#all the stuff that generally comes along with the Warehouse Incident really | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

homoose · 3 years

Text

Through the Smoke

Request: could you do spencer x bau reader where they aren't dating yet but they both feel for each other? where both spencer and reader are very closed off people and the whole team knows that. but after one rough case on the flight back, they're both just exhausted mentally and physically and seek comfort in each other. then spend the night at reader's apartment and kiss for the first time there. sorry if this is specific but thank you (:

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Category: angst with a happy ending

Warnings/Includes: typical CM stuff, cults, kidnapping, violence, etc.

Word count: 8.1k

Music recs: Through the Fire by Jake Etheridge and Margot Todd; scared by Jeremy Zucker

a/n: anon, I have no idea if this is what you were looking for, but this is where it went. It’s a generous rewrite of 300, substituting the reader for Garcia. Also this blog operates with the understanding that the season 14 jeid arc does not exist lmao. JJ is firmly in the “I love you as a brother” camp and I will not be taking questions at this time. Also, this is a reminder that my requests are open! send me some fresh ideas, head cannons, rambles, whatever!

———

“Metro PD and the Bureau have been made aware of the Believers and possible activity following their leader’s arrest,” Prentiss confirmed, looking out over the team mingling in the bullpen. “But taking Theo at his word—”

“We only arrested three. There’s probably more out there, but if they follow cult dynamics, they’ll break down on their own without the messiah,” Matt finished.

“Typical cults: you think it’s a cast of thousands when really it’s just four whackos sitting around in the dark,” Tara mused.

Prentiss smiled. “I think we deserve some decompression time, and Rossi’s kind enough to host.”

Rossi leaned over the railing and nodded. “And I have some top shelf wine picked just for the occasion.”

The team started gathering their belongings and heading towards the elevators. Y/N hesitated, looking toward the case file still sitting on her desk. Something about how this had all wrapped up just… didn’t sit right. Her nearly five years with the Critical Incident Response Group had given her an up close view of some of the most prolific cults in American history. She’d studied Jonestown, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Liberty Ranch; new cults emerged onto CIRG’s radar regularly. And there was something about The Believers that just didn’t add up.

Y/N began shuffling things around on her desk, trying to look busy. She caught Spencer and JJ out of the corner of her eye, talking quietly. They ended their conversation with a hug, lingering just a little longer than Y/N would have preferred. She shook her head to try to physically clear the thought from her brain. She knew that Spencer had been through a lifetime’s worth of trauma before she joined the team, and that JJ had been an integral support for him. Y/N was also aware that she had zero grounds to be concerned with any of Spencer’s relationships, romantic or otherwise.

“Y/N, you coming?” JJ asked, walking toward her desk. Spencer headed out of the bullpen and down the hall.

Y/N gave her a half-hearted smile. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a little bit. Just wanted to finish up a couple things here.”

“Well, don’t stay too late.” JJ pressed her lips together for a moment before adding, “Maybe you and Spence could drive together. He said he might not make it, but if he had some company...”

Y/N hoped her immediate flush wasn’t too obvious. After nearly a year in the unit, she finally felt like she had built some solid relationships with the team, and Spencer was no exception. She relished their card games on the jet, the laughs over too-sweet coffee, discussions about books and films and music. But she also adored the way his hair sometimes curled and fell into his eyes, his animated and rambling tangents, the way his hands traced over the tiny print of his books. Most of her adult life had been spent surrounded by men who would gather up her trust in their pitted hands and crush it on a whim. She’d kept her heart behind glass for a long while, but Spencer was slowly chipping away at the fragile panels. She was certain he had no idea that he was even holding the chisel; but just about everyone else seemed to have figured it out. JJ, with her hands clasped together and an eager smile, definitely had. Y/N smiled, too. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“So we’ll see you in a bit?” When Y/N nodded, JJ gave her a warm smile and headed out.

Turning back to the case file, Y/N pressed her fingers to her temple and looked over the documents. Some of the pieces fit together, but the whole case felt littered with gaps and holes. The tale that Theo had woven about The Believers seemed true enough— his parents were simply the suppliers of potential cult members. Although, she still couldn’t figure out the reason for the kidnapping and torture. There were much easier ways to recruit vulnerable people.

She flipped past the pages of written statements and read over the report from the warehouse raid. It was short— the take down of Merva was too easy. Why was he sitting alone in an empty warehouse with only two unarmed, sleeping followers as a defense? Where was the rest of the cult? Matt was correct that most cults fall apart without their leader; unless the loss of a leader was a possibility they’d already prepared for.

The burns on Quinn’s hands didn’t make sense, either. Why use the initiation ritual as a torture device? Shouldn’t that be saved for people who had accepted the invitation? And then there was the one coincidence that nagged at her the most: what were the chances that Theo just happened to be enrolled in Spencer's course? Why did Spencer seem to be at the center of the whole thing?

Y/N sighed as her phone lit up with a message from JJ. She realized she’d been poring over the file for twenty-five minutes, and she had to laugh. As the least experienced profiler on the team, what could she possibly see that the others hadn’t? She closed the case file and quickly packed up, grabbing her jacket and bag and making her way toward the elevator lobby. She paused at the glass doors, retrieving her phone and pulling up Spencer’s contact information. Her thumb hovered over the call button for a long moment before she huffed out a breath. If even JJ hadn’t been able to convince him to go, there was no way she’d be able to change his mind. Despite herself, she glanced down the hall, allowing herself one moment to imagine an alternate timeline where she asked him to come along with her— to Rossi’s, to the moon, anywhere.

With a sigh, Y/N pushed open the glass doors and saw Agent Meadows leading Quinn to the elevator. She pushed down the little red flag in the back of her mind. As she stepped onto the elevator, she smiled politely at the two agents.

“I knew you didn’t do it. I just knew,” Meadows said to Quinn. She turned to Y/N. “And I can’t tell you what a privilege it’s been working with the A-Team on this case.”

Something about the calm in her voice made Y/N uneasy. “Yeah, it’s— um. It’s a great team to be a part of.” Her phone lit up again, this time with a phone call from JJ. “Okay, okay,” she muttered under her breath. Y/N answered the call, half an ear still listening to Meadows speak to Quinn. “Hey, I’m just leaving now.”

“Are you still at the BAU?” JJ demanded, voice low.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. But I’m in the elevator,” Y/N answered.

“Listen, we’re pretty sure Quinn was converted,” JJ told her. Y/N’s heart dropped into her shoes. “I need you to make sure he doesn’t leave that building. We’re coming back now. Where’s Spence?”

Y/N took a breath to try to even out her voice before speaking again. “Mom, we already talked about this. I don’t know.”

JJ paused. “Is Quinn in the elevator with you?”

“Yep.” JJ spoke quietly to someone on the other end of the phone. Y/N watched as the elevator dinged to the floor of the parking garage. “I’m going to have to hang up, mom. I’m gonna lose you, but I’ll try to take care of it tonight, okay?”

“Y/N, we’re on our—” The call dropped as the elevator hit the basement level.

Y/N took a deep breath to steady her voice. “Ugh, lost her.” She glanced at Meadows and Quinn, forced a smile and shrugged. “Elevators, right?”

The elevator doors began to open and Y/N stepped out, surreptitiously reaching for her holster. She had just lifted the strap when she heard the crack of metal hitting bone. Her face hit the concrete before she realized it was her own skull that bore the impact. She watched as her gun skidded across the parking lot floor, the taste of iron flooding her mouth. “Fuck,” she muttered, wincing in pain and scrambling up off the ground as a gunshot went off.

She didn’t feel the impact of the bullet. She looked down at her body, expecting to see a blooming rose of blood. She stared dumbly for a second too long, before remembering that she needed to get to her gun. Her hand instinctively went to her nose as she stumbled forward, coming away wet with blood.

“Stop, Agent Y/L/N.”

She heard the sound of a gun cocking, and then another. She closed her eyes and ran through an internal stream of curses. Raising her hands up, she turned slowly around. An older white man stood to her left, his gun trained on her. Meadows walked slowly towards her, lowering her own weapon. Quinn leaned against the back of the elevator, clutching his abdomen and blood staining the front of his shirt.

“Surprise,” Meadows sang, a sick smile spreading across her face. She stopped in front of Y/N, sweeping her hand in the direction of the man. “Now, John’s going to make sure you don’t do anything stupid. Get in the car.”

Y/N glanced in the direction of the vehicle, a dark sedan, driver armed to the teeth as well. “The team knows something’s up. You won’t make it out of this garage alive.”

Meadows laughed, loud and unhinged. “Oh honey. They’re not looking for lil ol’ me. And they sure as hell won’t be looking for an ambulance.” Her smile returned. “Plus, I already erased 299 murders from the Bureau’s radar. What’s a couple more? Now, shut up... and get in the car.”

Y/N moved to the open car door, keeping her back as straight as possible and her chin up, refusing to show them any cowardice. The barrel of the gun jabbed her in the back as she lowered herself into the vehicle. The door slammed shut, and in a moment, the gun was back on her, the man sitting next to her in the backseat. Y/N waited for the car to pull out, still trying to make sense of it all. Meadows was a Believer? What did she mean by “erased” 299 murders? Why would she blow her cover to shoot Quinn? Did she think that he had figured her out? Or that Y/N had? If that was the case, why not just shoot her? Why wasn’t the car moving?

“Drop your gun, Agent Reid,” Meadows’ muffled voice penetrated the inside of the vehicle. Y/N’s heart began to race. John dug the gun further into her side.

“It’s been you the whole time,” Spencer deduced.

“Yes, it was. Quinn somehow figured it out first. Pity having to shoot him,” Meadows mocked. “But he can’t give me what I want. And you can.”

“What’s that?” Y/N’s brain scrambled to put the pieces together as she listened to the exchange. Spencer was at the heart of it after all. It was right there, she just couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Meadows continued, “You and I are going to go upstairs and free my Messiah.”

“You’re in the heart of the FBI. As soon as the rest of my team figures out it’s you, you’ll be dead before you’re out the door.” Y/N hoped to god that he was right.

“Then we need to work quickly.”

“I’m not going to cooperate with you,” Spencer told her. “Might as well shoot me.” Y/N didn’t even have time to panic before the car shifted into drive.

“I have a better idea.” On Meadows’ cue, the driver squealed out of the parking space and into Spencer’s line of sight. His eyes fell on Y/N, hands nearly pressed against the window, John’s gun pointed at her head. “Now, what’s it gonna be? Because you can either join us, or she dies.”

Y/N tried to radiate her rage through her eyes and screamed, “Reid, just shoot her! Shoot her!” The last thing she saw before the second crack of steel against her skull was the hesitation in Spencer’s eyes.

⧭⧭⧭

Y/N’s eyes fluttered open and she groaned at the pounding of her head, the rhythm of her heartbeat throbbing in the space behind her ears. She tried to lift her hand to check for blood, only to strain against the hold of a zip tie attached to the base of the chair. Instead, she surveyed the room around her. A warehouse, lots of shipping containers, and even more men— this time armed with assault rifles and machine guns. One stood at the entrance point of the small area she was being kept in.

She worked through her memory, putting the pieces together. Meadows was a Believer, had been for quite some time to pull all of this off. Quinn wasn’t special, he just got in the way of her real target. Ben Merva might have been the messiah, but Spencer Reid was clearly just as important to whatever mission they were carrying out. Every twisting thread of information somehow traced back to him: Theo in his class, Quinn’s attachment to him, Meadows’ demand that he be the one to free Merva.

“Good, you’re awake.” Meadows strode through the space with a laptop in hand. “I need your handiwork.”

Y/N stared at her. “Is that so?’

Meadows set the laptop on the barrel in front of Y/N and then leaned down to cut the zip tie. “Besides being my collateral for the good doctor, you’re also going to help me access CIRG’s surveillance data.”

“Fuck you.” Y/N spat on Meadows’ shoes. “I’m doing nothing for you.” Her head rolled back, eyes piercing daggers into Meadows. “You should just kill me now, because this is a waste of your time. And I’m sure you know the A-Team isn’t going to waste theirs.”

Meadows narrowed her eyes and gave a theatrical sigh. “I should’ve known you’d make this difficult.” She nodded to John, standing at the entranceway.

Y/N spat again, this time to rid her mouth of the taste of blood. She steeled herself for the next onslaught, compartmentalizing every emotion outside of her fury. Her mind raced to salvage and scrutinize the memories from her time in CIRG, trying desperately to identify what Meadows could be looking for in the surveillance reports. The Believers hadn’t even been on the Bureau’s radar. The reason had to be linked to their interest in Spencer… a piece of information that involved both Spencer Reid and the existing surveillance data. A single grain that could bring the whole damn bushel down.

She heard a scuffle at the entrance of the room and raised her head. Her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of Spencer, bloodied and bruised. John dragged him into the room, throwing him down onto his knees in front of Y/N. His eyes tracked over her face and clouded over with an emotion she couldn’t quite place.

“Shit, Reid—”

“I’m fine—I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” he murmured. The concern in his eyes told Y/N she looked about as bad as she felt. “Are you all right?”

“I should’ve seen it. I should’ve known—”

“No,” Spencer interrupted. “This isn’t your fault. We all missed it.”

“What’s the end game here?” Y/N asked. “What’re they doing?”

“I’m going to be their last victim.” Spencer shook his head, barely able to keep himself upright. “I don’t know why, but I overheard them. There have been hundreds.”

Meadows stepped up behind Spencer, grinning at Y/N. “Have you changed your mind? I sure hope you have.” She raised her gun to his head. “Because if you don’t do what I want, I’ll blow his big, beautiful brains out.”

Spencer locked eyes with Y/N. She held his gaze for a moment, then tilted her head slightly as the gears started turning. The tie between Spencer and Benjamin was where it all unraveled. “No, I don’t think you will.”

Meadows’ grin faltered for less than a second, but it was long enough that Y/N knew she was right. “Is that right?” Meadows questioned.

“Yeah, it is.” She furrowed her brow, and Spencer looked at her. “You need him, don’t you? Alive.” Meadows’ tongue darted out to wet her lips, and Y/N was sure. “Because this isn’t just about Benjamin Merva. It’s about Benjamin Cyrus. It’s about Liberty Ranch.”

Meadows held her gaze for five seconds, then ten seconds. Y/N raised her chin, refusing to be the one to blink first. Meadows shifted the trajectory of her gun a foot to her right and fired off one shot. The breeze from the bullet shifted Y/N’s hair.

“You have two minutes to decide,” Meadows advised. The phone in her hand began ringing. “The next one won’t miss.” She answered the phone and stepped out.

Spencer spoke quickly. “Do whatever she’s asking. We have to get you out of here.”

“Reid, are your eyes broken?” Y/N snapped. “There’s a cult loyalist with a machine gun every five feet. You got a plan for that?”

“Listen to me.” His voice was calm, determined. “You’re right about them wanting me alive.”

The frustration bled through Y/N’s voice. “You should have just shot her.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t do that.”

“You could’ve shot all three of them and ended this in the garage,” Y/N argued.

“And then I would have watched you die,” he said quietly. “That was never even an option.”

“I’m failing to see how that would have been any worse than this. Look at us.” She gestured wildly between them. She watched as the storm of emotion returned, a cyclone swirling in seas of gold and brown. “The team needs you. Spencer, I—” I need you. She reached a hand up, almost touching his face before dropping it back in her lap. He had found the chink in her carefully constructed armor; a fissure he’d fractured a little further with every smile, every look, every moment. All at once she knew she’d never be able to keep him out, no matter how much it might hurt.

“You’ve got one minute,” Meadows barked, hovering over them.

“Y/L/N, listen to me… Please...” Spencer’s voice was thick with tears. “Tell my mom—” The phone rang again, and Meadows stepped away to answer it. Spencer dropped to a whisper. His eyes flashed with urgency. “They’re taking me and Theo. We’ll distract them. The car we were in is right outside the door. We’re 18 minutes from Quantico. Turn left outside the parking lot, take a right at the light, you’ll recognize the rest. They stay off the highways.”

Y/N’s voice was frantic when she asked, “What about you?”

His eyes pleaded with her to respect what he was asking her to do. “I’ll delay them. Get the rest of the team back here. And do not worry about me.” John hauled up him off the floor.

“Time’s up.” Meadows, in a rare display of mercy, allowed them a hug.

Spencer leaned into her and Y/N wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She squeezed as hard as she could and whispered his name. She felt him take a deep breath into her hair, holding it for one impossibly long moment. Just before she released her hold on him, he mumbled, “It’s all happening. 10:23.” John dragged him back out the way they’d came.

“I gave you what you wanted.” Meadows ordered, “Get to it. Now.”

⧭⧭⧭

Y/N worked and waited, then watched and worried. Spencer spoke to Meadows. He was stalling her, offering a deal, boosting her ego, granting Y/N the opportunity to mentally prepare. But no matter how much time he gave her, she would never be prepared to leave him in that warehouse. He met her eyes across the movements of the operation and gave her an imperceptible nod before lunging forward to reach for John’s gun.

Chaos exploded throughout the warehouse. Theo ran in one direction, accosted by half a dozen Believers. Spencer and John tussled over the gun, one fighting for control and the other fighting the inevitable. Y/N sprinted, largely unnoticed, toward the huge sliding doors left slightly ajar. Bursting out into the night air, she immediately spotted one of the black sedans, unbelievably unlocked and with the keys in the ignition. She slammed the door behind her, turned the key, hesitated with her eyes on the door and her mind on Spencer for one moment too long. A single gunshot sounded from inside the warehouse.

Meadows raced out of the doorway, gun drawn. “Stop!” She pointed her gun at Y/N and there was nothing to do but step on the gas. Y/N had her eyes wide open as Meadows bounced off the windshield and onto the asphalt. She didn’t look back.

She drove. Left out of the parking lot. Just a dark, rural road—nothing particularly special or descript. She drove. Right at the stoplight. Then it was, just as Spencer said, familiar terrain. She wondered how it was possible to have seemed so far away— a world away— when it was right under their proverbial nose. She drove.

Her brain navigated of its own volition. Her mind couldn’t have been farther from the inside of the vehicle. She didn’t realize she’d arrived at the Bureau until she was attempting to pull into her usual parking spot, only to be met with her own abandoned car.

She turned the car off, left the keys in the ignition, and nearly floated out into the garage; up the elevator; across the cold floors of the lobby. Her body had walked this same path so many times before; it carried her without hesitation. She could hear the voices of the team, drifting through the open glass doors.

“She accepted their help knowing she would betray the government,” Tara deduced.

“Not every survivor wanted help,” JJ clarified.

Rossi continued, “We ran those who left the ranch and kept their names. A few relocated in rural Maryland and Virginia.”

“They could be helping now,” Luke suggested. “Any of them have large pieces of property?”

“A few,” Emily confirmed. Y/N turned the corner as she continued, “The Washington field office has started searches in Maryland. We’ll take the lead in Virginia.”

As she moved into the doorway, JJ’s eyes went wide and she rushed to Y/N’s side. “Oh my god, are you hurt?” She gently grabbed Y/N by the shoulders.

“It’s a warehouse in Hillcrest,” Y/N said flatly, eyes unfocused. “I can take you there, but we have to hurry. They hurt Reid; he looked— bad. He told me to r-run and take the car, but he’s still there.” Everyone headed for the doors except JJ and Garcia. “They won’t be there long, they have lots of trucks.” Y/N’s eyes locked on JJ, and for the first time since the whole ordeal started, she allowed herself to splinter, just a little. “I heard a gunshot. JJ, I heard a gunshot. I tried—”

“Shh, it’s okay,” JJ nodded, drawing her into a hug. “I know. I know you tr—”

“I left him there.” Her voice broke, but she couldn’t cry. Not yet. “I couldn’t get him. There was no way to save hi—”

“Stop,” JJ ordered, pulling out of the hug. “Y/N, look at me. You got out, you got back to us. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t even know about the warehouse.”

“What if— what if I got him killed?” Y/N asked.

“You didn’t get anyone killed. Spence knew what he was doing.” JJ’s voice softened. “That’s what he does. He always figures things out before the rest of us. He has a plan and getting you back to Quantico was part of it.” She raised her eyebrows, making sure Y/N was listening. “And now we have to help him by putting the rest of it together.”

Y/N ran a hand over her face. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”

Garcia stepped forward and laid a hand on her arm. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then we’ll get Reid back.”

They cleaned the blood from her face and hair as best they could in the bathroom sink. JJ patched up the lacerations with steri-strips. Back in the conference room, Garcia insisted she should get screened for a concussion as Y/N rubbed the knot on the back of her head. “There’s no time. Reid said, ‘It’s all happening. 10:23.’”

“But it’s past that,” JJ considered.

“So what did he mean?” Garcia asked.

“Could be a clue here.” Rossi's voice came over the speakerphone from inside the warehouse. “They got sloppy since they left in a hurry.”

“Okay, well you can’t be that far behind them,” JJ insisted.

“I know,” Emily agreed. “But there’s easy access to three major highways, and we don’t know which way they went.”

“Right, but they’re in tractor trailers. That means we can track them through weigh stations.”

“Garcia?” Emily prompted.

“In order to do that, I’d need the transponder identification numbers,” Garcia answered.

“Which we have no way of knowing,” Rossi sighed. “Everything they used was almost definitely forged.”

“We’re going to do another sweep here, and then we’ll head back,” Emily said. “Try to map out the most likely routes they’d use to get out of dodge.”

JJ hung up and looked to Y/N. “What do you remember about the warehouse?”

Y/N pressed her fingers into her temples. “It was full of supplies. They were disguising them, but they had stockpiles of weapons and ammunition; non-perishables and other food items; water. Enough to be off the grid for at least a year.” Y/N leaned back in her chair. “But it wasn’t just about The Believers. I mean, we know they’re a reincarnation of the Separatarian Sect.” She looked at JJ and Garcia. “It was more than that, though. Reid was at the center of everything; he was the target all along. Merva is the messiah, but it somehow all comes back to Spence.”

“Makes sense. They blame him for the downfall of the Sect,” JJ supplied.

“Yeah.” Y/N cracked her knuckles. “But—and I can’t—I can’t really explain it, but Meadows really wanted to kill Reid right then. She was— she was irritated, more than anything else.”

“So what stopped her?” Garcia asked.

“That’s what I can’t figure out. She threatened me with it, with ‘blowing his brains out,’ but I— called her bluff. And she was pissed.” Y/N rapped her knuckles on the table. “I mean, really, really furious. Which tells me that, even though she wanted to, she couldn’t kill him.” She looked between the two of them. “Merva was pulling the strings, and he wouldn’t let her do it there.”

“So it matters where the final sacrifice takes place,” JJ concluded. “We’ve got to figure out where they’re going.”

⧭⧭⧭

They’d been rehashing the details over and over. Liberty Ranch, The Strangler investigation, The Believers, Meadows, Merva, Cyrus, 300 victims, the hyoid bones, all of it. About the only thing they knew for sure was how far the cult could get in the trucks. Spencer could have told them the exact square mileage, but the potential geographical range of the trucks was dauntingly large. Y/N tried not to panic as she stared at the map.

“If this is about a Believer's rebirth, babies are born with 300 bones,” JJ said. “And they’re taking the hyoids.”

“And the hyoids we had in evidence are missing, which means Merva needed them back,” Tara reasoned. “And that means they mean more to the end game than we thought.”

Y/N felt her patience waning. “But why did Reid need us to know it all happens at 10:23?” Y/N hated that her voice sounded snappy and desperate. “That’s got to be important. It’s the last thing he said to me.”

Matt put his hand on her shoulder. “Listen, you’re right. It means something to him. We’re trying to figure it out.”

“Yeah, well, we better figure it out soon.” Y/N shrugged off his hand, pushed back from her seat at the conference room table, and turned for the door. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Every minute they spent floating ideas was another mile between them and Spencer. Another moment closer to losing him. She shoved the bathroom door open, hurrying into the stall and emptying the contents of her stomach.

She slumped back against the side of the stall, head gently knocking into the cool metal. She needed to pull herself together. The team was always strongest when they did their group think sessions, building upon each other’s knowledge and perspectives and filling in the gaps. If they’d done more of that earlier— if she’d had the confidence to call it out as soon as she saw the holes, Spencer might not be locked in the back of a truck, hundreds of miles away.

Y/N hoisted herself off the ground and out of the stall. She braced her hands on the counter top and tried to breathe evenly. She turned on the water and splashed her face, tapping against her cheeks. With water dripping down the planes of her face, she stared herself down in the mirror, willing her tired brain to make that last connection, to find that missing thread. It was all about the Benjamins, and she had a feeling that Cyrus was the key.

Y/N rolled her shoulders back and made her way to the conference room. She listened to their rotating conversation, knowing that this team was the only group of people capable of getting Spencer back alive.

“We have confirmation that there’s been no activity in or around the old ranch,” Matt informed them, pocketing his phone.

“If this is about rebirth, they’ll choose a new place,” Luke posited, arms crossed.

Tara leaned over the table. “Given their adoration of Cyrus and his love for the country, he’d want them to stay within our borders.”

“But Benjamin Cyrus wasn’t his real name, and he wasn’t born into the Sect,” Y/N reminded them quietly. Everyone turned to look at her. She gave an apology grimace to Matt. He just shrugged and smiled, motioning her over to the table.

Garcia nodded. “Right, let’s see. Uh, he and his mom arrived there when he was a teenager. He was kicked out for molesting girls. And then he served time in prison in Kentucky.”

“And that’s where he found religion,” Y/N recalled, thinking back to the report she’d studied dozens of times. “So he was reborn as Benjamin Cyrus in Kentucky.” She closed her eyes and flipped through her mental file cabinet, looking for 10:23.

“That’s within the area,” Garcia confirmed. “Maybe that’s where they’re headed?”

“Find out what city he was born in or where he was in prison,” Luke said. “We’ll spread out from there.”

“He found religion,” Y/N repeated, mostly to herself. “Chapter ten, verse twenty-three. 10:23 isn’t a time.” Y/N shook her head and then dragged her hand through her hair. “It’s scripture.”

“Let’s get in the air; we can narrow down which verse and city before we land,” Emily instructed.

⧭⧭⧭

“We’re approaching Kentucky; the pilot needs to know where to touch down,” Rossi informed them.

The team was scattered throughout the jet, scrolling through scripture on their tablets, reading out verses. Y/N held her chin in her hand, eyes unfocused, dragging a net along the furthest corners of her mind.

“Hey guys, listen to this,” JJ said. “Matthew chapter ten, verse twenty-three: ‘When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another.’”

“They’re going to the next town,” Emily said.

“Flee to the next town. But which one?” asked Garcia.

“Their end game is also a new beginning,” Rossi explained. “Cyrus brought religion back to the cult. They’d honor that by wanting to start fresh.”

Y/N raised her head. “Like the Garden of Eden.”

“That’s how 300 fits,” Tara concluded. “That was the number of angels that protected the Garden of Eden. Are there any Edens in Kentucky?”

The sound of Garcia tapping across the keyboard came through the laptop. “Um, no, but there are two synonyms: Canaan and Arcadia.”

“Cyrus is the original messiah. Which one is closer to where he was born?” Y/N asked.

“Arcadia,” Garcia informed them.

Y/N stood up. “That’s where they’re going.”

“Garcia, pull land deeds. I’ll notify SWAT,” Emily instructed.

JJ grabbed Y/N’s hand. “We’re going to get him.”

Y/N met her eyes. “I just hope we’re not too late.”

⧭⧭⧭

The new compound proved easy to find. In the middle of nowhere but illuminated by hundreds of lights, there were rows and rows of tents. The team began strategizing, looking for the best route to Spencer.

Emily tried to convince Y/N, now showing clear concussion symptoms, to stay with the SUVs.

“With all due respect, there is no way in hell that I’m going to sit in this car while Reid gets sacrificed by a homicidal cult leader,” Y/N said. There was a hushed pause, the team exchanging knowing glances.

“Fair enough,” Emily conceded. “Matt and JJ, I want you on the left side. Luke and Tara, the right. Dave and Y/N, you’re with me. We’re clearing every tent; eliminate any threat that would give away your position.” She unholstered her gun and swept her eyes across the team. “Our objective is to extract Reid with minimal loss.”

As they approached the first line of tents, Y/N could faintly hear Spencer speaking. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Her heart hammered against her ribcage. “A time to be born and a time to die.” She could feel the blood rushing through her ears. “A time to weep and a time to pluck up that which has been planted.”

“Okay, he’s stalling,” Meadows snapped. “That’s enough!”

“All right. Let the sacrifice begin.” That was Merva now, riling up the followers. “Protect us from all harm.”

