#And their cops are allowed to shoot you on sight

[john-get-the-salt]

Rage (w/ Jack Abbott)

Imagine: An incident brings the rage out of Jack, but luckily you have the ability to calm him

Contains: Reader who works in the Pitt in unspecified role, angry/protective Jack

Warnings: brief violence towards reader

AN: you can’t convince me Jack wouldn’t BEAT someone’s ass for you. He totally would. And I would thank him

It all happened so fast you barely had time to comprehend what was going on.

One minute you were working in the Pitt, talking to a couple that came in with a DV related injury. You were trying to deescalate the situation and calm down the raging boyfriend-and the next minute you were on the ground, head pounding and vision swimming.

Had he just hit you? You could taste iron on your lips and your hands were stinging from catching yourself on the ground.

You heard someone yelling in the distance, or was that you? You couldn’t tell-and then someone very close to you was calling for security.

You blinked furiously, trying to clear the black spots and finally you focused as a face was coming into view. Robby.

“What-what happened?”

“Can you stand?”

You nodded, wincing when it made a spike of pain radiate through your skull.

Hands were on your forearms-Robby and Dana. They helped you up on wobbling knees, and with a few more blinks your vision was starting to improve again. But you did not like what you saw.

Jack had the man who had hit you pressed up against the wall with his hands pulled behind his back. Jack was hollering in his ear, threats that if he ever touched his girl again he-

“Jack!” You’d never heard Robby’s voice so loud and thundering before. It was enough to get Jack’s attention, and his eyes landed on you.

“Leave him,” Robby ordered. “I will stay with him until security gets here. She’s bleeding she needs you.”

That was enough to snap Jack out of it. He released the man and stalked over to you without another thought. As he reached for your arm your knees began to give out so instead he swept you up into his arms.

Your senses were all jumbled, sounds and sights and thoughts all messed up and nonlinear. You allowed your eyes to close as you were carried, the rocking motion soothing.

“Hey-don’t close your eyes. Not yet, just keep em open for me sweetheart, okay?”

You hummed in acknowledgment and managed to open them and keep them open as Jack finally set you down in a room. Dana closed the door behind you both, leaving it just the 3 of you. She turned the lights lower, which immediately helped with your head.

“I’m ok I just need-what-I’m all jumbled. What happened?”

“He fucking hit you,” Jack seethed as he roughly put on gloves. “I could kill him.”

You winced at the loud voice, causing him to pause and then slow down.

“I got this Dana, just make sure that…fucker stays put until the cops get here.”

Dana didn’t argue, shooting you a look before pulling the curtain shut and leaving.

“The cops? Jack I’m ok you don’t-”

“Don’t.” His voice was calmer now, and that may have fooled other people but it didn’t fool you. You could hear the restrained anger, see it in his set jaw.

He ran you through the usual work up and concluded you most likely had a concussion, though he insisted you’d be getting a head CT just to be safe. You didn’t argue.

“I still don’t really understand what happened,” you mumbled, rubbing at your eyes. Jack, who’d been carefully wiping the blood away from your busted lip, was quiet for a moment.

He then took his gloves off before taking your hands in his, and it was then you realized that he was shaking. You looked up at him and his eyes were glassy.

“Hey-baby, talk to me.”

“I coulda fucking killed him.”

“But you didn’t-

“I wanted too. If Robby hadn’t stopped me I probably would have pummeled him for touching you.”

“Baby-“

“I won’t apologize for that. I’m supposed to protect you-and I didn’t.”

“You can’t be at my side every second of every day. Things are going to happen.”

“We’ll see about that.”

You shook your head. There was no use arguing with the man when he was all worked up like this.

“I’m sorry I scared you. I hope Robby doesn’t give you too much shit.”

Jack scoffed. “Robby looked like he wanted to sucker punch him too. And I thought Dana was gonna kick him in the dick.”

You laughed and Jack visibly relaxed at the sound.

“You sure you feel ok?”

You nodded, pulling his hands up to your cheeks so he would hold your face.

“I’m sure. Thank you for taking care of me, i love you.”

“I love you too.” He leaned in and allowed himself to give you a few delicate kisses, still worried about your head.

“Now do you think the security cameras caught all of that?” You asked, a bit of playfulness back into your voice. “Cause I would like to see all angles of my hot boyfriend coming to my defense and kicking some ass.”

Jack smirked, helping you stand from the exam table.

“That can definitely be arranged.”

“We’re gonna be the talk of the town now,” you said with a sigh. You’d managed to keep your relationship on the down low for the most part, but that was going to be the case anymore.

“To be fair I would’ve gotten involved regardless of who got hurt.”

“Yeah, but that restraint was a bit much.”

“You liked it just fine the other night.”

You punched Jack’s shoulder while he gave you a cheeky grin.

“Shut up and take me to CT. I’m ready to go home.”

“Aye aye captain.”

[back2thebasics]

Charlie Swan x Fem Reader - Target Practice

Hopefully you guys like it! It's my first time trying to write Twilight fanfic but I had lots of fun writing this so I would be down to make more in the future if there is an interest.

Charlie Swan X Fem Reader- Target Practice -

Summary: You work as a Private Investigator. You first met Charlie at a gun range and ever since you saw him for the first time, you can't stop thinking about him. He notices you right away, not being able to keep his eyes off of you, intrigued by you. One day, he finally musters up the courage to approach you and start a conversation.

Content: 18+, MDNI, sexual content, guns, oral sex, public sex, age gap, 

WordCount: 4k

You had moved to Forks recently from a big city, looking for an escape from your stressful job as a private investigator. You had covered anything from cheating to much darker things that you were trying to forget about. You needed some time off, so you decided to switch things up and move to the small town of Forks, Washington. Not long after arriving, you discovered through a local newspaper that there was a gun range a few minutes out of town. The first time you shot a gun was for your weapon training course. It surprised you how easily you took to it and how you somewhat enjoyed the experience. The small rush of adrenaline and the focus required made your blood rush and made you feel alive. Luckily, you never required a gun for work, but you always kept one hidden in the glove box of your blacked out Mustang. The first time you went to the gun range, you had just wanted to check it out, but once there you felt stupid turning around. You entered the old looking concrete building, which almost looked like an old prison but smaller. You could already hear the loud gunshots, slightly muffled through the front door. 

Once inside, you went up to the front desk, which doubled as a large gun locker. The old man leaning back in an old wooden chair polished a gun looking up at you. He put the rifle down and stood to greet you. You pay the admission fee and the rounds of ammo and you, as you enter the second section of the range where the targets are, you feel the old man's stare. He probably knows every single customer, but you are new here and also the only woman in sight. You feel pairs of eyes on you as you go to your assigned booth at the very back. That's when you see Charlie for the first time. He is in the booth right next to yours, his focus remaining on the target ahead. You find him handsome from first sight. He was just your type. A little older, rugged, strong looking, with a full head of dark hair and a nicely trimmed mustache. He seemed quiet, observant, but discreet. You caught him glancing your way as you settled in your own booth at the very back. As you prepped your gun, you felt his eyes on you again, lingering, but not constantly. During your first visit to the shooting range, he stayed silent but sneaked intrigued glances towards you when he thought you wouldn't to notice. You had good aim the first visit despite being a little rusty. His was near perfect, you noticed. He pulled the trigger like it was breathing to him, never straying too far from his intended target. He also looked detached a little while he shot round after round like he did this every Sunday. Did he? You thought to yourself. It was only on your way out that first night that you noticed a patch on his jacket telling you he was a cop and the chief of police of Forks. 

The following two weekends, you made the trip to the gun range to shoot a few rounds, and you saw Charlie there each time. He seemed to allow himself to look at you more and more each visit, his gaze lingering longer than before. Then one day, he finally broke the silence at the end of a session. 

“Where you from anyway? Ive never seen you around?” He asked as you were taking a break. You pushed back the large noise canceling headphones that you wore while shooting. 

“I just moved here about a month ago. I’m from Seattle.” You explained, happy that he finally spoke to you. 

“Ah, that explains it. If you don't mind me asking, how did you learn to shoot like that?” He asked, arching a brow slightly. The sight made you hold in a giggle. 

“I'm a Private Investigator so the training came with the job but I ended up enjoying it so now I do it as a way to unwind, I guess.” You told him, looking up into his dark eyes. He nodded, as if finally able to solve the puzzle he’d been constructing in his head.

“Well, I have to say after me you might be the best shot in this town.” He chuckled softly, and the praise made your stomach do flips. You didn't think a random man’s opinion would mean so much to you, but you cared about what he thought of you. 

“Well Chief, thank you. My name is Y/N.” You stuck out your hand for a handshake, not yet knowing his name.

“Please call me Charlie.” He shook your hand, giving you a warm smile. His touch lingering slightly on your smaller hand. His hand slightly calloused and rough felt warm in your grip. You both pulled away and went back to your own thing. He kept shooting a few rounds. You found yourself simply watching him for the rest of the session. 

A few months later…

After settling in fully into the Forks' lifestyle, you noticed a few things. Charlie was everywhere, and everyone in town knew and respected him. He was also a very quiet, reserved man who was impossible to read at times. You always felt nervous talking to him for some reason despite his trustworthy reputation as the town's hero. You were sitting in the only bar in town. You rarely went out for drinks, but tonight you sat on a high stool dressed in a nice black jumpsuit. You took the time to do your hair and apply a little makeup, which was a rare sight. While you were lost in thought, a person suddenly occupied the empty seat next to you.

“Fancy seeing you here.” Charlie sat with an ease that made you think this was his usual spot. You flashed him a smile that he returned.

“Yeah, what are the odds?” You joked back, knowing it was the only bar around for miles. 

“You come here often?” You add in teasing him.

“Probably more than I should.” He joked back and gave the bartender a little signal. A few minutes later, a tall draft beer sat in front of him. Your cocktail sat half empty as you nursed it, taking your time to make sure you could still drive home after. The two of you sat and talked for a while, the time slipping by as easy conversation flowed effortlessly. 

“I have this cabin up in the mountains with an outdoor practice range. I usually go up there with my buddies during hunting season, but I was wondering if you'd maybe want to go there to shoot. I mean you don't have to but if it interests you, I could um.. take you.” He seemed to get flustered by the proposition. Was he asking you on a date? “Yeah, that sounds great. I'm free next weekend.” Your answer eased his antsy demeanor, and he settled back into the stool, smiling at you, pleased.

“Perfect then. Ill pick you up and we can go.” He confirmed and the thought of going on a weekend trip to his cabin excited you more than anything had in the past 2 months . 

The weekend came, and you felt like a teenager as you paced by your window waiting for his truck to pull into the driveway. The outfit you had spent hours debating was a functional but cute ensemble consisting of a pair of jeans, a black tank top paired with a soft Forrest green flannel, and a pair of lace up hiking boots. You heard the gravel crunch and then saw his truck slow to a stop. To your surprise, Charlie exited the truck and approached your front door. A loud but still polite knock sounded a few minutes later, and you had to stop yourself from running to the door like a love-struck teenager. Opening the door, you admired him for a moment. He had shaved, leaving only his signature mustache perfectly trimmed. He wore dark-colored jeans paired with a gray t-shirt and a faded leather jacket. He looked so handsome that you had to stop yourself from ogling too long and making things awkward.

“Ready to go?” He asked, flashing you a smile that almost took your breath away.

“Yeah, but I don't have a gun. Sorry, I forgot to mention that earlier.” You usually borrowed one from the range. 

"No worries, I got you covered." He replied, smirking. Walking back to his truck and you followed instinctively. He opened the hatch of his truck to reveal a black trunk of some sort. He pulled it towards him and unlatched the cover to reveal a whole arsenal of firearms, from pistols to rifles. 

There were loads of ammo and other things as well and you were relieved he came prepared. You were willing to simply watch him shoot if it had come to it. You climbed in the truck after Charlie held the door open for you. He drove the both of you into the mountains, the forest getting thicker the further you drove. You filled the silence with pleasant conversation. You couldn't remember feeling this comfortable with anyone on this level before meeting Charlie. He made you feel seen, safe and fuzzy inside. Like a warm roaring fire was slowly building within you every time you thought of him or saw him in town. Once you arrived at the cabin, he helped you out of the truck and gave you a quick tour of the property. He showed you around the little clearing where he had set up many targets of varying distances, sizes and difficulty. He seemed proud of his hard work as he walked you around, showing you all the little details he had thought of and engineered himself. He then brought you inside the cute little log cabin that had a small kitchen, bathroom and a single bedroom. The inside was decorated with memorabilia that had been collected over the years. The cabin had charm and you couldn't help but walk around appreciating all the little momentos that made the cabin feel alive. This place was Charlie's space and you could tell he had fun times here in the past with his friends. 

“Its so nice Charlie, wow.” You told him, admiring the little metal fireplace in the corner of the living room. He saw you looking and approached to start making a fire. “You like it?” He smiled, crouching down to add logs to the fireplace. 

“Yeah, I love it.” You replied, still finding more things to look at. Everything in here had a story behind it and you couldn't wait to ask him more about his different adventures. 

“We can take a little break and eat before we go out to shoot.” He lit the fire and then stood to cross the cabin over to the fridge.

“You brought food?” You asked confused, not remembering a cooler of any kind. He open the fridge door and the fridge was fully stocked.

“I came up here yesterday to make sure we had food and other supplies we might need.” He pulled out a few things, placing them on the counter and closing the door once more. The thought of him going through all this effort for you made your belly warm and a rush of butterflies to flutter around. There was a tension in the air but it wasn't the bad kind. You went to his side to help him prepare the food. You made some steak and potatoes along with some steamed green beans. 

“My daughter showed me how to cook. Without her I would still be eating tv dinners every night.” He laughed to himself, draining the boiling water from the potatoes carefully.

“You have a daughter? I didn't know.” There were still a few things you wanted to know about him and you were curious to learn more.

“Yeah, Bella, she doesn't live with me anymore. She has a husband Edward and they live together with their daughter, Renesmee. I go visit them as much as I can nowadays.” He seemed wistful but the love that shined in his eyes made it clear the level of affection he held for his daughter and her family. 

“Hopefully, I can meet her one day.” You smiled at him warmly.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” He agreed, looking into your eyes, his dark pupils flaring slightly. He looked away, going back to preparing the food. Once you were both done, you sat and ate in a peaceful silence. Then it was time for some fun.

