#like when i was very young i wanted to be a police officer?? bc i wanted to protect people tm you know? r u picking up what i'm putting down

[dreamsrunfaster]

Nimona (2023) rly said "hey! Scholarship kid! You can be whatever you want to be! (So long as what you want to be is a perpetuator of and living excuse for an oppressive system) (also you will be 1st in line for any scapegoating sacrificing or literal maiming we need to do along the way)"

[t1red-twilight]

through the ages

part 1

content/warnings: gn!reader, fluff, doesn’t follow cannon super closely (i’m stupid), cursing, mentions of spencelle (bc i said so)

notes: lmao finally got this out

word count: 2.0k

masterlist series masterlist s. r. masterlist

hotch opened the door and brought you in. spencer took note of everything; the curve of your lips, the way you walked. he had never been so enamored with a single person before. sure, he’d had crushes. but never once had he immediately needed to know someone.

aaron’s introduction of you was wordless; the world lagged as spencer gazed upon you but desperately tried to avoid eye contact. every spot of your face, every imperfection had him speechless.

you had just graduated, masters in criminal justice and a minor in sociology from princeton. full ride scholarship, spencer later found out. (your writing was exquisite; very insightful. he looked it up in the hotel later that evening.)

it had been a normal day in the office, as normal as it could be. then, his world stopped when he saw you. after elle had left something in him felt sort of numb; maybe, you could give him a spark.

you sat in the chair directly to his left on the opposite side of the table. one elbow leaned on the desk, and you wordlessly mouthed words he couldn’t make out as the case was described. your eyes flicked over to him, and he quickly looked back at hotch. had you caught him staring, or had you wanted to catch a glimpse of him? he knew that this could maybe mean that you were trying to look at him from the same motivations that he was, enamorment, or maybe you had just sensed him staring like a frog at a fly: quickly, insignificantly.

the only issue was that it seemed you liked morgan.

las vegas, nevada was where the team was headed. being here reminded spencer of things, memories he didn’t care to recall. he noticed how you were hesitant to speak up, a feeling he had been familiar with a few years ago when he first joined the team.

the police station was incredibly stuffy, typical for the las vegas summertime. if you looked out into the road, you could see mirages. the police station had ac, but it was not helpful by any means at all.

spencer looked over at you. your hands were in your lap, and you were intently focused on something that morgan was saying. morgan was sitting on the table in the centers of the conference room, and you were looking up at him.

the stretch of morgan’s muscles underneath his shirt made spencer’s chest pang with envy. what did you think about morgan? was morgan your type? oh, god. maybe spencer didn’t even have a chance.

he didn’t see hotch approaching. “you find anything on the geographical profile, reid?” spencer blinked rapidly in an effort to clear his mind. he turned around to face the map that he had been leaning on. “distracted?” hotch’s eyebrows raised in what spencer knew to be amusement, though he was never hyper-expressive.

“uh- no. i’m alright. all the murders were in the same police jurisdiction, and all within a mile of each other. the focal point of these suggest that the unsub might live-“

-

you couldn’t stop your hands from shaking. this introduction could make or break your relationship with the bau team. it didn’t help that you were so young and inexperienced. hell, you were still working on your phd.

aaron hotchner guided you into the room and recited your name and qualifications. however, your eyes were glued to the wall right above the shoulder of a tall man, who had a goatee.

when you peeled your eyes away from the wall, you saw him. he had light brown hair, and starry eyes that were behind thick-rimmed glasses. one of his plump lips was tucked between his teeth.

once hotchner finished, you sat down paid attention as much as you could to the case that you were being sent on. baptism by fire, you guessed.

every now and then, you’d look out of the corner of your eye to look at the man in glasses. hopefully he wouldn’t catch you trying to memorize every freckle and line on his face.

you stayed mostly silent on the jet. you figured that you could mostly shadow the other people on the team before you got the hang of things. the chairs on the jet were not super comfortable; or maybe, you were just ridiculously tense.

you had only been to las vegas one or two times, and one of those times was just driving through. the police station was crowded and full of typical police assholes. that, you were more than used to. a bead of sweat dripped down your back.

when you sat down to look at the police reports one more time, you heard the table creak as someone sat upon it. looking up, you saw the man with the goatee from earlier. “so, where’d you work before you landed this gig?”

you exhaled a breath you didn’t know you were holding. at least he was being casual. still, you dropped your hands to your lap to fiddle with your fingers. “i was an assistant at a firm up in jersey,” you said, pausing briefly. “remind me what your name was again?”

“i’m morgan.” you followed by telling him your name. he must’ve seen you glancing over at the man in glasses repeatedly. he was raptly describing the geographical profile to agent hotchner. “that’s reid, if you didn’t already know.”

“that’s good to know. this morning was a little rushed.” your eyes trailed over agent reid. the way his fingers moved across the map with intense dexterity was enticing.

morgan chuckled and rolled his eyes playfully (even though you couldn’t see it, your gaze still locked on reid). “he’s single,” morgan purred, jumping off the table to return to his previous task.

you felt like a deer caught in the headlights, but morgan was gone before you could protest to what he was alluding to.

-

the case had gone by smoothly. but spencer could hardly even focus when you were within fifty feet of him. he was inexplicably drawn to you.

the jet was much cooler than vegas had been, and the entire team felt relieved. you were the last on, spencer quickly sat upright. were you walking towards him?

you spoke in a soft tone, “can i sit here? all the other seats are taken.” you clasped your hands together, likely out of nerves.

spencer nodded vigorously before he answered. he almost forgot to respond verbally. “yeah!” he said loudly. shit. he didn’t want to seem too eager, he might embarrass himself. “yes, of course you can.” this time, he spoke as quietly and calmly as he could muster while simultaneously scooting over to make room for you on the couch.

he tried to avoid eye contact. luckily, you weren’t even looking in his direction. if you had been, you might see the red creeping up his neck. you had a light floral scent about you, one that reminded him of simpler times when life was less hectic.

“agent reid, right?” you murmured. even though it was just his last name, he loved the way you said it, rolling off your tongue so smoothly and delicately.

he shrugged and leaned back on the couch slightly, trying to relax his shoulders. “doctor, actually, but you can just call me spencer.”

your tongue swiped your bottom lip before you spoke. “spencer. that suits you.” oh god, it did sound great when you said it. it sounded downright angelic; almost as if you were the only person meant to say it.

a silence followed. while being slightly awkward, spencer wasn’t too concerned about it. at least you were sitting next to him and not derek. “did you have a job before this one?”

“yeah, i was a lawyer’s assistant.” your voice was more soft than it had been. spencer looked over at you for the first time since you sat next to him.

“you like the bau so far?”

“how long have you worked for the bau?” you both spoke over each other; you turned and met his gaze. your eyes were beautiful, the lighting of the jet illuminating your face in a perfect way. spencer gestured for you to speak first.

“yeah, it’s alright.” a small smile adorned your lips. spencer wondered what they tasted like, before shutting that thought down completely. he couldn’t be thinking that about his coworker, let alone one he met less than forty eight hours ago.

you mirrored his gesture. “i’ve worked at the bau for a couple of years now.” what a dumb response. why couldn’t he think or speak properly?

his mind kept wandering. “you like it so far?” he whispered.

“yeah, it’s pretty cool.” pretty cool? who even says that? “just let me know if you need anything.” you gave him a warm smile and nodded. the way you smiled made him giddy and filled his stomach with butterflies.

-

being last on the jet didn’t work out well for you. every seat was taken, and the few that weren’t had feet propped up on them. in the back, you could see the couch still had space. perhaps spencer wouldn’t mind?

you walked over hesitantly to the couch. he didn’t notice you right away. “can i sit here? all the other seats are taken,” you noted, rocking on your heels.

he looked up at you, responding brightly. “yeah!” he moved over and spoke more quietly. “yes, of course you can.” there was a good six inches between the two of you, but it was as if you were brushing up against him with how your nerves were treating you.

small talk sucked, but you figured it would probably benefit you in getting to know your coworkers. “agent reid, right?” you recalled morgan’s anecdote from earlier, at the police station. it would really suck if you had somehow managed to forget his name in the time it took to solve the case and fly back to quantico.

“doctor, actually but you can just call me spencer.” shit, you totally just disrespected him. if only agent hotchner had properly introduced everyone when you were introduced.

trying to hide your increasing embarrassment, you tried, again, to be casual. “spencer. that suits you.” you should have apologized. not knowing what to say, you sat in the silence that consumed the rest of the jet. your knee bobbed up and down, you pulled at your fingers, and breathed deeply.

“did you have a job before this one?” he cleared his throat. did everything he did have to be attractive?

“yeah, i was a lawyer’s assistant.”

he had been looking at you, you realized. how long had he been looking at you and you were too skittish to look at him? how could you, with his gorgeous starry eyes.

in another circumstance his ‘interrogation’ would have intimidated you but, you only felt anxious from trying to impress him. “you like the bau so far?”

“how long have you worked for the bau?” the two of you interrupted each other. a laugh was shared and you relaxed for once, your posture looking a little less like you were constipated.

the chill of the jet was setting in; that, or spencer was just giving you goosebumps. he waved his hand in a motion saying that you should respond first. “yeah, it’s alright.” you actually really liked it (despite the morbidity, but that you were used to). but, you had to seem cool. chill, not like you were analyzing every thing he did and said to see if he liked you.

copying what he did, you silently urged that he was good to respond. “i’ve worked at the bau for a couple of years now,” he nodded as he spoke.

small talk did suck, a lot, but at least you were talking to spencer and not alone with your worried thoughts. “you like it so far?” you asked.

“yeah, it’s pretty cool.” his adam’s apple bobbed. “just let me know if you need anything.” you smiled at this, his comfort proving successful. the tension in your spine finally dissipated. it was good that you were at least on good terms with the bau member closest in age with you.

next part

[mvltisstuff]

hello again!! im the anon who requested sweet nothing (also, saw the edit note and don’t worry it was a fantastic fic and i love it, thank you so much for writing it ❤️) i was wondering if i could request another fic for buck where reader is like athena’s protege and she’s a lot like athena so athena and bobby basically play match maker for them, thinking they’d compliment each other very well but buck and the reader have secretly dating since they met bc they hit it off so well and athena and the 118 end up finding out and are shocked they had no idea. thank you if you get to this, no stress if you don’t. i hope you have a lovely day and remember to take breaks and drink water!!

the feels - e.b

summary: above :)

evan buckley x reader

a/n: i love seeing these requests so much, please leave as many as you want, this one is so sweet 🫶🫶 i wanted to recreate the funny scene when may walked in on athena in bobby’s turnout 😭

the grants were sitting in the kitchen waiting for another delicious meal from bobby to be ready to eat. athena was sitting down, playing a card game with her two children as bobby was stirring a boiling pot. sharing stories about their days, athena begins her own.

“the station welcomed a new recruit today,” athena starts while cleaning up the cards. “i think i was telling you about her.”

“y/n? i remember you told me she was going to be working there, i just didn’t know she’d be with you.”

“she’s not riding along with me, but we’ve spoken a lot. she reminds me of myself. she’s young but one of the most determined ones i’ve seen. i think she has a lot of great potential.”

“maybe you should bring her along one day,” bobby suggests. “she sounds cool, you should bring her to the station one night for dinner there.”

“i’ll have to check her schedule. she’s trying to get more comfortable in LA, so that could help her. give her some friends,” athena says. “i know she came here to get away for a bit, i’m not sure why but i think something at home.”

“might wanna be careful bringing her, now that i’m thinking about it.”

“what makes you say that?” she asks.

“i’m worried someone might take a liking to her. buck loves you, and he reminds me of myself. and if she’s really similar to you…” athena walks over to bobby, giving him a light kiss before beginning again. “i’ll see what her timing is, i’ll let you know so you can tame the lion.”

the next day at work, y/n walks in uniform with her chunky belt with her gear. she sweetly says good morning to the people at the front with a cup of coffee before returning to her bosses office. “y/n?” she hears someone say from behind her.

“sergeant grant! hello, i was just about to go get started,” y/n says politely to her superior.

“you can call me athena, officer.”

“ok, athena,” y/n has a bright smile that could be the source of light to the room. “is there anything i can do for you?”

“no, you’re all set. just making sure things are good for you here,” athena knows that she’s strong despite the kindness act she puts on. she’s seen she’s not afraid to stand up for herself against all the men at the station. similar to herself, she’s ready for anything god throws at her. “if you get off earlier tonight, i was going to the 118. my husband is bobby nash, and he’s having dinner. i thought it would be a good place for you to settle in.”

“that sounds great, athena. i get off a bit earlier today.”

“good,” athena says with a thin grin. “i’ll see you then, y/l/n.”

they both walk away, going to do their paperwork and jobs of the day. on the first call, they had to deal with a specific threat, making two arrests as y/n shoved them back into the car.

she had easily clicked into her workplace, impressing everyone with her skill and ease with the job. her quick thinking came in extreme need, and athena knew she was going to be one of the best eventually.

after another call, the fire department had been at a site of a crash with drunk driving robbers. the police had been called to observe the suspects and ask them questions about the accident and even before that. after some of the crash on the street was cleaned up, y/n had been on the side, informing dispatch on the current nature of the situation. she was hanging around near one of the trucks when a man, couldn’t have been over 30, walked over to her.

“hey,” he says with a seducing smile, looking her uniform up and down. “i haven’t seen you around yet.”

“i’ve just started working here, i was a cop before but i recently moved here.”

“you liking it? LA can be a lot,” he tells her. “i’m evan buckley, 118. buck.”

y/n smiles and shakes his hand. “you’re from 118? athena and bobby invited me over for dinner tonight.”

“y-you’re y/n?” buck asks, a little surprised. she’s gorgeous, her hair was done back in neat braids. her uniform complemented her well, making her look like a boss, but also looks sweet with her bright smile and laugh. buck noticed her beauty and grace in handling herself.

athena and bobby stood to the side, meeting up at the end of the shift. “i think it’s too late,” bobby says, pointing to y/n and buck flirting very clearly to everyone but themselves. athena would never admit it, but she was actually happy. she thought buck needed woman like her, and she needed one like buck, and after a whole night of convincing each other before bed, they finally decided to take up a new career in match making.

the dinner had gone well, the team asking y/n about her past and why she wanted to become a cop. someone in particular was mesmerized by her stories. “so, y/n, where did you grow up?” eddie asks.

“i was raised in boston, and i went to suffolk for criminal justice,” y/n says. “i knew i wanted to help people, and i came to LA as an escape honestly. just try something new.”

they all nod and smile as they finish their food, laughing about shared stories and the two spend the night eyeing each other.

a couple months had gone by, and buck and y/n had been better close. very close. they were seeing each other almost every day, meeting up outside work to see each other. for being a bad liar, buck was hiding their relationship very well. they started dating a few weeks after the dinner, and no one had any idea. or at least they thought.

buck was definitely head over heels for y/n. she was a person who dominated wherever she was, but carried herself around with respect and a soothing personality. coming home from work, she was always a person to talk to. her sweet and gentle words were always a comfort to him. he thought she was the most lovely person ever.

y/n was obsessed with buck after she met him. he was incredibly charming, being able to light up a room at any time. being able to spend time with him at the end of their shifts was truly the highlight of her day, and she hadn’t felt this happy in a long time. he helped her get settled in the new city that she was venturing. he was always a shoulder to lean on during the bad days, and one to celebrate with after the good ones.

chimney and maddie had been driving over to bucks apartment. they had all agreed to have dinner together so she could spend time with her little brother.

buck on the other hand, had been too preoccupied to remember the plans.

y/n was dressed in a lace bra and panties set, wearing bucks work shirt with his name and badge on it. she was sitting on top of the counter with buck standing between her legs.

when chimney and maddie walked in, they saw bucks bare back, and both of their half-naked bodies. luckily, buck still had his boxers on, and y/n had his shirt. her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, a pair of handcuffs in her hands. “oh my god! evan!” maddie shouted and buck turned around.

“jesus, maddie!” he yelled and his immediate instinct was to cover up y/n. “what are you doing here?”

“some of us had dinner plans,” chimney adds, watching in a humorous way.

“you had dinner plans?” y/n asks.

buck throws his head back in frustration. “im sorry, guys, i completely forgot.”

“clearly.” maddie and chim say, together. “we’re going to go in the hall, give you a minute. while i call bobb-“ chim starts.

“no! do not call bobby because then he and athena will hate me!”

“i think athena would fire me,” y/n says.

“are you kidding? they’ve been trying to force you two together for months!”

y/n and buck give each other a confused look because they both thought they’d want them separate. surely, they weren’t stopping it but they especially didn’t think they would encourage it. they start laughing at each other hysterically at the thought of their superiors trying to get them hooked up. maddie and chimney exit in a hurry, leaving to the hallway.

“well, wanna continue?” buck asks and y/n gives him a questioning look.

“we have like 2 minutes, babe,” she smiles. “i don’t know if we have time.”

“you doubting me?” he says, leaning back in and kissing her again.

“prove me wrong, then,” she smirks and they spend their few minutes not wasting a second.

“bobby! sorry to bother you tonight, but you’re gonna want to hear this!” chim says after calling the captain.

bobby hangs up the phone, and is sitting next to the athena on their couch. athena hears the whole conversation. “i’ll quit my job if you quit yours, and we can start our own business.”

“agreed,” athena says, giving bobby a high-five at their dating app skills. “i will say i’m surprised they kept it a secret. she did seem a bit more upbeat though.”

“so what’s next? getting them engaged?”

“ok, woah. let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. we’ll give ‘em a bit i guess.”

“fine, but i’m getting every detail about this tomorrow from him.”

