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bearsinpotatosacks · 1 year

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A Feather on the Wind - Reuben Fitch

Previous Chapter

Reuben refuses to make this place home, but can he get convinced otherwise?

Words: 3492

He'd been waiting for this day for over a week. It was all he'd been waiting for throughout the sleepless nights and smiling faces. The photo he had of his mum was wrinkled from how often he'd held it. He was just glad he didn't have to adjust to a new school, his brain had been so full with adjusting that he wouldn't have made a good start, not that they were making too many concessions for that at his school now.

The clunk of the ticking clock filled the silence. He shuffled his feet on the carpet, fingers were going numb from how he was sitting on them.

The air in this hospice was stuffy. Everything was beige, the walls, the furniture, even the atmosphere was. It was nothing like his home. There were no flowers for a start, his mum was always growing flowers and keeping them in vases around the house.

There was no laughter in these halls. He'd missed his mum's laugh so much. She was everything to him. And now he could only see her when it was arranged prior.

"Reuben Fitch?" The receptionist called.

He sat up and made eye contact. His heart began to quicken its pace. A clammy feeling took over his hands.

"Your mum's ready now, she may be a bit tired but she's been so excited about your visit."

Time stopped for a second. He remembered what it was like before he got taken away. She'd stayed in bed most days but on the days she didn't, her body was frail. He tried his best to help even though she wouldn't let him. It broke his heart to see her so ill.

"Her room's at the end of the corridor," she said and pointed.

Carole stood up and extended a hand. He didn't take it yet couldn’t help but admit that her smile eased the anxiety in his stomach.

The bland scent followed them as they walked past identical beige walls and mediocre artwork. An overcast sky did nothing to make this place feel more alive. Why did he feel like his mum was only going to get worse in such an energy sapping place?

As they reached her door, he stopped, not able to bring himself to open the door. He didn't know what he'd see when he went in. What if she was worse? He pictured an almost lifeless version of his mum, stuck in a chair and destined to never get out of this place.

"What are you waiting for?" Carole asked.

Her tone wasn't offensive. It was the same sweet one she always had.

"I can't do it."

"Can't do what?"

"See her."

She hummed and pulled him away from the door. Kneeling down, she looked him straight in the eye and gently rubbed his arm.

"Yes you can," she said. "I know it seems scary now but this is all you've been talking about all week, I know you can do this."

He pushed her hand off, rubbing where she'd touched as he averted her confident gaze.

"You don't get it, what if she's not like my mum anymore!"

Something else, a shadow of sadness flickered in her blue eyes. He hadn't seen that before.

"I do get it, trust me." She took a deep breath. "My dad had cancer a few years back, he died of it but when it came to the end, I felt just as scared as you are now. I didn't want to see him so ill. That wasn't the dad I remembered."

"But I still went in because I knew he needed me, and because I knew I'd regret it if I didn't," she said. "And I know you can do this, okay?"

He took a deep shaky breath and nodded. His eyes fell back on the door. He could do this, it was his mum, of course he could do this.

Opening the door with a creak, he saw her sitting near the window. Thin blinds let light through. He could see the garden through the translucent material.

She turned to see him and a smile grew on her fatigued face. There were more lines than before, and no life in her face as she took him in. She was thinner. Her pyjamas hung off her body and a fuzzy blanket wrought tightly around her lithe frame.

"Baby!" Her voice was thin too, breathy.

She looked at Carole in the doorway for a moment, she must've waved because his mum waved back. The door clicked shut behind him. That heavy feeling in his gut came back. His body was on the verge of shaking like a leaf.

"Come here, you-" she gestured for him to come closer, he did without thinking despite the anxiety. "Have you grown? And your hair looks so good, and your skin?"

She stroked his cheeks, squishing them as laughter filled the room. But laughter wasn't enough. The walls were still beige. And the garden sat plain and unimaginative outside.

"Are they feeding you? Cleaning your clothes? Not hurting you are they?"

"No, Mum, they're really nice," he nuzzled into her hand. "But I miss your curries, Carole's food is nice but it's not yours."

"But they're good to you, yeah?"

"Yeah, there's this other kid there, not their son, called Mickey who I'm sharing a room with, he's really nice."

Her shoulders relaxed, "I'm glad you made a friend, and their son, he's alright?"

"Yeah, we're about the same age, he's more focused though, not mean, just focuses on himself," he said. "His parents have been foster parents since he was four so I think he's used to new kids by now."

She smiled and lay a kiss on his forehead. He pulled up a chair and sat down as he listened to her talk about life here. Despite her forced optimism, he could see how much this place was wearing her down. The usual wonder in her stories was missing.

“The nurses are looking after me though, Steven is especially nice, he makes sure Fresh Prince is on every Monday and helps me in the garden,” she said

There was a wheeze in her voice as she spoke. He could tell in the way her body tensed around him that she was holding back. But eventually she couldn't hold back anymore and broke into a fit of coughing.

He jumped off her lap as he remembered the last few months of his life. He'd lay awake, listening to her cough over and over again deep into the night. Involuntarily, his hands began to shake. There was nothing more he wanted to do than to help her but he couldn’t move.

"Water, Reuben, baby, pass me the water," she croaked through coughs.

He stared for a few moments more. A pitcher of water glimmered in the overcast sun. With his hands still shaking, he poured a few splashes of water into a nearby glass and handed it to his mum.

After a few moments, she calmed down but the energy she'd previously had was gone. Instead, it was replaced with that fatigue that he knew well.

"Tell me how school's been going?" She wheezed.

They weren't going to talk about it? Why were they pushing that off so easily?

"Good," he said with hesitation. "I've been trying hard in my classes but, with the change, it's been difficult to concentrate."

"That's understandable, baby, and it won't be for too long, right? By the end of the year your dad will be home and this will all go back to normal."

Dad. He missed him like an ache deep within himself. The only reason he was in care was because of the Marines not letting his dad back to look after him. He was in the middle of another tour and the military didn't give parental leave.

"Let's hope so."

They fell into silence. His mum's body slumped as they waited for each of them to say something. Usually, conversation flowed naturally between them but now he could see how little energy she had.

"Maybe I should go, mum," he said.

"Already? You just got here!"

"I just think you should rest, I want you to get better."

Reluctantly, she nodded with a shallow sigh. He shuffled forward to give her a hug. His fingers tightened on her baggy clothes. Her usual homely scent was gone, replaced with a stuffy, clinical smell that lingered all around.

"Look after yourself, you," she said.

"You too, mum,"

Tears pricked in his eyes as she kissed him on the forehead. He held onto the feeling of her hand against his cheek as he pulled away. He tried not to see how much she withered as he turned his back to leave.

~~~

Reuben ws silent on the drive home. He simply stared out the window. From what she could tell, the visit had been alright, she knew better than to go in and intrude if he didn't want her there. But the visit had been short. After his blip of insecurity, he’d gone back to being the excited kid he had been for the past week he'd been with them.

"How was your visit, then?" She tried.

"Good."

"Is your mum looking better?"

No reply. Maybe that was a no. She wanted to carry on, yet knew that needling him with questions probably wasn't what he wanted.

"I was thinking, maybe next time we could bring her something, like some flowers to light up her room?" She glanced over to him, he'd moved his head to look at her. "Maybe have a think about some stuff she might like, a picture of you might be nice or if you know her favourite flowers then we could get some of them? Just have a think."

"Okay," he mumbled.

They pulled into the drive. Reuben got up like a shot and stormed into the house. He didn't slam any doors or stomp but couldn't look anyone in the eye.

"Hey Reub, how was your v-" Goose started.

He watched him storm up the stairs with a slightly gaping mouth. Bradley came in from the living room, the television playing quietly in the background.

"What was that about?" He asked.

"No idea," she said. "I mean, he was anxious about seeing his mum but he said it went well, although he didn't tell me very much."

She looked up the stairs again, considering whether she should follow him up there but decided against it. Today had been a tough day, maybe he just needed some time to himself. To process.

~~~

Once he'd got into his room, his and Mickey's room anyway, all he'd wanted was to be alone. His mum had been so frail. Her dreads hung off her head, bags under her eyes made her seem years older than she actually was. The red undertones of her skin had turned ashy and sickly. Fatigue was laced in her eyes.

That wasn't his mum. His mum was the life of the room. She spent hours in the garden, tending to her flowers and humming under her breath.

Where had she gone? Had this cancer taken her away from him so much? Would he ever get her back?

"How was your mum?" Mickey asked.

He was playing alone in the corner with some action figures from a show he didn't know. To him, this place was home. Goose and Carole were caring and considerate.

For Reuben, though, he didn't want this place to be home. It never could be.

"She's sick, what do you expect?"

"I bet it was nice to see her, though,"

"I guess."

He sat down next to him. A stinging feeling poked his eyes, one he couldn’t stop anymore. He wanted all of this to stop. Why did it have to happen to him? Why did his mum have to be sick? Why did his dad have to be halfway across the world with the Marines? Why couldn’t he just have a normal family?

"If I tell you something will you promise not to tell?"

~~~

Mickey stared at Reuben confused. What was he going to tell him that was so serious?

"Yes."

His mind began to race with possibilities. Maybe he was going to run away. Maybe his mum had actually died and he hadn't told anyone. Maybe he was going to leave because his dad was back from the Marines.

"Seeing my mum made things worse," Reuben said.

"Worse? How? She is nice, right?"

"Yeah," Reuben nodded, his eyebrows furrowed in what could be confused, Mickey always struggled to understand. "It's just that it reminded of how little I wanted to be here in the first place."

"But why don't you want to be here? Here's good."

Mickey thought back to his parents. It had taken a bit of adjustment. He still felt uncomfortable around group meals. The shock when Carole cleaned and bandaged his scabs from when he played outside, or when Nick helped him with his school work, remained as full as it had the day before.

"It's not home, though. Home is with my parents, when my mum's not sick and my dad's not away. This place can never be home."

From what Mickey had heard from Reuben, his parents were lovely. They had barbecues and made cakes, they, whenever his dad wasn't out with the marines, went to his parents' evenings and zoos and museums. He came from a strong and loving home whereas Mickey didn't. The only thing he knew of caring homes like that was this place, with the Bradshaws, so the idea that Reuben wasn't happy in a place like this confused him.

A strange feeling pooled in his gut. He hadn't felt it for a while, not since he was taken away from his parents. To him, there was only one thing different between the Fitches and the Bradshaws. Him.

"My dad's going to be back soon, anyway, and I'll be back home again where things make sense."

His words were far away, as though he was underwater. The feeling in his gut spread up and into his throat. Tears pricked in his eyes. He liked Reuben, he was the closest thing to a friend he'd ever had and now he realised he didn't like him at all.

It didn't matter what Carole or Nick said, he was the bad thing that made his parents not love him. How could he not be when Reuben hated it here too? They shared a room after all.

He couldn’t sit here anymore. His pulse throbbed in his head as he stood up and darted out of the room.

~~~

Reuben watched as Mickey ran out. Was it something he said? Maybe it was something about his parents, he knew they weren't the best.

He followed him out and down the stairs. In the distance, he heard rapid scrambled words. He barely caught himself as stumbled across the wooden floor and into the kitchen.

"Okay, slow down, Mickey, and explain it to me again," Carole said.

Mickey was in a flood of tears. Red rimmed eyes overflowing. A sleek sheen from his crying made his cheeks shiny.

"Reuben was saying how he doesn't want to be here but his home and here are both nice but he doesn't like it here so it must be me and he doesn't like me but I want him to like me and-" the words burst out of him all in one breath.

Carole knelt down and patted his shoulder, "Okay, okay-"

Reuben couldn't stand and just watch. The words left his mouth before he had time to think.

"Dude! You weren't meant to tell her! I told you that was a secret for a reason!"

This didn't help Mickey's state. He took one look at Reuben and burst into a bigger flood of tears.

Upon hearing the commotion, Nick walked in from the garden. He stood on the threshold for a second, hands on his hips, surveying the situation, before jumping in to help.

"Right, let's all calm down-"

"I don't need to calm down, I want Mickey to apologise for breaking my promise!"

"See!" Mickey sobbed. "He does hate me!"

Carole pulled him into her and wrapped him in her arms. Mickey's hands gripped the back kf her cardigan in a vice-like grip as his sobs were muffled by her skirt.

"Reuben, come outside with me." Nick said with a slight assertive note to it.

He must be mad. Why was he mad at him though? Mickey was the one breaking promises like they didn't mean anything. This was exactly why he didn't like this place, all the rules were different, and there were definite favourites.

As Carole led Mickey into the living room, Reuben followed Goose outside to the back porch. Flowers bordered the garden below. The smell of freshly cut grass floated on the breeze, the lawnmower sat abandoned on the lawn.

"Come on, sit down," Nick patted the steps next to him.

Reuben stared for a moment then sat. Nick didn't say anything at first, his eyes were set straight ahead. In the silence, Reuben focused on the world around him. Birds sang in the distance. Laughter and the burning smell of barbecues solidified early summer.

Reuben couldn't stand the silence, "Are you going to shout at me?"

"No."

"Then why did you take me out here?"

Nick paused. He turned his head to him. There was a storm in his eyes, something about them reminded him of his dad.

"Your dad's in the military, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "The Marines, why?"

"I used to be in the Navy."

Reuben sat up straighter, "Really?"

"Yeah, I was a Radar Intercept Officer, the backseater in a jet."

"Why did you quit?"

He couldn’t help but ask. There wasn't any memorabilia anywhere. It would explain why people called him Goose, and why his friends only came around every few months.

Nick looked down at his hands. He rubbed the tired skin of his hands as a bitter smile crept onto his face. An aeroplane flew overhead, he watched the trails as they dissipated into the clouds.

"I didn't quit," he said, a wistful tone to his voice. "I went to this elite training school called Top Gun, during one of the exercises something went wrong and we, me and my pilot, Pete, lost control of the jet. When I went to eject, I hit the canopy"

He looked at Reuben, as if questioning whether he should continue, "I broke my neck, cracked my skull, had to learn to walk again. And even though I got back in shape for the Navy, I still couldn't rejoin because my eyesight got worse and I ache too much some days."

Reuben did a double take. He couldn’t tell this had happened to him. There were no visible scars, he didn't seem in pain throughout the time he'd been here. The only visible difference he could see was that he wore thick rimmed glasses when doing anything technical.

"Is that why you became a foster parent?" He asked.

"It was the only thing I knew to do."

He paused for a second then spoke again, "I bet you're wondering what this has to do with anything."

He nodded.

"The whole point of me telling you that, and I didn't mean to scare you or make you think your dad's going to get hurt like that, is to tell you that I know with complete certainty that your dad wants nothing more than to be with you."

He turned to him and placed his hands on his shoulders, "If there was a way he could do his job and be with you and your mum, he would, I know I would've."

Tears sparked in his eyes. His dad had given him a picture of himself to remember him by, Reuben had creased it with how much he'd stroked it during the last few hard months.

"So, if you ever want to talk to someone about him, I'm right here," he smiled. "And Carole knows all about sick parents, so she's got a good ear for that."

"I know you want to go home, I get that, but while you can't, we want to help you feel as comfortable as possible here and help you with all this stuff you've been dealing with, okay?"

He nodded with a sniff. Tears began to roll down his face as all the anguish ran out of him.

"Do you want a hug?" Nick asked.

Reuben nodded again. If he spoke, he'd begin to sob uncontrollably and he was alright with the state he was in now.

Nick's arms wrapped around him in the perfect way. It wasn't quite like the hugs from his mum that she gave out readily, or the ones from his dad when he came home, but the warmth was still there.

I don't really have much to say about this. I think it's a well put together chapter, and I'm also starting to put more of the characters in other chapters. Mickey is in the Bradshaws long-term care, Reuben's in their short-term care. Thanks for reading!

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ebarglowskii · 29 days

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Introducing Me!

Hello Everyone!

My name is Emily B. I am Polish, and originally come from Brooklyn, New York. So excited to be in this course with you!

The art that I was assigned with was the "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp. At first glance, it didn't look like a fountain to me, I am not sure why but it genuinely looked like a toilet sculpture, as if a toilet was made. It is though, a unique and interesting piece of artwork to me, I have not really seen anything like it.

5 Facts that I ended up learning about the artist or artwork:

1. It is a porcelain urinal made in 1917.

2. Marcel was a French artist born in July 28, 1887, and died in October 2, 1968.

3. Out of the Duchamp family, 4 out of the 6 siblings ended up becoming artists.

4. The fountain was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists under another name, Richard Mutt.

5. The fountain was made to make a point, the point being, the point behind the piece of artwork is just as important as the artwork itself.

No it doesn't really look any different to me physically wise, from the beginning it looked like a toilet, more in depth a urinal. But I actually didn't really think twice about the name signed. At first, I was a little confused as to why "Mutt" was written on the toilet when the name Mutt isn't anywhere in Marcel Duchamps name, but some people go with nicknames or different names when wanting to express themselves. But now reading the story behind the name it makes more sense. Taking a piece of artwork, and submitting it with your own name if famous, most of the time the artwork is automatically accepted. But how Marcel Duchamp did, he submitted the artwork in another name, and it was instantly rejected. Very interesting concept.

Resources:

This is a work of art that is apart of my life. I actually created this piece myself, as it is signed by my name in the lower right corner. It hangs in my kitchen, as my mom and dad wanted to have it up since I made it when I was a little kid. I think it is beautiful. When you are young, you don’t put a lot of thought into the art you are creating. You just create. Here in this artwork, I wasn’t putting much thought into it but just creating. I think that in its entirety is beautiful.

Whenever I tend to look at art , I seem to over analyze things . I tend to want to know the whole story first before looking at an artwork and just imagining something. I am a 19 year old polish female, I am originally from Brooklyn, New York. For fun I spend time with my dogs, and just chill at home. A girl loves her sleep. I am not apart of any group, and I work as a waitress at a Chicago restaurant.

First things first, my parents are people that fascinate me on a daily basis. They were originally born in Poland, and moved to the United States when they were both 18. They didn’t continue school after high school, and never obtained a degree. My mom recently obtained her bachelor’s and nothing is more inspiring than seeing her make it possible. My dad has been so supportive, and by her side every step of the way. Married together for over 20 years, eventually I hope I find a love story like them. I am a true believer in Jesus Christ, I believe something that fascinates me on a daily basis is the wonderful views we are able to see. The sunsets created, and the views we are able to see just has me always breathless. I love taking in everything that I am able to see.

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frilly-interference-dazzling · 1 year

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Who to Blame for Domino Death 🎃

My mom made me feel bad, also the 2 times she called my dad at work when he said to call the police, who wouldn't listen to me. Police usually get mad at fake accusations and can maybe arrest you or harass you. They took me to the mental hospital. I was dropped off there with my aunt, Joni, at age 16. It's not that nice, especially not for me. She kept approaching me and acting like I couldn't talk to her, or something. I'd been having problems with my parents and was being monitored in private. The problems were unspoken, maybe even then by me but understood. Anyway, I think she was upset when it seemed I almost threw a glass top of a table because she wouldn't leave me alone, probably not he first time. I've thrown and even broke things, like my CD's, but nothing bad on purpose, and this was in the New Orleans area. So, anyway, once I threw the remote control, which didn't seem very breakable and not too too hard, no special reason. I made a hole in my wall by accident once when upset, just punched it, didn't think anyone'd hear. They did. I know I had recently been to someone's spa in their home and they violently tried to suction off blackheads on my face and forehead. I think it damaged my brain some, I could feel in the front, though I thought tubes were forming there recently which sounds strange. I'd been posting online a lot, on the then IMDb Message Boards, which are now film|boards. So, from punching my wall that first time then, my mom was acting weird sorta, and I didn't even come out to see my parents those days, not even to eat. I know I also made holes in the wall in the living room. I put Alice in Wonderland (2010) posters up, like I'd have put up artwork I made, in the house. I had to come home from college, from being monitored in private. So, later things happened. My dad did weird things to the house, like painted it blue and yellow. He arranged his room where my mom worked in a way that irritated her. When I went to visit my grandma, my dad's mom, who lived with my aunt, Barb, my dad's younger sister, I wanted a laptop, which I needed, and my dad and aunt, Barb, and/or maybe, Joni, set it up on a little table or desk in her room. It was my mom's. My grandma put it down hard kinda. In those days, computers could be slower, or I guess laptops I mean if you were not that rich. My mom finally couldn't "make it" and couldn't stand it, as it must have slowed down, though she acted like it was okay. My grandma used to do other mean things, when I was monitored in private, but so did and do others. She seemed nicer later. She already wouldn't go along with the game, when I acted like that's all it was, which isn't that hard to come to for me but was to others there. I don't know, but I think my grandma did it on purpose. I think it helped, at least, give my mom cancer. Other people did it, too, of course, like letting her go after pretending they liked they hired and she probably worked a little teaching children exercise at the nice gym, sorta nice, in Orlando, Florida. My mom had to take my younger brother's dog out each morning and was tired, also took my younger brother to high school. He got the dog mad I went to bed too early to watch movies anymore, a few years ago. So, my dad got sick and died after my mom was sick and died, and my aunt, Barb, cared for my grandma, or her mom, and when she broke her hip around age 95 went to the nursing home and died not too long after, so it was like she was murdered, "telepathically." She didn't really approve of my dad, and her daughters, my aunts, didn't matter, anyway. I don't trust them, but I'm not "afraid" of them, at least not anymore than others or actively. It's not my fault, come for me. Also, I was mistreated, all along, being monitored in private. I know my mom worked hard for whatever incentive people do like they still exist to please my grandma, my dad's mom. She probably snapped or "broke" early on saying she made my dad fat. I wanted him to go exercise, my mom saying he wanted to be a banker and dad, rather than... (out of space)

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sillyrabbit81 · 3 years

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The Pull

Summary: Alternative Universe. Vampire Henry. Henry, Crown Prince of the Vampires is avoiding his responsibilities because of his mother's fate. When Henry finds his mate, the circumstances are eerily similar to his mother's. Rather than risking his mate's life, Henry chooses to run, but can he run from his fate?

Pairing: Henry x OFC

Word Count: approx 2.4k

Warnings: mention of death, mention of abortion (although it didn't happen), and swearing

Masterlist

Part 1 Part 3

Chapter Two

Rowena POV

"David, I can't wear this!" I complained on the phone. I held up the dress again. "It's just too much, too revealing."

It was a simple white silk floor-length skirt, but the top of the dress was two long vertical pieces of silk, barely wide enough to cover my breasts, which crossed at the back before wrapping around my waist and tied in a bow on my lower back. There was no way I could wear a bra. It would only take a slight wrong move, and there would be an embarrassing nipple slip.

"Yes, you can," my brother said. "Lawrence had it made for you to wear as a gift. He wants to meet you and make a good impression." Lawrence was David's partner, they had been together for over a year, but I was yet to met him. Lawrence and David seemed to travel together an awful lot, so it had been challenging to find time for us to get together.

