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jeonsjiddies · 4 years

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and then came you | pjm (m)

summary - Jimin was having a harder time getting over his unrequited love than he’d like to admit. He was desperate to escape the longing in his chest; he was searching for something to make him feel alive again. Jimin was about to give up hope that he’d ever find anything meaningful to cling to again, and then came you.

rating- explicit 18+

word count- 7551

pairing- jimin x reader

genre- fluff, smut, angst

Warnings - a little angsty/ a little heartbreak at the beginning, some sexual harassment ( from an ex), mentions of cheating, thigh riding, ice play, creampie, multiple orgasms, slight dom!jimin, Oral (female receiving)

a/n - while this story can stand alone, it is based off the 8 letters AU, which can be found here. :) as usual, all the thanks in the world to @sweetnspicy93 for all your help and thank you for urging me to give 8 letters Jimin his own happy ending.

Jimin knew it was a bad idea, but he’d done it anyway. He would’ve done anything for the girl with the soft eyes and the bright smile, the girl who was now Namjoon’s. Jimin thought his crush was small enough that he’d be able to assist in making Namjoon jealous and walk away unscathed. At least she would be happy. That would be enough for Jimin. Or so he thought.

Jimin’s mind wandered back to the way she looked on top of him, grinding her hips into his. His cock stirred at the memory. Of course, it had all been a show, strategically designed to make her roommate and crush jealous. That didn’t stop Jimin’s heart from slipping a beat when her core ground down onto his member. It didn’t stop Jimin from melting when she’d giggled and covered her face to hide it. Jimin knew it wasn’t real, he’d laughed off his boner, but he let himself enjoy the feeling of her skin under his tongue, the soft noises he drew from her which he knew weren’t completely fake.

He felt empty, lost. Maybe he was being dramatic, but Jimin felt like he needed purpose. He’d feigned happiness when he saw her tucked into Namjoon’s loving embrace, congratulating the new couple as pieces of his heart chipped away and fell into the black hole of his chest. It seemed like his desire to do anything had faded away as quickly as his grasp on her. Now, he moped about his apartment, listening to the dull roar of the rain outside. It had been weeks since Namjoon had finally cracked and claimed her as his own, and Jimin was tired of feeling so… tired, dejected, lonely.

Jimin decided he needed a change of scenery. The messy apartment with the dingy walls he had been cooped up in for weeks wasn’t doing anything to help him, he needed a fresh start. He didn’t give himself time to think about it, only packed a bag and scurried out the door, through the pouring rain to his car. He didn’t have a real plan, just decided to hit the open road and let his gut guide him until he found a place to explore. He drove through the rain, letting his excitement seep through his bones as he made random turns and took unplanned exits to get to his unknown adventure.

Jimin drove for a few hours, deciding no matter where he went he wasn’t going to escape the dastardly rain. He took the next exit he saw, something in his chest guiding him towards the small town it led to. Near the exit he saw a sign illuminated promising a hotel room for only $35 a night. Jimin, having nothing to lose, pulled into the parking lot. Entering the building and shaking the rain from his dripping hair, he looked around to find the front lobby devoid of any life.

“Hello?” He called out.

You didn’t hear him enter the building and couldn't see anything past the stack of boxes you were balancing. He didn’t see you coming around the corner. You tripped over a flipped up rug and went tumbling forward, boxes flying out of your hands and landing haphazardly on the tile floor, contents spilling out and rolling in different directions. You would’ve splattered on the floor much like the contents of the boxes had it not been for the beautiful stranger who currently cradled you in his strong arms. Your palms were pressed flat against his chest, and you could feel the toned muscle under your fingertips. Your gaze traveled up his neck and face until your eyes locked with the deep brown pools of his. Though they were a dark color, they shone with the intensity of the sun, bright and vivid, so beautiful it almost hurt to look at. Your mouth hung open in shock for a moment at how gorgeous this man was before you came to your senses, stumbling back and out of his grip.

“I am so so sorry! Are you alright?” You questioned, skimming over his body for any obvious signs of injury. You sighed in relief when you found none.

“I’m fine. Are you okay?” He wondered, eyes searching yours.

“Yes, thanks to you. Thank you. For catching me.” You giggled nervously.

“It’s not every day a beautiful girl throws herself into my arms. Couldn’t pass up the opportunity.” He winked playfully.

You blushed and looked down to hide it and squeaked in surprise, scrambling to collect the contents of the boxes. Jimin leaned down to help you, collecting items and tucking them safely in the box before lifting it and following you to the counter where the both of you set them down.

“Thank you, again.” you smiled, taking your place behind the desk. “Were you looking for a room?”

“Yes, please.” he grinned back at you, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip.

Your eyes lingered on the action a little longer than was socially acceptable before you shook yourself back to reality and searched the old, worn down computer system for available rooms.

“Okay, I’ve got a double queen and a single king available. Which would you prefer? They’re both non-smoking rooms.” you smiled politely.

“The single king, it’s only me.” Jimin sighed, his sunshine filled eyes dimming a bit.

“Okay!” you tried not to show your concern, but selected the room and input your employee discount.

“How many nights?” you asked, glancing back up at him.

“Ummm…” he trailed off, looking away as he thought carefully. “Let’s go with seven. For now.”

“Okay, a one week stay…” your fingers tapped at the keys, and you rung up his total.

“Okay that will be $187.25. Cash or card?” you smiled sweetly.

“That doesn’t sound right… it’s for 7 nights right? $35 a night?” he confirmed.

“I, um, put my employee discount in for you…” you admitted shyly, avoiding his gaze. “It made it $25 a night, plus tax. We’re allowed to give the employee price to friends and family and I was thankful for your help.”

Jimin watched you for a moment, teeth sinking into his bottom lip as he appraised you.

“Thank you. That’s… really sweet. Probably the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” his voice lowered at the end, as if that part was a secret.

“Well, you helped me. I helped you.” you shrugged, trying to play it off and hoping he wouldn’t notice the blaze in your cheeks.

Your hands brushed when he handed over his card and you audibly gasped at the shockwave that shot through you when his skin met yours. His mouth parted in shock as well and you both locked eyes for a moment. One heartbeat passed. Two. The only sound in the lobby was both of you sucking in shaky breaths.

You gulped, pulling your hand away and swiping his card through the reader. You handed it and a receipt back to him, careful not to touch him again and smiled the most professional smile you could muster. You reached behind you and pulled the corresponding keycard out of its slot and handed it over as well.

“Room 318. If you need anything, you can call me. The front desk number is 0. I’ll be here until 7am, but if you find that Mina is a little too… blunt?..for your taste, I’m actually right down the hall in 338.” you explained.

You weren’t sure why you told him that, you never offered that information to any other customers. Something about him just pulled you in. You wanted to protect him. You wanted to know what was going on in his mind, what could possibly be dimming those glittering eyes. You were enamoured by him, intrigued, fascinated really.

“Thank you for the heads up…” he trailed off, eyes scanning your shirt for a name badge.

“Y/N. And you?” you offered.

“Jimin.” he beamed at you, causing your heart to skip a beat for probably the 92nd time since you’d laid eyes on him.

“It’s very nice to meet you Jimin. I hope you enjoy your stay.” you told him sincerely.

“I think I will.” he winked, making his way down the hallway towards his room.

*** Jimin couldn’t sleep. He was used to tossing and turning and lying awake until the sun came up, he was no stranger to the way his mind whirled when the silence crept in. He kept himself busy during the day, but when the sun went down, the restlessness set in. Jimin hated the silence. He hated being alone. He glanced at the clock, it was midnight. He sighed and shoved himself out of bed, slipping on his shoes and making his way down to the coffee bar he’d spotted earlier.

He filled two cups, fixing one the way he liked it and leaving the other black, but grabbing a couple of cream and sugar packets to bring with him. He peered around the corner to see if you were busy before he entered the lobby. You were sat on a stool behind the desk, head leaning on your hand as you struggled to stay awake. Jimin smiled, turning the corner and setting the coffee in front of you.

“Looks like you might need this more than I do.” he grinned, taking a sip of his own. “I wasn’t sure how you liked it so I just brought the extras to you.”

“Oh my gosh. My hero.” you cooed, ripping open the sugar and creamers and dumping them in before taking a sip.

Your head lolled back blissfully and you moaned quietly. Jimin’s eyes widened at the unexpected lewd sound rolling off your pink lips and had to discreetly adjust himself before you noticed the way his sweats got a little tighter.

“You saved my life. How can I ever repay you?” you giggled.

“Keep me company? I can’t sleep.” he whined.

“I’m not going anywhere until 7. You’re welcome to hang out with me here.” you offered.

Jimin hopped up on the desk, swinging his legs back and forth as he peered down at you. You rolled your eyes with a smile.

“Where are you from?” you asked him.

“Just a few hours south of here.” he answered. “I couldn’t get far in the rain.”

“Oh, you aren’t to your destination yet? Why did you book seven days then?” you wondered aloud.

“I didn’t really have a destination in mind. I just wanted to leave for a while. I had nothing holding me there anymore, and I thought a change of scenery would be nice. So I just kinda went where I felt like going and ended up here.” he shrugged.

“Your grand adventure led you to our little town?” you laughed.

“It’s got it’s charms.” he smirked.

You bit your lip and looked down, willing the blush on your cheeks to chill out. Jimin chuckled, the vibrations of his body shaking your desk.

“So what do you plan on doing now that you’re here?” you asked.

“I don’t really have a plan. I just felt kind of suffocated and needed to get out of my dingy apartment and that stupid town.” he left off the part about how SHE was everywhere he went when he did venture outside his apartment, and how every time he saw her hand laced with Namjoons bile rose in his throat.

“Well, on behalf of our tiny town, welcome. I hope you find what you’re searching for.” you smiled.

Jimin stayed perched on your desk for hours, until the sun started streaming through the blinds in the lobby, filling the room with a soft glow. In your opinion, though, the light wafting through the space couldn’t dare compare to the light that came from Jimin. When his head was thrown back and his body shook and his smile reached from ear to ear while giggles and chuckles fell from his pillowy lips, Jimin shone brighter than the sun could ever hope to.

You both got more comfortable as the night went on, delving into deeper topics, more personal ones. You told each other stories, shared your hopes for the future, It honestly felt like you’d known him your whole life. The conversation flowed easily, there weren’t any awkward pauses or times when neither of you could fill the silence, unsure of what to say. It was easy with Jimin. Being around him made you feel lighter, less broken. Like the light inside of him was seeping out and filling you with hope too.

You could tell there was something on his mind, something plaguing him. Who else stays up talking to a hotel clerk until the wee hours of the morning? He was running from something when he left without a plan, but he didn’t offer much information on it. Despite the darkness that sometimes threatened to break through his cheery exterior, Jimin was just… bright. It was who he was, a part of him. He was warm, friendly, and welcoming.

Neither of you had realized the time until the front door of the lobby swung open and Mina shuffled through, her ever-present scowl plastered on her weathered face. She glared at Jimin the moment she saw him. His eyes widened in fear and he slipped his bottom off of the desk, backing away from it. You sent him a look that said ‘I told you so.’

“Shifts over. Go.” she grunted, pointing her disappointed gaze at you.

You nodded quietly, gathering your purse and walking over to Jimin, who was almost cowering in the corner. You nodded for him to follow you out of the lobby and only spoke once you were out of earshot.

“See what I mean?” you giggled.

“She’s terrifying.” he whisper-hissed.

“She’s old and everything hurts. I’d probably be mean if I had to work here at her age too.” you shrugged, “but yeah if you need anything come find me. She definitely didn’t like the way you were sitting on the desk.”

Jimin nodded, covering his mouth as he stifled a yawn. You laughed.

“Did I wear you out talking your ear off?” you teased.

“No, that was the most fun I’ve had in a while to be honest.” he chuckled.

“Happy to help.” you smiled shyly, pausing in front of his room with him.

He hovered by the door but made no move to go in. You didn’t make a move to leave either. You both laughed at how ridiculous you were being. You placed your hand on his arm.

“Goodnight Jimin, sleep well.”

Suddenly, Jimin pulled you towards him, his arms wrapping tightly around your frame, head resting in the crook of your neck. You melted into his embrace, allowing your arms to circle around his body as well.

“Thank you for keeping me company.” he quietly spoke, warm breath hitting your ear and making you shiver.

“Any time, Jimin.” you answered back just as quietly.

He pulled back and sent you a smile before he slipped inside his room. You slowly made your way back to yours, every inch of your skin tingling, relishing the way it felt to be held by him, even for just a moment. In the arms of his stranger was the first time you’d ever felt like you were home.

You and Jimin had developed a nightly routine. Each night, he’d show up around midnight and perch himself on your desk, gifting you a cup of coffee (which he tailored to your tastes now.) The two of you would talk and laugh and just enjoy each other’s presence throughout the night. Maybe you should’ve gotten bored spending so much time together but you never ran out of things to talk about.

It felt like he’d always been there and he always would be. Even Mina seemed to get used to seeing Jimin when she arrived. She wasn’t friendly but she’d stopped sending him evil looks, which was quite the compliment from her. You found yourself looking forward to work rather than dreading it. Your favorite part of each day was the time you got to spend with Jimin. On the 4th night of this routine, Jimin wrapped you up in your nightly hug. You’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t wait all night for this part, longing to be wrapped up in his embrace, however fleeting the moment may be.

That night, Jimin surprised you. When he pulled away from your hug you felt his pillowy soft lips rest upon your cheek in a chaste kiss. The moment was over before you had time to process what was happening and Jimin smiled innocently at you.

“Goodnight, Y/N. Sweet dreams.”

You stood frozen in place, letting your hand come up to touch your cheek where his lips had just been. His lips were so soft, so plush, and you longed to feel them against your own. Your cheek burned in the best way where the lingering heat from his lips stayed. You couldn’t stop the goofy smile from spreading across your face.

That was until you rounded the corner to get to your room and walked face first into the chest of the man you despised more than anything else. Your ex boyfriend, Stuart, loomed over your like a predator stalking it’s prey, using his large body mass to trap you against the wall. He reeked of alcohol and you rolled your eyes at the familiar scent.

“What are you doing here? Get off of me.” You hissed.

“Awww don’t sound so disappointed, Y/N. Don’t you miss me?” He cooed, one finger sliding it’s way up the side of your face.

“No.” You spit. “Get the fuck off of me.”

“Come on baby… don’t you want to have a little fun?” He smirked and your stomach threatened to release your midnight snack all over his button up shirt.

“Let me get one thing through your thick ass skull, I will NEVER touch you again. Do you understand?” You hissed through gritted teeth

“Don’t be like this. Just unlock the door. We can go in your room and play around like we used to. You used to like it when I showed up like this.”

“That was before I found out you were fucking half the town behind my back.” You threw back at him. “If you think I’ll ever get with you again you’re insane.”

“Quit playing hard to get and open the fucking door.” He growled.

“I believe she said no.”

Your gaze snapped to the voice that had just spoken, your eyes landing on Jimin, who was carrying his ice bucket. His eyes were swimming with concern for you but he stood tall and held his ground, refusing to be intimidated by the giant drunk moron who had you pinned to the wall.

“This isn’t any of your business. Fuck off.” Stuart hissed.

“Actually it kind of is. You’re sexually harassing my friend.” Jimin spoke evenly, keeping a calm persona.

“You know this clown?” Stuart asked you.

“Yeah. He’s my friend.” You shrugged.

“You little slut, you’re letting him hit it aren’t you? Bitching at me for having a little fun but you’ll bust it open for anyone huh?” Stuart goaded you.

“Well Stuart, I don’t really think that’s any of your business.” You growled.

“If you’ll put out for him you better put out for me.” He hissed.

Jimin’s fist connected with Stuart’s jaw before you could reply or react. Stuart stumbled back in surprise and Jimin took the opportunity to grab your hand and sprint down the hallway with you in tow. A roar of rage sounded from behind the two of you which only fueled your legs to move faster. Nearing a T in the hallway, you made a split second decision to shove Jimin into the supply closet and shut the door.

Stuart wasn’t smart enough, especially while drunk, to think of that as an option and you strained your ears to listen as his footsteps clomped past the storage closet, pausing before retreating down the hallway. You let out a sigh of relief, looking up to meet Jimin’s gaze. It was then that you realized how close you were. Your noses almost touching, you could feel his ragged breaths against your skin. You told yourself it was from the running.

“Are you okay?” He whispered.

“Yes, thanks to you. You keep rescuing me.” You grinned.

“Well, call me Prince Charming then.” He laughed quietly. “Do you think he’s gone?”

“I’m not sure. We should probably wait it out.” You sighed.

“Why don’t you call the police?” Jimin wondered.

“His dads the sheriff. He won’t do anything.” You huffed.

Jimin shifted, trying to maneuver around you to set down the ice bucket he was holding. He opted to place it on the floor, bending down to set it beside the two of you. He misjudged the space between your bodies as he stood up, stumbling forward a little, his face ended up in your cleavage, his lips brushing against your cloth covered nipple. He froze in shock, unable to peel himself from your breast. His breath circled your nub, damp and warm. You let out a breathy moan at the feeling and your eyes immediately widened in panic.

Jimin straightened his posture, eyes locked on yours and lips parted in amazement. Neither of you spoke or dared to move. You could feel his chest rising and falling rapidly, brushing against your own each time in the cramped space. Jimin could feel his cock stirring to attention in his sweats and decided it was time to check if the coast was clear. He cleared his throat and opened the closet door, slipping his head out and checking both directions.

“I don’t see him anymore.” Jimin told you quietly.

You nodded and followed him towards your room. You paused in front of his, shaking with anxiety when he looked at you in confusion.

“Jimin… I’m scared. Can I… can I stay with you? I’m worried he’s going to come back and I-“ you rambled bit Jimin put you out of your misery.

“Of course, come on.” He unlocked the door and ushered you inside.

You followed him inside, thanking him quietly and following him like a lost puppy to the middle of the room.

“Make yourself comfortable. Do you want me to turn on a movie?” He asked. “Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“I’m okay, but I won’t turn down the movie.” You smiled gratefully.

Jimin flipped on the tv and sat at the opposite side of the bed, careful to give you room and made sure he was under the covers so you couldn’t see his semi. You got under the blankets too, but still shivered in the cold of his room.

“Are you still cold? I don’t think I have a clean sweater…” he thought out loud, wracking his brain for ideas.

“It’s fine! I’ll warm up soon.” You assured him.

Things shifted back to normal for the most part, but there was a lingering tension in the air neither of you were willing to talk about. You fell into easy conversation about the movie, giggling and poking fun at the plot holes together. You continued to shiver despite your best efforts not to show how cold you were. Jimin sighed.

“Come here.” He instructed.

“Hmm?” You questioned.

“Come over here and let me warm you up, you’re making me feel bad.” Jimin motioned for you to join him on his side of the bed.

“Really I’m fine-“ you began but the look on Jimin’s face had you obeying his command in an instant, crawling your way over to him and snuggling up beside him as he wrapped an arm around you and pulled the blanket up to cover you both, trapping the heat of both of your bodies.

The hotel mattress was lumpy and uneven, but you’d never been more comfortable in your life. Jimin’s arm wrapped around your shoulder so it wasn’t sandwiched between the two of you and you molded yourself against his side even closer. Your bodies fit perfectly together and it made your heart beat faster than normal. You only hoped Jimin couldn’t hear it. When the movie ended, Jimin switched off the tv and laid down. You followed suit, pressing your body up against his and resting your head on his shoulder, your hand on his chest.

“Tell me something I don’t already know about you.” you requested, voice soft in an attempt not to disturb the peaceful atmosphere.

“What haven’t I told you yet?” Jimin chuckles to himself.

“What’s the real reason you’re here?” you pondered, bracing yourself for him to close himself off.

Jimin sighed, and you were about to apologize and change the subject when he nodded, glancing over at you.

