#yeah. curt. i need to go back and watch all his episodes because BOY does that little bastard compel me

[reiverreturns]

feeling insane in this chili's tonight about curt biddick and how in a show expressly depicting the horrors of an endless nameless meat grinder approach to war he's one name and face in a huge ensemble of characters that fucking ripples when he's gone. the gap persists. he's always gonna owe buck one. bucky doesn't have anyone to make him feel anything. they both pull back to cover him falling behind. you can feel the space where he's kind of meant to be in every episode but he's not there. they don't really talk about him. i mean okay cool like your narrative choices but how am i meant to be normal about it.

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Hii!! Can you please do prompt #33?

Well, because you asked so nicely, Anon, of course!

33. Everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you��re dangerous

Romance Novelish

Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T Word count: 5540

Summary:

MJ's European vacation is a romance. Peter's is more like an episode of Jackass.

Brad talks too much and, unfortunately, he talks even more after MJ pulls out one of the novels she packed and raises it in front of her nose to dissuade further conversation. Apparently, the fact that the book has a bare-chested man and swooning, beribboned lady on the cover comes across as an invitation for comments from her seatmate. MJ glares at Brad. She’s tired of his attention. She wants to spend the rest of the flight living vicariously through this fictional woman about to get some Georgian D. If Brad will ever let her fucking get past the first chapter.

“Because it’s good,” she finally snaps, turning to face him when he continues to question why anyone with any self-respect would read a romance novel. “It’s wish-fulfillment. It’s not degrading, it’s empowering to read about a woman finding exactly… exactly what she…”

MJ trails off, attention snagged by Peter in the corner of her eye, several rows back. He’s getting up from his seat.

“…what she wants,” she continues distractedly, watching Peter twist to wriggle out towards the aisle. Even through his sweater, look at those shoulders. “…and, uh, going after it.”

Peter straightens up and slams his head into the overhead compartment. Wincing, she blinks and refocuses on Brad’s unconvinced expression.

“Ok,” he argues (she rolls her eyes), “but a woman going after what she wants shouldn’t be some fantasy. You’re not the timid type. You’d go after the guy in real life.”

MJ gives a small longing sigh and darts a look at Peter’s back as he heads for the bathroom.

“You’d think so,” she mumbles, disappointed in herself.

“The right guy,” Brad informs her emphatically, “wouldn’t make you wonder if he was interested. He’d make it obvious that he was into you and then you could just respond.” He shifts towards her, tone seeming to urge a confession. “He wouldn’t leave any room for doubt or misunderstanding. He’d give plenty of hints.”

His hand just brushes her knee and she shifts in her seat, away from him, whipping her novel back up in front of her face.

“Too bad he can’t take one,” she says and proceeds to ignore Brad until he stops talking to her.

An hour later, Peter trips up the aisle of the plane and knocks into the arm she had balanced on her armrest, propping her cheek up. He grabs her shoulder to straighten her before she can bang her head into anything. Heart hammering from more than the collision, MJ looks up at him. She sticks her finger between the pages and offers a shy smile.

“Hey,” he says. “So…”

He’s obviously nervous; MJ hears Brad make an impatient noise beside her and turns her back more fully towards him to concentrate on Peter. Peter, who’s lifting an arm and smoothing the back of his hair like he might’ve messed it up dozing against his seat’s headrest. MJ’s mind is back in the world of her book for a minute. The swell of Peter’s biceps. Her gaze slides down his body like butter on a hot cob of corn. The way his jeans hug his thighs. She swallows.

He swings his upper body abruptly to look at something and his raised elbow clocks a man who’s getting his carryon down in the ear.

“Oh shit,” Peter gasps, immediately apologizing and trying to help.

After the situation’s resolved―accepted as an accident―and Peter’s returning the man’s luggage to the compartment for him, he spins back to MJ and seems to lose his nerve. He gives her a weak laugh and scurries away. MJ slumps back into her seat.

Wearily, she holds her book before her eyes. The protagonist is in the middle of what MJ expects to be a futile attempt to resist her feelings for the hunk.

“‘Everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you’re dangerous!’” she reads.

Her real-life love interest of choice isn’t exactly a historical bad boy of the is-that-a-dagger-concealed-in-your-breeches-or-are-you-just-happy-to-see-me variety, but dangerous? MJ sneaks a peek and witnesses Peter swipe a woman’s drink clear off her tray as he tries to maneuver his way to his middle seat. Yeah, you could say that being close to him is a hazard.

―

“MJ,” Betty asks in Venice, “are you sure? You could share with Ned and I.”

And she gets this gushy look on her face that would make MJ say no even if she’d been considering trying to squeeze into the two-seater gondola with the brand-new couple.

“Nah, I’ll be alright with Parker.”

She sounds more certain than she feels and Betty gives her a doubtful look.

“Are you sure? Peter? In a narrow little boat? On water?”

“Yep. What could go wrong?”

It’s a joke because every one of Betty’s words hints at the possible pitfalls. Still, MJ knows a chance for romance when she sees one. The two of them, thigh-to-thigh in a gondola, gliding down the canal with no one and nothing to interrupt them? Ideal. Being alone with him (minus one gondolier) long enough for a gondola ride might give her time to form the words to say… well, she’s not sure what yet. But she’ll form them! The sway of the water beneath them and the centuries-old architecture to either side will inspire her. Not to mention her crush’s proximity. He already said yes when she asked if he might want to go together. Of course, MJ phrased it like she just needed someone to split the cost (something this touristy does not come cheap), but hopefully he’ll see past her practicality and directly into her heart.

“You’re right,” Betty says. She smiles. “I’m sure everything will be just fi―”

The girls turn and jump in reaction to Ned grabbing the back of Peter’s hoodie right before he can tumble off the dock and into the canal. MJ and Betty exchange a look.

“Will you hold my backpack?”

“Mhmm.” Betty waits while MJ tucks her romance novel inside and zips the bag shut. “Good luck,” she offers.

“Thanks.”

Once they’re actually on the water, MJ feels better. The way the gondolier propels them smoothly down the canal is very relaxing. She turns her face up, grateful for the kiss of the sun after all those hours on the plane. It’s also easier to look up and squint than it is to look sideways and meet Peter’s eye. Every time she does, they glance quickly away from each other.

“Maybe we should take a picture,” Peter suggests out of nowhere. MJ looks at him.

“Definitely. To commemorate the trip.”

“Right.”

He gives her a quick flick of a smile, brown eyes so close when they’re facing each other like this. There are more freckles springing up across his nose the longer they’re out in the sun. MJ wants to find a way for them to stay out all afternoon.

“I can take it,” she offers. He nods eagerly and she opens the camera on her phone, raising her arm to get a good angle.

“Um, should I…?”

Peter shifts on the seat. His legs press more surely against hers and he cranes his head forward awkwardly.

“No,” MJ instructs. “Get closer.”

She only watches him on the phone screen, but her breaths grow shallow as she sees him stare at the side of her face, then move his face right next to hers.

“Closer,” she urges.

His arm comes around her, touching the seat on the far side of her before he cautiously decides to hold her waist.

“Closer.” It’s a whisper.

His cheek rests gently against hers and MJ holds her breath.

“Look at the camera,” he says softly, though when she turns her head just a little, he’s not. He’s looking at her.

A speedboat zips past causing sudden choppy waves and Peter reacts instantly. He leaps into a rigid, defensive posture and something goes flying out of his hand or from up his sleeve. MJ doesn’t have a chance to figure out what it was or ask him about it because Peter yanks his arm back. Simultaneously, the gondolier’s oar goes sailing over their heads and, like a person with a broken leg who has their crutch kicked out from under their armpit, the gondolier topples over the side of the boat.

“Oh my god!” she gasps, flinging herself forward to grab the edge of the gondola, trying to see into the murky, churning water.

MJ misses the moment Peter jumps, but she feels his sweatshirt land in her lap and hears the splash. She slides across the bench to check the water on the other side, where he must have dived in. What should she do? What can she do? There are people on land stopping to look. She stares back in a panic, floating alone in the gondola.

“Help!” she calls to them, but rather than trust any of them to react, she starts to text Mr. Harrington, phone shaking in her hand. Their teacher gave everyone his number for emergencies and she doesn’t know what it’ll do to the poor guy for her to use it, but there’s no other choice…

Until Peter and the gondolier break the surface. Now MJ’s yelling at them.

“Why did you do that? What the hell, Parker?”

Thankfully, he ignores her panic (she’ll be embarrassed about it later) and holds the side of the gondola still while water runs into his eyes and the gondolier flops back on board, muttering in curt Italian. Peter paddles around the boat to retrieve the oar, now cracked in half. The gondolier accepts it with a nod.

“Aren’t you getting in?” MJ demands when the vessel begins to move and Peter’s still treading water.

“We were almost back to where we started,” he points out. “I’ll just swim it.”

She turns away from him and puts her hand to her forehead, somewhere between relieved and fuming. Her other hand unconsciously grips the sweatshirt in her lap. Once they’ve docked, MJ angrily passes the sweatshirt off to Ned and takes her backpack back from Betty.

“What happened?” they’re asking her, and MJ’s opening her mouth to explain the entire thing, about how Peter Parker is not only dangerous but an idiot, truthfully crushed that this moment slipped away from the two of them, when she glances towards the dock. Instead of speaking, her mouth just drops open further.

It’s like goddamn slow-motion.

He plants his hands on the weathered wood and hauls himself out of the water, plaid shirt plastered to his body. All the air leaves MJ’s chest as Peter shakes his head then slicks his wet hair back. Jesus Christ, she could swear she sees every drop of water cascading down his face and over the curve of his jaw. Light glints off the surface of the canal behind him and he walks, looking directly at her. Without breaking eye contact, she snatches the sweatshirt from Ned’s hands.

“Um, here,” she says, offering it to a sopping-wet Peter. This is better than the books.

“Thanks, MJ. At least that’s dry.”

MJ gives him a pathetically awed smile at the self-deprecating humour and has trouble letting go of the hoodie for a second, sorta hoping he’ll tug the whole thing forward and she’ll end up pressed to his chest. Yes, the front of her clothes will get wet, and yes, he smells like the canal, but she can overlook those things. Haul me against you, she thinks intently. Show me what it feels like to be a woman ruled by nothing but her passions in the embrace of your strong arms.

“Dammit!” Peter yelps, one eye clamped shut when he pulls the sweatshirt away from his now-dry face. “I wiped my face with the zipper!”

She could die. She could honestly just fucking die here. After Ned and Betty find a different gondola to rent, Peter goes back to the hotel for dry clothes and she wanders alone. Not far, just enough to find a bench where she sits and retrieves her novel from her backpack. God, right when she thought she and Peter were getting somewhere, that speedboat! The oar somehow jerked from the gondolier’s hands! Reality is bullshit. MJ cups her chin in her hand and turns the page.

―

They’re on the bus to Prague and MJ’s grateful for the stretch of time where she’s not expected to explore or listen to guided tours that tell her buildings that are clearly haunted aren’t, and other questionable facts. Do they even know how many people have been murdered in Venice? Neither does she, but the city had a very murdery vibe that she loved and would’ve appreciated hearing more about. And they call this an educational school trip. Ha.

She’s using this time to read. Read and observe. She’s on her third romance novel now. She only packed five, but if she gets through them all before they fly home from Paris, she’ll just start the first one again. They really aren’t tedious. Especially when she has material right in front of her eyes to project the characters onto. Peter pokes his head around the side of his seat and his gaze meets hers. Everything inside her flutters as though ruffled by an internal breeze. He gives her a sideways little smile that shows his teeth. Ravish me, MJ thinks, ducking back behind her open book to hide the way her face is lighting up like a flare.

She should just go talk to him. It would be thoughtful, a nice gesture, since his best friend is totally consumed with cozying up to Betty where they’re sitting together. Not having Ned to constantly hang out with has gotta be rough on Peter. Instead of barricading the seat beside her with her feet to ward off Brad, MJ could sit next to him. Soothe his loneliness.

“Do it,” she mutters to herself. “Get up.”

Pulse surging, MJ sets her novel aside and grips the back of the seat in front of hers to pull herself to her feet. There’s no need to be nervous. She and Peter… they have chemistry. There’s something there, just waiting to be realized if she can be brave enough to make a move. She ignores Brad, who looks up excitedly when she passes his seat. Brad’s fine, but she’d like him better if he didn’t feel like that towards her. Not when she feels like this towards someone else.

Peter’s at the front of the bus as they zoom down winding roads that hug steep cliffs. The scenery’s all gorgeous, she’s sure. She just can’t take her eyes off him. Confidence, MJ thinks to herself, trying to channel the heroine in her current read. That woman has three different men metaphorically eating out of the palm of her hand. MJ could do that. MJ has that power. This is just one sixteen-year-old on whom she happens to have a very large crush. She holds her head high and strides forward.

And in some quick struggle with Flash, Peter knocks the other boy out cold.

MJ freezes as Peter jolts back in evident surprise at his own action. He really shouldn’t be able to get into that amount of trouble while they’re all stuck on this bus. It just isn’t probable. She turns and slinks back to her seat before he can notice that his latest attack of awkwardness (and the ensuing collateral damage) had an audience. Rather than sit there trying to figure out how Peter incapacitated Flash with such a swift, soundless hit, MJ half-reads and half-daydreams. Her fantasies are full of his body slanting over hers for a completely different reason than to check her vitals after an accidental punch in the face.

―

There’s a hush in the theatre, still a long time before the opera will begin. Sound feels low to MJ, as though it’s billowing along the floor like smoke, everything dampened and expectant. Peter wavers and stops in the aisle. They’re going to sit together. Or, they were.

“What is it?” she asks.

He huffs an uncertain laugh.

“Just don’t really feel like watching an opera, I guess.”

“I know what you mean,” she agrees. Opera is about passion―lust, betrayal, wild consequences from the actions that heightened emotions lead to. It’s a lot like her romance novels, so, actually, opera appeals to her, but she’s not so sure about her ability to sit quietly and watch all of those things unfold on the stage while Peter’s seated next to her, the sleeve of his jacket rubbing against her arm.

“You do?” He seems surprised to find she’s on his side. Maybe he was worried about disappointing her.

MJ nods and offers a quick smile.

“You wanna… get out of here?” Peter looks at her warily after floating the suggestion. Her smile broadens.

“Yes.”

“Ok.” He glances back towards the row packed with their classmates. “As long as nobody sees us leave, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Oh, Harrington won’t notice. I told him Brad has a phobia of any kind of representational work, so he’s pretty focused on trying to comfort him.”

“And Brad?”

“Brad has no idea what’s going on.”

If her smirk is a touch vengeful, Peter doesn’t have any words of judgement for her. They walk together to the exit. She’s smiling hard towards the floor and has the feeling he is too. When the door catches the back of Peter’s jacket and shuts on it, MJ holds it open to free him, shrugging off his thanks. What’s a minor wardrobe mishap here or there? Tear this dress off me, she thinks as they step out into the night. They’re just a couple of teenagers, unchaperoned in a foreign city after dark. She isn’t scared as she walks next to Peter. Nothing could feel safer. In the historical novels she likes, there’s often a charming French gentleman or a dashing Spanish rogue, but this boy from home suits her just fine, with the smile never totally leaving his lips and the level of his head slightly below hers. MJ shivers and allows Peter to help her into her jean jacket. Sure, it’s the air bringing goosebumps to her arms.