“i’ll get it from y/n, we will reconvene after a short recess.”

[justwritedreams]

Surviving The Game | Mark Lee

Idol Mark x Investigator Reader

Word count: 11.368 Genre: Drama, angst, action. Author: maari Warnings: Mentions of stalking, guns and very sensitive topics with a happy ending bc you know me Note: I think I need to make it clear that this has nothing to do with yandere and personally I don't agree with stalker attitudes or anything like that. If you are going through this in real life, don't be silent, this is not normal. Btw this it’s just a fiction so don't come after me. Summary: An sasaeng turns Mark's life a nightmare and the only solution it's bring the police into this case. And it's your job to make him feel safe again.

⪢ NCT Masterlist

“To be more than a conqueror You have to learn to enjoy the pain If you want to survive the game” “Y/N, come with me, please.”

“Of course, boss.” Y/N stood up from her chair, ready to grab her vest.

“Without the vest.” the boss warned and she looked at him confused but left her protection behind.

She walked beside him anxiously, waiting for him to say something but it didn't happen until they were in the car. No vests, no flashy vehicles. Like normal people.

"Where are we going?" she asked as soon as the boss started the car.

“Visiting a victim." Y/N frowned, she had never done this type of work. Noticing her confusion, the boss decided to explain. “It's a delicate and completely confidential case, it involves a large company that wants a silent investigation.”

She knew how to keep a secret but the anxiety of knowing what it was all about was eating her alive.

"Understood." she replied and silence returned to them both until they reached their destination.

Y/N wanted to know more about the details but she knew that the boss wouldn't talk about the case on the street or while they were going up the elevator, after identifying themselves to the doorman. She was attentive to everything and when they arrived on the floor, they didn't have to wait long after the boss rang the bell.

A man probably the boss's age, if not younger, answered the door and bowed as he faced the boss.

"Detective." the man greeted him and the boss bowed in the same way, entering shortly afterwards.

Y/N did the same and noticed that the man was worried, she walked in behind the boss and felt several pairs of eyes staring at her.

She didn't usually get nervous, she liked to investigate and was one of the reasons why she joined the police but she confessed that now it was different. She didn't expect four  extremely handsome young men to be in the room, staring intently at her and the boss.

She was used to police officers of all ages, so she was struck by the beauty of mere civilians. She had never seen so many handsome men since University.

The four of them got up from the couch and bowed, they seemed more anxious and nervous than Y/N, and she tried not to show how affected she was by the looks.

“Detective, this is Taeyong, Yuta, Johnny and Mark.” the oldest introduced, indicating who was who and Y/N took a good look at the boys.

But the last one caught her attention.

He appeared to be the youngest and was visibly shaken, huge black dots under his eyes that were shaking constantly, but beneath his pale, worried face, he carried an innocent, almost childlike look. Although he wasn't that much younger than Y/N.

“Detective Kim, this is my partner Y/N.” the boss announced and all eyes stopped on her.

Y/N smiled slightly, holding her gaze for longer with Mark, who quickly lowered his gaze.

“Very well, tell us from the beginning what happened.” the boss asked and the oldest signaled for everyone to sit down.

Y/N and the boss sat across from the four young boys who looked at Mark before starting.

“We were returning from a recording that lasted all day, when we got out of the car a woman approached us, she wanted to talk to Mark.” Y/N's eyes met Mark's and he looked embarrassed, the boss pointed for her to write down what Taeyong was saying and she took her phone out of her pocket. “At first we thought she was a random fan who had just passed by on the street and saw us getting down, but after we entered, the doorman announced that the woman had not left the sidewalk.”

Y/N cocked her head to the side when she heard the word fan. Were they famous? Why hadn't the boss warned her about this?

“She stood still for a long time, looking at the building trying to find our floor.” Yuta continued.

“That’s when she started screaming.” Mark spoke quietly and Y/N stopped taking notes to look at him, his small voice made her feel sorry for him.

It was clear that this had affected him in a bad way, it was actually sad.

“We spoke to our manager.” Johnny pointed to the older man who was standing next to them with his arms crossed. “And we didn’t do anything but record it for proof.”

“What was she shouting?” Y/N asked and they looked at Mark, who shook his head and looked down.

"Nonsenses. That Mark couldn’t go without talking to his girlfriend, that it wasn’t right to leave her outside in the cold.” Tayeong spoke and it was at that moment that everyone had the same expression, anger.

Y/N tried to contain her grimace and went back to taking notes.

Reminder: the girl was crazy.

“But the next day she was in the same place we were and the next day too, and now she’s going to where we are.” Yuta showed the discomfort he felt and it seemed like he wasn't the only one.

“It even seems like she knows our schedule better than our own manager.” Johnny commented.

“How long has this been going on?” the boss asked.

"3 weeks?" Taeyong asked Mark and he just nodded, while stared into nothing.

Now Y/N could understand the case.

It made perfect sense for the police to go to their house in disguise, if the idols went to the police station or if they knew that a detective had gone there, it would attract a lot of attention.

From the media, from the fans, from who knows how many stalkers they had. It would be detrimental to the case.

“And when did the messages start?” the boss asked and Y/N looked at him.

Messages?

“A few days before she showed up.” Mark responded and put his hands together, stirring constantly.

“Can you show us?” the boss asked and Mark agreed, taking his phone out of his pocket and moving it around until he found what he was looking for, he handed it to the boss and as Y/N was closer, she held the phone.

The boss approached to read it and Y/N's eyes widened at the amount.

The number was already blocked, but on the same day Mark had received 52 messages.

‘I know where you are’

‘Why don’t you come out and talk?’

‘I see your face in the window’

‘Are you looking for me?’

'You are so cute'

There were some of them, Y/N noticed that the girl was really watching Mark closely and every second as she told him exactly what he was doing.

Psychopath, she thought.

Y/N looked at Mark once again. He was sad, dejected and tired, she could see that. It was clear as water.

Cases about stalkers were not rare, but she had never been at the forefront of the investigations. But now, knowing the story, she could only feel anger and disgust.

How could someone who claimed to be a fan do that?

“Have you ever thought about carrying armed security guards?” she asked and that caught everyone by surprise.

The boys looked at each other, looking for an answer while the manager scratched his head.

“It wouldn’t be fair to the fans.” Mark replied and for the first time held Y/N’s gaze.

She didn't want to notice how welcoming yet sad his brown eyes were, but she did.

“And is it fair to you?” she returned the question.

Okay, she understood the fame part but she couldn't understand why their safety didn't come first, especially since that girl was a perfect sasaeng.

They were obsessed and would stop at nothing. Someone needed to set limits.

“The company thinks it is more prudent for the police to investigate first and then we will see what can be done.” the manager said and Y/N wanted to snort.

She knew what to do, locking the crazy woman in a mental hospital was the solution.

“That’s what we’re here for.” the boss assured, resting his hand on Y/N's shoulder who was still looking at Mark. “We will do whatever is necessary.”

Y/N and the boss talked a little more with the boys so they could have something to start, as well as writing down the numbers the stalker was using to send messages to Mark.

Yes, numbers.

She was pushy, in Y/N's words she was annoying.

As soon as they left, after a long conversation that Mark apparently didn't want to have, they returned to the car with a plan in mind.

Well, Y/N had a rather radical plan.

“You know we’re going to have to check his phone, right?” Y/N asked her boss as soon as they left the street of the building. “The girl probably hacked it, based on her history.”

“I didn’t want to say that at first and scare him.”

She laughed, humorless.

“Boss, the guy is already scared!”

"I know. What did you find of her?” he asked and Y/N slid the file onto her phone.

After looking up her history in every database the police had access to, she found some interesting things.

“She was adopted when she was 6 years old. Her academic record is not the best, she went through several schools in a very short period, she must not have had time to create a bond with someone, her teachers made some notes over the years about her being quiet, introverted and extremely inattentive because she was too busy kissing posters of actors and singers.” Y/N saw the boss staring at her with a disbelieving look. "What? It’s written here!”

The boss laughed, nodding his head.

“I know what you think about stalkers.”

“That they are unbalanced people who deserve to spend the rest of their lives in a psychiatric clinic, am I wrong?”

“No, but it’s not right either.” the boss pondered, searching for the best words. “Cases like this involve a lot more than it seems, Y/N.”

"What does that mean?"

“I mean, you need to see beyond your outrage about this issue. Or do you think I didn’t realize you got mad when they started talking about the messages?” Y/N was silent. “You will be a good detective in the future and that is why I have an obligation to train you until then, I want you to be the best, but for that you will need to act more with reason than with emotion.”

[...]

Although the detective was in charge of the case, it was Y/N who was solving everything, especially because the boss was busier than usual. So he confided in her everything he said about this specific case.

That was why Y/N had gone to the group's dorm again, now she knew about Mark's professional life and how the group was famous, it made sense why stalkers showed up thinking they knew the boys closely.

However, a face that Y/N hadn't seen yet answered the door in confusion, so she held up her badge.

"Goodnight. Investigator Y/N, is Mark here?” she asked subtly and he nodded, giving her space to enter.

“Milk!” he shouted and even though she didn't know anything about him, she could tell that he must be one of the group's vocalists, by his powerful voice.

It was time for him to close the door and turn to face her, Mark appeared running and visibly tired, it was no wonder after all at that time of night they should have been sleeping due to their busy schedule.

“Officer, good night!” he greeted her and looked at her expectantly.

“How are you, Mark?”

"Good." she didn't believe the answer, not after the sad eyes gave it away. Y/N would have continued to hold his gaze if the boy who opened the door hadn't interrupted the brief moment. “This is Haechan, I guess you guys didn’t meet last week, did you?” he introduced and the boy smiled at Y/N.

"Pleasure."

"Equally!" he replied happily and the room fell into an awkward silence.

"Well, I'm sorry to come unannounced but I came to update you on the investigation." Y/N spoke and Mark moved in front of Haechan, pointing to the sofa.

"Please sit down."

She did so, taking off the backpack she was carrying on her back and placing it on her lap.

"First of all, your phone, where is it?"

Mark looked confused at Haechan who was on the same page, he pointed to one of the rooms.

"Charging, why?" He asked, curious.

"I'm going to need a favor. Two in fact." she saw Mark nod and then continued. "Bring your phone over here and cover all the cameras, you two will have to be silent at all time."

Mark looked complicit at Haechan who felt the investigator's eyes switch between him and Mark. The two agreed.

"Why?" Mark asked and saw her become reluctant.

"I need to make sure that what I suspect is happening." She explained without giving many details and received a shy ok from Mark, who got up and went to get his phone.

A few minutes later, while Haechan was silent and looked like he was going to explode, Mark returned. Y/N noticed that he had turned the phone's cover over and the rear cameras were covered, while the front was covered by a Band aid.

Creative, she thought.

Mark handed the phone to Y/N who quickly took the notebook out of her backpack and turned it on, Haechan approached Mark and the two remained standing next to the investigator while she worked tirelessly on the keyboard, concentrated enough to get Mark's attention .

He shouldn't have noticed her face so much, the way her lips held a firm line as she pressed them together, but he did.

In an absurd and boring silence, as Haechan thought, minutes passed until her expression changed.

From concentration to anger.

Y/N quickly turned off Mark's phone and got up from the couch almost at the same time.

"Officer…?" Mark caught her attention, and she looked at him seriously.

"What I thought was right." Mark looked at her expectantly, ready to understand what she meant but it wasn't that easy. She didn't want to be insensitive, so she took a deep breath before speaking. "She hacked your phone, she had access to any and all of your personal information."

Y/N saw Mark react in a common way, complete astonishment and despair. But even though it was normal, she hated seeing the vulnerability in him.

"How? When?" he asked, astonished.

"It is possible?" Haechan questioned, worried about his friend. Mark was whiter than usual, he looked like he was going to faint.

Y/N nodded and placed her hands on her hips.

"Unfortunately, yes. Did you leave your phone somewhere or access any unusual links?"

Mark reached deep into his memory.

"No, I don't access links that easily and I don't take my eyes off my phone. Well, only on the plane when I'm sleeping."

Y/N felt like a click appeared in her head.

So that was it.

"But she would never have access to my flight." He laughed in disbelief and saw Y/N look at him not so confidently. "Right?"

She sighed.

“Are you sure you never saw her before that night?” Y/N crossed her arms.

She had to have left some clue, everyone always did.

"Never!" Mark responded promptly and looked at his friend who was holding his hand to his face and staring into space, thoughtfully.

“Thinking back, I recognized her from somewhere. I remember seeing that face behind the scenes of our recordings.” Haechan replied, leaving Y/N on alert.

“You didn't tell me that before.” Mark accused and Haechan shrugged.

“I wasn't sure, but now that the police officer said it, it makes sense to me. She kept looking in our direction.”

Y/N took a deep breath, feeling her blood boil. With the case, she had analyzed other reports of sasaengs and the rumors she had heard about agencies allowing them to infiltrate artists' agendas because they had money was disturbing and revolting.

However, this theory seemed to make more sense than before.

"What do I do?" Mark asked, visibly desperate and Y/N raised her hand to rest on his shoulder but stopped in her tracks.

It would be too inappropriate.

That's why she put her hair behind her ear instead of physically comforting the boy.

"I suggest you buy another phone and don't answer any suspicious calls from an unknown number, always keep your phone in your front pocket."

Mark sighed, he looked so tired that Y/N sympathized with his suffering, it was the final reason she needed to speak with determination.

"She'll pay for this, I promise you."

[...]

Y/N closed the soaked umbrella while banging her fist against the door, that routine was becoming normal and she felt a mix of sensations run through her body waiting for the door to be opened.

She smiled slightly when she saw Mark's clean, confused face and his messy hair, but when she looked down at his bare torso, shock took over her body, she blinked a few times and her jaw dropped as she tried to find some words to say but there was nothing.

Y/N didn't want to notice the way that, even though he was so thin, Mark had a defined body. Well defined. It wasn't surprising, after all he was also a dancer, but she couldn't control her body to contain her stuttered speech.

“Ah shit, sorry!” she heard Mark speak after looking at his own body, finding himself only in his sweatpants while the guitar was in his other hand, Y/N looked at his face and saw that his cheeks took on a pink tone.

“It is…” Y/N cleared her throat as her voice came out weak. "It’s ok."

It was more than fine, she thought.

"Please come in." Mark gave her space and Y/N did so, moving next to Mark's hot body who looked anywhere but at her face. She left her shoes at the door, along with her umbrella. “I'm just going to…” he pointed to his body and she nodded frantically, still not knowing what to say, and followed him to the living room.

Mark practically ran with the guitar in his hand and Y/N put her lips together in a thin line as she watched Mark's back but when her eyes went to the waistband of his pants, she turned her head and with her eyes widened in surprise by the thoughts not at all pure that invaded her head, she lightly slapped her own cheek as if she managed to expel the thoughts.

Put yourself together, she thought.

“Sorry, I have this habit of playing the guitar like that.” she took a deep breath before turning to face Mark again, she was disappointed to see him without his guitar and in his gray hooded sweatshirt but she tried not to show it, the boy was embarrassed enough.

She didn't want to make the situation more uncomfortable than it already was.

“Don’t apologize, please. It’s me who should apologize for coming unannounced, again.”

Mark shook his head and smiled, crossing his arms.

“Apparently you have some more news about the case.” Mark tried to sound subtle but Y/N could find the anxiety in his voice, that was why she took a deep breath feeling her stomach churn with anxiety so she decided to be direct.

"We have the mandate ready." Mark smiled hopefully and was ready to say something when she interrupted him. "But the prosecution knew about your case in advance."

"And?" Mark asked, confused, his frown made him look cute.

"And they want to use this as an example to pressure Congress to pass stronger laws against stalkers."

Mark looked down, the gears in his brain seeming to grind slowly.

"Use as an example?" He questioned and she nodded. "A public trial. Is that it?"

Y/N bit her lip when she saw Mark's very serious expression.

"Yes. The prosecutor believes that with public opinion, especially international opinion, congress will have great motivation for stalkers to be treated as-"

"Wait, officer." Mark interrupted her, raising his hand. "I'm a layman on the subject but this means I'll have to testify in front of the jury. In person."

Y/N scratched the back of her head, feeling her heart sink when she saw Mark's pained expression.

"Yes, Mark. Your testimony at the trial is the main key, just testifying to the police is not enough to convict, it also needs to be in court."

Mark laughed in disbelief and ran his hand over his face, and then through his hair where he ruffled it hard.

He was visibly upset, Y/N understood the reasons but it was the only way to end it.

"Is not fair." he spoke and kept his gaze fixed on Y/N, who felt her shoulders sag.

It was true but he had no choice.

The investigations were practically over, she had nothing else to do.

Now it was with the prosecutor's office.

Mark shook his head and walked past Y/N who just followed him with her gaze, watching him go to the front door angrily, looking for some sneakers.

"Where are you going?" Y/N asked when she saw him put on the pair but had no answer, as Mark opened the door in the next second and walked out of the dorm in long strides.

Y/N ran to put on her shoes and follow Mark, finding him at the end of the hallway.

"Mark!" She called out to him but all she got was silence, which made her run after him again.

He walked out of the dorm and didn't even care about the rain outside as he took long steps down the street, Y/N didn't think about anything other than following him.

"Mark, wait!" She spoke loudly because the heavy rain had already soaked Mark's body and hers, her heavy hair fell in front of her face. "Hey!" she hurried and grabbed his arm, putting all the strength she had into making him stop.

Mark did it, suddenly, and Y/N almost ran into his body for it but she wished she hadn't because now she was staring into Mark's red eyes.

He looked broken inside and out, even in the heavy rain you could see the tears. Y/N felt an uncontrollable urge to protect him.

