aidan (tryst's version)

Welcome to my masterlist! Here, you will find all my fanfics <3 i write abt whatever character(s) im currently obsessed w :3

18+ LITERALLY MINORS DNI YOU WILL BE BLOCKED!!!

My AO3

Right Now, You're Feeling Helpless (SMUT) (Hoffman, Reader) (SAW)

pt. 1 (REWRITTEN)

pt. 2

Pt. 3(FINAL PART)

Complete Collapse (SMUT) (Kenny Lacos, reader) (PICKET FENCES)

What It Is (SMUT) (Hoffman, reader) (SAW)

The Drug In Me Is You (SMUT) (Mark Hoffman/Peter Strahm x reader) (SAW)

Somewhere In Neverland (SMUT) (Hoffman, reader) (SAW)

A Match Into Water (SMUT) (Hoffman, reader) (SAW)

Strawberry Sunscreen (SMUT) (Chase Harper, reader) (PRIMAL DOUBT)

Greatest Almost (SMUT) (Paul Blankenship, reader) (FALLING FOR YOU)

Make Me Disappear (SMUT) (Erik Campbell, reader) (FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES)

Alive In The Lights (SMUT) (Tryst, reader) (FAKES)

Look What You Made Me Do (SMUT) (Vern, reader) (LOWLIFES)

I luv that u hate me (SMUT) (Bobby Nash, reader) (911)

Morte et Dabo (Horror/Slasher/True crime/Suspense) (Esteban Ramírez, Muriel, original characters) (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody)

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

-chapter 5-

Content: possible murder charges against esteban

Word count: 1k

They found Maddox Cane’s phone. Not his body, which was already long gone in a pool of acid. Not his blood, which Esteban had spent hours ensuring was down the drain, not a trace of it left over. Just the phone, wedged beneath the dresser in Suite 902, screen cracked down the middle like a spiderweb.

Esteban looks at it through the clear evidence bag and feels, for one second, nothing at all.

Then Detective Alvarez says, “We recovered a deleted video.” She opens a laptop, hits a key, and turns it around to face Esteban. 

Esteban blinks as his own voice fills the room.

“Good evening. This is Esteban Julio Ricardo Montoya de la Rosa Ramírez, general manager of the world-famous Tipton Hotel…”

Detective Alvarez watches him as he stares at the screen, his own face staring back at him.

Esteban does not move. Not when his recorded self says Maddox was warned, or when the camera pans to Maddox curled up on the carpet, or when the video ends with Esteban smiling softly and saying, “Stay tuned.”

But the video doesn’t show the bathtub, the knife, the blood. It doesn’t show Esteban dragging him to the bathroom or shoving him into a storage tote right after. It only shows Esteban recording a man who was clearly uncomfortable being recorded, giving him a taste of his own medicine before seeking vengeance for Jasmine.

When it is over, the detective closes the laptop, and for a moment, no one speaks.

Then she asks, “Care to explain that?”

“He broke into a closed room,” Esteban says. “He was filming my hotel, my staff, my guests, without permission. He was harassing people in my hotel. I wanted to scare him.”

“You wanted to scare him.”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

“He left.”

“Funny,” Alvarez says. “No camera shows that.”

Esteban smiles politely. “The cameras here have always been temperamental.”

“Mr. Ramírez,” Alvarez says with a firm voice, “you were the last person to see Maddox Cane alive. As of right now, you are our primary suspect in his disappearance.” 

Primary suspect. The words should scare him more than they do. He thinks about the phone, the video, his own face on Maddox’s screen, smiling like he forgets that evidence can always exist outside of his control. 

“What evidence do you have besides a video on a phone?”

Alvarez stares. “That video, showing you alone in Suite 902 with a very scared Mr. Cane, you telling him that he was warned, the disappearance of Maddox Cane, all gives us enough for a search warrant.” 

For eighteen years, Esteban cleaned rooms, scrubbed blood from tiles, wiped names from logs, and turned cruel men into early checkouts. But Maddox Cane had done what nobody else had; he brought an entire audience into Suite 902. Esteban seems calm on the outside, but inside, his heart is thumping hard against the knife he keeps in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The knife that is fully cleaned and sanitized after every use, but still the knife regardless. 

Detective Alvarez watches his reaction, which is nothing more than a raised eyebrow. “You don’t seem surprised.”

Esteban folds his hands in front of him. “I manage a famous hotel, detective,” he says. “People make accusations. Have you seen the comments?”

“People don’t usually disappear after being recorded, alone, in a closed suite.”

“No,” Esteban says softly. “I suppose they don’t.”

Alvarez steps closer.

“You said he left.”

“I did.”