They hold hands out of necessity, trying not to be separated in the crowd. Though it’s warmer while they’re moving with this teaming river of festivalgoers, she’s glad to be wearing her jacket. Strangers graze it, but only Peter is permitted to touch her bare skin. Their fingers aren’t locked or anything and still his hand clamped around hers is enough to make her feel electrifyingly possessed. Look! she wants to tell these strangers. I’m with him! Being taken in a firm hold is not, for her, mutually exclusive from consensual physical contact. When it’s a yes, MJ prefers an unambiguous yes; when touch is granted, she isn’t averse to rough neediness. Of course, this is all based on theory, not personal experience, on the way heat crawls up her neck and behind her ears when she reads a passage where a heroine is hastened to a secret place by her lover before being pushed against the wall, arms pinned, as the man looses her front-fastening gown with his teeth.

With a quick sideways glance, she presses herself a little closer to Peter and feels his fingers flex around her hand in response. She longs for a love affair abroad. What’s apparently more realistic―because this is what happens―is that she and Peter are too shy to continue holding hands when they escape the throng. That it’s too loud to hear each other talking and the requirement of tipping their mouths towards each others’ ears to be heard goes from sensual to annoying disappointingly fast. After they decide to go back to the theatre and pretend to have exited just ahead of the rest of their class, MJ thinks Peter’s changed his mind. He comes lurching into her space. Is he going to kiss her?! No, he catches himself and shouts that somebody bumped into him. Then he apologizes. Dammit, there’s nothing more she would’ve wanted from this night than for Peter’s momentum to drive them stumbling into some tidy alley off the main thoroughfare! She could’ve threaded her fingers desperately into his hair while they kissed, let him feel her up a little. MJ communicates in gestures that it’s no problem and they’re both too jumpy to hold hands as they weave upstream through the people.

After this failure of courage on both their parts, she doesn’t expect Peter to show up at the door of her hotel room later that night. She’s lying on her stomach, reading, when she hears the knock.

The sound of the revelers is still there, but in the distance. The streets they tread are quiet and full of all the ambiance of cobblestones and yellow lamplight. They could almost be back in time. Run away with me, is MJ’s silly thought. She doesn’t really want the trouble that would cause―depleting their euros, the worry of their families, rebooking flights, probably killing Mr. Harrington with the stress of it all―just the idea of being alone with him, of buying the two of them more time. In her head, she bats at the idea of her and Peter, in love and on the run from anyone who’d try to stop them, like a child whacking at a piñata. No hope of splitting it open.

Still, she is alone with him and his profile’s never looked so nice as it does cut out against the velvety dark of Prague’s sky. Peter seems nervous, again. He gets that way with her. Would it reassure him if she hinted in the subtlest way possible that the only time the words ‘making love’ don’t cause her stomach to turn is when she applies them to her and him? Is she the only one set on fire by the possibilities of the darkness? MJ wants to see their shadows intertwine.

She guesses at what he needs for her to say, suppressing the flowing verbal pornography of what she wants to say. It’s obvious that he’s trying to reveal his secret identity. The gondola mishap, the instinctual way he navigated them through all those people earlier―there are multiple examples from this trip that she added to her accumulated observations of him back home to come to the conclusion that Peter is Spider-Man.

But her assertion surprises him. He hooks his shoe on a cobblestone and goes sprawling. MJ frowns down.

“Why didn’t you catch yourself?” she asks. It doesn’t come out sounding very sympathetic, but she’s scientific right now, studying him as his alter ego.

Peter shoves himself up from the ground and dusts his hands off on his jeans. MJ hopes his palms aren’t scraped up.

“I always seem to have a little trouble with my senses when I’m around you,” he says with a bashful smile.

At first, she’s insulted. Is he blaming her for his clumsiness? After all the time she’s devoted to constructing fantasies revolving around him in tight trousers, tall boots, and torn-open shirts! Then, she gets it.

“You do?”

“Definitely,” Peter admits. “Everything else sorta blurs out and I can only focus on where you are. Where your body is in relation to mine. Totally lose track of my surroundings.”

He says the last sentence while dropping his gaze to her lips, which she swiftly licks in preparation. MJ’s ready for her first kiss… which never comes because Peter’s phone goes off. He answers, since it’s his best friend calling, then informs her that Mr. Harrington’s looking for them and Ned can only stall and make up wild excuses for so long. There’s no time to do anything but race back to the hotel, the atmosphere that was so much like it is in her books diminishing with every step. As she trudges to her room, feeling restless and left hanging, Brad pops out of his. Says he was worried about her. That he would’ve been happy to go with her if she’d only let him know. Mentions how he wouldn’t have gotten lost the way Parker obviously did…

“What were you even doing with him?” Brad asks as she fiddles with her key card. “Trying to stop him from wandering into traffic?”

MJ whips her head around to glare at him.

“Trying to prove you right.”

She gets inside and closes the door on him so she won’t have to elaborate, remind him of what he told her on the plane. That she’s the kind of person who’d go after the guy. Well, she isn’t. She didn’t go after Peter. She blew it. In the morning, they’re flying to Paris, and then home two days later. There won’t be semi-private gondolas or chances to steal away from the rest of their group while they’re watching an opera. MJ really believed this would be the vacation where she transformed into the kind of person she’d want to read about in a book. She’d better stick to reading because she’s not even close.

―

Paris is in a heatwave. Some of her classmates appear to be disenchanted by the fact that they’re too hot and uncomfortable to strut down the boulevards like models on a catwalk as the pastel buildings of picture-perfect arrondissements rear around them. They’re feeling too limp to be chic, but MJ is thriving. She eats hearty sandwiches of crusty bread and layered meats and cheeses and ties her t-shirt up around her waist like a crop top when sweat rolls down her spine. She feels like a better-fed working-class woman of the 18th century. Give her a Louis XVI to drag from his bed in this epicenter of revolutions. In the story she imagines for herself now, her bosom doesn’t heave from the breathlessness of stolen moments with a paramour but from the exertion of storming the Place de la Concorde for justice and the disruption of a diseased social contract.

Group activities and being worn out by the sun by dinnertime prevent MJ from really talking to Peter. Also, he keeps giving her these looks, which she attributes to her stating that he’s Spider-Man and then the two of them never discussing it further. They can’t, in front of their friends and Mr. Harrington. She thinks maybe they will when the Louvre swallows them for a whole afternoon, but the shuffling feet of visitors make the words clog in her throat. Her new persona doesn’t follow her inside; central air extinguishes the fire of the woman she is in the streets. Instead, she studies the fold and flow of painted fabrics, yearning to drape herself across Peter’s body the way Da Vinci swathed Mary in blue.

MJ wakes up to oppressive humidity on the final morning. It feels cool enough in the hotel, but her skin grows damp in the fifteen minutes between toweling off from her shower and sitting down in the breakfast room. Mr. Harrington appears to be at the end of his rope partly because, as he notifies them, Mr. Dell’s apparently sleeping in until they have to leave for the airport. The rest of his stress is just from existing, MJ guesses. He’s too paralyzed by anxiety to even think about accompanying his students on an excursion. Fortunately, enough of them are interested in going up the Eiffel Tower―until now, they’ve only seen it from the ground―that Mr. Harrington permits them to leave in a pack. They nod awkwardly when he gives an intense directive for them to ‘protect each other out there’ as though they’re embarking on a journey across a minefield.

She’s kind of surprised at how quickly their group breaks apart. Some of her classmates, like Flash, clearly had no intention of doing anything but skipping off to freedom, but come on. Doesn’t anybody want to examine the Eiffel Tower for traces of mind-control technology? The only one MJ’s glad to see go is Brad, though he shoots her a look like, Aren’t you tempted to follow me? She is not. When Peter sticks to her side, promising to stay with her all the way to the very top (frazzled by his sudden closeness, she pedantically informs him that they don’t let people up that high), her heart seems to shudder and glisten like the lightshow that illuminates the Tower at night. Betty and Ned are coming too, but they’re lost in their own little world, swinging their clasped hands between them and stopping to make Peter take pictures of them in cute poses as they make their way to their destination.

On the way up the Eiffel Tower, MJ hardly breathes. It’s the heat, or it’s Peter there beside her, smiling whenever she catches his eye. Or it’s some kind of copycat impulse because he hardly seems to be breathing either, hands in his pockets and chewing his lip in her peripheral vision. Miraculously, on the platform, there’s air. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a breeze, but it feels like air is moving around her instead of her pushing thickly through it as she has been the past two days. She feels exposed, as though at the prow of a ship. She pictures herself captured by pirates only to become their leader after seducing and bamboozling their captain, whose hands prove to be as callused as his words are callous when they have their way with each other in his shabby quarters.

Ned and Betty hurry along the walkway in search of the ideal backdrop for the series of selfies they’re about to take. While MJ’s watching them go, Peter grabs her hand. The action’s not like it was on the swarming streets of Prague; his hold is gentle, cradling her hand as though to cushion a jewel. Speaking of…

“I got this for you,” he says, drawing a chain from his pocket with his free hand. A chipped black pendant, glass by how it shines in the morning light, twists slowly before her eyes. “In Venice.”

“You got that for me?”

“Yeah. It got beaten up a little in my luggage. I’m s―”

“It’s perfect. I love it,” she assures him quickly. Tentatively, she lifts a hand to finger the smooth petals. “I can’t believe you got this for me.”

“I thought you’d like it. Black―”

“Dahlia,” MJ finishes for him. His hair’s curling in the humidity and she just wants to take his face between her hands and give him a kiss. They stare at each other a moment and she thinks, finally, maybe, will he? Will she?

“Here,” Peter offers. “I can put it on you, if you want.”

She smiles and nods, turning to present him with her back and gathering her hair up away from her neck. His hands come around in front and she tries to watch them without lowering her chin too much. Trying to be steady for him. Either it’s taking him a while to fasten the finnicky catch or he’s as appreciative of their nearness as she is because she can feel the warmth of his hands resting against the nape of her neck. Just wrap your arms around me, she thinks. Seize my hips as I swoon against your solid chest. Spider-Man should be a lover as well as a fighter. Eventually, his hands drop and she steels herself to face him.

Taking a deep breath, MJ says, “Tell me how it looks.”

She’s still turning as Peter takes a step back (presumably to assess the way she looks wearing the necklace), bumps into the guardrail, and overreacts so aggressively that he goes vaulting over it.

“PETER!” she screams, springing forward.

When she looks over the side, he’s hanging there with his fist closed around some kind of stretchy, sticky thread. His webs. Peter gives her a sheepish smile and she sighs in relief that the dork didn’t just plummet to his death.

“Looks great,” he says. MJ rolls her eyes.

“Just get up here so I can kiss you.”

He grins.

But other people on the platform are reacting, exclaiming, turning their cameras and phones towards the guy hanging by what probably looks like a rope from a distance. And maybe the two of them, Peter and MJ―a team, a unit, a couple―could’ve played it off that way if he didn’t decide to swing back and forth to gather momentum and then flip up to land beside her. There are gasps and other noises of surprise.

“What are you going to do?” she demands, trying to block him from view as well as she can.

He gives her a determined look.

“I know the first thing,” Peter says, then grips the back of her neck as he kisses her, suddenly suave, suddenly sure, and suddenly she’s the one who can’t trust her own damn legs, going wobbly beneath her as she presses back into the kiss. His mouth responds urgently and his stability counteracts her shakiness to keep her on her feet.

When he breaks the kiss, MJ tilts her head and immediately goes after another one. Hey, they’re in the City of Love. She’s gonna get her romance.

more clichéd tropes and prompts

[clandestine-j]

Gossip Girl Reboot, Ep. 2 Reaction / Review

This was posted on reddit first, crossing posting it here since I’ve chosen to review the ep’s and post on tumblr as well. So, this post is geared more towards reddit as a whole, this was posted a day after ep 2 aired.

i don't have a favorite character rating but #teamaki, yeah, the acting is awkward but it's getting better and it's not like it's the only bad acting in the show. i like the character either way.

now

people are so extra with zoya and obie and are looking at julien with the rose colored classes. yeah, obie shouldn't be dating zoya but let's not act like julien gave her all and everything to him. from the conversation with zoya in ep 1, his general feelings, audrey calls it out (maybe because she always feels that way)

She admits it at the end, she wouldn’t do the things he wanted when it came to his interest, he’d want to do random and fun things and she’d blow him off...how is this mart of someone fully invested in their other, no, she was invested what he did for her and how he made her feel. She misses him because in their other breaks he’d always come back. We saw a dying relationship and ppl can assume a lot about him but make 0 assumptions when it comes to her.

And then y’all expect Zoya to turn down the one person who’s actually nice, doesn’t ice her out and shares interest? What I want more than anything is for Zoya to find her own friends & her romantic interest, just one episode where her life isn’t an extension of Julien's. Idk wut, maybe she can go off on a find out gossip girl adventure. Idk something.

Then this talk about sisters and sister hood. Yeah, they’re blood related but what sisterhood is there? You say that’s is wrong for Zoya to do that to her sister but what about what her sister did to her? Even in this ep, she wants Obie so instead of idk driving Zoya away from him, she attacks her lil ‘sis’ over her long time boyfriend. She continues to let her friends talk bad about the girl. We can talk sister hood when she gives the mean team a good “learn me or leave me” when it comes to Zoya

At the of ep 1 Zoya says, she’s not playing the game. She’s grounded in fear of losing her scholarship, has already lost her dads trust. So she does that, she keeps her head down and doesn’t bother anyone but it’s the mean team to prompt Julien to after Zoya and she does. She’s minding her business at the even and Julien is the one to storm over and cause a scene. And it’s all about her, she’s scared of her dad finding out without any care that Zoya has lost and what she has left to lose. Of course she doesn’t care about Julien personal problems? When did Julien care really about hers? Then, she wants to sneak away and have fun and because she’s mad Zoya won’t run off and hide like a hood little girl, she once again collabs with GG, brings in the dads and fucks her sisters life up, AGAIN. Yeah, she changed her mind at the end but too little too late. Her come to jesus moment was great but the relationship she wanted/wants it very much damaged.

So yeah, Zoya dating the one person who has empathy for her is not as bad as the older sister who consistently let her be talked down, about and two, plotted with GG and didn’t even ask her if she was okay because, she didn’t mean it, it’ll blow over. Even in the very last apology when Zoya was about to leave, you could see that she had 0 faith in Julien, not only as a sister but as a person.

Which leads me to saying that Julien is probs the most interesting character of the show. She’s lovable and flawed and she is good but she as of right now, she’s mean at worst and horribly complicit at best because right now her career is a bit more important but her 14 year old sister doesn’t deserve the headache of navigating her with her. But I do love Julien because she has layers and I think by the end, she’ll be able to have her influencer career without compromising herself. That does lead us to the the chairmen and co-chair of the mean team.