“Actually, I was kind of running away. I had this friend, and I liked her but she liked her roommate. He likes her too but wasn’t doing anything about it, so we fake dated to make him jealous. I know it’s immature but he needed a push. I wanted her to be happy but didn’t realize how I’d feel seeing them together all the time. It’s actually kind of nice, I haven’t thought about her in days.” Jimin explained.

“I’m sorry Jimin. You’re a wonderful guy and you deserve someone who appreciates you.” You told him, eyes searching his face.

“Thank you.” He scrunched his nose up in that cute way that made your heart clench. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

You wracked your brain for information you hadn’t already provided to Jimin during your nightly talks. You noticed then that Jimin was shifting beside you, growing antsy with the vulnerability of the conversation, you assumed. In an attempt to lighten the mood, you threw out the first thing you could think of.

“Hmmm… I can touch my nose with my tongue.” you lied with the best straight face you could muster.

“No way. Show me.” Jimin laughed, turning to watch you.

You stuck your tongue out and tried your hardest to push it far enough to touch the tip of your nose, but failed miserably. You refused to give up and kept trying, making silly faces while attempting to reach. Jimin couldn’t control the laughter bubbling from deep in his belly at your ridiculous antics.

His smile reached both ears, and Jimin watched you make a fool of yourself, realizing that he hadn’t felt so light and carefree in the longest time, even before the incident with Namjoon and his new girlfriend. Something about being near you just made Jimin turn into a version of himself that he actually liked. Being around you made him feel like it might actually be okay.

The two of you shared hushed whispers for a while, Jimin absentmindedly drawing shapes on the soft flesh of your hand that rest on his chest. The whispers died down and you were left with the quiet humming of the air conditioning kicking on and off periodically and the sound of Jimin’s even breathing. You lifted your head to see if he was asleep and watched his chest move with each inhale. You allowed yourself to study his features up close. You couldn’t help yourself, reaching out and letting your fingers brush against the skin of his jaw, a featherlight touch in the hopes of not waking him.

Jimin stirred slightly and you held your breath, ceasing all body movements. You watched his eyes flutter before stilling. He snuggled farther into the blanket and sighed happily. You waited a few moments before returning to your exploration. Your fingers danced lightly towards his lips, letting yourself marvel at how full and soft they were. Your thumb brushed against the tender flesh, and Jimin’s tongue darted out to wet them. You removed your fingers from his warm, now wet mouth.

His eyelashes fanned across his cheeks delicately, and you gently ran a finger along them, watching them flutter under your touch. You sighed, completely in awe of how beautiful the man next to you truly was. He was painfully attractive, that was a given. But he was also smart, funny, kind, open. You found yourself idly wondering how anyone could pass him up, but you were honestly not upset that she had. It was a stupid daydream, you knew that. There was no way he was into you. But you couldn’t stop yourself from imagining what it might be like to show Jimin the kind of love he’d been missing, the kind he was so clearly desperate to find.

If anyone deserved to feel raw, unconditional love, you had no doubt that Jimin did. He was so sweet and friendly and had so much love to give in return. You wanted to watch those eyes light up, see how brightly he could shine when properly adored. You wanted to be that for him. He shuffled in his sleep, mumbling something under his breath and his arms reached out, seeking your warmth. He brought you flush against him, enveloping you in his warm embrace. You smiled to yourself and carded your fingers through his silky hair.

You let yourself melt into his hold, feeling welcome and needed and wanted. You began fading in and out of consciousness, the comfort and safety of having Jimin so close putting your mind at ease. You fell asleep to the sound of his strong, steady heartbeat, which sounded a lot like your new favorite song.

You woke up before Jimin, the sunlight finding its way through the thin curtain that covered the large window of his hotel room. You blinked a few times and tried to sit up, but Jimin’s arms instinctively wrapped around you tighter, holding you in place against his firm body. You grinned, snuggling back into his embrace and pressing yourself up against him. That’s when you felt something hard pressing against your backside. You experimentally wiggled your hips against Jimin’s, wondering if it was what you thought it was. His sleepy moan and the friction against your bottom proved your suspicions correct.

Your eyes widened and you bit your lip as arousal pooled in between your legs. Jimin’s rock hard cock pressed against your backside made your head spin. You attempted to remove yourself from his grasp but that only made him hug you closer, effectively pressing his erection against you more. You whimpered quietly, torn between not disturbing Jimin and relieving the ache between your thighs. You pushed your bottom farther into him, hoping to gain a little friction. Suddenly, his hand gripped down on your hip, stilling your movements.

“What are you doing?” He questioned, his morning voice raspy and deep.

“I...uh….” you gulped, heat flooding to your cheeks at having been caught grinding against him.

You tried to flee, but Jimin’s firm grip on your hip didn’t lessen, his fingers dug into your skin deliciously.

“It looks like you were grinding your pretty little ass on my cock.” He purred, his hand sliding from your hip to grasp the fleshy globe of your bottom, giving it a rough squeeze.

“Ah, fuck.” You squeaked out at his possessive actions, you leaned into his touch and brought a chuckle from him.

“Hmmmm… you like that?” He chuckled, “you like when I touch you?”

“Yes.” You gasped as his hands traveled farther up to cup your breast, giving it a light squeeze.

“So needy. Why don’t you do something about it?” He prodded.

Your brain was fuzzy, you weren’t even registering his words. You didn’t think about what you were doing, you just let your body take control as you turned around then swung a leg over his lap and straddled him. Jimin’s words died in his throat and his mouth hung open in shock. You didn’t let yourself think or slow down, knowing you’d chicken out if you did. You pressed your lips to his in a needy kiss, which he reciprocated after he processed that it was happening.

His hands found purchase in your hair, tugging gently as his tongue explored your mouth. You moaned into his mouth when his free hand pinched and rolled your nipple between his fingers. You began to grind your hips down onto his, delighting in the way his cock felt dragging up and down your clothed folds. Jimin groaned, letting his head fall back and hit the headboard with a quiet thud before he lifted it and grabbed your hips, holding them still.

“Wait, wait.” he panted.

“What’s wrong?” your hips stilled, embarrassment flooding your cheeks.

“It’s uh, been a while, and if you do that I’m going to cum in my pants.” he admitted sheepishly.

You bit your lip to hide your giggle when an idea flashed in your mind. You moved your hips so you were straddling his thigh rather than his crotch. You began to rock your hips again and Jimin’s eyes darkened as he stared at the spot where your sex met his thigh.

“Holy shit, you look so sexy right now…” he hummed thoughtfully, his hands coming to rest on your hips again only to grind you down harder on his toned muscle.

The arousal pooling between your legs was soaking through your clothing, and you were certain Jimin would feel it soaking his flimsy sweats soon. You whimpered at the friction on your clit and when Jimin tensed his thigh it sent a wave of pleasure through you.

His fingers found the edge of your shirt and he glanced at your face to make sure it was okay. When you nodded, he lifted it off of your frame and tossed it aside. He licked his lips as he surveyed your skimpy bra. His lips attached themselves to the tops of your breast while his hands slipped behind you to unclasp the fabric preventing him from seeing all of your upper half. The bra fell off your shoulders and Jimin whisked it away, taking a moment to admire your breasts.

“I think I might have died if I didn’t get a chance to have a proper taste of these.” he hummed, eyes flicking up to yours as a smirk graced his lips.

“Fuck, Jimin.” You whimpered pathetically as electricity shot to your core.

Almost immediately, his lips were on your nipples.His soft, plump lips sucked at your sensitive nub, his teeth gently scraping along the flesh. Your movements on his thigh stuttered, your mind going blank at the shivers coursing through you. His tongue darted out and swirled around your nipple, before he moved his delicious assault to the other breast. This time, he bit down, pulling the nub between his teeth. You yelped, arching your body closer to him as the sinfully pleasurable pain raced through your veins.

Jimin smirked against your skin, biting and soothing it with the flat of his tongue afterwards. He blew cold air against the red marks on your breasts, and you shivered. Your hips picked up speed the closer you got to letting go and Jimin sensed you were near your high. His fingers dipped past the waistband of your pants and panties, and he began rubbing your clit harshly, until you were just about to fly off the edge, then he ripped his hand away and held you still.

“What the fuck?!” you whined.

“You don’t cum until I say you do.” he growled, “you were a very bad girl, rubbing up against me and teasing me, using me for your own pleasure. So fucking sexy.”

You whined, trying to rock your hips against him once more, but Jimin was stronger than you. He grabbed your waist and flipped you over so he was hovering above you. The tips of his fingers teasing at your waistband. Your breath caught in your throat, the palpable tension growing thicker with each passing moment. He quickly discarded his own shirt, giving you the most glorious view of his toned chest and stomach.

You made no attempt to disguise the way you ogled him. You licked your lips seductively as your eyes raked over his body, drinking him in. You reached up to let your hands rake down his chest, fingers tracing the lines of his abs and brushing over his nipples on the way down. His body jerked and you smiled to yourself. Your perusal of his body came to rest at the elastic in his sweats.

“Someone’s eager.” Jimin quipped.

“Someone might not be so eager if she’d been allowed to cum.” you huffed, tugging the sweats and boxers down in one smooth motion.

Jimin laughed, standing up and kicking the clothing off of his body before crawling back onto the bed.

“Mouthy little slut. Don’t you know only good girls get to cum?” he shot back, pressing you flat against the mattress and kissing down your neck.

You squirmed under his touch while he worked his way down your body, stopping just above your aching sex. He placed a soft kiss to your clothed folds, making your body react and arch closer, seeking relief. He chuckled to himself and shed you of any remaining clothing. The contrast of the cool air meeting your aching heat caused a shiver to rip through your body. Something lit up in Jimin’s eyes and he removed himself from the bed and walked over to the mini fridge, opening the freezer compartment. You watched curiously as he returned with the small ice bucket he’d filled before finding you last night.

“Feeling thirsty?” you joked.

Jimin raised an eyebrow, shooting you a half-smile before taking an icecube and running it over your already hard nipple. You cried out, the stark contrast of his warm hands with the freezing cold of the icecube was divine. You watched as it slowly melted, water droplets rolling off your body and falling onto the bed.

“Jimin…” you whimpered.

“Mmm?” he smirked, repeating the action on the other breast.

Your back arched, seeking more from the man above you. He was playing you like an instrument, and he knew all the right notes. You were putty in his hands, and he knew it. It stroked his ego more than you would’ve cared for but at this point you would’ve done anything to get some attention on your sodden pussy.

Jimin popped an icecube in his mouth and moved up to kiss you. It rolled around between your tongues until it melted between your combined heat. Jimin kissed the tip of your nose before moving his face down between your legs. He pressed his tongue flat against your clit, and the coldness from the icecube that he’d just had in his mouth stunned you. He left your clit to tease along your folds, letting his tongue dart experimentally inside your heat.

You groaned,writhing underneath his ministrations. He flicked the tip of his tongue against your clit quickly, building the heat in your belly as he moved. He slipped two fingers inside you, curling them and hitting that delicious spot with every pump. He paused for a moment, and suddenly there was something very cold and very wet pressing against your walls.

You gasped, the ice pressing against you as Jimin moved it in and out with his tongue. The melting liquid joined your slick and spilled out of your hole while Jimin flicked his tongue, and the remaining ice against that spot that drove you wild. Once the ice was gone, and you were panting enough for Jimin’s liking, he doubled down on his efforts, tongue pressing against your walls and fingers working beside it while his other hand worked your clit in small, deliberate circles.

Jimin pulled away abruptly, and you nearly began crying as another orgasm slipped away.You groaned in frustration, reaching down to play with your own clit but Jimin caught your wrists and clicked his tongue.

“Nuh uh, darling. What did I say? You don’t cum unless I tell you to.” he purred, licking a bold stripe along the veins in your wrist, which was strangely erotic. “I want you to beg for it.”

“What?” you hissed.

“Beg me to cum. Beg for my cock.” he smirked.

You sighed audibly, and Jimin just watched you, the smirk still pasted on his stupidly handsome face.

“Please…” you mumbled.

“I’m sorry, what was that darling?” Jimin chuckled. “I can’t hear you.”

“Please fuck me, Jimin. I need to cum. Please!” you whined, all of your pride flying out the window as your pussy clenched around nothing.

“That’s my good girl.” he cooed.

“Please hurry.” you whined.

“Shit. I don’t… I don’t have a condom.” Jimin realized out loud, shoulders slumping.

“I have an IUD and I’m clean.” you panted, fingers wrapping around his neck and bringing him to meet your lips. “Are you?”

“I’m clean,” he assured.

“Then fuck me.” you whispered, nibbling on his ear.

Jimin wasted no time obliging your request. He lined himself up with your entrance and slid in smoothly, aided by your dripping arousal, courtesy of your two denied orgasms and the skills of his tongue. Jimin bottomed out, both of you emitting a low groan. Jimin wasn’t super long, but his girth more than made up for it, as well as his ability to move his hips in the most delectable ways. He filled you up perfectly, hitting spots inside you that you were unaware even existed.

“Jimin.” you moaned, clawing at his back as he thrust in and out of you at a painfully slow pace.

“Say it again.” he whispered, hips picking up speed.

“Jimin.” you repeated.

“Louder.” he growled, snapping his hips in and out of you with vigor.

“Fuck! Jimin!” you cried.

Jimin pounded in and out of you, causing your body to bounce with each movement of his hips. He loved the way your breasts bounced and the way you bit down harshly on your lip, overwhelmed with pleasure. His head fell into your neck as he pistoned his hips against yours, one hand sneaking between your joined bodies to expertly rub at your clit. You could no longer form a coherent sentence,gibberish falling from your lips as the familiar fire built deep inside you.

“Jimin.” you warned, your cunt clenching around him.

“Are you gonna cum for me? Cum all over my cock? Do it, baby. Cum for me.” he coaxed.

His teeth sinking into your neck was the last push you needed before you were careening off the edge. Your body trembled at the most intense orgasm you’d ever experienced in your life. White dots clouded your vision and you screamed so loud your throat felt raw. Jimin came soon after you, working you both through your shared euphoria. His thrusts slowed and he stilled inside you, breathing as heavy as your own.

“Holy shit.” he groaned, and you could feel his muscles shaking just as much as your own.

He pulled out of you, watching in awe as his cum seeped out of your beaten hole. He slid a finger along your folds, gathering his seed and bringing it up to your lips. You obediently opened your mouth, wrapping your tongue around his fingers and sucking them clean, the taste of your own slick combined with his cum coating your tongue. Jimin shivered at the sight.

“Fuck, you’re perfect.” he sighed breathlessly.

He stood up, walking into the bathroom to dampen a towel with warm water and bring it back to the bed, gently cleaning you up. You bit your lip, suddenly feeling vulnerable under his gaze. He made his way back into the bed, snuggling up next to you and pulling you into his arms. He watched your expressions and you watched him. You both giggled nervously.

“Do you maybe… want to go out sometime?” he asked, teeth raking over his bottom lip nervously.

“I’d like that.” you giggled, hiding your face in his chest.

You both lay there in comfortable silence, holding each other while your breathing returned to normal. You nodded off, spent from the activities of the morning, and it was Jimin’s turn to watch your peaceful face as you slept. His eyes trailed over your features, adoration and a tinge of something more filling him. True, Jimin had arrived in this small town running away from something. He was searching for something to make him feel anything but the jealousy and pain that had settled deep in his chest. Jimin felt like he was running toward something now, a possibility of the two of you. He knew he wasn’t “fixed”, but he felt good with you, whole with you.

Jimin knew both of you had a lot of learning to do, and a long way to go and a long way to grow, but he couldn’t stop the excitement bubbling in his chest because for the first time in what seemed like forever, Jimin was happy. Truly, unabashedly happy. He’d started this journey of his running. He thought he’d never recover from the darkness that had taken him over. He thought he’d never find joy again. Jimin had gone desperately searching for something to give him hope.

And then came you.

#bts #bts smut #park jimin #park jimin smut #jimin #jimin smut #jimin x reader #park jimin x reader #jimin imagine #jimin one shot #park jimin imagine #park jimin one shot

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thiswasinevitableid · 4 years

Text

PSL (OT4)

Prompt for the 14th was: Pumpkin. The OT4, for new folks, is Barclay, Stern, Indrid, and Duck (every is dating except Duck and Barclay, who are metamors). This prompt could also be called “the silly things we sometimes do for love”

Stern absentmindedly taps the steering wheel as the last cars trickle from the visitor center parking lot. The last song before he dropped back into the NRQZ was “Bad Moon Rising” and so that’s what he taps in time to. The lights in the building can't go out soon enough.

He’d only been in D.C week, had skyped the others every night, but the sensation of missing them was so strong. It’s the trade-off, he supposes, for knowing there were three people waiting for him instead of the none he’d grown accustomed to.

Even with the LAN, the signal on the Kepler end was too weak to show video most of the time, so he lay on the hotel bed, basking in their voices. Barcaly’s voice makes him feel safe the way a well-built house and a warm drink on a stormy night make him feel safe. Indrid’s is like something from drem, familiar and alien all at once.

The car door swings open, letting in a burst of fall air.

“Hey, darlin.”

Duck’s voice makes him feel sixteen again. He never had a highschool sweetheart, but that drawl feels like it’s coming in through the open window in the summer air, promising something wonderful if he climbs outside.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

And then there’s him, sounding like a dork. But Duck just smiles.

“You have an okay drive?”

“It’s been worse, and at least this time I drove past the city limit sign knowing where Bigfoot is.”

“In your room pinin after you?”

“I hope not.” Stern lies, blushes a little at the image.

Duck moves to put his water bottle in the center cupholder, picks up the starbucks cup sitting there, and makes a face when he finds it mostly full.

“You feein okay? Don’t think I ever seen you leave coffee long enough to get cold.” Duck sniffs, nods in understanding, “uhuh, I see, not a fan of the old pumpkin spice?”

“No. I buy one every year, and every year it’s the same thing.”

“So...why keep buyin it?”

“Because it’s so popular and yet I don’t like it. It’s so frustrating, I feel like I’m missing something! And now I basically have this weird ritual where I buy one just to see if this is the year I finally taste what everyone else does.” He tosses a sideways glare at the cup, “I have to be missing something.”

Duck giggles as they turn down the street to his apartment, “Missed you a hell of a lot, city mouse.”

“Do you think Indrid will mind if I don’t come up? I’m ready to collapse, and his sleep schedule is so weird anyway-”

“Think you don’t gotta worry about it.’

Sitting on the foot of the outdoor staircase is tall figured bundled in sweaters. Once they’re parked, Duck leans over and turns Sterns face towards him, kissing him while running his hand along his leg.

The passenger car door clicks open and Indrid’s hand appears. Duck takes it, winking once before leaving the car. There’s the sound of another kiss, and then Indrid bends down , bracing awkwardly on the seat, purring as he looks at Stern.

“Hello, pet. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” Stern leans in without being told to, Indrid chuckling lightly before kissing him.

“And yes,” Indrid says as he pulls back, “that surprise you’re thinking of will work nicely.”

With that, he’s out of the car in a rustle of fabric.

------------------

His plan to surprise Barclay by waiting in the Sylphs room until he gets off shift does indeed go well. He gets fucked into the bedspread and cums with Barclays head between his legs, and that's not even the best part.

Barclay is so happy when he sees him, clings to him afterwards, trails after him like a faithful dog as he puts his things away. They started sharing the room after the almost end of the world, partly because it’s further from everyone elses and thus they run less risk of being heard (Sterns love of letting Barclay know how well he’s taking care of him in bed stops just shy of letting everyone else know). It also acted as a sign that Stern meant to stay, somehow reassuring Barclay of that fact more than the agent’s own permanent assignment over the gate did.

