#louisa but less cruel

[xxsmoko-n-mirrorsxx]

Murder Drones roleplay for @zombied-drone-maid - Cyn First Timeline- Gold and Gold, A heart less cold

Louisa loved her days off from doing James' work. She decided it was a self care day today, so she sat at her vanity mirror. Louisa took off her hat, setting it aside. She took out the bobbypins holding her hair back, and let down a cascade of artificially coloured golden blonde hair,gracing her upper back like a beautiful sun-spun wavy veil.

She smiled at her reflection, feeling vulnerable but comfortable with that right now.

She looked for something on the dresser desk, thinking about how nice it was having more time with James around since Cyn came along. The Elliott Family matriarch looked up after finding her favourite skin care cream and saw in the mirror's reflection Cyn out in the hallway.

"Goodness, Cyn! Don't sneak up on me like that!" Louisa laughed in shock. She got off the ottoman in front of her dresser and approached Cyn, getting down to her level

[navigatebetweenthelines]

Because a lot of you seem to be conflating intelligence to mean a single thing im going ro spell it out for you

DAZAI!

quick on his feet. He reads body language pretty well. he knows what to expect. His disadvantage is that he tends to project his own expectations onto others and this clouds his judgement. He is "intelligent" in the way thar he has a great capacity to improvise in tricky situations. He doesn't know everything he just always makes sure to have a plan B C D E F and G. Thats it

RANPO!

he knows all the facts about any given situation. His biggest disadvantages are that his judgement is shoddy at best and he doesn't always know what to do with that information. He is used to disregarding information for the sake of peace but that often means he ends up too close to the wrong people. He forgives EVERYONE he gives everyone a second chance. For as much as he sees the bad in a person he sees the good. He is unreliable and inconsistent. The good this about him is that as soon as he realizes his mistake he never makes it again.

POE!

JUSTTT as smart as Ranpo. He can GATHER as much information as Ranpo but it takes more effort. He has a lot of resources and technical know how. He knows technology, he knows politics, international law and most importantly people. His biggest advantage is that he knows exactly how to pressure people into doing what he wants. His mysteries are tailor made so that people can only escape when they realize what he wants them to. It is becuase of this that he saw society as a farce. That's why Ranpo and him are such a good team. Ranpo can see everything and Poe knows what to do with it.

Louisa!!!

She can slow down time when she's focused THAT'S her ability. She is capable of thinking of every possibility and coming up with dependable statistics. She's smarter than Dazai but less of an asset because her analysis relies on what she is aware of. In the world of BSD there is ALWAYS something no one is aware of. She isn't as capable of recovering quickly from a miscalculation so she really only has one shot.

Chuuya!!!

He doesnt need to use his intelligence most of the time because he can pretty much brute force his way out of most things. His intellegence relies on instinct. He has GREAT instincts. He knows when a situation has gone sour. Of course he doesnt usually verbalize it because with Dazai he doesn't need to and when he's alone why would he announce it to an enemy. He knows when he's safe and when he isn't. His biggest disadvantage is that he doesn't always listen to those instincts. In terms of priorities he almost always puts himself last and that leads to a lot of problems.

NIKOLAI!!!

Nikolai is similar to Chuuya except a bit more extreme because no one's life is his priority. His motivations are unclear and he always goes for the most imoral option. He isn't concerned with a specific desired outcome it is the inconsistency of his own actions that drive him.

FYODOR!!!

Kinda like Poe, in that he knows how to work people, but to a lesser extent and a little like the chameleon that Dazai can be but to a greater extent: he KNOWS people. He knows what a person wants more than anything and he promises that to them.

His biggest advantage is that he is smart enough to ally himself with people who have nothing else to live for. Sigma, Nikolai, Bram (before Aya), Nathaniel and Fukuchi are all outsiders. They are alone but desperately want to feel like they belong. Fyodors biggest disadvantage is that if those people find belonging elsewhere his influence on them shatters. He seems to be aware of that? Idk it's too soon to tell.

Mori!!!

He isn't crazy smart. He's just sadistic and cruel. He picks easy targets (children) and slowly takes away their agency. He undoes them until they have nothing to live for and they then become perfectly obedient adults. His biggest disadvantage is that he relies on the chain of abuse and that isn't sustainable as a dynamic for power. Chuuya and Akutagawa have no one above them to preassure them to listen to orders now that Dazai is gone. Also the extreme amounts of abuse he relies on is impossible to ditch out to EVERYONE. That's why he relied on the chain of abuse but that's failing. Mori isn't smart. He's a coward. He takes the shortest path no matter the resistance.

FUKUCHI!!

isn't smart either. He is just THE BEST chameleon. He hid in plain sight. He knows war and war tactics. He's a great spy and facilitating a strong bond with the target is a spy strategy.

They are not all the same stop conflating their perspectives as "knows everything". It leads to a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of misinformation. DAZAI IS NOT RANPO! He doesnt know everything. He's just really good at pretending he does.

[bethanydelleman]

I read Behind a Mask, or A Woman's Power by Louisa May Alcott and it was great! Thanks to those who suggested it. Spoilers!

It reminded me a lot of Lady Susan by Jane Austen, especially the letters to a confidant at the end. I feel like Jean Muir did more with far less than Lady Susan, as while both are poor, with a past that may catch up to them, Lady Susan had status and beauty which Jean Muir only could pretend to possess.

Lady Susan and Jean Muir were also similar in how angry they often were and how perfectly they were able to conceal their true emotions. I loved how angry Jean was in the end letters. They also had my favourite line:

One is engaged to a handsome iceberg, but that only renders him more interesting in my eyes...

It was fun how Jean Muir worked her way up the ladder, captivating the second son, first son/heir, and then Sir John.

I'm not sure how I feel about Jean herself. In the same way that I like Lady Susan, I feel like if a woman can manage to capture a baronet, more power to her. And I actually think Jean will keep being kind to Sir John, she isn't as emotionless and cruel as Lady Susan (whom I suspect of being a black widow). She will have to be one of those wives who never lets her husband see her without makeup though! And she seems to have done a good job governessing for what that is worth.

I suspected Jean was going for Sir John but I thought Edward died in the train crash, so that was a surprising twist. It was interesting that we knew Jean was a fraud from the beginning (also very Lady Susan).

Next is A Long, Fatal Love Chase!

[pagetreader]

"I've come to pay my respects,” he answered lowly, “Surely, that isn't a crime? And most especially, when it's towards the man for whom I lost my livelihood."

It was no secret what he’d done to protect her brother’s memory. When Louisa had heard about it, she thought of writing to him, but ultimately decided against it, believing that her correspondence would only serve to upset him in some way. He didn’t need further reminders of their mistakes. 

“Of course not,” she replied, cautiously closing the gap between them and kneeling to place the bouquet on the marker. For a moment it was quiet, all but the distant sounds of birdcalls carried by the wind. 

“What you did…the things you said…” she began, unable to conjure the right words to express her gratitude, “Thank you…for defending him. It means more than you could possibly know.” 

"Every great triumph comes at an equally great cost. I hope you know that your brother's death has long since haunted me...and not just because of the stripes upon my back." 

Louisa grimaced at the thought of the scars he permanently bore because of her cruel spite. 

"In another life, we could have been friends. Despite our political differences, I sensed a kinship and respect that's rarely found in another man…”

“Your friend Hamilton wrote, ‘Never perhaps did any man suffer death with more justice, or deserve it less.’ He has a gift with words…and a flare for the dramatics, even for the topic of death. Still, Andre would have commended him – and I believe he commended you as well…” 

“I spoke with him before his death and found nothing but admiration. And in a way, with so much distance between myself and the fighting, it can be difficult to remember why his death was necessary."

His admittance caused her heartache. 

"Traitor! Turncoat!"

Before Louisa could so much as react, a rock struck Tallmadge as several civilians neared them, indistinctly spitting their scorn and jeering with raised fists. Louisa put her hands on his shoulders, intending to quickly assess the damage but was instead taken by the hand. 

"Come with me. You can hate me all you wish, but at least let me help you out of here!"

“We’ll go to my house. It isn’t far,” she insisted, “Down that street there. Let’s hurry.” 

–

Louisa’s home, referred to by the locals as “Joy’s End,” was perhaps at one time a lovely home that one of financial wealth could be proud of, but the outside had since become shabby and the surrounding flora chaotically overgrown as though it were settled in dingy swampland rather than a quaint hamlet. Inside her home there was a sitting room, a dining room, the kitchen, and upstairs were two bedrooms and a library. Every room was dark, curtains shut tight, and inaccessible to natural light, as though it were perpetually night. 

Other than a maid who would come to clean twice a week, Louisa hadn’t hosted a single person in her home. No one would dare walk the halls that belonged to a British woman who had hoped for the Americans to lose their war, let alone be kind as she lived to take advantage of the freedoms they fought for. It mattered not if they knew her reasoning. They didn’t care, but truthfully, she didn’t either. 

Let them talk and spread their false rumors and accusations. Louisa didn’t need them. The only people she cared to speak to were either across the sea or buried six feet deep. 

Once the tea was boiled, she poured him a cup, took her place beside him on the cabriole, and took a better look at his wound, a fine diagonal cut along his right eyebrow. Thankfully, it hadn’t done damage to his eye.  

“The good news is I don’t believe you’ll need stitching, but please let me know if you suddenly feel woozy or ill.”

The years that followed were not kind. Despite giving his everything -- blood, sweat, tears, family and friends to the Cause, his fellow countrymen did not deign him worthy of the same respect. Or at least, not after his so-called betrayal.

In the matter of awarding John Andre's captors, Benjamin could not remain silent. No, he spoke out, and quite vociferously, about how they were not men of honor, but thieves. He could not forget how one of the so-called heroes had been wearing Andre's boots upon his arrest. That wasn't an act of valor, but cowardice and self-gain.

Despite the motion being made in Benjamin's favor, the social verdict was far different. He was no longer welcome at parties, greeted congenially in the streets, nor granted the joys of teaching children -- no, his students were ripped right from his clutches, forcing his own schoolhouse to go into ruin. He'd once erected each board himself, and it pained him to have to forever close its doors. After the dissolvement of his financials, Benjamin had no choice but to sell the building to stay afloat.

Several months later, he barely owned a shilling to his name, and only found himself supported by the few friends who dared keep his company. This was why, he supposed, he found himself drawn back to where his ruin all began -- to the man whose end he'd ultimately caused, but now found himself brought to an end, as well.

Standing over top of Major Andre's grave, a solemn comradery could be felt within Benjamin's bones. Even now, he did not wish ill will towards the man. He would not have done anything differently, nor would he have retracted his statement against Andre's captors. Justice, after all, could only truly be determined in the eyes of the Lord.

“What are you doing here?”

The light crunch of shoes against leaves rose above the stillness, but Benjamin did not lift his head -- or at least, not until he recognized her voice -- and slowly, he turned to regard Louisa over his shoulder. His heart twinged at the sight of her standing there, bedecked in mourning-wear even now, so, so many years after her brother's death. It was not suitable to still be closed off to marriage and social mingling, but Benjamin did not blame her for this since he, too, felt as if he were in a perpetual state of mourning.

Turning away, Benjamin lowly replied, "I've come to pay my respects. Surely, that isn't a crime? And most especially, when it's towards the man for whom I lost my livelihood."

Tracing his gaze along the marker, which had clearly been defiled, cleaned, and then defiled again, Benjamin softly offered, "Every great triumph comes at an equally great cost. I hope you know that your brother's death has long since haunted me...and not just because of the stripes upon my back." He exhaled, tucking a hand into his pocket. "In another life, we could have been friends. Despite our political differences, I sensed a kinship and respect that's rarely found in another man... I spoke with him before his death, and found nothing but admiration. And in a way, with so much distance between myself and the fighting, it can be difficult to remember why his death was necessary."

"Traitor! Turncoat!"

Whirling about, Benjamin spun just in time to be struck by a hefty rock. A couple of angry civilians were quickly approaching, and gritting his teeth, he took Louisa's hand and entreated, "Come with me. You can hate me all you wish, but at least let me help you out of here!"

[akitasimblr]

Hiiii. How are you doing? Question time!

Do you feel inspired for your story by TV series and movies? Have you incorporated any of these into your story, like a plot or a character?

hi lu! omg, thank you so much for this question!!

it's not directly tv series/movies, but i seek inspiration for many of my sims in characters from books - basically, british victorian literature -, which have tv/movies adaptations.

many of my sims bios (usually spares) are based on some literature character. mostly because they don't have the support of the challenges goals to make up their personality; so i often recur to books i love to invent their personalities.

my occult legacy spin-off is entirely based on classic gothic books like wuthering heights, frankenstein, the picture of dorian gray - so, the legacy sims in this spin-off will be somewhat inspired by some of those books characters.

for anyone interested in my ramblings 😉:

charlie harper's character was entirely built to be emma woodhouse (emma, jane austen);

isaura harper had a bit of helen graham (the tenant of wildfell hall, anne bronte) in her character construction;

ulysses harper would be a sort of edward ferrars (sense and sensibility, jane austen) or a male version of fanny price (mansfield park, jane austen);

zelda harper has a lot of jo march (little women, louisa may alcott) and elizabeth bennet (pride and prejudice, jane austen) in her;

grace harper was inspired in marianne dashwood (sense and sensibility, jane austen);

leo harper was developed to become a less vain version of sir walter elliot, (persuasion, jane austen);

paris harper has some hints of pip (great expectations, charles dickens);

katherine harper is heavily inspired in catherine morland (northanger abbey, jane austen);

heathcliff harper is absolutely inspired in emily bronte's heathcliff (wuthering heights, emily bronte) but my clee-clee is not cruel;

stella harper was heavily influenced by mary datcher (night and day, virginia woolf).

and that's all i can think of now... i really loved this question!! 😊

[aion-rsa]

Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor

https://ift.tt/2URb21b

As recently as September 2020 David Tennant topped a Radio Times poll of favourite Doctors. He beat Tom Baker in a 2006 Doctor Who Magazine poll, and was voted the best TV character of the 21st Century by the readers of Digital Spy. He was the Doctor during one of Doctor Who‘s critical and commercial peaks, bringing in consistently high ratings and a Christmas day audience of 13.31 million for ‘Voyage of the Damned’, and 12.27 million for his final episode, ‘The End of Time – Part Two’. He is the only other Doctor who challenges Tom Baker in terms of associated iconography, even being part of the Christmas idents on BBC One as his final episodes were broadcast. Put simply, the Tenth Doctor is ‘My Doctor’ for a huge swathe of people and David Tennant in a brown coat will be the image they think of when Doctor Who is mentioned.

In articles to accompany these fan polls, Tennant’s Doctor is described as ‘amiable’ in contrast to his predecessor Christopher Eccleston’s dark take on the character. Ten is ‘down-to-earth’, ‘romantic’, ‘sweeter’, ‘more light-hearted’ and the Doctor you’d most want to invite you on board the TARDIS. That’s interesting in some respects, because the Tenth Doctor is very much a Jekyll and Hyde character. He’s handsome, he’s charismatic, and travelling with him can be addictively fun, but he is also casually cruel, harshly dismissive, and lacking in self-awareness. His ego wants feeding, and once fed, can have destructive results.

