#4 damian's snippet bc that's what's going on there

[donnyclaws]

Not posting abt tiger crawl home as much bc I'm having fun with my little scratchings and updates but it's so going somewhere rn

[overb]

SNIPPET: (how we feelin abt this?? i need opinions bcs im gen so unsure how to start this fic)

SUMMER SUFFERERS

roach: good morning fuckers (3:20AM)

roach: we are en route (3:20AM)

wall: so are we (3:25AM)

wall: and they aren't even awake yet (3:26AM)

doll: i am awake thank u very much (3:29AM)

doll: everyone else is asleep our alarms arent set till like 4:45 but i havent slept yet so!!!! (3:30AM)

===

The stairs dug into Tim’s back as he stretched across them, head flopped awkwardly to the side as he watched Alfred open the door. All of his siblings were sprawled across the main staircase, half asleep and very upset. It was 4:50AM, the first day of the Summer Meetup, and Bruce expected everyone to be downstairs to greet their arriving guests. It was a stupid idea, in Tim’s opinion, as everyone arrived as tired as each other.

Last summer Hal had shown up in shorts and one shoe, making it two steps into the manor before slumping against the wall and going straight to sleep. Any expectations left after the first five years of Summer Meetup’s went straight out the window.

The doorbell rang and Tim cracked open an eye to watch the first people stumble in. Alfred pulled open the door quickly, the only one in the Manor actually functioning, letting three bodies in.

They were people Tim didn’t recognise — fully awake people. People dressed in actual clothes; shorts and shirts and shoes and socks. What the fuck. Bruce hauled himself off of the wall and stuck a hand out, muttering something too quiet for anyone to hear. The man smiled at Bruce. He looked ready to talk, awake enough to talk, but put off by the glares all the kids were giving him.

Alfred ushered them further into the room, gesturing to a cleared corner for them to put their bags. They followed his instructions to the T, loitering awkwardly next to their suitcases. One of them — the youngest boy — spotted (the face down) Damian and waved happily. The other boy — the one who looked Tim’s age — laughed when Damian didn’t respond.

Stephanie was next in, unlocking the door with her key before anyone else could act. She managed a smile at Alfred before stumbling up the stairs, kicking Dick in the ribs and throwing herself down next to Cass.

The doorbell rang as soon as Steph closed her eyes. This time Barry, Wally and Bart rolled in. They were all half asleep, Bart bumping into the boy their age as he abandoned his bag. Tim managed a laugh at that, catching Bart’s attention. Wally was already cuddled up to Dick and Barry was slumped at Bruce’s feet, head resting against the man's legs by the time Bart reached Tim. He threw himself on top of him and started snoring, a spitting image of Barry’s own sounds.

Five minutes later Hal dragged himself into the Manor, joining Barry on the floor and passing straight out. Tim took it as a sign to also, finally, sleep, and let his eyes drift shut as they waited for the last group to arrive.

bcs like… i have so many ideas running thru my head for this i have no idea how to start ir

[storm-leviosa-fanfics]

for the fic ask game, multiples of five!! and for ruins :)

Hey Luka!!! thanks for the asks (there are so many omg)

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

I know what you want and you're not getting it 😉 Instead have some waaaay in the future migratory birds

Things are...different when Damian comes home for summer. More frantic, tighter, hotter and faster and it makes Damian feel bad that the only one on vacation is him. He works a morning shift three times a week at the clinic, just desk work, but it gives him the kind of behind-the-scenes knowledge that a veterinary medicine degree won’t give him. Sometimes Mark the vet lets him stand in the corner and watch procedures. Sometimes Bianca the vet-tech lets him look at blood samples down a microscope. And then there’s Chara and Mel who sneak him in before his shift to cuddle the in-patients with them on their early morning rounds, and slide boxes of Chara’s grandfather’s homemade baklava across the front desk as they troop in from their lunch break. Aaron, who mans the front desk and supervises Damian, wants to be an accountant. This is something Damian will never understand. He lets Aaron do all the accounts and systems and spreadsheets, and takes over customer service instead. He signs in the patients, gives them all the pamphlets they’ll ever need, spends one - horrifically dull - morning crossing out the landline number on every business card in the stack when they switch over to online booking only.

He comes home in the early afternoons with hours of nothing stretching out before him and does nothing but watch out the ceiling fan whir. New York summers are hot as hell. He cannot physically bring himself to move from the floor. Titus tries to flop down on top of him and his body heat is too much for Damian. He shoves him off, and Titus whines as if he’s actually hurt by this.

