i get so emotional every time i think about fanfic culture. it's just so beautiful that people are writing and anonymously posting these thousand-word stories about characters we all love and not even getting any money or public fame from it. it's literally just for the love of the game.
shout out to everyone who participates in fanfic culture, be it reading or writing fanfics. you are contributing to such a lovely thing <3
Middle-aged women are dangerous because they have nothing left to lose. They have played by the rules—be pretty, be pleasing, be quiet—and they have discovered that the rules do not protect them. So they stop playing. And that terrifies those who still believe the game is real.
- Victoria Dutchman-Smith, "Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women"
Hey. Hey you. The person aimlessly scrolling, stuck in an immobilized standoff with your brain
It's not your fault. You won't be stuck forever. I know you're trying. I know you hate it. It's ok.
And tell the Mean Voice in your head that it's not helping. It knows as well as you do that you would get up and Just Start the task if you could. You're not doing this on purpose.
Take a deep breath. Relax your jaw. I see you trying so hard to break out of it, but you can't force it. You'll get Unstuck eventually. All you can do in the interim is be kind to yourself.
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
A/N: god I don't even know what to say tbh. I'm so sorry for dragging this out, life has been fucking relentless. I shame-rage deleted this in December and then spiralled and deleted my entire fucking google docs lmaoo, but we got back on track and I finally feel somewhat happy with how this has turned out. I feel like I'm starting to get back on my feet and the want to write is slowly starting to resurface so hopefully I don't fuck it up and scare it off again hahah. It's so good to see you again angels, hope you enjoy x
Summary: Following on from ‘Traitor’ and ‘You’re Somebody Else’. An unexpected visitor throws you right back into the life you thought you left behind. Working beside the man that put you behind bars is one thing, pretending like you never loved him is another.
Word count: 2.7kish
Warnings: it's a short-ish chapter, but it's all Marcus here and I liked it that way. A N G S T - obviously, I mean we know the deal with these two by now. Marcus and his little pity party, shit gets real finally, kidnapping, Marcus loses his fucking mind, bit of a panic attack, full steam ahead Special Agent Pike (competency kink going off rn ngl), thoughts of impending violence/death, man is stressed and ready to kill someone I think, robots can pry the em dash out of my cold dead human hands. If you see a spelling error, for the sake of my brain and the urge to get this out before I changed my mind, no you didn't x
main masterlist | series masterlist
This story is 18+ only.
Coward.
It rings through his ears, blunt and crisp and cutting, and the weight of it lands in the pit of his stomach as he drives to the office, as he runs away. He never thought he’d hit himself with that label—he’d always been headstrong, confident in his decisions and making the moves to achieve his goals. He’d never hidden behind bravado, or pretended to be someone else. He’d always been okay with who and what he was.
Not today. Not lately.
Not for a while.
He sits in his car once parked in the office garage, finally letting his lungs attempt to drag in a full breath as he roughly rubs at the tears left staining his cheeks. His chest constricts, eyes threatening to give way again with a vicious sting as his mind torments him with visions of the heartache that played across your face at his admittance.
It was always real to me.
He knew it wouldn’t change anything, he just wanted you to know. He needed you to know you weren’t just a means to an end, that you weren’t simply used and tossed aside as if you didn’t matter.
You’d mattered to him then, you matter to him now. You always will, whether you chose to believe it or not.
But instead of facing you, instead of owning the pain he caused by his own decisions and confronting that soul draining shadow that seemed to plague his footsteps, he turned and ran.
He thought it would be the best course of action at the time, something that came to him as quick and natural as his seasoned agent senses, but now? Now he saw it for what it really was.
Disgust at himself.
Shame for his past and present actions.
Fear of rejection.
He should’ve stayed, should’ve faced up to his confession and braved whatever merciless anger you threw at him because God knows he fucking deserved it. He deserved it all.
One step forward, three steps back.
A long tired sigh leaves his lips and he goes slack against his seat, raw eyes tracing the stitching along the curve of the steering wheel as his mind relentlessly ticks over and over. He’d have to fix this, or at the very least, smooth it over until he’s able to get a damn hold of this case.
