#i had to upload this twice because of tumblr

[hzdtrees]

Grass plains

#horizon forbidden west #hfw #hfw photomode #tfw you've got your tags all neatly typed out and your wifi just decides it's the ideal time to kick you out twice in short succession #so that tumblr gives you an upload error you can't close without having to reload the page #this internet connection and me won't become friends #with a bit of luck i'll have my own place soon(ish) so i can get my own plan #ANYWAY. #have i ever mentioned i love this grass? #i love this grass #not this leaplasher though #it's always off vibing in the distance during a tribe apart #and the combat music doesn't calm down unless you kill it even though the game registers you as officially out of combat #because it is so far away #and just minding its own business #having a great time #until loy puts an arrow into it #and i think even then i had trouble drawing it? #idk what's up with it it just doesn't want to fight #which is a new one for the electro kangaroos

[phantommuze]

Disappointed father of three...

Go read my comic ‘Ghost Rain’ on Webtoons!

#doodle #ghost rain webtoon #dont worry i'll make fun of my own characters #local goth dad and his three miserable children #i had to upload this twice because tumblr got rid of the edit images function in image posts

[januaryembrs]

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

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

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

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

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

previous chpt | next chapter

The one where Emily comes back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he believed her with everything in him. 

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, the one thing keeping her going was revenge. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They had found Doyle. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t do this, kid,” 

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

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

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

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

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

His smile wiped clean off his face at that.

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is, the rest of the team except Bugsy. 

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

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

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

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

Bugsy was laughing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stop, let’s just talk,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She wouldn’t tell her anything. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is it legal?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A serious contender, but nothing that screamed their UnSub. 

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

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

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

Unstable if there ever was a man for the word.

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

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

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

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

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

They moved in tandem, just like they always had. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. The one with the bank explosion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So like, is she his girlfriend or-”

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

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

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

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

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

If Emily hadn’t been there. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my god,”

“Penelope?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hated girl rules. He never understood them. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He sighed, hard. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Because crisis negotiation is overseas.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was going to be a long day. 

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe they had a chance after all.

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what was she doing?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Bugsy went down with it. 

Taglist:

@release-your-sweets @smileykiddie08 @caramelised-onions. @the-tpd-bau @stephthepeach @sunflowersndpeaches @sammy-4103 @starmansirius @yeonalie @delusionallooney @hades-disappointment-child @sadbae-33 @mdanon027 @swag13r @frickin-bats @bilesxbilinskixlahey @mindfullycriminal @mrsbellastyles @nilopillo @imagines--galore @bluejaysaysstuff @imaginexred @flow33didontsmoke @spicyspirit @mywellspringoflife @lovelyygirl8 @pleasantwitchgarden @star-girl-interlud3 @rosylnsworld @jamieolivia27 @halcyonwithletters @waywardhunter95 @ineedtosusoutmyreadinglist t @theoraekenslover @niktwazny303 @bliindmattmurdock @alyeskathewave @littlemadamred

#spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #dr spencer reid #matthew grey gubler x reader #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic #Emily Prentiss x Sister!reader

[totheblood]

jealous!ellie headcanons

a/n: these are modern headcanons sooooo... and this isn't jealous gf ellie, this is pining loser lesbian ellie... lol also super inspired by the talented @rxllingstones and @whore-era after reading their amazing fics tonight... pls go read them.. and for u fiends... there is ai audios at the bottom... more uploaded on sc bc tumblr hates me

ellie is incredibly hard to read

or at least that's what she tells herself

it's almost written all over her face how much she hates the people you date when she's in a five-foot radius of them

she tells herself she doesn't care (she's lying) but she can't ignore how her grip tightens when she sees you lip-locking some loser you met at a party

but she always finds herself at your side, pulling you away from them and back into the corner with her

"hey there, pretty girl. having fun?"

"i was until you cock-blocked me."

"there wasn't much to block... i heard his dick's small."

but the curse of having feelings for you was that you were always dating someone

it always comes up when the group goes out to dinner and the topic of who you're dating comes up

like it does every week...

"i actually really like him for you" dina shares, a genuine smile on her face

"yeah, dude's cool" jesse agrees, slinging his arm around dina in the booth

and then all the attention is on ellie as you stare at her with your wide eyes waiting for her approval

"what? you know you're not going to like what i have to say." she says taking a sip of her dr. pepper

yes ellie drinks dr. pepper

"cause you hate everyone i date!" you reply, your bottom lip jutting out in a pout

it was clear you were slightly tipsy but your face still made ellie smile

"yeah, cause you only date fucking losers." she would say smile on her face but anger blooming inside

ellie tries to be mature but she can't help herself

what makes it worse is that you really do date literally everyone except for her

so she doesn't really make an effort to be nice to the people you introduce her to

one time the same guy came around twice and all ellie could say was "oh it's this fucking guy again! hey man, glad to see you made it to a second date."

you scolded her after

but in her defense, you really are with someone new each week

until it's been three weeks and you're still dating the same girl

and ellie is a fucking mess

you started inviting her out to group hang outs and smoke sessions so ellie just stops showing up

she doesn't like the way it feels when her stomach flips upside down at the sight of you sitting on her lap, a beer in your hands

so she decides to opt-out, get high alone and avoid seeing you as much as possible

but it's short lived because your drunk ass is banging on her door

"ellie, let me in!" you yell over the tv playing from inside her dorm room. "i hear you watching shark tank!"

reluctantly, she gets up and opens the door for you

"can i help you?"

"yeah you can fucking help me. you can help me by telling me why you've been MIA for the last few parties. i miss you." you don't miss a beat and are already storming past her and sitting on her unmade bed

"you miss me? does arcadia know about that? you missing me?"

"is this seriously about you not liking another partner of mine? seriously ellie? grow up. you're supposed to be my friend and support me but you have done any of that?" it was obvious you had been hanging onto that for a while

she'd laugh but upon seeing your stone cold face her anger would rise

"oh, you're fucking serious. are you really that blind? you really think i want to be your fucking friend? i mean, my god i couldn't have made it clearer for you. i like you! like actually like you, like i want it to be my lap that you sit in. not hers. every person you have ever dated i have wished was me! but nooo, you just don't seem to notice."

she doesn't even realize it but she's shaking

she's actually just confessed her three year crush on you without even thinking about it

"ellie..." you begin, a worried look all over your face

"no, i don't really have it in me to get rejected by you tonight so please just go." she cuts you off, unable to meet your eyes

but then you're there next to her holding her shaking hand

"i'm not rejecting you, ellie." you whisper

"you're not? what about your little girlfriend."

"this might be absolutely toxic of me to say but... she's not you." you giggle

"you're absolutely right it's fucking toxic to say that…. but it's also EXTREMELY fucking hot."

ai audios:

extra ai audios:

there wasn't much to block..

oh, it's this fucking guy again!

oh you miss me?

you're not? what about your little girlfriend

you're right it's toxic to say that...

#ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams smut #ellie williams tlou #ellie williams x reader smut #ellie williams the last of us #ellie williams tlou2 #ellie williams fanfiction #ellie williams fanfic #ellie williams fan fic #ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams imagine #ellie williams oneshot #modern!ellie williams #college!ellie williams #ellie williams one shot

[dinogoofymutated]

Hi can you write something for Logan? I don’t have anything in particular in mind, but I never see this man get any love. Thanks!

NSFW!Wolverine/AFAB! Reader

Hope this is okay! I tried so hard to post it last night but tumblr kept failing on me. It wouldn't even save as a draft! If you see this before I've added the meat to the fic, it's because I'm testing because tumblr is being a dick and I'll edit in the good stuff soon.

Edit: Yay! It worked! I was just uploading too much at once I guess. Had to brake it all down for it to work!

Tw: MNDI!! pnv, fem reader, creampie, size difference, petnames. Praise kink.

If you asked him personally, Logan would say he's extremely unlucky, cursed even. and With everything he's gone through, he might be correct. But still, he is certainly blessed in at least one aspect.

Logan had a really, really nice cock. It wasn't pretty like the perfect ones in porn, but damn, was it nice. It has prominent veins that you couldn't help but spoil every time you your hands (or mouth) on him. He was flushed a deep red color at the stip, and proportional, a good 5 or six comfortable inches.

The only thing is, Logan's cock was thick. impressively, deliciously thick. When the two of you started to take your relationship to the next level, Logan didn't hesitate to warn you. That didn't stop him from Taking care of you though. He'd pump his thick fingers in an out of you, curling and stretching you, finding the most pleasure spots inside of you to get you to cum and cum hard.

But every time the two of you would get close to going further, he'd back out. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable, or that he didn't want to, he just wanted to make sure he didn't hurt you.He'd always end up saying “ ‘next time, sunshine.” Or “Just wanna make sure I take care of you properly.” and although it was sweet, you knew what you could handle, and you were determined to climb this man like a tree.

And if there was anything Logan knew more than anything, it was to never get in the way of a determined woman.

You had spent what felt like hours in Logan's sheets, his fingers curling deep in your cunt, stretching and touching the most sensitive parts of you. He kissed every tender part of you, letting you writhe and moan underneath him. He wanted to make sure that you were ready for him beyond a shadow of a doubt, knowing how stubborn you are when you really want something. This was no different. And after Cumming twice on his fingers, you were sure you could make it work. Logan sighed as you straddled him, grinding his cock against your slick cunt to try and lube him up. He sets his hands on your thighs, comfortingly caressing the plush skin. The two of you gasp when his head brushes against your Clit, an electric shock of pleasure bolting through your bodies. Logan is laid back against the pillows on his bed, looking up at you with a heated gaze.

“ ‘you okay there, doll?” He asks, the words rumbling through his chest with a groan. He smirks just barely as you scoff, adjusting yourself on your knees as you line his cock up with your slit.

“I'm- fine, I can do this.” You huff, grinding down against his thick head. Logan sucks in a breath as you do so, teeth latching onto his lip as we watches you desperately try to take him. He's not going in as easy as you thought he would, and it almost makes you feel discouraged. You were so sure you could take him, and you didn't want to quit now. Your eyebrows furrow as you struggle, and at some point his cock slips out and away from your hole. Logan lets out a grunt as you flinch, mortified.

“Ah- Sorry.” You're doing your best to not let it get to you, but there was such a sinking feeling in your chest. Almost as if he can sense it, Logan reaches up, taking your chin in-between his thumb and index finder and tilting your head down to look at him.

“It's okay.” Logan assures you. “Just relax. You'll get it.” His thumb drags across your lip, calloused hand brushing against your tits as he brings it down to your clit. He circles the nub gently first, then with a tad bit more pressure. You hear him chuckle as you eyes flutter closed, moaning at the pleasurable sensation.

“okay.” You sigh, trying to align himself with you once again. You try it a little slower this time, grinding down with just enough pressure. The both of you gasp when the head of his cock notches against your slit, an improvement from before. Then, almost suddenly, it slides in.

