#an offshore love part one

[chasingmidnights]

An Offshore Love - Part One

Title: Offshore 

Pairing: roughneck!ari levinson x reader 

Summary: You arrive at the Jupiter and you can already tell this crew is in rough shape just by looking at them. You just hope they take you seriously enough. 

A/N: This is kind of a slow burn and this first part is more focused on the reader, but if you bear with it, Ari pops up in the second part! 

Warnings: All of my work is 18+, minors DNI, even if there aren't many warnings to look out for. In this first part, some warnings may include some self-doubt; mentions of the ocean & motion sickness/sea sickness; and I believe that’s it. I apologize if I missed anything but you are responsible for what you read and your own internet consumption. By clicking keep reading, you agree to these warnings and that you are over 18. I do not claim to be a professional writer, any and all mistakes are my own; nothing is beta read. 

Wordcount: 2,998

You sat in the plush leather chair of the conference room, you were in your fourth meeting of the day and you had started to feel antsy. You were bouncing your pen between your thumb and forefinger as you stared out the large windows of the skyscraper of Baizen Oil Industries. A small sigh left your lips as you thought how you would much rather be on an assignment instead of being in meetings all of the time. You absolutely hated the agonizing day-to-day of office work. It was so mind numbingly dull and you didn’t have the patience for that type of work. At least when you were sent to one of the offshore oil rigs or even one of the land based ones, it provided a little more challenging work, or depending on the day, a little excitement. 

“Before we conclude this meeting, I’m going to hand it over to Carter Baizen himself.” Your supervisor’s words barely registered in your ears as you continued to play with your pen. If it wasn’t for your coworker’s jab to your arm with their elbow, you would’ve continued to look out the window. 

You instantly sat up and refocused your attention back to the meeting at hand, just as Carter walked into the conference room. You watched as Carter buttoned up his suit jacket as he took your supervisor’s place. Carter cleared his throat before he started to speak. 

“Good day everyone, I’ll try to be as quick as I can so you can get back to work. But I came here before you today because one of our offshore oil rigs is in trouble, the Jupiter.” Carter paused for a moment as he clicked on a remote towards the center of the table and a blue holographic image of the mentioned oil rig appeared before everyone. “The Jupiter is one of the company’s most prosperous rigs, bringing in the most oil in the last five years but she also seems to be our most problematic rig. From crew members getting injured to machinery malfunctions, it seems she’s been through it all.” 

This was it, your next big challenge. You immediately started to get excited at the thought of helping another oil rig out, especially since your last one was a success. At least, you thought it was. If Carter didn’t already have a team in place, you would definitely be volunteering before the meeting was over or at least by the end of the day. 

“So, the plan is to send in a small team, no more than two, to get this place whipped back into shape. If this doesn’t happen, I’m afraid that we’ll end up either selling the Jupiter or shutting her down. This is completely voluntary, but if no one volunteers, I’m not afraid to pick and choose who goes.” Carter then looked around at the filled conference table, immediately noticing the nervous looks on the majority of the faces. 

Here was your chance. “I’ll go.” You spoke up confidently, you were beyond certain you could handle this job. 

Carter nodded at you in appreciation and you could see the look on your supervisor’s face, rolling his eyes and clearly not surprised. He knew how much you hated being in one place for too long and the fact that you had only been back barely two weeks and ready to leave, didn’t surprise him. 

“Another volunteer?” Carter asked, giving everyone another chance before he picked someone. 

You didn’t blame your coworkers for not wanting to volunteer, Being on an offshore oil rig was dangerous and getting there even more so. Not to mention that the Jupiter was located in the middle of the North Sea, one of the most treacherous seas in the world. As you waited for another coworker to volunteer, you thought back to your first time on one of the company’s offshore oil rigs. You were assigned to be a part of a team to collect data and to check the quality of life of the workers who were on board, along with several other assignments. Needless to say, you hadn’t quite gotten your sea legs yet and you spent the majority of your first week on the rig with sea sickness. After that though, you became a natural and developed your own system on how to get these rigs, along with the crew, back into shape. 

“Um, I’ll go.” One of your coworkers stammered as he raised his hand slightly. 

You internally groaned when you saw who it was, an IT guy who’s barely been with the company for five years. By the looks of him, he didn’t seem like much and he seemed much better suited for land. He’s probably never been on a boat before either; with his dainty frame, those waves would take him out in a heartbeat. But of course, you didn’t say any of that and just offered him a forced smile. 

“Excellent, you two come to my office before you leave today and I’ll give you more information on this assignment. Meeting adjourned.” Carter then left the conference room, followed by your supervisor. 

Shortly after that, everyone started to collect their things and went back to work. While you collected your things, the other volunteer nervously approached you. 

“Hi, I’m Jake.” He introduced himself as he stuck out his hand, when he realized you weren’t going to shake it, he pulled it back and scratched the back of his head. 

“I know, you’re the IT guy around here.” You replied as you continued to collect your things. You took a moment before you turned to face him and introduced yourself properly. 

Jake nodded as he spoke. “I look forward to working with you, I’ve heard a lot about you.” 

You let out a small huff. “I hope you don’t believe everything you hear.” You then started towards the door of the conference room. 

Jake followed after you. “O-of course not. How many oil rigs have you been on?” 

“Land, six; off shore, the Jupiter would make it four. Let’s get one thing clear,” You stopped and turned to face Jake, who instantly became worried. “I’m in charge here. I’ve done this countless times and I know what I’m doing.” 

Jake pushed his round framed glasses up the bridge of his nose before he nodded. “Got it.” 

“Oh, also, don’t let the roughnecks give you too much of a hard time.” You teased playfully. 

“Roughnecks?” Jake asked as he arched a brow. 

“Yeah, the crew on a rig. They do the day-to-day work to make sure the rig works properly.” You let out a small sigh, realizing how much of a rookie Jake really was, this was going to be an interesting assignment. “I’ll put together a 101 pamphlet with terms and what to expect before the day is over.”

“Hey, thanks, I’d appreciate that!” Jake beamed as continued to follow you. 

By Sunday, you were locking up your apartment and making your way to the airport. Your luggage rolled behind you as you went down to the waiting company car. You greeted the driver with a tired smile as he took your luggage and placed it in the trunk and you opened the passenger door, you took a sip of your coffee from your tumbler. However, you nearly spat it out when you saw an excited Jake in the backseat of the car. You had somehow forgotten that the two of you were riding to the airport together. 

“Good morning, sunshine! I wasn’t sure if you’d have coffee already or not, so I had the driver stop so I could pick up some breakfast.” Jake greeted, too chipper for your taste this early in the morning. 

“I’m hearing this,” You made a motion with your hand to mock someone talking. “And I want to hear this.” You made your hand stop moving to signal silence. 

Jake chuckled at your response. “Not a morning person, eh?” 

You simply glared over at Jake. 

“Alright, alright, I get it sunshine.” Jake said and he acted as if he was sealing his lips and then locked them. 

When you landed in Germany and finally got to the port, you took in a deep breath of the ocean air causing a smile to curl up on your lips. You glanced over at Jake and immediately noticed how pale he looked. It reminded you of yourself when you went on your first offshore business trip. You looked back out to the ocean, the waves were relatively calm near the port but you knew the further out you went, that would change in a heartbeat. 

“Baizen Oil Industries?” A dock worker asked as he jogged up to you and Jake, his voice slightly raised. 

“Yes, that’s us.” You said as you turned to the man. 

“The shuttle to take you to the Jupiter is ready for you, if you follow me.” The dock worker gestured. 

“Of course.” You said and you motioned to Jake to follow. 

When you got to the boat, the dock worker was claiming to be your shuttle, you were in awe. The boat was more like a massive barge ship and you were in awe of the size of it. 

“This is a shuttle?!” Jake exclaimed, stopping to look up at the ship before he stepped onto the boarding ramp. 

“Welcome to the Orion.” The dock worker announced, his voice somehow deeper than before as he welcomed you to the barge ship. 

Jake then bent over and started to throw up causing the dock worker to shake his head and chuckle. You couldn’t help but do the same before you stepped onto the boarding ramp. 

“Come on Jake, we don’t want to be late.” You said, adjusting your bag on your shoulder. 

You watched the waves crash against the ship, a sense of calm washing over you, compared to your counterpart anyway. Jake hadn’t stopped throwing up and currently had his head in a bucket. As you glanced back at him, you were grateful that at least one of you had your sea legs. 

“Why is it always carrots? I haven’t even had carrots.” Jake mumbled before he threw up again. 

You laughed quietly to yourself before you turned your attention back to the ocean, watching the waves from one of the cabin rooms. You swore that each wave that formed was bigger than the last one. Each wave crashed into the barge ship as if it was nothing, causing the ship to rock and tilt to its side. The waves were thick and packed quite the punch, you couldn’t help but wonder how these men came out onto this sea every day. There were several times where you thought the waves were going to knock the ship over and capsize. However, the Orion prevailed and continued to make its way through the North Sea to get to the oil rig.

When you finally reached the Jupiter, your eyes nearly bugged out at the sheer size of the oil rig. Sure, you had been to multiple offshore sites but this one had to be the biggest one yet. The platform stood on top of a single, concrete let that was giant in itself and at least several hundred feet above the sea; yet the waves were still grazing the bottom of the platform. Your eyes wandered all over, trying to figure out what sight to take in first. The platform was just as impressive as the concrete leg it stood on, built from a mixture of solid concrete and heavy duty, industrialized iron, it was truly a sight to see. You were always in awe of these oil rigs that you visited. As you continued to stare up at the structure, your nerves started to kick in and you suddenly felt uneasy. However, you kept it together, you’d be damned if you gave these men any inclination that they could roll right over you. You were pulled out of your thoughts when the Captain ushered you and Jake down to the deck of the ship. There, you spotted a few workers trying to direct a metal cage that was being lowered onto the deck of the barge ship by a crane. 

“What the hell is that?!” Jake exclaimed as he adjusted his glasses. 

“That son, is your way up to the Jupiter.” The Captain of the Orion said, clapping Jake on the shoulder. 

The door of the metal cage opened and out stepped a heavyset, older brunette and you could feel him instantly judging you and Jake. You knew exactly what he was doing, he was trying to see if you were going to be a pushover or not, but he’d be in for a rude awakening. You held your head high as you walked towards the man, sticking out your hand as soon as you were close enough and introduced yourself to him. He eyed you up and down, one more time before he spoke, shaking your hand in return. 

“Lee Bodecker, ma’am, I’m the rig manager here. Welcome to the Jupiter.” Lee introduced himself as he sucked on his teeth. 

“Pleasure. This is my assistant, Jake Jensen.” You greeted politely and with a tight lipped smile. 

“What’s up?” Jake greeted with a nod as hugged his belongings to his chest. 

You internally groaned as Jake greeted the rig manager the way that he did. 

Thankfully, Lee just chuckled as he turned his attention towards Jake. “What’s the matter son? Don’t got yer sea legs yet?” 

“Afraid not, first time out on an oil rig, let alone the ocean.” Jake admitted, it was evident that Jake had been suffering from some sea sickness. From the lack of color in his face to the sweat dripping from his brow from constantly throwing up. 

“I can tell. Well, let’s stop dilly dallying and get to work. After you!” Lee then stepped to the side to allow you and Jake into the metal cage. 

With a jolt, the cage started to lift and just in time as a wave crashed onto the deck of the Orion. A cold breeze enveloped you as the wind picked up slightly, causing the cage to sway as well. When you got to one of the landings of the platform of the Jupiter, Lee opened the cage door and allowed you and Jake to exit first. As Lee led the two of you through the oil rig, you could feel everyone’s eyes on you and Jake as you passed by. You could feel your stomach begin to lurch but you kept holding your head high. As you looked around, to try and familiarize yourself a little bit, you could tell that these men looked a little more on the rough side than most crew that you’ve been around. You only hoped that you could help them as much as possible and get their quality of life back to where it should be while living on an oil rig. 

“I’ve set up a couple of meetings for the two of you tomorrow morning. You’ll meet the rest of the crew and management then.” Lee called back to you. “Tonight, the two of you focus on settling in your new quarters. I hope you don’t mind bunk beds.” 

“Sounds good, thank you, Mr. Bodecker.” You called back to him, having to shout over the noises of the oil rig. 

“Please, it’s Lee.” Lee insisted as he glanced back at you and Jake.

Lee held open a door and it was almost instantly warmer and brighter in this part of the oil rig. You also noticed that there was a lot more life in this part as well. 

“This is the Hub, the life of the Jupiter. Here, you’ll find entertainment rooms, the cafeteria and a few other eateries, laundry, the sleeping quarters and there’s even a gym if you’re into that sort of thing. There are also a few offices and conference rooms located in this part of the oil rig. There is internet but it can be a bit spotty sometimes.” Lee informed as he strutted through the building, pointing out different amenities. 

The three of you reached the third floor and Lee showed you to your new quarters for the next couple of weeks. You peered into the room once Lee had opened it and expected Lee to show another room for Jake. However, when he didn’t, you spoke up. 

“Are we sharing a room?” 

“What? I don’t have a problem with that. I’ll even take the top bunk.” Jake offered as he walked into the room and took a look around. “Pretty spacious here actually.” 

“Good man, Jake. Sorry, miss, but we’re full to the brim here. I actually had to kick out the two who were staying in here just to make room for you lot. They were not happy.” Lee explained, his southern drawl making its presence. 

“Right, well then, thank you Lee, I appreciate your hospitality.” You gave him a small, tight-lipped smile, the last thing you expected was having to share a room with someone. 

Lee simply nodded. “Dinner is whenever you feel like eating, so if you want food, you can come down. Otherwise, your first meeting is tomorrow at  seven in the morning and I’ll have someone come get you.” 

“Sounds good. I think I’m in for the rest of the night, so, I’ll see you tomorrow at seven.” You said, wanting to get some work done tonight and put some finishing touches on a few things. 

Lee didn’t say anything, he simply turned on his heel and walked away. You then stepped into the room and noticed Jake already setting up shop. A small smirk curved up slightly onto your lips as you did the same thing. You couldn’t lie, a part of you was extremely nervous about the next day and yet, you were also looking forward to the next few weeks while aboard the Jupiter.

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[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

look i have a lot of moral/ethical issues with glastonbury festival but i’m SOOOO happy that Little Simz is being given a spot on the pyramid stage like she deserves that space

#if the space is gonna be there i’m glad she’s part of it #also. look i get it i do enjoy watching glasto i’m not a full-on hater. #i just don’t like that it’s branded as this big progressive event with all it’s greenpeace/oxfam/whatever signs and partnerships #and the general hippy dippy one love coexist sticker vibe #while the guy who ducking g owns the farm and organises the event is like. a true-blue conservative party supporter and donor. #coldplay wheel him out every few years to perform with them and the crowd goes wild oh everyone loves micheal eavis isn’t he great. #babes. he’s profiting off you and giving that money to the tories to fund more offshore oil rigs. #idk man.

[heliads]

'homesick, but not for home' - kaz brekker

Based on this request: "y/n finally gets to visit their home country after years away in ketterdam with the crows. a sweet little slice of life with kaz finally getting to be kaz rietveld"

masterlist

merry christmas everyone! my present to you is kaz

Receiving a summons from Kaz Brekker usually means one of two things:  either you are about to be murdered, or he is going to ask you to do something before he murders you. Usually, that task involves the distribution of funds from your ledgers to his. However, as one of the bare few who has the privilege of making it to his inner circle, you would wager that there’s a third possible outcome from hearing from him:  he still wants you to do something, but you’ll be killing someone else.

Nonetheless, judging by the expression of the courier who tells you that Kaz is expecting you in his office, even being spared an imminent death doesn’t mean that this meeting will go pleasantly. Dirtyhands has a reputation around here, one just as dark and choking as those black gloves he so loves to wear. No one here knows Kaz as anything more than a shadow of a man, a killer, a convict. To learn that he wishes to speak to you is akin to hearing that Death itself is knocking on your door.

You, however, just smile and turn your feet towards the stairs leading to Kaz’s office instead. The Slat, home of the Dregs, is a rickety ramshackle of a building. Kaz has been doing his part to fix it up as he can, but the floorboards are still masterfully creaky and the oil lamps flicker ominously from their resting places beside each looming door. The stairwell is worst of all, a towering, beckoning talon that delivers you to your fate at the very top. 

Sometimes, you swear Kaz put his office on the top floor just because it would give his victims more time to contemplate their quickly approaching demise when they had to climb all the way up. Other days, you just assume that he was sick of the noise and wanted to find a place where nobody would bother him unless absolutely necessary. Knowing Kaz, both rationales are probably sound.

You knock once on the door to his office and, upon hearing your name called to come in, twist the doorknob and let yourself inside. Gathered in a loose semicircle on the few available pieces of furniture as well as leaning against the wall are Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Matthias, and Nina. Kaz sits, as usual, ramrod straight in a chair behind his desk, and gestures for you to take the final open seat.

“Looks like everyone’s here,” you note. “Should I be worried about missing anything?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jesper chirps. “Only that Kaz has been saving that chair for you this whole time. He keeps glaring at us whenever we so much as look towards it.”

Jesper looks as if he’d like to gossip about this a little more, but Wylan digs a sharp elbow into his side, causing the other boy to complain heartily. 

You just grin, sliding into your seat. “Good. I deserve luxury. I was never made to sit on the ground.”

Kaz coughs pointedly to disguise what you’re sure is a smile. “Now that we’re all in attendance, we can get started. I’ve heard news of a prospective business deal happening off the coast of the Southern Colonies. Expensive materials are being exchanged. Jewelry, artwork, the like. It’s all being conducted by Kerch merchers, but they took everything offshore to avoid the chance of getting caught. If we swoop in the night before and take all their bargaining tools, we’ll be richer and they’ll have to cave to our demands.”

“Of course, our demands,” Nina says, nodding. “What are we demanding, again?”

Inej smiles. “For them to stop breathing down our backs, for one thing. Also, they keep trying to cut into business. They needed this deal for an alliance between some of the wealthier merchers, but if each party thinks the other stole their riches before the swap, they’ll be so busy with infighting that they won’t bother us for some time.”

Kaz inclines his head gravely. “Precisely.”

Inej taps her fingers silently against her leg. “My question is when we’re going to stage the attack. We can attempt to hijack the ships before they leave the harbor, but I have no doubt that they’ll be crawling with stadwatch.”

“That’s why we’ll be sailing along with them,” Kaz clarifies. “The heist won’t happen until we’re on the shores of the Southern Colonies. That way, they’ll have let down their guard.”

Immediately, everyone reacts. Leaving the Barrel is an invitation for everything to go wrong. If rival gangs like the Dime Lions or the Razorgulls find out that Kaz’s inner circle isn’t in town, they’ll hasten to loot the place or kill your foot soldiers before anyone gets back.

“We have to leave the country?” Inej asks doubtfully. “That’s a tremendous risk.”

Kaz’s expression doesn’t shift a second, but you can still sense him tensing somehow, all too aware of the extra burden on his staff to maintain decorum and avoid attracting threats from his many enemies. “Think of it as a vacation. You’ll be able to get out of the city and go somewhere nice. Maybe even get some seaside air.”

Jesper snorts. “Kaz, your idea of a vacation is locking the door of your office and not running your numbers for five minutes. I didn’t think seaside air existed in your vocabulary except as a potential source of weakness.”

Kaz frowns. “Of course seaside air exists in my vocabulary. How else would I know to say it?”

Jesper rolls his eyes and looks as if he’d like to counter that with an equally terrible argument, but you cut him off. “I’d like to go,” you say suddenly.

All eyes turn to you. “Why?” Wylan asks.

A faint smile plays upon your lips. It’s easier to look at the ground than face all of their inquisitive stares, so you do just that. “I’m from the Southern Colonies. Used to be, at least. I’d always planned on going back at some point, but never got the chance until now.”

Truth be told, you were assuming that you would never get that chance. Your parents moved your whole family down to Ketterdam when you were about ten years old, drawn by the call of a quick profit. They were able to eke out a few tentative years, but the city swallowed them like it does everyone else. It’s just you now, you and the Crows and the dream that at one point, you might be able to revisit the place you once called home.

Even connecting ‘home’ and the Southern Colonies in the same sentence seems like something out of a dream. You’ve lived in Kerch for so long now that you can hardly imagine being anywhere else. The Crows are your family, the Barrel your home. It’s a strange life, certainly, but it’s yours.

Kaz’s face closes down. “I’ll go with you. Inej, you and the rest will maintain the Crow Club and its affiliates until we return. I don’t want to risk all of us on one endeavor.”

Matthias arches a brow. “You are willing to brave the risk of splitting up, though?”

Kaz turns a bemused expression his way. “Are you worried about me, drüskelle? And here I thought we’d never see eye to eye.”

Matthias snorts. “Don’t go that far, demjin.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” Kaz muses. “The plan is set, then. We’ll have three weeks to plan, and then Y/N and I will set off.”

He allows the rest of the Crows to leave, but gestures for you to stay. You pull your chair closer to his desk, sensing that the discussion will shift into more details of the mission at hand.

Once the last of your friends have gone, Kaz turns his gaze to you. His eyes seem to stare straight through your skull, and you get the strange feeling that he could read every thought created inside your mind if he just bothered to listen a little closer. 

“You said you were born in the Southern Colonies. I need to be certain that there will be no distractions for a job like this. Can you swear to me that you’ll be focused?” He asks you.

“It won’t be an issue,” you assure him. “I’ll see the countryside and then move on. Honest.”

“Well, I should hope you won’t be completely honest,” Kaz murmurs, the corners of his lips pricking up into a slight shade of a smile. “We are still robbing people, of course.”

“Of course,” you laugh. His eyes jerk up when you do, his gaze hungry for the sight of it.

And– see, this is where you start to get into trouble. You are a criminal, a member of a gang. Every day is a fight. You know that survival is the thing that matters most in the Barrel, survival and how much money you can make off of delaying your last breath. You need to have single-minded focus totally centered around how you are going to make it through each day, but instead, your brain has started drifting to unreasonable topics like the precise shade of Kaz’s eyes or all the techniques he uses to hide his smiles.

It won’t serve you well, this feeling like a slow burn in your chest. Kaz would be the very first to tell you that weakness will only get you killed. People are a weakness. Is Kaz, though? Sometimes, in vague moments in between the times when reality comes firmly back to ground you, you can almost imagine that he might feel the same way. Would he really entertain this idea if he didn’t feel something for you? Would he leave the Barrel to go all the way to the Southern Colonies with you if he could easily send Jesper or someone else?

In the end, all you can ever do is push the thoughts from your mind. The scheming and planning period has got to be your least favorite part of a heist, but unfortunately, it’s also the segment that takes the longest. Every detail has to be perfect or all involved will be caught in the act.

Eventually, though, you find yourself shipping out on a fine sea morning, headed towards the country that hasn’t been yours since you were a child. You and Kaz are pretending to be business partners, which is true enough. His cabin is next to yours. You’re fairly sure he already knows the identity of every other traveler on the ship, just in case.

Standing on the deck and watching Ketterdam retreat into a nameless speck on the dark, vast ocean, you can’t help but wonder what the Southern Colonies will bring your way. Your heart is surprisingly light in your chest at the thought of it. You have dim recollections of the rolling hills and drifting tides, although even these memories have grown hazy with time. You can’t wait to see it again.

By contrast, Kaz, standing by your side, seems far less thrilled about the whole idea. His black gloves are clenched tightly around the railing, his grip hardening whenever the ship tilts too much. You glance around to make sure no other travelers are within earshot, then ask him with a questioning glance, “Why would you make this trip if you don’t like the ocean?”

Kaz shoots you a wary look. “I’m perfectly fine with it.”

You scoff. “Nonsense. You look as if you’d like nothing more than to drain the entire True Sea and simply walk to the Southern Colonies on foot. You could have sent Inej or Jesper in your place, you know. Why’d you want to go?”

“I have to make sure the job goes smoothly,” Kaz informs you. “Business is best handled by myself.”

You arch a brow. “Lovely. Good to know that you’ll never let something pesky like sea travel stand between you and your ambitions.”

Kaz snorts. “I should hope you’d already know that. And to answer your unspoken question, you’re here too because it’s foolish to take international jobs without someone at your back just in case of trouble. I trust you to not let homesickness for the Southern Colonies get in the way. I would advise you to stick to that.”

You smile. “Goodness, Kaz, you trust me? No wonder you didn’t want anyone else with us, if the rest knew you were shelling out compliments this easily they would have teased you for years.”

In the corners of your peripheral vision, you swear you can see a matching smile slide onto Kaz’s lips, but it’s gone the second you turn to look at him. “Precisely my thinking.”

The journey takes shorter than expected, or maybe that’s just your restless thinking. In no time at all, your ship is docking at a port of the Southern Colonies, and you’re turning in a slow circle on the coast, taking in every single sight you can.

“Careful,” Kaz tells you, “You don’t want to come across as too strong of a pigeon. We don’t want to attract any new friends who anticipate stealing something off of us.”

He’s smiling, though, and you swear there’s something a little lighter in his expression than you usually see. Maybe it really is the sea air getting to him, or maybe the fact that he’s out of Ketterdam’s grimy clutches lets Kaz relax even a fraction.

Regardless, you’re happy for it. “Ridiculous,” you say, laughing slightly. “Not all the world is like the Barrel, you know. We don’t do that sort of thing in the Southern Colonies.”

“We?” Kaz asks doubtfully. “Three steps you’ve taken off the ship and you’re already a proper citizen again, are you?”

You just grin. “What, are you jealous? Scared I’ll leave the Barrel?”

He doesn’t answer, but quickly changes the topic towards finding accommodations for the night and planning out an intelligence trip near the location where the jewels are being held. Even walking through the portside town and crossing the streets feels like magic, in a way. You lived not far from here, and everything from the curve of the avenues to the bright sun in the sky feels like coming home.

As it turns out, you and Kaz aren’t the only ones affected by the easy way of life in the Colonies. The two merchers you’ve been tracking are discussing business in broad daylight, obviously not anticipating anyone to have followed them. The job will be easy, and the few days you gave yourselves for extra planning are largely useless since no more details are relevant.

Instead, you take it upon yourself to explore the surrounding countryside. You tell Kaz that he doesn’t have to accompany you every time, of course, he can stay back in the portside town if he pleases, but he still goes with you. It’s funny, the more time you spend away from the city, the more you watch the burdens slowly lift from his shoulders, the light return to his eyes.

One time, while walking through a wooded path, Kaz tells you it’s because this reminds him of his home, as well. He grew up on a farm, once, under a different last name and in a different life. He’ll never have that time of his life back again, nor, you think privately, will you have yours, but it’s still lovely to wander around here and pretend that you could.

The job goes off without a hitch. Soon enough, you find yourselves sitting pleased with jewels and artwork hidden away in your luggage, all items recovered without their owners batting so much as an eye. You’ll leave early in the morning before they can notice you. You feel a pang in your heart at the thought of leaving already, but you hadn’t realized you weren’t the only one thinking about it until Kaz visits your room at the inn late that final night.

You had known it was him at your door from the moment you heard his crisp knock against the wooden paneling. No one else moves or lives like Kaz, with so much precision. When you let him in, though, he looks more wild than you’ve ever seen him. His hair, for once, has lost its impeccable style and gone wild and unkempt. His shirt is wrinkled and rolled up to the elbows. It would still be a good look on him were it not for the fact that you’ve never seen him so little put together in the entire time you’ve known him.

Kaz doesn’t say a word until he is certain that the door is shut and bolted behind him. Then, all of a sudden, the words burst out of his throat, so beseeching that you have to wonder how in Ghezen’s name he managed to keep them from you for so long. “Don’t stay here,” he says. “Come back with me.”

You frown. “Who said I was staying? We’ve both got tickets on the ship departing next morning, Kaz.”

He waves a hand frustratedly to signal his disbelief in this statement. “Tickets don’t mean a thing. I need you to say it.”

“I did,” you frown. “Where else would I go?”

“Here,” Kaz says heatedly. “I’ve seen the way you look at the buildings, this place. You want to say here. Don’t you do it, Y/N.”

