#I wanna like trade off chores with him or something I wanna be friends with his mom I wanna see how he blossoms without his dad

[buysomecheese]

Literally shut up everyone he's so pretty. He's so stunning and I can't fucking DEAL with it. How am I supposed to live when I want to kiss his face and brush his hair. HOW do they want me to do maths work in this environment.

[ladywaffles]

calloused hands in soft hands + Icemav

thank you for playing! :)

calloused hands in soft hands

“Hey there, sailor, has it been a long tour?”

Six and a half months.

That’s how long it’s been since the President overturned Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

He is finally free to marry his partner, openly and within sight of their family, friends, and former flyboys.

“It’s worth it when the sea brings me back to you, lover,” Maverick replies with a lascivious grin.

Ice rolls his eyes, even as he stands to greet Mav. “I’ve changed my mind—the tides can have you. You’re terrible at this.”

“What, after all this time?” Maverick drops his pack in the foyer and winds his arms around Ice’s waist, sliding one of his hands into Ice’s back pocket. “When I can finally do this in public?”

“You know, you’re still technically not allowed to do that, I’m still a superior officer.”

“Yeah but—”

“Don’t even say it, Mitchell,” he cuts him off. “It’ll be cheesy and bad, and I’ll be looking to trade you in for the newer model by the end of the year if you do.”

“Trade me in?” Maverick asks incredulously. “After I finally got you house trained?”

“Got me house trained?”

“Breakfast for dinner is nice, dear, but it’s the only thing you can be relied upon to not burn when I ask you to cook,” Maverick replies.

“You’re just mad because the laundry always smells nicer when I do it no matter what you try.”

“And who was the one who had to stick his arm up the backside of the dryer because someone nearly set a lint fire?”

“There wouldn’t have been a fire, if you’d cleaned it out the first time like I asked—”

“You know you can go more than a week without washing your bedsheets, it’s not the end of the world—”

“—put a sticky note on the fridge and everything, reminded you before I left for D.C.—”

“—and if we’d switched to the other towels that don’t give off all that fluff, the lint wouldn’t have built up nearly as bad anyway—”

“—I told you, it was one list of things to do, a very simple list of three chores around the house, and you didn’t listen the first time or the second time, so third time’s the charm, right—”

“—and then you kept insisting we use dryer sheets when wool balls work just as well, better even—”

They cut themselves off and smile. Ice sticks out his hand, wiggling his fingers until Maverick takes it.

“So. It’s been a while since I last saw you.”

Maverick laces their fingers together. “Yup.”

“Seven months.”

“Seven months, two weeks, and three days. But who’s counting?”

“Did you see the news?”

“I’ve heard a thing or two.”

Ice squeezes Maverick’s hand. It’s scarred and calloused from all the maintenance he does around the house, on his bikes, and on the Mustang they still haven’t made airworthy again. There’s a bump right where the stick sits between his thumb and his forefinger after hours sitting in the box, first in a Tomcat and then in a Hornet, and soon, maybe, in one of those fifth-gen stealth planes that go five times faster than Ice ever did.

His own scars from his days in the sky have long since been traded in for hardened ridges where his pen rests, reams of forms to fill out and files to read. There’s no flying for admirals, Viper had once warned him. Flying’s like riding a bike, but the memory of it starts to fade from your body faster than it does your mind.

Between the two of them, Maverick is much more the image of a pilot than Ice is, in his tailored suits and stars.

He runs his fingers over the back of Mav’s hand and presses their palms together.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Of what?”

“Now you’re just playing coy.”

“Well, Admiral Kazansky, if you’re asking little old me,” Maverick starts, “I think it’s about damn time.”

Ice grins. “See, I’d thought something of the same myself.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two wedding bands, made of newly minted gold.

“So, what do you think, Mitchell? Wanna get hitched?”

Maverick holds onto Ice’s hand tighter and drags him back towards the front door.

“Where are we going?”

“Where else do you think? We gotta go catch Slider before he gets too far from base and tell him to call up the boys, we’re getting married this weekend!”

send me a type of touch, a number, and a pairing!

[dehydration-stati0n]

Luffy, Zoro, and Sanji Friendship HCs

Rules Word Count: 0.8k Spoilers: None

Luffy

Great friend but also not💀

Bro will show up uninvited to drag you into something possibly illegal

He’ll take your food too, your not safe

He will always be clinging to you in some way. Like he'll have his arms stretched around you or he'll carry you on his back.

He loves giving you gifts, but he's really bad at it

like he'll give you a box of leaves he thought were cool, or a really long worm he found in Usopp's garden

Sometimes he'll wander into your room and sleep in the room with you.

You'll wake up with him hanging off the end of your bed or snoring on the floor.

If you ever seem stressed or upset, he'll put his strawhat on your head. It's kinda his way of trying to comfort you without being pushy about what's bothering you

You'll pretend to be Zoro and he'll pretend to be Sanji and the two of you will jokingly fight with each other

He'll trade you his goldfish for your Capri Sun

Most things you do are gonna be a competition with him

The two of you tried to start your own band once but Nami said you were being too obnoxious

There's no chance he washes his hands so, for the sake of everyone else, please make sure he's somewhat hygenic

Your hype man

He'll find you before breaking into the fridge. You're the iconic duo Sanji despises

Very spontaneous friendship, it's very common for the two of you to be playing tag or hide n' seek at the worst possible moments on the worst possible islands

Zoro

He'll try to trip you when you walk by

You're one of the few people he wouldn't mind taking a nap with

Would ask if you wanted to work out with him and secretly be really happy if you agreed

He'd share his alcohol with you

You two would do drinking games with each other every other day

The crews gotta somehow separate the two of you and send you to bed cause you're both laughing wa too loud and none of them can get any sleep

I imagine his love language would be acts of service, so he might offer to help you with whatever chore you were assigned that week or just anything in general

He'd push you to be your best self physically and mentally

He would never admit it, but he loves spending time with you

Let's hope you're good with directions, cause the two of you are going to end up lost a lot. The crew eventually just appoints you to keep him from wandering.

You'll have to get a leash for him or something.

He's a very loyal friend and would never dare betray your trust in any way

Throw your trust and abandonment issues out the window cause you aren't getting rid of him anytime soon

He hates physical affection, it just makes him feel kinda uncomfortable

Although if you really needed it, he'd give you a very stiff hug and an awkward pat on the back

One time you were fishing together and you fished up a beer. Zoro now looks forward to fishing.

Sanji

Your confidence will skyrocket after hanging out with him

He'll give you the kindest and most genuine compliments you've ever received, regardless of your gender

Out of these three, he's probably the best to go to for advice

He’ll do whatever you wanna do. He loves talking to you and just spending time with you overall

You know that meme where it’s like “they asked for NO pickles”? That’s him. He’ll be defending you for absolutely everything

He’ll try to give you fashion tips, but it’s 50/50 whether it’s good or bad

Would probably cry if you gave him a gift

I feel like he’d really like watching movies with you. He just strikes me as a movie kinda guy.

He’s physically affectionate but also kinda not (?)

It’s almost as if he holds back on it cause he doesn’t wanna overwhelm you

When you’re out on the town he’ll be your self-appointed bodyguard

He’s gonna love cooking with/for you.

He’d be so excited if you wanted to learn to cook or were just a little interested in it.

Very concerned about your well-being and will constantly make sure you're doing good. He’s ready to solve all your problems even if it's completely out of his control

There’s gonna be a lot of times when the two of you are just hanging out in the kitchen as he gives you random samples of food he wants your opinion on before continuing whatever conversation you were having earlier

Your biggest supporter

You and he would team up to attack Luffy after he steals food from the kitchen

Would probably go to you for advice on how to approach Zoro women, even tho he considers him an expert

Overall, a very positive friendship :)

[beansnpeets]

Hi friends. Personal stuff under the cut, as per usual. I may be asking for dating advice. 😬

How flirt??? How do I make it clear to a man that I would like to Smooch And Stuff Maybe?? Without explicitly telling him??

I would very much not normally ask this kind of thing here, but I do not know who to talk to about it. I already talked to my bestie and she is bolder than I and has more or less told me to just suck it up and tell him, but uh. I don wanna 😵‍💫 because FEAR.

I have been out of the game for so long. The apps were already getting bad when I met Jon more than 6 years ago, but I hear they are Super bad now and I'm not really interested in wasting my time. I already have my eye on SDG, obvs. It would be NICE to do a little dating before I get into something with him, but I already know I am not meeting anyone anytime soon so I may as well just skip that part since it isn't important to me, just could be fun. I am pretty sure he likes me back, but he is being RESPECTFUL and giving me space post-breakup with Jon and I have already been dropping hints at him, but perhaps it's just not clear enough.

I gifted him a photo album with a few photos he had mentioned once he wanted printed out and I hand-wrote a note thanking him for the help moving and letting me be a part of the kennel and I signed it "yours, Blair 💙" and he messaged me afterward "I love it 💙 lol", and said it was a good trade for the collar he gave me for Rollei (he also gave me a hoodie with his new kennel logo on it, which I did not order, he ordered one for me specifically and gifted it to me) and idfk where to go from that. Everything since then has been normal. He DID linger and follow me around a little last weekend when I was there to brush dogs again. We usually end up chatting whenever I am there, it's always been like that from day 1. I have told him stuff I haven't talked with a lot of people about, in terms of my family garbage. He has told me some of his also. He was one of few people I told about Jon before I bought the house. And every time we talked after that he asked me if I had "had the difficult conversation yet" (dumping him).

Anyway, yeah idk how to flirt with this guy. I am getting a failing grade in Flirt I think. I had an opportunity to make a move last time I was there, but I was too chicken to be that bold. Might try next time, but idk if I can get up the nerve.

And here is the tmi/nsfw part pls don't perceive, but I need to get it out.

I know it is quite soon still, after Jon. I was trying to leave Jon for more than a year, though. I was ready to get out a while ago. Um but I am really craving that partnership and companionship that comes with a relationship but also I would reeeeeally appreciate getting laid sometime soon because I haven't for MANY MONTHS and now that I am free from the tension of my ex I am finding I do in fact have a libido. But, again, I ain't meeting anyone here. I don't like bars and there isn't exactly a roaring dating scene for 30+ people in this tiny town. Unless I wanna go after older men, but.....ew.

Like idk where to meet people? There is no recreation here!! And I'm not just chasing SDG because he's around my age, single, a dog person, and convenient. We get along well and I am interested to get to know him and see what this could be. Also VERY attractive man. Ngl. God. The one day I showed up there and he was doing chores with his shirt off and WOWIE I melted. And those hazel eyes 😍😍

But anyway. Um. Yeah. So. I am A Yearning Mess right now and have been super unsure how to deal with it. I am terrified to be too bold, but I am thinking maybe that is the next step here. Idk how much time he is going to give me post-Jon or if he is just going to wait for me to make a move anyway to be respectful. I am tired of chasing men, I would like to be pursued by someone I like just once 😮‍💨

[mydarllinglover]

Alone || Make up, Don’t Break Up

Previous

Natalia had hid away in the nursey for the rest of the day, it had been set up a couple of months ago, Rosita had taken over helping, Aaron helped where he could, but he was still managing taking care of Gracie as well as the loss of his arm.

She had pulled out all their clothes, deciding to reorganise it by colour, for each twin, to be put away in their separate drawers

This was probably her fifth time doing this, but she couldn't help it, when Natalia was bored with herself, had quiet time, or couldn't sleep, she found herself in here doing random chores, anything for a distraction, reminding herself that the twins were alive, and would be here any day, she'd managed to keep them alive, unlike the same nightmare that resurfaced every time she went to sleep, by herself.

The reason Natalia had become so attached to sleeping beside Daryl, when they were friends, was because she found that he had stopped her bad dreams, he didn't make her afraid, even in her sleep.

They were back in his absence and with the pregnancy, they had become even more vivid, even more real, like she was back in that house, back with them, killing them on repeat, killing her family over and over, like a horror version of groundhog day.

She paused her humming of eyes without a face, when she heard the front door open, it must be Evie coming home for bed, it was dark out.

No other sounds came except for the door, which was unusual, because even though Evie claimed to no longer be a child, because she had responsibilities and she was nine, now, she still bounded up the stairs rather loudly, every single time.

"Eves?" Natalia called.

She looked over her shoulder at the slightly open door, Daryl was stood there, leaning against the doorframe.

"Jude asked if they could have a sleepover, said it was fine, even though she didn't wanna leave you." He told her. "Can go get her if my word ain't good enough."

He was still pissed.

"No, it's fine." She turned back around, finishing up her task.

Daryl took a slow step into the room, he'd barely come in here, just let Natalia get on with it, considering she berated him the last time he put something in the wrong place.

"Looks nice." He commented, looking at the small frame on a shelf, containing a picture of Carl, Natalia, Judith and Sully, which was took on the porch steps of the Grimes house, Rick had forced them into smiling for a "Family photo" as he claimed that sometimes Natalia felt like his own kid.

"Mhm." She hummed, putting all her focus into the clothes, so far she'd been given outfits all the way up until they were six, when she shared the gender, the communities were quick to pass over hand me downs so she'd never have to worry about finding clothes to fit them, the collection seemed to grow after every drop off trade.

"Nat." He walked further into the room.

"Hm?"

"Bought the Mac n Cheese." He said, after a moment of thought.

She looked up at him, seeing the contents in a tub that looked like it could feed a family of four.

He watched her debate whether to accept it or not, but then finally caved, taking the tub and yanking the lid off, he handed her a fork before she dove in with her hands.

"'Anks" She murmured between a mouthful of cheesy pasta, topped with bacon bites, just how she liked it.

He sat down beside her, bringing his knees to his chest as he looked at the piles of clothes.

"I'm gonna stay around a bit." Daryl told her.

She paused, before swallowing, nodding slightly.

"Don't have to, if you don't want to be here, I can't force you." She went back to eating. "I'll manage."

"Nah, I want to. I gotta." He said. "They're my kids, I wanna be here for everything, for them. M'sorry for missing all of it. I wanna be a good dad for them."

"You will be." She told him, piling up a forkful of pasta. "I know you will. But, I was thinking, when the girls are a little older, not y'know, new borns" They weren't even born yet. "We'll go out again, start looking for him, and Evie will be older, she's already expecting the best big sister award."

He nodded, looking down, she knew he was disappointed, didn't like the idea of Rick being out there by himself in who knew what state, and what it meant to him to bring his brother back for Michonne. It hurt her to put him through it, she regretted getting pregnant for the countless time, even though she loved her babies unconditionally already.

"Here" she leaned towards him and he followed, kissing her sweetly before accepting the fork of pasta she held out for him, letting her feed him.

"I love ya." He rasped.

"I love you, too, I'm sorry for what I said, I was being a major bitch."

"You ain't gotta do that all the time, I know why ya say shit, I deserve it, when I'm being an asshole." He knew why she always apologised after their arguments, he caught on pretty early on throughout their friendship turned relationship, she didn't know that she was the only one who'd ever apologised to him for the way they treated him, he could handle her angry spouts, it made him feel warm when she took the time to try and make it up to him, no matter if he wasn't even affected by what she said. "What's all this?" Daryl asked, deciding to change the conversation, he wanted to learn about the girls, more, catch up after his time away.

"I'm separating their clothes for each girl, blue and anything in this pile is for B, green and anything in this pile is for A." Natalia explained, pairing up socks. "If we keep them colour coordinated, it'll help tell them apart as well, in case they're y'know, identical. Rick picked the colours, actually"

"A and B, that gonna be their names forever?"

"Well, I've been waiting to ask you about it, but..." She raised her eyebrows, as she paused the organising to have another forkful of mac and cheese.

Daryl let out a huff of air.

"What you wanna call them?" He asked.

"Evie's been pushing two names, that she's adamant on." Natalia shared.

He grunted in reply.

"I know she aint stopped with the Bambi idea, had Judith chanting it when they got back."

"Is it bad that It's kinda grown on me?" Natalia asked, unsure of herself.

"Aint that the movie about the deer who's mom gets shot and he's pals with a skunk?"

"You've seen Bambi?" Natalia grinned, looking up at him.

"Yeah, one of Merle's dealers kids was watching it, had nothing better to do." He shrugged.

Natalia began giggling, holding her bump as her body shook.

"Oh god, I'm gonna pee." She wheezed, covering her face as she attempted to gain composure.

"What's so funny?" He asked.

"Nothing, nothing, just thinking about you and Merle watching Bambi, did you cry when the mom died, oh please tell me you cried." She cackled.

"Reminded me of my own ma dying, a little, yeah." He took offense, cutting Natalia's laugh short.

"Oh, right... sorry." She looked away.

"Think we should call B, Bambi. Fits. I like it." He continued the conversation of naming their children.

"You do?"

"Yeah. 'Sides, Evie picked it."

"Okay, so Bambi for B, uh, I kinda like the other name, Daisy."

"Daisy, the flower?"

"Yeah, she picked it cause of the necklace you gave her, a purple daisy. And D like her Daddy."