That tension in the character isn’t due to bad writing or acting. Quite the contrary. Most Doctors have an element of unpleasantness to their behaviour. Ever since the First Doctor kidnapped Ian and Barbara, the character has been moving away from the entitled snob we met him as, but can never escape it completely.

Six and Twelve were both written to be especially abrasive, then soften as time went on (with Colin Baker having to do this through Big Finish audio plays rather than on telly). A significant difference between Twelve and Ten, though, is that Twelve questions himself more. Ten, to the very end, seems to believe his own hype.

The Tenth Doctor’s duality is apparent from his first full appearance in 2005’s ‘The Christmas Invasion’. Having quoted The Lion King and fearlessly ambled through the Sycorax ship in a dressing gown, he seems the picture of bonhomie, that lighter and amiable character shining through. Then he kills their leader. True, it was in self-defence, but it was lethal force that may not have been necessary. Then he immediately topples the British Prime Minister for a not dissimilar act of aggression. Immediately we see the Tenth Doctor’s potential for violence and moral grey areas. He’s still the same man who considered braining someone with a rock in ‘An Unearthly Child’. 

Teamed with Rose Tyler, a companion of similar status to Tennant’s Doctor, they blazed their way through time and space with a level of confidence that bordered on entitlement, and a love that manifested itself negatively on the people surrounding them. The most obvious example in Series 2 is ‘Tooth and Claw’, where Russell T. Davies has them react to horror and carnage in the manner of excited tourists who’ve just seen a celebrity. This aloof detachment results in Queen Victoria establishing the Torchwood institute that will eventually split them apart. We see their blinkers on again in ‘Rise of the Cybermen’, when they take Mickey for granted. Rose and the Doctor skip along the dividing line between romance and hubris.

Then, in a Christmassy romp where the Doctor is grieving the loss of Rose, he commits genocide and Donna Noble sucker punches him with ‘I think you need somebody to stop you’. Well-meaning as this statement is, the Doctor treats it as a reason to reduce his next companion to a function rather than a person. Martha Jones is there to stop the Doctor, as far as he’s concerned. She’s a rebound companion. Martha is in love with him, and though he respects her, she’s also something of a prop.

This is the series in which the Doctor becomes human in order to escape the Family of Blood (adapted from a book in which he becomes human in order to understand his companion’s grief, not realising anyone is after him), and is culpable for all the death that follows in his wake. Martha puts up with a position as a servant and with regular racist abuse on her travels with this man, before finally realising at the end of the series that she needs to get out of the relationship. For a rebound companion, Martha withstands a hell of a lot, mostly caused by the Doctor’s failings. 

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Series 4 develops the Doctor further, putting the Tenth’s Doctor’s flaws in the foreground more clearly. Donna is now travelling with him, and simply calls him out on his behaviour more than Rose or Martha did. Nonetheless the Doctor ploughs on, and in ‘Midnight’ we see him reduced to desperate and ugly pleas about how clever he is when he’s put in a situation he can’t talk himself out of.

Rose has also become more Doctor-like while trapped in another reality, and brutally tells Donna that she’s going to have to die in order to return to the original timeline (just as the Doctor tells Donna she’s going to have to lose her memories of travelling with him in order to live her previous life, even as she clearly asks him not to – and how long did the Doctor know he would have to do this for? It’s not like he’s surprised when Donna starts glitching). Tied into this is the Doctor’s belief in his own legend. In ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ he holds a gun to Cobb’s head, then withdraws it and asks that they start a society based on the morals of his actions. You know, like a well-adjusted person does.

What’s interesting here is that despite presenting himself as ‘a man who never would’, the Doctor is a man who absolutely would. We’ve seen him do it. Even the Tenth Doctor, so keen to live up to the absolute moral ideals he espouses, killed the Sycorax leader and the Krillitanes, drove the Cybermen to die of despair, brought the Family of Blood to a quiet village and then disposed of them personally. But Tennant doesn’t play this as a useful lie, he plays it as something the Doctor absolutely believes in that moment, that he is a man who would not kill even as his daughter lies dead. It’s why his picking up a gun in ‘The End of Time’ has such impact. And it makes some sense that the Tenth Doctor would reject violence following a predecessor who regenerated after refusing to commit another double-genocide.

In the series finale ‘Journey’s End‘, Davros accuses the Doctor of turning his friends into weapons. This is because the Doctor’s friends have used weapons against the Daleks who – and I can’t stress this enough – are about to kill everyone in the entire universe. Fighting back against them seems pretty rational. Also – and again I can’t stress this enough – the Daleks are bad. Like, really bad. You won’t believe just how mindbogglingly bad they are. The Doctor has tried to destroy them several times by this point. Here, there isn’t the complication of double-genocide, and instead the very real threat of absolutely everyone in the universe dying. This accusation, that the Doctor turns people into weapons, should absolutely not land.

And yet, with the Tenth Doctor, it does. This is a huge distinction between him and the First Doctor, who had to persuade pacifists to fight for him in ‘The Daleks’.

In ‘The Sontaran Strategem’ Martha compares the Doctor to fire. It’s so blunt it almost seems not worth saying, but it’s the perfect analogy (especially for a show where fire is a huge part of the very first story). Yes, fire shines in dark places, yes it can be a beacon, but despite it being very much fire’s entire deal, people can forget that it burns. And fire has that mythical connection of being stolen from the gods and brought to humanity. The Time Lord Victorious concept fits the Tenth Doctor so well. Of all the Doctors, he’s the most ready to believe in himself as a semi-mythic figure.

Even when regenerating there’s a balance between hero and legend: the Tenth Doctor does ultimately save Wilfred Mott, but only after pointing out passionately how big a sacrifice he’s making. And then he goes to get his reward by meeting all his friends, only to glare at them from a distance. His last words are ‘I don’t want to go’, which works well as clearly being a poignant moment for the actor as well, but in the context of Doctor Who as a whole it renders Ten anomalous: no one else went this unwillingly. And yet, in interviews Russell T. Davies said it was important to end the story with ‘the Doctor as people have loved him: funny, the bright spark, the hero, the enthusiast’.

It’s fascinating then, that this is the Doctor who has been taken to heart by so many viewers because there’s such an extreme contrast between his good-natured front, his stated beliefs, and his actions. He clearly loves Rose and Donna, but leaves them with a compromised version of happiness. They go on extraordinary journeys only to end up somewhere that leaves them less than who they want to be, with Russell T. Davies being more brutally honest than Steven Moffat, who nearly always goes the romance route. Davies once said to Mark Lawson that he liked writing happy endings ‘because in the real world they don’t exist’, but his endings tend towards the bittersweet: Mickey and Martha end up together but this feels like they’re leftovers from the Doctor and Rose’s relationship. The Tenth Doctor doesn’t, as Nine does, go with a smile, but holding back tears.

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It’s a testament to how well written the Tenth Doctor is that the character has this light and shade, and with David Tennant’s immense likeability he can appeal to a wider audience as a result. It’s not surprise he wins all these polls, but I can’t help but feel that if the Doctor arrived and invited me on board the TARDIS, I’d want it to be anyone but Ten.

The post Doctor Who: Perfect 10? How Fandom Forgets the Dark Side of David Tennant’s Doctor appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[brywrites]

Partners in Crime

A/N: This is one of the earliest Reid x Reader stories I wrote and never published, and I figured, why not? Reid and the Reader often go undercover as a couple to bait an unsub, and this time things don’t quite go as planned.  CW: for non-consensual behavior, mild physical abuse, reference to rape

-

It’s always the two of them. She figures it’s because they’re so close in age, and such good friends. After months of working together, and plenty of free time spent hanging out, the chemistry comes naturally. Whenever there’s a case involving couples, and the profile alone isn’t enough, she and Reid end up masquerading as boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, all varieties of people madly in love with each other. Sometimes it’s enough to just lure out an unsub, twice they’ve been kidnapped, but never for long. They do good work together. Garcia has even taking to calling them Partners in Crime, or The Dream Team.

Deep down she knows it’s not just her profiling abilities or friendship with Spencer that allows her to play the part so well. That chemistry has become absolutely natural, too much so. Long after the game is done, she finds herself stealing glances at him, staying up late at night wondering what it would be like to really be in love with him. It’s an impossible dream. Reid is brilliant, handsome, and her co-worker. Strictly off limits. And yet those fantasies continue with every smile he gives her, and a part of her hopes that maybe, maybe…

“Baltimore PD have requested our help with a serial killer,” Hotch announces in the conference room. “Over the last six months, six people have kidnapped and murdered. There’s evidence of torture and sexual sadism, though preliminary ME reports don’t indicate any sign of rape.”

“Why would they think it’s consensual?” JJ asks, skeptical. They’ve encountered incompetent medical examiners before.

“Because of the victims he chooses,” the unit chief says, nodding at Garcia to move to the next slide. Six photos pop up on screen, in groups of two. “Jeremy and Renee Lagher, Tyrone and Nina Davenport, and Louisa and Ryan Sheffield.”

From across the room, Y/N catches Reid’s eye, the two of them realizing where this is likely headed. “He’s using married couples,” Rossi observes. “Is there any indication to how he finds his victims?”

“Social networking,” Garcia chimes in. The internet has made it all too easy for predators to hunt. Oversharing can be fatal. “The couples all used Instagram, had no privacy settings, and shared photos that made it clear they were married. Their last posts were just before they went missing, and all of them used the location feature to check-in at a local restaurant.” The team throws out ideas and questions, possibilities about how he finds them and why he chooses them. It seems to be the general consensus that he must stake out the restaurant, and wait for the couple to leave after dinner.

Y/N is distracted through the discussion, unable to ignore the feeling that there’s something Hotch is keeping from them. Sure enough, the chief has one last thing to add before they get ready to head out. “Given the lack of evidence and how this unsub targets his victims, I’ve spoken with the Baltimore PD and we’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to find him is bait him. Reid, Y/L/N, are you up for this?”

The question is less of a request, more rhetorical in nature. What choice do they have? It’s their job to hunt down criminals, no matter what it takes to find them. And so they agree. On the plane, once the briefing is complete, the go about preparing for the undercover work. Garcia has worked some Photoshop magic, pulling stock photos and personal pictures alike to create two different accounts for Spencer and Y/N Fitzgerald. Over time they’ve gotten into the habit of choosing last names inspired by famous literary and scientific couples. Scrolling through the one created for her, she tries to memorize the details. They’ve been married for two years, they live just west of Baltimore in a studio apartment, they have a cat. She is a librarian, he’s a high school chemistry teacher.

Since no other couples have been reported missing, the police want them to get to work as soon as possible. That evening, she slips on a black dress and a pair of heels, her hair and makeup done much nicer than she would typically take the time for. If this is going to work, she needs to look the part. Reid is waiting for her in the lobby of their hotel, wearing a simple suit and a smile that widens at the sight of her. “You look beautiful,” he tells her.

“Thanks.” She can feel herself blushing, and reminds herself that this is all a part of the game, of the job. None of this is real. Still, when he holds out his hand for her to take, she can’t push back the happiness that bursts in her chest. They walk the few blocks to the restaurant that way, close enough that their shoulders touch. Once he’s put in a reservation, they stand in the dim light of the waiting area to take a photo. Reid wraps his arm around her, holding her close to his side. At the last second, he presses a kiss to her temple just as she snaps a photo on her phone.

“How was that?” he asks. Too good, she thinks. In the picture they look just like a couple, very much in love. It’s soon posted to Instagram, documented along with the rest of their fake relationship. She adds their location just as a waiter comes to whisk them away to a table. Dinner is wonderful, filled with long gazes and laughter and moments where his knee will bump hers, or her fingers will rest over his hand just a little too long. This is just a show, just in case the unsub is lying in wait somewhere inside. It’s a damn good performance, more convincing than it needs to be. Does she really need to look at him that way? Does he really need to give her that devastating grin? They steal all these small moments for themselves, lingering in a soft state of bliss.

It’s only temporary, and soon enough they’re on their way out the door once more. “I’m surprised you weren’t able to meet with your friend,” he says, trying to sound casual. Every so often his eyes dart along the sidewalk, trying to check their surroundings without making it obvious he’s looking.

“Me too, but I suppose plans can always change.”

Reid starts to respond, but the words never come. Instead, a hand clamps over her mouth, and something cold presses hard against her head. Metal, round. The barrel of a gun. “Do what I say,” a voice growls. “Or she dies.” Neither of them are armed, and he has no choice but to comply. A man in a ski mask leads them to a dark colored sedan, yanking open the door of the backseat. Before shoving them inside, he reaches into the pocket of Reid’s suit jacket to extract his cell phone. The device, along with her purse, is tossed onto the sidewalk, leaving them no way to contact the team as the car speeds away.

-

It’s hard to say for sure how much time has passed since they’ve arrived in the dingy cellar. Hours at least, though not a whole day. The room is dirty and cold, and Reid insists on giving her his jacket. He holds her hand still, and that small amount of physical contact is a silent promise between them that everything is going to be okay. They haven’t heard from their captor since the abduction. Does the team know they’re missing? Is Garcia trying to track them down? What’s going to happen to them?

The metal door swings open, and the man enters. His mask is gone, revealing a middle-aged white man. He is balding with a cruel sneer and empty eyes. One hand holds a gun, the other a bag surely full of the tools he tortures his victims with. Their profile was spot on. “Here’s how this is going to go,” he says. “I’m going to give you instructions. You will comply exactly. If you refuse, or mess up, I’ll kill you. If you try to escape, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?” They both nod. “Good. Kiss your husband, Mrs. Fitzgerald.”

“How do you know our name?” Reid demands, though they already know the answer. It’s like chess, all about making the right moves.

“No questions,” the man growls. “Do as I say.” Tentatively, Y/N stands on her toes to close the distance between them, kissing him gently. Chaste, soft, nothing that requires too much of either of them. But that isn’t good enough for their abductor. “Do it like you mean it.”

So she kisses him harder, deeper. If she closes her eyes, it’s easy to pretend that they aren’t here at gunpoint, that it’s just the two of them, that this kiss really does mean something. That this is the moment she’s been imagining a thousand times. He returns it, his hands settling on the small of her back in order to pull her closer. “Now, hit her.” At the sound of the bald man’s voice, Reid freezes, then pulls away. An apology is written on his face, and she braces herself for the slap that stings her cheek and sends her stumbling backwards a few steps. This isn’t going to be a romantic fantasy, apparently.

“Take off her dress, Mr. Fitzgerald.” On his tongue, their names are taunts and not identifiers.

Reid hesitates, but she gives him the slightest of nods. If they’re going to get out of this, they have to play along. It’s their only hope of staying alive long enough for the team to find them. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. His hands reach up her back, unzipping her dress in one fluid motion before easing it down her body. The black fabric falls in a pile at her feet, and she shivers. Standing in only her bra and underwear, the air is colder on her skin now, but it’s terribly unnerving for him to see her so exposed like this.

It isn’t supposed to be like this. This isn’t supposed to be the first time he kisses her or sees her undress. This isn’t the fantasy she replays on the jet each time they close a case and stop pretending to be a couple.