Monet and Luna weren’t around as much but I do think...I do think...that if Julien goes nice, they’re gonna go super nasty. They have access to her life which mean access to that video if Julien didn’t out right delete it or they find out about it and snooping. They’re her friends but unlike her, they don’t have a much of a Conscious so far of right and wrong and they’ll strike anyone down. I think if we have wild cards, they’re it. If Julien really does go down a new path, learns more to fight for what matters and understand the real her is just as likable, the mean duo will not accept and will try and bring her down. They have their own meaning of friends with benefits.

My dude Obie, I can’t say much. I don’t think he’s as Malicious as y’all make him out to be but he is a bit callous and naïve...which could be worse tbh. I think he does want to do good but he only knows Performative good to counter-act his parents. I do want him to get with someone else but I do hope he learns what true activism means through Zoya and understand how much of a difference he could make if he really put his mind to it. I also want him to learn get out quick, because he wasn’t just looking for a reason to end things but one to stay and Julien didn’t give him that.

Audrey, I like the stuff with her mom. I like the little bit more depth we got, she slept with Max maybe but Aki made out with him, who am I to judge? I hope her mon can step up in the future but I don’t think it’ll be easy and hopefully they explore it more. Not just tease us. Her mom needs therapy but I think I'm a bit invested in her too.

Max, I love max but the dude is Pretentious ~ above earthly love ~ low key a shitty friend and talks in metaphors whenever he has the chance BUT he does it well. I don’t see him with Aki but I want it! I do see him going harder after Audrey but I think he was a bit shocked for all his flirting that he was into the kids with Aki. I think he lives to play with people. I don't know if he really likes Audrey but he does want to bang her, a lot, a lot a lot. I don't think he really wanted to sleep with Aki but he did like playing with him and he could pick up the fact that Aki might be feeling him. I don't think the interest was really, real until Aki kissed him at the pool, home boy was shocked and was like oooo maybe something is there but his focus is on the teacher. And I also think the not in a million years thing had his gears turning too. You tell him it can't or won't happen and now he wants to make it happen.

Aki, my baby, my voice of reason. What makes him great as a person, makes him not great for Audrey when it comes to emotional stuff. He means well and I get where he's coming from with wanting Audrey to understand her mom but she did need a partner. The thing she loves about him is the thing that makes it hard. I don't know how Aki was brought up but I feel like this plays into it, she's always comparing him to a therapist. I wonder if his parents a bit more emotionally cold or curt or just very analytical people. But, like he's been lovely since ep one, the only one of the group to sort of defend Zoya or Julien wanting to know her / keep her secret. (What secrets does he have?) And in ep 2, he really was like 'ya'll fucked in the head' to the mean team. I know some consider him boring because he doesn't speak up often but when he does speak up, he got something to say. I want the show to use him in a way to stir drama just by being friends, his character doesn't have to have a dramatic effect and he could get his own little subplot that's tied into the show but like, my can't become some douche. (If he does, only for a bit.) Now, I don't see Max being endgame for him AT ALL. If it's between the two, Max would go for Audrey for sure while leading my boi on in ways, he could even really start to like him but endgame no. I'd love to see a scene with Max does get jealous of Aki with another dude, in a romantic way or the dude could be hitting on him, I think Aki would be able to humble him just a bit because no one really seems to know what he's thinking. In the end, idk who he ends up with but I want him to find someone who will do my dude right and he should get some non-shitty friends who'll listen to his problems. (Still not over that Max)

The teachers while being shown more, don't have much of a presence. It's mainly Kate and the goofy one for extended scenes. KATE MY GOOD SIS. NO. Please, I want this to be the point where she loses GG somehow and someone takes over or maybe another GG pops up, can market better and isn't willing to have a faltering moments. I want it to spiral. Spiral hard. Also, sexy teach said not on my watch ezra! I stan him. Teachers are still fun for me, they make me want to never teach at a dumb rich private school.

Also, fuck the dads within reason. Esp, Julien's dad but only because we got to see Zoya's more and he is kinda in the right about most of the stuff but not the sister stuff. You can tell he's doing his best to instill morals in his daughter esp when he knows she can fall to outside influences.

Overall, I'm still enjoying it, I'm invested. I see room for growth for all of the characters (maybe not the teachers) and I want to see it play out. It does feel a little rushed but I think they're finding their footing and they have some big things to pull. But's not horrible and if they just play the drama bit longer and then conclude, it wouldn't feel that way. Maybe one more episode or half an episode could've been added to the Zoya-Obie-Julien story line to fully flush it out but I like the ending. Not sisters, not friends but cool with each and possibly re-build, at worst they just don't interact. I noticed some cool things with the promos but I need to confirm when I can find the one for 3.

Sorry if it went from all lower case to proper-ish, I had to switch to my phone and it auto-does it.

[myheartrevealedocs]

Untouchable- Ch 3: The Fox (S1E7)

Summary:  A Spencer Reid x OC fanfic that retells select episodes, starting in season 1, from the point of view of Lydia Ambers, a forensic scientist.

Warnings: lots of murder, including the murder of young children, swearing

Ch 2 | Ch 4

~ ~ ~

“First case. Are you ready?”

Lydia glanced at Gideon, an eyebrow raising in the process. “Shouldn’t I be? I’ve done two months of preparedness training. And I’m not exactly out in the field.”

He chuckled. “You’re a crime scene investigator. Is that not ‘out in the field’ enough?”

“I just mean: I’m not facing down the bad guys, I don’t carry a gun, I sit and look for fingerprints. Not much to get the adrenaline pumping.”

When she said that, his face turned to a serious one. “I don’t know about that. This case is bad.”

She followed him into a conference room and he nodded for her to sit at a circular table, while he opened a case file and started to pin pictures on the wall. And he wasn’t lying. They were gruesome.

Lydia was accustomed to, if not entirely comfortable with, looking at some horrifying scenes, but it was rare that children were involved in something so violent.

A family, all killed in a dark room. The scene was a bloody one, almost all of them looking to have been stabbed except the father, who was shot through the head.

Elle was the first to join them and greet Lydia, before swiftly disappearing to grab the others on the team and start the case debriefing. Lydia did her best to assess their willingness on her joining the team as each one entered and shook her hand. Morgan seemed genuinely happy to have her and JJ was automatically polite. Reid, however, was harder to… read. He gave her a curt nod and a, ‘Nice to see you again,’ before sitting down.

Gideon and JJ went back and forth describing the case: the Crawford family had been found in their basement. It was set up to look like the father had stabbed his entire family before shooting himself. Which would mean the unsub was dead. However, they had a similar case from a month ago. 

Scratch similar. The exact same case from a month ago. Every detail. Including the assumption that their killer was dead in the house.

And a bonus was the fact that both families were supposed to go on vacation five days before their bodies were discovered, but they’d only been dead for 24 hours.

It was the perfect set up, Lydia realized. She didn’t know what someone would want a whole family for, but this unsub knew how to trap them all at a time when no one would go knocking on their door.

She tried to keep up with them as they spoke, but she was overwhelmed fairly fast. As Morgan and Gideon went over organized and disorganized contributors, JJ introduced a suspect into the pool. A man named Eric Miller, who’s ex-wife and children were part of the first family that was killed and who was just picked up by police after a month of being off the grid… with his kids’s blood on his jacket.

The physical evidence was fairly damning. And he disappeared for a whole month. That didn’t exactly play into his favor. Lucky for her, deciding whether or not he killed them wasn’t her job. She just had to find more evidence.

“Was any of his DNA found at the Crawford house?” Morgan asked.

“No.” Gideon was immersed in the photos he had. He didn’t look up even as he was talking. Lydia was curious what he planned to find in the pictures, but didn’t wish to disturb his thoughts.

“Did he know the Crawfords?” Reid continued.

“If he does, he’s not saying. In fact, he hasn’t said a word since his arrest,” JJ finished, leaning back in her seat. “Uh, the Arlington PD has asked us to interview him,” she told Gideon.

Reid finally picked out Miller’s mugshot and made a sound of disbelief. “If anyone could apply overwhelming force, he’s your man,” he said, catching a small laugh from JJ.

“I want you to find out,” Gideon told him. “Talk to him.”

His demeanor changed almost immediately. “Y-you want me to… talk to him?”

“Yeah. You’ve done interviews before with other agents running point. You can go solo.”

The boy looked at the other faces at the table nervously. Lydia actually enjoyed seeing it from someone so prideful, but she repressed a smile. He didn’t deserve teasing right now, he honestly looked terrified to conduct this interview alone.

“Morgan, Ambers, the Crawford house is a fresh crime scene. Once the Crawfords were brought down to the basement, they must have known their fate.”

~ ~ ~

Lydia’s eyes traced the walls of the stairwell as Gideon led them down to the basement. She wanted to see some signs of distress: a fight or scuffle. But not only were they clean, they were lined with perfectly straight mementos: picture frames, a wreath, two tennis rackets, etc. The family all walked down willingly.

But how do you control an entire family? Who alone has that much power?

“M.E. said they were all killed down here,” Gideon explained.

In the center of the blue carpet was a perfect red circle, which Morgan walked around and towards a separate smear on the washing machine.

“Sam was found here, Emily over there. So… I’m the unsub. How did I do it?”

Morgan flipped through the photos of the bodies, nodding at Gideon’s words. Lydia watched their process, knowing that if she was probably going to investigate quite a few scenes with them like this.

“Well, I had to bring ‘em down here first.”

“How?” Gideon prompted.

He shrugged, his eyes looking between the spots where the bodies were found. “I had a gun.”

“Ok. Use a gun to force them down here. What next?”

“Stab ‘em.”

“Who first?”

“The strongest,” Morgan said. “The father.” He held a photo next to the washing machine. It showed Chris Crawford laying against the machine awkwardly.

Lydia shook her head. “Chris Crawford wasn’t stabbed. He was shot.” She pointed at the smear. “The blood trail there follows his head as he slumped down and died. And there was no other blood on him or around him.”

“Okay.” Morgan rearranged the details in his mind. “Shoot the father, and then stab the mother.” In her photo, Allison Crawford was pale faced, blood dripping from her mouth down her neck and into her gold hair. The unsub had left her in the center of the room.

“How you gonna keep the kids from running away?” Gideon asked

Morgan thought about it a moment. “Restraints. Can’t aim a gun at them and stab the mother at the same time.”

“No restraints were found on the victims.”

“Because I took them with me,” he argued.

“No ligature marks were found.”

This threw Morgan for a loop. He flipped through all the photos in his folder, looking up at the locations in each photo.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Gideon offered. “See how they lived.”

Lydia took one final look at each of the blood pools on the floor. A five year old boy and eight year old girl. Had they really sat there and watched someone kill their parents in the middle of their basement?

~ ~ ~

“The yard is overgrown,” Gideon observed. “And like the roof, Chris Crawford’s car is in need of maintenance, but Allison Crawford’s SUV is in pristine condition.”

“Says here that Allison drove the kids to school. If they were educated privately, maybe the car was just an attempt to show the other parents wealth,” Morgan reasoned.

Lydia sighed. “Adds up to the rest of the house.”

“Rest of the house?” Gideon asked.

She gestured to the living room table. “These magazines are clearly placed. No one finishes reading a magazine and then places it into a perfect fan shape so that the title is showing. They’re designer names. And I don’t see any other magazines in the house, so likely, they were trying to fake subscriptions to high end magazines they don’t have.”

Gideon smirked. “Expensive furniture and a plasma screen TV. Behind the curtains: water damage,” he said, adding to Lydia’s statement. “Allison spent money on the things her friends could see and neglected those they couldn’t.”

“You saw the water damage,” Lydia argued, and Morgan went to confirm the accusation.

“The Crawford’s lived beyond their means,” Gideon continued, ignoring her comment.

“So, where’d the extra cash come from?” Morgan demanded.

“Get Garcia to check their financial status,” he instructed and disappeared into the kitchen.

Morgan nodded for Lydia to follow Gideon as he turned on his phone to make a call.

“Emily,” Gideon whispered, pulling a painting off the refrigerator, then turning it towards her. It was a house, painted entirely black. At the bottom, signed in sloppy, capital letters was the Crawford’s daughter’s name, Emily. “This painting is of this house. Strange that, for a child, it has no color. Has lines, dimensions, but no color.”

“Was there any indication that Emily had some kind of mental disability?”

Gideon’s brow furrowed. “No. Why?”

Lydia waved away his confusion with a flick of her hand. “Nothing. It would just explain her dedication to realism over classic, childish fun. I can search her room for anything else to indicate she would paint something like that?”

Gideon nodded and she left, jogging upstairs and immediately finding a door with Emily’s name on it.

The room was more than enough evidence that the painting downstairs was not typical of Emily. If her bright personality didn’t shine through her colorfully decorated walls and sparkly clothing, her collection of paintings did. This girl obviously had many different colored paints and she used them.

Lydia sifted through a couple of pictures on her desk until shouting from downstairs distracted her.

“Help me! Help! Please! HELP ME!!! No! NO!!! Please, no!”

Lydia could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she leapt down the stairs and found Gideon shrieking out of a window, a very startled Morgan watching him.

“NOOOOO!”

Morgan glanced at Lydia when she fumbled into the room, but he didn’t look concerned for Gideon. If he was, he likely would have interrupted this far sooner. But he definitely didn’t know what was going on.

His yells only lasted about a minute, before he went completely silent, not moving from his spot in front of the window. The other two held their breath in anticipation of an explanation, but he stayed there until a light came on in the house across the street. Then another. A dog down the street erupted into howls at the disturbance.

That’s when he turned around. “Why didn’t anyone hear them scream?”

Morgan looked out the window once more, to see the concerned neighbors rushing outside or opening their windows. And just like that, Gideon was off again to another part of the house.

“Shit,” Lydia mumbled. “I guess that’s one way to make a point.”

~ ~ ~

Before she knew it, she was back at headquarters. The case was close enough that they set up their evidence boards in the conference room so they didn’t have to impose on a police station. Hopefully she’d stay there for the rest of the case, knowing that she’d only be asked to leave again if another crime scene appeared. But, she was at a loss right now with what little evidence she had. A kid’s painting that didn’t match the others? And proof that someone was able to control and keep silent a whole family of four in their house for four days? She had no clue how this all formed into a profile that Gideon claimed he’d already started.

“I believe the unsub had control over this family,” he started. Everyone except Hotch, who was in Garcia’s office trying to make sense of the false wealth lead, sat around the round table, watching Gideon piece together his theory. “He may have separated each family member. He tells the mother, ‘If you scream, I’ll kill your children.’ He tells the children, ‘If you cry, I’ll kill mommy.’

“The suspect found a way of restraining them without leaving marks. Based on lividity, the M.E. estimates that the father was the last to die.”

“Which means he witnessed the whole thing,” Morgan added. “If the unsub did spend time with both families, he must’ve known he had the time to spend with ‘em.”

“‘Cause he knew they were going on vacation,” Reid reasoned.