You fired round after round, enjoying the rare sunshine that made the day even more special. You had friendly competitions with Charlie, who liked to tease that you were cheating by distracting him. In the end you won fair and square and you celebrated by opening a beer and sitting tother in the clearing on a large fallen log. He smiled at you as you took a sip of your beer. You were a little sweaty, your hair clung to the back of your neck from the beaming heat of the sun. Charlie seemed lost in thought, so you broke the silence first.

“What are you thinking about?” You asked softly.

“I can't remember the last time I was this happy.” He said simply, and the words flared something inside you like the fire that was building before it came to a roar suddenly. It gave you the confidence you needed to say the words that had been on your mind for the past month.

“I like you Charlie.” The words came out in a single breath, softly spoken, making you feel vulnerable.

“You do?” He asked, looking at you with a fierce look of longing. His question seemed like it served for his reassurance. Like he couldn't believe that someone like you could ever like someone like him.

“Yeah, a lot.” You replied nodding, a small smile forming on your lips. You felt nervous, giddy energy bubbling inside.

“Fuck sweetheart, you sure? I am a lot older than you are.” He seemed to be having an internal battle. You did have a considerable age gap between you, but that did not stop the attraction that you felt. He was kind, charming, warm and considerate, along with incredibly hot, which helped.

“I know, but that doesn't change anything for me. If it doesn't bother you then it doesn't bother me.” You said softly, scared he would reject you after bearing yourself to him. He looked torn and intense, and it made you nervous. 

“Listen, I don't want you to think I have ill intentions. I like you too, trust me. Shit, I don't remember the last time I felt like this. It makes me feel young again.” He swore and chuckled, shaking his head.

You felt hopeful, so you decided to take a leap of faith. You knew he would never make the first move, so you did. You leaned in slowly, giving him time to pull back if he wanted to. He instead pulled in closer as well and your lips met his. The kiss started slowly as you sighed into the soft contact of your lips. His mustache brushed against your upper lip and you gently griped the back of his neck with your hand. The kiss grew more intense as he brushed his tongue against your bottom lip mid kiss. You opened up for him and let your tongue explore as well. You pulled back breathless and the both of you held each other's eyes. Heat was building low in your stomach, sending a pool of liquid to your core. 

“Do you want to go inside?” He asked gruffly, his voice thick with desire.

“Yeah.” You led the way, standing from the log and feeling charlie follow behind you. Once inside, you couldn't hold back any longer and you almost pounced on him. Turning back to him once he closed the door and pressing him up against it, resuming the kiss you shared outside. It took him a split second to return the kiss, gripping your hips firmly with strong hands. He surprised you by turning the both of you suddenly so your back was pressed against the door. You released a small breath and looped your hands around his neck. He grabbed behind your thighs and lifted you effortlessly so your legs wrapped around his torso.

 The kiss continued fierce and passionate. Your hands gripped the back of his hair slightly, tugging the short strands between your fingers, earning a rough rumble from Charlie. The sound set another wave of lust to your core. You broke the kiss panting and looked into his blazing dark eyes that devoured you. 

“Charlie, I need you.” You spoke the words sounding needy even to your own ears.

“Fuck sweetheart, are you sure?” He asked for your consent, his eyes hopeful but careful, making sure you felt comfortable.

“Yes, Ive never been more sure.” You answered with a small smile, knowing this was important to him. 

“I don't have any, um, protection, darling.” His low, almost embarrassed voice made your heart swell. You stroked your thumb on his cheek. “I'm on birth control. It's okay.” You answered, soothing his worries.

You saw the restraint in him give in that moment as he carried you to the bedroom. You felt the excitement return, and you started peppering kisses to his jaw, down his neck, over the strong column of his stubbled throat. He groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pure male pleasure and it encouraged you. He set you down gently on the queen size bed hovering over you and leaning down to return the favour. He trailed kisses down your neck to your exposed collar bones, spreading kisses across them like he was appreciating every inch of your skin. You shivered with pleasure beneath his strong frame. He gently helped you out of the flannel you wore and then the tank top and jeans, leaving you in your underwear. Then you went to work on his clothing, shedding him of his layers until he was in his boxers and socks. 

The two of you continued the frenzied kissing like horny teenagers because that's what you both felt like. He was hard and you could tell it was big. It excited you and your hand trailed down to pull out his large cock from the confines of his underwear. He let out a huff of breath and he groaned when you started stroking him slowly, teasing him a little. He sat back and pulled you up with him so you were straddling his lap. He expertly unclasped your bra, and the look of admiration and pure lust thrilled you. He spent time appreciating your breasts, kissing them, licking your hard budding nipples, and then gently nipping the tips with his teeth, sending you twitching of pleasure in his arms. He made another guttural sound of pleasure and then you were beneath him again. He was trailing kisses down your stomach, going lower and lower until he reached your soaking wet clothed mound. He peeled your wet underwear from your legs and flicked them on the floor. He looked up at you with an intense lustful gaze, his dark eyes asking before his lips spoke the words.

“Can I?” The question was almost whispered against your core, sending shivers up your spine. You nodded quickly, flustered. Your cheeks felt warm and your breathing was still a little erratic from the intensity of the moment. He dipped down to your slick folds and got to work, starting with slow teasing licks that made you crazy. Your hands instinctively flew out to grip his dark brown hair. You felt his facial hair brush against your inner thighs and it turned you on. He devoured your pussy like a starving man, with languid strokes of his tongue that increased in speed slowly, followed by slightly sucking on your sensitive clit. You pulled harder on his hair, releasing little moans and soft cries at the pleasure. He increased in speed and intensity until you felt the slow climb of your orgasm forming. It came like a crashing wave, strong and sure. The white hot pleasure peaking and sending you free falling of the ledge. Your legs shook as you came on his tongue, moaning loudly and releasing his hair to grip the sheets tightly with bunched fists. He pulled back after you were done riding the comedown of your dizzying orgasm.

“You taste so good, Princess.” He praised low and throaty from his own desire. 

“Charlie, I want your dick.” The request left you without even thinking, you were still hypnotized from the rush of coming hard for him. He seemed pleased at the words and he pulled down his boxer briefs, his fully erect dick touching his happy trail. He was a good 7 inches for sure and the sight of him in his full glory made your mouth water. He positioned himself until he was lined up to your slick entrance and then, with a smooth slow thrust, he pushed in. The feeling of him filling you slowly was exquisite. He groaned and squeezed his eyes shut in pleasure.

“Fuck you're so tight.” He cursed under his breath as he started to test out a few thrusts. You moaned as he slowly picked up the pace. He braced himself on his elbows, caging you into him and sending his smell to flood your senses. He smelled faintly of pine and sweat and it turned you on more than any expensive cologne could. He fucks you deep, powerful thrusts and your moans increase in volume. He looks down into your eyes with lust, sweat beading on his forehead from the exertion. He lets out little groans and muffled curses as he fucks you. 

“You're so pretty when I fuck you, sweetheart.” He coos, pounding into you and sending you close to a second orgasm already. 

“Fuck yes Charlie.” You moan out his name, clutching the surrounding sheets in pleasure. 

Your back arches and you feel one of his strong, calloused hands on the small of your back, holding you up and pressing your front to his chest as he thrusts into you fast and strong. 

Your sensitive nipples rub against his hairy chest and it sends sparks of electricity through your body as you feel the peak of your second orgasm approaching. It rocks through your body and you pull him in for a needy kiss. You come while kissing him, breaking apart to moan out his name as you convulse in his powerful grip. Your toes curl, your back arching even more and then you come even harder than the last time. Your vision blurs a little as you come down from the high, still pressed close to a panting Charlie, who came at the same time. He pulls out slowly and then stands to grab tissues from the wooden side table next to the bed. He wipes you first, then himself. Then he approaches where you sit at the edge of the bed, watching him with a loving smile. He settles into the bed, pulling you close to him, and you cuddle with him in the drowsy post orgasm haze. His hairy chest serves as your pillow as you gently stroke his shoulder and then trail your fingers on his chest. You sigh happily.

“You know that was the best sex I've ever had.” He smiles down at you, flashing you with one of those breathtaking smiles.

“Me too.” You agree, smiling wider and then pulling him in for another kiss. 

[witchygagirlwrites]

Rebound

Jay Halstead x Reader (Nicknamed Jinx)

You were everything he needed after Erin but then you left without a word and he had no clue what he did until six months later you come home and act like nothing ever happened between the two of you.

Jinx. That’s what everyone called you. When you joined intelligence Jay hadn’t really overthought the nickname. Hell you were a damn good cop, had everyone’s back and wasn’t afraid of digging your heels in for a fight. It wasn’t long before even Voight was calling you by Jinx. 

You were assigned as Kevin’s partner when you first joined. The image of your  five foot something frame keeping pace with Kevin on the daily was a sight indeed. People liked you, you were a bit unpredictable at times but never in a dangerous way. More so in a “Where’s Jinx?” “Oh she’s getting witness statements while playing hop scotch with the kids” way.

You wore black boots most of the time, ones that looked more suited to be on the back of a Harley than on a detective’s feet. A smile would  always find your face for any kid that happened to be on a scene yet when it came to a takedown you would be neck deep against men twice your size and never blink twice.  

A few days after Erin left Jay walked into the bullpen and Voight called him into his office. “Yeah Sarge?” Voight nodded back out to the bullpen where you were walking up the stairs, talking to Kim “Jinx’s your partner now that Erin’s gone”

“Who’s Kev gonna partner with?” Jay questioned. “He’ll be with Kim, Ruzek will be with Upton. This is gonna take some getting used to, for all of us Jay but I think you’ll be a good fit for you” Jay nodded, he didn’t really care either way so it didn’t matter to him “Should I tell her or are you?” 

Voight shrugged “You can tell her because I need you to roll out and reinterview that witness from the shooting two days ago. Take her with you, she seems to have a better way with people than you” Jay scoffed “Thanks” and walked out into the bullpen.

“Jinx” he called your name and you glanced up as you were taking your jacket off “Sup Halstead?” “Don’t take your jacket off. Voight is changing up partners apparently. You’re with me now” you nodded slowly “Ok, we rolling out?” he nodded “Gotta reinterview a witness” you smiled slightly “Lead the way then” and grabbed your travel mug of coffee and cell phone off your desk.

____________________

You sat in the passenger seat of his truck, silently going over the statements you’d gotten.  He cut his eyes at you twice before you glanced at him “Are you ok Jay?” he shrugged “Yeah, what do you mean?” you shrugged “Well you keep looking at me for one and for two, everything that’s happened as of late” 

He watched you for a second, trying to gauge if it was being nosy or just honestly caring and the striking realisation hit him that you really just cared. “I’m ok, honestly” you smiled “Ok” and turned back to the statements. He cut his eyes at you again and you grinned “Is there anything else?” he nodded, eyes flicking back to the road since the light had turned green “Where did the nickname Jinx come from?” you turned slightly in the seat or as far as the seatbelt would allow anyways to face him “Why do you ask?”

He waved a hand at you  “You’ve been upstairs for a while. I’ve known you for a while. Don’t seem like a jinx to me” you nodded “Yeah, when I was a kid I messed up at school a lot. A play I was working on the props for went sideways. Science project kind of blew up when it wasn’t supposed to. Some kids started calling me Jinx. I told uncle Russ. He rolled it around a little and kind of laughed then told me sounds badass kid, you rock that shit so I did. I took what they meant as an insult and turned it into something more. Now Jinx is just me”

He felt a smile slip onto his face at the long awaited explanation of your nickname “I like your uncle Russ already” you shook your head “I don’t know about that now. Haven’t the army and marines always had some sort of feud between them?” Jay groaned playfully “Ugh, you were raised by a marine? Sweetheart, that explains so much”  you shook your head “Easy Halstead, I also was trained by a marine long before I ever dreamt of the academy” he grinned “Threatening me already? Looks like this partnership is starting off well huh?”

Jay never meant to get in a relationship with another partner but by the time six months hit he was asking you out. By the time seven months hit you were sleeping together. He found himself enamored by you. Your smile, your laugh, your touch. The tattoo of a bird breaking free of its cage that graced your back, the scars littered over your body rather from injuries on the job or just stupidity as a kid. 

You fixed that spot inside of him that had been broken for so long. you weren't just his partner and his girlfriend, you were his best friend.

You were being distant from Jay and it was starting to worry him. Were you leaving him? Had you found someone else? God either idea made his stomach churn.

It was around seven when his phone rang and he breathed a sigh of relief at seeing your name flash across the screen along with a photo of you and him, all dolled up from the last CPD banquet. You’d made him put that as your contact photo. He would’ve preferred the photo of you wearing an old shirt and boxers around his place.

“Hey sweetheart” he answered and a smile slipped onto his face when you said “Hey baby, can I come over?” he laughed lightly “Don’t ever even ask that. Just come over” 

________________________

The moment he answered the door you pulled him into a kiss and he felt every worry he’d had before that moment fade at the feeling of your lips on his. He pulled back for just a second and smiled at you “What’s with the mood change, not that I’m complaining” you shrugged “I missed you” he grinned “Then let me make sure you miss me again once you leave here” before he picked you up and carried you through his place to the bedroom.

He laid you down on the bed and you pulled him on top of you “I just want you Jay, please just touch me” you begged and the urgency in your voice made a warning bell go off in his head. “Honey, are you sure you’re ok?” he asked, leaning up to look at you but christ the moment you tugged at his shirt and whispered “Please Jay” he forgot anything else but pleasing you.

 He woke up the next morning, alone in his bed. The feeling of your lips on his still lingering in his mind, your nail marks still raised on his back. Flashes on the night before playing through his mind. “Sweetheart?” he called out and there was no answer so he climbed out of the bed, slipping his boxers on “Honey?” he tried knowing you’d normally respond to that but when you didn’t reply he realized your trail of clothes from the living room to his bedroom were gone.

Ok, maybe you had to run home before work. You’d done that before. It was normal. He’d get dressed and stop by that coffee shop you liked to take your usual order into work.

____________________

When he pulled into the parking lot he clocked your suv not being there and his stomach twisted. He pushed it down. You’d gotten rides in before. Hell you’d gotten Russ to drop you off on his Harley even.

He parked and walked in. He made his way upstairs and you weren’t at your desk or in the breakroom and he saw the way Kevin and Hailey looked at him with pity in their eyes. What was going on? “Halstead, my office” Voight called so he sat the coffee down on his desk and walked into Voight’s office. 

