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greenninjagal-blog · 3 months

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Dead Men Break No Codes pt1

I've been playing too many escape rooms recently. Fic be upon ye :D

Summary: Rookie Fbi agent, Roman is a certified genius who's time to shine is right now, while a serial killer's taken up taunting the police with puzzles leading them to the bodies of their victims! Someone should probably warn him about being so good at his job.

Word Count: 12020

Quick Taglist: @chelsvans @coyboi300 @dante-reblogs @dwbh888 @glitchybinaa @faithfulcat111 @felicianoromano @harrypotternerdprincess @holliberries @jemthebookworm @killerfangirl3 @mrbubbajones @musical-nerd18 @nonasficcollection @stricken-with-clairvoyancy @the-sunshine-dims @themagicheartmailman @themultishipperchild @thenaiads @treasureofpriam @vianadraws @welovelogansanders

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Chapter One: Odd Man Out

The letter found at the latest crime scene isn’t directly addressed to Roman but based on the entire crime scene team’s reaction, it might as well have been.

Roman had barely held onto the card for more than a few minutes, just enough that he could gage the type of paper, the ink color, the number of pages, the smell—all the nitty gritty details that might help them solve the riddles before someone else died—before he sent it off to the labs for further testing. Roman’s notes along with photos of each of the three pages of the banal opinions were displayed through a projector on the wall of the conference room they were in so everyone could see them, but the longer Roman stared at it all, the more he thought that he might have been going slightly stir crazy.

“I stand by what I said,” Virgil says from the corner where he’s strangling a stress ball to the point of it disintegrating in his hands. “Someone needs to get this guy a fucking hobby. Who even uses the word “effulgent” anymore?”

“I think murdering people is his hobby,” Roman comments as he scribbles through yet another code breaking attempt that led nowhere and provided nothing but a hatred for the English alphabet.

It’s obvious there's some type of code in it: previous crime scenes and puzzles aside, no one uses the words Verisimilitude and Brummagem without it being intentional, and certainly not the guy who’s killed ten people in the past three weeks. There are underlined words that spell out "your year of creation is key" and bolded words that read out “From Capitals to Rome” and all of it was tied together with a stunning, swooping bit of calligraphy that's left him with a headache after staring at it so long. Perfect punctuation, no extra doodles or dots: the letter itself talks scathingly about modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and detectives and what it means to be a genius in a world that doesn’t appreciate geniuses. Roman’s done the math: thirty-three sentences, averaging ten words across all of them, no direct address, but signed off with a cute “Plex”.

Which was short for “Perplex” because their serial killer thought they were clever.

If Roman had come across this guy in any other situation, he might have grown a grudging respect for him. Might have asked him out for drinks, even! Some of the puzzles that they’d come across are downright dazzling and ingenious and challenging and reminded Roman of his childhood so much they were nostalgic. If Roman ignored the code and read the letter as it was, he was left with a strangely twisted form of sick sympathy: he’d been a genius in a small town where everyone knew everyone else and trying to connect with people there had been like trying to squeeze himself into a pair of shoes he’d outgrown when he was four.

He’d been bored by schoolwork, already outpacing the teachers, too curious to wait until the next class to find answers which left him ahead of his peers. There weren’t thrilling enough mystery books in the library and every movie had ended in the most predictable way ever. He’d received the scorn of his own friends when he breezed through assignments that they struggled with at the same rate he’d received their adoration in any sort of academic competition or group project. Reading the letter in front of him, which was, at its core, someone else’s observations when they rang that close to Roman’s own internal laments, left him with a sour taste in his mouth.

What a horrible thing,—Roman thinks throwing his pen across the room to where the trashcan had been at one point and reaching for another— to have found more fucking kindship with a murderer than with the rest of his team.

He’d only been with this FBI team for a few months, and Roman’s ability to deftly stick his foot in his mouth had already put him at odds with most of the people he was supposed to be working with. The habit of thinking far too fast wasn’t a new thing for Roman to be dealing with, but Roman still forgot that not everyone was aware of just how fast he thought until he was blurting out a harmless comment he forgot could be taken as an insult.

His team leader—a man by the name of Logan Ackroyd—had bluntly told Roman that if he couldn’t keep his mouth in line there wouldn’t be a place for him on the team come the next week and Roman almost quit on the spot to avoid having to go through the utter embarrassment of being fired for his inability to play well with others, when he’d gotten multiple recommendations from high profile FBI agents who’d guaranteed Logan that Roman lived up to the rumors.

Logan had told him that he didn’t bother accepting fresh academy graduates usually, but the sheer volume of letters from colleagues had won Roman a chance to prove he was good enough to stay on permanently. And after six months, Roman is still standing with that Damocles sword over his head, with no sign of Logan changing his mind.

Logan’s right hand, Patton Hart, assures him that Logan means well, even if he doesn’t say it in so many (or any) words.

Patton radiates the gentle air of a tired, but well-meaning father although Roman’s never heard of him having any children and sometimes his existence is all that keeps Roman from crying the moment he home. He’s never been afraid to cut Logan off in the middle of a lecture or remind everyone they’re supposed to be fighting the serial killers not each other…as long as he’s paying attention.

Roman’s no stranger to getting caught up in his thoughts, but Patton is exactly like those cats who meow at dark corners when there’s nothing there; his crystal blue eyes soften with a distant gaze, seeing something that no one else can see for so long that once an actual gunfight broke out around them and Patton didn’t notice at all. Each conversation with Patton left Roman feeling as though he was being seen through instead of being looked at, but that was a small price to pay since Patton won’t take his words the wrong way no matter what he says.

In comparison, Virgil Storm is the person that Roman clashes with the most. Roman had been through enough Psych classes to hazard a guess that Virgil takes Roman’s entire existence as a threat to his own position: Roman is younger, prettier, healthier, smarter, and he had come with heralds of recommendation letters from the FBI academy professors. The only thing Virgil has over him is two years of field experiences that never quite seem to be enough for him to feel secure. Thus, every time Roman disagreed with him, Virgil had bitten back like it was a personal attack. Roman had nearly been written up twice because of their arguments when Virgil got to walk away with barely even a glance.

Janus Ekans, the last member of the team, is approachable in the same way that a live grenade was approachable: he’s a press liaison who sweet-talked reporters and consoled victims and made children laugh with funny faces while the adults talked, and then he turned around threatened to cut Roman’s brakes if he hummed another bar of the catchy pop song that was stuck in his head.

((Jokes on him though, the catchy pop song that had been stuck in his head had been the key to the code for the fourth victim.))

Janus’s brand of kindness always came with strings attached, or a manipulative ulterior motive. Roman had learned a healthy dose of skepticism of early morning coffees and a casual offer of finishing a report for him; the result was not worth having to sit through another workplace conduct seminar for Janus.

But for all of the conflicts with them, Roman wants to be part of this team, wants to be part of this mission, wants to know them and be known by them. It’s just… hard. Roman’s used to the feeling of distance between him and other people, compared it idly to a glass wall that he couldn’t figure out how to break, but something about how Janus and Virgil toast shots at the bar after a case, or how Patton always knows what to say to someone, or how Logan always predicts accurately what route an escaping suspect will take—something about how Roman got shot on his last case with them and woke up to find that the rest of his team had been taking turns watching over him so he wouldn’t wake up alone and it made Roman burn with the desire to be better for them.