"Have you seen it?" I asked.

"Of course," David replied. I was surprised. David was my older brother and had always been a little protective of me, especially since our parents died when I was 15 and he was 20. Maybe he had finally let that go considering I was now 26.

"You know I'd never wear something like that. It's gorgeous, but it's too revealing for me."

"Rowena, it's Halloween. It's an excuse for excess." I rolled my eyes. For David, being a day that ended in 'y' was an excuse for excess.

"Why does your boyfriend want to see me in this?" It just seemed over the top for a party. I gathered that Lawrence was wealthy, but still, it's just a Halloween party.

"Because he wants you to fit in. Honestly, you'll stick out less wearing that than anything else. Besides, no one knows you there, and you'll have a mask. Just pretend you're someone else."

I grumbled. "What time did Lawrence say the stylist was coming?"

Although I couldn't see him, I could hear David's victorious smile through the phone. "At six pm. The driver will be there at eight."

"That seems late, David," I said. "I won't arrive until nearly nine."

"I know, but that is Lawrence's style."

"Promise you won't leave me alone." I wasn't afraid of being alone at parties usually but by the sounds of this one, the dress and the fact that I was having my hair and makeup done professionally made it feel like a big deal.

"Lawrence and I will take good care of you," David promised.

I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone.

Feeling only a little more confident after the phone call, I jumped in the shower, washed my hair, and shaved my legs for the first time in weeks. I put on a robe and slippers and went up to the main house to see Charlie since I had half an hour to kill before the stylist arrived.

Charlie was staying there tonight with Alice while I went out. He had his own room and often slept there now that he was getting older and wanted space from me. Charlie and I mostly ate our meals up at the house and just kept basics in our two-bedroom flat above the old stables.

Charlie and Alice were sitting together at the dining table, playing with a random assortment of lego pieces. "Hey, Mum. I made this for you." Charlie handed me a flower made from the blocks. He was such a sweetheart of a boy.

"Awww, thanks, Babybear. I love it." I kissed the top of his head and sat with them.

"I thought you had to get ready for tonight," Alice asked.

"I have an hour," I replied.

"You're still going, aren't you?" Alice asked. She seemed more eager for me to go than I was. Alice was Charlie's paternal grandmother. Charlie's dad, Alex, had been my boyfriend when I was 17. Despite being on the pill, I fell pregnant, and Alex tried to pressure me into an abortion and refused to be a part of his life. Alice had been horrified by the way Alex had treated me. In an unexpected turn of events, she had stepped in to help raise Charlie. Charlie rarely saw Alex, but Alice saw that we both wanted nothing. The woman was a saint.

"Yeah," I said reluctantly.

"It'll be good for you," Alice said, squeezing my hand.

"I know." I sighed.

"Charlie, go get Nanny a glass of water, please. My throat is feeling dry," Alice said. She had something to say to me outside of Charlie's ears. Being a kind and helpful kid, Charlie immediately got up and went to get her one. He made me so proud.

As soon as he left the room, Alice said, "Rowena, don't feel guilty getting out there again."

"How can you say that?" I asked. I had tried dating a few times over the years. It always ended disastrously. Always my fault too. I had developed severe commitment issues.

"Charlie is my grandson, and I want his mother to be happy. Not lonely and depressed. It would be best if you had a life beyond Charlie. I've been telling you that for years."

Charlie came back with a book, and Alice read to him. As mothers often are, I was struck by how handsome my little boy was. His blonde sun-bleached hair and deep brown eyes were framed by a face that had lost nearly all of its childhood fat. At nine years old, he was almost as tall as me already, and he would probably take after his father in that regard. In fact, his eyes were the only thing that came from my side of the family as they were the same colour as David's and my Dad's. Charlie looked so much like his father, sometimes it hurts to look at him.

Kissing him again, on the cheek this time, I said goodbye to Charlie, told him to be a good boy for Nanny and went back to our flat above the garage.

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

I arrived at Lawrence's house not long after the sun had set. House was probably too humble a word to describe it. It was a borderline castle. I had thought Alice's family was wealthy, but this was another level. It was like something out of the Great Gatsby.

The car drove around the circular driveway and pulled up near the front door. A valet opened the car door, and he escorted me into the house, where he told my name to a butler who asked me to follow him.

Looking around the room, I was grateful to David for insisting I wear the dress. Everybody was dressed like it was a Hollywood awards show, and I mean everybody. Not to mention they all looked like actors or models. I had never in my life been around so many beautiful people. And I don't mean just beautiful because they were thin. There were people of all shapes and sizes, but everyone moved with grace and ethereal ease. They seemed so other.

This was crazy. Who the hell was my brother mixed up with? This whole night must have cost a fortune. Beyond a fortune! All for a Halloween party?

I was led from room to room, the house full of beautiful creatures. More than that, the house was decorated in a way that would put Versailles to shame. The decadence of the furnishings was lush and rich. Every piece seemed to be a precious antique but shone like it was brand new. Gold leaf decorated the cornices, and priceless framed artworks, tapestries and mirrors filled every wall. Even the wooden floor was an intricate parquetry design that appears to have taken years to lay.

At first, I thought I imagined it, but I noticed that everybody stared at me as I moved through each room. I felt heat rush to my cheeks. Did I look so different from everyone else? I supposed I did, but the eyes following me made me thankful for the mask.

After what seemed like hours but couldn't have been, I was taken to a large hall and presented. Yes, presented. What the fuck?

My escort stopped outside the room and spoke to a man standing just inside the door. The man rapped his cane on the floor three times and thundered, "Rowena, sister of David, Inamorato of Duke Lawrence." An eerie silence fell as every face turned to me. Some even bowed their heads. What on earth was going on?

"Rowena!" David was at my side, clutching my hands to his chest. "I've missed you so." He leaned over and kissed both my cheeks. Everybody in the room seemed to return to normal, and sounds of chatter resumed. David was wearing a mask and wore an elegant dark grey suit. He looked so different. David has always been handsome, but he looked so unlike his usual self, and I couldn't pinpoint the difference. I didn't even have the words to describe the change. I know it had been months since we had seen each other, but it wasn't that he had lost weight or gained muscle. What I could see of his face was inconsistent with my memories of him. Then I saw his eyes.

"David, what the..." David cut me off and embraced me. His smell was mouth-watering, and I wondered what cologne he was wearing. He had never smelt like that before.

"Come, meet Lawrence!" David exclaimed, gripping my hand tightly. Maybe he had put on muscle because he was stronger than I remembered.

David lead me further into the room. I followed, but my head was spinning. Why did everything look so beautiful but feel so... unreal?

"Lawrence, my love, this is Rowena," David said.

The man who sat before me took my breath away. I had no word to describe him other than impressive. He wasn't tall or large, but he seemed to take up all the space in the room as if by looking at him, your eyes couldn't see anything else. His skin was like a midnight sky lit up by the moon, which seemed to reflect the light as it was so smooth, flawless and radiant. His hair bounced with large curls, and although it was dark too, it seemed to shine with its own light.

As Lawrence stood, his movements were so polished they almost had a serpentine grace. His white lace mask framed his eyes, black with a red rim around the pupil, just like David's. Lawrence came towards me, and I was captivated, struck immobile by the force of his presence. Then all of a sudden, the fear left me as though it was never there. I sucked in air, not realising I hadn't taken a breath since I laid eyes on him.

Lawrence grasped my hands to his chest, just like my brother had. "Oh David, she is lovely, isn't she?" He lifted my hands to his lips and kissed both of them before lifting my arms wide and inspecting me. "She does look luscious in this dress. I do have excellent taste, do I not?"

I looked to David, who was beaming proudly like he had passed a test by bringing me here and meeting Lawrence's approval. Stunned, I looked again at David's smile. Something was wrong with it.

Lawrence was still talking, "You were right that she would be a hard one to crack. She seems to see many things others don't. Including you, by the way." David laughed at Lawrence's observation.

I tried to speak, to ask again what was going on, but nothing came out. I kept trying to breathe but I felt suffocated. The more I tried, the less air seemed to come in.

David grabbed my shoulders and caught my gaze. His voice was solid and musical, and the force of his words almost made me fall. "Rowena, it's alright. You can breathe." And all at once, I could.

"This dress is too tight." I managed to say.

"Nonsense," Lawrence said dismissively, "it's perfect. He is going to love it."

"He?" I questioned.

Lawrence sighed and glanced at David. They looked at each other for a few moments, then David took me by the arm and led me to a cluster of sofas. "Come, sister, sit with me and let's catch up."

Even the way he spoke seemed to change. It can't have been that long since I'd seen him. I thought back and realised I hadn't seen him in about two years. We occasionally spoke on the phone, but years had passed since I had physically seen him.

Lawrence left us mingled around the room, which I saw now was a ballroom. Some people danced, some drank wine, and others socialised. Something was wrong with all of it, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

David started to talk to me, asked me about little Charlie. I went to get my phone to show him some pictures and realised I must have left my bag in the limo. Before I could tell David that, he said, "never mind, the driver works for Lawrence. He has it. You can get it before you leave."

How did he know where I had left my phone? This was too much. "David, what's going on? There's something wrong here. This place is... off."

I suddenly felt bewildered, like I couldn't concentrate on anything. I felt a curious pull towards the back of the hall. I stood and looked back and started to walk towards the doors. It was like I was trapped in a gravitational pull towards... something. Without warning, a spontaneous feeling of arousal hit me, and my body was on fire. I let out an audible moan. I felt a desperate call come from between my legs to ease the rapidly growing craving. And not just by anyone, by Him. Wait, who was Him?

David held my arm and tried to lead me back, but I wouldn't allow it. I struggled for him to let me go. David was about to say something when another announcement was made, "The Crown Prince, Henry, Son of Alfred, King of all Sanguisuge."

I looked first to David to question what on earth that meant when I caught sight of the Prince.

It's Him.

I felt like I was falling, plummeting to the ground. The floor rushed to meet me, and my vision went dark.

Masterlist

Part 1 Part 3

@henryobsessed

#henry cavill #fanfic #alternate universe #Henry Cavill vampire #alexander skarsgard #werewolf #vampire #henry x ofc

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inky-duchess · 4 years

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21 History Ancedotes for my 21st Birthday

So today I celebrate my 21st birthday and I have decided to gift you all with 21 of my favourite historical Ancedotes. Some are funny, some are sad and some are plain bizarre but I hope the make your day 💜

Mary Maloney, an Irish-born suffragette in England followed Winston Churchill around while he was campaigning for a seat in Parliament, drowning out everything he said with a very large bell and calls for him to apologise for his comments on women's rights and suffrage movements.

Clodius Pulcher was a well born Roman noble during the last day's of the Republic. He gave up his Patrician status to become Tribune of the Plebs (an office in which one had to be a Pleb) by being adopted by a much younger Plebian man who became his "father". Clodius was a bit of a riot, sneaking into religious festivals dressed like a woman to sleep with Caesar's wife, building a shrine to Liberty in the ruins of the Conservative Cicero, vetoed the last speech of one of the Consuls (who basically did nothing all year and was apparently going to roast Caesar) and burned down the Senate House with his funeral pyre (the Plebs who loved him literally tearing up the furniture to build his pyre). He was honestly the best fun.

When laying on her deathbed, Queen Caroline of Ansbach turned to her husband George II of England and told him he should marry again. George refused to ever wed again... But added he would have mistresses. Caroline said , likely with a roll of her eyes, "oh my god that doesn't matter."

Florence was a pretty cool city in the Renaissance until Savanorola came to town. He disliked the loose living artists that crowded the city, with their naked pagan gods and rampant homosexuality. He expelled them all with help of the French hoping to make Florence Holy Again. When the Borgia Pope excommunicated him and sentenced him to death, one man in the crowd was reported to have said. "thank God, niw we can return to sodomy." One Floretine man in the 1490s said Gay Rights.

So this list couldn't be complete without an entry of the only American politician I love, Alexander Hamilton who was just a walking entity of sass. I could go on about his sharp sarcasm or his disaster bi vibes with John Lauren's but my all time favourite Alexander Hamilton ancedote has to be this exchange with Thomas Jefferson "There are approximately 1010300 words in the English language, but I could never string enough words together to properly explain how much I want to hit you with a chair."

Caterina Sforza was an Italian noble woman during the Renaissance. She was apart of the powerful Sforza family, which drew many enemies to her. One fateful day at Forli, Caterina's children were snatched as hostages. The besiegers threatened to kill her children if she did not cede the castle. Caterina refused, lifting her skirts and shouted to the besiegers that she had the means to make more children.

Hannibal Lecter's creator Thomas Harris was happy to end his great character's story with the original trilogy. However his publishers forced him to write an unneeded prequel explaining why Hannibal became Hannibal. Thomas Harris agreed lest he lose the rights to his character so he wrote Hannibal Rising, where Hannibal as a young man hunts down the Nazis who ate his sister with a katana.

Nell Gwyn is my favourite mistress of Charles II, mainly because of her sass. Once while trapped in the middle of a riot where Londoners swamped her carriage thinking she was Charles's Catholic mistress. She popped her head out the carriage and told the people "Pray good people be civil. I am the Protestant whore." She also dosed her rival Moll Davis with laxatives in order to free up some of Charles's time and she once flashed her underwear at the French ambassador after asking him why the Franch King did not pay her to spy on Charles because she was with him every night. A true Queen.

Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty of China once rose from his bed to go do some ruling when he realised his lover, Dong Xian was sleeping on his sleeve. Rather than disturb his lover, the Emperor cut his sleeve off at the wrist to leave Dong Xian nap. Nothing has ever been more romantic than that. Y'all could never.

Princess Margaret the sister of current Queen Elizabeth II was a socialable Princess and often tasked to visit the up and coming music stars of the day on behalf of the Crown. When meeting the Beatles one evening, she noticed George Harrison was acting a little odd. When she asked what was the matter, he replied "We arent allowed eat until you go." Princess Margaret laughed and promptly left so the Beatles could get some dinner.

During the Siege of Jadotsville, Irish soldiers under the flag of the UN were attacked and besieged by local insurgents allied with the Katanga Regime. The insurgents numbered thousands while the Irish only had 158 soldiers, all who were lightly armed. They radioed to their allies assuring them that "we will hold out until our last bullet is spent. Could use some whiskey though".

Napoleon was famous for writing raunchy letters to his wife, the Empress Josephine while he was away. She used to reply with really mundane letters or not at all. She really just could not be bothered with him.

Josip Broz Tito was so fed up with Joseph Stalin sending assassins to kill him, he wrote to Stalin personally to say "If you don't stop sending assassins to kill me. I will send one to Moscow and I won't have to send another." It didn't work but Big Dick Energy.

Successful Roman soldiers returning from war often got to march along in parades known as Triumphs. During this, it was customary for them to sing bawdy songs about their commander. One surviving one about Caesar goes like this "Romans, lock up your wives. Here comes the bald adulterous whore. We pissed away your gold in Gaul and come to borrow more."

Matilda, Lady of the English was a woman so badass that history cannot handle her. She was the daughter of Henry I who left his throne to her after the death of her brother. She was away in France when her father died and her throne was snatched by her cousin Stephen. They battled back and forth for years with neither side ceding any ground. Matilda was once besieged in a castle during a snow storm, with Stephen's men all around her. Instead of fighting her way out. She simply donned a white cloak and walked out of the castle. Just walked out without any of Stephen's men seeing her.

Pedro of Portugal once fell in love with a beautiful lady in waiting called Inez de Castro. For years, they lived as man and mistress, popping out a few kinds. Pedro's dad really did not like Inez and wanted Pedro to find a legitimate wife so he had her killed. Pedro returned home to find the mother of his children dead. Pedro went a little crazy. He had all his father's assassins killed, ripping out their hearts as they had done to him. When Pedro ascended the throne, he demanded the Pope legitimize his children by Inez. The Pope not wanting to upset the King, said he couldn't because Inez was never crowned Queen. Pedro dug Inez up and crowned her as Queen, having all the nobility swear loyalty to her corpse. The Pope had no choice but to agree to his request.

A famously clever general once saved an entire city with an ingenious stragety to sit outside the city waiting for the attacking army to come. The attack had come to fast for the city to ready themselves for a Siege so, the general had to move quickly. He evacuated the city and took his place waiting for the army to come. The enemy forces stopped and took one look at him and bolted, thinking he meant to lure them in one of his famous traps.

Michaelangelo was really badly treated by the Vatican when he was painting the Sistine Chapel. He constantly fought with the Popes over the design and his work, which he was paid peanuts for. Michaelangelo got his revenge in his work, painting the gates of Hell behind the Papal Throne and an angel flipping the ol' fig (the Renaissance version of the bird) toward the Pope's chair.

Peter the Great was not a perfect guy. He kept serfdom as a practise in his kingdom, he had his son tortured to death and he could be an unpleasant guy. But Peter was a dreamer. He wanted nothing more to build a fleet for Russia and bring Russia beyond its borders. Peter took a gap year from ruling Russia to wander around Europe. When he stopped in England, he was granted Leicester House to chill in while he did his shipwright studies. It was here that Peter found a new passion. The wheelbarrow. Cue Peter and his new found English buddies drinking in Leicester House, punching the artwork and rolling each other around in barrels across the house's Great gardens.

Diogenes is hands down a walking shit post. He was a great thinker in Greece during the reign of Alexander but a rather dry, sarcastic wit. He lived in a pithos/a jar because he shunned all vanities and values of society. He trolled other philosophers, attending their debates to heckle them and eat loud foods through them. When Alexander the Great came to fan boy over him, saying that if he were not Alexander he would like to be Diogenes to which Diogenes just said "yeah me too, now get out of my sunlight."

Cosimo de Medici was the son of a Floretine banker with a great knowledge and love of art. Cosimo wished for Florence to release its potentially and join the Renaissance. He hired Filippo Brunelleschi to finsh the Great Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore which had láin unfinished for over a century, a symbol of a failure of ambition. The builders had lost the knowledge of creating a dome so large so it remained unfinished. Despite much opposition from the other nobility and denouncers of the Renaissance, Cosimo's dream of the completion of the dome was completed, making it the largest brick dome in creation at that time. There is nothing like achieving your dreams and certainly nothing like leaving a lasting reminder that screams 'I was right and you were wrong' to stand for centuries.

#Instead of doing shots I decided to give you all a gift #History is our greatest gift #And it's filled with dick jokes and idiots #Anyway happy birthday to me #Go forth and enjoy this great gift #history dump #History Ancedotes #History bites: kinda?

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jazy3 · 3 years

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Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 17X15

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Wow! A lot happened in this episode. It was billed as Jackson’s goodbye episode, but it turned out to be so much more than that. Meredith got discharged and was reunited with her kids, Tom decided to move to Boston to work for Jackson, and we got the show’s first Indigenous doctor and patient storyline! I honestly think Jackson’s farewell was really well done! While it’s true he could do the work he wants to do just as easily from Seattle everything else about his exit makes sense to me. He’s tired of sitting on the sidelines and he wants to make real change where he can.

I loved his conversation with Meredith and how he was the one to sneak her out. I loved Meredith's voice over for this episode and how it followed Jackson's actions and the flashback montage set to music. I thought it was fitting. I would have liked him to have said goodbye to Ben because they were the Plastics Posse until he left to become a firefighter but apart from that I was happy with it. The character has come such a long way during his run on the show and I feel like this episode reflected that.

The editing was really well done too. Especially the shot of him overlooking the lobby. That transition was seamless. I loved his goodbye scene with Meredith. It made me so emotional. I love that Meredith tried to lighten the mood by making a joke about how she won because she's the last one standing. That scene when she hugged the pillow after he left because she misses him and everyone else really got me. I also really liked the conversation he had with Bailey and Richard.

I'm glad he said a proper goodbye to Jo although I didn't find it super emotional. In addition to Ben, I would also like to have seen a goodbye with Maggie. I'm surprised they didn't do that. Maggie was so focused on Meredith's recovery that it's not clear if she even knows that Jackson is moving to Boston. They also could have done a big emotional scene with Catherine. On a lighter note, I am so happy that Meredith is doing better for real this time and has been discharged! I've been waiting for this since the mid-season point.

I loved the scene where she was reunited with her kids and Amelia was panicking about the state of the house and Meredith told her it was fine and that was just how she liked it. Meredith getting Jackson to sneak her out of the hospital felt very in character to me. As her voice over says Meredith isn't one for tradition or big hullabaloos which is why I think the others tried to keep it a secret. I'm not surprised that she ducked out early. While I get why the other characters wanted to do a big send off for her, I feel like they should know by now that's not her style.

I loved the scene where Amelia and Link found out Meredith might be coming home, and they hugged and then Link said he had to go to work and Amelia started crying and then asked why he was still there. Link was so confused and then Amelia told him she’d be crying off and on like that all day to get her emotions out and that she’d be fine and he needed to go to work. That is so Amelia! But in a good way. Post-tumour and with her addiction under control even in a pandemic Amelia is now able to express her emotions in a healthy way so she doesn’t relapse or spin out of control. That is such huge growth for her. I loved the scene at the end with her and Meredith.

The smile that they share. The look between them. You could see early seasons Private Practice Amelia in that look but also mature and stable new Amelia. I loved that Amelia was all worried about the state of the house and Meredith was fine with it being a mess because as a working Mom she knows what it’s like and all she wanted was to be at home with her kids in her messy house.

At the end of the episode we find out that Tom’s near death experience with COVID has caused him to re-evaluate his life. He feels lucky to have lived to have been spared and he wants to help Jackson make real change in Boston. On the one hand I was surprised by Tom’s exit, but on the other hand I wasn’t. I love Tom and will truly miss his character, but ever since the affair came out and he and Teddy split and she started working on trying to repair her relationship with Owen, Tom hasn't had a lot to do.

I'm sad they didn't do more with him because he's such a great and complex character and I know some people had speculated they might pair him up with Mama Ortiz which could have been interesting. I'm sad we didn't get to see him say goodbye to Amelia, Link, Teddy, Catherine, or Meredith. Tom and Amelia are old friends, he trained her, he took out her brain tumour, and she rushed to the hospital when she heard he had been admitted for COVID-19.

Tom and Link seemed to be getting along as of late and Tom was ready to be a father to Teddy's baby before she got back together with Owen. He found her the perfect apartment and he built a crib for a child that wasn’t biologically his that he was so excited to meet and be a Dad to. All this after his own son died and his marriage collapsed as a result. He treated her like gold and she’s done nothing but treat him horribly for no reason. I don't think I’ll ever forgive Teddy for that.

Catherine and Tom are also old friends that go back even farther. She appointed him as Chief Medical Officer of the Fox Foundation. She told him about DeLuca’s death and took him to the Memorial. When Richard was sick, she told him she wanted him to take over the Foundation in her absence. Tom and Meredith had such an emotional scene earlier this season and he's been praying for her every day. Does she know that? Does Meredith know that Tom has been praying for her and worrying about her? I was expecting a follow up scene to that, so I hope we get one.