“Where’s Jinx?” he asked and Voight looked confused “She didn’t tell you?” “Tell me what?” Jay questioned and Voight handed him a piece of paper “She took a position with Benson’s unit to work a temp task force. She’ll be gone for a while” “What?” Jay felt his heart drop to his feet. You left him. You left him and he didn’t even know what he did. You didn’t even tell him. What the hell was he supposed to do? “I didn’t know” he whispered.

Six months. You had been gone for six freaking months. Jay woke up every morning and went to work, staring across the room at your empty desk. He parked next to your parking spot, he avoided the coffee shop you loved. He had your photos on his wall. His wallpaper on his phone was that picture of you laid across his chest. Neither of you had a shirt on but your chest was against his so the only thing to the camera was your back and your tattoo. You were looking up at him with a smile, the smile that made his heart flip. He couldn’t find it in himself to change it.

 He hadn’t known what he did. He’d tried so hard to be a good boyfriend, he really had. He’d even gone to your uncle. Just trying to get you to talk to him. He knew you were safe at least because you replied to Kim and Hailey. That was his solace.

__________________

Jay stopped at the palm scanner then when the gate popped he pulled it open and slowly walked up the stairs. Luckily they weren’t on an active case at the moment. When he got to the bullpen he froze at the top of the stairs. He wasn’t sure if he could believe his eyes. “Jinx?”

You turned around slowly and smiled “Hey Jay” 

__________________

Your heart was in your throat just seeing him, you knew this moment was coming. You knew you’d be home eventually. Six months had felt like forever. Staring across the four feet or so separating you and Jay, those six months may as well have been six seconds because your heart still felt raw on your sleeve when it came to this man, those seafoam blue eyes holding you in place “Hey Jay”

He took a step towards you, that damn smile that could talk you into damn near anything on earth working its way onto his face “You’re home? For good?” you nodded “The position with Sergeant Benson was only six months. My heart is in Chicago” he stared at you for a heartbeat and god you wanted nothing more than to just melt into him but those echoes from months before hit your ears all over again. “Rebound” was a word you’d rather choke on than live.

@desimarie12

“Jinx, my office” Voight called out and for once you were grateful. You motioned back towards him with your head “Gotta talk to the boss. I’ll catch up with you later” he nodded “Ok” so you turned and walked towards Voight, shoving your hands in your jacket pockets and taking a deep breath. You would be ok, you had no other choice.

Mistake

@nevaehstreater18

[s-4pphics]

mourn. teaser (e.w.)

TEASER. 

WORD COUNT: eight thirty :3

WARNINGS: streetracer!ellie, dealer!oc, heavy angst, HEAVY MENTIONS OF ADDICTION AND VIOLENCE IN THE FUTURE, no one’s a good person bc i’m grieving 

A/N: sad

fck neil drukman. zios will d!e.

FEBRUARY, 2019

Ellie’s fist comes down hard on your front door, the aged and loosened wood rattling with the desperate punctures from her twitchy hand. You’re always here. You never miss a fucking phone call. Why won’t you open the fucking door? Her chest falls rapidly like oxygen is limited. The winds are seconds away from crushing her bones into dust, it seems. Panicked curses fall from her mouth; How did you allow her to get this far? Her throat swells in warning as her eyes fill. C’mon… c’mon, you fucking bitch—

Her palm twists around the doorknob, rattling it, strangling it, begging for it to loosen so you can deliver what you promised. You never fucking miss her calls. She whimpers like a dog when the lock doesn’t shutter. You have to fucking be here. 

She doesn’t realize she’s begging with her mouth against the wood. Anyone she can; her mother, God, for you to fucking be home and save her from misery. She’s freezing and fiends to shed her skin like a snake. 

Fucking stupid bitch, Ellie gasps. Her first breath in what felt like years, Open the motherfucking do—

Ellie?

Her eyes, tearful and lost, find yours. Clad in all black with her vice thrown over your shoulder, guarded by your more than recognizable bright orange duffel. Ellie nearly drools at the sight, Please… please let me in, I’m gonna fucking die—

She has angered you in an instant, face twisting with creases between your brows. You always are when she shows up unannounced. In her defense, she warned you before she wandered upon your place. Dialed your number for an hour straight. 

I fucking told you a billion times—

I know, I know—

You trek until you’re in front of her, snarling your teeth like a lion, You don’t fucking know. You’re— Palms connect with Ellie’s chest and she stutters back, — I fucking told you no. Find somebody else. 

Ellie’s rebuttal is sharp as she grips your wrist, There’s no one fucking else and you know it. Don’t pull this shit right now—

You scoff and shove her off to unlock your door. She hates how her mind whirs to shove you to the side and steal away with your bag. Take your drunk ass home—

She fails to deny her intoxication. The stabbing pains in her side won’t allow it, And if I don’t? The fuck are you gonna do? Ellie snorts and it’s dark. Shoot me in the goddamn face? … Call the cops? 

Your door is unlocked, but you don’t open it. She can feel exhaustion radiating off you. It weighs her down. You weigh her down. She hates what you’ve done to her. If anything, you owe her for the damage you’ve caused. So, she preys. Claws at the one inkling of leverage she has over you. The only thing you’ll never back away from. 

Ellie’s eyes go soft. A ploy she’s mastered over the years. I love you so much… You can’t leave me like this… Your sharp exhale is painful to digest. She pads closer with tightly clenched fists; watches yours clutch the knob of the entrance as grounding. I won’t do it here. I promise, She whispers and watches your shoulders droop. Pride disguised as guilt sparks in her chest. She can practically taste euphoria. 

Ellie… Your voice shakes. She’s instantly transported back to high school. The ache in your strained call still remains. Dejected. 

Yes? Her reply is sweet as candy, and she knows she’s got you. Fingers jump underneath the cuff of her jacket sleeve. Eager, anticipating the rush of crushed pills in her nose. 

You’re heaving, chest rising and falling at an increased pace with tearful eyes glued to your rusted roof. All before you choke, If I ever see you again, I’ll rip your fucking throat out. 

Every time Ellie believes she’s grown used to your aggression, she’s proven wrong. Your anger causes her body to lock, feet glued to the floor as her expression drops. You manage to throw yourself into the shack you call home, door slamming in her face and lock clicking, trapping her in icy wind. 

NO! Nonononono—

Ellie’s screaming into the void, screeching like a banshee on cracked concrete as she kicks at your door with a weighted heel. 

On the other side, you drop to the floor, stocked duffel flung as far away from you as humanly possible in your hysteria. Your sobs are earth-shattering and your chest cracks open, scratching at unkept hardwood as you recall how the fuck you got here. There’s no future, no hope, no anything for you. For your best friend whom you’ve destroyed. You’ve ruined her. 

Ruined yourself in fire. 

[nakamatoo]

Marvel ya'll gotta do some business voodoo shit to get sony to play ball and allow Spiderman to show up in season 2. How does it makes sense that you have a city wide ban on vigilantes where cops are shooting people with masks on sight, and Spider man isn't going to be involved somehow???

Like where are you bro?? Your city is in danger and you're just sleeping in you one room apartment being sad???

[constanttea]

Employment Status: It's Complicated

Chapter One: Workplace Crush

༻⋆ Chapter Two: Meant to Be ༻⋆。

Where did your pull to this life begin?

There is a certain kind of pain in being perceived when you do not want to be. A cruel embarrassment that rises within you is paralleled by a rising rage and restlessness, a hunger, and not one that will satiated with ease. How troublesome indeed. Off work early and needing reprieve as nervous energy shoots through you, almost painfully so, the minutes and hours blur by. You pace. You walk. You people watch. 

People watching has always held a sort of calming effect for you. Go to a coffee shop with a book, buy a drink, and watch. Places with customer service interactions that take place in the open always have such juicy sights. Diners are another good place to hit. One that makes for good evening entertainment is a bar when you’re in the mood, but bars also have the tendency to put you in the line of fire. You met Peter Lukas in a bar once. He bought you a drink, you chatted, and then you went home. You turned him and his rugged loneliness down. The walk home was cold and long that night, but you know it was the right decision. 

You consider yourself a rather ordinary person that has simply had a lot of bad luck–a lot of wrong places at the wrong time. 

In college, you were having a short review with a teacher over your horrid performance on a rather major exam when that teacher died–a heart attack–it happens. You recall the sight, the way his eyes were in that moment. The sharpness of his groans of pain cracking against your eardrums, the sound annoying you. As he clutched at his chest, the fabric of his shirt crinkled beneath his hand for a moment, clutching turning to clawing. His lips slick and shiny with liquid, a dry cough heaving his shoulders, the sound like rocks scraping against each other. How he collapsed and tumbled to the ground, eyes rolled up into the back of his head.  You knew he was beyond help when you called for it. Reaching out was about going through the motions. The more efficient you were, the sooner you could fade back into the background again. They informed you that you couldn’t have done much, and you got to move on as if it never happened. Some teachers gave you extensions on homework, some didn’t. Life went on.

There was the time when the dorm across from yours had some sort of a bug problem. The end result of that event was also death. The email that went out to the student body bemoaned mysterious circumstances, but you knew there was so much more to it than that. It was a slow infection that spread over the course of a semester before finally taking down the student. Thank god it did, they never respected quiet hours. It was a sort of torture living across from them and having to hear them every night. Always with another girl. Always boring her out of her mind with the most mundane mediocre guitar performances of a lifetime. You are no stranger to the surprise guitar date. It was the worst when he got a new amp. Who allowed that?

You weren’t very sympathetic when you saw the first signs. A trail of ants into his room, crawling right below the overhang of the trim in the hallway. Not just anyone would have noticed it, but you were always watching things. A wasp nest under his window outside his dorm. A small thing that grew and grew, just like the density of ants crawling into his room. One time at the cafeteria, he threw a fit over maggots in his food. The whole building knew then because how could they not? What a grating voice! When his body was heaved away, it was in a bag by people in hazard suits. The cops investigated for about half a day, but no more than that. They also didn’t appear to be taking it very seriously. You saw one pick their nose even, flicking a hard dried fleck of blood off into a corner. What were they supposed to do about the bugs anyway?

An ache crackles to life at the back of your skull. No, it all began much earlier than all that. The watching went all the way back to your childhood. It went back to that evening in the park after school. 

The wind tasted sharp like a cold soda, drawing out in you a hunger, an ache that would haunt you all your life. You were playing then, running between the swings and slides, the wind spiking at your exposed knees. One of the other children stopped in their tracks, you colliding into them. They pointed at a dark van parked across the street, announcing something.

“Creepy van.”

The words sent a ripple through the group. There was no discussion, just the unspoken instinct that came with childhood. Everyone split in different directions, and you found yourself taking the same path as the kid who had signalled the alarm, your breath tight in your chest, shoes pounding against the dirt.

You cannot forget the moment when you climbed over the fence, the rough metal biting into your palms, the sharp tug as your thigh caught on it. A tear split through your skin, but you barely felt it, too focused on the sound behind you—a gruff voice, heavy footsteps. You didn’t dare look back until you hit the ground on the other side, the other kid landing beside you in a tangle of limbs and scuffed knees. Then, breathless, you turned.

There he was. Watching. As if to say, “I could have had you.”

The playground was never the same after. You never spoke about it, but you knew. Your legs still bore the memory of scars from that night. 

You have no proof. Just the memory, just the feeling.

That is the moment when the watching started for you. It’s when everything in you started to change like the way your parents looked at you. The fear that your mother seemed to hold for you. Her eyes always betrayed her, no matter what words escaped her lips. It’s always been in the eyes. 

After that, there is just so much that has happened, and you are always there somehow. 

Elias is different, special. He is a watcher too, and it is always so hard to take your eyes off him. Watch or be watched. No matter how much you watch him, he always catches you, which is exciting. It is so entirely new. Elias is the fun shiny toy, but it has been made clear to you that you are nowhere near his league, many times in fact.

Working at the archives happens to be another of those funny occurrences of chance. The funny chance being, you were looking for work, and nothing had seemed right. You were turning in job applications and never getting responses back. Your mail was disappearing, and your roommate was seeing things, doors specifically. You hadn’t known them that well in the beginning, it is a roommateship of convenience because who can afford rent these days? You get along well enough to live together and keep living together. There are the few things they do that annoy you of course, but so is tolerating interacting with people on a daily basis.  

Like they have this habit of putting their shoes on before they leave the house and tracking everything through the house. What's the point of taking your shoes off when you get in if you're just going to scuffle all the dirt around on the way out? 

And they were convinced your apartment was haunted. You just thought you were poor. What place isn’t haunted by a couple things? Their concern and paranoia reached a breaking point one day, and they went to some institute that researches paranormal occurrences. 

What a day that was. They came back home that evening, face drawn, eyes darting to the corners of the room as if expecting something to emerge. You asked how it went, and they hesitated before muttering something about researchers and archivists, how the place wasn’t quite a library but felt like one. Dim, dusty, strange. There was an older woman who wasn’t as frail as she looked, sitting at a desk nearby while they wrote out their statement.

You remember the way your fingers paused over your laptop keyboard at that. Data entry? Archivists? You needed a job. You needed something to do with yourself before the restlessness swallowed you up. Your applications had been going nowhere, and even your walks had become less satisfying. People watching alone wasn’t enough these days. 

So, you went.

As you stood before the Institute, you realized it hadn’t been difficult to find, not really. Places like this had a way of calling to people, of drawing them in when the moment was right.

The air inside pressed against your skin, thick with something unseen, something heavy. It wasn’t dust or age, though there was plenty of both. It was the quiet weight of something waiting.

You asked about openings, and the response was immediate. No hesitation. No forms. Just a nod and a gesture toward the stairs—more than you would have liked, each step burning a little more than the last. By the time you reached the higher floor, your breath came uneven, though you barely had time to catch it before you were met with a sugary smile.

The assistant was the cute, chatty type. The kind who collected information as easily as breathing, who knew things she shouldn’t, simply by virtue of being there. She waved you in with a sugary smile, the kind that told you she was a bit of a gossip at the most bearable of times and a simple, “You can go see Elias now.” 

Elias.

That name. There was a shiver that crawled up your spine as she said it because you knew what she was going to say before the words left her. You didn’t know how.

The moment you stepped into his office, he was already looking at you.

Not in the way others did. There was no wariness or fear; none of that guarded tightness that always told you people were trying not to meet your gaze for too long. No, Elias looked at you like he had been expecting you. 