As Merva led The Believers in a monotone chant, Y/N tried to block it out. She scanned a tent, watched as SWAT took out a bodyguard, looked for Spencer. Rinse and repeat, again and again. It was taking too long.

“And we thank Our Guardian, who will protect this family now and always,” Merva’s voice rang out. “Spencer: keeper of provisions!” Y/N saw the gathering of followers, but she couldn’t see Spencer.

The SWAT commander stopped them. They had reached the final line of tents. He signaled to the leaders on each side. They were ready to strike.

Y/N’s eyes scanned the crowd. She could just barely make out some sort of hanging mobile, white u-shaped decorations suspended from string. The hyoids, she realized, a wave of nausea hitting her like a truck.

Merva continued, “You have given selflessly to others and will be rewarded by the highest honor we could bestow. Your blood will be our blood. Your life will fuel ours.”

A gunshot rang out. The followers gasped. There was a split second of calm before the bedlam. Y/N took a single breath. Then she heard Matt yell; saw John lift his rifle and be felled by a solo shot to the head; watched Luke take down another bodyguard directly after.

And then she saw him. Strapped down under a canopy of bones, Spencer was silent and unmoving. He didn’t struggle. He didn’t call out. And there was Merva, knife in hand— still trying to complete his mission.

She didn’t vacillate, barely breathed, just let her legs carry her forward. She heard Emily call out his name. When Merva turned, the curved blade of the knife poised at the column of Spencer's throat, Y/N’s trigger finger compressed. She felt the gun recoil, felt the force of the shot travel up her arm as she put a single bullet in his chest. As he fell, she didn’t stop, just stepped over him, knew one of the others would take care of it.

She tripped over the small platform Spencer was restrained on, stumbling and holstering her gun. Her hands moved over the straps, loosening the one over his waist, then the ones at his hands, finally pushing the leather from his head. He panted and muttered his thanks, but she didn’t dare speak, afraid that if she did, she’d never be able to stop. Instead, she flung her arms over his shoulders, pulling him down and close and over her heart. She wondered if he could feel the way it pummeled against her chest, because to her it felt like it might smash through at any moment. His arms came around her, chin resting on her shoulder, nose in her hair. She heard him inhale and hold his breath, a mirror of that last moment together in the warehouse. She held onto him as an overboard sailor holds a life ring: single-minded, unrelenting, desperate.

There was a touch on her opposite shoulder and Y/N swung around, adrenaline still racing through her veins. JJ put her hand out in a placating motion, and Y/N came back to herself, allowing JJ to step forward and help Spencer off the platform. Y/N let out a breath and reached a hand out to steady herself, only to flinch when it brushed one of the straps that had held Spencer down. Luke caught her on one side, Tara on the other. She grasped at them, her emotions teetering right along with her physical form. Luke pulled her out from under the macabre canopy and into a hug. Tara held her hand. For the first time since the parking garage, she let herself go.

⧭⧭⧭

The jet was quiet. The team was spread out around the cabin, each of them lost in their own heads. There was a tranquility over the space, one that only ever happened when unmitigated relief overwhelmed even the joy or fulfillment of a life saved.

Y/N sat in one of the single seats, across the aisle from where Spencer was settled. Tara and Luke had finally convinced her to get checked out by the EMTs, who had confirmed her concussion. She convinced herself that the fuzziness on the corners of her vision was just a symptom of that, not a product of the tears she was struggling to hold back.

The team each stopped by Spencer’s seat, patting his shoulder, squeezing his hand, or in Rossi’s case, gently ruffling his hair. They all spoke briefly in hushed, grateful tones. All except Y/N. She couldn’t formulate a sentence that seemed adequate. There was simultaneously too much and nothing to say. Everything felt contrived or insufficient or intemperate.

Spencer was safe. They hadn’t been too late. He was bruised and undoubtedly sore, but ultimately, he’d been through worse. So why was her heart still aching? Why couldn’t she catch her breath? She hadn’t spoken more than a few words since leaving the raid, so why did her throat feel like it was on fire? She closed her eyes, leaned her head back. She incessantly pressed her hands together, trying to crack her sore knuckles over and over again.

A pair of hands gently closed over her own, stopping the abuse, and she didn’t have to open her eyes to know who they belonged to. His thumbs stroked over the backs of her hands and she cursed the tears that spilled over her bottom lashes. He didn’t say anything, didn’t force her to look at him or acknowledge her shattering. He waited her out, rubbing a rhythm on her skin and steadying her without a word. She opened her eyes but couldn’t bring herself to look at him just yet. Instead she focused on their joined hands, reciprocating the gentle pulses he gave every so often.

She turned her head to wipe her wet cheeks on her shoulder as the landing announcement came over the cabin speaker. She did look at him then, and the emotion in his gaze left her feeling raw and exposed. Their hands reluctantly separated to buckle their seat belts. Y/N closed her eyes again, turning her face into the warmth of the early morning sun as the jet began its descent.

When they landed, everyone wearily shuffled off the plane, eager to get home to their beds. Penelope met them at the elevator, enveloping Spencer in a long hug, the rest of the team smiling at their embrace. They each moved through the bullpen, gathering their things and talking quietly. Y/N’s eyes paused on her bag, brought up from the parking garage by one of the team after she’d gone missing. They lingered for a long moment on the case file, still sitting where she’d left it hours ago, before she let herself let it go. She grabbed her bag and turned to see Spencer standing in the aisle, hands in his pockets and eyes fixed on her.

“Hey,” she said dumbly.

He smiled. “Hi.”

Her hands wrung the straps of her bag. “How—how’re you holding up?”

“I’ve been worse.” He shrugged. “How’s your head?”

“I’ve been worse,” she agreed.

“That’s good. Because I think after all that, the least you could do is give me a ride home,” he joked.

Y/N knew he was trying to reassure her that he was fine, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh. If anything, his attempts to provide comfort made her feel worse. Because she couldn’t forget the sound of the gunshot at the warehouse, the sight of the knife at his throat, the feeling of nearly losing someone whom she knew she could love if she just had more time. Too exhausted to hide her emotions, she could tell by the change in Spencer’s eyes that the pain was apparent on her face.

“Actually, you probably shouldn’t be driving, even if it’s just a mild concussion. Where are your keys?”

“It’s fine. I’m all ri—” Y/N started.

“I know I phrased that as a question, but I’m not really asking.” He held out his hand.

Normally she would have argued, but she just didn’t have the energy. Y/N dug into her bag, fishing out the keys and dropping them into his hand. He closed his fingers around them and jerked his head toward the door. “Come on,” he murmured. He waved to the rest of the team, and Y/N nodded, avoiding their eyes.

The ride in the elevator was silent. The walk to the car, too. They were pulling out of the garage before Spencer finally broke the silence.

“You know this wasn’t your fault, right?” he asked. Y/N stayed quiet. “We all missed the connection to Liberty Ranch.”

“But I knew something was off, and I didn’t say anything. I— I almost came to find you before I left, and if I had just done that—”

“Y/N,�� Spencer interrupted. “The plan was already in motion. Meadows and Merva would have just figured out another way to execute it.” His fingers tightened on the wheel. “And without you and the leads from the warehouse, the team might not have figured it out in time.”

Y/N opened her mouth before realizing she didn’t have a response. She didn’t even want to consider that possibility. She leaned her head against the window, pressing the thumb and fingers of one hand into her eyes to stave off the throbbing.

Graciously, Spencer let her remain in silence the rest of the ride to her apartment. There was so much to say, especially now; she didn’t know where to begin. And even after everything, she couldn’t stop herself from bringing up that wall— protecting herself from what she knew could hurt her more than any unsub.

They pulled onto her street, fairly empty at such an early hour. Spencer parked in front of her apartment, opening the car door and coming around the other side of the car. She expected him to give her the keys, but as she exited the car, he waited by the gate for her. “I’ll walk you up.”

Spencer opened the gate, allowing her to walk through before closing it behind them and following her up the sidewalk. “I need the keys,” she told him.

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Right, right.” He placed them into her outstretched hand, and she wondered if she imagined his fingers lingering over hers.

When they reached her door, she unlocked the deadbolt and swung the door open, stepping over the threshold. He waited outside, hands in his pockets. Y/N rolled her keys in her hand, and Spencer watched them.

“Um— thank you for—” Y/N started.

“I told Emily on the jet, and I’ll tell you now.” Spencer raised his eyes to meet hers. There was that look again, the one she couldn’t quite identify. “I’ve always had a hard time saying what I feel. And maybe sometimes it’s because I’m afraid of being disappointed. But sometimes it’s because the words I’m looking for don’t exist in the English language.”

“Spence—”

“Please just let me get this out,” he said. “There have been a couple moments over the past few months where I thought maybe we were sharing mamihlapinatapei.”

“Mamih what?” Y/N asked.

“Mamihlapinatapei.” He repeated, gesturing with his hands. “It’s a Yagan word that originates on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago off the southern tip of Argentina. It translates succinctly as ‘the wordless, meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to do so.’”

“Oh.” Y/N felt a flush rising up in her cheeks.

Suddenly, Spencer couldn’t meet her eyes. “I, um—I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize our friendship or make things awkward at work. But last night, I… I just— I’ve had too many moments in my life where I thought it might be my last, and I hadn’t said all the things I needed to say.” He met her eyes again, and there was that familiar storm. “Last night I was out of time, and I hadn’t told you how I feel, and I realized that I wouldn’t get another chance, and it’s okay if you don’t feel the same, but I needed to—”

Y/N stepped forward, grabbed the front of his shirt, and crashed their mouths together. She tried to pour everything into the kiss: every blush, every worry, every laugh, every panicked moment, every mamihlapinatapei. Spencer cradled her face in his hands, opening his mouth and capturing her bottom lip, accepting everything she gave him. She wound one of her hands into his hair, pulling him impossibly closer and grounding herself to this new reality that almost wasn’t. The height of the kiss tapered off, and Y/N drew back, untangling her fingers from his hair and her heart from his grasp. Spencer watched her carefully, honey eyes uncertain.

“I do. Feel the same,” Y/N confirmed. Spencer’s lips twitched. “I’m not good at vulnerability. I’ve got a great track record of getting hurt.” Spencer grabbed her hand and opened his mouth, but Y/N continued, “But then I thought we might lose you, that time was out, and that I— I wouldn’t get the chance to see if you could be— if this could be more.” She gestured between them and then met his eyes again. “And I guess being vulnerable isn’t so bad in comparison. Because I think I could fall in love with you. I think maybe it’s already happening.” She held her breath and pressed her lips together, fighting the regret of saying too much.

“Actually, there’s a word for that, too.” Spencer smiled, warm and soft and genuine. “Forelsket. The origin is Norwegian, and it roughly translates to ‘the euphoria experienced as you begin to fall in love.’”

“Forelsket?” Y/N asked.

“Well, it’s more like forelsket,” Spencer corrected.

“Wow, okay, 187.” Y/N laughed for the first time in what felt like days. “Forelsket.”

“Better,” Spencer praised. “There’s also the Tagalog version, kilig.”

Y/N took a step closer to him and smoothed his shirt where her hands had wrinkled it. “Translation?”

“‘The sudden feeling of an inexplicable joy one gets when something romantic happens,’ or alternatively ‘the feeling of butterflies in your stomach.’” Spencer moved his hand to her waist and stepped over the threshold.

Y/N cupped his cheek in her hand, soothing the bruises and guiding him back to her. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”

#spencer reid #spencer x reader #spencer x y/n #spencer x you #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfic #dr spencer reid #spencer reid angst #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds self insert #criminal minds #homoose writes

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lineffability · 5 years

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// and the angel said unto them, do not be afraid // Luke 2:10

Aziraphale was in a good mood. Which was sort of his State Of Being, what with him being an angel and goodness incarnate and generally Holier Than Thou.

That was the way he liked to think of himself, anyways. He didn’t like to look past that thin, fragile layer into the burning depths out of which he had been forged. His goodness was the crust of the earth, the protective layer that made life possible on the surface.

What lay beneath was both life-giving and deeply destructive. Like God herself, in that way. Shaped in Her image.

Hellfire was not the most cataclysmic force around.

Like most angels, it was a part of him he kept under lock and had mostly forgotten (denied). Aziraphale had worked hard to shape himself into who he wanted himself to be. Who he had consciously chosen to be.

He was a being of love, at the end of it all.

And the things he loved and surrounded himself with were like the homemade, cross-stitched fabric of his soul: food and books and warm colours; softness and fondness and contentment; and Crowley.

(Woe betide the fool who might try and rip a hole into this fabric, to snatch a thread and force it to unravel--to reveal what lay neatly tucked away underneath.)

Currently, Aziraphale was in particularly high spirits, because he had struck a most pleasing book deal, and was on his way back to his shop with a pack of chocolates under his arm, and was also very much looking forward to Crowley returning tonight from his little trip over to Wales where he was wreaking some Moderate Inconvenience for old time’s sake.

He entered his shop with a smile on his face: a smile that died when he saw the tall, broad man clad in a perfectly-fitting grey suit standing right there in the centre of the room, waiting for him on the carpet that he knew hid a rather occult chalk sketch.

“Gabriel.” Aziraphale fixed his bowtie, smiling a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “This is a... surprise?”

Behind the angel, Aziraphale could see the answering machine blinking at him from under a pile of books--an ugly device, really, but Crowley had pestered him to get one set up so much he had to give in at some point, that wily old serpent--and his thoughts involuntarily wandered off to the demon. Not exactly an appropriate moment.

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel smiled his business smile, play-punching Aziraphale on his shoulder as he came up to him. The angels had kept their distance ever since The Hellfire Incident; this was the first time Aziraphale had seen the Archangel since that day, a few months ago now. “Old boy! Just dropped by to update you on some stuff; keep in touch, right? Well, anyways, about the demon Crowley--”

Aziraphale straightened, lips parting slightly.

“--well, about him, you’ll have to manage without him for a bit, nothing serious. No harm done, right? Well, no permanent harm, anyways.” He laughed, as if he’d made a little joke. He had, only Aziraphale was not in on it yet.

“What?” Aziraphale’s voice sounded weak to his own ears.

“Oh, come on! You know we’re big on vengeance!” Gabriel beamed. “Of course, we honour our agreements, but a well-placed little discorporation has never hurt anyone, now, has it? Actually, scratch that, it hurts a little. Anyways, we acquired some fine murderers--aren’t humans just great? Murder by purchase, hilarious! They should be on their way to eliminate his earthly shell as we speak, just wanted to let you know.”

Aziraphale was barely listening anymore. The red light of the answering machine glowered at him from the depths of his consciousness like beastly eyes in the dark, its happy promise turned to bone-deep, spine-chilling dread.

Crowley, discorporated? His knees felt weak.

"Oh don’t look so upset, now. He’ll be back in no time, the paperwork only takes a few years down there. Anyways, I gotta run, duty calls, and--”

He stopped dead when he caught the look in Aziraphale’s eyes.

Aziraphale had never looked at him like that. Perhaps Aziraphale had never looked at anyone like that. Gone was the pudgy little man with eyes so blue they must’ve been taken right from the perfect sky of a picture book. He looked like rainclouds, like a cold desert, like a stormy sea about to come crashing down to drown the entire world. He looked like The Fury Of God, and Gabriel took a step backwards, involuntarily.

But just as suddenly as it had come on, the wave subsided (but oh, the dark sea remained). “It has not happened yet, you say?” His voice sounded strained.

“Oh, no,” Gabriel started, but Aziraphale, staring at the floor, merely snapped his fingers, and the Archangel disappeared as the carpet below him incinerated and the chalk beneath glowed white.

Another snap, and the answering machine started playing by itself.

“Aziraphale!” A chipper voice piped up, and the angel suddenly felt so scared he wanted to sink down onto the floor. “So, I was wondering, since I can’t quite recall--was Wales one of yours or ours? I mean,” and here he laughed, “I do know who’s responsible for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch--still proud of that one. Anyways, come over to my place tonight at 7, I’ve brought you some bara brith and a bottle blanc de blancs.”

The rest of the tape ran empty. “Dammit, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, trying to convince himself that he was not about to cry. He rushed to the phone, and picked up the receiver. The right number started dialing by itself.

The clock showed 6.

“Angel? I know you miss me, but--”

“Crowley! Oh, Crowley!” Aziraphale closed his eyes, the relief was so big.

“--really, gotta be patient only a little while longer.” Crowley’s voice was mischievous, a sentiment that currently went right over the angel’s head. “I still got some business to attend to in Hackney.”

“Wait, are you back in London?!”

“Oh yeah, just about to meet up with some shady people, y’know, my favourite kind, they wanted to strike some sorta deal and--oh, gotta go!”

“Crowley, wait!”

“Toodeloo!”

The line went dead, and Aziraphale, aggravated, threw the receiver down. It fell to the ground, so he picked it back up and put it on the holder, angrily. He felt like swearing.

He had to get to Crowley. Before they did.

Crowley was expecting nothing. If they really were trained assassins, and if they acted fast enough, there was a real chance his demon was in serious trouble.

It took half an hour to get from Soho to Hackney by cab or public transport. For a human.

Aziraphale had been out of shape for six thousand years, but right now he didn’t have time to acknowledge that fact. Reality would just have to deal with it. So he ran. He ran as if the devil was on his heels, even though it was in fact quite the opposite. After a few steps he was barely touching the ground anymore, while an Old power deep inside him reared its tired head. Nobody took notice of him, nor of the flash of white feathers that flickered in and out of existence around him as he moved, ever faster, dragging his body along for the ride.

Ten minutes later he stood in a dark alley, gasping for breath as he tried to put himself back together: literally; rearranging his atoms and reattaching the patches of Soul that had spilled over like water out of an overflowing cup, like cotton out of a crude and frayed doll.

He was close enough now, to feel him. Could sense the demonic aura.

(That was good, right? That meant he still had an aura.)

It didn’t take long to track him down.

Through a broken fence and along a wall full of horrendous graffiti and towards the entrance of an abandoned warehouse. It was a truly sinister place; no person in their right mind would meet up with strangers here. Except Crowley was no person (and quite possibly never in his right mind.)

(I don’t have a right mind, angel, Aziraphale could almost hear him say, I have a wrong mind. And I’m very much in it. Duh.)

The doors crumbled before him, evaporated into thin air that he could feel against his wings. He hadn’t bothered putting them away.

“Crowley?” he called.

And Crowley turned around, surprise on his face, and as if they had been waiting for this moment the two people he was now facing away from drew their guns.

Two shots echoed through the empty hall.

They never reached their target. Aziraphale lifted his hand, and for a moment everything stopped. The wave of his righteous fury came crashing down all over again, and this time there was no stopping it. When reality resumed, the bullets had found new targets.

With twin screams, the two henchpeople went down and writhed on the ground, their kneecaps shattered. When they looked up, they wished they hadn’t.

All they saw was bright white blinding fury, a vast nothingness so incomprehensible to the human mind that it burned their eyes and their souls, and inside that nothingness a million eyes staring right through them. There were whispers, in that place, echoes and ghosts and memories of worlds, and as the angel spread its wings they started screaming.

They stopped, abruptly, when the demon Crowley let them fall into merciful unconsciousness.

“Angel, that’s enough.”

The sound of Crowley’s voice reached him through a haze, and Aziraphale faltered. He turned towards the demon, and saw shock and worry on his face.

Crowley saw something else entirely: He saw Both. There was Aziraphale, tired and dishevelled and unbearably horrified and so very Human; and there was Aziraphale, blinding and manifold and unbearably Holy, and not human at all.

“Aziraphale,” he murmured, “it’s enough, now. It’s okay.”

And Aziraphale closed his eyes, and stood there as the light receded, and when he opened his eyes he was One again. And he looked terrified.

“Oh, Crowley,” he said, and his voice almost broke, it sounded so feeble. “You’re, you’re alright.”

Crowley, on the other hand--now that he had his angel back, he knew it, saw it--looked at him... almost a little smitten. He stepped closer, steadying the angel before he could ask. Though he tried to look Casual, he still scanned the angel’s face intently, until Aziraphale looked away.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” he finally said, and after another moment: “Should I thank you?”

“Better not,” Aziraphale answered with a weak smile. “I could get into all sorts of trouble...”

Crowley smiled: faintly, softly. (Almost, very almost, he touched a hand to the angel’s cheek.)

“So, care to tell me what this is all about?” he asked instead, carefully circling around Aziraphale, his touch never quite leaving him.

Aziraphale pressed his lips into a fine line. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Silence settled around them, and both their gazes landed on the poor unconscious souls lying in a heap on the ground.

“Well uhhh, alright, then,” Crowley spoke up, “So... Let’s get you home? I still have that sparkling wine in my Bentley, y’know the one.”

“Wait.” Aziraphale sighed, taking a few exhausted steps towards the two murderers acquired by Gabriel. “Do not be afraid,” he murmured as he took to healing their knees, “ When you wake up, you migth want to re-evaluate your choice of profession. And try not to believe what you saw.”

(Forgetting, he knew, was impossible. They would have to carry this burden for life. As did he.)

Crowley stood waiting, and then wordlessly walked by his side (his arm brushing against Aziraphale’s now and again, close enough to offer comfort with his presence, but keeping to himself.) He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this situation, wasn’t sure what it all meant, but he knew Aziraphale well enough to give him time.

He’d always needed time.

As they stepped outside, someone was waiting for them.

He was Gabriel--but not quite. A few inches smaller, a little lop-sided, with less of his perfect hair on his head. He looked like he’d been run through a pastry machine. And he looked pissed.

“You’ve really done it now, Aziraphale,” he snapped. “Discorporating an Archangel! Look at the fucking body they gave me!”

“You what?!” Crowley wheezed, incredulous and, not to his credit, looking absolutely delighted.

Aziraphale cleared his throat, and straightened his shoulders, and suddenly looked like his old self. Like his softness was his armour.

“I thought, despite everything, that you were still one of us... but I must have been wrong.” Cold anger sat deep in Gabriel’s eyes, and behind that, hidden, something like disappointment.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, instinctively, ready to go No, no, of course I still am, but then he glanced sideways at Crowley. And that was that. He knew.

They were still His Side... but right now, though he would never say the words out loud despite it all, there was only one thought burning inside him and it was:

Fuck My Side.

“No, I don’t suppose I am.” He said it as if he was realizing it only as he spoke, and a part of him did. Another part had known it for a long, long time. He looked Gabriel right in the eyes, holding his furious gaze with his own.

Beside him, he saw (felt) Crowley’s head snap around, just impercetibly, a motion so small that Gabriel would never notice, but Aziraphale did. Behind his sunglasses, Crowley’s eyes had gone wide.

So this was it. The moment he had been so very scared of for so very long, but now that it was happening he suddenly was not scared anymore at all. Determined, he took a step forward, positioning himself slightly closer and slightly in front of Crowley. He thought he saw the demon smile softly, for just a second, a little unsure twitch in his cheek.

“I would appreciate it if you never did that again,” Aziraphale said, and somehow it sounded both like a polite request and a Threat.

And Gabriel, The Trial still present in his mind--the image of Azirapahle standing in Hellfire and basking in it--thought he saw that same Aziraphale again now. The Archangel smiled, a short and humourless smile that was mere acknowledgement, and then he snapped his fingers and was gone.

Crowley waved after him, a little wiggle of his fingers that he very much enjoyed.

Aziraphale felt all his strength leave him, yet at the same time he’d never felt stronger in his life. He exhaled, trying to wrap his mind around all that had happened. He had truly chosen his allegiance once and for all, and he knew it was the only decision he ever could have made.

The power that had so forcefully reminded him of its existence, never quite forgotten, still tingled beneath his skin, but it was only a soft stream now, and Aziraphale gently led it back down. The fabric of Himself was still intact. With a little smile, and an even littler glance to the demon by his side, he clasped his hands contentedly in front of his stomach.

Aziraphale knew who he had to thank for that. Wily old serpent, always meddling in his affairs. He’d better never stop.

“He’s a real jerk, that one, isn’t he?”

Aziraphale gasped, looking scandalized, and completely missed the irony of that. Then he grinned, and laughed, and looked at the ground and then back up into Crowley’s face, a little unsure.

“I guess you might, on occasion, have a point,” he conceded.

He smiled broadly, warmly, one of his best smiles, and Crowley, a little stricken, reciprocated. Suddenly nervous, he took off his sunglasses and tried to clean them with the hem of his shirt, before giving up and slipping them into his pocket, as had been his (very secret) intention all along.

They locked eyes, in the twilight, and almost seemed like bashful teenagers, ready to come of age but feeling very shy about it.

“What’s this horrible feeling all around here?” the demon asked suddenly, looking around. “It’s making my stomach all upset.”

“That would be love, my dear.” Unadulterated.

“Oh.” Crowley said nothing more.

But his hand brushed against the back of Aziraphale’s, just lightly grazing it, and the angel, as if by serendipity, turned his hand to face his--not quite taking it, but letting their fingers touch, and not pulling away.

_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_;_

tagging the people in the OP who sounded like they would want to be tagged:

@idinink @aangelphale @ohblessit @armoredavengers @e3105eb @ineffable-bisexual @cake-cow @snake-in-the-bookshop @crowleysscaredplants @the-best-pilot-in-the-resistance @crowleys--angel @qfantasydragon @aduckwithears @jesuisfabulous @azirafuck @snakecrowleyy @foolish-principalitee @crowleyraejepsen @azfellandco @on-our-own-side @imlowercasemad

#good omens #ineffable husbands #a/c #aziraphale x crowley #my omens #my writing #inefficable #why do i hurt the ones i love #the one in which aziraphale has had Enough

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lifeonashelf · 3 years

Text

COHEN, LEONARD

So, here’s the thing: I don’t know anything about Leonard Cohen.

I do own two of his most acclaimed albums, but don’t get too excited. I bought both of them the week of Cohen’s passing solely because learning of his passing made me realize I didn’t have anything by him in my collection, and he’s always been on my radar as an artist I should probably know some things about, you know? I listened to those two discs one day while I was cleaning my apartment or something, and they were lovely and pleasant and sounded great, but then I filed them away on my shelf and that was essentially the extent of my immersion into the world of Leonard Cohen. I know the reissues I purchased are noteworthy entries in his discography, because they’re housed in these rather attractive hardcover digipacks with booklets that feature lengthy contextual essays written by people way smarter than me. I suppose I could read those essays and glean a little information about Cohen that way, but then I’d just be offering you disingenuous regurgitation, and I don’t want to fake anything in these pages; that’s kind of counteractive to the entire purpose of me writing these dumb things. So if you want to read a thoughtful essay about Leonard Cohen constructed by someone who I assume knows enough about Leonard Cohen to warrant being paid to write an essay about him, you should definitely seek out the striking deluxe editions of Songs From a Room and Songs of Love and Hate I’m referring to, because both have essays in them, and they’re printed on glossy paper so they’re probably pretty good (very few crappy essays get preserved on glossy paper).

No one is paying me to write this essay about Leonard Cohen—they’d be pretty stupid to do so, since I don’t know anything about Leonard Cohen—but I have that pair of records and he’s the next artist on alphabetical deck. So here we are.

Actually, you know what? Before we get started, I’m going to go ahead and advise you to just skip this piece altogether.

Hear me out. I can’t imagine this is going to be one of my better entries; considering my not knowing anything about the person I’m supposed to be writing about and all, the odds of my somehow summoning literary gold here aren’t particularly strong. Also, Leonard Cohen is a highly respected artist, and based on the listening I’m doing right now, he definitely deserves that respect—I’m on my second spin of Songs from a Room and it is an absolutely beautiful record. But what am I accomplishing by telling you that? You probably already know Songs From a Room is an absolutely beautiful record, and if you don’t, you should totally listen to it right this minute instead of reading anything I might observe about it, because the album is a whole lot better than this essay is going to be. I’ve been down this road before, so I can tell you exactly what’s about to happen here: I’m going to keep prattling on with gibberish just like this and end up embarrassing myself by blowing yet another chance to write something substantial about a substantial artist. I guess I could comment on how much I like the two Cohen songs that were used to bookend the mindfuck of a film Natural Born Killers or something, but what purpose will that serve? There, I commented on it, and biting into those ‘member berries hasn’t magically ignited some spirited dissertation, has it? Look, I’m saying this because I care: I really think you should call it quits on this piece right here and now, before you get in too deep. I’m already doomed, but it’s not too late to save yourself. Run, go, get to the choppah. Fly away, Clarice, fly fly fly. ‘Member?

