Title: A Ritual Of Romance
Pairing: Tintin/OC

Hi guys.

I guess most of you may know me from my previous story, The Secret of the Unicorn, which I deleted it because I'm tired of the haters crap.

Here I am with my new story, set in the modern world. *throws confetti*

This is based on the movie verse, that means no characters in the comics (which did not appear in the movie) will appear, and that I don't know the plot of the comics, so if anything was the same it was purely coincidental. (IF YOU WANT TO FLAME ME, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE AND HATE.)

Hop on to the story, and hope for a new beginning!

"We met in an unexpected situation."

On a fine Monday morning, our lovely Belgian detective, Tintin, was waking up to the gentle snuffles of his white terrier dog, Snowy. The little dog was yelping and jumping up and down on his chest through the thick blankets of his bed. Tintin rubbed his eyes, squinting his eyes at the bright sunlight shining into his room, tucking himself back into bed as he ignored Snowy. "It's too early, Snowy. I want to sleep." He remembered that he was typing out the story of the Unicorn the night earlier, and had fell asleep at a late time. 5am, to be precise. He always claimed that working one day before the deadline can boost his memory of the incredible adventure. Tintin always passed his works on time, so there was nothing to worry about. The readers won't know that he's writing the story one day before it hits the papers anyway.

Snowy gave out a low whine, before a plan took form in his head. He leaped off the bed, running towards Tintin's office, and began to topple things over, creating huge noises as stuff from his table - souvenirs from his previous adventures, the latest being a diamond shaped amber topaz from Captain Haddock - fell onto the floor. Snowy was careful to knock over stuff that will not break upon making contact with the floor.

Tintin heard something - no, lots of things - crashed from outside his bedroom. There was nobody in his house at this time of day. Knowing Snowy, he would sit and stare at the floor guiltily if he had accidentally toppled over something. So what was this noise early in the morning? Was it a robbery? Did Snowy tried to wake him up because he saw somebody sneaking in his house? Tintin shot wide awake, flipping the thick blanket over his body, getting up on his legs, scrambling to his living room to apprehend the early thief. Nope, there was nobody there. My office! , thought Tintin, and dashed into his office, grabbing a heavy flashlight to defend himself. He bursted into his office, to see Snowy resting his paws on a telescope, getting ready to take it down.

"Snowy! What are you doing?" Tintin demanded, and the terrier got shocked, crashing against the telescope, knocking it down nevertheless. The journalist stepped forward, gently pulling his dog out from the mess, and glared at him. "Bad dog." Tintin managed to say to Snowy. He cannot bring himself to get angry on his dog. After all, Snowy is probably just trying to wake him up. Tintin looked around the room, taking in the sights of stuff all over the floor.

"It's time to buy an alarm clock."

xXx

It took Tintin quite some while to finish arranging the stuff back into place in his office. By the time he checked the wall clock in his living room, he realized that he was going to be late for work, and his story of the Unicorn was still laying on his desk. "Snowy, we're late!" Tintin said and quickly brushed his teeth, washed the sleepiness off his face, changed into his proper clothing and grabbed the jacket on his couch, covering himself with it as he exited his apartment with Snowy trailing behind him.

Just as Tintin had took a step outside his apartment, he saw a girl who was rushing down from upstairs as well, holding a pair of roller skates in her hand, a sling bag across her shoulder. Lucky for them that they didn't knock into each other. Her black hair was flowing messily behind her shoulder, the hazel glint in her eyes reflected panic in it. "Excuse me!" she said, and ran past Tintin, not even bothering to greet her neighbor just downstairs from her apartment. She dashed to the front door, strapping on her roller skates in mere seconds, and skated out of sight, heading down the streets. Tintin tried to go after her to say hello, but her skates proved to be much faster than Tintin.

Snowy woofed beside him.

"Oh, how could I almost forget it! I need to go to Le Soir to hand in my story!" Tintin said his thoughts out aloud, and quickly rushed to another direction, different from the route that the girl made. "Stay at home, Snowy! And don't break anything!"

He had managed to catch a taxi, reached the publishing company and headed straight towards the editor's office. He came to an abrupt halt in front of his editor's office, ran his fingers through his ginger hair, and knocked gently at the door.

"Come in," the editor's deep voice rang from inside the room. Tintin noticed that his editor was not feeling entirely cheerful this morning from his tone. He could only hope that it had nothing to do with his story. Tintin entered the room, and saw that his editor's desk was splattered with photos. He had never seen his boss like this. Usually he was such a neat person. This must be a new case, thought Tintin as he put down his file on a side of his editor's desk, and made his way close to the older man inside the office to take a better look at the photos.