“Then where did he go?”

Esteban shakes his head. “I wish I knew.”

By sunset, Detective Alvarez leaves the Tipton with Maddox Cane’s phone, three hours of useless security footage, and one deleted video of Esteban Ramírez smiling into a dead man’s camera. It’s not enough to arrest him, not yet anyways. Across the lobby, Esteban watches the gold doors close behind her.

For the next three days, the Tipton remains the most watched building in Boston.

Reporters linger across the street with cameras pointed at the gold doors. True crime TikTokers film themselves whispering outside the lobby like the hotel is a graveyard instead of a business. BookTok girlies hover in the lobby with their phones out, hoping to catch glimpses of Esteban. Some guests cancel reservations, other guests book rooms specifically because they want to sleep somewhere a man disappeared.

By the fourth morning, Detective Alvarez enters the Tipton once more. Not to arrest him, but to inform him that, for the time being, he is no longer their primary suspect. Esteban stands in his office with his arms folded in front of him, staring out the window at the St. Mark Hotel across the street, and then back at Alvarez.

“I see,” he says.

Alvarez does not sound pleased. “A witness confirmed your whereabouts during the time frame we believe Mr. Cane disappeared.”

Esteban does not need to ask who the witness is… He already knows. 

The next morning when Esteban arrives, Muriel is waiting in his office when he returns.

Of course she is.

She sits in the chair across from his desk with one leg crossed over the other, a coffee in her hand and a cigarette tucked behind her ear. Esteban closes the door behind him.

“Why did you do that?”

Muriel takes a sip of coffee. “Good morning to you too.”

“You told Detective Alvarez I was with you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I wasn’t with you.”

“No,” Muriel says. “You were busy being stupid. A celebrity, Esteban? Really?”

“Then why?”

For a moment, the room is quiet except for the low rumble of the air conditioning and the distant piano drifting in from the lobby. Muriel’s face softens, just barely.

“Because I found your cousin,” she says.

Esteban just stares at Muriel.

Muriel looks down at her coffee. “I found Isabela. I saw what that did to you. And I’ve watched you spend eighteen years trying to make sure it never happens to another girl in this place.”

Esteban looks away first. In lying to the police to cover for him, Muriel is now an accomplice. Just simply knowing about it is one thing, but this was an entirely different thing. 

“You should not have lied for me,” Esteban says.

Muriel takes a sip of coffee. “Probably not.”

“You understand what this makes you,” he says quietly.

Muriel snorts. “Old?”

“Complicit.”

Fuck off scammer

-chapter 4-

Content: disposal of a dead body.