"Daisy and Bambi, alrigh'" He nodded.

"Now what about middle names?"

"They need them?"

"Yes, Daryl, they need middle names, Evie has a middle name, too."

"She does?"

"Y'know her name is Evelyn Ruth Baker, right?" She squinted at him.

"Oh, always thought of her as just Evie, course "Milo" gave her some oldass name."

"Daryl, Milo was a very good friend of mine who I had to leave in the woods to die."

"Don't change anything." He shrugged.

"And that's why I kissed him before you."

"You what!?" He demanded. "You ain't never told me this before!"

"I wasn't going to deny a man of his dying wish, and it was before I realised I was madly in love with you." She scoffed with an eye roll. "Anyway, what name goes with Bambi?" She moved on, before he got a chance to make her more mad or press the other issue further.

"You tell me." He shrugged again. "I'll like whatever you pick, even though you named yer first kid after a witch." He had to kick some sand back in her own face, Daryl Dixon was not above snarky comments, even at his big age.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She asked him, he seemed to be on something today.

"You laughed about my mom."

Natalia thought on it for a moment, before it hit her.

"I have one."

"Mhm."

"Elizabeth." She said. "After Beth."

"Bambi Elizabeth Dixon, yeah." He nodded. "What about Daisy?"

"I picked Elizabeth, so you can pick Daisy's." She told him.

He leaned back on his hands as he thought hard about it, Daryl didn't even see the point in having middle names, they only needed their first anyway.

"What about Caroline? Like, for Carol?" He asked.

"You wanna name Daisy after Carol?"

He shrugged.

"She's my best friend."

"Then what am I?" She sounded sort of jealous.

"My wife." He answered.

"Oh, that's it?" She looked down.

"What, that ain't good enough?" He was confused by her sudden change of emotion.

"Nothing... just I thought that I..." She cut herself off covering her face with her hands.

"Are you crying?" Daryl asked, concerned at her stifled sobs that came out of nowhere.

Michonne had warned him about her emotional breakdowns, who had yet to witness them first hand, when she had screamed, cried and broke a plate, because Eugene pointed out the obvious growth of the twins inside of her, lets just say, he was banned from making comments on Natalia's pregnancy until Rosita checked the said comment.

Natalia wiped at her face, getting rid of the tears that were down her face, he'd seen her cry before, but never to this extent, and only because her loved one was dead, not over...random things.

"N-no." She lied. "Just that, clearly I'm not as important to you as you are to me." She looked away as more tears came.

"Nat." He muttered, sitting closer to her. "You're my wife, which means you're the most important person in my entire life. You're at the top of every list, okay, Carol, she's just my friend, same as Michonne, Aaron, Jesus, Rosita, an' the others." He'd be sure to remind them that they did matter to him at some point "But you, you're my whole world, baby, nothing matters if you ain't in it."

"Awe, baby." She squealed, reaching out to hug him, the babies not making it easy for her, but he made it easier by inching closer and hugging her tightly. "Daisy Caroline sounds beautiful."

"You sure?" You sure you ain't gonna cry again? Was his actual question, as he lifted his head from leaning it on hers to look at her.

"Yeah, Bambi Elizabeth and Daisy Caroline. You like them, right?" She asked Daryl.

"Yeah, yeah, sure, sounds good, whatever you want." He assured, he didn't really care what their names were, as long as Natalia liked them, it was good enough for him. "Think we should get you to bed."

"And you, right?" She didn't know if she could bare another sleepless night without him.

"'Course and me." He told her, standing up from the carpeted floor, letting out a low groan as his knees cracked.

"Alright, Grandpa." Natalia joked, waiting for him to help her up.

"Watch it." Daryl said, pointedly, taking hold of her hands to hoist the pregnant woman up. "Ma baby girls ain't even here yet, an' Evie's not even ten, ain't no dating until she's twenty-one."

"Twenty-one?" She laughed.

"You think that's funny? You old enough to drink, legally, you old enough to make your own decisions."

"Says the man who led an eighteen year old to a moonshine cabin so she could have her first sip of alcohol."

"Her dad just died, I ain't going nowhere. Different times."

"Okay, officer daddy Daryl." Natalia saluted with one hand, the other supported her large tummy as she waddled out of the room.

"I like the sound of that." He smirked at her.

"Don't give me that look, you had your chance months ago, I'm scared anything now will send me into Labour."

"Ain't that a good thing?" His wolfish expression dropped, an annoyed one taking place.

"No." She looked over her shoulder at him, his hands were on her hips, guiding her into the direction of their room, the one he hadn't slept in, in a long time. "I'm letting them come on their own time, whenever they want, best chance of not needing a C-Section."

"You'd make it through though, right?" Daryl asked, concern written all over his face as he opened their door. "Siddiq's prepared for that?"

"Daryl, hey, yeah, of course he is" She comforted him, taking his hands and sitting on the bed. "It's just... y'know, a personal preference of not being cut open. But it's handled and everything's gonna be fine, he's prepped for everything that could and might happen, you ain't the only one who's hard to kill." She pulled him down to sit down beside her. "Here, she's a kicker." She placed his hand on the right side of her belly, where it was moving around.

"Which one's this?" He asked, feeling the tiny attack on his palm, his voice was low, full of wonderment and intrigue.

"That's Daisy, she's always active, this one here, she's a little sleeper, I get worried sometimes by how still she is." Natalia prodded around on her left side, trying to get Bambi to move. "You can talk to them if you want, they can hear you."

"Nah, that looks stupid." He grumbled, though he was trying to keep his voice gentle, just in case, as he rubbed her belly.

"Daryl, you're their father, they're gonna want to learn their dad's voice. I talk to them all the time."

"About what?" He looked up at her.

"Anything" she shrugged "What I'm doing, how I'm feeling, I talk to them about Alexandria, and The Hilltop, and The Kingdom, about Rick and Michonne, Glenn and Maggie, Beth, Carl, everyone. I talk to them about the prison, and the road, and my life before this, and their sisters, both of them... and I talk about you a lot, when you're not here, and I'm by myself, when I'm missing you, but how you're out there and what you're doing, and I'm proud, and also that I'm glad that you're trying."

Daryl bowed his head, ashamed that he hadn't made progress in his hunt for any signs of Rick, but also that he had abandoned Natalia, and the girls.

"I'm sorry." He rasped, his eyes were becoming blurry as he thought about how bad of a father he was being, not only to the twins but to Evie, and then how he was a horrible husband to Natalia. "I'm sorry for being shit to ya, you don't deserve that."

"Hey, look at me." She lifted his head, her hands on his cheeks, she was always good at reading him. "Don't, okay, I know I was mad earlier, I shouldn't of said that stuff, I was annoyed and in the wrong, but I didn't mean it. You're the best husband in the world, and you're already an amazing father to Evie, she loves you, and I know the girls will, too. You're too good for this world, and I can't put into words enough how much I love you, I've waited my whole life for a person like you to come into it, and clearly I know words aren't enough to convince you, because I've been trying for two years, been tryna convince you you're important to me for four, and yet it feels like I've known you an entire lifetime. I was mad because I miss you so much, it's like my whole world stops when you're not in it."

"I ain't gonna leave ya, not again, I swear to ya." He sniffled, dropping his head on her shoulder as his fingers tangled in her hair. "Love ya, so fucking much."

"Hey, Evie might not be lurking around as the language police, but Daisy and Bambi can still hear ya." Natalia teased,  earning a scoff from the man.

"Sorry." He grumbled to the two babies. "Daddy didn' mean tha', S'bad word."

Natalia smiled widely as he spoke to her stomach, playing with his hair, feeling warm at the blush creeping up his neck, embarrassed he was actually doing it.

"Hey, you woke Bambi up." She cheered, feeling the baby move around on her side of the womb, "Keep talking, she must like the sound of your voice."

"Really?" He looked up at her.

"Yes, c'mon."

"Alright." He sighed, trying to think about what to say. "You said you told 'em stories about everything, right?"

"If you're thinking about telling them stories about you and your brother before all this, don't even think about it." She warned, having heard a bunch of the illegal activities they used to get up to.

"Nah, time I fell off a horse, almost died, back at the farm."

Natalia raised her brows, she didn't think she'd heard this one before.

"Go on." She urged. "Girls, just so you know, this was before I met your dad, so anything dumb he did, was out of my hands from preventing."

"Alright." He cleared his throat as Natalia moved back on the bed, laying her head on the pillows as he followed, laying in between her legs, resting his head on his hand whilst the other one rubbed the large bump,  her hand returned to entwine in his messy hair. "When I was out looking for Aunt Carols daughter, her name was Sophia." He told his daughters "Took a horse out, didn't bother asking Hershel, Aunt Maggie's dad, that's when I didn't really like him, though, I shoulda asked, then I woulda known her name was "Nervous Nelly." That's important to the story. So I'm riding this horse around the woods, an' I found her doll in a riverbed, first clue that she was alive, spoiler alert, she weren't. Then, the horse, Nervous Nelly, gets spooked, knocks your dad off, I go flying down this cliff, tumble so hard, I get a damn arrow stuck in my side, head was cut up, the water was stained with ma blood, was looking bad for yer old man." He looked up at Natalia, see if she was listening as well, which she was, though she was trying to work out what actually happened or if he was being dramatic, for the sake of the story, with it being Daryl, there was honestly no telling, with the amount of shit he's been through and surprisingly made it out. "So I drag myself out, and I gotta patch up, using the sleeves of my shirt to tie around the arrow, couldn't just pull it out, that's dangerous, if it were yer momma, bet she woulda, though." She smacked his head in protest. "Wait till I tell ya about the time she got shot, and I hadda save her life."

"So you were at the bottom of this cliff with an arrow in your side?" Natalia pulled him away from his distraction.

"Yeah, right, so I'm thinking about how I'm gonna get back up, track down that horse so I can skin it and- give it a good telling off... but then I hear rustling in the tree's, coulda been an animal, coulda been walkers, anything, so I comb through the river, finding my crossbow before making my way towards climbing the cliff, got nothing but a stick, a crossbow, and a damn doll tucked into my belt."

"Damn, sure sad I missed seeing that." Natalia scoffed. "I'm pregnant, with your kids." She warned, before he could pinch her in retaliation. "Continue with your story."

"Stop interrupting me, lady. Anyway, I manage to get half way through, giving myself a pep talk to get the rest of the way up, then I fall all the way back down, fell so hard, I damn passed out. When I woke up, saw my jackass of a brother, yer uncle Merle, who I thought was dead at the time, cause of yer Uncle Rick, 'Nother story though. Turned out, he was never there in the first place, y'know who were there, walkers, and when I got to my senses, took 'em out, even had to pull the arrow outta my own side to do it, then, patched myself up, gutted a squirrel, got some food in my system, made myself a neat lil necklace and I climbed the damn cliff, all by maself, ain't a single person's help, I got myself back to the farm, they all came running fer me, thought I was a walkers, when they got to me, realised I was still breathing, yer Uncle Rick, he put his gun down, then this woman I used to be friends with, Andrea, son of a bitch shot me in the head, bullet whizzed right past my head." He did the motion. "Grazed me."

"Andrea shot you?" Natalia asked, her brows furrowed. "Knew I was justified in not liking her, bitch."

"Thought we couldn't swear around 'em?" He reminded.

"Daryl, they're babies, they don't know what that means, why did she shoot you?" She interrogated.

"Said it in my story, she stayed at the RV, thought I was a walker and tried to shoot me from the distance, had something to prove, but she missed."

"Too right, she missed. Why'd you never tell me this before?"

"I haven't?"

"Uh, no! I think I'd remember if you did!"

"Geez, must've slipped my mind, ain't that big of a deal." He shrugged, moving away from out of the hold from between her legs and settling his head on his pillows, beside her.

"Daryl, you got shot, how is that not a big deal?"

"I didn't die, right c'mon, bed time, you gotta get as much sleep as ya can, those bags are huge."

He earned a punch in the arm.

"If I knew this would make you way more feisty than usual, I woulda pulled out." Daryl commented, rubbing his bicep.

"Well, you best start practising, cause I ain't going through it again."

"You mean now?" He looked at her, raising his brows.

"No." She shot him down. "I meant what I said earlier, give me two-to-three months."

"Huh?" His voice rose, the usual hoarseness dropping.

"You try pushing at least one thing outta your dick and we'll see how you get on." She told him, turning on her side, nestling her head into the pillow, she had made a small line of pillows to make it more comfortable in bed, for her bump. "What got us in this trouble anyway."

"That's what your body's made ta do." He told her, blowing out the candles that were lit on the bedside tables.

"Go back to sleeping in the woods, asshole."

"C'mon, I was kidding, grateful of ya for popping these two out, but you're way more than that." He spooned her, rubbing her protruding stomach whilst he kissed from her shoulder all the way up to her cheek. "I love ya."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." She rolled her eyes, but snuggled into his touch.

Quite a few moments had passed when she listened for his breathing, working out whether he was asleep or not.

"Hey, baby?" She whispered.

"Hm?" He mumbled, his eyes were closed and his chin was balanced on the top of her head.

"You awake?"

"Uh huh."

"I left the mac and cheese in the nursery." She confessed. "Don't wanna attract ants, but if I get up, it's so much harder."

He exhaled sharply, throwing his head back on his own pillows.

"I got it." Daryl told her, getting up from the bed.

"Oh, whilst you're up, we got some cobbler downstairs, Jerry sent it over with a pack of chips, I'm his guinea pig, he's experimenting, oh and grab a stick of cucumber."

"What, you want some slices?"

"No, that's okay, you can just get the whole stick." Natalia smiled up at him. "Thanks baby."

"Yeah, yeah." He shook his head, leaving the bedroom.

When he returned with her requested items, Daryl watched in wonderment how she devoured the food, before munching on the stick of cucumber, not even bothering to cut it up.

"What?" She asked, her mouth full of the vegetable, meeting his gaze.

"Nothing." He shook his head. "I don't like the way you're eating that, making me nervous."

He was already holding a pillow over his crotch, something he did subconsciously.

"I only bit it once, and it was an accident." Natalia glared at him, "I heard someone walk past and I got spooked."

"Was your idea, anyway." He looked away.

"You saying that if I offered to go down on you now, you wouldn't want it?" She asked, her hand on his thigh as she batted her eyelashes.

Daryl swallowed thickly, forcing himself to think straight.

"You for real?" He asked her.

"Of course not." She slapped her hand off, running it through her long dark hair. "I'm nine months pregnant, with twins, pig."

Next

[more-stuff-of-pi]

Hands

a/n: a friend sent me this tiktok and i have not stopped thinking about it so ofc i dragged maya into my bullshit (she was a huge help for akaashi). s/o to @saetyrn9​ for being a godsend and supplying me with this advice so i could write tobio <3

notes: these are all separate pairings. requests are open :) find my masterlist here

pairing: various - daichi, kuroo, kageyama, akaashi, bokuto, suga x fem!reader | genre: spice & fluff | warnings: pet names; spicy; in some, reader has enough hair to be tucked/pulled on | word count: 2,444 total

Daichi chuckled low and dark, the sound rumbling in his throat. You pressed your thighs together in anticipation as he reached towards your face. You continued to stare at him though your defiance was beginning to waver at the glint in his eyes.

His hand lightly scraped against your cheek, gently tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. He smiled at you, unnerving and exciting all at once. Daichi then slid his hand down until his thumb rested on your chin, the rest of his fingers curling around it.

“Are you finished, pretty girl?”

Your heart frantically beats out of your chest and, despite that, you smile wickedly. You tilt your chin down just enough to pop his huge thumb into your mouth, sucking it down and swirling your tongue around it. His eyes rolled back as he groaned.

You pulled back so that his thumb slid out, going back to resting on your chin. The movement left behind a delicious shining trail, your lips looking even more devilishly tantalizing.

Daichi chuckled again, sounding more strained as he opened his eyes only to meet your cheeky smile in return. Once your gazes met, your own smirk widened, Daichi’s own only growing.

“Oh,” he warned, squeezing tighter around your chin, grinning at the way you audibly gulp, “you’ve done it now, princess.”

Kuroo Tetsurou was an absolutely chaotic ride. One minute, he was being the absolute biggest dork, cracking stupidly delightful puns, the next he was what you could only describe as unbearably sexy, and the next he was so refreshingly serious and vulnerable. Tetsurou was colorful and lovely and warm and funny and handsome and compassionate and diligent. He was so in tune with you, always willing to match whatever level you were at. He flowed and ebbed like water. You were pretty sure you depended on him like he was, and he you.

And because Tetsurou was so well acquainted and well versed in you, he knew from the moment he stepped in the door and saw you that something was off. You were washing dishes, a chore that you hated. Tetsurou usually was the one to do it since he didn’t mind it and you would do the laundry since he despised that chore. It was a trade off and one that worked well. The only time you would ever do the dishes was when you were overwhelmed and simply needed something methodical to take your mind off things.