“Fuck.” Logan grunts. His cock was hardly halfway inside, but that didn't stop the moans you let out at the pleasure- and slight discomfort- of having him inside you. The stretch was slightly painful, but you can't seem to stop yourself from grinding against him, trying to take him further.

“Logan…” The whine of his name comes out involuntarily, and the strong man inbetween your thighs shushes you sweetly, adjusting himself so he's sitting against the headboard. He brings you closer to him, snaking his hand around the nape of your neck to bring you into a kiss. He hardly gives himself time to breathe in between kisses. Logan bites your lip, licking into your mouth when you gasp at the painful pinch. He groans when you clench around his length. Still not quite adjusted to what you could fit, and his hand grabs hold onto your thighs and squeezes.

“I know, sweetheart.” He says, finally pulling back. “I know. Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.” You bite your lip, leaning your head on his shoulder as you begin to move your hips again. The process is slow, sinking onto him inch by inch as your body adjusts to the girth, but when you finally feel the base of his cock finally sink into you, you've never felt so accomplished.

“Good girl.” Logan grunts into your ear. “ ‘did such a good job.” You yelp a little as his hips jerk, thrusting up into you. You cry out Logan's name, holding onto his shoulders as he starts to slowly pull out of you, gently thrusting back inside as he cups your face, kissing you gently. It feels good. Like he's rubbing against every spot inside of you perfectly. His slow, loving pace felt good, so, so good. But it could only keep the two of you satisfied for so long. The next time Logan pulls out of you, you slam down with a little more force. He lets out a choked moan, before you hear him chuckle. He pulls away from you just slightly, arms wrapped around your waist as he smirks at the needy look on your face. You're impatient however, and grind against him sharply when he stops moving. A flicker of pleasure flashes across his face before he's growling. He pulls you against him, pressed flush against your body as he begins to thrust more aggressively.

“Couldn't be patient, could you?” He growls. Your noises are embarrassingly loud as he picks up speed, fucking into you just like you had spent so much time imagining he would- and he was right too. You couldn't be patient. He moves his hips just slightly, hitting that one spongy spot inside of you that makes you see stars. You can't help but cry out, and without having to even tell him, he's hitting thay spot over and over again without fail. His grunts and groans are starting to get louder, and you can feel the knot in your stomach coming so close to snapping.

“Fuck- Logan!” He groans at the way you say his name, the knot snapping as you reach your peak and cum hard on his cock. He curses, burying his face into your neck as he starts to crumble at the feeling of your warm walls fluttering around him, desperately trying to milk him for what he's worth. He almost lets out a whine as he cums, and the noise surprises you. You can feel him twitch as spurts of his cum warm up your insides. By the time he's done, you're sure he must be leaking out of you. You lay against him, boneless as the two of you pant for air. Logan begins to press gentle kisses against your neck, praising you for how well you did. You sigh, content. Logan lays the two of you down on the bed, holding you close as his cock starts to soften inside of you.

Logan howlett was definitely blessed.

#x men 97 #x men #x men comics #x men 97 x reader #x men headcannons #wolverine x reader #wolverine #Wolverine smut #logan howlett x reader #logan howlett #logan howlett smut #logan howlett headcannons #Wolverine headcannons

[matan4il]

For Mileapo posts, I try not to step on anyone's toes, not even unintentionally, but it's not easy. It does make me sometimes not post something in case others will, and then some of the stuff I don't post doesn't get shared here at all. It's a bit hard to keep track. So, here's some stuff that I haven't seen on Tumblr from various dates.

Mileapo had lunch at a restaurant with Thailand's Tourism authority today (Sep 5):

They were both wearing Dior!

While Mile's mom later (Aug 26) posted the full pic, among the first batch of pics she uploaded (Aug 22) from the Man Suang gala (Aug 21) she included a pic where both Tong and Bas are cropped out. Basically JUST the Romsaithongs are in this one. ;)

And today she also posted pics from the new Vogue pics of Mile as Chat and Apo as Khem in Man Suang. She could have only posted pics with Mile or pics featuring both Mile and Apo, but she also included two pics of just Apo...

That woman adopted Apo without thinking twice about it.

A fan shared that during one of the screenings for Man Suang (Aug 26), a group of Apo fans were chanting his name while Mile specifically was speaking. Apo hushed them:

Mile and Apo both uploaded Dior pics today, they also liked and commented on each other's posts. Since it's the winter collection, Apo commented two snowmen emojis on Mile's post, while Mile commented with the rocker hand emoji on Apo's, and Apo replied with the partying emoji...

(I've seen the pics shared, but not the comments...)

And lastly, from the Shopee Game Show, which will air on Sep 9, and was probably recorded Sep 1 at the latest, Mile and Apo were asked to mimick what it's like when they're hungry. Apo rubbed his tummy, while Mile ended up staring at Apo...

Apo shared on IG his invitation to a Piaget event on Sep 12 to 14 in a heritage house in Bangkok.

On the wall, a postcard can be seen from a beach, on the right it bears the (incomplete, because the pic cuts out) date "19.08.20..." and on the left it says "w/ BOC for photobook...":

So this seems to be from the BOC cast trip to Phuket, from which Mile posted pics taken of him by Apo, dating them Aug 19, 2022:

(for all my Mileapo/Kinnporsche posts, click here)

#mileapo #mkp #mile phakphum #mile phakphum romsaithong #phakphum romsaithong #apo nattawin #apo nattawin wattanagitiphat #nattawin wattanagitiphat #man suang #man suang cast #kinnporsche #kinnporsche cast #kinnporsche the cast #kpts cast #kpts the cast #kinnporschedaily #mileapodaily

[mind-empty-just-fictional-people]

Our Own Holiday

masterlist

summary: tom can’t celebrate valentine’s day, you can’t celebrate halloween

paring: tom hanniger x female reader

rating: R for language

word count: 0.7k

warnings: trauma (not specified) surrounding halloween, language, no spoilers

timeline: set before or after the movie, up to you

author’s note: happy halloween! 🎃👻 (this fic was queued so i’m still not active on tumblr. i’ll be back on my main to celebrate the fifth of november but i don’t think i’ll be uploading any fics until later in the month 💞)

October 31st was the one day a year you absolutely hated. You loved horror movies, autumn weather, and the general aesthetic that surrounded the whole month, but Halloween hadn’t been fun for you in years.

You were currently huddled up on your living room couch and watching Child’s Play when a knock came from your back door. There had been noise coming from your front door all night (understandably so) but the fact someone had climbed your fence was a little unsettling.

You walked through the kitchen and to your back door, smiling when you saw who was there.

“Tom? Oh my god!” you giggled a little after unlocking the door and letting him in.

“I know this night is tough for you so I figured you’d want some company.” He smiled, somewhat sadly, and held up a large bag of candy. “I would’ve been here about two hours ago but I had to find non-Halloween-themed candy and the Target around the corner was out. I had to go to the one on Washington Road.”

“Thank you, Tom,” you said, a smile now on your lips.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked. “Have you gotten many trick-or-treaters?”

“I’ve had a few knocks but I haven’t answered the door,” you said. He put his hands on your shoulders before he pulled you into a hug. “I feel like absolute shit,” you admitted.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“That’s okay. How ‘bout this; I’ll go put a bowl out for the trick-or-treaters and a sign that says not to knock or ring the bell, we can cuddle on the couch and watch movies. It’ll be like… Well, not Valentine’s Day cause I hate that. It’ll be our own holiday that we celebrate twice a year while the rest of the world is celebrating stupid Halloween or Valentine’s Day.”

“My god, what did I do to deserve you, Tom?” You looked up at him as you both pulled back from the hug and he shrugged a little.

“Well, last Valentine’s you did stay with me for the whole day and kept me distracted so I wouldn’t think about it.”

“So…is this the second time we’re celebrating this new holiday of ours, then?”

“You’re right! We need a name for it,” he said as you both walked to the couch before sitting down. You snuggled into his side as he put an arm around your shoulders.

“The Hanniger Holiday,” you suggested.

“Hmm,” he hummed beside you, as if in thought. “I was gonna say ‘we need to have your name in there somewhere’ but I guess Hanniger will be your name someday.”

“You really think?”

“No question, sweetheart.” He kissed your cheek. “I love you, Y/n Hanniger.”

“I love you so much, Tom,” you mumbled, turning to place a kiss on his full lips.

“Love you more.” He smiled against your lips, moving his hand to your cheek as yours went into his hair.

“Not fuckin’ possible,” you said directly into his mouth.

“Definitely possible,” he retorted, “because it’s fuckin’ true.”

“Just shut up and kiss me some more,” you sighed.

A knock at the door and the faint sound of a few kids shouting “Trick-or-treat,” pulled you both out of the happy trance you’d been in.

“I’ll go shut ‘em up,” Tom said before kissing your cheek and standing up. “You stay here, maybe find us a different movie, and I’ll be back before you can say ‘Mr and Mrs Tom Hanniger’ three times fast.”

“But I love this movie,” you pouted, he rolled his eyes playfully before leaving to take care of the people at the door.

He handed out some candy (from another bag he’d bought, this one Halloween themed) before the kids all left. He then set the bag up on the front porch and quickly scribbled a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign that he then taped to the door.

He was back beside you within a couple minutes and, per his request, you’d set up a new movie for the two of you.

“Oh fuck yeah!” Tom exclaimed as the movie started.

#tom hanniger x reader #tom hanniger #my bloody valentine #my bloody valentine 2009 #jensen ackles #jackles character #by mind empty just fictional people #by jean

[dimepdf]

★  𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐔𝐏 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃. + 𝐓𝐎𝐉𝐈 𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐑𝐎

masterlist. / taglist. / any request? synopsis. holiday season is near, whats Christmas without a little drama to stir and a new boo for the mistletoe?

─── ☆ notes. i realized that i missed 3 uploads because none of them queued i'm SICK this tumblr update is tearing me apart and y'all didn't even tell me .

─── ☆ length. 1.6K (16 mins) .

─── ☆ genre and warnings. holiday season drama, christmas theme, established relationship, angsty, age gap, asshole boyfriend Gojo, eat the rich, cheating, daddy's money!, sorry gojo girlies, not beta'd put me on the naughty list | — feedback is always welcomed & don't forget to reblog 🤍

You were convinced that along with old age came a sour attitude towards the holidays. Sure, Gojo was twice your age and around the same age as your own father, considering the fact that Gojo was the top-paid employee in your father's company. 

When you first started to get comfortable with the fact that you were in a committed relationship with the man, you only wanted him to be your designated booty call.

just someone that you needed to warm up your bed whenever you got a little bored.

He'd slipped through the cracks of your commitment issues, crawling through the shit that you'd put him through just to finally tie you down and agree to the title of his girlfriend. 

