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ellieslittlewh0re · 5 months

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ִ ⋆｡ °✩ ❝ 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐄 𝐋♡𝐕𝐄 ❞ ✩°｡⋆

(𝒘𝒌) 5k

〚𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒〛 ✰ rockerstar! ellie x groupie! reader ✰

〚𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒〛 ellie williams. her name was everywhere- the underground music’s next breakout star, and for a good reason too- a honeyed voice mixed with gravel, her passion, energy, the fact she was everything rock and roll should be. also, let’s not forget the sex appeal.

〚𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒〛 sex, love, drugs, and rock and roll. !!TW!! for descriptions of drug usage ( c0cain, L$D) fingering (r! receiving), oral (r! receiving), strap on usage (r! receiving) overstim kinda, dom e!, sub r!

It started with a video- a grainy, shity quality one at that, but still a video. She was center stage of some grungy bar from the looks of it, spotlights illuminating her face enough to see stands of her hair sticking to her forehead with sweat, and a chipped cherry red electric guitar hanging from her shoulder. She was magnetic, hypnotizing- not just with her performance, but her looks as well.

From that day on, you just had the desire to get closer to her in any way you could.

It had been two months since you started following her band while they toured across the West Coast. You had been to every show, seen every performance, and Ellie was starting to catch on.

The first time she saw you, you immediately caught Ellie's attention- I mean, how could you not? You were by far the hottest girl in the venue that night, swinging your hips so effortlessly it put the rest of the girls to shame. Ellie remembers that night vividly because she was so pissed she couldn't find you after the show to bring you back to her shitty motel room and have her way with you. But Ellie quickly forgot about you when the company of two other girls took your place that night, along with a few too many hits of whatever her drug of choice was during that time.

So, that's how you ended up here- at a run down gas station bathroom touching up your makeup in the middle of the fucking desert, and a van full of strangers that you were currently hitching a ride with waiting outside at the pumps.

And Ellie? Well, Ellie was doing what she always does before a show- drugs, and lots of them, whether it was molly, coke, weed, tabs, or maybe even a deadly concoction of all the above, she didn't care as long as it made her feel alive- claiming it made her perform better or something, but really she just liked being fucked up while fucking girls after the show.

While Ellie was living this "glamorous" rockstar lifestyle, you were on the complete opposite end- quitting your day job to follow some girl around who doesn't even know your name and catching rides from people who definitely look like they have seen the inside of a prison cell- AKA, you were a groupie.

The air was hot, stale. A thin layer of orangy, rust-colored sand coated the windows and the van's gaudy upholstery. The landscape outside flashed like an old fashioned reel movie, cacti, shrubs, Joshua trees, and repeat.

It was desolate, and if the road and occasional mile marker wasn't there to remind you, you would've thought you were on a different planet.

"Your stop is next, daisy." The man with a handle bar mustache yelled from the drivers seat, meeting your eyes in the review mirror.

Daisy. A nickname given to you by the group when they first picked you up further up north. You had a daisy tucked behind your ear, and from then on, you were daisy.

It was dark by the time you arrived at the venue, venue isn't really how you would describe it. It was more like a diner turned bar turned into whatever the fuck it was currently. You waved your goodbyes to the the group of not-so-strange strangers, all of them bidding you 'farewells' and 'good lucks' before you watched the red tails fade into the pitch dark of the desert.

For once, you were early. Turns out a bunch of traveling hippies and outcasts aren't on a timed schedule, who knew?

Even though you were early, the dirt patch of a parking lot was packed, cars in various stages of deterioration lining the sides of the building, and people gathering outside to avoid the cramped interior. But you weren't here to socialize or drink and get high- you just wanted to see her, dance to the strum of her guitar, and let her voice consume and overtake you.

It was 40-ish minutes past midnight, meaning Ellie and her band were late, but that's not a surprise. She had a bad habit of keeping the people waiting, but she was a busy girl- hanging out backstage or at a hotel, a room full of girls for her to pick from, and no shortage of drugs and alcohol. But tonight, she went a little too overboard. Her band mates were practically carrying her across the motel parking lot to their van, trying to get her to sober up on the way to the venue with water and motivational speeches that mostly consisted of "get your fucking shit together".

The short 30 minute drive to the venue was barely long enough to get Ellie back in the right state of mind. She was slightly unsteady on her feet, and her speech was a little slurred, but she's used to preforming under these conditions.

You waited patiently of course, babying a strong cocktail mix since you didn't dare get drunk and risk not remembering every detail of the night- every detail of her.

When the crowd shifted their attention to the back entrance of the building, silent murmurs at first before a load cheer erupting was when you knew, she was here, and she looked like heaven- a black tank top that was torn near the neckline, a studded belt loosely securing a pair of baggy, black patchwork cargo pants.

The crowd parted a pathway for her as she made her way through the room with her bandmates following behind, a cigarette tucked between her lips as she'd occasionally stop to sign whatever was thrown at her- a piece of paper, cash, a pair of tits- which she'd always happily comply, but if she saw a girl she liked, she would lick her pointer finger and index, smearing part of her signature on their cleavage while the marker was still wet to subtly let you know that she wanted your company for the night- at least, that's the rumor you've heard.

You found yourself holding your breath- she was so close, a mere body or two keeping you at arm's length from her. You could smell the cigarette smoke, and see the details of her chipped black nail polish holding the marker between her fingers.

Ellie hands the notebook and marker back into the wave of hands, looking up while blowing out a cloud of smoke, and that's when she sees you. She was about to walk off, but she stopped for a second. You don't look like you belong- you were different, sweet, and innocent-looking compared to the rest of the audience. But she doesn't let her eyes linger long, she has a show to put on after all.

She turned, and walked towards the stage stairs, and centered herself behind the mic. She shifted her weight on her feet, and took one last drag of the cigarette before suffocating the embers on a ashtray near the edge of the stage.

"How's everyone doing tonight?" She barely could make out before the crowds hollering drowned out her voice. She laughed into the mic while plugging a cord into her guitar that was connected to a beefy looking amp.

Her ego was at its biggest right now- just her mere appearance could make a group of strangers act like dogs, and she fucking loved it.

She played a few cords on the guitar, ensuring the tune was where she wanted it before looking back up into the crowd, "c'mon, you can do better than that." And even though her mouth was covered by the mic, you could tell she was smirking.

The crowd cheered louder, fists clenched high above the sea of heads, and chanted her name over and over exactly how she wanted them to.

And for you? Well, you were also chanting her name, maybe not as loud, but you were too busy squeezing your way through to get to the front.

She needed to be able to see you.

And she did see you- you were front row, playfully singing and dancing along, your bright, twinkling eyes boring into every little thing she did- from the way she'd run her hand through the front of her hairline, ridding her face of the baby hairs and bangs, down to the way her fingers curled over the frets of her guitar. She made sure to look elsewhere into the crowd, interacting with everyone, but her eyes always found themselves back on you.

Ellie closed out the show with an encore, most of the crowd was overly intoxicated at this point, stumbling, and starting meaningless fights with whoever was closest- aka the usual time you'd leave, but you couldn't, at least, not when Ellie was walking towards you, her eyes set on you. You glanced to your right then your left- confused, and definitely was searching for an explanation as to why she was getting closer. Surely, it was someone else who caught her attention, but it was only you nearby.

You take a step back from the stage as the tips of her dirty converse near the edge. She bends down at the knees before sitting all together, dangling her legs over the edge. She doesn't say anything, and you didn't either, maybe from intimidation mixed with confusion as to why she chose to sit here out of all places.

She reaches her tattooed arm behind, shifting her weight to pull out a pack of cigarettes, and offering the carton to you, but you shyly decline. She smirked, a dimple deepening on the one side of her cheek, "So-" She said, her voice momentarily muffled by the cigarette between her lips, "-you don't look like you're from here, where'd you come from, baby?" She ignited the end with a metal lighter, holding a free hand up to cover the flame which only amplified the warm glow of the flame on her face.

You chuckled a nervous laugh, looking down at your fingers as she blew out a puff of smoke, "M' not. I'm from up north. " Your voice trembled, leaking with submission and uncertainty which only fascinated her more, but also she was frustrated- most girls wouldn't need a conversation to know what Ellie wanted from them, and you weren't looking at her.

She grabs your hand, and pulls you closer to the space between her knees. A sharp breath gets caught in your throat as she does this, your cheeks hot, and your gut feels like it's jumping being this close to her- enough to smell the fumes of her cologne mixed with ash. You watch her fingers come up and hover over your chest, her fingers gently dancing along the skin of your clavicle to examine the charm of your necklace, but really it was just a flirtation tactic to her.

"What's a girl like you doing in the desert in the middle of the night, huh?" She asked, dropping her voice down to an almost whisper- raspy, and thick with suggestion. You shake your head side to side, a nervous tick of yours when you felt uncomfortable, but being uncomfortable isn't always a bad thing.

"I uh-" you paused, mentally wavering if you should tell the truth since it does seem a little pathetic. "-I wanted to see you play."

Ellie's eyebrows raise, her bottom lip puckering into a frown with a slight nod. "Is that so?" She hummed, rolling the edges of the charm between her fingers. Ellie was certain she had seen you before. It wasn't a trick of the light or getting your face confused with some other hot chick- you were unmistakable. But she didn't want you to know that she found you out, not yet, not now.

Ellie learned in further, your knees almost buckling out from under you, feeling her breath against your lips. She played it off like she was getting a closer look at your necklace, extending the religious symbolic charm out so the chain tugged on your neck. "Do you believe?" She asked, still looking at the damn necklace, furrowing her brows like she was in a deep philosophical thought.

You swallowed dryly, wishing you still had your drink from easier, "N-not really-" you stuttered, "it was a gift from when I was younger."

Ellie chuckled, but it wasn't lighthearted or sweet- it was dark, methodical, and a tad bit sadistic.

She released the charm from her fingers, letting it hit your bare chest with a muted thud before looking up. Her eyes were a darker shade than you remembered them being- irises blown out and framed beautifully by a thick band of dark eyelashes.

Her hand reached out and gently grabbed you by the wrist before yanking you closer so your tummy was flush with the side of the stage, leaving only a few inches between your tits and the denim of her crotch.

You inhaled a sharp, breathy yelp as she did this, your hands not knowing what to do or where to divert your eyes- her hands on you, her face so close to yours that you could count the freckles on her cheeks, even the ones that are faint enough to miss- or maybe how her thighs were drifting apart, and you were in between them.

Her hand comes up, which causes you to squeeze your eyes shut, but the wrinkles around your eyes relax as you feel her hand on your face and her lips on yours. You moaned instantly at the contact, resting your hand on her thigh where it felt most comfortable. Ellie took this opportunity to slip her tongue inside, using the muscle to work against yours. Her hand snakes down your side, squeezing the soft flesh of your hip before pulling away, leaving you breathless, and hazy.

Her eyes were intense looking into yours, her lips wet and craving a deeper satisfaction.

She only said one thing, a simple sentence that would separate you from being just some regular fan,

"Come with me tonight, and I'll show you something worth believing."

So that's how your night shifted- how one decision to follow some band across the state had finally paid off because now you were here- a hotel room, alone with the band's most valuable member snorting lines of a white powdery substance off of a mirror topped end table.

Ellie held the rolled 20 between her fingers, putting the end of it to her nose while the index on her other closed the opposing nostril shut. She dragged the end of the cylinder across the smuggled surface, inhaling deeply until the white line disappeared behind it.

"Fuuck-" She sighed, throwing her head back, and swipes the bottom of her nose with her thumb,

"Here-" She held out the rolled 20 for you to take, but you lean away,

"I don't do that stuff."

She looks at you curiously, a furrow between her brows that suggests she found your refusal even more entertaining.

Ellie leaned forward and turned her body to face you on the edge of the dusty duvet, "What-" She scoffed, "'think you're too good for it?"

You shook your head violently, indicating a 'no', "No- no, that's not what I meant-"

Ellie laughed, causing you to stop mid-sentence, "I'm just fucking with you, doll. I should've known." She smiles, and you return the smile in relief that you didn't actually offend her.

Your eyes divert to the wallpapered walls- a faint pattern of stripes with cream-colored baseboards, a warm yellowed lamp on the bedside being the only source of light in the room to contrast the night outside.

You felt her hand creep up your thigh, tempting the skin below the hem of your dress before it disappeared underneath the fabric altogether. She leaned in, her other hand on your face to encourage you closer, whispering a "so soft" in a raspy breath before connecting your lips with hers.

It started slow- her lips overlapping yours like a soft current on a still morning before it turned into a ranging one during a windy cast. You moaned into her- soft and delicate mews between each detachment, and it fueled her.

Ellie's body overpowered yours, using her strength to her advantage. But it's not like she needed it- you were putty in her hands, fully committing yourself to her, letting her push you into your back, and her body hovering on top of yours.

You squirmed beneath her- each bump, and drag of her knee between your legs left you feeling more desperate.

"Ellie-" you broke the kiss in a breathless euphoria, looking up at her with a needy expression. Ellie knew that face well- it's not like she had all this experience and didn't know what to do with it, so- she got up, leaving you alone on the bed, and walked over to a black duffle bag decorated with pins of miscellaneous logos and bands.

She riffled through it, pulling a small clear plastic bag out before joining you back on the bed.

She opened the baggie, pulling something out no bigger than the size of a postage stamp, and tearing it into smaller halves before looking up,

"Do you trust me?" She asked, her green eyes piercing into yours, causing a wet sensation to spill from the heat between your legs. You swallowed, not really sure what you were agreeing to, but you nodded anyway, "Yes, Ellie... I trust you."

She placed the colorfully decorated paper on her tongue and held the sides of your face, kissing you and slipping her tongue inside, transferring whatever it was into your mouth before pulling away. "Swallow." She demanded, tilting your face up by your chin, and you did it without hesitation- straining the walls of your throat as the mystery stamp slid downwards.

She smirked, and swiped her thumb over your bottom lip, "good girl."

She followed it up by doing the same, placing the tab on her tongue and swallowing, but she made it seem so much more intentional like a ritual of some sorts.

Ellie leaned away from you in the bed to rest her back against the headboard and pillows, "C'mere" she said nonchalantly, patting her thighs.

With shaky knees, you did as you were told and crawled your way up her legs until you were straddling her waist.

Her hands come up to rest on your hips, her thumbs tracing circles through the flimsy fabric of your dress, "so obedient" she said lightly, almost under her breath to herself and not at you directly.

Her hands started to wander- first on your hips, then down to your thighs, gliding them up to the plush beneath your skirt. You felt her fingertip squeeze and caress, sending chills up your spine and a hot/cold sensation throughout your body.

Next, her lips were on yours, and her fingers were tightening the follicles on the back of your scalp as the kisses became more intense. Your back instinctively arches, and you reach a hand between your legs to soothe the ache, but she stops you with a firm grip on your wrist, "Gettin' impatient, huh?" She said in a cocky tone, smirking against your lips. You whimpered- nodding your head, and grabbed her hand, inching it closer to your core.

Ellie chucked at this- the kind of chuckle that was half way a scoff, and half way felt like an insult.

"Damn- you need me to fill you up that bad? 'thought you were one of them good girls."

She tisked her tongue against her teeth, but still let you guid her hand where you needed her.

The back of her knuckles grazed between the pillowy folds over your panties, going agonizingly slow before turning her hand over to fully palm your cunt.

You melt on top of her, resting your head against her shoulder, all the while dragging your hips against her hand.

She turns her head, her warm breath fanning against the helix of your ear, "You're so wet and I've barely touched you."

Her words echoed throughout your brain like her voice waves were sending signals to every part of your body. And her touch was magnified- each cell, fiber, and pore was experiencing a new sense of heightened, whether it be because of the drugs or not, you couldn't be sure.

"El-Ellie, please... need you."

Your words rang a siren song to Ellie's ears, creating a sticky pool between her own legs. She muttered a guttural "fuck" before she grabs you by the sides of your thighs, flipping you over so she was on top of you.

She was already yanking down your underwear, and tossing them to the side before you could comprehend what was happening. You felt her fingers stinging to the flesh of your thighs, prying them apart like she couldn't wait to see you, to taste you.

You sucked in a sharp breath as her tongue lightly traced a line down your folds before her lips met your clit where she pulsated the bud between her lips, letting out a moan as she made contact, "fuuck-" She curses before flicking her tongue over your bundle of nerves, igniting a colorful array of shapes behind your tightly closed eyes.

She was messy but precise- using her tongue along with the motion of her head to send you that much further. Your fingers tangled in her hair, tugging harder the closer you got which was the perfect time in Ellie's eyes to add a finger.

She slowly pushed her middle finger inside, stopping halfway at her knuckle to let you adjust before slamming it all the way till her knuckles were snug against your puffy lips.

You wriggled beneath her, reaching out to push her away with a palm to her shoulder, but that only makes her add a second finger.

You cry out loudly through heavy breaths, the veins on her forearm coming to the surface of her skin from how much force she was using, and her mouth putting in just as much work.

You were climbing higher and higher, the peripheral of your vision going white-

"Ellie... I'm- I'm gonna-" You don't have much time to warn her before your body starts to spaz, starting at your hips and up into your chest like volts of electricity through a highly active current.

Your knees close around her head, your back arching high off the mattress, and your eyes rolling into the back of your head. She slows her pace as you come down before pulling her fingers out and lifting her head.

With your eyes closed, and an arm draped over your face, you feel her pat the inside of your thigh before her weight leaves the bed.

She comes back a couple of minutes later, only opening your eyes when you feel her weight return to the mattress.

Your eyes go wide as you take notice of the new attachment- a black, strappy harness with buckles near her hips, and a crude shaped silicone cock bulging at her crotch.

She lowers herself over you, her hands on each side of your head before she leans down to kiss you, slipping her tongue inside. She pulled back, momentarily admiring the way you looked just from something as simple as oral and some fingering- glossy eyes, puffy lips smeared with her spit, and if she looked down- how your inner thighs glistened.

Her lips trial from yours, staring at your neck, then your chest, and finally your tits which Ellie had absolutely no problem with pulling the straps down to expose them, leaving the fabric bunched around your stomach. In her eyes, everything she wanted- no, needed was accessible this way.

Ellie looks up, placing a delicate kiss on the skin of your lower stomach, "Got one more fr' me, pretty girl?" She asked softly, tenderly, but it still managed to come off more intimidating than a question should sound.