And well…since Roman hasn’t been any good at the talkingpart of it, he figured that being a stellar coworker might be a better angle to go for.

((Remus laughed so hard at the idea on a call last month while Roman was working through his physical therapy exercises that Roman had hung up on him.))

It’s been….an attempt. Roman hasn’t exactly had the time to focus on it with the current case going on.

The police had called for help after the very first body, which was rare. Logan had explained on the way to the crime scene that there had been a letter sent to the local police that contained a grid of numbers and a warning that someone would get hurt if the police didn’t solve it in twenty-four hours. An identical copy had appeared at the crime scene, which had linked the two events together in a way that local police didn’t get paid enough for.

Logan had told Roman to focus on photographing details of the scene, but Roman had frozen the moment that his viewfinder had focused on the note, his mind recognizing the pattern from the billions he’d created in middle school.

Roman and Virgil had both spoken the same address at the same time: Roman because he had solved the cipher in the letter after reading it the first time, and Virgil because he’d pulled a long piece of paper with the address written on it out of the victims strangled throat with a pair of tweezers.

The address had ended up being an empty building with a “For Lease” sign in the window a few blocks away, and their arrival had revealed nothing except for another puzzle with a pinned note asking if they were going to actually try this time.

Roman had solved the next one, before Janus had even finished reading it and they had arrived at the next location before the next kidnapped victim had even been aware she’d been kidnapped, dazed and drugged and barely able to tell them her name. The murderer hadn’t been there, and Logan had ordered an evacuation with a posted discrete perimeter, with the hope that they could catch the murderer when they returned to kill their victim, but all ten officers hadn’t reported seeing anyone.

Instead, three days after that, the next letter had been delivered to the precinct via mailman who had no clue where the envelope had come from and hadn’t thought too much of it before making his next delivery. The killer seemed to have taken Roman’s quick solving as an offense or a challenge considering each of the puzzles had gotten harder and harder with the deadlines steady as ever. Roman had run up the clock trying to solve them fast enough to get his team to the scene before the victims were too injured to be saved, forget getting them in time to catch the perpetrator. The last woman had coded in the ambulance on the way to the hospital from her sustained injuries and still they hadn’t gotten any more of an idea who this killer was.

Brown hair, blond hair, long and groomed, a buzz cut, bearded, scarred, mole, green eyes, brown eyes, black eyes—every person that Roman managed to save had a different, conflicting description to offer. Every abduction had happened conveniently on corners were there weren’t cameras and none of the victims seemed to have anything in common: they were mostly young women with two cases of being young men, of various ethnicities and social classes, from all seven nearby counties. Had a gun, had a bat, didn’t see anything before the attack, was drugged, was knocked unconscious—even the corpses that they had recovered didn’t have any more information: there was no sign of fighting back, and every method of death was arbitrarily chosen as if the killer was spinning a wheel to decide how the next victim was going to go out.

Virgil, Patton, and Janus’s working profile was: “knows the area well”, “knows the police and FBI really well”, “easily overlooked”, and “desperate to prove they’re smarter than everyone else”.

Any event hosting riddles, puzzles, or trivia had received a visit from the FBI, but most had never seen anyone sweep the games as outrageously as the profile suggested nor had they had any unhappy customers that had caused a scene as much as a disgruntled, embarrassed genius like this would have. The narrow list of names all had accountable alibis and the team had been shoved back to square one until the next puzzle had appeared.

((They shared a music type, and a fondness for certain poets. Roman wouldn’t have solved half of the puzzles as fast if he hadn’t dabbled into the same extracurriculars of photography and art appreciation. He’d babbled to Virgil about the history of jigsaw puzzles when he put together a fifty-piece puzzle with nineteen pieces missing just so he could use the picture to identify the wharf area where they would find the next victim.))

It had felt like, at first, Roman had been assigned a task that would help, something that he excelled at that would do something to alleviate the stress of the situation and help people. While he’d gone through the programs and passed his tests with flying colors, Roman is still the youngest on the FBI team and his experience with catching serial killers is a laughable compared to the others—but after the third puzzle where Roman’s bizarre wealth of knowledge and prompt, problem-solving processes came in clutch, Logan had assigned the puzzles as Roman’s main task and refocused Janus, Patton, and Virgil on profiling the killer and victims and the area.

Roman thinks there’s a bit more to it as well, but Logan hadn’t deigned to share it with him and Roman just can’t afford to devote any of his brain to things other than finding codes at this point.

He hadn’t actually been back to his apartment in a week. He’d slept in this very room with blankets Virgil had dragged from his car, eaten take-out food grabbed by Patton, forced to shower by Janus with his bag of emergency toiletries until Logan had made the trip to Roman’s to pick up new clothes for his extended stay.

Roman was certain there were rules against all of this, policies and whatnot for the amount of overtime he was pulling and the clearly unhealthy sleep schedule and eating regime, but every time he closed his eyes, he remembered that first crime scene and the bulge of paper being delicately pulled from the strangled throat of a dead woman who deserved better and—

Even if it means his bed is gathering dust, even if he can’t remember what he last watched on TV, even if it means that he’ll been able to charge rent to the new life forms growing out of his fridge when this is over. He’d give up everything just to make sure that no other victims died without hope of being saved. All nine of the people he hadn’t gotten to save in time deserved at least to have their killer stopped.

That being said, the only member of his team keeping pace with his puzzle solving work still is Logan: Patton had run to the lab to check on the results of fingerprints (there hadn’t been any on the letters before, but Patton is an optimist at heart); Janus went to talk to one of the victims family after a call stating they thought they remembered something from the night before the victim went missing, and Virgil had tried his hardest for the first three hours before Roman had to break it to him for the nth time that Roman had already tried the codebreaking technique he was suggesting. He’s nearly jittery with the eager to have something to punch by now.

Logan is sitting primly in the seat across from Roman, his dark eyes tracing the calligraphy of the words looking for patterns that Roman hasn’t already tracked down and tried.

The digital clock at the head of the table is steadily counting down, and every time Roman blinks he sees the bloodied crime scene again: the lifeless eyes, the clinically broken bones, the bruises and the gashes and he thinks of the new missing girl who might be suffering the same fate if Roman doesn’t figure this out.

"There's thicker ink on the word Capital," Logan says, drawing Roman’s attention back to the first page of the letter. Roman had noted it briefly on his fourth review, even written down a list of capitals in the states and used the date of their establishments, their "year of creation" to identify words in the letter but nothing had come of it. Roman had moved off from it hours ago hoping that something else in the letter would circle back to it with more directions on what it meant.

"Let’s return to the concept that it refers to the capital letters," Logan says.

"Which spell out nothing, forward or backward or anagrammed," Virgil says from his chair in the corner towards the back of the room where he’d insisted he was sitting to get a better look at the “whole picture.”

"And we tried all possible Caesar shifts?” Logan says.

