#and frankly? if I had THAT in my bed? *points at Tim* I would too

[annefic]

Do you think Anne is a pilates girlie? I think she'd love it but would hate group fitness classes like Soulcycle (and the hype around them)

I think Anne is a horse girlie who cannot physically make herself sit still for more than five minutes at a stretch

[too-much-tma-stuff]

Finally Getting Help (prt. 10)

Mastterpost

A/N: Thank you all for the well wishes about my dog. Unfortunately he didn't make it and pass away Tuesday morning in the vet's office. I was able to get some writing done but I don't have the energy to edit. Let me know if you find any mistakes.

-----

Jason: hey, thanks for the gun and the tech, it's really cool.

Danny: new phone who dis 😝

Jason: I hope you haven't given too many people guns in the last couple days.

Danny: no I haven't, thanks for texting me Jason. Have you got a chance to try the gun?

Jason: not on anything moving, I've been doing some target practice to get a feel for it though. Looking forward to when I can test it on Vlad.

Danny: aww are you going to avenge my honor 🥺

Jason: if you want me too. I'll bring you his head if you want me too.

Danny: 🥰 you're so sweet. I wouldn't say no to seeing him suffer for what he's done but don't get yourself in any trouble okay? And if you do call me right away. I'll come rescue you 😘

Jason: hey I'm the one offering to protect you! 

Danny: we can protect each other. And fight each other, can you come spar again soon?

Jason: I wouldn't call that sparring, more like brawling.

Danny: eh potato potato, do you want to come fight me again?

Jason: if demon brat won't kill me for it, sure. Can I take you out for dinner afterwards? I have some questions

Danny: It's a date! Just tell me when

Jason: Day after tomorrow? I have some work to take care of first.

Danny: Sounds great! And it is a date right? You don't mind that I'm going to have kids?

Jason: the kids aren't a deal breaker I promise but let's not jump the gun okay? We're going to be family through B so we don't want this to blow up in our faces. Let's hang out, take it slow, see how it goes. You need to be careful about who you let into your life now anyway, you can't just let anyone around you and the babies.

Danny: don't tell me what to do 😠 but you're right. I'm bad about rushing into things. I'm still looking forward to it.

Danny: By the way Jazz uploaded the power point she made about Liminals and Ghosts to the bat’s server thing. You have access to that right? You should read that before we meet and I can fill in the gaps.

Jason: Sounds good, I’ll have a look at it and I’m looking forward to it too. I'll be there at 5 so we can spar before dinner. Don't forget to warn B and your guard dog.

Danny: Damian is a good kid. I'll let them know.

Danny stared at his new phone Tim had given him with apprehension. The chat with Jason had gone very well, and Danny was glad he reached out but there were other people he really needed to reach out to and he was… frankly scared. Sam and Tucker were his best friends and had always been there for him but they both had tempers. Would they be mad that he hadn’t told them he was pregnant? Would they be upset he had left Amity and wasn’t planning on coming back?

He needed to reach out though, the longer he waited the harder it would be to talk to them, and things wouldn’t stay calm as they were now. Vlad would be back to cause trouble again and even though the JLD had control of the portal but he was sure his rogues would find their way through eventually. Vlad had his own portal anyway, and Danny wouldn’t put it past him to open it just to annoy Danny. Maybe try and weaken him a little so Vlad could swoop in and pick him off.

Today was quiet, he needed to take this chance. He sighed and got up off the edge of his bed where he was sitting and ducked out of his room. He didn’t want to do this alone, so he wasn’t surprised when he found himself in the library where Jazz was studying. 

He sat down across from her and reached across, laying his hand, palm up on the table. Without looking up from her book she reached over and placed her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. He smiled at her and took a deep breath before putting on his earbuds and sending a message in the group chat.

Danny: When you guys are ready can we call?

Jazz phone went off too and she checked it, smiled at Danny, and then silenced the chat and went back to her book. She didn’t need to be part of this call but at least she knew what he was doing. 

Sam: Yes, let me just grab Tuck. He’s playing Doomed.

Danny took a deep breath and put down his phone while he waited for them to call and tried not to panic.

When the phone buzzed he jumped and reached for it, joining the call quickly. 

“Hey guys,” He said, awkwardly, waving with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone.

“Hey yourself! What the heck happened Danny?! Basically the whole town joined in in chasing Vlad when we found out what he did but why did we have to find out on tv?! Why didn’t you tell us?!” Sam said, but at least she just seemed stressed, not actually angry.

“I’m sorry guys,” Danny said, wincing a little when he heard Tucker sniffling a little. “I hadn’t told anyone yet. I hadn’t even fully accepted it yet honestly.

“I still wasn’t ready to talk about it, bur Cass is really good at reading people's body language and I guess she clocked that I was carrying them by how I kept unconsciously touching my stomach. When she asked me about it it sorta broke through my denial and I broke down which started the ball rolling on… all this,” He said with a vague gesture.”

“All this is right!The justice league really brought the hammer down on Amity. They’re dismantling the GIW and really pissed at the government and basically all the adults in the town for letting this happen. And they arrested your parents!” Sam said sounding almost excited.

“Sam! That was really insensitive! They’re still his parents, what if he didn’t know!?” Tucker broke in furiously. 

“No it’s alright I knew, Jazz told me. She’s here with me,” He said squeezing her hand though she wasn’t paying attention to the call.

“Okaaay so where is Here?” Tucker asked warily. 

“Ya are you safe? We haven’t seen you since all this went down! Are you really with Bruce Wayne?” Sam asked sounding wary.

“Yes I am. He’s got a foster license and since his kids were the one that found out what was going on it just made sense that I’d stay here.”

“And he’s Not another Fruitloop?” Sam asked warily. “You need to be careful with these rich people you know? They’re basically all crazy!”

“Sam you’re rich,” Danny pointed out, amused. 

“Ya, and? My point stands!”

“Fair enough,” Danny laughed. “But no, I did some snooping the first night I was here and it seems okay. And since he’s got close ties to the Justice League he was able to get the help we really needed, and he says he might be able to help me meet Martian Manhunter!”

“Don’t fanboy out too bad,” Tucker teased him.

“Oh ya? And what if I helped you meet Tim Drake? Would you not be just as bad,” Danny accused Tucker.

“Touche,” Tucker said. “Could you though?”

“I mean maybe? He’s my foster brother now and he seems cool. You two are my best friends, if I’m going to stay I’m sure you could come visit me and meet all of them.” 

“Are you really going to stay there though? I mean once the GIW and everything is cleared out you could stay with either of us. I know my parents aren’t your biggest fans but I know they’d let you stay,” Sam said sounding worried. 

“And I know my family doesn't have a ton of money but they adore you, we’d make it work,” Tucker added looking worried.

“No, guys I really appreciate the offer but… I don’t want to come back to Amity. The Justice League said they shut down the portal and I really need a fresh start I think. I think I’d rather stay here. Jazz too, she’s gonna study at Gotham U and intern at Arkham,” He said. She looked up at the mention of her name and gave him a small smile.

“I’m sorry, you guys are my best friends and I’ll miss you, but there are too many… memories in Amity you know?”

“Ya I get that,” Sam said, looking sad and distant.

“We can still call, and play Doomed together, and visit on breaks!” Tucker said, his chipper tone sounding a little forced. “We’re going to say friends!” He insisted and Danny smiled.

“Of course we will Tuck,” He promised. They might grow apart with the distance between them, but he hoped not, they really were his best friends.

“Ya, my parents will probably be thrilled about this development and want me to come over all the time. They love the Waynes,” Sam chuckled though her optimism also seemed a bit forced. Of course she was more of a pessimist, she probably thought they would drift apart, but knew Danny needed them right now. 

“Soo what’s been going on in Amity since I left?” Danny asked, letting them ramble about the drama, the rumours, and the bullshit that was the bullies and everyone in the school sudden;y pretending they cared about Danny soooo much.

After they finished telling him about it there were a few beats of silence and Danny was just about to suggest they hang up when Sam spoke up again. 

“So, what actually happened with Vlad? If you don’t want to talk about it that’s okay but…”

“No, it’s okay. It’s not what- what you’d think. It’s superhero bullshit really. When I wouldn’t be his son he decided to try and clone me, you met Dani with an I right? She was one of the clones. But he didn’t know I was trans, and my DNA got all fucked up in the portal so none of the clones were stable. I have no idea how many he tried to make that died. But when I found out it was because he had lied to Dani and told her he needed me to stabilize her clone brothers. It was a batch of ten.

“But he lied, he didn’t actually care about stabilizing them, he was going to let them all die. I was only able to save the two that were most stable and only by taking their cores into myself. So I’m not normal pregnant, I’m ghost pregnant. 

What is my life huh?” He finished, chuckling awkwardly. 

“Oh fuck,” Sam said her shoulders slumping a little even as her expression went through a range of emotions. “That’s better in a way but still a whole different type of fucked up! I hope they catch him soon.”

“I hope so too but I don’t think they will,” Danny said with a shrug. “Not before he tries something else. I’m not lucky enough to be able to just move past this,” He said with a bitter little laugh.

“Well, we can still hope. And even if he does cause trouble you have more allies now! You’ve been able to handle everything else he’s thrown at you basically on your own, with the Justice League behind you I know there’s nothing you can’t handle. I mean, Vlad is kind of pathetic anyway,” Tucker encouraged making Danny smile. 

“Ya, you’re right, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Thanks guys,” he said fondly. 

“Of course dude! We’re here for you!” Tucker said.

“It’s really good to hear from you too. Don’t be a stranger okay?” Sam said, a bit worried.

“Of course not, I’ll keep you posted I promise.” Danny assured before they said their goodbyes and he hung up. 

He put down his phone and leaned back with a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment. Next to him Jazz chuckled and there was a soft snap as she closed her book. 

“You did well little brother,” She told him, getting up from her seat she moved behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders.

“How do you know? You weren’t listening.”

“No, but you reached out to your friends and had an honest conversation which isn’t easy. You did well,” She reiterated, squeezing his shoulders.

“Well thanks Jazz. I hope that they’re right that we won’t lose touch, and I’ll be able to handle whatever Vlad does,” He grumbled. 

“I’m sure we will,” Jazz promised. “And either way there’s no point in worrying about it now. Has Jason texted you yet?” She asked, giving Danny the excuse he needed to change the subject and launch into his more petty worries about the upcoming date as she sat back down to listen.

Next

[suzukiblu]

excerpt from the one where Tim Drake goes to an alternate reality and decides to get his other self laid via the local Kon's bisexual awakening:

"Hey, remember when you saved my life earlier?" Tim asks. 

"Yeah, kinda," Kon replies in amusement. "Seeing as it was about two point five seconds after you rigged the evil alien robot army to self-destruct and helped save our entire literal reality's life, so I was definitely paying attention." 

"Flatterer," Tim says with a smirk even as he waves him off. The self-destruct function wasn't even that hard to hack, comparatively. That time he'd downloaded Lex Luthor's active IP files from his personal office while the asshole had been on his damn computer–now that'd been tricky. Interdimensional alien invaders barely compare. And the Brainiac incident still gives him stress migraines when he thinks about it for too long. 

Metropolis sucks and Tim frankly has no idea how his own Kon can stand the place.

But like, getting off-topic here. 

"Well, I was gonna say you should let me pay you back for that," he continues. "But since you bring it up I'll also accept a show of gratitude on behalf of your reality, whichever gets you off harder.” 

Kon laughs, because he is apparently adorable enough to have assumed that was a joke. Precious little moron, Tim thinks fondly. 

"You know, you're a lot less uptight than our version of you is," Kon says, grinning down at Tim before flashing Tim's other self a smirk. "No offense, Rob. Dude's clearly just doing more yoga than you or something. Maybe drinking more tea? Taking the occasional bubble bath?" 

"Silly me, if only I'd invested in more bath bombs in my life," Tim's other self says dryly. 

"It's probably my sex life, actually," Tim himself puts in with an easy shrug. Turns out when you stop pretending you don't have a ridiculously high libido and actually just indulge the thing, a lot of life's little annoyances become a lot easier to handle. Go figure. "Plus my boyfriend Bernard is really great, just his entire existence does wonders for my mood in general and he also makes me eat real food on occasion and monitors my caffeine intake much more reliably than I'm capable of doing on my own. The man is a living antidepressant and I don't even mean that in a fucked-up way, he's just that good." 

"Boyfriend?" Kon blinks at him, then puts on another grin. It takes, Tim cannot help but notice, exactly two beats longer than his real grin would've. "Ohhhhh, okay, so the problem is just that you're not getting laid hard enough?" 

"It is not," Tim's other self says dubiously, watching Kon just a little bit warily and obviously worried about his potential reaction to the word "boyfriend". Well, Tim never claimed to be emotionally intelligent about Kon, so no surprise his other self is also a dumbass there. 

"It kinda is, actually," he tells his other self. "I was tracking my cortisol levels the last time I went on a solo away mission and let's just say they were . . . concerning? Like really concerning. Like by the time I got back I was kiiiiind of convinced I was going to need to go on anti-anxiety meds again. But then I jumped my Kon in the Titans Tower med bay instead and that pretty much solved the problem." 

Kon . . . pauses, sort of. Tilts his head. Tim's other self looks a lot warier.

"'Jumped'," Kon repeats carefully. "Like . . . what, you dragged him to the gym to spar or something?" 

"Like I blew his back out so hard that when he came his TTK fritzed out and disassembled my recovery bed," Tim clarifies helpfully. "It really helped with the cortisol levels issue." 

Kon blinks. Tim's other self looks pained, but also desperately envious. Tim would also be desperately envious if their situations were reversed and so does not blame him for said envy in the slightest. 

"I thought you said you had a boyfriend?" Kon says after a moment, sounding a little odd in a very telling way. Or at least very telling to Tim, anyway. 

As is the way that he's not looking at Tim's other self at all anymore. 

"Open relationship," Tim says. "Also Bernard thinks you're stupidly hot and really likes hearing about the kind of stuff you let me do to you. I've actually been debating inviting you over for his birthday so he can watch us live for once but I haven't asked you yet." 

"What, so your Kon is the side chick?" Kon jokes, awkwardly putting on another just barely belated grin. 

"More like my kept boy, functionally speaking, but he's having a 'weird about commitment' phase right now so I've just been making a lot of sugar baby jokes to soften him up," Tim replies with a shrug. It's only sort of been working, but it has been working, and he's willing to take his time on it. It's not fair to expect Kon to only be easy, after all. "Long-term goal is to marry Bernard and ideally get Kon to 'live-in boyfriend' status somewhere in there, but that would also require him not being weird about commitment and also figuring out how well he and Bernard get along in the same space, so we'll just have to see how that one goes." 

"Uh," Kon says. "Why?" 

"Because you are incredibly important to me and also look like a very horny Renaissance sculptor made you out of calacatta marble," Tim tells him matter-of-factly, gesturing meaningfully at him. "Frankly it's criminal that you ever put clothes on."

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

OHSHCAU (Keysmash)

Part 3

Prev

You know how, when the school year starts up, a teacher might get everyone to go around the room and give a couple of vague facts about themselves? Or, even worse, they might split everyone up into teams based on some random, inconsequential factors and they would all be forced to work together on some dumb task? That way they can get to know new people better?

You know how everyone hates that?

Yeah. Marinette thought that, of all people, her fellow high schoolers would understand. But alas, here she was, glaring down Dick because he wanted to do a team-building exercise. Bastard. She was going to shoot him.

With a paintball gun! Because they were playing paintball!

Do not send cops her way! She will introduce neurotoxins to your system!

Anyways, she had no choice but to agree. Debt’s a bitch.

And, maybe, the idea of shooting the Waynes point blank in the face with paintballs would have swayed her regardless, but who knows. The option was never truly given to her, so who’s to say how she would have reacted?

Certainly, the Waynes would never know.

Which was probably for the best. They could end her life in a couple of phone calls.

She hummed as she absently messed with her paintball gun. They had been split off into pairs. Steph was still on the bench thanks to her copious amounts of injuries, unfortunately, so Marinette hadn’t particularly minded who she was going to end up with (she hated all of the Waynes equally, save fucking Tim, who would avoid her, anyway), and had allowed them to all pair off and leave her with the leftovers.

She was regretting that, now, of course.

Dick wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her into his side. “Don’t get too competitive, please?” He said, and he sounded like he was one more ‘fuck you’ away from begging.

She glanced over his shoulder and found Tim making faces at her behind his back. He was supposed to be heading to one of the other nondescript, frankly unnerving steel tunnels that would lead them to a random place on the map. He should be spending this time with Damian so they could discuss their plans. He was not doing any of these things. He had followed Marinette and Dick to their room instead, and she would be concerned about him trying to figure out where they would end up for the sake of a tactical advantage… but, frankly, that was too smart for him.

He had no good reason to be here. How sweet of him to want to see her off.

She looked back at Dick, her eyes gleaming. “Of course I won’t. Only babies get competitive over stuff like this.”

Tim bristled. But his mic was on, so he was unable to say a word in protest. He could turn his face away from the people to mouth the curses he so clearly wanted to scream, but she could just look in another direction.

Her lips twitched into a kind of grin before she tamped it down.

Dick sighed. Deeply. “I’m guessing I can take that as a no.”

“Aw. You know me so well.”

He snickered. “Well, I’d hope so, since I hired you.”

“No one has ever lied to the people hiring them ever,” she said, nodding sagely.

He grinned. “Which is why we went with… atypical hiring practices.”

“You’ve basically kidnapped me and decided to hold my entire future ransom to make me work for you.”

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, Marinette,” a voice called, and she was more than happy to let Steph drag her out from under Dick’s arm, even if this meant that a new arm was wrapped around her waist and a face came to rest close to her own.

Marinette raised an eyebrow, but wasn’t too surprised at the sudden closeness. They’d literally slept together, in the same bed, for days. She could handle a little bit of contact. And, besides, they’d both agreed that it fit their characters (a playful flirt would flirt with a girl next door, and a girl next door would blush and let it happen) and it would draw in more customers. Teenage boys and gay teenage girls would both rather enjoy watching ‘wlw content’ when given the option.

Besides, who doesn’t flirt with their friends a little? Now they got to monetize it. A win.

Marinette rested a lazy arm over Steph’s shoulder, careful not to jostle the microphone hovering by the girl’s chin. She gave it a pointed look, and Steph mouthed the word ‘off’. She untensed a little. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Your mic is off.”

“I didn’t get one,” she said, shrugging.

Steph blinked. “Oh. I can give you mine.”

“Well, if I accept that, how am I going to insult Tim without the audience knowing?”

Dick snickered. “You could try not insulting him.”

Marinette gave him a blank look.

He shrugged as if to say ‘well, I tried’. Which, did he really?

But her attention was quickly stolen away when Steph pulled something out from behind her ear and then presented it to Marinette, who looked at it how one might look at a dead rat their cat had just brought in.

“What the hell is that?”

“A mic,” Dick offered.

She glared at him out of the corner of her eyes, and then snapped her attention back to Steph when the girl leaned in to fit the device over her ear. “You’re not putting that on me.”

“What, is the scientist scared of technology?” teased Dick.

She gritted her teeth. “Chemicals are easy to understand. They’re predictable. This? Unreliable. Who knows who's listening in on those wavelengths.”

There was a beat of silence. The two Waynes looked at each other for a moment, something unreadable on their faces.

And then Dick sighed. “Listen, you know how our dad bankrolls the Batman?”

She nodded, still eyeing Steph as if the girl was going to jump her and attach the evil machine to her by force.

“Well, we get a couple of perks. Like this. If anyone tries to hack into these – which, really, why would they? – Batman will be alerted and I’m sure they will never be heard from again… or whatever it is he and his weirdo kids do.”

“Local Batman proves that all cops are corrupt,” she said, still eyeing it warily.

“Not a cop,” said Steph.

“Not corrupt,” said Dick.

She wasn’t sure who was being less realistic.

And it didn’t matter what they said, either way.

Batman was exactly the person she was trying to avoid, thank you very much. But it wasn’t like she could just say that, because being openly wary of the Batman in front of rich people was just begging for them to be suspicious of you. They were too used to their peers being affiliated with the Court of Owls. So, reluctantly, she let Steph place the mic.

The girl drew back slightly once she was sure everything was in place (and, more importantly, that it would stay in place even while they were all running around).

Steph grinned. “There. Done. All you’ve got to do now is press the button and you’ll be live. Anyways. Blush like I said something suuuuper hot, m’kay? They’re staring.”

