summary: Laurance Zvahl was your one true love—your Irene given soulmate. But when your one true love goes missing for over a decade, you decide it's best to move on. After you've settled into your new life, though, Laurance returns, and now you're left to grapple with the fact that your lover is not dead.
now playing: "Daydream" by Elliot James Reay
word count: 9.3k
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The cold of the wedding band was a stark contrast to the hand that put it on his finger. Your hand was warm, soft. Laurance found himself tangling his fingers with yours, holding onto the comfort and joy of the moment.
He hoped—prayed—that one day the wedding band would be a comfort, too.
“Irene has brought these two souls together. It is with her guidance that the couple standing before us has found the courage to hold each other no matter what comes their way.”
Laurance did the same to you. He picked the silver band from its box and put it on your finger with care. Your gaze had been lowered to watch the action, but when you lifted it there was a smile caressing your features that was brighter than any sun or blessing Laurance had ever seen.
He couldn’t help but give you one of his own, and he intertwined your fingers in a way to hold you closer.
“Legend says that Irene split her soul to give her lover eternal life, so he could stand by her side no matter the cost. We have no proof of this, however it is evident that the relationship shared between Laurance and Y/n is one that has been blessed by the Divine. One that will withstand the trials fate may have in store for them.”
A chuckle left your lips as your lover tried—and failed—to tear the silk fabric on the table in two. His eyes flicked to yours and he found himself laughing as well, complying when you gently took the fabric from his hands.
“Turn it,” you said, and when you did Laurance found it to be much easier to rip the white fabric. Together, the two of you tore it into two pieces. As your lord kept talking, you tied the ends together before handing it to her.
“Let this silk represent the strings of fate that connect these two.” Laurance took your hands in his, his thumbs rubbing soft circles across your knuckles as Lady Aphmau looped the fabric around your joined hands. “This silk will serve as Irene’s blessing on this marriage. It is with this tie that the people of Phoenix Drop . . . the people of Phoenix Drop . . .”
Aphmau stuttered, laughing to herself as she struggled to tie the fabric around yours and Laurance’s hands. She wasn’t new to her duties as lord, but she had never officiated a marriage before. Tying the knot in the way she had been shown was proving to be more difficult than she imagined.
Another laugh slipped past your lips as Garroth approached the altar. He was without his armor and helmet, a rare sight to see. Garroth reached out to guide Aphmau’s hands, effortlessly tying the knot and joining yours and Laurance’s hands.
Aphmau mumbled a brief thanks to him before clearing her throat and continuing. “As I was saying. It is with this tie that the people of Phoenix Drop wish you a happy, prosperous marriage. May Lady Irene take favor with your love and never let you go hungry. May you face minimal hardship, and may your union bring about the hope of joy in the lives of many.”
Aphmau draped another fabric—this one sheer and light blue, the color of the village—over your hands. Laurance’s hands stilled against yours. Instead, he held onto you with a steadfast grip, his hold on you unrelenting and sturdy.
“With the power that has been trusted in me as Lord of Phoenix Drop, I bind this marriage. Laurance Zvahl of Meteli, do you swear to promise yourself to your wife? Do you swear to hold her throughout life, no matter the difficulty you may face?”
Laurance smiled at you, his celestine gaze unwavering. “I do.”
Aphmau repeated the vows to you, turning her head to face you. There was a smile on her face as she spoke to you, asking if you would promise yourself to the conditions marriage posed.
You nodded, uttering a breathless, almost disbelieving, “I do.”
Aphmau bowed her head and took a step back. “Then I, Lady Aphmau of Phoenix Drop, give you my blessing. You may share your first kiss as husband and wife.”
Lotus petals—the flower of Irene—were thrown in the air. The sound of cheers and clapping were drowned out as Laurance kissed you with an unbridled passion and excitement you’d never seen him show before. He slipped his hand out of the knot, out from under the sheer fabric, to reach up and cup your face.
“You’re beautiful,” he mumbled into the kiss, hardly giving you a moment to breathe before his lips were pressed against yours again.
The day was cloudless and you were the picture of perfection against the cerulean sky. Laurance could think of no better atmosphere to get married under, and he hoped the rest of your marriage would bring about the same feeling he felt that day.
He refused to leave your side during the following celebration. He watched his sister and father welcome you into their family with open arms. Cadenza kissed your cheeks and Hayden placed a crown of white lilies on your head—an old tradition in the village of Meteli. Laurance smiled at the sight, pressing a brief kiss to your temple.
“And this is for you,” Cadrnza said once Hayden had gone. She handed you the box she had been holding.
“What is it?” you asked. It was tied with a green ribbon, and you held the end of it between two fingers, poised to open it.
Cadenza gently set her hands on yours, stopping you. “A little surprise for later.”
She winked at you and your eyes widened in embarrassment. You spared a glance to Laurance and found that his cheeks were red, though you weren’t able to look at him long.
Laurance cleared his throat. “Cadenza, that’s hardly appropriate.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Laurance,” Cadenza scolded. She rolled her eyes, pushing her long hair behind her shoulder. “My little brother just got married. Am I not allowed to gift him and his wife something they’d both enjoy?”
“Oh,” you squeaked, surprised. Your face heated and you reached up to push the neckline of your dress away from your body in a sad attempt to cool down. “Well . . . Regardless of what it is, we thank you, Cadenza.”
She gave you a warm smile and nodded. She placed an arm over your shoulders and pulled you in for a brief embrace. “Of course. I’m glad you’re the one Laurance chose.” She lowered her voice, whispering in your ear, “Between you and me, though, I don’t quite understand why you chose him, but-“
“Cadenza!” You couldn’t help but chuckle at Laurance’s short outburst. He reached over to playfully swat at his sister, but she effortlessly dodged.
“I’m only saying! Honestly, it’s a wonder you even got married considering how flirtatious you were with every girl you came across.” She scoffed. You could tell she had started getting hot under the sun because she began fanning herself with her hand. “Although, it doesn’t surprise me that Y/n is the one you chose. Irene, you never shut up about her. Every day he’d come home going on about-“
“That’s enough.”
Cadenza laughed, rolling her eyes before leaving you and Laurance alone. She left with the excuse that she was taking too much of your time, but from the way she gave you a wink as she walked away you assumed she’d be back.
Laurance wrapped his hand in yours, bringing it to his lips and leaving a soft kiss against your fingertips. “Ignore her,” he said. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“So she was lying when she said you never shut up about me?” you teased, giving Laurance’s hand a squeeze. His cheeks turned pink, and he softly shook his head.
“I will neither confirm nor deny.” You chuckled as Laurance kissed your palm. “All you need to know is that I’ve been smitten with you for quite a while.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
Laurance led you to a table where you dropped Cadenza’s gift off among he many others placed there. After, you found Lady Aphmau and thanked her for performing your ceremony. She apologized for messing up the knot, but you quickly reassured her by saying that it would only make you and Laurance stronger.
And for a fleeting moment of time, a period that would seem like seconds as the world moved forth, everything was perfect.
—
Laurance’s hands were not soft. They were calloused and the tips of his fingers had hardened from his years spent wielding a sword. Despite that, he brushed his hands against your body like you were a precious statue—one that would break if he applied too much pressure. Despite his rough hands, he took care in making sure to touch you gently.
“I love you,” he mumbled against your lips. You hummed in response, your fingers tangling in his hair. “I’m glad to have you as my wife. I must be the luckiest man in the world to have been able to charm a beauty like you.”
You smiled, pulling away just enough to look into his eyes. They were partially closed, clouded with the love and desire he held for you. That look was always there, but it was even more evident now that the two of you were alone.
You admired him. The slight bump in his nose, the curve of his lips. The way his hair was soft beneath your touch. The way his hands were wrapped around your waist, holding you as close as you could possibly be.
“You should let your hair grow,” you said after a moment. Laurance’s lips turned up.
“Yeah? You think I should do that?”
His touch—his always gentle touch—travelled up your spine. It was hardly there, making you shiver beneath the brush of his hands.
You nodded. “I liked when you had long hair.”
“You liked when it was orange?”
You huffed in amusement. You played with the strands of his hair, your hands not once faltering in their actions. “Maybe not orange. But I did like when you had long hair.”
Laurance hummed, and he leaned forward to kiss you again. He mumbled an agreement against your lips as he slowly lowered you to the neatly made bed. As his hands traced your figure—slowly and deliberately, as if he was memorizing your form—you relished in the feel of his warm body against yours. You took in every tingle his movement sent up your spine.
You circled back to the brief conversation from earlier. You needed to know if he felt the same toward you for as long as you had. “Cadenza said you never stopped talking about me.”
“I’d prefer it if we kept my sister’s name out of our bedroom,” your husband joked. He smiled down at you, his gaze flitting between the features of your face. “But she wasn’t lying. I do talk about you a lot.”
You couldn’t help but smile, the warmth of the moment enveloping you like a much needed embrace. “You are so in love with me,” you teased.
Laurance rolled his eyes. “And you are just as in love with me, so you can’t say anything.”
He kissed you before you could say anything else. His lips pressed against yours with such desire that you didn’t know what else to do but kiss him back. Again he traced your figure with his hands, his touch and hold filled with such softness you felt like melting.
Laurance pulled away. Just enough to say, “I’d like to see the lace Cadenza gave you.”
You chuckled against his mouth. Your eyes fluttered open and you gently pressed on his chest, pushing him far enough that you could properly look at him. “How do you even know it’s lace? Did you already look, Laurance Zvahl?”
“Why else would she have been so secretive about it?” he replied. He was still smiling. Irene, you loved that smile. “Is it a crime to want to see my wife in lace?”
You playfully scoffed. “Oh, Laurance, you are an insufferable man.”
He huffed in amusement, brushing his lips against yours once more wirh a featherlight touch. “Clearly I’m not insufferable enough. You married me.”
“That I did.” Laurance grabbed your hand, lifting it to his lips to press kisses to your fingers. “And I would do it again.”
He smiled, pressing your palm against his cheek. “Good.”
The two of you stayed like that for a moment. Your hand against Laurance’s face, grounding him. Reminding him that he retained his humanity despite what he had faced in the Nether. His pinky brushed against the band on your wedding finger, and his gaze flitted down to stare at it.
“I’ll get you a nicer one,” he said, noticing that the band had already begun to withstand scratches over months of using your hands. “Something made of more durable silver. Or gold. Diamond, if you want. I’ll get you anything.”
“I don’t care if the ring is paper, my love, so long as you stay beside me.”
Laurance smiled. He couldn’t help it, really. Any time he was with you his heart was filled with insurmountable amounts of joy. A happiness he couldn’t explain, and he found that he wanted to do nothing except hold you close and shower you with all the love he had.
His touch was gentle, as it always was. It stayed gentle, and he took great care in making sure you felt safe. He handled you like a priceless item and whispered praises in your ear, relishing in the way you held him in return.
“I love you,” he breathed. He peppered brief kisses across your face, your neck, your shoulders. Wherever Laurance could reach, he would kiss.
You felt like the luckiest person alive.
“I love you, too.”
—
The embrace you held Laurance in lasted so long that you were the only one left to board the ship. You weren’t entirely sure where it was going, but you had volunteered your help in taking care of the children that went.
Laurance had found you before you went. He’d grabbed into your hand and pulled you close while the ship was being loaded. Now, Zoey was standing at the ramp with Levin in her arms as she waited for you.
After a while, Laurance pressed his lips against your hair. He didn’t even kiss you, he just . . . stayed there.
“Please be safe,” he whispered to you. You couldn’t help but laugh.
“I should be saying that to you. You’re the one going off to fight.”
“I know, but . . .” Laurance took your hands in his and pulled away enough to look at you. He rubbed soft circles across your knuckles with his thumbs. “We’ve only been married four months and already we have to deal with something like this.”
You lightly exhaled, pulling your hands from his to cup his face. “I know, but this isn’t something we can’t handle. I will be safe with Zoey and the others, and I know you’ll come back to me soon enough. My husband is one of the best, after all.”
Laurance chuckled at your playful boasting. He leaned forward to brush a kiss against your lips and for that moment nothing else existed. There was no threat of looming war, no high priest intimidating your village, no worry of the inevitable death that would fall upon many families. For a fleeting second, the world was at peace simply because Laurance held you in his arms.
“This will pass and we’ll look back on this as a brief moment in our lives,” Laurance mumbled against your lips. He rested his forehead against yours, basking in your being. “Wait for me?”
You smiled. “I will. I’ll wait for you as long as it takes.”
“Y/n!” Dale called. You looked back to see him standing over the rail of the boat, urging you to board. “Come on! We have to go!”
You gave him a nod, turning back to Laurance. You smiled at him, leaning forward to kiss him again. One that was more sure. It sealed the promise that you would wait for him.
“Come back safe to me.”
“I will.”
You pecked his lips once more before reluctantly pulling away. Before you did, you gave his hand a firm squeeze.
Laurance watched you run up to the boat and up the ramp. He watched Dale push the ramp away and untie the roped holding the boat to the shore. You stood behind the rail, smiling at Laurance. You gave him a wave, which he returned.
He watched the boat until it was out of sight. Then, Laurance stepped away from the beach.
—
Fifteen years.
That fact hit Laurance differently each time he thought about it. Although, seeing what Meteli had grown into—what his sister rebuilt from the ashes with the help of their father—was the hardest hitting rock yet. He had spent all this time away—all that time that only seemed like minutes to him.
And where were you? Levin hadn’t said anything about you. Neither did Malachi. Dante barely uttered your name and avoided Laurance’s gaze the first time he asked. Dante acted like Laurance hadn’t even spoken any other time you were brought up. Donna had mumbled something about you that he couldn’t quite make out and was too nervous to ask her to repeat. And Cadenza, your best friend, hadn’t spoken a word of your being.
Were you dead? Laurance promised his time away from you would only seem like a fleeting moment on the beach. He promised it would be just a second of borrowed time until everything returned to normal and you were in his arms again. But since so much time had passed . . .
Where were you?
Laurance walked by Aphmau’s side, hand poised above the hilt of his sword, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Aphmau was talking to Cadenza, though Laurance wasn’t sure what about. He was almost positive he was meant to be listening, but he couldn’t bring himself to. His mind was racing, panicking in the absence of you. You hadn’t been in Phoenix Drop. Cadenza hadn’t said anything about you so he assumed you weren’t in New Meteli, either. Bright Port wasn’t too far. And there was always Scaleswind . . .
It felt like a weight was lifted from his chest when he heard Cadenza say your name. He became even lighter when she said you were living in New Meteli.
Laurance walked with a pep in his step after learning that. It might have been his imagination, but the journey to New Meteli felt quicker than it had been going. He was glad for that. Laurance had always hated traveling.
“Alright,” Cadenza began. In her arms she carried a basket of fresh fruit, going around and offering some to Aphmau and her friends, along with the guards of New Meteli. “Since all of you will be staying for a couple days, we’ll need to figure out sleep arrangements. I can probably take a few people here. Zack, is the guard quarters open at all?”
“I’m afraid not. If they had come any other week then it might, but with the new recruits from the guard academy the guard quarters is filled,” the black-haired guard, Zack, said. Laurance assumed he was the head guard.
Cadenza pressed her lips together, humming to herself as she thought. “Y/n’s still in Bright Port . . .”
“I believe she comes back today,” the blond one said. He was clearly younger than the other two Cadenza had called to her house, and his voice was softer. More timid.
Laurance perked up at your name, and so did Cadenza.
“Does she? Okay, that works out fine, then.” She murmured to herself for a moment. Something about you owning an inn that Laurance and his companions could stay in. “Vincent, will you wait at the gate for her? Oh, and tell her that she has a visitor.”
Vincent bowed his head. “Of course, Lady Cadenza.”
Laurance was glad when Vincent left. He no longer felt that suffocating thickness of air, but he now worried about you. He was afraid that Vincent—no matter how in control he said he was—would become a Shadow Knight and slice your head from your body.
But, he reminded himself, you had been living here for some time. There was no doubt you had been around Vincent, and if Cadenza still spoke your name then it meant he hadn’t killed you. Laurance calmed himself, loosening the hand he had unintentionally clenched.
Everything else that was said went in one ear and out the other. Laurance heard the words exchanged between Aphmau and his sister, but he couldn’t quite pin any sort of meaning to them. And when you followed Vincent through the door, every other sound seemed to dissipate in the air.
Laurance gaped. He almost couldn’t believe it was you. Your eyes were tired, your hair pulled out of your face with a bonnet. Your dress seemed worn and was faded, like it had gone through more uses and washes than it was made for. The sleeves were pulled above your elbows and you wiped your hands on the fabric wrapped around your waist. You looked nothing like the clean, proper girl Laurance had made his wife. Like Cadenza, you had made yourself into a more practical person as the years passed.
However, it was still you. The shape of your eyes was familiar and they still shone as brightly as the sun, despite the circles beneath them. The curve of your lips still made Laurance’s own curl up, and he let out a soft breath of relief.
Your gaze flicked to him. Your expression froze, smile slowly fading. Laurance feared for a moment that you weren’t happy to see him, but he realized it was only shock when you softly gasped and lifted a hand to your lips.
“Laurance?”
—
“Please can we move to Bright Port?“
You chuckled, glancing back at your son. You lifted a hand to protect your eyes from the blazing sun. Your ring sparkled in the light. “Enzo, we are not moving to Bright Port.”
“Why not?” Lorenzo groaned. He leaned back against the wall of the wagon. “There’s way more stuff to do and there’s actually kids my age there. Plus, with that many people, business will be better.”
You rolled your eyes, readjusting your daughter in your arms and turning yourself in the seat so you could face Lorenzo more clearly. “We can’t just up and move, darling. Carlos would have too much to take care of with the inn. Besides, Cadenza is in Meteli. She loves seeing you.”
Lorenzo groaned. “Yeah, but I’ve barely been able to see her since grandpa died.”
“Lady Cadenza has just been busy with adjusting to her duties as lord,” your husband cut in. His hold on the reigns didn’t falter and he kept his eyes on the road ahead, but Lorenzo turned his gaze to him. “Once she gets used to it she’ll want to see you again.”
Lorenzo groaned again. “But she’s been lord for almost two years now.”
“Hey,” you scolded. The gate of Meteli came into view, and you thanked Irene that you only had a couple more minutes. “Being a lord is hard work. Your aunt is still working on rebuilding the village to work in her favor and she’s facing a lot of societal pressure on top of that. Besides, your birthday is coming up. You can bet she’ll want to see you then.”
Lorenzo sighed, slouching down where he sat. It was clear there was more he wanted to say, but the wagon was closing in on Meteli and the conversation would go unresolved anyway. You softly exhaled, reaching back as best as you could to take his hand and squeeze it in comfort.
“We’ll talk more about this later, okay? Maybe you can convince me and Carlos to move.”
Lorenzo gave you a tight lipped smile and dropped the subject. You turned back so you were facing forward, adjusting your baby in your arms accordingly.
“How’s Maureen doing?” Carlos asked, his gaze flicking to you for a moment before turning back.
“She’s slept most of the way. I think the movement helps her,” you mused, brushing your thumb across your daughter’s brow bone. “I remember when Lorenzo was this small. He wouldn’t sleep for anything.” You smiled fondly, glancing back at your son. He had taken to picking at his nails and didn’t look up.
You softly hummed, your fond smile turning into something more bittersweet. As Lorenzo grew, he only looked more and more like his father. It was something that sent a sharp pang through your heart every time you looked at him and realized he was growing into his features.
“Lady Y/n!” Your head turned at the sound of your name. Carlos pulled the wagon to a stop in front of Meteli’s gate, where Vincent stood. You furrowed your brows in confusion, leaning forward to hear him better. “Lord Cadenza has requested your presence.”
“Really?” She hardly ever called for you if she thought you were on a trip or recovering from one. The last time she summoned you had been two years ago after a brief trip to Phoenix Drop. It had been to tell you and Lorenzo that Hayden was dead. “What for?”
Vincent shrugged. “We recently welcomed a group and she was wondering if you had any space in your inn. She also said there was someone you’d be interested in seeing.”
Now you were even more confused. You stared at Vincent for a moment, mouth slightly agape, before shaking your head and regathering your thoughts. “Of course. She wants to see me right now?” Vincent nodded. You sighed, turning to your husband. “I guess I’ll see you. Get settled at home and then meet me at Cadenza’s house, ‘kay?”
Carlos nodded. He leaned forward to brush a kiss against your temple and take Maureen from your arms. You turned to bid Lorenzo a brief farewell before Vincent helped you down. Once the two of you had gotten out of the way, Carlos urged the horses pulling the wagon forward.
“Did she say who I’d be interested in?” you questioned, walking by Vincent’s side.
He shook his head. “She didn’t say who, but I think it’s someone you used to know.”
You hummed. You ran through a list of people in your head, but you couldn’t think of anyone that would want to see you. You had just come back from visiting a friend in Bright Port. You had seen the residents of Phoenix Drop not too long ago. Nicole often exchanged letters with you to keep track with each other’s lives, and anyone else you could think of wasn’t someone you had built a relationship with before.
So who was it?
You were laughing at something Vincent had said as he pushed open Cadenza’s front door. Your laughter rang like a bell throughout the foyer and living room as you stepped inside and swept your gaze over the room.
And then your eyes caught sight of familiar faces—ones you hadn’t seen in over a decade. Your laughter and smile slowly died as your gaze ran over Aphmau. And then Katelyn, and Emmalyn. And then . . .
You softly gasped, lifting your hand to your mouth. You couldn’t believe your eyes. Right there—right in front of you—stood the husband you thought had been dead. Right in front of your eyes was the man that made you feel alive and in love all those years ago.
And he looked exactly the same as he did when you departed at the docks of Phoenix Drop. You must have been dreaming. No one could look so . . . unchanged after fifteen years of living.
“Laurance?” Your voice was breathless, his name coming out as a disbelieving whisper from your lips. You stood frozen, not knowing whether to jump for joy or back away from something that was so obviously not real.
Laurance stood. He nudged Cadenza, who had been talking with Aphmau, out of the way and was in front of you in a moment. His hands were on your arms, almost like he was making sure you were real. You found it ironic, since he was the one that had disappeared for fifteen years.