You nodded shyly, a small whine emitting from the back of your throat, looking down at her with your breasts out for her viewing, grabbing pleasure, and your legs spread wide, ready to take her.

She lifted her upper half up, slim fingers holding the base of her cock, and lined the artificial tip with your entrance. She glided the tip up your folds, coating it with your slick, and let out a sultry exhale since she could practically see your walls clenching around nothing in preparation for her.

She teased you for a bit- only giving you a couple of inches before backing away and repeating, each time causing you to whine harder and harder out of frustration. Sure, Ellie was having her fun watching you squirm, grab for her, and fuck- how your hole gapped each time she pulled out, a clear, viscous fluid leaking from it, but she was growing just as impatient- feeling your legs wrap around her waist, pulling her closer, pleading variations of her name and "please" and who is she to deny you when you ask so nicely?

She thrusts her hips forward until her crotch was flesh with your ass, your legs in the air, and her hands pushing on the back of your thighs.

"Is this what you wanted, huh?" She gritted, pulling her hips back only to snap them forward again.

You cried out loudly, curling your fingers around the bedsheets until the blood stopped circulating, turning the skin there a lighter shade than the rest of you.

She pushed harder on the back of your thighs- your knees pressed up against your chest, and using what you can imagine is all of her strength to thrust into you. She was reaching the deepest part of your cervix- grunting and moaning on Ellie's end while you mewled high-pitched noises mixed with the wet slapping of her cock repeatedly slamming into you.

Ellie's eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly upward, and her lips parted as insufficient, short breaths seep from them. Her hips started to falter from the endless abuse her clit was suffering behind the base of her strap, her boxers now a sticky, cold mess that stuck to her cunt and thighs.

She collapses on top of you, snugging herself between your legs to connect her lips to yours in a desperate effort, overpowering all your senses with her. She continues to fill you over and over again, both of you moaning in between breathless lips.

You wrapped her arms around her as her head hung low into your neck, digging your nails into the skin of her shoulder blades.

"El... mmhm- I'm gonna-" You babbled before biting your lip to silence the cry that was bubbling in the back of your throat, and Ellie wasn't far behind.

The pistoning motions of her hips turned into a grinding one- keeping a steady pace and rolling her hips forward, "M-me too- fuck... stay with me, yeah?" She said in between soft pants, the warmth of her breath brushing against your lips as her hand came up to gently but firmly wrap around your neck.

Ellie's head goes fuzzy as you looked up at her with your half-hooded gaze and your perfectly rosette lips that are just begging to be wrapped around something, so- she released the hold she had on your neck and brought her two fingers that were previously inside of you to your mouth.

She didn't even have to say anything for you to part your lips wider, slipping her fingers inside and rolling them over your tongue.

You moan, closing your lips around her as her fingers reach further back, causing tears to fall from the corner of your eyes.

"That's it-" She coaxed, her eyes focused on the split trailing down your chin,"-such a good girl."

She motioned her fingers in and out in a vulgar manner, bitting her bottom lip before pulling her fingers out all together to fist the bed sheets beside her.

"Fuckfuckfuck-oh my god-" She grunted incoherently, dropping her head to space between your neck and shoulder. Her forehead glistened with proof of her efforts as she rushed the pace to ease the itch between her legs.

You tightened your legs around her waist, pretty little noises falling on Ellie's ears as you both peak.

She rolls her hips- making it slow and deep until your voice grows tired and quiet before pushing her upper half away from you.

You wince at her absence, feeling your walls retract back to its original shape like the sand inside of an hourglass.

She plopped down beside you with an exaggerated sigh of exhaustion, pulling up the bottom of her tank top to wipe the slick/sweat mixture from her chin and nose, giving you a few seconds to admire her hardened stomach and prominent 'v' which lead your eyes down to the fake dick still standing high between her thighs.

She catches you looking, the corner of her lips tugging into a smirk as she lets out a low chuckle.

You meet her eyes, realizing you have been caught, which causes you to look away quickly, but her hand grabs yours.

"Gettin' shy on me now after all that?" She said, pulling at your hand to silently instruct you to get on top of her, so you did.

Her hands rub up and down your thighs, and her bottom lip snug between her teeth. She eyes your body, starting from your tits down to her cock that is resting against your lower stomach.

"Wanna do me a favor?" She asked, palming the fat of your thigh that spilled over the heels of your feet. You hummed at her- a sweet, genuine hum that was full of eagerness to assist her, which almost made Ellie feel bad for what she was about to say- key word almost.

"Put that pretty little mouth of yours to use and clean me up."

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isimpoveryou · 1 month

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arthur leclerc x ex!reader / max verstappen x reader (not yet but will be in the next part)

fc: olivia rodrigo

{𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓}

f2wag

likes by randomuser and 2.380 others

f2wag Y/N L/N AND AND ARTHUR LECLERC BROKE UP

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user01 NO WAY?!

leclercbrothers AS MUCH AS I LOVE CHARLES AND ARTHUR WE NOW GET IT WHY THEY'RE IN FERRARI

user02 whyyyy??? im so confused

lovelyy/n red flags

liked by yourinstagram

user03 I CANT HEAR Y/N SONG THE SAME ANYMORE 😭✋️

chery/n SO REA MOST OF HER SONG ARE ABOUT HIM

artleclercfan "Like a symphony of stars, our love dances through the night. With you, every moment feels just right." im done thats all from me

yourinstagram ✔︎

liked by alexandrasaintmleux and 1,728,091 others

yourinstagram you're losing me released in all platforms

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lovelyy/n what happened to hello?

lilymhe how are you?

yourinstagram HAHAHAH 😭😭

alexandrasaintmleux SO GOOD 🥹

yourinstagram THANK YOU SO MUCH ALEXXX 🥰🥰🥰🥰

user01 THE BRIDGE THE BRIDGE THE MF BRIDGE

user03 ITS SO MWAH MWAH MWAH (sadly)

user03 ARTHUR LECLERC WHEN I FIND YOU!

maxverstappen1 😍

maxverstappenfan HE IS SHOOTING HIS SHOT 😭😭😭

landonorris i dont think thats what we deal at the groupchat

danielricciardo shut up lando let him get into his verstappen rizz

yourinstagram @maxverstappen1 🤗🤗🤗

yourinstagram ✔︎

liked by maxverstappen1 and 927,820 others

yourinstagram me and my daughter

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alexandrasaintmleux my niece 🥹🥹🥹

yourinstagram molly misses youuu

alexandrasaintmleux awwww i miss her more i'll bring her treats the next time we meet

user01 her still being good friends with alex even after the break up makes my heart swell 💞💞

user02 MAX VERSTAPPEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?!?!

user03 he has been liking her pictures after the news of her break up with arthur

maxverstappen1 Cat playdate?

yourinstagram definitely 💞💞

yoursecondaccount

liked by alexandrasaintmleux and 260 others

yoursecondaccount he's okay i guess

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alexandrasaintmleux DONT LIE. YOU LIKE HIM

yoursecondaccount SHUSHHH

charles_leclerc I'm not the one who called at 3 AM to scream how much you want kiss him

yoursecondaccount shut up charles

lilymhe I THOUGHT YOU SAID I WAS THE ONLY ONE POOKIE

lilymhe jokes aside im happy for you pookes

yoursecondaccount YOU ARE DONT WORRY POOKIE! lets runaway and ditch alex and max

alex_albon i can just screenshot this and send this to max

yoursecondaccount i hate you albono

#max verstappen x reader #fake instagram #social media au #instagram au #social media imagines #fake social media #f1 x reader #max verstappen imagines #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen x you #f1 smau #f1 x you #smau

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sophiethewitch1 · 3 months

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What We Want - Chpt. 1 - Not Quite An Isekai

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

You awake to the sound of your phone ringing. You slap to the edge of your couch, aiming for the rickety side table. Your wrist smacks against the corner, and you hiss in pain. It’s a few inches too high, and wood, not metal. Seems you somehow got to your bed during the night, but you didn’t remember it. Still, you get your phone. Through squinted eyes, you find the screen, its 3:15, far too early for your drunken suffering- Wait no, it’s mid-afternoon. Still, you feel tired, and you want to sleep.

You answer the phone anyway, putting it on speaker and resting your head back against the pillow. Your head doesn’t hurt that bad anyway. God was smiling down on you today.

“Miss, are you awake?” a man’s voice rings through your apartment.

Who was that? Who called you Miss of all things? Your boss didn’t remember your name sure, but he just called you ‘intern’ instead. You’d been an official employee for six months now. Right, conversation, paying attention, replying like a normal person.

“Hm, yeah, I’m awake,” you say, fighting back the urge to yawn.

“You don’t sound very awake, Miss,” the man replies, his tone familiar.

“Who is this?”

He sighs, “Miss, are you being sarcastic?”

“What? No, I’m serious,” you confusedly answer.

“…This is Alfred, Miss. Now, Master Wayne has asked me to-”

“Master who now?” you cut this Alfred off, doubly confused now. Wayne? Like, the Wayne family? The rich, philanthropist one?

He sighs again, “I understand the relationship between the two of you is quite strained, and this is a personally difficult day for you, but he insists on seeing you. Your birthday gala starts at 7, as I’ve told you, and your assistant will be over at 4. I ask that you unblock both their accounts, as I would much rather I didn’t have to talk to you when you’re like this.”

“What?” you repeat, like the idiot you are.

“Good day, Miss. And happy birthday.”

He hangs up. You blink down at your phone. And then you roll your eyes, because oh my god are Molly’s pranks getting ridiculous. You never should have told her about your weird fascination with the Waynes, she was getting back at you hard for your drunken mistake.

You make a lot of those. Well, life goes on. You’ll put glitter in Molly’s car’s vanity mirror or something.

You turn off your phone, and let your face slam right back into your pillow. For a while, you try to go back to sleep.

…Something about this isn’t right. You, like the freak you are, take a deep inhale of your pillow. It smells like you, like the laundry soap you use, but it also smells like… Well, you don’t know. All you can think about is your new boss’s wife and her awful perfume that swallows the office space like noxious gas.

Your pillow… kind of smells like that. Your first ungodly thought is that, somehow, you spent a torrid night with your boss’s wife. The second is that Molly needs to die for her crimes.

You let your crusty, bleary, stinging eyes blink open.

Hm. Why is there a chandelier in your bedroom? You shoot upright in the bed, silk sheets falling to your lap. Silk sheets you can’t afford. You look around the room, eyes widening at the space. The bed is king-sized, while you had barely been able to afford your twin-sized mattress. The living room isn’t in the same space as the bedroom. You can’t see the kitchen and the bathroom to your right has shining marble tiles. And even then, the decoration’s are luxurious and clean, compared to your livable chaos.

You look to your left, and your mouth drops open.

A floor-to-ceiling window, showing the Gotham horizon with the morning sun. Fog and clouds twist around spiralling gothic towers, reaching down to the people down below. You’re looking out over the bay, and you can see the Narrows barely peaking through the mist, desperately clawing for any sunlight.

The sun rises on the right of your building, not the left. You don’t have a view, you’re on the fourth floor and there’s a brick building directly across from your window. You live in the Narrows.

You live in the Narrows. You press your face to the cool glass and look down. Oh my god, you can’t see the streetside. You’re too high up. You’re somehow on the opposite side of Gotham City.

Stumbling away from the window, you do your best not to touch anything, because you know it’s all too expensive for your peasant hand. Let’s start thinking… whatever was happening to you, through. Molly might kidnap you for a joke, sure, but she was barely any richer than you, and that was just because her boyfriend lived with her. She could not afford this level of fuckery.

So… so… is this, what? A big joke from the universe? Did someone else kidnap you? You have to have been kidnapped, right? Why the fuck would someone kidnap you?

Did the Joker kidnap you? Was he coming to finish you off? End your family line?

You reach down and pinch yourself hard enough you yelp. When the dazzlingly perfect apartment doesn’t disappear, it’s much harder to force yourself not to panic. Okay, okay, okay. It’s fine. This’ll be fine, and it could still be a dream. That whole pinching thing was a myth, right? Argh, maybe you should’ve listened to Molly when she was trying to get you into astral projection.

Wait, Molly!

You go back to your bed and pick up your phone.

It’s… it’s not your phone. What was this? The iPhone 27? You didn’t keep up with those sorts of things, but it looked expensive. Everything here looked expensive.

You think you’re going to go into anaphylactic shock. Wait, no, it’s hyper-something. What was it? Argh, you can’t do this right now!

You press your thumb to the ‘on’ button, and luckily whoever this phone belongs to is not worried about their privacy because there's no password. Stupidly, you look for Molly’s name in your list of contacts.

BLOCKED - ‘Bruce Wayne’

BLOCKED - ‘Damian Wayne’

BLOCKED - ‘Dick Grayson’

BLOCKED - ‘Tim Drake’

‘Alfred :)’

BLOCKED - ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’

You drop the phone. Because the floors, even in the bedroom, are marble, it shatters like glass. You make a sound like a dying chicken as you watch the piece of technology make a bouncing break for the bathroom. It slides to a stop against the giant hot tub, and you pick it up and cradle it between your palms like a newborn.

The screen still works. Even if it’s cracked to high heaven and takes multiple attempts to turn it on, it still eventually does. Thanks God, won’t forget this. You hiss as you open the contacts again, pricking your fingers against the sharp edges.

As fate commands, you click on the ‘Bruce Wayne’ contact. The description is very simple.

‘Massive dickhead. Hope you jump off a building and fall like a rock.’

You go back. Click on ‘Dick Grayson’.

‘Massive dickhead’s beloved firstborn. Most annoying man on earth congrats.’

Again. ‘Damian Wayne’ this time.

‘Massive dickhead’s massive dickhead. Demon? Grinch? Somebody kill it with fire please.’

And finally, ‘Tim Drake’.

‘The only acceptable one.’

…Well, at least your kidnapper liked one of the Waynes. Maybe they kidnapped you because you were their opposite or something? You definitely wouldn’t call Bruce motherfucking Wayne a massive dickhead. Or maybe they wanted to kill you.

The Molly prank idea was becoming more sound. Maybe she won the lottery and didn’t tell you.

You click on ‘Alfred :)’. He’s the one that called you earlier and also called you ‘Miss’, for some reason.

It’s just a bunch of heart emojis. Coherent, sure.

You go back, and click on the final of the list, ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’.

‘Don’t listen to Alfred. She wants to eat you.’

She wants to what?

A knock at the door has you jumping a foot in the air and nearly banging your head on the bathtub’s lip. You hear someone call your name through the door, and you freeze. Who… how? They call your name again, this time their voice louder. They bang on the door.

You creep over to the door.

“Ma’am, if you don’t open this right now, I’m quitting! We both know Alfred contacted you this morning, and he’s going to be very upset if I do so. There’s only so many assistants in this city!” from this close, you can recognise the voice belongs to a woman. She rattles the doorknob.

You lean down, peering through the peephole. The woman has a harsh face, a perfect pencil suit and her blonde hair in a pretty updo. Her makeup is impeccable. You get the feeling this woman is also more expensive than you can afford, despite her calling your name.

Bewildered, you open the door. She slams through like a battering ram, strutting 6-inch stilettos into the space.

She huffs, and then turns around. You can see very clearly she’s trying to keep her calm, but you did leave her at the door for like five minutes. It wasn’t your fault, you thought you were hallucinating or something.

“Ma’am,” she stresses the word, “Please unblock me.”

You blink at her, “Uh, sure.”

She waits, her hands clasped together in front of her.

“Oh- oh, right now?” you stutter, pulling the phone out from your noticeably lavish pyjamas.

Wait had someone changed you in your sleep? What the hell was going on? Maybe you should be more concerned about that, honestly. Still, you do as she commands.

She watches you like a hawk as you stare at the cracked phone. Your eyes flick up at her, and then back down at the screen. Slowly, watching for her reaction, you unblock ‘The Wicked Witch of the West.’ She nods, not even commenting on what was apparently her name in ‘your’ phone.

You were still slightly concerned about the ‘She wants to eat you’ thing, but she seemed… alright. Kind of scary. But not cannibalistic.

Still, this was Gotham after all. A healthy dose of fear was what kept people like you alive.

“Ma’am, did you just wake up? It’s already 4 o’clock,” she gives you a subtly disapproving look, and your shoulders sink like you’re being scolded.

“Yeah- yeah, sorry about that,” you stammer, embarrassed for some unknowable reason. This really was just like a dream. You could tell something was very obviously wrong, but you were still going along with everything like it wasn’t. Everyday life.

You were going to focus on that, this had to be just a dream. Just go along with… this, and then you’d wake up. And if you could manage to get over the uncanny valley-ness of the very obvious wealth surrounding you, maybe you could enjoy it.

You had always wanted to be rich. This was just your brain spewing out random information. Better than the nightmares you usually get.

You’re abruptly pulled back into focus when the woman clears her throat loudly. Ah, shoot. Had she been talking? You definitely hadn’t been listening.

“We need to get you ready, Miss,” she says like she’s repeating herself. You nod, because yes, of course, getting ready.

Ready for what? You think if you ask her she’ll yell at you. So when she grabs your arm and tugs you along, you follow. She pulls you into the bathroom, sitting you down in front of the mirror on a stool. Because this bathroom has stools in it. You stare at your reflection warily, before glancing up at her behind you.

“The stylists will be here in about forty minutes, and the makeup artists in two hours,” she pauses, giving you a strange look, “I appreciate you being so cooperative today. I understand this is all a delicate matter, but I am under Mr. Wayne’s orders first and foremost.”

“Wayne… like Bruce? Bruce Wayne?” you ask, even though there’s really no one else it could be. Still, you have to check.

Because it’s impossible. Even if it’s a dream, it still feels completely impossible. There was just something inside you that said ‘that can’t be right’, even if you knew none of this was real.

You realise, quite late, that you don’t even know this lady's name. ‘Wicked witch’

“Yes, Ma’am. Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises,” she answers you, pulling out her phone and flicking through it. She doesn’t even respond to what you have to assume is an inane question. Maybe ‘dream you’ often asks stupid questions.

‘Normal you’ certainly does.

