I don't not mean this offensively at all but is blows my mind that you are a lawyer but also writing jjk fics bc I work at a law firm and cannot for the life of me imagine any of the lawyers that work there writing fanfiction LOL kudos to u seriously I know how busy schedues can get due to court dates haha

im working in like. big city criminal law stuff right now and have been told by people in my office that i come off as a very deadpan and straight-laced legal nerd so i don't think the people who know me from my attorney life are imagining me writing jjk fanfic in my free time either

August || Chapter One

Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid

Chapter Description: After a few days, you are back at the office whenever you have an emotional outburst over the JJ/Spencer situation. That leaves you to have a soul shattering boundary you need to put into place.

Content/Warnings: Drama in the workplace, mentions of questioning self worth, Penelope is the best friend ever (duh), horrible friends, Spencer is an ass (again, sorry lmao)

WC: 2K

Navigation || August Masterlist || Main Masterlist || Request

🏷️ @sadroses98 @mega-kittyglitter-1 @cultish-corner @s0urmarvel @measure-in-pain @yourfavoritefangirl @imjustheretoreads-blog @bookworm003 @finnysmusic @itsbritney123 @hizzielover @tlou-reid @babyspiderling @sunsebaessie @lilrios-world @reidsdaisies @heleaflm @emotionalecho @witchcraftandwit @azxulaa @small-and-violent @corpsebridenightamare

“I don’t think I can come in today. I’m sick." You spoke to Emily over the phone, even feigning a cough, as you were just hoping she’d fall for it. It was only a few days after the wedding, the whole water in the face incident creeping up to embarrass you. 

“You can’t avoid them forever, you know. Now come to the office. All you need to do is work and then go home. No need to talk to JJ or Spencer.” The unit chief spoke over the phone, her tone making you just feel the disapproving look on her face. 

“Fine..” You huffed a bit while pushing yourself up from your couch, already dressed for the day, anyway. “I’ll be there soon.” With a defeated sigh, you were hanging up the phone and pocketing the device. It would be a good day, right? All you had to do was get through it.

The drive to the office was horrible, feeling nauseous with each mile you drove. Most people would assume that after your small outburst at the wedding, you’d feel better. That was far from the case. The action just made you feel worse, knowing that Spencer nor JJ attempted to follow you out, to explain themselves. There was radio silence from both of them.

You probably should’ve expected that. 

As you arrived at the dreaded building and parked in the parking garage, it wasn’t long until you were on the elevator and on your way up to the floor you needed to get to. The more you stood there, the sicker you felt. Facing two people who you are forced to work with is going to do nothing but hurt you even further. You could quit, although then you’d be homeless. Putting in a transfer was a good option, even if you’d miss your other teammates. 

The sound of the elevator’s ding was tearing you from your thoughts, your steps deliberately smaller and slower just to take the last few seconds to prepare yourself. The minute your hand was on the glass doors of the bullpen, you knew there was no more hiding. 

Much to your surprise, the team was too busy at their desks to even look up. Thank god. You quietly approached your desk, your purse being placed underneath, as you took your seat. That got everyone’s attention.

“Hey.” Luke spoke first, a smile on his face. “You’re later than you usually are, was worried we’d have to come get you.” He joked, causing Tara to laugh softly from her desk.

“We would’ve been there too. It isn’t a good workday when you’re not here.”

At least you knew the rest of the team considered you as a friend. No way they’d ever do the things JJ and Spencer did to you. Just thinking of them had a frown on your face, your eyes on a file that you’d opened previously. 

“Well, I couldn’t leave my favorite people hanging, could I?” You finally broke the silence while offering a forced smile. The idea of a transfer just made you feel horrible now. You were stuck here, no escape in sight.

While you were working on a case file you’d neglected, it wasn’t long before the door was opening again. This time, there was laughter and lighthearted discussion from two very distinct voices that you recognized. God damn it.

It was best to keep your eyes down, even though you could feel every person’s eyes burning into your skin, just waiting for a reaction. You felt like a circus act, expected to perform based on one interaction you had a few days ago.

The three of you didn’t even have to look each other in the eyes in order to make the whole room thick with tension that the strongest knife couldn’t even cut. “Can we be adults? I really don’t wanna discuss what happened.” JJ spoke up, knowing the attention was on all three of you. 

The audacity of her wanting to move on was what made you finally turn around, your ears heating from the anger that was still deep inside you. “Are you kidding me? You wanna be an adult and not get questions?” You asked, unable to help the laugh that fell from your lips. “Here’s a question that I know you want to be asked; How’s Will doing? Judging by how you wasted his time for.. Eleven years? Better yet, how are Michael and Henry? I think that someone needs to look out for them.” Venom seeped deep into every syllable.

She had a family. A husband who loved her, children who adored her and needed her. Yet here she was, with a man who she hadn’t even shown any interest in. The whole situation made you sick to even think about.

“That’s not fair.” The blonde spoke up, visibly hurt by the topic being brought up. The absolute fucking nerve. 

“You’re right. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to Will and the boys at all. I guess you didn’t stop to think about them, did you?”

“Enough!” Emily snapped from the doorway of her office, arms crossed over her chest. “This is ridiculous. The last thing any of us need is you two bickering all the time. I suggest you solve this and let it go. I will not deal with the bullshit. I’m sorry.” 

The frustration of your unit chief made you take a breath, putting your hands up. “I can’t pretend like this is right and I will not endorse this fraud of a relationship. If you choose to fire me, that’s fine.” Your built up anger and hurt made you push in your chair, your purse on your arm as you were storming out of the bullpen.

Penelope was the one that caught you in the hallway as you were making your escape. “Wait!” She screamed, quickly following behind you and grabbing your arm before you could make it to the elevator. “Come hang out with me for a little bit. Don’t make any rash decisions.” 

You didn’t answer, instead just letting the tech analyst pull you behind her into the safety of the batcave. As soon as that heavy door was closed and you realized you were with one of your best friends, it was like the dam holding in all your tears had been burst open as a hot stream of tears was running down your cheeks.

“Oh, honey..” Penelope frowned softly as she was letting her arms wrap around your body, giving you a tight squeeze as she was rubbing your back. “It’s okay, you can sit in here as long as you want. We will just tell Emily that you need some Garcia time.” Everyone could benefit from such time. 

You were forced into one of the chairs while the bubbly blonde grabbed one of her many phones to inform Emily on what was going on. “Just so you know, I don’t think you’re wrong for feeling the way you do. I would be just as upset.” She assured, the woman now sitting down beside you while gently holding your hand. “I just think that you should maybe calm down a bit. We don’t need any physical fights.” 

“I can’t help it, Pen. Why? Why would JJ encourage me to tell Spencer how I feel about him and then jump on him at the next opportunity. She has a family.” You knew that she wouldn’t have a concrete answer for you but you had to admit, it was nice just ranting to her about it. “It also hurts knowing that Spencer just.. Stopped talking to me. It made me feel like I was a placeholder for her. Like he was just entertaining himself until what he truly wanted came around..” 

There was a soft silence between you both, though it was soon being broken whenever there was a knock on the door. “Come in!” Penelope called to the mystery guest, although the both of you were in a stunned silence whenever Spencer Reid was poking his head through the door. 

“I come in peace, just let me talk.” 

“Too little, too late. I don’t wanna hear it.” You spoke, standing your ground.

Instead of taking the hint, the man just entered the room before closing the door behind him. “I understand that you’re mad at me, pissed at me even. I can handle it. That being said, I don’t want trouble. I came to personally apologize. I was a shitty friend to you these past few days with not reaching out.” 

“You are a shitty friend, Spencer. You know, I thought you were supposed to be by my side. I don’t expect you to be madly in love with me but what kind of friend ignores someone for days? What kind of friend makes their friend feel unimportant and makes them question their self worth?” You asked, keeping your composure as you were going to put everything on the table.

“I think you’re a horrible friend. Not just to me but to Will. I think you’re a horrible person who broke up a family. JJ may have left Will but you didn’t even stop and try to make her consider her husband. You were selfish.”

It seemed like a sobering realization, judging by the way Spencer’s eyes widened and his body went stiff. He needed to hear that, even if he wasn’t planning on changing things. “I- Wow. I don’t know what to say,” He let out an awkward chuckle as his hand rubbed the back of his neck. 

“I’m sure you don’t. Doesn’t sound like a good situation whenever someone says it out loud, does it?” You asked, voice cracking toward the end of the sentence as you were clearing your throat. “I just want you to know that I have no interest in talking to you outside of work. I think it’s best for you just to stay away.” A necessary boundary that killed you inside, however it needed to be put into place. 

“You don’t mean that. I don’t wanna lose you permanently like that. Please, just take some time to consider.”

“You lost me the moment that you chose to devote every ounce of your time to someone who didn’t ever say that she wanted to be with you until the night you were in a hostage situation together.” 

“We weren’t even dating, listen to yourself. We had sex, what, a few times? I hardly find that as something serious, especially whenever you never even seemed like you objected to the thought of something casual.” 

“Spencer Reid!” Penelope’s horrified voice was what solidified that you weren’t crazy, that he was in the wrong just as much as you could be.

You wanted to scream, punch him, cry, and just lose it. This wasn’t the place for such outbursts but you knew that the minute you got out of everyone’s line of sight, you were going to shatter. 

Your nights spent with Spencer were something you cherished. The way he’d touch you, the way he’d hold you.. It just felt like there was something real there, the potential for a love story that you could read about in novels, see in movies, even hear in songs. Instead, you were casted off as a casual plaything. There was no care behind the long nights spent tangled in one another’s embrace. 

“You know,” There was a laugh erupting, your arms over your chest. “JJ is gonna get bored of you. If she can leave her husband, she will leave you too. I think the day she does that is the day that you will feel the same way that I do. And you know what? I hope it fucking hurts. I hope she keeps you up at night wondering why you weren’t good enough.” 

With that, you were done. Emily would most definitely be calling you in her office for a meeting in the morning, so you just grabbed your bag and walked to the elevator.

You said what you needed to say and you thought it would make you feel relieved, instead, there was more hurt than you could’ve possibly fathomed. 

How stupid you were to think that he actually saw something in you.

recruitment drive. 5.3k. (or, the haunted house designers au.)

Suzanne sends the pre-meeting email just one and a half hours before the onboarding call is scheduled to begin. Beatrice knows this because her watch buzzes just as she emerges from the bathroom, wringing her hair dry after her post-run shower.

It’s still the middle of the night back in America. Beatrice thinks Suzanne just doesn’t sleep. 

She makes herself a pot of tea and carefully sets her mug down onto its cork coaster at the dining table. Her phone, face-down on the table, vibrates thrice as she boots up the laptop.

She flips it over: three texts from Lilith. That’s two too many. 

A curious sense of anticipation, and perhaps the shallowest hints of doubt, settles over the skin of her neck as she loads up her unread mail. It’s uncharacteristic of Suzanne to forward basic administrative material at such late notice. Especially since it concerns mere formalities like the Zoom link for later, and the confirmation of the meeting participants – an email that should take less than two minutes to formulate. After all, everyone already knows the team heading the expansion project.

Beatrice had mentioned this to Camila once, recently, during their weekly lunch call. Week six or six thousand into their strictly enforced remote work sojourn (the only way, Suzanne said, she could ensure that no Extra Responsibilities would be surreptitiously taken on) and she was already pacing the room from boredom and overthinking.

Camila had reminded her that, in her defense, Suzanne had just been out on that scouting trip in Peru without reliable internet. Whatever spare bandwidth she did have was probably best served hurdling over the mountains of administrative obstacles these new pop-up Houses inevitably would create. Not fretting over Zoom links.

Camila, as always, is sensible; probably the most sensible of them all. So Beatrice very seriously, and very conscientiously, takes a deep breath and runs through that one breathing exercise she’d found very helpful from her therapist.

Suzanne is a stickler. She holds her cards carefully close to her chest, arranged back and forth in some pattern nobody but she can see, and Beatrice trusts her fully. And that’s all that should matter – as Suzanne had made glaringly clear, even before she’d sat the three of them down one by one in her office, and then emailed them the remuneration clauses – that she’d wanted Beatrice for the job, had worked to convince her for it.

For an industry chest-deep in the currency of terror, Beatrice had – has never been lured by the screams. 

It is tradition for a House’s creative team to prowl the exit on opening night.  Maybe grab a drink and share a toast to the accompaniment of desperate footsteps sprinting out, or breathless, choked sobs at the gates. 

Beatrice doesn’t like that. Ever since she got personally banned by Mary from coldly going through the whole maze (yet again) with a clipboard on Night One while bona fide, ticket-purchasing customers were busy hollering their heads off, she’s preferred to go home right after the ceremony to a mug of hot chamomile and a dogeared autobiography. 

She plans to keep it that way, too. There is nothing more distasteful than cheap gore, or cultish fantasy, or whichever half-baked nightmare slough some over-excited writer could dredge up from the hallucinatory afterburn of a weekend bender.

She carefully takes a sip of her tea, gazing out into brightening but still charred-gray skies. She’d had an interview in Tales of Terror last year, and hadn’t known whether to be flattered or dismayed at the opening paragraph. 

‘You wouldn’t guess this is the home of the woman responsible for some of the most blood-curdling, spine-chilling effects, traps and rooms of the last half-decade. Nothing in her fourth-floor unit screams Creative Psycho. Every pale beige curtain in her flat is drawn wide, light flooding in. There are no letterboxd-worthy poster displays from the indie foreign films she watches religiously for research – only a framed print collection of early twentieth century European urban landscape paintings. There are no carpets, it’s almost unsettlingly clean, and there’s not a single ounce of bedragglement. Beatrice tells us, mild mannered and polite almost to a fault, that this is how she likes it.’

(Are you sure you want me?)

“Precisely,” Suzanne had said, careful and stern, “we need precisely that.” She’d been rolling a brass knuckle tightly over the surface of her desk as she spoke. Beatrice thought it produced a gorgeous, rich sound. 

“We need reinvention. Reinterpretation. Things should not be left to stagnate, for their own sake,” she’d stared at Beatrice meaningfully. “This applies to people too.” 

Beatrice had simply stared back, uncertain.

“Besides,” Suzanne turned away, the edge of her mouth twisting up like she knew something Beatrice didn’t, “As I’m sure you know by now, the workload will be shared.”

It made sense then that Suzanne had last year taken them aside to allocate them as leads to three of the flagship site’s Houses that season. Upon their successes she had allocated them, despite protests, those purely consultancy and remote assistance roles for this year’s season. 

Two years ago Beatrice and Lilith were section heads in their respective maze portions. Camila, then freshly poached by the firm, was primary set designer of the same House. That year they huddled together night after night and sixteen-hour days to cobble together something out of the most dysfunctional House of that year’s stable of nine.

The lead for said House was a man called Vincent. He was woefully incompetent to the point of unintentional sabotage. He had, of course, slunk away quietly upon the season’s conclusion, but until then the three of them had had to spend wee hours crawling up and clawing at walls and reinforcements and contractors that had been given contradictory instructions.

They built an easy partnership, eventually – disciplined and stone-smooth efficient to the extent that Beatrice reluctantly allowed herself to catch a few agonizing hours of unguilty sleep each night.

And through necessity she had come to know them as well, as only a truly nightmarish haunted house build will have you know a person.