Word count: 1.2k words

~~~~~~~~

By morning, three million people have watched Maddox Cane enter Suite 902, but no one has watched him leave.

The video is shaky, badly lit, and exactly the kind of thing the internet loves: a famous true crime TikToker whispering into his phone outside a forbidden hotel room, grin wide, eyes bright with the kind of arrogance that only exists in men who have never been truly afraid.

“Stay tuned,” he says.

Then the video ends.

By noon, the comments have become their own crime scene.

where’s the update???

this is fake right?

bro has not posted in 14 hours

did the tipton get him lmao

no but seriously has anyone checked on him?

By three o’clock, there are cameras outside the Tipton. Not security cameras, those have always been there. News cameras, phones, tripods. People pressing themselves against the velvet ropes outside the lobby, filming the gold doors as if the hotel itself might confess.

Esteban Ramírez stands behind the front desk in a black suit and speaks to the police with the patience of a man explaining the weather.

“Mr. Cane checked in yesterday afternoon,” he says. “He was warned several times about filming guests, harassing staff, and entering restricted areas. To our knowledge, he left the property sometime during the night.”

The detective glances up. “To your knowledge?”

Esteban smiles politely.

“We are a hotel, detective. Guests value discretion.”

Jasmine tells the police exactly what happened. Maddox stole a candy bar, Maddox flirted with her after she told him her age, Maddox shoved a phone in her face, Maddox was warned.

She does not tell them about Esteban driving her home or tell them about the way he said Maddox would not be a problem. Not because she is afraid of Esteban. But because, for the first time since Maddox walked into the lobby, she is not afraid of anything at all.

Muriel arrives at four with a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“You are getting sloppy,” she says.

Esteban does not look up from the incident report. “Good afternoon, Muriel.”

“Don’t good afternoon me. There are children outside making dances about a missing corpse.”

“There is no corpse. Not one that anybody has found, anyways.”

The night before, Esteban had been up until almost 5am cleaning up the bathtub and taking care of Maddox. He lugged Maddox’s body into a large plastic tote, dragged him down to the basement, and begun the process of dissolving his body in hydrochloric acid. After that, Esteban brought up a bottle of bleach, some rags, and a bottle of luminol and spent the remaining three hours cleaning every bit of trace evidence that Maddox Cane was stabbed to death in the bathtub. Esteban could barely keep his eyes open by the time he was done, so he slept in his office. 

Muriel sighs and take a drag from her cigarette. 

“I just hope you know what you’re doing.” 

At 11:59 p.m., Maddox Cane posts again, and the internet loses its mind in twelve seconds.

The video is not from Suite 902.

It is from earlier the previous day, filmed in the lobby, his face too close to the camera, voice lowered for drama.

“If I disappear,” Maddox says, grinning, “start with the manager.” He subtly points the camera to Esteban for two seconds before ending the video.  In his office, Esteban watches it once, then again.

Then, he decides to take a gander into the comment section. 

@ ghostgirlie92: wait why did he schedule this???

@ bostoncryptidwatch: He hasn’t posted since last night. This isn’t funny anymore.

@ room902truth: “If I disappear, start with the manager” BRO???

@ hauntedhotelsdaily: Did anyone else see the manager when he panned the camera???

@ estebansdefenseteam: okay but the manager is kinda 👀

@ missingmaddoxupdates: A MAN IS MISSING.

@ estebansdefenseteam: I can hold space for both truths.

@ truecrimewithtara: That manager looked way too calm.

@ booktokbanshee: I know this is serious but black suit + haunted hotel + possible body count is giving dark romance MMC and I fear I am seated.

@ ethicscommittee: PLEASE stop thirsting over a person of interest.

@ booktokbanshee: I said he was hot, not innocent.

@ do_not_disturb_902: He was warned.

That last comment really catches Esteban’s attention. He is not the one who wrote it. Muriel isn’t on TikTok, and Jasmine is too smart to leave a trail. Somebody knows. But who, though? 

Esteban had answered all the detective’s questions calmly, the cops and most of the paparazzi have been long gone for a while. He locks his phone and slips it inside his trousers pocket, sighing deeply. Today was a day. He is so ready to go home, pour himself a scotch, and pass the fuck out.

And he does exactly that. For the first time, Esteban regrets committing a murder. Not because Maddox Cane deserved mercy, but because he had an audience. And now that audience has turned their attention to the Tipton, to Esteban Ramírez. 

Once inside his house, he sits alone in the dark with a glass in one hand, eighteen years of regret breathing down his neck. 

He should have asked her if she was alright. He should have asked her if she was safe. He should have protected her better. 

And why did he have to murder a famous person? He should have just banned Maddox from the hotel for life and called it good. The scotch burns his throat. Why the hell couldn’t he protect Jasmine without turning Maddox Cane into a headline? 

He sleeps restlessly that night, tossing and turning and when he wakes up, it feels like he didn’t sleep a wink. But today is his day off. Good. He needs a day away from all the chaos. The Tipton will survive a day without him. 

The Tipton does not survive the day without him, not even trying to make it to noon. Esteban wakes to his phone vibrating against the nightstand, dragging itself slowly toward the edge with each angry buzz. For a moment, he considers letting it fall. Let it crack. Let the whole goddamn world crack with it. But then he sees Muriel’s name on the screen.

He answers. “What?”

“Good morning to you too,” Muriel says.

“It is my day off.”

“Yeah, well, the internet didn’t get the memo.”

Esteban sits up. The room is too bright. His head aches behind his eyes, scotch and sleeplessness pounding away at his skull.

“What happened?”

“You’re trending.”

His grip tightens around the phone.

Muriel sighs on the other end. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know what trending means exactly. Jasmine told me. She looked scared when she said it, so I figured it was bad.”

Esteban throws the blankets off.

“What are they saying?”

“That you killed him.”

Silence settles between them.

Then Muriel adds, “Also that you’re hot.”

Esteban closes his eyes. “Muriel.”

“What? I’m retired, not blind.”

By the time Esteban opens TikTok, there are already edits.

His face, pulled from Maddox’s scheduled video, slowed down beneath distorted music. His black suit, his stillness, his calmness, the brief turn of his head when Maddox pans the camera toward him.

The caption on the most popular one reads: the manager knows something.

Two million views and counting. Esteban watches it once. Then again. Not because he is vain, but because for the first time in eighteen years, someone has captured the monster in good lighting.

At 11:06 a.m., Detective Alvarez calls.

At 11:07, Esteban lets it ring.

At 11:08, she calls again.

This time, he answers.

“Mr. Ramírez,” she says. “I need you to come back to the hotel.”

“It is my day off.”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m aware.”

There is a pause, and then she says, “We found something.”