His lips were on yours before you could even form a coherent thought. He held you like he had been waiting. All the while you still had a hard time knowing if he was real. You heard Cadenza gasp and softly curse to herself.
You stayed frozen, not knowing what to do. Not knowing whether to kiss him back or stay still as a statue. Whether to push him away or bring him closer. The back of your neck burned, and you found yourself choosing to pull away for a breath of air.
Neither of you said a word. You spent a moment just looking at each other, taking each other in. Tears sprung to your eyes and you took a strangled breath. You cover your mouth to muffle it and take in the moment further, sure that you were dreaming.
That’s when Laurance saw it—the golden band embellished with a circle diamond on your finger. His gaze hardened, and once again it hit him that you hadn’t seen him for fifteen years, no matter how short that time felt for him.
Laurance could only afford to buy you a silver ring—one that easily dented and scratched—but during that time away you had found someone that could get you better. Someone that could provide you with stability and wealth.
You had lived what seemed to be an entire lifetime without him.
“Are you real?” you found yourself whispering, slowly lowering your hand. Your voice came out quiet, scared, almost. Like the dream would shatter if you acknowledged its illusion.
Laurance found it in himself to nod. “I am. I’m here, Y/n.”
“Oh, my Irene,” you gasped, covering your mouth again. You still couldn’t believe it. You had dreamed of the moment you would be able to hold Laurance in your arms again. You dreamed of the moment you would be able to sit with your old lover and tell him everything that had happened. The moment you would spill all of your grievances and regrets to him. The stolen moment where you told him he had a son.
Tears slipped from your eyes, falling in hot streaks down your cheeks. You didn’t know what to do. You had imagined your reunion over and over, hundreds of times before. You rehearsed what you would say, guessed what Laurance would say, but now that the unbelievable moment was staring you in the face, you didn’t know what to do.
“Thank you, Vincent.” You hardly processed the sound of your husband’s voice ushering Lorenzo into Cadenza’s house. Standing there, barely a foot across from Laurance, made the rest of the world disappear in the same way it did fifteen years ago on your wedding day. The rest of the world disappeared the same way it did that day on the beach, the last time you saw him.
“Mom, are you okay?” Lorenzo placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, pulling you out of your astonished stupor. You softly gasped again, turning to face your son. The spitting image of his father.
You managed to softly nod, your gaze flicking between him and Laurance. You still found it hard to believe. You could walk to the grave you had given Laurance, and yet here he was. You never imagined you’d be able to see him standing next to his son.
You cleared your throat, nodding more surely. “I’m fine,” you said with a hoarse voice. “Fine. Uhm, Carlos.”
Your husband stepped forward. He held Maureen in his arms, but the moment you held your arms out for her, he handed his daughter over. He stayed close, however, and wrapped an arm around your shoulder.
“I’m right here,” he whispered, only loud enough for you to hear it. You nodded, unable to meet his gaze as you held Maureen close. There was no doubt that he recognized Laurance. You and Cadenza had both shown Carlos pictures of him. You’d both told him about the man you thought had been dead.
You swallowed the pit in your throat. “This is Carlos,” you said, nodding slightly to the man next to you. “My . . . husband.”
You struggled to say that last word. It felt weird to say, even though it never had been before. The entire situation felt surreal, and the way everyone else in the room seemed to be closely watching the interaction didn’t help.
You watched Laurance’s mood change. It was evident in the way his eyes dulled and his brows pulled together by just a fraction. Despite that, Laurance played nice and held his hand out for Carlos to shake.
After the two shook hands and exchanged pleasantries in meeting, you motioned to the baby in your arms. “This is my daughter, Maureen.” Laurance smiled at her, the same one you had fallen in love with years ago. Finally, you lifted your hand and placed it on your son’s shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. You took a breath, your voice softening as you spoke. “And this is Lorenzo, my son. Lorenzo, this is Laurance.”
Realization flashed across both of their faces. Laurance’s gaze flitted all across your son’s face, recognizing the bump in his nose, the curve of his lips, the line of his brows, the shape of his eyes. Even Lorenzo’s hair and eye color was a near copy to what Laurance had seen countless times in the mirror.
Lorenzo’s head turned to face you so fast you were almost surprised his neck didn’t snap. His brows were pulled together, bunching in the exact same way Laurance’s did. “You told me he was dead,” he said.
“I thought he was,” you whispered. Carlos hadn’t said another word, but the weight of his arms across your shoulders served as a way to ground you. Even if you felt like you were going to shatter any moment.
“Lorenzo, how old are you?” Laurance asked. The crease in your son’s brow smoothed as he looked at Laurance. The action nearly sends you down a spiral.
“Fourteen,” he replied. “I turn fifteen in three weeks.”
Laurance’s eyes slightly widened. His gaze flicked to you, his celestine eyes seeming to search in the depths of your heart for any sort of information. “Is he . . . ?”
You nod, suddenly feeling very overwhelmed. Seeing your son and former lover standing together was something you never thought you’d experience. Not only was it like you were seeing double with how identical they looked, but for the past fifteen years you had grappled with the fact that one of them was dead.
You opened your mouth to speak, but a soft cry fell from your lips instead. It was completely involuntary, and the small action made you realize that you couldn’t handle whatever was happening, dream or not.
“I can’t do this.” You had whispered it to yourself, but Carlos heard your comment and in response softly squeezed your shoulder. The weight of his arm fell away and he reached for your daughter without being asked.
“Go outside and take a moment to breathe and clear your mind. I’ve got Maureen, my love,” he told you. You didn’t move for a moment, marvelling in the fact that your husband somehow knew what you needed. You sniffed, softly nodding before turning and leaving Cadenza’s house.
For a long moment, you paced up and down the steps to Cadenza’s front door, trying to get control of your breathing and stop yourself from crying. You realized that wasn’t happening, though, and sat yourself on the bottom step. You pulled your knees to your chest and wrapped your arms around them, laying your head against your crossed arms and allowing yourself to cry.
You hardly heard the door open and close behind you. It wasn’t long until you felt someone sit beside you and place a gentle hand in the middle of your back, rubbing small circles as a way to comfort you. When you looked up to see who it was, Cadenza offered you a soft smile.
“Are you alright?” she asked, her voice hushed. You lifted your head and used the heels of your hands to wipe at your tear stained cheeks.
“Of course not,” you bluntly replied. Despite yourself, you laughed. A headache was starting to form behind your eyes, so you closed them and began rubbing your temples to soothe it. “Cadenza, this isn’t real. It can’t be. He- Laurance is dead. He’s been dead for fifteen years, I- How is he here?”
“I know,” your friend said. She wrapped her arm around your shoulders properly, pulling you closer so she could embrace you. “He came into Meteli with Aphmau and everyone else a few hours ago. He and Aphmau explained that they got stuck in the Irene dimension.”
You scoffed, opening your eyes and facing her. “The Irene dimension? Seriously, Cadenza? I’m supposed to believe that he was not only in another dimension, but that he was in a dimension that not even the most knowledgeable scholars of Irene believe is a real place?”
Cadenza pressed her lips into a line. “I still don’t fully believe it myself. But, it makes sense, doesn’t it? All those theorists say a minute there is a year in our world . . . Besides, it’s what everyone that went missing is saying, so maybe it isn’t so unbelievable.”
“Well it’s ridiculous.” But was it really? Both you and Laurance had been devout followers of Irene. On more than one occasion the two of you had entertained conversations about sanctuaries she created for herself—ones where she could rest without the hassle of mortals. She was a Divine Warrior, and Enki did know how to create other worlds.
You considered the fact that Laurance was in this other dimension. “If . . . If I had known he were still alive I would have waited.” Even though you promised him all those years ago that you would.
Cadenza didn’t need you to elaborate. She knew that you would have waited for him to come back, no matter how long it took. In response to your comment, she huffed. “And waste the time you spent building the life you have now?”
“It would have been different if I had known that Laurance was alive.”
“Even so, there would have been no telling how long you would have been waiting,” Cadenza stated. “You would have spent fifteen years being miserable and missing him? You would give up everything you remade for yourself? Your husband, your children.”
Cadenza’s words hit you. She was right, as much as you didn’t want to admit it.
“You are who you are because Laurance was dead,” she continued. You stared off at the village paths, watching citizens walk along the road. They were accompanied by children or pets or lovers, and something about it reminded you that everyone lived their own life. “Lorenzo is who he is because his father was dead. You cannot let yourself dwell on what could have been, Y/n, because there is no way we could know how waiting for him would have turned out.”
She stopped talking, allowing you a moment to stew in her words. After a minute, you sighed and closed your eyes again.
You wished with all your being that you could have waited for him. You wished that life had gone just a little differently, that one small thing would be changed in the past. Where would that put you now? Surely you’d still be happy with Laurance and your child.
But Cadenza was right. Dwelling on what ifs wouldn’t help anyone, and the realization made your eyes burn.
“I don’t know what to do,” you whispered, your voice cracking as you fought another wave of tears.
Cadenza squeezed your shoulder again. “Just do your best. That’s all you can do.”
You gave her a soft nod, letting out a heavy breath.
You and Cadenza sat together on the bottom step leading to her house for what might have been hours. Neither of you spoke. Neither of you needed to. You both knew that you simply needed to be together in that moment because reflecting on it, what had she been thinking when she saw that she hadn’t lost all the family she’d ever known? She had you and Lorenzo, of course, but you couldn’t replace Laurance and Hayden and Joh and you knew that.
You wrapped your own arm around Cadenza’s shoulder and rested your heads against each other. You had always been each other’s support. She was there for you throughout both of your pregnancies. You had been there for her during the death of both her fathers. Together, the two of your mourned the loss of Laurance.
And you would continue to support each other, no matter what happened.
—
Hours later, long after the sun had set and you had recuperated with Laurance and your family, you found yourself basking in the soft breeze in a meadow on the outskirts of New Meteli beneath the stars.
Laurance had told you everything. He started with the war, explaining how he watched you sail off with Zoey and the other women and children of Phoenix Drop. He said he had been completely unaware that you were pregnant, just as you had been.
He went on to detail Garroth’s betrayal and how it led them to the Irene dimension. He told you about the battle and how Zoey rescued them. When he shared that they had to leave Garroth behind in order to prevent Zane from also leaving, you teared up. Laurance told you that he and the group that went had been trying to figure out how to get him back.
After that, you had gone home for a bit. The six of them followed your family to the inn and settled in their respective rooms. Lorenzo turned in after tucking Maureen into bed, which left you and Carlos.
You told him everything from that day. When you told him that Laurance had kissed you and that you had considered kissing him back, Carlos didn’t blame you. He said that if Mary Ann suddenly came back to life, then he likely would have done the same. You had smiled and kissed his cheek, saying you were thankful he understood your situation.
“I love you, Carlos,” you had told him. He had pulled you into an embrace and planted a kiss on your temple.
“I know you do,” he had said, rubbing your arm. “I love you, too, but I also know what it’s like to lose a spouse.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“I could never be. Not for something like this.”
Now, you sat in a meadow. Your eyes were closed and you welcomed the chill of the breeze around you. You didn’t know how long you had been sitting there, but it had been long enough for you to mostly clear your mind and regather yourself.
“I thought I’d find you here.” You opened your eyes and turned your head. Laurance approached you, his old armour shimmering under the moonlight. “You always did like contemplating in nature’s company. Especially beneath the stars.”
You couldn’t help but let a small smile grace your lips as Laurance settled himself beside you. “I guess no matter how much time passes, some things don’t change.”
He hummed. The moment reminded you of your first couple rendezvous with him. The ones where you were aware of each other’s feelings but too shy to act on any of them.
Laurance blew out a breath. “So.”
“So.”
Laurance chuckled, looking up at the stars. “How have the past fifteen years been?”
You softly shook your head, glancing down at where your hands were intwined in your lap. You picked at your cuticles as you spoke. “Good, I suppose. I had Lorenzo. I stayed with Dante for a bit in Phoenix Drop before deciding to help Cadenza and Hayden rebuild. After a while I met Carlos. We got married, had a daughter . . . You know.”
Laurance hummed again. He kept his stare trained on the sky, tracing the constellations he knew. “Carlos . . . Is he good to you?”
You nodded. “The best. He grounds me when I go too high, makes me breakfast every morning. He treats Lorenzo like his own son.” You smiled fondly, finally looking up to Laurance. “He’s a lot like you, actually.”
“A hopeless romantic and flirt?” You laughed, but nodded all the same. Laurance brought himself to meet your gaze and a smile graced his features. “Wow, you really do have a type.”
“Oh.” You reached forward to playfully smack him in the shoulder, and suddenly you were reminded of why you had fallen in love with Laurance in the first place.. He was so easy to talk to. It didn’t take much for you to be charmed by him and the two of you never had a dull moment. You playfully rolled your eyes. “He’s a lot like me, too, so it isn’t just that.”
“How so?”
You shrugged. “We’re in the same boat. His wife succumbed to an illness eight years ago. Her name was Mary Ann. It was actually why he came to New Meteli in the first place. He had been living in Borobos with Mary Ann and her family, but once she died he decided to come back to his own family.” You looked back down at your hands, picking at your nails again. “It’s actually how we started talking. I told him I knew how he felt and told him about you. He told me about Mary Ann, and we just kinda . . . went from there.”
“But you’re happy with him?” There was a lightness to Laurance’s voice. It almost seemed as if he hoped your answer was no so he could swoop in and save you.
You nodded, looking up to meet his gaze. “I am.”
Laurance pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything else. The two of you spent a moment in silence, just looking at each other. You looked at the man you had lost so long ago and Laurance admired the woman you had become.
“What’s Lorenzo like?” he asked after a long moment.
You smiled, pushing hair out of your face and pulling it over your shoulder. “Surprisingly a lot like his father,” you teased. A breath of amusement fell from your lips. “He’s incredibly restless, always wanting to help others. He says he wants to become a guard.”
Laurance’s lips curled up. “Just like his dad.”
You laughed, tears pricking at your eyes. You reached up to wipe them away before they had a chance to fall. “Yes, just like his dad.” Another moment of silence passed. The breath you took broke it. “You’ll be proud of him.”
“I’m sure.” Laurance noticed the tears building on your waterline and reached forward to brush his thumb against your cheek. After a fleeting touch, you pulled back and turned your head away. Defeated, Laurance let his hand drop. “What’s your daughter’s name?” he asked after a tense second.
“Maureen,” you replied. “We named her after Mary Ann since Carlos didn’t have a kid with her. And because Lorenzo is named after you.”
“He is?” You nodded. “Why?”
You let out a heavy breath, looking back down at your lap. “I was scared that if he ended up looking like me then you’d be gone forever.”
Laurance softly laughed to himself, trying to make light of the situation. “Well, he’s the spitting image of me.” The comment made you laugh as well. “Honestly, I looked at him and thought I was looking in a mirror.”
“I know,” you laughed. “I’m glad he does. It’s a reminder that you’ve been with me all these years.” You sniffed, shaking your head and looking up at the sky. The tears burned in your eyes more persistently, and you hoped that looking up would stop you from crying. “Oh, I was so mad when he came out with blue eyes and brown hair. He looked nothing like me, and when he was born I thought you had just . . . left me. I didn’t want Lorenzo to be a painful reminder of that.”
“And yet, you named him after me?”
You waved him off. “Don’t question what I was thinking. I was pregnant.”
The two of you laughed. For a moment, you were taken back to when you first met. The easy conversation and laughs, the way Laurance could pull any response from you that he wanted despite how nervous you made him
When your laughter died you sniffed, wiping your eyes and turning to look at him. “It’s really nice to see you again, Laurance.”
And just like that you were crying. You tried not to—you really did—but the bizarreness of the entire situation made you unable to hold anything back. Laurance reached forward and you let him pull you into his arms. It was an embrace you had missed for fifteen years. One you never thought you’d feel again so you let yourself be pulled in the moment. You let yourself, for just that moment, pretend that Laurance hadn’t been gone for fifteen years. You let yourself pretend that the two of you had stayed together, that you had waited for him. For a moment, you imagined what that life might have been like.
“I love you,” Laurance,” you softly said once you were able to catch a full breath. His arms tightened around you and he hid his face in the top of your head. “There will always be some part of my heart that belongs to you for the rest of my life. But I’m not the same person as I was. I’ve grown and have come to accept that you died, and . . .”
You trailed off. Now you knew he wasn’t dead. You knew seeing him wasn’t just another dream. You knew that, if you really wanted to, you could take him back as your husband. But . . . You didn’t want that. You were happy with Carlos. You understood each other and had helped each other grieve. Maybe if you hadn’t married Carlos, if you had stuck by your promise and just waited for Laurance, you’d have taken him back. But nothing could replace the relationship you had built with Carlos.
“I can’t be with you again,” you said. It was hard to say, especially when Laurance held you in his arms. “And it’s not because-”
“It’s alright.” You were almost thankful Laurance cut you off because you weren’t sure what you were going to say. “I understand. You thought I was dead, and before that you thought I’d deserted you. I don’t blame you for moving on.”
You nodded against him, letting go of the breath that had been caught in your throat. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from your shoulders.
“I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you,” you said. It wasn’t something you felt guilty about, but you still felt that you owed Laurance that apology.
“Don’t be. You had no way of knowing I would come back. Or when, for that matter. I would rather you move on than spend fifteen years being miserable and lonely while waiting for me.”
You hummed, a faint smile painting itself on your lips. “That’s what Cadenza told me after Dante’s daughter was born.”
Laurance laughed, the sound giving you the same feeling as hearing the birds chirping on the first day of spring. “Cadenza was right. Maybe it’s because she’s my sister.” You laughed, finally pulling yourself out of Laurance’s embrace so he could see the way you teasingly rolled your eyes. As you reached up to dry your cheeks, Laurance caught sight of your golden ring and a wistful smile found itself on his face. “Are you really happy with Carlos?”
You nodded. “I am, Laurance. I’m so happy with him.”
“Then don’t worry about us.” He reached up to give your shoulder a comforting squeeze. “As long as you’re happy with Carlos and he treats you right, then our time has passed. You’ve moved on from me, and it’s clear you don’t love me in the same way you did.”
You smiled at him. “Thank you for making this easier.”
“It would be cruel of me to make it more difficult. I know it’s already hard seeing me again.” You nodded in response. This time the silence that enveloped the two of you was comfortable. There was a new air of resolve and you no longer felt any pressure. “My only request is that you and Carlos let me spend time with Lorenzo. I know he also thought I was dead, but . . . I’d like to be a father to him.”
You laughed, finding it ridiculous that Laurance thought you would take that away from him. “Of course I will, Laurance. I was actually thinking about letting him go back to Phoenix Drop with you, if that’s alright.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You could show him all the places that are important to you. Tell him what they mean.”
Laurance smiled. This time, he looked like he was about to cry. He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck and nodded. “That would be nice.”
Maybe in another timeline you were still happily married to Laurance. Maybe the two of you were still in Phoenix Drop, living happily with Lorenzo and a happy girl named Mona and another boy named Daniel. The two of you would be living in a house built on the shore with the help of Lady Aphmau and Garroth and Dante and whoever else had decided to pitch in. Every day Laurance would go off to fulfill his duties as second in command and every day he would come home and greet you with a kiss. The two of you would spend dinner with your children every day.
He would hold you just as gently as he always had. You’d laugh against each other’s lips and every night he would hold you close in his arms. The two of you would age together and watch your children grow, living life in the same way you had.
But that wasn’t in this lifetime. In this lifetime, you had mourned the loss of Laurance and healed from it. Part of you would always belong to him, as you had said, but it was no longer the right time for your love. You had grown into a different person, one you weren’t sure Laurance would like the same way he did.
You were okay with that. Your love had run its course and it was time to grow apart. You would stay in each other’s life, but no longer would your fates be entangled as it was years ago.
Sometimes, when the day was cloudless and the sky was cerulean, Laurance would look up and wonder what that life would be like. He would yearn for a life where he hadn’t disappeared for fifteen years and sometimes he would beg the Divine to give him back the lost time. They never answered, and Laurance was left feeling like a fool for wishing for something that was so far out of his reach.
But as time passed, he would long for those dreamlike days less and less. He would learn to grow with you not as a lover, but as a companion. It would take a long time, but Laurance would find happiness in the days that had become his reality. He would eventually find it in himself to feel content, even if this was far from what he wanted.
No matter how much time passed, though—no matter how at peace he felt with the life he was living—some part of Laurance would always long for skies of blue.
this idea came to me as I was listening to “Daydream” by Elliot James Reay and i literally rushed to write it
also sorry that this is so long I got excited while writing it :( i hope you guys enjoyed though and that you aren’t too sad anywayssssss
TAGGING: @mellozhi @garrothswiferealnotfake @lilfarquad if you’d like to be added to the mcd or laurance taglist (or any other one) comment or DM to let me know!!
FORGET ABOUT SMUT. I LOVE IT BUT PLEASE I AM TIRED OF IT. I NEED ANGST. I NEED GUT WRENCHING EMOTIONAL TURMOIL THAT MAKES ME SICK TO MY STOMACH. I NEED TO BAWL JUST FROM THINKING ABOUT IT.
Have you ever had a fictional crush on a character, and it's always been there, but suddenly you're obsessing with them more? Like, somehow, you're even more feral towards them and they consume your mind even more. I believe the new term for it is hyperfixation^2
Summary: As Aaron Hotchner's eldest kid (and eldest daughter) you don't talk to him. Point blank period, his contact number is collecting dust in your list of people to call. However, he'll have sweep the grime off your number if he wants to get this case solved.
Warnings: Can be lowkey graphic, descriptions of violence, SA attempt, Daddy issues, smut, murder attempts, sororities, ambiguous ending (it's kinda up to y'all atp), Hotch says "fornication" once, Hotch (his parenting style), genius reader strikes again (girl Spencer Reid but Hotchner edition) Actual murder. Emotions. Friends. Reader is old money on Mama's side of things. Crazy inaccurate and ambiguous things. No editing (are we surprised).
Pairings: (Platonic) Aaron Hotchner x Hotchner!Reader, Spencer Reid x Hotchner!Reader (it's more background than focus). Fem reader as always.
