Grabbed and a little Ashamed

Head resting on his shoulder, your hands playing with his hair, you almost didn't want to move your hips. You were perfectly comfortable with him nestled inside you, feeling the closeness of the man without the threat of violence. You'd learnt not to try and take off his mask, even when he was a little more gentle with you, though it didn't stop your lips from dragging over his neck. He tilted his head in response. It gave you better access to him and the both of you knew you couldn't mention the fact that he liked the way your kisses felt.

He grew impatient, giving a little buck of his hips, shifting position slightly to better thrust into you. Al was certainly trying to figure out whether you were just taking your time with him or if you weren't going to participate at all, but the movement spurred you on. His cock dragged over that sweet spot inside you that made you whimper into the crook of his neck. Al didn't offer any sweet words to you. He never did. But his hands ran over your back gently, his nails scraping lightly over skin making you shudder happily.

You offered a roll of your hips before deciding you needed to feel him moving properly. It was a little pathetic, him watching how you tried to bounce yourself in his lap, barely able to get a rhythm going. Whimpering noises that escaped you made you even more embarrassed - especially since the asshole you were riding made very little attempt to help out. He just watched you with those strange blue eyes of his.

"Al~" you gripped him a little tighter, your nails digging into that horrid sweater of his. He never undressed properly. Not when you wanted him to. Maybe he felt too vulnerable if he did. "Help... come on" you begged him. He scoffed behind his grinning mask, but the little twinkle in his eye told you he was bemused by your attempt at getting him to play nice. You struggled into a better position with your knees either side of him on the mattress. The effort put in made sweat bead along your forehead as you bounced on his cock.

The Grabber groaned, his head tipping back to rest against the wall behind him.

It was exciting to undo that barely contained emotional control he had. It wasn't like you had to work hard, really, to make him more vocal, and yet you were drunk off his noises already. Al sounded so very pretty as he helped move you, his hips thrusting up into you more as he got a little more worked up. His groans were a deep rumble at first - crawling out of his throat and snaking through your body. You could feel it all the way down to your stomach where it met his cock buried deep inside you. Pressing your chest against his, you could feel it more. That vibration rippling through you.

The faster the both of you moved, the harder he fucked up into you, the less controlled either of your sounds were. His moans went up a pitch and you got louder, begging him for all sorts of perverse things that just made him ache for more.

You told him pretty lies.

Told him that you loved him. That you'd never leave him. You threw your arms around his neck and begged him to fuck you harder. Of course he obliged, why wouldn't he. You were his pretty little toy and you were promising that you'd be good for him forever. He wouldn't have to bother with finding anyone else (although he would eventually, the desire to hunt was already creeping through him).

He planted his feet and fucked up into you hard. A quick glance down showed you more than you could handle - the sight of his length bulging out in your small stomach, forcing its way through you. It pulled another sobbing, muffled moan from you. You didn't think there was much more you could handle, but Al knew better. He always did.

He wrapped a large hand around your sensitive cock, stroking slow, his pace mismatched against the brutal slamming of his own cock inside you. Al's thumb teased your tip, working gently over the slit at the top, toying with you as if he wasn't already doing far too much. You begged him to stop. You weren't sure you meant it, but it only spurred him on. He adored it when you looked so pathetic for him, but that little sparkle in his eyes came back when you pleaded with him to let you go. His grip on you tightened when you struggled to pull away, your cock twitching as you came. Al's relentless pace, fucking against the spot inside you that made you see stars, didn't slow - not when this was his favorite part.

You were overstimulated and sobbing for him. Crossing over from pleasure to pain where he could finally allow himself to enjoy you properly. The soundproofed basement aided Al to no end, the man letting you cry out all you like as he continued to abuse your poor ass.

"Scream all you like--" he grunted, focused entirely on not finishing yet, "-- no one can hear you, I soundproofed it myself."

The reminder didn't stop you from begging him to slow down before you came again. You'd made a mess all over his hand and his stupid sweater - no doubt earning you a punishment later.

Just as the Black Phone doesn't visually include the sexual assault of the Grabber's victims and allows us to put two and two together as an audience, it is almost impossible to miss that Albert Shaw/The Grabber has come from an abusive home. The characteristics of his Naughty Boy routine is reminiscent of his own childhood.

Regarding the dynamics between siblings, we saw from the Black Phone, Gwen takes on the protector between her and Finney. When he's being attacked, she jumps in to help him, but when she is being beaten by their father, he doesn't insert himself into the situation. Gwen reacts to situations with action while Finney is typically prone to shutting down.

