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Feb. 5th, 2013 04:55 pmPlayer Information:
Name: Mara
Age: 23
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
maraish
Game Cast: None.
Character Information:
Name: Detective William LaMontagne, Jr.
Canon: Criminal MInds
Canon Point: after 7.23-24 "Hit" and "Run"
Age: early 30s
Reference: http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/William_LaMontagne_Jr
Setting: Earth, as we know it. The show centers on the Behavioral Analysis Unit, a group within the FBI that specializes in profiling and catching serial killers. There are seven of them at any given time, and they go to a new locale/profile and catch a new killer each episode.
While this is a little Hollywood-ized from reality, it is very well-researched and based on an actual FBI unit, members of which have been known to consult for the show; generally, they only take real liberties when it comes to time (serial killer investigations can take weeks or months, but on Criminal Minds they generally take days) and drama (real profilers would generally leave arrests and direct investigation to the local police departments, detectives and crime scene analysts, but in this show the main characters do pretty much everything).
On Will's part, specifically, there also tends to e a fair amount of unrealistic coincidence that brings him into the path of the BAU in order to involve him in specific episodes. Like, his dad investigated one serial killer in New Orleans, then his partner died by one during travel in Miami. Another partner is killed during a surprise shootout at a bank in DC that requires the BAU to be called in. Yeah, he's lived an exciting life. For the purposes of role-play, I'll be playing this as an actual unusual thing, not like Will is from a completely Hollywood world: losing two partners, killing a bank robber by gunshot and having a father who was key on a serial murder are all things that have had a significant impact on him, and they are not normal. They are possible, though. In real life, though, sometimes weird-ass coincidences happen to the strangest people. (I worked for the Dallas Police Department for a while, and dude, I have stories.)
Will himself comes from New Orleans, having grown up in a cop family there. He later moves to Virginia to be with JJ.
Personality: Outwardly, with his quiet drawl, his withdrawn posture, and his weirdly tender kind of honesty, Will isn't quite a typical anything. Not a typical guy, or police officer, or Southerner. He knows the value of silence, and doesn't fill the air with too many words, but he's not exactly the strong and silent type. He's upfront about his feelings, but not obvious about them. Polite, and sweet, but steely when the occasion presents itself. He's his father's son, but he's not his father.
Pretty important to understand Will's father in order to understand Will. Detective William LaMontagne, Sr., fondly referred to by Will as 'my Daddy', actually was the strong and silent type. He's the stern-but-kind-father-figure cop of a generation ago, the guy with a strict moral compass and a hell of a lot of pride in his own profession. Who could cuff and jail a scumbag, tough as nails, and a second later give a victim the exact respect and empathy they need. He loved his oldest (and only) son, raised him in a house with two dogs and a drum set in order to be as good of a man as Will Sr. was. And he succeeded: Will grew up with a moral compass as ingrained as his Daddy's, and in time became a police officer too, and then a detective in his own right (probably one of the proudest moments of Will Sr.'s life). What Will wanted was to make his Daddy proud, and given the simple, content confidence that Will greeted the rest of his life with, there's no doubt in Will's mind that he succeeded.
The turning point of Will's life comes with a turning point in the state of all of New Orleans. In the heights of Hurricane Katrina, Will's father made a discovery in a serial murder case that had him refuse to leave his own house. Disaster hit; a tree branch came in through the window and opened the house to the heights of the storm. Will Sr. died, but not before carving a name on the wall of the house: Jones. After the storm, even preoccupied in rebuilding the city, Will works tirelessly to follow the trail his father left behind and find the killer. He channels the weight of his grief into this mystery, believing that if he solves it, then he'll feel as though his father's life had some closure to it. That Will himself could have some closure. To this end, he calls in the FBI behavioral analysis unit, and works with them on pinning down the killer. Turns out it was a woman who had been raped at a bar named Jones eight years ago, who now targeted men as a kind of desperate retaliation for what happened to her.
This series of events is important for three reasons. One: Will's father is dead, and this leads him to step up and become the man he always could be. He discovers in himself the same strength and intelligence that drove his father, and realizes his full potential as a detective. Two, he meets Jennifer Jareau, special agent of the FBI and his future wife. We'll get into that later.