"I’ve run them through every Caesar shift 1 through 26. Then I tried the established years of all capitals in the States." Roman says combing through his papers to find his work. "It came up with nothing. So, I tossed them through a Trimethius Tableau, which also got me nothing, so then I tried the Trimethius Tableau with a key word, and uhm…”

Roman trails off as he scrambles through the stack of papers next to him and then gives up and offers the entire stack to Logan.

“You tried it with the word Capital?” Logan says.

“I tried it with every word that appears in the letter,” Roman says. “I didn’t bother writing down half of them so please don’t ask for proof. When that didn’t work, I tried all the Capitals from the entire world and then I tried the missing woman’s name first and last, the killers self-proclaimed name, and the spelled-out number of all our individual ages including the victim’s and the age range that the profile suggests for the killer and Sherlock Holmes. Nothing.”

Logan accepts the papers to analyze it himself or double check the numbers and letters, which Roman would find offensive if he had the energy to feel anything other than dread and defeat. Theres a girl’s life on the line and Roman’s matched wits with a piece of paper and failed at the only thing he’s been good at recently. The clock hits hour twenty-two on the killer’s timetable and Roman feels a burn in his eyes as he rubs them so hard he witnesses undiscovered colors on the back of his eyelids.

“Patton just texted,” Virgil said, waving his phone. “The ink is Speedball India Ink which you can get at any art supply but it’s for those fancy calligraphy pens. The techs think the nib was a… Bruase Steno, whatever the fuck that means.”

“Beginner’s nib,” Roman says, tiredly. “It holds a lot of ink in it, pretty sturdy, and good for downstrokes. Allows for a bigger font size than some others.”

“Is there anything you don’t know about?” Virgil says blandly. “He also says the paper from one of those Canson Mix Media sketchbooks you can buy at basically any retail store. I doubt by now that has any bearing on anything, but I figured I pass it along.”

Logan and Roman both nod to show they heard it. Roman predicted as much in his notes, although he’d been more of the idea the nib was a Nikko G based on the size of the font. It’s been a while since he had the time to work on his calligraphy, since Remus “borrowed” his pen set last year.

“I checked for a Rail Fence and a Playfair," Roman says. “Tried both Horizontal and Vertical Two-Squares.”

“I mapped out all of the ‘I’s in the letter to see if they spelled out something in dot-only morse code,” Virgil says.

“Did they?” Logan asks with the tone of a very tired parent.

“No, but you’re welcome that I at least tried it.”

Roman tunes out Logan’s responding sigh-and-lecture bit. There’s a girl missing probably already fighting for her life against injuries that had killed ten others before. Roman could be the only spot of hope for her, and he’s staring at the word ‘Mélange’, wondering if “year of creation” refers to the year that the word first came to use.

Janus had sniffed distastefully at the letter when he’d first read it, claiming that the murderer’s vocabulary was just another attempt to show them that he was smarter than all of them. Janus, who’d studied language profiling and had two papers published on the topic, had begrudgingly affirmed that all the words were being used in a sensible way.

Roman twirls his pen between his fingers reading over his notes again.

He’d been so sure on his second read of the letter that Sherlock Holmes was going to be part of the answer. “Your year of creation” had sounded so much like a bid for the year of publication, which had meant he only needed to figure out what media form it was based on. “From Capitals to Rome” hadn’t spurred anything exciting in his memory: he didn’t recall any of Author Canon Doyle’s original writings putting Holmes in Rome, although he’d jolted down a few books he knew of by other authors, and none of the TV show or movies had been filmed in the iconic city.

If it meant the distance between a capital and Rome, well, London was the only place that Roman was confident in writing down, but 1873km didn’t even match up with any other years and certainly nothing further in the letter that would give an address.

But then Rome could refer to a Caesar Cipher, like Logan had said. Which had inspired a whole other rabbit hole of possibilities and Roman had fallen down it with much less fun than Alice.

Why use words that no one else does conversationally? Roman, as a certified genius, already struggles with having those around him keep up with a conversation so throwing in uncommon words was a waste of breath or, in this case, paper. So why is their killer risking the message of the letter not being understood? Is it really just to prove that this mystery killer was smarter than them? Or is the meaning of the letter as of little value to the killer as the lives of the victims they were snuffing out?

Roman had studied killers with a superiority complex. Most of them could have continued killing for decades and never been caught if they hadn’t felt compelled to have others be aware of how much smarter they were.

But then Roman stares at this letter talking about Sherlock Holmes and he doesn’t see someone who was overconfident and riding the high of the chase. They’re creative and clever enough that each of his letters are multitasking: sharing (supposedly inconsequential) knowledge about himself as well as acting as a code to lead them to where the missing girl is. But Roman’s decently sure that Logan’s already figured that one out. After all, how much help is the fact that the killer likes Sherlock Holmes going to be in finding out their real identity?

It isn’t Roman’s task to profile the serial killer. It’s not his problem and it shouldn’t be his worry and Roman doesn’t have the time to focus on the undertone of loneliness and isolation when there’s a girl’s life on the line.

“I see things here are going admirably,” Janus says as he flounces into the room. He’s dressed in black dress pants and a pale-yellow button down that looks tasteful and elegant. His usual grace accompanies his movements as he drops into a vacant chair and helps himself to a coffee cup that someone left on the table hours ago. He has a ring on his fourth finger, although he’d confessed in a drunken stupor after their first case that he’d never even kissed a prospective partner. ((And then the following day Janus had cornered Roman in the station bathroom and told him that if he told anyone about that Roman’s body would never be recovered, but whatever. Drama Queen.))

“Have you cracked the code yet? Solved all our problems?” Janus asks.

“Oh, yes,” Virgil answers him. “We were waiting for you to get back in order to figure out world hunger, though.”

“Eat the Rich,” the man wearing a $900 suit says without a trace of hesitation.

“Did the victim’s sister give you anything?” Logan asks, pushing away Roman’s stack of failed attempts.

Janus clicks his tongue. “I’m going to assume you remember that the sister told us previously that she’d been communicating to her sister via SnapChat the night she disappeared. She said that she saw someone in the background of the pictures that she didn’t think too much of it at the time, but now she’s wondering if it was our killer stalking his victim through the store. I made a pit stop to the grocery store and took another look through their footage, and found the person in question—black hoodie, black face mask—but it was just another shopper. According to timestamps, he checked out before our victim and went straight to his car and left.”

“Presumably to go home,” Virgil extrapolates, extremely helpfully.

“And we suspect that the killer grabbed her before she got to her car,” Logan hums affirmatively. Which Roman guessed was about as close as he got to announcing his approval.

Janus picks up one of Roman’s papers and scans it with faked interest. “So? How is Encyclopedia Brown doing? Has he come up for air in the past hour?”

“Do you even know what an encyclopedia is?” Roman asks, distractedly.

“Of course,” Janus says. “I found reading them to be quite riveting in my childhood. Didn’t you?”

“I was more of a phonebook, yellow pages type of kid,” Roman says.

“What’s a phone book?” Virgil cuts in.

“It’s a phone directory with the phone numbers of everyone in a certain area. The yellow pages were reserved for businesses, listed by category rather than alphabetical. Why don’t you know that?” Logan says. Then he frowned and turned back to Roman. “Why were you reading those as a child?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, old man.”