I found the patient storyline that Tom, Levi, and Indigenous intern James Chee had really moving. Grey's has never had an Indigenous patient or doctor on the show before and while the dialogue did feel heavy handed at times, they brought some really important issues to light and were trying to make up for lost time so that’s understandable.

Robert I. Mesa who plays Dr. Chee is Navajo Soboba and the patients that they treat at Coast Salish whose traditional territory encompasses the province of British Columbia, Canada and the states of Washington and Oregon in the United States. It’s really great to see an Indigenous actor bring stories about Indigenous characters to life in a realistic way for the same reason that it’s important to see black, brown, Asian, latinx, and LGBTQ+ actors bring stories about characters like themselves to life. It brings authenticity and ensures sure that white straight cisgender people aren’t taking roles away from people within those communities.

When I found out through Twitter that the show had cast its first Indigenous doctor, I was very excited. I work for an Indigenous organization currently and so Indigenous representation is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. The first thing that came to mind for me was the Coast Salish artwork you see in the background of so many scenes of the show. From the show’s earliest seasons, you can see beautiful art pieces in red, blue, and black depicting fish, birds, and other animals on the walls of the hospital and in people’s offices.

Yet it is never addressed or mentioned that that is Coast Salish artwork. In order for it to be there someone from the art department must have travelled to Seattle to buy some local artwork to put up around the hospital. While that’s great for making the hospital look authentic to the area by not mentioning its origins or the fact that Indigenous people exist for 16 seasons does all Indigenous people a disservice. Indigenous people are not stereotypes or tokens or simply makers of pretty pictures.

Every group has their own culture, artwork, language, and traditions. I’m glad that Grey’s Anatomy is finally acknowledging the existence of Indigenous Americans and the fact that Indigenous people exist and continue to exist despite repeated ruthless attempts to murder and assimilate them. This is a huge problem in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other nations. While in the last few years Indigenous issues have gotten greater coverage in Canadian media there isn’t as much media coverage of Indigenous issues in the United States.

I love that Tom and Levi treated both the pregnant woman and her grandfather with respect and dignity and didn't dismiss their concerns or mock their traditions. I love that Tom actually had some knowledge of smudging ceremonies and that he referred to Dr. Chee respectfully when needed and allowed him to perform a smudging ceremony for the grandfather. When the pregnant patient’s husband thanks them and says that in the past they haven’t had great experiences in big hospitals that is unfortunately a sad reality for many.

Like other people of people and other marginalized and oppressed groups the concerns of Indigenous patients are often not taken seriously, and they often encounter racism that leads to poorer treatment and death. When the pregnant patient talks about how their centres are under resourced and that they were sent body bags instead of medical supplies that is a real thing. The Trump Administration actually did that in the States and the Harper Government here in Canada did that during the H1N1 Epidemic.

Thankfully, here in Canada the COVID-19 Pandemic response of the Trudeau Government has been worlds better. No sending of body bags and instead medical supplies and lots of relief money has been given to Indigenous organizations like mine to help real people. Indigenous Canadians have also been given priority status for vaccinations and as a result people are alive today that would have died previously. Now that’s not to say things are perfect here. There are still so many issues that need to be addressed including police violence, discrimination within the justice system, and the rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women. But at least some progress is being made.

The fact that they wrote Tom off reminded of an old adage about Grey’s Anatomy that I heard someone talking about at the start of this season which is that if there isn’t anyone significant for a character to date and you’re not an original character your days on the show are numbered. The fact that they wrote Tom off after putting Teddy and Owen back together makes me even more sure that Meredith and Hayes are going to end up together and that their relationship will be a key plot point of Season 18.

If that wasn’t the plan, I don’t think Hayes would still be there. There have been episodes this season where he has been very prominent, episodes where he’s been completely absent, and episodes like this one where he has a few short scenes. He wouldn’t still be there hanging around in the background if the plan wasn’t to set him up with Meredith. To me the only explanation that makes sense is that they are going to put Meredith and Hayes together hopefully before Season 17 ends.

Side note, I bet all of the actors who passed on being Meredith’s love interest or backed out for a movie or tv role on a newer show probably feel real dumb right now. Grey’s is about to go into its 18th season and Richard Flood who plays Hayes is getting paid mad bank whether he’s prominently in the episode or not! Plus, he slays that role. While the path they took to get here was bumpy I’m so glad that we got Hayes as a character and we’ve gotten to see his relationship with Meredith develop.

I would have loved to see more of Hayes this episode. I was expecting a scene in which he visited Meredith and I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get that. I get that the focus of the episode was on Jackson’s departure, Meredith being discharged, and Tom’s epiphany, but it would have been nice to see that. The scenes we did get were great! I love his dry sense of humour and his comments about Jo’s terrible handwriting.

My favourite moment of the episode was hands down when Hayes came to clap out Meredith with everyone else and then Perez came out and they realized that she had snuck out early and Hayes laughed and said, "Nice one Grey, Brillant!" And then he wished everyone a good night and headed out. If Meredith isn't there, he's out. He’s not even trying to hide his feelings for Meredith anymore. It’s an open secret that he likes her and is clearly smitten. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if the janitors have a group chat about it.

I love that he laughed about it like it was some big cosmic joke they were both in on. He knows her so well. Everyone else was confused and her sisters were worried when they didn’t hear from her, but Hayes wasn’t worried because he knew she’d snuck out the back and that someone must have helped her. Speaking of romance, I’m guessing that next season they will bring in a new Head of Plastic Surgery for Jo to date. I feel like they will have more luck finding someone than they did when they tried to hire a new love interest for Meredith over the last few years because right now work is scarce.

Also, in the romance department Teddy and Owen are back together. I'm happy for them, but other than that I don't really have any strong feelings about it. I am happy that they seem to be good and that the fighting and long-drawn-out drama is over. I've never been a ride or die Teddy and Owen shipper, so I don't feel an emotional rush seeing them back together. I loved Tom and Teddy together so I'm sorry that ended especially since Teddy and Owen have always been such a mess.

I think that they should have spent less time fighting and more time rebuilding their friendship before getting back together. We spent the first half of the season watching them fight non-stop and Owen made it clear he wanted nothing to do with Teddy ever again. Teddy treated Tom like crap while trying to win Owen back who clearly didn’t want her. While I’m glad they have reconciled, and the drama appears to be over I wish they had spent less time on the fighting and more time on exploring Teddy’s trauma and having them rebuild their friendship if that was the route they were going to go.

We also get more details about Maggie and Winston’s wedding this episode. I posited on Twitter a few days ago that I thought Maggie might ask both her dads Bill and Richard to walk her down the aisle as she'd want to include both of them in the ceremony. I think having Bill walk her down the aisle and Richard officiate is lovely. It reminds me of when Bailey stepped up to officiate Callie and Arizona's wedding.

I’d like to see more interactions between Meredith and Winston and Meredith and Link in the future as both men have become a part of the family largely while Meredith was sick so it would be great to see them get to know each other and bond. I really loved the scene between Winston, Link, and Owen where Winston was trying to figure out if Teddy and Owen were back together and Winston and Owen were teasing Link about the Sister House. It’s nice to see them all bond. It would be even better if they would all have more scenes with Hayes and for them to bond as well. I hope to see more of that next season.

I get why Link wants to get out of the Sister House, but I think he was a bit unrealistic about the situation. Meredith just got discharged. Amelia and Maggie aren’t going to want to leave her side until she tells them she’s ready and it’s okay for them to go and take a step back. I foresee them going with a hybrid approach next season where Maggie and Winston move to his place following the wedding and Link, Amelia, and Scout move to Link's place, but they still spend time at Meredith's house frequently. I imagine after being away from her kids for so long at some point Meredith is going to want her house back and to spend time alone with her kids.

I'm interested to see Meredith talk about her time on the beach in the upcoming episodes. Richard and Bailey were struggling to figure out how to tell her about DeLuca’s death but we the audience knew that Meredith already knew he had died. When she coded previously, and Ellis Grey passed away the first words out of her mouth were about her mother being dead. But here we see something different. When Meredith wakes up this season the first words out of her mouth are about how much she and Derek love Zola. She uses the word ‘we’ so the audience knows what she’s talking about, but the characters don’t.

It appears that at least a week has passed since the previous episode possibly two and we learn that Meredith hasn’t brought up her time on the beach or her visits from the dead to anyone. I think that she’s keeping that to herself for a few reasons. She didn’t want to leave the beach and telling that to the people who just spend the past three months trying desperately to save her life would probably come across as suicidal and upsetting. The conversations between her and Derek were personal and private, and she may not be ready to share them just yet.

Her conversations with George, Lexie, and Mark were also pretty personal so she might not be ready to talk about that either. In this episode we see her tell Bailey and Richard that DeLuca is okay because he’s with his mother. The scene cuts away, so we don’t know what else she tells them. Hopefully we’ll find out next week. My guess is that the first person she’ll talk to about the beach in the following episodes will be Hayes because he will understand her desire to stay because of how he lost his wife.

He won’t see her desire to stay on the beach as suicidal or crazy because he would probably think about doing the same thing if given the opportunity. We saw Meredith be really vulnerable with Hayes when she first got sick about her fears of dying and falling asleep. They’ve talked at length about their spouses and their past relationships in a way she hasn’t with other characters. I feel like he is the perfect person to talk to about what happened on the beach because he won’t judge Meredith or take her desire to stay personally.

They’ve already established that Hayes is a supportive and understanding person who is happy to sit there and listen to Meredith talk about her experience of dating after death and past relationships and so I think he’s someone Meredith can open to about what it was like to see Derek again, what it was like to realize her ex-boyfriend was dying, what is what like to get closure with George, and gain wisdom from Lexie and Mark. I’m hoping that will happen in next week’s episode and if not in the finale.

We saw Helm having a tough time this episode. I think Helm moving in with Levi and Jo is a good idea. I think it will give Helm the support she needs and I'm glad Levi is there for her. We haven't seen Jo and Helm interact much so far, so I'm interested to see how Jo is going to feel about her moving in. Also, where is Helm going to sleep? Jo and Levi live in a one room loft where Jo sleeps in a large bed and Levi sleeps on the couch. I would have liked to have seen more scenes along the way building up to this as Levi and Helm haven't had a scene all season and now right at the end you see him trying to help her. I also really miss Parker as a character. I wish they brought him back as well as Helm.

Something I didn’t like was that they seem to be focusing on DeLuca, his death, and his absence more than they should. I get that the writers and people behind the scenes liked the actor who played him, but the character himself was pretty widely detested by the other characters for seasons 15 and 16 so having them talk about him like he was such a great guy that everyone was super close to and that they all miss feels hollow to me and kind of annoying.

DeLuca and Meredith were not that close. They weren’t friends and rarely had a scene together prior to Season 15. They stopped talking entirely after he broke up with her in Season 16 and they weren’t friends when he died. So, talking about how he would have been so happy for her and one of the first people to cheer her on is strange. Also, I felt like Jo’s comments to Carina were out of place. I get that when someone dies its customary to say nice things about them to their family and Carina is mentoring Jo and she’s grateful for that, but DeLuca was god awful to her.

They become really good friends after Alex attacked him but then they stopped being friends when she got back together with Alex. They stopped having scenes together after that until he took an interest in Meredith at which time Jo and Alex both made it abundantly clear to his face and behind his back that they disliked him, and they hated the idea of him and Meredith together. All he did was antagonize both of them during seasons 15 and 16 for absolutely no reason and then after Alex left DeLuca walked up to Jo at the Emerald City Bar touched her without her consent and attempted to kiss her and get her to sleep with him to the point that she wound up throwing a drink in his face to get him to leave her alone.

He then told the bartender she was crazy after she told him to get some help. That’s sexual assault and attempted rape and DeLuca should have gone to jail for what he did. Instead we never see it addressed, he never apologizes, and they don’t share a single together after that. My hope is that they will finally moving on from talking about DeLuca and his absence next season. It’s getting a bit ridiculous at this point and it’s time to move on.

Onto next week’s promo! We don’t get a lot of information from this one. We see Bailey talking about how she’s losing surgeons left, right, and centre and she can’t afford to lose anymore and Meredith talking about how she can’t operate if she can’t stand on her feet. She’s worried she might never get back to operating, but this is Grey’s Anatomy so we know she will. Link talks to Amelia about wanting more children which considering that Scout is only a few months old and they couldn’t wait to get out of the house full of children just last week is a terrible idea. Link finally calls Jo on the fact that she clearly wants to adopt Luna who promptly codes! Yikes!

Until next time!

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hotchley · 3 years

Text

two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five

Surprise, I have not finished the date or any of the things for my 300 sleepover, but I have written this thing set seven years after Haley’s death. I absolutely hate it, it makes no sense and it’s not been proofread but I also want to sleep so... yeah, it’s fine. Not my finest work, but something.

Trigger Warnings: grief/mourning, depictions of violence and death, religious themes, graveyards, unhealthy thinking patterns, slight implications of suicidal thoughts and thoughts of death, lots and lots of survivors guilt

read on ao3!

The one constant thing in Aaron's life had been Haley.

It had always been Haley, from the moment they first set eyes on each other. It had been the last day of school when he truly saw her for the first time. And he had been so taken aback by her smile and innocence that he'd crashed into a pile of props, sending them all tumbling to the floor.

She had refused to let him clear it up alone, and when their eyes met, he could've sworn he saw the life he could have if he would just get over himself and speak to her properly. But then her friends had called her over and she ran away without another word.

When his father came home with flowers for his mother, he didn't even remember to be disgusted. Because when he looked at the flowers, he didn't see a false apology, or an attempt to keep up the facade that the Hotchners were a perfect family. He just saw Haley's beautiful and kind eyes in the ribbon they were tied with.

And when his father died, filling him with grief so consuming and painful, even in spite of everything that had happened, Haley held his hand. She held his hand as they lowered his casket. And she held his soul when he sobbed, not understanding why he missed the man that had done nothing but hurt him.

Then his mother died, a semester into his final year at law school, Haley fought for him to be given a break, saying that he needed time but could still do it and didn't need to drop out. She held his hand at the funeral, rubbing comforting circles that warmed his skin and reminded him he was alive.

She held his hand at every funeral they ever had to attend, grounding him, reminding him of the reasons he kept fighting. Even after Adrian Bale murdered six agents, she held his hand. She did it because she wanted to, not even realising just how much it helped him.

Haley was light and good. But she never once hesitated to touch Aaron, and that was the one thing that convinced him he wasn't a monster that would turn into his father and destroy everything he touched. Even when the divorce papers were signed, she never left him. She had left because he wasn't the man she needed, and she was not the woman he wanted, but she would love him till she died.

But she had always assumed that she would die when Jack had his own children and Aaron had retired from the FBI, having taken a job at the local college to lecture the future lawyers. She had assumed it would be in her sleep, when her hair was grey and her joints ached. She always assumed Aaron would go first.

It was morbid, but true. His family had a history of cancer and heart attacks. His job involved putting his life on the line every single day. Unsubs set off bombs that caused shrapnel to the leg and they fired guns and they burnt down buildings.

Her job involved teaching children that music was not just something that needed to be a hobby. Telling children that they were good enough to do whatever they wanted and they could not let people control their futures because at the end of the day, it was their life.

Two thousand, five hundred and fifty five days ago, Haley Hotchner Brooks was murdered by George Foyet. Erin Strauss told her ex-husband that the death was swift and painless.

She had lied. George Foyet shot her, but he deliberately missed striking anything that would be fatal because he wanted to drag it out. He wanted to watch as her blood stained the living room carpet, the red a terrible and ugly contrast to the neutral tones. He wanted to watch as life left her body and as she fought so valiantly to keep her eyes open for her ex-husband and son. He wanted to watch the fear settle in her eyes as she realised that Aaron wasn’t coming to save her. Nobody was. He wanted her to know she was dying. Know that there was no coming back from this one. That she was never going to hold her son or kiss Aaron ever again.

And then he had dragged her body up the stairs, into their old bedroom for him to find. Aaron hadn’t been able to convince himself she was sleeping. Her body was too posed, too still. Haley always smiled as she slept. Her face, when he found the body, was contorted with fear because she had known that this was her ending.

Because she was too good, too selfless, her final thoughts had not been of everything she hadn’t gotten to do. It was not of the dreams that had been ripped from her far too early. Nor had it been anger and hatred directed towards Aaron. She knew he had done his best, and she would not let herself die hating him.

Haley Brooks' last thoughts had been a desperate prayer to anyone that was listening. She prayed that Jack would be able to enjoy the fireworks that would be set off on Independence and New Years Day. She prayed that Aaron's grief would not consume him and he would accept that it was not his fault, that she had always loved him, and that he would let himself love again. But most of all, she prayed that he would be spared the truth, if only so he would keep himself alive. She prayed Jack would be the perfect combination of them. And that he would be enough to remind Aaron of the reason he kept fighting.

Jack hated Independence Day. He hated New Years. Those were the days that Hotch would play Anastasia louder than was safe for his hearing. The days they would make a pillow fort in the living room and sleep with the light on because sleeping in the bedroom felt too much like hiding in that box.

There had been a time when Aaron's grief had consumed him. Jack had been away at summer camp. He had been alone, with no cases and no son to keep him occupied. All he had were his thoughts and guilt. Derek had pulled him from the shower, fully clothed and trembling from the cold, just in time. He had gotten suspicious when Aaron didn't turn up for their run for the first time since Haley had left and thought of the last time they had waited.

It was that same week that Aaron started telling his therapist the truth. They couldn't help him unless he let them. And he was finally ready to do that. He still believed it was his fault, because there had been so many things he could have done differently, but he had always let himself love again. Him and Beth had been beautiful together, and some of her artwork was still hung up in his apartment. Even though they hadn't lasted, it was nice to know that his heart still worked.

Her final prayer had been answered. Erin Strauss had heard how much Aaron still loved Haley from each of his team members. That final phone call had been played for her as part of the investigation into his actions. She had seen the look on his face when he said that George Foyet would have gotten up, killed him and then his son. He wasn't making assumptions. He was repeating what had been said.

He was already so broken and distraught. There was no need for him to know the truth. So she had looked down at the file that contained all of the violent and graphic details in one final attempt to pull herself together. And then she had looked her subordinate in the eye and lied to him.

Maybe it made her a terrible person, but she hadn't felt any remorse. It kept him alive. It kept him fighting and with the BAU. That had to be better than the alternative.

That lie had been told exactly two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days ago. Seven years. Haley Hotchner Brooks had died a brutal and painful death, but everyone that knew the truth had told Aaron Hotchner and Jessica Brooks that it had been quick and painless in order to keep them alive.

Aaron Hotchner woke up on the morning of the seventh anniversary of her death with a pit in his stomach. Jack had been quiet and withdrawn for the week leading up to it. He was some weird and imperfect combination of his mother and father, even though one had always been missing from the most formative years of his life. He grieved in the same way his father did and Aaron wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.

He didn't want to face the day. He didn't want to think about the science behind cells or take Jack to the graveyard and ask him how he was. He didn't want to pretend that Haley could hear what they were saying because he didn't believe she was in a better place. He didn't want to face sympathetic glances from everyone they came into contact with, or phone Jack's school to say he would be absent today.

But Jack couldn't go alone, he was still too young. And he needed to be asked so he could break down or shout or just shrug and say he didn't quite know. Jack still believed that Haley was watching over them from heaven, and that whatever they said would reach her because he had faith in happy endings. He would hate the sympathy, but accept it with a slight smile.

He would love the stories people shared about his mother. It helped him cope. It reminded him of how similar they truly were and made him feel like a piece of her was still with them. He know his dad would find it difficult to do everything, so he climbed out of bed and headed to the kitchen without making a sound.

Oatmeal was an easy meal for a child to make. Even one that wasn't even in high school yet. So Jack made two bowls that were far too full and took them to the bedroom.

Hotch had found it in him to sit up, even if he still hadn't made it out of bed.

"Look!" Jack exclaimed, with a wide grin. "It looks like the one you make!"

It didn't, not really, but Hotch forced a smile and nodded. "Yeah. Thank you buddy. How are you feeling?"

Jack hesitated, spoon halfway to his mouth, then shrugged. "Not sure. My stomach hurts. Do you think Mom's proud of me for making us breakfast without burning the apartment down?"

The lump that had been forming in Aaron's throat got larger. He swallowed. "Yeah buddy," he said, voice cracking slightly. "She's proud of you every minute of every day. Don't ever forget that, okay?"

"I won't," Jack promised, then ate his breakfast like it was any other day.

The florist gave them both a sad smile when they entered. She had made up their bouquets as soon as she had gotten in the shop, knowing exactly what they would want. The son always had a flower of each colour, tied together with a yellow ribbon. Even though it was unfair that he'd been forced to say goodbye at such a young age, making his bouquet always brought a smile to her face. He was still so innocent.

The father always asked for purple hyacinths. She wasn't stupid. She knew he was Aaron Hotchner with the BAU. She knew his ex-wife had been murdered by the same serial killer that had broken into his apartment and stabbed him. She wondered if it was a coincidence, or if he knew what they meant.

He did. It was why he picked them. Haley would laugh and call him an idiot if she knew, but she didn't so he carried on taking the same bouquet every time he went, no matter what time of year it was. They were always tied with white ribbon. It looked pretty.

Innocent. Pure. Like she had been until his obsession with the chase got her killed.

He handed his card to her without a word. She longed to ask if he needed anything, but didn't. It would be weird.

Jack waved her goodbye, and she smiled. Only when they were out of sight did she turn and wipe her eyes. Seven years they had been coming to her shop, and not once had the boy forgotten to say goodbye to her. Not once had the father left without saying thank you.

They both deserved better.

Hotch didn't let go of Jack's hand as they approached the grave. Jack set his flowers down with the utmost care, and then sat next to the headstone. Haley hadn't wanted anything fancy. In fact, her only request had been that it said Hotchner. Aaron remained a few feet away, wanting to give Jack some privacy, but also making sure that nothing bad happened.

He had always found something about graveyards morbidly peaceful. Even despite the tension that always accompanied a visit with Jack, he found himself admiring the other flowers, the trees and bushes that had been planted and the way the sun shone down on them.

The weather was so perfectly Haley that it caused him physical pain.

"Dad, you need to put your flowers down and talk too," Jack said, pulling him from his thoughts. Even though his features were completely Haley's, the look Jack got when he was being serious was purely Hotch's.

"Are you done talking?" he asked, trying to work out how long he had been thinking for.

Jack nodded. "Can I go and make sure the other people know that someone cares about them?" That soft and caring part of him, that demanded he save everyone, was both of his parents.

"Of course you can. Don't wander too far though," Hotch said. Jack rolled his eyes, as though his father was being the most unreasonable man in the world and, after blowing one last kiss to his mother, walked away, talking to himself as he went.

Hotch sighed, placed his own bouquet next to Jack's then stepped back. He didn't deserve to sit and be comfortable.