“Look at travel agents, relatives, work colleagues, contract workers, children’s tutors-” Gideon was interrupted by Hotch’s voice over the intercom in the center of the conference room.

“Gideon, we’ve been looking into the Crawford financials.”

Garcia’s voice stepped in to explain. “Allison Crawford spent way more money than Chris could afford. They were in major debt.”

“And Chris Crawford wrote a number of checks for a series of visits to a therapist.”

This wasn’t surprising news, although it didn’t give them anything. There still wasn’t any shady business in either household.

“Allison had two cell phone accounts… one of them billed to a separate address in southeast Washington, D.C.”

Everyone perked up, quickly taking note of this new discovery.

“Did you get that?” Hotch asked.

“Yeah, I got it,” Gideon sighed. “Ambers, stay here. The rest of you, let’s go.”

~ ~ ~

When the team got back, they were taking a man in for questioning. Lydia followed them to the interrogation room hesitantly. Gideon had said that they were looking for a smaller man in stature and this guy was anything but. He was awkward and nervous, sitting with Gideon and Morgan while the rest of the team looked on from the other side of the double-sided mirror.

As she watched the interrogation go down, Lydia took mental notes of everything she could on this man:

Frank Fielding. Unconfrontational. Attached to the painting Gideon was holding. Right-handed. Sweaty. Manic-depressive. On medication. Nervous stutter. Guilty conscious. Calls Allison Crawford ‘Ally’... 

‘Cause he was her brother.

Lydia could see Gideon and Morgan losing their assurance that this was their guy as Frank started to cry over the loss of his sister. His sadness then turned to anger and he started to blame Chris for killing his family.

“The rule was-- I was never supposed to go to the house,” Frank explained. “That was the only rule.”

Allison Crawford used money her husband didn’t have and was embarrassed by her mentally ill brother. That gave two men in her life motive, but not enough to kill a different family.

He explained how Chris hated him and how his phone was cut off and that was the reason for his visit. That led to another small burst of anger. He began banging his fists against the table and Gideon moved away.

“There’s no way this guy could’ve gotten into the house without a key,” Elle reasoned, shoulder-to-shoulder with Hotch, directly in front of the glass. She was right. He was tall, large, and clumsy. Not exactly prime ninja material. “Knowing how Chris Crawford felt about his brother-in-law, do you see him having one?”

“No,” the unit chief replied.

They sat there for a few more minutes, listening to Frank explain his visit to the Crawford house and seeing his sister and a stranger at the table. As he spoke the words out loud, he seemed to figure out what they were all thinking. This stranger was the unsub.

Gideon and Morgan tried to calm him, but Frank started to freak at the thought, banging his fists against his head and shouting. They were quick to jump into action, pushing him against the wall and holding back his hands. Hotch, Elle, and Reid all ran in to help, but Lydia stayed behind, just staring at the prescription pill bottles he had discarded across the table.

She hated those things.

~ ~ ~

“He’s been looking at those pictures all morning,” Elle mumbled over her cup of coffee, in reference to Gideon. Morgan was just hanging up a call and Reid was at his desk, looking over something.

“Well, I sure hope he sees a connection,” Morgan replied. “‘Cause I’ve checked doctors, lawyers, travel agents, tutors, contract workers. I’ve got nothing.”

“Why target those families?” Elle asked.

Hotch walked past as she said this, his nose in a file. “Well, to know that, we have to know how.”

“All right,” Morgan started, pulling the attention of the whole team. “We know organized killers are often skilled workers with above-average intelligence. High birth status. And in most cases, male. In the workplace, he’s socially confident. And with women, sexually confident. Every offense is preplanned. Targeting the victim is almost as pleasurable as the actual kill. These guys they’re… they’re meticulous. It’s a compulsion. Everything has to have its proper place.”

He was winding up, beginning to pace around the bullpen as he formulated his profile.

“They do exhaustive amounts of research on their victims. They watch their every move, every last detail is observed. Everything has to be written ever so neatly in a book or possibly a journal. Like, when the kids are coming home from school and when daddy’ll be home. Playtime. Suppertime. Bathtime. Bedtime. Plan the work… work the plan. This is the way that he maintains control.

“He takes great pride in his job. I think the workplace has to be the connection.”

Hotch looked like he wanted to say something, but for the first time that morning, Gideon emerged from the conference room, holding up the two paintings from Emily that he’d collected.

“Both are by Emily. Painted months apart. This one… is full of color, life,” he explained, holding up the framed photo from Frank Fielding’s house. “The one I found at Emily’s house has lines, dimensions. No color. Ambers, you said you saw other ones in her room?”

Lydia’s eyebrows knit together. “Yeah. She had all sorts of paintings: fields, trees, stick figures, other kid stuff. I think the only color she didn’t use was black.”

He nodded, assuring her that she was confirming his thinking. “I believe Emily was coerced to paint this. It’s a point of view. It is his point of view. This is where the killer stood and just watched the family.”

“What does he get out of making them paint the house?” Lydia asked, but she was interrupted by Hotch dropping his wedding ring onto Elle’s desk.

They all stared for a moment as it spun, fell flat, and Hotch put it back onto his finger. “Each of the dead husbands was missing his wedding ring. This is the unsub’s trophy. He targets a family because he lost his own, and for a few days, he gets to play daddy.”

“And he can do whatever he wants because no one’s gonna come looking because they’re supposed to be on vacation,” Morgan continued.

“Ambers, I want you to go to forensics and have them check the inside of Chris Crawford’s clothing,” Gideon instructed. “The suspect may have worn the father’s clothes, too. Complete the fantasy.”

She nodded.

“So, why kill them?” Elle asked.

“Because the fantasy can’t last,” Gideon reasoned.

“Do we know anything that actually helps us identify this bastard?” she demanded.

Lydia could tell she was getting more frustrated by the minute. She wondered briefly if Elle was naturally impatient.

“Wait a minute,” Morgan mumbled. “Chris Crawford worked for the I.R.S. and… Reese Miller was a secretary at the GAO.”

Elle sat forward. “That makes them both government employees.”

The team was already halfway out of their seats. Gideon reminded Lydia to head to forensics as soon as possible, before grabbing a file and leading the team to the elevator.

~ ~ ~

“Hey Garcia,” Lydia called as she walked into her office. “I just got off the phone with Gideon. He…” she paused, startled to find another presence in the room. “Dr. Reid, I’m sorry.”

He somehow seemed just as shocked to see her there. “Oh… hey, Lydia.”

The fear in his eyes made her suspect that she had walked in on something, but Garcia was completely unaffected. “What’s up with Gideon?” she asked, pulling Lydia’s attention back to her.

“Right. Both the Crawford’s and Reese Miller were seeing a therapist. He thinks that might be the connection.”

She nodded and began typing at a furious rate.

“Any luck in forensics?” Reid inquired.

Lydia shook her head. “No foreign DNA was found on the clothing in evidence. My guess is he washed everything before he left.”

“Here we are. The Crawfords made 12 weekly payments to the Applewood Family Medical Center,” Garcia interrupted.

“What about the Millers?” Reid asked, leaning over her shoulder to get a good look at the screen.

“No, nothing here.”

“How about pharmaceuticals? Nobody gets therapy these days without a healthy dose of medication.”

“What are you implying, Reid?”

“That everyone is medicated.”

Garcia stopped and looked up at the boy, shocked. “Did you just make a joke?”

“No,” he replied. “I meant statistics. They- They show that-”

She laughed and cut him off. “Reid, next time, just say yes, okay?”

He glanced at Lydia, like she might be able to explain it to him and she couldn’t hide the grin creeping on her face. He was somewhat of a goofball. Far different from the silent, stoic figure that she’d met in Santa Cruz.

“Now, medication normally requires reimbursement from the HMO, and since she works for the government, like you and I, we share the same healthcare provider.”

Reid raised an eyebrow. “Are you hacking into the government’s HMO database? Is that legal?”

“‘Course not. We’ll all go to prison, you’ll be someone’s bitch, and Lydia will become a hustler.”

“Oh, hell yes!” Lydia cried and he grimaced.

“Really?”

 But Garcia was already onto the next topic. “Oh. Right there. Good call, Reid,” she complimented as a new page popped up on her screen. “Mrs. Reese Miller-- Diazepam.”

“Who prescribed the meds?” he asked.

“Dr. R. Howard at the Applewood Family Center. Let’s find out what he looks like. Here we go.” She did some more typing and a photo of a ginger woman popped up on the screen.  “... Dr. Howard isn’t a he.”

“That doesn’t add up. She fits the description, but Fielding said he saw a man.” Lydia pulled out her phone and dialed Gideon’s number right away. “Hey Gideon? Yeah, Garcia’s got a Dr. Rachel Howard at the Applewood Family Medical Center? Small woman, orange hair, and she prescribed Reese Miller anxiety meds. It’s the same facility that the Crawfords went to family therapy at.”

He made a sound of understanding and hung up.

“Oh, Lydia?” Garcia started again. “I sent an email to an administrator at a nearby university about you starting online courses.”

“What?!” She leapt forward and ran to the girl’s side. “You didn’t have to do that! What did you say?”

“I told them I’d hack their site and frame them for stealing from their students if they didn’t admit you immediately,” she joked.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Oh great. Thanks, Garcia.”

“No, silly! I just told them how brilliant you are and your plan to transfer to online classes while you worked for the FBI and I sent them your transcript-”

“Garcia! Where’d you even get that?”

“I thought you’d already graduated, Lydia,” Spencer spoke up.

She shrugged. “I got my undergraduate, but I had already applied to start getting my master’s degree when Gideon offered me this job. I guess experience might mean I don’t need it anymore, but I didn’t want to just drop out of school, so Garcia was helping me try and transfer to an online school so I could continue my education.”

“Do you plan to get a PhD?” he inquired.

Garcia gasped, suddenly. “Oo, you totally should. Then we’ll have another ‘Dr.’ on the team to compete with boy genius.”

Lydia laughed. “I’m not sure I could survive that. And I’m not sure anyone could compete with boy genius. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I mean, people with a doctorate tend to become college professors and do extensive research in their fields… I just want to look over crime scenes and work in a lab. The master’s degree was truly just to help me widen my options… and because I didn’t have anywhere else to go after graduation.”

“You know, a lot of agents become professors after they retire,” Reid explained.

“Not an agent-” Lydia tried to argue, but Garcia was getting excited again.

“Oo! Oo! Dr. Ambers! Tell me that’s not the coolest name!” she exclaimed.

Lydia smiled at her and Reid was suddenly reminded of something that happened back in California, when they had met.

“Hey, you didn’t flinch.”

Lydia raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“You have everyone call you Lydia. Because when Gideon called you ‘Miss’, you reacted badly. But you didn’t flinch when she called you Dr. Ambers.”

Lydia was speechless. She had never liked to be called by her last name, she knew that much to be true, but he was right, she hadn’t minded the new title. And now that she was thinking about it, the first few times Gideon called her ‘Ambers’, she’d been unsure, but she’d started to answer to it without hesitation. 

But how had Reid noticed? She’d barely noticed.

“You don’t like to be called Miss Ambers?” Garcia interrupted her thoughts, causing her to startle. “Oh, you’re right, Reid. She did flinch.”

“I don’t-” she started to complain, but stopped herself.  “Listen, I don’t think changing my title is reason enough to get a PhD. And I don’t have the money. My student debt is crazy and if I don’t get a full time job as soon as I get my master’s, there’s no way I’ll pay it off.”

“Oh, I can help you cut down the amount of time it takes. I had 3 PhDs by the time I was 21.”

Lydia turned on Reid with a look of utter shock. “Three? Three?! Reid, I know you’ve got your memory going for you, but that doesn’t even sound possible.”

He smiled, his lip curling in as if to hide his satisfaction. She could see a small blush grace his cheeks. “It is possible. For you, too. I’d be happy to help you get your doctorate… if that’s what you want.”

Lydia glanced between the two before her. They both seemed extremely excited by the prospect, which she couldn’t deny would be an awesome thing to accomplish. But time and money weren’t exactly things she could spare.

“I’ll consider it,” she agreed.

~ ~ ~

A little while later, Gideon sent Lydia on another errand, calling her to tell her to go to the medical center herself and help Hotch search for the trophies of the suspect they had taken into custody: Karl Arnold.

A CSI team had searched Karl’s house, and decided it was clear, which meant he likely kept his trophies in his office. And since Lydia was supposed to be the team expert on searching for things out of place, she hopped into one of the team's SUVs and drove herself to meet up with Hotch.

He was already well on his way through the office when she got there, every drawer and box open and many miscellaneous objects lying around. He started throwing books off a bookshelf and she ran over to join him.

He was starting to get really frustrated. He was muttering to himself, wondering how hard the crime scene investigators had searched the house, because there was clearly nothing here. Once all the shelves had been clear, he stepped back, still huffing.

Lydia eyes searched for other places around the room that could fit the missing wedding rings and quickly shushed Hotch, holding up her hands to make her point. He looked somewhat surprised at her command, but did as she said, and she went to work, knocking on the wall along each shelf. It had almost gotten too high for her to reach when a hollow knock could be heard.

She ran her fingers along the edges, searching for a lip or hinge that might open up to the other side. The top board seemed weakest, so she dug her nails into the top and yanked it free. With that one out of the way, the two below it were far easier to pull the nails from the wall and Hotch was quick to step in front of her and assess the items he’d hidden.

There was a tangle of belts, a stack of black, hardcover books, and a metal container, colored brightly, like an old music box.

Hotch went for this, pulling it down from the shelf and opening it carefully. While he did this, Lydia looked over the books. Each one was labeled with a name, but the horrifying bit was the amount that he had collected.

The team had assumed that he picked his victims one at a time, did his research, then killed them, but he had so many families hidden here. Lydia wondered how long he might have been stalking these people without their knowledge, but Hotch brought the box to her attention.

She turned and felt sick. The container he was holding had eight wedding rings in it, all masculine. She flipped around to look at the journals again and was overwhelmed by the realization that these weren’t families he was stalking, he’d already killed them.

He’d been doing this for far longer than they’d suspected.

“Congrats,” Hotch said. It was the first time he’d spoken to her since she got there. “You just solved your first case.”

[ddagent]

"I’m a contestant on The Bachelor, and I’m probably the only one who really fell in love with you as soon as you walked in, but dammit, you don’t seem to like me at all, no matter what I do."

I have become rather obsessed with reality TV AUs of late, so be prepared for a whole bunch of them. I hope you enjoy this one, and my first prompt of April ‘20 (aka the best month, aka my birthday month). Happy reading!

“Are you gentlemen ready to find true love?”

Podrick, who looked barely old enough to drink, let alone be a producer, addressed the three men waiting inside the historically inaccurate Dragon Age carriage. The one closest to the door, with a bland face and brown hair, grinned. Another, with a broad frame and a red beard, practically crowed. That left Jaime Lannister, sitting as far back as he could manage, to give a brief nod of the head. 

“Sure.” 