“Touch her,” the man commands, pointing at her chest. This is easily the most humiliating experience they’ve been put through since Hotch first started pairing them up for assignments like this, and it’s quickly devolving into the most humiliating thing they’ve been through, period. Any chance she has hoped for at some future relationship is dashed away. After something like this, how will they ever be able to look at each other the same way?

She sends a silent prayer to the team to find them soon, then meets Reid’s eyes. “It’s okay,” she says quietly. “Spencer, it’s okay.”

The pained look on his face cuts her deep. Is he repulsed by the situation? Or by her? She tries to keep as still as she can, tense under the scrutiny of the bald man. Reid’s hand covers her breast and she oscillates between trying to pretend she’s not in this body, and trying to pretend that she is but it’s just the two of them here. Every so often they are directed in new ways, as if this is just a play and they’ve become actors in some sort of twisted production. It’s quite possible this is reminiscent of an event that occurred in the unsub’s life at some point. Reid is instructed to nibble her ear, she to grope at his backside. Every so often an interruption demanding a hit or a punch. His commands become increasingly more rough, Y/N receiving most of the abuse while Reid tries to be as careful as he can with her, touching her gently, trying to make it look like a slap is harder than it is.

“Remove her bra, then take off your pants.” No no no no no. She knows where this is going. She knows how this scene is supposed to end. They both balk for a brief moment, until the click of the gun cocking jolts them back to their senses.

Reid is shaking his head, but she squeezes his hand. He can feel how badly she’s trembling. This isn’t pleasant for either of them, but her voice is firm. “Do what he says. Just do what he says Spencer. We’re going to get out of here.”

Just as he reaches towards her, there’s a loud bang from somewhere beyond the open door. “Ronald Horton, FBI!” Morgan’s voice echoes down to them. As the man – Horton – turns away to see what’s happening, Y/N bends down to pull her dress back on, Reid pulling his jacket back over her shoulders so she won’t have to waste time fiddling with the zipper. She’s grateful that he’s looking out for her, trying to save her any embarrassment. It’s hard to recall if she has ever been more relieved to see her team storming down a flight of stairs.

Hotch and Morgan drag Horton away in handcuffs, and Rossi turns to the couple who stand together, visibly shaken by the turn of events. “Everything okay?” he asks.

“It is now,” Y/N sighs.

-

Ronald Horton is violent sociopath whose marriage broke apart two months before the killings began. Oddly enough, his ex-wife was the more dominant one in the relationship. To keep up appearances, he relented to her physicality, though didn’t spare her the emotional abuse he was so apt at causing. The murders were a fantasy of his, using surrogates the enact the revenge he never had the chance to. He is booked downtown, and after a long day all of the agents are relieved when Hotch informs them they’ll be staying in Baltimore one more night to catch up on sleep.

She tosses and turns in her bed. Her mind races through everything that happened, and everything that could’ve. If the team hadn’t arrived then, what was he going to force them to do? How far would they have to go? She tries to untangle the violation, the awfulness of it, from the fact that the romantic actions were things she had wanted from Reid. But not like that. Never like that.

Her skin doesn’t feel like her own. She still feels exposed, wrapped under two blankets. She wants to forget it, but she doesn’t want to forget him.  

There is a knock on the door late that night. At this hotel, sets of two rooms are connected by a door in the wall, and she knows who is on the other side before she opens it. “Hi,” Reid says softly. “Did I wake you up?”

“Not at all,” she replies. “I couldn’t sleep.” She motions for him to come in, and he does so somewhat reluctantly.

“Um, listen, Y/L/N, I just wanted to apologize for everything that happened before. That must’ve been… uncomfortable for you, and I’m really sorry.” His pause makes it clear that uncomfortable is an understatement, but neither of them knows what word to place there.

She tries to brush it off. “It’s fine, Reid. Really, it is. This isn’t the first time we’ve done something like this.” It is however, the first time they’ve had to be quite so physical with each other. There’s no reason for him to come apologizing though, it wasn’t his fault. The blame belongs solely to Ronald Horton.

“It’s not fine, though. What happened wasn’t okay. And I am so sorry for hurting you.”

“I had to hurt you too,” she says. Not as much. But neither of them were able to consent to what was done to them.

“I just… I feel bad.” He sighs and looks down at the floor. Conversation between them has never felt so strained. “Doing this, it’s embarrassing,” Reid mumbles.

The awkwardness she feels turns to anger, to hurt. Perhaps it was her that he had a problem with before, not the situation itself. After months of friendship, the idea of being with her is somehow abhorrent to him, and when she likes him so much, that knowledge is like a punch to the face. “If you’re so embarrassed by me, maybe you should stop agreeing to go undercover with me,” she retorts, starting to storm away from him. She’s too tired to deal with this.

“Y/L/N!” he cries. When she doesn’t stop, a strong hand grabs her wrist, pulling her back. “Y/N. Please, wait. That’s not what I meant. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me. You always have to pair up with me, and I don’t want to embarrass you. I’m sorry I-” He’s cut off by her mouth on his, kissing him hard. Like she means it. Because she does.

“That’s how you think I feel about you?” she gasps, when he pulls away. “Why do you think it’s so easy for me to pretend? Why do you think I never complain about the assignment? I like being with you. And I really like you.”

“You do?” Positively astonished, he is.

“Spencer, I love you. God, I love you so much. How can you not see that? If anything, you should be the one embarrassed by me.” He’s so smart, so good-looking.

“That would be impossible,” he says. Reid takes her hands in his, taking half a step towards her. He’s so tall, looming over practically, but his eyes are kind. Then he leans down to kiss her again. The depth of it surprises her, when he slips his tongue into her mouth. In response she bites his bottom lip gently, enticing a sigh from him.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

“I want to feel like I have a choice again in who touches me and how,” she answers. “And I want it to be you.”

It occurs to her they could be moving too fast, but when he moves his hands to her hips and she tangles her fingers in his hair, she decides she doesn’t care. After all, they’ve been dating for months. Fake-dating albeit, but every lie has a bit of the truth in it. And besides, it just feels too good to stop.

“I don’t think it’s quite fair,” she manages to find the air to say, “that you’ve seen me undress, but I haven’t seen you.” Her words give him pause, and Y/N reaches up to loosen his tie, pulling it away before starting on his shirt. The row of buttons is slowly undone, slower than is necessary. She wants to savor this, steadily revealing more of him as she goes. Reid shrugs out of his shirt, and she trails a hand down his torso, his skin warm beneath her fingertips. Feeling a little bolder, she places her lips on his neck, working her way down to his collarbone. Every soft moan spurs her on, until he captures her lips once more. It’s so good to finally touch him this way, to be touched by him. No instructions or unsubs or commands here. There’s only a warm room, dim light, and movements making up for lost time.

He’s pressed so close to her, close enough that she can feel him, hard against her. This has been so long in the making, she’s not surprised it doesn’t take long before he’s aroused. Especially not after all of the early physical stimulation between them. She’s feeling quite excited herself, the room too warm, her heart beating too fast, falling faster than she can keep up with. This man before her is like no one she’s ever met before, and she can’t remember loving someone as much as him. Needing someone as much as him. Reid’s hands slide up her sides until they find hold on the zipper of her dress. “Let’s get you out of that dress,” he murmurs.

This is how it was always supposed to be. Nothing about this is rough or difficult. In this hotel room, he is incredibly gentle with her, though his previous hesitation is gone. He knows what he wants now, they both do, and they’ve both given permission for it to happen. In a way, it’s like they are reclaiming every gesture they were forced to perform. These touches, theses feelings don’t belong to Ronald Horton. They belong to the two of them, tangled up together as they slowly explore the geography of the body. The fear is gone, wholly absent from their frantic exchanges. Love, desire, need, fills the place of that uncertainty and awkwardness.

He hurries to undo his belt, step out of his trousers. Taking full advantage of the opportunity, she teases the bulge in his boxers as he continues to find new places on her skin to place his lips, his tongue, his teeth. She tries to bite back a groan, knowing that walls are never quite as thick as they appear. Eventually she pulls him down the bed with her, and it takes only seconds before there’s no layers left between them. Just him, just her, just now.

It is even better than she’d imagined it would be. Spencer proves that he excels in every endeavor, this being no exception to the rule. It’s beautiful, the way he looks at her. How she wishes she had his eidetic memory, so as not to forget a single sensation. And when she calls out his name, when he answers with her own, nothing in the world has ever sounded so right. It seems over too soon, but they find themselves both breathless between the sheets, utterly delirious with joy. His hair is messier than usual, her face is flushed, but neither can stop staring at the other. Like stars in the night sky, it’s so hard to look away from something so wonderful.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he tells her. “I have been since the day it snowed in October, and you started a snowball fight with me on our way out of the office.”

“You lost horribly,” she says, laughing at the memory. Reid had been stunned by the unseasonably cold weather, and after hearing that he’d never had snow days growing up in Vegas, she promptly lobbed a snowball at his back. The ensuing war had been short, marked by short ceasefires so she could attempt to demonstrate proper snow packing techniques. As a term of surrender, he’d bought her hot chocolate, and the day was among her favorite memories of their friendship. This night would certainly have its own place in the rankings.

Spencer simply brushes her hair back, smiling at her. “I think I won, in the end.”

“Isn’t this technically against the rules?” she asks, thinking she should’ve read those fraternization policies a bit more closely.

“Mmm, probably. I suppose that makes us… what is it Garcia always calls us?”

“Partners in crime,” Y/N laughs. “I never thought that would be so true.” It’s absolutely worth it, she decides, because, “I love you, too.”

-

At breakfast the next day, Spencer seems visibly happier, and she can’t help but feel delighted at well. Once or twice she swears she catches Morgan looking at them funny, but she brushes it off. The older agent walks over to Reid and whispers something to him that makes their resident genius turn as pink as a pair of Garcia’s heels. Y/N is hoping things are still okay, until Morgan catches her on her way out the SUVs.

“Congratulations on finally breaking all that sexual tension. I thought you two were never going to get a clue. But hey, I guess life imitates art?” She’s tempted to slap the smirk off his face, but then Derek adds, “Thin walls, Y/L/N. But don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

[louisa-reyes]

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞, 𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦? 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲— 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞?”

louisa looks up from her phone, hazel eyes meeting the other as she debates whether to be annoyed or amused by the sudden intrusion. deciding to go with the latter, a charming smile paints on her features as she cocks her head to the side, looking at them with dazzling hues. “louisa reyes, twenty-three, law student. bisexual, biromantic.” there’s a smugness to the raven haired beauty as she rests her elbow on the table and places her chin on her hand. “lavender. lollipops. louis vutton. lilies — my favorite scent, candy, bag, and flowers. if you want to get me any,” she winks.

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦��𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞, 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐬, 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐜𝐡.”

this was a tricky question, the wrong answer could paint her in a light she’d rather not be seen in and considering recent events, that’s the last thing she currently needs. truthfully? it was words of affirmation. louisa longed for verbal affection. it was something she never received from her parents. while quick to reprimand and show their disappointment, an “i love you” or “i’m proud of you” was never something she received from them. as much as she hates to admit it, she knows it damaged her. “receiving gifts,” she responds. it’s the safe answer, the shallow one. the ironic thing about her answer is just how much of a contrast it was to how she actually felt. contrary to what she lead others belief, physical gifts were the last thing she cared for. she had a lifetime of them thanks to her parents.

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞?”

love. she doesn’t say it, she wouldn’t ever. it’s not lost on her either what the theme of this interview seems to be and how it’s what she evidently seems to lack. perhaps if she was alone, she’d be laughing at the cruel joke life played on her — a girl who had it all, except for the one thing she wanted. “an academy award,” she responds simply, “i want the recognition of being one of the leading actresses of this generation.” she knows how shallow it sounds, it’s suppose to. better to keep up the image of being absolutely fake then for others to realize the girl is nothing but a fraud.  

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮?”

“they could tell me i’m the best fuck they’ve ever had.” perhaps a bit of a vulgar answer by louisa’s standards but god was it funny to watch them squirm, eyes growing wide in horror as they frantically scribbled something down while turning red. truthfully, she’s not sure, which makes the tactless answer easier to stick with. the reality of it was that what she wanted to hear wasn’t even a compliment, just a reassurance: that flaws and all, she was enough. “as far as nicest thing someone could do, i don’t know?” for the record, she didn’t. her actions, especially lately, have been less than ones that could be condoned and even louisa’s was lucid enough to realize that it’s not something that should be rewarded. “getting whisked around all over the world, would be nice, i guess."

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮?”

“oh my god, that one is so easy! it’d totally be shopping alongside the french riviera!” the pristine facade remains in place. she’s lived that day and it’s not bad but by no means was it perfect. a perfect day would be to disconnect, unplug and just feel the world around her away from venomous tongues and watchful eyes. in her dreams, she’s there. at the beach, all alone as the warm summer sun brushes against her skin, the salty breeze keeping her cool as she walks barefoot in the sun, enjoying how the sand feels against bare feet. for once, she feels alive. then morning comes and she realizes how it’s all just a childish fantasy.

“𝐈𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐫𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞, 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰?”

what wouldn’t she want to know? the questions seem endless and considering how often she goes to kasey to get her fortune read, louisa’s need to know what the future holds is a curiosity that is never satisfied. there’s so much she wishes her could know, answers she wishes she could find, just clarity in general and hope that maybe if she did have a crystal ball, life would be just a little easier. “what?” she snaps, realizing she’d fallen into her own thoughts as the other stared, waiting for her to answer, “god, i was thinking. i guess i’d like to know if i’ll reach egot status."

“𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩?”

“loyalty.” perhaps that’s the most honest answer she’s given so far. if anything, it’s been the easiest to answer. the girl may be a lot of things but to those who she actually cared for, she’d walk through fire for. it’s a select few, mainly, well really, only friendships. louisa’s relationships were more like flings that latest months, if that.

“𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐨𝐠 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧?”

she does a double take at their question, giving them a perplexed glance. out of everything they had been asking, that was one that seemed to be the most unexpected. ugh, psych majors. louisa knew enough to know there was more to this answer. “dogs,” she answers, “no, cats. ugh. both? i can answer both, right? listen, dogs are amazing because of how loyal they are. who needs anyone else when you have a dog? cats are great because of the power they hold over humans. they own you, not the other way around.”

“𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: “𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐦 𝐈 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞…”

the obvious answer felt like it’d be “the rest of my life with”. which considering the monstrosity of an example her parents had provided, it was something louisa hesitated to even think about. in no world did she want to end up like either of them. the rest of the answers she could think of, only made her feel just as pathetic: someone to share my heart with, someone to share myself with, someone to share my dreams with. ugh, she was totally going to need a bottle of wine after this. or two. “a good bottle of wine with?"

“𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧? 𝐁𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟?”

“why the fuck do you care?” the defensive question leaves her lips out of instinct before she realizes how guarded it makes her seem. “sorry,” she mutters sheepishly as she silently damns the professor who assigned them such task. there were multiple times the night of the house on the hill party that lu almost broke out crying. keyword: almost. “maybe during rehearsal? we were running a pretty intense scene where my character ended up having a breakdown — the director, cast, and crew were all there. everyone was bawling. it was an amazing performance.” that wasn’t what they were asking and lu silently hoped it sufficed regardless. “the last time i cried by myself …” she trails off, giving it another thought. she’s not sure but what is certain is that there was most likely a lot of alcohol involved. “last month?” a most likely inaccurate guess but louisa doesn’t care to elaborate or actually think back to the last time she cried all alone.

“𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮?”

there’s something that makes her uneasy about this question, perhaps because of how often she seeks it and how empty it leaves her. somewhere along the lines during her teenage years, her motives shifted. it became easier to give herself physically to someone than emotionally. it was like a momentary high, feeling good at the moment yet by the time it was over, she didn’t even have the mental energy to stick around. “very. it’s sex,” she responds, “it releases endorphins or serotonin or whatever — shouldn’t you know this, you’re the psych major.”

“𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲?”

“why?” hazel eyes narrow suspiciously as she tries to hide the playful smirk curving on her lips, “don’t tell me this was a ploy to ask me out for valentine’s day?” the question was a bitter reminder of not just how single she was but how alone she felt. while the feeling wasn’t new the fact that she didn’t have someone to go home with at the end of the night was.

[taylorinthetardis]

Only Human - Prologue and Chapter 1

Hey everyone! So this is the Pride and Prejudice AU I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s set in Modern Day London and told from Darcy’s POV. It is cross posted on AO3, the link to it will be below. I promise I will update it soon, I’ve just been a little bit blocked for a while. But I promise there will be more. So here we go, the prologue and first chapter are under the cut! Enjoy!! Feedback is much appreciated!! If you like it and want to be on a taglist, please feel free to say so!!

Thank you to @madbaddic7ed for all your encouraging words and for convincing me to cross post!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/22109365

Only Human

Summary:  The events of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as seen through the eyes of Darcy. Story takes place in modern day London. Lizzy and Jane are American students studying abroad. Their sisters take turns visiting them throughout the story. Bingley and Darcy are recent business partners, but longtime friends. Caroline is as snake-ish as ever. George Wickham is an actual rapist - the rape will not be described in detail.

Pairing: William (Will) Darcy x Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bennet; Charles Bingley x Jane Bennet

Rating: Explicit due to eventual smut

Warnings: Swearing

Word Count: 2.8K

                                                       Prologue

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I, William Darcy, am an arsehole. The following tale, dear reader, will explain how that came to be and how, I hope, I have made the preceding statement a falsehood instead. The following tale does not often show me at my best. I hope, however, that you may look past my faults and forgive my disgraceful, ignorant, and often impure thoughts as I relay to you the circumstances by which I came to fall deeply in love with the most wonderful, challenging woman I’ve ever met, the method by which I nearly ruined an incredibly important friendship, and the events surrounding the creation of a familial fissure that will never heal. I hope you will not judge me too harshly.

                                       Chapter 1: Hanover Terrace

I was sat in my office. My office. Still getting used to that. When I took over control from my Aunt Catherine in April, a lot of work was done to make this office mine. Catherine’s taste in furniture was, how should I phrase this, medieval. I was honestly surprised we didn’t have to remove any torture devices when her furniture was cleared out to make room for my more practical mahogany desk and overstuffed leather chairs. My degree from Cambridge’s Judge Business School was propped in my bookcase with photos of my parents and Georgiana on either side. The office is still rather spartan in comparison to Charles’ but I don’t mind it. Our companies had recently merged, an event that proved profitable for both parties and served to deepen our friendship. Our offices are across the hallway from each other now, as opposed to being across the Thames. The economic windfall had been excellent for Charles. He had decided to purchase a new home, one big enough for himself and his sister and closer to her university. Charles is an orphan, like myself, and the sole caretaker of his younger sister Caroline, who recently began her studies at the fashion and design school at Regent’s University. I feel for Charles sometimes. His younger sister is an absolute terror, but I guess we can’t all be blessed with saints for sisters. Caroline is an uncommonly cruel young woman. She delights in shit-talking friends and strangers alike. She also is labouring under the delusion that she will one day be my wife. Her older sister, Louisa, has enjoyed several years of trophy-wifery and it seems Caroline has decided that is the life she wants to live as well. Although she just recently came of age, she has flirted with me non-stop since the first day Charles invited me home with him. We’ve known each other since we were 18 years old. We are now 25. Damn near seven years. SEVEN YEARS. Seven fucking years dealing with Caroline’s shite. She just turned 18 earlier this year. What the hell did she think I was going to do with her when she was eleven goddamn years old? Go to prison? I sure as shit think not.

Charles entered my office at around 1. He was bouncier than usual. He had either had more than one of his normal sickly-sweet coffees or he was in love again. Turned out it was both.

“Oh, Will I’m so happy you convinced me to snatch up Hanover Terrace. I met the most beautiful woman in world yesterday. I never would have known her if I hadn’t decided to take your advice. I invited her and her sister out with us tonight. You don’t mind, do you? Even if you do, once you meet her, you’ll forget you were ever bothered.” He spoke at such a speed that I only caught about every third word. My ears perked, however, at the ‘out with us tonight’ part. Out with us? I don’t remember agreeing to go anywhere with Charles. He always wants to go to nightclubs. He knows I don’t dance. He always does this. Drags me to some poppy nightclub with strobe lights and terrible music.

“And how did you meet this one Charles? Spill your coffee on her? No, wait, you were walking Caroline’s stupid pug and she thought it was cute and wanted to pet it.”

“Christ, am I becoming that predictable?” Yes Charles. Every girl you’ve ever fancied has fallen into your life in a cliché.

I nodded.  He sighed.

“Well, it’s different this time. She isn’t like any other girl I’ve been with. More beautiful than Sarah, kinder than Tilly, oh and her sister Will. Her sister has got to be one of the most intelligent women I’ve ever spoken to in my life. They’re both very beautiful Will. If I was a betting man, I’d wager that Lizzie might even be beautiful enough to tempt you out of your shell and entice you to have some goddamn fun for once. Maybe she’ll even get you to dance.” He nudged me with his elbow, winking. Yeah right Charles. Not even Charlize Theron could get me to dance at a nightclub.

“I seriously doubt that Charles. So, what’s this one called, hm?”

“Jane.” He said it with a sigh. Oh, he’s already long gone. “Her sister is called Elizabeth, but she prefers Lizzie. They’re American, Darce. From the Midwest. They’re both studying abroad at Regent’s for the year.”

“And to what godforsaken place will you be attempting to drag me to tonight?”

“I was thinking Drama? I wanna show off a little Will. I really like her; I want to impress her.”

“Drama might be a little much for a midwestern girl, don’t you think? What about that place we went in Camden a few months ago, by the lock?”

“Lock 17? Isn’t that a little down market for you Darce? There isn’t even a dress code!”

“Come off it, you know I couldn’t care less Charles. I don’t even like going out. I just think Lock 17 will be the better choice for her. You don’t want to scare her. Anyway, I think you’ll have a nice time. Without me.”

“Nuh uh, you aren’t getting out of this. You come or you’re dead to me.” I rolled my eyes. Jesus he’s such a goddamn drama queen.

“Ugh fine I’ll go. But I’m not dancing and you can’t make me. I’m a grown man Charles. So, meet at Hanover Terrace at, what, 8pm? Or should we meet earlier?”

“I was thinking 7:30, that way we’ll all have plenty of time to get ready and you can get to know them before we go. I’m going to order the cab for 8 so we’ll have plenty of time to get there if there’s any slow spots.”

“Please tell me you’ll be leaving Caroline at home.”

“Yeah, so she can kick my arse over it later? No chance. Besides, we’ll probably lose her to the dance floor as soon as we get in. She’ll find some nice dumb boy to buy her drinks and you won’t have to see her all night.” No Charles she’ll be on me like white on rice all damn night and you bloody well know it.

“Alright. But I’m not dancing.”

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

I arrived at Hanover Terrace about 7:30. As soon as Charles opened the door, I immediately regretted my decision to come. I should have told him I got food poisoning from lunch or something. Caroline was stomping through the front room, going from box to box screaming that she couldn’t find her favourite clubbing heels. Who the fuck has a favourite pair of heels for clubbing? Heels seem so impractical for dancing. Charles’ new love and her sister had yet to arrive and Charles appeared to be in a slight panic.

“What if she doesn’t come Will?” He said shakily. Christ he’s in a full meltdown.

“I’m sure she’ll be here in a few minutes Charles. It’s not even close to 8 o’ clock yet. You’ve got plenty of time, just relax.” I took a minute to look around his new home. He had barely unpacked. I helped him get everything in order for the move about two weeks ago and he moved in a few days later. Everything was basically where it was when I visited three days ago. “Have you genuinely not unpacked anything Charles? How are you even living in here?”

“I’ve got enough clothes unpacked upstairs to last another week probably. Caroline’s rarely home in the evening anymore so I just keep getting take-away. There’s a Chipotle just around the corner on Baker Street. You know I love a burrito bowl. Something I have in common with the lovely Jane.” Gag. Well, at least the movers got his furniture set up, although most of the downstairs furnishings were unusable because they were covered with cardboard boxes and plastic totes and suitcases. The sofa in the main living area was clear enough that I took a seat. Caroline continued her tear through the front room until a triumphant screech echoed through the relatively empty house. The heels in question were easily six inches high, sparkly platformed monstrosities. They completed a look which can only be described as what a disco ball would look like if it was a contestant on Love Island. Hopefully Jane and her sister would be a bit more sensibly dressed, like Charles and myself. I decided on a plain black tee and black jeans with my black and white trainers. Charles had gone with a less monochromatic palette, wearing a bright blue button down that was almost the colour of his eyes and a pair of dark blue jeans. We’re wearing the same shoes. Us and every other man in London. Suddenly there was knock on the door. I checked my watch, 7:35. I told Charles he was worrying for nothing. He bounced towards the door like Caroline’s pug when he needed a shit. He opened the door to reveal a young blonde woman and a younger looking woman with auburn hair.

“Jane, Lizzie, I’m so pleased you’re here. Sorry about the mess, haven’t had much time to unpack yet, with work and all.” Charles led them through to the room I had posted up in. The dark-haired girl peered at me through purple framed glasses. Her sister gave her a little nudge. Well fuck, Charles wasn’t kidding. God they’re both gorgeous! They were dressed considerably more sensibly than Caroline. Jane wore a low pair of black heels that complemented her red cocktail dress. Her sister was even more comfortably dressed, in black leggings, Doc Martins, and a plain white t-shirt. She wore a black leather jacket over the tee. Neither girl appeared to be wearing much make-up. Both were possessed of the natural beauty that Caroline tried to fabricate in her hour-long make-up routine that left her looking like she had Photoshopped her own face, but in real life. I stuck my hand out. “Will Darcy. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” Wow, sound more like you’re a hundred years old, why don’t you Will?

“Will, this is Lizzie,” he gestured to the brunette, “and this is Jane.” He put his hand on the small of the blonde’s back and she blushed redder than Charles’ hair.

“Lizzie Bennet. It’s so nice to meet you Will.” She took my hand with her considerably smaller one and shook it. It was a firmer handshake than I’d had from some of my business associates. She dropped my hand and her sister took up the vacancy. Her handshake was much softer, grip much lighter, much more feminine. Looking at the two women before me, I wouldn’t have known they were sisters if Charles hadn’t told me. They couldn’t have been more different. One blonde, one brunette. Jane had soft blue eyes, Lizzie’s were bright and hazel. Jane was tall and slender, her sister shorter and softer around the middle. Taking all of her in I came to a sudden realization: she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Okay Will be cool. For once in your bloody life be cool. I opened my mouth, but before I could speak Lizzie launched into an animated conversation with Charles about her day. It was all I could do not to stare at her mouth while it moved faster than Charles’ ever had, no matter how in love he was or how many Frappuccinos he had consumed. I sat back down on the sofa, while Lizzie sat on the carpet, Charles on the coffee table, and Jane remained standing. Lizzie told us about one of her professors, an archaeologist who taught university classes when he wasn’t on digs.

“He’s like a real-life Indiana Jones except without the bullwhip and the hat. And he’s not Harrison Ford. But still. Oh, and don’t even let me get started on my Shakespeare professor. George. He’s my most favourite.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying your studies Lizzie. But don’t forget to explore the city while you’re here! London is full of endless things to see and do. I’ve lived here most of my life and I still haven’t seen everything!” Charles is so blessed. I wish I could just talk. Talking is better than staring. C’mon mouth, work! “Wouldn’t you agree Darce?”

Shit, I have to talk now? I nodded, again opening my mouth to speak, but no words came. Charles picked the conversation back up, turning to Jane to ask if she had a pleasant day as well.

“Yes. I took a lovely walk through Regent’s Park today. I only have the one class on Thursdays so I’ve been using the rest of the day to explore a bit. Lizzie’s schedule is so much fuller than mine so I’ve been finding places for us to go on the weekends. We’ve gone to Camden Market and Hyde Park. When you met us the other day, we were on our way back from the Tate Modern, I don’t remember if I said or not.”

“Yes, you said Lizzie was disappointed because she thought you were going to the Tate Britain.”

“Do you have something against modern art?” Oh, cool. Thanks, mouth. Why did that come out like I’m angry about that? Modern art is dumb. How is a pile of rubber or a cut-up McDonald’s bag art?

“I can appreciate that its art, like how I can appreciate that romance novels are literature or techno is music, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I prefer the old masters and classical art to a splash of paint on a canvas. My little cousin can do that too, does that mean her art belongs in a prestigious museum? Naw fam it sure don’t.” Yes. I wholly agree. Why does she have her eyebrow raised at me? Does she think I don’t agree? What is my face doing? Am I scowling? I don’t want to scowl. Did she say ‘fam’? That doesn’t matter. Why does it feel like it matters?

“You’ll have to excuse my sister. She’s never been shy about her opinions. And she has a lot of them.” Jane shot her sister a disapproving look. Lizzie just shrugged. Caroline chose that moment to come swanning into the room. Seeing there was a perfectly good space next to her brother on the coffee table, she chose to throw herself down into my lap. Oh, for fucks sake. She’s gonna get fake tanner on my trousers.

“Will, my love," I threw up in my mouth a little, "we’re going to have such a wonderful time at Drama tonight.” I can’t wait to burst her bubble.

“Caroline, did Charles not tell you? We aren’t going to Drama. We’re going to Lock 17, in Camden.” I tried to move her from my lap, but she dug her heels into the carpet for grounding. Fat Christ, Charles will you get your sister under control?

She sputtered, on the verge of a full tantrum directed at her brother when, blessedly, Charles’ phone vibrated. “That’ll be the cab. Caroline are you still coming?”

She jumped up off my lap and straightened the piece of sequined cloth trying to pass itself off as a dress. “Of course I’m going Charles. I put all this on, I can’t just not go out now!” She stomped off to the dining area to get her bag from the table. Charles led Jane towards the front door. I extended my hand down to Lizzie, who took it. I pulled her up from the floor. You should let go of her hand now Will. You’re being weird. I dropped her hand like it had burned me. Smooth. She looked at me, smirked and cocked that eyebrow again. Saying nothing, she followed her sister and Charles out the front door. Caroline took advantage of my initial inaction by slipping her arm into mine, leading me towards the cab. And my doom.

