#prompt fill: murder/unsolved mystery

[bullet-prooflove]

Donna’s Wednesday Radio Show Prompt List #10

Hey guys! As some of may know I do a weekly radioshow on Wednesdays and I thought why not put together a prompt list from some of the songs I’ve been playing. I thought it would bring some fresh prompts into our world!

Feel free to pop any of these prompts with a charcter I write for (You can find these on the pinned post on my blog) into my ASK box!

Also don't forget to put the entire prompt in and not just the number!

I wanna start this out and say I gotta get it off my chest

I touch the place Where I'd find your face

We were staying in Paris

It's a dangerous love affair

I know you'll always jump in

So dance alone to the beat of your heart

Your heart is the only place that I call home

Out on the terrace

In this world, he who stops, won't get anything he wants

 Don't let them change you

Hear the screams from everywhere

To save somebody's life and have it blow up in his face

I can barely breathe, when you're here loving me

If we go down, then we go down together

The pleasure's pain and fire

Oh the bond is deeper than skin

baby, this is getting serious

We were meant for one another

Found me just a taste of heaven,

Cause ain't nobody gonna save you

 it's a bad bet, certain death

 something in the night is dangerous

Could you please loosen up the handcuffs on my wrists?

Every kiss that you ever gave me still remains

I'm addicted to the thrill

And I can hear the sirens burning

There's two of us, we're certain with desire

Up against the wall on a Wednesday afternoon

You got me running all the lights

Some girls they made eyes at me, played me for a fool

Your words in my memory Are like music to me

By your sweet side, that's the place where I belong

Bet that you're beautiful inside

I break the rules so I don't care

Come on baby, just, party with me

nothing's holding back the two of us

Got no anger, got no malice Just a little bit of regret

I lay down on the cold ground and I pray that something picks me up

I'm not the only one who finds it hard to understand

Looks like another unsolved mystery

Show the people what you are made of

Come take the wheel and drive

It's dangerous, to fall in love

No, you're not half the man you think

I don't know what you're thinking, sugar

Strike a match and I'll burn you to the ground

And you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs and cars

Open up your heart Take control of who you are

I'm so glad I never ever had a baby with you

I'm not afraid of God

doesn't it feel like our time is running out?

'Cause you can't love nothin' unless there's somethin' in it for you

Getting drunk on the past we were livin' in

Another day, another tale of rape

Yeah, we can be bad as we can be good

And I had no warnin' About who you are

I tried to help you It just made you mad

has something deep inside of us come undone?

So grab somebody and get your ass on the dance floor

Murder was the case and they blamed me

Hidden behind shirts, ties and marriages

Got some real heat for ya this time

#Donna's prompt list 10 #terry bruno #mike duarte #joe velasco #luke alvez #brian zvonecek #will halstead #jimmy lanik #connor rhodes #crockett marcel #antonio dawson #greg gerwitz #donovan rocker #rodrigo sanchez #nick amaro #benny miller #frankie morales #santiago pope garcia

[hermannsthumb]

possible prompt for a university au: newt is the biology major who maintains all the fish tanks in the physics building at 11pm and hermann is the physics student who likes to wander the halls to think. newt accidentally flings water all over the ground and hermann trips, hijinks ensue.

earlier today I was thinking about how I wrote a college AU fic almost 3 years ago to the date, and how I wanted to do more bc its fun thinking about newt and hermann as dumb college students

----

Newt's not really sure how he ended up with the weirdest work-study job on the planet, but honestly, things could be much, much worse (he could be stuck down in the dining hall, or dealing with confused freshmen in the school bookstore) so he keeps his thoughts on the whole thing to himself. Every Friday at eleven sharp, Newt pulls on his grodiest t-shirt and a pair of long rubber gloves and treks all the way over to the physics department to set to work scrubbing down the fish tanks that line the classroom walls. Why does the physics department have fish tanks? Newt's not really sure about that, either. It's kind of an insane amount of them, too, more than even the marine bio department has. Maybe it's supposed to boost morale or something. Hey, look at these crazy cool tropical fish who get to do nothing but eat and swim in circles, sorry you're stuck inside calculating velocity and shit.

Whatever, Newt's not complaining about that either. Let the physics nerds have their fun. It'll be good for them to branch out a little, realize there's life beyond robotics club meetings.

Also, Newt likes the fish. They're cute. He likes to think they like him, too, because they're very well behaved when he has to scoop them out of their tanks and plop them into smaller fish bowls (the kind goldfish in movies always use). He's going to teach them tricks eventually—he had a beta fish once who would do a little flip when Newt tapped the glass a certain way because he knew he'd get rewarded with dried worms, so Newt knows it's possible. Just imagine, a hundred fish doing flips on command. Newt Geiszler, fish whisperer.

Yeah, maybe the job could be more glamorous. It's really hard to get algae out of the gloves, and he hasn't been allotted the budget for a new pair yet.

"Hey, guys!" he shouts as he pushes in the door to room 214. The fish don't acknowledge him: they just continue swimming in their giant tank. In and out of plastic plants and rock caves. The rock caves were a gift from Newt three months into the job, and so were some of the moss balls—stimulation is important for fish! He wouldn't want to be trapped in a glass box with nothing to do, either. "I bet you missed me. Ready for a clean tank?"

Newt always talks to the fish, even if they don't talk back, because he thinks it's important to build their trust. He'll usually keep a running commentary of his week as he scrubs the tanks, just get everything off his chest that he needs to get off. Stuff he's worried about. Stuff that went well. Stuff that went badly. Therapy's expensive, and Newt's student health insurance can only cover so much, but talking to fish? That's free.

That's also kinda why he does it so late at night and over the weekend. The last thing he wants is an audience. Because, one, talking to fish is admittedly weird, and two, no one wants a glimpse at Newt's psyche like that, probably not even the fish.

The first step in cleaning the tanks is relocation. Newt digs his stereotypical goldfish bowls and an industrial-size mesh wand out of the supply closet, fills the former with some of the special tank salt water, and begins the slow and arduous task of scooping out the fish and depositing them into the bowls. "I had the lamest week," he announces once he's about three clownfish in. "I was working on a group project Saturday—"

Then Newt stops, because he hears footsteps in the hallway just outside the classroom.

Serial killer, Newt's instincts supply helpfully.

No, Newt corrects himself, that's dumb. Why would a serial killer wander into the physics building at eleven o'clock at night? Why would anyone, period? He's probably imagining stuff. Lack of sleep, stress over his upcoming projects, residual embarrassment from his disaster study session Saturday, all of it culminating in Newt thinking there's someone there. No, definitely imagining it. Newt can only even get in this late to the department because his ID swipe card is set up with the right permissions—not even the physics students have the permissions he does to be in this late at night. Well, not unless they clean the kitchenette in the student lounge or something.

Or if Newt left the door unlocked.

More footsteps. Closer now.

Newt's pretty sure he didn't leave the door unlocked, because he thinks it locks automatically behind him, and he would have to literally prop it open for anyone to get in after him. But anything's possible. The door could've caught on a dropped pencil or a paper scrap or other weird shit that physics students leave around, and a serial killer could've noticed and taken the opportunity to sneak inside on the off chance a hapless young biology major was scrubbing slime off fish tanks in the middle of the night. Any minute now, Newt's about to end up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. The Physics Department Murder. The Disappearing Biologist. (Nah, neither of those are very good titles, but that's why Newt isn't on the creative writing track.)

Step-tap-step. Closer now; Newt's heart leaps to his throat. Step-tap-step. Step-tap-step. Pausing just outside the door of room 214. God, why didn't Newt turn the lights off? Why didn't he shut the door?

Newt reaches for the first vaguely weapon-shaped thing he can find—an empty fishbowl, because Newt's not going to sacrifice any of the fish for this—and, as the door swings open, hurls it with a cry.

The bowl clunks on the ground. Except it turns out Newt grabbed the wrong fish bowl, because (even though it doesn't shatter, thank God) water quickly begins to seep across the slate floor tiles towards Newt's serial killer, a pathetic little clownfish (Newt thinks this one is named Albert, because the physics department is made up of nerds who do shit like name their random pet fish after their kind) flopping around in the puddle. Newt's serial killer, meanwhile, cries out similarly, his arms windmilling as he loses his footing and slips backwards, his cane—

Oh, fuck.

The intruder is not a serial killer. It's someone possibly worse, actually: Newt's mortal enemy, Hermann Gottlieb.

Newt's not really sure at what point Hermann became his mortal enemy and not just some guy I have class with that I hate, but he can pretty easily say that they've hated each other since the moment Hermann walked through the doors of Engineering 101 and was deigned Newt's lab partner by the Alphabetized By Last Name Seating Chart god. Something about Hermann just gets under Newt's skin. It's not his prissy English accent, or his oversized sweaters, or his absolutely horrendous haircut, and it's not even that he takes every opportunity to savagely rip apart every single thing Newt says in class. Don't get Newt wrong, that's all super fucking annoying, but it's annoying levels he can deal with.

It's the stuff they have in common that makes Newt hate him. It's like Hermann's a slightly broodier and more angular mirror that reflects all of Newt's most egregious faults—his arrogance, his stubbornness, his social awkwardness, his desperation to be taken seriously—right back at him. It sucks.

Plus, one time Newt caught Hermann ripping down the flyer he put up on the quad for Anime Club to advertise his stupid chess club instead, and he's never managed to forgive him for that.

Newt may hate Hermann, but he's not about to let him land on his ass in a puddle of fishy water (especially not on a freezing November night) just because the subsequent bitching would be unbearable, and, yeah, it would be supremely shitty of Newt, so he leaps forward just in time to catch Hermann and his cane before he hits the ground. He's so impressed with himself with his amazing catch that it takes him a few seconds to realize that Hermann is shouting and probably has been shouting since he slipped.

"—bloody maniac! What on earth are you doing in here? How are you in here? Did you just assault me? I'm going to phone campus police, you wretched—"

"Hold that thought," Newt says.

He rights Hermann and snags the mesh net and rescues poor Al before it's too late, dropping him back into the big tank with the rest of his friends. Newt can't be sure, but he thinks Al blows a bubble in thanks at him. Maybe he needs to make friends outside fish.

Hermann is still yelling at him.

"I am going to tell the head of the department you're—you're skulking about in here after hours!" he declares. "You're a menace. Pay attention to what I'm saying to you, Newton!"

Newt sighs and turns around. Hermann's turned an interesting shade of red—sort of like an over-boiled lobster, or if he fell asleep in the sun for too long. Newt wonders if it's from embarrassment (almost falling on his ass) or anger (almost being knocked on his ass). Probably anger. "Look, dude, I'm sorry," Newt says. His face twists like he ate a lemon, and he hopes Hermann doesn't notice. Newt hates apologizing to Hermann. "It's my job to clean the tanks every weekend. You scared the shit out of me and I freaked out—it's just that, like, no one ever comes by this late. Ever." He decides not to mention the serial killer thing. Hermann might make fun of him for being jumpy or paranoid or something.

Hermann's scowl doesn't lessen, but he does nod. Plus, he stops shouting. That's as much as Newt's gonna get of forgiveness. "Hmph," Hermann says. "You clean the tanks?"

"Every weekend," Newt repeats. He realizes he got some fish tank slime on Hermann's button-up when he caught him. Oops. Hopefully Hermann won't notice until Newt's in the safety of his dorm. "Gotta pay for my textbooks somehow." Then he frowns. "Wait, so what are you doing here? I didn't know you had access to the building this late."

Maybe Hermann is the kitchenette-cleaning guy after all. But, to his surprise, Hermann sniffs and casts his eyes to his dorky Oxford shoes. "Er," he says. "It's just—I was having trouble working out a solution to a problem, and thought a walk might do me good. Chilly nights like this one always do. And I quite like this building at night—it's calm, and much quieter than my dormitory." He fidgets. "And—well—only don't say anything to anyone, but I rewrote the permissions of my ID card so I could come and go wherever I please ages ago."

"You rewrote the permissions?" Newt says. "What the hell, wouldn't you have to hack into the security system or something to do that?"

"Well, obviously," Hermann says.

Despite himself, and despite Hermann being his Mortal Enemy, Newt is genuinely impressed. "Dude," he says. "That is so badass." Since when has Hermann been a badass?

Hermann's eyebrows jump, and he blinks at Newt behind his dorky librarian glasses. What twenty-one-year-old wears librarian glasses? With a chain? "You think so?" he says.

"Uh, totally," Newt says. "What problem were you stuck on? The one from Saturday?"

Being lab partners for engineering means Newt and Hermann have to collaborate on pretty much everything, including their midterms. Their midterm is what they've been working on for the past two weeks. On Saturday, though, they met in neutral ground to work on it (a reserved study room in the library), and, after a stupid and massive argument that had the librarians hoisting them out by their shirt collars and threatening to ban them for life, Hermann called Newt an idiot and stomped off into the night. Newt still hasn't gotten around to giving the problem another shot. Whatever, they have another week before the dumb thing is due. Plenty of time. Hermann nods. "Yes," he says. "Er—that one."

Newt glances at the clock ticking away on the wall. Quarter after eleven. Hermann's delayed him a whole fifteen minutes. Technically, he reminds himself, he doesn't actually have to have the tanks scrubbed by Friday night—he has the whole weekend to get it done. Also, he kind of feels like he owes Hermann for attacking him the way he did. Accidentally attacking. "Listen, Hermann," he says, feeling totally insane for what he's about to suggest. But he kind of wants to know more about Hermann The Badass. "What if we went back to my place and worked on it together? I'll buy us pizza, and I have, like, a bunch of energy drinks." The pizza place nearest campus is open until three in the morning, almost definitely because they get all of their business from sleep-deprived undergrads. Plus, they have midnight specials where you get free breadsticks with every pizza. Newt could go for some breadsticks. "It might be...fun," he adds.

Fun? With Hermann? Hermann will think he hit his head or something.

But to his surprise, Hermann doesn't hesitate even a second before saying "Alright, then."

"Oh," Newt says. He honestly thought Hermann would put up more of a struggle. "Cool!"

"But I might need to borrow a jumper," Hermann says. "If you'd be so...courteous, that is. I'm a bit chilly."

For some reason, the thought of Hermann (Newt's mortal enemy, but also a secret badass) curled up in one of Newt's baggy sweatshirts makes Newt feel all weird and warm all over. He swallows a few times, because his throat feels a little weird, too. Too tight. Like he just ate something he's allergic to. "No sweat," Newt says. "Let me just get these fish back in the, um, the tank. And—" He waves his slimy, gloved hands. "Take these off. And clean up that puddle. Gimme—um, gimme like, ten minutes?"

"Of course," Hermann says, and gives Newt a small, terse nod.

From Hermann, it's a smile. Newt almost slips on the puddle he's so blindsided by it. Stupid Hermann, making him feel all weird and clumsy.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

[choco-glow]

Day of the Dead (Robin)

April 27th.

The bed shifted, creaked as Bruce dragged himself up out of the comfort of his way too expensive (and totally worth it) mattress, followed reluctantly by an equally exhausted Selina. He insisted she use the bathroom first, taking that time to rub his face and scalp, forcing himself into an alertness that he didn’t feel…and Bruce ignored his constantly buzzing phone. He could hear Alfred puttering around in his own room down the hall, Damian’s near silent footsteps alongside his dog’s as the youngest Wayne limped down to let Titus out. Tim…Bruce sighed, knowing that Tim one of two places; passed out in the chair in front of the computer down in the cave, or passed out on the couch in the library, his laptop on the floor.

Either way, he was sleeping, most likely, and Bruce was going to take advantage of that.

“Hey.” He glanced up, and the smile on his lips was small, but real; she looked so good leaning against the doorway in nothing but her underwear and one of his old band tees, tousled hair sticking to her forehead from her shower, a sweet smile on her face, those familiar green-blue eyes always so dark in the morning. Bruce dragged himself upright to wrap her up in his arms, hugging her tight, and Selina melted against him, nuzzling his cheek. “Bruce…”

“Thank you for staying…” He murmured, gratitude thick in his voice, and she patted his bicep, popping up on her tiptoes to kiss his nose.

“Of course, sweetheart. Go wash up and get dressed, I’ll head down and help Alfred with breakfast?”

“Selina, you don’t have to…” She shook her head, chuckling, and he chuckled back, ignoring his impulse to just turn away and go brood. Brooding wouldn’t help today…

“I want to. I know what today is…and why it’s so hard.” He ducked his head, swallowing his next word, and she cupped his cheek. “Bruce. I mean it. Jason…” He lifted his head, blue eyes tired but crinkled from a weary smile.

“I miss him.”

“I do too. Go on. We’ll be waiting for you.” He nodded, and after a lingering kiss, despite Cat’s aversion to morning breath, Bruce let her go. The shower was hot enough to wash away some of the pain from his shoulder and upper back, and after washing up, he carefully redressed the bandage on his thigh, then pulled on a pair of old jeans and a tee shirt. It was Saturday, thankfully, so Bruce didn’t have to worry about a suit, and making his way down the stairs, he was glad to see visitors…especially these visitors.

Four years…four years, he’s been gone now. His heart twinged, but Bruce didn’t have to hold up a mask around Dick, who hugged him tight as soon as his first Robin saw him, nor around Barb, who he knelt to hug as well. Steph looked a little lost, a little nervous to be here, and Bruce hugged her too, whispering thanks to her as he’d done to the rest, and if Steph hugged his waist a little harder, her voice a little thick…well, Bruce wasn’t going to tell.

“Father, Alfred the cat is most worried about you.” Bruce paused as he set Steph back on her feet, turning to face Damian, who was holding his purring tuxedo cat and looking concerned…and Bruce couldn’t help the tiny, choked sob, because Damian looked so much like Jason at that age, his whole being focused on “comfort father”.

“So I see. May I hold him?” Damian nodded, and Bruce gently took the cat, smiling as Alfred bumped noses with him and settled on his shoulder, purring deeper still. “Thank you, Damian…”

“This is an auspicious day; we need all the comfort we can receive…” He murmured, and Bruce hugged his youngest tight, tears spilling over now…and Damian hugged him back, clinging to him tight.

“That’s…that’s true…c’mon everyone, we better get into the kitchen before Alfred the butler and Selina yell at us.” He murmured, and Dick chuckled while Barb smiled and took the lead. Damian pulled away from the hug, but not from Bruce, and they walked in hand in hand, taking comfort from one another. Jason’s photo, the last one taken two weeks before he died, was sitting on the counter, as always, with a candle lit…and the new addition of a tin can with the label meticulously soaked off, full of dandelions, and Bruce paused by it, lips twitching up in a fond smile.

“Master Bruce, I hope you don’t mind…I wanted…well…I remember Jason making those bouquets for us when he was a child…” Alfred murmured, and Bruce just pulled him into a hug, tears running hot down his cheeks now.

“I can’t think of a better thing…It’s perfect. Best bunch of flowers that’s ever entered this house.” They all shared a laugh at that, though Selina, Steph, and Damian looked a little confused, and it was Dick who explained, his voice warm and fond as he remembered all the times Jason would prowl the Wayne grounds, plucking dandelions and purple clovers, filling an old coffee can or tin can full to the brim and bringing them back to the house to share, his smile bright and happy.

“…At first, we offered him the flowers from the garden, and Jason just shook his head, looking scared, and said that he got in trouble for pulling those. No one cared about the wildflowers.”

“Oh, what a sweetheart…” Selina breathed, and Bruce and Alfred settled at the table at last, which prompted Dick to pass them the plate of pancakes and motion to fill up.

“He really was…c’mon, let’s eat, best way to remember our boy.”

“Here here! And whatever we do, avoid Buzzfeed today.” Barb raised her OJ in a toast, and Bruce closed his eyes with a sigh.

“God, I hate Buzzfeed…”

“Same here, old man. Same here.”

—-

Six months I’ve been back, and not a Bat to bother me. Jason settled in for a quiet Saturday morning, and ignored cable for a change; he knew what was going to be all over the news today, and he, for one, didn’t want to hear yet another poignant portrayal of his death. At least Bruce wouldn’t be out in public today; he’d learned that from running through the old news stories from the last few years, and frankly, Jason was grateful for it. It…meant that Bruce at least care enough to mourn him. Even if the goddamn Joker is still alive…

He sighed, and pushed away the anger he still felt at that fact, and pulled out his guns, then pulled up YouTube on his TV. He scrolled through his usual recommended list, feeling…restless and a little out of his element; it was the first death day he’d spent back in Gotham, and his normal goofy favorites just…weren’t going to cut it. Then he saw the one video he didn’t expect to see.

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Jason Todd, Wayne or Robin?

A grin split his face.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

—-

“Welcome to Buzzfeed Unsolved. I’m Ryan Bergera, and this is Shane Madej. Today, we are covering the mysterious deaths of two important people in the deadly metropolis that is Gotham City…or are we?”

“Wait, what?”

“Jason Todd Wayne, the adopted son of billionaire Bruce Wayne, and the second Boy Wonder, Robin, both of whom disappeared the same day, April 27th…and have never been heard from again.”

“Ryan, you said it was one murder!”

“And therein lays our mystery, because the more you hear details of the case, the more you wonder if these two boys were really the same person.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…I smell a conspiracy!”

“Shane, you smell lunch.”

“And a conspiracy! C’mon, out with details, gimme something, Bergera.”

“Hold your freakin’ horses, dude, lemme go over things…” Jason watched with unconcealed delight as he disassembled his pistol, cleaning each part as Ryan laid out the admittedly sparse facts of the case; of course, Jason knew the truth, but he was frankly somewhat impressed with the story that Bruce and Alfred had concocted. Of course, they couldn’t say the Joker beat him to death with a crowbar and blew up a building on him ( and even Bruce couldn’t have guessed that Talia al Ghul had stolen his corpse from the morgue, gave them an equally beaten dead kid to bury, and dumped his ass in the Lazarus Pit). But the story of Jason being killed as a hit out on the Wayne family was all too likely.

Batman had a lot of enemies.

Bruce Wayne had a lot more.

“No one was ever charged for Jason’s murder…here’s the last video of the press conference where Bruce explains things.”

“…Jesus, he’s barely keeping it together…I know he’s a billionaire, but he’s got a lot of heart…poor guy…”

“Yeah…I know we tend to fuck around on this channel, but…this kid died. Pretty badly, from what the evidence shows.”

“Man…so, you said there were theories, right?”

“Yeah, and they only get worse from here.”

“Well, we started the program with a dead kid; can’t get any worse than that.” Jason paused the video and just…stared at Bruce’s face, the tears on his cheeks, his exhausted appearance…and sighed a little.

“Sorry Dad…”

—-

“Theory number one: Dick Grayson killed Jason Todd out of jealousy. It was rumored that the brothers didn't get along and Dick and his father didn't have a good relationship when Jason came to the household.” Jason’s eyes narrowed at that one; whoever thought up that crock of shit had another thing coming. Sure, he and Dick had bickered like brothers, but at the end of the day, Dick was his brother from another mother. Even now, even with everything that had happened…Jason missed those hugs something fierce.

“I mean, that’s a pretty cut and dry one…”

“So it would seem…but if you look at the interviews, there’s nothing in Dick’s demeanor that shows any resentment or anger. And both Jason and Dick were orphaned at early ages and adopted by Bruce, so…”

“Yeah, I dunno. It’s cut and dry, but…at the same time, it doesn’t really make sense.”

“Especially given that Dick every year celebrates Jason’s birthday; I mean, killers can be weird, we know that from the last several seasons, but…I dunno. It doesn’t really fit.”

“Probably some asshole detective looking to close it up.”

“Probably…”

“On to number two!”

—-

“Bruce Wayne killed Jason Todd. This was, actually, the first big conspiracy theory to hit the web. Thankfully, it quickly died when people saw just how devastated Bruce was for months after his death, but apparently there are still some trolls on public forums who accuse Bruce Wayne of killing his son.”

“…That’s utter bullshit. Fuckers.”

“Right there with ya, buddy. Right there with ya. Onto three?”

“Please.”

—-

“Jason isn't dead, because of sightings of a homeless boy who wandered all around Crime Alley and looked exactly like Jason Todd. He was completely battered and bruised and suddenly disappeared after a year in the streets, likely due to a trafficking ring.” Jason raised an eyebrow at that, and turned his AK, Shane and Ryan’s incredulousness a comfort. He wasn’t sure why he was still watching this, but…it was kinda nice. Nice to have people be pissed off for his sake.

“Jesus Christ, Gotham, y’all are so dark.”

“May be why their superhero is Batman, dude.”

“STILL. Could this one have some merit, though, since he was an orphan?”

“This one is one of the strongest theories to date, because Jason was from a place called the Narrows, not far from Crime Alley, and according to Wayne Enterprises official documentation in their family museum, Jason had had issues with drugs and abuse, though to what extent, only the family knows. It’s a pretty ugly idea, but…it’s possible.”

“I think I’d rather be dead, Ryan, than go through that.”

“Same. Same…”

—

“Now. We move onto the disappearance of the second Robin, who vanished the same day that Jason Todd supposedly died. Possible theories of the disappearance of the second boy wonder—”

“Ryan. Ryan. Buddy. Champ. Are you implying, really, that Jason and Robin are the same kid?!”

“I’m just reading the script!”

“You wrote the script!”

“…I may be implying that they’re the same, yes.”

“I KNEW IT.”

“You don’t know shit.” Jason started laughing, and paused to get himself a fresh beer, ordering pizza while he was at it. Alright, this wasn’t so bad after all…

—

“He is hiding. Some say he hid from Batman, and some say Batman is hiding him from others. They don't know what, though. Some even say he quit the job.”

“Alright, I’ll bite, who’s ‘some’.”

“Paparazzi, conspiracy theorists, Alex Jones, etc…”

“Ah yes. The enlightened crowd.”

“Pftt…This is the weakest one, so we’ll go ahead and lay out the second theory while we’re at it. The second Robin died. After Robin stopped appearing with batman for an entire year, the same time Jason Todd died. This used to be a widely spread theory, until people realized maybe talking about the death of a boy in a terrorist attack for a conspiracy theory after his father broke down in public isn't the nicest thing to do.”

“And this is your theory.”

“This…is the strongest one I think, and the one that has the most emotional punch. But let’s be real; if the second Robin was indeed Jason Todd, then his Batman HAS to be Bruce Wayne. And c’mon. We’ve all seen the nightmare surrounding THAT theory.”

“Uh, yeah. No thanks, I do not ever need to write another “But the butts don’t match” article ever again in my life.” Jason snorted at that, cracking up laughing, and when he googled “The Butts don’t match”, he had to pause his boys because the ensuing hyena laugh had him flat on his back for ten minutes, absolutely losing his shit.

“Oh Christ, I love the internet…”

—-

“Next theory. He’s a kid, he took a break from vigilante-ing to do something else.”

“Now see, I like this one; that’s like, the most wholesome version. I hope this is the real one, but…”

“I know, man. I know.”

“Sigh.”

“Sigh.”

—-

“Almost there. Some people believe the second and the third Robin are the same, although many people disagree, considering witness reports that they looked very different, and the Robins were very distinctive in their fighting style and personalities.” Jason snorted at that, shoveling a slice of pizza into his gullet, and even the boys were looking a bit annoyed at that theory, Shane more than Ryan.

“Question.”

“Yes?”

“How the hell do they know about fighting styles?!”

“Gotham City Police.”

“Oh. Well, that makes sense now.”

“Also, apparently Commissioner Gordon likes the third Robin more, which tells me they’re definitely not the same.”