After slipping off his shoes, Tetsurou slid behind you, slowly loosely wrapping his arms around your waist, giving you plenty of time to shy away from him if you wanted. But once he was encircling you, you immediately melted into his embrace, leaning into his face when he hooked his chin over your shoulder.

“Hi, baby,” he whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to your temple. “Bad day?”

You sighed, whimpering almost, in response.

“Wanna talk about it?”

You shook your head gently, reaching over to unplug the drain. Wiping your hands on a towel, you turned around in Tetsurou’s hold, hands fluttering to his arms. You bit your lip, embarrassment flushing your cheeks as you looked at the space between you so as to not have to directly face Tetsurou. “Can you just help me forget about it?”

Tetsurou’s eyes widened, a little surprised at the request. But his mouth grew into a soft grin, his eyes melting to a place of care and desire. He tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear, leaning down to kiss a spot right next to it as he did. He gently kissed the corners of your eyes, too, as red and tired as they looked. When your mouths finally met, the kiss was slow and passionate and loving and eager all at once. It didn’t really make sense but your tongues were dancing like they knew the rhythm anyways.

Molten heat began swirling at the unmistakably loving way Tetsurou was kissing you. He felt the same stir in him as he pulled away, looking equally as dazed as you felt. With a few blinks, the glaze of his eyes swirled to a more solidified darkness. His hand that had slipped to the small of your back gently tugged your hips closer, the other hand caressing your face. He stroked his thumb over your cheek before sliding his hand to gently grip either side of your face.

And in the most loving, tender, gentle voice, Tetsurou whispered against your lips: “By the time I’m done with you, you won’t even remember your own name.” And he sealed his promise with a chaste kiss.

You tried to feel bad about how much of a devil you could be, but teasing Tobio was just so addictive, the rush it gave you might as well have been some kind of drug, thrilling as it was. Though Tobio was quite perceptive in the middle of a game, he always needed a bit of a nudge in the right direction to catch onto your teasing. But, after being with him for so long, you became a natural in nudging him right where you wanted him.

You had purposely waited for some formal charity event that you and Tobio couldn’t afford to be running late to. In getting ready for the event, you had slipped into a lacy set, a beautiful deep blue to compliment the color of Tobio’s eyes. Feigning ignorant innocence, you walked into your living room, presenting Tobio with two choices to pick for the formal event. He had only stared at you, a blush quickly rising to his cheeks as you shrugged and slipped into the option that had a tasteful but rather high slit.

The rest of the night he kept glancing at you and his face would heat up all over again, remembering exactly what it was that you were teasingly wearing underneath. You had done everything you could think of to tease him. Leaning too much into your chin, the neckline of your dress shifting precariously. Moving your hand to your throat, squeezing when you knew he was looking. A few times when he was across the room you had crossed your legs, ‘accidentally’ letting the slit fall open to reveal the garters sitting snugly around your thighs. Once you had even slipped a finger in between the garter and your thigh, pulling and letting it snap back against your skin.

But the last straw for Tobio had been when you slid into the seat next to him while he was talking to some important businesswoman or other, innocent dazzling smile sitting prettily on your lips. You had taken his large hand into yours, gently placing it on your thigh. Hidden by the overhang of the table cloth and the distraction of the conversation, you had inched his hand up, over the garter until it eventually cupped you, his fingers meeting the intricate patterns of the intriguing swirl of lace and the wetness they were holding.

It was no wonder that you found yourself now with his large hand wrapped around your jaw, fingers and thumb digging painfully into the sides of your face.

He used the deliciously sinful grip that he had on your face to shove you against the wall of the entryway of your shared apartment. Even through his lustful fury, what really got him was how, in the depths of your gorgeous eyes, even now pressed up against the wall held by his larger strength, Tobio saw nothing but love, trust, and adoration. In his eyes, he saw that you were truly his for the taking. And he was yours.

Tobio jerked your face, forcing you to look at him. “If you wanna play, princess,” he squeezed possessively, and on instinct you opened your mouth. Tobio grinned, leaning on his forearm above you, staring you down, his own eyes mirroring all of the emotions found in yours. “Then we are going to play.”

It was, regrettably, rather easy for you to become lost in thought. You didn’t ever mean to lose focus, sometimes your mind would drift off, carrying you to some faraway place or memory.

Fortunately, however, Akaashi Keiji was used to his girlfriend’s mind wandering. He found it rather endearing that way that you could be present in one moment and adrift the next. It didn’t happen too often, only every now and then, enough to warrant it a recurring issue.

Keiji was at the sink, cleaning the dishes used for dinner that night while you were sitting at the table, sifting through the small stack of mail there. He was talking to you, telling you about the latest panels that he was excited to be working on, though frustrated with how slow he seemed to be going compared to his usual pace.

“Maybe it’s because there’s not enough caffeine in my coffee,” he joked, briefly glancing over his shoulder to watch you laugh knowingly with him as you both well understood that the amount of caffeine Keiji consumed was probably a borderline addiction. Only, you were busy staring blankly through the mail in your hand. Keiji smiled at the sight. “Love?” he called, not really expecting any kind of response. And sure enough, you were still as lost as ever.

Keiji wiped his hands on the towel kept by the sink, crossing to stand in front of you. He braced himself on the back of a chair, slightly leaning forward as he innocently lifted your chin with his finger, tugging to get you to look at him. “Angel, did you even hear a word I said?”

Despite his gentle tone and small touch, you seemed to be jerked back into reality. You looked down from the finger on your chin, to Keiji’s blue eyes and not a moment later, you were shifting in your seat, flustered and at a loss for words. Keiji quirks an eyebrow, wondering what could have you so hot and bothered until he remembers certain events the previous evening. The room had been dark and so very hot, filled with the music of both of your pants and moans. You had clung to him like your life had depended on it, face fallen open into wanton bliss, messy and without a care in the world. The scratches you had left on his back suddenly flared with the memory.

As he looked into your eyes, ever perceptive, he could see the familiar glaze ringing the edges and immediately understood what place your mind had taken you to. Keiji smirked, fully prepared to bring his angel another moment to occupy her pretty little mind.

When you first got together, you wondered if Koutarou was simply too big. The man was big, massive even. He always made you feel so small, his hands wrapping around your waist, covering a lot of ground. When he would come up behind you to wrap his arms around you in a giant loving hug, he would always curl over you, resting his head atop yours. And though he made you feel so small physically -- he couldn’t help it, afterall, he was just big -- he always, always made you feel like the world to him.

Even now, loving you so gently, he reminded you of the large part you occupied in his world. He didn’t even need words to do it. Koutarou was always so wonderfully and delightfully expressive, deliciously so in moments like these.

You were in his lap, nothing but an old worn shirt of his drowning you in fabric, the probably unflattering shorts that you wore around the apartment hastily discarded somewhere. You had your hands hanging off of his shoulders, lazily crossed at the wrists. Your legs were wrapped around him much in the same way as he held you, hands loose around your waist. The kisses passing between you were passionate yet soft, heated yet full of the tenderness that Koutarou always treated you with. Even when you asked him to be anything but gentle, he always found a way to slip it in, a small yet significant reminder of his utter love and adoration for you.

He rolled his hips up into you, the particular motion pulling a whimper from your lips. You could feel Koutarou smile into the next kiss. His hands trailed from your waist, squeezing playfully as he went up, both of you giggling into each other. After a few pinches along the way, Koutarou’s hands rested on either side of your face. The look in his eyes made you still, being helplessly drawn into the stars there. His eyes shone, bright and vibrant and full of the excitement that you felt with him everyday. His thumbs rubbed into your face as he searched your gaze, a gentle smile resting peacefully on his lips.

“You’re my everything. I love you so, so much. Let me show how true that is.”

Koushi’s voice was beautiful. It was so soothing. Any other time you would love to listen to him read to you if only for the chance to hear his voice.

But now, with your wrists tied to your ankles, your legs spread wide open and trembling, and just an overall overstimulated mess, you swore you were going to kill him the next time you could form a coherent sentence.

Your eyes rolled back into your head at another vibration, fresh tears streaming down your face.

Koushi must have noticed, his voice pausing.

You knew you must have looked ridiculous. Old tears having already dried in streaks down your face, new ones gently adding fresh paths. Your mouth was open, tongue almost lolling out. Maybe it was. You really couldn’t tell, you were so lost in your own head. You honestly didn’t really even notice Koushi had stopped reading aloud, only processing it when he clicked his tongue.

“You know, if you keep spacing out, you’ll never learn. And we wouldn't want that, now, would we?”

You couldn’t do much more than nod your head forward, your neck having given up on supporting its suddenly incredibly heavy weight.

Koushi tsked once more, stopping his pacing altogether. “Now, now, angel,” Koushi cooed, taking the manuscript he was holding and scraping its weight underneath your chin, lifting up. “Eyes on me.”

With the assistance, you were able to meet Koushi’s eyes. There, you saw the mischievous glint that sent a shudder down your spine. Your eyes fluttered closed and Koushi gently lifted your chin further. You managed to open your heavy lids once more, gazing submissively back at him. Koushi licked his lips, devilish smirk stretching his pretty lips across shining teeth.

“Good girl.”

taglist: @samwrights, @mayaoliviee​ - send an ask to be on it!​

[howlingday]

jaune's from a family of raiders

well not quite he's from a culture that puts a lot of stock in capturing and ransoming off their friends and neighbors from other tribes. think of it like a combat sport only some times you're also stealing cattle and horses.

he's a prince of the high king

well again it's more complicated the kingdoms are like city states they don't exactly legislate or collect taxes all the way out into the wilds. but they do send huntsmen to protect the area and then tax the huntsmen.

jaune's dad just happened to be a huntsman who didn't pay taxes because the area his family had lived in for generations also happened to be outside the control of vale. and lots of people wanna live near the huntsmen who can keep them safe. so he has a position of respect among all the tribes. and jaune is his son

he's also required to have a harem

this one is interesting because it's one of those cultural things that seems weird from the outside but makes more sense when you look at it. men are hard to keep alive without a hospital. even with aura. women are part of a protected group like children and so take less risks in life. leading to there being a ton more women than men. and since technology isn't quite to the level of the kingdoms proper,

well more hands to help maintain a house isn't bad right?

but most of all jaune is a man who only wants to do right by his family, whether that be those from the past, or the woman, or women, that he loves.

and this part needs no further clarification

tldr: au where jaune's part of a tribal community and brings his lover or lovers home to meet the family. how does that go for everyone?

P.S: also sorry for the flowery ask, i felt inspired by something

Ooh, do tell the inspiration!

"Unhand me, you brute!" Jaune sighed as the girl in white screeched and squirmed behind him. "Do you know who I am?! When my family hears of this, they will hang you for this! Do you hear me?"

Jaune kept his focus on the road ahead as he gripped the reigns of Valorie, his mare, glancing left and right occasionally to avoid an ambush. His family might have a hold on the territory, but with his father growing in age, so, too, did that grip loosen. A rival tribe or rogue patrol from the kingdoms would easily snatch up an easy target like the lone swordsman and his latest bride.

"Could you at least tell me where we're going?"

"Home." Jaune answered, not looking back.

"Oh, yes, of course! How could I not know? And where exactly is your home?"

"Just up ahead."

"Uh huh, I see, and what are you going to do once you're home?"

Jaune let out a long sigh as he stretched his shoulders a bit. "Well, drop you off with the others, then have you judged, if there's enough time."

"Judged?" Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Judged for what?"

"Wife material." Weiss blushed and her jaw dropped. "Can you cook; can you clean; are you good with children; can you have children; do you have any family illnesses?" He shrugged. "Routine wedding discussions."

"W-Wedding?!" Ah, and just like that, the shrieking began anew. "You savage! You brute! I refuse to be treated like some stock taken to auction, about to be sold to some pervert noble!"

"You're not being sold to a noble." Jaune smiled and looked back. "Just me." Before she could begin again, Jaune let out a sigh of relief. "Finally, we're home."

It may have only been about a week since Jaune had left, but it felt like forever since his departure from the lands of Arcadia. The valleys and hills were as green and lush as ever, and the summer winds carried the calming scent of flowers across it all. He passed the growing crops, where he saw his sisters, their wives, and some of his own watering and tending to them. They waved to him, and he returned one to them.

"Welcome home, Miss Weiss." The girl marveled at the beauty. She had only heard of such places from her studies in the manor, but to see it in person was something else. Before she could admire it more, however, the mare stopped, jostling her from her focus.

Jaune slid down, then pulled Weiss down as well, carrying her bridal style. He then set her onto her own feet and untied the binds on her wrists and ankles. She lifted her leg, then kicked his shin. He yelped in pain.

"That was for the kidnapping!" She shouted.

"Yeesh! Just a kick?" Weiss turned to see a lilac-eyed blonde woman in fieldwork garments smiling at her. "When he dropped me off, they had to get his old man to get me off of him." She looked past Weiss to Jaune. "You going soft on me, or just your taste in women?"

"And who are you?" Weiss spat. "One of his whores?"

Yang laughed and placed a sweaty, mud-encrusted paw on her delicate shoulder. It felt warm at first, then hot as her grip became tight, and her eyes red. "I dare you to say that again."

"Yang, stop it!" Weiss and Yang looked to the younger girl running from inside the house. She was a brunette with red tips and silver eyes, and she wore a red apron that she had to roll up to her shins. She futilely tugged on the blonde woman's arm. "Jaune told you not to hurt anyone else!"

She let go, making the girl yelp as she was lifted with her arm. "Aw, c'mon, Rubes, we were just playing!" She then looked to Weiss, her eyes lilac once more. "Ain't that right, Ice Queen?"

"Ice Queen?!" Weiss balked.

"Yang, cut it out, please." Jaune sighed.

"Fine, fine!" Yang turned around, lowering her arm. The smaller girl let go as she walked away. "Besides, the crops won't grow themselves. I'll go be a good workhorse." She stopped to look back and winked. "I expect my carrot tonight, though, sweetheart~."

"Play nice and we'll see." Jaune responded with a smile. With that, Yang chuckled and resumed walking, swaying her hips for a few more yards before jogging back to the field. He looked to the younger girl and smiled. "And how have you been, Ruby?"

She sighed. "Do you mean after you left, or after you came back?"

"Both."

"After you left, I missed you. It was your mom's birthday, but I couldn't afford a present, so I took on her chores for the week, but I didn't expect her chores included chimney cleaning, so now I have soot so far up my nose, I'm still sneezing black. Then I had to tend to the chickens, but they're so vicious, and I swear they can smell weakness, because the rooster jumped me at least six times. Then Zwei needed a bath, but he somehow tricked me into the tub, so I smell like wet dog a little bit. And then I had to bake her cake all on my own, but there were eggshells in it and it came out both burnt and raw somehow, and I just- Argh!" Ruby collapsed into Jaune's torso. "I really missed you."

Jaune held her and kissed the crown of her head. "I missed you, too, Ruby." He stepped back and held a hand outward towards Weiss. "Ruby Rose-Arc, this is Weiss Schnee. She's going to be my newest bride." He looked to Weiss. "Weiss Schnee, this is Ruby Rose-Arc, my second wife. She and Yang will help prepare you for judging."

"It's so nice to meet you!" Ruby swooped in, snatching the other woman's hands in hers. Her smile was wide and bright. "It'll be nice to have another short girl in our home!"

"No!" Weiss yanked her hands away. "I refuse! When my father hears of this, he'll-"

"Oh, that reminds me!" Jaune walked to Valorie and reached into her saddlebag. Weiss grumbled as she watched him pull out a small, burlap sack. "Here, Ruby. This was part of the dowry, but I want you to have it."

Ruby opened the sack and squealed in delight. "Dust crystals!" She hugged the new woman tightly. "You are the bestest bestie a bestie could ever have!"

"What the-?! Where did you get those?!" Weiss shrieked.

"From your father." Ruby ran inside with her new sack. "In exchange for marrying you, we'll allow him to trade through our lands."

"My father would never-!" Jaune gave her a curious look. "I mean, not to one of his own-!" Her voice grew softer. "I thought..."

"Listen," Jaune placed a hand on her shoulder, "if you don't want to marry me, I understand. Most of the others didn't want to, either. But if you give it a few days, you might learn to love it here. You won't go hungry, you'll be well protected, and I promise you'll be loved every day."

"I just... I didn't think I would be treated like this. By my own family."

"I know." Jaune removed his hand. "Would it be okay if I hugged you?"

"I-"

"JAUNEY!" The two saw a young woman bull rush towards Jaune, carrying a dead boar high above her head. Jaune extended his arms out and caught her, spinning in place at least a dozen times. Blood sprayed around, including onto Weiss and the other two as they embraced. When they stopped, Jaune set her down, giving her a butterfly kiss with his nose to hers. "You're home!"

Jaune chuckled. "Yup!" He peered around her and looked to Weiss. "And I brought back someone new."