"It's been seven years," he whispered. "It's been two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days, yet I still remember the day I met you perfectly. Is that weird? I like to think that you still remembered it."

When he looked back, Jack was busy talking to one of the other people that was visiting a grave. Aaron recognised who it was, so he turned back and allowed a few of his own tears to roll down his cheeks. For a few minutes, he could stop pretending that he was fine and just break.

"Haley, I don't know if you can hear me or if heaven is real, but I do know that I am so, so sorry that it was you and not me. And I hate that it was you. If there was a way to go back in time and make sure it was you standing here, I would take it in a heartbeat. You deserved so much better and I am sorry I could not give it to you. So, so sorry."

He had told Haley he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her because he had believed that he would not live long enough to do so, and that his death would be his final act of penance.He had believed that he would be able to save her.

"One day I will earn your forgiveness. One day you will laugh at me for saying all of this, but until that day comes, I will make sure Jack is just like you. Because you were as perfect as a single person could be. And I- I miss you, every single day. I hope, wherever you are, you're happy."

For seven years, he had been making some version of that speech. Only today, it felt different. More important. More painful. And suddenly, he needed to get away. From her grave, from the flowers, from everything.

He went over to Jack, apologised for cutting their conversation short and asked if he was ready to go home. Jack said yes, because that was what his father wanted to hear. The walk home was silent, and when they got back, Jack announced that he was going for a shower. Hotch knew why. He wasn't ready to watch one of the old videos either. Only when the shower started running did Aaron bury his head in the pillow and sob.

Two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days George Foyet touched him for the last time. The nine scars on his torso would always be there, serving as a permanent reminder of what his failure had caused, preventing him from ever being truly comfortable in his body. But seven years had passed since Foyet's hands had been on his body. Every single cell had been replaced. His touch no longer lingered like a bad smell. Aaron was finally free. Knowing that he had a body that Foyet had not ruined was an indescribable relief.

Foyet's touch had faded into nothing.

But so had Haley's. He could no longer cling to the comfort that knowing a part of her still lived in him provided. He could no longer look at Jack and say that Mom's last hug would forever be a part of him. It would always be in his memory, no matter how fuzzy it was. But it wouldn't be there in the way that counted. Jack would never be able to know what his mother's touch felt like and it was all his fault. Haley was longer part of their bodies.

The final piece of her that was easy to cling to had finally ceased to exist.

Hotch was not sure he could survive anymore. But then the shower stopped running, and Jack emerged in the Captain America pajamas that he still hasn't outgrown from the previous year. And Aaron rubbed his eyes, pretending he was just a little sleepy before following Jack into the living room.

Jack did not want to watch a video. So Hotch made them something light to eat, and then they built a pillow fort. It was then that he told the story of how they met, of how Haley always smiled at his jokes, of how she would make him smile. He told Jack that if he ever wanted to see what his mother's smile had been like, he just needed to look in the mirror.

The stories didn't stop until Jack fell asleep, with his legs dangling off the couch and his head in his father's lap. Aaron knew he would regret it, that his back couldn't handle doing this anymore, but his son looked so peaceful that he refused to move. Instead, he played with Jack's hair. The same way Haley had always played with his own locks.

Seven years was a long time. To Aaron, it passed in the blink of an eye. The day Haley had died, Jack had fallen asleep in his lap, much like he had now. Only then, he had been so small. Fragile. Aaron had been terrified. Now, he was growing into the kindest young man Aaron had ever known. And he was strong. Aaron was still terrified, for different reasons than he had been then.

Haley's touch would never find its way to either of them again. Aaron could accept it as his punishment for letting her get away. For letting her die. But maybe his own gentle touch would be enough for Jack to understand just how much he was loved. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe Jack would never wake up and blame him for his mother's death, instead choosing to be just as good as she had been.

Aaron fell asleep on the couch too. He fell asleep, disappointed and angry with himself for letting her die. But he fell asleep so proud of his son for not losing his softness or kindness. He fell asleep, finding some comfort in the knowledge that although Haley had died well before her time, it had been quick. Painless.

The next day, both father and son would regret sleeping the way they had.

But Jack would go to school and accept the comfort people tried to show him with a gracious smile. He would be secretly grateful that people still cared. And he would know that even if every cell in your body was replaced every seven years, it didn't matter because he still remembered the smell of his mom's perfume. He still remembered what her hugs felt like.

Aaron would return to work, tired and a little worse for the wear, but ready to be the hero his son still believed he was. He would let Penelope hug him for longer than was strictly necessary and find a way to thank Derek for doing his paperwork. And he would find some comfort in knowing that even if this body of his didn't know Haley, it also did not Foyet.

And the BAU would carry the truth of Haley's death to their own graves.

It was the only way forward.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fic #aaron hotchner #haley hotchner #aaron x haley #jack hotchner #hurt aaron hotchner #sad aaron hotchner #hotch whump #tw death #tw grief #tw religious themes #tw past suicidal thoughts #sumayyah writes cm

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destielharlequinchallenge · 4 years

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The Destiel Harlequin Challenge Master Post: 2020 Mega Bang

Participants in the 2020 Destiel Harlequin Challenge completed an amazing 20 fics and 3 sets of artwork! You can learn all about those here!

Spectre (fic by a_dusky_gold, art by aceriee)

This whole thing… this was supposed to be a fucking farce. A way to keep Nicholas Vaught occupied until the deadline he’d given Dean would run out, and he’d still get the money to send Dad to the Town Hall rehabilitation for alcoholism, because that was the goddamned deal.

There were no such things as ghosts or magic or a Book of Life. Dean knows, okay? He wasn’t the Army’s goddamned Mystery Raider for nothin’; he knows history, he knows artifacts, and he knows that the Book of Life is an ancient myth that is about as real as werewolves or vampires.

And yet.

“The Book of Life,” the man had said. Dean can’t even remember his name.

Shit, shit, shit.

Dangerous Ground by Amethystaris

Special Agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Castiel Novak and Dean Winchester have been partners and best friends for three years, but everything changed the night Cas admitted the truth about his feelings for Dean. And when Cas was shot a few hours later, Dean felt his reluctance to get involved was vindicated.

Can a camping trip in the High Sierras save their partnership?

Honour Undressed by andimeantittosting

Among his friends, Castiel, Lord Milton is everyone’s confidant and, along with his trusted valet, the fixer of problems. But there is one secret Castiel has never shared: he is in love with his valet and has been for years.

Born in the gutters, Dean Winchester was assigned as Castiel’s batman in the war, and when Castiel travelled home to take up his title, Dean followed him as his valet. To assist Castiel, Dean is not above a little burglary or blackmail. But the one thing he wants for himself is Castiel’s heart.

When Castiel’s closest friends become the target of a blackmailer, certain truths come out. But while Dean determines to seduce Castiel, Castiel is adamant that he must resist, for if there is one rule a gentleman must follow, it is never to dally with his servant.

Havenport by BlueMasquerade

Castiel cleared space on his desk by the expedience of sweeping the previous contents to the side. He set the bundle down in the center of the surface and studied the knots in the rope before expertly untying them.

The book was old, its leather bindings cracked and crumbling. He carefully opened the cover to reveal the pages within, each hand cut, the edges beautifully deckled, the text written in pen and ink.

“This is written in ancient Enochian.” Castiel looked up, gaze narrowed. “Where did you obtain a book written in ancient Enochian?”

“Is that what it is? All I could tell is that it sure as hell isn’t English.” Mr. Winchester grinned, a dimple flashing in his cheek.

an aching in my heart by contemplativepancakes

When Dean’s best friend dies, leaving behind her daughter, Dean knows he has what it takes to give Claire the life she deserves. The problem is, they’re not related by blood, and Claire’s long lost uncle gets called to take her in. Castiel Novak was bad news when he was in highschool with Dean, and judging by his blue hair and tattoo sleeves, nothing’s changed. Castiel ran out on his family once before, and there’s no way Dean’s going to let that happen to Claire without putting up a fight.

Fools and Fate by Danica_Dust

Castiel Novak fled his coven to escape the rigid, predetermined Fate laid out for him within its confines. Desperate and alone, he took shelter in the city of Sacriloga, forsaking all magic and living off whatever he could steal. There, witches like Cas are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

When Jack, a young witch also on the run from his own coven, seeks out Cas’ aid, however, Cas finds that he cannot reject the boy, leaving him to his sure destruction. Especially after the newest visitor to Sacriloga makes his presence known: the legendary Hunter, Dean Winchester, who has been following Jack’s trail.

Sworn to the Men of Letters, Hunters live by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Dean’s path was never meant to cross with Cas', but a desperate stunt and a single mistake forces them into an impossible union—holy matrimony.

The war between the witches and the Men of Letters is an ancient one and Cas' most dangerous enemies bring a Fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore his growing feelings, yet powerless to change what he is, a choice must be made.

A suffocating Fate on one hand. A precarious freedom on the other. And in between, the kind of love that makes fools of us all.

Ozone by Deancebra

A young magic user who wants desperately to live. A jaded recluse who has forgotten what living means. They’re each other’s only chance.

Dean’s wild magic is killing him. The mage guilds have given up on him, and it’s only a matter of time before he dies in a spectacular, catastrophic bang. His only hope is an exiled wizard who lives in seclusion—and is rumored to have lost his mind.

The years alone on his hilltop estate have not been good for Castiel Novak. After the magical accident that disfigured him and nearly destroyed the village, he drifts through his days, a wraith trapped in memories and depression. Until a stricken young man collapses on his driveway, one who claims Castiel is his last chance. For the first time in fifteen years, Castiel must make a choice—leave this wild mage to his fate or take him in and try to teach him, which may kill them both. The old Castiel, brash and commanding, wouldn’t have hesitated. Castiel the exile isn’t sure he can find the energy to try.

A Demon Like Him by EllenOfOz

Dean Winchester doesn’t want to be a warlock. The idea of working in a lab, channeling demonic magic into enchanted batteries is not what he wants to do with his life, but it’s a dangerous opinion to have—his father was a powerful and well-connected warlock, and Dean is expected to follow the family tradition.

His only way out is to fail the demon summoning class—failure means expulsion from the Warlock College. Despite Dean’s best efforts to fumble the summoning, it works. Although not the way anyone expects.

Dean’s demon, Castiel, is an incubus, but also a powerful mage on a mission to rebalance the magic that is being stripped from Demonside by warlocks.

Dean must choose: fail out of his final exam and turn his back on becoming a warlock, or help Castiel and graduate. But he doesn’t count on how hot the incubus is, or how close they have become in just a few days.

A Working Relationship by fangirlingtodeath513

The homes that Castiel Novak designs for Angelic Houses are to die for. They’re pristine, perfectly designed and organized, and they’ve caused more than a few bidding wars. It’s the perfect job—he’s organized, good with math, and he’s able to pick up on design trends relatively quickly. The only thing that isn’t perfect? His obnoxious older brother, Luke. Castiel’s been vying for a position on a flipping team for years now, but Luke has never even considered it. When a lecherous gossip reporter overhears an argument, they receive an offer they can’t refuse.

They’re invited to compete on Flip Off, a competition where two people flip houses and compete for the highest profit. Castiel wants the leverage a win would bring him, but he also wants to prove himself. Enter Dean Winchester, a contractor with his own team and one that’s blissfully unconnected to Angelic Houses, allowing Castiel to prove himself without any help from the family company.

The undeniable attraction between them certainly doesn’t help matters, but Castiel is resolute in his decision to make a move only after they’ve finished working together. At least, that had been his plan until Dean made him an offer he simply couldn’t refuse.

Crashing In by followyourenergy

Castiel Novak is convinced he’s the last unwillingly single person in Lupine Cove. Even Gabriel, his perpetual bachelor brother, has found love. It’s probably because Cas leads the most boring life in existence. He’s a gay man living in a rented, one-room cottage in the same small coastal town he grew up in, just getting by as the owner of the same convenience store he was practically raised in. The most excitement he gets is chatting with the locals or maybe, if he’s unlucky, oversleeping and rushing to work. So when a baby is left at the Safe Haven drop-off at the local fire station, he takes the opportunity to step in for the child temporarily, at least until suitable parents, plural, can be found.

Life certainly gets more interesting.

And it gets even more interesting when a handsome man comes crashing—literally—into his life.

Make Me Believe by GhoulsnHalos

Ten years ago, Castiel Novak’s stepfather disowned him, taking from him his place as hereditary heir to the head of the Hunter and Warrior Guild. Now, he’s a self-made, and celebrated, master gem and metal smith. Castiel doesn’t believe that the God’s decide your soulmate. Until he designs what can only be a gift fit for his soul mate, who in contradiction to the etiquette, if not the laws of Neffroen, must be a man.

Dean Winchester is convinced that he is a lowly, dumbass, no magic hunter who couldn’t possibly be on the same social scale as a Novak. So, why is it when he spots the jewelled torc in Castiel’s shop, Dean develops an obsession over the neckpiece and its creator? It can't be anything to do with the will of the Gods, no matter what anyone says, because that's baloney and Dean's not into men.

When Castiel’s long-lost brother turns up and suggests he ought to challenge their stepfather and that Dean is destined to help Castiel rule the clan, Castiel takes some convincing. The real problem is Dean. Can Castiel with the help of family and friends convince Dean of his place by Castiel’s side? Can Dean play the part everyone expects of him to help Castiel regain his rightful place in society?

Shielded Heart by JuniperJones

Arthos, the Infinite City, is a place of alien wonders and indescribable beauty—and, most importantly for Dean, it’s also halfway across the universe from his abusive ex-fiancé. He came to the city desperate for a fresh start, but he finds himself downtrodden on a world of aloof alien beings with little hope of finding his place—and a good chance of being kidnapped or killed before he can even settle in.

At least until he is saved by an irresistible alien with piercing eyes and a seductive smile.

Castiel is the living embodiment of temptation, and he makes no effort to disguise his desire for Dean. But when his past threatens to drag Dean into a dangerous underworld, Dean discovers Castiel isn’t who he claims to be. After enduring so much suffering, can Dean bear to take a leap of faith with this mysterious alien? Can he trust Castiel with not only his life, but his heart?

Stumble and Fall by Kitmistry

Castiel was raised to do one thing: serve his country, whether that was fighting a war or becoming an expert spy. But when his lover is charged with treason and executed Castiel defects. He has evidence that can destroy the KGB’s entire spy ring in New Mexico, he has names of scientists involved with atomic weapons who send information to the Soviets, and he won’t stop until he has revenge.

Putting all his trust in the Americans, Castiel finds himself under the protection of U.S. Marshal Dean Winchester, who is too cocky and attractive for his own good, but at least seems to know what he’s doing.

When a routine transfer to a safehouse goes horribly wrong, Castiel and Dean narrowly escape with their lives. With the Marshals compromised and Castiel being framed for murder, he and Dean are on the run from KGB and law enforcement alike. They have no one to trust except each other, and nowhere to go that their enemies can’t reach.

The Shots We Don’t Take by MandalaRose

Still nursing the tatters of a broken heart and trying desperately to stave off the terror of his impending graduation, college senior Cas Novak decides it’s time to blow off a little steam. Not just any hook-up will do, however. The last thing Cas needs right now is a distraction. On the lookout for someone he can enjoy a steamy night of passion with before leaving them behind entirely, Cas thinks he’s found exactly what he needs in cocky university hockey star and well-known playboy Dean Winchester.

Dean is gorgeous, doesn’t date, and is the singular most infuriating person Cas has ever met. He’s the perfect one night stand...that is, until Dean decides he wants an instant replay of what was supposed to be a one-time event. Will Cas’ offer of friends, sans benefits, convince the arrogant love ’em and leave ’em hockey defenseman to find an easier score? Or will Dean wear down Cas’ defenses and lure the sexy nerd in the dorky trenchcoat back to his bed?

Bullets Over the Bayou (fic by mattzerella_sticks, art by dontbelasagnax)

Everyone wants Castiel Novak to quit the force, including Castiel. But he stays on despite the toxic work environment he’s surrounded by. Still believing he can do some good despite the many lines of red tape impeding him. Luckily, a pair of scissors by the name of Dean Winchester drops into his hands, and he finally feels like he can do some good.

Dean Winchester thought he would be in New Orleans for a day or two. Identify the body of his deadbeat father and then move on. No one knows he’s here. His mother and brother are blissfully unaware of the danger his father roped him into. With a parting gift of a journal, delivered to him the same day he received word about his father, Dean has become the target of a group of people who want him dead. The same people who killed his father.

Racing against the clock, can Dean and Castiel figure out what is so important about John Winchester’s journal that someone would kill for it?

Masquerade by noxsoulmate

It had begun as such a good plan; one that benefitted them both. And masquerading as Castiel Krushnic's boyfriend during the weeks of balls, galas, and charity events certainly was no hardship. With the impending end of their arrangement, though, Dean Winchester must admit that behind the mask of an aloof CEO lies a man he could fall in love with. Or maybe, he already has…

The Medium by raths_kitten

Detective Dean Winchester hates it when his Chief sends a medium to consult on his cases. But this time, the murder is closely linked to Castiel’s world and they both need to work together to solve it.

Any Semblance of Touch (fic by saltnhalo, art by c-kaeru)

1925, New York.

Dean Winchester’s life’s work is protecting the world from the supernatural relics that could destroy it. When an amulet with the power to control the tides is shipped to New York, he must intercept it before it can be used to devastating effects. This time, in order to succeed, he needs a powerful psychometric… and the only one available has sworn off the magical world altogether.

Castiel Novak’s gift comes with great risk. To protect himself, he’s become a recluse, redirecting his magic into museum research. But with the city’s fate hanging in the balance, and faced with the power of Dean’s charm and persuasion…

He can’t force himself to say no.

The Love of a Righteous Man by SargentMom573

Five years ago, Captain Dean Winchester defied his father, Senator John Winchester. With his brother Sam, and his spaceship Impala, Dean found his place among a ragtag fleet of pirates and smugglers. Their latest mission left him with a price on his head and a scar on his heart. When a surprise attack separated him from Sam and revealed a Sith weapon, he would do whatever it took to bring his brother back – even sacrifice his own happiness.

After Emperor Michael’s death broke the psychic link between them, Emperor’s Hand Castiel Novak spent years drowning his sorrows at the bottom of a barrel. Mostly sober, three years ago he found a new purpose as the Impala’s Chief Medical Officer, and Sam Winchester’s guide in the Force. And a good friend in the Impala’s gruff but kind Captain.

Dean and Castiel must work together to bring Sam home alive. But when Castiel’s last mission is exposed, will Castiel complete it and destroy any hopes Dean had for a family? Will Dean forgive Cas’ horrific purpose before it is too late? And give them both what they really want — the love of a righteous man.

SKID by spnsmile

Dean Winchester swore off love after getting dumped and fired from his job the same day. Badly drunk, he ended up balcony-hopping until a pair of hands snatched him inside a darkened room. But it's no hero, it's someone with deep voice whispering threats with a gun pointed at his back. Dean’s too drunk to deal with life but one good look at his hot assailant plus enough beer sold him to his accursed fate. The next morning, he found himself engaged to the most notorious leader of a powerful clan, Castiel Novak.

Married life in the compound for a month was not as blissful so when he could, Dean fought for that freedom. Castiel relented and as Dean tried to put the pieces of his normal life together, getting a bike messenger job and dealing with pain in the ass clients, he now also needs to deal with the dangerous presence of his very jealous and very protective husband watching over him.

Is his life ever going to get back to normal?

#2020 masterpost #destielharlequinchallenge #destiel harlequin challenge #destiel fanart #destiel fanfic #destiel

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shadow-assassin-blix · 3 years

Text

Parent Trap

PART 2

Marcus Moreno x Reader

It’s hereeee! Children’s shenanigans. Yearning. A kiss.

The Artist

The rest of the week went smoothly. Artemis was very excited to have a new friend and talked about Missy often.

Friday came around, and Shade had to inform the school that she was running late in picking Artemis up. A seller was taking his sweet time, in trying to decide which of the 2 pieces he wanted, before deciding he didn’t want either.

She was annoyed; it wasn’t uncommon for a seller to act like they wanted her work before making up some excuse as to why they were no longer interested. Nor was it uncommon for a person to try and haggle for lower prices, claiming ‘you should be grateful someone even wants your business.’

She was tired to say the least.

She finally, after 45 minutes, pulled up to the school, and made her way to Artemis’s class to pick her up. She was surprised when she saw Missy sitting with her.

“Missy? What are you still doing here honey?” Shade asked concerned.

“My dad’s running late, but I have no way of contacting him to find out what’s going on,” She admitted quietly.

Shade nodded in understanding, before pulling out her phone. Marcus had made sure to give her his number the other day when they saw each other dropping their kids off.

She called him. It took about 4 rings, before he answered, out of breath “Hey Shade.”

“Hey. So. I’m here with Artemis and Missy, are you uhh.. on your way hon?” She asked politely.

She hears him swear in the background before stating, “I promise I didn’t forget about her. It appears that someone has changed every clock I know. I haven’t been able to tell time for 90% of the day.”

“Haven’t been able to tell time eh? Funny. Had something similar happen the other morning when my alarm went off an hour early. Weird how these clocks… have just magically changed for both of us,” She noted staring at the two girls suspiciously.

Both of them shrugged acting like they have no idea what she was talking about, before looking away.

“Listen, can you tell Missy I am on my way, I swear,” He requested with a sigh.

“How about this… How about I take Missy home with me, and she can stay the night? In the morning, you can bring her a change of clothes, and pick us all up for our date,” She offered with a smile.

“Are... are you sure? It’s no problem for me to come and get her, it would just be a few minutes?” He questioned hesitantly.

“It’s not a problem. We will see you in the morning, yeah?” She assured.

“Sounds good, can I talk to Missy real quick?” He politely asked.

She handed her phone over to her, and they talked for a moment before she hung.

“Alright. Let’s get outta here,” She nodded her head toward the door.

The girls grabbed their things and the three of them were off.

She gets them home and told them to get to work on their homework. She checked on dinner that was cooking in the crockpot. It was crockpot chicken and noodles.

The girls finished up their homework and were currently helping her set the table an hour later. They were both giggling and whispering to one another.

“Alright you two, enough with the whisper party. Go wash your hands, while I serve up dinner,” She tells them, shaking her head.

She grabbed their bowls and ladled them a healthy portion for all of them. She had made some fruit salad to go with it and gave them a small plate of it.

By the time their plates were ready, the girls were bouncing back into the dining room. They took their seats, and she joined them.

Missy began asking questions about Shade’s work.

“So, what kind of art do you do?” Missy politely asked.

“I do mostly pencil sketches and paint occasionally even though I don’t think I’m very good at it. Been working on some new stuff, but... Mh. not sure how I feel about it so far,” Shade explained to her.

“Ooh. What kind of new stuff?” Missy asked excitedly.

Shade went to wave it off as nothing when Artemis piped up, “She’s been drawing the Heroics and their most famous battles! Kinda like a comicbook! It’s so cool!”