“Yeah, if anyone other than Batman would know, he would. What’s next?”

“This one is kinda great, but also a bit outrageous.”

“Ooooh, juicy. Spill the beans, Bergera!”

—-

“Some even believe that the second Robin is now the infamous Red Hood. Gothamites have been known to try to stalk the dude but it's never successful, and supposedly, even the Batfam won’t bother him.”

“I mean, that’s a cool story, but how true is it?”

“Considering the guy wears a red freakin’ helmet with eyeholes and no mouth, who knows how true it is?”

“Still a nicer story than the butts. And hey, Red Hood is pretty chill, man, I think he’s probably the best thing to hit Gotham in years.”

“You’re a Hoodie!”

“The fuck is a ‘Hoodie?”

“Red Hood groupie.”

“Uh, hell no, I just think he’s cool.”

“Uh huh…Well, folks, that ties up our deep dive into the murder of Jason Todd, and the disappearance of the second Robin. To date, this case remains…Unsolved.” As the quiet music that ushered in the ending screen and credits, Jason sat back, working his second slice of pizza, and chuckled a little to himself. If only they knew…well. His people knew who he was; old man Falcone figured it out the second day Jason had been home. The Narrows had welcomed their boy back…And they weren’t gonna tell anyone. They didn’t trust Gothamites, they didn’t trust the Bats…which was why Jason had carved out his place here again, with gunfire and brutal justice. They trusted him.

He turned YouTube over to something mindless, and padded over to the window, feeling the sunshine, weak though it was, break through the clouds and warm his skin. Jason leaned against the familiar brick, and opened the window, letting in a rush of cool air, reminiscent of spring.

It was good to be home.

#deathinthefamily #jason todd #red hood #batman #bruce wayne #selina kyle #damian wayne #dick grayson #barbara gordon #buzzfeed:unsolved #ryan bergera #shane madej #this is feels and crack #why do I write this

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts Recs: Powerful!Harry

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 In Evidence of Magical Theory by bixgirl1 Rated:  Explicit Words:  43747 Tags: Hogwarts Eighth Year, Accidental Bonding, Magical Theory, Magical Cores, Powerful Harry, Rimming, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Switching, Slash, HP: EWE, Falling In Love, forced bed sharing, Blow Jobs, completed fic, Bonding, Forced Proximity, Sharing a Bed, First Time, Loss of Virginity Summary:  When a hex meant for Draco accidentally catches Harry as well, they're forced to learn to understand each other in ways they previously might have thought impossible. In which Harry and Draco can't fight, so they fall in love instead. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Home by gnarf Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  29377 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Pansy Parkinson/Theodore Nott, Auror Harry Potter, Curse Breaker Draco Malfoy, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Sentient Houses, Magical Theory, Accidental Marriage, Accidental Bonding, Fluff, Getting Together, Banter, First Dates, Kissing, Cuddling & Snuggling, POV Harry Potter, Drinking, H/D Erised 2019 Summary:  When Harry was forced to leave his house because he couldn't take the things happening there any longer, he realised he'd need to ask for help from the best curse breaker the Ministry had to offer—Draco sodding Malfoy. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but nothing could have prepared him for what happened after he finally jumped over his own shadow. A story about an unsolved mystery, a few minor accidents, and finally finding a home. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Under Pressure by VivacissimoVoce Rated:  Mature Words:  21423 Tags: Romance, Mystery, Muggle Life, Post-Hogwarts, POV Draco Malfoy, Redeemed Draco, Powerful Harry Summary:  Harry Potter has quit magic and left the wizarding world. Draco, a top-notch Tracker, has been hired to find him and save his life. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 A Lick and a Promise by tackytiger Rated:  Explicit Words:  55321 Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Past Draco Malfoy/Original Male Character(s), Mystery, Case Fic, Auror Harry Potter, Professor Harry Potter, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Professor Draco Malfoy, Undercover, Sentient Hogwarts, Magical Theory, Back to Hogwarts, Blood Magic, Blood Drinking, Blood, Vampires, Magic, Falling In Love, Masturbation, Desk Sex, Brandy - Freeform, Drinking, Feelings, Snarky Draco Malfoy, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Powerful Harry Potter, Competent Draco Malfoy, Domesticity, Kissing, Undressing, Bathing/Washing, Sharing a Bath, Minor Injuries, minor animal injuries, Minor Child Injuries, H/D Erised 2019, POV Alternating, POV Harry Potter, POV Draco Malfoy, Office Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Hogwarts Professors, Clothing Porn, Love Confessions, Draco Malfoy is a Snappy Dresser, Magical Creatures, Light Angst, Christmas, Christmas at Hogwarts Summary:  Something sinister stirs in Hogwarts! When magical creatures and students at the school are hit with a debilitating blood curse, Minerva McGonagall approaches the Ministry for help. Star Auror Harry Potter seems to be the obvious choice to go undercover—as DADA Professor, naturally. He’s going to need the help of the Ministry’s foremost expert in blood magic to get to the bottom of the mystery, though, and he’s not entirely convinced that going back to Hogwarts with Draco Malfoy is a good idea. Things are complicated between them—what’s new?—but they know they have to learn to work together (and keep their hands off each other in the corridors) in order to solve this case. Luckily for them, Hogwarts itself wants to lend a hand. A tale of love, lessons, and learning to really live. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 The Way Down by lettered Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  65615 Tags: nervous breakdown, Social Anxiety, hermit Harry, Powerful Harry Summary:  Harry is overwhelmed by his own power and fame and angst, so he's become a hermit. Draco Malfoy is tired of the melodrama. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 I Am Not Who I Became by mab_di Rated:  Explicit Words:  93189 Tags: H/D Fan Fair 2019, Secondary Theme: Travel Fair, Secondary Theme: Book Fair, Commercial Fisherman Draco Malfoy, Failed Writer Harry Potter, Depressed Harry Potter, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Muscular Draco Malfoy, Recluse Harry Potter, Angst, Smut, Drama & Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Wandless Magic, Boats and Ships, Finland (Country), Fishing, Redemption, School Reunion, Minor Draco Malfoy/Original Male Character(s), Anal Sex, Rough Sex, Sex Magic, Suicidal Thoughts, Near Death Experiences, Magical Theory, POV Alternating Summary:  Draco left England after the trials and has travelled the world meeting wizards and Muggles from different cultures and with vastly different relationships to magic, each other, and the natural world. Now he's a fisherman in Finland on commercial vessels. Harry has been struggling since the war and has become a recluse while trying to write his autobiography. An invitation to the Hogwarts class of 1998's 15th reunion isn't welcomed by either of them, but neither could predict how the night, and their reunion, will upend their lives. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 And One To Play by tackytiger Rated:  Explicit Words:  21777 Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Draco Malfoy, Auror Partners, Rimming, Friends to Lovers, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Post-Hogwarts, Secret Relationship, Violence, Blood and Injury, Minor Character Death, Hospitalization, depictions of violence, Happy Ending, Competent Draco Malfoy, Magical Theory, Case Fic, Blow Jobs, Major Character Injury, Community: hp_drizzle, HP Drizzle Fest 2019, Police Brutality Summary:  Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are the best team in the Auror Department, even when they're driving Gawain Robards up the wall. When Malfoy is injured on a mission, it causes Harry's magic to go haywire. Meanwhile, a mysterious criminal is draining people's magical cores and turning them into Squibs. Can Harry stop blowing Malfoy away in time to solve the case? And will Malfoy ever stop trying to get the last word? ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Leave Your Mark by Gullviva Rated:  Explicit Words:  26712 Tags: Auror Harry Potter, Violent Sex, Office Sex, Powerful Harry, Jealousy, Blow Jobs, Angst and Fluff and Smut, lots of smut, Top Harry, Bottom Draco Summary:  Harry Potter is known in the Auror Office for his short fuse and powerful magic; a dangerous combination. When Draco Malfoy unexpectedly turns up in his life again, as much of a git as ever, the explosive confrontation that follows is inevitable. But as it turns out, that might have been exactly what Harry needed. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 If an Injury Is to Be Inflicted by shealwaysreads (onereader) Rated:  Explicit Words:  44800 Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-War, Powerful Harry, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Moral Ambiguity, Morally Grey Harry Potter, False Identity, Kidnapping, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Rough Sex, Consensual Sex, Police Brutality, Government Conspiracy, Dark Harry Potter, Sentient Magical House, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter), Intrigue, Blood and Gorefights to the death, Rimming, Anal Sex, Love Bites, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, Choking, Gambling, Corpses, Serious Injuries, Forced Captivity, Scars, Addiction, No actual animals fighting Summary:  If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. Harry Potter disappeared a year after the Battle of Hogwarts, and with him went all hope for true change in magical Britain. Three years later, Draco indulges himself and attends his first Dog Fight—the infamous underground fights with no rules, no referee, and no points system bar blood on the floor. The game was simple: you win, or you die. A glint of green amidst the blood-red changes everything. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 The new guy by MarigoldWritesThings Rated:  General Words:  2612 Tags: powerful!Harry, accidental magic, Auror Partners, Angst, Oblivious!Harry, Tumblr Prompt Summary:  Harry and Draco have been Auror partners for a while now, but with the arrival of a new guy who is definitely up to something, things become strained. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Just keep breathing by Dahlia_Rose_83 Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  55645 Tags: Panic Attacks, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Nightmares, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Not Epilogue Compliant, Slow Burn, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Powerful Harry, Hurt/Comfort, Oblivious Harry, Idiots in Love Summary:  Harry had hoped for some peace and normalcy once he'd defeated Voldemort. What he gets instead are nightmares, panic attacks and his magic going haywire. And suddenly his once sworn enemy is the only one he can rely on. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Love and Other Unsafe Medical Practices by Tedah Rated:  Explicit Words:  116854 Tags: Healer Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Ron Weasley, Harry Potter is a reckless idiot, Healing, Injury Recovery, Accidental Bonding, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Minor Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Post-War, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Unconventional Medical Practices, Light Dom/sub, Competent Draco Malfoy, Pining, Occlumency, malicious bureaucracy, does this even count as a courtroom drama?, House Elves, Slow Burn, Case Fic, Child Loss, Angst, copious amounts of angst, Snarky Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy is a delight, Chess, Lesbian Pansy Parkinson, Fashion Designer Pansy Parkinson, Lawyer Blaise Zabini, Happy Ending, Shaving, Kink Negotiation, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, minor sex injury, Explicit Consent, Enthusiastic Consent, magic buildings, Magical Tattoos Summary:  Love is a lot like surgery: sometimes you have to take risks to succeed and most times there are unexpected side effects. Harry is back in a hospital room after an Auror sting gone wrong and nobody is amused at this point. It's starting to become somewhat of a familiar scene for Ron and Hermione. This time his healer is one Draco Malfoy so it's actually a /little/ funny when something goes wrong during recovery. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Burn Your Life Down (but look back to me) by triggerlil Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  35908 Tags: Pining, Smoking, Club owner harry potter, On the Run, Alternate Universe - World War II, Film Noir, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Hurt/Comfort, No Horcruxes, Self-Medication, Alcohol, Infidelity, (not between Harry and Draco), mention of slavery and human trafficking, inspired by Casablanca, LCDrarry, Eventual Happy Ending, Beauxbatons Student Draco Malfoy Summary:  It's been years since destiny walked into an apartment on Rue Azais, and Harry is over it. Really, he is. He has Blaise, he has his work, and if necessary, he still has his memories. But with the onset of WWII, the foundations of his life are crumbling, and suddenly a certain blond man is walking back into his life, asking Harry to make important, and dangerous, choices. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Criminal by The_Sinking_Ship Rated:  Explicit Words:  83499 Tags: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Auror Harry Potter, Criminal Draco Malfoy, Card Shark Draco Malfoy, powerful!Harry, smitten!Draco, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Playing House, Domesticity, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, some homophobic slurs/internalized homophobia, but nothing too drastic, Happy Ending, Minor Draco Malfoy/Blaise Zabini, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Complete, references to past Ginny/Harry, minor draco/omc, Slow Burn, Wandless Magic, Humor, Pining, Top Harry, Topping from the Bottom, Bottom Draco Summary:  Things were going just fine for Draco Malfoy. He successfully conned and counted cards across Europe and America, amassing a small fortune, along with a lengthy rap sheet. That was until he made the grave mistake of returning to England for a high stakes card game and got himself caught – by Harry Potter no less. Now, Draco is stuck in England under Auror Potter’s guard with no friends, no distractions, and no escape. How the hell will he pass the time? And since when did Potter get so bloody fit? ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Quicksilver and Phoenix Fire by The_Sinking_Ship Rated:  Mature Words:  4685 Tags: Auror Partners, Wand lore, Magical Theory, Powerful Harry, Mutual Pining, Prompt Fill Summary:  A wizard’s wand is a delicate thing, precisely suited to their magic. To wield another’s wand isn’t just intimate, it’s exceedingly rare. So what does it mean that Harry’s wand responds so beautifully in Draco’s hand? ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Crown Witness by slytherco Rated:  Explicit Words:  70321 Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Hogwarts, Auror Harry Potter, Mobster Draco Malfoy, Bodyguard Harry Potter, Witness Draco Malfoy, Protective Custody, Enemies to Lovers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Forced Proximity, mafia, Political Intrigue, Crimes & Criminals, Organized Crime, Explicit Sexual Content, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Wandless Magic, magic kink, Healing, Possessive Harry Potter, Serious Injuries, Happy Ending, Guns, Art, FanartI, llustrations, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Police Brutality, Duelling, Voyeurism, Drinking, Past Drug Use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Corruption, Auror Corruption, Blood and Injury, Murder, Gun Violence, Face Punching, POV Harry Potter, Hotel Sex, Bars and Pubs, Masturbation in Shower, Hung Harry Potter, Blow Jobs, Semi-Public Sex, Face-Fucking, Hand Jobs, Frottage ,Rimming, Anal Fingering, Switching, Dirty Talk, Mirror Sex, H/D Erised 2020 Summary:  After the war, wizarding society is oppressed by a new kind of plague—an organised crime group calling itself the Family. When Harry Potter goes to interrogate a potential witness, he doesn’t expect to end up on the run again, trying to keep Draco Malfoy alive, while a manhunt follows in their footsteps, adamant on eliminating the one witness that could ruin everything. In which Harry and Draco learn that the way to each other might just have to go through the dingiest hotels in Britain. ❤️ Read on AO3

#powerful harry #harry potter #draco malfoy #drarry #drarry recs #game of drarry #wizards hearts #wh masterlist

[marvelspookytoberprompts]

Marvel Spookytober 2020 Prompts

Hello, everyone!

It’s almost that time of the year again, and Marvel Spookytober Prompts is back with prompts for you. 

For those who aren’t familiar, Marvel Spookytober Prompts is a month long event—during the month of October—with different prompts for you to choose from. You are free to participate as much or as little as you wish, meaning there is no minimum word count, minimum images, or anything of the like. All forms (writing, art, gifsets, moodboards, etc.) will be accepted! 

Here are some quick reminders of this event:

You don’t have to use every prompt that is given for each day, but you are more than welcome to if you want. 

If you would like for us to reblog your work, then use the hashtags #marvelspookytober or #marvelspookytoberprompts. For an extra measure, since tracked tagging has been a bit wonky lately, then tag us in your post. 

To make it easier for us Mods for when we reblog and tag your work, please state what day and prompt(s) you have filled. (If you would like for us to post an example of fic formatting on Tumblr as a refresher, then feel free to drop an ask!)

You can also include your work in our AO3 collection here. Please state what day and prompt(s) you have filled in the ‘Summary’ section.

These prompts are free for anyone to use; however, we will only be reblogging Marvel related content.

Without further ado, here, under the cut, are this year’s prompts!

If you have any questions, feel free to drop by our ask.

01 OCTOBER/DAY 1: “Did you really get us lost on Halloween night?” || Harvest/Festivals/Carnivals

02 OCTOBER/DAY 2: Haunted House || A magical supply store, a talking judgmental cat, a mixed up stock shipment

03 OCTOBER/DAY 3: “Come on, let me scare a few trick-or-treaters.” || Eternal Relationship

04 OCTOBER/DAY 4: Murder/Unsolved Mystery || A fortune teller, a thief, and a bank heist gone wrong

05 OCTOBER/DAY 5: “Did you seriously injure yourself carving a pumpkin?” || Supernatural Beings

06 OCTOBER/DAY 6: Final Girl || Character A and Character B wear costumes from the same fandom at a costume party.

07 OCTOBER/DAY 7: “We ran out of candy, and a mini horde is coming this way!” || Graveyard

08 OCTOBER/DAY 8: Pumpkin Carving Contest || Character A gets scared by Character B in a corn maze and lashes out to hit them.

09 OCTOBER/DAY 9: “Halloween is better, and if you disagree then you gotta forfeit all your candy.” || Abandoned House

10 OCTOBER/DAY 10: Costume Party || Picking out each other’s Halloween costumes

11 OCTOBER/DAY 11: “Have you ever heard about what happened in that house?” || Ghost Hunting

12 OCTOBER/DAY 12: Tricks and Traps || Apple cider, a scary movie marathon, and cuddling on a chilly night

13 OCTOBER/DAY 13: “You know you’re not alive, right?” || Positions and Propositions

14 OCTOBER/DAY 14: Creepypasta || Covering the house with Halloween decorations

15 OCTOBER/DAY 15: “If I hear pumpkin spice one more time, I’m going to scream.” || Slasher

16 OCTOBER/DAY 16: Nightmare Fuel || The haunting image of spindly, bare trees

17 OCTOBER/DAY 17: “Why are we raking up leaves?” “To jump into them.” || Apocalyptic Log

18 OCTOBER/DAY 18: Buried Alive || Characters wearing coordinating masks at a masquerade party

19 OCTOBER/DAY 19: “Did you just hiss at me?” “Duh, idiot. I’m a snake.” || Circus of Fear

20 OCTOBER/DAY 20: Creepy Attic/Basement || Character A reluctantly attends Character B’s murder mystery party

21 OCTOBER/DAY 21: “You’re too old to be going trick-or-treating.” || Death by Sex

22 OCTOBER/DAY 22: Distress Call || A candle, a broken promise, an engagement ring

23 OCTOBER/DAY 23: “I never thought I’d fall in love with a werewolf.” “You know it’s just a costume, right?” || Dolls

24 OCTOBER/DAY 24: Power Outage || Getting caught in an autumn rainstorm with only one umbrella

25 OCTOBER/DAY 25: “Can’t believe we got kidnapped by a clown tonight, of all nights. This is your fault.” || Ominous Knocking 

26 OCTOBER/DAY 26: Sinister Car || The crunching of leaves, ever-growing chill, and lots and lots of soup

27 OCTOBER/DAY 27: “She’s six and dressed up as a little bunny. How can she scare you” || Wicked Witch

28 OCTOBER/DAY 28: Kidnapped || Making caramel apples

29 OCTOBER/DAY 29: “What was that noise?” || Let’s Split Up, Gang

30 OCTOBER/DAY 30: Spooky Paintings/Photographs || Chilly weather, bloody sweater and black feathers

31 OCTOBER/DAY 31: “Don’t you dare try selling your soul for me.” || Séance || An abandoned motel/hotel on the edge of town.

#marvelspookytoberprompts #marvelspookytober

[slutegoshi]

1Hi Beastars fandom! We got an actively updating Fanfic rec list!  Below is a collection of #Beastars fanfic I’ve read. This means just reading through some #Beastars tag on AO3. I can only read so much work a day, so the updates might come in a (or bi)weekly form and mass dump fic rec.  Enjoy! Read fic!  

SLUTEGOSHI NOTE: I love these all these fics so much and have gone back and re-read them several times over. I hope they become some of your favourites too. Remember if you have an AO3 account (or not) please leave positive comments and love on all these fics!  

RULES OF FIC: read tags  read with kindness constructive feedback doesn’t need to be destructive Explicit/Mature work should be read with discretion Keep Kink shame to yourself 

REC KEY ❤ - Slutgoshi recommendation Story Link - Author Link Rating - Completion Status - Word Count - Ship/Detail  or additional notes

Authors summary.

☆ TOP 5 FAVOURITE - of the week

1 . kill me more - sushishorts Mature - Complete work - 3976 wc - Haru/Legosi/Louis Summary: In which Louis knows, Haru urges on, and Legosi wonders.

2 .  The Wolf Trap - surveycorpsjean Explicit - Complete - 18,279 wc - Legosi/Louis, Action, adventure Summary: If you're going to play the game, you have to play it right.

3 .  A Tale of Moon - Wuffin_Arts (Chaptered Fic) Mature - Uncomplete - 8,000K+ wc - Louis/Legosi, Kid fic Summary: This story will focus on the life and drama of these two as they grow and learn more about themselves, and face the struggles of it all. 4 . Leave Me On Read - cutiefemdom Teen - Complete - 3624 wc - Louis/Legosi, cute, texting fic Summary: Louis gets Legosi's number to keep an eye on him but instead slowly falls in love. 5 . do we realise that we’ve already closed our eyes - aiineslin* Mature - Complete - 1631wc - Louis/Ibuki, sad, angst fic Summary: he has always followed where life took him, unflinching and unresisting. ** this fic is labeled restricted and might not be able to be read by non-ao3 users. if you can’t view it, it’s because it’s restricted by author.

☆  ★  ☆  FULL SLUTEGOSHI REC LIST  ☆  ★  ☆

SLUTGOSHI - Legosi Centric Fic 

☆ Fluff / Angst / Non Explicit How to Handle Your Harem - TheFancySquid Teen - Complete - 1218 wc - Legosi / multiple characters, comedy Summary: Legosi has a harem, plain and simple. But the animals in the harem aren’t too happy to have to share the grey wolf. muted emotion - sushishorts Teen - completed - 5245 wc - Legosi/Jack, Imprinting fic Summary: Jack isn’t an idiot. He’s a dog, and his kind are bred to be the most intelligent creatures of their world. Their biological strain is the end result of the strive for perfection. As far as he wished that his arrogance for knowledge would prove him otherwise, Jack knows the question that’s coming. "Who did you imprint on, Jack?"And he’s afraid to say the answer out loud. Wolf, Dog, and Deer - TheFancySquid General Audience - Complete - 1651 wc - Jack/Legosi/Louis, Old Friends Summary: Jack and Legosi have been best friends since the moment they met. They did everything together; looked for bugs, dug in the dirt, and thing you could think of these two would do it together. They thought their duo couldn’t be better, until they met Louis the red deer. Bloodstained Wolf - GoGetterBrae Teen - Uncomplete - 46,000+ wc - Legosi/Male!Reader, First Person fic Summary: Two male wolves in love but they couldn't be more different.

Collared - Reflet271 Teen - Uncomplete - 11,000+ wc - Legosi/Reader, Second Person fic Summary: Human beings are treated nothing more than slaves to animals. Some try to escape. Others accept their fate. So what will you do?

☆ NSFW

Come Vibe With Me - cripplingfanficaddict Explicit - Complete - 1843 wc - Bill/Legosi Summary: Bill gives Legosi a major vibe check, and Legosi absolutely hates it. Legosi then decides to get that sweet, sweet revenge.

Loyal to You - orphan_account Mature - Complete - 4455 wc - Legosi/Jack, Slow burn, angst Summary: Jack and Legosi had been inseparable since childhood and Legosi's sudden disappearances take a toll on his best friend in unexpected ways.

Lustful Thoughts - Welcumtotheshitholecanitakeurorder Mature - Complete - 7,582 wc - Riz/Legosi, One-Sided Pinning Summary: He knew that the thought of fighting the wolf was accelerating, but he didn't think it would push him off the edge.

OT3 - HARU/LOUIS/LEGOSHI

☆ Fluff / Non Explicit Your Favorite - orphan_account ❤ Teen - Complete - 772 wc - chatfic, humor, fluff Summary: Haru and Louis love their boyfriend, even if he is horribly incompetent when it comes to electronics (and flirting).

Morning In - callmecacti General Audience - complete - 841 wc - Domestic fluff Summary: Legosi's day off and they're having breakfast together. every morning, every night (I will love you the same) - Soqquadro ❤ General Audience - Complete - 1,400 wc - Fluff, Feel-good Summary: It’s a normal day, but those are the ones Legosi enjoys the most. terminological inexactitude - sushishorts ❤ Teen - Complete - 4006 wc - rumor mill, Canon Divergent Summary: In which the Drama Club believes that Legosi and Louis are fighting over Haru, and completely misses out on the most important detail of it all.

Porclelain Wolf - FatDragonLair Teen - Complete - 1,518 wc - Angst fic with happy ending Summary: After having a severe injury a week ago, Legosi hasn't been the same. Louis and Haru are worried for the wolf and try their best with fixing him. Wild Side - slycooper20 Teen - Uncomplete - 19,000+ wc - Included OC, Cannon Divergent, Cherryton Summary: An old friend of Jack's gets accepted to the prestigious Cherryton Academy, but when he gets involved with the mysterious grey wolf Legoshi, his life spirals out of control as an unsolved murder, a mysterious stranger, and a gang of lions all enter into his life.  The Way you Bloom - Sanomo Teen - Complete - 4,219 wc - Alternate Universe, adorable Summary: The day in the life of a flower shop owner isn't always fun, certainly not when she is a dwarf rabbit; but sometimes all it takes is a gentle wolf to brighten her day. ☆ NSFW

Bad Liar (Series) - pocketfullofbees Explicit - Uncomplete - 22,000+ wc - Canon Divergent, 120CH, BDSM Summary: Legosi and Louis share a feral first kiss. Legosi has to deal with the fact that he might be in love with the guy who let him eat his leg, and his rabbit girlfriend. The three of them try to hang onto each other while also trying to figure out this crazy adult world.

kill me more - sushishorts ❤ Mature - Complete work - 3976 wc - Getting Together, Haru and Louis scheme Summary: In which Louis knows, Haru urges on, and Legosi wonders.

To One I am Tied, to the Other I am True - Born This Gay (Sinpie_Senpai)  ❤ Mature - Complete Work - 6111 wc - Snapshot, Getting Together Summary: Legosi is in love. Louis is exasperated. Haru is fond of them both.

little red riding hood - dedicaiton Mature - Uncomplete - 1,046+ wc - Alternate Universe Summary: Haru is a little rabbit that explores deep into the woods to find a blood-red flower. But whatever is lurking behind those trees is seemingly more trouble than this venture is worth.

The Rabbit, The Deer and The Wolf - jekyllhyde Mature - Uncomplete - 1,300+ wc - Alternate Universe Summary: Haru and Louis are engaged and living together, both looking forward to a bright future as an herbivore couple who have been together for a few years.That is... until a big, bad wolf moves next door and their lives become a whole lot messier.

LOUGOSHI 

☆ Fluff / Angst / Non Explicit 

dream of me - grieve* Teen - Complete - 7413 wc - Pinning, One-shot Summary: Louis is in love with Legosi.

The Ride Home - Doubtfuldeer ❤ General Audience - Complete - 1352 wc - Domestic Fluff, One-shot Summary: OTP prompt: They comes home after a very long drive. Person A is wide awake, but Person B is extremely exhausted and falls asleep in a very uncomfortable spot. Person A wants to carry them to bed, but there’s a problem: B is really tall, and REALLY heavy, and A is very weak.