“Maybe if you do something hot, I will.”

She hummed thoughtfully before she brought her free hand up to cradle Marinette’s face. She tilted her head up, her thumb caressing her cheek, their noses brushing. A quiet click sounded next to her ear as her headpiece was turned on.

“Fixed,” Steph said. Quiet, but close enough to the mic hovering by Marinette’s chin for their audience to hear.

“Thanks,” Marinette mumbled. Thank god she had melanin to hide the reddening of her face somewhat, but she was pretty sure it was obvious regardless.

“Anytime,” Steph teased, going so far as to press a kiss to Marinette’s nose before drawing back. She glanced at Dick. “Your mic is off, too.”

“What, not going to fix mine for me?” Dick joked, lifting a lazy hand to flick the knob by his ear.

Steph snorted. “I’d rather die.”

Dick grinned and immediately tugged Marinette closer to him again. Woe is her. If only she could retaliate by beating his ass like she so wants to do. She hates debt. Thankfully, he didn’t wrap an arm around her this time, instead he let her go in favor of crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re just jealous that you don’t get to teach this sweet little underclassman the ropes.”

Marinette was fighting a valiant battle with her face, trying to keep the unimpressed annoyance off of it. “You’re so kind.”

“Of course! It’s my job as the club leader to make sure that your introduction to the group goes smoothly!”

They wouldn’t be bothering with all of this otherwise.

For you see, a large part of being a Host was based around how physically attractive you were, and if they wanted her to be popular enough to pay off her debt, they would have to introduce her to the potential customers in a way that would draw their attention in that way. So, it had been decided that Marinette’s official introduction should be some kind of physical activity. Especially since their clients were all fellow teens, and likely would see a bunch of people fighting for their lives in slightly skimpy clothes and go ‘ooooooooooh’.

Steph rolled her eyes so hard she must have seen her brain back there. “It would have been easier if we’d just done a pool party.”

“My! A pool party?! Steph, have you no shame? What about her innocence?!”

“Dick. She’s wearing a crop top and yoga pants.”

“A crop top, yoga pants, and tasteful armor,” said Dick. His attempts at defending her honor were… definitely attempts. Marinette could give him that.

Marinette crossed her arms over her chest, grinning. “Would you prefer I work out in a hoodie and sweats?”

“Well,” said Steph. She brought her hands up to press against her own chest, winking. “I don’t want that.”

A glance up at the crowd showed that the people had caught the jist of what she’d said thanks to the overdramatic body language she had opted for. Thankfully. Marinette wasn’t sure how to naturally repeat that for the sake of the people watching.

Her eyes caught on one particular person in the crowd, though.

Fu, leaning against his cane heavily, watching her.

“Alright, Steph, stop flirting with the new recruit,” Dick said, slinging his arm over Marinette’s shoulders again, tugging her closer to his side. “Shoo. Scram. Other synonyms that start with ‘s’. I need to teach her how to shoot – shoot! No, wait, I’m thinking of ‘shoo’, and I’m pretty sure I already said that. Anyways. Leave so I can teach her.”

Marinette’s head jerked around to look at him, her eyebrows disappearing behind her hairline. “I know how to shoot. You just…”

She pointed her paintball gun at a nearby wall and pulled the trigger. A disappointed look crossed her face when, despite the gun clicking to tell her that the trigger was working, nothing came out.

“Hm,” she said, eloquently.

He snickered. “Well, I know why that happened, but before we fix that…” He reached a hand out to adjust her fingers. “Let’s not keep our fingers on the trigger. Unless you want to shoot at anything that dares to surprise you.”

Marinette absolutely wanted that. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say that while in character, so she was stuck smiling and saying, “Thanks, Richard.”

“Dick,” he corrected lightly, as usual.

“You don’t understand how much I can not call you that,” she said. Even if Dick was, often, a dick, and she didn’t usually mind going with whatever nickname or name someone called themself, it’s hard to say the word and still come across as demure.

“Well, then, you can call me something else. How does ‘my liege’ sound?”

Marinette snickered into her hand. “Terrible, King.”

“Oh. Hate that.”

“Got it, Queen.”

He sighed.

“Themporer?” she tried, batting her eyelashes.

“How many of those do you have?”

“So many, gender nonspecific monarch.”

“That one feels like a stretch.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, it is a bit of a mouthful.”

“You know, I’m starting to realize that you use humor to stall.”

Marinette’s face flushed at the direct callout. That had been unnecessary. And she couldn’t even curse him out for it. She hated life.

Whatever. She’d roll with it (not like she had any other choices). She gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “What do you mean? I was trying to figure out your royal-title-specific pronoun preferences! I had only the best of intentions.”

“Of course, of course. Pretend to get ready to shoot your gun.”

Marinette huffed, mumbling that he was ‘no fun’ as she lifted her paintball gun.

He walked around her slowly, knocking his foot against the inside of her own until she moved them to be shoulder width apart, bending her arms so the recoil wouldn’t hurt as much, bending her knees slightly so she wouldn’t fall over at the lightest of hits…

“You sure know a lot about this,” Marinette said, eyeing him warily.

“Dad made me take some self-defense classes after I got held for ransom for the eight and a half-th time.”

“Eight times is a lot but I guess that’s still surprisingly competent for hi – wait, half-th?”

“Yeah!” he said, and then did not elaborate.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting.

He checked her form one last time before nodding to himself. He squinted at her gun for a moment, before cringing.

“I – uh – I’m not used to turning off the safety from an outsider’s point of view…”

“Then here,” she said, starting to stand up straighter and hand it over to him, only for him to rapidly shake his head.

“No, no, no, we need you in that position for as long as possible to get your body used to it.”

Marinette fought back a grimace, her eyes briefly flicking to the people still watching them intently. Dick, as the self-proclaimed ‘king’ of the Host Club, was easily the most popular among guests. She did not want to put a target on her back by looking like she was trying to come onto him. Or because it might look like he was coming onto her. She hated this fucking job. They were coworkers, damn it. She shouldn’t be stressing about getting, like, Court of Owls-style assassinated for being near him!

“Just – just… do it quick,” she said.

He nodded sharply.

Arms wrapped around her from behind, a chin coming to rest upon her shoulder. Warm breath just barely wafted over the side of her neck, earning a few goosebumps. His hands ghosted over the back of her own, briefly, fixing the positioning of her fingers once again (he really didn’t like her tendency to hang onto the trigger, apparently) before flicking the safety off.

He pulled back the second everything was in order, hands up like he was already actively surrendering. They sent the people watching them mildly embarrassed looks. It isn’t doing them much good, though.

Quick! Take legitimacy away from the intimacy!

“I need to stop bringing desserts from home, you’re getting heavy.”

Dick spluttered. “What?”

“I said what I said.”

She would apologize later.

… wait, would Babs count mental damage as adding to her debt?

She was going to apologize so profusely later.

Dick sighed, running a hand through his hair, briefly pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “Tell me why we made you the girl next door again?”

“Out of ideas,” Marinette said.

“Right, right. Any chance we can change it?”

“Well, you’re the king and all, you can choose,” she said, before winking and blowing a kiss to the people up on the viewing platform. “But, hey, everyone knows that most ‘harsh’ people are just hurt people trying to protect themselves from more harm. I’m sure that, with the right person, I could actually be the soft, kind person I portray. After all, every act needs at least a little bit of truth to work, right?”

She glanced at Dick out of the corner of her eyes. He gave the barest trace of a nod.

Good.

She had a bit of a reputation in the school. Not really because she was outright mean to people – she would never say half the shit she said around Adrien and the host club members to people she didn’t know, not without good reason – but because pretty much every student knew about her… antagonistic relationship with Tim. Because during the last finals season they had only been a step above fistfighting in the middle of the hallway. And not even because they had been scared of punishment or expulsion, but instead because Duke and Steph had physically dragged Tim away before he could jump at her.

Whatever. It was totally water under the bridge and she definitely didn’t want him dead anymore.

(Yes, Tim and Marinette could just put aside their differences, and show that they had changed… but Marinette would rather just kill him, to be honest.)

Regardless, it would be hard to convince the general population that the person that had almost fought another member was all that shy and kind. So, they needed to rework her image. Recontextualize her personality.

Whether or not Marinette or any of the other host club members really believed what she was saying didn’t matter, all that mattered was that their guests believed it. Thankfully, they had years worth of toxic media to back up their claims, and the rich kids who had never had real reason to distrust what they’d been told fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Great. The goal for today is done. Now, if only she could get out of this stupid paintball tournament. She has changed her mind. A chance of shooting Tim in the face is not worth having to simulate a battle.

Maybe if she annoys Dick enough he might just call it off?

She watched him out of the corner of her eyes as they continued down the hallway. He caught her stare and, instead of being confused or upset or uncomfortable, sent her a tiny smile.

Yeah, she didn’t think it would work. You can’t annoy someone with as many younger siblings as he has. They are immune to outside annoyances by this age, she is pretty sure.

There’s no getting out of this.

She almost laughed. Story of her fucking life.

Dick rested his hand on the doorknob, glancing back at her.

“Ready?”

She flashed a wink. “As I’ll ever be.”

Their door opened up into what seemed to be a trench, carved into the ground. Once they had clambered out of the trench, their clothes already stained with dirt (at least she didn’t have to pay for any of it), they found themselves in a heavily wooded area, with a couple of concrete structures dotted around.

She walked to a nearby tree. All of them looked long dead, blackened, as if they had been burned. As if this was a real battlefield.

She rapped her knuckles against it lightly, and wasn’t surprised to find that, whatever it was made of, it wasn’t organic material. Judging by the sound, she would guess styrofoam, paper mache, paint, and a dream.

A quick check of one of the structures revealed it to have no ceiling.

The entire world around them was fabricated to give the people so far above them, standing on the glass and peering down at them with excited grins she didn’t want to look at, a good view of what was going on. No leaves, no roofs, nothing was allowed to take away from their fun.

Oh shit, she thought. This is what it feels like to be in the Hunger Games.

Or to be in one of Riddler’s escape rooms, she supposed.

She watched Dick carefully toeing at the dirt, checking to see how far down it went. Whether it could actually be used as padding, or if the metal hidden beneath would give some nasty bruises if someone fell on it for any reason. Such as dramatically falling over when shot ‘dead’.

Her lips twitched into a wry kind of grin. And he’s supposed to be the ‘dumbest’ one. Who does he think that he’s fooling?

It wasn’t until long after he had confirmed that the ground was, in fact, soft enough for them all to drop dead on without issue, that an alarm alerted them to the fact that the grace period was over, and they were now supposed to be hunting each other to the death.

Marinette brushed her bangs away from her eyes, taking advantage of the opportunity to see how the audience had dispersed themselves. They were, largely, grouped into four spots. No guesses why. Sureeeeeely not because this was where the four pairs of competitors were…

Okay, that wasn’t fair to the customers. There was no way for them to know that the glass wasn’t a one way mirror like they’d been told. They shouldn’t be aware of the fact that this was all a play that had been planned out well in advance. The Waynes weren’t the types to let on that they weren’t quite as ‘airheaded’ as they often portrayed themselves to be, for whatever reason.

Still… Marinette stretched lazily, rocking back and forth on her feet, trying not to laugh aloud at just how obvious they were all being.

“So, are we heading to the center or skirting around the edges?” she asked.

“Center,” he said, because that was where most of the male clients were, and therefore where Babs and Cass were likely to be. “Let’s see whether there’s a Hunger Games-style cornucopia or something.”

Marinette clicked her tongue lightly. “You can’t tell people what we’re ripping off.”

“I think they already know.”

She huffed, but it’s not as if she genuinely cared.

Without further ado, they were off.

*****

They happened across Babs and Cass in the middle. They seemed to be doing the same thing that Marinette and Dick were, picking around for anything that might be useful. As if the people who had made this place would make an entrance in a spot where they had special items.

“Find anything?” Dick asked, pointing his gun at Babs.

Cass retaliated by pointing her gun at him. He did not seem particularly pleased about this development.

Marinette wasn’t pleased, either, because this meant she had to point her gun at Cass in retaliation. Fuck this script for making her defend Dick Grayson of all people.

Their guests looked to Babs, expecting her to point her gun at Marinette and complete the circle, leading to a dramatic standoff…

Only for Babs to hold up her hands in the universal sign of surrender. “We don’t have to fight,” she said. “It’s better if we don’t. We can’t have Jason or Tim’s teams winning.”

If nothing else, Marinette had to admit that this strategy would have probably worked on her and Dick even if it wasn’t scripted. Because fuck Tim Drake. And, in Dick’s case, Jason, in particular, cannot win, because he would be insufferable about it. They would both take shady deals in a heartbeat if it meant that the other two teams wouldn’t win.

“What do you get from this?” Marinette asked, because it was expected of her.

Cass shrugged. “Fun.”

Valid reason. Marinette (and Dick, too, though she loathed to admit it) could sometimes be fun.

As for Babs…

“If we’re the last two teams, I want to shoot Dick in the face.”

Dick gave a screech of offense, complaining about his ‘beautiful face’. But Marinette sees now downsides! They shook on it before he could get a word in edgewise.

“Alright, team, let’s roll out,” said Babs.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Dick whined.

“No. We are misandry-ing,” Marinette informed him.

“Perfect. Us girlies have to stick together,” Babs joked lightly.

“True. Can’t wait to kill ‘my liege’ for the sake of women everywhere,” Marinette said, snickering to herself.

Dick snorted at the ‘my liege’ callback, and then seemed to process what she had said. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Excuse you, I’m a girlie, too.”

“Woo, slay queen,” Marinette deadpanned. And then she frowned to herself. “Is ‘my liege’ a gendered term?”

“I… think so?” said Babs. The grammar rules for royalty is not the kind of thing the average teenager is looking up, after all. And, if Babs doesn’t know, then Cass (ESL speaker) and Dick (a liar pretending to be the ‘dumb one’ in a group already known for being stupid) had no shot. Pain. She must live without knowing for the next few hours. Why does god hate her so? Truly, she has suffered more than Jesus.

… perhaps it is jokes like that that make god hate her.

Whatever. She did not believe in Him, therefore He could not hurt her.

Anyways.

“Let’s roll out, then, I guess,” she said.

“Only I’m allowed to make that joke,” said Babs.

Marinette blinked. And then her face reddened. “Oh — I—!”

Cass shook her head in mock disappointment.

Marinette huffed. “Is it too late to un-team?”

“Nah, we shook on it, it’s binding,” Babs said.

Well. If that’s the case. They rolled ou— started off in search of others.

It was, honestly, a lot of meandering around. If they managed to go in the right direction too many times, the illusion would break, after all.

But, if nothing ‘entertaining’ was happening, they needed to work extra hard to have interesting conversations to listen in on. Which was hard. Usually, they entertained their guests by flirting, which was easy and didn’t take that much mental energy, but that was no longer really an option. They weren’t going to flirt with each other, especially since Dick and Cass were siblings and Dick and Babs were exes (Dick once again ruining things for everyone, shame on him). So…

Marinette walked alongside Babs. “If you don’t mind me asking, how the heck are you able to use your wheelchair when the ground is like this?” she said. The wheels didn’t look all that special, after all – it was all clearly high-quality, don’t get her wrong, but it wasn’t like she was looking at the wheelchair version of four wheel drive. And the gun in her lap was barely even moving.

“That’s the most fucked up question anyone’s ever asked me,” deadpanned Babs.

Marinette huffed. “Now, I just don’t think that’s true.”

“When have I ever lied?”

“I’m still convinced that the debt was a scam,” she sniffed.

Babs rolled her eyes but distinctly didn’t deny it. Because she couldn’t, clearly, not because she just didn’t feel that this was worth her time or energy. “This isn’t any worse than going down sidewalks.”

Marinette envisioned the Average Gotham Sidewalk. Then looked at the ground. She supposed that the sticks kind of resembled used syringes, now that she thought about it, and the dirt was surprisingly much smoother than the pothole-riddled concrete.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, makes sense, yeah.”

Well. She had done her job. Someone else needs to pick up the slack, now.

Babs sent her a flat look that said she needed to say something that would interest the audience, not just her. She fought the urge to grumble under her breath. The microphone would pick that up, too.

She turned to look at Dick.

“Okay, philosophical question: if you are aware that you are in denial, is it really denial, or is it a weird form of acceptance?”

It was silent for a moment.

“Er… I guess… acceptance?”

“But then it’s not denial. Different stage,” Cass said.

“But if you’re aware of it, it can’t be denial,” Dick argued.

Babs sighed. “How ‘aware’ is this ‘awareness’? Because, I’m pretty sure, even people in denial kind of know things are weird.”

“Nonono, you’re aware of the denial,” said Marinette. “Like, you know the thing you’re in denial about is bad and you go ‘nahhhhh’. But it’s a conscious decision.”

“Then… ugh. Denial, I guess.”

Babs and Cass started arguing. Marinette was pretty sure this was the most talkative and passionate she had ever seen Cass.

As for the guests… they were either arguing vehemently themselves or watching other people argue with amused grins.

Marinette, discreetly, gave a little bow in Dick’s direction. He gave a huff of laughter.

By the time they stumbled across another person, Cass seemed pissed off enough to go all out. This wasn’t intentional, but it was still funny to watch Duke go from relatively calm and in control to immediately ducking behind a tree for cover for fear of death.

Until he started firing at them all, too, and they were forced to book it to the nearest shelter.

You might argue that they were cowards, and should help out Cass, and you’d be right, but…

They wouldn’t be much help, to be honest.

The way Duke and Cass were fighting was insane. Like they already knew what each other’s movements were going to be ahead of time, and thus were more intent on waiting for the other to slip up than outright outsmarting each other.

Marinette whistled lowly. “How often do you guys come here?”

“Here? This is the first time, actually,” said Dick, brightly. “But we have something like this back at the Manor.”

She hated rich people.

(This fact has been made abundantly clear over the past few chapters, but she would like to say it again. And again. For as many times as it would take for them to stop pulling Rich People Shit.)

“Woooow,” she said, trying to infuse as much fake cheeriness into her tone as was physically possible when her main thought was about how, technically, friendly fire is possible here. “What a perfectly amazing use of your money.”

He nodded his agreement. Whether or not it was joking did not matter when her blood was boiling beneath her skin. She started to lift her gun, intent on either helping Cass or betraying both Cass and Duke at once, only for a stray bullet to nail the wall by her head the moment she started to poke her head out.

She stared at the purple paint for a moment, eyes wide, before slowly shrinking back into hiding.

She was still pissed off, though!

Before her eyes could drift to Babs and she could weigh the moral implications of sending her out first, a handful of skittles was shoved in front of her face.

“Want some?” said Jason.

She nodded, taking all of the red ones and popping them in her mouth. Dick did the same, but with the green pieces, like a weirdo (who the hell prefers green?). Babs wasn’t nearly as picky, just taking a handful of the rest and popping them like pills.

And then she started to lift her gun.

Marinette nearly choked on her sweet treat.

“JASON?!” Dick yelped.

They scrambled for their own guns.

Jason managed to get a shot off on Babs before he was covered in yellow. Maybe they shot him more times than was strictly necessary, but that was what he deserved for using Skittles against them. Honestly, the fact that Dick didn’t believe in the death penalty was the only thing saving him right now.

As for Marinette… well, she had been too intent on looting his ‘corpse’ for more candy to bother with murdering him via paintball gun. After all, what if the Skittles ended up getting blood or — god forbid — paint on them? She wouldn’t even be able to kill him in retaliation for messing up her snack.

She grumbled when she found paintballs, but pocketed them for extra ammo, in case Cass won and needed more.

Then, finally, she procured her prize: a sharing size bag of candy.

Life is good.

Unless you are Jason Todd.

“Maaaaan,” he groaned. “Those are mine, y’know.”

“Shhhhh, you’re a corpse, you can’t speak,” Dick said, holding his hand out for some.

She set the paintballs in his hand instead.

And then watched on in horror as he bit down on one without thinking.

Dick stared at her for a moment, purple dripping from his mouth.

Marinette swallowed down the temptation to joke about him looking like a vampire in favor of frantically looking up whether paintballs were nontoxic or if they were about to cut this paintball tournament short.

… which she wouldn’t mind, actually, now that she thought about it...

She considered the google page saying that they were nontoxic (for humans, at least, apparently they were not good for animals, which Damian was going to be distressed about when he learned), wondering whether an ambulance visit would be added to her debt. And then decided she didn’t want to risk it.

“You’re fine.”