And three, the situation he finds himself in showcases a perfect example of Will's almost endless empathy, patience and kindness. When he discovers that the woman had specifically singled out his father not as the investigating detective of the murders but as the officer who helped through the immediate aftermath of her rape years ago, he moves to more literally take up his father's mantle. They discover her with her latest victim tied up, a knife in her hand. You trusted my Daddy, he says. Do you trust me? -- and he puts his gun away, steps closer, takes the knife from her hand, and lifts her away from the tied-up man. He lets her hold him while she cries, desperate and hurt. He can find sympathy even someone who's killed so many people, who left a trail of brutal murders across the French Quarter.
You see, Will isn't his father. He's his father: the next generation, more sensitive, more empathetic, and more open about himself and his feelings. Without the worries of typical masculinity. After the killer is arrested, he confides in JJ: he thought that solving this case would make everything better, but now all he feels is lost. Will isn't bound by pride. He can admit that, to himself and to another. He's not as sexist as his father probably was; though he reacts with immediate surprise to JJ's physical appearance, he doesn't let it temper his respect of her and her abilities in any way. He just later finds time to quietly flirt with her. He's tolerant of more than that, too. When his partner is killed by a serial murderer in Miami, years later, and he finds out after the fact that his partner was gay, he expresses disbelief -- that his partner felt he couldn't tell Will about it. "I can't think of anything I would have cared about less," Will told JJ. "He was my friend. I loved him. I just wanted him to be happy."
Now, having covered how Will is both a product of his father and different from his father, I'd like to go on to talk about his further appearances in the show. He's only in nine episodes over the course of six seasons, so we kind of get dropped in on his life in weird, random moments, but we get a pretty good cross-section of how he behaves.
Boyfriend/Husband/Father: For these six years, Will dates JJ. He treats her with patience, absolute devotion, and sacrifice; he stays with her, giving up his job in New Orleans to take a job as a cop in DC to live with her. He proposes multiple times, and she refuses. He loves her without reservation, though it takes JJ more time to return his love. Will puts family first and foremost, partially because of his regard for his father, partially because he just has a tendency to form a few close, deep connections that trump everyone in his life. This isn't to say that he's a complete saint; he can and will get unhappy with circumstances, especially when he feels he isn't being respected himself. When JJ refuses to tell her coworkers and friends about him, he pursues it, pushing her to find out if she's ashamed of him, if there's someone else, what's happening with how she feels. When JJ's job takes up all of her time, leaving him to raise their child alone, he pushes for her to take a job at the Pentagon with set hours and weekends free so she can be with him and with Henry. He proposes marriage to her multiple times, and she turns him down every time, shying away from that final commitment even though she loves him, even though they have a child together, and he's not happy about that either. But he loves her, and he loves Henry, so damn much that he'll put up with all of it so he can be theirs.
Police Officer: He's brave as all fuck. His moral compass is rooted in that same idea of family: when he goes to save someone's life, he does it because they're someone's son, someone's wife, someone's father or friend or lover. He will walk straight into the line of fire to save a person's life. And he does: in the finale of seventh season, he shoots and kills a bank robber, precipitating a hostage situation, and when the hostage-takers demand that Will be sent in to be the one to speak with them, or they'll kill a new hostage every sixty seconds, he goes. He goes, even though the BAU tells him not to, even though JJ screams for him as he walks in the door. And even though he's immediately shot once he enters the room, he draws on some serious god damn willpower and generates an opening for the hostages to escape while bleeding from a shoulder/chest wound and dooming himself to being captured and taken away from the crime scene.
The Hostage: Will isn't an action hero. He doesn't take out the two robbers who take him hostage and save the day. They hold him at gunpoint, use him to pick up and take hostage his son. He struggles with the decisions he has to make: it wrenches at him to leave his son with a murderer. He hates himself for letting them take and then kill a medic just so that his gunshot wound could be patched up. He even finds it morally revolting when one robber shoots another and forces Will to leave the man bleeding out on the sidewalk. And yet, he persists, behaves enough to keep his family safe, bides his time, waits until he has an opening. He only fights when he's truly backed into a corner, when the robbers are about to set a bomb in a train station -- and then he's easily defeated, wounded as he is, considering his opponent is an ex-Marine. He doesn't defuse the bomb that ends up strapped to him, either. That's one of the BAU. And yet -- he goes into the whole damn thing knowing he probably won't come out alive, knowing that JJ will have her heart broken if he dies, but knowing that he had to do everything in his power to stop them from killing the hostages at the bank. He steps into it with clarity of purpose, even though he hates what this might do to his then-girlfriend.