After that wretched time they had been wrenched apart. The OCS had multiple Houses to churn out at full steam and speed every season, and a brutal reputation to maintain. The cruel prize of a job well done involved getting split up, even if for bigger, better things.

But the point is, they’re tried and tested. Beatrice likes that. She isn’t sure she would have agreed to taking on this challenge otherwise, and she knows Suzanne knows that, too. 

It is a weight on her shoulders, irregular and uncomfortably shifting across her shoulder blades; a worry that any success she has in executing such an endeavor would be largely circumstantial.

Last summer, long before everything had been set in stone, Shannon sent her a link to an Instagram post. It detailed some theories and speculations over an unnamed upcoming OCS expansion. A strategic leak, perhaps, although Beatrice worked far too distantly from the marketing team to be certain.

They were lying next to each other on the mud-streaked safety mats they put over the wooden boards beside the building site. Her building site. The one with the credits board, hooked up at the exit, that would bear her name first at the top. 

It had been the muggiest, most intolerable time of the day when Shannon, overseeing production on this half of the Houses, had come round, somehow hoisting a bulky IKEA carrier over her neck and under her left arm. She pulled out a variety of chips and buns that she’d gone down to the shops to buy, and handed them out far too cheerfully for someone who must have already half-melted in the heat. When Beatrice raised her eyebrows, glancing over behind the barriers where Mary’s motorcycle very conspicuously was parked, Shannon merely winked – poorly – and pretended to be very innocent. 

She stayed to help, afterwards, peering over the storyboards pinned up on the board like it wasn’t the thousandth time she’d gone over them. That year she’d also had her own House to take care of, in addition to the small matter of co-running the entire season’s program. So Beatrice tried to weakly bat her away, but she pulled out a banana from some back pocket, peeled it, took a large bite with a moan so obnoxiously loud Beatrice turned red, and shushed her.    

At this point construction was going ahead in full force, and Beatrice would frequently navigate every step of the maze and inspect every bolt and hidden door with a pocket-sized Moleskine in her hand and three gel pens in her pocket. Yasmine, her head writer, preferred to make notes directly onto her phone, stopwatch dangling from her wrist and an earbud in her ear as she ran over the preliminary audio cues for each section. Ambling behind them, Shannon found a nail and tried to spin it as long as she could on her fingertip. When the nail rolled off into a groove, irretrievable, she dusted off her hands very innocently on her cargo pants and off the back of her greasy tank top. Then she folded her hands behind her back and looked up very seriously to examine overhead mechanisms that Beatrice ‘might be too short to see clearly’. 

With the work lights strung up, the innards of the House did not look particularly scary. 

To Beatrice it was a purely cerebral challenge, despite the very physical layer of sweat, powder, and grime that pressed itself under one’s skin. A puzzle to fit and form and reverse-engineer under cool light; door mechanisms and false ceilings and spring-loaded foam sprays, optimized and timed within fractions of a second. Clean, clockwork.

And as if to prevent her from getting hauled fully into the vortex of her mind, Shannon accompanied the little pilgrimage around the set, pressing a water bottle firmly into Beatrice’s hands every half-hour. It made Beatrice feel like a moody little child, but she accepted it grudgingly every time. 

At the end of the day Beatrice sent everyone home twenty minutes early, and ordered dinner for her and Shannon to eat out on the boards. Fast food, Shannon insisted, and she would be paying for it, because “do you know what day it is tomorrow?”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“It’s better than your birthday.”

And to Beatrice, that was true, so she kept quiet.

After that, they lay down for a while, two cans of soda cracked open and resting on the square of wood beside them that hadn’t been covered by the mats. Shannon sent her the post, then, and when Beatrice complained limply that she couldn’t read the comments because she didn’t have an account, Shannon rolled her eyes and handed over her own phone. 

She made a peculiar dialect of eye contact with Beatrice as she did so; weighty, certainly, and telling. 

The post itself featured garish word art splattered over a mangled, heavily-filtered edited image of one of the previous seasons’ Houses – a fan favorite, actually, from the year Beatrice had first joined. Back then she was still working shifts on the engineering team, not even yet being assigned a maze section to look after its technical execution. 

There was a rumor, the post said, that the OCS was considering broadening its operations to seasonal pop-ups in different cities. All-new sets, all-new storylines, all-new takes on the haunted house experience. What do you think? The caption asked, Do you want more of the OCS brand of sleek, seriously messed-up and sickeningly chilling?

Below that a disclaimer: Not appropriate for young children! Please remember that this is not your typical carnival house of mirrors.

A staggering amount of likes and comments. Beatrice clicked to expand the latter, saw the word ‘legacy’ in the topmost one, and then quickly swiped to close the app entirely. 

Mary and Shannon grinned up at her from the home screen, half-buried in sand somewhere on their Greek island-hopping honeymoon. 

Shannon raised her eyebrows as she received her phone back, and Beatrice suddenly understood the meaningful look she’d been given. Are you ready? 

She reached out blindly for her soda can and finished the rest of the drink in one long, shuddering gulp.

At lunch the next day, Beatrice’s fifth year OCS anniversary was celebrated with some fanfare in the makeup and fittings trailer, where Beatrice had spent the whole morning hunched over fabric textures she could barely distinguish from each other.

Everyone came down from their sets, even Mary and Shannon. Beatrice thought they must have been exhausted; they had stayed late the previous night, after Beatrice had left, to thread their way softly through the OCS’ gaping campus of half-built sets. Simply looking over their modest kingdom. It had a certain wistful luster; in this summer twilight it was a garden of greenhouses, transparent and skeletal. A complex slowly unfurled over the years. Ghostly-quiet, too, in a way it could never be in the throes of peak season. 

Mary waited for Shannon at the gates of the House, silhouette sharp against the work lights, as Beatrice had gotten up to pack for the night. Up by the lockers she glanced over, but looked away when their hands fell gently together. They walked slowly away, murmuring things she couldn’t hear. 

When Beatrice bolted the gate to leave, it clacked too loudly, and they’d called over to say goodbye, dark intertwined shadows stretched grotesquely and longingly over sawdust towards her.

Nevertheless they had made it to the celebration the following day, Mary holding aloft a large creamy cake. Unlike the customary employee milestone cakes, dark and billowing and elaborately stylized with elements of houses previously worked on, Beatrice’s was plain white, with light blue frosting.

The celebration moved outside to the large, white refreshments tent, industrial fans blowing hot, coarse air. Beatrice marveled at how everyone seemed to be able to fit under its canvas. The team working on her House had all come, of course, pooling money for a hamper, and so did a surprising number of others across the other sets.

Lilith and Camila arrived together, squeezing through the throngs to the unsteady plastic table at the center. “We were not bringing your gift into this slaughterhouse,” Lilith huffed, “you’ll have to go back to the office to get it.”

“What is it?”

Lilith scoffed. “Why would we ruin the surprise?”

Camila put her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. “What we’re really here to say is that we’re proud we’ve been able to work with you during these five years, and we hope we’ll get a chance to do it again.” Beatrice looked at Lilith, who shrugged, stabbing her paper plate.

Mary, still slicing up the cake and handing them out, stopped to meet Beatrice’s eyes. She grinned.

It was many months later, deep into November, that Suzanne had made the formal pitch in her office. By then social media was awash with rumors of possible locations where the OCS could plant their pop-ups. Names, too – there were spreadsheets and Clue-esque checklists on Reddit lining up members of every significant OCS creative team in its past iterations in vertical rows. There even were columns of ‘evidence’ For and Against each individual’s involvement in the as-good-as-guaranteed pop-ups project.

Beatrice couldn’t tear her eyes away as the online crowd reached a consensus, drawing red circles in damning permanent marker ink again and again and again around the names that everything pointed towards. She closed the browser before getting to the point where the discussions dissolved and devolved into bitter catfights over creators’ artistic styles, as they always did.

Suzanne’s office, for as long as Beatrice had worked at OCS, felt like something out of a natural history museum. It was all burnished wood, walls fully doused in dark, rich green, and glass display cases of her collection of Southern European invertebrate fossils. Symmetrical tiles underfoot and over them, a thick carpet that swallowed the clap of footsteps. In Beatrice’s early days here it had been a terrifying place; severe and gloomy even when the heavy curtains were fully peeled open to let light in. The exacting botanical sketches on the walls, too, did not help in the least. Even now she thought it would make for a wonderful basis for a section in a House – a museum, of course, or perhaps a town hall.

Some might think her an unlikely horror creator – easily spooked by many things and a fervent hater of surprises, but Beatrice thought it was a good thing, for a designer, to be able to find something genuinely terrifying in everything.

She took a seat gingerly at Suzanne’s beautiful oak desk, angled so as to always make her seem taller and larger. So that the light would fall in a certain slanted way across her face, carving a cavern of contrasts down the thin scar through her eye.

“Suzanne.”

“Beatrice.” Suzanne inclined her head, expressionless. From a drawer she took out a stapled set of papers, and flicked through the corners thoughtfully. Her leather chair let out a sigh as she leaned back and appraised Beatrice silently for a minute.

“It’s time” she said, “for a new challenge.” She placed the papers down in front and to the left of Beatrice, next to the handmade tin man figurine gifted from her son. 

For Beatrice it had never really been about the horror; the thrill of smelling blood in the water, and Suzanne knew that.

“Some details have not been hammered out yet, but you have a role here should you accept it,” she said, at the end, sliding the papers into a manila folder. “You all are ready for it.”

Beatrice bit her lip. It was hard to argue otherwise, if not for her, then for the others, at least.

Camila, who she traveled with halfway across the world on a budget airplane that rattled and croaked just to take hundreds of terrible reference pictures in poor lighting with their bad phone cameras. 

One evening, Beatrice had eaten something foul, and she’d found herself slung across Camila’s lap, cringing in the back seat of an overpriced taxi without a working AC. Groaning with each bump of the road and helplessly dipping her head further into the crook of Camila’s arm. Throughout the ride she had gently brushed her fingers through Beatrice’s damp, clumped hair, whispering things Beatrice could no longer remember, and dabbing her clammy, chattering cheeks dry every two minutes with her own sleep shirt. 

Beatrice insisted she get back to the hostel to get some rest while she was kept overnight for monitoring and IV rehydration. It had been a rocky trip, and a break would do them some good. Instead Camila had spent the next one and a half days finishing up three days worth of location scouting, and then had it all packaged into a neatly organized folder by the time Beatrice was ready to go again. 

There was nothing imaginable, Beatrice thought, that could truly faze her.

And Lilith. The most capable person Beatrice knew to spearhead the overall production and creative direction of something like this. 

Not just because Beatrice knew she would genuinely do a marvelous job masterminding and knitting together a house of horrors. Beatrice also considered it important that, if she were to join the team, a satellite unit stationed thousands of miles away from the safety of the Cat’s Cradle headquarters, the team would be led by people she trusted.

Or the equivalent of ‘trusted’. Whatever you call the thing between two people who fly desperately over to each other’s homes with some regularity to scream and claw at particularly unyielding scenes and transitions and then fall exhausted into sleep in each others’ beds.

“Take some time to think about it,” Suzanne had said, afternoon light shining harshly so that the whole room was a prism of contrast. “Let me know what you think.”

So here they are.

“Subj: OCS Halloween Pop-ups - Onboarding”. Beatrice puts down her mug, takes a deep breath, and clicks the email from Suzanne. 

Her phone rings.

“What is it?” Beatrice copies the zoom link at the top of the message and pastes it into the top of a new tab. With her other hand she holds her phone to the shell of her ear. 

“Have you seen the email?” Lilith is terse and tight, even through the phone. Her voice is faraway; Lilith has her phone on Speaker and on a table or drawer somewhere while she looks at something else. Unusual. Her calls are usually curt, succinct, and fully focused. It makes Beatrice’s ears go hot and buzz with static.

“I’m reading it now,” she says, scrolling and scanning the words. 

It’s a short email, in Suzanne’s usual clipped style. No attachments if she can help it. Below the zoom link there is a brief four-point meeting agenda, a reminder to be punctual, and finally a brisk thank you.

In-between these lines Suzanne has appointed lead and three accompanying names of the members of the steering team of the OCS’ first expansion project. 

Lilith’s name is listed second. She's not the Creative Director.

Silence.

“You’ve read it.” The statement is biting; almost a sneer. Beatrice smells the bitterness licking under the corners of its thin, cool veneer. Sticky.

Beatrice rereads the four lines. She rereads it again. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

Ava Silva.

“Who is she?” she exhales, finally. Weakly.

There is a scoff on the end of the line. Echoes of slippers marching down parquet, a door slamming, and then, quietly, an uncontrolled squeak of leather. A furious stream of mechanical clicks, as Lilith’s hands race over the keys of her expensive desktop setup. Beatrice can picture her in her room as if mirrored before her: Lilith still in her terribly fancy robe, sprawled ungainly before the expanse of her monitors in her glassy, austere, home office.

Her voice is suddenly much closer over the call, and Beatrice pictures the phone wedged to her ear by her shoulder.

“Ava Silva,” Lilith spits, in a dry, desiccated whisper.  “Is a Disney rat.”

Beatrice raises her eyebrows, pulling up the matching LinkedIn profile. The most recent post was uploaded a week ago – it seems to be an incredibly effusive Farewell-slash-Thank You post for, indeed, the Disneyland Anaheim Imagineering team and the Creative Development department. She scans the prose: candid and emoji-laden, bordering on unprofessional. 

Beatrice counts seven Disney Princess puns, and one awful Star Wars quote to cap it off. There are eight – yes, eight – images attached to the post, all full-sized so that the page runs on like a travelog blog post. 

The last image appears to be a mountain of goodbye swag. These include, Beatrice notes: a Moana beach ball, a matching Buzz Lightyear set of wheelchair spoke guards and cane covers, and a Sven the Reindeer onesie. The rest of them are all pictures of the woman who must be Ava, with her now ex-coworkers. All adorned with Mickey ears and pin-studded lanyards, in front of various rides and experiences she probably had a hand in creating. 

No, Beatrice scrolls back up to information messily hidden in the overlong farewell paragraph: Specifically, two of these are rides for which she’s been part of the main creative team. Three more that she’s played some role in creating, whether at the design phase or in later consultancy during implementation. 

One picture is a solo snapshot of Ava in a bright yellow baseball cap and remarkably tiny denim shorts, in front of a Disneyland hotdog stand. She’s holding an extra large hotdog, absolutely drenched in ketchup and mustard, high over her head like a trophy. Her smile, Beatrice thinks, is dazzling. 

She swipes down on her trackpad too quickly.

The last picture is of Ava and two others standing on a boulder in front of a massive Zootopia indoor roller coaster, while crowds in the background swarm the attraction in a snaking queue. ‘My pride and joy / baby / first full lead’, Ava has captioned it, ‘aka Great Zootopian Escape 🫡 . Just opened !!! I will be back 2 visit :’)) ’

Beatrice sighs. 

“What the hell is Suzanne thinking,” Lilith mutters, teeth gritted; tone cold. She’s shaken, and Beatrice knows it.

She herself can barely stop herself from scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. That’s enough, she snaps at herself, and her hand leaves the touchpad with a short jerk. There’s no point. 