Nora turned around and gasped as she looked at Weiss. "Oh! My! Dust! You are so small!" She looked to Jaune and waggled her brow. "Be careful you don't break her!" She then laughed. "I'd shake your hand, but, uh, I'm a little busy. I'm Nora Valkyrie-Arc, Jaune's fourth wife."

"Weiss Schnee." Blood dripped from her hair. "And I was just about to leave."

"Aw! Already?! We were gonna make pancakes tomorrow!"

"I was going to make pancakes, Nora." Weiss turned to the male voice and saw a slim man in the doorway, wearing both an apron and a blank expression. "Just like I do every morning for you."

"Renny!" Nora cheered before tossing the trophy to him. "This is my first husband, Lie-Valkyrie Ren!"

Despite his slim figure, the man held the heavy beast with seemingly no trouble. "A pleasure to meet you." He nodded, before turning to head inside.

"Is he also your husband?" Weiss asked. Jaune chuckled nervously. This was going to be a long day, but they both already knew that.

[reidgraygubler]

play date (jennifer jareau/reader)

Title: Play Date

Request: no

Couple: Jennifer Jareau/Gender-Neutral!Reader

Category: Fluff

Content Warning:  allusions to parents death, mentions of a parent walking out, swearing (if any), single parenthood, tbh i don’t really know what else to tag. It’s just straight (or gay) fluff.

Word Count: 3,028

Summary: JJ brings her kids to the park where she meets Reader, who brought her kids to play. The pair’s kids become fast friends, as for Reader and JJ? That’s a whole different story.

A/N: this is my first time writing for jj. please enjoy it bc im big soft for her rn (i will also say that about luke too)... this is day four of my 7fics 7days event for 1.2k followers ! Here is the masterlist for that! And here’s my main masterlist! Thank you all for the love and support! 

also, thank you to @reidetic​ for proof reading this :)))

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It was a normal day, right? I mean, that’s what I thought. My kids and I walked to the park after some chores, and after lunch. Nice fresh air, playing in the park, talking to other parents. Do people actually do that? Talking to other parents in the park? It’s been a while since I’ve actually gone to the park with my kids… 

"Make sure you’re safe. And, if you need me, I’ll be sitting here," I pointed to the bench that held my backpack. My daughter looked up at me and nodded before running off. My son on the other hand was a little bit more apprehensive of leaving my side to go play. Part of me wondered if it had to do with all the other kids running around, playing with one another. 

"What’s up, Buddy? Didn’t you want to come to the park?" I looked at him as I squatted to his height. He looked up at me and shrugged, not really telling me what was wrong. "Oh, c’mon, we’ve been to this park before." I sighed and looked at him while I gently ruffled his hair.

"Your sister wants to play with you, go on." I looked towards the park where my daughter was currently playing. It was a relief seeing her playing with the other kids, not by herself. But she was always quick to make new friends and play with new people. So it wasn’t that big of a surprise. 

"Your son can play with my boys if he wants," a woman looked at me with a smile. I looked away from my child and towards a blonde woman who had two boys standing beside her. They looked to be about my son's age. 

"You wanna play with them?" I looked back at my boy, resting a hand on his shoulder. I watched as he looked over at the two new boys, his little eyebrows furrowed together as his lips pouted out a bit. "C’mon they won’t bite."

"Well, Michael might…" the woman laughed as she looked between me and my boy. I looked back at her with a raised eyebrow. "They like playing superheroes," she was quick to add, clearly realizing her mistake. 

"You love superheroes! You could be X-Men!" I clapped my hands together. My son looked up at me with furrowed eyebrows and shook his head. Over by the blonde woman I could hear her boys talking about something. I looked over at the three and raised an eyebrow. "Did I say something wrong?" I looked back at my son. He just looked at me, his eyes just staring at me like I did, indeed, say something wrong. 

"How about," the woman spoke, looking between my boy and I, and then down at her boys, "You three go play superheroes, and when you’re all done, come back to us," she folded her arms over her chest as she looked down at the 3 boys. My son looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow, silently asking if I was totally fine with him going with 2 strangers.

"It’s okay, go on. I’ll be here. Have fun," I winked at him before standing upright myself. He looked over at the two other boys before running off with them. 

"That was easier than I thought it would be," I laughed as I moved my backpack to the ground, before I sat on the bench. 

"They love making new friends. But they can be a little… shy," she laughed as she stepped closer to the bench, "I would do anything for them," she smiled and nodded.

"Please, you can sit beside me." I chuckled as I gestured towards the empty space beside me.

"Jennifer… Jennifer Jareau," she smiled at me as she sat down beside each other on the park bench. I looked at her and nodded. "But you can call me JJ,"

"It’s nice meeting you, JJ," I smiled before giving her my name, "How old are your boys?" I looked over at the playground and spotted our boys playing together. It didn’t look like they were playing superheroes like JJ and I had both thought. It looked like they were playing pirates or something else. 

"Henry is 9 and Michael just turned 6," JJ smiled at me as I looked back at her. "What about yours? How old is he?" she asked, looking out at all the kids. 

"He just turned 5 a few months ago. And my daughter is 10," I smiled and nodded. I looked back out at the playground, looking for my daughter. She was by the slide, talking with one of the other girls. 

"Oh, and you have a daughter?" JJ asked as she followed my gaze to the girl in question. "Well, they both look just like you."

"Well, they definitely don’t have my  eyes and nose," I laughed and shook my head. JJ looked back at me with a cocked eyebrow. "And I swear my little boy has their personality too." 

"He certainly is adorable," JJ laughed as she looked around at the playground. She laughed once she looked at our boys. I was impressed that my son was actually playing instead of just sitting to the side by himself. To be honest, I don’t remember the last time he played with other kids his age. It was a nice change to see for him. He looked like he was having fun, and that’s all that mattered.

"My little king," I laughed lightly as I looked back at JJ. I noticed she was looking between me and our kids. "Do you come to this park often?" 

"Not as often as I’d like. Work can get busy, and then school gets busy," I relaxed my body as I sat back more on the bench.

"Amen to that," JJ raised her eyebrows as she spoke. Her smile was genuine, and I enjoyed looking at it. It gave me a certain joy I hadn’t had in a while. It made me smile. 

"What is it you do for a living? Surely it can’t be too bad," I laughed as I turned to face her more. She copied my movement and faced me too.

"I… I actually work for the FBI," she kept her voice low so no one around could hear our conversation. I looked at her with wide eyes. And suddenly every little bad thing I’ve ever done came to my mind. The one time I ran a red light because I didn’t want to be late. Or, the one time I stole a chocolate bar when I was a teenager. Or, when I cut someone off on the freeway.

"The-the FBI… Great," I nodded as I looked down at my hands. "Beats my media manager job," I laughed again as I looked up at her.

"Don’t worry. Media manager sounds like a great job," JJ smiled at me, reaching over to hold my hand. I looked at her and nodded.

"FBI sounds even cooler. I bet it’s terrifying," I swallowed roughly as I looked at her.

"Sometimes it can be. It’s the thrill of the chase that keeps me going." Her laughter was like cotton candy: sweet and light and fluffy. I couldn’t help but smile again. 

"I would have guessed it was the boys that kept you going. But, I supposed the FBI does do that to someone," I looked down at her hand, which was still holding mine. I could feel my heart rate pick up slightly as I looked down at our hands. I wonder if she knew she was still holding mine. 

"Yeah, I suppose I do have to try to keep up with those boys," she laughed, again, before looking over at our kids. I furrowed my eyebrows before nodding slowly. 

"Surely their dad must be a load of help, while you’re at work," I asked about her husband/partner without actually asking about him. She looked back at me and cringed slightly. "Oh… I’m so sorry," I whispered before dropping my gaze from her face.

"It’s okay. Really, it's fine,"  she pulled her hand from mine and waved it off. Part of me sensed that she didn't want to talk about it. And, that was okay. 

If it was the same situation as me, if they just walked out? Or if he was ever a part of his kids lives… Did he die? And, if so how? Was he a police officer who got killed on duty? Or was he incredibly sick? It was a bit of a touchy subject. That was until she asked...

"What happened to their…” she started as she looked over at me. “If you don’t mind me asking?" JJ looked at me. And I could feel her big blue doe eyes starting into my spoiler soul. I looked at her and shrugged.

"Oh, uh, not in their lives anymore," I sighed before looking towards the playground, "It was just after our son was born too..." I shrugged, leaving my statement as vague as possible so I wouldn’t have to explain that we were left for another person.

"Oh goodness, I’m sorry," she looked at me, gently resting a hand on my lap. I looked down at her hand and felt my heart rate spike again. 

I think she was able to figure out what happened without me saying anything about him. I mean, I figured out what happened to her husband. If I didn't have to explain what happened, then I think that would be best….

"Anyways, I've been a single parent ever since," I smiled as I looked over at her, “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Those two are my world,” I locked eyes with her. 

“I can agree. Michael and Henry… I’d be lost without them,” she smiled at me as she spoke. With that, we both fell into an odd and slightly uncomfortable silence. We both just turned and looked at our kids playing with each other. I wish it wasn’t so awkward…. 

“So, the… FBI?” I started as I turned back to face her. 

“The FBI,” she laughed and nodded, “I work in the BAU,” she looked over at me.

“What would that be, exactly?” I raised an eyebrow. 

“Oh! Yeah! Right, I forget that people don’t know about all the different sections within the actual FBI,” JJ laughed again, and I couldn’t help but let my heart swell again. “So, there’s a bunch of different branches in the FBI, right. I work in the BAU, which is the Behavioral Analysis Unit,” she explained, looking at me like I already knew what that was. I furrowed my eyebrows as I looked at her.

“Okay, so… What do you do?” 

“Essentially, we read the behaviors of criminals… Like, serial killers, kidnappers… Stuff like that.”

“Like, Ted Bundy?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.

“Yeah! Kinda. We’ve been all over the country, solving cases, some unsolved ones. It’s a wild world we live in,” JJ swallowed roughly as she looked down at the bench.

“Do you know how many cases you’ve solved? Must be a lot,” I asked, feeling a certain excitement take over. I felt a little embarrassed by the excitement I felt. JJ could sense that too. But I could see how happy she got with my joy. 

“Too many to count, honestly. I’ve been on the team for… 15 years,” JJ’s tone was mildly confused. Like, she wasn’t too sure. 

“Well, if you’ve been in that line of work for nearly two decades, it’s okay if you don’t remember,” I laughed as I reached over and rested my hand on her leg. It was her turn to blush up at my touch. “Media manager isn’t anything cool. Not like travelling the country like an FBI Agent. That’s super cool,” I looked up at her. 

“It is till it keeps you away from home for long periods of time,” she frowned as she looked down at where my hand was resting on her leg. I returned the frown as I retracted my hand.

“I understand being away from home for a while. Although, I think I only go on work trips every six months,” I laughed, trying to cheer her up a bit. 

“Anyways, enough about work,” JJ laughed as she looked back at me. 

I was more than happy when we fell into a comfortable conversation. Better than before, when we fell into the complete opposite, uncomfortable silence. The conversations moved so swiftly from hobbies, to when our kids were younger, to what we do in our free time. Although, our conversations were cut short by a cry from a little boy in the playground.

I instantly shot up to my feet, looking around the playground for my son. JJ was instantly on her feet too, looking for her sons too. The second I saw my son on the ground, in tears and holding his knee close to his body. I sprinted across the playground and right to him.

“Hey, hey, baby,” I knelt to the ground to help him, “It’s okay,” I whispered as I brushed the tears off his face.

“He… He just fell off the playground,” one of JJ’s sons appeared by me. I looked over at him and nodded with an exaggerated pout. 

“That’s okay! Accidents happen!” I looked back down at my son before picking him up and resting him on my hip. He sniffled his nose before pressing his face into my shoulder. “Ohh, is it time to go home?” I frowned as I walked back over to JJ and the bench. 

“Oh no! Did we have a fall?” JJ looked at me as I got closer to her. I frowned and nodded. “I have a first aid kit in the van if you need." She watched as I sat back down. She sat beside me and looked at my son. “Oh, that looks like a rough owie,” she looked at the scrape on his knees.

“You should see his hands,” I looked back at her. JJ looked back at me before standing up. 

“I’ll be right back,” she rested a hand on my son’s head and then mine before leaving us for a moment. 

“Should we go home and take a nap?” I asked, resting my hand on his back. He took a shaky breath and nodded before pressing his head into body. I looked up just as JJ returned with a small first aid kit and a stuffed animal.

“I have X-Men and Batman band aids,” JJ whispered as she sat back down beside me. I turned my son around so he was facing JJ. “Do you want… Wolverine or Batman?” She looked at him with a small smile on her lips. 

“B-batman,” he whispered, looking cautiously at JJ. I watched as she pulled out a wipe, ointment and some Batman band aids. My son looked up at me, tears still fresh in his eyes. 

“This might sting… Do you want to hold Arlo? He’s Michael’s dinosaur,” JJ looked at my son as she offered the bright blue and yellow stuffed animal. I looked down at him as he held out his hands to take the dinosaur from JJ’s hands. 

“You can be a big boy, for JJ?” I asked, brushing more tears off his cheeks. He looked up at me and nodded. I looked back at JJ and nodded lightly so she would just hurry and clean his injuries. 

“Owie,” he cried as he began squirming around. I held him close as JJ tried to be quick. 

“Look! Look! I’m all done!” she lifted her hands to show him that she was truly finished. “You got some pretty cool Batman’s band aids on your knees now,” she pointed at his knees, causing him to look down at them.

“What do you say to JJ,” I whispered, looking at my son’s face. She looked at me, then down at the boy on my knee with a smile.

“Thanks, JJ,” he mumbled before turning to hide into my body. JJ laughed, and looked back at me. 

“You’re welcome, Buddy,” she looked down at him again. 

“And, on that note… I should probably collect my other kid and go home. It’s nap time,” I looked at JJ as I handed her the stuffed Dinosaur. I really didn’t want to bid farewell to her. But, it was time to go. Time had flown by quickly, it was well past nap time and almost dinner time.

“I agree,” JJ frowned as she stood up. I sighed as I stood up beside her. We both called for our kids, waiting for them to run over to us. “Oh, we should exchange numbers… It was nice talking with you, and it’s nice to have friends outside of work,” she laughed as she turned to me again. I smiled and nodded before pulling out my phone.

"We’ll have to set up another playdate soon. I’m sure they all had fun together," I smiled, looking down at my kid. JJ looked at her kids, then over at mine, "Now that we’ve exchanged numbers and all. How would you guys feel about that?" I couldn’t help but let the smile grow across my lips. My cheeks started to hurt a little bit from how happy I was feeling. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was this happy.

"I think that’s a great idea," JJ smiled before looking back at me. I looked back at her and nodded. "And, maybe we can… have a date our… ourselves?" she asked, raising an eyebrow slightly, "Only if you want! I won’t press-"

"That would be… nice," I smiled and nodded, "I’ll call you?" 

"Sounds good! Have a nice night you three," JJ smiled at each of us before corralling her kids towards her van. 

"Who was that?" My daughter looked up at me with furrowed eyebrows. I smiled as I watched JJ drive off.

"A new friend," I answered, looking down at her with a smile. 

if you want to be a part of a taglist or have any comments about this one shot, let me know here

[belphegor1982]

not sure if you're doing the prompt list, but parenthood (6) with leonard snart and janet? 👉👈 i'm in love with your characterizations of len and his wife 💕

It took me two weeks, but there it is :D

Parenthood (DCAU)

When she’d been a kid, Janet had – very naturally – assumed that her adult life would match her parents’, or their neighbours: a house, a husband, a dog, a white picket fence, not necessarily in that order. And kids. Like an afterthought, something not really important so much as vaguely necessary.

She hadn’t thought about it until a couple of years or so into her and Len’s marriage. They’d had somewhat rocky beginnings: she’d been fierce, he’d been grumpy, and they’d both been so damn young they hadn’t seen how ridiculous they were, dancing around each other like they weren’t sure they were allowed this… that. ‘Relationship’ was too big a word. Whatever they had, though, they had kept, because it was good and it was theirs. One day it had hit Janet that Len basically only went back to his crappy little apartment to shower; one night they’d been in bed, sweaty and tired and stupid happy, and as Janet reached for the book on her bedside table afterwards while Len scribbled on his ‘heist ideas’ notebook like he’d been struck with sudden inspiration, she had realised in a rush that she wanted the rest of her life to be like this.

“Wanna get married, one of these days?” she’d asked, almost not nervous at all.

Len had stared at her long enough to make her start to regret asking. Then he’d given a small smile, the very rare sort that showed in his eyes.

“Sure,” he’d said, and that was that.

They’d gotten married six months later. Janet wore blue. Her parents showed up, despite the disapproval hanging thick in the air – her father convinced that she could ‘do a lot better than a thug’, her mother ice-cold at the thought of her daughter marrying ‘some two-bit crook’. Len had only invited his sister, a stunning young blonde who’d been friendly to Janet but still appeared put-out that the invitation didn’t extend to her boyfriend.