[orlissa]

Shadow of Night Read Along: Chapter 36

Some time later Diana meets Father Hubbard on the street—Hubbard tells her that he knows she is carrying Matthew’s baby, and that Matthew’s interference in the Scottish witch trials have backfired: the annoyed King James has found a way to go against his efforts to save witches, which will most likely end in the deaths of more creatures. Hubbard also tells Diana that Matthew is in Bedlam with Louisa and Kit, causing Diana to immediately go to the asylum, with Hubbard in her heels. Diana is shocked by the conditions at Bedlam. Behind the one closed door there is Matthew, Gallowglass, Kit, and Louisa. Matthew has been taking Louisa’s blood, which worries Diana. She tries to make Matthew stop the torture of Louisa and Kit, first by bringing up Jack, then by pointing out that this—becoming an animal waiting for punishment—is his greatest fear, but it shouldn’t be, because he is not like Louisa. She tells him to have hope for the future, and asks him to let others take care of Kit and Louisa, which he eventually agrees to. Louisa asks her to take away her memories, but Diana refuses. They leave Bedlam, but these recent events convince them that it’s time to go back to their present, so they start to get their affairs in order. However, in early June, during one of their walks in the city, they stumble upon someone unexpected: Diana’s father.

Notes

It’s cute, in an overbearing way, that Matthew “made sure” that Diana had breakfast. On the other, after all that has happened? Totally understandable that he’d be even more protective than usual.

It’s amazing that Diana is still worried about Kit. Scratch that—it’s amazing that Kit is still alive.

There is a vampire at Bedlam—daemons and witches are, but how do they keep a vampire there without realizing he is not human?

Diana objects to Matthew taking Louisa blood, because “blood rage and poppy don’t mix.” It’s been, by my estimate, at least twenty hours since Louisa and/or Kit had access to opiates. How long does it take for the drugs to empty from one’s system?

It seems like Matthew has been methodically tending to his disease in this situation, actually using it as an advantage, even though he apparently hates himself for it.

Louisa is not cruel because of the blood rage. She is a cruel bitch—has always have been, I’d bet—and she has blood rage. No connection.

Diana “forces” Matthew’s hand open. He is way stronger than her. If he didn’t want her to do that, he wouldn’t have let her.

I actually didn’t remember that this chapter was this emotionally taxing.

Diana is talking about their “children.” She doesn’t know yet that she is carrying twins, so she is totally counting on subsequent pregnancies.

I’d be curious what Phillippe did to Louisa when he learned what she did.

Hubbard calls Diana Madame de Clermont and says that she’s truly Phillippe’s daughter—this is a high praise. Phillippe has been on top of world politics for two millennia for a reason.

So ever since they’ve returned to London, they’ve been without a housekeeper. So who is seeing to their needs? I still keep to my belief that Matthew would frown upon Diana doing household chores, so does everything falls on Annie and Pierre? Also, Francoise must have been annoyed when she was told to stay put.

It’s so cute that Matthew and Diana just stop at the bookseller’s and stuff. They’re basically on a date.

Doing some quick math, Diana’s about 11-12 weeks pregnant by the end of this chapter, already beyond the point they got with the previous pregnancy, and really close to the end of the first trimester. She and Matthew are surely starting cease worrying about the viability of this pregnancy.

I wanna see this exact exchange between Diana, Matthew, and Diana’s father in the show.

Favorite quote

I sighed. Matthew couldn’t stop himself from going after every thief in the market. At times I wished his eyesight were not so keen, his moral compass less absolute.

[noona-clock]

Look After You

Genre: Regency!AU/Single Parent!AU

Pairing: Choi Minho x You (Female Reader)

Warnings: Mentions of death and some mature themes

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | Words: 2,642

“Wow,” Caroline breathed, her nose pressed to the window of the carriage as her breath fogged up the glass. 

Your eldest daughter, now just about six, had slid away from you to the other end of the bench seat when she’d seen the large manor home come into view. She lived in a rather vast estate house herself, so it’s not like she’d never seen a house of that size before, but... When you saw the grand Jacobean-style architecture, all the columns and parapets and round-arch arcades, you were a bit breathless, as well.

“Let me see, Mama!” your youngest, Louisa, cried as she scrambled off your lap to slide over to the other window. The three-year-old rose up on her knees, placing her hands on the glass on either side of her small face and let out a very amazed-sounding gasp.

“It’s a beautiful house, isn’t it, darlings?” you remarked with a grin, keeping a close eye on both of them in case the carriage rolled over a particularly bumpy rock and knocked them off their seats.

“This is where Aunt Abigail is getting married?” Caroline asked, her eyes still glued to the mansion in the distance.

“It is,” you confirmed. “Her husband-to-be lives here. Well, sometimes. He has a house in London, too, but this house is much bigger and better for a large wedding.”

“And prettier,” Louisa added.

It was quite true. The grandiose manor was surrounded by acres and acres of rolling hills and green pastures and lush farmland and colorful gardens. As you had admitted to yourself just moments ago, it was absolutely breathtaking.

In fact, it was so breathtaking you were beginning to feel a knot of emotion forming in your throat.

...Or maybe that was the fact you were thinking about your younger sister getting married.

You were happy for her, of course. More than happy. She’d found true love and happiness in her fiancé, Onew. It didn’t matter that he was a Duke; Abigail had met him at a London ball and fallen madly in love -- and he with her. What was there to not be happy about?

...Okay, there was something. A little something to not be happy about.

Your younger sister getting married reminded you that you no longer were. Married, that is.

You had been, of course; you had two daughters, after all. It’s just that your husband had passed away over two years ago; he’d been ill for most of his life, and he had succumbed to it before he’d even turned thirty. Before your eldest daughter had even turned four and your youngest had even turned one.

Life can be so cruel sometimes.

You shook your head softly, mentally reminding yourself not to get too lost in your own grief because this was a happy occasion! Your sister was getting married, and she was as blissful as you’d ever seen her.

Plus, two years was enough time to not be totally overcome by your loss. You were out of the mourning period and had been for quite some time. You had your daughters to look after. And, for now, you had your family to look after you.

Caroline and Louisa continued to ooh and ahh and squeal as the carriage trundled ever closer to the manor home.

“Look, Mama!” Caroline gasped, glancing at you over her shoulder. “It’s Aunt Abigail! She’s waiting outside for us!”

Now it was your turn to slide down the bench toward the window. You picked up Louisa and set her on your lap again, craning your neck to peer out the window above Caroline.

Sure enough, there was your younger sister, jumping up and down and waving her arms about. She then stopped, turning toward her husband-to-be standing behind her and grasping his arm in excitement.

You could see from here that he smiled down at her, a warm and loving smile full of adoration.

And, oh, were you glad. Your sister was very dear to you; there was no way you could have let her marry a man who loved her less than Onew did.

The carriage conveying your mother, father, and two younger brothers was ambling along in front of you, and you watched as it slowed to a stop in front of the manor’s main entrance, where Abigail and Onew were waiting. Your driver was not far behind, and as soon as the footman opened the door, your girls jumped down and ran to greet their favorite aunt (their only aunt - while you had only one sister, you had four brothers. Choosing a favorite uncle was always a challenge for Caroline and Louisa, for they all spoiled them considerably).

“Hello, my dearest ones!” you heard Abigail cry, and you alighted from the carriage just in time to see her scoop them into her arms and hug them tightly. “Are you excited to be here? Isn’t this house grand and miraculous?”

“Hello, darling,” you heard a deep voice murmur next to you. 

A small smile immediately tugged at your lips as you felt your father’s hand come to rest in-between your shoulder blades.

“Papa,” you greeted after turning your head to look at him.

“How was your journey?” he asked with a slightly furrowed brow.

“It was the same as yours,” you chuckled. “We all came from the same place, remember?”

After your husband had died, your family had insisted upon moving you back to the estate where you grew up, where your parents and two younger brothers still lived.

Your husband had been a Viscount, but since you had not produced a male heir, his younger cousin inherited the title and everything which went along with it -- including your house. You’d lost everything, even your husband, in the blink of an eye.

You enjoyed living with your family, of course. Caroline and Louisa did, too -- probably more than you since their uncles and grandparents doted on them so.

But you’d had a taste of independent living while you’d been married. You’d had a taste of running your own home and being a Viscountess with duties and responsibilities. So, living back at home with your family, feeling like you had to obey your parents’ rules... it felt constricting at times.

The new Viscount had just recently made you a very generous offer, though, one which you knew you would have to accept: you and your daughters could live in one of the farmhouses located on his country estate, one much like Onew’s, without having to pay rent or do any actual farm labor.

You hadn’t told anyone about it, though; you were planning on waiting until after the wedding to break the news.

After everyone had greeted and hugged each other, Onew invited your family inside, even taking Caroline and Louisa by the hand and walking in with them.

The breathlessness you’d experienced in the carriage upon seeing just the outside of the manor returned in full force when you stepped inside the manor. It was more luxurious and grand than any home you’d been to, including your own. Your father was a Duke, the same as Onew, but even his family estate didn’t quite measure up to this.

Onew began leading your family in a tour of the house, though he assured you he wouldn’t take you into every room. There had to be at least two hundred of them, so a full tour would take the whole day!

He showed you the sitting room, the parlor, the drawing room, the library, the dining room, and the study. When you reached the main staircase, you heard your sister’s delighted voice call out a name.

“Minho!”

You had just been distracted by an enormous, beautiful painting hung up in the hall, but the sound of that name made your gaze snap to attention.

Minho.

You had completely forgotten.

Your eyes landed on a tall but muscular frame, his long legs trotting down the stairs in front of you. But then his smile caught your eye, and you nearly fall back onto the floor. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d seen a grin so bright and friendly, a face so handsome...

Besides that of your husband’s, of course.

Obviously.

The excitement of seeing your sister had totally overshadowed the fact that Minho, your late husband’s former best friend from boarding school, was Onew’s younger brother. You had never met him before since he and your husband had fallen out of touch after graduating onto university, but you had been friends with your husband since childhood. He had told you about his boarding school adventures with Minho in his letters, so you knew all about him. 

Rather, you knew all about him as an adolescent.

You didn’t know much about him as an adult... though, you’d heard things.

Lots of things.

And none of them were very good.

If the society rumors were true, the death of the former Duke and Duchess (Minho and Onew’s parents) had taken quite a toll of him. He had been in University at the time, and he had dropped out soon afterward. He’d -- allegedly -- made his way to London where he’d spent every night drunk, gambling, and in the arms of a new woman.

...At least, that’s what you’d heard.

Whether or not it was actually true remained to be seen.

Looking at his face, you would find it hard to believe he hadn’t been in the arms of a new woman every night.

And now, of course, your cheeks were warming just thinking about that.

“This is my younger brother, Minho,” Onew introduced as Minho reached the bottom of the stairs. “This is Abigail’s... entire family, pretty much. Except for Gabriel and Jacob, whom you met when they arrived with their families yesterday.”

Ah, that’s right! Your two older brothers were already here; you hadn’t seen them in months since they both had their own wives and children. Caroline and Louisa would certainly be pleased to see their cousins.

“Very pleased to meet you,” Minho responded as he reached out to shake your father’s hand.

And then, quite unexpectedly, Minho turned to you, pointing a finger and quirking an eyebrow at you. “I know you.”

Your head jerked back slightly in surprise, and everyone standing in the hall turned to look at you.

“You -- you do?”

“Well, I know -- knew -- your husband.”

To be frank, you were quite amazed he remembered.

“Ah, yes,” you replied with a breathless chuckle. “Yes, I believe you did.”

It looked as though he were about to step up to you, maybe take hold of your hand and clutch it to his chest as a show of sympathy. But your eldest interrupted before he had the chance.

“You knew my Papa?” Caroline asked in a small voice, her little eyebrows raised.

Minho’s own eyebrows raised, and he turned away from you to face your daughter.

You were about to intervene and scold Caroline for being impolite, but Minho almost immediately crouched down to be face-to-face with her. He reached out and took her hand from Onew’s, holding it delicately.

“Yes, I did,” he answered gently. “We went to school together when we were younger. I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

Caroline simply nodded, and you saw her cheeks growing pink.

“What’s your name?” Minho asked.

“Caroline,” your daughter replied with a nod. And then she nodded her head toward her younger sister. “And that’s Louisa.”

Minho looked over to Louisa, and you heard the grin in his voice when he said, “He has two daughters?”

Louisa nodded shyly before stepping behind Onew’s legs.

“She’s scared of new people,” Caroline explained in her typical know-it-all voice.

“Am not!” Louisa retorted with a deep frown.

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

Oh, boy. What a lovely first impression your daughters were making on Minho.

“Girls, please --” you began, taking a step toward them.

But then Minho quickly picked Caroline up, hoisting her on his waist and standing up. “If she’s shy, then we won’t bother her,” he said. “Would you like to go see the playroom?”

Caroline gasped, suddenly clutching onto Minho’s neck and nodding vigorously.

“But I want to go, too!” Louisa piped in. She then looked over at you, and you took it as your cue to get involved.

“Come, my darling,” you said softly, stepping over there and taking her hand. “Let’s go with them. We’ll probably find your cousins up there.”

“Are those little mongrels your cousins?” Minho asked teasingly.

Of course, all the way up to the playroom on the second floor, Caroline and Louisa giggled with delight at Minho calling their cousins ‘mongrels.’ By the time you and Minho reached the door, they were scrambling to get down and share the news with Gabriel’s three sons and Jacob’s son and daughter, all under the age of ten.

“Thank you, My Lord,” you murmured after Caroline and Louisa dashed into the room yelling their cousins’ names.

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” he replied with a charming grin.

“No, truly,” you urged. “It was very kind of you to be so nice to my girls. I know it’s been years since you even talked to my husband -- late husband.”

Minho turned slightly toward you, though he still stayed a proper distance away from you. “I was so very sorry to hear about his untimely passing,” he said quietly. “I... At that moment, I regretted immensely not ever reaching back out to him or going to your wedding or --”

“There’s nothing can be done now,” you reminded him gently, feeling your brow furrow.

“Right, of course,” Minho said, a forced smile tugging at his lips. “Please do accept my condolences and sincerest sympathies.”

You nodded and dipped down into a small curtsy. “Thank you, My Lord. They are much appreciated.”

Minho suddenly jumped to attention and turned toward you fully, extending his hand out to you. “I am so sorry, we have not even properly met.”

You somewhat cautiously slid your hand into his, and he bowed his head over it before saying, “I’m Minho. Please, you can call me by name if you’d like since we’ve indirectly known each other for years.”

“Nice to finally meet you, My Lord,” you replied, purposely not using his first name. You were not so bold as to do that. “I am Y/N, though you may call me Miss Y/L/N or My Lady.” Your father was a Duke, so you still had that title, at least.

Minho’s lips quirked into an amused smirk as if to say ‘All right, I get it.’ 

“Yes, M’lady,” he murmured. “It is quite a pleasure to meet you. I heard so much about you at boarding school.”

“Did you?” you asked with some embarrassment.

Minho nodded, looking a bit too pleased with himself. “He read most of your letters out loud and talked about you constantly.”

Oh, it hurt your heart to hear that.

And, much to your chagrin, you felt your eyes fill with tears.

