#and the other just *is* that and would effortlessly murder the former on sight

[spin-attaxx]

Couple of quick additional refs for Shade and Charn I did for Artfight.

[hotchs-big-hands]

What did you call me?

Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|6.7k words

Aaron Hotchner x plus-size!reader

NSFW Minors dni please

Warning(s): slight angst, daddy kink, lead up to sex, body insecurities, Dom/sub relationship, sex clubs/strip clubs, confrontation with an unsub who has a knife, minor violence, firearm.

When Dom/sub couples begin to show up murdered mid-coital, the BAU team is brought in to solve the case. But as more couples are found and the unsub remains undetected, it becomes an undercover mission. The posing Dom/sub couple in question? Your intimidating, attractive boss and you.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Hello everyone!!! Gosh, I didn't expect people to enjoy the first part so much so thank you 💖💖💖💖 it means a lot! If you would also like to join the taglist then please let me know :) Thank you for reading!

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Another couple had been found dead soon enough, they'd also visited the same sex club the night before the estimated time of death. And just the same as the other couples, they were also in the middle of intercourse when they were murdered. But once again the killer had evaded being discovered. Everyone who worked in the club or had visited during the same night the couple had were interrogated, a process that had taken a few days but ultimately turned up no-one of note. Needless to say, the atmosphere in the station was exceedingly tense.

The chief of police was clearly at his wits end, his thin, greying hair was tussled and sticking to his skin from the sweat beading on his creased forehead. He stormed into the conference room yourself and the rest of the BAU were set up in and he made a beeline towards Hotch, of whom was reading back over the profile that you were all struggling to put together.

"Why the hell aren't you all doing anything?! I don't see why you're even here!" He snapped, causing everyone to focus on his reddening face. Hotch slowly turned to him, towering above him effortlessly, and glared.

"If you'll recall, you requested our assistance. And as you can see my team and I are working."

He turned slightly to gesture around the room and his eyes immediately met yours. Your brow furrowed slightly, wishing the chief would project his frustration on all of you, rather than just one person. You straightened up from where you were reviewing the footage from the night of the recent incident.

"I-I- think I have a theory that will help us figure out who the culprit is." You said. The chief spun sharply and you inwardly praised yourself for not flinching when he focused on you. Your eyes flicked to the man beside him for a split second.

"Well? Say it." Your eyes returned to the former again, unimpressed by his rudeness.

"The women. The victims that were women were all wearing a collar of some sort, but when their bodies were discovered there were no collars in sight, not even in the locations they were found in or amongst their belongings." You spoke smoothly, beckoning all to the computer screen you were at.

"You think the killer takes them?" The chief wondered aloud. Rossi answered on your behalf.

"Some killers take trophies from their victims, something to remember them by." He said.

"But what would the unsub do with the collars?" You heard JJ say. Emily crossed the room and pulled off the photos of the victims from the white board, bringing them back over to the monitor to compare with the different footage.

"Maybe they just collect them."

You narrowed your eyes a little as your mind rewound over the different people that had been interrogated over the past couple of days since the latest murder.

"Or they wear them." You mumbled.

"What was that?" Rossi prompted you and you cleared your throat, repeating yourself.

"I think they could possibly be wearing the collars until they find a new couple, then replace the collar with the newest victim's."

The chief huffed.

"The footage isn't clear enough to pinpoint who's wearing them though."

All eyes were upon Hotch now, of whom stood with his left hand on his hip, deep in thought. He glanced at Rossi.

"We'll have to go in." He said after a moment.

"As in...?" JJ trailed off. Your eyes widened. Hotch nodded and his eyes flicked from face to face.

"Yes. Two of us will need to bait the unsub out." He clarified.

Oh boy.

"Well Morgan and I wouldn't be able to go back there given that we would be instantly recognised as federal agents." Emily said and you hummed in agreement. Hotch's brow furrowed moreso than ever before sighing.

"I have not been in there, so I'll go."

Your eyes flicked to JJ, who stared back and slightly shook her head. Without breaking eye contact with you she opened her mouth to speak.

"I'm not so sure about doing this."

You winced. Emily elbowed you subtly, making you tense up. You felt eyes on you and your breath hitched when your own met brown ones. Hotch gazed down at you. Oh no.

"(L/n)?"

Fuck. This was a bad idea. You drew in a shaky breath and nodded.

"I guess we have no other options." You said finally. Something shifted in his face, a very subtle expression you couldn't read, before it was gone and his attention returned to the whole group.

"It's settled then. This unsub will follow us to wherever we are headed to once we have their attention," He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it and scrolling through his contacts. "With that in mind we should book a room in a different hotel if there aren't any new rooms available in the one we're in currently."

Your heart was pounding now, and you knew Emily could feel just how tense you were.

"We'll help (Y/n) with finding an appropriate outfit for tonight." She said. Hotch eyed her and nodded, pressing his phone to his ear.

"Garcia, I need you to..."

Your thoughts drowned out his voice, circling in your mind as you realised just what your undercover mission entailed. Pretending to be a dominant and submissive couple with the man you harboured strong feelings for? Absolutely awful. A truly terrible idea. And the fact that the couples were all found murdered mid-coital--

A hand appeared in front of your face and you blinked, slowly focussing on who was stood in front of you. Emily fought back a grin as you took her hand and you realised you'd been staring at Hotch, of whom was behind Emily eyeing you. With cheeks warming, you returned your attention to the woman in front of you and took her hand. She hummed.

"Lost in thought, hmm?" She asked casually.

"Shut up."

"Aww, don't be like that. We have to go find you an outfit now anyway."

She pulled you out of the office, JJ tagging alongside you and you turned your head back, meeting eyes with Hotch one last time. You were absolutely fucked.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Oh, you were absolutely going to kill Emily Prentiss for this. You'd managed to purchase a velvety little burgundy number that was more form fitting than what you were used to, some heels to match and even a black collar that had the words 'GOOD GIRL' adorning it in silver metal letters. Not only that, you'd treated yourself to a lovely red lingerie set to boost your confidence. But that wasn't the problem. The woman had insisted on visiting the back of the lingerie store to purchase one more item, an item that you had refused to buy until Emily simply took it to the clerk herself.

You huffed quietly as you walked alongside Hotch down the corridor in a different hotel that Garcia had booked for you both tonight. You weren't wearing the clothes you picked out for the club, instead wearing a black pencil skirt and the shirt you had been wearing earlier, tucked into the skirt. It was again, Emily's idea for you to wear a pair of heels for this as well. The sound of the suitcase wheels rumbled softly on the carpeted flooring and in your hands the room key-card warmed to your body temperature.

"Are you okay?" You heard Hotch say as you came to a stop outside your hotel room door. Not trusting yourself to look at him you simply nodded.

"Yeah. Are you?" You asked weakly and it was his turn to huff out a breath.

"Fine."

You flicked the card against the pad and pushed the handle down to enter the room. Garcia had, admittedly, found a double bed in a higher end hotel near the club but you certainly were not expecting this.

The room was huge. The hallway had an expensive oak wood table laid out against one wall with a vase of flowers on top. The walls were a pristine white and the decorating retained a theme of red accents, from the artwork on the walls to the duvet and pillows on the bed. Oh right, the bed...

A luxuriously large double bed stood in the centre of the room adorned with expensive sheets and pillows. You had to admit, it did look like a very comfy bed. You kicked off your heels and padded through to the main area of the room and perched on the side of it.

"If anything, Garcia certainly knows how to get us a good deal." You said light-heartedly and Hotch hummed, carrying the suitcase over to the bed and laying it down on its side. Your eyes drifted around the room still, slightly in awe of it all. It was incredible enough to almost have you forgetting the reason you were actually there.

"Let's read over the profile and notes one more time before we get ready to head out." Hotch murmured as he pulled the zipper on the case to open it. "We should also discuss what our dynamic is meant to..."

You blinked and turned your head in his direction. He was tense, brows pulled together. In hand was the casefile but his attention wasn't on it.

"What's wro...ng?" Your eyes drifted down to the suitcase and in an instant you knew the problem. Nestled on top of your clothing was a pastel pink vibrator and a matching remote. Fuck.

"Why is this in here?" Hotch asked slowly. Your eyes trailed back up to him. His gaze was dark, intense. A shiver shuddered through you.

"I.... It wasn't meant to be." You dipped your head and your cheeks felt hot, a coil forming in your lower abdomen. "Emily, uh, she bought it to apparently help with getting into character. I'd say she was joking but I never know with that woman." You trailed off and fiddled with the fabric of your skirt.

"I see..."

You lifted your head up and drew in a shaky breath when you realised he was still staring at you.

"I think she must have snuck it back into the suitcase because I left it in my room. Sorry about that."

Hotch studied you for a while, clearly debating something in his head with the way his eyes narrowed slightly. It made you uncomfortable, shifting under his gaze and after a moment you grabbed the device and made a move to shove it into the bottom of the case.

"Let's just forget about it, I'm SO gonna have a go at her for this." You rambled, that is until a warm, large hand came to grab both of your smaller hands, and ultimately made you pause. What the...

"Maybe... I mean, if you were comfortable, we could use it- as in you hide it under your dress and I'll have the remote- so it draws more attention our way." Hotch said and now it was your turn to stare. Holy shit, he wanted to actually use it?! You swallowed thickly and nodded.

"S-sure. Uh, I'll pin it to the side of my thigh with my pantyhose."

Hotch moved his hand away and you and this allowed you to grab your clothing for tonight. You pushed off the bed rapidly and made a beeline for the bathroom.

"Gonna get changed." You mumbled quickly and closed the door behind you. Fuck. Sitting down on the lid of the toilet after placing your clothes on the bathroom counter you rubbed your thighs together, attempting to ease the throb between your legs. This whole situation was a bad idea. The fact that you'd have to pretend to be a couple with him of all people whilst battling the complicated feelings you had going on troubled you. You hadn't forgotten what he told Rossi the other night, the ache in your chest lingering still. How would you return to normality after this? To pretend your feelings for him didn't exist, that you wished this wasn't just for an undercover job.

Both upset and horny now, you huffed and stripped off so you could change into the new lingerie and dress. Your eyes glanced at the mirror whilst you pulled the set on and you had to admit, you looked incredible. And when you finished pulling the dress into position you stepped back and gazed at your reflection your eyes widened.

The fabric hugged closely to your body, your hips curved with delicate drapes of fabric that spanned across your plump stomach deliciously. The queen anne neckline concealed your bra but the openness displayed the tantalising plain of your chest. You felt good, really good. With a smile, you grabbed your discarded clothing and exited the bathroom, only to stop short at the sight of Hotch's bare back as he pulled on a black dress shirt. He glanced back at you in surprise, not turning to face you though. You stammered and averted your eyes.

"Sorry, I didn't realise you were changing."

Hotch hummed, fastening the buttons of the shirt whilst you passed him to place your folded clothes back into the suitcase.

"It's alright, no harm done." He responded quietly and at the corner of your eye you could tell he was watching you as he tucked the shirt into his dress pants. You lifted your gaze to him properly and you frowned a little. He noticed and raised a brow. "What's wrong?"

You approached him and lifted your hands to the top few buttons, unfastening them to show off more of his neck and collarbones.

"That looks better I think." You mumbled. When your eyes flitted to his face you trembled, stepping away quickly whilst your cheeks flushed. He was smirking ever so subtly at you.

"Oh? Well I'll take your word for it."

You nodded and grabbed the heels that matched your dress and sat down on the bed so you could put them on. Irritatingly, the bed was quite tall and made fastening the shoes difficult. During your struggle you didn't realise the man before you had knelt down until his hands came into view, one grasping your ankle gently whilst the other took the shoe from your hand. Your head shot up and you let out a squeak when you realised how close to his face you were whilst slouched over. That little smirk was still there.

"Let me help you." He insisted softly, voice deep and breath fanning across your cheeks, only emphasizing just how close your faces were to one another. You straightened up and bashfully looked away from him. The sight of him kneeling in front of you like this had your thoughts spiraling, imagining him grasping both your ankles and spreading your legs and leaning his face closer and closer to your throbbing slit-

You cleared your throat, feeling perverted, and internally scolded yourself for thinking about such things, especially with him so close to you right now.

"O-okay. Thank you, sir."

He hummed again and made swift but gentle work of fastening your shoes on, his large hands skillful as though he had done this many times in the past for his ex-wife. You tried not to think too much about that though.

Once ready, you hopped off the bed and grabbed the vibrator. You puffed out a breath.

"I'll, uhm, pin this to my thigh now." You said and turned away from him so you could shove your hand down your pantyhose and slide the toy into the correct spot on your leg. When you pulled the skirt of the dress back down you were satisfied that it was undetectable. Spinning, you held your arms out to present yourself. "Well? Do you think this is okay?"

Hotch studied you with dark eyes, trailing up and down your figure slowly.

"Beautiful," He said finally and stepped towards you. "However, you forgot this-"

In his hand was the collar you'd picked out. Your eyes widened a little as you reached for it.

"Oh, yeah I did. Thanks, I'll-"

Hotch pulled his hand out of reach, surprising you. His eyes bored down into yours as you frowned at him.

"Let me."

"Oh." You trembled a little as he turned you to face away from him and carefully, he fastened the collar around your neck, fingers brushing against your skin slightly and causing a shiver to dance down your spine. His hands lingered a moment longer, then he took a step back.

"There you go."

You turned to face him again and his eyes lingered on the new piece of jewelry. You swallowed thickly.

"Thanks. Uhm, let's read the file and then we can go." You said and Hotch hummed.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Everything would be okay, you thought to yourself. But realistically, you felt almost sick with nerves. You never did undercover work, let alone something as confronting and intimate as this. Hotch walked alongside you in the warm, slightly clammy night towards the sex club, his hand on the small of your back. Initially, when he rested his hand there you'd jolted, making him pull his hand back and apologise. You'd shyly let him know it was okay, you just hadn't expected it. Your heels clacked on the sidewalk, the only noise besides the passing of cars or other people dotted around. You felt Hotch's thumb gently rub against your back, causing your cheeks to feel flushed.

"Just follow my lead." He murmured into your ear. You shuddered as his breath fanned against your neck and you knew he felt it from the more firm grasp of his hand on your back.

Eventually, you both came to a stop in front of the unassuming door which led down to the club. Glancing at one another, you nodded once and assumed the act of an overly affectionate couple for when you pressed the buzzer to be allowed inside. You wrapped your arm around Hotch's waist, feeling his torso tense underneath you as he pulled you closer towards him. The action made you automatically lay your hand against his chest to balance yourself and you could feel the warmth of his body, the strumming of his heartbeat.

A short moment later you were walking down the staircase that separated the outdoors from the club. Loud, pulsing music played through unseen speakers and immediately the two of you were greeted by the sight of scantily dressed women and men, eyeing you both as you crossed the room to the front desk. You were very uncomfortable. Hotch took charge talking to the woman at the desk whilst your eyes drifted around the room, taking in the environment. Your attention was drawn back to Hotch and the woman when his arm tightened around you and his hand squeezed your hip.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's have a look around." Hotch murmured and you jolted. He called you sweetheart. You bit your lip and hummed, letting him lead you away from the entrance. You found a crescent-shaped booth in the middle of the main lounge to settle in for a moment and you snuggled closely up to him, inhaling his scent. His hand was around you, resting on your lower back again and stroking you with his fingertips. He pressed his lips to the top of your head, you bit back a noise as you tried to calm yourself down.

"Are you sure it's okay for me to kiss you and get handsy with you?" He asked again, despite having discussed yours and his boundaries back at the hotel. You nodded and swung your leg over his hips, pushing yourself up so you could gaze at his face. He was watching you through lidded eyes and his hands came to grip your hips. You felt hot, needy.

"Of course I am. What should I call you though?" You murmured back, eyes flicking between his lips and the rest of his face. He raised a brow.

"Whatever you want to, sweetheart."

You shuddered again and hummed.

"Okay, daddy."

Something flared in his eyes and suddenly you were being pulled onto his lap properly, straddling him with your hands bracing yourself up on his shoulders. Your eyes flew open wide and you gasped, he held back a smirk. You pouted.

"A little warning next time."

His hands squeezed again.

"Sorry. Are you alright?" He asked quietly. You nodded and craned your neck, peeking over the top of the booth and scanning the area, trying to spot anyone of note. You felt a hot breath against the valley between your breasts and you gasped out, hands gripping tighter on Hotch's shoulders. You slid back down to straddle one of his thighs and blushed, avoiding his gaze.

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't think I would be all up in your face like that! I was just trying to look over the top of the booth." You fumbled out quickly and Hotch's hands tightened, moving slightly just shy of your ass.

"It's fine." You heard him say, but it sounded strained. "Do you see anyone suspicious?"

"No, not yet. Maybe we should get refreshments so we have the chance to interact with people more."

"Yes. I'll wave over someone." He murmured. A moment later, a woman wearing a black lingerie set and heels approached your booth and swayed her hips, smiling seductively at the two of you.

"What can I do for you two tonight?" She asked, eyeing you from head to toe. You tensed a little, not enjoying the staring. Hotch stroked your hips, holding you closer to him.

"Two cokes, please." He responded. The woman sauntered off towards the bar with one more scrutinizing glance over and you slumped a little.

"I can't wait until we get out of here." You grumbled. All of a sudden, the hands on your hips were grabbing your ass cheeks tightly, making you squeak. "H-Hotc-!"

The man below you pressed his lips to yours roughly and you felt your body short-circuit, utterly stunned by him. You kissed back, a whine lingering in your throat which escaped when Hotch pulled away from the kiss. He looked stern.

"What did you call me?"

You whimpered.

"I- I called you Hotch, instead of daddy."

He hummed and smoothed his hands over your rump, encouraging you to roll your hips.

"I hope that wasn't too far, I think I just spotted our unsub though and wanted to solidify their attention on us." He murmured gently. You drew in a shuddering breath.

"N-no it was okay. Very believable I think." You managed to choke out. Reality set back in again for you. This wasn't a fun little night out with your boss, finally getting the touches and kisses you craved, you were there to do your job. You felt tense again and very embarrassed that you'd been caught up in the moment, wishfully thinking of it all being real with your boss. Hotch's brows scrunched together as he felt a shift in your mood.

"(Y/n).. I-"

"-Two cokes for the very cosy couple." You heard from behind you and you jolted, turning your body to see who it was. Your eyes widened.

A slender woman with straight, dyed red hair was standing at the edge of the booth holding two glasses of the fizzy drink. She too was wearing a black lingerie set and heels but that wasn't what your eyes were focused on. Around her neck was a pink leather collar with the phrase "DADDY'S KITTEN" on it. The collar had belonged to the latest female victim. Your eyes drifted back up to her face quickly and you smiled at her.

"Oh, thank you!" You chirped at her in a cutesy voice. She smirked and placed the two glasses down, condensation already rolling down onto the table.

"You two seem to be having a lot of fun."

You felt your cheeks warm and Hotch adjusted you to sit facing away from him, his hands on your expansive thighs. His stomach was tense against your back, a clear sign of him being on high alert.

"Mmm, we don't get to spend much time together. I have to travel to my little girl, you see." He said, then pressed his lips to your neck to kiss it. The sensation of his lips on your sensitive neck made you shudder and grip onto the fabric of his trousers, not even remotely acting. The woman in front of you stared.

"Oh?"

You nodded and pouted.

"I'm studying here but we're going back to our hotel though 'cuz I struggle staying quiet enough in my dorm."

Hotch chuckled and ran his hands up and down your thighs, fingers dipping between them slightly and causing you to whimper. The corner of the woman's mouth twitched.

"Mhm, you looking for a threesome tonight, huh?"

"Actually, I'm trying to teach her to control herself and behave." Hotch answered before you could even open your mouth. And then you felt it, the vibrator stirred to life and began to vibrate violently against your thigh, startling you. You gasped out, hips automatically rolling forward and grinding down on Hotch's lap. The woman in front of you eyed you up and down, realising what she thought was happening and smirked. An unseen woman called for her attention and she stepped back.

"Well, if you need any help with that just let me know."

She turned on her heel and walked away, your eyes following her until she was out of sight. You returned to facing Hotch, pouting.

"That scared the fuck out of me!" You hissed. His eyes glinted mysteriously in the dim lighting, the vibrator continued to buzz against you.

"At least we know who our unsub is. And we got a first name: Tanya."

You nodded slightly.

"We should finish up here then and make a move."

Reluctantly, you climbed off his lap and eyed the drinks on the table. You didn't exactly trust consuming anything the possible unsub had brought out to you. Hotch took hold of your hand.

"Leave them. We need to go." He said and you nodded, letting him pull you out of the booth. He held you close to his body, gazing down at you and leaning close to you. "I'm going to kiss you again and grab your ass before we leave. Is that okay?"

You wanted to laugh at how formal he sounded but held back, instead nodding and gripping onto his shirt.

"Yes, sir."

He pulled you tighter against him and pressed his lips to yours, growling lowly as his hands grabbed handfuls of your ass again. You squeaked, arms throwing over his shoulders and hanging on tight to him. You never wanted this to end, craving his touch over and over and over...

Your lips departed when he pulled away, a smacking noise causing you to shudder a little. His hands smoothed up your body to rest at your lower back and you shifted uncomfortably.

"The vibrator- could you turn it off?"

He blinked at you, then fumbled one of his hands in his pocket.

"Right, yeah. Sorry."

The vibrator stilled and you exhaled, resting your head against his chest. His heart was pounding, chest rising and falling deeply with every breath. God, you were desperate for him to fuck you at this point. Scrunching your eyes closed for a second, you exhaled and pulled away from him to take hold of his hand.

"Let's go." You said softly. You felt eyes on you as Hotch guided you back out of the club and for a mere moment you dared glance around. The unsub was watching you through a fierce glare, eyes following as you walked away. Gotcha, you thought.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

The walk back to the hotel was brisk, still holding onto one another just in case the unsub had already begun following you. Discreetly, Hotch sent a message to Derek to indicate you were both heading back to the hotel and to monitor the security cameras for the unsub, typing out a brief description as well. You were nervous. Nervous about what the unsub would do, but even more so nervous about what you were about to do next.

Once you were back in your hotel room you quickly kicked your heels off and exhaled, gracious that they were finally off your feet.

"I don't know why people wear these things, they fucking hurt." You complained quietly. Hotch watched you for a moment, then pulled his phone out again to call one of the others.

"Give me the word when they head into the hotel." You vaguely heard him talking as you eyed yourself in the large mirror situated on the wall on the right side of the bed. None of your colleagues had seen you dressed in anything less than your current outfit, you never even thought your boss would be the one you'd be undressing for in a moment's time. You bit your lip, hand subconsciously moving to rest against your plump stomach. You shouldn't care what he would think, this was for a job. It wasn't as though you'd ever become a couple from this. And yet...

"Are you alright?" Hotch murmured softly from behind you, causing you to jump slightly. You hadn't realised he'd moved to stand behind you, his brows pulled together and his mouth tugging downward. You dropped your hand immediately and smiled.

"Yes of course. I guess we're playing the waiting game now, huh?"

He didn't smile back, appearing more concerned instead.

"We are, yes. Morgan will give us the signal. Which would mean..." He trailed off. You dropped your gaze, feeling hot and a slightly upset.

"Yeah.. uhm, what should we do?"

"Well, we would have to look as though we were about to engage in intercourse."

Hotch raised a brow when a bubble of laughter escaped you, making your cheeks flush. You covered your mouth, trying to calm yourself down enough to explain yourself.

"Sorry, you're just so formal when discussing something like this. I didn't mean to laugh." You said, revelling in the faint smile that slowly formed on his face. He placed a hand on your arm and turned you to face him. Your eyes widened, heart rate increasing as you gazed up at him in surprise. He thought for a moment, then spoke.

"I was wondering, when this case is finished, if you-"

The shrill of Hotch's ringtone cut him off and the two of you sighed, pulling from one another. He answered. You knew it was time to get ready for the next phase of the job, there was no room for anymore hesitation. When Hotch ended the call and pocketed his phone you were gripping onto the skirt of your dress tightly, trembling a little. You avoided his gaze.

"I'm gonna...uhm, take my dress off now." You warned him gently. And then you slipped the dress up over your head and discarded it on the ground near the bed. You heard a sharp intake of air and cringed, expecting the worst. "You should, uh, keep your shirt on. Just undo a few more buttons. The dominant in the relationship usually is more dressed than the submissive during sex."

"You seem knowledgeable on the subject." Hotch murmured, making your ears feel hot. You quickly pulled the vibrator out from inside your pantyhose and huffed.

"Shut up."

There was a pause, then Hotch was dragging you by the arm firmly but gently and pushing you down on the bed, manhandling you until you were laying amongst the now scattered pillows. You'd let out a yelp and a shout of his usual nickname until you found yourself being straddled by him, your chest heaving and your mouth slightly agape. Hotch sneered down at you, pinning your wrists either side of your head.

"What did you just say to me?" He asked dangerously calmly. You gulped.

"U-uhm.."

He tutted, leaning down to graze his nose along your neck, inhaling.

"Do at least one thing right for me; be loud, let everyone know who you belong to. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?"

You trembled, legs falling open a little.

"H-Hotch?"

With a quiet rumble in his chest, he began to suck harshly on your neck, avoiding the collar, and making you cry out.

"Wrong name." He muttered against your skin. Oh... You were unable to think straight, mind feeling mushy and your body tingling and throbbing all for him. The last thing you cared about was the unsub, the man sucking on your skin taking over your entire being. You pushed your chest up against his and whined loudly.

"S-sir, please!"

Hotch growled, pressing his lips to yours in a bruising kiss whilst his hips pinned yours down, his crotch against yours. You spread your legs wider, wanting him closer to you. His lips detached from yours, a trail of saliva connecting you both for a mere moment, but he wasn't finished. He moved slowly downwards, kissing and sucking your neck again, then your collarbones. Your back arched and you moaned as he sucked a hickey on your left breast, his hands moving from your wrists to your thighs. You could feel him smirking against your skin.

"Such a good girl, let out all those noises. Daddy wants to hear them whilst he marks you up. Gotta make it look like we were up to something, haven't we?." He cooed, spreading your legs wider and grinding against you. You bit your lip as you whimpered; you could have sworn you felt something hard and thick pressing into your clothed pussy.

And then the door burst open.

"Don't fucking move!" A familiar voice snapped, causing you and Hotch to flinch and turn your attention to the doorway.

"W-what-" Hotch played up a stutter. You'd been right, it was the woman who had given you your drinks. She glared at you both as she slammed the door shut behind her, you noted she hadn't locked it, seemingly because she had broken the lock to get into the room as she had done with all the other victims. In her hand was a long kitchen knife, glinting in the room light.

"Shut the fuck up." She stepped closer, pointing the blade towards you. "You disgusting freaks, playing around with such a horrible dynamic! Do you even understand what such relationships do to people?!"

Hotch moved slightly, shielding you from the unsub. It was like whiplash, one moment you were losing yourself to the pleasure of him and the next you were face to face with the murderer under the guise of her having the upper hand. Your eyes drifted slightly, eyeing Hotch for a brief moment, then returning your gaze to the unsub before she noticed.