He’s never told Barclay the truth, which is that if it had come down to staying in Kepler or leaving the FBI, he’d have turned in his badge in an instant. Barclay alone is reason enough for that, and when you added Duck and Indrid into the mix, how could he be anywhere else?

Then again, maybe Barclay has guessed as much after Stern willingly dragged his boss into a closet to help them save the world.

It scares him, knowing he might have put so much of his ambition aside to stay here. But it thrills him too.

Right now, it seems deeply worthwhile; he’s laying on the couch, legs in Duck's lap, doing a crossword while the other man reads. The Sylphs are on the floor, Indrid using his claws to scratch and groom Barclays fur. They’re talking quietly to each other in what Stern now recognizes as High Sylph, Barclay letting our rumbling purrs as they do.

Then he opens his eyes, looks at Stern, “No way. Babe, you don’t like pumpkin spice?”

Stern looks at Duck, confused. The ranger shrugs, “I told ‘Drid about it.”

“Just the lattes. I like pumpkin in other things.”

“I am the one who hates pumpkin in all forms.” Indrid says, handing Barclay his bracelet.

“Hold up, not even pumpkin pie?” Duck sets his book down.

Indrid shakes his head.

“But it’s a classic!”

“It is a trap. Pie is supposed to be sweet, not vegetal. And do not get me started on the wretched gourds themselves.”

“Do they make you sick?” Stern is already making a mental note to steer the Sylph clear of the bins of them by the Kroger.

“No. They resemble a fruit on Sylvain that is commonly grown near where I grew up. That fruit tastes sweet, like a melon. Not like horrid pulp.”

“Hmm, I wonder if seeds from one got through the gate and created the other.”

“Had to be the pumpkins goin to Sylvain, pumpkins have been growin in the americas for a long time.” Duck adds, then sighs, “can't believe I’m datin a fella who hates pumpkin pie. My mom made the best version in the world. Wonder if I can make it…”

“My sweet, I doubt even you are capable of as impressive a feat as making pumpkin pie not repulsive. But if you want to try, I will not stop you. Just go easy on the ginger, I am not fond of that either.”

“Indrid please, you’re breaking my culinary heart.” Barclay pouts.

Indrid licks his cheek, “You will survive, sunburst. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check some futures. Joseph, you have a phone call.”

Stern stands, already moving down the hall by the time the phone rings. Dating the mothman has some benefits.

-----------------------

Barclay watches them go, rubbing his beard, then looks over at Duck with an unusually mischievous glint in his eye.

“Up for a friendly bet?”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Bet I can make Joseph a Pumpkin Spice Latte he likes before you can make Indrid a pumpkin pie he'll eat.”

“What are we bettin?”

Barclay smirks, “assuming those two are up for it? Winner gets to be on the bed, loser gets tied up and has to watch.”

“You’re on.”

------------------------

Barclay carefully measures spices into simple syrup, Joseph watching him with his usual curiosity from a stool by one of the prep stations.

“You know you don’t have to go to all this trouble right? I’m happy to keep doing my nonsensical fall ritual.”

“Know you love you patterns babe, but I love a challenge. Once managed to recreate Dani’s favorite dessert from back home out of apples, peanut butter, and marshmallow fluff with a red licorice reduction.”

He glances over his shoulder to see his boyfriend making a horrified face.

“She still asks for it for her birthday. Or she did, I assume she can get the real deal now,”

Returning to his whisking sends bursts of cardamom and ginger into the ir. He inhales, content, just as the music coming from Sterns phone quiets.

“You’re also looking for a distraction.”

Damn FBI training.

“What makes you say that, agent?”

“Your posture, tone, and the fact you keep changing the subject.” There’s a sharp sound of leather soles on tiles as Stern hops of the stool. Then he’s in Barlcay’s periphery, leaning back against the counter, sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, “It’s alright if you don’t want to talk about it. But if it’s something to do with me, please tell me.”

“No” he turns off the burner, sets the syrup side to cool, “not even little, babe. I, uh, my first memory of fall on earth was getting exiled.”

“Oh, oh Barclay I had no idea.” Stern pivots, rests a hand on his hip.

“No one but Mama really does. It just means that all the stuff people like about fall; the leaves changing,getting to bundle up, building the first fire of the year, even the food...I still get this miserable feeling. Even though I’ve had lots of good stuff happen in the fall since then I find myself knowing what I was missing all those years. That was one of my favorite times of year on Sylvain that feeling. Having projects makes it easier to ignore.” When he turns his head his gaze is on the ground, “sorry, don’t mean to make things heavy when we’re just doing a goofy bet.”

Stern tugs him away from the stove, rests a hnd on each bearded cheek, “Thank you for telling me, Barclay. I’m sorry, I can't imagine how that felt, and if you ever want to talk about it...well, actually, Indrid might be the better person, but I’ll do my best. And,” he guides Barclay’s face up so he’s looking into brown eyes, stroking his cheek to coax out a smile, “I’m happy to be a distraction whenever you need me to.”

--------------------------------------

“Oh of course, how could I have missed that?” Indrid whacks his head into his notebook as Stern mentions his conversation with Brcly, “He told me once when in the year he was exiled, but I never put together what that corresponded to. I wish there was something I could do.”

“Me too. For now I’m taking him at his word that the bet is enough of a distraction.”

“Wise. Speaking of which; any luck, my love?”

“Nope!” Duck’s voice comes down from Janes attic. His sister is mostly sure their mom’s pumpkin pie recipe is somewhere in the boes up there, so Duck used his spare key to get into the house.

“How’s the ltte?” Indrid dips his head to indicate the travel mug in Stern’s hnd.

“I still don’t see what the fuss is. Barclay even used my favorite blend as the base.”

Indrid looks down t his own mug, “do you want some of my white chocolate- oh dear”

“Ahfuck! Uh, ‘Drid, Joe? Can, uh, can one of you move the ladder back? Because I just kicked it.” Duck’s legs are dangling from the attic door, the stepladder on it’s side on the floor. Before Stern can grab it, two chitinous, slightly velvety arms paper.

“Just let go.”

Duck obeys, dropping into the mothman’s waiting arms.

“Thanks, sugar.”

“You are welcome. Since you are about to say you did not find it, how bout lunch.”

“Sounds good. You comin, Joe.”

“Of course.”

‘...’Drid, you gonna put me down?’

“.......I haven't decided yet.”

-----------------------------

“Okay, this one has condensed milk, less ginger, and a hint of caramel.”

“Mmm. Hmmm, no I mean, it’s not bad but it’s still not trendsetting.”

“Dang.”

---------------------------------

“Jesus, why’d they keep all this stuff? These are report cards from first grade!”

“What is there to grade at that age?”

“Behavior, mostly. Huh, here are some cookbooks, maybe mom put that recipe in here.”

“While you search, I shall amuse myself with this box of photographs--you never told me you played trombone. Or had frosted tips.”

“That was one time in college, and gimme that box, you fuzzy menace.”

“Only if you come and get it, little human.”

---------------------------------

“This one is salted caramel, pumpkin, spices, and vanilla infused heavy cream.”

“Nope, still not revelatory.”

“Grrrrr.”

“Was that directed at me or the latte?”

“The latte, but if you feel like being a little late for your meeting with agent Steele I can growl over you some right now.”

----------------------------------

“...Thanks, Aunt Alice. Uhhuh, yep, talk with you soon.”

“No help from the extended family, I take it?”

“Nope. Just questions about when I’m gonna get married.”

“Oh dear.”

---------------------------------------------------

Stern sips from his Flathead Lake travel mug, the one where a monster becomes visible when warm liquid is poured in.

“Oh my lord, Barclay, this is incredible! You’ve done it, I want to drink this everyday.” He sips as fast as his tongue will allow as his boyfriend rumbles out a laugh.

“Well, yes and no. I did make that, but it’s not pumpkin spice. It’s dirty chai with fall-spiced caramel syrup.”

“It’s amazing. I love you so much.”

Barclay laughs louder, reaches across the center console to squeeze his hand, “Love you too, babe. More I thought about it, more I figured you're a man of very, uh, particular tastes sometimes, and if you don’t like pumpkin lattes, you don’t like them. I’d rather spend my time making something I know you’ll love, rather than trying to make your tastes match everyone else's. I mean, I kinda benefit from your having weird taste. Um, so to speak.” He pulls up to the apartment, and as soon as the car stops Stern pulls him into a kiss.

“Thank you, Barclay. I, um, no one’s ever gone to all that effort just to try and help me understand why people like something.”

“Any time, agent.”

Stern pulls his phone out, “I have something for you too.”

Barclay reads the image of an email he saved, “You’re taking time off?”

“Yes. I, um, I was thinking we could go to Sylvain during it. I can't give you back all the things you missed being gone. But I thought maybe I could give you the chance to start making up for lost time. I love fall on earth; I want to learn how to love it on Sylvain too, with you as my guide. I want to do what I can so it isn’t a bittersweet time of year anymore.”

The larger man looks like he might cry, but Stern doesn’t get long to examine it, since he’s crushed in a hug.

“Thank you, babe, thank you so fucking much. I, I’ve been kinda nervous to try and go back for things but I felt silly for being scared and I didn’t know how to ask and just...thank you.” He sniffles, pulls back with a watery smile, “Now c’mon, let’s go up. From the smell of it, Duck made pie.”

The apartment smells like the platonic ideal of fall, and Duck, streak of flour on his cheek, is putting the finishing whip cream touch on a pumpkin pie.”

“Where did you finally find the recipe?”

“In a book buried at the back of my closet, full of moms advice for when I got my own place. Haven't looked at it in close to two decades, and Winnie shredded the top cover, but the recipe was there alright.”

“Gotta admit, I’m impressed. That looks real fucking professional Duck.”

“Thanks man.” The ranger grins, cuts a slice and places it in front of Indrid (happily bundled in one of Barclay’s orange and grey flannels). The Sylph takes a forkful, scrutinizing it for a moment. Takes a bite, and chirps as he chews.

“Good?”

Wordlessly, Indrid stands, removes his glasses, and picks up the pie dish.

“If anyone needs me, the pie and I will be in the bedroom.”

“HAH!” Duck whoops triumphantly.

“Hey, hold on, I gotta try this to see what the secret is” Barclay takes off down the hall after him.

“No, mine, AH! Unhand me, I am the court seer.”

Duck flops against Stern as he doubles over, laughing.

“Fine, I gotta try it sir.” Barclays voice dips lower, and Stern sees him shift into his Sylph form.

“Don’t try to sweet talk me, this pie is mineOHgoodness, put me down.”

“Wanna know the secret?” The ranger says between giggles.

“Please.”

“I tripled the amount of sugar it called for.”

“Good thinking, ranger Newton.” Stern kisses him, “care to help me arbitrate a cryptid fight?”

Duck grins at him, love in every line of his face as laughter rings down the hallway, “lead the way, darlin.”

#promptober #OT4: Government Men and Their Cryptid Boyfriends #indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #sternclay #agent stern/barclay/indrid cold/Duck newton #agent stern/barclay #agent stern/duck newton #Indrid cold/Barclay #trans stern #trans duck newton

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musingsofsaturn · 4 years

Text

What are we waiting for?

Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation

Ship: The Enterprise Will Riker/Deanna Troi

Rating: T for descriptions of injury.

Words: 3,800+

Summary: A re-imagining of how my favourite space idiots got back together. Will is injured while on an away mission and Deanna questions everything that has led them to this moment. Basically just an angst-fest but I give them a happy ending because they deserve it goshdammit.

Author’s Note: Hello everyone! This is the first piece of fanfiction that I’ve written in a very long time, so I do apologise if I’m a bit rusty. I’ve been watching Star Trek TNG all summer long and have been wistfully longing for these two to just get it together and get together already. But since that’s not going to happen in-series, I’m just going to make it happen for my damn self. Canon? What canon? I don’t know her. But I hope you enjoy!

- Saturn

[Photo pinched from kirksfattitties]

‘What are we waiting for?’

She was on the Bridge when it happened.

It should have been a routine mission, investigating the planet’s surface for artifacts left by a long-extinct race. The captain had sent a small away team to the surface to explore, including a few science officers, Worf, and of course Will to lead the group. In constant contact with the Enterprise, they’d been relaying their findings as they happened - a piece of art here, an ancient tool there. Every new discovery caused Picard’s face to light up a little bit more; it didn’t take an empath to know that he was delighted with the discovery of an ancient civilisation’s history.

“Captain,” Worf’s gruff voice came over the communicator, “We’ve found a structure of some kind. It looks like it may have once been a temple.” The transmission sounded slightly fuzzy, as though they were losing signal slightly.

Authorative and clear, Picard praised his chief of security. “Excellent find, Mr Worf. Let’s see what’s in there.”

“Ackowledged.” Again, the transmition didn’t sound as clear as it should. There seemed to be some sort of interference.

The away team continued their exploration, and carried on detailing the various interesting things they discovered. The communicator signal kept deteriorating.

“Cap-” The transmission was breaking up so badly it was clipping some of Will’s words as he spoke. “There’s- ... kind of mosaic. I think- ... to see it-”

“Can you repeat that, Number One?”

“I sai-... mosaic in the tem-... Get down!”

Everyone on the Bridge tensed at Will’s sudden order to the away team. He’d sounded startled, almost panicked. Something had gone wrong.

Picard shifted forward in his chair, alert. “Report, Number One.” No one came in to respond. “Picard to Commander Riker.” Silence again. “Picard to Lieutenant Wo-”

“Captain-” Again, Worf addressed the Captain and the others on the bridge. “Th- ... under atta- ... Riker is injur-”

“Picard to Transporter Room Three. Can you get a lock on the away team?”

Deanna’s heart was in her throat, barely listening as the transport engineer responded something about too much disruption to beam them back. She knew that Worf had been trying to tell them the words she had dreaded ever hearing: ‘Commander Riker is injured’.

She had always known that their positions aboard the Enterprise came with a degree of risk. There was always a possibility that crew members could be injured, or worse. As such, she’d sometimes found herself imagining how she’d react when those words reached her ears. Would she be calm and composed, her every thought coming to her with perfect clarity as she came to a logical solution to his plight? Would she shut down, become a useless dead weight, having no way to help? Would she play the hero, demand to be beamed to join them, so she could fight and vanquish whatever foe had dared to hurt him?

And now that she’d heard those words, she knew the answer. She would panic.

“Captain, do something!” she all but sobbed, turning to the Captain. He ignored her, focusing on the task at hand, contacting various transport rooms, engineers, and of course the away team. How Deanna envied that focus, that usefulness, while her mind conjured hideous images of whatever and whoever had injured Will. A blade, a phaser, some awful weapon of war used to destroy and maim...

“Captain-” Worf’s voice cut through the panic swirling through her mind. “Every- ... stunned. We’re- ... way to some- ... less disruption- ... -mander Riker- ... medical attention-”

The message was badly broken up, but the Captain quickly interpreted it. “Picard to Transporter Room Three, as soon as you can get a lock on the away team, beam them directly to Sick Bay. Picard to Sick Bay, expect the away team any moment. Commander Riker has been injured. The condition of the rest of the team is unknown.” The people he’d addressed over the communicator quickly acknowledged the message. “Counselor, in my ready room please.”

She could hear her own heartbeat drumming in her ears as she followed his orders.

“One of the things I most value in your presence on the Bridge, counselor, is your composure.”

“I-”

He interrupted her, and she fell silent as he spoke. “We all know that serving with Starfleet carries a great risk. And I should think that nobody recognises the importance of a level head in an emergency as much as you do.” He stopped to allow her a chance to speak.

“Captain, I-” Deanna swallowed a lump in her throat, suppressing the urge to raise her voice as her fearful thoughts continued. “I apologise. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Well I do. And I need it not to cloud your judgement or interrupt your professionalism again.” She was going to ask what he meant by his suggestion that he knew what had come over her, but he continued. “I’m placing you on leave for the time being. You need some time to regain your focus.”

Deanna wanted to argue, but she decided against it. She recognised that this was not the time to disagree with Captain Picard. “Yes, Captain.”

“Now, let’s get to Sick Bay.” He placed a gentle hand on her arm as he led her to the door, comforting and guiding her in one.

When they got to Sick Bay, it was in a flurry of activity. Deanna heard Dr. Crusher confidently issuing commands to her team, as the medical officers ran back and forth with various devices and medical instruments. She saw Worf first, sitting upright, protesting to a medical officer that he was ‘fine, a warrior embraces his scars’ as she tried to heal a cut on his chest. One of the science officers from the away team was lying on a bed, silent and still, no one tending to him. Deanna realised with sickening certainty that it was because he was already dead.

From behind a crowd of medical personnel, she heard Will’s groans of pain. He was normally so in control and composed. She knew his pain must have been severe for him to so much as acknowledge it, let alone hiss and yelp as the medical officers worked on him.

“Doctor, report.” A path cleared for the captain to approach the bed Will was lying on, and Deanna followed. Will met her gaze, and she could see from his face that he was suffering a great deal. But he was alive, so she still felt relief flood through her.

“Just a moment, captain.” Beverly injected something into Will’s neck. His groans of pain slowly faded to small whimpers, before he fell silent. Deanna watched his limbs become heavy as the muscles relaxed. His head rolled grotesquely. “He was in a lot of pain. It was better to make him unconscious before we continued.”

“What happened?” Picard demanded.

Worf answered, “Sir, we were attacked while exploring the temple. I did not recognise the species. They didn’t use phasers, but they had many weapons. The commander was investigating something when they attacked him from behind. It was... not very honourable.”

Beverly went on, “His right leg is broken. He appears to have been beaten with something heavy that smashed the bones in three places.” She gestured to the corresponding places on his mangled leg. Deanna managed a quick glance, then quickly looked away. “His stomach was slashed with something sharp. I’ve managed to stop the bleeding, but it seems to be too deep to heal it quickly. I’ll keep working on it. He was also stabbed in the chest-”

A sob escaped Deanna’s throat at those words. It felt as though she, too, had been stabbed. She felt a hand on her shoulder as the captain tried to comfort her, then he gestured for Dr. Crusher to continue.

“The blade missed his heart by half an inch, captain. And the angle at which it entered the body enabled the left lung to be punctured.” As if to emphasise that point, Will sucked in a juddery breath. “It appears that he fell and broke his left wrist. That’s a clean break though, easily repaired. And whatever weapon was used on his leg was also used on the back of his head. His skull is fractured, but scans show no brain damage. A miracle really.”

In a small voice, Deanna squeaked out, “Is- is he going to be alright?”

Beverly took a deep breath. “I don’t know the answer to that, Deanna. We’re going to do our absolute best, but his injuries are very severe and his condition is serious.” She reached forward and took Deanna’s hand in her own. “I promise you that I will give him the best chance I am capable of.”

Deanna swallowed, and nodded slowly. She leant down, pressing a gentle kiss to Will’s forehead. He was caked with blood, and she could taste his sweat, but she didn’t care. She needed him to know that she was there.

Realising that there was nothing she could do to help, Deanna slipped away to allow the medical team to do their job. She left Sick Bay, and made it all of two steps before she slumped to the floor against the wall of the corridor, allowing her anxious tears to fall freely.

Hours later, Beverly’s voice burst through Deanna’s comm-badge. “Dr. Crusher to Counselor Troi, you can come and see him now.”

Deanna struggled to her feet, her aching joints protesting. She wasn’t sure how long she’d remained in that position, her back pressed to the wall, knees pulled tightly to her chest by her shaking hands. Her face was still damp from tears, but now her eyes and her mouth felt uncomfortable dry and almost prickly.

Beverly looked surprised when the doors to sick bay opened. Deanna felt the doctor’s concern when she realised that her friend had been waiting right outside the door all this time.

“I’ve stopped all the bleeding, and mended the bones as much as possible. Don’t look too closely at his leg; it’ll freak you out. You should know that he is still unconscious. It was the kindest thing to do given the fact that he is still injured. And I’ll need to run some neurological scans on him before I feel confident waking him up. Deanna, he looks sick. But I can tell you he’s probably in better shape than he looks.”