He attempts to pull himself together both mentally and physically in the quiet of his car, mind settling on a course of action as he tugs his tie back into place, smooths the stiff collar of his shirt and straightens his jacket.
He’ll face you once he knows you’re somewhere safe and comfortable. He’ll let you talk, cry, yell, hit him—whatever you want to do, he’ll take it. It’s been a long time coming, years in the making. He’ll answer questions, he’ll be honest. He’ll tell you anything and everything you want to know. He'll lay it all out, and then you'll... well, you'll do whatever you do. He doesn't dwell on how bad it would get.
The constant buzz of work manages to claim his mind once he’s in the office. There’s been another arrest, more paperwork and reports, more leads that have popped up and he's thankful for it. He soaks it all up, relishes in the constant need to move and think and plan ahead.
Wilson handles finding you somewhere to lay low. Somewhere nice, Marcus had made sure to mention. You deserve nice.
It’s an expensive hotel a few hours drive away, high end spa and all. He thinks you’d like it. It’s a weak attempt of earning back a slight bit of your favour and he’s almost positive it won’t work in the slightest, but he does it anyway.
He soon sends one of his own to retrieve you, and start the drive out.
Once he knows you’re out of here, maybe his mind will get a little clearer. The drive up to you will give him a bit of time to figure out what to say, how to carefully broach the subject if you don’t bring it up. He can wallow on how he could possibly fuck this up even more.
He seems to be good at that with you.
The suspect in the interrogation room is an easy talker, he finds. Good. Saves Marcus the effort of making him talk. There’s no loyalty here, just quick work under the promise of easy cash. Rigsby and Cho get names, descriptions, and Marcus gets to watch the man who broke into your apartment squirm from behind the glass.
He’ll give it to Teresa’s team—they work fast. He always did like them, except for one of course.
The suspect, he wasn’t meant to trash your place. He was there to find you, and to take you to a meeting point, but he got messy. You weren’t there, and so there’d be no money waiting for him at the end. He turned to finding a quick bit of cash from pawning your stuff, desperate for a little pay-out.
Unlucky for him, you had nothing left worth stealing.
The buzz of his phone steals his attention from the grilling continuing on on the other side of the glass, and Marcus steps away to take the call. Teresa stays put, watching with a pleased purse of her lips as her men damn near get the suspect to sing. Not bad at all.
He answers, frank and polite. “Pike.”
And with four words, the world is suddenly off axis. His surroundings tilt. Hot bile builds in his throat, anxiety coils harshly in the pit of his stomach and his vision starts to blur—
“Sir, she’s not here.”
—
The apartment is as he left it, albeit void of you.
There’s no mess signalling a struggle, no sign of forced entry indicating someone had fought their way to you. He could find nothing out of the ordinary, nothing suspicious whatsoever. The glass you had used during the night still sits on his coffee table, the blanket you had snuggled in still strewn across the couch.
He almost wants to find traces of some sort of attack so he has something, someone to pin this on, but as he walks around, it becomes increasingly clearer that you had left on your own accord.
The self hatred returns ten fold and he couldn’t be more disgusted with himself.
He was the reason you’re not here. He’s the reason you’re not safe.
Anger begins to build alongside the bitterness churning in the pit of his stomach, and he doesn’t know whether it’s directed more at himself or you. You knew it was potentially dangerous out there, and you couldn’t wait a few simple hours for him to arrange some new accommodation and for an agent to pick you up? What the hell were you thinking?
A part of his mind naturally jumps to your defence, spinning excuse upon excuse that you clearly weren’t thinking straight, that you could’ve been incredibly upset or angry, maybe needed a moment of fresh air and just forgot where his apartment was.
Highly probable, your sense of direction had always been self admittedly shocking.
Marcus pinches the bridge of his nose and pulls his phone out of his pocket, dialling your number for the fourth time in ten minutes, only to once again be met with your voicemail. Unsurprising of course, he’s the last person on Earth you’d want to take a call from at the moment.