//

“Good morning,” Suzanne says flatly, the moment the call holds five participants. “Thank you all for joining the call punctually.” Her face is crisp and too-sharp against the blurred-black virtual background.

Like they wouldn’t have come anyway, even if thoroughly rocked. Three stern, stiff and silent faces look straight ahead. Suzanne probably prefers them this way. 

Beatrice looks quickly through the five rectangles on the screen and finds the label that she seeks. 

🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿.

“I would like to welcome a new member to the OCS.” Suzanne begins. She nods: “Ava Silva.”

There is a light smattering of the hand wave emoji reaction floating up from the toolbar from 🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿. The device itself seems to be held up very close to her face so that all Beatrice can see is patchy pixelated bits of nose and cheek, shaking about as Ava presumably works to send the emojis.

Beatrice clenches a stress ball in her fist. It had been gifted to her for April Fools’ Day by Mary and Shannon. Something about clenching and unclenching, although Shannon had been laughing too hard to deliver the line in full.

“Ava has been a Creative Development Director at Disneyland and worked on numerous attractions both there and at Universal.” Suzanne pauses. “So, to put it crudely, this is something of a coup. We are very happy to have her with us to lead this creative expansion of the OCS brand.”

Beatrice’s phone, which has been relentlessly buzzing, skates across the table. She turns it over, a stormy headache already gathering steam: dozens of unread messages from Camila and Lilith, and more still on their way. Sighing, she shoots off a quick ‘Later, please.’ and then puts it on a tea towel on the kitchen island, out of reach.

“As you may imagine, it was not easy. She was… highly sought after by various studios and companies. Miss Silva,” Suzanne deadpans, “you are a difficult woman to track down and convince.”

The image of Ava’s face, very close to the camera already, wobbles further. It jostles like she’s jabbing at her screen fiercely. A good while later, after Suzanne had moved on entirely, her delayed message would finally deliver through the Zoom chat: 

🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿: thats only bc i don’t read my emails lol! Glad 2 be here too 🥰

“You will all be working very closely together. In case anyone has forgotten…” Suzanne begins summarizing the contents of that fateful paper packet that she’d handed over in her office last November. The words, the clauses, are identical, but Beatrice can’t help but see it all in a different light. It sinks in more completely. 

Close collaboration to envision and map out the overall direction and themes for the pop-ups. Planning and writing for each house. Liaising with and consulting Admin back at the Cradle, yes, but otherwise almost entirely shouldering production independently. All of that now with Ava Silva thrown into the works.

For Ava’s sake, Suzanne briefly recaps the typical in-house workflow of the production of a Haunted House. Steering team meetings to establish expectations and aims; brainstorming and ideation and finalization of directions; traditionally an in-person bootcamp-esque intensive where the engine of development truly shifts into gear; followed by an ever-accelerating process of recruitment, research, sourcing, production, and testing. A process that should be second nature suddenly feels daunting.

“Now, this meeting is taking place so late because we have only just secured the venue permits for the pop-ups. I have briefed Ava already, and she will be able to explain this separately.”

Beatrice doesn’t have to turn around to hear her phone begin to rattle furiously behind her again.

“Finally, Ava,” Suzanne says, “let me introduce the rest of the team.”

First there is Camila, who Suzanne praises modestly for her extensive set design and art experience. Beatrice knows she’s always had a soft spot for her – resilient and optimistic and ready to put her teeth into anything. 

But in sharp contrast Camila’s face now is neutral and unreadable. The usually bright, tasteful splashes of color in her room are muted against the only two lamps she’s chosen to keep on, shades down and twisted away so her face sits in half-shadow. 

Lilith, then, in her icy postmodern tech den. Her arms are folded and her eyes are cast somewhere. Distant and acidic. 

Beatrice snaps back to attention when Suzanne mentions her name. She keeps it short and sweet: Beatrice’s original training was in engineering, and so, beyond her job scope, she’s best equipped to provide the team with technical and mechanical expertise. 

Ava nods. From what Beatrice can surmise from her patchy rectangle, she is not in a room at all.

No. She is, it seems, on some kind of wicker chair on a sun-dappled porch or veranda, lined by orange and beige walls and pillars veined with vines and hanging pots. A pair of sunglasses, perched on the crown of her head, keeps slipping down, and every few minutes Beatrice sees her lift a finger to nudge it back into place.

Her iPad seems to be on her lap, because it’s shuffling precariously at a strange angle focused on Ava’s chin as she flits about, constantly in blurry motion. 

When Ava holds up the iPad, there seems to be an inscrutable wall of something behind her, simultaneously metallic yet moving in dashes of color. For a moment, her video lags and freezes, and Beatrice gets a better look.

They’re birds. Dramatic plumages and muted tones of all kinds of domestic birds. In cages of every shape and size and color, decked from floor to awning, hanging off bars and resting on customized stands. The whole place is full of them. The iPad tilts as Ava adjusts herself and Beatrice finds that there’s more to the side, off-camera, too. 

Suzanne does not comment on it. “Ava, any thoughts?” 

Ava unmutes herself, grinning.

Beatrice’s earbuds erupt in utter, screaming, avian cacophony, and everybody winces at the exact same time.

Ava – muffled by bird screeching – yelps, mutes herself, and switches off her video.

The call melts into thirty seconds of stunned silence. 

“Oops sorry”,  types 🗿Ava Silva’s iPad 🗿 in the chat.

Beatrice can see Lilith physically take a deep breath and count one to fifteen out loud. Camila is in disbelief; shocked and a little delighted. Beatrice reflects on the strange, confusing mess of large feelings, and decides that she possibly wants to throw up.

Suzanne bites a lip and frowns.

Deep breath, Beatrice reminds herself. Exhale. Inhale. 

Ava’s camera switches back on eventually, and this time, she has, in each ear, one bud of a pair of half-untangled earphones. The wires are frayed and taped over with red duct tape, and the sounds of the surrounding aviary are now blessedly punched out.

This time, too, her iPad appears to be propped up on something. The earphone cord stretches dangerously taut when Ava scrambles to sit back into her chair. 

“Sorry,” her voice careens back into the call. “I’m crashing at a friend’s home at the moment. It’s also kind of a bird shop.”

“Anyway,” she takes a deep breath, grinning, “I’m so happy to join the team. I love horror, and haunted houses, so much. And like, the OCS is– wow. It’s such a dream.” 

She lifts her arms to either side excitedly to gesticulate, and Beatrice watches Lilith balk at the unabashedly kitschy Universal Monsters tie dye oversized t-shirt. Ava leans in just enough that Beatrice can see the crudely cartoonish red-and-white design on her black flask, swirling about.

Bite me I’m scared scrawled over a crude cartoonish vampire.

“So,” Ava goes on excitedly, “I have a lot of ideas, and I can’t wait to get started.”

Little Witch | Chapter 3

A/N: A chill one. We dive into Spencer's friends and his relationship with reader getting closer. Matilda is being a mini Spencer! If you want to be added to some tag list or want to scream at my face, go ahead and tell! ILY

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female reader

Words: 3.5 k

Warning: read it here!

Taglist: @cultish-corner

⇜ ⇝

"I missed you both..."

Chapter 3

You didn't expect to visit the BAU again. It's not that you didn't want to, but it wasn't your place; everything was too neat and immaculate—neutral colors, nothing flashy or sentimental. That changed when Penelope offered to give you a tour of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. She had been persuasive with an invitation to "have a cup of tea" the night before. Unexpectedly, you found yourself having tea in the place where Spencer worked on a day when no one should be in the office.

"I feel sorry this isn't in a cafe. I would have loved to invite you to my favorite place, but I'm a bit tied up here now," Penelope apologized.

"Doesn't it scare you?" you asked as she guided you to the office where she was temporarily staying. Something about some very dangerous serial killlers (yes, more than one) wanting her dead .

"A little. I hate being in hiding, and I hate even more that someone out there wants to kill me," she responded, her face showing terror. "I miss Sergio, my cat, and my plants a lot"

You entered the office and realized that the BAU's aesthetics had gone out the window in Penelope's temporary dwelling. Flowers adorned every corner, cartoon figures and stuffed animals were everywhere, and there was even a small stove.

"You've certainly made the place cozy," you added with a reassuring smile, placing your hand on Matilda, who was peacefully sleeping in your arms. "Do you think I can leave her on your sofa?" you asked, and Penelope quickly made space for Matilda, who stretched a bit and settled on the sofa to continue sleeping.

Penelope watched her with amazement. "She's so cute. She has your mouth and Spencer's eyes, it's amazing"

You half-smiled at her comment, raising an eyebrow with curiosity.

"You know Matilda is Spencer and my twin's daughter , right?"

Penelope nodded slowly, approaching a small coffee maker and turning it on.

"I know. Spence told me, but if she's your twin, Matilda will resemble you, won't she?" She shrugged as if it were straightforward. "You're her mom, and that brings me to why I invited you here while Spencer is away and can't stop me from doing it" she added.

"I thought you just wanted to get to know me," you said.

Pen nodded. "I do, but I also want to make sure you—.... I need to make sure you know you can count on us. I need to know that you understand Spencer is possibly the best choice to be someone's dad, right?"

You blinked, terribly confused, and stopped her. "Why do you think I wouldn't understand that?" you furrowed your brow.

"It's just that... I know the job he has can be terrifying at times, and I know the hours he puts in aren't exactly office hours, but I know he'll do an excellent job," she paused again nervously. "I'm overstepping, aren't I? Did I overstep? I'm sorry; I just really want Matilda to always have Spencer by her side."

You observed her carefully, feeling somewhat disoriented. You were certain that this meeting with Penelope hadn't been orchestrated by Spencer. Her feelings seemed genuine and honest. You decided to be diplomatic until the ice broke and tension left the table.

"It's okay," you murmured in response, taking a deep breath before speaking again. "I understand what you mean, but you have to know this: whether Matilda always has her dad around will depend on Spencer. I will never interfere in the relationship she has with her dad," you asserted with determination. Penelope's eyes gleamed with joy, and your words seemed to have a soothing effect on her.

Suddenly, her whole body seemed relaxed, and she smiled from ear to ear. "Is it true?" she asked in a hushed voice.

You nodded, giving a half-smile. "It's true."

She reached for your hands, holding them firmly and letting out a joyful squeal.

"That's fantastic! You have no idea the relief I feel now. Because I've known Spencer since he was 23, and he's one of the most amazing people I know. He's been through so much, and you probably don't know, but I've never seen him smile like when he talks about Matilda," she seemed to defend her point again, but this time more calmly. She released your hands slowly when the coffee maker was already working and served both of you steaming cups of coffee adorned with small marshmallows.

They sat at the small table Penelope had there and continued the conversation, this time with a more relaxed and familiar tone.

"We didn't talk much, Mela and I, but we certainly saw each other more often than our parents visited her. She was... a bit lost, and I was just starting to work as a primary school teacher. It was hard, and with the time Matilda came into the picture; we were so excited," you admitted to Penelope's enthusiastic smile.

"Can I ask... did you know you would take care of her in case... you know?" she asked somewhat hesitantly.

"Yes," you nodded in response. "Mela had said it. Although I never wanted something like that to happen, the prospect of having a daughter was certainly not a problem. I've always wanted to be a mom," you admitted.

Penelope took one of her homemade cookies to her mouth and, after eating, jumped to the next question. "And what about you? Have you never thought about starting a family?"

"I have," you admitted honestly without thinking too much. They were already there talking, right? It's not like this was going to end soon, and Penelope had gained your trust very quickly. "I had a boyfriend for many years; I thought I would start a family with him, but we eventually broke up when Mela died."

"Meaning there's no guy in your life right now?" She smiled.

It wasn't easy, with a life like yours—not that other people's lives were less challenging, but dating someone right now wasn't a priority on your list.

"No. There isn't," you half-smiled.

"It means that when you're not working, you're with Matilda," Penelope reasoned, somewhat surprised. "When was the last time you went out with a friend for coffee?"

You leaned back in the chair and sighed resignedly.

"The truth is, I haven't done it in a year," you admitted, making her open her mouth in amazement.

"Oh, sweetheart. You need to be part of our girls' nights. That happens when there are no cases, so Spencer can be with Matilda, and you come with us. My tequila Margarita is legendary, do you like margaritas?"

"I love tequila margarita," you smiled excitedly as Penelope reached out and took your hand.

"It's a deal!" she declared. "I'll call you when we have a day, and you must come, okay?"

You nodded, and with her face adorned by a smile, she took your hand, gave it a gentle squeeze, and then let go.

"Do you think you can leave here soon?" you asked, changing the subject a bit.

"Well," Penelope lowered her eyes to her cup and then looked at you with a hint of concern in her eyes. "Now that Spencer's here, maybe we'll work much faster. We're getting close to solving everything," she added.

You leaned back in your chair and finished your coffee. "You'll make it, and you'll be back home with your cat very soon, I know. You guys are the best in your field, and that's saying a lot," you tried to encourage her.

"I know," she sighed, distressed. "And that's the only thing that helps me sleep at night."

"Just have a little patience; I know everything will be fine."

Penelope was fantastic, and you had to admit that the three hours spent talking and drinking coffee flew by like a kite. She was interesting and admirable, and although your tendency to solitude wanted to discourage you, you were curious to meet the rest of Spencer's colleagues. You were reassured because they were the kind of people you would want Matilda to be around and see as an example.

"Is Spencer coming back today?" Penelope asked as you stood up to put on your jacket and wake up Matilda from her long nap.

"Yes, I'll take her to his house today so they can spend the weekend together," you explained. "They haven't seen each other in many days, and this little girl already misses him a lot, right?" you asked Matilda, who was starting to get up from the sofa with rosy cheeks and a bit of hair stuck to her face due to sweat.

Matilda opened and closed her eyes slowly and then yawned, a clear sign for Penelope to approach her and take her in her arms.

"It's okay, little doll, you'll go home soon," she cradled her in her arms, and you saw Matilda rest her face on Penelope's neck, causing her face to contract in a gesture of tenderness. She looked at you through her glasses with concern. "Did you say you came by subway?"

"Yes; I have my car in maintenance, they'll deliver it to me tomorrow morning."

Penelope jumped a little when her phone vibrated strongly in the pocket of her jacket, and she unlocked it to read something on the screen.

"Oh, just in time!" she announced. "Hotchner came to drop off some groceries and said he would take you to Spencer's house."

You shook your head. "It's not necessary. Subway is super safe at this hour still."

"I work for the FBI, and that's a big lie, but you tried. Hotchner will come up with the groceries, and you can go with him."

And that was it. You couldn't refuse any longer because you knew that no argument would be valid, especially not for Hotchner, who adamantly refused to let you go alone. He had even installed his son's old car seat, so you couldn't continue refusing, especially when he had gone through so much trouble.

You had always thought Hotchner was too serious. In a way, every time you saw him, you felt like a girl who had gotten into trouble, and her parents were about to punish her. But the ride in his car to Spencer's house helped you realize that when he smiled and wasn't working, he was a completely different person. They talked about Penelope and raising children. Your admiration grew when you learned about the circumstances in which he was raising his son, doing it alone and carrying the pain of losing his wife.

"Wait," Hotchner stopped you when you took Matilda out of her seat and said to him. "I know you've heard it from all the team members, but I want you to know that you can always count on us, okay? You're family, and we take care of family."