“Oh… okay…” the conversation drifts off, and she makes no attempt to fill it. Aren’t P.A.s supposed to… you don’t know, fix that? Or maybe she’s not your personal assistant, just an assistant. Silly you, making assumptions.

This bathroom deserves assumptions. You wonder if the gold frame of the mirror is, y’know, real.

The blonde woman walks out of the room without speaking another word to you. You think maybe you should follow her, but instead you just sit there with your hands on top of your knees. Your leg bounces up and down, and you glare it into submission, ignoring the way your muscles jump.

You look at yourself. You look… different. The bags under your eyes are worse than usual, and your gaze sunken into your face. Your hair is sad and oily, knotted in places. Your skin is almost waxy.

You look sick. You look like… you remember, you look like…

In the light of the day, you refuse to think about it. You’re not allowed to, you’ll break if you do.

You just don’t. Even if your reflection just confirms that you have to be dreaming.

Instead, you turn your gaze to the tub. You raise your hand to your hair again. Back in your apartment, you’d had a shower. It was a surprisingly good shower because you’d invested in a showerhead with better pressure. Still, it wasn’t a bath.

You missed bathes. You get up, close the door, lock it, and sink inside the tub. You take off your silky pyjamas inside the bath, and then you toss them on the floor beside you. Sitting there, you watch through the giant window at the world down below. At the ravens and pigeons that fly through the fog, at the few people you can see through the windows and balconies.

You press your cheek against the glass. It’s cold. You’re cold.

You’re sitting in an empty bathtub naked. What are you doing?

Rubbing at your eyes, you reach over to what you think are the controls. They all look very complicated, but there’s a switch that goes from blue to red, so you turn that. It takes another button press for the water to start flowing out. Steam fills the room, and you let out a sigh of contentment.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, the stylists will be here in ten minutes, and you need to get out. Ma’am? Ma’am!”

You shoot up in the bath, splashing water over the overflowing sides. Blinking, you turn your head back and forth and then sink back down. Oh. You’re still here. You went to sleep, but you’re still here. Maybe it’s one of those dreams where you think you wake up, but you haven’t. Or, ah, something similar.

You feel so tired. You really, really didn’t miss this feeling.

Quickly, you wash your hair and body, scrubbing furiously at the oily sweat on your skin. You stumble out of the bath on shaky legs, dry yourself off, and almost trip in your haste to get out the door. Showing off your negligible intelligence, you only realise you’re still wearing just a towel till she manhandles you towards the closet.

A walk-in closet, because of course it is. You think it’s bigger than your apartment. It has a flat bench in the centre because evidently all the walking around you’ll be doing will require a fainting couch.

The woman gives you, horrifyingly, a set of lacy, racy underwear. When all you do is just gape at her, she sighs, takes them from your hands and gives you a simple black set with no frills. You look down at them clasped in your wet hands. They’re clean, and they seem to be your size.

Still, this is a bit…

“Are these… new?” you ask, because there’s no tag or anything.

“Yes, Ma’am. But if you want, we do have some sets still unpacked at the back of the closet,” she says, going along with your weirdness. Even if she was a bit scary, you were grateful for that, at least. You guess celebrities were usually quite eccentric, so maybe this wasn’t out of the ordinary for her.

“Yes, please.”

She gives you a pair of Victoria’s Secret bra and underwear, plain beige and still in their plastic packaging.

“Cool, sweet, thanks,” you say, and she shakes her head just slightly.

She puts a white bathrobe down, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her. You lock it, and then you put on the underwear that you did not buy. The whole experience is strange, but still, you just go along with it. You’re a go-along-with-it kind of person.

You were… you were starting to not like that all of a sudden. Still, out of your depth in an odd dream is no place to start doubting your entire personality. You put on the bathrobe too. And the fluffy slippers that are tucked under them, with great pleasure.

You hear the many voices before you open the door. When you step through it, you feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a movie. Or well, the backstage at least. Women and men are flittering about the chic apartment in the sort of rush you’d only seen working at BatBurger.

The woman from before spots you and you feel like a rabbit under a hawk's gaze when her brown eyes narrow on you. She strides over to you and then, once again, clamps her grip around your wrist and drags you over. You wonder as you stumble after her if she’s got some meta-human in her because no slim, perfectly put-together lady should be this damn strong.

She pulls you towards a set of three people. You can immediately tell they’re the heads of the operation, with an aura that squashes you like a pancake. Two women, one man. They’re all dressed to the nines, in their own unique ways.

They all look at you with assessing glances. You fear you do not measure.

“I’m surprised, Jeanine. You actually got her this time,” a woman with a black bob and a rocker look comments, her red lips twisting into a grin. You realise, with a start, that the blonde woman who was not incorrectly nicknamed ‘The Wicked Witch of The West’ was actually called Jeanine.

Lovely, you were getting the hang of things.

“Yes, she was very agreeable this afternoon. I’d like to apologise once again for any past issues,” Jeanine says, all business. You still have no idea what’s going on, and definitely no idea what they’re talking about. But what you assumed was the jist of it… was that ‘dream you’ wasn’t a very harmonious person.

Lovely, lovely, lovely. This was a bit of a personal nightmare for a people pleaser like you. Actually, it was a literal personal nightmare. Lovely.

“The disrespect I’ve faced is immeasurable. But, Monsoir Wayne pays exceedingly well. Still, it’s nice to actually have our dear client before us,” the other woman says, appraising her french tip nails. Which, considering she said ‘monsoir’ and the whole accent, would make a lot of sense. She’s closer to a classic beauty than her punk rock friend, with brown hair coiled and beautiful pearls across her neck.

“I don’t know, I thought I’d be getting paid for doing no work tonight. Ruins my plans,” the man teases, and you’re relieved at the kindness in his gaze. He’s wearing a suit with a dazzling but trendy red tie. His tie has an odd metallic sheen to it, a fabric your peasant mind couldn’t place.

If Molly were here, she’d jab you in the stomach with an elbow and whisper “One of those homosexuals, me thinks” even if she was bi herself.

You wish Molly were here.

“Yes, well, I’d like it if we could all work together tonight. And get to it quickly, the drive to the Wayne Tower isn’t a quick one with the evening traffic, so, if you’d please.”

And that was that. No introductions, no extra pleasantries. You were swept away in a whirl of fabric and hair products.

They stuff you into a gorgeous evening gown, its colour reminding you of a sparkling midnight sky. Rhinestones dot down the sides, coalescing at the bottom. You hope they’re not real diamonds. Gloves, a bracelet, a necklace, and dripping pearl earrings. It was all impeccably put together, and you felt uncomfortable with such items on you. You didn’t dare ask how much it all cost, despite being desperately curious.

They slip towering 6-inch stilettos on you despite your protests, cake your face in enough powder to make you sneeze. Dramatic liner and eyelashes that felt heavy on your face, a lipstick that had to be coated twice because you chewed on your lip with nerves.

And then you’re done, dizzy and confused but thoroughly made up.

You get one quick look at your reflection before Jeanine is pulling you up and out of the seat.

They’d gotten rid of the signs.

You ignore the part of you that desperately wants them back and follow Jeanine out into the elevator.

Despite the fact that it is, in fact, a very long drive to the Wayne Tower, she does not seem inclined to say a single word to you. The ride is awkward and quiet, broken only by the sound of you pressing buttons in the back of limousine, and even that stops when you get an unimpressed look from her.

So you just sit there, vibrating at frequencies unseen by man.

When you finally arrive at Wayne Tower, the crowd shocks you. There are so many paparazzi, nearly overflowing the flimsy barricades and onto the carpeted marble entryway. The tower itself is a display of outrageous wealth, towering over the rest of Gotham City easily. You think for a while it’d been the tallest building in the world, but you couldn’t remember your elementary school education all that well.

It wasn’t like this information would’ve been useful at any point in your life. You still don’t think it will be, as this is all a very vivid dream.

The door opens, and immediately you’re overwhelmed by the camera flashing. You hunch away from the lights like a vampire, but Jeanine pushes you forward.

“We’re already very late, Ma’am. No time for faffing around,” she says from behind you, hand placed squarely against your back.

What? But all you’d done was rush around all afternoon! You know, if you’d just taken one of the trains or even the Skyrail you’d have been able to avoid this. Still, you’re out the door, up the steps, not given a moment to react to the questions thrown at you.

“Miss! Miss, are you here to celebrate your birthday? Don’t you think it’s a bit callous to ignore the tragedies of today?”

“Miss! Is it true you’ve been disowned?”

“Miss, miss, about your family…!”

Oh, well, even if what they’re saying is awful, it’s a relief. It’s your birthday again. You think the guy who had called you said happy birthday. That meant none of this could possibly be real. See? It had to be a dream. Had to, had to… You decide to ignore literally everything else they say, letting the words float through your very hollow brain.

Life’s a lot easier when you play it a little stupider.

The heels and the stairs are an awful combination, and if it wasn’t for Jeanine’s herculean strength you’re certain you’d be tumbling down them right now. Your assistant… secretary… lady is careful not to let that happen, however.

Maybe you judged her too quickly. You appreciated anyone who made sure you didn’t fall flat on your ass. It was a good quality for a person to have.

You don’t get to appreciate the Wayne Tower all done up. You don’t get to stare at the lights and flowers strung into the art deco rafters. You don’t get to stare and gape and look like an idiot, because Jeanine wants you to look like an idiot elsewhere.

In the middle of all these fucking random rich people you don’t know. Hurray!

You’re shoved into a group of people, with Jeanine at your back. She starts rattling off names and titles and relations, and you can’t make heads or tails of any of it. You turn to look at her with what must be a genuine deer-in-headlights fear, and she stops and then starts speaking slower.

Thank God for that. Well, since she’s making an effort, you do too.

“This is Lianne Jenkins, wife of Senator Jenkins,” Jeanine whispers into your ear, and you nod. You knew him, you’d voted for him, in fact. How the fuck were you here talking to his wife? She’s not looking at you, instead talking to someone beside her. She turns, and you put on the best smile you can.

The socialite physically startles when she sees your face. Great.

“Oh- oh my!” her voice stutters over your name like she can barely even remember it, “I didn’t know you’d be here tonight, it’s a pleasure to see you!”

It… it was your birthday party, right? Your name was on a giant banner at the back of the room, so you had to assume it was. Dream logic. Just- just blame it on dream logic.

“Oh, look it’s Gerald! I’m sorry my dear I really have to-”

And she just ditched you. At your birthday party. You blink at the space she just evacuated and then turn around to Jeanine. You probably give her some sort of weird Kubrick stare, and she winces. She then looks around for someone else for you to talk to. From the growing despair on her face, you can assume she doesn’t find anyone.

“I don’t want to be here,” you say.

“I said I’d quit, remember?” she replies. You think she’s lying to you. She looks about as desperate as you feel, which is a lot. You were seeing a lot of sides of ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’ today. She seemed less wicked and more generally insane. Hey, at least the two of you had something in common.

You turn away from her, eyes roving over the party. You recognise some people, because you know, they’re all rich and famous. That guy over there was in a movie you pirated recently. The one on your right seems to be someone important in online tech spaces. You think he did NFTs or something, which made you sad because you did not want that sort of person at your birthday party. Oh, the woman on the other side of the room eating canapes is an Instagram influencer, you think. The fantasy of a Wayne party gala is fading fast, falling out of the sky like a comet of fire to bring doom and death to mankind.

You are so out of your depth.

You turn back around to Jeanine.

“I really, really don’t want to be here,” you repeat, and Jeanine, shocking you, grabs your hands in hers.

“Please stay. Just for thirty minutes, please,” she begs you, her dark eyes pleading. And because you are the living personification of a doormat, you sigh.

“Alright. But only for thirty. And I’m getting very, very drunk.”

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be right beside you the entire time-”

You decide, oh so kindly, that you are totally ditching Jeanine, too. Spinning in your dress, you make a grand effort to get away from her, but she dogs you loyally. The goliath-like heels you’re wearing don’t make it any damn well easier. Still, you don’t stop trying to outrun the tiny, control freak of a woman. Because while she definitely seems to desperate to stay near you, you are also very desperate to not be near her.

Your hand itches. Randomly, it itches quite a lot. You don’t know why you only notice what must be a bug bite inside the gala, but you do. Awkwardly, you scratch your palm with your other hand, staring down at the skin. It doesn’t look red yet, but it honestly it’s getting kind of annoying.

You sigh again, and turn to ask Jeanine if she had any lotion or something, because you assume that’s what stalking personal assistants are for and… she’s not there. Somehow you lost her, without even noticing.

You throw your arms into the air. Yippee! Now, it’s time for alcoholism, as is the answer to all problems in life. It’s what the loving and maternal arms of Gotham had taught you, after all.

You stumble your way to a wall where there’s a set of food, and a server with a silver platter carrying a bunch of champagne glasses. You stop the guy before he moves again, your hands in the air like you’re trying to soothe a scared animal.

You point at the tray, “I want that.”

He looks at you with mild horror. You thought rich people were weird, like he’d be used to something like this. It wasn’t like you were asking for the shirt off his back or cocaine or something. If it wasn’t obvious, you really didn’t know anything about what rich people did.

“It’s my birthday. It’s totally cool. I asked Bruce myself,” You bald-faced lie, like you’d ever even met the man. Like a predator, you watch the man carefully put the tray down next to the rest of the food, and then he slowly backs away from you. Well, okay, you could admit that was kind of weird. This night is getting to you. God knows this loud-as-fuck party was more overstimulating than anything you could usually stand. And so bright. What a shitty fairytale ball.

You grab one of the flutes of champagne and swirl it, sniff it, and then once you’ve gone through the polite checklist of drinking you throw it back like it’s a shot of vodka. There were people watching after all. Wait, they’d probably seen you corner that poor server boy.

Hmm, this requires cake. You choose a random slice that looks like it might be strawberry something, and dig in eagerly. It tastes fucking fantastic. The cream is sweet and soft, and the jam has a pop of flavour you totally weren’t expecting. And the cake itself was a lovely, spongy texture.

Grand. Maybe if you just sat here like a wallflower and ate food and drank liquor you could handle this. It wasn’t any different from how you behaved at Molly’s college parties.

So, you decide to work your way up and down the buffet table. Most of it’s delicious, but when you try things you can’t quite recognise, there’s a twenty-percent chance it’ll be disgusting and you’ll have to spit it out to avoid poisoning. You’re careful not to try the caviar, despite your own curiosity. You’d heard that it just tasted like salty water, and that didn’t mix well with whatever you were currently putting in your stomach.

You look down at your hand. It’s another piece of the sponge cake, wedged between a napkin so your dirty fingers didn’t touch it and you didn’t have to bother with another plate. You giggle, because it really is that good.

Ah, this is great. You could do this forever, screw thirty minutes. You eye the entrance the servers keep coming in and out of, and wonder if Jeanine would get mad if you tried to follow them into the kitchens. Probably, probably…

The question was, was it worth it? You’re debating the merits when the sound of someone's shoes stops next to you. You think it’s a man, and you consider barking at him to get away from the buffet, but decide you’ve tried everything and can probably share again. It takes great strength, though. You decide you deserve some more champagne for the kindness.

It’s after a moment that you realise he’s not taking anything.

“Oh, so you actually showed up? Colour me surprised,” a familiar, calm, masculine voice speaks from behind you. Your mouth drops open, and you spin on your heel. If you hadn’t been clinging to the table cloth you’d have fallen over, but still, you drop the champagne flute, and it bursts in a spray of liquid and glass against your dress.

It also splatters on the dress shoes of one Tim Drake.

First the phone, now the delicious drink. You really wished you’d stop dropping things.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

#Series:WWW #yandere batfam #yandere dc #yandere batfamily #yandere batfam x reader #yandere x reader #dick grayson x reader #nightwing x reader #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #tim drake x reader #red robin x reader #damian wayne x reader #robin x reader

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januaryembrs · 5 days

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THE KID HITS BACK | Spencer Reid x Prentiss!Reader [4]

Description: The THREE times things feel weird between Spencer and you because you're just best friends.

Length: 21k (this is HALF of what I wrote for this chapter before I split it into two parts :0)

Warnings: explicit hints of suicidal ideation, as I have said in the last two chapters, Bugsy has really struggled with losing Emily and has been in a bad place. it is mentioned once or twice but please read with caution if you feel topics of mental health, not vividly described but the effects of it, are mentioned. Spencer's addiction is also mentioned. Violence, blood, swearing, usual CM warnings. Also there is a brief mention of SA (bugsy gets spanked by a stranger in a casino), again if this is triggering please be cautious. EXPLOSION. Emily and bug argue + fight. Bug + hatch fight. Bugsy takes no prisoners in this one won't lie. Spencer and bugsy turn each other on accidentally.

authors note: this was supposed to be a lot longer (I've had to split it with the next part released in a few days time) and yet every time I tried to upload to Tumblr, it crashed because it was over 30k words ;-; OTHER HALF IS COMING SOON.

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The one where Emily comes back.

She felt the headache as soon as she woke up. She’d experimented with Molly her first week of college, hated every second of it after she had prattled on for two hours to some other random freshman about the breakthrough research in enzyme-replacement therapy like she was catching him up on an episode of the Kardashians. She’d tried the odd few brownies, though they usually turned her stomach the next day and made her paranoid for about a week, before she swore them off entirely for their yummy, sober counterpart.

She should have known what to expect when she woke up, but then again, if she had been smart enough to pre-empt how awful she’d feel the next day, she probably wouldn’t have taken the little pink pill with a candied love heart on the top at all.

The duvet was soft against her face, and for a moment she didn’t care about anything except chasing the warmth it provided; just that she was cosy and it smelled nice, smelled familiar.

Her eyes pinged open when she realised that whatever that familiar smell was, it was very much not her own sheets. And she was very much not in the clothes she left the house in last night.

Bugsy sat up too fast, that much she knew, because in the time it had taken her to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, reach for the side table where she hoped to find her phone, a home phone, or just any working phone she could call someone off, she felt the room that smelled like a dream spinning around her.

Her legs turned to jelly, her stomach tossed with a mix of nerves and nausea, and, graceful as ever, she fell face first to the ground with a thud, smacking her temple off the corner of the bedpost on her way down.

“Fuck,” She whined, raising a hand to her brow that thudded with more than the side affects of last night, and she was quick to hear footsteps approaching as if in a half run. The door to the bedroom dragged on the thick sherpa carpet as it swung open, and she blinked wearily up at the culprit.

