𝖍𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖗, criminal minds

OO6.

© TR0LLFILMS, wattpad.

HELLRAISER.         &&              part six.
what a good peach cobbler and a gin & lemonade does to a woman

MY APARTMENT WAS SMALL; the walls were so dark that the shadows seemingly clung to them. Perhaps, it was because I was only there at the darkest moments of the day. My job at the FBI made it virtually impossible to get home early, and the constant inability to sleep made it so I was keenly awake in the middle of the night. The building I lived in was brick-made, stable, and somewhat dirt-stained, but relatively well-kept and well-loved. My neighbours, surprisingly, knew me well, and my late hours had become a point of conversation every time our paths crossed on the stairwell and hallways. She's a night owl, my neighbour, Patsy Kelsaw, would say once she thought I was far enough away that I couldn't hear her. She was likable enough, but a bit too nosy for my taste, and she was determined to figure out what exactly happened in my past to make me the woman I was today. This hunt for the truth was mostly done through acts of sporadic kindness and intense questioning, a peach crumble and a discussion about my mother, a chicken noodle soup and a casual line of questions about where my father was right now. Despite my discomfort, it was practically impossible to turn her down, so I answered her questions, bared my soul, and eventually, she bared hers in return. 

"So, you're team's good?" Patsy asked, resting against my well-worn armchair, a half-drunk wineglass in her left hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. She was determined to quit, and she managed to cut down her funding, so she would have to drag out the process of having a cigarette for as long as possible before actually lighting it and smoking it. Either way, the entire image was an amusing one────grey-haired Patsy, with saggy skin and bright eyes the colour of hazelnuts, had a blue streak in her hair for her granddaughter who wanted to match with her favourite grandmother. Patsy was built well, with broad shoulders and wide hips, and a type of smile that caused her face to wrinkle like a permanent cruel sneer. Her eyebrows were still red, the only way to identify her old hair colour, and she dressed almost entirely in large, well-detailed and brightly-coloured dresses, without much shape. She would say I don't need to bother dressing up but still wore an assortment of chunky jewellery and the thinnest spectacles I had ever seen. When she smiled I half-expected there to be a golden tooth, to match the look, but her teeth were misshapen and mismatched, some fake and perfect and others rotten and worn down. 

I tilted my head, sitting against the wall beneath the window, an empty glass of wine in my hand. I had finished it a while ago but couldn't bother getting up, and was quietly hoping that eventually Patsy would refill her own and I could ask her to do the same for me. "They're fine."

"Just fine?" Patsy scoffed. "Aren't all'a y'all gonna be fighting criminals with these guys? Wouldn't you want to think they're more than fine?" There was the twinge of a southern drawl in her voice, she hailed from some Baiyou area in Lousiana and moved to DC during the heyday of the seventies, but she never lost her accent, which I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse. 

I felt my eyes roll back. "That's what my mum thinks," I said. "Theo told me that I should get to know them. Be a normal person was their exact words." 

Patsy shrugged. "That don't sound too bad. You got to know me." 

"Yeah, after you practically forced your foot into the door." I looked over to the kitchen, the apple cobbler still steaming on the table. Forcing myself to get up, I walked back over to the kitchen, serving for the both of us. I was wearing sweatpants and an oversized tee shirt I had found at Walmart, it was star-wars themed and badly made, but I didn't care enough. "The only reason you're here right now is because of this," I said and placed the bowl of cobbler on her lap. 

She snorted. "Sure, sure. I bet you would've been fine, bottlin' up those secrets until you exploded. The fact yer here alive and not dead somewhere after you got shot got nothing to do with me." 

She, unfortunately, was right. But, instead, I shook my head. "No way," I scoffed, eating my cobbler. "I would've been totally fine without you." She knew I was lying, but did not bother with correcting me. 

"Okay, if you had to pick though, one person from your team that you had to save and all the others died, which one?" Patsy asked, tilting her head back, and looking down her nose at me. 

That was a struggle. "I guess," I swished my wineglass around. "Morgan?"

"Morgan?"

"Derek Morgan." I shrugged. "He seemed nice. They're all nice, well, except Hotch." I rolled my eyes. "He's got a stick up his ass, I swear to god." I put another spoonful of cobbler in my mouth. "I'd like to kick it further up, pierce his little brain." I motioned with my foot, kicking it up. 

Patsy's laugh was loud and unglamorous and full. "I'd love to see that happen." She leaned forward again, so far over that it looked like she could tip out of her chair at any moment. "Any cuties?"

I rolled my eyes again. As I took another spoonful of cobbler, I looked at my watch. Seven o'clock. My heart thumped against my chest and my head started to burn a little. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. I'm late!" 

"Late?" She asked, her eyebrows raised. 

I nodded and rushed to stand, putting the cobbler down on the floor and racing to my room. My bare feet barely caused a sound on the wooden floor. "What should I wear?" I called out to Patsy, scouring through the piles of clothes on the floor. Most of them were clean-enough, but I deliberately skipped over the items that I knew were dirty. My hands found purchase on low-rise, wide-leg jeans and I quickly got undressed, pulling them over my legs with a grunt.