#and it's probably a “i just prefer this normal mug to that big one” or “idk im doing this” thing

[murraywalker]

Sometimes it's the little things that make you realise you are the least favourite child

[tacticaldiary]

just found ur account, u post some rly awesome stuff. i was just wondering if you could write a fic for either the 141’s ghost or price in an established relationship with the reader and they forgot the readers birthday?

Forget Me Not

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

Genre: Hurt No Comfort

Simon's a sharp man. He can't afford to be anything less, lest he ends up with a bullet in his back but it's most often the more mundane and meaningful things that slip his mind. Her birthday, for example.

Masterlist

There wasn't an expectation to go all out for every little celebration in their lives. Both Simon and her were relatively quiet people, preferring to keep celebrations more intimate between them. A small gift for an anniversary, a walk along the beach. It was the little things that were the most special to her, they showed her that grandeur and big gestures weren't the only means of expressing love so deep and devoted.

But never had it come to one of them completely withdrawing.

Their birthday were a slightly more lively affair, having more people involved. Simon, of course, was not particularly fond of having his own but hers? In the past he'd arranged surprises for her on the day, whether that be contacting her family and friends or pulling her out of bed in the morning with breakfast he'd made just for her.

It's why it's so surprising to see him go about his morning like a completely normal day.

He'd kissed her in the morning, no different than how he does every day, went about the house gathering his gear for work that day. Nothing special, just a debrief he needed to attend in the afternoon.

"You'll be going in today?" She asks, unable to keep the slight frown off her face. Her coffee cup is set on the counter with a small 'clink.'

He nods, leaning down to lace up his boots. "Got a debrief at noon. Johnny's been yapping our ears off about a new bar he found so I've no doubt he'll find a way to drag everybody there afterwards." He rolls his eyes but she can tell it's in a fond way.

As disinterested as Ghost might act, she knows he's fond of his team.

Ghost nods, straightening up once he's done with his boots. "Don't wait up for me. Might be a while till I'm back." She watches, a little stunned as he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead before hitching his bag over his shoulder.

Oh.

She didn't think he'd...forget.

"Are you sure you're not forgetting something?" She asks half thinking he's playing some sort of joke on her. He couldn't have forgotten...right? Simon was normally so good with these things. He'd never forgotten before. "Something else that's today? Something important, maybe?"

He gives her a blank look, coming to a stop next to her. "Nothing important enough to remember." He responds, pulling out his keys.

She knows he doesn't mean it like it sounds to her, but that doesn't stop the pang of sudden hurt. Nothing worth remembering?

He was probably trying to be funny with that dry humour of his, but after waking up to him already out of bed, excited to spend the day with him, finding out he'd be going to spend some time in some bar instead of with her today...

It really does sting.

She knows she could call out to him, just tell him that it's her birthday today, but part of her just...doesn't want to. If it wasn't worth remembering, maybe she should celebrate by herself this year...

He calls out a goodbye. The front door opens. Shuts close behind him.

Silence.

She draws in a long, slightly shaky breath and picks up her coffee mug, willing the stinging in her eyes to recede.

                                 · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Simon's had a pretty smooth day so far, which is something that almost never happens. The debrief went smoothly confirming that the Russian intel they'd spotted the other day had been solid enough to warrant the extraction op the team was to take in two weeks time. The bar Johnny had been so eager to show them hadn't been half bad either.

The decor was old 80's themed, a nice polished mahogany bar spanning the entire length of a wall. Ghost had taken to sitting down with a whiskey, watching Price and Gaz play pool while making idle conversation with Johnny sat by his side.

Well, 'conversation' was a generous word. It was mostly Johnny doing the talking with him answering every now and then, or chiming in with a hum to show he was still listening.

"I'm surprised your still hear, you know." Johnny says, shaking his head as he takes another sip of his drink.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Had a fight with the missus?" Gaz's voice joins in, the other two having wrapped up their game. He orders a drink for himself before sliding into the stool next to Ghost. "Got to agree with Soap on this one. I'm bloody surprised you're in deep enough shit to spend the night here instead."

Ghost stares at them like they're stupid. Maybe they are, because neither of them are making a lick of sense to him.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" He drains the last of his whiskey, not missing the look exchanged by the other two men.

"Mate-" Gaz says incredulously.

"Nah, he's not that daft." Soap cuts him off. "He's just fucking with ya."

Gaz narrows his eyes at Ghost. "I don't think he is."

"He's gotta be. Everyone knows-"

"Will either of you spit it out?" He sets his glass down on the table with a little more force than necessary.

"Bloody hell, you did forget." Gaz whispers. "Oh, you're a dead man." Soap recognising the frustrated twitch of Ghost's hand decided to blurt it out before hands get thrown.

"It's your lass' birthday today." Soap says. "Don't tell me ya forgot."

Ghost go through a rush of feelings all at once.

First in disbelief. He's not stupid, of course he'd remember something as simple as a birthday, especially hers. The second is doubt, because the look on Gaz's face is one so full of pity it makes him uncomfortable.

Ghost pulls out his phone to check the date and...

Shit.

The third feeling is disbelief. There's no way he just forgot. Someone must be fucking with him.

"Are you sure you're not forgetting something?"

"Nothing important enough to remember."

The barstool scrapes as dread and guilt twist his gut. Grabbing his coat, he makes for the door without another word, cussing out Johnny for the cackle he laughs behind his back as he leaves in more of a hurry than anyone's ever seen him.

8pm. He'd spent the entire day taking the piss with the guys on the one day that should have been dedicated to her.

He'd been away for so long, arriving home only a few days ago and he'd just...left her again. Granted, those few days being so busy had been out of his control but still. That wasn't an excuse, he decides, turning on the car.

He hadn't been busy today, and had had the time to go back home to her after his debriefing.

His hands tighten around the steering wheel.

                                 · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Her earrings glint under the light of their bedroom. Staring at herself in the vanity, admiring the gorgeous dress her friend had gifted her for today, she can't help but feel a lack of excitement for the upcoming night.

Simon has really forgotten. She'd come to terms with it a couple hours ago when the sun had finally set and she'd realised that it wasn't a joke. He'd really, truly forgotten.

Going out partying hadn't been the plan at all, but when he friends had come over to give her a hug and presents, they'd seen her upset, still in her house clothes and decided it was completely unacceptable for her to spend the day like that.

Ushered into getting ready, they'd made plans to meet at this new upscale fancy restaurant before hitting a few clubs on the way back home.

Better than nothing, she reminds herself, chasing away thoughts of what her night might have looked like if Simon had stayed. No time for sulking, this was supposed to be a happy day. She was supposed to be happy.

So why does she feel tears sting at her eyes when she reaches for her purse to check if she has everything? Blinking them away, she takes a second to compose herself.

The key jingle in the lock, the sound echoing from the hallway into their bedroom. She tenses in surprise. Was he home?

Hope blooms in her chest. If Simon was home, maybe he did remember? Maybe he came home early to-

No.

No that wasn't right, she chides herself, smile slipping off her face. Even if he did remember now, that's not an excuse for forgetting the rest of the entire day, for leaving her feeling so shitty and going off to drink with the others.

Straightening her spine, she takes a deep breath and heads for the door. Her feet take her halfway down the hall before the front door flies open on its own, baring the man in question.

His knuckles are white with how hard he's gripping his keys, and some of the tension in his shoulders relaxes when he lays eyes on her. Something akin to relief, as if he might have thought she wouldn't be there when he got home.

"I-"

"Early night?" She straightens out her dress, feeling his eyes on her. He's quiet for a beat, assessing the situation before acting. Ever the soldier. "Mine's just starting." Her voice is as even as she can make it.

Simon shuts the door behind him. "I didn't realise-"

"That's right." He doesn't get to speak right now, doesn't get to fill her mind with pretty apologies and promises. Not this time, not tonight. "You forgot, Simon." A flash of guilt in his eyes makes her feel a pang in her chest she refuses to let take the reigns. "You forgot." She wavers for a moment, clears her throat to regain some control. "Nothing important enough to remember, right?"

It's a punch to the gut, hearing his words thrown back at him with the knowledge of how she interpreted them. His jaw clenches, frustrated at himself for letting something like this slip by him. "I'm going to make it up to you, yeah? Just let me-"

"No thanks." She shakes her head.

"Just let me finish," He narrows his eyes, a little irked at being cut off over and over again.

"No, Ghost." The way he tenses at his name being abandoned for his callsign is proof enough of how he's fucked up. "I don't want to hear it, alright?" She swallows. "I don't want to hear any of it, I'm going out, I'm going to have a good time on my goddamn birthday with my friends, and I'm not going to let you make me cry before I leave."

Cry? It's then that he notices how red her eyes are. Guilt slams into him hard enough to wind him, it worms it's way through his chest and eats him alive, gnawing on the little parts of his heart that haven't gotten calloused.

The first thing he notices when he walked in was how gorgeous she looked. Standing there in front of him in that dress, he's well familiar with most of her clothes, having been the one taking them off at the end of the day, but this one he hasn't ever seen before and it hugs her just right, enough to make his mind blank for a moment when he first walked in.

But he understands. Ghost sees the way she's clutching onto that purse of hers, the way her knuckles are white and the slight shake of her shoulders.

She's trying not to cry.

Because of him.

Fucking hell, that hurts. But not as much as what he's made her feel. Simon wants to argue, wants to tug her close and make it all better, but he sees that she means it, and hell does she deserve to have a good time after the way her morning went.

Simon steps aside with a tight nod.

Letting out what almost is a small, shaky sigh of relief, she brushes past him on the way out and Simon really doesn't have enough self control, because his hand wraps around her elbow to halt her in her tracks.

"I'm sorry, love." He says, so gently, so quiet. Such a stark difference to how he usually is. "I really am. And I will make it up to you, yeah? I promise."

A tight knot forms in her throat, threatening to send a fresh wave of tears at her conflicted feelings. It's all she can do to give him the barest of nods, avoiding his eyes.

"Don't wait up for me. Might be a while till I'm back." She echoes his words from the morning back to him before she shakes off his grip and leaves him alone.

An empty house, a mind full of buzzing remorse.

Requests Are Open! Reblog, Reply and Like!

(11/07/2023)

[petermorwood]

Saturday was a lovely sunny day, so we fired up the BBQ.

These are bacon chops on the bone from Andarl Farm in Co Mayo. Each is the size of my hand from wrist to extended fingertips.

Accompanied by @dduane​’s version of Zeughauskeller potato salad and a slug of BBQ sauce from Mic’s Chilli, they are delicious.

Potato salad recipe under the cut.

Potato Salad a la Zeughauskeller

Serves 4 as Side.

The Zeughauskeller (http://www.zeughauskeller.ch), located in the heart of Zurich, Switzerland, successfully straddles a very difficult divide between "tourist destination" and "locals' hangout".  Once the cantonal armory, it now serves as a restaurant happily positioned just off one of the world's great shopping streets, the Bahnhofstrasse, and right by the busy Paradeplatz tram junction.   Tourists probably know it best as the place with menus in nine languages -- a haven of big beer mugs and a wide spectrum of sausages, grills and Swiss specialties. Locals usually know it best as the kind of place where, when the furor of lunch dies down, you can sit and have a beer or a wine with a friend and gossip the afternoon away.  But members of both groups may well know it for its potato salad.

Though this recipe does contain mayonnaise, it doesn't need as much as some, since the mayo gets thickening assistance from the potatoes' own starch, drawn out of them by a dousing with boiling stock.  The restaurant goes through approximately twenty tons of this potato salad each year.  

The Zeughauskeller's boss was kind enough to give us the recipe some years back...so here it is.  This is an adaptation of the original, as most of us do not normally want to deal with twenty kilograms of potatoes at once.

3-3/4 lb Mealy potatoes

1 c beef stock

1 c chicken stock

1 small onion

1/2 oz fresh parsley

Salad dressing

1/2 c Mayonnaise, fresh if possible

1/4 c Brown or yellow mustard, as you prefer  (more if desired)

(Because this preparation involves a prolonged session at room temperature while the stock and potatoes come into equilibrium, special attention must be given to making sure that the pots and pans involved are scrupulously clean. I normally freshly wash my pots and then scald them out with boiling water.)

Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks -- quartering them seems to work well with smaller potatoes: if you have big ones, it probably makes more sense to chop them into eighths.

Cook in boiling salted water until "almost ready". (This is obviously very subjective: I go for the equivalent of "al dente".)  Drain, trying to retain in the pan any starch that has come off the potatoes while boiling: but get rid of as much as possible of the water. Bring the stocks to boiling and pour them over the potatoes. Allow the potatoes to rest in the  stock for 45 minutes.

Finely chop the parsley and onion:  add them to the mixture and toss them together, letting them sit for five or ten minutes further to bring out the flavor.  Then mix in the dressing.

Serve faintly warm.

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

Amazon Affiliate Listicle, but with my ADHD and propensity for swearing

So I'mma do a listicle of Amazon affiliate links just like every other place is doing for Prime Days.

I'm just gonna tell you ahead of time that I'm doing it for money and the sense of incredulity I feel about... Amazon as a whole.

🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

A Backbone, probably the most ridiculous gaming accessory I've ever seen. Yes, I'd like to use my phone as a controller for $35 more than a normal PS5 controller costs and have almost no other functionality!

I am ALL ABOUT BIDET ATTACHMENTS, okay, but this brand is so fucking overpriced. I'm not paying $77 to launch high-powdered water up my chocolate starfish, and I'm definitely not paying the normal $110. I WILL say that I've used this brand and it was good, but... Dudes. It's a stream of water to make wiping your ass easier. How much is that actually worth? This is a much better price for the exact same functions.

When I saw this set of movies, I didn't see that it was James Bond. Daniel Craig is wearing like a sweater, but I also didn't realize it was Daniel Craig. All I saw was CRAIG. This is, for some reason, absolutely fucking hilarious to me.

Instant Pot for $65, need I say more?

Okay I'm not even joking, this is just a pretty fucking decent price ($84) for a 1.5 TB microSD card.

If you have a 3D resin printer, today is the day to stock up: AnyCubic has some really good resin deals going on! I personally love the plant-based resin, but I've heard amazing things about their water-washable stuff. I wanna try the ultra-tough resin, though. (Note: this is UV resin so you don't have to actually use it in a 3D printer. You can use it in a mold too.)

Let's spend $50 to make a single cup of coffee at a time when I can make better coffee using a disposable tea bag. 🙄 The hatred I have for single-use coffee makers knows no bounds.

What you do is take about two regular spoons full of coffee grounds (another half a spoon if you like it harsh, half a spoon less if you like it light), put them in the tea bag. Put any other spices and flavorings you like in the bag too. Close it, and tie it closed really well (I wrap the strings around the top of the bag and tie them again when I've tied it.) steep for 5 minutes in a mug full of hot water (doesn't matter how it got hot), and then add milk or creamer depending on your preference. It will have less of an acidic bite and a better flavor profile.

I'm super into the idea of bleaching my tooth enamel until it rots away and my teeth are super white but extremely sensitive! Give it to me, Crest! Yeah Daddy!

If you DO want the tooth-brightening shit, you'll probably want to invest in a few tubes of Sensodyne. Trust me.

Oh, you eat Tide pods? Cool, cool, if you Wan a be like 2021 about it. I'm a dishwasher pod kid. Snack time.

OK no sarcasm, this shit will clean your washing machine so fuckin good. My daughter gave me some and suddenly none of us smell like Satan's asshole anymore. Fucking amazing.

Okay look, if you wanna get special pimple patches, go ahead, they're on sale today and they DO work, but they're just hydrocolloidal bandages. I get the regular ones bc I can cut them to shape.

Okay fullstop, I love the power mops Swiffer makes and this is a GREAT deal. Anyone wanna buy me a new mop? 😂

Oh shit, they have Naked mini-palettes for 40% off. That's $21 omg why am I a poor with expensive makeup taste??? WHY? (They also have the Stila liquid eyeliner on sale somewhere.)

Yes, sir? I'd like the biggest, widest computer monitor to ever exist. I'm a gamer, you see. A thousand dollars today, you say? What a deal! I'm a gamer! (Look, I have a gaming computer and a pretty big monitor but there's a fkn limit, Samsung. There's a line and you've crossed it.)

I almost didn't click on the "pet products" tab because I miss Ziva SO MUCH. But I do love pampering my pets. In that vein, WHO WANTS TO BUY A SHOCK COLLAR?

If you've ever needed 900 poop-scooping mini garbage bags... Today is your day. Time to shine.

Aw fuck, I found a pretty damn good deal on a cat tree.

If you don't have a 3D printer, you have to buy Settlers of Catan like a peon and it's on sale today.

I'm actually disappointed in myself how much I want this.

TICKET TO RIDE FOR UNDER $40.

If you wanna train your pet to talk these things are on sale.

For the low, low price of $98, you too can let your child kill themselves by improperly using a Zipline kit.

EXPLODING KITTENS FOR $10 AND I MEAN THE GAME NOT ACTUAL KITTENS BUT I GUESS HE HAS A SHOW NAMED THAT TOO?

As a general rule Raven and I don't buy Nerf products because they're owned by Hasbro and we're boycotting them because of the whole Pinkertons thing. Plus, in the world of foam dart guns they're actually doing the worst when it comes to innovation and performance. But! We will get them on clearance or secondhand. I consider Prime Day to be clearance, so have this multipack for a kid's party that I wish I'd had for Raven's birthday party last month.

Also, this translucent blaster.

I love this style of shorts (although I got the viral tiktok ones) but omg this one has POCKETS.

Today I discovered that there is a brand called THE GYM PEOPLE and they make really boring clothes.

Hey plus-sized ladies! Want yet another ugly beige bra? Look no further!

I have one of these mandolin slicers. Highly recommend.

Get your kids used to corporate surveillance with an Amazon Echo made just for them!

THESE ARE THE ONLY PENS I USE.

Amazon putting these under "off to college" is absolutely fucking hilarious to me.

I'm actually really bummed I don't have the money to get this Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Amazon knows what's up when it comes to kids: a five-pack of identical pants. I think it's for uniforms but like. Let's be real, kids just go through clothes like that.

Every time I see a Skullcandy product, I remember when I was at a Skullcandy booth at the Warped Tour and I asked the booth babe how they compared to Sennheiser or even Audio-Technica. She looked at me, and in a snooty voice, said, "I've never even heard of Sennheiser before."