He smiled, steepling his fingers together atop his desk. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.” His voice had edges. It was smooth, deliberate, inescapable.

And that feeling, the one curling deep in your chest, sharpened. The sense that this was not happenstance. That you had been moving toward this moment from the very beginning, tracing the edges of inevitability without ever realizing it. 

For the first time in a long time, you felt seen.

Truly, utterly, entirely seen, and that was so incredibly thrilling. Elias was a book you picked up and couldn’t put down. The searing brightness of staring into the sun and not being able to look away. You wanted to imprint every corner of his existence into the lens of your eyes. 

What a thrill!

Chapter Three: Job Titles

Master Post

[mintytrifecta]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/66688117/chapters/172055728

------------

Rick doesn't see the way he used to. As most people get older their sight just gets worse and worse and eventually goes away entirely.

But not him.

With time, his sight has only gotten better.

And as he feels the mechanic gears behind his fake eyeball itch, and sees his dead daughter in front of him, he realizes that's maybe where the problem starts.

----------

The Ship of Theseus Has Nothing On Me (chapter 1 of 2)

The Federation gets more scummy with each planet they attack and, personally speaking, Rick's getting pretty tired of seeing just how low their newest low is.

Their latest hit? An inhabited moon in some far off corner of an unnamed galaxy, altogether inconspicuous and inevitable to miss unless you already heard of it by some guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, or lived there, occupied by the Symnemonians.

The Symnemonians are a peaceful race, a batesian divergent evolution of their much more dangerous parasitic sister species to which their home orbits the planet of. Unlike their parasite brethren, these guys can't create new people out of memories, but instead reach into the subliminal, innermost mind to take in a subjective form depending on the person viewing them.

Friends, real or imaginary, family, even a stranger you could've met ten years ago ordering coffee from a shop that overpriced everything and you were stuck in line with them and heard them cough in a weird way that you can never forget.

Y’know, normal people to remember.

The more interaction around them, the deeper the illusion gets and the more you believe their form. Like a psychic venom the creature never means to spew.

And the Feds want to kidnap their young to utilize their abilities for disguise and leave the rest charred beyond even subconscious recognition. Disgusting fuckers.

The battle itself hasn't gone too bad. With the Flesh Curtains at the helm and the rest of the rebellion never far behind, it was an easy victory, especially against the considerably small fleet they sent. Either they're getting scared and finally backing off, or it's an ambush and they're going to track down and merc’ Rick and his allies when their guards are down.

Eh, that's what the satellite voltron-mech guards orbiting their ship are for. They'll be fine.

Rick fiddles with the scanner in his hands as he surveys the rubble. They'd split off into different groups to look for survivors, Federation or inhabitants for either information or to heal, depending on who it is. Rick teamed up with Squanch and BP, who were currently interrogating a Fed footsoldier with all the grace and mercy of a bad 1960s good-cop/bad-cop act. Well, with those two it's more like unstable-cop and emotionally-constipated cop, but Rick digresses.

The scanner is a prototype that if built right (and it was made by Rick so it is, in fact, built right), would allow the wearer to see the Symnemonian through an objective, unfiltered lens. The Federation might shoot its own hostages, but with these babies the rebellion would always be able to see friend from stupid bug-ass foe. Currently, the tech it runs on can only detect biometrics with a written indicator to whatever it locks on, but it was enough to carry them through today, so Rick’d count it as a success.

The only issue he found, really, is that everyone in the rebellion comes from a different world and as such, has differently functioning eyes. He'd had to make specialized visors that mold to a specific person's eyes to bypass that hurdle. Scan not only the outside perspective but the internal biology of the wearers vision and mind. Flexible, specialized (and highly volatile), but more functional than anyone else has ever managed before. Now that's Rick's kind of tech.

He steps over a pile of yellow-ashen bricks, the chatter of his friends getting further away as he surveys the next area over.

There's a lot to improve on the design, Rick muses as he walks, boots crunching the rubble under him. For starters, he'd love to actually be able to see the Symnemonian true form instead of just indicating that's what they are. Going a step further would help to see injuries and assess their medical needs perfectly. He'd probably need to actually get one of them up close to do a whole-body scan to get that much information out of them, but once he can do that with just these species it'd be a sinch to do it for more advanced lifeforms. Gas-based aliens, fifth-dimensional beings, hell, Rick could even see the true form of a god and be able to know exactly what nerve to pinch for it to drop in a second!

But first things first, he should probably get the device to its full capacity. If he could scrounge around for parts maybe he could-

A wail sounds in the distance, catching Rick in his steps.

He stops, listening again in case his ears are tricking him. A beat passes, then another, and another, and-

There it is again. He knows that voice.

Rick's eyes widen and his casual stride turns into a full sprint, activating his jet boots to give the slightest push forward, Rick races his heart's rapid pace with the fall of his feet to the origin of the voice.

Okay, okay, so the species takes forms from memories, but they don't control what they appear as; the only real indicator of their true livelihood is their age. They never transform into anything relatively older or younger than what they are, that's the only control they've got over their appearance. And judging by the sound, it can't be older than a teenager, if that at all.

The wailing grows to its apex as Rick comes to a standstill before a collapsed building. Its interior is nothing but dust and support structures in pieces. Rick scans the area, squinting in the harsh debris-filled atmosphere to see-

Oh. That's why he recognized the voice. It's been years since he'd imagined it accurately, much longer than that he's actually heard it, but there's zero doubt about it.

He skids to his knees, gently putting an arm behind the being’s head, raising her bloodied torso up from the ground. Their legs are stuck under rubble and even from this angle he can tell they're shattered beyond repair–even with his knowledge of first aid he doesn't have any supplies with him besides what can fit in his coat–and their arms can only flail around helplessly, each finger twisted beyond recognition.

His little girl looks up to him, reaching her hands out to cup his face, tear tracks dyed with the color of her own insides, and cries a desperate, harrowing plea.

“Daddy!” Beth screams, somehow piercing his eardrums more than his already erupting heart. “Daddy, help!”

Rick's wide eyes fight to close as his hands tremble more and more under the weight of what he's holding. He knows, he knows, they have no control over this. That his mind just plucked this form to put over an alien he can't comprehend, that his little girl is dead and gone and has been for years and Rick's had zero problems leaving other beings for dead before and this shouldn't be any different and-

“Daddy, please!”

Rick snaps his eyes open, hyperventilating and attempting to stay calm as he grabs her small, fragile hand by the palm and lowers it, staring deep onto her scared eyes reflecting his own.

“Hey, hey, breathe, okay? You're gonna be just fine, you just need to breathe first, alright kiddo?” He lays her arms and torso down again slowly before shedding his coat off with one arm, keeping another hand tight on her grip, rifling through his supplies to see if literally anything he brought could be of use.

His daughter or not, this is a child, injured and distressed, and it's Rick's responsibility (as a parent-) as a freedom fighter to help them.

First of all, she's got a jagged wire bar sticking through their midsection, Rick can take it out and cauterize the wound to keep it from bleeding, but if the internal organs look like a human’s, he could just be causing damage to her actual form. Other than that, there's a gash on her head, bleeding from the temple and down to her eyelid and ears, which themselves look ruptured and red. Her pupils are unfocused, maybe a concussion (can these beings even get concussions? What if it's his own brain assuming it and filling in the details? Rick tries thinking back to his time learning every bit of medical science he can and comes up empty, all he can think of is his little girl-) at best and a sign of severe brain damage at worst. Her legs–fuck, he has no idea how to even get them out of there without amputation or some very fast, very impressive jerryrigging to lift a ton-heavy stone stretching back at least 20 feet.

Fuck, okay, wire first. Rick doesn't want to risk jostling it so he'll cut the majority out, give an inch or two of bloody levity still in that he can take out once (if) he can move her to a sterile location. He's got a plasma knife that can cut through the densest gromflomite exoskeleton, which takes care of that hurdle easily, and he can use it to seal up the flooding gash on her forehead as well.

“Okay, can you hear me,” Rick begins, cutting himself off from adding ‘sweetie’ last minute at (his daughter's-) the aliens' frantic wheezing nod. “ ‘Kay I can stop the bleeding on your head, but you need to be very still, got it? Otherwise it-it'll just hurt even more.”

She nods again, half understanding what he said, half just trusting him to take the reigns and save her.

Rick carefully moves her blonde (so, so beautiful, like the golden silk of her mother's-) hair away from the wound, clumps of blood and dust trying to form the world's worst gauze pad using the hair above it. It's a sick sight. Deep and long and absolutely an inevitable infection in the making. Rick hisses quietly. If he cauterizes it now, it might be worse down the line, but if he leaves it open, there's no telling how much blood she'll lose. He needs her alive now, infection be damned–she needs to keep her blood inside of her, first.

He takes a steady hand, setting the blade just above her skin, and moves slowly down, not pressing any further in than he has to. Below him, the alien screams, tears back at full force as she calls out for her dad and she sounds so much like Beth did when she broke her leg, once, from her first time on horseback, so excited and restless and falling in a minute and the memory is shoved right to the forefront of his mind that Rick can't help himself, and his own tears start flowing.

“It's okay, Beth, it's okay, Dad's here. Your daddy's here and you're gonna be just fine, you hear me?” He repeats over and over again, but he can't tell if he's doing it for her or for himself now.

After an eternity, he lifts the blade and all but chucks it to the dirt near him, clutching Beth's forehead to his own, caressing her cheeks with bloodied fingers.

He can't save her like this, he thinks as he shushes her weeps. He can't tell what's broken or what's an illusion. His little girl is in his arms, bloodied and bruised and he can't even fix her the way he could have.

Rick lifts his head, frantically whipping his vision back and forth until he lands on the scanner prototype, and his ears start ringing.

He has all the knowledge in the world about medical science, all he needs is to be able to see it. He just needs to see what's wrong. He can get her stab wound cleaned, he can heal or make her better legs than ever before, he can fix her temple and arms and everything else under the sun, he just needs to see it first.

He takes a shaking hand off her head, reaching for the unopened visor. He grips it tight, the blood coating his hands making the material slippery, but gets it close anyway. Rick activates its molding protocol, and the metal bends and whirs as it gets ready to take over and enhance whatever material it's attached to.

Setting it down, Rick reaches again for the plasma blade, rolling the reddened handle in his hand.

He needs to see. He needs to save his daughter and see. He can't risk it powering off. Can't risk it slipping out of place.

(What he doesn't register is the quieting thrashing beside him. The wheezing turning into shallow sighs, arms slowing their distressed reach-)

Rick lifts the blade, its point glinting a bright yellow for just one moment, and plunges it deep in one swift motion.

He screams, both hands on the blade, vision dark and bright and all encompassing and nothing at the same time.

It hurts. It hurts and he feels exactly where the blade cuts close to his socket at the bottom and scratches his top eyelid. His brain blades in oranges and yellows that aren't there as everything from his sclera to his now non-existent pupil is drowned in sunset crimson. Every nerve remaining stands on end as it reconciles with its inevitable end. There's a horrible squelch as he digs the blade deeper, effectively slicing whatever was left in two, held together by the optic nerve too in his head for the plasma to reach.

(He can see his daughter, he can see her smile brighter than the summer sun, he can see his wife, caring and grounded and ready for anything. He can see nothing but them, and soon he'll be able to see his daughter in front of him. She's in the ground and he can help her this time. He can save her like he could never before. He can see her soon.)

With a keening whine, Rick twists the handle.

The blade comes out with a long wet pop, his eyeball stuck firmly on the plasma, iris cauterized, rips out of his optic nerve with an audible snap. His own blood gushes out and his head aches, a deep resounding and sharp pain. Rick reaches swiftly for his scanner, the material slipping in and out of his grip until he manages to shove it under his eyelid with a scratching cry. Rick yells, hunching over himself in an attempt to stop the blood and shape the scanner to its correct form.

He can feel the metal fluid work its way around his burned eye socket. Rounded as it may be, the shelled layers scratch at his orbicularis oculi muscles, a microchipped edge digs deeper in, reaching the least damaged nerve of his optic nerve so it can start pulling knowledge and implant true images.

He feels the sensation of buzzing more, then hears it as the ferro-fluid-like wire molds and attaches to the nerve endings, pushing at the walls of his socket until it's firmly settled.

It was never meant to go this deep. It's his only solution.

Rick groans, wiping the still-flowing blood over his eyelid and uses two fingers to pry it open so it doesn't crust up and seal it in.

His remaining visioneye blurs with tears, tinted rose from the smears careening over his face, Beth's form trembling on his knees. The dust billowing across the maroon earth looks just the same as her wound in his low-definition sight, a fact unhelpful even as the scanner begins its visual processing.

It's not black, but an orange that overtakes his entire left side, inputs of a billion different data points at once flood his already overwhelmed mind and begin his screaming anew. Rick tries pushing through, focusing directly on Beth in front of him by leading a free hand to her…still chest.

It's too still. Rick finds his own imitates hers, but falls short of the intensity.

Warning messages blare through his eye, reading in loud flashes.

[DEAD]

[HEARTBEAT NOT FOUND]

[LIFE FORM UNIDENTIFIED]

[BLOOD CLOT IN PREFRONTAL CORTEX FOUND]

[DEAD]

[DEAD]

[DEAD]

[DEAD]

Over and over again, louder than any siren he's ever heard. Rick yells, throwing himself around Beth's shriveled corpse, battle robe becoming heavy and wet and stained with colors he wishes could've just come from him instead. He rocks her back and forth, whispering softly to her. Yeah, rocking her will help. She liked to be rocked as a baby, he remembers. She liked to be rocked.

Rick's head swims, he feels his body get lighter and lighter, his one good eye unable to see anything in front of him while his new one burns an accursed sunset hue into his brain.

He rests his forehead on hers, long strands of blue blanketing her from any danger she could ever come across.

His baby girl will be fine. She's not dead, his scanner is just wrong. He'll fix her, he won't let her die this time. She'll be okay…. She'll be okay…. She'll be-

A hand barely settles on his shoulder and Rick flinches violently, shielding Beth tight from the possible assailant. He shivers, growling in warning at the threat, unable to let his daughter out of his sight.

“Rick. You appear to be severely injured and distressed. You need medical attention as soon as possible.”

Violently shaking his aching head, Rick spits out, “No!” slurring as blood drops from his mouth. “No, you can't make me… you can't make me leave her!”