You shake your head softly. “I love it here, yes, but it’s not my home anymore than Ravka across the sea. I’m going back to the Barrel, Kaz.”

“With me,” he says uncertainly.

“With you,” you confirm. “Goodness, Kaz, did you really think I would stay? How could I do such a thing?”

“It’s very easy for people to leave,” he tells you. There’s a heaviness in his eyes that reminds you of brothers that have been buried, of farms that have long been sold to undeserving families that were not his.

“Not me,” you whisper. “Not if it was you I was leaving.”

His eyes, which have been sweeping your figure this entire time, looking for some twitch of a finger or jump of a pulse to betray you for lying, leap up to yours again. “Okay,” he says at last. “Okay.”

He leans back slightly, wavering on his heels. “I– I’ll go back to my room, then.”

Kaz doesn’t look as if he much savors the idea, and you decide to spare him from his thoughts, just in case. “You can stay here, you know.”

A soft breath is released. “That would– I could do that.”

He does. And, as your candles burn closer to the quick, as the night settles over this city, you cannot help but be glad for the time when you’ll find yourself in a different one. It has been nice to be here, but you would like to go home. And, most importantly of all, you are glad that Kaz will be there with you.

grishaverse tags: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69, @crazyhearttragedy, @aoi-targaryen, @budugu

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker imagines #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker oneshot #grishaverse #grishaverse imagines #grishaverse x reader #grishaverse oneshot #kaz #kaz imagines #kaz x reader #kaz oneshot #shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagines #shadow and bone x reader #shadow and bone oneshot #six of crows #six of crows imagines #six of crows x reader #six of crows oneshot #grishaverse kaz #grishaverse kaz imagines #grishaverse kaz x reader #grishaverse kaz oneshot

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk is not archievable under Capitalism

Okay, let me make one thing very clear: We will never have a Solarpunk future as long as we live under capitalism. Again and again I will find people, who have fallen in love with the idea of Solarpunk, but are unwilling to consider any alternative to capitalism. So, please, let me quickly explain what that just is not gonna work out that way. There will be no Solarpunk under capitalism. Because the incentives of capitalism are opposing anything that Solarpunk stands for.

So let me please run over a few core points.

What is capitalism?

One issue that a lot of people do seem to have is understanding what capitalism even is. The defining attribute of capitalism is that "the means of production" (e.g. the things needed to create things) are privately owned and as such the private owners will decide both what gets created through it and who will get a share in any profits created through them. The ultimate goal in this is, to generate as large as a profit as possible, ideally more and more profit with every year. In real terms this means, that most of those means of productions in the way of companies and the like are owned mostly by shareholders, that is investors who have bought part of the company.

While capitalism gets generally thaught in schools with this entire idea of the free market, that... actually is not the central aspect of capitalism. I would even go so far to argue something else...

The market is actually not free and cannot be free

The idea of the free market is, that prices are controlled by the concept of supply and demand, with the buyer in the end deciding on whether they want to spend their money on something and being able to use that power to also enact control on the supplier.

However... that is actually not what is happening. Because it turns out that the end consumer has little influence, because they are actually not actively participating in the market. The market mainly is something that is happening between multimillionaires. It is their demand (or the lack thereoff) that is the influence. Investors, mainly. Which is logical. In a system, where the power to buy is deciding, the person who can spend multiple millions is gonna have a lot more power, than the person who has twenty bucks to their name.

Hence: 99% of all people are not participating in anything resembling a free market, and the remaining 1% are not interested in such a system.

Money under capitalism

One thing everyone needs to understand is, that for the most part money under capitalism is a very theoretical concept. It might be real for the average joe, who for the most part will not have more than maybe ten grand to their name, but it is not real to multi millionaires, let alone billionairs. Something that is going to be thrown around a lot is the concept of "net worth". But what you need to realize is that this net worth is not real money. It does not exist. It is the estimated worth of stuff these people own. Maybe houses and land, maybe private jets, maybe shares in companies and other things. These people's power and literal worth is tied to them being able theoretically able to sell these assets for money.

In fact a lot of these very rich people do not even have a lot of liquid money. So money they can spend. In fact there are quite a few billionairs who do not even own a million in liquidated money. The money they use in everyday life they borrow from banks, while putting their assets up as a security.

Why capitalism won't abolish fossil fuels

Understanding this makes it quite easy to understand why the capitalists cannot have fossil fuels ending. Because a lot of them own millions, at times billions in fossil fuel related assets. They might own a coal mine, or a fracking station, or maybe an offshore rig, or a power plant burning fossil fuels. At times they have 50% or more of their net worth bound in assets like this. If we stopped using fossil fuels, all those assets would become useless from one day to the next. Hence it is not in the interest of these very rich people to have that happen.

But it goes further than that, because politicians cannot have that happen either. Because the entire economy is build around these assets existing and being used as leverage and security for other investments.

Why capitalism won't build walkable cities and infrastructure

The same goes very much for the entire infrastructure. Another thing a lot of people have invested a lot of money into is cars. Not physical cars they own, but cars manufacturing. So, if we were building walkable cities with bikelanes and public transportation, a lot less people would buy cars, those manufactoring factories becoming worthless and hence once more money... just vanishing, that would otherwise be further invested.

Furthermore, even stuff like investing into EVs is a touch call to get to happen, because the investors (whose theoretical and not real money is tied to those manufacturers) want to see dividents at the end of the quartal. And if the manufactuerer invested into changing their factories to build EVs for a while profits would go down due to that investment. Hence, capitalism encourages them not doing that.

Why capitalism won't create sustainable goods

A lot of people will decry the fact that these days all goods you buy will break within two years, while that old washing machine your grandparents bought in 1962 is still running smoothly. To which I say: "Obviously. Because they want to make profits. Hence, selling you the same product every two years is more profitable."

If you wonder: "But wasn't that the same in 1962?" I will answer: "Yes. But in 1962 the market was still growing." See, with the post war economic boom more and more people got more divestable income they could spend. So a lot of companies could expect to win new costumers. But now the market is saturated. There is not a person who could use a washing machine, who does not have one. Hence, that thing needs to break, so they can sell another one.

The market incentive is against making sustainable, enduring products, that can be repaired. They would rather have you throw your clothing, your smartphone and your laptop away every two years.

Why workers will always be exploited under capitalism

One other central thing one has to realize about capitalism is that due to the privitization of the means of production the workers in a capitalist system will always be exploited. Because they own nothing, not even their own work. Any profit the company makes is value that has in the end been created by the workers within the company. (Please note, that everyone who does not own their work and cannot decide what happens to the value created by it is a worker. No matter whether they have a blue collar or a white collar job.)

That is also, why there is the saying: All profit is unpaid wages.

Under capitalism the profits will get divided up under the shareholders (aka the investors), while many of the workers do not even have enough money to just... live. Hence, good living standards for everyone are explicitly once more against the incentives of capitalism.

Why there won't be social justice under capitalism

Racism, sexism and also the current rise of queermisia are all a result of capitalism and have everything to do with capitalist incentives. Because the capitalists, so the people who own the means of production, profit from this discrimination. This is for two reasons.

For once having marginalized people creates groups that are easier exploitable. Due to discrimination these people will have a harder time finding a job and living quarters, making them more desperate and more likely to take badly paid jobs. Making it easier to exploit them for the profit of the capitalists.

A workforce divided through prejudice and discrimination will have a harder time to band together in unions and strikes. The crux of the entire system si, that it is build on the exploitation of workers - but if the workers stopped working, the system would instantly collapse. Hence the power of strikes. So, dividing the workforce between white and non-white, between queer and straight, between abled and disabled makes it easier to stop them from banding together, as they are too busy quaralling amoung themselves.

Why we won't decolonize under capitalism

Colonialism has never ended. Even now a lot of natural ressources and companies in the former colonies are owned by western interest. And this will stay that way, because this way the extraction of wealth is cheaper - making it more profitable. Colonialism has never ended, it has only gotten more subtle - and as long as more money can be made through this system, it will not end.

There won't be Solarpunk under capitalism

It is not your fault, if you think that capitalism cannot end. You have been literally taught this for as long as you can think. You never have been given the information about what capitalism is and how it works. You have never been taught the alternative mechanisms and where and when they were implemented.

You probably look at Solarpunk and think: "Yeah, that... that looks neat. I want that." And here is the thing: I want that, too.

But I have studied economics. Literally. And I can tell you... it does not work. It will not create better living situations for everyone. It will not save the world. Because in the end the longterm goals are not compatible with a capitalistic system.

I know it is fucking scary to be told: "Yeah, change the world you know in massive ways - or the world will end." But... it is just how the things are standing.

You can start small, though. Join a local party. Join a union. Join a mutual aid network. Help repair things. Help people just deal. Our power lies in working together. That is, in the end, what will get us a better future.

#solarpunk #anarchism #anti capitalism #unions #environmentalism #save the planet #explanation #sustainability #renewable energy #end fossil fuels #communism

[nocoastposts]

Happy Friday! This rec list is lengthy, kinky, and explicit. I'll have an additional list up soon, but this one is dedicated to some excellent E-rated gems.

Please remember to mind the tags - especially for these recs! - and kindly skip anything that doesn't suit you.

If you enjoy these, make sure to leave kudos and check out the authors additional works. Fic links and summaries below the cut.

in the dead of night | @littlemisskittentoes | E | 3.8k

“Hm, am I still dreaming, or is there a very pretty boy playing with me under the covers?” Alex’s voice is gruff. Its edges are coated in lingering sleep, and the drowsy-slow pull of the words slows them to a deeper accent than he usually lets slip through. The syrupy drawl skitters the length of Henry’s spine.

or, Henry knows he can always rely on Alex to tire him out when sleep is far off.

If We're Caught in a Wave (I Will Carry You Over) | @sparklepocalypse | E | 5.9k

There it is, up ahead – the small island just offshore, with Alex’s favorite broad, flat stone outcropping, perfect for sunning himself in seclusion. He splashes into the shallows and dives in when the water’s up to his knees, and it’s a matter of maybe a minute’s swim to reach the island. Alex finds his footing among the sand and pebbles, pulls himself upright, and shakes the water out of his hair, then pushes it back from his face. He can practically hear the outcropping calling to him -- you know, if inanimate rock could speak.

Alex stretches, his mid-back satisfyingly popping, and then skirts his way between some larger rocks until his sunning rock is in view. Except – there’s someone already on the outcropping, their short blond hair shimmering in the sunshine, the upper slant of their shoulders visible from where Alex is standing.

(Movie or Bookverse AU; Alex rents a remote beach house and Henry is a cecaelia.)

What I Need Tonight | @sparklepocalypse (again, always, etc.) | E | 3.5k

It’s two in the morning on a Tuesday when the clatter of something hitting the bathroom floor startles Henry awake. At first, his groggy mind assumes it’s Alex – but then Alex snuffles in his sleep behind him and tightens his arms around Henry’s waist.

There’s another clatter, and then a shuffling noise, and Henry’s eyes widen. He reaches back and grabs Alex’s thigh, shaking him.

(A temporal folding M/M/M AU that takes place post-canon but pre-bonus chapter.)

It's Called Tact, Fuck-Rag! | largepeachicedtea | E | 12.8k

Texas had been an odd choice, some might say. Henry thinks it's perfect. College is a time to go crazy, after all. A Scream AU

when he walks in (i am loved) | @kill8a | E | 10.3k

Henry has chores. They’re chores he’s allocated to himself, ones he loves to do in his free time, when he’s home alone. But he can’t keep thinking about Alex, what he did to him this morning, and it proves to be a distraction.

or, henry gets well fucked and well loved.

[ My final rec is for the four-part series please, please have me by @everwitch-magiks; the total word count is 29.7k. I really love the summaries for each installment, so I've included 'em all.]

Hope and Glory | E | 3.5k

Any moment now, that door will open again and another man will enter, another stranger will bare himself and quietly slot himself into the hole in the wooden panel. And Henry will swallow him down, willingly, greedily. He will use his mouth and his tongue and both of his hands, and he will lose himself in every little sound, every low groan and trembling whimper, every sharp intake of breath. He will bring the stranger to the brink and then over it, will smile faintly as feels the man pulsing in between his hands, will brush a chaste kiss against the tip before he lets go.

Henry joins an exclusive, members only sex club and lives out an impossible fantasy. Along the way, he forms a connection with an enigmatic lover.

Everything I Never Thought I'd Ever Find | E | 5.3k

The man is rubbing his length alongside Alex's as promised, his breathing heavy as Alex engages him in a series of wild, open-mouthed kisses, all teeth and tongue, give and take. Alex is shaking with want as he struggles to keep his arms still, to keep kissing, to keep himself from losing control entirely, to be good. God, he wants to be good.

Alex had never dared to hope that his sexual escapades with an irresistible stranger could turn into so much more.

That Look In Your Eyes | E | 4.7k

They’re trying something new. It’s a bit of an indulgence on Henry’s part. Earlier that night, he had walked into the now familiar room to find Alex as utterly irresistible as always: naked and blindfolded and so impossibly willing, so wonderfully eager. In that exact moment, Henry had decided that it was time for something a little bit different.

One brief but intriguing conversation later, Henry had been very pleased to pull the silk scarf from his own neck. Clearly, they'd just found a better use for it.

When The Time Is Right | E | 16.1k

“Maybe I could challenge you more,” Henry suggests, his eyes carefully trained on Alex. “And hold you accountable for longer. How does that sound?” “That sounds fucking amazing,” Alex tells him, the words coming out in a rush. “Yes. That. Please.” “Alright, then.” Henry offers him a sly grin. “Alex, love. You just gave me a wonderful idea.” It’s really something, how quickly Alex’s heartbeat picks up. “Oh? Do tell.” Henry’s grin widens. He looks alarmingly pleased with himself. “How would you feel about a staycation?”

When Alex asks Henry for something a little more intense in the bedroom, they end up taking more than just their sex life to the next level.

I've got another post in the works with some longer fics that are a mixture of all types of themes, ratings, and so on.

Feel free to request fic recs anytime!

XOXO,

Amy | NoCoastPosts

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #fic rec friday #fic rec #fic recs #rwrb fics #rwrb fic recs #rwrb fic rec #rwrb fanfic #rwrb fic #firstprince fic recs #firstprince fic #firstprince fanfic #firstprince smut #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #prince henry fox mountchristen windsor #henry fox #nocoastposts fic rec

[justadeadreaper]

Hey, this is for @frogchiro and her COD Gods AU. I hope she is comfortable with this, and I'm sorry if she isn't and will remove it if she asks me. But, let me just say thank you for blessing us with this idea and I am so happy that you are back as you are one of my favourite Tumblr accounts and your ideas are always amazing.

This will be very long and could be confusing so please hear me out as this is 4771 words of explanation.

My idea for God König could be him being a mysterious God that not many people know about entirely but they'll know his cults. He has many, many cults (like the cults of Dionysus or Pan) worshipping him, but all for different things due to how he randomly appeared one day and had all these cults popping up like it was planned, but all these cults fight each other over what he's the God of as they can't seem to agree but to try and beat each other they try to spread their worship to more people, not knowing that it makes König more powerful. I can also break down each aspect, why he has them, how powerful each aspect is due to the size of the cult, and what parts of the world would worship which aspect.

To make this make sense I have made a hypothetical world which I hope @frogchiro is okay with. So for this hypothetical world which I'm basing on other fantasy worlds and our Earth, we can say that most of the mountain ranges would be a majority in the North, going through the North-East and a lot of the East. Now forests would go across the whole world but would be more focused in the North all across to the West, although the North would be thicker deciduous or timber forests compared to the West where it would be mostly oak or birch forests, but the South-West would have some tropical rainforests while the East has a mixture of tropical forests and normal forests. The East going into the West, which would be the middle, would be mostly desert area, which has some oases here and there. Most of the South is a coastal region with the upper parts being sand deserts while on the South-West and East-West would be tropical rainforests with the furthest parts of the South being pure beaches that are mainly used for fishing villages. Of course, there are offshore islands that come off the mainland, with the South and East having the most islands.

  Wildlife/Nature/Earth- I see König being worshipped as the God of Wildlife/Nature/Earth due to how we see in his Ghillie Monster and Desidia skins we see that he is tanned and he gives the vibes of an outdoorsman who loves nature and wildlife but also feral animal vibes especially when on field, plus the gun we see with his The Wolf skin (look on the wiki) reminds me of the hunting rifles my great-great uncle owns and he is a giant outdoorsman. This aspect is mainly worshipped in the North and West because those are the regions where it is mostly land thick with nature and forests. The powers König gets from this are the ability to talk to animals and have some control over them but not complete control, he can also morph forests to make them thicker or more confusing, he can also help plants grow but he doesn’t have to much control over it, and he can mimic animal calls but also shift into the animal if he has a part of that animal and he can grant a safe passage through forests or safety from predators to his followers for this aspect.

  Mountains/Caves- I see König being worshipped as the God of Mountains/Caves due to how he is a mountain of a man, so it would make sense for him to be associated with them and I thought to add in caves due to caves being closely linked with nature and caves but also due to how caves are natural shelters and it made sense in my mind that people would worship and thank him for these shelters within nature. This aspect is mainly worshipped in the North and North-East because those are the regions where it is mostly mountain ranges and mountains tend to have tunnel systems. The powers König gets from this are being able to be so tall and use mountains as his territory and he can grant shelter and to grant big, strong children to his followers for this aspect.

  Shadows- I see König being worshipped as the God of Shadows due to how it was one of the easiest for him to steal first and I always find it funny when someone so big is so quiet and sneaky that they blend into the shadows. This aspect is mainly worshipped by assassins so it can be anywhere but normally there is a designated spot in a city where the assassins can pray to him. The powers König gets from this are being able to travel through the shadows and sneak around and he can grant similar abilities to his followers for this aspect.

  Death- I see König being worshipped as the God of Death due to how he probably has the highest kill count and if I saw him on the field I would think that it was Death coming me himself and because it fits into the backstory I have for him. This aspect is mainly worshipped by a select few cults, which would mostly be his most original followers. The powers König gets from this are to be able to see when someone is going to die, to easily kill anyone and to have control over the dead, and he can’t “grant” anything to his followers for this aspect unless they want him to kill someone after they’ve given him a big enough sacrifice.

  Oceans- I see König being worshipped as the God of Oceans due to how there’s the whole Eldritch König thing in the fandom which was made worse by his Deep Lord skin and paired with his ability to change into animals from being the God of Wilderness he could have transformed into a Kraken once so people started worshipping this Kraken form so it did not hurt them when they are fishing and allows the to fish in its territory. This aspect is mainly worshipped in the South because it is mostly fishing villages on the coast. The powers König gets from this are the ability to control the ocean and sea storms and he can’t “grant” to his followers for this aspect as he isn’t really aware of this aspect yet.

  Fertility- This is inspired by @stariepie 's idea for God König, and I hope she is okay with this, and if not I don't mind removing it as I don't know if she doesn’t mind me expanding on the idea. I see König being worshipped as the God of Fertility due to how much of a fine specimen of a man he is, like who wouldn’t and I see him as a family man, so it just works. This aspect is worshipped anywhere because people want to have kids. The powers König gets from this is boosted fertility and being good at you know what and he can grant a boost of fertility to his followers for this aspect.

  Physique- This is inspired by @stariepie 's idea for God König, and I hope she is okay with this, and if not I don't mind removing it as I don't know if she doesn’t mind me expanding on the idea. I see König being worshipped as the God of Physique due to him in my eyes being one of the perfect specimens of a man based on my type, he could easily protect his family and he could give the best of cuddles and he is carrying a whole battle axe down there. This aspect is mainly worshipped in the North because his physique would be most suited for the North region and the men who survive the most there would be like him as you need to be strong and warm to live there. The power König gets from this is his amazing physique and he can grant advantages to get stronger and more muscular to his followers for this aspect.

  Secrets/Mysteries- I see König being worshipped as the God of Secrets/Mysteries due to how mysterious he would be to most humans and because canonically we know virtually nothing about actual König but also due to how I think König tries to hide his past and plans to make it easier for him to achieve his goal. This aspect is mainly worshipped by people who worship König as to not piss him off but not because they actually care about him.   Music/Poetry/Literature- I see König being worshipped as the God of Music/Poetry/Literature due to how I envision each God having a wholesome part of their aspects which is worshipped and I envision these for him as I think it fits him as I get the vibe he’d probably be a poetry snob and enjoy learning to play and actually playing instruments even if most are too small for him, plus it’s a nod to all the AI covers people make of him singing. This aspect is mainly worshipped by artists because it first came about due to artists romanticising the aspects of König, and he was seen as a martyr for the outcasts of society, which artists tend to be, so he became their God in return. The powers König gets from this is the ability to be able to play most instruments and have a beautiful singing voice, and he can grant the ability to have a breakthrough song or poem to his followers for this aspect.

  Madness- I see König being worshipped as the God of Madness due to his social anxiety and the paranoia it causes as I have social anxiety myself which causes me to have paranoia, and I thought it would be cool nod to his social anxiety and how he is feared on the field even by the people he is rescuing. This aspect is mainly worshipped by a select few cults, which would mostly be his most original followers. The powers König gets from this aspect is to cause madness and panic, which is generally in the form of paranoia or anxiety through his screams or he can cause people to become paranoid to the point of changing their memories to something that involves him, and he can grant the ability to cause madness in the enemies of his followers for this aspect.

  Royalty- I see König being worshipped as the God of Royalty due to how in German ‘König’ means King, so I thought it was fitting, and royals would see him as powerful and would want him on their side so they could continue ruling. This aspect is mainly worshipped by royalty all over the world. The powers König gets from this are nothing but just being known as the favourite God of certain royal families and he is seen to grant strong heirs to his royal followers for this aspect.

  Lost/Forgotten/Outcasts- I see König being worshipped as the God of the Lost/Forgotten/Outcasts due to the backstory I made for him and with his backstory of being bullied outside the AU as I can see how he’d relate to people who are outcasted from society or forgotten about especially for physical differences. This aspect is mainly worshipped by people who are outcasts. König doesn’t exactly have any powers for this aspect, but he has an elite form of guards who are outcasts that he picked out himself as he saw something in them that no one else could, and he uses these guards to protect certain areas that are extremely sacred to him. I could honestly spend hours explaining each aspect and the backstory of how he got it and how it would be worshipped and explain the influences more clearly, but that is the basics for each one, and if I get permission I may go into them more and explain them more.

Strength of the aspects from strongest to weakest: -Madness -Lost/Forgotten/Outcasts -Shadows -Death -Mountains/Caves -Wildlife/Nature/Earth -Secrets/Mysteries -Physique -Royalty -Oceans -Music/Poetry/Literature

My inspiration for God König was actually Persephone due to her history as it's really interesting, and the same for Pan as his history is really interesting as well. I ask you to please watch Overly Sarcastic Productions' videos on the two Gods (their video about Persephone and Hermes as it depicts the history of the two) since if you do, my ideas will make a lot more sense, but I will do a summary.   Persephone and Demeter predated the Greek Pantheon due to their mysterious cult and were already associated with Death due to being linked to Poseidon before the Pantheon we know, as he was originally the God of the Underworld, which linked to the Earth and the God of the Oceans as that was seen more important at that time. Persephone had many titles and many things associated with her since people didn't directly talk about her due to being genuinely terrified of her as she was powerful and she was a Dread Goddess linked to Death.    Pan is equally as mysterious as Persephone as he is described as a rustic, ancient God of the wilderness and was primarily worshipped exclusively in Arcadia like Persephone. Barely anything is known about him, but we know he's the reason we panic due to the noises he would make.

I also have a backstory for König, which isn't totally figured out yet, but here is what I have so far. So König started off as a God of Madness and Death. He wasn't well known or worshipped at all as being a God of Madness and Death; no one wanted to worship him as those things are associated with very negative things, which caused König to be extremely jealous of the Gods that were being worshipped, which affected his insecurity. So, as the God of Death, he started going and killing other Gods and taking their place; it's why he suddenly appeared as he previously had no worshippers, and he took over the place of one God. The first aspect was the aspect of being the God of Shadows from Graves, and this started by having a cult in a ring of assassins, who needed the shadows to do their job, as he used his powers as the God of Madness to change the minds of that cult to believe he was the original God of Shadows the entire time. But, our dear König got greedy and cocky with his new sense of power and wanted more, so he sent out his assassins when on their killing missions to spread the word of him. Now each assassin was given a different aspect to start cults on depending on the region he was in. These original members are his original court and infested many small cults and would build them up until König was worshipped for that aspect more than the original God, which boosted his power but weakened the powers of those Gods, giving him the chance to go in and kill them. And König isn't going to stop until he gets someone to pacify him or until he's the God of everything, as he wants all the power and he's paranoid about being forgotten and being reduced to a powerless God again.

I imagine König to look very cryptid-like to fit his theme of being inspired by a Dread God and to fit how mysterious and all-encompassing he is. For his body, I say that he is tanned, as I mentioned earlier, as we see that he is somewhat tanned in Desidia and Ghillie Monster skins, and I see him as an outdoorsman, but he would be the tallest God and be a mountain of a man in his height but also in his build, as I imagine him to be pure muscle with a layer of fat on top so think of something similar to a dad bod but muscular which makes him all the more warm and cuddly. Now I see him as someone who is a bit hairy, and for his hair colour, I’m basing on my own family where we are dark strawberry blonde, but at different angles it looks like different colours, so from the back he could look ginger or the front he looks blonde since I can’t pick one colour for him and I thought it would look so pretty on him. I think his head hair, it’s long and puffy to the point that when he takes his mask off, just a bush of hair falls out and it’s an absolute wild mess. His body is riddled with scars, but some noticeable ones would be his cleft lip scar, a clipping of his right ear which is missing, one that runs down the whole of his spine, multiple stab wounds going from the upper area of the left of his chest to the lower of the right of his chest, a burn scar on the top of the right side of his forehead and the bottom left side of his face, and multiple scars on his hands from when the knife in his hand would slip out or from when he was stopping attacks. I feel like his tattoos would either be runes or statement pieces of animals, and he would have piercings in his ears which use bones of bandits he has killed. For his clothing, I imagine him using a mask which is a deer skull with a veil coming out of the bottom of it to cover his face, and he mostly wears furs from a mixture of furs from elk, bears, and wolves -mostly so he can transform into them to scare off hunters from his temple- which he uses as a cloak and to cover his lower half but I would imagine him not covering his chest as a cocky show of strength and to show off his body in general as he is proud of it. For decoration, I see him having chains/necklaces that have small trinkets on them as references to what aspects he has (e.g. for Ocean he has a belt-like chain of shark teeth, but for Wilderness he has vines wrapping around his body, but for Death he uses bones as decorations).

I'd say his sacred animal would either be an eagle due to it being the national animal of Austria and Germany as an eagle represents boldness, power, and victory, which fit König well, or it could be a wolf due to The Wolf skin König has, but also due to how I headcanon him as part Serbian due to @would_tbh on X/Twitter and for the family history I headcanon him to have and due to how wolves are Serbian’s national animal and it fits him well as wolves are described as lone creatures which fits his social anxiety but also how they’re pack animals which fits how König has his own team he has to take care of as a Colonel and wolves are supposed to represent loyalty, strong family ties, good communication, education, understanding, and intelligence which you’d need to be a Colonel and I see him being a big family man. Although I have two more unique choices of what his sacred animal could be. The first is a bear, as in Germanic regions, it was used to represent a warrior, which fits our big guy well and bears are big just like him, and bears can be deadly or cuddly like him as well. While for Indigenous people, a bear can represent strength, family, vitality, courage, health, thoughtfulness and independence, with little need for fellowship with it being self-contained and strong-willed in nature, which are all attributes I would associate with our Colonel. But my second and most unique choice is a winged boar. This is due to how wild boars are surprisingly shy animals that generally try to avoid humans, which fits how the fandom sees König as shy even though he’d probably just want to avoid other people; however, wild boars are also formidable assholes -I don’t get recommended being chased by one- when cornered or angry or threatened so it has come to represent courage and ferocity. The reason why I say a winged boar though is due to Khrysaor, as it was supposed a winged boar that was born when Medusa’s head was cut off. I thought this could be a nod to the eagle, but also a nod to how Medusa’s eyes are deadly as they can turn anyone to stone and the only part of König that isn’t covered is his eyes, and if he were to look at you, with his size and demeanour, you’d probably freeze on the spot like you were a stone statue.