But the moment that you two started to spend more time together, it was obvious that you two were two different people going through completely different paths in life.

It was a struggle trying to include each other in the daily routines that the both of you had already settled into, one that would always be the strain that ignited the flame for the main topic for the arguments that you two had. 

As the month crept to an end and it was your first holiday that you two were spending together, you were starting to notice how much of an absolute grinch your grown-ass boyfriend was.

"I don’t understand why I have to dress like we’re going to a fucking gala." Gojo complained for the fourth time, fidgeting with his dark green tie around his neck. The beep of his Mercedes was heard as he locked it.

You hadn't understood why he was complaining so much. The ivy green of his velvet suit not only fitted against his pale complexion, but it matched perfectly with the dark shade of wine red you wore to fit the Christmas theme.

"Stop being such a brat, I never knew you'd passed up the free opportunity to pass on unnecessarily expensive wine and old people talking about their slot shares and other boring shit." You hissed out into the cold air, hugging your jacket closer to your chest for warmth.

The night was young, the sky a darker purple as the moon rose just above in the sky, and down from the clouds fell small specs of white crystals laying against the ground, leaving a small blanket of white on the streets and anything else that it could mark. 

You would have thought it was a scene from a movie if it hadn't been for the hot-headed being erasing all recollections of Christmas joy you had left in your soul. 

"Last I checked, that boring shit is the reason you could even afford to wear that godawful set." Your outfit wasn’t awful: nothing about the dazzling diamond necklace that decorated your collarbone or the white crystals that hung from your ears was anything close to being considered ugly.

"I swear it's like you don't even try to look even close to modest." It just wasn't the dress that Gojo had laid out for you to wear. 

Another reason that you two were arguing would be his completely unbearable, controlling personality, wanting to dress you up and down as if you were his personal Barbie doll.

"Last I checked, my father pays your bills, honey," you scoffed, ignoring his invitation to hold his arm and stomping forward to the door. 

As with the doorman who greeted you by name, your annoyance morphed into a split second of kindness. Not missing the sly smile placed on his lips as he checked you out.

He wasn't bad looking—a tall man with a wide stature and a dark gaze—and if you hadn't had the throne by your side—aka Gojo—you might have given him another look. 

It seemed like Gojo didn't miss that look of reconsideration in your eye, ignoring the man's greeting and barreling through the door with a scuff.

"So now you're going to throw a tantrum tonight, how fucking mature of you," he scoffed, grabbing you by the elbow and bringing you to a halt. 

You stumbled a bit from the force but were used to Gojo's strength enough to stabilize yourself in your heels.

You didn't bother making the confrontation look anything but aggressive, you hoped that someone would get the completely wrong idea just by looking at you glaring up at him. 

Fortunately for Gojo, your father seemed to appear out of thin air, as he looked as graceful and rich as ever.

A man out of a bougie magazine always seemed too dressed to impress.

You were convinced he did it just to remind the other people around him that they could never dream to even make as much money as he would spend in a day.

"Ah, there you are, sweetheart. I was waiting to see when you and Gojo would arrive."

Your father was a stony man, practically always in business mode, ready to give just about anyone that would lend him an ear a nice long ramble about how important it is to stay ahead in life, to never let your self-worth droop, and to especially never let anyone walk all over you, which you found pretty ironic given the type of guy you were dating.

Gojo's expression had changed completely, plastering on that annoying chirper smile as if he wasn't already red in the face and ready to blow up at you.

You two should have gotten Grammy awards for how quickly you could change from the appearance of completely hating each other to looking like the world's star couple as you yanked your elbow from his grasp instead of tucking your arm into his. 

"Hope you found the place quite already. If I knew it was bound to snow this much, I would have moved the date back a bit." You detested small talk, even despised it. 

No matter the person or situation, you could hide the way your smile twitched, your eyes already scanning for an escape. The last thing you wanted to do at a party was talk about the fucking weather.

"Yeah, it was a pretty long drive with the traffic and all, I’m gonna go find the restrooms to freshen up a bit." The excuse was enough for your father to allow you to part ways, slipping away from the conversation with a small hug before your heels directed you straight to the open bar. 

Drinking was a pretty good distraction, especially when you were passed a new glass at the wave of a hand. You had almost felt shame at the side glances the bartender would give you with every shot.

 "Boy trouble?" Anyone but the doorman with the alluring eyes and Chester smile was expected to be sitting next to you. 

Your eyes instantly flickered to the scar that traced just over his lips. He seemed to get a lot of attention from the scar, his tongue swiping over the front of his smile to his cheek once he had noticed your eyes on his mouth.

You weren't sloppy drunk; if anything, you were a bit tipsy, as your party phase definitely raised your alcohol tolerance. "Sorry, what?" you stuttered a bit over your syllables, lashes fluttering as you genuinely tried to recognize the question he asked.

Toji didn't seem phased at all, only biting back a chuckle as he leaned against the bar counter, rotating his entire position on the stool to face you completely.

An extremely attractive gesture of interest that you had checked off on the list of things that he’s done that you found completely hot.

Another thing was the way his head nodded in the direction of Gojo, yet his eyes still stayed on you as if a split second of looking away would miss some little detail about you. "What do you think they're talking about?"

The question had brought a smile to your face, and you were giggling into your drink as you tipped back the glass. "I bet stocks and boring shit." Your thoughts returned to the earlier argument. "A bunch of stuck-up assholes parading around my dad just for a raise." You sighed. 

"I don't blame them, shit might go over there myself if it meant a few months off rent." You felt his hand rest against your thigh, his palm warm to the touch despite standing outside in the snow.

You wondered how he had managed to radiate so much heat from his body, almost like a personal heater, resisting the urge to lean into his chest and nuzzle your face into his chest.

With a glance, you noticed how black seemed to be his color—dark slacks and a button-up shirt that hugged his muscles just the right amount. 

Not enough to tear around the seams, but enough to show that he had definitely bought in a bigger size but had gotten shrunken as he got bigger, or maybe he just didn't know how to wash his clothes.

Either way, you weren't complaining much as he seemed to soak up all the attention you gave him. "You're pretty handsy for a guy I just met."

"And you're just pretty." He had seemed to be leaning in more and more, wanting to get as close to you as he possibly could.

Wanting to know how far he could push you before you would pull away, and maybe it was the alcohol talking or the fact that your asshole boyfriend was just a few feet away, glaring at you from across the room, but something inside of you just seemed to erupt.

“Wanna get out of here?”

tap here to be added to taglist.

#[ ⇢ ˗ˏˋ ★ — t.wrks. ] #toji x reader #jjk x reader #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #jjk toji #fushiguro toji #toji fushiguro #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #toji fushiguro x reader

[cassius-the-kitten]

DDADDS as Content Creators (headcanons)

I don't know why I had this idea, but here you go!

have some content-creating DDADDS :3

Brian Harding

technically Brian doesn’t have a channel. Daisy just records him and posts it to TikTok.

it is all camping, fishing, and general outdoors videos. except the lawncare videos, which are actual tutorials.

Daisy actually makes these tiktoks look really nice and high-quality, even if Brian is not that good of an actor. he’s trying his best, but it actually works. surprisingly, she never really shows up on camera. it’s all Brian here

has a lot of fans of his fishing for… aesthetic reasons. yeah, aesthetic reasons. the aesthetic reason being that he is shirtless in almost all of them. and that he is obviously very confident in his body.

his lawncare videos get the same amount of views, but for vastly different reasons. all of the lawn-caring dads enter his TikTok comment section whenever he posts and they either compliment him or start discourse on which weedwhacker is the best.

surprisingly, Brian has some of the most followers out of all of the dads. he even ends up doing some lawn equipment giveaways.

Craig Cahn

it’s all fitness all day with Craig. he has a TikTok and an Instagram.

he posts a lot about his business, softball coaching, healthy recipes, and once again fitness.

he has fallen for the “can you fitness dick in your mouth” joke at least 12 times by now. he keeps falling for it. help him please

completely avoids drama not only to keep away extra stress, but also because there’s literally nothing you can really yell at him for. unless you hate his recipes

probably has a series where he tries out a bunch of popular healthy recipes and rates them on a 5-star scale.

he has a LOT of followers for a LOT of reasons. good video quality, good recipes, he’s entertaining, a good father, and all of the softball moms\dads love him.

Damien Bloodmarch

plenty of Victorian recipes, fashion, and general taxidermy. he’s got a Youtube channel and a Tiktok, but he’s more comfortable with the YouTube format.

he edits all of his videos and he’s Really, Really good at it to the point where he offers to edit videos for other dads. so he’s both a YouTuber and a freelance editor.

probably gets the most sponsorships out of all the dads

has a very welcoming and kind community that he interacts with over Tumblr and Reddit. he has a Twitter but he just doesn’t use it

his space is 100% drama-free. unless you are arguing about historical accuracy.

he has an entire series rating the historical accuracy of anything Victorian; from clothes to books to recipes and more. it doesn’t stop. he will post these forever.

he manages to make a LOT of money off of this, to the point where he gets to quit his IT job altogether and gets to have more fun.

Damien really loves getting recognized by fans and always expresses his appreciation in his videos whenever he can.

Lucien shows up in his food videos sometimes, but only to eat the food and to mildly bully him on-camera. the comments call him low-rent Gerard Way and he does Not appreciate it.

Hugo Vega

he has a small YouTube channel that consists of book reviews and nothing else. until he eventually gains more popularity, that is.

there is very, very little editing on the earlier videos and it shows. Ernest refuses to help him. all of his students refuse to help him. dadsona cannot help him. please help him. he cannot edit

he uploads very rarely (once a month, maybe twice during summer months), but his videos are actually very well-scripted and well-performed. sometimes Ernest comes in to purposefully ruin his recording session, and it works every time.

eventually he somehow manages to bag Damien as his editor, and the video quality goes up significantly from there. Damien even buys Hugo better equipment and gives him advice.

he started out covering just older lesser-known works from the 18th century. somewhere along the way, he made a single video on poorly written YouTuber books and it Exploded in popularity. that’s when he started shifting towards being a bit more of a commentary channel, with Damien’s technological help of course.

some people have called him “the old librarian version of Kurtis Conner” and he doesn’t know what it means until he looks up Kurtis Conner. then he understands.

somehow he becomes well-versed in internet discourse and makes videos about it, with full-length video essays of a pretty high quality.

he doesn’t forget his literature roots, though — he still makes plenty of content on literature and art history, even if they make less views. he enjoys doing it and that’s what matters.

he always blushes when he gets recognized in public and he is way too polite to turn down a signature or photo. one time a wrestler he likes recognized him and he almost fainted from pure joy.