Behind him, the figure makes no further move, but speaks again, after a beat. “Rick, there is no one in front of you. What you are seeing is an illusion created to cause you distress. You need to be taken away from it.”

Rick clutches her shirt so hard it almost tears, snarling. “Don't you dare! Don't you dare hurt her!”

“Man, I know in the state you are it's squanch to believe, but we're here to help you, alright? We're not gonna hurt anyone.” A second voice chimes in, causing Rick to gasp, choking on a vile mix of his own saliva and blood. The air gets harder to breathe, sulfur and copper staining his nose.

Fuck, fuck, he can't let them get to her. She's hurt already and there's more than one enemy and his weapons somewhere else and he can't fight them and hold her at the same time. Rick whines, burrowing his head in the crook of her neck.

A hand comes back to his shoulder, gripping it and not letting go this time, Rick freezes. “Who you are looking at is a fake, Rick. I am sorry for this, but you need to let it go and come back with us.”

There's a sudden yank on his shoulder, ripping him away from the small figure and onto the ground. Rick lies, sprawled, panting and shaking. His eye scans the overhead clouds, reading off every piece of matter that makes up the smoke in the sky, every cloud formation available and the weather both of the past and future. Whatever grip remains on him pushes past Rick's wails and shaking arms reaching out toward his daughter.

He fights, kicking and screaming and balling his bloodied hands into fists to drive his assailants away. Doing so only gives them an edge to grab his arms without warning and lift him into a secure hold tucked deeply into someone's soft but tense chest. Rick pushes, blaring through the warning signs and information flooding his overused brain, headbutting whatever he can to rid himself of the words across his eyes.

He screams. “NO!” Bright and blaring, scratching his throat. “NO! YOU CAN'T TAKE ME FROM HER!”

His breathing picks up as his kidnappers start their trek away from his daughter.

“BETH!” Rick tries extending a hand out. “IT’S GONNA BE OKAY, BETH! DAD'S HERE, DADDY'S HERE, HE’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE, I'M HERE BETH JUST HOLD ON, JUST LET ME GO BACK TO HER, PLEASE-”

Someone faintly is shushing him, cradling and petting his hair like he just did a moment ago. Rick's screams peters out into desperate pleas, begging to return to his girl before it's too late. Begging them that she needs her dad, that she needs him, please, let him go back to her. He can see her now, he can heal her, please…. just… please….

Even with his enhanced eye, his vision goes black.

[nthspecialll]

I'm not sure if you've talked about this but!! What's your opinion on "Charles was the rat" theory? I dislike it and I have TRIED reading people's theories to see why they think that but still don't get at all how ppl would think that lol

Funny thing is, I have heard about this theory one time before and when I googled it just now I could only find one person actually believing it. Their arguments were:

Charles not being shot on sight while distracting the law so the gang could escape Saint Denis

Agent Ross finding Beecher's Hope and the fact Charles was one of the only people who knew John's identity.

Knowing where Arthur's body was despite not being at the stand off.

Not knowing that John was alive despite being wanted for murder in Strawberry

Some weird claim that he helped the pinkertons for the Natives to be allowed to stay?? Even though they weren't???

Okay, so let's very easily debunk these because they all got an explanation to them that really ain't that hard to know.

Charles was not shot due to the fact the law did not know who he was, sure they might know he was part of the gang, but that does not mean shoot on sight. Charles would be far more valuable alive to give them information than dead.

Ross finding Beecher's Hope, to this there are two explanations actually! Take your pick. John bought a house and got a loan in his actual name, he has been struggling to pay it off and suddenly boom he pays it all off, you don't think the already suspecious banker is gonna alert the cops? Another could be literally just hearing about the commotion of the public hanging of a known assosiate to Micah by people fitting John, Charles and Sadie's describtions and tracking their movements from there.

Knowing where Arthur's body is. Charles is a master tracker, the hoofprints might be gone but the absolute sea of bullet casings will not be.

Not knowing John was alive. Sure the man might have a warrent on his head, but that was in Strawberry not in Saint Denis. Similar to how the player can be wanted in West Elizabeth (Strawberry) and the law in Lemoyne (Saint Denis) won't know.

And then yeah, the reddit post I looked at somehow claimed that Charles made a deal to rat out in exchange for the natives being allowed to stay even though they weren't?

If you can't tell, I don't like this theory.

[snugglywugglysocialist]

Hiraeth

You throw your trench coat over your right arm, as you enter into the precinct where your services are needed.

During your trek, you fervently attempt to convince yourself that being a defense attorney was the best choice for your future as you prepare yourself to defend someone who's most likely done something abhorrent.

You pan your head upwards as you walk, your previous efforts to thwart the nausea arising within you failing. You turn the corner, and your eyes immediately fall onto the three people gathered around the two-way mirror, looking into the interrogation room, intensely watching the man you presume to be your client. You're just about to avert your gaze when you process the identity of the woman just a few feet in front of you.

There's no way in hell.

You stop in your tracks as you see the blonde turn back to the window after saying something to one of the personnel. There's no mistaking her; haughty smirk playing on full lips, assured posture and a phlegmatic air, all qualities only flaunted by one particular woman you've ever known.

You halt your gawking and pick up the pace of your walking as you think of how this is going to play out. As you approach, they all turn their heads and you're subject to the scrutiny of their cold looks. You bite back a laugh as you see the distaste in Cabot's eyes quickly be replaced by shock. Her face doesn't change, but you know her well enough to know when she's masking.

"Alexandra." you trail, looking her up and down, taking this time to absorb the way her figure looks in a pantsuit.

"Always a pleasure." She retorts coldly. You smirk softly as her blue eyes continue to bore into yours.

"Pull back your goons Cabot, you should know better than to allow them to speak to my client without counsel." You say, and she shoots you an icy glare as she knocks on the glass, signaling the detectives to leave.

They look off-put as they exit the room, confusion spreading across their faces as they watch the silent brawl between the blonde and yourself. The detectives look between the two of you, and it's become obvious that the tension is far beyond that of standard professional banter. You deliver to her a condescending pat on the back as you enter into the room where your client is sitting.

A chill runs up your spine when you finally lay eyes on him; he scans your body as you sit down across from him, and you feel the sudden urge to hop into a scalding shower. You soon leave the room after instructing him not to speak to the cops, and inform him of what's to come.

He's off your hands for now, until initial appearance, which is tomorrow. Cabot is still standing outside the door, balancing herself on her hands, leaning against the ledge underneath the window and speaking to a detective. You walk out and she immediately stands up, straightening her posture and crossing her arms across her ribcage lazily.

"Arraignment is tomorrow morning; 8:00 a.m. Don't be late." You say, heading for the exit.

“When have you ever known me to be late to a court appearance?" Shes asks, as she rolls her head back to look at you.

“A lot can change in a decade." You say, a borderline sinister smile plastered on your face. That comment definitely pissed her off.

You enter into the courtroom, and take your place next to your client. You don't even attempt to look at the blonde a few feet away from you, keeping your eyes focused solely on the judge. You give his plea of not guilty, followed by a short speech before the next topic commences.

“We will now hear the people on bail." The judge states as he casts his sight towards Cabot.

"The people request remand, Your Honor. Given the violent nature of these crimes, this man should not be out on the streets, and should also be considered a serious flight risk given his extensive financial resources, and double citizenship." Alex vocalizes, her monotone pitch never faltering as she speaks.

"That's excessive. My client has deep ties to the community, and these outrageous accusations hold no merit as of now. However, as a show of good-faith, he will agree to surrender his passport on the condition he is released on OR pending trial." You express.

Cabot audibly scoffs, and you pierce the skin of your palm with your nails to prevent saying something to warrant being slapped with a contempt charge. The judge scans between the both of you before delivering a ruling.

"I'll have to agree with Miss Cabot this time, defendant is remanded without bail." You glare at Alex as the judges gavel comes down, motioning for the next case to be heard.

The trial is unsurprisingly messy. There's charges of witness tampering being imposed, and the impartialness of multiple jurors is called into question, trudging this case along even further. To add to it, the media frenzy surrounding this particular case is abysmal due to your client being CEO of a high-profile corporation.

The jury initially came back hopelessly deadlocked, but upon request from the judge to reconvene, they came back with a narrow verdict of not-guilty. A technical win for your client, and you to be honest, but not something that made you joyous by any metric. Both you and Alex are burnt out, given that you each fought tooth-and-nail. You had almost forgotten the blonde's fervidness until this case.

You wake up on your couch, still in court attire, files and papers scattered all over the coffee table. You check the time, seeing it's just after 9 p.m and decide to head out for a drink, God knows you need it after this case. Not wanting to walk the few blocks, you hail a cab and zone out in the back, going over the case in your head while on the way to the bar. You remind yourself of the "win" as you try to focus on something else.

"Ma'am. Ma'am, we're here." The driver says. You snap your head up, leaving your existential thoughts for later, tossing a $20 towards the driver, and exiting the vehicle. You enter the decently populated bar, and head straight towards the bartender.

"Whiskey sour, on the rocks." You tell her, and she slides you the drink, offering a sympathetic smile as you sit down.

The events of the last few weeks had obviously taken a toll on your appearance. You happen to glance to your left and see the absolute last person you want to see right now.

Alex Cabot.

Cursing under your breath, you pull your head back to your right in a failed attempt to conceal your face. She's already heading towards you, drink in hand. You grimace at the ass-chewing you're about to endure at the hands of the slender blonde.

"Congratulations." She remarks derisively, dropping her fist onto the dark-colored counter you're leaning on. You stay silent, downing the last of your drink, and immediately propositioning the bartender for another. If you had to guess, Alex is in a few drinks deep, but her wit never fumbles.

You plan to leave quickly after this encounter, but she sits down beside you. A few moments go by, and no words are exchanged. It's just the both of you being consumed by overwhelming tension, and white noise of the bar.

You finally decide to say something after you're halfway through your second drink. Compliments of the booze, it's admittedly not anything intelligent.

"For what it's worth, you gave it your all." You mutter, keeping your eyes fixed on the chestnut-colored liquid and clinking ice in your glass as you twirl it in your hand.

"That isn't worth a damn thing, you and I both know that." She retorts, giving a facetious smile following the statement.

"You signed the death-warrant on this case by letting Barney Fife in there question my client without properly mirandizing him." You say, turning towards her and coming off more condescending than you intended.

Silence consumes both of you once again.

"Defending people who commit these crimes doesn't bring me jubilation, Alex. I'm only doing my job, just like you." You let out, pinching the bridge of your nose between your thumb and pointer in annoyance at her prosecutorial righteousness.

She looks at you, and understanding flashes in her eyes, but it dissipates just as quickly as it appears. She begins to get up, but some foreign feeling within you doesn't want her to leave.

"This definitely isn't how I imagined our reunion." You avow softly, finally looking her in the eye.

Alex's sternness falters just enough for her to crack a smirk, and return your gaze. She sits back down, and you talk about the case for a bit before starting to reminisce on old times. You decide to call it a night after a few hours, grabbing your coat and heading for the exit.

"I'll walk you out." She says. Alex's demeanor is no longer cold and distant, it's warm and her guard is partly down, and you silently lend tequila credence for that one.

You walk out together, sharing comfortable silence before you're suddenly being pinned in the brick alleyway by the intoxicated blonde. Alex's eyes are hooded and blackened with lust, a look you haven't recognized in her for almost twelve years. Arousal stabs you in the stomach as she places her hands flush with the wall you're up against.

"Alex..." You warn, but your voice betrays your subconscious, and comes out as a needy whisper.

"Yes?" She teases, before bringing her lips to your neck, making your breath hitch in your throat.

She lavishes the skin with soft, open-mouth kisses, and your knees begin to give out.

"We agreed last time this was a bad idea." You say with much less conviction in your voice than you'd like.

“A lot can change in a decade, can't it?" She mocks.

Normally you'd be more than pissed having your own words used against you, but the lips attached to your pulse point keep your brain from being able to come up with a snide comment. Just as her teeth make contact with the flesh beneath your jaw, your resolve tumbles down completely. You're gasping for air as you grab her wrist and lead her towards your apartment.

The short distance is closed within minutes, but it's still not quick enough, as your patience wears thinner by the second. As soon as the door to your apartment opens, her lips are on yours, and you're once again being pinned against a wall. Your brain has finally caught up, and you gain the forethought to impose your positions, and pin Alex's hands above her head in one swift motion.

“Damn, I didn't think you—oh fuck." Whatever snarky remark Alex was about to throw your way quickly dissipates as you pull her earlobe between your teeth.

Her head falls back onto the wall, and her eyes flutter shut. You smile to yourself as you exploit every last one of the blonde's erogenous zones on her neck by memory alone.

You eventually unpin her hands, letting them fall to her side. Your hands roam her waist and hers settle on your hips, rubbing random shapes with her thumbs. The nerve-endings in your body feel like they're being torched with each soft touch Alex burns into your skin.

Every breath, wandering hand, and whimper coming from Alex hits you at once. It's been forever since you've been in this position with her, and yet the effect she has on you has not waned even slightly.

The kiss you two have shared since entering your flat never fully breaks as her skillful hands begin working at the buttons on your pants. Yours begin toying with the buttons on her shirt. You slip the garment down her shoulders, exposing the slim frame endowed with alabaster skin that you longed to taste.

Your hands run up her back and down her arms, leaving her sighing into your mouth. She pulls you closer by the waist as you slowly trace over the hem of her bra, eventually moving your hands upwards, and mirroring the same movements across her collarbone.

“Bed?" You ask before this goes any further. You wanted the blonde writhing beneath you with need, and your couch would simply not suffice for what you had planned.

Alex nods and follows suit behind you. Before you can even close the door, her hands are attached to your body once more, roaming feverishly. You kiss and nip at her neck before running your hands down her stomach, and quickly undoing her belt. You pull back, and use this as an opportunity to partially undress. You aimlessly throw your shirt and pants across the room and she does the same.

She settles herself on your bed, her hair splaying out from behind her. Alex licks her lips predatorily as you straddle her, and begin to run your hands up and down the length of her body. She pulls you down, and moves in to recapture your lips.

Your hands move upwards to cup her breasts, earning a mewl from the blonde. You exploit her surprise by slipping your tongue into her mouth, eliciting a low groan from her. Your tongue scrapes over her mouth in a desperate attempt to remember each area, and you pull back after a few moments.

"I missed this." You whisper against her lips, your eyes still closed.