Then-girlfriend, I say, because at the end of this, when he comes back alive and weakened, JJ realizes just how much she absolutely cannot live without him. "Ask me," she tells him; "Ask me again." And when he, stunned, asks her, "Jennifer Jareau, will you marry me?" -- then she says yes. "About damn time," he says, but he holds her close. Cause right then the worst day of his life became the best day of his life, and holy crap emotional whiplash.
The Victim: It's worth it to note, though this isn't a basic building block of Will's personality, that he's suffering a lot of trauma for the events of 7.23 and 7.24, including the hostage situation, the death of his partner, and the deaths of the robber, a medic, and two hostages that he feels are on his conscience. He blames himself, but he's working on not blaming himself. He's pretty sure that if anyone he knew was in that situation, he'd think they did the best that they could, and so he makes a sincere effort to be as fair on him as he would be on them. Doesn't mean he's not going through a lot of emotional repercussions.
So that's Will. He's a good guy.
Appearance:
Slim, almost diminutive, dark-haired, wiry. He's got weird droopy eyelids and his eyes are a little sunken, but besides that he is completely adorable. In canon, he's described as "something nice to look at" by Emily Prentiss. Additionally, in his first episode while he was working on a case with JJ in a bar, a girl sent him over a drink, and his amused non-reaction to this would lead one to believe it's something that happens often. So that 'completely adorable' thing is totally canon fact.
Abilities:
Will is a detective from the New Orleans police department. As such, he's got some training in physical combat, guns, general law enforcement, investigation. He's got a good short-term memory, and he's street-smart and educated to college-level. He has no supernatural powers of any kind.
Inventory:
Wallet, police badge, cellphone. Beyond that, just what he's wearing.
Suite:
In the Earth sector, which I feel would match well with Will's moral certainty and quiet kind of strength. Will would probably ask for a smaller place, cause he'd have no idea what to do with a bigger one.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
"We don't need you to identify the body," says the morgue attendant, "we know who she is," and around them the silver-white hallways of the morgue slip away. Doors pass, and Will wants to check them, search them all for the cold, white body of his partner, to brush back the hair from the wound in her forehead and say goodbye. But the hallways deposit him out in the burning bright sun, the heat, and she's ahead of him, in the police car.
A surge of relief, as he steps up and slides into the passenger seat. "I thought you were dead," he says, with a smile, like, hey, isn't that ridiculous?
She turns to him, and her hair is wrong, he realizes, a gun in her hand. "Drive, Dick," she says, and Will's head turns, twists; he flounders and comes awake at the scrape of a sheet against his palm. He thinks he sees, for a second, the sight of a man instead, lying back on a morgue table while JJ stands beside him, but he blinks the sleep away from his eyes and comes awake all the way, blinking his eyes open in the pale dark. 3:24 AM.
The dreams don't fade away. These ones linger, like a cobweb you can feel brushing across your skin but can't manage to get off of you.
He looks over to JJ, asleep, facing away from him. They fell asleep pressed against one another, and some time during the night, he turned away from her. He hadn't made a sound while he was dreaming; if he had, she'd be awake, already stroking her fingers through his hair.
Carefully, he lifts himself out of the bed, settling the blanket down over JJ's shoulders.
Downstairs, puts the kettle on and slides down into a seat at the table. His fingers interlace over the back of his neck, elbows on the table. The dreams don't really count as nightmares, he thinks. Sure, there's fear, and there's grief and there's memories that rearrange themselves into a terrifying semblance of reality, but they don't wake him up in a cold sweat. Don't make him shake and shiver. They don't make him hate to face the night nearly as much as he hates to face the day.
He worries: about not being enough for JJ, for Henry. About the fact he's a newcomer to the District police force and he's got two dead partners in his past. About the gunshot wound that's only just started to heal. About bills, and going to the grocery store, and the department-mandated therapy that has him facing his own feelings before he knows what they are.
The kettle whistles.
He darts for it, wincing as it knocks the chair noisily against the table leg. Lifts it off of the stand, and pours it into the hot chocolate mix, three quarters of the way. Reaches for the bottle of rum they keep in the cabinet beside the fridge.