Joseph Christiansen

by far the most controversial of all. (\j its Robert)

just kidding it’s all baking. his TikTok is just a gay tradwife’s dream.

the man is just trying to be hip with the kids. he even dresses up as Ken after the Barbie movie premiere and makes a cake about it. this is actually his most popular video and it gets millions of views & likes

his community is Christian. mainly because he’s Christian. just that sometimes he attracts the mean Christians. he gets a lot of hate comments from them but he just deletes them and moves on with minimal worry or stress

besides that, his community is pretty supportive and full of a combo Christian mothers and Christian queers. most of his audience are 25+ but there is a sizeable portion that is under the age of 25, so technically he got what he wanted

the videos are of a fine quality, even though he’s not really an editor. like everyone else who can’t edit themselves, he just asks Damien very nicely to edit for him

he shows his kids in videos semi-often, but it’s really just because they either mess with him while he’s recording and he doesn’t know how to edit it out, or he has them try the food afterwards. it’s a win-win scenario for the kids

Mary refuses to show her face in any of the videos whatsoever and steers clear of the kitchen whenever Joseph is recording in there.

the kids at church all know him from his TikTok but either say nothing about it or actively make fun of him for it.

Mat Sella

posts baking and recipes to TikTok, along with promotion stuff for The Coffee Spoon. it was Carmensita’s idea and he just ran with it because it’s fun for both of them

Carmensita is the one behind the camera (or tripod) while Mat bakes, and sometimes she appears on camera when she wants to try the food. Pablo helps him edit and do other promotional videos. sometimes Pablo is seen helping in the videos too.

he always gets really anxious after posting it but the second that the positive comments and likes roll in, he’s completely relaxed.

any food he bakes on TikTok he sells at the Coffee Spoon, so it’s actually extremely useful at getting people to come and buy stuff. eventually people are mostly coming over for the food but also order a coffee because “may as well”

has a very positive comments section that consists mostly of people really wanting to go to Massachusetts just to order the food and give him a kiss on the forehead.

he has been called a babygirl at least twice and he has no clue what it means. Pablo and Carmensita refuse to tell him.

has done multiple collabs with Joseph and Damien, along with sharing tips with them. they’re all internet besties.

is recognized pretty often, and he’s always in-between being an anxious mess and being a really cool chill guy about it.

Robert Small

by far the least consistent and most unhinged out of all of them, for obvious reasons. he’s a TikToker solely because the format is easy for him, but he also just uploads all of his content straight to YouTube

he either posts 5 times a day or twice a month. there’s no in between.

it will be of the most random shit. one day you get him rating brands of whiskey, and next week there’s a 12 part series of him going cryptid hunting. all of it is unedited and of very poor audio quality if he’s outside

he probably visited the Goatman’s Bridge after the Buzzfeed Unsolved and also bullied the Goatman and took the bridge for himself. the only difference is that he’s drunkenly yelling at the Goatman and calling him a bitch.

he’s always at least a little intoxicated in all of his videos, and some cases he is fully drunk. he doesn’t really put an act on for the camera, he’s really just himself, completely unfiltered.

90% of his YouTube videos are either age-restricted, demonetized, or both. some of his TikToks get taken down but he always reuploads them because he is a very stubborn old man and he refuses to stop.

Robert probably has a maximum of 200 followers. he does not respond to his comments unless someone insults his whiskey or pineapple on pizza. he also responds to weird internet slang.

he doesn’t get any sponsorships. and he never will. and he doesn’t want them. the sponsorships also don’t want him. he has made multiple videos where he goes on rants about ads and how much he hates capitalism.

whenever someone in his TikTok comments calls him a blorbo he responds with a video of his honest reaction. he is confused. they also call him a poor little meow meow. he is confused. they also call him babygirl. he is still confused.

when he gets recognized in public he has no clue how to act. mainly because he very, very rarely gets recognized. his own neighbors are surprised when they find out he is a content creator.

eventually he will get recognized more, because his content is a comedy goldmine, albeit very unintentional. most of his fans are actually Gen Z, because his humor fits in pretty damn well. he is always slightly unsettled when teenagers recognize him because sometimes he forgets that young people do in fact watch his content. even though most of his viewers are half his age or less.

eventually Val finds his channel and dies laughing and confronts him about it (post reconnecting), because she never knew about it and she wants to be in those videos too because it’s fun. just some father & daughter fun: getting drunk and taking a walk in the forest being silly.

--

I actually really love doing these headcanons and i hope you do too :3

#ddadds #dream daddy a dad dating simulator #dream daddy #game grumps #ddadds headcanons #dream daddy headcanons #headcanons #general headcanons #ddadds fanart #hugo vega #robert small #brian harding #craig cahn #joseph christiansen #damien bloodmarch #mat sella

[cupcraft]

Sorry if this posts twice (i had issues uploading)

Dream's statement about amanda tw grooming & victim blaming. Source was a clip on twitter i screen recorded because i didnt want to link to a drm stan/plus give the video to ppl who dont have twitter. Sorry if the video repeats i ended the recording late and i cant edit for shit lol.

I am sending it as a drive link because tumblr is literally exploding for me. You can view it!

#dream situation #tw grooming #tw victim blaming #its just ...makes him look so much worse and he sys such vile things #also the discord message isnt mine its op's from twitter

[messrmoonyy]

so I had a thought and Uhm uhm uhm Tess fucking you in front of a mirror, holding you against her and making you watch yourself as she uses one of her toys on you 👉🏻👈🏻😵‍💫 whispering in your ear and telling you to watch and how good you look 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹 I don’t want to put you out and ask for a big thing I’m sure you have lots of writing but if you could just do a little something and put my horny thoughts to rest

Hello my love! You are always welcome to off load feral thoughts into my ask box and I will write you a lil something in between my usual request uploads please don’t be shy or feel like you’re putting me out I love this shit.

All requests that I can’t write much for because I can’t come up with anything longer like this are also linked on my masterlist if you wanna give them a read

let’s pray this actually reads right in app seeing as tumblr keeps chopping off the bottom chunks of whatever fic I post

Smut under the cut 18+ ( 444 words )

Your head fell back onto Tess’ shoulder, too overwhelmed to maintain the focus that keeping your head up required. How long has you been sat there now? On the floor at the end of the bed, held back against her chest as she fucked you mercilessly, the long mirror from the bathroom propped up in front of you. There was a crack across the middle and you were thankful for it, it helped you obscure your own face if you tilted your head a certain way.

But she knew that. She knew you too well.

“ no no baby, eyes forward “ she grabbed your face with her free hand, forcing you to look back at the mirror again “ that’s it “ she caught your eyes in the reflection, a smirk plastered across her face “ so disobedient today “

“ I’m sorry “ you whimpered, cheeks burning as your eyes fluttered down to where she was dragging one of her biggest toys in and out of your sopping cunt at a torturous pace. You didn’t know how she managed to find them, it was like she had some sex toy radar. You’d complained she was taking up valuable space in her bag once or twice but according to her. They were essentials.

Because apparently fucking you to within an inch of your life was the most essential part of survival in a post outbreak world. Not that you were complaining really.

“ I’ll forgive you if you keep those eyes forward baby girl “ she pressed kisses across your neck as she changed the angle of her wrist slightly, hitting some new devastating part inside of you that made you shiver. You couldn’t deny there was something about watching her fuck you with such a clear view, seeing the fucked out look on your face that she loved so much. Seeing for yourself how easy it was to destroy you, to bring you to your knees in a whimpering pathetic mess. It was almost too much.

“ cant- cant take much more “ you spoke, voice barely audible, the stretch of your cunt combined with the way her teeth grazed over the soft skin of your neck boarding on making you see stars.

“ yes you can. You’ve done it before so you can do it again “ she caught your eyes in the mirror again “ if you hadn’t of been such a disobedient slut earlier you wouldn’t be in this position would you? No“

“ I’m sorry. I’m sorry “ “ I know “ she cooed, lips brushing against the shell of your ear “ but I need you to prove it. So you’re gonna keep your eyes forward like a good girl. I want you to watch yourself when you come “

#tess servopoulos x reader #tess servopoulos #the last of us #tlou hbo #tlou tess #lgbt #Anna torv

[stargirlaveblog]

7Seals

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Chapter 13

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•Previous Chapter: Chapter Twelve

•Next Chapter: Chapter Fourteen

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•New chapters every Thursday

•Content: Levi Ackerman × OC female. Slow Burn! Canon verse!

•Word Count: 2.7k

•Warning: This content may not be suitable for all readers. If you've watched all of AOT then you will understand that the show handles heavy subjects such as abuse, racism, violence, and other heavy subjects. This fanfiction will also have the same heavy themes. Chapters with heavy themes will be marked with * at each chapter.

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A/N: Hey babes! I just want to say thank you all for the support. This is my first ever fanfiction & using Tumblr so thanks for the patience and positivity. I’ve read a lot of fanfics to the point I was running out. (I’m a picky bitch) I got to the point where I had an itch that wasn’t being scratched. I needed something so angsty and tension ridden that I decided to create my own story. I hope you guys enjoy this story because I have no plan of ending it anytime soon. Within the next month or so I plan on uploading this fic on Wattpad & ao3 as well. I understand it might be difficult to read on here, bare with me. I’m not tech savvy unfortunately. (2-24-24)

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The infirmary was a place where the scent of antiseptic hung heavier than Hange's lab. I don't know which one I'd rather be at. Hange would just talk my ear off, a lot better than being poked and prodded at. Who knows with Hange though, I could end up as their test subject at any moment. I guess the doctor is a safer option, one that I can hold accountable.

The doctor, with all the charm of a brick wall, attempted to order me around as she waltzed around the room. I didn't want to listen to her, there was no reason for me to be here anyway.

"Sit down, Iris," she demanded.

"I'm fine. I just need new wraps, that's all. I can handle the rest myself," I countered, my bravado masking the twinge of pain radiating from my battered body.

The doctor sighed, her expression a mix of 'Not again' and 'Why me.' She was over my shit and I was over hers as well. I avoid her just as much as she avoids me.

The door swung open without the courtesy of a knock, and in walked Levi, the epitome of perpetual grumpiness.

"When will you learn to knock?" I threw at him, but Mr. Manners over here didn't seem to care.

"Brat," he grumbled, his eyes quickly scanning the room. "Why am I here?"

"She won't sit," the doctor lamented like she was dealing with a toddler who refuses to eat their veggies.

Did she really call the Captain on me?

If Levi hadn't walked in maybe she would have accepted her fate and dealt with the defeat. Levi's eyes laser-focused on me, or maybe it was just his usual stare.

"Your ribs," he stated, a command more than a question. "Sit down."

In reluctant submission, I perched on the uncomfortable examination table, a sigh escaping my lips. The doctor prodded and pressed on every inch of my battered body. I winced, particularly as their fingers found the tender spots on my lower ribs, the pain shooting through me like a lightning bolt.