“Alright, up we get,” There were hands slipping under hers before she got a chance to see anything that wasn’t a blurry mess of brown hair and worried eyes, and it wasn’t until she heard his voice she felt herself sigh in relief, “Of course you wake up the second I turn around,”

“Sencer?,” She cleared her throat, hands latching onto his shoulders as he lifted her back onto the bed, “Spencer?” She tried again, her lips chapped, her skin clammy.

“Good morning, to you too,” His voice was soft, quieter than usual, like he knew just how delicate her head was and changed his tone accordingly, “Did you sleep well?”

“Morgan- where’s Morgan, I thought we…” She murmured, turning her head in confusion to the window where Spence had gone so far as to pull the curtains closed for her, seeing just the smallest crack of daylight filtering over the bed sheets. Her hands ran down his chest, her eyes lost and dazed, like someone had taken her batteries out, and Spencer took it as an opportunity to hand her the glass of water he’d got her and two advil.

“Morgan’s safe; he went home, he said he had a wonderful night,” Spencer lied, hoping she was just a little out of it that she didn’t catch him in it. She always knew when he was lying. But, as he’d suspected, she barely picked up on it, her lips pouting in confusion when she took note of the medicine he’d given her, “Drink up, Morgan said you did a lot of dancing last night, you’re probably dehydrated.”

“I did…” She echoed him, trailing off when the blur of the nightclub caught up to her, and she remembered exactly the last time someone had handed her a little tablet like those ones. Her heart plummeted, her eyes widening into saucers, and she swore she might have felt the glass crack beneath her palm with how tight her grip became. She looked up at him, and instantly picked apart the pity and the sadness swimming in his honey pooled eyes, “You know,”

He nodded softly, his hand coming up to stroke her hair away from her face, his gaze falling to where she felt something sore and achy forming on her forehead, bleeding into her brow.

“Spence-” Her own groan of pain cut her off when he brushed over the bump on her temple, and she understood she had perhaps hit it much harder than she’d initially thought.

“Let’s get you breakfast, and then we’ll talk,” He whispered softly, concern thick in his voice, and for the first time in months, she didn’t fight it. She just listened, and let him love her.

“God, I am truly pathetic,” She muttered, sipping her coffee with a scowl in between the maple ladened pancakes going down with a vicious chomp on her fork. Her other hand was occupied holding a bag of frozen peas to her head, where a nice dark bruise was spreading its way over the right side of her face, spider webbing out into a black eye.

“You’re not pathetic, everyone makes mistakes,” Spencer tried reassuring her, but he couldn’t help but smile as she devoured breakfast with the anger of a raccoon being dragged from a garbage bin, “You’re safe, that’s all that matters,”

She sighed, and Spencer didn’t actually think she had ever been so grumpy around him before, “Spencer, look at me,” He did, he had been all morning, but he did as he was told anyway, “I’m a federal agent who took molly from a frat boy all because I can’t just grieve like a normal person and cry my pathetic little heart out and be done with it. I crashed your night because I can’t even handle a little ecstasy without needing supervision and I just got into a fight with your bedframe,” She finished with a huff, dipping her next mouthful of pancake in the puddle of maple syrup she’d created on the plate, “And the fucking bedframe won.”

He smiled despite himself, reaching out to hold her wrist gently, making sure it was her turn to listen to him now, “Bug, I grew up being shoved into lockers and swirlied my whole life. I was the only kid in a classful of seniors that used to wedgie me so hard I had to have the school librarian, Mrs Addler, walk me between classes. Believe me, I’ve seen pathetic and you’re not- why are you crying, Bug, don’t cry,”

He remembered this bit, the mood swings, when he would pendulum between exhaustion and irritation straight into sadness and hopelessness, like there would never be an impasse between them unless he did more of the thing that had made him feel so awful in the first place. Still, he gently took the bag of now slightly soggy peas from her head, wrapping an arm around her back and scooching his chair to sit next to hers as she dropped onto his shoulder with a weepy sniff.

“I’m crying because I just thought of baby you all alone with Mrs Addler-” She sobbed loudly, and his heart bled out in his chest with warmth. No one had ever cried for him. “How could they be so cruel to you, I swear if we ever see those bastards, I’ll show them how we settled things in Russia-”

He chuckled, shaking his head, and she snuggled closer to him the way she had last night when the only thing keeping her on earth had been his body heat.

“It wasn’t all bad, she used to share her butterscotch with me,” He said with a small smile when she raised a wet glance at him.

“You know, you never have to be alone again, right?” Bugsy murmured, and he swore his heart might have just jumped right up into his mouth then and there, “You’re my best friend in the whole world, and I promise I’ll never leave you again. That was… selfish of me, I’m sorry I was so selfish.”

Spencer felt his throat tighten as he looked at her, innocent and entirely truthful, like he could ask anything from her right this second and her god’s honest words would be ‘Anything for you, Spencer, I’d do anything for you.’ He had never had anyone look at him like that, nothing even close.

“You’re my best friend too. And you weren’t selfish, you were grieving,” He choked out, and she tucked herself beneath his chin then, satisfied with the response, but his stomach turned sour when he remembered what he was going to tell her last night, what he should have told her months, years, ago instead of lying to her. Because he knew she would understand, knew she would get him the way no one else had even tried to, because she was just her. “I have to tell you something,”

She sat up straight, sensing the seriousness in his tone, and looked at him with imploring eyes, still sleep-addled and slightly wet around the edges.

He cleared his throat, “When I told you I was allergic to narcotics since I was born, that wasn’t entirely true, and I’m sorry I lied to you,” Her brows softened, creasing in a way that told him she was worried, or she knew where he was heading but couldn’t find a voice in her to say anything. He ran clammy palms over his pyjama pants, “There was a case, a while back, where we were tracking an UnSub to this farmhouse in the middle of Atlanta. Me and JJ got split up and the UnSub took me hostage in his father’s shed,”

She stayed quiet, but she quickly took his hand in hers when she saw him fidgeting with it in his lap. He smiled at her weakly, and squeezed her fingers gently, telling her he was okay to talk about it no matter if his chest was rattling and his face felt like fire.

“He was very sick, the UnSub. Tobias. He took on an alter of his dead father because he couldn't handle life without him. Even though his father was extremely violent and abusive, he still loved him enough to never want to let him go,” His lip pulled between his teeth for a moment, and he couldn’t look at her for what he was about to say, “Tobias tried giving me something to stop the pain of his father’s beatings when he would front and being a drug addict himself, the best thing he had was dilaudid. So, he gave it to me for the three days I was with him before the team found me,”

“Spence,” She said softly, knowing he would hate to hear an ‘I’m sorry’ because she hated those two words with a passion, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,”

“No, I want to, it’s just a little… fuzzy in parts,” He whispered, and she nodded, gently knocking her head against his jaw to let him know she was there to listen, “After the case wrapped up, everyone got home and just sort of pretended things went back to normal, even though I felt like I was drowning in everything that had happened, and the only thing I could think that had stopped the pain was the dilaudid. So I took more, and more, until I was using every other day, sometimes even at work to cope with the cases,”

“Did anyone know?” She asked, lips pressed tight as she scolded herself for talking, but he stroked her hand with his thumb to show he didn’t care if she asked questions, “Did Emily know?”

He nodded gingerly, “Everyone knew, but no one could do anything, or say anything, because otherwise Hotch would have to file a report on me, and I’d be forced to leave the team,”

“So no one helped?” She said, and there was an unexpected trace of anger in her tone that he knew too well. He’d be lying if he said that there were more than a handful of times when he was at his lowest he didn’t curse the team out for not giving a single shit about his condition. But when he’d sobered up, when he’d got clean and back to his usual self, he knew they were trying to do what was best, that they were in uncharted waters as to what would be the correct approach to helping him that wouldn’t diffuse a bomb that could ruin all of their careers.

“There was nothing they could do, Bug. If they said anything they would be just as liable as me for what I was doing, the same way Morgan and I aren’t going to say a word about what happened last night,” He pointed out, and she seemed bitter as if she knew he was right but hated the point of it anyway.

She held onto herself for long enough hearing that, and he saw it coming before it came as a shock when she threw her arms around him, hugging him tighter than she ever had before, not crying like she had been, but full to the brim of sadness and grief and mourning, as if she was trying to squeeze it all out of him so she could take it on for herself.

“You’re never going to be alone again, I swear, Spencer,”

And he believed her with everything in him.

–

Bugsy had been back in the field for five weeks now, looking healthier than ever thanks to Hotch’s insistence she joined Beth for triathlon practice despite the fact she really had started feeling more like herself.

It had only taken six months, but who was counting, right?

Sure, walking past Emily’s desk had stopped her in her tracks the first day she got back, and Morgan had quickly jumped in to distract her with a cup of coffee, leading her over to the kitchenette and far away from the empty table her sister’s things had once been on.

She was still adjusting to this alternate reality version of the BAU where Emily wasn’t there to protect her and watch out for her, and where they didn’t bicker about who got to ride shotgun with Hotch because Bug loved when he would drive fast (he pretended not to notice but would floor it when they hit the freeway), or when they would butt heads over who finished off the biscuits Emily kept in her secret stash (it was almost always Bugsy sharing them with Spencer and Penelope, when the three of them would gossip in Pen’s lair at lunchtime.)

She was adjusting, slowly yes, but there was one thing to keep her going, to keep her holding her head high as she walked past Emily’s picture on the way, full of smiles and dark hair the day she’d been instated in the bureau, her excitement tangible even through a piece of paper and a thin sheet of glass.

There was one thing keeping her going, and it wasn’t Penelope’s cheerful good mornings she showered her in the minute she entered the building, it wasn’t Beth’s runs that would take everything out of her even though she felt stronger than she ever had, it wasn’t Rossi’s insistence on cooking for her once or twice a week because ‘he had more wine he could ever need alone and she could stir the pasta while he chopped the meat’, and it wasn’t even Spencer sticking to her side like damn velcro since she had been back. Although, they played a pretty big part in it.

No, the one thing keeping her going was revenge.

Morgan had let it slip accidentally, the morning she had come back into the headquarters to fill in some forms with Hotch and Strauss before Hotch was reassigned to Pakistan, when she had slinked into his office with an apology ready at her lips for the way she had behaved, to which he was going to say he had no idea what she was talking about because that was how things had to be, only to find file upon file upon caseload on Ian Doyle splayed all over his desk, and she quickly realised Derek was not one to let sleeping dogs lie either.

And, reluctantly, he had let her help, because he hated the idea of them keeping secrets from her. Especially ones that involved them secretly tracking down the guy who killed her sister, who had threatened to abduct, torture and kill her if Emily hadn’t gone after him first.

Because Bugsy was always going to be her little sister, no matter how grown and headstrong and stubborn as an ass she was. And Emily had had zero intention of letting Bugsy come even close to danger at the hands of Ian Doyle or any other motherfucker dumb enough to think they’d get away unscathed making threats to her sister. Which was why Emily had been the one to track him down first, no matter who she had to trample on, what lines she had to cross.

And now it was Bug’s turn to reciprocate the favour.

The one thing that bounced around her head with every step she took across the BAU floor was how Ian Doyle would look when she dragged him to hell and back and everything in between, when she made him burn the way she had burnt.

Hotch had been away on temporary duty for the month, bar the occasional phone call where he checked in on her directly or through Spencer, and it wasn’t until she walked into Morgan in a blunt exchange with his own cell that she realised he was perhaps closer to coming home than she’d thought.

The man nodded, and bid the mystery caller goodbye before he flicked a look up to where Bugsy had entered his office with a cup of to-go coffee and an expression of intrigue.

“We got him,” Morgan said, and it was the three words she had been waiting to hear for two hundred and fifteen days.

They had found Doyle.

She was in the back of an SUV not even two hours later, strapped to her neck with tactical gear and two loaded pistols holstered at her hips.

“You’re sure you’re alright to do this?” JJ asked from her place beside her, noting the way the girl’s leg was bouncing, her fingers twitching as the three of them crowded around the screen linked to the surveillance camera set up outside Doyle’s apartment, Spencer and David watching an identical feed in the next block over, outside the safe house his son, Declan, was supposed to be in.

Only, when they’d arrived, the little blonde haired, blue eyed boy that was the only thing Doyle gave a damn about in the world was gone, two agents and his nanny lying dead on the floor.

“Put it this way, JJ, I’m going in after that son of a bitch whether you guys cover me or not, and it would be real nice to have back up,” Bugsy said simply, like she was reciting the weather, not ready to rain hellfire on anyone who got in between her and wringing Doyle’s neck.

The blonde woman exchanged a look with Derek, the two of them cautious about her behaviour, but thought better than to try stop her when she had just as much right as any of them for justice.

Before any of them could say another word, a car sped around the corner of the cul-de-sac, veering and wavering between parked cars, narrowly missing theirs by an inch, and red-blue blaring lights came racing after it within seconds, the siren full blast and no doubt waking the neighbours.

Or at least one neighbour in particular, as they spotted the curtains twitching in Doyle’s apartment, and they had their first sign of life in hours.

“He’s in there, someone’s in there,” Bugsy pointed to where the fabric moved in the dead of the night, unholstering one of her weapons and bursting the back door to the SUV open.

JJ clicked her radio on, speaking into her shoulder as Morgan was a hair width behind Bugsy, equally armed and ready, “We got movement on Doyle, we’re heading up to search his apartment,”

“Be careful, keep an eye on the kid,” Rossi ordered, he and Spencer adjusting their positions in their SUV, waiting for forensics to show up and investigate the nanny’s house. Spencer licked his lips nervously, and he could only imagine what was going through Bugsy’s mind at that moment, wishing more than ever she could have just stayed with him and let Morgan and JJ catch Doyle.

But she would never. She had nearly ripped Rossi’s head off for suggesting it even.

–

She’d seen him move up to the roof, had taken the stairs in twos, and she felt like kissing Aaron the second she saw him for all that cardio paying off a treat. She heard Morgan panting behind her, urging her to wait up so she wasn’t going in alone, but she didn’t listen, not when she was this close to getting that rat in her grasp and squeezing the life out of him barehanded.

She kicked down the door leading to the roof from the stairwell, her pistol drawn high and sharp and Morgan’s steps racing up behind her were the only sound for a moment.

He was here somewhere, watching them, god only hoped they had caught him unaware before he could call in his own backup.

Taking a careful step out onto the concrete, willing herself to take a deep breath and calm herself; she checked her nine o’clock, checked her three, before her boots crunched under her and she moved further out onto the roofing. Flicking a look around again, her eyes squinted against the moonlight that did little to no good, searching for even the smallest movements that would give him away.

“I heard you wanted to see me, Doyle,” She said loudly, hoping he would fit the profile they’d put together and want to tie up his loose ends once he realised who she was, “Truth is, I’ve been wanting to see you too,”

She had barely a second to react as she felt something hard slam across the back of her head, and she realised he had hit her with a rogue, loose pipe, hard enough for her to stumble forward, dropping her pistol when his body soon followed to tackle her completely to the ground in the effort to grab for the gun himself.

But she felt like body was alive with excitement, like the pain in her skull didn’t ache, didn’t matter, because she had him in her reach.

It took her barely a second to bring her elbow into his stomach, winding him hard enough he weakened his grip on top of her, then another hit square across his jaw, another to his temple, one to his already crooked nose and she threw a downward thump into his groin for good measure.

He hissed, cursing her something vile, and it was only then she saw the grey-blue eyes of the man who had killed her sister with no remorse, who had taken the person she loved unconditionally within a blink of an eye.

“You recognise me?” She said, a manic smile on her face as she raised the other gun from its holster, kicking him hard in the knee she’d seen him limping on, a bullet wound shaped scar giving his weakness away in seconds.

She wasn’t the only enemy he’d made in that business of his, but she sure as hell would be his last one.

He fell to the floor, his eyes wary as he looked up at the girl he had spent weeks collating photos of, the girl he’d had two of his best men tracking, snapping pictures of her going about her day to day life before he sent them to Emily. Because she would know what that meant no words needed.

This was her sister. Her little sister she had fought tooth and nail for, that she had given her life for. Her sister, who had the same rock solid loyalty to her family as Lauren had.

“Do you want to know where you went wrong, Doyle?” She asked, and her voice wasn’t calm like her body was, it was hiding the glee she was taking from his alarmed expression, like they both knew she was the last person he would have expected to be grabbing him in the night, “Your mistake, Doyle, was not killing me first,”

She raised her finger to the trigger, feeling for a second the same thrill as when she popped that molly just to forget everything that was happening. Because she had tunnel vision, and pulling the plug on Ian Doyle’s pathetic existence was the solution.

Until Morgan’s hand came over hers, and his voice was closer than she’d expected to her ear. She’d barely heard him creep up on her, she realised with a jolt.

“Don’t do this, kid,”

“He deserves it,” She spat, hating the sorrow in his voice when he pointed the gun away from Doyle who wiped his fingers beneath his nostrils and pulled back with a wince and a blob of blood over the back of his hand.

“I know he does. But we need to find Declan, and we can’t do that without him,” Morgan’s voice was deep and bitter, knowing full well he had to be the one to take the reins as much as he would love to just let her have at him.

Her nose scrunched in disgust when Doyle laughed at her annoyance, and she quickly holstered her weapon, pulling the cuffs out of her back pocket and helping Morgan yank him off the floor.

“I got some friends that would love to meet you, honey,” Doyle said through a wheezing breath, despite Morgan’s rough hands shoving him forward towards the stairwell.

She chuckled however, her face still bitter, her eyes something nasty and wild as she flanked his other side, “Don’t worry, I have some friends for you to play with too, Doyle.” She tightened her grip on his arm just to make it hurt, “I wonder how the Chernuses would feel about you and your men being so close to their turf. You ever fucked with the Russian Mob, Ian?”

His smile wiped clean off his face at that.

“How’s it going?” Hotch asked, and she barely had time to comment on the fact he looked rather dashing with a beard and a tan, or that he had lost ten pounds, before he was straight back to business, even after an eighteen hour flight.

“He won’t talk. He said the only person who could have helped us find Gerace would have been Emily.” She replied, rubbing her hands over her eyes with a huff, “Just another dead end,” She threw the file onto the roundtable, which was slowly piling up with documents relating to anyone Ian Doyle had ever had relations with.