"Will?"
He glances up, his eyes resting on JJ. She's an angel, in the doorway. Eyes bleary with sleep, in a loose t-shirt and a soft pair of pajama pants.
"Didn't mean to wake you," he says. Tops off the mug with a little rum, and digs for a spoon to stir it in.
"It's all right," she says. "Dreams?" And she steps forward, slipping into his arms. Her body presses against his, and he sighs out a long breath, tension easing from him that he hadn't been aware he was carrying.
"Dreams," he confirms.
She doesn't say anything like it'll get better or it's okay or I'm here, because he knows all of that. No trite words of comfort. Just her fingers, stroking through the hair at the back of his neck. Yeah, it'll get better. And yeah, things are okay, even though they so easily could have been not.
Her other hand slides into his, and he brushes his thumb over her ring finger. The little circle of metal makes him smile, again.
"You want to make me one of those?" she asks, with a nod at the hot chocolate.
"You might have to let me go, first," he murmurs, brushing his lips across hers.
"Not a chance."
Her hand is too tight on his, and her laugh is a little forced. He scared her, he knows. He scared the hell out of her.
Their lips meet, briefly, and he pulls back, reaches for another mug.
Hour or two later, he wakes up on the couch, JJ's weight heavy on him. She's draped over his chest, and he sees her outlined: the orange light from the lamp by the couch, the blue light of dawn. He strains, reaches, and flicks the light off. Closes his eyes again.
Doesn't dream.
Network:
Hello?
[ -- comes the voice and face of someone rather more accustomed to telephones than … whatever this is.
When he continues on, the slow, Southern drawl in his voice, a native New Orleans accent, is unmistakeable. ]
My name is… William LaMontagne, Jr. I'm a detective, [ and here he briefly flashes the badge, because that can go a long way towards gaining trust, getting information -- and also because he's honest, and not inclined to hide ] with the Metropolitan Police Department, in Washington, DC.
If that's familiar to anyone [ because he's not assuming a damn thing ] then please tell me. I'd like to know.
[ Looking for anything familiar, in this. ]
General tutorial on the land between life and death was great, but I'm havin' a little trouble… believing it, that's all.
Name: Mara
Age: 23
Contact:
Game Cast: None.
Character Information:
Name: Detective William LaMontagne, Jr.
Canon: Criminal MInds
Canon Point: after 7.23-24 "Hit" and "Run"
Age: early 30s
Reference: http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/William_LaMontagne_Jr
Setting: Earth, as we know it. The show centers on the Behavioral Analysis Unit, a group within the FBI that specializes in profiling and catching serial killers. There are seven of them at any given time, and they go to a new locale/profile and catch a new killer each episode.
While this is a little Hollywood-ized from reality, it is very well-researched and based on an actual FBI unit, members of which have been known to consult for the show; generally, they only take real liberties when it comes to time (serial killer investigations can take weeks or months, but on Criminal Minds they generally take days) and drama (real profilers would generally leave arrests and direct investigation to the local police departments, detectives and crime scene analysts, but in this show the main characters do pretty much everything).
On Will's part, specifically, there also tends to e a fair amount of unrealistic coincidence that brings him into the path of the BAU in order to involve him in specific episodes. Like, his dad investigated one serial killer in New Orleans, then his partner died by one during travel in Miami. Another partner is killed during a surprise shootout at a bank in DC that requires the BAU to be called in. Yeah, he's lived an exciting life. For the purposes of role-play, I'll be playing this as an actual unusual thing, not like Will is from a completely Hollywood world: losing two partners, killing a bank robber by gunshot and having a father who was key on a serial murder are all things that have had a significant impact on him, and they are not normal. They are possible, though. In real life, though, sometimes weird-ass coincidences happen to the strangest people. (I worked for the Dallas Police Department for a while, and dude, I have stories.)
Will himself comes from New Orleans, having grown up in a cop family there. He later moves to Virginia to be with JJ.
Personality: Outwardly, with his quiet drawl, his withdrawn posture, and his weirdly tender kind of honesty, Will isn't quite a typical anything. Not a typical guy, or police officer, or Southerner. He knows the value of silence, and doesn't fill the air with too many words, but he's not exactly the strong and silent type. He's upfront about his feelings, but not obvious about them. Polite, and sweet, but steely when the occasion presents itself. He's his father's son, but he's not his father.