Deanna nodded in acknowledgement, and braced herself as Beverly led her to a private room off the main Sick Bay. She was grateful for Beverly’s warning when she saw him.

His face was ashen, and his hair was matted with dried blood. His shirt was off, and she could see the gnarled scar across his abdomen from where he’d been slashed. Thankfully the wound was now closed, but Deanna imagined that the scar would probably be with him for the rest of his life. The stab wound to his chest appeared to have been a cleaner injury. While there was still some scarring, it was rather minimal given the damage that had been done, and the line of it was straight, not jagged and rough like the other. While his lower half was covered with a sheet, she could see the outline of his legs. The right one seemed to be jutting out in unusual places. She took Beverly’s advice and didn’t look at it too closely. Will’s breath was unusually laboured and noisy, and for once Deanna couldn’t sense his emotions, no matter how hard she tried. For now, it seemed he was closed to her.

“Will.” Deanna’s voice cracked as she spoke on a whisper, moving to the bed to take his hand in hers.

He was normally so large, so jovial, so full of life. Now he looked small and frail. She raised the hand she was holding to her lips, and pressed a kiss to each of his knuckles in turn.

“I’m here. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

She remained by his side for several more hours. Her deft hands stroked his forehead soothingly, gently caressed his shoulders, carefully brushed his neck in a way she hadn’t done since they were far younger. At one point she requested a bowl of water, and she rinsed the blood and grime from his hair and beard. As it dried, she brushed it tenderly, grateful for a task that made her feel she had some use.

She spoke to him too, reminding him that she was present. She spoke of little things she remembered from their lives together so far. Of poker games, kisses on Betazed, relaxed evenings in Ten Forward. Of comforting hugs, the boredom of personnel reviews, and teaching him to enjoy chocolate as much as she did. She told him of all the things she would miss if he did not come out of this okay.

“So please,” she whispered to him softly. “Please be okay.”

Sometimes she tried to read his emotions, tried to pass hers to him. Their telepathic link wasn’t as strong as it had once been, but now it seemed tightly closed. It made her eyes flood with tears to think that it might remain that way forever.

When Beverly came to check on him, Deanna stepped to the side, but kept a watchful eye over the proceedings. She saw Beverly’s frown as she took some readings, and sensed a feeling of concerned disappointment from her.

“What’s wrong?”

Beverly sighed, and met her friend’s anxious gaze. “I would have expected an improvement on these readings, but they’re almost exactly the same as they were eight hours ago. I had hoped to be able to wake him up soon, now it’s looking like I was getting ahead of myself. I’m sorry, Deanna.”

Realising she wouldn’t get a response from her silent friend, Beverly slipped out of the room, leaving Deanna alone with Will once more.

“You know what all this is making me realise, Will?” Briefly, she paused, as though allowing him a chance to respond. Of course, he didn’t, and Deanna went on. “We are absolute idiots.”

She took a seat beside his lifeless body, capturing his hand tightly in hers again as she continued. “I mean, what are we doing? I’m still in love with you, and you’re still in love with me, and we both know that, for gods’ sakes. You date other people, and I date other people, and it never works out. And why does it never work out? Because we don’t want it to! We constantly push away something that could be good, could be real, because it’s not what we want.

“Will, when I was waiting on that planet for you, slowly realising you weren’t coming, my heart broke. And it remained broken for years afterwards. You were the first man I ever loved, and I knew I could never truly get over you. Even when I thought I’d never see you again, I knew you’d always be a part of me.

“And then here I was, minding my own business, and then you came in and everything just came flooding back. Will, I’m so glad you’re here. You are my closest friend, my Imzadi, and I am so tired of trying not to love you to be professional.” Tears started to cascade down her cheeks. “I don’t care about being professional. I don’t care what anybody else on this ship thinks. I don’t care about any of it.

“When you came back, Will, I was terrified. I was so scared that you were going to hurt me again. But nothing could hurt me more than this. You could have been dead.”

She interrupted herself with a loud sob. “You could be dead, and I’d never see you again. And I never would have taken that chance, that chance to hold you, to kiss you, to love you. And that chance wouldn’t come again. I couldn’t live with that regret, I know I couldn’t. To know that I could have had you all to myself forever if I had just been brave, and to know that I missed out because I was scared. I was scared of rejection, scared of getting hurt, scared of looking unprofessional, and it just doesn’t matter!

“So for goodness’ sake, William Riker, what are we waiting for?”

She pulled his hand closer to her, breathing deeply. Stillness settled over the room.

In spite of her sombre surroundings, a wry laugh escaped Deanna’s lips. “There’s a chance that you didn’t hear that. And I’m going to have to pour my heart out to you all over again.” She took a breath to continue speaking, then stopped.

Deanna paused. Listened.

It was faint, so faint that it could have been a figment of her imagination, but it was familiar. She could sense Will.

As she continued to focus her attention on him, his feelings were growing stronger, clearer. She could feel that he was hurting, though not as bad as before. His leg was flooded with a dull pain, and every inhalation felt like a repeated stab. She knew that he was worried. About what happened, about his upcoming recovery. She could sense his anger towards the monsters that did this to him. To take him by surprise and attack him so violently, so viciously, so mercilessly. His response was a white-hot rage, fuelled by mild embarrassment that he hadn’t had his wits about him.

One thing was cutting through every other feeling she could sense from him. Love. Love for her, warm and sweet, and constant. In all these years, it hadn’t faded. She felt how it had burst through him when he first saw her again, and how it enveloped him every time he saw her after that. She felt his longing, his yearning for her, how many times he’d envisioned their future together. She felt his utter adoration for her as it coursed through his veins, blurred his every thought until his mind was just Deanna, Deanna, Deanna.

And then she felt his fingers twitch. Her eyes flew to his face to see as movement beneath his eyelids caused them to flicker slightly. His brow furrowed, and a quiet groan escaped his mouth.

Not looking away, Deanna cried out, “Beverly?”

Within moments the doctor hurried into the room, scanning Will’s body and head and looking to Deanna in shock.

“He’s waking up.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“It shouldn’t be. It’s just a sign that his consciousness is a bit stronger than I anticipated. It’s better to let him wake himself up now. I can knock him back out if need be.”

Another quiet sound from Will caught their attention, and Deanna hurriedly looked back down at his face, just in time to see his eyelids fluttering open. He blinked a few times, then his eyes met hers.

“Im-” He broke off, heaving a difficult breath. “Imzadi.” He was gazing at her with such certainty, such love, that Deanna thought it could have knocked her off her chair. She jumped to her feet, moved her hands to cup his face, and captured his lips with her own. His weak hand moved to wrap around her small waist as he returned the kiss.

She broke away, pressing her forehead to his as they kept their eyes closed.

“Imzadi,” she whispered. Relief flooded through her as she realised that he was really okay, and that they had the rest of their lives to spend making up for wasted time.

Two Years Later

She was on the bridge when it happened.

His recovery had been a gradual one, but Deanna had been by Will’s side to help him every day since his attack. Thanks to Beverly’s expert medical treatment and Deanna’s attentive care, he was almost fully healed physically. He walked with an almost imperceptable limp, and the scar across his stomach was fainter but still present. Deanna said it made him look rugged.

They were the only two people on the bridge, having taken the graveyard shift together. Normally only Data would take this shift, and the rest of the senior crewmen would be resting, but Data’s cat, Spot, had been unwell for a few days and he’d wanted to remain in his quarters in case anything changed.

Will sat in the Captain’s chair, and Deanna sat in his, acting as his First Officer. Their hands were entwined together over the console. They’d activated the screen in front of them to show them what was going on outside the ship, and sat in comfortable silence watching the infinite ocean of stars in front of them.

It was Will who broke the silence. “Imzadi.” Hearing the word alone was enough to flood her with warmth. “I’ve been thinking about something for a very long time, but I was worried about what your response might be. But tonight, I’ve been thinking: ‘What are we waiting for?’“

He smoothly slid out of the Captain’s chair and onto one knee, clasping her hand in his.

“Deanna Troi, daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed, Heir to th-”

Laughing, she pressed her free hand to his lips to stop him continuing with the ridiculous spiel. “Just ‘Deanna’ is fine!”

He flashed her a mischievious grin when she removed her hand. “Deanna, I love you with all my heart, and I promise to protect, serve, and honour you for the rest of our lives and for whatever comes after. My Imzadi, will you marry me?”

“Of course I will.”

She pulled him to his feet and he wrapped her in his arms, pressing an elated kiss to her lips. It seemed that every moment in their lives up to now had been leading to this, and Deanna looked to the future with excitement.

The next day, as they proudly announced their engagement to their friends and colleagues, Deanna caught Captain Picard’s eye. She remembered something he’d said to her on that fateful day just a few years before.

“Captain, may I speak with you?” she politely requested once all the excitement and congratulations had died down. He nodded his agreement, and gestured towards his Ready Room. When they were alone, Deanna said, “After Will’s attack, when you had to give me a telling off-” They both shared a smile at the memory. It was funny now that years had passed. “I told you that I didn’t know what had come over me, and you said that you did know. And at the time I wanted to ask what you meant, but it slipped my mind.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t worked it out for yourself, Deanna.”

She took a pause to collect her thoughts. She remembered the sheer panic that had gripped her, the knowledge that the entire away team was in danger, but her mind was consumed with just one member of it.

Slowly, and with a soft kind of realisation, Deanna stated simply: “It was love. Love is what came over me.”

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kezikatescribbling · 5 years

Text

Where Did You Go?

Chapter 2: Office Secrets

Leon S. Kennedy x Reader

F/M

Leon and [Yn] have been friends for years, but over the past two weeks they finally began dating. It's all going well until [Yn] goes missing. With a trail of clues that leave Leon more questions than answers, will he be able to find her?

Also on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546981/chapters/50083046#workskin

The first thing Leon tries is calling her friend at work, who she was supposed to be meeting with earlier in the day. After a couple rings a deep, pleasant voice answers.

“Is this the famous Leon [Yn] has told me so much about? I’ve had my ear talked off about you over the last couple years. I hear you finally made a move on her too! Good for you. [Yn] has been a wreck of nerves the last, oh, seven months or so? She kept wondering if she should make a move, or if it would ruin things between you two, and she kept chickening out. Nice to see that you at least have some ba-”

“I’m guessing you’re Felix?” Leon had been waiting for a pause to break into the conversation, but evidently this man didn’t need to breathe. “How did you know it was me calling?”

“Photographic memory love. I saw your number on [Yn]’s phone at one point, and there you go, locked in my mind forever. It’s a handy little trick, but I’d never survive combat, so I’m resigned to being the best damn secretary you’ll ever see.” This man...had a story to tell about anything and everything. Leon didn’t have time for this.

“Listen, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is urgent. Did [Yn] come into work this morning? She said she had some files she needed to deliver to you.”

“Why, yes she did. And you must have done a real number on her this morning, she looked like a right mess. Makeup a mess, hair in a tizzy, and boy was she distracted! She barely said two words to me. Gave me the files then holed up in her office.”

“But I didn’t…” Leon’s mind was racing. She was a mess when she got to the office? It was only a half hour drive from Leon’s apartment to work. “What time did she get there?”

“Oh she got here close to noon, I would say? I was swamped with calls this morning, I barely had a moment to breathe, let alone look at the clock.”

[Yn] had left Leon’s place close to ten o’clock, and with the half hour drive, that left another hour and a half where anything could have happened. Leon knew Felix wasn’t an idiot, he would have noticed if [Yn] was in any kind of distress, and he assumed it had been Leon that mussed up [Yn]’s hair and makeup, so he must not have sensed anything amiss. That told Leon something very important; whatever had happened to [Yn] in that missing time, she had felt the need to keep one of her closest and most trusted friends, as well as a government coworker, in the dark about it.

[Yn] was an excellent liar when she needed to be. She had been trained for it after all. But Leon knew she hated it, and would never use that skill on someone she knew unless it was absolutely necessary. In this case, most likely she had been either protecting herself, or more likely, Felix. He said she had gone to her office.

“[Yn] mentioned that she left some papers she needed in her office, and since I was already out, I told her I’d grab them. Mind if I come in and take a look?” Leon tried to keep most of the desperation out of his voice, not wanting to tip off Felix that something was wrong.

“Oh, uhh, sure love. Normally I wouldn’t do that, but given all the amazing things [Yn] has told me about you, I think I can make an exception. Just come see me when you get in.” Leon said a quick goodbye to Felix before he could launch into another story, and ran out the door, with his gun strapped to his thigh, and ammo belt around his waist. Something was definitely wrong, and he was going in prepared for anything.

🙠

After twenty minutes, and several broken traffic laws, Leon arrived at [Yn]’s office building. He shows his badge at the security point, then breaks into a brisk walk, half jogging to the elevator. Once he gets to [Yn]’s floor, he quickly makes his way to Felix’s desk, smiling in greeting and catching the keys that are tossed to him.

“Here’s the spare key, just make sure you give them back, Boss will knock my teeth out if I lose them again. After only a month, I’d be lucky if it was only my teeth that were knocked loose.” Felix continues to mutter to himself, and Leon smiles, takes the keys, and walks over to [Yn]’s office.

Unlocking the door with the key numbered the same as the office, Leon steps in cautiously, checking all the corners and hiding spots for threats. When his quick scan reveals none, he walks the rest of the way in and shuts the door with a soft click, hoping that no one noticed him.

“There has to be something here. Come on [Yn], give me a clue here.” Leon speaks softly into the silence, trying to keep calm. [Yn] had been here, maybe a bit tousled, but alive and unharmed. But that was close to twelve hours ago now. A lot can change in twelve hours.

Leon does his best to look quickly and thoroughly through the office, making sure to put everything back in its place, just in case someone was keeping tabs on [Yn]. The blinds were closed now, so no one was watching him, but Leon couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t check to see if anything was amiss or missing after he left.

Upon closer inspection of the desk, Leon realizes that [Yn]’s computer is still on, only the screen is off. He presses the button to turn on the screen, carefully sitting down as it flickers to life. The desktop is open and blank, but the browser was left open. Leon opens the window to see [Yn]’s email, open to a message she received early this morning.

The message came from an official company email address, based on the name of it, another agent, Jocelyn Lang. The message is asking [Yn] out for drinks when she has the time. [Yn] had sent a reply that morning, before she left Leon’s apartment, saying to meet at the usual place. Besides the fact that they were meeting for drinks at ten thirty in the morning, the email seemed normal. But Leon knew better.

Looking back on it, [Yn] had seemed rather rushed to leave that morning. Leon had assumed that she was just excited about their date later, but now her rushed goodbye and playful refusal to stay for breakfast had more sinister undertones.

Leon sifts quickly through [Yn]’s computer, but it’s clear this was what she wanted him to see. He takes out his phone and snaps a picture of the correspondence, making sure the information isn’t lost. Leon is about to stand after closing the browser and turning off the computer, when he notices a faint green glow coming from something under the monitor. It’s a phosphorescent stamp on a business card.

“Delphi Bar and Grill, 24 hours,” Leon reads softly, “that’s the clue. I’ve got it [Yn],” Leon says to the empty room, quickly putting the chair in its place and shutting off the lights, ready to leave, “I’m coming for you [Yn]. I’m coming.”

Leon locks the door and goes back to return the keys. After waiting a moment for Felix to finish his call, Leon hands over the keys, and after a moment of thought, decides to subtly question him.

“Find what you were looking for, love?” Felix rests his head in his palm, elbow propped on the desk. The sudden focus throwing Leon off a bit, but not enough to distract him.

“Yeah. Can I ask you something?” Felix nods, “[Yn] mentioned something about Jocelyn Lang this morning. I don’t think I’ve met her. Was she in this morning?” Leon watches Felix’s face carefully for any sign of deceit.

“No, I haven’t seen Ms. Lang today. I think she’s supposed to be on vacation. I haven’t seen her in a couple weeks, actually.”

Leon forces a laugh, “What do you mean she’s ‘supposed’ to be on vacation? Does she have a quota for how many margaritas she’s supposed to drink?”

“Hey, all I know is that she hasn’t been in to work. How am I supposed to know what you agents do in your spare time?” Felix’s words are innocuous enough, but coupled with his intense, unwavering gaze, Leon reads more into the words. Reading between the lines, Felix seems to be saying ‘She may have time off, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t working’.

Leon nods a few times to himself, before meeting Felix’s gaze again, “Thank you Felix. For your help.” Felix smiles and nods in return, a conspiratorial glint in his eyes.

“Anytime Leon. Give [Yn] a hug for me.” He says with a hard look, before turning back to the phone, answering in his usual cheerful voice.

“I will.” Leon waves and leaves. No, Felix certainly is no fool. He knew something was up, even with the lies he’s been given by both Leon and [Yn], and maybe even this Agent Lang. He’s pieced together something, he knows [Yn] is in some kind of trouble, and he’s counting on Leon to find her. He’s not the only.

And now, Leon has a lead.

Ch. 1

#leonkennedyxreader #Leon Kennedy #My writing #reader insert

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sweetswesf · 4 years

Text

#100DaysOfCode: Day 2

What I Learned:

turn a number into it’s binary in Python with bin()

decorators wrap functions; can be custom (best to use functools.wraps with custom decorators)

pickle is a Python object serializer

help ideally should return function’s docstring

keyword arguments must come after in an argument list

positional arguments must come first in an argument list

keyword-only arguments can be supplied only by keyword and never by position; come after * in an argument list

positional-only arguments are opposite of keyword-only arguments; come before / in an argument list

**operator tells Python to pass the values from the dictionary as the corresponding keyword arguments of the function

installed Oh My Zsh to update my zsh config and now my terminal looks like this and my shortcuts are removed; i’ll see if I get annoyed of it anytime soon...I thought it was something else, but no. I just have been hearing about it from everyone; a little underwhelmed, but just by the never-ending shortcuts list, I know this thing is powerful. I just don’t imagine having time exploring 1/2 of what it does...

Problem I did:

Practiced with some binary & indexing.

Reflection:

I’m definitely not moving at a pace I want, but am exhausted, constantly moving between cooking, cleaning, tending to hygiene, drinking water, responding to texts. I am proud of myself for working away from my phone, but I keep hopping to it. I did not go on Facebook today, which is something I have not done in at LEAST a month. My back hurts in this chair not meant for long hours of sitting. My office chair is delayed. I caught myself getting angry today and quickly checked myself: when so many are without so much, this is no time to be bitching over an office chair.

My rock hard floors aren’t the easiest to stand on either. I am thinking about going to my office and getting my office supplies that make my space a bit more ergonomic, but not sure if it is worth the risk. It would be at least a 90 minute walk. Not even sure if my badge works right now either.

Whenever a noteworthy encouraging message pops in my head, I write it down and stick it up. This is what my bootcamp looked like and what another female engineer encouraged me to do. I like to think it helps.

I even have my dream bodies posted. Here are their IGs.

https://www.instagram.com/fitgurlmel

https://www.instagram.com/jsimsfit

https://www.instagram.com/jesskingnyc

https://www.instagram.com/hannahbronfman/

https://www.instagram.com/tamsgoinham/

Yes, they all slightly look alike. No I don’t look like them lol. But they look good huh!? Tryna get strong and toned like them!

That being said, I did not work out today to make progress. Effective Python reading is taking much longer than expected. Still struggling a bit with breathing issues and it is hard to stay focused and keep my attention, but ya girl is trying. Realizing how poor my habits have become but am glad I’m taking the steps to change them for my career but most importantly for myself.