König's relationship with the other gods is messy, and when I say messy I mean messy:

  Ghost- Fucking hate each other. Just plain enemies to the point that they have fake versions of each other in their temples that they train with and brutally murder. König hates Ghost as due to Ghost being the God of War, Strength, and Fertility; he is König's biggest enemy due to how much power and influence Ghost has since it's an equal amount to König and Ghost has the strength as the God of War and Strength to be able to attack König and actually be able to beat him in combat. While Ghost hates König as some people have started worshipping König for fertility instead of Ghost, and due to Ghost thinking Madness should be under the aspects that Ghost is the God of as Madness induced by Fear and Panic is what is experienced in War (this is based on the sons of Ares: Deimos and Phobos).

  Soap- Surprisingly, these two actually get along. I imagine Soap is also the God of Art, as in painting and drawing, so the two get along due to their love of the arts. Soap loves making paintings of König's poems, songs, or stories, and in turn, König loves making songs, poems, or stories based on Soap's drawings or paintings. They are also friends as Soap being the God of Spring means that König's nature flourishes more and is reborn after it's destroyed by Makarov in Winter.

  Gaz- This is based on how people replace Gaz with König but these two are hostile to each other. The reason why I say this is because Gaz is the God of the Hunt, König is the God of Wildlife. To hunt in König's forests and kill the animals under his protection, you need his permission and sacrifice some of the hunt to him. Gaz did not do that as he didn't know, and Gaz accidentally killed König's favourite winged boar, which pissed König off greatly, so he went to fight Gaz and so the two have hated each other ever since.

  Krueger- I headcanon Krueger and König to be cousins, so these two do get along but they annoy each other like all cousins do as even not in the Gods AU, I see König as the older cousin who used to be the main problem maker of the family before Krueger -who was an accident- was born; they may not have much of an age difference as I see it as König being five years older, but once König realised that Krueger was as chaotic as him, or even more so, he would get Krueger to do his schemes with him or just encouraging Krueger’s schemes. But back to the AU, originally, Krueger was a more powerful God than König, but as König grew in power, he became more powerful than Krueger, but as they have that cousin love for each other König helped Krueger by giving him an aspect or two that he didn't want. I don't know what Krueger would be the God of, but I know it would link to König somehow.

  Makarov- I headcanon Makarov to be the God of Winter and Plagues. This has caused him and König to be respectful rivals as sadly Makarov's plagues and Winter kill König's animals and nature but he benefits from Makarov's plagues killing people as it means he has more souls due to people dying. Makarov, like König is trying to kill the other Gods to become more powerful, so it has caused a rivalry. Makarov is slightly jealous of König being the God of Death but the two do have some respect for each other because of their similar goals and how their aspects affect each other.

  Valeria- I headcanon that Valeria is the Goddess of Deserts and Poisons/Venoms. She and König both don't like Alejandro since König sees him as a risk due to Alejandro being the God of Rage like @stariepie said, and as we see in the campaign, she hates Alejandro. So due to both having a mutual dislike of him, they made an alliance where Valeria's poisonous and venomous animals are protected in König's forest, and in return, König has oases through Valeria's deserts so his followers can have some water when traveling through to get him more followers.

  Horangi- Everyone headcanons these two as friends, and I do too, so I imagine these two became friends as Horangi is the God of Bad Luck and Gambling; one time challenged König to a game of Matgo where the first to get enough points to say "Go" then "Stop" got to take an aspect from the other God. Horangi, due to being the God of Bad Luck, lost but König liked Horangi's balls to challenge him to such a challenge, so he gave Horangi the aspect of tigers from König's aspect of Wildlife, which made Horangi also the God of Tigers.

  Roach- I headcanon that Roach is also a God of Outcasts, but unlike König who focuses more on people who are outcasted due to their physical appearance, instead Roach focuses more on people who are outcasted due to being different by having a mental disability as I see him as autistic and mute. They are allies since they are the only few people who are accepting of outcasts and they sometimes trade their chosen outcasts with each other as I also see König having autism and sometimes he sees one of Roach’s outcasts that he thinks is a lot like him and the same with Roach as König may have an outcast who’s mute due to a physical disability or scarring.

  Price- Based on @stariepie 's idea of God Price being the God of Knowledge and Wisdom and my idea of him also being the God of Stratedy makes König either fear or be uncomfortable about Price. Unlike with Ghost, who constantly fights or acts snarky with König which created the hatred for each other on top of the other issues, Price doesn’t take notice of König as he just sees König as another God but does judge König’s friendliness with Makarov. But, König fears Price due to that, as König is smart enough to understand that with Price being the literal God of Knowledge it means that Price knows König’s weaknesses and knows ways to defeat him, which does not help König’s anxiety-induced paranoia as he sees Price’s indifference as Price plotting something.   Graves- Our poor Phillip hates König for obvious reasons. I also see Graves as the original God of Shadows because he started the Cult of Shadows, which was a ring of assassins, but König accidentally became it as well as some assassins saw him and thought oh Death God if we worship him he could help us kill more König saw it as a perfect opportunity to steal his first aspect by making them think he was the God of Death and Shadows. This, of course, created hate between him and Phillip as Graves sees him as an undeserving thief who’s overstepping and trying to take over, while König hates Phillip as half of all assassins still worship Graves and König thinks that they should be worshipping him.

One little fun fact: a headcanon I have for God König is he is actually the God that gets sick the most as he is the blood type AB- as seen on The Wolf skin and said on the wiki, and all my relatives that are AB+ or (especially) AB- get sick really easily and seriously so I imagine him to be the worst when he’s sick; he genuinely makes man-flu seem like it’s nothing as he’s overdramatic and tries to push through it even if he is near enough dying.

Sorry about this, but I'm just a giant König fanboy and adore this man and have so many fucking ideas and headcanons for this man which I may post at a later date if anyone is interested because I have so fucking many, and I have made a full backstory and family tree and the same goes for Price, Makarov, and Soap which I can talk about for days. If I have anything more to add to it, I'll probably post it or send it to @frogchiro 's inbox, but if you have questions, you should honestly ask her as it’s her AU unless I get permission from her to answer the ones I receive.

Now, if either person mentioned in this are uncomfortable with this or needs me to remove anything, just please tell me, and I'll remove it when I see it. But I hope they are okay with me expanding it with my own ideas, but if not I do not mind removing it. If there’s anything offensive or any mistakes, please tell me. I also may come back and edit this at a later point if I think I need to. I just saw the posts and got inspired as I adore König, especially God König. Also sorry if the formatting is weird this is my first ever post on Tumblr instead of being a lurker so I may change the format if I'm not happy with it and if I need to add any tags to this I will just tell me if I need to.

-This is Ozzie signing out, and I hope you have a fantastic night.

#konig #konig cod #konig call of duty #konig mw2 #könig #könig cod #könig call of duty #könig mw2 #gods!cod au

[half-oz-eddie]

I am so utterly obsessed with rag-tag team heist movies so I made a Stranger things heist crew AU roster

Steve "Moneybags" Harrington's heist crew used to be a team of 2, the other being Dustin "Phisher" Henderson. Steve was the only person Claudia Henderson trusted to look after her son, and as Dustin grew older, the two of them became close friends.

Steve watched Dustin hack into all sorts of databases, uncover the truth behind town conspiracies and even hack a few of his bullies.

When Mr. harrington cut Steve off financially, he wanted to get back at him, and pull a "prank" with Dustin to empty out an offshore bank account that his father kept hidden from Mrs. Harrington.

The plan went smoothly. A little too smoothly, maybe. Or perhaps Dustin was a natural at this, that's what Steve believed. And since it was that easy for Steve and Dustin to get their hands on $1.5 Million, they decided to take their pranks to another level.

Steve proposed for their next prank, they should clean out one of Mr. Harrington's friends' cryptocurrency. He explains to Dustin how the asshole keeps his assets on a physical drive in his house that they could wipe while he was away on vacation.

Dustin agrees and suggests they bring Eddie "Safecrack" Munson into the fold. He tells Steve Eddie's trustworthy and knows how to pick locks and hotwire cars, y'know, just in case.

Eddie, of course, is thrilled by the idea. Not only does he love a little mischief, he'd love to get his hands on some money and a fast car. "However," Eddie told them "we'll need someone to drive one of those fancy cars outta there. We may be good drivers...but we're not that good. But not to worry, I know a guy."

The guy in question? Billy "Wheels" Hargrove. A California bad boy who knows plenty about fast cars and fast cash, so he's in without question. He also doesn't mind hassling pretty boy Harrington. (there's so much sexual tension between them. Billy's the one who gave Steve his code name. He said 'the hair' didn't quite fit.). But Billy's not doing anything unless his stepsister, Max "Sticky Fingers" Mayfield can come in and swipe whatever isn't nailed down for a cut.

They used to have a complicated relationship, but they bonded by shoplifting whatever Billy's dad wouldn't let them have. Max was a skilled thief. She could get out of any store with anything that she wanted, and Billy would drive away like a bat outta hell. She lifted consoles, games and even a little lipgloss, for Billy.

So their first heist goes without a hitch, and after wiping millions in crypto off some hard drives, swiping some expensive paintings and a 2020 Mclaren, they can't resist the urge to plan bigger heists together.

Billy suggests they call up his coworker Heather "Chameleon" Holloway. "She's got more wigs than personalities" He joked. When they brought Heather onto the team, she showed them her massive walk in closet, full of clothes, wigs, shoes and more. Not to mention, she could use her charm and distract anyone. Heather was bored at home, spending time perfecting her hair and makeup skills. She could change her appearance to look like a completely different person. It was all the fun she had. Her mom was always wine drunk, and her dad was a jerk who ignored her because he wanted a son, so she was happy to be part of a team that didn't treat her like she was invisible.

Under normal circumstances, they'd never spend time together, but now? They're an inseperable friend group.

They've made some friends (and enemies) in their line of work, but everyday is an adventure.

They recently took on a half a billion dollar heist job for a mysterious man by the name of Henry Creel, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead...

Tagging some people: @shieldofiron @adelacreations @dragonflylady77 @harringroveera @bigdumbbambieyes

Because I love your writing and I'd love to hear how y'all would include some other characters/ships in the mix. I just love heist AUs so much~

#ST heist Crew AU #i have so many ideas #i may write lots of ficlets in this universe #harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #eddie munson #max mayfield #heather holloway #dustin henderson #ivy.doc

[emberfrostlovesloki]

Demons [Hotch x Reader]

Photo credits: Left and Right (Google) Center (@hotchs-big-hands [my beloved])

Prompt: The team is forced into very close quarters during a case on an offshore oil rig in Alaska. It’s bitterly cold and there’s nowhere to go, and three men have been beaten and stabbed to death. The team must solve the mystery before it’s too late. A mix-up in rooms also has Aaron and the reader closer than ever. It allows him to learn something new about her. 

Category: Angst/comfort 

Word Count: 15.6K 

Content Warnings: Sleep paralysis, canon typical violence, death (of a victim and unsub), beating (with a blunt object), choking (briefly described), mention of death by stabbing, the threat of death by knife/gun, mention of drowning (unsub), mention of abuse (in the past [Hotch]), slight mention of blood, language, hospitals, slight body image issues (Hotch). Please let me know if I missed any. 

A/N: Ahhhh, hi loves. Did anyone ask for something this long? No. Did I expect to write this much? No. But the scenes kept coming, and I kept writing them down. I just love the writing process. It’s so cool. But enough of that. This story’s mostly based on a northern gothic vibe and the age-old, ‘only one bed’ trope. I am very happy with how this turned out and I hope you all like it too. You could read this as a stand-alone or as a prequel to my story, Unwanted Attention (linked). A huge thank you to my top hype woman @sadgirlzluvdilfs (ILY) If you like this story as well, likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated! I hope you all have a great Friday night! - Love Levi. 

List with all stories 

_y/n_ = your name 

_y/e/c_ = your eye color 

Hotch got a call from Strauss in his office. He had hoped that Monday would be a quiet work day for himself and the team. He was currently drowning in paperwork, and as he glanced down at the bullpen. He could see his team trying to do their best to also catch up on the more clerical side of their jobs as FBI agents. Strauss had told him to meet her in her office immediately. He replied, “Yes, Ma’am. I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone, grabbed his shoulder bag, and moved toward the elevator. It was a short ride up to the twentieth floor of their building, and Aaron wondered what he should prepare for when he arrived at Struas’s office. He walked down the long hallway and knocked twice on his boss’s door before opening it. Aaron was not expecting to see The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Frank Ridgewell, seated across from Strauss. Both the Commissioner and Strauss stood when he entered her office.  Erin gestured to Ridgewell and said, “Agent Hotchner, I’m sure you know Commissioner Ridgewell.” Aaron nodded. He had never met the man in person before, but he was aware of who he was, and how important he was to the United States. Aaron extended a hand and Mr. Ridgewell took it, giving it a firm shake. Once the quick introduction was done, Strauss said, “Let’s all have a seat.” From Erin’s tone, whatever was happening here was important. Strauss indicated to the other man in the room, and Frank turned toward Aaron asking, “Are you aware of the new offshore drilling operation in Alaska?” Hotch furrowed his brow and replied, “Only tangentially. I understand that the rig was built quickly and there was a land dispute. I’m also aware that there were environmental protests over beginning new drilling so close to a naturally preserved site.” Ridgewell nodded and said, “You’re correct. As of three months ago, the oil rig has been fully operational. The rig employs sixty-seven people in total. Fourty-four of those individuals are employed part-time or have shift work on the operation. The other twenty-three are full-time employees that work one month on-site and three weeks off.” Aaron had his legal pad out and was taking a few notes as the Commissioner spoke. He was waiting for the important information with a bit of impatience. This had to be important if it wasn’t coming from JJ. If it was coming from the top, he needed to be meticulous in his work and the various details being thrown at him. 

After another minute of the smaller details about the rig and its crew. Ridgewell’s tone changed. The man said, “Well all that preliminary information is building up to say that within the first three months of operation, three men have been killed. Only one of the twenty-five men working full time on shift could be responsible for the deaths. The three victims were found beaten and stabbed to death at various locations on the job site. The first victim was found by one of the security guards and the next two were found by workmen.” Aaron nodded, finally understanding the gravity of the situation, and asked, “And you believe that the BAU can assist you in finding the unsub on this oil rig?” Frank looked confused as Hotch said, “Unsub,” and Aaron clarified, “The Behavioral Analysis Team calls potential murderers Unknown Subjects, or unsubs for short.” At hearing this, Ridgewell nodded and replied, “Yes, yes I do, but there’s more to it than just the killings.” Aaron raised an eyebrow and Strauss chimed in for the first time during the meeting, saying, “Take a look at these Agent Hotchner.” Strauss pushed a file labeled ‘Classified,” in front of the Unit Chief. Hotch opened the folders and inside found a dozen or so copies of transcripts and pictures of messages that had been unencrypted. The jist of all of them was that the three deaths had been an intentional attack on the U.S. oil and gas industry. After Aaron had carefully examined these pictures, he looked over to Strauss and then Ridgewell. He asked, “So you believe there is credibility to these claims?” Ridgewell gave a half-shrug before answering, “We can’t be sure yet, but if this information got and with the new site already having a negative reputation, there would be dire consequences. The current administration is desperate to keep prices on gas and oil low and even a momentary shutdown of operations would affect the bottom line. And heaven forbid those messages leaked to the public. Half of the States would be in a panic, and there'll be a run on fuel.” Hotch nodded. This case was more complicated than he had first expected. Strauss looked at her Senior Agent and stated, “We need you and the team in Alaska as soon as possible. This is a matter of national security. Agent Hotchner. You and the BAU will need to be extremely careful.” Aaron replied, “Yes, Ma’am.” He then turned to Ridgewell and said, “I’ll need to brief my team. We’ll be headed to the site by the afternoon.” Frank looked relieved and replied, “Thank you, Agent Hotchner. I’ll email you the file with the current crew of the rig and their supervisor. I should warn you that it’s going to be close quarters up there.” Aaron nodded. He didn’t ask for elaboration about the space, he was going to be there by the end of the day anyway, and he didn’t have time to think about it right now. Hotch stood and shook hands with Ridgewell and Strauss before straightening his jacket and moving outside to the hallway again. 

Back in the bullpen, he moved to his office, He would need to check his email and do a bit of research before calling the team to the briefing room. He moved toward his office and Rossi passed him. Dave looked over his neutral expression. Though Aaron rarely showed his emotions openly, Rossi knew him well enough to know that something was amiss. David flashed him his, ‘New case?” Look, to which he nodded affirmatively. Aaron could see Rossi’s shoulders fall slightly. Hotch understood that his friend had also wanted a break. The caseload had been extra heavy over the last month and a half, and the team was aching for a break. As the two men passed each other on the stairs, the sound of laughter caught Aaron’s attention. He knew the laugh well. Better than he should. Aaron turned and saw _y/n_ sitting at her desk. She had a file slightly covering her face and her _y/e/c_ eyes were bright and wide. Emily and Derek were standing beside her having made some joke that he hadn’t heard. Looking at her like this, as a casual observer made a small flame in his chest flicker slightly, like a lighter being turned on by an unsteady hand. Aaron had begun to recognize that the small attraction that he had for _y/n_ had grown. Now every time he looked at her, he felt the need to stifle a sigh. For now, he was safe. _y/n_ hadn’t shown any particular interest in him, that he could tell. Or maybe he was just pretending to not notice when _y/n_ looked at him for longer than necessary, or how she checked in on him often, just to make sure he was really doing alright. Hotch turned away as another peal of laughter emerged from the group downstairs. In his office, he turned on his lamps and opened his email inbox for the new information Strauss had CC’d him. It was a good 110 pages of personnel files and maps of the site. More important for the team was when the supply boat schedule which went to the rig in the morning and early evening. It took Hotch a full hour to skim all of the new information. He sent Garcia an SOS to get as much dirt of the Northern Oil and Gas Supply LLC as she could. Particularly the new oil site called Farpoint 52, -153. The name was unassuming, and the first thing Penelope told him was that the numbers were latitude and longitude points in Alaska, but not those of the actual site. 

When Aaron was ready, he had seven file folders with all the most important information accumulated including pictures of the victims that the local PD in Anchorage had just sent over. The attacks were brutal. The injuries on the three bodies seemed to be caused by blunt force trauma, and as Ridgewell had said, there were multiple stab wounds on the victims as well. Hotch took a long breath as he got up and moved outside his office. He knocked on JJ and Rossi’s doors and gave them their files. JJ said, “I’ll get Garcia to come and set up the screen in the briefing room.” Aaron thanked her, and she and Rossi moved out of his way. Hotch placed his hands on the railing of the stairs and called out for his agents saying, “BAU team, I need you in the conference room.” As all four members of the team looked up to him, the mood of the room changed, dimming from how lively it had just been. Hotch turned toward the meeting room before he could see their faces fall once more. Sometimes he thought that he couldn’t keep doing this to them. To himself. The isolation he felt when he was home alone left him a breathless aching mess. It was rare when he allowed those feelings to overwhelm him, but sometimes he couldn’t help it. When this happened, he often found himself in a steaming hot shower. So hot that it hurt. When he couldn’t control his emotions, he felt like a kid again after his father had gone on either a verbal or physical diatribe about his perceived shortcomings. The reminders of the abuse he endured for years would flare up and make him feel a different kind of shame and hurt than letting his team down. By the end of the shower, he had normally excised these emotions and feelings of weakness and would fall into a fitful sleep afterward. 

_y/n_ watched Aaron turn quickly. She let out a long sigh at the announcement about a new case. Everyone on the team was exhausted, and it seemed that Hotch was the most exhausted of them all. She had watched him closely over the last month. Something about his demeanor had shifted. _y/n_ wondered if it was the two-year anniversary of Hailey leaving him that had initiated the change, or if it was something else personal or professional. She wanted to ask him what was wrong. How she could soothe him from the stress she could sense coming off of him. But she assumed that might be stepping over some personal work line, and she was still relatively new to the team. She didn’t want to risk any consequences for being overly personal. For now, all she could do was watch and wait for a time that seemed appropriate. She was fully aware that that time may never come and would have to be okay with just being near someone as commanding and steady as Aaron. 

In the briefing room, everyone but Hotch and JJ sat. Aaron moved to the head of the table and said, “This morning I got a call from Director Strauss. When I got to her office, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner was waiting for me. He has a case for us in Alaska that is a top priority. And…” Hotch paused as seven pairs of eyes waited for more details. Realizing that it might be more efficient to have his agents just read the brief in their files, he said, “Actually, why don’t you just turn to page one in your files and read over the case notes so far? I’ll give you a few moments.” The team opened the files in front of them and read the 1,000-ish word briefing on the first page. They were all aware that this case was different than the rest and that the brief hadn’t been written by JJ. Spencer and _y/n_ could tell it was Hotch’s writing almost immediately. The tense use and wording were very direct and blunt, just as Aaron was. Not that JJ added fluff, just that she took a few more words to make a point than their Unit Chief. Once those seated at the table had read over the first page and taken a look at the victim's pictures, Aaron moved forward and said, “Well as you can see, this latest case doesn’t have a lot of victims, but the timeline is progressing quickly and given that the crew is so small, these deaths have caused issues in the operation of the rig. On top of this, it seems that foreign agents are claiming they are playing a part in these deaths. If this is true or not; we can’t be sure until we find the Unsub.” Rossi tossed in the comment, “If it is foreign agents, they are most likely to come from Russia or the Middle East where much of the oil in the U.S. comes from. We should look at the crew and see if there are any potential ties to those countries.” Hotch inclined his head at the suggestion. It was a good one. With the primary details being said and a long flight ahead of them, Aaron concluded the information session by saying, “I recommend bringing the warmest clothes you have in your go bags, and something waterproof if you have it; I’m sure you can guess that it will be cold and wet where we’re headed.” Aaron looked at his team as they started standing, and he added one last thing that stilled the team and drew their attention to him again. He simply said, “I understand that this team has gone through a lot in the last few cases. I know you’re tired. After this case, I’m going to do my best to find some time for us to be off and recuperate for a bit. Please know that your efforts and work don’t go unnoticed by me. That’s all.” With his mini pep-talk finished, the team moved into action again. Aaron had meant what he said of course, but had also said it for himself too. 

As everyone filed out of the room, _y/n_ approached Aaron and just barely touched his forearm to get his attention. Hotch looked down at her and asked, “What is it, _y/n_?” Sometimes when _y/n_ looked at him specifically, intentionally, he thought he saw a flicker of something more in her eyes than just attention and respect. He thought he saw it now, but he cleared his head. Now wasn’t the time for those thoughts. _y/n_ didn’t seem to notice how deeply he was looking at her when she said, “When you spoke to Strauss this morning, did she say anything more about the case? Is there anything else we need to know?” She hoped she wasn’t asking for information he couldn’t give. Hotch continued looking down at her for a moment before replying, “She just said that we needed to be safe. There are a lot of unknowns here. More than usual for a case.” _y/n_ acknowledged his statement and said softly, “Got it. See you in the parking lot.” With that, she quickly left to gather her go-bag and race to get some coffee if she could before the jet left for Anchorage. When _y/n_ had gone, Aaron took another moment to minorly compose himself. Then he moved to catch up with Garcia. He was going to ask her to join the team on this case due to the technical aspects that might be involved. He had a sinking suspicion that getting her on wifi all the way out where they would be might be harder than on the mainland. If foreign assets were involved or there was tampering with the equipment of the rig’s systems, Penelope was the most capable of any of them to lend a hand. 

Thirty minutes later, the team piled into the jet with their go bags and files. Garcia was a balm to what seemed to be an already dreary case. As everyone sat, the ideas started flowing about motive and the type of unsub that they were dealing with. Spencer and Morgan were thinking about the physical elements of the unsub. Things like the impact of the wounds, the type of weapon being used to inflict them, and the force that would be needed to cause them. Their top ideas for weapons were a baseball bat or some other blunt object that had lots of fulcrum power. Meanwhile, JJ and Emily were looking through the personnel of the twenty-five full-time employees. Garcia was on every possible legal and illegal site that tracked energy and messages that could possibly correlate with countries like Russia, Iran, or Iraq. Rossi and Aaron were looking deeper into the oil company as a whole. To them, it seemed a little sketchy and the fact that Mr. Ridgewell had asked for the team personally belied that there might be some shady business not only from outside but inside the company as well. Rossi was talking about a possible correlation with BP and their recent legal troubles. As all this was happening, _y/n_ sat and listened to the cacophony of sounds bouncing around the plane. She had her notebook out and was taking her usual annotations on the case and jotting down when someone on the team said something she thought was important. She was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the chatter happening around her, so she took a moment to grab a coffee from the back of the jet. The team had moved out so quickly that she didn’t get a chance to grab a cup in the office break room. She moved past Hotch and noticed he wasn’t holding a cup either. _y/n_ stopped briefly in front of her boss, and he looked up at her. She made a hand motion to indicate ‘drink?’ Aaron gave her a small, grateful look and nodded his head yes. 

At the back of the jet across from the small sink and mirror, was the coffee machine. She put in the water and a capsule for the Keurig. _y/n_ placed a cup under the dispenser and pushed run, on the machine. _y/n_ somehow hated the Keurig coffee more than the office coffee. It managed to always taste burned and flavorless no matter which flavor of pod she picked. But the caffeine was a necessity at the start of a case for her. It was half ritual half desire, and she didn’t fight it. When her cup was finished, she started the process again for Aaron, who no matter what coffee he was drinking, seemed unfazed by the quality of the brew. As Hotch’s cup started filling, _y/n_ doctored her own cup with milk and white sugar. Once both drinks were ready, she placed lids on the cups and moved back to the cabin of the plane. As she passed Hotch, she seamlessly handed his cup to him, as she settled back to her own spot further down the row. Garcia watched as this happened. It was like moving a baton between two runners in a relay. ‘They hardly looked at each other while it happened!’ The technical analyst thought. Penelope hadn’t been on a case since _y/n_ had joined, and this behavior was new and exciting for someone like Hotch. Garcia had taken special care with _y/n_. The newest BAU agent was young, and she knew more about _y/n_’s background than most of the team. Because of this, Garcia had done her best to uplift and support _y/n_But it seems that _y/n_ was supporting the team in small ways too. Penelope knew that _y/n_ was attentive and sharp in her mind and actions if she needed to be. But this was generally hidden beneath her gentle warm exterior. But seeing _y/n_ meet even the smallest needs without even being asked to was such her thing; at least, that was what Penelope thought. Now that she was here seeing this, Garcia was going to have to pay more attention to _y/n_ and Hotch. Because she wanted to know if this was just a them thing, or was _y/n_ acting like this with the whole team? 

_y/n_ sat and took a sip of the coffee that was a little too hot. The liquid burned her tongue and she made a small face of pain. Thankfully no one was looking at her at the time. _y/n_ set the cup in the cupholder next to her seat and looked at the picture of the rig itself again. This setting was so bizarre for a crime. Even the photos of the outside of the rig made her feel unnerved. _y/n_ tried to think of any prior cases like this. There had to be some. _y/n_ was fiercely thinking about old cases. Old old cases even. This case was going to require thinking outside the box. Finally, with eyes closed and brows pinched, some ideas started coming to her. With some inspiration, she began writing quickly on a new page of her notepad As this was happening, Aaron looked around the cabin. Everyone was still intensely focused, and he walked around each group to see what they had come up with so far. Spencer and Morgan had surmised that the unsub was probably smaller than they might assume. Given that they used blunt objects to kill the victim. If the unsub had a lot of strength, they should be able to kill their victims without the need for an object. Between JJ and Emily, they had pinpointed a few possible workers who might fit certain profile types and those specifically seemed to be linked to odd organizations or firms that could be linked to terrorist organizations. As Aaron moved to ask Garcia how it was going, she shooed him away with a tut-tut indicating that she was too busy for a check-in at the moment. 