Utlerior Motives - Doubtfuldeer, pocketfullofbees ❤ Teen - Complete (series: on-going) - 4642 wc - Crack, Fluff, 701+ Summary: Louis and Legosi have some unexpected bonding time over some episodes of Rick and Morty (i'm unironically proud of this tbh)

Leave Me On Read - cutiefemdom ❤ Teen - Complete - 3624 wc - Louis/Legosi, cute, texting fic Summary: Louis gets Legosi's number to keep an eye on him but instead slowly falls in love.

Like a Beast Hunting For Love - cutiefemdom ❤ Teen - Complete - 1811 wc - Soulmates, Alternate Universe Summary: Early in their lives, all animals wake up to a soulprint on their wrist. It's the shape of the animal's paw they are destined to be with. For herbivores who get a carnivore's print it's a death sentence.Louis doesn't think he's meant long for this world.

musk - mokarozu Teen - Complete - 1011 wc - Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha!Louis Summary:  “Louis, I want..” Legosi said breathily, his heat growing far too unbearable. He yearned to be filled, practically aching at this point in time. He gulped, before finally giving into his temptations as he admitted.“I want you, alpha..”

☆ Long Form / Chaptered Work Mostly Uncomplete or Active Updating

I’m In Love With a Dork - aekyuu General Audiences - Uncomplete - 9,700+ wc - University AU Summary: In a world where Legosi doesn't drop out of high school and actually graduates, Louis enters a well-known University with a prosthetic foot that attracts a lot of attention and fear from other animals. Legosi, feeling bad for what he'd done to Louis, and witnessing other animals "bullying" Louis, also enrolls into the same University to protect him at all costs.

Craving More Than You’re Given - doopstory ❤ Teen - Uncomplete - 74,000+ wc - Canon Divergent, 120 CH Summary: Friendship finally established, Legosi and Louis start to really get to know each other.

A Wolf with Little Heart - TheFancySquid ❤ Teen - Uncomplete - 41,000 wc - Alternative Universe, Dark!Legosi Summary: Legosi is a rude, obnoxious, and down right mean and negative person to everyone around him. But for what reason?

Repose Unto Terror - wurmz Teen - Uncomplete - 2,600+ wc - Canon Divergent, Louis cares fic Summary: It was the least he could do to maintain this state of purgatory, to fund this male's survival. Under any other circumstances, with the prohibitive cost of preservation, he was certain that Legosi wouldn't have been allowed to linger in limbo for so long. It was the least he could do, Louis repeated to himself, to use his wealth to fund the basic survival of a male who gave himself for the prospect of a new future.

wanted life enough to risk the open field - jurassicqueer Mature - Uncomplete - 6,200+ wc - Canon Divergent Summary: Legosi's chronic worrying keeps him up until long walks are the only way for him to sleep at night. One warm, humid evening, he stumbles upon the bloody mess left by Tem's attacker-- except Tem is still alive. This changes things.

Salut d’Amour - Doubtfuldeer ❤ Mature - Uncompleted - 13,000+ wc - AU Orchestra Summary: An AU in which Legosi is a violinist, and Louis is a pianist. All Legosi wants is to one day play a duet with Louis, but he ends up getting much more than he bargained for.

Over There - Big_Hairy_Stallion68 ❤ Mature - Uncomplete - 17,000+ wc - Cannon Divergent - 123CH, Slow burn Summary: What if the society of Beastars was only part of a larger world? What if there was an alternative, a different place to live in, a different society with different customs? What if Louis and Legosi had enough of the bullshit and just wanted a... regular life?

A Tale of Moon - Wuffin_Arts  ❤ Mature - Uncomplete - 8,000K+ wc - Louis/Legosi, Kid fic Summary: This story will focus on the life and drama of these two as they grow and learn more about themselves, and face the struggles of it all. Penumbra: Part 1 - Srugging_Altas103 Explicit - Uncomplete - 23,000+ wc - Cannon Divergent Summary: To be a gray wolf was a damning fate in Legosi's eyes. Despite his best efforts, he would always been seen for the predator he was. However, one fateful day led him to begin a less-than-wholesome relationship with Louis, challenging everything he had ever thought about himself. To be gay was a damning fate in Louis's eyes. Despite his best efforts, it continued to fester within him, threatening to destroy the future laid out for him without mercy. He needed to cope; any insecure straight guy would do.

El esclavo Luna y el amo Sol - Kmilarts (Language: Spanish) ❤ Explicit - Uncomplete - 23,000+ wc - Alternate Universe, Slaves, Top!Louis Summary: Raised as a slave to be treated as a free person, the slave Legosi became free with his master Louis. You will get more than just freedom, you will also have the love and family that someone of your caste should not have, but sometimes the world gives good things to people who deserve it.

Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me  - kastiyana Mature - Uncomplete - 27,000+ wc - Alternate Universe, Body Guard!Legosi Summary: Louis is a rich heir of the Horns Conglomerate, future CEO, future Beastar, his life seems all planned... until this exasperating wolf is hired as his bodyguard.

☆ NSFW

Guess You're Apart of Me Now - butterfingers69 ❤ Explicit - Complete - 4,239 wc - Trans!Louis fic Summary: Shortly after Legosi left the hospital after being shot Louis and him agree to meet up and talk. They soon realize that not only are they connected, but perhaps they don't mind.

The Wolf Trap - surveycorpsjean ❤ Explicit - Complete - 18,279 wc - Legosi/Louis, Action, adventure Summary: If you're going to play the game, you have to play it right.

tame - TrashKing (Vanya_Deyja) ❤❤ Explicit - Complete - 2561 wc - possessive legosi, shishigami louis Summary: Legosi is not leaving here without Louis.

Heat - TrashKing (Vanya_Deyja) Explicit - Complete - 2213 wc - Rut, Knotting Summary: Interspecies romance is taboo, politics is complicated, but this? This is simple.

Secret Lovers - Zeuspower6 Explicit - Complete - 2731 wc - Top Louis, secret relationship Summary: Louis and Legosi are in a secret relationship, but a few of the drama club members start to get suspicious.

Hurts So Good - cutiefemdom Explicit - Complete - 1637 wc - Dom Louis, Dirty Talk Summary: "Unruly puppies have to be taught to behave." Legosi doesn't realize that he's being too rough during sex so Louis decides he needs some disciplining.

Disgusting - TrashKing (Vanya_Deyja) ❤ Explicit - Complete - 2268 wc - Masturbation, Verbal Humiliation Summary: There's something very perverse about how Legosi sits with his predatory instincts all the while frantically denying them. Unfortunately for him Louis lives to make his life a hellscape.

Sweet Release - Skrap Explicit - Complete - 1050 wc - BDSM, CBT, Smut Summary: A story about Louis and Legosi's time in bed and Legosi's relatively new toy.

Release Your Inner Wolf - Nacht_Writer Explicit - Complete - 4698 wc - Smut, Knotting, Exhibitionism Summary: Legosi is the only one Louis' trusts to grant him his darkest desire: to be fucked and marked by a carnivore.

Smoke Under the Moonlight - omnic Explicit - Complete - 4515 wc - Dom/Sub, Bottom Louis Summary: Legosi visits Louis at his dorm during his early morning smoke.

i would go down on you for days - orphan_account Mature - Complete - 2009 wc - Pinning fic Summary: Legosi often dreams of Louis.

in love(with your existence) - sweetycat Explicit - Uncomplete - 1,685+ wc - Cannon Divergent 114 ch, Porn With Plot Summary: Louis The Red Deer can proudly state that he’s never been speechless. Surprised, sure. Shocked even. Yet, he inevitably has a retort to whatever is being communicated to him. He has resolve.It all goes to shit the day his canine friend confesses his herbivore fetish. (or, Louis has a different reaction to Legosi’s confession in chap. 114)

A Good Alpha - cutiefemdom Mature - Complete - 8442 wc - Alternate Universe, Alpha!Louis, Omega!Legosi Summary: When Louis had presented as an alpha it hadn't been a shock to anyone, despite the fact that he was a herbivore.What was shocking was his mate.

My Temple (In You I Feel Safe) - cutiefemdom Explicit - Complete - 2596 wc - Canon Divergent, Knotting Summary: Louis knows it's obvious to every beast within a ten foot radius that he is going to into heat. What's worse is that those beasts happen to be back-alley sellers who are all carnivores. In one word he is: fucked.

This Wolf Is Mine - cutiefemdom ❤ Explicit - Complete - 4198 wc - Canon Divergent, Possessive Behavior Summary: Just like how Legosi had a fetish for herbivores, Louis was coming to accept that he might feel the same way about carnivores.One carnivore in particular.

A Royal’s Scent - cutiefemdom Explicit - Complete - 21,776 wc - AU, Prince!Louis, Louis/Jack, Louis/Legosi Summary: Prince Louis had already had enough on his plate before a wolf was apprehended on the border of his territory, thank you very much. Too bad his lessons never taught him about the intricacies of the wolf mating cycle. Dorime (Series) | Hail Mary | Full of Grace - frymyrisole Explicit - Complete - 20,416 wc - AU, Priest!Legosi, Mob Boss!Louis Summary: The day he came, Legosi's life turned upside down like the pancake his mom used to make every Sunday morning. The old doors of the church swung wide open with a resounding creak. A male red deer walked in an untouchable air to him. He was dressed to impress with an all-black three-piece suit. His shirt, his pants, his fancy little vest, all fitting tightly on his body. He even had a black jacket draped over his shoulder, the fabric trailing behind him like a cape.

Mío - Dakuraita (Language: Spanish) ❤ Explicit - Complete - 3,293 wc - Alternate Universe, Top Louis Summary: In a Universe where Louis is the boss of the mafia, Legoshi is his back guard ... however despite all he has lived through, the wolf has not let the rabbit of his heart go; Louis, on the other hand, is now only interested in the wolf and the dynamics they have developed over time. It is unforgivable that Legoshi is not his. It's yours, only yours.

MISC SHIPS / GENERAL B★ FIC

☆ Fluff / Angst / Non Explicit

I’m Simply Pina -  TheFancySquid ❤ Teen - Complete - 973 wc - Trans!Pina Fic Summary: Legosi stopped suddenly. He sniffed the air. There it was again, that familiar scent of a female. Legosi looked down at the club members below. He scanned over all the members, trying to isolate the source of the scent. His eyes finally fell on the far too familiar dall sheep, Pina.

Meanwhile at Cherryton - Sunset_Rider Teen - Uncomplete -  4016 wc - Jack Centric, 701, General  Summary: Jack is awake late at night thinking about the past and the desicions he has made.

do we realise that we’ve already closed our eyes - aiineslin* ❤ Mature - Complete - 1631 wc - Louis/Ibuki, sad, angst fic Summary: he has always followed where life took him, unflinching and unresisting.

pavo christatus - SatyrSyd37 ❤ Teen - Complete - 2839 wc- Dom/Kai, Canon Compliant Summary: Kai’s a mongoose. Dom’s a peafowl. It’s no wonder Kai’s drawn to him…he just wants to eat him. Right?

☆ NSFW

Bill Sneezes in Kai's Face While Attempting to Film Himself Shotgunning a Vape Cloud into His Mouth - BeAggressive ❤ Mature - Complete - 1988 wc - Bill/Kai Summary: Bill thinks it's funny, at least.

Gaffer Bias - BeAggressive ❤❤ Mature - Uncomplete - 8329+ wc - Bill/Kai Summary: The first night of Bill's first show as head of the drama club went great. Bill has a horrible idea that will probably ruin night two.

Jack x Juno - Haw ❤ Mature - Uncomplete - 4,700+ wc - Juno/Jack, Literally the cutest fic Summary: Juno is a heartbroken mess. Jack is still lonely. When their fates collide will that be fixed?

Fading Anger -  Haw  Mature - Uncomplete - 3,800+ wc - Kai/Sheila Summary: Kai is a little shit and is love with a beautiful Leopard.

Cornered in the Bathroom Stall - TheFancySquid ❤ Mature - Complete - 2,309 wc - Riz/Pina, dubcon, smut Summary: Pina is cornered in the bathroom by Riz the brown bear.

Miguno & Durham - AleksWulfe, legosiwithagun Mature - Complete - 975 wc - Mild Smut Summary: "We're going to fuck, of course. During lunch you said if you died 15 times on the final boss I’d get to fuck you," Miguno responded. 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

☆ (aka, currently reading / popular in fandom)

We're Only Animals: Book 1 - doopstory, NilesTheWhiteTailedDeerQueer Mature - Complete - 307,678 wc - Alternate Universe, Louis/Legosi Summary: This is an alternate universe where instead of attacking Haru in the beginning, Legosi attacks Louis, drastically altering the events of Beastars. Pining, danger, love, loss, it's all here. Can Legosi figure out his purpose in life and will Louis be able to come terms with his true feelings about becoming the Beastar? And can they figure out their true feelings for each other in a world where their love is forbidden?

St. Cherryton Hospital - http_petrichor General - Uncomplete - 13,000+ wc - Hospital/Good Doctor AU Summary: Carnivores can't be surgeons. Everybody knows that. What if they go haywire and eat organs from donors, or just ravish the patient while in operation? Legosi has known this all his life, too. But he could still dream of being one.Then, one day, he saves a boy's life. Then, he finds himself as a surgical resident at St. Cherryton Hospital. The first carnivore to ever become a surgical resident. How will society react?

A Vigourous Haws - Hartatak  Mature - Complete (?) - 2461 wc - Crack, Discord Vigs/Haw, #FanficitionStars Summary: Wasting no more time, he hastily rose up on his two feet with the help from the bed that had supported his resting body, only to realize a few new shocking facts. “Why am I naked? And why is my body is covered with ... fur?”

READING LIST (Not Yet Categorized)

Selfish - doopstory - Complete - Louis/Legosi Quite the Twist - MadAcries - Uncomplete - Louis/Legosi, Gosha/Gouhin Bare Back Black Alley Boys - Mico_Kun - Uncomplete - Louis/Legosi The New Waiter at Cherryton - peachie_teaa - Uncomplete - Louis/Legosi

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Q: Hi, I don’t see my fic on here? A: I haven’t read it! Send it to me.  twitter: @vote_dogs | discord: @DogVote ask box

Once I’ve read a fic, it will be placed on this rec list. The categories will grow or change based on how fic transforms in the BEASTARS fandom so expect this rec list to look different all the time! New languages will be added, or translated to english, I google translated a spanish BEASTAR fic and it was beautiful (You will see it on here). I’m so excited to read more fic! BEASTARS is a gorgeous and complex and inspirational manga series; these stories only add multitudes of theory and dynamics. That means YOU need to write fic. DM me here or on Discord your link. Spread work, say hi: #Fanficitionstars. Ask me to proofread/beta a fic? [email protected]

#Beastars #fanfic #fanfiction #beastars fanfic #lougoshi #Louis x Legosi #louis/legosi #legosi/louis #legoshi #haru/legosi #master list #first update #fanficitionstars #beastars manga

[sraawrats]

🦇🎃Kana’s Halloween Hangover Rec List🎃🦇

Love Halloween? Not ready for it to be over? No worries! Old and new, these are some of my favorite spooky, suspenseful, and supernatural Kylux reads--perfect for drawing out your favorite month a little longer!

which is 100% why i’m posting this on november 1st, definitely not because i didnt manage to finish it before yesterday. nope, not at all

My Baby’s a Devil in the Bedroom | @callmelyss

- E - 4/5 chapters, 14 645 words - “Oh, obviously.” Kylo let out a shaky laugh and ran both hands through his hair. “Wait, no, you’re serious. You’re a fucking demon.”

“Well, yes, not to put too fine a point on it.” Hux smiled, clearly pleased with himself at the joke. “Or more accurately, I’m a succubus. A sex demon.”

—

Kylo has an unusual squatter. He's pretty fine with it. -

This fic is seriously amazing. It’s a super fun idea, the dialogue is hilarious, and it perfectly balances the sweetness and humor with angst/intrigue. Plus, I’m absolutely taken with snarky, smug, candy-tasting succubus Hux <3 <3

strange phenomenon | @brawlite, @kyluxtrashcompactor

- E - 8/8 chapters, 65 756 words - Kylo Ren is haunted by recent tragedy. He answers an ad posted by one Armitage Hux for a roommate, and he thinks a fresh start will help him begin to heal. He brings next to nothing with him from the past when he moves in.Or so he thinks. -

This fic is wonderfully suspenseful, and perfect if you’re looking for something to keep you on the edge of your seat. I also had a lot of Han feels when reading this one. Overall it’s just really nicely well-rounded with heartfelt and genuine characterizations, good spooks, and some searing sexual tension.

Something Wicked | @marlonbookcase

- G - 7/7 chapters, 22 514 words -  Kylo and Armitage have been friends since they were kids. Now in university, they run a semi-popular YouTube channel called "London Below" where they investigate all sorts of haunted and paranormal happenings in and around London and try to answer the question, are ghosts real? When they take on the mysterious and tragic case of the Pendle Witches, they come face to face with the spirit world in a way they never have before. Will they make it out of Pendle alive? Are ghosts real? And most importantly, does Armitage return Kylo's affections? -

I love Buzzfeed Unsolved. I love Kylux. I love this fic. A lot. As it says in the description, it’s not an exact Unsolved AU, but it really captured the format/feel of the “paranormal investigator” genre, so if you’re a fan of that, you’ll love this. Bonus points for some mutual pining and sugary fluff 👀👀

Second Spring, First Fall | @huxandthehound

- T - 5/? chapters, 7 018 words -  Nothing brings people together quite like the holidays. Well, maybe not Halloween... After a scare, Hux has to confront his neighbor. Lucky for him, Kylo might be a little sweeter than his tricks let on. -

A cute multi-chap made of Huxloween prompt fills! Lighthearted, but it’s still got that Halloween spirit. Plus I’ve got a soft spot for sweet modern AU Kylo :))

Some Strange and Unnerving Events | @longstoryshortikilledhim

- E - 10/10 chapters, 158 815 words -  As a boy in a dreary school on the moors, Kylo Ren had only one friend, a red-headed boy whose sharp tongue and wit drew Kylo to him. But that friend was taken from him. Now grown, Kylo goes into the service of the master of Stormfield Hall, the enigmatic Lord Arkanis, who is seeking a tutor for his charge. Kylo's past will come rushing back to him, both in his new employer and some unusual circumstances that bring to the fore powers that Kylo thought long-suppressed. -

This fic hit me like a ton of bricks. This fic hit me like TWO tons of bricks. Start this one when you’re ready to be feeling it for a few days afterwards. It’s an incredible historical AU with magic and a great murder mystery--it basically pushes, like, all of my buttons. And it’s /genuinely/ spooky, I had to start keeping a light on while I read it. Oh, and it features definitely my favorite Millicent ever. If you’ve got the time for something long, go for this one.

Reach Out in the Darkness | unicornsandbutane

- E - 2/2 chapters, 9 321 words - Having spent a decent amount of time researching the history and folklore of Arkanis, Cadet Hux strikes out one chilly evening in search of some legendary creature that's supposed to be extremely powerful. If the myths aren't true, all he's wasted is time. But, if they are based in some actual fact, then what a boon such an entity would be to his cause. He doesn't know what he will find, but he is prepared for any (absolutely ANY) eventuality. -

Tentacle monster Kylo. I am unapologetic. It’s really good.

Witchfeather | Whatever21ism

- E - 14/? chapters, 16 015 words - Armitage Hux is a new witch trying to establish himself in a new town. One day he goes out seeking a familiar, particularly a cat, somehow instead he ends up with a raven who is much more than they appear to be. -

A favorite of mine! Apothecary witch Hux & his crow familiar Kylo. There’s some really nice worldbuilding and crow Kylo is super cute. Possibly abandoned, but defs worth checking out what’s there & showing the author some love.

First Order Investigations | @mistresseast

- Unrated - series, 3 works, 58 094 words, incomplete - Hux and Phasma have been running First Order Investigations since high school, and Dr. Snoke's metaphysical research graduate program seemed like the perfect opportunity to pursue their interests under the protective umbrella of academia. Unfortunately, that meant allowing Snoke's personal project, a taciturn medium named Kylo Ren, to join their team. Hux and Kylo mix like oil and water, or, more accurately, like fire and gasoline, and Hux is convinced that working effectively with Kylo is absolutely impossible. They hate each other, and Hux is content to leave it that way.

But then, a case in the sweltering heat of South Carolina begins to change things between them, and Hux finds himself questioning not only Kylo's feelings, but his own as well. -

Paranormal Investigator AU of the highest quality. The detail and thought put into each investigation site is incredible. I love this fic to pieces, and if you like ghost stories, you will too.

Undead | @heyktula, @splinteredscript

- E - series, 2 works, 6 855 words, incomplete - They’ve been circling around each other for years. Kylo Ren, the most powerful vampire in Supreme Leader Snoke’s house, and Armitage Hux, the human liaison between the world of mortals and that of eternal darkness. Baiting, taunting, the cord between them growing ever tighter.Sooner or later, one of them is going to snap. -

A lovely and dark vampire AU~~ Gives off some real classic Kylux vibes, and is an absolute pleasure to read :D

Fixer Upper | @irisparry

- T - 5/7 chapters, 10 034 words - When Armitage Hux starts with First Order estate agents, he thinks the house on Alderaan Drive is an insult, a patronising set of training wheels for the new boy. He is ... not correct. -

Adorable haunted house AU! I love both of their characterizations in this one, especially shy, grumpy ghost Kylo~

Hair of the Dog That Bit You | @theweddingofthefoxes

- M - 9/9 chapters, 21 597 words -  Ren owns a popular tavern, and Armitage is a respected physician in town and the surrounding villages. Their years-long friendship will survive anything -- even the bite of a werewolf. Won't it? -

Full disclosure, I haven’t actually finished this one-- I have a tendency to get distracted unless I finish something in one sitting, rip. But I remember being SUPER stoked about starting it, and anything by weddingofthefoxes is guaranteed to be a treat, so I’m putting it on here anyway :D tbh now that I’m thinking about it again I’ll probably finish it tonight.

The Eldritch Effect | @generallyhuxurious

- E - 17/17 chapters, 67 899 words - For the last three years Major Donal A. Hux, formerly of the British Army's Parachute Regiment, and Kylo Ren, estranged son of US Defence Secretary Leia Organa, have been tooling around North America investigating "weirdness"- and they're plenty weird themselves. Their latest tip off is leading them towards a haunting in rural Alabama. But first they need to make a stop in Trinity, South Carolina... -

A real goofy Paranormal Investigators AU that I super love (but I also need to catch up on rip). It’s an American Gothic AU, but you don’t need to have any knowledge of the show to follow along (I don’t). It also comes with a series of oneshots set in the universe but outside the main plotline, so when you finish the fic and inevitably want more, you’re covered ;)

blackbird, fly | @acroamatica

- M - 19 265 words - One sunny afternoon in the mountains of Washington state, Ben Organa-Solo walked out into the woods.

He never came home.

Six years later, a journalist specialising in missing-persons cold cases decides to follow his footsteps and see where they might lead. -

This is a sad beautiful horror AU that is very close to my heart. The writing is just gorgeous and the suspense is beautifully done. Also, it about doubled the amount of emotions already attached to the song Blackbird for me (I still get a little heart-squeeze every time I hear it)

what’s real or isn’t | @brawlite

- E - 12/12 chapters, 57 398 words - Hux's new house is not haunted. It isn't. -

Super surreal haunted house AU. There’s also monster sex. This is definitely a staple of spooky Kylux fics :D

How to Kill a Living Thing | hedgerowhag

- E - 10/10 chapters, 25 394 words - It starts like any other horror movie: a young man moves into a strange old house full of relics of the past and becomes haunted by some strange entity. However, Ren doesn't find the monster that he expects. -

This one has got some of the most stunning, spooky visuals I’ve ever read. I could picture every scene and character so clearly. Plus, I love Hux’s characterization--he’s kind of a shit, and it’s beautiful.

Twenty-Six Weeks | @vmprsm

- E (eventually) - series, 4 works, 28 539 words, probably complete - Two mature adults need to do two things: live an a house with a stranger for six months, and keep their secrets to themselves. How hard could that be?

Apparently very. -

The author made a point of trying not to give too much away in the summary/tags, so I won’t either :D I’ll just say it’s one of my favorites, and definitely worth a read if you haven’t already~~

The Brief Wondrous Return of Vampire Boy | @hollyhark

- T - 21 190 words - Two days before Halloween, Hux hears a rumor that Ben Solo is back in town. While Hux does not believe the sensational version-- that his estranged childhood friend/enemy escaped from an asylum and is out for revenge --he is left on edge as to how to proceed. -

One of my favorite Halloween fics; it really encompasses the feel of fall/Halloween but also, like, good ol’ ~teenage bullshit~. There’s a lot of creepy Snoke stuff, some dealing with the fallout, and a nice hopeful ending :))

Ghost Encounters of the Hux Kind | carefulren

- T - 9/9 chapters, 25 610 words - Kylo purchases an old, abandoned house in order to get away from his family. He just wants the chance to be alone for a while, and he considers this house as the start of his new, isolated freedom.

Everything is going as smoothly as possible, until it's not.

Perhaps, Kylo isn't living alone after all.-

A sweet and soft ghost  story AU. I adore the ending <3 <3 

Spookylux Huxloween 2018 | @nofootprintsinsalt

- T - series, 31 works, 36 896 words, complete - Huxloween 2018 - 31 benarmie fics in 31 days -

A series of benarmie fluff/horror for the Huxloween prompts this year! These were so so fun to read throughout the month and I adore the little universe that develops as they go on :))

Of Our Time | @ezlebe

- E - 15 297 words - “Do you know how many people would think it’s weird you walk around in the day?”

Hux grits his teeth in vain against an uncanny sensation, his own words digging and clawing up his throat to leave behind the taste of blood and bitterness thick on his tongue. “I could care less. I was made this way before there were movies – before fucking Stroker. Call me a demon if it makes you feel better.” -

I only read this really recently, and I was BLOWN AWAY. Seriously, this packs so much into 15k--it’s got feels, it’s got lore, it’s got steamy smut. What more could one ask for?

Shiver The Whole Night Through | @theweddingofthefoxes

- T- 5/5 chapters, 7 977 words - Ren's always loved hunting, so when he's told his paid time off won't roll over into the next year, he decides to take a week, get his gun and rent a cabin in the woods. But it takes no time at all for the hunter to become the hunted. -

This one’s very accurately tagged “Mind Games,” which really made it stand out to me--I do love a good spooky woods story~~

The Ghost Under My Bed | @longstoryshortikilledhim

- E - 19 525 words - Amateur witch, aspiring actor and full-time family fuckup Ben Solo discovers that his house is being haunted. Best part? His very own poltergeist, Armitage Hux, is kinda cute. Worst part? Well. He's dead. -

THIS IS THE SWEETEST GHOST STORY. I love it so so much. The sweetness of their relationship set against the sad backdrop of both of their histories gives this one a really unique feel. And the ending is guaranteed to give you the warm fuzzies <3

--

aaaand that’s all, folks! Lord, this post turned into a behemoth lmao. I just. really love supernatural stuff. (on that note, if anyone has read/written anything even tangentially spooky/supernatural, feel free to send it my way. I will happily give it a read ;)))

Happy reading! ^_^

#kylux #fic rec #halloween #huxloween #spookylux

[nightspeakswrites]

Update and Worldbuilding

This will be part update, because I haven’t posted in ages, and part world building day 1.