"I'm fine," I groaned through the discomfort, attempting to downplay the obvious.

"No, you're not," the doctor retorted, unyielding in her assessment. I shot her a scowl as she continued to deliver the unwelcome prognosis.

"Your ribs never healed properly. Maybe if you did as you were told we wouldn't be here. Rest for two weeks, and then we'll have another follow-up."

"Thrilling," I deadpanned, envisioning the excitement of two weeks staring at the ceiling. Levi's glower intensified, probably sensing the impending chaos of my forced downtime.

"She is not to engage in any training or expeditions until she is cleared, Captain," she declared, her stern gaze landing squarely on me.

Levi, arms crossed in that brooding way of his, shot a glare that could make even a Titan think twice.

"Oh, trust me. She won't be."

"I'll be fine. Stop overreacting," I mumbled, dismissing their concern with a wave of my hand. Death and I were like old pals—flirty but never too serious.

"No. You are not fine," the doctor asserted, her exasperation palpable. "You just love flirting with death, don't you?"

"Yeah, just a bit," I grinned, hopping off the examination table as if I hadn't just narrowly escaped becoming Titan chow.

"You're not done," the doctor stated firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument.

"Oh, I can just wrap it myself," I offered, trying to sidestep more medical attention.

"Wrong. You'll come to my office every day to get it wrapped,"

"That's okay. I got it," I insisted, attempting to regain control over my destiny.

"It's not an option. You have nothing else to do anyway," Levi chimed in, his annoyance practically a tangible force.

"Paperwork," I informed Levi, I can only envision the burdensome stacks scattered across his desk. "You have mounds of it."

"You can get that done after," he dismissed, a casual wave of his hand.

"Fine, whatever. Just wrap me already," I groaned, reluctantly surrendering to the inevitable visit to the infirmary.

And just like that, my grand plans for rebellion were crushed under the heel of duty and responsibility. No expeditions, no training, just the thrilling routine of daily bandaging sessions. Not even paperwork could get me out of this situation. The glamour of soldier life, they said.

Levi, ever the epitome of brevity, left the doctor's office, leaving me alone with her—a situation I deeply dreaded.

"So," she began, a faux pleasantness tainting her voice. I, on the other hand, contemplated escaping through the window.

"How've you been?"

"Great," I replied, my tone implying anything but.

She rolled her eyes, her hands deftly wrapping my protesting ribs. "Uh-huh," she continued, winding the bandages tighter.

"And sleep? How's that going for you?"

"Amazing. The full eight hours and occasional naps every day," I retorted, my sarcasm dripping like honey.

"Oh really?" she pressed on, unfazed.

"Oh yeah, best sleep I've had in years," I replied with a grin that didn't quite reach my eyes.

"Your eyes say otherwise," she observed, a touch too perceptive for comfort.

I opted for silence as she finished wrapping my ribs, hopping off the bed with an air of finality.

"Anything else, doc?"

"You need to rest," she insisted, stating the impossible.

"You know I can't do that," I shot back, walking out the door before she could further encroach on my stubborn resolve.

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Same old slop bean soup, the Scouts' daily culinary masterpiece – or disaster, depending on how you view things. Trash for us while the other military branches dined like royalty.

With an air of resigned acceptance, I served the lackluster fare into a container, the same repetitive soup that graced our tables day in and day out. Lars, the scouts' chef and bearer of both good and bad news, shattered any hope of something different.

"No bacon today, miss," he declared.

"Shocker," I mutter, unenthusiastically piling the obligatory veggies and bread into a basket.

"This is for the Captain," he grins pulling out a tin canister at his side from his apron.

"I'll make sure he knows. Might even crack a rare smile from humanity's stoic wall." I said taking the canister and quickly putting it in the basket before anyone else sees.

Lars beamed with pride. Everyone admired Captain Levi, and winning his favor in the food department was an achievement, especially for me. Often they would add small bags of sugar in my basket for the Captain or sometimes sweets from the ladies.

It worked in my favor most of the time. Captain didn't want the luxurious treats from his admirers but he did want all the sugar. It was a compromise I was content with. While the girls in the regiment splurged their savings on the Captain thinking it would work in their favor, I snacked on each item.

"To the office?" Eld inquired, strategically positioning himself to block my path.

I can never have a moment to myself.

"Yeah, the thrilling world of paperwork awaits," I replied, attempting to sidestep his social invitation. The mundane mess hall was the last place I wanted to linger.

"Stay, have dinner with us for once," he urged his hand landing on my arm in a well-intentioned but entirely unwelcome gesture.

"Let go,"

Eld complied, but the echoes of his touch lingered, reigniting a familiar anger as I left the mess hall, basket in hand, and a taste of frustration.

Eld doesn't know the details but knows enough to understand I don't like being touched. He's been around enough to know, he's seen enough to know. They all have.

I pushed open Levi's office door, an uninvited guest with a basket full of shit as an excuse for dinner. The room was suffused with the flickering glow of lanterns, and the warmth from the fireplace competed with Levi's ever-present scowl.

As expected, the man himself, sipping tea and drowning in a sea of paperwork, shot me a scowl as I strolled in unannounced.

"It's polite to knock," he scolded, his eyes narrowing.

"Pot calling the kettle black. When was the last time you knocked before barging in?"

Politeness and Levi were distant relatives, especially when it came to door-knocking etiquette. I couldn't help but wonder how many innocent souls fell victim to his uncanny ability to barge in unannounced, even in the men's restroom.

Ignoring his irritated huff, I set the basket on his side table and began unpacking our lovely dinner. Bread, potatoes, carrots, and the perpetually present bean soup – the Scouts' culinary masterpiece. The meat was a luxury reserved for those suicidal expeditions defending humanity.

"I brought you dinner," I declared, crafting a plate for him even though he would insist he was not hungry. The man needed sustenance beyond tea and stress, and someone had to remind him.

"I'm not hungry."

Shocker.

"Shut it. You're going to eat it or I'm going to shove it down your throat," I threatened, depositing the plate on his desk with a decisive thud.

His steel eyes, momentarily diverted from the paperwork, met mine. Levi's face remained an emotionless canvas, an unreadable mask only occasionally betraying a hint of anger. He took a begrudging bite of the bread, showcasing his usual efficiency in devouring it.

What a brat.

"Happy?" he deadpanned, pushing the plate away after a few bites.

"You burn more calories than you take in, Captain. Ever thought about a balanced diet? Y'know one that's not tea and stress?" I smirked at him.

"You are my stress." He said rubbing his temples.

"Oh really?" I challenged him, leaning on his desk. "Last time I checked, I'm the reason you've survived this long."

Levi's eyebrow quirked, his arms crossed, and he leaned in, eyeing me with that infuriatingly unreadable expression.

"Let's not forget I'm the reason you haven't bled out and died yet."

"Well, I'm the reason you have all these fancy teas," I snubbed him. "We both know without me by your side, your likability would be rock bottom."

"We both know I don't give a shit about status," he growled.

"You should," Hange's voice chimed in from the doorway.

I felt my body jolt back as Levi did the same, a rare moment of synchronized surprise.

"Oh, sorry," Hange giggled. "Do you think we interrupted something, Moblit?"

"What do you want, Hange?" Levi groaned, snapping us all back to reality.

They barged into Levi's office like they owned the place, plopping down on his couch with all the grace of a nosy neighbor. Moblit loyally stood by, an unwilling participant in Hange's grand entrance.

"Wow!" Hange gasped dramatically. "Can't I visit my very best friends I haven't seen in a while?"

Levi pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You just saw us four hours ago."

"Oh, so you guys can hang out together, but I can't join?" Hange played the victim, poking at invisible wounds.

"We aren't hanging out," Levi and I shouted in unison, our frustration evident.

My ears burned but my cheeks grew hotter at the accusation.

"Really? Then what was all that I saw a moment ago?" Hange prodded, determined to stir the pot.

"Me trying to get this mutt to eat," I groaned, gesturing towards Levi, who shot me a glare that could freeze hell over.

Levi's head snapped toward me, a warning in his eyes. "Watch it, brat," he growled.

I rolled my eyes, choosing to ignore his threat, my attention fixed on Hange. They leisurely got up, stretching their entire body with an exaggerated yawn.

"Well, I guess I'll get going. Be expecting me soon, though! We have some big things to go over," they declared, strolling out the door. Their head peeked back in, a mischievous smirk playing on their lips. "Bye, you two."

"Come on, Moblit. We have planning to do," Hange's voice echoed down the hallway, lingering even after the door closed, leaving Levi and me alone once again.

I flopped onto the couch, covering my eyes with my arms to block out the light.

"What was that about me being stressful again?" I teased Levi.

"Shut it," he groaned. "Be quiet or get out. I have work to do."

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Gasping for air, I struggled to move, my limbs heavy as if the weight of the world pressed down on me. My feeble attempts to stay conscious were futile.

Coughs wracked my body relentlessly, and the metallic taste of blood coated my mouth, staining my clothes in macabre patterns.

The world spun around me, a disorienting blur that refused to make sense. Panic set in as I tried to grasp the reality of the situation. What was happening to me?

His fist collided with another's face, each blow accompanied by a sickening crunch. His eyes, devoid of any trace of remorse, blazed with an intensity that sent shivers down my spine.

Crimson droplets dripped from his knuckles, creating a grotesque mosaic on the ground. He was forcefully pulled away, his breaths resonating like those of a rabid beast.

His eyes admired the bloodshed.

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"Iris!" I felt a hand urgently shaking my arm and another gripping my shoulder.

My eyes snapped open, and my hands instinctively shot toward the perceived threat, aiming for the throat of the intruder. Before I could tighten my grip, my arms were captured, restrained by a force I couldn't overpower.

"Wake up," a voice commanded its tone firm yet oddly soothing, accompanied by a hand gently resting on my head.

Levi.

Though my eyes were open, I struggled to transition. Levi's presence began to anchor me to reality.

"Breath," he instructed, locking eyes with me while still holding my wrists in a firm, grounding grip.

We found ourselves on the floor of his office, the crackling fire providing a grip on reality. My back leaned against the couch, and the warmth from the flames seemed distant.

"It hurts," I mumbled, my voice a fragile whisper.

"What hurts?" Levi questioned, his concern evident.

"It hurts to breathe," I replied more audibly, a hint of irritation seeping into my voice.

"Lay down on the couch," he ordered, his grip easing on my wrists.

"I can't. I need to get back to Alexander," I insisted, urgency tainting my words.

"Please, let go. It hurts."

His face appeared paler than usual, a stark contrast against the flickering firelight. Levi's words reached me, but their meaning blurred in my disoriented state.

"You're not awake," he asserted, rising and placing a cup in my hands, ensuring I had a firm grip to prevent any accidental spills. The cold tea trickled down my lips as I stared at the dancing flames behind him. He knelt beside me, still his rough callous hands covering my small puny finger as he held the cup.