The last person he needed to see was _y/n_. As he approached her, she seemed deep in thought, and he sat across from her and sat for a minute or two in silence as he let her wrap up whatever she was writing. When _y/n_’s pen stilled, she looked up at him and he asked, “You seem to be having some ideas overhear. Mind sharing them with me?” _y/n_ nodded, looking down to her notes. She resisted the urge to say, ‘I don’t feel good about this case. I can’t pinpoint it, but something feels off here.’ Instead, she said, “I was thinking about the setting; the rig. Looking at the ariel photographs, the maps of the interior, and the security footage from the main hallways made me think about something. It’s so isolated. If you work there then it’s a tight space, and you work a dangerous job, and you see the same twenty or so people day after day for three to four weeks.” Hotch nodded along, getting a feeling for where she was going. When they made eye contact again, he said, “And?” He was encouraging her to finish her thought. _y/n_ gave a soft sigh as if she was doubting herself. Whether there was doubt or not, _y/n_ continued, saying, “Well those working conditions can’t be good for one’s psyche. I was considering some old cases. I know that Cabin Fever isn’t a diagnosable psychological condition, but there’s a history of those symptoms manifesting in groups of isolated people. I’m thinking as far back as the Donner party in 1846. There was the Highcliff’s in 1980, and more recently the Smith and Wess party in 1992. I know these are ancient cases for the team but it seems to fit to me. I know this case could be way more complex given the terrorism element, but just looking at the brief you wrote, I think this might be a case of insanity due to the location. I could be wrong. I could be totally off here, but it’s what I’ve got so far.” Aaron thought about what _y/n_ had said and replied, “I’m not saying that that train of thought is not out there, but given the novelty of this case, I think we need someone who is thinking with a separate mind frame. Once we’re on site, keep what you have here in the back of your mind. If you see anything that relates to this theory let me know immediately.” _y/n_ nodded at him in agreement as he stood and made his way back to Rossi. Sometimes when Hotch or anyone asked her her thoughts early on, she feared that she sounded unhinged, or worse, stupid. _y/n_was still finding solid footing with the team, but Hotch never dismissed her ideas unless they were fully implausible, and she appreciated that about him. 

The flight moved quickly after this. Although there were five hours left, the team regrouped and shared what they knew before touchdown in Anchorage. When the jet landed, the sun was already setting in the West although it was only 5:30 p.m. It only took a few minutes before they arrived in the SUVs at the dock with the resupply boat that would take them to the rig thirty minutes offshore. The team turned in all three sets of keys to the cars to the police officer waiting for them at the dock. Aaron promised to call the local LEO when the team was ready for their return to the small airstrip. The team pulled their go bags from the back of the cars. Derek was kind enough to carry Garcia’s pink and sparkly duffle on top of his small carry-on suitcase. The team had bundled up in their jackets and they were buffeted by the harsh northern winds beating them from all sides. As they boarded the gangway, Hotch momentarily steadied _y/n_ who he was walking next to. Though she seemed okay, it seemed to him that she could use a steadying hand for a moment as she battled the wind. When she felt Aaron approach her and then place a steadying hand just barely against her back she looked at him. He wore that expression that just said, ‘I’m here.’ _y/n_ gave him a nod, indicating that she appreciated the gesture. Aaron kept his hand where it was until they got on deck. Once they were on a more sturdy surface, Hotch removed his hand but moved to take the handle of _y/n’s small wheeled case in his open left hand. Their hands brushed briefly as they exchanged the weight of her luggage. Neither Aaron nor _y/n_ said anything at the exchange, but she gave him a soft smile as he moved toward the stairway that led to the passenger area of the ship. This had become a little pattern of theirs over the past few months. There was a kind of shared understanding of care between them. Aaron told himself that this was him taking care of his newest agent, and _y/n_ told herself that this was her trying to prove that she noticed the small needs of the team; both of them were lying to themselves. 

Once the team was downstairs _y/n_ took charge of her case again, as Aaron and JJ moved to the control room to introduce themselves to the captain and get some relevant information. While the team waited to start moving, they all settled into the uncomfortable benches either in the center of the boat or those near the sides of the room that had a few windows looking out onto the choppy Alaskan Sea. After a few minutes, the boat motors started roaring to life and the resupply vessel moved toward the open water. Garcia moved to sit next to _y/n_ who had slumped down on a bench next to one of the windows. The waves were a dark green and blue, and the clouds had turned a charcoal grey as the sun started to dip below the horizon. Penelope looked over to _y/n_ and asked, “How are you holding up, friend?” _y/n_ looked over to Garcia and said, “I don’t like this Penelope. This feels off to me. This case.” Garcia nodded along and said, “Trust your gut _y/n_. You know yourself better than anyone else. If you ever need to talk, I’m here for you.” _y/n_ nodded and both she and the tech whizz turned to look as Hotch and JJ returned from the bridge. Aaron stepped into the center of the room. The boat listed up and down slightly, but he seemed perfectly stable even as the boat took on a large wave. In his smooth voice, Aaron said, “According to the skipper we should be at the rig in around twenty-five minutes. Apparently, the seas are pretty rough tonight. Once we get there, the boat will take a few minutes to dock. A worker on the rig is going to get our luggage for us, so leave it here by the door when we disembark. Once we’re on the rig the first thing we'll do is meet the foreman. As you saw in the file, his man is Mr. Obermann. Once I’ve introduced us all, we’ll get a tour of the rig. Find rooms and then debrief if that sounds alright?” Everyone agreed and said so in some way or another. _y/n_ always found it interesting that he said things like, ‘If that’s alright with you.’ To the team. It’s not exactly like they had a choice on what happened at the start of a case. _y/n_ hypothesized that he did this to give them an allusion of control. Also, if someone did really have a suggestion that the team do something differently -- like asking to go to a crime scene or the hospital or something like that -- then he would consider it. However, Aaron was usually good at predicting the needs of the team and the case. He was their leader after all. 

The resupply boat arrived at the rig and the size of the massive object that was being buffeted by the cold waves was more massive than any of them had imagined. The rig wasn’t the only thing being pushed by the harsh wind. As the team got outside and made it to the short ladder they would need to climb to get to the main platform. Derek helped _y/n_ and Garcia get to the ladder while Aaron helped JJ, and Rossi provided Emily a steadying hand. The whole team pulled their jackets tighter around themselves as they made it to the main door. A worker pulled the heavy metal door open for them. The door led directly to the crew’s rec room. Mr. Obermann was waiting for them and stood as the team entered the room. Aaron moved to the front of the pack and introduced himself and the team quickly. Mr. Obermann looked stressed and worn out which was understandable given the circumstances. The man said, “Well I appreciate you all coming so far. If this doesn’t get fixed it will be hell for the company, but more importantly to me twenty-five good hard-working men. Because you’ve all come I’ve sent all the temp workers home until you find our guy. What did you call him again?” Aaron replied, “The unknown subject, or unsub for short.” Obermann nodded and said, “Yeah. That. The men that are still here are freaked. They all think they’re going to be the next victim. It’s not good for the job as they need to pay full attention to what they are doing. Risk of injury on offshore rigs are thirty three percent more likely than those on land.” Obermann stopped to take a breath before continuing, “Now I’ll give you a tour of the place. I need you all to put on hard hats. 

The protective headwear was passed out, and the team put the hats on. JJ, Penelope, and _y/n_ struggled not to laugh at the look of all the men on the team wearing the hats. Particularly Rossi, Morgan, and Aaron. Hotch looked like a midwestern politician trying to get votes from the rustbelt to _y/n_, and she actually had to cough to hide her laugh. She was fully aware that she must also look like a fool, but she just couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. Once they were equipped, the team and Mr. Obermann moved through an internal door that led to a long hallway. The foreman moved through each of the rooms on that floor, including his small office, the mess hall, the laundry room, and some of the sleeping quarters. They moved outside, and the team looked at the helipad, and the derrick that brought the oil up to the surface. The team moved back inside and moved down the steps to the first level of the rig. The lower floor was very dark and close to the water level. The sound of the waves could be heard through the thick steel and concrete which spoke to the power of the water surrounding them. Obermann guided through the more mechanical side of the rigs. The communal showers for the crew were also located on the second level. As they walked through the mechanical room, Obermann said, “This room is generally off limits, but as you know, the first victim was found here. I ask that if you need to be in here, let me know and I’ll send someone to open it for you.” The tour took a long time as the space was cramped and a lot of the rooms required them to be careful. Obermann led them back to the rec room where their luggage was waiting for them. Oberman said, “I’ll give you all a few minutes to pick rooms for yourself. The rooms that are free are downstairs. With all of you here, you’ll have to double up. The keys to the rooms are on the table and are labeled with the number that matches the door. Now I have some paperwork to attend to, but I’ll be in my office for any questions you have.” 

As Obermann moved to his office, the team looked at each other. Having to share rooms was never something they enjoyed. Though the team was close, it was an entirely different thing to have to share a room. The team's cases often brought a lot of stress and little sleep, and having the privacy of their own space let them decompress in their own form or fashion was needed. On the rare occasions that the team did share rooms, it was fine, but everyone was far more comfortable alone. But, the work needed to be done, and they needed to start quickly, so no one made a fuss. With that out of the way, the team paired up. Derek, Spencer, and Rossi shared one of the rooms that had three beds, and JJ, Emily, and Garcia took the other room with three beds. Emily offered to share her bed with _y/n_ but _y/n_ said that she was alright being with Hotch in the room with two beds. If it meant having her own bed she would be fine. Aaron overheard _y/n_ and Prentiss’s conversation, and he felt a tug in his chest. He wasn’t sure if the feeling was because _y/n_ seemed so okay with sharing a room with him, or the fact that he was even thinking about it. Hotch had noticed his feelings change toward _y/n_ in the last few months. He wasn’t sure what was pulling him to her, but in some tiny way, things seemed to have shifted in the air for them. And Aaron knew that it wasn’t just him that felt the change. _y/n_ had started to adapt around him. Doing things for him she didn’t need to but that he wanted. He had started reciprocating the gestures and it just kind of clicked in place. Hotch hadn’t given this much thought yet. There hadn’t been time, and he wanted to wait before he did anything more. The fact that he was thinking this now felt like he was breaking some kind of supervisory rule. Even if _y/n_ seemed completely fine with sharing a room with him, he wanted to check in personally. As the rest of the groups moved down the stairs with their suitcases, Hotch stepped toward her. 

When Aaron was next to her, he looked down into her eyes and said, “_y/n_, you don’t have to share a room with me. I can make another arraignment or sleep on one of the couches in here if you prefer.” _y/n_ appreciated the gesture, and she looked over what appeared to be the most old, decrepit, and uncomfortable couches she had seen in her life. Not only would Hotch’s sleep be compromised, but he honestly might be unsafe here given that the rec room was open 24/7. With the killings happening, she would never risk him like that. Even if she was uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same room as her boss, she still wouldn’t make him sleep in a space like this. Although _y/n_ didn’t find the idea of sleeping in the same room as Hotch uncomfortable, she did find it a bit awkward. Over the past few months, she had had some less-than-professional thoughts about her Unit Chief. None of them had strayed into the lewd, lurid, or vulgar, but even so, being that close to Aaron made her insides flutter slightly. She told the butterflies just trying to take flight for the first time to slow down. For now, she was just thinking about this situation by internally telling herself, ‘It’s just Hotch.’ _y/n_ didn’t mean this in a demeaning way. Many of her close relationships or intimate moments with men were marred by pain or betrayal. So for her to simply and honestly say, ‘It’s just Hotch,’ meant a great deal. “Alright, but if at any time you feel like you need space during the night, just tell me and I’ll give it to you.” _y/n_ smiled and nodded, saying, “I will, Hotch. Now, maybe we should put our stuff away so we can get to work?” Aaron nodded in agreement and he stood more straight. The pair grabbed the last room key and their cases. The duo moved down the stairs and to the end of the hallway where their room was. 

Hotch pulled the door’s key from his pants pocket and fitted it into the lock. There was the pleasant sound of the bolt clicking back. Aaron took the metal handle in his large hand. The door swung outward, and he froze momentarily as he looked into the room. _y/n_ noticed his shift in demeanor and softly asked, “What is it?” She pressed closer to him, and she realized why he had reacted as he had. The room they were supposed to share only had one bed and from the size of it, there was no space for another mattress. Aaron muttered something she couldn’t hear under his breath before he more loudly articulated, “There must be a mistake. I’ll talk to Obermann. Or we can talk to someone on the team. Emily will still let you sleep with her. I’m sure of it.” While he said this, two thoughts were happening simultaneously in _y/n_’s head. The first was that her work phone had vibrated in her pocket about ten times since she and Hotch had been trying to negotiate about the room. _y/n_ took a moment to look through her messages. It seemed the other team members were ready to start building the profile for the unsub and were waiting for her and Hotch. This meant she had little time to think about the second thought running through her head like a fire. Imagining sleeping in the same bed as Aaron, even momentarily pulled a light flush to her face. She pushed the latter thought back for later and said, “Hotch, we can figure it out later. I think the team is waiting for us in the rec room. Em said there’s coffee. Let’s just put our cases inside and you and I can figure this out later.” Aaron turned to _y/n_ with a furrowed brow. For a second he could see the flush on her skin but moved to look away not ready to acknowledge that fact yet. Though he wanted to rectify this situation immediately, _y/n_ was right. He gave a small sigh and said, “You’re right. We can figure it out later." With that Aaron and _y/n_ moved into the small space. Hotch pushed his suitcase under the small space of the bed while _y/n_ placed her smaller case in the only open storage area the room had. When this was done, they both left the room; Aaron switched off the light and locked the door behind him. As they made their way back up to the first floor, Aaron sighed. This wasn’t particularly Obermann’s fault, but it was a unique situation for sure. One that he would resolve to make sure _y/n_ was comfortable. For some reason when he saw her in pain or discomfort, it really ate at him. This had only happened twice, but those were two times he did not want to repeat. And he certainly wasn’t going to be the cause of her discomfort. 

The pair moved back to the team and settled into the open spots at one of the tables in the rec room. The darkness outside the windows of the rec room seemed to try and penetrate through and around the lights on the rig, and the howl of the wind crashed with the waves as the team worked late into the night. They bounced ideas off each other and looked at the first three spots where the victims had been found. By 2:40 a.m. the team had a basic profile down. They assumed the unsub was around forty to fifty-five years old, which eliminated a little less than half of the twenty-five workers. They also assumed the man was important and potentially used violence as a substitute for sex and a form of release. _y/n_ kept the idea of cabin fever in the back of her head and suggested acts of hysteria or depression for the profile. She clarified, “We wouldn’t see that behavior here, but while this unsub is not on the rig I think bouts of anger and depression might be a pattern. He might have even lost jobs because of this before.” Rossi agreed and said, “We can ask Mr. Obermann about people with those traits tomorrow morning. We also know the attacks happen at night when most of the crew are asleep and only the night shift workers are awake.” Derek tacked on, “And they happen where there aren’t cameras or the lighting is too dark to see clearly. It’s often near the machinery to drown out any screaming.” Now that the preliminary profile was created, it would give the team a better chance to look over all the workers tomorrow who they were meeting in the morning. They had only met two men officially that night and it was the two security guards. One was a younger man in his thirties named Joe, and the other was in his fifties named Pete. The team had met the two while they changed shifts. Both men had introduced themselves and told the members of the BAU to call them at any time if they needed help. Derek and Aaron both clocked that neither man carried a gun, but did have retractable nightsticks in their belts. 

By this point, it was nearly three, and many members of the team decided to call it a night. They needed to wake up at five a.m. to meet the oil workers before their shift started at 6:00 a.m. It was only Rossi, Garcia, Aaron, and _y/n_ left awake. _y/n_ could feel the weight of her exhaustion pulling at her. Her mind was foggy and looking at the files actually hurt her eyes. The lights on the rig at night were a bit dimmed and she longed to get to sleep. She pushed away from the table and Garcia looked up and asked, “Are you going to bed, darling?” _y/n_ nodded. At hearing this, Aaron looked over to her and she approached him. Mr. Obermann had retired hours ago and _y/n_ was sure Emily was out like a light by now. She could see Hotch eyeing the couches again and she just barely touched his shoulder. He looked over to her and she nodded her head toward his phone, which pinged once. Aaron picked up the device and swiped up on _y/n_’s text message. He quickly read it over. The message read: “Hotch. I guarantee that sleeping in the same room, even the same bed as you doesn’t make me uncomfortable. It may be unorthodox by FBI standards, but I’m tired and I don’t to wake JJ or Emily. Please don’t sleep on those couches or stay up all night to try and make tonight better for me. You need rest too. If sleeping with me makes you uncomfortable, I’ll take the couch, just wake me up and let me know.” Hotch turned back to _y/n_ and could see that she was being honest, about all of it. That she wasn’t uncomfortable, and that she would take the couch if he wanted to be alone. Again he had that feeling that he was being cared for by _y/n_. And even though he felt uncertain for some unknown reason, he couldn’t deny he’d rather be on a bed than the couches. Finally, he gave her a small nod letting her know that he would be down at the room later. Silently, _y/n_ mouthed, “Night Aaron.” With that, she slipped into the corridor and out of sight. Garcia had observed whatever that odd interaction was between her two friends and she was sure something was happening. What that was, she couldn’t say yet, but with her snooping and pleading skills, she hoped to find out soon enough. 

After another hour, Aaron was the only one still up. He was stalling and he knew it. With a sigh, Hotch put his loose papers in his file. He picked up the manila folder and moved downstairs. The grimy, dim hall lights flickered and the shadows seemed to move as Hotch walked down the small corridor. Hotch stopped outside the showers and considered taking one. Again he was stalling. He didn’t need a shower, he needed sleep. He passed the showers and tried to unlock the door as quietly as he could. It was dark in the room and he felt around the dark space for the edge of the bed. _y/n_’s slow breathing filled the room along with the sound of the wave slapping the sides of the rig. Aaron knelt down and tried to quietly remove his suitcase from under the bed. He stopped once it was out and listened. From her breathing, it seemed that _y/n_ was still asleep. He unzipped the case and at this point, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. He found his grey sweatpants and a sleeping shirt. He couldn’t tell what color it was in the dark but it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Once he had the articles of clothing, he pushed his suitcase back under the bed. Once he was standing again, he considered moving back to the showers to change. However, opening the door and letting in the light from the hall might wake _y/n_. He looked over at his agent who was turned away from him facing the wall. She was obviously asleep, and he decided to just quickly change in the room. He placed his pajamas on the empty side of the twin bed. He faced the other direction and quietly undid the buckle of his belt. He slipped it out of his belt loops and when it was free, he silently placed the leather on the bed. With a fast intentional movement, he undid the button and zipper of his pants. He slipped off the fabric and when his legs were free, he grabbed his sweats and slipped them on. Somehow Aaron felt that it would be alright if _y/n_ saw him in his undershirt or even bare-chested, but something about her seeing his legs or worse his groin -- even if it was covered with briefs was too embarrassing to think about. 

A tiny voice in his head said mockingly, “And you just thought ‘you weren’t trying to impress someone?’” Hotch grit his teeth, removed his shirt and undershirt, and put on the soft cotton of his sleeping shirt. Aaron folded the clothes that he had put on the bed and set them on top of _y/n_’s case. He would hang them up tomorrow. He slowly sat down on the edge of the mattress and it dipped slightly with his weight. Very slowly he moved his legs onto the bed and it was just long enough to fit his tall frame. He lay on his back. For his sake and _y/n_’s he decided to sleep on top of the covers, while _y/n_ stayed bundled beneath them. This would at least give them a layer of separation between them. Aaron wasn’t sure if it was his was his stirring or even his body heat, but _y/n_ seemed to momentarily wake, and in a sleep-heavy voice asked, “Hotch.” It was hard to tell if she was still asleep or not, but he softly replied, “It’s me.” This answer seemed to soothe her and _y/n_ quickly fell back asleep. The exhaustion Aaron felt nearly made him fall asleep before he turned on his side to face the opposite direction from _y/n_. For once, he was grateful that he was so tired that his mind couldn’t wander to places he shouldn't let it. 

An hour or so later Aaron woke when _y/n_ made a small sound in her sleep. It was like a little hum or maybe the softest “yes” he had heard in his life. As he came to a more conscious state he realized that he was warm. Warmer than he had been when he fell asleep. In his sleep, he had managed to get under the covers and he was nestled next to _y/n_. His right arm was around her waist and his face was pressed into the soft smooth skin of her neck. Hotch stilled his body. Apart from the fact that being pressed close to _y/n_ felt good, he realized that he needed to move slowly or he might wake her while he disentangled his body from hers. Hotch pulled his face back first, and in his tired mind, he thought about how he missed _y/n_’s crisp scent. Next, he removed his arm from her waist. _y/n_ made another noise at this retraction but still didn’t wake. Aaron thanked the gods for apparently making _y/n_ a deep sleeper. Finally, Aaron rolled onto his back and then to his original position facing the other wall. He was too drained to try and get out and above the covers again, and anyway the warmth from both the blankets and _y/n_ who was only an inch or so away from him felt good, and he fell back into unconsciousness after a few minutes. 

In the morning, neither Aaron nor _y/n_ had the time to reflect that they had ended up in each other's arms again during the night because they were jolted awake by the sound of someone screaming. _y/n_ said, “It’s Garcia.” Both Aaron and _y/n_ quickly put on their shoes and grabbed their guns in case there was any danger. Aaron moved out the door first and _y/n_ followed closely after. The sound had come from the nearby showers. Mr. Obermann had set up for the showers to be open from six to seven a.m. each morning for the BAU women to shower safely and with the guarantee that a man wouldn’t interrupt them. This was something JJ had set up on the flight over to Alaska. JJ had ensured that the same was promised for the men on the team, but their hours were in the evening. As Aaron and _y/n_ arrived outside the showers, Morgan was gently guiding Penelope from outside. The technical analyst was sobbing and Derek sort of passed her over to _y/n_ who put her gun away. Morgan firmly said, “Get her away from here, _y/n_. We have a new victim.” _y/n_ nodded and she tried to comfort Garcia as they moved away from the new scene. Hotch slipped past them and at his point the whole team assembled. Rossi was acting as a guard against the workers who wondered what was going on, and if someone had been killed. As _y/n_ passed JJ, she asked the media liaison to come with her and Garcia to provide another more comforting presence for Penelope. JJ nodded and they moved back to the women’s room. 

It was a hectic three hours at the start of the morning as a coroner and the local authorities were called. The oil workers became increasingly restless with all of the authorities and the BAU around. To the men, so far these newcomers hadn’t done anything to protect them yet. Once Penelope had calmed, _y/n_ sat on Emily’s bed and thought to the morning. To Hotch in his sneakers and grey sweatpants and dark blue shirt with his gun drawn. To Rossi in a dressing gown and undershirt, and Morgan in a tank and sweats. In fact, they had all been in sleeping clothes except for Spencer. _y/n_ expected that the young genius had stayed up all night. The sight of all of them with guns in such casual clothing would have been funny if it was in a dream or something. But this wasn’t a dream. They were isolated in the middle of nowhere. So far away from civilization that it took an hour for the coroner to arrive. _y/n_ thought back to her isolation theory. She looked forward to speaking with Obermann when she got the chance to see what he had to say. She could also get JJ to look over the personnel files with her for clues as well. After Emily dropped off a soda for Garcia, _y/n_ asked Garcia if she could describe what had happened in the morning and any clues she might have seen or observed. _y/n_ had her pen and pad ready when her friend began to speak. Finally, the police left, the coroner took the body, and the team changed into their professional clothes and assembled in the rec space. Obermann and all the workers minus the fourth victim were assembled. 

Obermann spoke first and said, “Alright, new rule. Teams of three only. No one moves alone, even to piss. No teams of two, teams of three. I’ve called corporate and am waiting for a response. If they tell us to leave today, we will. But until then we can still do our jobs. And if you can’t tell me. Before we get to today’s work, I’ll have Agent Hotchner speak to you. Listen to him and his team without any grumbling or complaints unless you want to be written up.”With that, Oberman stepped aside for Aaron. Hotch tried to make this quick. He could tell the men in front of him were angsty. He cleared his throat and said, “As Mr. Obermann said, I’m Agent Aaron Hotchner. I work for the FBI in the Behavioral Analysis  Unit. I and my team are here to find the person who is making this an even more dangerous place to work. I am sincerely sorry for your loss this morning. I and my team standing beside me will do everything we can to try and not allow something like that to happen again while we are here. If any of you see something off or suspicious, don’t hesitate to tell me, our Media Liaison, or anyone on the team. I promise we won’t get in your way. For now, that’s all.” Aaron stepped back and motioned for the team to move further back into the room as Obermann started giving the instructions for the day's labor. Aaron had cut out a lot of the formalities, his title, and the science behind the team's work. It wasn’t needed now. He had been speaking to hardened working men, not cops, and sounding fancy or professional wouldn’t make their opinions of him or the team any higher. As Obermann gave orders, Aaron similarly divvied up tasks for the team. Garcia, who had much recovered from her shocking morning would continue looking at the terror element and online leads. He and Morgan would look at the crime scenes. Rossi volunteered to watch the men at work and see if he saw anything that fit the profile. JJ, _y/n_, and Emily volunteered to look at the files of the employees again, as well as rewatching any relevant footage, and Spencer would work on a geographic profile if that was even possible in a space this small. Hotch, like Obermann, told his team that he wanted them in pairs. The events of the morning were a clear reminder that there was significant danger for everyone on the rig. 

The team worked tirelessly through the day. They all even missed breakfast and lunch. They reconvened at mid-day and shared what they had. Rossi had suspicions about two men, Baker and Price. Em, JJ, and _y/n_ had thoughts about three men: Slainfield, Parkins, and Jotenson. _y/n_ also had a bad feeling about Pete. However, Pete was standing by them so she didn’t say anything to the whole team. But once the man was gone, she approached Aaron. He was leaning over his and Rossi’s notes on the table, but he acknowledged her presence by turning his head to her for a moment. _y/n_ said, “I think that there’s something off about Pete. He seems to match the profile well and…” She paused momentarily and Hotch looked at her closely, saying, “And?” _y/n_ swallowed and said, “Maybe this is silly but he gives me a bad feeling.” Hotch nodded and said, “It’s not silly. We’ll keep an eye on him.” 

The team worked through the afternoon and into the evening. Every now and then they would update the group as they discovered new things. Morgan and Hotch had looked at the crime scene and the pictures of the victim. It was clear that this murder was faster and more reckless. It had happened in a more public place unlike the last three and there was less bruising which meant the death had been rushed. Hotch and Rossi made two hypotheses: one was that the killer was trying to show dominance to the team. To demonstrate that he could kill even with them watching. The second was that he was getting sloppy. He might be trying to show strength, but it was evident in the victim’s body that he was slipping. In the evening the team met for dinner with the rest of the workers. The BAU members all sat together at a table on the far side of the room. Clear cliques could be seen in the oil men as the group sat and chattered softly. None of the men looked at the team and they clearly didn’t want to be overheard. It was clear that the team's presence and the fact that a killer was among them was altering their behavior. As _y/n_ looked over the group and then to her friends it all suddenly felt like high school. And in a moment that felt like a bad teen romance, _y/n_ thought of the morning, before Garcia had shifted the course of events for the day with her discovery. _y/n_ had woken early. She wanted a shower even if she didn’t really need it. She had not expected to wake up warm and cozily tucked in Aaron’s arms with his face pressed into her hair. The comfort she found in his embrace knocked the senses out of her for a moment before she realized he was her boss and any feeling that might or might not been growing in her would be rejected. Not that she’d ever have the nerve to say or do anything. She liked her job too much to do something stupid. She liked Aaron too. As a colleague and friend, she wouldn’t want to make things awkward between them. _y/n_ came back to herself and wondered how she could navigate out of the small bed and his warm, strong arms to get to the showers. Just then Penelope had screamed and saved her from having to think about it. _y/n_ snapped back to reality as Emily said something to her. _y/n_ looked over at Prentiss and said, “Sorry, come again?” As she picked up her pizza for another bite. 