"Ma'am, I understand that you may not like the lifestyle but why do you think you should kill us for it?" Hotch said calmly, hands raised to show he meant no harm to her. She sneered.

"All you people are the same. Prepared to have a horrible imbalanced relationship but so pathetic when that's threatened." She stepped closer, the handle of the knife trembling slightly with the tight grip she had on it. It wouldn't be long before Derek and the others appeared, but she was getting too close to you and Hotch. Without hesitating a second longer, you lunged towards the man still encasing you below him and grabbed the gun he always had strapped to his ankle, pushing back the safety on it and pointing it at the unsub. Her eyes widened, you stared her down.

"Tanya, put the knife down. We're with the FBI. We know what you've done." You said unwaveringly, forgetting your state of undress as you sat up straighter and faced her. She opened her mouth a few times, unable to think of what to say.

"B-but- you both- you were going to fuck! You seemed so much like a real couple!"

You ignored the sting in your chest, instead lightly pushing Hotch backwards with your shoulder so you could stand up.

"You were good, Tanya. We couldn't quite figure out who it was murdering all those couples. We had to resort to going undercover." You stepped closer, gun still trained on her. "It's over though. Put that knife down."

Hesitation flashed across Tanya's face for a moment, her hands shaking more erratically the longer she stood there. Absently, you sensed Hotch standing behind you and felt proud of yourself when you didn't flinch. Before any of you could make another move the hotel door swung open and the room was flooded with people, Derek leading the way.

"FBI! Put your weapon down now and put your hands up where we can see them!" He yelled. Tanya jolted, dropping the blade as she spun on her heel in utter panic. It was over. You barely registered the arrest being made, instead making quick work of putting the safety back on the gun, placing it on the bed and pulling the dress back over your head so you didn't feel so exposed anymore. You needed to get out of the room, needed fresh air to clear your head. Before anyone could speak to you you were gone, slipping your feet into the heels again and struggling with the buckles, then rushing out of the room.

"Hey! (L/n)! Where are you going!?" You heard Emily shout but you didn't stop, not until you reached the outdoors.

Back in the hotel room Rossi casually approached Hotch, who was staring after your abrupt exit with a deep-set frown.

"What was that about?" Rossi asked, feigning disinterest.

"I don't know. I need to go after her."

Before the taller of the two men could run after you, Rossi grabbed his arm and raised a brow.

"I would wait a bit. Unlike the female body, it's much easier to tell when the male body is in the mood."

Hotch froze, breath caught in his throat. He tried clearing it as he turned away from his longtime friend.

"Excuse me." He muttered.

Back outside, you ran your hands over your scalp, heart racing still and an array of emotions spiralling within you.

"(L/n)!" Emily shouted, having caught up with you. Her eyes widened when she came to stand in front of you, eyes fixated on your neck and chest. "Oh wow, he really did a number on you, huh?"

You flushed, scowling at her and folding your arms.

"Shut it! Leave it alone." You snapped but she didn't back down, grinning widely at you.

"I bet that felt really nice, huh? You look absolutely frazzled."

"-There you are. Looking frazzled, are we?" Derek said as he exited the hotel lobby. You wished you had a jacket right about now. He chuckled when his eyes found the hickeys decorating your skin. "Damn! Didn't know boss-man had it in him!"

You scowled at the two of them as you hugged your arms closer around yourself.

"We did what we had to do for the job. Now leave it be."

"Come on now, I bet it was a dream come true for you, right?" The dark-skinned man pressed. Shame consumed you as your gaze dropped.

"Not his though." You said quietly.

"-I wouldn't say so."

The three of you turned to find Rossi approaching you, a mischievous glint in his gaze. Your eyes narrowed a little.

"What?"

The old man shrugged, hands in his pockets.

"Let's just say he's not here right now for a reason." Was all he said. Emily snorted at the same time as Derek hollering. And yet it did nothing to help you, your thoughts having already set themselves in your mind.

"It's probably involuntary. We were in a sex club and such for a while so.."

"Come on now, you know it's because of you." Emily retorted, but you were not convinced in the slightest.

"Let's just- we need to go back to the station to do the interrogation. The sooner we get that done the sooner I can get these damn shoes off."

You turned to find one of the FBI cars and began to walk towards it. You ignored the calls of your name, waiting desperately for one of the others to give in and drive back to the station with you. In the end, Rossi unlocked the vehicle and once again he drove you away to your salvation.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

Thank you all for reading!! This one I kept getting carried away 😭 idk if it's that good but I hope you all enjoyed regardless! I wonder what will happen in the final part 😳😳

Taglist: @cr1minalskies @modern-mermaid @aaronhotchnersgirlfriend @aaronhotchswife @emptybagofchips77 @crimeshowjunkie @igotanidea @gogococopuffs @prentissesredtanktop @louderfortheback @howabouticallyou @lalalove-56 @abbyschmaby @constantwritingblock @boredelle @powerlvr25 @aad1993 @idkbubs (not sure why some don't work 😭)

[phoenix-flamed]

@roseire asked: ❝ So sleep in your only memory of me, my dearest. ❞ | Silent Hill Lyric Starters

The dilapidated audience room was silent, empty aside from the two of them. Any grief the man would have otherwise felt at the sight of what had become of his former home was replaced with anger -- burning so intensely within his breast. It acted as kindling for the flames of hatred which threatened to consume him.

Miles -- no, Elwin would not tear his gaze away from the woman. The Holy Empire's former Empress. The scourge of Rosaria, far more devastating even than the Blight itself had been.

Beneath the collar he wore to cover it, that old scar encircling his neck began to burn too; rather than flinching or reaching up to it, his face contorted into a scowl. Lips pulled back, revealing gritted teeth. Though his head tipped slightly downward, those darkened eyes never strayed from Anabella, daring her to move or to speak.

Daring her to give him a reason to draw the dagger sheathed at his thigh, the hilt upon which one hand rested in preparation.

"You have no right to be here," the disgraced royal warned. "Not after everything you have done, Your Grace. Monster. Murderer. Snake in the grass."

Elwin stepped forward slowly. Each footfall that brought him closer to the former Duchess dredged up more and more unwanted feelings, fleeting reminders of times long dead from another life. Her words echoed within his very soul as effortlessly as they echoed throughout the walls of the throne room: So sleep in your only memory of me, my dearest.

"My memory of you has been overtaken with fire and grief. Sleep brings me no peace, no solace -- I dream only of that night, and of the faces of the dead. Ever since my liberation, do you have any idea how many of your messes I have aided in cleaning up? How many of our people -- friends, all, who looked to us for guidance and protection -- I have helped in burying after your men slaughtered them in cold blood? How many horrific stories were relayed back to us by our fellow Cursebreakers out in the field?"

The more he spoke, the more his anger mounted, and the more his voice raised until he was damn near yelling. "Auldhyl. Eastpool. Countless other villages, and still more terrified to incur your wrath lest they be next. Lives snuffed out as if they meant nothing, just like at Phoenix Gate," he snarled, and his tone was laced with venom borne of emotions that he never would have thought himself capable of. "Even our own children, their lives destroyed by your machinations. Isn't that right, Anabella? Or did you forget about them, too, when you started your new life in Sanbreque?"

[robininthelabyrinth]

The Nie brothers time travel but something goes wrong and they end up in each other bodies. So now they have to defeat WRH, find a way to curb JGY worst tendencies, and hide (and undo) the switch before any cultivator decides they are possesed by evil spirits

“I can’t do this,” Nie Huaisang announced heavily. “I can’t. Nope. Cannot. No way.”

“You apparently found a way to time travel into the past,” his brother pointed out. He was taking this entire thing very calmly – or, rather, like he’d heard a really great joke. It wasn’t that Nie Huaisang had forgotten that his brother had a sense of humor hidden under the rage, especially in the earlier years before Jin Guangyao got at him, but he may have downplayed his memories of how annoying it was to be the target of it. “Your abilities are clearly well beyond what you’ve been leading me to believe.”

“I’m sneaky,” Nie Huaisang explained. “I can scheme and plot and play politics, sometimes, if I have to. But I cannot be a general!”

I cannot be you, he meant. He might currently be inhabiting his long-dead brother’s body – an unfortunate side effect of messing up the time travel array, he suspected, but then again experimental things were often imperfect – while his brother’s spirit had been cast out into his own former self, but he wasn’t his brother.

He could never be.

(But Nie Mingjue was alive, alive and well with bright eyes and that stupid smirk that didn’t fit right on Nie Huaisang’s smaller face except in the ways it sort of did, and that was all Nie Huaisang had ever wanted in his life, other than Jin Guangyao to pay in blood and shame for depriving him of it.)

“Why not?” his brother asked. He leaned back and stretched lazily. Nie Mingjue never did a lazy thing in his whole life, so it was deliberate. He was enjoying this. “We have a battle strategy, already decided; most of the rest of it is on-the-ground tactics, which can be done just as well from behind the lines as at the front of them. There’s a reason that no one ever settled on the best place for a war-leader to be – it comes down to temperament.”

Nie Huaisang threw his hands into the air. “I know that! I was sect leader for nearly two decades, da-ge; I assure you, I’ve heard all the sect’s philosophical musings by now. But I don’t have your temperament – there’s no way someone won’t figure out what’s happened, that we’ve switched, and that’ll be a disaster.”

“Two decades,” Nie Mingjue said thoughtfully, focusing on the entirely wrong part of the conversation.

“A decade and a half to avenge your untimely murder,” that got a flinch out of his brother and his focus back, just as Nie Huaisang had wanted, “and another five to find a way to come back and avert it entirely.”

Nie Huaisang had always been resourceful. Resourceful, and ruthless – sometimes to a degree that scared even him.

When he was younger, it was okay. After all, the only thing he used it for was sneaking treats and spoiling himself, and it didn’t really matter if he was ruthless about stuff like that. And then his brother died – was murdered – and suddenly he knew what it was like to be his brother: a young man suddenly shoved into the role of sect leader, and having to balance everything he now had to be against the overwhelming blistering hatred he bore for and the crippling weight of the vengeance he had sworn against a man who had taken away someone he loved forever for something as pointless and ephemeral as political advantage.

(He had to take a deep breath at the mere thought of it, the family rage spiking under his skin. It was a bit of a surprise, actually, to find that his brother didn’t have more of it - he’d always assumed that his rage was lesser, weaker, the way his golden core was, but no. It turned out their rage was just the same.)

“So what you’re saying,” his brother said, and he was smirking again, oh no, “is that you’re focused, efficient, and unyielding in pursuit of your goals, given the right motivation. That sounds like general material to me.”

“Not if the goal is to make sure no one knows what’s happened,” Nie Huaisang hissed. Had own face always looked so incredibly punchable? “Da-ge, it doesn’t matter what type of general I might be. What matters is that it’s not the same type of general you are – you’re always at the front line, leading the charge. I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” his brother said. “By the time you’re in the middle of a charge, you’re not really thinking tactics anymore. It’s all just fighting, and I know you know all the moves, no matter how much you bitch and moan about having to practice them.”

Nie Huaisang glared, crossing his arms over his chest – his brother’s arms, his brother’s chest, and this was still just too weird. He hadn’t even had time to properly weep and cry and hug his brother the way he’d expected to in the event the time travel array worked; they’d had to jump straight into explanations and strategizing because there was a pretty big battle happening in less than twenty-four hours and they needed to fix this first.

His brother rolled his eyes at him, and for the first time Nie Huaisang realized that his brother was going to have no problem at all pretending to be him – the acting problem here went only one way. “Just let Baxia handle the aggression part, okay? The rest is muscle memory, and I, at least, have done enough to build that in.”

“Letting the saber spirit in like that is dangerous, da-ge,” Nie Huaisang reminded him, eyes narrowed. His brother was also assuming that Baxia would agree to be wielded by anyone other than her beloved master, which was a stretch – she barely even agreed to be sharpened by someone else, resisting violently whenever someone tried. 

Jin Guangyao had died still bearing the scars from his attempt. 

“Well, apparently I get murdered before it becomes an issue, so why worry?” his brother cackled, and Nie Huaisang glared harder. It had no impact whatsoever: Nie Mingjue stood up and stretched again. “You know what, Huaisang, if you’re feeling the need to sit around and pity yourself, you’ve got at least a few incense sticks’ worth of time to do it in before actually doing something becomes necessary – I, on the other hand, am going to do something productive with my time.”

“Like what?”

His brother grinned at him with teeth. “Saber training. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Nie Huaisang picked up a teacup and hurtled it at his beloved big brother’s head. Naturally, Nie Mingjue dodged, effortlessly, and left laughing.

“At least pretend like you’re going to behave!” Nie Huaisang bellowed after him, but his brother just waved at him, and – ugh. This was vengeance for a lifetime of laziness, wasn’t it? Coming to bite him in the ass.

After a few minutes, Nie Huaisang picked up another teacup – they always had dozens of them in the Nie sect, cheaply made in bulk and specifically designed to shatter easily because of the family tendency to throw stuff around and not calm down until something was broken, and better a cheap teacup than an expensive door or table, better something designed not to hurt anyone who happened to get in the way or didn’t know how to duck faster enough – and threw it against the door again.

It shattered beautifully. NIe Huaisang had only rarely been able to get it to do that, and never so effortlessly – the advantage of his brother’s strength.

Strength, and height. Nie Huaisang was tall now.

Okay, self-pity could wait until later. Nie Huaisang was going to go patrol the camp for a little bit and enjoy looking down at all the people.

It was going to be great.

It was, too. Even talking with people wasn’t as difficult as he thought it was going to be. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised at that; he had been sect leader for years, so he was accustomed to answering questions and making on-the-fly rearrangements and responding to things with leading questions that made the other person come up with the solution on their own, not to mention saying encouraging things that made people feel better about things. 

He’d had to do a lot of that, being the Head-shaker, and even more afterwards, when he’d shed his disguise like a cicada shedding its skin.

It was easier now than it had ever been before, of course. The Nie sect was still strong, under his brother’s leadership; his disciples didn’t have that discouraged look lurking in the back of their eyes, the shame of being led by the disgraceful Head-shaker. It was easy to brighten someone’s day with a nod in their direction, disciples blooming like roses at the sight of their stern sect leader looking approving, and the questions he received were far more intellectually stimulating than the usual – less about making sure he knew what he was supposed to do and more actual puzzles, things that had really tripped people up.

Nie Huaisang tried at first to keep his answers short, tried to pretend to be more stoic and stand-offish the way the famous Chifeng-zun ought to be, except when he did everyone just smiled at him the way they always had when he’d been the Head-shaker – a little indulgent, a little pitying, a little “well he’s trying his best” – and after a while Nie Huaisang started remembering things he’d long ago forgotten.

Things like how his brother was actually kind of a mess sometimes, emotionally speaking – he was the sort of person who got weepy over dramatic literature – and how he’d never quite gotten the hang of people, how he valued his friends like gold and held grudges way too long and promoted people just because they seemed decent; how he sometimes spent his entire money pouch and more on buying Nie Huaisang stupid trinkets because it seemed to make him happy, even borrowing money from their escort, which would always be doubled over laughing at how their fearsome sect leader couldn’t bring himself to say no.

Like how Nie Huaisang’s sect was his family, aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters, whether born in or adopted or just part of the sect. The good type of family – not always the closest, not always your friends, not always even people you really liked, but still all predisposed to take your side in a fight if it came down to it.

These were the people who supported him and stood behind him – even when he was the Head-shaker.

He’d almost forgotten.

And so, despite himself, Nie Huaisang softened a bit. He stopped trying to respond to everything with a grunt or a huff, started asking about people’s families, making suggestions, telling them they’d done a good job.

“Glad you’re out of your mood,” Nie Yongbiao, who’d been quietly trailing him, finally commented, and Nie Huaisang blinked owlishly at him. “What kicked it off this time? You usually only get that closed-mouth after having to host guests.”

And that was true, wasn’t it? It had been such a long time, and after so much trauma, that Nie Huaisang had forgotten how his brother used to shut down whenever there was a discussion conference or an important meeting – how it took him longer and longer to get better on the other side as the qi deviation drew nearer, his meridians filling with Jin Guangyao’s spiritual poison. By the end, he had barely ever been open and free, barely seemed to remember how to drop his guard and relax, to act like a regular person with a sense of humor again, be the person Nie Huaisang knew his brother to be. 

But that was then, and this was now - war had been good for Nie Mingjue, in a strange way. Here in the camps there was a lessened expectation of etiquette, a great appreciation of strength, and his brother was more free to be himself, straightforward and blunt as the off side of a saber.

(Nie Mingjue had tried so hard to be a good brother to Jin Guangyao, Nie Huaisang abruptly remembered, but he’d shut down after every visit, worse than ever before. His heart had known the truth, even if he had allowed himself to be convinced by Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang to keep giving Jin Guangyao second chance after second chance. He should never have listened to them.)

“Argument with Huaisang,” he said, a safe answer, and Nie Yongbiao nodded wisely.

“Can you say what it was about?” he asked, rather unexpectedly – Nie Yongbiao wasn’t exactly talkative, and no one ever pried about their family affairs. Catching Nie Huaisang’s surprised look, he shrugged. “He’s obviously very upset.”

“He is?”

“He’s at the training field,” Nie Yongbiao stressed, and Nie Huaisang had to choke down a hysterical laugh. Of course Nie Yongbiao would think that something must have gone horribly wrong to get “Nie Huaisang” to go willingly to train.

Nor was Nie Yongbiao the only one, for that matter: when Nie Huaisang arrived at the training field they’d set up in the middle of the camp, he saw an entire crowd of Nie sect disciples milling around at the edge of the field, bearing a suspicious resemblance to a flock of over-anxious quail.

He reached up to his face, pretending to want to pinch the bridge of his nose but actually to smother a smile, and luckily he had regained control of his features by the time he reached the edge of the small sea of disciples because they immediately all turned to him with relieved expressions, their cries of “Sect Leader! Sect Leader!” ringing in his ears like the coos of his pet birds.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, and immediately received the full story: Nie Huaisang had come to the field looking upset – one person insisted there had been tears in his eyes – and had set himself up against a practice dummy, and he hadn’t stopped whacking at it ever since.

Clearly, the world was ending.

“We had an argument earlier,” Nie Huaisang admitted, and managed, barely, not to laugh at how they all looked at him with disapproving eyes. “I’ll talk with him.”

Approving nods all around, although they didn’t disperse.

“Sect Leader,” one of the older generation said, very hesitantly. “If it’s about – the clan matter – if there’s anything we can do to help –”

Nie Huaisang shook his head, feeling touched. When it really had been him, his brother had kept the specifics of it secret – the tombs, the inevitability, the deterioration he was so avidly trying to put off – until it was too late, and he’d had to learn about it the hard way; it was nice, though, that they apparently all worried so much on his behalf about it.

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it. “But it’s a different issue.”

Namely, the issue was that the person doing the training wasn’t Nie Huaisang at all, he thought, but when the crowd finally started breaking apart, people going back to their assigned tasks, and he finally managed to make his way to where his brother was, he was surprised to see that his brother really did appear to be upset.

He wasn’t practicing any of his normal training routines, but rather wielding Aituan in the same way a novice woodcutter would wield an axe: repetitive strikes, made wildly and with too much strength, as if hitting the practice dummy was the only thing that could vent his feelings.

“Uh, ‘Huaisang’?” Nie Huaisang asked, worrying his lip as he came closer. “Are you –”

His brother dropped Aituan to the ground – which, hey! Watch it, that was his saber! – and turned, and Nie Huaisang had only a moment to see his glassy eyes before his brother threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around him and holding him tight.

Nie Huaisang automatically responded, wrapping his arms back around and holding Nie Mingjue close – it was nice, he thought, to finally have the reach he’d always felt he should have, big and tall and enveloping in its warm the way his brother had been for him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice low enough not to carry. “Did something happen…?”

“No,” Nie Mingjue said, but his lips were pressed together to keep them from trembling. Nie Huaisang’s body had always been free with his emotions, much to his annoyance; he’d learned to cultivate it into a disguise, but he hadn’t really liked it. Tears had never been a relief for him the way they’d been for his brother. “No, it’s nothing.”

“It’s obviously not nothing,” Nie Huaisang said firmly, and carted him off back to his tent. Being as worried as he was, he did his best not to be too smug about finally being the one who was strong enough to pick his brother up, rather than the other way around – not that he needed to, what with his brother following docilely along with him – but there was, perhaps, a little bit of smugness. “Okay, we’re back, silencing talismans are back up because we apparently have the nosiest disciples. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing, really…”

“Da-ge.”

“I left you alone,” his brother blurted out, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. “For twenty years. Whatever I did, however I got murdered – some moment of carelessness – it doesn’t matter. I failed you.”

Oh, no. No, no, no– 

“No,” he said out loud. “No, da-ge, you were tricked – it wasn’t – it wasn’t your fault.”

“I always said I would hold up the sky for you,” Nie Mingjue said bitterly. “And instead I left you with the same inheritance that I received. I never wanted that for you, Huaisang. Never.”

“Da-ge,” Nie Huaisang said helplessly. “Da-ge, you don’t understand. You were trying. You wanted – you were doing everything you could. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t fail me. I was the one who failed you. I’ve always failed you –”

“Never!”

“I’m lazy, I’m selfish, I’m good-for-nothing, a head-shaker –”

“So what?” his brother said, glaring up at him. His eyes were red, but with tears, not qi deviation. “Even if it’s true, which it isn’t, because no head-shaker could have avenged me, could have found a way to come back, could have become the Nie sect leader and kept it for two decades, even if it’s true – so what? As long as you’re safe, I don’t care. As long as you have a way to defend yourself, and you so obviously must have, then nothing else matters. Nothing has ever mattered but your happiness.”

“And yours,” Nie Huaisang shot back. “You have the right to a life too, da-ge! You – you should have had my support. You should have been able to share your burdens, I should have helped you instead of anchored you down –”

“Huaisang –”

Nie Huaisang pulled him in tight again. “It’ll be different, this time,” he promised, his voice rough. “I’m older than you ever go the chance to be, da-ge. This time, I can help you with the things you’re not good at – I can do the politics, the people. We can bear the weight of the sect together.”

He felt a whisper in the back of his mind that was strange and yet familiar, approving. Baxia, he realized. Baxia, approving of him; Baxia, who would let him wield her,   and he sensed her confidence that no one would get past her iron guard, together protecting his brother in both body and soul.

“All right,” his brother said. “Together. You and me – and the others.”

“Others?”

“After so many years, you must know who’s trustworthy,” Nie Mingjue pointed out. Already back to being practical, even if he was wiping his eyes. “If we tell those people, they can help us keep up the impression that I’m you and you’re me for as long as we need it.”

Nie Huaisang was nodding along, because that made sense, only then his brother said the last part and it was like a sunrise had opened up in his head, the way terrible and wonderful ideas always did.

“Da-ge,” he said, tasting the words in his mouth. “Da-ge, how do you like my body?”

His brother blinked up at him. “It’s fine, I guess? You’re actually in pretty decent shape, better than I thought, and your cultivation is – well, you could do a bit more with that, honestly, but it’s not uncomfortable or anything. Why?”

Nie Huaisang smiled. He’d always been remarkably resistant to their family’s cultivation curse, and not only, as he’d pretended to Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji all those years ago, because he didn’t practice - it was his temper, or lack thereof, that softened the saber spirit’s effects on him. 

Even if his body’s cultivation increased, he was far enough behind the curve, with his mediocre talent, that it would take decades for him to reach the level that it would be dangerous to him, while his brother’s prodigious talent, coupled with his inheritance of the family temper, made him even more likely to succumb – it was that prediction which had worried him so much that he had sought out treatment even before it had become a serious problem, the same worries that had driven him into Jin Guangyao’s trap.

What do you think? he asked the brand-new whisper in his mind. Aituan would probably bitch and moan about having to actually do things, but he’d secretly enjoy getting a bit more evil-killing in; the question was Baxia. What would she think?

A purr of agreement.

“I was just thinking,” Nie Huaisang said. “Chronologically speaking, I’m older than you are. I ran the sect for years – it might be hard to let go of that habit. How about we just…stay as we are, for now?”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Baxia –”

“I’ll use her in public, and Aituan in private,” Nie Huaisang interrupted. He’d known that would be his brother’s first concern. “And you’ll do the opposite. And when we’re settled enough, we’ll come up with some excuse to switch.”

His brother hesitated. “But…you don’t like doing things. Responsibility. That sort of thing.”

“I got over it,” Nie Huaisang assured him. “Trust me, I have a whole system – I’ll implement it once the Sunshot Campaign is done; you’ll be amazed at how much easier it makes things, and then all the things that are left over are the stuff I actually enjoy. And this way, you could…I…”

He swallowed, and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. He didn’t want to manipulate his brother into something like this – he didn’t want to manipulate his brother at all. His brother deserved the truth and honesty he had always freely given the world, and so Nie Huaisang could only offer up the unvarnished truth.

“I want to do this for you, da-ge,” he said. “I want you to have the life you should have had. I want you to have hobbies again, to make friends, real friends that will put you first. I want you to have fun with them without thinking of how people might think about it…please, da-ge. I came back here to keep you alive, but I want more than that. I want to see you live.”

“Okay,” his brother said, and he was choking back tears again. “We’ll – we’ll discuss it later, but I’ll think about it. Okay.”

“Good,” Nie Huaisang said. “Now catch me up on the tactics we’re planning on using in tomorrow’s battle, and I’ll let you know everything I know about what happens in the future…oh, and one more thing.”

“Oh?”

Nie Huaisang’s hand dropped to the table, parallel to Baxia; he could hear her purr in his mind whistling like the rumble of thunder. He smiled.

“Can you tell me where Meng Yao is?”

[mysterioushogwartsrequests]

Starry Skies, Starry Eyes

Request: Hello! I want to request something with Sirius too!! But with an age gap and Hogwarts Mystery MC. Can you write something like that?

This literally took me forever to write and I just want to get it out there. I hope the ending is alright, I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out the last parts, but I think it all came together in the end. 

Edit: I am not quite sure what happened, but for some reason Tumblr deleted my story? It’s currently four in the morning and I just realized this so I have to fix it or else it is going to bother me all night. Anyways, it should be fine now! I hope you enjoy!

Note: I will write a part 2 for this story in the future! I’ve noticed the comments asking for more and I’ve already got some ideas.

Summary: Auror training was not going as planned. Now, (Y/N) (L/N) is staying at Number 12 Grimmauld Place with its only known resident, Sirius Black. 

A small thumping sound resonated through the quiet halls of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Along with the maniacal murmurs of the Kreacher the House Elf occasionally adding to the noise. The commencement of the Hogwarts school year meant that few guests came through the home, effectively darkening the mood of one of its permanent residents.  