That honesty sent waves of warmth through your body, deeply moving you. Finally, you nodded, stroking Matilda's neck.

"Thank you, Aaron. I know."

The man nodded solemnly at you and said goodbye to Matilda with a wave that the little girl returned. You watched him drive away, disappearing down the main street in silence. Then, you turned to Matilda, prompting her to look at you, and you smiled cheerfully.

"Ready to see Daddy, little bug?" you asked, and the girl nodded, much less drowsy than before as you started walking towards the building where Spencer lived.

As always, he didn't take long to open the door, and after a few seconds, Matilda was jumping from your arms to Spencer's, clinging tightly to her father's neck. Spencer returned the gesture, burying his nose in his daughter's neck and closing his eyes tightly, as if convincing himself that he wasn't delusional, and you were both right there on the doorstep of his home. You observed them with an involuntary smile, and suddenly, Spencer's eyes opened while still hugging Matilda, and he smiled at you with teary eyes.

"I missed you both," he murmured, stepping back a bit from Matilda to take a step towards you and unexpectedly embracing you. It wasn't just a courtesy hug; Spencer was beyond mere social politeness. His arms enveloped you, and you felt his hand caressing one of your shoulders, leaving you somewhat stunned in the hallway in front of his door.

He had to invite you in to snap you out of the tiny stupor his gesture had left you in.

Spencer hurried to serve ice cream for Matilda, who was waiting seated in her little chair, swinging her feet as she usually did.

"How was Diana?" you asked as you heard Spencer moving around in his kitchen, opening and closing drawers.

"The first day, she was usually disoriented, but as time passed, her memory improved. Anyway, that will happen often; the doctor changed her medication again," he replied, appearing in the dining area with a tray of three plates filled with ice cream. Of course, Matilda's was loaded with colorful sprinkles.

You thanked him for the ice cream and sat down next to Matilda to help her eat, but Spencer sat on her other side, begging to be the one to feed her. Of course, you didn't refuse. Instead, you managed to see the happiness that covered Spencer's face with each spoonful of ice cream he brought to Matilda's mouth. Spencer's apartment was somewhat gloomy, interesting but still taken out of a Tim Burton movie. Nevertheless, it suited him; such a house should belong to a kind of Sherlock, a lover of gothic literature, and a Halloween party animal/ donut enthusiast. There, in the midst of his home, which could only be perfectly described by someone like Edgar Allan Poe, Spencer and Matilda laughing and eating ice cream with sprinkles were the perfect colorful aesthetic fracture.

"It's good that you went to see her. Maybe next time you can bring Matilda," you suggested.

He looked at you and smiled, but didn't give a clear answer. You didn't want to press him, but you knew something was bothering him.

"And you? What have been doing?" he asked, a blatantly drastic change of subject.

You rested your chin on one of your palms and watched them with a smile.

"We've been fine. Matilda is practicing a lot for her ballet recital," you added. "This Wednesday, Spencer," you reminded him.

Lately, they had noticed that Matilda was too restless, or so said her daycare teacher, who couldn't keep up with the girl. She easily got distracted and didn't want to sing the alphabet or numbers songs. She hated coloring animal cartoons with all her might and even more the naptime. They had been recommended to have her engage in some sport or physical activity that would distract her, and J.J suggested enrolling her in ballet. It had been good; although neither you nor Spencer had seen such distracted behavior, at least Matilda had found a pastime she truly enjoyed.

"I talked to Hotch. Everything's set," he nodded. "Besides, my official work doesn't start until a week from now."

"You can work on freeing Penelope from the horrible nightmare she's been living these last few days in Quantico," was your distracted response.

You couldn't see the curious frown on Spencer's face because you were too focused on the ice cream melting on your plate.

"Wait, I didn't tell you anything about that," you lifted your gaze and smiled playfully.

"Oh. Guess who invited me for tea this afternoon?" you replied with humor, causing Spencer to roll his eyes and smile.

"You won't be able to escape from Pen. I warn you," he teased.

You leaned back in your chair and took another spoonful of ice cream delicately, then, after savoring it, responded, "I don't want to escape from her. I actually liked her a lot."

You saw Spencer make that grimace he always made when trying to hide an embarrassed smile.

"We're making it work, aren't we? Raising Matilda, I mean" he murmured softly.

You wouldn't admit it, but that one sentence almost disarmed you.

Since you spent together that Thanksgiving dinner in Wyoming, you and Spencer had become a united front. You couldn't say you were friends; there were too many secrets between you to declare that level of intimacy, but at least now, you knew about each other, talked, and faced problems together. That was a huge progress compared to the tension that existed between you when you didn't talk at all.

"We're doing well," you reluctantly admitted with a hint of shyness. "Hey, I know it's not strictly your days to take care of Matilda, but I was thinking, since you haven't seen her for quite a few days... Do you want to have her tonight?" you offered, almost with a bit of pain in your chest.

The truth was, you hated being away from Matilda, but that feeling only made you think about how Spencer felt not having her close when she was with you.His eyes stopped on yours with surprise, as if he was crafting some lie, and when he didn't find one, he smiled excitedly.

"And what about you? Won't you miss her?"

"Terribly, but it's only fair. You've been apart for too long, and she really wants you to read that Matilda book... again."

David Rossi, one of Spencer's colleagues, had given her Roald Dahl's book as a Christmas gift, and Matilda was so excited about it that she always made you read the book to her without getting tired. If you didn't, somehow, she managed to snuggle into a corner of her bed and slowly connect the letters to form a complete sentence. She still couldn't read continuously, so she quickly got tired and asked you to read her favorite story again and again.

Spencer gave you an incredulous look and looked at Matilda with a smile.

"Little witch. Maybe it's good to change the story a bit. How about 'The Little Prince'?"

Matilda made a disgusted face.

"No-oh, 'The Little Prince' is dumb."

Spencer looked at you in shock.

"I know the DNA test came back positive, but this can't be my daughter."

You let out a contained laugh and looked at Matilda, who continued with the furrowed brow that she had undoubtedly inherited from Spencer.

"Oh. Bug, I think you'll regret saying that someday."

"'The Little Prince' is dumb," she repeated almost belligerently.

"Okay, little witch, it's dumb... why?" Spencer observed her as Matilda stared at him as if another eye or a horn had suddenly grown on his forehead. She leaned towards him and spoke.

"A rose talks to him, Daddy." Spencer burst into contagious laughter that prompted your amused laughter. Matilda remained totally serious. "Roses don't talk."

You saw Spencer put his hands on his stomach and bend over in laughter, and you felt the sting of tears in your eyes.

"Why is a little girl manipulating things with her mind normal, sweetheart?" you tried to say as you wiped the tears from your eyes and tried to calm down.

Matilda looked at you and crossed her arms, somewhat upset. Spencer straightened up in his chair once he had calmed down and tried to reason with the little one.

"Little witch, your mom and I aren't making fun of you. You are just adorable. You're brilliant and know what you want," he explained, caressing her hair with a smile. "Let's read 'Matilda''. But you have to promise to give other stories a chance, okay? Do you promise?" he raised his eyebrows and slowly won her over again.

Matilda relaxed and nodded gently. "Promise," she agreed.

And there it was again: both had immersed themselves in that bubble they had created. You ignored whatever sent twinges to your stomach and picked up the dishes to wash them. They wouldn't miss you anyway. You took the opportunity to fold the clothes that Matilda kept at Spencer's house and left Schrödinger on her bed while you listened to Spencer read to Matilda. Later, when Spencer and Matilda took you home and made sure you entered your apartment safely, you faced the lonely prospect that awaited you this weekend.

You poured a glass of your favorite wine, drank it while watching an episode of Fleabag, then went to bed. Your eyes were heavy, and you could feel sleep beginning to creep inside you. That's when you remembered that you hadn't told Spencer that you had missed him too.

And you couldn't sleep for the rest of the night.

Mat Oxley is so right for this because I'm trying to imagine a world with these guys where their psychopathy was allowed to exist freely in the world.

Anyway, psychos out in real world headcanons:

1. Vale would be a politician. His ministerial portfolio would be something that always keeps him in the news, maybe commerce, or health, imo. Spokesman for his party. He's young and positioning himself well to gun for the big leagues (ahem head of state ahem). Of course his office is involved in a financial scam, of course his financial affairs come to light, of course he denies it and calls it a smear campaign, of course he comes up with a gimmick political road show type thingy to gain the trust of the people back, of course he succeeds and comes back stronger.

2. Marc would be a CEO. Either pharmaceuticals or one of those cultish SF tech companies. He would thrive in the environment. He would start out on the lower rungs and build himself up to be bigger while edging out any competition. His company would be indicted for financial irregularities. He would get away with it though. The money fraud bit was never the focus, they were just moving it around to get some technology approved that wasn't ready, and Marc was smart enough to hide it well.

3. Bezz would be tried for Arson. No loss of life tho only property damage. His mugshot would go viral mugshawty style and people would send him letters in prison. He would come out without having served full sentence because of model conduct.

4. Luca would be running those cybersecurity crypto ass scams. Lowkey, makes a bunch of money. Company is registered in Togo, he never gets caught. Puts all his money into a shell account in Isle of man. Gets a nice second home in South America.

5. Fabio Q would definitely be purchasing expiring patents and manipulating that to make boatloads of money. He will eventually be exposed and people would joke about his hair or clothes on twitter. Twitter would be kinda mad but not overly, they would think he's a hilarious dude with a fucked moral compass. He will go to prison for under a year and then come back and use his new found fame amongst extremely online people to become a very successful twitch streamer.

Feel free to add your own or send me a name lol

CORRIE OC MASTERLIST

Collection of my corrie OCs and art. Finally had the time to make a masterlist for them and decided to put all of them in one place ^^ If you have questions about my OCs, don't hesitate to ask!

I don't do rp on this blog, but if you interact with one of my characters with yours through askbox, I may respond with an art work!

ヽ(*・ω・)ﾉ

JULY 2023

「CMO Headshot」 [ART]

13/07/2023 |OC: Headshot, Commander Fox | Sketchbook| My first sketch about Headshot and his ridiculously stylish everything | Not to be confused with Deadshot! | 

AUGUST 2023

「Corries」 [ART]

30/08/2023 | OC: Vorn, OC: Blaze, OC: Bolt | Incorrect Quote | Sketchbook| Little lore about my corrie OCs |

SEPTEMBER 2023

「Comfort a character: Fox」 [ART] 29/09/2023 | Commander Fox, OC: Headshot | Comfort a character prompt| We have a shared custody on Headshot with ithillia <3 |

DECEMBER 2023

「Culture shock(ed)trooper」 [Snippet]

10/12/2023 |OC: Lily, OC: Blaze, Corrie!Fives | Conversation about Lily’s photography, social media and drug habits | Warning: mentions of drugs | 

「Lily doing Lily-things」 [ART]

30/12/2023 |OC: Lily, OC: Vorn, OC: Blaze | OC lore | Corey you’ve made me the happiest person with this request TT__TT |

JANUARY 2024

「Lily in the club」 [ART]

28/01/2024 | OC: Lily | Prettiest flower of the 79’s |

「Selfie with Blaze」 [ART] 

28/01/2024 | OC: Lily, OC: Blaze | Companion art for Lily in the Club |

「Glasses make you classy」 [ART]

31/01/2024 | Commander Fox, OC: Headshot | Sketchbook | Headshot wears glasses to look more mature, Fox wears Headshot’s glasses to annoy him | 

FEBRUARY 2024

「City boy gets intimidated by war veteran’s huge equipment」 [ART]

Not a cloneship, but I’m a very mature person so the dialogue is purposefully written as cockmeasuring 18/02/2024 | Clone Trooper Kix, OC: Headshot | Kix tries to befriend the corrie medic |

「Life after O66」 [ART]

18/02/2024 | OC: Lily, OC: Blaze, OC: Vorn, OC: Headshot, OC: Pons, OC: Angel, Commander Fox, Commander Thorn, Commander Thire | ARTs and rambling about OC’s and how they life will be after Order 66 | WARNING: Mentions of canon character's deaths, mentions of suicide, actual suicide and visual depiction of it, nudity but genitals are not visible. Coruscant Guard has cultish vibes. 

「Corrie Medical Team」 [ART]

18/02/2024 | OC: Headshot, OC: Pons, OC: Angel | That art about the medical team from Life after O66 post. | It’s just three of them being not alright. | 

「Imperial!Lily」 [ART]

21/02/2024| OC: Lily | Basically that art about Lily from the Life after O66 post | He is not alright | 

「Reggest reg ever regged from the reg manual」 [ART]

29/02/2024 | Corrie!Fives, OC: Blaze, ithillia’s OC: Snake | Fives has a rough time adapting to his new environment | 

MARCH 2024

「Gems of the Republic」 [FIC]

03/03/2024 | OC: Blaze, OC: Vorn | Ficlet about a little bit of nothing, corrie guard Blaze and Vorn having a lighthearted conversation during patrol, and oh, there is unhealthy amount of mention of piss. Wordcount around 700.

「Corrie Medical Officer Pons」 [ART] 

03/03/2024 | OC: Pons, OC: Angel, OC: Jason, OC: Headshot | Art and lore of Pons |

What would happen if Joey Drew and 035 met each other?

I decided to make a short fic of this. I hope you enjoy.

---

Under the cover of night, the possessive mask dragged itself through the dark alley, bits of blackened and ichor-soaked flesh leaving a trail behind him. He'd stayed with this host for far, far too long, and if he didn't find a place to hide or a new body to possess within the next few hours, he would be left out in the open, helpless to the SCP foundation or whomever else might disturb him. But not all hope was lost. He had found a perfect building to hide in, and if he could find a brick or a similar item, breaking into it would be relatively easy even with the decaying state of his body.

The mask was not naive enough to choose just any building. Hiding while without a host was very dangerous. The mask's ability to make anyone yearn to wear it gave him almost guaranteed success with unaccompanied people, but witnesses were a problem. The act of taking a person over was unmistakably supernatural, and a call to the police or worse would ensue. He couldn't wait indefinitely for an isolated host to wander along, either. If he stayed in place a mere day, people would notice his black ichor melting the surrounding area, and he would be just as caught and even more helpless.

There would be no risk of that in Joey Drew Studios. The mask had heard of its cult activity and strange goings-on from an ink-stained man who was desperate to tell anyone who'd listen. If it was anything like the man had said, then the mask could settle down there and no one would question it if the walls oozed a bit more black fluid than usual, if there was one more cultish item to be found, or if yet another worker disappeared.

Finally, the mask found what he was looking for- not a brick, but a wooden beam small enough to wield but large enough to break glass. With one swing, the small side window gave way, and the mask could wriggle in. Wandering the corridors, it found its way to a room containing six pedestals and a giant machine. The mask dragged itself to the corner of the room and spent the rest of the night focused on producing enough ichor to finish dissolving the body.

Tomorrow, the real work would begin. With his psychic powers, he'd figure out the best host in the building and exactly how to draw them in.

---

It was an average day at Joey Drew Studios, and Joey was just seeing Jack and Sammy out after their daily morning meeting. He had just closed his office door behind them when the voices began.

Joey... Come to the ink machine room.

It was a smooth voice, comforting and persuasive.

The Gods seek to give you knowledge that you'll wish you'd never been without. Follow your heart. It will tell you where to find it.