[veliseraptor]

O Great Lise, Master of Tea, I seek your wisdom. I'm a coffee person big time but for the sake of my dumb sensitive stomach I'm trying to switch out SOME of the coffee for tea. Please recommend me some caffeinated teas. I'm currently drinking a mug of Stash chai so as you can see, the situation is grave indeed.

master of tea! that's a new one. I'm into it though

so some caffeinated teas...I'm going to start with ones that are fairly easy to find at a grocery store and also not loose leaf only because I'm not sure how dedicated you're feeling to the bit (though if you are, my personal favorites are Victorian London Fog from Harney & Sons and Creme de la Earl Grey from Tea Chai Te, at least at the moment).

but as far as caffeinated teas I enjoy that you can find pretty easily, in my experience:

Good Earth Sweet & Spicy. This one I've had a weirdly difficult time finding in NYC but I think that might be an NYC problem? At any rate I should probably order more online. It's a nice sweet and spicy blend (as the name implies) that tastes good even when you accidentally steep it longer than you meant to.

Hot Cinnamon Spice from Harney & Sons. I introduced this one to a Swedish friend and got her hooked on it. Another one that's good even if you steep it on the too-long side. Also on the sweeter side as far as teas go, if that is a selling point or a detracting point.

Twining's Lavender Earl Grey. You might have gathered that I really like Earl Grey. It is true, and this is one of the variants that I enjoy (though not as much as the ones I mentioned above). It can be a little more elusive than just plain Earl Grey from Twining's, which is also decent, though if I'm going for an Earl Grey on its own I think I tend to prefer Harney & Sons', actually.

Twining's Chai (Vanilla or Spiced Apple). Their normal chai is fine but not particularly interesting, in my opinion; I like these ones for a little bit of extra spice (ha, ha).

I don't know how you feel about fruity teas - I don't usually like them but speaking of Stash I have a weird soft spot for Stash's Peach Black. It's possible it's just because it was one of the first teas I started drinking with any regularity, but.

if you feel like getting fancy I have other loose leaf tea recommendations (Winter Warmer Chai from White Heron is another one I quite like), but there's at least a few places to start!

[flower-seller]

Oooohoohoo that cats analogy is very cute, like when two cats walk next to each other and bonk heads/curl tails (and ur not sure if its adoration or frustration lol)

That was really cool! And I'll throw some more at ya, all optional and no rush of puzzling anything out 💕

What does love mean to them? (ie gentle, fiery, enduring, painful?)

Love languages?

Favorite places, ways to be touched? (ie scratched, scalp massage, biting)

Monogamy or polyamory?

What is their moral code, and what circumstances could lead them to break it?

😘💕

Hi this one is…so, so late and I apologize for that BUT it is here it is for what it is worth! OTL 

Thanks for your patience, Praz!

What does love mean to them?

🌸 Euphorbia: 

Solidity and warmth, someone to lean on. Safety....even if she (past an, ahem, certain mountain-esque point) doesn't always get that feeling from him, she still loves him. It's all of it to her; gentle, fiery, enduring, painful, sweet and bitter and just...everything.

Basically, even if he's hurt and betrayed her, this fucked up little man is still her everything and while she isn't going to take his bullshit laying down she still cares deeply enough about him to try and wrangle him and understand what is wrong. Like, god, I bet at times out of nowhere during that 10 year gap they're apart she wonders if he ate that day.

✨️ Volo:

 For Volo... Love would be for someone to accept him as he is, not what he appears to be, but to acknowledge his flaws and mistakes, his scars, and still find something worth value. He's a very guarded person and for someone to be able to break away the facade he's built upon for his entire life; that is love. 

It's simple and a bit self indulgent on his part, but that's what we enjoy about him

Love Languages?

🌸 Euphorbia: 

Hmm… hers is probably gifts to a lesser extent than Volo. Even if she can't remember her past where her situation was similar, she is living where her means are not Great so to give something without it being an exchange is a big deal. No one gave you shit for free in water country so to her it's another little show of undiluted affection. i.e. candies and homemade preserves she gives him and the gold nugget she reverse mugs him with. Also, words of affirmation are a close second.

✨️ Volo: 

Volo's love language is gifts naturally. Further adds to the folklore/yokai vibes he's got now too in addition to his occupation, it's just too good not to be his exact love language. Another one though is definitely teasing, friendly jabs here and there for the people close enough to him to know he only jokes. Sometimes.

Favorite places/ways to be touched?

🌸 Euphorbia: Touch is a bit weird for Euph, since you've definitely got to be on the tier of friend or higher for her to willingly allow it. Though if she is in the village and someone taps her shoulder to get her attention or something she isn't going to lash out, since she is trying to play nice to avoid being tossed to the wilds with amnesia in an unfamiliar land.

As far as more intimate touch. We kind of touched on (heh) preferred places and ways to be touched with a kink meme. (Not posted but maybe… someday? It's not visually explicit, just a checklist.) But I imagine anyone else but Volo making her aware of how small she is would be met with grrrhisss, but definitely is not opposed to feeling his entire hand wrap around a wrist or shoulder or whatnot. Very much a case of "I am showing you my neck because I feel secure, please don't break it"

✨️ Volo: 

Volo is touch starved. And while there are spots that he is self conscious about, namely scars, this dude will absolutely melt at the slightest touch truthfully. He’s really big on… Hand holding. In both normal and sexual settings, He wants to twine his fingers together to show that he’s still there and that he loves her, always. Also pretty into his chest being played with and ass grabs oop— 

He’s got a nice ass and he knows it. 

He also loooves his hair being touched, his hair being a bit of a symbol to his progress in life. Once super long and flowy (longer than even current Volo’s), it was once cut down to about ear length against his own will. So it being as long as it is once more, this man feels a lot of emotion about it. 

One big thing to note; He does not like the touch of strangers in any regard. Especially after certain points in his life, he really does not care for random people even brushing shoulders with him accidentally. It makes him nervous, and nervousness leads into his anger which… Don’t touch this man without permission, he may recoil, and if you’re lucky he’ll only grumble about it. Especially his hands if he doesn’t know you. With how self conscious he is about his claws… 

There is another like. Super sensitive spot on his dude, but I shan’t reveal that yet… 😏

Monogamy or polyamory?

🌸 Euphorbia:

Hmm… she is probably mostly monogamous, it would take a very special someone since she's pretty stuck on this guy. She's already prone to a little jealousy, so I think anything beyond like an unattached threesome or whatever would take some work and probably give her indescribable amounts of heartburn first 

✨️ Volo:

YEAH YEAH they handshake pretty much

I could see like a political alliance threesome or maybe a secret spying one but not anything legitimately more than business. Even then I know he wouldn’t ever go through with full blown sex with anyone other than Euph for a plethora of reasons (most of which I will not say just yet but), but yeah teasing and toying to get information out of someone before tossing them aside is not off the table. 

Moral code and breaking it?

🌸 Euphorbia:

Her morals, outwardly, are pretty good. And actually not horrendously bad either. She's definitely willing to do some sketchy shit and feel minimally bad about it depending on what it is. "Be nice to me/my friend or I'll punch your lights out" and "good thing the nearest village is so far away because you fucked up and I'm going to break your wrist now and don't want someone to come running" type shit

As for what would make her break a moral code... your standard desperation, that can make anyone act unwise. That desperation can definitely range in flavor though, instinctual or meditated on.

Euph is pretty stubborn as a previous kiri nin from ye old days where the village was basically self-cannibalizing itself politically and maybe even literally. So having resolve and the will to keep moving forward even if you have to become monstrous to do so is far from an unknown concept. But...she also has come to value softer and sweeter things. So it's a bit complicated.

I guess the answer is just fuck around and find out ALSKDH

✨️ Volo:

Volo is… We all know Volo. He's a bit of an enigma in that of himself. His moral code, mind you his moral code, is quite different from the black and white common views of the world. Most nothing to him is inherently good or evil, everything is chaos, nothing and everything matters all at once. As such, his code of conduct varies vastly from situation to situation, there's obviously the favorable things to do, the more socially acceptable things, but seeing himself as an outlier to the status quo, he's more flexible to make choices that more typical people would… Probably not do?? The key point in understanding his mindset is that he doesn't value life the way most do. 

That being said, breaking his own code would be not only incredibly difficult, but also quite the event. The most likely causes for him to act out of his typical would be one of two things; Wrath, or Envy. Seeing as he is a cocky and confident bastard, it isn't too terribly often that he loses his temper truly. But when he does, boy does he. Easily comparable to a raging fire, once he's mad mad, it's hard to get him to calm down and will act out of instinct. 

Jealousy, on the other hand, makes the man act unwise. Often does jealousy lead to his more… Questionable choices, leaning on the dumb side. Often these choices go against his instinct.

[purplesurveys]

1814

1. Who was the last person you forgave? How long did it take you to forgive them? I haven't had to forgive someone in a while; I don't get in much conflict anymore.

2. Is going mushroom hunting in the woods something that would interest you? No. Don't mushrooms like, run the risk of being super deadly? I don't have nearly enough knowledge about them to identify which ones would be safe to touch and such.

3. What is your favorite junk food? How about your favorite health food? Mozzarella sticks, arancini, pork isaw, French fries. Favorite health food...uhhhhh idk do salad wraps count? Haha they're my favorite thing to get these days! Saladstop has this Caesar wrap that I have probably at least once a week at this point.

4. Are you listening to anything right now? Do you normally listen to music while you take surveys? No, I prefer it to be quiet now. Sometimes I do but most of the time I find it really distracting and I end up taking like, double, triple the time I'd otherwise normally take doing surveys.

5. What were you doing the last time you hung out with a friend? It was well over a month ago but I saw my closest friends for a Christmas gift exchanging + dinner. We were supposed to head to a café after to continue talking, but while walking we saw this vapery(?) - idk what to call it, but it's a coffee shop that also sells vapes and allows you to do so inside - and went there instead and chatted it up with the owners since we were the only customers there.

Reena had to leave after an hour and the vapery was closing soon too, so Angela, Hans, and I went to Anj's house so we could TALK SOME MORE. Hahaha. We only see each other, like, quarterly now, so we're usually stuffed to the brim with stories when we have the time to see each other.

6. Is there anything about you that might cause others to dislike you? I tend to choose who I want to talk to, so those I might not approach may find me aloof and uninterested. It's because I am tbh, lol.

7. Is there anything you’re really particular or specific about, anything that has to be done a certain way every time? I'm very particular at work. I like things presented or explained a certain way; and I have the tendency to either overhaul a Powerpoint if I think it's lacking in how it's been made, or chime in for someone if I think they explain something in a way that I think is poorly.

8. Are there any chores you need to get done today? Just get rid of the mug and glass that's been sitting in my room and wash them.

9. Where was the last place you went shopping and what did you buy? I went to Landmark to buy a pastel gown + heels for the 18th birthday party of a family friend that I'm going to later this evening.

10. What was the last big change you made to your physical appearance? Dyeing my hair back to purple a couple of months ago.

11. Are you more likely to shut people out of your life or try to fix things no matter what? I will cut people off.

12. Where was the last place you went out to eat? Is going out something you enjoy or would you rather cook at home? To Red Keep last weekend just for some little me time. I had a spamsilog and a white mocha, which I had while filling in my journal and reading my book.

I like eating out because I can't cook, but I limit it because doing that everyday for every meal is super unsustainable. Plus with me resigning and not having an immediate job replacement, I'm gonna be a bit of a hardass on myself not to spend much until I can find a new source of income.

13. If you have any pets, do they seem to notice when you’re sick or sad? Not really, but it's okay with me. Kimi though is a different story; he liked keeping to himself but he would walk towards me if he can sense that I'm stressed or close to tears.

15. Is anything you’ve done lately going to matter in a year?  Yeah, absolutely.

16. What was the subject of your last phone call? It was a guy dropping off something at the office and needing to be guided STEP BY FUCKING STEP to get there. I don't have problems helping out people with directions, but I've also just never dealt with someone who needed to be told every turn, every stop, every move... and especially over the phone where I wouldn't be able to see where he was standing haha.

17. Are your hobbies something you’d rather do alone or with others? On my own. I don't like going to museums with someone else just cos it makes me super self conscious? Like I can stay 3-4 hours in one museum alone and I'm also not a big talker when I'm immersed, so I might just end up boring a companion to death.

18. Is there anything about yourself that you’re trying to improve? Trying to be gentler towards my teammates as I know everyone is overwhelmed and tired as it is.

19. What are you doing today? I went to the dentist and had a horrible experience because they were 1 hour late to our appointment; got a big order of flavored fries and corndogs to cheer myself up after the grueling wait; took a nap; and now I'm just killing time before I'd need to get up and prep for the debut I'm attending tonight.

20. What did you dream about last night? I can't remember. But in my nap an hour ago I dreamt that we went to Japan, but it was an overnight stay LOL so I spent more time at the airport than I did in the country.

21. When was the last time you visited relatives? Do you see extended family often? It was during the whole Christmas/New Year timeline when we drove out to see different sides of extended family. I'd say these things happen pretty much only during the holidays, but occasionally in the middle of the year when things end up being planned we'd also visit family then.

22. What was the last relaxing thing you did? Last weekend was a major Chef's Kiss weekend. I'm amazed at how peaceful it felt and the calming effect it had on me. Saturday I went to Red Keep where I dined al fresco, wrote in my journal, and read my book until the sun set and I couldn't read anymore. Sunday I spent the afternoon in UP where I sat under a tree and alternated between people-watching and finishing my book as the afternoon rolled on.

23. Will this weekend be better than last weekend? Nothing will top the past weekend, I'm afraid.

24. When was the last time you were there for a friend? Just the last couple of weeks. Angela's morale has been down what with the pressure of studying for the architecture boards, and I've been there to listen but also give advice if she needs it.

25. Do you have any jewelry you almost never take off? At one point it was the necklace Reena gave me, but it started to itch so I've removed it for now.

26. What are some of your favorite words? Poignant, eloquent, vivacious...and indicted and viscount just because I'm fascinated with how they're both pronounced nothing like they're spelled lol.

27. Do you have any journals from when you were younger? If so, do you ever go back and read them? No I think I got rid of them years ago because they were all pretty embarrassing to me and it's not really something I'd want to keep.

28. Are there any holidays you used to celebrate, but no longer do? I no longer observe Christmas for the Christian reason. I'm just here for the food.

29. What was the last occasion for which you dressed up? A family friend's daughter's 18th birthday party, from which I just came home actually.

30. Is there anything you wish you could say to anyone? I wish you could trust me more because today was very telling of how much you don't, and that kind of stung.

[cryptidroots]

Getting Wholesale clients

Another small business PSA because Cryptids don't gatekeep, especially from other small business colleagues!

You're business has gotten a few sales, your product photos are looking good, the 5-star reviews are rolling in; but now you wanna shoot for the stars, you wanna go big, you wanna get a wholesale order.

First step; Tell. People. You. Do. Wholesale. Orders.

Say it everywhere. On Etsy I even mention it in the bottom of each item listing, write it in your about section, under FAQs write a little bit about where to reach out for wholesale orders - My first wholesale order, and half of them in total, all came from other people contacting me about it first. People are looking, and if you mention you'll do a wholesale order, they're more likely to reach out and ask.

second step; reaching out to other people.

Your best bet, especially as a small business owner yourself, is probably going to be a wholesale order from another small business - the type depends on what products you sell.

You sell clothing, especially handmade, or featuring cool art you made? You're probably gonna be aiming at Boutiques. Same with some jewelry brands.

You sell bone art, creepy art prints, handmade coffin furniture? You're going to be looking at Oddities shops and other goth small businesses.

Cups and mugs with funny seasonal sayings? A local coffee shop/bar (not a big retail chain like starbucks)

personalized doggy bandanas? You're gonna look at partnering up with some local shelters (some have small shops to make money to support their work) and those bougie doggie daycare centers - preferably in the richer part of town.

Once you find out which places you should reach out to, then it's time to actually reach out to them about it. Generally Email is preferred, but some new and smaller places don't have a professional email yet and will be fine talking on social media about it (before you assume to reach out on social media though, it does look more professional to email, so ask if there is an email you can use to send them wholesale pricing info, etc.)

If you can talk and interact with someone beforehand, even better. Follow the accounts of your target shops, interact with their posts (genuinely! don't be all fake and sales-pitchy) really think about if your stuff would work well with their store.

sometimes just doing this will make them reach out to you first (refer to step one) but if not then again, email.

For starting an email the title can normally be (-your business name- wholesale order for -their business name-). Give a nice greeting, say a -brief!- thing about your business, about their business, about why your stuff might be a good fit. Include some photos of things you specifically think would be a good fit for them.

The worst thing that could happen is that they don't carry your stuff - which is already what is happening.

So go forth! Expand your business! Make money! And don't forget to help support the other small/local businesses around you as you grow.

Love,

-Cryptid

[sirgidget]

“Line, copy,” Winn’s voice crackles across Kara’s radio. There’s a somewhat serious touch to his voice. Just enough to get Kara’s attention, but not enough to make her worried. Not just yet. So she foolishly answers. Like there’s nothing dangerous looming on the horizon.

“Go ahead.”

“We’ve got a lima lima incoming,” Winn says.

Kara sighs to herself, “Dang it.” Of course she had to be the one to answer this call. She couldn’t have left it for Brainy. Or James. Or literally anyone else. It had to be her. “Which one?”

“400.”

400? Four hundred lima lima? That’s not one of their planes. Is it? Did they get a new one? Again?

“Okay… what kinda aircraft?”

“Citation Sovereign. Dropping 1 passenger, and then should be staying overnight.”

That’s new. And smaller than what they normally go for. Significantly so. But, hey, at least it’s not the airbus. That would be a pain to park right now. They are packed.

“How far out?”

“They’re about to land.”

Kara groans. “Alright, I’ll park them as close to the doors as I can.”

“Actually, Kara, the pilots requested to be parked kinda far away.”

That’s very new. “Alright… I’ll park ‘em by the tie downs then, I guess.”

“Great. Sending the driver out now.”

“Copy.”

Readjusting her safety earmuffs to make sure they’re secured, Kara clambers back onto her golf cart. She was able to snag it this morning before James got in, thankfully. It’s the fastest one they have, and the one with the big cup holders that can actually fit her oversized travel mug. His name is Carl.

As she zooms across the ramp on Carl, her mind is racing to the incoming aircraft. Darn lima limas. The aircraft are always way too big and way too loud, and don’t even get her started on the passengers. The worst sort of people to have ever come through this airport. And they come in a lot. Too much. Sure, they tip well, but they are just plain rude. One time, they actually asked Kara to depart in the middle of a thunderstorm. Like she could either stop the storm or get ATC to give them their departure clearance somehow.