“What!? That’s awesome! Can I see it sometime? I mean. If you’re okay with it?” Missy asked amazed.

“Hmm. Possibly. If…” Shade began.

“If what?” Missy questioned.

“If… you promise to fix your dad’s clocks, and not mess with them again. I understand that both of you are excited to be friends and want us to get along too, but messing with clocks and alarms is not okay,” She bargained looking at both of them.

They both looked down, wincing as they mumbled apologies and swearing that they would fix things.

“Apology accepted. Finish eating and I’ll show you my workshop,” She stated with a smile.

Both of them perked back up and began eating again happily.

Once they all had eaten and cleaned up, Shade led them to her workshop. She slid opened the double doors and presented it to Missy.

There were several desks, covered in pencils, graphite and colored, pens, paints, and brushes. There was an easel and some blank canvases resting in a corner. She walked over to one of her sketch books and opened it about midway.

“Just, uh, don’t touch the ink too much. It takes a long time to dry,” She informed them setting it down on the small table where Artemis held her art supplies.

Missy was amazed. She stared at all of the drawings of Miracle Guy, Sharkboy & Lavagirl, Tech-No, and many other Heroics. She noticed one thing though.

“You haven’t drawn my dad yet?” She mentioned looking up at her.

“No. I haven’t. I for whatever reason… cannot seem to draw him. Every time I do, I worry I’ll mess it up. Your dad meant a great deal to me at one point,” Shade tells her, thinking fondly of Marcus.

Missy and Artemis looked at each other, a plan forming.

They spoke a little more about art and what Shade does before the girls ran upstairs to go play.

Or so Shade thought…

The Hero

Marcus was finishing up some paperwork that had piled up over the week when Miracle Guy stepped into his office.

“What are you still doing here, man? Shouldn’t you be at home? With your kid?” Miracle asked him.

“Can ask you the same thing, MG?” Marcus countered, referring to his nickname.

“Had a job I just came from. Mission report. Saw your light was still on, figured I should check on our fearless leader,” Miracle lightly teased.

Marcus simply hummed in response.

“So. What’s been going on with you? You’ve been jittery all week. I had thought it had something to do with the incident at Missy’s school, but now… not so sure,” Miracle brought up, sitting across from Marcus.

“Remember… when we first started out? I was with that artist?” Marcus began, biting his lip.

“Yeah. The really pretty one, that you wound up breaking up with, right?” Miracle recalled.

“Mh. Her daughter is now best friends with my daughter… and we have a date tomorrow… and I honestly… don’t know how I feel,” Marcus confessed, setting his pen down, the report no longer distracting him.

“Wh-… What? Seriously? Wow. What a small world? I mean… this is the first time you’ve gone out since Isabelle died right? I think it’s only natural that you’re nervous. But… it’s also with someone you’ve been with. I doubt she’s changed that much in 15 years,” Miracle noted with a shrug.

“Yeah. I just… hmm. I don’t know. I am nervous… but I’m also…excited? Happy? I mean… I wanted to marry this girl back in college, but life… got in the way. I guess… I’m just worried I’ll mess it up,” Marcus admitted with a sigh.

“Oh? You never told me that part? Listen. It’s one date. If you don’t feel sparks fly or whatever then, it’s not meant to be. But if you do, explore it. You deserve to be happy Marcus,” Miracle stated.

Marcus opened his mouth to reply when his phone rang.

He answers noticing it was Shade’s number.

“Hey, what’s-” He began.

“Dad! You should get over here! Like quickly! As fast as possible!” Missy voice came, rushed.

Marcus goes to question her, but the line ends.

Marcus quickly gets up, grabs his things and runs out to his car. The drive under normal circumstances was 20 minutes, but he was there in half that time.

He ran up to the door, banging on it, panicked.

When the door opened, Shade stood there, looking extremely confused.

“Marcus?” She greeted staring at him concerned.

“Are the girls okay? Missy called and told me I should get here,” Marcus explained quickly.

“Yes. They’re fine. They went upstairs to play?” She answered still confused.

“But they had your phone? And she sounded worried?” Marcus recalled the phone call.

She suddenly patted her pockets, looking around trying to find her phone.

The Artist

It slowly dawned on her what happened.

“GIRLS! GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW” She yelled up the stairs.

A moment passed, and neither of them heard movement.

“I am so sorry Marcus. Artemis… must have grabbed my phone while I wasn’t looking,” She apologized, moving to go upstairs.

Marcus stopped her.

“Hey, so long as everyone is okay. Even though a CERTAIN YOUNG LADY IS GROUNDED. I’m sorry for almost busting your door down with my knocking,” He tells her, shouting part of his sentence up the stairs.

A loud groan could be heard in response.

“AS IS ANOTHER CERTAIN YOUNG LADY,” Shade mentioned loudly.

Cue another loud groan.

“Would… would you like some water?” Shade offered, twirling a lock of her hair.

“Yes. I would actually,” Marcus accepted gratefully.

The two of them stepped into her kitchen. Shade grabbed him a glass and filled it with water, before handing it to him. He downed about half of it, before setting it back down, wiping his mouth.

“So. What… what happened?” Marcus asked trying to understand.

She thought about it, trying to retrace the evening.

“Oh…. I showed them…some of my artwork… and Missy asked me why I hadn’t drawn you yet,” She realized.

“Oh? Ahem. So… Why…Why haven’t you drawn me yet?” He asked hesitantly and trying to hide his curiosity.

“I told her it was because… I was worried I would mess it up and that you meant a great deal to me… which is somewhat true… I have drawn you…but I always feel like… they didn’t do you justice,” She quietly admitted to him, not making eye contact. “Kind of hard to draw someone you were in love with for years. Especially when those feelings never quite went away.”

The Hero

He was surprised to hear that. He didn’t quite know how to respond. He did… know one thing though.

He moved around the island over to her.

“Forgive me… if this is too forward,” He whispered to her.

He gently cupped her face into his hands, and pressed a small, hesitant kiss to her lips. When she didn’t pull away or slap him, he kissed her again, but just a smidge longer.

He felt her arms move, sliding around his neck. He was extremely relieved when he felt her kiss him back. He lightly pinned her against her the island, his hands moving to her waist. They wrapped around her, pulling her close.

Their kiss lasted for a minute and would’ve gone longer if it weren’t for the fact that they heard giggles coming from the stairway.

They pulled away slowly.

“I told you that my daughter’s favorite movie was the Parent Trap, right? We’ve been Parent Trapped,” She whispered against his lips.

“You also said her number one favorite was The Mummy, which I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t unleash an unspeakable evil to get us together,” Marcus joked.

“This is true. You 2 are still grounded by the way, and Mrs. Moreno will be informed of that fact tomorrow when we leave you with her to go on our date,” She threw over shoulder.

There was a sound of 2 pairs of feet scurrying back upstairs.

“You… you still want to go out tomorrow?” Marcus inquired, hopeful.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. If you still want to,” She mentioned, biting her lip.

“Yeah. I do. Though… I think I should go grab my little delinquent, and take her home, so you can sleep without anymore “emergencies.” Plus, I apparently need to talk to her about boundaries,” Marcus noted as he slowly stepped away from her.

“Yeah. I apparently have to have a similar conversation. We’ll see you tomorrow?” She said with a smile.

“Yeah. Tomorrow. Umm. Just one last thing,” Marcus hurriedly said.

He pulled her into another kiss, that she returned with a sigh.

When he finally pulled away again, he simply said, “One wasn’t enough.”

He called for Missy to come downstairs and get her things. He told her that a slumber party will have to wait for another time. As he took Missy home, he couldn’t help the smile on his face, as he thought about Shade.

He knew his evening was far from over, but he couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

#marcus moreno #marcus moreno x reader #we can be heroes #parent trap au

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troped-fanfic-challenge · 3 years

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AUTHOR REVEAL of the JATP: ROUND 1: ANGST FICS!

The Tropes:

1. Character discovers they’re not human

2. Coffee Shop AU

3. Poorly Timed Confession

4. Character A catches Character B crying

————

the sky was gray and white and (cloudy) (Rated T) [Alex x Willie] by @screamin-amuseum

Summary: “I’ve got you,” Willie’s whispering over and over, panic creeping into his voice. “Alex, I’ve got you, okay? Come on, baby, come on, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be okay, I love you–”

Alex spits out what feels like a clot of blood and gives Willie a tired grin, probably looking completely insane.

“That’s pretty gay of you,” he says, just as his vision clouds over and he passes out.

Honey, You’re Familiar (Like My Mirror Years Ago) (Rated T) [Julie x Luke] by nik_knows_nothing

Summary: Luke works at a coffee shop, which is normal, quietly pines after his coworker, which is normal, and also occasionally steals people’s faces without really meaning to.

It’s probably that last part that moves him pretty solidly out of the “normal” territory.

But that’s fine, that’s totally cool.

He’s handling it super well.

You Can’t Value People Less Than a Good, Hot Cup of Bean Juice (It Just Seems Rude) (Rated T) [Julie x Luke] by nik_knows_nothing

Summary: Julie gets a job at a coffee stand in the middle of nowhere.

It’ll help to pass the time, if nothing else.

And if there’s a cute guy who works the shift after her and sometimes leaves her ridiculously endearing messages on an ancient tape recorder?

Well, that’s just a bonus.

honest to god I’ll break your heart, tear you to pieces and rip you apart (Rated T) [Julie x Luke] by @tonightthestarsalign

Summary: Julie wakes up with a start. Her hair is stuck to her face with sweat and there is a loud crashing noise. The sheets beneath her feel rough against her skin. She shivers, when a breeze meets her naked skin. She must have left the window open when she went to bed last night. She opens her eyes. The room is dark around her, but the glow in the dark stars, she stuck on her ceiling when she was a kid, are shimmering brighter than ever before.

or: the siren!Julie AU no one asked for

new instincts (Rated T) [Luke x Reggie] by @comeonpeters

Summary: Reggie is fine with being the only human member of his band, Julie and the Phantoms (tell your friends!), just like he’s fine with being the only single member. It doesn’t make him feel lonely, and he’s only picking up more shifts at the coffee shop because he needs more money, not because he’s avoiding being alone. And picking up more shifts at the coffee shop is making the work easier! He’s only a little confused by the fact that he can now touch the espresso machine mid shift without burning himself… must be all of the experience.

you look like you’ve just seen a monster (is that what i look like to you?) (Rated T) [Bobby x Alex x Luke x Reggie] by @aroacethetic-shitpost

Summary: When Bobby woke up that Friday morning, he wasn’t expecting to have horns. Who would? There was absolutely no reason to expect horns to just start growing out of his temples, but there they were anyway.

He stared in silent shock at the little nubs in the mirror. They were only an inch or two big, but pointy and a little fuzzy when he poked at them.

Well, at least they weren’t fully grown yet.

(or: it’s angsty tiefling bobby time, folks!)

We Are Monsters, We Are Proud (Rated G) [Flynn x Carrie, Julie x Luke] by @americanhoney913

Summary: The clock is striking thirteen

It’s time to scream your team

We don’t have to say goodbye

‘Cause friends like these will never die

Carrie finds herself at a college like no other in search of her dad and some answers.

Julie’s not feeling good and maybe staring at roses wasn’t the best idea.

Monster College/Coffeeshop AU

sending forth their beautiful voice, and my heart was fain to listen (Rated G) [Julie x Carrie] by @savannahleemay

Summary: Months after the death of her mom, Julie prepares to sing again and makes an upsetting discovery.

rise from the ashes (Rated M) [Alex x Willie] by @willexxmercer

Summary: At a time when everything was going wrong for Alex, the one bright spot in his life was the charming barista at the coffee shop he frequented. At least, it was the bright spot until everything went up in flames. All he could do was hope that they could rise from the ashes and figure things out together.

Siren’s Song (Rated T) [Ray x Rose] by hufflebibin

Summary: The Scopuli was never meant to be a permanent arrangement. Rose had taken the job straight out of school just looking to make a little extra money before the tour kicked off.

That was four years ago.

After a string of bad luck befalls Rose and the Petal Pushers, she can’t help but wonder if she is the problem. Or is there something more sinister at play?

Yellow (Rated T) [Julie & Reggie] by @tmp-jatp

Summary: Reggie picked up his apron and polo. Julie returned, this time hiding behind Alex. He held a pair of metal pastry tongs out in front of him like a weapon. One of his arms was extended protectively in front of Julie.

“Alex, Julie, what are you doing?” Reggie cleared his throat; his voice was deep and gruff, like he was developing a cold.

Julie and Alex startled. Julie glanced down at her nametag. Alex readjusted his footing and his grip on the tongs.

“What’s going on, guys?”

Alex took a deep breath. “I don’t know who you are, dude, but you have got to leave.”

–

Reggie just wanted to get some new guitar strings. A shapeshifter!Reggie au

Angels Like You (Rated T) [Luke x Reggie] by @sunsetcurveofficial

Summary: Reggie is having a bit of a weird day. It gets worse when he figures out that it’s because he died in his sleep and has somehow been walking around as a ghost without realising it. Meeting Luke helps. Luke says he’s a fellow ghost, and there is something about him that Reggie just feels drawn to. Falling for him is the easiest thing Reggie has ever done, but Luke is a little more than he lets on, and it turns out that their story actually started long before Reggie thought it did.

look into my eyes (it’s where my demons hide) (Rated T) [Flynn x Carrie] by @fanfics-she-wrote

Summary: Hiding out from demons was never a desirable nightmare. Of course, Carrie would much prefer a run-for-my-life nightmare than actually running for her life. Having Flynn around is a very welcome soothing balm, though.

Bring All The Monsters Out To Play, Let All The Red Erase The Grey (Rated T) [Bobby & Reggie] by @kennysbirthday

Summary: Mythologicals, Reggie realised, were kind of like queer people. Sometimes your Token Human friend turns around one day and admits that actually, there was something they were suppressing all along, and they hadn’t realised.

–

Reggie’s final exam has been pushed forward at the most inconvenient time. Bobby is sick, Alex is missing, and now he needs to help a selkie get their ‘Happily-Ever-After’ in order to scrape a passing grade. Oh, and if his boss catches him handing out more free coffee, he’s gonna get fired.

————

All the Winners can be found here.

We hope you enjoy these fics from our fabulous Fantoms! Make sure to leave kudos and comments to show them some love! And don’t forget, if you missed the initial writing deadline you can still submit your fics to our Non-Anon Collection at any time! Thank you all so much for participating this round! Now that winners and authors have been revealed feel free to post about your fics, create artwork for it, if you like, and don’t forget to tag us!

We hope you all will join us for Round 2! The prompt drops at Midnight tonight!

#troped: jatp #round 1: angst #author reveal #jatp fanfiction

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overlyimmersed · 3 years

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Nightmares and Daydreams

A Gravity Falls AU.

Hi @verysorrytobother Stanticore anon, revealing my true identity to share this with you! I wasn’t sure how a post this long would go over as an ask, so I decided to do it this way. I hope this is ok.

I’ve been working on this for a while and I hope it goes over well enough. The artwork took me the most time.

As a car crash victim is slowly dying, her mental self panics in the mindscape. She's offered a deal to save her life. Let the game begin.

(Content warnings: Blood. Descriptions of serious injuries.)

"What..." she whispered to herself, staring at the other in disbelief.

"Yep!" he confirms, in a high-pitched, grating, inappropriately upbeat tone, "Dead as a doornail, kid!- Well technically you still have a few more seconds till you brain totally ceases to function. Better make up your mind while you still have one!"

She's still staring dumbly at him. How can he be this nonchalant about it?! A half second ago she was sitting in the front seat of the family truck, a totally routine trip to the store- she never liked trucks but her dad's a carpenter so they need the hauling space. At least it's a pretty shade of blue- and the next she's here, laying face down in a black void with this prick this- this...All Seeing Eye? He's like the Illuminati symbol, but with arms and legs and a top hat. Caution sign yellow and talking to her- or at her. Bill. Freaking. Cipher. Every time he 'speaks' he flashes with light- no mouth so does it really count as speaking? More like his voice is being projected right into her mind- ... And he's telling her that she freakin died! Can't he see how messed up this is?! Can't he sympathize at all!? Then again, it's Bill. She ought to know better.

She ought to know better. She's seen this show a hundred times, she knows nothing good comes from dealing with Cipher. But she doesn't have time to be careful, she doesn't have the luxury of weighing options.

"Tick-tock, Car Wreck!" The obnoxious voice insists again, forcing her out of her stupor, his outstretched hand now alight with blue fire.

Her face scrunches up in a loud cringe, eyes screwed shut and teeth bared, and she swings her hand till it lands solidly in his. Crazed cackling resounds as the deal is struck, but it falls to simple soundtrack as her senses try to sort out what's going on.

She'd expected the blue fire to burn, or at least feel like something, but it didn't. Instead her entire being is flung into a...whirl? Free fall? Something that makes her stomach jump into her throat, and gives her vertigo.

The sensation stops suddenly, only to be replaced by a cacophony of new perceptions. She isn't sure which strikes her first, the sounds or the smell. Shrieks of agony and terror make up the next track of this bizarre playlist, punctuated by the reek of burnt hair. When her eyes fly open to try and make sense of it all, they have no luck. The sight that meets her is a sky of surreal, swirling, bastardized ribbons of every hue, like being inside a filthy bubble. Floating strewn about the space are pockmarked asteroids, and little else.

"So what'd ya think?" The grating voice rejoins the discord, drawing her shell-shocked gaze. "Home-sweet-home, huh? Well don't worry, you won't be here for very long. A deal's a deal, Car Wreck." With that que, and a snap of his fingers, she's falling again. This time untethered and unaccompanied. It takes her a moment to realize the scream ripping though the void is coming from her own throat. Once it hits her, so does something else, and the world goes black.

She wakes some time later, maybe moments maybe days. She has no way of knowing. She pushes herself onto her hands and knees, groggy and disoriented. It takes her a moment to notice the texture under her hands and focus her vision on it. It's grass. She sits up and looks around. "oh..." she says to herself, taking in the scenery. It's lovely, a grassy, sun soaked field. The sky made of churning colors like the last place she'd been, but they're pastel and much prettier. A warm breeze brushes past her face and she takes a deep breath of it, it smells sweet and warm, heavy with the scent of growing things, and for the first time since this started she finds some peace. Peace which is quickly shattered by a familiar, grating voice.

She jumps and whirls around so quick she falls onto her butt. There, floating just inches from where her head had been, is Bill. Laughing at her of course.

"Whoops! Didn't mean to scare you there, Car Wreck!" he claims, moving through the air to look around, then turning back around to look at her. "So how do you like the new digs?"

There's a beat of silence where she just stares at him again, but quickly she shakes off the shock and tries to respond. "Uh...It's nice." She lets her eyes roam around for a second, before returning to Bill, "Where are we?"

"This is the Realm of Daydreams! Your new HQ!" he answers, floating around behind her and making a grand gesture with his arms.

She turns her head to follow him, "Daydreams? HQ?"

"Yep! This is where you'll hang out when you're not puppeting your little pawns." He turns around to look at the scenery more himself. "Kinda dull if you ask me. Maybe you can do something about that!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh you know, some pillars of anguish, an alter of unholy fire, maybe a blood fountain or a couple of-" he gestures with each suggestion, like a landscaper creating a vision, until she cuts him off.

"No I mean," she finally pushes herself to a stand, teetering a little till she finds her balance. "Pawns?"

He turns back to her, "Oh yeah, which ones do you want anyway?" he waits a beat for an answer, but she just stares back at him, clearly not following. "Ugh, our deal?"

He hadn't really told her what the deal was, just mentioned a game and a second chance. "Uhh, I don't think you-"

"Oh right, you flesh bags need everything explained to you." he groans, rolling his eye, "Alright, here's the deal. We're gonna play a little game," he holds out his hand and a little hologram like projection appears showing an aerial view of a town. "and the people of this hick town are gonna be the pieces." ten little blue stick figures appear in the center of town, each with a little symbol above it's head. "If you win, you rejoin the land of the living!" a little magenta stick figure pops into existence next to the others and they all do a little happy dance. "If I win..." suddenly the whole projection goes up in flames, and she jerks her head back instinctively, "You burn with rest of those worthless mortals!" He bursts into a fit of maniacal laughter, which actually gives her some times to recover.

After a second of shocked staring, she blinks a few times then puts on as neutral an expression as she can. "Ok. So what are the rules?"

"Simple!" he answers, cutting off his laughter "We can't directly manipulate each other's pawns, and we can't interfere with the other's powers."

"That's it?"

"Yep. Everything else is fair game"

"Ok...What are my powers?"

"Same as mine! Except you don't have to wait till someone falls asleep to get in their head."

"I see..." her eyes wander to the ground as she contemplates the information, and her hand reaches for the longest of her three necklaces to idly play with the spiked pendant. "So you can talk to them in dreams, and I can talk to them in daydreams."

"Bingo!"

She scrunches her nose a little, thinking of a few ways that could end up being annoying. "Alright, anything else I need to know?"

"Hmm, nope! That just about covers it. All that's left is to pick our pawns, I'll even let you go first!" And with that ten, glowing, blue symbols appear between them. She looks them over carefully, she knows who each symbol corresponds to- supposing the cartoon from her world is accurate. She considers the six-fingered hand, if she takes him out of Bill's control from the start that derails his whole plan as she knows it. But, then she'll have no clue what's up to at all, at least by letting Bill have the pawns she's familiar with she has a chance at guessing his moves. She reaches forward and touches the shooting star, it turns magenta and floats to hover closer to her.

"Interesting." Bill comments, though his tone doesn't sound very interested, as he makes a simple motion with his eye and the six-fingered hand settles beside him. She chooses the fish looking symbol next, and Bill's second choice in the pine tree. They go back and forth till they have five symbols each, Bill having the the six-fingered hand, the pine tree, the llama, the stitched heart, and the pentagram. While she has the shooting star, the fish, the bag of ice, the spectacles, and the question mark.

"Welp, that settles that. Nice picks you made there, lets hope they work out for ya, Car Wreck"

"Could you not call me that?" though it hardly sounds like a request.

"And what else should I call you?" Bill asks, collecting his symbols into one hand and placing the other on his...hip?

"How about my name? It's Maranwe."

"But Car Wreck fits you so much better! Just take a look!" he quips, snapping a full-length mirror into existence. Maranwe turns to look and gasps in horror. Bill breaks out into more cackling, "Well my work here is done! I'll let you get cleaned up, see ya around Car Wreck!" And with that he fades from existence.