"Fucking me?" She asks, clearly amused.

You let out a gentle laugh, letting your head fall back before casting your eyes down to hers.

"Yes, that's obvious given our current situation." You respond, biting her bottom lip and lathing the swollen flesh with your tongue.

Alex brushes a strand of hair from your face, putting it behind your ear. She dons a lopsided smile before speaking.

“So, are you going to recite love poems to me, or are you actually going to show me how much you missed me?" She asks, her voice low.

You let a seductive chuckle fall from your lips before motioning to unclip her bra. The material falls, and your hands immediately slide up her stomach, and begin to brush over her nipples. She exhales sharply as you bring one into your mouth, flicking your tongue over the sensitive bud. You feel it harden between your teeth, and soften as you run your tongue over it gently.

She sputters as you deliver a particularly harsh bite to her skin; you reach your hand down to slide her underwear to the side, involuntarily groaning at the wetness you discover. You gently push your middle and ring fingers into her, and she gasps at the intrusion. You pump in and out of her slowly, her hands grasping at your sheets the longer you continue. You know this alone won't bring her to orgasm, but you enjoy the frustrating effect this has on her.

Alex whines after a minute and you can tell she's getting impatient. Her hand grips your wrist, and she pulls until she guides your fingers out of her with a gasp. She pushes your hand upwards towards her clit as she spreads her legs apart further.

You decide to give her what she wants, and slide through her folds until you reach her hood, pulling back to reveal the bundle of nerves to your finger pad. You rub tight circles over her clit, and her legs begin to shake just moments after.

"Don't stop." She pants out, seething beneath you.

“Wasn't planning on it." You say slyly, reveling in your control over her.

You pick up the pace even faster and her back arches off the bed, signaling she's about to go tumbling over the edge. After entering her once more, and circling her clit languidly, she does exactly that. She lets out an exasperated moan and grips your shoulders hard enough to leave reminders in the morning.

You continue your movements, letting Alex ride out her high until you see her wince. You slow down, keeping your hand in place so she can control her breathing before you stop completely.

"Fuck." She says after a minute. You remove your hand from her underwear, and push your middle and ring fingers past her lips, and she happily obliges your silent proposition. She licks them clean, and you continue lightly bobbing your fingers down her throat until her eyes water, and you remove them.

"C'mon you used to take more than that." You say lowly.

She smacks your arm playfully in response. You lay down beside her and she grips your face lightly, pulling you into another kiss. It's gentle, not frenzied and heated as they once were. You reach over to turn off the lamp perched on your bedside, and pull her body as close to yours as possible.

You wrap your right arm around her chest, and allow the other to run through her hair. Alex's previously rapid heartbeat has slowed, but yours remains erratic. You breathe into her skin as you accept the cycle of fate you're in, with the arrogant blonde at the center.

Something clicks in your mind this time, however, and you know you'll dread the morning when she leaves. You also know you'll choke back your true feelings regarding the blonde and only convey them between her thighs. Words suddenly cut through the darkness and interrupt your ruminating.

"I missed you too." Alex says faintly, so faintly in fact, you can't tell if she actually said anything.

You quickly realize it's reality when she flips over and kisses your forehead softly, her toned arms grasping onto your bare waist as she nuzzles into your neck.

You'll cherish those four words until your demise, but you'll never give Alex the satisfaction of knowing that.

[klbwriting]

Broken Prism

Chapter 21

Fandom: Red Hood

Pairing: Jason Todd x f!reader

Warnings: o this chapter has some fucked up stuff in it, mentions of body mutilation, child death

Summary: Batman and Red Hood go to the scene of the crime, then find out about another murder

Taglist: @amberpanda99 if you would like added to the taglist let me know!

The GCPD didn’t trust Red Hood, so Batman was the only one allowed at the crime scene. Jason waited across the street, not sure what to do honestly. Who killed a family like this? What kind of absolute monster? It made him sick. He paced, watching the cops, who were watching him back. He saw a mix pride and anger depending on the face. He figured they either loved that he had taken out Joker, saving them some work later, or hated him, wanting to get the big score themselves. He wanted to walk over, get as close a look at the scene as possible, but he didn’t want someone to get trigger happy and try shooting him. Finally, after what seemed like eternity, Batman walked over to him.

“Gordon is willing to let you walk the scene with me,” he said. Jason nodded and followed him, the cops parting enough so they could get through.

“Since when is Batman friendly with murderers?” “Who does this idiot think he is? A Nightwing ripoff?” “He killed Joker, we should be groveling at his feet right now.” He wanted to scream at them, tell them what had happened, why he had become this person. He shook himself, they wouldn’t understand, ever, and he had made his bed, now he had to lie in it. He followed Batman into the dining room and stared. The family was seated for dinner, the food still on their plates. The parents were eating meatloaf, looks like the kids were having chicken nuggets. Their throats had been slit, which was the only decent thing this monster did. The rest of the scene was haunting.

“Emily Dervish, Dexter Dervish, their children, 7-year-old Amelia, and 4-year-old Tyson,” Gordon explained, voice coming out staggered at the sight. “We will have to wait for the coroner to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” Jason asked, unable to take his eyes off the children.

“To be sure if they were alive or dead when the killer cut off their faces.”

After another hour scouring for evidence and finding nothing Jason and Batman were about to head back to the cave, see if they could find anything there, when another officer came over to Gordon, whispering to him. They watched his face grow ashen and he nodded solemnly.

“There’s been another murder…not completely the same, but they left a note,” he said. “You two better come with me.”

Across town at the McCreary’s Pub there were cops keeping curious onlookers away. Despite it being early morning at this point people were still curious when they saw police tape and a medical examiner’s van. They brought out phones and started taking pictures when Batman and Red Hood arrived. Jason was really glad he hadn’t done the whole social media thing now, he couldn’t imagine what Twitter looked like, him and Batman working together. All those concerns left his mind when he entered the bar. There were at least a dozen bodies, all seated like they had been enjoying a night out, lifeless eyes staring up the ceiling, posed as if gazing towards Heaven.

“What the fuck,” Jason muttered. Batman wandered the room slowly, looking at different angles. Jason started, but then his eyes were drawn to the mirror behind the bar. Once again, a message in blood, the shaping of the letters completely different from the last crime scene.

DID YOU SEE HIM YET RED HOOD?

Batman stared at the message also and then looked at Gordon, nodding his head for the room to be cleared. The commissioner sighed and called for his guys to vacate for a few minutes, letting the vigilantes have the room. Jason started looking at the faces of the patrons, wondering who he was looking for. While Jason looked at faces, Batman looked at him. He could feel the man’s eyes, probably trying to read his body language, see how his mind was at the moment. He wouldn’t lie, his mind was fuzzy, the sight of all this death was almost too much for him to handle and he had been an assassin once. He was trying to avoid staring at the gaping holes in the victims’ chests.

“Why do you think they took the faces and the hearts?” Jason asked, trying to focus in on the case, ignore the dread rising in his chest.

“I am not sure, but we are most definitely dealing with at least two people who are very annoyed at you,” Batman said. Jason didn’t like that, that Batman was already blaming these deaths on him. ‘If you hadn’t killed Joker all these people might be alive’ he could Bruce’s voice in his head, the accusations stinging. “Do you know someone here?” Jason shook his head as he rounded to the back of the bar and stared.

“Ya, I do,” he said, eyes falling on Auggie Valentine. “This guy, um, he was my best, well my only friend in Crime Alley, before you took me in.” He looked at Batman and Batman stormed out of the bar. This was bad. Very bad. If this person had killed one of Jason’s friends that meant they knew who Red Hood was. They knew where he lived. He took off running, climbing on his bike and driving like the devil possessed him back to the cave. He had to know if YN was safe.

You were watching the monitor with Alfred, Dick, Barbara, and Tim, listening to Bruce and Jason talk about the murders. You were horrified by the family, and the bar just made things worse. Then Jason mentioned knowing the bartender and your blood ran cold. Someone knew. Someone knew Jason was Red Hood. The others noticed also, and they started looking around, maybe for listening devices, cameras, maybe for a person hiding in the shadows ready to attack. You sat the computer, staring at the live feed video from Batman’s cowl. You looked at the body of the bartender, noticing that you knew him too. He had been a loyal informant against Black Mask back when you were looking into him. Did the bartender know more than he said? Bartenders knew a lot of things that most people didn’t realize, and he had been willing to talk for no money, just the idea that Gotham would be safer if he helped. Auggie was a great person, you could see how Jason would have been friends with him as a kid. He was a good person; he didn’t deserve to be murdered and have his heart ripped anymore than those children deserved their deaths. It made you sick and you could only imagine what Jason was thinking.

The familiar sound of the Batmobile and Jason’s bike came from the ramp into the cave, and you went with the others to meet them. Jason was off his bike, helmet tossed aside and running towards you, taking your face in his hands, looking frantic.

“Are you alright?” he asked. You nodded, reaching up and taking his hands, holding them in yours. “I thought…they know who I am…”

“Shhh, I’m here, we’re all safe,” you whispered, hugging him tight. He gripped you like he used to after a nightmare, like you were going to vanish if he didn’t hold you tight enough. The others went to the Batcomputer to start discussing the samples Bruce had brought back and the other clues from the crime scenes.

“You’re not safe, please take some time off, please stay here,” Jason begged. You nodded, anything to calm him down. His breathing was hitching, and he was going pale. You guided him to sit on the floor, sitting next to him.

“I won’t go anywhere, I’ll stay here, take deep breaths,” you said, rubbing the back of his head gently, petting his hair, catching the white streak and massaging the spot it sat on. He leaned his head into the touch, matching your deep breaths with his own.

“It was awful,” he said, finally calm again. “It’s my fault.”

“It is not your fault. You are not responsible for these monsters. You are a hero,” you said. He shook his head.

“I killed Joker, they saw it as a challenge. I thought it would end with him, but instead I just created a new threat. One head is cut, two more grow back,” he said. You leaned to his shoulder, arms around him.

“Jason, you killing Joker didn’t bring this about, this city is rotten, we all know it. Something in the air here breeds horrible criminals. No matter what happened they would be here, they just picked you because you are doing the most good right now. Just like they went after Batman,” you said, desperate to stop him from spiraling down into self-loathing again. You could see the signs, his eyes distant, his body fatigued from worry and despair.

“I need to go to the others, find out if they have any idea who did this,” Jason said softly, getting up. He walked away, leaving you there.

[fyodior]

(CW: GUNPLAY, YOU DON'T GOTTA REPLY IF IT'S NOT YOUR THING NO WORRIES)

I LOVE YOUR BLOG YOU'RE JUST AS DEPRAVED AS I AM LMAOO

so I've been having these. Thoughts. Vivid thoughts. Shooting at shit from Chuuya's balcony while he stands behind you and rubs your clit. Previously you had been fucking as usual and then the gun on his bedside table had caught your eye and you suddenly turned the dirty talk into gun related FILTH "Do you think I could fuck your mouth with the barrel huh? You'd suck that shit like a dick" and at first he'd been a bit surprised?? amused?? Unnerved? But soon enough that man had to pull tf out cause just the thought of it made his dick almost fall off LOOOL AND THEN he'd beSO excited, like not knowing where to touch you first, wanting to fuck you harder, to fuck your silly little brains out BUT then he gets an idea so he tells you to throw on a shirt and leads you to the balcony where he teaches you how to work the gun (and it's so, so hot for the both of you, I'm talking innuendos, I'm talking technical gun related terminology almost whispered like it's dirty talk because It is because y'all are SICK, I'm talking WATCHING HIM AT WORK) and then he gives you the gun ( and almost cums just from watching you hold it) and tells you to shoot at whatever you want (neighbors and discretion and the law be damned, he's too turned on) and stands behind you, correcting your aim with one hand and going absolutely nuts on your clit with the other, whispering encouragements and whatever absolutely depraved shit comes to him in the heat of the moment and after the fourth or fifth shot he can't stand it anymore and fucks you right there on the balcony and lets you facefuck him with the gun as he kneels in front of you and/or lets you put it in his mouth while you ride him FULLY LOADED. SAFTEY OFF.

PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT ALL ALONE FOR MONTHS I HAVE MORE WHERE THIS CAME FROM AAAAAAA

OH???????? THIS IS SO INTERESTING

im literally hollering at the idea of just shooting at random shit LKFKLFL i also love the idea of fucking this throat with the gun omg but idk personally if id have it loaded bye fsldlkflslfds

i think how i'd envision it is slightly less chaotic, and more in tune with the mostly level-headed (when need be), logical chuuya - while the idea is fun, i don't personally see him letting you shoot at shit wildly off his balcony. he doesn't need nor want the cops on his ass like that. a mafioso like him needs to fly under the radar as much as possible. i can see him taking you to a private port mafia owned shooting range and demanding the place be deserted so its just the 2 of you, making it a very sensual experience. chuuya didn't originally have the plan of fucking you in the middle of the shooting range, but seeing how goddamn sexy you look as you concentrate so hard on aiming the handgun at the target in front of you, he can't help the way he gets hard in his pants. he comes up right behind you, arms wrapping around your own to help you properly aim, chin resting on your shoulder as he whispers directions and encouragement in your ear. he starts rubbing up against your ass too, your breath catching in your throat as you feel his hardon press against you. you'll tease him too.

"chuuya nakahara, are you hard watching me handle a gun?" you giggle, and he just shushes you and tells you to focus on the target in front of you.

and when he lets go to allow you to try and shoot on your own, he unbuckles his belt and tugs out his dig before tugging your pants down and sliding himself inside you. that's when he puts his arms back around you, helping you aim. again, its very sensual, slow, more of a cockwarming than a fucking, because the sight of you handling a gun is so goddamn hot.

and that's how i personally think it would go :)

[kanerallels]

Kanera, retirement home or seniors community

This is almost certainly not what you were intending when you sent in this request, but my sister gave me the idea and it was too amusing to resist

Working at a senior’s community was a fairly unpredictable job. But Hera was pretty sure that finding a guy around her age climbing out through the window was a first.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, staring at him.

The man paused, one leg already out the window as he stared at her. “I… live here?” he offered tentatively.

Hera stopped at him for a long moment, until his shoulders dropped in a sigh. “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

“It was,” Hera agreed. “And you have about two minutes to give me a better answer before I call the cops.”

Wincing, the man said, “Yeah, please don’t do that. Okay, so I’m here to see my great-grandfather, Stellan— you know him?”