Joey wasn't sure what to think. But he did know that some of the Gods could communicate through a person's thoughts. And he did feel drawn to the ink machine room. He got up immediately and made his way there at a brisk pace, feeling more and more eager the closer he got. It was as though he were a child being drawn to his presents on Christmas day, or an addict being drawn to their drug of choice.

When Joey opened the door to the ink machine room, he couldn't believe his eyes. The walls, floor, ceiling, and even the ink machine were covered in text written in ink- not a few sloppily-drawn words like he'd seen written by the occasional ink-infected employee, but small, dainty text written in numerous languages. Joey could pick up that some of it was in Latin and some in French, but there were so many others he'd never even seen before, along with diagrams of pentagrams and sacrifices. Joey's heart could have beat out of his chest. He didn't know where to start reading. Transcribing it all would surely take months if not years, but it would be welcome work.

Put me on, and you'll understand all of it as though it were written in your mother tongue, a voice said. It sounded nearer than before.

Joey felt himself drawn to a corner of the room, where he found a porcelain comedy mask. With the care of a priest handling a holy object, Joey picked up the mask and slipped it over his face. Instantly, Joey's mind was no more.

That afternoon, all Joey Drew Studios workers were gathered in the break room for a special announcement.

"With this mask, I've been granted special knowledge from the Gods," Joey announced to the crowd. For every worker who was eating up his lies, there were six who were clearly uncomfortable with the notion. That was fine. A seventh of them would still be enough hosts to last him a year. "Unfortunately it's very hard on my body. In a few weeks, I will need someone else to act as the holder of their knowledge as well as my own, and to inherit my position as the head of the studio. Submit your applications by envelope to my office."

In the coming months, dozens of people quit. The mask couldn't blame them. Though he'd tried to learn, he simply didn't know how to run an animation studio, nor did he know enough about Joey's spiritual beliefs to convincingly interact with members of the studio who shared them. And even if he'd been the perfect image of Joey Drew, the mask imagined that many would have quit simply because they did not want to watch their coworkers rot right before them, one at a time.

The mask did not care. He did not care about the success of Joey Drew Studios or whatever Joey Drew had been planning with the ink machine. He was going to get as many hosts out of this as he could, and then he would move on, just as he always had.

My marriage is at a tipping point and I don’t know what to do. Here’s our full story.

“TL;DR - My wife and I have had ups and downs for years and a couple times she has threatened to leave. Even once admitting having feelings for someone she worked with briefly. We finally hit a breaking point this week where she’s saying really wants to be done and along with that came the admission that she is infatuated with a musician, whom we’ve seen perform a couple times and she’s barely met once. But so much so that she feels a connection and she might be in love. Like love at first sight with some random guitar player dude. We have 2 kids and I have no fucking idea what to do…because I love her more than life itself.”

Here’s goes the full story…and if any of you actually read all of this, thank you. I’m about to lay it all out. This is going to be very, very, very long.

My wife and I got married very young. I’m 35, she’s 33 and we’ve been married 13 years. This is because we both grew up in a fringe sect of Christianity that is strict and weird and almost cultish. Our parents and some family are still very involved in this church. We are not. We separated from it only a couple years into our marriage and we’re both so glad we did. But it’s never been easy. 

She’s always struggled with insecurities, even though she is gorgeous. Like unbiased, she is a very beautiful woman with a beautiful face and body and personality. She is much more confident now in her 30’s, but she has struggled with body dysmorphia among other things. She has a terrible guilt complex. Her parents were pretty overbearing and she’s a middle child and there’s just a lot of complex shit. In the midst of that is she’s never trusted me to be faithful to her. I’ve never cheated, never even flirted or taken interest in someone else. But at times she has been convinced otherwise and it has been a sore spot in our marriage. Probably because of her own insecurities and that being fueled by the revealing of many adults in her life who cheated. Like both her grandfathers, her mothers relationship with her oldest sisters father who cheated on my mother in law and left. And to top it off, her finding out my dad was cheating on my mom just months before we got married. Emotional issues.

Neither one of us finished college. I was doing trade work when we got married, she was in an stale office job. She hated it and went to part time work for a bakery just as I finally got a steady desk job in the (then recovering) Mortgage industry. But I’ve had a lot of ups and down in trying to build my career. We’ve never been financially stable, not even from the start. Money issues. 

A few years into our marriage, we couldn’t even afford our cheap apartment because she was working part time. We moved in with her aging grandmother with the idea that we could be there to help as caretakers and save money for a house. Instead, we got pregnant because my wife was restless. The pressures of our upbringing meant that we were both wired to think “get married young, have kids young” and if you’re not doing either of those things you’ve messed up somehow and you’re falling behind in life. She was obviously unhappy and not settled and looking back now I think she believed a baby would cement this idea of our happy life and our bonding and growing as a family. (Now I know she probably needed to separate or divorce so she could go be her own woman and fuck up and do whatever without the pressures of being a “good Christian wife”)

So we move out with no real plan or money because we need to make room for baby and we “can’t do that with her grandma around”. I had to start working evenings to even pull off the move. We have our first child and then all that implodes as she suffers from postpartum depression and I can’t make enough money to keep us afloat on my own and we end up back at grandmas. This time it’s just us because her grandma fell and was moved to a nursing home.

Another year and her grandma passes away and the family decides to sell the house. We’re still no better off so now we move in with her parents, in their basement. It was rough. Worst of all because my in laws bought a dog after my wife moved out but she is deathly allergic and has asthma. We had to deep clean the basement and run air purifiers 24/7 and she was on special medication that she hated. Oh and we had a 2 year old at the time and my wife still only worked part time at a grocery store.

One year of that was hell but we finally moved out because I was working 2 jobs again. Spent the next 2 years on our own in an apartment finally rebuilding our lives. We got pregnant again and everything was pretty good. Still a hard time with her postpartum depression but she actually got certified as a personal trainer during pregnancy and was taking on clients at a gym and really pursuing something she was passionate about while I kept grinding the 9-5 doing mortgages.

In the midst of all that chaos there were times where she’d blow up at me. Unhappy with our circumstances, unhappy with me. Wanting a more stable life and one filled with more romance and adventure. She blamed it on us getting married too young and rushing into things and how, in the end, even though we love each other and we have a strong friendship, we’re just “not meant to be”. Usually she would spring back from this after a couple days or a week and we’d soldier on. We show a lot of affection to each other. We’re both A+ parents who are very attentive and giving to our children. We laugh a lot and flirt and get along well. I always thought when she down like that it was just her getting in her own head or hormonal or whatever. I didn’t think she really “meant it” but rather she was unloading all her pent up frustration and expectations to just vent. And of course we’d argue and yell but it would come down to me fighting for her. Apologizing, trying harder, getting better at listening and helping and wooing her but also increasing my anxiety of feeling like I had to super husband and super dad all the time and any slip might mean I’m not good enough. And I’m terrified of losing her.

Aside, she has diagnosed anxiety and depression. Her grandmother and mother and her siblings all struggle with anxiety and depression. Her oldest sister deals with bipolar depression. My kids have noticeable anxiety. Whether learned or genetic, it’s very real and effects a lot of her life and day to day. She only a couple years ago started taking medication to help but she still refuses to go to therapy. With all we’ve been through and all the trauma of our upbringing and other things, I know she needs therapy and so do I, but she just won’t pursue it.

And of course, our financial struggles have always been a constant. We’re still getting there with our story.

She doesn’t stick with the personal training thing. Instead I continue to stick with mortgages and then get a part time gig leading music at a different church we were attending. A much less strict and more-so “normal” church. Yes, I’m a musician and so is my wife but those passions have been put aside for sometime because of the need to focus on young kids and provide for our family.

So 2 years on our own in an apartment leads to moving into a house. Still leasing but we’re really making progress now. 2 kids, new house in a great community. Work still has its ups and downs but even when one door closes another opens and I’m still carving out a career path in the mortgage industry. Then COVID hit. We’re all home. My oldest is doing virtual school. I’m working from home. My wife decides to go back to school for a couple semesters and I obviously stop leading music at the church. In fact by now we’ve washed our hands of “Christianity”. That was our last shot at making religion work for us.

That means back to one income. So I’m going grocery orders on the side and so is she while also doing school. It’s not great. Before COVID I was working a lot but I got to play music and be around people we liked and we had a community and I was making good money from both jobs combined.

Now it’s COVID time and we’re isolated and picking up a side hustle to make ends meet and we’re home all the time with 2 kids. 

I remember she snapped on me around Fathers Day 2020 and again around Christmas that year. I really thought we were done for then. Thankfully early 2021 she sought help and started a mild medication which has helped. And the world started opening up more and our oldest went back to school. Stuff was getting normal again and I thought we were pressing on and going to make this work.

Summer 2021 she decides to start a business, a bakery from home. It’s been tough but it’s been good. It doesn’t align with her personal training/fitness passion but she has always loved to bake and she’s good at it and enjoys it. We spent a lot of time and energy to get it off the ground and Spring 2022 launched into our local farmers market.

Summer 2021 I also switched career paths. A local friend who I had done some side work with, wanted me to join his remodeling business. Promised it would be a role that’s more so managing projects and working as the middle man between the contractors and the designers. I ended up just doing a lot of on site stuff from demo to painting to flooring, you name it. My wife supported to move and wanted me to take the offer because we liked these people and she knew I was growing tired of a desk job. I was going to make more money and have a company truck and she thought this was a turning point for us. Me in a new field and a new role and her building a bakery business from home.

Well, June 2022, I lost that job and since then my “friends” company has lost everyone on their team except a single designer. I saw the writing on the wall shortly after joining his company and realized he sold me on a lie. A lie in regards to what work I would be doing and how healthy the company was and that he could even run a business like this.

Frustratingly, I lost that job and that same month (after 3 years) we lost our home as our landlords did not offer us the option to renew our lease. 

2 years at the apartment, 3 years at the house…I thought we were getting somewhere…instead it all came crumbling down.

I tried going back to mortgages but last year every mortgage company was bleeding people. The opportunities were scarce and the competition for every opening was fierce. I applied and interviewed but got nowhere. Didn’t land another steady position until February 2023 at an insurance company making half of what I used to pre-COVID.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. July 2022 we move in with one of my wife’s sisters. Her sister has 2 kids and a busy life. It was awkward and temporary thankfully. We kept doing the farmers market and take on another market. Thinking, if nothing else, let’s keep her business afloat and try and build something.

By September we move in with her other sister who is married but no kids and has more space but we’re further away from our city and our friends and our customers than we ever thought reasonable. 

My oldest did a year of school here. We still live here. Me, my wife, 2 kids who will both be in school full time soon, my sister in law and her husband. We’ve been living like this for almost a year. Thankfully, this sister is my wife’s favorite and they’re best friends. Hell, she’s my best friend too. We’ve known each other for 20 years and all played in a band when together when we were young emo kids lol. Living here isn’t terrible because of the company, it’s terrible because we were supposed to be building our life onward and upward. Instead we’ve come crashing down. Somehow this past year has been harder than all the lows before and I’ve been more depressed than ever. So has she.

We have still found time to be intimate. To laugh and flirt and lean on each other and grow close and fight for us and our kids and try and rebuild our lives once again. Or so I thought until about a week ago. My wife hit me with it again, she’s not happy. She wants freedom. She’s not sure we were ever meant to be.

In April this year her and I went on a day date to a nearby big city. Good food, museum, exploring the city, a little shopping, and ending the night at a small jazz concert that was in a neighboring city on our way home. 

She loved it. I thought she loved the day we had together, and maybe she did. But the music really stirred her up. It’s a quarter that plays early 1900’s Parisian style jazz. They’re incredibly talented and just cool guys. Last week she wants to go see them again at another nearby city at a small club. I thought, yeah why not. We need another date night and their music was great.

That was last Wednesday. And after we left the club, we walked around town. She was quiet and cold. Odd considering that we usually still have a strong bond and we usually laugh together and enjoy each others company. Especially a night out with no kids and good music. I thought she’d be in a great mood but she was so heavy. Quiet the whole way home.

Fathers Day weekend wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great. She was busy baking orders and again, had dropped a bomb on me that she doesn’t see us having a future. We saw her family and mine Sunday and we put on a good face, but it’s been bad these past 6-7 days.

Yesterday, Wednesday June 21st. She wants to go out alone. She wants to go back to the club but doesn’t want a date, she needs space.

She looked so fucking hot. Confident. Didn’t even wear a bra with her cute new top I paid for earlier that day when she wanted to do some shopping. Yes, that’s a big deal for my wife who for years (and sometimes still) struggles with insecurities. Her hair looked incredible and it was something new she’s never really done before. But she was going out alone. All dressed up for “just her”. She got a desert in the area and read a book she recently bought and made her way to be club around 8:45 pm. Band plays until 10.

I know this is true because she has a guilty complex like I said and she has a hard time being dishonest. She was keeping me updated on her whereabouts because she has anxiety and we like to check in with each other often.

But she left the club maybe 10:15 and for her text I knew something was up. I met her in the car outside when she got home because she asked me to come out and talk. There she admitted that ever since April when we first saw this band, she had become infatuated with the guitar player. She follows his Instagram and his stories and believes she has a real connection with him. She feels she owes it to herself to pursue this connection even if her turns her down. She might be “in love” she said and hasn’t felt this way about anyone since she first fell for me. I think this is fucking nuts but I played it soooo cool. I was patient and calm and let her express herself and tell me her feelings.

She got all dressed up and super hot for this random dude she doesn’t even know. She swears they haven’t messaged or communicated. She wasn’t physical with him at the club. She just introduced herself and even mentioned me, her husband, because he talked to us last week when we were there and he remembered us. He was giving out cards after their performance and she took one. She also gave him her email. 

You would have thought she slept with the whole band that night. Her guilt over this was tearing her apart. Just going to see him and giving out her email was basically her giving this guy the keys to her heart. Never have I seen her like this. I don’t understand it. Weirdly, he kind of looks like me. Not even better looking or in better shape. We could be related it’s so weird. But listening to her last night, it’s like he’s her new soulmate. 

She doesn’t know what to do. Our kids are young and fragile. It seems clear she doesn’t want to be with me. She wants to pursue this guy, but she still wants to be a mom too so she’s not just up and leaving.

Meanwhile we’re living with her sister and barely keeping our heads above water while I try and build a new career and she tries to grow a small business. 

It feels like nothing is working and I don’t know how we move forward or recover from this. I want her more than anything in the entire world. I’m infatuated with her. I think she’s gorgeous and sexy and smart and funny. I think she’s a great mom and a wonderful, caring, talented person. She has baggage, so do I, but I love her endlessly and am hopelessly committed to her. She thinks I’ll find someone who will love me better, but I don’t want that.

What am I missing? What do I do? She swears she’s not testing me. She’s not trying to get me to fight for her or change something. She honestly feels this way and I don’t get it. I’m lost and I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m losing my best friend and the love of my life. 

Thanks for reading this, it’s our life story and it’s a lot. Sorry for dumping it all but I never share with anyone and I wanted to get out as much as I could and provide as much context as possible because I need help. I need wisdom, encouragement, advice, honesty. I need something cause everything is going dark.