A/N: Guys for once I'm not super stoned (I'm eating as edible as I speak) but I am in a shit ton of pain rn (mmmm phantom pain goes insane) and I churned this out. Also I hope yall know I am writing this shit with literally one hand so these are definitely labours of love.
WC: 29.5K
Spencer had, once upon a time, considered going to UC Berkeley but ultimately decided not to. However, he can still appreciate a good campus full of people determined to make it in the world. Maybe in a different life he would’ve gone to school out in San Francisco, but it is not this life, and certainly not in this moment. Not when the third body has shown up on campus, posed as a statue, but clearly not one. Not when there’s exposed ribs, cheek ripped open to show off the teeth, fingers bent in all the unnatural ways.
Someone had been killing girls and posing them as statues around campus, it was done quickly, efficiently, and they were never seen. The work some would say is beautiful, a statement made about women and the obscene robbery of self-identity they face. At the end of the day the girls were real though, and the week prior they had been working towards degrees, they had families, friends, they were someone. The call for help with the case comes after the third statue went up in front of the library, her body contorted and defiled for all to see.
There was only one person who saw her -Rosey- last, and his name is Joseph Sings. A senior double major for classic art and theology. He’d been a dead end, truthful too, when he said that the last time he saw her she was going to the library to work on a project. They’d interviewed the girls’ friend group, who’d been partially inconsolable and partially determined to help and partially scared out of their minds. Nothing came of it, and so they decided to walk around the campus, talk to the professors, the student body, just to see if they could find anything.
Hotch, for some reason or another, had been an absolute ass throughout the entirety of the case so far. Body tensed as if he were ready to pounce at any given moment, frown somehow more severe, and his eyes the definition of broody. Morgan had texted Garcia about it no less than three times but didn’t risk anymore in case Hotch got onto him about that too. He seemed to be waiting for something, like a shoe to drop, but didn’t even know what he was looking for.
One thing was clear though; There was nothing to be found from the university. They left once that became clear, settling into their designated spot in the university police department's office. It felt odd to be surrounded by so many young people, hearing the way they talked to each other and bounced around one another. Lively, if a police department could be described as such. They had three bodies, dead end witnesses, and an invisible clock ticking behind them, reminding them that there wasn’t much time between this and the next victim.
Unfortunately by day three the next victim had been picked: Natalie Clawson. A senior in the data science program, she had a job set up as a data analyst for Ulta Beauty. This time they call in the friend group, especially since two of them last saw her. Cameron, again, and then you. You who stands at the front of the group, hair blown out perfectly, your makeup sharp like the rest of your outfit. You’ve got a black mini skirt on over a pair of tights, a form fitting button down clinging to your figure, a blazer over your arm along with the Birkin bag you’re sporting, gold jewelry glinting off your ears, neck, and wrists, only one ring on your hand. Red bottom shoes and a scent like heaven clinging to you, you look highly unimpressed when they emerge.
For a moment they still under the weight of your disgust that you haven’t even bothered to disguise, “Nice of you to show your face around here for once.”
Hotch sighs, head tilting back as he resists the urge to drag his hands down his face, “Can we please focus on the case for the moment? Everything else can come after.”
Wrong words to say judging by the way your glare sharpens, mouth pulling into a line that speaks of unfathomable disappointment, “Alright. Lead the way Sir.”
All around both parties exchange looks of absolute bafflement, shrugging shoulders as they attempt to piece together the information. Especially when you and Hotch wind up falling into step together, although you’re clearly agitated by him and he’s stuck between trying to concentrate or talking to you. There’s not a word said that could warm the frigid silence you and him have created around each other, spreading to everyone else as well.
Once inside Hotch turns to look at you all, fingers already pointing, “Morgan take Cameron again, Emily, you can take her. We’ll interview the rest of them here.”
He turns to you, something like a plea in his eyes when you glare right back at him, “We just need information.”
You scoff, eyes already rolling in a way that surprises your friends. To them you’re the epitome of future lawyer, president, whoever. Clean cut lines, never a minute off the dot for meetings and deadlines, cold but present, passionate too, even if it shows in different ways. You don’t do things like roll your eyes, and they don’t ever see Hotch tilt his head back in such clear, obvious frustration that it’s almost jarring.
“Just information is what you shall receive then. Let’s not waste time.”
The four of you leave the rest of them in confused but charged silence, one that Hotch doesn’t elaborate on any further as they start to talk to the friends. Camerons’ goes by quicker, mostly because they’ve already interviewed him before, and Emily? Well, she’s trying to get through to you but it’s like talking to a wall of steel. You give her clinically perfect answers, everything remembered clear as day and with all the details she could need.
You’re innocent, that much is clear, and you’re also not going to let her dive deeper than that. She has the things she needs to know, but your personal life is made abundantly clear that it is just that; Personal. You don’t know her and she can profile you all she wants but she’s never going to get anywhere further than that. She comes back an hour later exhausted with her efforts knowing that she’s lost to a twenty-two year old college girl.
Hotch raises his brow at you when you both return, “You gave her a hard time.”
You grab your blazer and purse, shrugging, “I gave her the information needed. Are we done now?”
“Technically we have what we can get, but there’s a few more things we need to go over. Did Natalie have any enemies or on the flipside, admirers?”
The purse gets set down with a thump, “Natalie was good and kind, she didn’t like Aiden Thomas because he’s arrogant, she didn’t like Shaera Kingsley because she’s stuck-up and sleeps her way to good grades, and she’ll sleep her way into a comfortable life. One where she’ll never amount to anything besides an occasional name on a check for a donation to charity. She didn’t like Julian Borough because he liked to hit on her even after she told him she wasn’t interested, but like clockwork he invites her to his frats party every two weeks whenever they throw. These are the three people she complained about the most and saw on a somewhat average basis. The closest to admirer and enemy she possessed.”
“What about professors, did she have good relationships with them?”
Your eyes flash, something dangerous there, “Freshman year she didn’t like Professor Angela Crone because of the way she graded things. Sophomore year she didn’t care for Professors Boeing and Chimney, Boeing for the way he taught and Chimney for his material, she thought he didn’t understand it correctly. Junior year her least favorite professor was Monoville, she had clashing opinions that were often verbalized. This past semester her least favorite is Professor Monroe for how he teaches, she thought it was incompatible for the majority of those taking his class, all the TAs she got along with.”
“Any conflicts in the friend group here with her?”
“Beyond skirmishes of who puked in whose car and if someone stood someone up there’s nothing that could reasonably result in something like this.”
“Friends outside of you all, did she have very many?”
“She’s in a sorority, pi beta phi, you should ask the sisters, or I can tell you and we can sit here for two hours talking about all her relationships with the sorority sisters and then we can go another four hours talking about where she stands with the other sororities, and tomorrow we can go over the frats. But just so you know in her sorority alone there’s 178 current members. If we factor in that there’s 1,893 sorority sisters on campus and 1,957 fraternity brothers then we’re looking at 3,850 relationships that go one on one alone. Then you factor in dynamics between a third variable that interrupts the one on one relationship because humans are unpredictable. You can be friends with someone on a solo level and not like each other in a group setting, sometimes vice versa. This leaves us with 7,419,000 possible relationship outcomes surrounding one person.”
Automatically they turned to look at Spencer, who was looking at you with something funny in his eye, like he’d struck gold as you were speaking, “Reid, is that right?”
He jolted, just for a second, cheeks pinkening at having been called out, “Yes, she’s correct, and that’s the simplified number too. We don’t have enough time to go over everything and ask all these people. We need to make an overall statement, might help narrow things down.”
You nod, finger tapping against your bag, “If you’re interested in watching how they’ll react to the news, separate them into their cliques. I trust you, the profilers, to figure out who goes with who. Do this for pi beta phi, kappa kappa gamma, and delta gamma. The rest of them can withstand a mass announcement if you go house to house. Do this, and you’ll have until approximately midnight before all of campus knows about your involvement with the case.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
His question makes you shrug, “Either you’ve finally found your seats for the unsubs show or you’ll figure it out. I hope that it’s the latter, now, is there anything else you all need from us? Or can I go get briefed on my case?”
Hotch perks up, just a bit, “You have a case?”
You don’t glare this time, you just look at him with that measured look that spells for a knife about to be twisted, “I’m a lawyer, didn’t you know that? Aren’t you happy you predicted me right?”
“I didn’t know you were still interested in pursuing law.”
“You don’t know what I’m interested in, period. You made sure of that too.”
“I know.”
For a second you simply stare at him, so clearly displeased, but then you turn on your heel to stride out the door, letting it slam shut behind you as you make your way out of the building. They watch you go, your imposing figure quickly vanishing into the foray of people, and then around the corner. Katalina, one of your close friends, peers at him, “You’re, you’re Agent Hotchner, aren’t you?”
He looks at the young woman, “What gave it away?”
“You both glare the same way. Like you’ll keep people away with it.”
Emily is the one to connect the dots, “She’s your daughter. Oh my god you have a daughter?”
Hotch sighs, standing as he does, “Yes, if she’ll even admit it.”
Morgan stares, then he looks at Spencer, who’s looking at Hotch funny, then back to said man, “She seemed ecstatic to see you again, I thought you and Haley had been married this whole time.”
“Not always, we dated in high school and broke up after college, I came out to San Francisco to be a prosecutor, I met her mother, we wound up having her, and then I left for the BAU…and Haley.”
Your friends wince but they stand up too, gathering their things and quietly muttering goodbyes as the team is left in an awkward, strained silence. He shuts his eyes briefly before clenching his hands once, then he smoothes them out, “I will tell you this once, and only once. I was in her life, consistently, and then I was not. I will not be answering any questions regarding our relationship, but she can do as she pleases.”
And that’s that.
____________
Hotch knows it’s a bad idea to knock on your door, but he does it anyway. He hadn’t known what your face looked like as an adult until now and it’s hard to reconcile the idea of you, baby faced with your wild hair and dirt stained cheeks. With you now, sharp featured and dark lined lips, high heels and degrees under your belt despite being twenty-two and in your senior year of college (again). He paid for one semester of your college, always, which was how he knew where you were going, but beyond that he didn’t know anything.
Part of him hadn’t expected to actually see you today, he’d thought you might accept under the condition that he not be there, but you’d shown up without protest. You had wanted to see him, despite it all. He knocks on the door, and you answer him a moment later. You’re still dressed as you were earlier but you’re no longer wearing the heels, those have been tucked away already. He smells something cooking from inside, something good and something that reminds him of the life he left behind, the life he traded.
“Can I help you with something?”
He nods, glancing inside, “Can I come in?”
Your jaw works as you think it over before you step aside, letting him in. Your apartment isn’t what he expected, he’d thought you’d go for a minimalist look, something that fit the coldness rolling off of you. It’s a pleasant surprise when he sees the artwork displayed on the wall in alternating heights and placements, colorful flower arrangements displayed proudly with thick coffee table books scattered around the place. You’ve got pictures on display, deep reds, purples, your home is borderline whimsical.
“Expecting somebody?”
“No.”
He slips his shoes off because you and your mother were always adamant about no shoes in the house. A rule that used to make you giggle. He remembered from when you were little, your chubby fingers prying at his laces that he’d purposely unlace slowly just to make you laugh with impatience and attempt to help or tug him inside. He’d given that up though, and now you won’t look him in the eye. He’s not even really welcomed into your apartment.
If he stayed would he have a key to your apartment just for emergencies? Would his picture be up there beside the one of you and your mother? He doesn’t know, he’ll never figure it out either. Instead he turns his attention back to you, to your kitchen and whatever you’re cooking. There’s textbooks open, stacks of files open, scattered almost, but he sees the control in your chaotic spread, “What has your schooling looked like?”
He watches you tense, lips pursing for a minute as you stir the liquid in your pot, “I graduated high school at fourteen after six months of being there, I then went here, to Berkeley, for political science and psychology. I was…determined, to do as much as I could. I did two degrees in two years, went to law school, got it done in two years, I was eighteen when I finished. I spent nineteen as a public defender, then I came back to school so I could study linguistics and neuroscience.”
“What’s your IQ?”
“176, it matches my LSAT scores.”
“When did they conclude that you’re a genius?”
“When I turned eight.”
After you left. It goes unspoken, but it’s true. Hotch left when you were five for Seattle, he’d spend the next six years there, keeping contact consistently up until you were eleven, when he was transferred to the BAU in Quantico. It was after the transfer, after he reconnected with Haley (who was almost your middle name), communication started to fall apart. You were sixteen when it finally clicked in your head that he didn’t want anything to do with you, or at least you just weren’t high enough on his list of priorities to keep up with. You were sixteen and graduating from UC Berkeley with two degrees under your belt and he didn’t show up to it. He’d left the seat empty, so you stopped saving one for him.
He’d gone to UC Berkeley for his degree, and you followed him in his footsteps because no matter what you did you just couldn’t escape him or his legacy that literally flowed through your veins. You were a prosecutor for a year, just enough to help with bills and gain experience. Then you did school for the past few years while simultaneously juggling cases. You lived a very, very busy life, but you wouldn’t have it any other way either.
“You’ve done well for yourself.”
The praise makes you shudder. It’s something you’ve craved for so long and learned to resent when it wasn’t given. All you had wanted was for him to say you were doing well, that he was proud, that he wished he could be there to celebrate your accomplishments. What you got was 2,833 miles between you and him, empty voicemails and a number that sat untouched on your contacts list. Strained silence despite the lack of the others presence, now it was oppressive, unbearable.
You regret letting him in, seeing the face that isn’t yours but it belongs to you standing right outside your door, pleading to be let in. He doesn’t belong in your space, it’s made clear from the way he stands between the chairs on your island and the couch, unsure of where he should be. Part of you wants to throw your hands in the air, tell him to get the hell out because you needed bim then but you don’t need him now. The other part is still the little girl who waited by the door for her dad to come home but he never did, the girl who waited by the phone for it to ring and cried herself to sleep when the chime you set for him never came through.
“How’s Virginia?”
How’s Haley? Hotch doesn’t even know where to begin, if he should even bring up the existence of his son. He doubts you’d react well to it, so he keeps his mouth shut even if he might regret it later, “Virginia is fine, it’s different than theWest coast, the people are faster, sharper. You’d fit in over there.”
Except you wouldn’t fit in over there because that’d mean fitting into Hotch’s life and you both know you don’t. You’re the estranged daughter, the genius he helped make but couldn’t raise, the product of a relationship that shouldn’t have happened. The clothes you wear, the way you carry yourself, that could make you an East coaster, but it’s your existence that prohibits it from happening, even if you want to leave for the other side.
“I thought about DC.”
Warily, he takes a seat at the island, “But you’re not going there yet.”
You shake your head, “No, not yet, there’s more degrees I want to get first.”
“You sound like Spencer, except he’s stopped at five.”
“I intend to out-degree him.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that, he might take it as a challenge.”
“You can tell him I’ll win it then.”
Spencer intrigues you. A fellow genius with a slightly higher IQ than you, it doesn’t matter to you though. You’re doing what you need to do and as long as he doesn’t interfere with that then you can peacefully co-exist with him. Now if your father could stop interfering with your life as it is now, you’d be peaceful too. (You wouldn't, you know it to be too truthful to admit to though).
“You’ve grown up.”
It’s truthful too, and you hate that. You’ve grown up, you wear bras and pencil skirts, you line your lips and fill it in with gloss, you blowout your hair every morning and you drink protein shakes for breakfast. There’s case files on your counter, Birkin bag on the counter spilling with notes and evidence. Wine on your kitchen counter, floor cleaned and living room tidy. Your bills are paid, you graduate (again) in a semesters’ time, you’re what any young adult aspires to be.
Healthy, well maintained, comfortable. Yet distinctly isolated despite the friends you’ve made and unattainable to most people around you. They aren’t allowed to see the depth of what you’re feeling, they don’t get to come close enough to offer comfort even when you desperately need it. You prefer it that way though, you dislike when people can see through your cool facade, you hate it even more when they call you on it too. If you could, you’d prefer to be thought of as something almost inhuman, more robot than flesh, simply because it’d mean people would stop trying to get into your head and see what lies there.
Profilers, you think, are some of the worst people in the world simply because their whole job description is reading people. Your father read you easier than a book when you were younger and you doubted much had changed despite the distance between you both. The rest of his team could read you too and you’d be a fool to think otherwise, but it didn’t mean you had to be open or talk about things. They could know, but it’d also never be acknowledged.
“I have.”
You grab two bowls, because you’re not going to be rude and eat alone in front of him, and also because now he has no choice but to eat what you’ve cooked. The rice goes first, then the curry, then the chicken you’ve put in the oven to drain off oil and keep warm. He blinks when you hand him the bowl, surprised, especially when water comes with it, but he thanks you anyway as you take a seat beside him. It gives you the urge to flee, but you’re not going to run away after agreeing that you’ve grown up because that’d be childish.
“You’ve inherited your mother’s skill in the kitchen.”
Simple words, a simple compliment, a reminder of the life he threw away. Your parents had been in love, you knew that much, you saw it with the way they kissed when coming home, how they took care of each other during the long hours and rough cases. The life they’d made with you was good too, Hotch had doted on you as a child, had loved you and done what he could to make sure you knew that. They’d been young when they had you -an accident- and your mother always made sure to tell you she’d do it all over again if given the choice.
Five years your family had been wonderful. Tight-knit and loving, they’d discussed marriage, they’d been engaged, they talked about giving you a sibling. Then the Seattle profiler branch had called and everything had come crashing down within the span of a month. One week your dad was there, the next he wasn’t, and from that point on it was more wasn’t than was and part of you still doesn’t know how to bridge the two together. Now he’s here eating curry in your apartment when you’re twenty-two and supposedly thriving. He knows better though.
Hotch sees it in the way you carry yourself, the hard set of your jaw and mouth that things aren’t as perfect as you work for them to be. You’re weighed down by your own consciousness, as if existence is a chore for you to deal with on a daily basis. Lost, he should say, you look lost. Lost in the way that Hotchner’s look, because you and him are one in the same. Feelings of internal strife and conflict are dealt with by throwing yourselves into work as a distraction for the truth of what’s really there. Hotch knows you’re like this because he’s like this, and you took after him more than either of you cared to admit.
“Haley and I are getting divorced.”
There goes his resolve at being level-headed, about easing into things with you. Because when it comes to you there’s no rhyme or reason, it’s you, and therefore everything he’s so precariously balanced is thrown off of its axis. You’d been talented at doing that to him from the moment of your conception and it seemed that distance nor time managed to take that away from you.
“Really?”
“Mhm. How’s your mother?”
You blink twice, processing, “Mama’s fine, she’s ah, divorced now.”
Hotch hadn’t even known about your stepfather, he hadn’t known anything since he resolved to stay out of your life as much as he could. He knew he’d hurt you badly and as a form of penance decided to ignore the details of your life despite being able to access all of it if he wanted to. It felt wrong to invade your privacy like that though, it felt wrong to keep tabs on you and not call you.
“Really? How long?”
“Two years now, and it’s a good thing, she’s over it now too which helps.”
“If I saw her do you think she might kick me or eviscerate me?”
Against your will a tiny, amused, huff leaves you. Hotch’s sense of humour wasn’t extensive by any means, but the dry wit you’d inherited allowed you to tell when he was trying to be at least a little humorous. Your mother had always said that if he cheated, or if he fucked up bad enough she’d eviscerate and castrate him all in one go.
“I think she might get you banned from the state of California.”
“At the very least San Francisco.”
The rest of dinner isn’t as tense as it was when he first came in, despite the layer of tension and discomfort of it all. He does the dishes because you’ve cooked and for a minute you imagine that this is what your entire life has looked like. Like your dad comes over once a week for dinner and cleans because you’ve cooked and you two get to discuss cases, analyze human behavior, talk about how screwed up the world is. Bathe in the satisfaction of putting these people away, helping other innocent people find peace or protection, you enjoy that, you do.
The spell is broken once the last dish is set to dry and he turns to you, confusion about how to proceed etched in each line of his face, and you realize it’s up to you how this will go. You clear your throat, shifting as you reach for all the right words. As always when it comes to your father you find yourself frustrated with the amount of things you want to say but can’t proceed correctly when using them. Words are your strong suit, they’re your safety net and when it comes to him you have none whatsoever. It infuriates you, even makes you want to cry.
“Will you keep me updated on Natalie?”
He nods, “I will, and can I ask you to be a consultant for this case? You know the student body better than anybody on campus, and with your memory you’d likely be able to help us trace things that we would overlook. You can say no of course if it’d be too much, but I do think you’d be a valuable asset for the team.”
Will you spend time with me? Will you let me be present just this once? I’m sorry for leaving you, come with me one more time? These are all the questions layered under professionalism and as his daughter, his firstborn, you know these questions by heart years later. He’d taught you to read between the lines and hear what wasn’t spoken, listen to the silence and see what it had to say.
“I’m up for it. I’ll inform my professors that I’ll be taking the week off to act as a consultant for the BAU in regards to the case of multiple murders on campus.”
“Thank you, I’m sure the rest of the team will be interested in getting to know you, Reid in particular has shown interest.”
Your lips twitch upwards, just a bit, “We’re geniuses, it’s natural to be interested in figuring out the other genius in the room.”
“Just don’t try to outcompete one another for intellect.”
“No promises.”
He lingers at the door, trying to find what to say until he settles on, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, goodnight.”
You lock the door behind him, relief flooding through your veins when you hear his footsteps fading away down the hall. On a side note you notice your hands are trembling, heart racing and body warm in a way it usually isn’t. Uncomfortable, yes, and most certainly anxiety inducing. Dinner with your father, it’s a sentence you thought you’d never say again after you turned eighteen and yet it happened anyway. He ate your curry, he’s divorcing Haley, he’s in Berkeley, one of your best friends is missing, there’s a case to read on your coffee table, and you’re going to be a consulting member to your fathers fancy FBI team.
You need to send some emails.