He dials Wilson next, waiting on the line as he attempts to contact you himself only to also be met with your voice telling him to leave a message.
Wilson says he’s happy to keep trying, adamant that you’d eventually get sick of his spam calls and will eventually pick up. He’s not wrong, it would absolutely work, but he finds he doesn’t have the patience right now.
“Don’t bother—just get someone onto her phone and tell me where she is.”
"Yes, sir."
The exact location is delivered to his waiting hand a mere five minutes later. He’s sure it felt longer.
He pulls up the map and finds you’re only a few streets away, relief immediately cooling the panic that had flared when his agent had discovered you nowhere to be found. Maybe you were already on your way back.
A quick text to Wilson instructing him to watch your position and he’s on his way, biting back and swallowing the words of disapproval that build on his tongue as he makes his way to the car. With how he left you before, he’s sure that meeting you with some stern words from his FBI agent mouth would not help his case in the slightest.
She’s not moving.
He eyes the text as he drives, trying to recall the stores and cafes that line that street. There’s a café, but not near your position. He tries to picture you simply standing by the street, lost in thought and unaware of your surroundings.
His stomach twists.
You’re not where he pictured you to be.
You’re nowhere along the street.
He begins to strain his eyes with how hard he focuses, rolling over every person wandering along and minding their own business, but he can’t find you. You’re not—you’re not here. His eyes flick down to his lap where he holds his phone, screen unlocked and zoomed in to where your position is, and yet, you’re not there.
He knows that, because the only thing standing there, where his phone tells him you should be, is a trash can.
The car pulls to a slow stop and he can’t tear his eyes away from it.
He feels his heart beat in his throat with every step he takes towards the innocent stationary object. It’s a mistake—a glitch from the tracking software, or maybe it’s just your last position before you turned your phone off.
It wouldn’t ring if it was turned off.
His phone is in his hand and pressing your contact before he can even draw in his next breath, and his stomach sinks with every drawn out ring that sinks into his ear.
He hears it then, and ever so slowly, his phone falls away from his face.
The phone, your phone, is there, vibrating amongst the random rubbish thrown in by passers by. There’s a slight shake to his hand as he retrieves and holds it, wiping a thumb across the screen and watching it flick to life under his touch. The wildflowers that make up your screensaver and the stream of missed call notifications give way to his thumb and he struggles to steady the ice that floods his veins because why, why would this be here?
Why would you throw your phone away?
Anger makes people do irrational things, sure, but this? This isn’t like you. You wouldn't rid yourself of your only way of contacting anyone, not with how this whole thing had rattled you. You may be upset with him, but he doubts you'd go to such lengths just to stick it to him.
He holds your phone tight in grasp, holding the device close to his chest as he surveys and makes a mental note of every security camera he can see in view, before tucking it into his inner jacket pocket and making his way into the closest store.
A flick of his badge and a firm demand to see the most recent security footage from the front of the building and he’s in the store’s small office, crowding over the older gentleman tapping on an aged keyboard to fulfill the agent’s request.
It’s an old system, the footage is grainy and low quality, but he’s able to track the pixilated version of you walking past the store and just past the camera's view. Only a few moments later, there’s a blur of movement above the trashcan and then nothing further.
“Rewind it, please.”
The words are quiet, choked, stuck to the inside of his throat.
The man complies, and Marcus leans over him to pause the footage just as an arm appears over the bin. The image may be shit quality, but he’d know every single part of you from a mile away—that arm is not yours.
Okay, he thinks.
Okay.
It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in danger. It doesn’t—maybe you just—maybe it’s a friend. Maybe you’ll find another way of contacting him. Maybe it’s not what he thinks. You’re fine. You’re fine. Of course you are. It will be okay. There’s a simple explanation, and he’ll find it.
He rubs at his chest, where he feels a deep constrictive ache begin to form around his lungs. It hurts.
He tries to blink the haze away from his vision.
The mind can be a cruel thing. He hears and sees it all so fucking vividly—you crying out in pain, calling out for help and mercy, getting thrown to the floor, beaten for answers, and the final fire of a gunshot echoes in his ears. He feels it physically jolt his body.