Pretty important to understand Will's father in order to understand Will. Detective William LaMontagne, Sr., fondly referred to by Will as 'my Daddy', actually was the strong and silent type. He's the stern-but-kind-father-figure cop of a generation ago, the guy with a strict moral compass and a hell of a lot of pride in his own profession. Who could cuff and jail a scumbag, tough as nails, and a second later give a victim the exact respect and empathy they need. He loved his oldest (and only) son, raised him in a house with two dogs and a drum set in order to be as good of a man as Will Sr. was. And he succeeded: Will grew up with a moral compass as ingrained as his Daddy's, and in time became a police officer too, and then a detective in his own right (probably one of the proudest moments of Will Sr.'s life). What Will wanted was to make his Daddy proud, and given the simple, content confidence that Will greeted the rest of his life with, there's no doubt in Will's mind that he succeeded.
The turning point of Will's life comes with a turning point in the state of all of New Orleans. In the heights of Hurricane Katrina, Will's father made a discovery in a serial murder case that had him refuse to leave his own house. Disaster hit; a tree branch came in through the window and opened the house to the heights of the storm. Will Sr. died, but not before carving a name on the wall of the house: Jones. After the storm, even preoccupied in rebuilding the city, Will works tirelessly to follow the trail his father left behind and find the killer. He channels the weight of his grief into this mystery, believing that if he solves it, then he'll feel as though his father's life had some closure to it. That Will himself could have some closure. To this end, he calls in the FBI behavioral analysis unit, and works with them on pinning down the killer. Turns out it was a woman who had been raped at a bar named Jones eight years ago, who now targeted men as a kind of desperate retaliation for what happened to her.
This series of events is important for three reasons. One: Will's father is dead, and this leads him to step up and become the man he always could be. He discovers in himself the same strength and intelligence that drove his father, and realizes his full potential as a detective. Two, he meets Jennifer Jareau, special agent of the FBI and his future wife. We'll get into that later.
And three, the situation he finds himself in showcases a perfect example of Will's almost endless empathy, patience and kindness. When he discovers that the woman had specifically singled out his father not as the investigating detective of the murders but as the officer who helped through the immediate aftermath of her rape years ago, he moves to more literally take up his father's mantle. They discover her with her latest victim tied up, a knife in her hand. You trusted my Daddy, he says. Do you trust me? -- and he puts his gun away, steps closer, takes the knife from her hand, and lifts her away from the tied-up man. He lets her hold him while she cries, desperate and hurt. He can find sympathy even someone who's killed so many people, who left a trail of brutal murders across the French Quarter.
You see, Will isn't his father. He's his father: the next generation, more sensitive, more empathetic, and more open about himself and his feelings. Without the worries of typical masculinity. After the killer is arrested, he confides in JJ: he thought that solving this case would make everything better, but now all he feels is lost. Will isn't bound by pride. He can admit that, to himself and to another. He's not as sexist as his father probably was; though he reacts with immediate surprise to JJ's physical appearance, he doesn't let it temper his respect of her and her abilities in any way. He just later finds time to quietly flirt with her. He's tolerant of more than that, too. When his partner is killed by a serial murderer in Miami, years later, and he finds out after the fact that his partner was gay, he expresses disbelief -- that his partner felt he couldn't tell Will about it. "I can't think of anything I would have cared about less," Will told JJ. "He was my friend. I loved him. I just wanted him to be happy."
Now, having covered how Will is both a product of his father and different from his father, I'd like to go on to talk about his further appearances in the show. He's only in nine episodes over the course of six seasons, so we kind of get dropped in on his life in weird, random moments, but we get a pretty good cross-section of how he behaves.
Boyfriend/Husband/Father: For these six years, Will dates JJ. He treats her with patience, absolute devotion, and sacrifice; he stays with her, giving up his job in New Orleans to take a job as a cop in DC to live with her. He proposes multiple times, and she refuses. He loves her without reservation, though it takes JJ more time to return his love. Will puts family first and foremost, partially because of his regard for his father, partially because he just has a tendency to form a few close, deep connections that trump everyone in his life. This isn't to say that he's a complete saint; he can and will get unhappy with circumstances, especially when he feels he isn't being respected himself. When JJ refuses to tell her coworkers and friends about him, he pursues it, pushing her to find out if she's ashamed of him, if there's someone else, what's happening with how she feels. When JJ's job takes up all of her time, leaving him to raise their child alone, he pushes for her to take a job at the Pentagon with set hours and weekends free so she can be with him and with Henry. He proposes marriage to her multiple times, and she turns him down every time, shying away from that final commitment even though she loves him, even though they have a child together, and he's not happy about that either. But he loves her, and he loves Henry, so damn much that he'll put up with all of it so he can be theirs.