"I turned 49 this year, Roman," Logan says blandly.

Roman had a really good response to that, he did. Something snippety about how Logan acted like a professor double his age, or asking how his birthday party of birdwatchers went, or if he's picked out an adult day care he wants to be sent to once he reaches the big five-oh. Just for the sick pleasure of seeing Logan physically leave the room to go print out the official papers to fire Roman on the spot.

"What’s going on at 15 Maple Street?"

Virgil startles like a cat, nearly flipping out of his chair at the voice right behind him.

Remus—dressed in a biker jacket, spiked boots, and gunmetal piercings—grins with all his teeth unflinching even when Virgil’s fist brushes by his cheek in an aborted attempt at throat-punching Roman's twin brother.

“Is it some kind of orgy? Y’all gonna invite me?” he asks, raising a Slurpee cup to his mouth and taking a sip.

“Who the fuck?!” Virgil says, snapping his neck to look at Roman as if he thought Roman had gotten up put on a fake mustache and then tried to jump scare him. “Wh-wha…?”

When they were younger, Roman had described Remus as his funhouse mirror reflection: they shared the same nose, the same face structure, the same dark brown eyes and the same untamable brown hair; but where their appearances had been identical inverses of each other—Remus’s cowlick rolled to the left and Roman’s went to the right—their personalities had a drastic split. Remus is also a certified genius, same as Roman, but where Roman had gotten banned from the local escape rooms for solving them in under five minutes, Remus had gotten banned from them for brute forcing answers until something clicked.

If Remus had to break something to get the answer, he was having fun. Replay-ability was never a thought in his mind growing up and turned their childhood home’s game closet into a graveyard. He talked faster than he thought, often blurting out answers or questions or impulsive thoughts before someone else had finished talking.

Nine-year-old Roman had loathed most of these things about Remus, but it had only taken a year for Roman to realize that in their small town, Remus was the only one who could possibly keep up with his wits. Remus had been the one to tell him to take up the codebreaking classes hosted by an ex-FBI agent who had ended up being so impressed with Roman that the man had sponsored him through all his subsequent courses and written him three recommendation letters personally to Logan to get him his current job.

The job had taken Roman nine states away, but Remus and him had kept near weekly calls where Remus offered him feedback on Roman’s newest attempt at writing a novel, and Roman play tested the clues for puzzles in Remus’s escape room games.

Near weekly had turned into a stretch of silence though, when cases came up. Remus had just told him to call him whenever the cases were over instead of stressing over finding time to talk. His schedule was always more flexible.

But it shouldn’t have been flexible enough for Remus to be standing in the FBI headquarters.

“Remus,” Roman says, standing before Virgil decides to enact his shapeshifting alien emergency plan. “What are you doing here?”

“Learn to pick up your phone sometime, asshole,” Remus says, flicking his neon yellow visitor badge to the left of Virgil’s body for everyone to see. “If I had known that you were going to leave me at an airport for three fucking hours, I would have just canceled my flight and spent my vacation mapping out the sewers back home.”

“Vacation?” Roman repeats. “OH FUCK! What day is it?!”

Roman dives for his phone, only realizing when he frantically taps the screen that it’s dead and probably has been dead for a while. Remus rolls his eyes flicking a lazy salute at Logan and Janus and welcoming himself into the room.

“Name’s Remus,” Remus says, “I’m this dipshit’s twin brother. Currently single, but I charge five for a hand job if you want one.”

“Charming,” Janus says, running a finger around the rim off his coffee cup.

“You mentioned Maple Street.” Logan says. “Ignoring that you are not supposed to be in here and this is confidential work, where did you come up with that?”

"I mean, I assumed it’s a Maple Street," Remus says. "Every state has a Maple Street, right? I stopped doing the conversion at the P."

“Elaborate.”

“Buy me dinner first, Daddy,” Remus says and Janus chokes on his coffee so hard it almost comes out of his nose and Roman can feel his employee termination paperwork being drafted up mentally in Logan’s mind.

Still Remus shrugs, waves a hand towards the projector, and obliges. “The letter is about Sherlock Holmes, right? Its pretentious as all shit so the writer is only going to care about the original Arthor Canon Doyle characterizations. “The year of your creation” is a snob’s way of saying publishing date. So, you’re looking for a Sherlock Holmes book and you’re going to care about the year it originally came out. Still with me? I can walk you back if you got lost, old timer.”

“Remus,” Roman says, which sounds remarkably like please shut up before you get me fired.

“Damn, you got boring in FBI school. Fine. You care about ciphers, right? There’s only four from the original books that actually appear, even though Holmes is said to be a gifted codebreaker. This ain’t the Dancing Man code, and it’s not the flashing lights from Red Circle. Your other two options are The Book Code from Valley of Fear in which you’d be fucked six ways to Saturday with an unlubed corkscrew and not in a way that you’d enjoy or—”

Virgil makes a sharp disgusted noise form the back of the room, and Remus grins with satisfaction at getting a reaction out of him. He tilts his head back to look the agents, mouth open to make things as bad as he can.

“Wait! Gloria Scott,” Roman says catching on to what he did. “Fuck! You’re right! It’s Gloria Scott. But not whole words. Did you go by letters?”

Remus tsks and swirls his drink. “You’re a genius, Ro. You tell me.”

“That’s why it says to go ‘From the Capitals!’”

“Tell me you didn’t think it meant actual capitals. Did you list them all out? I’m disowning you.”

“Get bent,” Roman says on instinct as he scribbles out the letters of importance.

“Get laid.”

“I have. Jealous? And then a Caesar with 1-8-9-3?”

“Did you know that off the top of your head? Fucking nerd.”

“That’s an E, V, I—”

“It’s faster to start it from the end,” Remus sings.

“Did they screw up on the eighth sentence or am I doing math wrong?”

“I told you go from the end.”

“I don’t like going backwards!”

“It’s already backwards, bitch.”

“Dick.”

“Geek. You used to be good at this. Why is it taking you so long?”

“Shut up. Did you get Mom gaudy heels she wanted for her birthday?”

“The ones with the cat faces on them? Fuck no! I got her a candle like I do every year.”

“Son of the year award.”

“They were over a hundred fucking dollars! —That’s an F, dumbass, not a G.— And I can gift her a whole litter of cats for that amount!”

“Agreed. I’ll get the accessories; you get the cats?”

“Deal. I want naming rights.”

“PG-13 rated at the max. Mom will kill us otherwise. So, it was a mistake on the eighth sentence.”

“Yeah! A goddamn embarrassment. This is already a cringe ass attempt to seem good at encoding—”

A humming uhhhh? cuts through the rest of Remus’s statement and Roman is relieved to see Remus also does a mental reset as he remembers where they are. Namely, standing in the conference room in the FBI headquarters shooting comments back and forth at each other in front of Roman’s team.

Virgil is staring at both of them, head on a swivel that leaves him looking hopelessly horrified, as if he just watched them give birth. The last time Roman saw Virgil look so nauseated, he’d gotten a major concussion after being jumped by three gang members in the back of warehouse they had thought a bioterrorist was renting.