             Sirius Black lay atop a surprisingly plush mattress, casually tossing a rubber ball against the ceiling of his childhood bedroom. As he effortlessly caught the small ball in his hands, Sirius wondered how Harry could be doing at school and how he could improve to become a suitable fatherly figure for his beloved godson. This initiative proved difficult considering the restrictions set up by Albus Dumbledore. Underneath his leadership, Sirius was to remain in Grimmauld Place until it was determined safe for him to venture beyond the house walls. However, as the days passed by, Sirius’s optimism of stepping outside slowly diminished and thought it would be best to stop thinking about this improbable idea.  

             But before Sirius could give up his hopes of happiness, she arrived.  

             Downstairs, the front door opened, and two women stepped into the spotless home. From the way the mirrors shone, it was apparent they spent a lot of time transforming it into suitable headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. The first woman swiftly moved through the house, already familiar with its surroundings, “He should be here somewhere,” she announced, her bright pink hair clashing horribly with the emerald green walls.  

             The second woman followed her cautiously, scanning her unfamiliar surroundings, and mentally noting the details that stood out to her. “Y’know,” she started, grimacing at the meticulously preserved heads of house-elves beside her when they ascended the stairs, “when I first became an Auror, I didn’t quite expect to be babysitting a notorious murderer”   

              (Y/N) (L/N) had never been the type to feel unnerved. She had always taken pride in her ability to keep calm, especially in situations of immense danger. So, it was safe to say she was not enjoying the malaise developing within her.  

             Nymphadora Tonks rolled her eyes, a hint of notable annoyance as she reiterated her point for the third time that afternoon, “It wasn’t him, all right? It was Pettigrew who caused all that trouble, Sirius is completely innocent.”  

             A large part of (Y/N) wholeheartedly believed Tonks, but another, slightly gruffer voice kept ringing through her head, 

               “Constant vigilance!” 

             Reminded of Mad-Eye Moody’s teachings, she thought it best to remain cautious, just in case. 

             “I’m sorry,” added (Y/N), knowing she had offended her friend. Tonks gave her a small nod, accepting her apology as she led her past the multiple bedrooms on the second story. Halting at a door with the name “Sirius” intricately carved on a silver nameplate, Tonks raised her hand. “Black, are you in there?” she asked, knocking on the bedroom door.  

              “Yes, but, it seems I’ll have to find a better hiding place next time,” Sirius spoke up, casually confirming his presence within the room, “You found me rather quickly”  

             Tonks opened the door, a smile on her face when her eyes landed on Sirius, “You gave away your position by doing that,” she said, pointing at the ceiling as the ball bounced back into his hand.  

             Sirius clutched the ball tightly and sat up from his bed, “I suppose you’re right,” he said, the already faint smile on his face vanishing as he became aware of the stranger in his home, “What’s going on?” He asked, masking his rousing irritation.  

             Disregarding his obvious displeasure, (Y/N) subtly examined his appearance. This could not be the same person in the Azkaban wanted pamphlets. She had expected a worn-down, angry wizard with incredibly long, matted hair. But instead, she locked eyes with a devilishly handsome, well-kept, older gentleman wearing brown, pinstripe robes. (Y/N) mustered up a casual smile, pushing away her bewilderment but unable to hide the faint blush on her cheeks. 

             Tonks frowned at Sirius’s disappointment, “Well,” she began, placing her hands on (Y/N)’s shoulders, “(Y/N)’s just started her Auror training and Mad-Eye’s instructed her here for the time being,” Tonks gently pulled (Y/N) into the room as she spoke, “It won’t be for long,” she added, noting Sirius’s sour expression, “And at least you’ll have human company.” 

             Sirius eyed the (h/c) haired woman standing in his bedroom suspiciously. Indeed, he found it quite odd that Mad-Eye would send a trainee into isolation but decided against mentioning it. The idea of letting a stranger into his home without warning did not sit well with him, but he could not deny the presence of someone he could have a pleasant conversation with. 

             “All right,” Sirius said, rising from his seat and walking over to the two women. 

              (Y/N) swallowed nervously, impulsively trying to calculate the height of the man making his way towards her. It was not until he stood in front of her with his hand extended that she came to the possible solution of six feet. With her heart thumping against her chest, (Y/N) stretched out her arm and grasped his expecting hand firmly.  

             “(Y/N) (L/N),” she stated formally, looking up at Sirius with a confident smile as they shook hands. 

              Sirius mentally applauded her firm grip, a smile appearing at his lips, “Sirius Black, it is a pleasure to meet you.” He caught sight of the sparkle in her eyes, those bright eyes filled with stars reflective of her optimism and was instantly charmed. The two of them stood there, looking interestedly at each other, their attention devoted to something other than their handshake.

             Tonks’s eyes bounced from Sirius to (Y/N), an odd feeling settling over her, but unaware as to what it could be, “Well,” she announced, now that the pair seemed to be getting along, “I’ve better get going, Mad-Eye’s waiting for me.” she declared, sensing this would be the best time to make her exit, and swiftly made her way out of the room. 

              Startled by her sudden declaration, (Y/N) turned to follow Tonks, who was already half-way down the stairs, “Wait!” she called, rushing after her friend, “Tonks, hold on!”

            Hearing (Y/N)’s yells, Sirius stalked out of his bedroom and quickly followed after them, “Don’t yell,” he hissed, but his warning was ignored. With another cry of her name, Tonks turned, her arms raised warningly towards the curtains which had flown open. The woman in the, now exposed, painting took a singular glance towards Nymphadora Tonks and let out an ear-splitting screech. 

             “Filth! In my sacred home!” screamed the portrait of Walburga Black, her eyes then narrowing towards her son, “Shame of my flesh! Traitors!” 

             Sirius, with a swift flick of his hand, closed the long, green curtains and silenced his mother, his previous look of displeasure returning to his face. 

             “I’m sorry,” apologized (Y/N), looking up at Sirius from the bottom of the stairs, a frown appearing on her face. 

             “It’s fine,” Sirius replied exasperatedly, “...just don’t scream down the hallway, okay?” he added and retreated towards his room. (Y/N) solemnly watched Sirius leave, her eyes lingering on the curtains of the concealed portrait before turning towards her friend. 

             “What am I supposed to say to him?” asked (Y/N), gripping Tonks’s wrist before she could get away, “He wasn’t exactly pleased to have someone here.” 

              Tonks shook her head, patting her friend on the shoulder, “He's just going through some things right now, but he’ll ease up.” she added reassuringly, “I haven’t known him for exceptionally long, but he is part of my family so I know you’ll be alright.” 

              (Y/N) was aware of their familial connection, having been informed by Tonks before their arrival and she could not deny that this information settled some of her nerves, but not all. However, her trust in Nymphadora Tonks outweighed her suspicions. The two had experienced a lot during their time at Hogwarts and Tonks’s judgment usually supplied positive outcomes. 

             “I trust you,” (Y/N) said, releasing Tonks’s arm and hugging her, “Good luck with Mad-Eye, show them who's boss” 

             Tonks laughed as she embraced her former classmate, “As if I don’t do that already,” she stated confidently, reaching for the silver door handle, “But I’ve really got to go, I’m already late.”

             (Y/N) nodded and watched Tonks exit the home, taking the time to lock the door before looking back towards the empty stairs. What Tonks had said about Mad-Eye assigning her to Grimmauld Place was not entirely untrue, but she had purposely left out the details of Albus Dumbledore’s involvement. 

             She was not sure why Dumbledore had sent her to keep an eye on Sirius Black, but she gratefully took the opportunity and packed her bags. But, as she assessed her current situation, (Y/N)’s mind fell on a particularly important thought:

          “Where am I going to sleep?” 

                                                   ---

The temperature began to drop during the late weeks of October, and a substantial amount of rainfall washed over the country. Three weeks had passed since (Y/N)’s initial arrival and she found that her time at Grimmauld Place was rather pleasant. Unlike Sirius, (Y/N) could venture out of the home and occasionally found herself at the nearby marketplace, buying ingredients for her meals, or reviewing her books at the cozy coffee shop down the street. However, she also spent a lot of her time, albeit alone, wandering around Grimmauld Place, and learning the history of the ancient Black Family. 

Even though she was surrounded by reminders of the Black family, (Y/N) couldn't help noting the unmistakable absence of its last living descendant. The two of them had, surprisingly, enjoyed each other’s company more than they had expected and usually saw each other during mealtimes. Sirius had also, to (Y/N)’s bewilderment, offered his help when he had caught her practicing her Transfiguration.

Despite receiving excellent marks in her examinations, (Y/N) constantly struggled with Human Transfiguration which put a damper on her “Concealment and Disguises” training results. On a particularly stormy night, (Y/N) decided to practice her spell-work in the kitchen, in front of the large mirror that hung in the room. She had successfully transfigured her hair into a shade of cotton candy blue but failed at altering the size of her nose. 

Letting out a small gasp of horror and pain, (Y/N)’s hand flew to her face, her fingers grazing the small bump and unusual slant of her new nose. She only viewed her reflection for a split second, nervously covering up her face as her eyes landed on the comically large witch’s nose that had replaced her normal one. 

Keeping a hand over her face, (Y/N) flipped through the pages of her book, searching desperately for a counterspell. However, as she ran through her book, the door to the kitchen swung open and someone lazily entered the room. 

At first, Sirius did not seem to notice (Y/N). Like her, he was having a particularly tough time falling asleep but hoped a late-night snack would do the trick. However, he quickly became aware of her presence when the noise of her clumsily collapsing into a chair filled the room.

 Raising his eyebrows, Sirius poured himself a glass of milk and acknowledged her jittery behavior. “Can’t sleep?” he asked, wiping away the milk droplets collecting at the side of his mouth. Sirius took a second to admire her new hair color, grinning as he added, “I like the new look.”

(Y/N) blushed at the sudden compliment, but nodded her head, a little too enthusiastically, in response, “Y-Yes! But I think I’ll head upstairs now!” she said, rising from her seat.

Although he did not mention it, Sirius knew (Y/N) was practicing her Transfiguration in the kitchen. The open book, specifically on a page regarding “Human Transfiguration and it’s counterspells,” and her wand strewn across the black, tiled floor were enough to confirm his theory. He was also aware that her last spell must’ve malfunctioned and that she was now struggling to revert it. However, he wasn’t sure how she would respond to his assistance and debated his next move. 

(Y/N) had never requested his help before, but it was clear to him, due to her obvious distress, that he must do so. Sirius caught her before she could dash out of the room, his fingers delicately wrapping around the wrist of the hand that covered her face. Clearing his throat, he looked down at (Y/N), his grey eyes meeting hers, “Let me see.”

To her surprise, (Y/N) did not tense up at the feel of Sirius’s touch. Instead, she found herself relaxing underneath his unusually comforting gaze. This was only the second time she had stood this close to Sirius, the first being when she arrived, but her heart still beat the same way, thumping loudly against her ribcage. (Y/N) relaxed her arm, letting Sirius guide it away from her face to reveal the heavily crooked nose. 

“It’s awful,” murmured (Y/N), turning her face away from his when his eyes widened in shock. She was already embarrassed and having a Senior Member of The Order of the Phoenix witnessing her mistake mortified her. 

For the first time in weeks, unable to retain his composure, Sirius Black burst out laughing, clutching his stomach as he doubled over, “I’m sorry,” he forced out, wiping away the tears in his eyes as he smiled down at (Y/N)’s shocked expression, “But that nose makes you look completely ridiculous.”

(Y/N) scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest when he laughed, “I’m perfectly aware of that!” She stated angrily, “I wasn’t trying for a Witch’s nose! I was going for more of a Roman look like the book said” she said, gesturing towards her open book. 

“Don’t worry,” added Sirius, retrieving his wand from his pocket, and directing it towards her face, “We’ll try again.” Muttering a spell, Sirius flicked his wand and a flash of blue appeared from the tip. Within seconds, (Y/N) felt her abnormally large nose shrinking to its usual size, enthusiastically turning towards the mirror when the transformation finished. 

“Thank you!” she exclaimed happily, picking up her wand from the floor, “But what do you mean we’ll try?” she asked, recalling what he had said. 

“It means, I’m going to teach you” started Sirius, lifting up the book from the table, “But we really won’t be needing this,” he added, slamming it shut and tossing it to the side with a large grin, “That is if you want my help.”

(Y/N) considered his proposal, surely having an actual teacher would help her improve since he could give her feedback and he was an experienced wizard. Surely, there was no harm in letting him help.

Nodding eagerly, (Y/N) grinned up at Sirius, “Where do we start?”

But some time had passed since their last encounter and her lessons with Sirius suddenly fell short. (Y/N) had not seen him for a week and was beginning to worry about his well-being. Sirius had stopped sharing his meals with her and refused to come out of his bedroom. During this time, (Y/N) had decided against intruding and hoped he would come around just as Tonks said. But as she sat alone in the kitchen, she began to wonder why Sirius would suddenly disappear. 

Taking a glance at the enchanted calendar near the refrigerator, (Y/N) read the date October 29th scrawled at the top. Closing her copy of Moste Potente Potions, she paced around the kitchen, taking a moment to consider the situation. 

“Maybe, I can make something to cheer him up,” She thought, scanning through the numerous recipe books, which had collected a substantial amount of dust through the years due to lack of use. (Y/N) picked out a tattered book on baking, running her hand over the hardcover to clean it off. She was not entirely sure what type of treats Sirius would enjoy but got to work with newfound determination. 

“After all,” began (Y/N) to no one in particular, taking out a large tray, “Problem-solving is part of being an Auror”

---

Upstairs sat a man clutching an old portrait in his hands, a single tear sliding down the tip of his nose and onto the glass. Sirius lifted his hand and wiped away the tear-stained surface, the smiling face of James Potter throwing him a playful wink with his arm wrapped around Lily Evans. 

As the anniversary of their death approached, Sirius Black recalled his final conversations with his best friend, urging him to choose Peter Pettigrew as their secret keeper instead of him. Sirius glared down at his former friend, Peter shyly waving towards the couple as the younger versions of himself and Remus Lupin approaching him bearing wide grins. 

            “Damn it!” exclaimed Sirius angrily, tossing the picture onto his bed and burying his face in his hands. These intrusive thoughts had plagued Sirius ever since that Halloween night at Godric’s Hollow. How he should’ve realized Wormtail’s odd behavior during their meetings. 

             How it should’ve been him that perished that night and not his best friends, who had just happily begun their domestic life with their baby boy. 

              Sirius wished for nothing more than to be able to turn back time and fix everything. But he couldn’t. All he could do was- 

“Sirius?” A soft voice called from the other side of the door, a light knock following her voice. Taking a deep breath, Sirius wiped his face, rose from his bed, and stepped towards the door. 

(Y/N) stared up at the silver nameplate, nervously tapping her foot as she debated calling his name once again. In her hands, she carried a freshly baked pumpkin pasty on a small silver platter.            

“Just act normal,” she thought as she waited for Sirius’s reply, “Be calm.” But despite her constant pep-talks, (Y/N)’s nerves skyrocketed once the door to Sirius’s bedroom swung open. 

Right off the bat, she could tell something was wrong. The Sirius that stood before her had puffy, red eyes and bore the expression of someone who had spent a significant amount of time crying.

“Yes?” He asked in a steady voice, one that completely betrayed his appearance. 

“W-Well, I was just in the kitchen making some, uh, pumpkin pasties” She started, raising the silver platter, “And I thought since I haven't seen you in a while, that I would bring you one…” (Y/N) hadn’t realized she was no longer looking up at Sirius or that she was tapping her finger nervously against the platter, “Because I was worried… about you” she finished, meeting Sirius’s surprised expression.

Worried? About him? Sirius’s eyes shifted from the delectable treat to (Y/N)’s bright, (e/c) eyes, surprised by her genuine act of kindness. He was not surrounded by thoughtfulness or generosity while he was in Azkaban so having (Y/N), a woman he barely just met, go out of her way for him was undeniably heartwarming. Slowly, he picked up the pasty, enjoying the warmth of the dough radiating into his palm, and took a bite.  

The delightful combination of pumpkin puree and cinnamon instantly covering his tastebuds, the dough practically melting in his mouth. He finished his treat and cleaned off the remnants of the pumpkin filling on his fingers. Clearing his throat, Sirius reached out and pulled (Y/N) in for a tight hug, “Thank you,” he uttered, his head resting on top of hers, “and… I’m sorry for making you worry”

(Y/N) gasped when Sirius pulled her in, the feeling of his arms around her waist making her blush instantly. Although she had speculated how Sirius would react, she certainly did not expect him to hug her, much less utter an apology. (Y/N) let her arms wrap around his larger frame, her free hand patting his back lightly, “You don’t have to apologize,” she replied, her head resting against his chest. 

“But I do,” Sirius cut in, “I promised I’d help you and all I’ve done is hide....” He said, releasing his grip to look down at her, “And that wasn’t right.” 

               (Y/N)’s words suddenly failed her, the feeling of Sirius brushing a strand of hair behind her ear made her heart flutter. Sirius smiled down at her before releasing her, “Now, why don’t we go have some more of those delicious pasties?” He joked, gesturing towards the stairs. 

              “I guess it’s my turn to apologize,” (Y/N) muttered sheepishly, “I kind of made a mess in the kitchen…” but Sirius only laughed at her remarks, stretching his hand out towards her. 

             “Kreacher will handle the cleanup” he added, “Besides, you’ve done all the baking so it’s natural for you to now.” 

              “You do make a great point, Black,” (Y/N) replied, a grin spreading across her face as she took Sirius’s hand and followed him down the stairs.

---

              It was now early December, and the excitement of the Christmas holidays began to settle over the inhabitants of Grimmauld Place. In a few weeks, Harry Potter would be let out of Hogwarts and Sirius had spent most of his time preparing for his arrival. 

             When he wasn’t cleaning, Sirius helped (Y/N) with her Transfiguration and often spent their time in the kitchen, searching for recipes they could use on Christmas Day. Today, however, the two of them decided to take a break to relax and enjoy themselves. 

             In the sitting room, Sirius laid across one of the couches, happily munching on some shortbread cookies they had previously made. (Y/N) sat at the piano, randomly plucking at keys, enjoying the faint sound of the fire crackling from within the fireplace. 

          “So,” Sirius started, resuming their game of twenty questions, that had now gone past the initial twenty, “Hogwarts House?” He asked, crossing his arms behind his head. 

         “Oh, we’re back to basics, aren’t we?” (Y/N) joked, earning another laugh from Sirius while she played one final glissando before swiveling on the bench, “I consider myself an observant person and I’ve noticed that you seem to be the only Gryffindor in a home of Slytherins” 

       Sirius raised a questioning eyebrow, “Your observations would be correct,” he replied, “But, I don’t remember asking what you think my house was” Sirius teased, reaching for another cookie. 

“Now, you can’t get upset,” (Y/N) started, playfully raising her hands defensively, “but I was a part of Slytherin house.”

At her words, Sirius choked on his cookie, shot up into a seating position and began coughing up crumbs. Once he caught his breath, he shook his head, “You?! A Slytherin?” He asked in bewilderment, wondering if she was just playing a practical joke on him. 

But (Y/N) only nodded confidently, “and I’m proud of it, thank you very much!” She stated, shooting him a wink from her seat at the piano. It was safe to say (Y/N) had grown quite comfortable around Sirius and had no trouble following through her flirtatious remarks. 

“Blimey, you really had me fooled,” Sirius laughed, falling back onto the couch, “I never thought a Slytherin would worry as much as you do”

(Y/N) scoffed impishly, placing her hand over her heart, “That hurts, Black. I didn’t take you for the stereotypical type” she quipped, rising from the bench to rest on the couch opposite of Sirius. “Besides,” she added, snatching up a cookie for herself and taking a bite, “I’ve worn my old house scarf plenty of times, I’m surprised you didn’t notice it then.” 

Sirius gave a hearty laugh, raising his arms up defensively like she had done before, “Sorry, doll” he apologized, looking over at her with a smirk, “But I’ve been too busy looking at that pretty face of yours to pay attention to some old scarf,” Sirius complimented smoothly, chuckling at the dark blush painting your cheeks. 

“Have you always been this charming?” asked (Y/N) in a joking manner, turning on her side so her body was facing Sirius’s. 

“That counts as your next question,” Sirius hummed, tapping his index finger against his temple in acknowledgment, “I’d like to say so, I’m quite flattered you find me charming” he admitted while nodding his head contentedly. He turned his head to look at her once again, eyes raking over her body in silent admiration. 

Sirius felt odd. He would’ve never imagined that he and (Y/N) would get along so well, much less spend days lounging around until the wee hours staring up at the newly enchanted ceiling getting to know each other. In an attempt to raise Sirius’s spirits, (Y/N) had bewitched the ceiling to resemble the starry night’s sky. Just the two of laying over a blanket with Sirius expertly pointing out the various star clusters until she felt asleep at his side. 

He never woke her when she fell asleep. Instead, he scooped her up from the ground and tucked her into her bed without complaints. Sirius didn’t quite understand why, but there was something refreshing about the angelic look of peace on her face and the her soft smile never failed at brightening his mood. 

“Do you miss them?” asked (Y/N), redirecting their conversation to the stars above them, “Your family, I mean”

Sirius remained silent, his eyes shifting back towards the bewitched ceiling to find the Leo constellation. He stared up at the brightest star in that formation, the name Regulus scrawled around in tiny cursive letters.

“Some of them,” he replied gloomily, “Sometimes I recall the lousy Pureblood parties I attended when I was younger and remember playing with my brother and cousins… before it all went to shit,” Sirius explained, his eyes trailing over the various constellations to find ‘Andromeda’, “My Mother, on the other hand, was a foul old hag. If I could, I’d remove that portrait of her and burn it to ashes, but it seems she thought ahead and permanently stuck herself to the wall.”

(Y/N) hadn’t expected such an honest reply from Sirius. In all honesty, she thought he would brush her remark to the side or make a joke about how that’s her second question. 

“I miss them too,” she added, feeling compelled to share a story of her own, “My parents passed when I was incredibly young, and my older brother disappeared for quite a while. I thought- well, I hoped to find him alive, but when I did… he wasn’t the same,” (Y/N) explained with a frown, “He looked sick, raving about blood-status, how we were all in danger and then I saw it. On his left arm, the Dark Mark on my brother’s arm and I froze, like an imbecile.” 

Sirius pulled his eyes away from the ceiling as she told her story, frowning slightly at the glossy eyes that never met his. (Y/N) sniffled slightly, running her index finger underneath her eye to collect the tears that threatened to spill, “He raised his wand at me, he told me I had seen too much and that I couldn’t leave, but I couldn’t react,” She paused to take a deep breath, “But Mad-Eye was there and he finished my brother off before he could hurt me.” 

Then she fell silent, sniffling softly before letting out a soft chuckle, “Some way to start off Auror training, right?” joked (Y/N), looking towards Sirius who met her tearful gaze with a solemn expression, “Wow, Sirius…I’ve never seen you look so concerned” 

Sirius’s eyes widened slightly and he cleared his throat, tearing his eyes away from hers in embarrassment, “I’m sorry about your brother,” he replied, choosing to ignore her comment, “I know what it’s like to lose one too.” He admitted, looking back at her with a sorrowful smile.

“See, we’re not as different as we thought we were,” (Y/N) declared, sitting up on the couch, “Thank you for telling me about your family,” She said to Sirius, her gaze locked with his, “And for helping me with my magic.” 

Sirius smiled softly, rose from his seat on the couch, and walked over to (Y/N), extending a hand out towards her, “No, thank you,” he admitted, “You’ve brought me happiness in this hell hole, I never thought I’d make happy memories here again” 

(Y/N) slipped her hand into his and stood up from her seat, “I’m glad I could help,” she breathed, lightly squeezing Sirius’s hand. The two of them stood, hand in hand, in silence, each contemplating their next move. With a small inhale, (Y/N) rose to her tiptoes, pressed her lips against Sirius’s cheek, and quickly slinked out of the room. 

Sirius looked back, but he stood alone in the empty room, the tip of his finger trailing the spot where her lips had been. 

“Charming” he uttered to himself, letting out a small chuckle before exiting the room with another shortbread cookie in hand.

 ---

Only a couple of people had taken note of Sirius’s interesting behavior. How he would stand up every time (Y/N) entered or exited a room, how he would slide her chair in while she sat, and how close the two of them would stand whenever they were cooking. 

(Y/N) leaned up against the countertops, sipping her hot chocolate as Tonks rambled on about her latest expedition with Moody. She smiled at her friend’s stories, recalling the times in the Clocktower Courtyard where they could only speculate what their future would’ve been like. 

“And what about you?” Questioned Tonks, a knowing smile playing at her lips as she leaned in closer to her friend, “Anything interesting to report?” 

“Yes, actually,” (Y/N) declared confidently, setting her mug down, “I’ve gotten quite good at human transfiguration and I’m certain I will pass the disguise portion of the exam now.” 

Tonks gave a nod of encouragement, but rolled her eyes in disappointment, “Do you ever think about anything else?” She asked teasingly, “Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant that you’re focusing on your training, but what else have you done?” 

(Y/N) raised her eyebrows inquisitively, “Well-” she cleared her throat, “I’ve gone to the bookstore a couple of times, baked, and I’ve had dinner with Sirius” she started, her mind drifting to the many evenings they had shared together, “Oh, you missed it. We enchanted the ceiling to look like the night’s sky, it would keep moving so you could see all the star constellations, like a large map.” (Y/N) explained dreamily, her eyes twinkling with excitement as she continued, “We would lay in the sitting room talking and then, the next morning I would wake up in my bed with no recollection of ever getting there.” 

There was a small pause, “I told him about my brother,” (Y/N) admitted quietly, her eyes trained towards the wooden floorboard, “and he told me about his family, your mum,” she added, looking back to meet Tonks’s gaze, “and his brother.” 

Tonks looked extremely surprised, she pursed her lips momentarily before awkwardly scratching the back of her neck, “I never expected him to tell you that,” she admitted dejectedly, but a smile quickly replaced her sad expression, “Sirius is a good man, Remus tells me stories from when they were at school together,” she explained excitedly, “It’s a good thing we weren’t walking the corridors together”

The schoolmates laughed wholeheartedly, holding each other’s hands as they finished their hot chocolate, “I reckon we would’ve given them a run for their money if we did,” she added with a wink and the two friends embraced. 

“Merry Christmas, Tonks,” (Y/N) muttered, tightening her arms around her friend and Tonks did so in response. 

“Merry Christmas, and to many more” grinned Tonks, “Maybe we’ll both be Aurors by the next one” she joked, nudging her on the side as people flooded into the kitchen. 

(Y/N) smiled towards the people settling into their seats, her eyes scanning the room for Sirius, but he was nowhere in sight. The Weasley Twins crowded their mother, making jokes about carrying the pots to the table as she refused their help. Tonks moved towards Molly, taking the tray off her hands, and giving her a sympathetic smile as they set the table. 

Taking advantage of the commotion, (Y/N) slipped out of the room to find Sirius. After having spent four months with him in Grimmauld Place, she had a strong inkling as to where Sirius could be. 

“Sirius?” She called, peeking her head curiously into the drawing room where, as she expected, Sirius stood. He was staring towards a burn mark on the wall, his fingers tracing over the charred remains before acknowledging her. 