Police Officer: He's brave as all fuck. His moral compass is rooted in that same idea of family: when he goes to save someone's life, he does it because they're someone's son, someone's wife, someone's father or friend or lover. He will walk straight into the line of fire to save a person's life. And he does: in the finale of seventh season, he shoots and kills a bank robber, precipitating a hostage situation, and when the hostage-takers demand that Will be sent in to be the one to speak with them, or they'll kill a new hostage every sixty seconds, he goes. He goes, even though the BAU tells him not to, even though JJ screams for him as he walks in the door. And even though he's immediately shot once he enters the room, he draws on some serious god damn willpower and generates an opening for the hostages to escape while bleeding from a shoulder/chest wound and dooming himself to being captured and taken away from the crime scene.
The Hostage: Will isn't an action hero. He doesn't take out the two robbers who take him hostage and save the day. They hold him at gunpoint, use him to pick up and take hostage his son. He struggles with the decisions he has to make: it wrenches at him to leave his son with a murderer. He hates himself for letting them take and then kill a medic just so that his gunshot wound could be patched up. He even finds it morally revolting when one robber shoots another and forces Will to leave the man bleeding out on the sidewalk. And yet, he persists, behaves enough to keep his family safe, bides his time, waits until he has an opening. He only fights when he's truly backed into a corner, when the robbers are about to set a bomb in a train station -- and then he's easily defeated, wounded as he is, considering his opponent is an ex-Marine. He doesn't defuse the bomb that ends up strapped to him, either. That's one of the BAU. And yet -- he goes into the whole damn thing knowing he probably won't come out alive, knowing that JJ will have her heart broken if he dies, but knowing that he had to do everything in his power to stop them from killing the hostages at the bank. He steps into it with clarity of purpose, even though he hates what this might do to his then-girlfriend.
Then-girlfriend, I say, because at the end of this, when he comes back alive and weakened, JJ realizes just how much she absolutely cannot live without him. "Ask me," she tells him; "Ask me again." And when he, stunned, asks her, "Jennifer Jareau, will you marry me?" -- then she says yes. "About damn time," he says, but he holds her close. Cause right then the worst day of his life became the best day of his life, and holy crap emotional whiplash.
The Victim: It's worth it to note, though this isn't a basic building block of Will's personality, that he's suffering a lot of trauma for the events of 7.23 and 7.24, including the hostage situation, the death of his partner, and the deaths of the robber, a medic, and two hostages that he feels are on his conscience. He blames himself, but he's working on not blaming himself. He's pretty sure that if anyone he knew was in that situation, he'd think they did the best that they could, and so he makes a sincere effort to be as fair on him as he would be on them. Doesn't mean he's not going through a lot of emotional repercussions.
So that's Will. He's a good guy.
Appearance:
Slim, almost diminutive, dark-haired, wiry. He's got weird droopy eyelids and his eyes are a little sunken, but besides that he is completely adorable. In canon, he's described as "something nice to look at" by Emily Prentiss. Additionally, in his first episode while he was working on a case with JJ in a bar, a girl sent him over a drink, and his amused non-reaction to this would lead one to believe it's something that happens often. So that 'completely adorable' thing is totally canon fact.
Abilities:
Will is a detective from the New Orleans police department. As such, he's got some training in physical combat, guns, general law enforcement, investigation. He's got a good short-term memory, and he's street-smart and educated to college-level. He has no supernatural powers of any kind.
Inventory:
Wallet, police badge, cellphone. Beyond that, just what he's wearing.
Suite:
In the Earth sector, which I feel would match well with Will's moral certainty and quiet kind of strength. Will would probably ask for a smaller place, cause he'd have no idea what to do with a bigger one.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
"We don't need you to identify the body," says the morgue attendant, "we know who she is," and around them the silver-white hallways of the morgue slip away. Doors pass, and Will wants to check them, search them all for the cold, white body of his partner, to brush back the hair from the wound in her forehead and say goodbye. But the hallways deposit him out in the burning bright sun, the heat, and she's ahead of him, in the police car.