Crystal Wars, and all of its world building from last year still exist. I promise, at some point, eventually, I am going to go back and work on it more and finish. I just… I have no idea where the plot is going, and I really need to grow as a writer before I can really tackle that project in the way it deserves. I’ll likely write snippets about the characters now and again, and I will always answer asks/prompts about Crystal Wars to the best of my ability. But for now, it’s a project that will be shelved while I learn more about who I am as a writer, and what kind of story I want to put forth.

So for now, I’m going to work on some smaller scale, less in-depth projects. D&D (and rpgs in general) have been really important to me in terms of learning to build characters and worlds that are engaging and have their own spark of life to them. At present, I have a handful of characters based in a homebrewed setting, which I plan to work from for @worldbuildingjune, as well as to write smaller pieces, much like Here When You Wake. Although most of these characters (Leto, Sho, Ash, Kharwin, and Nyct) are in various locations, they all exist within the same overall setting.

Leto & Sho

Leto’Velia’Lalwen’Menel and Sho Satoru meet just outside the Elmwood, or Lalven in the elven tongue, which is the forest where Leto has lived their whole life. As the name implies, the forest is almost entirely comprised of ancient elm trees. On the east the Elmwood is bordered by grassy plains, stretching for a few days ride before reaching human settlements and towns. It is along this border that Leto meets Sho, as the bard was travelling with a caravan of entertainers headed back east, eventually coming to the city of Bentsler. Bentsler is where Leto and Sho part ways for the time being. Bentsler is a large, bustling city. Mainly human, but there are elven and dwarven quarters of the city, and other folk -- halflings, gnomes, even dragonborn, tieflings, and half-orcs -- are also fairly common.

Ash & Kharwin

Ash Ofer and Kharwin McKennon come from Hylith, an old town, at the eastern base of Mount Pelloway. Hylith looks like many cities that have been rebuilt several times throughout their history, trading hands a few times due to wars or raiding parties, but for the past few generations peace has reigned thanks to treaties and alliances between the neighboring kingdoms that surround Mt. Pelloway and the rest of the Orodruin mountain range. Within the town, Ash has his own workshop up on Journeyman’s Hill, as does the McKennon’s cooperage (run by Kharwin’s father, Kharl), and an upholsterer & textiles shop run by Mr. & Mrs. Tucker and their daughter, Scarlytt. Ash’s mother, Holly, runs the best of the local taverns -- a homey place called The Golden Lager.

Nyct

Nyctophilia Swiftstar grew up in The Halls of Mysteries, a religious temple dedicated to the Goddess Mystra, who oversees magical knowledge. An abandoned tiefling infant, she was taken in and adopted by Torlin Swiftstar, the master cleric of The Halls. The temple sits on a hill at the edge of the small town of Laraby. A small community, Laraby is home mostly to farmers and smaller craftsmen, providing a quieter life than in Westheim (a major trading hub located a few hours’ travel further along the river). Westheim is a bustling city, and home to the Unseen University, a well respected institution for arcane studies. While many of the university students choose to pray to Deneir (patron god of knowledge) at the House of Learning in Westheim proper, some students seeking more specific guidance make their way to Laraby to offer their prayers to Mystra. In recent weeks however, tensions have been rising in Westheim, to the point that even those in Laraby are worried. There are whispers of political corruption, unsolved murders in Westheim, and parishioners of all faiths seeking guidance as an unease and sense of foreboding fills their hearts. Is it all linked? Is someone pulling the strings?

#nightspeakswrites #world building june #nyctophilia swiftstar #leto'velia #sho satoru #ash ofer #kharwin mckennon #dnd character

[sleepyfan-blog]

If you're in the mood for prompts: #1 “I’m sorry I scared you, I didn’t mean to.” for ConHayth

@balsaminaceae​

Fandom: Assassin’s Creed

Pairing: ConHayth

warnings: Father/Son incest, Modern AU, angst, attempted murder

word count: 2,935

summary: Once a month, Connor and his coworkers are required to attend meetings to discuss how the testing of the falcons they are training with are going, and what differences in behaviors that they have observed, if any. Towards the end of such meetings, if the CEO or another powerful leading employee of Abstergo is giving a press release, they are required to tune in. One of them doesn’t go well.

It’s been a year and a half since Connor’s been working for Abstergo, and he still found these check-in meetings to be boring at best, and vaguely insulting at worst. He had bonded with Corbin, one of the red-tailed hawks that they were training, and was able to see through his eyes, and influence the other’s movements, while he was seeing through the bird’s eyes. Once his fellow researchers had found this out, they had been absolutely delighted. They had asked him all sorts of questions, finding out that Connor was in possession of second sight - as well as his apparently enhanced senses and above-average strength, even for someone his size and age.

But the way that some of the other research teams spoke about him was... More than a little creepy, and caused the young man to feel as if they thought of him as little more than another piece of the experiment. The worst thing was that when he politely brought up the fact that he was a human being rather than an object to be studied under a microscope, everyone in the room stared at him, blinking a little before all claiming at once that they hadn’t meant to sound like that, and that he was being a little oversensitive in the matter. At first Connor had been unsure - as he knew that many of his colleagues tended to be rather blunt - and second sight was an incredibly rare gift... But the way a few of them spoke about him was chilling to say the least.

Connor had tried to describe what it was like to feel the wind beneath wings that weren’t entirely his - to see the ground from so far below, and to glide and coast in the enclosure that Corbin had been put into... But it was difficult to quantify, and the young man couldn’t explain how or why he had bonded with the relatively young red-tailed hawk. The meeting was winding down, thankfully, and Connor was sitting in a chair closer towards the door, as while some lingered to talk longer after the meeting was officially over, the young veterinarian always longed for fresh air and sky - raining or sunny or somewhere in between didn’t matter. Just the feeling of being out of that meeting room and a little bit of freedom was blissful.

Occasionally some of his coworkers would allude to something deeper to the reasons why they were researching falcon behavior, but they were always quickly quieted down. Connor was well aware of the fact that they were hiding several things, but as no one seemed to be the least bit interested in telling him - or the two other people who were out of that particular loop who worked in this building - it was a mystery that was likely to be gone unsolved for some time. Still, the birds were treated well, and no one had attempted to lock him in with the falcons overnight, so the young man was content not to try to pry further into the mystery surrounding this longer term project.

The head researcher - the one who was responsible for reporting all of their findings to the higher ups who worked in the main office where Haytham did - cleared her throat and stated once she had all of their attention “Since we have finished discussing everything of value and we have an hour left of the meeting, we will watch and listen to the live press conference that Haytham Kenway is currently giving.”

Many of his fellow researchers groaned a little, but none of them asked if they could leave early - as they had never been allowed to do so. Connor was curious as to what Haytham was going to talk about, and was always happy to see his beloved - even if the other was going to be on a screen. The head researcher quieted everyone down as she switched the large, wall mounted computer screens to a live streaming site, where Haytham was giving a speech.

“- and further more, the veterinary clinic program that has been running for six months will be expanded from the four clinics in New York, Boston and Cincinnati will be expanded by another eight clinics in cities across the united states. As with the first four, they will be providing excellent, at-cost pet care.”  Haytham said, sounding confident, a touch of a smile on his face as he gestured, to underline his words.

A small, fond smile appeared on Connor’s face as his father continued to speak about where the clinics would be opening, and other such details. He could hear a quiet murmur among his fellow researchers - perhaps surprised by the increase in the program? The young man couldn’t imagine why - from what he could tell, the initial four clinics were a boost in profits and good PR of Abstergo, and having more of those clinics would only help, rather than hinder.

Haytham concluded “Do any of you have any questions?” looking over at what must be a sea of reporters.

Several cameras swiveled towards someone - including the camera that they had been watching Haytham through, and terror clutched at his stomach, as Chevalier stepped closer, saying “Yes, I have a question.” the Anarchist shifted his position a little, and raised a pistol, shooting Haytham squarely in the chest, the force of the bullet knocking the CEO off his feet. The Frenchman sneered as he was swarmed by security “How quickly do you think you’ll die, you miserable pig?”

The cameras went dead shortly after that, but there had been screaming and chaos captured on tape, and the entire table was in uproar. frenzied questions and horrified words were exchanged, but Connor was rooted to his seat, frozen and mute in utter horror at seeing his father fall backwards out of sight, shock and pain on the other’s face. Those moments were playing over and over again in his head, and a miserable sob wrenched it’s way out of Connor’s chest before he could stop himself from making a sound.

Strangely enough, a majority of the sound and movement died down at the sound that Connor made, and the young vet was paralyzed by the intense staring of everyone else in the room. He could feel his breathing become fast and shallow, and it was difficult to see anyone as his eyes were so blurry. He reached up to his eyes with one violently trembling hand, realizing that he was crying uncontrollably.

Someone was trying to touch him, and a face came into his hazy view - but their touch was static and their voice seemingly filled with false concern. Connor hissed acid; y “No, I am not okay! I just watched my father get shot!” with that, Connor jumped to his feet and fled the meeting, despite several hands reaching out for him - he knocked them away, growling at anyone who tried to stop him to let him go and to leave him alone!

Connor locked himself into a single-person bathroom and allowed himself to sob until he had no more tears. Then he drank as much water as he could force himself to drink through cupped hands before shakily calling Shay - who had to have either been at the press conference or watching. His phone rang and rang and rang.

Finally, Shay answered his phone, the other sounding tense “Good afternoon Connor - yes I saw what happened at the press release. Your father’s at the private hospital he was last time that something awful happened to him. He’s in stable condition and just went into surgery. Where are you? Haytham wants to know where you are, and for you to come to him as soon as you can.”

“I... I’m at work. Th-the research center, n-not the cl-clinic.” Connor hiccupped. Shay sounded as if he was barely holding himself together, and the young vet was doing his best to attempt to calm down. “I... We were... In a meeting and we finished and... I... Where should I go to get... to Get to him? back to the apartment or...?”

Shay cut him off, though the other’s voice was filled with grief and kindness “I’ll come get you at your work - it’s closer to the hospital than your apartment is. If your boss won’t let you leave early. I’ll talk to her.”

“Okay. T-thank you S-shay.” Connor managed out, getting back up to his feet “Do you want to talk to her over the phone or... Or once you arrive...?”

“I’ll talk to her once I show up - more credible that way. Stay inside the research building until I come to get you, alright?” The other responded, sounding stern and worried.

“I will...” Connor promised. His phone buzzed a little and the young man frowned unhappily “... My phone’s about to die on me...”

“I’ll let you go. I’ll text you when I’m about five minutes away.” Shay responded before ending the call.

~

It took Connor more courage than he wanted to admit to having to use, in order to leave the bathroom - and it took him some time to even make it over to the door. He cracked the door open, to find what appeared to be his entire research team - as well as the head researcher waiting for him outside of the bathroom. Connor closed the door and locked it, before leaning against it, startled by their presence and wholly unprepared for the questions that might be flung at him by inquisitive and possibly well-meaning coworkers and boss.

Someone knocked on the door, calling out “Connor... I’m not going to force you to come out of there, but... I would like to talk to you for a moment. It’d be easier if the door wasn't in the way, I wouldn’t have to half-shout to make myself heard.”

“I can hear you fine. If you’re about to ask if someone’s coming to pick me up to take me to father, the answer is yes. He’s going to text me when he’s getting close and I will be leaving, meeting be damned. The boss can fire me if she wants to. I hate being looked at and poked and prodded like a lab rat, anyways.” Connor grumbled, knowing that perhaps he was being a little unfair. “I can hear you fine through the door.”

“I... Wouldn’t dream of stopping anyone from visiting family who’d been badly injured so suddenly. And what do you mean by being poked and prodded?” His boss responded, sounding vaguely hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell us your real name, Connor? Didn’t you trust us?” One of his coworkers piped up, sounding as if he’d somehow betrayed them in some way.

“Connor Hill is my name, it’s just not my full name. I haven’t told any of you my first name either, mostly because I don’t want to hear any of you attempt to say my name, only to slaughter it and give up. I also didn’t want to be accused of getting this position because of who my father is.” The young vet hissed irritably. “Oh please. Don’t start with that. The tests that you people run on me while I'm working with Corbin - the endless questions. How would you like it if you were asked millions of questions that you either didn’t have the answer to, or when you tried to answer, were completely disregarded as utter nonsense because the person asking them didn’t have a proper frame of reference! It’s like trying to describe color to someone who can only see in black and white. In French, while they don’t understand a word of the language.”

There was a long stretch of silence from the other side of the door, but Connor wasn’t going to apologize for his words, or open the door. Not until Shay texted him, as he was fairly sure that he would say something that he was going to regret if he had to deal with false concern and pretty words that weren’t honestly meant from the people on the other side of the door. His boss spoke up after what felt like an eternity “I see. I wish that you’d come to me earlier with the information that such inquiries were upsetting and stressing you out, as that was something that none of us had intended. We’ll leave you be, if that’s what you’d like.”

“It is.” Connor growled, having realized that he might have been a little harsher than he should have been “... And I am sorry for being rude. I just... Don’t want... to lose both of... Of my parents because of... because of the violence and a-avarice of o-others.” He was going to start crying again and he hated that fact.

“Thank you for the apology, Connor.” The head researcher murmured before continuing “I’ll be sure that everyone else leaves you alone - if your ride does forget to text you, will you please tell me whose supposed to pick you up?”

“Yeah... Shay Cormac is.” The young vet responded quietly. He heard the sounds of footsteps leaving and breathed out a silent sigh of relief, pulling himself together somewhat.

~

Connor wasn’t sure what was longer, waiting for Shay to arrive, or the drive over to the private hospital and being checked over for weapons by two members of security - and that was after his ID had been checked three times against the list of people his father wanted to talk to after surgery. The both of them were let in and taken up to Haytham’s room.

The other looked pale and worn, and was laying down in bed, typing away on his work laptop, looking up as Connor came in, only one guest was allowed in at the time, and Shay had very graciously allowed the young man to come in first. “Connor, I’m glad that you’re here. I-”

The younger man threw himself at his father, holding the other tightly and burying his face into the other’s chest, being sure not to press against the other’s bandages, holding Haytham as tightly as he dared. Despite a stern promise to himself not to start blubbering all over his beloved, Connor could feel himself start to tear up again “I’m so... I’m so glad that you... That you s-survived. H-how are you doing? H-how long are you going to n-need to heal? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Haytham’s eyes softened a little, and the other pressed a gentle kiss to Connor’s forehead, murmuring an apologetic “I’m sorry I scared you. I didn’t mean to.” One of the other’s hands was gently petting his hair, the other lightly patting him on one of his shoulders in a soothing gesture.

“It wasn’t your f-fault you got s-shot.” Connor responded, giving the other a watery attempt at a smile, feeling part of himself relax a little.

“I should recover fully in a couple of weeks - however I will have to stay out of the public eye for several months, as it would be incredibly unusual for someone to recover so swiftly, even with the aid of the best medical services available to man.” Haytham responded quietly “The anarchist who shot me has been detained - and I will need to speak with a police officer, as I was shot in a very public event. Shay and Charles will be handling that aspect of it, although I am certain that the trial will not take very long - however there is a high likelihood that his fellow anarchists will try to meddle, or hope that the trial will allow them another chance at killing me. There are... A few things about them and why they are so determined to kill me, that I have not spoken to you about.”

“I know.” Connor murmured “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. I love you and trust you and I always will. You said before that you didn’t want me to get further involved in this, and if not telling me about that helps to reassure you that I won’t, then you don’t have to talk more about it.”

His father nodded, seemingly surprised that he wasn’t pushing for more information. “Thank you, Connor.”

Before either of them could say anything else, Shay knocked on the door, opening it a crack and saying “The police officers are coming up to speak with you, ‘Aytham. Just thought that you’d like to know.”

His father heaved a sigh before responding “Thank you for telling me.” Connor was about to ask if Haytham wanted him to stay for that or not, when his stomach rumbled loudly in complaint. A dark blush appeared on his face and the young man covered his eyes with his hands, horrifically embarrassed. His father glanced at him, a small and amused smile appearing on his face as the other asked “I’m guessing that you missed lunch?”

“... Yeah... I was very busy today and then the meeting started and we’re not allowed to eat at the meetings. I was going to have some of my lunch after the meeting ended but... That didn’t happen. I wasn’t bothered by hunger until my stomach just decided to complain.”

Haytham chuckled lightly before gently pushing Connor away, saying “Go eat then, I’ll be here when you’re done.”

The young man nodded reluctantly and left, glancing back at Haytham as he did so.

[utsus]

Stolen Beginnings Naruto Hyuuga Hinata, Uzumaki Naruto AO3 @basilbees​ was kind enough to guide me towards this prompt about criminal!naruto and cop!hinata, which I thought was super fun. 💛

Summary:

Naruto had long since learned how to gauge a predator’s intent before the threat moved from eventual to emergent. He’d learned it the hard way as a young boy, with six facial scars to show for it.

It had taken him far too long to realize it, but now he was up to speed.

Hinata was a predator.

A pack of gum.

The sugary sweet flavor of watermelon on his tongue, and the way his hands had trembled.

There was a method to the madness of furtive theft, and Naruto played it with deft fingers and a smile. His very own orchestra, tuned perfectly to the sound of his own laughter, the airy apology as he turned back to a patron he’d bumped into and rubbed idly at the nape of his neck. He flitted down the street to their curses, vibrant and annoyed but so, so unsuspecting, and Naruto couldn’t help the smile that pulled at the corners of his lips. He dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets, an added bounce to his step, and did not stop walking until he was back in his apartment.

He pulled his hands from his pockets, a wallet filled to bursting in his right hand, and a golden watch glinting and gleaming in his left. He grinned, setting the wallet down onto his shoddy counter, the corner chipped, the surface dusty. He turned the watch over in his hands, brought it up to his ear and listened to the reassuring tick, tick, tick, with his eyes closed. It was almost soothing, he thought, being able to nearly touch something so all-consuming as time.

Almost, he thought, except that as it continued to tick, tick, tick, his own clock of freedom was waning. It wasn’t a secret, and he wasn’t one to lie to himself; he would get caught. Soon, probably, considering how long he’d been doing this and how close the cops were on his trail, nearly snuffling at his doorway.

He slipped the watch onto his wrist, a perfect fit, tick, tick, tick.

He reached for the wallet and went for the ID first, an uncharacteristic choice for a thief. But Naruto didn’t like to lie to himself, and that included lies of omission, so he looked at who he stole from and he studied the life that their documentation left exposed for him.

Komura Gin, 45, a pale man who needed a haircut. Naruto could relate, reaching up to idly tuck some of his bangs away behind his ear. He’d been a little too busy to worry about his looks beyond how best to blend in without looking like he was trying to blend in, and how best to make himself forgettable.

That last part had always been easy.

He set Komura Gin’s identification down against the counter with a gentle slip, and fingered through the contents of his wallet with a clinical eye. A good haul, several big bills and well-known credit cards.

Pictures of a family still growing.

Naruto pocketed the money and the cards, set the wallet against the counter just beside Komura Gin’s friendly smile. The flash of the camera had caught in the corner of his picture.

He didn’t seem like the kind of man to care.

Naruto moved further into the belly of his humble apartment, stretching his arms overhead with a groan. He slipped the credit cards out of his pocket and deposited them on his desk, right next to his laptop, where he would later put them to duplicitous use before cutting them up and disposing of them himself. The meager few years he’d spent in university learning about computer technology and coding had prepared him well for the future, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. There were many reasons that he had yet to be caught, but one of the most significant was that he knew how to cover his tracks.

It was simple enough to alter the location of the purchase history, especially since he had all of Komura Gin’s information, address and all. He would keep the purchases small, scattered, throughout the night. Odds and ends he’s never actually see or touch. Nothing extravagant.

He didn’t keep trophies.

The sunlight filtered in through his kitchen, over his shoulder, alighting each pigment of dust sailing loftily through the air, and caught on the glass face of the watch on his wrist.

Tick, tick, tick.

Naruto slipped the watch over his wrist, ran his thumb once over the face of it with a gentle tilt of his head, expression almost nostalgic—it was the last remnant of emotion he allowed himself to feel for the accessory, the person and the life it had belonged to only just that morning. He reached for a sanitary cloth, soft as velvet, and cleaned the watch with meticulous care, ensuring no trace of a fingerprint be left behind. He discarded it into one of his countless baggies, sealed and tied, and dropped it in a lightly growing pile of trinkets since stolen. They formed a tiny mountain, too sharp to be a hill, too thin to be a mountainous range; his own landmark of culminated goods.

Sunlight beaming through glass through dust through his home; falling silently over his claims.

No matter how high up he managed to climb, it was important never to forget where he had started.

A pack of gum, the summer sun.

Stolen beginnings.

 ✧

 Exhaustion was as intimate a partner as Hyuuga Hinata had found for at least the last decade.

At fifteen, she’d enrolled in the Hidden Leaf Police Academy, on an advanced track to becoming a detective. She’d been the youngest ever until recently, when Hanabi joined the ranks at fourteen and proved that each new generation of the Hyuuga family was more exceptional than the last. Not that anyone had ever questioned that, considering Hinata’s mother had been Bureau Chief and her father the captain serving under her—before the accident that took him from them all.

Now, her cousin was one of the youngest and most efficient police captains to ever run the force.

Her uniform hung heavily over her shoulders, buttoned to the throat, pants pulled snug over her hips. She let her forehead rest in her hand, eyes scouring over scattered pictures layered over her desk. Some had already fallen to the floor, but they had fallen face-up, so Hinata didn’t reach for them with anything but her gaze and open curiosity. She needed a bigger desk. Oak, preferably, but she wasn’t going to push for it. Mikoto needed a new chair, a good one to support her aging bones when she worked reception. Hinata had home furnishing bookmarks open behind the article she was periodically scanning and re-scanning, chairs of all shapes and sizes.

She frowned, reaching out to straighten one of the pictures, aligning it with those on either side of it, her hand coming back slowly to rub at her mouth. Where was the connection? What was its nature? If she could deconstruct the foundation of it, something that would attempt to distract them, then she could solve this string of murders in a matter of days. She was certain of it.

Hinata had a peculiar skill, a keen eye; she wasn’t known to miss a single detail.

It was what had helped her advance through the rankings to become a detective at age twenty; and not just a detective, but a good one. She had a mind for puzzles and an ability to empathize with anyone she encountered. Usually, this wasn’t a bad thing. It helped her understand those around her, and in turn, helped her understand herself better, too.

But it also meant that she could understand killers on their own level.

This one had sticky fingers; he took trophies from previous victims with shameless abandon. His pattern was bizarre, with so many unanswered mysteries. That, among other things, was why his dossier had been thrown on Hinata’s desk come Monday morning.

“Need a fresh perspective,” Nara Shikamaru had said, blandly. “A keen set of eyes.”

The folder had been heavy in her hands, the material of it catching against her fingertips. Their homicide supervisor with the highest percentage of closed cases wanted her perspective, her help. She had smiled up at him, radiant under his lazy appraisal, and said, “Then you’ve come to the right place, Shikamaru-san.”

That had been over a month ago, and now they had a string of six unsolved murders in front of them. Each body mutilated post-mortem, made to be humiliated. Each body found with miscellaneous items belonging to the previous victim. Hinata had realized that early on; that these mutilation murders were connected, that there was a single killer at work. The pattern was there, right before her eyes; it was easy to follow the trail he so purposefully left behind for them. She’d followed the trail of those trinkets, wallets and jewelry and paintings and phones, to the families of the previously deceased. It was a pattern she had found herself wrapped up in:

Arrive on scene. Study the layout, surveil the area. Confiscate the items left behind. Identify their owner. Recognize the name, the face before mutilation. Follow their trail back to the family. I’m sincerely sorry for your loss. Investigate the victim from their family’s eyes. Dead end.

New murder, new victim, same pattern, same process.

Hinata’s brain throbbed. She shifted, restless with questions and uncertainty, and took a break from the images of the items left behind, a compilation spread over her desk of a pattern she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around.

Her eyes found the article again, tracing over lines she’d already memorized. This case had nothing to do with the string of murders she was currently working on; the only hold over her that it had was in her curiosity.

A serial thief that a little-known news site had caught wind of. There was nothing about him in social media, or in the news—it seemed he was too efficient a hider to gain that kind of attention. It was only her love of the unacknowledged hard working reporters that had led her to find him. Had she not checked the Hidden Tribune, her favorite underappreciated news, he would’ve been lost in the cracks between official case files and new accounts of better understood crimes and injustices.

But the Tribune had caught onto him and so, too, had Hinata.

Their lead reporter described him as a fox, swift and cunning; there one moment and gone the next with nothing left behind but a faint recollection of a flash.

Orange and gold.

“How’s the case coming along?”

Hinata startled, blinking up at the voice over her screen. Neji stared balefully down at her, posture strung tight in perpetual severity. Hinata offered him a put-upon grin, leaning back in her chair with a sigh.

“Frustrating,” she admitted. “I can sense that there’s a deeper connection, one that ties things together more adequately then the pattern of displaying previous victim’s items as trophies of sorts. There’s something more under the surface, I can just barely feel it, but it’s evasive.”

Neji nods, a subtle gesture, and glances around the precinct with steady observation. Under his command, their force ran like a well-oiled machine. Hinata hid an amused smile at the memory of what the precinct used to look like before Neji had been appointed captain—so much dog hair and towers, towers of paperwork on every surface. Their new bureau chief wasn’t particularly known for being tidy.

“Do you have new considerations to report?”

Hinata bit her lip. “Not quite. I don’t want to report halfheartedly over something that isn’t emergent. I’ll have a report on your desk tomorrow morning, though.”

“That’s acceptable,” he allowed, nodding. He moved back a few steps, a purposeful distance, reinstating his authority—shifting from concerned cousin to commanding officer.

“Keep at it,” he added quietly, only for her ears, before striding away. Hinata grinned after him, amused and charmed, and set a reminder in her phone to remind him that they had plans for that coming Friday. Hanabi would undoubtedly invite herself before Hinata could even extend the initiation.

Hinata turned back to her computer and minimized the article without a second thought, moving on to more important and emergent matters. She sat upright and scooted back in against the desk, pushing the tail of her long hair back over her shoulder. She touched the picture closest to her, a pasture of watercolors signed with cursive and stained with blood.

She felt the heat in her temples as her focus rekindled, and her eyes began to scour over the evidence once more.

She would find the pattern, the one that was hidden so meticulously, and she would make it sing.

She always did.

 ✧

 Uzumaki Naruto could feel someone’s eyes on him.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. In his line of work, he had to be aware of those around him and their response to his presence in their vicinity, even when he wasn’t intent on working at that precise moment.

He didn’t turn to the gaze, not yet. He merely grabbed his tea from the attendant and thanked her, smiling with too many teeth, and headed for one of the only empty tables over by the window. For a moment, the pressure of someone’s stare was gone. He tried not to let his shoulders tense, tried to keep himself loose. He reclined in the hard, wooden seat, letting his head dangle backwards for a moment as though he were an exhausted university student taking a moment of respite in-between a schedule of studying.

That was, after all, the general air of the coffee shop he was currently in.

He sat back up slowly, wrapping his hands around his cup to let the warmth of it seep into his chilled palms. The pressure returned, right between his shoulder blades, and Naruto did not fidget. He pulled his laptop from his bag and opened it with ease, logging into social media just to search, since he didn’t actually have an account.

Some tiny little station in the heart of Hidden Leaf had somehow caught wind of him, and he couldn’t help but to be curious. Worried, too, but only a little. From the cursory research he’d done from a library computer the day before, it seemed the website—some Tribune or something—was run by a bunch of local university students. He wasn’t certain yet how serious they were about the gig; if they were just trying to decorate their résumé for future careers, or if they genuinely appreciated the justice of reporting.