They always want to be parked as close to the doors as possible and they always need their car pulled rampside. Always. And if there’s more than two line service technicians there when they arrive, god help you.

But this one’s different. It’s a new plane. A smaller one. With a new tail number. And they want to be parked far away from the doors. Baffling. Truly.

Once Kara parks Carl she can see it. Already taxiing off the runway, heading in her direction. She has to admit, it is a beautiful aircraft. It’s got that same trademark purple and green of the rest of the lima lima fleet, of course. But where the others seem to scream at you who it belongs to, this one looks a little more tame. Much more preferable to the ridiculously gaudy paint job on the airbus.

It takes little effort to flag the aircraft down as it turns off the taxiway. Kara guides the aircraft into its parking spot, so far out of the way it’d likely be forgotten if it weren’t a gosh darned lima lima. Once they finally park, Kara makes short work of chocking the aircraft. She quietly hums to herself, not that she can hear it over her earmuffs or the engine blaring overhead, but still. It’s calming considering what she’s about to deal with. With that done, she returns to Carl to wait for the aircraft to shut down.

It takes a little longer than normal, which is more concerning than it probably should be. But soon enough, the engines are shut down and the door is being opened.

Kara pushes back off of Carl and strides over to the plane. The pit in her stomach grows with each step. Uncertainty gnawing away at it. Until finally she sees the woman standing in the door of the aircraft, half distracted by something on her phone, a frown creasing a line between her brows. And wow. Is there suddenly a lot less air out here? There is. Right? Because, yeah, Kara is definitely not breathing right now.

And, of course, it is in that moment where her entire respiratory system has cataclysmically failed that this goddess of a woman finally looks up from her phone. Brilliant, calculating eyes land on Kara, and it would be really great if her lungs decided to cooperate again.

“H-hi.” Oh look, her lungs are working again. “Welcome to National City!”

The woman manages a smile, but Kara can tell even from here that it’s forced. She stuffs her phone back into her pocket and descends the stairwell.

“Thank you…” the woman says, trailing off a little. And holy crow. People actually sound like that? “Kara?”

She just said Kara’s name. This woman just said her name. How does she know that? “Uh… yeah. How’d you--?” Kara’s voice croaks out when the woman points at her chest. What a weird thing to point at. Wait, is there something on her shirt? Oh no. That’s not good.

In her panic to find the blemish, stain, or what have you that this woman is clearly disapproving of, she comes face to face with her name. Stitched into her vest, like it always is. Which is how everyone who comes into the airport knows her name.

“Oh, right,” she laughs. She lifts her gaze sheepishly to the woman, who is now actually smiling at her. “I always forget that’s there.”

“Uh-huh,” the woman muses.

Kara’s brain is finally catching up to her, thanks to the reminder about her vest. Which reminded her she’s at work. Which reminded her to do her job.

“Do you have any bags you want me to take?” She asks with a smile.

The woman takes a step down the stairwell and lifts a single briefcase up in the air. “I think I can handle it, thank you.”

“I don’t know. It looks pretty heavy to me.” Why did I just say that?

The woman continues her descent with a laugh. And even though Kara knows that wasn’t funny, she knows, she can’t help but smile back. All proud and smug that she got this magnificent woman to laugh.

“Good thing I’m carrying it then,” the woman drawls.

Kara laughs, a nervous high-pitched laugh. “Yeah, good thing.” She clears her throat with a cough, bringing her voice back to its normal pitch. “Uh… can I give you a ride to the terminal?”

“I believe my ride is right behind you, actually.”

Right. Yes. The car and driver. Kara knew that. Obviously. She definitely doesn’t need to turn over her shoulder to visually confirm that there is in fact a sedan there.

“Of course.” She steps out of the way, making a grand motion with her hands allowing the woman to pass her by, all but bowing in front of her. “Enjoy your stay in National City.”

“Thank you, Kara,” the woman says with a nod.

She steps around Kara without another word and walks off to her car. Unlike the other passengers off a lima lima aircraft, she opens her own door and climbs in herself. However, just before disappearing within those thick, tinted windows, she stops. She lifts her head to meet Kara’s gaze once more, smiles, and waves. Kara’s dopey grin as she waves back can surely be seen all the way back at the FBO where everyone is most definitely ready to make fun of her for this. But she doesn’t care. Not right now.

She stays there, frozen in space and time, watching the black sedan drive back where it came from. Taking that wondrous woman with it. Which is very rude, honestly.

“Um… can we get some fuel?” someone asks from way too close.

Kara starts and practically leaps away from the pilot who isn’t as close as she thought he was. “Golly,” she breathes. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

The pilot snickers. “Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. Anyway… fuel?”

“Right.” Yes. My job. I should do that. “What do you need?”

[tired-beholding-bitch]

I'm in a yearning mood today so maybe......... 30. grabbing onto their arm from touches and 4. lips barely touching from kisses?

thank you so much for the request anon! indeed, yearning is Much Appreciated in this household

(also, as a side note: feel free to request specific pairings/people if you'd like to see something in particular! was kind of going with jonmartin as default even before anon sent another ask to clarify but. yes, if you have a preference just add it I’d be glad to write almost anything really 💙)

here you go, I hope you’ll enjoy it! 🌺

-

It’s too early in the morning to be awake. Martin is sitting at the kitchen table nonetheless, shivering a little in the chilly air of the room.

The darkened windows aren’t letting in any light yet, showing him only his own reflection, staring back at him from the eerie quiet of the Scottish countryside. On the stove, he can hear the water for the tea start to simmer.

They do have a kettle, old-fashioned and clearly one Daisy salvaged from a thrift store somehow, but Jon is still sleeping, for once. It’s too early to risk waking him up, on a rare occasion in which he’s actually resting.

While he waits for it to reach a full boil, the cup with its teabag already sitting in front of him, he picks absent-mindendly at a hangnail right on his thumb. He does it over and over again, until he can feel it sting in protest, pulling a bit. When he looks down, brows furrowing, it’s bleeding – it stains the skin around it red, a drop of blood rolling down his finger, and when he brings it to his mouth, the coppery, unpleasant taste of it on his tongue makes him grimace.

The water bubbles. He gets up to pour it in his mug, only narrowly managing not to burn himself as it splashes from the sides. He sits down again. He forgot the sugar, but the thought of getting up to rummage through the cabinets to find it is unappealing, so he doesn’t.

His breathing hasn’t gone back to normal yet.

Surpisingly, given the pattern of his dreams these days, the nightmare wasn’t about the Lonely.

In a way, it would have been easier – he has developed all kinds of tricks and reassurances to deal with the white, heavy fog that still curls around his ankles on occasion, to fight off the alluring silence of a place shrouded in mist. The comfort of not seeing past the wall of grey, silhouettes blurred and so far away they could never hurt him.

It would have been better if it was about the worms, even, despite how daft he feels every time he wakes up gasping from the echoing of Prentiss’ knocking, after so much worse has happened to all of them, really, in the years between then and now.

Instead, the dream was about his mum.

It wasn’t even a nightmare, not in the actual meaning of the word – more like a memory, something he had quite forgotten, dredged up by his subconscious for some reason or another.

He doesn’t remember exactly what it was about. He doesn’t have to, for the image of his mother’s face – that expression he never quite wanted to give a name to, because if he had it would have to be something less than annoyance and closer to disgust or contempt or loathing – to linger clear as day behind his eyelids every time he blinks.

Martin stares down into his tea, and tries to slow the rhythm of his breaths to something manageable.

He’s so focused on it – on trying to not fall apart at 4 am in the morning sitting in a still unfamiliar kitchen, tea slowly growing cold and too bitter to drink in his hands – that he almost jumps out of his skin when he feels something touching his arm.

Jon makes a startled noise of surprise in return, reeling back immediately to give him space.

He looks… rumpled, really, is probably the best word for it. He’s squinting something fierce – he must have abandoned his glasses who-knows-where –, and Martin can tell he’s biting back a yawn by the way he scrunches up his nose, forehead creasing in concentration. The shirt he’s wearing is way too big on him, slipping down his shoulder to reveal a very endearing clavicle.

It makes his heart constrict almost painfully with tenderness, a sweet, lingering ache blossoming at the base of his throat.

Once he meets his eyes, Jon tries again, tentatively settling his hand on Martin’s arm. He squeezes once, twice, in a casual display of affection that helps none with the lump of feelings knotted at the centre of his chest. He doesn’t let go even as he drags the other chair next to his, sitting down so close to him he’s almost leaning his whole body against him.

The weight of his fingers on his forearm, the thin skin of his wrist warm against Martin’s own. The gentle, firm grip that keeps him anchored, somehow, much better than the tea had managed to do.

Jon doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask – he never asks, and sometimes Martin tells him anyway. He doesn’t, this time, but he knows it’s alright all the same.

They sit in silence for what feels like a long time.

He eventually lets go of the cup, and Jon starts rubbing soothing circles on his inner forearm, almost distractedly, and smiles against his shoulder when Martin’s breath eases as he follows the motion.

There is something to be said about how momentous it can feel, to be touched so casually.

Even more so when Jon looks up at him, after an undefinable amount of time has passed them by, his eyes coffee-dark and tired but full of something so warm that almost makes him want to cry, and tilts his head just so that their lips barely brush in a kiss.

It doesn’t linger, stays feather-light and familiar, and his mouth tingles with it.

He smiles without realising, and Jon smiles back, and this time he doesn’t bother hiding the yawn that takes him after, his free hand barely managing to cover his mouth.

«Let’s go back to bed?» he asks, his tone just a little teasing.

He’s still smiling, as Jon tugs him to his feet with scarcely concealed impatience, mumbling something under his breath that could be yes please before the birds start just as well as unintellegible gibberish.

They sleep until the afternoon, and Martin doesn’t dream again.

[taeescript]

29+1 (Part One)

𝔰𝔶𝔫𝔬𝔭𝔰𝔦𝔰: In which Seokjin is the Devil from The Devil Wears Prada, Taehyung is your work Jesus and Jimin is your handsome successful brother. 

𝔭𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: seokjin x reader (taehyung x reader if you squint real hard) 

𝔤𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢: slice of life; ceo!seokjin (diva!seokjin)

𝔴𝔠: 3.6k

𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔰: heavy use of alcohol as a coping mechanism, a plethora of sarcasm (please don’t be offended) and a sprinkle of softness (is that a warning?). 

𝔞/𝔫: this sat in my unwritten folder since 2017 no lie. I wrote the premise and a singular paragraph at that time, then just gave up. I opened it a few days ago, got inspired again and this word vomit came out (heavily influenced by a midnight Zoom call with my friends). Ngl this was so much fun to write, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. This will probably be in three parts.  𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔩𝔞𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔯: I did not know that DailyHive is an actual online news source when writing. This work is purely fictional and has absolutely nothing to do with the real DailyHive. 

part two

Your friends have a saying: After 29, nobody shares their age until they’ve accomplished something. 

In the past, you didn’t understand it. What’s so bad about saying you’re 30 or you’re 32? That’s still a young age! Sure, you’re not exactly in your prime anymore but you’re not old, right?

So, you continue in your own wondrous world of naïveté until that fateful day at your class reunion. You had simply been walking around, minding your own business when you had been stopped by an old colleague.

“Hey, Y/N, right?” she waves you down. 

You smile kindly, not even bothering to try and remember her name (you sucked at names, what could you say). 

“Hey…you!” you chuckle lightly, “How have you been doing?” 

An everyday question leading to catastrophic effects. 

“Oh you know,” she says and rolls her eyes as if you truly did know, “I’ve just been out and about. Did I tell you though? I got married last year!” She holds out her hand in which a giant diamond adorns her finger. “Wow!” you gasp, feigning interest. It’s not that you aren’t happy for her, but you are reminded of just how single you are currently. When was the last time you felt another human’s touch? Does kissing come back as easily as riding a bicycle? “Hey!” she says suddenly, “I’m actually meeting with a couple of friends from our class. You should come join! I’m sure they’d be happy to see you again!” You want to wave her off, but against your better judgment, you find yourself following in her footsteps and listening to her speak about wedding venues and honeymoon destinations.

“Oh my god!” another female voice filters in.

The “couple of friends” this old classmate had mentioned is in fact a fairly impressive size of twenty. This is also the third time the wedding announcement has been made. 

“Last year?” the female continues, “Weren’t you young?”

Yes, you want to respond. Yes she was young. A full 365 days younger than she is now.

Your classmate, Sooyoung (or Kiko as she insists going by now) titters in front of you. “I mean, you can sort of say I’m a late bloomer. I got married when I was 31.”

Her words unintentionally cut into you. Here you are at 29 without a beau in sight. You take a fast swig of your beer and end up hitting the empty glass with a clink to your teeth. Nobody notices.

“Enough about me, however, how about you?”

“I started my own business actually. It’s been doing really well and it’s been a crazy mind. Imagine me, my own boss at only 33!”

You nervously join them when they suddenly laugh together.  

“Hi, can I get another pint please? Actually add a tequila shot to that,” you whisper the last part to the waitress you had just stopped.

And that was how the rest of the night went. People asking one another what they had accomplished. Any moment in time after 30 would not be mentioned until somebody travelled to Uganda to build houses at 31 or another gave birth at the same age. Below 30, anything would be attributed to luck or in your case…

“What are you doing currently?” somebody asks you, “The little baby of our class.”

Swallowing your third tequila shot of the night, you wonder for the umpteenth time how you had become a part of this giant sharing circle. You wonder if it’s a blessing or a curse that you had graduated a little early and thus was younger than most of your peers.

“Well,” you start, “I’m currently working at DailyHive.”

“Ohh!” a man gushes. You recognize him as the once-upon-a-time science partner you used to cheat notes off of. “I use DailyHive nearly as much as Instagram these days. You guys cover everything from news to sports to fashion.”

You shrug. “Yeah. It’s, uh… it’s a pretty big company!”

“What are you doing there?”

Kiko-ex-Sooyoung hits the man teasingly on the shoulder. “Y/N is probably the Director of Marketing or something. Remember how she used to spend all class doodling in her notebook?”

“Or sleeping!” someone quips.

You don’t join in when they all laugh.

“I’m…an intern,” you say with as much pride as you can in a group of established professionals ranging from dermatologists to that one guy who had flown around the world as a TedTalk guest speaker.

A hushed silence befalls everyone.

“That’s…cool!” the same man encourages you, “Interns are totally rad! Everyone wants an intern spot these days.”

His girlfriend pats your arm, almost empathetically. “Yeah. I know a bunch of people who first start off as interns and then they shoot up the ladder quick enough. As long as you’re no longer an intern at 30, you’re golden!”

Once again, the entire group laughs as if she has said the most hilarious of jokes.

She composes herself and says to you, “Because after that, you should have accomplished something.”

Her words still ring in your ears as you sit at your desk this morning.

Yeah…something. All you need to do is accomplish something in the next three months before you are officially, 29 + 1.

Your fingers tap against your thighs silently while you observe the current debate that is occurring in the conference room. You barely have time to sweep the falling hair back behind your ear as your fingers ferociously fly across the keyboard to keep in track with the meeting.

Fei is arguing that the implement of a new search word system would boost users while Daniel says that it is a waste of resources. Instead, everything should be put into updating the entire system as a whole. You have long since lost track of their words as neither pertain to what you do as an intern.

“Enough,” the CEO of DailyHive holds up a hand. His one word causes the entire room to hush over – truly, the words of a god.

And that might as well be what he is. With his hair swept back and a lone tendril curling perfectly above his brow, Kim Seokjin is legitimately a walking god. Off his broad shoulders hang an expensive white linen suit bought with his pocket change and your yearly salary. A pair of sunglasses hangs in the V of the collared shirt dipping low enough to blur the lines between being fashionably professional and just downright sexy.

The snap of his fingers brings you back to the present.

He dramatically rolls his eyes and accepts that you are an incompetent minute-taker.  

“I have to remember that the world just doesn’t move as fast as I do.”  

                                                            - Quote: Rolling Stones 2019 Kim Seokjin.

Now if only he’d remember he had once said that.

He points at each of them with one finger, then swipes to the left. “Both of you, solve this outside. I don’t want to hear your voices any longer. You two from the marketing team, Ungroomed Stache and Acne Chin, create me a report if we are to implement Ms. Song’s idea. The two of you from…” he takes a pause here clearly having forgotten who his employees are, “The two of you do the same thing but for Mr. Hwang.”

The pair from accounting open their mouth to protest that they are in charge of only numbers, but they are ignored.

“All of you out now. Except you,” he points his finger directly at you, “Stay.”

Nobody utters a single word until they have all left and you are left alone with him. Standing before him with your hands folded nicely in front of you, you blink and wait.

He stares right back at you, picks up his coffee mug and drops it. The clatter of ceramic smashing against the ground causes a pause in the loud buzz outside the room. You know everybody’s focus has been shifted into the room.

“Do you want to kill me?” he drawls.

You take a long inhale. “No,” you say.

“No?” he repeats the word, “Well I think you do. Did you check this coffee before you brought it to me? I tasted cinnamon in it. You know how I’m allergic to cinnamon. Get me a new cup. And this mess, get somebody to clean it. I don’t want the smell of coffee in this room when I have my next meeting here in twenty. I’m taking a smoke a break.”

He stands up and brushes past you without saying anything else.

Nobody can be allergic to cinnamon. Besides if he had actually tasted cinnamon and was that sensitive, he would be dead. And good riddance to that.

Of course, you say none of this and wordlessly begin to pick up the broken ceramic pieces of the dead mug. The bustling outside the meeting room has returned back to its normal state of chaos. Seeing the ugly stain of coffee on the once pristine carpet causes you to swear beneath your breath.

“Who the fuck is allergic to cinnamon?” a new voice says, sliding up beside you.  

The second god in DailyHive; the much nicer and evidently preferred Kim; Taehyung takes the mug pieces from you and drops it into the garbage bin.

Blessed with not only intelligence but devilishly model-like features, he is your desk buddy in the small space allotted for interns and your sole friend in the company.

“Tae,” you sigh with exasperation upon seeing your lifesaver, “What am I going to do about this stain? He’s going to return in fifteen and there’s no way I can get a coffee stain out of this expensive-ass carpet.”

Taehyung taps a long finger to his lips, leaves the room briefly, and returns with a roll of Bounty sheets and a can of Febreze. He promptly blots as much of the coffee off from the carpet then proceeds to pull the meeting table.

“C’mon, Y/N, don’t just stand there. Help me! Time is of the essence!”