The photos on the editor's desk were images of blood. A whole lot of blood. On a man's body. He had a handsome face, Tintin noticed. He was also a blonde. A peaceful expression was on his face, far too peaceful for somebody who was killed in such a horrid way. Another photo showed his mouth being opened by one of the police officers on duty, a rose laying inside the mouth of the man. The rose was part white and part red, which could be a very pretty rose if it was not sitting inside some dead man's mouth. The stem of a rose - Tintin deduced it from the thorns - was circled around the neck of the body, its thorns prickling into the flesh of the man, drawing blood from it.

That's not it. Tintin looked at the other photos on the desk. A shape of a heart was carved roughly on the dead blonde's chest. Blood on that part of his body was drier than the other parts of his body, so Tintin assumed that the murderer made this wound before everything else. He got shivers just by seeing this series of photo. That's when he noticed that there were also similar photos of white and red roses in dead men's mouths, necks strangled by stems and chests carved with the shape of a heart.

"What... was all this?" Tintin asked, finally relocating his vocal chord, recovering from the shock. He reached out his hand, bringing the photos closer to him to get a better look. This was interesting, Tintin thought. Every man killed was quite good looking. And each of them had similar stuff on them - roses in their mouths, rose stems around their necks and a heart on their chests. He could at least know that they were done by the same person.

"Can I take on this story?" Tintin asked.

"That is, if you can solve the mysteries of these serial killings." His editor said, pushing several clippings of newspapers towards Tintin. The journalist took the papers and looked at them. "These were the killings that happened when you're out investigating the Unicorn." Tintin went through them, and noticed that the bodies were found in secluded areas such as a private room in the pub, in a dim hotel room, the dark back alley and such.

"They were all handsome men," said Tintin as he picked up more photos, cupping them in between his palms. "And they had the similar killing pattern. It could be from the same person." Just as Tintin was going to deduce more from the gruesome photos, a reporter came into the office without knocking, startling both men inside the office.

"Mr. Yeats! There was another kill today!" The reporter yelled. "Today the body was found inside an abandoned building!"

"What building was it?" Mr. Yeats - the editor - asked.

"The old building site near Old Street Market, boss." the reporter said.

"I'm going," said Tintin as he hushed for the reporter to lead the way to the construction site.

xXx

Reporters, cameramen, policemen and nosy passerbys were already crowding around the site. Policemen were already setting up yellow "KEEP OUT" stripes within a few meters radius around the scene. Somehow Tintin managed to sneak beyond the yellow line. He walked towards the smaller crowd in the construction site, where people from the forensic team in the police squad were taking photos and collecting evidences. He wished that he had a camera to take down what he saw.

A man was killed yet again. But this time he had a slightly different kind of death compared to the other victims. He lay still, soaked in a bath tub, the water a shade of red by his own blood. His arms were carved with the letters 'LOVE' and 'DEATH', blood still slowly pouring out from the wounds. His mouth still had the trademark of the murderer - a white and red rose. Pink rose petals floated around the tub, bringing out the contrast of the bloody water against the pure innocent pink of the petals.

Tintin gulped, staring at the dead body of the man. He had slicked black hair, and was wearing a three piece suit. Yet another handsome man. Tintin took a closer look, and saw that there was cash lying below his body.

"What kind of a creepy ritual is this?" Tintin heard somebody said beside him, and when he turned around to face the voice of the person, a camera met his face. He got taken back by the device in his face, and the camera backed away as well. A face appeared from behind the camera.

"Excuse me, I'm trying to take a photo of the crime scene here." A girl said from behind the camera, looking at Tintin and back at her camera. An image of Tintin's face appeared in her camera. She looked at her camera, and a smile carved on her face. "But I think I'll hang on to this."

Tintin looked at the girl in front of him. She was familiar, he noticed. There was something about her...

"You don't happen to live in Labrador Street, do you?" Tintin asked.

"Hmm? Well yes, I do." The girl said, lowering her camera down to look at Tintin. They locked eyes for a moment, taking in each other's features for a long time. Their eyes blinked, blue eyes against hazel eyes. She had almost the same height as him, Tintin noticed. But there was something bigger that he noticed.

"You're... the girl that skated this morning from my apartment?"

"You're... the boy that nearly knocked into me this morning?"

They said simultaneously, and broke into a huge smile when they realize that they were referring to each other. Tintin held out his hand to her.

"I'm Tintin."

"Zoe. Zoe Flynn."

Ah... So did you guys like my new story?

Oh and. Le Soir was the name of a real Belgian newspaper. I knew that it had been part of the Tintin series via Wiki, so... I used it.

Using the names won't actually get me sued... Will I?

But anyway, reviews are much loved!

Will appreciate it if it was not from a hater, thank you.

(P.s: I really need to stop with my hater issues.)

~VelonicaSushi