Naruto took a careful sip of his tea, burning the tip of his tongue in the process, and blinked down at a Wikipedia page he’d randomly searched for. Someone was still looking. Naruto tried to think about his entrance into the shop, about his clothes, his bedhead. What part of him was standing apart from the rest, at least to this one person? He couldn’t locate them, it would be too obvious to turn and glance over his shoulder, and that would mean giving himself away.

He couldn’t let them know he was alert enough to their watchful gaze that he was feeling distinctly cornered. So instead, he kept track of them as best as he could and tried to remain as ordinary and unmemorable as possible. His jacket, a ratty orange thing with holes in the sleeve hems, was doing nothing to protect him from the cold of the morning. He’d need to get himself something a little newer soon, but he was fond enough of his hoodie that he knew he’d continue to wear it regardless.

He rubbed his hands together and pushed at his hair. He’d finally gotten that haircut a few weeks back, but already his fringe was growing out over his temples. He wondered if it was genetic.

Not that he’d know, having been an orphan and all.

A chair to his right scraped against the linoleum. Someone settled carefully into the seat, dropping a messenger bag against their legs. This was Naruto’s chance, he recognized silently, lifting his cup to his lips again. He turned with genuine, muted curiosity.

His first thought was that she was beautiful, in a way that almost hurt.

His second thought was oh, shit.

She was staring right at him, eyes shrewd, moving over his features as though systematically deconstructing every fragment of his expression. He felt undone.

He tried to offer her a friendly smile, stranger to stranger, and he watched her reciprocate it easily. She blinked once, a heavy fall of her eyelashes, and Naruto swallowed.

He turned back to his computer and couldn’t help the way his shoulders felt strung tight, a bow hitched and knocked and pulled. There was something about her, maybe everything, that felt powerful in a way that startled him. Her eyes were so clear, so unassuming even as they studied him, an insect pinned to a board and left to wriggle and writhe under her depthless perusal.

He forced his fingers to skim over the keys, had to keep up the persona of listlessly searching the internet even as she sat right there, just a turn of his head away.

He was hyperaware of her for the next hour, doing careless coding for his society-accepted job while she shuffled an endless amount of papers between her fingers and let her fingers fly over the keys of her own computer. She worked with purpose, with unerring confidence, and every time Naruto stole a glance of her from the corner of his eyes he found her totally immersed in the materials of her work.

She didn’t stare at him again, though he did catch her casting equally curious glances his way. After a suitable amount of time where Naruto felt he had been there long enough to be believable, he packed up and tucked his chair in. It almost felt rude to leave without acknowledging her, which was ridiculous and, frankly, worrisome. He was halfway between internally scolding himself and opening his mouth to offer her a quiet, aimless farewell when she suddenly glanced up at him.

Her eyes trailed over his features and then dropped to the holes in his sleeves and back to his gaze all in one go. Naruto’s mouth snapped shut.

“I like your hoodie,” she said, and Naruto felt jarred enough to trip against the leg of his chair as he edged around their tables. He regained his composure and offered her a wayward grin, rubbing at the hair over his nape in idle amusement.

“Thanks,” he offered, and forced himself to leave before he could say anything else. She had already noticed him more than he had ever wanted to be noticed, and that wasn’t safe. Especially when his target was finally leaving the place, right on time, and Naruto was planning on following her into the shopping district to rid her of her necklace and the scarf hanging idly over her purse.

Naruto didn’t look back even when he felt those shrewd eyes on him again. He only swallowed, heavily, before tossing his cup into the garbage and pushing through the doors. He turned to follow his target at a distance, pulling his phone out to pretend to look at messages he didn’t actually receive. His chest felt tight, and he realized he was nearly holding his breath.

He didn’t take a comfortable breath until he was three blocks away, inside the mall, bumping into a young woman who apologized to him even as he managed to slip her bracelet from her wrist and onto his. He waved it off and apologized, her bracelet hidden under the hem of his sleeve, and moved on to continue after his initial target.

He could still feel the pressure of that woman from the coffee shop’s eyes on him, even so far from her.

He hoped sincerely that he had left less of an impression on her as she had on him.

His freedom seemed to depend on it.

 ✧

 Weeks passed, and Hinata’s frustration only managed to grow. She still hadn’t found that missing piece in her case, and people at the precinct were starting to notice.

Muffled whispers and sidelong glances, covert and judgmental, and Hinata felt herself blushing more often than not with the added attention. It wasn’t as though she were slacking off—she had lived and breathed this case since the moment she’d found it on her desk. Her only lapses had been to maintain her nutrition and her sleep schedule, though the latter was most recently sorely lacking.

And sometimes she took a moment to peruse the Tribune, indefinably curious about that article from so far back. There was nothing new about the information or the thief, but still Hinata found herself coming back to it, a hitch in-between her eyebrows. Something about it felt…significant.

It was probably just her curiosity, and her desire to separate herself if even for a moment from the irritating lack of progress she had found in her own case.

Before long she had Shikamaru hovering over her desk, offering insight and advice, and a new pattern he had discovered. Hinata did not resent him for having found one—he was brilliant, firstly, and she respected him. She also just would not turn down a lead on this case. She didn’t have the luxury, and she wasn’t the kind of person to feel jealousy over something like that.

“It’s bothersome,” he started off, leaning his weight against the counter overlooking her desk. He rested his chin in the palm of his hand and ignored the bustling behind him, as agents Tenten and Rock brought someone in for processing. “But if you look at the pattern of items left at each new murder, you can see where they’re all pointing.”

Shikamaru pushed away from the counter and walked around to stand behind her. He pointed at the pictures laid across her desk, glossy under the halogen lights overhead.

“Starting with the most recent murder, Mr. Fukushima, the personal belongings left by his body belong to the victim before him, Ms. Aoishi. And the belongings found by her body belong to the victim before her. And so on.”

“Right,” Hinata agreed, though none of this information was novel. She didn’t rush him, however, and waited patiently for his reverie, knowing all the while that if he had found it then it was there, and how had she missed it? Her eyes burned over the images, frozen moments of time with awful depictions of human beings and the intimacy of their home space, and a stranger’s belongings just beside them.

“Well, follow the trail back. All the way back.” Hinata watched Shikamaru’s finger trail through the air, from the most recent victim, over those in the interim, before finally stopping on the very first victim they’d found.

Jiraiya Monogatari.

“The belongings,” Shikamaru continued lightly, sounding bored. “The trail—“

“It ends there,” Hinata interrupted, eyebrows scrunching together. She pursed her lips. “We have yet to find the owner of the belongings left at that first scene.”

“Right,” Shikamaru agreed, shifting closer to her so specialist Aburame could move behind him, his steps familiar enough for Hinata to know him without having to look. Shikamaru moved back right afterwards, polite if apathetic, and rested his hand on the top of her chair. “We definitely need to keep looking for them, but what’s important here, what we’ve missed up until now is the importance of this being a dead end. We basically just accepted it as someone we couldn’t find but will continue to try to find. But there’s more to it than that.”

Shikamaru didn’t pose the sentiment as a question—But what if there’s more to it than that?—He was the picture of confidence, not an inkling of uncertainty in his voice. Hinata admired that aspect of him; his perfect confidence in himself.

Hinata picked the image of the first victim up and held it before her, studying the belongings, replaying Shikamaru’s words in her mind. It was sudden, when she realized where Shikamaru was going with this. When she saw the finding he’d uncovered. She was nearly breathless with the indication, the abrupt spark in an otherwise dry case.

“They’re not a dead end,” she whispered, understanding. “They’re part of the same trail, the same pattern. They just lead backwards.”

“Yeah,” Shikamaru added, and Hinata turned over her shoulder after a long moment of studying the evidence. Shikamaru ran a hand through the tail of his hair and shrugged, careless and lackadaisical even after having made such a pivotal discovery. Hinata grinned up at him, small but true, with silent gratitude.

“This murderer,” Shikamaru began, glancing over her shoulder to the image in her hands, his eyes narrowing. “He’s careful. Meticulously so. Every scene mirrors the one before it perfectly, except for the differences in items left behind. This first one is special. Compare the belongings, Hinata. What do you see?”

Hinata glanced through the pictures, her eyes trailing over every detail.

“They’re detached,” she muttered, setting the first scene back into alignment. “Wallets, random jewelry, artwork. They’re almost…purposefully random. Nothing personal.”

“And the first?” Shikamaru asked.

“It’s almost—“ she began, searching for the word. It came to her abruptly, slipped from her lips with open wonder. “Intimate.”

“Exactly,” Shikamaru agreed, walking back around the counter in his normal indolent gait. He leaned his hip against the marble. “The items left behind at that first scene and their unfound owner; they’re crucial to this investigation. We just don’t understand why, yet.”

“It could just be that this was his first kill. That could make it intimate.”

“Does this scene look like a first kill to you?” Shikamaru asked, and Hinata eyed the evidence again, already shaking her head. Too neat, too precise.

A contained shout voice through blood and belongings.

“Then why did he make this unfound owner stand out?” Hinata wondered aloud, forgetting for a moment that she had a captive audience in her superior and those in nearby desks, who had subtly begun to listen in on their joint brainstorming. “It’s like he threw the owner right into the spotlight. These items are so unlike all the others. They break the pattern.”

“And create something new,” Shikamaru surmises, glancing up at the ceiling where rainwater had leaked through the previous year, staining the creases between panels.

“We have to find the owner.”

Shikamaru didn’t look at her. “We’ve been looking.”

“We need to look harder,” Hinata insisted, glancing up from the pictures to stare at her superior with intent. “They’re the key.”

“This case has a lot of closed doors,” Shikamaru sighed, lilting. “There’s bound to be more than one key.”

“Perhaps,” Hinata allowed, though she refused to back down. “But this missing owner, their part in all of this—they’re the master key, Shikamaru-san.”

Shikamaru turned to her, then. He studied her expression, the unflinching line of her determined shoulders. After a long moment of appraisal through which Hinata had no idea what he thought of her or her words, he simply shrugged. He peeled himself away from the counter and tucked his hands deep into the pockets of his uniform, which still to this day looked unfortunate on him—as though he were a child dressing up in his father’s clothes, too baggy and stiff to fit his sluggish character.

“Maybe,” he allowed, at last. He turned from her and sighed again, heavily enough for his shoulders to rise sharply and fall heavily. “The evidence will tell us, in time.”

Hinata agreed, but Shikamaru was already making his way down the hall and they didn’t have time. She glanced back to the pictures, her eyes drawn to the belongings at the scene of the first victim. She studied them astutely, unblinking.

A red scarf with a mother’s loving message sewn into the material; a flip book with only a single picture of a deceased family within its worn pages; and a homemade recipe book, filled from front to back with neat, thin writing.

Hinata scraped all of the images together and secured them back into their file, tucking it away in her desk as she logged out of her computer. She forgot entirely about the protein bar she’d packed for herself in the top right drawer of her desk and was already heading down the stairwell to the evidence room. She turned a corner and smiled tersely when she saw the chief leaning against the gate, most likely harassing the agent working the evidence desk. When she was close enough to spot him, she couldn’t help the way her smile grew.

“Shino-san,” she greeted, before turning to the chief with a brief, polite salute. He blinked at her, amused and eternally chagrined with her penchant for manners regardless of however many times he had informed her they were unnecessary with him. Chief he might be, but he didn’t care for the formalities of the position. That was no secret.

“Chief,” she greeted, before turning back to Shino. “They’ve got you working in evidence today?”

“Yamanaka-san has the flu,” Shino answered quietly, tilting his head. “I was available.”

“It sure is interesting having a sociological analytics specialist tucked away in the basement, where nothing else is even alive.”

Hinata casted the chief a bemused look, though he seemed unaffected. He pushed away from the wall and lifted two fingers in farewell, before tucking his hands in his pockets and lumbering back towards the stairs. His shock of gray hair disappeared around the corner a moment later, and Hinata gave her good friend her full attention.

“How are you today, Shino-san?”

“Content,” Shino answered, hesitating for only a moment before admitting, “It’s cold down here.”

Hinata laughed quietly, nodding. “Ino-san says it keeps her on her toes.”

Shino hummed. “What can I get for you, Hinata?”

“The evidence footlocker for case #7.”

She watched one of Shino’s eyebrows curve up over the brim of his sunglasses, silent curiosity. He didn’t question her, however, and simply went back to retrieve her requested bin. She tapped her fingers against the counter, listless with a new lead. She wanted to do a hundred things at once, though she knew that she needed to put one hundred percent of her focus into each detail so as to not miss anything pertinent. She was good at calming herself down, at honing her focus. She took a few deep breaths and ignored the slightly elevated pace of her heart rate.

Shino came back with a small sealed bin in his hands. He scanned it and allowed his fingers to fly over the keys of his computer, logging and documenting. When he finished, he slid the bin through the hole in the fencing that separated the evidence from the rest of the room.

His hand remained on top of the bin, however, and Hinata glanced up at him curiously.

“This bin,” he began, almost hesitantly. “It’s from the first murder.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve looked at it before.”

“Yes,” Hinata agreed, wanting to wince for having to look twice, even if she knew others wouldn’t even normally consider that a blunder. But for her, for a Hyuuga, having to look twice was an embarrassment. She doubted that Neji or Hanabi would have missed it the first time around.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“I missed something,” she admitted honestly, unabashedly humble. Shino didn’t react much, other than to slide his hand forward to cover her own. He offered a single comforting squeeze, and Hinata smiled. He was a good friend, one of her best, and she appreciated his lack of judgement.

“I’ll have it back to you by tonight,” she promised, grabbing a pair of gloves from Shino’s station and moving into the joint room and heading for the back corner, where several potted plants and flowers lined the wall.

She settled in with the bin in front of her and unlatched the lid, preparing to slide it open and off. She took a moment to glance at the flowers, her eyes catching on the sunlight shade of a beautiful sunflower. She’d bought them ages ago, wanting to spruce up the basement with some flora but not wanting the plants to suffer for lack of sunlight. During the day she set them upon the windowsills of the precinct, allowing them an abundance of sunlight. But at night she brought them down to the basement, and let them sit under the fluorescent lights that research claimed would help them grow.

The sunflower stood out, thriving; stained a bright, beautiful orange under the glow of the pink fluorescent lights.

“Okay,” she sighed, removing the lid and setting it aside on the empty chair beside her. She slipped into the gloves. The scarf was the first item she saw, and the first she touched. It was a brilliant, scarlet red; still soft, even while it was ratty and threadbare. She ran it between her gloved fingers and could feel the durability of it, and knew that it was made to last.

She turned it over and over in her hands, studying the little stains and the tears, the message sewn messily into one end: to keep you warm, always

Intimate, Hinata thought again, swallowing. Her heart lurched and she set the scarf aside, reaching instead for the flipbook. It was no larger than the palm of her hand, with about ten slots made for small pictures. Only one of the slots was filled, with a single picture worn at the edges, as though someone had thumbed at it frequently. A trio, new in every sense of the word: a young man with a shock of golden hair, caught in a moment of exuberant laughter; a young woman with a cascade of scarlet hair, expression frozen in rapturous wonderment; a baby boy with his father’s golden hair, his mother’s bone structure, cradled in their loving embrace.

A family.

The Hidden Leaf’s police force had done their research, covered all their bases. They’d done facial recognition scans, hunted down these strangers and prepared to investigate them, to ask their questions. Instead, they found the ruins of their life detailed briefly in three documents.

There had been an accident, an earthquake in the inner city; their home had been destroyed with them inside of it, leaving a crater behind in the earth. As if a monster had crushed them under its fist. Three death certificates were all that was left of them—well, Hinata silently amended, three death certificates and three personal items left behind at the scene of a gruesome murder.

Hinata closed the flipbook. She couldn’t look at it much longer, it was too private, too cherished, and it felt like she was intruding. It didn’t matter how silly that might have been and it didn’t matter that there was no one to criticize her for it. This family had passed.

But still, it didn’t feel right to look any longer than necessary.

The last item in the bin was the recipe book. It made Hinata curious; at first she’d assumed that it belonged to one of the parents, the mother or the father—her guess had been the father. The handwriting was tall and thin and when she thought of the woman with the red hair, she thought of the uneven stitched message in the tattered scarf, a patchwork of effort. The handwriting was more precise, less chaotic. Highly detailed.

But handwriting analysis threw them all for a loop: it was an unknown. It was difficult enough finding written proof of handwriting from the parents, who seemed to never write anything down, but Hinata’s investigative team managed to find a couple old university assignments. The handwriting didn’t match—didn’t fit.

They ran it through their database for days, searching and searching, until finally they found it—found him. An elementary school teacher working on the outskirts of Hidden Leaf, closer to the surrounding forest than the city.

Umino Iruka.

His school wasn’t the closest to the family from the flipbook; in fact, it was just about the furthest they could get without moving to a new district.

It was also, apparently, no longer his place of work.

As if the case itself wasn’t frustrating enough, they hadn’t been able to find Umino Iruka’s current place of residence, nor workplace. It was as though he had disappeared, though he did not have a death certificate to prove it. He was still out there somewhere with vital answers to this yet unsolved case, and Hinata hadn’t a clue where to find him. They’d checked every school in Hidden Leaf, from the inner city to the outskirts and even beyond their own gates—nothing.

He had vanished, as fickle as a speck of dust on the breeze.

What was his connection to that small family? He was older than them, but he could still be a family friend. Was he the child’s uncle? Godfather? The child had perished before reaching school-age, so there was no way that he had ever been the boy’s teacher.

He was a puzzle piece that didn’t fit this particular puzzle, and it was infuriating.

It had been months since they’d put a halt on looking for him in lieu of continuing to focus on the key factors of the case. They still had an agent on him, but there was only so much Temari could do to find a needle in a haystack that stretched impossibly far and wide.

Hinata focused in on the facts, instead. That included Umino Iruka’s recipe book. She had lost track of how many times she had studied the pages, from front to back, looking for clues, for hints, for details that stood out. But all she found time and time again were recipes for highly nutritious meals. What the recipe book did show Hinata was Umino Iruka’s character—he cared deeply for whoever he had given these recipes. They were thorough, measurements exact, and each dish had an appropriate amount of all the necessary nutrition for a healthy mind and body to continue to grow well.

Hinata couldn’t put it into words, but even his handwriting felt protective. Doting, even.

It was this thought, simple as it might have been, that triggered an incredible epiphany. It was suddenly so clear, right there before her eyes like it had been for months, only now she could see it.

The murderer left behind impersonal items for every murder but the first, as though none of the victims meant enough to him for that kind of meticulous care—and if that were true, then the first victim did. The first victim was meaningful. Shikamaru had said as much, too, that the first victim opened up a new path in the opposite direction, one they’d never suspected before now.

All three items, the scarf the flipbook the recipe book—all of them were made with love.

“He knows them,” Hinata breathed, and a shadow of the same confidence that she imagined Shikamaru had felt in himself flickered through her, a comforting heat. Her heart raced in the cage of her chest, adrenaline pumping through her system. She felt breathless with the breakthrough, shaken by the realization. “The murderer and whoever owns these items—they know each other.”

She glanced to the scarf, red as that young woman’s vibrant hair, the flipbook concealing the moment of joy captured forever in a single frame, the recipe book in her hands. Personal items, intimate belongings, important for emotional value rather than monetary value, and it was so clear.

“Who are you?” She whispered, eyebrows scrunching down in concentration. She placed the recipe book alongside the other two items, cherished items, and folded her hands in front of her lips. “Why this family? Why were they important to you?”

She reached out again, touching the scarf and the flipbook, her gloved fingers resting against them. Out loud she asked, “Who do these belong to?”

And in the privacy of her own mind, where she felt free to make boundless leaps without sufficient evidence to support them, a single daunting theory rose into her consciousness.

She set her hands on the edge of the table, spine straight and shoulders tensed. She could hear Shino shift on his rolling chair, a single squeak before he settled. Her heart raced, blood pumping in loud, coursing waves in her ears. Everything in the world seemed to grow unreservedly loud, a cacophony of individual instruments playing out of tune. The lights overhead buzzed like beehives, Shino’s chair an instrument of wind squeaking through the halls, the dull whirring of a fan on the other side of the room growing to a roar.

And yet, above it all, a single question reigned:

Are you killing or them?

Hinata did not get much sleep that night.

 ✧

 Naruto was more than used to stepping outside of his comfort zone. One could say that he lived for it.

The bus jostled over the dirt road, hitting potholes and rocks and swerving easily to avoid gulfs in the decrepit road. They’d passed the walls of Hidden Leaf more than an hour ago, and Naruto’s would be the next stop. Right smack dab in the middle of nowhere; a tiny town that one could walk through completely in under half an hour, with a gas station and a motel with broken fluorescent lights on the roof. There was a tow yard, too, and several fast food restaurants—open twenty-four hours. Magnificent ramen.

But Naruto wasn’t looking to stay within the town. When the bus finally stopped at the gas station, his destination deviated through the trees, deep into the dense brush of Hidden Leaf vegetation, where a single house structured in the canopy could be found by a familiar eye.

Naruto was used to putting himself in danger and dealing with the factors involved, and the potentiality of consequences. In those situations, he had nerves of steel and an iron stomach. It had taken him over a year to get control over his stomach and not throw up after plucking some miscellaneous item from someone’s person. It had taken him even longer to train his hands to stop shaking afterwards.

He still had an untamable heart, though, that insisted on racing.

It raced now, too. The signs rose in him without his consent, fear in the secretions that dabbled over his forehead and down his sideburns, worry in the tense line of his shoulders, his clenched fists.

Putting himself in danger was one thing.

Putting a loved one in danger was another altogether, especially for someone who had no one else but that loved one.

Naruto noted the change in vegetation when he came upon the flower garden, a familiar sight in shades of lavender, pink, red, orange, and the brightest of yellows. If he put his mind to it, he could name each flower. He had spent enough time here to have learned those lessons well.

He glanced up into the canopy, watching the way the leaves shifted and allowed streams of gold to filter through them, lovingly touching their faces in shades of healing. And there, amongst the gold, was a small wooden house held aloft in the branches. Naruto knew where the ladder was by memory and ascended it easily, calling out with a bird-like whistle, laughing lowly when creatures around him responded in kind.

The creature he’d intended to call came to the doorway a moment later, hair pulled into his customary tail, smile as soft and kind as Naruto remembered.

“Iruka-sensei,” he greeted, dropping down onto the veranda he himself had laid out so many years back. Iruka had a washcloth in his hands, which he passed to Naruto the moment he straightened.

“What have I taught you, Naruto,” Iruka chided, watching as Naruto took the warm cloth and wiped the sweat from his face, neck, and the tops of his shoulders. He scrubbed at his hands and wrists, too, the skin that managed to peek out from under his sleeves. He grinned resplendently, unwilling to be cowed by his teacher’s scolding when he felt so overwhelmingly fond. Even still, he cooperated.

“I’m home,” he announced, and Iruka’s smile was everything bright and good in Naruto’s world. He stepped forward and brushed the back of his hand over Naruto’s forehead, having to push himself on the tips of his toes to reach easily, and wiped away a stray bead of moisture. The gesture was so paternal Naruto felt himself flushing, wanting to rub at the nape of his neck in embarrassment.

“Welcome home,” Iruka answered softly, taking the dirtied cloth from Naruto’s hands. “I’ve made ramen.”

“Woah!” Naruto called, following Iruka as he turned and headed back into his home. Naruto closed the door behind them with more care than he probably needed, and was immediately hit with the smell of home-cooking, his favorite dish made by his favorite person. “You’re awesome, Iruka-sensei. What’s the occasion?”

Iruka moved towards a basin filled with water and dipped the cloth into it, ringing it out until it looked clean as new. He hung it over a suspended rope with other material items spread over it, drying in the forest air coming through the screen door.

“It’s not often that I get to have a family meal,” Iruka answered easily enough, reaching into a massive pot to stir with a wooden spoon Naruto had stolen from a vender when he was seven and gifted to Iruka. He’d gotten the usual scolding of his life for his lifestyle, though Iruka was inarguably soft on him given his understanding of Naruto’s past. Iruka understood, too, that someone like Naruto just needed someone on his side, regardless of whether what he did with his free time was right or wrong. As someone who had lost his parents when he was an infant and had grown up in a system of foster homes—by fact or misfortune, each more destructive than the one before—and eventually moved to living on the streets by the time he was six, it was a wonder that the worst he did was steal.

He was fairly certain that that was a major part of the reason that Iruka only scolded him, and didn’t turn him away altogether. That, and he loved him.

“Ditto,” Naruto agreed, quieter than usual. “What can I do to help?”

“I’ve pretty much covered all of my bases, actually,” Iruka replied, reaching into his cupboards to pull two ceramic bowls down to the counter. Naruto had lifted them from a department store when he was ten. He looked around and saw milestones of his growth and development all throughout Iruka’s apartment, thoroughly immersed in his life.

When he was too young to truly understand, he had felt pride whenever he caught Iruka using or displaying or wearing something that Naruto had stolen for him, even when his teacher scolded him and discouraged his behavior. When he grew old enough to understand his place in the world, he would experience moments of panic, or uncertainty—had he pushed himself on Iruka so much so that he had cornered him in his own world of thievery? Did he want a way out? Did he only use the items Naruto stole for him because he felt forced? Iruka had shut that thought process down right quick when he’d managed to draw it out of Naruto when his stomach had been full and his heart had been heavy enough to spill.

And now, as a twenty-five-year-old man comfortable with the hand he had been dealt—and the one he dealt himself daily—he simply felt content at seeing Iruka use the treasures he had coveted for him. He’d learned, though, that Iruka appreciated things he could use more than things he could display. It was typical of Iruka to grudgingly accept Naruto’s pilfering so long as the result of it meant he had more tools to garden with, or cook with, or wash with—rather than a fancy watch to wear, or a fine woolen coat to keep him warm in the winter. Iruka would not let Naruto spoil him with grandeur; but he had grown to accept gifts he could put to work.

Naruto grinned thinking about it, even as he turned and studied the framed artwork he’d lifted from a museum on the farthest side of Hidden Leaf, a simple painting of a vegetable garden, edged in peonies. He had been fifteen. Iruka allowed some exceptions, and Naruto thrived in that narrow window of acceptance.

“You’re smug,” Iruka muttered suspiciously, without ever having to turn around to know it. Naruto’s heart swelled with affection as he pulled Iruka’s seat back from the table, waiting there as Iruka scooped ramen into each bowl and moved to the table. He set Naruto’s food down first, but accepted Naruto’s help in scooting him in towards the table. Iruka waited for Naruto to take his seat across from him, and when Naruto glanced up at him he watched Iruka try to suppress an amused grin. Iruka gestured for Naruto to take the first bite, and though it was but a simple thing, wanting Naruto to eat first, Naruto suddenly felt close to tears with affection.

Iruka was so, so kind.

Naruto took his first bite and closed his eyes around the flavor of it, and the warmth. He couldn’t honestly tell how much of that soothing heat was from the food, and how much of it was from loving Iruka and being loved in return. When he opened his eyes, Iruka’s smile brought laugh lines up beside his eyes. He used to tell Naruto that he’d never had those wrinkles before meeting Naruto, and that from the moment he’d seen him as a boy he’d known he was going to cause him wrinkles. When they had begun to appear, he’d made a point of bringing them up in conversation, and always with this muffled smile—trying so hard to hide how charmed he was by Naruto, and how little he actually cared about wrinkles on his face.