_____________
The next morning you come in with a cup of coffee, perfectly blown out hair, and a new outfit this time. You’re in black business pants, the baggy kind that sits just right and shows what it needs but not too much. This time you’re in a black, sleeveless halter neck blouse, gold jewelry all over your body and makeup once again done to perfection. You come in smelling like apples, lemon, brown sugar, and rain all rolled into one, a perfectly intoxicating fall scent that leaves heads turning as you walk.
Now that they look at you and Hotch they see the similarities they didn’t before. The severity of both your expressions like a mirror, the hair. If you’d inherited one physical trait from Hotch it had to be the hair. Soft and sleek like raven feathers, the exact shade of his sprouting from your own head. Everything else is your mothers, or just you. Your bag gets set down, your coat put up and with that you take a seat at the table as if you’ve always belonged there.
Hotch gestures to you as he stands at the board, the one filled with evidence and possible connections, “As we’ve noticed Miss. Hotchner is in the room with us, she’ll be acting as a consultant for this case not only for her connections to the latest victim but for the connections to the university as well. Feel free to ask her questions pertaining to the case or student body, she’ll likely have the answer. She also knows this campus well, use that to your advantage.”
He begins to brief them, and by extension you, on what they’ve gathered so far, and what they’re going to do for the day. You’ll be going with Spencer and Emily to interview Natalie’s professors, the TAs included, and once that’s done you’ll come back to discuss. You’re thankfully not in heels this time as you lead the two of them around campus, pointing certain things out as you walk. The campus is big and crowded, students milling about in every direction, you pay no mind to it though.
Emily walks behind you and Spencer, who asks about each building even though he knows the history of them, and then about the professors, the classes that you even take. She hides her amusement carefully, opting to listen in on your careful explanations, you keep things concise where Spencer would usually start rambling, another Hotchner trait you’ve seemingly inherited. You both walk step in step together and it’s fitting she thinks. Two geniuses dressed like runway models for whatever reason walking the campus to solve a murder case. It feels almost like a movie in far too many ways.
It’s a little strange watching two geniuses interact, both of you feeding off of one another in ways she can’t hope to keep up with. Ideas and theories bouncing off of one another, facts recited in perfect detail and discussions about things she knows neither of you specialize in but clearly know well enough to have opinions. You’re warmer like this, when you’re in your element called academia and more importantly, not in the same room as Hotch. She doesn’t know what happened between you two, she won’t pry, but something had shifted between the reunion from yesterday to today. As if there was some unspoken agreement to get along.
Eventually the three of you dip into a building, you know the layout from when Natalie showed you around, the sleek interior, the empty corridors. You take them to Professor Mardi first, she has no classes for an hour so they’ll have time to talk. It’s odd, walking the same path that Natalie did, she’d walked the halls like this at least twice a week. She walked it with friends, by herself, soaked in rain or fresh from her apartment on a perfect hair day. Now she’s missing and you wonder if she’ll ever walk the halls again.
You try not to think about what might be happening with her now, where she might be and who might be doing something to her. There’s no point in dwelling with thoughts like that, it won’t help find her. Instead you push the door open to her classroom that’s just emptied out, her projector off, files being sorted together. She looks up when the three of you enter, eyes widening in surprise, “Miss. Hotchner, I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
Her voice grates on you, soft and motherly as if she has the right to act like that with you, “I’m here as a consultant with the FBI to look into the recent happenings on campus, they’d like to speak with you about Natalie Clawson.”
“She went missing yesterday, right?”
“She did.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss. Hotchner, I know you two are close.”
“No apology needed, are you amenable to a conversation?”
“Of course! Come, sit, sit.”
For three hours you lead the pair of FBI agents around to talk with professors and state your reasoning, Spencer and Emily observe, they ask seemingly random questions but you know better. You know that the preferred color of socks can tell you all about somebody's insecurities or where their ideals lay. You know that certain products that people will use often feature a common factor that they subconsciously associate with themselves, which often shows you more than they’d care to know. Hotch taught you all of this when you were little, and when he left you continued to apply the skills until it became second nature.
At lunch you all meet up again, except this time you all are hungry and there’s nothing anybody can do when hungry. Hotch turns to you, expectant, “Pick a place, we’ll go eat there.”
You raise a brow, “Budget?”
“The government.”
“Are we going to take one of your SUVs?”
He sighs, “Yes, we can take the SUV.”
“Great, we’re going to Baozi.”
Hotch, inexplicably, gets this look on his face like he wants to shoot himself in the kneecaps rather than go to Baozi, wherever that is, “And you’re driving.”
“Of course I am.”
He says it like it’s the most depressing fact on Earth, as if there’s not pictures of corpses pinned up behind him. You, on the other hand, look as pleased as you can be in this situation. Spencer siddles up next to you, already asking things about something or another that distracts you well enough on the way towards the car, where there’s the unspoken agreement that you’re in the passenger seat. They can at least understand the gift that is Hotchner family drama, even Spencer knows this, and so they without protest climb into the SUV all as one.
“Do you still eat there often? Baozi?”
You hum, adjusting your bracelets as you do, “I eat there for whenever I graduate. So I guess I’m due for another visit in about eight months.”
“I see.”
The drive is borderline painful for the two of you up in the front, you fiddle with your jewelry, Hotch fights the urge to crash the car. Baozi. You’d gone there frequently as a kid but specifically with Hotch. He’d take you on the rare times it was just you and him, usually on the days when your mother had something important to do that day. It was a ritual you both had fallen into and it was a ritual that transitioned into every time he came to visit you, the two of you would go.
It’s thankfully not far and when you enter there’s a middle-aged Taiwanese woman whose eyes crinkle when she sees you, a grin splitting her face when she pulls you into a tight hug, “My, my, look how beautiful you’ve grown! It’s been nearly three years, but there’s no graduation today, so what’s the occasion?”
Your head tilts towards Hotch, “He’s in town.”
Her eyes widen, jaw parting as she stares at Hotch before she swats him with her shoe in the next instance “You! YOU! You leave my two girls alone, never showing your face, always busy, busy, BUSY! You show your face now? Huh?”
You chortle, one hand coming to her arm to steady her, “We’re working on it, and trust me he’s been groveling, I’m making him grovel more too. Hence why we’re here.”
She laughs, her amusement infectious, “Okay, okay, only if you insist though, let’s get you to the round table.”
“Thank you.”
You follow her to the table, settling in easily with Hotch on one side and Spencer on the other. You know what you’re getting, Hotch knows too, and neither of you bother with opening up the menus because of that. It looks the exact same as it did from when you were a child. With peeling red booths and orange walls, there’s glass with faded paintings of pandas on it. Stereotypical but charming in a way that’s well loved throughout the passage of time. Your memory allows you to relieve them, and times spent in Baozi are some of the ones you revisit often, even if you don’t try to think about it very often.
It feels strange to be making a new memory like this, not reliving one from a time long ago. If you look to the left you can see a five year old you learning how to hold chopsticks while the guy beside you teaches it to you. Fingers unfailingly gentle as he directs your tiny fingers to work the wood properly. You’d gotten the hang of it eventually, but it took time, and now they come as natural as breathing to you. There’s no need for the rubber band trick anymore.
You order for the group seeing how you’re the only one capable of speaking Mandarin, for a while you content yourself with listening to the team tell their stories, discuss possible theories and try to pinpoint who the unsub might be. It’s a lot, but you soak up every word of it. The jargon reminds you of the stories Hotch would use when he put you to bed, his words never softened for you, and maybe that’s why you’re so smart. Maybe it’s because you were put to bed with legal jargon as a lullaby, human behavior as a soothing ailment to your restless mind.
The food comes looking delicious as ever, and this is where you falter, just for a second. Hotch doesn’t say a word when he slides over a little dish made up of ginger, soy sauce, vinegar, a dash of fish oil, and a heaping spoon full of chili oil. You’re the one with the rarest memory on Earth, and he’s remembered how you make your dipping sauce for xiao long bao and other dumplings. He couldn’t call you, but he remembered how to make your dumpling oil combination as if it were a written down recipe he’d memorized.
He confuses you like nothing else ever has. An absent father who felt a step away, never there when you needed him to be, yet there’s an invisible list of facts about you in his head that he’d never forgotten. The familiar anger of his abandonment rises in you, risky and for a second, uncontrollable, but then you bite into the dumpling, the sauce combination being the first thing you taste. It’s vinegary, spicy, salty, you feel the cut of ginger and it’s perfect. Instead of wanting to hit him you want to cry.
There’s the other thing: He left, and you stopped crying. You already felt weak from him leaving and you weren’t going to feel weak for yourself. It was something you couldn’t afford to happen because you needed strength to make up for what he had stolen from you. So you didn’t cry, but when you bite into that dumpling you feel the urge to do so. It rises up sharply, quicker than you expected, and yet you refuse to give in. You won’t give the satisfaction of giving in.
To them it’s clear Hotch is struggling too, making them wonder if this was the way you two liked to punish yourselves. Hotch by giving you control, and you for picking someplace you knew would pack a punch for the both of you. You remember everything in perfect clarity from the past, you remember what he’d said to you, the way he dressed, the thing you ordered to drink. You remembered the emotion too, when you were so pleased, so proud to be sitting at the table with him. The feeling of being loved by him, your subconscious reassurance that it’d be like this forever.
He remembers sitting with you in the booths, teaching you how to use chopsticks, watching you graduate from the white foam cups to the plastic ones they used. If he knew what he knows now, would he trade it for what could’ve been with you? Would he stay with you, watching you grow from not the sidelines but the front row, would he sit still or would he fidget? The man hadn’t even bought a ticket.
You sit behind him in stilted silence, nothing but memory and muscle to keep you going. Neither of you can look at each other, the misery of each other’s company too much to fight against. It’s not the right place to ask questions, there’s not enough time for explanation. Your friend is missing, you’re eating lunch with your dad again for the first time in forever in the restaurant that had forgotten his face but felt the weight of his absence, and you’re truly, stunningly, miserable.
It’s the kind of misery that you hadn’t let yourself dwell in for a long while. You’d felt it the first time he missed your birthday, or the tenth time that he didn’t pick the phone up. Over the course of time you’d learnt to swallow it down until it stopped coming back up. This you can’t ignore though, not when the origin is sitting less than a foot away from you and the tray of dumpling dip sits innocently between the two of you. You have him here, now, in a stolen moment brought upon by the disappearance of your friend and the murder of three other girls on campus. Because it seems the only time he’s there is when it’s convenient for him.
The team watches you both fall into the trap that is history the longer lunch goes on. There's a familiar rhythm between you two but it’s clear that it’s a routine neither is comfortable participating in any longer. They’ve never seen Hotch so quiet, so guilty, and you’re the stranger that’s familiar to them in the most confusing of ways. You and Hotch are one in the same, daughter and father separated by bad choices and the lack of time despite the way it drags on from days to weeks to months to years.
There’s the way you both eat the same, calculated dips and perfectly placed bites, neither of you willing to step outside of the dance you two know. You look nothing like Hotch and yet when you glare, when you move a certain way, it’s all Aaron and that jars them in ways they didn’t expect. They’ve seen Jack, the subtle markers that tell them he’s Aaron Hotchner’s son, but you? You. You’re different, you’re grown up and even though there’s that distance, the knowledge that you didn’t get to watch him as you grew so you could mimic his mannerisms but they’re just built in you from the get go. That’s something else entirely.
Spencer knows. He knows because he knows when there’s another kid whose dad abandoned them too early, he sees you in him and what you are because five years ago he was you. A genius doing well for themself, thriving at a glance because why wouldn’t you be thriving? You’re working with a law firm, you’re getting two more degrees under your belt, you’ll have PhDs by 25 without a doubt. You live in a nice apartment, you wear red bottoms and the jewelry clinking off your wrist is pure gold, heavy and thick with luxury. By all means, you’re walking perfection.
He knows better though. You’re just pieces of a body stapled together and wound so tightly you can’t fall apart. It’s not thriving, it’s survival. You busy yourself with so many things because if you don’t then you’ll have to feel things you can’t let yourself feel for fear of them taking control over your body and most importantly, your mind. Your mind, the most crucial thing your body has to offer, brilliance encased through a layer of bone and thick skin not easily exposed to the world. If you can’t control that, then it means you control nothing.
This is something Spencer knows intimately, he understands it, he understands you. At least on this particular aspect. Seeing you with Hotch makes him wonder about what would happen if he sat down for lunch with William Reid. Would they hold their forks the same? Would they reach for certain sauces or would they have completely different flavor pallets? It makes him wonder when he sees you two over there. Different tastes in food but similar mannerisms, it’s like you two don’t want to be anything like the other but your subconsciouses refuse to allow that truth to come true.
Thinking is difficult when it comes to you and Hotch, this much is apparent. Difficult for you and him simply because of everything that is laid between the two of you. Difficult for the team because Hotch has never been so out of it, so confused before, all because of you, the physical manifestation of a different life. West coast versus East, daughter versus son, prosecutor versus profiler. Nobody can truly wrap their heads around it all.
Lunch ending is a celebration, it means that the case moves forward, that nobody is exuding an air of such downtrodden grief that it roots their hearts in their stomachs. It’s easier to talk about murder with Hotch than school or what you’re doing with your life. He finds it easier to question your memory, the sequence of events, than ask if you prefer to party or stay inside. He can’t profile you, he refuses, and even though the team wants to profile you it feels wrong. Besides that, you won’t let them profile you.
You’ll let them see what you’re willing to show but beyond that it’s all clinical detachment or attachment. Returning back to campus is a strained affair, not that you acknowledge it when you all set up shop again in the room the PD gave them. You bring your laptop out, immediately throwing yourself into the art of homework as Spencer sits next to you so he can read through the information for things that they might’ve missed. You of course can’t have access to everything, but you know enough, and if you really wanted to you could find out.
Which is what you’ve busied yourself in doing. You want the details, you want locations, pictures, all of it. Hotch wouldn’t give it to you, not the nitty gritty details that you need in order for all of it to work out. It’s laughably easy to get access to it all, dates, names, locations, coroners exams. If Penelope on the other end knows you’re there she hasn’t called to tell you to get out. Naturally, you dig, and you dig, and you dig.
Because you’re a lawyer, you’re a Hotchner, and digging is what you do.
____________
When you hear a knock on your door you half expect it to be Hotch, the other half expects a friend. You don’t expect it to be Spencer Reid standing on the other side, his fingers are slotted together loosely, held at his chest, bag slung over his shoulder as he rocks on his feet. His hair’s messier than it was earlier, tie a little crooked, “Can I come in?”
You step aside easier for him than Hotch, and upon noticing the shoes at the doorway he slides his off as well, “Does he know you’re here at my apartment?”
Spencer winces at the mention of your father, you won’t even say dad, or father, or biological unit, but also because, “No, I didn’t think he’d appreciate that.”
Hotch would most certainly not appreciate it. Doesn’t matter that you and him are estranged and this is the weird pause on that, doesn’t matter that you’re both two adults and you can decide who you want to talk to. For Spencer your dad is still his boss, and the last thing he wants to do is piss the guy off when he’s clearly already emotionally compromised.
Something shifts as soon as the words come out of his mouth. It’s not a break in the case that he’s come knocking on your door about, but something personal. You move into the kitchen, pulling two wine glasses from your shelf before peering into the small wine cabinet the apartment had built into it, “Red or white?”
“Why don’t you guess?”
You’re the kid of a legendary profiler helping them with their case, he’d be surprised if you didn’t know the basics of profiling, “You like red, but the sweeter ones that taste like berries after they’ve been warmed by the sun. Aged, because you prefer the way things taste after they’ve had time to develop an edge. You don’t like dry wines because it sucks everything sweet about it out.”
Then you look at him whilst holding a bottle up of something older, something more expensive than he’d care to think about with a little twitch to your lips, “I think I might have one that you like.”
You pour it perfectly even, graceful in the way it doesn’t slosh when you turn around to hand a glass to him before settling on your couch, letting him follow your lead. It’s sunset now on the bay, which you have a lovely view of from your big windows. The apartment isn’t by any means low to the ground, with tall buildings framing your vision and the gold tinted water in the distance, you’ve certainly earned this particular view.
“You didn’t come here because of the case.”
Statement, fact, not a question in your voice, just a prompt for him to start talking. It’s very Hotchner of you to do that, he notes, but he doesn’t dare say it out loud, not yet at least, “I came because you’re a fellow genius, you know how rare that is.”
More statement over question. With two geniuses in the room the word is absolute, “So you came for my brain?”
He tilts his head, there’s a subtle layer of mischief in your tone, as if you’re testing the waters with him, “I came because I wanted to see what a genius does to shut their brain off. I never really, I wasn’t like you when I was in college. I didn’t make friends, I didn’t have a presence in the university besides being a prodigy and proving that I could handle myself just fine. You do though, you can blend in just fine with the rest of the population.”
Your eyebrows raise a bit, “You’re asking me what I do for fun.”
His cheeks flush, just a little bit, “Yes.”
“Do you swear none of this gets back to Quantico?”
An opening, not one he intends to waste, “Yes. I swear.”
“And you’re wearing….the world’s best teachers assistant outfit I’ve ever seen in my life. Sweater vest, khakis, permanent helmet hair, if you want to blend in, we need to find you something different to wear.”
“Where exactly are we going?”
Your smile widens, just a bit as you raise the glass to your lips, “Out.”
Then the wine is going down the hatch, and in an effort to keep up Spencer tilts his head back too. You shouldn’t be doing this, going out when Natalie is somewhere out there, maybe dead, maybe alive, probably in pain. But there’s a plan in your mind too, the unsub has clearly been attracted to girls with dark hair and striking features. Beautiful, young, going places and in college. Technically, you fit that description to a textbook definition.
Two days before Natalie had gone missing -Thursday- you and her had gone out for a night on the town. You remember the night, the faces you had seen, you want to find familiar ones, because if you do then you can find these faces, run your tests, maybe you can narrow it down. It’s something you need to do, and it doesn’t matter if you’re drunk, you might black out in the moment, but when you sober up you’ll remember it. At least it’s how it works for you.
Spencer follows you to your bedroom, your big, wonderful bedroom with the bed unmade and fragrances crowded together on a nightstand that you don’t use. Warm lighting, and a different view of the city. This one is into the city itself, bright twinkling lights, the cars passing below, it’s a sight that’ll haunt you just as much as it brings you peace. Your bed is pushed up next to it, especially with the way the window wraps around to the other side of the wall, it’s insane, and so incredibly worth it.
You work on him first, having him sit on your bed as he thinks about what you might do to him. Because even at lunch when it was so clear that you and Hotch were one in the same for certain things, he knows that you’ve come into yourself in ways that Hotch would never dream of. You’ve grown up without him, you’re not him. Hence why you tell him to run his fingers through his hair, mess it up a little and to please, please, ditch the sweater vest. He does as told, going so far as to remove his tie as well.
“These will be too big on you, but it’ll work, so wear these.”
He’s handed a pair of your business slacks, they’re already loose on you so he knows he’ll be almost drowning in them himself, but he does as told, emerging a few minutes later from your bathroom holding the fabric up for dear life. He’d really like to avoid accidentally dropping his pants in front of you. It makes your teeth poke through when you see him though, a soft snort leaving you as you take the tie he discarded to turn it into a belt. Then for the final touch his shirt gets unbuttoned a little bit, just enough to let go for a second.
But after him it’s your turn, and he sits on the bed while you move around your room to assemble an outfit together. It takes thirty minutes, but once you’re done you emerge in all of your early twenties glory. A halter top with no back, no front either if he’s honest, there’s just mesh that flows around you except it splits in the middle to show off your smooth skin and belly button. The top of it too is low, your tits pushed up and a golden sun charm right in the center. You pair it with jeans that cling to your curves, widening after the knee to brush your feet and floor.
You’re gorgeous, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking of that but the wine is buzzing pleasantly in his mind, and from an objective point of view, you are beyond a simple aesthetically pleasing description. He watches you as you select your shoes, your jewelry, even the perfume on the nightstand. There’s something captivating about how you move around your space, a fluidity to your movements that speaks of practice and excitement.
“You go out often.”
“Mm, I do.”
Once you’re done with that you grab your shoes and lead him back to the kitchen where this time you’re grabbing two shot glasses, “You wanted to know how I blended in, well I’ll tell you I don’t usually start with wine, although it’s better at getting people drunk than anybody ever acknowledges.”
Spencer can attest from the slight disconnect between his mind and body, the little lag between his thoughts. He’s not a lightweight, but he’s also not a heavy drinker by any means. Liquor like the one you’re pouring into those little cups is something Spencer rarely indulges in. He’s not like Morgan who takes it with a grin and a kiss and maybe a little something more because alcoholic shots spell for a good time in his opinion.
“So what are you poisoning us with instead?”
You glance at him as you prepare chasers, you know he won’t do well without one, “The simple stuff; Tequila.”
Tequila isn’t simple stuff in his book, but to you, to a good chunk of the student population, tequila is simple. Tequila comes in the form of cheap indulgence for long lasting effects, it comes with blurred memories and a weightless feeling that young people chase when they start to feel the heavy weight of adulthood creeping in too close for their liking. Spencer indulged in classic literature, puzzles, things that fed his brain until it was too stuffed to take anymore. Not tequila.
He drinks it though, drinks it when he knows he shouldn’t because he’s got a job to do and it feels kind of like New Orleans. In that bar when he had a plane to catch but missed on purpose. Except this time he isn’t missing anything because this is where he’s supposed to be. He’s blending in and he came here for multiple reasons, but amongst them was to try and profile you without profiling you. So he supposes getting to know you is the better term for it.
You and him take three shots before you grab your purse, the going out one, and together you both head out to the streets of San Francisco. It’s a city he’d thought about going to, he liked the idea of it. Closer to his mother, closer to familiar things, but ultimately he’d gone to Quantico, to Virginia and Washington D.C. and became a profiler there. But the glimpse at what it could’ve been is nice, especially when he can smell your scent of coffee, vanilla, cherry, and chocolate.
The thoughts of your beauty, of you in general are only amplified with the alcohol coursing through his veins. It’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong, but from the moment you’d walked through those doors like hell was in the palm of your hand he’d been captivated. Power and precision drove you to the top of the food chain, a place you were most comfortable being, and he liked it. He liked the way you never lowered your gaze to anybody, unafraid of inviting discomfort to the floor.