Okay, you’ve been duly warned. So if you do decide to continue on, I’m not going to feel terribly bad about wasting your time, especially since I essentially just promised you anything I write from this point forward is going to be a waste of your time. I mean, everything I’ve written so far has also been a waste of your time, but I haven’t written that much yet. And at least the stuff I wrote so far has served a purpose: it cautioned you that everything to come is going to be an even bigger waste of your time. I can’t promise any of the supplemental paragraphs I’m about to compose will be worth even that much, so I really have to advise you to take a moment here and consider your situation carefully. Weighing everything I’ve just told you about my not knowing anything about Leonard Cohen (and, just to be clear, I’m not playfully minimizing that disposition; I honestly don’t know shit about him), along with my stated unambiguous surety that I am about to waste an indefinite amount of your time (you must be familiar with my work by now; it’s totally plausible this thing could end up running 15 pages)—do you really want to read any of more of this? It’s still not too late to back out. Your time investment thus far is minimal. You can just move right along to the next piece (it’s about Coldplay, so I’m sure that essay is going to be way funnier than this one). My feelings won’t be hurt, I promise. I can hardly fault you for not reading this, because there isn’t any reason at all you should read this. Unless you just really enjoy reading these entries in general, but that seems highly unlikely because nobody enjoys reading them—shit, I only enjoy every fifth one or so, and I write the fucking things.

Check it out: usually by this point in a composition, I would be painstakingly rereading what I’ve written so far to make sure I’m off to an okay start, right? But I haven’t done that in this case because I already know everything I’ve written so far is garbage. This piece isn’t going to improve, either. And that’s what I’m really trying to get across to you here: I am woefully ill-equipped to write anything about Leonard Cohen that is as excellent as his music—I just listened to Songs of Love and Hate a couple times, and holy shit, that’s an absolutely beautiful record too. You may assume I’m continuing this obnoxious diatribe because I’m setting you up for some grand gag (granted, it’s a fair guess, because I’ve done that a few times in entries past). But I’m not joking when I say that I’m not joking in this instance. This rambling philological self-fellation is not going to coalesce into something worthwhile; it’s just going to go on and on like this until I decide I’m done fucking with you and then this essay will just sort of… end, without preamble or satisfaction. I’m telling you, if you keep reading this, you are going to be super pissed off when you finish it. You’ll get to the conclusion, and you’ll grumble, “That’s it…? That was stupid.” And you will be right, because that will be it and it will be stupid.

Since that will be transpiring soon, we should probably clarify that at this point, when it does it’s going to be entirely your fault. If you go all the way back to the beginning of this twaddle, you’ll clearly see the very first thing I wrote was, “So, here’s the thing: I don’t know anything about Leonard Cohen.” That was the opening fucking sentence, dude. Seriously, what did you think was going to happen after that? And only a few lines later, I wrote: “I’m going to go ahead and advise you to just skip this piece altogether.” Then came that whole part about how reading this was going to be a total waste of your time, blah blah blah. You can check if you want; it’s all totally in there. I’m sure you didn’t think I’d be reprinting complete sentences you already read—and, you know what, yes, that’s kind of a low blow, I’m realizing now—but after I took the time to explain in detail that this essay would likely end up serving no purpose whatsoever, surely that must have given you pause. I mean, didn’t you think to yourself, “Wait a minute, before I read this essay, is it going to serve some purpose?” As I’ve made abundantly clear, the answer is: No. No, it is not. I was pretty up front about that. In fact, I specifically told you not to read it—“there isn’t any reason at all you should read this”; is that ringing a bell at all? So if you are still reading it, that’s kind of on you, dude. Sure, I could have stopped writing a long time ago and spared you from all of this bullshit, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.

Have you seen the movie Reservoir Dogs? I’m assuming you have, but if you haven’t, you can add that to the list of far more fulfilling things you could be doing right now instead of reading this essay. Anyway, the film is centered around the aftermath of a jewelry store robbery gone horrifically wrong. We don’t actually see the caper take place, but the characters reference it enough along the way for us to get a clear sense of things devolving into a bloodbath after one of the robbers, Mr. Blonde (played by Michael Madsen) shoots numerous people inside the establishment. Is it coming back to you now? Good. There’s a reason I’m bringing this up.

Since Madsen is absent for a lot of the movie, the audience’s understanding of the storyline relies mostly on what the characters played by Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel share with us about what has occurred. Their perspective is clear: Mr. Blonde went crazy and started killing people, and that’s why the whole heist went tits up. However, when Madsen finally appears at the warehouse where the bulk of the plot’s action takes place, he presents an entirely different assessment of the exact same incident. It is here that the movie shifts into the subtle employment of a narrative device known as the “Rashomon Effect,” so-named because this formula’s introduction to Western film-goers is commonly credited to the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon—a picture which we can assume in hindsight Reservoir Dogs creator Quentin Tarantino was consciously invoking since his filmography has since revealed a heart-on-sleeve fandom for the work of that storied Japanese director (several Tarantino flicks make reference to this allegiance, but his Kill Bill films in particular are at their core unashamed modern reimaginings of Kurosawa’s legendary Samurai epics). I won’t recount the entire plot of Rashomon, since doing so would be superfluous here (as opposed to all of this shit I’m writing about Reservoir Dogs, which is obviously vitally important to this essay about Leonard Cohen). All you really need to know for our purposes is that the crux of the story is a singular event which is assigned completely disparate interpretations by the various people in the film who witness it. Which is precisely what happens when Michael Madsen makes his entrance.

Now, I’ve seen Reservoir Dogs many times, but not enough times to have the dialogue faithfully memorized; you’ll have to forgive me if I paraphrase a bit here. Essentially, Keitel’s character calls Mr. Blonde a “maniac” or something to that effect, a designation based on Madsen’s character opening fire upon one of the store’s clerks for what Keitel perceives as “no reason at all.” Madsen’s response to this slanted accusation is fascinating. In direct repudiation of his labelling as a “maniac” seconds before, he continues calmly drinking his soda as he amends Keitel’s analysis of the murder by providing a remarkably lucid and utilitarian explanation for the killing: “I told her not to press the alarm, but she did. If she hadn’t done the thing that I told her not to do, then I wouldn’t have shot her.”

It seems we are sharing our own Rashomon moment, my friends. You may feel like your time has been wasted, and it certainly has. But I am not the one who wasted it. That was you. I told you not to read this essay, but you did. If you hadn’t done the thing I told you not to do…

Mr. Cohen: I am truly sorry. Your music is stunning, and you deserve far better than this.

As for the rest of you: I mean, dude, I fucking told you.

March 31, 2019

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dasfuzzy · 4 years

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This thing still exists...?

So...I guess I'll start off by saying that the main reason for this post is because I got the Tumblr app a while back and have periodically gotten the notification that someone has liked my blog (hello, by the way), so this is twofold:

1) Give an update because, y'know, I haven't touched this thing in a long time, so there's a lot to update, and

2) Find out who's been liking my blog and why. So I guess comment, message, note, or whatever the hell people do here and let me know what got you interested in my ramblings.

I guess the three main things I would discuss here were my job, my love life, and my situation in general, so those'll be the primary focus for now. I guess I'll start with my love life just to get that out of the way as it's typically the focal point and most salacious content here (and possibly the most interesting to y'all).

Well, I'm gonna tell you right off the bat that things have changed drastically since I last was here. I will say that if you're expecting me to tell all, you're gonna be disappointed. I know in the past I never really held back on my feelings and about dishing out the truth, but this is a different situation than any in the past. All I'll really say is that since August of 2017 I've been in a committed relationship with someone that I truly love and can see myself being with for the rest of my days. Our relationship hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows, however, mostly due to nagging injuries and surgeries stemming from a work-related injury on her part (she used to be a physical therapy assistant), but I've done everything in my power to accommodate her and make things work. It hasn't been easy and it's taken it's toll on me, but at the end of the day I try to remain optimistic that things will get better with time.

Regarding my job...er, jobs, I've bounced around a bit since I was last here. I think I was still at Dave & Busters, but I was able to leave there to become a preschool/toddler teacher at a highly-accredited daycare center called Bright Horizons. It wasn't the easiest job and with me being who I am (profane and a fan of mature content, a la Game of Thrones, Walking Dead and wrestling) I felt like I was walking on eggshells at times, especially because the director was a bit of a prude, but I really enjoyed it. I was one of only two male teachers in a facility of approximately 30 teachers, so the kids really enjoyed the change of pace. I learned a lot being there, especially since I only had a few early education courses under my belt beforehand and I had some great mentors guiding me along.

Unfortunately, I made the decision to leave after 18 months for a couple of reasons:

1) The landlady finally sold the house, so my mom and I had to move (more on that later), and

2) There was an incident where I might've let slip a bit of profanity on the job. Basically it was nap time and most of the children were sleeping. I was in one of the preschool rooms at the time and at that age, some children just don't want to sleep, so we have to either try to soothe them or at least do what we can to keep them quiet so they don't wake the other children up. So I'm with another, younger teacher sitting with the non-sleepers, one of which was on the autistic spectrum and had an action plan in place that inform us of what we can and cannot do in certain situations that normally wouldn't apply to other children. Anyways, that particular child was not having any of nap/quiet time and decided to start walking around the room. In my frustration, I might've uttered under my breath "what the fuck". A few days later, I get a call from the director and she asks me if I used any profanity while in the classroom. I tell her that I don't recall doing so; she tells me that another teacher informed her that I had and she would need me to type up a formal statement of what I recall from that particular event. I stuck to my guns and said that I honestly don't recall doing so and, after submitting that to her, I was put on an indefinite administrative leave. As much as I loved that job, I took that as a sign that maybe it was time to find another job, something that pays better because I knew I was going to be moving within the next few months.

On the first day of my "leave", I asked friends if they knew of any good-paying jobs that had openings. I was only making $12.40/hr, which is only $.40 over minimum wage, so I was definitely open to suggestions. My best friend told me to apply to where he worked, Fitzgerald Tile, because they were looking for warehouse workers. He said they could start me at $18, so I leapt at the opportunity. I went down that Monday and met the warehouse supervisor to have an interview. I'll give you an almost word-for-word retelling of how that interview went:

Him: "Do you know how to drive a forklift?"

Me: "Yeah."

Him: "Great, you're hired."

Me: "Oh...okay."

Okay, that might be stretching it a bit, but that was more or less how it went. Really, he outlined some of the basic duties, asked if I was able to lift up to 50lbs unassisted, know that I'm expected to work 50 hours a week, then had me fill out the application, mostly for the sake of having it on file. He told me that I would just have to meet with the HR person to finalize the paperwork and discuss pay and my schedule, then I'd be good to go. Here's the thing: I never got to talk to the HR person. Ever. I was waiting for over an hour then told that we could do it another time, so I just went home. I should've noticed how sketchy the whole thing was. I should've picked up on all the red flags, but I didn't. So I go home, call my boss, and tell her that I'm giving my two weeks notice. She obliges and I ask if I could come visit down the road. She says that it would be in the best interest of the children that I stay away so they don't get the wrong idea. Basically I haven't been back there besides one time when I stopped by after hours to catch up with my favorite colleague and mentor, Jen.

Anywho, here I am on November 19th at the asscrack of dawn starting at the tile warehouse. I meet with the warehouse supervisor (I don't fucking remember his name; he's honestly not worth remembering) and he asks if I know how to drive a forklift. Uh...we talked about that when you hired me, but anyways, I say yes. "Great. Hop on, drive around a bit, get a feel for it, then get to work." Um...I dunno about those guys, but when I was at Lowe's where I learned to drive a forklift, we had to be licensed to operate one. Not to mention if they bothered to do a background check, they'd learn that I was fired from there for getting into an accident on a forklift and causing damage to a bay door. But I do as they say; I grab an order sheet ("grab the biggest ones first", they tell me) and get to it. Basically the way they run things is they put the sheets out on a table, everyone grabs one, gathers everything up on a pallet, then drop it in the outgoing delivery area, then do it all again until every order has been filled. I should also mention that I started right as they were moving warehouses to North Reading, so after the orders were pulled, we had to get other pallets ready to ship to the new place. Remember how I said I was never able to talk to the HR person? Well, I was never given a schedule because of that, so I guess it was understood that I would come in at 7 in the morning and work until everyone was done, which typically wasn't until 8 or 9 at night. I adhered to that mindset for maybe a week and a half; after that, I started sneaking out after at least doing my 8 hours a day. One day the supervisor caught me and said that I can't do that again. I didn't give a fuck. Another day he tells me that I'm not working fast enough and need to step it up. Maybe if someone took the time to train me on the other lift that was smaller and had forks that extended, I'd be able to be more efficient, but no; the only machines I could use were the huge lifts that are barely able to maneuver in the narrow fucking aisles and the order picker, which is basically a standing lift with a small tray-sized platform that you could place stuff on and lower it back down. That thing was kinda fun because it had controlls that kinda felt like piloting a mech and it was fast as hell.

Fast forward a few days and a few hours into my shift the supervisor tells me that I'm being let go and he hands me my last check and a pamphlet for unemployment benefits. No reasoning, just that I'm gone. Probably because I was "working too slow" and would leave when I felt like it, but I could give two shits; they never cared about me and I was tired of working under those unreasonable conditions. I manage keep my composure and start heading out, telling the few friends that I made there that I was fired; they wished me well and said I'd move onto something better. No shit. Once I get to my car, I burst out crying, trying to comprehend the gravity of my situation. I text my girlfriend and she asks if I want to come over to her house; I do partly because I needed the emotional support and partly because she was only 5 minutes away and my drive home would've been about 30 minutes. Honestly, I probably could've reported them to OSHA since they were in violation of god knows how many rules and regulations (hell, during the first week at the new warehouse, someone managed to destroy an entire bay: 3 shelves with 4 pallets each, totalling I believe over $6000 worth of product), but I just wanted to wash my hands of that place entirely. Since it was mid December, I decided to just take time to enjoy the holidays before looking for a new job, especially since I had made enough money there to keep myself afloat for about a month.

So, regarding the move, mom and I spent the last few years looking for places nearby for when the time came, but a lot of places were either in undesirable towns, were too expensive (this is Massachusetts; rent prices suck balls), or didn't meet our needs/standards. Ideally we were aiming to find a small house or even duplex to move into since we'd been in a 2-story, 3-bedroom house since January 2001, but we ended up settling for a 2-bedroom apartment in a small complex in Reading. It's been a bit of an adjustment for many reasons, but we've made it work. One of the biggest annoyances is that we don't have any laundry machines in our unit or even our building, so if we have to wash our clothes, we need to bring our stuff to one of the neighboring buildings that has a credit card-opperated laundry room with seven washers and 8 dryers. Kinda obnoxious to have to go through all that trouble and pay to do it, but condidering heat, hot water, and facility maintenance and snow removal are all covered in our rent (which is $1750/month), it's a small price to pay, I suppose.

Once we got all settled into the new place, I started job hunting again. For years I've wanted to do something technical, like be a plumber or maintenance engineer, but it's nigh impossible to find entry-level jobs like that. I somehow managed to find a job posting on Craigslist for a preventative maintenance engineer at a hotel in my old hometown of Woburn (ironically it's across from my old Dave & Busters), put in an application, and about a week later I had the job. Basically what I do is go through the guestrooms and make sure everything is in working order and is clean. I do about 2 rooms a day, repairing things as needed, be it electrical, plumbing, painting, or whatever else. I started back in early February of this year and in April the chief engineer was unceremoniously fired, leaving me as the sole engineer at the hotel. We had outside help come in periodically, but generally speaking I was the one keeping the place together until we hired a new chief this past October. I had to learn how to take care of an outdoor pool and how to take readings on it daily. I had to represent my hotel at engineer trainings normally meant for chiefs. Hell, I was very close to being promoted to chief myself until they found the new guy. But my efforts weren't in vain: our scores from our guest surveys for maintenance and upkeep were always above expectations and everyone at the hotel appreciate and respect what I do there. They raised my pay as high as they could go because of the amount of work I was putting in. My boss even got me two $75 tickets to a Ring of Honor show since he was a wrestling fan like myself. I think it's safe to say that I definitely bounced back from Fitzgerald.

I guess that about wraps things up. It's currently two weeks until Christmas, so I've got that to look forward to. I'd apologize for the lengthy rant, but I think that's par for the course on my blog. Again, if you're new (or even if you're not), feel free to leave a comment, note, message, or whatever and let me know what brought you to my blog or if there's any questions, comments, or suggestions for things that I could discuss. I figure I've been away from this thing for a long time, why not be a bit more active. Anyways, that's all I got for now. Hope y'all are well; take care of yourself!

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inxcs · 4 years

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kim taehyung , 24 , he/him ------ hey , did i just see siwon ryu walking around the block ? oh ! yes ! the last time i saw him , i heard he wanted to be called siwon . people around say they are so endearing && inquisitive sometimes i wonder how they can be selfish && duplicitous . ( popped bubblegum , glowing under the sun , purple-pink skylines , patterned blouses )

heyo ! i’m deni , she/her pronouns in the gmt+9 section of the world . i can’t keep an aesthetic and i use too many em dashes . below is one of the characters i’m bringing , SIWON , my favorite problem sunflowers . i have some info and verse-specific information beneath , but i have a habit of updating , adding and changing as i go . apologies in advance for how messy all tis is . looking forward to writing with you <3 !

☀ 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 .

➤ full name. siwon ryu ➤ date of birth. january 29th ➤ hometown. toronto , canada ➤ gender. cis male ➤ sexual attraction. pansexual ➤ romantic attraction. pansexual ➤ wants. family , power ➤ fears. imprisonment , humiliation

universal facts. hustles at arcade halls , scarfs down burritos like they’re gonna disappear , looks as comfortable in a dark , dirty alley as he does standing under all those lights in the neon districts . pockets full of candy and a lollipop between his lips . likes cheap beer and cigarettes , fast talking and smooth smiles . gets up when the sun goes down . who knows if he ever gets a full night’s sleep , but you can find him taking a nap just about anywhere . seems to live for the dark hours and stays busy as a bee , feels the rain on his skin , plays with matches . spray paints boobs on the sides of government buildings and dicks on malls . can do crazy math in his head and spot fake bills with incredible accuracy . can barely stand to sit still , always moving except when there’s a computer screen or an aquarium in front of him . gets addicted to things so easily it’s scary — people , food , liquor , feelings . craves that intimacy , craves that closeness . has a loud as fuck laugh and a love for sneaking into places where he doesn’t belong . catches extra cash on the side by fixing up broken-down machines and can figure his way around a motor with a bit of elbow grease . fucking loves nature dude --- takes care of plants and reptiles in his home . would die for snakes and lets them drape over him , claims they give the best hugs . vegetarian . would be a vegan but too lazy .

personality. loud , noisy . could talk to a brick wall . holds himself with all the confidence of the sun and his smile burns just as bright . there’s this lazy intensity to everything he does . like , pretends he super cares but also doesn’t ? or pretends he cares so much but in reality couldn’t give a shit . affable , easy to get along with on a surface level , and he’s curious enough to keep any conversation going with questions and enthusiastic energy . mood changes on a dime , goes from grinning like a maniac to eerily calm in a snap of your fingers . intuitive and instinctive , listens to and follows his gut . trusts the energy in the air more than anyone’s word . comes off as thoughtless but it actually very cautious . impulsive doesn’t mean brainless . sniffs out bad situation fast and decides on a dime if he needs to run or face it . go with the flow kind of attitude . doesn’t take things personally . nice but trusting him’s an iffy situation . greedy --- wants everything and anything .

appearance. stands around 5′11 . broad shoulders , slim hips . floppy , messy hair and glowing skin . half legs and a lot of eyelashes . wears no less than five charms on a daily basis and keeps his tarot cards with him at all times . rings , bracelets , necklaces , earrings , crystals , talismans . wears a small lip ring and has several runes tattooed on his body . dresses anywhere between a washed up rockstar , your college weed dealer , and your grandpa in the ‘40s . his closet’s a chaotic mix of anything he could thrift or patch together . most of the time , he’s sporting loose pants , a vintage blouse , a jacket or blazer and comfortable loafers . kind of swims in his clothing because most of its’ two or three sizes too big . only wears skinny jeans when he wants something . unironically wears cargo shorts in the summer . keeps all that hair back with a bandana or a headband , hairties on his wrist . nothing in his closet’s technically new and he loves looking for a bargain steal ——or simply just a steal . sometimes he’s jimi hendrix and other times he’s versace .

☀ 𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄 .

⇀ kim taehyung , 24 , he/him ------ hey , did i just see siwon ryu walking around the block ? oh ! yes ! the last time i saw him , i heard he wanted to be called siwon . i hear they are a podcast host ╱ “psychic” . people around town say they are so endearing && generous sometimes i wonder how they can be selfish && duplicitous . ( beaded curtains , purple skies , tousled hair )

about. wrongly labeled a troublemaker after a little incident with some candles , pentagrams and a slightly burned down warehouse , siwon’s been on the road and seeing te road ever since . makes a few quick bucks tapping into that aura of his that somehow magically nudges his brain about who’s got what on their minds and what might happen to those what’s , but no one really seems to believe him when he says it’s all real . starting a podcast straight outta the back of a busted-up RV , siwon’s crossed the country and broke down in this little town . and , so . . . maybe some stuff he was involved with in the past wasn’t totally legal butthat’sokayokayhedoesn’tdothatanymore . ANYWAY--- this town . figures he’ll call it home . it’s groovy enough , he supposes , and after a few attempts to get out of town that just failed , siwon figures this is the universe telling him to settle down for a bit . so okay . his few listeners don’t mind , siwon still does some readings and random lectures on whatever’s on his brain . for extra cash , he does a few side gigs --- fixing up websites , selling crystals and rocks he finds , jobs around town that don’t require him to fork over any semi-serious documentation . takes scenic pictures for his instagram and documents the road-trip across this Great Wide Country he and his pets are seeing . let’s . . . let’s just see how this goes .

☀ 𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 .

⇀ kim taehyung , 24 , he/him , toxokinesis ------ hey , did i just see siwon ryu walking around the block ? or was it poison ? it’s hard to tell , really , all i saw was the commotion , someone being saved . you know , i heard siwon is an app developer . i also heard they are a saint , really , so affable && generous , none of that mercurial && selfish nature people talk about . ( blackened veins , wild eyes , living for the applause )

about. after his parents volunteered him for “ quirk ” studies at a leading research institute , siwon’s been semiworking for the man . but it’s fine . it’s fine . totally fine . spending most of his early life in a tank waiting to be let out , siwon kept himself busy with plant pals , reptiles , and of course a computer screen --- everyone’s favorite parents . he’s developed websites and applications for the hero organization to help them locate and identify trouble around the city , a bridge between 911 services and the heroes themselves . at twenty-two , siwon created a popular app cataloging heroes and villains , a place for fans to post their own pictures of fights and fallouts , gossiping about which heroes were secretly in love and speculating about new faces behind the masks , then a megapopular game where people could play as their favorite heroes or villains to save ( or destroy ) a city . as poison , he wears no cape --- and in fact hasn’t even been seen since the site skyrocketed in popularity years ago . instead , siwon helps in the development of weapons using his poison and sends little , touching notes to baddies all over the world when he isn’t shuttling around on mercenary expeditions . he’ll ignore the mortal coil for now as long as they fly him first class ... he thinks . just hopes the organization doesn’t find his stash of supervillain fanfics . ikes .

☀ 𝟏𝟖𝟓𝟑 .

⇀ kim taehyung , 24 , he/him ------ hey , did i just see siwon ryu over there ? talk around town is that they are a witch , but i don’t believe any of that , no . they are just a con artist , endearing && generous . those are all just humors . like the people saying they were selfish && duplicitous . ( frayed tarot cards , three-piece suits , sticky fingers and a smile )

about. look who got himself invited into a magnate’s manor : a nobody who made a pretty penny from the opium trade ----- and who’s definitely not human . siwon’s bounced from city to city on his own , brewing and selling antidotes to unfortunate come-downs from the drugs that’s rotting them all from the inside out , but that’s only to sell more of that shit once the high’s gone . it’s enough to keep the rich happy enough . popular at parties , he performs as a spiritualist and fortune teller , snakes into conversations he shouldn’t be privy to and trades the information later . he’s a busy man , what can he say ? for someone who wants to be free from all of this , he enjoys parts of the lifestyle far too much . but maybe he should start making friends soon . attracting a lot of attention lately , and with rumors of animals around , even the “fake” witches like himself might find themselves in more trouble with the law . and now there’s the other trouble he’s found himself in . unfortunately caught swindling a vampire , siwon was forced into dealing with a group of witches and their opium trade for protection . now his clients are their’s . his product and profits , partly their’s . siwon’s in a whole other side of the criminal underground on the cusp of the victorian age --- and he doesn’t know what the fuck’s gonna happen .

☀ 𝟐𝟐𝟖𝟎 .

⇀ kim taehyung , 24 , he/him ------ hey , did i just see siwon ryu over there ? yes , oh my ! haven’t you heard ? it seems they have moved to level seven . makes sense , considering they’re a techie . rumor has it they are so affable && inquisitive but i know at heart they are just impulsive && mercurial . ( busted old radios , buzzing neons , sticky situations )

about. tba !

#. development ⇀ siwon ryu .#multivrseintro

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jedipiff · 5 years

Text

1/4/2019 Late Night Article Diving

There's an article saying that most Americans still prefer to watch TV for news rather than be reading it. Well I would like to say I enjoy both, I have found myself reading late night articles more than ever. I guess it was cause I was fascinated with a piece on The Miracle At Tham Luang, when a whole team of soccer players and their coach got trapped on an afternoon trip through a cave. When a sudden rain onset hit a week sooner than planned, the water was overfilled with water and they were forced to seek safety wherever they could while trying not to battle the constant thought of that they all could die down there. The team was called Moo Pa, which is also translated to Forest Pigs or the Wild Boars. They recieved great advice from their mentor Coach Ek, who had trained to be a buddhist monk and guided them with his teachings.

Many people tried to work on their rescue and one person lost their life trying to set up oxygen tanks so that they could be taken out of the cave safely. While he did this, his own oxygen tank ran out and he wasn't able to make it back from the journey inbetween. Saman Gunan was his name and he was a retired Thai Seal who eagerly journeyed to this land on his choice to try to help rescue these boys. He didn't try, he more than succeeded and I wanted to start my piece off commeorating his bravery. So if anyone is interested in reading more about this inspiring and terrifying story, the best article I have read describing it can be found here https://www.gq.com/story/thai-cave-rescue-miracle-at-tham-luang by Sean Flynn a GQ correspondent.

On another random note, the U.S. Government is in a current state of shutdown over President Trump not getting a 5 $ billion funding to build The Wall. The Senate Democrats have rejected his proposal and Trump now plans to hold the government in lockdown for quite a long period of time he has announced. While this is a current issue going on, I do find it frustrating the government has to do this cause in the meantime I guess many National Parks and Zoos, along with many other residencies go into states of despair and disarray. Some officials will stay on has emergency personnel, but a large majority of the staff won't be there during this period of time.

A surprising one I learned tonight that many may not know, is that the US National Coast guard also goes without pay during this tme. I was reading a post about many disgruntled families, that wondered why they had to be affected out of all the military branches to have to suffer this. They weren't discrediting any other ones, they just said they do it for the love of the country as welll and it was very disheartening to them to be treated this way. I merely just wanted to touch upon the subject, though I will try to hold my frightening political views at bay. Radical, eccentric, a man that cares about the state of the world though that is actively trying to keep his mind more open to the ideas going on around him.

It was on another post that I was diving through Facebook, and I found a girl around my age which is 25 that was posting about the state of Global warming and climate change. There were several older relatives of her that were bewildered at the concept, and I didn't want to frown harshly upon it. They did not know what it was but it still raised my awareness that perphaps the older generation, may not have the exact knowledge of some of the things that we do now. Sure, using Alexa or switching to Netflix on your Smarttv might be easy to you, but to some parents that sounds like some voodoo magic.

I never commented though the girl was throuhoghly explainging to her family that we has a population were causing destruction to the earth. All our gases, fuels, land dumps and numerous other things would all be culminating to stuff that while may not seem like it's affecting us that much around you, is causing many changes throughout the World whether you realize it or not. The thought seems scary, I mean even the act of just using solar energy or switching how you maybe use water, to add more filters and purifiers can sound like some crazy traps to some folk. I don't know, I guess even with all this new technology I'm just saying that somehow we still remain blind.