To call the food good would be hyperbole, but the team was so famished the cafeteria-grade food tasted amazing. The workmen moved to finish their tasks for the night before turning in. The team continued working for an hour or so before many members also turned in for the night. Perhaps it was the cramped space or the fact that the daylight faded quickly leaving the rig in darkness much of the time, or just the sounds of the waves that made them all a little more sleepy than usual. Emily, Garcia, _y/n_, and JJ were one of the groups to turn in early. _y/n_ could tell that Garcia was going to start asking her questions about what the night with Aaron had been like. To avoid having that personal conversation right now, _y/n_ faked a yawn to indicate that she was really sleepy, which she was. Her strategy worked and Garcia, who was actively going to ask _y/n_ about her night yesterday stopped herself realizing that her friend was tired. Each of the women moved to their rooms and got ready for bed. When the lights were off and _y/n_ was under the blanket and her breathing was the only sound in the room, she thought she heard a creaking from the corner of the small space. _y/n_ sat up, but there was obviously no one there. She lay back down and pulled the covers over her head like a little girl. The place unnerved her. It was like an isolated haunted British mansion with a vengeful ghost roaming the corridors. Except this ghost was real and would do more than scare you to death. _y/n_ let out a sigh at her silly thoughts. She cleared her head and actually focused on getting some rest. 

Aaron was not the last one up this time. That honor went to Derek who was chatting with Garcia about something technical that he wasn’t sure he fully understood. Hotch stood and excused himself. Aaron was smarter the second night, and he had set out a clean pair of pajamas and his toiletries for his shower night. Aaron grabbed the items and moved back to the shower room. Hotch stripped and moved into one of the communal showers. He pulled the frosted plastic curtain back for privacy. He turned on the water and flinched as the ice-cold water hit his skin. It took a moment before the warm water replaced the frigid. When the hot water did come, he let out a little sigh. He didn’t know where it had come from. He assumed it was from being so tired. From the real and present danger his team was in, and also that there had been a dead body in this very space many hours earlier. As he reflected, he thought, ‘These cases certainly make strange bedfellows of places.’ And it was true. Where hadn’t he seen a crime? Churches, dressing rooms, parks, campgrounds, strip clubs, showers, houses, houses, houses… Aaron tried to not focus on the morbidity of his job. He was actually thinking about the ‘bedfellows’ part of his thought. Because this case was making him have a strange bedfellow in _y/n_. In what world would something like this happen? In what twisted world was he so comfortable with it happening? He thought back to when he woke up holding _y/n_. Now Aaron actually stopped himself from groaning. ‘You’re tired,’ Aaron reassured himself. He more quickly worked through his routine of thoroughly cleaning his skin and washing his hair. After drying off with a towel and changing. He moved back into the room and settled into the bed. As he lay down, he looked at the metal ceiling painted an unimaginative hospital beige. He silently said, ‘You won’t hold _y/n_ tonight._’ He repeated it a few times. It was a technique he used with Jack when he had bad dreams. Aaron told his son that if you say something while you’re awake, like, “I won’t have a nightmare tonight,” that it will happen in your sleep too. Hotch softly chuckled at the fact that he was using a comforting technique for his son on himself. As his thoughts shifted to Jack, he slipped into sleep. 

It was the middle of the night, Aaron woke when he felt like all the air had been sucked from the room and a heavy weight seemed to press down on him. He shifted up and looked at _y/n_. He was surprised when he saw her eyes wide open apparently looking at the foot of the bed. He could tell something was off. Her body was stiff like a board. Aaron tried to get her to relax by gently shaking her shoulder and calling her name, but this had no response. Hotch swallowed and placed his fingers over her pulse. It was a bit elevated, but he could see her breathing normally. Her condition scared him, and he called her name again. After a moment _y/n_’s eyes shifted from the edge of the bed and up to the ceiling. Aaron knew there was nothing there, but he looked up at the flat surface anyway. He tried shaking her again. He was wondering if she was having a stroke, but the odd symptoms didn’t look like those of a stroke, and _y/n_ was far too young and healthy to have a stroke. He would have seen it in her medical history and not let her on the team. For another agonizing minute, _y/n lay still. _y/n_ seemed to snap out of whatever this episode was. She quite literally collapsed into the mattress, and she took large unsteady breaths like she was panicking or had been unable to breathe over the last few minutes. Aaron’s voice was filled with concern and worry, as he brushed his hand over her arm and said, _y/n_. What was that?” In a strained voice, _y/n_ said, “Lights. Give me a minute.” Hotch nodded, and he felt relieved hearing her voice, even if it did sound distressed. He leaned over to his side of the wall and flipped the light switch on. The low-level fluorescent glow of the overhead made Hotch blink a few times. When his eyes had adjusted, he watched _y/n_. Her eyes were closed and she was clearly doing some breathing techniques to calm herself and her nervous system down. Aaron’s hand briefly ghosted over her upright palm. For a moment he wanted the take it in his own hand, but he stopped himself. He grabbed at the sheets of the bed and made a fist with the fabric instead. After a few minutes, _y/n_ sat up. One of her legs was bent to her chest, and she placed her forehead in her right hand. Aaron cleared his throat and as if she just now remembered he was there, she turned her head to look at him with her forehead still in her hand. She looked so scared. Her eyes shone with it. After a final beat of silence, _y/n_ said, “Do you know what sleep paralysis is?” Her voice was slightly hoarse, lower than its normal register. Hotch thought about what he knew about the condition. He’d heard of it before, but never experienced it himself. Softly, he replied, “I have. Though I don’t know a lot about it.” _y/n_ nodded and then said, “Well now you’ve seen it.” Seeing _y/n_ like this pulled at his insides, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He moved his hand to the small of her back to provide some comfort. 

_y/n_ seemed to settle with his touch, and she took her head out of her hand. Aaron wanted, needed some answers. So as kindly as he could, he asked, “What is that like exactly? You were so stiff for about three minutes.” _y/n_’s brow pinched for a moment and she replied, “It’s like locked-in syndrome a bit. You’re aware, awake but there's no moving or being able to snap out of it. You’re trapped until the episode is over. People see, hear, or feel things. One or all of those things can happen.” Hotch’s mind went back to while the episode was happening. She had clearly been looking at something at the foot of the bed and then at the ceiling. He asked, “Do you see things?” _y/n_ nodded and said, “Yeah.” Aaron could see the discomfort as she thought about it. Aaron wasn’t going to press, but he did wonder what she had seen. His unspoken question was answered by _y/n_, who said, “For me, I… I see a man. He’s large and cloaked in a kind of shadow. Like his body is there but not there. He smiles at me but other than his mouth there’s no face.” _y/n_ swallowed thickly and said, “Normally he’s at the foot of my bed, but sometimes he’s near my face. Tonight he crawled up the wall and looked down at me from the ceiling.” While she spoke about the figure, her voice hitched and Aaron noticed the small sob she was trying to hide. Her description of sleep paralysis sounded horrible. His bouts of insomnia felt like nothing compared to what she described. It was an actual living nightmare. Hotch took a breath and started running a gentle circle on her back with his thumb. He wanted to know more. Like how often does this happen? Or if there’s something that causes these events. But right now he was more concerned about making sure _y/n_ was comfortable and felt safe. 

Aaron removed his hand from her back, and this made her look at him more intently. He first acknowledged how frightening that sounded, and he said, “I’m sorry you’ve gone through this. It sounds, scary. Is there anything you do that helps you calm down? Is there anything I can do to help? I could grab you a coffee, or give you space if you need.” _y/n_ gave Hotch one of those small half smiles that she flashed him when he was doing something for her that he didn’t need to exactly. She replied, with a more stable voice, “I, um actually think that coffee might make it worse. Trying to stay up and outlast the feelings doesn’t normally help with anything. But maybe some water would be nice.” Hotch nodded and turned toward the small nightstand on his side of the bed. He grabbed the water bottle that he had taken from dinner. He had only taken a sip or two, and he offered it over to _y/n_ saying, “Is this okay? I just had a sip, but I can get you a new one if you prefer.” _y/n_ chuckled lightly as she unscrewed the cap and took a drink. She really wasn’t worried about germs from Aaron. After a few sips, she put the cap back on and Aaron placed it back on the table. Aaron then asked, “Is there anything else?” _y/n_ continued looking at him and said, “Normally I just grab a weighted blanket and and try and get back to sleep and pray it doesn’t happen again.” The idea that something like this would happen more than once in a night was abhorrent to Hotch. He looked around the room for anything that might act like a weighted blanket even though there wasn’t anything of the kind around. Aaron’s brain came up with an idea and his mouth voiced the thought before he could stop himself. He said, “Maybe I can hold you? It’s not a weighted blanket, but maybe it could help?” There was a silence after the offer was out there. Both Aaron and _y/n_ were a bit surprised. Aaron bit the inside of his mouth at what he had said. He feared that he had crossed a line, and _y/n_ looked at him like she was surprised that he had offered. However, much to Hotch’s relief, she said, “I’d like that, actually.” Aaron nodded and softly replied, “Okay. Do you want me to turn off the lights?” _y/n_ nodded and laid back on the mattress. 

Aaron switched off the light and lay flush with the mattress as well. He wasn’t exactly sure how to start what he had offered without it being awkward or uncomfortable. So he started by just taking _y/n_’s hand in the darkness. He gave it a gentle squeeze, and she let out a breath at his touch. His hand trailed up her arm to her bicep where he ran his pointer and middle fingers up and down the area gently. He wanted to ensure that she was okay with this. After a minute of this, _y/n_ softly said, “Aaron, please.” Maybe it was the way he said his first name or the fact that he wanted to provide the comfort that gave him the courage to move his body close to hers. He placed a hand on her hip and asked, “Do you want to face my chest or face the wall?” Her comfort was most important to him. _y/n_ thought for a moment and said, “I’d like the face the wall.” Aaron hummed and positioned himself so his chest was against her back as she turned on her side. With his left arm, he wrapped his arm over her. It rested on her waistline. He didn’t add any pressure, but let the weight of his arm rest on the side of her body. _y/n_ could feel that he was tense; he might even be flexing. She didn’t mention this and after a few minutes, he relaxed like her. When he did this she could fully feel him pressed against her. The soft area of this stomach pressed against her lower back. Before she fell asleep she said, “Thanks Hotch.” With that, she slipped into oblivion. 

In the morning it wasn’t odd as they got up. Aaron checked in to see how she was, and _y/n_ said, “I’m alright. I rested pretty well thanks to you. I really appreciate it, Hotch.” Aaron nodded and more nonchalantly than he really felt he said, “I’m just happy that I could help.” _y/n_moved to grab her towel, her work clothes, and her toiletries bag. She stepped into the shower and told JJ good morning. The media liaison was humming some county song behind her privacy curtain and told _y/n_ “Good morning,” as well. _y/n_ and JJ moved to the rec room together. The rest of the team was grabbing breakfast. As soon as Garcia saw _y/n_, she knew something had happened the previous night. The technical analyst and Emily approached _y/n_, and Penelope asked her, “Baby, did something happen? You don’t look well.” _y/n_ shook her head and quietly told her friends, “I had another episode last night. It was a lot worse than the recent ones.” Garcia looked at _y/n_ sympathetically and pulled her into a hug saying, “I’m so sorry, _y/n_. It’s gotta be this place. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies too.” Aaron watched on as Em, Garcia, and _y/n_ had a quiet conversation near the serving table. He could just hear some of their conversation, and for a moment, he felt left out because _y/n_ hadn’t told him about her sleep paralysis but had clearly let Penelope and Prentiss in on the secret. Aaron realized that immediately that was stupid because the conversation about her sleeping habits didn’t normally just pop up around him. What would she possibly say, “Oh yeah, every now and then a literal sleep demon shows up by my bed, and he doesn’t have a face. Also, I can’t move when it happens. And it could happen anytime I sleep.” Aaron chastised himself and stabbed another bite of eggs onto his fork. At least now he knew about one of the challenges that seemed to haunt _y/n_ outside the job, and he now would do what he could to make her life easier while they were on cases. 

The day moved quickly as some leads dropped cold and the pressure was on to get results. There hadn’t been a new attack which indicated that either the unsub was getting scared, or the fact that the team and the workmen being in teams of two and three had stopped them from being able to act. If the pattern of the last two killings heald, the unsub was likely to attack again today. During the afternoon, Spencer and _y/n_ were discussing her theory and the idea that the unsub was impotent. Spencer said, “What if he’s not important at all, but has a pain fetish or something?” _y/n_ looked at Spencer with apprehension, and she replied, “But the impotence matches with the profile. The bat or blunt object is clearly a replacement for the phallus. If the unsub has a pain fetish I think he would take much more time with the victim. Granted in a place like this, there can’t be a lot of time spent on each victim. I’m not sure, now it feels off.” Spencer leaned against the wall and said, “Let’s re-examine that part of the profile in a bit. I have some thoughts about your cabin fever theory.” _y/n_ gave the genius a small smile and said, “Shot. I’m all ears.” What both agents were missing about the first subject of discussion was that it was possible that more than one person was influencing the way the victims were being killed. 

It was late, again and Em and _y/n_ were calling it a night. _y/n_ had tried to get to bed before Hotch while they shared the bed. She hoped that if she was asleep when he got back, he would be more comfortable because they wouldn’t have to have any potential awkward ‘good nights’ or shifting around in the bed to try and get comfortable. _y/n_ for one, took what felt like half an hour to find a comfy position and actually get to sleep. The hallway to their room was cloaked in oddly long shadows. For a second Emily thought she heard a dripping sound and looked around for the source of the noise, but she couldn’t see anything from the darkened hall. Emily looked over to _y/n_ and said, “I don’t know about you, but I want to get the fuck off this rig.” _y/n_ nodded in agreement and said, “That gets an Amen from me.” As Prentiss approached her door, she fished for her keys and muttered, “Shit,” under her breath. _y/n_ looked over to Emily and asked, “What is it?” Emily said, “I left my keys on the table.” _y/n_ looked to her friend and then to her own door. It was only ten or so feet away and Em said, “You go to bed. I’ll be fine by myself getting my keys. JJ was planning on heading to bed soon too, so I’ll just walk back with her.” _y/n_ said, “You’re sure?” Prentiss nodded and both women headed their separate ways. Emily moved with determination, wanting to get to bed as quickly as possible. 

_y/n_ moved down the hallway and passed the showers. Once she was past the site of the latest victim, a figure emerged from the entrance behind her. _y/n_ wasn’t aware of the man’s presence until he spoke, saying, “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be walking alone.” _y/n_ whipped around and saw the security guard, Joe. _y/n_ suddenly felt a dread build in her stomach, and Joe stepped toward her saying, “Let me walk you to your room at least.” Just as _y/n_ was about to say something, the man lunged at her. His strong hands found their grip on her neck and she choked as he restricted her airway and pushed her harshly against the metal wall. _y/n_ tried to fight the unsub, but her lack of air was making it hard. In an act of desperation, she used her right hand to find the man’s groin and she took his manhood in her hand squeezing the area tightly. Joe removed his hands from her body and said, “Bitch,” as he moved back covering his groin with his hands. _y/n_ tried to catch her breath. She pulled for the gun in her holster with shaking fingers, but Joe was quicker with his nightstick. As he extended the weapon it gave a little swishing sound. Before _y/n_ could fully protect her face with her hands the nightstick made painful contact on the side of her head. _y/n_ reeled, and she saw stars for a second. _y/n_ tried to stay upright, but the pain and confusion had her collapse against the wall. As she crumpled, she could hear Joe say, “How fucking dare you say I’m impotent. You’re going to regret that comment you little bitch.” _y/n_ closed her eyes as she saw the man’s hand holding the weapon raise and lower with considerable force. 

Hotch moved down the hallway and stairs that led to the first level of the rig. He was in desperate need of a shower and a distraction. The day had been rough on him. He had had to speak to Obermann about the men suddenly acting different, even with hostility toward the team. They were obviously all on edge, but that didn’t give them a right to badmouth his team. He had also had a very choppy call with Strauss and Mr. Ridgewell. Both were disappointed that he hadn’t found anything yet. Aaron had to explain to Ridgewell specifically how unique a case this was. Aaron wondered why Erin hadn’t told the Commissioner this information before. Was his boss angry with him as well? Making him do this sort of soft groveling as a sort of punishment? To prove that he and the team were valuable? Aaron had also had a long conversation with Garcia about more messages that had been shared from the alleged foreign agents. Hotch was beginning to think that this part of the case was all a ruse by the unsub to distract the team’s time and energy. As Hotch got lower on the stairs, he heard a snapping sound and the small moan of pain that came after a particularly loud cracking sound had his hand on his gun in an instant. Aaron quietly moved down the final steps and he saw the younger security guard leaning over a prone figure that he recognized as _y/n_. Aaron authoritatively said, “I have a gun pointed at the back of your skull. Unless you want your brains decorating these walls, I’d put your hands behind your head and slowly stand.” Unfortunately for Aaron, Joe had heard Hotch’s footsteps and had grabbed his knife, which he kept hidden in his back pocket, and pressed it close to _y/n_’s neck. Joe called back, “I wouldn’t if I were you, Agent Hotchner. I have my knife pressed to your agent's neck. So unless you want her bleeding out from her carotid artery, I’d put down your gun, and kick it toward me.” Aaron clenched his jaw but replied, “Alright. I’m doing it now.” Hotch would never jeopardize a member of his team. The fact that he couldn’t see how hurt _y/n_ was and the fact that she wasn’t moving almost made him sick. He slowly moved his center of gravity down and set his handgun on the cold smooth floor. Aaron pushed the weapon toward Joe. The unsub felt behind himself until his hands found the gun. Joe moved to face Aaron, dropped the knife, and grabbed his nightstick instead. Joe commanded Aaron to raise his hands and put them behind his head. Hotch did as told and when the unsub was a foot away from Aaron, Joe quickly raised his nightstick and hit Aaron on the side of the face. The blow wasn’t well aimed, and it didn’t have as much power as he had used with _y/n_, but it was still enough to incapacitate the FBI agent for a moment. As Hotch slumped against the wall, Joe pushed past him and ran to an external door at the end of the hallway.

After a second, Aaron came back to himself and he clicked on his open communication channel with the team and he said, “The unsub is Joe Pabst. He just attacked _y/n_. He exited the southwest door. The channel came to life as Aaron moved toward _y/n_ on unsteady feet. He collapsed next to _y/n_ and checked her breathing and pulse. It was clear that she was unconscious and battered, but her pulse seemed alright. She seemed to be struggling to breathe due to the trauma on her nose. Aaron couldn’t tell if it was broken or not, but the blood leaking from it and the bruising already there told him that it was hard for her to breathe through it. Thankfully Rossi and Garcia came to his side in a second. Rossi motioned that he would stay with _y/n_ and at seeing this, Aaron got to his feet to pursue the unsub. He listened as Derek, Spencer, and Emily approached the man who had harmed _y/n_. Outside on the slick side of the rig, Aaron fought the wind. He moved up to the top platform and saw Derek and Spencer in a stand-off with the unsub who was on the rigging of the derrick itself. A light shone out, highlighting the unsubs form standing high above the waves. Hotch lined up a shot with the second gun he wore on his left ankle. Just as he was preparing to fire an incapacitating shot, Joe moved to the edge of the small platform, and by some twist of fate, or a simple design flaw, the chain railing slipped from one of its posts, and because Joe was leaning his weight on the barrier, he flailed wildly before plummeting into the choppy sea below. Aaron called Morgan on the secure channel and said, “Go see if you can find Joe. I’ll wake Obermann and let him know what’s just happened.” Derek confirmed Hotch’s directions. As much as Aaron would like the unsub to drown, it was still his job to make sure monsters like Joe faced the full weight of justice if possible. 

A half-hour later Aaron was back by _y/n_’s side. Rossi had moved _y/n_ to the rec room and the travel medical evacuation team was en route. _y/n_ hadn’t woken yet and Aaron feared a bad concussion or worse, something like a brain bleed from the head trauma she had received. Aaron also couldn’t deny that he was feeling unwell. The lights were a bit bright for him, but he ignored his own pain to be seated next to _y/n_. When the helicopter came, Rossi insisted that Aaron ride with _y/n_ to the nearest hospital because he might also need medical care. Hotch acquiesced and boarded the helicopter with the paramedics and pilot. The sun was just rising above the horizon line as the chopper moved up and over where the Alaskan sea met the cold,  hard land. At the hospital Aaron reluctantly submitted himself to an exam, but he only had thoughts for _y/n_ who was seen a few rooms down. 

When _y/n_ woke a few hours later, her head pounded in pain. Even though she was hurting, she could sense that she was somewhere new. Her last memories were of Joe approaching her. As someone near her shifted, she opened her eyes and tried to see through the glare of her blurry vision. Aaron sat up as _y/n_ stirred. His head was lightly bandaged to stop the bleeding from his temple. _y/n_ struggled to say, “It was Joe.” Aaron nodded and said, “Yeah. Joe and Pete, but we can talk about that later. I’m going to call the doctor for you.” As Aaron waited for Dr. Ramirez to come and check in on _y/n_ he looked her over again. Her face was deeply bruised. There were other sites of trauma on her body including a fractured wrist and some bruised ribs. The doctors assumed that she had a grade III concussion due to the fact that she had been unconscious for as long as she had. Hotch could see the pain in her eyes, but even so, she said, “It’s nice to have someone one I really like be beside my bad instead of shadow man.” _y/n_ cringed slightly from the pain and how stupid ‘shadow man,’ sounded to her. She had never named her sleep paralysis demon. She refused to give it an identity. She looked at Aaron who was also a bit damaged. She wanted him to hold her again, but due to the fact that they were in a hospital, and he was her boss, that seemed a bit implausable. So she extended her hand out to him. Aaron took it in both of his hands, and his calloused fingers moved gently over her knuckles and palm. Before she closed her eyes against the brightness of the room, she saw a ghost of a smile on Hotch’s face. It always showed up in the crow's feet by his eyes. 

A day and a half later, the team was headed back home. Joe’s body still hadn’t been found in the rough sea. It was possible that it may never be recovered. Aaron was fine with this. Pete, who had influenced Joe had been taken into custody and was awaiting a hearing. The doctors had recommended a three-day leave of absence for Aaron and a week-long recovery period for _y/n_ for both of their healing. Aaron was going to insist on a longer break for _y/n_. And if he was medically forced from the office, that should give the team a bit of a reprieve as well. As the team settled on the jet, Aaron found himself seated next to _y/n_. Discretely, his left hand found its place close to her thigh. The tips of his fingers softly touching _y/n_’s upper leg. _y/n_ seemed to be asleep, and Aaron looked over her face which was bandaging on her nose, crown, and temple. At his touch, _y/n_ shifted her body towards his in her sleep. The part of Aaron that was growing fonder and fonder for _y/n_ contentedly filled his chest. He would have to do some self-reflection once he was home about these feelings. Once his hand was a bit more firmly planted on _y/n_’s leg, Hotch thought about how demons really were real. Either those who showed up unwanted in horrifying waking nightmares, or people like Joe, who had been influenced by the older, isolated, and impotent Pete, who had told his protege to enact violence for him. But as  Aaron looked over the dimmed jet cabin at his team --all of whom were asleep except for Garcia and Rossi. Aaron thought of them as his gaze returned to _y/n_. Yes, demons were real, but he was there to take care of them, whatever form they took. And that gave him the strength to keep going.

#criminal minds #ssa aaron hotchner #aaron hotcher #reader insert #aaron x reader #Aaron x y/n #hotch x y/n #self insert #cm #emily prentiss #spencer reid #derek morgan #jj criminal minds #david rossi #only one bed #gothic story #criminal minds x reader #protective hotch #hotch drabble #hotch blurb #this is was longer than I planned #i hope you like it #hotch comfort #hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader

[cntctchmnw]

14 May 2024

For the first time since she left 9 months ago, I've truly found my way back to the loneliness that suffocated me throughout my youth. I worry that the piece of me she took when she walked away was the one that had been keeping me alive. My body went numb and inert when she walked out. The only thing I've allowed myself to feel is heartbreak; if not from her, from someone else. I've been so busy grieving people that my body has had no time to grasp that they are gone. When all you can think of is why they left and why this happened and if they'll ever come back, you will never possess the true awareness to realise they're gone. I keep them alive through nostalgia so I never have to let them go. But they are gone, and I am back where I started. I need a friend, I need a soft hand to reach out of our bedsheets searching for me at night. I've grown so accustomed to falling asleep skin-to-skin with someone I love that I'm unsure how I ever managed to sleep alone.

I walked past a river last week that reminded me of the psychotic episode I had at 18 that urged me to drown myself. I used to fantasise about overdosing on a sedative and letting my body float away down a large body of water until they found me two weeks later and pulled me offshore. My brain went on autopilot and my legs were moving as if they'd been given orders from somewhere outside of my body. I'd fade out of consciousness without realising until I was further down the street than I'd last remembered being. Some small part of me had awoken to remind me that I hadn't left a note but I was at the mercy of something much larger than myself that would not let me turn around. Almost all of my memories exist in first-person but I watch this one from beside myself as if I'm following her down the street in curiosity. When I got to the lake a tree had fallen down at the entrance that was too large for me to climb or see over. I cried hysterically and walked back home and my memory stops there. I have no recollection of the weeks or moments leading up to it, just the complete disconnect from reality and the need to walk into the water and hold my head under it until everything stopped.

I try to forgive the people I love the way God forgives me but I'm not God. I'm scared and alone again and I want someone to sit with me. It hurts to relentlessly forgive and love from afar people who you once slept chest-to-chest with. Everyone I've ever loved has had the same hands. Big and soft and tanned with skin around the knuckles that's darker than everywhere else. I spend hours tracing the lines etched in their skin but it's never enough. I only know how to see people who don't want to be seen.

#diary #journal #journalling #poetry #prose #spilled ink #longing #love #poem #spilled words #lit #literature #on love #on loss #words words words #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing community

[zuko-always-lies]

Azula-Katara AU idea (or: Katara runs into an Azula who has changed a lot in some ways and not very much in others)

I don’t think I ever detailed this AU idea despite playing around with it for a long time, since I could never quite make it work, but here it is:

The idea is that Azula disappeared not that long after the war.  It’s now several years later, and many think she’s dead(and it’s whispered in the Fire Nation that Zuko murdered her).  Meanwhile, the Fire Nation is slowly descending into civil war due to unhappiness with Zuko’s policies, and some suspect that Azula is leading one of the factions attempting to overthrow him.

Katara is traveling via ship (to the NWT? to Caldera?), but her ship gets caught in an awful storm and driven into the breakers offshore of a remote part of the Fire Nation. It disintegrates in the power of the storm, and everyone but her is killed. She’s badly injured and knocked unconscious, but is unexpectively rescued as she’s driven toward shore. In fact, the rescue was exceptionally dangerous and required great physical and bending ability to pull it off, but it takes quite a while for Katara to find out what exactly happened.

When Katara comes too, she in a hut and her wounds have been bandaged, but her injuries badly restrict her movement. Soon, Azula returns to check on her. Katara is intensely hostile and suspicious, but her being incapacitated means she has to rely on Azula.

Azula, meanwhile, makes it clear that she strongly dislikes Katara(whose name she struggles to remember) for the traumatic experience she suffered at Katara’s hands, but says that, from Azula’s perspective, the fact that the Fire Nation and Water Tribes are no longer clearly at war means that Katara can be catagorized as an injured, shipwrecked foreigner, and she has a clear obligation and duty to aid people in that catagory.  Azula makes it clear that she would love to dump the responsibility of nursing Katara back to health on literally anyone else, but they are stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by difficult terrain. No one lives remotely close, and it will be a long time before Katara is well enough to hike out.  Although Katara’s healing can help, she has several broken bones and other serious injuries, and those take a long to heal.

Thus, Azula is stuck taking care of Katara for the foreseable future, even though they both dislike each other and Katara has zero trust for Azula.  What Katara doesn’t know (but might eventually pick up on) is that Azula is seriously depressed, along with being confused and broken by what has happened over the last several years. Losing the war and everything else made her doubt everything, and she’s struggled to make sense of everything as she tried to survive.* Azula came out here, into the wilderness, since the area is known to have ruins of one of ancient predecessors of the Fire Nation and is reputed to be a center of spiritual energy.* She wanted to mediate on the meaning of firebending and on the meaning of life. However, she just felt empty and was on the verge of giving up on everything, until Katara showed up.