Want to know who wasn’t fine? Cass and Duke. Apparently, in the time it took for everything to settle, Duke and Cass had killed each other off. Or, well, Duke had slipped up and Cass had ‘died’ in solidarity with him. Mildly concerning behavior, but it was a paintball game and therefore has no real indication of actual behaviors. Hopefully. Marinette genuinely liked Cass.

No time to linger on that particular line of thought.

“If Tim wins I’m pulling a Cass,” Marinette told Dick.

Dick raised an eyebrow. “You’d already be ‘dead’ if Tim wins.”

She thought this over. “Then I’ll come back as a zombie and be killed again. Perfect.”

Jason did not seem to find this funny, but maybe he was still bitter about having his Skittles stolen. Dick grinned and, really, that’s all that matters.

“What do you think real life zombies are like?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Nonexistent.”

“Don’t know what I was expecting from the scientist,” he huffed.

“Fiiiiiine,” she said. She thought, long and hard, about what a real life zombie would be like. Blüdhaven got nuked a while back (deserved, fuck Blüdhaven), and she hadn’t yet heard of zombies, so radiation poisoning wasn’t going to do it. So probably an intentional thing — Jurassic Park style experimentation, or something. Which means that the circumstances would be controlled… except zombies would probably escape the labs, if Marinette were to ever see them. The body would have to be very cold to slow down decomposition. It wouldn’t even halt it entirely.

“Gross,” she decided.

Dick stared at her. “All that thought and you come up with ‘gross’?!”

“I’m not wrong. They’d be gross.”

“That is not the point!” he groaned. “Talk about whether you think they’d be fast or slow, strong or weak, intelligent or not! Talk about whether their decomposition would affect them!”

She snickered. “Careful, Richard, or you’re going to make people think you have a brain in there.”

For a moment, he froze. And then he purposefully relaxed, each muscle individually untensing, one by one. He laughed lightly, but it was a tad bit forced (when wasn’t it, though?). “Yeah, the zombies will come after me if they know.”

“Being stupid has its benefits, yeah?”

He chuckled humorlessly.

Before he could come up with a proper response, though, Tim wandered into their area, drawn by the sound of gunfire from Duke and Cass’s fight. Marinette and Dick pointed their guns at him immediately.

Tim narrowed his eyes. He pointed his gun at Marinette, but seemed hesitant.

Marinette fought off a smirk. She loved having plot armor. At the sight of her face, he only seemed more irritated, which was even better.

But there was nothing he could do.

He set his gun down.

“We could take him as hostage,” Dick offered. “See if that lures Damian –.”

“Nah, too risky,” said Marinette. Without any further ado, she shot Tim.

Tim fell over, and not entirely because that was standard for ‘dead’ people. He hugged himself. His dignity, breaking. In a very literal sense.

It was very quiet. Marinette’s hand found its way to her mouth.

Dick looked at her, his eyes wide and horrified.

“I know I hate you, but… I didn’t mean… I forgot that men have… Tim, I’m so sorry.”

Tim made a pitiful sound.

Shakily, he lifted a hand in a thumbs up.

She made a heart with her own hands. This did not seem to help in the slightest but, frankly, there wasn’t much else she could do.

Luckily, she didn’t need to think about it for long before she was distracted — a voice called from behind them: “Found you.”

She whipped around and shot Damian in the chest.

There were a few moments where no one knew what to do. The boy stared at the paint staining his armor bright yellow. Marinette’s grip felt clammy on her gun.

Dick tipped his head to the side consideringly.

She met his eyes.

She was no longer amused by the intelligence lingering in his gaze as he scrutinized her. She narrowed her eyes at him, briefly, daring him to say something. She wasn’t the only one hiding things, after all.

Play along, she told him. Help me fix this ending.

He relaxed his expression carefully.

They had an understanding. Despite Marinette’s supposed incompetence with guns, when startled she was quick to shoot and accurate. Despite Dick constantly acting as if he was dumb, there was clearly a brain hidden somewhere there. They both knew more than they tried to let on. Maybe that was why they didn’t have much trouble identifying each other’s acts… but, so long as their own secrets remained intact, they could keep each others’.

It was a little nerve-wracking, and yet, strangely, nice, to have someone you don’t have to lie to. That can see past it even when you try.

She smirked and lifted her gun. “See? This is why you keep your finger on the trigger, Dick.”

He grinned and held up his hands in surrender.

*****

Marinette and Dick grimaced as a cooler full of paint was poured over their backs. They definitely felt victorious right about now. This was their prize for winning. Yay them.

Sure, they didn’t exactly, genuinely earn the win, but that’s besides the point.

He looked at her. “You’ve got red in your hair.”

She yelped and brought a hand up to try and get it out, only to remember just a second too late that her hands, too, were covered in paint. She stared at the glob of paint-covered hair hanging limp in front of her eyes for a moment, devastated, and then glared at him.

“You did that on purpose.”

“I was just pointing something out for you,” he said ‘innocently’, unable to quite keep himself from smiling.

She hummed, and then slapped her hand onto his hair. He hissed and reflexively his hands flew up to touch the sore spot, only for him to realize that now he had been the one baited into getting paint in his hair.

“Marinette,” he said, smiling sweetly.

For a moment, one could almost see the regret flickering across her features.

And then he rushed forward to try and trap her in a hug. She shrieked, managing to get only a few steps before she was snatched up, dragged into the evil monster. She barely even had time to fight back before she was thrown over his shoulder, only able to yell off-brand curse words and try to writhe around in hopes of freedom – or, at least, in hopes that she could smear her own paint over every part of him she could reach.

Within minutes, they were swirling messes of red, blue, purple, and the occasional scrap of visible skin.

There were people laughing at their antics.

Both of them froze.

They looked up, and found the other members of the Host Club were enjoying the show.

As well as a few guests, but they couldn’t really retaliate against them.

So, Dick set Marinette down and they met each other’s eyes and silently resolved to make up for that by attacking their fellow club members twice as much to compensate.

*****

Marinette heaved a sigh as she sat on a bench, scrubbing paint off her arm with her millionth wet wipe of the day. Where did the green even come from?

It was then that she realized someone was nearing her.

She looked over her shoulder and found…

Well, someone her age. She recognized her, vaguely, from her English class, but their name eluded her.

The girl smiled nervously at Marinette, wringing her hands and somewhat avoiding eye contact. “I – uh – was wondering if you could Host for me sometime?”

Marinette stared at her for a moment, processing.

And then she lit up, practically jumping from her seat in order to shake the girl’s hand.

“That sounds great! What day would you –?”

She drew her hand back, and cringed at the red strings of paint now connecting their hands.

“I… don’t know if I have more wet wipes,” she said, blushing.

The girl smiled, amused. “If you walk me home, I’ll consider it even.”