There had been a bubbling excitement in Roman’s chest that felt right in the way that all his conversations with Remus always feel so right. He didn’t have to slow down or reword or even watch his wording because it was Remus and Remus always knew exactly how to take anything Roman said. Twin Telepathy and all that.

But the moment he sees the utter bafflement on Logan and Janus’s faces that part of him shrivels up and dies, an embarrassed, awful death.

Virgil, however, finds his voice before Roman can apologize. “Hardy Boys! Wanna explain that in English? Where are you getting Maple Street from?”

“Fifteen Maple Street,” Roman corrects. “Come to Fifteen Maple Street, Detective.”

“Do-tective,” Remus says. “I’ve met kids with better spelling!”

Roman doesn’t outright elbow him in the side but it’s a close thing. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, I know where that is. Its two blocks from my—”

“Is the Gloria Scott referring to The Adventures of the Gloria Scott?” Janus cuts him off sharply and Roman blinks. Remus frowns and takes another sip of his Slurpee, until the resulting slorpppp nearly drowns out Roman’s response if Roman hadn’t reached out and snapped it out of his hand.

“Yeah,” Roman says. “Published in 1893. It’s the short story where Holmes claims to have first realized that his deduction hobby could be used professionally. The code in it—spoilers—is that every third word is taken and spells out its own sentence. But in this case ‘From Capitals’ is referring to the third word of the sentence instead of every third word. Then if you take the first letter of each of the word and put it in a Caesar shift, with the first one being a one-shift, the second letter being an eight-shift, then nine-shift, then three, then back to one….”

Roman holds up the paper where he wrote down the final product. “And then you read it backwards.”

The Conference room is slightly too quiet for Roman’s taste, but his hands are shaking with nerves he didn’t know he had. The clock in the corner still reads an hour and thirty minutes and Roman feels like he’s taken his first actual breath for the first time in years.

"Did you do that in your head?" Logan says, looking at Remus. "As you walked in here?"

“Well, not really,” Remus says, casually swinging his badge around one of his fingers. “I’m not wearing my glasses, so I didn’t see it until I got halfway across the floor. And I had to look up the year of publish for it because I’m not the type of freak who knows years like that.”

Roman flips him the bird under the table where Logan won’t see it.

"Holy shit,” Virgil says. “You both are fucking insane. Actually, fucking insane. How did you even think to do that?”

Remus laughs. "That’s just a party trick. We used more advanced ciphers when selling test answers in seventh grade."

"There was no "we" in that!" Roman says quickly. "I was not involved in that!"

Remus glances at the papers next to Virgil raising an eyebrow at the penmanship. "Did you try to map out the dots over the I's like it’s a dot only morse code? That’s so cute!"

Virgil crumples his paper into a ball and throws it across the room. "Can I punch him for real this time? I’m going to punch him."

Roman doesn’t bother explain that comments like that just fuel Remus on. The bullies in their small town had learned to leave both of them alone, because Remus laughed when they broke his arm. Remus liked the sharp taste of pain and the metallic smell of blood and the way that his vision blurred and blacked out.

Instead, Roman reaches for his jacket. “Come on. There’s still two hours on the clock. We can beat rush out traffic and make it there in ten minutes!”

“No,” Logan says and Roman mentally stumbles over a chair and then down a flight of stairs. “I want you to stay here. If for some reason this location ends up being wrong, I want you and your brother both to be here already looking for another answer. Do not argue with me on this.”

Roman’s voice dies a little in his throat, shriveling up and itching like a cough that he doesn’t want to admit to having. Logan doesn’t even grace him with an actual full glance, as if Roman’s compliance is expected just as much as his acceptance. Janus and Virgil share a look that Roman can’t quite read, although from the pursing of Virgil’s lips something about Logan’s decision doesn’t sit right with him.

Janus, however, looks relieved before he can school his features into a neutral expression.

“I’m certain this is the location,” Roman says tentatively. “Sir.”

“I do not like placing all of my figurative eggs in one figurative basket,” Logan says, already halfway out the door. “Safety is my priority. Virgil, Janus: with me.”

Both of the other two agents scramble after Logan; Virgil not even bothering to put his jacket back on as he bolts out the door and Janus clicking his tongue in that way that speaks of his loathing for being told what to do.

Roman drops his coat back on the chair and flops back down. Remus frowns at the doors for a second longer, but Roman can’t imagine what he’s thinking—or if it’s anything different from what Roman himself has already thought about this FBI gig.

Roman can appreciate how Logan is looking at the bigger picture, covering all his bases, leaving little room for the killer to add to their kill count, but at the end of the day those words still sound a lot more like “You’re still not good enough, Roman, and I’m still considering if you deserve a place with this team.”

***

“You’re seriously still not going to tell him?” Virgil hisses as soon as the elevator doors close. “He deserves to know at this point! We’re seven incidents into this!”

“There’s actually only been six that can’t simple coincidence,” Janus corrects, even though that is not the fucking point that Virgil meant and he knows it. Six is still Six-Too-Fucking-Many and the fact that Janus is even making the argument has Virgil’s skin crawling. He meets Virgil’s eyes in the reflection of the stainless-steel elevator wall and Virgil sneers at him while Janus raises an elegant middle finger.

Logan, although he must have seen it, doesn’t bother to reprimand either of them. He stares at the ticking digital screen detailing the floors as they race towards the garage and keeps his face in a stern neutral expression. Virgil isn’t trained in micro expressions, so the fact that he notices the crease in the corner of Logan’s lip is probably very telling for how stressed he is about all of this.

“Call Patton. I want him to meet us at the location with whatever police he has contact with. No sirens. If this killer is there, I don’t want to alert him anymore than we already have.”

“You’re changing the topic,” Virgil says. “Sir.”

“Agent Storm. As of right now, his best use is solving the puzzles where we can keep an eye on him. He doesn’t need to know; it will only cause him to panic, and we cannot afford that at this stage. He’s too… instrumental.”

Instrumental. Virgil almost laughs at Logan’s fucking audacity. Instrumental.

“Are you going to tell his brother?” Janus says, boredly, scrolling through his phone for Patton’s number. “Twin brother. Did anyone know he was a twin? I didn’t and I believe I’m offended.”

Virgil did know. Although knowing is an entirely different beast from seeing Roman’s face with a mustache and his body with a grunge aesthetic and his voice with a proficiency for the absolute worse strings of words in the human language. He almost looked like Roman-in-a-Halloween-Costume, expect for the part where he opened his mouth. But the worst part of it was how when Remus and Roman had been standing next to each other shooting back and forth completely at ease, Virgil had felt as though he was seeing doubles and neither version of his friend was the right one.

Something about Roman so easily relaxed into the conversation, a lightness to his words, a brightness to his eyes—something about how Roman looked comfortable as if a huge burden had been lifted from his shoulders when his twin had shown up….

It threw him off and Virgil doesn’t think he’s found his balance again yet. And the whole “Unspoken Agreement” was not helping matters at-fucking-all.

“I want a background check on him, emphasis on his whereabouts in the past three weeks. If he’s not involved, then I’ll consider reading him in. Although, there’s a high probability he already suspects it,” Logan says. “You were not subtle about cutting Roman off at all.”