I wasn’t quite sure where this fic would go after here, aside from Azula and Katara gradually warming up to each other; nothing I thought of for an ending ever quite worked. 

Note that I always thought of this as an enemies to friends AU, not an enemies to lovers one. The reason I chose Katara as the shipwreck victim here is that: 1. I wasn’t interested in Aang or Sokka’s dynamics with Azula, and Aang would be too trusting and positive in any case.

2. I’m not sure that the Azula we see here would rescue Zuko or spend significant time nursing him back to health. She has massive beef with him, far more than she has with any other character, and the temptation to just let him die would be massive. In any case, the story would be taken over by Zuko-Azula dynamics.

3. I don’t think Toph or Suki really have that much beef with Azula, and Azula doesn’t really have beef with them.  They might be a little distrustful, but that’s it.

4. Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee have a complex relationship with each other and a lot issues, but I don’t think either Mai or Ty Lee would be that surprised or shocked by Azula saving their lives and helping them. Moreover, the situation would become about her personal relationship with her friend, not about Azula’s sense of duty and responsibility.

5. Azula has serious beef with Katara, and Katara has serious beef with Azula. A lot of the fic is about Katara very much struggling to understand why Azula of all people would make significant sacrifices to help her.

*Azula really still feels that no cares about her or ever cared about her. That’s not necessarily true.

**Note that Azula has a significant quantity of money and supplies that she was able to purchase from money she had secretly stashed away before the end of the war.

Anyone who wants to write something inspired by this is, as always, welcome to do so. And anyone who wants to comment on this idea is also more than welcome to do so!

#Azula #Katara #AU idea #atla idea #azula redemption #it's complicated #avatar the last airbender #atla #atla au

[chasingmidnights]

An Offshore Love - Part Two

Title: Delicate 

Summary: While on the job, you made yourself one rule: no dating. But when you meet Ari, you consider throwing that rule out the window. But will you? 

Warnings: First things first, this is 18+, minors DNI!! Things to look out for in this part would include: Lee being a bit of a jerk; Ari Levinson (yes, he’s a warning); some implied sexual content; minor cursing; and I think that’s everything. I apologize if I missed anything but you are responsible for what you read and your own media consumption. I do not claim to be a professional writer, any and all mistakes are my own; nothing is beta read. 

Wordcount: 3,941

You stood off to the side with Jake as Lee gave the next crew their briefing and their assignments for the day. You listened to how he spoke to the men and you cringed internally with the way he talked to his crew. No wonder this rig was in rough shape, they had a manager who thought they were disposable and easily replaced. Lee’s southern drawl barked out orders and as you glanced out to the men, you could see the life being sucked out of them the longer Lee talked. This isn’t the first time that you’ve seen this and you made several mental notes about Lee and his behavior, you would be discussing with him at a later time. As you stood off to the side, you could feel the crew’s curiosity as you caught several of the men glancing your way. You looked down at your watch and found yourself wondering how much longer Lee was going to talk before he finally mentioned you and why you were here at The Jupiter. Lee was in the middle of handing out orders when one of the crew members interrupted him. 

“Who’s the skirt and her lap dog?” 

You had to keep a straight face as Jake stifled a laugh and Lee rolled his eyes at the interruption. 

“Well, if you had waited a few more minutes for me to finish my briefing Curtis, you would’ve been introduced.” Lee snapped back, narrowing his gaze. 

You wanted to slap Lee for the way he talked to his men. Sure the guy had interrupted, but Lee could’ve been the better man and not have been so rude to him. You didn’t blame them for being so curious, you had been standing off to the side for nearly twenty minutes. You hoped that the other rig drillers weren't as uncompassionate as Lee, a bad manager can be the sole cause alone for a crew not to care and to not give their one hundred percent. 

“But since you’re asking, these two are here from Baizen Oil Industries, hopefully to get your asses whipped back into shape.” Lee introduced before he motioned for you and Jake to come over. 

“Thank you, Mr. Bodecker, although I’m not sure I would’ve exactly phrased it like that.” You said as you took front and center. You introduced yourself before you introduced Jake as your assistant. “Mr. Baizen informed us that this is one of the more problematic offshore oil rigs that the company owns and my assistant and I are here to find out why. Jake and I are here to check on quality of life, to make sure safety protocols are up to date and possibly rearrange crew and management if we feel it necessary.” 

“My quality of life just got better with you being here, sweetheart!” One of the crew members shouted, causing a few of the others to chuckle. 

You were about to put that man in his place when his comment was quickly followed by a groan as another crew member slapped him on the back of the head. 

“Show the lady some respect, Lloyd,” The other man growled. He then gave you a small nod for you to continue. 

As the two of you made eye contact, you almost forgot where you were for a moment. Sure, you had seen blue eyes before but his were different. His reminded you of the ocean, that deep blue color and you had a hard time looking away from the man. You cleared your throat before you started talking again, bringing your attention back to the whole group. 

“Right, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, there are a few things that I won’t allow. I won’t allow any form of disrespect.” You paused for a moment as you shot the man, Lloyd, a look before you continued. “I will also not tolerate laziness or tardiness. At the end of my time here, I hope to turn this whole rig around and make it less problematic for everyone’s benefits.” 

“And what makes you so qualified?” The man with the ocean eyes asked, crossing his strong arms across his chest. You couldn’t help but notice that as he did that, the material of his shirt bulged from his muscular arms. 

“Well, Mr.?” You started.

“Levinson. Ari Levinson.” Blue eyes introduced himself. 

“Mr. Levinson, that’s an excellent question. I've been working for Baizen Oil Industries for the last ten years and the last five years going around to different rigs and doing exactly this kind of work.” You did your best to sound as confident as possible but with the way Ari was staring at you, it was hard.

The small, barely noticeable smirk on the corner of his mouth to his piercing stare caused a warmth to form in your body. You hoped that as you stared back at him, he couldn’t tell that he was having an affect on you. 

“Alright you lazy lot, time to get back to work.” Lee finally said, interrupting the moment you and Ari were having. 

The group of men then dispersed and headed off to do their jobs for the day. You let out a small sigh as you broke eye contact from Arri as he turned to leave, however the feeling that he had given you lingered. Your thoughts started to wander but you were quickly pulled out of them when Lee spoke up again. 

“Ready for a day filled with meetings and training?” 

You internally groaned at having to be in meetings all day, but since this was your job, you knew you had to suck it up. Besides, it was either this or being stuck at a desk back at the main office. But after meeting Ari, you would much rather be daydreaming about him, but since that wasn’t an option, you forced a smile and answered. 

“Lead the way, Mr. Bodecker.” 

After a long day of meetings and a few different safety training sessions, you were glad to get a moment to yourself. Well, almost a moment to yourself, Jake’s typing reminded you that you weren’t alone just yet. You had just finished up your last meeting and wanted nothing more than to take off your shoes and put your feet up. As you pinched the bridge of your nose, you tried to disassociate for a moment, but when Jake spoke up, you were brought back to reality. 

“You alright there, boss?” 

You let out a small sigh as you released the bridge of your nose. “Yeah, just been a long day.” 

Jake nodded, seemingly accepting your answer. “It’s definitely been a long day, I don’t think we even breaked for lunch.” 

As you thought about what Jake said, you knew he was right, especially when your stomach started to growl. A small laugh escaped you and you couldn’t believe you worked through lunch. 

“Well, why don’t you go ahead and head to dinner while I clean up here? I’ll join you shortly.” You suggested as you started to organize and clean up. 

“You sure boss? I can stay and help.” Jake offered as he watched you. 

You had just started making different piles as you sorted through each piece of paper, you had gone through a good chunk of the rig’s books during some of these meetings. “I’m positive. Besides, you don’t know my system.” 

“I’m a fast learner.” Jake countered, a bit curious as to what your system was exactly. 

“Really Jake, I’m fine. Maybe I’ll teach you another day, but I really just want to get this done.” You said as you continued to sort. 

“Alright, alright, if you insist. I’ll see you in a bit.” Jake said as he packed up his laptop and started to leave. 

You gave Jake a small smile as he left, you couldn’t help but appreciate his willingness to learn. Honestly though, if you had taken him up on his offer to help, it would’ve taken twice as long to sort through everything. As you sorted, you tried not to think about anything in particular, wanting to give your brain a break after the long day that you just had. However, you didn’t exactly succeed as Ari popped into your mind, which didn’t exactly complain about. Ari was probably the only good thing about this oil rig, even though you barely knew the man. You couldn’t help but find him extremely attractive and exactly your type. The six foot, five inches of a man and he was big and burly as well. His long, shaggy brown hair and full beard suited him well, you especially like the beard. You wondered what it would feel like to have his face in between your legs and his beard rubbing - no, stop that. You quickly scolded yourself for that type of thinking. Years ago, you gave yourself one rule, no dating any of the men you meet while working on these oil rigs. A heavy sigh fell from your lips as you reminded yourself of this, this was going to be an interesting time here on The Jupiter. 

When you were finally done organizing, you collected your things and put them in your bag before locking the door behind you as you left the office. You did your best to memorize your way to the offices so that you could get back to the Hub on your own. However, as you turned a corner and walked down the dimly lit hall, you opened the door when you reached it, but it wasn’t the right door. It opened up to what looked like the stem of the oil rig. You could just barely make out a metal staircase that was attached to the concrete wall and it spiraled down to the bottom. Wind howled through the funnell, giving you goosebumps but you couldn’t help yourself and found yourself peeking further into the concrete leg. After all of these years, you had never actually been inside one of these things, you knew they were hollow but that’s all you knew. You were just about to take a step forward to take another look, when you were suddenly being pulled back, causing you to gasp as you were pinned to the wall, an unhappy Ari glaring at you. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, uh? Do you realize you could’ve gotten hurt going in there?” Ari’s nostrils flared as he tightly held onto you. 

You couldn’t help but feel incredibly small right now as Ari scolded you like a child. 

“Sorry, I got lost.” 

Ari scoffed at your answer as he let go of you. “Where were you trying to get too?” 

“Back to the Hub for dinner. I got turned around.” You explained, watching Ari as h took a step back and ran his fingers through his hair. 

Ari took a deep breath and exhaled it with a huff. “Come on, Rogue, follow me and I’ll take you safely back to the Hub.” 

You scrunched up your face at the nickname that he just gave you before you corrected him and told him your name again. 

“I know, I didn’t forget. I like Rogue better.” Ari replied with a smirk. “Now come on, let’s get going.” 

Butterflies started to form in your stomach, he had given you a nickname. Granted, you had no idea where it came from or the meaning behind it and you made a mental note to ask him, but it was a nickname nonetheless. As Ari led you back to the Hub, you did your best to memorize the path that he took, but he moved so quickly and effortlessly that your main focus was to keep up with him. As the two of you were walking through the rig, you ended up tripping over a raised threshold. However, before you fell on your face, Ari had caught you. 

“Careful, you alright?” Ari asked as he helped you over the threshold. 

“Yeah, just clumsy I guess.” You said as you looked up at him, enjoying the feeling of being in his arms. 

For a moment though, it felt as if time stood still as the two of you looked into each other’s eyes. Your heart began to race and you thought it was going to burst out of your chest with how fast it was racing. You had never felt such a connection or so strongly towards a guy before, at least not in a really long time. Also for a moment, it felt as if the two of you were about to kiss, but instead of that, Ari pulled away and let go of you. A wave of disappointment washed over you and you did your best not to let it show. 

“You’re gonna be trouble, aren’t you Rogue?” Ari asked before he stood tall and combed his fingers through his thick hair. 

You cleared your throat, not knowing how to respond to his question even though you had a feeling it was a rhetorical one. So, you thought it best to change the subject. 

“So, how long have you been working here?” 

A small smirk formed on the corner of his mouth. “This way.” Ari said as he pointed left. “And I’ve been working here for about eleven years.” 

“Do you like it?” You asked, genuinely curious. 

Ari glanced over at you, not expecting you to make this kind of conversation. “It’s not horrible. The job pays well and every couple of weeks I get to go to the mainland to recharge, see family if I want to.” 

You nod your head along to what he was saying. “How do you feel about Mr. Bodecker as your manager?” 

Ari stopped at your question before he spun around to face you. Once you saw the look on his face, you could tell that he was upset. 

“What’s your game here?” He practically growled as his eyes narrowed at you. 

You’re a bit taken aback at his reaction. “M-my game? I was only curious. If you ask me, he seems like a complete ass.” 

Ari chuckled at your comment. “You’re not wrong about that, but around here, if you know what’s best for ya, you keep your mouth shut.” 

The situation was a lot worse than you thought. 

“Right, got it.” You said with a nod, dropping the matter almost instantly. 

The rest of the way to the Hub was quiet. You thought about what Ari had said and pondered how to move forward, it was clear that Lee Bodecker was the problem. 

The passion and pleasure that you were feeling almost felt too good to be true as you and Ari kissed each other hungrily. The feeling of his large hands roaming your body, squeezing you here and there, causing your body to heat up with every touch. Ari had you pinned against the door of his sleeping quarters and you were loving every minute of it, you didn’t want it to end. You let out a squeal as he picked you up and you instinctively wrapped your legs around his waist. You weren’t sure why or when you decided to throw out your rule but at this exact moment, you really didn’t care as Ari gently laid you down on the mattress. The two of you pulled apart for a brief moment and as the two of you looked longingly at each other, it felt as if time ceased to exist. You knew things would be delicate after this but frankly, you just didn’t care. As things were about to continue, an annoying alarm started to go off. You squinted at Ari confused as to why there was an alarm going off. You leaned into his touch as he cupped your cheek, he placed a gentle kiss on your forehead before he spoke up, his voice deep and raspy. 

“It’s time to wake up, sweetheart.” 

“What if I don’t wanna?” You questioned as you tried to steady your breathing. 

Ari smirked, letting out a small chuckle before placing another kiss to your forehead. “You don’t really have a choice, sweetheart.” 

You groaned as your dream started to fade and your eyes were met with a dimly lit room. You immediately felt cold as you were no longer in Ari’s embrace, even if it was just a dream. The alarm was still going off and you wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. A heavy sigh left your lips before you reached over to finally shut it off, slamming it a little harder than you meant too. 

“God, was wondering when you were going to shut that awful thing off.” Jake commented as you saw already ready for the day. 

“How long have you been up?” You asked as you sat up, stretching as you did. 

Jake shrugged his shoulders. “About half an hour.” 

“Early riser?” You questioned as you started to get up and ready yourself. 

“Kinda. But honestly, I just don’t sleep well outside of my own bed.” Jake answered. He then stood up, grabbing his backpack as he did before continuing. “Room’s yours, I’ll see you down at breakfast.” 

You gave Jake a nod of the head as he left the room before you laid back on your bed. You let out a groan as you ran a hand down your face once Jake had closed the door. 

“Maybe a cold shower this morning.” You mumbled to yourself as you sat up again and started to get ready for the long day ahead. 

Later that day, you and Jake found yourselves being shown some of the training that the men have to go through. As you walked in on one of the training sessions, you found Ari instructing a course and you found yourself staring at the man, remembering your dream from that morning. For a moment, you had almost forgotten where you were and you had to pull yourself out of that headspace. As you watched Ari giving the instructions, you could tell that the men that he was teaching were following his every word. You made several notes and scribbled a few of them down on your notepad. While you were writing down your notes, you could feel a pair of eyes on you. You did your best to be as subtle as possible as you glanced up and you were met with Ari’s beautiful blue eyes looking at you. You quickly tore your gaze away from him to finish your notes, but that didn’t stop the butterflies from forming. How in the world did this man have such a powerful grip on you? You were usually pretty level headed about this sort of thing but for some reason, Ari was different. You wanted to throw all caution to the wind and not care how complicated or delicate things might become afterwards. 

You hadn’t realized how lost in your thoughts you’d been until Jake nudged you in your side. The small class that Ari had been teaching a safety training was being dismissed and the supervisor who had been showing you and Jake around was now talking to Ari. You couldn’t help but feel as if the two men were talking about you and Jake as they whispered and glanced your way every so often. 

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Jake leaned over and whispered into your ear. 

“Shush, they’re coming back.” You answered quickly, nudging him in the side, like he did you moments ago. 

The original supervisor walked right by you and Jake and you were about to say something when Ari stopped in front of the two of you. 

“So, I guess I’m taking over for Mr. Humphrey, so you better keep up, don’t get lost, and don’t get hurt.” Ari said as he then pushed past the two of you. 

Throughout the morning, Ari showed you various stations and talked about the importance of each one. You even witnessed a few of the men jumping off of the rig in full scuba equipment to work on something below. When you watched them jump, a shiver crawled down your spine, sure you could visit offshore oil rigs and even stay on them, but you couldn’t do half of what these men do on a daily basis. Every now and then, Jak would make small comments of wonderment and even asked Ari a few questions. As Ari went through the basic day-to-day with you and Jake, you made several notes, both mentally as well as short-handing some notes on your notepad.You also did your best not to stare at Ari’s ass as you walked behind him, though it was hard, especially since he had a masterpiece of an ass. 

When lunch time came around, Ari said we could take a break but he was going to continue with his work. You couldn’t help but admire that, you could tell he was a hard worker and you could see him being a great leader. Jake had already started to head back to the Hub, when you decided to stay behind and talk to Ari. 

“Ari, can we talk?” You asked as you placed your folder that contained your notepad in front of you, holding it against your chest. 

Ari stopped and turned to face you, placing his hands on his hips. ‘God, he looked amazing,’ you thought to yourself as he did that. 

“Sure, about what? What you’ve been making little notes on, Rogue?” 

It was like he read right through you as he took a step forward. Your words seemed to fail you and all you could do was nod your head. Ari reached for your folder and took it from you, thankfully it only had today’s notes in it. Your heart raced as Ari read through your notes, his face unreadable and you felt like a fish trapped in a net. 

“You really think all of this about me? You barely know me.” Ari said as he finally handed you your folder back. 

You cleared your throat as you finally found your voice again. “I have a pretty good judgment of character, part of what makes me good at my job.” 

Ari nodded his head at your answer as he took another step forward. “You really think I would make a good leader?” 

“I do. The men seem to respect you and you seem to actually care about what you do and that things are done correctly.” You managed to get out, you’re not sure how because it felt like you had peanut butter on the roof of your mouth. 

You’re not quite sure how it happened, and not that you were complaining, but you found yourself in a similar situation from your dream this morning. Ari had you pinned against the back of an office door that wasn’t too far from where you were. The two of you kissed each other hungrily and his tongue easily dominated yours with ease and you gladly let him. Your body was on fire as Ari roamed his hands all over it, eventually stopping on your ass and giving it a firm squeeze. You did your best to block out any irrational thought, or maybe it was rational but your brain was too muddled as Ari lifted you up and carried you over to an empty desk. Right now, all you cared about was enjoying this moment with Ari and nothing else. You knew deep down though just how delicate things between the two of you was going to be, but as Ari started to remove your shirt, you simply didn’t care.

#an offshore love #an offshore love mini series #mini series #part two #an offshore love part two #ari levinson #ari levison x reader #ari levinson mini series #roughneck!ari levinson x reader #roughneck!ari levinson #ari levison x f!reader #ari levinson fandom #ari levinson fanfiction #chris evans characters #chris evans fandom

[sensei-venus]

Random Thoughts/Headcanons on Hawk/Pregnant!Reader/Pregnant!Midwife!Moon

(Unedited) (Based around this Discussion) ( @gemini-sensei because we be vibing to this shit so much🥰😍)

I keep thinking about how as they both get bigger the more cuddly they get with each other.

Hawk is all for it during the first half of the pregnancy because he feel like it’s safer. He can’t be around them constantly because he still has to go to work. With Moon basically still having her own work schedule along with Reader, it’s best bet they stay together.

Most of the day they are completely hip to hip with each other. After a long time of thinking about it they believe it was honestly their best option that they got pregnant so close together. Yes multiple hormones and growth and so on. But they got to go though it together and they could lean on each other if the need to.

(Yes I made this part a little sad. Why because I can.)

During the first half of the pregnancy Reader starts to get dizzy more often then not. At first it’s completely harmless, Moon being a midwife says it’s completely normal to occasionally get a little dizzy. It’s just a normal symptom of pregnancy. But then one day when Reader is at work, she is in her own little office and she passes out in her chair. Luckily it’s only a minute or two that she’s out but she wakes up and freaks out. She calls a ambulance and goes straight to the hospital.

Moon and Hawk drop everything and rush to the hospital.

Moon is upset because she has no idea what is wrong, now she’s thinking about her own pregnancy and how she should have been there with Reader. Hawk is the same way, thinking he should have quite work for a while and went on leave to take care of both of his girls. But ultimately they don’t blame each other because they couldn’t have known any of this would’ve happened. When the doctor finally lets them back they find out that Reader developed a intolerance to something. It was most likely brought up and amplified because of the pregnancy. No one would have know until it actually happened and they could diagnose it. The doctor tells her that she doesn’t need bed rest but she needs to be relaxed and most importantly have someone with her if she can.

After they get home they have a long much needed conversation. Hawk and Moon don’t want to force Reader to do anything she doesn’t want to, but they make a good argument.

She needs to be in a relaxed and safe environment now.

Moon doesn’t want to bring it up but she does. She has more then enough money from her mom tucked away in a offshore bank account that she can use any time she wants. It will be replenished as well any time she calls her for more. If she was frank about it none of them needed to be working with the amount of money her mom has given to her. Reader understands this and after long though she agrees that she can’t go back to work. So she leaves her job and goes to work with Moon.

Moon’s job is pretty cushioning, she has a great work schedule for the most part and luckily enough she could take on as many clients as she wanted. She promised herself and her lovers that she would stop taking any more new clients the minute she found out she and Reader was pregnant. She only had three clients who where all in late stage pregnancy, when her and Reader where about four months in she was all done. Her clientele list was completely blank and she officially stopped working after that.

Moon makes it a big deal that she pulls out her midwife equipment every once and a while to use on the two of them. She has a portable heartbeat finder. Sometimes she pulls it out and she takes turns between using it on herself and Reader. They listen to each other’s babies heart beats. Moon always giggles when she does Reader’s because Reader always ends up laughing mid way through. The little heart beats always seem to lift their spirits when some days are worse then others. Hawk loves to listen to them as well when he is home with them.

Hawk loves taking them out to baby stores all the time when he’s off work. They like shopping on line for stuff but going in person is so much fun. He gets to spend the day with his baby mamas. Looking at all kinds of new stuff that they had no idea existed. Some times his head spins a little because when he sees something he likes he always had to double up on it. Reader and Moon are dead set on making sure to get doubles of everything and or matching things. Matching outfits are Moons favorite thing to pick out with the help of Hawk.

Hawk thinks it’s the cutest thing when they first start showing. The two women do everything together now that they are pregnant. At first Moon is the bigger one, naturally do to her being a few weeks ahead of Reader in pregnancy. Reader helps her do things like reaching down, reaching up so on. They tie each others shoes if they go out and can’t wear slip on shoes. They help put on each other’s underwear. It’s literally one of the cutest things he has ever scene.

But then Reader starts to catch up with her.

Both of them are big and can’t do much. They have to work together to do the most simple things. If they need something off the floor or drop something, one of them has to brace against something and help hold the other so they can reach down and get it. Cue days where they act like they are going to get up and do stuff when Hawk is leaving for work, only for them to get back into bed or lay on the couch together. Moon try’s her best to stay active but as time goes in she just can’t. Reader hates walking around at that point and just makes Moon stay with her all the time.

Hawk literally burst out laughing one time because he came home to them both laying opposite to each other on their bed. Reader was crying because she wanted something from the fridge. Moon was also crying but because her feet hurt and she just couldn’t bring herself to get up to go get it for the other women. Their just hormonal sobbing together until Hawk brings them what they where both craving from the kitchen.

Insert Hawk crying when Moon’s baby starts visibly moving around. Kicking, punching and moving around and in her big belly. Everyone is so excited to see the baby start to move around. Reader is in awe as she feel the baby move under her hand. She asks so many questions about what it feels like because a she has been able to feel is flutters so far. A few weeks later Reader’s baby starts moving to. Both women go crazy at this. Taking turns feeling each others baby’s kick.

Hawk takes multiple pictures of them with their bumps together.

All of them are in silent awe when the baby’s kick each other for the first time. They both decide to move around at the same time as the two women are touching belly’s.

Honestly I could go on and on with those three. But Moon/Reader are always so cute with each other pregnant.🥰 I love @gemini-sensei so much because she always makes me think about some of the most random cuteness things in my head.

#cobra kai #cobra kai blog #cobra kai ask blog #cobra kai headcanons #cobra kai imagine #cobra kai blurbs #cobra kai blurb #domestic blurb #poly hawk & moon #poly hawk and moon #hawk x reader x moon #cobra kai hawk #cobra kai hawk x reader #hawk headcanons #hawk moskowitz #hawk cobra kai #eli hawk moskowitz #eli moskowitz x chubby reader #hawk moskowitz x chubby reader #cobra kai x chubby reader #cobra kai moon #moon cobra kai headcanons #moon x reader #moon x chubby reader #pregnant!reader #pregnant reader #pregnant moon #pregnancy headcanon #midwife!moon

[attackfish]

Could you please do another Mama Lin AU post? I absolutely freaking love it!

Continued from: [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link].

1. The deciding factor, and there were other things too, but the one that brought them to the breaking point, was that Tenzin needed to have children if there were ever going to be more airbenders, and Lin wanted to be a mother about as much as she wanted to be buried alive. And now she's got two kids? It's a bit of a shock for Tenzin, let's be fair. He's married to someone else, and has children, and he's not unhappy about not being with Lin, but it's a weird feeling, a road not taken feeling, something like, but not really, regret.

2. But whatever mixed and complicated emotions Tenzin feels in regards to Lin's forays into motherhood, he recognizes a potential political ally when he sees one. And he has too few of those to throw one away needlessly. He, of all the Council members, treats Republic City as his home. Air Temple island is right offshore, and the United Republic is part of his father's legacy. Most of the rest of the Council expect to serve out their terms and return home to their respective countries. Tarrlock is the only one who intends to stay, but Tarrlock is slippery as an eel-shark, and anyway, he is two parts smarm, one part corruption, and he has no interest in changing the status quo to improve lives for the poor. Not a man Tenzin can work with. Lin however, Lin he can work with.

3. Technically, Lin isn't officially a mom yet. The official adoption is still about a week away when she has her audience with the Council. They still have to meet in front of a judge and declare that they are a family. Bolin is over the moon excited about it, and Mako is, well Mako has mixed feelings. He can't shake the worry that this is all some kind of trap and everything will change once he and his brother are legally Lin's sons. He knows it doesn't make any sense, but... Lin asked Mako's teacher about that, and she said it's normal, so Lin is mostly ignoring the worry, cautiously trusting that it will fade when nothing actually changes. And nothing does change. They go in front of the judge, the paperwork is filed, they go out to dinner at Mako and Bolin's favorite noodle shop to celebrate, and the next day, Lin signs a paper with their school to officially add Beifong to the boys' names. That's it. They're officially a family.

4. Okay, that's not strictly true. Zuko also shows up a few days later on the boys' day off school with Fire Nation style ginger honey plum cakes, and presents for the three of them, and a mock-stern warning that the boys are his nephews now. Lin pulls him aside later to talk to him about the problems in Republic City, and he promises to talk to Izumi, but it's all he can do not to pinch Lin's cheeks.

5. I just want to give a shout out to Kuvira. It takes a lot of bravery to do what she does next, calling Katara up in the middle of the night (for her, not for Katara) to talk.

#legend of korra #lin beifong #lok mako #bolin #zuko #tenzin #posts i created #do you want to ask a question it doesn't have to be a question #five headcanons #mako got moxie #they see me bolin #that's chief lin bei fong to you #zuko is a dweeby little turtleduck #except tenzin #kuvira is a dic uh tator

[redisaid]

Beneath the Blue Moon - Chapter 8

Full

Oh hi. I missed the girls. I’m back on the train of this bullshit again. 