On another thing, the future of the robot is seemingly coming to dawn upon us sooner than probably humans could have ever realized. Here we are now, where factories and many companies are using robots to help with their daily jobs. In a warehouse of Amazon recently one of the automated robots recently opened a car of bear repellenant spray and sent many hospital workers to the hospital. One of them even in critical condition. Now I'm not calling this the end of the world, but the fact that incidents like this are already happening is just making me already imagining what can of worms are going to be opened. I'm not hating on this future, I'm just saying with great strides in technology there will be many kinks and problems that you have to try to work out. Not everything goes perfect, and I am sure they try their best to make sure their workers are safe, I'm not trying to point that type of finger.

It's just the day a bot autofunctions and crushes a human like a soda can, with his body mangled and looking like a sack of fruit what will the world say. Well damn, does that mean my Xbox One S won't be delivered on time for Christmas then?

========

I'm still ever opposed to reading books through Ebooks or Kindle, any type of thing like a tablet or whatever. It's just when I want to sit down and dive into a world outside of this, the last thing I want to have to do is by diving into the internet world first. I was thinkng recently of a teacher I had in high school who whenever there was a book fair, would always go down looking for first edition books. One had said he liked collecting them they were more rare and to he said some could be quite valuable, ever since after that I always liked to try to keep my eye out for them to.

In my room I have several bookcases filled with many of my favorite stories and tales. In the past I used to be quite religious at one point and would drop off many bibles and other religious books at book centers or free libraries for them to be taken to be read. I would donate my fantasy books or horror ones I didn't like to, but I had gone through a period where I might have caught a religious fervor. I was for a period selling Bibles though, so it would make sense that eventually some of the text maybe would speak to me on some level.

One of these nights while dropping off the books at a free public library in Salem, Massachusetts I discovered one of the best books I have ever found. It was a book about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who is one of my favorite people to read about in history. It was written in an embellished epic kind of way, one where you get taken through the role of John Wilkes Booth his killer and what led in a dramatic fashion up to what the writer felt was all different motives and ways he went about killing old Abe. I never actually got around to finishing this book, but at the time I went to a small cafe nearby and find myself diving through it. It's a riveting tale, with a really unique way of going about that whole event that I really enjoyed the way they wrote it.

The book was called Manhunt The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson.

It's a great read even if you have heard the story a million times, you never had it told like this.

So at this note, I want to just relax and spend some time watching a show on HBO called Deadwood. An American Western largely all done by David Milch, it shows the gritty and insane side of life that may have been during that period of time. There's a great cast of actors on it and the setting and atmosphere are brutally done. Even the characters I want to like, the times they live in and the way they think make me wanna hate them sometimes. Though I see resemblances of the characters in the show to people now, I suppose time holds no difference between ignorance and disgust. You'll find a woman, who seems disabled and can't walk and no one even pays her a glimpse of mind. Even the doctors back then utterly cruel, and maybe some people get all the greatest doctor care but there's still issues and shit like that today. But she walks through the whole town and not even anyone bats an eye, but her resolve to fix her legs and fit in hit me in the feels. I have to keep watching just to see what she'll do, she wants to try leg braces to try to fix her ailment, but the doctor says it's one that she was born with and cant be undone. I can't say, I have seen miracles, but I'll let the show tell this story's narrative of her ordeal.

That's just one instance, and there's also a priest that is slowly losing his mind and suffering what seems like strokes and seizures. I'm not sure, I've only watched a few episodes but each episode gets sadder than the last watching his descent. He's becoming so fucked in the head, but I know it's not his fault. So there's that, if anyone likes Red Dead Redemption 2 or Westworld, than they might be interested in this. Not that it's anything like really either of those, this show is it's own style but it's very graceful in the way it's depicted.

I also realize that one of my sweetest joys is getting that 50 % off holiday candy at pharmacies after it's marked down. There's nothing like having a big bag of hershey kisses for only a few dollars. Most definetely chocolate causes an overdose of love in my brain.

#random #writing #news #original #bored #insomnia #usa #world

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wheredidhiseyebrowsgo · 6 years

Note

Heya amazing enablers, I've been looking for some more procrastination material. Some Sheriff finds out fics, can be about sterek or werewolves or both. You decide! Thank you in advance 😁😁😁

Here’s the Sheriff Finding Out all kinds of things. - Anastasia

The Longing Of Rebirth by MelodramaticSalad

(1/1 I 4,366 I Teen I Sterek)

The role that Derek played was guardian to the underworld, a place that chilled one to the bone at the simple thought of it. For the most part, he lived there alone with the souls of those that had passed to keep him company. The work was always busy and always thankless, colder than the ground one was buried in.

He longed for the warmth of the sun, for springtime when the flowers bloomed. Was his role a mistake? He'd always wondered if he was cursed and if this was how things would always be.

Stiles grew bored of the spring, of the flowers, of the pollen that would cover everything in a yellow dust. He'd tired of the monotony of the same old pattern; pollinate, bloom, harvest. Over and over again it had turned and turned. What truly fascinated him was when the flowers would wither and petals would fall from their stems.

He had a morbid fascination with death, with the destruction of everything so perfect. Perhaps that was what had drawn him to the gateway in the first place.

Promise You'll Look After Him by DiscontentedWinter

(1/1 I 9,901 I Mature I Sterek I Rape)

Sheriff Stilinski is used to dealing with victims of violent crime. He knows how to approach kids who've been beaten and sexually assaulted.

Except this time it's his son.

It's Stiles.

Thunderstorms & Polish Lullabies by Whispering_Sumire

(1/1 I 10,057 I Teen I Sterek)

Boyd is there, hovering over his claws, Isaac looks devastated, Jennifer looks bewildered and concerned and horrified, Kali looks smug, the twins are carefully keeping their faces blank but they're playing along, and- Gods, he's really going to be forced to do this, isn't he? Pack, his Pack, the make-shift family he'd all but accidentally gathered is going to die by his hand, and even if it's forced, it'll still be his fault, for wanting them, for needing them, for biting them.

Loving them.

He wants to close his eyes but he owes Boyd more than that.

And then, abruptly, in this saturated technicolor still-picture moment of chaos and violence- the eye of the storm- the door to the loft crashes open. With the water and the metal and the force of it, the sound is almost guttural, and far too loud- even Kali seems startled.

[Or, the one where Stiles time-travels just in time to save Boyd and Derek from the Alphas, and manages to heal everyone, including himself, just a little in the process.]

The Road Less Traveled by gryvon

(10/10 I 25,101 I Explicit I Sterek)

Stiles doesn't want to die in a basement. No one is going to die in the Argent's basement, not if he can help it.

Little red riding hood the nephilim by Zarhara

(11/11 I 37,500 I Explicit I Sterek)

“Stiles tell me you understand” His mum pleaded. “You are not allowed to talk about your biological fathers with anyone except me. Not even John” She waited for him to nod his head before continuing “And you can't use your powers, okay. No matter how much you want to. The demons will find you, if you do. You can only use your powers in emergencies, when there are no other way out. Do you understand ?” Stiles nodded, willing to give his mother anything, if she would just be happy again. “Good. Now enough about stupid rules. John is at the police station, and Gabriel is coming to pick us up, so we can spend the entire day with your fathers. Sound fun?” She asked, smiling. Stiles nodded his head again, his own smile breaking out on his face.

Or : Stiles is the nephilim son of Archangel Gabriel and Hunter Sam Winchester. Stiles is hunted by both demons and angels, but he will do everything in his power to keep his new pack safe. Still, keeping the secret is getting harder, and harder.Stiles just need a bit more time, but Derek has apparently never heard of personal space, that makes the secret harder to keep. And worse is that Stiles seem to react really funny to getting his personal space invaded.

Amor Fati by alocalband

(2/2 I 42,812 I Explicit I Sterek)

When Stiles gets thrown into the bank vault about twenty minutes after him, Derek isn’t even surprised.

As it turns out, neither is Stiles.

I'm Still Up and Driving by KouriArashi

(12/12 I 58,155 I Mature I Lydia/Jackson)

Jackson decides to teach Stiles a lesson for the interest he shows in Lydia. Stiles doesn't say anything until four months later.

Go Away, Scott by HelloWhyTheFuckAmIHere

45/45 I (66,232 I Not Rated I Sterek)

After the incident at the warehouse, Stiles is fed up with Scott. He finds himself drawn into Derek’s pack and in the process, drawn to Derek himself.

With the Alpha Pack closing in, Derek needs to learn how to trust his pack and those around him. And who better to help him than Stiles?

Hallowed Grounds by damnfancyscotch

(16/16 I 109,578 I Mature I Sterek)

Everything in Beacon Hills is the same when Stiles comes home from college.

Well, except for the fact that he's a published author now, Scott is halfway across the world with a travelling circus, Erica's epilepsy has been cured, her boss offers him a job too, and there's this weird black dog that seems to be following him around just to judge him.

Oh, and the murders, of course.

But other than that stuff... totally the same old BH.

Running Up That Hill by maypoison

(31/32 I 136,965 I Explicit I Sterek)

“Even before the pack joined together, Scott was trying to protect you. And he still is trying to protect you, even if it means leaving you out of all this.”

Stiles does roll his eyes at that. “Yeah, but it didn’t work did it. I was still involved, and so was my Dad. We were nearly killed by Matt, and then Gerard.”

“My point is, people change. Relationships aren’t always perfect. Scott's tried to kill me before."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "So, you’re saying that someone trying to kill you is just a small flaw in a relationship?"

“We’re werewolves.” Derek answers with a shrug, as if that was a perfectly good explanation.

When It Comes To Being Lucky by sterekcrush

(45/? I 154,429 I General I Sterek)

Derek Hale doesn't do love. He's tried twice; the first time it made him a killer, and the second time cost him his whole world.

So he doesn't do love, and he definitely doesn't love Stiles. He doesn't care about Stiles' new powers or the fact that Stiles has been talking to Derek's dead mother, or even the fact that for some reason supernatural creatures from all over the country are sending Stiles offers of courtship.

But when Stiles claims he's not part of Derek's pack and takes off for parts unknown...well, maybe Derek cares a little after all.

Do Not Go Gentle by MojoFlower

(51/51 I 195,867 I Explicit I Sterek)

Derek Hale, Beacon Hills Alpha and Dom, wakes up in a dark cell already housing another captive – a mute, traumatized sub with a cruel collar around his neck. His only goal is to get them both free of their brutal circumstances; but even as he tries to get his young companion home, a bond between them grows. Nothing comes easily: danger and harrowing echoes of their ordeal shadow every step they take.

#teen wolf #sterek #stiles stilinski #derek hale #sheriff finds out #mythology #rape #in-the-making-to

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spidypool · 6 years

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Tales From Bed Bath & Beyond

So I’ve decided to start a little series called “Tales From Bed Bath & Beyond”. For those of you who follow me you know I’ve been working there for almost 4 years now. And honestly this store is one giant mess. It wasn’t always like that mind you. But it is now. My sister says I work in the real life Superstore (never seen the show but I’ll take her word for it).

I’m writing these little tales 1. Because so many incidents happen I can never remember them all, 2. One day I’ll probably wanna look back on these, 3. I’ll have a ton of stories to tell me niece and nephews, and 4. For @ladysnowstorm because she LOVES hearing all about the Bed Bath and Beyond drama.

This first post I’m just gonna give some background so anyone who wants to read them will have an idea of the set up.

Alright lets start with the store and the ranking. So in BBB it goes:

Store Manager (can tell what this is by the name)

LOD aka Leader On Duty (just the senior who is currently in charge because the store manager can’t always be there)

Senior (head Managers of the store)

Department Supervisors (the managers of each store department)

LEAD aka I have no idea what that stands for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (they are just Department Sups but just without the extra responsibility)

Associates aka the bottom of the food chain

Maintenance (change my mind these guys are the bottom of the food chain)

*There are other parts and stuff but this is all that you guys should know

See I’m an associate. Officially. However I’m treated as a manager and most of the managers obey me so hey I am a manager just without the title, the pay, and well the actual authority.

Now I work at the largest BBB in the world located in NYC. It’s 3 stories tall PLUS the warehouse. Customers only have access to 2 of those levels. The store is so large it is divided into smaller departments. I’m sure other stores do this but they probably don’t have it divided up so much. Anyways they are:

Frontend which includes

Checkout

Customer Service

Home Delivery

Cashroom

Hardside

Seasonal

Seasonal Electronics

Small Appliances

Kitchen Basics

Pots and Pans

Utilities

Soft Side but really called Lifestyles

Vacuums

Cleaning

Tabletops

Closet and storage

Bath

Candles

Rugs

Towels

Shower Curtains

Bath Essentials

Bedding

Furniture

Window Treatment

Frames

HBC aka Health & Beauty Care

okay this ones obvious but beauty stuff

and some random cleaning

Gormey Foods

food

Registry

Baby Registry

Wedding Registry

Also Luggage

And Fancy Dishes

Inventory Control

damaged products and such

Warehouse

where extra stuff is kept

Office

People who answer the phones

Secretary stuff

Human Resources

Scan

they order stuff for the building

LP aka Loss Prevention

they deal with stolen stuff

full of a bunch of idiots

Training

they train the staff on well anything

Okay well I think that everything that matters really. Anyways I’m part of the Frontend Staff! But not only that I’ve every department of the Frontend. Which is well a lot of work. Plus I’m backup to the office. Just means I answer phones and am generally bored out of my mind 99% of the time.

So now that you know about the ranks and the building set up what about the most Important part. The people!

Seniors/LODs

Sha-tanna - my favorite LOD she’s the bomb funny thing though we actually could not get along to save our lives and it wasn’t until I started working in the Cashroom that suddenly we worked great together. Go figure.

Darnell - used to be my Frontend Manager and we got along great until he was promoted and the power went to his head. He won’t shut up at all. Is always talking and is generally considered the most annoying guy around. You can literally hear him from down the hall. But all in all he’s not the worse boss and sometimes I like him but sometimes I wanna strange him.

Anthony Illarti (we just call him Illarti cause there are a ton of Anthony’s in the building) - he is a bitch. Just putting that out there. He’s a bitch. He’s rude to people, says the most inappropriate things, frankly he doesn’t know how to work with people. But he can be a good boss? I mean considering most of the people we work with are terrible he’s not the worse? IDK how to describe him. He’s like 80% of the time terrible but 20% good so yeah...

Quincy - he has no idea what he’s doing like ever. I usually end up telling him what to do because OMG he cannot handle anything.

Twed Jacket (I can’t remember his name so shoot me) - thinks he know everything doesn’t know anything and fucks shit up trying to boss us around and just GETS IN THE WAY. Like holy shit just go you make our lives SO MUCH HARDER. Just GO.

Kathleen - a stupid fucking cunt. Yes yes I said that. I know. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt but HA she proved everyone else was right about how awful she is. She literally knows NO ONE’S names. Only the people she hates. If you tell her no at anytime she will find a way to DESTROY you. She also knows nothing, can’t count, forgets to do her job all the time like remembering to lock the door. I cannot say anything good about her. She is the worst.

Managers

Joey - he’s bath and lifestyles. He’s a good guy. Kinda short, gay, and an annoying dude but in a fun way.

DeShaw - hardside. Freakishly tall, really reliable, and a good guy.

Ronald - hardside. We don’t really talk. He’s okay-ish at his job.

Alex - HBC. Is kinda like that annoying little brother type.

Steve - HBC okay so he’s not a manager but I swore up and down he way and then I found out he wasn’t so he’s going on this list cause he SHOULD be. He teases everyone all the time like ALL THE TIME. It can get annoying.

Victor - bedding. He was Frontend but couldn’t hack it. Being honest here.

Rochelle - bedding. I know nothing about her at all. We’ve spoken like twice.

*There are some others but I cannot remember their names so not important here or to my stories.

Frontend Managers (there are so many they get their own section)

Ms. B - customer service only. She’s a good boss but she also hates me. I have no idea why. Also I actually like her.

Shelina - frontend only. Okay ya’ll this is the person I will talk about the most. She’s THE BOMB. The Badass MVP. She actually runs the entire frontend cause everyone else is stupid idiots and have no idea what they’re doing. Like at all. She makes the schedule, orders products, sets up everything, puts away the products, I mean it she does EVERYTHING. I work with her a lot. She’s taught me everything I know. Literally the best person and I love her. You guys are going to hear SO MUCH ABOUT HER.

Dumescus - I hate him. He tortured me for months. Bullied and treated me like shit. He flirts with all the women and if his flirting doesn’t work well he hates you. He literally has a group of girl squeal at every word he says. He does nothing even though he’s given all the responsibility and treated like he’s in charge of the whole department. Only thing he actually does is fix the registers.

Tiffany - we started at the same time and are friends and as much as I love her she has no idea what she’s doing. But she does have one of the biggest hearts. She’s fed me when I planned on going hungry to save money. And she has a positive attitude. She technically a department sup but she doesn’t act like it. She is a good person and a good friend but she panics at even the slightest pressure. She acts like a LEAD doing on the basics of her job. The Bare minimum. She seriously need to start acting like a leader.

Celeste - a LEAD. I like her as a person. She’s also the best person to close Customer Service when you’re in the Cashroom. She’s also the youngest LEAD. And the thing is when I started she used to be a badass LEAD. She was great at her job used to give it 110%. I honestly don’t know what happened. Now she does nothing more than the bare minimum. Hell she even stops me from doing the other parts of my job to make sure I “stay on a register”. Even when we have 6 open cashiers and no customers. I like her a lot but whatever happened to her she stopped being a great LEAD and just fails all the time.

Jessica - a LEAD. The gossip Queen. A very likable person. But being likable doesn’t mean you’re a great or even good boss. She does nothing. When she started he was so eager to learn but no she disappears to gossip with people. Never comes back and just does the basics. It’s sad really. All the potential just wasted.

Sanshia - a LEAD. I hated her, I liked her, I hated her again, now I like her again. She was for the longest time the most hated LEAD. She was a bitch to everyone and no one wanted to work with her. Something happened and now she’s actually good to work with. Not that she does anything more than the basics. Seeing a pattern guys? Everyone does the basics and pons off their work onto others if given half the chance. Sanshia is no exception.

Kenisha - a LEAD. A literal baby who cries when she doesn’t get what she wants, throws fits, and is just petty. Funny thing is she’s proven she can actually be good at her job she just chooses not to. She is actually the most hated LEAD right now because of how horrible and childish she acts. It’s just terrible.

Marsha - she gets her own spot because she secretly runs the whole store. Her offical job is head of the office but really she’s girl Friday. She makes sure everything is running and knows everything. Frankly she’s the bomb and a lot of people are terrified of her. IDK why. I actually have a total crush on her... She so awesome and pretty.

Now I could talk about all the associates but I’m not going to because the staff is ridiculously large and they come and go so often that there’s not too much of a reason to bother. But you’ll hear more about then as I tell you guys about what happens at my store.

There’s also other people in other positions I could mention and I have a ton of stories to tell you all ready but I’m not gonna cause they’re all stupid people as you’ll learn soon enough.

Okay so I know I just threw a lot of fact at you thanks if you’ve stuck it out this far but from now on all my Bed Bath and Beyond Tales will be fun stories or awful things that happened. Eh we’ll just see what happens.

#tales from bed bath and beyond

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shinobicyrus · 7 years

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“Tooth and Claw”

Haven’t written much Phandom stuff lately, so I thought I’d try something for this year’s Ectober. This one’s for October 26th: TEETH

It was probably a bad sign how long it took for Tucker to figure out which of the tech in his bag was beeping. Had to crouch over it on the sidewalk sifting through a tablet, an old phone, his backup battery charger, two different generations of game boys, his backup-backup charger; Sam always warned him he was slowly sliding down a slippery silicon slope into pseudo-hoarding.

He found the culprit near the bottom of the bag: a Fenton ecto-scope tangled up in some old cables for a model of PDA he…didn’t actually own anymore. Sam must never know.

It was a cobbled-together monster made from grave-robbing radio-shacks and amateur soldering kits. Taking it out of the bag only made it vibrate and beep more urgently. The scope took some finagling with a few stuck knobs and dials before the static on screen resolved into something informative: the pixelated silhouettes of trees and a cold-spot slithering past them in toxic, neon green.

Tucker lowered the scope and squinted down the block. The park was that way. Damn. Rustling through his pockets, he pulled out his main phone and pinged Danny on the secure messenger app they’d set up for Phantom stuff- because it wasn’t paranoia when the government really was hunting you down.

GROUPCHAT: WHO YA GONNA CALL? (THE D)

You: Code Green in the park You: class idk whatever the hell AW SHIT THAT’S BIG is Danny: ok I can be there in 8 Danny: keep your head down till I get there

Tucker typed back ‘You know me,’ and added a scardey-faced emoticon.

Danny: :/ You: I choose to interpret that as loving concern for my safety You: don’t text and fly have you learned nothing from the billboard incident You: such a bad role model You: Thing of the kids You: *think You: Plz hurry

Tucker pocketed his phone before Danny remembered the talk-to-text feature. Or if Sam logged on. Like he needed their reminders not to try stuff solo. He was fully capable on standing on a streetcorner like a good sidekick and wait for the big kids to come and-

A scream cut through the night, echoes elongating on concrete and broken asphalt.

From the park.

Where the monster-ghost was.

Tucker groaned. “Aw hell,” and ran down the street towards it.

Being a technophillic pseudo-shut-in whose primary mode of exercise was patrolling haunted warehouses and fleeing for his life, Tucker was pretty unfamiliar with the park. The light from the scattering of streetlamps following the paths was too few and far between, and the shadows from the trees offered too many places for an attack to come from. Honestly, even without the ghost this place was a deathtrap.

But whatever, he was committed. He had a Fenton wrist blaster raised and trained on anything that sounded bigger than a grasshopper while he followed the chiming ectoscope.

It all resembled a scene from one of Sam’s Femalien movies a little too close for comfort: the squad of buff, hypermasculine space marines of the spacepatriachy, gung-ho and completely unaware how quickly their collective space-asses were about to get wrecked.

He kept walking. The ectoscope pinged faster. Danny said eight minutes, right? And that was…not eight minutes ago, but sooner than it was earlier. All he had to do was rescue the nice human people from being chewtoys and preferably not get full-ghosted himself.

A twig snapped. Tucker almost shot a startled rabbit, eyes shining on the edge of a streetlight. It hopped away until it melted into the long shadows of the mini-woods.

“This is a good plan,” Tucker decided. Out loud. On the record.

Further down the path, where the path looped around a copse of trees and the scarce light flickered weakly, Tucker heard another scream.

He ran towards it. Look out, creatures of the netherworld, it’s a coward with a guuuun!

Around the bend, the lights were completely out, smothered and snuffed by a low buzzing hum that smelled like ozone and made the ectoscope sputter into a snowstorm of static. There was still plenty of light to see by. Sick, witch-cauldron green radiating from the ghost swimming ethereally in the air like a giant watersnake, only segmented, SUV-sized, and a head that was more a gaping chasm of sawteeth than actual head.

That sarlacc mouth was perfectly sized to swallow up a lady in jogger clothes, who was pretty much paralyzed with fear…or maybe it was some kind of hypnotic gaze? Maybe that was what the noise was: lulling the prey just long enough to send them to the Boba-Fett Place.

Tucker threw the ectoscope aside, braced the arm with the wrist-blaster, and shot right down the thing’s ugly mouth.

The low buzzing in the air cut off into a gurgling screech. It reared up, spitting up ecto-bile and vaporized gullet. Tucker’s next two shots hit along its body, making it spasm mid-air like a breathless fish to crash writhing into the grass.

“Wha-?” The lady said, either broken by the spell or just plain baffled by daring rescue. Tuck ran up to stand between her and the ghost, blaster at the ready.

“Just go, I’ll hold it off!” Tucker yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be-”

Annnddd she was already gone. Oh wow she could really book it. Guess that explained the jogging shorts. Still.

“What, not even half a second of hesitation?!” Tucker yelled at the receding sound of her shoes. “I know I told you to run, but jeez, a little concern for- oh hi you’re up.”

The baby shai-hulud had risen back up, not floating but still long enough to cast a shadow over him. From that close, its outraged roar smelled a little like sun-rotted roadkill.

“Okay, you’re a little mad, I hear you,” Tucker leveled the blaster at it. “But here’s my rebuttal.”

Then the blaster didn’t fire.

Tucker rapidly thumbed the firing switch again. A third time. The blaster shuddered a bit on his wrist, made an sad, tired electric whine. It sounded too much like a whomp whomp on helium.

“Uh…I don’t suppose you’d let me find someplace to plug this in?” He yelped and dove to the side when the ghost lunged at him. “AH! Guess that’s a ‘no’!”

Oh God how had he thought this was a good plan.

Tucker ran, pulled out every stop he knew from years of tactically fleeing horrifying undead monsters. Thankfully however he’d hurt it before kept it from flying after him, and it didn’t seem smart enough to phase through the trash cans, streetlights, and park benches that got in its way. Or maybe it was just super pissed.

Somehow he managed to pull out his phone in the middle of a zigzag, checked the time. Another three minutes? Two? Like Danny was ever freaking on time for anything in his half-life. “Call Danny!” He yelled.

The phone showed him a profile pic of Danielle and Tucker cosplaying at last year’s nerd-con. “Calling ‘DANI’…”

“Wrong one stupid clone-racist phone! CALL DANNY!”

“Calling ‘DADDY…’“

“How the fuck even?!”

Technology you’ve failed me. I’ve shown you nothing but allegedly obsessive love and you do me like that.

The ghost’s glow cast behind him warned Tucker just in time to skid beneath a low-branch and let it ram into the tree instead. Wood crunched and he shuddered thinking of being chewed and ground down to the bone between those teeth.

It was okay, the plan was going great. He was still alive, stalling for time. Danny would get here, follow the sound of ghost roars and Tucker’s manly not-panicking screams, thermos the worm, then grab some nice post-hunt midnight bro-grub and crack jokes about how Tucker almost got eaten by-

Something snagged his ankle, cutting Tucker’s speed from adrenaline-fueled to face-meets-ground with gravity-speed. Screw you too, psychics.

He managed to throw up his arms in time to shield his face. Pain lanced up his forearm and burned scraps into his palms. His glasses where askew, the world gone crooked and blurred. Neck twisted to follow the cold, wet feeling slowly dragging him through a bed of dead leaves.

A long, slick glowing tendril coming from the ghost’s mouth pulled him closer and closer into its waiting maw. The hum turned into hungry, gleeful gurgles.

Oh. This was. This was not in the plan.

Tucker dug his raw hands into the ground, dragging fistfuls of leaves and wet dirt. The light from his phone screen was just an arms length ahead, pulling away, no matter how much he kicked and scrambled and tried to pull himself forward. He thought there’d be more screaming and babbling on his end. Instead he was focusing every molecule of air on breathing, trying to get his crappy body Sam used for workout fodder to fight, stop that grinding progress towards it.

He was close enough to kick it, watch its expectant slobber dribble on his ripped cargo pants. Stupidly, he adjusted his glasses; got a nice, non-blurry view of that garbage disposal mouth, a hungry pit lined with thumb-sized teeth he could reach up and touch.

Tucker’s entire life, the whole of him, boiled down to this. He always figured his last thoughts would be of his mom, crammed between Sam and Danny on his too-small bed binging bad anime, the way Ingrid bit her lip nervously before she decided to give him his first kiss.

Instead, he just swallowed and said: “Oh Grandmother, what big teeth you have.”

Jesus, good thing no one was around to hear that.

“LASU LIN IRI!”

A furious growl tore through the trees- a wrecking ball of black and green slammed into the side of the ghost-worm. It reared up and shrieked with pain, the tendril around Tucker’s ankle somehow slack and severed.

The smart thing would be to move. Tucker numbly continued to sit there, jaw hanging as his rescuer clung to the side of the ghost-worm and tore into it with massive claws.

“Wulf?”

The ghost-worm bucked and wiggled, then body-slammed itself into the ground, forcing Wulf to leap off and land on all fours. His eyes were solid green and burning, snarling something in ghost Tucker couldn’t catch. They went at each other, tearing the small forest around them apart. The worm’s hide was pierced and bleeding in a dozen places, but it had desperation and a metric fuckton of bulk to throw around.

Wulf took cover in the trees, leaping from branch to branch, constantly circling and taking advantage of every opportunity to claw at its blind spots (how did it see though? did it even have eyes where the hell were its eyes?). Tucker realized his mistake when it dawned on him how much energy Wulf was wasting trying to keep that thing’s attention off of him, how Wulf was trying to protect him.

The worm must have realized it at the same time. Tucker saw it coming, tried to yell and warn him, but it came too fast- Wulf was blindsided by the worm’s tail end, flew and hit the trunk of a tree and went down hard. Pulled himself up with strain shaking his shoulders.