My high school friend who was salutatorian constantly motivates and shares my posts. She recently sent me Brian Wilson’s (Just Mercy) book and an encouraging card. It is so sweet and so encouraging: the person who I have looked up to for their discipline and aspired to be like academically for years is proud of me and encouraging me. I am working to please God, but I do appreciate that she is recognizing me for a goal achieved in intellect. It went right next to the cards from my grandparents and pastor.

The calendar of New York photos is a favorite. Each time I look at it I’m reminded of where I was and what the sights and sounds were like in that spot displayed for that month. I miss the picture a day calendar I had, but I would blaze through them so quickly and go too quickly through the memories I had in the spots showcased.

This new system of studying is hard, but I see the benefits. I’m learning so much and am proud that I am back at it. Shout out to my accountability partner and friend. She is kicking ass and motivating me. I would definitely recommend getting one. Healthy competition and supportive motivation is often a good thing. Hoping to make some real progress I can be proud of on the Interview Cake lessons and the Python tutorial tomorrow.

Every time I get sad about Quarantine, I realize I have no choice but to tough it out. I cannot worry about tomorrow, I have to focus on today and expect that things will get back to how they were, but that I will be stronger on the other end. God bless y’all.

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sevenpabosandabunchoffans · 6 years

Text

Criminal minds {Min Yoongi}

After Namjoon realizes he doesn’t exactly like working as a detective at the local police department, he leaves, determined to finish a case by himself. After months of nothing, a new development comes to light, motivating him to enlist the help of someone else. The two of them build a team from the ground up that’s independent from any government or police force, solving cases purely for the benefit of helping others and doing what’s right.One day, a newcomer enters their lives, begging them to let him join, too.

:: characters: namjoon, yoongi

:: genre: angst, thriller, Criminal Minds!au

:: warnings: mentions of death, someone gets shot

:: word count: 2893

Kim Namjoon

The door opened not even thirty seconds after Namjoon had knocked. “Well, if it isn’t Detective Kim Namjoon.” Yoongi leaned against the door frame crossing his arms. “What brings you here?”

“Hi, Yoongi.” Namjoon greeted him. “How’s the shoulder?”

Yoongi subconsciously brought his hand up to massage it. “Better. You know the doctor cleared me to be back on the field months ago, but the chief forced me to retire.”

“I knew there had to be something that was keeping you from coming back.”

Yoongi sucked air through his teeth. “Yeah, you get shot on the job, and all you get is a retirement package, so you can ‘live comfortably’.” He rolled his eyes.

Namjoon chuckled lowly. “What would you say if you had the chance to get back in the field?” Yoongi cocked his head at Namjoon’s inquiry.

They soon found themselves standing around Yoongi’s kitchen table, case files spread out. “So, the only reason this guy is still out there is because Chief Son was in a rush to pin it on someone?” Namjoon nodded. “Definitely sounds like him.” Yoongi grumbled under his breath.

“Yeah, I took everything with me, since I’m technically still the detective on the case, but I haven’t been able to work on it.”

Yoongi shook his head. “Well three months between the murders…” Yoongi picked up the picture of the newest victim that Namjoon had printed out before coming over to his place. “It’s gonna be hard to find a connection between them, especially when we don’t know their identities.”

“Actually, that was the last thing I worked on before I quit.” Namjoon rustled through the papers until he found the list of addresses. “These are all the addresses of single males that had either disappeared or hadn’t paid rent around the time our original John Doe was found in the believed area of residence. I haven’t been able to go check them out yet, though.”

Yoongi pointed to the third address listed. “I know someone who works at this complex, let’s go there first.”

Namjoon picked up a picture of the John Doe. “You still got your gun and badge?”

Yoongi scoffed, walking towards his bedroom. “It’s like you don’t even know me!”

The two of them entered the apartment complex, approaching the young woman at the front desk. Yoongi knocked lightly on the wood to get her attention. He shot her a smile as soon as she looked up, which was met with a hard glare. “Hi, Suran, we-“

“You never called me back.” She cut him off, crossing her arms.

Namjoon failed at holding back laughter. “There’s actually a really funny story about that.”

“Oh really?” She asked, obviously not believing him.

“I’m serious!” Yoongi insisted. “You know how I told you I was a cop?” She nodded. “Well, now I’m not kidding about this, the day after you gave me your number, I got shot on the job, and then I had to recover, and by the time that was over, I couldn’t find the paper you’d written your number on.”

“Uh huh.” She said, still not believing him.

“Oh, he actually was shot.” Namjoon chimed in.

“Yeah,” Yoongi smirked. “I can even show you my scar sometime.” Suran’s cheeks turned a light shade of pink as Namjoon smacked Yoongi on the back of the head. “Ow!”

“We’re not here to flirt.” Namjoon placed the man’s picture on the desk in front of Suran. “Have you ever seen this man?”

Suran looked at the photo, her eyes widening in recognition. “That’s Junghoon!” She looked up at the two detectives in front of her. “Is he okay?”

“I’m afraid not.” Namjoon said. “What can you tell us about Junghoon?”

“Uh,” Suran looked around, trying to recall anything she could about the man. “He was a nice guy, he always brought me a cup of ramen from the convenience store down the street when he came home at night. I haven’t seen him in about three and a half months, though.”

“He was found dead a little over three months ago.” Namjoon explained.

“Do you know who did it?” Suran asked after a few seconds of silence, obviously trying to keep herself calm.

“Until today we had no idea who he was.” Yoongi said. “Can we see his rent payment records, and look at his apartment?”

“Well, Junghoon always paid in cash, but I’ll take you up to his apartment now.” Suran stood up and moved around the desk.

After leading them up to the third floor, Suran left Yoongi and Namjoon alone in the apartment to look around. “Not very many reasons for someone to be paying their rent in cash.”

Yoongi continued Namjoon’s observation. “And almost all of them involve trying to stay off the grid.”

Yoongi moved to look in the man’s bedroom while Namjoon stayed behind in the living room. He paused as he noticed the pairs of shoes by the door. Upon closer inspection, Namjoon realized that there were two different sizes. Moving further into the apartment, Namjoon inspected the kitchen, noticing that there seemed to be fairly fresh fruits and vegetables, along with recently used dishes in the sink. Namjoon made his way to the man’s bedroom, where Yoongi was standing at the desk, sporting gloves as he held two pieces of paper in his hands. “Someone has been here recently, like, within the past week or two.” Yoongi turned to face him. “I think someone was living here.”

“I think I have an idea of who.” Yoongi holds out one of the papers to Namjoon. “These are letters of correspondence to what seems to be a friend. It looks like they used codewords and phrases, as if they were worried someone would read them and find something out.”

As Yoongi was talking, Namjoon had pulled on his own pair of gloves and taken the letter from Yoongi. “What were they trying to hide?”

Yoongi shrugged and picked up an unsealed envelope on the desk, pulling out the contents. After skimming through it, he spoke up. “I think we might have found this guy’s family.” Namjoon looked up in surprise as Yoongi started reading off. “’My dearest wife, I am so sorry for my sudden disappearance. I had to leave for the safety of our family. Do not try to look for me, I will be home as soon as I am sure it is safe.’” He looked up from the letter. “He never sent it.”

“He was probably killed before he got the chance to. Is there an address on that envelope?”

Yoongi flipped it over in his hand. “Looks like Junghoon is from Busan.” He looked up at Namjoon. “You up for a mini road trip?”

After asking Suran if there was a possibility of someone else living in Junghoon’s apartment (“No, I haven’t seen anyone new around here, and no one’s been near Junghoon’s apartment.”) and a four-hour drive, Namjoon and Yoongi were knocking on the door of a fairly nice house. A middle-aged woman answered the door, looking confused as to why two unfamiliar men were standing on her porch. “We’re very sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Namjoon held up the picture of Junghoon, “but is this man your husband?”

The woman covered her mouth as she gasped. “Sungho!” She started crying at the image of her dead husband.

Around a half hour later, the two detectives found themselves sitting across from the shocked woman, her son now there to comfort her after he had been contacted. “My father abandoned my mother. He packed up and left in the middle of the night with no form of contact for three months.” The son obviously had a lot of anger towards his father.

“Your father was murdered three months ago.” Yoongi said, sliding the letter they had found across the table towards him. “We found this letter at his apartment. He never got the chance to send it.”

The college-aged boy swallowed back tears. “Have you found the reason why he left?”

A sob escaped the woman’s mouth. “That’s why we’re here.” Namjoon explained. “We’re trying to understand your father so that we can find the man who killed him.”

Before anyone else could say a word, the front door was thrown open and another middle-aged woman ran in. “Have you seen my husband?” The woman directed towards Namjoon and Yoongi.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, who-“

The boy cut Yoongi off. “This is Auntie Jiyoung. Her husband and my father were good friends.” The boy stood up to wrap his arms around the distressed woman. “Her husband, Sungjin, disappeared two weeks ago, much like my father did.”

Yoongi looked over at Namjoon before pulling out the picture of the new victim. “Is this your husband?”

The woman burst into tears as she took the picture from Yoongi, sinking into a chair at the table. “We are very sorry for your losses.” Namjoon sincerely told the women. “We can’t even begin to understand how you feel at this moment…but we do need to ask you some questions so that we can catch the man who did this.”

The boy rejoined his mother and the other lady at the table. “I can answer any questions you have.”

“How did your father and Sungjin know each other? Were they childhood friends?”

The boy shook his head. “They met six months ago at a support group for people with a gambling addiction. Apparently, they used to frequent the same places, and decided they could hold each other accountable to make sure they never returned.”

After a few more questions and getting the name of the support group from Sungho’s son, Namjoon and Yoongi found themselves interrogating the leader of the group. “Yeah, I remember them.” He handed the pictures back to Namjoon. “I was sorely disappointed when they both stopped attending meetings, but now that I know the reason…”

“Did either of them still have debts to pay off?” Yoongi inquired.

The man chuckled. “All of the people in our support group are people who still have enormous debts to repay. They join this group to keep themselves from gambling away the money they could be using to pay off those debts.”

It was nearing midnight, and the two of them were still working diligently on the case, neither of them wanting to give up. Namjoon was busy adding their new findings to the file while also checking into the news occasionally to see if there were any updates on the other end. Yoongi had his laptop on his lap, trying to search for more information on their victims. “Have you found anything yet?” Namjoon asked.

Yoongi scoffed. “You know I’m not some tech person. I don’t have fancy equipment. I’m having to rely on Naver, so I’m not exactly having the best of luck.” Just a few minutes later, Yoongi sat up excitedly. “I think I found something!”

“What?” Namjoon asked as Yoongi turned his laptop towards him.

“An underground gambling ring was busted six months ago. Everyone involved was arrested except for those that agreed to join support groups along with performing community service. Including our two victims.”

“Does it say who was in charge?”

Yoongi scrolled through the article. “One Lee Youngsoo.” Yoongi quickly searched the internet for this guy before finding another article on him from four months earlier. “He was apparently held and investigated until four months ago when all the charges were dropped. People think he paid people off.”

“And that coincides with when Sungho went into hiding.” Namjoon concluded before standing up. “Come on, we’re paying the station a visit.”

Officers all over the station were shocked to see both Kim Namjoon and Min Yoongi stalking through the building towards the Chief’s office. Namjoon threw open the door, revealing not only Chief Son, but some NIS agents that were in the room. “What is the meaning of this?” Chief Son stood up from his chair, about to yell out Namjoon, but he was cut off.

“Lee Youngsoo.”

“What?” The chief looked at him, confused.

“Who are you and why are you busting in here in the middle of an investigation spouting out the name of one of the richest men in Busan?”

“I’m Detective Kim Namjoon and this is Officer Min Yoongi.”

“EX detective and officer.” The chief jumped in.

“We still have our badges.” Namjoon retorted before turning his attention back to the agents. “I was placed as head of this case back when the first body was found and chose to pursue it on my own when I realized Chief Son here did not care to actually look into it.”

“I made a mistake-“

“I told you that you had the wrong guy. That you had nothing on him. And you still refused to release him, stating that you just wanted the case closed.” Namjoon exposed, refusing to back down or submit to the man.

“Anyway,” Yoongi chimed in. “While you were here, sitting on your ass, as you do best, we were over in Busan, finding out what we could about the victims.”

Namjoon placed the file he had compiled on the desk in front of the agents. “The victims’ names are Ahn Sungho and Im Sungjin. They were both gamblers, specifically members of the ring run by our very own Lee Youngsoo. The police in Busan let them go with the agreement that they would perform community service and join a support group.”

Yoongi picked up. “Four months ago, two weeks before the first victim made his way here to Seoul, the charges were dropped against Lee Youngsoo, and we believe he’s out to find all the people who still owe him money.”

One of the agents sighed. “I hope you’re right.” He turned to the chief. “We’re gonna need to find out where this guy is and get a warrant.” He turned back to Yoongi and Namjoon. “And you two, I want you with us when we find the bastard.”

After discovering which hotel Lee Youngsoo was staying at, Yoongi and Namjoon found themselves following behind officers and NIS agents as they kicked down the door to the hotel room. The group spread themselves around the penthouse, Yoongi and Namjoon heading towards the bedroom. No sooner had Yoongi opened the door than he fell back against the wall as pain spread through his arm. Namjoon quickly shot the leg of the bodyguard who had shot Yoongi, kicking the gun out of his grasp as he kept his gun trained on the man standing on the balcony, still not moving an inch. “You okay?” Namjoon asked Yoongi.

Yoongi nodded through the pain, keeping his hand on the wound on his arm. “First day back and I’ve been shot again. At least it’s not my shoulder this time.”

Namjoon slowly approached the man on the balcony, sensing other officers filing into the room. “Lee Youngsoo!”

“You’ll never keep me in there.” The man stated calmly, only turning his head so Namjoon could see his profile. “I have connections.”

“Seoul doesn’t take too kindly to bribes.” Namjoon only lowered his gun as an officer came forward and placed cuffs on the man.

By the time they made it downstairs and outside, the sun had risen. Lee Youngsoo was placed in the back of a cop car as Namjoon went over to the ambulance where Yoongi was being checked over. “Are you seriously okay?”

Yoongi nodded. “It was just a graze this time.” He smiled up at Namjoon. “Thanks for bringing me into this. It was nice to be back out there.”

“We do make a pretty good team.” Yoongi nodded. “What do you say we stay a team?” Yoongi cocked his head in confusion as Namjoon explained further. “Too many cases like this one pass through the station, leaving questions unanswered and families and friends of victims unsatisfied. We can be the ones to change that.”

Before Yoongi could answer, an NIS agent approached them. “Gentlemen, we’d like to thank you for your work on this case. We have an opening over at the NIS if you two are interested.”

The two shared a look before Yoongi responded. “Nah, I think we’re good, just the two of us.”

The chief overheard and walked up. “They can’t do that. Can they?”

“Well,” the Nis agent stroked his chin thoughtfully, “as long as they don’t break any laws, which they haven’t yet, we can’t stop them.” He held his hand out to shake Namjoon and Yoongi’s. “Should you need it, any resources the NIS can provide will be open for your use.”

The agent walked away, and the chief crossed his arms, staring them down. “How exactly do you expect to fund…whatever you call this?”

Yoongi stood up from the back of the ambulance. “Well, since I’m technically still retired from the force….and you’re required to provide a retirement check every month…I guess…you’re the one funding us.” The chief’s jaw dropped in shock. “Thanks a lot, Chief.” Yoongi mockingly pat his shoulder as he and Namjoon walked away.

“So, what should we call ourselves?” Namjoon asked.

“Well, since I’ve been shot twice now and am still alive…how about Bangtan?”

Namjoon rolled his eyes and laughed with Yoongi, throwing his arm over his shoulder as the area slowly cleared out.

Jung Hoseok

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andersonsallpurpose · 6 years

Link

Swedish Vice (is there such a thing? apparently) visit the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) in Norrköping, Sweden, and their collection of UFO reports from all over the world. I’ve probably mentioned them before because I think the idea is pretty cool, even though I’m not particularly into UFOs. The article is in Swedish, but I took the liberty of editing the google translate version a bit (a lot) into something resembling actual English. If you are the copyright holder and disapprove, please don’t sue, I’m super broke. Under a cut because long:

We visited the world's largest UFO archive

by Benjamin Wirström and Ingrid Altino, okt 19 2018, 5:54pm

In Norrköping there's an archive that collects all of the world's UFO-related reports and objects. Why?

It is a dark September evening in 1989. Mother Kerstin and her 13-year-old daughter Tina are in the car on the way to their home in Björkvik, an urban center just outside Katrineholm in Södermanland. Suddenly they spot an object in the sky, floating above a grove of trees next to the road. It is about five meters in diameter, flashing, and shaped like a saucer. Kerstin reportedly gets out of the car to take a closer look, when the craft quickly shoots off across the lake Yngaren on the other side of the road, out of sight.

Reports of "sightings" such as this there are thousands of in Sweden - about 200-250 come in each year - and all of them get filed in the world's largest UFO archive in Norrköping: Archives of the Unexplained, or AFU.

When we found out about the existence of the archive, we obviously went straight there to get our millions of questions answered. Why is there an archive for UFO-related items at all? Why in Sweden? Are they sitting on some kind of evidence that could potentially solve one of today's greatest mysteries?

The archive, it turns out, is located in what seems to be an ordinary residential area, just ten minutes by tram from Norrköping Central Station. For those who have not had the opportunity to visit Norrköping, the city looks exactly like every other Swedish city with around 100,000 inhabitants: picturesque, pastel, and full of bicycles. The fact that the world's largest UFO archive is allegedly squeezed in here somewhere among townhouses and playgrounds doesn't seem entirely reasonable, but after searching for a while we find a door that leads into the ground floor of a four-story house, subtly marked with "AFU"- the acronym of the archive. The door is open.

We enter a room that looks like any other office, with desks and shelves full of ring binders and books. Wherever you look, there's something UFO-related. On one wall hangs paintings depicting different types of flying saucers, next to old posters from the mid-20th century telling of info meetings on extraterrestrial life.

As we're standing there looking lost, a man comes in through the door behind us. Anders Liljegren, archive coordinator, has agreed to give us a tour. Anders is a 68-year-old pensioner and one of the founders of the national organization UFO Sweden in 1970, and later in 1973 the AFU. Today he spends most of his spare time supervising all the activities at the archive.

Anders tells us that the archive is about 600 square meters, stuffed full with more than 30,000 books, about 50,000 UFO reports from different countries in Europe, around 80,000 magazines, half a million news notices, and loads of different UFO-related items.

Before we begin the tour, we ask Anders about the plaques on the wall, which he tells us belonged to various Swedish UFO societies that used to be around, but sooner or later closed down. "Even the Stockholm UFO Association has shut down," he tells us. "They've been trying to revive it. Today there are two or three societies left within UFO Sweden. It's a fading existence, but we have the archives of about 120 former Swedish societies."

We enter the first archive, which Anders tells us contains documents from the UFO Sweden national organization and other material that's been donated to them. It feels a bit like entering a very organized underground bunker, filled to the brim with information that might prove very useful when aliens sooner or later arrive and enslave humanity.

Everywhere there are archived reports, news articles, and recorded material from the last 200 years. Material indicating the existence of some kind of life out there in space, which may or may not be stopping by our planet in saucerlike craft. Some of it is neatly sorted alphabetically and thematically onto shelves; some is packed away in boxes, waiting to one day be properly archived. As can be expected of a well-stocked archive, there is a constant layer of dust in the air, making you constantly feel like sneezing.

We ask Anders the obvious question whether he believes in everything on the shelves. "Believe in what, exactly?" Anders counters, gesturing to the documents around him. These subjects are way too complex to be able to say that you believe everything or nothing, Anders says. "Rather you have to look at individual cases."

"Some of us believe in a small piece of this cake, which the rest of us don't believe in. We're all different shades," Anders says, referring to the archive’s ten employees. "We have one guy who is very interested in alien contact cases, while I am more interested in abduction cases - in my opinion they carry more weight than those old contact cases. But we have different opinions."

