So, I don't know if any of you guys watch 'Catfish' on mtv, but this is an AU based on that TV program. If you don't know it, I suggest maybe googling it to understand this chapter better (but I think you don't really have to, as I'll most likely explain everything.) Anyways, I still need ideas or suggestions on how to finish this plan, so if u have any, leave a comment down below :))

(I feel like I'm writing a description on instagram lmao). But without further ad do, I hope you enjoy this one ! 3

The week started out just like any other, the usual routine kicked in and made the week fly by. They'd start with the fun, then came the email reading, meeting the victim, helping them with uncovering their mystery, trying to set up a meeting with the so called 'catfish'. And to top it all off, they'd check in with both their victim and catfish two months after. Nothing new, nothing serious really.

But, this particular one was a bit different.

When Eric walked into the office that Monday, the crew started singing (well, more like yelling) 'Happy Birthday'. You see, it was the blonde's birthday last Saturday, but he had hoped no one would notice. To his luck, they did, they were a bunch of investigators after all.

"Happy birthday, dude! Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday? I could have gotten something for you, mate." Deeks' voice boomed through the office area, and a few annoyed heads shot him a couple dirty looks, but he shrugged them off and pretended he didn't notice.

"Didn't want to make it into a big deal, it's just 34, man. Nothing special." Eric placed his backpack next to his seat, and found out his coworkers had planted a cupcake on the desk in front of him. It had one sad, quite lonely looking, lit candle on it, the light flickering as if it was waiting for him to be blown out. The man rolled his eyes, but had a smile on his face despite all of it, and gave in to the birthday madness around him. Cheers of happiness could be heard around the two boys, and Eric laughed at the silliness his friends possessed.

"Let's read the email now, shall we?" Eric was eager to shove all the attention away from him, he had never liked having all eyes on him, and was ready to start the new case.

"Right. So, let's catch some fish!" The cameras had started rolling the minute Eric came in, and miraculously filmed everything of the fun encounter beforehand. They seem to have no problem with (finally, in Eric's opinion) moving on with the more serious matters at hand.

"*Hi Eric and Deeks*. Damn, why do they always mention you first?" Eric laughed at the stupid comment of his blonde haired friend, before he picked up where the boy left of.

"*My name is Alicia and I'm 23 years old. I live in Minnesota and have a normal steady job.

I've been talking to this girl named Evie online for about 1,5 years now. We've tried to meet up several times now, but every time she has a last minute excuse ready why she can't meet up anymore. I care a lot about her, but it's also time for me to know the truth now. I'm tired of all the lies hidden underneath the sand. Can you help me?

Kind regards,

Alicia*."

"Lots of red flags." Deeks spoke up before Eric could place the puzzle pieces together in his mind. "Obviously she's either hiding something, or a catfish."

"Let's call this lovely Alicia." Eric leaned over the desk and moved the laptop away from Deeks, which made the latter chuckle at his eagerness to start this, undoubtedly, interesting case. The familiar calling sound filled the room, and both boys started goofily dancing on it, until a brown haired woman picked up on the other side of the call and both blondes pretended like nothing ever happened.

"Hello!" Both boys piped up, and smoothly started the conversation and discovered more and more details.

When they ended the call, everybody in the room was left with more information then they'd started with, and a plane ticket to Minnesota.

It wasn't until the next day that the entire Catfish crew could start moving and the investigation finally started rolling. To say the camera's had enough footage of their loving main investigators goofing around while they were on the airport and the plane, was an understatement. Traveling with those two could never grow old or boring. They'd agreed to meet up with Alicia after 1 PM, and luckily for Eric and Deeks, it was only 11 AM when their plane finally touched the ground of Minnesota.

Both men drove to the hotel they'd stay at for the week in their shared rented car, but the pair divided for the next couple hours and left to discover the hotel rooms on their own.

While he could hear Deeks calling his wife in the next room, Eric decided it'd be great to spend his time napping away on his bed. Luckily he didn't have a wife, or girlfriend for that matter, to call and settle their worries down. Even though it was rather sad, or just straight up depressing, to come home in his apartment after a long tough week, the man didn't feel the need to go out looking for love. Of course, he had tried dating around for a while, but that didn't seem to satisfy his needs at all, so he called it quits every soon after he broke it off with the last girl. The problem was never the girls, neither was it the boys (yes, Eric was bisexual, it didn't seem to bother anyone close to him though and he couldn't be happier about that), the blonde just never found time to schedule some quality time around them. He was always too busy with the case, or just to focused on all the details that'd, even though he had a fantastic mind, completely forget.

Eric was a busy man, and sometimes that took his toll, and in this case, it was love that had to make place for it. It never really seemed to work in the poor man's favor.

The meeting with Alicia seemed to go smoothly, and like expected, left lots of red flags in the air. Except she hadn't told them everything, but rather sooner than later, they'd discover it anyway and call her out for it.

"So, Alicia, 25 years old, meets this lovely girl named Evie on this dating site. They start talking, immediately hit it off, and slowly but surely it becomes something more. It all seems bees, butterflies, rainbows and flowers at first, but, here it comes, Evie starts acting weird. Every time they have tried to meet Evie calls it off last minute, claiming some scam looking stupid excuse while so. Pretty common story, right?" Deeks is listing it off as Eric tries to focus on both the road ahead and the details flown around his head.