Naruto had joked, “At least they’re happy ones, right? And they make you look even more handsome, sensei.”

“Flatterer,” Iruka had snuffled, charmed despite himself.

Naruto watched Iruka take his first bite, chewing a bit before making a similarly content expression as Naruto had. Naruto said, “I was feeling a little smug, yeah.”

“What about this time?”

“Don’t say it like I’m always smug!”

Iruka pointed his chopsticks at him, one eyebrow ticking up. “Really?”

Naruto ducked his head in faux-embarrassment, reaching up to mess with his hair. “The painting,” Naruto admitted, glancing up from under his fringe to gauge his teacher’s expression. Even though Iruka had long since given up on boldly scolding Naruto for his choice of delinquency, sometimes Naruto still expected some negative emotion to flicker across Iruka’s face. Even now, so many years later, he still expected Iruka to tire of him some day, even as he fought tooth and nail against the thought. “And the spoon, in the ramen bowl. And the scrunchie in your hair, if I’m remembering right.”

Iruka blinked at him, chopsticks at his lips. He took his time chewing, swallowed completely before setting his chopsticks down beside his bowl and sitting upright. He studied Naruto for a long moment, and Naruto wondered what he was thinking. What he was seeing; a scruffy, scarred, bedraggled young man with jaded eyes and a surefire confidence in himself that seemed to come from absolutely nowhere.

Iruka said, “I love that painting. I use that spoon with just about every meal I prepare—it’s perfectly curved. This scrunchie is my favorite, you know that.”

Naruto smiled, a shy thing. He ignored the stretch of his scars, so familiar a feeling he barely even regarded it at all. “Because it has flowers on it.”

Iruka’s eyes gleamed, bright with affection. “Sunflowers.”

Naruto ducked his head again, lifting his chopsticks to his mouth to hide how great his smile had grown. They ate comfortably together, offering idle conversation in-between bites. Iruka worried incessantly over him, asking question after question about his well-being, his job and his work, his health. Naruto asked him what he’s been doing to keep himself busy, learns that Iruka has planted new vegetables he’s trying to grow and that he’s working on writing his own recipe books from scratch. He’s dabbled in writing a book for himself, too, one about nutrition interweaved with gardening and cooking—all his favorite things.

Naruto soaked in the comfort and the warmth of his presence and his home—their home, as Iruka considered it. It’d been ages since Naruto had worked himself up to visiting Iruka, ensuring that he wasn’t in danger of being caught and leading the trouble to Iruka’s doorstep. It didn’t occur to him that he was equally, if not even more protective of Iruka than Iruka was of him.

After they got up to rinse their bowls—and the pot that Naruto had polished off by eating directly from it with the wooden spoon—Iruka encouraged Naruto out onto the veranda with him. There were two cushioned rocking chairs out there that they’d constructed together, and each took their respective place. Naruto curled up in his chair, both of them facing the expanse of the evergreen forest before and around them.

“So,” Iruka started, and by his tone Naruto knew that the conversation would shift to serious matters. He didn’t mind. “This time it took you even longer to come back home. Are you worried?”

“I’m sorry about that, Iruka-sensei, really.” Naruto apologized, shifting to make his chair rock. Iruka maintained an even rocking motion with practiced ease, all from periodic taps of his foot against the veranda flooring. “You know how it is.”

“I know what you tell me,” Iruka disagreed, “And what I infer from your behavior.”

Naruto pursed his lips. “What do you think exactly?”

Iruka didn’t hesitate. “I think you’re in trouble. Why else would you wait so long to come back?”

He didn’t say, to me, because even Iruka had insecurities. Naruto wanted to reassure him, but wasn’t sure of what words he needed to say to do that. So instead, he answered with honesty, knowing that Iruka would appreciate that, too.

“I’m not really in trouble,” he admitted, watching the leaves of the canopy above and around them shift in the lightest of breezes. “It’s just that the longer I do this, the more likely I am to get caught, y’know?”

Iruka remained silent, pensive and considering. Naruto added, “I have to be more careful now.”

“You should always be as careful as possible,” Iruka chided quietly, a gentle reprimand and a frequent impasse they often arrive at. He broached another a moment later: “If you stopped doing this, you wouldn’t have to be so careful all the time anyways, Naruto. It would be easier.”

Naruto debated for only a moment between honesty and omission. Honesty, as always, won.

“I don’t know how to explain it any different than I have in the past, but I don’t just do this for no reason. The things I take, the people I take them from, they could easily get them again. But the kids that I send them to have nothing. No family, no legacy. Many times, no toys or treasures. I give them a chance to have things they might never have. Even if you think that’s an excuse, it makes me feel good. It helps me to take control of myself.”

Iruka sighed, an edge to the sound. Naruto tensed, preparing for another argument they’ve already had. Instead, Iruka remained quiet for several long moments, long enough that Naruto started to relax.

“You know how I feel about it,” Iruka offered, so quietly he barely even disturbed the air around them. “Just be careful, and be safe, Naruto. It’s not your responsibility to take care of every orphan in Hidden Leaf.”

If not mine, Naruto thought immediately, then whose?

But he didn’t say a word, only continued to rock there with Iruka at his side, an accepting if slightly critical presence.

“You need a new jacket, Naruto.”

Naruto grinned. “I think I can manage that.”

Iruka blew a raspberry, unworried. “We both know you don’t steal for yourself. Maybe I can learn how to knit, or something. I can make you one.”

It’s unconscious, the way Naruto suddenly remembered the red scarf he’d grown up with. A gift from his late mother, he’d been told, with a message inscribed on the hem. His heart pounded, a powerful and discomfiting lurch of muscle. It was just a scarf, he tried to remind himself.

But even still to this day, it felt like a loss. Like a part of him was missing. He could still remember the day he had returned to his apartment and been unable to find it—the countless days he’d retraced his steps for it. The countless thoughts of what if—what if someone had lifted it? Was that exactly what he deserved? But that seemed an impossibility, and he dismissed it as such. When he was in public, he was hyperaware of himself and those around him. He would’ve noticed. He would’ve.

He still couldn’t imagine why someone would take a scarf, unless they simply liked the color. It wasn’t well-made. It was uneven and ratty, with stains and some fringe missing. They could’ve found something more efficient

For Naruto, it had been priceless.

A token from his dead mother; a reminder that he had been loved by a parent, by parents, at one point in his life. Even if he had been too young to remember it.

And now it was gone.

Not the only memorable item lost or stolen from him, either.

The only picture he had of his parents. The first recipe book that Iruka had ever made him, entirely by hand.

Someone had targeted him personally—struck purposefully at the heart of him.

He forced himself not to dwell on it, not when he was with Iruka. He’d have plenty of time to feel the emptiness of loss later when he was alone and in the privacy of his own apartment.

“I like my jacket,” Naruto argued softly, not putting much into the dispute. Similar words said in a softer voice seeped through his consciousness, and he remembered the woman from the coffee shop—the woman with the shrewd, unblinking stare. The woman so beautiful it’d hurt to look at her.

The woman who had looked right through him.

I like your hoodie.

Iruka didn’t pay his sudden lapse in attention any mind. Instead, he continued to chatter on about how he’d been looking for another hobby to keep him busy when he wasn’t elbow deep in the soil, fostering his gardens. Naruto swallowed, listening with half an ear, and decided maybe it would be for the best if he got a new jacket after all. Part of him wanted to keep it even more now that he remembered that the ratty orange material had gained that stranger’s temporary favor, her kind smile.

The rest of him screamed danger. She looked too close. The last thing Naruto needed was to get caught because of his favorite orange hoodie.

And yet…he was undecided on the matter. Regardless, he wouldn’t mind being an excuse for Iruka to pick up another new hobby, and he would gladly wear anything Iruka decided to make for him.

He would wear it lovingly, and this time, he wouldn’t let it out of his sight.

“Maybe obsidian,” Iruka mused to himself, as Naruto continued to stare out into the gradually darkening forest. “Something a little subtler than that garish orange.”

Naruto stiffened. “Hey!”

 ✧

 “You look like shit,” Inuzuka Kiba informed her, the venom of it replaced by apparent concern. “Are you getting any sleep at all?”

Hinata wasn’t fond of lying, and especially not to her loved ones. But the concern on Kiba’s face was concerning, and she didn’t want him to worry about her more than he needed to.

“Some,” she offered, lifting her tea up to her lips and deliberately avoiding Kiba’s gaze. Kiba had made it perfectly, as he always did. It was made specifically for her, little hints of lavender and honey throughout, and it never failed to soothe the kinks in her system.

The shop was still empty, save for Hinata and Kiba’s coworkers steadily taking the chairs down from tables. She’d made it a habit to visit him often, to sit in the middle of a bustling environment of relaxing university students chattering and typing away on their computers. Tired, smiling mouths and eyes bright with something between exhaustion and determination; a ratty orange hoodie.

A kind, scarred smile.

Today, however, she had come before opening. She had places to be today, and people to see. 

Kiba was frowning at her, displeased with her answer and the reality of it etched in the dark circles under her eyes, the lines of fatigue by her lips—too much frowning, and pursing.

Tapping her fingers against the counter, she offered him something vague, her words chosen purposely: “The same killer struck again yesterday.”

Kiba’s eyes widened. He’d pestered her about the case early on when she’d first received it and they’d been eating Chinese straight from the cartons at her place. She’d given him the barest of bones, a vague outline, as much and as little as she could.

She didn’t tell him that the pattern had been broken, though. That was something she couldn’t share with anyone, not even one of her best friends.

“Shit,” Kiba exhaled, lifting a hand to remove his work visor and running a hand messily over the top of his head until his hair stood on end in every direction. He put the visor back on, crooked and sideways-facing, and if Hinata had not been thinking about a fresh murder, she might’ve laughed.

“Yeah,” she sighed, shoulders deflating. She moved away from the counter, tea in hand, and lifted a hand in farewell. “Well I have to get going. I just wanted to stop by real quick and see you. Hope you have a good day—and thank you for the tea!”

“Be careful, Hinata,” he responded, leaning heavily on the counter with arms crossed over his chest. The bright red Ichiraku Coffee logo across his chest disappeared behind his crossed forearms, and Hinata turned with a nod to head back into the city.

It didn’t take her long to reach her destination.

The home was run-down, one of a community of similarly structured homes locked away behind a gated fence and high, pristine block walls. Once, this community had been beautiful; thriving with families and children playing on the streets, their parents laughing and gossiping, their cousins playing at the pool.

But that was all before the fire of ’05.

Now, only a few homes remained standing—but just barely. Charred obsidian coursed up and over and all around each home, a crispy reminder of what had happened there. The city had tried to pass a movement to knock the place down, clear the slate, and start anew. But a single resident with power behind his name thwarted them with ease, in only a few words, and a signature.

She went to see him now.

She glanced at the slip of paper with his address written in her messy scrawl once more, then lifted her knuckles to gently rap against the wooden door. For several long moments, there was nothing. No sound of life, not even around her—it seemed even the birds avoided this side of town. She hadn’t seen a single squirrel, thought briefly there was a chance she’d seen a butterfly, but she wasn’t sure. She waited, shifting her bag on her shoulder, and heard no footsteps. But then the door opened, and there he stood.

The victim of the most recent attack; an outlier, because he was alive.

Uchiha Sasuke appraised her with a level of indifference that chilled her. His dark eyes were wide, doe-like, but there was nothing in their depths to even catch a gleam in broad daylight. There was blood dripping down his jaw and the beginnings of discolored skin over his temple, every shade of murky dawn. He moved to the side, widening the open space of his doorway, and made no move to gesture her inside. Hinata realized immediately that Uchiha Sasuke was a meticulous kind of man, who did not waste energy.

“Hi there,” she greeted before crossing the threshold. “Have you received medical attention, Uchiha-san?”

Sasuke didn’t respond to that, merely slid the door shut behind them and moved around her with silent steps. He led them into the belly of his home, too big for a single person to be living here, so empty it made her ache. Her eyes trailed over the pale nape of his neck, his proud shoulders, his confident stride. Then, they leapt from his shoulders to the scene he brought her to, messed up furniture and a blood stain trailing back through the kitchen, where the killer apparently escaped. They’d run the blood through their systems, and not a single match had appeared. They were chasing a ghost.

“He entered through the kitchen,” Sasuke recounted, his voice gentler than Hinata had expected. “He did not expect a fight.”

“Sure looks like he got one,” Hinata offered neutrally, shifting around Sasuke’s shoulder to better observe the front room. “How did you know he wasn’t expecting a fight?”

“I was asleep. And he had a katana.”

Hinata blinked, turning over her shoulder to study Sasuke’s expression. Not a puzzle piece out of place, the perfect picture of structured apathy. His bone structure was noble; his jaw thin, his cheeks razor-sharp. The arrow of his nose was perfectly straight, without a single notch to signal any sign of past damage. Unsmiling lips.

“He had a katana?”

Sasuke’s lips twisted, the first sign of true emotion on his face; sheer displeasure.

“It didn’t belong to him.”

“How do you know that?”

“He didn’t hold it properly,” Sasuke explained easily, far more patient than Hinata might’ve imagined him to be. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would appreciate explaining every detail, and Hinata was smart enough to put together the pieces, but even she needed a vague outline in order to know what pieces applied. “He was sloppy.”

With this, Sasuke shifted so that the wound Hinata had not seen became her sole focus. A single slash in his side, not emergent but enough to have stained his shirt with his own blood. Hinata hurried to his side, wondering if she should call for help or maybe contact Sakura and see if she had a shift today. Sasuke was already shaking his head, however, and lifted the hem of his shirt to show her that a practiced, efficient stich-job had already been done. It took Hinata only a moment to realize that he must have stitched it himself.

What kind of man was Uchiha Sasuke?

“Are you sure you don’t need medical attention, Uchiha-san? I know someone at the hospital. You probably need antibiotics.”

Sasuke’s head shifted, a sharp negation. “I have sufficient supplies here.”

Hinata didn’t want to push, but she couldn’t help her incredulous expression, eyebrows lifted. She let it go, though, in favor of turning back to the scene of his almost-murder.

“So he’s using a katana, but he doesn’t have a clue how to use it.” Hinata chewed lightly on her lower lip. “I can’t imagine a scenario where a strange man with a katana, however poorly wielded, would still lose against an unconscious man. Especially considering that he has killed before.”

Sasuke shifted on his feet, and it was so bizarre but Hinata would’ve said he looked embarrassed.

“I’m a light sleeper.” He explained lowly, then when she glanced up at him inquiringly: “A very light sleeper.”

Instantly, without her conscious control, Hinata remembered the fire she’d read about in the news, seen on TV, and gone to explore on her own after the crowds finally dispersed and left the sole survivor of the region alone. She remembered the flames, and her university background in psychology reared it’s ever-relevant head with a single term: PTSD.

She did not show Sasuke the expression of sympathy that moved over her without her control, before she could tuck it away. He would not want it; would resent it. Instead, she merely nodded her head and tried to extend whatever she could make of a weak olive branch in his direction.

“I struggle with sleep often, doing what I do.” She swallowed. “I could definitely be a deeper sleeper.”

Sasuke didn’t respond, but she felt no judgment from him. When she glanced over her shoulder at him once more, he was studying her with something akin to curiosity.

“Okay, so he attacked you while you were sleeping, you fought him off, and he escaped?” Hinata frowned. “Might be naïve, but it seemed like you had the upper hand. I’m guessing this blood stain isn’t yours.”

“No,” Sasuke agreed. He fell silent again, not answering her initial inquiries. She waited for him for as long as she felt comfortable before turning to face him completely. She needed to gauge his expression while she asked him questions, to better understand the situation. To better understand what she was seeing here, in the aftermath. She opened her mouth to pose her questions again, to paraphrase them, when he finally spoke.

“I did have the upper hand,” he admitted, with no lack of confidence. “But he escaped.”

Hinata studied him unblinkingly, critically. “You allowed him to.”

Sasuke frowned, his eyebrows dipping down in frustration. He ran his hands through his hair, an uncharacteristically telling gesture coming from him.

“I didn’t allow him to go.” Hinata watched him search inside himself for the words, the truth. He didn’t seem the kind of man to lie, but she knew that intuition wasn’t enough to trust something like that.

“He said something to me,” Sasuke admitted, and his tone pieced everything together for Hinata at once—he was embarrassed. “And it messed with my head. Just long enough for him to disappear.”

“What did he say to you?”

Sasuke’s posture straightened, drawing all of his walls back up.

“It has nothing to do with this.”

Hinata studied him critically, frowning. “Isn’t that something I should decide?”

But Sasuke was already shaking his head, repudiating. “I’m telling you that it has nothing to do with this. It has to do with me.”

“Are you not a part of this investigation?” Hinata refuted, crossing her arms over her chest. Her uniform pulled taut over her shoulder blades, stretched over her chest.

“I am,” he agreed, not backing down for an instant. “But the information I was told is mine alone.”

Hinata tried not to scowl. Sasuke looked imposing, indomitably so, as though nothing could scratch even the surface of him. It seemed incredible that someone had even managed to draw his blood, for how careful he was.

It was this reasoning that led Hinata to back down, if only for now. She would come to him again, probably soon, to ask him about that mysterious statement—the one that had distracted him or ruined him enough to let a murderer who had been trying to kill him escape. As a victim, she understood that in this circumstance, his safety was priority. On top of that, she was certain he was suffering from PTSD, so his mental health was already in a delicate state. She wasn’t about to fracture an already shattered patchwork he was so meticulously attempting to re-work into a complete picture.  If the message he was unwilling to divulge was important to his mental health, she would let him covet it.

So long as it wasn’t vital to saving other lives.

“Do you remember where the items left behind were? Exactly?”

“Yes,” he intoned, studying her for only a moment longer before moving further into the room. Hinata reached into her bag and removed three pictures of the items left behind. He crouched and marked each spot with two swipes of his pointer finger over the hardwood flooring. Hinata placed each photo in its respective spot, and studied the room as a whole with them in place.

They had already spoken with the parents of the previous victim, and ascertained that these three items had belonged to their son. Hinata studied them, wondering if anything would be out of place. Sasuke was supposed to be dead beside them, and yet there he stood, right next to her, shrewd eyes staring blankly at the scene of his would-be death.

She wondered if he was so unaffected by this because he had faced death once before, when he was but a child. He had survived that attack, too.

“The only factor that’s different from the previous murders is that you survived him,” Hinata voiced aloud, making the decision to tentatively draw Uchiha Sasuke’s particular kind of gifted mind into the case as more than just a victim, but a possible resource.

“The previous murders involved three items left behind,” Sasuke began, and Hinata hummed in agreement.

Then, he said: “Not this one.”

Hinata turned to him, confused. “I’m sorry?”

Sasuke reached into his pocket and removed a folded knife, the handle of which was made from a beautiful cut of onyx stone.

“There was a fourth and fifth item.”

Hinata’s heart began to race, hungry for answers, for the possibilities of this twist in the case.

“Was this reported? Did the investigators get this information? Do you know who the knife belongs to? What is the fifth item?”

“It was not reported,” Sasuke responded easily, turning slowly to face her, the knife still clutched in the palm of his hand. “Because the knife belongs to me.”

Hinata paused, all of her questions grounding to a halt. Sasuke’s eyes flickered between her own, suddenly curious yet again, before they dulled back into the recesses of indifference.

“Someone attempted to steal this knife from me several days ago, on market street.” He blinked, lifting the knife to stare at the handle, and the tiny symbol of a scratched out leaf Hinata could just barely make out. “He failed. Obviously. But it went missing a few days after that, and reappeared when the attempt was made on my life. The fifth item was an earring my mother had made for me.”

Beyond Sasuke speaking so casually about an attempted murder on his own life, Hinata found herself floored by this new information. Her mind raced, her heart thundering in her chest. She took a step towards Sasuke without conscious thought, her eyes bright with the chase.

“Uchiha-san,” she asked, nearly breathless with wonder. Determination hardened her features, curbing the excitement into something more professional. “Did you see what the man who robbed you, and then later attacked you looked like? Can you identify him?”

Hinata’s excitement took a plunge when Sasuke stared at her for several long moments before shaking his head. She felt her shoulders fall, just a little, but wouldn’t let this crush her enthusiasm. She had new information on the case, and she could follow it.

And then, Sasuke added: “I cannot identify the man who attacked me. His face was covered with some kind of gnarled mask. But I was able to see something of the attempted thief.”

Hinata blinked, eyes still deer-in-the-headlights wide. She immediately pulled her transcriber from her pocket, booting it up and ensuring that she had access to her work laptop even this far from the station. She did, and everything spoken into the recorder would be automatically transcribed onto a file in her computer, ready for her to peruse and reflect on later.

“Would you mind repeating that, for the record? And then describing what is still missing, and what you were able to see of the thief?”

Sasuke complied without hesitation, repeating his statement and adding what Hinata believed to be the most important information yet. The earring was a red and black pinwheel, no larger than Sasuke’s smallest fingernail.

“The thief was blond,” he described with a single slow blink. “He was about my height, so 168 cm. He was tan, and scarred.”

Hinata nodded, encouraging him for any other detail he could possibly recall. She was so relieved to finally have something new to chew on in this case, something that could lead her closer to the killer, closer to putting him away where he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. She thought about what Sasuke had already given her, the reveals, and her mind circled something acerbic and biting she couldn’t quite get a grip on.

It came to her at the exact same moment that Sasuke remembered one last detail about the thief, and the potentiality of her realization coupled with Sasuke’s was enough to send her reeling.

Sasuke said, “He was wearing an ugly, bright orange hoodie.”

Two thieves, Hinata realized with dawning dread, growing rapidly. Possibly working together.

Her murderer could have an accomplice.

And she thought she might know him.

 ✧

 Naruto had been tailing a young man for the better half of the morning, planning on lifting his jacket the moment he stayed still for a bit. After more time than Naruto usually stuck around for, he found himself sitting inside a familiar coffee shop, with a familiar cup of tea before him. His quarry was a few tables away, and he’d already shrugged out of his jacket. Naruto was watching him closely while he pretended to edit his real but recently neglected thesis on artificial intelligence.

He heard the chair nearest him scrape against the linoleum, but paid it no mind until the person spoke to him.

“Hi there,” she greeted, and Naruto blinked. He turned and found the same beautiful woman he remembered from weeks back in this same coffee shop, who’d complimented his hoodie and hadn’t stared at his facial scars.

“Hey,” he responded, surprised. He felt himself staring at her, knew that he should look away, but there was something about her that was captivating. It felt impossible to look anywhere else but at her. She smiled, just enough to show a glimpse of teeth, and Naruto felt his heart give a heavy thud.

She responded to his surprise with embarrassment, heat filling her cheeks.

“Sorry, you probably don’t even remember me. I shouldn’t speak so informally.”

“Oh,” he started, waving his hands a bit. “Oh no, it’s fine! Totally cool. I remember you.”

The woman blinked, and Naruto thought with amusement that it was her turn to be surprised. Her cheeks were still sunrise pink, the softest shade of bashful.

“You do?” She asked, and Naruto laughed. He rubbed at his nape, mussing his hair there.

“Oh yeah,” he laughed, unashamed to be honest with her. Well, honest about this. “You’re kinda unforgettable.”

She sat upright at that, physically startled. For some reason, that bothered Naruto—that she wouldn’t recognize how charming she was, or how beautiful, enough to startle at a simple unattached compliment.

He frowned at her, studying her. Last time, he’d only really gotten enough of an impression of her in the short time they’d shared the same space to remember her shrewd eyes, her kind smile, the heavy fall of her dark hair.

Now, he saw so much more, and all of it delighted him.

She was heavier than he remembered, strong and sturdy, but it was the softness of her speech and her shyness that still made Naruto think: delicate. There was notable definition to her biceps, muscles well-trained and well-used. He wondered what her profession was, if she played sports for a living or if she worked in the fields. Maybe a personal trainer? He wished he could see more of her, but the table hid most of her from his view.

Of what he could see, however, he found himself hopelessly, helplessly attracted. There was ink on her bicep, large blue and violet roses in varying states of bloom, outlined in black with beautiful evergreen leaves and accompanying orange brambles. The tattoo climbed up into her sleeve, and he thought he could just barely see the paw of some creature intertwined with the petals, but her sleeve hid the rest of it from view.

“Well,” the woman cleared her throat, brushing off her embarrassment. Naruto’s eyes leapt from her tattoo back to her eyes, and it was easy to find himself staring. “I don’t even know your name.”

Naruto smiled, showing teeth. “I don’t know yours either!”

“Ah,” Hinata squeaked, nodding as though she couldn’t believe she’d been so rude. “I’m Hinata.”

“Hinata,” he repeated, tasting her name in his mouth and watching the way the heat in her cheeks spread down to her throat. He grinned cheekily. “Makes sense! I’m Naruto.”

“N-Naruto-kun,” she reiterated, stumbling a bit. He wondered if she was as suspicious of him as he was of her for not having given a surname. She seemed to be struggling over the use of his first name, her polite nature undoubtedly recoiling, and that was enough to amuse Naruto into distraction.

“Not to give you a line, I’m seriously curious, but do you come here often? Since, y’know, this is the second time I’ve seen you here.”

“Oh, yes,” she responded easily, exhaling to shake off her nerves. Did he make her nervous? “A good friend of mine works here. I like to come visit.”

Naruto hummed, nodding his head.

“It’s nice here,” Naruto said. “If you don’t mind the chatter.”

Hinata smiled, turning a little more to face him. “And you don’t mind?”

“Nope!” He exclaimed, reclining in his seat, the picture of comfort and ease. “I don’t really do great in silent places. I like the noise.”

“Really?” Hinata hummed, bumping her bag a little with her elbow as she rested her face in the palm of her hand. She was watching him, eyes soft and wondering, and Naruto couldn’t resist gazing back at her. He felt his lips continuously inching up in the corners, and it was bizarre that a perfect stranger could make him feel so happy in so little time, with so little interaction. There was something soothing about her, that drew him in.

Well, at least that was one of the reasons he felt drawn to her.

“I keep telling Kiba-kun that it’s a little cold in here,” Hinata continued, and Naruto assumed Kiba-kun was the friend that worked there. Naruto’s eyes fell to Hinata’s exposed arms for only a moment, a cursory glance, and noted no goosebumps there. When he met her gaze again he smirked. She ducked her head a little, uncomfortable for some reason.

“You should bring a jacket next time,” he responded blithely, blinking down at her. She grinned up at him, rolling her eyes.

“I know, it’s silly of me.” She blew a puff of air up at her bangs, amusingly frustrated. “But I don’t have any good jackets at the moment. Not like yours.”

Naruto’s eyebrows jumped up. “Mine?”

Hinata’s eyes sparkled, amused. There was something else there, too, hidden in their pale depths, but Naruto couldn’t name it. The hairs on his nape stood on end.

“Yes!” She laughed, bringing her free hand up to cover her mouth. “It looks…well-loved.”

Naruto glanced down at his hoodie, noted the holes in the sleeves, the stretched out front pocket, the stain on the hem. He met Hinata’s eyes again and couldn’t help his hearty laughter, bringing his hand back up to rub at his nape in amused embarrassment.

“It’s a good hoodie!” He defended himself, smiling so widely his eyes clinched shut. “It’s been with me through a lot! Believe it!”