“It’s astonishing how much you worry,” chuckled Sirius, looking over his shoulder to shoot a wink at her. (Y/N) scoffed, but smiled as she sauntered into the room, “It’s Christmas, you know. The day you’ve been dreaming about these past few weeks,” she spoke in a sing-song voice, slowly approaching Sirius with each word. 

Sirius turned fully, spreading his arms out as he did so, “How do you know what I’ve been dreaming about?” He asked, a devilish grin appearing on his face. 

“Hm, I believe I recall telling you I’m an excellent legilimens,” She said in mock ponderment, but giving herself into his embrace, “We’re waiting on you, you know?” She added, inhaling deeply to take in that sweet smell of smoky sugar she had grown so fond of. 

“We shouldn’t keep them waiting then,” Sirius whispered, twirling the ends of her hair between his fingers. Merlin, but he could stay here forever just with her in his arms, a sweet smell of cinnamon filling his lungs as they embraced. 

“Yes, you’re right,” She agreed, stepping out of his grip, and heading towards the doorway. Sirius slinked after her, his eyes flickering up towards the door frame, “Wait a minute,” he blurted out without thinking, making (Y/N) halt right underneath it. With a sheepish smile, he walked up towards her and reached down to grab her hand, pressing a kiss against the back of it and meeting her starry-eyed expression. His other hand was gripping his wand, discreetly flicking up towards the ceiling to re-enchant the drawing room ceiling.

“The stars are wonderful, aren’t they?” Sirius muttered, running his fingers against her palm until their hands were firmly pressed together. (Y/N)’s eyes instinctively shifted upwards, catching sight of the twinkling stars rotating throughout the ceiling. 

Her eyes, however, caught sight of something else, something much smaller hanging from the ceiling. No- hanging from the doorway was a small plant with a cluster of white berries all around it. Her mouth fell open as she stared up at the plant, “Mistletoe…” she breathed out, meeting Sirius’s gaze with a dark blush painting her cheeks, “Was that your doing too?” She asked teasingly, nudging his shoulder with a small smile. 

Sirius let out a noise of feigned pain, clicking his tongue as he smiled down at her, “That hurts, Doll. You know I have more honor than that,” He mused, pulling her into another embrace, “But,” he cleared his throat, hoping he did not misread their situation, “If you don’t want to, we can just pretend it never-“ 

“Are you mad?” (Y/N) cut him off, placing her hands on either side of Sirius’s face, “Stop talking, Sirius and just do it,” she urged, leaning her face closer to his, but refusing to close the gap between them. 

Sirius didn’t mind, he preferred to make the first move either way, “As you wish,” he replied and rested his hand against her cheek, pulling her in for a gentle kiss. Her heart beat growing faster and faster as Sirius’s handsome face came up to her own. Their lips brushed together for a moment before completely dipping down and capturing her lips in a sweet kiss. 

Their fingers locking together as her body pressed closer to his. Sirius placed his hand against her waist, keeping her close while their lips melted together and he could only focus on how soft her lips felt against her mouth, how addictively she invaded all his senses. (Y/N) could have sworn time had stopped when his lips met hers and she was only brought back to reality when he pulled away, his finger trailing delicately over the apple of her pink cheek. 

“I think we’ve kept them waiting long enough now,” Sirius announced, flicking his wand towards the ceiling to make the stars disappear, his hand still gripping hers gently, “Don’t you agree?” 

“Yes, you’re quite right,” She replied with a subtle nod of her head, “I suppose we should go” 

Sirius smiled, leaned down, and pressed a kiss against her forehead. Retrieving his hand from hers and gesturing towards the stairs, which she descended first. The two of them slipped into the fully decorated kitchen, both smiling at the group of people seated at the long table as they settled into empty seats. 

“What took you so long?” asked Tonks, gently shoving (Y/N)’s shoulder when she sat down. 

But (Y/N) only smiled at her question, her eyes flickering towards Sirius and meeting his mischievous gaze as he lifted his wine glass towards her and brought it to his lips. The smile on her face only grew and she quickly shot him a wink before looking back towards Tonks. 

“Oh, nothing,” She lied, happily poking at her dinner with her fork, “Just making sure Buckbeak was comfortable”

Tonks squinted towards her, but decided her answer was good enough… for now. (Y/N), however, had no intention of revealing what happened upstairs and spent the rest of the evening with the lingering feeling of Sirius’s lips ghosting over hers. 

As they all bid their goodnights, (Y/N) climbed up into her room and caught sight of Sirius closing his door. But before he did, he raised his hand up to his lips and blew a kiss in her direction, his signature smirk appearing at his lips. (Y/N) pretended to catch the floating kiss, playfully bringing it to her cheek and laughing when Sirius did. 

“Merry Christmas, (Y/N).”

“Merry Christmas, Sirius.” 

And with that, the two of them closed their bedroom doors. Simultaneously, albeit unknowingly, flopping onto their mattresses with grins of satisfaction plastered over their faces. It didn’t take long for them to fall asleep, but the two of them had the same thought as they went… 

            “What would it be like to fall asleep in each other’s arms?”

[1piece-for-you]

𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭 — 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬

[𝐀𝐒𝐊] - 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨😊𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐲 — 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐒𝐋... 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐄𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐊𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫?🙏🏼 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬𝐬𝐬

[𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄] - 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐣𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐀𝐒𝐋! 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐊𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫. 𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲, 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲. 

━━ 𝐄𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐊𝐢𝐝𝐝

— In the eyes of the public, Kidd is indisputably an uncontrollable savage; a menace that is shrouded in death and terror. He stands with an unwavering form that spits ichor and acid towards every authoritarian, barbarian, and civilian in his path, and his crew proudly shares the same sentiments as their captain, for they are just as ravenous and power-hungry as Kidd.

— And as his lover, a sense of pride thrums beneath your skin whenever you read headlines detailing the Kid Pirate’s most recent bloodshed. It is a thrilling sensation, knowing that Kidd possesses such monstrous strength, yet he treats you so wonderfully gentle with the right degree of roughness. 

— The strong grasp Kidd has on you are both enthralling and welcomed. The implication of being kept in his hardened arms with no escape never ceases to send biting tingles down the curve of your spine. His possessive behavior towards you is no secret; the mad scowl resembling that of hellhounds were enough to signal to all the unworthy individuals that you were undoubtedly claimed by him.

— Though selfish mannerism is befitting for the walking explosive that is Eustass Captain Kidd, the word jealousy never did quite seem to belong in his vocabulary. 

— And you were inclined to believe such a notion; Kidd is incredibly brazen with his earthly desires and greed for treasures he deems worthy of belonging in his collection. There never existed a reason for him to be jealous since the planets were constantly aligned in his favor. Whatever his target was, it will inevitably end up in his clutches.

— But the truth is, that attitude was only retained until you stepped into Kidd’s life. All the people he held in his bed before were for cheap, fleeting pleasure, and the materialistic goods in his possession are nothing more than replaceable, inanimate objects. You do not, nor ever will, belong in either of those categories; you are too precious to be labeled as anything other than Kidd’s treasured lover. 

— And so, after officializing your relationship, an unforeseen development was occurring within Kidd’s psyche. In the open air, where his sharp eyes take notice of the lingering gazes and judging stares your presence attracts, a newfound threat looms behind him. The sickly green claws of jealousy ropes around his neck, clawing at his throat to shout threats of murder towards any and all of your pursuers. 

— He would never admit it, but the slumbering insecurity buried deep in his metallic heart had finally awoken, rearing its ugly head whenever jealousy seeps into the cracks of his frame. 

— While you are considerate of Kidd’s feelings and would genuinely never wish for him to feel even the slightest bit of distress, your more sadistic side is a little too tempted to garner this reaction out of him. And as destructive as his rampages could be, which hinders the livelihood of both the innocent and Kid Pirates themselves, the entertainment you derive from them is intoxicating.

— There is plenty to notice of Kidd’s hostile behavior during his jealous outbreaks; the prominent veins throbbing on his neck, the faded white on the knuckles of his clenched fists, the feral eyes of a beast that craves red to be spilled. It is these same details that made Kidd so alluring in the first place.

— The most notable event of Kidd lashing out was when journalists for the News Coos had sought you out for an exclusive interview on your boyfriend. It was during one of those rare occasions when you had the privilege of self-isolation whenever visiting a relatively secluded island. Being asked to an interview was certainly a strange occurrence, but otherwise, you gladly accepted their invitation, just for the pure enjoyment you would receive when Kidd learns of this; it was sure to be a spectacle. 

— And oh, how right you were. You would even dare to compare the next morning of cotton candy and yellow rays to a night of vivid, scattered fireworks. The imaginary sparks that flew from the grinding of his teeth and the vicious glare that was scorching the newspaper to char as he traced the front headlines; the sight alone had undoubtedly left you high on cloud nine. A shame that Kidd did not share your view on the matter. The article was entirely laced with inflated lies and pompous descriptions courtesy of you, which the journalists easily lapped up, but those details were not what pressed Kidd’s gears.

— The picture accompanying the interview was none other than one of you; a quaint, charming photo that encapsulated your smile. It seemed that the editors deemed photos of Kidd to be both unnecessary and tasteless; he is a renowned pirate, his fiery red and crazed snarl is engraved into everyone’s mind. And so, that day’s newspaper had essentially settled you in the limelight. For that, he was livid beyond the orbit; he was furiously seething. You were swarmed with harmless threats, stuttered quibbles, and poorly disguised compliments for nearly a week.

— “How can you interact with these nobodies?” “If you wanted to talk about me, then I’m right here to listen, you know!” “Why would you let someone take a picture of you? Now the world will see how-! They’ll know about your existence!” “How dare you look so- look so damn cute!” - How brazen of you, to find a riled up Eustass Kidd be your guilty pleasure.

— But you know his limits, as any lover should when it concerns their partners, and to calm down that brute of yours, you resort to the two most effective methods; hushed whispers of sweet honey and melting wax, or close contact of bodies with not even a hairsbreadth of space in between. 

—But really, it never matters what you do, Kidd is always happy to indulge your needs and his own, especially if it rids that grotesque, sliver of doubt that nips at his mind as he drowns himself in the nectar of ecstasy. As long as you remain by his side and in his embrace, he will be content, and the same goes for you.

━━ 𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫

— Killer is a dangerous man. He is the manifestation of dreading silence and disguisable malice; his mere presence of which that is both suffocating and daunting never ceases to send his foes onto trembling knees. It is honestly a shame that people allow his estranged mask to cloud their better judgment and underestimate his true strength, for they would be no different from mindless sheep wandering into the wolf’s den.  

— But perhaps there is some delight to be found in the fact that the masses remain ignorant of Killer’s more feral side, which lies beneath his metal veil of mystery and obscurity. Though, the real pleasure of it all truly descends upon your core when you are graciously given the chance to witness him succumb to the boiling heat of jealousy.

— Killer may be the level-headed one of the crew, with his silent bravado and hardened resolution, but that simply means he is more capable of hiding his true intentions. In a sort of absurdly humorous way, Killer could be compared to the infamous Pandora’s box; dare yourself to probe the enigma and be rewarded the gift of miserable consequences. 

— Typically, it would be an utter chore to garner any sort of instinctual response laced in ire from Killer; his patience and composure do rarely snap, but then again, it may be due to the iron pride he latches onto that refuses to falter in the face of his enemies. Well, whatever the incentive is, Killer effortlessly deflects and counters any shunning whims and mockery throttled his way, no matter the level of triviality in the situation. 

— And yet, when those supposedly trifling incidences drag you into its cesspool of festering problems, a rivulet of frigid panic whirls within him. There was something so prolifically revolting about heeding his lover involved in such situations, and that bitter inkling only deepens when he finds some weak nobodies casting empty promises and vapid flirts at you. The confinement in his chest would be too tight, suffocating his velvet rope in endless unease; it was impossible for him to ignore it, to ignore the desire to show you were his. 

— Now, Killer will never act out so intrusively at a scale that would cause you discomfort; he greatly respects your boundaries and privacy, shown through his timid head tilts and hovering hands as he waits for your confirmation to coddle you in tender intimacy. But sometimes, Killer’s need for a release from the thrumming tension and frustration distorts his reasoning, whether in the form of cloaked malice or blatant aggression. 

—  If it is the former, Killer would quietly come in between you and the other party with feigned formalities and subtle contact. His bold assertions range from small doting to shameless proximity; a brush of his bronze skin against your own warmth, a possessive embrace around your waist to pull you back against his steel frame, a shift of view to his mask, where you knew that Killer was riddling you with all his passion and reverence through his masked gaze.

— Ah, even the smallest of his grazes has your mind muddled in pink sugar.

— But as much as his fervid touches leave you teeming in a swirl of rousing electricity, there was no denying that the sparking sensation utterly surges when he follows up with a more assertive approach. And oh my, how his killing intent permeates the atmosphere when he is edged on by the crawling eyesore of your flatterer laying their sullied claws on your petaled features.

— Really now, just who did those specks of grime think they were, to project themselves upon you so invasively? Slamming an object down may be enough to scare off your contriving admirers, but the temptation to simply utilize his raw, brute power to ensure they never awake from their slumber was just too much of a rush for him to reject. However, Killer is more civilized when it pertains to social settings, so brawls prompted by him are not a common affair; but you could still list the numerous times he punched somebody for more warranted reasons, especially when they unmindfully slip themselves into your space by force.

— But the part that swoons your heart into torrid oblivion are the aftermaths of any of his invidious turmoils, when your ever so reserved giant, who can be reduced to melted chocolate and thawed hearts with a touch of your own, returns to you with a shameful expression. Through the veneer for his unmerited insecurity, you could vividly picture the confliction swimming in the depths of his cerulean eyes. 

— As unreasonable as it may sound, Killer is entangled in the firm belief that you had this sparkling image of him where he is this reposeful, yet formidable pirate who also happens to be the ideal boyfriend. It is this same notion that spurs Killer to play the role of a perfect lover; the unfortunate product of his childhood, where he spent years in hiding out of self-doubt. And so, when he finds himself reacting senselessly violent towards a mundane situation, fueled by nothing more than petty feelings, he is inclined to believe that he somehow has broken your trust.

— So it is in your best interest that you remind him of just how perfect he already was, how you adore his qualities, his potential, and his flaws; Killer does so much to deserve that melodic reassurance. Imagine, the radiant blissfulness that would cocoon his being once your comforting voice sends honey swirling through his body. And besides, his possessive arrays are enticing performances, because everything Killer does for you was just so profoundly romantic, even with the couple splashes of crimson here and there.

— Of course, there are other traits of Killer’s for you to wholly cherish him for other than the ones that lean towards his violent streak, but how can you gloss over such displays of ferocity without proper appreciation? He deserves at least some slick pressure poured in with unbridled love and infinite urges, from the top of his crown to the underside of his jagged jawline; perhaps even lower if you are ever so daring.

[uas-fics]

Title: Hop and Gloria to the Rescue!

Rating: G

Summary: Gloria and Hop are finally home for a visit after their stays in the far-off Crown Tundra and the Isle of Armor, respectively. But what's this? Someone is breaking into Hop's house!? And Leon's there alone? They have to save him!

Ships: Leon x Piers

Content Warnings: Mild spoilers for the SwSh post games and DLCs

Read on AO3

-----

"Anything but curry. Let's agree to that."

"Oh, definitely!"

Hop rubbed his stomach. "If I ever see another Max Mushroom curry in my life, it'll be too soon."

"At least the Dojo has a snack machine!" Gloria bumped into his shoulder with her own. "You know what I got to eat? Camp curry and carrots."

"So that means you got the best eyesight now, don't it?" Hop teased.

Gloria wrinkled up her nose. She moved to push Hop forward, but he dodged. She snorted. A smile played on her face.

For the last few months, the Galar continent separated the best friends, with Gloria exploring the Crown Tundra and Hop studying in the Isle of Armor. They kept in touch, of course, texting, calling,and sending pictures of interesting pokemon they saw, but none of that compared to walking and chatting with each other on their journey home to Postwick.

Both trainers had so much to tell everyone and each other.

Notebooks weighted down Hop's pack. Each one filled with notes, sketches, and photographs about the pokemon he'd been studying on the Isle of Armor. One, in particular, had a blurry photo of a black and pink bird pokemon that sped by the front of the Dojo one afternoon.

Hop already knew exactly how he would convince Gloria to help him track it down.

Gloria's pack, on the other hand, held a folder with all the notes she'd taken from her own journeys around The Crown Tundra with Peony. If the pictures of the Legendary pokemon didn't leave Hop gobsmacked, then seeing them registered in her Pokedex would!

Of course, once he knew she was tracking down Moltres somewhere in the Isle of Armor, he would have to join her.

But all that could wait until after a few days rest with their families.

Patchy clouds darkened the sun as the two crested the final hill to Postwick. Far in the distance, over the Slumbering Weald, the heavy clouds poured down. The travelers missed the deluge by less than an hour.

Gloria took a deep breath, enjoying air that didn't fill her lungs with an icy chill. Coming home a day earlier than she'd told her mum turned out to be the right idea.

Not just their families would be elated to see them. Gloria had message after message from Marnie: how she was improving her gym and the new boutique that opened near the Spikemuth pokemon center--and about The Big Secret.

Marnie had taunted her with the huge, life changing secret that was too sensitive to tell over the phone for weeks now. If Gloria wanted to know what the secret was, she would have to come to Spikmuth and hear it from Marnie face to face.

Hop ran over to a wooden fence.

"I didn't know how much I'd missed wooloo." He laughed and gestured to a herd of grazing wooloo.

One of the wooloo raised its head at the sound of his voice. It baa'ed at the two before trotting over. It butted its head against Hop's palm. Soon the rest of the herd crowded the fence line, baa-ing in delight at the attention Hop readily gave out.

"Remind me to let Dubwool out after we get home so he can talk to all his old wooloo friends. He's grown even stronger since the last time they all saw him. Master Mustard said he thinks Dubwool is getting stronger faster than even Lee’s Charizard did."

Hop scratched a wooloo under the chin. It bleated in delight.

Gloria leaned her arms on the fence. "Speaking of Leon, will he be home too? My pokemon are itching for a battle with him." She fingered the pokeballs at her belt.

If Cinderace didn't get a chance to battle Leon's Charizard, he would give Gloria the silent treatment for a week. After all the rememensing about the amazing championship battle Gloria and Leon had, Calyrex, too, wanted a good look at the former champion. Not to mention the rest of her team wanted to test their strength against the toughest trainer they knew.

Hop jumped back from the fence, much to the sorrow of the wooloo herd. "He should be. Lee told me he's been helping Mum and my grandparents around the house the last week or so."

"Well, if he's not home," Gloria punched her fist into her palm, "I'll go drag him back to Postwick myself."

Hop chuckled as he spun around towards Postwick. He wished he could see that: Tiny Gloria carrying his big brother over her head all the way through the Wild Area and back home. It was almost too bad Lee wouldn't miss a chance to see his little brother after so long apart.

He opened his mouth to tell Gloria as much when something caught his eye. He shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted.

"What's that?" He pointed.

Gloria followed his finger to see a figure in black with a hood pulled up walk through the gate to Hop's house. The figure shut the gate behind them before passing a large tree and leaving her sight.

"I dunno, but it gives me a bad feeling." Gloria grabbed Hop's wrist. "C'mon! Let's investigate!"

They hurried down the road until they came to the edge of the stone wall that surrounded Hop's home.

"Do you think we should go inside? What if that's a burglar? Should we call the police?" Hop asked. His fingers brushed his rotomphone in his pocket.

"Not yet. Let's see if we can tell what's going on first."

Gloria dropped her bag. With a leap, she effortlessly cleared the wall. She rushed past the tree and to the shed beside the house. Hop shouldered off his heavy pack and mimicked her until both their backs pressed against the worn paint of the shed.

"There's a window 'round the side of the shed. It looks into the kitchen." Hop jerked his head towards the house. "Let's see if we can see anything."

At the edge of the shed, Gloria and Hop exchanged looks. They nodded at each other then dropped to their stomachs in the wet grass. The smell of soggy earth filled their noses. They army crawled to the side of the house.

Hop's grandfather, or maybe even Leon, had recently cleared the leaf litter from around the shed into a tidy pile beside the house. The pile blocked their path like a sodded brown mountain.

Gloria started to ask, "Should we go arou--" when the kitchen window opened.

Hop slapped a hand over her mouth and pulled her until they were right next to the leaf litter pile.

A voice floated out the window.

"...won't be back until tonight."

Hop stiffened.

Leon! That was Leon's voice! So he was home. What about the burglar? The figure who walked through the gate. Did that person know Leon was home too? Did Leon know he wasn't alone?

Leon stuck his head out the window and gazed at the sky. "Rain's well past," he said before pulling his head back in.

Gloria held Hop against the wall to stop him from jumping out of their hiding place and dragging Leon out of the window by his shoulders.

She put a finger to her lips. "We don't know if anyone is in there with him yet," She hissed into his ear. "We don't want to scare him over nothing."

Hop swallowed the lump of worry in his throat. Gloria was right, of course. Maybe the figure was just cutting through his yard. People did that all the time, didn't they?

A hand with skin much too pale to be Leon's came from the window. It turned, palm to the sky, before returning to the house. The window shut with a click.

Hop and Gloria's eyes met.

There was someone in the house, someone beside Leon.

Without another word, the two crawled around the leaf pile and to the window. They waited a few heart-pounding moments before, carefully, peeking into the kitchen.

The figure in black, hood still up, had their back to Hop and Gloria. A sharp knife stuck out from their sleeves.

The figure started to turn towards the window. Hop and Gloria ducked down. Their hearts threatened to tear right out of their chests.

"Oh, Arceus." Hop sucked in a breath, going to his knees.

She put her hands on Hop's shoulders and shook him once. "Do you know what this means? It's not a burglar! It's a murderer!"

"But why? Who would want to hurt Leon? He is the greatest Champion Galar's ever had!" He paused a beat then added, "Ah, I mean--"

Gloria cut him off with a wave of her hand. "That's probably why! He must know something someone doesn't want him to. He has to have some top secret information about the League or someone very powerful."

"So they sent an assassin!" Hop interjected.

"Maybe more than one!"

Then, like a feedback loop of movie cliches, the mysterious figure walking through Hop's gate turned into a burglar, then murderer, then one of a team of well trained ninja assassins from Kanto coming to either kidnap Leon to extort information out of him or kill him to keep him from talking.

Midway through Hop's edition of a secret underground society of pokemon psychics, a scream pierced the air from inside the house.

"Lee!" Hop jumped to his feet.

He ran to the front of the house, weaving around the set of metal chairs and table near the kitchen door, and skidded to a stop, sending mud and wet grass up into the air.

He took a pokeball from his belt. "Dubwool, come out!"

In a flash of light, Hop's dubwool appeared. He shook out his fleece. For a moment, excitement rose on Dubwool's face upon being home. It disappeared when he looked at Hop's terrified expression.

Gloria let out her Cinderace. Cinderace took a breath for an delighted shout but Gloria shushed him with a hand over his mouth.

"There is an assassin in Hop's house trying to kidnap Leon," She explained quickly to the pokemon. "They probably have the door blocked, so we need to break it in then take out the assassin, got it?"

Dubwool and Cinderace nodded without a second’s hesitation. Their trainers knew exactly what was going on, and the pokemon always trusted their judgement.

Hop picked up one of the metal garden chairs and Gloria the other. They weren't much for weapons or protection, but they were better than nothing.

Another scream made all four jump.

"Let's go! Dubwool, use slam on the door!" Hop ordered, throwing out his arm.

Dubwool bleated. He pawed at the dirt once, twice, then rammed, horns first, into the door. The door flew from the hinges and crashed into the stairs across the hall. Photos rattled and fell to the floor with a shattering glass. Shards of glass scattered across fleece as Dubwool righted himself.

With a war cry, Hop, Gloria, and Cinderace raced through the door.

Cinderace jumped onto the broken door and used it as a springboard to leap across the living room.

"What in the world?" Leon jumped up from the couch in time for Cinderace's foot to plant firmly on his chest. His hat flew off his head as he landed, pinned between the wall and Cinderace's foot.

Gloria raised the chair above her head and threw it as another head came up from the couch.

The assassin ducked in time to miss the metal chair, but not the Dubwool who jumped over the couch to land on them with a victorious bleat.

The shelf above Leon swung down by one nail, disturbed by the chair hitting the wall. A trophy rolled and landed square on Leon's head with a bell-like ring.

Hop darted around the chaos towards his brother, his chair forgotten by the mess near the broken door.

"Lee!" Hop pushed a shocked Cinderace away and crouched next to Leon.

"H...Hop?" Leon squinted. "What are you doing here?" He winced, holding his head. A nice sized lump began to grow where the trophy collided with Leon’s skull.

Before Hop could answer, Gloria took a pillow from the couch and began beating the only part of the assassin's body that wasn't under a mass of thick wool--their thrashing legs.

"How do you like it, huh? You're not killing any champions on my watch! Bam! Ha! Boom! Take that, assassin!" She cried, repeatedly slamming the pillow against the assassin's ankles.

Leon gasped. "S-stop! Gloria, stop!" He tried to stand, but could barely lift himself up without falling back.

Hop wrapped his arms around Leon's shoulders protectively. Why in the world would he want them to stop? That assassin was trying to kidnap him, take him to their underground base, and torture him for information!

"Get the 'ell offa me!" The assassin yelled. With a grunt of effort, they pushed Dubwool off.

The sheep pokemon rolled onto his back, hooves waving in the air. Gloria quickly changed her angle and slammed the pillow into the assassin's face.

I hope I broke this jerk's nose! Gloria thought, though she didn't hear any cartilage crunching against her attack.

A pale hand gripped the pillow and tore it from her hands.

"What was all that for?" A familiar person demanded, throwing the pillowing back at Gloria. It hit her face and landed in a sad lump on the ground.

"Piers?"

Piers narrowed his eyes. A chill worse than anything she felt in the Crown Tundra ran up her spine at his icy glare.

"Did you throw a chair at me?" He demanded.

"I, I, uh..." Gloria floundered.

What was going on? Why was Piers, of all people, here? He wasn't a gym leader anymore, so he didn't need to talk to Leon about the League. Gloria couldn't think of a single reason the two would ever be in the same place together.

Unless something was wrong with Marnie. Was that The Big Secret she wanted to tell her? Had Marnie broken some sort of huge rule? Did something bad happen? Was her best gal friend in trouble?

Leon groaned again. Piers moved his gaze from Gloria and towards Leon. He jumped to his feet and hurried over.

"Leon? Are you alright?" He winced, seeing the blooming bruise on his forehead.

Hop tightened his grip on his brother. His head spun. Had his and Gloria's grand plan to save Leon been for nothing? No way they were wrong about the danger Leon had been in.

"I'm ffffffine," Leon slurred, "propsably."

Piers held up three fingers. "How many fingers I got up?"

Leon stared into the middle distance for a few beats longer than he should before squinting at Piers' fingers.

"Six."

Piers groaned, throwing his head back dramatically and slumping his shoulders. "I think you two gave him a concussion."