"What?" he shouted, making her fall silent.

She didn't know what to say, she just wanted to hug him tight enough to ease that suffering.

"I just…" he reluctantly and Y/N kept her eyes fixed on his, encouraging him to continue. "I just wanted, once, just once, to have a normal life like everyone else."

"And what would you do if you were a normal person?" she questioned and saw Mark look intensely into her eyes until he moved down to her mouth.

Y/N didn't have time for any more questions, she just saw Mark approach her in a blur, grab both sides of her face tightly and pull her towards him, their mouths colliding in an almost desperate way.

She widened her eyes when Mark's cold, wet lips took hers, letting a sound of surprise be muffled by the kiss, but Mark's palms covering her skin and his face so close to hers was enough for Y/N to give in to the brief desire at that moment.

She closed her eyes and her hands found Mark's shoulder, feeling her whole body light up with the way his lips moved between hers, tilting her head the kiss became deeper and was the perfect excuse for Mark's tongue seeks hers, bringing his chest closer to hers, their bodies emanating a heat that not even the cold rain was able to stifle.

Y/N sighed when her tongue began to dance in the same fast rhythm as Mark's and she felt his hand hold the back of her neck firmly, sending shivers throughout her body.

The rain, although it made the kiss much wetter and with more saliva than normal, seemed to wash away any kind of insecurity or fear on both sides.

Y/N didn't restrict herself from feeling everything she wanted. She had been attracted to Mark since the first day, and even though her rational side screamed that it was dangerous, she couldn't control the way her heart warmed much more than her body that was touched by him. She felt a peace, a strong connection that she had never felt before.

And Mark, he finally managed to put all his problems aside, it was like he was in another world. One in which Y/N wasn't the police officer who was just there to investigate the case, it went much further. He felt safe and normal.

When they separated, breathing heavy and missing from their lungs, they faced each other once more. Without saying anything, Mark just caressed Y/N's cheek that he was holding and watched her, her lips swollen and red, parted and beautiful.

Y/N kept her hands on Mark's shoulder and lost herself in the current of his eyes, as if it were a black hole that was pulling her. That day, she had promised that she would protect him from everything.

Even if she had to with her own life.

[...]

Y/N sneezed once again as she entered the police station, receiving a greeting from one of her colleagues in which she responded with just one hand.

The headache, the runny nose, the lack of sleep, and being woken up late had everything to do with last night, but none of that mattered to the boss when he saw her.

"You come with me." he pointed at her and continued walking outside the district, she just took a deep breath and turned around, following the detective to the parking lot.

When they got into the car, she dropped her suitcase at her feet and sneezed again.

"Shit." she complained, closing her eyes for a while.

“Did you catch the rain yesterday?” the boss asked and she opened her eyes instantly.

She didn't want to be so suspicious, she hadn't even been able to digest what had happened last night, so she just nodded as she put on the seat belt.

“I told you to use your umbrella.”

She laughed, rolling her eyes theatrically.

"Thank you, dad." the detective laughed at the sarcastic tone, before throwing the tablet that Y/N only noticed he was holding at that moment onto her lap and starting the car.

If it were any other police officer, would never talk with the detective like that. But Y/N was intimate enough for that, and sometimes he acted like he was her father.

"What is that?" she asked, holding up the tablet.

“Unlock the screen and you’ll know where we’re going.” he warned, without taking his attention off the streets and Y/N did as he said.

When she read the title of the article, she felt her blood run cold.

“Lee Mark accused of drugging and abusing minor”

Y/N swallowed hard and wrinkled her nose as she read the article quickly, closing the fists of her other hand so hard that her nails dug into her skin but she didn't care about the pain.

That article was even worse.

And the worst part, it was all a lie. False.

The alleged victim’s “statement” on a social network was too clear for her, in addition to not making any sense, it had only one objective.

“It was the stalker.” she spoke through gritted teeth, trying to control her breathing.

She had no doubts. There was no one other than her who could lie about something so serious.

“I asked intelligence to track the account, of course, she already deleted everything.”

Y/N laughed humorlessly.

“Obviously, her goal was to just throw shit at the media.” she replied angrily.

“And she did, the phone was the same one you identified as the one that had access to Mark’s.”

Great, more evidence against her.

“Can we arrest her now?” Y/N looked at the boss who had a serious expression.

“No, this morning the phone was found.” he glanced at Y/N and took a deep breath before continuing. “On the Han River. I sent a car to her house and the doorman said she hadn’t been there for two days.”

Y/N glared angrily at her boss. It wasn't with him but with the stalker, she wasn't enjoying that Tom and Jerry game.

They should have arrested her last night.

“She knows we’re after her.” she concluded.

“If your theory that she infiltrates the group’s staff is right, then yes.”

“Boss, a lie cannot be proven.” she said, indignantly.

“No, but a true can. That’s what we have to do.” he reminded her and Y/N took a deep breath, looking back at the street.

Anxiety took over her body when she realized that they were close to the company building, very different from the path to Mark's dorm that she was used to, but all she could think about was the boy.

He must have been desperate, much more than yesterday.

Although she should be thinking about her work, it was difficult to control the shiver as she remembered last night and the kiss.

That line was dangerous but it felt so right, Y/N didn't regret kissing Mark because it had only incited the fire of justice within her even more. She needed to help him more than ever, protect him in any way.

“Will SM let the police in through the front door?” Y/N asked as soon as they got out of the car and the boss nodded.

“You can’t even imagine how desperate they are to solve this case.”

Ah, she could actually imagine it.

They entered the building, just showing their badge and entry was authorized, they went to the elevator towards the meeting room where one of the employees had informed them that they would be waiting for them both.

The boss knocked on the door and someone spoke loudly for them to come in, Y/N felt her hands sweat as she entered the room and her eyes searched Mark's, finding him sitting in one of the chairs.

He seemed surprised to see her there but held her gaze, making her heart skip a beat in her chest and memories of last night flooded her head. She could still feel the texture of Mark's lips and the taste of him.

However, she blinked several times when the company's CEO suggested that they sit down, she followed the boss and ended up sitting facing Mark who couldn't take his eyes off her.

She then discovered that in addition to the CEO, SM's lawyer and Mark's lawyer were there, as well as the head of the public relations department.

The meeting had a single objective, to find a way out of that maze.

And Y/N observed everything quietly, listening to the discussions about how they would deal with that without tarnishing the company's image, something that made her raise her eyebrow.

Mark's image should be a priority, or rather, his safety.

She looked back at Mark, he looked not only bothered but irritated too, he kept rubbing his hands while fixing his eyes on a random spot on the table.

“If Mark is sued, we won’t be able to continue with the contract-”

Y/N rolled her eyes surreptitiously. But there was no way she could be listening to that.

"Excuse me." she interrupted, raising her hand and got everyone's attention. “I have an idea, we can set a trap for the girl.”

Y/N's boss looked at her curiously.

"What did you think?"

“It's clear that she is doing everything she can to ruin Mark's life, and I think everyone is aware of that. But you can hush up the case of the false report made on social media.”

"As?" Mark's lawyer asked.

“Release an official note, say Mark has an alibi.” she looked glancing at Mark who had his eyes narrowed at her, trying to follow her reasoning.

“This won’t help without proof.” the head of the public relations department said and she shook her head.

“It will if you say he was with his girlfriend.” she replied with conviction and saw everyone's eyes widen.

"What?"

“But that’s a lie.” Mark spoke a little louder and Y/N looked at him. "I don't have a girlfriend."

She suppressed her smile, she didn't know why but she was happy to hear that from him.

The situation between them would have been much more dangerous if they had kissed while he had a girlfriend...

“Do you want us to defend ourselves from an exposure like this, exposing ourselves even more?” The CEO asked and she nodded.

“Listen to me, if you confirm that Mark is in a relationship and that you hid it to protect his image, in addition to you coming out of this situation as sensible, this will attract the stalker.”

“She’s right.” Y/N's boss agreed, drawing everyone's attention to himself. “The girl has been missing for two days, no one knows where she is. If she believes Mark has a girlfriend, she will come running back to find out who the girl is.”

Everyone was silent, pondering.

“And then, we took action. We take her to jail and the prosecution does its part.”

Y/N looked at everyone's faces, trying to make her confidence convince everyone that the plan was ideal.

They needed to attract the stalker somehow and she couldn't imagine a better scenario than if she believed that Mark already had someone, the girl would change the focus of the threats to the supposed girlfriend.

She faced Mark last, he didn't seem so comfortable with her suggestion but she managed to see something in his eyes that she hadn't seen before.

Hope.

[...]

Y/N wanted to hit herself, she stared at the wall with focus thinking about how she could hit her head without passing out.

Watching Mark after the dating scandal came out to ensure his integrity and watching the stalker appear was perfect.

She had the perfect idea.

Mainly because Mark had been removed from his activities for a few days, the official statement said it was for personal reasons, but Y/N knew that it was all part of the plan to catch the stalker in the act and increase her sentence.

A great idea that the boss had approved.

As long as Y/N kept Mark safe, that she escorted him, and she watched him all night.

Spending all her time outside his apartment doing what exactly? Thinking about the kiss they shared!

Even on duty, with the gun on her waist and her hand nearby in case of any eventuality, she couldn't stop thinking about his lips, no matter how hard she tried.

She didn't know if it was because she had a personal connection to the case and had just felt the need to protect Mark but that kiss moved her in a way that no other had.

It was more than affection.

Mark's sad eyes and the way he looked so small and defenseless in that situation made her feel the need to not only protect him, but also help him in some way.

And as wrong as it was, since she couldn't get involved with the victims, she wanted to do something for him besides work.

To make him feel better, even to vent to someone because she more than anyone knew what an extremely stressful situation it was.

Y/N turned her head and all her attention when she heard the door to his house open slowly, making the noise echo through the silent hallway, her palms were already sweaty before she even saw Mark's shy face.

His dark hair fell into his eyes that were looking for anywhere to look but her eyes.

"It's… um… good evening, officer." His voice came out so shy that she would have smiled if she didn't feel so embarrassed.

The air was tense between them, it was palpable.

"Good evening, Mark." she returned it with a wry smile. "Do you need something?"

"No." He shook his head incessantly, he seemed to search for the right words while holding the door. "Listen, are you going to be out there for too long?"

Y/N sighed, of course he was feeling uncomfortable.

"Until the patrol finds some movement around the perimeter." she explained.

That was the deal.

Mark took a deep breath and raised his eyes to look at her.

"You are not hungry?" The question caught Y/N off guard and she frowned, not understanding. "It's just that I made a lot of food…" he pointed inside his own apartment. "I forgot the members wouldn't be here." He smiled shyly, scratching the back of his head and she watched him carefully.

The police had been very specific, keeping Mark in the dorm was a necessity but they weren't going to put the other boys in danger.

So they all went to a hotel that night.

"I don’t want to bother." She was being sincere, although her stomach rejoiced at the invitation.

"No, no. It won't be uncomfortable." Mark replied promptly, shrugging his shoulders. "It's not against what was stipulated, you'll still watch me... just from inside."

Y/N pondered, a huge part of her saying to accept it soon but until she remembered that she was on duty, working to keep him safe.

Except, well, Mark wasn't wrong. He had a point.

"I don't know…"

"Please." Mark's eyes shone with guilt and she surrendered right then and there. "I feel responsible for you being out there alone when you could be somewhere you really wanted."

She felt offended but didn't take it personally, Mark didn't really know her so he didn't know that she was there of her own free will, it was her duty.

"Don't say that, I don't want you to feel that way." She took a step forward, her fingers itching to touch his shoulder, but stopped where she was. "It's not your fault, Mark, it never was!"

She spoke with conviction and he remained silent, only to nod his head shortly afterwards.

"I'll feel a lot better if you at least come in for a drink of water."

She suppressed a smile and Mark gave her space to enter, without hesitation she did so.

The house was much warmer than the hallway she was in before, she took off her boots at the door and walked in, hearing Mark close the door behind her and feeling him watching her.

"Do you want to eat? Seriously, I made a lot of food." He walked ahead and pointed to where Y/N imagined the kitchen to be, a clear invitation for her to go.

In silence she entered and saw that Mark had actually made a lot of food, enough for the whole night. Even though she was about to deny it, her stomach betrayed her and growled loudly the instant she saw the food.

It looked very delicious.

Although there was one thing missing.

"I know, the egg needs to be fried, right." He laughed softly and Y/N looked at him.

Had she been watching the food for so long?

"I’ll just eat it as is." She replied and Mark approached the stove.

"No, it's okay. I'll do it in a second." He offered and she smiled gratefully.

However, Y/N's smile faded when she saw that Mark looked more like he was about to plant a bomb than fry an egg.

Mark took what he needed a little confused, he muttered quietly to himself and she couldn't understand but she imagined it was the steps of the process.

When one hand was free, he scratched the back of his head and looked at the items on the kitchen counter, as if he wanted to ensure he had gotten everything needed.

This was taking a lot longer than a second.

"Mark." she called after him, stifling a laugh.

He looked at her, even more confused and a little shy.

"Yes?"

"Do you know how to fry eggs?" she crossed her arms and saw him frown.

"Yeah!" he responded promptly, scratching the back of his head again. "You just can't guarantee that it's edible."

Y/N put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh, he also laughed a little more shyly.

"Alright, I'll do it."

Y/N approached the stove as Mark opened and closed his mouth to retort, but she just raised her eyebrow and reached out to hold the spatula he was holding.

He ended up giving in willingly and their fingers ended up touching briefly, making them both look at each other at the same moment.

Mark walked away, shyly while Y/N cleared her throat trying not to show how much Mark's eyes affected her.

"Do you want a tip?" she asked, to dispel the disturbing silence and he nodded. "You need to get the oil hot before you add the egg."

Mark paid attention as she announced what she was going to do in a step-by-step that seemed much simpler than what he did.

She took the opportunity and made him an egg too, Mark helped put together the dish and they were quickly sitting on the stools ready to eat.

"Seeing you cook, it seemed easy to do." Mark pointed to the egg, laughing and she mirrored the same reaction.

Catching her attention a little on his wide and genuine smile.

"Because it's easy." She noticed and started to eat.

"For me it's much more complicated than it really is, officer." he replied, watching her expression as she ate.

"But you cook well." She spoke after chewing everything. "This is a feast compared to the hot dogs I eat on the street."

Mark frowned.

"Don't you eat real food when you work, officer?"

She looked at him. She didn't like it when Mark called her an officer often, it seemed like every time he said that word a rift grew between them.

"Define real food."

Mark laughed, he didn't need the answer because she had already said it.

They ate some more in silence, although she noticed Mark's uneasiness.

"Can I ask you a question, officer?" He spoke quietly.

"Y/N."

Mark looked at her confused.

"Huh?"

"Y/N. That's my name." He raised his eyebrows and she smiled slightly. "Instead of just officer."

Mark smirked.

"Y/N."

She had to control the huge smile she wanted to give, she had enjoyed hearing him say her name.

"Of course you can." She moved away from the plate, turning all her attention to him. "Go ahead"

Mark took a deep breath and looked at her deeply.

"Why did you become a police officer?"

She swallowed hard, she didn't imagine he would ask her that right away.

She tried to hide how much that question had weighed on her shoulders and frowned.

"And why did you become an idol?"

He shook his head, his eyes shining with stubbornness.

"I asked first." He remembered and she nodded, looking down at her hands that were in her lap.

"I know how you feel." She shifted on the stool and looked somewhere in the kitchen, avoiding Mark's eyes. "With this stalker thing. You're not the only one who has someone chasing you everywhere."

Y/N suddenly fell silent, her mind flooding with the memories she had forced herself to forget.

"Ex boyfriend?" Mark asked reluctantly.

Y/N looked at him again, smiling sadly.

"I wish it were." She shook her head and he looked even more confused. "I had a childhood friend, we were inseparable in kindergarten but I ended up having to change cities shortly after and lost contact. In elementary school, on a random day, she showed up at the same school, she had enrolled there. At first I thought it was great because I didn't know what had happened to her so I would be able to have that friendship again." She took a deep breath before continuing. "But I had grown up, met other people, had new friends... and she didn't seem to like it very much. She was jealous of all my friends, she said she liked the same guys as me. I started to think it was strange, but it was only in middle school that I started to feel weird around her. She did everything she could to be near me, all the time, as if… as if…"

"You had an intimacy that no one has ever had." Mark concluded and she nodded.

She laughed, sadly.

"Yeah, but it wasn't like that. She wasn't my best friend, the memory I had of her was very different, and her jealousy bothered me a lot so I tried to stay away."

"But it did not work." He guessed.

"Yes, it seemed that the more I moved away, the more she tried to be close to me. She even followed me home several times, sending me messages in the early hours of the morning wanting to question me because I had posted photos with my friends." she sighed. “She said I was the reason she self-harmed.”

Mark's jaw dropped and he watched her helpfully.

"She sent me sensitive photos of slit wrists every time and I always felt guilty. But the messages started to be more frequent and she started threatening me, threatening my family, saying that I had told her to kill herself , although it wasn't like that, I had just warned her and tried to help that if she continued doing that she would end up killing herself. I was so angry because I didn't think there was a reason for that. Until I had enough."

"How?" He crossed his arms and she then realized that Mark was really interested in the story, so she continued.

"I joined the police academy, I was always afraid that she would do something against my family so I thought I could protect them if I was a police officer. Then I decided to change cities, I wanted her focus to change, so she wouldn't need to focus on what to do against my family. I left all social media, I never showed up in the city again."

"And then?"

Y/N scratched her head, this was part she had never told anyone, not even her family. She then got up from the stool and crossed her arms, turning her back to Mark and heading into the living room.