According to Anders, "about 95 percent" of the reports coming in about people who have seen aliens and flying saucers can be explained with the help of science - often it's about people mistaking different light phenomena for something alien or paranormal. The remaining five percent of cases that cannot be dismissed are the reason why many, not least those at AFU, are interested in the topic at all.

The national organization UFO Sweden sometimes carries out its own investigations of reports to try to get closer to the truth. This summer they went door to door in Björkvik to try and find more witnesses to the event that the mother and daughter experienced in 1989.

We ask Anders if he is convinced that some UFO reports are 100 percent correct, or if it's more about being open to the possibility of something happening in a certain way. "What we're absolutely dead sure of is that either way, that woman and her daughter in Björkvik did experience an objective event," Anders replies. "Then there's a lot of things I don't think are worth taking seriously", by which he means reports of people who "keep seeing phenomena all the time". At the archive, they distinguish between these types of reports and more credible statements.

AFU is neither a group of fanatics trying to convince the rest of the world of their "truth", or a bunch of skeptics whose purpose is to try to disprove the submitted hypotheses and theories. The main mission of the association is to archive and preserve materials for the future, and try to approach the subject as scientifically as possible.

Anders leads us through room after room, past shelf after shelf. Some rooms are reminiscent of the science fiction department at a library, others look more like exhibition venues in a museum, while some rooms are more sterile with rows of tall white archive shelves. The majority of the books are non-fiction - the small proportion that is fiction is packed away in boxes.

The deeper into the archives you get, the more obvious it becomes why this archive became the world's largest when it comes to UFO-related documents - so big that aficionados travel here from all over the world to access certain documents. There's a steady trickle of donations from private collectors and libraries. Anders tells us that they have a private contact in London who works as a lawyer, but who in their spare time visits institutions to ask for material to send to the AFU for archiving.

It is also through private donations that the archive is kept afloat, as it is run entirely non-profit. "Right now, we're mainly living off donations we received a few years ago from the US," says Anders. "We received nearly half a million (SEK) from an American who sent us $60,000. So that's what we live off and have as backup funds."

Recorded radio shows, VHS cassettes, 35-milimeter movies, old news notices (both analog and digitized), books, newspapers, reports, correspondence, artwork - every conceivable medium is represented. Is it easy to become conspiratorially inclined when you're exposed to so many reports of abductions, flying saucers, crop circles, and paranormal phenomena? Anders doesn't think so. "I don't feel particularly conspiratorially inclined. It decreases with time, actually. We're taking in so many aspects of things, it would be impossible. I read through the conspiracy literature, but it holds almost no interest for me."

(Image: Fabric badges from Swedish UFO societies)

It is natural, however, that conspiracy theorists are drawn to an institution such as AFU - which is why those at the archive have chosen to keep a low profile. "We don't want conspiracy theorists and people with a transient interest," says Anders. "We all know how many hobbies we went through as teenagers."

Anders has never had a supernatural experience himself. His fascination with UFO's came when he was interested in aircraft as a child - a hobby he inherited from an older brother who passed away when Anders was only three years old. His brother left behind a heap of drawings of craft which piqued Anders's interest.

Five basement rooms, 1.5 kilometers of shelves and three hours later. Going through the archive feels a bit like a journey back in time to when you were little, when pretty much everything was still analog. To a time that wasn't necessarily better, but simpler. And as Anders says, "Why does everything have to be digitized?"

#ufo #paranormal #archives for the unexplained #conspiracy theories #interesting #sweden

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elfnerdherder · 7 years

Text

Ill Intentions: Chapter 11

You can read Chapter 11 on Ao3 Here

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Chapter 11: Character Arcs

The apartment was soon reduced to a chaotic, shambled mess.

A few cups had chipped and shattered as Will decimated the kitchen, and the trash had been overturned in his haste to hunt through the pantry. Towels laid in desolate piles across the hallway, and dresser drawers had been overturned and upended in his haste.

Will sat huddled in the wake of a flipped mattress and abused Wal-Mart sheets, shaking hands grasping a note written in an elegant, beautiful, and furiously familiar hand.

Dear Will,

I am interested to see just how your world turns when you don’t have an electronic device to dictate every aspect of your life. Will it slow to a stop, marked only by a rising and setting sun, or will you retaliate in a blind fury, unable to stop the quickness of your pulse?

I’m eager to see the messages and reminders you have programmed to light up on this screen. The battery life on these, I’m told, are incredible.

-Chesapeake Ripper

He could hear his voice in those words. Will reread it enough times that it began to echo in his mind, frantic and furious with the all-knowing arrogance of it. The bastard had even put it in the sock drawer, where a familiar and not entirely welcome knife once lay.

“No,” he murmured, and he felt himself rocking a bit, side-to-side to try and ground himself rather than start screaming. “No, no, no, no…”

He set the note down on a pile of disheveled shirts, and he let out a croaking gasp. He had the urge to scream, to yell. He had the urge to pace, bellow, to rage, and he contained it all within himself as he started tapping his fingers on the ground, the sound hard and punctuated with the beat of his pulse.

His phone rang, and Will snatched it up from among a spilled glass of water and the remnants of a dead plant that’d fallen from the windowsill. He’d have to sweep it up later, along with the rest of his things he’d reduced to shards in his furious haste.

“Hello?” he asked. It was breathy, needing –God, why did he have to sound so hopeful that it was the Ripper, there to gloat then inevitably return his watch?

“Where the hell are you?” Beverly hissed. “You’d better be in a hospital –you’re not in a hospital, are you?”

Fuck.

“I’m…not feeling well, Beverly,” Will said hollowly. “I don’t think I should come in today.”

“Seriously? Haven’t you seen the news?”

“Is that a joke?”

“Dead serious, if you’re not on your way here, you’d better turn the news on. Work is hell right now, hell, and there are cops, feds…shit, other news vans…”

Will managed to drag himself to his feet where he made his way to the living room. The TV had been shoved to the side so violently that it teetered on the end of the stand. He nudged it to safety and sat down in front of it, skimming through channels until he could find the local news. Teeth gnashed against his bottom lip, breaking skin. His wrist felt bare, far too light.

“…and here now we’re standing just in front of Tattler News where you can see beyond the police line the body of a young man that authorities are now recognizing as Harrison Nolan, an up-and-coming member of the Baltimore Symphony. This is reminiscent of the recent murder of another young musician, Billy Nguyen who was found on the stage of the Baltimore Symphony with the neck of a cello placed down the victim’s throat.”

Will’s heart plummeted to a sickening squelch in his guts.

“Although partitions and canvases are being placed to block the view of onlookers, you can still see the victim has been found much the same way as before. Is this a promise of something more to come? Is there another serial killer in the midst of the DC area, looking to upstage the Ripper? Has the Ripper’s correspondence with Tattler News reduced him to something ‘mainstream’?”

“Shit,” Will murmured. In the distance, just beyond the reporter’s shoulder, he could barely make out a man slumped into a simple-backed chair, head tilted back to give way for the neck of a cello that burst from his mouth.

“Do you think it’s the Ripper?” Beverly asked. It took far too long for him to focus on her voice rather than the image before him. It cut back to the woman, and he blinked rapidly, dispelling it from his retinas.

“No, he…”

He’s playing a different game.

“This isn’t his style,” he said instead, quietly. “I think this is someone else that wants to be in the column.”

“Charlie’s asking where you are. What the hell do you want me to tell him?”

That took Will far too long to answer as well. The image in front of him cut to the crime scene from before, when the first body had been found on stage. He stared at it for several moments, mouth dry, wondering at the still image of the neck of the cello sprouting from a gaping mouth as though it were coming to full bloom.

“Will?”

He gave a start and looked away from the image. As it cut back to the woman’s white noise of fear-mongering, he shut off the TV and rubbed his face, resolute.

“I’ll be there in a bit…I have to get ready. My alarm didn’t go off.”

“Seriously?” Beverly bit out a snort. “Better have a better excuse than that when you get here. He’s pissed.”

Will hung up and sat on the floor of his apartment for several more minutes before he could pull himself to his feet. The skin on his wrist felt odd, and he itched it as he gathered together a suitable outfit and choked down a cup of coffee.

It wasn’t until halfway to work that he realized he’d forgotten to grab his water bottle. He thought about going back, but traffic was such that it’d be an entirely new ordeal altogether that he wasn’t precisely prepared for. He’d have to rely on work coolers, then.

He almost missed his stop on the bus, and he only realized it was there when the old woman beside him shoved and nudged him far enough away for her to walk out. He gave a start at the realization of where he was at, and he followed after her, an uncomfortable prickle down his neck.

“You’re not following me, are you?” the old woman asked.

He looked away from the distant street corner he would turn at and stared at her for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

“Because if you are, I’ve got mace. I’ll mace yeh,” she informed him.

“I’m going to work.”

She eyed him with extreme prejudice –likely his wrinkled shirt. His hair, too, he supposed, seeing as how he was now just realizing that he’d forgotten to brush it. It was quite the contrast to her own perfectly ironed shirt tucked into pants hiked up high at her hips –remnants of the good old days when gas was only twenty-five cents a gallon and a milkshake was a nickel. He likely looked the type to try and pickpocket someone, in her eyes. A mildly desperate expression, right hand twitching towards his left like he could find his watch there if he just fucking tried hard enough.

Oh, god. His watch. His fucking watch.

“Alright, then. Be quick about it.”

“Alright,” he said, and he took a dramatic step around her before he hurried on his way. He pitied the idiot that decided to try and mug someone like her –that pity faded as he figured they’d likely deserve it if they cased someone like that out and thought she’d be an easy target.

He had to fight through the crowd to get to the front, and more than a few elbows nestled into his gut as he skirted around them all. Their breaths and BO clung to him, and when he reached the front he nearly bowled over an officer that stepped just before him to stop him.

“I work here, this is-”

“ID, please,” the man said.

Will fished out his wallet and handed over his license, eyes scanning for Beverly. A cluster of news vehicles cramped up the public parking, and cameras were wildly swinging across the crowd, then towards the partitions that blocked the view of the body.

“No, your badge for the press,” he said impatiently.

“Yeah,” Will snapped impatiently, “it’s-”

Right here, he finished mentally, although the words didn’t come. His hand pressed to the place on his chest where his lanyard would hang, if he had it.

If he’d fucking remembered it from home.

“Behind the line, then,” the officer decided. Will could almost smell his smug superiority as he sauntered away to push back a few people testing the line, and the urge to lunge out at him coiled, ready to spring. It was a sudden wave of emotion, hot and volcanic in its fury, and it surprised him as he stood, puzzled beside a chatty millennial that was glued to her phone.

“Yeah, I can’t get inside to work because of this freak show, and my boss is going to kill me if I…”

Her words faded, though, as he struggled to turn the sudden emotions about in his hands, wrestle them into something manageable. The officer was just doing his job, Will decided. He was just doing his job, and anyone that wanted a closer look at a dead body would say whatever they could if it meant that they could get just close enough to maybe poke it with a stick once or twice. Stephen King had made a novel about something much like that –a group of boys that poked a dead body with a stick.

Serial killers must be Stephen King’s muse, too.

It took far too long for him to turn his feelings into something logical. Half of him longed to rush after the man, grab him, and snap his neck. The other half turned the idea about of him just staying home for the day. He could turn around and just go home, lock himself in his bedroom with a fifth of Jack and call it a fucking day.

“I’d say something, but honestly anything revolving around you is hard to be surprised by anymore.”

Jack Crawford’s voice listed across the foggy aspects of his thoughts, turned about as they were with the feeling of what the officer’s pulse would feel like in his palm as he squeezed. Will blinked once, then rapidly; he clung to the sound of professional weariness, and he looked up from his shoe in order make some sort of paltry eye contact with Jack. He swallowed heavily and wished that he’d remembered a water bottle. It’d sat in the back of his cabinets for so long that it’d collected dust, but now that he’d found it…

Something else to blame the Chesapeake Ripper for, then. His water would taste like the sun-abused shit in Charlie’s office by the time he got home.

“I forgot my press badge,” he said.

“…Come on,” Jack grunted, and he lifted the tape for Will.

As they passed by the officer who was busy answering questions to an irate woman, Will ensured that he made eye contact of a sort with the man. A smug, self-satisfied smile crept across his lips, and it twisted to a sneer as the cop realized just who it was he’d held back from entering. He glanced from Will to Jack, then back to Will; that Will Graham, he was fast realizing. That God damn, Will Graham.

“One of yours said that I should haul you in for questioning on this one,” Jack said as they ascended the steps.

“Todd from Marketing?”

“Yeah, I think name was Todd.”

Todd has a cocaine problem, he wanted to say. How about you go and grab the squealer’s stash before you bring me in for this?

It wasn’t the time, though, to throw Todd under the bus. He may need him for more paper analysis or something else mundane and detailed that he didn’t want to do, consumed as he was with his work.

“Todd hates marketing,” he said instead. “And me.”

“I supposed that if you were to start your own killing spree, you wouldn’t put the body on your front doorstep,” Jack assured him. “You seem a little too smart for that.”

There was that. As they skirted the partitions and Will got a full view of the body without the trouble of distance from a news station, he felt something much akin to relief that Jack didn’t find him entirely capable of this.

“…This wouldn’t be my design,” he murmured.

“Thank God for that,” Jack replied.

“This the kind of thing your boss had in mind when he started ‘Will Intentions’?” A guy asked, head popping up from around the body. It wasn’t Jimmy, and that minor change shook him down to his core, made words dry up in his mouth because first the watch, then his water, then his badge, and who in the world was this son-of-a-bitch? Why was everything suddenly changing?

“This isn’t good press,” Jack said.

“Any press is good press,” Will managed hoarsely. “That’s news for you.”

“Well this guy was pressed for time,” the man said, and he stood up. His mouth was obscured by a cloth mask, although unruly, curly dark hair poked up from a headpiece of the same material. A kind attempt at not contaminating the crime scene. “He’s fresher than the last one. The killer probably didn’t want it stinking up anything.”

“The last one?”

“Found in Baltimore just two weeks ago –Billy Nguyen.” The man eyed Will much the same way that the old woman had, as though he could see Will’s worth beneath his plaid button-up and found him wanting.

“You don’t think they’re from the Chesapeake Ripper, do you?” Will asked Jack.

“It’s on your doorstep,” the man interjected. Will ignored him.

“I didn’t at first, but unless you’ve got more crazies climbing out of the woodwork for you, I think it’s highly likely,” Jack said. “Unless you’ve got another idea?”

Will had several ideas, but none of them sounded stable enough to share. He frowned and glanced back to the body.

“Could I…” he looked to Jack, then back to the body. Could he see? Could he look at this the same way he stared at Mary Mai and see?

Jack stared at him, and Will had an uneasy ripple down his spine at the feeling that maybe, just maybe, Jack could see, too.

“Brian,” Jack said, and something on his face made Will’s stomach flop. “If you’ll step out of here with me for a minute.”

“Jack,” Brian needled.

“Come on.”

The apparent Brian didn’t enjoy being shifted from his work, and it showed in his face. The incredulous expression twisted, then cracked somewhat as he gave Will the most accusing and understanding expression of disdain that he’d ever witnessed. He skirted the body and Will, then stalked from the tent with the beginnings of his rant starting with, “Jack, seriously, a civilian…?”

Will ignored it, though. His fingers reached for the watch on his wrist that he knew wouldn’t be there, and he sighed.

The body was older than a few days; it didn’t reek so much of decay as it did chemicals. Will circled it, studying the way that the wooden neck of the cello burst from his mouth, lips curled to reveal the artistry beneath. If he’d been wearing gloves, he’d have taken fingers to it, caressed it as he wondered at its purpose –

-No, no, the purpose was obvious, wasn’t it? The musician wanted to play. This was his magnum opus.

The throat was open, peeled back with efficiency, although there was a bit of classic showmanship in the way that it was pinned in place with pearl-tipped pins. The white, bleached strings at his throat turned out to be vocal chords, though in truth Will only recognized it by the thickness of them –normally they weren’t so white, were they? No, no…no. Blood had dripped onto the suit, speckled bits of red like burst holly on freshly fallen snow. The cold, even within the partitions, was biting. It was going to snow, soon. It was going to snow, and the Chesapeake Ripper had his fucking watch.

“You wanted to play him,” Will murmured, and it made so much sense. His throat was dry, and he swallowed, imagining the sort of music that would burst from someone like this, become from someone like this. He took a musician, and he made his very skin, his very bones into an instrument to play for the masses. A true arrogance, to take one so talented and make him your own toy to play at your leisure. He wondered what sort of thoughts pervaded the mind of someone that wondered the notes they could draw forth from the neck of the dead.

Nothing tasty, surely.

Will closed his eyes, and there was a flash of light that turned his lids pink –likely a reporter in the distance trying to get a good photo. He inhaled, and the taste was on his tongue, the scent of whatever had bleached his vocal chords stung his nose, and just in the distance, Will swore that he could hear the sort of music that would make tears come to even the hardiest of men’s eyes.

It would be mellow –something along the D-string, fingers fretting over the vibrato. Will swayed to the sound of it, the crooning lilt that made his bones vibrate, and he imagined the care it must have taken to lay him out so kindly, to share such art with the world –

-Art? Surely, in this man’s eyes, it was art. But for Will, too?

“Will?”

It wasn’t his name that pulled him from the sound, the sensation that sent goosebumps along his arms. It was more the tone, he supposed, and how it didn’t mesh in the least with F-Harmonic notes that settled deep like the ache of overworked muscles. He looked to the entrance of the tent where Jack was busy observing him, and he supposed that out of any time to be caught not quite ‘all there’ this wasn’t a good one.

“This isn’t an act of anger,” he said, and he cleared his throat to relieve the hoarseness from it. “Not at all.”

“He isn’t punishing the musician?” Jack snorted. “Seems like jealousy to me.”

“No, no, it’s –” Will scowled and rubbed at his mouth, swallowing down a foul word “–elevation, Jack, he’s…elevating them. They’re probably good musicians, aren’t they? First chairs, second chairs…he’s taking them, and he’s making them more. He’s making their music something that comes from within, something…”

He clenched at the air, grasping for the words that didn’t want to come easily. Jack stood by the entryway, patiently impatient as he waited.

“He’s… making them more than what they are,” Will finished lamely. “Taking the core of what brings their happiness, and taking that art and passion and ingraining it into their skin. That’s what he’s doing.”

Jack nodded and looked to the man, mulling a few thoughts around his head as he thought. It left Will feeling anxious. His watch didn’t buzz to tell him that he’d better take a walk through the office –is that what he’d be doing right now? He made a move to check the time, then hissed out a curse when he realized once more that it wasn’t fucking there.

“His intestines are missing,” Jack revealed. “Are you sure this isn’t the Chesapeake Ripper, Will?”

“Yeah, Jack, this…this is different. The Chesapeake Ripper isn’t so much a man succumbing to intrusive thoughts –this feels intrusive. Thoughts that pervade the mind until…” He gestured lamely to the corpse. The cello. The art. “And I’d say it’s here because he probably wants his name in the column, too.”

“Are you going to give him that satisfaction?”

“…No. One too many psychos, I think.”

“One too many psychos,” Jack echoed.

He was let go after he sighed a few things, and he headed into the office with an odd, lingering sound just at the edge of his hearing, like the haunting vibrato of a cello’s wavering song.

He tried to banish it, shove it to the far back of his mind where it could lay to rot and wither like his other tasteless thoughts, but there seemed to be a genuine lack of control. His thoughts leapt with short, electric burst, rapid sensations like the quick blinks of his eyelids, watering at the gust of AC that hit him as he walked by the lobby desk: the cop, the watch, the music, the throat, the cello, the need, the violence, the fury, the feel of the Ripper’s blade against his stomach, the putrid muck that fed through his veins like a poison because it’s no wonder you can relate to someone like this, considering your own tasteless, horrendous penchant for violence.