"Concussion?!" Hop nearly choked on the word. "But, we didn't mean to!"

Cinderace took a few steps around Gloria. He lowered himself to hide behind her, ashamed of the damage he'd caused. She reached back and patted him reassuringly. It wasn’t his fault. If Piers had been an assassin ninja, Cinderace would have just saved Leon from a dagger to the neck.

Piers disentangled Hop from Leon. He put his arm under Leon's and around his back before hoisting him up. Leon tried to take a step on his own, but wobbled back against Piers.

"Let's get you to a doctor. That's a nasty lump." Piers' voice came out softer than Gloria or Hop had ever heard it. To Hop, he asked, "Do we got to go all the way to the next town or is there a doctor in Postwick."

Hop's mouth gaped before he shook himself. "There's not, but if I call the one in Wedgehurt, he can be here in a jiffy." He already had his rotomphone out before he finished speaking.

Gloria, feeling useless standing there like a slowpoke on a stone, went to roll Dubwool back to his hooves. She dusted some of the wood chips and glass shards from his fleece. A few chips hit the cracked screen of a laptop on the floor.

She had a feeling she would be paying for that, and for everything else...

Leon rested his weight against Piers' side.

"Surry," He muttered. "This didn't go alls well 't all."

Piers shrugged as he carefully helped Leon through the broken mess on the floor.

"Believe it or not, this still isn’t the worst date I've ever been on."

Hop dropped the rotomphone and Gloria fell over herself, landing on the other side of Dubwool.

"Date?"

------

Piers shook the rain off his coat.

“Walk more,” they said.

“It's good for you,” they said.

“The weather is great today,” they said.

Bull crap!

That's the last time he takes his gym trainers' advice on the weather--no, not his gym trainers. They were Marnie's now. He hadn’t been a gym leader in a few months, but sometimes that fact still slipped his mind.

He should have gotten a taxi to Postwick. That way he wouldn't have gotten caught in the rain.

He hurried down the road to Leon's house. He opened the gate, surprised it didn't screech in protest. Well, Leon did say he'd been doing handiwork around his family's house recently. He probably oiled the gate.

Or maybe Piers just wasn't used to gates that didn't squeak from years of rust.

He shut the gate behind him as he wondered if he could talk Leon into helping him around Spikemuth's gym. Marnie might be the gym leader, but that didn't mean Piers couldn't still keep the gym up to snuff.

Leon opened the door after the second knock. He wore a floral themed apron with his sleeves rolled past his elbows and hair pulled back at the nape of his neck.

He covered a chuckle.

"Spooky. Are you the grim reaper today?" He gestured at the long black coat and hood.

Piers rolled his eyes and pushed the hood back. How he fit all of his hair in the hood, Leon couldn't fathom a guess.

Leon gestured for him to follow him to the kitchen. Piers peeled off his coat and draped it over a kitchen chair. Leon reached back to untie the apron.

"I lost track of time," he explained, hanging the apron on a hook. "I promised Mum I'd get the kitchen spick and span for tomorrow."

"How kind."

Hop came back tomorrow from the Isle of Armor. Piers' knew that well at this point. It seemed every other conversation lately had been about how excited Leon was about his little brother's return.

Leon couldn't wait to hear what kind of research Hop was doing and what kind of pokemon he'd met and all about how everything at the Dojo was.

Of course, Gloria was supposed to come back too. Neither Leon nor Piers had ever been to the Crown Tundra, but they knew the rumors of the incredibly strong pokemon that live in the barren, frozen north of Galar.

Both of them knew they would need to battle the current champ to see just how strong she'd become before she left to continue her explorations.

Piers peered around the kitchen. As far as he could tell, it looked fine. All the counters were clean and the cobwebs dusted from the corners, but he still asked, "D’you need help?" anyway.

Leon shook his head. "No. It's just a few dishes I have to do." He jerked his head to the sink.

In fact, Leon started cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the kitchen right after breakfast. He intended to finish well before Piers showed up, but only having a few pieces of silverware left wasn't that bad.

Piers took a dish towel from beside the sink and dropped it. Using his foot, he mopped up the puddle he and his coat created on the tiled floor. With one quick movement, he hooked the towel with his toe and kicked it up into his waiting hand.

"You're welcome." He tossed the towel next to the sink.

Leon snorted a laugh. "Thanks."

"When is your family 'ppose to be back? The movie isn't that long, but..." Piers trailed off, rolling his wrist to finish the comment.

Leon didn't need him to finish to know what he was talking about. They were a little secret, for the time being. Only the bare minimum of people knew they were dating, and Leon had been putting off explaining the situation to his family until after Hop and Gloria’s homecoming.

"My grandparents are visiting friends in Ballonlea. My and Gloria's mums are in Hammerlock, so, they," Leon opened the window over the sink, "won't be back until tonight."

Leaning over the sink, he poked his head out and looked up. The dark rain clouds moved on, leaving Postwick humid, but drying. A weather Piers didn’t seem to mind, though Leon couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of humidity being better than a sunny afternoon.

"Rain's well past."

Piers strode next to him and stuck his hand out the window. He turned his palm up, half expecting more rain, before pulling it back in. He shut the window.

"Too bad," he smiled slyly, "a scary movie is always better with some thunder and lightnin' in the background."

"I wouldn't want Hop treading home through mud," Leon replied, only half joking.

Piers took his coat from the chair and draped it over Leon's shoulders. He chuckled and patted his warm cheek.

"It's cute you care so much about your bro like that."

A faint blush crossed Leon's cheeks. Their faces were so close. It wouldn't take much to close the gap and--

"We should start the movie soon." Piers stole a step away. "We're doing this in the living room, yeah?"

Before he could get any farther, Leon took hold of his wrist and gently pulled him back. He placed a kiss on his cheek.

"I have to empty the sink first, so don't miss me too much."

Although he knew it was unlikely, Leon wished his impromptu romantic gesture would leave the formidable dark-type trainer flustered. It didn't, of course. Leon had only ever gotten him blushing and gobsmacked once, when he first proposed the idea of a date between the two.

Piers shook his head with a smile then pulled the hood over Leon's head.

"Smooth as a druddigon."

He paused, mentally storing that line away. It could make a good lyric someday. Smooth as a druddigon, loving as a gorbis? Bisharp?

He'd work on it later.

With Piers out of the kitchen, Leon sighed in defeat. Maybe next time he'd get him.

Instead of taking off Piers' coat, he put his arms through the sleeves. Piers was taller than him by a half a head, so the sleeves fell past his hands

Leon took the last fork and spoons from the sink and set them aside. Careful of the blade, he took a knife out. Mum used the knife to chop vegetables for dinner the night before, so it was a relatively easy clean.

Leon shuddered. The coat wasn't even that warm. Did Piers only wear it for the style? He turned away from the sink, knife still in hand and lifted an arm. At least the material seemed to dry fast after being caught in the rain. Maybe that's why Piers wore it?

As he turned back to the sink, something moved out of the corner of his eye. He frowned. Did a rookidee fly down from the tree in the yard just then? Setting the knife aside, he reached to open the window again when a blood curdling scream made him jump.

With his hand to his pounding heart, he hurried to the living room.

"What was that?"

Piers nodded to the laptop set up in front of him on the coffee table.

Leon craned his neck towards the laptop screen. The fakest monster costume he had ever seen loomed over a frightened woman on the title screen.

"Night Of the Living Nightmare" the title read in a dripping green and purple font.

When Piers said he had a classic of Galar indie horror to show him, Leon expected a movie with thrilling psychological horror and innovative use of pokemon moves for special effects, not a repainted rubber gyarados mask with extra teeth glued in.

"How old is this movie?" Leon asked, taking off Piers' fashionable, but impractical, coat.

"Would you believe me if I told you it was made only eight years ago?" Piers took the coat from Leon and tossed it in the corner of the couch.

"Really?" He sat next to Peers.

Piers scooted over and pressed against his side. Leon always felt warm, which was part of the reason Piers took his less than warm coat with him. A good excuse to get close as they watched the movie. At least one of them was actually smooth.

He hummed the affirmative.

'The Night Of The Living Nightmare' was a terribly cheesy movie. The fake blood wasn't thick enough, the teeth on the mask fell off half way through, the editing made scenes drag on much too long, and the actors either over exaggerated their lines or delivered them with as much life as a dead magikarp.

All together, 'The Night Of The Living Nightmare' made for a good date movie in Piers' opinion.

"Ready?" Piers already hit play before Leon could answer.

The movie started with a scene of a woman rising up out of a pool. The camera lingered on her chest and stomach and legs before it panned back towards the water. A ripple skittered across the pool water.

The scales on the wishiwashi making the waves gleamed in the harsh set lighting.

The woman dried her hair with a bright pink beach towel. She hummed a pop song that Leon remembered being popular when he was a teenager, but couldn’t recall the name off.

A set of rubber fins slapped against the pool tile. The music grew frantic with each wet slap as the monster neared the woman.

A three clawed hand reached out towards the woman. She spun, screamed in terror and--

"Is that a boom mic?" Leon paused the movie and pointed to the mic in the corner of the screen.

"There are at least seven hangin' around in different shots," Piers confirmed. "You think you can find 'em all?"

Now with a goal of finding all the hidden mics, Leon went to hit play again. Before his fingers brushed the space bar, something let out a loud "Baaaa!"

He bolted up in time to see the front door fly off its hinges, followed by a dubwool.The door and dubwool slammed into the steps. Picture frames crashed to the ground. Glass scattered across the floor.

Outside, several people screamed, then a cinderace then leapt over the dubwool.

It ricocheted off the busted door and aimed a well placed kick into Leon's chest.

----

"...And that's what happened before you brusted in." Leon adjusted the ice pack against his head.

The doctor from Wedgehurts said Leon got lucky that Cinderace's attack only left him with some bruises, bumps, and a mild concussion and not broken bones. When he left, the doctor tutted at the broken door and muttered about kids these days.

Piers set a glass of water on the table in front of Leon and two pain pills beside it.

From across the kitchen table, Hop and Gloria avoided looking at the older trainers. How could they let their imagination get away from them like that? Gloria was the Galar champion and Hop was a professor in training, and yet they really believed assassins had broken in.

How foolish! Leon was a champion, too. Of course he could take care of a few assassin's without their help!

"We're really sorry, Lee," Hop muttered then added quickly, "and Piers."

Gloria added in, "We just wanted to help."

"It's not the first time I've been hit by a pokemon, and it probably won't be the last," Leon reassured after he downed the pain killers.

Piers took a seat. He steepled his fingers and looked over Hop and Gloria with a hard, steady gaze. The two squirmed. Should they apologize again? Get on their knees and beg for forgiveness?

"This wasn't how this was s’pposed to go." Piers sighed, turning to look away and releasing the kids from his stare.

Leon nodded in agreement, only to flinch. He blinked hard until the kitchen finally stopped spinning. The doctor told him not to do anything that required much mental or physical exertion, but he didn't particularly have a choice in this case.

The thought of explaining the door, the wall, the shelf, his head, not to mention Piers, made his head pound in anticipation of the confrontation. Mum would be upset about the door, worried about him, and annoyed about Piers being kept a secret from her.

"I don't get," Hop frowned, "why you two keep this a secret from everyone? What's the big deal?"

Leon scratched his cheek with his finger. "Well, ah, that's because--"

"We were breakin’ rules," Piers cut in.

"Rules? What rules?" Hop wrinkled his brow.

Leon was a grown up now, so the rules Mum set up for dating when he was a teenager didn't apply anymore. Or, Hop thought they didn't. Had Leon broken his curfew to spend time with Piers? Did he leave for a date without telling Mum how long he’d be out?

"The Pokemon League rules. Members of The League aren't allowed to date each other. Conflict of interest and all that," Peers explained. "I was still a gym leader and he was still champion when this started." He nodded towards Leon.

Now Hop felt really confused. He couldn't imagine his big brother breaking a rule like that. Then again, he couldn't imagine Leon breaking curfew either, at least not without a really good reason.

Gloria crossed her arms. This was news to her. What a dumb rule. Who cared if a gym leader wanted to date another leader. What if she wanted to go out with a gym leader? The League could try and stop her!

"I don't think we'll get in too much trouble now, but we figured we'd wait it out before saying anything to anyone." Leon switched the hand holding the ice pack. He wanted this conversation over so he could go lay down and stare at the ceiling for a bit.

A thought crossed Gloria's mind just then. Could it be this The Big Secret Marnie had to tell her in person?

"Does Marnie know?"

"That you two nearly suffocated her brother under a hundred kilo of unknit sweater? She will when I get home." Piers glanced at the side of the kitchen where the pokemon were. Dubwool lowered his gaze. Cinderace coughed into his paws and turned to stare out the window.

"No, did Marnie know about you two?"

Piers raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. She knew."

Gloria's eyes gleamed. Now Marnie owed her a new secret, since Gloria knew this one. It was only fair after all! Maybe this whole ordeal was worth it to learn Marnie’s crushes!

Hop asked, "Is there anything we can do to make this up to you two? We messed up, and we deserve it."

Piers and Leon exchanged looks. Piers shrugged. He could always find them something to do at Spikemuth: the less artistic graffiti needed to be washed off walls, trash picked up, or moss scraped off buildings.

Leon, though, was the one who had actually been hurt so he let the punishment for the kids’ transgression be under his discretion.

"I can think of one thing," Leon said. He gestured for Piers to lean towards him. He covered the side of his mouth and whispered into Piers' ear.

Piers cackled and sent Hop and Gloria a smirk.

"Brilliant. Just brilliant." He clasped Leon on the upper arm and squeezed.

Leon set the ice pack on the table. He reached across and put a firm hand on one of Hop's and one of Gloria's shoulders.

He half smiled. "Someone has to tell Mum what happened to the door, and I don't think it will be me."

---

---

AN: I haven't written a fanfiction in like more than a year. But last year was 2020 so can you blame me?

[fandom-necromancer]

Criminal Romance

This was prompted by an amazing anon! I hope evil!Reed900 and criminal!Reed900 are overlapping enough for this to be what you wanted! Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: Author blatantly brushes over morals and ethics for the sake of the AU, Gavin and Nines are criminals, murder)

‘Damn, you are phcking sexy when you are angry, you know that?’ That made a smile appear on that beautiful face, as Nines was standing hunched over the sink to wash away the blood from his knuckles. ‘I believe you are the only one who reacts to danger by proposing to it.’ ‘Aw, so you finally have decided on an answer?’ Gavin couldn’t hide his excitement and knowing he needed something to do if he didn’t want to bounce around the place, he took the disinfectant wipes and took Nines’ hands. ‘Here, let me.’ He started wiping over the android’s knuckles, careful to get into the ridges between hull plates too as soon as Nines let his skin retract. ‘There, all done’, Gavin murmured, not letting Nines’ hands leave his as he continued caressing them gently. ‘I think I have decided’, the android answered finally. ‘Not that I ever had any doubts, but you know, I had planned to confess my love to you at a perfect moment. Like, right after a chase with the police, when the adrenaline is rushing in your veins and your heart is beating like crazy.’ He grasped Gavin’s hands and pulled the man close. ‘Or during a shootout when we made it just within an inch of our lives.’ He kissed him. ‘Or maybe when we are both tied up in the back of a police car, just moments before breaking our chains and making our escape.’ His thirium pump worked overtime as he saw Gavin’s eyes flutter shut while leaning in for the next kiss, his breathing caught against the android’s lips.

‘You damn romantic’, Gavin whispered and pressed himself flush with Nines’ body. It was when he lifted a leg to hook behind him, that the android chuckled and pressed it down gently. ‘Darling, we still have a body to dispose of.’ ‘Don’t care’, Gavin panted. ‘Police isn’t even searching for him yet. Isn’t even reported missing yet.’ ‘Still, we have to-‘ He was interrupted by another kiss and Nines was just about as annoyed as he was amused. He laughed the moment his mouth was free again and shook his head. ‘Gavin. Come on. Let’s wait until we are home. I’ll dispose of the body, you clean. Then we can continue this. How about that?’ Gavin whined, but stepped back from him, holding him by his coat-tails. ‘Hurry’, He ordered in stern tone and Nines nodded.

They walked back into the room and Nines got to work untying the lifeless body that slumped in his grip. Damn low-life trying to rat them out to the police for a reduced sentence… In Nines’ opinion you either were smart enough to plan your actions so you didn’t get caught, or you owed up to your crimes. Was there no honour in the criminal world? No, Nines had never betrayed someone in his life. He had killed, threatened and robbed, but he had never betrayed his partners. Neither had Gavin, Nines thought, remembering how they had met. Nines, out for revenge for what Cyberlife had done to him, what they had done to other androids, killing off everyone who was responsible for the decisions made. And then Gavin, who had been thrown out of the police for anti-android behaviour and started a small little red-ice business. Nines remembered all too fondly how they had started off as enemies, Gavin accepting Thirium drained from captured androids. He had planned to kill the man for the longest time, but as he had looked death personified into the eyes and just smiled, flirting with him of all things, it had been the first time Nines had changed his mind and offered Gavin to be partners. Since then, Gavin found Nines his victims. Gavin lured in those who were willing to let androids suffer and Nines ended their existence on this planet. It was perfect and no one was able to stop them.

Not even former partners of his human that had suddenly decided that creating drugs from the blood of the dead to make humans addicted to it until it killed them eventually was fine, but they drew the line at taking the shortcut of killing some assholes directly. Nines would have to pay Gavin’s labs a visit after this, reminding them not to dare say a word against his love else they would end just like the body Nines currently carried on his shoulder effortlessly. He smiled to himself thinking of their scared faces and nodded. But first he had to take care of their latest victim.

As he came back, the body neatly cut up and buried deep in several neighbouring fields with enough distance they wouldn’t be able to connect the single pieces if they ever found them, he froze. His eyes were fixed on the police car parked just in front of the building, the officers nowhere in sight. It hadn’t been here before. It had just arrived, the hood still appearing slightly warm in his infra-red vision. And Gavin was still inside, cleaning away the mess they had made. Gavin.

Nines started running. Out of the two of them, Gavin wasn’t the one who was good with careful words. Gavin was the one to manipulate, to be the textbook asshole who threw punches and curses around. Gavin was the one to hide their intentions behind blunt bravado and gather attention. Nines? Nines was the one who made sure all that attention came from the right kind of people and that in the event the wrong people appeared – like they had decided to do now – they had no evidence to go off of. Said simpler, they were a really good team and Nines had left Gavin alone in one of the worst situations he could have. But maybe he wasn’t too late yet.

He slowed down as he heard distant voices and made a point of strolling in as relaxed and calm as possible, even if his systems were running overtime already. He pretended to flinch as if only now realising they weren’t alone. It would help the play, whatever Gavin had already said. ‘Hey, what happened?’, he asked, quickly moving to Gavin’s side. ‘Stop! Don’t move. Put your hands where I can see them!’, one of the two officers ordered sternly, weapon raised. ‘I’m not armed’, Nines said, otherwise complied. He was near enough to Gavin to jump in front of him or grab him to pull him away. He was safe. Gavin turned his head around to him, his arms still risen. ‘They found us.’ Nines remembered their codes. “Found” was something different to “caught” or “got”. “Found” was good. It meant they didn’t have a clue, just caught them somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. “Caught” would mean they had seen something and “they got us” would be the signal for Nines to come up with an escape plan that left no witnesses.

So, he relaxed a bit. ‘Are you from the police?’, Nines asked innocently. ‘Yes, DPD! And who are you?’ ‘May I see your badges?’, the android tried. Both officers showed them without taking the gun down. ‘There. Now answer the question.’ ‘I’m a RK900 unit. My name is Nines.’ The android had looked up their IDs and badge number. They were real cops and were currently stationed at the precinct Gavin had formerly worked at. It was safer to use their real names in case someone recognised them or they had to follow them to the station. Nines’ scan from the room returned him nothing, Gavin had done his job well. Maybe this time playing innocent and just relaying on the laziness of others might be the safest bet. ‘My name is Gavin Reed’, Gavin followed his example. ‘Gavin Reed? Like the Detective?’ Gavin sighed. He was still salty about having lost his job. Nines was quite glad about it as the human would have without doubt long caught up with his doings. ‘Yeah. Got kicked out because of anti-android bullshit.’

‘Sir, has he done anything to you?’, the officer that had kept in the background until now asked. ‘Excuse me?’ Nines would have laughed hadn’t he been deeply offended by the assumption. ‘No’, he answered, looking down on the humans. ‘And considering I plan to propose in the near future, I doubt it will be very likely.’ ‘Alright, why were you here? As a former Detective, you do know, this is breaking and entering, right?’ ‘Is it really breaking and entering, if we didn’t break in?’, Nines asked and Gavin backed him up: ‘Yeah, we drive by this place almost every day and wanted to know what’s inside. We checked, this building doesn’t belong to anyone anymore.’ ‘So you are just exploring?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Then where’s your third man?’ ‘Third man?’ ‘Yes, you were going inside with someone else, now you are only two.’

Nines alarm went off. They had been watching. They had seen the person that was now dead. Gavin likely hadn’t had a chance to dispose of the bloodied tarp and his cleaning supplies yet. A thoroughly search would without doubt lead them onto their trail. And although the police would never be able to prove they had committed all their murders, at least this last one they would be punished for. Outwardly he only smiled and shrugged. ‘We were alone. I don’t know if someone followed us, but it was just us two.’ ‘Yeah, right’, the officer said, little convinced. ‘I would like to take you two with us to the station for further questioning. We have a few cases where the suspects’ descriptions fit well enough with you.’

Gavin and Nines stared at each other and Nines shrugged. He couldn’t think of any reason why they could be suspicious to the police, but that was what made it all the more important to go with them to the station. Nines was sure they would have to let them go for lack of evidence anyways, so it was best to comply and play their part instead of making a scene. Might as well find out how much the authorities knew of them. ‘Alright’, Nines took the lead and hoped Gavin wouldn’t make a fuss. ‘But we have to be home before eight o’clock, else his cat will start dismantling the flat.’ ‘That’s entirely up to you.’

~

‘Where were you on the third October 2039?’ They were sitting in different interrogation rooms and while Nines was waiting for someone to ask him questions, Gavin was already prodded. Nines had allowed himself into the room’s systems and could hear every word from the intercom and see through the cameras mounted on the walls. Other than Nines Gavin really had to think back and try to remember what had happened that day. But even then, Nines saw recognition on his face far earlier than he showed it to the officer in front of him. ‘Pffff, I don’t really remember. That’s how many years ago? Five? Six? I had been kicked out of the DPD and looked for a job at that time. Didn’t find one right away, apparently being fired by the police isn’t the best way to find a new job quickly.’ ‘Which you haven’t until this very day, although you have regular income.’ ‘I’m a freelancer. Private security, one day here the next over there, you know? I’m still looking for a real job.’ ‘So, the sudden rise in Red Ice trade and cases of missing androids are not in any way connected to you?’ The officer sitting opposite to Gavin had leaned back in the chair and let the files fall on the table with an audible slap. Nines listened very intently. That was from before they had met, before they had had each other’s backs. How on earth had the police been diligent enough to do follow ups on something this long ago?

Gavin just laughed; his obviously heightened stress levels well hidden. ‘Hey, don’t complain about that if you throw out one of the best detectives you had, especially one that worked his ass off to get these cases closed. Hell, likely some new gang that uses the thirium from these units to skip a lot of the production costs. Really, that sounds like an easy case. And you haven’t solved that one yet?’ Nines relaxed. He didn’t know whether leading someone on their trail was a good idea, but he trusted Gavin to choose the right action and angering the officer might just work. ‘Okay, I’ll ring up a few contacts and see if they can recognise you’, the officer grumbled. ‘For now, that’s it, my colleague will lead you out.’

~

When the door opened, Nines made a show of looking completely unperturbed. ‘Letting me wait? Let me tell you that tactic isn’t as effective as it is with humans.’ The officer threw him a look. ‘Well, we are just understaffed, that’s all.’ ‘Shouldn’t have fired my partner then’, Nines hit into the same spot Gavin had just minutes before. It worked wonders. ‘Listen, this is about you and whether or not you will be arrested. We have a bunch of dead Cyberlife personnel that where involved with the development of your series.’ ‘Really?’, Nines asked. ‘That’s too bad. I never really liked them, I mean I guess no deviant likes the people that thought of them as objects. But I am perfectly content with creating a brighter future. I don’t like looking back on what happened.’ Not really a lie. He was indeed creating a better future by making sure these monsters would never be able to lay hands on an android again. ‘Sure. That’s why people disappear that worked in complete secrecy on your line? Not even their families knew what they were working on.’ ‘Maybe whoever is killing these people got their hands on a Cyberlife pay-check? I am no cop, but I’d say you should look into the higher ups of Cyberlife itself.’ ‘That we already did and there is no motive. One, two, maybe. Not forty-three.’

Nines would have swallowed hadn’t he been observed. How had they managed to find all his kills and managed to connect them back to him? ‘Well, that is no evidence. Why should I kill them? I wasn’t a deviant back then. You have no reason to believe I did this.’ ‘We have, actually. One of the persons the killer missed had fled the country seeing what happened to his colleagues. He informed us and pointed us your way, telling us how you swore to kill every last one of the people who held you at that lab.’ So the fucker had fled the country. That’s the reason Nines never managed to find him. Good to know. ‘I have sworn that’, Nines admitted. What else could he do? ‘Multiple times even. But that doesn’t mean I would do that. If you knew what they did to me, you would understand what drove me to say that. But now the situation is different. One careless word delivered by someone who fled the country isn’t enough to arrest me.’ ‘No, but enough to keep you here for further questioning. I will lead you back to the cell until the officers responsible for this case have arrived.’

~

Nines joined Gavin on the bench, watching how the door was locked and the officer walked away, likely to make some phone calls. Both of them knew they hadn’t been as invulnerable as they had thought, and the lasting expectant silence was weighing down on them. >It doesn’t look too good. Nines eventually displayed on his palm for the other to see. Gavin leaned against him and whispered in his ear: ‘Yeah, it really doesn’t.’ >We need to get out of here. Gavin nodded and shrugged, enough for Nines to understand he agreed but had his doubts it would work. The android smiled. >Thanks to the police I have located my last target. The only loose end. ‘Really? Where?’ As an answer, Nines pulled up a tourist brochure of Indonesia. >How about a vacation until things have settled? Gavin smiled at him, taking Nines’ hand and stood up after him. Just before Nines laid his hand at the door and started hacking, Gavin leaned in tiptoeing, so he could press a kiss on his neck. ‘Seems you do get your romantic moment after all’, Gavin whispered amusedly, and Nines answered by opening the door. Shortly after an alarm blared and they found themselves surrounded by chaos, sudden gunshots and screams. That would be indeed make for the perfect moment.