Hotch’s face tightened. He took a single moment to enjoy the calm that overcame the room, took a second to enjoy the fact she was looking normal and healthy compared to when he had all but barged into her apartment to force her on a run.

Because he knew the normalcy they had found themselves in now was about to be flipped on its head, JJ confirming with a nod from the other side of the room that she was on her way.

He turned to look where Morgan, Rossi and Reid had walked in, Reid stroking a gentle hand over Bugsy’s hair where she hunched over the table and flicked through some files for anything to keep her mind off of going into that interrogation room and ripping into Doyle. She flicked a small smile up at him as he passed her, leaning over her shoulder to take half her workload off her.

She looked happier than she had in months, and he was about to take it all away again. Hotch swallowed the self loathing that threatened to choke him alive, and opened his mouth.

“Everybody have a seat,” The team looked up at him in confusion, but followed orders, JJ moving around the table to stand beside him, the same reluctant look on her face when she saw Bugsy’s frown.

“Why?” Morgan asked, seeing as no one else was going to, “What’s going on? Everything alright?”

“Seven months ago, I made a decision that affected this team,” Hotch began, his eyes immediately flicking to where the youngest Prentiss faltered, “As you all know, Emily had lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. But the doctors were able to stabilise her,”

Bugsy’s ears started ringing just hearing her sister’s name coming from his lips, said so casually and blunt that it felt like he had punched her in the stomach and she thought she was maybe over estimating how well she had overcome the grief.

And that hadn’t even been the worst part, she quickly realised. The doctors were able to stabilise her.

“And she was airlifted from Boston to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration. Her identity was strictly need to know. She was reassigned to Paris where she was given several identities, none of which we had access to for her security,” Hotch said, avoiding the piercing eyes that were slowly melting between confusion to heartache to one she finally could land on, horror.

No one breathed for a moment, no one said a thing as the words sunk in, and she felt her entire body wash over with a gut wrenching numbness as it dawned on her what he was saying.

Emily never died on that table like JJ had said. She had never died at all.

“What?” Her voice was tiny and childlike when it came out, and she felt like she was stuck in the world’s worst nightmare, like she could claw and scratch and rip at her skin just to wake herself up from this terrifying dream where Hotch had lied and Emily had left her and everyone who was supposed to care about her had kept her in the dark.

“She’s alive?” Garcia asked, tears in her own green lined eyes, looking at Hotch with utter shock.

“But we buried her,” Spencer found it in himself to murmur, because none of this made sense and if any of what Hotch was saying was true, then he knew things were about to become really ugly.

“As I said I take full responsibility for the decision; if anyone has any issues, they should be directed towards me,” And it was only then he looked at Bugsy fully, properly, since he had opened his mouth.

He could have swore he had never seen such complete and utter betrayal written across someone’s face, let alone directed towards him. Because he knew that’s what it was. He knew he had taken every scrap and shred of trust she had placed in him since that day she ran away from her own wedding and found herself stuck in that very same office, hugging him tightly with her sodden veil and even more soaked white dress, he had taken everything vulnerable she had ever given him and spat it right back at her.

He felt like crying but before he could think too hard about it, he saw Emily walking down the hall and her own face was just as, if not more, devastated than his own and he knew he had to be the one to stay strong.

Garcia’s head snapped to the doorway, the sight of it leading Spencer and Rossi to do the same, and Morgan’s face morphed into anguish when he took a look for himself.

Because there, looking like a glowing beacon of everything they’d been missing in seven months, was Emily Prentiss, alive and well.

She seemed lost for words, her eyes falling to her sister who seemed to force herself to look up at her from where she was staring in wide eyed terror at the table, as if she was struggling to comprehend any of this, or like the building was falling down around her and she was in complete fight, flight or freeze.

But she did, she looked up at her after a second, her face unrecognisable to Emily for a moment, and it took all of three moments where she seemed relieved to see her, before it curled into a vitriolic anger Emily had never, never seen from her.

She looked like she was ready to kill her with her bare hands herself.

Penelope was first out of her seat, practically flying across the room to grab her close friend in a hug, a complete bubble of sobs and wails, her pigtails shaking with her rattling chest as Emily hugged her tight to her.

“Oh, my god, it’s real-you’re real- like I can actually touch you and you’re safe and not in that god awful box-” Penelope was a catalyst for the rest of the team standing up to take their turn crying on the woman’s shoulder.

That is, the rest of the team except Bugsy.

She remained in her seat, her gaze falling back to the mess of files that all of a sudden felt a complete waste of time, felt irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Who cared who was Doyle’s financial advisor between the years of 2005 and 2007 when Emily was alive and they had known the whole time.

And the more she thought, the more furious she got. And then the more furious she got, the stiller she became; an atomic bomb ready to detonate at the slightest prod.

“I am so sorry, I really am,” Emily said as Spencer had wrapped his giant arms around her tentatively, smelling her perfume and feeling his heart ache with how warm and alive and healthy her body felt. “Not a day went by that I didn’t-”

But a sound cut her off, one none of them were expecting in the slightest.

Bugsy was laughing.

Not the sweet chirp she normally gave, or the hearty one that came from her gut that they hadn’t heard in months, but something manic. Something frenzied, beserk. Deranged.

Hotch’s head snapped to her, Emily’s too, though she had already taken note of the fact her sister hadn’t so much as moved from her feet, and stupidly she had hoped it was the shock sinking in.

But her eyes were cruel, her teeth more of a snarl than a smile and the laugh she gave was that of a person over the edge.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, she believed it was called.

“She never made it off the table,” Bugsy imitated woefully, her eyes snapping to JJ, who felt smaller than she ever had under the hatred in them, though the girl’s nasty smile hadn’t let up, “You are good, Jennifer. You really got me there, hey maybe if the agent thing doesn’t work out then acting is alway an option for you,”

“Bug-” Hotch started, only for her to stand up so harshly her chair nearly tipped back, but she didn’t seem to care as she rounded the table towards him in a bitter chuckle.

“And you! I didn’t know you had it in you. But very good, Hotch, very well played out. For a second I thought you actually gave a fuck about me,” She fist bumped his shoulder, a little harsher than something innocent behind it, before something spiteful settled in her tone, “But then again, you are nothing if not professional, aren’t you? I guess a suicide on your team would look terrible on your report card,”

“I think you need to calm down and let’s talk about this for a second,” Hotch tried to jump in, his brows furrowed enough to make him look annoyed but anyone with two eyes could see the worry that brewed there, that chased her as she retreated to where her jacket was slung over the back of her seat. She laughed again viciously, shaking her head. Grabbing her coat, she headed for the door where Emily stood helplessly, not knowing what to say for the best, and she thought for a minute her little sister was going to address her.

But she didn’t; didn’t even look her way as she approached, and it wasn’t until Hotch rounded the room after her with a fixed gaze she showed any sign of stopping. Not until he reached for her arm with a tight grip, a call of her name, did she even halt in her step.

“Stop, let’s just talk,”

“Let go of me,” Bugsy snapped, and it was the first time she actually gave way to the anger she felt, the amusement coming from a place of distraught long gone. She sounded pissed.

“Listen to me, we had no choice here,” Hotch barked, because it was the only way he could communicate when he felt this lost. And that’s what he was; he was losing her. They all were. “And I would have thought you’d be able to stop being so spoiled for one god damn second to see we were protecting-”

Her palm whirled around faster than he could have ever anticipated, slapping clean and sharp against his cheek, hard enough the air was sucked out of the room and his words died in his throat.

Penelope gasped. Spencer’s eyes widened. Emily took a heavy gulp.

“Bugsy!” Emily said in horror, and it was then her little sister’s eyes actually set on hers, every bit as cruel and hateful she’d expected.

“I want nothing to do with you, do you hear me? I don’t want to talk to you, or see you, don’t even speak that name, I don’t want it from you anymore,” Bugsy pointed at her with crooked, bitten nails Emily knew all too well, “You left me. You left me.”

With those three choked words, the other’s could only watch hurricane Bugsy whirl and burn and crash her way out of the room.

–

She sat on the steps to the federal building, perfectly dressed agents filtering around her with the occasional tut in disgust.

She couldn’t really blame them; her face was wet with tears, she was pretty sure there was snot running out of her nose hastily, and between her free hand, the other of which was pulling at her hair, was a cigarette that swirled its grey smoke around her head with a horribly addictive smell.

She heard footsteps approaching her from the back, different from the rest, and felt someone stop beside her, sliding to their ass on the step.

“Spencer, if you’re going to tell me this is taking seven minutes off my life then please can it wait for another day-” Bugsy started with a tearful cadence, only to be cut off by a woman’s voice.

“I was actually going to ask if you had a lighter,” Erin Strauss said, pulling her own menthol cigarette between her lips, and Bugsy dug around her pocket for the cheap ‘I <3 Virginia’ lighter she had snagged on New Years, clicking the flame out long enough for her boss’s boss to light the tip, “I heard you gave Aaron a shock,”

Bugsy stayed silent, taking a drag that burnt her lips and tasted awful, but it was the only thing she could turn to that would calm her even in the slightest, even if it was just the chemicals.

“Bit of an understatement,” She mused, exhaling softly with a frown, “Did you know?”

“Are you going to slap me too if I said yes?” Erin asked, and Bugsy gave a small, wet chuckle, shaking her head, “Would it matter if I did?”

“No, I guess not,” She replied, breathing in through her nose, “I want to feel sorry, but all I feel is just … empty. Why did JJ and Hotch know what happened to her but she didn’t think to tell her own sister?”

“Probably because you’re the one she loves the most,” Strauss picked over the hem of her navy blue midi dress that had been pressed neatly just that morning, and now here she was sitting on the steps to her building helping a girl in crisis chainsmoke, “It was how she ended up there in the first place, right? Because she wanted to protect you,”

“She left me torturing myself for months that her death was all my fault; believe me protection was not what I needed,” Bugsy said harshly, her final drag reaching the brown stub, and she scowled as she doubted it on the concrete floor below her, tucking her knees up to her face and resting her head on them.

Erin sighed, patting her on the back gently, not wanting to cross any lines for such a fragile girl, but not wanting to leave her entirely alone either.

“Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family.” Strauss quoted, taking one more breath of her own cigarette before she squished it under her heel quickly. “Paul Pearsall,”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bug asked quietly, tilting her head onto her cheek to look over at the woman.

“It means you can hate her as much as you can right now, but sooner or later, you’re going to need her, or she’s going to need you, and you’ll wish you never pushed each other away,”

2. The one where you pretend to be a couple.

Her hair was shorter, Bugsy noted, where she saw the back of her sister’s head from her desk. It looked nice, not that she would tell her that.

She wouldn’t tell her anything.

It had been eight weeks, three of which Bugsy had spent taking a leave of absence and been forced to see the designated federal councillor for her behaviour towards Hotch. She had gone to the handful of sessions to keep him off her back, but had stayed quiet for most of them, except the one where she got the psychologist to tell her the dirt on her recent, messy break up so they’d have something to talk about at least.

She had only really been speaking to Spencer the weeks since she had returned to work, had handed the slip of paper that declared her fit to work to Hotch with a smug look on her face, daring him to extend her sick leave as punishment for the tantrum she’d thrown.

She knew it was dragging, knew most of the team were at least trying to adjust to the shellshock of Emily being back from the dead, but then again, the rest of the team hadn’t been writing their own eulogy so the burden wouldn’t fall onto someone else if they ever found her unresponsive.

In the time Emily had supposedly been dead, her mind had wandered someone cold and dark and alone. Worse than any of them had ever thought it had been, worse than they gave her credit for.

Only for it to be fake. As though she was the star of her own Truman show, with a laugh track playing on loop in the back; her own friends, people she’d considered family, watching her kicking and screaming and fighting through every breath for some sort of relief from the pain, a pawn in their little sitcom of horrors.

Morgan had forgiven her sister with little resistance. She’d always known that, to Morgan, trust was higher than anything in his books. Yet with some soft words and tears shed, Derek had cracked and accepted Emily back warmly like nothing had happened. Rossi and Penelope had just been happy to see her, happy to have her back and very much not dead, so convincing them she was innocent had been no big feat. The only other person who had put up nearly as much fight as her had been Spencer. He had told her about the spat he and JJ had gotten into for being an accomplice to their pain, but even he was beginning to warm back up to her sister, not that she could really blame him.

Emily was putting in overtime trying to get back into her good books, while she couldn’t even stand to look at her without remembering how hard she’d cried when she realised Nico and Sergio would be in her apartment alone and confused if she had been sad enough to do something rash.

“Good Morning,” Emily’s voice was nails in a chalkboard, two arms winding over her shoulder to plonk two take out coffees in front of her and Spencer, one with his name written in black ink on the lid and the other with a dozen hearts dotted over the cup, a little doodle of a lady bug and a bumble bee cuddling. What she supposed was meant to be the two of them.

Spencer watched Bugsy fight the urge to roll her eyes, surprisingly somewhat progress for her since the first two weeks of Emily even being near her resulted in the two of them screaming at one another until they were separated. Emily was growing tired of being punished for trying to keep her sister safe, Bugsy was full of hatred for every lie they had told her.

But he saw the way she immediately knocked the coffee into the trash without a second thought, ignoring the fact she would need to take out a very heavy and wet bin liner later, if only to drive the point home to her older sister. I don’t want your charity.

Emily faltered for a second, her eyes snapping to him as if he could do or say anything to help her out, but he could only give her one of his awkward, straight smiles, because he had absolutely no intention of pushing Bugsy to heal any faster than she was doing like everyone else was, nor did he want Emily to feel like he didn’t care she was hurting too.

Emily gave a resigned nod, daring to pat her sister on the shoulder. “Better in the trash than thrown over my face, right?”

She moved away from the woman’s desk, shooting a disheartened look at Reid as she passed him and he murmured ‘thankyou’ for his own coffee, until the sound of JJ calling them into the round table room cut off whatever she was going to say back.

Spencer thoughtlessly handed Bugsy his own latte, smothered with caramel and cream the way he liked it, and she took an appreciative sip without a word.

He hadn’t brought up that night, hadn’t spoken about the way she’d pressed her lips to his for a split second the night Morgan had dragged her over to his apartment to sober up. And because she hadn’t brought it up either, he assumed she didn’t want to talk about it anymore than she wanted to talk about what had got her there in the first place.

He had helped her brush her own teeth more than once in the early days of her grief, hell he had even had her lips against his, so when she handed him the coffee cup back, he didn’t think much of it when he continued drinking the hot caffeinated goodness.

Bugsy was wired differently in his brain, everything about her was different than how he felt about everyone else. So if she didn’t want to talk about kissing him, if she wanted to forget it ever happened, then he would swallow his feelings and accept she didn’t ever want to do it again. If she wanted to keep the bond they had carefully crafted through days and months and weeks of being each other’s solace, then he wouldn’t fight it. Because he didn’t want to ruin it either.

He just nudged her gently with his shoulder as they meandered up the stairs to the round table room, looking at her with the puppy dog eyes that usually followed her around when she was in one of her silent moods.

“You okay?” He asked carefully, noting the way she tugged her files to her chest, smiling up at him nevertheless. Because she could never be mad at him, it was Spencer.

“You don’t have to do that, you know?” She said, lowering her voice as Morgan trailed behind the two of them his own mug of fresh brewed coffee sloshing in his hand, “Pretend like you don’t forgive her for my sake. I want you to be friends again if that’s what you want,”

She’d noticed his sheepish glances when he met Emily’s gaze, unmoving from her side like he wanted to make it clear he was there for her above everything else. But she saw how he would smile and joke with her sister when he thought she was in the bathroom, or when they would return from a crime scene, working together again like a well oiled machine.

They were still friends, even if she felt sick every time she saw her sister’s noir black bangs flick her way, even if her heart was aching and her chest heavier than she would have ever let on.

“But you’re upset with her?” Spencer muttered back, with a frown on his face, “I’m upset you got so hurt by the whole thing. I’m essentially hurt by proxy,”

She snickered, leaning into his side for a moment, pulling away when they reached Rossi’s office and began walking past the long window she saw everyone settling down behind, “I appreciate that, Spence, I do. But you were her friend first, and she’s my sister. It’s different for you guys. And it’s not like we’re dating, because then I’d be allowed to be upset if you were still friends with her,” She explained lightly, though she felt her chest pick up at the very fact she had let that silly little dating word slip past her lips.

She had no idea where they were. He was the only thing keeping her together some days, the only one who understood her for all her silly, complex feelings and didn’t make her feel dumb or crazy for feeling the world so deeply. He was special to her in a way no guy had ever even come close.

She just wished she hadn’t made such an idiot of herself that night with Morgan; wished she remembered anything of what was said or done, because things had felt electrified since then and she had no idea why. All she knew was she was falling harder for him every time he stood so close, or offered her his drink, or every time they had a movie night at his and fell asleep on his couch pressed together like they were meant to be that way forever.

He sighed, still stuck on the situation, and shot her a frown, “I’ll never understand the rules,” Though he hoped she didn’t see how his cheeks tinged pink at the fact she’d brought up whatever it was between them too.

Because he wasn’t entirely talking about her and Emily. Sometimes, he really didn’t understand the rules of telling your best friend you were in love with her.

The press was calling him “The Circle of Eight killer,” no matter how much media liaison JJ had tried to do to stop them from giving him notoriety and possibly boosting an already inflated ego. But the team had already managed to profile that the killings were some sort of ritual the UnSub was using to turn his luck on a gambling addiction, or whatever suspicion he had mentally linked from the victims needing to die and being dealt a royal flush.

“Eighty eight dollars, the UnSub’s getting generous,” She said grimly, her gloved fingers counting the wad of cash tossed over the victim’s body. Where they had usually found eight, single dollar bills and an eight card of any suit, his signature seemed to have changed on the most recent body and he had dumped a much larger sum of money, “There’s more remorse with this kill too; shot from behind so he didn’t have to see the victim when he did it,”

Bugsy slipped the cash into a clear baggie to send to forensics to see if they could pull prints, but then again bills usually gave a million possible UnSubs with how many people touched them. “There’s less rage here, an undoing,” Emily chimed in, her own gloved fingers checking the victim’s pockets for anything off.