“Will, there you are –come on; are you coming?”

It wasn’t Beverly that yanked him unceremoniously from his thoughts, but Freddie. Just inside the elevator, she swung a checkered arm out to hold the door for him.

“Charlie is having a field day, you know,” she said as he stepped into the elevator. It chimed shut and shuddered before lifting. “Where the hell were you?”

“…I lost my watch,” he said. It sounded far more blank than morose, an odd feeling attached to it –confusion and disbelief rather than anger.

“Your watch?”

“It wakes me up in the morning,” he explained. “I don’t know where I left it.”

Freddie eyed him with extreme prejudice. It was reminiscent of the woman on the bus and Bryan poised beside the corpse, and it made a trickle of anger slither up his throat and lodge itself just at the back of his mouth. He had to resist the urge to spit it out at her.

“That out there him?” she asked.

“No. Someone else, someone…”

Someone that really shouldn’t be my problem right now.

Freddie laughed, sparing him the elongated, pregnant pause. “Wow, Graham, you’re really shook up. Did your grandma buy you that watch or something?”

The elevator dinged onto their floor.

“I never knew my grandma.”

“Okay.” She gave him another sidelong stare. “Just letting you know, Charlie’s-”

“Pissed, I’m late, there’s a dead guy on the steps outside, my watch is gone, and-”

“-waiting for you in the conference room,” Freddie finished. “Someone else is there to see you.”

That stopped him. Will turned towards the conference room rather than Charlie’s office, and he spared Freddie a confused, uncomfortable look.

“Yeah, someone’s in there to see you,” she said, and her mouth of secrets twisted into something akin to a smile. “See, not all bad.”

Not all bad, she said. Could still be somewhat bad, somewhat…

Just who in the hell would want to see him?

“I’ll go see to that, then,” he said distractedly, and he headed towards the conference room.

“Thank you,” Freddie prompted.

“You’re welcome,” Will replied.

He didn’t hesitate by the door because that would be cliché –Will Graham wasn’t much a person for such things as that. Instead, he walked right in with his shoulders hunched, his messenger bag digging into his collarbone, and his tie bunched up, half-hanging out of his coat –this he only realized when he saw a faint, faded reflection of himself in the windowpane across from him. He stared at that image of himself: glasses crooked, clothing rumpled, hands bunched to fists in his pockets. His reflection was more of the person that he generally tried to present at Tattler news; something innocent to be trusted and left well enough alone. He wondered how his colleagues would have described him, hunched over their keyboards with the pressure of deadlines on their back.

Something much like that reflection, he supposed. Nothing at all like the reality of himself. Nothing at all like what the Chesapeake Ripper was trying so desperately to reveal to the world.

“Will,” Charlie grunted. He stood from his chair at the head of the table, and the look he gave Will could have melted steel beams. “Glad you could make it.”

“…Rough morning,” Will managed after a beat. “Sorry,” he tacked on hastily.

“Well, you’re here. So is your guest.” Charlie gestured off to the side, although the look on his face barely softened. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Whatever lecture Will had been expecting wasn’t to happen, it seemed. Charlie excused himself from the room, nudging and shoving past Will who hadn’t managed to leave the doorway. Fight or flight instinct, he supposed. He needed an exit close.

It took too long for him to see her there, hunched back towards the small AV station where the TV and work videos rested, collecting dust. She was a thin, slight girl with classically straight brunette hair and pale skin found in most rural, mid-American homes. She turned to look at him only after Charlie had left, and although her clothes were plain, they seemed to be a sturdy, expensive make.

“Hello, Mr. Graham,” she said, and despite the watery, uncertain stance, her voice came out strong and sound. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Who are you?”

She smiled. “I didn’t expect you to recognize me, although I recognized you immediately. My name is Abigail Hobbs.”

A special, lovely thanks to my Patrons: Emily Elm, Matilda, Starlit-Catastrophe, Sylarana, Heather Feather, Frosty Lee, Duhaunt6, and Superlurk! You’re the best!

#LiaS scribbles #ill intentions #hannibal #hannibal au #hannibal fanfic #hannigram #slowburn hannigram #journalist!will #someone help will graham #find his god damn watch

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bloggerblagger · 7 years

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81) To my old, impressionable friends who are falling for Corbynonsense.

Remember Barbara Follett? Blair babe and MP. Wife of seriously wedged-up best selling author Ken Follett. She was queen of the champagne socialists.

I mention her because champagne socialist seems an outdated term to me these days. As outdated as Blair Babes. Or Blair anything come to that. To begin with, it’s perfectly respectable to pitch up at a party with a lesser bubbly these days - champagne even seems a tad vulgar, a bit footballer. And with the sharp leftward swerve of Corby’s Labour Party, well, ‘socialist’ hardly seems to cover it. That’s why, in a recent Facebook spat I had with some old advertising pals who have decided that Jezza is the new messiah, I called them Prosecco Marxists.

One of them objected. Not to the Marxist bit. He told me he was strictly teetotal these days. So I tried a bit harder, and always liking a bit of alliteration I offered up Perrier Pol Pottist. Then I thought a bit more and came up with Eau Chi Minnist. All a bit seventies I agree, but that seems to fit in quite well with Jezza’s policies.

For those still on the booze, how about Cava Commie? Or if you really are a footballer you could make that Cristal Commie?

Raw nerves touched.

Anyway, my central and not terribly well received point was that there was something faintly ridiculous about people who had spent their lives in the engine room of capitalism, and living very comfortably as a result, deciding that the Islington Hugo Chavez was the answer to their prayers. When I suggested that whatever the problem, Jezza was most emphatically not the answer, and that, should he ever actually manage to fly the Red Flag outside no.10, they would be the first ones dispatched to the gulag, I received back some impassioned replies.

One said, “….you would rather vote for a morally & fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards? Seriously? Purely on the basis of ‘what might be’? Crikey. I’m sorry but I’m genuinely surprised by that. It’s an interesting inversion of the ‘it was all better in the old days’ thinking that led to your generation voting overwhelmingly to Leave. Now the same generation is voting AGAINST a return to the past. Jesus. Make your minds up!! (I appreciate you’re a remainer but you are unusual in your generation) And try looking forward at the world you’d like to create rather than running from one you fear will be recreated.

Come on Richard, where’s that youthful idealism? Where’s the belief we can make the world a better place? A fairer, more just, more equal one? To want that isn’t to want a return to the 70s, it’s just to want a world in which human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. A world with some principles, some humanity, some hope. A world in which the prevailing orthodoxy isn’t that the free market is the answer to all ills.”

Selfish? Moi?

As this particular correspondent admitted to being 54 himself, I thought the ‘my generation’ bit was a bit rich. And as for the whereabouts of ‘my youthful idealism’, well, pretty obviously you’ll find that in the locked and barred cupboard of my youth along with the Beatle jacket and the “Make Love Not War’ badge and the flower that I never wore in my hair even when I had some.

Actually, I wouldn’t rather vote for a morally and fiscally bankrupt bunch of murderous bastards. Although I probably would work on their advertising business if I got the chance. I’d draw the line at Golden Dawn and ISIS but I’d sell my soul for pretty much anything in between as I am pretty sure most advertising people would; very possibly including my friend who wants the world where human beings are more important than lining your own pockets. ( I really objected to that; when I worked in advertising, it wasn’t just about the money. It was also the company pension, the six week hols, the trips to Cannes, the business class plane tickets….)

It is not that I am pro Tory, at least not pro this lot. The fact that the only one of the present bunch that I have any time for is Spreadsheet Phil clearly underlines my total disillusionment with the Conservatives. It is just that I genuinely believe that Jezza and Johnny Mac and Big Di represent an existential danger. To the country. To the public services. To the poor and needy. And, lastly, to me.

Actually, this is one of those cases where the last shall be first. Because what I really mean to say is, not, lastly, to me, but firstly to me.

My heartlessness explained.

If I have one central guiding precept by which I make sense of the world, it is this: self interest rules. At the epicentre of my world is me, as it must be because it is through my eyes that I see it, and through my mind that I make sense of it, and when I cease to exist, for me the world will do likewise.

Similarly the epicentre of your world is you, and the epicentre of anybody else’s world is their's and their's alone. I concede that if there were a God we would all be equal but only in that God’s eyes. It is an immutable law of life; me and mine first, you and yours second, them and their's last. (Me and mine rather than just me, because I see our children are an extension of ourselves, our immortality.)

It is this order of value of which explains why, when tens of thousands of people die in Syria it rates less British column inches than when 129 people die in an attack on a nightclub in Paris, and why that in turn gets less coverage in this country than when one soldier is beheaded in Greenwich. It is that which is closest to us which always gets our attention first.

It’s all me, me, me. Even for you.

However I also realise that for every other person it is their self interest that rules and for us all to coexist we each have to allow for that.

As you may know, I am not the first to have happened upon this revelation. Moses may have got there first. The Ten Commandments, it seems to me, are not so much a matter of morality as a matter of self preservation.

Thou does not kill because thou would much prefer not to be killed. Thou honours thy mother and father in the hope that thine own little dears won’t ship thou off to the nearest nursing home.

This, I would say, is enlightened self interest. It mean giving careful thought to what my medium and long term interest might be,and in doing that, sometimes sacrificing my short term interest as a result. I might have an almost irresistible urge to jump over the garden fence and nick next door’s ox, but, unless I want to start the next war of the oxen, I had better keep a lid on it. Peace between neighbours is more in my medium and long term self interest than the brief pleasure of slurping down a nice bowl of oxtail soup.

A tiny cog in the great machine of commerce.

Thinking in terms of self-interest, even enlightened self interest, might not give one the lofty views of others that one gets from believing one is occupying the moral high ground. But it just makes more sense to me. Amongst other benefits, it allows me to have worked and profited from a career in advertising, without the queasy feeling - most of the time - that I was doing something fundamentally wrong. (Which is how I am sure Jezza would see it.)

Being in advertising often involves attempting to persuade people to part with money they often have to borrow, to pay for things they often don’t need, and which they wouldn’t otherwise want. If ��belief that we can make the world a better place’ is what is driving you it is hard to see how that squares with a life spent working in advertising. (Although, if that were your point of view, you could, if pushed, just about, make an argument that advertising increases demand and that is to the general economic good. But somehow I think I would find that more of a comfort than you would.)

So what would Jezza do for me?

I would hazard a guess that as soon as he was elected the pound would fall through the floor, the credit agencies would slash our credit rating, the interest on government’s borrowings would rise inexorably, inflation would soar, and interest rates would have to follow.

The property market - already falling in London - would fall further and faster, leaving some owners (grown used to the low interest rates of the last years) in negative equity and no longer able to afford their increased mortgage payments that would follow interest rate rises. Overseas investors would be withdrawing their money before you could say Viva La Revolucion.

Unfazed by any of the aforementioned, Jezza and his dedicated disciples would whack up income taxes and inheritance tax and corporate taxes and lots of companies would up sticks and bugger off to Ireland or somewhere. If corporation tax rose by the 40% (from 19% to 26%) promised in the Labour manifesto, what would be the consequences of the resultant hole in profits? Either, less money for investment in plant or people or R and D, and less for dividends on shares - which means pension funds suffer - or cost cutting, meaning possible loss of jobs, or a combination of all of the above.

So far, so bad

And then we come to the wealth tax that John McDonnell has always been a proponent of but which was conveniently downplayed during the election. Any sort of wealth tax - and John McDonnell has previously proposed one on the wealthiest 10% - would obviously be heavily biased towards London and the South East. They mentioned a Land Tax in the manifesto but we have no idea of the details.

So, what I see is a doctrinaire Marxist-ish Labour government steadfastly hanging on to its outmoded ideas while the economy tips into serious decline, with the payment of lots of extra taxes being requested of me while the value of my house, pension and other assets falls precipitously.

No, Jezza wouldn’t be too good for my short term self interest. And neither would he be good for my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - as I don’t see how his policies would ultimately benefit anyone else either. In the words of the unfashionable Tony Blair earlier this week, they would leave the country ‘flat on its back’,

And it gets worse.

Then there is Jezza’s position on the EU, which is the polar opposite of mine as I am a staunch, unrepentant Remoaner. Whatever he claims to think, however much he tries to face both ways, it is absolutely obvious from his lukewarm campaigning during the referendum - so inferior to his full-blooded performance during the election - that he is a Brexiteer. His parliamentary voting record on every matter from 1975 onwards has been steadfastly anti-EU. Many of his and McDonnell’s cherished plans for state intervention in the economy, would, it is believed, run foul of EU competition laws.

And I have another fundamental problem with him: his supposed integrity and authenticity. Far from believing in it, I think he is, in a sense, the most duplicitous of politicians. I think he could teach even Boris a thing or two. For whereas we know brazen Boris is completely two faced, he at least makes no real effort to disguise the fact, whereas Jezza unashamedly trades on his entirely fictitious image of being a straight-talking anti-politician.

His refuses to be honest about his positions on the EU, on nuclear weapons, and on the monarchy, none of which he believes in. As it happens I agree with him on the Royals and I am half in sympathy on the Trident issue, but he thinks these views might be electorally damaging so he prevaricates and obfuscates like any other politician does.

Last - for the moment - but not least for the enlightened self-interest of a Jew like me, there is his half-arsed, unconvincing, lack of action on anti-Semitism in the Labour party despite his proclaimed determination to root it out. (You might have misgivings about the Sun as a source of reference but this time they were bang on : https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1558035/jeremy-corbyn-faces-backlash-for-nominating-shami-chakrabarti-for-peerage-after-she-led-partys-anti-semitism-investigation/ )

Oh Jeremy Cor-byn (as his adoring fans like to sing) - whatever happened to all that refreshing honesty?

And yet…

What I do accept is that the NHS and social services need a drastic rethink and will need more money. Likewise schools, and very probably the police and fire and prison services too. I don’t see how councils can fix the roads and sweep the streets and empty the bins and do all the other things they have to do if government subsidies are constantly being cut. And I can’t help feeling university tuition fees of nine grand a year are way too high, and that charging interest of 6.1% on the loans for them is outrageous.

Just as worrying, the constant whittling away of legal aid is profoundly wrong. It makes our legal system fundamentally unjust.

Perhaps most important of all, we need a radical and imaginative building programme that gives young people a chance to buy a home of their own. If bits of the green belt have to go, if the toes of the constituents of Tory MPs have to be trodden on, then so be it.

Buying a house is the route by which - certainly since the war - have-nots in this country have become haves. That’s how I, once a have-not, became a have and if ‘me and mine’ and the rest of the haves are not to become an ever shrinking minority, and thus politically marginalised and vulnerable, then we need a constant stream of new blood.

(Young people who yearn to own a home of their own please note: Helping people to buy houses will never be a priority for Jezza and Co. They do not stand for an aspiring, burgeoning, upwardly mobile middle class.

If not publicly opposed to the ownership of property, which, ideologically, at bottom, they surely are, then you can be certain that their housing policy is, and will continue to be, focussed on increasing social housing and not on private ownership.)

Money, money, money - my money.

How is all of that to be paid for? One way or another by higher taxation I reluctantly suppose. (And by a reduction to my perks - the pension triple lock and my winter fuel allowance will have to go of course, although Jezza wouldn’t agree because, for the far left, the holy cow of universal benefits must never be slain, no matter how much sense it makes. )

As I believe it to be in my medium and long term self interest - my enlightened self interest - I am prepared to settle the bigger claims that will be made of me.

I don’t say I am enthusiastic about paying more tax - never yet met the person who pays more tax than she or he has to - but I regard tax as a sort of protection money. It is what I have to pay to keep the ravening hordes from my door and demanding everything.

It’s become clear to me that the heavies are now putting the squeeze on me so I’d better slip them a bit more or face the unpleasant consequences. Some call this the price we pay for a civilised society. Put it whichever way you like, it adds up to the same thing.

Thou can be holier than me.

What I refuse to do is pretend that what impels me is anything other than what is good for me and mine. I do object to those who insist on claiming the moral high ground, but more than that, I laugh at them. I don’t doubt their sincerity but I think they are as self-interested as I am. It’s just that they insist on looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Personal reward is everything. Sometimes materially. Sometimes, for want of a better word, spiritually. (Or as I, who make no claim to any kind of spirituality, prefer to think of it, sometimes it is the reward of making yourself - your self - feel better.) You don’t give money to a beggar because it makes you feel worse, or tend a sick friend, or rescue a mangy dog. Virtue is it’s own reward, as the saying goes. Even the idea of empathy is rooted in self-interest. It means to put oneself - one’s self - in another’s place.

For me, this is the only way to square the circle: of being competitive, of wanting to do well - in an egg and spoon race or in a career - which inevitably means judging yourself by the yardstick of others’ relative lack of success, and yet squaring that with the innate sense of fairness and justice which we all feel almost as soon as we can speak - “it’s not fair, Mummy!” Both positions, it seems to me, are undeniably essential to the human condition.

So to the Mōet Tendancy, I say this. Call me a selfish bastard if you want. I cheerfully plead guilty. And so are you.

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homedevises · 6 years

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letswritepod-blog · 6 years

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District 10

Story by:

Ryan Matsunaga

Alisha Grauso

Julian Bahmani

We open with a “found” montage, mixing scenes from the first film with new footage. News reports bring us up to speed:

It’s been 10 years since the alien ship departed and District 9 was closed. To this day, no one knows why the ship left, or if it will ever return.

Despite this, millions of “prawns” remain on Earth, practically all of whom have been moved to a far larger camp: District 10.

Over the past decade, a lot of progress has been made in human-alien relations. As living conditions in this new camp improved, culture, art, and science began to emerge from the alien community, and their own technological expertise lent itself to innovation and progress on the human side of things as well.

As the years go by, trust slowly begins to grow between the two species, and in recent years, the UN has been considering a motion that would allow the aliens to leave District 10 permanently, integrating freely into human populations.

This soon becomes the political talking point across the globe, driving deep ideological schisms into human populations.

The idea has been strongly opposed by Multi-National United, who legally maintain ownership over the District 10 encampment. The MNU is reportedly making record-shattering profits controlling the flow of technology and resources in and out of District 10; a process overseen by an MNU bureaucrat named Cunningham.

Over the past decade, they have grown to become the single largest arms and aerospace corporation in the world. Journalists report that the MNU has secret funding ties to anti-integration groups and politicians, likely in an attempt to keep their proprietary hold over these lucrative exports.

As the UN vote draws nearer, the tension goes from a simmer to an outright boil, as protests, demonstrations, and riots break out around the world. And just when things couldn’t get any more contentious, on the eve of this historic vote… an alien ship appears in the skies above Johannesburg.

In interview segments, we hear from various interviewees: a Johannesburg cop, an ER nurse, etc. They’re all speaking of some kind of “incident,” an unimaginable disaster that’s left an indelible mark on these people.

A quote from a young woman wearing a news correspondent’s badge ends the segment:

“No one could have known what was about to happen. Not even those responsible.”

We begin the film proper in District 10 itself, just as the sun is setting.

It’s not an ideal living situation, but it’s a far cry from the abject poverty of District 9. There are human guards posted at regular intervals, and carrying assault weapons, but despite this, there’s actually the semblance of everyday life here. Prawns are closing up their storefronts for the evening, food stalls are bustling with activity, children are playing in the dirt streets.

At the corner of one such street, a prawn is interacting with a group of kids, selling them something from his cart. They’re excited, jumping up and down to jockey for a position in line.

Through a gap in the diminutive crowd, we can see that the proprietor is selling candy. It doesn’t look like the freshest merchandise, the packages look dated, but the children don’t seem to mind.

As he wraps up with his last customer and the group disperses. The prawn notices a dropped candy wrapper on the ground, and reaches to pick it up. He unfolds it, delicately, before refolding it into a little paper bird.