He followed her, he was curious and also worried, but he felt relieved somehow. He had identified with her story.

"And then I ended up here." She opened her arms, turning to look at him. "I was feeling safe enough, until…"

Y/N looked down at the floor, running her hand over her forehead while Mark didn't take his eyes off her, a little reluctant.

"Until?" He urged her to continue but seeing that she was still silent, he took a step towards her.

"Until I was assigned to handle your case." She raised her gaze again to Mark's, seeing him change his expression to one of surprise. "I said I know how you feel because it's the truth. I understand the fear you're feeling."

Y/N saw Mark's eyes falter so she took a step forward, getting closer to him.

"I know it's desperate and that you will do everything to protect the ones you love because that's exactly what I'm doing." Mark looked away and, unable to contain himself, she brought her hand to his face, making him regain eye contact. "If the trial appears on TV, if it's public, she'll find me."

"So you think I shouldn't testify?" he asked quietly, his shoulders so shrugged that it gave him a very fragile image, one that Y/N didn't like.

She shook her head and moved closer to him, cupping the other side of Mark's face with her free hand.

"Quite the opposite. You need to testify." she spoke firmly and he stared at her lips. "You have to end this or else you'll spend the rest of your life hiding."

“But what about you, Y/N?” he asked, worried. "What will happen to you?"

She sighed. Even though she knew that maybe her life would become a nightmare, that wasn't what she was worried about.

It was Mark's life that was at risk, he might never do what he loved again because of a false accusation and if she had the power to stop that from happening, she would strive to help him.

"I'm finally going to put an end to this story. I'm going to stop being the scared, terrified victim." she replied with certainty, a conviction that took Mark's words away.

He just stood there staring at her determined face, he saw a strength in Y/N's eyes that infected him.

He had to do that not only for him or the people he loved but also for everyone else who was going through the same situation.

If he had a chance to start a change, he couldn't let fear stop him.

And as strange as it was, she gave him a security he had never felt before.

Then his eyes dropped to Y/N's lips, not wanting to hold back anymore, Mark moved closer to touch them softly with his own lips.

She slowly closed her eyes at the light contact and had to force herself not to let out a sigh.

However, when Mark hugged her waist and brought her closer while his lips moved skillfully against hers, she simply gave in.

She forgot everything. Her past, her history, what she was doing there, what her mission was.

Mark took her out of orbit and it was intoxicating, all she wanted was to stay there with his warm lips moving slowly against hers, appreciating every inch and tasting her without rushing.

From Mark's face, her hands went to the back of his head and hair, moving his head to the side so that the kiss intensified.

Mark didn't stop the kiss until Y//N hit her back against a hard surface, it was only with surprise that they separated to realize that they were glued to the glass door of the balcony.

She laughed softly, followed by Mark's laugh as he raised his hand to her cheek. Y/N just watched him, with wobbly legs and dropped her hands to his shoulders while Mark caressed her face.

They didn't need words, the only thing that was exchanged there was complicity.

Mark's sideways smile indicated before he tilted his head that he intended to continue what they had started.

If it weren't for the ringing on his phone, notifying him of a new message. He took a deep breath before walking away.

"Y/N. Over."

Still a little dizzy from the lack of air, she reached for the communicator on her waist, watching Mark walk to get the phone from the sofa.

"I am here." She responded, forcing her voice to come out steady.

She saw Mark using his phone with his back to her.

"We saw some strange movement around the back of the building."

Y/N's entire body became alert, her rigid posture appearing again.

"What?"

Y/N didn't take her eyes off Mark, he was motionless.

"It was near some trash cans so we walked around the street to be sure what it was."

She took a deep breath, not liking it.

Mark turned to her, his eyes wide and an expression of pure shock that made Y/N look at him suspiciously.

He turned the phone screen and she returned her attention to Mark's shaking hand until she realized that a video was playing.

She felt her blood boil as she recognized the place and people in the video.

"We didn't find anything."

In front of her, on Mark's phone, a video of the kiss they had just exchanged played with a zoom clearly enough to identify both of them.

Y/N swallowed hard, not knowing what to do for the first time ever.

They kissed with so much passion that even though she didn't feel guilty, she felt embarrassed that it was recorded.

She looked at Mark, who even confused, had understood everything.

"Stop the car and go up to the building. Now." She ordered before turning off the communicator.

Y/N ran a hand over her face while Mark scratched the back of his head, staring at his phone screen again.

"She is here." He spoke quietly, with his eyes lost on a specific point on the phone. "She is here!"

Y/N took a deep breath and approached Mark.

"Hey." She rested her hands on his shoulders. "Mark, look at me."

He obeyed, scared.

"How did she do it?!"

"Don’t do that. That's what she wants, to make you scared!" she reminded him, making him nod.

"She sent the video with a message." He handed the phone to Y/N, who quickly took it, breaking the contact established with Mark.

She clenched her jaw and closed her eyes angrily after reading 'If you don't come and find me, your girlfriend will become famous'.

"I'm tired, Y/N!"

She opened her eyes, looking at Mark, he shook his head nonstop, completely disbelieved.

"I can't take all this mess anymore."

"You can, Mark, you're strong!"

He wet his own lips with his tongue and pressed them together in a thin line.

"You are right." He looked at her, making her raise her eyebrow in silent question. "I need to testify. I'm going to testify."

[...]

Y/N was hurriedly walking down the corridor of the police station, it was early in the morning and even though her body was tired from not having gone to sleep yet, the anger and hatred that coursed hotly through her veins left her more awake than ever.

She entered her boss's office without knocking and when she saw him standing next to the table, she found that he was already waiting for her.

He took a deep breath, his hands in his pants pockets.

"What about Mark?" he asked, worried.

"I left the patrollers there." she replied after closing the door with a thud, heading towards the chair in front of the table.

Y/N threw herself into the chair, being watched by her boss.

"Great, so we can talk." She nodded, the boss then handed his phone and she looked at it with a frown. "About this."

Y/N turned her attention to the phone and felt her blood suddenly run cold as she reviewed the video of the kiss between her and Mark.

A lump formed in her throat and she had nothing to say for a few seconds.

"How… who sent you that?" she raised the phone, after closing the video, irritated.

"She sent it to another deputy from another police station." he explained, returning to his chair and sitting down, to face Y/N. "Lucky for you two, he is a good friend of mine and realized it was a case of blackmail. This hasn't been leaked to the press yet."

She swallowed hard. She had nothing to explain to her boss because the video was enough.

"Y/N, I warned you about your emotions in this case."

"Boss, I didn't plan any of this-"

"I know that." He raised his hand to stop her. "But it doesn't make any difference anyway, because that kind of involvement is too dangerous."

She narrowed her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Getting emotionally involved with a victim in cases like this rarely ends well." he leaned back in the chair. "Know that I'm not removing you from the investigations just because everything is ready."

She swallowed the answer she wanted to give. It wouldn't be fair to her.

"It would be very difficult to explain why to the supervisor and both you and Mark need to protect yourself from this type of gossip."

She nodded.

"The girl said that if Mark didn't find her, this video would be exposed, but apparently she can't keep her word." She huffed, irritated.

"I thought you better than anyone understood that these kinds of people can't be trusted."

"I'm always surprised." she replied in disbelief.

"I'm going to talk to Mark's lawyer by the end of the day." she frowned, that information was new to her. "We need to get him out of the country as soon as possible, we can't delay it any longer."

Y/N felt her shoulders sag. They were fighting against this possibility at all costs but apparently there was no other way out.

"With the warrant issued, she won't be able to leave the country and so we caught her."

"Let me tell him." she begged, being closely watched by her boss. "Please."

"You overstepped, didn't you?" he crossed his arms after a while of silence.

Y/N swallowed hard and looked at the boss in complete surprise.

"What?"

"You fell in love with the boy."

Y/N felt her entire body shiver and her jaw dropped slightly as words failed her, she wanted to deny it with all her strength but her body didn't obey.

Didn't obey because she agreed with the boss.

Didn't obey because it was true.

At first it was pure need to protect him, she identified with his case in a very personal way. But after the first kiss, she felt her heart leap out of her mouth every time she thought about him, which ended up being very constant because her entire attention was focused solely on Mark, either because she was working on the case or because she was thinking about what had happened between them.

She rubbed her cold hands, still trying to find an answer, which wasn't coming.

"Boss-"

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me.” his voice sounded much calmer than she imagined. “You can’t imagine how common this is.” she smiled, embarrassed. “But you know what happens now, don’t you?”

She frowned, confused.

“You became the main target.”

“I’m not afraid of her.”

Y/N felt the blood bubbling hotly through her veins every time she thought about that stalker, it was the fuel she needed to do what was right. She wanted justice, that's all.

And she would, one way or another.

[...]

Y/N drove down the streets that would lead to Mark's house, her only purpose in talking to her boss was to ensure Mark's safety. First they would take him out of the apartment and take him to a safe place before boarding him on a flight back to Canada, it would be for a short time but enough to arrest the stalker and begin the trial.

He would come back, that was obvious, but that didn't mean that Y/N's didn’t heart sank and anguished when she remembered that she wouldn't see him for a few weeks.

She wanted to make sure he was okay.

“Attention vehicles, report of suspected robbery at a grocery store.”

Y/N turned up the volume on the radio to hear better and frowned when the location was mentioned, a street next to the one where Mark lived. When the center repeated it, Y/N's mind worked quickly and was soon fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together.

That was why she accelerated the car even more, turning on the siren so she could pass between the cars more quickly. She felt her heart racing faster than the car she was driving and she shook her head, wishing that what she was thinking wasn't happening. However, all her fears became clearer when she didn't see the patrol car on the street outside Mark's house. Y/N got out of the car before she could even turn it off, pulling the gun from her waistband as soon as she set foot on the street.

Her hands were shaking and she had to hold the gun tighter than necessary, she didn't enter the building through the front door, she went through the back and was very attentive to every inch, she went up through the service elevator. She would have taken the stairs if she hadn't known that it had been on purpose, she knew where to go and wouldn't need to analyze the floors of the building as protocol said.

The climb to Mark's floor felt like slow torture and when the metal doors opened, she took a deep breath before leaving. She swallowed hard when she saw the apartment door slightly opened and there was no longer any doubt for her, she felt her heart beating in her ears and her jaw clenched as she approached the door without making a sound.

She raised the gun forward with one hand and with the other she opened the door suddenly, she didn't see anyone in the entrance hall so without thinking twice, she entered the house.

She didn't hear any noise and that made her alert, but when she went to the living room she felt her shoulders give in slightly, the strength seemed to be lacking in her legs but at the same time her instinct reacted by raising the gun towards the stalker who had a knife pointed at Mark's neck.

Y/N swallowed the growl that almost escaped her mouth and aimed for the girl's head, she was ready for that with her finger on the trigger, the stalker didn't even make the effort to hide behind Mark.

She just didn't shoot because Mark's terrified face and tears weighed heavily on her heart. The rational part of her brain knew that if she fired there and now, with the blade's proximity to Mark's skin, she would risk his life.

And that was everything she wouldn't do.

“It took you long enough.”

Y/N took a deep breath, controlling the urge to tell her to fuck off.

That crazy woman was still cynical.

"What do you want?" she asked through gritted teeth, gripping the gun tighter.

“I already have what I want.” She smiled widely, bringing her face closer to Mark's to plant a kiss on his cheek, who tried to pull away with a disgusted grimace. “It’s right here, isn’t it my love?”

“And why all this theater to get me here?” Y/N questioned, glaring at her. “You were the one who made the anonymous report of the theft.” it wasn't a question.

Because the stalker's insolent smile said exactly the answer she already knew.

"Of course." she replied with a tone of obviousness. “How did you expect those two idiots guarding the door to let me in without me being seen?”

“They weren’t going!”

"Exactly." she shrugged. “That’s why I needed to get them out of my way. You should thank me, police officer, I spared their lives.”

Y/N laughed in disbelief.

“You won’t kill a fly.”

The stalker smiled devilishly and pressed the knife further into Mark's neck, making him raise his head to try to get away from the blade, Y/N held her breath.

“Don’t provoke me, officer, you don’t know me.” she threatened.

"Okay!" Y/N agreed. “Get away from Mark and I’ll give you what you want.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? I walk away and you shoot me. You're smart." she grabbed Mark by the shoulder with her other hand.

Y/N was becoming distressed by the exaggerated proximity so she raised her hands, removing her aim from her head.

"Is it better this way?" she asked angrily, raising her eyebrow.

“I don’t know how Mark got interested in a coward like you.” she teased and Y/N locked her jaw. Okay, she wasn't going to fall for that conversation, it was purposeful and she knew it. “But you know it can be funny.” the stalker slightly raised the hand that was holding the knife and Y/N paid attention to the movement. “Almost like a joke.”

Now it had become too personal.

"You're right." she smiled ironically at her, who looked at her in surprise. “I’m really smart.”

Before a blink of an eye, Y/N aimed the gun at the stalker and fired. The shot echoed through the apartment and Mark flinched to the side in fright, Y/N kept her stance firm and the gun still extended as she saw the stalker fidget on the floor, reaching for her injured shoulder.

Y/N approached in long strides, placing herself in front of Mark protectively, the girl struggled to try and hold the knife that had fallen a little away.

Y/N shook her head and kicked the knife away, far enough away that the stalker couldn't reach it.

"You are under arrest!" she announced before turning to face Mark.

Y/N felt her heart sink when she saw Mark devastated, he seemed like he couldn't breathe and that made her place a hand on his shoulder.

“Mark.” she called softly, seeing him run his eyes around the room, scared. “Hey, it’s over.”

He nodded before looking into her eyes, the exchange of glances was quick but for them it lasted an eternity, until Y/N shifted her attention to Mark's neck.

It was marked and red, but no injuries. It was enough to breathe a sigh of relief, she felt her whole body tingle with the adrenaline that was beginning to subside.

She put the gun in her waistband and took her phone from her pants pocket, calling for backup.

After the call, she lifted the stalker and handcuffed her, leaving her sitting on the floor near the sofa. Then, being very careful not to scare Mark, she led him out of the apartment. Only then would they have privacy to talk.

"Are you okay?" she asked, calmly analyzing his face.

He swallowed, drying his sweaty hands on his pants.

“I guess… I guess so.” he took a deep breath.

“I know, after all the adrenaline wears off your body feels sore.” Y/N's fingers itched to touch Mark's face and this time she didn't hold back.

She made him look her in the eyes. He had a mix of emotions there and it was enough to hug him.

Y/N buried her face in the back of Mark's head and he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, shaking so much that she had to pat his back to try to calm him down.

She wanted to envelop him with the certainty that everything was okay in the same way that the heat of his body enveloped her.

"You saved my life." he said, his voice being muffled by the hug. “I will never be able to thank you enough.”

Y/N smiled lightly and moved away, seeing Mark's grateful smile up close.

"You don't need to. Just live your life like you have been doing and that’s enough for me.” Y/N's eyes dropped to his lips.

She fought the urge to kiss him one last time and so she bit her lower lip.

“So it’s like this?” Y/N narrowed her eyes at Mark's question, not understanding. “Is this how we’re going to say goodbye?”

Y/N opened her mouth to respond but no sound came out as she didn't know what to say, she shrugged sheepishly.

“If you want to-” she started but was interrupted by Mark, who got close enough so that their noses were touching slightly.

Y/N got lost in his eyes, which begged her to stay.

"Don’ go away." he asked and she smiled slightly. “It's going to be hard being away from you, officer. I survived the game thanks to you.”

[necrotic-nephilim]

i think it would be interesting to explore jaybabs, especially if babs is darker, like in the babscass prompt you did. babs helps jason track down people she wants dead, and he courts her by leaving corpses on her door, except she likes it. she gets the joker killed by a third party and delivers his head to jason, and he just fucks her right there.

anon i need you to know my reaction to this ask was SO delighted. like i had to cover my mouth and scream and just. lost my mind bc oh my GOD. i've never even considered dead dove JayBabs.

but i love the idea of a darker Babs. i think Babs being raised by a police officer who has killed in the line of duty could influence her feelings. and i remember in Joker: Last Laugh, i think it was? where she struggled with morality relating to wanting to kill the Joker. so she's not a hard character to gently push in that direction, esp given her tendency to work with and around those who have. if she just finally snaps, you can do a *lot* with her on the darker side of things. and as for JayBabs, i think sometimes about how Babs had a thing for Jean-Paul, who is someone else who's been known for lethal violence. and how she basically had to tell him "hey. i like you." and the control she took. so, imo that could easily apply to JayBabs and how she just bluntly approaches being into Jason. especially given the age gap and you push how young he could've been when he came back as Red Hood and possibly was like. 18. and Babs is in her mid 20s, knowing Jason is emotionally vulnerable and needs someone to lean on who's going to do better than Bruce. she starts with sending him coordinates and information on people she knows he's hunting. or, people she just knows are shitty. and Jason knows a hit list when he sees one. and he's very intrigued bc everyone has always painted Babs as being very moral like Bruce.

so he leaves dead bodies on her doorstep just to see her reaction. and it's *not* what he expects. bc she sends him more names and locations, this time with a "helpful tip" about how she feels about corpse dumping and next time, he can bring her a souvenir or trophy to prove his point. bc she likes the bodies alright, but it's a messy cleanup for someone in a wheelchair to handle. sometimes he leaves her fingers, sometimes it's teeth. for one particular pervert, he just leaves the guy's eyes and a sorry note that says it's the only part of the guy that was still intact by the time he was done. and so Babs is so enthralled by this little game that she gets the Joker killed for Jason and Jason just. loses it.

also? what i think is fun is if this romance is almost double-sided. playing into the idea of Jason being a bookworm and Babs in her librarian era. every week or so Jason goes to the library and always asks for Babs, casually asking for her recommendations and telling her what he thought of the last books she recommended. it's almost a thrilling roleplay where they pretend they're flirting strangers and Jason always says he's busy at night with work, working on another project for "a scary boss lady". it's coy and they enjoy the fun of being normal strangers while Jason is sending her bloody body parts.

and when Joker is finally dead, the slow dance ends bc Jason needs her now. and Babs finally gets what she wants out of her long-con when Jason is fucking into her and she's guiding him on how to support her body and make her feel good. she's promising him as he's buried inside her the next people she has planned and the parts she wants from them which shouldn't make Jason this horny but somehow it does.

also just the erotism of Babs having *the* Red Hood wrapped around her finger. she can tell him what to do and he *listens*. he will drop everything for her and whenever she praises him he just shatters and cries so pretty for her. anything for the person who finally helped him find a purpose, yk. it's so crunchy.