“Did he?” you asked, your lips pulling into a watery grin.

“He did,” Minho confirmed with a very warm and compassionate expression on his face, in his eyes. “I always wanted to meet you. It took a while, but... I’m glad I finally did.”

Well.

Considering the rumors about his past, you weren’t entirely sure what to think about his feelings toward meeting you, but...

You would hold off judgment. For now.

Just thinking about the way he crouched down to speak to Caroline, how he picked her up with no hesitation, how he offered to show your girls to the playroom...

It was the first time your heart had melted - just a little - since your late husband’s death had frozen it.

That had to account for something.

Part 2

[bottled-bliss]

AOP

This can be read as a kind of sequel to "Walking Back Home In The Mud" but it's fine on its own too. Enjoy! Or not, I can’t force you.

A peculiar smell drifts in through the open windows- dewberry. It’s sweet and light and totally out of place. She shouldn’t be able to smell it at all, not with the overpowering stench of fresh paint burning her nostrils. She hasn’t caught a sniff of it since Vermont, except maybe in some perfume shop at one point or another, but artificial smells are different. They don’t have the same time traveling abilities, the power of launching you back into your childhood bedroom like you never left. It makes her think of her mother, how much she misses her and how she’d love to have her here, to help with the alien being that she’s growing inside her, just under her heart.

“Frank,” she shouts and hears him promptly stomp down the stairs. “Can you smell that?”

“Can’t smell anything but the goddamn paint. I left the windows open, hope it helps,” he grumbles. “What is it? Something burning?”

“No, nothing like that.” She eases herself down onto the couch and twists just enough to stretch her legs on it as well. Movement is becoming increasingly difficult these days, as her belly keeps expanding. “Maybe I imagined it,” she shrugs.

“Like the garlic bread last week?” Frank chuckles. He gently grips her ankles, lifts up her legs and sits down beside her, as he grabs a throw pillow to place on his lap, under her feet. “Gotta keep them elevated,” he reminds her and starts giving her feet a much needed massage, smiling when she lets out a moan. He looks a bit silly with the mint green smudges on his face, on his clothes -all over him actually. Silly and laid-back and gorgeous. The past month has taught her she shouldn’t even try to bend forward, but if she could, she would be kissing him right now.

“You don’t know how good this feels,” Karen purrs before getting down to business. “So, are you finished painting the nursery? I want to have the crib set up by the end of the week. The changing table too and it wouldn’t hurt to have some drawers in there and-”

“Slow down,” Frank says, his thumb kneading the arch of her left foot as she wiggles her toes. “I’ll set up everything, stop being so stressed. You didn’t take the week off so you could nag me the whole time, did you?”

Karen gives him a snort full of disapproval. “I don’t nag.”

He raises one eyebrow and cocks his head, lips curling into an amused smile. “Baby, you nag.”

She kicks his hand away playfully while trying to hide her own smile. “If I do, it’s because this little hell spawn of yours is giving me a hard time,” she huffs and places a protective hand on her belly. “Would it kill you to sit still for one moment?” she addresses the baby and then turns to Frank. “I could swear it already hates me.”

“Might be because you’re still calling it ‘it’,” he says, running his palm over her leg.

“It’s mine, I’ll call it what I like,” she tells him.

Frank leans to the side, lowering his head towards her stomach and rubbing his cheek against it. “What are you doing in there that’s got her so mad, kid?” he says in a low voice, like he and the baby are having a private conversation, and then jolts up, surprised. “Christ, that was one mean kick!”  

“No kidding.” Karen exhales slowly. “I’ve developed this theory that the baby is actually trying to kick its way out of me. And at this rate, it will probably succeed.”

He places a tender hand over hers, worry obvious in his eyes. “Does it hurt?”

“Not really, but I’m not enjoying it either.” She hisses as the imprint of a tiny foot appears, pushing against the stretched flesh of her belly. She’s about to start telling the kid off, when she notices Frank’s hypnotized stare. Without saying a word, she takes his hand and presses it down, hoping her estimation of the baby’s next target is correct. “There,” she says when the kick lands. “You felt that, right?”

“Yeah,” he gives her a teary-eyed look. “Yeah, I felt it.”

Her fingers wrap around his in an affectionate squeeze as he pretends to examine the living room walls. “You’ve already painted those,” Karen remarks kindly.

Not bothering to deny he got caught, Frank lets out a quiet, soft laugh. “Can’t hide from you, can I?” He continues rubbing her leg lazily, his eyes rolling to the side as he tries either to recall something or avoid her gaze.

“Frank.”

“Hmm?”

“What did you do?”

When he turns to her, he’s holding a breath that he lets out slowly, very slowly, buying time for himself. “What makes you think I did anything?” he says finally. It’s just a game they play. He likes to tease her but he always spills the beans without much effort from her part. Karen’s brow shoots up and he knows that he shouldn’t drag it out this time. “I may or may not have called your doctor while you were in the bathroom earlier.”

“Frank, come on,” she whines. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“And it will be, for you,” he assures her. Her disbelieving glare makes him want to laugh, but he manages to stifle it. “You don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut? I will, cross my heart and all that.”

Karen moves forward with a grunt and slaps his arm. “Why couldn’t you wait?”

“Because I hate surprises, you know,” he says. “And I was thinking about that form you showed me the other day. Child’s name goes on top. We haven’t even started talking about names yet. What are we going to tell the notary public? Give us a week to decide?”

“I have half a mind to call it Matthew even if it’s a girl, just to annoy you,” she grumbles and Frank roars with laughter.

“Don’t you dare.” He grabs her hand and brings it to his lips.

“Matthew David has a nice ring to it too,” she smirks.

“You wouldn’t be that cruel to the father of your child,” he says before kissing her palm and placing it on his cheek. “I’ll be good from now on, I swear.”

The baby delivers a little pop of a kick, as though asking her to take pity on daddy, and Karen rubs the stubbly cheek under her palm. “I could do worse but I’m going to let this one slide. It seems that you two are teaming up against me.”

“It,” he stresses the word, “knows what’s right.”  

“Oh, getting cocky, are we?” She leans closer to her belly and casts him a smile that is all threat, as she whispers to the baby. “Are you comfortable in there, Matthew David?” Frank raises his hands in surrender and the baby stays suspiciously still. She counts that as a win. “Both are good names though.”

“No way in hell,” he laughs again. “I can’t handle more than one David and one Matthew in our life. We’re covered on that front.”

“So it’s a boy,” Karen exclaims. She expected to be a bit disappointed at finding out now instead of later, but she really isn’t. A little nervous, maybe, because she doesn’t know the first thing about raising a boy. But also excited.

“Didn’t say that,” Frank cuts her excitement short.

“A girl?” She realizes she doesn’t know the first thing about raising a girl either. What was she thinking, that she would magically have all the insight necessary to bring up a person, simply because they happened to be of the same gender? Frank presses his lips together in response, refusing to give up the secret. “That’s not fair,” Karen frowns.

“I thought you didn’t want to know,” he quirks an eyebrow. “If you’ve changed your mind…”

“I haven’t,” says Karen and turns her head away, pouting in mock annoyance.

“Okay then.”

Placing an arm behind her knees, Frank lifts up her legs and gets up, setting the pillow on a different angle, making sure the position is up to his standards before gently laying her feet on it. As he stands there rubbing the back of his neck, Karen follows his gaze across the room, to the kitchen table where the printed AOP form lies. She wonders if the same thing that bothers her, bothers him too. “Have you thought of any names?” she asks.

“Don’t expect anything creative from me,” he chuckles, distracted momentarily. “Jane and John are the first names that came to mind.”

“Jane Castiglione,” she says, inclining her head to the side as though seriously considering it. “It doesn’t sound bad.”

“It sounds terrible. Same goes for John Castiglione,” he replies as he bends down to kiss her forehead. “We could go with Penelope, if it’s a girl. If you…”

Karen reaches up to stroke his cheek. “It’s very sweet of you to suggest it, but as much as I loved my mom, I don’t want to force that name on a child. It’s not very… us, don’t you think?” Her eyes widen, sparkling with an idea. “What about your mom’s name?”

“Louisa? You like that?”

Yes, she really does and the more she thinks about it, the more fitting it seems. “Louisa Castiglione. Yeah, I like it. Do you? Or is it too much like…”

“A little bit,” Frank admits with a tightness in his tone. “We have time to come up with something. No rush.”

Karen nods. “And if it’s a boy?”

He hesitates for a split second, maybe even less than that, looking confused, which tells Karen a lot more than he’d planned. “Uh, I don’t know,” he replies. “We agree that both Paxton and Mario are shit names, right?”

“Oh, definitely.” A bright smile starts forming on her lips, as something like joy stirs in her stomach, prompting the baby to begin moving again as well. Joy, she thinks and puts the name down in the mental list of potential names for their daughter. “But we won’t be needing any boys’ names, I take it?”

Frank throws his hands up and then cradles her face in them, leaning in to kiss her. “How the hell do you do that?”

“You’re too easy to read, Castle,” Karen giggles and throws her arm over the back of the couch, slanting backwards. “A little girl, huh?”

“Yeah,” he beams at her, taking a deep breath.

“Well, I hope she likes green because that room isn’t getting repainted for a long time.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t mind doing it all over again, if she doesn’t like it,” Frank tells her, eyes narrowed with a smile.

Great, Karen thinks, the kid isn’t even out yet and he’s already set on spoiling her. “Jane Castiglione is really not a bad name.” Frank pulls a seriously displeased face. “Is it the Castiglione part that bothers you?”

“No, why would it? I’ll sign the paper as Pete Castiglione and I’ll be proud to do it. But it bothers you.”

“Just a tiny little bit,” she confesses.

“It’s just a name, Karen.” He shrugs and his eyes gleam with mischief. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“You know, continuing to quote Shakespeare in spite of me asking you to stop, is grounds for divorce,” Karen says, tapping her finger on the couch while holding his gaze.

“You’ll have to marry me before you can file for divorce,” he chuckles as he makes his way towards the stairs, probably going to add some finishing touches to the nursery before jumping in the shower.

“Well, you haven’t asked me yet.”

Frank freezes in his tracks and for a moment, Karen considers if that’s too much pressure for him. There’s no reason why it should be; they’ve been living together for some time, they’re expecting a baby, for god’s sake, and while she doesn’t need a ring on her finger to feel secure in her relationship, she’s going to smack him if he freaks out on her. When he turns around to face her, his features are soft and calm and Karen is glad that she doesn’t have to resort to violence, especially because she’d have to get up to do it. “I will,” he tells her simply and goes off to finish his chores.

Frank planted two large rose bushes in the flower beds of their front yard just last week, but despite their size, they haven’t made their presence known until now, as a mild breeze carries their scent inside the house and spreads it around the living room. Karen inhales deeply, not letting the smell drag her back to the past, but have her glimpse into the future instead. She knows enough about genetics to understand the chances of the kid looking like her are slim, but she’s perfectly okay with that. The only flaw she can imagine in a child that looks like Frank is that she’ll have two sets of those dark, puppy eyes melting her heart. “I won’t allow you to be spoiled, you hear me?” she speaks softly, rubbing her belly. ‘Your father will be a constant foil to my plans, but you’re not going to become some obnoxious brat that nobody likes. And you’d better love mint green, we’re done with painting for at least five years. Well, maybe if you’d like a bit of yellow, I’d consider it. I don’t know, stop being so spoiled already,” she smiles as her daughter finally settles down to sleep. 

AO3

[probablymango]

Try to love again

Harvey awkwardly watches Johnson from across the table, things were finally starting to calm down, but anxiety was building up higher in him. His mind keeps looping back to what Dandy asked him months back: Does he have a thing for Johnson?

His first reaction was no, but that was his first reaction. Actually spending time with him was making him rethink his answer way more often than he would like. He had many wonderful qualities; helpful, cheerful, not put off by the murder, patient, knowledgeable in magic, wanting to spend time with him for reasons not related to the hotel or the trainyard. It was…. Endearing and starting to make him feel nervous, which got in the way of practicing magic and Johnson was starting to notice.

“Mr. Williams, are you alright?” Johnson wasn’t wearing his skin mask, which meant that he could see his antennae twitch with worry. It was kinda cute.

“I.. I think so. I don’t think that I’m sick, at least.” Sick in the head might be another issue, but physically he was fine…. Actually, that might be a stretch considering his physical alterations since dealing with demons. “Why?”

“I’m just worried. You haven’t been focusing well during practice and you’ve been sticking to the edges of the room, well, more to the edge than before.” His antennae move back. “Is something wrong? I understand if you don’t want to tell me, but I just want you to know…. That I’m here for you if you need me, ok?”

“.....” He nods, feeling himself get warm in the face and sweating a bit. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Johnson seems to relax, antennae lifting back up and if he had a mouth, he’d probably be smiling. “That’s all I can ask, sir.”

Harvey smiles, then gets up and leaves, smile growing wider as he tried to find somewhere that no one else was. God, he felt like a teen again, hopelessly infatuated with a man that was too good for him. He sits in the nearest chair and puts his hands on his face. Why does his feelings have to be cruel like this?

He looks up to see Earnest walk in. “What the fuck? Why are you sitting in the dark buddy?”

“Earnest…” He sighed, sitting up straighter and staring at him. “Can you… Wait, no, never mind.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. Come on, tell your old friend what’s up.” He pulls over a chair in front of Harvey and sits on it backward. “What’s on your mind?”

“..... How did you know that it would be ok with Gerdy?”

“That’s a weird question coming from you. Why do you ask? Are you trying to take my girl?”

Harvey snorts. “I’m gay, remember?”

“Oh yeah, that’s right.” He relaxes a bit, grin forming on his features. “So, you asking me for love advice? Who you thinking about serenading?”

“No serenading, but… some advice would be nice… please.” He was getting nervous again.

“Well, for one, I need to know who it is, so I can help!” Earnest leans closer, tipping the chair a bit.

He blushes, leaning back a bit. “Does it really matter that much?”

“Listen, buddy, pal.”

“I’m listening.”

“I can’t help you with the person if I don’t know who it is, because people have very different preferences. Like how some people like Louisa love flowers and others like Julia love to eat makeup.”

He snorts, relaxing a bit. “I guess you’re right.”

“Sooooooo?” Earnest grins, getting way too close again. “Who is it?”

“It’s, uh, it’s….” He stands up and tries to leave. “Never mind.”

“No, you don’t.” He grabs him and lifts him off the ground. “Tell me!”

“Put me down!” He tries to kick him and pull out, but Earnest wouldn’t loosen his grip.

“Not until I get my answers, lover boy!” He laughs, spinning in place.

The door opens wider to show a confused Dandy and Louisa. “What the fuck are you doing to him?”

“Thought you’d recognize an interrogation when you see one.” He easily walked over to the couple. “He won’t tell me who he has a crush on!”

“Shut up Earnest…” Harvey attempted a different tactic for escape, wiggling.

“He has a crush?” Louisa glanced between her blushing, sort of, boss and his captor. “Is that true?”

Dandy leaned closer and had a smug, knowing grin. “Do you have a crush on Johnson?”

He was blushing hard, looking away from the curious trio. “I… I might have a thing for Johnson.”