[the-penny-dreadfuls]

The sun shone brightly on the morning of July 9th, 1969. Its golden rays spread across the clear, cobalt blue sky, warming the world below. It was a picture-perfect summer day, the type families loved to use as a backdrop for memories. A father and his two young sons set out to the Root River in Racine, Wisconsin for a fishing trip. As they sought for the perfect fishing sight, one of the boys came across a ghastly discovery. There, lying on the river bank, was a severed leg. Authorities were contacted and a search began. Investigators found two more body parts as they scoured the nearby area; an arm and head, which had been wrapped in a paper grocery bag. The victim’s pelvic bone and two vertebrates were later discovered several in a brush filled area five miles away from the initial dumpsight, located between the 6 Mile and 7 Mile road. Police were able to identify the unfortunate victim on day one of the investigation.

Her name was Stephanie Marie Casberg. She entered the world on July 11th, 1951 and joined a large, lively family. Out of the seven Casberg siblings, Stephanie was the only girl. This seventeen-year-old loved getting dolled up, fixing her shining red hair in just the right look, and heading out to a school dance. Charming, polite, and always smiling; that’s how people knew her. There was a carefree energy about her, one that effortlessly put others in good spirits, and no matter where she went, Stephanie easily made friends. She was an excellent student and graduated from Riverside High School in June 1969. She held a waitressing position at the local Big Boy burger restaurant on Van Buren Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and saved up money for the next chapter in her life. A bright future waited just beyond the girl’s fingertips. All she had to do was reach out and grab it.

During the early evening hours of Monday, July 7th, Stephanie prepared for another shift at the Big Boy and left home around 5:30 PM. Her little brother last saw her getting into a yellow convertible and driving away. Stephanie never arrived for her shift. Somewhere between her family’s house and the restaurant, she crossed paths with her killer.

Two days passed before the Casberg family moved to action. It wasn’t unusual for them to go a day or two without hearing from Stephanie. Several of her friends had apartments, and the girl often slept over there. Wednesday came with no word from Stephanie. Her coworkers informed Stephanie’s parents that they, too, hadn’t seen or heard from her within the last few days. One revealed that Stephanie did not show up for her July 7th shift. The Casbergs made up their mind; they needed to file a missing person report. Just as Charles Casberg was about to head out, his eldest son stopped him and said that police discovered a body alongside the Root River. Charles feared the worst. “I didn’t want to think it was our own,” he said in an interview, dated 12th July 1969. “It was so remote, but I thought I’d check it out first and then on my way back to Milwaukee, I would stop at the safety building and report her as a missing person.”

After arriving on the scene, Charles ran up to the officers and pulled out a photograph of his beloved daughter. They showed him negatives of the severed head for comparison and then took him to the morgue for full identification. There, they confirmed his greatest fears. His child was dead.

The coroner could not pinpoint an official cause of death. He found no breaks in her bones, no serious abrasions or contusions. Two puncture marks wounded her neck, and this led officials to believe that the stabbing may have been what killed her. The murderer used a sharp instrument to sever her limbs at their joints. Because of the cleanness of the cuts, investigators considered the possibility that it was the work of a professional, perhaps a butcher or someone in the medical field. The earring Stephanie had been wearing at the time of her death, a bronze square with a pretty blue oval stone, remained attached to her left ear. The right earring remains missing.

More clues laid scattered up the Root River. In the city of Franklin, located in Milwaukee County, investigators uncovered Stephanie’s purse and a pink blanket. Amongst these items was another chilling clue; a small ripped up photograph of the victim.

The case appeared to be making good headway during the early days of the investigation. An anonymous tip phoned in and gave the name of an eighteen-year-old boy as a potential suspect. Authorities tracked him down to a bus stop before he could leave town, but they cleared the boy after a lengthy and rigorous questioning. Stephanie’s former boyfriend, a young man who worked as a cook at the Big Boy, was briefly considered. He, too, was ruled out.

On July 16th, 1969, a deceased man in his early thirties around found in his car near one dumpsite. He committed suicide and left two notes in his car. Investigators wondered if they could be an act of remorse by the killer. They examined the man’s background, searching for any possible connection to Stephanie Casberg, but found none. They concluded it to be a tragic coincidence.

Another potential suspect may have tried to attack one of Stephanie’s coworkers a month prior to the murder. The witness described him as a man in his twenties with blonde or light brown hair, standing around 5’8. At the time of the attack, he wore a light-colored jacket and cleats. One June night, around 12:30 AM, a waitress walked out into Big Boy parking lot after her shift. A man reportedly walked up behind her, grabbed the young woman, and held a sharp object to her neck. The woman let out a piercing shriek. As she struggled, the assailant punched her in the stomach and allegedly threatened to “cut her head off” if she continued to fight. Fortunately, she broke away by hitting the man with her purse and fled to safety. She did not file a report with the police, and the identity of the attacker remains a mystery.

Through the years, DNA and fingerprints evidence have been analyzed, but have yet to bring any matches. Retired MPD lieutenant Steve Spingola, who once worked on the case, believes that the killer is still alive and living in the area. In a 2019 interview, he stated, “The lion hunts in his own backyard.”

Fifty years have passed since Stephanie Casberg’s horrific murder, and the case remains unsolved. The Milwaukee Cold Case Unit asks that anyone with information related to please this case to contact them at 414-935-7360.

[aion-rsa]

Line of Duty: the Best Crime Thrillers to Watch Next

https://ift.tt/3nJr9b3

Line of Duty is over, perhaps for good. It’s time to dismantle that evidence wall, file the exhibits away, and close the door on AC-12. With H unmasked, we can all rest our adrenal glands and get back to a healthy, Jimmy Nesbitt-free sleep pattern.

Once that’s achieved, if you start to feel the itch for more seismic shocks and sleights-of-hand, here are a few suggestions of what to watch next – eight TV thrillers that provide similar doses of double-dealing, truth-concealing, witness-squealing, case-breaking shenanigans. Add your own recommendations below!  

Bodyguard

Bodyguard proved that there was life after the Red Wedding for Richard Madden. His performance as  David Budd, a former combat soldier living a new – and equally dangerous – life as a Principal Protection Officer (PPO) in the London Met deservedly netted him a Golden Globe and a Scottish Bafta award.

Budd’s job protecting the abrasive yet vulnerable British Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes) is complicated by their conflicting ideologies, Budd’s fractured home-life and PTSD, and a wide-ranging conspiracy that brings together Islamic terrorism, organised crime, intra-governmental malfeasance and dodgy cops.  Be prepared to watch from behind half-closed eyes, wincing in anticipation of the oblivion that’s promised around almost every corner.

Bodyguard has the kinetic ferocity and explosive twists of 24; the grim and gritty characterisation of a Jimmy McGovern project; and the ‘Oh my God it was them along… or was it?’ twists of Line of Duty, which follows as it was also created by Jed Mercurio and World Productions.

Watch on: Netflix UK

The Americans

What if you were so deeply embedded with your enemies that you were indistinguishable from them, both inside and out, and even started to become increasingly disillusioned about what side you were supposed to be on? That’s the central conceit of FX’s slick and superlative spy drama The Americans, set in Washington DC during the height of the Cold War. Russian operatives Philip and Elizabeth Jennings have fake pasts and fake identities, but they also have very real American teenage children, who have been raised oblivious to the devastating secret thumping Poe-like in their parents’  hearts. Other shows trading in similar tropes may well deal in deception and corruption, but the cross that the Jennings have to bear in the name of ideology makes even the biggest conspiracies in Line of Duty and Bodyguard seem like a fib told by a child to avoid punishment for stealing freshly-baked muffins from their mother’s windowsill.

The heat on the Jennings is turned up even further when an FBI agent tasked with uncovering Russian agents moves next door with his family; further still when the two families become friends, further blurring the lines between truth, lies, identity and loyalty.

Whom do you trust when you can’t even trust yourself? 

Watch it on: Amazon Prime Video UK (available to purchase)

Edge of Darkness (1985)

Edge of Darkness is steeped in the same Thatcher-tainted, Reagan-ruled, greed-is-good, hyper-capitalist era as The Americans, but is a contemporaneous piece rather than a period piece, having debuted in 1985. 

The tragic tale follows tortured policeman Ronald Craven (Bob Peck) as he tries to unravel the truth behind his eco-activist daughter’s murder, while he himself starts to unravel in a sea of lies, half-truths, hard truths and shifting allegiances. Craven snakes his way through a colourful cast of misfits, agitators, loudmouths, snobs, yobs and psychopaths, as the battle for power – nuclear, economic, hegemonic – and perhaps the survival of the earth itself, swirls and dances and ricochets around him.

It’s a series that’s unafraid to immerse the viewer in complexity; leaving them to fathom the ever-morphing labyrinth of motivations and revelations on their own; leaning heavily into ambiguity whenever it serves the shape and tone of the story. Often, the viewer is left as bemused and perplexed as Craven himself in the face of this deadly puzzle, but they will still find themselves – also like Craven – unable and unwilling to rest until the pieces fit together.          

The late Bob Peck – whom many will only know as the game keeper from Jurassic Park, who utters his memorable final line, ‘Clever girl…’, seconds before becoming a velociraptor hors d’oeuvre – puts in a mesmerising, career-defining performance as Craven, effortlessly embodying the full gamut of the man’s grief, guilt, obsession, melancholy and mania. Craven seems at once mythical and otherworldly, and yet solidly, painfully, exquisitely human.

Watch on: Amazon Prime Video UK (available to purchase)

The Shield

“Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I’m a different kind of cop.”

So says LA Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) seconds before demonstrating his no-holds-barred interrogation technique to an obfuscating paedophile. It’s not that Vic considers himself above the law, more that everybody else is below his. He often does the right things for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong way, or the wrong things for the right reasons. Or at least for reasons that he thinks are right. And he’s got a justification for everything, from bribing fellow officers, to partnering with organised criminals, to even murdering suspects.

Impossibly corrupt, relentlessly self-righteous, fearless to the point of psychopathy, Vic is the badge-wearing heir apparent to Tony Soprano, but burdened with little of the gabagool-guzzler’s guilt. Viewers are left under no illusions about the lengths Vic will go to protect himself and his kingdom, nor about the sort of show they’re watching, when at the close of the first episode he executes an officer who has been placed in his Strike Team to investigate his corruption, framing a similarly deceased drug kingpin for the crime.

So begins the toxic, spreading rot of secrets, lies and double-dealings, each action an effort to cover over and stay a step ahead of the misdeed before. Vic’s three-man Strike Team would follow him into Hell, which is just as well, because that’s exactly where he leads them, along with his family, and anyone who ever associated with or went toe-to-toe against him. The Shield begins as a punchy, kinetic pop-corn spectacle of a series, but slowly evolves into an almost Shakespearian tragedy, rich in sadness, sacrifice and betrayal. The final act – hell, the final few seasons – will leave you in no doubt as to The Shield‘s place in the pantheon of small-screen greats.    

Watch on: All4 (UK)

Read more

TV

Celebrating Jimmy McGovern’s Cracker

By Jamie Andrew

TV

Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 7 Review: H Unmasked At Last

By Louisa Mellor

Dexter

If Internal Affairs set up an office in the Miami Metro Police Department, the last person they’d suspect of foul play would be the handsome, unfailingly polite blood-spatter analyst Dexter Morgan, doyen of the Homicide bowling team and daily bringer of doughnuts. Whereas Vic Mackey flaunts his corruption in plain sight, Dexter has to stay in the shadows. Dexter’s corruption is a little more extreme than Vic’s: he’s a highly active serial killer. That he only kills according to a strict ethical code – only other murderers, and only those who’d escaped, or would escape, justice by more legitimate means – makes him a complex, compassionate and compelling figure, one with whom we sympathise easily: perhaps too easily. Dexter makes us complicit by proxy. We find ourselves rooting for a serial killer, hopelessly lost in the hedge-maze of his amorality.

Dexter’s relationships with his sister, Deborah (Jennifer Carter) – a detective at his precinct – and Rita (Julie Benz) – first his girlfriend, then his wife and eventually mother of his son – are his only toe-holds on humanity, which is why the show regularly has them dancing on the edge of his dark secret. No more so than when Dexter has to help the department investigate the crimes of a serial killer the media dubs The Bay Harbor Butcher, a serial killer who just happens to be… Dexter.

While it’s true that Dexter came to a perfect natural conclusion after four great seasons, it’s also true that it limped on for another four seasons after that, capped by a finale that is quite possibly one of the weakest and worst of any drama series ever made. Thankfully, it’s coming back for a ninth season later this year, hopefully to right past wrongs.   

Watch on: NOW (UK)

Cracker

If you only know the larger-than-life Robbie Coltrane as the much-larger-than-life Hagrid in the Harry Potter series, you’d do well to check out the mid-90s UK crime-series Cracker, and see Coltrane at his most searing, endearing, dangerous and iconic. Here he plays Eddie ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald – quite simply the role he was born to play – a sharp-witted, full-blooded, foul-mouthed, fast-living psychologist who impresses (and largely imposes) his way into a consulting gig with the Manchester Police, helping them to solve their more grizzly and unusual crimes. The storyline that sees Fitz investigating one of ‘his’ own is perhaps its most harrowing and heart-breaking – a network of tragedies dovetailing into one other – with a denouement that casts a long, sad shadow over the rest of the series.

Warning: If you are a Harry Potter fan, and you decide to watch Cracker, do take the time to psychologically prepare yourself for the sight of Hagrid in bed with Harry Potter’s mum.  

Watch on: Britbox (UK)   

Luther

Detective John Luther (Idris Elba) has the presence of a bear, the heart of a lion, and the mind of Columbo. With his razor-sharp stare, long, lived-in coat and propensity to stick his neck precisely where it’s needed but never wanted, Luther’s ‘Oh, one more thing’ is just as likely to be a fist as it is a verbal death-blow.

Over the course of five seasons Luther is betrayed by those closest to him, mangled by loss, framed for murder and even strikes up an unusual but oddly touching relationship with a serial killer. It’s electric, captivating TV, and Idris Elba wears and lives Luther’s rage, sadness, regret and fuck-you-ness so intensely that you won’t be able to draw your eyes away from him. A barnstormer all round.

Watch on: BBC iPlayer (UK)      

State of Play

The cast-list alone is enough to commend this early 2000s conspiracy thriller: John Simm, Philip Glenister (prior to the duo teaming up in Life on Mars), David Morrissey, James McAvoy, Bill Nighy, Amelia Bullmore, and Line of Duty‘s own Kelly MacDonald. Thankfully, almost everything else about this mini-series also screams excellence, especially the crackling, incisive and deeply honest writing from Clocking Off, Cracker and Shameless-stalwart Paul Abbott.

State of Play follows a group of journalists as they stumble onto the greatest story of their lives – ministerial corruption, contract killings, corporate greed, industrial espionage, illicit affairs – that pits the police, the government, and even their own friends and loved ones against them. It’s a twisting, turning, shifting, shocker of a masterpiece: a true titan of the genre. 

Watch on: Amazon Prime Video UK (available to purchase)

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Line of Duty series one to six are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

The post Line of Duty: the Best Crime Thrillers to Watch Next appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3eLSdlS

[edelwoodsouls]

all roads lead - ch. 7

When his mother dies, Stiles runs away, straight into danger - only to be saved by Peter Hale. Seven years later, after burying their alpha, Stiles and Malia return home.

Word Count: 4,433 | Also on Ao3 | Other Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8,

Chapter 7: GROWTH

The next morning, John takes Malia and Stiles down to the station.

"Can we walk?" Malia asks through a mouthful of toast over the breakfast table. "We took the fastest route to get here, and I never want to see the inside of a car or bus again."

Stiles cringes at the instantly curious glint in the rest of the table's eye - the fastest? What were they running from? -  but his father just nods.

As the others leave for school, Stiles catches Isaac by the door. He's already regretting it as the taller boy regards him with suspicion, but he also knows that making peace, making friends with the people he's living with - the pack he's rivalling - can only help.

"I just, uh, wanted to say, about last night-"

"Oh, uh-" Isaac flinches back at the reminder; Stiles barrels through before the conversation can derail.

"I don't need to know what happened to you, man. I just wanted to say, if these douche twins are getting you detention for something you never did, it can't really hurt to do the things the school already thinks you're guilty of, right?"

Isaac narrows his eyes. "Are you telling me I should beat up the twins." It comes out flat, less question than deadpan statement.

Stiles kinda likes this kid. "I'm not saying anything, dude. Just something to think about."

As he ducks away to go find Malia, he swears he sees Isaac smirk.

His lighter mood doesn't last long. Whilst walking down the roads towards town, shrouded by foliage and that strangely charged forest air, seems to clear something in his lungs; walking through the centre of Beacon Hills feels like slowly peeling off his skin. With every step, the last seven years seem to flee him. He is shrinking into that scared, angry ten year old who knew nothing of the real world, and it makes him itch like ants crawling through his veins.

Everything feels so much smaller. The long walk from his or Scott's house, usually only completed with the aid of their parents' cars, now breezes by. The buildings that towered over him seem so short he could touch their roofs.

Maybe it's because he hit his crazy growth spurt just after leaving, shooting up inches overnight - at the meagre age of eleven he had already rivalled his alpha, a fact he never let Peter live down. Or maybe it's living in a city full of skyscrapers. Maybe it's just the confidence that comes with knowing he is the most dangerous thing for miles, that anything that could challenge or threaten him now would pale in comparison to- well, everything else.

But that well of confidence seems buried, far from reach as the past crawls over his skin. In a city like New York, everything faded quickly into the background. Buildings came up and down, climbing higher and higher towards the clouds. The names and contents of shops were more like revolving doors than staples of the community. Here in Beacon Hills, time seems to have frozen. There is the clock tower, still broken ten years after it ground to a halt. The ice-cream shop that never seems to have customers yet remains open, even through the winter months.

There is something aching in his heart that he refuses to label.

Stiles had hoped that the long stretch of time since he was last seen in Beacon Hills would keep the watchful eyes of a small town away from him. But while no one recognises the sheriff's son, everyone recognises the sheriff. People look up from their shopping, gaze out of cafe windows, stop in the street to watch the sheriff walking into town with two strange teenagers trailing behind him. Stiles wants to fold in on himself - his anonymity has been a weapon he's wielded for as long as he can remember.

Malia squares her shoulders, grips his hand tight in hers.

As they approach the sheriff's station, Stiles' pace slows. Even with a father in law enforcement, places and people such as these have only ever registered as a threat. Here in Beacon Hills, they are the reason Peter's family was never avenged. The reason Malia had to be broken out of Eichen House. In New York they had all been in the pockets of various supernatural groups. Being arrested had nothing to do with what you did wrong, and everything to do with who you were, or who you had pissed off.

Stiles got off relatively lucky, as a white guy. They still make his skin crawl, and the toxic scent of gunmetal and overentitlement only adds to the sickness growing in the pit of his stomach.

"Stiles?" his father asks, stood in the doorway. The light casts off-putting shadows across his face.

"I'm fine," he swallows, allowing one of his many masks to slip effortlessly over his features. Bright eyes, vageuly concerned smile. He curls one fist full of claws deep into his pocket, the other fastened firmly in Malia's grip.

"You with me?" he asks her, watching her distant expression. Her experiences here, though almost a year ago, have never led to good things.

"Mmhm," Malia nods noncomittally, as if she isn't hearing hollow screams in her ears, as if her claws haven't begun to dig painfully into Stiles' palm.

"We can wait outside," he suggests.

"No we can't. I'm just being ridiculous."

"Malia." He turns to face her, blocking vieher w of the station. "You're never being ridiculous. I would burn this whole place down in an instant if you asked me. You're allowed to find things hard, to say no to things."

"But you-"

"I am hardly the poster boy for mental health and healthy coping mechanisms. Just because I have a habit of exposing myself to my triggers doesn't mean you should force yourself into those situations."

Malia bites her lip, eyes drifting behind him to where John is waiting, no doubt confused or concerned. "I think I can do this." When Stiles doesn't move, she touches her hand to the side of his face. "Really. If I need to leave, I promise I will."

They go inside, ignoring the sheriff's expression. The Stiles who idolised his father and his career is long dead.

The next few hours are a whirlwind of paperwork and curious stares that Stiles barely registers. There's closing his and Malia's missing persons cases, filling out statements that everyone knows are little more than a patchwork of thinly connected lies, filled with more blanks than words. The deputies are all overly helpful, coming over to offer coffee, biscuits, anything that will give them a glimpse to take back for gossip.

Then comes dealing with the school - and dealing with Eichen House. The former is nothing more than a few phone calls, the scheduling of an aptitude test for the next day. An inquiry into the education the two of them have had in the past few years, to which they shrug. "Home-schooled," they say, which is sort of true - if you count home-school as learning to pick out a single voice from an entire city of noise, memorising ancient alphabets and magical herbs.

A far more useful education, in Stiles' opinion.

The latter goes suspiciously easy, Malia's claws gripped into Stiles' flesh the whole time. John leaves him and Malia in the hallway while he makes a call behind the locked door of his office. Five minutes later, he emerges with a grimacing smile.

"Everything's cleared up," John says, talking to Malia but looking at his son, and Stiles wonders just what strings his father had to pull to make this miracle happen. How worried he should be.

But the door of the sheriff's station is lined with mountain ash, so neither of them heard a thing. If he wasn't sure of his father's supernatural knowledge, he is now.

How often has the station been subject to supernatural attack?

By the time the wheels of bureaucracy have been set fully in motion, it's well into the afternoon. The autumn air is beginning to turn cold as the sun sinks towards the horizon, and Stiles feels a weight lifting from his shoulders. He's always preferred the cover of darkness, the way the world gets quieter but never quite still. It feels like a breath of fresh air after months below ground.

"I've got a lot to finish up here," John apologises, glancing out at the sky. "If you kids want to make your way home, go ahead."

"Is it okay if we wander around town a bit?" Malia asks. "We'll be back for dinner."

John hesitates before nodding - having his son back for only a day, letting him out of sight must feel like losing him all over again.

"It's okay, dad," Stiles insists. "We can look after ourselves."

"Just be safe," his father sighs. "There's been a lot of animal attacks in the past few months, even in town." The alpha pack. Of course. But what reason would they have to go after him and Malia when they're hiding their scents?

But the sheriff isn't finished. His eyes dart nervously. "And... it's possible there's a serial killer working in Beacon Hills right now."

That is not what Stiles expected. Even in a supernaturally charged town, a serial killer? That's something saved for cities like the one they just left.

"A serial killer?" Stiles asks, trying to keep his voice nonchalant.

"RItual murderer as far as we can tell, yeah. So please be careful. Stay together. Come home before dark."

"Of course, yeah. Love you dad!" Stiles ushers Malia out of the station as fast as he can appear casual.

"Stiles, you're smiling." Malia looks half amused as they begin wandering aimlessly around town.

"Am I?"

"You know most people don't get excited about serial killers."

"Yeah, but a serial killer in this town, Mal. Ritual murders. That's magical nonsense if ever I heard it. Remember that guy in New York who used blood sacrifices for his healing potions?"

"Of course I remember. Their whole pack was exiled."

"Exactly. We already know there are two packs in town." He'd informed Malia of everything he overheard from Scott and Melissa at dinner, though she doesn't seem half as worried about it as he is. "And every pack has an emissary."

"We don't have an emissary."

"That's cos we have me."

He doesn't know why he's able to do magic. It's hereditary, Peter had told him, and he supposes his mother might have had a gift and never had the chance to tell him- but surely his father would have known? Whatever the reason, his power is significantly weaker than it should be, supposedly since he's no longer human.

Still, Peter had insisted on getting him training; any unexpected edge was a good one in New York. He can't handle mountain ash or mistletoe, but he can conjure a flickering light, or unlock a door. He has enough ability to sense magic in the air, enough knowledge to decipher its workings.

Enough of a spark to draw a trickster spirit like a moth to a flame.

"So you want to investigate? What happened to being normal teenagers?"

"Is that what you want?" Stiles asks, genuinely.

Malia's face twists. "Not really. Especially if there's a threat. I'd like... to find things to care about. People. A place. Something that might be a safe, even for a little while. And we're supernatural- normal was never really our thing."

"Okay then." Stiles smiles. A project, a place to call home, the lack of blood on the air (at least for now) - it's all he really needs to thrive. "First things first we've gotta steal the case files from my dad."

"You haven't even checked the newspapers yet."

Stiles is about to come up with a witty response to that, when he all but slams into someone waiting on the sidewalk by the public library. He leaps back, a mess of instinctual clumsiness and supernatural grace. "Sorry, sorry-"

"It's okay, really," the girl says, brushing herself off, already pushing away. Stiles blinks. It's been seven years, but he would recognise that strawberry blonde hair, those intelligent green eyes, anywhere.

"Lydia? Lydia Martin?"

She frowns, eyes narrowing in suspicion at him. She's grown tall in the years since he left, though the alarmingly high heels may have something to do with it. Her face is a perfectly painted canvas of makeup and confidence. Her clothes and posture are immaculate despite their run-in moments before.

Everything about this girl is practiced and careful.

"Do I know you?" she asks, dismissively, but there's a sharp wariness to her tone.

"Stiles!" The yell comes from across the street, and Stiles flinches a mile, not used to being recognised or addressed. He turns to the source of the voice and finds Scott running across the street - which is thankfully mostly empty.

"Stiles?" Lydia asks, mask breaking in shock. "Stilinski?"

"Um, yeah?" Stiles rubs the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. "I just got back yesterday."

"You just 'got back'? You've been missing for seven years."

"And now I'm not?"

Scott joins them on their side of the street. "Hey, Lyds," Scott smiles to her, and that is something Stiles wasn't expecting, either. Is Scott popular now? When will he stop being surprised by this town? "I see you've met Stiles and Malia."

"You didn't think to mention the small fact that the sheriff's presumed-dead son had turned up back in town? We've been at school for a whole day and it- what, just slipped your mind? Come on, McCall."

"Sorry," Scott looks up bashfully through his eyelashes, an expression even the most heartless person would forgive instantly. He turns to look at Stiles with a stern expression. "In my defence, I was trying to do damage control all day."

"Isaac?" Stiles asks. "Good for him. I hope he made those detentions worth it."

Lydia snorts. "You put him up to that? He drove Aiden's bike into the school hallway and framed him for it."

Okay; Stiles loves this kid.

"You're just bitter cos you're sleeping with the enemy," Scott mutters, earning himself a sharp elbow in the ribs from Lydia. They dissolve into bickering - remarkably like siblings, Stiles thinks - as if he and Malia aren't even there. Their camaraderie is enough for him to do a double-take, to check the scents on the wind again.

Lydia isn't a werewolf, but there's something. Like the smell of dust and grass, the dampness of mist. It clings to her in flickers and starts, as if unsure it belongs to her.

Why does everything in this town have to be supernatural and connected?

Not that New York was much different, in his experience.

Growing up in New York had been good for Stiles, he had always liked to think. That first year had been rough, both he and Peter angry and guilty and filled with so much grief they could barely stand. But when Stiles had stumbled back into their apartment, missing for almost two weeks, with a fully grown coyote pacing at his heels, everything had changed.

He hadn't even tried to convince her to stay in the preserve - he wanted to leave her side as little as she wanted to leave him, but the bond calling him back to New York, to Peter, had been just as strong. Convincing bus drivers to let her on, that she was really just an overly large service dog, had been the real challenge.