“He’s a jerk,” Len had said later, making Janet laugh.

“You’re a jerk, Len.”

“Not the same kind. He’s stuck-up. Lisa’s too good for him anyway.”

“Yeah, well. That’s not up to you to decide, is it? It’s your sister’s choice.”

“I know, I just… She deserves better. Better than she got as a kid.”

Janet had looked at him, long and careful, suddenly a little tense.

“Do you think she’s… not safe? With him?”

Len had blinked, then shaken his head.

“Nah, nothin’ like that. You can tell Dillon’s actually good to her. Nothing like…” He had trailed off, something hard and cold and sudden in his eyes like someone had slammed closed a pair of shutters. That had only lasted for ten seconds before he’d shrugged. “I just wish he wasn’t such a dick, that’s all.”

Then he’d abruptly changed the subject, and Janet had followed, because she knew precarious ground when she saw it.

* * * *

Living with someone in the intimate way meant noticing a lot of things about them, more or less willingly.

Len had cottoned on pretty early to her tendency to snap when she was tired or angry, and of holding nothing back then. She also caught him looking at the crisscross pattern of scar tissue on her knuckles from when she’d punched a wall, repeatedly, after the girl who’d been her best friend in school was battered to death by her boyfriend. “I only slapped her around a bit,” the bastard had said, and ten years later Janet still wished that she’d had the guts to punch him instead. She’d finally told Len about it one day, and seen his face go stone and his eyes ice. His cold fury had been comforting.

It went both ways. She noticed things about her husband, too. Like some odd scars she had a feeling he hadn’t picked up in juvie, the trace of a cigarette burn in the hollow of his right shoulder, or the mark – still chillingly precise even years later – of a belt buckle in the small of his back. She wondered whether Lisa had similar scars. Not that she’d ask. She and her sister-in-law didn’t have that kind of relationship.

Janet had a past. Len had a past. That was what being human meant. Sometimes that felt more like dragging a corpse through the dust wherever you went than a happy set of picture-perfect memories, but it was part of the whole package.

The major reason Janet didn’t entertain the idea of kids for longer than a passing thought was because she didn’t want any – for the moment, she told herself, even as she kept forgetting to really think about it. She’s grown up with the distinct impression that she hadn’t been wanted, or had come at an inconvenient time to her parents. The last thing she wanted was to make a kid feel like that.

The lesser reason was everything Len wasn’t saying. He wasn’t crazy about opening up about things either important or trivial, though he did anyway because they both liked to get their point across clearly. But she’d never, ever heard him say anything at all about his life before he’d struck out on his own, a couple of years short of eighteen years old. His sister Lisa was six years younger, and that was all Janet knew. Family, parents, home life – Len didn’t let anything slip. This, combined with the scars and a few odd reactions, carefully hidden under a lot of attitude, told her more than he appeared willing to share.

One day, when he’d been nicely mellowed out by a good score and a shared bottle of the good stuff to celebrate, she had asked him, “Do you ever think about having kids?”

The split-second look he’d given her still haunted her to this day. She had seen him angry, she had seen him silent, cheerful and surly and balking at house chores, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that he could ever be afraid.

“No,” he’d answered curtly. “Why?”

“Just wondering. Kevin from logistics just had his third the other day. Kept asking me when I’d finally get started on my own.”

“Kevin from logistics needs to mind his own damn business.”

“That’s what I told him,” said Janet, and Len smirked. “Anyway, he got me thinking. Turns out I don’t think I want kids. You know, at all.”

The relief on his face was as fleeting as the fear, but just as stark.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I like what we have.” A pause. “You’ve really never thought about having kids one day?”

“Sure I did, once – for about five seconds. Weirdest five seconds of my life.”

She’d given him a look, half amused, half a smile. Relax, Len. You’re not getting interrogated.

“That bad?”

“Look, I don’t… Kids are weird, all right? Adults I can deal with. Besides, all I know is how not to be a father. No way I’m risking—no way.”

That was as close as he ever came to telling her why she’d never even heard Snart Sr.’s first name. But it was enough. They closed the subject and moved on to other things.

* * * *

And then it turned out that Metropolis and Gotham were not the only cities that could boast an actual superhero, because Central City quickly became aware of a lean, young-looking man in a red costume who called himself the Flash and went after burglars and thieves with superhuman speed. Whoever he was, whatever he was, he added an element of danger to her husband’s chosen profession, and Janet took an instant dislike to him and his big smug smile. Then she dismissed him from her mind quickly enough.

Len, though, was a very different story.

While he didn’t like the Flash any more than Janet did, the guy’s addition to the tried-and-true equation of cops and robbers added an edge that hadn’t been present before. Having an actual superhero in town made all of Len’s old research on absolute zero – and tinkering in the basement – not only relevant but useful. He designed a ‘cold gun’ from plans he’d stolen years ago, looking more excited than Janet had seen him in the last eight years, and worked hard to ‘up his game’.

Privately, Janet thought that, for a man who claimed to be as serious about his trade as Len did, creating a brand-new persona complete with parka, visor, and goofy moniker was hilarious.

Not that she ever actually laughed at him. Especially not the one time Len came back from a heist with an armful of cash and a weird look on his face.

“He’s a kid, Jan,” he said when Janet had asked him what could be wrong when he’d clearly got away with the loot unscathed. “He’s a goddamn kid. I don’t think he’s even old enough to drink.”

“What the hell is he playing at, then?” she exclaimed. “This job is not kid’s stuff! What was he thinking, that he could waltz in and play Superman, just like that?”

“I don’t know.” Len took off his visor and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then his eyes hardened. “And I don’t care. I like my job. If this guy thinks he can stop me, then he’d better be prepared to try harder.”

“I got him good today, though,” he said hours later, in the small hours of the night, after Janet’s hands had searched for his, cool and calloused, under the covers.

Something tensed inside in the region of her stomach.

“You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, looking annoyed that she’d even ask. Janet’s guts relaxed. “I’m a crook, not a murderer. Besides, you know the second someone offs that guy, Superman or another big hero is gonna show up and turn the city inside out in revenge. It’d be like when a cop gets killed. They close ranks and start shooting indiscriminately.”

“So when you say you ‘got him good’ –”

“I just sent him packin’. Didn’t rough him up more than I would a cop. The kid’s got a mean right hook but he has no idea how real cold works, speed or no speed.”

Janet closed her eyes again and murmured, “Maybe he’ll quit, then.”

“Maybe.” Even half-asleep, she could tell that this ‘maybe’ meant ‘fat chance’.

“So… on the off-chance that today didn’t put him off, what are you gonna do?”

“I was thinking I might hit Drake & Hall Savings on Infantino Street next month.”

“I meant about the Flash.”

Len’s voice was low but certain when he said, “Me too. I’ll just keep doing my job, and if this joker is as serious as he claims to be, he’ll keep trying to stop me. But I’m not gonna drop everything just because of a kid in a onesie and a mask. I’ll just have to find ways to slow him down.”

The last thought that coalesced in Janet’s mind just before she nodded off was Did my husband just become a supervillain?

She fell asleep before the laugh passed her lips.

* * * *

While ‘supervillain’ might have been stretching things – not to mention the word made Janet choke up on laughter – Len’s new approach to the job was certainly different from the one he’d had before the Flash came along. He still refused the label, though, arguing that supervillains had powers, costumes, and delusions of grandeur, while he just had a cold gun, a parka, and banks to rob.

“Okay,” said Janet when she was in a ribbing mood, “what’s the Joker’s power, then?”

This usually earned her a deadpan look.

At least Len didn’t remain the only crook with a gimmick and an eccentric costume for long. Soon her husband had colleagues, fellow not-supervillains, some of whom not only willing to work together but also seemed to actually appreciate it. Their ‘powers’ were not innate, nor did they get them in freaky accidents; like Len, they either stole tech or were savvy enough to design it. And they all rejected the label of ‘supervillain’.

They were ‘rogues’. Or rather, Rogues. And Len – who knows why – took the place of the de facto leader.

Of her husband’s coworkers, Janet got on with Mick Rory the best. She liked his even temper, his slight smile, and the fact that he generally found it easy to keep a level head. Digger Harkness was his exact opposite, and her whole life she could never quite shake off the urge to slap him whenever he opened his mouth. The others were scattered along the scale between those two extremes: some were never quite sure what to do with her (or she with them – apart from making sure the old couch in the basement could be slept on and keeping an eye on their quickly-dwindling stock of coffee and beer packs), while others were more accommodating about having to spend time with ‘Len’s missus’.

One day Janet caught James pilfering one of the cookies she’d baked herself for the next night she’d have to spend alone. He looked so terrified at being caught red-handed that she refrained from rolling her eyes and told him to help himself and share with his musician friend.

She drew the line at pointing out Hartley was too skinny, though. Just because the young man was friendly and polite and, indeed, looked rather underfed didn’t mean she had any right to turn into her Aunt Debbie. She’d rather die first. Besides, she wasn’t the kid’s nanny, was she?

Nevertheless, the cookies proved a success. Like the couch in the basement, like the stocking up on beer packs, like the occasional patching-up of scrapes not serious enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, they surreptitiously became a habit.

* * * *

Over the years, Janet Snart slid smoothly into middle-age never regretting once her decision not to have children. Turned out being a woman, a wife, a friend, and a sometimes kind-of-support to a bunch of Rogues was quite enough.

Parenthood was overrated, anyway.

______________

Hope you liked, @orion-nottson 💜

Timeline notes thingy: Janet and Len met when they were about 25-27 and got married a couple of years later. ‘Dillon’ is of course Roscoe Dillon, the Top, who has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in the JLU episode with the Rogues, but since I don’t want to kill him or Lisa, I’m thinking he was her ice skating trainer, they fell in love, and didn’t go into villainy.

Wally was the first Flash of this universe - maybe the second and Jay was a superhero in the 1940s? - since he says “my uncle’s flying in” for the ceremony. Also, when he first pops up in this story he’s not quite 16, while Len is a bit over 30.

...I really overthink these things, huh 😅

[zaffrenotes]

[TRR x ES] Viewing Party

Book: The Royal Romance & Endless Summer Pairings: Liam x MC (Katrina Bailey), Drake x OC (Alyssa Devereaux), Jake x MC (Laurel) Rating/Warnings: G; mild innuendo Author’s Note: * All main characters belong to Pixelberry, I’m just borrowing them * Katrina Bailey & Laurel are the MCs I use when writing fanfic for TRR and ES, respectively; Alyssa Devereaux belongs to birthday girl @burnsoslow​ * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles​​ Prompt 80: Stop looking at me like that. * Author’s Note 2: * This is a birthday gift for my cheesy, potato loving homegirl Burnsie, who requested her very first Endless Summer/Jake fic, despite having never read any ES fic until now 🙈 for the sole reason being that she and Jake McKenzie are almost birthday twins, and my favorite pilot turns 30 this year. If you’re unfamiliar with canon ES trivia, Jake can hold his breath for 9 minutes, and Estela can hold her breath for an astonishing 14. This isn’t entirely what I had in mind when I set out to write an ES/Jake birthday fic, but I wasn’t about to miss your day because I’ve hit a whole ass writer’s wall, Burnsie! I hope you have an AMAZING day and I’m sending you so many hugs! You’re one of the sweetest ladies here, and I am so very thankful that I can call you a friend 🥰 also my real, real gift to you is coming at a later date, as I still have to work on it 😬 * and yes, that’s DDT in the moodboard - just for Burnsie, again - since I use Barnes as Drake’s FC in my TRR fics, lol * Word Count: 2000 on the dot!

It was nearly 10:00 PM on Friday evening, when Burns arranged things around the comfiest chair in her living room. The rest of her family already retired for the evening, after a small but wonderful birthday celebration in her honor at home. Within easy reach, she’d arranged drinks and snacks next to her laptop - a glass of water, a hot mug of tea, a slice of homemade birthday cake to take care of any sugar cravings, and a small platter of cheese and crackers for something more savory. She grinned softly at the newest addition to her mug collection, watching the steam rise from the contents within. 

The lavender mug arrived in the mail earlier that day from one of her friends, emblazoned with a quote from David Rose. Burns took a sip of the warm beverage before setting it down on the small side table and situated herself in the chair. She flipped open the laptop and pulled up a browser window, smiling at a gift from another friend - there was a sticker next to the trackpad with a drawing of a wedge of Swiss, quoting another memorable line from Schitt’s Creek, reminding her to “fold in the cheese.” Burns glanced to the time on the screen and logged in to her Netflix account, clicking until she arrived at the viewing party, and began typing to join the group chat. 

She was greeted with jubilant messages from Donna, Ella, Brandy, Anitah, and half a dozen other friends, wishing her a happy birthday before the show started. They’d formed an ever-growing viewing party for a new series titled Stranded in the Orchard, which was an odd amalgamation of Survivor and Gilligan’s Island. Taking a cue from reality tv competitions, there were hidden cameras all over the island to monitor everyone and reduce production crew intervention, and in a nod to Hunger Games, there was an omnipresent host that would drop messages to signal when challenges were about to take place. After four episodes, the ladies in the watching party started picking their favorites from the two teams. 

Team Ruby consisted of a group that appeared to have been shipwrecked onto the island. Leo was dubbed The Rogue; his brother Liam was The CEO; Katrina was The Attorney; Alyssa was The Teacher; Drake was The Cowboy; Olivia was The Weapons Expert; Bertrand was The Grump; Madeleine was The Whiner; Maxwell was Bertrand’s brother and The Jester; Hana was The Jill of All Trades. Bertrand and Madeleine had already been voted off when Ruby lost two events. 

Team Catalyst consisted of a group of mostly college students. Jake was The Pilot; Laurel was The Mystery Girl; Sean was The Coach; Michelle was The Doctor, even though she was only pre-med; Craig was The Muscle; Zahra was The Engineer; Aleister was The Slick One; Grace was The Brain; Diego was The Entertainer; Estela was The Huntress. Catalyst lost the last two events, which sent Aleister and Grace packing. 

Everyone settled in to watch the opening credits as they recapped last week’s episode, where Ruby won the immunity challenge and fishing gear by building a makeshift stretcher to rescue and carry Katrina from a jungle crash site to a first aid station on the beach; Catalyst voted Grace out. Burns popped a cheese cube into her mouth as she and her friends watched the two groups deal with day-to-day chores in their respective camps on Day 14 of the show. They chatted about the team members and how much Burns wanted to see Drake take off his shirt to go in the water, despite the knowledge that there were clips of him cuddling with Alyssa; Donna, Ella, and Anitah would keysmash in the group chat any time Liam appeared on the screen, even though he and Katrina were clearly sweet on each other, while Brandy and Alyssa Lauren would ask what was happening or who someone was from the Catalyst team.

—

“Pillows and blankets are nice, but what we could really use is food,” Maxwell said, drawing an octopus in the sand with a piece of driftwood. “I don’t know how much longer I can last on coconuts and rice.” 

“Liam and Drake took the raft out this morning to try fishing with the gear, maybe they’ll get lucky,” Katrina suggested, stirring the pot of rice in the fire. She set the lid on top and stood up from her kimchi squat position, dusting some errant sand off her leg. They both looked out towards the water, as dawn stretched out across the ocean, making out shadowy forms of their friends as they bobbed in the water, just before one of them went under the surface. Behind them, the rest of their friends began to stir awake from the scent of rice cooking. 

Back at the Catalyst camp, Jake sat by the campfire with Estela; they were working on making their own fishing gear from bamboo and camp supplies after losing the previous challenge. Jake fed a length of twine through a handmade fishing pole while Estela sharpened tips on one end of a pile of branches she’d gathered. “Whatcha whittlin’, Katniss?” 

Estela glanced at Jake sideways. “Stakes. Hand over some of that twine, I need it to bind these to make spears.” With a begrudging huff, Jake unfurled the twine and ran it against the edge of the makeshift bench he was sitting on to cut it, before tossing the rest at Estela. 

“How fast can you tie those off? We’re losin’ daylight for a morning catch, if you wanna ride on the raft with me.” 

“Five minutes,” she answered, already working nimbly around a branch to secure the whittled spikes. 

The screen cut back to Ruby’s camp, where Liam and Drake stepped ashore, smiles brighter than the sunrise as Drake held up a fish trap with small rays flapping against one another. 

—

“kjsdhfksjhfksjhfks,” Burns smashed into her keyboard. “Look at my man! With the sea bounty!” 

“mevmnbvmnxb,” Ella smashed back.

“How do you know Drake did all the work? Liam’s just as wet, hahaha,” Donna chortled in response.

—

After killing their catch as humanely as possible - with Alyssa turning her face to Drake’s chest to avoid witnessing it - Leo and Olivia gutted and cleaned the rays before setting them on top of their makeshift grill to cook. Liam and Drake regaled the group with their morning under the water, as they took turns fishing. 

While Team Ruby enjoyed some protein with their rice that morning, members of the Catalyst team glumly spooned rice into their mouths as they sat around the campfire while Jake and Estela dried off; their morning fishing trip had been unsuccessful. 