"Alexander is in custody," he informed me, a somber note underlying his words.

"Drink," he commanded, lifting the cup to my lips.

As I sipped the tea, I noticed how close and docile he was with me. The heat of his body seeped through his clothes and into mine. The smell of mint and black tea radiated off of him, wafting my way with every move he made.

"What happened?" my voice a hushed murmur.

"You had another night of terror," he responded, his gaze shifting away.

"I realize that," I groaned, embarrassment flooding me. "What happened while I was out?"

"You were screaming," he admitted, his eyes avoiding mine.

"How long?" I pressed.

"At least ten minutes," he sighed. "I couldn't wake you."

Defeat settled over me as I absorbed the impact of my nightmares still haunting me after all these years.

"You're still dreaming about it?" Levi asked softly, his concern evident.

I met his gaze, and concern clouded his eyes, but I ignored it, choosing silence over confirmation. Four years had passed, yet the ghosts of the past lingered.  I was still a prisoner to my dreams.

"No," I deflected, pushing myself off the ground and heading toward the door.

"Thanks for the tea, but I should probably get going. It's late. I didn't mean to fall asleep here. I'm sorry."

Without awaiting his response, I walked out the door, leaving the haunting shadows of the night terror behind.

Will I ever forget the devilish gaze in Levi's eyes that night?

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[makriiii]

Caught Ⅲ (Arthur Morgan × f!reader)

Word count: 3.1k

Authors notes: Sorry for the slow uploads. Btw, when I copy-paste this from my notes app, tumblr double spaces my paragraphs and I'm too lazy to change it. 😭

Warnings: 18+, angst, & cursing.

Pt1! Or pt4

Wattpad or Ao3

♡

Caught Ⅲ

The land around you briskly faced a blanket of darkness as the sun had just set, the colors had kept you busy for just a stint, longing for them as they faded into deep shades of gray and blue.

People were now rekindling their fires from the night previous, preparing for dinner, a preparation you didn't need to worry yourself with, as much as you wished you did.

Keiran was across from you, and despite being part of your gang, you hadn't exchanged many words. He never did seem too fond of the gang.

Neither of you conversed, not only due to the fact that he tried desperately to distance himself from being an O'Driscoll, but because everyone in camp would also be part of the conversation.

With Keiran ignoring you, and Dutch's gang shunning you, you may as well have been the naughty kid who sat in the corner with a dunce cap on.

The only thing that kept your sanity was finding out that, Arthur, so you came to know, had taken your horse with him that day.

With nothing to do but sit defeated, you zoned out, staring at your horse. The thoughts of escaping with her danced around in your head.

Revenge didn't even cross your mind, in fact, at this point you were willing to let it all go, so long as you had your horse.

Rival gang members came and went, gawking at both of you like zoo animals. At one point, a lady who seemed personally victimized by Keiran had come and dropped food on him.

You were slightly taken aback by her actions, you were hoping it wasn't just for the fact he's an O'Driscoll, otherwise you felt you'd be next.

It was clear you weren't welcome despite being forced to stay and by all means you were happy to leave if they'd allow it. You'd even take Keiran along as well, but they had no such plans.

Out of all the people who roamed before you, your eyes met with one, much to your despair.

You had had enough of the man over these past days when he would check on you, once or twice each day, occasionally giving you water but only teasing you with food.

He kept to asking you and Keiran both, where on earth Colm was, and on that earth, you couldn't give him the darndest of answers.

Each time threatening to rid of both of you right here and there every time you gave him the same answer.

He was no man to play games with, but you still played them. He threatened it but never did actually point the barrel of his gun at you again. You shivered as a small ache crept from your arm just thinking about it.

With the eye contact you regrettably made, Arthur finally decided he'd saunter over and have a friendly little chat with you.

You shifted your weight uncomfortably, your arms and shoulders hurting with every second you didn't stay still.

He seemed to have this look in his eye that you couldn't quite place.

"I reckon it's time to change that bandage of yours." He commented, half gesturing for your arm before looking down and reaching into his satchel.

You didn't want him to touch you, hell, you didn't even want that stinking man anywhere in your sights.

"No, please. I'd rather it get infected so god can take care of it instead." You dismissed, kicking out your leg in an attempt to wave him off since you couldn't use your arm to do so.

He snickered as he crouched down beside you, moving for his knife, and to your surprise, he started cutting at the ropes that kept you tethered to the tree.

"That'd be a good few weeks of worse pain before it finally took you, pain I can just save you from now."

"There's a lot you could've saved me from, not being a poor aim on the day you shot me would've been it." Jeering at him with sass.

Any relief you would have felt from the breakage of your bounds was cut short as you hissed out a gasp of pain.

His large, calloused hand wrapped and dug in just above your wound.

Your instinctual reaction had your right hand balled into a fist and swinging around into a hook that landed sweetly on the side of his face before you could do anything about it, or so that's what you claimed.

It caught him off-guard, taking him a second to react, by which he squeezed your arm even harder and reached for your other wrist in a tight, abrasive grasp.

You cried out while he manhandled you. "Fuck- quit grabbin' me like that, you big brute!" You stirred under him, but he kept you still in an almost a perfect manner.

The whole commotion caught everyone's attention, their turned heads held looks of confusion and surprise.

"Im tryna help your ass, woman." He snarled, keeping you from jerking around. "Hold damn still before I save myself the trouble instead."

You looked away, mumbling a curse under your breath. By no means did you relax, but you stopped fidgeting, he cautiously let go. His eyes burned holes through you as he did.

Suddenly, he reached for your buttoned shirt, you flinched back in befuddled surprise.

"Just what the hell do you think this is?" You demanded, fully desiring to line up another fist to his face, if it wasn't for the control he had over you with clasping your arm.

"Your sleeve doesn't roll up that far. Didn't I tell you to hold still?"

You felt overwhelmed with rage, and worst yet, you couldn't do anything about it.

"Don't look at me like that, how else do you think I took care of this for you before?" He adds, leaving you in silence.

A man undoing your shirt wasn't the problem. The man doing it, was.

"I was hoping you had left me in the care of one of the more dignified ladies here."

"You wandered off so far from where we camped, you would've died before then." He counters, shaking his head.

"And I would have thanked you, if you left it at that." You stayed arguing, but slighted your head up, giving him easier access to your buttons.

His eyes flickered from your face and to your shirt for a moment at your small gesture.

"Left it at that? Nah, I couldn't let you get away with all that money." He takes a moment, unbuttoning your shirt half way, exposing most of your bra.

It was enough to get your arm out but not leave much to the imagination.

"I was hopin you'd know more than your buddy, yet, neither of you annoying shits seem to recall jack all." He nagged, giving you a stern look before returning his gaze to your arm.

You couldn't say much in return when you felt him pinch and prod at your arm, needles running through your body.

You groaned your hurt, though he didn't seem to care much.

"Don't punch me again, y/n. I ain't beyond hittin' a lady like you."

You gave him a dismissive, smug look, shrugging your shoulder through the aching and burning he inflicted on you.

"I'll just skip that part and put a bullet through your other arm instead," he halts his medical measures and grabs your face, squeezing your cheeks in a firm grip. "You understand me?"

You shook your head away from his grasp, a small, childlike and petty desire to jab at him grew inside you.

"You sure feel me up a lot for someone who hates O'Driscolls so much." Your lips curl upward into a mischievous smile.

He raises a brow, leaning away from you, scoffing in disbelief.

"I'd prefer much anything over you, O'Driscoll." He gripes, returning back to your wound, unraveling the old bandage.

"Yeah, I can see that, considering you have me almost half undressed." You did your utmost to keep from looking at your wound, instead keeping your eyes on Arthur's face. His eyes kept strictly at your arm, never faltering as he lazily slathered on some sort of ointment.

"You're full of yourself. I wouldn't be doin' this if I didn't need to." He shakes his head.

As he finished with the fresh bandage, his hands finally had stopped poking you, leaving your arm in peace and an onset of relief.

"You know, I was thinkin' bout feedin you tonight," his words brought you back to how starving you were.

"Can't say I'm feelin' so kind now." His hand found the side of his face, his fingers inspecting the welt you had inflicted on his cheek.

Your stomach found his words utterly strangling, but begging him was out of the question.

"Dead people can't tell you where Colm is."

"So, the answer comes to you if you're fed?" His eyebrow shoots up, sarcasm plastered all over his freshly punched face.

"I can give you my best guess if you feed me." You explained, irritation being the entire undertone of your statement.

"You think guesses are gonna get you fed? Huh, girl?"

"That, or I simply wont have enough energy to think much on Colm." You cajoled, your smirk slowly returned.

"Careful with that mouth of yours, it's gettin' real tiresome." He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Yours reached that point way long ago." You fired back, his face now full of frustration.

"Glad to hear you're not hungry, O'Driscoll." He griped, returning rope to your wrists.

You full well expected it, but having them back on so soon displeased you beyond words.

Once he tied you up good, he got back up without a word and promptly left back to camp, leaving you alone on your tree once more.

You leaned your head back, wondering just how much longer they'd leave you tied up before they acted on their word of killing you both.

Minutes passed as you felt your eyelids get heavy, you didn't want to sleep, not until at least everyone else, but being tired, starving and having been shot only a few days ago left you exhausted.

"Don't you fall asleep yet, y/n." That man's voice chimed. You grimaced at his return.

The front of him was shadowed in contrast to his backside, which faced the camps fire light. You couldn't quite see what he held as he made for you.

"Couldn't get enough of me, huh?" You teased with a straight face, irritation filling you once more.

"You would like if I couldn't, wouldn't you?" A shit eating grin spread across his face at his own comeback.

You scoffed in response, staring him up and down as he got closer and to your surprise - the smell of food wafted into your nose.

Your whole body jolted with excitement, though, you couldn't tell just why he decided on feeding you.

He unties your wound-free arm, but hesitates when handing you the bowl in his hand.

"What?" You ask, looking up at him, his large frame towering over you.

"Say please." He demands, an evil look on his face.

"You're crazy. Now hand it here."

You reach for it but he pulls it away.

"Just say please, O'Driscoll." He laughs, taking a step back to avoid your waving arm.

"Quite actin' a fool and just give it to me." Your voice tightened with anger, your hunger almost possessed you into fighting him for it.

"Didn't anyone teach you manners? Please aint that hard to say."

"It is when the man you're saying it to is the same one that shot you. Now-" You reach again, your hand finally collecting the soup filled bowl.

You glanced back up at him, almost in shock that he actually let you grab it.

"Alright, alright, but next time, I expect some manners, O'Driscoll." He grins, knowing this set you off.

Next time? Next time, really? Your face furrowed with disbelief. "I'm happy you're an optimistic man, Arthur, but next time'll be in your dreams."