And with that, Game of Hearts began. It was Westeros’ most popular dating show: one young lady in search of a husband; twenty-one knights of the realm looking to be the lord of her castle. Jaime usually changed the channel whenever it came on, even if his brother was a producer. But Father had been pushing for Jaime to settle down; throwing daughters of business partners at Jaime day and night. After a night of drinking and complaining, Tyrion had come up with this ingenious idea to get Tywin off his back. All Jaime had to do was act as if he really wanted to get married on reality television and reach the finals. 

Not hard. With a face like his, a final spot was practically guaranteed. 

As he leant back, letting the evening’s festivities wash over him, Jaime caught the bland man in the corner eyeing him. He raised a single brow. “Can I help you with something?” 

“You’re good looking.” A statement. Not a question. That was coming. “You could get any girl you want. Why bother coming on the show?” 

He shrugged. “I like a challenge.”

“Yeah, well, I like money. I heard one of the producers talking; apparently, this girl is rich. Heir to some Stormlands fortune.” 

The bland man seemed to come alive at the prospect of his potential wife’s dowry. Jaime just picked lint off his shoulder. She might be rich, but she wasn’t Lannister rich. Another shrug. “Guess we’ll see who the better man is.”

A muscle twitched in the other man’s jaw. “Yeah. I guess we will.”

Before something could irreparably tear in the other man’s face, Podrick re-appeared at the door to their carriage. “Gentlemen, we’re nearly ready for you. Before that, I’d like to unofficially introduce you to our suitress. Her name is Brienne Tarth, she’s the curator of the Evenfall Museum, and she’s 32. She is also heir to the Tarth Shipping fortune.” Podrick grinned. “Jaime, Hyle, Tormund: are you ready to meet your future wife?” 

The bland man, Hyle, grinned; gold dragons replacing the dull brown of his eyes. The hulk in the corner, Tormund, practically salivated at the thought of meeting this woman. Any woman, probably. Jaime was...intrigued. After watching a few episodes to know what he was getting himself into, he had expected the suitress to be a dental hygenist or a student...some kind of consultant, perhaps. As an archaeologist, a museum curator was someone he would actually want to talk to. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have to murder his brother after all. 

Jaime actually found himself excited as the minutes ticked closer to meeting Brienne Tarth. As Hyle and Tormund tried to imagine the physical attributes of their suitress, Jaime tried to recall what he knew about Evenfall. The Blue Knight was buried in Tarth. There was a pirate exhibit he’d wanted to visit two months before but had been talked into this instead. Ah, Oathkeeper. One of the great Valyrian steel swords was on permanent display at the museum. Interesting. 

“Jaime, are you ready to meet your future wife?” 

This was Podrick’s sixth time of asking. But, as the camera pressed into his face, Jaime actually smiled and said, “Yes, I think I am.” 

Jaime was the last to leave the carriage. In the restored ruins of Harrenhal, now the locale for Game of Heart’s quest for love, twenty other men stood having already met Brienne. Best for last. Adjusting the line of his three-piece suit, Jaime strode as directed by the producers to meet his potential wife. A line formed across his brow as he walked, unable to pick her out from the crowd. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man standing beside the host, Oberyn Martell, but no suitress. 

And then: “Brienne, this is our last suitor for the evening. Archaeologist Jaime Lannister.” 

The tall, broad-shouldered woman standing beside host Oberyn Martell turned on the heel of her blue flats. Anything more, and she would have loomed over him. As it was, Brienne Tarth had an inch, maybe two, on Jaime’s six-foot frame. The blue suit she wore betrayed the muscles in her arms and back but did little for her waist or breasts. Her face was far too plain, but her eyes were all the decoration it needed. 

Fuck. It made sense that she would be the guardian of Oathkeeper. She looked like the Blue Knight. Jaime beamed. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

“I’m Jaime,” he said, wearing that charming smile that had left more than a few women in a puddle on the floor. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Brienne. I think we have a lot in common.” 

A muscle beside those gorgeous eyes twitched. “I’m sure.” 

And that was it. No gushing, no flirting. A curt three words were all that Jaime had been offered. From behind the line of cameras, he spotted his brother conversing rapidly with Podrick. Jaime Lannister – gorgeous, wealthy, accomplished – was supposed to be their showstopper. And Brienne Tarth stared at him as if he was an eight-year-old boy who had been caught touching the exhibits. Less than that, even. Cool indifference. 

Well, fuck that. Jaime hadn’t even wanted to do this show in the first place, but here he was, and he was going to be in that damn final. 

Taking two steps forward, Jaime reached for Brienne’s hand and rubbed his thumb across her wrist. As she gasped from the contact, he leant forward and brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth. Tyrion’s hissing stopped, and Jaime could feel every camera trained on them. Good. Everyone else thought him charming. It was time Brienne Tarth thought so, too. 

“I’m sure I’m not the first man tonight to tell you that your eyes look like sapphires,” he said; his voice soft. “If I am, then every other man here is a fool.” 

The corner of her mouth twitched, and Jaime thought he had her. “Does that line often work?”

“Only about 10% of the time. Too many people in Westeros have brown eyes.”

“You think you’re charming.” 

“But you don’t.” 

Brienne shook her head. “I know men like you.” 

“There are no men like me, Brienne.” Jaime took a step back but still held her hand. He lifted it to his mouth and pressed a kiss across the bridge of her knuckles. “Let me show you.” 

Brienne nodded but did not seem convinced. Good. Jaime liked a challenge. He’d make her fall just enough in love with him to get him to the final, get Father off his back, and then some other knight could propose. Just because she had pretty eyes and a big sword did not mean Jaime wanted to win. But those were big eyes. And a really pretty sword. 

[trensu]

Episode 22: The One with ANOTHER Other Moonlit Rooftop Scene

WE’RE ON A ROOF, GREAT START! 

THERE’S MOONLIGHT, GREAT START!

BC WE ALL KNOW THAT THE BEST THINGS HAPPEN ON MOONLIT ROOFTOPS (except for that one time that we’re not gonna talk about rn bc it’ll give me the Sads)

OUR BOYS ARE SITTING TOGETHER ON A ROOF IN QINGHE

TOGETHER!! ON A ROOF!! IN THE MOONLIGHT!!!

WE LOVE ROOFS AND MOONLIGHT IN THIS FANDOM

Wwx: does this seem familiar to you? Weren’t we chilling on a roof like this together back in the cloud recesses during Ancient Fantasy China summer school?

And lwj is like, no, we were fighting with swords and stuff

Wwx: right, right, you caught me breaking curfew!

HE LAUGHS, REMINISCING. HE LAUGHS!!

Wwx: too bad there’s no emperor’s smile

Get help wwx, problems are not solved with copious amounts of wine

Oh god, and he just slouches back on the roof, leaning on his elbows and SPREADING HIS LEGS LIKE A SCARLET WOMAN

WWX WHAT ARE YOU DOING

MAKING YOURSELF LOOK ALL ENTICING LIKE THAT

And lwj has an iron will apparently bc he’s still sitting upright in a meditation pose

Oooh, now they’re going to have a Serious conversation

Lwj: things change. How could it be the same as before?

And wwx gives him this sad little smile

Wwx: lan zhan, thank you

Lwj: for what?

Wwx: thank you for not telling shijie

And then HE SMILES AT LWJ

SINCERELY. THAT’S A SINCERE SMILE ON HIS FACE

Like, okay, it’s not as big and bright as his usual sunshine smile BUT IT’S STILL THE HAPPIEST SMILE HE’S DIRECTED AT LWJ SINCE THE BURIAL MOUNDS

Ofc lwj goes and ruins the mood (why does he keep doing this)

Lwj: these tricks harm your body and mind as well

Wwx: i know, but i’m not using wicked tricks, i learned CRAFTY tricks

Lwj: crafty tricks?

Lwj’s tone changes here! It has a hopeful edge to it rather than the solemn note it carried before. THINGS ARE LOOKING UP, GUYS

Wwx: that’s what i learned in that sunless dingy place for three months

ah, guess i spoke too soon...wwx gets this faraway look on his face like he’s back in that awful place anD IT MAKES ME SO SAD

Wwx: anyway, i have to thank you for Lan clan’s Temperament Technique bc my crafty tricks require

HE USED LAN CLAN TEACHINGS TO DEVELOP HIS NEW CULTIVATION

LAN CLAN!!

LAN!!!!

EVEN AT HIS LOWEST, HE STILL CLUNG TO LAN WANGJI. LAN WANGJI STILL WAS ABLE TO HELP HIM EVEN THO HE WASN’T THERE

AHHHHHHHHH

And lwj is just watching him here, yearningly like always

Wwx: with my bamboo flute, everything can be controlled~! *twirls the demon flute*

But lwj is not gonna be distracted by his fancy flute twirling here

Lwj: do crafty tricks rely on the spirit?

Wwx nods in response

~Their Song~ starts playing in the background (the flute version of it, even!!)

Lwj: mastering it by mind is like taking a grain of rice from a fire. If not done carefully you risk falling into demonic cultivation. The consequences will be unimaginable

Okay, 1) pretty sure that’s the longest string of sentences lwj has made in the entire show so far, so kudos to you lwj. You used your words!! I’m so proud!!

And 2) THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE UNIMAGINABLE?? LWJ DOES NOT WANT TO IMAGINE THOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR WEI YING. HE DOESN’T WANT TO THINK OF HIM SUFFERING THAT WAY. BC HE LOVES HIM

Wwx: i know. Lan zhan, i understand your concern.

OUR BOYS OUR COMMUNICATING. 

LOOK AT THEM!! 

COMMUNICATING ALL OVER EACH OTHER!!!! 

THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER

And here wwx does HIS LITTLE SCOUT’S HONOR THING AND HIS VOICE PICKS UP A CHIPPER TONE AND IT’S SO CUTE AND SO REMINISCENT OF BEFORE

Wwx: i, wei ying, promise you that i will never degenerate into demonic cultivation

STOP MAKING PROMISES YOU WON’T KEEP WWX

Wwx: do you believe me?

Lwj nods

AND OH, THE SMILE WWX HAS IN RESPONSE

IT’S ALMOST LIKE BEFORE

ALL OF THIS IS ALMOST LIKE BEFORE

Now wwx does a little floaty jump thing off of the roof (it doesn’t look ridiculous for once!! It actually looks pretty neat here!!) and starts to walk away

Lwj elegantly stands up (still on the roof!!) and says “Let me help you.”

Wwx freezes in his steps for a moment, not quite turning back, and says “okay.”

He says that AND HE SMILES AGAIN

Lwj is left standing alone on the roof

ALL THIS AND WE’RE ONLY 5MIN INTO THE EPISODE

MY HEART, MY HEART

GOD I MISSED MY WANGXIANTICS.

IT’S BEEN SO LONG, MY LOVE, I’VE MISSED YOU SO!!

Oh, and now it’s daytime

Plot Things are happening

Nmj is giving a rousing speech to the troops, very imposing, very stern, very soldier-y

AND TOTALLY DOES NOT MATTER SO WE’RE MOVING ON

Everyone’s leaving Qinghe for plot reasons. Jc and jzx go ahead on their swords but lwj and wwx are traveling by horse

They’re on horses!! Idk why that makes me happy but it does!! I don’t even like horses that much??? 

Wwx is twirling his flute!!

Lwj: why didn’t you go ahead with them?

Wwx: i don’t want to join in the fun with jc and that colorful peacock

Lwj: aren’t you the one who prefers to join in the fun?

GUYS, GUYS LWJ SAYS THIS WITH A TEASING TONE (well, teasing for him; it’s a very subtle change BUT IT’S THERE, I SWEAR!!)

HE’S TRYING TO BE PLAYFUL WITH WWX!! IT’S SO CUTE!!

OMG, OMG we get a brief moment of Jealous!LWJ. Courtesy of NHS, of course.

Nhs is at the top of a tower in qinghe waving goodbye, right? (he’s adorable, i love him)

BUT HE CALLS SPECIFICALLY TO WWX

Nhs: wwx, wwx, take care!

and lwj lets his eyes drift a little towards the voice but HE DOESN’T EVEN DEIGN TO LOOK AT NHS DIRECTLY before his eyes flicker to face forward

it’s such a disdainful little movement; IT HAPPENS SO FAST

BUT THE JEALOUSY IS SO POTENT HERE, OMG OMG

chill out lwj, nhs is just a friend!!

Ugh, evil wen lair time

WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE PLOT DEVICE OR WEN RUOHAN

Oh, now we’re in the middle of a battlefield but no lwj or wwx in sight, how boring

Battle battle battle

Fight fight fighting

Ooooh demon transformation. That was interesting for like, two seconds

Gotta say, the makeup/costuming they use for those demon things actually looks pretty decent, all things considered

Actually, most of their group fight scenes are pretty good

UGH MORE EVIL WEN LAIR TIME?? Plot plot Meng Yao is revealed to be a wen flunkie suddenly plot plot 

Back with the good guys now! At soldier camp!! (or whatever those are called, listen, i’m not a war general, terms escape me)

Plot plot nmj, jzx, jc are inspecting puppets blah blah don’t care don’t care

OH WAIT, LWJ AND WWX SHOWED UP

THEY LOOK VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE PUPPETS. I SUDDENLY CARE ABOUT THE PUPPETS

Nvm, we’re back at a boring strategy meeting blegh

Blah blah invinceable puppets blah blah kill wen ruohan blah blah

Nmj: I WILL SNEAK INTO NIGHTLESS CITY AND KILL WEN RUOHAN

I’m sorry nmj but you don’t have a sneaky bone in your entire body

That is a terrible plan. Jzx agrees with me.

Nmj: if i die, lxc can just take charge nbd

Suddenly lxc shows up with a Sneaky Map

Everybody’s excited about the Sneaky Map

I AM NOT

I AM NOT EXCITED ABOUT THE SNEAKY MAP

THIS IS BORING

LET’S MOVE ON NOW PLZ

Ah, we’re back with wwx and lwj who are inspecting the Suddenly Interesting Puppets

They’re being all clever together!! I love it

OH NO, SOME RANDO JUST INTERRUPTED SAYING JYL NEEDS HELP

WWX TAKES OFF IN A FLASH, OBVS

We’re at jzx’s tent!! WHERE JZX MADE HER CRY

I DEMAND BLOOD IN RECOMPENSE

Wwx: what happened? Don’t cry!

Wwx: was there someone who bullied you??

Omg his words are like, dripping with venom as he says this and turns to glare at jzx

POOR JYL IS SOBBING, OUTRIGHT SOBBING

Jyl: i’m fine! Let’s go, come on, come on

SHE SAYS THIS THROUGH HER TEARS. SHE’S HEARTBROKEN

I DEMAND BLOODSHED

Mianmian shows up to explain the situation

Details don’t matter

What matters is that we see Lwj about to join them in the tent

Like, he’s one step in and everything

But once mianmian starts talking, he steps back out? And just loiters in front of their tent thing?