Later that day, both teams received messages from the host to gather for a reward challenge. Each team made their way to a small lagoon, where they saw a structure floating in the water. A booming voice overhead instructed them to swim out to the structure and await further instructions. Once everyone from both teams had done so, a blue holographic image of the host appeared in the center to explain the rules. “The challenge is simple,” she narrated. “We want to see who can hold their breath the longest. There’s a bar you can use to keep yourself from floating up if you need it. Last one standing earns the prize for the whole team — an overnight trip at the Celestial Hotel, where our rotating film crew goes to rest. You’ll be treated to clean sheets and towels, hot showers, along with a decadent dinner and breakfast menu the next morning, before having to return to your camp.” 

Everyone’s eyes lit up at the incentive of a night away from sleeping on the beach, away from mosquitos, rodents, and the threat of being waterlogged by passing storms. Stomachs gurgled at the thought of hot meals that didn’t consist of rice, and the possibility of cocktails or wine. “Oh, we got this,” Jake murmured quietly to Laurel. “Bet I can hold my breath longer’n any of those Ruby kids.” 

“Is that so?” Leo taunted, overhearing Jake’s comment.

“Just call me Poseidon,” Jake smirked. 

“We’ll see about that,” Leo replied. “You know most of us are from an island, right? We’re basically merpeople.” 

—

“Bets! Bets on who wins this!” Brandy typed into the chat window.

“Sticking with Drake,” Burns typed. “Maybe Hana. She could have another random talent up her sleeve.” 

“My money’s on Liam. Look how broad his chest is,” Anya replied. “He’s got to have massive lungs to match.”

“That makes no sense,” Ella typed, adding a laughing emoji. “But I’m Team Liam anyway.”

“Don’t hate me,” Donna began. “Something tells me Jake isn’t boasting right now.” 

From her screen at home, Alyssa Lauren used Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe to choose Zahra. The rest of the group picked their favorites as the castaways donned goggles and got into the water. 

—

“Ready? Set! Go!” 

Sixteen heads dipped under the water’s surface, with contestants pinching their noses and puffing out their cheeks as an underwater camera filmed them. A handful of them - Olivia, Alyssa, Maxwell, Diego, and Michelle - tapped out under a minute. As the sand settled, thirty seconds passed before Katrina, Laurel, Sean, and Drake headed to the surface. Just after the two minute mark, Hana, Craig, and Zahra gave up, leaving Jake, Liam, Estela, and Leo under the water. 

Jake looked positively peaceful, sandy brown hair swaying with ease in the water. Estela tapped her fingers lightly across the bamboo rod, counting each second as it passed. Liam glanced over to his brother, who’d begun to turn pink. Half a minute later, Leo popped up to the surface, muttering to himself out of frustration. 

Three minutes in, Liam surfaced, gasping for air, leaving Jake and Estela to battle it out between themselves. Even though the hologram host blasted a horn to signal the end of the challenge, neither Catalyst member surfaced. Liam ducked down to check on them, and Jake and Estela both signaled that they were fine. Everyone continued to wait as the pair spent minute after minute under the water.

—

“Seriously? They’re on the same team!” Anitah typed. “They won already!” 

“They’ve been underwater for a scary length of time,” Brandy added. “What are they, Navy SEALs or something?” 

“I think Jake mentioned he was actually in the Navy before,” Alyssa Lauren replied. 

—

A digital clock appeared in the corner of the screen as the two Catalyst members continued to hold their breath underwater. With each passing minute, members from both groups began to worry. After eight minutes passed, the host’s voice rang out, advising them to pull Jake and Estela up from the water to end the challenge. Laurel and Craig ducked down, eventually pulling their teammates up. “Congratulations to The Catalysts!” the host exclaimed. “A boat will be waiting at your camp to take you to the hotel.” 

Laurel swatted Jake’s arm as they made their way to the shore. “What’s wrong with you!? You were underwater for nearly ten minutes! Who does that!?” 

Jake looked over his shoulder to her with a grin, mischievous sparkle in his bright blue eyes. “Ten would be a new record, my best is nine.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Imagine nine uninterrupted minutes of me holding my breath, Princess. My birthday is tomorrow, and I know exactly how I wanna celebrate,” he winked.  

Laurel’s cheeks flushed at the suggestion. “Stop looking at me like that, Top Gun.”

—

That evening at the hotel, after a sumptuous feast of lobster, crab, and an endless supply of beer and wine, the Catalyst members eventually went to bed. Much later into the night, Jake was seen sneaking into Laurel’s room. 

—

“I KNEW IT!” Burns typed. She laughed as her friends typed in responses full of lemon, fire, pepper, and eggplant emojis. She popped another cheese cube into her mouth and smiled, watching the rest of the episode play out.

[watchtower-feed]

Detective

Anon: after your last imagine I can't shake college Damian off my mind, can I request one about him and his s/o in college? I don't really have an specific idea but something like walking them to class, studying together, getting each other coffee and just overall taking care of each other. Notes: I didn’t get to cover everything in the request because there are too many scenes and I didn’t wanna turn this into a bullet point fic. Hope you like it though! Words: 2,774

     “No.”

     The girl that approached the table looked forlorn and her friends slowly helped her walk away.

     “Ugh,” Will groans. He’s one of Damian Wayne’s friends and their varsity is currently doing charity work for Gotham Academy. Will took a brilliant idea from the internet where they set up a table offering people to walk them around campus if they feel bullied or generally unsafe.

     “You can’t keep saying no to people, Wayne. That’s not how the charity works.”

     Damian clicked his tongue. “I know exactly how this works, and those girls did not need assistance.”

     “Yeah. In the bedroom, they did,” Mike laughs and tries to fistbump Will who just stares at him until he puts his hands down.

     Damian’s attention is already taken by you. He kicks back his seat to leave.

     “Where are you going now?” Will whines.

     “Helping someone who actually needs it.”

     You’re walking to your next class while looking over your shoulder every now and then. To Damian, they’re simple signals of someone who feels like they’re being followed. So he stands right in front of your path in the middle of the quad where there is a multitude of people around. You almost bump into him but he quickly takes a step back to give you your space. 

     You know him. Everybody on campus knows him. He’s the greatest player the football team has ever had. Too bad he left halfway through his first semester and joined the swim team instead.

     Damian is staring down at you from being almost a foot taller. Then something catches his eye and he looks at someone behind you who quickly hides behind a statue.

     You see a small snarl on the corners of his lips before he starts taking steps around you. You stop him immediately.

     “You can’t--”

     “Why not?” Damian quickly asks.

     “If you-- if you get in a fight again, they’ll kick you off the team.” 

     Damian raises his eyebrows in thought, “That doesn’t sound like much of a loss to me.”

     “Please don’t.” You grip his arm tighter.

     He stares at you, “Why haven’t you reported him?”

     “He-- he hasn’t done anything. He’s smart. He keeps his distance and no one has actually noticed him following me around.”

     “I did.”

     And you want to thank him for that. This whole semester has been a nightmare for you. It started with your survival instincts kicking in, always warning you that you’re in danger. Your gut has never failed you so you listened. But this stalker is so good that he’s hidden himself well from all of your friends. Friends you’ve lost because they deemed you too paranoid and anxious.

     “Come on.” Damian’s voice saves you from your thoughts. “I’ll walk you to your class. Spanish, right?”

     You’re stunned, “How-- how do you know that?”

     He rolls his eyes and then points at your books. “It’s the one on top of your pile. Lucky guess.”

     You suddenly feel assured and laugh a little. “You’re quite the detective.”

     His eyes widen at the comment and he slowly turns back to you. “You have no idea.”

     Damian walks you right up to the door of your classroom. As soon as you thank him, he leaves and heads for his own class. When it’s time for lunch, you’re surprised to find him standing against the wall outside of the room.

     “You’re here.”

     “Do you have another class?” he asks you while his eyes roam the hallways.

     “No, I’m about to have lunch.”

     “Okay. Let’s go.” Without giving you time to respond, he starts walking to the cafeteria and you try to keep up with his strides. 

     So far nobody has paid attention to the two of you. But when Damian carries both of your trays to your table, the staring and the whispers start. There are even some flashes from cameras that almost blind you.

     “Sorry,” he mutters under his breath while concentrating on his food.

     You shake your head as you watch the lines on his brows and the irritation on his face. “It must be hard being a Wayne,” you say.

     He grins at the thought of what it’s like to be a real Wayne beyond what the gossip columns say. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s all this stupid attention that I hate.”

     “That’s probably why you don’t date, huh?” Damian looks up and stares at you with a raised eyebrow. You quickly wave your hands, “It’s just that-- my friend-- well my old friend-- she asked you out once and you said you’re not interested. We teased her that maybe you’re just not interested in her but--”

     A sudden flash hits the side of your cheeks and Damian is quickly leaving his seat and marching over to another table, the table where your stalker is sitting with a camera pointed at you. You wince at the sight of it. 

     Damian grabs the man’s camera still strapped around his neck. “What? Did you think you could hide your flash among these paparazzi wannabes?” Before he could say anything, Damian takes off the camera and starts flipping through the pictures. 

     “Hey, man! That’s mine!”

     Damian scoffs. “Really? That’s good then. You can get it back from the cops.” Damian turns the camera around and shows the stalker a picture of you in the girl’s shower. His eyes widen and quickly tries to run but Damian grabs him by the collar and slams the side of his head against the table.

     You watch all of this go down from your table. People’s murmurs are louder, trying to figure out what’s going on. When word reaches you that Damian is calling the cops, you feel a new kind of relief wash over you. Suddenly, your shoulders felt lighter and it’s easier to stand up straight.

     Damian stays with you the whole time. Whenever the officers and the stalker’s voices got too loud, your voice would falter and Damian would speak for you, authoritatively holding everyone’s attention. 

     Once the stalker was detained and all evidence tagged, you and Damian walk back to campus.

     “You seem… happy.”

     You didn’t even notice you’re smiling until you touch the upturned corners of your lips. “I feel kind of free… like a bird.”

     Damian snorts to himself, “Yeah.” 

     You mull something in your head and speak your thoughts out loud, “You planned that, didn’t you?” Damian stops walking and he’s looking at you when you turn around. “You knew he wasn’t just following me, and that he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity you created.”

     Damian’s brows furrowed, “I apologize for using you as bait--”

     “No!” you interrupt and hold his hands, “I was just thinking that it’s ingenious. Forget being a detective, you’re almost as good as Batman.”

     Damian smirks. You suddenly see a whole new side of him probably no one on campus has ever seen. A playful one. “Just almost?”

     When you reach the dorms, Damian walks you right up to your door. He takes a quick look inside to make sure you’re roommate is already there. Before you let him leave, thinking this will probably be the last time you’ll be together again, you gather up the courage to hold his arm, stand on your toes, and kiss him on the lips. “Thanks. For everything.”

     Damian gives you a look before he nods and leaves. You watch a small shade of red reach the tips of his ears as you cover your own blush.

     The next day, Damian Wayne is back at the table with his varsity friends. You walk by and only mean to wave at him before your next class. But as soon as he saw you, he shrugs off Mike’s arm from his shoulder and gets up to leave.

     “Dude, no. You’re bailing again?” Will whines.

     “You have more than enough people here. Just message me.”

     Will slumps down in his seat and crosses his arms, “Yeah right. It’s not like any of us has your number.”

     “They don’t look too happy about you leaving,” you tease as he approaches you.

     He shrugs nonchalantly, “They’ll live.” He gives you a long look before he raises an eyebrow in curiosity, “You seem happier today.” You quickly blush and immediately think of the kiss from last night. “You’re thinking about the kiss, aren’t you?”

     You stare at Damian with wide eyes. You wonder if he’s either a real detective or you’re just too obvious. You laugh, “You, too. I mean you’re actually teasing me. Where is the always-reserved Damian Wayne of Gotham Academy and what have you done to him?”

     He smirks and points ahead to the direction of your next classroom, World History. You look down at the top book in your pile and roll your eyes. Definitely the detective. Definitely obvious.

     After class, there’s no Damian standing outside waiting for you. You try not to feel the tiny pang in your chest and walk to your Figure Drawing class. As soon as you walk in, you come face to face with a very naked Damian Wayne.

     When Damian returned to the varsity table, Will had given him punishment for bailing twice in a row and volunteered him to be the model for a class. Damian has absolutely no problems with appearing naked in front of anybody. To him, this was just a chore he had to do to live up to his civilian identity.

     But as soon as he sees you walk in through the door and your eyes roam from his head all the way down to his toes, he grits his teeth. “I’ll kill him.”

     “Y/N, please. You’re already late. Take your seat.”

     Your lecturer’s voice jolts you back to your senses and you quickly take a seat on the far side of the room. It’s one of the most grueling classes you’ve been in since you got to the academy. Damian avoided your eyes the whole time.

     “Y/N, wait for me.”

     Damian calls out while he put on his clothes. You’re already standing by the door and a lot of people had stayed to continue to watch him. When they heard him call out to you, they instantly turn and glare.

     As soon as he reaches you, he puts his arm around your shoulder and you walk out together. You can feel the heavy weight of his arm rest on top of you.

     “Do you have another class?” he asks. You shake your head, still unable to speak to him because you keep seeing him naked inside your head. “Good. Let’s have lunch in the city.”

     Damian takes you to a small diner hidden in a corner between the business district and the Narrows. The lunch rush is already over and you find yourselves in a corner booth.

     “Wow,” you say. “I never expected you to eat at a place like this. You’re more down-to-Earth than I thought.”

     “As opposed to what?”

     “Oh, I don’t know. Being a rich kid? Everything handed to you on a silver platter?”

     “Trust me, Y/N. Nothing was ever handed to me. Everything I have-- everything I am, I worked for.”

     You prop your elbow on the table as you look at the once menacing Damian Wayne. The past two days, you’ve spent with him have completely changed your opinion about him and a little of the ancient Wayne family.

     Speaking of.

     “My family’s here,” Damian mutters as he scoots over until he’s sitting next to you, freeing up his side of the booth. A group of four walks into the diner and start heading for your booth. “Damian!”

     “Good morning, Grayson. Cain.” 

     Two of the four, nod their heads at you. While the shortest boy, who is still taller than you, crosses his arms. “Rude. What about us?”

     Damian doesn’t pay him any attention. You watch as they enter the booth in a single file. 

     “Late night?” Damian asks.

     The one he called Grayson gives a long sigh as he sits next to Damian. “You have no idea. Would’ve been faster if Rob-- Ow!” The tallest of the three elbows him and nudges his head toward you. “Oh, hello there.”

     “Are you on a date?” asks the girl he called Cain, smiling.

     “Yes.”

     “We are?” you ask right away. You tried to keep your voice low but from the way their eyes widen, you know they heard you.

     They look at each other and smirk. “Looks like you forgot to inform your date,” teases the tallest one.

     Damian smirks to himself before replying. “Y/N can’t think straight at the moment. Still a little flustered after seeing me naked.”

     Damian pulls you closer to him to avoid the spray of water from one of his siblings. “We really shouldn’t be letting you loose into society without a harness, Drake.” 

     “It was for figure drawing class,” you chuckle to break the tension, and try to appease their wide eyes with your waving hands. “I’m Y/N by the way. I go to GA, too.”

     “I’m Dick,” one of his siblings reaches around Damian to shake your hand. “These are Cass, Jason, and Tim. We’re Damian’s siblings--”

     “Adopted.”

     Jason looms over the table and grabs Damian’s head to harshly rub his knuckles into his hair. “You don’t have to say that every time, demon.”

     “Todd-- Stop it--”

     Dick tries to pry them apart but ultimately fails and accidentally gets punched by one of Damian’s flailing limbs, making Jason laugh. “You may have gotten bigger, but you’re still a runt!”

     “Not-- as much-- as Drake--”

     Tim, who’s sitting at the outer edge of the booth across from you, apologizes for his brothers with a sigh. “I wish I could tell you that we’re not always like this.”

     You smile at the thought and finally realize why Damian is always so reserved on campus. He’s the youngest of such a big and lively family. Dick and Tim are familiar, too. You’ve seen their faces on the Legacy Wall of the academy. You’ve seen a few pictures of Jason and Cass, too but not as much.

     This is what Damian meant when he said he’s worked hard for everything in his life. It must be hard living behind so many giant shadows.

     When Cass finally intervenes and disentangles the boys, you place your hand over Damian’s as he sits back down. He turns to you and you give him a supportive smile.

     He smirks and raises an eyebrow, “You keep getting into a better mood each time I look at you.”

     You blush a little because who would ever expect someone to just say things like that. “Maybe your company just does that to me,” you tease back.

     You hear a quick snicker from Dick and both of you turn to him. He’s visibly whispering to Cass but it’s audible enough for you to hear. “They’readorable.”

     After that, Damian never took you back to the diner again, not wanting to let his siblings see the two of you together. But on campus, you are almost always together.