Peter didn't even have the dignity to look surprised. His icy eyes blinked between the two of them, as if tracing the newly forged bond tying them together. "A pack of strays if ever I saw one," he smirked.

It had taken several days for Peter to figure out how to force Malia's change. She spent them basking in their attention, lying sprawled across the bed, follwing him around the apartment. She tried to play the piano with her paws - to Peter's infinite frustration - and stood on the kitchen counter while he cooked dinner, stealing slivers of meat from the frying pan.

By the time she was human again, Stiles knew Peter had fallen just as in love with this girl as he had.

Now that there were two of them, however, Peter put his foot down. Stiles had too much time on his hands, and Peter too little. And that meant school.

Forging the papers was easy enough. And in a city as large as New York, being the new kids wasn't that out of place.

But he was the boy who flinched at loud noises. Who never stopped moving or talking, too clumsy or too fast, never just right. And she was the girl who behaved more like an animal; who had missed three years of school due to a tragedy she still had yet to mention. And that made them outcasts.

Which was fine by Stiles. In Beacon Hills he'd had only two friends - Scott, and a quiet, introspective boy named Theo. He didn't thrive off large crowds. He did his school work, excelled at the sciences and utterly failed at English. He knew what he was good at, and bad at, and didn't need anyone else's approval.

Looking back, it wasn't exactly a healthy mindset. But he had been happy enough with Malia. She was funny, and brusque. She spoke her mind and didn't act like she had a care in the world, though he was witness to every flinch and nightmare, and the way she got frustrated and angry in situations that exposed how little she knew compared to her peers. She cuddled him for warmth at night, always shivering, and woke him when his dreams began to drown him.

She hated school as much as he hated the people inside it, always falling asleep in class or ditching altogether. He's sure there are more than a dozen tables covered in deep claw marks around the middle and high schools they attended. And after, she would drag him out to the woods, or to the latest restaurant she'd discovered that served deer. She was such a contradiction of animal and human, filled with a young spirit and an old heart.

Seeing the world through her eyes was as different, as wonderful, as the contrast between his human and wolf eyes.

Every Friday, Stiles managed to keep Malia's attention on school work for two hours - certainly not long enough to cover everything that made her mutilate tables, but enough to ground her, to keep her grades wavering between a C and a D. They had traded this agreement in exchange for Stiles learning how to cast warming charms from his magical tutor. He had sewn them into every piece of clothing Malia owned and she, clearly not expecting him to actually follow through, was stuck in the school library once a week.

A year before Malia left to try Beacon Hills on for size, he sat in their usual spot. Malia had bunked off their last two sessions to see her new girlfriend, whom Stiles was so sure would be out the door before long he hadn't bothered to learn her name.

Which is why he was so stunned to see Malia saunter up to the desk and throw herself into a chair, followed by an awkward-looking girl in cute black pigtails and a tartan skirt.

"What's the subject today?" Malia asked, spilling the entire contents of her locker onto the table.

"Uh, math, as usual," Stiles stumbled over his words, unsure of how to behave around this new girl. "You've been maintaining a D in that for months."

"Just because they can't find the x right there on the page doesn't mean I'm the idiot."

The girl, still hovering uncertainly, let out a laugh - cute, and genuine. Stiles felt a sudden rush of jealousy - no, just protectiveness - rise up inside him.

"Who are you?" he asked with all the force a fourteen year old could muster, not bothering to hide his feelings.

"Stiles, play nice," Malia rolled her eyes at him. "This is Kira. Yukimura. She's struggling with math as well, and since you're such a good teacher, I thought you could tutor us both." The girl gave a small wave and took a seat beside Malia.

Stiles gave Malia what he hoped was the most annoyed glare in the world. Yukimura. His magical tutor didn't talk about much outside of their lesson material, but she'd mentioned her daughter a couple times before. What was Malia thinking, mixing these two antithetical sides of their lives?

Peter had insisted on training Stiles - but their pack had no emissary to do the work. Stiles never asked him where he got his alpha power from, what happened to the pack - and the emissary - left behind. He didn't want to break the tentatively steady ground they'd all found for themselves these past few years. But their pack had been regarded with suspicion for it - new alphas didn't just appear, especially in such heavily contested territory as New York.

Maybe if they'd known his real last name was Hale, they might have been less suspicious. Or more, Stiles can't decide. Whatever the possibilities, their pack had been outsiders on that front, too; no one willing to lend their emissary to this ragtag bunch of strays.

So Peter had turned to an old kitsune, one who had given up most of her power to her child but still had the knowledge to explain the mechanisms and techniques of the craft. She was over nine hundred, after all - there was nothing she hadn't seen.

Stiles could smell the fox on this girl, when he focused. Barely more than a wisp, a spark of power that would no doubt burst into flames over the next couple of years. Was Malia hoping to add to their family? Did she seriously just like this girl?

The answer to all these questions, Stiles would later learn, was of course. Because Malia is a pack animal at heart, filled to the brim with feelings she never really learned how to voice, and a special eye for stray, wounded creatures. She wants to care, if only someone would teach her how- and neither Stiles nor Peter could do that.

But Kira could. She was kind and curious - a lot like Scott, he thinks now. And powerful.

Curiosity had won out. Kira was attentive, asking all the right questions, prompting Malia's work when she was hesitant to ask. He hated to admit it then, but it was the most productive session they'd ever had. He'd even managed to smile Kira goodbye when they left her at the bus stop.

"I knew it," Malia grinned as they made their way back to the apartment. She was practically bouncing.

"Knew what?" Stiles grumbled, more acting the part of annoyed than feeling it by now.

"You're lonely." Stiles started to scoff, but she cut him off. "I've literally never seen you that animated. More arm waving than ever. You stink of loneliness, even if you never noticed. You cut yourself off from people before they can get close to you, that way they never have the ammunition to hurt you."

"You sound like you've eaten a psychology textbook."

"I'm not wrong. Stiles, no man is an island."

"That's definitely from a textbook."

"Actually it's from trivia about The Incredibles. Doesn't make it any less true."

"So you just happened to pick the one girl at school with a known connection to the supernatural."

He doesn't think he'd seen Malia blush until that second. "She yelled at some girls who were teasing me about being stupid."

"You're not-"

"Shut up, Stiles," Malia glared at him. "The point is she's cute, and I like her, and if she's going to be in my life then she's going to be in yours, too. Might as well be friends."

"I think Noshiko could kill me and leave no trace."

"So could I. What's your point?"

And that had been that. Kira had folded seamlessly into their lives, and Stiles had been surprised by the space his heart made to fit her.

Like everything in their lives, that had collapsed several weeks ago in a rush of blood and electricity. He couldn't have know, of course he couldn't, that the nogitsune he let inside had a personal vendetta against Kira's mother.

But her horrified expression is burnt into the backs of his eyelids in the flashes of her flickering foxfire. The easy grin on his face as he drank in the chaos. The riddle he left her with.

 What do liars do after death?

He had considered Kira a friend, maybe even pack, and the memories of that first meeting come rushing back to him as he watches Scott and Lydia. Scott, an alpha who has control, who is so effortlessly kind and put together that even other supernaturals flock to him. The way a fox should have made her home with them, if only Stiles hadn't ruined absolutely everything.

It takes him a moment to realise he's been staring into space, and the other three are looking at him. "Hm?" Malia gives him a knowing look that says she's going to try and make him talk about this later.

"Me and Lyds are supposed to be meeting up with Isaac and a couple others," Scott says. "If you wanted to come?"

A couple others. Stiles is pretty sure that's code for pack. Isn't this what he wanted? To ingratiate himself to the resident pack of the town, so that when their charade of normalcy inevitably comes crashing down, they might not kill him and Malia on sight?

Can he start again afresh, or is the blood doomed to follow him?

"Sounds awesome," Malia says. After all, she's always been the most forward of the two of them. The one who builds bridges whilst Stiles burns them down.

But he'd like to see Isaac again. He'd like to meet the rest of Scott McCall's pack, figure out just how much danger this boy has surrounded himself with to remain so kind. He still needs to find Derek and Laura Hale.

Beacon Hills is not New York; so far from it, no matter how tethered Stiles and the supernatural are to the both of them. The other shoe will undoubtedly drop eventually, soon - it's the one fact life has only convinced him of more as the years pass.

May as well make the best of the sunshine while it lasts.

[matronpersephone]

(tw: torture, mention of unconsenting intercourse, mention of death)

The man quivered against his confinements and the rope burn restored his conciousness crippled back to him instantly, to return him from the promised lands of dreams to the agonizing hell of reality. Count your blessings, they say. So little his moments of bliss seemed, so quick to pass and fleet through the cracks on his fingers like the river waters, he whaled in protest almost pathetically. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream, he wanted to plea, but his tears had dried, his throat had turned sore and his remorse was exhausted, upon deaf eyes. The memory of his wife and his son seemed a distant haze, a wild summer dream and the thought alone of reconnecting with his family was no longer written in his stars. Alas, life was short, so short, so much shorter actually than all he had reckoned. And for that, he lost faith, he lost ambition, he lost sorrow and as all emotion turned to mold from the inside out, he was turned into a shell of his former self, a cheap replica of his days of glory and youth. Life was a game that could take the right player anywhere; now she was collecting unpaid debts and there was no cheating this round. Only reckoning.

He was handsome and strong, and his eyes burned with mischief and desire. But who was he now? Or what, really? The man could only just barely see in this sea of darkness and the goddess of the moon was mayhaps feeling merciful for one final time to grace her light, through one hollow crack on the ceiling this one ray of pale silver, taking a leap of faith into the void of his prison, granting him one glimpse of life again. He crouched closer, thirsty for her grace, thirsty for her saviour, and he cupped the silver in the bloodied hold of his palms, trying to delight what tiny beauty remained in the world. When did he become so mindful of nature, when did he finally grow eyes to see the beauty and when did he find the clarity in his mind to treasure the on going moments of mortality? Death truly changes people and those that meet the dead, they are never one and the same again. Perhaps this explained why now, of all times, he did, finally, truly see. And perhaps he owes even gratitude to her.

---

Maymm has always been an adversary for quick, clean kills. The purpose of the executioner is not to bring suffering, but to carry out a fatal sentence. It is never their responsibility to measure guilt and justice; once jurisdiction has been spoken, the executioner obeys. And perhaps she is right. For all her nonsensical blabbering, maybe this one time Maymm was not a self congratulatory fool, but actually precise. Nothing quite compared to a swift, spontaneous kill. To steal their breath, to stop their hearts, to overshadow the light behind their eyes and to let their thoughts and their minds and their hopes and their beliefs all bleed peacefully into eternity forevermore, to end a life and to bring a halt to years upon years of pursuits and endeavours and to all that made a person this one, specific person, all in but a split moment in this infinite line of time; that is orgasmic. Maymm never taught her the amusement in a kill, she just had to learn it her own way. For as long as she remembers, the she had to rely upon her own strengths and efforts to teach herself all the necessary lessons to survive in this world and understand it. Well, clearly enough to turn her into an assassin like no other of her kind. Because who other of her own would ever take joy in such cruelty, misery, suffering than the only one with a brave spirit and a huntress' heart. Quick kills are good; sometimes, prolonged is better. And in the case of such scumbags, who dirtied her land with their crimes and shed the blood of her people, oooh! Prolonged was (really) the better of the two.

--

The silver in his hands clashes on the smooth surface of perfectly sharp steel, gliding smoothly on the sharp edges of the weapon and reflecting in the four corners of this room. The man flinches with horror and he collapses on the flayed, butchered muscles of his back, to no avail but a surge of pain that paralyzed him again. The woman was quiet, so quiet always, so discreet when she danced in the dark and she moved unseen, unheard and unparalleled in the shadows. He never noticed her, not him and definitely not his companions, albeit their magical properties. Had the woman no influence over the spirit realm, or were they so reckless they failed to detect her? Impossible. Impossible, that with no magic one could ever be so swift, so precise, so deadly. Impossible that one could ever circle seven mercenaries so quietly, move so quickly and kill them, one by one, always with one, perfect blow so efficiently. He watched the six, as they surrendered to the sweet embrace of death all around him, their skin turning pale and cold before they hit the ground, and he was left lone, to face judgement. For the first time in his life, afraid. Scared. Horrified.

--

She likes the fear. Fear is necessary. There can be no respect and no integrity without fear in the spirits of one's enemies. This was, all along, why Ionia had to suffer before she learned her lesson. The old ways worked for the past, but the future did not adhere to the laws of yesterday and thankfully, someone was making sure the laws were on their side of the field this time. So yes, a bit of brutality here and there? That was just some necessary evil. From Navori, to Weh'le and to Puboe, or anywhere else in Ionia, criminals of the war remained hidden, outcasts that were condemned when their evil dreams sank and their ambitions were met with nothing but the wrath of justice. (Someone) had to pull out the weeds and end this infestation because if no one did so much, there will be no tree for her former masters to Prune. Well, and the thrill of the hunt made it all the more exciting.

She turned him over with the heel of her shoe. Poor bastard did not make a pretty sight no more. For a gang leader and a traitor of his homeland, who gambled on the misfortune of his people and tried to chase privileges in foreign empires, he was quite the charm. But now most of all that was lost and the true ugliness of himself was brought to the light. Of course that required some little help of her kama, that was unsurprisingly quite the effective thing. He was given a choice, after all, to confess his guilt and spurt out his secrets, in exchange for a quick passing; he declined. So why would she feel remorseful for her actions, like for one when she first dag deep her blade into his skin and peeled his entire arm off with the precision of a mad surgeon, or when he tried to strike her for a wild attempt to freedom and she slashed the fingers of his feet? Or when she caught lies in his testimony and he forced her to slice across chest and lower torso, smoothly removing the ugly clothing so that perhaps when his heart would come closer to the light he would at least feel less confident in his escaping efforts? She loved that one, watching the steel glide so effortlessly, like scissors on paper, almost brushing against the bones. Perhaps the Kinkou was not so useless, teaching her all about human anatomy and that much. It definitely brought the two so much closer.

He weakly moved his head, with every fiber of his dying being begging only with his eyes. He had seen a kunai before, it killed all his friends so peacefully and what he feared now he longed desperately for. She tilted her scalp. "Oh this? Yeah, it can probably end the pain," she jabbed with a smirk. "But I'm not sure I should do that little favour for you. You see, you turned on my people and then you tried to hide from punishment. You kind of became my problem. And I'm really good at dealing with my problems."

The ghost closes his eyes and flails weakly, as he cries but his tears come no more. But he can hear her smile. It's wicked, it's cruel and it has a voice of its own, that he will remember even when he reaches the skies, the spirit be good. His whole life he fought for a better future for his child, for a chance to save her from the poverty of their family, the cold of the winter and the cruel hunger. His whole life Ionia turned its back on his child that lived in the streets and when he turned his back on them in return, is this what he deserves? To hell with honour and patriotism, they never kept mouths fed; the invaders did. The invaders sheltered them and gave them seats at the table. So to hell with this righteous wench, to hell with it all, why was he so undeserving of a quick death?

But she never answered, she never asked, she never doubted and she never pondered. Why would she ponder, on a killer of the defenseless? On an enabler of the tyrants? On a selfish fool that brought the blades of the enemy into their land and guided them into the bodies of the weak? They murdered, they usurped, they raped and for what? The honour of dying in the wars of someone else that proclaimed himself a righteous conqueror? Was that it, a life any better? Was that enough to trade the suffering of thousands? Was that worth the trauma that now scars them?

Akali doesn't think so. Now twilight falls, and forgiveness is a privileged the guilty have lost.

[collective-laugh]

Detective AU - Muriel x MC Chapter 4

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three

Taglist:  @a-zoidberg-aesthetic @lesbiancountess @fartkittyonline @yaysam @y-all-dnt-ve @countgoatman-and-drleechboy @julians-chest-hair @vesuviass @caterpiller-tea @zaemoultrie75901 @saltywerewolfrebel @obsessedwiththearcana @thatsaltyseaman @xburningwitch @i-dont-speak-wolf @missrabbitart @softarcana

This chapter was highly inspired by ‘Private Investigations’ by the Dire Straits. @dr-devorak-will-seeyounow introduced me, and it fit the vibe, and I fell in love! I recommend listening while reading!

Also, please let me know if you would like me to put together some sort of playlist/mood music! I’ve done this before on AO3, and it really seems to help!

Thank you to everyone who has made this series such a success, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have! Please let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Chapter Four: Private Investigations

“You’re looking more miserable than usual, Muriel.” Ludovico leans against the handrail to the back entrance of the Raven, “Which is a feat, considering you always look miserable.”

Muriel lets the cigarette dangle from his lips, still worried about her, hoping that Julian got her back home safely, that he didn’t try anything…

If he found out he so much as laid a hand on her, he’d fucking kill him.

He didn’t really know why he cared so much, and he knew the doctor well enough to know he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything...sober.

“‘m tired.” Muriel claims, and though it’s a half truth, he wished he wasn’t so transparent, “Don’t worry about it.”

Ludovico smirks at him, tossing his cigarette butt out in the rain, “Wouldn’t have anything to do with the little broad you walked in with, huh?”

“No.” He answers a little too quickly, a little too sharply.

He raises his eyebrows, unused to Muriel being anything other than quietly benign, and asks, “Who was she anyway?”

Muriel knew it was none of his business, but he didn’t mind Ludovico, and it didn’t hurt to talk to someone, he guessed. That was always Asra’s advice - “feelings” and “talking” and all that bullshit.

“You wanna, ah,” He waggles his eyebrows, “make whoopee with her?”

Never mind.

Muriel rolls his eyes, smashing his cigarette on the hand rail. Trying to talk to people was shit, and definitely something he didn’t want to make a habit.

“She’s a friend.” He claims, which...isn’t a lie. He’s known her for years now, and knows more about her than he probably ought to, considering just how little they talked. Asra liked to talk about her to no end, sparing no detail about just how much he missed her.

He hopes she’s gotten home safely, that she’s managed to fall asleep so she doesn’t muck up her interview with the Countess later.

The Countess...he could hardly believe that the Countess of Vesuvia herself had resorted to a backwater private detective, no offense to her or Asra. She held no real title outside of being insanely rich and being the former wife of the most prominent crime boss in the city.

Lucio sickened Muriel. The thought of him made him sneer again, and the mere idea that someone could pull the right strings and make the right deals with the right people, and all his problems, all the sick shit he did, could just disappear.

“A friend, huh? Well, the last friend I had like that ended up in my bed, compadre.” Ludovico raises his brow, his sleazy intentions obvious, “You could always give her my number if she doesn’t have someone waitin’ for her at home.”

He was about to say she did, that there was Asra or maybe even Julian waiting for her back at the office, that she wasn’t going to be in that dank little hole all on her own.

Maybe it was selfish. It was definitely selfish to want to be the one waiting for her.

He curses himself, wondering when the hell he started considering her as anything more than an acquaintance he kept at arms’ length. He’s itching for another cigarette, especially as he’s facing the stupid grin on Ludovico’s face. Instead of lighting another, he’s looking at the watch on his wrist. It was a quarter past five, which meant he was free to go.

“Maybe.” He says, trying not to sound so cryptic, but, like Asra said, it was a second nature to him.

He debates stopping back by the office. He’d sent Jules home with her around midnight, and he did want to make sure she was alright. But, something she said to him earlier stuck out like a sore thumb, something about how she could walk herself home.

She was still a grown woman, even if she couldn’t really remember who she was, and he wasn’t certain she’d be all too thrilled about his breathing down her neck.

He does light a cigarette, with Ludovico yelling something crude about her after him, and he shuts his eyes for just a moment, trying to steady himself. It had been a long night, and he was so tired, but he needed to check on her, to make sure she got home alright…

The nagging voice in his head telling him to leave her be wins, despite his instincts screaming at him to do otherwise. He walks the opposite direction, straight back home.

His place is small, modest, and...decidedly not comfortable. The landlord insisted on no pets, but as soon as she saw Muriel, she made an exception, considering she claimed, “ruffians’ll go running soon as they see you, boy!” He couldn’t live anywhere without Inanna, he knows, and was thankful to the lady - Nonna Linka, as she insisted on being called - for letting him stay.

She wasn’t up yet, like anyone with sense, so he’s alone on his trek up the single flight of stairs. He isn’t surprised to find his door unlocked, considering the damn thing had been broken for months now, and all but collapses in bed alongside Inanna.

He dreams of her, of happier times, and wishes things were simpler than he made them out to be.

_

She’s scrambling to get dressed.

It’s embarrassing; the first time in months she’s had a case, and actual, honest to God interview with a client, and she’s running around like a headless chicken trying to gather everything she needed. Asra would have been no better, she knew, waiting until the last minute for everything, but she refuses to think of him now, today, at least until she’s gotten this interview over with.

It was a murder case. Not only a murder case, but a case surrounding the Lucio Morgason. It was more than she ever could have asked for, and she was squandering it because she could quite reach the button on her dress.

Once she’s certain she’s gathered everything - and certain that she’s forgotten at least one thing - she’s out the door, only half remembering to lock it and turn the tacky neon signs off. She only barely catches the train to the Heart District, and knows she must look a mess.

A gorgeous socialite looks at her, all legs and brown hair tied up in some elaborate braid, lips painted a red far too improper for the time of day, and arches a perfectly sculpted brow, as if the very sight of her was amusing.

It was enough to send her blood boiling, and remind her exactly what she was here for.

Nadia’s house - estate, mansion, whatever - is only a seven minute walk and a four minute run from the train station, and she makes it with five minutes to spare before she was considered tardy. It takes two minutes to have her looking presentable again, another three to even reach the door and be led inside by a butler - butler! - one to have her coat taken, and another seven before she even sees Nadia.

She’s the picture of perfection, and puts that socialite from the train to shame, effortlessly beautiful with her long, black hair, and long, golden dress. She greets her gracefully, as she does all things, and ensures that they’re alone, beginning the interview in Lucio’s private library, sitting across from one another.

“Can you tell me about the last time you saw your husband?” She asks, subtly looking over to the tape recorder to ensure that it was getting all of this. Her hand stood ready, just in case Nadia said anything important, and she settles into detective mode, trying to calm herself.

“I…” Nadia wrings her hands, eyeing the white gloves she set aside moments before, as if she was debating whether or not she really wanted to hold them. “I don’t remember my husband. The accident…” She shrugs, looking everywhere but at the detective, “I didn’t know where else to turn, detective. The law is thankful he’s dead, and his ‘friends’ are starting to call for my removal.”

“Removal?” She asks, “Removal from what?”

“I’ve been acting as an interim...boss, I suppose.” She finally meets her eyes, “You must understand, detective. This city isn’t kind to us.”

Truer words had never been spoken, but she only purses her lips before asking, “Is there anyone who might have wanted to hurt your husband? Anyone he had any bad blood with?”

“He was not known for his...subtlety.” Nadia hesitates, as if the gravity of the situation was just catching up to her, “Detective, you must know that I’m willing to pay you handsomely for your services. And that the law is not to know of this.” She says it with such vindication, with such authority, that the detective feels like she has to listen.

“Don’t worry about that.” She replies, thankful her voice didn’t betray her nerves, “This conversation will only ever be heard by you, me, and my associate.”

“Asra?” Nadia inquires, like she was quizzing herself to see if she could remember his name.

The detective nods, but moves on, “Did your husband have any enemies?”

Nadia purses her lips, eyes flicking over to the tape recorder before pulling a small notepad from between the chair and its cushion, sliding it across the table toward Nadia, “I, um...I compiled a short list of people it could possibly be, or people who might have wanted him dead.”

The detective flicks through the pages, though the only writing found inside is on the first and second slips of paper. “Consul Valerius…Vulgora...these are his associates, right?”

Nadia opens her mouth to say something, closes it, and shakes her head, “They are...suspicious at the very least.”

The detective purses her lips.

This was going to be a long interview.

[scarlettaeonia]

abyss’ edge

The rain banged at the windows of the mansion violently, thunders clapping and overflowing the modestly furniture of the living room where Vilgefortz stood quietly. Mortals tended to bore themselves with silence, with idleness; the sorcerer however did not suffer from the same affliction no longer. His timeless grey eyes needed not stimuli for behind them raged tales of his past lives – of his former world before the crash landing onto the so familiar yet so different Thedas.

He shifts slightly, eyes narrowing ever so softly at the flashes of that which once was, of the warmth once found and lost, of his mistakes & the works of the unyielding hand of destiny.

An exiled king indeed, sitting upon his throne of brown fabric, nearly at the end of its useful days.

“So this is how it is – making me go through the skies falling out in water and not even being home to welcome me with a warm beverage.”

He scoffs. Hawke jests to herself even, the mage remarked. Must be tiring, to be in character even without an audience.

“I could not find anything hot and alcoholic” Vilgefortz replies, his grave voice giving out his position – causing the champion of Kirkwall to readily jump on her toes, muscles flexing and fingers gripping tight around her staff “And you’d be just as disappointed at coffee, I believe.”

Marian’s eyes adjusts to the darkness and she can tell the silhouette of her companion from the few others in the room “Were you just waiting to spook me like that? You’ve been walking with Varric too much” She brushes off her embarrassment with a retort, resting a hand over her hip and waving the other to make a source of light “Scratch that – not even our resident writer could muster THIS much convincing evil guy impression”.

This time Vilgefortz chuckled actually, albeit with his usual darkness. His eyes had the cold tenderness that perfectly went with the shady demeanor, so he seems disarmed even when ominously illuminated by cackling fireball at the woman’s fingers. He laughed, but it was mostly out of the irony – after all, the sorcerer WAS a classic novel devil.

Not in Thedas however. Here he was just another of the good guys that banded around the champion. Another of the misfits, of the homeless & wayward warriors.

“You just caught me off guard” the sorcerer justified, finger snapping to alight the several candles and the fireplace in one motion, releasing a warm breeze that done away with much of the gloom surrounding the room. The carved woods, spotless carpet & finely crafted curtains over the gargantuan windows stretching from roof to floor made it so it seemed as if they had been transported to a whole different place. Much like the mage himself, the place had a silent duality to itself that upset something small and shy within Marian. Something that fell between comfort and mistrust.

Not that it was enough to intimidate the young woman, that readily let her wet coat slide from her shoulders, charmingly shaking her drenched raven locks like a pup would dry themselves “Now that I don’t feel like I’m getting murdered and stashed in your basement” lively vibrant sapphires meet the freezing bottomless eyes of the immortal stretched across the couch “what is this gift you mentioned?”

Vilgefortz follows her every move with an innate curiosity, like she was a book he was going through with an ever burning ember of interest “Take that armor off first, you won’t need it” he answers, legs crossing over.

“Just like that, uh!? Don’t get me wrong it works for me, but…”

“Of course it does” Vilgefortz murmurs, fingers waving to make her coat levitate, fold itself and fly off to a dark corner “Put your Isabella away for the time being however, we need to be ready at once, while its still thundering.”

Marian squints her eyes slightly, but obliges either way without dragging the word play on. She knew the male, albeit at times sportive as she was, could turn into a brick wall when in a haste for something. A pragmatic at his very core, practical and swift to the point of authoritarianism – specially when in one of those brooding moods.