He follows your lead when you pull him into a little ramen restaurant in an alley he’d never think of looking into, but he’s drunk and admittedly hungry so he goes without thinking too much about it. You and he get sat in a small booth where you both have to take your shoes off and settle on the seating which consists of a low table, pillows so neither of your asses go numb, and a private divider between the outside of the booth and inside. Like a personal little bubble, he stretches out because he can, and he’s too drunk to think not to.
“So what’s this place?”
You hand him a menu, “Furikake, can you read Japanese?”
“Mmm, not right now, which isn’t great because the whole menu’s in Japanese.”
He sits up again, slouching onto the table as he peers at the words written down. Everything’s done by hand, the paper crisp and worn in his hold but most certainly legible. It’s clear that the restaurant is old but beloved, and well maintained despite its location, “What is this place? It feels…not San Francisco.”
He watches your lips twitch again, “Furikake is one of the older Japanese restaurants around here, and real Japanese too, not the Americanized version of it. Fresh fish, fresh ingredients, they opened up in the seventies and became a community staple. They have English menus, but you have to ask for one. So it gives you two options, you can either try and figure it out yourself, or you can go through the embarrassment of asking for an English menu. What have you, Doctor Reid?”
Spencer pouts, he won’t admit that he is but he most definitely is regardless. Cheeks puffed out and mouth set in a distinctive line, he can’t read Japanese, he can read, speak, and write in Korean (specifically South), but not Japanese. You know Mandarin, English, now Japanese, and he’s interested to know in any others you might have up your sleeve. For now though he pouts because he doesn’t know and that’s unusual for him.
“I’ll let you order for me, yeah?”
It’s an easy solution, but you give him a pass since he’s clearly feeling the glass of wine and shots from earlier. Once there’s food in his stomach he’ll settle some more and then he’ll be ready, but in the meanwhile you’ll give him some leniency. The waitress comes by not long after, her smile warm when she greets you and her laughter delicate when you point at Spencer and order for him. He should be embarrassed but the alcohol just makes him laugh, it’s funny even though it’s at his expense. If it makes you crack a grin then you’re happy with it.
He hopes that somewhere at the end of the night he can make you smile, but Hotchner’s are so difficult when it comes to expressing enjoyment. Yet again another trait you’d inherited from Hotch. He doesn’t even know what to call you sometimes, Miss. Hotchner, little Hotchner, he’s definitely not calling you Hotch. Hotch and Hotchner. Two different things, and nobody ever says Hotchner in full when referencing your father. It doesn’t feel right though, like Hotchner doesn’t fit you, at least not yet.
He looks up at you from where he’s spilling over the table, hazel eyed bambi through and through as he thinks for a second how you look like an angel with the light behind you making a halo. He shouldn’t be here, drunk and in a private booth with you. Daughter of his boss, an academic equal, he’s curious, always curious, especially about you. He’d asked what a genius like you did for fun, and you’re getting him drunk for a night on the streets. He’d be a fool to think you’d stop at a hole-in-the-wall of San Francisco whilst drunk, not when the sun had just gone dark. It’d be cooler outside now than it was earlier, maybe even with a drizzle.
“What’d you order us?”
You give him a look, like he isn’t fooling anybody with his drunken haze, “I got us a few things, you’ll see when they get here, I’ll explain as we eat.”
“Are we sharing?”
“Of course we are, food was made to share with people.”
He blinks, it’s not a Hotchner answer, but something else entirely, “Did your mother raise you by those ideals?”
You nod, “She did, and I’m guessing nobody knows who she is?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“I’ll show you a picture then.”
He blinks again when you pull out a flat screened phone from your bag, swiping a few times to gain access before showing him a picture. The quality isn’t bad, good lighting even though the details aren’t as good as the naked eye but nonetheless it’s a photo of high definition, “Is that the iPhone? They came out with those earlier this year.”
“Mhm, we pre-paid for ours so we didn’t have to worry about not getting one when they were released.”
“I didn’t know you were rich like that. I thought the red bottoms and fancy jewelry was from your earnings as a prosecutor. Since you’re in the Bay Area they pay you higher, for a woman of your talents they pay higher. But you said “our” which indicates multiple people, you go to school, Berkeley of all places, you have wines that cost three-hundred dollars in your apartment that you chug without second thought. The ring is generational, you act like old money, so tell me, was Hotch the sugar baby?”
Being drunk lets him say the most ridiculous things, lets him feel a confidence he only possesses when he’s absolutely certain that he’s got it right when he catches the unsub, when he’s explaining his fields of expertise, that sort of thing. It apparently even lets him accuse Hotch of being a sugar baby and he hopes beyond measure that you don’t tell the man he said that. It would never be forgotten, and he’d spend the rest of his career being reminded of it. But it also gets you to stare at him for a second before a giggle of all things falls from your lips. Forget the smiling, he’s made you giggle.
“Apologies, it’s just, nobody knows him like you guys do, and I suppose like me as well, so the idea of him as my mothers’ sugar baby is certainly an idea.”
He groans, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, “Please do not tell him I said that, I think I might be banned from the BAU if you do.”
“Fear not, I’ll keep my lips sealed.”
“Thank you.”
“And for the record, yes, my mother is old money and he married into wealth. Of course he didn’t see a single penny of it from my mother, she refused to ever send a penny to him. Her fathers side of the family owns a firm over here, they were some of the first lawyers in San Francisco and they stayed in San Francisco. My grandmother though, she immigrated over here and when her children grew up they’d spend a year in San Francisco and a year in her home-country. It was doable, and it allowed her fathers’ family to put roots down in her country.”
You pause as the door slides open again for the drinks and appetizers, you thank her politely as Spencer perks up at the arrival of food, “This is wakame, a staple in my opinion, cucumber salad, and okonomiyaki, and we each have a little thing of cold soba.”
He, over the last few years, had picked up on the art of chopsticks, but in comparison with you it’s not great. You have practice with it, Spencer does too but not like you. His plate gets filled, but it’s not heavy food, it’s light, refreshing, and as you two make your way through the appetizers you continue.
“Alright, so now my mother has spent half her life in the homeland, has connections everywhere across the world through her schooling because she’d spend a year with one friend group and a year with the other. She kept in contact with everyone, just like my aunts and uncles did with their other school friends. Now this results in my family opening up law firms everywhere, literally everywhere, and it certainly helps that we’ve been in business for over two-hundred years. But my mother just so happens to be the eldest daughter of her family, which happens to be the main line of inheritors of the firm as a whole.”
Not just rich. But rich. No wonder you could afford the view of your apartment, and it made him really, really, wonder what Hotch’s life looked like when he was still in the picture. Was he secret glitz and glam, pulling strings from behind the curtain, what was it like to be in a firm like the one your family runs? Old and established, roots in all sorts of places, wealth established in areas he wouldn’t even think of just for the sake of curating a lasting legacy. For a family in San Francisco to hold a title of some of the first means something he won’t understand beyond what it means on paper.
“So what do you inherit?”
Your lips twitch, just a bit, “It means that if I stay here in San Francisco I’ll keep doing well for myself, but I’ll always have family dinner on Sunday. But it also means that if I want to I can pack my things up and leave San Francisco behind. Either option is a good option, and if more family firms pop up in my area then I’m in charge of them because I was there first. For some reason the family is big on the whole ‘I was here first’ thing, so whoever was there from the beginning is the one in charge. That’s how it works. For example my grandfather is the one running things here. My oldest uncle is his heir, my mother is his voice of reason, the entire reason why there are still dinners on Sundays.”
His eyes are practically sparkling, and if you were sober it’d freak you out. However, you’re drunk and he looks rather handsome in the warm lighting despite the way his eyes betray his drunken state and how he’s a tiny bit sweaty. He listens, he understands and beyond that he listens to the things between your sentences because he’s smart, he knows what to listen for. A tight-knit family that loves and cares but it’s a little too tight, a little bit on the edge of perfection that doesn’t allow much give to it. You can leave, they’ll let you, but they won’t stop reminding you.
“They want you to continue with law, will you?”
“Wherever I go I’ll be with some form of law, I was practically spoon fed it from birth. You know, my-he used to put me to bed by reading his law textbooks. Bedtime law was our hour, exactly sixty minutes he’d sit there and read to me about things like ‘capitol offense’ or my rights. At least once a week we went through the amendment and what random ones stood for, he’d question me at breakfast in the morning without fail.”
The thought of Hotch reading law textbooks to put you to bed is an image that tugs at him and an image he desperately wishes he couldn’t see. Little raven locked you yawning while Hotch told you about gun rights isn’t something that should give him the urge to cry, but it kind of does. Hotch had been a good father to you then, he’d been kind, he’d been patient, he’d been loving. William had been that too all those years ago, he clears his throat after he swallows a bite of his food.
“I, when I was little, my dad would go through all the sports with me, he’d change it up every week. Sometimes it was hockey, sometimes it was bowling, but every Saturday night it was a different sport. I wasn’t interested in sports, but it was one of the few things he could drag me into, especially because he knew it’d keep me quiet and retreat into sleep. That was how we spent Saturdays until he left.”
You eye him a bit as you sip your drink, and just like that the energy in the booth shifts again. Two peas in the pod you and he. Young geniuses with daddy issues and a little too much in common to ignore. You think of gravity, the pull that turns to revolving, a circle that moves so fast it roots you into place as you stare at what lies between the both of you. It should scare you, but it doesn’t, not this time.
“He’s your boss.”
“I know.”
Pull. Force. Attraction. He’s five years older than you, the co-worker of your estranged father, and yet you’re spilling your guts to him in a private booth like you’ve never done before. It’s a bad idea, a terrible idea, but it’s an idea nonetheless. You know that with enough force, if something revolves fast enough, what gets inside stays inside, the only way out is to be violently flung. So not only a bad idea, but a dangerous one.
You’re rational, you always have been, and so has Spencer. Two geniuses where control over oneself is the only way to live, taken like an oath branded in every decision made. Upon collision all of it flies out the window, there’s no rational way the chemicals in your brain mix and spark together, no indicator of why. There is though, but you can’t think of it, not like this. Not even when the food is brought does the tension snap, neither of you acting on it, nor acknowledging it, but it’s there. It’s there.
Somehow, you both make it to the club, and because you’re you the line doesn’t apply to you, by extension it doesn’t apply to him either. The inside is loud, bathed in red with smoky lights strobing out to the crowd that’s on the floor. There’s girls in basically nothing with bottles in hand, cheering and laughing as the music blares. You though? You’re like a fish in water.
You take him by the sleeve, making your way to the bar where you greet the bartender with two kisses on the cheek and your lips pulled into an easy smile while you shout something in her ear and hand her your purse. She steps away while you turn to Spencer, eyes already a little lidded as you beckon your head to the floor before you pull him down to yell in his ear, “I’m gonna go dance after a few shots, join me?”
He nods even though he’s never really danced at a club like this, especially not with a woman like you. Soon enough four shots of something pink is set down in front of you two, right along with two glasses of water and from there it’s a game of keep up for him. You take your shots and down your water, he nearly chokes at the speed, but he manages, and then you’re taking him to the floor.
There’s too many people, the music too loud, but you begin to dance as you wade through the crowd. Hips starting to shimmy, your shoulders rolling as songs he’d heard on the radio to work start blaring with an edm twist thrown in. He tries, the alcohol helps, but you’re truly something else when you bend over and another girl starts humping you as you grind back on her, ass somehow in motion despite the jeans. Spencer is, undoubtedly, amazed by how you make it look easy. He is also mortified to an extent because you’re you and this was not what he was expecting.
Somehow he’d thought you would go to the bar, stay on the outskirts, give a little movement every now and then. Not get down on your hands and throw your ass back or start letting a girl roam her hands over your body. But here you were, grinning as you let a girl touch over your chest, roam her hands down your hip and suckle a hickey onto your neck. Spencer stared because he didn’t know where else to look, and after you parted with the girl you came to him.
You looped your arms around his neck, you weren’t grinning, you were just looking at him like the most satisfying puzzle you’d ever had was completed. Instinctively his hands came to your body, first your waist, and as you stepped closer to him, they went lower. He began to rock with your movements, letting the alcohol cloud further judgement when he grabbed a handful of your ass. In the next moment you turned around, pressing yourselves together as one of his hands came to your hip, the other holding your hand.
You began to circle your hips whilst pressed to him, grinning as you felt him stiffen a bit beneath you despite the way his body kept moving. He felt good, like something new and exciting all at once in ways you didn’t expect as you moved. You didn’t shut your eyes, instead you looked at every face around you. You’d remember their faces, you knew you would, but you could also enjoy the good doctor while you were at it. Afterall, you had to sell it if you were going to find Natalie.
Spencer’s hand trailed up, skimming your waist until it was creeping up, up, up, squeezing your tit lightly once he had found his target. You shivered under the touch, body moving a little wider, a little bolder as your nipple stiffened under the shirt. He pressed a kiss to your temple, then your jaw, and as you tilted your head your neck, your shoulder, but it was when he bit your neck did you know it was time to go home.
He went willingly when you pulled him out of the place, drunkenly making your way back to your home as you clung to his arm, finding yourself in a talkative mood as you walked back to your place. Yet as soon as the door shut it was a different story. You found yourself backed up to the wall while he kissed you, hands roaming freely now that you weren’t under the public eye. Your fingers clumsily undid his buttons, and then his tie which made your pants drop off his waist. But he wasn’t the only one getting stripped down, he’d gotten your pants off, and your shirt was next. Luckily for you both a bra wasn’t involved.
You dragged him to your bedroom as the stripping went on, until it was him in just his boxers while he parted your legs easily. The attention to your spread legs made you flush a bit, especially when he eased his way down to kiss at your inner thighs. He looked good like this, city light to illuminate the both of you, hair messed up and face flushed from alcohol. You like the sight of him between your thighs, especially when his mouth finally dips down where you need it to be.
His mouth works you exactly how you need it, and he eats like there’s no greater purpose than to be between your legs. He remembers all the anatomical books he’d read, the sex organs, the seven spots of pressure that create pleasure in a woman's body. He’d memorized where they were, so when he slips two fingers into you it’s not difficult to press and rub against that little piece in you that has your fingers in a white-knuckle grip on the sheet despite the melanin in your skin. When he moans against your clit, having it in his mouth and his fingers drenched in your cunt you can’t help the way your body shoots itself into an orgasm.
You moan because you can, there’s no neighbors to hear you fall apart as pleasure unfolds you for him. His hands don’t stop wandering over your body, occasionally thumbing your nipple, caressing your side, squeezing your thigh hard enough to leave the vague impressions of his fingers. He presses kisses to your body as he hauls himself up to slot himself between your legs, his own arousal poking at yours, but not quite there yet. He sucks hickies into your skin, a few here, a few there, and then the random bite mark that never fails to make you jolt as pleasure blooms from that particular pain.
Finally he makes his way to your mouth, you can taste yourself on his tongue, but you don’t mind it. Not really, not when your fingers can roam over his back, fingernails tracing so lightly on his skin he can’t help but shiver. He draws himself up eventually so he can align himself with your entrance, the blunt head of his dick pressing down and you just know you’ll be ruined for any other man's cock after this. It’s not fair that Spencer has it all in your eyes. He’s smart, excellent job, and he has a dick that makes your mouth water. It’s always the nerds you remember, always the nerds that are packing nine or so inches with a girth that tells you you’ll need both hands to handle.
“Is….is my dick okay? You’re staring at it rather intensely."
Your eyes flick up to him and wordlessly, you scoot your hips down a little bit, just enough to get the head in, “Spencer, I swear to god if you don’t put it in my right now I’m going to flip us over and do the job for you.”
His eyes widen, but then he grins, the one that tells you he’s just gotten a major confidence boost, and just like that you know you’re going to have the dicking down of your life. He holds your legs down as he eases his way in, the stretch everything you could have asked for, apparent in the way your thighs quiver as he sinks himself into you. Inch after inch vanishing into your straining folds as he seems to split you open, “Breathe for me, okay? Final stretch.”
You inhale deeply, and when you exhale Spencer pushes the rest of him inside with one thrust. There’s no choice but for you to open up to him except it nearly makes you shriek from the burst of stinging pleasure, the pressure in you nearly unbearable as his full length sits inside of you. You can feel every vein, ridge, every time he twitches or shifts. His thumb lazily circles your clit as you adjust to him, helping loosen you up a bit more, “You still with me?”
“Yes.” Somehow you manage to choke out an answer, it’s not strong by any means but you’d gotten it out, and that’s what matters. He smiles, leaning down to kiss your jaw, “You’re doing so good for me, want me to move now?”
“Please.”
“Good girl.”
His praise makes you shudder, but there’s no time for that when he drags part of himself out before pushing back in. You may be quiet when getting eaten out, when you’re in the midst of foreplay, but as soon as you get a dick stuck up your cunt? All that control over your words and embarrassing noises fly right out the window. With Spencer all you can do is take it, take the rhythm he sets and feel his hands on your body, touching you like he worships you.
You’re not as drunk as you were before, but you’re tipsy enough to where the edges blur a bit and the pleasure only gets heightened by the lowered inhibitions you wear tonight. One of his hands comes to stroke your cheek, cradling it there and you lean into it, going so far as to kiss his palm whilst staring directly at him. Your hands move up then, pulling him down to where you can drag your fingernails all over his back, drawing thin red lines on his pale flesh. He whines when you scratch at the nape of his neck, or when you bite down on his shoulder.
In a move that can only be described as bold you latch your lips to his wrist to suckle a hickey on his skin there. Truthfully, you didn’t know if it’d be one of his sensitive spots, you guessed it might be, and with the way he all but collapses onto you, whimpering with a fresh bruise right there, you know you’ve nearly shot him to the edge. Your fingers drag up his back, to his hair, tugging it until he looks at you with those big watery eyes of his, “Spence.”
He sighs at the call of his name, “Sweetheart.”
Intimate, it’s too intimate, but you both let it happen anyway because with two geniuses in the room all self-restraint goes out the door. He’s still moving in you, still chasing that high, you’re getting close to it, you know he is too, “Want it inside, please?”
He kisses you as an answer, hands gripping your hips so hard you know there’s going to be purple prints left behind. The orgasms, when they do arrive, are strong enough to make you two go boneless as pleasure clouds your visions for a second. Your pussy wrapped tight around him, milking him for all he has to offer and his dick twitching inside of you as he empties himself. For a moment you both lay there, nothing but bodies lax with post-orgasm bliss and the pleasant buzz of alcohol coursing through both of you. Then the spell must be broken by getting up to pee and shower because you’re both disgusting.
There’s the spell of the night when the consequences of tomorrow haven’t arrived yet, quiet and lovely because for these spare hours it is just you and he and nothing else matters. For a few hours the world outside of your apartment doesn’t exist, it doesn’t matter, it’s you, him, the mountain of combined daddy issues and the urge to fuck each other stupid. Because geniuses make other geniuses stupid.
For the night you two fall into bed with each other, acknowledging that gravity level draw that had you both in the club tonight, from a private booth in a pocket of Japan to you crying out for his dick in your unmade bed. Tomorrow will be a crucial day in order to find Natalie, you’ll be throwing everything you have into it, and so will Spencer, so will everybody. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow-
___________
Tomorrow. Spencer scrambles when the alarm goes off, and so do you. He’d fallen asleep with you curled up on him and he’d woken up to your back pressed against him with his arm slung over your waist. He’s got thirty minutes to get to the hotel, get changed, and hopefully avoid the prying eyes of the team because he knows that you’ve marked him up good, and he did a number on you as well. Thankfully, he’s so very thankful, it’s fall which means long sleeves and high collars.
You grumble when he stirs but he presses a kiss to your head and murmurs that he’ll see you in a few hours. You sigh, tugging him down for a proper kiss before waving him off, “Go, go, see you soon.”
Then just like that you drop back to sleep, he snorts at the sight before pulling on his clothes from the night before, but not just his clothes, the clubbing clothes. He’d done it absentmindedly, and then he does his walk of shame back to the hotel room, he’d been put up with Morgan, but Spencer hadn’t come back during the night. Unfortunately for Spencer there’s really not enough time to get in the shower or bathroom to change properly, it’s more a mad scramble of other things.
Which means when he peels his shirt off Derek Morgan gets the full view of his back and how you’ve borderline claimed him via fingernail scratches. He freezes when Morgan whistles, a low sound that’s prideful, letting him know he’s absolutely been caught, “I was wondering where you were at last night, didn’t realize you were having a night, I thought you were going to visit little Hotchner?”
This is territory that Spencer absolutely cannot fall into, but there’s also no way in hell that he’s going to be able to hide this from him, not with Garcia on the other end that can trace him to where he’d spent the night, “Oh, I did see her, I talked with her a little bit and found out that Natalie and her went clubbing a few days ago. She took me to the club that they were at, and I uh, I got distracted at the end.”
Morgan raises his brow, “Distracted, by whom?”
“Oh, you know, some girl, don’t remember her name or anything like that. Did you know the statistics of a relationship happening after a one night stand are actually higher than people would think? An average median of 28% of one-night stands lead to successful relationships, which is really interesting because-”
“Spencer.”
His mouth clicks shut as he finishes tugging his pants on, “Yeah?”
He hates how his voice goes quiet, how meek he sounds because it’s not hard to put the pieces together, “If I call Garcia and ask her where you were last night is she going to tell me you were at Hotch’s daughters’ apartment?”
Spencer sighs, shoulders slumping, “I didn’t plan on it.”
Morgan groans, running his hands down his face, “Oh no you are into her. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, but I didn’t think you two would jump each other like that! What happened last night?”
Now it’s Spencer’s turn to groan as he speed brushes his teeth, quickly spitting it out before rising his mouth, “I went over intending to ask her about the case, about any personal details she might have omitted because she might not have wanted to say something due to Hotch being there. I mean, we all saw how lunch went down yesterday. I’ve never seen two people want to be there with each other so badly and be so miserable about it. I came over, she poured wine, we ended up at the club, at a restaurant, and then we got super drunk and came home, then we fucked each other, and now I’m never going to be able to look Hotch in the eye.”
“Did you at least find out anything from the club?”