“I bet it has,” Hinata responded, and there was something in her tone, too, that sent chills down Naruto’s spine. It was almost too direct. As if she were looking for something under the surface.

Naruto’s expression fell in waves, his laughter stuttering to a gradual, breathless stop. He traced the subtle curves of her beautiful, rounded face, and wondered what she was looking for.

Naruto had long since learned how to gauge a predator’s intent before the threat moved from eventual to emergent. He’d learned it the hard way as a young boy, with six facial scars to show for it.

It had taken him far too long to realize it, but now he was up to speed.

Hinata was a predator.

“It’s funny,” Naruto began, trying to keep his tone as casual as possible. Even as he saw her for what she was—a wildcat lurking in the shadows, preying on some part of him she’d honed in on—he found her charming. His instincts set off alarm bells, told him to run, to make an excuse, get up, leave this place, and never come back; he’d allowed himself to have too consistent a pattern, visiting one place regularly, and it was stupid. And he knew better.

But the bells paled in comparison to the orchestra of his racing heart, the drums of his pulse in his ears, the heat of a symphony playing under his skin every time she glanced his way. Even when he found her studying him, searching and seeking, he felt himself smiling.

Maybe he was a fool, deserving of a creature less predator and more prey, but—

He wanted to get closer to her. He would have to walk a fine line, play a dangerous game, but Naruto had never backed down from a challenge he thought he could match. He’d learned in this life that sometimes, not backing down from a challenge meant running first and coming back prepared. That survival didn’t always mean brute force. That sometimes, he had to get creative.

So he did not run.

“You visit your friend here a lot?” He reiterated, pursing his lips in faux-curiosity. He wasn’t proficient at mind games, was too heavy-handed, but sometimes that worked in his favor. Sometimes, that backed a sneaky predator into a corner. “Then shouldn’t you have known they let this place run cold?”

Hinata blinked, just once, her only noticeable reaction.

“I do come here often,” she replied, and Naruto couldn’t tell if the words were spoken a little too slowly to be unaffected. “It’s just that I usually forget until I get here. It’s usually warm outside, anyways.”

“That’s true,” Naruto said, but he knew that he’d caught her. For some reason, she was hyper-focused on his hoodie. Had she seen him steal from someone? That last time, their first meeting, had she followed him? But he’d been so careful.

“Do you not mind the heat, then, Naruto-kun?”

“The heat?”

Her smile turned coy, only just so, but Naruto was watching for it.

“Just the same, it’s always so hot. But both times I’ve seen you, you’ve been in this hoodie.”

Naruto didn’t falter. “It’s my favorite, after all!”

Hinata laughed, nodding her head.

“It’s certainly…unique.”

Naruto narrowed his eyes at her, tone playful. “What’s that supposed to mean, Hinata?”

Her laugh sounded genuine, was genuine, but Naruto refused to let his guard down. Even if she was the most beautiful person he’d ever been lucky enough to meet.

“It’s just,” she started, before pausing to think carefully about her words. “It’s so bright,” she eventually said, grinning. “It’s not a common color to see people wearing all the time, I guess.”

Naruto considered that for a moment, pursing his lips. Finally, he grinned until his eyes pinched shut.

“I guess I’m one of a kind!”

When he peered over at her again, there was something about the sharpness of her eyes, narrowed ever so slightly, and the sly curl of her lips that made Naruto think of a trap snipping shut. She shifted, and her sleeve pulled up enough for him to see enough of the creature to name it.

A lynx.

After a heavy moment’s pause, Hinata smiled softly and said, “I guess so.” Her voice was amused, wrapped around gentle, unassuming laughter. Naruto swallowed, and the trap he could feel around his throat felt less like steel and more like bone, like teeth.

A series of rings distracted Naruto out of the frightening mental image and he watched as Hinata frowned down at her phone before looking to Naruto apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I know this is rude, but I have to take this.”

“Go ahead, yeah,” he responded easily, turning back to his computer to give her some semblance of privacy. At least, he pretended to. He listened to every word she said while pretending to continue to edit his thesis, erasing and replacing apostrophes.

“Okay,” she sighed, quiet enough that he could barely hear her over the bustle of the shop. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her back facing him, and realized that she was a little shorter than he’d suspected, though not by much. Naruto swallowed and forced himself to turn back to his computer, because if he didn’t, then he wasn’t sure if he could stop staring at all. She had the shapeliest hips he’d ever seen and a beautifully tapered waist and he was so, so screwed.

“Bye,” he heard over his shoulder, lifting a hand to pound a fist lightly against his chest, right over his thudding heart.

He didn’t turn to her until she spoke to him, not wanting to seem as though he’d been listening to her conversation—which had been basic, and boring, a friend she was going to leave him to go see. Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t even certain if he would’ve minded getting caught looking at her. He was honest about most things, and his appreciation for the shape of her, for the whole of her, even as someone he was certain was a threat to him, was not something he would hide.

“Naruto-kun?” She inquired, reaching out and touching her fingertips to his shoulder so gently he could barely even feel the weight of her touch.

“Yeah?” He asked, and pretended that his voice hadn’t come out choked, startled by her voluntary contact. Why hadn’t she asked him about the scars?

“I have to go,” she explained, coming more fully into his line of sight. She drew her hand back as if she hadn’t even realized she was still touching him, squeezing her fingers once against the strap of her bag. “I do come here often, but not usually for long periods of time. Do you think…will I see you again?”

Bold, Naruto thought, warm with satisfaction. He ignored those ever-persistent alarm bells in his mind and smiled up at Hinata, his eyes heavy-lidded. For her, he would toe the line of danger. He didn’t know which direction the strike would come from, only that it would come.

For whatever reason, she was a predator, and he was her prey.

“Yeah,” he said, bobbing his head. “For sure, yeah. I’ll call out to you next time I see you, believe it!”

Her smile bloomed over her entire expression, an entire season of healing in the blink of an eye.

“See you again.” She turned before she could see him wave, before she could hear him respond. He watched her weave through the tables full of university students and office workers taking their lunch breaks. He wondered if she’d look back, if he could catch her eyes just one more time.

She pushed through the doors and was gone.

Naruto sat back in his seat, exhausted by the tension of their interaction. What kind of game had he played in to? What about him and his hoodie were so important to her? Was there more in her interest about him than suspicion, as there was more in his about her?

He hoped so. He really, really hoped so.

He took a sip of his long-forgotten tea and choked on the coldness of it, the acrid bitterness of unstirred sweetness. He set it back down by his laptop with a bedraggled sigh, perching his elbows on the table and holding his head in his hands.

He glanced idly to his side, past the empty table where Hinata had been just a moment before, and saw another empty table. But it was more than just an empty table, to him.

It had belonged to the man and the jacket Naruto had been planning to lift.

He blinked, and thought, hell.

Next time, then.

 ✧

 Hinata called Kiba back after she was sure she hadn’t been followed, and she was in the relative safety of her vehicle. He answered on the first ring, and impatiently demanded an explanation for why she’d instructed him to call her a certain amount of time into her conversation with the man in the orange hoodie—Naruto.

“Why did you want me to call you like that?” Kiba had demanded, talking so fast there wasn’t space for Hinata to get a word in edgewise. “Did he do something to you? Were you in a sketchy situation and you didn’t even tell me, you just had me call you, which is such a shitty thing to do. I could’ve been your backup, y’know? Clyde to your Bonnie—“

“Y’know, Kiba-kun, in that reference we would be the criminals.”

Kiba had gasped over the line, and Hinata had done all she could to hold in her amused laughter. Instead, she’d only rolled her eyes as he exclaimed, “Was that fox-boy a criminal?”

“Fox-boy?”

“The scars, Hinata, you can’t tell me you didn’t notice them. They look like whiskers. And, I don’t know, he’s weasel-y somehow.”

That time, Hinata couldn’t hold in a single snort of laughter. “Wouldn’t that make him a weasel, then?”

Kiba had groaned. “No, no. Too…I don’t know. Tricky. Mischievous.”

Hinata had only hummed, starting her car and running her phone through the central system rather than holding it in her hand. She pulled into traffic and headed in the direction of the precinct.

“He isn’t a criminal,” she had finally said, though after her conversation with him she was less certain of that than ever. In fact, she was even leaning specifically in that direction, but she didn’t want Kiba to harass him and set him onto her trail.

“Then you don’t like him?”

“That’s not it,” Hinata had said immediately, embarrassed by her own insistence. Kiba picked up on it instantly, and luckily or unluckily, derailed completely to harass her about her new crush the entire drive back to the precinct until she finally had to force him to let her hang up.

She put her car in park and turned the key until the motor fell silent, and she considered what all she had learned. And what she had felt—still felt. She knew next to nothing about the man, but something about him was endearing. She felt drawn to him, curious and intrigued and—yes, admittedly, hopelessly attracted.

Of course she had noticed his scars. It would be impossible not to, what with their being six of them, jagged lines spread out over his cheeks, a mockery of whiskers.

But Hinata had scars of her own, and she knew that it was bad for her to prod them herself, and worse still for someone else to. So she hadn’t said anything about them, and had found it easy enough to fall into the endless blues of his eyes, instead. Even his smile called to her, thrilling in its easy humor. He was an honest guy, not easily embarrassed, and under his idle gaze she felt caught.

She felt distressingly comfortable around him already, almost familiar, as though in another life they had been more than perfect strangers. Even his name felt familiar.

Naruto.

Why did that sound so familiar?

Hinata pulled the key from the ignition with a sigh, and headed into the precinct while rotating her shoulder. It felt a little stiff, probably from yesterday’s target practice challenge with Shino. She’d won, but only by a narrow margin.

She greeted Chouji, their weekend receptionist, with a friendly nod and a quiet, “hello.”

She glanced down the hall towards the bureau chief’s room and found Nara Shikamaru standing in front of his desk, his hands held loosely behind his back—not cuffed. An important distinction, in this building.

She wondered for a moment what they were discussing, if it was her case or another, and dismissed the thought as unnecessary. She threw herself into her seat, rolling back a few feet only to scoot back up to her desk and log swiftly into her computer. Some familiar uniforms walked past her desk, calling out friendly hello’s, and she returned them with a wayward wave, already immersed in the articles she’d pulled up.

She didn’t really know what she was looking for, only that there was something to find in the thousands of words that encompassed the paperwork involved in this case. She sifted through report after report, reading everything from the timestamp to the notes listed in the margins—most of which was in her own scrunched handwriting.

She scrolled through the comprehensive stack of scanned photos from every scene, her eyes missing nothing she hadn’t already uncovered. She quickly lost track of time, unaware of the shifting shades of the sky through the window, from effervescent blue to lavender to muddled eggplant until the only source of light came from the halogen bulbs overhead. She thanked several colleagues for their hard work as they headed home, her attention glued to the screen or the paperwork in front of her, the notes in red, in pink, in blue; the post-its she’d gone back and added later, with new findings and postulations, theories and theoretical.

A few minutes after Chouji called out his goodbye, someone approached her desk. She didn’t hear the footsteps lumber up beside her, only saw someone hovering in her peripheral vision. It was noticeable enough that she managed to tear her eyes from the computer screen to glance up and find her bureau chief standing there leaning against the counter over her desk, his chin resting in his palms as he lounged.

“Yo,” he saluted, his heavy eyes trailing over her exhausted features. She knew what he was seeing, but she wasn’t about to back down. She was on the verge of something huge, she could feel it—this was exactly the kind of intuition that she had followed her entire life, the same one that had allowed her to get where she is today.

“Chief,” she acknowledged amiably if a little tiredly. “Are you heading home?”

“Sure am,” he responded blandly, picking at what appeared to be a sugary stain on her countertop. She would have to have a polite talk with agent Sai about eating donuts over her station. “And, if I’m not mistaken, it’s also time for little overachievers to be heading home, too.”

Hinata didn’t bristle, knew the chief well enough to know when he was being protective of someone he was fond of. Hinata was lucky enough to count herself among the measly few of that category—their chief was rather…prickly. And fastidious, too.

“Soon,” Hinata promised gently, leaning back in her seat to blink up at him. His wealth of gray hair seemed even more unruly than usual, but it could’ve just been the fact that her vision was blurring at the edges from looking at the screen for too long. “I’m…I think I’m onto something.”

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. “Anything I can help you with?”

Hinata glanced up into his tired eyes, the lines of exhaustion on his face. She wasn’t the only one having a hard time, working herself to the bone just to find something, anything to point them closer to a murderer. She found herself shaking her head, unable to keep Kakashi from a full night’s sleep when he looked close to falling over.

“No, I just have this feeling…it’s hard to explain.”

Kakashi hummed, unconvinced. He studied her expression as she gazed unseeingly at her screen, as if waiting for the answers to leap out at her.

“Let me give you some advice,” he offered dully, with a single heavy blink. “Often when we’re lost on the road of life and we’re looking for clues, we’ve actually already found them. We just have to retrace our steps, back to the start.”

Hinata flicked her gaze to his amused expression and blinked slowly up at him.

“Um,” she said, not wanting to be rude. “Okay. I’ll…follow my intuition. I can’t take a break now though, Chief, else I might lose the trail entirely.”

“Really?” Hatake Kakashi posed, quirking the eyebrow split in half by a gnarly vertical scar that had cost him his left eye. “You’re going to give me excuses, little one? Do you know who you’re talking to?”

“Chief,” Hinata began, tone insistent, but Kakashi clicked his tongue at her.

“I am the king of excuses,” he boasted, buffing one of his fists against his chest. Then, as if realizing he’d just admitted some vitally important secret to her, he pointed right at her with a deceptively gentle smile. “Not that you heard that from me, of course.”

Hinata laughed under her breath, and couldn’t help the fondness of her smile. “Of course.”

“Of course,” he repeated with an appreciative nod. “Well, since you’re being such a peach I guess I won’t lecture you about stealing my brand.”

“Does that mean you won’t sass me for staying a little late, too?”

“Sass?” Kakashi snorted, eyes wide. Hinata was so used to the entirely white surface of his fake eye that even seeing him so uncharacteristically expressive didn’t phase her. “Well.”

“I suppose if you stayed a little late today, that would be okay.” Kakashi’s smile shifted, grew barbed edges, and before the “thank you” Hinata had on her lips fell to the wayside he added, “After all, tomorrow is your pet rabbit’s special anniversary, and you cannot miss that again. And the bureau completely supports the practices that foster healthy emotional well-being in our operatives. So of course you have my…permission, to leave early tomorrow afternoon. Lunch is probably an ideal time, don’t you think?”

Hinata, properly backed into a corner and wondering how she had ever thought she’d get out of this safely when her opponent was Kakashi, merely sighed.

“Of course,” she reiterated, and Kakashi’s smile lost all of its edges, softened into something affectionate and rare.

“Of course,” he repeated once more, tapping his knuckles twice against her counter. “Drive home safely, Hinata-chan.”

“You as well, Chief,” she called after him, shaking her head as he lurked through the precinct and headed to the private parking structure just behind the building.

Hinata sat up with a low groan, flexing her tailbone before leaning back over the keys. It seemed like so long ago that she’d spoken with Naruto, and longer still since she’d had a proper lead in this case. She flickered through page after page of evidence, her eyes scanning every line even in their weary exhaustion. She should have gotten herself a cup of water, but the canteen felt so far away, sitting over there across the room.

The files started to blur, and somewhere in-between reading a family member’s statement—my son had just turned nineteen—and studying the blood splatter on a fan of credit cards that had been left behind Hinata was wading out into the ocean.

Speckles of sand fluttered around her ankles, the water frigid and chilling her to the bone, but she did not shiver. The sun was close enough that she could touch it; it didn’t burn, but her skin came back gold and gleaming where she’d made contact. She dipped the fingertips of her left hand into the surface of the ocean, and when she brought her hand up in front of her she was holding a threadbare scarf. She ran her fingers over it lovingly, as though it were a pet, as though it were alive.

And it moved under her fingers, unspooling into the ocean until it sank through the layers of cyan and cobalt blue, until the depths of the ocean swallowed it hole. Hinata blinked and she was at the scene of a crime, her gun steady in her hands, her heart racing so loudly in her ears she couldn’t hear a word being said. She could see faceless people around her, some in uniforms, some in street clothes, all of them shouting.

What were they shouting? All she could hear were the waves, the ocean, the blood, her veins.

A flash of orange in her peripheral vision, but when she turned, no one was there. She glanced straight ahead and she was shouting, too. What was she shouting? Where was the air needed to shout, if she could still feel herself breathing? Was the water getting in? Would she be able to get it out?

The suspect turned around so that he was looking right at her, and he was the only creature who had a face.

Or maybe he was just too familiar to her to ever be anything but recognizable, strikingly so.

Her father stared at her without saying a word, not an ounce of fear in him even as he stared down the barrel of her gun. They were alone, had always been alone, just the two of them and the sun. She reached for him with one hand open, the other wrapped around a gun, and her father did not reach back.

Instead, he turned to look over his shoulder. Her eyes followed the same trail, and they were wet, her cheeks chilled. When had she started to cry?

A familiar coffee shop. She looked back to her father, to her open hand and her clenched gun still aiming for the heart of him. It had been so long since she’d seen him, since she’d seen him, since she’d seen him without blood marring his air of jaded perfection. Where was the hole in his body that had taken him from her, from Hanabi, from Neji?

Where was the bullet she’d found a fingers breadth under his skin; ground zero of a shattered wing, right under his left shoulder blade. She had been six.

Her father turned back to her and his lips parted around a single word, familiar even in this reality. Hinata didn’t hear a sound, but she read it on his lips.

Ichiraku.

She blinked and he was right in front of her. Finally, finally he reached out to her, standing there right in-between her reaching hand and her clenched gun, still lifted. He touched her cheek, trailed his fingers over the softness of her skin, the wetness of her tears. His lips parted and when he spoke it wasn’t with his own voice.

It was Kakashi’s.

We just have to retrace our steps, her father said with Kakashi’s voice. Back to the start.

She looked over her father’s shoulder, studied the garbled blur of red in an inconsistent garble of characters held suspended over the shop’s entrance. She knew it to mean Ichiraku, the coffee shop’s title card.

Written in bright red, swooping characters; almost as if all of them were connected by a single red strand, a red string, a scarf, tattered and torn.

We just have to retrace our steps,

Ichiraku.

Back to the start.

Naruto.

Hinata gasped and awoke to the feeling of panic, of anxiety. She had fallen asleep partially on her keyboard, and a silent error message blinked repeatedly at her. She blinked back, trying to regain control of her rapid breathing, and a moment later she bypassed the error and dove deep into the case files until she found the specific file she was looking for.

The very first file, the very first murder, the very first trio of items left behind on scene.

She knew her way around these files better than she knew the layout of her own home, so it was easy to find what she now knew she was looking for. She pulled up the file on the investigation done into the family whose picture was tucked lovingly within an old flipbook down in the ice-cold evidence room. Her eyes scanned the file until she came across the names of the deceased, a dead-end in every since of the phrase, except that it wasn’t.

There, next to their archived identification pictures, was the deceased parents from the recovered flipbook.

Namikaze Minato—deceased.

Uzumaki Kushina—deceased.

And there, just below their information and their beautiful, smiling faces was a single name, buried under mountains of hard evidence and indefinitely cast off as extraneous material—until now.

Uzumaki Naruto—deceased.

“Got you,” Hinata whispered.

And a single tear slipped over her cheek.

 ✧

 Uzumaki Naruto had been called a fool many times in his life, but never before had he ever believed it as much as he did when Hinata turned out to be Detective Hyuuga Hinata of the Hidden Leaf Police Force.

His day had started out as any other day would, with him singing lowly in his cramped shower, all shoulders and elbows and knees. He’d hesitated for a breathless moment before tugging his favorite hoodie on over a clean white shirt, a snug pair of ripped black jeans. His favorite sneakers, with the bottoms melted from getting too close to a campfire.

He successfully lifted from three different people and managed to swipe Iruka a new and fancy set of pens for his new recipe book all before noon. When his stomach spoke up to remind him that he needed to eat, he thought about a coy smile and rose-stained cheeks, and a stare that moved through him with heat.

That was how he found himself at Ichiraku, waiting with equal parts restlessness and hope for Hinata to show up. He waited an hour before he realized it was a long shot, downtrodden and sulking he packed his laptop into his bag and prepared to leave. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking about the possibility of visiting Iruka that coming weekend; giving him the pens Naruto had researched to death before stealing.

He glanced up unconsciously towards the doors when he heard the overhead chime, not really expecting to find her, moving out of habit. He stilled completely the moment his eyes met hers, the recognition zapping between them like a livewire and gone just the next second, because she was—what she was wearing, it meant that she—

Naruto couldn’t move, not a muscle not an inch. He remembered this feeling, the startled realization that he had made a mistake somewhere along the way and was now as vulnerable as wounded prey, cornered and static. A sequence of foster parents snarling and apathetic, both, flashed behind his eyes.

Hinata in a Hidden Leaf Police uniform was the last image to appear, and though Naruto willed it away with everything he had, it remained. She didn’t even keep up the pretense of getting something to drink, she made a beeline straight for him. Naruto wondered if she had been staking the place out, waiting for him to appear, a bug in her masterful web. He swallowed, and only regained movement in his tensed muscles when he forced himself to straighten up, let his bag drop back to the floor with his laptop weighing it down.

He tried to loosen his muscles, to seem as approachable and innocuous as possible. Like a man who had nothing to hide.

“Hinata,” he forced himself to call out to her, hiding his left hand against his thigh where he clenched it into a fist so tight his knuckles turned white. Only for a moment, however, before releasing when she was close enough to touch. Bizarrely, the smile that rose to his face was genuine. Even now, seeing her in her crisp, royal blue uniform, a clear sign for an active criminal to run the other direction, he was glad to see her.

He was a fool.

“It’s good to see you,” he greeted her, and allowed his eyes to openly scan over her body, from the very top button fastened at her throat, to the gun holstered at her hip, to her roughened and worn work boots. “Wow,” he laughed, lifting his hand to scratch idly at a sideburn, his fingertip just barely touching the end of one of his scars as he kept up the play between them. She might not have enough on him to be lethal, just yet. She might just have an idea. If that were the case, then he could finagle his way out of this and disappear the next day. He was used to making himself disappear. He ignored the sudden ache that arose at the thought of never seeing her again, because that was ridiculous. “I thought you were a student from the local university, but man was I wrong. You’re a cop!”

She broke their pattern for the second time that morning by pulling out the chair across from him rather than the one adjacent to him, at her own table. She smiled at him and there was so much hidden behind a shaky mask that Naruto instantly knew she wasn’t yet the emergent threat he had thought her. She was struggling with something, and though her smile was sincere and her acknowledgment was warm, her usual luster was muted.

And then, while Naruto was still trying to convince himself that he wasn’t reeling, she threw another curve his way.

She said, “I’m a detective, actually.”

Naruto paled and thought, oh shit.

“Damn,” he said, and the surprise of his tone was as authentic as the bead of sweat suddenly trailing down his nape. “That’s awesome! I never would’ve guessed.”

Her resulting smile was wry, as though she got that a lot. She didn’t seem offended, however.

“What do you do, Naruto-kun?”

Naruto did not read too much into that inquiry. It was a common question.

“I work in IT right now at the local university, but I’m about to graduate.”

“What’s your major?” Genuinely curious.

“Ah, it’s kind of a mouthful. I study computer technology, with a focus on artificial intelligence.”

Hinata’s eyes brightened, surprised.

“Wow, Naruto-kun. That’s pretty awesome too.”

Naruto laughed, a stunted reaction. “If the cops need an expert IT guy, feel free to drop my name.”

At the same time that Naruto mentally kicked himself for repeatedly referring to the police as cops, something someone with a grudge or bias would do, he watched something curious flicker over Hinata’s expression. He tilted his head wonderingly, silently encouraging her to voice whatever she had perched under her tongue.

“That’s as good a segue as I’m going to get, I think.” This, she said under her breath, almost to herself. She straightened up and her uniform pulled tight across her chest, and her name badge gleamed, catching his attention.

Det. Hyuuga Hinata.

Hyuuga, Naruto thought, praying for his balls not to crawl up inside of his body. Hyuuga, as in the infamous police family the news loved to boast about—youngest trainees every generation, highest ranks, swiftest advancement through the ranks, elevated intelligence.

Keen intuition.

All-seeing eyes.

Naruto was so, so fucked.

If he made it out of this with freedom, he promised himself he’d actually start watching the news so he’d never have to feel this blindsided again.

“Your name is actually already at the station,” she started to explain, sitting with her back against her chair, as far from him as she could get without scooting away. He wondered if that was purposeful, and almost unconsciously scooted closer.

Naruto frowned, preparing himself for her big reveal. Whatever she had to say, it all started here. There was no use dragging it out. “What? Why?”

Hinata closed her eyes and sighed, a long moment to herself, before locking her eyes onto him with open perusal. Predator-mode, Naruto thought in pathetic amusement.

“There’s this case I’ve been working on for several months now,” she explained, and though Naruto was verging on panic, he still managed to notice for the first time the dark moons under her eyes, the lines of strain by her lips. She looked exhausted. “And your name is associated with it.”

Naruto swallowed, forcing his expression to appear confused and concerned without overdoing it. “What kind of case? The only trouble I’ve had with the law has been with foster parents.”

The words slipped out of him before he could even recognize them for what they were: the honest truth. One moment Hinata looked startled at the mention of his past, and the next it was as though she had filed that bit of information away for another time and was moving on with her original line of thought.

“There’s been a series of murders,” Hinata began, and Naruto felt all of the air leave his lungs. Relief made him light, eased the tension in his shoulders enough to allow him to project a more efficient façade of innocence. “And at each scene, the killer leaves three belongings behind. The items he leaves don’t belong to him, or even to the person he just killed. He uses items from his previous victim. Only, the first victim we found had some interesting things that, at first, we couldn’t trace.”

Naruto tried to wrap his head around this information, genuinely concerned and curious.

“Because, what, you’d need a previous victim for that guy too?”

“Well, simply put, yes.” Hinata continued to study him, eyes sharp and all-seeing. Naruto let her see, encouraged her to look now that he knew she was inquiring about something entirely different than his proclivity for robbing people. “But one of the items we found at the scene of that first murder leads right back to you, Naruto-kun.”

Naruto stopped breathing. “Me?”

Hinata nodded, the epitome of critical composure. Someone pulled the seat beside them out—the seat Naruto had thought of as Hinata’s, and sat at her table. Hinata glanced away from him for the first time to offer the other patron a friendly if muted smile before scooting in close to their own table, closer to Naruto. He pinched his thigh to distract himself from the lavender scent of her perfume, which he was now close enough to smell.

“You,” Hinata agreed. “Or, more precisely, your family.”

Naruto wondered how many punches Hinata was planning on throwing; none of them pulled, all of them ruinous.

It took Naruto several long, breathless moments to respond. He glanced around the coffee shop, needing to distract himself. When he blinked, he thought he could remember the quaking, but that was ridiculous.

He had only just barely turned two.

“Hinata…” he trailed off, having to clear his throat. Until now he’d convinced himself that he’d gotten better at this. At talking about what he never had like it was okay to never have it. Like anything about his past before Iruka was okay at all. This was all he had to offer, and all that he could manage: “I don’t remember them.”

Hinata was patient with him, and when he looked back to her from the corner of his eyes, still turned away, all he saw in her expression was genuine kindness, and the smallest hint of sadness she couldn’t seem to veil.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I have to ask, though. A picture of your parents holding you as a baby was found at the scene of the first murder.”