“What’s the thunder got to do with anything?” She can’t help but debate, releasing the buckles of her dark steel gauntlets.

“Where’s your adventurous spirit?” Vil quickly smirks right back, standing up and approaching he female to offer his nibble fingers in aid; his visage towering over Marian and then vanishing out of her field of sight to undo the straps holding her shoulder guard “Standard serial killer modus operandi – how else would I drown out the cries of help of my victims?”

“Jokes on you” Marian smiles, turning back to face him as soon as the weight is lifted from her arm – from up close she could feel his wooden scent of ionized air fill her lungs in a way that almost set off her balance “I am a yeller; you’d need a hurricane to do any drowning of THIS bird’s voice.”

His arms lace around her small shoulders to remove the V shaped breastplate “Funny enough, that’s exactly how they called me once.”

“They” Marian scoffed, pushing the large chest of the male with a finger in order to have room to remove her iron clad boots “as in the family and or friends of your shady past you never mention to anyone ever.”

“The family and friends dead in my basement, yes” The ashen haired mage shrugged, lips curling downwards slightly “They still call me that, you know; in the voices in my head” Joked further, setting down Hawke’s armor at a nearby bureau.

Marian stretches her fingers in the soft carpet, feeling he comfort of being considerably lighter “You’re going to ride that joke until it gets creepy won’t you?”

The sorcerer offered Marian one more devilish smile, shoving a covered basket at her chest. She blinked, unsure from where he had pulled the bowl from – feeling it warm against her hand as a smell of freshly baked bread rose to her nostrils. The mage peeked underneath the fabric and marveled at the sight of a hefty amount of delicious looking pastries and sweets, as well as berries and grapes “I have so much questions right now.”

Vilgefortz delicately covered the bowl once again “Tsk tsk – it’s not for us alone. We shall have company; or rather we will be joining others for dinner.”

Hawke couldn’t guess for her life the man’s plans and something about it lightened her humor. She, who spent so much time telling others where to go, what do to; now being lead on as a child to an anniversary party, clueless to the delightful surprises ahead. The mage became younger again, heart making off with the burdens of command “Where to now, boss?” She jested.

“Now you promise me to be quiet, to not cry nor yell, to not ask & simply follow my tale, not deviating from it, no matter how strongly you desire to.”

Marian furrowed her browns. Had it not been Vilgefortz asking, one of the most reliable companion she’s ever had (to the point of resisting demonic offers effortlessly), the female might have had objected; but instead she just reluctantly nodded “Sure… can I wear a shoe though? Or breathe?”

The sorcerer touched Marian softly in the nose “You already have shoes.”

And when she looked down, so she did – simple traveling shoes, as well as new fabrics of lesser quality covering her body.

She looked up, then; only to see Vilgefortz too dressed modestly.

“Don’t drop your jaw like that as well, it will give away our disguise” He instructed “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

A thunder blinded Hawke before she could get an answer from her companion, almost deafening her as well. She could feel drippings of water on her hair again, around them not the cozy living room but another raging storm. Under her feet she felt mud and as she sunk slightly into it, the smell of wet farm animals struck her with nostalgia;

Ferelden, it had to be it.

An arm wrapped around her waist keeping her from falling over due to the shock & Marian looked around confusedly, noticing both Vilgefortz and a light in the distance, peering from the darkness of the night.

“What the actual -”

The sorcerer did not reply, instead guided her through the hard path towards the light. As they approached it, Hawke could slowly make sense of what she was seeing; a house. Small, connected to a stable such as Fereldans homesteads where, indistinguishable from many others to anyone except herself.

It was the Hawke’s home.

Her home.

“I saw the way you looked at your father’s illusion when we ventured into Corypheus’ prison, I noticed your reaction to Larius mentions of Leandra and your siblings as well. I know the weight of wanting another day with someone you love, but have lost hopelessly” Vilgefortz whispered to the mage’s ear as he was the driving force to push the nigh paralyzed female towards the threshold of the wooden farm house  “you fought Corypheus hard still, even knowing you could neither right the wrongs of your father nor bring them back… You have, in a way, inspired me, Marian.”

“It’s not possible. It’s an illusion, isn’t it?”

The sorcerer cast his heart stopping deep gaze into Hawke’s soul and she knew the answer to her question, even without words. It’s not to say that she believed it, that she wanted to accept it right away; but soon a voice snapped the girl right back from the soundless gasp she was stuck into.

“You two! Come in!”

Her eyes turned, filled already with salty drops of tears that mixed with the rain;

“We’ve little, but what we have we do share. Besides, a roof shouldn’t cost no silver between fereldans.”

Standing at the door, hushing them in, was nothing less than a long dead memory. A shard of the past, faded and incomplete in the female’s memory, like a stone at the sea of time’s depths, almost lost to the tides of new disgraces that flogged it.

Malcolm Hawke, young, Olympic even in his simplicity, dressed in nothing more than a hard worker’s rag, made from an old robe probably, beckoned them with opened arms. Marian had an urge to scream, to run up to him, to say all the things she held tight in her juvenile chest before she had lost him forever; but Vilgefortz skillfully took word first to avoid the end of the façade:

“Thank you, my friend. The rain will pass soon, such as it does in summer.”

Malcolm scoffed “It’s no nuisance, come.”

Hawke hugged the bowl of food against her chest as she begun to recall that night from a different perspective. The rain, that robe on her father’s visage, the voices of strangers – and HUNGER. They’ve had nothing to eat in days back then; The twins had just begun to teeth and eat like full fledged persons. The strain of new mouths to feed had drove them to the hardest and most united they ever were as a family…

It was when she stopped being a kid, to be a bigger sister.

She took the first step, Vilgefortz chuckled and followed “Well, my wife made the decision for us, it seems.”

“As she should” Malcolm nodded, giving way to them to enter “She will do just fine with my little girl, then – both have the same strong character”

Marian smiled, wide, her heart filling with pride, and clumsily walked into the living room turned dining room. There she was met with curious eyes; of her siblings… And her own. Eyes full of light, of wit, innocence in body & form, hidden behind the matted raven locks – so different from the soft straight strands of the CHAMPION OF KIRKWALL. She kneels, looking closer at the small girl which she once was “She’s… beautiful” Remarked, hardly holding back the choking, reminding in fragments of the day that an imposing warrior-looking lady went to her home, bringing sweets out of the storm “She looks like a true champion” added; words that brought hope and FIRE to the resolve of her younger self.

Little Marian didn’t reply. She was just as baffled, just as mesmerized by her new idol as her elder self was.

“We bring wares; they were intentioned to a manor nearby but the rain have all but ruined them to the lords’ taste – Orlesians, you know how they are” Vilgefortz explained, after having shaken the hand of Malcolm, bowing towards Leandra with his warm elegance “This is by no means a trade nor payment, but you should all partake in it.”

Leandra straightened her hair, lifted the tips of her dress and bowed slightly in a noble woman’s greeting, the smaller Hawkes plunged at the basket – only to be stopped by little Marian, whom diligently divided the food between her younger siblings. Malcolm and Vilgefortz sat both in a corner; soon descending into academics talks that no baker nor farm hand had any business knowing and discussing. Marian sat by the table and allowed the family to slowly accept her back, part food with her, thank her, compliment her.

As the rain raged against the shack, within they fraternized on wooden stools, sitting by the modest fireplace that held no duality whatsoever, delighting themselves from the last meal any of them would ever have before the unyielding hand of fate descended upon their lives. They laughed and warmed themselves at the edge of the ABYSS – and even then, found happiness despite of it.  

[deputysaint]

      i need to be told to stop playing new dawn. 

   ft: @sanctemony 

     john/deacon centered with some mentions of: joseph, jacob, faith, paul, rachel, hannah

        warnings: canon typical violence, character death(s), flowery smut, my tears

   it’s been a long time since deacon’s been in this situation, but he remembers the feeling of it, and knows what to do. even with his knees in the dirt, and his hands above his head, he has options. even with there being a gun pointed in his direction, he knows what he can do to get out of this. he can see that their grip is sloppy, finger on the trigger but too loosely to be a threat, and deacon knows if he needed to, he could get out of this. he could overpower the person hovering over him and take them down effortlessly and without really harming them. it’s all muscle memory, he’s done it hundreds of times before the collapse, and dozens of times since the arrival of the highwaymen.

 he knows he can do this. but he doesn’t. he sits and bides his time.

 there’s voices on the radio, the highwayman is swearing up a storm, a gleeful one, the busted lip he’s sporting doing nothing to prevent his excited report.

 he should be listening to the report, he knows he should be, but it’s boring things he’s heard before, and he doesn’t care. he catches his name in all the swearing and laughter, and then a slur he chooses not to acknowledge, and finally something about him being new eden’s guard dog.

 he bites back a grin.

 he’s not anyone’s dog. and he hasn’t been deacon saint in a very long time.

 movement catches his eye between the threats of don’t move and the twins are going to love this, and it takes all of his willpower not to track it with his eyes. he knows the man coming up on them, wearing a long jacket like nothing has changed in the world. deacon knows him well enough to know that he could probably kill the man above him easily even if noticed, but he also likes him well enough to not want to cause him that grief.

 john seed looks beautiful in everything, even his own blood, but deacon knows well enough that he’ll catch hell if jacob sees him with another split lip or bruised face, and that joseph’ll never forgive him if he brings john home with more scars than he’d left with. ( paul would forgive him, deacon knows that for a fact. paul was always forgiving, and would just sigh at the sight and ask who they’d pissed off that day. faith would probably laugh at them, curl her fingers in his and ask if they’d had fun. )

 some things changed in the new world, and some things didn’t.

 lacing his fingers together loosely atop his head, deacon chooses instead to smile up at his captor, all teeth and mirth and lacking any and all kindness he might have had before the collapse.

 he’s different now. still the same kind man who smiled at people, who believed in the good of the people of hope county before the bad. but he’s also more protective of them, and with the arrival of the highwaymen had come a strange, more dangerous side to him, something protective and ruthless and deadly.

 he thinks, despite what everyone said, that this part of him has always existed, it had lived in him long before he’d arrived in hope county, fresh and ready for his new job. he knows a part of him has always been unkind, but before he’d been better at smothering it.

 now, however, he has no reason to. his family needed him, the county needed him, and he would murder anyone who tried to threaten their safety.

 when john shoots out the man’s knee from behind, deacon is ready to launch himself at him, hands grabbing for the rifle and pushing it towards the sky as they fall.

 two pulses of gunfire. and then he’s dead, and john is laughing down at him, teeth too bright, hand held out.

 deacon takes his hand.

 -

 they hunt the highwaymen together.

 it’s not what joseph wants for his brother, for either of them, but he can’t stop them. he locks up new eden, forbids his flock from leaving except at night, under the cover of darkness and bliss-created fog, but he cannot stop john and deacon from doing as they please, just as he couldn’t stop jacob from taking his chosen, his wife and children, and setting up a separate settlement nearby.

 it’s the end of an era, the final act of brotherhood. they stand together, but apart, having chosen different lives for their family. joseph tends to his flock, his people, and jacob tends to his family, his people. faith stays with joseph, broken and a little mad, seemingly so small without her bliss. paul floats between settlements, alliance torn between two of his brothers, but unwilling to choose a side over the other and instead choosing to find a balance between the two.

 john and deacon wander. they hunt.

 they live.

 -

 it ends because of a mistake, a foolish moment of sentiment over sensibility.

 hannah’s gift, her final gift to deacon, gets caught on a branch as they’re running from highwaymen scouts. and deacon goes back to get it, ignoring john’s yells of warning and frustration.

 it’s the only thing he has of her left, of their unlikely friendship. and he won’t let it be lost.

 when he looks up after getting it, the scouts are too close, and shots ring in the night.

 there’s too much blood.

 -

  it’s been a while, but he’s been here too, with blood soaking his shirt and john leaning over him, trying to stop the flow with bandages and duct tape. but it’s never been like this, john has never looked down at him like that.

  they’re in a house, someone’s home, one of the few remaining buildings that had withstood the collapse. it looks familiar to deacon, like he’s been here before, searched it before, bled on this floor before, but he can’t tell when, or why, and honestly, he’s bled on a lot of floors before, nearly died in a lot of homes.

  he probably should have stopped with that shit seventeen fucking years ago. but he hadn’t.

  “john. john.” his hand feels like dead weight, like he’s been sleeping on it and it’s gone numb, and he nearly slaps john as he tries to cradle his face in his hand. “johnny.” he pleads quietly, and wide blue eyes flick up at that.

  there’s fear in them. deacon doesn’t understand why.

  “stop moving.” the statement is snapped out. a command. but there’s too much fear in his voice, and he’s shaking too much for deacon to stop trying to pet him, get his full attention.

  “you need to... to go.” it’s funny, because he thinks that when he hears the wet sound of something hitting the ground, he should be afraid. logic says he should, because that’s him bleeding through the shirt john has been pressing against the wound on his neck. but instead, he’s calm, so calm and peaceful.

  he’s dying, and he knows it. and he can’t help but feel free.

  “johnny,” he whispers the nickname, and this feels nothing like any other time he’s nearly died. everything is warm and cold at once, and he feels like he’s stepped into the bliss. “you have to go. the flare - they’re coming.”

  “i’m not leaving you.”

  i’m not leaving you.

  you’re not leaving me.

  you promised.

  everything is all muddled, but deacon can still read john like a book. and it’s not said, but he knows he’s thinking about the promise deacon has made, again and again and again. so many times over the many years they’ve been together.

  you’re never going to be alone.

  fuck. he closes his eyes, breathes out a sigh.

  “okay.” he smiles crookedly, and he knows it’s filled with blood. but when he opens his eyes, there’s blood, his blood, smeared up john’s cheek, and the former baptist is gazing down at him affectionately. “okay.”

  -

  john piles together all he can find, all the supplies they’ve been carrying. and all the things other people have left behind, or stored there during the collapse. there’s shotgun shells in a drawer, a gun taped to the underside of a desk, ethanol and bomb making materials stuffed under loose floorboards.

  john finds a familiar knife wedged between a stripped bed and the wall, but says nothing of it. just turns it over in his hands and stares for a long time. then smiles a bitter smile and heads back to deacon’s side.

  they make a plan. it’s suicidal.

  -

  deacon dies quietly, tucked against john’s chest.

  his last words are i love you.

  -

  less than half an hour later, one of the highwaymen lieutenants and his crew bust down the front door, and begins a room by room search of the home.

  they don’t recognize the smell of ethanol under the smell of wood rotting and blood.

  john smiles where he is, tucked in the dark, with deacon resting against him. he lights a road flare.

  the house erupts.

  -

  some seventeen years earlier

  deacon is over him, on him, in him and john’s disgusted with himself, even as he digs his fingernails in deep, even as deacon shifts and hits just right enough to cause him to gasp, his world to go briefly white.

  he hates him. he hates him so much.

  he hates that this isn’t about hate sex anymore, and that deacon’s long stopped letting john use him for frustration relief.

  he hates that deacon feels so good, and he hates that deacon can light his nerves on fire with just a touch or a look.

  he hates deacon’s soft whispers of god, you’re beautiful and fuck, fuck, john, i -

  he thinks he hates that deacon always cuts himself off before saying it the most.

  there’s a knife in his free hand, and he means to use it. he wants to go home, and it’s become obvious at this point that deacon’s morals will never let him join them, will never let the deputy join him.

  the fingers wrapped around the knife curl tighter, and move to raise it. above him, deacon doesn’t notice. his head is pressed to john’s throat, whispering sweet, nonsensical things there, pressing wet sloppy kisses to his skin, refusing to bite and make it hurt like john wants him so desperately to.

  he wants it to hurt. he doesn’t deserve this kindness and affection.

  he raises the knife the same time deacon raises his head to look at him.

  the world seems to stop. john freezes in place.

  but deacon, sweet deacon, his fucking saint, doesn’t see the knife, doesn’t look at anything but john’s face and there’s just so fucking much in his eyes that john doesn’t know what to do with. doesn’t deserve. doesn’t want.

  ( it’s a lie. he wants, he wants, he wants. )

  a warm mouth presses against his at the same time a hand brushes down across his ribs, uncaring of the scars that fingers catch on. the man’s other hand readjusts its grip on the underside of his thigh, pulling gently, so fucking gently. and then, the hand sliding down his body wraps around him, wet and warm, grip comfortably firm and tight.

  john chokes on a sob as his world whites out.

  the knife drops out of his hand, slides off the bed. wedges itself between the bed and the wall.

  deacon loves him, and it’s fucked up, but he thinks he loves him back.

[frostythefelix]

Haunted: Chapter 4

“I’m so excited for tonight!” The girl in front of you squealed. “I bet BamBam will be there.” Her friend giggled.

“Everyone will be there!” She replied, sounding excited. She then turned around, quirking an eyebrow up, “Well, mostly everyone.” Her tone was demeaning, and you knew it was meant to hurt your feelings. And it did. It had been the second party that the entire school was invited to, excluding you. A boy in your class said that inviting you would be inviting your “bad juju” too, and of course they couldn’t have that.

Halloween was now right around the corner. The closer it got, the more you were mocked. You hated it, but somehow after speaking with Chan you weren’t mad at them anymore. You felt bad for the kids who bullied you, and you didn’t hold any grudges against your parents anymore. Only your thirst for answers remained.

Although, it still stung to be the sole uninvited person on campus. It wounded your pride, but nothing hurt more than your former friends watching you in disgust from their lockers. That marked another day where you laid in your bed and cried. You made to grab your teddy bear only to find out it wasn’t in its usual place. You checked under the bed and all around the room, but to no avail. You grew agitated, wanting nothing more than to curl up with your teddy and cry yourself to sleep. You were muttering to yourself, something about thinking you were friends when you heard a soft bump in the hallway. You stood in the doorway, peering around the edge. You smiled, mumbling a thanks at the sight of your teddy bear laying on its side in the middle of the hallway.

Chan wanted to comfort you again. He wanted to wipe away your tears and tell you everything would be alright, but he knew he couldn’t. He didn’t know if he was even able to help, or why you were crying in the first place. All he knew was that you wanted your bear, so he secretly retrieved it from Jisung’s stolen stash and brought it to you unnoticed. He watched you retreat back into your room and followed you. He knocked on your desk to let you know he was there before opening a drawer and producing your notebook and a pen.

“You ok?” He wrote. He was taking a huge risk. Writing to you should’ve taken an abundance of energy and left him fatigued, but he felt fine. You nodded, chuckling a bit. You sat with your legs crossed on your bed with your bear held tight to your chest.

“I have questions.” You spoke, wiping your face with the sleeves of your hoodie. You could have sworn at that moment you saw his shadow, but shook your head. “You don’t have to speak. Just knock once for yes and twice for no.” You hoped you weren’t crossing any boundaries, but when a soft knock answered, relief flooded your body.

“Are there more than just you and Jeongin here?” You asked, a soft knock coming soon after. “How many of you are there?” You winced at your own question, afraid he wouldn’t answer. But then came another knock, and another after that, and another. You counted the knocks. Nine. Your heart stopped. “Wow,” you breathed, stunned. “So this whole time there has been nine of you, and I thought it was just Jeongin.” And then your heart stopped again, only embarrassment was the culprit this time.

“That means all nine of you watched me try to speak to Jeongin, right?” A blush crept up your cheeks as you hid behind your bear. Chan laughed, a sound you heard so clearly it was as if he were alive right next to you. You suddenly felt another presence, but this one didn’t seem angry. Hyunjin stood at the door, watching the interaction between you and his older friend. He was quiet, kind of like the Switzerland of their group. He liked to observe, so he knew exactly why you cried at night. He often cried with you, but of course you didn’t know that. Chan noticed his friend and froze. Hyunjin smiled, bouncing off the door frame and entering the room.

“I won’t tell them.” He said, resting his hand on the older boy’s shoulder. “I just wanted to see this for myself.”

“Is someone else here?” You asked, startling the two boys.

“How does she know?” Hyunjin asked. Chan shrugged in response. “Can I try?” He asked. Chan nodded.

“Y/N?” he whispered. Your head shot up at the sound of your name. You recognized the voice from your dreams. It had spoken to you several times, telling you everything would be okay soon. You sat up straighter.

“Hi,” you smiled, “Who are you?” Your heart was pounding with excitement. Chan got up and moved your laptop, signaling for you to open it again.

“What are you doing?” Hyunjin asked him, alarmed. But when you reached for your laptop he understood.

“Tell me who you are.” You mumbled, opening up chrome and waiting. Chan pushing Hyunjin forward, smilled encouragingly. The younger boy typed his name into the search engine and pressed the small magnifying glass. Ten pages of articles popped up, all relating to the Stray Kid Murders. You clicked on the first one: More Bodies Have Been Identified.

“Hwang Hyunjin, 18 at the time of his kidnapping, was found dead in the backyard of the Stray Kids house along with several other young men that have yet to be identified.” You read aloud. The air became increasingly colder as you read on. “The son of the CEO of Hwang Corp. was taken after supposedly running away from home. Witnesses say they saw him in the back of a brown Station Wagon just north of Busan.” Hmmm, you thought, sounds familiar. The boys watched you somberly as you dove more into your research. Hyunjin had been killed likely right after he was abducted, blunt force trauma to the head. You winced, not wanting to read any more about the tragedy that took place in your basement for the rest of the week.

“I’m sorry this happened to you guys.” You said, your head turned to the floor. A hand was placed on your shoulder, and you jumped. The hand didn’t move though, and you lifted your own to set it on top. You felt cold, but nothing else. It was strange that they could touch you, but you couldn’t touch them.

“It was a long time ago.” Chan said, his voice carrying throughout the room. You nodded, understanding. The moment was interrupted by another negative feeling. This was was different from the one from the other day, and you could tell it wasn’t the same boy. Jisung was so angry there was practically steam coming out of his ears. He grabbed the boys by their ears and pulled them down into the basement, calling the other boys on the way. It didn’t take long for all of them to arrive in their lair.

“Guess what I found them doing.” The orange haired boy’s eyes were wide, his lips curled back. “Talking to Y/N. That’s where.” He answered himself before anyone could. Seungmin’s eyebrows shot up. Hyunjin was talking to her? He was surprised. Hyunjin was the one who never really participated in the pranks; he mostly kept to himself. It had a lot to do with his time with Park Jinyoung, but he wouldn’t tell anyone that.

“Guys, seriously?” Woojin asked, seemingly deflated. Jeongin slowly rose his hand, shyly, not knowing if his question would get him in trouble or not.

“What is it, Jeongin?” Jisung asked, his voice harsh. But Jeongin directed his question to Chan, the non-official leader of their group.

“Can I-” He paused, taking a deep breath. He could tell Jisung would blow his top at any second, so he had to ask quickly. “Can I speak to her?” Chan smiled, opening his mouth to respond when Minho did.

“Are you crazy?” he roared. “You do realize you could die,” he paused, rethinking his words, “Again.” Seungmin blinked at the boys, keeping his comments to himself. He couldn’t understand how Chan and Hyunjin were okay, but they were. They weren’t deteriorating, evaporating into thin air never to be seen again. They were perfectly fine, no scratches.

“Actually-” Changbin began, only to be cut off by Jisung. Changbin and Seungmin shared a look. It seemed as if they were thinking the same thing.

“I stayed here to terrorize the living with my best friends, not to watch them die for a second time.” Jisung eyed Chan, tears brimming his eyes. Chan sighed, remembering the look on Jisung’s face when Park Jinyoung took him into the room. They both knew what was going to happen, and Jisung couldn’t bare to watch another friend be brutally murdered. He’d been killed not too long after Chan for rebelling. Chan sighed.

“For some reason we can talk to her.” He stated, making it a point to have eye contact with each boy as his eyes scraped the room. “We can move things in her presence. She can hear us, and I think she sees us sometimes too.” The air in the room became stiff, each boy holding their breath at the news. “She wants to know who we are, and I think we should tell her.”

Minho eyed you warrily while you ate dinner with your family that night. You looked back at him several times during dinner, swearing in your head that you knew someone was there. Every once in awhile you could see his outline, like he was trying to manifest entirely, but didn’t have the strength to do so. He thought about what Chan had said. He himself had seen you googling the case, trying to find out everything you could. He also was skeptical that Chan could just effortlessly talk to you. That was impossible. It’d been twenty years since they began their antics with the living, and never once had they been able to talk freely with them. They were dead, you were alive. It made sense to him that you all shouldn’t be able to communicate easily.

You suddenly excused yourself from the dinner table, swiftly going up the stairs and to your room. You’d had enough of whoever was staring at you. You wanted to talk to him, to know his story. Minho followed you, reluctantly standing in the corner of your room. He was about to speak, only to prove Chan wrong when Jeongin entered. He stopped abruptly at the sight of Minho. For a moment he thought he was going to be reprimanded, only to be silenced by the sound of your voice.

“There’s more than one of you in here.” You say, matter-of-factly. “You’re not Chan or Hyunjin. Who are you?” Neither of the boys felt any sort of hostility from you, but they were shaking in their boots anyway. Jeongin sighed, closing his eyes before speaking.

“I’m Jeongin.” He said, his eyes scrunched closed. “Do you remember me?” The boys were taken aback when you laughed joyously.

“So, you’ve finally decided to speak to me?” You responded, glancing around the room. You didn’t know how, but you sensed Jeongin by your desk, and the other entity by your closet. You could tell they were afraid. “I’ve been trying to get a word out of you for a while now.” Jeongin and Minho couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Minho asked him if he was okay, or if he felt anything. Jeongin felt fine, good even. His bright smile returned to his face, and he laughed. You smiled at the sound, feeling both of the entities relax.

“Who is your friend?” You ask, gesturing to the area in which you suspected he was.

“I’m-” Minho paused, shocked. “Lee Minho.” You hurriedly opened your laptop, searching his name as quickly as you could.

“Lee Minho, age 17 at the time of his abduction.” You read. You felt his presence behind you as you continued to read about him. He was among the bodies found with Hyunjin, but an article stated that he was killed after. He was almost unidentified, but a chip in one of his molars gave him away. You were relieved that they found his body, and that his family could have a proper burial for him, unlike Chan’s. The cause of death was ruled unknown on the report. You were curious, did he know how he died?

“Minho,” your voice was soft. He looked at you, waiting for you to continue. “How did you die?” The air turned cold as soon as the question left your mouth.

“Suffocation.” He replied, shaking at the chilling memory. He’d wished he was one of the lucky ones, like Changbin and Felix, who didn’t remember their death. He could recall every agonizing second. He remembered the terrified look on Woojin’s face when Park Jinyoung grabbed him, tearing his escape plan to shreds. He remembered the screams of the younger boys as he suffocated him in the front of every single one of them.

“I’m sorry,” you breathed, You could feel his hurt, the pain in his chest, and tears soon fell stubbornly down your cheeks. Jeongin hesitantly placed his hand on your back. You didn’t jump, but you leaned back into his hand, welcoming the comfort.

“I think we should talk to the guys.” Minho whispered.

prev | four | next

masterlist