Marinette hesitantly took her hand again, intertwining their fingers. “Okay. Don’t know if that’s much of a punishment, but if that’s what it takes to repay you…”

~~~~~~~~~~

TBC

Taglist: @ev-cupcake @thatonecroc @toodaloo-kangaroo @fangirlingfanatic

[smittywing]

FicBit 7: Jason Todd/Tim Drake

Previous parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

This was not one of Jason's better ideas.

~

Jason tried. He did. He went to the nightclubs and the bars and he asked guys out on dates and kissed guys on the dance floor. Not one of them was Tim Drake. Sure, some of the kisses were interesting and one guy put a heavy hand on Jason’s lower back and pressed him close in a way that he liked, but when he went home, when he went to bed, there was only one person on his mind.

Maybe, he thought, he was trying too hard. He was in the back of a nightclub nursing a drink and watching the couples and throuples on the dance floor. He had discovered a few things that he liked and didn’t like and he could build on that. But his heart wasn’t in it tonight and he knew it.

At least it wasn’t until a slim, dark-haired guy leaned into the bar to speak to the bartender and Jason knew him. He would know Tim Drake anywhere. Tim got his drink and backed up, his eyes casing the room. There was nowhere to go, so Jason just braced for Tim’s gaze to sweep over him and lifted his glass in acknowledgment. Tim nodded and started filtering his way through the crowd toward Jason.

“Hey,” he said, a few inches below Jason’s ear. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Jason shrugged. “Research,” he said. “Where’s Cannon Fodder?”

“I’m working tonight,” Tim said, sliding up against the wall next to Jason and taking a sip of his drink. “It’s drugs,” he said from behind the glass. “Want to help?”

“Hell yes,” Jason said. 

~

For the record, Jason would be down with taking out some pushers even if it didn't involve Tim murmuring in his ear for the next ten minutes. 

But it did. 

“It comes in on motorboats small enough to come up to the dock,” Tim explained. “They cut and package it in one of the rooms upstairs - I haven’t gotten in there yet - and then they have the dealers take it to the floor. A little dancing, a little grinding, hey you want to do some powder, and they’re making bank before midnight.”

“So we want to be on the docks,” Jason reasoned. “Pushers aren’t getting us anywhere but the cutting room. If we can get onboard one of those boats - “

“This is just evidence-gathering,” Tim told him. “If we can catch the actual sale, I’ll call Detective Williams and he can - “

“Don’t you want to get the big bad,” Jason asked. “Cut this ring off at the head?”

“Do you have anything that even resembles a plan?” Tim returned. “We don’t have gear. At least I don’t.”

“I came here to get laid, not bust a drug ring.” Jason shrugged. “But I like to think I’m flexible with my plans.”

Tim stared at him a moment, eyebrows furrowed, mouth slightly open, and Jason suddenly realized what he’d said. Well. Who cared, anyway. One of these days he was going to get laid at one of these places. He didn’t have to tell Tim that it wasn’t actually going to be tonight.

‘Come with me,” Tim said suddenly, looping fingers around Jason’s wrist and tugging him around the crowd, up to the bar. Tim left his half-filled glass on a tray and waved down a handsome blond guy at the edge of the room. For a moment, Jason thought Bernard was actually there, but then realized the guy was too broad and too sharp-featured to be Tim’s boyfriend.

“What can I get for you, Mr. Drake-Wayne?” the man greeted them, hardly sparing a glance for Jason. “Or for your friend, perhaps?”

“Listen,” Tim said, sounding impatient and bored for someone who had summoned the guy in the first place. “My friend - “ and at this point, he slid his hand into the back pocket of Jason’s jeans - “is looking for a bump but frankly, I’m a little concerned about the quality of the stuff here. How do I know it's not cut with fentanyl or something else that could cause some…bad press?”

Wow, Jason almost said because he knew Tim had some bastard in him but he delivered that line so coldly, Jason wanted to shiver. 

There were other reasons he wanted to shiver, starting with the hand Tim had firmly tucked in his back pocket. He was starting to regret wearing the tight jeans that night. 

“Understood,” the man said. “If you like, I can show you the process from receipt to delivery. The package comes to us pure and the division of assets takes place upstairs.”

“Please,” Tim said disdainfully. “I do enjoy an efficient operation.”

They followed the man down a back hallway, past the bathrooms and the kitchen, and finally out a set of double doors onto the freshly salted air of the courtyard. 

Under the light of the new moon and the motion-activated security lights on the building, Jason’s pants were definitely too tight. He tried to adjust himself subtly but Tim noticed and a blush spread across the bridge of his nose and over both cheeks. He did not, however, remove his hand.

“Mr. Drake-Wayne,” the man said, nodding to the water. 

Tim looked at his watch. “On the nose,” he said. The speedboat pulled up alongside the dock and the pilot looped heavy rope lines around the pylons of the dock. 

“Pure bricks,” the man said, breaking one in half. White powder puffed upward in the moonlight and Jason threw up a little bit in his mouth. He tapped a finger against the split edge and held it up to Tim’s face - to smell or taste, Jason wasn't sure. “A sample, Mr. Wayne?”

“Drake-Wayne,” Jason said. 

“Excuse me?” the man said, looking vaguely horrified that Jason dared speak. 

“He uses both names,” Jason said. Tim was the only one of them to use the Wayne moniker - mostly because Bruce had suckered him into working for the business - but he made sure to acknowledge his birth family as well, and Jason respected that. 

“Of course,” the man said. The expression he cast at Jason was most definitely in the sneer family. “Any other requests?”

“Well,” Jason said, deciding to go for broke. “I don’t suppose we could have a tour of that ship?”

Tim’s hand spasmed. Yeah, this was definitely one of Jason’s better ideas.

~

This turned out not to be one of Jason’s better ideas.

Jason hit the water feet-first and sank like a rock. He exhaled some bubbles and followed them to the surface with brute strength strokes. His head broke the surface and he immediately looked around for Tim as he blinked water out of his eyes. For a long moment, he couldn’t see Tim, could barely see anything, and his heart seized up as he reoriented himself, finding the ship behind him and the lights of the marina in the distance. He shook his head and his ears popped and there, finally, Tim’s head broke the surface twenty feet away.

Jason used a powerful crawl to close the space between them. “You okay?” he called, spitting out vile Gotham river water that lapped into his mouth when he opened it.

“Yeah,” Tim called back, spitting out his own mouthful. His hair fell into his eyes and he shoved it back out of the way. “Make for the marina. My boat’s not far.”

‘Not far’ was a relative statement, Jason found, as he followed Tim through the water toward the lights. Tim was a graceful swimmer, cutting through the water swiftly and quietly. Jason had the strength and endurance, but he wasn’t as fast as Tim and trying to keep up was actually a little bit of a workout.

“Here,” Tim finally declared, grabbing the ladder on the outside of one of the boats and hauling himself out of the water. Jason followed closely, feeling the weight of the water fall off him as he pulled himself up the rungs.

“Ugh,” Jason said when he hit the deck. “Gross.” He was drenched through and while he was glad he’d been wearing clubbing clothes instead of his armored suit, he was drenched and the night air was chill.

“We probably need a course of antibiotics now,” Tim said, and Jason coughed out a watery laugh. Then Tim sat straight up. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit, what?” Jason asked but he didn’t have to wait for an answer.

Cannon Fodder was on the dock and hopping onto the boat. He was a good-looking kid, Jason had to admit, taller than Tim, lean but fit, with dark blond hair falling over his eyes. 

“Tim?” he called. “Tim’s friend? Are you okay?”

“Hey, hi,” Tim said, scrambling to his feet and reaching for Bernard. “We’re fine, it’s all good.”

“Were you *swimming*?” Cannon Fodder asked in horror and reared back when Tim leaned in to kiss him. Jason couldn’t really blame him. Gotham’s water wasn’t exactly potable on its own and the river caught the worst of it. “In the *river*?”

Tim raked his hair back. “Um. Jason fell in and I jumped in for…solidarity.”

“Solidarity,” Cannon Fodder repeated.

“To help him get back up to the boat,” Tim amended hastily.

“Help,” Cannon Fodder echoed. His eyes narrowed at Jason and Jason immediately felt guilty. This was the guy who made Tim smile like Jason had never seen before, Tim’s *partner* and Jason couldn’t stop himself from wanting to wrap Tim in his arms, kiss him, steal him away for his very own. 

Did Cannon Fodder know he was the guy Tim had kissed? How had he reacted when Tim had explained? How had he *felt*? Was the context enough? Empathy might not be a trait people immediately associated with Jason, but he was having a hard time not putting himself in Cannon Fodder’s shoes right now.

“I fell in,” Jason said. “I was chasing my, um, hat. I had a hat and I thought I could grab it. Guess I was wrong.” He could feel Tim’s eyes on him. Ugh, selflessness was the worst.

“Sorry about your hat,” Cannon Fodder said. “You might want to hold on to it better next time.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, entirely aware there was no wind that night. “Or maybe not wear a hat.”

“Also an option,” Tim agreed. “Um, Bernard, this is my friend Jason. Jason, this is my boyfriend Bernard.” And then he fucking blushed at calling Cannon Fodder his boyfriend. “Look, we should get some dry clothes. Um. Jason, I’ll see if I have anything that will fit you?”

That was unlikely. Jason might be able to squeeze into a t-shirt that was oversized on Tim, but there was no way pants were going to happen.

“Uh, thanks but I think I’m just gonna…Uber?”

“Uber?” Tim repeated.

“Uber,” Cannon Fodder said firmly.

Somehow Jason’s phone survived its bath in the Gotham River, courtesy of the weatherized case Barbara had left in a gear drop. There was awkward silence as Jason waited for his ride.

“Thanks for the save,” Jason said stiffly when his ride was a minute out. “Bernard, good to meet you, man.”

“Same.”

Yeah, Cannon Fodder definitely knew who he was.

Jason collapsed in the back seat of the car and closed his eyes. He’d given an address two blocks from his closest safehouse but chances were he’d have to burn the place anyway. River stench lingered.

He tried not to picture Cannon Fodder taking Tim below decks and stripping him of all those wet clothes, wrapping him in towels, running a hot shower, getting in with him, soaping him up, and - 

Yeah.  Not picturing that at all.

~

[flownwrong]

expectations (a due south fic)

F/K, 1.5k words, additional tags: first kiss, stupid phone conversations, drama over a duffel bag

I'll tell you what I told ao3:

"My writing hit a wall a while back. To deal with it, I decided I'd write the only way I can now—short fic I can seat-of-my-pants in one day. A piece for each ship/fandom/idea where I have wips or thoughts that I can't make into actual works. This is the first one.

Thanks to @nigeltde-fic for dragging me down with this ship, and generally being a champion. <3”"

read on ao3

Maybe it really is a damn Groundhog Day type situation. Only twice as boring and nobody gets the girl, like, ever.

One thing he never pictured when he thought of the after-fraser-life, which he didn’t do very often, or, well, maybe he did, but he didn’t like doing it, point being—one thing he didn’t imagine was that it would be the same. As in, poof, never happened, must have daydreamed it, off you go, Stanley, play well with the boys.

And, well, it isn’t really a never-happened kinda deal, because Fraser, he just lives in a pocket in Ray’s head now, twenty-four-literal-seven, like friends do, you know, or something close. And what with Vecchio and Stella fucking off to Florida and Frannie doing her thing all while they were still doing the big adventure stuff, between all that it’s hard to not notice the change. But other than that—it’s the same job, the same desk (his desk, The Kowalski Desk), the same bottle in the cabinet above the sink and the same—the inside of his head is the same, too, giving him trouble like always.

The way they left things—if that’s even what happened, left things, huh—it’s not what he feared. Not what he expected, either—and it took him many, many frozen-through adrenaline-drunk days to put a finger on it, that there was an expectation. And now back here, it’s like one of those tip-of-the-tongue moments he’s so familiar with, only with that expectation; it circles him all predatory with every lonely shuffle around his dance-apartment-floor and every stupid late night reruns session and every finger of drink he takes with that, and then it wafts away on the wind, leaving him feeling like he missed a step and twisted his ankle. Which is kinda stupid, when you come to think of it, since it looks like all his worst-case scenarios solved themselves and left him with a cushy little offering while he was playing explorer, and wasn’t that what it was all about.

And maybe it wasn’t, because Fraser calls, like he does, which floors Ray a little every single time for reasons he can’t even begin to articulate, he calls on a Friday and brings him up to speed on Dief’s aversion to the nearest Tim Hortons (nearest being a few hours’ trip to Yellowknife) because quote he says it’s cheating and Chicago ones tasted better and frankly it’s insulting end quote and how you pay and pay and pay and how he fixed up the cabin now and the second bed is new and really much better than the one Ray had to deal with up there, he made sure of that (felled the best tree he could find, Ray wagers), and Ray finds himself nodding and humming and gripping the stupid station handset, knuckles gone white, biting his cheek, hell if he knows why, not like his smile could do any damage at this point. “There isn’t a waiting list for that bed, is there?” he says, no reservations worth stopping for. And, “no,” says Fraser, and there’s that expectation, clarion as you please, ten-four, roger that. “Greatness,” Ray says, and hangs up, and does a little shimmy he’s not even ashamed of.

And then Fraser doesn’t call for three weeks, in which Ray is very productive, managing to vent drunkenly at Turtle who looks so unimpressed Ray thinks he actually hears him sigh, pack the bag, unpack the bag, consider terminating the lease, call in with Welsh then come in anyway, chase the latest case into almost three whole days awake and get sent away by Welsh anyway once the Bonnie and Clyde of small-time food truck GTA are locked up, pick up the phone roughly thirty-seven times, put it down thirty-six, and that last time, Fraser picks up and calls out for him softly and he’s too much of a chicken to do it back. Where exactly they tripped in a dance Ray felt resonate in his bones, he can’t guess.

Week four, Fraser calls, only it’s Ray’s doorbell that rings this time, and he picks himself up faster than he would the phone.

“Fraser,” he says first, then swings the door open, “Frase,” gripping his wrists way too tight, “what in god’s name was that—scratch that, don’t say, one thing it was is not buddies.”

“I don’t see what you mean, Ray,” Fraser says, and it’s supposed to make him angry, this far in, only this time Fraser is wrapped up in a soft green-gray flannel instead of the red walking coffin and he has his beat-up bag and the stupid hat on, so even Ray can see through the reflex of it. Fraser tugs gently at him. “Ah, Ray, if you could just let me put my bag down—thank you kindly.’

“You do, Frase, I know you do.” He lets Fraser’s wrists go for half a second it takes for the bag to thud onto the floor—other side of the threshold, damn it—and not a moment longer. “Did you come to stand outside my home and bullshit me?”

“Yes. I mean, not for that, no, but yes, I forgot about—oh, darn,” he says and tugs one hand free to take his stetson off, which is how you know, if you’re Ray, things are afoot. Big things. Momentary events in history. So when Fraser steps one foot in and leans back against the doorjamb and pulls him near—with hands snaking under his arms to land just below his shoulder blades, one half of a hug not yet given, a freakish way only Fraser would go with, which fires Ray up instantly, heat flooding his face like a punch he has to close his eyes against—when that’s done, Ray can find his mouth blind he’s so ready.

“You’re off,” he mumbles, because Fraser is the one with eyes open and he still landed somewhere around where Ray’s lips turn into his cheek, and then only corrected half an inch down, catching the corner of his open-eager mouth.

Fraser presses a kiss there, with intent. “Not,” he says, and then, then he hits the bullseye, fucking A, bingo, job done, you get a sticker—or a mouthful of tongue, because that’s faster where they stand.

“Momentous,” Fraser says into Ray’s hair, some breathless minutes later, and Ray says, “wha—’ and Fraser says, “you said, or rather mouthed, something about momentary events, if my memory serves—well, it must, it’s only been three minutes. I suppose you meant momentous, given the context.”

“Jesus, Shakespeare, come the fuck in, what do I have to offer to get you both feet inside.”

Fraser straightens but doesn’t move an inch to displace Ray where he’s giving him the second half of a hug. “Well, Ray, I didn’t mean to stay, per se.”

Ray disentangles them and tugs at the lapels of Fraser’s really very soft shirt, whenever he’s grabbed those, huh. He blinks once, twice, and thinks about how many bottles he will have to get for that cabinet now, because fucking hell. The bastard didn’t even have the courtesy to rub at his eyebrow, so to him it all makes sense somehow. He looks down and frowns.

“What’s with the bag?”

When he looks back up, Fraser smiles, an honest to god I’m-back-in-ten-foot-snow-and-alive-again grin, eyes kind of superglued to Ray’s face. “Promised Dief to get some of those Chicago donuts, which are, apparently ‘the right kind’.”

Ray steps back, shoves at Fraser’s chest, no way-like, and folds in two with laughter. Fraser looks at him all affectionate, and the absurdity is so familiar it gives Ray a headrush. Or maybe that’s all the wheezing he's doing.

“A bag? A whole bag of donuts?”

Fraser gets this look where his eyes get all liquid and light, and now that Ray’s got the manual he knows that translates to scared and hopeful in downright unhealthy measures. “I didn’t count on being back to Chicago soon.”

Ray can feel he’s doing the superglue thing now, too.

Fraser clears his throat. “Oh dear. Unless—I didn’t mean to presume, it’s only that on the phone—”

Ray cuts him off in a voice that’s too rough to seize the reins of, so it will probably break in there somewhere but it’s all a-okay now, isn’t it—says, “You’ll have to get in here, Frase. I think I’ll want some pants with my donuts, and I’m now in the bag-unpacked phase—uh, anyway.”

He heads inside and hears Fraser shut the door and toe off his boots. 

So maybe there was no tripping after all. Just Fraser and his insane moves Ray always learns, dancing skills be damned. Good thing he isn’t Bill Murray—would be awkward to explain this to the girl.

[worldofroma]

April 21 2023, Friday - 1:10pm

It’s been quite a while since I’ve gotten the chance to write on this again. A lot of shit has happened, actually.

I got super sick. Like, super fucking sick. Pretty sure it was COVID as I was completely bed-ridden for 4 days, my head and ears full of pressure and my throat hurting so bad I could barely breathe. Not only that, but everytime I did breathe, I made a weird gurgling kind of sound and it was absolutely disgusting.

I got a job. Finally. But I’m working at Tim Hortons. Gross. I’ve learned how they make some of my favourite drinks, foul. Yet I’ll still continue to drink them almost every damn day.

Practiced driving a lot more as my driving test for G2 is coming up next Tuesday. Was doing great until my instructor told me that they think I’ll be fine on the test, immediately ran a stop sign and turned the opposite way that I had my signal on for. Nice.

Discovered the side of me that could be considered a slut. But now I understand the reason why so many women turn to it, it’s so exciting and quite frankly entertaining. Theres this stupid website, some kind of thing for pen pals, idfk, but the amount of disgusting men on there is outstanding. I made an account and within 10 minutes, I had 17 messages from 17 different men (yes, men, all over the age of 25) telling me how beautiful I am and the things they’d love to do to my “young, teen body”. Fucking disgusting. But, I reply anyways. I’m addicted to the attention they give me and how little effort I have to put in to getting it. All I have to do is respond with short, sweet, and flirty answers and they’re all over me. I love it.

Met someone on the website who I think is my twin flame. He’s only a few months younger than me, lowkey cringe, but we are so alike. But, now that we’ve been texting back and fourth for a good 5 days now, I’ve definitely been humbled. In short, let’s just say we used this app called RAVE to watch a movie without being in the same place. He chose the movie. He chose Fight Club. Need I say more?

I’m writing this on the last day of my co-op, thank the lord. I kind of feel bad for hating it, but I told the teacher I was an assistant for that I enjoyed it even though almost every day I sat at the back table cutting out laminated cards or instructions to a game I never knew existed. It was dreadful, but I managed.

I killed a bug today, a big brown shiny one that made a crunching noise when I stepped on it. Felt really bad afterwards. Don’t really know why, I’ve never cared before.

Oh, and back to the guy I mentioned in 5, his name is Atlas by the way, he’s so smart yet so fucking douchy about it. Not in a bad way though, I honestly enjoy being told by him. But at one point, we had this super long typical conversation about the meaning of life and what happens after death. He’s fully convinced that there is no God, there is no Heaven or Hell. There’s just nothing after death. And he’s okay with it too, but I’m not sure I am. I think that might be why I felt bad for killing the bug. All it was trying to do was hide under some shelf but I purposely went out of my way to end it’s life in a split second, leaving it in the emptiness of the afterlife forever on. Atlas also told me that he killed someone, or may have at least. Apparently he was drunk some time ago and was approched by an even more drunk old man who tried to come onto him, rape him I guess, and he beat him to the point he has no clue if the man survived. He also told me he’d be willing to eat human flesh. I don’t know why, but I’m not afraid of him like anyone else would be after hearing this stuff from him. I actually find it rather comforting that he trusts me enough to tell me things like that after not even knowing me for a week yet. He says he’s really glad we met, but I think if we ever met in real life, it would be catastrophic.

Also, yesterday I skipped co-op just to sleep. Woke up at 7:30, decided I didn’t want to go, and then went back to bed only to wake up at 2pm without waking once. I think If I had the choice, I’d stay in bed forever. Now I understand My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

So thats what my life has been like recently. Fucking hell if you ask me. But on top of everything thats going on, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my future is going to look like. If I want to get anywhere in this world without living a life of depression, I need to marry rich. In this world, you don’t get anywhere without aqquiring a job in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and I fucking hate all four of those things. All I want to do is write. I want to write stories that someone will read once and remember for the rest of their lives. I want to be a movie director so I can bring those books to life and create a masterpiece out of each one. But you don’t get anywhere like that without money and as of right now, I have $2.09 in my bank account. Savings and all. And by the looks of it, I’ll either be marrying someone extremely fucked up and insane like Atlas, or some rich old perverted white guy who will be willing to give me anything if I strip down. And in all honesty, I don’t mind either. As long as I’m getting the attention I deserve and the time to spend on writing, I couldn’t give a shit who I spend it with.

Also, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be capable of loving someone. I remember this one time before we broke off completely, Kyra and I decided to take a break from our friendship as I didn’t feel I was getting anything out of it compared to what I was putting into the friendship. My stepdad, Paul, decided to tell me during that break that he was convinced Kyra and I were in some kind of secret relationship because of how often we’d spend time together, but we were only so close because we only had each other for years. During that conversation, he went on to tell me that no matter how long we spend a part, we would always find our way back to being friends because even if we didn’t want to admit it, we loved each other. This was after I made it clear that I’m straight, by the way, so this so called love was more just in a family way because it was the only other option. But that wasn’t the case. Her and I never had any love for each other, only depdenance and a sort of guilt that if we didn’t hang out with each other, we’d be a bad person. A bad friend. I realized that after she started hanging out with me only to use my weed and get my mother to buy her pods. Another reason I don’t think I could ever love someone is because I have no commitment skills. If I ever somehow get in a relationship with a guy, I can almost guarantee that I’ll be tired of them before the 1 year mark, if I even make it that far. It’s kind of funny it worked out that way though seeing I have serious abandonment issues. If I get abandoned, I’ll never recover from it, but if I abandon someone else, they’ll likely never cross my mind again unless it’s because I’m internally insulting them. This is why I know I’m not a good person. I’m selfish. I don’t care about how my actions affect others, but if someone were to hurt me, I’d find a way to make them pay for it.