After all these years, it seems, WIKUS has found a new life amongst the people of District 10. He seems content enough as he rolls his cart home, stopping to pal around a bit with a few younger-looking prawns dancing to music from an old, beat up boombox.

As he rounds a corner, though, the ground shakes. The “city” suddenly springs to life. Crowds gather in the streets, chattering a mix of fear, excitement, confusion. All eyes are on the sky, as a massive alien ship enters the skyline.

As the ship slowly descends through the clouds, what seems to be debris appears to fall off the sides. As they drop, their descents slow, revealing them to be smaller craft.

Panic ensues in the streets.

Wikus is bumped and jostled as prawns scramble for safety from whatever is coming.

Something hits him from behind, hard, and Wikus goes down. He stumbles a few steps, his vision blurring before he passes out. The last thing he sees is a tall prawn wearing strange, unfamiliar clothing.

When Wikus awakens, he’s being dragged through a dark corridor. He’s still groggy, his vision blurring. He looks to his left and right to see a pair of large figures wearing that same clothing.

“What’s happening, where are you taking me?”

Don’t worry, they reply in prawn, we know who you are, we are going to help you.

They bring him to a chamber filled with what appears to be medical equipment.

A TALL PRAWN approaches. His hands are outstretched, he seems almost conciliatory.

“We were lucky to find you Wikus, you were struck, almost trampled.”

He’s distracted as other prawns approach him, holding devices and gesturing. Something in the room is being put together or powered on.

“How do you know my name?” Wikus asks, but isn’t heard.

Wikus is pulled, gently but firmly, into a sort of pod-like enclosure, where he’s placed on what looks like a medical gurney. His limbs are strapped in.

The tall prawn puts a hand on Wikus’s shoulder. “See you on the other side, my friend.”

A needle is plunged into Wikus’s neck, injecting him with a viscous black liquid, and his vision fades away.

Wikus awakens, disoriented. He’s on the same gurney, but he’s no longer restrained. He hears muffled voices in the next room.

Wikus rises unsteadily and follows the voices. Through a crack in the door, he can hear two distinct people: one prawn and one presumably human.

The human speaks with a condescending tone. He has a posh, polished cadence in his voice that only accentuates an air of malice around his words. He’s an asshole.

The prawn refers to this man as CUNNINGHAM. They’re negotiating something, and the prawn seems to be getting the worse end of it.

They seem to be talking around something to do with the prawns leaving District 10, an “exodus protocol” that needs to be enforced. We learn that the MNU, for all practical purposes, legally owns the prawns living in District 10. They won’t be permitted to leave in any way until they’ve paid off a collective debt, trillions in housing, food, and construction, signed when the prawns were relocated to the new camp.

The prawn counters that this can’t possibly be legal. Cunningham laughs this off. They’re not humans. Laws aren’t designed to protect them.

Cunningham has clearly “won” this exchange. Wikus peeks through the door to see him and several armed members of MNU security preparing to depart.

“Stay. Leave. I don’t give a shit where that piece of garbage in the sky goes. But these prawns,” Cunningham says, gesturing broadly around him. “They belong To Me.”

Trying to get a better look, Wikus trips over a loose cable, barely catching himself.

Cunningham inquires, curious: “What do you have back there, anyways?”

“I have nothing more to say to you,” the prawn replies, ending the conversation.

Cunningham shrugs, and leaves.

As the humans exit, the prawn turns to where Wikus is hiding, gently opening the door.

He gestures for Wikus to enter the room, gently, like he’s trying to console a frightened animal.

“Welcome back Wikus, welcome back my friend.”

Wikus asks what happened, where he is. As he moves from the darkness of the medical bay to this well lit room, he sees his hands… human hands.

“I am sorry I am so late,” the prawn tells him. He seems genuinely ashamed.

Wikus stares at his hands in disbelief, then up at the tall prawn.

He stammers: “…Christopher?”

It is Christopher, after all these years. They embrace.

As they part, Wikus asks Christopher where the “little one” is.

Christopher clasps Wikus on the shoulder: “He is safe, thanks to you.”

He gestures to Wikus’s now human frame. Christopher tells him that the process is not complete. He will need to undergo a final gene therapy in a few days, and there may be side effects in the meantime.

They step out into the sun together. They’ve exited an alien craft of some kind, like the command module from the first movie, but much, much bigger. Above them, the massive mothership hovers.

Christopher walks Wikus home, to no shortage of strange looks. The streets are buzzing with energy. Some prawns can be seen packing up their belongings. In one corner, a group appears to be praying in front of a statue depicting two prawns pointing upwards towards the stars. Many others though are just carrying on as if it’s business as usual.

Wikus also spots other humans in the District. They’re not in uniforms, but they are wearing lanyards of some kind, and appear to be guiding prawns in an official capacity.

Wikus is realizing that this probably isn’t the next morning, so much has happened. He asks Christopher how long he was out. Christopher replies that Wikus has been recovering for nearly three weeks.

Christopher elaborates that those humans are volunteers, helping to organize the prawns that want to depart. The prawns that accompanied Christopher to Earth do not understand the concept of possessions and property, complicating the process.

Wikus sees a group of these human volunteers leaving the District, and tells Christopher that he needs to go do something. Christopher understands, but says that he needs Wikus’s help, and asks to meet tomorrow. Wikus readily agrees, and joins the human group as they’re leaving through a busy MNU checkpoint.

It’s dusk and Wikus has returned home. Not his home in District 10, but where he and his wife lived nearly a decade ago.

Through a ground floor window, he sees his wife, and a man, both playing with a small child.

Wikus stares just out of sight. He should be crushed, but he almost looks, at peace? It’s as if a weight has been lifted from him, a burden he had been living with for so long.

He turns to leave, and in the distance, we see he’s being followed.

An EXPLOSION. Gunfire. There’s flames and wreckage in the streets, people running for their lives. Bullets are whizzing, and a giant metal foot crushes down on a parked car. It’s a prawn mech suit, firing indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd.

Wikus awakens suddenly, back in his home in District 10. He’s covered in a cold, sticky sweat.

“You’re disconnecting from the prawn hive mind. For obvious reasons, you’re the first. I’d be willing to bet though that’s it’s going to get pretty weird before all is said and done.”

A figure is sitting at the foot of Wikus’s bed. It’s the reporter from the opening montage. She introduces herself as MELINA, an investigative journalist for Johannesburg's News24.

Melina reveals that she knows who Wikus is, what he was a decade ago. She’s been investigating the return of the prawn ship, and if he has anything to do with it. She wants to talk, but Wikus is wary, uncertain. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to safely trust a human.

She offers a business card, but Wikus doesn’t take it, so she places it at the foot of his bed instead, and leaves.

The next morning, Wikus goes to meet Christopher at the command module. He’s told that Christopher is on the outskirts of District 10, alone.

Wikus finds Christopher finishing his work, brushing dirt from his hands. He’s standing above a mound of fresh dirt.

Wikus approaches to see that on top of the mound lies a piece of clothing. It’s a red vest; Christopher Johnson's vest from the first film.

It dawns on Wikus who has actually returned. They stand in silence over the grave for a few moments.

“Your father… is he?” Wikus asks.

Christopher shakes his head.

“He died on that ship. ”

Wikus opens his mouth to offer condolences, but “Christopher” puts up his hand. He tells Wikus that he’s had his time to grieve, and that his father’s sacrifice will always be with him, he’s taken his name after all.

Christopher looks up to the monolith in the sky.

“What you and my father did here 10 years ago. You didn’t just save my life, you gave me something far more valuable: Clarity. Purpose. He wanted to save our people.”

Christopher puts a hand on Wikus’s shoulder.

“And we will.”

The two spend the afternoon touring Wikus’s neighborhood. Wikus shows Christopher his favorite spots as they talk.

Wikus excitedly points out his favorite food stall, greeting the owner enthusiastically. The stall’s owner seems confused, very hesitant. He’s an older prawn, he’s probably lived through the worst years of District 9.

Wikus clicks something at him in very crude prawn. The older prawn pauses, there’s a moment of silence. Then, if prawns could smile, he’d certainly be smiling as he embraces Wikus. Wikus is clearly well liked, the prawns in his community have accepted him as one of their own.

Wikus and Christopher continue their walk. Seeing more of the human volunteers hustling about, Wikus asks why they’re going through this, why they don’t just return better equipped, force the MNU to let them leave.

Christopher explains that there will never be a third trip. That vessel in the sky is their people’s very last “homeship.”

Far from a paradise, the prawn’s home planet has been experiencing a slow decay. The “leader” class of prawns strained the planet’s resources to the brink, forcing them to send out more and more homeships in a desperate pursuit of new supplies; while the “worker” class has grown increasingly more unhinged and violent.

If Christopher cannot bring the millions of prawns on Earth back, and with them, an infusion of fresh resources and labor, their planet will almost certainly expire in a generation or less.

At the moment though, no one but Christopher and his inner circle know about the MNU’s demands. If Christopher cannot find a solution, he is certain there will be blood in the streets as the prawns turn to violence. It is an arrangement that neither the prawns that want to leave, nor the ones who want to stay, would accept without a fight.

To make matters worse, the MNU might not know it yet, but Christopher’s forces are themselves depleted. They are far too few, and far too underequipped to mount a resistance if things go bad.

Wikus stops to see a group of Christopher’s prawns making their rounds through District 10 neighborhoods. They are going door to door trying to get the inhabitants to leave their homes and make their way to the evacuation points to prepare for the departure. The District 10 prawns are being asked to give up many of their belongings in the process, a point of contention that is causing a lot of unrest.

In front of one such household, Christopher’s prawns get into an argument with the residents when one tries to pull a suitcase out of their hands. A scuffle ensues. No one is hurt, but there is a palpable tension in the air. The scene is eerily reminiscent of the relocation process in District 9.

Christopher is shaking his head. He knows what Wikus is about to say.

Christopher pauses in front a statue, the same one we saw prawns huddled in front of earlier: two prawns holding hands and pointing upwards, towards the stars.

“So long as there is even the possibility that we can leave, our people will find no peace here. If we let this linger, it will tear us in two, if the humans do not destroy us first. It is a decision we make together, or not at all.”

We see news footage of rioting on the border wall of District 10. Outside there is a growing crowd of human protesters carrying signs saying things like “GO HOME PRAWNS” and “OVERSTAYED YOUR WELCOME”.

We learn that rumors have gotten out about the MNU’s demands for repatriations. The news anchor adds that some believe the MNU purposefully leaked financial documents disclosing the huge amounts of taxpayer money used to subsidize the building and maintaining of the camps, turning public sentiment against the prawns.

The MNU is now openly seizing prawn businesses and property, sparking a huge spike in violent crimes within the District.

And suddenly, Wikus is in the footage. He’s lost and stumbling in the midst of a nighttime riot. From an unseen vantage, machine gun fire begins to mow down prawns as they scramble for cover. Wikus stumbles towards an alleyway as bullets whiz past, and into… a room?

Wikus is somehow in the command module again. He is watching a conversation between Christopher and Cunningham. The two are arguing.

Cunningham: "I don't know what you're playing at you slimy fuck, but as soon as I find out, we're coming for you. Their blood is going to be on your ha-"

The environment shifts again, and Wikus is standing beside Christopher as he leans over a metal table. He looks tired, but determined. On the table lies a prawn body.

Just as suddenly, Wikus back on the rioting street, barely managing to dive out of the way of a falling prawn mech, bullet hole riddling the armor. A dead prawn pilot is inside, staring up at nothing.

Above, a squadron of fighter jets fly at a low approach, rattling windows. Wikus glances up to see that the homeship is burning.

He wakes again, stumbling to the bathroom to throw up. In the bathroom mirror, he sees that one of his eyes is yellow. He shakes his head a few times and the color is back to normal.

There’s a knock at his door. It’s Christopher.

“Wikus, my friend, I am sorry to come to you at this hour, but we need to talk.”

Christopher opens computer-like display on Wikus’s kitchen table. Lines of prawn language stream across the image before it opens what looks like low-quality security camera footage.

Christopher explains the footage: “The past three nights, unmarked helicopters have been making passes around the homeship. Last night, figures were seen on the hull. I know it is the MNU, I know they are planning something. Wikus, I need your help to figure out what. Please.”

Christopher elaborates that he’s secured for Wikus an MNU uniform and security badge. It’s risky, there’s always a possibility he would be recognized, even after all these years, but it’s their best shot at stopping whatever the MNU has planned.”

Wikus agrees to do what he can. As Christopher leaves, Wikus opens a drawer to retrieve the reporter’s business card.

Wikus and Melina convene to plan out their infiltration. Melina has managed to get the MNU to agree to a small TV segment concerning the prawn repatriation process, allowing her to tour the facility’s ground floor.

Wikus will pose as Melina’s cameraman, and when he gets the opportunity, will break away to investigate on his own. Melina reminds him that he has promised her complete and total honesty in an interview when this is all over.

Wikus and Melina arrive at the MNU facility. They conduct a short, very PR-friendly interview with an MNU rep. Wikus makes sure to cover as much of his face as possible with the camera.

There’s a moment where Melina notices that Wikus’s eye is drooping unnaturally, as if it doesn’t quite fit his face. Wikus quickly hides it by moving the camera in front of him.

At the end of the interview, Wikus asks to use the bathroom, and makes a break for it, changing into the MNU uniform and using the badge to go deeper into the facility.

Wikus narrowly avoids going down a corridor as Cunningham approaches, MNU retinue in tow. He’s shouting, visibly angry.

Slipping into a nearby garage bay, Wikus finds stacks of crates that are being prepared to be loaded. The manifests mark them as general medical supplies to be helicoptered into District 10, but when he opens one, he finds a huge volume of military-grade explosives.

Wikus quickly captures it all on video, just as a group of MNU employees comes through the door. Wikus hides what he’s been doing, but he’s been spotted.

One of the employees approaches him and asks him what he’s doing here. Wikus attempts to play it off. He reaches into his pocket for the ID badge, but realizes that his hand has turned claw-like, as if he’s reverting into a prawn again. He awkwardly retrieves the ID with his other hand.

The MNU employee seems suspicious. Wikus starts losing his cool when he briefly hallucinates that the employee’s eyes are yellow like a prawn’s. Wikus clears his head, revealing that his “claw hand” was just a hallucination as well. Whatever’s happening to him is clearly getting worse.

Despite this, he maintains his cool and seems to be talking his way out of the situation.

The MNU employee stares at him for a second, assessing, then shrugs, and taps Wikus on his badge as he walks past him. “See ya around.”

Wikus returns to Christopher with the news. Those crates were being requisitioned to the helicopter pads. The MNU is planting explosives on the homeship. They mean to strand the prawns here, to make sure their cash cow never leaves.

Christopher tells him that earlier that night, a huge MNU force took control of the command module, quarantining off the area around it. Knowing what he knows now, Christopher understands why.

The command module can send the power-up signal to the homeship, and if explosives were to be detonated during that sequence, the results would be catastrophic. The ship would be utterly destroyed, and with it, any hope of returning home.

The pair form a plan of attack. They have to stop this, but as quietly as possible. If word gets out about it, the chaos that would ensue would leave thousands dead.

Christopher gives Wikus a weapon. He tells him that it should still work; until the procedure is completed, Wikus is still part prawn.

Wikus prepares an envelope with the video evidence and photos he collected from the MNU facility. He calls Melina, she doesn’t pick up. He calls the News24 headquarters, they tell him no one by that name works here. Wikus is flustered, his head is a mess.

Christopher urges him to hurry. Wikus sends a text, and leaves his phone next to the materials as they leave the house.

Prawns gather en masse outside of the MNU’s barricades. They’ve been evicted from their homes, and they’re pissed. They’re throwing rocks and molotov cocktails, shoving against the riot shields of the MNU security forces.

Suddenly, gunfire breaks out, and all hell breaks loose. Hundreds of prawns swarm over the MNU guards, as more gunfire and small explosions can be heard.

Under this cover of chaos, Wikus and Christopher push past the barricade lines and into the quarantined area.

Wikus and Christopher make it to the command module, but it’s too heavily guarded. They’re not going to get any further without being detected.

The two know what has to be done, and they go LOUD. Alien weapons blasting, Wikus and Christopher fight their way through the MNU forces, side by side again. It’s awesome.

They battle their way towards the control room, but there’s just so many guards pursuing them. Christopher holds them off while Wikus continues to the central room.

He enters the room and sees a central console. On top of it, several human laptops are open. Some are displaying security camera footage of the chaos outside. One is displaying what looks like a countdown sequence with just a few minutes to go.

Suddenly, Wikus is SHOT, a ferocious blast that takes off his arm in a shower of gore.

Wikus falls to the floor. He looks up to see Cunningham holding a combat shotgun.

“You idiot,” he spits. “You fucking idiot. You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“Look at this shit,” he gestures towards the security feeds. “This is you. This is what you creatures do, isn’t it? You just can’t help yourselves.”

Wikus shouts back that the MNU brought this on themselves, stealing from the prawns, evicting them from their homes.

Cunningham seems genuinely taken aback. “Evicting? This is an evacuation. What exactly are you playing a-”

He’s cut off mid-sentence by the sound of an alien weapon powering up. Cunningham turns just in time to be evaporated into a mist of viscera by a bloody, but still alive Christopher.

Wikus’s arm has been nearly completely severed. He falls to the ground clutching the bloody stump. He’s breathing heavily, but he’s relieved. It’s over.

He gestures towards the laptop. “Christopher, the computer, there’s still time.”

Christopher moves towards the computer, his hand hovering above the keys. He’s hesitating, but why?

Wikus is growing more frantic. “Christopher! What are you waiting for?”

Still staring at the glowing countdown sequence, he replies to Wikus.

“I spent a long time on that ship, alone with the memories of a dying planet. But still, I didn’t know until just now if I would be ready, when the time came, to do what I have to.”

“Christopher, what are you doing? Think of your people!”

“Wikus, I have known you nearly all my life. When the time comes, I know you too will do what needs to be done. Our people, they will survive this.”

Christopher shuts the laptop.

Wikus looks up in horror to see a series of violent explosions rock the side of the mothership. Huge pieces of debris fall from the damaged vessel, crushing buildings beneath them.

The massive ship veers downward, angling awkwardly in its descent. It’s crashing, and it’s clear thousands are about to die.

Wikus is in disbelief.

“This story isn’t over my friend. One day, you will understand why I did this. Just as you are realizing now the role you must play in what’s to come.”

Behind Christopher, we see the “transformation” pod.

The ship comes crashing down in the distance, sending a shockwave that violently shakes the walls.

Epilogue:

A montage of news clips reveals that in the months that followed the disaster, public sentiment towards the prawns has turned sympathetic.

An extensive investigation revealed the extent of the MNU conspiracy, not just the terrorist attack that downed the ship, but also illegal arms trading, inhumane experimentation, etc.

In response to the public outcry, the UN has granted the prawns their own territory to self-govern around the site of the crash, effectively creating a “prawn nation.”

The immense ruins of the ship itself still lay half-buried in the ground, a towering monument to the disaster, and the legacy of District 9.

Some of the interviewees from before add their thoughts. Many are relieved that the horrifying past of the Districts are behind them. Some however are worried that the prawns’ memory will not be so short, that they will not forgive what was done to them.

Melina finishes her own interview segment. She asks if they are done. Before the camera cuts we see her removing contacts from her eyes. It may just be a trick of the light, but are her eyes… yellow?

Further footage reveals that the prawn population has seemingly reunited in the pursuit of rebuilding this land into a home for themselves and their descendants.

At one such construction site, Christopher stands above his fellow prawns, surveying the progress. From behind him, a one armed prawn approaches to stand by his side.

“Let’s Write” is a Villainy project. You can find all of our work at www.Villainy.media

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