[quantum1mmortality]

please some vampire bi-han? 🙏🏻

You guys just can't get enough of the vampire writings smh y'all need Jesus(it's me, I'm Jesus and I'm writing this for you because I need it too)

Tw/cw: THIS ISNT GONNA BE AN NSFW BC I ACTUALLY WANT TO MAKE THIS FULL OF STORY!!! IF YOU WANT AN NSFW VERSION, PLEASE ASK ME!!! OR DONT IDC, you guys know the drill by now cmon (highly influenced by Angel from BTVS SUE ME IDC HES HOT)

Not proofread

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your relationship with Bi Han is a lot more complicated that it would be with Kung Lao or Raiden. He'd often times only visit you at night, and he'd only stay for a few hours.

It all started when you were walking home. Alone, in the dark, not a good match for a young woman. This was proven correct by you almost getting hurt in an accident, but luckily Bi Han was there to save you.

You begged and pleaded with him to tell you someway you could make it up to him. If it wasn't for him, you'd be dead! You thought you owed him your life.

After a few minutes of your back and forth, you saying he deserved something while he said he didn't need anything, you settled on taking him out for coffee.

You guys sat at that cafe for nearly 3 hours just talking. Talking about everything you guys could think of. At the end of the night, which only ended because the cafe was closing, he walked you home.

You didn't think much of it, you'd known each other on a first name basis by now and he just wanted to be nice.

Or at least, that's what you thought. He would show up every night after that, the exact same time, the exact same way, asking the exact same thing. "Would you like to join me for coffee?" Those words would ring in your head in the morning, he just kept coming back, asking the same thing over and over.

You didn't mind it, but at the same time, you found it odd. This man you knew for only 3 hours would come to your house every night, take you out for coffee, pay for everything, take you back home, and wouldn't talk to you again till the next night. Something about him was off, very off, but you didn't know what.

It's not that you didn't feel safe around him, you did, but there was something he wasn't telling you. You knew he wanted to, he just couldn't.

One night, he told you he was a private investigator, even going as far as to show you his official badge. You wanted to know more about it, considering most of the time he'd just ask about you and not talk about himself much.

He went on to say that he'd usually investigate disappearances, murder cases, and even paranormal activity sometimes. Bi Han continued by saying he'd often take care of the source of the crime before the police got to it, somehow always finding out inside information.

You were completely intrigued. You wanted to see him in action, but he said that would be too dangerous for you. He gave you his business card and walked you back home, telling you to swing by his headquarters tomorrow morning and he'll tell you everything you need to know about him.

He said it in such a serious way it sent chills down your spine. This was an offer you couldn't miss. You got up early just to be there on the time you agreed on, walking into I nearly organized office area.

Oddly enough, however, all of the blinds on the windows were completely closed. You thought this was extremely odd, wondering why, but before you could go too deep into thought, you could see Bi Han in the corner of your eye.

"Care for some coffee?" He says with a playful smirk as he points to the full coffee pot on his end table.

He had given you a small tour before taking you to the lower part of the building. "This is where I live, train, sleep, shower, everything. Call it a basement, I call it home."

To be fair, it was a finished basement, completed with rug and hardwood floors and even a spruce ceiling, at least he has taste.

He showed you around even more and ended the tour at his bedroom. "This is my bedroom. I like to keep it simple, but the bed is comfortable, I swear. It's memory foam."

He smiles at you before taking you to the small couch in his living room. He sat you down, and turned to you with a very serious look on his face.

"Y/n, there's something I've been keeping from you. Something I need to tell you. We've known each other for a while now," it's true. You guys have been seeing each other for coffee for the past 4 weeks. This is the very first time you've ever seen him in the day time, odd considering he'd never missed a day of taking you out.

"I know this is gonna sound insane, and I have proof, but I need you to trust me." He let out a deep sigh before continuing, "I'm a vampire."

You just looked at him, in complete disbelief. Not for the reasons you should be, though. You were wondering if he was joking or not.

"Are you being serious? Do you genuinely expect me to believe that?" You said as you chuckle into your hand a bit. He face only grew more serious as he took your hand and led you upstairs, going to the side of one of the windows before opening the blinds and letting you see as his hand began to sizzle. He let out a small gasp of pain as he pulled away, hand now smoking because of the heat.

You were in shock. You still didn't completely believe him, however. "Maybe you just have a skin condition, that doesn't mean anything."

You didn't want to believe the man that you had been talking to for so long was a FUCKING VAMPIRE. it was hard to come to terms with really.

He walked over to you slowly, holding up his hand as the smoldering wound miraculously healed in seconds.

He grabbed your hands, taking them in his as he makes eye contact with you. His gaze softens as he can see the uncertainty in your eyes.

He opens his mouth slowly, showing his retractable fangs. That's it. You were convinced. You gasped as he let go of you, letting you have your space.

"I know this might be a lot to take in, but I hope this doesn't change anything between us. I still care about you."

You genuinely don't know how to feel, conflicted by someone you thought you could trust. How did he go so long without telling you about this? It honestly hurt you to know that he was keeping this from you.

"I think we should have some time off from each other. I need a bit to process this, it's a lot to take in all at once." He could hear fear in your voice, and it broke his heart knowing he was the cause of it.

He nodded his head, watching as you left the building. He leaned back on his desk, wondering what he could've done better, wondering what he could've done to make you feel more safe.

He was going to make it up to you somehow, he just knew you needed time. He was patient, but after waiting so long to make you his, his patience is wearing thin. Very thin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/n: boom shaka laka

[callme-darling]

Scenario inspired from the tag on your last anon: becoming a menace to the town and causing minor inconveniences just so you could see the lawyer again 😂😂😂

no bc lets be for real. it would be so much fun.

i can see it: you’re young (at least compared to the average age demographic of the town lmao) and not to mention bored. the first time you had gotten in trouble was entirely an accident—how were you supposed to know that the farmer moved his cattle to a different pasture while his fence got mended? and how were you supposed to know you were technically trespassing on said property? you don’t recall seeing any markers, and besides, you were just going on a casual walk with your dog. and that very dog may or may not have charged the cows before you had a chance to tighten your hold on the lead. hence, the trouble came when one of the younger calves was minority wounded by a quick bite from your dog.

and that is how you first met maître vincent renzi. you were sat in the town’s small police station, just finishing up the written portion of your statement when he walked in. and goddamn it. as much as you hated your dog right now, you wanted to thank it because how else would you have come to meet a man like that. (under better circumstances, ideally).

“bonjour,” his voice was deep, matching the depth of his eyes as they watched you. then he continued in english, “my name is vincent, i’ll be representing you in court.”

as thrilled as you were to be introducing yourself to such a handsome man, you instantly groaned in disbelief. “that old shit is actually taking this to court?”

and that, is how you came to know the man who now groans every time he sees you wander into the office, a shy smile and hand scratching the back of your neck as you explain how you kinda need him to talk you out of a minor trouble with your landlord again. or how you didn’t mean to park in the wrong spot and need help navigating how to contest a parking violation. or (his personal favorite) how were you supposed to know that in france it’s illegal to snap a picture of a policeman in uniform? (he was cute and you wanted to brag to your friends, sue you).

needless to say, you’ve become a face vincent has to suppress a groan every time he sees. he’d never admit it, but he does find it mildly humoring the type of shit you manage to get yourself into.

[bcolfanfic]

If this is too dark you can ignore it I completely understand but I was rereading east side of sorrow (A++++ fic FWIW) and thought about how it would’ve gone if Bucky,,,went through with the attempt,,,

putting this under a read more bc it’s dark but. i have thought about it too.

***there is no canon or b side of young vets au where he does go through with it, this is just a ‘what if’ thing

i do ultimately think he wouldn’t have been able to go through with shooting himself in the living room. he almost did in esos yeah, but even right before gale came out he was already second guessing that aspect of it bc he- even in worst moments- didn’t want to burden gale like that.

so if he did i think he’d pull a side b croz and go into the woods to do it. gale wakes up one morning and he isn’t there and. feels a very distinct sinking feeling that feels a lot scarier than just normal worry that john isn’t in the house.

then he finds his note ):

feels like the world is crashing down on him but he also. disassociates. tries to call him a few times and after 3-5 times with no answer calls the cops and very flat toned tells them his husband went off somewhere to kill himself and he’d like if it they figured out where, thanks. then he hangs up and just. feels like all his strings were cut. is sitting at the kitchen table in complete dead silence, unmoving, staring at the wall for nearly an hour until the police officer calls him back and says they found a body, does he need someone to drive him to the morgue he can send an officer. very gentle and patient officer at least.

but gale says no it’s fine he can get there, thanks. doesn’t remember a second of putting his shoes on or getting in the car or driving. feels like he blinked and then he was staring at his dead husband with a bullet wound in his head. gets the 1000 yard stare look on his face and feels like he can’t move till something in him snaps and he just. shatters ): can’t stand upright anymore and is completely hysterical crying so hard he feels like he’s gagging but not saying any words. what use would it be anyways when he can’t hear him because he’s dead. he stays in there for a while which the staff don’t mind, and when he is ready to be done someone walks him out to his car and just plops herself in the passenger seat with him. not gonna let him drive home till she feels like he’s safe to do that. all gentle and soft asking if there’s anyone he needs to call, she can help,

and the first person that pops into his head is curt

god. poor curt <\3. the second his name crosses gale’s mind he feels like he’s about to shatter all over again because he knows this is going to be the worst day of curt’s life too. the staff woman sitting with him calls the number and tells gale she can talk to him but he puts his foot down about that, knows curt needs to hear this from gale himself.

curt gets on the first plane out there and as terribly devastatingly heartbroken as he is he finds the strength to muscle through and take care of as much as he can for gale. handles the majority of the funeral stuff, calls john’s family, is just about feeding gale by hand so he eats anything at all. then when kenny flies out a week later that’s when curt’s strings finally snap. nearly collapses in the driveway the second he’s close enough to have him in his arms and gale can see the two of them sitting out there crying for a while.

i think gale puts down the idea of arlington funeral. can’t stomach a military funeral when the military is why john went and shot himself. and i think since curt, ever perspective, has a feeling gale isn’t going to stay in wyoming for much longer now he convinces him on cremating him after the funeral.

gale just. mhm. sure curt.

my poor loves ):

[rosyfingered-moon]

2023 drama roundup

Unchained Love: I still hum the unhinged flute intro on a regular basis, easily my fave intro of 2023! I didn't actually finish the show due to dwindling interest, but for the first 14 episodes or so I took a keen pleasure in it (and it made me go on a eunuch webnovel spree, expertly curated by @mercipourleslivres). I love it when heroines are allowed to be truly funny, rather than just quirky or ditzy. Also appreciate the goofy Lamp Prince turning into a brutal incel tyrant the moment he got power.

Six Flying Dragons: I don't think I can write anything succinct enough for the roundup format so I direct you to my "my sfd tag" if you want to access my enthused livetweeting. Show of all times, lives were changed.

Tree with Deep Roots: I literally can't think of a better topic for a tv show than Sejong the Great constructing hangul together with his band of nerds, one of whom he has a weirdly intense, vaguely erotic relationship with. Han Suk-kyu carried this entire show on his trembling shoulders. What an actor! What range!!! It was such a treat to watch him smugly debate his ministers, roleplay a farmer, and hiss half-mad soliloquies to himself in the dark. It took nuance and depth to portray the kind of inner conflicts and generational trauma that Sejong battles in the background of this drama. To be honest I didn't always enjoy the Milbon subplot which I felt got repetitive, and often found myself wanting to fast-forward the wuxia scenes. In a better world the show would have centered the whip-smart palace maids and their alphabet workshops. But I will definitely rewatch this soon. And maybe also write a fix-it where Sejong and Soo-yi fuck idk.

Quartet: Cute little murder mystery about a found family of freaks, liked it a lot.

My Country: The New Age: As entertaining as ever. Very fun to rewatch this back to back with Tree with Deep Roots, since Jang Hyuk plays diametrically opposite characters with the same vigor and commitment.

Gone with the Rain: Sometimes you watch something which you understand is technically a masterpiece but it doesn't do anything for you, and sometimes you watch a piece of campy silly fun and it makes you tingle with joy. This was the latter category for me. I liked the first and middle parts enough to make up for the lukewarm fizzle of an ending.

The Autumn Ballad: Has some fucked up elements that are difficult to stomach, but the parts that are good are really good.

Not Others: Bingeable! But imo they could have cut out the stalker/murder cases and just focused on the excellent family drama.

The Matchmakers: This surprisingly swooped in towards the end of the year as my favorite comedy of 2023, all thanks to a rec by @haraxvati. I adore Cho Yi-hyun in this role!!! She is so hot as a shrewd matchmaker with a fake mole and a twinkle in her eye. Love the virgin prince with his yearning-induced panic attacks (Rowoon didn't work for me in The King's Affection in a quite similar role, but he's so much weirder and lamer here, which is something I like in a man). I am obsessed with the side plot of the crossdressing romance novelist and the solemn police officer who is trying to capture her and ends up giving her free home renovations and smouldering looks instead. Also, Park Ji-Young and Lee Hae-Young are two of my favorite villain actors on their own, and here they are married!! Still have a few episodes to go, but I intend to binge them as soon as I post this.

Dramas I dropped or paused:

Our Blossoming Youth: I shipped the heroine and her cute maidservant a little too much to bear the dull prince they stuck her with. But I might rewatch it some day bc I want to write a Sherlock Holmes fic for the girls.

Little Women: A real disappointment, because I love Louisa May Alcott and I love Jeong Seo-kyeong. Once again, letting the women kiss might have solved much of it.

Island: Casting Kim Nam-gil as an expressionless cool-guy action hero offends me personally. (Yes Song of the Bandits I'm giving you the stinky eye also.) But Lee Da-hee and Cha Eun-woo were delightful!

See you in my 19th life: I couldn't, even for my most darling Shin Hye-sun, go beyond episode 1. There's something about a kid dating another kid even though she's a literal adult inside her brain that I can't really vibe with.

My Dearest: I do intend to finish this, but I lost the thread after the first half. It got a little too dark for me I think.

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

Who are the ballad brothers I have seen you tag them on a variety of posts and I am intrigued

THREE MONTHS LATE BUT HERE WE GO!!! I also did a post about this ages ago which I’ll link HERE but! There’s been a lot of development since then!!!

This is going to get long. Sorry in advance. (Also I’m keeping it to just the Ballad Brothers themselves (and co) but lmk if you also want to know about the saints! They’re not at all relevant to the main plot (two and a half exceptions) but they live rent free in my head)

TLDR. Little guys took up residence in my head when I listened to music in the car and it’s become a whole scifantasy worldbuilding exercise.

Anyway!

KYRIE ALEIDIS BALLAD

- she/her

- 29 years old

- 5’11 (and a half)

- Massive Fucking Tech Sword

- Enneagram 8w7 if you’re an enneagram guy

- she is YOUNG she’s FANTASTIC she’s GOD’S FAVORITE and she’s NEVER GOING TO DIE

- The main character!

- She is the city (symbolic) and her name is god

- Former sword-for-hire/star player/golden girl/mascot/diversity hire (whatever you want to call it) for evil organization(tm) Rekah’s Finest

- (named after St Rekah of the Guard)(think somewhere between the CIA and the Pinkertons)(National guard type of thing that staged a very quiet coup/government takeover about a decade before Kyrie was born and is gradually got to the point where they’re running the city-state where this all takes place as a police state)

- current renegade and aspiring vigilante

- she fucked off the minute she turned 18 to join the metaphorical army/become a cop (same difference)(except there’s also regular cops and they kind of suck shit) and very quickly became very good at it!

- wound up as essentially the Special Little Guy they have as the face of the organization doing a lot of like. Public outreach and shit. Also doing a lot of assassinations inside and outside of the city

- A few years before the story starts she Realized Some Things about how her and Alonzo were orphaned and quit her job EXTREMELY publicly and extremely dramatically and left with nothing but her Massive Fucking Tech Sword and the clothes on her back and fucked off to go hide/live in a massive tower monument at the center of town

- It’s… legally difficult to get her out of there due to the historical site preservation regulations so she’s just been kind of vibing there ever since

- Theoretically. She’s trying to take down the RF and get them Out Of Her Damn City

- In practice she’s one singular burnout and has no idea how the hell to go about doing that so she’s mostly just hanging out in the tower and evading arrest

- She’s a fuck boy dirt bag piece of shit (etc etc etc) and I love her for it

- She gets no bitches despite being a local celebrity with one of The Fanbases Ever (she would do numbers on scifantasy Twitter) bc She’s So Sucks <3

- (no bitches except she does have a weird homoerotic thing going w her roommate/childhood best friend who’s kind of a reincarnation of St Ely who built the city and lives in the tower)(she’s not looking at it)(she’s got bigger problems called Avoiding Confronting Any Emotion bc if she looks at any of them she’ll have to process all of the Guilt she has irt. Pretty much abandoning her baby brother on the streets to go be a hero and then Never Contacting Him Again)

ALONZO BALLAD

- he/him

- 25

- 5’4

- two regular guns

- Kyrie’s aforementioned baby brother!