Maranwe just stares, even as Bill disappears from 'her' realm, she can only stare at her destroyed refection. Her hair is messy- and she almost laughs that that's what her brain zeros in on first-, It's also dirty, some of the mess is actual dirt but several spots are matted with half-dry blood. Her face is in a similar condition, smeared with dirt and blood but she can see the wounds there. Scrapes and still oozing cuts, bruises forming on one cheek bone and under her eyes. Her nose isn't quite right...broken probably. Her vision skims over her whole body for a second, making note of similar injuries where tears in her clothes reveal them. It's not as bad as she would expect a car crash victim to look- "except for that" Her mind screams suddenly while all her mouth can do is gasp, as her attention lands dizzyingly on her neck. It's...purple, but also red? There's no spilled blood but it still looks ugly, and the worst part is the...bump. It's not hard to figure out that it's a misaligned bone. Without the pain to tell her she never would have noticed, her neck is broken. Very broken. How is she holding her head up right... Probably because this isn't actually a physical body. She wonders if this is what killed her, or if there's something inside, something she can't see, that did the trick.

Whatever it is, she can't be seen like this. And she really really doesn't want to look like this for her own sake. Bill said she could 'clean herself up'? How exactly... She thinks about how Bill's powers tend to work and tries to concentrate on a cleaner, less beat up mental image of herself. She lifts her hand to her cheek and grazes her finger tips across it, a trail of sparkles follow the touch and the skin underneath returns to normal. She relaxes a little, watching the disaster wipe off her face like cheap make-up. She keeps the image in her mind and closes her eyes, cupping her hands in front of herself and imagining the sparkles pooling in them. Then she splashes the sparkles over he face, like a girl in a face wash commercial, and imagines the glittering dust washing over her entire body, cleaning away the mess and injuries. And when she opens her eyes, that's exactly what's happened. Her reflection shows her whole and unwounded, even her clothes are fixed.

The next thing she does is smooth her hair down, mostly an instinct since it's still messy, and the sparkles trail after her hands, tidying the strands as if she'd just brushed them. She watches her reflection's mouth quirk up a little in a small smirk. So she can just change what she looks like by imagining it? That figures, this is a place of daydreams that's kind of how they work. She knows exactly what to do with this, she's known since she was a kid what she's change if she could. She places the backs of her hands next to her ears and flicks up, sparkles spray up with the motion and her normal human ears, turn to wolf ears the fur the same chocolate brown as her hair. Her smirk blooms into a full blown smile, and she tilts her head to get a better look at them, watching them move as she tests them. It's like they're real! Next is the tail of course, it's mostly brown, with some silver down the top and a black tip. Then she looks down, and taps the toe of each of her shoes against the ground in turn, as she does they become the compressed paws of her own design.

"That's insane..." she laughs to herself. She's actually turning herself into something else, her own made up alien species. And she just can! With the big changes out of the way she works out the details; pupil shape, fang length, and straightens out a few asymmetries and insecurities she's always had about her body- after all why not? When she's done, she can't help admiring herself a little, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, her perfect image of herself. Well- almost perfect. She snaps her fingers and in the same dusting of glitter, her shirt changes. What was before a loose grey t-shirt with the word "nope" written across it in cursive, as been replaced by a cropped sweater, banded in 3 colors; white at the top, then light blue, then dark blue. She lifts it to look at the crop top under neither, it's just plain white. She decides she doesn't like it that way, so it changes to a cropped version of the t-shirt she'd had before. With that taken care of she lifts her arm so the over-sized sleeve falls down and she can see her forearm, which is covered by a light blue arm warmer with white lace around the edges. Perfect. At least for now. She can change later if she decides she doesn't like the arm warmers.

She giggles to herself, invigorated by the makeover and the sense of control she has now. She turns from the mirror and skips a few feet across the grass, the symbols she'd chosen follow her, floating loosely like beads suspended in gel. She laughs a little as she watches them, and idly reaches for her necklace again, but this time her hand just meets the soft knit of her sweater. She'd forgotten to add them into this new look, so she just wills them into place; three different necklaces of three different lengths. Her hand finds the middle length first, the pendant is designed to spin so she plays with it while her mind starts to wander. She starts thinking of plans for winning this game, what she might say to each other 'pawns' and who to use where and how, even letter her thoughts wonder about the new life she'll have. Cipher's hologram suggested she'll stay in Gravity Falls, which would be cool but what about-

The sound of screeching tires and twisting metal cuts her thoughts off clean and she whips around to find the source of the noise, but her fear turns to confusion when she sees...nothing. She stands stock still, her mind running over only vague impressions of thoughts relating to what she just heard, until another loud sound whips her back around. This time she actually sees something, like a huge firework in the pastel oil-slick sky, accompanied by Bill's obnoxious voice echoing through the space.

"Let the game begin!"

#I was on anon at first because I have ungodly amounts of social anxiety #gravity falls #gravity falls au #NM&DD #Nightmares and Daydreams #creative writing #?#fanfiction #fanfic #gravity falls fanfiction #Bill Cypher #gravity falls OC #now I'm gonna go die of embarrassment #I don't really consider myself a writer #i'm more of the drawing sort of artist #so I hope at least the pictures are good #someone please let me know if the cryptograms are illegible in that font #I'll post a translation if they're too hard to read

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tantei-chan-4869 · 3 years

Text

Chapter 2: Shinichi is Back?!?

Last Chapter..........

"You must've have guessed. Of course, for a brilliant detective like you, I have nowhere to hide. Yes. It is I, the Moonlight Phantom. Kaitou KID." Slowly, a smug begin to form on his face as he put his poker face on. "Looks like we'll have a lot to talk about tonight~" he said seductively as he slowly approached the unguarded detective. She slowly backed away, her heart beating wildly. She was fearful. What does he wanted do to her?

As his steps echoed closer, Shinichi shut her eyes in despair. "Help me..... someone. Anyone. Help me....."

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Suddenly, the panicked detective felt something cold and metallic against her forehead. Immediately, her face paled from nervousness.

"Oh? Who would've thought the detective who had fired a bullet on me a year ago would've been in the same situation." Kaito's voice can be heard, very close in her ear as Shinichi stood frozen in fear. Is this it? Must her life as Shinichi be so short?

With the sound of trigger being heard echoing across the empty alleyway, signaling that the gun had been fired. Shinichi strangely didn't feel any pain. Strange, she thought. The death must've been quite an easy one. But by the time she opened her eyes, she was perfectly fine. Alive and well. No blood gushing out of her forehead and was staring into the indigo eyes of a certain thief.

The detective gasped and immediately was alert and on guard. However Kaito was quite pleased with himself.

"I wasn't going to do anything to you. You seemed to have forgotten my rule that no blood shall be shed when I'm around Meiantei. Never think you'd be so freaked out like that. Quite amusing to mess with you~"

Shinichi glared daggers into Kaito's eyes as he whistles while twirling his card gun around his finger. Frustrated, the detective turned on her heel and stormed off, leaving Kaito behind to catch up.

"Oi, oi Meiantei! Matte yo! (Wait up!)" Kaito called as he ran after her. "Hey, I'm sorry for pranking you like that. It's not everyday you hear the news that the kid you deal with on your heists is actually a high school detective." He chuckled. "I mean, I had guesses that you're not someone ordinary but this was too much, even for KID himself. So, will you forgive me my dearest Tantei-chan?"

But Shinichi's mind was not on Kaito at all. She was afraid that someone from BO was hiding in the dark who happened to hear everything and someday they'll rebuilt and hunt her down again. She vividly remember how her childhood best friend Mouri Ran almost died because of a mortal bullet wound to the stomach. She didn't want anymore innocent people lose their lives for her. Not even KID the master of escape himself.

"Earth to Shin-chan, are you here?" Kaito asked with a cute headtilt as he tried to get her attention. Shinichi was quite annoyed at this point. She stopped abruptly, whipped around and scolded Kaito.

"Go home. It's quite late. Besides, what's a thief doing with a detective so late at night like this? And we're both a guy and a girl. Do you think it's normal for someone to still be friendly after they found out the person had been their rivals the entire time? I don't think so! I regretted meeting you in the park. In fact, I wish I never ran into you in the first place!"

The last of the sentence was shouted out. Each words she said was a dagger being driven into Kaito's heart, wounding him. Sure. He could shrug it off with his poker face, but he would rather not do that in front of his favorite critique. He only listened with silence as his Meiantei lets out her anger on him. Shinichi however, was displeased. "Don't just stand there. Say something for yourself Kuroba Kaito. Why do you steal? Why do you live under the alias 'Kaitou KID'? What are you trying to hide?"

"When I was young...." Kaito hesitated but decided to continue. "My dad died in an accident while performing magic. I always thought his death was not normal, so I decided to look into it. Let's just say..... He was involved with a group of shady men. They were trying to find this jewel called 'Pandora'. It's said to be able to grant anyone's wish for immortality. My dad didn't want that to happen so he took up the job of stealing, hoping to find the jewel before them and to destroy it before they found it. Apparently, the men found out my dad's identity and..... Murdered him. However, I still believe that my dad is still alive. And..... I want to complete what he started. So yeah. Basically why I took up stealing."

There was a hint of sadness in Kaito's voice, as Shinichi noticed. For a minute, she didn't know what to say. The feeling of having to keep 2 identities was too similar and painful to not acknowledge. For a minute, she felt bad for Kaito.

" I...... I'm sorry Kuroba- I mean, Kaito." She apologized. " I just want to let you know, I understand and I'm here for you. Now I understand you're now really stealing. Sorry for misunderstanding you..... "

Kaito only gave the detective a wry smile. "I'm used to being misunderstood. It's nothing new for me. However, like you said, it is getting quite late. I should probably head home anyways. See you next illusion Meiantei."

He turned and was about to go until Shinichi's voice stopped him. "I- I mean, you can stay over for the night if..... If you want. It's not safe to walk alone on the streets so late like this anyways....."

The said thief looked back to see a quite flustered Shinichi offering him hospitality while trying not to sound too awkward. He had to smile, seeing his favorite detective in such a situation. It's quite cute, he thought to himself.

"Are you sure? Who said a guy and a girl can't be alone together? Definitely not me~" he teased while walking back to her. Which flustered the poor detective more as she blushed pink. "You don't have to take up the offer if you're not interested." She pouted as she proceeded to head over to her house's direction. Kaito only grinned as he followed after her.

Once inside the manor, Kaito couldn't help but marvel how big the place was. He whistled as to see how many compartments this house had. "You've been living in here growing up? Sheesh, your parents are filthy rich Shin-chan." He commented as he stood in front of a framed artwork to examine it.

"Eh, it's nothing if your mom is a popular retired actress and your dad is a world renowned novel writer." Shinichi shrugged as she proceeded to hang up her jacket, glove, and scarf on the hanger at the entrance of the house. "Can I get you something? I'm guessing you want both something to eat and something to drink?" She asked as she proceeded into the kitchen. "Just a heads-up, I don't cook a lot. My childhood best friend comes over and cook once in a while for me. But my cooking isn't good so bear with me." She explained as she tied an apron around her waist only for it to be untied by Kaito.

"Oi what are you-" Shinichi was about to protest until Kaito shushed her. "Let me handle it. I usually live alone and I've had to learn to cook quite a few dishes by myself. Don't worry, won't burn your house down if that's what you're worried about." Kaito winked at her, earning a flustered stutter from her.

"No I'm not worried about that- it's just- well, I can't make a guest cook-" She chased after Kaito, trying to get the apron back from him. But Kaito only dodged her.

"Aw, and here I thought you were going to worry about me. How cruel are you Meiantei~ my heart is in pain~~" Kaito teased her in a playful manner. Poor Shinichi was quite red at this point to the point where she seemed like she was going to pass out. Laughing, Kaito was quite pleased with his doing before he waltzed around the room getting ingredients out.

Soon, the Kudo manor was filled with the delicious aroma of something cooking. Shinichi, who was reading a Sherlock Holmes book in the library sniffed the air and immediately felt drolls in her mouth. The female detective followed the smell into the kitchen to see a beaming Kaito coming towards her with plates of food in his hands. Shinichi was quite impressed. "W-we had that many food materials in the house-?" Her gaze followed the plate of food as Kaito moved about the room setting the table.

"Of course. You had quite a lot of left overs that can be made into a table of feast. It's just up to your creativity." Kaito hummed as he set some utensils on the table. "Well, don't just stand over there Tantei-chan." Kaito waved. "Come and have a taste!"

The two enjoyed a quite filling meal. After Kaito had cleared take, Shinichi pushed back her chair quite contently. Kaito only sat across from her with a triumphant smug. The detective only rolled her eyes playfully at him before smiling. His cooking had definitely captured her stomach.

"So, what now?" Kaito asked as he folded his hands together. Shinichi noticed how slender and well-cared for they looked. "Well, I suppose perhaps I should help you on your heists." Shinichi replied as she looked at her nails rather casually while waiting to get a reaction from him.

True to her prediction, Kaito almost fell off of the chair he was sitting on. "Seriously? Meiantei is going to help me-?" He asked in disbelief as he tried to process what Shinichi was telling him.

"Yep." She replied simply. "Your dad was somewhat of a sensei to my mom who taught her how to disguise. So in a way, my family owe you one."

Kaito gave Shinichi a genuine smile. He never thought that this day would come. Who knows your rival would suddenly just stop being your rival and actually side with you?

Shinichi, had a knowing look as she stared at Kaito's idioticly hopeful face, decided to wake him up from his daydreams. "However, we'll still be somewhat of a rival." She smiled mysteriously as Kaito pouted.

"B-but why?" Kaito whined. The smug high school detective mused at how cute he looked. "Well, it wouldn't be fun for me if I can't triumphantly take you down myself, would it?" She smirked. "Isn't it your job to entertain your audience, Mr. Magician?"

Kaito huffed and pouted. Shinichi only laughed it off. "I'm off to bed. You can sleep in my parents' room if you want. I got you a pair of my dad's sleeping wear ready and laid on the bed for you." Then she paused and turned to look at Kaito dead in the eyes. "Do. Not. Try. Anything. Funny. While. I'm. Sleeping. Do you understand?"

The said magician just raised up his hands in surrender. "Never planned to do anything anyways. Please Tantei-chan, I'm not that perverted to the point of not having any self respect. Unless...... " Then, Kaito lowered his voice into a quite deep and seductive tone. "You want me to snuggle next to you while you're asleep~"

"Ew you pervert!" Came Shinichi's flustered voice followed by a slipper flying to his way, to which Kaito easily dodged. He laughed at how easily she reacted to his playful jokes and went to get ready for the night.

Early the next morning, a loud and rapid rapping could be heard outside of the Kudo manor followed by a voice that Shinichi couldn't be more familiar with. "Shinichi! Shinichi are you back? I'm coming in!"

"Hang on I'm coming!" The high school detective jumped out of bed with a messy bedhead rushed to the door, almost knocking over a very confused Kaito who was also not very pleased about his morning sleep being interrupted. He followed Shinichi to the front door to see her childhood best friend Mouri Ran, who was, staring daggers into Kaito's soul as he came face to face with the karate champion.

"Yo, good morning." Kaito yawned and waved.

"Kudo Shinichi, could you explain the meaning of this-?" Ran growled through his gritted teeth.

"Oh crap-" came Shinichi's reply. She's as good as dead.

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Author's Note.........

Oh no! What will happen to Shin-chan!? Sounds like a love triangle/secret crushes compilation! I hope you guys stick around long enough to find out because cliffhangers will be a thing in my fan fics 👀

#kuroba kaito #female au kudo shinichi #kudo shinichi #dcmk #kaishin #kaishin fanfiction #anime #detective conan #detective conan alternate universe

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imagineaworlds · 3 years

Text

I Love You (Part Forty-Seven) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of PTSD, Dom/sub relationship, death, etc-- everything Criminal Minds.. I think that’s it???

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12575

Timeline: Season 7 Episode 01. Three months after part forty-six.

For the past three months, the team had worked dozens of different cases across the country, but none of them mattered except for the one that Morgan, Garcia, and I had been working on privately. Since I came back to work and was deemed the temporary unit chief, I decided to reopen the Ian Doyle case. At first, it was just me. When I wasn’t at work, I was at home, hiding in the upstairs office, working on trying to piece all of the evidence together to figure out where the hell Doyle could have possibly gone. But then it was just too hard to keep doing it on my own, and all of my resources were wasted. There was only one person who had access to more information than I did. Garcia. So, I asked if she would be willing to help me, but it was impossible for her to keep a secret, so we invited Morgan to help us. From there, we managed to find Declan, but we didn’t tell anyone about it outside of our small group of three.

Finding Declan was an interesting process. I had hit a wall with it, hence why I acquired Garcia’s help, but she managed to find him almost immediately after she told Derek what was going on and he helped profile Emily in order to profile Declan. He figured that she had been the one to move him considering how she died protecting his identity and location. Before joining the team, apparently she lived in Reston, Virginia, something I didn’t know about her, but he managed to know. From there, we decided that it was probably to be close to Declan. So, we started narrowing it down. We knew that she liked cul-de-sacs, so as Garcia was going through the school system to find kids that looked like Declan, she compared if their guardian looked like Louise, his nanny, and if they lived in a cul-de-sac. Then, bam. We found them.

Morgan had been the one to offer up the idea of looking for Declan before Ian because if we found Declan, then so would his father eventually, which made our job easier. After that, it was just a waiting game. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do beyond searching all of the footage to see if Ian ever showed up, which he never did. When Morgan and I were away on cases, Penelope kept an eye on him; and when we were in town but not working on anything, Morgan was driving baby Emily out there and taking her on walks around Declan’s neighborhood to scout the place. I think it was also just an excuse for him to have Emily more.

On our way to work one morning, Morgan and I stopped to get sandwiches for lunch, as well as some donuts from Leonard’s for the office since we were feeling generous, I suppose. At work, we split off so that he could sit in the bullpen while I dragged my feet up to my office. I didn’t understand how Hotch did it. Being away from the team all day, every day was so… isolating and exhausting. There was no joking with Morgan, teasing Reid, or… well, when Emily was around, there was no more chatting with her and gossiping about Hotch. I missed the way she used to slide in veiled threats into the conversation about how she would hurt him if he ever hurt me. So, then again, maybe it was a good thing that I wasn’t down in the bullpen anymore. Sitting at my old desk would have just given me a reason to sit there and stare at her desk all day, reflecting on what it was like to have her around, wishing that I could bring her back.

By lunch time, Morgan rescued our sandwiches from the fridge and brought them up to my office. He closed the door behind him and sat down across from me. I caught my sandwich as he threw it at me, then tossed him a water bottle from Hotch’s secret stash in his bookshelf behind the desk. I hadn’t really changed anything. For the most part, the office was still exactly how he left it. From the artwork to the family photos, to the stacks of case files that he practically left for me on his desk to work through, to his computer wallpaper of us, it was all still Hotch. The only difference was that I was finding all of his secrets now, like the water bottles, and totally taking advantage of them.

Morgan kicked his feet up on the desk, something Hotch would’ve never let him do in a thousand years, and dug into his lunch. I picked at mine for a moment while thinking. I was doing too much of that nowadays. Without my “other half” (or some cliché shit like that) around, I didn’t really know who to talk to 24/7 about what I was thinking and feeling. Sure, I could’ve talked to Morgan, but it was different. When I talked to Morgan, it was like we were brainstorming for a solution; but with Hotch, it was just like he was there to listen, and I could go on and on for hours, and he would hear me out, and he would only offer up a solution if he felt it were necessary. Sometimes I just liked ranting my thoughts to him. I liked watching how he would slowly get lost in the details of my face as I would be talking, and how he it looked like he was falling in love with me over and over again with every minute that passed. Skype and calling on the phone every day didn’t do that look justice anymore.

“Oh, my god—Oh, my god—Oh, my god!” Garcia came running into the office with a laptop balancing on one of her arms. Morgan and I turned to face her. “It’s him! It’s him!” She quickly set her laptop down on my desk and pressed play on a video. Morgan and I both leaned forward in our seats to watch the security footage from Declan’s house. “It’s Doyle—” She paused and pointed to a driver in a car passing by. It was kind of hard to see, but when she zoomed the image in and enhanced it, it was undeniably Ian Doyle.

“When was this?” I asked, jumping into action by standing from my seat and started collecting everything we had on this case thus far.

“Two hours ago.”

“He could have Declan by now. Fuck.” I looked at the two of them to say, “Okay, I think it’s time. I’m going to call Hotch to let him know, meanwhile, I need you guys to get the team together and start explaining everything. I want Reid and Rossi to go retrieve Declan and Louise after they’re briefed.” I grabbed my phone from my desk. “Go.” Just as they were leaving, I dialed Hotch’s satellite phone out in the Middle East.

Hotch and I had still been calling each other every day and Skyping as often as we could. The longer he was there, however, the busier he and I got with our two different jobs, which made it increasingly complicated to keep up with each other. But we made the effort. We knew that if at least one day passed where we wouldn’t talk, one day would inevitably turn into two, then three, and so on. I didn’t want to stop talking to him. As boring as the conversations could get at times, at least I got to see him. He was growing out a beard that I happened to love, but Jack hated. He claimed that it made his dad look old. When we could talk in private a little bit later, I told Hotch that I thought it was hot, and that I couldn’t wait to pull at it while he towered over me. He disliked when I teased him like that, though.

When I called, he picked up almost immediately.

“You’re calling awfully early,” Hotch said over the phone, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Do you have a minute?”

“For you? I have all the time in the world.”

I blushed to myself and looked down to watch the toes of my shoe dig into the ground over and over again. “There’s something you need to know, baby, and you have to promise to not get mad.” He didn’t say anything. “Morgan, Garcia, and I have been looking for Doyle while you’ve been gone.” Still, nothing. “We found Declan.”

“What?!”

“Hotch—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Y/N? Do you know how stupid that was? Your whole career could—”

“I don’t care about that, Hotch. I really don’t. I knew that finding Declan was the best way of finding Ian, so I asked Garcia to help; and you know her, she couldn’t keep it to herself, so she told Morgan, and he insisted that he help us. He’s basically the one who found Declan. Without the two of them, I wouldn’t have any leads.”

Hotch sighed quietly. “Is Declan safe?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Morgan’s still surveilling him—But, Hotch, listen, we were right. By watching Declan all this time, we got eyes on Ian.”

He hesitated for a moment. “You’re sure?” He sounded more scared than angry now. I hummed a “yes” in response. “Baby, listen to me right now.”

I bit my lip. “I’m listening, Sir.”

He chuckled slightly. “If you get eyes on Doyle, you need to take the shot. Got it? Don’t let him get away again.” He sounded out of breath now like he was running around. “I’m coming back to help.”

I felt my heart skip a beat and the air leave my lungs with one shocked gasp. He was coming back. After three months, I was finally going to get to hold him in my arms again, and I was going to get to kiss his lips again. Holy shit. He was coming home. My husband was coming back to me. I almost wanted to dance and cheer, scream from the top of my lungs how happy I was and that I couldn’t wait to see him; but I had to show a modicum of respect still, so I buried that feeling until I would get to see him again.

“You can do that?” I questioned cautiously. As happy as I was, could he really just abandon his post to come back like that? It sounded almost too good to be true.