Louisa was practically vibrating, Earnest’s grip on him finally loosened, and Dandy was bouncing in place. “I knew it! I knew it! I called it months ago!”

“What does Johnson like? Hmmmm….”

“Were you asking for love advice from Earnest?” Louisa stood beside Harvey once he was on the ground again.

“I was considering it..”

“Here’s my advice first, don’t talk to him while he’s near a bathroom.”

Harvey gave her a look. “.. Why would I even do that?”

“Just keep it in mind, okay?”

He looked at his two taller friends to find them suddenly interested in not looking him in the eyes. “..... I shall keep it in mind. Thank you.”

“Go get ’em tiger.” She gives him a quick shoulder pat, then runs off.

“...... what was the bathroom talk about?”

“It’s hard to say, y’know? Cryptic women talking about love and shit..” Earnest shrugs, trying to lie about not knowing.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story, but it can be summed up to: Louisa used to hide out in Jimmy James’ bathroom and while I tried to flirt with her, Earnest wanted me to ask how her poop went.”

“She still hasn’t gotten back to me on that and we’ve known for… about a year now?”

“......... I’m going to ignore that.” He weaves away from them, not wanting to learn more about Louisa’s bathroom habits. “I’ll just…. Do something else.”

“Wait! We have so much wisdom to give you!” Earnest called out.

“Don’t want it anymore!” Harvey wandered off, managing to lose the others between the crowd and many hallways. His friends were weird.

He sighed, wandering the halls that regular customers used. It had less people, gave him a more space, and silence for him to think.

He liked Johnson, that was apparent now, but was he willing to try to get into a relationship with him? His previous attempts at having a relationship haven’t ended well and it seemed to usually be his fault.

He sighed, sitting on a couch in the lobby and staring out a window. It was getting really late and the only people hanging around were night owls and moth people.

After a while, Howie finally noticed him and waved him over. “Hey, Mr. Spoopy! How’s it going?”

He sighed, getting up and walking to her. “Can’t any of you let me think in peace?”

“Well, maybe you should sulk in places that curious people don’t hang out at.” She joked, leaning against the counter. “What’s got you down, sport?”

For a second, he cracks a small smile, before goes back to frowning. “Over thinking love.”

“Oof, that’s rough, buddy.” She looks around, then pulls a small flask out from under the counter. “Need a drink?”

“Have…. Have you been drinking on the job?”

She puts it back under the counter. “No.”

He shakes his head, chuckling softly. “We’re going to need to talk about that.”

“Later though, right?” She grins and gives him finger guns.

“Fine later.”

She does a quick fist bump and then goes back to focusing on him. “So, what’s love done to you this time?”

“Well, it’s making me fall for someone close to me and making me overthink my entire relationship with a moth person. It’s…. It’s getting very stressful.”

She nods thoughtfully. “Need a way to tell Johnson you love him?”

He looks up at her, mildly scared. “How did you know it was him?”

She looks around, trying to feign innocence. “What? Know who?”

“.........”

“.........”

“Do you know what I can say to him to see if he likes me without actually asking him?”

“How do you talk to him about important things?”

“Well….. I slipped a letter under his door for the dinner and before that, I asked Dandy to help ask him to teach me magic.”

She took a deep breath, put her hands in front of her face, almost as if praying, then swiftly tilted her hand to point at him. “You need help. Like, a lot of help.”

He blushed and shrugged. “Or I can ignore my feelings and continue to be a cold bitch.”

She shakes her head in disapproval, then without looking away, dials a number and holds the phone to her head. “Hi, Gerdy, this is Howie. Can you, Louisa, and Marcus come to the front? We have a new project on our hands. …. Yeah, it can wait til morning. Thank you, see you then!”

And that is when Harvey knew, he was fucked.

The next few days were filled with too many people invested in his love life. He thinks that someone told moth people outside of his friend group about his crush, because now when he enters rooms that have them, he hears their giggling in his head. Howie was trying to make him confident enough to actually confess to him, Marcus set about cleaning up one of the back rooms for a private place to have a date, Earnest gave a lot of unwanted advice, while Dandy and Louisa gave better advice, and Gerdy provided moth person knowledge.

Now he was standing outside of his door, fidgeting with a piece of paper in his hands. He considered bolting, but Howie and Earnest were at each end of the hall, refusing to let him run. He sighed, knocking on the door and glaring at Earnest.

Johnson opened up after a few minutes, in his human skin and smiled. “Hello, Harvey! What… what are you doing here?”

He looks at the man in front of him and gives a nervous smile. “Hey, I, uh, I uh, ummm. Just… take this.” He gives him the note and bolts off, trying to get as much distance as possible. This was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, this was a bad-

“Sir, wait!”

He turns to see Johnson running to catch up with him, flushed and holding the paper. “Y… yes?” He fidgets in place, expecting the worse. He could see the vague form of Howie giving him a thumbs up.

“Is this real? Do you really want to see more between us?”

He nods, leg tapping the floor and looking at the ground. “You can say no if you want..”

“Why would I say no?”

He looks up, face growing warmer and pulse getting quick. “What?”

He smiles wider. “I like you a lot and I’m happy to learn that you like me back.”

His knees were getting weak and he smiles, probably looking ridiculous. “I…… I love you….”

“He did it!” Earnest cheered.

He groaned, covering his face and turning to look at him. “Yes, I did it. Please, for the love of god, fuck off.”

“Fucking off!” The blond laughed, running off, and from the sound of it, so did Howie.

“Needed help again?” Johnson joked, resting a hand on Harvey’s shoulder.

“Unfortunately.” He chuckles softly and turns to him. “Want to go on a date?”

He nods. “Wait, like right now?”

“I think Marcus would prefer if we did it sooner than later.”

“Oh boy. Give me a minute to change!” He ran back into his room. Harvey laughs, leaning against the wall as he waits. This is going to be great.

[rivervixen327]

The Slayer

Summary ↓

Six months ago Stevie Hoffman was just your regular highschool student, above average grades, head cheerleader, class president and the president of the year book committee. But all that changed the day she turned sixteen, that day the wool had been ripped from her eye's and suddenly she was thrust into the world of the supernatural. A world she had to singlehandedly keep at bay, along with her over barring Watcher at her side ,all while she tried to keep her identity a secret.  unfortunately things are about to get a whole lot more complicated when Thaddeus greystone shows up, with information about the big bad apocalyptic Ark Angel who just rolled into town looking for trouble. and a secret, one that involves Stevie Hoffman.

Characters ↓

Thaddeus greystone - " I didn't choose to be this way, a monster."

Stevie Hoffman - "Go to hell, the council doesn't get to decide who I love"

Louisa Corns - " I really do hate that bitch"

Gregory Cerberus - "Wow they really don't make em how they used, huh"

Kathy Davenport - " wait let me get this straight, you're vampire slayer and my boyfriend is the wolf man"

Mickey st'john- "sorry my favourite time of the is coming up"

Pete Hoffman- "Back off dad, you screwed up way before you cheated on mum"

Tory Rivera - " So can he like, ya know smell you're period"

Professor Lionel Coleman- " I'm her Watcher it's my duty to train her, to protect her, it's not yours"

Mrs Mary Hoffman - "Hunny I know you don't want to talk right now, but when your ready my doors open"

Cameron Fields- "Look babe I've been trying to get in good with her click, but the witchy girl is making Impossible"

Sara Davidson - "Hmm, she's different to the others, why?"

Angela Thomas - " So you're the slayer, smaller than I thought you'd be"

Delilah Spence - " Long time no see, tell me Thaddeus how is immortality treating you"

Ezekiel - " You think you have the power to beat me little girl, I am power"

Jedediah - " We were friends once Thaddeus, perhaps one day we shall be again "

Mathias - " Come home Brother our father misses you greatly"

Philip Hoffman - " Hey she's my daughter too, I deserve to know what the fuck is going on with her"

Hey so I'll post the prologue on Tumblr if you want to read but don't have a wattpad account.

_________prologue↓_________

Prologue

1

Ezekiel's feet pounded the gravel flooring of Paris, the night air thick as he chased down his latest prey, the slayer. He had kill meny in his time since his fall from heaven, this one would mean just as little as the rest. The slayer rounded the corner into a pretty french graveyard, away from the prying eyes of the mortal folk.  personally he couldn't care less if the mundanes saw what really lurked in the night, but she was a slayer and very good one, one who had evaded him and his clan for years, so yes it made sense that even now as her death was approaching she kept to slayer code.

The slayer stood rooted in her spot, watching as two more men appeared from the crevices of the graveyard. She knew in that moment that her death was near, but she wasn't scared to die. For a slayer her life had been long, most don't make passed the test. So yes while she was only 43 the slayer knew she had lived a long Life, one in which she was a hero to meny. Going out in Paris seemed beautiful to her, the tower in view it's light's glistening, as the Ark Angel and his followers surrounded her. The Slayer knew what he wanted, but she wouldn't give up a fellow sister, especially one as significant as she would become.  For centuries the council had told it's warriors of one who would have the power to end the raign of Ezekiel. That the Slayer would have the power of immortality, though it was an impossible task it was a task each was Given, to understand what the prophecy ment by immortality. And for centuries no one had figured this out, until now, until this moment now she the middle aged women stared her death in the eye's she understood the prophecy.

In her minds eyes she could see the next warrior, the girl was young much like she used to be. But she also happened to be completely untrained, though to the slayer perhaps this was a good thing. The girl would be surprise to Ezekiel and his band of merry men, he wouldn't be expecting the next warrior to be small and untrained knowing nothing of the supernatural world. But the Slayer knew this girl would be well protected, with friends like she had. With the Watcher who would soon be chosen to prepare her for the battles ahead, one who would love the her like a father loves his daughter. Surely the council would frown upon such a thing, but it was something out if their control. And she had him.

He was a surprise to the women at first, but now visions had become clear, In Death that often happens, now she could see the Slayer clearly and she knew the girl needed him. There had been a Reason her first date six months ago had been such a chaotic disaster, it was the same reason all the other dates had ended the same way. It was clear now, she was destined to be with him, it was as though they're Union was written in the star's. she was Reason why he had left his master's side over a thousand years ago. She was Reason why he only killed when he needed to, the universe was trying to tell him something. It had become clearer to women now as her death approached, the shadows in her vision's had been him. He was forever watching her, making sure she was Safe. He had loved her since the beginning of his immortal life. Now the current slayer for however long she had left knew this would be hard for the pair of fated lovers, it was forbidden but she knew somehow in the end it would work out. She knew the slayer would be safe and protected by all around her that cared for her. And she knew that the girl would protect them too.

Ezekiel finally came into view, the Slayer shut of her minds eye, her concentration now of the Ark Angel and his followers coming forwards  from the Shadows. The women was now surrounded but she had no fear of death, it was a natural part of life.

The women dropped her stakes, using her now free hands to push back she knoted blonde locks from her face.

"Arh, i see the women has come to her senses, tell my slayer what do you know of the prophecy" the man's voice was thick with gravel, his yellow eyes hooded as  they remained trained on the Slayer.

"I'll never tell you" spat the women, in a flash Mathias had pinned one arm across the blondes chest, while his free hand tangled itself into her hair, pulling back her head. The warm flesh of her neck exposed.

"You are brave, for a dead women,  aren't you ?" The ark angel closer now, so close he could hear the blood pumping in her veins. She wasn't stupid, she knew he was trying to intimidate her but it wouldn't work she wouldn't give the young girl up.

"Nothing I'll tell you nothing" Ezekiel growled like a primitive animal, before taking a few strides backwards.

"Go ahead boys, but remember to share." Within a blink of a eye, the slayer felt two pairs sharp teeth sink into either side of her neck. Both vampire's lapping up the blood as sweet as nectar. The older man forced his children to stop when he saw the women wanting to speak.

"STOP, she wants to speak." Both vampire reluctantly realised the women allowing her sputter out her last words.

"You'll never beat him, you Ezekiel of Lazarus will never beat him, you are not strong enough."

"Who, is this you speak of, girl answer me" the man's face was a mixture of confusion and desperation, to know who the Slayer spoke of.

"Someone you thought was long dead, you're Greatest creation," with those words the women was dead.

Ezekiel was confused, In his long raign on this earth he had turned meny and meny of them he considered his greatest creation. But through the ages they had all died, well those except Mathias and jedediah. On some level he knew that the pair were living because of him, they were faithful to him, to cause and of course he knew why. He had found jedediah two thousand years ago dying, the blood had been two hard to resist and soon enough he was drained of the sticky red liquid. At the time his first turn had convinced Ezekiel to bring the man back and of course he did. Matthias was different he was young compared to jedediah at only just a thousand. He and come looking for Ezekiel, evidently he found the the ark Angel in question, at the time he happened to be grieving the loss of his child. So he turned the young Man, his pathetic attempt to recreate his masterpiece.

"Father_father are you okay"

"No I think I have discovered something imperative, you're brother Jedediah may still in world after all". Ezekiel stated, the younger man froze taking a step backwards.

"Father it can not be, you would've felt his presence long ago, if he was still with the world you could feel him" Mathias spoke up licking the rest of the slayers blood from the corner of his lips. He had never met his master first creation but he had heard the story's, if they were true he was something beautiful but fearsome to be-hold.

"Perhaps, the distance of time has severed our connection, my son would've come home to me if I'd called, if he knew I was still living." Ezekiel frowned as a old wound had been opened.

"Father, maybe he did know and he simply didn't want to return to your side, that if what the girl said isn't true, father she could've lied" Jedediah said remembering those last few months before his blood brother disappeared, before the human had come with proof of his death. It had been trying times, his brother grew bored of being locked up like a child, he grew tired of the constant killing. The blood that followed them, how cruel they're father had become. How his eyes longed for more than blood and satisfaction the kill gave him. Jedediah knew his brother was capable of more, maybe evenlove if he found the right person. So he thought maybe his brother had planned that night, to escape and then disappear from the face of world.

"No my son would return to me, I know it" all eyes were on the Ark Angel as he spoke.

"Let's leave we have a Slayer to find"

2

It was late afternoon when Stevie Hoffman started on her way home, cheer practice had gone longer then expected, giving her less time to get ready for tonights party. Tonight her family and friends would be celebrating sixteen wonderful years with Stevie in the world. We'll all except her father, he would be seeing her on the weekend, since Mary and Philip got divorced the redhead saw her father less and less. Though she supposed it was natural he lived in California now and she still live in Willow falls, a small town just outside of Pennsylvania. But that didn't mean that Stevie didn't want him here for her sixteenth, but both her parents had assured their daughter it was for the best so Stevie dropped it.

The redhead decided to take a short cut through the cemetery, maybe she'd stop and see her grandparents graves before heading home. This was nothing out of ordinary Stevie often came by to see her grandparents, sometimes it help to talk to to them, if the day had been especially bad. And today had been, the boy who asked out had suddenly changed his mind and copped off with a blonde a year or so older than her.

This always happened to her, the redhead felt like she was destined to be lonely forever. Stevie continued down the gravel path to her family crypt, but from behind her the girl Heard a branch snapped under someone's feet. Now sure this could've been nothing but the redhead could've sworn she was alone. Turning Stevie saw nothing, so she shook it off and headed further down the track.