- Enneagram 3w4 which if you were friends w me 2019-2021 you’ll know exactly how much that says everything you need to know about this guy (derogatory)

- Most repressed mfer on the planet and a neurotic little freak

- Considers himself to be the only guy in this found family with a braincell. (Untrue, even if you don’t count An)

- His first instinct in a lot of situations is Improv Theater. (Seeing his sister for the first time in more than ten years? Better wear a hood and prepare a whole dramatic reveal about it. Ran into the guy he kissed at the office holiday party while trying to get his expense account wrangled for an upcoming assignment? Time to launch into an extended bit about how he’s so sad and poor and he’s gonna starve and freeze to death all alone on the street and Only They have the power to help him. please.)(they think it’s hilarious but jfc what’s wrong with him)

- The main issue with him is that he gets his apartment and all of his necessities directly from his employer, so his first priority at all times is Preserve His Job At All Costs

- He thinks of the way he lives as self care. I think of it as masochism.

- His main idea of a Life Plan from the ages of 15-his early 20s was Look At What His Older Sister Did And Then Do It Too

- (his main idea of a life plan from the ages of 3-20 was Don’t Get In Trouble Ever or They Will Come And Kill You To Death)(these are not especially compatible philosophies.)

- So he’s a sword-for-hire (gun for hire. And not even a fancy tech one. They’re not trusting any more Ballad brothers with any more expensive technology.)

- This is not working out well for him. he’s not overwhelmingly good at the job. He doesn’t find any purpose in killing people. He doesn’t even like blood.

- He is, however, very good at following orders. But only when he wants to.

- He’s also very good at Lying To His Boss’s Boss

- They keep sending him to try and assassinate Kyrie as like. Kind of a power move? Trying to show her that they’ve got her only family at their beck and call and they can make him do whatever they want

- Unfortunately Alonzo has no interest in killing her so those missions pretty much just wind up with him going to hang out in the tower and shoot shit for a couple days and then going back and turning on the big sad wet eyes for his report to tell them that he did his best he really did but she’s always been stronger and he just couldn’t take her— but he’ll do better next time he promises 🥺🥺🥺

- Kyrie had been their best guy for several years and Alonzo is, in all other regards, the perfect employee (turns in all his paperwork ahead of time, does every other mission very efficiently and never gets caught, goes to all the company mixers even though everyone can tell he’s exhausted, always has his uniform meticulously clean and pressed) so this is plausible, and they go “aww okay better luck next time :) go get some rest :)”

- Also he’s lowkey a hostage here. What are they gonna do? Fire him? No they need him for leverage

- It drives his immediate supervisor who knows EXACTLY what’s going on up the fucking wall. We will get to them.

- Gets Fucking Shot With A Cheater Bullet (very small timed action grenade) on an assignment midway through the story and his first instinct (instead of going back to the office where they have like. Actual doctors and medical equipment to deal with that) is to head to St Ely’s tower, where they have his sister and his kind of boyfriend and also his sister’s roommate who can sew and his childhood buddy Jonesie down the street who knows first aid

- He’s not thinking especially straight due to the Panic and also the Blood Loss from the Bullet In His Ribcage and he’s got a whole emotional thing about how he wants to die at home w his people— and then it goes off and he Fucking Dies. Whoops!

- He gets better his boyfriend (for real now lmao) is an aspiring necromancer and God’s Pet Freak (there’s a lot. Behind that. more later) and he very pointedly doesn’t believe in magic or saints or anything but also his chest cavity did very much get exploded and he’s fine now (besides the lingering Effects) so like.

- He deals with this by 1. Contacting his supervisor who lets the higher ups know there’s been An Incident. 2. Going back to work as soon as they’ll let him (like three days later). and 3. Getting himself transferred to the security division and becoming Ari’s dad’s bodyguard so he doesn’t have an excuse to go hang out at the tower anymore and he doesn’t have to look at any of those emotions he can just Focus on his Work <3

- Obviously that does not go well for him.

SENECA “ARI” FINCH

- they/them/any

- 25

- 5’2

- Enneagram 5w6

- Mad scientist

- Nepo baby

- Front desk intern for the RF financial department

- Aspiring necromancer

- God’s Pet Freak

- If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you raise a child in one of those beige instagrammable influencer houses. It’s this.

- Their dad is the puppet city governor for the RF (Kyrie wants him dead so goddamn bad)(he’s kind of a useless twink but he’s an easy guy to blame for all this shit)

- Their mom died when they were like 8 of something pretty regular and they have since dedicated pretty much their entire life to Bringing Her Back

- (No they were not especially close or anything why do you ask?)

- TECHNICALLY their dad, knowing their passion for Science (and not much else about them) got them a cushy RF job developing biotech to make the cool individualized tech weapons

- In practice, they got their funding and their fancy work lab and immediately proceeded to squirrel just about everything useful from it downstairs to their own personal lab in the basement (not on the floor plan) where they don’t have to worry about things like “supervision” “safety regulations” “proper ventilation” “their job” etc

- They are still doing their job but they’re getting it done in like. Two days out of the month and spending literally all the rest of their time on the necromancy

- It’s gotten to the point where they’re not even clocking in upstairs anymore so they made them take a couple shifts a week at the front desk of the financial department just so they have something on record to pay them for

- They’re okay with this! it’s fun to switch it up and there’s snacks in the breakroom

- I cannot emphasize enough how much they Do Not Leave the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement. there’s a couch in the corner and a sink and an employee bathroom in the stairwell what more could they need.

- One of the early plotlines is centered around Getting Them To Go Outside (really outside, not just to the regular parts of the RF building) and like. Idk. Maybe seeing a leaf or smth would be good for them)

- where they also wind up meeting and hanging out w Kyrie and El, doing some upkeep on Kyrie’s fancy sword, and being Absolutely Fascinated by St Ely’s Tower (there’s some generally buried Magic Shit that perks up when them and El are in the room together)

- BECAUSE!!! (And this is why they haven’t succumbed to the Fumes in the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement, or the gas leak in there from the pipe main running through the middle of it that they’ve been siphoning off of, or any of the experiments they do on themself bc they can’t get any other test subjects and also bc they wouldn’t trust anyone else’s testimony as to What It’s Like) the magic, which is how Ely built the city (and how all of the other saints Did Their Things as well but that’s a whole other can of worms) is a vapor that lives underground and speaks no human language but saw this little freak trying to defy the laws of nature from their hole in the ground and took a liking to them

- It can’t bring their mom back bc she’s been dead for fifteen years and it never met her so it wouldn’t even know where to start

- But it likes them! It follows them around and keeps them alive and helps with their experiments :)

- (they remind it of Saint Ely, who was a similarly tiny passionate freak, but that’s also a whole other can of worms)

- Ari is not aware of this in the slightest.

- Their second arc is getting Disappeared from legal existence (very easy. They live in a basement and barely ever leave it and don’t really talk to people), realizing that they are in fact mortal and could potentially die someday, and trying to contact their dad to make sure he knows they’re okay. (Doesn’t work. They’ve been disappeared and are no longer allowed past the front desk.)

- Their third arc (during the communal breakdown era. Kyrie’s abandoned by god arc where she decides to run away from her problems in a literal sense and Alonzo’s evil arc where stops speaking to everybody and dives headfirst into his job at the war crimes factory) is deciding that the same thing happened to their mom and the necromancy isn’t working because she’s NOT actually dead which means she’s out there somewhere and they can find her! :)

- That is not even a little bit true. :(

EL (no last name)

- he/him (woman)

- Doesn’t really have an age. They don’t really exist in time in the usual sense

- 5’0

- Enneagram 9w1

- Lives in the tower

- Just kind of showed up there one day as a kid and has been living there ever since

- There’s a nearby convent of some kind that fed and clothed them growing up (same place that looked after Kyrie and Alonzo after they were orphaned)

- Kind of a reincarnation of Saint Ely. not in so many steps bc again. Out of time and who knows how long he’s been there but like. He’s back for more but he’s a lady with an ounce of common sense this time. It’s unclear how much he’s aware of this part of it. He knows the tower is important, and he knows restoring the murals inside of it is important. I don’t think he knows why.

- only guy in this found family who’s even remotely capable of coping with the idea of death (he already did that)(kind of psychopomp coded about it)

- Kyrie’s best friend and second in command so much as she has a command. Weird homoerotic gay thing going on there. I assume there’s some of the traditional St Ely brand of devotion but like

- (And by traditional I mean I don’t think that’s a widely known thing about Ely the Saint but it is one of the more prominent things about Ely the Guy)

- Spends most of his time restoring the tower and the murals inside that nobody has seen in years

- (That’s a whole thing)(different can of worms)

- This is @nosongunsung11’s guy so I’ll tap them in for the details but I think that’s the basics!!

AN “PUNK” JANG

- they/them (lesbian)(in gender moreso than practice)

- 35 but they’re lying about it. actually 33

- 5’5

- Enneagram 1w2 😬

- Twin fancy tech rapiers

- The previous Special Little Guy/Mascot/face of the RF

- Ran away from home, changed their name, and lied about their age to join up when they were 16 and they’ve just kind of been going off that ever since

- Went by Punk for a while towards the beginning of their career bc they were 16/17 and it Sounded Cool and it would up becoming almost like their callsign (that’s what Alonzo calls them bc he was very much an enjoyer when he was a kid. They were like Spider-Man to him. Blorbo from the news.)(and he continues to call them that bc he’s a little shit.)

- (They wound up naming themselves after Saint Anjane of Strength not because they believe in any saints but because they desperately wish they did and this way at least they can pretend they know what it might feel like to have that kind of faith.)(in a fun and funky coincidence, they’re actually very very similar to Saint Anjane herself. El has some Complicated Emotions about this.)(long story. It’s Saint Ely’s Monument but it’s also the closest thing he has to a grave— he pulled it out of the ground so he could be alone w/ Anje’s body after he got to her execution too late to talk her out of it)

- Got shunted when Kyrie showed up and was infinitely more personable due to her heroics in SciFantasy 9/11 (long story. Building exploded.) and general bright-eyed and bushy tailed unjaded Disposition

- And by shunted I mean promoted to middle management in the Murder Department

- They’re fine with this it’s significantly less work on their end

- They do make sure after that to have everything they need for basic living separated from the job though

- Only guy in this found family with their own actual apartment. And basic cooking skills. And healthy sleep schedule.

- When Alonzo gets into the Murder Department they wind up as his immediate supervisor!

- Exciting prospect at first! He’s a high profile assignment (hostage) and also an easy assignment (does all of his paperwork on time, completes his missions Quietly and Efficiently, doesn’t really do anything interesting at all)

- Less exciting prospect once they actually work with him. He’s a little shit and a motherfucker and he knows exactly what he’s doing

- They can’t stop covering for him at this point without doing a hell of a lot of paperwork and jeopardizing their own job so they’re stuck now

- Also. unfortunately. they got attached. They’re not the step-older sibling, they’re the older sibling who stepped up.

- They’re the one who arrests Kyrie at the beginning of the story and kick off the whole first half of the plot, but they also wind up putting in their two weeks after Alonzo Gets Fucking Killed and then immediately goes back to work

- They do it significantly better than Kyrie tho they keep their apartment and their bank account and return most of their uniforms so the rf doesn’t have any reason to come after them besides Aiding and Abetting (and also trespassing. On the protected historical site that is St Ely’s monument. But that’s the least of anyone’s worries here.)

- They wind up kind of taking charge of the. whatever the hell these guys are doing. during the Communal Breakdowns arc. they would really prefer not to be doing this but somebody has to. So.

- Also during that arc they wind up facing off with Alonzo and boy howdy is there a reason they got assigned as the rf’s Special Little Guy and he didn’t, bc he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell even with them holding back

AND THAT’S THE MAIN CAST! Thank you for coming to my ted talk! (Get it?) I’ve hit the image limit on mobile so I’ll come back and add the before/after pictures in a reblog bc I had fun making those

[wastrelwoods]

to be fair i actually like the way that pterry positions police work - that there IS value in theory in a force that works to bring justice and uphold laws designed to protect people, and if police were good people who truly wanted justice then that would be fine, but also unflinchingly pointing out how easy it is for cops to be corrupt and/or arms of the government and how individual coppers' prejudices can affect their policing if not dealt with? like night watch especially with the original gang and with cable street and then with carcer easily becoming police - feels like pterry was saying 'ACAB, but they don't HAVE to be, but it takes root reform and a top-down permanent commitment to genuine people-focused policing to make them a force for good'

HI yeah sorry i waited to chew on this for a while i'm thinkin it over bc i am still always of two minds. pterry's take on policing is very reform-minded and explicitly trying to call out widespread corruption and violence in direct deconstruction of almost every other traditional form of the police procedural. and also having vimes and his police literally break from their intended role as a tool of the state to try to hold the state equally as accountable as people with less power is very narratively good! the idea that runs through the books of one man who is so committed to justice that he can reform the whole institution from the inside is compelling! and it is also very much an unrealistic fantasy and the kind of empty promise cities throw millions of dollars away for in sensitivity training and uber-militarization hoping that the problems with policing always sort themselves out with the right polish

as an abolitionist i don't agree that police work is an essential service and that police need to exist to provide justice, or that people would tear themselves apart without police and states and laws to hold them in check. but. that premise is something it would be very hard to make a procedural without. i think i like the watch best when they function the least like Police and are striving to provide more nuanced nonviolent community support, and de-escalate, and actually protect and serve people, and i like that sections like the start of night watch where every department in the city is involved in a genre-typical tense manhunt and shootout with A Psychopath Serial Killer (tm) are very, very rare

carcer isn't like most watch series criminals in being either a person driven to breaking the law by rough circumstances or a corrupt person in power, when we meet him he's just knee-jerk murdering young off-duty officers to keep from being caught for undescribed other random murders. carcer is just the sort of character who exists to be as terrible as possible with no particular motivation in order to make vimes' inner narration about how badly he wants to get a chance to kill this man without due process something that is sympathetic as much as it is harrowing. definitely the type of character most copaganda pieces use as an antagonist, and i like that the watch books don't resort to that the rest of the time. AND i also love that being just a guy who loves to do indiscriminate violence for the hell of it lands him a job as a cop in the past THAT is a great deconstruction. i also love the final conclusion being that even people who are this brand of cartoonishly evil and too dangerous to safely apprehend can't just be murdered in the street on the judgement of a good guy with a weapon. tho of course he is just hauled off and killed by the state anyway with more due process and paperwork involved. which is a little bit of an undercut of the idea but the ethics of capital punishment is sort of a different beast and not rly the focus ANYWAY

TLDR my hesitation is that a lot of the premise of police reform in the watch books is the kind of thing that demonstrably doesn't work irl re: promoting change from the inside but if you gotta have a book about good cops i do appreciate the ways pterry dug in and grappled with that

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

why i don't really write things centering jjba!Cecio?

So... JJBA Cecio... and why dont i write much about his central thing of being a mafia controlled cop or change it to something else. warnings for discussion of police and their role as violent enforcers of the state

Tldr: i feel uncomfortable humanizing a cop while writing how much corruption and brutality they do, in a way i dont feel with Muro and Tesoro and Conficcare despite them also doing awful things, meaning i dont think i will ever properly write about the center of Cecios story, but also i dont want to change it to something that triggers me less bc its so core to his character and came from something i was trying to say, so its just gonna be this hole that i maneuver around.

so in Celia & co, Cecio is persuaded to train as an officer and act as a informant and inside agent for Passione by a member of the data analysis team, and uses his sob story and pretty face to act as a 'good cop' while secretly doing what passione wants from him- evidence tampering, altering cases, disappearing people, ect..

For many many reasons i struggle to write him with the same level of flawed humanity and emotion as i give my other also horrible and violent characters [Muro, Tesoro, ect...] when hes in uniform, mainly because of me and my communities experiences with police brutality.

yeah, yeah, we need to remember that these people are human and many of us can all turn into fascistic and violent enforcers the states will if in the wrong circumstances and we shouldn't label pigs as something other and separate, rather as people who believe the lies and often think they are doing 'right'

But you wont see much of that from me. the only good cop is a dead cop, and its not exactly subversive or needed to go "🥺 but they have thoughts and feelings and reasons and family too! 🥺" [🤢] I place it in a similar mental spot as "Look at all those poor soldiers traumatized by killing brown people" aka we dont need more and in pretty poor taste to focus on their trauma over the trauma and deaths of people they are killing.

So don't expect any fics exploring Cecios mindset as he ruins peoples lives because its probably never happening unless we see a world were a complete abolishing the police is feasible and nothing arises to replace them and i also get over my own revulsion of everything cop.

[am i biased in how i humanize Muro and Tesoro and Conficcare and Rametta and the conditions that led to them being career criminals but draw a line at a pig? Eh. Maybe, but quite frankly i think drawing a line at humanizing perpetrators of state sanctioned violence and giving sympathy to the reasons they do in my own works is a pretty sane line to draw. i mean i've lived in one of the worst areas of london and all i gotta say on gang shit is my dad probably deserved it when he got his ass beat and i kept my head low and my tone respectable like any smart kid, whereas nothing quite inspires fear in me like seeing a cop]

Now onto why i haven't changed it even if i will probably never be able to explore whats pretty much the center of his character.