Spencer shakes his head, frowning, “I didn’t find anything, but she did.”
He grabs his bag, following Morgan out the door, “I know she was there to scan the area, see if there were any familiar faces in the crowd that might’ve been there when she went with Natalie. Her memory, she’s got hyperthymesia meaning she can recall just about every single detail of every day of her life perfectly. You can ask her what she was doing February 7, 1994 and she can tell you what she did. She can give you faces, what people said to her, what she ate and how she felt that day. She can look back at her memories and see what’s there, review it like footage but it’s her memory.”
“That’s more detailed than your eidetic memory.”
He smiles at the comment, “I know, I think it’s fascinating though. Mine isn’t even scientifically proven despite my existence and hers is rare enough that there’s three other people who have been diagnosed with it.”
“Meaning she’s basically a walking recorder. But specifically through her eyes.”
“Exactly, her mind is incredible, she’s like the ultimate witness.”
The paused at the elevator, not yet going down as Morgan turned to look at Spencer, an unfamiliar glint in his eye, “Last night wasn’t a one time thing, was it?”
Spencer pauses, he remembers the way he’d touched on you last night, the way you’d tugged him close as if he might just up and leave you after the act was done. He knows what it’s like, he knows what you need, and in turn you know what he needs, “I don’t think so. Will you, are you going to tell Hotch?”
“Nah man, I’m not about to be the postman of your murder.”
Reassurance had always been Morgan’s strong suit.
___________
Emily gives him a look once he appears, “I heard you didn’t come back last night.”
Spencer shrugs, “Had a night.”
Morgan grins, because he might not be able to tease Spencer on who he slept with, but he can tease him over the fact that it happened, “Our doctor over here certainly did have a night. Boy came in running, I’ve never seen so much damage done by fingernails and teeth.”
Their eyebrows shot up as Spencer’s face reddened, “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Oh yeah? Show them your wrist, pretty boy.”
“Derek.”
He laughed, thumping Spencer on the back as the team moved out, “Don’t worry, we’re happy for you.”
Hotch wouldn’t be when he found out who was on the receiving end of Spencer’s night out, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. They stop for coffee along the way, and an hour into getting to their room you roll up. This time you’re fully covered but nobody thinks twice about it because of the weather outside. You glance at Spencer, a silent confirmation to not say a single word about the night prior. Hotch glances at you, taking note of the circles hidden underneath the concealer and the way you’re sitting a bit tensely, “Did you sleep alright?”
Spencer locks his gaze in on Morgan, who busies himself with his files as you nod, “Yes, I was just out late though. I went to the club Natalie and I went to two days before she vanished to see if I could spot a familiar face. I found two people who were within a twenty foot proximity that were also in the same area when Natalie and I were there.”
“Do you have names?”
“Give me a second.”
You go still, eyes glazing over for a second as you pick a memory to review, and after a few minutes you nod, “Brian Fishner and Jacob Teems. Brian’s a psych major, Jacob is classical art. Brian’s a senior, Jacob’s a sophomore. Brian’s about 6’2, 180-185 pounds, he’s into streetwear. Jacob’s around 5’9, 130-135 pounds, he’s creative with his clothes.”
The names get written down as Morgan flips his phone open, “Hey babygirl, we’ve got two names I need you to look into, you ready? Brian Fishner and Jacob Teems. Alright, thank you sugar.”
He snaps the phone shut, “Alright, now where would they be?”
You tilt your head, “Brian’s probably at home, Jacob could be anywhere. Brian was still at the club when I left, Jacob left earlier. Don’t ask me their schedules or where their addresses are, I don’t keep tabs on everyone.”
“Noted, how do we want to do this?”
Hotch pursed his lips, “We split into two teams, one will go to Brian’s apartment, the other will find Jacob and pull him in for a conversation. Natalie’s parents are giving a statement later today, around two PM. If we’re following the unsubs patterns then today is Natalie’s last day, we need to find her by tonight.”
You try not to flinch at his words, it’s just the truth, but nonetheless it hurts to hear. You’d held yourself together through the ordeal, but knowing that you’re so, so close to losing one of your best friends is something you didn’t think you’d be dealing with at twenty-two. All you want is to feel her arm pressed against yours and her infectious laughter as you and her hang out in your apartment. Shopping, hair, nails, you and her had been two peas in a pod.
You’d met Natalie in Freshman year in line for a party, you’d both decided to go out by yourselves, and along the way had met each other, and other people too. Three times of running into each other at the club you’d both exchanged numbers and the rest was history. She was the kind of friend that you knew with absolute certainty that she’d be a bridesmaid and contender for maid of honor. Now she was somewhere out there, and if dawn broke the next morning without her you knew you’d wake up to her corpse on campus.
With this in mind, you step outside to make a call, phone already pulled up as you reach for your other friend, Rumi, who you met at the club with Natalie in Freshman year. He picks up on the second call, breathless, “Sorry I was in class, what’s going on? Is there an update?”
For the first time in years your breathing goes a bit shaky, “It’s, it doesn’t look good right now. I went back to the club to see if there was anybody familiar, there was, and we’re looking into them now. But it’s just, today's the deadline.”
“The deadline?”
“According to the FBI the unsub has a pattern, every fourth day the corpse shows up on campus. But during those three days the victim is alive. But come nightfall they’re killed. We have less than twelve hours to find this guy.”
“Oh my god. That’s, how are you holding up?”
“I think I’m going insane, just a little bit.”
“Want me to come get you?”
“No, no, I need to help with this investigation. It’ll increase the chances of us finding Nattie if I’m a present consultant.”
“I forgot, your dad is on the team too, isn’t he?”
“He is.”
“How is it?”
“Weird, god it’s weird. He’s got wrinkles in his face, there's grey hair, if I stand in front of him with my heels I can look him in the eye instead of looking up. It’s like, I catch myself doing things that he does too, and I know we don’t look very much alike but he’ll make a face and it’s my face too, it’s weird. Really weird.”
“I can’t imagine, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, just, would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Get the friend group together, I’ll come by later, I’ll give a rundown of what goes down today and deliver the verdict after, okay?”
“I can do that, what time were you thinking?”
“Let’s do six, that sounds good?”
“Perfect, I’ll see you at six, my place or yours?”
“We can do mine, you have a spare key.”
“Great because mine is a disaster.”
You chat with him for a few more minutes before you call your mother, she takes a few rings to answer, but eventually she does, “Hi baby, you doing okay?”
Her voice makes you want to cry, all you want is to see your mom, to hug her and breathe her scent in, but you’re in college, you’ve been in college, you’re grown. Supposedly, “Hi Ma, I-I really want to see you.”
“We can do that, how about tonight?”
“Can we do tomorrow? I’m, if today doesn’t go right then I’ll be with my friends.”
You can practically see the way her face morphs on the other end, “Of course, how about we grab lunch tomorrow, noon?”
“Yes, yes, please. I-did you know Dad was going to be here?”
She’s silent on the other end, just for a second and it’s enough to tell you that yes, she knew, “Have you told my brothers their dad is in town?”
“No. Not yet.”
You shift uneasily, “Will you tell them?”
She sighs, “I don’t know, they were, they were so young when he left. They don’t remember things like you do.”
“Mama nobody remembers things like I do. You need to ask them if they want to meet him, that’s their choice.”
“I know it is but Aaron, he’s-he’s him. God there’s so much of him I can’t think straight. Not when it comes to your dad.”
You know it too, you know how your parents' marriage panned out from when you were a baby to now, you remember the details, you remember the words. You’d watched them love each other and then you’d watched them hate each other. They’d loved each other, deeply, enough to have three children together within three years of one another. There was going to be a wedding, and you knew, you knew like you knew your measurements that if the BAU hadn’t called your mother would have met him at the altar.
“You really think I should ask them?”
“Yes. They’re old enough to make these kinds of choices for themselves. They’re twenty Mama, they’ll be mad if you don’t offer the chance to them.”
“Will you tell them?”
“Mama.”
“Sorry, sorry, I know it’s not your job to be your father.”
You love your mother, she’s friend and guardian rolled in one and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Despite her intelligence, despite her confidence, her everything, she never could figure out how to deal with Hotch. Those first few years after Hotch left, really left, your mother was a wreck. She’d never admit that she was, she wouldn’t acknowledge those years really. If you thought it was bad when you were a kid it was downright horrendous as a teenager.
She’d realized upon your second graduation, the one from law school when you were seventeen, that she spiraled hard. Your brothers were fourteen, just starting high school, and you were working your first year of the firm. At some point you’d moved out to an apartment and taken your brothers with you, it was after your stepfather divorced from your mother and took what he could with your stepsiblings. He did what he could for you and your full brothers but with mouths to feed on his side he couldn’t fully take care of you all.
Eventually she’d gotten better and you could finally breathe again. You’d been the twins’ primary caretaker, mother and older sister forced to be one person. It’d been an interesting time to say the least. The three of you grew closer than ever, but it also saw the three of you grow up way too much without the safety net you all needed. It was without contest the absolute lowest point of your life.
“Tell them within the hour, we’re going to lunch together, okay?”
She sniffles, it makes your heart ache because that’s your mother, the strongest woman you know, and your father has made her cry again despite their lack of interaction, “Is he with you now? Aaron?”
“We’re in the same building, why?”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Mama it is not the time for this, Natalie is missing and we cannot be distracted right now.”
“Baby please, just five minutes, I need five minutes.”
“Lunch. You’ll have a whole lunch later, you’ll have it tomorrow. Now Mama I have to go. If we can’t find Nattie by sundown she’s going to turn up tomorrow morning as one of those god-awful corpse statues. I-I can’t see her like that, I can’t. So can we please put a pause on our feelings until we know Natalie is safe? Look, if by sundown we’ve found her I’ll call you back, I’ll put him on for you, and you can talk to him all night long. But not right now. Please?”
She’s silent for a long moment on the other end and fuck how you want to cry. Unbidden, your eyes start to tear up, you hate fighting with your mother. You argue with people for a living but you can’t tell your mother no without feeling like you’re getting the shit kicked out of you. Finally, you hear her breathe, “You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, I’ll ask the boys, they might call you later. I’ll send you an address.”
Your head tips back, eyes shutting in relief, “Thank you Mama, and if they do call I’m available after eleven, I can’t promise I’ll be in the right state to pick up the phone.”
“I’ll let them know, it’s okay, I promise it’s okay.”
“I miss her Mama, I miss her so much.”
“I know you do, but you’ll see her soon.”
You will see her soon, she just might not be alive. With a new blanket of misery cloaking your being you make your way back to the room where you plop down, not bothering to hide your displeasure. Hotch arches a brow at you, “Is everything okay?”
He doesn’t flinch when you look at him, mouth downturned even as you speak, “Everything’s perfect, and heads up, Mama’s coming to lunch tomorrow, she might bring the twins.”
“Are you serious?”
“She said she’d text where we’re going to meet.”
“Can she still not let anybody pick where to eat when going out?”
“What do you think?”
Hotch grunts in acknowledgement, lip curled in mild disgust as he waves his hand, “Text the address to me later, I’ll be there. You said the twins might come?”
You shrug, “They might, Mama hasn’t told them you’re here.”
“She hasn’t?”
“They have like max three memories of you, they were two when you left. Mama was on the verge of making me play messenger and delivering the news to them that their dad who they haven’t seen in a decade is in the city. But can we please focus? My friend is dead as soon as that sun dips below the horizon.”
Spencer clears his throat, “Garcia’s on line one.”
Hotch reaches over, and then her voice is there, “I, the faithful messenger you all adore, have come with some information, but not a lot. Brian Fishner checks out, he had an alibi and was at the club well into three am, past the time of Natalie vanishing. Jacob Teems however has no alibi, he’s not seen anywhere and the contacts in his phone were all nowhere near to him or with him.”
There’s a pause, and then, “Wait is femme Hotchner in the room with us?”
Hotch tilts his head from you to the call, and you clear your throat, “Are you Garcia?”
“Oh my god you’re real, you’re so real. I didn’t believe them at first, you’re really Hotch’s flesh and blood?”
“Unfortunately.”
She laughs, Hotch does not, you decide you like Garcia, “Well, well, I expect photos and comparisons and nobody is getting out of it. You hear me?”
“I do.”
Then you throw yourself into the case, head tilting back as you recall the events from the last time you saw Natalie. Spencer eyes you carefully, clearly you’re on edge, the looming loss of Natalie creeping over you faster than you can process. You’ve worked really, really hard on the case. Tonight will be difficult for you, no matter what it is there’s no getting around the fact that some part of you will break. They’re just waiting for the shoe to drop. But in the meanwhile you sharpen your focus, filtering, sorting, your memory and intellect are a dangerous combo in a situation like this.
Spencer nudges your thigh, “What’s Natalie’s favorite coffee shop?”
You glance at him, “She liked going to Chai House when she wasn’t on campus, but on campus she preferred going to Baker and Commons. Thursdays were reserved for coffee study sessions.”
“It’s Thursday, what time did she usually go?”
“Around two, she’d stay until five.”
Hotch nods at him, “Go to the one she frequented outside of campus, Morgan and Emily can set up shop in the one on campus. Don’t stay longer than three-thirty, we’re getting close but not close enough.”
It was around eleven when you got a new phone call, one from Katalina, you answered her easily, stepping outside when you did, “What’s up?”
“Rumi said to gather at your apartment, at six, he said it wasn’t looking good. I’m with Veronica right now, we just, what’s going on?”
You swallow because it’s the one thing you can do, “We’re trying to narrow down who it is. You know that.”
“I know, but seriously, this is-how bad is it? Is Nat coming home or not?”
Your eyes shut, “I don’t know. It’s, I think we need to prepare for the worst.”
She’s silent for a moment, “You don’t think she’s coming home.”
“I don’t think I know anything right now.”
“You’re literally a genius, your LSAT scores match your IQ, you’re on degree number four and you’re twenty-two. How can you not know what’s going on? Why can’t you find her? What’s wrong?”
“Katalina I’m trying over here, I’m pouring everything I have into finding Natalie. You’re frustrated? How do you think I feel?”
“I think you’re sitting on your ass.”
“Excuse me?”
“Cameron was at the club last night, so were you. What could you possibly need to find while grinding against the FBI agent closest to you in age?”
You struggle to get your thoughts in order, just for a second, “Katalina I was blending in, we both were. Natalie and I were at the club two days before she vanished. I saw two people there who were also in a twenty-foot proximity to us that night there again. You think I went to the club because I thought I could use some fun? Like I just want to forget that somewhere out there our friend is getting fucking murdered?”
“I think you want to forget a lot of things, doesn’t surprise me you know, with your dad being there and all. Bet you feel like you’re five again, huh? Daddy’s little girl who sits on his lap and reads her big girl books. Are you gonna fall apart when he inevitably leaves again?”
You try telling yourself it’s grief, it’s justified anger and she’s just saying things because she’s upset, but you’re tired of being the level headed one. You’re so sick of being the voice of reason, the one who drives people home from the club, the one making sure people are hydrated, “Fuck you.”
“What?”
The disbelief in her voice satisfies something in you, only fueling the ever
growing pit of rage that’s been slowly starting to bubble in your stomach, “You heard me Katty. Fuck. You. If one of us ever goes missing I better see you sitting front row working the case, I know I’ll be there. But where the hell are you going to be? Because it’s been three days since Natalie went missing, and the most I’ve heard from you is about how you have to paint a banner for your sorority. Color theory got your tongue?”
Without waiting for a reply you end the call and step back into the room, Morgan raises his brows at you, “Sounded pretty serious out there. You ever say fuck before?”
Your cheeks warm, “Apologies. I let my feelings get the better of me.”
“No, no, I’m sure whatever you’ve said was warranted.”
That makes your face sour, “She’s always been great about pointing out everyone else's weak points but when it comes to her own self she can’t take the criticism. At least I know I’m a frigid bitch.”
Hotch clears his throat, “Language.”
You roll your eyes, going boneless in your chair as your brows furrow, “Wait, did Katalina have an alibi for when Natalie went missing?”
Emily pauses her reading to look up at you, “Are you putting your friend as a suspect?”
“Katalina was with us that night at the club. She left before us, and said she was going home with a guy. But Katalina never mentioned anything about him the next day, which is odd, since she always recounts her one-night stands in detail. She’s been more focused on her sorority than Natalie, and now she calls me with the intention of throwing me off.”
Hotch sighs, “Your anger at your friend isn’t enough to warrant her as a potential suspect. Although the information is convenient, are you absolutely sure that you want to throw her under the bus like that?”
You glance at him, “Take this out of personal perspective. Does she look like a potential unsub?”
“With that information, yes, but that is besides the point. You and her get in a fight and you accuse her of kidnapping a mutual friend? Did she even have connections to the other girls on campus?”
“Sorority life, all the other girls were part of sororities.”
Hotch hesitates, taking a look around the rest of the team, “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll have Garcia look into her.”
“Thank you.”
“What did she say to you that warranted such a strong reaction? Clearly she got under your skin.”
They all very pointedly try to make it look like they aren’t listening to a damn word when you purse your lips, “It was about you.”
“Me?”
“She asked what I was going to do when you inevitably leave again. There was other stuff, but that was the main question.”
You hold your hand up when he opens his mouth, body shutting off away from him, “Don’t answer her question yet. You can tell me later, whatever you decide can’t possibly do more damage than what came around the first time.”
He relents, backing down and away after a moment where it looks like he might leap, “Alright. Tomorrow, at lunch, we’ll discuss it with your mother.”
“Okay.”
You’re too strung out to argue against anything at the moment. Natalie is almost on the cusp of being gone completely, Katalina is picking fights with you, and there’s almost an unsub, almost a name to be held accountable. But it’s not enough. Time slips past you as you review the names of everyone interviewed. Sculpture students, professors, her friends, you included.
It’s weird to see your profile there, your student ID and then right beside it your name, Hotchner written down just as it always is but it still feels wrong. You don’t know why you kept the name, your mother had offered to change it, but you refused. Now it’s on a case file for your friend, “When will you bring her in for an interview?”
“As soon as we can, what else could make Katalina the unsub?”
You shut your eyes, retreating into the space of memory for a second before you look at your father, “Are you sure it’s just one unsub?”
The question makes the room go still as Hotch tilts his head at you, “Go on.”
You glance at the bodies pinned up on the wall, “These were sorority girls, this one, Jennifer Thompson, was the secretary for her sorority, Delta Zeta. Maria Ramirez was chair of Philanthropy, Rosey Blank was vice-president of Delta-Sigma. Natalie was treasurer for Pi Beta Phi. All of them held a position of power in their sorority. Whoever is targeting them is making a cabinet of corpses. Meaning the next victim is going to be someone of importance to a sorority, you’re looking at the President or recruitment officer since the other four slots have been filled.”
The realization makes your body go taut as you take it in, “A sorority girl who ran for a position of importance but didn’t make it. Katalina ran for recruitment officer and lost to Brianna DeMarcos. Katalina’s made banners for her sorority for the past four years, she’s been the one putting things together, making things pretty. Didn’t we say the unsub was an underappreciated artist?”
“But who's kidnapping the girls and murdering them? I doubt Katalina is doing all of that.”
“Every woman with sex appeal knows that all you have to do is find the guy who nobody pays attention to for your dirty work. You bat your eyes, tease him, give him the illusion you need him, that you’ll repay him however he likes, as long as he does this favor for you. You used to tell me that in a duo who murders there’s always a dominant and submissive partner. Katalina is the dominant partner, the guy is the submissive and she’s using him to kill the girls. She picks them out, she lures them in because she’s a sister, she’s welcoming, friendly, nobody thinks twice about a sister asking them for help or joining up. Katalina’s a chemistry major, she’s got access to chemicals that make easy date-rape drugs or substances that impair judgement, making the victim pliant, maybe a bit disoriented. Easy to drag off.”
You tap the first pose, “She’s forcing them into demeaning positions because she feels insulted. The higher the position of power the more degrading the pose becomes. She’s….coming to my apartment tonight.”
Your body turns to look at Hotch, “I’m president of Phi Alpha Delta. Just like you were.”
“You’re a target then.”
“She called me to throw me off my game. She used the points that she knew would hurt me.”
“So you’ll slip up, it can be blamed on the heat of the moment but it adds up too well, she knew you’d figure it out eventually.”
“Because I’m too close to the case, I told her we were close to figuring it out. She asked how I couldn’t know who it was, she asked how I couldn’t figure it out. She didn’t ask for Natalie’s sake.”
“She asked because she’s upset you haven’t figured it out yet.”
“She’s an underappreciated artist.”
“You’re the president, you’re the one with all the recognition, she’s upset about it. She wants you to recognize her.”
“Because I’m the end goal.”
Hotch’s frown deepens, “Because you’ve been a target this entire time. You’ve been the target.”
You nod once, like it's a fact, “How do you want to do this then? We rush her then she might have her guy go ahead and kill Natalie, and this is assuming she’s still alive. We don’t rush her and she might kill Natalie herself.”
“It’ll look suspicious if we call her to the station, she might not even show up if we do, especially if it becomes apparent we know.”
“So we act like nothing is wrong?”
“Exactly, you’re going to go home and grieve with your friends, we’re going to wait outside and as soon as you’re in we’re going to get her.”
“What about Natalie?”
“Does Katalina have an apartment?”
“No, she lives in the sorority house. If Natalie’s being held anywhere it’s the submissive partner's place.”
“She would’ve seeked a guy out with his expertise in human anatomy and sculpting.”
“So a guy who studies the human body but loves art. He doesn’t go to Berkeley if that’s the case, he probably goes to UCSF, they’re nationally ranked for the med programs. But he probably does sculpting or art here in Berkeley. We have a program, Berkeley Art Studio, it offers various classes and is open to the public so anybody can join a class. Katalina signs up for sculpting, she finds a guy perfect for her needs, she might’ve even made him into what she needed in order to get her way. It’s just a bonus that he’s from a different university.”
Hotch turns to Morgan, “Get Garcia on the line.”
A few moments later her voice is there, “What can I do for you people way beyond the indignity of a frat party?”