The worm let out a skree of victory and hurled itself towards Wulf. Faster than Tucker could shout, he saved himself by cutting a portal into solid air and diving in just before the worm hit, flattening itself and splintering the tree like a brittle toothpick.

It rolled and flopped on the ground, like it was having some kind of tantrum. Pulling itself back up, its mouth-head swiveled around, searching for some sign of Wulf, until it settled back on Tucker.

“Don’t look at me, I don’t know where he went.”

A muffled, tearing noise came from somewhere in the worm’s middle.

“Nevermind.”

Wulf burst out of worm’s midsection claws first with a howl, an explosion like a sledgehammer to a watermelon that splattered Tucker and everything in sight with green. The worm didn’t even have any breath left inside, much less insides at all, to even make a dying noise as it fell over like a deflated hose.

Panting, splattered with goopy green chunks on his claws and in his fur, Wulf stood in the clearing and panted hard. His eyes were still narrowed and dangerous, ears flat against his big head and hackles raised. Tucker had forgotten how big he was, half again as tall with enough shoulder width and muscle that would have brought Dax Baxter to weep impotent tears.

“Uh…Wulf? You okay buddy? Amiko?”

Wulf’s ears shot up, the hunch in his shoulders straightening as he spun around to look at Tucker with huge, concerned eyes. “Amiko Tuck!”

He dove at him, predator fast, and before Tucker could even flinch Wulf’s huge paws picked up Tucker and held him at Wulf’s eye-level. “Ĉu vi estas bone? Ĉu ĝi vundis vin?” His muzzle scrunched adorably as he sniffed Tucker up and down.

“Ah-ah!, that tickles! Haha- okay okay I’m fine, man. Ne…ne- nenio estas rompita.” He smiled with a split lip. “Danke al vi.”

“Sed,” A paw easily braceleted around Tucker’s wrist. “Viaj manoj…”

“Just a scrape man, really,” Tucker assured him. “It could have been- would have been a hell of a lot worse.”

Wulf’s left ear flicked, then looked pointedly at Tucker’s hands. Shaking like leaves in Wulf’s grip. It hurt his palms for Tucker to clench his fist, but it stopped the worst of the shakes. There was nothing he could do to stop the shaking in his heart, how hyperaware he was of his own pulse, the distant but twinging pain in arm, his ankle. The pressure behind his eyes.

“Please don’t tell Danny and Sam?” He asked, voice a little weaker. “I-I don’t want them to know how close it was. They’d only get worried.”

“Por bona kialo,” Wulf reprimanded him gently.

“Please? Bonvolu?”

It was funny to see a wolf’s brow furrow with deep thoughts, until finally Wulf hugged Tucker tight to his chest. A giant, fuzzy, protective barrier he could wrap his arms around.

“Thanks Wulf, you’re the best.”

“I know,” he managed, then touched his big, wet nose Tucker’s.

Heat flooded his face. “Oh my God did you just give me a dog-kiss? Is that a thing you just did?”

“Not dog,” Wulf corrected him. “Lupo.”

“You are missing the point of-”

“Tucker!” A voice dropped in from the sky.

Of course this is when Danny would get here. This is his life, this is what he deserves.

Danny floated above the torn up ground and pulverized trees and gaped at the slowly melting leftovers of the ghost-worm. “What the hell- what is Wulf doing here?”

Tucker crossed his arms across and played up snuggling against Wulf’s ghost-hoodie. Not like they weren’t both covered in worm-goop anyways. “Lucky for me you’re not the only ghost-friend I have and this one is both cuddlier and more reliable.”

“I thought I told you to sit tight until I got here!”

“An innocent midnight jogger with bad judgement and possibly insomnia was in danger. What was I supposed to do, ask it to hold up until the real hero showed up?”

That seemed to cut off whatever else Danny was planning to say. “I. There was- yeah okay that’s fair. Good work, Tuck.”

Wulf and Tucker cleared their throats.

“Both of you. Thanks for having Tucker’s back, Wulf.”

Wulf shrugged, “Ne dankinde. Tucker havis ĝin sub kontrolo.”

“I’m…going to assume that means ‘you’re welcome.’“

“Dude,” Tucker said. “Duolingo. Esperanto ain’t that hard.”

“Iz not.” Wulf said. “English.”

Danny and Tucker both laughed at the smug look on Wulf’s face.

“Well you two look thoroughly disgusting,” Danny said. “Want to skip the traditional after-hunt bro-snack and get you home to get cleaned up?”

“Hell no,” Tucker said mutinously. “Wulf and I can go back to the apartment to get cleaned, you can pick up some burgers for all three of us for being late.”

Wulf’s tail swished away some stray leaves behind him “Burgers?”

Danny blanched at the thought of paying for enough food to satisfy two grown men and a giant werewolf-ghost, but between Tucker’s guilt-trip look and Wulf’s puppy eyes, he sighed. “Okay, okay fine, I’ve got food duty. But he stays in your room until you two get that crap off you. I don’t want the whole apartment smelling like double-dead worm monster and wet dog.”

“Lupo,” They said together. Wulf’s ears perked and he grinned at Tucker with a mouthful of fangs.

186 notes · View notes

biluata · 7 years

Text

It Didn't Even Feel like Falling - Quakerider One-shot

Words: 15,522

Request #8: Daisy ranting about her evolving friendship with Robbie Reyes to Simmons

A little Fluff. Lots of Emotions. Pretty Saucy. Some Humor. Gets a bit Sappy. (I apologize)

Read on Ao3: Here

Daisy pounded on the apartment door with enough fury to nearly knock it off its hinges. After all the craziness that happened these past few days, she had to talk to someone. Anyone, really. She tightened her left hand into a fist in her coat pocket as her right hand continued to batter the innocent door once more.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered as her foot tapped faster than a jackhammer into the hardwood floors. If someone didn’t answer in the next two seconds, Daisy swore she was going to quake the damn door down.

Suddenly, a loud thunk resonated through the door as the deadbolt slid out of place. Daisy let out an audible sigh as her shoulders relaxed. Finally!

The door quickly creaked open inward, revealing a wide-eyed, slightly disheveled Jemma Simmons in comfy, gray loungewear. She held a small I.C.E.R. in her right hand, but quickly lowered the gun to her hip once she saw it was only her.

“Daisy? What on Earth are you doing here?” Simmons asked, brushing back a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her messy bun.

“I needed to see you,” Daisy simply replied. She slipped past the British woman, who gaped at her all huge-eyed and open-mouthed like a goldfish, and shuffled her way into the apartment.

It was the same apartment Daisy helped pick out for Fitz-Simmons in what honestly seemed like a lifetime ago. Still, even if it had only been a trick to lure Simmons into meeting and helping her, she was glad her friends had ended up deciding to keep it.

Overall, it was cute and what she imagined a cozy, modern English cottage would look like if it were brought into the city. Instead of her blood decorating the walls and floors, the space was stuffed with transitional furniture and décor. Everything was in neutral, earthy tones with lots of whites and creams to make the small space seem bright and more open. Even if the place gave off the staged aura of a Home & Garden magazine page, Fitz-Simmons managed to make it feel like their own with personal touches. Various science books and trinkets she couldn’t even begin to comprehend were scattered throughout the space, along with several pictures of themselves and the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team. This was the perfect place for her two beloved friends. After all they had been through, they deserved it.

Daisy paused at the small, circular dining table set up in the breakfast nook. Wedding magazines and binders filled the small surface area with one binder currently opened to a huge page filled with just various, different floral arrangements one could have for the “big day.” Her stomach swirled uneasily and she hastily averted her eyes.

“Daisy, what is going on?” Simmons asked as she shut the front door and set her I.C.E.R. on a nearby end table.

“Is Fitz here?”

Her eyes roved the space, peeking into the kitchen. Fitz-Simmons were always a packaged pair. You couldn’t have one without the other too far behind.

“Uh, no,” she answered slowly as she stepped closer. “He’s helping Coulson with new enhancements for Zephyr One.”

“Probably for the best.” Daisy nodded. If they were both here, they’d probably tag-team against her. No, one-on-one had to be the best scenario for what she was about to reveal.

“Daisy, what is going on? Why are you here?” Simmons demanded as she tugged her cardigan sweater closer while crossing her arms. Her cheeks flushed as she realized how harsh that sounded and quickly added: “Not that I don’t appreciate you visiting. You are always welcomed here, but you were pounding on the door like a madman and you seem–” She narrowed her eyes. “On edge? Is everything okay?”

A cold sweat began to form on the back of her neck. That was Simmons alright. Always the observant scientist. Daisy tightened her left hand in her pocket as her other hand ran its fingers through her short, dark locks.

“It’s … It’s a long story,” she admitted, casting her gaze to the ground. “So, first we are going to need a drink!”

Simmons sputtered as if her whole system crashed into error while Daisy quickly marched into her kitchen. It had the same charm as the living room, but she didn’t have time to admire. Daisy set her eyes on the top, cream cupboards and tugged them open. Nothing. She turned to the refrigerator, but the only decent alcohol she could find was a nice Moscato on the bottom shelf.

What? No Scotch? Does Fitz not have any patriotic pride?

Daisy sighed as she pulled the chilled wine out and set it on the dark granite countertop before closing the fridge. It wasn’t exactly the hard stuff, but it would work just fine.

“Daisy, it’s 11 in the morning!” Simmons criticized as she walked up to the counter.

Daisy ignored her as she started to pull out drawer after drawer in the search for a corkscrew. Each one she opened was carefully organized like how Simmons always kept her work space and lab, but even in all the many years she had known her, Daisy still could not figure out the method to her madness. After opening, rifling through the fifth drawer and still coming up empty, she groaned and gave up.

Turning towards the Moscato, Daisy carefully pointed her right hand at it. She concentrated on the air vibrations inside the bottle and gave her wrist a tiny flick. The cork came flying out of the bottle as it were champagne and landed softly on the counter. Daisy grinned. There was nothing quite like abusing one’s powers to make it through the struggles of the every day.

“Daisy, what is this all about?”

She glanced at Simmons as she snatched two wine glasses from a row in the cupboards she found earlier. Right, the reason she was here. Daisy took in a deep breath and let out a sigh as she set the two glasses down hard by the wine bottle.

“Robbie.”

Now that peaked the other woman’s interest. Simmons raised an eyebrow as she sat down on one of the bar stools on the other side of the counter. “Robbie? As in Robbie Reyes?”

“Mm-hmm,” Daisy hummed in confirmation as she poured herself a generous glass. She gestured the second empty glass towards her British companion, but Simmons hurriedly shook her head.

“What about Robbie Reyes?”

Her stomach lurched uneasily. “It’s … complicated.”

Simmons shot her a look. “Daisy, I earned two PhDs by the time I was 17. I can do complicated.”

I doubt this, Daisy thought as she took a sip of wine and let the sweet, citrus taste mull over her tongue. She swallowed and let out another sigh as Simmons kept looking to her expectantly. Well, she had wanted to talk this over with somebody. It was either now or horribly half-assed later, which would probably be at the most terrible time and lead to a lot of confused yelling.

“Alright,” Daisy started,“ So, after the whole A.I.D.A. and Darkhold incident, Robbie and I started to hang out a lot more often. We’d help each other out on missions, you know, just a casual superhero team-up for the greater good. It was nice and fun, but then …” She took another sip.

“But then what?”

Daisy bit her lip. Well, here goes the first Band-Aid.

“But then we kind of had sex.”

Simmons’ eyes nearly popped out of her head, but she said nothing. Instead, she hastily reached across the counter and poured herself a full glass of wine. She took a sip before gingerly setting her glass down.

“Kind of?” Simmons questioned, her voice terribly high-pitched and screechy as if Mary Poppins turned into an owl. “What do you mean you kind of had sex? How do you kind of have sex?”

A grin coiled on Daisy’s lips. “Well, when a guy and a girl who are attracted to each other meet, sometimes they get these urges in their–”

“Don’t you get clever with me! I know perfectly well how sexual intercourse works, thank you very much.”

Daisy cringed. Sexual intercourse. It was like she was back in middle school forced to attend the sex-education class.

“Okay, alright, alright, just don’t get all medical, technical term on me,” Daisy stated, wrinkling her nose. “It’s so proper and weird and takes all the fun out of sex.”

Simmons smirked. “Well then?”

Daisy took another sip of wine. “Alright, so one night …”

* * *

The ground rumbled beneath her as she silently landed on the wet asphalt outside of the warehouse. Her arms groaned like an old oak tree threatening to splinter and keel over in a harsh breeze. Daisy gritted her teeth as she tried to rub the dull ache away. If only she had snatched her gauntlets before coming here, but she didn’t have the time. Any minute now Coulson might realize that she had taken a detour during her Inhuman asset check-up and send back-up to come track her down. It wouldn’t be hard if she was successful in what she was planning to do.

Thankful at least she had thought to wear black, Daisy stuck to the shadows as she skirted the outside of the huge, metallic warehouse. From the exterior, there was certainly nothing suspicious about this place. It looked like any of the other rusting warehouses lined up on the harbor docks, but Daisy had heard the chatter on the dark web. Watchdogs were gathering here.

Even after Senator Nadeer and Ivanov fell from grace, the Watchdogs continued to grow and strengthen their numbers. They might have been silent in the recent months, but it was only a matter of time before they struck again. As long as the Watchdogs were around, no Inhuman was safe.

Coulson had promised her that they would focus on the ending the Watchdogs for good soon, but after months of waiting, she’d had enough. She had to do something, even if it meant doing it outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s oversight once more.

Daisy crouched down behind a damp set of indistinct wooden crates and peered out at the backdoor. She frowned. No guards. Usually there had to be some of those canine-masked goons loitering about to keep watch, but so far, she hadn’t come across a single one. It was … unnerving and made her stomach crawl. She couldn’t have been mistaken with the information, could she?

A mechanical rumble roared through the still night.

Daisy whirled around from her crouched position just in time to see a very familiar, sleek black ‘69 Charger appear from around the corner. The muscle car skidded to a halt a couple yards away, small wisps of steam billowing off its metallic hide in the cool, marine air.

Warmth bubbled in her chest and a smile inched across her face. She had a good feeling she knew who it was behind the wheel.

Daisy checked the area once more for any signs of the Watchdogs, then stood once her search came up empty again. She slowly made her way over to the Charger as the rumbling black beauty hissed into silence and the driver’s door swung open.

“Funny running into you here,” Daisy called as Robbie Reyes stepped out of the vehicle.

He froze, but as he turned his head and his eyes landed on her, a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth beneath his mustache. Her heart sped up a little bit.

Robbie had been doing a lot more smiling lately the more she had been seeing him. It was surprisingly nice, actually. His whole face seemed so much more youthful and warm when it didn’t have the hard lines of his glower weighing him down. Other than that, he was looking pretty much the same as always ever since he returned from hiding the Darkhold a few weeks ago. Same leather jacket, same chain, same possessive fiery vengeance demon hiding beneath his skull.

“You following me or something?” She asked, stopping just a few feet short of him.

This had to be the fourth time she ran into him these past few weeks, outside of S.H.I.E.L.D.-ordered appearances, and Daisy rarely believed in coincidences. Not that she minded seeing him again. When he wasn’t all grim and “I sold my soul to the devil,” Robbie was actually pretty fun to hang around. The last time they had ran into each other, they had ended up getting drunk together at a country bar in Texas and rode a mechanical bull.

“Because, stalking really does not look good on you, Reyes.” Daisy crossed her arms across her chest and jutted her hip out to the side. Her gesture was supposed to come off as cool and intimidating, maybe even a little badass. Robbie just snorted a chuckle instead.

“You wish,” he stated, slamming his car door shut and walking over towards her. “I was actually just in the neighborhood taking care of some dark magic cultists in Salem when I sensed some trouble here.” Robbie stopped a few feet short of her and smirked. “I guess I found it.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Ha. Ha,” she declared, punctuating each syllable with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “But, that’s actually why I’m here, too. I heard some talk of Watchdogs meeting here.”

She shot another glance around, but it was still just the two of them. Honestly, where were they? If Robbie, the bad-mojo-detecting wonder, could sense there was something wrong here, she couldn’t be far-off.

Daisy turned back towards Robbie and her heart jolted harshly in her chest. He was staring at her intently, his dark eyes roving up and down her whole frame. A spark of electricity tingled up her spine and prickled her skin. Her heart began to pick up speed, thudding heavily against her ribcage.

“So, I’m guessing you aren’t here under official S.H.I.E.L.D. business?” He asked, nodding his head at her outfit.

Daisy raised her eyebrows as she glanced down at her ensemble of jeans, a black tank-top and a black leather jacket. Right, her clothes. If she had been ordered by S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle the Watchdogs, she would usually wear her Quake uniform and, at least, her gauntlets. Of course, that’s what he had noticed. Not that he had been staring at her because he liked–

No! That was ridiculous. This was just Robbie, after all. They were just friends. Besides, there was no way he would even be looking at her in that way. He had seen her sweaty and disheveled, vomiting into a cowboy hat just last week. If that wasn’t a big enough turn-off, she didn’t know what was.

“I guess you could call it an off-the-grid, side project,” she admitted with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Don’t worry,” Robbie grinned as he stepped a bit closer to her. Her breath hitched in her chest as she fought the urge to step back. “Your secret is safe with me.”

His eyes focused on something over her shoulder and suddenly his whole face blanched. “Daisy!”

Then everything happened so fast it almost seemed like it was frozen in slow motion.

Daisy whirled around to see a lone Watchdog aim a pistol at her. He let loose several shots, but before they could hit her, Robbie leapt in front of her. A chilling numbness took over her as the bullets hit him square in the chest, staining the night air with a mist of his blood. Robbie shuddered from the impact before his body pitched forward and he collapsed onto his knees.

The thud of body onto pavement quickly knocked her and everything else back into motion. She set her steely gaze on the Watchdog and quickly sent a shockwave in his direction. He went flying back several feet and landed with a sickening bang against the steel warehouse wall before crumpling to the ground.

“Robbie?“ Her voice cracked as she turned to check on him, but Robbie wasn’t there anymore.

Fire ignited where he once kneeled and the hot flames caused Daisy to quickly stagger a few steps back. A cold sweat pricked at the back of her neck as the Ghost Rider slowly rose to his feet. He glanced over at her, the embers that made his eyes boring deep into her soul. She had met the demon many times before now, but the sight of his flaming skull still sent a shiver down her spine.

Her head whipped around as several pounding feet coalesced around them. A large group of over a dozen Watchdogs surrounded them. They trained their weapons on them, but there was some hesitancy in their grip and stance.

"I-I told you Quake would come, but who-who the Hell is that other … thing?” One of them barked to the person next to them.

“I dunno, some weird-ass fire Inhuman? No matter, we stick with the plan," the other responded back, cocking his rifle.

Daisy gritted her teeth as a fire began to burn in her chest. So, this had all just been a grand scheme to lure her here? She should have known. Oh well, that would be their mistake, not hers.

She raised her arms into a fighting stance and glanced over towards the Rider who unwrapped the chain from around his torso with a loud snap. "You game?”

He turned his skull towards her and nodded. Then all Hell broke loose.

Instantly, Daisy sent quake blast after quake blast towards the Watchdogs’ weapons, destroying some into tiny pieces while the Ghost Rider used his chain to melt others. The Watchdogs were only hindered for a moment before they rushed forward in a mass of yelling canine masks. Daisy’s S.H.I.E.L.D.-trained instincts immediately kicked in. She dodged one punch and caught another’s arm as he was sending a knife down at her throat. Daisy twisted it out of his grip with a snap and quaked him away before taking the knife and stabbing it in the other’s chest.

A few times she would quake a Watchdog goon in the Rider’s direction who would take care of them instantly with his chain or bare hands. Sometimes he would wrangle up a few in his chain and send them her way to be immediately blasted hundreds of feet away into the harbor. They were perfectly in sync. An unstoppable team of fire and earthquakes that quickly brought down every single Watchdog until there were none left standing.

Daisy sunk her butt onto a wooden crate as she tried to catch her breath. The bones in her arm whined, but her body was still too buzzed to notice any real pain. She was certainly going to feel it in the morning, though.

Her eyes shifted to her fiery companion as his flaming skull extinguished and flesh took over once more. Then, he was back.

Robbie Reyes staggered towards his Charger, dropping his chain with a sizzle as it hit the cold, wet ground. An icy shard stabbed its way through her heart as he collapsed onto his car for support.

“Robbie!” Daisy quickly rose to her feet and rushed over towards him.

He groaned as he slowly turned around, but a ghost of a smile flicked across his lip as his eyes landed on her.

“Hey,” he panted.

“Hey?” She faltered for a moment, slowing down before finishing her stride up to him. “Robbie, you just got shot in the chest and all you can say is ‘hey'?”

Robbie smirked and Daisy clenched her hands to restrain herself from slapping the smug look off his face. “Daisy, I’m fine.”

She raised her brow. “Robbie, you were shot in the chest. Multiple times. How is that fine?”

“I’m fine, honestly,” he stated, pushing himself off the Charger with his shoulders and straightening up.

Daisy frowned, crossing her arms. “You don’t look fine.”

Sure, he didn’t look like he was at Death’s door, but there was a tightness to his expression with each heavy breath he took. The shard in her heart twisted. He was in some sort of pain, even if he was too damn stubborn to admit it. Why did he always have to be so stubborn?

Robbie watched her, his face softening. “I’ll be fine. See?”

He gestured to his jacket and Daisy tilted her head. After all those bullets, his signature leather jacket should be the equivalence of Swiss cheese right now. Instead, it was perfectly fine. There wasn’t even a scratch on it.

Daisy stepped closer, her eyes focused on his seemingly okay chest as everything else started to spin around her. She didn’t even ask, but Robbie didn’t protest, as she unbuttoned his jacket and zipped it down. Her fingers ghosted over his fitted dark grey shirt. There were no bullet holes either, not even a hint of blood as proof of the horror she witnessed. A chill settled in her stomach. It was as if he never got shot at all.

Robbie reached a gloved hand to her cheek, but hesitated and let it settle on her shoulder, instead.

“I told you. I don’t get hurt.”

His words shocked her back into reality and all the fire that had simmered in her chest came bellowing back full-force. Daisy frowned as her hand on his chest balled into a fist.

“Well that doesn’t mean you can just take a bullet for me, Reyes,” she spat, pounding her clenched hand into his chest. Robbie winced.

Good, so he does get hurt, she thought, glaring at him.

Robbie narrowed his eyes at her and his usual glower took over his face. “Are you being serious?” He demanded, dropping his hand from her shoulder. “Of course, I’d take a bullet for you. Or a dozen. Hell, I’d do it again without a second thought. You know why?”

“Why?” She snapped, stepping closer to get in his face.

“It’s cause despite how much of a badass you think you are, you’re not invincible, Daisy. I am!”

“For now!” Daisy shouted, blood roaring through her system as heat stung at the back of her eyes. “Who’s to say the next time you get knocked down, you don’t get back up? Just because it’s happened before, doesn’t mean it always will. What if the other guy just decides to leave you cold on the ground?”

“We have a deal–”

“Ugh, don’t you dare start with that 'deal with the devil’ bullshit, again.”

“Bullshit? Are you serious? The deal is the only damn reason I’m still alive and here right now!”

“The deal doesn’t matter! Damn it, you don’t get it, Robbie! You can’t just risk your life for mine! You can’t just sacrifice yourself for my careless mistakes! I can’t lose–”

The rest of her words cracked in her throat as Daisy fell silent. The blood drained from her face. Robbie furrowed his brow as his fiery brown eyes searched hers, waiting for her to continue. But it was gone. All that fire that had consumed her was snuffed out leaving her numb and heavy.

Daisy ducked her head to avoid his gaze and closed her eyes. Immediately, she was back on the Zephyr One. Her body was frozen like a statue, unable to do anything but watch the lone Quinjet on the monitors spiral outside the Earth’s atmosphere. She steeled her heart, waiting as the seconds ticked down for the explosion, but before it could, she blinked, and suddenly she was back at the docks moments ago. Robbie stood in front of her, seconds away from being riddled with bullets. Daisy tried to move, to quake him out of the way, to push him aside, to do something, anything, but she couldn’t even scream. She could only watch and wait before another person she cared about was ripped away from her again.

A hollowness ached in her chest as she opened her eyes and raised her head. Robbie was no longer glaring at her. The harsh lines had disappeared, making his face smooth and tender once more. The fierce fire was gone from his eyes, as well. Instead, they held a gentle warmth like pools of molten chocolate sweetly watching her with a glisten of concern.

Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest while her stomach squirmed. There was a charge in the air in the small distance between them, something electric and magnetic that slowly drew her even closer to him.

Daisy froze, quickly averting her gaze as heat pooled in her cheeks. What was she doing? She took a step back, running a hand through her hair. So much happened in the past few minutes, a rollercoaster of emotions and adrenaline. She had to get out of here.

“Sorry, I should–” Daisy pinched her brow and shook her head before quickly turning around. She only took a few steps when suddenly a warm, leather hand grabbed hold of her wrist. Daisy barely had time to acknowledge it before she was roughly spun around and Robbie’s lips pounced on her own.

It was like lightning struck her spine, frying all her nerves as she stood there frozen and wide-eyed beneath his mouth. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t move. An explosion had gone off in her brain, leaving her disoriented and barely able to comprehend anything besides the fact that Robbie Reyes was kissing her right now.

Then, the fire appeared. It started off small and white-hot like a shower of sparks where their lips met, but then quickly it ignited into a blazing inferno. The flames swept across her body, consuming every inch of her in its warm glow. It was hot and sweet like the desert sun, kindly coaxing her into its scorching embrace. Daisy slowly closed her eyes as she started to melt into his kiss.

As sudden as it had happened, Robbie broke off the kiss like the snap of safety tether over a cavernous drop. Immediately, a chill rushed in, suffocating the warmth inside her.

Daisy opened her eyes, her lips still tingling like they were being lit up by firecrackers as Robbie stared at her a good arm-length’s distance away. He was breathing heavy, face flushed and eyes wider than a deer’s in headlights.

She glanced at his parted lips as her own ached. He had kissed her. Robbie had kissed her.

“I–” He choked out, running a hand across his short hair. “I’m so sorry– I just– I don’t know what–”

Daisy wrapped her fingers tight around Robbie’s leather jacket and roughly tugged him towards her. She closed her eyes as her lips crashed against his, kissing him with a fevered eagerness while the fire roared to life in her once more. Robbie’s lips trembled against hers, wanting to kiss her back, but he grabbed her shoulders and held her back.

“Daisy, we shouldn’t–”

“Shut up,” she breathed and kissed him again, hard enough to probably leave a bruise.

Robbie instantly gave in as he wrapped his arms around her waist and jerked her close to him. They kissed as if they were wildfire. Messy and raw with an enormous heat that consumed everything they touched. Their hands roamed each other in a frantic mess, desperately tugging and pulling each other closer as if the other was the oxygen they needed to survive.

Robbie stumbled back against his Charger taking her with him. The sudden jolt broke their kiss for a moment, before Robbie’s lips came rushing back onto her own. Daisy clung to him desperately like to a ship in a raging storm as he trailed hot kisses from her lips down to her neck. She dug her fingernails into his jacket as his teeth grazed her skin and a moan shot through her as he reached a sensitive part of her neck. That only seemed to encourage him more as Robbie left more little nips that had her melting.

Daisy couldn’t take it anymore. The sweet stings of his mouth, the smooth leather of his gloved fingers trailing hot streaks on the skin of her lower back, it all left her with a pulsing desire for more. She wanted him. She needed him in a way she didn’t think she’d ever feel for another man again.

“Car? Now?” She panted breathlessly in his ear as one of her hands slid down and played with the buckle of his jeans’ belt.

Robbie pulled his head back and Daisy opened her eyes in time to see him nod. His hand quickly fumbled for the driver’s door handle and pulled it open. Daisy planted one last kiss on his lips, leaving a teasing bite, before she ducked into his car. She crawled into the backseat where she quickly kicked off her boots and vehemently shrugged off her jacket as it stuck harshly to her sweaty skin.

The car door slammed shut with a heavy thunk as Robbie hopped in. Daisy watched him from where he sat in the driver’s seat tearing off his gloves and his own shoes.

A cold spike pierced her chest. Oh fuck, were they really going to do this? She was starting to wonder if she should call this off before it was too late when his hungry, dark eyes landed on her and all such thoughts went up in a puff of smoke.

Daisy pulled her to him as he crawled into the back and kissed him roughly. Their lips continued to part and meet like lovers on a dancefloor as they tugged each other’s clothes off until there was nothing left between them. Robbie hovered over her, his face mirroring her own hesitation for the briefest of moments before Daisy kissed him and tugged him onto her. Everything exploded in a blinding white heat as their bodies meshed and melded as one.