Alright, I'm going to put this simply for people who either refuse to vote Biden or have been influenced by the psyops trying to make leftists not either not vote or split the Democrat vote. You have to take this seriously. Because I am.

What plan do you have in mind to make disillusioned conservative voters vote something other than Republican?

Why am I so worried about that? Because I've seen the data from the 2020 election and I'm seeing who is pushing to not vote Democrat.

In Georgia, one of the states Trump was so adamant about voter fraud, Biden won by 0.3% of the vote.

In Arizona, another one pushed hard for voter fraud, Biden won by 0.4%.

In Wisconsin, Biden won by 0.6%.

This totals up to 37 electoral votes. Each state winning by less than 1%.

This totals up to 37 electoral votes that could have been for Trump, putting them both at 269 electoral votes had these less than 1% of voters had voted third party.

The Supreme Court would have had to get involved if this had happened. A majority Supreme Court would not have declared Biden the winner.

Now think about this election year. We have people who say they can't vote blue because of the bullshit happening. So they'll vote third party, and for someone actually good.

Now, I want you to think for a moment. Who is voting this way? Is it the more centralist Democrats, disillusioned by their party? Or is it the more liberal ones, disgusted by how far to the right the Democrats are?

It's the second, isn't it.

Now think for an extra moment. Who are the disillusioned conservatives? Those more to the left and those who think they aren't to the right enough, correct?

Which of those voters are going to vote for the third party that the very left liberals are wanting to actually vote into office?

None of them? The ones more to the left are more likely to vote Democrat if they get away from the cultish mentality of the Republicans are the ones to the right are more likely to stay Republican?

There you go. That's why I'm saying vote blue. Because the person we actually want in office is not going to appeal in the least to the right, and the race is much closer than the psyops want you to think.

And if you think in less than 8 months that we can influence these conservatives to suddenly vote actually left, then get on it and stop trying to get liberals on this site to vote for someone who doesn't suck. Because we are not who you should worry about.

You should be worried about conservative votes. Because splitting the left vote doesn't mean shit if you can't do the same for the right.

Biden flipped red states by less than 1%.

If that less than 1% votes anything other than Democrat we need people on the right to do the same, and to continue to grow those extra votes to a larger group.

Work on making a third and fourth party bigger and making them an actual possibility AFTER we don't vote in the person declaring he'll shit in our bed while helping shit in the Palestine one too.

VOTE. BLUE.

DON'T SPLIT THE VOTE BECAUSE REPUBLICANS WON'T.

Wings

There are chickadees outside the sliding glass door of my home office as I wait for my son to finish getting ready to go outside. His bus will be here soon, but he had to run to the kitchen because he forgot to grab a snack. I'm thinking about my grandma.

Her 78th birthday was two days ago. She used to call us her little chickadees when we were kids. I always think about that when the chickadees come around. She was born in the middle of winter; the chickadees seem to be the only birds that visit on her birthday. I have the dog made in my grandparents' ceramic shop, the one that used to sit in her living room, next to this door. A large stone frog from her yard is in my garage, I haven't decided where to put it. There's a fairy I cast and fired and painted in her shop when I was ten, sitting on the bookcase behind my desk.

It was made for a girl, and my grandma made an identical one alongside me, letting her colorblind grandson pick the paints and doing whatever I did as she talked me through the process. She was impressed with my results, and asked if she could keep mine for a few days to show her adult ceramics class, and I was hesitant because I wanted to give it to Beth at church on Sunday and didn't know if I'd get it back in time. She offered to give me the one she made, and told me that if I didn't have mine back in time, I could give Beth that one. Beth got that one; I didn't get mine back for two years. I never told Beth I didn't actually make the one she got, but she told me a decade later that she still had it.

My dad's 60th birthday party was a little over a week ago, and I told a story about the church I grew up in that went astray into weird cultish stuff; and how it showed my dad's willingness to fight and speak truth, even if it wasn't welcome or it needed to be harsh, a couple traits that I respect about him and learned from him.

When grandma took my fairy to class, she set it in the center of the table they were gathered around, and declared, "my 10-year-old grandson made this! Look at the quality of this! Next time one of you bitches wants to complain about how hard this is and how you can't possibly learn the stuff I'm telling you, remember that THIS was made by a child!" When she learned her first husband, my biological grandpa, had cheated on her, he left a hole by running through the screen door, while thrown knives were stabbing into the floor behind him.

The chickadees like it outside my office door, mostly because of the pine tree. They get their winter food from the tree and the ground under it; today, they're especially interested in getting grit from the cooled ashes of my wood stove I didn't feel like carrying to the other side of the driveway. The snow is soft enough that they leave marks in it.

My grandma moved out of the mountains when my dad was a little boy, but she went back many times a year, and we joined her sometimes. We had our family reunions in the mountains all through my childhood, but they petered out around the time I entered my teens. The mountain laurel is the state flower of PA, but I only ever saw it when we were Down Home, down in the mountains.

It will be five years this summer since Grandma died. She was in an apartment she'd moved into a while after Grandpa died, decades after the old house was condemned and replaced with a double-wide and the ceramic shop was closed.

We weren't in this house yet when I got the call. We had arranged to buy it, but were staying at a friend's house for six weeks while they finished replacing the septic so we could close. We drove to PA that very day and stayed until a few days after the funeral. I walked around the property for the last time on that trip, leaned against the tree I climbed when I was a boy, walked through the barn where all the ceramic molds had been stored after the shop closed. Saw all the pictures she hadn't taken down of all of us, and of the family Down Home; people I saw at the funeral, but hadn't seen before that since the last family reunion.

My house is in the mountains, the New England stretch of the Appalachians. When we walked into the house from the closing, there was a note that said "Welcome home!" next to a vase of mountain laurels that were picked fresh that morning. They weren't blooming when we came to the house before, so I hadn't realized we had it growing wild in our yard. I wanted to cry when I saw the vase and the note. I might have cried, I don't even remember now. I cried a lot that month, they all start to blur together.

My son is ready, and I slide the door open, and the chickadees fly away. And suddenly it's just me, and my son, and the empty cold; a mountain laurel bush in hibernation, and a thousand little footprints in the snow.

Hit Em High w/ Amy Dee

Let’s time travel back to January 29, 2023, with the glorious gem, Amy Dee, who came to stand by Shift as he firmly defends his reputation with the truth.

Some liars have threatened Shift’s life and livelihood by targeting him with hundreds of triggered fanatics --- this story is very important.

Learn about the timeline of Shift’s experience getting caught up in Eat Predators' messy “organization” after Alexa Nikolas started what may be the most selfish, inappropriate, and poorly managed book club that has ever existed outside of Yellowjackets season 1. 

Amy Dee reminds us that the #metoo movement centralizes around Central Casting, and mentions how irrelevant people can be made relevant by connecting their names in articles to actually important, well-known people and events.

Shift covers some anecdotal moments like how Alexa Nikolas' husband randomly left their baby alone with him... In a car... With the keys. And made Shift drive the baby around while he and Alexa Nikolas hung around taking pictures at a protest at Orange County School of the Arts with people like Nomi Abadi, Amanda Peters, and their partners. He also mentions how he was aggressively harassed by a police officer during the time they left him and their child alone. 

Shift refers to the bizarre and mysterious exposé website, alexanikolas.net, and how far back some truly alarming accusations about Alexa Nikolas’ abuse of others goes. He also reviews how Melanie Veronica inserted her undeserved and erratic #freebritney clout to boost Alexa Nikolas’ lies.

Tangentially, Shift highlights how long he's been working with media, culture, and movements with a story about taking care of Bella Eiko’s baby for 2 weeks in 2014 when Bella went to live stream the events in Ferguson just after Mike Brown was killed.

Can Alexa Nikolas project a lie that shines brighter than who Shift really is?

Can people play dumb while being smartasses?

Can movements ever get their shit together?

In all these questions and confusions… we know this much is true… liberal movement "leaders" tend to make themselves the Mean Girls in every room they’re in.

And… Shift and Amy Dee are committed to facing any foe to help make society more trauma-informed and honest.

  How did Shift go from being called a “godsend” to being falsely accused of being a “stalker” by Alexa Nikolas and her husband, her mother, and her cultish fanatical “organization”?

Let’s get into it.

  Hate us or love us? Call us and tell us at 415-343-4420.

  Also.... get ready for Amy Dee and Shift's upcoming podcast, Glitch Sesh! A media and culturally-informed history and society focusing on spiritual predators and power abusers who seek to serve themselves at the expense of society and the cultural ramifications and consequences and how social behavior contributes to the erosion of trust in the culture of American society in modern times.

Season 1 is all about Britney Spears' circa 2004-2005.

              [By the way, we aren’t breaking any laws, civil or criminal, by continuing to tell the truth.]

Listen, lindas

Mary-Kate Olsen's Singular Style

She came to fame as a twin, but the actress's cultish look is entirely her own. Here, with Lauren Hutton, she pays homage to another fashion inspiration, Grey Gardens. Written by Laura Brown, with photography by Peter Lindbergh (Harper's Bazaar, 2007)

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Mary-Kate Olsen may be the only young actress who breezes into her local Starbucks wearing towering, fashion-fierce Balenciaga boots, who arrives at her latest premiere (in Mary-Kate's case, for the new season of Showtime's Weeds, in which she plays a devout Christian with a pot fetish) sporting an oversize cross, and whose favorite band is Led Zeppelin. She may, in fact, be the only young actress who knows who Led Zeppelin is. MK, as she is known to her friends and family, is also a punctual and professional sort. She arrives for a poolside tea in Los Angeles 10 minutes early, ordering a hot chocolate while explaining her fetish for all things sweet — "I'm a candy girl, like Tootsie Rolls and Swedish Fish" — and objecting when the waiter tries to take the sugar bowl away. She is wearing a nautical striped T-shirt (her mom's, from the '70s), tucked into two black Wolford slips rolled down and turned into a tight, Robert-Palmer-video-style mini, and multicolored sparkly Christian Louboutin stilettos. She's just had her hair colored, returning to a sunnier shade after some experiments with both peroxide ("I woke up one morning and was like, I want white-trash hair today") and the dark side (an auburn-haired near-Goth moment last year). She's carrying a large black fringed leather Prada tote — she doesn't do small bags — and her fingers are covered with rings, most notably two vintage coiled gold snakes stacked on top of each other. ("They remind me of twins, sort of double headed.") Altogether, the effect is less her famed "bag-lady chic" than an edgy, body-conscious, and, yes, sexy silhouette. If she weren't 21, she could be 40. And French.

Few people need reminding that Mary-Kate — with her twin sister, Ashley — literally crawled into celebrity aged nine months (courtesy of Full House) and has not been out of the spotlight ever since. She has been a celebrity for more than two decades. Perhaps that's one reason she seems as if she came out of the womb worldly, the textbook old soul. "Yeah," she says with a small shrug. "I get that a lot." With all of that attention and all of the money (her and Ashley's company, Dualstar, has famously become a "billion-dollar business"), Mary-Kate could easily have ended up the type who wears pink terry cloth and carries a variety of small dogs. "Could you imagine?" she says with the politest version of a snort. "No way." She credits her exceptionally close-knit family (she has five siblings) and, interestingly, early stardom with helping her keep her perspective. "I think it helped that I started in front of the camera, so it didn't come as a shock. If I was a teenager and was thrown into the spotlight, I don't know how I would react, to be honest." Though the tabloids are all too keen to brand her a skinny, nervous deer in the headlights, in person Mary-Kate is easy in her skin, confident and surprisingly tactile, curling up in her seat and touching you on the arm to make a point. She laments the generic style of most actresses and cites only men as style inspirations: "Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp. Men, they just dress the way they want, and they don't think about Who Wore It Best." She doesn't much care for Who Wore It Best, noting she avoids those pages by "wearing vintage so often. I just dress the way I feel instead of looking for what's the new handbag." If Mary-Kate and Ashley have their way, more people will be wearing clothes and carrying bags the way they do. They have just shown the fifth collection of their ready-to-wear line, the Row, and recently launched a contemporary label, Elizabeth and James, named after a sister and a brother. The Row's holiday collection (in stores next month) is a slick mix of skinny leather pants, razor-cut blazers, butter-soft, slouchy tees, and a destined-to-be-cultish pullover fur. Lauren Hutton, who stars in the Row's Spring '08 look book, says, "The clothes are extraordinary. A man I was with just loved them. The pieces are just so genius, soft like a baby's skin. Simple minimalist stuff, but really spectacular." Mary-Kate, designer, faces an interesting challenge. She has to marry Dualstar — which has made its fortune selling tween-tastic DVDs and pastel Mary-Kate and Ashley T-shirts at Wal-Mart — with her increasingly edgy and subversive taste. Dualstar executives, some of whom have worked with her since she was a child, often nag her, mom-style, about pulling her hair back "or wearing a color," she says with a laugh. "I had this event recently, and I was like, They're going to be so happy that I'm wearing ... purple. I actually have to think about those things, though, you know, so I don't get trashed." Get trashed sometimes she does. Hutton says, "Once in a while, she'll wear something and I'll think, Oh, baby doll, take another look. But to have the bravery, to take the chance to do that, is pretty wonderful. She is making her own way, which is hardly ever done in Hollywood." Of Mary-Kate's penchant for gigantic Balenciaga heels, Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, says, laughing, "I'd be like, 'It's Tuesday. Do you really want to be wearing those shoes?' But she pulls it off." Designer Giambattista Valli, a friend, says, "She likes to take risks, but because she has such strong personal style, she always manages to make it work. Even if she had nothing on, she'd have style." And MK chic is spreading. "Sometimes I'll look at people or at a magazine and I'll do a double take because I'm like, Oh, my God, that's my outfit, but that's not me," Mary-Kate says. Playing with her wire-rimmed aviators, she jokes wryly that she should have bought shares in Ray-Ban. (She and Chloë Sevigny pretty much brought back white '80s Wayfarers.) She tends to fall in love with a look, then wear it until she's done. "If I put together a good outfit, I'll wear it for three days and then switch it up with a blazer," she says. "I still love my vintage jeans, my tights, and my pants, though." She didn't start wearing heels, in fact, until a couple of years ago: "I kept watching Ashley walk around in them so gracefully, and I'm such a klutz. But I ended up loving heels, and I don't usually take them off." She wears precisely one pair of flat shoes: Chanel's knee-high patent-leather gladiator sandals. This season, it's Balenciaga's fall collection — all of it — that has Mary-Kate obsessed. She is close to designer Nicolas Ghesquière and says, "He is so talented, but he's the nicest, most down-to-earth guy, and that makes everything he does more brilliant. I bought everything, but I haven't got anything yet," she says like a girl impatiently waiting for Christmas. Will she wear the new pieces with her infamous clodhopper boots? "Uh-huh. Wore them the other day, actually." Mary-Kate always goes with her gut, even if some people (back to those tabloids) don't quite get it. "The tabloids say things about me? What do they say?" she asks archly. "People are going to write what they want, and everyone's going to have their own idea of who I am. But I'm not trying to be friends with the people who are reading them, really." After a rough couple of years filled with near-forensic scrutiny of her weight, she'll have you know that she does eat. "This is not going to sound good," she laughs, "but I like making crispy tofu sticks with peanut sauce. I love my sashimi and my salmon and my vegetables." She observes, "Stress plays a big role in how I look day-to-day. I've always been very active — Pilates, yoga. I grew up horseback riding every day for hours. I love dancing. I usually last longer than anyone on the dance floor." A common image of Mary-Kate has her emerging from a coffee joint with an oversize cup. "I always get creamed for having my Starbucks cup," she says, sighing. "But the only time people get photos of me is when I'm getting coffee, when I can't sneak away from the camera." She also resents the pictorial implication that she and Ashley are dilettantes. "They take photos of us going into our offices, and it's 'Mary-Kate and Ashley shopping again.' But I'm going to work for eight hours, and we're working so hard. ..." She trails off. "It just shows how people want to think of you." Mary-Kate is not above celeb watching herself, however. Newly obsessed with Victoria Beckham, she notes she avidly watched Beckham's Coming to America documentary: "She's running around in a bikini and heels, and I'm like, Oh, my God! I do that, too!" How positively Grey Gardens. "I run around my house naked with heels all the time. It's so funny. All my friends will tell you I love running around in kimonos and jewelry or naked with jewelry." More people will be watching Mary-Kate soon, thanks to her role in the Emmy-nominated Weeds. "I am a very good Christian girl," she says with a wink. "She has her moral beliefs — and she happens to smoke pot." Of her newest cast member, Kohan adds, "Mary-Kate is complicated. She's a big celebrity, a huge media icon, but you have to separate the media images from someone who has the same issues, the same desires, as anyone else." Of course, Mary-Kate's image, in all its incarnations — from high fashion to small screen — is her strongest asset. And she has yet to settle on one. "I feel like I've lived 10 different lives already and I'm only 21," she says, almost as a reminder to herself. "But I also feel like I'm entering a new chapter." One thing on which she is clear, though: She doesn't need to be looked at all the time. What would she do for a day if she were invisible? "I would probably go to a restaurant with my friends, who would be able to see me, of course," she adds pragmatically, "and I would sit outside and enjoy a nice lunch with them. Then I would walk down the street." The old soul takes a sip of her little-girl-sweet hot chocolate. "That's what I would do."