Janus feigns an offended scoff, as he puts his phone to his ear and the line starts ringing. “I didn’t see you saying anything.”

Virgil digs his nails into the strap of his bag. “If Roman were a civilian, you wouldn’t be treating him like this. You know you wouldn’t. You would have read him in and—”

“Virgil,” Logan says sharply.

“How long are you going to keep punishing him for something that wasn’t his fault?!”

Logan’s hand snaps out and he knocks the safety switch into activation. The elevator jerks to a stop so suddenly that Janus fumbles his phone, and Virgil has to grab the railing to keep himself steady. When he looks up again Logan’s eyes are trained on him with a fury that Virgil’s never seen before.

Still, he forces himself to raise his chin in defiance, meeting that gaze head on even with his brain shrieking at him to backdown.

“Do not accuse me of confusing the safety of my agents for a petty grudge,” Logan says. “I will have your badge, Virgil. My reluctance to tell him comes from the need to have our smartest agent focused on these deranged puzzles instead of whether or not the rest of us are capable of doing out jobs, not from my irritation over being blackmailed into taking him onto my team. He will do his job, and you will do yours and when this is over, I will personally debrief him. Am I clear?”

Virgil’s jaw creaks from how tightly he’s clenching his jaw, but he nods.

For a second, barely a blink, Logan’s expression softens again. “Thank you, Virgil, for being concerned about him. I know you don’t appreciate withholding information from your teammates.”

It’s hard to feel like he’s doing anything good when they all saw how Roman’s face dropped earlier. Logan turns back to the doors and flips the safety switch again, allowing the elevator to continue its descent. Virgil lets out the quietest breath he can manage, but based on Janus’s uneasy glance back at him, it wasn’t quiet enough.

“Well! I guess that means that Roman solved the letter!” Patton’s voice chirps from the phone in Janus’s hand.

“Yes,” Logan says loud enough for Patton to hear him. “Janus will fill you in.”

“Aye-Aye Captain!”

The elevator dings and the mechanical voice reads out the basement floor, but Logan doesn’t wait for it to finish speaking. He’s already shoving his way out of the elevator to the BMW registered to their team, with all the confidence and authority of someone who would leave them both behind if Virgil and Janus didn’t rush after him.

Virgil turns to Janus, but Janus is greeting Patton with his particular brand of waspish backhanded compliments that Patton likes to laugh at. He pretends he doesn’t see Virgil’s look at all, stubbornly facing forward marching after Logan. His voice bounces off the underground parking lot concrete, updating their other senior agent on the details and plan and the request for a background check as if Virgil’s very real concerns about Roman was just another instance of him blowing the situation out of proportion. Virgil lets out a shaky breath as the elevator doors roll close behind him.

“He can handle it. He’s Roman. Of course, he can handle it,” he repeats as a mantra and hitches his bag over his shoulder.

Despite that, Virgil sends a soft, silent prayer to whatever might be out there watching, that they aren’t running into as much of a trap as it feels like they are.

***

When the call comes Roman nearly lunges across the table to accept it.

Remus is, per usual, a very interesting and ambitious conversation partner: he does not and has not ever required an actual person to respond to him. Roman tested it once when they were younger and he wanted to have a whole ten minutes of silence—put a hoodie over a pile of clothes while Remus is speed running a video game, gradually stop answering with more than a few hums, and then dip out. It had been hours later when Remus woke him by jumping on his bed in revenge.

That’s not to say that Roman isn’t thrilled to talk with him! But Roman is the type of person who would rather catch up with his brother’s endless thrilling tales of research and experimentation in the comfort of his own home, take out on the coffee table and a stream of true crime YouTube episodes on his TV in the background. Roman had been excited to ask him about where he’d gotten his inspirations for his 1920’s speakeasy parlor escape room because Remus had never really dipped into history themes when he could have haunted houses and murder movies instead.

The oppressive atmosphere in the FBI headquarters, with empty conference room chairs, stacks of papers to recycled, and a projector showing the ramblings of serial killer, paled in comparison to the thought of Roman’s crappy couch and greasy pizza from across town.

And now small part of Roman is worried that maybe they did miss something in the letter. As certain as he is about this, there is a part of him that keeps whispering Logan’s right to hold you back, you failed, you were helpless until Remus showed up—

So, when the call comes, Roman is nearly vaulting the table to answer it via the conference call.

“You would have told me just to shut up!” Remus says with no real heat.

Roman doesn’t bother responding to him. He’s sure that Remus already knows what Roman was thinking anyway; it wasn’t like Remus was a fan of a conference rooms after the amount of time he spent in them with Mom and Dad on either side of him as his teachers tried to explain that just because Remus was bored out of his mind in their classes, it didn’t mean he had the right to start dismantling desks or doodling on the walls with sharpies or designing paper airplanes with precision that most aviators couldn’t claim.

“Roman Sanders, speaking,” Roman says, as soon as he hits the answer button. “Remus is in the room.”

“Are you or your brother familiar with one Andy Clupeidae?” Logan’s voice says.

“Uh,” Roman glances towards Remus but he also just shrugs chewing on his straw. “Not that I’m aware of, sir. Would you like me to start a background search on them?”

“Not necessary, I already have Janus on it.”

“Weird ass fucking last name,” Remus comments. “I would have remembered it. What’s their deal? Or are you on Tinder? If he’s got a picture of him holding a fish up, you can guarantee that he’s been lying about length sizes for a whi—”

“It’s the name of a man that we just apprehended in the middle of strangling the victim,” Logan says, dry tone scathing even through the phone speaker. Remus has the rare decency to cringe slightly. “I trust that you can keep that information to yourself, Remus.”

“We got him?” Roman says, hope swelling in his chest like a balloon throttling his voice box. “Like—we actually caught him? Red handed and everything?!”

“We have a suspect in custody,” Logan says. “There are…a few things that don’t settle correctly into the profile. But when we arrived, he was already inside the building, hands on the throat of the victim, and he had in his possession a letter that contains what appears to be the next puzzle for you to solve. The victim is already on the way to the hospital with Janus on standby for when she regains lucidity. Patton will be taking the letter to the labs, and while Virgil and I get ready for the interrogation.”

Roman swears the air tastes ridiculously sweet, too sweet, in a way that’s making it hard to breathe. Remus is staring at him worriedly, but all Roman can think is we did it, we got him, we stopped him.

“There are still several things that need to happen before we can declare this case closed,” Logan warns. “I’ll see you both in half an hour.”

Roman nods although Logan definitely can’t see him. He’d probably be embarrassed if Logan could see him and his stupid dopey grin.

“And Roman? Remus? …you both did a good job.”

Roman doesn’t even hear the telltale click of the call ending. He’s too busy covering his mouth and trying not to scream at the top of his lung. Pure relief washes through him, rushing through his trembling fingers and weak knees until he’s nearly lightheaded with elation.

“Are you okay?” Remus asks steadying Roman with a hand on his arm. “Are you going to orgasm right now?”