Another thing that’s been on my mind lately is what kind of illness I have. I don’t want to be diagnosed because as much as it can be nice to know how to treat whatever I have, then I’ll know for sure that theres something wrong with me that can never truly be fixed. Also, then I’ll know that I’m nothing more than a younger version of my parents, the mixture of those two being the worst possible outcome of a child there can be. I’d rather just go on forever thinking that whatevers wrong with me could just be in my head, whether that sounds better or not. But I know theres something wrong with me, and Atlas knows too. He and I were talking about the issues we had since he’s not a stranger with mental health issues either. He’s an insomniac (or so he says, I honestly think he may just be adapting the personality of that guy from Fight Club after he was so eager to show me), and he clearly has some kind of personality disorder. Likely DID he says, and he thinks thats what I have too. He says that those occurances I’ve had where I’ve done awful things without having a reason, such as attempting to run away, could be the result of untreated DID. In all honesty, even if I haven’t spoken to him for very long, it’s kind of obvious he does have DID. Sometimes when I’m messaging him, I notice a split in his personality that he thinks is normal. We’ll both be talking about really personal things, things I often mention in here, and he’ll randomly tell me to stop talking about it so he doesn’t start spiralling or doesn’t want to come off as someone who doesn’t care about my problems. Regardless, he’s not shy when it comes to telling me to shut up. Frankly, I’m not sure if that’s really DID or him being flat out about not caring what I have to say. It’s odd though, because other times he tells me how glad he is that we met and that we’re able to chat and gets a little impatient when I don’t answer him right away either, which is why I do believe he has DID. But again, he could just be a shitty person. I’m not sure what I’d rather him be.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but I think I also might have some kind of schizo illness. I say schizo illness and not schizophrenia because schizophrenics aren’t often aware of themselves having it, but I do have a lot of the symptoms and I’m fully aware of it. I’m constantly seeing people or figures or animals, my cats in particular, in random places wherever I am. Sometimes just out of the corner of my eye, other times they’ll be right in front of me until I look at them. It only freaks me out when they’re moving, though. It’s always super quick and right towards me, it’s fucking chilling. Also, when it’s too quiet, I hear things talking to me. Men, women, children, old people. I always hear it, but it’s not common for me to understand what they’re saying. A lot of the time, it’s jumbled or sounds like they’re under water almost. Sometimes I hear whistling too. It’s weird. I also get extreme paranoia. Everyone always has that one emotion their driven by whether it’s happiness, sadness, anger, blah blah blah. But what drives me most of the time is fear. Anxiety. It’s so bad that sometimes when I’m in my room by myself for too long, I start thinking that whatever screen is in front of me such as my phone or tv will randomly get hacked into and jumpscare me with horrific images and loud noises. When has that ever happened? Never. What are the chances of it happening? Likely slim to nothing. Yet I think about it almost daily and when I do, I have to leave the room and stare at a wall or I’ll have a panic attack. Similarly, I get extra paranoid at night and find it really hard to leave my room after a certain time. I’m afraid that once the lights are out, something will be lurking in the dark ready for whenever I dare to step foot out. I never know what this thing will do to me, but I don’t want to find out which is why sometimes I’ll go to bed with a full bladder or a full face of make up on. I can’t even go to the bathroom without freaking out about something that’s not even there. I’ve convinced myself that wherever I go, specifically my home and bathroom, a camera or thousands of cameras are watching me. I don’t know whos watching me, but whoever is is judging me and making fun of me so I have to be perfect all the time. I’m constantly worrying about what I’m doing, what I said, what I look like because of it. I think theres someone secretly living in my basement. My trapped door basement. When I’m home alone, I hear people walking around downstairs and moving things around. Sometimes, I’ll lose things for months and then it’ll randomly appear in the most obvious place I would’ve found only seconds after I’d realized it was lost. Someones fucking with me. Sometimes I think that I have the ability to ‘regenerate’ or ��heal’ faster than others. Yes I get sick, but I’m convinced that I can fight off any kind of illness or injury much faster than others. I can do it without medications, unlike everyone else. Yet I constantly worry about getting cancer or some unfixable illness. It doesn’t add up. Now that I’m writing all this, I realized how pathetic it all sounds, but it’s the truth. I live like this everyday and I don’t tell a single person. I keep it all in. Not because I’m afraid of what they may say or think of me or what the outcome may be, I simply can’t bring myself to say it. I don’t know why, but I just can’t. No matter how close I get to saying it, I always switch the topic or lie about what I really feel, even to my therapist. I think she knows I’m lying too because almost every appointment she asks “Are you telling me everything or is there something else I should know about? I’m only asking because it’s easy for anyone to put on a mask and fake things.” But I know she knows. And I feel bad for lying about it. It’s not that I don’t trust her or think she’s a bad therapist or anything like that, I think she’s a great person for me to talk to. I honestly just can’t talk about it. Not only that, but it’s just so much easier to force a smile and tell her that I’m fine.

I know that if I ever do admit it, I’ll cry and I hate crying. I don’t even remember the last time I had a good hard cry, I almost feel as if I don’t deserve the tears. That, and the things I could cry about don’t deserve the tears. It’s pointless. I also hate the way I look after I cry. My eyes get all swollen and gross looking and don’t return to normal for a good day or two. Why would I foil my appearance on things that don’t matter. Things I’ll forget within a month or even sooner.

[butwhyduh]

After reading the teen!dick Grayson I keep thinking about Bruce having to give The Talk to the boys even if they say I know what I’m doing (cough Jason cough). We know he would try hard to not be awkward but it would still be super awkward

Lmaooo okay I can do that.

Dick

Dick and Bruce stared at each other silently for a full 45 seconds. Dick didn’t have anything to say for himself. Bruce didn’t know what to say.

“It isn’t mine,” Dick answered and realized it was worse. Bruce opened his mouth and closed it.

“Then.. then whose is it?” He finally said. Dick winced.

“Uhh Roy’s?”

“Roy’s? Are you and he-“

“No! I mean- he gave them to me- because-uhh,” Dick stammered. “I’m dating Starfire- Kori.”

“Hng, okay,” Bruce said as he tried to formulate a plan. He had caught Dick with a box of condoms which isn’t the worst thing. It felt like the worst thing but a pregnancy or disease would be worse. Be cool, Bruce thought to himself. “I’m glad you are thinking about being safe. Are you and her… active? Sexually?”

“God, Bruce! No! We haven’t- nor anything like that yet. Roy was just being a jerk,” Dick said, his face was bright red. “He’s just like that.”

“Right… umm, I haven’t really given you the talk or anything yet and uhh- you’re old enough and dating someone. So have you learned about, uhh sex in school? Like class?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah, we learned about parts and diseases and stuff,” Dick said, sitting on his bed awkwardly. Bruce leaned against his desk.

“Okay cool. Yeah, right. Umm, but did they teach you about like protection?” Bruce asked.

“Uhh- no. Not really I guess,” Dick replied.

“Okay, we’ll… let’s Google,” Bruce said and Dick’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “Like educational videos.” Bruce typed in sex Ed videos and found a comprehensive video and both he and Dick watched it. Bruce even made a Hmm noise at stuff he hadn’t heard of before.

“So… that was.. that was it,” he muttered. Dick nodded in agreement. “Do you have questions?”

“Uhh, no.”

“Good. Good. We have patrol tonight and you can leave condoms on Alfred’s shopping list and no questions asked,” bruce said, basically escaping the room.

———————————

Jason

Bruce sighed and put the mattress back down. Jason stood by his closet door, playing with the hem of his hoodie. Bruce was so quiet it made the boy stressed.

“Look- we can just get rid of it,” Jason started. “My friend Tommy got-“

“I’m disappointed,” Bruce said and Jason froze. “These magazines, they are disrespectful to women. And frankly, they are so far from what sex is that it’s scary.”

Jason just stared at Bruce.

“If you want pornography, and I’m against it because you’re too young, but this kind won’t be in my house,” Bruce said. He crumpled up the hardcore fetish magazines and stood up to leave before changing his mind.

“I didn’t- I didn’t like them,” Jason admitted in a mumble, looking at the floor. “He gave them to me and when I looked at them, they looked mean and stuff. So I hid them there and was gonna throw it out later.”

“Oh and your friend is interested in that?”

“No he took them from his dad,” Jason replied. Bruce nodded in understanding.

“Okay well, I’m got a video that we should watch,” Bruce said, pulling up the one he watched with Dick. Jason stared at the kinda out dated video but Bruce wasn’t wrong about the info.

“Do you have any questions?”

“What’s a holla back girl and a scrub,” Jason asked about some slang used in the video.

“You know, I still don’t know…” Bruce replied. “Ask Dick sometime,” he said before moving to the door. “And exploring your interests is great but not this way,” he pointed to the magazines in hand. “I’ll throw these away for you.”

“Okay.”

—————————

Tim

“Thanks Robin!” Said a teen girl he saved from a house fire. Before he could say anything, she hugged him and then kissed him on the mouth. Tim stood stiff as a board as she quickly pulled away. He didn’t move as she ran into the crowd.

Bruce pulled his son away from the crowd who had cheered at the kiss and toward the batmobile. Tim went quietly in a daze. He didn’t even say anything in the batmobile ride to the cave.

“Alright chum, let’s have a talk,” Bruce said as he pulled off his cowl. Tim gulped and nodded as if he was in trouble and that worried Bruce. Tim sat on the bench next to the computer bay. Bruce pulled up a chair across from him. Tim looked extremely nervous.

“Timbo, I wanted to talk about tonight-“

“I didn’t mean to! I mean I didn’t plan to- she kissed me!” Tim interrupted.

“I know. And you aren’t in trouble. I’m fact I wanted to ask if you were okay,” Bruce asked.

“I’m- what?” Tim replied thoroughly confused.

“Are you bothered that she kissed you like that? People should ask before kissing other people. She should have asked.”

“Oh… I guess I’m fine.”

“I also realized I never gave you the talk. Did your dad- did he tell you?” Bruce asked.

Tim huffed out a laugh. “No.”

“Oh…. Okay. I would like to show you a video and then I’ll answer any questions you have,” Bruce said pulling up the video. Tim sat and watched the whole thing intently.

“Do you have any questions?” Bruce asked. He felt confident. He had 2 boys already ask all their questions and everything.

“Yeah, uh I get the part about dating a girl and stuff and that’s cool. Helpful even. But what if I wanted a boyfriend? Not that I’m saying I do…” Tim trailed of. Bruce almost started hyperventilating. He had forgot gay was even an option.

“I… I will research and get back to you,” he sputtered. A week later he found another inclusive video that both he and Tim watched. Bruce also started making huge donations to lbgtqia groups in Gotham.

——————————

Damian

Bruce would love to say he was an expert at giving the talk but he was far from ready when Damian tossed a magazine with Bruce and Selina on the cover. They were on a private balcony alone in a heated make out. Bruce could remember that they moved things inside before it went anywhere. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatizing to Damian.

“Father, what you do in your spare time, that I’ll never understand, is your own and should be private. I don’t want to know about your promiscuous-“

“Alright Damian.”

“They are calling you a DILF in school,” Damian added dryly. Bruce noticed but didn’t acknowledge that Alfred was studiously cleaning a nearby counter as the boy talked.

“I was not expecting to photographed on a private vacation but I am sorry that you saw that,” Bruce said.

“Are you trying to have a baby with Selina?” Damian asked bluntly and Alfred almost dropped a vase he was cleaning.

“No I am not. I would think our house is already pretty full. Why?” Bruce replied calculated.

“Then why are you both engaging in sex of all things?” Damian asked. Alfred froze in the background.

“Damian? Do you think sex is only for creating children?” Bruce asked, now concerned. He had expected some bad education on sex but most kids were fairly interested in it at 14 or at least thought about it. Bruce was now waiting tried that Talia or Ra’s has said or done something to make Damian sex repulsed.

“Why else…” Damian started and trailed off confused.

“Because sex is enjoyable. It’s something people in relationships do together even when they don’t want children. Have you never thought about sex before?”

Damian flushed. “Not really. I have no interest in having children so I never really considered it..”

“Your mother or Ra’s never said anything-“

“No. No they didn’t. I- I believe I may be someone considered asexual. I read one of Drake’s books and I have no interest in marriage or children. And I have never considered that sex and procreation were separate. I will have to think on that,” Damian said, pointedly looking out the window to the courtyard.

“Right,” Bruce said, thinking quickly. “I am proud of you no matter your orientation. But if you decide that you want to be sexually active, I would like for you to speak to me so you can be safe. I have some videos we can watch-“

“I know about protection. But.. I will talk to you if I need to,” Damian said before leaving the room.

Bruce stood there for a minute before turning to Alfred flabbergasted.

“I will refresh the condom bowl in the cave locker room, sir. And perhaps add pamphlets on use,” Alfred added before also leaving the room.

[nat-20s]

for @jonmartinweek THE FINAL DAY prompt- Pining/Longing. This one takes place, well, you’ll see

~*~

A Study of Longing, Told in Six Parts

Part 1

Martin wonders if he’ll ever get to a point in his life where kindness doesn’t feel like a shock to the system. It’s already surprising enough when Tim and Sasha invite him for drinks in a genuine offer of friendship, but for that kindness to come from Jon? Martin has no idea what to do with being believed, let alone being protected.

And now here he is, blearily opening his eyes only to find himself staring at a mass of hair. As he sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes, the shape resolves into the form of one Jonathan Sims. He had apparently fallen asleep with his head cushioned on his arms, against the cot Martin was currently occupying. It’s not an image that Martin can fully process at the moment, so instead he debates whether or not to wake Jon up or quietly get off the cot to let him get some much needed sleep. He decides on the former, both thinking that it would be hell on his back to keep sleeping in that position, and that he would like an explanation.

Hand hovering above Jon’s shoulder, but not fully touching, Martin oh so quietly calls out, “Jon?”

That’s all it takes for Jon’s head to rush up with a gasp, glasses askew, and with the texture of his sleeves pressed in red marks on his face. It is a horribly endearing look. “Hrn?”

Martin opens his mouths, closes it, and waits for Jon to get his bearings. Jon smooths down his (frankly ridiculous) sweater-vest, adjusts his glasses, and slips back on his professional demeanor. “My apologies, Martin, I, ah, must have fallen asleep.”

Glancing to the crappy little digital clock resting on a file box next to him, Martin rolls his eyes. Only Jon could be quite so stuffy at 4:32 in the morning. “No apologies needed. Though, um, was there? Something you needed or..?”

Jon shakes his head and stands up, dusting off imaginary grime. “No, no, nothing like that. I had just, er. I had heard you cry out and I- I wanted to make sure nothing was going on. It appears that it simply a nightmare,so I will be.. taking my leave. Now.”

He doesn’t know what part of himself replies, “Oh! You don’t have to go!,” but he replies it anyway. Jon does that little thoughtful frown at him, which forces him to continue, “I mean, if you wanted the cot. For sleeping. I’ll probably be awake for the rest of the night, so, you know, no skin off my back .”

“Ah. No, that’s quite alright, Martin. Try to get some more sleep, there’s still a long work day ahead.”

Jon doesn’t even wait for a response before turning on his heel and leaving. Martin sort of hates how much he wanted him to stay.

Part 2

Jon is laughing. Jon is terrified, all the damn time, and yet, somehow, he’s laughing. Honestly, he was starting to wonder if he was still capable of it. Martin is gesticulating wildly with his fork, animated in a way that Jon’s only ever seen when in they’re in the middle of a rather silly debate. He thinks this lunch’s topic was something like whether or not snakes were cute? He lost the thread of conversation about half an hour ago, honestly. Covering his mouth, he lets the giggles run through his whole body, shaking his shoulders and heating his core. He feels light, heady, like he’s reminiscing with an old friend and they’re both on the edge of having had too much to drink.

He only wishes he could trust this feeling. He wishes that he could trust Martin, that they were normal coworkers having a normal lunch, that the previous person in Jon’s position had gone into an easy retirement instead of being violently murdered. He wishes he hadn’t read that letter telling him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Martin, Martin, who took him to lunch and brought him tea and seemed so very warm in so very cold circumstances, was lying to him.

Jon stops laughing.

Part 3

Of course, the second his body hits the simultaneously stiff and weirdly lumpy motel mattress, his phone goes off. It may only be about 8 pm, but he’s tired, and he’s sore, and he’s had a persistent headcold for the past week for some unholy reason, the last thing he wants to do is talk. However, only about four people have the number to the burner cell, and they’re almost certainly have a purpose behind their call.

Closing his eyes and letting out a sigh that turns into more of a groan, he picks up on the 4th ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Jon! It’s Martin, I’m not sure if you have my number programmed in that phone, or if it even has caller ID if you do. Anyway, it’s been about a week since I’ve heard anything, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t, y’know, dead or arrested or anything.”

His previously tense and aching muscles all relax, without him consciously deciding to relax them, and a sleepy smile spreads across his face, because some time in the past year he’s become a parody of himself. Yes, maybe he should be more affronted by how much Martin’s tinny voice brings him comfort, but he’s had a rather terrible time of things since...since he began work in the archives, really, and he’s worn down enough that he can admit he misses his friend.

Huh. Friends. They are, aren’t they? Wonder when that happened. (He can guess, something involving a fake CV admission, but he doesn’t feel like it right now.) “Martin, I recognize your voice, no need to introduce yourself.”

“Right! Yes, uh, ‘course..of course you can. Right. Sooo...I take it you’re not dead, then.”

“Correct. I haven’t been arrested, either.” It’s only sort of a comforting lie, so Jon thinks it can be forgiven.

“Good. Great! Yeah, that’s...that’s good.”

The conversation could probably end there. Jon could probably tell Martin good night, and they’d hang up, and Jon could get the sleep he had been so desperately craving not moments ago. Somehow, he thinks that neither of them want that. Scrambling for something to talk about, Jon replies, “Hang on, isn’t it something like 2am over there?”

“It...might be.”

“Martin!”

“What! It’s not like you have a monopoly on bad sleeping habits. Besides, I was up anyway, and I just..”

“Just what?”

“I just missed your voice.”

Oh. Heat rushes to his cheeks, and tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes, and god. He had missed Martin’s voice too. “Really? I know you’ve had to listen to a fair number of tapes lately, thought you might be sick of it by now.”

“No. I mean, I am a bit tired of tapes, honestly, but even the ones that you recorded, that not really your voice, is it? I mean it is, but it doesn’t sound like you when you’re actually, um, you. I wanted..I wanted to hear you.”

Jon’s far too worn out to deal with that sentiment, and the way that it makes his heart clench. So instead  of addressing it, he says, “I am very close to being asleep.”

“Oh. Right, sorry, I’ll let you go-”

“No! No. Um. Would you mind staying on the line? Until I’m gone? I-I like hearing your voice. As well.”

“Oh! Sure, yeah, definitely. Anything in particular you want me to talk about?”

“Whatever you like. Something nice?”

“All right. I can do that. Um. Did I tell you about this little yarn shop I found the other day. It’s called ‘Puttin’ on the knitz’, and it’s…”

Jon peacefully drifts off, listening to the voice of the man who he can only admit in moments such as these, he wishes was in this bed, laying beside him.

Part 4

please come back please come back for the love of god come back I can’t believe you’re doing this do you have any idea how stupid this is come back to me come back come back come back

Part 5

There is plenty of things to long for in the apocalypse. A decent cuppa. The relief of actual sleep. Murdering Jonah Magnus. For there not to be a apocalypse. They are grateful, however, to not have to long for each other.

Part 6

Martin comes to without a knife in his hand, or bloodstains on his clothing. Those, under other circumstances, would be good things.

Martin comes to, laying in the grass, without anyone beside him. He barely has the moment to feel agony spike through him before he’s out once more.

There are no Jonathan Sims admitted to the hospital. As far as he can tell, no one was admitted into the hospital at the same time as him, and certainly no one with a stab wound.

There are thousands of ‘Jonathan Sims UK’, typed desperately into a library computer search bar, wielding mostly results about a sport manager and a romance novelist. None of the images are of the right person.

Sometimes Martin puts one foot in front of the other, carefully blank in heart and head. Surviving, even  during times that he’s not sure he wants to, is one of his greatest abilities.

Sometimes Martin despairs.

On the worst nights, he tries to call the Lonely back to him, tries to be swallowed whole. It never works. He’s not sure if it’s because the fears aren’t in the reality or if they’re not established enough to have any leverage or if his connection has simply been broken. (He doubts the last reason. He hasn’t been this alone since Tim’s funeral. Even then, Melanie had thrown a few stilted condolences towards him. No one is aware enough of him to give condolences now. He misses Melanie. He misses all of them. He misses Jon like a gaping, bleeding wound misses skin.)

Seven months later, and he has enough money saved and identity built that he moves on to Scotland. The little village they had been adjacent to exists in this reality. Daisy’s cottage does not.

On a whim, he enters the yarn shop. He’s not going to pick anything up, hobbies are the last thing he can focus on, but it’s nice to look. To feel the various textures, to take in the rich variance of colors, to, hopefully be present in his own body, if only for a moment.

Martin steps in. The bell chimes. He’s there. Standing in front of him. Whole. In a cry that’s closer to a gasp, he calls out, “JON!”

Jon turns, looks up at him, recognizes him even before he’s even fully seen him. It’s his Jon, he’s here he’s here he’s here. The callback of “MARTIN!” sounds like it was punched out of him, the start of a sob and a laugh all at once.

In a blink, they’re together, their embrace a tangle of limbs, a collision of lips, a mixture of tears. Martin can’t tell which of them is saying the litany of “thank god thank god thank god” and who’s repeating “it’s you it’s you it’s you.”

It’s Jon that’s telling him, “I knew you had to be here. I knew it, because I kept thinking. Surely. Surely this new universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to allow me to live, but to make me live without you.”

It’s Martin that replies, “I didn’t know. I thought it would be that cruel. Please don’t make me go through that again.”

Jon pulls him in tighter, eliminating the centimeter of space between them. Speaking into Martin’s neck, whispered in fierce devotion, Jon promises, “Never again. Never again. You and me. Together. For the rest of our lives.”

Barely discernible through his sobbing, Martin tells him, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

~*~

There are people that think that wanting is more worthwhile than having. Martin thinks, frankly, that those people have never been in love.

[imonthinice]

The Criminal Psychology Majors, Jason Todd x Fem!Reader Part 15/?

Word Count: 3k

Author’s Note: Y/N - Your Name.

Thinking about making parts longer so that I can at least finish a semester of Jason knowing Y/N before I do fic 2 of this continuity. Give it a better name, probably. I dunno

Warnings: Eludes to sex, Takes about Injuries, Mentions of Trauma, Refusal to acknowledge pain, Swearing, No beta bitch we die like Jason Todd

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Part 18) (Part 19) (Part 20)

She could find herself lost in the way Jason walked for hours. He thought she was asleep when he threw on his slightly ripped boxers so he could walk to his desk. She didn’t know what it was that drew her in, maybe it was just the way that even after he had been stabbed that he could act like he owned the room.

She thought he was really, really, attractive. Like, really.  She couldn't think of times where she wouldn’t get lost in how he looked. His personality made it a lot better, too. She really liked how he chose to carry his personality, how he chose to carry himself. 

He turned to his bed after plugging in his laptop, it would take a while to charge, when he noticed she was staring.

“Your eyes will dry out looking at something so hot, Y/N. I’d be careful,” he joked, letting a large smile slip by.

“I’ll need heat-resistant goggled to keep this relationship going, damn.”

“Bruce can buy you some.”