     “Stop! Stop!” you laugh and try to protect yourself from the whirlwind of water Damian is sending your way as he shakes his head. He had just finished training and met up with you at the stands where you’ve been studying while waiting.

     Damian leans down and kisses you on the lips. Your eyes widen before they slowly close as you let him lead. You hear catcalls from his teammates and you can already guess that Damian’s flipping them off.

     “Okay. Come here.” You break the kiss and pull down the towel he had draped around his shoulders. You use it to properly rub his head and dry off his hair. “You must be tired. That ran longer than usual.”

     Damian tries to look at you as you keep drying his hair, “Competition’s next week so we’re doing last-minute checks on everyone’s forms. Did you wait long?”

     You nod your head like a child. “Been here since morning. It’s so hard to date a varsity,” you groan.

     Damian takes the towel from you and rubs your face with it. “Think that’s hard? Try dating a vigilante.”

     You giggle as you try to fight Damian for the towel, “I wouldn’t mind that. Batman seems to be getting hotter these days.”

     You’re only teasing him and he knows it. But you don’t know that the mantle of Batman has been passed down to him. So he laughs out loud and it’s one of those rarest moments you want to treasure but you also can’t resist the urge to just kiss this happy and carefree version of Damian Wayne. 

[obsessive-ego]

Beelejuice finds your vibe

warning nsft content DUH

musical!Beetlejuice x fem reader

i apologize for this

You were supposed to have the day off, you had plans with beetlejuice to show him a hardcore horror game, movies were one thing but horror games amazed him. But no your incompetent coworkers called you in to cover and wouldn't take no for an answer.

You felt rotten having to cancel this, you tried to stand your ground with your boss, but it didn't work. You planned this day for a week, it was your only day off this week, you wanted to spend it with your friend.

"S'alright babes, shit happens" is what he says but his hair betrays him, streaks of purple peaking through his green hair.

You give him a small smile "I'll make it up to you, I promise, want me to text lydia to summon you back there?"

"Nah, shes in school dummy, and no matter how hard I push she wont take me, I'll just hang here, with the cat" he shrugs.

"I'll be back around 7pm if your still around, I promise, I'll make up for this"

"I'll hold ya to it sweets, I'd say a handy j would be a fair trade" is what he says, but you can tell his heart wasn't in it.

You bid your farewell, feeling awful about the whole thing, and with that the ghoul was alone.

The moment the front door closes, beetlejuice turns completely purple, as if he was trying his best not to in front of you.

You work too much and too hard in his opinion, you were stupid for it, too kind for your own good, you didnt realize how obviously your boss was taking advantage of your kind nature, but he did, not that you would listen.

He sighed, he was really looking forward to spending a whole day alone with you, maybe snooping through your stuff would cheer him up.

You have told beetlejuice multiple times, to stay out of your stuff, not that he'd ever listen, but what you dont know wont hurt ya.

Normally digging though your stuff would bring him the utmost joy, but today? It felt like a chore, he flopped down on your bed and groaned, he just wanted to crawl under the covers and mope.

Glancing up he sees your over full laundry basket, he signs maybe there was something fresh in there to get his mind off how your shitty boss ruined his day.

Wandering over he slumps down in front of the basket, digging right in looking for anything fresh, his heart wasn't really in the task, just doing it out of habbit rather then pleasure, until his hand hits something hard, curious, he pulls it out.

And there it was, the little treasure he searched so long and hard for, your vibrator, beetlejuice purple hue was long gone, to be replaced with a mix of electric pink and green.

It was bright pink, average sized, with a nice bulbous tip, beetlejuice was practically drooling at this, he KNEW you had one, but just couldn't find it, but what was it doing in the laundry basket?

Oh, could it be you used it earlier? Did You used it before you summoned him today and just tossed it aside? Were you so riled up to see his handsome mug you had to rub one out? The demon's mind was running wild, imagining his cute little breather an absolute mess, face flushed, hair a tossed mess, chest heaving for air, while this little treasure was buzzing and being pumped into that cute pussy, between those beautiful legs.

Beetlejuice, buzzing with excitement, gives the toy a kiss "you, my little friend are gonna fix everything"

With that beetlejuice plops down on your bed, his clothes long forgotten on the floor. "Tell me sweet stuff, are you well loved?~ do you visit my little breather often?~" he chuckles, trailing his tongue along the length of the toy. His musings were correct, the toy had a faint lingering taste, something salty yet sweet.

"Oh ho, VERY well loved indeed" he chuckles licking every inch of the toy, savoring the taste you left behind, god slash satan, he longed for the day he could taste it from the source.

"Now let's see what you can do sugar~" and with a click the vibe buzzes to life.

"Holy moly, you got some kick to ya, even on the lowest setting, ah, that little minx" he laughs.

He takes the buzzing toy, and starts circling his right nipple "Oh sugar, you know what I like~" the demon moaned, beetlejuice couldn't help but imagine you teasing him, straddling him, wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a smile.

The idea of you teasing the ghoul with your freshly used vibrator drove him wild, the man was an absolute mess, his hair as bright pink as the vibe he was playing with.

Switching to the other nipple he groans your name, moving lower, beetlejuice trails the vibe along his inner thigh and sighs, jolting when the toy meets his erect cock "oh babes, ready for the main show?~ let's see what this little toy can do~" Beetlejuice cranks the toy to max, shocked but the intensity, he removes the toy from his skin "Oh ho, sugar you're a naughty little thing aren’t you~" he sighs, teasing his cock up and down with the toy, imagining how such an intense toy would leave his breather an absolute mess, he could have came with that thought alone.

Running the vibe up and down his cock, smearing his pre cum over it, moaning and groaning your name, he was so close, fuck, the thought of you coaxing him to come for you while you drag the vibrator from base to tip was enough to push him over the edge, his cum all over his stomach and the vibe.

He sighs, proud of what he did, feeling much more content now, turning off the toy, he debates if he should clean it or chance leaving his cum on it, you were the oblivious type, but were you THAT oblivious? Probably not, but his spit on the other hand? That should be fine, it was no secret that beetlejuice was gross, gross enough to have no issue licking his own cum off your vibrator.

Clean as a whistle, with a nice thin layer of demon spit, hopefully you'll use it tonight, he couldn't help but drool from the idea.

Torn from his thoughts with the familiar clunk of you unlocking the door, you were home?! Not that you were home early, you were right on time, beetlejuice just lost track of what he was doing, fuck if you saw him like this, naked on your bed, vibrator in hands, youd never want to see him again, you'd straight up banish him for good, fuck.

"Beetlejuice? You still around?"

With a snap of his fingers he was full clothed, tossed the toy in the basket where it was found, he poses seductively on your bed waiting with one of your comics in hand.

You make your way to your bedroom "oh, you're still around, so I was thinking- what are you doing in my room?"

If beetlejuice heart was still beating it would have stopped there, theres no way you could suspect what he did, and yet he still felt a tad nervous "just reading some of those little comics you got sweets, BIG fan of that super sonico book" he chuckles

You sigh, seems like you bought it. "Okay so I was thinking, since today was payday, wanna order pizza? Home delivery?"

Beetlejuice jumps up, hair buzzing an electric green, he knew what that implies "Yes! Oh sugar you know it"

You smile, happy to see he was no longer glum, you leave to fetch your phone to make the order.

Beetlejuice sighs, then smiles, pleased "today was a good day."

[army-of-bee-assassins]

I want all of them for Whitlock, but let's start with the Morning ones ;3

1 is already answered!

2. What was your character’s morning routine when they were a child?

okay i have never lived in a cold place like miock so i'm gonna be speculating a bit about what that's like in the mornings lol. i would assume baby whitlock had some sort of chores to do??? but idk what??? maybe shoveling snow and collecting firewood. i'm sorry all i can think of are the two probably most stereotpical snowy weather chores. he would have breakfast with his parents, and maybe any cousins who were visiting. as soon as he was done with any chores/responsibilities, he would be running around town playing with friends and cousins

3. Do they eat breakfast? What’s their favorite?

whitlock definitely eats breakfast. he's got a lot of muscle and he needs food to maintain it. he probably favors sausage and bacon, or a good hash. he loves a good pancake or waffle too but it's gotta be a side, not the main course.

4. Who was their childhood hero?

honestly i don't know. probably one or both of his parents? i've been meaning to flesh out rosa and judd, and whitlock's relationship with them, but i haven't yet.

5. What was their childhood fear?

i don't really know this one either. i wanna say the ocean or sailing or something because it would be cool that he conquered the fear and came to love it, but i would be pulling that entirely out of my ass. he was probably scared of normal kid stuff, like monsters he heard about in stories. there's no shortage of horrifying creatures in dnd. and now he gets to face those creatures as his job and it's (usually) not too terrible.

6. Did they grow up with siblings? What were those relationships like?

funny you should ask! no, he doesn't have siblings, but if i had actually fleshed out the character when i made him, he would have had some. at this point in the game, with him having only ever talked about searching for his parents, randomly adding siblings to the mix would make no sense for him. like i'm sure there's some convoluted reason i could come up with for him to have never mentioned them before, but i'm not really into it. i've been thinking a lot about it recently, how i would have liked him to have siblings, because i really do envision him as having grown up with a big family. instead, i have decided that he just had lots of cousins that he spent lots of time with. they all lived in the same town and were together pretty frequently. he'd love to find these cousins too, post-cataclysm. he assumes (hopes?) that finding his parents will mean finding the cousins as well.

7. How was their relationship with their parents/guardians growing up?

oh jeez alyx you are asking so many good questions that i want to answer well but i just haven't fleshed things out enough yet. like whitlock obvs had a good relationship with his parents. he loves them very much. he would love to see them again. i have written down in my google doc that his mom rosa was a tinkerer and sold little clockwork devices and toys. so i can tell you that whitlock learned to tinker from his mother. there's definitely more to her than that too i just haven't written it yet. idk basically anything about judd i'm sorry. imagine the blurred shape of a gnome man with big sign in front of him that says "grandilf under construction" djdgsh

8. How does the sunrise make them feel?

i think he's not much of a morning person, but it is a nice perk when you have to be up that early. he misses back on miock when it started getting on towards winter, and the sun rose later and later each day. you could enjoy it after sleeping in. even though the trade-off was a shorter day, it was worth it.

9. How do they like their mornings? Rainy and chilly? Bright and sunny? Not at all because they don’t wake until noon?

rainy and chilly. nothing better than a warm bed when it's cold outside. bonus points if it's snowing instead.

10. When did their childhood end?

when the cataclysm happened. he was only around 20 at the time. a few years prior to the cataclysm - when he first became a sailor - was a big change too, but he still returned home on a fairly regular basis. once the cataclysm happened, almost every familiar comfort of his was gone.

[solesurvivorpaigeargot]

I wanna hearing about Paige's family with #5.

Super detailed questions about your OCs

5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults?

HOO BOI my friend, you have volunteered for an infodump. I’m putting in a read-more cut to prevent dash clogging.

Paige was the second-to-last child out of five, with three brothers and one sister. 

Isabelle [Bella, Belle] -- the eldest, Paige’s sister and seven years older than her. Basically ended up as built-in babysitter/second mom. Paige calls her Izzy and is the only one who is allowed to call her that [anyone else will get whacked, including Bella’s husband]. Their relationship when Paige was a kiddo was pretty strained; Paige grew up running wild with her brothers whilst Isabelle, the eldest daughter of a very conservative and publicly religious family, was constantly being watched and judged on how responsible she was and how well she was growing into a ‘lady’ as she was expected to do. Meanwhile Paige, as the younger daughter and surrounded by boys, was excused for more wild behavior and often given a flavor of the ‘boys will be boys’ pass when she got into trouble until she hit puberty and suddenly got whacked in the face with more feminine expectations. 

Somewhere in Paige’s early teens, she and Izzy had it out in an honest to goodness, full-on fight, wherein Izzy accused Paige of being a spoiled brat who was incapable of understanding just how hard it was to hold up under everyone’s expectations, and Paige threw it right back by calling those expectations petty bullshit and questioning why Izzy didn’t just toss it all out if she hated being a lady. The two grew apart after that, maintaining some sisterly affection but mostly not getting in each other’s way. Izzy taught Paige how to look after her hair when she started growing it out, taught her how to do make-up, gave her advice on clothes and shoes for interviews, that sort of thing. 

They both ultimately stayed at arm’s length until Shaun was born, at which point Izzy had reached out to try and reconnect. She and her husband had been living in Pennsylvania when the bombs fell. Izzy’s family was well off enough that they might have gotten a spot in a vault, but Paige hadn’t been keeping up with them enough to know whether or not they’d registered...

Ethan -- eldest brother, five years older than Paige, she always looked up to him as her cool older brother. He and his friends had a garage band when he was a teen, but he gave it up when their parents put pressure on him to start figuring out something ‘real’ to do with his life. Music became a beloved hobby, noodling about on his guitar when he could get away with it, but never when their father was home, as he’d threatened to smash it on more than one occasion. 

Like Isabelle, Ethan was often leaned upon to be more adult than he actually was, looking after his younger siblings but with a touch more wiggle room. Where Isabelle was very much considered the one with full parental authority, and thus expected to enforce the rules to their fullest extent, Ethan allowed Paige, Daniel, and Zach to get away with the occasional mischief with a wink and a smile that assured them he didn’t see anything. 

Besides music, Ethan also had a gift of gab that made him excellent at talking himself and his siblings out of any trouble-- something he and Paige shared, and the two would get into deep arguments over tiny things as a kind of sport. At school a teacher encouraged him towards debate club and theater, and he participated in multiple school productions before, again, their parents reminded him that artistic careers were more fantasy than anything to build your life around. Instead, they pushed him towards law, which he fucking hated but attempted to make them happy.

He dropped out after his first year of college, arriving at home with black dyed hair, two tattoos and three piercings he hadn’t had when he left for school, giving their parents the finger, and all but disappearing when Paige was fourteen. Nineteen years old, he was technically an adult, his their parents couldn’t drag him back. Dad doesn’t talk about Ethan, and mom would cry when he was mentioned. Paige worried he died chasing a dream for the longest time, until she left for law school and started getting postcards-- turned out Ethan was still in contact with Izzy, and had embraced his musical career [and all the hardship that came with it] with everything he had. 

Last Paige heard, Ethan had been somewhere on the western seaboard when the bombs fell. She finds it unlikely that he, or any descendants of him, survived... though, if he went ghoul, she wouldn’t be surprised if he was still living the traveling musician life two centuries later. 

Daniel [Danny] -- middle brother, two years older than Paige, and oldest of the trouble trio. Daniel, Paige, and Zach were always the three making messes together as young kids, running wild, exploring the backwoods on the family farm, finding fun and odd ways to get chores done, and generally being kids. Danny was the tough one out of the three of them; easily the biggest out of all of Paige’s siblings and the one who got in people’s faces if anyone was messing with anyone else in the family. 

Danny and Paige frequently butted heads; they were both stubborn as hell and outspoken, and before Paige was expected to be more lady-like it very regularly came to blows. It’s thanks to Danny that Paige knew how to squirm out of most holds by the time she was an adult, even if the other person was larger than her, and exactly which soft spots to shove her elbows or heels into. This tendency towards brawling changed as they got older, however, as Danny realized that Paige was going to be a petite woman her entire life and went out of his way to teach her some honest-to-goodness self-defense tactics after hearing a few of his friends say a few... off color things about his sister. 

Danny stayed in Minnesota to attend a trade school, finding work in the automation industry; installing and maintaining machines used for mass manufacture. He married almost immediately out of highschool, and the timing of his first kid suggests that his wife was pregnant before the wedding. Paige kept in contact with him, and Danny actually made the trip out to visit her when Shaun was born. While Paige suspects that he’s dead, unless of course he ended up ghoul, she has occasionally speculated that if Danny and his family survived the initial bombing? He had practical skills that might have seen him through long enough to have descendants that survived to the present day.  Zachariah [Zach] -- the youngest, a year younger than Paige and her childhood partner in crime. Zach, like Paige, was kinda on the small side. Unlike Paige, Zach was also intensely shy in a family full of outspoken, opinionated, stubborn mules. It wasn’t that he didn’t have opinions, mind-- rather that he had a lot of trouble putting the words together to express them. Zach would often stick with Paige like her second shadow, because Paige was very good at picking up on what he meant to say to others and saying it for him, or re-iterating when he spoke too quietly and he got ignored. 

That said, Zach was often the mastermind behind what he, Paige, and Danny got up to as little kids-- quiet, but quick witted, and a grade-A prankster. 

As adolescents, Zach and Paige were occasionally confused for being twins despite there being a year difference between them. Their faces were strikingly similar, with Zach having deeply brown eyes rather than Paige’s hazel being the main difference. Sometimes their mischief would play into this, and Paige was allowed to get away with many things as a young teen simply by virtue of being mistaken for her brother. 