He’s the one that finds you, cold to the touch and already long bled out, eyes empty and unfocused. He feels the pure and utter devastation that would consume him. It threatens to bite at him now, with merely just the mental image. It feels realer than before, like it’s an actual possibility now that you’re not here where he can see and hear you, where he knows you're safe, and it almost sends his body reeling into shock.
A sting bites at his eyes.
His fingers curl into the knot of the tie at his throat, attempting to loosen it to be able to breathe for just a damn second. His heart thunders heavily against his ribs, increasing with every horrid image conjured and the echo of you crying out for help, for him in your final moments.
The urge to retch tightens his throat and he turns away from the screen, inhaling deeply and forcing the image of you laying across a cold autopsy table from his mind.
No. They didn’t want to hurt you. Not yet, at the very least. The suspect had said he was to take you to a meeting point, a handover of sorts. If they wanted you dead, they would’ve tried so already. You’ve got time.
He half believes it, and it’s just enough to get him to draw in a shaky, steadying breath. It's enough for clarity to start seeping into his view.
His chest still burns.
He has time.
It won’t end like this, it can’t.
He won’t let it.
“Thank you for your assistance,” he forces out, throat raw. “We’ll be in touch should we need anything further.”
He’s striding out before the man can even reply, phone already to his ear and snapping Wilson into an immediate response. He wants everything.
Security footage from the entire street. He wants to know what way you came from, where it looked like you were heading. He wants to know who you spoke to along the way. Names, if any. He wants whoever dumped your phone, if you got into a car. He wants the registration, make and model and the direction it went. He wants a BOLO put out on it five minutes ago.
“On it, boss.”
It doesn’t calm him.
It fuels him.
The panic, the adrenaline, the rage.
He’s made an entire mental checklist before he’s even back in his car. He’s calling the other members of his team, he’s firing off instructions to each. He wants updates and he wants answers. He wants this whole thing dissected again, picked apart bit by bit and then some. He even calls Teresa—make Jane useful.
They’re getting close, he knows it. He feels it.
They know he’s close—the few they’ve already nailed and arrested show that. They’re looking for ways to fix the mess left by your replicas, they’re looking to make the money, probably by finding out what ones had been replaced. The organisation and people they’re after are angry. They’re panicking, and when people panic, they make mistakes.
Taking you in broad daylight was just that.
Now he’ll be there waiting to catch each one that comes next: poised, ready and pissed off.
Please hold on, I'm coming.
—
Just want to take a little moment here to say thank you. I have so many unanswered reblogs in my drafts, left from when I wanted to say thank you for reading and being along for the ride way back when and never got the chance to actually say it. Just know that I don't forget them, and I don't forget you. Your kind words have done more than you know. Thank you for being here, for being patient, and for your support. I treasure it, and you.
I‘ve been following this story for the last two years and am always overjoyed when I see an update! Thanks you so much for giving it another chance, I loved the new chapter and I’m so ready for Marcus to beat the crap out of some thugs and for these two to finally admit their feelings for each other and move along with it👇🏻😄🥰
Hello friends, some places are going to get snow that aren't very used to snow. As a result, emergency rooms are probably going to see an increase in heart attacks due to people shoveling snow (we call certain snowfalls widowmakers for a reason!).
If you and your loved ones don't want to experience this, please be sure to gently warm yourselves up (exercise wise, although clothing wise is good to) before shoveling any snow. Learn the signs of a heart attack and listen to your bodies!
A freshly shoveled driveway is nice, but living is even nicer.
This is no joke! My perfectly healthy uncle died at 52 from this. And I had a neighbor who died in his late 30's too. When the body isn't used to strenuous activity in the cold, it creates a temperature differential that can cause a heart attack. Please be careful!
filter on ao3 that only shows fic by women in their 40s who has a degree and works an office job and probably leaves authors notes that are like “sorry for the wait on the chapter guys! i had to give birth to my third kid😂”