August || Chapter Five

Pairing: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid, fem!reader x Emily Prentiss 

Description: After a conversation with Emily, Spencer drowns in a sea of regret and guilt. That’s when JJ gives him a harsh reality check.

Content/Warnings: Spencer/JJ centric chapter, friendships are threatened, drama, emissions of guilt, regret, Spencer thinks of you and Emily to a deep degree, a break up ensues, one use of Y/N. 

WC: 2.1K

Y'all know the drill. 450 notes for next part!

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The sound of the ceramic shattering on the ground had you looking at the floor first, the overly sugary coffee surely going to make the floor sticky and give everyone’s shoes that annoying sound of them getting stuck to the ground.

“That’s going to be a pain to clean up.” Was all Emily could say, unphased by his reaction. Truth be told, he had no reason to react the way he did. He had made his bed the moment he got with JJ, losing every chance that he had with you. “Pick up the pieces, don’t need anyone getting hurt.” She added.

“So this is what you two do whenever you're supposed to be working? Not very professional.” Spencer huffed, kneeling down to pick up the remains of the navy blue coffee cup, his head shaking. 

“Everyone is entitled to a lunch break for an hour every workday. What anyone else does outside of this office is absolutely none of your business.” The unit chief countered back while she was heading over to the bullpen doors. “When you’re finished, come to my office. We need to talk.” 

You were looking between Spencer and Emily, hands pushed into your pockets while the both of them had their little back and forth. “Can we all just calm it down? There’s no need for any more drama than this team already has.” The voice of reason. How fitting.

“I am calm. I just find it shocking that you’re kissing our boss in the elevator.” He commented, the shards rested in the palm of his hand as he pushed himself to stand up straight.

“You have no right to be mad and you know that.” You countered, deciding against furthering the argument as you approached the doors to the bullpen. How dare he act angry at you after what he did. He had no logical reasoning to act like a child over your decisions.

You knew that this was him lashing out, showing that deep down, he really is bothered and has noticed what he lost out on. That could’ve been you and him kissing in the elevator instead of you and Emily, the both of you could be going out to lunch together… He knew where he went wrong and this was going to haunt him. 

Spencer was always dramatic in that way, needing to see just what he lost before it was hitting him like a freight train. It was something he did with JJ, then he got with her and things haven’t exactly been smooth sailing in the department of their relationship.

He felt immense guilt, especially whenever JJ and Will had to make plans for the boys to visit with her. She should’ve been home with her children, not with him. Although it was seemingly too late, he highly doubted Will would take JJ back. 

He made it known on several occasions that she made her bed and she had to lie in it, to suffer from the loss of a loving marriage. In a way, it made Spencer feel dirty. What would Henry think of his beloved uncle when he got older? What would Michael think? In their story, as well as yours, Spencer was the bad guy. 

Those thoughts were in his mind all day after that. Even whenever being scolded by Emily, he just wasn’t present in the conversation. All he could think about was how happy you seemed with her, the way you looked at her. It made him feel nauseous. 

He knew Emily would take care of you at the end of the day but all he could do is think about what he lost. Emily was the lucky one, the one who didn’t break your heart into a million pieces. She got to hold you, to kiss you, to bask in your love and presence. 

His mind wandered farther, the idea of you two being intimate together. The idea made jealousy tug at his heart. She would be the one to worship you, to bring a rush of euphoria over you so strong that you wouldn’t dare think about another person in the same manner. 

It made him irrationally angry, upset at Emily because she was lucky enough to step in to the relationship that should’ve been shared between you and him. 

“Are you even listening?” Emily’s voice made Spencer look over at her, his eyes searching her features. She was angry at him, the comments he made earlier being the driving force behind it. He understood why, however this talk was unnecessary. 

“Yes. I’m listening. I just think this is all a waste of my time and yours. I’m sorry for making the comments I made but you have to admit, you are our boss at the end of the day. If you can’t handle what I have to say, imagine hearing what other people will say.” He stated. 

“I can guarantee you that nobody would care as much as you do. There will have to be a tedious paperwork process done for this to continue, but I don’t mind it.” It was a wonder how Emily kept her composure despite Spencer’s shitty attitude. “I am just asking you to stop with the comments and quite honestly, you need to grow up. The Spencer that I know would be happy for his coworkers who are also his friends. He wouldn’t be throwing a hissy fit over jealousy.”

“Look. I am happy for you, for her. I’m not jealous either.” Debatable. He didn’t care to admit things like that. “I just don’t like how I didn't know. She used to tell me everything!” 

“And then you ruined that for yourself. You know that I love you but you’re acting foolish. I don’t want to constantly have battles between us, alright? Just take this time to reflect and realize what you did wrong and then let all of that built up anger go. Now, go and wash your face. Get your shit together.” 

That was the end of the conversation, the male slowly pushing himself to stand before making a slow retreat from the office. Washing his face was good, would clear his head, settle his nerves.. So, he made a b-line straight for the men’s washroom. Although unbeknownst to him, JJ was hurrying out of the bullpen right behind him.

“What happened in there?” She made her presence known as she grabbed Spencer’s arm, startling him in the process. “What are you trying to pull now?”

“Trying to pull? Are you serious? Emily wanted to have a private discussion with me. I suggest you mind your own business, Jennifer.” He spat, the built up aggression causing him to breathe heavier thn usual, his face red. He needed to get to the bathroom now. 

“Woah, hold on. You think you are allowed to get rude with me because you don’t know how to leave things alone? Spencer, don’t be ridiculous.” She began although the male’s hands were raised in self defense as he looked in her direction. He had no time for this.

“I know how to leave things alone. I’ve proved that enough these past few weeks. You just don’t like that all the attention isn’t on you for once. Nobody really cares what you have to say in regards to this situation. I don’t care. You don’t like the way I carry myself and that is your problem. I can’t change myself just to make you approve.” 

“Are you crazy? I’m just telling you to leave them alone.”

“Yeah, well how about you leave me alone?” He spat, now turning on his heel to get to the bathroom. He knew taking out his anger on JJ wasn’t fair but she just always poked and prodded at him. He hated that. 

As he made it to the bathroom, he was staring at his reflection, the man in the mirror being someone who he could barely recognize. The old Spencer would’ve never taken things this far. He would’ve been too afraid of backlash, would’ve pulled away entirely once he saw the hectic nature of what his decisions could unleash.. 

With the sink water steadily running, he was leaning down to splash some cold water on his face. He just needed to calm down, to think through this situation and what his options were. His brain was amazing with conjuring up ideas and theories, although it was like as of late, he was lacking.

“Get your shit together.” Spencer spoke to himself, his eyes closing to avoid looking at himself, at who he became over the years; a man who broke someone’s heart, broke a family, and broke a team dynamic. Hell, he might’ve even broken himself in the process.

The sound of flowing water coupled with his breathing was all he could hear, blocking out the rest of the world as he was bringing himself back down to a more calm and collected state. His decisions have never haunted him like these past few ones have. 

Once calm, his hand was turning off the water, his eyes watching a steady pour slow down to nothing. Alright. He was alright. 

Upon exiting the bathroom, JJ was still there, arms crossed as she was waiting patiently for him to come out. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.” She stated, looking up at the man in front of her.

“I don’t want your help. I just- I feel like this isn’t working. I don’t like this relationship or whatever we have anymore. I can’t keep up with it, I just can’t.” He blurted out, heart beating like a drum in his chest, threatening to burst out of his chest cavity.

A tense silence came over them as JJ pursed her lips together. “After I left my husband to try and make this work?” She asked, not giving the man time to answer as she took in a breath. “Fine. Maybe you’re right. You can’t do this anymore. Because now you’ve realized the weight of your decisions. I always wanted you to reflect and realize what you did wrong, to take accountability. I just didn’t expect it to lead to this.”

“I just can’t do it. I can’t look at Henry or Michael without feeling immense guilt. I broke up the dynamic they were used to, at least contributed to it. We’ve both lost important things to us. The only difference is, you’re lucky enough to have your children. You could salvage a cordial relationship with Will. I’ve lost everything.” 

“You’re unbelievable!” The blonde stared at the taller male in disbelief. “You are throwing a pity party for yourself because suddenly you feel the need to be jealous over what Emily has? After this whole experience, I can tell you that Y/N is much better off with her than she is with you.”

The ugly truth that hit Spencer harder than a train derailed from the tracks.

“I have to agree that this needs to end. You also need to leave those two alone. If anything, take my advice on that. Let them live. Let them be happy.” She frowned while bringing her hands up to tiredly rub at her face. “She doesn’t love you and you need to realize that.”

Those words stuck with Spencer, even whenever he made it to his apartment later that night. He was pacing around his living room, arms over his chest, as he really had time to think about everything. The silence never did him any favors, but he couldn’t even ignore his thoughts with a book like he usually could. He tried. 

Every conclusion that he conjured up was the same; he needed to leave you alone. Not that easy, though. You knew him better than the others did. You two talked and shared a lot in the time frame of knowing each other.

He got a horrible idea, one that he knew he shouldn’t have had, but it was an idea. 

With his hand digging into his pocket, he was eventually retrieving his phone, getting into it before getting to his contact list.

There wasn’t much scrolling that had to be done, eventually finding a familiar name. Your name. He was silently outweighing his options. You could answer, you could block him, or you could flat out ignore him.

So, throwing caution to the wind, he hit call, slowly sitting in the middle of the floor as he patiently waited for an answer.

The 12: Work Culture, Death Cult, & Endgame

The 12 is a crime organization and shadow government. They are named after the 12 hidden figures at the top and have many working under them. They have an agenda requiring the destabilization of all governments, select businesses, and societal resources with their main focus and central hub being Europe and Russia. This is aimed to create chaos, but this is not the endgame.

There is only one race of people in history who have managed to have world domination, before that many others have made an attempt: the Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc. and many other groups, nations and people who have been inspired to seek power and control have succeeded in some part of the world at one point or another. The 12 is just another one looking for their own power grab, which some would say they already have, but they are aiming for the jackpot.

The 12 have been around for decades, they at least have existed since the late 80s, so let’s say since the later half of the cold war. But what makes the 12 so different from any other mob/mafia, crime ring, secret society, etc. One thing is clear they have been planning for a long time, and their domino's are falling clean and precise, but since the season 2 finale (and season 3 finale), their cleanly laid out plan is going sideways. This is my attempt to piece together the 12, and analyze its nucleus. Let’s get into it!:

Work Culture:

The 12 is strictly hierarchical, it’s a secret organization that infiltrates any and every sector deemed important. It acts also as a political or religious operation, there is a shared belief and reward system. Keep in mind that the 12 is decentralized, meaning there is no one way of attack that brings them down. They are a 12 headed dragon.

There are 3 main hierarchy’s within the 12; the Masterminds, the Puppeteers, and the Puppets:

The Masterminds:

They are IT. They are the multi organ of this organization. The 12 is run by a group of people who have deep, old connections and old money. They are an exclusive, elitist, an almost ‘aryan-esque’ type deal. They are the privilege, the uber wealthy, the entitled, they are not in touch with the rest of humanity. They have a shared vision, a grand delusion, and the resources and plans to get it. There is a question on whether they get their hands dirty and how anonymous they are, but fortunately they have the Puppeteers for that.

The Puppeteers (keepers,etc):

These ‘managers’ are fairly high up in government and business sectors. They also have the same characteristics and backgrounds of their Masterminds. They are many questions about them as well, their job description is rather vague.

We can summarize that a Keepers job is to help make their bosses dream become a reality, of course with rewards. I believe they also know the 12’s identity and keep them safe and hidden. When all destabilizes they’ll be there to make sure the power flows where it should. Raymond and Paul could have been keepers, but we don’t know for sure do we.

The Puppets (Handler, Informants, Assassins, etc.):

This is straight forward. They do the dirty work, run the lower operation, get the dirt, and kill the targets and so it goes. Many are the readily disposable and replaceable. Notice that many among the 12 are apart of government offices. This lower tier has many government agents, like Konstantin, Dasha, Colonel Zhang Wu and of course Frank (though there’s evidence he may have been in deeper). This group also has a sub hierarchy, as handlers and informants are above assassins.

Death Cult:

What mentality does the 12 function, it’s almost occult, hence the use of ‘the 12, the all powerful number’. A cult is not just strictly defined as religious or spiritual group of beliefs but be defined as philosophical belief, a shared common interest in a personality, objects, or goal. Will like to say that the 12 is not a typical cult, but crime organizations, mafias, and secret societies etc. all have characteristics that are considered cultish. Heck fandom is considered to have cult mentality characteristics.

But what are the 12 specifically ‘worshiping’? What is their shared goal, their shared vision? The cult of capitalism, elitism and white supremacy; so basically money and power and perverse utopia. The 12 is what I call a Death Cult, now this is not used in the traditional sense where a religious cult that worships death and partakes in mass homicides and suicides.

A death cult is a perfectly distinguishes of the 12, as this is an organization you can’t get out of alive. In a death cult, no lives matter just the belief just the goal. They are willing to sacrifice everything around them except themselves to achieve their agenda, and if they go down they’ll take everyone down with them. Not all in the 12 are into the agenda, but are there for the money, the rewards, and the power. Example, Villanelle has no stake in what they believe, she just wants the money, benefits, and for a brief period the power.