Al and Max, in my view, have a similar dynamic, except this time Albert is the aggressor. The emotional outbursts and quick changes in his temperament as an adult could be drawn from growing up in an angry, violent home where he was forced to insert himself into problems between his parent/s and Max. That urge to release his anger physically out on his victims later in life coming from lack of emotional regulation and solving his own problems with violence.

Grabber existing or not in this situation, abuse is isolating. We already know that Finney's only real friends include Robin and his sister in the first movie, and then once Robin is gone, he's not left with anyone but Gwen - as seen in number 2.

But we have a fight and a fawn dynamic here. Just like Robin, Finney needs someone who can pull him out of shutting down. Al on the other hand needs someone to balance out the emotional extremes. Someone his own age who can understand what he's going through because of his home life.

Do I think it would have solved all their issues? Not really, no.

I think that it could've changed some things.

Let's say the Grabber as an entity on its own existed and Finney was still taken, he would have had someone who understood ongoing abuse a lot better than Gwen. Another teenage boy who is at the mercy of another man and is pretty helpless to stop it.

Based off my own mental health, as someone who is prone to aggression responses over anything else immediately, I think it could genuinely help Albert to see someone else falling down that path. There's nothing more sobering to see someone else behave the way you do. It's also easier to aid someone else than it is to do things for yourself.

If the Grabber didn't exist in this funky little AU, we could assume that Finney's father kept drinking and Finney would grow up with a slightly varied trauma response.

Ultimately, I think that the world failed both of them. Knowing that extreme abuse can destroy someone's sense of self so deeply that they turn into something like The Grabber is genuinely distressing. I don't think he was born that way. Environment plays a hell of a big part on how someone turns out. Despite a lot of what I think about Al being headcanons, I am fairly well versed in abnormal psychology and developmental psychology.

I also want to write something about this so bad but I'm not sure whether to go on a:

The Grabber doesn't exist and Finney + little Al get to navigate the world in a new plot

or

"He's been nicknamed The Grabber by local kids, and the press is running with it" JJ sighed, planting herself in one of the seats at the table, adding a file to the already growing stacks.

"They see him as the town's boogeyman, maybe it'll keep kids from wandering around by themselves" Morgan folded his arms over his chest, the details of The Grabber case making him fight the urge to pace in the already too small room.

"We should go over what we have so far" Hotch stepped up by the whiteboard, his eyes flicking from each of the missing boys. They hadn't been able to find bodies, and with the sheer lack of cctv throughout the town, there wasn't much to go on aside from retracing the steps of where they assumed the children were last seen.

"In stranger child abductions, the majority of victims are female—roughly two-thirds—but male victims are significantly more common when the offender is a sexually or power-motivated male predator targeting adolescent boys" Reid kicked off the presentation, the resounding understanding between them that the children taken were likely objects of their unsub's sexual desire shuddering between them. "Most child abduction offenders select based on vulnerability or opportunity. A consistent gender preference suggests the victims represent something psychologically significant to him."

"The victims are all adolescents who are unlikely to be able to overpower a relatively larger adult male. We can likely assume that the unsub has the ability to physically take on his victims," Prentiss started, "but it's not easy for a grown man to look approachable to a young boy. I mean you'd have to lure them in to get close enough to physically take them to a second location."

"These kids don't seem likely to follow this man to a second location..." Rossi murmured.

"What about this one?" Morgan interjected, plucking the oldest of the victims off the board. "What's his name, again?"

"Vance Hopper. The oldest of the missing boys as far as we know." Reid replied. Morgan shook his head, thinking for a moment.

"Nah, nah this one... this one isn't like the other boys. See these ones could be stopped in the streets on their way from point A to point B. They're young enough that they probably still have the empathy to help someone out if they asked for it. He doesn't" The others paused as they looked over the paperwork in front of them.

"He might be an outlier"

"He might've known the unsub before he went missing" Morgan pointed out.

"True as that might be, we've questioned the parents and they had no idea who their son was hanging out with. What we do know is that the unsub needs a vehicle to transport his victim to a secondary location and privacy to keep each of them to himself." Hotch took a seat as he picked up one of the pieces of paper he'd collected information on. "Based on the timeline between each missing children report we can assume the unsub has a routine. He's an organised psychopath with average to above average intelligence who follows his victims for some time before approaching them. He probably knows them decently well before he gets to talk to them face to face--"

"-- He likely wouldn't approach them more than once. He'd plan out the perfect moment to take them and follow through" Rossi continued the profile, "That way none of the victims could tell anyone about any strangers approaching them."