“I put in the request to transfer back to Quantico about two weeks ago.” And he didn’t tell me? “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up on anything; but they don’t need me here anymore, so it’s not a big deal if they find a replacement.” I hopped slightly with joy and giggled. Hotch chuckled at me. “I can’t wait to see you, baby.”

Even considering the circumstances, I couldn’t wait to see him either. “Call me when you’re landing.”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

----

By the time Garcia followed traffic camera footage across the state just to see where Doyle was hiding out, we had a SWAT team with snipers on call, and the team was ready to head out there. Just as I had ordered, Rossi and Reid headed to get Declan, but the drive was pretty far, so I didn’t expect to hear from them for a while, especially while we were in the early stages of staking out Doyle’s place. Morgan, JJ, and I were trapped in a van across the street from his apartment while SWAT was just down the road, and they had two snipers up on separate roofs. All of it was my call, though. The second we had reasonable cause to believe that it was actually Ian Doyle up there, I would be the one to dictate if the snipers or Morgan would be taking the shot, like Hotch said.

“That’s all Hotch said? ‘Take the shot’?” JJ questioned warily. I nodded and shrugged. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Why?”

She shook her head. “Nothing…”

I eyed her suspiciously for a moment, taking into account how her gaze wasn’t resting on one thing, but instead a thousand different things, like she was too anxious to focus. It was odd, but I shrugged it off with the excuse that finding Doyle was a big deal. Since he killed Prentiss, we had all been itching to find him and avenge her. Out of everyone, I knew that JJ would want to know that Doyle was dead because of us. She wanted that justice. I couldn’t exactly tell why, but she had always been like that, especially since getting promoted to being a profiler.

And then my phone started ringing with a call from Spencer who had just arrived at Declan’s house. I figured it was just an update. I mean, him and Rossi were there to simply pick up Declan and Louise, that was it. But then something worrying happened when I picked up the call: Reid sounded concerned.

“Reid?”

“Declan’s missing,” he answered quickly.

“What?”

“We just searched the house, and he’s gone, so we called the school to see if he even made it home, and they told us that his mom picked him up early.”

“Louise?” I speculated.

“I doubt it.” He sounded annoyed now. “She’s dead.”

“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath, then looked up at Morgan and JJ to tell them what was going on. They also cursed, and he hit the side of the car. “Okay. Reid, you and Rossi should meet us here in case we end up seeing—” The sound of a police car’s siren flew past our van, catching our attention. It was just a squad car. No, no, no, no. Fuck. That was going to scare Doyle off. Fuck.

“He’s inside!” Morgan exclaimed. We all turned to face the window to see the drape in Doyle’s apartment window shaking like it had just been disturbed. “I saw him!” Morgan was already fiddling with the door handle and pushing his way out of the car.

“Shit…” This wasn’t at all how I imagined this going down. We were supposed to just monitor the situation, get legitimate confirmation that Doyle was in there, not just Morgan claiming he saw him— But what choice did we have now? “Go, go, go,” I made the call, following Morgan out of the van and hanging up the call with Reid.

JJ, Morgan, and I raced inside first, the SWAT van pulling up behind us and the team moving in, too. When we reached the apartment number, JJ and I stood our ground in the hallway with our weapons raised, and I gave Morgan the signal to kick the door down, which he did without hesitating, and then he dashed inside. The three of us took turned towards different sides of the apartment in order to clear it. Morgan went straight into the living room/bedroom, JJ went into the bathroom on the left, and I stepped into the tiny kitchen on the right. He wasn’t there. Neither was Declan. Reid said that they couldn’t find Declan, so I only assumed that Doyle got to him first. Fuck! How the fuck did he—

“I’ve got something!” Morgan called out. I hurried into the living room/bedroom to see him peeking up at the ceiling inside of the closet. I cocked a brow and carefully approached. “He’s climbing to the roof.” There was a hole in the ceiling for some kind of secret tunnel that led upwards.

“Follow him,” I ordered. “I’ll take the steps. JJ, watch the door downstairs to make sure he doesn’t get out, and coordinate with SWAT to make sure that the block is locked down just in case. Get a crime scene team here to see if Declan was ever here.”

Morgan holstered his weapon then quickly pulled himself up into the tunnel to follow Doyle, meanwhile I hurried out into the hallway to start sprinting up the rest of the stairs, and JJ ran down them. How the fuck did this happen? How did we lose Declan like this, and how was Doyle actually planning on getting out of this?

And then I burst out onto the roof to see Morgan chasing after Doyle who was running for the fire escape on the side of the building. Morgan aimed his weapon, but didn’t shoot. Instead, he tried commanding Doyle to stop. Like that would help.

“I’ve got the shot,” one of the snipers said over the comms.

“Don’t shoot!” I exclaimed. “Don’t!” I knew what Hotch said about taking the shot if given the chance, but things were different now that we couldn’t find Declan in the apartment. Our only way of getting him back now was by keeping his father alive. Asshole. “Hold your fire!” When nothing came, Morgan tackled Doyle and spun him onto his stomach so that he could be handcuffed. “You got it?” I asked him. He nodded while slapping the cuffs on Doyle. “I’ll have JJ take him back to the office while we start going through everything downstairs.”

Morgan groaned as he yanked Doyle up onto his feet. “You’re not gonna let me take a crack at him?”

“Not yet.”

Doyle chuckled. I squinted at him while searching his eyes for a reason that he could have possibly found this funny. He noticed my curiosity. “Lauren was right about you.”

Morgan tugged on Doyle’s restraints to make them hurt. “Shut up.”

Doyle kept laughing as Morgan pushed him towards the stairwell so that JJ could take him to the office like I had ordered. My only question, however, was, what the hell did he mean by that? Lauren was right about me? Right about what? The question lingered in my head as I sighed and moved to walk downstairs, too.

Afterwards, hours passed while we were combing through Doyle’s apartment, trying to find clues about where he must have taken Declan, as well as compiling evidence connecting him to Valhalla and Prentiss’s death. For someone in hiding, there was a lot he had with him. Usually, people in his situation would stay minimalist and wouldn’t have all of their condemning evidence in one spot, but Doyle was so cocky that he wouldn’t get caught that he didn’t bother to keep any of his current business elsewhere. There were so many guns in that one apartment that we could have started another small army. I couldn’t understand how on Earth someone would need all of that. Then again, Doyle already had a small army, and the reason they needed to smuggle all of those weapons out of the state was so that he could maintain power in Europe while he was underground. Well, looked like all of that was worthless now.

I sighed as I stepped outside of that tiny, dirty, smelly, cramped apartment for the first time in over ten hours. It really took that long. Doyle had been sitting at the office the entire time, brewing in his own thoughts, which was our strategy to break him. If he was left in darkness and silence long enough, he would open up. Hopefully. At least, Morgan and I would give it a shot when we would head back to the office. For now, we were down tearing the entire apartment to shreds. The bastard even had papers hiding behind the wallpaper.

When my phone started buzzing in my pocket, I sighed again and dug it out. “Hotchner,” I answered.

“Mmm… I could get used to that,” Hotch’s voice echoed over the phone, making me melt.

I perked up within an instant while looking down at my watch, spotting the time and how long it had been since he last called me, and how he promised he would call when he was close to landing in Virginia. Finally, I thought. “How close are you?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

It was almost morning already. He was probably going to be landing just as the sun would start to peek over the tall buildings of Quantico. “I’m coming to pick you up.”

“Y/N, you should stay—”

“Nope,” I interrupted adamantly.

Hotch chuckled. “You’re really going to be a brat about this right now?”

“Mhm. You can scold me for it when you see me.”

“God, I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Hey, sunshine,” Morgan said, sneaking up behind me, “you ready to go?”

“I’ll see you in a few minutes, baby,” I told Hotch. Before he could say anything in return, though, I hung up on him. I hid my grin as I buried my phone in my back pocket, then turned to face Morgan. “Can you handle the interrogation for a bit while I head to the airport?”

“He’s back already?”

“Yeah.”

Morgan nodded. “Go get him.” We smiled at each other. “No detours, though, sunshine. There and back.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I responded half-heartedly while already walking away from him. “Just remember, when this is over with, you and Clooney are going home!”

----

To say I was nervous would have been a drastic understatement. I had gone four months without seeing him. Four months without his touch, his kiss, his hold, his love. A lot could change in four months. People could grow apart in four months. I was absolutely terrified that even though we called each other every day, we might not have been the same Hotchners who said goodbye to each other at the airport a few months ago. I knew that I still loved him endlessly— maybe even more now that I had been starved of him for so long. But I didn’t know what happened to him out there. I didn’t know what new experiences he had that could have possibly changed him. For all I knew, he could walk off that plane in a few minutes and walk right past me without a care. I just prayed that he was still Aaron. That the man I fell in love with would walk off that plane and know exactly how to hold me again. It was like I could already feel his touch, even though the plane’s engines hadn’t died out yet. He was so far, but he was so damn close. This was the closest we had been in four fucking months, and I was just so ready to see him already.

The plane came to a slow and steady stop on the runway. With every second that passed, I felt a growing need to throw up everywhere. He was probably sitting in there, watching me through the window, grinning ear to ear because I looked so nervous and sick. He could likely see me, yet I couldn’t see anything but the sun in my eyes. He was always an asshole, but he even had to beat me to the first look. Asshole x2.

The door of the jet popped open, and it started slowly falling down towards the concrete, the stairs on the inside making a slow appearance. I thought about what was going to happen. How was I going to react? How was he going to react? Was it better to stay where I was or was it better to meet him at the bottom of the steps? I felt like even if I wanted to move towards the plane, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was frozen in place as my mind raced with questions and endless possibilities. But there was one thing that was consistent: I was going to hold my husband in my arms, and I was going to tell him that I loved him over and over again until I passed out.

The second I saw a foot step out of the jet, I started sprinting as fast as I could without stopping to think. The rest of him emerged, and Hotch looked around for me. After spotting me from the top of the stairs, Hotch jumped down the steps, dropped his bag on the runway, and started running towards me, too. He held his arms out, an invitation for me to jump and hold him tight, so that was exactly what I did. Our bodies clashed, but he still managed to catch me, even though the force sent him stumbling back a few unwanted steps. My arms flew around his shoulders, my legs wrapped around his hips, my face buried in the crook of his neck. It didn’t matter that he smelled like sweat, sand, and cheap deodorant, because he was finally home with me and that was all that mattered. Hell, I even enjoyed the smell since it just meant that I had him in my arms again.

I squeezed him tight with my arms and legs after he nuzzled his face— beard, sunglasses, and all— into the crook of my neck. The aching in my chest, my broken heart that had been falling apart during every second that he was away from me, slowly started to mend with every breath we took together. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry, scream, cheer, laugh, or all of the above. Every single emotion imaginable was flooding my body and the only way I could cope with it was by nearly squeezing the life out of him while repeating: “I love you, I love you, I love you” over and over in his ear. I never wanted to stop saying it. I prayed that he would never let me go again and that we could say those three words until there was no more breath in our lungs.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” we kept whispering like we were records stuck on repeat. Fuck, I missed the way he said it to me. I missed the way he said my name and the way he called me “baby”. Nothing felt more right than how he spoke to me and how he kissed my neck in between words.

When his beard started tickling my neck, I finally paused to let out a giggle. I leaned back, his arms still around my torso to hold me for support, and I got a good look at him for the first time in months. There was no screen between us, no shitty computer cameras, no god awful Skype buffer, no speakers that cut out every other word. He looked so different than how I remembered him. His face was slimmed behind the scratchy beard he had grown, and his eyes were more sunken with exhaustion— if that were even possible. Aaron Hotchner always had dark circles under his eyes, that was no secret. Between work, the kids, and wrangling me, Hotch never had time to sleep; but Pakistan kicked his ass, and I could see it in every little detail about him.

He watched me with the brightest smile I had ever seen on his face as I brought my left hand up to his face and scratched my nails gently down his beard. “This is even hotter in person,” I smirked.

“It has to go the second I get an electric shaver,” he laughed.

My smirk fell and I pouted, “Are you sure?” He nodded. “But I have literally never wanted to fuck you harder in my entire life.”

He paused and gulped. “Okay, so maybe it can stay for a few days.”

I perked up again at my little victory and scratched it again. “Please don’t ever leave me again. Please.”

“I’d rather die than go away again.”

“Don’t be hyperbolic, Agent Hotchner.” I hit his shoulder playfully. He grinned before tightening his arms around me again to make me lean in for a kiss. I grabbed his face, the hairs on his cheeks tickling my palms as I did so, and I moaned into his mouth. “I love you so much.”

His eyes screwed shut as he slid his tongue into the kiss and claimed dominance. I missed that feeling so much. I missed how he tasted, how he smelled, how he felt, how he had to dominate me every second of every day. I missed getting lost in his eyes and staring at his lips all day until I could finally kiss them until our lips were chapped. If there weren’t a million and one things going on outside of that airport, I would have begged him to take me inside and fuck me in the bathroom. It should have been impossible to need him that much considering everything that was going on with Ian Doyle, yet there I was, only thinking about showing Aaron Hotchner how much I loved him.

Hotch pulled away from my lips, but he kept his nose pressed to mine. “Emily?”

“At home with Jessica.”

“Jack?”

“At school.”

“You?”

“The most relieved I have ever been in my life.” I leaned in and kissed him again. I thought to myself: “Please, never let this end. Let us stay trapped in each other’s arms forever. Never let us get tired of kissing each other, of holding each other, of saying ‘I love you’. Never let the desperation for passion die. Never let me miss him ever again. Keep him by my side until we die of old age. Please.”

And just like he could read my mind, Hotch loosened his hold on me ever so slightly, making me drop down to my feet, and he said, “We should get back to the office.”

I shook my head. “Just… One more minute… Please.”

“One more minute will turn into an hour at least, you know that.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No, it isn’t.” Hotch cupped my cheeks and kissed me as hard as he could. After a short minute of him kissing me like he had been starved of it for years, Hotch pushed me away. Our hands fell to our sides and I bit my lip while I tried to focus on not jumping on him again. “We have to go.”

I tried to catch my breath, my chest rising and falling at a dramatic pace. It took every ounce of strength and self-restraint I had stored away to not jump back on him and kiss him again. I felt like I was going to cry because he wasn’t in my arms again. I felt like screaming and kicking— throwing a tantrum like Jack would. I felt like at any moment, the two of us would break, and I would tackle him to the ground before showering him in kisses and pinning him down so that he couldn’t leave me again.

Hotch stumbled away from me to grab his go-bag from where he dropped it because he had the same look I had, and I knew that he was sharing the same thoughts. When he came back, he took my hand, and we walked towards the car. I started catching him up on everything we knew about the case thus far. Ian and Declan, all of Ian’s business papers that he had in his apartment. I realized then just how little we actually knew. Hopefully by the time we got back to the office, Morgan would have something out of Doyle that would help.

I drove the whole way to Quantico because he was too tired from the flight and the time zones. He had one of my hands trapped in his instead of on the steering wheel, and he kept kissing my knuckles again and again. He wasn’t listening to me. Not that I blamed him. If he wanted to just talk shop and I was sitting there, not distracted by driving, I would’ve been antsy to shower him in love, too. But Morgan said no detours. As much as it pained me, he was right that there really wasn’t any time to drive home, or even pull to the side of the road to fuck Hotch. I really, really wanted to, though; so, I figured the longer I distracted myself with work, the better off we would be. After this, though… Once this was all resolved… I wasn’t letting him go.

At the office, Hotch and I headed up to the sixth floor, somehow managing to go that entire time without touching each other. I wanted to kiss him again. I wanted to hold him again. While we were standing in the elevator, I stared at him and thought about pushing him against the wall, but it wasn’t worth it right now. I hated this inner battle I was having to fight between wanting him all to myself in that very moment and just focusing wholeheartedly on the case. The worst thought hit me suddenly… Maybe it would have been better if he didn’t come back so soon… I mean, he was just so distracting, I felt like I couldn’t celebrate this win as much as I should’ve been.

And then we stepped onto the floor.

“Hey.” Hotch grabbed my hand, tugging me back a few steps towards him. “You trust me, right?”

I furrowed my brows as I turned to face him. Of course I trusted him. Why wouldn’t I? He was my husband, and we made a promise to each other a long time ago to not keep any secrets from one another. I had no reason to doubt him. I wouldn’t have met him at the airport like that if I didn’t trust and love him wholeheartedly.

“You know that I do everything for a reason?”

What was he on about? Was there something I missed between meeting him at the airport and walking into the building with him? Why was he suddenly acting so weird?

I put my hands on his biceps. “Listen. I know that you told me you were in an all guys unit. If there’s something you want to say about it, I’m all ears. And I’m going to support you no matter what.” I bit back a smile.

Hotch cracked a smile. “No,” he shook his head, “that’s not what I mean.”

“Phew.” I rolled my eyes playfully. “I thought I was going to have to give you the birds and the bees talk, and how love is love—”

“Shut up.” He laughed before kissing me.

I pushed him back gently. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to cheat on me, it should at least be with a guy so that you get to experiment a bit.” I patted his chest.

He was still laughing quietly. “What am I going to do with you, Agent Hotchner?”

“I don’t know, Agent Hotchner,” I responded as I let him pull me back in for another kiss. “I’m sure you’ll think of something before we get home after this case, though.” I pecked his lips again, then escaped into the board room.

Everyone was standing behind the round table, huddled together as they discussed something about the case. It seemed as though Morgan had just finished his first attempt at getting information out of Doyle, to no avail. They were discussing how he was going to approach the second try, but no one’s ideas seemed to stick since Morgan had an excuse for why none of it would work. It was like we had hit a dead end, even though Doyle was the end, technically. He was the one who took Declan, and he was the one who took our sister from us. Prentiss was dead because of him, and we weren’t going to let him get away this time.

When Hotch walked into the room, everyone fell silent and turned to get a look at him. Hotch really didn’t seem to care about our no PDA at work rule now, because as everyone’s eyes lingered on him and his beard, Hotch came over to me, took my hand in his, and kissed my cheek. A lot changed for him in the Middle East, I guess. He missed me and he didn’t care what rules we had. He wanted to just have me around all the time, and I couldn’t blame him. But, technically, I was still the unit chief until Hotch could officially come back, and I couldn’t let us break the rules. Now I understood why Hotch was always so adamant about me behaving while at work. It was excruciatingly painful to not touch and kiss him just because I was the boss and had to set an example.

I moved away from Hotch, taking my seat at the round table. Everyone followed my lead warily, their eyes still trained on Hotch. Him and JJ didn’t sit, though. They were the only ones who stayed on their feet at the front of the room. Hotch had his arms crossed, a frown hiding under his facial hair, his eyes wandering around the room as he thought nervously about something. This had to do with him asking about my trust, but I didn’t understand how. Him worrying about something and not telling me almost immediately was only making me worry, too. He needed to spit it out fast or I would go insane.

“Everything alright, Hotch?” Morgan asked, also taking notice of Hotch’s clear unease.

Hotch didn’t nod or give any kind of reassurance that everything was alright. Instead, he shifted his weight on the balls of his feet— a silent tell that something was definitely wrong. He kept his head down now, only glancing up through his lashes occasionally to look at me. A thought struck me that maybe my joke wasn’t really a joke in the hallway. Four months was a long time to go without me, and it probably didn’t help that all he got was shitty phone sex. Maybe he really did change out there in the desert. Maybe he was showering me in love because he was going to drop a huge ass bomb that said: “I’m leaving you” or “I’m quitting the BAU and running away forever” or “I’m taking the kids and you’ll never see them again.” Every shit scenario possible was racing through my head. Like I said, if he wasn’t going to spit it out soon, I was going to start screaming for answers.

“Nine months ago,” Hotch began, “I made a decision that affected this team. As you all know, Prentiss lost a lot of blood after her fight with Doyle. We told you that she succumbed to her wounds…” He hesitated a beat. “That’s not really the case.”

Shock filled the room as it dawned on each of us what Hotch was really saying. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions because I really, really didn’t want to get my hopes up… but it sounded like he was telling us that Prentiss was alive. That over the past seven months, we have been led to believe that she died in that hospital.

“The truth is, the doctors were able to stabilize her, and she was airlifted to Bethesda under a covert exfiltration.”

My shoulders fell. So, it was true. Emily Prentiss was alive. The woman we mourned the loss of for seven months was… still around all along? That was why Hotch asked if I trusted him. That was why he was being so handsy. He knew that I hated it when he kept things from me. He knew that I hated it when he would betray my trust like this. I yelled at him for weeks the last time he did it— which was our suspension over two years ago. He was asking about trust and touching me as often as he could because he didn’t know if this admission of the truth was going to break us apart. This wasn’t like him lying and going to ask for a transfer out of the BAU. This wasn’t like him lying to me about his health. This was Emily Prentiss. This was our sister we lost in the field. We buried her. Why did Hotch… What… I— My thoughts were too scrambled to form another cohesive thought other than: “How could he do this to us?”

“After she got better, she was reassigned to Paris, where she was given multiple fake identities so that she could be safe,” Hotch continued.

“She’s alive?” Spencer finally asked the clarifying question we were all dying to know the answer to.

Hotch nodded shortly, keeping his eyes lowered. He wasn’t even looking at me now because of the shame and guilt he likely felt.

“But we buried her,” Spencer croaked.

Hotch nodded again. “If anyone has any issues with the executive decision that I made, then they can take it up with me.”

“Issues?” Morgan asked angrily. “Issues, Hotch? Yeah, I’ve got a few issues, but why don’t you start with the fact that you let your own wife believe that Emily was dead and let them name your daughter after her because of it, hmm? Don’t you think that you owe Y/N an explanation?”

“Morgan,” I hissed quietly. It was neither the time nor the place to discuss my daughter. I had a few choice words for Hotch running through my head, but I fully intended on keeping them to myself until Hotch and I could speak privately.

“Emily’s alive, Y/N. How are you going to explain that to your daughter as she grows up?”

“Stop it,” I demanded more harshly.

There wasn’t anything Morgan could say to me that I didn’t already know. Hotch had betrayed everything we believed in and promised each other. He had told me countless times since meeting me that he would never lie to me, and every time he ended up breaking that promise, he would tell me that it wouldn’t happen again. But there we were. Another promise broken. Even worse, though, was the fact that he made a vow to me on our wedding day that he would always be honest with me. Always. And yet he kept this a secret from me. Did he not trust that I could have kept it a secret? Morgan was right, I was owed an explanation. Hotch kept this from me, his wife for nine months. What else was he hiding? How was I ever supposed to trust him again?

I stood from my seat and turned for the door. No one said anything as I took a step but came to a sudden halt when I discovered that my path was blocked by someone in my way. I felt like I was going to pass out. There was she was: Emily Prentiss… standing right in front of me. Back from the dead.