“I think after his freak-out bout our situation, he wouldn’t be keen on that one, darling.”

He smiled at her, “What makes you say that? He clearly likes you.”

“That doesn't mean he wants to spend that much money on me.”

“I would spend that much money on you,” he grabbed the water bottle sitting at his desk and twisted the cap off.

“You have spent that much money on me.”

“Pretty girl, gets money, gets the pretty man,” he said before seeming to chug the entire bottle.

“You would probably find a way to drown while drinking water, honestly.”

“Ha, ha, baby. Funny.”

“You don’t have to tell me I’m funny for me to know I’m funny, Jay,” she joked, “Are you coming back to bed?”

“No, I’m not.”

“What the fuck, man.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have work to do for Wayne Enterprises,” he said.

“I just want to cuddle,” she jokingly wined at him.

“You’re a temptress, but I really have to do this.”

“Doesn’t your laptop take time to charge?” she asked.

“Yes it does, why?”

“Come here then.”

He sighed and looked at his laptop before smiling and coming over to his bed, “You’re lucky it’s charging slowly today, baby.”

He climbed into the bed beside her, she thought he forgot that she was naked but he didn’t.  He knew she was naked, he just didn’t want anything from her, he didn’t want a ‘fun night’ with his girlfriend, he just wanted the cuddling on a Thursday morning.

She had a headache, a massive one, and Jason noticed her wincing a lot and holding her head, he had seen these signs before, in Time Drake, his baby brother, who had a severe caffeine addiction.

“You alright?” he asked, nuzzling his nose into her shoulder.

“Headache,” she answered and winced again.

“Caffeine or medication?” he asked, trying to make certain that is was caffeine and not anything else.

“Caffeine.”

“I can always make you some coffee, Y/N.”

“If you're willing to leave this bed, could you?” she asked.

“I could, I could. I don’t want to leave this moment, but I guess” he said, sarcastically.

“I’ll owe you indefinitely,” she said as he got up and walked over to his dresser, scavenging for a pair of pants so he didn’t walk downstairs and possibly expose himself to his siblings.

“Do you want anything else while I’m down there?” he asked while putting on his pants, “I can always make you breakfast,” he said. 

“No, no, the coffee is more than enough, I swear.”

“You just want to spend more time with me, you simp.”

“That is true, that is so true.”

“I’ll be back in bed before you know it,” he walked over to her and kissed her forehead, taking in the bedhead and the way her eyes drowsed when she was tired, “Don’t pass out on me.”

“I can’t make promises I may not keep.”

“Then just keep me positive.”

She laughed and he walked out of the room. You could feel the way he was giddy about her as he walked out, from the way his grin wouldn’t fall to the way he bothered to get dressed, even if it was just pants.

No one thought they’d see the day that Jason Todd, the Jason Todd, would walk out of a room with a girl in it with pants on.

“Master Todd,” Alfred said as Jason walked into the kitchen, “One of these days, I ask of you, you and Miss Y/N should eat breakfast with the rest of us. And, it’s nearly 10:00, sir. You should be up sooner.”

“I can always count on you to parent me, Alfred,” Jason joked, “One of these days she and I will come down for breakfast, I swear,” he turned on the coffee machine.

“You don’t drink coffee, Master Todd.”

“No, I don’t. But she does.”

“My god, you’re whipped!” Tim exclaimed at his big brother.

“You’ll understand one day when someone you like this much is in your bed, Tim.”

“You didn’t even call me on my shit, who are you and what did you do with my brother?” Tim joked.

“I sold him to the devil in exchange for his rocking body and a beautiful girlfriend, moron.”

“How is your stab wound, Master Todd?” Alfred asked.

“Painful,” he said before looking in his foresight for Alfred’s reaction, when Alfred frowned, it broke Jason’s heart, he loved Alfred, “It’s gotten better, I swear. But it’s not ideal, either.”

“Master Richard says he should have watched you closer.”

“I don’t think he could have stopped it.”

“I could have tried,” Dick chimed in.

“Have you been listening in?” Tim asked when he turned to Dick.

“Are you that surprised? But Jase, you could have died, I could have done better, I could have stopped it if I just-”

“How many times do I have to say it isn’t your fault, Dickie?” Jason cut him off.

“I just promised to always protect you, and I failed my job.”

“You’re starting to sound like Dad, Dick,” Jason joked, trying to liven up the mood and stop his brother from crying. He needed to just distract them all from it, he didn’t want to deal with it, to talk about it all.

“Jase,” Dick paused.

“Dick, c’mon. I’m not dead. No one died. We’re all okay.”

“Jay, he has a point, no one is ready to lose you again, man,” Tim jumped in.

“To say the least,” Alfred finished.

“I love you guys, I do,” he said as he poured Y/N’s coffee, “And I get you’re scared that I’m going to die again,” he paused and sighed, “I don’t really know what to say, really.”

“You said really twice,” Tim joked.

“Listen here you little, literally, shit,” Jason retorted, holding his hand above Tim’s head like he was comparing heights, “I’ve enjoyed this, really. I can’t give up family bonding for anything, but you guys understand-”

“Are you ditching us for the pretty woman?” Dick asked.

“You would do the same, Dick.”

“Because I’m serious about Barbara.”

“And?” he joked as he walked off and back to his room.

Opening his door, he saw her, half-awake, laying in his bed. She had gotten up at some point to put on one of his shirts, it was cute. He liked the fact that she was wearing his shirt. He stared for a bit.

“Whatcha doing, Romeo?” she joked.

“Is that my shirt?” he asked as he walked towards his nightstand and put down the coffee before looking at her.

“Yeah, it is. If you mind, frankly, I don’t care.”

“Ha, ha. I don’t mind,” he said as he crawled back into bed with her while she sat up to drink the coffee, “Hope that makes it a little nicer to be here.”

“It’s already nice to be here.”

“I’m sure the headache made it suck a little, though.”

“Well yes but no.”

“Yes but no is my personal motto.”

“Is it now?”

“Well, ‘Should you do this, Jason? Dad will be mad.’ followed by yes but no is literally everything I do, ever.”

“Is this how telling your dad that we’re dating went?” she joked.

“Oh yeah, he just hates you,” he said with heavy sarcasm.

“If your partner’s parents don’t hate you then are you even their partner?” she retorted.

He laughed and buried his face into her chest. She laughed between sips of her coffee and she stroked his hair. She thought he liked it when she did this, and he did, she was right. He could feel each of her fingers running through his hair, massaging his head. If love languages are a thing, she could speak his fluently.

She was scared, scared that the attacks against her were related, scared that her friends weren’t going to get out of jail, scared that her escapade of drinking had brought her back to alcoholism, there was a taste she could never get off her tongue, the cravings she couldn’t quench. And it scared her. She hadn’t been this far down in a while, mentally. 

It never seemed like the moment that she could bring that up to Jason, her fears. She wanted to open up about it but she just couldn’t.

Jason wanted to bring up the nightmares to her, but it was never the moment, He wanted to open up to her about it but he too, just couldn’t.

When she finished her coffee, it was unfortunately the time that Jason had to work, she audibly groaned and sighed when he left her side. He laughed and kissed her before he left the bed, and she, jokingly, tried to pull him back onto the bed.

Mundane life, day-to-day life was stuff like this, partners leaving because they had jobs, school, volunteering, extra-curricular activities, anything. It was the sad reality that they both would have to accept, especially if Y/N was going to reenroll in her dance lessons, which she had been thinking about. She hadn’t been deciding anything, she was scared.

Was it the distance that scared her? Probably. Was it the fact that she could fall from grace? Yes. She didn’t want to fall, she wanted to climb and climb harder and progress. She was a high-achiever. She had already fell, too. She fell hard.

She remembered waking up in a hospital in grade 10, after a night of partying, on the verge of death from alcohol poisoning. She was sent to rehab but relapsed hard. She had already fell, she had fallen so hard but tried to rebuild herself so hard as well. No one, but her parents, knew about the hospital visit, she had hidden it.

He was working away, typing on his laptop when she noticed that he was wincing.

“Baby?” she asked.

“Yes?” he said, through pain.

“Are you alright?”

“Just a little bit of pain, don’t worry.”

She got up and draped her arms behind him on the chair, “Doesn’t seem like a little bit, Jay.”

He grabbed her arm and rested his hand there while the other worked still, “Really, it’s nothing.”

“Do you have pain medication?” she whispered in his ear, trying to prove that she wasn’t going to let it go.

“I do, in the cabinet in the bathroom, why? Are you in pain?”

“If I asked you to take some so I don’t have to see you wince, will you?” she said while she walked towards the bathroom and dug through his cabinet.

“Baby, c’mon, please,”

“Shhhh,” she said as she found the pain meds and walked back, “Take some?”

“C’mon now,” he said.

“No, don’t humor me, say yes or no,” she said.

He grabbed the pill bottle and read the dosage instructions as she  crawled behind him in the chair and rested her head on his back. He laughed slightly when she did and she could feel him laugh. The way his muscles contorted as he laughed. It was something she loved. He took the recommended dosage when she glanced at his stitches. They looked to be healing, but she wasn’t a doctor, she didn’t know if they were.

She placed her hand on top of his stitches, hoping she could just trace the outline of the scar, but she was watching his face, hoping that he wouldn’t wince if she tried. He smiled though,  something about her even trying to comfort him brought him joy.

He didn’t feel worthy of her worry, her love, her kindness, but he enjoyed every minute of it because he still didn’t know if the pressure of it all, his life, if it would break her. He didn’t want it all to come crashing down, ever. He wanted this to last at least long enough that he could consider saying ‘I love you’  to her.

Every other girl would have run at the moment he was stabbed though, maybe because they had sense, maybe because she didn’t think through it all. He didn’t think she was ‘Not like other girls’ just because he knew that mindset is fucking trash, thank to his sisters just rambling about it at family game night after Tim said it, on accident. Boy, that kid got his ass handed to him by the girls.

He was sure that Y/N probably thought the same about it, in spite of the pick-me songs she’d end up playing when she was bored. They were just good songs, he was sure she didn’t really think that bringing other women, even men, down was a good thing. if she did, who knows how his sisters and brothers would feel about her when they found out.

But there he sat, and Y/N hadn't run. She had embraced the tragedy with open arms and expected it to slow down. His life was face-paced, a tale of a boy running too far and into the sky, and she sat through it with him. He would tap and type on his laptop, trying to not move and disturb her as she relaxed. 

Doing work was not exactly the activity a new couple would want to do when neither of them had anything else to do, but it needed to be done or Bruce would hand Jason his ass in an argument about work ethic. Jason had work ethic, and Bruce had let him rest but when Jason was showing signs of recovery, he started telling Jason to ease back into work. So, Jason wrote essays defending projects Bruce wanted to do to the board. 

Bruce didn’t need Jason to defend him, but if Jason could get the words out, normally no board members would fight Bruce on the decision anymore. And Bruce paid Jason handsomely for these essays, because Bruce did not like the fighting and arguing he’d get from the board.

But the Batman-Patented Stare would follow if someone continued to hate Bruce’s plans. It was a watered-down version of it, but it was still probably the most intimidating thing that his kids and teammates have ever experienced.

Jason hope that the relationship between him and Y/N would continued even if Bruce gave her the Batman Stare. She seemed like the type of girl who would end up laughing in Bruce’s face if he did it to her.

She was probably going to receive it after that fight Jason and him had about protection, because she was also partly to blame about that.

The hours ticked by as Jason wrote to defend his dad from the board, and before he and Y/N knew it, it was dinner time at the Wayne Manor, and Y/N was invited. Great, Jason thought, I guess we’re going to find out how she’s going to deal with the stare.

“Just a fair warning, baby, my dad’s probably going to attempt to lecture you if you join us for dinner,” Jason said as he got dressed.

“He can try his best, I’ll give him that,” she laughed as she threw on the same clothes she had from the day before.

“You need to start bringing an over-night bag here, damn,” he joked.

“Remind me next time I come over and I’ll at least bring a second change of clothes in my schoolbag.”

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

They all sat down for dinner, and Bruce started his parenting attempt, “Jason, Y/N,” he said and both of them stared at him, “You both know what you did was irresponsible-”

“Everything I do is irresponsible, Bruce, no offense,” Y/N joked.

“Look, I’m not going to have you two having sex-”

“They’re having sex?!” Damien and Tim exclaimed with fake disgust, YN laughed.

“Could any of you take this seriously?”

“Sorry, sorry, playboy billionaire, I’ll pretend you’re my dad for a second,” YN joked.

“You’re going to be a pain in my ass, huh?”

“Yeah, probably. Sorry about that, genuinely, but its not my fault your son picked me.”

“I just need you two to be safe if  you’re going to continue to have sex in my house,” Bruce said, exasperated.

“We’ll just have sex at my house then,” Y/N joked again.

Bruce gave her The Stare at this moment, and she got startled a little bit. Everyone paused because she literally jumped a bit at The Stare.

“Dad, I think you genuinely scared her a bit,” Dick said.

“Did I jump? Oh my god,” she laughed, “I’m sorry,” she laughed harder, “I wasn’t expecting it!”

“Dad, c’mon, she’s a guest,” Jason said.

“No, no don’t worry about me, seriously. He can discipline me all he wants, honestly. If he’s nice about it, I’ll listen, even if I throw 69 jokes his way.”

“Nice,” Tim retorted.

“Really, a sex joke? Right after I tried to parent you?” Bruce questioned, “You really are the perfect match for Jason, my god.”

“You didn’t already realize that from the flipping off the press and her head-butting incident?” Stephanie added in, mocking Bruce.

“I, in no way, feel remorse or shame about either of those events.”

“You flipped off the press?” Cass asked.

“I did, I did. They can’t stop me, no one can.”

“I can,” Jason joked.

“You can keep thinking that.”

Everyone laughed. Whether or not Bruce wanted to admit it, he liked Y/N and hoped that Jason and her were going to last a while.

[gentlemancrow]

jonmartin, pre-romance, #15/28??

I did manage to get BOTH of these in! So we have a combo of "You called me, remember?" and "It's too early for this". Much like the others, the MINUTE I read this prompt an idea popped into my head that I just HAD to go with! This is actually based off a real life incident I had with a friend (They know who they are...) but it fit both Jmart and the prompt PERFECTLY! The names have been changed to fictional characters to protect the innocent. (Hint I was the Martin in this situation) Anyway this was super fun and cute to write and I made myself all squishy a lot. HOPE YOU ENJOY! <3

There were precious few reasons why Martin’s mobile should be ringing at exactly 5:47 am on a Tuesday, and precisely none of them were good. Still, the anxiety inducing sound alerting him to something ominously, ambiguously amiss struggled to worm its way through a rather lovely dream of his acceptance speech after being awarded poet laureate. The poem he had prepared for the occasion was marrow-deep and hauntingly beautiful, or at least he remembered it that way until suddenly he was reciting the lyrics to Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ instead and sweating profusely as the audience began to murmur in disgust amongst themselves. Waterloo was indeed blaring, but from the ringtone of his phone, not from his lips, and his stomach performed a cold somersault with the force of the wave of anxiety that had begun in his dream and crested up to lap at the base of his barely functional brain. The few synapses he needed for basic motor function and reading comprehension crackled to life as he clumsily batted the buzzing device on his nightstand into his hand and squinted blearily at the name.

It was small. That was an immediate relief. If the care home had been calling about an incident with his mother, either her health or the staff’s as a result of her, it would have been the full moniker of ‘Sunrise Acres Care Home’ ticking across the caller ID. Yet small implied a name, a person, someone he had in his phone and not just a random spam call, and anxiety spiked again as Martin scrubbed at his eyes until ‘Jon’ appeared in white hot letters on the screen. Sleep dissolved from him in an instant and he sat bolt upright in a tangle of covers as he smashed the green answer icon with his thumb and threw the receiver to his ear.

“Hullo?! Jon? R’you okay? What’s happened?” he demanded, voice still slumbery thick and groggy.

“Martin!” Jon’s silky, prim voice, thinned out to a tin can vibrato over airwaves, answered, “Good, you’re awake. I need your help. Urgently.”

Martin was already out of bed by the time ‘need’ reached his ears, yanking on the first pair of jeans he spotted in the laundry heap on the floor and hopping on his free leg to the en suite with his phone pinched between his cheek and shoulder.

“I’m on it!” he assured him despite having no clue what ‘it’ was, exactly, “I’m coming to you as soon as I can. Where are you? Are you hurt? Should I bring a first aid kit? I don’t think I have a first aid kit… should I buy a first aid kit? There’s a Boots just down the block from my flat, I could-“

“Martin, stop! What the hell are you on about?” Jon’s annoyed tone cut through his panic like a scalpel.

Martin stopped in the doorframe of the bathroom, brows knitted, jeans puddling around the one leg he’d managed to get through and left once again in naught but his boxers as he gripped his phone back into his hand.

“Huh? What are you on about? You said you needed help!” he snapped.

“I do! But not like… not like THAT. What kind of mortal peril do you imagine I would find myself in at a quarter to six in the morning?”

The initial surge of adrenaline fizzling out uselessly in his veins the more Jon talked, Martin sagged against the doorway and pinched his temples as he strained his words through a colander of civility.

“I don’t know, Jon. You called me, remember?”

“Right, right…”

A terse, lowly hissing silence of dead satellite replaced Jon’s voice, twisting Martin’s nerves as acrobatically as he twisted to avoid the point. He kicked off his jeans and stalked grouchily back to bed where he threw himself face down and unmoving.

“So, what is it then? Wi-Fi gone tits up? Forgot how long to steep Darjeeling?” he hissed into his rumpled duvet, a little nastier than he would have liked given the deadly combination of interrupted slumber and primordial biological survival instinct.

“I uh…” Jon’s voice deflated over the speaker, “I have a… problem.”

“Yes, we’ve so very, very clearly established that. What kind of a problem, exactly…?”

“A problem of an upsettingly… Arachnid nature.”

“A spider…?”

“…Yes.”

Martin propped himself up on one elbow, eyes narrowed with genuine and curious concern.

“Wait like a… like a spooky spooky spider? Or just an ordinary kind of spooky spider?” he inquired with as much levity as he could muster, given one of the likely options.

“Stop saying spooky. And the ordinary kind. I think. No, I’m sure of it. It’s merely the sitting on my kitchen wall like it owns the place and staring at me rudely with all eight eyes, judging me for skipping breakfast again, kind,” Jon answered with clinical pointedness.

“O… kay…?” Martin drawled, suppressing a giggle, “So, what’s the problem then?”

“What do I do?”

Martin opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again as he doubted that he had actually heard Jonathan Sims, the irascible, pompous, only capable of truly looking at him down his nose Head Archivist Jonathan Sims, ask him, a lowly assistant, what to do. With a spider. It would have been almost adorable, had he not scared the life out of him initially, but even that knocked it only down a single peg to helplessly charming.

“I-I mean, the normal thing one does when encountering a spider in one’s home? You kind of only have the usual two options? Er well, three, if you count just leaving it be, but I doubt you’re amenable to that one.”

“No, absolutely not, out of the question,” Jon declared swiftly.

“Didn’t think so,” Martin chuckled, rolling onto his back and sagging in relief into the mattress.

“So?” came the impatient invitation to continue.

“So what?”

“So, then what do I do?” Jon repeated brusquely.

“Well, you either kill it or let it go, of course! What else is there to do? Invite it to brunch?”

“I know that! I’m not an idiot!” Jon erupted furiously, “Good lord, Martin! Do you really think I would have called you because I didn’t know the only two options for dealing with an eight-legged criminal invading my home were kill it or let it go? Really?! Did you suppose this was the very first spider I ever encountered in my life? Is that what you thought? Or perhaps I had my own personal valet to attend to all of my insectoid tribulations, hmm? Just call the bug butler, he’ll attend to it straightaway! Do you ever stop to think before you open your mouth? Or do you customarily just air out whatever inane notions blow through your ears, no matter how puerile? Christ!”

Martin let the phone drop onto the bed beside him, away from the verbal darts hurled directly into his eardrum and taxing the output matrix of the speaker, as Jon launched into an affronted, mortified tirade, smirking and shaking his head.

“It’s too early for this…” he mused to himself ruefully, rubbing both hands over his face and eyes.

Once the phone stopped humming and glowing white hot with remote rage, Martin scooped it back up and yawned into the receiver.

“You alright there, Jon?” he asked in a gentle tone.

A ragged sigh crackled into a blip of feedback from lips too close on the other end of the phone.

“…Not really?” came Jon’s tremulous reply, “Listen, I’m sorry I went off on you. That was unfair of me. I-I just… I really… really hate spiders.”

Something squeezed in Martin’s chest, something about the confident bass flayed neatly out of Jon’s usually assertively solid mannerisms, leaving it abnormally thin and rickety. He sat up on the bed, cradling the phone much more gently to his cheek.

“Hey hey, it’s okay,” he assured him, “If anybody sympathizes about being afraid, you definitely called the right person. Need me to stay on the line with you while you whack it? A good heavy book will probably do the trick, or if you need speed and agility a rolled-up newspaper or a magazine might be better?”

“No! I wasn’t calling because I needed advice on how to murder the damn thing! I’m quite capable of doing that on my own. Frankly, I’ve taken rather a vested interest in honing my spider termination methodology over the years. I called you because… well you were going on about how you thought they were…” Jon trailed off in a series of garbled sounds of disgust, “Cute… of all things.”

Martin grinned and had to put the phone on his bare chest a moment, as if Jon might somehow perceive his giddy glee through the receiver.

“To be fair I’m a little odd that way. Most people feel much the same as you do about them,” he commented as he picked it back up.

“True, but that’s not even the whole of it!” Jon went on exasperatedly, “I also overheard you talking… must have been to Tim or Sasha but… you were explaining about how helpful they are to the ecosystem and what a vital role they play in that natural order of things, and how we always see images of them eating butterflies and beautiful things that make them look sinister, but how really they mostly control pests and the like… how you thought they got kind of a bad rap?”

“Wow I uh… I can’t believe you remembered all that,” Martin muttered, freckled cheeks dusting a light pink, “But what does that have to do with your unwanted houseguest in particular?”

“It was the last part, mainly. That’s what got me. The part about fear. That they’re afraid, too… You said there had been studies that showed a clear fear response in spiders… to us. They’re afraid of us, demonstrably more so than we are of them…”

One word of all of those slipped between Martin’s ribs and into his heart. Too. They were afraid, too. His thumb stroked and consoled the edge of his phone unconsciously as Jon blustered on, unbothered by his own unconscious admission.

“And now I can’t do it! Now I have to set this bloody spider free because you think it’s cute and want to make friends with it, and I can’t make it an innocent victim of my fear and I have no idea how!”

Martin couldn’t help but smile, imagining how Jon must be in his flat on the other end, scrunched in a corner all hunched up shoulders and furrowed brow with hackles bristling, squaring off with a creature who was possessed of no knowledge of the fear she symbolized, or the grace to understand the iconographical divorce to her salvation. Only Jon, quivering and still bed-rumpled and frazzled, could understand the magnitude of cupping that fear in the palm of his hand while reaching out to him with the other. And now Martin understood it, too.

“Hey alright, I’ve got you. Steady on Jon, we’re gonna get through this together. I’ll talk you through the steps, you just follow what I say, okay?” he instructed in his best 999 operator performance.

A beat of silence ensued, followed by a much more robust and emboldened, “Okay.”

“So, what you want to do first is get a glass.”

“A glass?”

“Yeah, like a water glass. And a stiff piece of paper or cardboard or something. If you’ve got a bit of post lying about, flyers and coupons and the like, those usually work well.”

There was a period of distant shuffling, clattering, and indecipherable muttering as Jon gathered his weapons, then sucked in an audible breath through his teeth.

“Alright I’ve got them, now what?” he asked, sounding a bit winded.