The 12 infiltrate, recruit, and divide and conquer - sound familiar? They are everywhere in business and government with their hand in different honey jars strategizing their plans. They have a deadline though, and their plan is (was) going very well.

This culture and cult of wealth, power, and white supremacy, what do they want?

Endgame:

What really is the endgame, it’s not just chaos, that’s just the tool. When there are times of chaos and turmoil it’s easier to seize power. As history has recounted time and time again of political factions rising to power during economic lows, disease, and unrest, that’s where the power is a free for all. Coup’s happen all the time, during the past 2 years at least 4 attempts and successes have happened around the world.

If you want to build a new world, chaos is where it’s at.

Really it’s a grand delusion, and not rooted in reality, but with enough power, money, and of course “destabilizing from the ground up”. This vision can become a sick reality. What do all rich elitists, power hungry, white supremacists want; they want the world at their fingertips. They want perfection (eugenics), they want ‘law and order”, they want their version of utopia that they can rule, control, and exploit.

This may be a fictional universe but we are actually living in a world where a certain race and class of people actually succeeded in world domination *cough*

Final Thoughts:

So yes the 12 are the mustache twirling villain, the Dr. Evil seeking world domination. The 12 is a dream shadow organization and terrorist group that conspiracy theorists would jerk off to. But they are dumbasses who let two lesbians go buck wild. The 12 in my eyes are sorely lacking, supposedly this all powerful shadow government with all their resources and what not to take over the world and their just a looming shadow with no bite just a blah subplot to the actual story line which is Villaneve. And I’m not complaining but the 12 plot drives me up the wall with questions, hopefully season 4 let’s the Villaneve plot and the 12 subplot converge more and not leave it unsatisfactory.

I'm here to talk to you again about the WLF. This time I'm more of focusing on their history and method.

Under the cut because there are a lot of pictures and words again.

This is another shot of the farmland outside of their stadium base. I wanted to include this for two reasons: first, because I just think it is pretty, and second, because it's a pretty good representation of the WLF in Seattle. They are organized, they have their shit together, but the fight is always there in front of their eyes. When there is a truce there is still the work of clearing all those buildings of infected, or at least the ones they want to explore or use. When the truce is broken, they also have the Seraphites to deal with. The Seraphites who aren't afraid to place camps in their backyard, who aren't afraid to die for their prophet and the greater good.

The first thing you need to understand about the WLF is that everything goes through Issac. He is the only known survivor of the original WLF leaders. He is also the man that came up with the strategy that allowed them to defeat FEDRA: total elimination of the enemy. Originally, the WLF's strategy seemed to focus on smuggling, distributing anti-FEDRA propaganda, making fake ration cards, and the occasional murder of a FEDRA officer. Once the original leaders of the WLF died, Issac took things even further. He increased the protests and the attacks on FEDRA units, culminating in a coup and the killing of anyone who still claimed loyalty to FEDRA. This also included seeking and and eliminating anyone who ever worked for FEDRA (sometimes even if they helped the WLF). His strategy was brutal, but it worked. The WLF took control of most of Seattle (except Scar Island) and all of FEDRA's checkpoints and resources. This made them the most well supplied group in the game, with thousands of potential soldiers at their disposal.

Here you can see him in his penthouse suite at the FOB. I made a post about this before, which you can see here.

Here you can see a list of assignments for the WLF.

Issac picks squad leaders (but lets them assign patrol routes), he can banish people to far ends of the QZ as punishment, he can have anyone imprisoned or executed, he decides on their overall battle strategy, he is the one making the executive decisions.

Issac is also the one that instilled an almost cultish mindset in the WLF. During the coup against FEDRA, he signed letters with "May your survival be long". That, and the reply "May your death be swift", tells you a lot about the culture of the WLF. They are super gung-ho, you can see that in many of the notes you find from people within the WLF. They often talk about their desire to go out in a "blaze of glory", that it is better to go out fighting than sitting at home. The enemy is anyone that stands in the way of the WLF, especially Scars.

It's actually a smart strategy if you want to motivate people to go out and kill. I wonder if Issac was former military himself, or at least a student of history and politics.

As previously mentioned, the WLF took over all of the areas previously controlled by FEDRA. The biggest being the base at the Stadium, but all of the other outposts you see (the school, the hotel, the conference center), were all also former checkpoints for FEDRA. The walls, guard towers, weapons, vehicles, radios, and most of the infrastructure came from FEDRA. Anything they still use just had the word FEDRA removed and WLF was painted over it. However, sometimes you can still find signs and other things with FEDRA markings.

Above you can see an example of their rapid response strategy. They patrol areas they claim, but if there are reports of infected, trespassers or Scars, they have stations like this at their base and at the FOB so that they can quickly send out units to support. Their main means of getting around is via the highway (also seen in this picture) or the roads around it (there is a huge intersection for the highway that is directly next to their base and they seem to mostly control these roads). They also use the highway to cross the rapids.

FEDRA had previously allowed people to remain in certain zones, which ended up being a major weakness for them as their forces and supplies were constantly stretched throughout the whole QZ. One of the main things the WLF changed was forcibly moving everyone to their main base, that way they could concentrate most of their supplies in one secure area. You can also see that they weren't that much different than FEDRA, killing anyone that did not obey their commands.

The biggest difference between the WLF and FEDRA is that the WLF were much more organized. Very brutal, but also very organized. Moving everyone to one place also allowed them to start farming on a much bigger level, removing one of the biggest reasons people complained about FEDRA (food shortages). It's not hard to see why so many people followed along with the WLF. At this point they had been living under military rule for at least 5 to 10 years, and they were faced with constant shortages of food and other supplies. Yes, the WLF were brutal, but they were like a better version of FEDRA. Why fight back when they can offer food AND security?

Of course, that doesn't mean that the WLF didn't face resistance. You see one story of that when Ellie goes to Hillcrest. You also see that with the Seraphites, who become their main enemy after they have eliminated all other resistance within the QZ.

If you want to take a look a look at where the WLF are located and where they patrol, check out the Seattle maps here.

The main FOB building you usually see (the one with the bigass sign) is a hotel where the soldiers stay when stationed at the FOB or in training). The building above is the part hotel, and part prison/torture chamber. The top level is also the one that Issac stays in.

The culture of the WLF is heavily militarized. They have ranks (there is at least one person who signs their name with the rank "Sgt.", he is one of the torturers at the FOB), they wear (presumably) old military gear, they are strict about following orders, and many of them are eager to fight. Outsiders, whether they are Seraphites, trespassers, or deserters, are dehumanized to the point where anything is permissible against them. Even torture, even genocide.

And that's it today for the WLF. Eventually I want to talk about the Seraphites strategy and their home, but that will have to wait. Once again, if you read all this you are my people.

'Depends on the Wagon' liveblog!

I saw someone do timestamps in their liveblog and it was absolutely lovely, so I think I'll try that too

1:55 why does Curtain sound like an mlm ceo LMAO

2:07 WOW ASSHOLE 😂😂 waving off your own teacher when he was complimenting you is not the vibe

2:17 so Dr. Curtian is only available through chain emails. Got it.

2:27 he seems like the kind of asshole to say that people on welfare are lazy and exploitave but then like, not pay his taxes

2:42 I DON'T LIKE HOW HE SAID THAT, THAT WAS CREEPY

2:47 oooooh Constance, always asking the right questions

3:05 Kate, why are you yelling, it's literally past curfew 😂

3:35 oh hai Jackson.. gtfo

4:22 oh yeah, the best way out is through the hallway that Jackson just entered. Good plane, babe.

4:25 soooo Kate Depending On Friends arc :)

4:59 AYYY HI RHONDA!!

5:13 why do I kinda fucking love then all deciphering the Morse code together

5:20 so the kids use the gemini riddle? Not the adults???

5:36 his face when he figures it out 😭😭😭

5:46 Nathaniel? Guess that's Dr. Curtain's name now. Less ridiculous than Ledroptha, but you dont get the badass Let Drop the Curtain reference

6:53 okay so no one knew he had a brother? But he did???

7:21 his faaaace 🥺

7:29 AWWW HE COULDNT BRING HIMSELF TO SHARE 😭😭😭 okay I'm kinda on board with the change if they can make it work in the long-haul

7:42 hi Milligan, good timing 😂

7:56 "not the time.........I'll take a dozen" Number Two my LOVE

8:23 interesting. I dont think Mr. Benedict was adopted in the books? He certainly didn't let Violet's family, the Hopefields, because he knew their financial troubles would be even worse. So who?

8:54 ohhhh dear, stages of grief at work. Maybe don't do that

9:05 I talked about this in the MBS discord server, but I think the show is really nailing Mr. Benedict's feelings. He's always been an emotional person, but he has to be so careful. Bottling up your feelings only leads to bigger feelings later. It makes so much sense for Mr. Benedict to be a whirlpool of strong, repressed emotions.

9:11 MILLIGAN'S FACE JAHAHS

9:34 RHONDA'S FACE HAGSKDGDJ

9:40 Mr. Benedict, sweetheart 🥺❤

10:01 "brothers stick together" why does it sound like he's talking about Reynie here 😭😭😭😭

10:12 that is a good ass point, Mr. Benedict already lied to them once

10:21 it makes sense for Sticky to be the one questioning the most because of his anxiety, but damn

10:46 AWWWWWW

10:56 KATE MAKING A BED FORT KATE MAKING A BED FORT KATE MAKING A BED FORT

11:00 I dont like how aggressive Kate is but it makes sense considering she's been in the circus for years, taking care of herself for far longer than she hasn't. She's not good at depending on people, and she's not good with difficult people.

11:10 Yeahh, Constance gets it!

11:40 Yeahhh, Constance gets it

12:55 that teacher seemed pretty nice last episode, nice to see that they're not what they seem just the same as Dr. Curtain lol

13:28 CONSTANCE I LOVE YOU 😂😂

14:00 "check again" okay so Krista from the tests and Martina give off the same vibe.. perfect 😂

14:16 "yeah......hang in there :D"

15:05 all of the apologies to the general class.. he's such an anxious sweetheart. He's really reading as autistic to me.

My sister just called me 😑 it's like 8 am, I answered her like "did you ever consider that you might be waking me up?" She did not consider that 😂

15:22 Martina's face just growing more and more annoyed and disgruntled HAHA

15:29 that was CORRECT?? WHAAAA

15:51 throwback to when I compared Dr. Curtain to an mlm ceo.. definitely like a cult

16:44 ohhhh Martina

17:30 CONSTANCE HEARING VOICES HELLOOOOO

18:22 ayyyyyy helper man

18:40 he seems too cheery to be a helper .-. The helpers all being super sad made [redacted]'s story make a whole lot more sense

19:35 aaaand now we get to it. You know, it really does seem a lot more cultish on screen than in the book

19:53 WAIT CONSTANCE GOOD JOB PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER 😂😂😂😂

19:53 that cut to Milligan making that exact face was INCREDIBLE

20:05 was he tryna leave? Yeah, good fuckin luck bucko

20:10 "critical papers at home" my ass, they packed everything up

20:24 the stages of grief back at it. 🥺

20:38 their relationship >>>>

21:00 "located in the..?" *description of envelope* "located in the....?" *more description* "located in the????" 😂😂😂😂

21:34 ohhhhh Thursday must be the student ranking day

21:56 Martina seems like the kind to throw out "pick a god and pray" as a crit quote 😂

22:07 I don't see any of the Society'a names on the list. Maybe they havent been there long enough

22:17 OH SHIT JK THERE THEY ARE

22:25 ohh Kate and Constance

22:55 the combination of the ferry horn and the bell makes it weirdly grim

23:55 them bringing Kate up and reminding her that she's needed 😌✨

24:29 hi Milligan bb ilyyyy

24:35 real good lookout guys, y'all are so well hidden

24:52 AYY HE'S DOING IT KATE STYLE

26:31 "visionary" is a word for it

26:31 I really kinda love that Number Two and Rhonda are going to such depths to try and help Mr. Benedict figure this out for sure

26:56 Mr. Benedict fully walking away while they talk about his brothers accomplishments 😂 I'm laughing, but poor guy

27:08 his FACE 🥺

27:28 HERE'S THAT TANTRUM FROM THE TRAILER

27:28 take your guesses how many times will he fall asleep

27:50 "he just has to work through some things" you dont fuckin say

27:55 you mean to tell me he had a full blown meltdown and they didn't show him falling asleep once??

28:35 like father like daughter 😌✨

29:10 ayyyy secret desk compartment

29:19 honestly I'm surprised there were actually papers he needed and it wasnt an excuse to go confront Dr. Curtain

29:32 oh shit, how'd they manage to get that far inside? No one was there to guard it, but the maze itself is a security measure

29:42 KATE STYLE STRIKES AGAIN

29:47 ooooh I like Dr. Curtain's office

30:01 WAS THAT SQ AND DID HE JUST CALL DR. CURTAIN HIS DAD

30:41 birds have careers. Got it 😂

30:50 JOURNAAAL

31:02 the fox?? Reynard the fox???

31:27 ohhh here we go, Dr. Curtain sees himself in Reynie only to resent it later

31:37 Mr. Benedict called Reynie a leader once too.. the parallels have ✨begun✨

32:12 is this the "keep your enemies close" conversation??

32:15 I'm honestly surprised he called him Sticky and not George

32:42 IT IS SQ IT IS SQ IT IS SQ

32:59 sooo that starts by not letting his caution down with you

33:11 Dr. Curtain congratulating himself mid-conversation on saying something deep is so in character

33:20 "I was betrayed by someone very close to me" so that was Mr. Benedict. Who the fuck else would it be

33:23 WHAT DID I SAAAAY

33:31 oh noooo Reynie starts doubting Mr. Benedict here? Is that the move?

33:43 that transition was so pretty stoppp

33:53 again how hasn't he fallen asleep

34:55 ayyyy journal snooping

35:05 Constance, my love, you are cut throat

35:11 Milligan is in the DRYWALL? ohh buddy be careful

35:21 omfg are they talking about water polo 😂 I love that that's the sport of choice

35:51 ayyyy they put the Milligan dots together too. Shame the guy's not with them rn

36:36 so Mr. Benedict brings up cheating first? I really like how we get to see the adults riddling out what to send back, we didn't get that at all in the books

37:46 I LOVE THAT THEY KEPT "don't get caught"

38:51 Kate riddling out the island schematics engineer style is so like her

39:07 they're just walking out the door?? Huh???

39:29 babe... turn off your flashlight

39:33 AND THAT'S WHY

39:58 is that the precursor to chuckroot?

40:38 the papers were from his orphanage 🥺🥺🥺

41:14 why does that break my heart

41:19 Dr. Curtain and SQ doing shit together it just.. so heartwarming

42:00 HAHA

42:16 okay, so show!Curtain is a kissass 😂

42:35 wait wait wait so Dr. Curtain is actively trying to contain his brother? That would explain why the Recruiters were looking for him and weirdly not the kids

43:25 "power wants to be free" sounds more like a personal mantra than a conversation between engineers

43:41 YES A LETTER TO MISS PERUMAL

44:02 more voices. Poor Connie girl 🥺

44:36 he loves her so much 😭😭😭

44:45 SHE TRIED TO SEND HIM A CARE PACKAGE

45:13 WORRIED MOM TIMEEE