HE DOESN’T WANT TO INTRUDE ON A FAMILY MATTER

BC LAST TIME HE DID, WWX SNAPPED AT HIM AND PUSHED HIM AWAY

AND THAT SHIT HURTED

WE DON’T WANT THAT AGAIN

We find out that jzx was a total utter DOUCHEBAG to jyl and HUMILIATED her in public BECAUSE HE’S A DICK AND DOESN’T DESERVE HER

YOU’RE LUCKY I’M NOT THERE RN JZX BC I’M READY TO MURDER

Oh look, wwx is ready to murder too

he punches jzx right in the chest AND SENDS HIM FLYING, HELL YEAH

then uses his demon flute TO SMACK DOWN THE JIN DISCIPLES with resentful energy

then goes and DECKS JZX RIGHT IN THE FACE

YESSS!!!!!!

HIT HIM HARDER WWX

But nooo, mianmian and jyl have to be decent people and try to hold wwx back

Lwj hears them cry out and rushes into the room!!

He grabs wwx’s arm, which was already poised for another punch

Lwj: wei ying, calm down

DON’T TELL HIM TO CALM DOWN LWJ

JZX DESERVES WHAT’S COMING TO HIM

DON’T YOU SEE YOUR SISTER IN LAW CRYING???

But it seems that lwj’s words cut through wwx’s rage (even tho he didn’t raise his voice at all!!) bc wwx lets his arm be lowered by lwj’s grip

He looks at lwj’s concerned face and turns to walk out of the tent

We cut to some Sect Leader Time featuring NMJ and LXC

Nmj: soooo, how’d you get the Sneaky Map

Lxc: ...I know a guy

Then they go on for awhile and i get the impression that they’re trying to Flirt but are doing it Badly

HA, losers! (they say, even tho their OTP consistently fails to communicate their Emotions well)

We’re on a battlefield again!

Kinda sucks how our guys get possessed and turned against us.

What a bummer

MORE BORING PLOT STUFF

Blah blah, nmj disappeared, blah blah our guys are forced into a trap blah blah

Oh wait, there’s a bit here

Wwx asks lxc who gave him the Sneaky Map and lxc is all “a good friend” and wwx is like oh okay and walks off

As he walks away, lwj turns to ~gaze longingly~ at him

It was kinda weird, bc contextually it doesn’t make sense for there to be a longing gaze here

BUT WHO CARES!

SINCE WHEN DO WE NEED A REASON FOR GAY YEARNING??

IT JUST IS, MY FRIENDS, AND WE LOVE IT

More evil wen lair time (at some point we watch nmj be a badass at this lair, but we’re not here for him. Sorry nmj, still love ya tho!)

MoVInG alONg

Battlefield has moved to the Nightless City

For real for real, these group battle scenes are pretty cool. I like them.

AHHHH!! AHHHHHHH!!! WWX NEARLY GETS A SWORD TO THE THROAT

BUT LWJ NOTICES IT AND IS BLOCKING THE HIT IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

THE WAY IT’S FRAMED MAKES IT LOOK EVEN MORE AWESOME!!

Bc he just swooshes into the frame from the right, all fluid movement and elegance

BLOCKS THE HIT LIKE NOTHING

And ends up on the opposite side of the frame, not even looking at the baddie he just blocked; he’s all straight-backed and regal

I am Shocked wwx didn’t swoon right there and then

WWX AND LWJ ARE NOW BACK TO BACK

FIGHTING TOGETHER

I AM IN LOVE

Ugh, we’re back at the evil wen lair

Gross

Can we not? Nobody cares.

BACK ON THE BATTLEFIELD!!

Everything stops suddenly, and lwj and wwx are side by side

Bc ofc they are

They’re soulmates!!

Uh oh, some of their guys get Literally pulverized

Aaaaand, here come the massive amounts of puppets

Wen ruohan - creator of the world’s worst puppet show

Omg, we just keep getting shots of lwj and wwx standing next to each other, or standing back to back

They’re not even doing anything AND IT’S STILL AMAZING TO WATCH

UGH, JUST HAVING THEM BE NEAR EACH OTHER ON SCREEN MAKES ME SO HAPPY

Wwx: lan zhan, what method can we take now to escape?

Lwj: Fight.

Wwx: *smirk*

GOD I LOVE MY BOYS

And the cameras give us close-up shots of their faces in that exchange and it’s amazing

THE EXPRESSIONS, MAN

GRIM DETERMINATION

LIKE, WE’RE PROBABLY DEAD, MIGHT AS WELL GO DOWN FIGHTING

THAT’S WHAT THEIR FACES SAY

I! LOVE!! MY!!! BOYS!!!!

They just look so awesome fighting here!!

Lol wwx is just whacking people with his flute

Very intimidating, wwx, very scary

One of the demon things just tried attacking wwx aND GOT BICHEN THROUGH THE CHEST FOR THEIR TROUBLES

THAT’S WHAT YOU GET, DEMON THING!!

And then lwj goes and blocks another blow meant for wwx

Lwj is so awesome in battle??

I feel like shang from mulan trying to compliment lwj

“YOU...YOU FIGHT GOOD”

i mean, come on, he literally just now took out a demon thing with a BLAST from bichen

BICHEN DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH IT? 

AND THE DEMON THING WAS COMING FROM BEHIND HIM??

HE DIDN’T EVEN TURN AROUND TO LOOK!!

HE JUST HAD BICHEN BLAST SOME SPIRITUAL ENERGY BEHIND HIM TO KNOCK OUT THE DEMON THING

WHAT A BAMF

Uh oh

Wwx just did his floaty jump thing and perched on a winged creature statue overlooking the battlefield

Lwj has his eyes on him

He’s watching him all worriedly

WWX STARTS TO PLAY HIS DEMON FLUTE

listen

listen

i know the demon flute and resentful energy is bad for you or whatever

BUT HE LOOKS SO DAMN COOL HERE

ENSHROUDED IN BLACK SMOKE

HIS FACE A PICTURE OF CONCENTRATION

Meanwhile lwj is cutting down enemies left and right AND STILL MAKING TIME TO THROW WORRIED LOOKS AT WWX

WAIT A MINUTE, wwx has just TAKEN CONTROL of the demon things

Bc he’s BADASS

And the music gets INTENSE here

THIS IS SO EXCITING!!!!

LWJ still looks so concerned even tho the demon things start fighting for them rather than against them

Bc he doesn’t care about the demon things or the battle

He cares about how this will affect his wei ying!!

And the episode ends with wen ruohan throwing a hissy fit bc his demon things aren’t under his control anymore

WE DID IT GUYS, WE FINALLY MADE IT TO AN EPISODE WITH QUALITY NOT-COMPLETELY-HEARTBREAKING WANGXIANTICS

OUR BOYS WERE NICE TO EACH OTHER!!!

ON A MOONLIT ROOFTOP!!!

AND THEY FOUGHT SIDE BY SIDE!!

IT WAS ALL SO BEAUTIFUL

Return to Masterpost

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 133: Dewey Wins

“But...I’m hurt.”

I started reviewing the Week of Sardonyx in late 2017. It was slow going thanks to grad school and student teaching and licensing tests and my job (boy do I not miss those days), but I’d clawed my way through Cry for Help in October and Keystone Motel on the first Sunday of November. In those reviews, I wrote at length about how this was the most devastating arc of the series, a massive argument spanning multiple episodes with no easy answers.

Then the Friday after my Keystone Motel post was uploaded, Cartoon Network dropped the Breakup Arc on us all at once, and I had to make some edits.

There’s no official name for the span of episodes between Dewey Wins and Kevin Party, but considering it features not one but two breakups, with only one reconciliation by the end, I think my nickname is apt. Just under a fifth of Season 5 is devoted to six consecutive episodes designed to make us miserable, and on top of being an outstanding sequel to the Week of Sardonyx, it’s the best precursor we’ve got to adolescent trials of Steven Universe Future. 

The Week of Sardonyx is strengthened by numerous previous episodes where Pearl does bad things without consequence, making it something of a shock when her actions are finally addressed. In a similar way, we’ve been taught from Log Date 7 15 2 and Kindergarten Kid and The New Crystal Gems that emotionally draining arcs are followed by cooldown episodes, and Dewey Wins sounds like the name of a fun adventure with our goofy mayor. There’s no situation where the Breakup Arc would be a pleasant affair, but the pattern adds an extra layer of angst as our anticipated relief period ends up more stressful than the arc we needed relief from.

But not every big arc gets a cooldown. Our very first, ending with Jailbreak, is followed by one of the Breakup Arc’s major prequels: Full Disclosure, an episode about missed phone calls and the importance of keeping friends in the loop regarding space adventures. The ghosted party is flipped, as Connie now refuses to talk to Steven, and watching his struggle gives an even greater appreciation for Connie’s own turmoil (not just from Full Disclosure, but Steven’s reckless self-sacrifice).

We know something’s wrong from the moment we see her, in a way that’s different from Greg and the Gems’ wide-eyed concern. Her discomfort manifests just as it did in Mindful Education: a downcast expression and curt demeanor made more apparent by Steven’s cheery chattiness. But because she’s the only one of them that has truly taken the lessons of that episode to heart, she soon expresses her feelings outright (after a brutal “Of course I’m happy to see you”—Grace Rolek only needs one scene to be the episode’s MVP). Her complaints are all valid: this is not the first time she’s been left on Earth, and her sense that Steven isn’t taking her seriously is confirmed when he can’t even take her seriously within the conversation. She’s as direct as she can be, but when Steven refuses to acknowledge her pain, her anger takes over and she shuts him out. Lion’s side-eye is icing on the cake.

My biggest issue with Dewey Wins, however, is Steven. I’m torn, because it’s easy to justify his behavior throughout the episode as a result of recent trauma and the relief at surviving such a harrowing experience (and, later, the same sleeplessness that made him snap in Rose’s Room and Warp Tour). It makes sense that his martyr complex is intensified by his experience with Lars, that he falls back on helping others at the cost of his own well-being on instinct. But his flippant dismissal of Connie’s emotions still feels off, especially because it comes with a heretofore unseen swagger about his own heroism. She pours her heart out, making it clear that she wants to keep being Jam Buds but he’s making it really difficult, but every word goes right over his head. This is a version of Steven that somehow doesn’t get that “hurt” can refer to emotions instead of physical damage.

Throughout the episode, but particularly in this opening scene, Steven feels exaggerated for the sake of honing Connie’s argument. Perhaps it’s necessary, considering how easy it is in first viewing to see his sacrifice as noble rather than selfish; we need to see a more extreme version of his behavior to understand that going it alone was a bad move, or else Connie’s arguments seem small against the scale of the stakes. It’s further complicated by the fact that Steven’s sacrifice was noble, even if it was selfish at the same time. This isn’t a case where Steven is fully right or fully wrong, so it’s bound to be confusing to hear that his traditionally heroic move wasn’t as great as he (or we) first thought.

So yeah, I get why Steven is acting this way for the sake of the show. And, again, I can find reasons to explain his sudden emotional idiocy, making it leagues better than a true Annoying Steven episode. But it still comes across as clumsy to me; I can see the wheels turning to move the plot along in a way that’s normally hidden better on this show. His final monologue where he realizes that Connie felt the way he feels about Dewey abandoning the race feels like something from another show, a show that’s way more on-the-nose than Steven Universe is at its best. It was probably the right move, because as much as I can’t stand it when media is patronizing to young audiences, this lesson is complex enough that it’s worth a little clunkiness to ensure that the message gets through to smaller viewers. But compared to the elegance of our recent space adventure, Dewey Wins sacrifices polish for clarity when we usually get both.

But enough about what doesn’t work for me, because so much of this episode works for me. Even if his behavior feels forced, Steven provides seamless in-universe exposition recapping his space adventure. His follow-up conversation with Sadie has the same kind of douchey detachment that he shows Connie, but in a way that’s far more consistent with his character: dismissing Connie’s emotions is out of left field for him, but it makes plenty of sense that he’d see Lars as “okay” despite being trapped in space, considering the alternative was a very real death. And, of course, there’s the matter of the episode’s actual hero.

Nanefua Pizza has been my everything since Beach Party, and it’s thrilling to see her gain more prominence in the tail end of the series. Her beef with Mayor Dewey has been running since Political Power, the Dewey episode that established all the flaws that drive him out of office in Dewey Wins. Then, she responded by rallying rioters to tip over his truck, but now she takes a more civic-minded approach to effect real change. Still, she’s driven by the same anger at Dewey, and can only become a true force for good when she gains a new appreciation for his struggles.

While the correlation between Dewey and Steven is obvious well before Steven straight-up says there’s a correlation (a moment that’s made easier to swallow when Dewey points out he has no context for Steven’s friend troubles), the general conflict between Nanefua and Bill(iam) is a more fascinating study on blame. At first, both candidates believe in the power of blame, with Nanefua laying all the city’s troubles on Dewey’s inaction and Dewey arguing that taking the heat is his greatest strength: in his mind, there’s not much he can actually do about the cosmic misfortunes that befall Beach City, but giving its citizens somebody to blame gives them a sense of control that’s necessary in a chaotic world. And both of these viewpoints can be found in Steven’s self-image.

Steven, like Nanefua, is quick to lay blame when anything goes wrong. But Steven, like Dewey, sees the absorption of blame as a virtue. So he loops between those two positions, looking for someone to blame at the drop of a hat and only finding himself. The ensuing guilt make him want to fix the problems of others to atone, rather than focus on the underlying cause of his own issues, and if that sounds familiar it’s because Steven Universe Future is entirely about how important it is to break this loop.

But obsessing over fixing things is also how Pearl tries to solve her argument with Garnet in the Week of Sardonyx: she focuses on finding Peridot instead of doing anything about her own actions until she has no choice but to talk things out. And, as I said back in my Friend Ship post, it evokes something Pearl once said about humans (which it turns out applies to Gems): 

“They want to blame all the world's problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone's control.”

When was this said? In Keep Beach City Weird, in regards to Ronaldo. The same Ronaldo who poured gas on the fire in Full Disclosure by presenting the idea that heroes are aloof and keep their friends at a distance. So in a way, the Breakup Arc can be chalked up to ignoring the good Ronaldo lesson but taking the bad Ronaldo lesson to heart. But more on him in Gemcation.

Steven’s turmoil lends a somber edge to Nanefua’s powerful change of heart, where she rejects her past choice to blame Dewey. She apologizes for her own part in pointing fingers, because blame is a lousy substitute for getting things done, and forgives him for not being perfect. She pitches the act of helping as a community effort, rather than something that any one person must do alone; she remembers that the lyrics are “we can be strong in the real way.” She’s giving Steven all of the answers well before Steven Universe Future shows how much his guilt loop will continue to plague him, but he isn’t ready to listen yet, and leaves the debate dejected instead of empowered. (Considering Jenny’s appeal to taking breaks during trying times in Joy Ride, and an adventure with Kiki about not spreading yourself too thin on behalf of others in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, this is the third time a Pizza woman’s fantastic advice has gone ignored by our hero.)

Even Dewey seems better off than Steven, accepting defeat by acknowledging that Nanefua would make a better mayor. And he’s right! She sets up actual services to account for alien threats, services that end up changing the universe in a way Dewey’s brand of keeping the peace never could. He may need a new job (Sadie foreshadows both his fate and her own imminent career change in one fell swoop), but there’s a sense of calm as he passes the torch after a full episode of Joel Hodgson’s hammy anxiety.