You laugh and join him in moving the table so that one of the legs cover the stain 80% of the way. Once he is satisfied, he takes the Febreze and sprays until the whole room smells like ���Hawaiian Aloha”.

“You’re welcome.” He gives an extravagant bow, the motion popping open the top button of his shirt to expose a surprisingly chiseled chest.

Fei returns back into the room holding a phone to her ear and a clipboard in her left hand. “What the hell? It smells like a Bath & Body Works in here. Intern, aren’t you supposed to be filing or something? Stop standing around and be useful.” She grips Taehyung’s arm and drags him out of the room. “Button up. This is a professional workplace.”

You give him a tiny wave as Taehyung is steered away by his girlfriend and back to the cubicles.

Taehyung may be your saviour at work, but outside, it cannot be denied that your brother is the true Fountain of Life.

A week has passed since the coffee incident (you suspect a cleaning personnel had found the stain and cleaned up after your improv as aforementioned stain can no longer be found), but Jimin still brings it up.

“I still can’t believe that he said he was allergic to cinnamon. I’ve never heard of such bullshit before,” your brother says over the phone. You can practically hear his eyeroll from across the world.

As a renowned ophthalmologist, you have not seen Jimin for close to a year as he has been initiating his new clinic, a flying eye hospital.

“You should hear his Starbucks order. I always feel like I’m ready to launch my next EP whenever I’m at the counter,” you say.

Jimin laughs. There is the muffled sounds of voices as his never-ending flow of patients have arrived for the day.

“I shouldn’t keep you,” you say upon hearing that, “You’re probably really busy.”

“No,” he says, “I’ve got a few minutes if you’ve got a few. I miss talking to my baby sister.”

“I’m not a baby anymore, Jiminie,” you say using the nickname he hated.

“Oh that’s right. Your birthday’s in a little under three months, right? My baby sister is turning the big three-oh.”

“God, don’t remind me.”

“Want me to come visit you?”

You contemplate the idea once, having not seen Jimin in quite a while.

“Only if you have time. But I feel like Mom and Dad would probably want to see you more. Speaking of which, um… How are Mom and Dad?”

“They’re good. I hear Dad is finally going to retire this year. He’s giving his practice to Kibum, you remember him? Mom will probably start pestering us about what to do for his retirement party.”

There is a pause.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to say hi to them once in a while.”

You sigh. “And say what? Hey, it’s me. The child that ran away from home at 18? Yeah, I’m not a doctor like everybody else in the family but a 29 year old intern at a popular app company. Whassuuup?”

“Y/N, that’s not what I – ”

“It’s okay, Jimin. I’ve come to accept that not everybody is cut out to be a doctor. I just wish Mom and Dad could realize that.”

Jimin sighs on your behalf. There is the sound of a crying child coming through the earphone. “Well, your contract expires a few weeks after your birthday, right? Who knows, you might be the next Mark Zuckerberg.”

He has never explicitly inquired about your life plan and you know this is as much as he is willing to push without asking, “What’s next after this intern hiccup?” At least he had the decency to compare you to a controversial Internet entrepreneur.

The child is crying much louder now.

“Again with my birthday. But I’ll let you know,” is the only reply you can come up with at the moment. “Okay, brother, go forth and heal the blind. I bless thee in the name of the Holy Spirit, Son and Ghost.”

There is true laughter that rings from Jimin as he ends the call. “It’s Father, Son and Holy Ghost you dweeb. I love you sis.”

“You too.” You hang up first before he can add anything else.

With that, you enter into the 7am Starbucks queue and prepare yourself in running the first single of your long overdue EP.

Seokjin leans back in his chair, watching you from inside his office. Today he has chosen a black turtleneck and a brazen maroon-nearly purple suit jacket to complete the outfit. For once, there is an empty mug of coffee beside him and his morning headache has been appeased.

He knew he had given you an impossible task.

“Compile all the troubleshooting errors we have received since the launch of DailyHive. Organize it in a manner that allows me to identify the most prominent problem. Run it through whomever you please before giving it to me. I don’t need to waste my time correcting your mistakes.”

There is an amused smile that bubbles beneath his otherwise stoic features. He cannot deny that there is, might he dare say, a cute quality about you as you manually scan through the received concerns on your laptop dating back to the initial beta tests – the ones that were lost in a data crash and only backed up with unintelligible scribblings of previous interns.

The moment you had been introduced as the new intern, you had caught his eye. You are exquisitely mundane, and perhaps the reason you had even caught him the first time was due to solely to the fact that you were older than most interns – himself even. Nevertheless, you continue to present him small surprises in your tenacity and capability to tackle challenges.

“Mr. Kim.”

His intercom comes alive with the voice of his secretary.

Seokjin’s eyes do not leave you as he answers.

“Mr. Hwang is on line two. Would you like me to defer him to a later time if you are currently busy?”

Seokjin cannot help but sigh. Hwang Junho, his co-founder, while a genius in international business is also a notorious chatterbox and gossip. There is seldom a reason for Junho to call him except to relay the cover titles of E!Magazine.

“Did he mention a reason for calling?” Seokjin inquires.

His secretary seems to be reading from a note. “He says it’s to do with the company. Something he read from Cosmopolitan this morning.”

So not E! but another sister celebrity gossip blog. He checks his watch and duly notes that he certainly has no meetings scheduled until later in the afternoon where your report would be needed to run a preliminary analysis.

“Sir?”

“Yes, put him through. But tell him I’ve got only five minutes, so he’s better give me the Cliffnotes version,” Seokjin sighs again.

Before he can be connected, Seokjin quickly says, “What’s the name of that intern again?”

“Who?” his secretary asks, “We’ve hired four since the beginning of the year.”

“The one who keeps wanting to poison me.”

“I’m sorry, Sir?” she sounds concerned.

“The one who keeps forgetting that I despise cinnamon.”

There is no response.

“The older one. Spilled coffee a while ago but still has enough coordination to pull together a decent report.”

“Ah,” she says.

He waits patiently as she searches through the database, eventually giving him your name. He gives a slight pause and then says, “Good. Now patch me with Junho.”

There is a momentary buzz as the call becomes connected in which Seokjin turns over the syllables of your name wordlessly.

“Mr. Kim. The man of the hour. How are you, my brother?” Junho’s baritone fills the office in a manner of seconds.

Despite the little annoying quirks, Seokjin cannot help but smile when hearing the voice of his best friend.

“You’ve got three minutes, Junho.”

Junho grumbles. “That’s not my fault. You were the one still on the line with your secretary. Is it still Yerin? ‘Cuz I won’t blame you if that’s the case. Did I catch you doing some naughty phone sex during office hours?”

“Two.”

“Holy hell. Fine. It’s always business with you. That’s why the tabloids are always writing you as an uptight asshole.”

This shifts Seokjin’s attention to the phone. His name is seldomly mentioned except for the features in business columns. He prefers to stay out of the limelight.

“What?”

“Put your name on Google.”

Seokjin does as he is told.

There are millions of results, but the first few pages share the same headline. He clicks on the first one with a grimace.

“Kim Seokjin. Mr. Worldwide Handsome as noted by his fans, has recently sparked Internet outrage.”

A quick skim of the otherwise trashy article brought to the surface a summary: his last dating scandal had ended badly and the repercussions of blowing off a famous celebrity’s daughter had finally caught up with him. The Internet was calling him arrogant, narrow-minded, and even greedy. “The young Chief Executive Officer of booming social media app DailyHive has been accused of using his relationship with actress XYZ to further his own business. Once he gained recognition from aforementioned relationship, he has cold-heartedly cast her away to pursue his next.” “You’re calling me for this bullshit?” Seokjin scoffs. Junho tuts his tongue loudly. “This is not bullshit. It’s affecting the image of your company. Do you think people want to download and support an app that is run by somebody who is being called cruel and dishonest? You’ve got to address this soon before it gets out of control. You’re lucky I have alerts set for these type of things. I caught it for you just in the nick of time.” Seokjin inhales deeply. “You’re also lucky that I’ve got the perfect solution in mind.” “That is?” “The Silver Gala,” Junho references the prestigious event. The Silver Gala is hosted annually and attended by the largest celebrities as well as other wealthy investors and guests. Those in the social circle shared between Seokjin and Junho often yearned for tickets to attend events such as this, as they serve as excellent networking opportunities. Besides the above, such events are circled by reporters and writers of gossip columns to get the exclusive scoop on any eyebrow-raising rumours. “The solution lies in such an event,” Junho continues, “You know how many people will be there. All you’ve got to do is show up with your average girl-next-door type and it’ll show how you’re actually really humble and down to earth. Kim Seokjin is perfectly capable of dating like any regular human being. He doesn’t use “love” or whatever to further his business. Love is the connection between two souls; two individuals who – ” “Beep. Your time has run out Junho. I’ve got another meeting scheduled right this moment,” Seokjin interrupts. “Dude, seriously. Think about it. You could bring Yerin. Everbody loves a good CEO and his secretary affair. And if that’s too juicy for you, I can introduce you to some girls. Or maybe we could go back to our university days and hit a bar, y’know?” Junho tries his best to persuade. “Fuck!” you swear beneath your breath right as you walk into Kim Seokjin’s office. His door had been open and, in your excitement to show your completed report, you had dropped all the loose papers on the ground. Four hours of organization gone, just like that. You hope that at least Seokjin hasn’t heard or noticed you as he had been engrossed in his phone call. Seokjin had in fact noticed you. He can’t help himself but follow the curvature of your bare shoulder as your bangs escape the hold of your scrunchie and sweep across your skin. “Don’t worry, Junho, I’ve just thought about it,” he says with a smile.

[disturbedbydesign]

The Widow and the Wolf - Chapter 3

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x dark!exWidow!reader

Summary: After Natasha Romanoff took down the Red Room, the former Widows scattered to the wind. Raised to be a killing machine and released into the world with nothing and no one, you decided to use your newfound autonomy to take down the bad guys of your choosing. But now Natasha is riddled with guilt for leaving you on your own. She wants to recruit you, rehabilitate you, make you part of a team again. But the rest of the squad has reservations, and no one is more against you than Bucky Barnes.

Warnings: Graphic violence; Mentions of domestic violence, rape, pedophilia, human trafficking, child sex trafficking; eventual Dubcon (not Bucky); eventual smut; slow(ish) burn enemies-to-lovers. [More warnings will be added as necessary but these are the Big Bads.] 18+ only, no minors.

If you prefer to read on AO3, you can do so here.

Chapter Three

If you had a home, it would be Bucharest, even though you despise the place. It was the first place you went when you got free, because you know he’s here somewhere, conducting his evil machinations from the shadows, shielded by layer after layer of vile men across the globe doing his dirty work. There are plenty of men out there deserving of your particular brand of justice, but no one more so than the Viper. Sometimes you think that, if you can just find him and take him out, you might be able to move on—try to make a normal life for yourself, whatever that looks like. You don’t allow yourself to think about what will happen if you finally achieve your life’s goal and it’s still not enough for you.

You remember everything about the day you learned of the Viper’s existence. You were just 7 years old, one of many little girls packed into a shipping container. You had no idea how long you’d been in there or how long you would be in there. It smelled rancid, and there was never a moment of quiet. Most of the girls were screaming or crying, but a few (like you) were silent, just observing. You don’t know who sold you from your orphanage and shipped you off to Dreykov and you never will. What you do know is that you had no family to miss and no one to miss you, so you didn’t understand what the others were so upset about. From the very beginning, you adjusted to life as a Widow almost effortlessly, which is its own form of tragedy.

Others, though, they were stolen away from people who loved them. This seemed a foreign concept to you when you heard about it from the tiny, sobbing girl huddled next to you in the shipping container—the girl who told you about the Viper, the girl who would become your first and only friend until Dreykov took control of all of your minds. Once you were given the serum, your memories were locked up inside your own heads—none of you could have talked about your past lives even if you’d wanted to. Your words were not your own. You didn’t know what was real and what was planted there. Sometimes you still don’t, and nothing terrifies you more than that.

You have no idea how many little girls the Viper funneled to Dreykov over the years, but it was probably a decent amount. His real bread and butter had always been sex trafficking, and he’s still doing it—on an even larger scale if your intel is correct (which, of course, it is). But he won’t be operating for much longer, not now that you’re so close you can almost taste the venom. You were barely 8 years old when you decided you would kill him, and now you have your chance. You are so close, closer than you’ve ever been, but he keeps slithering out of your grasp. And so you’re in Bucharest, again, looking for answers, again. But you have other business, too—almost as important, if not more so.

You head to the safehouse on the outskirts of the city. The building doesn’t look like much on the outside, but you’ve made sure the inside is comfortable enough for the women and children who live there. The matron greets you at the door and you hand her this month’s envelope, which contains enough cash to feed everyone for the next two months, keep the lights and the water on, and some extra to fix the plumbing issues that have been plaguing the building since you bought it.

The building can house about 40 people comfortably—it’s not nearly enough, and you’re determined to create as many safe spaces as you can, but it’ll do for now. For now, you have to select your charges according to a very strict criteria: they are all women and children (and the children of women) who have been bought and sold by the Viper. Some of them escaped on their own; some of them had assistance from you and the very few people you trust in the city. But all of them have suffered, and all of them have information that you need. Individually, it’s not much, but the more women you talk to, the more pieces of the puzzle you have to work with.

Besides for the cash drop, today you’re here to see the newest resident: Irina, a 19-year-old beauty your Bucharest contacts had managed to snatch from one of the sex clubs. Irina was delivered to the Viper at 12, and her life since then has been an endless nightmare that you can’t think about for too long without feeling physically ill. She’s sitting by the window in the living room, cupping a steaming mug of tea, when you approach her. You walk towards her slowly, and when Irina looks over at you, there is recognition in her eyes even though you’ve never met.

“You’re the Widow,” she says.

“Not anymore,” you reply. “But if that’s what you’d like to call me, go ahead. May I sit?” She gestures to the seat opposite her and you settle in for a chat. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Irina. Is that ok?”

“The others told me you’d be coming.” She speaks softly, her voice hoarse from screaming or crying or both. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’ll never catch him, you know.”

“I disagree,” you say, “but I need more information.”

“Alright,” she agrees, “if you think it will help,” and you begin the gentlest of interrogations.

Irina tells you that for the first several years after she was taken, she hadn’t heard anyone mention the Viper. She thinks that a lot of the girls probably knew about him or came directly from him, but no one would talk about it because it was too dangerous or traumatizing (or both). Things were different at her last club, though. When you ask her how many of the girls at Delirium knew about him, she tells you that several of them had passed through him somewhere along their journey. One of them—one far too young to be working there—even admitted that she’d been with him only two months earlier.

Finally, after all this time, you’ve got a clear line from point A to point B. You feel it in your bones that Delirium holds the answers, that if you can just get in and poke around a bit, you’ll be able to find him. You take Irina’s hands in yours and thank her for her help, and then you hear it: heavy footsteps coming down the hall. No woman or child in the building weighs enough to make a sound like that, and no men are allowed on the premises. You know who it is before you see him.

*****

Bucky watches you enter the building from his position on the roof across the street. His contact had told him that there were whispers of a Widow safehouse at this address, though no one would dare set foot within 10 blocks of the place to find out. Bucky doesn’t believe the rumor, though. He knows you work alone, that you pride yourself on it. He assumes this is just one of many places where your targets meet their ends, and he knows enough about Bucharest to know that there are a lot of men in this city who fit your modus operandi.

Still, something is off. It’s not an empty building. There have been women and children coming and going all morning, and nearly all the apartments seem occupied. Why would you choose to do your dirty work in a place with so much activity, with so many innocents around? That seems not only impractical but beneath even you. He’s lost in these thoughts, checking each window with his binoculars, when he settles on a beautiful young girl staring out the window, looking desperately sad. She turns to look at someone he can’t see, and then he sees you emerge from the shadows and take a seat opposite her.

There’s a softness to your face—a gentle kindness—that knocks the wind out of him. Bucky can’t take his eyes off of you, analyzing your body language and facial expressions to try to figure out what the hell is going on. This is the last thing he expected to see, and he tells himself that this woman must be hiring you for a job—except the woman is nothing but a broken child and doesn’t look like someone who would be taking out a hit on somebody (and certainly not someone who could pay for one).

It’s unnerving, watching you this way, and Bucky is no longer sure that what he’s doing is right. There’s something about your interaction with this girl that makes him feel like a voyeur, witnessing an intimate moment that he should not be seeing but that fascinates him nonetheless. Still, he’s here, you’re his mission—albeit one he took upon himself—and he needs to finish it. By this time, Natasha and Steve are almost certainly on their way, and Bucky needs to get to you before they show up. He went rogue and committed to this plan; now he just has to execute it. He’ll deal with the consequences later.

Bucky makes his way across the street and around the back, where children’s toys litter the small yard of weeds and dirt. When he gets to the back door, he notices that it isn’t the usual ancient rusted lock that one finds on the old buildings in this neighborhood; it’s brand new tech. There’s a pretty decent security camera setup around the building, too.

What the hell is this place?

Bucky has two choices: he can rip the door off the hinges, or he can scale the building and climb in the open window on the top floor. You’re going to be homicidally pissed either way, so he might as well not destroy any property—you may be a monster, but the other tenants here look like civilians, and he doesn’t want to sacrifice their security in his quest to bring you in.

Bucky makes it into the building and weaves his way through the hallways. Along the way, he runs into a few women, and each one of them freezes when they see him. They are shocked and deathly afraid—a look he knows far too well—and they scurry back to their apartments and lock the doors. With his hair cut short, baseball cap pulled down, and leather jacket and glove hiding his prosthetic, it doesn’t seem possible that all of these women would immediately recognize him as the Winter Soldier. That’s what it feels like to him, though, and it’s a gut-punch sensation he does not like at all.

When he gets to the sitting room, the girl you are with has the same look of terror, and for a moment, so do you. But you snap back to yourself quickly—having gone from soft to terrified to hostile within a span of about 15 seconds. Before he can react, you stomp towards him, grab him by the jacket, and hiss, “Not here.”

Bucky hears you speak to the girl in Romanian, “Don’t be afraid, Irina. He’s a friend,” although he knows you think him anything but.

The second you get him into the hallway, you’ve got your knife to his throat. Even with your cold blade nicking his skin, Bucky fights the impulse to disarm you. He doesn’t want to fight you. He knows that he’s intruded on something here, though he doesn’t know what, and he actually feels guilty. He could break you in half if he wanted to, but he lets you pin him to the wall—lets you feel like you’re in control.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” you growl.

“You know why I’m here,” Bucky replies, but he doesn’t know—not really, not anymore. “What is this place?”