If Naruto had to describe what it felt like to feel one’s heart shatter to pieces, he would lead with this: it felt like the aftermath of burning. Like all that had ever been left of you was a patchwork of charred pieces, and a single detail in the grand scheme of things could crush you like an earthquake, until all that you were and all that you had been was this: ash on the heel of a monster called life.

Naruto closed his eyes and focused on breathing.

“That picture,” he choked, and a single tear pushed out from behind his closed eye. Honesty had never hurt so badly, but then, he had not had experience with admitting these things out loud to anyone other than Iruka, and even then, he left things out. “Was taken from me when I was a child.”

“Someone robbed you? Your home?”

Naruto did not say, what home?

Instead, he said, “I was robbed on the street. He thought it was my wallet. His mistake, thinking someone as poor as I was would even have the need to own one.”

Hinata winced, a subtle, inadvertent reaction. Naruto turned back to her fully, crossing his arms over his chest—an excuse to hold himself together.

“The flipbook,” Hinata clarified, so very carefully. She was treating him like spun glass.

“My flipbook,” Naruto amended quietly, nodding. He hadn’t thought about that picture for years, years, and now it was all he could see whenever he blinked. His father’s smiling face, his mother’s blatant awe; him cradled between them as if he were loved, as if he were precious.

He watched Hinata struggle with something behind her lips, watched her gnaw on her cheek and tap her hands against her thighs. If her tone and expression had not been enough for him to recognize how careful she was being with him, her inability to just be honest with him would have given her away instead. It was then that Naruto realized that the punches were going to keep coming, indefinitely. That a lifetime of punches were in store for him, some of them deserved, some of them not.

He was so tired of trying to dodge them. She had seen a picture of his parents. He felt raw.

And he wanted her honesty.

“I won’t break,” he reminded her, watching the way her eyes jumped to his almost guiltily, unsure. “If you push me, I won’t break. So come on, Hinata. Ask me your questions.”

He watched the way she physically steeled herself, pushing her shoulders back and sitting up straighter in her seat. He didn’t miss the way she fisted her hands, though, or the way she pressed them into her thighs hard enough to bruise.

“How do you feel about the thief who stole that picture from you?”

It was not the question he was expecting. He frowned, wondering if it was a trick. He was so tired of playing games.

“Angry,” he replied honestly, a snarl of an answer. Just that next moment, however, he deflated, shoulders drooping. He had aired his grievances about the situation before, over and over with Iruka’s ear to listen, his voice to soothe. Enough time had passed for Naruto to move on. “But I understand why he did it. I know what it’s like to have nothing. He thought it was a wallet. He thought it had money in it. He didn’t know it was the only picture of my family that I ever had.”

Naruto wondered for a moment why Hinata wasn’t writing any of this down, wondered if she was recording.

“Are you recording this?” He asked, not upset but curious. Hinata shook her head, a calm negation. She smiled slightly and lifted a hand to tap idly at her temple, her voice soft.

“I won’t forget.”

Somehow, that was reassuring.

“Naruto-kun, how did you survive the earthquake? And how did no one discover that you had? You were just a baby.”

She didn’t have to explain what she meant. There was only one natural disaster that had ever mattered to him, only one quake that had decimated his family, his home, and any chance at an ordinary life. It was her second question that he focused in on, wondering if he had to tread lightly here for his own protection. It was difficult for him to plan so far ahead, to see the future clear enough to know that if he said this, then the possibilities of that could occur. He could only clearly see here, and now, and Hinata’s open expression of wonder.

“I don’t remember. No one ever told me, either. I went from the hospital directly into the foster system before I could even understand that I existed.”

Naruto took a moment to have some of his tea, remembering their last meeting and his cold, wasted tea. Not this time, he thought with amusement he didn’t really feel.

“They gave me their last names,” he explained, tone deceptively nonchalant when internally he felt like he was freezing over. “I didn’t get to choose, and no one in the system remembered my surname anyways. My mother’s line died before it could even get to me.”

“Well,” Hinata began hesitantly, ever-careful. Her words were so gentle they soothed some of the chill he felt in his bones. “That’s not exactly true now, is it?”

Naruto felt the corner of his lips quirk, his eyes heavy with sudden fondness.

“I guess not, yeah.” He thought about it, and a genuine smile inched its way across his face when he added, “I am Uzumaki Naruto, after all.”

Hinata’s eyes widened, as though she had somehow gotten concrete proof of something she’d only just suspected, and it was that reaction that reminded Naruto that she was investigating a murder, that she was a detective. That he was a subject to be studied, even if she hadn’t discovered his crimes. It was far too easy to trust her, to want to lean into the warmth of her gentle kindness and just breathe.

“So you were in the foster system,” Hinata nudged, unconsciously leaning towards him. Drawn in.

“Until I was six, yeah. It was easier for me to live on the streets.”

That was a lie, it wasn’t easier but it was less painful. He wasn’t about to get into why.

Hinata’s expression dimmed, melancholy hanging on every beautiful slope of her face. He slid his tea over to her, smiling when she only blinked at the beverage.

“Try it,” he offered, smiling. “It’s delicious, believe it.”

“Uh,” she stuttered, one hand tentatively reaching out for the cup. “Are you sure?”

Naruto liked that she didn’t ask why, that she just asked permission. “Of course!”

He watched her lift the cup to her lips, careful not to spill, careful not to burn her tongue. She took the tiniest sip he had ever seen, and then a heartier gulp when she caught his disapproving glare. She set the cup back on the table and blinked, swallowing before a smile blossomed.

“Wow,” she said, and Naruto couldn’t help his muffled laughter.

“It’s that good,” he agreed easily, arms still held crossed over his chest, but held loosely now. “It makes everything better. You should ask your friend to make it for you.”

“I might,” Hinata laughed, her hand still on the top of the table. Naruto hesitated for only a blink before reaching out to rest his hand over hers, to offer a single supportive squeeze. He knew she’d let him touch her, she was a cop—a detective after all, and that warmed him.

“How would you know what to call it?”

Hinata froze, lips parting and then closing. Her cheeks gradually grew pink until she finally admitted, “My friend, Kiba-kun, he knows who you are. I figured I could just ask him to make me what you usually get.”

Naruto’s laughter was choppy and surprised, and he watched Hinata put her face into her hands, utterly embarrassed.

“Oh!” He crowed when he’d finally managed to settle down. “You’ve talked about me before?”

His amusement took a turn when he realized he may have mistaken what exactly she had talked to her friend about regarding him. Maybe it hadn’t been an interest for interest’s sake conversation.

Maybe it had been a suspicious sort of thing.

Naruto frowned, and Hinata misinterpreted it enough to rush to explain herself.

“Nothing bad, I promise,” she said. “He just saw us together and asked how we knew each other and then he riddled me with questions for the better half of an hour.”

“I don’t know if I wanna know what kinds of questions,” he laughed.

“Pushy ones,” Hinata grumbled, glancing over to where Naruto was sure she could see her friend clearly working behind the counter. “But I promise, nothing bad.”

Naruto hummed, considering. After a brief pause, he grinned at her. “I believe you.”

Her answering smile, radiant as it was, made his admission worthwhile.

“Speaking of pushy questions,” she shifted, expression apologetic. “What did you do to survive, when you lived on the streets?”

“For money, you mean?”

Hinata flushed, but didn’t back down. “Yes.”

“So many things. Too many things. Luckily I could get jobs as quickly as I could lose them. I was strong, even as a kid, so I did a lot of manual labor. Some work in the fields. A lot of time at vendors, selling vegetables that old people grew.”

Hinata’s eyebrows ticked up in surprise. “Venders?”

Naruto studied her, not wanting to make stereotypical judgements, but it was simply the reality of their differences in socioeconomic standing. Her name tag gleamed, catching his attention again, and he remembered that she had grown up in one of the wealthiest families this side of the West.

“In the poorer towns, they have venders that—“

Hinata cut him off, as politely as one could do so. “I know what venders are, Naruto-kun. My jurisdiction is far and wide within Hidden Leaf, and I have several friends that grew up on the far side of Leaf’s west sector.”

Naruto paused, shocked. He was inexplicably pleased to have been wrong, and his admiration for Hinata only seemed to continue to grow. Even if she was pushing her way into his secrets and edging dangerously close to the origins of his criminal activity. Some part of him in the back of his mind wondered if that was her intention.

“Oh, yeah, well,” he stuttered, caught off guard despite himself. “Venders were a huge part of how I got cash. And working there had some serious perks; you wouldn’t believe the amount of cabbage I’ve eaten in my lifetime.”

Hinata grinned, shaking her head. Simple understanding with no need for explanation.

“I see,” she said, and her voice rang with muffled humor. A bell yet un-rung. Naruto grinned in response.

“What about you?” He asked, pushy without hesitation. “What were you before you were a defender of justice?”

Hinata sputtered over the title, only half-posed in jest. Her cheeks flared and he could see in her a kind of pride that straightened her out, pushed down on her shoulders.

“Ah,” she sighed, “I have always wanted to be a detective, Naruto-kun. Ever since I was a little girl. My mother was Bureau Chief, and my father was lead detective there for a while.”

Hinata hesitated, eyeing him carefully. Naruto pretended not to notice the added focus and merely blinked at her, his smile as lofty as it was lazy.

“I have a lot of family in the force,” she continued after the pause, apparently finding in him something that made her remain cautious. He wondered where he’d made a misstep, and if he had the capacity to make up for it. Her eyes were as shrewd as ever, though, and he could see in the taut lines of her posture that she was closing off. “I went straight into the Academy and advanced from there, over the years. I never had time to be anything other than what I knew I wanted to be.”

Hinata smiled. “And I’m happy for it.”

“That’s what matters most, right?” Naruto hedged, leaning his weight on his forearms. The table’s surface was cold under the heat of his skin. Someone behind him choked, their beverage probably going down the wrong pipe. When Naruto glanced around, the café was as boisterous as always, and the lights inside were ever-humming. He could see Hinata’s friend at the counter, casting periodic glances their way. Naruto turned back to her and smiled.

“As long as you love what you do and you’re doing it for the right reasons,” he said, thinking of Iruka, “Then it’s the right thing to do.”

Hinata watched him, a sudden stillness to the frame of her. Despite the warning bells in his head, Naruto did not back down from her probing stare. He gazed back at her, a touch more fondly than he probably should have, especially in the face of her veiled distrust of him, but—

He liked her.

After a pause even she couldn’t veil for normalcy’s sake, Hinata said, “I don’t know if I quite agree with that, actually.”

Naruto couldn’t help the quirk of his lips, the jaded smirk that bloomed over his confident expression as he leaned back in his chair. He crossed his feet out in front of him under the table, his hands sliding down into his pockets. He didn’t respond to her, and she took the initiative to continue.

“Some things are not right, or just, simply because we love them.” She watched him sharply, her eyes piercing into him, hooks to flesh. “It’s important that you know that, Naruto-kun.”

At that, she pushed her chair out from their table, the legs screeching against the linoleum flooring; a piercing cry to shatter the peace of their understanding. Hinata rose to her full height and shifted her bag over her shoulders, aimlessly tucking her hair behind her ears. She tucked her chair in without hindering his outstretched legs, a practiced sort of efficiency to her every move, and Naruto watched and watched and couldn’t look away.

His heart raced in his chest, prey caught in a bone cage, sealed with Hinata’s barbed kindness.

She turned over her shoulder one last time and offered Naruto one parting sentiment, equal parts a warning and a threat:

“Even if something is done out of love,” she said stoically, an angel of justice, strung tight and standing tall, shoulders thrust back with lawful pride, “If it causes harm or hardship, it is not just. It is corruption.”

And with that, she strode evenly through the room, never once looking back to him; not even with the heavy weight of his considering stare haunting her shoulders, so proudly pulled taut. Naruto felt himself swallow, just once, a gavel falling, and wondered how much time he had before she came for him. He wondered if anyone could see the tremble of his skin, the jerking of his muscles. The fear and the excitement, bot

 A lynx, he remembered suddenly, pressed into her skin in droplets of ink.

And it was reckless and foolish—the most foolish thing he had ever done in his life and he had done many foolish things—but still he felt the stirrings of interest in the base of his gut. Even with his throat between her teeth, he found himself smiling.

There was something special about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly, evasive as she was, inherently. She was beautiful and she was strong and there was a kindness to her that edged between the slits of his ribs, pierced right where it counted.

And he didn’t mind it.

Dangerous as it was, as she was, he didn’t mind.

Naruto wondered if this conflict of interest was how Icarus had felt, as he fell.

That there was beauty in the breaking, and the fall worth it all.

 ✧

 Naruto could have run.

He could have never picked up the phone; packed what few things truly belonged to him and made it out west to Iruka for good.

He could have escaped this.

Instead, he had answered his phone. He had agreed to meet and answer some questions.

He had brought himself to the station.

He wanted to see her.

They did not handcuff him, but they might as well have. The door of the interrogation room was heavy, and sealed with a violent whoosh. In front of him, in her stark but stunning cobalt uniform, Hinata stood facing him. She watched him carefully, but there was an indifference to her stare that irritated him; as though just by being within the walls of the precinct all that had transpired between them was forgotten.

She looked at him like he was a stranger.

He didn’t like it.

Naruto sat at a small table with a small glass of water within arm’s reach. He was not sweating or shaking, and his heartbeat was steady. He did not look away from Hinata, even as he knew that he was being observed through the two-way mirror over her shoulder.

She did not pace; she remained relatively steady, only shifting her weight every now and again in-between questions. Many of them, as she had informed him at the beginning of their session, were the same she had asked him at Ichiraku. Only this time, they were being recorded—with his permission.

Some, however, were new; like the ones inquiring about his whereabouts on certain dates, and whether or not he had known Jiraiya Monogatari personally.

He had.

“Jiraiya was like a funky uncle to me,” Naruto explained honestly, resting his hands on the tops of his thighs. He wanted to grip the material of his jeans, the edge of the table, anything he could get his hands on to settle himself. Hinata had to have known that she was pulling sensitive information from him—personal, intimate information he had never shared with anyone before. Even Iruka was unaware of some of the information Hinata fished out of him.

“I met him when I was still working at a vender, when I was twelve. He would buy radishes from me. I never saw him eat ‘em, but he’d always buy ‘em. And he’d bring me gifts.”

Naruto left out the part about the gifts being stolen goods, and Jiraiya being the mentor who had taught him the skill of pickpocketing in the first place.

Instead, he continued on as honestly as he could while edging around the criminal background of both himself and his mentor. Hinata blinked once, considering, and continued to watch him hawkishly.

“I didn’t know much about him outside of that relationship, though.”

“It sounds like you knew Jiraiya Monogatari better than you’re letting on.” Hinata hedged, and Naruto wondered if she were truly suspicious or if she were merely playing devil’s advocate for those watching through the mirror. He truly didn’t know which was true, and there wasn’t an inch of Hinata that gave her away. She was as solid and unbending as steel.

Naruto clenched his jaw, twice, two lapses in control. “He was nice to me when no one else was.”

“And was that it?” Hinata asked, insistent. She took a few steps until she could rest her hip against the edge of the table, her arms crossing over her generous chest. Naruto couldn’t help the way his eyes trailed over her, drawn to the structure of her uniform and how well she wore it. He just barely prevented himself from swallowing, not wanting to show any signs of weakness. “He didn’t take you under his wing, teach you anything while you lived on the streets?”

But Naruto was incomprehensibly partial to Hinata in uniform. He didn’t mind her tone of voice even when it just barely dipped into an acerbic pool, something turbid and clinical. He didn’t even mind that she was bringing up his past again, his life on the streets. He could see the paths she had weaved around them, the different ways she circled him, preparing to come in for the kill. She knew that something about him was off, that something was wrong, but she was pinning him for the wrong crimes.

He was not a murderer.

And he was not a traitor, either. Years of training under Jiraiya’s care flashed through his mind and Naruto had a moment to be thankful that it was unconstitutional to use truth serum on regular old potential criminals.

“I barely knew him,” Naruto repeated.

Hinata paused, a noticeable deficit that caught Naruto’s attention. She studied his expression and there was an unusual seriousness to her with an edge of something new swirling in the depths of her gaze, almost pleading. It was as though she were offering him an out if he had one, encouraging him to take it if it existed at all; wanting him to take it.

He had nothing for her, and so he said nothing at all.

He could almost literally see the hope leave her, exhaled out of the depths of her lungs. Her shoulders sagged for only a moment, a deep and heavy breath that must’ve been riding her insistently, before she straightened. She turned to him completely, squaring her body language off against his with barbs and edges. Everything about her was treacherous, a jungle cat lurking in the shadows, slowly circling.

She was every ounce a predator, and Naruto would only just realize that she wasn’t shy about using what leverage she had to corner him completely.

She said, “It seems quite the coincidence that Jiraiya Monogatari, the infamous pocket thief of Hidden Leaf, would come into your life as a child and not leave any lasting impression.” She ignored completely, purposely, the way that Naruto stiffened. He couldn’t regain the loss of control, his unconscious reaction to her knowledge of the not-so-hidden truth, and by the time he wished he could, she was already speaking.

Almost haphazardly, as if she weren’t about to deliver the second in a vicious one-two punch, she added, “Especially considering that you have a penchant for the same recreational activities.”

Naruto felt his heart fall through his chest. It was somewhere down there by his feet, his ankles, and he took a flickering moment to wonder what it would feel like to be weighed down by shackles, by chains—

Because that was where he was headed.

He stared up at Hinata with clear eyes, perhaps for the first time since he had met her, and still he did not want to turn away. She was every inch the statue of justice he had imagined her previously, a soldier and a statute both. He could see the disquiet in her expression, those ever-expressive eyes. That she took no pleasure in exposing him, catching him, capturing.

That this was difficult for her; he, a relative stranger to her, enough of something to unsettle her.

It was the thought of Iruka finding out about this that kept down the smile pushing valiantly at his lips. Iruka, alone in the outskirts of a no-name town, waiting for Naruto for months, for years, wondering. Worrying and suspecting. The eventual realization, the crushing acceptance.

Naruto didn’t want to do that to him.

“Recreational activities?” He asked, and watched clearly as Hinata frowned, her expression pinching. She knew she had him, well and truly caught, but there was not a chance in hell he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. He was going to make this as difficult as he could—even if that meant making it difficult for her, too. In this case, he realized, especially so.

“I don’t get what you mean, Hinata.”

“I never would’ve guessed, when I first met you,” Hinata responded unflinchingly. She sounded critical, more so of herself than anything else. “I didn’t even see what was right in front of me.  Yellow and gold; blonde and scarred; a tattered orange jacket.”

Naruto frowned, cocking his head to the side even as his heart gave its first lunge of the evening. He urged it back into submission.

“You said it yourself, really.” She continued, solemn and self-depreciating. “You and that hoodie are one of a kind.”

“I’m not sure I get it,” Naruto started, playing dumb and finding his eyes caught on the gleam of Hinata’s wet lower lip. “Based off of those few things, you think I’m a criminal?”

Hinata didn’t hesitate. “A thief, yes.”

Naruto paused, letting her response speak for itself for lack of sufficient evidence.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Hinata, but don’t you think you need more evidence than that?”

“Of course. There are many blonde men with scarred faces in this town.” Hinata agreed seriously, easily nodding her head. She glanced down at her boots, scuffed them briefly against the tile before glancing up at him through her eyelashes for only a moment. She spoke even as she stared down, a posture of defeat with words of triumph. “But I also just so happened to witness one of your most recent outings. If I remember correctly, it was an ascot, a pair of sunglasses, and a purse.”

Naruto didn’t move a muscle, not even to blink. He felt how well and truly cornered he was, and wondered if Hinata was lying. He didn’t think that she was, something of his intuition telling him that while she might’ve had the capacity to be an excellent liar, she wouldn’t utilize it. Too shady.

So that meant she was telling the truth—and that meant he was screwed.

All of the laidback rebuffs he had planned slipped from his memory, and all he had left in him was simple frustration. She wasn’t looking at him, was still looking down at her boots. Naruto watched her carefully for several long moments, trying to find the right words. None of them felt right, because none of them were true.

He was so blindsided by the fact that she knew, she knew—more about him than he had ever imagined, that he could barely think. How long had it been? Was his silence stretching, telltale of a guilty conscience, a lack of excuses?

Why wasn’t she looking at him?

Frustration was the monopolizing feeling coursing through him, like heat in his veins. She hadn’t once referred to him by his name since he’d gotten to the station, not even to welcome him, nor to invite him inside. She was putting distance between them so rapidly he had whiplash, and he hated it.

She was beautiful even as she cornered him and cut off his future, his freedom, and yet even for all of that, he couldn’t hate her.

“Say my name, Hinata,” he said, and it was her turn to be shocked. He watched her eyes leap to his, wide-eyed with lips parting in surprise. She pushed away from the table and pointedly ignored the two-way window behind her. Naruto ignored it as well, watching her as she began to pace. Though she seemed every bit the wildcat, Naruto suddenly felt power reinstated within him. He was at a structural disadvantage, caught and seated and captured, but in this strange connection that had begun to grow between them, he was the stronger.

Because unlike Hinata, he had nothing to lose.

And, well, even if he had? He was still the kind of person who would’ve went all in anyways.

Hinata managed to rein herself in enough to continue trying to push and prod him, to incite some sort of anger or frustration that would get him to confess. But she underestimated the frustration he felt at being ignored by someone he had thought he was growing close to—the first person he’d wanted to keep around in years.

She tried to goad him, said, “I wonder even now if you were thinking of what you could steal from me, that day in the coffee shop.”

“When we first met,” Naruto agreed without actually agreeing to the crime. “You didn’t know me or my name then. You do now. Say it.”

Hinata glared at him, eyes flashing. She turned on her heel and continued to pace, jarring her head in one sharp negation that Naruto assumed meant she had declined interference from whoever was watching the show. Naruto had nearly forgotten they were there, he was so focused on her.

“Say me name, Hinata.” A challenge, plain and simple.

His tone worked, stopped Hinata’s pacing as she spun on her heel to face him. She raised her chin, haughty and untouchable in her crisp cobalt edges.

“This is not the time to be playing games, Naruto-kun,” And before Naruto could do anything other than smile with satisfaction, Hinata threw yet another punch: “You are suspected of murder.”

Naruto shot straight up in his seat, hands coming to grip the edge of the table. His surprise was not feigned, and the satisfaction of having gotten her to say his name, to admit to their intimacy—however brief—fell to the wayside.

“What?” He asked, shocked nearly to silence. Hinata studied his expression for flaws, for cracks. She folded her arms over her chest and said, “The first victim, Jiraiya Monogatari, was a man you knew well. He taught you how to pickpocket. How to steal. He was also the first man found dead in this string of murders I’m working on. Your family’s personal effects were found on scene.”

Naruto, heated with the accusation, snarled, “I would never hurt him! I loved him!”

Hinata’s eyes flashed with something like triumph mixed with sorrow, as though every time he came closer to admitting his criminal activity both sides of her responded in kind—the detective and the friend he had made.

“I thought you barely knew him, Naruto-kun,” and oh, he thought, it was a twisted kind of cruel for her to use his name now only as a weapon. She was more dangerous than he could have ever imagined, and all the same, he felt a stirring deep in his gut that felt like a wave of heat.

Interest. Excitement. So poorly timed.

Naruto gritted his teeth. “I knew him enough to love him. He was good to me.”

“If you lied about how well you knew him,” Hinata forged ahead, relentless in her pursuit of the truth. “Then why should we believe you now, when you say you didn’t kill him?”

“Because I loved him!” Naruto shouted, fists banging on the table. His rage boiled over, and he realized all at once that this, too, was a trick. Maybe Hinata didn’t mean for it to be, but a killed capable of murder might have a temper, might be proud and easily angered.

And he was showing all the signs to her and whoever was behind the glass.

“What motive would I have?” He finally asked, deflating. Worry rang him dry.

Hinata didn’t move, not even to shift her weight.

“Jiraiya Monogatari is the reason that your parents are dead.”

Naruto stopped breathing. He was exhausted with so many surprise hits, each of them aiming for organs more vital than the last. His mentor, his friend…responsible for the death of his parents?

“You’re lying,” he snarled, low and mean, baring his teeth. Hinata flinched, not from the tone nor the insinuation, but from the truth she was being forced to deliver to an unsuspecting son.

“I’m not, Naruto-kun.” She whispered, voice low and even.

“There was an earthquake.”

“The ground shook, yes,” Hinata hedged, and when Naruto looked up at her his expression was as drained as it ever had been. He felt more raw than he could ever remember. He thought, how could someone so beautiful be so cruel? But even then, he knew that the cruelty wasn’t entirely her fault. It belonged to whoever clouded his past with lies, whoever forged the truth of his and his parents’ lives with falsehoods.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means the ground shook,” Hinata repeated. “At least, that’s the story that was to be reported. In truth, Naruto-kun, there was an explosion. An attack. And your Jiraiya was there when it happened.”

Naruto closed his eyes, wanting to bow his head, to tuck into himself until he was as small as he could become, small enough to disappear, even. He grit his teeth and counted to ten, pictured a river and a forest and a leaf, so many things he’d used to calm his anxiety over the years, but nothing worked now.

“Why was it covered up like that?”

“It’s a long story,” Hinata began, lifting a hand when he opened his eyes and snapped, “I have a right to know.”

“You do, of course you do,” she agreed. “And you’ll have plenty of time to hear it. But right now, we have a different issue at hand.”

Naruto’s jaded smile was a sharp and sardonic shadow across his jaw. “Are you going to detain me?”

“Detain?” Hinata questioned, and he could hear the way she restructured her voice with steel. He watched her beautiful lips wrap around the words, her fair skin paler than usual. She was exquisite, unique and indomitable, and he liked her. “You have already been detained, for questioning.”

He liked her.

“What I am going to do, as a detective of Hidden Leaf,” Hinata pushed on, straightening her shoulders even as the light left her eyes, a sadness she couldn’t or wouldn’t withhold from him covering her expression in shadows. “Is arrest you, for three counts of witnessed theft and seven suspected murders.”

Naruto’s heart clenched. He thought of Iruka again, and everything in him ached. A prison cell couldn’t be awful—he already had barely anything to his name, and his studio apartment was barely larger than a cell would be. It was the loss of freedom, the loss of Iruka, and even the loss of the innocent relationship he had begun to form with Hinata that hurt him.

He couldn’t help but to plead, “Hinata, please, you have to believe me. I would never hurt anyone. I would never kill anyone.”

Hinata frowned, trying desperately to keep up the façade of a lawful detective upholding rightful justice. But she was wrong—she had to know there was something off. She wasn’t the same statue of conviction as she had been; there was uncertainty in her, enough to give Naruto an inkling of hope.

“Please,” he begged, not even knowing exactly what he was asking of her other than this one truth: to believe him when it counted, when he was telling the truth. He had not murdered anyone.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” she whispered, at just the same moment that the door behind him opened up and he could hear the clank of steel against steel. Shackles for the bare skin of his wrists. He watched Hinata with heavy eyes, exhausted and raw and unashamedly himself before her.

He rose to his full height, the only real advantage he seemed to have over her, and watched her beautiful lips shape the words: “You have the right to remain silent.”

#naruhina #naruto #uzumaki naruto #naruto uzumaki #hyuuga hinata #hinata hyuuga #cops and robbers #sort of #hope it's okay! #basilbees