When they were in the field, Bug could hold her eye rolls and sharp tongue and resting bitch face for the sake of helping the victim’s families find closure. Because, despite how much she seethed in private about how Hotch, JJ and her own sister had conspired without her, she knew she could choke it down if it meant she could help someone, if it meant no one else had to grieve as deeply and gut wrenching as she had when Emily ‘died’.

“There’s no sign of robbery either, wallet is still intact except his ID,” Spencer added, standing back from the body while Bugsy handed the evidence off to CSI and the chief on the case headed their way.

“Is it even the same guy?” Agent Goslin asked, looking between Hotch and Emily for an explanation, Hotch shaking his head with a stoney look on his already tired face.

“The ritual’s too similar to discount,” He said, Bugsy frowning and tugging her lip between her teeth in thought.

“The change in MO makes sense if the UnSub is still refining his system, maybe killing the cashier at the gas station didn’t work so he’s back to the drawing board.” Emily speculated, her little sister nodding along with her in the first sign of agreement she’d seen all day.

“Two eights instead of one could also be significant; I know in China the number eight symbolises prosperity, the more eights the better. As a matter of fact, in Chengdu, a telephone number consisting of all eights recently sold for over a quarter of a million dollars,” Spencer said, and Bugsy flashed a look up at him, her eyes thoughtful.

“In ancient Egypt, the number seven represented completion in this life while the number eight represented success through ambition and determination in your reincarnated life,” She replied, peeling the gloves down her hands as they clung to her skin with tight clamminess, “And the eight pointed star is associated with the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, or the light bringer,”

He nodded with her and he hated to admit that he loved that she managed to fill in the gaps in his own knowledge, like they were two puzzle pieces finding a way to fit together; like they were two halves cleaved from the same brain that hadn’t stopped growing in the entirety of her twenty seven years.

That, and he’d always found her brain one of the most attractive things about her. One of the long list he could think of.

“Why would he be doubling up on his luck out here, away from all the casinos?” Emily asked, because she was trying not to stand in awe of her sister’s fat brain that rivalled even their pretty boy.

“There’s been another killing,” Agent Goslin stated, hanging up the phone with a tense frown on her face, “A guest in his room at the Sapphire Lady,”

“Same ritual?” Hotch asked without a pause, because they were on body number five now and they were barely closer to understanding him than they were a few hours ago.

“No. His neck was broken. And he was robbed of $50,000.” Goslin replied, shaking her head, “Strange thing is? The killer left another $20,000 behind with the body,”

“Money isn’t his motive here,” Bugsy input, crossing her arms while Hotch got on the phone to Garcia, “Atleast, not that guy’s money,”

“Garcia, is there a casino in the neighbourhood of Penrose and Morningside Avenue?” He asked, clicking the perky woman onto speakerphone.

They heard a quick clatter of typing, “Uhhh, No casinos per se, but there’s a private gambling establishment right around the corner.” She replied helpfully, with another bout of her long, delicately painted nails against her keyboard.

“Is it legal?”

“Yeah, but it’s ultra exclusive. They have a monthly high-stakes poker tournament,” She paused for a second, “Today being the day for the month, coincidentally enough,”

“Or no coincidence at all,” Emily said, as they began putting together exactly where this chain of events had come from.

“What’s the buy in?” Bugsy asked, though she already guessed the answer.

“Yikies, $50,000,” And with that Bug and Reid exchanged a knowing look, her suspicion confirmed, “But, it’s a million dollar guarantee if you win,”

“What time does it start?” Hotch asked, Bugsy already rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingertip, willing herself not to be right about what they were going to do.

“Later this evening,” Pen replied and Hotch thanked her, hanging up the phone. A second of silence spread around the crime scene.

“So, if anyone’s got fifty k lying around, now would be a great time to share with the group,” Busgy humoured herself with a straight face, realising the paperwork that would almost definitely be declined if Strauss had anything to say about it the would enable them to borrow fifty thousand from the government.

Because if they missed their chance tonight, she had no clue when they would get another.

–

“Any luck?” JJ asked, Emily sat to her right, Rossi across from her. Spencer and Bugsy sat on the end of the table, the girl breaking a KitKat in half to share with him, which he accepted happily.

“No, they don’t want to allocate emergency funds for the buy-in, I’m still working on it,” Hotch said shortly, his phone blowing up with messages, no doubt needing a lot more details if they were really going to get the money they needed.

“Well, I can’t imagine why not, we’re only asking for fifty thousand bucks of taxpayer money, so that FBI agents can play Texas Hold ‘em,” Rossi drawled, shaking his head with a cynical humour that was all they had to hold onto while they waited in limbo.

“Hey, what about you?” Emily asked, something mischievous in her eyes as she watched David freeze in his seat, so like the old Emily that Bugsy felt her stomach turn.

“What about me what?” David said with a frown, pausing in his writing for a moment.

“You could stake us the buy-in,” She suggested, and the other three members of the team turned their attention back to Rossi’s palling face.

“You’re a best selling author,” Spencer chimed in, devouring the last of the chocolatey biscuit snack as she pulled another out of her bag.

“No,” Rossi replied, slightly wide eyed at the suggestion of it, to which Emily jumped in.

“Why not?”

“One, it’s against regulations and I’d like to hold onto this job for a little while longer.” David said, his arms out in a defensive stance towards the four people who suddenly felt like his kids asking for the newest IPhone on the market for Christmas.

“It’s a minor administrative violation,” Bugsy pointed out between bites, offering the second half again to her best friend who took it without delay.

She could have given the whole thing to him to start with, and had the first one for herself, it would have ended the same, but she liked sharing with him. She liked being the one to split things with him when he cringed in horror at other people touching his food.

“And, two, I prefer to spend my money on actual things, like single malt scotch, a fine cigar, beautiful artwork,”

“Poker chips are things!” Emily tried to reason, but it only ended with David scoffing in her cheeky, hopeful face.

“Maybe just think of it as a new experience, I mean at your age how often does that happen?” Spencer said innocently, licking the chocolate from the tips of his fingers, noticing how Bugsy tensed up and Rossi slowly turned in his seat to face the BAU’s youngest members.

“At my what?” He asked in an aghast tone, Bug grabbing onto Spencer’s forearm with a gentle squeeze.

“Reel it in, reel it in,” She whispered, and he looked at her with a lost expression, willing her to explain to him where he had gone wrong, because he knew she would, “What he meant to say was this may be our only chance to get this guy,”

David chewed his words for a second, as if he was trying not to bite at the kids who looked between one another hopefully, and he wondered if this was what being a father felt like; handing his credit card over to two twenty something year olds and watching his bank deposit plummet in seconds.

“All right. Fine.” He sighed heavily like he’d seen the fifty thousand burned there and then, “I’m a decent poker player, but I can’t promise that I can stay in the game long enough to…”

“You know what? I bet you’re a great poker player,” Emily started kindly, her gaze drifting over to the hazel hues that watched between them curiously, “But what if we sent in Reid?”

“I am banned from casinos in Las Vegas, Laughlin and Pahrump because of my card counting ability,” Spencer said, and Bugsy rolled her eyes.

“They can’t ban you for maths, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” She said, nudging his side with her shoulder, “They hate to see an underdog win, it’s Rocky all over again,”

“Tell me about it,” He murmured back, even though he had never watched any of the Rocky movies, he just liked humouring her.

“Look I know I’m not a genius like the boy wonder here, but poker is not black jack. It’s about bluffing; reading human nature, head games.” Rossi pointed at Reid, who badgered over Bugsy’s shoulder for the cookies she had packed in her rucksack, “The kid does not have a poker face.”

“Which is why we’re going to send him with someone who does,” JJ chimed in, and it was then that the youngest members of the team looked up from where they had cracked open the packet of chocolate chip delights, near identical looks of innocence painted on their faces, like they really were kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Bugsy looked between JJ and Rossi, who had equal parts hopeful and worried looks on their faces, before she glanced over to Spencer to see if he had any explanation. He looked as lost as she did.

“Huh?” She asked cluelessly, as Rossi buried his head in his hands.

At this rate was going to have to remortgage his house for wedding number four, he thought sourly.

–

“I swear to god if this dress rides up anymore, it will be me who’s charging fifty thousand per head,” Bugsy growled, her hands frantically tugging the dress down her legs more. She couldn’t deny it was a beautiful dress, bunched around certain areas that made the most of her body, but goodness was it shorter than she would have ever picked out for herself. She was the last person to be a prude when it came to showing off just how alluring she could look when she made an effort, but this was something else.

It was a striking red, meant to match the ruby of her lipstick and the vermillion of the diamonds and hearts on the cards spread around the tables in the room, flushed in between little plastic chips worth thousands of dollars, handfuls of dice being tossed over the green velvet surfaces, deciding whether the players lost their cars or paid off their kids college fund.

They queued up to be patted down, as if they were heading through airport security or into a packed nightclub. A handful of bouncers waved metal detectors over patron’s clothing, dipping hands into coat pockets, trousers, even some shoes were ordered off in the name of a fair game. She swore she had never seen so many sets of weighted dice confiscated off one man who swore blind as he was kicked out.

“Only fifty? You could rinse them for a hundred at least,” Spencer replied, his arm entwined behind her back, if not to hold her up in the clunky heels one of the women on Goslin’s task force had loaned her along with the dress. She smirked at him, pressing herself closer to him when they both saw a dozen eyes shoot towards her as they entered the building, and he tightened his grip just the slightest with a calculating coolness.

He wished his cheeks didn’t feel so hot feeling her body so close to his, wished she hadn’t made such an effort to look the part of the expensive call girl they knew the UnSub had a history with, not because he didn’t like it, but because she made everything a little more difficult when she looked like that.

He was having a hard time trying to calm the way his manhood brushed against his pants whenever she showed some of that saccharine affection, even though he knew it wasn’t real. Or atleast, was an extreme version of the love she usually showed him.

The bouncers called them up next, and he let her go first, because getting her through would be easy. He was the one with the panic alarm disguised as a shot of Halitosis in his pocket.

Spencer would never admit that his eyes fell straight down to the curves of her butt that seemed to be spotlighted by that damn dress.

Why did she have to look so irresistible? He supposed that was the point; he was the mysterious young gambler that was going to keep them in the game long enough to spot the UnSub, she was the attractive, woman of the night brought only to boost his ego and as his good luck charm. She certainly wasn’t the only one, she’d already seen a handful of other women, tall as models and so toned it looked as though they hit the gym every morning and didn’t leave until sundown, primped and primed for their player’s delight.

They were ten times better looking than she was, but to Spencer, she was the only woman in the room who he was envisioning ripping that dress right off.

She was making it very hard, no pun intended, for him to accept the idea of them as just friends.

The bouncer patted her down, Bugsy flashing him a cheeky smile just a little too forced for it to be one of her real ones, when the woman patted around her waist and hips for any hidden pockets or stashed bills.

“You wish this was you, huh, baby?” She teased him with a wicked look in her eyes, and he could only smirk back, hoping his blush didn’t give him away as quick as he reckoned it did.

He felt his knees weaken, worrying he might just fall to the ground there and then and be forced to crawl towards her if he had any hope of getting into the casino alive, but even that sent a new wave of lewd thoughts through his head, and he was grateful when the other bouncer called him forward to inspection.

The muscled guy waved a metal detector over his torso, moving down to his trouser legs where he wondered with cynical humour if the rod he now sported in his pants painfully would set off the alarm. It didn’t, and he begged his crotch to let up even the slightest if he had any hope of keeping his head on his shoulders during this game, but the detector sprung to life the minute it waved over the alarm in his pocket.

He produced the medical looking device, one they’d already planned and checked for faults, showing the fake prescription clearly to the guard, “Halitosis,”

The guy seemed to frown, took another look over the gangly guy who was with a woman way, way out of his league. A woman who waited for him after her own inspection, a very real diamond necklace that had been a sixteenth birthday present from Steph around her neck, courtesy of her dad’s bank account and ten years worth of emotional distance. Whether he took pity on Spencer because Bugsy looked like the kind of girl who could chew up a guy like him and spit him right back out, or he really didn’t care about his medical condition, he didn’t know, but he waved him through without another thought, and they both took a sigh of relief.

“You want a drink?” He asked nonchalantly as possible, wrapping his arm around her waist again, and he tried to not let his flustered demeanour show when he found slits cut into the side of the fabric, and he felt the softness of her hips under his fingertips.

“My treat, to get you started,” Bugsy replied, something unreadable in the teasing of her eyes, and she leaned up to his jaw to steal a quick kiss there like any other girl wanting to be paid the full sum of her night would have done.

At least that’s what she told herself, pretending as if her brazen action hadn’t caused her heart rate to spike.

She got him an iced tea, because she knew he wouldn’t want alcohol, and got herself a half shot Moscow Mule, sipping the lime rim appreciatively.

“See anything yet?” She asked under her breath, one hand trailing over the back of his neck, playing with the curls that sat there with vixen sly eyes that scanned the room.

He forced himself not to moan at the sensation, and he worried it was too obvious to the other patrons in the gambling room just how easily he melted beneath her fingertips. He felt like a dog drooling after a bone, like she was shaking a lead in his face and asking for walkies, and he was panting beneath her, tail wagging and dopey eyed.

Not the look of suave, mysterious stranger they were initially going for when they were coming up with identities for their covers. But at least it sold the part of a man desperate to win the jackpot if it meant he could spend the night with the siren woman that clung to him with a giggly sip of her pink straw.

“No one looking particularly suspicious,” He noted; everyone was almost too good at a poker face, though he supposed that it made sense seeing the value of the prize pool, “You are getting a lot of attention however,”

And she was. In fact, he was quick to take her hand in his own free one when he saw a group of men dressed to the nines, solid gold rings along their knuckles, diamond encrusted Rolexs staring back at him from their wrists, their faces dead yet starved when they drank in every inch of her skin, their eyes falling to where her dress rode up high, as she had whined about the entire way there.

She chuckled, and something about it sounded like her own, not the woman she’d had to become for the evening, and she kissed where his jaw clenched in annoyance, “Not from anyone that matters, boy wonder,”

And he felt his heart rest for a moment, because as long as she was with him he knew he could shift that big brain of his into gear. He loved nothing more than the click he felt when he was with her, like their brains and bodies just seemed to bluetooth to one another and they weren’t Spencer and Bugsy they were just them. A since cell amoeba.

He smiled at her, and she preened under his attention, so genuinely her that he felt the vignette that had clouded his vision shift into focus, and he knew he could find their UnSub if she was there with him.

He sat at the nearest table to them that was about to deal in, and within twenty minutes he was racking up a nice, fat pile of poker chips next to his iced tea.

Bugsy knew he was a smart man, knew he was good at magic tricks, but if he had turned to her then and there and pulled a rabbit out her ear hole she wouldn’t have questioned him otherwise. Watching him play was something else.

It was entirely sordid, the whole hour of his first game was spent trying to keep her focus on any patrons sat at their table and the rest that seemed to be twitching, whilst also trying not to look awed at just how amazing his brain was when he won damn near every time.

But she did manage to rip her eyes off him when she could, not enough to seem suspicious, just enough to scan the area for someone who could be their UnSub, her eyes quickly jumping to the guy on the table across from them with a large magic 8-ball tattoo across his bicep, unsurprisingly already looking her head to toe as he waited for his hand to be dealt out. He winked at her, a smarmy, cocky grin on his face, almost too confident in his ability to be someone to turn to suspicions and rituals in order to win.

A serious contender, but nothing that screamed their UnSub.

She looked around a little more, ignoring the handful of men who tried to grab her attention, who thought they were somewhat validated or interesting for having her look at them for a split second. They were just part of the wallpaper compared to Spencer anyway.

It wasn’t until she spotted a guy in a baseball cap a few paces away from them fiddling with yet another magic 8-ball, though this time a key chain, giving it a gentle touch every time he picked up his hand as if it really had the power to change the values once they’d been dealt.

From the quick glance she got of his face, he seemed to be running on an hour’s sleep tops. His eyes were rimmed redder than her lipstick, and his hair was damp with sweat and grease against his temple.

Unstable if there ever was a man for the word.

She quickly looked back to Spencer’s cards, her hands weaving over his shoulders to rub his muscles gently, the signal that she’d seen something important masked as an affectionate gesture.

The House called the end of the round, Spencer being awarded a heaped pile of tens, hundreds even a small few thousands thrown in there, to which he collected onto his tray they had handed him at the door.

Bugsy leaned down with a girlish squeal, giving him another big, cherry lipped kiss to his cheek, to which he felt himself blush under immediately. Quickly dodging to whisper into his ear, it looked to the other patrons as if she was simply promising him an even bigger reward later for his winnings in exchange, “Nine O’Clock at table two, guy in the green jacket has an eight ball keyring he ritually plays with before drawing,”

Spencer nodded, standing from the table with his winnings, using Bugsy’s as an excuse to angle himself to where she was talking about. He pulled her to him effortlessly, his long arms wrapping over her bare back, his neck craning over her shoulder to serveill the table she had indicated, and she quickly hugged him back with that fake giggle of hers, her body pressing to his desperately like the other ladies of the night he had seen with men three times their age.

He clocked who she was talking about almost immediately, running a hand down her spine and squeezing her waist gently to let her know he’d seen him.

They moved in tandem, just like they always had.

A hostess came over to them, all big smiles and a tight fitted black dress, a log book in her arms of where everyone was sitting in the next round to keep a fair game. Bugsy took a look at him, wiping away the smudged lipstick on his cheek with a loving swipe of her thumb, nodding at him for a small bout of reassurance.

“I’m going to go get another drink, honey,” She said loud enough for the hostess to hear, as she flashed him a flirty smile, “Don’t forget to wait for your lucky charm,”

He bristled, a smile twitching at his lips at that, “I wouldn’t dare,”

Because her message was clear. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m updating the team.

She swanned through the crowd as if she owned the place, but then again a packed scene had never been an issue for her. She felt through her concealed inseam of the tiny cardigan she draped over her shoulders, until she felt the long bullet shaped object stuffed into a tampon wrapper that Penelope had geniously planted there to look like a feminine product.

Her own alarm, the one meant to let the team know they had sights on the guy and to be ready. It was Spencer’s that would give them the signal to enter.

She was fiddling with the damn thing when she felt it, a sharp crack across her ass as she was walking towards the bar, heard the laughter in the second she froze up.