“It’s somewhere safe,” you say, “or it was until you showed up. No boys allowed, Soldat. Time to go.”

You catch him off guard when you flip him around and throw him through the nearest door, and before he can regain his balance, you kick him straight through the window and into the yard two storeys below. The fall is nothing to Bucky, and he knows that you know that, but it certainly made a statement. He looks up at the broken window he’d just crashed through and sees you peering out with a satisfied smile on your face.

Bucky calls up to you, “I just want to talk.”

“Bullshit,” you snap.

“I mean it,” he says, and he actually does. “You can pick the place.”

He watches as you consider his offer, weighing your options—you obviously don’t trust him, but it’s clear that the sanctity of this location is important to you. Now that he’s violated it, you can’t just let him wander off. You agree to meet with him that evening—in public, at a club in Old Town.

“Come alone, Soldat,” you call down to him, “and if you tell anyone about this place, I’ll throw you out a higher window.”

Bucky tries to hide his tiny smile but he knows you see it, just like he sees the little quirk of your lip just before you disappear. He hoists himself off the ground and brushes himself off. When he turns to leave, he sees a little girl holding hands with her mother. He has no idea how long they’ve been standing there, but the girl is pointing and giggling at him.

The little girl asks, “What happened to him, mama?”

“The Widow’s bite,” she replies.

*****

“He’s not going to hurt her, Natasha,” Steve says as he prepares the Quinjet for landing.

“She might not give him a choice,” she replies, strapping herself in. “What the hell was he thinking coming here alone?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “There’s something about this girl that’s really gotten under his skin.”

Natasha looks at Steve, asking the question with her eyes she wouldn’t dare say aloud, and he picks up what she’s putting out.

“He’s not the Winter Soldier anymore. All of that programming… it’s gone. You know that. He’s just Bucky now.”

Natasha nods in agreement, but a part of her still has questions—not whether the deprogramming worked, she knows that it did, and she trusts Bucky with her life. No, Natasha’s concern is what is going on inside Bucky’s head. He was doing well, he was adjusting, he was finally ok, but the existence of you seems to have triggered something in him that the words never had. The words made him cold and empty and ready to comply, but you—you make him think, and Natasha knows how dangerous it can be to dwell too much on things you’ve left in the past.

When Steve and Natasha arrive at Bucky’s old apartment, it’s empty, but there are small signs of life—the indent of a head on the pillow on the floor in the corner, an apple core just starting to brown. He’s been there, and recently. Natasha and Steve don’t know who he would still have contact with in Bucharest, so they are left with nothing to go on. Bucky knows how to cover his tracks, and he left them just enough crumbs to get them to Bucharest but not enough that they could find him when they got there.

“He wants us to trust him,” Steve says, “to wait for him to bring her back here.”

“I can’t just sit around waiting for something to happen, Steve. I have a really bad feeling about this.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Steve asks.

Natasha sighs and looks out the window. “I have no idea,” she replies, and that’s when she sees it: a piece of graffiti spraypainted on the wall of a building down the street—a coiled snake ready to strike.

The memory hits Natasha like a freight train. She knows that symbol. She knows what it means. She knows exactly who you’re looking for and it seems absurd to her now that she hadn’t thought of it before.

“Let me make a call,” she says. “I think I know why she’s here.”

[weighty-ghosts]

‘Coppertone’ (wolfstar)

Coppertone, by weightyghosts

“Sirius had just settled in for a normal, quiet evening with his dog and a nice cup of tea. Then he answered the phone.”

Rating: teen

Word count: 3200

Pairing: Remus x Sirius

Published: January 8, 2022

Warnings: none

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36282718 

     Sirius had just collapsed onto his couch with a hot cup of tea when he felt a buzzing in his pocket. He grumbled at the disturbance and switched the mug to his other hand so he could pull out his phone, answering it without looking at the screen.

“Hello?”

“Hi there, is this Sirius?”

“Uh- yes,” he replied, lowering the tea that he’d been about to take a sip of. He didn’t recognize the voice on the other end, but they had a thick accent that was smooth and honeyed, and for some reason visions of Welsh men on horseback sprung involuntarily into his mind. “Who’s this?”

“Oh, my name is Remus-”

Remus? The Welsh men on horseback were suddenly shirtless and sun-kissed.

Sirius really hoped this wasn’t a bank he didn’t belong to calling to inform him he had missed a payment on his credit card; or someone calling to get rid of the supposed viruses on Sirius’ laptop that his very expensive firmware somehow didn’t catch; or someone asking to borrow five-thousand dollars for their sick mother and they promised to give him ten-thousand in return; or-

“I’m calling because I would like to adopt your dog?”

Any thoughts of scams, as well as the Welsh men, vanished as quickly as Sirius’ ex-boyfriend had a year ago. He blinked, then pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the screen, which only displayed a phone number that he didn’t recognize.

“Pardon me?” he asked the stranger.

“I saw that you’re looking to adopt out your dog,” the man on the other end explained, “I’d be happy to take him; one of my dogs just passed and I think the other has been lonely.”

“What? I think you have the wrong number, man,” Sirius sighed regretfully, slouching back into the couch.

“Didn’t you say this was Sirius?”

Oh. “Yes-” he frowned, “How do you know my name?”

“And the dog is Padfoot?”

Sirius glanced up to where the door to his bedroom was ajar. Padfoot was passed out on Sirius’ bed, all four legs in the air as any dog with no dignity preferred to sleep. “How do you know my dog’s-”

Sirius jolted as his phone suddenly vibrated against his face. He held it out again to look at who was calling, but it was an unknown number again.

“Sorry, I’m getting another…” Sirius paused. He should probably hang up on this person, who was likely a stalker or insane, but with a voice like that, and with how long it’d been since he’d gone on a date, he was willing to find out. He could probably work with stalker. “Can you just… hold on a sec?”

“Sure.”

Sirius answered the other call and was met with a cheery, feminine voice.

“Hi!” Excitement rang through the phone, “Is this Sirius?”

He was starting to get a bad feeling about this. “Yes?” he responded with a wary question of his own, setting his tea down on the coffee table. Apparently this was his evening now.

“Oh my god,” the woman shrieked into his ear, “Your dog is so cute! I’ve always wanted a big puppy! Can I come pick him up tomorrow?”

“What?” His voice came out a moment later, volume higher than he’d intended. Padfoot abruptly whipped onto his belly and blinked sleepily at Sirius, confusion now matching his owner’s. “No, you may not come and pick up my dog!”

“But he needs to be adopt-”

“My dog is not up for adoption!” Sirius refuted before the ridiculous sentence could be completed.

“But the ad said-”

“What ad?!” Sirius bellowed, officially having had enough of this. “Listen lady, I am not giving up my dog. End of story.”

“No need to be rude,” the woman snapped. And then, because apparently Sirius had grossly underestimated how completely unhinged this conversation was, she added, “At least I still have a nice ass!”

He blinked twice. “What the f-”  

She hung up on him before he could finish.

A growl of frustration rang through the room as he tossed his phone on the couch beside him, wondering what in God’s name that was about. He ran a hand through his hair and stared incredulously at Padfoot, who yawned, lay his head on his paws, and sent Sirius a dirty look for waking him when there was clearly no imminent danger. Or treats. The absolute gall.

“Hello? Hello?” Sirius heard a faint voice from the empty couch beside him.

He reached for his phone and saw that the call was still going with the first mystery caller– Remus, he’d said his name was.

“Sorry, yes,” Sirius answered, rubbing his temple, “I’m here.”

“Oh, hi-”

“Why are people asking to adopt my dog?” He demanded to know.

“Your dog is Padfoot?” Remus asked, “Five-year-old black Belgian Sheepdog?”

“Yes! That’s my dog!”

“There’s an ad on Kijiji to adopt him.”

“What-”

Sirius looked around him, as if an explanation would be conveniently sitting on a shelf or chair nearby. “I did not post an ad on Kijiji!”

“Hold on…” The man paused, and Sirius heard some rustling, then his voice sounded slightly further away, as if he were holding his phone away from his mouth. “Here,” he began, “It says, ‘Looking for a new home for my dog, Padfoot, a five-year-old black Belgian Sheepdog. Well-behaved, mild-mannered, and low energy-”

Sirius snorted at that complete falsity.

Padfoot raised his head, tilting it to the side with narrowed eyes– like he knew Sirius was mocking him.

“I’ll miss him dearly,” Remus kept reading, “But since my botched bum implants (stay far away from Dr. Pettigrew!!!) and the corrective plastic surgery I subsequently need, I can no longer afford a dog-”

“I- But- I don’t- what-” Sirius spluttered indignantly.

And then the realization set in.

Oh. Sirius was going to kill him.

The man on the phone cleared his voice awkwardly. “Padfoot sleeps on the floor,” he continued, brave soul that he was, “Isn’t allowed on any furniture (definitely not on any beds, as that’s very unsanitary), and I hope that his new owner will continue this way.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and let out another noise of exasperation. Padfoot had decided something was clearly going on that he didn’t want to miss out on, so he stood, stretched rather dramatically, and hopped off the bed before bounding over to his beloved owner.

“Someone with dog training experience is preferred; Padfoot needs a firm authoritarian to keep him submissive, something that I failed spectacularly at, since–” there was a hesitant pause, “–since I’ve never been much of a dom myself.”

Sirius let out a weird choking noise.

He was going to absolutely kill him.

“Please contact Sirius at 647-555-4318, or alternatively, find me all day long at Flash, the strip club on Church!”

A long moment of silence followed, broken only by the sound of Padfoot sighing as he sat next to Sirius’ feet. And bless this Remus guy for putting the emphasis on that last line; Sirius could practically hear the exclamation point at the conclusion of the ad. Excellent.

“Hello?” the man asked tentatively.

“Mmh,” Sirius grumbled in reply, distracted by thoughts of all the different ways he was going to murder his best friend.

“I’m going to go ahead and guess someone’s taking the piss?”

“Mmh.”

Remus chuckled, and Sirius couldn’t help but notice what a sweet sound it was.

“Should’ve known. That actually sounds like something my mate would do,” Remus said, his voice full of annoyance and fondness– two emotions Sirius was very used to feeling at the same time during his long friendship with James Potter. “A few weeks ago she changed my birthday on Facebook to that same day, and I was inundated with messages and phone calls, people apologizing for forgetting.”

Sirius cracked a smile, deciding he could think about revenge later. He’d rather find out more about this intriguing stranger. “That’s pretty funny.”

Remus snorted. “My mum didn’t think so when my grandmother called her in tears because she felt terrible for not sending me a birthday card.”

“Your grandmother has Facebook?”

“Yes, she’s very hip. Self-described.”

“Ah,” Sirius smiled, “And she usually sends a card?”

“Without fail… until this year, of course. But honestly I think she was more upset that she hadn’t received an invitation to my nonexistent birthday party.”

“Your poor grandmother,” Sirius snickered, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice. “Was your friend apologetic at all?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Padfoot tilted his head at Sirius’ laughter, then scooched forward to rest his chin on Sirius’ knee, his big puppy eyes staring up lovingly at his owner.

“I should definitely introduce her to my best friend,” Sirius mused, picking up his tea and settling comfortably into the sofa, “The two of them together would be diabolical.”

“Is that really something we want, though?”

“Oh, we would have to form our own alliance to eventually take them down,” Sirius quipped, noting how effortless this exchange had become, “The war would rage for years, but I have no doubt we would come out of it victorious.”

Remus hummed, sounding as if he were smiling. “Quite a bold move planning our future together, considering we’ve never met and have only been speaking for a few minutes.”

“It’s been at least ten minutes,” Sirius stated without missing a beat, “That’s plenty of time to get to know someone well enough to plan a future together.”

There was a brief pause. “You don’t even know what I look like.”

“True, but neither do you.”

Though, it was a solid point… and come to think of it, Sirius had no idea how old this person was or whether he would even be attracted to them. He figured he should probably keep the flirting to a minimum, just in case.

On the other hand… the man was funny and sweet, that much had already been established. So, if it turned out he was only eighteen-years-old or had a hunchback or something, Sirius would still want to be friends. Or at least their dogs could be friends. Thankfully he didn’t sound that young. Or like he lived in a Parisian bell tower.

“I do know what you look like, actually,” Remus then supplied, “There was a photo with the ad.”

“What?!” Sirius shouted, nearly spilling his tea as he sat up.

He’d assumed there might have been a photo of Padfoot, but he was shocked that James would cross the line of posting a picture of him on the internet without his consent. He put his phone on speaker, while carefully setting back down his mug of now-lukewarm tea. Padfoot immediately nudged his newly-freed hand and Sirius absentmindedly scratched behind his ears as he opened the browser on his phone.

“Yeah,” Remus confirmed, “Not sure if it’s from before or after the bum implants, but your bum looked great to me.”

“I do not have bum implants,” Sirius grumbled automatically, more fixated on typing ‘Padfoot’ in the search bar on Kijiji than anything else, “Or any kind of implants for that matter.”

“Hm, I don’t think I know you well enough to take your word for it. I’ll probably have to see for myself.”

Sirius’ fingers froze just as he’d tapped on the ad. Did this stranger just say he wants to see his bum?

Damn.

The visions of Welsh men were back. Muscled. Shirtless. Welsh men. And those accents–

“Sorry,” Remus rushed to say after receiving no response, “That was a bit forward.”

“That…that’s alright,” Sirius choked out. He bit his lip and shook his head a little to clear the images in there. “I was planning our future together a moment ago so…I’d say we’re past ‘forward’ now, eh?”

Sirius heard Remus breathe a sigh of relief and chuckle. “I suppose we are. But before this goes any further, I really have to ask… Do you actually have all those strict rules for your dog?”

Sirius let out a noise that was a clear indication of what his answer was. “No, that was all crap. Padfoot is absolutely wild, full of energy, cheeky beyond belief, and I couldn’t stop him from jumping on the furniture even if I tried. He sleeps quite literally on top of me.”

“Good to know.”

“Were you really going to follow all those rules?”

“God, no. Only a sociopath wouldn’t let his dog sleep in his bed.”

“Good to know,” Sirius echoed with a chuckle.

They lapsed into silence and Sirius glanced around the room, trying to think of what to say. Then he realized his phone was still open on the ad. He scrolled past the description to the first photo and–

“Oh my god…” He groaned, feeling his cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“What?” Remus’ curious voice came through, “Oh– did you just see the photo of yourself?”

“Yup,” Sirius replied, really letting the word enthusiastically pop out of his mouth.

The photo in question was from about a year ago when he, James, and a few other guys had gone to Wasaga Beach for the weekend. Sirius had brought Padfoot, and on their second day, James had thought it would be funny to put a slice of bacon in the back pocket of Sirius’ bathing suit.

The photo was of Sirius dropping an armful of drinks all over himself as he grabbed the front of his shorts to stop from flashing the entire beach, while Padfoot was clamped down on the back pocket, successfully pulling the trunks below Sirius’ pale ass.

To make it even better, their friend Pete had shot the photo from the side, so there was a perfect view of Sirius’ round cheeks, as well as the comical expression of horror on his face as he turned his head around towards his mischievous dog.

Thankfully, James had had the decency to crop the picture above his neck. What a guy.

Sirius was brought back to the present by the sound of quiet laughter.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I’m looking at it again,” Remus snickered, “Had to choose between all those drinks and keeping your trunks up, did you?”

“Wasn’t much of a freaking choice!” The words erupted out of Sirius’ mouth, “There were women and children around! I didn’t want to scar anyone! Or get arrested!”

Remus‘ laughter was muffled, sounding as though he’d covered his mouth to silence himself. It didn’t work, and the man descended into a fit of giggling. Remus attempted to control his voice enough to apologize, and Sirius thought that was incredibly endearing, even as he burst out laughing as well.

Padfoot lifted his head from Sirius’ knee and placed a paw there instead, wanting to remind Sirius that he was, in fact, a very good boy who deserved much more attention than he was receiving at present. Sirius couldn’t argue with that, and he patted his head fondly, as the conversation between the two men seemed to be quieting down.

“I’m going to have fun planning my revenge on James,” Sirius then announced with purpose.

“Just don’t murder him until after he meets my mate Lily,” Remus said, “I’m curious to see how they’d react to each other.”

“Alright,” Sirius smiled. He supposed that meant he would also get to meet Remus. He immediately wondered how soon that could be.

There were a few beats of silence, until, “Well…” Remus started, “I guess if you’re not looking to rehome your dog then I don’t really have a reason to be ringing you anymore… so I should probably go?”

“Oh.” And oof, Sirius cringed at how disappointed he sounded.

“But-” Remus hastened to say, and Sirius felt himself perk up, “Do you know the dog park at Trinity Bellwoods? Maybe we– maybe our dogs can meet up? For a playdate?”

“Oh,” Sirius said more brightly, “Well it’s a bit of a hike for me-”

“Right, of course, don’t worry about it then, I wouldn’t want to put you out-”

“No, I want to go!” Sirius interrupted. It was far for him to get to that part of Toronto, but he didn’t want Remus to think that was an excuse to blow him off. “I mean, I’ve actually been meaning to find a new dog park. The one Padfoot and I go to now is a bit sketchy… Full of unsavoury types, you know?”

Remus hummed seriously. “Chihuahuas.”

“What?” Sirius snorted with surprise, “What do you have against chihuahuas?”

“I don’t trust those beady little eyes.”

“Well I happen to think they’re adorable.”

“Ah, right, yeah, no, very adorable, of course.” A short pause. “Cutest dogs around.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow, even though Remus couldn’t see him. “You don’t have to agree with me just to be nice, you know.”

“Oh good,” Remus said with something like a sigh of relief, “Because I happen to think chihuahuas are the creepiest looking dogs on the planet.”

Sirius laughed. He glanced at Padfoot, who stuck his tongue out to the side so he could pant, even though he’d been doing nothing but sitting and sleeping for the last three hours. What a life.

“Alright, then, maybe I’ll see you…this weekend? At the park?” Sirius put out hopefully.

“Yeah we’re usually there around three on Saturdays and Sundays.”

“Does that sound good, Pads?” Sirius turned his attention to his grateful pup, his voice unwittingly taking on a goofy tone, “New dog park? New friends?”

Padfoot let out a loud, happy bark, then the two of them heard two deep barks on the other end of the phone. Padfoot was immediately on high alert, jumping halfway onto Sirius to get to the phone, sniffing it wildly.

“Ugh, you oaf!” Sirius groaned as Padfoot’s paws dug into the soft tissue of his stomach.