He's a piss take. a satire. A commentary on the very thin line of legality that separates cops from violent criminals in the eyes of the public

Cecio is a police officer who works for a criminal organization and follows their explicit and implicit orders to frame people, brutalize them, fake evidence, and make sure that no-one around him is 'good' and are instead beaten down and manipulate into going with whatever his superiors want. He is a blight on his community and betrays them to help himself, all while pretending to be a nice and good young man, with people eating it up to excuse the acts he commits.

So he's just a slightly worse than average cop 🤷‍♂️

there's just functionally so little difference between his role as a police officer and his role as mafia plant in the force, other than sometimes his orders from the cops and criminals conflict.

Maybe i will change him to some other career, like a forensics cop not just a detective, where he isnt quite the same in terms of enacting violence and is 'just' altering evidence, but the core of his character is the idea that you slap a pretty face and a sob story on a very dangerous criminal cop and he can get away with anything, and that the line between organized crime and police forces is mainly which one is formally employed by the government. [Its why trickster is perfect for him, his character is one big joke at how society excuses police corruption and state violence with the thinnest of excuses]

Im turning reblogs off on this, but im more than happy to answer questions/asks given in good faith. this shit is something i dont mind discussing its more the act of writing a story about it makes me too uncomfortable

[chevvy-yates]

STEYR TWINS OUTFIT COMPARISON

[NC_RES]_00002727 mercs_steyr_twins_outfits.file ///core:_bi-runners.file\\\

—

Please do not repost any of my art.

No special VP, just me wanting to see how different and at the same time similar both of them are.

They didn't know of each others existence for almost all their lives. V not until 2078. Jay knew earlier he's got a brother but only found him in 2078. So they grew up in entirely different surroundings: Vijay at a beautiful ocean side at first, in Monterey, then his teens in Portland, only coming to Night City in 2070. Jaysen grew up in Night City since he can remember. He never really left the place except for some visits in the badlands.

As adults, Vijay is the more reserved one while Jaysen is the rowdy one. And looking at least at Vijay's already written backstory, V had been a rwody teen/young adult while Jaysen hasn't gone this path bc his foster dad is a police officer who looked after him and brought him into the police (yes I somehow picture that Jay worked at the NCPD for a few years). Only when Jaysen went patrolling in the streets his more rowdy character seemed to have awakened. well he was quite stubborn as a kid already, tho.

I don't know very much about twins and their same or different interests but I like that they have some similar clothing taste yet it is still different. Jay is definitely more of a rocker boy type whilst Vijay is living in Vaporwave. But both like to listen to nu metal tunes for example.

V obviously shows openly he's bisexual through his clothing style. You do not see it on Jaysen, but he is bi as well (I thought about him being straight since I do not have a straight OC but something inside me says, nah he's also bi — maybe it is also only bc I am bi as well and tastes and likes do flow into your own OC's quite often).

Another funny thing I just realized is:

What Jaysen is now I had originally intended for Vijay to be at first. Like when I was still on PS4, I wanted him to look similar like Jaysen is pictured now. Not a cyberarm tho, but e.g. I was struggling hard when I created V if I choose the eye cyberware or the one on the neck. I decided for the neck in the end. Also 2071 V had same hair as Jay now. I intended to give Vijay some cowboy vibes since he's based of Clint's Blondie from the Dollars Trilogy, but when Vijay hopped onto the Vaporwave train thanks to me being able to start using mods, the cowoby thematic shifted further away from him. Now that I have Jay, I can give him that cowboy theme while V is continuing to immerse in his vaporwavy 80s dreamland. :P –

off topic: I don't know why but since I startd using that coole Vesnelle's hair for Vijay the original vanilla copper color from the game is gone on him. It looks way too bright and therefore unnatrual, but I wanna keep that hair on him. :/ I mostly edit the hair color in post processing, so it fits again.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

please tell me more abt Yancy in mark TV

Okay so my thoughts on Yancy in all the Markiplier TV stuff is really a mash up if a lot of different headcanons I've collected from different places and then some.

So like, big fan of the headcanon that Yancy is one of Mark and Celine's kids, and he ended up in prison cause he got blamed for the events of wkm. I know it's not perfectly supported by the canon or anything but it's fun, so, y’know, who cares. I can do whatever I want lol. And then I don't know how common this headcanon actually is bc I picked it up from like one specific fic, but Yancy as the security guard for Wilford's club in Wilford Motherloving Warfstache.

So like, Yancy grows up in Markiplier Manor for most of his life, Celine gets custody during the divorce, the events of wkm happen (maybe Yancy is the one who told Celine about the poker night, having heard about it from William, and that's why Celine shows up in the middle of wkm?) So then when Celine goes off and never comes back he goes out looking for her, police show up while he's there, and between intense unethical police interrogations and the fucked up house immensely fucking with his head, he ends up convinced he did do the crime and pleads guilty, landing him in Happy Trails eventually. Canon ensues, Yancy decides he's gonna get out on parole after God knows how long he's been in there. At some point he meets Wilford, neither of them recognize eachother really, but there is like, some subconscious shit working definitely. Wilford's like, 'hey do you want to work at my club? I'll walk you right out of this fucking prison' and Yancy is like 'nah man, I'm gonna keep on track to make parole, do this the right way, but if the job offer is still open in a few months 👀' and Wilford's like 'okay, sick' and so when Yancy gets out a few month's later, there's Wilford inexplicably, ready to pick him up. And so he goes to work as security at the club, and things are actually pretty chill most of the time, so Yancy's got a lot of free time to do his own thing, and he's got no fucking clue where Wil's money comes from but he gets payed well, so he's enjoying the job, even if maybe he'd rather be performing. He does some community theater stuff here and there, occasionally performs in the club, often ends up ranting about his narrative ideas to Wil after hours. And eventually Wil is like 'hey, you know I own a TV network right? I could give you a show.' And Yancy absolutely fucking takes that opportunity. Which is how he ends up at Markiplier TV.

I feel like his show(s) would be this weird tonal mess where it's like a Disney Channel musical sitcom, there's songs and comedy and it's all very much giving young teen drama with constant bits and inconsistent lore, but then the storylines all deal with very serious and realistic topics. There's fucked up families, and deep dives into the horrors of the American prison system, and death, and grief, all portrayed very realistically and with all the complexity they deserve. But also all of the character's act like disney sitcom characters the second they're not handling the serious stuff, and there's always at least one musical number per episode. It's actually probably really cool if you're into weird shit like that (as I absolutely would be), the video essays discussing it are probably insane. But it maybe doesn't speak to the average audience lmao. Yancy doesn't really realize and doesn't care. It's reaching the audiences it needs to.

Anyways I think him and Bim get along the vast majority of the time, they've got a mutual love of theater and a mutual hatred of Ed, cause I mean, look at Ed's lore and then look at Yancy. Yeah Yancy fucking hates Ed and his whole deadbeat dad thing. Luckily fights around the office are so common here that it's pretty easy for Yancy to get away with punching Ed in the face a little bit any time he says some asshole shit. Also maybe everyone turns a little bit of a blind eye to it. So really he feels right at home.

I think Google freaks him out from the get-go, and he's a little more interested in trying to get some info on the weird android shit from Bing at first, but quickly finds out that Bing can be like twice as uncanny as Google, and so he just kind of ends of steering clear of both after not too long in the office. I think they grow on him eventually but it takes some warming up lol

I think he and The Host actually get along. Like, maybe he freaked Yancy out a little bit at first, and then he started to realize the two of them had a lot in common in terms of their opinions and beliefs, and instantly he started getting all buddy buddy with the guy, and then it was the Host's turn to be a little freaked out, cause he's not exactly used to people being so enthusiasticlly friendly towards him. So they become friends. Yancy's always there to make sure he gets included in work get togethers and such since some of the other guys find him intimidating.

Dr. Iplier finds him a little exasperating seeing ad he is probably constantly getting hurt and also constantly leading to other injuries around the office (mostly Ed's, let's be honest), but, y’know, his enthusiasm and friendliness around the office probably win him over eventually, and his kindness to the Host probably helps.

The Jims and Yancy get along great, in fact Yancy is probably the only person around the office who actively gets along with them besides Wilford.

Wilford is always very supportive of Yancy, and Yancy still picks up shifts at the club a few times a week. I think maybe he's the only one who's met Abe out of everyone else at the office bc of his job. Abe knows who Yancy is and has tried dropping hints to Wil a few times, but they are not getting picked up. So it just kind of goes unspoken.

Dark and Yancy absolutely have the strangest dynamic. Dark definitely knows who Yancy is. Yancy does not know who Dark is, but I think he recognizes bits of his mother in Dark's personality and actions, and it freaks him out. Some one points put once that Dark and Yancy look alike and that they've got matching moles under their eyes and Dark leaves without saying anything, visibly upset, and Yancy starts wearing a bandaid over that cheek every day after. No one brings up that shit again. Dark basically let's Yancy get away with anything around the office, seemingly from a sense of guilt. Funds any ideas he has, let's him get away with bending rules, or beating the shit out of Ed, or whatever. But then Yancy does something minor, or something that puts himself in danger, and Dark starts lecturing, and Yancy gets real pissed off. The office stays tense for several days after every time. I think those are just about the only times at which Wil starts to recognize him. He usually doesn't sit on the thought for very long, as he's prone to do. But maybe he treats Yancy to a little something the next day any time one of those arguments goes down. It helps a bit, for both of them.

I don't think he knows the details of what went down in the manor, or that he's seen Mark since, or that he knows about Dark and Mark's whole fucking thing, and I hate to think about how incredibly badly it would go if he did find out.

[dykelawlight]

2. job headcanon

for mikami or light?? so interested in ur law experience here!

Oh love this!! I think Mikami is exceptionally good at his job and probably a good guy to have as a coworker. Passionate about the work, keeps his head down, in it because he genuinely wants change (which is about as good as you can ask for from a prosecutor, even though the "change" isn't reform lmfao 🙄) etc. etc. He's on the young end for an attorney, having passed the bar right out of college (though I believe it's more common in Japan to go directly to law school from college rather than returning as an adult, since many people don't go at all and rather take the preliminary qualifying exam for the bar, which does not require a law degree ⁠— Mikami may or may not [depending on whether you go by the manga or anime timeline] have attended law school as a graduate program anyway bc the law school system was not instituted in Japan until 2004), which means he might have to work a little harder to be respected by his colleagues as a whippersnapper fresh out of the year-long prosecutor training program. However, I think his colleagues probably admire his work ethic, even if he's unlikely to join the rest of the office for drinks ⁠— so, respected and liked well enough by the people he works with, but still kind of socially unpopular just because of his own standoffish tendencies. He maybe has freaked somebody out individually by saying some surprisingly aggressive shit about the nature of good and evil and how evil deeds should be punished but frankly dudes like that are a dime a dozen in prosecutorial and police offices so it's probably whatever.

He's a total fucking pit bull in court and imo probably really good at telling a compelling story to the judge since his passion for obtaining what he views as justice for victims is so real and close to his heart. I imagine him as a real firebrand who almost transforms from this solemn, mild-mannered guy to this vibrant, angry advocate who's very capable of swaying a jury and really demonstrates the emotional basis for his Kira fanaticism. But he's not purely an emotional performer ⁠— his arguments are airtight from a legal perspective, even though his written voice is probably kind of dry and lacking in any particular linguistic flair. People who have only met him in a courtroom context are often surprised at what he's like in his day-to-day life, but they wouldn't be if they'd ever read his legal briefs, lmao.

I like to imagine Light in a non- or post-Kira AU going on to join a Japanese intelligence agency like the Public Security Bureau of either the NPA or the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, specifically in a line of work like the TMPD PSB's Fourth Foreign Affairs Division handling global counterterrorism efforts. I imagine this because I think it would be funny. I also think he would be well-qualified for a role of that type (The Global Terrorism Is Coming From Inside The House) and would have the nepotism bonus from his dad lmfao, and would additionally probably really enjoy it when it was exciting and politely tolerate the boring parts. I think he'd be well-liked and admired by his peers, as usual ⁠— we can see the way the task force treats him for evidence of this. He's a hard, competent worker and a friendly guy, so I imagine he moves up the ranks relatively quickly. (Also, the PSB building is right by the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office, so if Mikami ever moves out of Kyoto and gets a job over there, I know they're making out in the courtyard and shit.)

[bawkrya]

🥛

hi. im finally here to rant about something unrelated to flight rising at all whatsoever. 

i actually do have fan dragons of the bitches im abt to talk about though

original sin.............. 2018......................... the cdrama...........

the following is going to be pure and utter delusion as the actual show itself is a little ass, again was made in 2018, and was directed by a 54 yr old man that unironically believed early 20 yr olds of 2018 were wearing victorian deathly ill childrens pajamas to bed with fringes.

actual cws: OS is a crime show and handles pretty intense cases. primary stuff i can think of off the top of my head is SA/CSA, child neglect, serial killer who targeted young girls/women. and. i think that is it. asides from like mild gore bt im not posting screenshots of the show thts showing tht LMFAO. I wont be going into INTENSE detail abt these things but some of it is unfortunately plot relevant

so these are my babygirls

Chi Zhen (Left) & Lu Li (Right)

brief summary of Original Sin before i get down to it: Chi Zhen was a previous lawyer that did shady shit in court in order to bring justice to his clients when the judicial system wouldnt do it, it pisses off Lu Li (cop bitch) mostly bc he jst doesnt know the context of chi zhen pulling all of tht shit and lu li is like i will put you in jail. Bitch. they literally get into a fist fight after court once iirc bc lu li has ~~~anger issues~~~ (its a watered down version of what anger issues actually are and is only used so he can beat up chi zhen. and also “bad cop” trope. he has knocked the shit out of a suspect before)

anyways chi zhen eventually Does get arrested bc he gets caught helping one of his clients get rid of her husbands body, whom she had killed out of, iirc, self defense bc she was being abused, but the court was siding with the husband as he was u kno, dead. im pretty sure thats the part where lu li gives chi zhen a black eye. etc. but yeah chi zhen goes to jail for three years

after that hes tasked with taking care of a night club (that they VERY desperately wanted to be a strip club but im 100% sure censors said no), a cafe, and some other fucking building?? i dont even remember bc they never showed it but anyways one of the ladies at the night club is killed (not at the club) and turns out whoops! lu li is the head investigator of the case. and chi zhen gets dragged into it bc the guy hes watching these businesses for threatens to tell Mr. Chen who is Chi Zhens Boss Guy From Jail. (mr chen is like..... LITERALLY WE DONT EVEN KNO WE’RE NEVER GIVEN CONTEXT AS TO WHO HE IS AND WHY HE HAS SO MUCH POWER. obviously hes rich but hesj ust given No background. #@%$^&)

one thing leads to another, Dong Lingqi/Chief Dong basically blackmails chi zhen into becoming an officer to be partnered up with Lu Li bc wht do u kno they work well together and end up solving the case of one of his workers deaths within like. three days. chief dong is another we-dont-know-why-he-has-power guy. and Yes hes literally the damn. chief police guy, but its implied he had power before he even went into the police force frm Mr. Chen, and goes by the name Pixiu, BUT WE DONT KNOW WHYYYYY

anwyays so the whole show is chilu bonding (we dont see it on screen as they devote too much time to the side story case plots), them beating each other up, etc but oh fuck plot twist! and honest to god i actually like this twist bc generally i fucking hate cop shows but this one was so interesting: Lu Ziming, Lu Li’s dad, killed Chi Zhen’s older sister. And only Chi Zhen is aware of this for a long time in the show, and Chief Dong tries to use this as a motivator for chi zhen to fucking murk lu li in order to avenge his sister. chief dong has a tendency to kill his cops.

i genuinely. cant properly summarize this show like theres a LOT im leaving out there but i want to talk abt my genuine delusion rewrite that dissects every damn aspect of this show and emphasizes it.

1. women are not given enough screentime. oh my god women arent given enough screentime.

Chi Wen, Chi Zhen’s older sister, literally was the domino that lead to Everything that happened in original sin but All we know about her is that she was a piano prodigy (Lu Ziming was her piano teacher) & that she had a boyfriend.        that is it. i wouldve REALLY liked to see her dynamic with her family, as she came across as very loving in the few scenes we had, and iirc she couldnt do the whole um. there was a thing that was out of country re piano shit but i believe for family reasons she couldnt leave the country. but. She was their mothers favorite child. and its so blatantly obvious. theres NO proper discussion of it because it leans heavy into Chi Zhen still caring for his mother bc shes family, despite her Literally not giving a singular fuck about him. like he’ll try to speak and she’ll start going on about Chi Wen even tho its been. what. two decades

i wouldnt have a problem with that specifically but asides from a singular meltdown that chi zhen has while drunk, i dont think chi wen’s impact is discussed enough whatsoever.

Also i wouldve liked a ghost girl angle bc i am just so obsessed with Girl Who Has Made Her Situation Everyones Problem bc she deserves that and i think it would fuck with chi zhen mentally and i am only here to make him worse. also in my rewrite, she has parallels with lu lis daughter Yinuo.

i have Very specific thoughts about like. how she interacted with her family, her friends, and how as a ghost it wld specifically taunt chi zhen. ofc she doesnt mean to taunt but chi zhen is so fucked brain wise that it manifests into that. (i could go on about chi zhens neglect during childhood for hours because its so prevalent in the show but again its never explored deeply, and its surprising bc chi zhen has a lot more development than lu li does)

like. this goes for all of the mental illness/trauma responses in the show. but all of it is SUPER surface level and it just drives me fucking insane. 

the next woman who should have had disproportionately more screen time than she got is Wu Wenxuan, aka Lu Li’s ex wife.