Expect a new poll for choices on chapters 9 and 10 in a few days.

7052 Words

Read it on Ao3!

When the wind bends the branch to softly touch me, When the band plays your song, I feel strong enough to keep dreaming, Even when I'm all alone, Our love goes on and on.

Sylvanas decided that there was no worse idea ever had than that of trying to host a luncheon across the span of two ships tethered to one another. And as painful as the creaking of rope and wood and canvas against one another was to her elven ears, the fact that Jaina was just a gangplank away from her, and had been this entire time, yet still would not look at her, was far worse.

Otherwise, the summit was going well. As well as could be imagined, really. Horde and Alliance alike were enjoying tea and finger sandwiches on a sunny day in the harbor of an offshore island deemed too far away from Dazar’alor to pose a threat. Both of them were digesting Sylvanas’ words with their food, her explanation of the threat that faced them all, and the price she feared the world would pay for the theft of her soul.

Her selfish dooming of Azeroth. Nothing unusual, really. Old news before it was even news.

Just as the situation was with Jaina. The only time she’d looked into her eyes in over a decade was across the throne room in Lordaeron—when Jaina had come to save the Alliance’s bid to take her city from her.

And succeeded.

She was powerful, a ball of stress that was honestly only more beautiful for it. She looked incredible in her Kul Tiran uniform, even today, sulking with a greatcoat draped over her shoulders, unbuttoned otherwise for the heat of the Zandalari sun.

Just because she wouldn’t look at Sylvanas didn’t mean Sylvanas couldn’t look at her.

And honestly, over the years, in the scant times that they’d shared space since, all she could ever do was look at her. To look at her, going on, changing, becoming something without her. In the absence of her.

Sylvanas wondered if the emptiness had gnawed at her? The lack of what once was? Their connection, bone deep, severed even as Sylvanas still walked this world. Maybe it was the years of having had time to process it properly, as Sylvanas didn’t, that had hardened Jaina to her. To this need.

It was a need. Like the living needed water and air and food and shelter. Sylvanas was dead, still, and needed none of these. But she needed Jaina. She needed her like withered elves needed mana. Like—

“Warchief, a moment of your time?”

Anduin Wrynn. A lad of annoying height that he’d only gained in the last few years, loomed over her in his ceremonial lion armor, a polite smile tugging at the corner of his beardless lips. Last she’d seen him wear that armor, it was when she’d run from him, defeated at Lordaeron, wondering after the apology that seemed to echo in Jaina’s eyes.

Still too broken to understand it, but questioning all the same.

“By all means, High King,” she said with a nod.

In all her life and thereafter, Sylvanas had never imagined she would be nodding to a king. A boy king besides that, but even so, she had thought she would remain nothing more than a General, still giving a full bow to Anestarian, hoping he’d hold on a few more centuries and spare her from doing the same to Kael’thas.

Anduin came to stand with her on the aft deck of the Banshee’s Wail, mounting the stairs with a plate of tiny sandwiches still in hand.

“I have to admit I was rather fascinated by your tales of the Shadowlands,” he told her. “And what you’d experienced there. I was hoping you might answer some questions for me, about the nature of death.”

He would be disappointed to know how little she knew. How little she cared to know. Sylvanas could tell him exactly what death was. Unfair. Broken. A thing that ground one down, bones to dust. Souls to anima. A transformation to smaller parts, in which, along the way, the whole was lost forever.

A thing that made the decay and disgust of decomposition seem kind.

But instead, she said to him, “You may ask what you wish. I will share what I know, but I would hardly call my knowledge of the Shadowlands encyclopedic.”

“You mentioned there being other realms of death, besides the place you called the Maw. I was wondering…”

Wonder away, she almost wanted to tell him. Sylvanas herself had only seen glimpses of them as the Jailer’s servants had escorted her through a tour of the unfairness of death—the great separation and unending that awaited all living things.

Beautiful Bastion, its angelic embrace a front for a great lie—consuming the souls of heroes to turn them into willing servants and ferriers of yet even more souls. Malevolent Maldraxxus, where the souls of the warlike could play at war for the rest eternity, never satisfied with an end to their violence. Repentant Revendreth, whose aesthetic honestly didn’t miss, but otherwise enslaved the souls of the evil to extract from them in exchange for the slim hope at a better fate.

There was no better fate. Not even in Ardenweald, among the eternal forest, caring for slumbering gods. The Jailer had taunted her, telling her this was where she’d been headed before Arthas had rent her soul in twain and damned her to undeath and her eventual bargain. But even in her kindest end, Sylvanas now knew she would have become nothing more than a nymph of the woods that did not remember herself.

Or Jaina.

Or Lirath. Or Mother and father. Their souls too, were already lost in this machine of death. One that still very much deserved to be broken.

But not at the costs she had already paid.

Sylvanas waited for him to seem to finish his question, though she did not truly listen to the rest of it. “I’m afraid I’ve seen little outside of the Maw.”

She lied through simplicity. Much as she wished Anduin to enjoy his little sandwiches and hear out her request for peace, she was not here for him.

She was here for the woman who wouldn’t so much as set foot on the Horde side of the ships, and had all the reasons in the world to stay where she was. The Alliance side was made up of one of her ships, actually. Her flagship was larger, but sat lower in the water overall to the point where such side by side anchorage was possible for them. Still, it made Sylvanas nervous. All canons and teeth.

Jaina had a right to every one of those guns.

“I just wondered if you might know where my father went. Where a man like him would go to his eternal rest?” Anduin asked.

The porcelain plate in his hands reflected sunlight dully up at her amidst an array of cucumber, mayonnaise, and white bread. King Wrynn could not look her in the eye as he asked.

Bastion? Perhaps. Varian was a hero, certainly, and Sylvanas remembered well the time they fought side by side, deck to deck on different ships in the sky and not at sea. The way it made her thick black blood seem to race again to fight beside a warrior of equal skill, despite their opposite factions. It was only recent, very recent to one with both an elf and an undead’s lengthy perception of time. She would not soon forget the feeling.

But Varian was headstrong. Willful in the way Alliance men seemed to excel at. A warrior through and through. Perhaps he fought in the endless battles of Maldraxxus.

But death was infinite and terrible. Its realms expanded on and on, like the twisting tower of Torghast. It was not for mortal comprehension. It was not meant to make sense, or to be fair.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” was the most honest answer she could give him. “But, as you do, I would hope he rests peacefully, and remains as such. I cannot recommend the alternative.”

Anduin Wrynn had never heard her make a joke before. That occurred to her as he stared at her, one bushy blonde eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

Not many people from the other ship had heard her make a joke before, actually. Or even on her side of the gangplank.

Among the many disservices of her death and the loss of her whole soul was that the world had forgotten she was funny.

She used to be very funny.

“Right,” Anduin eventually said, catching the gape that his mouth was starting to form and closing his teeth with an audible click. “Perhaps I might draft up a letter with a list of questions, or put you in contact with a scholar to chronicle your knowledge.”

“No doubt many will be interested. I’ve already been approached by the Reliquary and my own Apothecaries since my announcement to the Horde,” Sylvanas informed him.

She had no doubt that she would be made to recount her singular experiences a hundred times over. If Azeroth survived to care about them, that is.

“But,” she continued. “My priorities at the moment are ensuring that we work together to protect the world of the living and my people alike from that which may threaten us.”

Diplomacy never felt right to her. Even as successful as she had been at it here and there. She was a creature of trails and trees, not of contracts and meetings.

Or graves and the ink darkness of night. Lingering fog and dripping horrors. Teeth gnashing at rotting flesh.

Reconciling the two was still too difficult to keep in the forefront of her mind. Both parts of her had known a life of duty and objectivity coming first. That, at least, Sylvanas could focus on.

Even as her eyes tracked the deep blue of Jaina’s greatcoat from across the deck.

“Right,” Anduin said again, nodding along and picking up a tiny sandwich in meaty hands that must have come from his father. “If you want to discuss anything in specific about the draft agreement I’ve put forth, before we bring it to the table here, let me know.”

It was good, for a draft. Sylvanas had nothing to bring up. She knew that the other leaders of the Horde would be happy to squabble about the particulars and pick it apart. She was only concerned with setting a limit on the time they could do so. Dread and anxiety were her constant companions, even as she didn’t settle her thoughts on her disparate existence. Time, she felt, was a borrowed luxury they did not have to throw around, though she could not say why exactly.

She hadn’t bothered to go into descriptions of the Jailer’s forces to great degrees. “The Scourge, but worse,” was approximately what she had told the Alliance to watch out for. But her vision had been clouded by the black feathers of Mawsworn. The dull gray metal of armored constructs. The sharp bone of skeletal horrors.

“It is a fine agreement for the time being,” Sylvanas told him. “One that I will work to ensure the Horde honors as we face this threat.”

“I will tell you there is some skepticism on my side that there is a threat at all,” Anduin said, still holding the sandwich. “Not from my part. You are quite obviously changed to my eyes, if you don’t mind me saying so. Something has happened to cause that, and I believe you there. But others aren’t so quick to trust.”

No, they would not be. Not Genn Greymane, his silvered fur bristled as he stalked the deck of Jaina’s ship, one of the many not to leave it. In fact, the only ones to cross the gangplank thus far were Anduin and Baine.

As Sylvanas’ eyes flitted briefly away from Jaina, they noted her sisters were nowhere to be found on the Alliance ship. Neither, it seemed, had the courage to face her, or represent their factions of stolen elves. Stolen names.

“I honestly hope that I’m wrong, Wyrnn,” she told him. “I hope that nothing happens. But I fear that we will feel the Jailer’s wrath and fear we will feel it soon. My promise remains regardless of whether that happens or not, though. Azeroth has spent too long at war, and I no longer wish to be the cause of it.”

“What changed your mind?”

Sylvanas was hardly prepared for the question.

A dead body, dripping salt water on her table in the cabin just below them, was the root of the answer. But Derek Proudmoore’s rotted corpse was mostly a symbol. A message to her from her. From beyond her.

You are better than this. You are better than a pawn in someone else’s game.

Sylvanas knew what she wanted, and knew then, as she stared down a decision she did not want to make, that it wasn’t that. She wished she made this long ago, honestly. At the peak of Icecrown Citadel. Over Vol’jin’s dying, fel-ridden body. Before the flames were launched at Teldrassil.

Early as she could go back, honestly, but it would never be enough.

Her hands were already stained with blood from the moment they’d become her own again. From the first flex of spectral fingers that was her will and hers alone, after her death. But before then, they’d been used to rip the faces off of elven children. To rend the land that had birthed her so deeply that it was still scarred to this day. Bodiless, monstrous, and broken beyond repair—she had been irredeemable from the very start of her unlife.

Even now, soul restored to wholeness, hands corporeal but still stained with that blood and so much more, there was no fixing it. There was no forgiveness. No justice. No redemption to be sought.

There never would be.

Sylvanas’ eyes still tracked the blue greatcoat across the deck of the Kul Tiran ship. No doubt it was hot, but Jaina kept herself beneath it as if it were a shield that protected her from the foulness of the very air.

Foul, perhaps, because of who it was shared with. Truly, all Sylvanas could get from her over their renewed bond since the ships both docked was a feeling of general annoyance bordering on aversion. It pulled at the bottom of her stomach and tightened her chest.

Only then, as he waited for an answer, did Anduin’s eyes follow hers and land on the real answer to his question.

How could she explain that to the boy king? That even in her undeath, her brokenness, her grief over her own life, she could not violate the bond that had once tied her to Jaina. She could not bring herself to attack her directly. The thought had repelled her, like one magnetic pole to another of the same charge. It was never an option.

And even Jaina, in all her disgust, had looked sorry at Lordaeron for being willing to do what she was not.

A memory stirred in Sylvanas’ mind, so vivid now with her newfound ability to connect to the fullness of its emotions. Once, she and Jaina had sat on the beach outside of Windrunner Spire, an outing prompted after their recounting of similar childhoods spent by the seashore. The beach outside the Spire was mostly rocky, and only had a small strip of smooth sand on which they’d laid out a little picnic.

It had been the day before they had to leave one another. Jaina laughed and teased and loved her. She smelled of mana wine and pomegranates and honey pastries. She leaned in for a kiss, on that perfect afternoon, and asked as she pulled away, “But where will we live?”

The question was a loaded one. No answer was correct. The first difficult to navigate strait in the sea of their union. Sylvanas wanted to answer that here at the Spire was good. But Jaina was an agent of the Kirin Tor, based in Dalaran. Sylvanas hated Dalaran, and was the Ranger General of Quel’thalas. But Jaina was also technically heir to the Kul Tiran admiralty, and would presumably need to return there or name her younger brother heir instead some day. Back then, her father still lived and was still young enough to the point it wasn’t the forethought on anyone’s mind, save maybe Sylvanas’ as she worried for them. And then there was the Alliance, based in Lordaeron and not Stormwind back then, that called to the loyalties of both of them.

Sylvanas had listed all of these in a panicked tirade of sorts, wanting to find the answer.

It was Jaina who had arrived at the real answer with a smile, “Don’t worry so much. We’ll figure it out.”

They never got to even try.

“I see,” Anduin started. “Well if—”

“You wretched beast!” A Thalassian screech came from just below them, causing both Anduin and Sylvanas to lean over the railing to see the source.

That happened to be Velonara shaking an offending pest off of her boot. The offending pest being a small pink dinosaur that was clinging onto the black leather, gnawing at the laces.

Nathanos ran over from where he’d been entertaining Gallywix and his goblins, prying the creature off with a desperate whisper of, “How did you get out?” before carrying it back into the aft cabin with a huff.

He was successful in that at least, despite the creature’s protesting squawk and sharp little teeth that no doubt left a few tiny holes in his gloves.

“Fascinating wildlife here in Zandalar,” Anduin noted as distraction was removed.

“Yes, fascinating,” Sylvanas agreed dryly.

She’d have a talk with Nathanos about smuggling his newest pets onto diplomatic missions later.

Thankfully, as Anduin seemed to be following her gaze across to the other ship again, another distraction was provided in the form of red hair and golden armor. Lady Liadrin stood on the last step up to the aft deck, seemingly waiting to be invited to join them.

Still a stickler for decorum, after all these years. Sylvanas hadn’t spoken to her since, save to grant orders. Once, she had considered her a friend.

They even went on a terrible date once, centuries ago. Absolutely awful. Liadrin had tried to order for her at the restaurant, and it had only gotten worse from there. And now here she was, waiting to be acknowledged. It must have physically pained the control freak that Sylvanas knew lay beneath all that armor.

“Matriarch,” Sylvanas said with a nod in her direction.

Liadrin still looked like shit. Like she’d been run over by a goblin trike and left in the streets of Orgrimmar to die for it. She did her best to hold it together and bowed gracefully and appropriately to Sylvanas and Anduin, but the signs were there. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

And Sylvanas was struggling with wanting to actually ask what that was, when she was owed no such answer.

“Warchief, High King,” Liadrin said as she rose.

Anduin was respectful in his own nod to her, offering a greeting, “Bal’a dash, Lady Liadrin.”

His pronunciation was not terrible, for all it was worth. And while Sylvanas expected Liadrin not to have any interest in his attempt, her golden eyes only settled on the young king. A question burned in them. A question she did not ask.

Her gaze instead flitted around the boy king, left, then right, then back to him. Searching for something.

There was nothing up here but Sylvanas, Anduin, and the ship’s wheel. Maybe it was some Light thing? That, at least, Sylvanas had never understood in any of her lives. Nor had she cared to. Especially now. Religion was not the realm of the dead.

“It’s no rush,” Liadrin began, finally, “but I was hoping I might borrow a moment of your time before we reconvene, King Wrynn.”

“Certainly. We have not spoken since the Legion’s invasion, and I treasure any opportunity to speak to a sister in the Light,” was Anduin’s very warm and seemingly genuine answer.

Only he didn’t get to continue on to the point of turning Sylvanas’ undead stomach with his religious drivel.

The afternoon sun flickered strangely out of the corner of her eye. Sylvanas banished the thought, just another vision of dread. Another fantasy of what could come for her, for all of them. The price she would pay for the faint blue glow of the moon she kept hidden on her wrist beneath her clawed gauntlets, matching that which would be similarly hidden by the golden gauntlet on Jaina’s casting hand.

The price she’d paid to be ignored and shunned yet again. Sylvanas was coming to the conclusion that she did indeed deserve it. Her best hope was this peace, and buying herself a few years of good behavior, of attempted redemption where there could truly be none, just to be heard. To be seen. To be looked at, even, with anything other than pity or silent apology.

But then the sun flickered again, this time catching the hard gold of Liadrin’s eyes enough to rouse them from the dark bags that sunk beneath them. Enough for Sylvanas to follow her gaze to the west.

“Mawsworn!” she shouted.

No one but her knew the meaning of the word, of the dark silhouettes that flocked toward them, shading out the sun with a mass of black feathers. They looked not too dissimilar from her Val’kyr, but larger. Fiercer. Intent. Whereas the Val’kyr waited on orders, inert but for the occasional flap of wings, Sylvanas had never seen a Mawsworn that didn’t have some terrible mission on their mind, always flying toward something.

And now they were flying toward her, and her peace summit.

Deathwhisper was in her hands in an instant. No Thas’dorah, certainly, but she could make it work. No doubt things would be better if she’d accepted the Jailer’s gifts, the chained arrows he’d promised in exchange for more and more dirty deeds.

Only now did she regret not taking him up on the offer.

“That’s what they look like? I don’t under—”

Anduin was cut off from his confusion by Liadrin drawing her sword and standing between him and the western sky.

“Arm yourself!” she ordered someone she had no business ordering, gruff voice grated even deeper by her apparent exhaustion.

That was enough to shake Anduin out of his questioning, though he muttered, “They look like angels,” as he drew his father’s famed sword.

They were not angels. Angels lived in Bastion and forgot themselves. Angels carried the dead into the machine to chop them up at the behest of yet even more masters. Nowhere could anyone be free, even in death.

Not, at least, if they didn’t fight.

Sylvanas knocked an arrow and looked to the combined forces of Horde and Alliance leadership on the decks below her, scrambling to her warning call. Satisfied that the Horde ship had a suitable amount of Dark Rangers with bows drawn as she had, even Nathanos, and plenty of Orcish axes and Tauren totems alike joining them, she cast a look over to the Alliance ship.

And to a blue coat beneath which hands were forming to host an icy spell. Jaina’s eyes glowed with arcane, visible even from this far away, as she stood between most of her own people and the new threat.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Sylvanas shouted over the water and wood. “Watch for their chains!”

And then they were upon them. So fast did their black wings carry them across Azeroth’s sky that it was seemingly unnatural. No time to think of where they could have come from or how or why. Well, the why Sylvanas was certain of, at least.

They’d come for her.

She fired the first shot, an arrow that ripped through the black feathers of the winged skeleton, slicing just the corner of its dark cloak. Wide and misaimed.

The product of fear. A deep fear that Sylvanas had not felt in years. A fear not for herself, but for those around her. For Anduin. Liadrin. Even traitorous Baine, who didn’t think she’d known of his dealings with the Alliance. And Jaina.

Of course, Jaina. But she shot second, and her ice lance hit true, striking a Mawsworn from the air and into the ocean with the force of it.

Truly, what an honor it was to be destined for such a powerful woman, who had only grown into that power and beauty over these last hard years. What a privilege, even if she wouldn’t deign to look at the broken creature that was Sylvanas Windrunner.

Sylvanas knocked another arrow. She fired. She hit deep into an eye socket this time, causing another Mawsworn to fall. She listened as Liadrin and Anduin whispered blessings under their breath, laying hands on one another to trade them.

She knocked a third arrow, but didn’t get a chance to fire before a chain shot out toward her.

Liadrin dutifully deflected this with her shield, offering Sylvanas cover to fire behind. The fear dissipated, and suddenly her dead heart was full of a feeling of ancient camaraderie. Of memories of Liadrin when she still wielded the mace of a priestess, and was no less fearsome in her white robes than she was in her golden and crimson armor. Of times when she’d done this before, standing between Sylvanas and an Amani troll. An Alliance footman. A shambling undead horror. A massive, horned demon.

This was just another enemy. Another in the unending chain of threats that Azeroth seemed to face. And as shaped by war as Sylvanas was like no one else, she had to remind herself that she was not the only one so molded. Maybe not to such a degree, but she wasn’t about to debate that with Liadrin.

She was grateful, she realized, as she fired over her shoulder with a little smirk on her face.

“Ready yourselves!” Sylvanas delivered one last final warning as she made a fifth shot over Liadrin’s red ponytail.

The decks became crowded with black feathers and magical chains. They were just as soon filled with broken bones and battered pieces of dull gray armor. While she didn’t like being caught off guard, the place to do so was certainly around the best and brightest that each faction had to offer, as it seemed none of them had a problem with this initial onslaught.

Nathanos had hopped up on the aft deck to join them, and flashed her a grin as he buried one of his axes into a screaming skull. Midship, Saurfang headbutted another skull with such force that it cracked loudly enough to draw her attention a moment later. She caught sight of Genn Greymane with a fibula in his wolven mouth. Maybe an ulna. The area around Jaina was just coated in ice, several Mawsworn either frozen within it or shattered by it.

They were many, but they were fragile. They were not meant to be here in the living world, and it seemed to be a weakness to them. Their bones were brittle, Sylvanas realized as she cleaved yet another skull near in two with a close range shot.

This was a battle that could be easily won.

Even Anduin was holding up next to her, green boy that he obviously was. He’d made a good run of it at Lordaeron, and had shown courage then, but his heart was not in it. That much was clear to Sylvanas. He didn’t have that streak of joy in the kill to him. She doubted he’d even enjoy a good hunt, and would weep instead for the animals.

But, he still cut clean through a ribcage. A leg. An arm. A haze of black feathers.

And somehow missed the chain that wrapped around him.

His grunt of surprise was what alerted her as he was lifted into the air. The Mawsworn that had tangled him made haste to fly up, up, and then off.

They weren’t here to fight. They were here to take. Zovaal didn’t care how many of his abominations he lost in the process. He only needed to rob Sylvanas of one of her allies, or her own freedom, to prove that his vengeance was not to be trifled with.

And she wasn’t about to let him win another battle. Never again.

She rolled out of the cloud of Mawsworn that had descended on the aft deck, up to the rail that stood between her and the sea. She took aim, willing the necromantic magic that bound her to unlife into her arrow until it swirled with darkness, hoping that would be enough. She fired at the chain that held Anduin aloft, slowly raising upward to bring him into the embrace of the Mawsworn that was carrying him off.

Her shot hit true, determined as she was that it would. It snapped the chain, but left the boy king falling rapidly toward the ocean.

Sylvanas didn’t hesitate. Much as she hated her banshee form, and the memories she still carried of those days where she watched its clawed hands move against her will to aid Arthas in destroying Silvermoon, she slipped into it without lingering on those thoughts. There was no time for it.

She shot forward at speed that almost matched that of unnatural Mawsworn, managing to catch him just before he hit the waves. He would have hit them hard, covered in that ridiculous plate, and sunk below them immediately. There was no other choice.

Even though he shied away from her and the scream that echoed from her spectral mouth unbidden as it must when she was this way.

Sylvanas wanted to warn him to cover his ears, but she couldn’t speak when she was like this. She could only scream.

No wonder Jaina wouldn’t look at her. She was still dead. Broken. Monstrous. A war criminal on her best day. An abomination no different than those that attacked them at her worst.

As she soared back upward to the aft deck with him in her arms, Sylvanas couldn’t help but notice the blue glow on the wrist that curled around Anduin. Even temporarily banishing her physical body, and the mark that contained that fire, she was not without it.

But she didn’t have time to contemplate that either. She surged upward with one last blast of a scream, reminding herself to beg forgiveness from Anduin later, and summoned her corporeal form once she had him dumped safely onto the deck once more.

A little bit unceremoniously, perhaps. A little rougher than necessary, surely.

For the Undercity, Sylvanas thought to herself as she took up Deathwhisper again, and went back to filling Mawsworn with arrows. For the Undercity indeed, she stood over Anduin as he got to his feet and got ready to continue the fight. She made sure to turn around at her earliest opportunity, and shoot down the one that was coming back from the sea, having realized its prize had been stolen from it.

As easily as they fell, their numbers were so great. So much so that Sylvanas lost count of how many she’d downed quickly. She was also busy keeping her eyes on the sky to ensure that no one else was being taken, but it seemed only Anduin had been caught unaware by the chains thus far. She’d dodged more than a few of her own, grabbing him by his tabard to drag him with her up to the railing overlooking the lower deck. Large as he was, she was stronger. Yet another point for undeath today.

What she saw there was nothing short of disappointing. Most of the Mawsworn were clustered on the aft deck of her ship, and between her, Anduin, Liadrin, and Nathanos, had mostly been dispatched. The Horde below had dealt with nearly all that assailed them already.

But the Alliance ship didn’t fare as well. Only Jaina seemed to be a deadly force enough to leave her icy corner of the Kul Tiran flagship fully clear. Otherwise, it was still a haze of black feathers and battle cries.

“Horde, what are you doing?” Sylvanas questioned of idle axes and swords, arcane and Light alike. “Protect our allies! We must work together!”

With one last quick check to make sure that Nathanos and Liadrin had a handle on the remaining Mawsworn on the aft deck, Sylvanas turned to Anduin and told him, “I’m afraid your little papers must wait. Allow me to prove the truth of my words. Fight with me.”

“I didn’t doubt you in the first place!” Anduin protested as she led the way across the gangplank to the deck of the Kul Tiran ship.

The Kul Tiran ship, where it seemed the Mawsworn had realized who was to be feared there. Who was to be prioritized. Or perhaps, who the Jailer had sent to target.

Whose capture and subsequent torture in the bowels of hell itself would hurt Sylvanas most.

The remainder of them were closing in on Jaina, chains lashing out only to meet wave after wave of ice, shattering them each time. Impressive as it was, Sylvanas knew she couldn’t keep it up forever. Mana was a thing in limited quantities, even for one of Azeroth’s most powerful mages.

Certainly its most beautiful, eyes aglow with magic, greatcoat forgotten and frozen to the deck beside her, white braid whipping in the wind.

As much as Sylvanas enjoyed looking at her soulmate in her battle fury, she was here to help her, wanted or not. She took aim and fired at a Mawsworn that was getting too close, and nodded to Anduin as he ran to assist the woman he apparently would refer to as his aunt, despite their lack of blood relation.

Bones clattered to the polished wood of the deck, darker and slicker than that of her own ship. Ice smashed and shattered into crystalline explosions that tingled Sylvanas’ sensitive elven ears. A dwarf threw a thunder-laden hammer that whizzed past her. Genn was snarling off to her left, but at the Mawsworn he was biting at and not her. And finally, the Horde followed. Saurfang crashed into a skeletal figure that was flanking her right. A spectral dinosaur came across the gangplank, summoned by the muttered words of Talanji to assist. A goblin rocket was aimed with surprising care and managed to hit only a pack of Mawsworn that were cutting off the aft deck of the Alliance ship from the rest of the fight.

In her efforts to get to Jaina and help, Sylvanas hadn’t realized how close they were. Suddenly, it seemed, they were nearly back to back—Sylvanas facing west to keep an eye on the sky, and Jaina facing east to blast the last big group of Mawsworn with a cone of ice wind, freezing them in place for the coming rush of melee fighters to smash to bits.

Only when she heard the panting breaths of Jaina thrumming against her ears, did she realize this was the closest she’d been to her in over a decade. The last time she’d heard her this winded, this close, it had been for much better reasons. Much more pleasant, at least.

Sylvanas turned to the east to see if there were anymore enemies, but was only met with blue eyes.

Blue eyes, looking at her for the second time in all these years. This time not begging for an apology Jaina would not give. Could not give.

This time, they were regarding her as if she’d never seen her before. Curiously. Cautiously.

Almost like the first time Sylvanas ever saw them, when Jaina came through the portal with Vereesa in tow, chattering to her about how excited she was to have potentially found her sister’s soulmate for her.

How beautiful she’d been then too. Young, but knowing. Her hair shining gold to match the leaves of the forests of Quel’thalas. She’d been a vision in the purple and white livery of the Kirin Tor. With her curious blue eyes, and the smile she’d given her after that first cautious look.