"To acquaintances, he might seem withdrawn, quiet, and eccentric. He's socially awkward and a little childish himself. He's taking a certain range of boys for a reason and while that may very well be complete sexual interest of this specific range..." Morgan paced the room finally, letting himself run through more of the profile. "There's a common theme amongst the children that have been going missing. They're more isolated than others around the town. People know of them, but there were multiple times in a day where they would be seen walking around alone. There's a power dynamic he's invested in recreating."

"The Grabber himself was a victim?" Prentiss asked.

"Approximately one-third of abused children go on to repeat patterns of abuse. But, the difference isn't whether they were hurt. It's whether they learned that hurt was something to heal from—or something to inflict" Reid replied. "Without the bodies, if the children are in fact being killed as well as simply taken, there's really no way of knowing how aggressive the unsub is being with them. We can really only assume there's a continuance of abuse..."

"We need to isolate how he's taking these boys. We know that he's hunting inside his comfort zone. He isn't travelling hours to take these kids to the second location. Either he lives in the town or he's studied it enough to get around without anyone being alerted to his presence," Hotch drew them back to the unsub himself. There were only so many things they could assume off the missing children when there were no bodies to look over.

"The unsub has taken each of his victims at varying hours of the day - he must have a flexible work schedule... maybe he's self employed?" Prentiss offered.

"Garcia, let's look into white males, 35-50 years old, who live in the town and are either self-employed or work flexible hours--"

"That's a lot of names, my friend" Garcia replied from over the phone where she'd been listening in to the conversation. "BUT! I've been able to cross reference where the boys were last seen and all of them disappeared within a three-mile radius"

"Then our unsub probably lives or works inside that radius..." Reid sat up a little more.

"Garcia, narrow down the search with occupations that might involve children" Rossi hummed, his hand moving over his mouth.

"Involve children?"

"Maybe someone who would do in-house work where they would see the kids, a shop that might target a child's interest, an entertainment service that--"

"I have something for you and it goes very nicely with the balloons we found at the scenes... local magician for hire. A Mister Albert Shaw is self employed as a part time magician."

The room jolted into movement.

"Garcia, send us the address and get a warrant for registered vehicles under his name and any houses or other buildings he's purchased or rented." Hotch pulled his coat on.

3. THE REPEATER

A victim of abuse themselves yet chose the path of violence and continued the cycle. A coping mechanism that destroyed not only the part of themselves who once felt a sense of companionship with other victims, but the parts of themselves that embraced the strength of surviving. The victim no longer holds the reins. There can be no justification, for that means their own abuser deserves it too. A path of cowardice, but not necessarily always a choice.

4. THE SUPPRESSED

A pretender. An amnesiac. A victim so deeply focused on not being one that they posture themselves as a functional member of society. Everything about them screams something that cannot find proper footing like the rest of the untouched world, but to others who have faced the same, they are seen as the ones to follow. It is all in the past. They have survived just like others, and now it is time to forget and move forward.

5. THE BYSTANDER

Not the person with whom hands have been lain upon them, yet a victim nonetheless. Forced to watch as the world seems to slow around people they care for. Every action they make, every reaction, further pushes others one way or the other through the suffering - whether they make it out the other side, might very well depend on how they behave. Cursed to feel a pain that cannot be recognised by strangers and is diminished by those who have suffered directly at the hands of abuse. They're on the outside, yet one day, when things are at peace, they are rewarded with moving forward. A luxury others do not get.

And you can ignore this if you want cause it's my OC hehe

6. THE SURVIVOR BY ANY MEANS

(general info) - a survivor of the basement who played his own game and complied with the Grabber in ways that allowed him to live and gain the man's trust. Evidence for Stockholm Syndrome has been considered dubious or nonexistent, and this doesn't change things - never 'falling' for Shaw himself, but becoming too trapped in self preservation to escape. This ultimately included taking the life of one of the Grabber's victims himself to ensure what he set up for himself didn't crumble.

Where a heroic survivor keeps his mind upon escaping - his morals, his self, he walks to freedom and knows that somewhere deep down, he still lingers, this survivor doesn't. Mind broken - shattered until pieces from abusers start to wedge themselves where their personality once lay. There is no question of 'right' or 'wrong' anymore, it is simply 'what keeps me alive'.