A surge of relief, as he steps up and slides into the passenger seat. "I thought you were dead," he says, with a smile, like, hey, isn't that ridiculous?
She turns to him, and her hair is wrong, he realizes, a gun in her hand. "Drive, Dick," she says, and Will's head turns, twists; he flounders and comes awake at the scrape of a sheet against his palm. He thinks he sees, for a second, the sight of a man instead, lying back on a morgue table while JJ stands beside him, but he blinks the sleep away from his eyes and comes awake all the way, blinking his eyes open in the pale dark. 3:24 AM.
The dreams don't fade away. These ones linger, like a cobweb you can feel brushing across your skin but can't manage to get off of you.
He looks over to JJ, asleep, facing away from him. They fell asleep pressed against one another, and some time during the night, he turned away from her. He hadn't made a sound while he was dreaming; if he had, she'd be awake, already stroking her fingers through his hair.
Carefully, he lifts himself out of the bed, settling the blanket down over JJ's shoulders.
Downstairs, puts the kettle on and slides down into a seat at the table. His fingers interlace over the back of his neck, elbows on the table. The dreams don't really count as nightmares, he thinks. Sure, there's fear, and there's grief and there's memories that rearrange themselves into a terrifying semblance of reality, but they don't wake him up in a cold sweat. Don't make him shake and shiver. They don't make him hate to face the night nearly as much as he hates to face the day.
He worries: about not being enough for JJ, for Henry. About the fact he's a newcomer to the District police force and he's got two dead partners in his past. About the gunshot wound that's only just started to heal. About bills, and going to the grocery store, and the department-mandated therapy that has him facing his own feelings before he knows what they are.
The kettle whistles.
He darts for it, wincing as it knocks the chair noisily against the table leg. Lifts it off of the stand, and pours it into the hot chocolate mix, three quarters of the way. Reaches for the bottle of rum they keep in the cabinet beside the fridge.
"Will?"
He glances up, his eyes resting on JJ. She's an angel, in the doorway. Eyes bleary with sleep, in a loose t-shirt and a soft pair of pajama pants.
"Didn't mean to wake you," he says. Tops off the mug with a little rum, and digs for a spoon to stir it in.
"It's all right," she says. "Dreams?" And she steps forward, slipping into his arms. Her body presses against his, and he sighs out a long breath, tension easing from him that he hadn't been aware he was carrying.
"Dreams," he confirms.
She doesn't say anything like it'll get better or it's okay or I'm here, because he knows all of that. No trite words of comfort. Just her fingers, stroking through the hair at the back of his neck. Yeah, it'll get better. And yeah, things are okay, even though they so easily could have been not.
Her other hand slides into his, and he brushes his thumb over her ring finger. The little circle of metal makes him smile, again.
"You want to make me one of those?" she asks, with a nod at the hot chocolate.
"You might have to let me go, first," he murmurs, brushing his lips across hers.
"Not a chance."
Her hand is too tight on his, and her laugh is a little forced. He scared her, he knows. He scared the hell out of her.
Their lips meet, briefly, and he pulls back, reaches for another mug.
Hour or two later, he wakes up on the couch, JJ's weight heavy on him. She's draped over his chest, and he sees her outlined: the orange light from the lamp by the couch, the blue light of dawn. He strains, reaches, and flicks the light off. Closes his eyes again.
Doesn't dream.
Network:
Hello?
[ -- comes the voice and face of someone rather more accustomed to telephones than … whatever this is.
When he continues on, the slow, Southern drawl in his voice, a native New Orleans accent, is unmistakeable. ]
My name is… William LaMontagne, Jr. I'm a detective, [ and here he briefly flashes the badge, because that can go a long way towards gaining trust, getting information -- and also because he's honest, and not inclined to hide ] with the Metropolitan Police Department, in Washington, DC.
If that's familiar to anyone [ because he's not assuming a damn thing ] then please tell me. I'd like to know.
[ Looking for anything familiar, in this. ]
General tutorial on the land between life and death was great, but I'm havin' a little trouble… believing it, that's all.
