❛ You look tired. ❜
“i am tired. Honestly, I don’t think I stop being tired anymore.”
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❛ You look tired. ❜
“i am tired. Honestly, I don’t think I stop being tired anymore.”
closed starter for @baumother
It’d been a Thursday morning when the first letter arrived, an innocent-looking plain white envelope sitting in Taissa’s empty mailbox, with nothing on it apart from her address scrawled in almost illegible handwriting. It’d taken her awhile to decipher what was actually in the letter, but the first couple of sentences were enough to get her stomach churning, the bile rising in her throat. She’d shoved it back into the envelope, tossed it straight into the trash just so she wouldn’t have to look at it, but a couple hours later her Bureau instincts kicked in and she’d pulled it back out to keep as evidence.
Foolishly, she’d hoped it would go away if she ignored it for long enough. Until the second letter came. By the third letter, she’d installed a new electronic lock on her door and two motion sensor security cameras - one in the outer hallway and the other in full view of her apartment. The nights dragged on far too long as she lay in bed sleepless, staring at the doorway and hyper aware of every creak and groan in the building.
If you were to ask Taissa why she hadn’t approached anyone about it - she worked at the FBI for Christ’s sakes - she wouldn’t have known what to respond. That she was too afraid of the consequences? That she didn’t want to trouble anyone with her issues? That she didn’t want her daddy issues dug up and examined under a microscope? The list went on, really.
She’d learnt from experience that sometimes it was better to just deal with these things alone, that it was infuriating how people learnt to treat you like glass and stepped on eggshells around you - which was exactly what she had begun to notice from her team. She supposed she couldn’t expect all the sleepless nights and lackluster work performance to escape their notice; they were all trained agents after all.
@baumother said “I mean… I’ve made worse choices before.”
THERE’S A VERY THIN LINE: between vulnerable and exposed, between too honest and just honest enough. maeve doesn’t talk about herself, none of them do, but maeve especially makes an art of avoiding any topic that might reveal too much. her constance impermanence is made easier by the fact that the others remain only colleagues - being friends would simply be too much. but they were bound to notice how her engagement ring no longer rests on her finger, how today she’s all the quieter.
❝ my mother will be devastated. ❞ has she mentioned mary before? it feels odd, personal, but there’s no getting out of this without saying more than she has. the engagement with bobby is over and all she feels is so painfully hollow. ❝ I- it was the right choice. not all of us are right for marriage, you know? ❞
dangerouslyfunny meme | accepting
how many times am i going to have to force you to leisure?
“i’m not good at leisuring,” she says. “i’m good at working, and analyzing.”
she’s not the worst at it, really: she’s great at it during girls nights, whether that’s at one of their places or some dance studio they stay out too late in. it’s not that she doesn’t know how, it just ... slips through the cracks unless someone forces her to.
“that pile of folders isn’t going to write itself,” there’s a dry laugh at the end of that, but it falls a little flat.
❛ Promise me you’re not gonna over-react. ❜
“you’re already making me worry.”
it’s an instinct at this point. the worry. especially when someone tells her not to. it’s not that she’s irrational, but -- hell, sometimes someone tells them all not to worry and ends up in prison, or in the hospital, or some other horrifying thing.
“just tell me you’re okay, jayje.”
❛ i can’t , i can’t , i just — can’t . ❜
“okay. look at me, jayje.”
reaching out is instinctual, as is the lowering of her voice. so many years on this team, with these friends, and it doesn’t matter that she’s only just back, that the title of unit chief has been hefted onto her shoulders so suddenly - she has known all of them too long for there to be a gap in knowing how to love them.
emily reaches out to clasp her fingers around jj’s wrist.
( and suddenly she’s the new girl again, standing in a bathroom doorway of an unfamiliar house, watching a woman with blood-stained sleeves clasp the edge of a sink, because the team’s youngest is missing and compartmentalization is a better answer than i was a spy for years to the liaison’s question. )
“we’re not going to lose him. i told him that and i’ll tell you the same thing. we’re going to get that kid back, with the help of the bureau’s lawyers or not. i’ve got a friend, i’m going to give her a call. okay?”
she rubs her thumb back and forth across her wrist.
is it even something she can promise? she knows it’s not. maybe if she was an agent, not the head of the unit, she’d allow herself to falter in her own belief in front of others.
but she’s not, and they’re counting on her.