“Shut up,” Roman says with half the amount of annoyance he means. He gets a grip of a nearby chair to ground himself and takes a deep breath to refocus. The hope in his chest tastes like a victory, like he’s done something great, even though all he’s done is his job.

Remus is still staring at him suspiciously and no amount of Roman’s smile is reassuring him apparently. His eyes are lined with that brand of eyeliner that he’s been using since they were tweens, making his hickory eyes even darker than usual, and more worried than he’s ever been. He makes one suspicious sweeping look around the room, as if checking for someone else despite the fact it’s been just the two of them for a while now, then he leans in to say something.

But before he can get it out, the conference phone rings again.

“Hardy Boys!” Virgil’s voice calls through the speaker, a little distorted. Roman grimaces at it, tapping his pen on the table a few times.

“Hey, Dark and Stormy,” Roman says, “Heard you caught the guy!”

“Is there anything you don’t know about?” Virgil says blandly.

“Well, I was going to congratulate you, and offer to buy drinks, but if you’re going to be an asshole about it….” Roman says.

Virgil might have responded but there’s a crackling on the line that cuts over whatever thing he’s going to say. Remus fake-gags out of the corner of Roman’s eye.

“Whatever,” Roman says. “Logan called just a minute ago and told me the news.”

“He also says—you’re welcome—to go home—”

“What the fuck type of phone service do you have?” Remus asks. “Dial up? How do you have any type of phone sex with this shit going on?”

“—I’m going to punch him."

Remus grins delightedly. “We’re gonna need to decide a safe word—”

Roman immediately bats the back of his head and Remus yelps, ducking away from the receiver and rubbing the spot that Roman hit with a pout. Roman sends him scowl, and Remus sticks his tongue out and mouths something that looks like its was a joke, dickwad! And Roman returns it with an appropriate middle finger.

“Hardy Boys!” Virgil’s voice says again, and Roman drums his pen on the table.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry about Remus. Please don’t complain to HR again. I don’t want to be written up for this one—”

Remus shoves Roman out of the way to get closer to the speaker again. “Who cares about that! Did Lead Agent DILF actually say it’s cool if Roman and I cut out of here? Cause if so, go ahead and tell him to approve Roman for a week vacation, too, because if you don’t, you’ll have to file for kidnapping. I have a list of places I’m going to make Roman take me to and it requires a minimum of three days off.”

“Remus!” Roman says. “You can’t just—"

“Someone needs to get this guy a fucking hobby— you’re welcome—to go home—”

“Alright, bye, Virgin!” Remus shouts and hits the end call button. He throws most of his weight back in the chair, stretching out his spine and arms in a wild chaotic movement that Roman couldn’t help but fondly roll his eyes at. He’s sure that the Virgin comment will come up again, likely in the form of a summons to the HR to talk about workplace harassment, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t Roman who said it, but all in all he can’t really be all that worried about it at the moment.

Roman sighs out, rubbing his aching neck.

“That was weird right?” Roman says. “You thought that was weird, too?”

Remus yawns so loud that his jaw cracks. “Who cares? I want pizza on your dime, and shitty ghost hunter videos on your TV. Your job is boring as fuck! Come on, I’ll drive! You can micronap in the passenger seat.”

“With you at the wheel? No chance,” Roman says, but he fishes his keys from his jacket and tosses them towards Remus anyway. Remus grins with all his teeth, the exact way that everyone would expect someone who frames all of their speeding tickets to smile. Roman yawns and waves for Remus to follow him towards the office desks where Roman’s stuff would be, pausing only long enough to switch off the projector and the clock and the lights.

Admittedly Roman doesn’t remember a lot of what happens after that. The adrenaline crash comes down pretty hard on him and the exhaustion swirls around him, the moment they get to the lobby and Remus chats up the receptionist and returns his visitor’s badge and compliments her hair. Roman focuses more on keeping his duffle over his shoulder and standing upright as this goes on.

He didn’t recall Logan bringing him all that much stuff from his apartment: he’d scribbled out a list of clothes that he liked and tried his best not to cringe too much at the idea of his superior officer seeing his uncleaned apartment.

Even when Remus was coming over, Roman made an effort to take out the trash and have the sheets in his guest room cleaned and fill the pantry with healthier snacks. Roman had put off doing the cleaning for a few days after he and Remus had confirmed the date, but then the case had come up and Roman had literally forgotten what month it was.

But he wasn’t too concerned with Remus making fun of him. The way that Remus was already side eyeing him and chatting away about the details of their hometown and his trip to visit Mom and Dad last weekend was telling Roman that Remus guessed just how tired Roman was at the moment.

The drive is a blur at best. As far as Roman remembers Remus obeyed the laws and parked legally. They argued over music for a few minutes, and then argued over if Remus could have made a light that he stopped for because Roman yelled at him. Then, on the way into Roman’s apartment building their argument turns into which YouTube ghost hunter series to watch while they ate dinner.

“Race ya!” Remus shouts, as he hits the platform for Roman’s level.

“Remus!” Roman hisses, “Wait, Remus!” He slings his bag over his shoulder and rushes the last few steps and catches the door before it closes but by then Remus is already charging down the hall.

“Remus people can hear into the hallway! Remus!”

“You’re just mad because you owe me ice cream now!” Remus calls and then proceeds to knock on Roman’s door several times over as if Roman is going to magically open it from the other side when he’s slowly trudging his way over.

“What was the point of running all the way down here just to have to wait for me to open the door?” Roman huffs. “You have a key anyway!”

“Had a key,” Remus shrugs, pressing as close as physically possible to Roman as he jiggles his key through the lock until it relents. “I don’t anymore!”

Roman lets Remus push through the door the moment it’s open, rolling his eyes. “Down a sewer grate, off the metro platform, confiscated by the TSA, or forgot it in that dumpster fire you call an apartment?”

“Got knocked overboard on a ferry ride I took a couple months ago! Right along with my house key and my mailbox key. The process to get a new one of both of those was a bitch and a half, by the way. Would not recommend.”

"Wait," Roman says, flicking on the lights to his apartment. It feels a bit like defeat doing it after Remus has made himself at home on the couch with his disgusting shoes up on Roman’s upholstery. But Roman finds himself a bit too tired to care about all the cleaning he has to do. "If you lost the keys to my apartment, what did you do with your bag? I know you didn’t come here empty handed— Please tell me you didn’t pick the locks; I have to pay out of pocket for those repairs."

But even as he says it Roman frowns at the lock. There are signs of tampering: a few scratches on the outside cylinder casing of the deadbolt that are too thick to be from Roman’s own key and exhaustion. But Remus almost sounds surprised by the idea, as if this was the first time, he’d ever thought of breaking into a place he may or may not have half permission to be in and even if it weren’t, Roman’s only mostly whining about the repairs because Remus’s lockpicking skills have been at a master level since they were in middle school.

"I just stood outside your place and hit the buzzers until someone just opened the door,” Remus says stretching out on the couch and cracking his neck with a poppoppop. “And then when I got to your apartment, I just knocked, and your wacko roommate let me in."