"Don't get too cocksure, darlin'."

"You know, you look pretty good when your face has a big red mark on it from my fist." You commented, shuffling in bites as you spoke.

"Really? Well, I think you also looked pretty good tied up all these days." He countered, the smile he had on his face ever growing.

That smile, on that nasty man. You hated it.

"Leave me to finish my food in peace."

He hums in consideration. "As much as I'd like to, you aint tied back to the tree."

You glower at him, desiring to eat slower so you could spend more time to rest your rope burned wrists, but ridding yourself of his presence felt more important.

You stayed silent as you finished the rest of your food, which didn't take long, tossing the dish to his feet and laying back on the tree so he could re rope you.

"That's what I like to see from you, O'Driscoll." He nods with approval.

You ignore him, your pride hurt with every moment more you had to give into this man and his crook gang.

He ties you back up and returns to the heart of camp.

It wasnt long before you finally dozed off.

-

(Set after the scene when Keiran gets interrogated.)

You sat petrified, still as the tree behind you, gelding tongs. They pulled down his pants for it too, if Keiran hadn't spoken up, you feared you'd be subject to it as well.

Goosebumps had crept up your back just thinking about those searing hot metal peices anywhere near your barren skin.

Keiran had finally come up with something.

Six point cabin.

You recalled having been there a few times, but was Colm up there? Your guess was as good as Keirans unless he actually was sure of it.

Arthur finally released Keiran from the tree, pushing him to the direction of the horses, then he came to you.

"You get to join us too, O'Driscoll." A small sinister smile creeps on his face, cutting through your ropes. "You better hope he's not trickin' us."

"Either way, if I'm rid of you, it's fine with me." He finishes, pulling you to your feet, guiding you to his mount.

"I'll get the most joy out of that, I reckon." You affirmed, somewhat stumbling as he releases you.

"Whatever you say, princess." He chuckles, closely following you.

Arthur calls out to a John and Bill, telling them just what's about to happen.

Keiran and a man with a nasty scar on his face were mounting, if you had to assume, the name John seemed best to suit him.

The other - Bill who had to be the man that threatened to 'geld' Keiran, coincidentally the one who also ratted on you that not so faithful day.

As you reluctantly walked along, you passed your steed you so woefully desired to mount instead, your ticket out of here. But Arthur quickly dismissed the thought for you, pushing you to his horse instead.

You gave him a hard stare in return, frustrated with his shoving.

"We're gonna pay your buddies our respects." He announces, entirely unconcerned.

"They taking us to Colm?" Questions John, steering his horse away.

"That's what he says." Arthur attempted to lift you up but you wave away his hands and pull yourself up instead, as much as your arm protested in agony.

Keiran stuttered out his assumption on where the cabin and Colm was, they pushed their horses in the opposite direction of camp.

Arthur mounted on after you, and for the first few moments you chose to hang on to nothing, however as if he knew, he kicked his horse to a trot, prompting you to grab at his sides.

Even underneath his layer of clothing, you could feel his heavyset build that helped keep you steady. Looking him up and down, a shiny metal caught your eye.

You were captivated at the sight of your revolver, missing the feel of it at your side and in your palm whenever you saw fit.

He had taken your gun as if you weren't still alive to be the owner of it.

You clenched your jaw, angry at everything and now finally riding to your more likely than not demise, worse yet, possibly executed with your own gun.

He kicked his horse into a lope, leaving you clinging to his sides firmly.

He turned to look over his shoulder at you, clearly in response to your tightened grip.

A small smirk crossed his lips before peering back to the trail up ahead.

The rest of the entire ride consisted of Keiran condemning O'Driscolls, bickering and directions shouted from you and Keiran.

It didn't take very long at the speed in which you rode, though you feared slipping off everytime you didn't have a good hold on Arthur.

You approached a small hill, Keiran confirmed the destination upon arrival.

"Okay, off your horses." Arthur draws back the reins. "Let's go." His voice now low in tone.

He jumps off and you follow suit shortly after, sliding off the back of his horse.

John reminded you and Keiran as you snuck forward, that he was keepijg his eye on you. Although you felt Arthur had beat him to it, he stared daggers at you as you crept along with the rest of them.

"I ain't gonna shop you now, come on." Keiran assures. "That'd be suicide."

"You'll die, boy. But you'll lose your balls first." Warned Bill, his gravelly voice blunt as could be.

Bill wasn't a man you wanted to be too close to with threats like that, so you kept closer to Arthur.

"Jesus christ…" Keiran murmured under his breath.

The lot of you kept low as you came to a ridge overlooking the cabin.

Keiran gave the rundown, confirming they were in fact armed, drunk and not fond of strangers.

Colm would be in the same way, just in the comfort of the cabin, which you agreed on.

Unlike Keiran's declared opposition, the O'Driscolls were a gang you rode with for a good while and despite Colm's nasty behavior, you felt a large sense of betrayal. Betrayal or your life, as it was now.

Your thoughts interrupted by three men emerging from the small cover of young trees, conversing about something miniscule and not far from earshot.

Suddenly Keiran was grabbed by John, a gun to his head and a hand over his mouth.

Arthur followed suit, pulling you into him, losing your balance with his sudden pull, your own gun held to your head and any potential cries for help blocked by his rough hand.

The now non existent barrier betwen your back and his chest was closed, you could feel each breath and each nervous heart beat agaisnt you.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x you #lemon fanfic #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption arthur #red dead redemption two #red dead fanfic #enemies to lovers #rdr2arthur #rdr2 #arthur morgan fanfiction

[quokkawritesarchive]

okay guys… i have something to say.

i don’t know what changed in tumblr over the past months, maybe they changed something in their hashtags or whatever… BUT ITS SO HARD TO RECEIVE ANY INTERACTIONS???

in december i got so many works with over 1k notes in DAYS, but now? did my writing change? is everything i wrote now cringe?? i don’t know. but all i can say that i’ve never had SO LITTLE feedback with my new uploads.

my first ever work that i uploaded received like 200? likes in a couple of days, and honestly that’s the whole reason why i’m still here. i thought it would be easy to reach new followers. but no… it feels like there is a huge wall between me and other creators. (+ they are all friends, so it feels twice impossible to reach their lvl)

of course i will upload the rest of the collab, and i’ll finish the request that i started today (even tho i have no motivation to finish it). and then i’ll probably leave tumblr, because… what’s the point? i write till 5am almost every day, translate it, search for grammar mistakes, to get roughly 100 likes from bots? no thank you.

i saw one ask, where that person said “where are all tumblr writers”. no babes, WHERE ARE ALL TUMBLR READERS!!?? where did yall go??

idk what happened in one month, maybe my writing did become shit, but in december it felt like a whole different platform.

me and every other writer on this app can guarantee you that we are so f tired of likes AND NO REBLOGS. fyi: LIKES DONT DO SHIT. if you want to give your fav writer motivation — reblog. please, ffs, reblog.

anyway. it was nice being in here, when skz tumblr was still alive. maybe i’ll change my mind if the rest of the fics will receive enough love. but as of now… i think i’ll leave.

#quokka talks #quokka rant #it was nice while it lasted but i’m done

[2willowlane]

i've been posting silly crack fanfiction on ao3 lately, and i decided to just upload this on my tumblr. it's inspired off of interstellartoaster's kalampokiphobia: fear of corn, and the mods harvey's irrational apple hatred and harvey hates apples.

fantastic works; mind you.

gender neutral reader, sfw; not really focused on romance, as it is just absurdity

tallying his profit, of which was a big fat zero, harvey sighed; pushing up his glasses. it's been a rather long week for him, considering no one wants to buy those energy tonic muscle whatever medication that he supplies. the only time that anyone has ever purchased such a redundant item from him, was whenever they misclick- accidentally bought it; and then just sold it again. the only way that he'll ever make a good buck out of his pharmaceutical care was if he just eradicated the valley's food supply... of which, did sound tempting, but harvey loves his pickles too much to give them up.

there haven't been any appointments placed recently, so he was having a hard time trying to keep up with the expenses. right now, he could so go for a bottle of fine wine... maybe it's because he's spending too much of his expenses on plane models, rather than actually trying to keep up with all of the financial records, like an actual adult should. huh, what a foreign concept. well, he's just going to go continue complaining about his money situation, until further notice.

with the door opening, he had to them correct his shrimp posture, as he then greeted you, the almost superhuman farmer, into the clinic. normally, you just like to go behind the counter and access rooms that are off-limits to regular patients, but there was something about your gumption that made you so lovable. even if you do tend to barge into private examinations, there was something that made you feel so rebellious; that harvey couldn't help but swoon over you! also, he's a pathetic beanpole of a man, so he'll probably get pummeled into the ground by your combat prowess if he ever rejects your blatant non-filtered view of what "personal space" meant.

you were about to get some items turned into the community center; as you were carrying a basket full of assorted goods (they ranged from something simple to five highly-graded melons, a still-flopping ghostfish, and poisonous mushrooms). oh well, with the poisonous mushrooms, those are harvey's choice of decoration during the autumn seasons; so, the doctor felt rather seen whenever he saw those clumped together. he grimaced at the fish, however. other than that, he was glad to see a good friend pop in now and then; he needed something to spice up his days, and he can always expect you at around 9am, or somehow always being in the places he's trying to go to... coincidence?

normally, you'd stop on buy and get him a coffee. either you've brewed it yourself, or stopped by gus', it was coffee. you wonder how many mugs harvey has, considering you also gift him a free cup alongside the sweet, sweet ground bean liquid. it really wasn't the healthiest thing to drink due to the sugar and caffeine levels, and you were pretty worried for the guy who has been through years and years of intensive schooling to know better about those dietary concerns. you assume he probably only has a cup twice a week, considering you have some type of intergalactic force keeping you from extending that quota.

you had some apples somewhere on your person, and it was probably the only thing he'd like; you'd figure. after all, they're just funky little guys. who doesn't like a good, crisp apple? even though they're supposed to be for the community center, you can always just get one later. you'd give harvey something else, but you decided that he deserved better than just countless upon countless liters of his favourite brew. you knew harvey appreciated a good foraged, natural good—especially with someone locally grown on your acres. fishing out an apple out of your pockets, you then present it to him.

"... i think i may be allergic to this."

as harvey looked like a sad shih tzu puppy, looking off to the side, your heart sank. he was allergic to apples? at first, you really wanted to make fun of him. he seemed like the type of person who'd be allergic to peanut butter, and be the kid that doesn't allow their classmates to bring in anything homemade due to those medical reasons. holding the red delicious apple in your hands, rotating it around in your palm, you decided to test that theory.