“Garcia, I need you to access the list of people who took a sculpting class through Berkeley Art Studio, narrow it down to students, and from there pre-med students in UCSF.”
“Specific concentration?”
“Surgery.”
“I’ll get back to you with what I can.”
“Thank you.”
Hotch turns back to you, “Do you have a gun?”
You give him a look, “Of course I do, who do you take me for? I have a revolver in my purse.”
“Good, you might have to use it tonight.”
“Fantastic, just what I wanted to hear.”
“You’re inviting the unsub into your apartment, I’m not taking any risks.”
“Do I get to arrest her?”
“You don’t have that power despite being a prosecutor.”
“Can I tell her she’s going to be arrested?”
“Fine.”
Your nerves despite being raised smooth themselves over. You know what’ll happen tonight, you know what might come, “What do we do if things don’t go according to plan?”
“We adapt.”
“Reassuring.”
He sighs, “You’ll be surrounded by law enforcement as soon as the party begins. We’re a call away and we’ll also send you in with an earpiece so we can listen in on the conversation. If things start going south then we’ll be ready.”
You eye him, “Are you also going to be there?”
“I will be.”
Marginally, you relax. It aggravates you that knowing he’ll be there is a comfort, but knowing what’s going to go down tonight is different. You might have to shoot somebody, you’re going to face Katalina, cry over Natalie and watch as she cries over her too despite knowing the truth. Nobody else knows and you intend to keep it that way if you’re going to pull this off. The day moves on, fast and slow and then there’s the coffee shop, that just gets turned into a discussion of the plan.
An hour before the deadline you stand, brushing your clothes off from invisible dust as you grab your things, “I need to go prepare for people tonight.”
Before Hotch can speak you cut him off, “And before you make me recite the plan or what I need to do I’ve had these procedures memorized since I was three.”
He relents with a tip of his head, “Alright, but at the first sign of something suspicious you tell us, that’s an order, understand?”
“I do. I’ll see you later.”
You step away from the building, from the safety net that you’ve subconsciously reattached to Hotch. You think of calling your mother again, maybe one of your brothers. Tell them what’s happening, that no matter what tonight entails you’re always thinking of them. You think of Spencer, the way his ankle had tangled with yours under the table and he brought you your preferred order from the coffee shop without asking. He could be something, he could be nothing. You think of your father, stoic in his ways, serious like he hadn’t been when you were a kid, and how you want him to tell you everything will be alright again.
Hotch doesn’t do well with promises though, no Hotchner does. There’s no guarantee about how tonight will fare. If Natalie will be found alive, if you’ll walk away without blood stained hands. You don’t know, nobody knows, but what matters is that you’ve found an unsub, and you’re inviting her in tonight.
____________
Katalina finds you ten minutes into your walk home, her face deceptively apologetic as you shift uneasily, “Kat?”
“I’m sorry, about earlier. I wasn’t thinking right and it was wrong of me to say.”
Pretend like nothing’s amiss. That’s a rule, and one you intend to follow through. Your face softens, “I know it’s difficult, she’s our friend.”
Relief bleeds through her body language, you doubt it’s because you’ve forgiven her, “I know, it’s just, we haven’t seen much of you at all these past few days and then you go out last night with that guy looking like you’re having the time of your life. It was jarring to see that.”
You raise your brow at her, “I thought Cameron saw us, were you there too?”
“No, but he sent a video.”
“Mm, I see.”
“Did you sleep with him? The agent?”
“I did.”
“That didn’t distract you from the case?”
You shake your head, allowing a little smile to grace your face, “I’d say it helped us focus if I’m honest.”
“What’s his name?”
“Spencer, he’s fun.”
“He looked fun, looked at you like he wanted to devour you.”
“Well, he kinda did.”
She gasps, but there’s laughter in her voice and if you didn’t know what you do now it would feel like any other day after class or work. The mood sobers quickly though when she nudges your side, “What are you planning for tonight?”
You resist the urge to dock her in the face and demand what she has planned for tonight. If she’ll laugh when Natalie gets hacked to pieces, if she’ll gasp in awe when the statue is complete.
“I was going to make us something easy, something comforting. You want to help?”
“If you’ll let me.”
“For Natalie, I’ll make an exception. Let’s go get groceries.”
“I’ll pay for them then since you’ll be doing the cooking.”
For the most part it’s normal, you’re just two girls doing some grocery shopping in the most expensive luxury grocery store that sits between campus and your apartment. You get to shop there because you have money in your pockets, lots of money, and because you used to take Natalie there for a sweet treat every now and then. She had loved the baklava, and considering the fact that you aren’t going to bake that, you buy a sheet of it because you can.
It’s five when you get to your apartment, and once the key unlocks you feel the heavy weight of knowing it’s too late. The sky is darkening outside, there’s maybe thirty minutes left of daylight before darkness takes over completely. You and Katalina both know there’s not even an hour left for Natalie, and you just hope that your father has figured out where she’s being held.
Nonetheless you begin to cook, a dance you find comfort in. You know exactly what’s in what, when to add things, how to cook other ingredients for maximum flavor profile. Guests will be arriving soon, you know some will be in tears, others will keep themselves strong. You get a text from Hotch once, a simple we’re in the area and your heart wants to hammer but you keep calm.
You pause your cooking when the text comes through as you turn to Katalina, “Do you mind watching the stove while I pee?”
“Of course not, you go.”
Quietly you slip away to the kitchen so you can text him back, “Katalina is in here with me, guests are due to arrive in a few minutes.”
There’s a ping a few seconds later, Spencer this time, “Your dad looks ready to crawl out of his skin.”
You can’t imagine what that might look like to them, what they might be witnessing from their fearless leader. You finish up your business before coming back to the kitchen, Cameron is there now. Red hair and pale skin, his lip trembles when he sees you, “Is it true?”
Cameron is innocent, you know it like you know your memory. He reminds you of one of your younger twin boys, a bit of naive innocence clinging to him despite everything, “It’s true.”
“Oh. Oh.”
You grab a tissue wordlessly when the tears start to spill over, “I-I didn’t think it’d be true.”
“It’s alright, I didn’t want to believe it either.”
He hugs you, face pressed to the crook of his neck as he falls apart for a few
minutes. You let him because you’re falling apart a little bit too, you don’t have confirmation on Natalie, you don’t have confirmation on everything. To top it off the offender is standing three feet away from you cooking on your stove acting like she feels remorse for what’s going on. You have to pull away first, smoothing some of his hair back as you wipe the tears away with a tissue, “I need you to be strong for a little bit longer, can you do that?”
Cameron nods, although he’s still sniffling, “I can do that, but can I ask why you were at the club yesterday?”
You’d slipped away to the bathroom to put your earpiece in, so now you know that whatever you say they can hear, “I was undercover for a little bit, I needed to scope out the club to see if there was anybody familiar standing too close.”
“You didn’t find anybody there?”
“I didn’t, but we think we’ve found the guy responsible for all of this. I’ll tell you all more when everyone sits down, I want everyone to know.”
“Okay.”
Veronica comes next, so does Nikolas, followed up by Julian, Priyani, Abdul, and lastly, Lucca. They come in with varying states of misery, but the company helps. Your friends can lean on each other while you keep cooking, losing yourself to the rhythm of stirring, flipping, the warmth of the stove decreasing the stiffness in your fingers. Katalina pours wine for people beside you while a few others set the table. There’s not much said, not much anybody can say if they’re honest.
A few hours of this, of pretending and mourning and hoping that Natalie is found before the sunbreaks. You wait for the moment that they burst through to declare Katalina the unsub, putting her under arrest as the hunt for Natalie takes a few steps forward. You hope you won’t have to put a gun to her temple. She might be the one behind the murders, the reason why Hotch is inexplicably back in your life, the reason why Natalie isn’t sitting at your table anymore. But yesterday she was a friend, a good one too. Yesterday she had been Katty to you, the girl you went to parties with and took photos of.
Tonight she’s the bitch with an end goal to murder you. Part of you itches to reach for the gun, to let it go straight through her head even without a confession. The other part wants to scream and cry why in her face, demand answers and have her plead it was a misunderstanding even when it isn’t. The worst part is; You don’t know which option you’ll be forced to take, it could be any of them depending on circumstance. Now you wait for the FBI to burst in, to traumatize your friends and leave you to pick up the pieces.
Dinner finishes and moves to the living room for baklava and tea, nobody says a word, nobody speaks, it’s like there’s a countdown hanging above your heads. The silence isn’t comforting for you, and when you look up, Katalina is staring directly at you, “So what information do you have?”
Go time. You know your father will be moving now, you just have to time it right, “We know the unsub is likely a white male in his early twenties. Quiet, unassuming, he’s taken a class at Berkeley Art Studio in the past six months. He goes to school at UCSF for surgery, but he’s pre-med. Insecure, he’s likely a virgin. You could even say this guy is submissive, but he’s very, very intelligent. He might not be particularly handsome, but enough to where his ugliness isn’t noticed, but right there on the side where he’s never someone’s first pick.”
Katalina shifts as you reach into the cushion to draw your revolver out, nobody sees, you’re too careful for that, “And more importantly, he’s not working alone. Because when two killers get together there’s always one focal dynamic; A dominant, and a submissive. The dominant one in this case is a woman, a sister, one who’s clearly upset by the power system in place. She feels unappreciated, like her art hasn’t been recognized, or better yet, because art is a representation of oneself, she feels unrecognized, unappreciated. She’s a narcissist, a psychopath, she doesn’t feel empathy, she doesn’t feel remorse. She’s sitting in this room.”
The doors burst open and you try not to flinch when your fathers voice rings in your ears, “Katalina McKinny you’re under arrest for the murders of Jennifer Thompson, Maria Ramirez, and Rosey Blank.”
She’s on her feet in an instant, “This isn’t right, I haven’t done anything!”
You stand, something cool, something dangerous on your face as you circle around her, your father stepping forward and god you look so much like him. Revolver in hand and a deceptive calm over your face, “Yes you have, you have. You watched your partner take those girls apart and you drew up the poses you wanted to put those girls in. The higher their position the more degrading the pose would be. You couldn’t stand it, could you? All that work, banner after banner, everything you’ve ever created, all for it to get discarded in the end. How long have you been planning my murder Katalina?”
She’s got her hands up but her eyes won’t leave you, she grits her teeth, silently analyzing her options, “Where’s Natalie? Where have you stored her?”
For a moment there’s nothing, then she shuts her eyes and tilts her head up towards your ceiling, “Anna Head Alumnae Hall. Third floor, second door on the right from the west stairs.”
“Is she alive?”
“No.”
Hotch moves, dragging her wrists into cuffs as she’s hauled out of the building, but when you start to head out Spencer steps in front of you, hands gripping your arms, “Let us go get her. Not you. Please.”
You frown at him, “Spencer-”
“Please. You’re not part of the BAU officially, you don’t need to see her body.”
“I do, I’ve worked this case right there with you and I need to see it finished.”
“I know but please, just, you’ve had a night. You can see tomorrow.”
Your brow arches, “I want updates tonight and I get to see tomorrow.”
“Deal, thank you, just please, go be with your friends.”
He leaves, you lock the door behind you and in a display of a rare lapse in control, you slide down the front of it until you’re on the floor. Natalie is dead, Katalina confessed her murder, she confessed what she had done. You’ve cracked the case, you’ve followed your fathers’ footsteps. Katalina will be put behind bars, the perfect future she’d envisioned for herself gone in the blink of an eye. For a second you just sit there, head thumping against the door when you tilt it back.
You’re exhausted, you hadn’t realized it, but you’re absolutely exhausted. The bone deep kind that tells you if you want you could sleep until Sunday, but you won’t. Because you’re waiting on updates and tomorrow you’ll see Natalie, or what remains of her. You wonder how long Natalie has been dead for, if you’re too late by a day, or an hour, you’ll find out soon enough. You open your eyes when you hear footsteps approaching you. Above you stand your friend group, all of them in varying states of shock, but more importantly, Nik is extending a hand to you.
“How long did you know Katalina was the murderer?”
You take the hand, letting him haul you to your feet as you sway, “Noon. We’re narrowing down who the partner is, but earlier when Katalina called me she gave herself away.”
“What’d she say?”
Perhaps it’s the shock but your lips curve into a dazed smile, “She tried to throw me off my game. But she asked how I couldn’t not know, how I couldn’t figure it out. She challenged my intelligence, and then she went for feelings. She tried to rile me up using my dad as ammo, she asked, and I quote ‘I think you want to forget a lot of things, doesn’t surprise me you know, with your dad being there and all. Bet you feel like you’re five again, huh? Daddy’s little girl who sits on his lap and reads her big girl books. Are you gonna fall apart when he inevitably leaves again?’”
You make your way to the living room again, grabbing another slice of baklava, “Unfortunately for her I can do something called emotional processing and compartmentalizing. I can deal with my personal issues another day. What I won’t do is let words keep me from catching a serial killer.”
Veronica stares at you for a second, “That’s-That’s kind of scary.”
You shrug, “It’s only scary because you don’t understand how it works. It got me through dinner with her, it let me ask all the questions we needed answered. There’s a confession, a location, they’ll work on getting her partners’ name and recovery. We got what we needed and this weekend, once I can catch a fucking break, I’ll deal with my emotions.”
“You don’t deal with them as soon as they come up?”
“Vi I’m a Hotchner, and Hotchner’s don’t do things like emotions, not when we’re out in the field.”
“You’re not in the field anymore though, not right now, you’re in your apartment so please show something other than this unnerving calm. Please.”
You shoot her a look, “I’m not asking you to stop showing emotions so do not ask me to show them because you’re uncomfortable that I’m not.”
“Are you uncomfortable with us showing emotion then?”
You stand, you’re tired, you feel sick to your stomach, there’s filth everywhere in your apartment and this is why you don’t host but maybe twice a year. There’s too many people, your clothes are clinging to you in ways that make you want to peel your skin off. Your hair is touching you and they want you to be more emotional. Then they’ve gone and flipped your words on you.
“Get out. Now.”
“Excuse me?”
You level your gaze at her, “Here’s my emotions, front and center. Get. Out.”
“This isn’t-”
“What you wanted? What you expected? Did you want my hands to shake, did you want me to start crying maybe? Maybe I’d throw something against the wall. What, did you want to see me fall apart or something?”
“Of course not, it’s just, we’ve got confirmation Natalie is dead, she’s gone and you’re just-just-”
“Standing here with a grip on myself because I can’t afford to fall apart at the moment. You do realize there were two of them and one of them is still out there, right?”
She falters and Priyani tugs at her arm gently, “Now isn’t the time. This is a case, you know how she handles cases.”
“By being an unfeeling, icy bitch?”
This time it’s emotions driving her words, they’re not spoken to throw you off your game, they’re just spoken because she doesn’t know what else to say or how to say it. You could stand here and take it, but the case is personal, “I won’t repeat myself, get out before I force you out. Natalie is dead, I intend to find the one who physically took her life.”
Veronica, caught between her anger and denial, shakes her head, “No, no, we’re staying here. You’re going to include us in every detail, you’re going to share every update with us, she was our friend too. You don’t-you don’t get to just hold that information from us.”
“And you’re delusional to think that’s going to happen. Are you the prosecutor in the room, are you the one with an autobiographical memory? Where were you in that damned room looking at every nitty gritty detail of those girls' corpses? Were you the end target to a string of gruesome murders? Did you have to pretend like you weren’t seconds away from putting a bullet into who should’ve been a friends’ mouth? Was that you? Or was that me?”
She opens her mouth and closes it like a fish, “That isn’t-”
“It’s the truth. Now get the fuck out of my apartment so we can both process that. I can’t think with all of you in here, or with the fifty-six dishes that wait for me or the fact that I’ve been in the same socks for fifteen or so hours. I’m waiting for pictures of Natalie’s corpse, I do not need any of you in here right now, or this mess.”
They leave because there’s nothing they get out of staying. You clean because it’s the one thing you have control over. Leftovers get put away, dishes left to soak and others in a washer that you’ve started. Then you thankfully, blissfully, get to shower, and when you shower you don’t hear the door open again. Why would you? You need a key to get into the building, your apartment door is locked too. You go through your night-routine easily, and it’s only when you hear the click of a gun that you feel your blood run cold.
“Put on a pair of underwear, a bra, and a big coat to conceal yourself.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Milo Lovelette. Katalina let me in, she gave me a mission to complete.”
“You’re the sculptor.”
“I am.”
You turn to face him. He’s got a gun pointed at your chest, he’s tall, muscular, his face average but leaning towards ugly. His hands are steady. Surgeon hands. He’s in control right now, and he knows it, “Do you have a matching set?”
“I do.”
“What colors?”
“Black, pink, green, purple, red, orange.”
“Wear the red set.”
You have no weapons here, you also know you can’t make a break for it, so you’ll do what you can. As you rummage through your clothes you twist some shirts to spell out SOS before grabbing what you need. You’re already naked so you get dressed in front of Milo, acutely aware of how he hovers close, too close, “Wear these with it, and go do your makeup.”
There’s no choice but to comply, hair being done up again as you do a fresh face of makeup. You draw on your calmness, the ability to compartmentalize. You need to focus, you need to escape somehow, someway. Somewhere out there your father searches for Natalie’s corpse, with your eyeliner you write down on the inside of the sink Milo Lovelette and then you finish getting ready with a perfume of his choice. He takes you aggressively, arm latched with his and a purse you rarely use slung over your shoulder, phone left behind on the table.
He drags you to his car, it’s a shit box and it smells but none of it matters when you start trying to think of how you can get out of the situation, “Why did you make me put lingerie on?”
Milo works his jaw as he glances at you, “Katalina promised you to me.”
“Promised?”
“She asked what I wanted most in the world. I told her a muse, she gave me one. You.”
You think you might puke, right there in the car all over your three thousand dollar shoes, “Oh.”
He takes you to a part of San Francisco you haven’t frequented often, and then he starts making his calls. He refers to you as Scarlett even though it isn’t your name and it makes you wonder what you’ve been dragged into. Then he takes you into the building, it’s lavish despite the outside of it. Sleek hallways and warm lighting that should ease you but it feels wrong to be there. Your heels click as you walk, and the farther you go the more unease you feel. Milo takes you into a room, the lighting is darker here but there’s big windows overlooking the city and a bed. The bed is bloodstained.
“Take the coat off.”
You let it pool to the floor, trying not to flinch when his hand takes a fistful of your ass and gives it a squeeze, “You’re perfect, did you know that?”
You glance at him, at the obsessive look in his eye when he drinks your body in, “I knew from the moment she showed me a picture of you that you were meant to be mine. That you’d look stunning in my bed. Katalina said you didn’t have a boyfriend, that you needed to be taught how to be a proper woman. Do you know what a proper woman is?”
Answering feels like a death sentence, but your silence might not save you either, “Tell me?”
He smiles, knuckle caressing your face, “You women don’t know anything, not really. There’s no reason for any of you to be in universities unless it’s to assist us men. I know you’re a smart thing, but smarts don’t matter when you have a pretty face. I don’t know why you insist on all these degrees when your true purpose isn’t bound to a court room but a home. Don’t worry though, I promise I’ll show you what you really need. I’ll make you a wife, a mother, but only once you’ve proved yourself as my wife. Tonight, we’ll make it official.”
“How so?”
“I’ve called some people, they’re going to watch us consummate our marriage.”
You’re going to be raped, and people are going to watch. It makes your head spin in the worst way possible, “And after?”
“And after I’m going to have your heart for eternity.”
Which means you might be dead by sunrise, “How’d you kill Natalie?”
Milo’s smile widens, “I thought she looked like you, so with her I practiced how to be a good husband. I didn’t need her heart though, I only need yours.”
“Why can’t my family be at our wedding?”
“Because they’ll try to take you from me, especially your dad, the FBI agent. Don’t worry, he can have you back eventually, but he’ll never have your heart.”
It’s not often that you’ve felt fear before but in this moment you feel nothing but fear. Raped and murdered, that might be how you go down and you refuse for that to be your legacy. You’ve earned four degrees, you’re president of the oldest law fraternity on campus (it’s technically pre-law but they begged you to come be president). You’re a prosecutor, you’ve been entertaining the idea of the BAU for the past few days since you got thrown on the case.
“When will you consummate our marriage?”
“As soon as our witnesses arrive, go, lay down on the bed.”
The bloodstain is not welcoming, even more so with how wet it is. Fresh blood, Natalie’s blood, and you’re getting covered in it. The shoes stay on and you stare at the ceiling, hoping, praying, that you’re rescued or you find an escape route. You think about it, how you’d rather die than be assaulted like he plans on doing.
“Have you had other wives before?”
You hear him sharpening a blade, “I’ve had six wives.”
“Who were they?”
“Deborah Hank, Loralie Harvey, Anastasia Cove, Angelina Pear, Constance Smith, and then there was Bianca Lane. You’ll be the seventh wife, lucky number seven.”
You don’t feel lucky, you feel all shades of awful as you plan how to get out of the building, “Will I still be pretty once you’ve gotten my heart?”
“You’ll be the prettiest one in the room. Always.”
Then there’s nothing to do but wait.
__________
Hotch knows something’s wrong as soon as he steps into your apartment, the phone ringing on your counter. It’s empty, he knows that as soon as he’s inside. The team waits outside for him, he said it’d be a quick check in, but when he comes to your bathroom, when he spots the name you’ve written down, he knows it isn’t going to be quick. He’s got Reid on call in an instant, “Get the team up here. Now.”
He goes to your bedroom, the light is on but you’re gone. A coat is missing, so is a pair of shoes, he yanks the drawer open to find the SOS sign staring back at him. The door opens again and the light comes on, “Hotch?!”
Hotch stalks his way out, “Milo Lovelette, he’s kidnapped her. He’s the second unsub.”
Spencer straightens up, “Where did you find that?”
“She wrote down his name in the bathroom sink with eyeliner. I opened up one of her dresser drawers and found sos spelled out with her shirts. She’d showered so he probably came in when she was showering, made her get dressed and put on makeup so suspicions wouldn’t be raised when she left.”
“How’d he get in here?”
“Katalina let him into the building, he probably picked the lock to get into her apartment, Morgan have Garcia pull up security footage and a home address or any address associated with him. With Katalina in our hold he knows he doesn’t have the luxury to take his time with her.”