When Ethan ran out on the family, Zach was probably the one most deeply effected by it, and Paige did everything she could to support him at the time. They both looked up to Ethan, but Zach even more so because he was also musically inclined and had been learning the drums from one of Ethan’s friends. Sometimes the band even let him do some kind of back-up percussion when they were practicing before their father shut it down, and it was during those practice sessions that Zach tended to really light up. When Ethan left? Zach fell deeply into depression for a long time, and Paige felt like it was her responsibility to hold him up lest she lose another brother. 

Despite being the often-overlooked child in the family, Zach had damn near perfect grades... and yet, their parents appeared to lack specific expectation for him. Rather, the had a vague assurance that he’d simply do well at whatever he decided to do, and Zach confided in Paige that he had no idea what to do with his scholastic success-- that it didn’t feel real to him. That he wasn’t a person, but rather a mass of goo that could just be poured into whatever shape worked best for the people around him. 

Paige still regrets not having any good advice for him. Last she heard, he’d gone to school to pursue an engineering degree, like their father; imitating a ready example. She suspects that he might have gone after something musical, if not for what happened with Ethan, and that his choice paralysis was a form of avoiding even thinking about that kind of rebellion. Like Danny, Zach’s schooling didn’t take him far from the family home, and he still lived in Minnesota at the time of the bombing. He was, at the time, unmarried. Given time to think further on it, Paige actually suspects that Zach might have been some form of closeted due to still being close to the family and their parents intense involvement with the church. Thinking about that always makes her wish she’d been there for him more, that she’d been smarter and figured out what he’d been dealing with and helped him handle it better. 

Like everyone else, Paige is pretty sure Zach is dead... and he’s probably the one she’s mourns the most, because it feels like he never really got to live in the first place. 

[desdemonafictional]

The morning after the wedding party

Banners from the Turrets au

Despite all muddled hopes to the contrary, Deadlock woke up with a very solid, very real hangover. It was his own fault, he couldn’t argue; he’d drunk enough engex to corrode a steel beam. When he came stumbling out of his room and into the only other room in this cramped little flat, hand clutched against helm, he’d nearly tripped on the body laying across his floor.

“Oh slag,” he said, optics fritzing in and out, “did I kill somebody?”

Blue light blinked on at his feet. “I’m alive,” the body said, “thanks so much for the concern.”

Deadlock relaxed marginally. “Thank Primus,” he said, “I didn’t want to go back to jail.”

The body levered itself upright, with a wheeze and a grind of straining mechanisms, just about the same time it dawned on Deadlock what had happened.

“You stayed,” he said, with an involuntary smile that made his left optic start to ache.

“Said I was gonna,” Ratchet said, brushing dust off himself, now fully upright. “Anyway, I was just answering memos most of the night. No recharge hookup.”

“…You didn’t have to sleep on the floor,” Deadlock said. He frowned. This hurt less. “My berth could fit two.”

“I specifically said,” Ratchet told him, “we were not going to frag, make out, or touch each other. How do you think sharing a berth would have ended?”

Deadlock gave him a long, serious once-over. “So you are interested,” he said. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ratchet snorted. “Seemed pretty sure last night. I think I’ve still got drool in my gears.”

Deadlock flashed his fangs, to make up for the fact that he could feel his biolights flushing with a hellish combination of arousal and embarrassment. “I meant, I thought maybe you weren’t into fragging around. You don’t seem like the type. Everyone knows you and Pharma were practically conjunxed for like, a million years. And you don’t hook up with anybody at the hospital.”

That was actually the first thing Deadlock learned about Ratchet, after coming to the hospital for his work-sponsor parole. It was weird, kind of a shock to the system—he couldn’t help wondering if they’d still been together that one time, when Deadlock-then-Drift had ended up on Ratchet’s table in the Dead End. This much he’d actually picked up from Pharma, who was comfortable enough in his bitterness to remark on that shared history in front of apparently anyone, including the mech he’d called Rung’s little pet sparkeater.

Didn’t bother Deadlock. He liked it when autobots wrote him off as a rabid berserker. Usually.

The point was, Deadlock had pretty quickly taken apart the facts as he knew them and come to the conclusion that Ratchet was probably a serious commitment type, a wine-and-dine type, not the kind who’d be interested in the patented Deadlock brand of “get over here and sit on my spike, and I’ll eat your valve after”. If that wasn’t the problem, then Deadlock couldn’t make heads or tails of why Ratchet hadn’t wanted to frag him last night.

“I don’t hook up with anyone because I’m at my job,” Ratchet said, “am I the only one at this institution who knows the meaning of inappropriate workplace relations?”

Deadlock’s plating flattened. “Is that why you don’t wanna ‘face me? Because we’re coworkers now?”

Ratchet blinked at him a couple times. “Now hey,” he said, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to—I wasn’t trying to—” He dug two fingers into his chevron and then said, “I’m gonna go get out breakfast for us.”

Several kliks later, with two cubes of basic mid-grade set out between them on the top of the cold-box, which was the only flat surface in Deadlock’s flat, Ratchet said, “I’m not against us interfacing. I just want to know what you’re getting out of it, before I agree to anything.”

Immediately, Deadlock relaxed. “Oh,” he said, “yeah, sure. Okay so what I’m offering to do is spike-and-valve, in a berth,” he started ticking off fingers, “maximum foreplay, aftercare, I’d rather top but if you wanna spike me I’m willing to ride. I don’t do insults, blow jobs, or bondage.”

Ratchet blinked again. He took a sip of his cube, holding it between the two of them like a barricade.

“Wow,” he said, at last. “I heard ‘cons were cold, but—”

“Cold!” Deadlock sputtered. “I just offered to let you spike!”

“Uhuh,” Ratchet said, and took another sip of his drink. “What it sounds like you’re offering me is a side hustle that’s gonna cost me a couple thousand shanix at the end of the night.”

“I’m not—I don’t do that kind of thing!”

Ratchet just looked at him, over the edge of the cube.

Deadlock set his jaw and then amended. “Anymore. I don’t do that anymore.” He knocked back half his cube in one go, and then said, “If I was trying to sell you something, you’d know it.”

What he didn’t say—what he wouldn’t say—was that if the version of him who had peddled spike services in the backstreets hadn’t been anything close to this kind of picky about boundaries. And he certainly wouldn’t have bothered to list his own preferences to a prospective buyer. Despite the mileage he’d gotten back before the war, Deadlock hadn’t actually learned how to frag and like it until after becoming a ‘con.

Before the war, he’d been a drifter himself—an addict, a leaker, a sciv. He took odd jobs. He did dirty work for cheap. Never had the focus to build himself a clientele base and stick with it, not the way Gasket had. Robbery, smuggling, day labor, sex. He’d sucked spike occasionally in gutters without art, mind already on the next fix, just trying to get it over and done. Courtesan he had not been. It hadn’t seemed possible to him then that fragging could be anything but a chore. Why bother trying to please a partner when you could get yourself off faster and for free? He’d preferred the comfortable warmth of laying curled against the side of a friend, teeth embedded in an exposed wrist-line.

His gaze lingered over Ratchet’s thick wrist, the clean white paint gapping to reveal hints of black cable underneath. What he wouldn’t trade to get his teeth in that.

Oblivious to the scrutiny, Ratchet sighed and set down his cube. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not being fair to you. I’m just trying to figure out the… the angle. What it is you want from me.”

Deadlock eased up, but less than before, wary now. “Well it’s—if that’s how autobots do it, I can list what I want from you, and you can list what you want from me? Is that how you do it?”

“What.”

Deadlock flexed a set of claws, frustrated. “I don’t know, I’ve never fragged an autobot before! Primus, I’m gonna have to call Aglet. He’ll know how this works.”

“Do not call Aglet,” Ratchet ordered, “nobody else needs to know about my sex life.”

Deadlock made a frustrated noise and then clicked his claw tips on the top of the cold box. “Okay, he said, “okay. Then—how do you normally do this? When you wanna frag somebody, what do you tell them?”

Ratchet pursed his lips. He gave the corner of the ceiling a complicated look. “Actually, I’m having trouble remembering. It’s been a few thousand years.”

Deadlock frowned. “You mean, since Pharma.”

“…Yeah,” Ratchet said. “Since Pharma. Five times burned, twice shy, as they say.”

“Well if you were a ‘con,” Deadlock said, and then abruptly found that he liked this idea. He brightened. “—If you were a con medic, on a ship with me, and I wanted to hook up… First I’d get you alone somewhere. Then I’d tell you how sexy I think you are, and I’d offer you some of the things I’m good at. Then if you were interested, you’d tell me what kinds of things you’d do for me, in exchange.”

“What is this, a barter system?”

Now it was Deadlock’s turn to blink. “I mean yeah, technically,” he said. “You get something you want, I get something I want. Equality.”

“But,” Ratchet said, looking lost. “How do… but don’t you…”

Deadlock waited, finishing off his drink, while Ratchet shifted helplessly from one abandoned sentence to another.

Come to think of it, he’d heard autobots call ‘con culture cutthroat, cold, and calculated. Everything had a cost, they said; nothing came free with ‘cons. It was all about the exchange rate.

Well (and he wouldn’t admit this to just anybody) maybe it could be. When you had that many drifters and lowlifes and scoundrels all piled in the same place and equally armed to the teeth, you worked with what you had. And Deadlock had liked it. Right up until Turmoil.

But the less said about Turmoil, the better.

Deadlock considered Ratchet for a moment, feeling the last of his headache recede into a manageable buzz. Sweet Primus he really was to die for, with that jaw and those shoulders.

“Alright,” he said. “Tell you what. You get on the berth back there, warm your pussy up for me, and I’ll give you the routine they liked in the Darkmount medical bay.”

Ratchet’s brows went way up. For a second Drift was sure he’d made the wrong call, steeling himself to be graceful about it when Ratchet started shouting, but after a second, the doctor turned his gaze with some interest on the open bedroom door.

“I’ll stop at any point you want me to,” Deadlock added in a rush, vaguely remembering some chatter he’d heard from autobots before. “Cons aren’t all like that, with the no-means-yes rustwash. I like you, Ratchet. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Ratchet gave him a considering look. Deadlock tried to shift himself into an appealing pose, without making it obvious he was doing so.

“Alright…” Ratchet said. He held up one stern finger. “But only because I deserve it, after a night like that.”

--

Afterward, a little sticky and hot under the engine cover, Ratchet touched two fingers to his mouth, where Deadlock had kissed him in the moment of overload. Deadlock lay beside him, foggy with afterglow, cheek pillowed in the crook of his elbow.

“This is only until you find somebody you really wanna be with,” Ratchet said. He looked at his fingers, not at Deadlock. “Find yourself something steady, and we’ll go back to being coworkers.”

Deadlock frowned, a pang in the otherwise blissful glow, but didn’t argue. If that’s what Ratchet wanted, then that’s what Ratchet could have. Five times bitten, twice shy, after all. It wasn’t as if Deadlock didn’t know how to make the best of whatever scraps he was given in life.

[the-awkward-outlaw]

“Hey, don’t touch me there. It hurts.” I'm the same anon who've asked which one of the two honors you play and since you've said low honor, how about some steam angst? I play high honor btw.

Did I say low honor? Sorry I meant high honor! Ugh, I can’t do low honor. Breaks my heart. Anyways, thanks for sending this! I should be writing more for my new longer fic but I’ve already run in to a writer’s block. 

Okay, I meant for there to be more steamy angst, but this turned out more fluffy than anything! If you want me to write something steamy, send me in another one (even your own idea). Specify if you want smut or not. Thanks so much, anon! 

You get back to Clemens Point, frustrated and sore. You go to your tent and drop off a few things and then head over to the donation box, throwing in a few things. You head over to get a plate of stew and some cornbread, trying your best to hide your limp. Your shoulder and upper arm hurts even worse though. 

You’ve been with the Van der Linde gang for years, longer than several of the others. You’ve done tons of robberies on your own and even had a few go south in the past. This one was one of those that went south. You’d run into an escaped convict from a chain gang and shot his chains. He’d given you a tip about robbing a homestead in exchange. Robbing the house north of the Heartlands had gone smoothly as the owners were out fishing, but not five minutes after you’d left, several O’Driscolls showed up. Based on the things they were screaming, they’d been meaning to rob the house. 

One of the O’Driscolls forced you off your horse and demanded you hand over your dishonest gains from the house. You’d gotten off and feigned letting him come over and go through your pockets and then shot him when he was distracted. Of course, this resulted in the others shooting at you. You quickly remounted your horse in order to try and outrun them, but your horse panicked and threw you off, which was how your leg got hurt. When you regained your feet to continue shooting, one of the O’Driscolls slammed you into the ground and sliced your arm open with his knife. Somehow, you managed to kill him and the others, but the damage had been done. You hid the cut on your arm by throwing on your old duster. 

You sit next to John at the fire, trading small talk and trying to ignore the horrible burning in your arm. You should be getting it taken care of, but you know how Grimshaw will lecture you if she finds out. You’re not in the mood. Besides, it’s probably not that deep. 

John proves a good distraction until Abigail calls him away. He rolls his eyes when she retreats to her tent with Jack. “What now?” he grumbles and leaves. 

You finish the last of your stew and cornbread, then head over to your tent. You’ll have to try and treat your arm by yourself. You always hate doing this: treating your own wounds. Not only that, but now that the adrenaline from the attack has worn off and no one is around to prove a distraction, you’re feeling a bit shaken up. 

You sit down on your cot and fold your knees to your chest, ignoring the complaints from your hip. You feel weak, pathetic. You’ve been in plenty of shootouts, why is this one so different? It makes you angry that you feel this way. Everyone’s always seen you as being one of the toughest members in the gang, and also the most fearless. 

Just as you’re about to put your head on your knees in order to let go, a voice calls your attention by speaking your name. 

“Hey, I got you those... you a’right?” It’s Arthur, of course. He must have just gotten back from one of his adventures. You mentioned weeks ago how you lost your camera when you fled Blackwater. You liked taking pictures of nature, animals, people. It was your hobby. You’ve been meaning to replace it since fleeing, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Arthur being Arthur, you’re not surprised he went out of his way to find you one. 

When you first joined the gang all those years ago, you and Arthur were friendly, but definitely didn’t have a thing for each other. You became fast friends however. You had to since you were the best hunters and spent a lot of time providing meat for the gang. Arthur also taught you how to rob and shoot guns. You didn’t realize you were in love with him until Arthur got separated from the gang for three weeks and you realized how much you missed him. It was when he returned you discovered you had feelings for him. However, you knew about Mary and how emotionally unavailable he was, so you kept your feelings bottled up in order to retain your friendship. 

“I’m fine,” you say, coming back to the present. “Just tired, is all.” You tell him about the robbery and the O’Driscolls, minus the slice across your arm. Arthur sits down next to you, setting the camera down on the table next to your cot. 

“Well, sounds like you had quite the ride,” he chuckles lightly. 

“Yeah, I’m okay though,” you say, hoping he doesn’t notice the shaking in your voice. 

He smiles and then puts an arm around you. He’s about to say something when his hand unknowingly presses upon the gash in your arms. You yelp out.  “Hey, don’t touch me there. It hurts.” 

His brows lift up. “You okay?” 

You sigh, knowing you can’t hide it anymore. You tell him the parts you left out. He slides your duster coat off and sees the sleeve of your shirt is soaked in blood. 

“Jesus, girl. I know Grimshaw’s a chore, but this is bad. You need stitches.” 

“I’m fine, Arthur. I was gonna wrap it, but I didn’t think it was that bad.” 

He rolls his eyes and leaves for a moment. When he comes back, he’s holding Strauss’s medical kit. He delicately rolls up your sleeve, cleans the wound with some alcohol which burns like hell, and then sews you up. His hands are definitely more clumsy than Grimshaw’s or the other girls, but it’ll do. He then finishes it up by wrapping it up. 

“There. You should change into something clean.” 

He stands at the opening of your tent with his back to you so you can do just that. When you’re done, he turns back and smiles at you. “Good. Can’t be worryin’ about ya. Now, anything else you wanna talk about?”

His voice is so low and he looks at you in such a soft, gentle way, it becomes obvious he knows how shaken you are. As if on queue, you put your face in your hands and break down. You expect him to roll his eyes, tell you to buck up or something along those lines. The last thing you thought he’d do is fold his arms around you, letting you rest your head in the crook of his neck. You’ve envisioned doing this in your daydreams, even imagined how his heart would sound. Those are pathetic in comparison to this, the real thing. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says so softly you barely hear him. “You’re still tough as nails, but our life can be scary. It’s okay to let it get the better of you every once in a while.” 

You don’t know how long you stay in his arms, but you finally pull away and thank him. He smiles and responds by kissing your forehead and then rubbing your cheeks dry with his thumb. His face is so close to yours, you can feel his breath. He starts leaning in as though he’s about to kiss you.

“Arthur! I need to talk to you about them Grays!” Dutch hollers. Arthur pulls away and looks over at him. He then turns back to you and whispers in your ear.

“We’ll pick this up later, sweetheart.” He gives you a wink before joining Dutch.