* * *

“So then what?” Simmons asked, digging her hand into a bowl of mini pretzels she had gotten out during Daisy’s tale. She popped two into her mouth with a loud crunch as her eyes looked to her expectantly.

“Well,” Daisy murmured, trailing her finger around the base of her glass. “After Robbie and I … you know, I just … left.”

Simmons' eyes almost bugged out of her head and she coughed on the pretzels still in her mouth. She quickly grabbed her wine glass and took a sip, swallowing with relieving sigh. “You left?” she questioned piercingly like a whistle.

Daisy jumped. “Yeah? Why? What? Was that bad?”

Simmons groaned as she sank against the countertop, rubbing at her temple. “I mean, yes, kind of? You two had sex. What does this mean? Are you together now?”

“See, I didn’t know! It all just happened so fast all of a sudden, I just had to get out of there, ” she admitted and took a sip of wine. “I mean, I cared about Robbie. We were friends, but …”

“You still weren’t over Lincoln.”

Daisy stared down into her glass and nodded her head. “I mean, it’s not entirely crazy, right? Lincoln was the first guy I could say I ever truly loved. I didn’t know if I was ready to have such a serious relationship like that again.”

“Did you tell Robbie that?”

Her palms began to sweat as she glanced up at Simmons, but quickly averted her gaze. “Well, I had planned to when I saw him again a week later at the Base. I brought him to my room so we could talk in private … ”

“But?” Simmons supplied, unease creeping in her voice.

Daisy bit her lip. “But then we had sex again.”

“What?!” Daisy cringed as Simmons slammed her hand onto the counter, rattling their glasses. “You’re joking?”

Her cheeks began to warm. “Well, I hadn’t really seen or talked to him ever since that night, and, as we were standing there, the memories just started coming back …”

She didn’t want to be so melodramatic about it, but their sex in the Charger had been good. Like really freaking good. It had been a bit cramped and awkward at first, but the more they got into it, the more his touch ignited her and brought her whole body to life. He had left her reeling in ecstasy.

Daisy had thought maybe it was just a one-time fluke. It had been the first time in a really long time since she had been with anyone, and maybe by that point her body was desperate for any touch. But then they had sex in her room, and Daisy swore it had been even better than their first tryst.

“After that I told him I wasn’t really looking for a serious relationship, so we agreed to just be friends … who happened to have sex sometimes.”

“Wait a minute,” Simmons murmured, straightening up. “I remember the Watchdog’s harbor incident. That was last June.” Her eyes widened. “You mean to tell me you and Robbie have been having friendly, casual sex for 10 months and I am just now finding out about it?”

Daisy shrugged as she snatched a pretzel out of the bowl. “Well, it’s not like we saw each other that much, you know, between S.H.I.E.L.D. duties and his Ghost Rider duties.”

“But when you did?”

“I mean, not every time. We’re not sex freaks.” She popped the pretzel in her mouth and chewed it slowly for a moment. “But, yeah.”

Simmons sighed as she sank back into her stool. There was a distant look in her eyes, as if Daisy had just told her all the laws of thermodynamics were proven to be a sham. “I … I cannot believe I never figured it out. You and Robbie are my friends, and I didn’t even realize.”

The pretzel she had been chewing quickly turned to ashes in her mouth, and Daisy struggled to swallow it. “I’m sorry, it’s just that we didn’t even really know what our relationship was. It was nice and fun and if we told you guys, it would have been complicated.”

“Still,” she whined. “I should have at least noticed something was going on with you two.”

“Hey,” Daisy reached her right hand out and let it rest gently on her friend’s arm. “You got engaged. You’ve been kicking biochemical ass at S.H.I.E.L.D. and planning a wedding! I’d say you’ve more than earned being allowed to be a little distracted.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Simmons’ mouth as she fiddled with her engagement ring. It was a gorgeous three-diamond gold ring with the middle diamond being slightly larger than its two companions. Daisy and the rest of the team had all been there when Fitz proposed and gave the ring to her several months ago. Everyone had been in tears, even May, the whole moment had been so romantically beautiful.

Daisy smiled tightly as she twisted her left hand still in her coat pocket. “Besides, if it makes you feel any better, you were really close to walking in on us one time.”

Simmons froze, the smile slowly fading off her face as she tilted her head. “What one time?” She asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Well, Robbie and I were banging out a quickie in the science-tech lab supply closet when–”

The supply closet? Are you serious?“ Simmons shrilled and Daisy hastily returned her hand.

"I mean, at the time, it was just right there–”

“Daisy! There are so many sensitive equipment stored in there! I cannot believe you would do–”

“Oh, please, we didn’t break anything and you didn’t even notice. Besides, surely you must’ve thought of getting a little frisky with Fitz in the Containment Module at least once, right?” She waggled her eyebrows.

Simmons’ face immediately flushed a bright, cherry blossom pink. Daisy grinned.

Busted.

Man, they had been talking about her sex life for almost the past hour, it was nice to have the tables turn, at least for a moment.

Simmons took a long, shaky sip of wine. “I-I mean, sure, the idea might have crossed our minds a few times, but we would never–” She paused, eyes widening. “Wait a minute! Did you and Robbie have sex in the Containment Module, as well?”

Shit.

Warmth rose in Daisy’s cheek as she hastily took her own long sip of wine instead of answering the question. Apparently, that was already telling enough. A huge grin stretched across Simmons’ face until she realized what she was smiling about and scowled instead.

“Honestly, is there any place at the Base you two haven’t defiled with your antics?” She questioned.

Daisy set her empty glass on the counter and poured herself some more. “Simmons, the Base is freaking ginormous. Do you honestly think two people can have sex in every possible–”

“That’s not answering my question.”

Daisy sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Simmons, there are places we haven’t had sex in. We’re not sex freaks!”

Although she and Robbie probably had fooled around in more places than anybody else who worked at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base. There was even that time in the director’s office when Coulson left her in charge for a week.

She hadn’t planned on it, obviously. They had just been talking late one night after he had invited himself in to check on her, but Robbie just had a way of easily turning her on. One minute she was ranting about her problems while he was massaging away the stress in her shoulders, the next they were kissing and quickly pulling each other’s clothes off.

Daisy had paid particularly close attention to make sure all physical and digital evidence of that incident had been wiped clean, but that still didn’t stop her heart rate from spiking every time Coulson called to talk to her in his office. So far, to her knowledge, he still hadn’t found out about it, and hopefully he never would.

Simmons shook her head as she fiddled with her wine glass. “I just cannot believe nobody figured out what was happening with you two.”

“Actually, Gabe found out,” Daisy admitted as she popped another pretzel in her mouth.

He was the closest person in Robbie’s life and a really smart kid. It didn’t take him long to put together what was really going on between the two of them. Although, it was kind of painfully obvious when he had spotted her leaving Robbie’s room early one morning with fresh sex hair.

Breakfast later that morning between the three of them had to be one of the most terribly awkward meals she ever had to endure, but in the end Gabe had said he was fine with their arrangement as long as Robbie was happy. And as long as they were careful to make sure he didn’t become an uncle just yet. The sight of coffee shooting out of Robbie’s nose almost made up for the mini heart-attack Gabe had given even her for even implying something like that.

She swallowed. “And May caught us.”

“Seriously?” Simmons asked, sitting up in her seat. “What happened?”

Daisy pinched her eyebrows together. Ugh, May catching her with Robbie had to be worse than Gabe finding out. Maybe even worse than when she caught her with Miles.

Daisy had been sparring with Robbie in the gym-training room when their heated match quickly became a heated kiss. It wasn’t long before the clothes had started coming off. She had her hands sliding down his sweatpants when May had loudly cleared her throat. It was like the bang of a gunshot that had them hastily separating themselves from each other faster than Yo-Yo’s super-speed.

May was her S.O. and the basic equivalence of a mother to her (even though neither of them would admittedly openly call their relationship that). Seeing the older woman standing in the gym’s doorway with her arms crossed and an arctic cold expression on her face, an extremely red-faced Daisy had nearly died on the spot. As they put their clothes back on, she had expected a scolding lecture, maybe even a slap on the wrist. What had came next still floored her to this day.

“She asked for an explanation, and after we did, May was surprisingly fine with it. She even agreed not to tell anyone else what were doing unless it would cause problems that affected the team.”

Simmons raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s all?” She questioned, doubt evident in her voice.

A grin slipped on Daisy’s face. “Well, she may have also threatened Robbie that she would find a way to kill him if he ever hurt me.”

Robbie’s blanching face had been priceless. It honestly had to have been the first time she had seen him look actually unnerved about his immortality. He had been around long enough to know May wasn’t one to be easily trifled with. If she made a threat, she would certainly follow through with it.

Daisy knew the older woman must have been thinking about Ward when she made the threat. May knew first-hand how having a secretive, sexual relationship with a coworker could really go wrong. The gesture had been sweet, but Daisy had already known that Robbie was far from turning out to be a Ward situation. She had known that the minute she had learned about the man behind the fiery Los Angeles serial killer, and he had proven his good nature countless times since.

“Okay,” Simmons murmured slowly, folding her hands together on the counter. “So you and Robbie have been having this–” She paused, her eyes darting to find the right phrasing. “– friendly sexual relationship for months now without most people’s knowledge. Why are you telling me this now? What changed?”

Daisy tensed as if a bucket of freezing ice water had been dumped over her head. There was the clever Simmons she knew. Always able to figure out the root of the reasoning behind a mess of data.

She played with the lint in her left coat pocket as she took another sip of wine. Here comes the second Band-Aid.

“Alright, so I was staying at Robbie’s house last Friday while I was conducting ’S.H.I.E.L.D. check-ups.’ It’s how we got to spend time together sometimes. But …”

* * *

Daisy was stirred from her dreamless slumber as the mattress creaked and shifted beneath her. She didn’t even open her eyes as she immediately reached out and latched onto the warm body next to her trying to leave the bed.

“Robbie, no,” she grumbled as she tugged him back, rubbing her cheek into his burning hot, bare shoulder. He was always so damn warm and cozy, as if she was snuggling up against a huge campfire marshmallow.

A chuckle rumbled through him that sent pleasant tremors straight to her heart. “Sorry, chica, I got to go,” he murmured quietly.

The logical part in Daisy knew that. Unlike she, who was taking an undisclosed mini vacation from S.H.I.E.L.D., Robbie actually had responsibilities and duties to uphold. However, the logical part of Daisy was still very much asleep and honestly didn’t care to try to wake up at the moment. All she wanted was for Robbie and his wonderfully warm body to stay just a little bit longer. It couldn’t be that late in the morning already.

She wrapped her arms tighter around him and another laugh tumbled out of him. Daisy was prepared to hold on with the vice-like grip of a crocodile in a death roll until Robbie’s fingers began to tickle her arms. She whined and jerked, but no matter how hard she tried to resist, she was no match for his tickling. Her grip on him loosened and Robbie hastily slipped out of her arms and rolled away. Daisy immediately grasped out for him again, but all her fingers found were rapidly cooling, empty sheets.

She let out a groan, opening her eyes just a crack in the dim room to see a turned-around Robbie slipping on a pair of jeans over his boxers. Her eyes widened just a little more as she watched the way the taut muscles on his shirtless back moved while he finished adjusting his pants. Daisy bit her bottom lip as she sat up, pulling his dark sheets closer to her cold, half-naked body. What she wouldn’t give to rake her fingernails across that smooth skin right now.

“Why go when you could stay in bed with me?” She purred, letting the bed sheet slip lower over her breasts.

Robbie turned around, his eyes widening for a moment as they locked on her before a cheeky grin began to stretch across his face. “You know I would rather choose bed with you in a heartbeat,” he admitted, then his smile fell away. “But I promised Gabe I would drop him off at school and I’ve got to swing by Canelo’s to do a few things.”

Daisy kicked her left foot out from under the sheets and slowly pulled the fabric back from around her smooth, bare leg. Robbie’s eyes followed the teasing movement like a hungry predator as the sheet inched higher and higher up her leg until it stopped just below the hem of her black underwear.

“You sure?” She crooned sweetly, swaying her hips.

Robbie said nothing, but his dark eyes revealed everything. The way they longingly trailed over her body, causing goosebumps to shiver across her skin, she knew he was considering it. Daisy grinned. Any second now and he would be on her, warming her body with his sweet touch.

Robbie’s face pinched together as he sighed and shook his head. “Sadly, yes.”

What? Daisy furrowed her brow while Robbie returned to getting dressed for the day. She crossed her arms across her chest as he pulled a dark gray t-shirt out of his dresser and slipped it on along with his socks and shoes. Was he serious?

“Are you serious?” Daisy asked, dropping the enticing tone as a frown settled on her lips. This wouldn’t be the first time she was denied sex, but the rejection still stung like a thorn to her ego.

Robbie turned to her with a remorseful look. "Sorry, Dais, I really have to go, but I promise I’ll make it up to you.“

He scooped up his signature leather jacket from off the floor as he walked over to her and then bent down until they were eye-level with each other, their faces mere inches away from one another. His warm chocolate brown eyes searched her own as a soft smile tugged at his mouth.

"When I get back, I swear, I’m.” Daisy closed her eyes as he leaned forward and gave a soft peck to her pouting lips. “All.” He kissed her again. “Yours.”

Daisy’s pout trembled as his lips found hers once more, until she finally gave in and kissed him back. His lips were always sweeter than honey, but they also held a fire to them that gently stung. Robbie broke off the kiss before giving her one final quick smooch. She opened her eyes as he stood up and tugged his jacket on.

“Who says I’m going to be here when you get back, Reyes?” She haughtily asked, biting back the smile tingling on her lips.

Robbie paused his primping as he stared at her for a moment. He titled his head, slightly opening his mouth as if meant to say something but hesitation teetered on his lips. Closing his mouth, Robbie quickly shook his head and, apparently, the thought aside. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he smirked before exiting his room and closing the door behind him.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Daisy muttered as she sunk back into the bed.

She stared up at the shadows on the ceiling casted by the early morning light as the sound of the two Reyes brothers bumbling about in the house filtered through the cracks in the door. What had he wanted to say? The first thing that came to mind was a joke at her expense, but Robbie had never been one to hold back from a wisecrack, even when they first met and all he did was pout and glower.

Daisy casted her eyes to the bedroom door as the solid thud of the front door closing vibrated through the house’s structure. It was quiet for a moment until the rumbling growl of the Charger’s engine roared out, instead. The high-pitched squeal of the tires peeling out screamed over it for a moment before the Charger’s clamor faded away, and everything returned to a dull silence once more. She was all alone.

A sigh slipped past her lips as she rolled over onto her side and pulled the sheets closer to her body. Robbie may have stuff to do, but this was her day off. No missions to worry about. No morning training sessions to attend. She could sleep for as long as she wanted to, and she planned to. Who knew when the next time she’d get a peaceful morning like this?

Snuggling her cheek into her pillow, Daisy closed her eyes. Instead of empty blackness that would soon lull her into slumber, Robbie’s face filled her vision as if he was on a jumbo movie screen. He had that look on his face before he left as if he had a hidden inside joke that he seemed to not want to share with her. Why?

Daisy frowned as she rolled over to her other side. She didn’t want to think about Robbie or his annoyingly appealing face or anything. All she wanted was to get a few more hours of sleep. Daisy squeezed her eyes even tighter shut, hoping to will the prickly thoughts away, as she rolled over again. After several minutes of doing this, and not being any closer to getting sleepy or getting Robbie out of her head, Daisy groaned like a wounded, defeated bear and opened her eyes.

Well, I guess I’ll just get up then.

She tossed the sheets back and the morning chill immediately began to settle across her bare skin. A shiver ran through her as she stretched her stiff limbs before quickly rising out of bed. Daisy went over to his dresser and opened the drawer that held several articles of her clothing. As she tugged on a pair of dark gray jeans and a navy-blue sweater, her eyes landed on the photo strip she and Robbie had taken when they went to the Santa Monica pier last September resting on top of his dresser.

A smile tugged on the corners of her mouth. That had been such a great day. It was probably the most fun and relaxing day she had in a while filled with nothing but laughter and bellies full of junk food. As soon as she had spotted the photo booth, she had dragged Robbie’s protesting ass as fast as she could to it. He had pouted originally, as evidenced by the first photo, but after she had poked his cheeks back with her index fingers in order to force him to smile, she had been able to coax him into making ridiculous faces alongside her.

“I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Daisy frowned as she slammed the drawer shut. It had been such an innocent statement, but it rubbed her the wrong way like sandpaper across her skin. It had been the way he said it, not really a request but more as if it was a fact that she would be here waiting for him to get home. Where did he even get off expecting something like that?“

She ran her fingers through her tangled hair as she left his room and headed for the bathroom to finish getting ready for the day. The small counter was a mess of toothbrushes, razors and whatever the Hell else guys needed, as it usually was in the morning, but the boys were kind enough to leave the space with her toiletries fairly clear. Daisy tugged open her makeup bag and quickly got to work.

I mean, I know we are friends, she thought as she flicked on some mascara. And yes, I came out to L.A. to see him specifically, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go off and do my own thing.

Daisy finished making herself look somewhat of a presentable person before she left the bathroom and made her way into the kitchen. Immediately, she was hit with the bitter warm smell of roasted coffee. The ”#1 Superhero” mug Coulson got her for Christmas sat on the counter with the tawny brown liquid filled to the brim inside. Warmth bubbled in her chest. Robbie must have poured it for her before he left.

She raised the mug to her lips and took a tentative sip. The coffee was barely tepid by this point, but it still had the perfect amount of cream and sugar to make the bitter, life-saving fuel enjoyable. There was even the hint of cinnamon she loved to add to give her coffee a fun little kick. Daisy smiled, but quickly forced herself to frown.

I don’t have to be here when he comes back, she thought as she set the mug in the microwave to heat it up for a few seconds.

As she waited, Daisy went into the pantry and snatched a package of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts out from the box she hid in the corner from Gabe (the sneaky little thief). The microwave went off and she quickly retrieved her coffee, wincing as the hot ceramic burned her fingers briefly.

In fact, I don’t even have to stay here at all.

Daisy took her breakfast and headed into the living room. With careful, practiced ease, she sunk into her favored spot on the brown leather couch and kicked her feet up onto the coffee table. She raised her mug to her mouth once more.

After all, it’s not like I live here.

Daisy froze as that thought crossed her mind, her mug hovering just inches from her lips. She glanced down at the white “#1 Superhero” letters printed on her mug, contrasting sharply with its navy-blue background.

This was her mug.

In his house.

Her eyes shifted to the Pop-Tarts she had in her lap. Her Pop-Tarts. The ones she had specifically bought for herself along with the other various food items she had in his pantry and fridge.

An icy grip seized her squirming gut as she sat up and shakily set her mug and pastries onto the coffee table. Daisy glanced around his living room, quickly recognizing several more items as her own:

That was her black leather jacket hanging on the coat rack. Those were her boots and sandals by the front door. Her laptop sat charging on the dining room table. The daisy-patterned fleece blanket Bobbi got her for Christmas hung on the adjacent dining chair. Even the framed photograph she took of everyone in her S.H.I.E.L.D. family (including Robbie) during their short vacation in Hawaii rested on one of the bookshelves.

But Daisy knew it didn’t just end here. Some of her clothes were in his dresser. Her beloved dancing hula figure sat on his desk. Her favorite vanilla shampoo and conditioner were in the shower. Hell, she was even certain she had a box of tampons underneath the bathroom sink.

Daisy ran a hand across her clammy face as everything started to go all topsy-turvy around her. Suddenly, Robbie’s smirk and comment earlier were starting to make sense. This wasn’t just his and Gabe’s home anymore. Somehow, sometime along the way, it had become her home, as well.

“Oh, shit.”

* * *

Daisy fiddled with the stem of her glass, the swirling and sloshing pale yellow wine inside matching her own inner unease. “I mean, I was living there, Simmons. Living there! Without even realizing it. How stupid could I be?” She groaned.

“Well, I have great evidence that correlates to a profound percentage just from this conversation alone, so …” Simmons muttered before draining the last of the Moscato bottle into her glass.

Daisy winced. Man, she forgot how catty Simmons could get after a few drinks. Daisy snatched a handful of pretzels out and laid them on the counter before quickly scooting the rest of the whole bowl across towards her friend.

“Okay, I admit, sleeping with Robbie in the first place was probably not a good idea,” Daisy stated, a knife twisting in her heart. “Then, agreeing to continue having sex with him was probably an even worse idea, but it just felt so good.”

She frowned as she started pacing back and forth the small length of the kitchen.

“Whenever I was with Robbie, with or without the sex, I was free. I wasn’t an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I wasn’t deputy director. I wasn’t even Quake the supehero. I was just Daisy. No worries, no responsibilities, just carefree fun. What we had it … It wasn’t supposed to be serious. I said I wasn’t ready for anything serious, but living together? That’s–”

“Serious?” Simmons supplied.

“Exactly!” Daisy murmured, slumping back onto the counter.

Simmons shifted in her seat, sitting up. “So, what did you do?”

“Well, after I realized that I was actually living with Robbie, I freaked out for a good hour.”

“Obviously.”

“But then I calmed down and started to think things over and reflect. When Robbie came back later, we talked about this change in our relationship, and, well …” Daisy picked up her wine glass and took a big sip. Crap, could she even say it?

“Oh no, did you guys break up?”

* * *

Daisy sat on the couch as the warm, afternoon sunlight filtered through the slats in the windows. Her coffee and Pop-Tarts still laid on the coffee table, cold and untouched. Any second now Robbie could be returning and then–

Her heart jerked as the familiar thrum of the Charger’s engine roared just outside the house. Speak of the devil, she thought with a tiny smirk while all her insides turned into mush. This was it. The beginning or end to everything.

Ever since her recent living situation realization, Daisy had spent the past couple hours running through so many different ways her conversation with Robbie could go in her head. Some where pleasant. Most were terrible, so terrible she had ended up packing several of her things already just in case she needed to make a quick getaway. Now it was time to see which scenario it was going to be.

The front door clanked open and Robbie greeted her kindly, but it was as if they were miles away instead of a few feet. Daisy stared into her murky coffee mug as her sweaty hands fiddled in her lap.

This is it, Daisy. You can do this. Just tell Robbie how you feel and hope for the best.

Her whole body tensed as a warm, wet kiss was pressed to her cheek while Robbie passed behind her. It tingled her skin like the sweet fizz of soda and her heart writhed heavily in her chest.

Or you could just run away right now? Completely ignore the elephant in the room. Meet up with him next week and continue our relationship as if everything is normal.

“So, what did you want to do for the rest of today?” Robbie called from the kitchen, popping open the fridge. “We could watch a movie? Drive around town? Or,” He paused, closing the fridge with a soft click before shuffling closer. “Gabe isn’t going to be back from studying at the library for a few more hours if the offer from this morning is still on the table?”

Daisy twisted around to see him briefly waggle his eyebrows at her through the kitchen's pass-through window. A devilish grin played on his lips. Her heart fluttered briefly the way it always seemed to whenever he smiled at her. It was her one damn weakness.

No. She had to do this. She had to tell him the truth. A massive weight sunk in her chest. Even if it might break her stupid, foolish heart.

Daisy took in a deep breath to settle the shaking of her nerves and slowly let it out. “We need to talk.”

“Fine it doesn’t have to be on the table,” Robbie smirked as he walked back into the living room, cracking open the bottle of apple juice he had gotten. “It could be on the bed, on the couch, Hell, even on the–”

“Robbie!” Daisy cut him off, wincing at how sharp her tone was even to her own ears. “This is serious.”

He froze mid-stride, his grin quickly sliding off his face. His eyes searched her face waiting for the crack of a smile or a crinkle in her eyes that told him she was just messing with him like she always did.

It never came.

Robbie flexed his jaw as he set his drink on the dining room table before making his way to the couch. Daisy swiveled in her spot towards him as he hesitantly sat down on the couch cushion beside her. The leather creaked as he slowly sunk in.

“Okay, Daisy, what is going on?” His dark brown eyes focused intensely on her as he reached out and rested a hand on her forearm. Even through her sweater, his touch was so gentle and warm like a sliver of pure sunshine.

“Did you–” Daisy bit her bottom lip. “Did you know?”

“Know what?” He asked tentatively.

Her eyebrows kitted together. “That I’m basically living in your house?” She questioned incredulously.

Robbie furrowed his brow briefly before a grin returned to his face. “Are you– Are you serious? Is that all?”

Daisy tilted her head. “Yeah?” She frowned as his smirk grew wider. “And I’m going to guess you already knew.”

He snorted, trying to hold back a laugh until a few chuckles made it past his lips. Those small chuckles swiftly turned into a hearty flow and scorching heat rose in Daisy’s face. “Hell, girl, I thought that maybe you– Nervermind.” Robbie snickered, shaking his head back.

Her lips pursed together and she twisted her shaking fingers to quell the urge to quake his ass off the couch. “Well, I’m glad this is all one big joke to you,” she snapped.

His laughter cut off instantaneously, filling the space for a long moment in silence. Robbie then cleared his throat, sitting up and focusing on her once more. “I’m sorry, Daisy,” he stated, and the tension in her eased. “It’s just that you living in my house? It’s no big deal. Really. I’m happy to have you stay here whenever. We’re friends, right?” He offered her a soft smile and gave her arm a kind squeeze.

Her heart grew heavy as her guts twisted into knots. “But that’s the problem,” Daisy admitted faintly.

Robbie’s face recoiled as if she had just slapped him. His eyes glistened like shattered window glass before they hardened with his lowered eyebrows and steely frown. “So, what? You don’t want to be friends anymore? Is that it?” He retorted like a venomous sting.

“No! Well, not exactly –”

“What? Is it about us sleeping together, then? Damn it, Daisy, I’d rather lose the sex than lose out on our friendship.”

“No, it’s just that– Well, I– Fuck!” Daisy slammed a fist into the couch and quickly stood.

Why did this have to go so off-track? Why did this have to be so difficult? She should have just grabbed her bag and left.

Daisy ran a hand through her hair as she slowly began to pace around the room. No, she was already in this deep. Might as well get it over with. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, then opened her eyes again as she breathed out. Robbie watched her from the couch, his body tense and guarded.

“Can I just start over? Say what I need to say?” She asked.

He nodded.

Okay, good. She paced the room a few more times to gather her nerves and thoughts, before she stopped and faced Robbie once more.

“When we started this … Friends-with-benefits relationship almost a year ago, I agreed to it because I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship again. Not after what happened with Lincoln. I thought it was because I still wasn’t over him, and maybe that was partially true, but it was also probably because I was scared. Scared to care for someone so much like that again only to end up hurt once more.

“When I realized I was I was living with you, I panicked, because that? That’s serious. It’s the complete opposite of what I thought I wanted. I thought I should leave. Wish you all the best in a note and never see you again. But, every time I made my way to that door, something in me stopped myself. Something that told me I should stay, that leaving would be one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, and you know what I realized?”

Robbie’s eyes never left her as he sat apprehensively on the couch. He remained silent, waiting.

“I care about you, Robbie. I care about you more than I ever thought I could with someone again. Maybe it happened sometime in the months since we’ve been sleeping together, or maybe I’ve felt this way ever since you came back from the other dimension and I was too stubborn to accept it, but I do. You’re the first thing I think about in the morning, and the last thing I think about at night. Even when we are miles apart from each other, I can’t stop thinking about you. I’d always be like, 'I wish Robbie was here to see this,’ or 'Robbie would laugh if he was here right now.’ I know it’s silly, but I look forward to seeing you and spending time with you far more than I should.”

Daisy turned away as warmth crept in her cheeks. Sure, she could wholeheartedly sleep with the guy for months on end without barely a bat of an eye, but telling him about her feelings was what left her a blushing mess.

“I know this might not be what you want, but I have to be truthful. To you and to me.” She paused, taking a shaky breath. “I don’t want us to pretend were just friends while sneaking around and having sex behind nearly everyone-we-care-about’s backs. I don’t want to hide how much you genuinely mean to me anymore. I want us to be something real and true, because, damn it, Robbie, I–”

Daisy turned around and her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Her eyes widened as they laser-focused in on the square black velvet box Robbie pulled out from a pocket inside his jacket. It was small and nestled perfectly in the palm of his hand. There were only so many objects that could fit in a box that tiny.

“Wh-what is that?” She asked through strained breath while a cold sweat pricked down her back. Daisy was not a complete idiot. She had a very good idea of what it could be, but he couldn’t seriously be about to do that, could he?