Morgan nods, phone already flipped up with Penelope on the other end as Spencer heads to your room to look at the SOS signal, he’d told you to stay behind. He didn’t want you to see Natalie’s corpse knowing that you’d already seen enough and even if you didn’t see it he and Hotch could see that you were nearing your limits. Hence why they made you stay behind, but you’d been kidnapped from your own home, and now they were running on a strict time-limit.
JJ takes her turn with the drawers, opening one up in particular that makes her shut her eyes, “Looks like our unsub wanted her in something particular, she’s missing a lingerie set.”
Hotch does not want to imagine that, Spencer at least knows time and place. Now is not one of those occasions, “That’s different than what the other girls were found in, none of them were wearing lingerie.”
Morgan flips the phone shut, “Natalie’s results haven’t come back yet but none of them showed signs of sexual abuse."
Emily doesn’t dare look at Hotch, “She was the final target, she obviously held some sort of superiority over the other girls. What if she was part of Katalina’s deal with the unsub in order to get him to do her bidding? Like an arrangement.”
“We need to talk to Katalina again then, she might know something.”
They take off, heading back to Katalina in her interrogation room. She hadn’t cried or thrown a fit, she’d just stayed stubbornly silent. That wasn’t going to happen anymore though, not when Hotch all but ripped the door open. She flinched hard when he stepped in and although the team exchanged looks they didn’t interfere, not when he was like this.
“Milo Lovelette. Where would he hide?”
Her eyes widen for a second before her face smoothes down, “How should I know?”
“You’re his accomplice, you promised my daughter to him, where has he taken her?”
She shrugs, “Again, how should I know?”
“Tell me do you like solitude?”
“What?”
“Do you like the quiet, when it’s just you and your thoughts? Can you stand that noise that fills your ears when there’s no noise to fill them up except for your voice when you speak to yourself?”
“I don’t talk to myself, what does this have to do with anything?”
“Because depending on your answer you’re either going to solitary confinement for a few years or for life. You’re manipulative, vindictive, and you have a thirst for revenge that’ll turn the prison yard into your playground. All traits of someone that’ll land them in a white walled room where they see someone once a day and it isn’t on a personal basis either. It’s clinical, cold, you’re going to be alone. Now, do you want that to be your future? Or do you want that to be something you endure until you learn how to be with people again?”
Katalina stares at him for a second before she turns away, “The address is 3321 Cod Circle. Fifteenth floor, go to the left, then turn right, and go to the apartment in the corner at the end of the hallway.”
“Good, now what does he want with her?”
“She’s going to be his wife. The guy is weird, has an obsession with wives and teaches them how to be perfect for him.”
Hotch is silent for a second, and then he stands, “You will never, ever, be allowed to eat lunch with another person ever again. I hope you know that.”
He leaves her there with an address in hand and a hope that you’re still untouched wherever you are. Lingerie, makeup, a big black coat and heels. Hotch is going to put a bullet through Milo’s head, he’ll make sure of it.
____________
You didn’t expect for there to be twelve men watching the consummation of marriage. They wore white and sat in chairs that had been set up by Milo, they wore masks over their faces, silent and straight backed as they stared at you. You who laid in the bed, an uncharacteristic tremble in your body when you felt the bed dip under his weight. You didn’t dare look when his knife ran along your thigh before digging in and dragging.
Warm blood began to run down the side, pooling onto the bed below as you did your best not to flinch or make a sound, “See? She’s learning already.”
Your other thigh received the same treatment, then he dragged the knife up to your stomach, right where your womb lay, “This is your most prized possession. Within this you can create life, you can grow my offspring within you, and when I rejoin you in the afterlife you and the rest of my wives will have my children raised for me. Because that is what you’re good for; Breeding, and raising. As a woman this is your god-given duty, and as a man I will ensure you fulfil this creed.”
Then the knife dips into your skin and he begins to carve a circle around your stomach, it isn’t deep but it’s enough to make it to where you bleed, you know it’ll scar if given the chance. Your fingers twitch to take the knife from him, to drive into his face, his neck, and you might go down trying but at the very least it’ll mean you went down fighting. You endure it though, waiting for the right moment when he drags the knife up, up, up.
Your hand shoots up to grip his wrist, and in his surprise you manage to deliver a kick to his head. His grip loosens just enough for you to grab the knife and once you feel it in your hand you bring it down on him. Right into his chest, but unfortunately another man manages to grab you and shove a different knife into your side. It makes you shriek as pain blooms beneath your eyes, so strong your vision fades for a second, especially when he removes it and more blood spills out your side.
That isn’t enough though, you reach behind you to stab him too, right in the neck and then the other men are amongst you. But you stab like a frenzied animal, with two knives in hand and nothing but blind desperation to get out of the place. The pain makes you sluggish but adrenaline fuels you, allowing you to injure enough men that you can flee. You remember the route, heels clicking faster as the men shout to follow you but you’re already farther ahead than them. You won’t fail, even when you get dizzy as your bloodstained fingers desperately push at the elevator button. You plead for it to open as the footsteps hurry, but the door opens and you scramble to close it, pressing the ground floor level and the door closes just as a singular knife flies through the air, embedded itself into your shoulder.
Not that it matters, you press a hand to your wound, bracing yourself to run again as the doors open and you fly out of the place. You don’t stop running either. It doesn’t matter that you’re in nothing but lingerie and heels, you’re covered in blood and it hurts. Oh god it hurts. You know you’re running out of steam, the adrenaline is fading, but you also know stopping means your death. You need to find a place to hide, a place you can escape to.
Someplace the men can’t reach you. You look around frantically in an attempt to find some sort of civilization but there’s none, and hiding in an alley isn’t an option since you’re leaving a blood trail behind. You keep running, you can’t stop running. You take twists and turns and finally a convenience store is there, a gas station attached to it. You stumble in, ignoring the horrified gasps from people as you all but claw your way to the cashier, “Phone.”
They hand it to you quickly, and you dial Hotch’s number, he answers on ring two, “Who is this?”
“Dad.”
You don’t regret saying it, not when you sway dangerously and you pass the phone to the cashier who gives the address then back to you, “They’re-They’re coming after me, hurry.”
A woman locks the doors just as your legs give out. The people shout but you’re too far gone to stop yourself. You shriek as the pain hits you full force, there’s blood coming out from your side, a knife sticking out of your shoulder. You’re borderline nude and you know your hair is messed up six weeks to Sunday. None of it matters though, not when your vision is going in and out and you know you’re running out of time. You gave it hell, gave them hell, whoever they are.
You’ve done your best, you know that. You can die satisfied knowing that you ended this man who took so many other lives before you. He didn’t get you though, you got him. A woman kneels beside you. She’s older, closer to your mothers age but she takes your hand, it’s warm, comforting, “Can you tell me your name?”
Because you need to live, you need to survive, you tell it to her, “Hotcher.”
“Alright Miss. Hotchner, can you tell me what happened?”
You swallow, letting your eyes shut, “Milo Lovelette, he kidnapped me, tried to rape me, he had twelve companions in white robes and masks who sat around the bed and watched. I-I stabbed him, I killed him. I killed seven of them, the rest are cha-chasing me. Ohhh fuck-”
For a moment sound fades away while your body lurches forward, vomit spilling from your lips to splatter against the floor beside you but you don’t care about that very much. You feel floaty, yet in so, so much pain, something is wrong, horribly wrong, “That’s okay Miss. Hotchner, that’s okay, let it out.”
There’s something wrong with the vomit, it’s too red, you didn’t eat anything red for dinner, “I need my Dad, he’s-he’s workin’ the case, gotta tell him I caught the guy, Mama will-she will, bars. Mhmm.”
“How old are you, Miss. Hotchner?”
“M’ twenty-two.”
“Are you in college?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What for?”
You have to think for a moment, everything’s farther apart, harder to recall despite it all, “Li-Linguistics and brain science.”
“Wow Miss. Hotchner, those are some good degrees, are you excited to graduate?”
Her question makes you smile, even though your mouth is full of blood, “Yuh, I-I want my Dad to be there this time. I graduated thrice, he has to be there this time.”
“You’ve graduated three times?”
“Mhm, high school, college, law school, now this, next Spring.”
“You must be brilliant.”
“M’a genius, 176, same as my LSAT scores.”
“Well can you use that big brain of yours to keep your eyes open? Your parents want to see you, they’d be sad if you were asleep when they came by.”
Everything’s getting fuzzier and you aren’t sure if you’ll be able to stay awake. You think of your mother, the strongest woman you know. Your brothers, the physical extensions of you that you adore with all your heart. Your father who left and came back and you should hate him, but you want him back nonetheless. You think of your friends, the heartbreak on their faces as they sit around your table and you don’t think you can crush their spirits anymore. You think of Spencer, the possibilities are endless with him, possibilities you want to explore.
“Would you-would you tell them I’m sorry? I ran so fast.”
Her face does something funny, you can’t really tell though with how your vision starts to get fuzzy, “Tell-tell my Dad I know why he did what he did, it’s okay now, because he’s back.”
More blood spills over your mouth, dripping onto your chest, “And my Mama, she-she can handle it. The twins have to graduate, I want a seat saved. My friends can raid my closet, and Spencer. I would’ve liked having a chance with Spencer.”
She shakes her head, cupping your face, “Now Miss. Hotchner, they’ll be here any minute, you can’t leave them waiting.”
A hot tear spills down your cheek, the first in years, “I just wanted to make someone proud.”
“They’re very proud of you, I promise you that much. You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re kind, all you have to do is hang on, okay?”
“I think I might disappoint them this time.”
“You won’t be disappointing anybody, no matter what happens.”
You sniffle, “I’m tired.”
She croons softly, tucking a strand of hair behind your head, “I know you’re tired, but stay awake a little bit longer, okay?”
Her voice sounds far away though, and everything’s getting brighter. You see her lips moving but you can’t hear what she’s saying, you can’t hear anything, but you think you see red and blue lights flashing in the distance and you smile for it because, “My Dad’s here, he’s here.”
__________
Hotch doesn’t know what he expects when he bursts through the doors, but you on deaths’ door isn’t one of them. You had sounded strained on the phone call, not, not this. The woman sitting beside you scrambles out of his way when he kneels beside you, “Honey I need you to respond to me, I need you to talk.”
But there’s nothing coming out of you, just that faraway look in your eyes as your body starts to fail. It’s a look he’s seen on people before, the look that tells him it’s going to take a miracle for you to survive. He has to see it through though, he has to see your eyes again, to hear your voice. You’d been so strong, so vibrant despite the dark color pallet and aura around you. Your jaw moves, something a little more alive returning to your eyes, “Dad, you came.”
He exhales sharply, he hadn’t even known he was holding his breath, “Of course I came, I’ll always come from now on.”
“No promises.”
“This is a promise.”
You huff, breath laboured and shallow, “I’m sorry, I-I couldn’t-”
“None of that, you did your best, you did plenty, you’re going to be okay, alright?”
The glassiness creeps back in, “I like pancakes on Tuesdays.”
Tuesdays, once upon a time, had been a reserved time for breakfast for dinner instead of actual dinner. It was like that because you never got to eat breakfast with your parents who left for work too early to do such a thing. So Tuesdays were reserved for breakfast instead of dinner. You’d loved pancakes, you liked it best if you had a plain one and another with chocolate chips in it.
“We can make pancakes on Tuesday.”
You don’t respond, and Hotch’s fingers fly to your pulse, it’s thready, barely there. You won’t last much longer, “How long until the paramedics get here?!”
Spencer kneels on your other side, they’d done what they could for your wounds but with the damage sustained they could only do so much, “ETA one minute tops.”
Then your pulse falters and your body goes completely limp, slumping towards Hotch who catches you, immediately setting you down to start compressions on your chest as Spencer shouts that you’re down. Morgan is the one to shove Hotch aside to take over chest compressions, Emily grabs him in the same motion, dragging him back, “He’ll take care of her.”
Hotch can only stare as your body jolts, and then get transferred to the ambulance, he watches as you get sped away. Spencer is the one to guide him to the car and the rest spread out to search for the others, and the building Katalina had named. They go to the hospital, Spencer behind the wheel, and he feels like he’s floating from somewhere far away. You’d died, your pulse gone and eyes blank, your body drenched in blood both from you and whoever you attacked to get to freedom.
He walks with steady feet but doesn’t zone in until the doctor approaches, her face grim as she calls for Hotchner. He stands first, quick with purposeful strides as he goes to her, “I’m her father, how is she?”
The doctor grimaces, “She’s extremely unstable but in surgery. Her iliac artery was nicked when she was stabbed and not to mention the incredible amount of strain her body went through when she escaped. With all her injuries she ran over a mile towards safety, that’s borderline inhuman. Unfortunately these are the only updates I can give for right now, I’ll try to come when I can. Have you informed any of her other family?”
“Not yet, what should I inform them?”
“To come quickly, urgently. There’s no guarantee that she’ll see the sunrise.”
“Thank you.”
She nods once, “And for what it’s worth, your daughter is incredible for all she’s managed to do. I hope her strength lasts when she’s on the table.”
Hotch all but collapses back in his seat as Spencer focuses on the area around them. You’re in surgery, it doesn’t look great, and someone needs to call your mother. Hotch resigns himself to the task, “I’m going to inform her mother.”
“I’ll be here.”
Hotch steps away to a small room when he flips his phone open, dialing a number he thought he might never have dialed again. Your mother picks up on the last ring possible, voice thick with sleep, “Aaron?”
He shuts his eyes as her voice comes over him. A voice he’d loved and lost, and he doesn’t know how to face this, how he’s going to tell her that you’re dying on the surgery table, “Aaron did something happen?”
“Our daughter is in the hospital, she-she might not make it through the night.”
“What?”
“She was kidnapped from her apartment and in her escape sustained potentially lethal injury. We’re at UCSF Medical Center, just, please. They don’t know if she’ll make it off the table.”
“Oh my god, oh my god. We’re on our way, oh god, oh god.”
She hangs up and Hotch takes a second to himself. You might not make it off the table, he’d watched every fathers’ worst nightmare come to life before his very eyes. He doesn’t even know if you’ve been raped by that man. On the way back to Spencer he gets a call from Morgan, “Hey we just checked out the apartment, she uh, she got eight of them, Milo included. Hotch, she fought like hell in here.”
“She killed eight men?”
“Sure did, we’ll have pictures but it’s an absolute blood bath in here. We didn’t even need to figure out which apartment she was being held in, there’s bloody red bottom shoe prints coming from the door to the elevator.”
“She ran a mile in those shoes.”
“How’s she doing over there?”
“Not well, they’re preparing for her not to make it off the table.”
“Oh hell, we’ll get this wrapped up over here and then head over.”
“Get me those pictures, I need to see them.”
“Will do.”
The line goes dead and he returns to Spencer, eternally fidgeting Spencer who all but jumps when Hotch takes a seat again, “How’d it go?”
“Her mothers frantic, Morgan’s getting photos from the crime scene. According to him she left bloody stiletto prints all the way from the apartment to the elevator, and then she also left eight bodies to cool in that room.”
Spencer blinks, “Eight bodies?”
“Milo included. The other eight have yet to be named.”
“I see.”
They fall silent for a minute, maybe ten, before Hotch sighs, “And if you didn’t think I’d notice you two playing footsie under the table you’re mistaken.”
“Oh god.”
Hotch raises a brow at him, “According to sources, you were at my daughter's apartment last night. All of last night, except for of course when you two went to the club. And Morgan was very vocal about your activities the night prior.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I-I-”
“Reid.”
Spencer’s mouth shuts with an audible click as Hotch raises his hand, “When my daughter recovers well enough you’re going to take her on a proper date. You’re going to give her more than a club and drunken fornication.”
“Sure, yes, one hundred percent you got it.”
“And for what it’s worth, I can see you two being good for each other.”
Spencer pauses, unsure of where to go with this information, “Really?”
Hotch tilts his head back, eyes shutting, “You’re both geniuses who graduated early and started getting degrees like the British took over countries. Your emotions are worn on your sleeve, hers are stored away in a pandora's box. If anybody is curious enough to open that box it’s you, and out of anybody, you’re the most equipped to help her handle them.”
“I’ll do my best then.”
“I know you will, hence why I’m giving you this one pass.”
“Thank you, Hotch.”
“Mm, now shut your eyes, they’re going to strain themselves looking for things you can’t see yet.”
____________
Your mother comes in an hour later, your younger brothers hot on her heels. For all that you look like your mother, your brothers take an awful lot of Hotch after them. Of course they see your mother in them, like their skin tone and the lips. But the brows, the nose, the eyes, the hair, the face structure, all of that is Hotch. Like if Hotch were brown, that’d be them.
She comes in a frenzy and as soon as she sees Hotch, your blood all over him, she breaks apart, “What happened? Aaron, tell me right now where is our baby girl? What did they do to her?”
Hotch sits her down, swallowing at the looks of incredulousness on the other two boys' faces. They were so young when he left, they’d known him through phone calls and rare visits, but they were thirteen when he officially exited their lives. When he married Haley. When she pursed her lips every time he called and clicked her tongue when he used his vacation to go over to see you and the twins. He doesn’t know why he gave in, why he went the route that he did.
“We’ve been working on the case of the sorority girls turned statues. Natalie went missing, she got pulled in on the case because she was one of the last people who’d seen her and her memory. Her knowledge of the student body and the people around her, it’s unparalleled. She unraveled the case and found out our unsub was actually two people, amongst them Katalina. Who we arrested earlier tonight after our daughter hosted a dinner party with her friends.”
He sighs, body dropping a bit, “They left, and we didn’t know that Katalina had let the second unsub in. Milo Lovette, who had an obsession around making innocent girls into his wife, the only one with full details on what he was doing and planning to do is her. We believe she was not his first victim, but she was certainly his last. It’s reported that there were twelve men in the room, not including Milo. Who broke into her apartment once everyone left and forced her to get ready. We believe he was planning on assaulting her sexually before he inevitably murdered her. As far as we know it didn’t happen, she left eight bodies, including his, behind during her escape. She ran a mile in her heels to safety.”
Your mother stares at him, something broken all over her face, “How could this have happened to her?”
“I don’t know. It was ultimately Katalina’s fault for putting the idea of her as a wife for Milo in his head. She was using him to kill the other sorority girls so she didn’t even have to lift a finger.”
“She called me earlier today, we were supposed to get lunch tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“And she’s-she’s still in surgery?”
“She is, we’ve had no updates since the first one.”
“Alright. We can-did you see her? Before the ambulance took her?”
“I did.”
“Was she coherent?”
“Barely, she, the last thing she said was she likes pancakes on Tuesdays.”
Your mother breaks then while your brothers grip each other's hands and stare off into the distance. Spencer stands, almost abruptly, “I need to call her friends and inform them of what’s going on.”
He leaves quickly, leaving the Hotchners to grieve for someone who’s almost dead, but not quite there yet. He doesn’t need to listen to the conversation that’ll happen when he’s gone, instead he takes the list of contacts that belong to your friends and dials the first one: Nikolas.
“Hello?”
“This is Doctor Spencer Reid, are you Nikolas Perez?”
“I am. What’s going on?”
Spencer braces himself, “Small Hotchner’s in the hospital, she was kidnapped by the secondary unsub after you all left. She escaped, but we don’t know if she’s going to survive. How fast can you gather your friends and come to UCSF Medical Center?”
“Oh my fuck we’ll be there within the hour, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck went wrong after we left?”
“A lot of things, but she fought tooth and nail to get out, she succeeded.”
“What do I tell people?”
“You tell them she’s in the hospital in critical condition, tell them to get their asses up and over here.”
“Right, of course, we’ll be there shortly.”
Spencer hopes so for your sake.
_____________
Morgan comes in our hour five to a whole waiting room full of familiar faces, even though three of them he hasn’t been introduced to yet. He hands the file over to Hotch regardless, “It was a cult that abducted her. Milo was the leader of it, but there's a lot of evidence, and we might’ve accidentally stumbled on something bigger than we anticipated.”
Hotch opens the folder and there’s the bloody footprints. Your bloody footprints, the trail of dripping blood joining. The next picture is the elevator, your blood swept over the buttons, and then down the panel on the inside. The pool of blood is bigger there. The next photos are of the path you took, the blood trail you’d left behind up until the gas station where they’d found you. The next pictures are the bodies. Men in white with red stained robes, Morgan was right about the bedroom looking like a bloodbath.
Spencer looks at them with him, eyebrows raised when he sees the level of violence that went down in the room. Your bodies rest in mostly whole pieces, but there’s an ear, some fingers, and a nose on the ground found in various places. Your coat pooled on the floor, the evidence of you in the bed through blood stains, some fresher than others. Fought like hell he’d said, he was right about that too.
“Have we managed to identify the seven other bodies?”
Emily glances his way, “We’re sending dental records in, there should be matches pulled up soon enough. They’re young men, similar age, varying degrees of attractiveness, Milo might’ve been the leader but I doubt he was the big boss of this operation.”
The cult is a thing to look into later, and it’s not their jurisdiction for the moment. Right now Hotch’s only duty is to sit in his chair and hope he gets to make you pancakes on Tuesday again.
if the dad’s best friend trope where he knew reader since they were born and immediately have feelings and attraction the minute reader turns 18 has no haters that means i'm dead
Not trying to be negative or anything, just something I noticed and wondered if anyone else agrees. But, does anyone else feel like the fanfic community has kinda of faded throughout the years?
I remember when everyone was super active in it and pushing out fic’s like it was their job. But now that personalized AI has come around I feel like people haven’t really been as reliant on fan fiction to get that kind of self insert experience.
Which makes me kinda sad because it completely strips away the community aspect of sharing fan fiction. Also because using AI for this purpose is such an isolating experience and a huge difference between fan fiction and AI roleplay is that fanfics have an END.
Using generative AI for this and being able to go on as long as you want seems like why so many people are becoming addicted to it.
Anyways those are just some of my thoughts, sorry if it was written/formatted poorly I just wanted to go on a bit of a rant. But anyone from either side of this issue let me know your thoughts please!
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