"may?" you inquiried, and with a look of horror, harvey began to shudder. yes, he's an anxious man at heart, but due to various interesting cases at the clinic, he's grown insensitive to many things. plus, he's in front of the one and only farmer(tm), and his crush. god, what an embarrassment he is. he didn't want to talk about his irrational hatred for apples; those disgusting overblown flower ovaries called "fruit" just sicken him to death, not to mention that the apples were the first to hate HIM—it wasn't his fault that his body rejects them!

"yes, yes! just- just get it away from me!"

"i don't believe you..."

and that's where you've learnt that the phrase "an apple a day keep the doctor away" was right.

#💙 #sorry guys #had to #crackfic #crack #crack taken seriously #crack treated seriously #stardew valley fanfic #stardew valley #harvey stardew valley #harvey x reader #harvey x gender neutral reader #harvey stv #harvey sdv #harvey sdv x reader #harvey x player #gender neutral reader #gender neutral player

[pretty-chips]

Howdy. I’ve started writing a thing and I want to share the beginnings of it, because I absolutely am too excited to keep it to myself. Here’s a lil’ snippet of the beginning of Electric Love, my Rocket x Brita work. let me know if you enjoy! Thanks to @raccoonfallsharder and my angel babies in the discord server for unearthing my desire to write.

I’ve never uploaded writing to tumblr, especially on mobile, so apologies if the format is weird! The spacing between paragraphs was a lot and that bugged me lol.

“You’re freaking joking. You haven’t seen Footloose yet??” Peter’s voice is kind of shrill, and it makes Rocket’s ears pin back. “DUDE, I’ve talked about it like a million times! You guys kidnapped Kevin freakin’ Bacon for me!”

Two hours of Peter Quill being back on Knowhere, and he’d already brought up stupid flarking Kevin Bacon twice. Sheesh. Rocket shrugs defensively, lifting his hands and gesturing wildly as they walk. “Dude, I don’t know! The only place I ever get earth movies is here in Knowhere and I’m, like…busy, I dunno.”

Peter stops in his tracks, his face screwed up in confusion and surprise. “Wait, there’s a place with earth movies here?”

“Yeah.” Rocket’s arms fold as he regards Quill with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t know?”

Peter looks absolutely appalled. Offended, even. “NO, I did not know. What the heck, man! I thought you guys were just…getting them somehow with the satellite or something.” Peter holds his hand up to his eyes and scans around, a bit dramatically, and Rocket roll his eyes. “Where the crap is this store? We’re going. Right now.”

With an amused huff, Rocket starts walking and gestures over his shoulder for Quill to follow. “C’mon Pete. Let’s get your stupid movie.”

He catches Peter smiling. Good. That means he heard the ‘I missed you’ buried in those words.

~

“I think I’m going to go insane.”

Brita’s elbows slide across the counter as she holds her chin in her hands. “We’ve heard this song five times. Why can’t we play a radio station or something? We’ve got the satellites for it.” She glances out the big window by the front doors, her eyes flicking wistfully back and forth between every person walking past. They probably had more exciting lives than this.

Her coworker, currently alphabetizing a row of media disks, shrugs impatiently. She doesn’t even give Brita a side glance or anything.

Brita huffs and shuffles her feet back to lean down onto the counter even more, bent at quite the impressive 90 degree angle.

This coworker girl had proven to be quite a stick-in-the-mud, which made for a pretty lame conversation partner. And as awful as it made her feel, Brita still couldn’t remember her name. Calling her Krylorian Coworker has worked just fine in Brita’s brain, but that probably isn’t going to last very long without accidentally slipping out one day. Oh, well. Maybe soon she’ll pull a good old, ‘So how do you spell your name anyway?’

Brita had pretty much used every ice breaker she could think of today, which had very visibly worn Krylorian Coworker’s patience pretty thin. She had only really responded to like, three of them. Brita sighs, her gaze out the window again.

It wasn’t her fault that today had been so slow and sludgy. Like tromping through the sloppiest terrain of the swampiest planet. The ground would probably suck at her boots, making her legs magnet to the mushy ground and her whole body burn with exertion. It would probably be hot, too, the combination of muggy air and sweat plastering hair to her forehead. She’d push it out of her eyes, blinking away the blur, and she’d see a figure come into focus. A familiar figure also trekking through the muck in front of her, strong and stout legs visibly strained with effort. He’d be holding a big gun, of course, probably one with little red blinking lights that flash through the murky air. Air you could feel as you inhaled, such thick and humid air in this swampy environment. He’d turn his head back to look at her, pretty auburn eyes alight with mirth. That fluffy ringed tail would swish behind him, an ear flicking as he opens his mouth to say something clever…

“You’re daydreaming, Brita.”

Krylorian Coworker stares, a hand on one hip and her eyebrow raised. “I can literally see you disappearing.”

Brita blinks hard, the yellow lighting of the media store melting away the trees and mud from her imagination. She lets out a breath as she comes back to reality, straightening up and stretching her arms above her head. “And that’s why I wanted some new music. I’m getting bored out of this dimension.”

Coworker shakes her head, huffing in amusement as she goes back to her alphabetizing.

Brita gives her own huff, and walks around the counter. It’d be better to actually do something with herself. Maybe she should alphabetize like Boring Coworker.

She makes her way down a couple aisles of holo-vid disks, glancing at the labels. She smiles, her heart doing that skipping thing it always does when she thinks about her favorite things. She’d apparently subconsciously wandered to her favorite section, the Terran holo-vids. Movies, she knows they’re called, but that’s not universal enough according to boss man who was in charge of this d’ast store. And the tech is different, anyway, he’d said. Whatever, Brita knew better than that old fart.

Her fingers run along the labels, stopping to reminisce at a few favorites. One day she was going to consume every single piece of Terran media in the store, and even further one day, the whole Terran planet. Every movie, every song, every book…everything.

Ring-ding-ling.

The little bell on the door announces, after at least an hour of nothing, a living being. Brita leans back, angling her head to look at the front doors. A guy with somewhat curly hair and a red leather jacket is stepping through, looking…amazed, actually. As he makes his way towards the aisle she’s standing in, Brita studies him further and is pretty sure she recognizes the things on his t-shirt. Her eyes widen.

An earth dude!

Before she can even process her body moving, she’s in front of him, all smiles. “Hi, how are ya?”

The guy blinks at her, seemingly coming out of some kind of trance, and his face lights up. “How long has this place been here? I’ve never noticed a…what, record store-slash-bookstore-slash-Blockbuster?”

Brita figures that’s an earth thing, and her heart flutters in excitement.

“Yeah, maybe a few months? Short enough lots of people haven’t been in yet, long enough it feels like ages if you’re working here.” She grins, leaning against the shelf next to her casually.

The comment lands, and the guy laughs. “I get that. But, I feel like this is probably the coolest place to work in all of…anywhere. You’ve got something from every planet I know the name of in here, just from what I can tell right away. That’s freakin’…epic.”

His enthusiasm is intoxicating. Brita beams at him, anxious to make this interaction last as long as possible. “Oh, dude, believe me, it is epic. Working here has permanently changed my life. I get to hear earth music and talk about movies…that’s a dream.”

He lights up even more, which Brita didn’t even think was possible, and his big open-mouthed smile says, “You like earth movies?”

She feels a beautiful conversation brewing, the feeling punctuated with Coworker’s exasperated sigh from across the counter, and Brita nods with a grin.

“Hell yeah I like earth movies.”

She’s not even sure how many minutes pass, she’s so enveloped in her favorite conversation she’s ever had. They gush over their favorites, which somehow don’t overlap at all even though they’re both familiar with everything brought up. The difference in taste is almost comical to her. She feels like she could be here for days, the world could pass away and she’d be completely content just standing here, talking to this man in a red jacket. Brita doesn’t even process her surroundings until she hears someone clearing their throat behind her.

Snapped back to earth, she realizes Coworker is raising a brow. Right. Work. Job.

“Sorry,” she laughs lightly and folds her arms as she leans against the shelf again, “you were looking for which one?”

“Oh, yeah. Footloose, can you believe Drax and Rocket both haven’t seen it yet, even though it’s the greatest movie of all time…”

Every muscle in her body stiffens. Her folded arms tighten against her chest and she feels her fingers dig into her arms. He’s still talking, she can tell with his mouth still moving, but nothing he says is reaching her ears anymore.

Rocket. Rocket. All she can see now are those bourbon eyes. A voice rings back into her processing, but not the voice of the dude, it’s deep and rumbles through her core. This guy, this Terran guy, was friends with Rocket. An earth dude that’s friends with Rocket AND Drax, how did he get so lucky…

Suddenly, it clicks.

“Wait, wait, stop.” She knows she’s interrupting, and she doesn’t care. “You’re freaking Peter Quill.”

He mouth quirks into a bit of a confused grin, one eyebrow inching up. “Uh, yeah I am.”

She blinks at him. She knows she looks stupid. “Sorry, I didn’t, uh, I didn’t... Not to be, like, weird, y’know. I just. That’s so cool. I’ve always wanted to actually talk to the guardians, they seem like, such…incredible friends. I hear about you all the time.”

His smile is sly, but there’s a heartwarming expression in his eyes. “They talk about me, huh?” He nods and glances over behind her shoulder. “…They are the best friends I’ve ever had.”

Before she can respond, another voice materializes behind her. One she’s only heard once, months and months ago in real life, but countless times in her imagination. Gravelly yet liquid gold at the same time.

“Pete, holy crap, d’you get lost or what?”

Peter Quill smirks and lifts a hand in mild defense. “Just talkin’ to…” he glances at her name badge, “Brita here about stupid earth movies, man.”

Brita is frozen in place. She desperately begs her brain to send any kind of signal to her body, to make it move, but it’s complete radio silence up there.

The presence behind her moves past, then stands next to Peter Quill. That tail swishes casually and those ears flick, just like in her dreams.

Peter is saying something. She tries to tune in. “Brita, this is my buddy Rocket.”

The furry face tilts his chin up in a nod. The auburn eyes flit up and down her body, studying her.

“How ya doin’?” Says Rocket Raccoon, who is standing directly in front of her on purpose for the first time ever.

Brita can feel how huge her eyes are, the skin above her cheeks and under her eyebrows feels strained. She probably looks ridiculous. Why can’t she say anything? She glances at Coworker for a lifeline. A clue of what she should even do right now.

Krylorian Coworker’s eyes widen, and for the first time since Brita can remember, she looks genuinely interested in what’s happening in front of her. Coworker has been told possibly way too much about the hearty interest in this particular guardian of the galaxy. The subject of all of the daydreams Brita keeps getting caught in. The one that brought her here, to Knowhere, even though he definitely had no idea that was the case.

Brita can feel her mouth opening and closing, and she just knows she looks like a stupid fish. She smashes her mouth shut and conjures up a smile that is probably a little too big. She forces a word out of her mouth.

“Hi!”

#rocket x oc #rocket gotg #gotg oc #rocket raccoon #rocket x reader #brita x rocket