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starry-bi-sky · 7 months ago

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tales of the passerine - danny fenton being bruce wayne's first kid

okay okay. so this is like a continuation/elaboration of my oneshot/prompt i wrote about the idea that Danny was the first batkid. We have a lot of aus where he joins the family after the rest of the bats do, right? So hey! Lets shake things up a bit. Danny is the first to be adopted by Bruce Wayne.

Danny's parents and unfortunately Jazz die shortly after the events of TUE -- how so? I was gonna say an ecto-filter explosion, that would call back to the TUE explosion and trauma behind that. But lets do something new! Carbon-monoxide poisoning.

It's not too unexpected for something to break in the Fenton house, especially with the Fenton parents' questionable understanding of proper weapon handling and lab safety. The water heater broke from a stray shot by one of the weapons, and was promptly MacGyver'd incorrectly. Danny went to stay with Tucker for a guys' night, and came back to a dead silent house.

(Danny's neighbors got a very unfortunate shock when he ran to the next house over in hysterics.)

There was a lot of shuffling around with CPS, the police. People had to be called in to handle the equipment in the lab, and the GIW was rumoring to show up in aid to clearing the scene. When Danny heard of that, he immediately went and dismantled the ghost portal to the best of his abilities. He burned the physical blueprints of all his parents' inventions, their blueprints on the ghost portal, and their most dangerous weapons were destroyed beyond recognition. Anything to prevent the GIW from getting their hands on his parents' tech.

It opened up another investigation, but he was not under the list of suspects. He was placed in the care of Vlad Masters, where they then went back to the rebuilt castle mansion in Wisconsin. Danny, terrified of the future that has once passed and may do so again, shuts down in his grief. Inadvertently, he ends up somewhat repressing his ghost half. Something Vlad, who is grieving Madeline but relishing in Jack's demise and his custody of Daniel, is not very happy with.

Vlad's... gone into a bit of a mental health spiral. He's becoming increasingly possessive over Daniel, the final remnants of his friends and a liminal being like him. He doesn't like that Danny's repressing his ghost half -- both out of genuine concern as a ghost, but also because of his desire to control Danny and groom him into the perfect son. If you ever had a phase where you read Dark SBI found family fics, first off; me too bro, and second off; those are the vibes I'm thinking of.

Danny's mentally shut down from grief! And fear. He's dropped into a bad depressive state -- paralyzed with grief and the terror of the inevitable. Clockwork saved his parents because he believes in second chances, but what's the point of that when his family ended up dead anyways? Danny doesn't wanna believe that he's destined to become evil, and he's holding out onto that hope, but it's a thin line, and he feels utterly hopeless and trapped. He hasn't used his powers or ghost form since he trashed the lab, and Vlad has alarms set up to prevent him from trying to escape.

He's also unintentionally cut off Sam and Tucker -- both of whom are so scared and concerned for Danny too, and are trying their damndest to reach out to him. He keeps ignoring their texts. Danny basically haunts Vlad's manor. He goes out to eat if he has to, attends parties Vlad drags him to, and stays in his room all day if he can.

At parties, Vlad doesn't allow Danny to leave his side, or really talk to anyone -- not that Danny wants to. A product of Vlad's increasing possessiveness. Well, he almost doesn't let Danny leave his side. Danny has a habit of slipping off to hide somewhere for the parties whenever he can, and Vlad reluctantly allows it so long as he stays alone.

This becomes an advantage when eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham after missing for years, and holds a bright charity ball to celebrate the return. Vlad has been chomping at the bits to get his hands on Wayne Industries, and with the return of its owner there is no better opportunity to wipe out his rival. He goes, and he as normal, brings Daniel with him.

Vlad thinks Wayne will bleed his little heart out for Daniel's poor orphan sob story -- he's a fellow orphan himself, after all. He's not wrong; Wayne's little heart will bleed, just not in the way that benefits him.

Bruce sees Vlad and Danny approaching before they're even close enough to introduce themselves - and like with many of the children he will soon come to care for, it's like someone set a mirror into the past right in front of him.

Danny Fenton's suit is tailor-made for him, and despite the fact that it's his perfect size, the sag in his shoulders, the ducked down head, and the way he hunches into himself all pictures the image of a child in shoes too big for him. There's a far away, glazed over look in his eyes and grief marble-cut into the lines of his face. There's not enough makeup in the world that will hide the dark circles under his eyes.