“Now you very carefully put the glass over the spider, then slide the paper under the glass so you trap it inside. Then you can take it out without touching it or worrying about it scuttling off on you and set it free wherever you think it’ll be happy!” Martin answered sweetly.

“Okay, okay. I think I can do that,” Jon chanted for steadiness, “I’m putting the phone down so I don’t louse it up, but d-don’t hang up, stay on with me, okay?”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jon. I promise. You’re okay.”

“O-Okay… Okay… Okay…!”

Martin listened as Jon’s voice grew distant, but somehow stronger, more like a war cry, with the soft pad of socked feet on tile, then a short stretch of silence, and then a chorus of oaths and yelping, rising to the crescendo of a door being messily flung open, shut, then opened and shut again. A drumbeat of returning feet rolled mutely close and melded into the scratchy rustle of the phone being picked back up.

“I’m back,” Jon announced.

“Is it done?”

“The deed is done… your little friend is enjoying some lovely pink dahlias out front as we speak.”

“I’m pleased for her! And… for you, too,” Martin said, voice melting into lilting tenderness, “I’m honestly really proud of you, I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

“I… Ah… No, it wasn’t. Thank you, Martin,” came the sheepishly measured rejoinder.

“You’re very welcome.”

Martin smiled privately to himself, and ran a loving thumb down the edge of his phone once more.

“So then may I rightly assume I have permission to come in an hour or so late today so I can go back to sleep?” he continued, already knowing the answer as he flopped back down on his pillows and rolled up into the covers.

He was relieved to hear a husky chuckle rumble through the phone.

“Yes, yes. I think you’ve more than earned it.”

“Brilliant, see you in a bit then? And for lunch?” he added hopefully.

The brief silence as Jon calculated his response hung thick and palpable in the digital airwaves.

“Lunch sounds good,” he replied at length, “See you then.”

“G-Great! Great! See you!”

Their phones clicked mutually off without the awkward jumble of sign-offs, pleasantries, and accidentally stumbling over each other’s words. Martin thought glimmeringly of the spider hunting free in plush pink petals, none the wiser, and of Jon, with new and irrefutable proof that not everything ugly or quietly cunning in the world lurked behind to cast its shadow over him. A spider could be just a spider, and Martin back asleep with both hands still clutching his phone to his chest, dreaming of singing Waterloo again, but this time to a rapt audience and thunderous applause.

[holly-benji]

CHENFORD 4X07..SERIOUSLY??

New episode but unfortunately no new theory. I had high expectations, but was not particularly listened to in my wishes. I've had a very mixed opinion of the last few episodes of The Rookie, and although I've tried to change points of view, to suggest situations to "our advantage," I keep losing sight of the continuity of the episodes. 

*DIGRESSION* I'll give an example that isn't related to Chenford. We left Nyla and Don in bed together in 4x05; since then no other mention of the 2 of them. And even the fire serial, frankly I expected more then Marcus (too predictable). And Nolan trying to escape, as cute as it may be to watch, it's a continued demonstration of how he's the main character, and there's no greater chorality. The screen time is also definitely in Nolan's favor. Of course, he's the character that the series is built on, but if he took a back seat a few times, it wouldn't be a bad idea. I hope, since episodes 8 and 9 will have Tim's sister among the cast, that this will be the case. I'll let you in on a secret: I've never been a fan of stories where the protagonists are the champions of justice, always perfect, who manage to resolve situations on their own, and who are the superman/wonder woman of the situation. And that's what happens with Nolan and Bailey. They definitely have moments that make me smile, but most of the time I find them too perfect. Even Bailey, army, firefighters, then? Do we want to add anything else to her career? In the end it's not even plausible anymore, in my opinion. *END OF DIGRESSION*

Let's come to Chenford: we've still had a few of their interactions, but we're always moving on the flirty side, and frankly it's starting to get heavy. Especially for Lucy: can we believe that the only focus of her entire day is the bet with Tim? I left a badass Chen, and I find her completely disassembled from her features. We're going ooc. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, because I think her acting this way stems from always trying to be happy, like she was striving, or trying to keep herself busy to get over Jackson's death. It could be a coping mechanism of hers, but at some point she's going to have to take stock of the situation.

I see on Tumblr that many people justify this as Lucy and Tim needing to deepen their friendship, and get away from the time they were TO/Rookie. I might agree except that it's been a minimum of 5 or 6 months. In 3x09 if I remember correctly Angela was in her 4th month, so by the time 4x01 was over, 5 months had passed. Now we are on episode 7, so more time has definitely passed. Also the scenes in the Van were very cute, but rushed (to give Nolan more and more screen time or because they really want to buy us?). I'm increasingly convinced that the writers are testing the waters, but what more proof do they need that we want Chenford? They're pulling the strings a bit too much, and in my opinion after episode 10 we could definitely draw our conclusions: if at the end of this episode we don't have confirmations/moments that give a clear intention of Chenford then let's rule out anything happening to them this season. There must be a clear reference by now, and instead we waste time in chatter. The only tiny signal we can cling to is Tim throwing a "truce" and wanting to close the bet. This is totally not Tim, and would be a huge ooc, so surely there is an explanation, which is not the one he gave Chen. Again, the writers blind the viewers to what caused him to act this way, leaving us holding the bag. The explanation I've come up with is that between the UC moment and the hospital visit Tim has been reflecting on what's between him and Chen, certainly with respect to the question the girl asked him in the car: are you dating anyone? Clearly he is, he's dating Ashley, but is she really the one he wants? 

I think with increasing certainty that he has thrown himself at her (maybe not even consciously) because he sees Chen as unavailable and especially because he reflects the relationship he had with Jerry on his daughter. I don't remember who said this, so I apologize if you read this post, but I think you're right: Tim is transferring his relationship with Jerry onto Ashley. Definitely good girl, principled, INTERESTED IN HIM (which according to Tim Lucy is not.... 3x09 how many times do I have to call in that prank?) and a chance to fix his life once and for all. 

This question may have really caused Tim to wonder why he's dating another woman (probably also why he didn't tell Lucy) and weighing his feelings toward Chen. My guess is that he's trying to put distance between him and Lucy. Sometimes  consciously (4x03, 4x07) other unconsciously (4x06 - ask Ashley out). 

And although Lucy has now willingly accepted, it's not certain that she won't regret this "distance" perhaps by making her open her eyes. I remain convinced at this point that Tim is afraid and runs away, probably also because of what happened in 3x09, and because of his past. So let's wait and see. As always I embrace you, and tell me what you think, if you read all of this thank you so much!! See you soon, Holly!

[spooky-z]

[1/3]Bombshell Dupain-Cheng: YSSMIAC

Masterlist  Maribat by @ozmav​

Bombshell: The AU // 0, 1, 2, 3

Ships: Lukadaminette, Jondrien, Chlolix, Feligami, Kimax

Warnings: Language

2.6K

Chapter title: you should see me in a crown

You should see me in a crown Your silence is my favorite sound Watch me make 'em bow One by, one by one 

Here's: Marinette and Kagami didn't expect the transformation to be so outrageously obvious.

Of course, Diana had warned the teenagers that it could happen, but- again, they didn't think it would be so drastic. The growing pains had been, well, a pain. A brutal one.

If Marinette was being bitter, she would blame Tikki for this happening to her and her miraculous partners, but she knew for a fact that it was not the fault of the kwamis for this lack of information.

It was the first time since the world was created, that the miraculous were given to literal children. So, for that reason the side effects were something unknown. But they believed that they had already discovered all the effects after five years wielding the jewelry.

Diana was able to destroy any idea they had about it, since none of them noticed the biggest and most obvious side effect of the miraculous:

They were trapped in underdeveloped bodies for seventeen/eighteen-year-olds teenagers. And that wasn't just because their genetics made them look more youthful, no. The active use of Ladybug’s cure was slowing the aging journey of the other heroes, as they were the hardest hit by healing magic.

So, when Diana - Wonder Woman - invited the miraculous female team to Themyscira to correct this problem with the Amazons, Marinette, Kagami, Chloe and Alix did not hesitate to accept.

The men's team had already been invited by Arthur Curry - Aquaman - because men were not allowed on Themyscira, but also because training with Arthur would be more ideal for them than that of the Amazons.

Zatanna encouraging and assuring the heroes that she would maintain a blocking spell throughout Paris to prevent Hawkmoth from acting.

They left their homes with an excuse to travel the world. Adrien was a little more difficult to get out of Gabriel's claws, but in the end, with Bruce Wayne's call, Adrien was able to leave Paris alone with friends. They were ready.

That's when Marinette suffered.

Starting with all the miraculous having to be resigned in order for the effect of magic to expunge faster, the box being kept safe in Themyscira. And then with the infernal training that the Amazons put them through.

Before, Marinette and Kagami prided themselves on being the most agile and sharp in the fights against akumas, but being in Themyscira showed that they did not even reach the feet of the youngest warriors in the island.

So, it was already clear that if Kagami and Marinette were having problems, Chloe and Alix felt death touching their souls with affection.

(The boys also suffered in those months in Atlantis. Arthur was not at all merciful in teaching them.)

Anyway, when the two and a half month mark reached, the physical changes were simply too glaring to go through a simple growth spurt.

Marinette never envied Chloe and Alix so much for not being predisposed to be tall naturally.

Of all four, Marinette grew the most in height without the influence of the miraculous. She may or may not have cried when she reached 5'11” with Kagami and Hippolyta said she would still grow a few inches.

She didn't care much for stretch marks on her joints, but she complained about the growing pains. Kagami was not very vocal, but the grimaces of pain she let out did not let anyone be fooled.

But even with the pain, the teachings and the struggles, Marinette was happy that they were finally having the right mentoring to guide them. Fu had left very early, much of his knowledge was not passed on.

○○○

After almost struggling to free Marinette from Chloe, they left the blonde sleeping on the brunette's bed while she showered.

Alix ate a croissant, Damian and Luka talked about strategies against Hawkmoth and Plume.

"I already talked to Zatanna and she will release the blocking barrier in three days, just so Hawkmoth doesn't suspect anything." Damian looked at Alix, attracting the young woman's attention. "It would be very suspicious if the barrier was broken just on the same day that Dupont's classes returned."

Alix nodded in agreement. "Did she say anything about tracking the miraculous?"

Luka sighed despondently. "No. She will probably only make it when they are active, meaning- “

"We will have to wait for Plume and Hawkmoth to attack again to get any leads."

Marinette came into the room, fully dressed - a black skater dress with the pattern of delicate cherry blossoms, reaching a few inches above the knee, v-neck and short sleeves; white liner socks - and dry hair stuck in a messy bun, leaving the bangs framing the pretty face.

Luka and Damian swallowed at the glorious sight. She managed to be strong and cute at the same time. And it destroyed them so good.

"He should attack as soon as he feels the barrier is gone." Alix replied and it took both of them out of inappropriate thoughts. Marinette's knowing look showed that she knew exactly where the boyfriends' minds ran.

"And that is why we will be making a war council in half an hour." She reached for the pair of white sneakers on the shoe rack and tucked them in her feet, the laces already tied. “Everyone has already been warned. I will be delivering the miraculous and we will make plans on how to take down Hawkmoth for good.”

"... But first we have to wake Chloe." Luka points. "Who's going to be the unlucky one?"

○○○

After managing to wake Chloe without resulting in a murder, they were quick to leave Marinette's home for Fu's massage parlor, the current headquarters of the miraculous team and where Zatanna had lived for three months when they were away.

"We are here, losers!" Alix announced pompously.

Upon arriving, they found Adrien talking to Jon in a corner; Max, Tim and Barbara on the computer browsing documents that appeared to be important; Félix and Kagami sat at the big table - which Adrien insisted on calling the round table and Marinette found it unnecessary - analyzing a detailed hologram of the streets of Paris.

No sign of Kim or Zatanna yet.

The entry of the five drew everyone's attention; Tim and Felix's eyes doubled in size as they focused on Marinette.

"What the hell, Mari?!" Tim choked on his words.

"This is what I call transformation." Barbara commented amusedly.

“Everyone has undergone drastic changes, Drake. I'm sure you didn't react that way when you saw the others.” Marinette replied.

"Of course not! Nobody came here looking like an Amazon.”

Kagami coughed against the fist, eyebrow raised.

"Okay, I take back what I said." Tim raises his hands in surrender. "But you have to agree with me, Marinette is the most surprising change here."

Adrien nodded frantically in agreement. “When you showed up at school earlier, everyone was shocked. I hardly recognized you.”

Max and Felix scoffed. "Yes, we noticed the warm looks you were shooting at Mari." Max pointed out causing Adrien to choke in embarrassment.

“Oh, is that so? Interesting." Damian murmured, a frankly murderous look on his face. He had already taken the seat next to Felix.

"What? No! You got it wrong.” Adrien stammered, his cheeks red.

“Okay, Adrien. I'm not jealous." Luka said. The malicious curve in the corner of his mouth making it clear that the musician was loving seeing the model turn into a hot mess in front of everyone.

"Luka!" Adrien groaned painfully and turned to Jon. “You know it's not true, right? Everyone knows that I only have eyes for you.” He pouted.

The brunette put his arm around the blonde's waist, bringing him a little closer. “Of course, I know dear. I totally trust my charm.” He winked seductively; Adrien's blush only growing in intensity.

The two of them seeming to forget that their friends were there.

"Ugh, nobody deserves to watch these two making out with their eyes." Chloe moaned on the chair, still drowsy and irritated at being woken up.

"Think on the bright side!" Marinette said happily.

"What would it be...?"

"At least this time they are dressed and aware that there are other people in the room." Kim replied upon entering.

"... I think we better split them up before they really forget we're here." Kagami pointed a finger at the two boys who had started a kiss in a way that, in her opinion, should be inappropriate for people under fifty.

"Does anyone have a spray bottle?" Damian asked.

And Marinette stopped to analyze the physical changes in her team.

So, the fact was: yes, Marinette was the person with the greatest physical change among the miraculous group. Because in addition to the height, she got muscles (which she didn't have before). It wasn't something like a body builder would be, but it also made it clear that she had a pretty intense exercise routine.

Kagami had also grown a lot, losing to Mari by just a few inches. Even before wielding the dragon's miraculous, she had already developed some muscle due to the intense fencing routine; so, the only things that had changed was the increase in body mass around the shoulders, biceps and calves.

Alix didn't grow much, just two inches from what she was before, and the muscles in her body hadn't been developed as visibly as the two asian girls. She had a better definition, elasticity and mobility had improved dramatically.

Chloe was the only one of the four parisian heroines who had no visible change. She remained thin and flexible, with no pronounced hard muscles. Diana had said that the blonde's body was the type that hid her power. The deceptive, fragile type, but who was agile and fatal. Which suited Chloe.

Of the boys, the shock had been Damian. Damian, who, like Marinette, was one of the smallest on the team - followed by Alix and Max - reached his desired height of 6’3”; surpassing both Bruce and Jason, the tallest in the Wayne family.

But that didn't surprise Marinette or Tim, since Damian's parents were both quite tall. They hoped that eventually Damian would start to grow like a weed.

Anyway. While Damian did not grow muscle mass like a brick house like Jason, his shoulders grew broad and powerful, biceps pronounced, muscles lean and defined. He achieved a perfect match between raw power and agility.

Luka surprisingly hasn't changed much. He put a few inches more - taller than Marinette by just an inch, but smaller than Damian by four - but his muscles didn't grow. They just became more defined. And Marinette understood that.

Among all of them, Luka, Alix and Max were the ones who least physically attacked akumas; sometimes they even stayed out of the fight, as their powers were only for a very critical situation.

Adrien somehow still had room to grow. You see, it wasn't like he was short before; for a twelve-year-old boy - before wielding the ring - he was already quite tall, so even with the magic interfering, he still had a decent height for a teenager.

Then discover that there was still room for him to reach Damian? That was surprising.

Unlike Luka, Adrien gained muscle mass. The blonde, over the years, showed that there was no mercy when it came to eating. He never refused food, always chewing what he could as if there was no tomorrow, since at home, his diet was strict. But even with that, he never gained weight.

Always the same skinny boy as always. So skinny that Sabine had made it her life's mission to fatten the Agreste boy. (Which did not work, but it did not diminish the determination of the Chinese woman.)

Then, without the interference of magic, Adrien grew up.

The boy who was once skin and bone, now looked like the blonde version with green eyes of Kim. He didn't get uncomfortably muscular, but the muscle tone he got was insane. Even wearing a hoodie that was supposed to be 2x bigger than its ideal size, it was possible to see that some corners of the seams were stretched on the shoulders and chest.

Gabriel probably burst a vein when he saw his son's transformation. The more youthful Adrien looked, the better it was for him to sell the image of "teenage prince".

Kim was the least surprised, as he was already big even for a teenager. In addition to his shoulders - which became broader - he grew a few inches, bumping head-on with Marinette and Luka. The chest remained strong and his body seemed to have no problem staying flexible.

Félix followed the same path as Luka - which Marinette secretly thanked, since finding a bodybuilder Félix would be beyond strange -, remaining tall and elegant. Lean, well-defined muscles. He remembered Chloe's changes. Silent, but fatal.

He was also in the race for whoever got higher with Adrien and Damian.

Max, on the other hand, must not have grown more than five inches. His muscle tone did not grow at an alarming rate either, remaining mostly thin, but looking agile. Like a person who runs five miles every morning without losing his breath or sweating.

Which was good, since Max was never a fitness person and everyone knew it. If he appeared like a damn monster truck out of nowhere - like Marinette, Kagami and Adrien - it would make people ask even more and they didn't want to attract more attention than they were already getting.

All of this, of course, without pointing out the other obvious changes that puberty brought.

The lack of baby fat, sharp jaws, developed curves, deep voices... Marinette managed to get used to her new height, but was not finding peace of mind with the new weight of her chest.

She clapped her hands to get everyone's attention and smiled.

"Let's start?"

And everyone, including the two lovebirds, sat around the table.

They would only leave with a solid plan against Hawkmoth.

BONUS:

"Wow, did you see how some of Ms. Bustier's and Ms. Mendeleiev's students looked different?" Lila heard extra #1 gossip with extra #2.

"I saw it, girl!" Extra #2 responded. "Everyone is saying that they joined a gang."

"Oho, do you believe that?!"

"Well, won't you say that you didn't find Agreste's new appearance strange?"

Lila jumped when she heard the name of one of her enemies. She moved closer to the two girls to hear the conversation better.

It could be something she could use against the ice king.

“Did you see Dupain-Cheng?! That was insane!”

The Italian bristled when she heard Maribrat's name. Still confused about what the two girls were talking about.

She had decided not to go on the first day of school to make a flashy comeback, so what had happened, she didn't know.

"And Adrien?!"

"I know!"

And that was it! Lila needed to know in detail what was going on.

"Excuse me, girls..." She sweetened her voice as much as she could. The two girls looked at her confused. "I wanted to first apologize for listening to your conversation and also to ask what you were talking about..." The ‘poor woman’ expression stuck to her face.

The two girls were even more confused. "Didn't you come yesterday?"

"No. My flight from Achu took longer than expected and I just arrived today.”

"Ah..." Extra #2 waved. “Is that- Ah! In fact, just look back and you will understand!” She said hastily.

Extra #1 looked over Lila's shoulder with a haunted expression. Waving violently.

And when Lila turned... What the fuck was that.

[tag list]

@nightstarblue​ @dreamykitty25​  @phantomroseo3​ @avengerthewarrior​  @guessmyname17​ @luveverything12​ @wannajointhecrabcult​ @chocolate1721​ @polyvirnl​ @enchanted-nerd​ @sandraf0612​ @multi-fandom-freak0221​ @rosalineandrosemary​ @jessigurl-design​ @saays-bitch​ @xxmdsxx​ @nicknnie​ @iamablinkmarvelarmy​ @damianette-is-life​ 

[paladin-of-nerd-fandom65]

Little Robin and Momma Bird

 In honor of First Day of Spring 2021 which for comic fans is the birth date of Richard John-Grayson Wayne, Member of the Flying Graysons, Bruce Wayne’s Adopted Son, Barbara Gordon’s classmate, Wally West and Roy Harper’s best friend, Princess Koriand’r’s true love, the first Robin, The Boy Wonder, Leader and founding member of the Teen Titans, Nightwing, Protector of the City of Bludhaven, Renegade, Ex Apprentice of Slade Wilson, Agent 37, Big Brother to Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain, Duke Thomas, and Damian Wayne, in varying times and places Father of Mar’i ‘Nightstar’ and Jacob ‘Jake’ Grayson and above all else and beyond all those titles, son of John Grayson and Mary Elizabeth Lloyd Grayson; here’s what I hope is something short and sweet. 

 Now with long intro out of the way, the following is dedicated to @mothnem @lightdusk96 @hood-ex @thattimdrakeguy @tarisilmarwen @fireflyxrebel-writes @nightglider124 @nyxqueen97 @wisegirlandseaweedbrainforever @arabian-batboy @meara-eldestofthemall @robxstar @bluerene and so many others for being my friends in light of this occasion. Please like, comment and especially reblog for any corrections and constructive criticisms. It’ll be very appreciated. 

  Please Enjoy....  

 The sun gleaming and bright rays shone through the small trailer window, lighting the small bedroom with many bright colors of its own decorated throughout. The beige carpet, still an ever bit of simple yet practical use of being the floor, was littered with small shapes of varying sizes, almost all being made of plastic. In particular, these spread out toys were action figures, representing the recent phenomena of spandex clad and awe inspiring individuals that are the ‘Superman’ from Metropolis and the rest being merely the few robotic and unnatural opponents he faces in protecting the oppressed and those in need. The resident of this small bedroom was for all accounts a fan of Superman, something not too unprecedented given the caped champion’s crusades in correcting the wrongs and dangers Metropolis and the larger world face the best he can ever since his first day to the public. 

   And given these are action figures of Superman, it shall be of no surprise said resident was indeed very young; a small acrobat of the famous Haly’s Circus currently asleep and softly snoring away in this room’s bed, blankets draped and covering almost every part of him, even his face. It’s his 7th birthday as of today, this wonderful first day of Spring. Now if only something or someone can get him awake to enjoy such a day. That’s where a certain Mrs. Mary Grayson enters our picture. 

  As she gently pries open her son’s bedroom door as to not awaken him, clad only in a grey t-shirt and black pants as used for pajamas last night, Mary carefully trudges across the beige carpet towards the bed being occupied by said son. Sure, both her and him have slept in until nearly 9:30 am as of now since their family group, the Flying Graysons, have a day off from practice for today, but frankly had Dick remembered that today’s his birthday from earlier, he would been by now sneaking into his parents’ neighboring room, awaking them both his father John and her up about said day, probably  the best he can think of for a gentle reminder. But due to recent influx of performances across the West Coast, Dick lost count so now it was Mary’s turn to gently remind him and in the best way she knows how. 