“Sorry,” Remus laughed, “That was Moony. You’re on speakerphone and he got very excited when he heard Padfoot.”

“That’s what’s happening over here!”

There were scratchy sniffing and snorting sounds on the other end of the line, as if Moony was also looking for the source of the barks inside the phone. Padfoot’s tail was wagging a mile a minute, as he clambered further on top of Sirius. Best friends already, apparently. A paw thumped dangerously close to some body parts Sirius was particularly fond of, and he decided that was enough.

“Padfoot, off!” He commanded sternly, then immediately softened his voice before speaking into his phone again, “Remus, I’m sorry, I have to go before he crushes me to death.”

Remus laughed. “No problem. Erm,” he hesitated, “It was nice…meeting you? Sort of?”

Sirius grinned. “It was nice meeting you sort of too.”

“Bye, then.”

“Bye, then.”

Sirius waited a breath before ending the call. He leaned back on the couch and fiddled with his phone in his hand, unable to keep the smile off his face. There was a whine from the dog who had chosen to freeze in place instead of actually getting off of Sirius like he’d commanded. Sirius rolled his eyes, patting the couch beside him. Padfoot leapt up the rest of the way and plopped himself right over Sirius’ lap.

“You excited to make a new friend? Maybe even get yourself a boyfriend?”  

Padfoot rolled onto his back, his tongue happily lolling to the side, and prepared for belly rubs.

“Me too, Pads,” Sirius smiled at him, “Me too.”

~

[liquid-luck-00]

My Life is One Complication After Another

Inspired by this post by @dolphin-ghost

Happy New Year everyone

Some cursing ����

Ao3 ~~~ Part 1 ~~~ Next

~~~~~~~~~~

Marinette has always been willing to give everyone a second chance. That may have been why she still had people to consider them as her friends. That is why when Lila started yet another lie about some celebrity she, Adrien, Chloe, and Juleka were holding their laughter and rolled their eyes.

"Honest Alya I'm like this" Lila crossed her fingers "with Bruce's kids." Alya must not have recognized the name as the liar gave a small laugh "oh, right Bruce Wayne, he prefers to only go by Bruce."

"Oh my God, Girl you have got to give me an interview for my blog!" Alya lapped up the story.

"Of course" Lila smiled, then looked over at Marinette "Anything for my best friend."

At this point, Marinette wasn't paying attention to the liar. Instead Mari was talking in low voices with her actual best friend, Adrien. They sat on the very back bench and Juleka and Chloe on the bench in front of them.

That was their normal, it had been since their eighth year. Now two years later it was routine, her classmates shunned her only talking with her for class assignments. Otherwise they ignored her and that may just have been the best outcome.

She, Chloe, Juleka, Luka, and Adrien were in the park working on a photoshoot. Adrien was behind the camera while Juleka and Luka were modeling. Marinette and Chloe were changing for the next set. When they came out Mari noticed several reporters around the perimeter. Security had them handled and she focused on modeling her creation.

However this wasn't the last she saw of the reporters. They were always at the school questioning the students. What they were asking she didn't know as she was never questioned.

Three weeks of spotting and avoiding reporters, with them swarming the school she needed to get creative in order to transform. Lila was of course bathing in the limelight and attention.

Mari was the last person out of the school as she was getting the homework for her three friends who didn't come today. The first thing she noticed coming out of the courtyard was the purple limo. Her honorary uncle came to pick her up. As soon as the door closed said uncle was crushing her in a hug.

"It's Rock' n to see ya Nettie" Jagged spoke, the hug muffling his voice slightly.

"Same here Jagged," wiggling out of Jagged's hug she reached over to hug Penny. "so what's with the escort?"

"A close friend of ours wanted to meet you and He and his son's are waiting at our room," Penny explained.

"Okay..." she hesitated exiting the car to head inside "but why? Is this a commission or what?"

After a silent elevator ride, Penny hesitated at the door before speaking. "We are hoping you could clear something up actually," as she opened the door.

Mari stepped in and noticed them. The eldest looked to be around mid to late thirties, black hair and bluebell eyes, dressed in a dark charcoal suit.

The youngest of the boys seemed to be a couple years younger than her, shorter than her by a head, tanned skin, short black hair, and jade eyes. A scowl on his face partially hidden by the collar of a black peacoat and slacks as he sat on the arm chair.

A boy around her age with chin length black hair and azure eyes, a red hoodie under a grey bomber jacket and black pants. He looked like he hadn't slept in at least a week, and if how he was holding the travel mug in his hands it was probably true.

Next to him was another boy who looked a couple of years older, black messy hair about 5 cm at the longest and a white tuff in front, cerulean eyes, a brown leather jacket and distressed jeans. He seemed familiar but couldn't place it.

The last boy also had long black hair but seemed to be layered and shorter in the front, sky blue eyes, a blue varsity jacket and jeans. He would either be the eldest or second, he had a bright smile but kept shooting a glance at Fang.

Speaking of which once she was in the room and she saw him, he charged at her, knocking her over. Mari was giggling as Fang rolled over and she was lost to the world as she doted on the crocodile.

"Nettie" Penny finally managed to get her attention.

"Sorry," she stood "but if it wasn't done we wouldn't be able to talk. Hello I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng it is nice to meet you." again she smiled.

"Bruce Wayne" the man introduced himself, "and my sons. My youngest Damian." he gestured to the boy with green eyes. "Next is Tim" gesturing to the boy with the mug who rose it in acknowledgment. "Jason is the second oldest" the boy with the white tuff gave a lop sided smile. "And my eldest Dick" whose smile seemed to become brighter.

She smiled nodding at everyone before realization hit. A quick snap of her fingers before pulling out her phone, opened up her texts and started typing, ending with a quick picture of Jason.

I think I just met your idiot friend

She put away her phone. Not even a minute later another went off.

The ringing stopped once, twice, thrice, and on the fourth Jason, spoke up. "Sorry I should take this."

"Go ahead this can wait a moment." Mari smiled.

As soon as Jason answered the phone "What the hell are you doing in Paris!?" everyone heard the caller as Jason was holding the phone an arm length away.

"How did you know... you?!" it dawned on Jason.

"Guilty," she smiled. "I guess you're not as big of an idiot as Roy made you out to be."

"Hey!" Jason called before turning to the phone. "What the hell did you tell her Harper!" By now Roy was on speaker.

"You can't prove what I said, ya know," she could practically see Roy's smirk.

"Video's however," she was now smirking.

"What!!" Jason seemed to freeze.

"Bug! No!" Roy was sounding like he was going to start panicking.

"I think I have a few saved," she tapped her chin.

That was when Bruce cleared his throat. "As amusing as this is we have business to discuss."

"Talk to ya later Mari." Roy bid her farewell. "Oh and Jason don't underestimate her." the call ended.

"Okay so how do you know Roy?" Dick finally asked.

"Oh. It was at a charity ball hosted by Oliver Queen," she replied nonchalantly.

"Was it the same one where a baby elephant ended up at the event. Following you the whole time." Penny asked exasperated.

"I still don't get how you think we had anything to do with that." Marinette finally sat down. She ended up sitting on the ground leaning against the couch next to Jagged, Fang resting his head on her out stretched legs.

"I have so many questions,” Tim finally added to the conversation.

"Tt. can we stop beating around the bush already," Damian was irritated and it showed. "Are you or are you not my biological sister."

He seemed ready to pounce, unfortunately that was dangerous in Paris. Especially as she saw an akuma right outside the window. The question asked now forgotten as she focused on the corrupted butterfly.

"Nope, Nope. I am not dealing with an akuma today." she stood up. Took a deep breath and let her anger and frustrations to the surface. The smile fell from her face. "If you want a puppet have a marionette" Kwamii Adrien is rubbing off on me.

The butterfly changed targets and was heading towards her, finally gaining the other's attention. She vaulted over the couch and made a beeline to her backpack. By then the akuma was close so she tossed the backpack over to everyone and rolled out of the way.

"Glass jar, unscrew it" she called out.

"How pathetic running from a bug." Damian moved quickly to catch the butterfly but it moved and found something in his pocket. He was engulfed in purple and then he stood there in evergreen armor with golden accents. A red and yellow cape and a pitch black sword in his hand. Pocket knife, the sword is where the akuma is.

"Screw it" she turned and with two quick jabs his two arms went limp. A third knocked him to the ground.

She picked up the sword and went to Dick who was holding the jar. She took the jar, broke the sword, and went to catch the butterfly. As soon as she screwed the lid on the butterfly began to turn white.

She let out the breath she was holding as she compartmentalized her emotions yet again.

"What the fuck was that!" Jason screamed and so did Dick, minus the curse.

"Where and why do you have one of those," Jagged asked.

Finally Damian shouted "Why can I not move? What did you do?" he accused.

"Okay so the butterfly was an akuma used by Hawkmoth, Paris’ villain, to manipulate anyone with strong negative emotions. These champions or Akuma are used to attempt to retrieve magical jewels from our heroes. The jar was given to me and a few others in my class, because our class is a hot bed for akuma, by Ladybug, one of the heroes." she gave a short and simple run down. "As for Damian, those were a series of pressure points,” infused with magic to-take down people easily, "it should wear off in a few minutes."

"Teach me please!" Tim begged.

"I dunno." she started to chew her lip and shift her weight.

"Roy's warning now makes a lot more sense," Jason hummed.

"Tt. adequate," Damian muttered softly, Marinette is sure she is the only one who heard.

"Okay so where were we?" she smiled turning and sitting back down with Fang.

Next

~~~~~~~~~~

Taglist: @dolphin-ghost @unabashedbookworm @bookgirl14 @laurcad123 @mochegato @vixen-uchiha

[ellana-ravenwood]

The day he understood what Death means - Batfam x Fem!Reader

Synopsis : The youngest Wayne makes a shocking discovery...And will need his parents, siblings, and the one and only Alfred, to recover from it. /Drabble.

I don’t know. I was thinking about this. How when you’re a kid, realizing that one day you’ll die, but worst, that the people you love will die, is sort of traumatic...And wanted to write about it. So. Here we are, with little Thomas eh. I hope you will like it :) :

My masterlists blog : @ella-ravenwood-archives​

__________________________________________________

If you have no idea who Thomas is, he appears in those stories (long story short he’s the youngest kiddo, biological of Batmom and Bruce) : The Great Mall adventure, Master of Diaper Shaky steps and bad teaching, Polichinelle, “Go away, you’re confusing my baby”, Wild Child 2, “We want them back”, How do you make babies ?“ and Mom got lost again”

                                                   ******

Realizing your loved ones are not immortal for the first time can be traumatic. 

Especially if they’re amazing, if they’re your heroes, if you admire them beyond all measure, if they love you unconditionally just like you love them so damn much, and if you can’t even imagine your life without seeing them every day.

If you can’t even fathom the fact that maybe, one day, they won’t be there when you wake up and go look for them. And that they will never be there again. 

And so it was particularly quite the shocking discovery for little Thomas Clark Wayne, 5 and a half years old, to find out about that certain thing called...”Death”. 

It happened on a moody, rainy Summer day. The weather outside was awful, even for Gotham City. And it meant that Thomas was calmly playing inside, rather than getting up to some shenanigans in the garden. 

His parents were home, it was one of those rare day they both had off. 

Which always filled little Tommy with joy. It wasn’t often he could get them both with him !! In the end, the fact it was rainy outside was good. It meant they’d probably all snuggle up later in the day, and watch a film, a mug of hot cocoa in their hands. 

You would probably throw a blanket over him, and keep him close, sandwiched between you and his dad. His father would fall asleep half-way through the film, which would annoy you and Damian. 

Damian would join for sure. Sitting next to you. Yes. He would. Maybe Tim too, if he wasn’t too busy with college ? Oh he would surely make the time to come. And Cass ? Yes. Yes Cass would be there, sitting in her usual spot, on the floor right in front of you (or maybe Tommy). Because she knew you’d gently run your hand through her hair, and your youngest son slowly took the habit to do the same. Which was so soothing to Cass...Duke would certainly be there, he never said no to a good movie. 

Maybe, because it was a rainy day, Dick and Jason would come too ? Unlikely, but Thomas could hope. He loved having his entire family in one spot. 

They’d ask him to do his “puppy eyes” and convince Alfred to join them too, and not work. 

Alfred had an armchair reserved just for him. Right next to the couch where Bruce would sit, leaving enough space for Ace to lay down (Damian’s dog, Titus, always preferred to be near his master, who would more often than not be sitting next to you, laying his head on your shoulder, even as he was not a child anymore...Yes, Titus sat next to Cass, at Damian’s feet, letting his head fall down in Cass’ laps). 

Ace...Ace didn’t feel well yesterday, and this morning, the “dog doctor” came. 

Thomas heard him say they needed to give him a...an “indection” or something ? (An injection, really) So he’d probably get better. Shots were supposed to get you better or to avoid you getting sick, that’s what you told him. 

His dad looked upset, but it didn’t alarm Thomas much. Because his dad was always upset when him or his siblings would get a shot, he hated going, so it was probably the same thing. 

Come to think of it, Thomas hadn’t seen Ace since the “vekerinarianan” (or whatever it was pronounced) came earlier in the day. 

He suddenly wanted some “doggle” (dog cuddles), and so he put down the toys he was playing with, and went to look for him. 

Maybe, he could also round up the rest of his family so they’d start movie time earlier ? 

Hyped to have some family time, as he considered his dogs family for sure, he went on the hunt to find Ace, and gather everyone else. 

If only. If only he had known...

************

“Aaaace !! Aaace ? Ace boy, where are you ?” 

This was odd. Usually, Ace would come running if he heard the little one’s voice. That dog loved children, and he made it his mission to protect all of them (bonus point if he had some snuggle, and a few treats, while doing it). 

Bruce told him long ago to protect his kids...So Ace was always there. 

Maybe he wanted to play hide and seek ? Thomas would play that game with Titus and Damian, Ace never seemed very interested, but maybe he changed his mind ? 

“Ace ? Aaaacceeee ?” 

The boy roamed the manor, but every room Ace would usually hang in were empty. 

Finally, he decided he’d ask his parents, who would usually hang out in...oh, they weren’t in their usual spot either. In their bedroom, maybe ? 

Thomas ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, sure that he would find Ace, and his parents, asleep in the master’s bedroom. When they had their day off, his mama and daddy would often take long naps together.  

Thomas immediately knew something was wrong when the door to the room was wide open. Slowly, he approached the place and...surely his parents were there. 

But something was off. 

His dad was laying in the bed, back to the door, his head laid in your lap. One of your hand was caressing his head soothingly, while the other was drawing calming circles on his back. 

Definitely something was not normal. You’d do that to your kids when they were sad, or sick...Was daddy sick ?! This gave Thomas a little fright. 

You whisper something into Bruce’s ears, and he doesn’t answer, just shaking his head to say “yes”. And so you stand up, after giving him a kiss on the cheek, and...You spot your youngest son. 

You smiled at him reassuringly, and go to him. 

“Hey little buddy. You should give a big hug to Daddy, he’s very sad today.” 

You say, walking past him and ruffling his hair. 

From the direction you were taking, you were going to the kitchen, and Thomas just instantly assumed you were going to brew some tea for his dad. When Bruce was sad, you’d always brew some tea for him, from his mother’s garden (which was kept up nice and clean by you and Alfred, now). 

Worried about his dad, Thomas slowly walked to him and climbed on the big bed. Bruce turned around to see what this new weight was, as he knew you had just left and...He smiled. 

Of this wide pure genuine smile he gave his family only. 

But there was a hint of sadness behind his eyes, and Thomas didn’t like that one bit. So the little boy crawled to his dad, and nestled next to him, wrapping his little arms around his dad’s neck and holding tightly. 

Bruce engulfed his son in his own arms, holding onto the little one, burrying his face in his hair. There was always something comforting, in the smell his kiddo had. It was a mix of your smell, which was always soothing to him, but also something more...Something soft and sweet. 

Just like his son. 

Little Thomas was the epitome of a sweet child. It was a miracle, a man like him made a child this cute and happy. Ah, but he wasn’t raising him alone of course. There was you, and his siblings, and Alfred... 

After a pause of the little boy holding his dad, he whispered slowly : 

“Daddy, why are you sad Daddy ? Please don’t be sad, it makes me sad too.”

Thomas unwrapped his arms from around his dad’s neck, and squished his little hands on Bruce’s cheeks. Which made Bruce sigh fondly, chuckling a little as he said, honestly (he shouldn’t hide this sort of things) : 

“Because Ace is gone.”  

There’s another silence, during which Thomas tries to understand why is the fact Ace went somewhere so sad. He cannot figure it out, so he asks : 

“But, he’ll come back daddy. Like always. Yes ? Ace is a good boy.” 

“Was.”

Bruce is clumsy in his grief. He always been. He’s not sure how to broach the subject to his son, how to explain to him their dog was just too old and sick to make it...He doesn’t know how to explain death to him. 

“Was ?” 

“Ace is gone for good.” 

“What do you mean Daddy ? Where did he go ? Why couldn’t we see him again ? Did he move out, like Dick ?” 

Oh. Oh the sweet innocence of a child that is maybe a little too sheltered by his family (he’s the youngest, the one they’re trying to keep away from the horror they see every day as much as they can...Although he’s still trained, all of them hope he will never become a Robin, or worst, a Batman). 

“Did he move out, like Dick ?” 

Sweet, sweet Thomas. Not able to even fathom that Ace is never coming back...and why would he ? How could he know what his father meant ? 

“No, no he didn't move out. He left us, to a place we can’t follow him to.” 

Another short pause. And you could see the gears in little Thomas’ head turning. After a little bit, he asks :

“...The toilets ?”

This makes his father chuckle, even in this sad times. But he continues : 

“No. Not the toilets. He...He went really far away, where we can’t ever see him again.” 

This idea is so foreign to your son, that he raises himself on one of his elbow and exclaims : 

“Why would he do that ? Does he not love us anymore ?” 

Obviously, the thought is distressing to the little bird. So Bruce says : 

“No no no, of course he still loves us...loved, us. But he had to go.”

“But why ?” 

“Because he was getting very old, and sick.”

“But we don't mind daddy, right ? We don’t mind ? He doesn't have to go away for that, I don’t care if he doesn’t play like he used to, I want him to stay ! Tell him daddy, call him on the phone to tell him to come back.” 

Bruce is lost. How ? How can he explains what death means ? He thought about this moment coming many times, but never told him anything as he thought that he had time to know what it meant. He had time...

How do you tell a child that one of his favorite “person” in the world is dead ?