I appreciate that Dewey is allowed some points in his favor even as he flubs his way out of office. Yes, he should be more thoughtful and attentive: his vow to find a new donut shop kid when presented with news that Lars is trapped in space is even broader than Steven’s reaction to Connie’s pain, but the mayor has always ridiculous so I don’t mind at all. Yes, he should try and do something to address the concerns of his citizens beyond saying everything will be fine. But it’s not lost on the show that it isn’t easy running a town that’s a lightning rod for alien encounters, so Dewey remains sympathetic even if his ineptitude must be addressed. After all, if he’s gonna stand in for Steven in a metaphor that’s clear enough to be monologued about, it’s important to point out that it’s okay when you fail against impossible odds. Neither Dewey nor Steven can do everything on their own, no matter how much power they wield.

Steven might skip a few crucial lessons of Dewey Wins, but he at least learns one. Perhaps in an earlier season, that would be enough to mend fences with Connie. But time makes you bolder, children get older, and she’s getting older too. She’s been more than patient with being treated like an afterthought, so the moment she’s had enough is bound to be a big one. Thus, we end with a cliffhanger, one that pulls Steven into the same landslide that’s surely consuming the rest of the town after his kidnapping. The Barrigas are missing a son, and Sadie’s missing a romantic friend. Bill Dewey is no longer Mayor Dewey, and Nanefua has a whole new set of obstacles to face. Greg and the Gems have their son back, but his kidnapping was traumatic for them as well, and Connie gets that trauma on top of her stated complaints. And Steven had learned two lessons instead of one: it’s important to take your friends seriously, and timing is everything.

It’s gonna be a rough week.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I do like it, really. But Steven’s behavior takes it down a few notches, regardless of my ability to find ways to explain it. Great episodes don’t require the audience to seek ways to justify a character’s weird behavior. There’s more good than bad here, but I’d be lying if I said I loved Dewey Wins.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Lars’s Head

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

I Am My Mom

Stuck Together

The Trial

Off Colors

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Dewey Wins

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

(No official promo art for most of the Breakup Arc, given the way they were released, but I can’t be too mad when we get brilliance like this from ajora.)

[starrynite7114]

distraction: four

A/N: Hello everyone! An update is finally here! I’m hitting a block with things you never knew, but I’m sure I will get through it soon. I’ve been really inspired for this one and it’s really moving along! Hope you all enjoy the next part!

==============================

Emerson was immersed with Bird Box when her doorbell rang. It couldn’t be Elijah since he was with Miguel. As much as she wanted to go to dinner, she was just not feeling well after her episode and wanted to stay home. She looked through the peephole and found EZ.

She opened the door and greeted him. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to check on you, can I come in?”

“Sure,” she stepped aside and let EZ come in.

She closed the door and did her usual routine of checking the lock three times. EZ smiled at her routine and just shook his head. He sat down on one of her armchairs.

“Haven’t seen you at the bakery in a while, everything okay?” When she first arrived, EZ was one of the first people she met. She was setting up the bakery and was carrying stuff inside. EZ and his father, Felipe, happened to be walking by and helped her out. She thanked them by making them some food.

“Just busy with club business.” The reasoned EZ stayed away was he couldn’t keep lying to her and not tell her he was a part of her life. It was difficult to not tell Emerson what they’ve been through together.

“I see,” she nodded her head. “Your brother is always around.” It was stupid reasoning, but from her understanding of this whole M.C. business, EZ was Angel’s prospect for 2 more months. Shouldn’t he be attached to Angel?

“Can’t keep him away even if you want to,” EZ replied.

“Your brother is just a bottomless pit, that’s why.”

EZ laughed. “He definitely is. So, Elijah is here?”

“No, he’s with Miguel and Emily, business dinner.” Emerson always found it interesting how much more she’ll see EZ when Elijah was around. Whenever Elijah was in town, that’s when she would see EZ more often. Coco, Gilly, Angel or any of the other Mayans would hardly come around. It was mostly EZ.

“You didn’t go?”

“I’m not feeling well.”

“Everything okay?”

Emerson paused Bird Box since she was almost certain she wouldn’t be watching with EZ here.

“Yeah, I just almost blacked out.” Emerson answered. “I’m fine, happens every once in a while.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” EZ was having an internal struggle whether he should tell her or not. He knew her, he could help her with her memories. If anything, Angel could help her the most.

“It’s fine, the bakery can be stressful and Letty.” She was obviously joking about Letty because as ridiculous as teenagers were, Letty made her life better.

“We both know if there’s anyone who Letty isn’t a pain in the ass to, it’s you.” EZ chuckled.

“She’s a good kid.” Emerson really did adore Leticia. She wasn’t sure what it was, maybe she did remind her of her younger sister. Regardless, Leticia was a smart kid with a good head on her head. She could be a wise ass at times, but she was a teenager.

“You ever miss your family?” EZ was well aware that Emerson’s father disowned her for a second time. Whenever he met the Patriarch of the Andres family, he seemed to be a kind man who never had a problem with him or his upbringing. But everyone can put up an act after all.

“Yes, at times,” she looked over at him. “The holidays are coming up, so I do, but otherwise, I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Can I ask you a question?” EZ was going to ask her. He didn’t give a shit what Angel instructed. She’s been here for 6 months, he didn’t want to lie to her anymore.

“Sure,” she nodded her head.

EZ opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the knocking on the door. He stood up to go and open it, even though he was certain it was Angel. He had convinced his brother to let him go check on Emerson instead since EZ knew that Angel would cause trouble. When he opened the door, he was surprised to find Elijah on the other side of the door.

“Elijah.”

“Ezekiel.”

Their greetings was short and curt. EZ moved aside to let Elijah in, but before he can go all the way in, EZ placed his arm in front of him.

“We should talk.”

Elijah looked over at him and nodded his head. “Yes, it seems like we’re due for a conversation.”

==============================

Elijah exited the car Miguel had provided for him, waiting for Ezekiel to arrive at their designated meeting place. He heard the roar of a motorcycle and knew EZ was close by. Slipping on his sunglasses, he took off his suit jacket, the Santo Padre heat seeped in quickly. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone nor was this a business meeting.

When the motorcycle finally came insight he knew that it wasn’t Ezekiel and he felt foolish for even believing it would be EZ who would meet him. The motorcycle stopped beside his car.

Angel got off his bike, removing his helmet and placing it on his handle. He kept his gloves on, walking over to Elijah who was overlooking the mountains that were their background.

“Can’t say I’m surprise to see you,” Elijah rolled up the sleeves of his button up. The heat seeping in.

“Same goes to you, I should know better than to think that you would leave Emerson alone.” Angel never understood Elijah. Sophia Andres was in love with him, why couldn’t he settle for Emerson’s sister?

“I don’t have to do shit,” Elijah growled out. “She doesn’t remember you. You’re nothing to her.”

“And you conveniently bask on that fact.” Angel spat out.

“Emerson is a clean slate. She doesn’t remember meeting you and your brother, it’s the best thing that can ever happen for her.” Elijah never liked Angel. He was indifferent about EZ, if anything he wanted to recruit EZ for his business as he found that his photographic memory would be incredibly helpful. And EZ was a smart kid, he liked him, especially since he was never interested in Emerson. “Well mostly forgetting you was the best thing to happen to her.”

“What happens when she remembers everything? You think she’s going to be okay with you hiding such a big part of her life?” Angel wanted to smack this pretty boy around, but he knew there would be consequences. He had to be smart about this, Elijah was Miguel’s business partner. The last thing he wanted was for Galindo to take it out on the club.

“We both know you don’t want her remembering anything. Cause between you and me, you’re the one who needs the clean slate. If she remembers everything, you’re forever tainted,” Elijah smugly reminded him. “You know what, she should remember. It’ll push her right into my arms.”

Angel chuckled then before grabbing Elijah by the collar of his shirt. “No matter what happens, no matter what you do, she’ll never love you like she loves me. Even without her memories, I’ll have her fall right back in love with me.”

Elijah looked down at Angel’s hands before pushing him off. “Is that so? The confidence you have is immense seeing as how Emerson doesn’t even seem to give you the time of day.”

“You’re not always here, are you now?” Angel shoved him back.

“For now,” Elijah smirked. “Santo Padre would be a great place to establish some real estate.”

“Fuck you, you never liked it here. Let Galindo handle that, why would you need to be here?” Angel hated Elijah with every fiber of his being. Whenever he had the chance, Elijah always tried to prove to Angel how undeserving he was of Emerson. Ever since he first met the guy, Elijah made it known that Angel was beneath him. He never let Elijah get into his head, at least at first, but self worth was a tricky thing and during vulnerable moments, people do stupid shit.

“Someone has to oversee the operations, I would be the perfect candidate for that, wouldn’t you say?” Elijah brushed off the dirt Angel got on his shirt. “I’m sure Emmy wouldn’t mind if I stayed put.”

“You sure about that? You seem to upset her yesterday.”

“Emerson doesn’t like being pushed, she’s stubborn.”

“What were you pushing her about?”

“Her mother would like for her to come to New York. She would like to celebrate her 60th birthday with all of her children and Emerson isn’t responding to her.”

“Can’t say I blame her since her family is full of snobby rich assholes.”

“Tia Dolores was always fond of you, I do not think you have the right to say such terrible words about her.”

“You know who I mean.”

“Ah, Tio Eduardo is a bit of an asshole,” Elijah shrugged. “But you can’t fault him for wanting the best for his daughter.”

Eduardo Andres has always hated Angel. EZ, he could tolerate, but Angel knew that Eduardo saw him as someone who would never be good enough for his daughter. And the thing that killed him, it wasn’t entirely about the MC. Eduardo had respect for Bishop and Marcus, they were businessmen and they understood one another. But Angel was a foot soldier. Eduardo couldn’t fathom that his daughter would be someone who had no plan for the future besides sell drugs. Angel tried, he really did try to appease her father, but Angel knew that no matter what he did, it would be futile.

“And I assume that’s you?” Angel scoffed.

Elijah chuckled. “Perhaps, but I love Emerson. I want her to be happy and I’m man enough to accept that.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because she hasn’t chosen anyone, Angel. She may have ended our engagement, but let’s be honest, Emerson is trying to find herself. Once she does, and if she remembers how your relationship ended, she’ll run right back to me.” Elijah wasn’t as confident as he projected to be, but he had hope. He wasn’t a selfish man, he wasn’t psychotic. In the end, if Emerson picked Angel again, he would step away, just as he did before.

“You’re not innocent yourself, you set me up.”

Elijah shrugged. “All is fair in love and war.” He knew if Emerson ever found out what he did, he would be on her shit list, but not as bad as Angel. “Why keep trying Angel? You never thought you deserved Emerson, that you two basically had an expiration date. Why fight for her now?”

It was true, Angel always thought that whatever he had with Emerson, it wasn’t going to last. Maybe it was his self esteem issues or issues that stem from growing up in EZ’s shadow, but the world was stacked up against them. Maybe that’s why he fucked up during the last year of their relationship. He couldn’t exactly give an exact reason why, but he recognized that he fucked up their relationship with his own insecurities. After he lost her, things were put in perspective for him as the years went along. He watched in the shadows as Emerson paraded around with Elijah, happily playing the part of his other half. He never understood why Emerson did what she did, knowing Emerson never wanted to be engaged to Elijah.

At one point, he thought he pushed her enough that she finally decided to go to Elijah. But then he realized that she lost her memory and the only thing she remember was up to her high school graduation, when she was still madly in love with Elijah.

So why was he fighting now?

“Because I lost her once and I can’t let that happen again.”

==============================

Letty and Emerson were in kitchen of the bakery, preparing a cake that was pre-ordered for pick up tomorrow morning. The bakery had been closed for an hour and she was trying to finish a few things before she headed home. She was going to drop off Letty at the clubhouse since the boys were having a party. She offered for Letty to just stay over at her place since it was a school night, but Coco insisted on having Letty dropped off. Emerson was almost certain that Letty would be Coco’s excuse to leave.

“Can I ask you a question?” Letty broke Emerson out of her concentration as she was finishing up the design on the cake.

“Sure, what’s up?” Emerson placed the pipetting bag down and focused her attention on Letty.

“Why’d you take me in?” Letty always wondered why Emerson helped her. She wasn’t used to that, especially from a complete stranger. Aside for her father, her grandmother wasn’t exactly the best person in the world. She never experienced unquestionable loyalty from anyone, someone who was willing to get her out of a shitty situation besides EZ and Emerson. Her father was a default even though it didn’t seem that way at first.

“What you mean?”

“You didn’t have to help me that one night I got in a fight with my dad.” Letty always wondered if Emerson had an ulterior motive for helping her. But then, when her anxiety subsided and she was able to reason with herself, Emerson didn’t want anything from Letty.

“I wasn’t going to let you walk alone in the rain. I do have a heart you know,” Emerson playfully bumped Letty with her hip. “What’s with the question? I’ve literally spent the last 5 months with you.”

“I’m just not used to a complete stranger caring for me without asking for something in return.”

Emerson frowned. She’s always known Letty had a hard life. Her grandmother treated her terribly and she didn’t know Coco till a year ago. Regardless, she could tell Coco genuinely cared for his daughter and she meant the world to him. “The world hasn’t been kind to you, I get it. But there are still good people in the world. You just reminded me of my younger sister. Guess having you around filled a void for me and you grew on me.” She teased.

“Were you close to her?” Letty was surprised that Emerson brought up her sister. She rarely spoke of her family and when she usually did, it was a smartass remark.

“Yes, but we fell out.” Emerson picked up the pipetting bag as she finished the last design on this layer of the cake.

“After you were disowned?”

“We fell out way before that.”

“Why?” This was the most Emerson ever opened up to Letty and she wasn’t going to let it pass. She wanted to know about her.

“My sister Sophia always saw me as my parents’ favorite. She never resented me, I always made sure to try and dissuade her whenever she got that look in her eye. I tried to be the best older sister I could be to her.” Emerson explained. “Then one day, it was announced that I was engaged to Elijah and things changed from there.”

“Was she upset cause she thought Elijah was taking you away?”

“No, she was in love with Elijah and I knew all about it. She felt that I betrayed her.”

“Wait, you were engaged to Elijah?!” Letty always knew that Elijah had a thing for Emerson, but she never mentioned she was actually engaged to him.

“Once upon a time, I was engaged to Elijah. But something in me was against it. We were engaged for a few months before I called it off.” Emerson placed the pipetting bag down once again. “We were arranged by our parents, some sort of business deal to strengthen ties between our companies.”

“What?! People still arrange for their children to be married? I thought that was in the 1800s or somethin’,”

Emerson laughed at that. “No, it actually occurs to this day.”

“If you two were arranged why was she so upset?”

“She thought I planned it, that I wanted to take Elijah away from her.” Emerson gave her a small smile. “Sophia was absolutely upset at me and when I called it off, she still refused to speak to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I broke Elijah’s heart.”

“Your sister sounds like a bitch.”