“You,” Damian tells him seriously, “are an over-dramatic idiot.” Titus thumps his tail on the floor and licks Damian’s face. It’s disgusting, but his slobber is surprisingly cool.

10: Who has been your favourite character to write about in 'ruins'? What do they bring to the fic?

Why would you make me choooooose? Tim and Steph are both so much fun to write. Chaos gremlins who share half a braincell between them. I don't want to choose one. The best thing about them is that neither of them actually hold the braincell, but each of them thinks they do. If that makes any sense at all. Like they both think they're so smart and so mature, but really they are just stupid teenagers and it's actually so much fun. They're great as unreliable narrators because they don't think they are! They think they're totally reasonable!

15: Which fic that you’ve written relates to you and your personal life the most?

Well they all do a little I think? Like 'ruins' is a chance for me to rag on the BM and repatriation/decolonisation efforts; 'migratory birds' is wish-fulfillment for 17 yr old me who wanted to go to vet school; 'if wishes were horses' is pretty self-explanatory in inspiration. But the only time I've written a fic and gone 'oh this is really personal maybe I shouldn't do this' was sticks and stones, so I'd have to say that.

20: Which fic have you put the most work into? Which fic have you put the least work into?

Most: in terms of time and background research? ruins. I have spent hours on google looking for specific facts, or places of interest, or archeological stuff, and half of it doesn't actually make it into the fic I just find it interesting and then 4 hours later I'm still on wikipedia and 0 words have been written.

Least: There are fics that I have rattled out in an hour at 1am. Anything tagged 'I wrote this instead of sleeping' is one of those. The one I will say as my ultimate 'least effort' is probably the one with Damian and Santa solely bc I don't remember anything about it. I wrote it at like midnight on Christmas eve and posted it unedited.

25: If you could remove one character from ruins’s universe, who would it be? Why?

Most of the characters I don't think I could actually remove without crippling the story. But, I think I mentioned Ives once or twice and I realised very quickly that he was mentioned solely bc I wanted Tim to have friends, and I remembered his name before anyone else's. So, I'd probably remove him, bc I know nothing about him as a character, and replace him with someone else. I had the chance to bring Bernard back before it was cool and I blew it!

send me asks

[archiveofidentityconstellations]

(Preferably all batfam related else I'd be clueless :P) 4, 8, 15, 29, 30, 37, 40 alternative ending to 'On Fashions & Small Fry' 💜💜

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

I literally just had an idea this morning about little snapshots in which Damian crawls into Dick’s bed to kind of show the break of outer and inner lives and what we project to the world (day) and how we feel inside (night). That sounds like a lot of hogwash bc mostly I just wanted to do a cute thing with Dick and Damian being brothers

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

from birds all sing:

Several minutes passed, Tim looking at the man he had known as a father for several years, brow furrowed in consideration.

"What else?" Bruce finally said. He let his voice soften. "What else do you need?" Tim met his eyes. Bruce's fists clenched.

So young.

"...The roti."

What?

"What?"

"The roti bread?" Tim repeated. "I was thinking maybe the zucchini but no, I definitely want the roti."

Bruce stood there, adrenaline seeping out of his bones.

"That's it?" he asked brusquely, not a little annoyed to be put through the emotional ringer in under five minutes.

"Yeah," Tim nodded. He almost beamed at the thought of the upcoming food. "That's it. Thanks, Bruce!"

"Don't mention it," he growled, marching out the office.

It’s not perfect, but I like it because it makes me laugh. My humor has a lot to do with timing, so when I manage to get the timing right I find it very funny

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Good question! I wouldn’t really choose any of my fics to be filmed, but I would love my “version” of batcat to have a film presence. Other than that, I would probably want either bratkid or star wars domestic AU to be filmed, but I would make them original work. I like the idea of family coming together and getting to love one another. It’s an after school special!

29. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Oh man I’m kind of shit at imagining things beyond what the author intends. My friend Hobbs has a world she lets me play in sometimes, so I write little snippets of fanfic of her stuff.

30. Do you accept prompts?

When I say they’re open, yeah, kind of. I don’t get paid for writing, it’s not like a commission, so if I like the idea I’ll do it or incorporate it into whatever I’m writing. It’s free real estate babey

37. Talk about your current wips.

There’s too manyyyyyy

I’ll talk about what I need to do

birds all sing: start the first fight. make it organic, not off the cuff. don’t be overt but not too subtle.

crack fic: research you dumb bint. you are literally not writing this because you don’t want to research. why. normally you love research. you just don’t want to look up what writing up reports looks like. it’s probably online. just do it.

40. Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

OHO, okay! Long answer

This was actually supposed to be a full fic, I had a lot planned for it but it got so large that I was like “hmmm” and didn’t do it. It had like 4 “acts” as to how the story went

Anyhow, the fic starts out how Damian wants to go to Sacramento with Bruce, because Bruce said he would take him last week, but then Bruce says no. He won’t explain why, but he’s obviously not mad at Damian, so Damian can’t figure it out. Damian ends up facecalling him and he can see Talia in the background. He promptly flips out, throws his phone at the wall, breaks it, destroys the room, then kind of has a breakdown wherein he just sits in the tub fully clothed with his shoes on 😅

Tim sits with him, then Damian basically falls asleep so Tim goes to get Dick and Dick puts his boy to bed

Second act: Several days go by, and Damian is better, but as he’s sitting on the counter while Stephanie is cooking, she accidentally says something they were all keeping from him: Bruce went to Sacramento so that Talia could sign off on custody rights, lawyers are involved and everything.

Cue to Damian being like “what” and marching off. Damian then concocts this scheme in which he tells Dick that he really wanted to see Dallas, that father was going to take him, please he wants to see the rodeo, etc. Dick gives in and decides they’ll take a brotherly bonding road trip! Yay!

But things start to go sour when neither one of them can mind their business in a seedy motel, and their relationship issues come to light. After this:

"No, damn it!" Dick slammed his hand against the doorframe. It rattled at its hinges. "You got your time, that's it, done, over. I take care of you, got it?"

"We're partners," Damian said, weakly.

Dick's eyes softened. He struggled inside himself, Damian could see. But just as a bubble of hope rose forth, it burst the next millisecond. Dick lowered his hands, head tucked low and shaking softly. "Not anymore we're not," he sighed.

then Damian uhhhh how does one say, drugs Dick so he can sneak out and take a plane to Sacramento.

He bursts into whatever meeting place Bruce and Talia are at and lambasts them for lying to him and such. Talia is like “hi sweetie” and Bruce is like “b o i” and Damian ends by saying he gets to leave first because they always leave whenever they wanted, so now he gets to leave THEM

So he angry-walks to a park and sits down on a bench and stews

Then Dick BURSTS in and is like “is he here?????” and Bruce is like “you let your eleven year old brother get on a plane himself?!” and Dick is like “that little SHIT drugged me, I didn’t let him do anything” and they all sort of talk about the best thing for Damian

Damian comes back after a day on the town in which he really doesn’t have all that much fun, and comes back and everyone is like “okay let’s all be mature about this and talk, no secrets”

And it turns out

Talia is dying

So Damian is bewildered and mad that he can’t be mad, she’s dying, she’s dying and she doesn’t even get to see him without Bruce’s approval, etc

So they work out what would be best for Damian WITH Damian’s input, thank you very much

(also Bruce is like “We acknowledge that we weren’t the best but if you EVER do that again—”)

Third act is in which the new normal is strange, because Damian is visiting Talia but it’s like when he was a very young child again, because she’s not trying to impart survival wisdom, she’s just his mom. And Damian is sort of dealing with the remnants of trauma, and is upset because why couldn’t it have been like this all the time, but he CAN’T be upset because she’s dying and despite his unwillingness to go back over his trauma it crops up and Talia has a lot to make up for. Ra’s appears in his crazy old way, because she’s his favorite child and she’s dying and Damian and Ra’s basically get to sit in a hospital waiting room together and have a stilted conversation on who they are and what family even means

Anyhow Damian is really starting to get along with Talia, which concerns Bruce because. she’s dying. Damian is going to be gutted. So he slowly kind of tries to make it so Damian isn’t as attached (dumb but it’s Bruce) and Damian gets angry and runs away to visit his mother in the French Riviera. They have a wonderful time but then Bruce goes to get him and Damian is mad at him. But Talia says “you need to listen to your father” and Damian realizes that Bruce is the only parent he’s going to have, he’s not going to have his mom anymore.

So yeah, there’s still another act that I didn’t finalize but that’s a rough summary of everything!!

And Talia was going to have an illness exacerbated by the Lazarus pits, like caused by it. It was basically going be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease equivalent in the DC universe. So yeah, she can’t come back lol