Robbie stared at the box as he fiddled with it in his hands, his shoulders tense. “It’s nothing really,” he murmured slowly before his face pinched together and he shook his head. Even he could tell that was bullshit. “Okay, it’s just … something I’ve been carrying with me for the past few weeks, but I wasn’t really thinking anything until you– Well–”

He sighed, glancing over at her. The tips of his ears were turning red. “Can I?” He asked, waving his free hand back and forth by his mouth in a gesture to speak.

Daisy gave a curt nod, her whole body frozen and stiff. She could barely breathe.

Robbie smiled tightly and nodded back. He stood, rubbing the back of his neck as he took a deep breath.

“I know I’m not usually the best with words, so just heart me out. These past several months have been the happiest months of my life. When I made my deal, and became the Ghost Rider, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to have happiness again. I accepted my condemned agreement. But then you showed up at El Monte one night like my own personal angel from Hell,” He chuckled warmly and her heart squeezed tight. “And you shook up my life and changed it so much for the better. Before you appeared, I was just a dead man walking, but you showed me that I could have and be so much more than that. If it weren’t for you, I may have never had a great, open relationship with Gabe again, for which I can never thank you enough. You helped me find control in my chaos. You helped me find the light in the darkness.

"I know we never really put a label on whatever this thing was with us, and I understand if this is too much for you, but I’ve got to let my feelings known.”

Robbie stepped closer until they were barely a foot apart, holding up the little black box. He flipped open the lid and Daisy inhaled sharply through her nose. Cushioned inside was a simple, silver twisted ring, set with a tiny white diamond. The gem had to be barely ¼-carat, but it still managed to shine radiantly in the soft light.

Shit, that’s a ring. That is a freaking ring.

Daisy covered her nose and mouth with her hands as she struggled to keep her legs from going out from under her. Despite her S.H.I.E.L.D. training to remain calm no matter the situation, her heart started picking up speed until she was pretty sure it was going a mile a minute. He couldn’t be serious. This couldn’t actually be happening right now.

“This was my mother’s engagement ring,” Robbie continued, unable to meet her gaze as his face began to flush. “It’s not much, but it represents the eternal love between two of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. It was given to me after they died, and I was told to save it for somebody special. I didn’t think that would ever happen, but Papá always used to say, 'When you know, you know.’” He looked to her and nodded his head. “And I know.”

The floorboards creaked as Robbie slowly got down on to one knee in front of her. Daisy couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, but everything around her started to tremble. This was actually happening. He was actually doing this. Out of all the scenarios she had imagined in her head about where their conversation would go when he got home, this was definitely not one of them. Daisy bit the inside of her cheek as butterflies scrambled in her stomach. Oh, crap, was she going to throw up?

Robbie took a deep breath as he raised the little box and his eyes focused on hers. There was a fire in those dark brown eyes. Not as fierce as when the Ghost Rider showed up, but they still burned brighter than a shooting star. There was also a gentle warmth flickering in them like a friendly campfire on a cold night. It was the tenderness to his flames that so few got to see, but she was grateful she was one of them.

The rumbling hysteria that was her nerves slowly began to quell into a standstill. Daisy lowered her hands away from her face, and Robbie gently took hold of her left hand in his right. The rough skin of his thumb ran comfortingly over her fingers, spreading a warmth in her hand that quickly took hold of the rest of her body and melted her heart.

"Daisy Louise Johnson,” he started, his eyes never leaving hers as he fondly punctuated each word of her name like they were sacred. “I love you. I love you so much more than I thought I ever could with anybody. I love your smile. I love your laugh. I love your strong, compassionate heart. I love how you put Sriracha sauce on practically almost everything you eat even if that is honestly the grossest, most disgusting thing I’ve ever had to repeatedly witness.” He laughed and few chuckles bubbled out of her, as well.

“Please, I’ve seen you drink Tapatío straight from the bottle," Daisy cracked.

"Yeah, well you're practically drinking Sriracha with how much you smother everything in it." Robbie grinned impishly. He then cleared his throat, collecting himself once more.

"Anyway, Daisy," he stated, giving her hand a soft squeeze. "Besides Gabe, you are the most important person in this world, dimension, universe or otherwise to me. There was a time I wanted nothing more than you out of my life, and now I can't imagine not having you in it. You make every day so much better just be your mere presence. There is nothing more that I want to do than to spend the rest of my life with you, however long that may be. I know our lives aren't easy, and I know I'm not the most reliable person all the time, but, Daisy, I promise I will do my best to make you as happy every day as you make me. We may argue, we may fight, we may become separated beyond all possible reach for lengths of time, but I swear I will never stop loving you.

"Daisy Johnson, will you m--"

"Yes."

Robbie blinked, his eyebrows scrunching together. "Wait, what?"

Daisy snorted and shook her head back. "Sorry, I couldn't wait any longer, but yes, Robbie. Yes," she stressed, softly smiling and squeezing his hand.

Her heart swelled as his eyes widened and a grin quickly began to grow across his face. "You're serious?"

She groaned, but continued smiling. "Oh my, yes, Robbie! I love you and I want to -- Mmph!"

She was cut off as Robbie suddenly stood and kissed her hard. He still held her hand while his other arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close to him. Daisy grinned against his lips before she closed her eyes and kissed him back long and dear.

Soon, she broke off the kiss, leaning slightly back. "Um, isn't there something you should?" Daisy asked, lifting their conjoined hands as she opened her eyes. Even if this was her first time being proposed to, she had watched enough rom-coms with Fitz-Simmons to know these usually ended with a ring on somebody's finger.

Robbie raised his brow as he opened his eyes. He glanced at her hand and his face started to flush with color. "Right, sorry," he murmured shyly, unwrapping his arm from around her.

Her chest grew tight as Robbie plucked out the ring and slowly slipped the cool metal on to her left ring finger. It was a little loose, but overall it fit perfectly. Tears pricked at her eyes as she stared down at the little ring and soon her entire vision became blurry.

Damn it, Daisy thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn't supposed to get all emotional and shit.

"Sorry," she murmured, opening her eyes to look up at the ceiling and rapidly blink the tears away.

Robbie laughed and squeezed her hand. "It's okay. You're still the most beautiful woman in the universe even when you cry."

Daisy glanced down at his smirking face and rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up," she scoffed, fighting back a smile.

A few more chuckles tumbled their way out of Robbie as he leaned forward and bent his head down. Daisy closed her eyes as his lips met hers once more. Their arms found their way around one another as they held each other close and kissed sweetly. The fire still burned between them with each kiss, as it did the first time all those many months ago. It might not have been as intense as that night, but the flames still blazed as strongly and surely as ever.

She kept her eyes closed as Robbie slowly broke off the kiss and softly rested his warm forehead against hers. Neither one said anything. They didn't need to as they relished in each other's touch and close company.

Daisy smiled weakly. No matter how much she wanted to stay in this perfect moment, she knew it couldn't last. Eventually, S.H.I.E.L.D. would call her back, or maybe the Rider would order Robbie away. Something would happen that would pull them apart from each other again for who knew how long this time.

Daisy tightened her grip on him. She loved Robbie. She didn't know how it happened, but somehow, he slipped right through the cracks in the defensive armor she wore and found a home in her heart. After wasting all this time ignoring her true feelings, she couldn't bear the thought of leaving him now. What if this was the last time they had with each other?

Her heart grew heavy, and then suddenly an idea struck her like sunlight parting through clouds on a rainy day.

Daisy leaned back and opened her eyes. "Robbie, let's get married."

He cocked his head as he opened his eyes and shot her a dubious look. "Um, yeah, Daisy, that was kind of the whole point of me proposing? Sorry if you seemed to miss that--"

"No!" She interjected, slightly bouncing on her toes. "I mean, Vegas is, like, what? A four-hour drive away? Let's go and get married today."

Robbie's eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up high into his forehead. "Today? Isn't that a bit soon?"

"What? Is someone getting cold feet?" She teased with a wicked grin, wiggling her eyebrows.

The double-meaning was not lost on Robbie as he rolled his eyes and disapprovingly shook his head.

"No, it's just --" He pressed his lips together as his eyes hesitantly searched hers. "Are you sure?"

"Robbie," Daisy said softly. She unwrapped her arms from around him and stepped out of his own embrace only to immediately take his hands into her own. Curling their fingers together, Daisy gave him a loving squeeze and flashed him a smile. "I don't mean to put this lightly, but we're freaking superheroes. We risk our lives almost every day to help the greater good. We don't know which day is going to be our last or how much time we will have left together, so . . . Why wait?"

Marriage might have never been in her plans until this very moment. Hell, she'd rather face a whole battalion of Watchdogs alone than even think about getting married, but if there was one thing Daisy was certain of, it was she loved Robbie Reyes. So, if she was going to marry him someday anyway, then why not now?

Daisy had thought she had all the time in the world when she was with Lincoln, and the first time they had ended up saying, "I love you," had also been their last. She couldn't risk waiting for the right moment. Not again.

Robbie stared at the floor as his eyes flicked back and forth in consideration. "Eloping in Vegas," he murmured, rubbing circles on her hands with his thumbs. His eyes slowly met hers. "You know it's crazy, right?"

Daisy snorted and shrugged her shoulders. "When has anything in our lives not been crazy?"

He shook his head as he took a deep breath and sighed. The biggest grin then broke out across his face as he squeezed her hands. "Alright, let's do this. Let's go to Vegas and get married."

Her heart soared as she tugged Robbie towards her and kissed him with all her might. "Let's get hitched!" She beamed as she pulled away.

Robbie chuckled as he separated himself from her and snatched his car keys from off the dining room table. "First, I've got to grab Gabe from the library. He has to come."

She nodded, following him to the front door. "And while you do that, I'll start packing everyone's stuff."

"Make sure you pack something white." He grinned. Robbie wrapped an arm around her waist and dipped her slightly for a kiss. It was a brief, but the move still left her head spinning.

Daisy let out a giddy laugh as she was righted back up and Robbie broke off the kiss. He gave her one final peck good-bye then headed out the front door. She watched him through the window get into the Charger and take off before her eyes flickered to the new ring sitting heavy on her finger. As if acknowledging her gaze, the small jewel flashed a dazzling glimmer that made her heart pick up speed.

A grin stretched across her lips as Daisy turned and headed towards their room. There was even a small skip in her step as she quickly began to figure out what exactly was close enough to being white for her to wear.

* * *

Simmons' hands covered her mouth and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as Daisy pulled her left hand out of her coat pocket and held it out between them. On her left ring finger nestled the engagement ring Robbie had given her along with the small silver band she had received at the Vegas wedding chapel. Somewhere out there in this world, its twin rested on Robbie's own left ring finger, forever tying them to each other as husband and wife. Or, however that cheesy wedding officiant had phrased it.

"So, yeah, I got married."

Simmons said nothing. She only continued to stare at her hand as if it had grown two heads and started singing a duet of the "The Elements."

Oh, crap, I broke her.

"Simmons? Jemma?" Daisy reached across the counter and shook the other woman's arm. What was Fitz going to think if he came back and found his fiancée like this? "Jemma, come back to me."

After a few more rougher shoves, Simmons suddenly blinked back into presence. Daisy let out an audible sigh as she withdrew her hand and the tenseness in her shoulders relaxed.

Simmons slowly shook her head as she lowered her hands from her face onto the counter. "You got married?" She murmured, her eyes seemingly focused on something off in the distance while her voice had a misty, dream-like cadence to it.

"Yeah," Daisy replied, nodding her head. "I was there myself. Signed the official marriage license and everything."

"Daisy!" Simmons snapped suddenly, sounding more like her usual old self. She furrowed her brown then threw a mini pretzel at her.

"Ow!" Daisy retorted, even though the small, salty snack harmlessly bounced off her shoulder and on to the floor. Still, the gesture stung. "What was that for?"

"You got married and you didn't tell us?!"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I-- Hey!" She hollered as another pretzel smacked into her forehead and tumbled onto the counter.

Simmons glared at her with a pout on her lips from across the counter. She held the bowl of mini delicious ammunition close against her chest, one arm poised over the opening ready to grab another projectile at a moment's notice.

Daisy frowned, glancing at her friend's empty wine glass. She had also forgotten how violent Simmons could be sometimes after a few drinks. The whole S.H.I.E.L.D. team still remembered the "Tropical Umbrella Toothpick Incident of 2015." It was honestly hard not to. Why did she choose to drink her worries away with Simmons in the first place?

"Why didn't you tell us when you were about to get married? We all could've been there for it!"

"I told you it was--" Daisy gritted her teeth as she dodged another pretzel. "It was a-- It was-- Jemma stop with the pretzels, already! I told you it was a spur of the moment decision, okay?"

"But we're your family, Daisy! You didn't think we'd want to be there for you during such a momentous occasion?" Simmons snapped. "How would you feel if Fitz and I just decided to head to Cornwall for the weekend and elope without telling anyone else, hm?"

Daisy pursed her lips as her heart grew heavy. This had been what she was afraid of. The yelling. The judgement. All of it was just a colossal weight bearing down on her shoulders and threatening to crush her into the ground. She knew it came from a place of love, but it still hurt all the same.

"Jemma, of course I wanted all of your there more than anything. You know that, but you also didn't even know I was with Robbie until today. Hell, you're the first person I've even told this to. If I told all of you guys I was getting married, there would have been this big commotion of questions and yelling hurt feelings. You guys would have tried to stop me, and all I wanted to do was marry Robbie.

"I know, I should have been more honest with you guys, and I am really sorry, but I'm trying to be now, if that counts for anything."

Simmons' face softened and she slowly released her hold on the pretzel bowl. Daisy quickly grabbed the bowl and placed it far from the other woman's reach.

"I'm sorry, it's just, I was supposed to be your maid of honor!" Simmons sighed, resting her chin on her hand. "I had all these great plans. I was going to help throw your bridal shower, your bachelorette party, and make sure everything went perfectly for your special day."

"Aw, Jemma," Daisy murmured with a tight smile as she reached out and gave Simmons' free hand a comforting squeeze.

"I even started a wedding idea scrapbook for you."

Daisy's eyebrows twisted together as she slowly retracted her hand. "Wait, what?"

Simmons' already pink cheeks flushed to watermelon red as she fiddled with her empty glass and avoided Daisy's eyes. "Oh, it's not much really. It's just that while I was looking up ideas for Fitz and I's wedding, I would see stuff that I thought would be perfect for your wedding. So, I started cataloguing them in your own scrapbook, making sure to leave plenty of space for whatever your future betrothed's style would be, as well," She frowned. "But now I suppose you don't need it."

"Hey, not necessarily," Daisy stated, offering a gentle smile. "Maybe I can use it in a few years if we decide to renew our vows? You know, like a second wedding. That's a thing, right?"

Simmons perked her head up a little higher. "Yeah, or maybe for your next marriage?" She countered with a coy grin.

"Simmons!" Daisy scoffed with a slack jaw. "Robbie's a great guy and you know that!"

Sure, things had been a little rocky when they all first met, but Robbie had really grown to be a part of the team over the past year. Besides providing help during missions and saving their asses countless times, Robbie would often hang out with all of them on the Zephyr or at the Playground during some of his downtime. While some of that had mostly been so they could fool around, Daisy had noticed him getting along well with the rest of her teammates, as well.

Robbie would talk for hours on end about cars with Coulson and Mack. He'd watch and cheer on soccer matches with Fitz and Simmons. He and Yo-Yo were often conversing and joking in Spanish. Daisy had even caught May smile briefly while practice-sparring with him. Even if he refused to be an official S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Robbie was one of them through and through.

"I know, I know," Jemma sighed dramatically, but still had a good-natured smile on her face. "But how great can he be if he helped hide your relationship from us, hm? You know Coulson might just kill you both when he finds out."

Daisy groaned, sinking her upper body on the counter like a rag doll. "Ugh, don't remind me! I have to talk to him before he finds the Vegas charges on my S.H.I.E.L.D. account. " She had hacked them to be listed and labeled as regular various S.H.I.E.L.D. expenses, but she was certain that once Coulson saw the numbers he'd grow suspicious. Sadly, Las Vegas weddings didn't come cheap.

"You charged everything to S.H.I.E.L.D. funds? Glad to see your bad-girl shenanigans never change," Simmons smirked.

"Hey," Daisy retorted, straightening up. "I'll take a pay cut, live off ramen for a few months. It'll be fine." Besides, after all she had done for S.H.I.E.L.D. over the years, she deserved a little treat that just so happened to be in the form of a three-day honeymoon in Vegas.

"Well," Simmons mused, her stool creaking as she shifted in her seat. "Congratulations, Daisy. Seriously. I'm sorry I didn't say it first. I just--" She shook her head. "Can't believe you got married before I did."

"Yeah, trust me, no one is more shocked than I am," Daisy chuckled.

"Are you regretting it? You seemed really upset earlier when you walked in."

Daisy furrowed her brow as she stared at her rings, fiddling them with her thumb. "I was a little concerned at first," she admitted.

Her entire weekend had been nothing but a delicious haze of Robbie loving and room-service coconut shrimp. When she had said good-bye to the Reyes brothers that morning and got on the Quinjet back to the East Coast, it was like she was waking up from a dream. All the warm and fuzzy feelings started to fade away, only to be replaced by the harsh, cold-sweating doubts of reality. Had she made the right decision to marry Robbie? Maybe they had both been too caught up in the moment to realize they could be making a humongous mistake?

"But talking it out with you, reliving all those moments," Warmth flooded her chest as a small beam of sunlight hit her engagement ring and made it sparkle brighter than a thousand stars. Just like it had when Robbie gave it to her. Daisy smiled. "No, I don't regret it. Not one single bit."

It was silly the whole idea that their relationship was determined by a legal document that could never fully express the love she had for Robbie Reyes, but it meant Robbie was hers. No matter what shit might happen in their future, nothing could change that.

Her gaze turned to Simmons who with her quivering smile and glistening eyes looked more emotional than when they finished marathoning the eight Harry Potter movies together.

"Aw, Simmons," Daisy fussed as her heart panged heavily in her chest. "Don't you get all emotional on me, because when you get emotional, I get emotional."

Simmons choked up a laugh as she dabbed at her eyes. "Sorry, it's just you look so happy. It's nice."

Heat rushed to her face and her cheeks began to cramp from her wide smile. "Yeah, it really is nice," she beamed, glancing at her rings.

Simmons took in a deep breath and audibly exhaled in one quick huff. "Well," she announced, slapping her hands onto the counter and pushing herself up off her chair. "Since you didn't get to plan your wedding, you are going to help me plan mine."

Daisy sagged her shoulders and groaned loudly as the other woman grabbed hold of her arm and began tugging her towards the living room. She tried to resist, but Simmons had her in a death grip with the strength of a mountain lion. "Come on, Simmons, you know I'm more of a doer than a planner."

"Oh, I am very much aware of that, Mrs. Reyes."

Her cheeks immediately blazed even hotter. "Actually, it's still Daisy Johnson, but I see your point."

"Come on," Simmons urged, pulling her towards the table she saw earlier filled entirely with wedding booklets and magazines. "We can order sushi and you can tell me more about your husband."

Butterflies swarmed in her stomach. My husband. It was still so surreal to think of Robbie like that, but after all they had been through together in this past year, Daisy knew in her heart that it felt right.

"Okay, but I need at least a dozen spicy tuna rolls and you better have some Sriracha."

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kaibutsushidousha · 7 years

Text

DanganRonpa Re:Birth Summary -Chapter 1, part 2

The investigation part.

Didn’t mention it in the first part, but the name of the chapter is The Life is Short, Race on Girl.

Original script

Everyone is shocked about Rokudou’s death. Maiko starts shaking and falls on the floor. Yodogawa approaches the corpse and confirms he is dead. Fujimori’s first reaction? Of course, saying that’s not possible because the Body Discovery Announcement didn’t happen. Great to see we’re on the same page here. Monodora explains that Fujimori somehow broke the device without realizing. I’m still assuming △○□× forgot about that when posting the first part and made this excuse up. Anyways, Monodora explains the Class Trial, says every is allowed to enter any locker rooms for the investigation and gives the first Monodora File.

Truth Bullet #1: Monodora File The victim is the Super High School Level Undertaker, Saiji Rokudou.The body was discovered on the boys’ locker room of the gym. The time of death was around 2:30a.m. The cause of death was strangulation and signs from a thin string-like object can be found around his neck.

Everyone is being sad and doubting Monodora until Itsuki tells we have no time for that and we should start investigating. Maiko is still shaken and says she can’t and Itsuki tells her to go cry in the corner, not somewhere where she is obstructing the investigation. Itsuki wants to ends this repulsive game asap. Fujimori agrees with sentiment and says he wants to avenge Rokudou.

Yodogawa is helping with the investigation because his talent requires knowledge of murder tricks and even lead him to help with official investigations before (again he is amazingly not lying). Yodogawa says it’s bad to force Fujimori to check the corpse first thing, so he tells him to look around the room first. Fujimori sees the dumbbells in the corner and flashbacks to Yodogawa saying he put it there.

Truth Bullet #5: Boys’ Locker Room Many lockers and two benches. The dumbells and training equipment were placed in the corner. No major changes between its states before and after the murder.

Why are the bullets numbered out of order? Your guess is as good as mine. Anyways, Koga suddenly shows up and points at a window and they do a little test with it.

Truth Bullet #6: Boys’ Locker Room’s Small Window A small window placed somewhat high. It’s not big enough go a person to enter through, so it’s hard to believe anyone could enter or leave through it. Discouting this possibility, the only alternative for leaving or entering the room is the door.

And remember that one locker that didn’t open because the door didn’t fit the frame right? Well, someone didn’t and did a number on it.

Truth Bullet #7: Locker that doesn’t fit the frame One of the lockers on the boys’ locker couldn’t be open because the door didn’t fit its frame. It was apparently wrenched open by force and now the door is so bent it can’t close.

Then Fujimori decides search the trash and finds a letter invinting Samejima to get the motive video’s sequel on the locker room’s locker.

Truth Bullet #8: Letter from the Mastermind? A letter adressed to Kazuomi Samejima, found in the trash can. It was written using only straight lines, probably in order to hide the writer’s handwriting. Its phrasing implies it’s a letter a from the mastermind and it reads "additional information about the motive videos can be found in the boys’ room locker.”

That’s all about the room, so now we’re now moving on to the corpse. Well, in the conversation before, Rokudou said he could checking the corpses, so let’s call him to... oh. Bad jokes aside, they confirm the corpse has signs of strangulation by a thin string.

Truth Bullet #2: Saiji Rokudou’s Corpse Found half-shoved into the boys’ room locker.

Fujimori speculates Rokudou was strangled by the rope in the weapon set Monodora distrubuted everyone the night before.

Truth Bullet #4: Murder Weapon Set A murder kit sent by Monodora along with the message “Stabbing, strangling, beating, poisoning, which will you choose?”. Contains a knife, a rope, a hammer and a bottle.

Then Fujimori notices some bleeding on the back of Rokudou’s head, unrelated to his strangling. He and Yodogawa write it off since it’s not even mentioned it in the Monodora File.

Truth Bullet #3: Saiji Rokudou’s Bump A bump can be found in Rokudou’s head, probably caused by being hit by a blunt object. We can’t determine when it happened.

Fujimori asks to Samejima if he is investigating too and he says he is not, he is not good at that, so he just assigned himself to protect evidence in the boys’ room and assigned Aisaka to protect evidence in the girls’ room. Talking to Todoroki has her questioning why did the killer chose to kill Rokudou inside the locker room. Yodogawa answers that he wasn’t necessarily killed were he was found.

The two leave the locker and go to main area of the gym. They ask Izumo for her alibi and she say she was playing with “the children”. We couldn’t ask Himuro for her alibi because she is too poem mode to give coherent answers. Sakuma says he already searched this room, but couldn’t find anything. The two move to the girls’ locker room.

Fujimori reacts to the room, making Yodogawa notice he was never there before. He explained was looking at the podium while Maiko checked the room. The find the cleaning push car Maiko mentioned, but the mop wasn’t dusty like she said it was.

Truth Bullet #9: Girls’ Locker Room It’s structure is no different from the boys’ locker room. It has a push car and mop that was apparently dusty before the incident, but it looks clean now.

They try moving the push car.

Truth Bullet #10: Push Car A somewhat big push car in the girls’ locker room. It’s make creaking sound when moved, probably because a tire is damaged.

They talk to Aisaka. She is speculating the culprit might be a girl who used the dead Rokudou’s e-Handbook to enter the boys’ room. Fujimori flashbacks to when Monodora changed the rules to forbid that and points out you can’t do it because Monodora is always watching.

Truth Bullet #11: Locker Room’s Card Reader A card reader opens the door when scanning a e-Handbook. You can only enter by using a handbook that matches your gender.

The two talk to Oosone and she mentions the same window the boys’ room also had. She confirms not even her and Sakuma can fit there. Our duo realize they already investigated everything in the gym area, so they decide it would also be good to check Rokudou’s room on the dorm area.

However, before they can go to the dorms, they find Mizuta on the hallway floor searching for something. Fujimori warns her about her pose because someone could see her panties, but she says it’s okay, she is wearing good panties, panties she can let other people without being embarassed about it. Apparently she is always wearing showable panties because she never knows when she is going to be suddenly called to livereport a typhoon. The two ignore Mizuta’s clearly suspicious behavior and leave to the dorms without even asking what exactly she is looking for.

They reach the dorms, but before they can start looking for Rokudou’s room, Tsuchiya says it’s locked. He is too lazy to properly explain and tells them to ask Monodora. They wonder about that and Tsuchiya tells them that Monodora always comes when called and answers almost any questions.

Akira Tsuchiya: He is actually quite obedient when I ask him stuff. I even got the sucker to run some errands for me for a while...

It’s like he is not even trying to hide it, honestly.

Anyways, Yodogawa calls Monodora with a Doraemon reference and asks about the locked rooms. Monodora makes about how personal rooms are absolutely private spaces, so the autolocks only respond to the room’s owner (that means you can’t just steal someone’s e-Handbook and try to invade the room with it. Due to his Bad Luck talent, Fujimori worries that his autolock might activate the one time he forgets his e-Handbook inside the bedroom and leave him stuck outside. Yodogawa also remembers the rooms are soundproofed, as they tested earlier.

Truth Bullet #12: Personal Rooms Private rooms assigned to each student. They are all equipped with automatic locks, so someone forgeting to lock their doors is out of the question.

Maiko had the same idea of searching Rokudou’s room and got the same answer from Tsuchiya. Fujimori asks her about her injury and she tells her alibi. After she finished exercising with him and Rokudou, she went to sleep early, but was woken up by a huge noise. She decides to exercise some more with the training equip in her room and practice some dances but tripped and got hurt. The infirmaty is locked during nighttime, so she spent the time waiting for the morning announcement to go disinfect and put a band-aid on her wound. Judging from Fujimori’s wording on his response, it really feels like he also noticed she was lying about the noise but I can’t say it for sure.

Truth Bullet #13: Maiko Kagura’s Injury On the murder’s night, she was woken up by some big noise and got hurt while practicing dance on her room. It’s covered by a band-aid and it looks a bit painful.

The last thing that happens before the end of the investigation is talking to Itsuki. The only thing she has to add is that the only areas not locked at nighttime are the dorms, the gym, the dining hall, the courtyard and the warehouse. She talked to Monodora about it and he says that at a later chapter, when the staff room is open, a student might be able to grab the master key and opens any areas at nighttime though. It’s weird were getting hints for a future trial now, but that’s an interesting way of doing things.

Monodora announces the end of the investigation and tells everyone to gather at the dorm area. After everyone is here, we get a generic anime transformation scene for the water fountain transforming into an elevator.

Everyone enters the elevator and starts the descending. Yodogawa takes the opportunity for his motivational speech.

Seishi Yodogawa: Are you nervous?

Ayumu Fujimori: ...Huh-? Oh ...Yes. Just like everyone else, I think.

Seishi Yodogawa: Yeah, I can see that. These kind of situation usually doesn’t happen to normal people.

Ayumu Fujimori: Yodogawa-san, are you not tense or nervous or anything?

Seishi Yodogawa: ...I’m... not much. I believe everyone... and you, will be able to help me along my way. I’m, placing my trust on you here. On the... something you have inside you, Fujimori-san, that it feels like it can even change the world.

Ayumu Fujimori: No... I don’t have... anything like that in me.

Seishi Yodogawa: You know it’s very difficult to look at yourself with your own eyes. I think you should believe a little bit more in the information other people give about you. So... from now on, no matter what happens, you better do everything the way you believe in. Because you... you're much more powerful than you think.