Roman laughs sardonically as he closes the door behind himself and tosses his bag at the shoe rack he needs to reorganize later. He’s untying his laces when he realizes that Remus hasn’t congratulated himself on his witty joke and told him the actual truth about how he got in. He glances up at his twin and catches the minimal silhouette of Remus plucking at something from Roman’s mess of a coffee table.

"Remus….I don’t have a roommate."

"Well, she wasn’t your fucking girlfriend, you gay fuck," Remus says. “Hey, what are you doing with one of these? You always said that you hated the way your recorded voice sounds.”

“Huh?”

In response Remus waves whatever it was that he picked up and experimentally clicks a button on the side of it.

“—I’m going to punch him,” Virgil’s unmistakable voice crackles out into the otherwise silent apartment.

Remus’s head snaps to the side looking at the recording in his hand with wild eyes and he scrambles back to his feet. Roman’s heart is pounding in his throat, his blood is rushing in his ears, and a whole lot of things are making sense in a way that Roman really, really did not like them making sense.

“Wha….What did you say that my roommate looked like?” Roman says. “Remus, what did she look like?”

"I don’t know! I wasn’t paying attention! I was pissed off that I had to pay for an uber and demanded to know where you were! She said you were at work and that you would be back soon. I tossed my bag in here and nearly knocked over the laundry she was folding…. My bag’s gone. Fuck, that had my favorite jeans in there. And my Switch!”

“Remus,” Roman says, trying to swallow back the panic in his throat.

“She was wearing your sweatpants,” he says. “Motherfucker, she was wearing your sweatpants and eating one of those personal tubs of Cherry Garcia ice cream that only you like while folding laundry... and she smelled like bleach. A lot of bleach.”

The walls of Roman’s apartment suddenly seem to be closing in on them both.

"Out," Roman says, strangled and pleading and reaching for his sidearm. "Out of my apartment! Wait outside and use my phone to call Logan and tell him everything. I’m going to see what else she touched—"

“Your phone’s dead dumbass andI am not going to leave you alone in this apartment where a serial killer might have been hiding out!” Remus says and it sounds remarkably like he’s also panicking. Roman doesn’t think he’s ever actually seen Remus panic; Remus had always been a little too excited about his own lack of self-preservation, and there hadn’t ever been a situation that Remus hadn’t been able to handle and Roman decides that right here, right now, is a horrible time for him to learn to be scared.

Roman’s mouth opens to say something brilliant and focused, something that would make the dozens of FBI instructors he had proud of how calm he could be and how rational he could think, something that would convince Remus to listen to him and go outside away from possible dangers, something that would slow the rapidly building tidal wave of fear in his chest.

What comes out is a partial scream as one of the shadows in his apartment lunges at Remus from behind and slams solidly against his skull. Remus’s eyes go wide, then unfocused, and then his entire body drops like a concrete block in a pool.

Roman jolts towards him, but the sight of the person standing there stops him short: a young woman in black leggings and a pink Princess Peach T-shirt that Roman recognizes from his own closet, and Roman’s high school letterman over her shoulders. There’s Ruger LCP in her manicured hand, barrel pointed right down at Remus’s unmoving head, and she wedges her boot heel directly on his back, like a cat showing off the baby bird it’s killed.

Except the baby bird is Remus’s twin brother and Roman might be next.

He can’t think straight, can’t think at all; every time he tries to remember what protocol is for this, his brain takes a detour to how Remus crumpled like a soda can. Roman can’t tear his eyes from the gun at his twin’s head, not even to look at the intruder enough to memorize her features to tell someone if he makes it out of this. Remus is still as stone, as concrete, as a corpse and Roman can’t even tell if he’s still breathing, or if Roman’s already lost the person who’d always had his back in everything.

“I didn’t think you would be so quiet,” the killer says. Her tone is soft and warm and all the things that serial killers shouldn’t be. Oh, is that why all the victims had been younger and smaller? So that she could get control of them easily if they fought back? “Are you just so happy to see me? Surprised?”

"But….Andy Clupeidae," Roman says, voice trembling, his hand hovering over his gun holster, still not close enough to draw before she would get a chance to fire. "Clupeidae…. Fuck, that’s—That’s a family of fish, right? That’s why it sounded familiar.”

“Sardines, shads, and…herrings," the murderer says, wistfully proud of Roman. "The fact that he was wearing red today was just luck. Isn’t that funny?"

Roman chokes on his urge to laugh because it’s not and his wheezing, twisted, cramped lungs are fighting off hysteria. For someone who was a genius, who thought faster than most people could imagine, who passed every test the FBI threw at him with perfection, Roman can’t remember what he’s supposed to do.

He’s not even sure of what he can do.

His phone hesitates in back pocket, long dead, and as far as he knows no one would even think to check on them tonight. Even if he yelled for help, what would his neighbors do? Call the police? Come running to save him? Get murdered by the person in front of him who’s taken ten other lives like it was a game? Even if Roman ran, what would she do? Chase him? Or just kill Remus and make Roman live out the worst version of his life that he can imagine?

“I’ve been waiting for a long time to meet you, Roman,” the killer says, before he can get a handle of any of his thoughts. “Your team is so annoying, don’t you think? Every time I thought I would have gotten to talk to you alone, one of them always appeared….and then that awful man Logan Ackroyd made you stay at your office! I knew if I tried to visit you there, they wouldn’t understand! They would convince you I was wrong just like how everyone has always said I was wrong and bad!

“So, I stayed here, waiting for you the whole time…thinking you would be able to sneak back here and meet me like you’re supposed to! But your terrible team couldn’t even let you do that!”

((“Is the Gloria Scott referring to The Adventures of the Gloria Scott?” Janus cuts him off right before he says where he lives.))

((“No,” Logan said, “I want you to stay here.”))

((The look that Virgil and Janus shared before they left.))

“They knew.” Roman swallows hard. “They fucking knew and didn’t tell me—”

“It’s okay! I know it wasn’t your fault….” She says mistaking his horror for some other emotion Roman doesn’t even think he can fake. “I realized they just needed a reason to let you come home to me! You did so good solving my code! Even after this bitch showed up and started making fun of you and it!” She presses her boot down on Remus’s spine and Roman jerks reflectively forward before he can stop himself.

“Remus wasn’t—he didn’t—!” Roman stutters. “He wasn’t doing it maliciously! He’s just like that! Okay? You don’t have to hurt him!”

His eyes flick up to her face, hoping that maybe if Roman stops looking at him, Remus will shake off the hit to the head the same way he shook off water after Roman shoved him into the pool when they were kids: miraculously unhurt and smug in his movements, you really thought that could get me to shut up? HA!

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to defend him anymore. You’re never going to have to worry about anyone not taking you seriously ever again. I won’t let them, my detective.” She smiles at him, softly, so softly, as if she really believes she’s doing him a kindness.

Roman takes a step backwards, his back bumping against the closed door. The killer crowds forward, humming happily. “I’m so, so happy to finally meet someone just like me, Detective,” she says. “We’re going to be so happy together. Just you wait.”

[Chapter 2]

#sanders sides #remus sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #patton sanders #fbi agent #serial killers #Remus and Roman are good Brothers #Everyone actually adores Roman agenda #tw: guns #Kidnappings #The twins should get to be geniuses #because I said so

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