Turning on her heel with a tight expression, the anger burnt hot in her eyes when she saw the guy with the tattoo who had been trying to get her attention not even a half hour ago, watched him sidling up to her with a conceited smile.

“So, has that twiglet over there paid for you in advance or are you going home with the highest bidder?” He said, his head flicking to Spencer who now sat at table two, counting his chips out onto the table and paying himself in.

She smiled at the assailant widely, and it would have been pretty had it not been for the crazy look in her eye that twitched when he made a move to step towards her more.

“I’m spoken for in advance,” She said lightly, eyes trailing down his outfit like she was trying to commit it to memory, over his defining markers like the slit in his brow and his tattoos that looped over his hands, “But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you real soon, sweetheart,”

And she flashed him a toothy smile again, yet something was wolfish about it this time, like she was ready to lunge for him there and then.

The guy wasn’t their UnSub but he had made it to the very top of her hit list in a split second decision.

She waltzed away, securing herself another Moscow Mule she had no intention of drinking, and headed back to where Spencer was being allotted his hand of cards. Their round started, Bugsy keeping a close eye on the UnSub who sat directly to Spencer’s right, and she found a little solace in the fact he couldn't have brought in any weapons since they had all been patted down at the door.

It didn’t shake the feeling of edge the guy with the tattoo had put her into when she watched their guy flick a look over Spencer’s shoulder to look her head to toe, glancing back at Spence who was already glaring at him.

“Is she part of the winnings?” The other guy to his right chimed in, sliding a stack of hundred dollar chips into the centre, two of the players already bust as they watched the others play on for the house.

She saw her partner tense in his spine when he heard the man’s drawling voice, and she knew he was struggling to keep a lid on the facade they were putting on for the evening.

Snickering, she ran a gentle hand through his hair, down the nape of his neck with a sickeningly sweet simper, “Sorry, boys. Only person who’s taking me home tonight is the pretty boy,”

One of the guys who had already busted out scoffed, grumbling under his breath, “Lucky fucker,”

And Spencer knew it too. He felt almost rejuvenated just feeling her near, a damn near cocky smile on his face when he pushed his chips into the centre of the table, barely flicking a glance at his hand when he realised he had almost certainly secured a winning run.

Maybe she was his lucky charm, he thought cynically. Maybe he couldn’t blame the guy to his right for carrying a silly little trinket around with him in the name of luck if he was no better.

“I’m calling,” The guy on the far right declared, shuffling two piles of his chips into the middle with the total pooling.

“I’ll raise,” The UnSub cut in, grabbing some of his black thousand dollar tokens and clinking them one by one next to his opponents, “Eight thousand,”

What a surprise, eight thousand, Bug mused, squeezing onto Spencer’s shoulder again as he was quick to match the bidding and then some with his own checks.

“$8,000, that’s fifty six months’ wage for the average person in Bangladesh,” Spencer said, doubling the bet with a flick of those long fingers of his. It was heinous how much his brain managed to warm her insides, Bugsy thought, hoping she kept her poker face intact, “Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?”

The two remaining players, UnSub included, looked at him like he’d grown a second head, and Bugsy fought off the urge to laugh in their face, because for a minute he was so Spencer like all she wanted to do was quip something back equally as smart.

“Look, it’s eight thou’ to you, are you in or are you out?” The first man snapped, perhaps seethin with jealousy that the pretty woman wanted nothing to do with him or perhaps just pissed that the fresh faced teenager of a man was serving their asses up cold.

“I am in,” He moved some more chips towards them, his eyes falling back to the guy they suspected was their UnSub with a challenge in his eyes, “And I raise,”

“Three raise,” The dealer declared, and the first guy huffed in defeat.

“That’s too rich for my blood,” He growled, crossing his arms and flipping his dead cards over.

“Sir, are you in?” The dealer asked the UnSub, and for a minute his eyes snapped to Bugsy’s where she was keeping a calm look on her face despite the fact her insides were stumbling with nerves. But she never doubted Spencer’s maths, she would stake her life on it in fact.

“I’ll call,” The UnSub replied, flicking his cards over with another small token of a hundred, an okay run of cards but not an entire failure.

Spencer met it with a couple hundreds of his own, revealing his four and his eight that met the five, six, and seven he already put down. A winning flush. “Straight.”

Her smile was genuine, dazzling, when the pile of chips were pushed over to him, and she would have laughed with glee had the UnSub’s face not dropped into something devastated, borderline demented, when he saw his ritual had meant nothing. That he had lost despite killing his own friend and four more people as a sacrifice.

He was unravelling fast, and it was then Bugsy knew they had only moments to confirm he was their guy obsessed with his suspicions and that damn lucky number eight.

“I guess you won’t be needing this anymore, will you honey?” Bugsy reached over for the charm with a cheeky grin as the other patrons grumbled at their losses, only for the guy’s hand to come slamming down on top of hers with a brutal grip, hard enough she knew it was going to bruise by morning.

“Don’t,” He hissed at her, and it seemed to click with confirmation in Spencer and Bugsy’s mind there was no doubt this was their guy.

Spencer stood up to defend the woman, only for both of them to be grabbed by security second’s later.

“You’re going to let a man put his hands on a woman like that- would you relax I can walk,” Spencer snapped, watching the other security guard manhandle Bugsy just as roughly, pinning her arms behind her back, though she complied with a victorious grin, “Real tough there pal, grabbing on a woman half your size,”

“Relax honey, I got a taser in my pocket if they really want to behave like bad boys,” The bouncers looked at her in alarm, and it was the distraction Spencer needed to reach into his jacket and trigger the signal. She gave the three of them a shit eating grin, and Spencer thought he might just love her even more, “Don’t shit your pants, I’m kidding. I charge extra for the rough stuff,”

Spencer was still laughing when Hotch and Emily barged past them after the UnSub, who was by now leaving out the back door.

–

“Spencer, really, we can go back to the hotel and forget about it,” After revealing their cover with the bouncers, courtesy of one David Rossi and his famous face clearing their names, and the UnSub caught and well on the way to the nearest jail cell for questioning, Bugsy was more than tired and ready to strip out of the impossibly tight dress.

“I want to see this guy brought to justice, think of him as another UnSub,” Spencer said, his arms crossed over his chest as they sat on the bonnet of a squad car out the front of the building, the tournament slowly trickling to an end with its patrons leaving for the night.

She rolled her eyes, his jacket over her arms the only thing keeping her warm against the evening air. It would have been so much easier if they had been allowed back in, but FBI agents or not, the guards had clear rules against breaching the peace in such a high stakes game. A bad rep for having the feds show up on their busiest day of the year was not welcomed, just as much as they weren’t.

“Except he’s not murdered anyone,” She replied, eyes darting between the guests leaving with their earnings spilling out of their pockets, “He’s just some dumb asshole who can’t keep his hands to himself and- it’s him,”

The guy with the tattoos, Mike Folio as would later be printed on the police report, had barely a second to grieve his losses of the night before Spencer had him cuffed against the squad car, yelling and spitting about his rights as an American citizen.

It wasn’t until he saw the gorgeous woman donned in the candy red dress looking down at him with amusement that he felt the colour drain from his face.

“Hi sweetheart,” She smiled viciously, “I told you I’d see you again. Spence, read him the Mirandas,”

3. The one with the bank explosion

The tweed trousers irritated her thighs, the head band fluffed her hair away from her face in a way she kept trying to fix, and the brown pumps squeaked every time she walked, but her smile was dazzling nevertheless.

“Okay, the TV movie is at Hall H at nine, can we go to that?” Penelope asked, reading from the pamphlet as Bugsy and Spencer all but ran to keep up with her.

“Absolutely!” Spencer chimed in, “Do you think we can make it to the Captains of Enterprise at eleven?”

“Obvs,” Penny replied, fixing the bow tie necklace her and Bugsy had made not even the week before. She looked over at the younger woman, who had a matching K-9 pendant, because apparently FBI salaries did not take into account life sized robot dogs, “Thanks for coming with me,”

“Ofcourse, I’ve been knitting this scarf for weeks,” Spencer replied, his eyes falling down to where Bugsy donned a Sarah Jane Smith cosplay.

“Who are you going as?” She’d asked, the minute he’d asked her to go, because there were few things he did these days without her.

“The Fourth Doctor,” Spencer replied, because he had explained in length to her about the concept of regenerating and had even flicked on some of the newer series for her to watch with him, “Tom Baker’s Doctor, he’s a fan favourite,”

He showed her a picture of the time lord stood outside the TARDIS, a younger girl stood opposite him in a pink suit, large white peter pan collar hanging wide over her chest.

“Who’s that?” She asked, pointing the girl with the cute bangs and pleated skirts.

“That’s Sarah-Jane, or Sarah-Jane Smith. She’s one of the longest starring companions since she was the Third Doctor’s companion first and also was in the spin off show for her dog, K-9,” He explained, warming inside when Bugsy listened with raptured interest.

“So like, is she his girlfriend or-”

“No, no! The Doctor is often speculated to be asexual when it comes to relations with humans. Sarah Jane was one of his closest friends however, and in the Tenth Doctor’s third season he even comes back to rescue her from a wedding set up by one of his enemies,” He said, and her smile pulled out widely when an idea popped into her head.

“Well, can I be her? For your convention?” She asked, somewhat shyly, still a little unsure how the show worked in the fine details, “You know, since you saved me from my wedding?”

He paused, because she’d never really spoken about that day she’d jumped into his arms in the elevator, holding him to her like he was the only thing that made sense. Bugsy was like that alot; giving him everything he ever dreamed in the moment and then acting like it was never a big deal the next.

“S-sure! Yeah, that would be really nice.” He said, and she immediately started searching up what she should wear for it, “I didn’t really save you though, you know, you saved yourself,”

She snickered, nudging him with her shoulder, “You all saved me, I don’t know what I would have done if Em-” She stopped herself, swallowing thickly, and he saw the glow leave her eyes.

If Emily hadn’t been there.

Things were still awkward between them. There were no more catfights, thank goodness, though there also wasn’t any doting between the sisters anymore. It was like a clean break had slit between them. Emily had given up trying to warm to her, given up trying to get her to come around, and had instead taken the high road of waiting for Bugsy to make the first move.

But Bugsy was nothing if not stubborn. So Emily would be waiting a while longer.

“Hey, listen, next time I promise I’ll be the first one to object and then you can say I saved you,” Spencer joked, because he knew the subject of Emily stung her, because he knew she needed to stop thinking about it or she’d unravel into self hatred.

She chuckled aghast, “Next time? I was kind of hoping to keep the next one, Spence, whoever the unlucky guy is,”

He shook his head, a fake look of disapprovement, “Sorry, rules are rules. You wanted to be Sarah-Jane, I have to crash your wedding with the TARDIS I’m afraid,”

She laughed, resting her head on his shoulder as they flicked through the TV some more together.

“Well, I mean if those are the rules,” She simpered, snuggling under his chin, “Does this mean I get a sick robo-dog too?”

She looked every bit the part he would have ever expected her to look. Down to the maroon tie, and the white dress shirt, and the matching tweed blazer and pants that made her look embarrassingly hot.

He was about to tell her just how great she looked because she still seemed unsure, being a casual fan of the show not nearly as religious as some of the surrounding guests were, when Penelope cut them off in a near gutted voice.

“Oh my god,”

“Penelope?”

Bugsy and Spencer looked up to see Penelope’s ex beau, Kevin, dressed in a nearly identical outfit to her (though in Bug’s opinion he didn’t have the same pzazz as she did with the glitter and the sparkliness,) a red headed woman beside him donned in a police woman uniform.

“Kevin, hi, you came,” The blonde woman replied, her face mortified as she took in just how pretty the other woman was, “And you brought a friend, CSU technician Sharp, how are you?”

Hannah Sharp, from two floors below them in the BAU, grinned tightly, as if she could sense just how disastrous the situation had suddenly become, “I’m fine, uh, you?”

Bugsy gripped onto Spence’s arm tightly, hating the turn this was taking, every second of it.

“I am also fine,” Pen replied, though she looked as though she was ready to float outside of her body any minute now. “Okay, well, see ya,”

“You’re not gonna go in?” Kevin asked, his eyes crestfallen when he saw Penelope also grab onto the boy genius’ arm, and he cursed Spencer Reid for getting so many attractive women.

“Actually, we just went in and it’s super lame,” Bugsy interrupted, flashing a disjointed smile at the two of them, turning to usher her best friend away before he could call her out in her lie. “So we’re leaving,”

“Oh, okay,” Kevin replied, his date all but forgotten as the three of them made a sharp exit, a wince on the youngest Prentiss’ face when they got far enough that the girl could cringe in peace, “Well, great costumes,”

“Yeah, you too,” Penelope called back, her heels practically leaving tire marks with how fast she had sped away from her ex that was opening fresh wounds as they spoke. At work they were separated by a whole floor, so it wasn’t quite so scathing to see each other around or even hear of one another, but to be brought out in front of what she could only assume was his new woman was horrifying.

Bugsy was at her side immediately, grabbing onto her hand with a squeezing grip.

“Well, that was awkward,” Spencer noted aloud, and Bugsy lightly slapped his arm for him to shut up, her eyes wide with worry.

He looked at her in alarm, but her face told him everything he needed to know. Girl rules.

He hated girl rules. He never understood them.

“Oh my god, we used to come every year, I can’t believe he brought someone else,” Penelope sighed to the younger girl, who watched her with furrowed brows.

“Well you brought someone else,” Spencer pointed out, only to have his arm whipped at again in a chiding motion, and he watched Bugsy stroke Pen’s back with a bite in her tone.

“Girl rules, Spencer, girl rules,” He tutted at her, rolling her eyes as if they were a married couple and she was nagging him to wash the dishes.

Sometimes it felt easy like that with them. Like she really was just his best friend and not the only girl who held any sort of romantic connection to his heart.

“Yeah, someone I couldn’t possibly be attracted to,” Penelope stated, “Besides, he always thought the two of you were a thing anyway, oh god what if he thinks I’m your guys third-”

“Woah, woah, what?” Bugsy asked with wide eyes, “He thought me and Spencer were, like, dating?”

Penelope nodded, and Bugsy couldn’t even look at him without stumbling over her words.

“Well he knows we’re- like I mean we’re not even each other’s seconds so how could you be our third you know?” She said with a forced laugh, because she could feel her face going hot.

Spencer watched her tongue tie herself into oblivion, thinking of any and every excuse as to why she didn’t want dating associated to the two of them. Because how could she ever feel the same way? He was just him and she was, well, her. So incredibly, beautifully her.

It wasn’t until she bumped into an older gentleman waiting for his valet she even shut herself up.

“And I mean Kevin shouldn’t have just assumed- oh sorry,” She whirled around to apologise the man she presumed was a fan of the early seasons of the show, perhaps even around when they first aired, though the thought died in her throat when he turned around, “Oh, Rossi?”

David Rossi looked suave as ever in his age, a blazer thrown casually over his shoulder, a neat shirt and dress pants ensemble at his hips as he looked between the three of them, their costumes staring back at him entirely too colourful for a Saturday morning.

He sighed, hard.

“Why doesn’t this surprise me?” He asked with a tired voice, as Bugsy bounced back over to Spencer’s side with an incredulous look on her face.

“Are you here for the convention?” Spencer asked, excitement bubbling in his tone as Bug grabbed his forearm gently, already sensing Rossi hadn’t had nearly enough coffee to put up with them today.

“Who schedules a cigar aficionado event back to back with this?” Rossi asked, his eyes clamping on the pendant around her neck, “What is that, a robot dog?”

“K-9,” The three of them replied, and it was as if it tipped him over the edge, his hair growing whiter by the second.

“Kevin brought another woman, I’m plotting revenge. Do you want to help?” Penelope asked, her face still warm from running into the guy who was almost her fiance.

“Know where we can get any horse heads?” Bugsy asked, her expression lost in though as Penelope gasped, “What? I’m thinking go big or go home. Also, horse head in the bed means they can't have sex-”

“I’m taking that as my cue to leave,” Rossi cut in, just as his valet arrived, “Now you know I love all three of you, but this is Saturday, and it is my day off, so I’m going to love you from afar,”

He ruffled Bugsy’s hair fondly as he took his leave, throwing his blazer over the passenger seat and bidding them a wave goodbye.

They watched him go, wondering where it left them for a moment before Bugsy spoke up again, “So are we saying a definitive no to the horse head idea, because I’m sure I know a guy in college-”

“No, Bugsy,” Penelope hissed, her face scrunched in disgust, and Spencer swore she turned green, “Definitive no,”

–

They had been half way through breakfast when Spencer got an emergency call from Hotch for a team of serial killers robbing a bank downtown, hostages and guns on scene.

She had barely had time to whip the tweed blazer off her shoulders, keeping the shirt and pants on as Derek threw her a kevlar vest.

“It’s definitely them,” Will said in his soft Southern drawl, JJ embracing him tightly to her with a worried expression. It had been him and his partner first on the scene, though unfortunately things had not ended well for her when they had ran into the three UnSubs slipping out the back of the bank and had engaged in a shoot out; Will’s partner getting a bullet to the head almost immediately, and Will narrowly escaping unscathed, but not before he managed to gun down one of the UnSubs in the stomach.

So there they were, the UnSubs back inside the bank for safety since they were now surrounded by the city police, the FBI, the SWAT team and a handful of ambulances and medics on standby.

“I only saw the King and the Jack but I figured the Queen’s inside too,” He added, JJ peeling herself from his side as they headed towards the building.

“The media's calling them the face cards,” Hotch informed his team, all eight of them decked in their thickest vests and weapons loaded in full, “Seven bank robberies in seven months. They’ve killed one person at each robbery,”

“MO?” Rossi asked, now dressed out of his smart, Saturday wear and something more akin to his usual business attire.

“Single gun shot wound, each of the victims has bled out,” Hotch replied, and it wasn’t until they turned the corner towards the bank did Bugsy realise just how packed the street was with law enforcement.

Three or four choppers circled overhead with snipers and back up SWAT teams at the ready.

“Serial killers with a thirty day cooling off period, and we’re only just hearing about this now?” Emily asked in an incredulous tone, her voice raised to accommodate the shouting between other chiefs and their units.