“I do,” Hera said, frowning. “He’s talked about you— you’re Caleb?”

“Right, but he’s one of like two people who call me that,” he said. “You can call me Kanan.”

“Well, Kanan,” Hera said, “you haven’t exactly explained why you’re climbing out the window.”

“Um. I’m technically not allowed in here because I kind of accidentally kidnapped Stellan and his two best friends out for lunch once.”

Hera rolled her eyes. “Somehow, I’m already unsurprised by that.”

Grinning, Kanan said, “Yeah, not my best move. But I can’t miss our weekly poker games, Elzar would never forgive me. So… any chance you can let me go this time?”

Hera considered for a minute. He did look familiar, like she’d seen him in some of the family photos in Stellan’s room. And her gut was telling her that he was probably telling the truth. “Fine,” she said. “But next time I expect to see you coming in through the front door. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kanan said, shooting her a grin before hopping out the window and out of sight.

[ashlingiswriting]

do i know you? chapter three

[ 3k words ] [ prev chapters: one, two ] [ masterlist ] "it’s an unfamiliar sensation, not being able to completely read him. it skitters over you like static electricity." richie jerimovich x reader, past mikey berzatto x reader, slow burn

you’re on call every day from eight at night to eight in the morning, so by the time richie rolls up, you’ve usually just eaten a late breakfast and he’s heading home after work. there’s a consistency to his late night appearances, a rhythm that becomes comforting.

there’s no pretending and no politeness—what would be the point? they should invent a word for this. maybe childhood-friend-in-law would do, except you had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever marrying michael and you always knew it. that’s the feeling, though. familiarity comes built in. even when he gets truly infuriating, you don’t leave feeling worse than you did. more pissed off, sure, but never worse. it’s a distinction worth noticing. 

some nights are easy. you talk about questionable obscure music in which you really do not overlap or middling mainstream music in which you do, running out of concerts and context. sometimes it’s pure bullshit, gossip or make believe, starting up elaborate jokes too lame to admit to in front of anyone else, then discarding them when they’re outworn. sometimes it’s old stories, sometimes it’s pure speculation.

hand to god, some nights are good.

and then there’s this night.

.

.

.

you’re barely out the front door when richie calls out, hey. where the hell were you?

you got called in real early yesterday, so you missed seeing him last night. but that’s no cause for him to yell, the entitled little jerk. you shoot him a baleful glare. then, as you take in the sight of him, you settle a little.

he’s not truly angry. you’ve spent enough time with him now, you’d know.

with a shrug, you shove your hands deep in your pockets and come stand beside him. 

last night i had to smoke all by myself like a fuckin loser, he says. 

that's your cue to say, you are a fuckin loser, but you don't take it.

he offers you a drag on his own cigarette, and you shake your head. you want it bad, but you can’t. you all but smoked yourself to death between crises yesterday, and you’re trying to convince yourself now that giving it up will somehow fix things. 

but nothing will be fixed, and it’s not your responsibility anyhow. this is not your city. you’ve felt that acutely of late, as each of your last links to it is broken one by one. coke or the cops, what difference does it make? the caruso kid didn’t listen to you, didn’t listen to anyone, and once his infection got bad enough, his wife called an ambulance. it’ll be the cops for him if he survives, and his father after that, the next domino to fall. you yourself are somewhere in that long line, just waiting for your turn. 

work sucks, huh, richie says. 

you look over at him to find that he’s already looking back at you, a little sleepy but not good enough an actor to hide the keenness in his observing eyes. it’s dangerous that he noticed you were gone and it’s dangerous that he’s noticing you now, but it feels really, really fucking good. 

yeah, you say. i thank god every day that i am a woman of leisure.

he laughs. well, i’m just grateful that you allow yourself to associate out with me, you know. me in my rags and you in your pearls and finery. he gestures at your sweatpants and gigantic parka.

once my tiara’s back from the cleaner’s, it’s over for you, you say.

sure, and i’ll be crying my eyes out in a pint of cherry chocolate chip. 

with that, he launches into a long, winding tale about the shenanigans he pulled at the beef today, installment nine hundred and seventeen of his neverending battle with a guy named fak. you’re not following, but you’re not trying to follow particularly hard, either. you’re too tired, and you’ve got other shit on your mind.

that’s the closest richie has gotten to mentioning your job in weeks. 

used to be that he’d poke around with dogged persistence, as though he thought he could needle you into submission. he asked after your boss’s health, your credit score, your childhood high school. he complained he had to take a shit or that it was too cold out to stand around. all that. anything to invade, get inside, get a little more information. 

michael was like that, too. the difference between the two is that michael won. conquered you, most if not all of your secrets, and fell asleep in your bed long before even a month had passed. but richie’s been at it for a few months now and he seems to have given up. he doesn’t know your job, your last name, or your phone number. he could pick you out of a lineup but he could never track you down. and he’s decided to let that go.

it’s just as well. you’ve got leftover dim sum in the minifridge right now, and if he pushed hard enough, you’re pretty sure you’d take him up to share it. siu mai re-steamed and slices of lo bak goh re-fried in hot oil in a pan, savory and delicious, nothing better. you can’t cook, but you’d still feed him well if given half the chance. you’d arrange the table with takeout napkins and your only two sets of matching cutlery, you’d—

the real richie rudely interrupts your thoughts. 

you’re not even listening to me, are you, he says. 

no, i’m not, you admit without an ounce of compunction.

just like everyone else, hey? fan-tastic. there’s a real bite to the way he breaks the word in half.

you look at him, startled and stung. don’t be such a fucking baby.

man, fuck you, he says. real anger, rocketing out from his chest. 

fuck you! you stare at him, legitimately astonished. maybe it’s your fault for not paying attention, but you really have no idea where this is coming from. you’ve been good. maybe your mind strayed for a while tonight, but what about every other night? you’ve always listened, or at least pretended to listen, to the travails of his divorce, his money problems, his insane workplace, his dysfunctional quasi-adopted family. and there’s a hell of a lot of it. you’ve been really fucking good!

apparently, not only has he not noticed this, but he thinks he’s entitled to even more.

you say, what do you expect here when you’re going on for eons like fucking always. do you think this is fun for me?

well, someone has to talk since you won’t say shit about shit with that paranoid secret agent—

oh, fuck. something about the way richie cuts himself off. you dread whatever he’s got to say next.

he says, what’s that supposed to mean, do you think this is fun for me?

jesus christ. you fumble in your coat, only to remember that you threw away your last pack. i don’t speak in fucking riddles, richie, this is not that type of situation.

then what type of, like. his face wrinkles in horror and disgust. am i a charity project? 

this is like having a migraine, but worse. i never said… truly, what the hell is going on? how did you even get here? 

dredging up the last of your energy, the emergency fund, you turn it into bravado, your default response to an unexpectedly angry man. you give it your all cause that’s the only way to do it, turning and facing him head on, putting your shoulders back and standing square over your own two feet. 

what is this, richie? you wanna fight? you really wanna fight?

yeah, i think i do actually, says richie, alarmingly ready. i think i really fuckin do. 

fine, you spit. 

you tilt your chin up so you can look him square in the eye and you give him the worst you got, spiteful already, and then you start trying to anticipate his next move.

there’s a lot of things he could say, as it turns out, a lot of things that only he could say, because he was there for everything. he witnessed the aftermath and attended the funeral. he could have you skinned like a caught rabbit given half the chance, and you just handed it to him on a silver platter. 

besides, he has a right. he loved michael even more than you did.

the realization dawns on you far too late, and then the dread sets in. can he see it in your face? when he opens his mouth, you’re setting your jaw so you don’t flinch. 

forget it, he says flatly. he turns away a little, steps back to lean against the building, and in the shadow of the building all you can see is the shape of him. if you concentrate, you can make out his profile against the gray concrete. 

.

.

.

at first, you can’t quite believe it. it’s mercy, after all, and that’s rarely reliable. but after his last cigarette, richie folds his arms tight across his chest and tilts his head back, eyes looking up towards stars that neither of you can see through the city lights.

eventually, you do start to think the mercy is real. you test it.

can i have one? you say.

richie doesn’t even hesitate. he reaches into the left pocket of his tracksuit pants, produces a pack, and hands it over. it turns out to be brand-new box of menthols. 

you look at it for a moment. your throat’s doing that thing again. he really did notice that you weren’t here last night, huh.

i don’t do charity, you say, after a second.

it’s fine, forget it, he says. 

i don’t, though. you don’t know what to say, but you know you can’t leave things there, so you keep pushing, and the words just come out. richie, i’m—i’m really a piece of shit. 

he looks at you directly again, but this time it’s a question. he doesn’t try to negate it with a brainless autoresponse like ‘no you’re not.’ he just listens, plain and simple. for a second, you’re at a loss. 

sudden and frightening as a car crash at the next intersection, the impulse flashes through you: tell him the truth, the whole truth. test him for real, watch that mercy melt away, inevitable as ice on hot pavement. teach him to hate you like he should. it’s like strong hands digging their fingers into your shoulders, the thought, and you’re reeling.

i… you swallow, smash it down, yank the car back onto the road. i hate ice cream and babies and long walks on the beach, i hate old ladies and libraries. you look over at him. i kick dogs every chance i get. 

there it is, at the corners of his mouth.

heartened, you go on, nearly tripping over your words. like, small dogs, richie. puppies. right in the head, i kick them. 

now you’re both smiling, and the relief is so fucking crazy. you’ve fought with him so many times before, but you’ve never gotten scared by it before. this is a first, and you have no idea what to do. all you can do is repeat, i don’t do charity.

okay, he says. okay.

you lean against the wall, and you’re absurdly heartened when he does the same right next to you. something about the symmetry, something about the weight off. you finally light up one of the menthols, and you have the night with richie back again. the breeze brushes by, chilly but not unbearable. it’s perfect.

what happened today? you say.

i thought you’d like it, he says. it was funny. 

go on, then. 

you wonder if richie might try to make you say please, but he doesn’t. he walks you through the whole day of catastrophes, from the broken toilet to the loss of electricity, from the loss of electricity to the fucked-up fridge, from the fucked-up fridge to the outdoor grill—

that’s really cool, you say.

he grins. right? 

whose idea?

from his crooked, exasperated smile, you know it wasn’t his. 

syd’s, he admits.

you raise an eyebrow. so i take it the culinary institute is good for something.

he scoffs. no way they taught her that. that—he points at you—was pure chicago.

oh okay, so we’re giving the credit to the city.

yeah, we are, cause it’s like—

the city, not the woman.

it was very chicago of her! that’s a compliment. don’t make it a feminism thing. his voice matches yours, a near-laugh ribboning through it like fudge in ice cream.

alright, okay. you’re smiling like a fool and you couldn’t care less. so then what?

so turns out fak’s connect isn’t much of a connect, surprise surprise, and it’s gonna cost us fifty-five hundred just to get the fridge back up and running. so he and carmy come to me, all hat in hand, and they’re like—shit. i didn’t tell you about the dealing, did i? you got me all turned around.

didn’t tell me bout the what now?

fak snitched on me earlier, told carmy i was dealing in the alley back behind the beef. i’m not moving much weight, just like. he gestures vaguely. covid, he adds, like that’s an explanation. please don’t have a fit about this, i’ve had all i can take from carmy already.

you shake your head once, thinking hard, processing. the more you think on it, the more it unsettles you. 

i knew he was dealing, obviously, but i didn’t know about you, you say. after a second, you add, richard edgar jerimovich?

jesus, he mutters.

is that right?

and here i thought carmy was going full mom. edgar, jesus fucking christ. richie’s torn between aghast and amused. where’d you get that from?

that’s your middle name?

yeah, but—

you hold up a hand, not rude, just asking him silently to let you finish, and he does. 

richie, you broke your wrist when you were twelve trying to play tackle football with the big boys on asphalt. at some point in your thirties, you started getting a rash every time you ate shellfish, but you still do it anyways, ‘cause fuck it’. and to this day you hate nightmare on elm street cause he convinced you to watch it with him when you were both way too young. 

none of this richie told you himself. it all came straight from michael. 

you say, how do i know all that, but i didn’t know you were dealing? 

richie says nothing, so you look over and find him watching you already. it’s an unfamiliar sensation, not being able to completely read him. it skitters over you like static electricity. 

you got a pretty good memory there, huh, he says.

it’s coke, right?

it’s just coke, yeah. was coke. it’s over now. richie shrugs wearily, turns away, and stubs out his spent cigarette on the concrete wall. mikey and his fucking secrets. i don’t know what to tell you. 

you can say that again. 

richie says nothing for a beat, then: mikey and his fucking secrets, i don’t—

okay, okay. 

he breaks into a small smile as you watch him, and then you keep on looking at him even as the smile subsides. a car goes by, and you look down at the pavement as the headlights sweet over both your faces, only looking back up at him once the car is gone.

the thing is, you really did think you knew him. what a crazy thing to think, when this is a mistake you’ve already made before with michael. you thought you knew him too. 

there could be so much of richie you don’t know, because michael didn’t know—or because michael didn’t tell. and yet richie isn’t a stranger. at any moment you could close your eyes and picture his face, imagine his voice. he’s in you that much, at least.

so here he is, through your own eyes. you’re determined to fix him in your mind, not richie from the stories, but richie as he really is. his hair is dark and close-cut, his beard too. his eyebrows are scant, and there’s a ridge on his forehead as if to make up for it. his nose is straight and straightforward. there are bags under his eyes, because of course there are, but his eyes themselves are as blue as summer, so blue they’re barely believable. that’s him, that’s his face.

then there’s the eternal black leather jacket, oversized and complete with unnecessary shoulder straps for all the bags he’ll never carry. he stinks of kitchen in general and arby’s curly fries in specific. he’s allowing you to stare at him, an indulgence that you can’t question without being a dick. he makes you want to not be a dick. all this is here, all this is real. 

he rubs his nose with the side of his wrist. 

you must be tired, you say quietly.

when he smiles like that, it’s almost like you can look down past a few decades and see the teenager you never got to meet. i’m never tired, he says.

he’s always tired, you realize. of course he would be. you only ever see him after his long-ass shifts. go to bed, richie.

that was too gentle for sure, because he says a little curiously, getting some real weird vibes off you right now.

you take one last drag, then push off the side of the building, gathering yourself to go. you want normal, don’t come to me. 

heard, he says with a chuckle. g’night.

goodnight.

.