“Unfortunately buddy, we have some sad news.”

His savior. You, as usual. With two cups of tea, and a cup of hot cocoa on a tray. As you went downstairs to get some “pick me up” for Bruce, you knew your son was gonna need it too. 

“What news mama ?” 

“Ace. He died today.” 

You actually thought about it as you were preparing everything for them. How to talk about this ? You decided to go with “honesty”. Not brutal honesty though. You weren’t about to traumatize your son. 

But you thought it was important he knew what happened to Ace. As a child, you hated how your brothers tried to make you think your ferret ran away to Las Vegas or something of the like. 

You understood this sentiment, of course. But you also remembered how betrayed you felt when you finally understood “death” and realized your beloved Mister Will Ferret was NOT in Sin City having fun, but just died...

The truth was important. 

Especially about such subjects. 

Children weren’t dumb. And they had every right to know certain truth.

Did you wish your son could stay innocent for longer ? Of course. But he still had a right to know what happened to his dog. To be treated like a person and be explained things. 

People, too often, treats children as some kind of idiots who wouldn’t comprehend complex things anyway, and who have to be protected at all cost from anything...

Kids were clever. You had a bunch of them to prove it so. But above that, although you agreed kids had to be protected...You weren't one of those person who thought you should lie to your children in order to do so. 

 Because one day, he’ll know what death is. He’ll know what happened to Ace. And what if the fact you lied that day, settles a slight distrust in him towards anything you’ll ever tell him ? Just like it did with you and your brothers ? 

No. You thought at first it was a good idea to delay such a conversation. But why ? Because it would make you more comfortable ? That didn’t sound very fair in regard of your boy.

Everyone always talked about “the birds and the bees” talk, but never about something that was even more inescapable than that...

Death. 

You give him a few seconds to take in your words. “Ace died today.” You wait for his reaction. He seems to think about it, having vaguely heard of “death” before...finally he asks : 

“What does it mean ?” 

He’s sitting up in the bed now. Bruce did the same, encircling his arms around his boy protectively (old habits die hard). But he’s determined to explain things to him too. You and Bruce were always rather in sync, about how you should raise your children. 

“It means he will no longer be with us. He passed away to something else.” 

“To what ?” 

“No one really knows.” 

“Will we see him again ?” 

“No.” 

“Why ?”

“Because he’s dead.” 

“And being dead means you can’t see anyone anymore ?”

“Being dead means you are not living on this Earth anymore, so yes, you cannot see them anymore.” 

“It means we can’t see him ? And what do you mean not on Earth ? Is he in Space ? Can we see him if we go to the watchtower ?” 

“I mean in our life, we will not see Ace again. He won’t be with us ever again. He’s not in space, he’s just gone.” 

“Because he’s dead ?” 

“Because he’s dead.” 

“So, being dead means we don’t get to see someone ever again ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Ever ever ?” 

You decide to leave any conversations about a possible after-life aside, as it’s clear this, he’s not quite old enough to comprehend. So you keep on talking about the truth, with the support of Bruce. 

“Yes. Ever ever.” 

It takes Thomas a few minutes to take in all those new informations. Bruce is sitting on the bed, legs crossed, behind the boy. And your son is clearly lost in deep thoughts...Up until finally, finally tears are starting to well up in his eyes. 

“But I didn’t even say goodbye !”

“Unfortunately, we don’t always get to say goodbye...” 

“But mama, how will he know I loved him so much if I didn’t even say goodbye before he left ? How could you let him go before I did ?”

“I’m sorry, if I could chose I would’ve-...He knew you loved him and-”

“Are you going to die too ?!”

The dreaded question. Dreadest of them all, really. But you can’t lie to him. Not now that you started to explain things. 

“Yes. Everyone dies one day.” 

“But but but...but I don’t want you to die ! And Daddy ?” 

Bruce nods, and...and that’s when it finally happens. 

The awful moments your sweet innocent boy realizes what death sort-of means. That one day, none of his parents will be in his life anymore. Than one day, he’ll lose his siblings, and Alfred. 

Just like he lost Ace. Because he was “old and sick”. But...Thomas knew a lot of sick people ! And a lot of old people ! Were they going to die too, without him being able to say goodbye ?!

And so the tears started to fall. And oh, oh did they fall. 

Bruce held his son against his heart, drawing soothing circles on his back, just like you usually do. And you came to sit next to them, encircling them in your arms as well. 

Thomas was trying to talk, but nothing came out very clearly as he cried, cried, cried and cried some more. 

When he finally calmed down, he was slowly falling asleep, crying drained him of all his energy. That night, there was no “movie time”, but comforting snuggles with his parents... 

Thomas had finally discover what “Death” meant.

************

“Oh my God Thomas !”

Bruce’s heart drops.

The entire scene goes in slow motion, and the fearless Batman can see his entire life flash in front of his eyes, as his tiny son is running towards him, while a few thugs were about to shoot automatic weapons at him...

“There’s a kid ! There’s a kid !”

“Who cares, we have the bat right at our mercy, just shoot !”

“I can’t shoot a kid...”

“Should we shoot ?”

The few seconds of surprise after Thomas bursted in allow Damian to swoop down, and to get rid of everyone. Slowly, a serious face on, your son walks to his dad and, solemnly, he says :

“This was too close, father. And...Thomas...”

“I know Damian, I know.”

Your little boy was inconsolable, clinging to his dad.

They didn’t even have to ask him how he got there. It was obvious he somehow snuck into the Batmobile (which wasn’t that much of a surprise, although it was already quite a feat...Thomas was small, but also very stealthy, as he was taught to be).

He was only five, and it wasn’t really clear to him yet his dad was that “Batman” everyone talked about, that his siblings were also vigilantes...But he knew that when they went out at night, they were often in danger.

And that night. That night right after the one Thomas learned what Death was...He snuck in the car, so he would make sure “she” would not take her dad away ! Or her brothers and sister !

Only Damian and Bruce were in the car, on patrol together. The rest of the kids were scattered across the city, and you were taking care of the bat computer (nowadays you were the one doing so to give some relief to Alfred).

Thomas took the habit to fall asleep in the cave, in a bed there just for him...and he must’ve snuck into the car. 

It was nobody’s fault. It was very unlike the boy, to do such a thing.

He got into the car. When Damian and his father got out of it to apprehend a few of Two-Face’s thug, he stayed behind, looking at what they did...but when he saw those men about to shoot his dad (a proper ambush), he jumped out, punching every buttons (which was quite dangerous itself) to find which one opened the door, and then he ran to his dad...

The surprised probably saved Bruce. But it also almost killed him with a heart attack. 

What if those men didn’t hesitate long enough for Damian to take care of them ? What if they shot anyway, ignoring the surprising appearance of a small child ? What if they had recognize who that kid was, too ? (Unlikely, this was a time where Thomas was still quite sheltered from media, as you tried to give him a childhood as normal as you all possibly could). 

What if they shot anyway...

Bruce doesn’t think he would’ve survived the death of his youngest son. He was sure, actually, that he would’ve killed those men. 

That is, if Damian didn’t do it first. 

But it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen, but it was so close. So close. 

Later, when everything calmed down, Thomas would explain he jumped in the car to “keep death away”, to protect his daddy and brother. To make sure Death wouldn’t take them. 

And that's when you all understood Ace’s death, and the discovery that everyone dies one day, one way or another, truly was “traumatic” for your baby. 

From that point on, you made sure that Thomas would be in the cave...but this event. This event really unfolded a problem you knew you’d have to tackle truly one day. 

You just had no idea yet how to help your son. 

************

Damian had told Jason the debacle that was yesterday. About his parents explaining to their little brother what it meant to be dead. And about how it lead to Thomas sneaking into the Batmobile and running in front of danger to “protect” his dad. 

Because of where he grew up, Damian always knew what death meant. And he never cared much (or convinced himself he never cared much). He understood from a very young age what all this shenanigans was...

Jason did too. He found his mother, dead, when he was three years old. He grew up surrounded by death, in the gutter of Gotham. He knew. He did. 

But Thomas. 

Thomas was a “normal” 5 years old boy, as normal you can be in such a family. He trained a little, and sort of knew about his dad being “Batman” (but it seemed he didn’t understand he was ACTUALLY the Batman people talked about in the city). 

He spend most of his nights in a little area made just for him, with a bed and such, in the batcave (he hated sleeping upstairs alone, so he would sleep in the batcave and you’d pick him up to bring him in  his bed once you’d go to bed, and/or once the rest of your family would get home). 

So for a little one like Thomas, who was pure and sweet and nice...It was a shock, to know one day he’d lose the people he loved. 

He was inconsolable, at Ace’s funerals (thrown at the back of the Manor).  

He couldn’t get over the fact he didn’t get to say goodbye, and that he would never play with his dog anymore. 

It made it worst, that Ace’s death made everyone else sad. That dog truly was a member of the family... 

“I know you're feeling very sad. I'm sad, too. We all loved Ace so much, and he oved us, too.”

You told him a few times, tryin to put words on his emotions and helping him understand...God, to Damian, you truly were the most amazing mother. Always knew what to say, how to say it, when to say it.  

But Thomas was still blue, and it was so unlike his usual bubbly personality. 

And so, both Damian and Jason made it their mission to distract their little brother, and...it worked. For the most part. It really worked. 

Amongst all his siblings, Damian and Jason were the ones that loved having a little brother the most. Not that the others didn’t, of course ! They just were a little less willing to play for hours on end with a little kid. 

They were rather busy. Jason and Damian always found ways...They were an unlikely pairs at first glance. Most people would think Damian was the closest to Dick, and Jason too. But no. They were equally as close to all their siblings, in different ways. 

But Damian and Jason, they had an extra connection. Jason was there, when Damian was a baby. He didn’t remember his own name, and was used by the Al’Ghuls after they resurrected him...But he was still one of the only person in Damian’s life that truly valued him. 

Fate, right ? A funny thing. After all, how small did the world have to be for two of Bruce’s sons to meet in such a way ? A hidden son, and one he thought dead, at that ?! 

In any case. They were closer than most would think. And they also were linked not only by the Al’Ghuls, but by how they were both ripped off of an actual childhood, and therefor wanted to make sure their little brother had one too (Cass was the same, but more subtle, and discreet). 

And so...

They played, made art pieces, jigsaw puzzles, watched his favorite movies, cooked...Anything to take his mind off of “Death”. 

That little boy would overthink too much, for such a young age. 

But overall, Damian and Jason did a good job distracting him from the pain. 

They did an amazing job. 

You were so proud of how they took care of their baby brother (and it would give yourself more time to go cheer up the “Oldest Wayne”, your dear husband, who definitely had a hard time getting over his dog’s death...). 

Only, there was one problem...And that problem was that neither Damian nor Jason, just like everyone else, were immortal. 

And this, this, Thomas would realize very soon. 

************

“More compresses, Master Tim !” 

“On it Al !” 

The loud noises woke Thomas up. You knew. You knew you should’ve gone up to bed earlier. Tuck him in, and wait for your family to come back. 

Ah. But when they all arrived in the cave, ALL of them, including Dick who did not live at the manor anymore...You knew there was a problem. 

And indeed. Jason had been badly hurt. Not something that couldn’t be fixed, but ah, once again, too damn close. 

Everyone was on the tail of a high profile serial killer, the newcomer called “Dr Pyg”, and...Collateral damage. It happened, in this line of work. 

It wasn’t easy. Especially when it was one of your baby. But you had to keep a leveled head, as you helped Alfred fix your boy. 

You had taken medical trainings early in in your relationship with Bruce. For obvious reasons. And there was rarely a day it didn’t come in handy. 

In any case, all the noises around woke Thomas up. 

Before. Before he knew what death truly meant, he would’ve been worried. He would've cried. He would’ve been distressed. Of course. 

And one of his siblings would’ve taken care of him, reassure him, soothe and console him, and little Thomas would be ok again. 

Before he knew what death truly meant. 

He was so small anyway, most of the time he’d forget things, or just not understand them...but he was five now. Close to the age of reason. And definitely aware of his surroundings enough now to pay attention, and remember things. 

And he knew what death truly meant. 

He clung to Jason for dear life, even as everyone reassured him he was actually ok. Jason himself was conscious, he had been badly hurt but nothing he hadn’t seen before. 

He needed some rest for sure, but it was fine, really. 

It wasn’t fine for Thomas. He yelled, threw the biggest tantrum he ever threw, yelled some more that they should stop. That he didn’t want them to die. That whatever they were doing...He begged them to stop. 

Never before in your life, had any of you witness Thomas being in such a state. He was inconsolable. You couldn’t calm him down, no matter what...

And once more, it’s only because of exhaustion that he finally relaxed. But yet, still in his sleep, he clung to Jason’s sleeve, as if afraid his brother would be gone when he’d wake up. 

It tore yours and Bruce’s heart apart, to see your baby like this. But to be honest...neither of you knew what to do...

************

“Where’s Damian mama ? Where is he ?” 

Thomas was truly panicked. 

The first day, he thought maybe his brother was busy with school and such. The second day, he started to worry. But now ? Three days in a row with Damian not at the dinner table ? Or in his room ? Or in the batcave ?! 

It made Thomas anxious. What happened to his brother ? Was he...was he...DID DEATH TAKE HIM AWAY ? 

“Where’s Dami mama ? Where is he ?!”  Thomas kept asking, crying. And it took you moment to finally realize what your son must’ve thought. When you did, you picked him up and calmed him down, explaining Damian was simply over at Jon’s for a few days... 

And from that day on, you’d make sure to tell him why anyone would be gone for any amount of time. 

That night, Bruce and you talked about what you could do to help Thomas get over his consuming fear of losing one of you. 

But nothing really came to your minds. 

And it was awful, to feel like a failure like that. 

Later on, your Damian would tell you you were NOT failing at parents because you were a little lost about this. After all, none of your other kids got into quite a crisis like this one. He said maybe considering a therapist could do ? But oh, oh Thomas was so little. 

And if words were out that Thomas Wayne, barely five years old, was seeing a therapist ? The scandals would be unending, and would it really help your son ? 

Damian joined in in the search for a way to soothe his baby brother. He never said “no” to cuddles from him, but lately...Lately, Thomas almost became overbearing, as he made sure he’d always sort of have his eyes on everyone. 

And it wasn’t healthy, for such a little boy to worry so much. 

Damian missed his carefree baby brother. He knew he had to eventually grow up, of course, and that he’d have some hardships but...he was just five and a half ! He wasn’t suppose to be so scared of death ! 

And so he thought, nights and days, of a way to soothe him. But just like you and Bruce, this matter was quite delicate...

************

It seemed like Cass was the only one able to truly console him, and make him relax. She would sing him songs, just like you did to her when she felt sad. 

She would tell him tales of Death as a good thing, inspiring herself from many legends from around the world. 

She would try to put perspective on everything, in a way you truly admired. 

She never spoke too much, your Cass...But when she did, every words were carefully chosen and crafted into truly beautiful things. 

And it would soothe your boy. 

But only as long as he was with Cass. And he couldn’t always be with her. 

You didn’t have her talent to tell those tales, and your singing was working only for a few moments to put him to sleep but...you couldn’t always have him sleep. You had to think of more viable options. 

Nonetheless, when Thomas was really too anxious, Cass would be there. 

Relieving everyone of their worry, as she could calm her baby brother in matter of seconds. In those  moments, you wished time could stop. You truly did...

************

Thomas would cling to you and his dad the most. His siblings were often out and about, but you two ? Well you took some time off to be with your youngest son, to be there for him in this odd times...

And you weren’t sure it was such a good idea, in the end. 

He would often just snuggle up to you or Bruce, listening to your heartbeats, which would calm him...You’d normally never say no to hugs from your children. But this was all starting to become so unhealthy for the little one. 

What could you do ? What could you do ?!

************

Duke was panicking. 

Thomas was doing fine today, and Duke felt like he royally fucked up. 

Thomas was worried about Duke, telling him to be careful and that his heart would break if Duke ever died...Which melted Duke’s heart. 

It made him feel so loved and accepted. And he wanted to help little Thomas so much...

That’s when he made a rookie mistake. 

After all, he was still quite new at this “big brother” thing. 

“There are things worst than death.” 

Is what he told him. What was he thinking ? Reflecting on things, Duke realized he didn't think it through. To him, it was a soothing way to say death wasn’t that bad. But...Ah, ah it made Thomas cry. 

“What ? What is worst than not seeing you guys ever again ?!”  

At that moment, Duke hadn’t realized quite yet how much he fucked up. So he said : “Well, my parents can't remember me, can’t remember who they are...They’re not dead, but they’re not here anymore. They’re physically here, but they don’t know me, they don’t know how to hug me, they can’t be my parents anymore...Yet they’re still alive.” 

The horrified look on Thomas’ face is what gave him a hint that this really wasn’t a good thing to say...

“No no no wait Thomas, don’t cry please, I was trying to tell you...Wait Thomas, please, no. Oooh buddy, buddy I’m so sorry.” 

It almost made Duke cry too, to witness the one he considered his little brother in such distress. He wasn’t trained for this ! He wasn’t trained for this !!!

This was the first time Duke truly felt like an older brother, truly felt like he understood this important role. He had to think before saying something. He had to protect his baby brother. He had to find ways to soothe him...

“Ok here we are, here we are everything is a-okay, you’re ok, things will be ok...” 

Duke picked Thomas up, and started to rock him back and forth slowly, just like his own mom did to him...He mixed the way his mom used to put him to sleep, with your soothing singing. With words he borrowed from you. 

“I’m here, I’m here. Don’t worry I’m here, I won’t go anywhere. Things will be ok baby boy, things will be ok. You’re gonna be ok. I’m not going anywhere. I didn’t mean any of it...” 

Duke had been living with you for a while now. He came to see all of you as his second family, even as his parents were still alive, and a constant chain holding him back at times...a chain that broke right at this moment. 

Thomas was his little brother. He truly was. 

And Duke was determined to be there for him. Especially after he made him cry. 

“It’s ok Tommy, cry all you want. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to cry.” 

You always told him that. It was ok to cry. To be angry. To want to break everything. To want his mom...

But you were his mom too now. You were. And you had such a way with words. Such a soothing touch. Even as he was grown up now, you always knew what to say. You always did. 

“You’re ok, right ? Yeaaaah you’re ok. See, things are fine, we chill, we chill.” 

Duke was slowly swaying from left to right, Thomas in his arm, slowly lulling him to sleep, calming him down. His voice seemed to have the same effect than yours...Because he was calm. And because he meant it.

The love. 