“Headquarters characterised them as robbers first, killers second,” Hotch said, his hands on his hips as they all assessed the situation from afar. Naturally a few new anchors had pulled up to the scene as well and were setting up their equipment despite the officers trying to corral them away.

“Oh yeah? How did that turn out for them?” Bugsy grumbled behind her thick, dark sunglasses, biting her lip from saying worse.

“I disagreed with the original assessment, I was overruled,” Her chief shot back, because things had been just as cold between them since that day as they had with Emily.

JJ was slowly reaching out the olive branch in her direction, and if it wasn’t for Henry being so darn cute every time he begged ‘Buggy’ to come play with him, she reckoned JJ would have taken even longer to forgive as well.

“Why are we here now?” Rossi chimed in, eyes locked on Aaron’s frown, that seemed to harden every step they took closer to the bank.

“Because crisis negotiation is overseas.”

“What do we know about them?” JJ jumped in straight away with the problem solving, because even if they were out in the field and not in their pretty little round table room anymore, the UnSubs were still just pictures on a white board needing that red string to connect them all together.

“They’re organised, they're efficient,” Hotch fired off, mentally running through whether he had loaded the pistol he kept around his calf for emergencies, “Each strike lasts about two minutes,”

Derek’s face scrunched in confusion, “They gotta be scouting out the banks in advance, why haven’t we been able to ID them off of surveillance footage?”

“They hacked the security feed and turn off the cameras both during the initial canvas and during the robbery, until the masks come back on and then were allowed to watch” Hotch replied, and the eight of them slipped into the base of operation for the day; a wide trailer converted to house the high tech computers Penelope needed to keep an eye on the cameras with those magic skills of hers.

Bugsy’s eyes landed on the black and white feed of inside the bank, her heart lurching in her throat when she saw well over forty men, women and children lined on their knees execution style, facing the doors to the bank to act as a shield if the snipers did happen to get a shot through the windows.

The woman took the lead, a mask over her face with a doll-like expression on it, the other men soaked in blood as one fought to hold the injured one up for dear life.

“Why haven’t they cut the feed now that they’ve been cornered,” Derek said with a shake of his head, his lips pulled into a grimace, “Letting us see inside gives us a tactical advantage, they have to know that,”

“Unless they want the audience,” Bugsy suggested, watching the jack slowly growing weaker and weaker as they discussed tactics, “Although the only one who really strikes me as the attention seeker is her, he seems more prioritised with the other male,”

“The masks add to their narcissism,” Spencer input with a nod, “Their personas are the royalty of poker,”

“JJ, you, Bugsy, Reid and Prentiss, look at past robberies, that’s going to be our victimology,” Hotch ordered, and they did as ordered with little delay, heading to the office they had set up in the opposite trailer.

This was going to be a long day.

–

“I can help,” Bugsy offered herself before the team even had a chance to protest.

It hadn’t even been an hour into them pulling research from InterPol as to who their UnSubs were before they had made their next dramatic move; they had shot a hostage.

Which meant they needed medics in there fast, fast enough to save the hostage and the jack if it kept the king from unravelling into a massacre.

“What do you mean you can help?” Emily said with a scathing tone, “Bug, you can’t just throw yourself in harm’s way if you have no clue what you’re-”

“I did three years of a medicine degree alongside my biochemistry before I got bored of doing both and gave up on it,” Bugsy snapped at her sister, brows contorting into a harsher frown than she’d had in months. She preferred it when they weren’t speaking at all.

“Because you were bored?” Derek asked, his face incredulous at the gall of the twenty year old they’d plucked from college and sent into the midst of the Russian Mob five years ago, “Did you not have anything better to do like partying or making out with guys- a whole medical degree on the side is your idea of downtime?”

She shrugged, looking back at Emily with a glare who seemed to bristle at the information.

“Can I speak to you outside please?” Emily said in the coolest tone she could muster, though even that sounded like a bite.

Something shifted in the air of the tiny, makeshift office and the other inhabitants tensed up at the sight of the Prentiss women gritting their teeth almost identically, staring daggers at one another for a moment before they stood from their seats and waltzed out of the side of the trailer to where there wasn’t the bustle of squad cars or media to be seen.

JJ looked to Morgan, who looked to Spencer, who seemed to have paled for a moment, and the three of them were out of their own seats to linger at the doorway in case things really did get ugly between the sisters.

“Do you honestly think that throwing yourself into the line of danger today is a good idea or are you trying to hurt me to get back at me?” Emily seethed the minute they had stepped foot on the ground, and the scoff that left her little sister’s throat was something nasty.

“Oh, please, don’t make yourself sound so important.” Bugsy snapped, whirling around on her heel to glare at her sister, “I’m not doing any of this to get back at you, I’m trying to save those hostages in there-”

“So I just happened to have never heard about this medical side quest you set yourself on until now because, what, it just never came up?” Emily laughed, laughed, in her sister’s face, and Bugsy saw red even more, “I thought you were a better liar than that,”

“Maybe if you’d bothered to even speak to me before you needed something from me that day with the Russians then you would have known anything about me that wasn’t being your dumb little sister you can just walk all over like you’re my mom or something,” Bugsy’s voice was getting louder, and Emily’s smirk wiped right off at the sound of that, because she knew she could have been ten times a better sister had she not wanted to get as far away from her mother as fast as possible. “Same with Hotch, he never wanted much to do with me until his wife died and then who did he come to needing help grieving, none a single one of you, and who gets bitten in the ass and punished when I find out I spent seven months grieving like some idiot to that uptight prick who lied to me-”

“Do not speak about him like that,” Emily was shouting now too because Bugsy was truly holding nothing back on her.

“Why? Are you going to pick him over me, Em?” The younger woman snarked, her eyes hateful and narrowed, “Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest given your track record-”

Emily shoved her, like, truly shoved her back and it robbed the words out of the girl’s throat. Yet it made JJ gasp where they were watching from the crack in the doorway, wanting to break them apart but knowing they needed to fix it for themselves.

The three of them hissed when Bugsy’s hand swiped against Emily’s cheek in a territory neither of them had ever wandered into. Emily was always too old to argue with her sister, too big to fight the way most siblings did with slaps and hair pulls and scratches, but Bugsy was a grown woman now; they both were.

Emily swatted the same back to her own cheekbone, after a second of shock washing over her face, and it was like they were two cats fighting in a back alleyway over a scrap of chicken.

Bugsy shoved at her around the tits, because she knew it would ache, Emily pulled at her braid with a yank that made Bugsy’s eyes water, the two of them banging against the wall of the trailer, their heads clunking together.

“Fucking punishing me after months like some insolent child-”

“I would never have left you thinking you were to blame for my death- I would never fucking do this to you-”

This was childish, entirely childish, playground offences and girlish curses in between. The worst part was they knew they could do much worse, they knew they could truly hurt one another if they wanted to. They were both trained to kill, and yet Emily had Bugsy grabbed in a headlock like they were two infants fighting over a sandpit.

Because they didn’t want to properly hurt one another in any way that would last. Never.

“Get the fuck off me or I’m punching you in the crotch,” Bugsy barked, trying to wriggle her way out of her sister’s freakishly strong arms with a frown, “EMILY- I SAID-”

“I was trying to protect you- just get your head out of your ass for two seconds and listen to me- I was trying to protect all of you-” But by the time Emily had somewhat gotten her to stop squirming, the girl had grabbed her by the calf where she had been forced to bend at a forty five degree angle, holding her one leg up off the floor while she sweeped at the second one to knock her off balance.

She had been known to shoot an assailant in the foot from twenty feet away to stop them from getting away, and yet she was resorting to simply pushing her sister over as a way to get one up on her.

She felt like she was ready to finger paint and take a nap time next; like they were about to be sat in the headmaster’s office and have their wrists slapped with a ruler for not keeping their hands to themselves.

But it worked, and in seconds the Prentiss girls were on the floor, puffing out of breath, Bugsy’s lip bleeding where Emily’s ring had caught it on the corner, Emily’s cheek red and raised from where her sister had a surprisingly strong right hook. They took a minute to breath, Bugsy glaring at the awfully clear blue sky, much too happy and cheery for the travesty that had been her entire day. And it was only then did she hear the other three members of their team exit the trailer, JJ going to help Emily up while Morgan's face appeared in the middle of the powdered clouds, something sad and sympathetic in his eyes and it was then that he held out his hand to get her up.

She didn’t want to, had every intention of laying there and staring at the broad daylight until she managed to float far away from there and from where her chest hurt with betrayal and her lip bled with lies.

He yanked her off the floor, offered her a cold can of coke for where she felt her lip swelling already, and she resigned to sit on the stairs to the trailer with her head in her hands until her temple stopped pounding or at least until she felt herself calm down in the slightest.

Emily shuffled to sit down next to her, her breathing still uneven but she could tell because she felt a tentative hand on her thigh rubbing gently, in the motherly way Emily had always watched her.

Because Bugsy had always been her baby, whether she wanted to admit it or not.

“Bugsy?” The younger woman huffed in indignance, pouting as she stared at her lap, because she felt the tears welling up already, “I’m so sorry I left you, you know I never, ever wanted to, you know that right?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracked as she finally looked over at her sister’s solemn face, “You told JJ and Hotch but you couldn’t even tell me? Did you just not want to come back for me?”

Emily’s brows pulled up into a sorrowful frown, and she felt her eyes start to burn too.

“No, that was never a part of it, I swear, there wasn’t a day when I didn’t want to come home to you,” She replied, taking a deep breath in through her nose as not to start bawling her eyes out there and then, “I had to tell Hotch and JJ as a matter of precaution, not because I wanted to tell them and not you. Bug, I missed you every day, I missed Niko and Sergio and those dumb documentaries you made us watch,”

Bugsy smiled despite herself, wiping a finger under her nose to stop the tears that had already started rolling there, “Well, I don’t know about Niko but Sergio missed you a whole lot,” She sniffled, rolling the Coke over to a cooler side to sooth her lip some more, “But I think he feels like you kind of abandoned him, and like you maybe don’t love him as much because he can be kind of annoying and, like, he’s real torn up about me telling him you died only to find your you’re not, like you can’t just do that to Sergio, Em, he doesn’t deserve that,”

Bugsy’s lip was quivering by the time she’d finished, but Emily chuckled wetly, wrapping an arm over her shoulder and pressing their pounding heads together.

“Are we maybe not talking about Sergio anymore, Bug? Are we talking about you-”

“No, we’re definitely talking about Sergio,” She cut in, wiping under her eyes with her sleeve, looking back up where Emily’s face was glistening with tears though it seemed like she had somewhat calmed under her sister’s gaze that wasn’t so full of vitriol hatred anymore.

Emily nodded, a humoured smile on her lips, “Right, okay, my bad. Definitely Sergio,” She held up her hand, stroking down Bug’s cheek for her where her tears had started pooling, “Well, I want Sergio to know that even if he is annoying sometimes, that there’s nothing that could ever take me away from him again, cause even though I’m not his mom, he’s still always going to be my kid, you know?”

Bugsy’s face crumpled in pain for a minute, sniffling and meeting Emily’s eyes, dark brown hues watching her sadly, imploring her to know how much her heart called out for her.

“Really? You promise?” Bugsy whined, and Emily nodded with a sad smile, stroking the back of her braid that looked a little ratted and wispy from where it had been yanked at. She took a shaky breath, looking down to her shoes where they scraped against the steps, “Well, I’m sure he’ll love to hear that, I’ll tell him when we’re home-”

Emily laughed, kissing her sister’s forehead, and pulling her into a side hug.

“Alright, tough guys. Let’s get back to working on the profile, Sergio can wait for a minute,” Morgan said, though his face fought off the smile that crept on his lips seeing two of his favourite girls finally at peace with one another.

Bugsy looked five years younger within seconds, and they clicked back into place, hopping up off the steps to get right to work, cursing herself for wasting so much time on silly things like hating her sister, because forgiving her felt cathartic in a way she didn’t understand she needed.

Maybe they had a chance after all.

–

Bugsy swore she would never have an optimistic thought a day in her life again.

Because just as they had thought perhaps things could look up; just as they had sent in a different agent medically trained enough to save the jack, their UnSub, that they’d identified as Oliver, had bled out before he could have done anything to save him. Without a second thought, the king, Chris, had shot the agent, and demanded he wanted Will next as retribution for his brother’s death.

They had of course turned down the offer in a heartbeat but the moment everyone turned their backs, Will, ten times the cop Bugsy could ever hope to be, had walked into the bank with his arms raised in surrender despite JJ screaming for him to stop from where Morgan and Hotch held her back from following him in.

Bugsy and Penelope watched from the CCTV in blood curdling horror when Chris put two bullets in him before he could even declare he was unarmed.

“Did you see where he was shot?” JJ asked, her tone empty, her eyes bloodshot where she had broken down into a fit of wails as soon as the gunshots had sounded through the street.

Bugsy opened her mouth to speak, losing all hope as soon as the bluebell gaze fell to her for an explanation.

“Is he alive or dead, Bug?” JJ snipped, but she knew she didn’t mean it, knew she was just worried out her mind and grasping at straws.

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Bugsy replied, Emily’s hand at the small of her back in a comforting gesture because she sounded scared. She wished Spencer was with her, he always knew how to make people feel better, but he and Kevin had gone back to their office uptown to use Penelope’s personal lair for better coverage on the BAU’s resources.

“He was wearing a vest,” Emily jumped in, because Bug was tense and upset enough as it was, “He might be okay,”

“Might be?” JJ said humourlessly, her face hollow with sadness, “Alright we need to get inside,”

“JJ, it’s too risky,” Morgan tried as the woman stood up, a new found determination, because she refused to accept her partner, the father of her child, was dead until she saw him in a body bag for herself, “We don’t have eyes in there anymore,”

Jennifer’s eyes welled up again, and she turned to their unit chief; he was the only one who could understand just how desperate she felt right now if there was even the smallest chance he could still be alive. “Aaron.”

Hotch took a breath, nodding to her with complete empathy, “Let’s go in,”

Bugsy leapt for the medical kit they’d kept in the cupboard, because if she could stop the bleeding as soon as possible he might have a chance. She was taken back to when she had gotten to Emily that night with Doyle, when she had nothing but the clothes on her back and a loaded gun to treat her sister with, when she had felt completely helpless.

She refused to feel like that again, not now she’d been lucky enough to get Emily back. She refused to let JJ and tiny Henry go through what she did.

Will wouldn’t die if she had anything to do with it.

“Seeing what’s going on outside doesn’t help us inside,” Spencer said, standing behind where Kevin sat in Pen’s office, his hazel eyes falling to the surveillance footage of the bank live streaming from one of the choppers, where the familiar woman he worried for more than he could ever tell her moved behind a SWAT unit towards the front doors, a large med kit strapped to her back, a pistol at her side.

He looked down at the blueprints of the bank because if he watched her get even ten feet away the bank he thought he might just throw up, even if there were four armed men shielding her.

“Kevin, can you possibly pull up each of the surveillance feeds prior to Will being shot?” He asked, quickly diverting his attention away from where they were at an impasse waiting for something to happen, Emily’s SWAT team moving slowly towards hers.

“Sure, what are we looking for?” The other man asked, his fingers sprawling over Penelope’s keyboard as he did as requested, playing the older footage on the opposite screen, though even he was getting cold feet watching their team getting ready to breach the perimeter.

“The female UnSub disappeared once before, if she wasn’t looking for an escape, what was she doing?”

Spencer paused, because he couldn’t help when his eyes flicked back to the footage of Bugsy shuffling closer to the entrance behind one SWAT agent, and the doors burst open, the entire street pausing for a second to see what the movement was.

The hostages. The civillians caught in the crossfire at the bank slowly trickled out of the doorway, their arms raised in peace, some crying in relief though there was no sign of Will anywhere.

This was bad. Though he felt utmost care that the hostages had been released safely, he knew that the UnSubs keeping Will meant one of two things. One, that Will was already dead and useless to them, or two, keeping him bleeding out as a bargaining chip was their final play. Meaning they had no intention of releasing him, otherwise they would be left with nothing.

If he wasn’t already dead, he would be any minute now.

Spencer’s chest crashed in devastation for his friend and his godson, though it soon took a turn of terror when it seemed the same thought ran through Bugsy’s mind and she began stepping forward towards where the hostages were shuffling out in floods of tears.

He saw Morgan and Emily yelling at her to stop, two of the SWAT team trying to follow her because they had no idea what had come over the twenty something year old rookie with a death wish. Spencer tried to ignore the way his chest clawed in horror, his eyes snapping back onto the surveillance of the female UnSub disappearing into the back rooms of the bank, completely ignoring the vault and the very clearly marked exit, meaning she had no intention of using either.

So what was she doing?”

Spencer felt his head rattling with a horrid thought, hoping his intuition was wrong when he held the blueprints up to the screen, his skin turning to gooseflesh when he realised just exactly where she had been dipping out to with that backpack of hers.

“Gas mains,” His voice was numb with fear, his body diving for their comm link to Garcia, where she sat in the trailer with Strauss and Rossi, watching the surveillance just as he was, “Garcia, get them out of there now,”

But no sooner had he said anything, Bugsy’s figure disappeared into the building, the SWAT team confirming that the entrance was clear, JJ and Morgan moving after her with their own agents protecting them.

But she was already inside, his head screamed at him. Even when he heard David’s frantic voice through the radio they had linked to their kevlars, “ABORT, ABORT!”

Even when he heard Hotch swear hastily, calling to his team to hold back, trying to yell loud enough JJ and her team could hear his orders to take cover.

Spencer couldn’t truly take any of it in as he watched the large glass windows wobble for a second, a shock wave of what he knew was about to come.

The lines went dead, and he thought for a second his heart stopped. Because he hadn’t figured it out fast enough, hadn’t warned them before she had chance to throw herself head first into danger the way he should have known she would.

Because Spencer watched the footage with a terror he had never known, not even in his eight years on the team, not even in his own situations as a hostage, not even when he was at his lowest and he thought the dilaudid was going to finish him off, alone and high in his apartment’s little bathroom, a burnt out drug addict who had so much going for him.

Spencer had never felt the sheer, spine-chilling dread that he did when he watched, useless and heart broken, as the bank went up in a colossal explosion, a plume of flames bursting out of every window, shattering glass and cracking the brickwork, hard enough he watched part of the building start to crumble inwards.

And Bugsy went down with it.

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