“Oh, she definitely was. But she was also smart and hard headed, just like you.” Emerson booped Letty’s nose causing her to laugh. “Though, you’re definitely much more level headed than Sophia.”

“Has she ever tried to talk to you?”

“Yes, very civil conversations.”

“But not the same?”

Emerson shook her head. “Maybe she’ll forgive me one day once I’m actually married with children with someone who is not Elijah.”

“If Elijah hasn’t given her the time of day, why would he now?”

“I don’t know, I tried to push him towards her, but he’s a bit of a dick about it.”

“Really? How so?”

“He doesn’t want the lesser Andres when the better one is available.” EZ startled the two young women.

Emerson gave him a questioning look. “How do you know that?”

“Experience.” He shrugged. “I just know enough people and have witnessed it before.

She eyed him suspiciously along with Letty. But both women just nodded their heads.

“You two ready to go? Coco asked me to pick you two up.”

“For?” Emerson picked up her piping bag once more and continued with her designs.

“Just to assure that you two get to the clubhouse safely.” It wasn’t Coco, it was Angel. He wanted to make sure Elijah wasn’t around to dissuade Emerson from going to the clubhouse. Angel saw it as the perfect opportunity to get her alone.

Ever since Emerson came back, she’s just been to the clubhouse a handful of times and that was usually to drop off food. Since they had her drop off Letty, they figured she would stay put as well.

“I still got two more layers to go, you guys can just go.”  Emerson offered.

“We can wait,” EZ insisted. “Besides, my brother would be disappointed if you didn’t go.”

“Your brother has enough ass at the clubhouse to keep him distracted.” Emerson walked over to the fridge and took another layer.

“Come on Emmy, Taza and Hank would love to see you as well.”

“They saw me this morning Ezekiel, they come here every morning.” Emerson pointed out. She placed the cake layer on the table, eyeing him suspiciously. “Am I missing something?”

“No, you just keep making excuses about spending time at the clubhouse. You too good for us?”

“Yes, because that’s why I hang around you all.” Emerson rolled her eyes. “I just don’t like parties, they make me antsy.” She hated parties when her parents threw it and it was no different now. They were always filled with people she didn’t know and her social energy would be drained so quickly, she would panic trying to look for an exit. Though, the Mayans parties were a bit cooler than her parents since they weren’t full of snobby rich people.

EZ knew that about Emerson. He remembered during college, he wanted to experience the college life, but Emerson always shied away from those parties and prefered to same in her apartment and just watch movies.

“Come on Emmy, please? You can just drop me off then be on your way. If my dad to stays a little bit, I don’t want to be alone.” Letty pleaded.

“Chucky would keep you company.” Emerson found Chucky creepy at first, but he seemed to be a genuinely good guy.

“True, but can’t you just go, for me?” Letty did those eyes once again and EZ chuckled, seeing the struggle in Emerson’s face.

“God, you are terrible.” Emerson laughed. “Let me finish this and we can go.”

It was odd how at home Emerson felt in Santo Padre. She never even knew this town existed till her grandfather had mentioned to her that Miguel lives in Santo Padre. Her grandfather was her biggest advocate ever since she could remember. Sure, she was close to her father and mother, but she was incredibly close to her grandfather as well. And it was weird since her father instructed her to look out for bikers, not because they’re dangerous, but they were going to help her.

It was such a weird statement, but she guessed it made sense.

After all, no one should ever judge a book by its cover.

[stillthewordgirl]

Fic: Triangles (Ch. 3)

After the Oculus exploded, the spark that is Leonard Snart was sent hurtling through time and space. His latest destination: The waters of the Bermuda Triangle in 1939. And a luxury liner called the Queen Anne…

(A sort-of crossover between Legends of Tomorrow and The X-Files episode “Triangle.” Mostly Snart POV.)

Continued thanks to @larielromeniel and @pir8grl for looking it over.

Can also be read here at AO3 or here at FF.net.

More notes at the end!

A small boat near the Queen Anne, 1998

"Hey, Scully, you're not going to believe this. Get up here."

"What?"

"The sky just cleared and there it was."

"Is it the Queen Anne?"

"That's her."

"I don't believe it."

"Seeing is believing."

"They've got power."

"Maybe Mulder's already on board."

"Let's hope he is."

On the Waverider, 1998, in a holding pattern above the Atlantic Ocean, not far from Bermuda

Nate lets out a long, low whistle. "That's one big aberration."

Sara stares at the Queen Anne, a piece—a very, very big piece—of 1939 that's somehow slipped through into 1998. There's power, clearly. But no life signs on the entire ship, leading to immediate "zombie apocalypse" jokes from Nate and Ray. (And shudders from Stein and Mick.)

"We need to take a look," she says, worrying her lip between her teeth. Something's weird here. Weirder than usual. "Ray. And... Martin. Jax. Come with me." She straightens, ignoring Nate's "Awwwww!" "Mick, keep the ship here while we take a look around. If it's really empty, it won't be long."

"What about Captain... sorry, Mr. …Hunter?" Amaya asks. "That's a British luxury liner."

"Rip's still prone to fits of time drift at the most inappropriate moments. I don't think so. With our luck, he'd decide he's the first mate or something." She shakes her head.

"Blondie, there's a small boat off the side there. Four people on it. Don't worry, pretty sure we cloaked before they saw us." Mick frowns from his seat in the captain's chair.

"Well, then we just need to keep that up."

On the Queen Anne, 1939

"I told you, this man is the scientist."

The Fed has nerve too; Leonard will give him that. He can half-hear the man mouthing off to the Nazis—yeah, that can't end well—but keeps his eyes locked on Sara's.

"By killing one of your own?" he asks quietly. "It's not the answer."

"I have to."

He has no idea of her story, here. But some things, in these places he lands, always seem to be the same. This is one of them: Sara Lance, in whatever incarnation, is a hero. The one who led him to become a hero himself, for better or for worse.

"That's how a killer thinks," he tells her, "and that's not you anymore."

She stares at him a moment longer, then lets out a shaky breath, some of the tension going out of her shoulders. He dares to look; the gun isn't in her hand anymore. He lets out a breath of his own.

When he looks up again, she's looking at him with shadows in her eyes, but a smirk on her face. "OK, stranger," she says, "I don't know who you are, or how you know me, but my instincts say your intentions are good. Now, what do we do?"

At the center of the action, another man, the one Mulder's redhead was with, is claiming to be the scientist—and so does she, although the man then claims she's an OSS agent protecting him.

Another decoy. And an OSS agent—is that what this Raymond is, too? Layers on layers, and only one thing for sure: it's time to leave.

"Raymond!" The man starts at the sound of his voice and looks at him with wide eyes. Leonard shakes his head. "Come on. We should get outta here."

"Who are..."

"Just listen to me, Boy Scout. We need to get all three of you out of here, find somewhere safe until the ship..." He breaks off. "...well. Until it gets where it needs to go, and that's not Nazi Germany. Come on."

For some reason, the man believes him. Raymond exchanges a few quick words with Stein and Jax, then looks back at Sara and Leonard, who start leading the way across the outskirts of the ballroom, toward one of the doors.

Leonard waves the rest through, then, for some reason, turns to look back... and pauses.

The Nazis have Mulder and the redhead on their knees near the front of the ballroom, hands behind their heads. An execution pose: they're dead if no one steps in. Leonard scans the ballroom, frowning. And no one in this cowed lot is going to do that.

He sighs, then takes one step back...only to pause again. Something's...off.

The engines have stopped.

And then, with a roar, a mixed group of sailors and crewmen burst through corridors on both sides of the ballroom. They immediately set to punching Nazis, initiating a good ol' bottle-smashing, table-throwing brawl. And in the middle of them, throwing punches and smashing Nazi heads with the best of them: Mick.

The Fed and the redhead have vanished. Leonard lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Mick's come through again.

The big man turns as if he feels the eyes upon him, hesitates a moment and then gives him a curt nod. He has this. Has Leonard's back—even though he doesn't realize, doesn't know...

After a moment, Leonard nods back. And then he turns and runs after Sara and the others.

"Hey! Hey…you!" Mulder catches sight of the tall guy from the captain's quarters again as he and Scully make their way, creeping on hands and knees to avoid the battle, from the ballroom. The man ignores him, vanishing out the doorway, and Mulder lurches after him, skidding to a stop in the hall as he realizes the other has already managed to vanish in plain sight.

"What the hell?" Not-Scully has come to a halt right behind him, gazing at him with irritation.

"I…saw someone." Mulder turns slowly, frowning. "Someone I think might be able to tell me how to…get home."

"Mister, after all that, you're helping fix this first." A wave of her hand indicates the ship, the Nazis, the missing scientist…everything he's managed to muck about in since he got here, slipping through time into 1939.

And she's right. He reaches out and grabs her hand, letting the mystery of the man in black go. For now. "Come on."

Leonard catches up to the others, slipping past the three men and then Sara to take the lead. "We'll lock you in the captain's quarters," he tells them. "There's a radio in there; you might be able to contact someone. At any rate, you can stay hidden for as long as possible. If you're lucky, Mi… that group will take back the ship and it'll all be fine. If you're not, well, it's not a bad place to stay hidden, and from what I've heard, the captain won't be back."

Raymond gulps audibly. "Oh. Ah. And who are…"

"Just move, Boy Scout!"

They round a corner and continue… and suddenly, another man, dressed in a Nazi uniform, steps suddenly out in front of them.

Leonard comes to an abrupt halt with a startled oath, the others piling up behind him. Sara moves up beside him, her gun in her hand, steel in her eyes.

The Nazi smiles at him, and Leonard feels ice in his veins. Because it's Vandal Savage standing in front of him, the spitting image of the man he'd sworn to take down, the man he'd…well, he'd thought he was going to die…to stop.

Why would the Nazis take Savage? he thinks absently, tensing to fight.He's not precisely their ideal…but I suppose they're his kind of people…

"Und wo sind Sie fünf gehen?" the Savage doppelganger says smoothly. "Ich denke, es gibt Leute, die Sie suchen..."

He never gets to finish, because with a yell of rage, Rip Hunter, or the Rip doppelganger, hurtles out of a nearby corridor, knife in hand, and tackles the bigger man.

"Run!" he yells at them. "Run, you idiots!"

They run. Leonard grabs Sara's hand as they do so. She lets him.

On the Queen Anne, 1998

There's someone else on the ship. Sara frowns, moving down the hallway, flashlight in one hand, bo in the other, Ray, Stein, and Jax trailing in her wake

She can hear the voices—a woman and a few men, she thinks—and hear the footsteps, but the group is always gone just before she turns a corner.

Otherwise, the Queen Anne is, indeed, deserted. The hallways are lit, though dimly, and in decent repair. Truly, a ghost ship.

She's seen some odd things—aliens, even—since going on the Waverider. This is among the odder of them.

They turn a corner…and an odd shudder runs down Sara's spine. She stops and shakes her head, looking at her right hand, which is closed around the bo…but momentarily felt warm.

The others have stopped as well.

"Did you feel that?" Jax asks the group at large. "Now, that was spooky. My grandma woulda called it someone walking on your grave."

"Jax, I've had people walking on my grave. It doesn't feel like anything."

The younger man eyes her for a moment, then shakes his head. "Yeah, and that isn't creepy or anything…"

The Queen Anne, 1939

They escort Raymond and his charges to the captain's quarters, where Jax immediately starts tinkering with the radio and Leonard ignores Raymond's questions in favor of wishing him a curt "good luck"—pausing to acknowledge Stein's quiet "thank you" before they leave the room. He uses the key he'd picked from the Fed's pocket, breaking it off in the lock, and then takes off again. Sara follows him.

When they finally emerge on the deck, Leonard casts a quick look around…and then grabs Sara's arm, pulling her back into the shadows as they see the Fed and the redhead standing there already.

"….don't go back and convince the crew of this ship to turn this ship around and head back into the devil's triangle, everything Einstein predicted will become true—except for the outcome of history," Mulder is saying, talking fast, obviously trying to persuade her of something.

The redhead is skeptical. "So, if I don't turn this ship around…?"

"In all likelihood, I won't exist … and neither will you." He considers her a long moment. "So, in case we never meet again…"

Leonard almost thinks Sara bites back a chuckle at the kiss that follows…and, standing there with her, he knows she does at the swift right hook that follows it. Personally, watching her in the darkness, he has some sympathy for the man. Does the redhead have a doppelganger, back where and when he's from? Was this a chance he'd never had the nerve to take before?

His mind is so elsewhere that he nearly misses it when the Fed hurls himself off the side of the ship, landing with a splash in the ocean below. The redhead runs after him, but after throwing a life preserver overboard and scanning the dark waters for a few minutes, she turns and heads back below decks. Leonard moves slowly to the railing and scans the ocean himself. Nothing.

Good luck, Fox.

"Was he right?" Sara's quiet question comes from behind him. "Is he…are you from…somewhere else?"

He considers and discards several responses, finally shrugs. "Yeah," he admits. "And he's right. The ship needs to turn around. I told…someone…in the boiler room. A man named Mick. If you find him, trust him. But whatever you do, make sure the ship turns. Take it back the way it came."

"And you?"

Almost time, he's pretty sure. "I'll be moving on." He turns to look at her…and she's standing close, so close, blue eyes gazing into his, a small frown on her lips.

Oh, what the hell. "So, just in case we never meet again…" he whispers.

And he kisses her. Finally stealing the kiss he's wanted to for so very long, or at least pretending to, given that this woman isn't Sara, just looks like her, moves like her, speaks like her...

...tastes like her...

"Sara? Sara? Are you OK?"

In 1998, Sara Lance stops dead in her tracks on the deck of the deserted Queen Anne, all thoughts of ghost ships and mysterious intruders washed away. Ray has turned back toward her; he's saying something, but she can barely hear him.

Her hand drifts to her mouth, fingers brushing against her lips, as a rush of warmth goes through her, the scent of warm leather and fresh winter air, the taste of mint and Leonard...

He semi-expects a fist to the face, like the skillful right hook Mulder'd gotten from the redhead. Hell, to be honest, he semi-expects a knife to the ribs.

Instead, Sara's double kisses him back, actually deepening the kiss by bending into him, lifting her arms and curving one hand across the back of his head, the other gripping the collar of his jacket. He makes a sound of surprise; she takes advantage of it by running the tip of her tongue along his lips, past them.

He can feels the pins and needles in his limbs that mean he's going to be leaving soon, any moment now, but he ignores them, pulling her closer, losing himself, or trying to, in the feel of her mouth on his, her body in his arms, the sense of Sara...Sara...Sara...

Just as he knows he can't hang on much longer, she breaks the kiss, pulling back just a little, looking at him with something amazed in her blue eyes.

"Leonard..." she whispers.

But he's gone.

Vanished...in blue light.

Author's note: OK, so you can accept that as the end, albeit a slightly mysterious (and possibly sad) one.

Or, you can go on and read the epilogue, which I posted just a few minutes later. However, I'm warning you: The whole thing is another reference to one of my favorite TV shows from the '80s/'90s. I'll tell you what at the very end, if you don't get it, and you can comment or PM if you really want to scream at me.

You have been warned. ;)