The love he had for this little boy. 

It poured out of him, easily, naturally. 

He loved that kid so much. And he wanted him to be ok. And it seemed like Thomas ? Thomas felt it. He felt the love. Just like Duke felt the love of all of you...

That little bean put himself in such a state at the mere thought of Duke dying, of one of his brother leaving...And Duke. Duke realized he felt the same. 

Couldn’t imagine any of them dying. 

And so he poured love in his every word, and swayed from side to side, calming Thomas, and making sure he knew...He knew that, he was right there. 

Right there. 

************

“You’re getting old, Alfred.” 

You said jokingly, as you beat him at chess. And oh. Oh what a mistake you just did. 

“Old ? I don’t want you to die Alfred, I don’t !” 

Thomas was playing next to you. You hadn’t thought about his “trauma” for a little while as he seemed to feel a little better lately...But oh, he plunged right back into it there. 

Because of you. You felt absolutely awful...

“I’ll fight Death for you Alfred ! I will ! I won’t let her take you !!” 

It took a while, as it became usual now, to calm him down. He was ready to throw hands with Death. Fierce that no one would take his “grandpa”. But he was still very scared and sad...

“I’m a terrible mother...”

You told Bruce that night. And he held you against him, consoling you, saying it wasn’t your fault and that it was just friendly banter with Alfred as usual...

“You are the literal opposite of a terrible mother, my love.”

“But Broosh, I made him- I-” 

You sniff, unable to control your sobs as you remember your poor little boy holding Alfred and yelling at Death she can’t take him. The poor butler himself didn’t even know how he could do anything to calm him down...

“We’ll find a solution my love, we’ll find a solution...” 

This entire night, Bruce stayed up although he was exhausted, so he could soothe you and take care of you. Skipping patrol (knowing though the city was safe with his children out). 

At some point during the night, Thomas came to your room. 

It was often, lately, that after a nightmare he’d come running to you. His nightmares would often be about losing you...

You had finally fallen asleep, in your husband’s arms, and Bruce gestured to your boy to not make too much noice. 

Sweet little Thomas acquiesced, and slowly came to the bed, taking the hand his father gave him. 

Bruce was about to fall asleep too, knowing you had finally found sleep...But now, he wasn’t going to. Not until he made sure his son was asleep as well. 

All he could do for now, was being there for you two. Try to soothe you as best her could. As best he could...

Sleep was restless and full of nightmares. 

************

Dick would try to often visit his parents and siblings. As much as he could, which wasn’t always easy, with his work in Bludhäven. But nothing is more sacred than family...He realized that over the years.

During those moments, it would be rather normal for Thomas to go settle in his oldest brother’s laps. He would make the most of seeing him.

So today, as Dick was in the kitchen trying to make himself a cup of coffee, it was no surprise when little Tommy came to see him.

You had bought a new espresso machine, and Dick had no idea how it worked...Slowly, his littlest brother came in, dragged a chair next to him, and used it to climb on the counter.

He then started to make Dick’s cup of coffee, without much of a word being exchanged. Dick smiled widely, his little bro was so cute and clever. In no time, he had make a great cup of coffee for him.

But...Something seemed to bother him. Tommy was an exuberant child when around his family, but he had been quiet right there. He didn’t jump in his brother’s arms like he usually does, and he wasn’t telling him all about what he missed since last time he came in !

Was it still this all thing about being worried about death ? 

“Are you ok little wing ?”

Ever since Jason, “Little Wing” or “Bird” became the common denomination for his younger siblings. A term of endearment that they all (secretly or not) loved.

Tommy seemed to think a little, while raising his arms, signifying he wanted Dick to pick him up.

Dick did, of course, and they went to sit at the kitchen counter, and as usual, Tommy settled down on Dick’s laps. He turned around and, after another short pause (Dick always knew when to stay silent, and wait for the other person to speak first) said :

“Dickie, are mom and dad not your mom and dad ?” 

“Mm ?” 

“Your real mom and dad, they died ? You can’t see them no more now ?”

There was a lump in Dick’s throat. Not because he thought about his parents no. He actually came to peace with their death long ago now. And though he missed them every day, it didn’t hurt as much as it used to. 

He was lucky to find another loving family...From which that little worried kiddo in front of him was an important part of. 

“Yes, I can’t see them anymore.”

“It hurts ?” 

“It used to. Now less. I miss them, but I wasn’t alone.”

“Because you have our mom and dad ?”

“Yes.” 

Dick ruffles his hair fondly. 

“Do you wish you’d still have your real mom and dad ?”

“Mom and dad ARE my real parents too. I was lucky enough to find new ones. Not everyone is as lucky, like dad. He was alone for a long time” 

“What about Alfred ?” 

“It took dad a while to realize that Alfred was a second father to him” 

“So...Will you be my second dad if dad goes ?” 

Dick feels another lump in his throat. Bigger this time. 

He couldn’t even imagine the day he’ll lose this “second dad”, this one he had now called “dad” for longer even than his own biological father...Dick was 8, when he came into yours and Bruce’s life. 

He spend more  years with you two than with his “real” parents. You never replaced them, no. You just..became his parents too. 

He would never forget his biological parents. But he would never diminish the impact his adoptive one had. The love you and Bruce gave him. 

Would he be good enough to be Thomas “second dad” ? After all, he currently had about the age Bruce had when he adopted him...

But Dick couldn’t imagine losing Bruce too. Losing another father. No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. 

Thomas was already moving on, asking more questions : 

“Will I find another mom and dad too if mom and dad die ? Or will I be alone like dad ? Will I have Alfred forever ?”

“I-I don’t know buddy.”

“What if I lose all of you at the same time ? I will be all alone then.” 

“You won’t.”

“But what if I do ?” 

“I’ll always be there.” 

“You can’t know that, can you ?” 

“Maybe, but this will never happen. You will never be alone.” 

“You really think so ?”

“I Do. And I promise little wing, I promise...You won’t lose all of us. You won’t.” 

Dick held his brother even tighter against him, and missed the unconvinced expression on Thomas’ face. 

************

Your youngest son was still utterly terrified of losing any of you. But his terrible fit would pass now, he would calm down more easily, and wouldn’t cry until exhaustion...But it didn’t mean he wasn't afraid anymore. 

Unfortunately. 

“Death” was still a constant on his mind. One of the biggest question. Without much answers. 

His mother and father said no one knew what happened after “death”, but Thomas wasn’t convinced. So he went to the only one he knew would tell him the truth, and was most likely to know...Tim.

His older brother was currently in the garden, studying for his finals. But oh he’d take a break for his little brother, of course. 

Especially lately, as said little brother was overly worried and needed constant reassurance. 

“Hi Timmy.” 

“Hey little one.” 

“Bothering you ?”

“You are not bothering me, never.” 

“Can I ask you a question then ?”

“Of course.” 

“What happens when we die ?” 

Oof. 

OOOOF. 

Not something Tim could say he expected to be asked. Even as he knew Thomas was sort of obsessed with this lately. And ah...Ah he started to get lost into physiological effects of death, into science, into things Thomas could definitely not understand...

And into things he didn’t care about. 

Thomas had no interest in knowing what happens to the corporeal side of things. To our bodies. He wanted to know where “we” went. Where the being went. The conscience. 

Of course he wouldn’t word it that way, but it was easy to understand that it was what he meant when he said : “where do we go when we die ?”. 

After a long time of Tim getting lost in many complex explanations about decomposition (what the Hell Tim ?), he finally stopped as he saw that Thomas was most definitely lost.  

“Where do we go after we die ?” 

“Yes. What happens ? You must know, you know everything !” 

The faith his littlest brother put in him made him feel warm inside but...unfortunately on this subject he had to disappoint him. 

“I..I don’t know about this, actually.” 

Thomas looked crestfallen. Was nothing sacred anymore ?? Death existed, and the one he thought would always have a solution to everything didn’t know something that important !! 

“There’s many theories.” 

“What’s a theories ?”

“One theory, multiple theories. A theory is...an idea of how things might work.” 

“What are the theory ?” 

“Theories, plural.” 

“What are the theories ?” 

“Well. Some people think that you go into some kind of afterlife. It depends the culture, and the religion, and...many other factors. But there’s usually a few places we can end up.” 

“And we’ll see the people who died there ? We’ll see them again ?” 

“Supposedly so.” 

“Is it sure ?”

“No, it’s just a theory.” 

“You said a theory is an idea of how things might work.” 

“An idea that might not be proven.” 

“What’s the point then ?” 

“Theorizing.” 

“I don’t understand...”

Of course he didn’t, he was a smart little boy...But still just five. Tim sat down to his level, and looked at him in the eyes : 

“Well. You have to understand that um...No one knows what happens after death. So we have to make theories, things that might or might not be. You understand ?” 

“No.” 

“Well, since we don’t know, we make things up. But maybe those things are right. Maybe they aren’t.” 

“So the answer is we don't know ?” 

“Yes. But there are theories ?” 

“Ok. So aside from the place we see others again, what are the theories ?” 

“Well (...)” 

Tim was a patient boy. For hours and hours, he tried to explain every single “theory” people might’ve had about what happens after Death. And Thomas listened carefully. 

Finally, Tim was done, and his brother said : 

“So...No one really knows, and there’s a lot of theory...ies. Theories.” 

“Basically.” 

Thomas looked so discouraged. Tim was very well aware that none of what he told him really helped his brother, or reassured him...But ah. Tim was known to not lie. Which was a good thing. And he couldn’t possibly have a free conscience if he had told his brother just one theory of the after life, the nicest one, just to reassure him. 

Of course, he wanted to reassure him. To distract him. But he would do so another way. Lying to him was not it. 

Still, it was so disheartening to see this sweet little boy so crestfallen. 

“Um, Well...I guess some people know.”

Thomas looked up at his brother, hopeful, waiting for him to continue. 

“Like Constantine. But um, he’s sort of crazy. And dad doesn't want him around the house for...reasons you’ll understand when you’ll grow up. And-”

Ah but Thomas wasn’t listening to Tim anymore, and his monologue as to why maybe John Constantine wasn’t such a reliable source.   

“Constantine” huh ? Interesting. Ah. Sometimes, Tim forgot how smart his little brother truly was...for a five years old. And how he took after his father, when it came to memory and attention to details. 

************

This constant worry went on for quite just a few days. A few very eventful days, that were so...exhausting. Thomas was constantly scared for your lives, and would cry if anyone got hurt too much. 

He would follow you around, and be way too stressed for such a little bean. 

Everyone came to hide their injuries from him, tried to distract him from what they were doing when out as the Bats...But it was becoming a real problem. 

How ? How could they make a little five years old understand that he couldn’t forever be afraid of death ? It was impossible. None of you, not even you, had the right words. There were no right words anyway. 

You could tell him whatever you wanted, it’d never make him stop thinking about Death taking one of you with her, taking one of you far away from him. 

“A place he cannot follow you to.” 

How ? How could you help ?!

But the change had to come from within him, you would soon realize. 

About a week after Ace’s death, and a truly painful few days of everyone being lost and unable to help the baby of the family... he suddenly spoke up, at dinner time : 

“Mama, mama, if one day you die, I will bring you back. I promise. Same for daddy, and Dick, and Jason, and Cass, and Tim, and Duke, and Damian, and Alfred. I don’t know if we can bring dogs back, but humans yes ? And worst case scenario, I’ll conjure your spirit so I can say goodbye, and then I’ll know we’ll see each others again !”

“Wh-What ?” 

“Stunned” doesn’t quite cover how you felt at your son’s sudden tirade, at dinner that night. Everyone was here, a rare occasion. Your one dinner a months that was mandatory for all your kids ! To make sure you’d all have moments together. 

And boom. Came this monologue out of nowhere, from your small little five and a half years old son. 

Stunned. Not a strong word enough to describe you, or your other children. 

But Bruce. Oh Bruce. Bruce was frowning. Narrowing his eyes in a way you knew perfectly well...It meant he was angry at someone. 

“Who told you all this, son ?” 

“Mister Constantine.”

A growl. A scary growl. From deep within your husband’s throat. You would NOT want to be John next time he’d see 

“How did you talk to him ?” 

“I used your phone.” 

“I don’t have his number on my...Wait, the bat phone ?!” 

“Yes. The one you call uncle Clark on !”

“What the-...how did you-ugh ?!” 

There were so many questions. So many. 

“I copied what you do, on the phone. And I asked it if it could call the Constantine.” 

“The Constantine”, this better not be a stupid way he called himself in front of his son, Bruce thought. Ah, and curse the fact he kept having kids that were too damn smart for their own good ! 

Kids this days. Growing up with technology. Able to work a batphobe at age 5 and a half !! 

“Hope I helped little man - John Constantine”, said the note that came to the manor a few days later. Which made Bruce fume with rage, but Thomas beam happily. 

Bruce was already planning to go after John, and force him to say what he told his son. But...But...

To be honest. Whatever he said. You didn’t care. You knew, more than anyone else, that “Death” wasn’t as definitive as it sounded at times. And you knew for certain there was something after you died. What ? You couldn’t be sure. But something. Another place. Or maybe reincarnation ? Who knew. 

Deep in your heart though, you knew that no matter what, if you ever were to die...You’d see your family again. You weren’t sure how or where. It was just a certainty in your heart. A gut feeling. 

Yes. You didn’t care what John told your son. If it could help him accept that everyone will die one day. Didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid of losing you anymore. Oh no. But at least...At least he knew worrying about it lead nowhere. And to truly enjoy the moments of the present. 

Whatever John said, it helped your son. That’s all that mattered. And as Thomas would grow up, you knew he’d understand things more and more. 

He already knew he was luckier than many people. He had a loving family. They were all there with him for now (minus Ace, whom he missed every day). A lot of people couldn’t say the same thing. 

Death was an odd thing. Especially in the World you lived in. 

It wasn’t as definitive as some would say.

Your family knew that more than anyone else.  

Death was an odd thing, that wasn’t always the ultimate end...

This, one day, Thomas would truly understand. 

The end 

__________________________________________________

And here we are :). Just a quick thing again, my bigger story (fake boyfriend trope with Bruce hehe) is coming soon. But in the mean time, felt compelled to write about this. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and liked it ? Not my best work :/, another quick drabble written very late at night eh. But nonetheless, fun to write ? Hope it’s not a disappointment, it’s just a thing to make ya wait for a more elaborate thing that I took a lot of care writing. Anyway it’s 4 am, time for bed :).

If you did, don’t hesitate to leave a little feedback or/and to reblog :). If you didn’t as well really, it’s always good to know what’s not good so I can improve (just stay civil please). 

PS : Bonus point if you get where I’m trying to arrive at with those last few words about how definitive death is :p. 

[teiasviago]

You asked for tea recommendations and I’m delivering because I’d gone down to make a cuppa anyway.

So, first things first, I always recommend starting with something your familiar with. The first tea I ever drank and liked was apple and cinnamon flavour, and because I understood the flavours, I actually enjoyed it.

As an extra consideration for that, choose flavours you know you like when they’re hot. It took me years to enjoy peppermint tea, because I’d only ever had mint cold before. There’s a strawberry and cucumber tea that I really like, but again, it took a couple of mugs of it to get used to having those flavours hot.

I think this is kind of why herbal teas are easier to drink than tea-teas, y’know?

Anyway, on to some recommended brands. I don’t know if you can get any of these where you are, but these are my go-to brands

First off, Pukka. They’re a little pricier than some other brands, but they have a really big range and there really is something for everyone. They also come individually wrapped and that for me is a must because I always have teabags just floating around my bag and also sometimes I won’t have a flavour for months at a time and then I’ll suddenly crave it again.

The night time one I’ve been drinking for nearly six years now, it’s very soothing. Some people don’t like how it smells, though, but I’ve never found a problem with it. The lemongrass and ginger one I usually only have when I’m on my period, and the chai one I have when I’m writing because I find the scents help focus me. Personally, though, I probably wouldn’t start with the lemongrass or chai ones as your first flavour. There’s a Manuka honey one that I really love that I don’t have any of at the moment and is on my shopping list for tomorrow.

My absolute favourite tea at the moment is this one

I don’t have the box any more but it’s really citrusy, it’s orangey and lemony and it really does make my day when I have it. This is a good one to have as your first foray into Pukka teas.

The other brand I drink a lot of is Twinnings.

These three are the ones I have at the moment that I’d really recommend. The camomile and spiced apple is lovely for autumn and is almost out so I need to get some more, and the other two are great for when you’re really stressed. The other one I like is the strawberry, cucumber and aloe Vera which is another of their super blends range. Honestly, I prefer the superblends ones to the normal twinings ones, even though they’re more expensive. Oh, also, the twinings buttermint tea is really good if you want something to ease you into mint teas.

The other brand I occasionally drink is kib

This one isn’t my favourite, and it’s kinda expensive, but it’s better than some teas that I’ve had, also.

I also usually keep a stock of just plain standard camomile and peppermint and stuff, but honestly…it’s a trial and error game of finding what blend works best for you. Both twinings and pukka do assortment boxes of like five teabags of four different flavours that are really good for finding out what works for you, cause it can be a pretty pricy guessing game otherwise.

The other way of trialing flavours is Pukka do an advent calendar (I know you’re not Christian, and it’s kinda expensive if you think about it) for like £10 ish where they have 24 tea bags of different blends so you can treat it like a sample box and try 24 different flavours without committing to a whole box of tea that you have know way of knowing if you’ll like it. I think twinings might do one too, but I can’t remember.

This is really long, sorry, but one more thing of course is knowing how to brew it - knowing what temperature water works best for what teas, how long to brew them for. Most teas will tell you. I’m a sadist and will leave my teabag in my mug until the end of the drink, but I find a stronger flavour is easier to drink. A lot of the pukka ones have brew times from 5-15 minutes anyway, and I always go longer than the recommended, but it’s personal preference and trial and error.

Also, lastly, don’t feel pressured to drink tea. I think that’s something that a lot of young people (particularly if your surrounded by a lot of tea drinkers) find. Tea should be a personal journey of growth, and it takes time, and some people just really don’t enjoy it and that’s okay.

(A good mug always helps too)

Cheers

Citrusy flavors are usually fine for me, and also if I ice drinks—that worked for coffee. It still tastes horrid if it’s hot but iced it’s good. I’ll have to find some apple and orange-flavored tea to start out, maybe when I’m home for winter break since I don’t have time to break my routine rn. My bad experience with tea was when I was feeling sick and my mom made me like honey and lemon tea and not only did it just straight up taste horrid but the sweetness/sourness was really off. I haven’t trusted tea since 😂