Wu Wenxuan’s case is another pivotal plot point that becomes relevant in the end of the show, but gist of it (and CW for SA/Murder), she was orphaned really young and adopted by a couple who previously werent able to conceive their own kid. they end up conceiving their own kid and begin to neglect her. SA occurs. she kills her entire family while in nursing school and manages to get away with it because she copies everything that a serial killer at the time had been doing. 

Lu Li was the head investigator of this case as well. and its just. THEIR STORY IS SO DAMN SUS AND IT MAKES ME SOOOO ANGRYYYYYYYY

within three months of the case getting closed. THEY GET MARRIED. AND WWX IS ALREADY KNOCKED UP. ?????? and only ONE person from the PD is suspicious of it. ONE. and honestly its not even THAT part that gets me angry its the fact they got MARRIED within three months AND DIVORCE A YEAR LATER??#!$%$@^?%#^ the director did lu li SO fucking dirty its insane but also i hate het couples that move on that quickly like are you fucking insane. are you insane. ive been with my boyfriend Two Years and marriage is Nowhere that close in our brains. 

anwyays so like wu wenxuan is just. a tool for lu lis man pain. for some reason wwx has Full custody of their daughter Yinuo even though theres no logical reason why lu li shouldnt have at least visitation (which. he doesnt), bc i know damn well lu li wouldve fought w everything in him to get at least partial custody of yinuo. so theres just weird fucking scenes of him agonizing over losing his wife and kid. also wu wenxuan remarries not even a year after getting divorced. i fucking hate this director so bad.

BT JST. wu wenxuan was There when cz and ll were first starting to interact. she was there when lu li was partnered with chu dao (lu lis ex cop partner that was fucking murked (it is rumored that lu li killed him) (lu li did not kill him)). Why does she only have ONE fucking conversation with chi zhen and thats ONLY when her case re her family is starting to come back up. you’re genuinely telling me chi zhen doesnt try to get information about lu li out of her at Any point.

that convo they had was ass anyways bc somehow lu li just Knew chi zhen was there and they had that cis man intimidation thing where they stand and stare at each other while making passive aggressive comments idk i dont remember the scene pissed me off.

but anywyas i jst wished we couldve seen more on her side of things? honest to god it doesnt even make sense why her and lu li got together bc theres no way like. she doesnt know about lu lis dad. who was a serial killer and rapist. i just really think that would hit too close and i think she would want to Avoid Anything even REMOTELY like that? like i love the wwx/ll in my brain but canon wwx/ll is so fucking confusing i hate it so much

she jst shouldve had more participation in the overall plot instead of just being Lu Li’s Man Angst, like i want to see who she is outside of all this shit too?? from wht we can tell she’s a good mom, she went into nursing, and ALLL tht like....... give me who she is away from lu li and away frm her past. Please.

the THIRD woman who shouldve had more screen time is sophie and she ALSO upsets me bc shes another character thats solely there to be a love interest for one of the men.

shes like. 100% a character they only made so censorship wouldnt snipe them for the main two guys. im sorry. its so blatantly obvious it makes me so fucking mad. and i LOVE HER!!!!!!! SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES LITERALLY MY FAVORITE CHARACTER NEXT TO CHILU!!!!!

All we know about sophie is that she had Just started working at the club when Lily, the worker of Chi Zhen’s that got murdered, had been killed. she shared an apartment with lily, and remained relevant Only really for that case. she would pop up every now and then but only as Chi Zhen needed her for other cases. nothing else. we’re even shown that chilu text each other significantly more than chi zhen even talks to sophie. #@%$^&

sophie does get re-employed at the cafe after chi zhen loses his job at the night club, but like. she doesnt come back fully until the last case, which concerns wu wenxuan. and it is LITERALLY just so she can ogle chi zhen and very suddenly ~want a family~. WE WERE NEVER GIVEN THT CHARACTERIZATION FOR HER BEFORE! like they literally tried to “pretend” to be a couple but u kno how tht goes sophie got too caught up in it.

and there IS like a scene of sophie and chi zhen getting drunk together but 1. thats when he has his drunk spiel about how lonely he is and how hehas no one to rely on. 2. he calls sophie annoying. perhaps i was just bullied as a child but if im offering some fucking man emotional support and he calls me annoying as a joke i would have kicked his ass out of my apartment. im like PRETTY sure it was sophies alcohol they were drinking too like get the fuck out. Asshole. SHE WAS EVEN LIKE. SHOCKED WHEN HE SAID THT TOO AND NOT IN A PLAYFUL WAY? LIKE SHE RLLY THOUGHT SHE WAS BEING REJECTED. but then he kisses her. bro i would have killed myself in front of him and changed his life before his eyes.

anyways yeah sophie was just a sidekick/love interest for chi zhen and it makes me mad bc while im not against them as a pairing At all its just that the director hd no actual investment in her. she was literally only made to cover up the bromance shit for the main guys.

what i WOULDVE liked to see is her maybe doing the club/cafe shit part time while she went to college full time? chi zhen was a lawyer. make her someone who admired his work before x and x happened, make her have her major concern law, have scenes where chi zhen is lamenting about the new case and how they’re stuck on something, and sophie gives him a new angle to look at. those two GENUINELY have a really good dynamic when sophie isnt suddenly Wannabe Mother and i was expecting her to be a lot more involved throughout the Entirety of the series, not jst the first and last cases....... Please.

i have more thots on her specifically but its more connected to um. sochilu. polycule

another character who shouldve gotten more is Wen Maoling simply because i think she is very lovely and she showed us that chi zhen is into dominate women and i think thats funny. i dont have too many thoughts for her unfortunately but shes involved in the evidence department of the PD and i was hoping She would also have more screentime because of such but alas.

last lady character: Yinuo. my little baby yinuo.

she is wu wenxuans & Lu Lis daughter and she was written so damn poorly even though shes QUITE LITERALLY 4 because the director just has?? no fucking idea how children work???? LIKE ANY TIME A CHILD WAS ON SCREEN IT WAS JUST BAD. but anyways i mentioned prior that i wouldve liked parallels between her and Chi Wen, moreso in how they act

i think yinuo would lean more on the assertive side just because of who her parents are, so i think she’d b a bossy lil kid, but at the same time Because Of Who Her Parents Are i think she’d be very kind. also bc of chi zhen. HER AND CHI ZHEN SHOULDVE HAD SOOOO MUCH MORE INTERACTION IT DRIVES ME INSANE. chi zhen literally just Heard that lu li had a kid and he bought her one of those big ass expensive doll houses. Immediately. like he hadnt even seen a picture of her yet he jst knew lu li had a daughter.

bt for my rewrite he’s really doting on kids and in turn doting on yinuo and hes u kno uncle chi bt ithink tht could turn into reminding him of Chi Wen. “but chi wen was older than him” listen. it would be like assuming cws role. you know. not in that yinuo reminds him of himself, but in that he’s doing the little tricks that cw used to soothe him for yinuo, hes spoiling her like cw spoiled him, etc etc.. i dont think he would want kids of his own, but he very much spoils every kid he meets Because of chi wen, and because he doesnt want kids to go through what he did. like. if lu li tries to put yinuo down chi zhen would immediately pick her back up. “shes almost 5 u dont need to be carrying her all of the time “ well little baby kids need affection........ ok ......................

i also jst think tht yinuo being freakishly smart would be a funny little thing to do. i like 2 think that lu lis mom used to be a music teacher as well, so yinuo is learning the flute, and shes REALLY good at it, but also she’s looked over cases (that lu li lets her look at) for HOURS at a time with her dad bc he has a lil office w all his docs in my rewrite so even SHE can give little tidbits of something that might be happening when lu li is agonizing over a case. of course, shes still a child, its not going to be right 90% of the time, but its still a new perspective that can be worth looking at for more minor cases. 

in my rewrite shes actually around like 7 so shes a lil older than canon but idk i love characters who have little daughters........ especially when they can be little rambunctious daughters........

and in ref to my rewrite i make lu li and wu wenxuan have 50/50 custody bc it jst. does NOT make sense to me why lu li doesnt have Any custody in canon. she’ll stay w one parent one week, the other parent the next, etc.. She also has the master bedroom in lu lis apartment and its filled to the brim w 90% of her toys. (lu li has the other two bedrooms, his personal room then an office, the bathroom connects the two rooms which is why he took those).

god. ok. i think thats everything concerning my ladies. i Think.

now onto the most. insufferable sopping wet men who are the stars of this show.

this is not in the show the actors for these two just REALLY liked kissing each other during the promo/premier whatever it was (but also chi zhen DOES fake lu li out of a kiss? and it was the one scene out of the entire show that lu li thinks back on when he thinks chi zhen is fucking dead. ?!?@$?%#^$)

anyways ive mentioned before right. Chi Zhen is a lawyer. Lu Li is a cop. i hate the latter fact so in my rewrite. ive changed it up.

Ive changed a lot ofthings up

this is just a timeline for what happens Pre OS. and i dont even have everything down. like this is still bare bones to me timeline wise. Right. 

but anyways, chi zhen remains a lawyer throughout the rewrite, but its not his primary job. He still very much takes care of the club and cafe, and takes on more minor cases that Mr. Chen specifically requests that he picks up, and said cases are usually so that Mr. Chen can get his own men out of trouble. 

Lu Li becomes a Private Investigator after his mentor (Chief Zhang) and previous partner (Chu Dao) are murdered, especially when their deaths are brushed off as Chief Dong gets promoted to Chief. theres plenty of other instances where he believe proper justice wasnt served that pushes him to separate himself from the PD, but he does still work with a Select Few people in order to find evidence for his cases. Wen Maoling and Eggwaffle namely (ignore his nickname) are two he stays in contact with along with the coroner i cant remember his name right now. 

Lu Li is. very borderline obsessed with chi zhen in the rewrite. again chi zhen was notorious for pulling loopholes and very unconventional means of winning his cases, and it was always rumored he was doing dirty work to win his cases. So Lu Li already had an eye on him before he even went to jail. This shit is magnified the second chi zhen is reinstated as a lawyer. and u might be like. how the fuck did chi zhen come back as a lawyer if he was caught hiding a fucking body.

Well. Again, he is connected to Mr. Chen in jail, and in some way, Mr. Chen is connected to Pixiu, aka Chief Dong. In the rewrite, CZ doesnt serve the full three years of jailtime, because evidence of CZ being “framed” comes up. aka they forged evidence in order to get him out and to make him their personal lawyer. so CZ does manage to get out, and hes compensated for his time in prison, but Lu Li is still very suspicious of everything, especially what they claim to be evidence. CZ himself is even alarmed that it was even pulled off at All bc he wouldnt have tried that shit himself at All.

but again. Mr. Chen and Chief Dong have connections throughout the PD, and in turn im sure that would lead into connections with certain judges.

in this ive made Mr. Chen more of a broker of sorts, but hes still involved with a lot of crime. He doesn’t generally touch murder, but he does do “loans”, drug related shit, etc. etc. and Pixiu Came from that kind of business. Pixiu specifically though was raised rich and he fully intends to remain rich while maintaining power over the legal system where he can. But! Mr. Chen being a broker/loan shark is actually how I have Chi Zhen’s father AND Lu Ziming involved with Mr. Chen. Now.

Chi Zhen wasn’t aware that his father had been involved with this sort of shit. In Canon, his father literally dips the second CZs mom gets Mystery Illness, but in my rewrite he is murdered by Lu Ziming-- something that chi zhen isnt aware of for a good while, but he does know that his father was murdered. As far as he knew, his father was a laborer that ended up in the wrong spot at the wrong time, not someone who was trying to get SOMEONE (lu ziming) to pay their debts. 

Lu ziming specifically was taking these loans Mostly for his own studio right, but also to help him cover up the fact he was, you know, a fucking serial killer. He got his own family set up with the money he got from Mr. Chen’s people, but he wasnt making enough back quickly in order to pay Mr. Chen off. which is how chi zhens dad gets involved in trying to get the debt paid.

But. czs dad finds lzm as lzm as literally murking one of his victims. and what do u kno. lzm manages to kill czs dad (who ive named Chi Yin. Actually). in order to get mr chen off of his ass, lzm specifically delivers cy’s body To mr chens base at the time as a sort of threat.

Chi Yin in this like.......... he was close friends with mr chen, and he was responsible for a lot of financial shit. He kept track of everything in relation to that, so this was VERY much a hard hit for mr chen. SURPRISINGLY though this isnt why Mr Chen chooses Chi Zhen specifically when he ends up in jail-- he didnt even realize Chi Yin had kids until Chief Dong Kindly fills him in on the situation. and of course. he used that as a way to pin Lu Li under more eyes.

LZM isnt exactly touchable. he Is in jail, but because of who he is, what hes done, and how others in jail might react to him, hes kept in a highly secured section of the prison by himself. And he still cares about his son, even though in my vers Lu Li specifically disowns him! so Lu Li is the target most are trying to go for if they want revenge of Any sort. which Mr Chen And Chi Zhen want.

On top of this, Chief Dong specifically wants Lu Li dead because he was behind the murders of Chief Zhang and Chu Dao, and Lu Li is getting REALLY close to figuring this out as of the start of the rewrite, so hes doing everything in his power to get this mf killed. Mr Chen also helped with the murders of Chief Zhang and Chu dao, so its just another reason for him to get rid of Lu Li, because his whole operation could be flipped if Lu Li decided to release Anything.

So. the rewrite rlly focuses on them using each other, them using chi zhen and wu wenxuan, etc etc against lu li, all the while lu li is solving more and more shit and finding out more and more information. It also devotes more focus to the characters themselves instead of the sidecases becoming a main focus like in theshow bc it jst. @$#%$ PISSED ME OFF! A lot of development ended up shafted because of how much they focused on the cases, esp in relation to how Chi Zhen and Lu Li bond and how things behind closed doors develop.

but yeah i just make them a lot worse. like they kind of hate each other and beat each other up in the show but i make them obsessed with each other and they Still beat each other up but its got more sexual tension LOL. i do still make them bond, its a prime enemies to lovers to enemies to friends to lovers to Fucking Dead sort of deal but. etcccc

and ive mentioned it several times. Chi zhen does “die” but also no he doesnt. i dont think it was an intentional fake death, but chi zhen gets gut stabbed by some guy who had harassed sophie (and he had defended sophie from the guy) and disappears for a good year before coming back. Season two WAS supposed to go over this comeback as the ending of the show literally shows us him coming back as a cliff hanger but then um chi zhens actor got into some shit and well s2 is not coming. which is honestly where im stumped in my rewrite but at the same time theres still a LOT of stuff to develop just with the first season. You know.

like a big thing that im trying to get details nailed into is some of the symbolism. In the first episode of the show, Mr Chen is introduced while fishing. and i love me some fucking fish symbolism. but as he’s talking to chi zhen he makes an example out of the fish for if Chi Zhen doesnt get the case concerning lily solved: he cuts off the head of the fish. And it wasnt a clean cut, which is something i think was supposed to be emphasized-- he wasnt going to let chi zhen out peacefully if he let the case went cold, he would make sure chi zhen suffered if he didnt get them out of the water.

so the angle im taking rn is that Chi Zhen is bait. CZ in the show dresses as flamboyantly as they could (i dont think the costuming had ever seen a gay man but that was the prompt they were given by the director and by god they tried their best), and while the colors lean towards the dark side, theyre still a lot more colorful than Lu Li’s wardrobe. Granted! In my rewrite i make him a lot sluttier and brighter, so he fits the Bait title more appearance wise. But again, he is bait, and he is bait for Lu Li, the fish in this situation

but Chi Zhen is lead to believe that he is the fisherman. he believes hes using other people as bait in order to catch and corner lu li, and Mr Chen takes every advantage of that that he feasibly can until Chi Zhen is shown the harsh reality that hesthe one being used. but again. Mr Chen and Chief Dong are the fishermen in this case. They are not. Wu Wenxuan is also another form of bait in the rewrite, but shes more aware of her position in the chain, and it leads to u kno more complications bc she can steer the situation how She wants to better.

bc of this angle ive been basing their clothes off of different styles of bait and different fish. in the ideal world i finally breakdown and make this shit into a comic of sorts, their color palettes would be following such. but again this is still heavy development bc im intending to put Research into the fish and baits that i use as reference LMFAO.

another thing that follows this and smth ive mentioned is Chi Wen as a ghost that is haunting Chi Zhen. i just like psychological horror. Her appearing as hallucinations to freak him out, guide him, etc. is smth iwant to write in rlly bad bc it could also just key the audience more into what had happened when she was killed, instead of the direct information dump they sort of did when it came to her case. mysterious ghost girls is my favorite thing.

Also in relation to her, I have chi zhen wear one of those little necklaces u kno the one tht has matching halves. He had one that matched his sister, and Chi Wen is still wearing said necklace. in the rewrite when he becomes like.... consoled re his sisters death, he gives his necklace to yinuo as a little gift. U kno. but thts like late story for it.

in general tho colors also wld have a rlly big significance bt again i think tht wld be more obvious when it comes to like..... a comic version of this rewrite. i rlly dont think ill go thru w a full thing but if i do write it i Do want to make some pages to implement w the writing bc some things r just visual u kno.......

but. i think that is The Most General take on my rewrite for original sin that I can offer. ifanyone actually read all of this i will kiss you on the mouth. also if you’d like to inquiry specific parts (ex sochilu and how their relationship works in the rewrite, stuff about yinuo, who mr chen and chief dong are, who chilus parents are, etcccc) u can send a milk emote w the character name/question to @mingjue and i will give. an equally long fucking rant about it. im genuinely so obsessed w this damn rewrite i Will get it written one day i mean it so bad.

these men haunt me