  As Mary’s bare feet carefully skirt around the action figures spread across the floor, even picking some up along the way (maybe reminding Dick to next time pick up his toys before bed will come in later tonight), she eventually reaches her son’s twin sized bed and the red, green and yellow pattern blanket that draped over the little guy overnight. In her right hand was a blue fine point marker pen with washable ink while her left gently leans to one end of the blanket where a small tuff of black hair sticks out. Gently caressing her left hand the black mass, Mary can hear a content giggle coming from under the blanket, no doubt her son feeling the familiar, loving motion John and her regularly do as parents can. On normal moments this happens, Dick would playfully push the hand ruffling his black hair away. This time, he just simply lightly giggles in his sleep. Mary was sort of banking the hair ruffling being enough to awaken her son to this bright and beautiful first day of Spring. As soon as her hand though stops with the affectionate ruffling and once more snores are heard coming from Dick, her lips turn into a soft yet mischievous smile; it was time for Plan B. Sure Enough, when looking over to the other end of the blanket and seeing her son’s own two feet, so far socked but with her there not for too long. That marker in her hand has its cap screw off. 

  On some occasions when she was basically passed out from a long night on the trapeze, Mary wold wake to find the soles of her feet with scribbles and doodles all across, most of them featuring the Flying Graysons logo prominently. She almost immediately knew the culprit behind such drawing but often times just leaves it be and even walks on her two feet with drawing and all since the marker ink easily comes off so it was overall no big deal. Besides, her son was just having some harmless fun so why would she dare try ruining that; sure she was strict on some parts of his behavior but this ain’t one of the them. Now though, as she lightly tugs the two socks off her sleeping son as to not awake him, revealing two velvet soles and the ten toes and with her marker in hand, it was time for payback if you may. 

  Starting with lightly drawing smiley faces on his big toes, Dick’s reaction was almost immediate as a slightly louder giggle comes from the blankets and his toes clench. Mary briefly backs off the marker until the toes relaxing and using her free hand, she lightly grabs unto the big ones, leaving his feet still. With that, she can proceed with the rest as sure enough, various other faces across his other toes are drawn along with flowers and even an elephant on the arch of his right foot. As for that last one, the giggling had reached its loudest and looking upward, Mary couldn’t help but smile at the results. Plan B was a success, Dick was awake and laughing his head off due to the scribbling.

   “Momma!” he yells between hearty giggles, “That tickles!” 

   Mary grins a bit, “Oh really?” 

  She continues with that elephant on Dick’s right foot, now holding him still with arm entrapping his ankles tightly, making sure he can’t pull his feet back from that blue marker as it continued its path. Though Mary notes that even then, Dick wouldn’t want to. He had not once told her to stop, indicating that he was enjoying this instead. Frankly, after a long time doing this to her, she couldn’t blame him. All Dick does on his part is lay his head on the pillows, the blankets off of him, allowing Mary to see him clad in a similar style of PJs to hers only with the coloring being a blue t shirt and grey sweat pants instead. To the left of him was his precious stuffed elephant Peanut; ever since being first given that on his 4th birthday, he keeps it close to him whenever going to bed. All this time afterwards, Mary still hasn’t been able in getting her son a second stuffed toy like Peanut much to her disappointment but hey that’s a thought for another time, she has one more spot to draw before she can move on for the rest of the day, the arch on Dick’s left foot.

  At first, Mary thought of drawing the Flying Graysons logo for the finishing touch but instead opts for a more casually yet fitting wording. With that in mind, her blue marker makes contact with the velvet of her son’s arch and starts its ink dripped path. By now, the 7 year old was still in full hysterics over his Momma’s drawings but he will admit, at least it was better waking up from his trapeze swinging dreams like this rather than the sun’s rays shining on him as it usually happens. Finally though, he feels the marker stop and opening his ocean blue eyes, sees his mother put the cap back on. Putting the marker away in her pocket, Mary places a soft kiss on her son’s forehead while giving him another hair ruffle. This time, now fully awake, Dick gently pushes her hand away. 

  His blue eyes meet his mother’s own blue eyes and a wide smile stretches on his face. 

  “Thanks Momma” he chirps happily in Romani Chib. 

  Another motherly kiss, this time his cheek, “You’re welcome, Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about your special day today, My Little Robin” 

  As Mary stands and makes her way back to the door, Dick stretches his arms, letting out a yawn from his mouth doing so. 

  “Breakfast will be ready in 5 minutes” Mary states with a warm smile on her face.

  “Cereal, Momma?”

  “Any type you like that we have of course” 

  “I’ll be there soon” Dick says, a wide grin on his face. 

 Mary has a humming giggle of her own before making her own to the kitchen to no doubt prepare her son and her’s bowls for the day. Though of course, they were just getting started. 

  Dick swings his feet to step off his bed and begin trudging to his breakfast, he briefly wonders on what his mother drew on him before putting the marker away. As such, flexing his leg to where he can see the soles and toes of his two feet, Dick smiles of all nice stuff Momma left. Indeed, there were flowers on the balls of his arches, goofy faces on each of his ten toes, what looks like a circus ball on his right heel, a trapeze bar on his left heel, a short yet cute elephant on right foot’s arch and at least the words on his left arch. 

‘Happy 7th B-Day Little Robin, Love Momma’ 

  Now that was love from a mother alright. Dick certainly will never forget this. Now to get the table without stepping on his toys on the floor. 

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Bound, Epilogue

Previous part

Marinette and Tim had been having an average day. A slow, quiet day, if you will. It was the middle of summer, and therefore the bakery was getting less customers than usual – no one wants a hot meal when they’re already being roasted alive by the sun. They had decided to close up shop an hour early, since no one was coming in anyway, and spend a little extra time resting before they went to bed at the completely normal and average time of 5pm.

Alas, they had one more job before they could officially turn the sign in front of the door from Open to Closed: delivering a birthday cake.

How dare that child be born seven years ago. How rude of them. Didn’t they know Marinette and Tim wanted to sleep?

But fine, whatever, they supposed they could do their job.

Frankly, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The house they were taking it to wasn’t even that far away. Neither of them would have minded it at all… if it were not for the walk back.

It had started drizzling. Honestly, they had thought it was a godsend on such a horrible day, but perhaps it had been a literal godsend. A sign.

“So, what’s for dinner?” Tim asked, looping his arm around her shoulders lazily, dragging her into his side so he could hold the delivery bag over their heads like a makeshift umbrella. If they tracked too much rainwater into the bakery, they’d have to clean it up, and they did not want to bother with that.

“I was thinking we should just buy some ice cream and not tell my parents.” Marinette sent him a teasing grin. “You know, one day you’re going to have to learn how to cook.”

“You don’t want that,” he said, his nose wrinkling.

“Mmmmmaybe not. You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

Tim rolled his eyes at her. “No, I’m lucky your parents took one look at me and said ‘I do not care whether you two get married or I have to adopt him myself, that is now my son’.”

“Yeah! Because you’re pretty.”

He snickered. “That is definitely not why.”

“True, I guess.”

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. If she was agreeing this easily, then she definitely had another idea lined up. And, lo and behold, her eyes were gleaming with mirth.

“It’s because you’re a wet cat of a man.”

“Well, aren’t I lucky you’re a cat person, then,” he said, grinning cheekily.

Clearly, she had not been expecting that one, because her face gained a red tint and she snatched the delivery bag out of his hands to use as a fearsome weapon. Tim only laughed as she swatted him with the plastic bag. In his eyes, it was still worth it.

They were snapped out of their own little world thanks to the screeching of tires.

Their heads snapped to a nearby intersection.

The rain, though relatively light, had been enough to make the roads more slippery than expected, and a car had skidded far too close to hitting an old man. Thankfully, some blond guy had reacted in time to get him out of the way.

Tim and Marinette had, as nosy people often do, tried to get a good look at what was going on as they passed. Nothing interesting, really. The younger of the two was worrying over the man’s health, which seemed fine other than slightly scraped up knees and hands, certainly better than it could have been. The old man was assuring him he was fine and trying to collect all of the things that had fallen out of the blond’s bag when he had half-tackled him out of the way.

It was because Marinette’s head was turned towards the pair that Tim almost missed the horrified expression that stole across her face.

“Fucking – you!” she said, pointing at the old man.

The old man didn’t seem all that abnormal to look at. Stringy, gray and white hair and beard. A myriad of smile lines and age spots. His cane looked as if it had been fashioned out of an actual stick, probably custom-made, which was not surprising considering his height. The most interesting thing about him was the Hawaiian tee, which was remarkably loud.

But the old man seemed to recognize Marinette, too. He didn’t look confused at having been called out, he looked wary.

Marinette tugged the bag out of the old man’s hands and started sifting through it, her expression… well, Tim hadn’t seen that kind of existential terror since they had cut their String. He couldn’t say he had missed seeing it on her face.

“Mari?” he asked, resting a hand on her shoulder gently.

She didn’t even seem to notice. She pulled out a small, black box with a strange red design. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Do you recognize this?” she asked the blond.

Said blond had gone remarkably pale. He shook his head slowly, and Tim thought, vaguely, that he looked kind of unsure.

Marinette didn’t seem to notice. She scowled and shoved the box into the old man’s hands.

His hands closed around it quickly – not in the way people instinctively took things you pushed into their chest, but instead as if he had been expecting to take it back.

“What – what is that?” the blond asked.

Marinette hesitated here, her gaze darting up to meet his. And then she blinked. “Holy shit, aren’t you that guy from the perfume ads?”

The blond blushed and tugged his baseball cap lower over his face, a blush creeping up his neck.

A flicker of movement out of the corner of Tim’s eyes drew his attention away from the pair, and instead to the atrociously bright red of a Hawaiian shirt turning the corner. He hissed a curse and took up the chase.

The old man was surprisingly fast, for someone supposedly in need of a cane. Tim wasn’t a vigilante anymore, but he was by no means out of shape, and yet his feet pounded against the pavement, his eyes constantly flicking around in search of the flashes of too-bright red, always just barely catching sight of it in time to watch it turn a corner.

And then he saw the man disappear into an alleyway. One which, unless Tim remembered wrong, was a dead end.

He wasn’t wrong.

He swung around a pipe to get inside faster, and found the old man at the end of the alley, not the least bit out of breath.

Tim, however, was exhausted. So, forgive him for being slightly rough with the elderly when he grabbed him by the collar, shoving him against the wall. The old man’s smile hadn’t disappeared in the slightest, and Tim’s hands balled tighter in his shirt, frustration eating at him.

Despite the rain, the man wasn’t wet in the slightest.

“Who – what are you?” he hissed.

"Just someone who wants to right a wrong."

"That makes no sense."

The Old Man tipped his head back and laughed. Too far. Slowly, he unraveled before Tim’s eyes, his form spilling away into red fucking string that slipped between his fingers no matter how hard he tried to get a hold on it.

Tim stared at the only thing that remained of the man. A tiny bow tied around his thumb.

He swallowed thickly.

It wasn’t connecting him to anything, so he was probably safe to assume that this was what was left of the original String, and yet the fact that he could suddenly see it did not bode well.

He rushed back the way he’d come.

Marinette and the blond were backed up against a random building, people clamoring for the blond’s attention. Apparently, Marinette was right about him being a minor celebrity – perfume ad guy, Marinette had shown the video to him a while back because apparently he, as a Parisian, had to see it at least once or else he was a ‘fake’.

He was pretty sure the guy’s name was –

“Adrien!” someone squealed. “Can I have an autograph?!”

Adrien looked a little overwhelmed. Understandable, really.

Tim glanced around, and realized they weren’t backed up against just any building.

He clambered up the fire escape and then let himself in via the skylight. A few flights of stairs later, he was fiddling with the lock on the door.

Marinette dragged Adrien inside by the wrist, and Tim slammed the door shut behind them, triple-locking it. Usually, they only bothered with one or two, but considering the crowd… well, it was best to be safe.

Marinette reached up and turned the sign over the door to ‘Closed’.

Adrien sunk to the ground, groaning. He took off his hat so he could run his hands through his already messy hair.

Tim took the moment to look at Marinette’s pinky. She, too, had a tiny bow wrapped around her finger, but she wasn’t bound to anyone. Not to Tim, and certainly not to the random blond guy beside her.

The lack of a Red String of Fate didn’t quite put him at ease. If it wasn’t that that had been 'righted', then what was going on?

“Sorry about that,” Marinette mumbled, sitting beside Adrien.

“Well, you did save me from – I don’t know – a bomb? A tracker? Whatever that guy put in my bag. So I did owe you. Now, I think it’s evened back out.”

Marinette snickered. “I guess that’s fair.”

“We can make you owe us again,” Tim said, walking to tap his knuckles against the glass case containing everything that hadn’t been sold that day. Usually, they’d eat some and donate the rest, but hey, they had company for the foreseeable future. Might as well pawn some food off on him. “What’re you in the mood for?”

Adrien smiled faintly. “Got anything with passionfruit in it?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Awwwwwwww.”

Marinette was watching Adrien out of the corner of her eyes, something inscrutable on her face.

“Mari?”

She jolted to attention, something soft stealing over her face. “I could make some passionfruit macarons, if you’d like that.”

Adrien’s eyes lit up, but he was quick to shake his head. “No, I can’t make you do all that…”

“We’re going to be stuck here for a while,” she said, pointing at the crowd still standing outside the door. “We might as well have something to do.”

Adrien nodded hesitantly. “I guess…”

“Great!” she said, hopping to her feet smoothly.

She held a hand out to help him up.

Adrien smiled as he took it.

[grayson1996]

You Have to Let Me Go

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34210816

No. 1 All trussed up and still nowhere to go.

"You have to let go" | Barbed Wire |Bound

Unlike what most people assumed, the cave was not usually a quiet place.

How could it be, when each one of Bruce’s children would filter in and out throughout the day and night. To ask questions, to spar, to prepare for patrol. Each inhabitant of the manor came with their own soundtrack that when put together created a familiar and comforting symphony.

Damian was the sound of quiet purposeful footfalls, followed by the scurrying steps of a small animal trailing dutifully after him. He was small huffs of breath made out of annoyance or interest (or amusement if it was a good day). The metallic sound of a sword being drawn out of it’s sheath, followed by the dull thud of it striking one of the many wooden posts in the training area. When Damian first appeared at the Manor he had been like a ghost, gliding along and hiding in the corners of rooms and the sides of hallways. The League believed that their assassins should neither be seen nor heard. The sound was a relief to Bruce, an outward sign of his youngest growth.

Cassandra, like Damian, was taught to be silent. Deadly quiet. And to this day Bruce couldn’t hear her coming and was often spooked by her sudden appearance, much to her amusement. But she too had her own trills. The sound of the skin on her hands rubbing together as they signed to whoever was nearest to her. A breathy chuckle, usually in response to something done by Stephanie or Dick. The awful sound of knuckles cracking striking through the cave. Despite Alfred's reasoning that it would cause arthritis Cass wouldn’t stop and frankly Bruce thought the twitch that appeared above his surrogate Father’s eyes when it happened was hilarious.

Tim was the slurping of coffee, and the rumblings of an empty stomach. He was the quick typing of a keyboard, and the distracting tapping of his foot against the side of the computer console. People thought that Dick was the most fidgety of his children, but it was Tim. Though true that Dick enjoyed moving, his movement was always purposeful. While Tim’s seem to flick out of him sporadically and without much thought. Tim was also the most spatially unaware of his children, though whether that was from lack of grace or just sleep deprivation was anyone’s guess. It wasn’t uncommon to be alerted of his approach by the sound of something being knocked over or of a quiet curse being uttered after stubbing his toe on the stairs.

Jason perhaps contributed to the symphony of the cave the least, though thankfully his presence had become more and more common in the years since his resurrection. The sounds he made were purposeful and designed to annoy. The sound of chips being crunched by an open mouth during a mission report. A scoff at the end of an order or request. And on bad days the sound of arguing, of things being thrown and property being destroyed. But on softer days it was more comforting. The crinkle of a packet of cigarettes in his back pocket being smushed as he leaned against the computer console. Leather rubbing against leather as he crossed his arms. A quiet ‘thank you’ to Alfred after being handed a cup of tea. Or even a softly sarcastic ‘See ya old man’ if Bruce managed to get through an interaction without pissing him off.

All these sounds, these beautiful little noises that told Bruce his children were home, were safe. All of these sounds were gone from the cave. As he sat alone, staring blankly in front of him at the black computer screen. Half dressed in a torn and ripped Batsuit, his cowl and gloves having been discarded at some point. It was a space he hadn’t left for nearing three days much to his family's chagrin and thinly veiled concern. At the end of the first day he had locked them out, pushing back the familiar feeling of guilt as he did so.

He wasn’t sure if he was punishing himself. Perhaps he deserved this, deserved to be denied the comforting presence of his children, and deserved the oppressing quiet? Or perhaps he just didn’t have the energy to get up from this spot, to do anything. Perhaps it was easier to just sit here alone in the dark and quiet, because moving seemed impossible at the moment.

Usually when he sequestered himself away from any stimuli or love, he would be hounded by his thoughts. He would allow them to fester and devour his happiness, and drain him of anything resembling hope. He would allow himself to feel as awful as possible, because he deserved to tear himself up from the inside out.

Now however his thoughts were blank, deafened by the silence as though he were wearing noise cancelling headphones and his thoughts were the outside world. It was all blank, silent, there was nothing except him and his chair and the blank screen in front of him.

Then a warm hand gently placed itself on his shoulder.

“They’re worried about you.” Bruce let out a heavy sigh.

“I know.”

“I’m worried about you too.”

“I’m fine.” A snort of disbelief followed his statement.

“Clearly.”

“Why are you here?” The silence grew again and for a moment the hand began to retreat.

“I can go if you’d like?”

“NO!” Bruce spun around in his chair and reaching out he grabbed the tan hand and held it tightly in his grip. His son raised an eyebrow but did not retreat further.

“Alright I won’t.” Sitting down on the ground next to him, Dick’s gaze did not move from Bruce. “You look like shit.” Despite himself Bruce let out a huff of amusement, and felt warmth as Dick grinned back in triumph. “Seriously, take a shower B and get out of those clothes. You know Alfred’s upstairs dying to get you a proper meal.” Bruce shook his head, his grip tightening around Dick’s hand.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can, all you have to do is stand up and put one foot in front of the other.” Bruce shook his head again.

“I can’t leave you.” Dick let out a heavy breath, and his eyes softened at the admission.

“You can’t stay down here forever B.” Bruce felt his chest tighten and his gaze quickly flickered over to the med bay where the curtain was drawn.

“I’m not ready.”

“Bruce-”

“ I’m not ready.” His tone was stern and for a moment Dick’s eyes narrowed, much like they had when the two were younger and always at each other’s throats. When it was just the two of them and neither knew how to be a Father or a Son. But just as quickly Dick’s face smoothed over, changing into something kinder then pity. Empathy perhaps.

“Okay, you’re not ready. But at least let the others down here Bruce. Isolating yourself like this, keeping them locked out and grieving on their own? It’s not kind B, you should all be together.” There was truth in his son’s words but still Bruce couldn’t let himself get up and see his other children. Because to see them, to let them in and to acknowledge what had happened meant that it was over. It meant that Dick was dead, and all that remained was his body now being kept cool in the medbay so that it didn’t begin to decompose.

And if Dick was dead then what the hell did that mean for Bruce, for the rest of them?

Dick was the one to calm Damian down after yet another fight with Bruce. Dick had been the one to soften the boy, raise him even. Damian didn’t deserve to lose the man. Didn’t deserve to lose the kindest person in his life.

Dick was the one to pull Tim away from the computer screen when he was going on his 3rd night of no sleep. To pry his phone out of his brother's hand, and tuck the boy into bed. He was the only one who could get away with treating Tim like a child. He was the only one who could get away with showing Tim love, without the boy recoiling in uncomfortableness.

Dick was the one who brought Jason back. Maybe not back to life but to the family for sure. Dragging the man in after him for a family dinner, pushing Jason to the table and breaking the tension with a quip or bad joke.

Dick was the one who brought Cass to her first dance lesson, and encouraged Stephanie to get her Masters, and got Alfred to take a break and join them for movie nights.

Dick was the one who had given Bruce hope again. Dick was love, Dick was family, Dick was goodness and righteousness and fury and passion. And all of sudden he was gone, with little fanfare or reason. He was just…. gone.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this chum.” Dick shrugged his shoulders, a small smile on his face.

“You just do it Bruce. You just get up and move forward. It sucks and I’m sorry but sitting here alone is only going to make it worse… and it’s only going to make them resent you.” Bruce knew he didn’t deal with death well. It was obvious in the black eye Dick sported after Jason’s death, in his anger after Damian’s. His whole life was built around it, and while he loved what he and his family had created as Batman, part of him hated it as well.

“I’m not a man who can change Dick…. It’s not something I ever learned how to do.” The confession was quiet and Bruce felt uncomfortable by the unusual genuineness of his words. Dick chuckled and shook his head incredulously.

“Of course it takes me dying to finally get you to open up.” The words were said without any scorn but it still caused something heavy to settle in Bruce’s gut. Dick however continued. “You have to grieve Bruce, you can’t push this away and ignore it. You have to let yourself grieve, and you have to let the others do it to. And it will suck and it will be hard and some days you won’t want to say my name because you just can’t . And some days you’ll forget for a moment that I’m not gone, and you’ll go to call me or turn to talk to me and then you’ll remember. And it will hit you like a brick.” Dick smiled sadly at him. “And it will be especially hard because you have lost a lot of people in your life but you haven’t let yourself experience that loss”

“ I can’t do this Dick . I’ll break.” Dick shook his head.

“So you let yourself break. And then you do what anyone who has lost someone does, you put yourself back together.”  Dick sat up from the ground and moved to kneel in front of Bruce. Placing both his hands on his Father’s knees. “I can be there for them Bruce you have to be, which means you have to let go. You have to let go of me and let yourself fall, and trust trust that you’ll be able to get back up again.”

Maybe it was because this was all happening in his mind. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation and lack of food and water. Maybe it was because looking at Dick all he could see was the little boy who over 20 years ago first taught him how to actively live life again. Maybe it was the knowledge that the same little boy was now lying several feet away, dead. Whatever it was Bruce knew that he needed to do things differently.

Jason’s death had felt like a punishment. Dick’s felt like a lesson.

“I’ll try Dick… I can’t promise that I’ll do it all right, but I’ll try.” Dick smiled and standing up he pulled Bruce into a deep hug. The arms seemed less real then they had before, but the warmth and love was obvious. “....I’m going to miss you Chum.” A small huff of amusement brushed the top of Bruce's head.

“I love you too B.”