Well, that was all of it and now I can FINALLY watch the trial. As for the culprit, I want to believe it’s Mizuta because she was acting really suspicious, but we all know that’s not who the evidence is pointing to.

I really enjoyed Maiko throughout this chapter, she is a great friend, but this is the first trial and she is the only person clearly lying her alibi, so there’s not much room to think I’m wrong. Looking back at her profile, it even mentions she has a weak mentality and is easiest to panic. I thought this was expressed by her falling to the ground when Rokudou was found, but I could very be her being the first one fall for Monodora’s motives. Not to mention we know Fujimori’s gender will be exposed in the Trial and Maiko is currently the only one who knows that, so I’m assuming she will out him as a last ditch accusation after being cornered

#danganronpa re:birth #ayumu fujimori #seishi yodogawa #misuzu aisaka #mikoto itsuki #kasumi izumo #maiko kagura #mitsunari koga #marin mizuta #narumi oosone #saiji rokudou #keigo sakuma #kazuomi samejima #aruma todoroki #akira tsuchiya #drrb

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thewritelycampix · 7 years

Text

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 3: Graveyard Shift

Town pride is a commonplace thing in any world. People and Pokémon alike seem to have a need to protect what they believe is theirs, even though in reality, it is just a big plot of land with a variety of rectangles and triangles built on top of it. Why humans had developed these enamoured attachments and why Pokémon decided it was a good idea to follow, we will never know. Some may argue that the concept of a home is a comforting prospect for people to come home to. But it is not the question of having a home, but simply having an attraction to the land itself, rather than the sense of security it brings. Most people would usually think this does not make sense, developing an emotional or even romantic attachment to a large square-ish chunk of dirt and rocks, but many do it anyways. This is not a good idea, because like many things that people love, there are other people that exist only to take that beloved thing, knock it off its cone into the sand and drive over it with their fancy Diesel-chugging ATV. And all the hours those people had spent figuratively making out with the local bar will be put into perspective as all the things they loved become roadkill.

Nuzlocke was a beautiful town. It was incredibly obvious by looking at the town that it was a labour of love that had lasted decades, perhaps centuries to make. Nuzlocke was thriving. An item shop, jewellery, outdoor mall, a town square, Technical Machine and Relic shop, daycare; the town seemed to have everything. This statement wasn’t entirely true.

“Everyone here seems kind of cold,” Coran noticed. By this, he did not mean that everyone in Nuzlocke was uncomfortable with the temperature; rather, he meant that nobody quite seemed to appreciate his presence that much.

“…Really? I’ve never noticed.” Squirtle (the Eevee) said, looking around.

“That was sarcasm, wasn’t it?” Coran said, crossing his arms. “Honestly, I’m really new here, so I can’t tell. Sarcasm is not a good idea when you’re introducing people to places and such.”

“No, it isn’t sarcasm,” Squirtle reiterated. “I’ve really just kept to myself. My only contact with these Pokémon is through the Bulletin Board. They post problems, I solve them. End of story.” Squirtle shrugged. “But now that you mention it, everyone does seem kind of quiet and reclusive.”

“Yeah, it’s like everyone here is an adolescent teenager who takes pride in being an introvert.”

Squirtle stared at him, confused. “…what?”

“Forget it,” said Coran, mentally reeling from the words that had spilt out of his mouth. What had he even said? He couldn’t remember it exactly. It was foggy, as if the sentence had been said months ago rather than moments.

Squirtle, who, by this point, had begun deliberating on what Coran had pointed out about Nuzlocke’s general attitude, tried to start a conversation with a passing Breloom. “Hi there!” she said, uncharacteristically cheerily.

Breloom gave her a confused look, before narrowing his eyes. He seemed to be trying to discern what it was Squirtle wanted. “Um…Hello.”

“Nice day, isn’t it?” Squirtle asked.

Breloom simply looked up at the sunny blue sky. “No.”

Squirtle wasn’t expecting a negative answer. She drew back in surprise. “What? Why?”

“I am a part mushroom. Mushrooms like dank, dark places. It’s too hot for me.” Breloom said, before walking along his way without another word.

Squirtle frowned deeply. “I…wasn’t expecting that. Maybe he’s just an outlier,” she mumbled, giving Coran a curious look. “Anyways, we didn’t come here to socialise. We came here to shop. Come on, let’s go.”

Squirtle led Coran up to a nearby booth built into the front of what looked like a warehouse. It was currently empty - nobody was there. “Hello?” Squirtle called. “Is anyone there?”

A bored looking Shuppet came to the front of the booth. Her half-lidded eyes took in the pair of Pokémon in front of her. She let out a quiet sigh and took a deep breath. “Hello, and welcome to Banette’s Bazaar, how can I help you today?” The words came out of her mouth so monotonous and easily it seemed as if she had been saying them for the past ten minutes before Coran and Squirtle had come to the booth.

“Yes, I’d like to peruse some of your wares, please,” Squirtle replied.

Shuppet raised an eyebrow at Squirtle’s eloquent vocabulary and gestured behind her. “There’s shelves upon shelves back there. Take a look at our…extensive selection of merchandise and commodities.” Shuppet said, smirking a bit.

Squirtle, a bit put off, nodded her head curtly. “Thank you.”

Coran, while Squirtle and Shuppet had been talking, was checking out the shelves. It wasn’t a very big store, but there still was quite a selection. Many, many berries, a few TMs and HMs, rocks, sticks, thorns, seeds and some very expensive vitamins. Squirtle walked up to him. “What do you see?”

“Just gonna put this out there, but…” Coran’s voice quivered as he looked at the plethora of items with nothing short of overwhelming fear. “I have no idea what any of this stuff does.”

“Y'know, I would explain this to you, but I feel I’ve done enough explaining to last me a lifetime, so I’ll just take some of these,” she said, grabbing some of the blue berries and putting them in her bag. “…and we should probably have some of these,” she finished, putting two reddish seeds into her treasure bag. She took it back to the front of the shop.

Shuppet, without even looking at the bag, told them the total was 900 Poké. Squirtle paid the right amount, then left. “Coran,” she said. “I believe it’s time for you to take your first trouble.”

Coran wasn’t so sure he agreed with her about that, but he realised that he would have entered a losing battle if he tried to challenge that, so he decided not to resist. They headed back to the Bulletin Board and looked at the possible jobs.

“Here. This one looks good for your first time,” Squirtle announced. Coran looked at where Squirtle was pointing. It read:

Get my pendant back!

Rank: E Dungeon: Sorrowing Meadows

My name is Yamask. I was travelling through the Sorrowing Meadows on my way to my friend’s place. I came through without incident, but when I got back to Nuzlocke, I found that my pendant, which had been handed down through my family for a long time, was missing! I would go back to get it, but now I hear rumours of suspicious Pokémon roaming around. Please, get it back!

Reward: 1000 Poké

Coran bit his lip. A shiver ran down his spine at the name. “Sorrowing Meadows?” he said, unable to banish a whine from his voice. “I-is that somewhere between Blood-Death Gulch and Endless Pain Hill?”

“Oh, hush. The Sorrowing Meadows aren’t that bad. And besides, it seems like he was only on the main path, so it’ll be easy to find the pendant.” She let that hang a bit, then continued. “I’m coming with you, of course. This is your first job, and you didn’t really pass the Sanity test, so I’m going to be keeping an eye on you.”

Normally, this would have struck Coran as an attack on his ego. But the thought of tackling such a sinister-sounding place such as the Sorrowing Meadows alone was even more of an attack, and on something a little more vulnerable than his ego. He agreed.

“Here it is! The Sorrowing Meadows,” announced Squirtle, nodding in what she was sure was an official manner.

Coran looked at her in confusion. “How can you be so chipper in a place like this?”

The Sorrowing Meadows looked quite sorrowing indeed. The thickly laid trees were dead skeletons, reaching out to scratch and scrape anyone who passed by, as if they were being controlled by a deranged puppeteer. The pale moon rising up along the scraggly horizon of gnarled branches made tinted everything below its light a sickly purple colour, draining the forest of any sign of life. The worn dirt path had stone bricks scattered about, half buried in the dirt. It was as if someone had tried to civilize the woods, but had died when he had just started the act. Even this path the poor soul had made seemed threatened, as if the purple grass was extending its tendrils to choke it out. If he looked hard enough, Coran could see the outline of a steeple in the background. A holy building in an unholy place was not a good thing for a genre savvy Pokémon like him. Overall, this was not first stage material.

“And why did we have to come here at night? Why can’t it wait till the morning?”

“Because, Coran,” Squirtle answered, “That notice was posted today, and it detailed suspicious Pokémon about-”

“Wouldn’t that mean going at night was a bad thing?!” Coran blurted.

“Let me finish!” Squirtle snapped. “Suspicious Pokémon are dangerous, yes, but they could also steal the pendant. It’s best for us to get the pendant as soon as possible so it isn’t stolen. The client comes first.”

Coran hesitated. “Okay, fine. Let’s do it. But when we get back, I’m going to make a mattress and you’re going to help me.”

“…No I’m not.”

“Come on!”

“Yes, come on, that’s a great idea,” Squirtle said, flicking her tail and taking her first steps into the Sorrowing Meadows.

Things did not get better when they entered the dungeon. Almost immediately the moon at their backs was blotted out by the skeleton-like trees. The path, though worn enough to be seen, became more and more choked by ivy and grass as the two Pokémon ventured further into the forest. It was getting truly hard to see, and Coran was beginning to doubt whether he would even be able to spot a tiny pendant at all in the darkness. He did note that he didn’t see any of those aforementioned ‘hostile Pokémon’, which he was grateful for. But he would much rather be sleeping right now. This was not an enjoyable pastime and his entire body recognized this.

"Well, farther up and further in!” Squirtle chirped in an excessively happy manner, as if trying to mock him.

Coran simply sighed and followed her. That was before he tripped on a tree root.

“Ow.” Coran was not in the best of moods, and this did not help. Therefore, he had to convince himself to get up. He spent one long minute on the ground, trying his very hardest to tell himself that going further into this forsaken land was a better idea than lying here in the dirt. When he did get up, however, he was faced with a rather prominent problem.

Squirtle was gone.

One hour later…

Coran ran frantically through the quickly darkening forest, trying to find any sign of Squirtle. Or any sign of an exit.

Or any sign of hope.

Terrified at every single sound he knew he wasn’t making, he dashed across the path, confident that Squirtle wouldn’t have strayed from it. But the longer he ran alongside the road, the darker things became, and the more hopeless things seemed to be. The ground somehow felt unfamiliar beneath his paws. This was a strange thing to note, Coran realized, considering that he’d never been here before. This entire place was unfamiliar. Then he remembered he was also apparently an amnesiac. So not only was this place unfamiliar, but also literally everything he’d ever experienced since waking up in that field. His throat was getting scratchy from thirst. He didn’t have a bag on him. No berries grew here. There was only sorrow.

This is my first job! I can’t die here! Where is she? Where is anything?!

Coran was getting delirious. Why…why is it even called Sorrowing Meadows…? It’s a forest. Not meadows. If…if anything, Nuzlocke should be called Sorrowing Meadows. Would that mean this place was Nuzlocke? What does Nuzlocke mean, anyways? Is there a secret in Nuzlocke? Is there a thousand year old door locked with a key you can only get by winning a racing tournament with foxy items off destination? Where can I get a nuzkey? Is there a town called Nuzkey, and if there is how do I get it to Nuzlocke so they can kiss and unlock the foxy tourney door….? He chuckled nervously. He had slowed down, and was simply walking across the path absentmindedly. After a while of sauntering along his merry way, he heard a sort of metal scraping along with his footsteps. He looked down, and saw a pendant and chain hooked around his foot. He picked it up, and guessed it must have been the pendant he was here for.

“…I…I win,” he said, teetering on his feet. “H-hey…hey, Sq-Squirtle…H-how many points is…” Before he could finish his sentence, Coran fell flat on his face, unconscious.

“He’s out cold…”

“What do we do now? Can we?”

“It’s fine…he doesn’t need it.”

“It’s so shiny!”

“He won’t mind, right?”

“Right.”

And the pendant was gone.

Link to Chapter 4

Start at the beginning

#pmd #pokemon mystery dungeon #no pokeballs allowed #npa #story #chapter 3

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seanmeverett · 7 years

Text

Notes from Gigaom’s AI 2017 Conference

Insights from Enterprise AI startups, CIOs, and Data Scientists

I. Setting the Stage

Yesterday we attended the Gigaom’s Artificial Intelligence conference in San Francisco. The focus was on the enterprise, from the perspective of what’s actually being implemented rather than the possibilities of what could come in the future.

All of the notes below are typed using the exact words said by the participants. We did not take any leeway with the language, interpretation, nor have we provided any opinion on this.

What you read below is factually accurate as best as we could copy from the participants themselves.

II. Blueprint for Building & Deploying Enterprise AI Solutions Across Industries

Panelists

Tim Crawford (moderator)

Somya Kapoor: ServiceNow

Josh Sutton: Publicis Sapient

Kumar Srivastava: BNY Mellon

Biggest industries from a survey (most participants work in a company with 1K to 25K employees)

Financial services

Healthcare

Manufacturing

Construction

Where do people get started with AI?

33% are in evaluation stage

25% in planning and getting to production

Why still early stages?

Most organizations are used to the past rate of change

But now time period is a much shorter cycle

Many people are hurrying to react and do it smartly

Now people are getting in deep

Are enterprise projects net new?

90% of AI work is net new activity

Existing things in production means you have to refactor what’s already there and takes time

This it’s easier to start fresh

Traditional devops is not used to dealing with new models

Easier to try something new business production container is new. Deploy that up front and no legacy software to deal with

Smarter for enterprises to start with net new

Learnings from starting to implement AI (commands)

Modify how a user or employee operates

Based on patterns this might be the right thing to do, adds an extra step. Safer, harder to inspect a black box AI

How to retrain employees for working with AI

People seem to start with Bots as their first experience with AI

Vast majority of respondents sit to 5 to 100 bots, not 1–5 buckets

Intent and entity abstraction

Next up consolidation of bots

Entire customer journey experience (look at the entire thing, not just one small piece) is the holy grail

accounting, supply chain, customer service

Are people looking to solve a broad set of problems or specific?

Vast majority of respondents are split evenly between a broad approach and holistic approach

One problem that gets solved first then use that to build off of for the holistic strategy

Agile and BI opened the door

Initiatives can start in IT (becoming a service later, reduce headcount)

Password reset is one of the biggest requests for Bots

Problems

Training the people is one of the hardest things to do

Strategy situation from Board to CEO, lots of competition within the firm: different solutions for different problems that don’t work together

What part of the organization started the AI conversation?

Finance (cost cutting as goal could result in problems in the future)

Huge drop off after that

But there’s an expectation that other parts of the organization will be able to consume what comes out of IT. Needs to be a company driven strategy.

IT is becoming a provisioning layer so others can consume it

Doesn’t matter where it starts just that it does

But needs to become consistent with a coherent strategy

In House vs External?

45% are building their AI services in-house rather than getting outsiders

Market is flooded with too many vendors

ServiceNow taking a two-prong approach (google, Watson) don’t feel like they can solve it all by themselves

What role does open source play? And how?

Have the best minds in the world working on this stuff, competing to give away the best services

Leverage but know you still have to build on top

Majority of AI effort starts with open source

Platform company so have to work with open source but have to add more

Two types: academic or large tech companies (incentives) both are starting points

Use them to go from zero to 60 very quickly

Many product companies are based on open source underpinnings

75% of survey respondents say open source plays a very significant role

Explainability is the big problem. How do you rewind the decision-making for transparency for how it works?

Use case

Show how a customer incident is correlated to a knowledge article based on machine learning

Confidence interval. Can’t say why it’s the answer but can give you 99% confidence that it is right

III. How To Consider Proof of Concept Use Cases, Building & Scaling Your POC

Panelists

Soma: Madrona Group (moderator)

Jim McHugh: NVIDIA

Peter Marx: GE Digital (predix platform, former CTO city of LA)

Jim

NVIDIA DGX-1 is a supercomputer in a box

Most of the people working on AI don’t have the resources to set up a farm

NVIDIA wanted to come out with something turnkey, democratize it and make the compute power accessible

Only been about 4 years from AlexNET

Peter

GE has 380,000 employees

Turbines produce about 12% of the world’s power (scale is crazy)

60% of airplanes run on a GE turbine

Been in AI world for a long time, came out of medical imaging, then Apple to work on videos, then work in video games (football AIs, race car AIs)

Techniques has been around a long time but what changed is access to data (and processing power

How do you get started in a POC?

Peter Marx:

GE looks at asset performance management across all their machines, when will they break?

LA has several million trees. Lifetime of a tree is 80 years, 3 years to establish a tree, fancy neighborhoods have more trees. Trees represent equity, how thriving the city is, and different than urban street islands with no trees.

With the drought, LA had to figure out what to do with the trees along with 20-year lawsuit on sidewalk damage where replacing a couple hundred thousand trees

Need a catalogue of trees, hiring a bunch of people to drive around the streets doesn’t work in today’s world (need more fidelity and automation)

Tensorflow and computer vision techniques used to identify species: did it on google street view, the computer is driving down the street and cataloguing getting down to sub-meter resolution

How do you do that in a mayor’s office

He did a small POC in Caltech then pulled up satellite image from 1996 data (pretty scratchy). Over 20 years many things changed. Get started with a small area, make it highly visible. Then we said we need money to do it across entire city of LA. By the time they got the money, had already done it across the entire city of LA and looked like Gods.

Reason GE is moving into Predix is because we’ve reached the limits of performance improvements in our engines, materials science, process engineering. But now we can start to optimize thrust across an entire fleet of planes and power performance. Level of complexity not taken by man before.

Jim McHugh

Bring people through their demo center

Put cameras in car and let them learn intuitively, after 100 hours they were hitting all the orange cones, after 3000 hours it’s driving through the streets of New Jersey in rain and showing the power of image recognition

Identifying objects: “do you know how many warehouse issues that solves for me?”

Showed it to consumer companies: P&G, Oil of Olay (do a study of your face and recommend right lotion, 60% to 70% didn’t understand product line, after app it’s a 90% product satisfaction and 88% repurchase rate)

Pattern recognition: studying network traffic patterns then detect an anomaly, understand where connections belong; same thing with Voice

Always start with Gaming in demo center, incredible amount of computational math, showing raw compute power and simulation (don’t need experience in real life)

PRISMA art overlays on top of your photo, generate new scenes for Blade Runner

Oxford getting 93% accuracy at lip reading, most humans are just above 50% (what can you do with cars and trucks)

IV. Fireside Chat: Auren Hoffman & Byron Reese

Auren Hoffman Bio

Started LiveRamp sold to Axiom

CEO of a startup that makes data sets for AI

Angel investor

Why was now the time AI is coming out?

We have enough data (stock market)

Over-predicting self-driving cars, most still driven by humans in the next 10 years

Under-predicting other interesting types of AI

What can we do to speed up the development of AI?

Really focus on getting the historical data on the truth of what happened

Truth is really important (chess moves, stock market mostly true)

Building models based on bad data can compound the mistakes very quickly

How much time are they spending on data?

80% to 90% of their time is cleaning, munging, dealing with privacy

Spending only 5% of their time on the actual AI

One of the reasons Google gets all the researchers is they don’t have to do any of the other stuff around the data, just work your magic (compelling recruiting pitch)

Biggest complaint is they have to do all this other stuff, the problem is labeled training data

Enterprise problems

500 vendors yesterday, 5,000 vendors today, another order of magnitude tomorrow

Wal-Mart has 1,000 vendors for just marketing technology alone

Number of vendors is astronomical and it’s growing

How do you manage vendors? Law firm, for instance

Instead of using a spreadsheet, now using an API

Almost a vendor assembly line, sometimes vendors work together to move data around

A company’s DNA is defined by their vendor: it’s like a fingerprint

Thesis for investing in AI companies

Have to tease out if someone wants to be cool, or do they have a passion about this particular thing

Hard thing to test for

Invests in B2B kind of companies, but seems a bad idea

Just investing in a good time to be a good time to be an investor

Where do you get data?

First, make sure the data is true (bad algorithms from bad data)

Scale is important, what is scale?

Watson Oncology, data from Sloan Kettering (procedures and outcomes); going to need more data from more sources, guessing the data is labeled, true, and clean

Probably want data from all hospitals that don’t have the best people and practitioners, and from all over the world. Variation.

Most interesting data sets that he has at his startup?

It’s not about one data set, but many together

Quant hedge funds

Graphing data cross data sets

Originally look at each data set by itself, train and that works relatively well, each data set had some sort of value to get better performance

But the real value they found was graphing all these data sets together, then asking questions

But by putting these things together, you start to learn a lot of interesting things

Nutrition is hard: everything you ate, wealth, DNA of people all together to graph for understanding on what’s going on

But if we could we would unlock the benefits to humanity

This is basically general intelligence

V. Line of Business AI: How Marketing, Sales, Customer Support, HR, Finance & Product Can Use AI Without Being a Data Scientist

Panelists:

Sam Charrington: CloudPulse strategies (moderator)

Simon Chan: Salesforce

Matt Gandolfo: Charlotte Russe

Terry Cordeiro: Lloyds

Charlotte Russe

Fast fashion, don’t rebuy products, have to make decisions quickly and repeatably

Issue is with a lot of people making decisions manually

Instead of just prescribing an action, actually take that action

Identify that the fleet is in the right location

If you shut a store down can ecommerce pick up the slack

They’re looking for commoditized solutions so they don’t have to hire data scientists or machine learning

Aren’t going to hire a bunch of data scientists and PhDs because they’re too expensive

Components of change management and retraining people when you get rid of their job of updating excel spreadsheets

AI is nobody’s full-time job, only have 50-person IT team total

So the question is how do they leverage solutions

Partnered with a vendor to take data around physical stores and eCom, other attributes to run a bunch of what-if scenarios

Problem is it’s built on an external vendor’s platform

cost was cheaper, shifting more data to them is more risk, what if data leaks out

Salesforce

Einstein platform, AI that runs on top of Salesforce as a CRM tool (came from Prediction.io startup he built)

Automate tasks they don’t want to do

In addition to metamind acquisition

Focus on improving the customer experience, customer improvement

Have an AI system that can help them

Make their business more efficient, and make AI customizable for any business to use

They have 100 machine learning researchers / PhDs

Data is already in the cloud and ready, so much easier to get benefit from it

Cloud is the infrastructure that can empower AI (get data ready, get model ready, get production ready)

When compare in-house development vs external: moving from POC to mass production they start to see the cost difference (maintenance in own IT infrastructure)

Pivotal point where people look to external solutions is when the scale and productionization happens

Keeping business users in the team with data scientists, that’s when real value is created

Privacy and data protection seems to be a big problem (at least with consumer use cases)

Trust is #1 value of salesforce

Lloyds

One of the products they want to build is a cognitive platform; started thinking about virtual assistants and then extended into the rest of the business (“empower colleagues as well as customers”)

Definitely a skills shortage in this area

Build a centralized AI team that offers AI as a Service to the rest of the organization

Good relationship with IBM Watson so chose them, use Bluemix as their dev environment, use data already had

Learning: spent too much time training the model, should have done it quicker and cheaper

Have 5 people: data scientist, product manager, scrum master, engineer, architect sit around a table and get something done quickly (paid for by different parts of the bank)

Can’t do this on-premise, would be impossible

Build components out as services, then put a wrapper around it

Use some open-source

Their differentiator will always be their data, and the bank should use that intelligently

IP will be in AI as a Service platform approach

Very worried about sensitivity of data in the cloud

VI. Super Powers of Innovation

Sandy Carter

CEO & Founder, Silicon Blitz (spent 20 years at IBM)

[email protected]

Stats

Narrative Science has been doing research on AI

80% of business executives in 2017 believe AI will help improve worker performance and create new jobs

Gartner predicts 85% of interactions will be done without a human in 2020

Bloomberg: $300M as first investment in new AI startups

PWC: 1757 execs: 93% of execs depend on innovation to drive growth

Forrester: why companies DON’T use AI

42% there is no defined business case

39% not clear what AI can be used for

33% don’t have the required skills

29% need first to invest in modernizing data management platform

Jeremiah Olang (did a study on innovation)

114 companies, asked them “What is innovation?”

Answer was across 4 areas: AI innovation in product, operational, client experience, business model

Startup: 360 Fashion collaborating with Intel, Chinese government, and CCTV (1.2 billion people watched new year’s celebration)

Smart glove fashion

162 dancer synchronization, sensor based, learned gestures

Use of AI in media and entertainment using these smart gloves

Mastercard

#36 on Fortune’s most innovative companies list

Who are you, are you you, what can you do

85% of payments are still done with cash

Disruptive business model

Atipica

Look at a profile and look at unconscious bias in hiring company (removes it from resume)

Diversity and inclusion, automatically review matches

Tesla

AI in cars, obviously

Ecosystem around their technology (if you leave your car at a charging station, keeps charging you)

Marketing AI Use Cases

Personalization

Content Creation & Curation

Recommendation Engine

Search Optimization

Product Pricing

Customer Service

Ad targeting

Voice recognition

Segmentation (her favorite as a past CMO)

Superpowers

Super Intelligence: understand the technology, but also the business and use case

Super Speed: ability to experiment rapidly

Super Synergy: build ecosystem of partners (not just a standalone system)

VII. CIO Panel: Do It Yourself, Partner, Or Buy?

Panelists

Tim Crawford (moderator)

Paul Chapman Box, prior at HP

Tom Keiser: Zendesk, prior Gap, then Victoria’s Secret

Elinor Mackinnon: Devcool, prior esurance, prior Blueshield California, prior biopharma company, prior Charles Schwab

Where is AI fitting into CIO agenda, or is it not?

Zendesk

consumer of AI right now, it is definitely one of the tools they use

Don’t really have an AI initiative, have a series of initiatives to drive productivity and scale (which have some AI components)

Growing rapidly globally requires customer service touchpoints

Global products that need to be secured

13 data centers now, each year a few more, whole series of AI around capacity planning, knowing when bad things are going to happen

Box

Heavily millennial workforce, taking friction out of product

Deliberate set of investments to change how employees interact with technology

Dialogue-based user experience, Bots, voice controlled conference rooms, Alexa

Expectation that they’re a forward thinking tech company

Deliberate that there’s enough meat to move the company forward

Insurance (P&C)

See a pretty big spectrum

Use an internal team for service and support like Lloyds

Struggle going from low impact, low risk and moving to something that would have a big impact is very risky and hard for them

Attendees at InsurTech: many were from outside the US (lots of innovation globally), many called themselves purely AI

Small startups taking a narrow slice of AI combined with something else (dongles and data for car insurance)

Is AI like mobile apps where you plug into the cloud, or does it require something net new?

400 service reps closing out a ticket from 100,000 tickets

A reply of “thank you” from the customer re-opens a ticket so machine learning can learn not to open that instead of “thank you, but”

Role of CIO, where does CIO fit in conversation around AI?

Depends on how role is defined, sometimes the expertise of other business unit leaders can bring AI to the table

Some CIOs are likely spending a lot of their time working on infrastructure-related issues

AI slash deep learning, AI slash IoT, AI slash robotics

AI is not just in a vacuum or in a silo, it’s always coupled to something else

AI for support functions is a big deal, take out the repetitive processes

CIO previously was a foreign relationship in the C Suite, now it’s a much closer relationship

The language of IT

“AI is the convergence of the physical, digital, and biological set to disrupt everything.”

In the world of insurance, who do we insure if nobody is driving a car, do we stay in the business, get out of it, what do we do with the actuaries

Build versus Buy?

Most of the survey respondents are using a best of breed approach solution rather than using a platform

Outside providers, all of them want to be a platform, all my data is in there, second platform

No one is selling you just the component you need, instead they want them to live in their platform

Insurance space: move to micro-products, go small instead of selling you an entire platform

Don’t know if there ever will be a single platform?

Before we pick a platform, lets have a strategic conversation, architecture could get really complicated

“Show me the org chart of Ralph Lauren” instead of having to go through single sign on, two-factor authentication, navigate to the person, then open it up

Big use case for email:

3 suggested responses to any email based on your tone and writing style, inherent to the subject of the message

Most innovation in insurance tech

UK: less regulation

Micro products, people don’t want to buy an entire portfolio of insurance products, they just want to turn some product on or off

AI: use service side of it to give insurance customer an entirely different experience in the moment when the problem happens (it how they remain loyal to the companies)

Insurance: such a huge corpus of data, all available in the public domain

I want to take my bike out of the house, turn my insurance on, bring my bike home, turn the insurance off

— Sean