.

.

[ chapter four ] [ masterlist ]

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@garbinge, @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @beingalive1 — if anyone else wants a tag, let me know.

[mudskip-drabbles]

@dragcns-den wanted more Gay Shit

"You are an asshole!" Yelled as the front door was literally kicked open, that poor lock not having a single hope when matched against Giovanni Potage!

Still, despite his strong entrance, it was clear by Gio's tone that he was anything but angry, the shouting being solely for dramatic affect, which was always important. "How dare you start a war of affections with me while I was enacting my most evil of plans!" (IE: Stealing a bear plushie for Molly out of a claw machine that would spurn him no longer!) "There is no room for love in the midst of such vile atrocities!" That didn't stop him from returning the warm feeling of love across their bond though, it seemingly having become one of Rick's favorite pastimes as of late, to bombard his friends whenever he got the urge to let them know just how much he cared for them. Gio still remembers the first time he'd felt it, the sudden feeling of pure, unrestrained affection literally knocking him to his knees as it took his breath from his lungs. It hadn't taken long to put two and two together after that, Rick quickly turning from loving to fearful so suddenly that it too could be felt across their bond, there being no way it could all be chalked up to coincidence.

Rick was mostly unphased, having to push down the initial fear of the sudden entrance despite knowing it was only Giovanni. He met the dramatic shouting with an evil laugh in turn, dark wisps of miasma emitting from his upturned palms most menacingly.

"Fool! You believed yourself free from my grasp simply because you were busy!? The downfall is of your own making!" It didn't matter where any of his friends were or what they were doing, he was going to send them love whenever he pleased! He needed them to know at any given moment when his mind grew cruel, it making him twitchy and unnerved whenever he'd tried to suppress the urge at first.

"You will never know peace so long as we are bound heart and soul! Such is the consequences of-" He cut himself off at the sight of the stuffed bear in Gio's hand, his eyes now shining as a hand came up to his mouth as if to hide a gasp. "Oooooo! What is that adorable little creature? Will it require sustenance? What does such a mighty being endeavor to consume?" Rapid fire questions didn't give Gio a chance to answer until Rick was nose to nose with the stuffed animal that had been held up for him to see more clearly.

"Oh this?" He sounded way too smug about a plushie. "It's a stuffed animal! One that Bear Trap and I tried for hours to win. But I emerged victorious in the end!!" A pause, the theatrics being toned down within the span of a blink. "Oh uh, I'm not allowed at the arcade in the mall anymore. Like that's gonna stop me. Stupid mall cop thinks he can control me."

Setting the bear onto the dining table so Molly would see it upon coming home from school, Rick stayed near nose to nose with the fluffy thing with that shine never dulling for even a moment.

"Fascinating! What is the purpose of these 'stuffed animals'? Is it customary to gift the deceased to a loved one?" A genuine question, one that pulled a laugh from Gio as he settled the little bear to sit up against a couple school books Molly had left there. It wasn't out of malice though, something Gio made sure to tell Rick every now and then so he didn't get the wrong idea. He thought such questions were cute, that puppy dog look of excitement Rick got enough to inadvertently shoot affection across their bond, Gio always felt it so strongly upon seeing it.

"It's just fabric, dude. Made into a little friend! Kinda like...THIS!" Pulled dramatically from his inner coat pocket was another plushie, this one being a stuffed chameleon that was purple and red in color. "I actually paid for this one, saw it while they were escorting me out of the mall. Had to sneak back in to buy it, but I had to! It was too perfect!!"

Those puppy dog eyes quickly switched their excitement to this new reveal, Rick growing so giddy he began to rapidly clap his hands as he bounced in place.

"I LOVE IT!!" Loud, but Gio hardly minded. "Who is this fabric friend for?" A question Giovanni knew to be genuine by the curiosity that skipped across their bond, it bringing a fond smile to his face.

"It's for you, ya goof!" A dramatic gasp at the new new reveal, Rick lighting up like a firework as he nearly plowed into Gio's chest for a tight hug. One that had Gio lifted a good couple inches off the ground, something that had a blush warming up his face with a feeling he didn't quite know how to place.

"I LOVE IT!!!" Somehow even louder than before, Gio was set down in favor of hugging the plushie to his chest, Rick being filled with joy one might expect of a child or a man who hadn't received a gift like this in years.

"Where is your fabric friend?" Asked with that same eager grin as he smooshed his cheek against the plushie, it quickly turned into a loud gasp as Gio shrugged his shoulders.

"UNACCEPTABLE!!" Shouted before Gio could get even a breath into his lungs, Rick hugged the toy to his chest while he pulled a smiling Giovanni towards the door by the hand.

"Uh, I'm kinda banned from the mall, remember?" Not that he would abide by such a thing, but he was curious as to where Rick would go with this.

"Unimportant!! We must procure you a fabric friend as well!!" He didn't want Giovanni to be left out.

Gio could only give a fond laugh as he shook his head, picking up his pace so he was the one pulling rick along.

"Well then what are we waiting for? Pick up the pace Shades, we gotta get home before Bear Trap so we can see her face when we give her that bear!! I bet she's gonna flip and I don't wanna miss it!!"

[sophieinwonderland]

i know the supervillain bit (when you explained Vira) is a joke but you would make an awesome supervillain i think. you would be good at it. well. you would be evil at it i should say. 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 (lighthearted) -orv & tom

Thanks! LOL!

You know, I've talked about this before, but I've been thinking about this again since my host has been playing Spider-Man lately... And that's the tendency for a villain to be the person taking initiative to change the world.

Sure, plenty of villains are just naturally bad. But there are also many who just end up victims of their own ambitions.

The Lizard in Spider-Man media is usually just a disabled scientist looking for a way to regrow limbs. In Spider-Man 2, Doctor Octopus is just a guy who tries to make renewable clean energy. Both characters want to make the world a better place. And both really end up victims of the writing, punished for doing what other people aren't brave enough to even try.

I'm not saying they don't go too far. Of course they do. That's what makes them villains.

But it bothers me how often the only representation of ambitious people who want to change the world is in the form of a villain.

Meanwhile, Peter Parker won't even sell his web fluid. Think about how many deaths by cops could be prevented if you replaced their lethal bullets with a web gun? Think of how useful it could be for rescuers to have instant ropes they can shoot from a small handheld device.

But Peter just keeps it for himself so he can use it to beat up criminals.

It just feels like a lot of Spider-Man's villains were originally good people who tried and failed to change the world for the better, and ended up punished by the narrative for their failure, while Peter Parker is someone who never tried at all. As a hero, he usually just tries to maintain a status quo in the world.

Superheroes all just tend to think too small for my liking. They're too reactive with their world-saving, where the villains are proactive.

To be fair, Iron Man was supposedly working on using his Arc Reactors to make cheap renewable energy too. We just never see the fruits of that labor. It's an off-hand thing mentioned about how Stark Tower would be the first to use it. But where is this technology 10 years later? Surely, every car and plane coming off the assembly line in the MCU should be powered by Arc Reactor tech, right?

They can't be that expensive to produce. Tony made one in a cave with a box of scraps.

All in all, I guess what it comes down to is that comics are a world where status quo is God. And in that world, the only people who can try to change the status quo are villains, because they're destined to fail. And on the rare occasion lip service is paid to heroes trying to change the status quo, it's ultimately forgotten about because they're not allowed to do that.

And the message it sends to youths is to keep your sights low and don't rock the boat. That a "hero" is someone who try to keep things the way they are, and anyone with ambition who wants to change world is a villain.

Through that lens, I guess I'd rather be the supervillain. Better to be bold and ambitious, and fail, than to accept stagnation and uphold a flawed status quo.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

T$$ Dystopia AU: Part Two

previous ///// T$$ Masterlist

cw: aftermath of whipping/beating, referenced public torture, institutionalized violence, adult language

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Joy didn't often bother with the floggings or the stocks or the other punishments inflicted by the police state. As shitty as it was, they happened too frequently for her to expend the resources to help every victim. Better to focus her efforts elsewhere and try to stop it altogether.

This was different though.

One of her scouts reported a whipping, and whatever, it was practically a daily occurrence at this point, but then they'd added that the kid on the post had already looked beaten half to death before the first crack even came down. That was just a little too cruel for her to ignore. She figured she'd at least check up on him, make sure he knew where the unsanctioned medic huts were and that he had the means to reach one. The rest of her guys were busy with other taskings, so Joy decided she'd pay him a visit herself.

Only when she arrived at the square, what must've been an hour at least since the flogging had ended, the poor guy was still on the post.

Security was posted around the perimeter, watching their prisoner with a body language like they'd shoot down anyone who tried to help.

If they were going to all these lengths… who was this guy? Just a victim they'd decided to be especially cruel to? Or was he something more?

Knowing the police corp as well as Joy did, she knew either option was equally as viable. Either way, she was gonna rescue the kid, and either way, she'd need some backup.

And fast. Fuck knew how long the poor guy would be able to hold out for.

It took less than a sentence of explanation to get Jericho on board, along with enough guys to distract the cops and give them an opening for the rescue.

It took longer than she would've liked to get everyone in place, but they wouldn't be any help to the beaten kid if they got arrested en route to him. It was another hour before the group was at the square’s edge, poised to act.

The rear guard gave the signal, and Joy darted forward, Jericho and a pair bolt cutters at her side. 

Up close, the sight of the kid’s back was far more gruesome; layered blacks and reds gouging every inch of it. Torn to shreds. How many had they fucking given him? What had he even done to deserve this in the force's eyes?

The whipping alone should've been enough to kill him, let alone the dark bruises covering his ribcage, let alone being left like this for hours. But this kid was a fighter. Though shallow and wheezing, he was still breathing.

“I got him, Jer. Cut him down.”

Her friend cut through the chains linking the guy’s handcuffs together, and he collapsed onto Joy. She winced when she saw his face, half of it basically one big bruise. It would be hell on his wounds to carry him out of here, but they needed to get back underground fast, or there would be no saving him.

Jericho slid the cutters into his belt, reaching to take the unconscious man from her, but as the bigger man started to lift him, his hand closed around Joy’s arm.

“Stars…” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “Th-they lead to you.”

Fuck, he was delirious too. Not that she was surprised by that. Joy nodded, not knowing how else to respond.

“Yeah. Yeah, they do.”

Behind her came the shout of her men, and she knew they needed to get moving now. Joy gently removed his fingers, allowing Jericho to sling the leaner man over his shoulder. She kept a few paces behind her friend to watch his back, her pistol drawn in case any of the cops saw them and moved to close in from the rear.

Somehow, the whole group made it back to the clear zone without pursuit. Joy sent a few guys on to fetch a medic, and accompanied Jericho to one of the safe havens. The havens were usually occupied by those who'd been wrongly accused of criminal intent, and needed somewhere to hide for a while, as well as people who had nowhere else to go. As far as she knew, their rescue checked both of those boxes, but she wouldn't know for sure until he regained consciousness.

…if he regained consciousness.

Jericho carried him to one of the empty rooms downstairs, carefully depositing him stomach-down on a bed.

“Thanks, Jer,” she said, cutting away the tattered remains of his shirt and gently removing them.

“Happy to help.” He sighed. “Never thought they would take things this far. Not in public. I mean, an execution is one thing, but this…”

“I know.”

“Do you think they would've let him down at all?”

Joy shook her head, letting her gaze fall to the unconscious man on the bed. “Cops've been doubling down lately. Wouldn't be surprised if they just wanted to make an example of him.” Her medical knowledge was limited, but she figured she should try her hand at cleaning him up. Who knew how long the medic would be?

“There's a silver lining then. They know the resistance is a threat,” Jericho said.

“How is that a silver lining? It'll only make them strike harder, do shit like this.”

“It means we stand a chance against them, and they know it," Jericho said. "Why else would they be lashing out?”

Joy pressed her lips together. “You're right.” She tore herself away from the bedside, checking one of the room’s cabinets for supplies, and coming away with a small stack of gauze and a bottle of water. “But fuck, man, we need to get the upper hand before there's a death on the whipping post.”

“We will,” Jericho said. “We have to.”

Joy sure fucking hoped so.

She wet one of the thicker gauze pads and started dabbing at the wounds on the man's back, trying not to let it get to her when the muscles there spasmed in pain and the guy let out a weak whimper.

“Easy does it.”

She hadn't covered much ground before the real medic arrived, patching up his ragged torso and giving him a morphine injection. Their stock of drugs and antibiotics was getting scarily low, but if anyone needed it, this kid did. 

They'd have to set up another raid on the upper-ring hospital soon. Dangerous for sure, but necessary to keep people alive.

“Will he live?” she asked as the medic started to leave. They answered with an apologetic shrug.

“He's made it this far. Keep a close eye on him, but… I wouldn't set my hopes too high.”

Joy nodded, clenching her jaw. “Thank you.”

As the medic left, she turned back to the bed. The man there looked marginally better, his thin form wrapped in heavy bandages that masked the worst of his injuries. He'd live. He had to. The cops couldn't win this one.

“I'll take the first watch,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Jericho asked. “How long have you been awake?”

“Few more hours won't kill me. I'll send for someone else soon, I promise.” She dragged a chair to the foot of the bed, and planted herself there, fidgeting with a paperclip she’d found in her pocket, bending it into different shapes until piece by piece it broke into nothing.

Sometime around midnight, the kid began to stir; little shifts and twitches and groans. Joy grabbed another water bottle. They didn't have the supplies for an IV line right now. As much as she hated to drag him out of his rest, if he was gonna live, he'd have to take liquids by mouth.

“Hey,” she said, giving him a light shake on his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

“Ffff-fuck off,” came the shaky reply, and Joy nearly cracked a smile.

“You need to try and drink something,” she said, unscrewing the cap and sliding a plastic straw inside. “Can you turn your face towards me?”

After a moment he did, bruised eye and cheek pointing in her direction. She set the straw against his lips, careful to avoid the spots that were cut up, and waited.

It seemed to take a lot of effort, but he managed to swallow down some of the liquid.

“Cool,” she murmured, then hastily added, “good, I meant, that's good.” One step forward.

“You can drink more if you want,” she said. “If not, I'll let you sleep.”

He spat out the straw. It was enough of an answer for Joy.

“Got a name?”

“Hu-Hunter,” he muttered.

Behind the bruises and blood and swollen lips, she swore she saw him grin.

“Joy,” she replied. “Welcome to the resistance.”

× × ×

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