Sylvanas hadn’t been what she expected. Jaina hadn’t been what she’d expected either. But somehow, they’d been perfect for each other.

But this time—thirteen years and countless tragedies later, Jaina did not smile. She turned away, searching for Anduin before asking him, “Anduin, are you all right?”

He wasn’t in the best shape. Sylvanas could see blood dripping from one of his ears, likely the fault of her banshee wail. The foul magic of the chains that had wrapped him had left a nasty red mark in their pattern across his cheek. He was far more winded than Jaina, even, but was able to give her a nod.

Still, she checked him over, pushed at his breastplate to stand him up straight so she could confirm he was otherwise unhurt.

“Sylvanas saved me,” he blurted out when he managed to catch his breath.

“I saw,” Jaina told him, speaking under her breath, but not quiet enough to avoid being heard by an elf.

Sylvanas watched as she flexed her casting hand, and the other one briefly came to touch it, shaking. She turned and looked at Sylvanas again, still seeming to be undecided.

But across their bond, weak as it was, Sylvanas felt a tug. A pull. Magnetic in the opposite way she’d been thinking of before. A draw that demanded they be together. The very laws of physics itself would not allow for anything else.

The deck was soon awash with activity that swept Jaina from her vision before they could connect. Leaders gathering, now all on the Kul Tiran ship for the first time—examining remains of their enemies, wondering at the suddenness of the attack, the strange chains, the purpose of it all. Some mutters, too, of how convenient it was that this had come just after Sylvanas had warned them. Of how it could be another one of her tricks.

Again, she’d not given them reason to suspect otherwise. It would not take one battle, one rescue of an enemy leader, to prove her intentions.

Sylvanas knew this would take years, if she was lucky. Restoring even the smallest amount of trust in her among the rest of Azeroth would be a near impossible feat. But, at least they would all understand what to watch out for now, if nothing else.

She was about to look for Nathanos or one of her Rangers to ask for a report from them when a hand reached for her upper arm. A gap between her pauldrons and gauntlets that all Ranger armor had, to allow for the movement of one’s arms. A gap one would only reach for if one was familiar with it, and looking to make contact with skin.

A gap where Jaina Proudmoore’s hand started a feedback loop that Sylvanas hadn’t felt in thirteen years. Even through the cloth of her glove, Sylvanas could feel her feeling her feeling her feeling her. The coldness of her skin. The curiosity. The hesitation. But still, she was touching her. Trying to get her attention in only the way she could.

Sylvanas turned to face her, wordless, only feeling. Only feeling her and Jaina’s sensations of one another mingle and merge until they were indistinguishable. Was that her shock or Jaina’s? Was the cloth on her skin or Jaina’s? Was she surprised at herself and how she reacted, how much this took the wind out of her sails, or was that Jaina’s Kul Tiran expression leaking through her thoughts.

It was too much and not enough at once. Sylvanas wanted to run. She wanted to pull away. She wanted to pull Jaina to her, cover her skin with hers, regardless of how cold and dead it might be, and lose herself in this heady feeling. She wanted the true completeness of her soul that was only found in her arms. She wanted to rewind time itself, and forget all these sins that had kept them apart, had kept her desperate enough to commit them in the name of the hope of this.

“Tomorrow, Theramore,” Jaina whispered to her, hand still on her skin. “I will meet you. We can talk. I…”

Sylvanas’ eyes traced down from Jaina’s own blue eyes to her lips. Lips she could still remember kissing. Lips that she remembered setting alight the mark on her wrist with the sweetest kiss anyone could ever receive.

The kiss that marked a life that would no longer have to be lived alone. That meant she would have a partner, forever. For as long as this chaotic world of theirs would let them both live, at least.

And perhaps beyond that.

She watched as those lips mouthed a word, seemingly running out of breath and will to speak it.

A world Sylvanas had taught her.

“Rea’anath,” she’d said once, cradled in Sylvanas’ arms in her bedroom at the Spire.

“Bonded soul,” Sylvanas had translated for her. “In case you hear anyone call you that in reference to me.”

“Should I call you that?” Jaina had asked.

“You can if you’d like,” Sylvanas had told her before leaning in to kiss the word out of her mouth before she could say it again.

But now, on the deck of her ship, surrounded by shattered bones and ice, Sylvanas could only stare after her as Jaina’s hand left her arm, and she ran to catch Anduin again as he surveyed the damage. She could only chase after the echo of their looped feelings. Of a touch she didn’t deserve and wasn’t ready for, even if it was what she’d wanted most, killed and died again and again to get back. Of a word she was so certain she’d never hear her say again, not fully voiced, but still attempted.

A bond renewed. A flame fed to roaring. A longing that consumed her as emptiness once had.

#sylvaina #Sylvanas Windrunner #Jaina Proudmoore #fanfic #beneath the blue moon #sorry for the months long hiatus on this #but damn if it wasn't a treat to write catty sylvanas again #i missed her so much

[dailycharacteroption]

Hinyasi (Brawler Archetype)

(art by FranLu07 on DeviantArt)

They often say that when you handle a weapon long enough, it becomes an extension of your arm, your body knowing perfectly how to compensate for it’s weight and all the little intricacies of how it interacts with the forces you subject it to.

It may be less glamorous, but that is also true for tools as well, your implements becoming a part of you as you use them to perform, whether it be a precision tool for precision work, or something strong and unyielding, like a farmer’s hoe.

Though it may come as no surprise to us, with any luck their enemies are very surprised when some warriors choose to use simple tools as weapons!

We’ve seen a few improvised weapon builds and archetypes before, but this one in particular is geared towards the brawler class and their gift of further improvising with their martial flexibility!

In the Lost Omens setting, the Hinyasi were a group of soldiers and guards that were formed with the nation of Yamasa seceded from Lirgen. The former being the breadbasket of the latter until they could no longer stand the neglect of the stargazing Lirgeni. And with their familiarity with farming, the Hinyasi were formed as a border guard, warriors that seemed like unassuming farmers that could catch would-be bandits and raiders by surprise, turning farming implements into deadly weapons.

Sadly, Yamasa as a nation collapsed, becoming the Sodden Lands when the permanent hurricane known as the Eye of Abendego appeared offshore. While some remained, degenerating into brutality, most fled and took their traditions, including the Hinyasi, with them.

Of course, while I do love the aesthetic of the farmer that can make a raider eat their leather straps, you need not use this archetype solely for the farming aesthetic. Any martial artist that specializes in using whatever is around as a weapon could use this archetype, whether they seemingly belong to any noncombat vocation, or they simply were trained to grab anything and everything like their name is Jackie Chan.

Regardless of where they are from or what they do as their day job, these warriors can prove that anything can be a weapon if you know it’s properties intimately and apply extreme force in the right way.

Naturally, these warriors are trained to use improvised weapons effectively, specializing in melee or thrown objects.

While most brawlers scale the damage their weapons do at a slower rate than their unarmed strikes, their improvised weapons improve at the same rate, making them shockingly deadly.

Improvised weapons are often known for their odd shapes and weight distribution, as well as other properties that make them shockingly good at befuddling foes. A threshing scythe hooked around the ankles to trip foes, a flag being wrapped around a weapon to yank it out of the foe’s grasp, or a heavy boulder forcing a foe to move back, all and more are possible. As such, these brawlers can get in a free combat maneuver in after a strike with their improvised weapons, though they tend to be more awkward than if they had focused on the maneuver first. Additionally, the brawler must choose which maneuver to specialize in, though they gain a second and third choice later on.

Finally, these warriors learn to specialize on different weight categories of improvised weapons, light ones, one-handed, or two-handed, becoming especially effective with them.

This archetype is fairly simple, but it offers good ways to combine improvised weapons with the brawler class, both by letting you use the brawler unarmed strike full progression, as well as letting them use a few types of combat maneuvers free as part of your attacks. If you’re going this route, I highly recommend feats like the entire Shikigami Style line, as well as Chairbreaker to get a little damage boost when you don’t care about breaking your weapon. Also, consider the Disposable Weapon feat as well, since it works with any weapon with the fragile trait, not just primitive weapons the way Splintering Weapon does. Also, be sure to make the improved and greater combat maneuvers that you’ve specialized in a mainstay of your arsenal as well.

It's interesting to think of the reason why someone would train themselves in this art. Some may see it as a way to demonstrate their own fighting skill by not even using tools meant for fighting, while others may seek to be inconspicuous but deadly at a moment’s notice. Others still might have a philosophical aversion to using weapons, but not against violence.

Klaubon’s big stick is his favorite thing, a strong reinforced fence post that he has added all sorts of metal bits to make it useful for nearly anything, from digging holes to tilling earth, to shattering a bandit’s skull. While not balanced right to be a weapon, the ogre doesn’t mind, and is quite adept at using it, this crude multi-tool of his in times of conflict and in peace.

Despite there being plenty of weapons available, Shofa swears by her “magic rock”, which sometimes discharges sparks of magic and lightning when she uses it as a crude bludgeon. What the young barbarian doesn’t know is that the rock is a fragment of a menhir from the back of a zarxorin, a massive elemental that resembles a hill capped with standing stones, and those flashes of power will one day attract its attention.

Though he swears it isn’t on purpose, Baulidare Farwalker often finds himself in situations where his life is threatened, and the athletic but seemingly mild-mannered man must defend himself with anything on hand with a shocking level of skill. Is he really a sap with incredibly bad luck, or is he hiding a past as a skilled warrior?

#pathfinder #archetype #brawler #hinyasi #ogre #zarxorin #Blood of the Ancients

[rafemotherfuckingcameron]

LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS

Word Count: 3.6K

Pairing(s): Rafe Cameron x fem!reader, Barry x reader

Summary: RAFE HELPS Y/N OUT OF A TOUGH SITUATION

Warnings: Drug Use, Swearing, Throwing Up Drugs, Fainting, Fluff, Slight Flirting, Kissing

Masterlist

On a scorching summer afternoon, y/n woke up from her slumber on Barry's worn-out couch. The sun was high in the sky, signalling the middle of the day.

She had spent the previous night measuring and preparing cocaine for Barry's upcoming drug deals. Barry held the title of being the primary drug dealer of the OBX, capable of procuring any substance for anyone at a price of course. 

Y/n began collaborating with him informally around 8 months back, aiming to boost her finances and regain stability. However, she initially believed that once she accumulated sufficient funds, she could part ways. Instead, Barry harboured different intentions, refusing to let her go. 

Her tasks involved functioning as the ‘Drug Runner’ responsible for transporting narcotics to clients. Additionally, she also assumed the role of the "Money Changer," tasked with verifying the legitimacy of the cash.

Rafe, too, held a part-time position under Barry, primarily functioning as a drug tester and ‘The Muscle Man’. He played a crucial role in mentoring her, imparting knowledge on handling dodgy individuals and the details of the operation. 

The trio shared a deep bond until Ward, Rafe's father, compelled him to abandon this world and take control of his family's business. Rafe's departure was abrupt, leaving Y/n to step into his shoes and assume his responsibilities.

From the moment Rafe departed, the situation took a dramatic turn.

Barry's behaviour became increasingly exploitative. He utilised her as a drug courier, tasking her with transporting narcotics from OBX to offshore islands. He resorted to coercing her into swallowing small packets of cocaine to evade maritime customs. 

During her initial attempts, she struggled to keep them down. Barry would forcefully keep her mouth open and assist by pouring water down her throat. If she faltered, he would resort to physical violence, striking her across the face and pressing her against the wall until she complied.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

As Y/n finalised the packaging of all the cocaine parcels laid out on the table, Barry emerged from his room carrying 20 small clear sachets, placing them in her palm. "You need to swallow all of these," he instructed while retrieving a bottle of whiskey from the floor.

“20? Usually, I only swallow 5. And why are they clear?” she inquired with curiosity. His annoyance was evident in his gaze as he seized her by the back of the hair, raising his voice to command her compliance. He forcefully pushed her back onto the couch before taking a seat across from her.

"They're clear because it's not cocaine... Don't concern yourself; just swallow them now!" he commanded, retrieving his phone from his pocket. 

Y/n ingested them consecutively, resorting to water to aid their passage down her throat. 10 down 10 to go, she silently reminded herself. As she took in the final one, she reclined on the lounge, shutting her eyes.

"You've got five hours before they dissolve and become instant killers," he taunted, a smirk playing on his lips.

Wide-eyed, she turned her gaze toward him, her voice trembling. "What? What do you mean, dissolve?" Her urgency caused her to rise abruptly.

"I warned you, darling. These aren't cocaine. They dissolve in the stomach if they stay longer than five hours. Another girl suffered that fate; she didn't act fast enough and dropped dead," he chuckled, taking a sip from his bottle.

Fury fuelled her words. "Then why the fuck are you making me do this if she died?" she snapped, attempting to induce vomiting by sticking her fingers down her throat.

Swift as lightning, he leapt to his feet, seizing her wrist and twisting her arm behind her back. His finger tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as he whispered threateningly,

"If you jeopardise this deal in any way, I'll hunt you down and have my way with you.” A lick grazed her neck as he let go, returning her bag to her possession.

He handed her instructions to the drop-off point on Figure 8, intended for a wealthy kook eager to indulge for the weekend. After approximately half an hour of driving, Y/n became aware of perspiration trickling down her forehead and her hands trembling uncontrollably.

She pulled over to the roadside and stepped out of the vehicle. Her condition had worsened to the point where she struggled to maintain her balance, ultimately collapsing onto her hands and knees.

She attempted to compose herself and re-enter the car. However, her efforts led to her vision blurring, evoking a surge of panic. Her breathing became rapid and irregular.

Struggling, she endeavoured to use Siri to call Barry, yet she immediately ceased, well aware of the repercussions that would follow if she proceeded. For roughly an hour, she remained in that state, motionless by the roadside.

Then, a familiar sound reached her ears — the distinct noise of a truck approaching. Recognising it, she heard the vehicle come to a halt behind her.

Footsteps drew closer, and a voice inquired, "Hey, do you need help?" The speaker moved into view, positioning himself to see her face. 

"OMG! Y/N, hey, are you okay?" he exclaimed, his hand gently lifting her chin and brushing her hair away from her face.

Through her blurred gaze, she discerned a vague outline of the person, recognising Rafe from the sound of his voice.

"Rafe, is that you?" she whispered.

"Yeah, Y/n, it's me. What happened?" he asked gently, taking her hand in his.

"I was on my way to make a delivery, and then my hands started shaking, and I felt sweaty. I pulled over for some fresh air, but I couldn't stand, and my legs gave out,” she explained, her voice quivering.

Tears welled up, and her voice trembled further. He grasped her hands and hoisted her up, enveloping her in a comforting embrace.

"Where are the drugs? I'll handle the delivery for you," he offered, holding her securely around her waist to prevent her from collapsing

"Rafe, you don't understand... since you left, Barry started pushing these small packets of product that you have to swallow to avoid getting caught. If I don't deliver them within three hours, they'll dissolve, and I'll die," she rushed out, her breath laboured.

"Actually, I think they might be dissolving as we speak," she added, gripping his bicep for stability.

Stunned by her revelation, he regarded her in disbelief. Gently, he supported her by placing her arm around his shoulders.

"What the hell, Y/n? How could you knowingly put those things in your body? Do you even know what they are? How long has this been happening? How can we get them out?" he questioned, his gaze intent on her.

"Barry forced me into it the first time; I had no choice. I tried to get away from this! He never told me what they were.

He started this 'swallowing product' scheme a month ago. And to answer your last question, I have to throw this shit up to get it out!" she revealed in a hushed tone, her strength failing as she collapsed into his embrace. 

-----

"Y/N! Y/N! Come on, wake up," he pleaded, his voice tinged with urgency, gently shaking her form. "Baby, please, open your eyes." 

Gradually, she blinked her eyes open, her fingers tightening around his shirt.

"Did you just call me 'baby'?" she remarked with a faint smile.

"Ahh, well, yeah, it sort of slipped out," he chuckled, his concern not fully dissipating.

"Be careful, Cameron; you're starting to sound like my boyfriend," she teased, a light laughter escaping her lips, which he joined in.

Rafe guided Y/n to his truck and placed her into the passenger seat. He ran around and jumped in the driver seat and drove off. 

“Rafe I need to make this delivery, otherwise Barry’s going to hurt me.” He said as she rolled her head towards him.

“What do you mean he’s going to hurt you? You guys are friends Y/n.” He said as his gaze diverted from the road to her. 

“We were and than you left. Now its just him and me all alone. He can do what ever we wants with me and he has” She said looking back at him.

Rafe's face registered a mix of shock and anger, his grip on the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles turned white. "What did he do, Y/N?" His gaze shifted from the road to her, back and forth.

Y/n averted her eyes, her voice subdued. "Exactly what you're thinking, Rafe," she responded, her hair obscuring her face.

She tilted her head back to catch a glimpse of his expression, her own face carrying an air of vulnerability. "Time," she murmured, her words barely audible.

"What?" He reached out to brush her hair away from her face, revealing her flushed complexion. An internal thought passed through his mind - she's running a high fever.

"What... what's the time?" she asked with a frustrated sigh, her voice barely above a whisper.

-------

"It's around 5:45 pm... I'm taking you home, my home," he declared, his hand moving to her thigh, rubbing gentle circles in an attempt to offer comfort.

Upon arriving at Tanny Hill, he hastily exited the car and rushed to open her door, intending to assist her. However, she had already begun making her way toward the house.

Rafe caught up, gently manoeuvring her arm around his shoulders and guiding her indoors and up to his room. Rafe gently lowered her to the foot of the bed and then left to fetch a glass of water. When he returned, he found Y/n attempting to induce vomiting by inserting her fingers down her throat.

"Oh no, Y/n, that's risky! You might end up biting your fingers off doing it like that!" he exclaimed, swiftly reaching to grasp her wrist.

"This is how I usually do it, Rafe," she replied, leaning into him for support. Rafe responded by encircling his arm around her, pulling her into a comforting embrace. His hand moved to cradle her face, noting the feverish heat.

"I need to cool you down; your body temperature is rising, and that's not good considering what you have in you," he noted, gesturing toward her stomach.

Standing up, he assisted her to her feet, guiding them both to his ensuite and leaning her against the counter. He turned on the shower and then glanced back at her. "Do you need help?" he inquired. 

She gazes at him, conveying her assent through a nod. His hand reaches for the edge of her top, lifting it over her head and depositing it in the laundry basket beside her.

Her purple bra remains, as he moves on to unfastening her denim shorts. His actions are gentle, releasing the fly as she steadies herself by placing her hands on his shoulders. 

As he eases her shorts downward, she gracefully steps out of them. Unable to resist, he admires her toned figure, his attention caught as he turns her to face the mirror.

She catches him staring at her, her smirk evident as she playfully pushes her backside outward. "Liking what you see?" she teases slightly exhausted, her words accompanied by a slight sway of her hips.

With a subtle nod, he licks his lips. Quickly removing his own shirt and pants, leaving him in his boxers, he follows her into the shower.

As the cold water cascades over her, she releases a relieved breath, steadying herself by placing her hand against the wall. "It's time, Y/n," he says, his touch on her shoulder coaxing her to turn and face him.

"How many are there?"

"Twenty," she responds, her gaze steady as she reaches to grasp his forearm.

"Twenty, fuck!" he exclaims, a hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck. "Are you ready?" he asks, extending two of her fingers toward her.

-------

"Not really," she admits, her gaze meeting his eyes through her lashes. His understanding nod mirrors her sentiment. Raising her fingers, he prompts her to open her mouth.

Gently, he guides her fingers in, pushing them back past her tongue and further down. The sensation presses her back against the wall, her other hand seeking support as she clings to his bicep.

A gag reflex emerges, and she manages to bring up six sachets, placing them on the counter. Then another seven, three, and another two. Y/n lowers herself to all fours, needing a moment's rest before the next round.

"Only three more, Y/n," Rafe assures as he lifts her back onto her knees.

"I can't... I can't do it," her voice trembles as her eyes well up. "I... I can't do it again, Rafe." Her gaze meets his, vulnerability in her eyes. "I can't. Please, just let me die. If I survive this, Barry's just going to ruin me. I'll wish I was dead."

Rafe lowers himself to her level, cupping her face gently. "Hey, Y/n, look at me. I am not going to stand here and watch you give up on yourself. You only have three left, and you're going to survive, okay? And don't worry about Barry…..I’ll keep you safe, even if that means you stay here with me.” His soothing words resonate as they lock eyes. 

"I will always protect you because... because I LOVE YOU, Y/N Y/L/N. I'm so sorry for leaving you behind, I'll never let anyone hurt you again." A tear escapes his eye. 

"So please, tell me you can do this because I'm not ready for you to die yet." His forehead touches hers.

Y/n clutches his wrists, her voice trembling. "I don't want to give up, Rafe. It's just that I feel like I’m dying and... I just….I can't put my fingers down again." She lets go of his wrists, resting her hands on his knees as she looks down.

"It's okay, I'll help you," he reassures, guiding her chin back up. "Open up." Placing his two fingers in her mouth, he pushes gently, her head tilting back to give him easier access. She grabs his hand and pushes him further in. As he brushes against the back of her throat, three sachets surface. 

"You did it baby, No more," he says as they gather the remaining sachets. Nonetheless, when he retrieves the final item, he becomes aware that the bag contains a tear, resulting in some of the product ending up on his fingers and still inside her.

"FUCK!" he shouts, his gaze returning to Y/n, who now rests her head on the ground, trembling. He grabs soap from the sink and comes behind her, lifting her and placing her against him.

"I'm really sorry, baby. One of the bags broke, and there's still half inside you. You need to swallow this soap so the rest will come up, okay?" He explains, receiving a weak nod.

Gently, his hand guides her head back to rest in the crook of this neck. Using his fingers, he props open her mouth and pours the soap down her throat.

The taste is awful, and she attempts to shut her mouth to prevent the taste of soap, but her efforts are in vain since he instructs her to try to keep her mouth open.

When the bottle is empty, he places it down and moves her hair out of her face. He inserts his fingers down her throat once more. Y/n chokes a few times on his finger before expelling clear chunks of the product mixed with the purple citrus soap.

When she's done, Rafe cleans her up and retrieves a towel from beneath the sink. Y/n grabs on his hand and guides his face to look at hers. “I LOVE YOU TOO RAFE CAMERON!” She smiles and wraps her arms around his toned body. 

Rafe carries her out to his bed and places her on the edge. “I’ll be back in a sec.” he mentions while heading towards the door, intending to fetch some clothes from Sarah's room for her.

"These should fit,” he remarks upon re-entering his room, placing a set of cozy attire beside her. "Sarah's clothing choices aren't particularly extensive, but I believed these suited your style," he comments before stepping back a couple of paces.

“Thanks Rafe,” she replied smiling back up at him. 

"I'll give you some privacy to change," Rafe says, heading back into the ensuite to retrieve the medication. 

Y/n sets aside the towel and changes into the comfortable attire he had picked out.

Tucking her damp undergarments within the towel, she moves towards the laundry basket, but her action is halted by her phone vibrating on the side table.

Her phone screen flashes with Barry's incoming call, prompting her to shout for Rafe. He hurries back to her upon hearing her call, and she exclaims that Barry is calling. She proceeds to inform Rafe about the caller's identity while displaying the screen to him.

“Let it go to voicemail” He tells her and she does. She patiently waits as the call is redirected to voicemail:

“Y/N WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?  THIS GUY IS HARASSING ME ABOUT YOU NOT SHOWING!! YOU NEED TO GET BACK HERE NOW! YOUR NOT GOING TO LAST VERY LONG IF YOU DON’T COME BACK!”

Another voicemail pops up….

“IM SERIOUS Y/N, TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE? IF NOT YOU KNOW I’LL FIND YOU AND MAKE YOU PAY!” 

Y/n gazes at Rafe, her eyes wide with fear. He expresses his rage by rubbing his eyes and surprisingly advises her, catching her off guard: “You need to call him back.”

“What, no!” She responded. Shaking her head

“I know I know you don’t want to but he’s not going to stop calling.” He consoles her by placing his hands on her shoulders.

Her voice quivering due to her rapid speech, she responds, “I don’t know about this Rafe? What am I supposed to say?” She maintains direct eye contact with him while speaking.

“I’ll tell you what to say baby, you just have to place it on speaker so I can hear what he’s saying!…………..Yeah!” He replies running his hand up her neck, resting it just under her ear.

Hitting Barry’s contact on her phone, she activates the speaker function and situates it on the bed. They position themselves across from one another on the bed.

Y/n starts fidgeting with her fingers and biting her nails. In a reassuring gesture, Rafe raises his hand and gently interlocks his fingers with hers.

After a while, he eventually answers the call...

B: “Y/N WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN? WHY HAVEN’T YOU RESPONDED TO ANY OF MY CALLS?” He shouts into the phone.

Rafe whispers into her ear what he wants her to say. 

Y/N: “Your own your Barry…………I don’t work for you anymore!” She responded, waiting for his reaction. 

B: “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT…………YOU BELONG TO ME, I OWN YOU BITCH!” 

Y/N: “No thats just it Barry you don’t own me, you never did I -“ She’s cut off by him interrupting.

B: “DON’T FUCK AROUND Y/L/N, THOSE DRUGS WILL DISSOLVE SOON AND YOU’LL BE DEAD. SO YOU MAY AS WELL TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE AND I’LL COME GET YOU AND YOU CAN FIX THIS  FUCKING DISASTER YOU’VE CREATED!”

Y/N: “NO!” She yelled “I’M OUT…… I NEVER WANT NOTHING MORE TO DO WITH YOU!"!”

B: “YOU NEED ME TO HELP GET THOSE DRUGS OUT Y/N, DON'T KID YOURSELF INTO THINKING YOU CAN."

Y/N: “I ALREADY DID………..AND YOU WON’T RECEIVE A THING!”

From the other side of the line, they can hear a crash and Barry's enraged shout.

B: "YOU WON'T ESCAPE, Y/N, I—"

Y/N: "I ALREADY DID," she asserts with confidence before ending the call.

Placing the phone on the bedside table, she takes a deep breath. Nestling against Rafe's side, she rests her head on his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" he inquires.

"I feel like a burden has been lifted off me," she replies. "I'm just so drained."

"Did you mean what you said earlier... about allowing me to stay here with you? Because I've got nowhere else to turn!" she asks.

Rafe shifts to face her, tenderly grasping her hands. "Of course, I meant every word," he says, his eyes conveying reassurance. "I don't want you out of my sight, especially with Barry’s on the hunt for you."

"Thank you," she murmurs, embracing him warmly, her arms encircling his neck, and her fingers gently toying with his hair.

Rafe lead her into and under the covers of his bed, pulling the sheets up and over them. They lie facing each other, their faces mere inches apart. He brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she closes her eyes.

"I love you," he whispers, his own eyes shutting in kind. Her eyes reopen slowly, and she replies in hushed tones, "I love you too."

Their gazes lock deeply, and she inches a bit closer, echoing her previous motion. Their lips meet in a tender yet passionate kiss that sends shivers through her body. His hand finds her hip, rolling her slightly to align their bodies. 

She licks his lower lip and explores his mouth with her tongue. Her fingers dance over the hem of his shirt, signalling her desire, prompting him to remove it. She trails her fingers along his abdomen, sensually moving against him in a wavy rhythm.

As things escalate, she draws back, a mixture of longing and caution in her eyes. "I really want this to happen, but I want to take things slow," she confesses, her hand resting on his wrist.

He nods, understanding her sentiment. He shifts her, embracing her from behind, his head nestled in the curve of her neck as he envelops her in his arms.

She adjusts her position, gently pressing against his length for comfort. "Please, stop moving,” he laughs  whispering in her ear.

"Sorry," she responds with laughter in her tone, ceasing her movements.

"Goodnight, Baby."

"Goodnight, Rafey."

************************************************************************🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️😘🌿❤️************************************************************************

Masterlist

#outer banks #barry x reader #rafe x reader #obx #rafe cameron #love and other drugs #rafe mf cameron #rafe obx #reader x cocaine #rafe x barry x fem!reader #rafe & reader flirting #drug use