The girl however didn't get far because before long had been shoved to floor, with a man in his late twenties maybe early thirty's on top of her. The man's face was filled with rage, his eyes wide with hunger. He craned mouth down to the girls neck, but as his large fangs grazed Stevie's neck she brought her knee up to his groin, connecting it hard. The man tumbled a little to the side in pain, the girl shoved him the rest of way scrambling to her feet she ran.

The redhead ran as fast as converse clad feet would carry her, but she couldn't beat the man's speed. He up and like a flash had caught up to the girl. Stevie once again found her on floor, the man dragging her by the ankles. The gravel of the paving cutting her knees and hands. The girl some manage to break one leg free, kicking the man in the ankle he fell to the ground.

Stevie turned to leave but once again the man was her In a flash, the red was flat on her back. Fearing the worst, that he was going rape her. She turned her head, green eyes landing on a sharp wooden branch and in a instant the girl knew what to do. It was like every molecule woke up and told her what to do, seconds later Stevie plunged the wooden stick into the man's chest. Soon enough he was reduced to ash, his body had disappeared, as though he was never there.

From the corner stood a man holding a note pad and what looked to be a recording device. He looked impressed, but Stevie Hoffman stood tears welling up in her eyes and the realization of what she had just done. She and killed a man.

"Oh god I killed him, he's dead" the man frowned  and made his way over to his slayer.

"Miss Hoffman you need to calm down" he tried to Reason with the girl.

"No I killed someone, I just killed someone, he's dead what if he had a family" Stevie Hoffman's body trembled, where she now stood the stake still in her hands.

"Miss Hoffman, I need you calm down and listen to me. What you just killed wasn't human, he was a vampire and he was already dead" the man with note pad spoke getting closer to frightened redhead.

"Vampires aren't real,"

"Yes miss Hoffman they are and it's you're duty to protect the world against the creatures, you are the slayer" Stevie Hoffman let out a hystercial giggle before collapsing to the floor. The Watcher huffing as it suddenly became clear to him just how much help this girl was going to need.

Sighing professor Lionel Coleman collected his slayers belongings, and drove the unconscious girl home. He had spun some story of how he saw the girl being asulted by the cemetery, but had managed to to stop the assailant before anything to bad had happened. Stevie's mother had been greatfull that her daughter was brought home safely and thanked the man kindly. 

It was safe to say her sixteenth birthday hadn't turned out the way she expected and it turned out her life wouldn't be the same again. So much was coming and her Watcher just hoped she'd be ready when it did.

[echodrops]

Can we still send ships? Midotsuyu, Kiribaku, Kataang, Zutara, JoxLaurie (don’t know the ship name, little women)

Whoa, there are a lot here, so I’ll just write a little about each one.

MidoTsuyu:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I quite like Tsuyu and her character. It’s refreshing to see a somewhat blunt female character who speaks her mind, is responsible, level-headed, and great in a crisis. She’s not only cute in her design but also in her reactions to other characters–her straightforward manner of making friends is very endearing to me. Even though she rarely gets as much of the spotlight as she deserves, I think that she and Midoriya could be a fine ship! In particular, I appreciate that if this ship was the main het ship, there probably wouldn’t be a lot beating around the bush and awkward romantic tension such as exists between Izuku and Ochako–Tsuyu seems like the type who would come clean about her feelings fairly quickly. Ha ha, it would honestly be pretty cute to see Midoriya completely flustered by having a girl confess to him–he’d probably melt into a puddle from the heat of his own blush.

I think this ship has a lot of potential and should get more attention from fans–maybe Horikoshi should spend a little more time giving Tsuyu some ship tease with other characters! I’m kind of partial to Ochako/Tsuyu myself.

KiriBaku:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

There are some ships where you just have to ask yourself what the creator’s intent was. Like do you think Horikoshi intended for the fans to like seeing Bakugou and Kirishima together as much as we do? Do you think he sees all the fanarts and asks himself “What have I done?!” or, deep down, do you think that sometimes manga and animation artists create these characters just KNOWING that fans are going to ship them, and secretly embracing that fan reaction, even if they don’t ever actually plan on making the pair canon in actual material? Sometimes when I look at KiriBaku, I just get the feeling that Horikoshi knew what he was doing when he started drawing the two of them together.

I love that Kirishima has zero fear of Bakugou’s threats and crappy attitude, and that he also won’t just allow Bakugou to trample over others. He’s such a good kid whose gentle chiding and constant corrections seem to be improving Bakugou’s mannerisms and helping Bakugou to make genuine friends (however grudging Bakugou seems to be about it lol). Kirishima makes Bakugou a better person just by being around him! But it’s also true in reverse–I don’t know if Bakugou’s really deliberately trying to cheer Kirishima up or just stating what’s on his mind because he’s honest, but Bakugou’s supporting words have been massive motivators for Kirishima, whose greatest weakness has always been his internal feelings of inferiority.

A good, mutually supportive and beneficial ship. A+.

Kataang:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

Ten years ago I was not the mature adult I am today, and although I myself was never an active part of the ship war between Zutara and Kataang, I definitely read every single piece of back-and-forth drama between these two ships that I could get my hands on and was vocally on the Zutara side. To be honest, I recall hating Kataang with a burning passion back then. I just disliked everything about it, from the stereotype schoolgirl/schoolboy crush vibe it radiated to the irritating “clingy jealous girl“ scenes that got handed to Katara… Not to mention that, personally, I’ve always found it a bit odd when girls date younger men–I’m sure this is just ingrained societal stereotypes coming out, but… ha ha, is it bad of me to say that I’ve always found men to be less mature than girls? Dating a guy who is your own age can turn into a babysitting gig if he hasn’t got his shit together… Dating a younger guy might be even worse. XD

I felt like a lot of chemistry between these characters was kind of arbitrary… Almost like “Katara has never met any young men who weren’t from her tribe before but now she met someone new and ooh, he’s so cool and different as the Avatar!” There wasn’t anything wrong with Aang–he was sweet and fun and strong. But I could never see what particularly would have attracted someone to him romantically; his vibe and attitude were so explicitly childish through the first half of the story that I never quite got a “romantic” vibe and it kind of made me, as a nearly twenty-year-old viewer, a little uncomfortable to even try to imagine a twelve-year-old in a romantic light. I feel like a lot of the Kataang shippers might have been on the younger end, and therefore more likely to see Aang as a reflection of themselves?

In any case, as a more responsible adult, I definitely have learned my lessons on shipping and letting others ship–if Kataang is your cup of tea, more power to you guys! I was never my ship, but I can respect other people’s love for it.

Zutara:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

Obviously if you’re not a Kataang shipper, you’re a Zutara shipper. I don’t make the rules, just abide by them. Zutara was my bread and butter for as long as Avatar was on TV. I remember calling my friend up on the good old house phone with a cord I had to stretch to the max just to see the TV and talk at the same time, wailing about all the ship tease scenes for this ship. I still remember the heartbreak I felt when watching the ending of the last season and knowing that Kataang was incoming. I remember grumbling through every Zuko/Mai scene wondering why in the hell the creators hated Zuko so much they’d throw him together with someone so ambivalent as Mai…

I love red/blue, fire/water, opposites-in-balance ships, always have and always will. I love the imagery, I love their motifs, I love the personalities that come along with these kind of elementally-aligned characters; I love the weight and automatic tension coding two characters with these colors or other opposite features brings and how creators can bank on these archetypes to add additional depth to character interactions–there’s just something very tidy and pleasing about color-coded ships.

Not to mention all the other wonderful aspects of this ship. I really wanted to see this one in canon. Alas…

Jo/Laurie:

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

LOOK MAN. I might not have read Little Women since elementary school but you do not forget the perfection that is Jo and Laurie, the most perfect ship that never was. Screw you Louisa May Alcott, I’ll never forgive you.

I feel like, when you’re young and you read books, there’s that moment where you come across your first “real” romance, the first relationship where you go from seeing relationships as “blech, something for adults” to “this is why all the adults make such a big deal out of getting married because THEY’RE IN LOVE”–in some ways, what we read or see depicted to us through media early on in life becomes our lens for viewing and judging later relationships, and having Little Women as an early example of romance has definitely had a profound effect on my tastes and definitions of romance throughout the years, I feel.

Jo and Laurie had no right to never get together. It actually feels cruel, thinking about it in retrospect. How could their destiny be denied so coldly?! I’m getting sad just thinking about this lol.

Jo and Laurie were each other’s best friends, the absolute picture of “kindred spirits”–they understood each other, delighted in each other’s wit, and supported each other through the doubts and drama. There was an air about them that they existed in a world all their own, that they were just two very different people from all the other characters, who saw eye-to-eye in a way that others couldn’t touch and who brought out the best–and sometimes worst–in each other in a very vivid and human way.

They felt real, lovable, enjoyable, and made for each other.

And then it never happened. I’m going to leave my dissatisfied fan letter on Alcott’s grave, dammit.

[aion-rsa]

Behind Her Eyes: the Dubious Messages Behind its Finale Twist

https://ift.tt/3s2mzFI

Warning: contains major spoilers for the Behind Her Eyes finale

Behind Her Eyes is the perfect duplicity-hinting title for a series that conceals what it is until the very end. The name works both for the psychological adultery thriller that this Netflix adaptation presents as, and for the supernatural story it’s really telling. 

Because what’s behind her eyes, in this instance, is him. She is beautiful, wealthy Scottish heiress Adele, played by The Luminaries’ Eve Hewson. He is working class, Glaswegian heroin addict Rob, played by Game of Thrones’ Robert Aramayo. They meet as teenagers at rehab after the death of Adele’s parents, and realise that they share the ability for their souls to leave their bodies while they sleep and ‘travel’ to other places to spy on other people’s lives. 

‘I love this place, I’d stay forever if I could’

Rob, who identifies as gay, isn’t content just to be a voyeur; he wants a permanent change. Obsessed with Adele for her looks, wealth and adoring fiancé David (Beecham House’s Tom Bateman), Rob manipulates her into using their power to swap bodies, then kills her and takes over her identity. He leaves his life behind to live hers, and is prepared to do anything to keep hold of it.

That includes pulling the same trick a decade later. David and Rob-as-Adele move to London for the latest in a string of fresh starts, and David starts an affair with his secretary Louise (Kiss Me First’s Simona Brown). David has been unhappy in the marriage for years, but won’t leave for fear of being implicated in the death of ‘Rob’, which he helped to cover up. Rob-as-Adele uses his astral projection power to spy on the affair from the start, and forms a plan.

As luck would have it, Louise also shares the rare soul-travelling power, which enables Rob to stage Adele’s suicide, swap bodies with Louise, and re-marry David posing as her newly stolen identity. Now in the body of another woman he’s tricked and killed, conscience-free Rob ends the series with everything he ever wanted: a new life, David, and through marriage, Adele’s money. 

‘Nothing about that life I want back’

It’s a malevolent ending made all the more cruel by the existence of Louise’s seven-year-old son Adam, who knows instantly that there’s something very different about his mother after Rob takes over her body. The story ends with two women murdered, a man deceived for years about who he’s married to and having sex with, and a child’s mother replaced by the person who killed her – all so that one person can greedily live a life they coveted.  

It’s a surprising ending, not just for its audacious supernatural twist, but also because of how unusually out of touch it feels with modern sensibilities. However inadvertent, the conclusions it seems to reach about gay male sexuality, trans identities and the working class threat to the wealthy all feel centuries out of date. Granted, Behind Her Eyes is a supernatural fantasy/pulp thriller, not a documentary or manifesto, but its story choices reinforce harmful myths with real-world consequences. 

Read more

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Netflix’s Behind Her Eyes Ending Explained

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The idea, for instance, that gay men routinely sexually predate on heterosexual men and deceive them into sex is a corrosive one. The Gay Panic Defence has historically been used to exonerate perpetrators of violent, homophobic attacks, and the work of dismantling the myths that shore it up is ongoing. Even in a pulpy, fictional fantasy setting, showing a gay man tricking his duped heterosexual partner into sex feels… unhelpful. 

Rob’s deception is made possible by a gender-transitioning body swap, a plot point impossible not to view in terms of trans identities in 2021 (or in 2017 when the book on which the show is based was published). At no point does Behind Her Eyes suggest that pre-swap Rob is a trans woman; he’s a gay man who coveted Adele’s life. Showing a character changing their birth gender for self-serving reasons of greed and personal gratification plays into the worst tabloid scaremongering. Rob’s villainy strengthens transphobic narratives about deception and misrepresentation.

‘What’s it like to be so fucking rich and so fucking pretty?’

One of the biggest surprises in this show’s sensational twist ending is its almost Victorian fear of the working class, largely represented by Rob. From Ebenezer Scrooge to Mr Burns, it’s practically a consensus in fiction that rich people are life’s baddies. Outside of 19th century pamphlets, villains tend to be taken from the one percent and heroes from the plucky underclass. At the very least, working class villains are granted a Joker-style revenge motive, a traumatic catalyst for why they want to eat the rich. Not here.

Rob (not just any member of the working class, but – as an impoverished heroin addict with a troubled background from a Glaswegian tenement – a full bingo card of poverty cliche) has no revenge to take against blameless Adele. She doesn’t patronise him or use her wealth to humiliate him. He simply sees what she has, wants it and takes it. It’s greed, and the body-theft a supernatural metaphor for the threat that the wealthy have historically perceived as coming from the ‘parasitic’ poor. 

The same paranoia is seen in the show’s plot thread about farm boy David having been suspected of starting the fire that killed Adele’s parents. And again in the scene where Rob-as-Adele tries to buy heroin from an Islington estate and is immediately attacked by a gang. Even in working class Louise’s affair with her now-rich boss, it’s the same pattern: the poor take from the rich.

‘You kind of have this fairy tale life’

Rob’s obsession with wealth blinkers him to reality. He myopically sees Adele and David’s life only as a flawless fairy tale, callously dismissing Adele’s loneliness and the traumatic deaths of her parents. When Adele first teaches him the ability to quell his nightmares and control his dreams – a gift for which he is supremely ungrateful – Rob conjures up a manor house, a cravat and a butler. Upon his arrival at Adele’s estate, he immediately goes into an exaggerated role play as the lord of the manor. Wealth, status and being loved are his obsessions.

Later, in London, Rob-as-Adele’s fixation on beauty and appearances see him dressing almost entirely in white (the colour of the rehab uniform in which he first met, and idolised, Adele) and spending his life maintaining her athletic body and magazine-spread house. 

Rob’s priorities are, to say the least, warped. He’s so desperate to escape his lonely working class roots that he does unthinkable things, behaving with brutal selfishness and a total lack of conscience. That all makes sense – he’s the villain. 

And in a perfect and equal world, gay men, trans women and impoverished working class addicts have just as much right to be the messed-up, dangerous villain in stories as anyone from a less vulnerable social group. In a perfect and equal world, that kind of portrayal couldn’t harm anybody or affect their safety. But we don’t yet live in a perfect and equal world. By choosing this particular villain, and crafting this particular ending, Behind Her Eyes has either optimistically jumped several steps ahead in representation, or taken a lengthy stride backwards.

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All episodes of Behind Her Eyes are available to stream now on Netflix.

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