She let out a sigh of regret, but also relief, when our eyes met. She looked sorry about how all of this happened. And she should have been. Morgan sat on our couch for months, crying because he missed her so much. I named my daughter after her because I missed her so much and I wanted her memory to be remembered. What was it all for, though, now that was standing there? What was the point now? Morgan was right to be vocally angry because he knew that I couldn’t. But as mad as I was at Hotch, I felt an overwhelming need to hug her. I crashed into her. I didn’t hesitate. Nine months without her. Nine fucking months.

Emily caught me as I embraced her as tightly as I could. She rubbed small circles on my back as she held me close. “I am so sorry, Y/N.”

I sniffled into her shoulder while I hugged her tighter. She was there. Like, really there. I wasn’t dreaming or hoping anymore. It was her. Our family was back. And I was just so relieved. I couldn’t even be mad at her. But I could tell as I pulled away from Emily and turned to look at the room with her that Morgan was pissed beyond compare. Everyone was crying because they were so grateful for the fact that she was still alive. However, Morgan wasn’t. He was standing there, pouting with disbelief, his hands curled into shaky fists that were holding in all of his anger.

She carefully let go of me and approached Morgan. “Derek, you have to believe me when I tell you that not a day went by where I didn’t think about you guys and how sorry I am that things turned out this way. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I didn’t deserve to know that you were alive?” he questioned through gritted teeth.

“You didn’t deserve to hold a dying friend in your arms.” Prentiss extended her arms for another hug, a silent offer for him, which he took slowly, as if he were afraid that he would fall right through her like she was some kind of ghost. When they embraced, however, I saw Morgan’s anger wash away. Now, he was just broken. “I’m so sorry.” He squeezed her waist as tight as he could for as long as he could before she tapped out and parted from him. She turned to face me again. “I want to meet baby Emily, if you’ll let me, once this is all over.”

I nodded, still too hesitant to say anything.

She smiled. “Okay… For now, I just want to focus on finding Declan and bringing him home safe. What do you guys know so far?”

Reid immediately jumped to his feet like this was his moment to shine, and he started asking her questions about Declan, Ian, and Louise, but I couldn’t hear anything. Everything seemed so washed out and distant. The only thing that was clear to me was the shame on my husband’s face as I stood there, staring at him, silently letting him know just how badly he had fucked up this time around. He could hardly look me in the eyes.

“Can I see you in my office?” he asked.

Everyone watched us silently, wondering if I would correct him on the fact that it was my office now. Or maybe they were waiting with anticipation to see if I was going to blow him off considering I had been glaring at him the entire time since I found out that Prentiss was alive this whole time—and he knew! But that was exactly why I indulged him. I didn’t correct him, I didn’t argue with him, I didn’t embarrass him. I simply followed him to his office.

I sat in my chair at my desk, which all used to be his before he left. He sat down across from me in one of the seats I would sit in whenever I was called to meet with him in his office. He seemed so out of his element in that chair, and, honestly, I was glad. I wanted him to be uncomfortable. I wanted him to be physically and emotionally uneasy because that was how I felt every day while he was away, and that was how I felt since finding out that our daughter’s namesake was actually alive and well.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” I inquired, reclining back. He shook his head. “You were going to just let me think that she was dead in order to, what, make me feel better about naming our daughter after her? Why didn’t you try to stop me—”

“I did try. I asked you if there were really no other names you could think of, but you were so adamant about it and I couldn’t tell you the truth; so, I just had to let it happen.”

“Is that why you left?”

Hotch froze for a moment while searching my eyes, and before he even began nodding, I knew the answer. He sighed. “It was hard to keep lying to everyone, but it felt impossible to keep lying to you specifically, especially since you took Emily’s death so hard… So, I just… I ran.”

“So, you would have stayed if I knew the truth?”

“Yes.”

I scoffed and let out an exasperated chuckle.

“Baby, I am so sorry, you have to believe me. I wish things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

“Yeah, well, you had a choice in that, didn’t you?”

“Y/N, that’s not fair. I was just trying to protect her—"

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, proceeded by Garcia cautiously stepping into the office. “Sorry, ma’am, but I found something.”

I nodded her over, holding my hand out for the file of information she put together. Hotch eyed me. Usually, it was him sitting in my current seat, ignoring me in his seat as he accepted another file from Garcia who had addressed him in the first place. Everything felt so backwards. But, then again, maybe that was what he deserved now that I knew that he had been lying to me this entire time.

“I was narrowing down a list of Doyle’s top ten enemies from what we know and what Morgan’s getting out of him. The only one who’s been in the states recently is Mr. Richard Gerace. He’s been here for the past two weeks with a work visa.”

“Is there any way to connect him to this?” I asked while flipping through the file.

“The guy who cut off the camera feed at Declan’s house had a scar on his neck...” She turned the next page for me and pointed to a mugshot of Gerace. He had the same exact scar on his neck, meaning it was definitely him who took Declan.

“Get me everything you can on him, please, Penelope,” I said while closing the file and setting it down on my desk. She hesitated. “What is it?”

“That’s everything I have.”

I sighed. “Can you call Prentiss in, please?”

“Sure…”

“Thank you.”

When she left, I sighed and looked at Hotch again. Neither of us said anything as we stared at each other uncomfortably, a barrier of trust broken between us now. I didn’t like it when he lied to me. Every time I told him not to lie to me, he promised he wouldn’t, and then he would, and I would be mad for a few days before forgiving him and moving on. How much longer was I supposed to put up with it? I couldn’t even count how many times he lied to me on my fingers anymore. Meanwhile, I could count the number of times I lied to him on one hand. At some point, enough was going to be enough, and if he wasn’t careful, it was going to be soon. As much as I loved him, I couldn’t keep living with the lies. What was more important to him? Me or protecting his secrets? If the answer wasn’t immediately me, then there was an entirely different conversation we needed to have at some point that included what our future was going to look like.

“We’re going to talk later,” I finally told him.

As we were coming back to the office together, Hotch stopped to ask if I trusted him, and at the time, of course I did… But now? I wasn’t so sure. Then again, I’d said that a dozen times before when he pulled this shit. The worst part was, that I knew that I was going to end up crawling back to him, and it was going to be an excuse for him to lie to me all over again.

Hotch nodded. “Yeah…”

There was another knock at the door, this time from Prentiss, who seemed too shy to invite herself in, even though I had requested her presence. I waved her in.

“Gerace,” I said, holding the file out for her. She slowly walked over and accepted it. “Garcia thinks that he’s the one who took Declan.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted before even looking at the file. I waited for her to explain why she thought that. “Gerace gave up on Doyle a long time ago, and he’s too much of a coward to pull something like this off. Not to mention how meticulous the abduction was. Gerace doesn’t have that level of patience and organization.”

I scoffed and wiped my palms over my face. “He was our only suspect and lead.”

“I mean…” She flipped through the file. “That’s definitely Gerace’s scar… So, I suppose he had something to do with it, but I wouldn’t say he’s solely responsible. If he’s working with a partner, he’s definitely the submissive.” She flipped another page. “Hold on—” I looked up at her. “Look at this.” She turned the file to show me one of the shots from the security footage of Gerace turning the cameras off. “Look in the background.” There was a woman standing there, watching Gerace while cocking a gun at her side. Prentiss’s jaw dropped as a realization dawned on her. “This might have something to do with Declan’s birth mother, considering the overkill towards Louise, who was Declan’s mother figure throughout his entire life.”

“Do you know who she is?”

She shook her head. “No. Doyle never told me.”

“Would you be willing to go in and get the information out of him now?”

She looked between me and Hotch, almost as if she were waiting for permission from him, but then she recalled that I was calling the shots right now until Hotch could be reinstated into the unit by Strauss and Cody. She finally gave in. “I don’t mind giving it a shot.”

Since Prentiss was still just a visitor, she couldn’t technically be allowed to wander the floor on her own. Even though she knew exactly where the interrogation room was and how to get there the fastest, I still had to usher her there. So, without saying anything to Hotch, I started walking out. Prentiss watched him silently for a moment before deciding to follow me.

“You know,” she said while catching up to me on the ramp outside of my office, “unit chief suits you.”

“It won’t last long. It’s just until Hotch can come back.”

We continued on towards the interrogation room in silence. When we stepped into the mirror room, I saw that Morgan and JJ were there, watching Doyle who was sitting on his own, staring at the wall while he silently thought and worried about his missing son. With others around to “officially” watch Prentiss, I took my leave almost immediately, heading back to my office so that I could sit down, catch my breath, and have a moment to think.

When I got there, Hotch was already gone. I glanced across the bullpen to see that he was in the boardroom with Rossi, Reid, and Garcia, all of them working on finding who Declan’s mother was in case that was the next fresh lead we would get from Doyle. They were fine on their own. For just a few minutes, I could disappear, and no one would notice. So, I closed the door, spun the dial of the blinds until they were shut tight, and I immediately broke down. I didn’t even make it to my chair or the couch. I just fell right then and there.

I started crying with my face hiding in my hands. Getting Hotch back should have been the best thing in the world, and yet it felt so shitty. I hated that he lied to me again. I hated that things went down like that. I hated that our daughter was mixed up in the drama of it all now just because of her name. I hated that I was mad at the love of my life after just getting him back, because instead of wanting to hold him close until our last breath, I wanted to kick his ankles until my anger was gone—If my anger would ever go away.

And then there was a knock at the door.

I tried catching my breath and calming down enough to wipe my tears away, but the door opened before I could collect myself entirely. I hid my face in the shadows. It didn’t matter who it was because I was just hoping that they would leave me alone now that they saw me collapsed on the floor and hiding my face while sniffling.

“Sunshine?”

I let out a choked sob when I realized that it was Morgan who had followed me from the mirror room to my office. “What?”

He knelt beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Come here…” He turned me slightly until I was facing him, and we immediately pulled each other in for a tight hug. I hid my face in his shirt, letting my tears soak the fabric without care. “It’s okay. I promise. Just breathe.” He rubbed circles on my back to help me calm down slowly.

I started to catch my breath by sucking in deep breaths and letting out short ones. “You shouldn’t have brought up Emily earlier,” I whispered.

He had been completely out of line when he brought up my daughter in the context of Prentiss still being alive. That was a conversation for me and my husband to have at a later time when we could talk privately. It didn’t give him permission to put our predicament on blast. I was sure that everyone had been thinking it, too. I mean, they were all probably wondering the same thing I was, which was what the hell were Hotch and I going to do now that Prentiss, our daughter’s namesake was back? But, honestly, it was none of their business. Yes, Morgan was her godfather, but he wasn’t her father, therefore, he had no say. He would be the first to know when a decision would be made, of course, but not before then.

I slid out of his arms and fell back against the wall carefully to just sit there and stare into the darkness. “It wasn’t fair,” I continued.

“I’m sorry, cupcake…” He slid down the wall to sit beside me, then took one of my cold hands in his. “My emotions have just been all over the place, and I snapped when I didn’t mean to. I know that’s not an excuse, but…” He sighed.

“I get it.” I rested my head on his shoulder. Of all people, I understood the most how Morgan felt.

“Did you talk to him?”

“Kind of…”

“Are you going to forgive him?”

“Unfortunately.”

Morgan swung his arm around me so that he could hug me close to his side. “Do you ever just miss the old days when things were so simple? Gideon and Elle were still on the team. Pretty boy was still dorky and quiet all the time. Hotch actually talked to us and trusted us.”

“You mean talked to you and trusted you.” I chuckled. “He didn’t talk to me when I first joined the team.”

“Yeah, because he had a schoolgirl crush on you. That doesn’t mean he didn’t trust you. But wasn’t it so much easier back then when you two weren’t together, and everything was just about putting the back guys away, and nothing was ever personal…” He sighed. “I think we just haven’t been the same ever since the Fisher King.”

He was right. That was the first case where we were all effected personally, and an Unsub got under our skin, and tore our family apart. I mean, I assumed that it was because of Randall Garner that my sister left the BAU. If we had never gotten mixed up in that case, maybe she and Gideon would still be around. But then again, if that were the case, then we wouldn’t’ve had Rossi or Emily on the team, and I was genuinely happy that I knew them and that they were apart of our family now. Rossi was Hotch’s best friend who liked to help me pick on him from time to time. Emily was one of my closest friends… At least before she left. I didn’t know where we stood now. That was what Morgan meant by things being easier back in the day, though, I supposed. Things weren’t so messy.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed quietly.

----

Not even an hour later, Prentiss had already convinced Doyle to tell us who the mother of his child was and how to find her. With Garcia’s help, we managed to track her down. Her name was Chloe Donaghy, and she was a notorious crime lord who ran a human trafficking and prostitution ring. She and Ian had met about eight years before Prentiss met him. When she found out that she was pregnant with Declan, she tried to kill herself to make sure that his son would never be born, but Doyle stopped her before she could even swallow a single pill, and from that point on during the pregnancy, she was his prisoner. He kept her locked away. She was chained to a bed in a locked room in his heavily guarded home for seven months straight. She was given a healthy diet for herself and the baby, and Doyle had a doctor go to check on her every other week or so to make sure that they were still okay. Once she had the baby, however, she left. She wanted nothing to do with Declan, and everyone knew it, so Doyle practically paid her to stay away and to never tell a soul about their son.

However, once she found out that Ian was a wanted man and was in hiding, she decided that she wanted a piece of him in the name of revenge. So, she got the same idea as us. Knowing that Ian would try to find Declan, she waited until someone found him first—which happened to be us—and once she knew where her son was, she jumped at the opportunity to take him when everyone was too distracted to notice. We managed to track her down to Baltimore. It looked like she and Gerace took Declan down there, and they were planning on selling him to another one of Doyle’s enemies, a man by the name of Lachlan. That wasn’t good. If Declan left U.S. soil, there was nothing we could do. It would be left up to the CIA or another agency similar to them, but they wouldn’t care. So, I made a call.

I decided that the best way to ensure that little boy would never die at the hands of a revenge driven monster like Lachlan was to have our team pursue this. I knew the risks involved with the choice. I knew that my career was on the line, and that I would inevitably be demoted as unit chief—if I were lucky. Worst case scenario, actually, was that I would be fired. But I didn’t care in the moment, because all I could think about was the fact that there was a little boy out there, wondering why his own mother was doing this, and why he was facing danger again. And then I thought about Jack. Declan was around Jack’s age. I couldn’t bear to think that it could have been Jack in Declan’s shoes, and that if that were the case, I would want someone to fight for him until he was safe at home.

So, I made the call to use Doyle as a pawn in our game. We loaded Doyle into an SUV with myself, Hotch, and Morgan, and we drove down to the airstrip where Garcia found out that Chloe and Lachlan were catching a flight at together. Emily was against the idea. She was concerned that Doyle was going to get away, or that Chloe was going to get Declan and Ian, and all of this was for nothing. I wasn’t going to let that happen. We were going to get Declan back, and we weren’t going to let Doyle get away. After everything that happened over the past few months, I was going to die before fucking this up.

“You wanna do it, or should I?” Hotch asked as we pulled up to the jet on the runway. I gestured that he could go for it, but I didn’t look at him or say anything in response. I still wasn’t ready to do that much. “Okay.” Morgan handed him the megaphone, and Hotch stepped out of the car to announce, “Lachlan McDermott and Cloe Donaghy, this is the FBI. We know that you have Declan Doyle. To ensure his safety, we would like to make a trade. Declan for Ian Doyle.”

That was our cue to show off Doyle to the world, so Morgan and I pulled him out of the car, making sure that our grip on him was strong enough that he couldn’t wiggle out. And then we heard a gunshot, and I saw a muzzle flash from within the jet. No. No, no, no. There was no way they just killed Declan. I refused to believe it, but just in case it was true, we kept Doyle close to the car so that we could stuff him back in and drive off if we had to.

Suddenly, the door of the jet started falling open, revealing the steps that Lachlan started storming down with Declan in front of him. I let out a quiet sigh of relief at the same time as Ian. It didn’t last long, however, since Lachlan immediately put a gun to Declan’s head.

“Bring him here!” Lachlan demanded, referencing Doyle.

Hotch looked over at me. “You’re still the unit chief. It’s your call.”

I sighed quietly while trying to quickly weigh the pros and cons. It certainly wasn’t ideal to put Doyle in Lachlan’s line of fire, but if it was the only way to get Declan…

“Now!” Lachlan yelled.

Within an instant, I was pushing forward, Morgan following lead by helping me move Doyle towards Lachlan. When we were close enough, we pushed him onto his knees and waited for something to happen. Lachlan smiled wickedly. He said something to Doyle, but I wasn’t listening while my attention was trained on Declan and trying to figure out how I was going to grab him on time while Morgan made sure he still had a grip on Doyle. I just had to trust the process, I supposed.

When I heard movement from the jet again, I looked up to see Chloe limping out, holding her stomach from the shot she took from Lachlan. They must have argued about taking our deal. Before I could tell her to stay back, though, I saw how she was raising her arm and aiming at me, Ian, and Morgan.

“Gun!” Morgan shouted, tackling me out of the way just as the sound of a gunshot rang through the air. I groaned as the wind was knocked out of me. Morgan rolled off me to check to see if I was okay. “Are you hit?” I shook my head. “Doyle—” He spun around on his knees to see Ian falling to the ground while holding his bleeding neck. “Shit.”

Another gunshot fired, this time from Chloe aiming directly at Lachlan, instantly killing him. In retaliation, Hotch, Reid, Prentiss, and JJ all shot down Chloe as fast as they could. Hotch ran over to me, putting his hands on my cheeks while scanning my body with my eyes to make sure that I was alright, the same way Morgan had. I inhaled sharply as I caught my breath. I got that Morgan was just trying to protect me, but did he have to go all high school footballer on me? Fucking hell. We were on concrete. The tackle was worse than getting shot, in my opinion.

“Next time, I make the call. And it won’t be this one,” Hotch whispered to me, brushing my hair out of my face.

“Ha. Ha,” I responded sarcastically. “Help me up.” We clasped our hands together, and he pulled me to my feet, letting me stumble into his chest somewhat before I caught my balance. “Thanks.” I patted his chest. “This is why you’re the unit chief.”

He kissed my forehead. “You thought you were doing the right thing, and that’s all we can ever do.”

I glanced over to Doyle who was reaching out for his son, knowing that it would be the last time. A part of me broke somewhat. As much as I despised Doyle, I had nothing against his son, and seeing a bond between a father and his son, even though they hardly knew each other at all, made me think about Hotch and Jack. It could have been Hotch instead of Haley who died in our house two years ago. We were beyond lucky that he was still with us. That I had a husband who loved me, that our daughter had a father who wanted nothing more than to raise her away from all of this chaos, that our son still had a father who would protect him no matter the cost. We were, by some definition, “lucky” that it wasn’t Hotch and Jack there instead of Ian and Declan.

----

By the time we cleaned up the mess at the airstrip, I had called Jessica and asked if she could bring Emily to the office to surprise Hotch, but also because Prentiss asked if she could meet her, and I felt like after the long day we had, we all deserved that. I mean, she was our little sunshine. If anyone could change the mood entirely, it was her.

So, when we all returned to Quantico, I told security to keep an out for Jessica and the baby—to which they all cheered about how excited they were to see her. The team went up to the boardroom to start tearing down all of the photos and evidence on the walls. Another chapter of our lives closed. Over months, we had been working on a case where we only had a fraction of the pieces. The only person who knew every part of it and could end this once and for all had left, but when she came back, it ended, and now we could just breathe again. We had our family back. That had to count for something.

When I saw Jessica arrive in the elevator, I met her there so that I could still surprise Hotch and Prentiss. “Thank you for bringing her,” I said while crouching down in front of the stroller to see my lil’ bug. She was half awake, but just lucid enough to play with my finger as I wiggled it in her face. “I owe you.”

“It’s no big deal, I swear. I was on my way to pick up Jack from a playdate, and this was on the way, anyhow.”

I glanced up at Jessica. “We can pick him up later. You don’t have to race around for us like this.”

Jessica smiled lightly. “What else am I going to do?”

I stopped to think about that for a moment, considering how we were her only family around now that Haley was gone, and Roy was… Well, Roy didn’t like having Jessica around because she was a very hands-on and task-oriented person when it came to family, and he didn’t like how overbearing and protective she was of him. So, we were the only ones that were around and in need of help. I just felt bad sometimes because it felt like she was our nanny or something. Then again, every time this conversation came up where I would tell her that all of this was unnecessary and that I felt bad, she would always argue that she loved doing it and that it was no big deal. If it really were a problem, she would have ditched us months ago.

“Okay,” I gave in. “We’ll see you at home, then.” I stood to hug her.

“See you at home.”

When we parted, she leaned over to say goodbye to baby Emily quickly, then waved to me as she walked towards the elevator. I waved back shortly before pushing the stroller up the ramp towards the boardroom. Inside, I could see and hear everyone chatting and catching up with one another. Rossi was hogging Aaron. He was so happy to have his buddy back after all this time, but he was still trying to convince him to shave the beard. Over my dead body. I loved that beard, and after everything that man put me through today, I was going to get the chance to scratch my fingers through it as he fucked me. Come hell or high water, I was going to make that happen.

I pushed the stroller into the room, and everyone fell silent. This was the first time Hotch had seen her in… months, and this was the first time Prentiss was going to meet her. Everyone wanted to be witness to it, and no one wanted to disrupt the moment. So, when I spun the stroller around, everyone held their breaths. I tried to ignore them as I pulled the top of stroller back to reveal Emily.

“May I hold her?” Prentiss asked, looking up at me with the brightest smile I had ever seen from her before. I nodded. Prentiss reached into the stroller, buried her hands under Emily, and lifted her up. “Hi, there, baby girl…” Prentiss cooed. Emily kicked and fussed in Prentiss’s arms.

As I watched Prentiss rock Emily side to side in her arms, I felt someone’s arms snake around my waist and pull me backwards into a hug. I smiled and rested my head on Hotch’s shoulder. His beard scratched my cheek slightly as he pressed a gentle kiss against it. I giggled and nuzzled into his touch as much as I could while thinking about how I missed this feeling so bad every single second he was away from me. All those rules we had for so long before he left didn't matter anymore. Not when he had been away and all we wanted was to hold each other and love each other.

“She has your eyes, Hotch,” Prentiss said while Emily giggled. “Yes, you do,” Prentiss teased with the same kind of baby-talk voice everyone used around kids. “You are just too darn cute.”

“I missed you so much,” he whispered in my ear before kissing me.

“I’m still mad at you, Aaron,” I whispered only for him to hear. He loosened his grip on me somewhat. “And I don’t know when I’ll stop being mad.” He hid his face in the crook of my neck to hide his disappointment from everyone else. “But I know that I love you, and that, with time, I’ll learn to forgive and forget about this. Until then, I just need you to bear with me while I navigate rebuilding what trust I had given you, and asking you to give me answers, or asking that you give me some space—whatever it is, I just need you to understand. Can you do that?”

He nodded against me.

“We’re going to be okay,” I sighed, almost like I was trying to convince myself, too. “We’re going to be okay…”

-----

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