"Right. Which means she's either scared, or isn't who she's supposed to be." Eric finishes off for him, forming his thoughts flying around his head in actual words for the other man to understand.

"Well, we'll find out one way or another.

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"Let's run the pictures first, maybe we'll find a hit right away." Eric opens the new email Alicia send them, which contains more information about her mysterious girlfriend 'Evie', and downloads the pictures on the laptop. While he runs them through facial recognition, Deeks is already shooting new options in the air.

"What if something else went down, and Alicia just didn't mention it to us yet. I mean, it has happened to us before." He shrugs at the possibly, but Eric can't deny him wrong in any sense. Sadly, it has happened, and this wouldn't be the last time their victim would leave out crucial information because they thought it wouldn't be important. He makes a mental note to interrogate Alicia about it, and definitely call her out on it if she did, because at this point, any little thing would be something.

"Nothing. Run her phone number, see if it's a land line or gives any linked locations." Deeks' voice ran through the blonde's head and (harshly, may he add) interrupted his train of thoughts. But, Eric did just that, and, surprisingly, came up with a land line.

"So they'd be using a texting app, we've seen it many times before. It's a fake number, doesn't give us any new information but only rules some options out."

"What else do we have?" Alicia didn't give them many information to work with, and all they could do was pray for a miracle that something would come up anyways.

"We have her Facebook and Instagram left, nothing else."

Deeks took over control of the laptop, and typed furiously 'Evie Winters' in the search bar on Facebook. "Evie Winters, studied on Cambridge, born in Connecticut, and her birthday, nothing else."

"Look at her tagged photos or see if she tagged anyone in her own. And maybe we could do something with Cambridge too." Eric pointed out, praying they'd at least find something and could send out a few text messages to possible related people.

"Gosh, this is going to take longer than I expected, I thought this would be one of the easier ones, you know?" The man laughed at his partner, and wondered why Deeks ever thought that in the first place. They rarely had easy ones, but lately they've been growing heavier and more difficult, so Eric could see where his friend came from. He craved some relaxation and a little break from the tough ones as well.

"Here we go, Margaret Williams, seems legit. Let's hit her up and maybe shimmy more stuff out of her." Before Eric could even spell his own name, Deeks had already send a message to the, hopefully real, girl and they're left waiting for an answer.

After digging down through the sand and back on the official Cambridge page, the boys were ready to call it a day and fall straight into their beds. They'd follow this up in the morning, and hoped they heard from this 'Margaret' by then.

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"Good morning America, welcome to our start up routine. So, last night, I got a text from this unknown number, and I'm on my way to read it together with my best boy Eric now. Let's see if we can catch some sexy abs footage on here." Deeks picked up the camera and walked down the hallway before knocking on Eric's door. A faint 'Come in!' was heard in the background, and the dirty blonde opened the hotel room door to greet his friend.

"Good morning, hot stuff." Deeks joked as he found Eric indeed with no chest coverage whatsoever, grinning like a mad man at the camera.

The said man scoffed before he answered, "Let me just put on a shirt, hold on."

"So, what's up?" Eric stepped out of the bathroom and took a seat on his soft hotel bed. "You heard anything from 'Margaret'?"

"Sadly, no, but I did get a text. It was send from an anonymous number so we can't track it.

*You're wasting your time with finding out who 'Evie' is, I know who she is*."

"Well, that's much of a help, yes." The older boy rolled his eyes, and was eager to reply to this unknown person to solve their ongoing mystery.

"Should we reply?"

"Of course, up till now this is our only lead, seeing 'Margaret' isn't answering us yet."

Deeks passed the phone to Eric and the latter rolled his eyes good naturally again, but didn't complain as he started typing the message. He turned around the screen, so both his coworker and the camera could catch it, before he hit send and hoped for another text back.

A familiar notification sound came out of the phone, and they finally had a response from the person they'd been hoping to hear back from.

"Speak of the devil. 'Margaret just texted us back.

*Yes, Evie is my friend, what about her?*."

*We're with her friend Alicia, and were hoping to make a meeting for the both of them happen.*

*I can ask her.*

*That'd be great, thank you. Would you mind if we called you to clear up some messy information?*

"Oh, we got a caller!" Deeks picked up the phone, ripping the device out of Eric's hands who had been texting with 'Margaret' for a while now. "Hello? Margaret? This is Eric and Deeks."

"Hi!" A friendly reply came through the receiver, but it didn't make Eric question it any less. After all, this was their only point of getting to the infamous 'Evie' now.

"We were wondering if you could answer some questions for us."

"Sure, hit me." The blonde raised an eyebrow at this, the woman seemed almost too eagerly to give her answers. Eric's suspicions weren't proving wrong when after a few minutes and one risky question, the call ended and she hung up the phone.

"Did she just hung up on us?" Deeks was surprised but somehow not disappointed, in the back of his head he could have known something like this would happen. Just as they seemed to get out of the woods.

"You really think she was going to give her answer to that question? That was a risky one, man, but I guess we have one more person to add to the list of growing suspects."

"I guess we have to go old school then, straight up call the catfish itself. But let's check in with Alicia first, let her know what we found and have her input in it, I still have a weird stomach feeling that she's hiding something. Maybe we could pick up some Starbucks breakfast along the way, you don't seem to have eaten anything yet." Deeks was already moving around, leaving Eric with no choice but to follow him and wordlessly agree with the dirty blondes plans.

As long as his friend paid, he didn't mind it and most certainly wouldn't complain.