("My nephew, Daniel Fenton." Vlad's hands are possessive on Danny's shoulders. Bruce immediately notices the way the boy tenses under his touch. "His parents passed recently, and as his godfather I was designated his guardian.") ("I'm so sorry, the loss must've been terrible.") ("Yes, carbon-monoxide poisoning caused it. Daniel was out with friends, when he came home... they had already passed.") (Bruce immediately dislikes that Vlad shared the details of their death unprompted -- he likes it even less when Danny flinches at the reminder and hunches into himself.)

Danny runs off at some point earlier into the charity. At this point, parties are still being held at Wayne Manor (because iirc google search mentioned that was a thing at first before it was changed), so he disappears and hides in one of the empty rooms nearby. It just so happens to be the same room Bruce Wayne hides in when he needs a break from all of the socialization.

Thus begins a long, long process of trust. Bruce can't reveal his hand as being smarter than he looks, but he can be compassionate. Kindness needs no measure of intelligence. He keeps Danny company for as long as he can before he runs the risk of being found.

Rinse and repeat. Vlad insistently wants Wayne Industries, and he'll go to as many Wayne parties as he can to get his hooks into the man. The problem is that Bruce Wayne is never alone, and getting him alone is impossible. Finding him too. It's like the man never stops moving. Always talking to someone, always circling somewhere. He orbits around the room as if he isn't the sun of the Gotham Elite's solar system.

Danny's had such repetitive behavior that Vlad never thinks to believe that Bruce Wayne is disappearing to go talk to him. That "Vlad's" son is even interacting with him at all. Danny never gives him a reason to think so, and neither does Bruce.

Danny doesn't actually acknowledge Bruce until a handful of parties in, where he hands Bruce a small slip of paper he smuggled in that says; "don't trust Vlad". Danny's face stays carefully blank, but he's so tense that his hands are trembling, and he's purposely looking away from him. Bruce plasters a smile onto his face, slips the paper into his pocket, and tells him "okay".

(he's been busy with his own goals with the mafia, but he sets aside time to investigate Vlad Masters. He was holding off. Until now.)

Danny does eventually start speaking to Bruce, he's starting to really like the guy. He's starting to see a little hope, even as Vlad is starting to get more and more agitated with him the more he refuses to use his powers.

He reaches out to Sam and Tucker again, and starts trying to reconnect with them. Vlad has spyware on his phone, and he limits the amount of times he can talk to them. A weird parental control lock of some sort that leaves a time limit on how long he can talk to them for. 30 minutes. Danny doesn't tell them anything about Mr. Wayne.

Danny, slowly, wants out of here, and he's slowly gathering the motivation to do it. Vlad is genuinely scaring him -- and Danny wonders just how truthful the past-future Vlad was when he told him that Danny wanted his ghost half separate. He starts trying to come up with an escape plan.

Vlad has anti-ghost wards everywhere around the mansion, and while they're always on, they boost to full power at sunset. The doors and windows are always locked, all main exits have alarms set on them. The only reason it's not super extensive is because Danny hasn't tried leaving at all yet, so Vlad hasn't had to tighten anything.

At night, Vlad locks the door to his room and puts up an anti-ghost ward around the room. The mansion is on the outside westward side of Madison, more entrenched in rural Wisconsin. The closest town is a four-way stop sign with one house on three corners, and an open bar on the fourth. Not much to go.

He refuses to go to Sam and Tucker; Vlad would look there first. It's too dangerous. Vlad would sound alarm bells and have a manhunt looking for him, Danny can't risk going just anywhere. Too much risk of being found, sold out, or caught. There's really nowhere for him to hide.

Until there is. Bruce is telling Danny about the history of Wayne Manor, and says, as casually as saying the weather; "The manor has dozens of empty rooms, I'm sure Alfred wouldn't mind filling another one if he could." And quietly, hesitantly, Bruce places a careful hand on Danny's shoulder, unrestrictive and gentle; "He wouldn't mind getting one ready for you if you need one."

And there it is. There's his out.

Danny, just as quietly, replies; "I'll keep that in mind."

The ball starts rolling.

Now I've been trying to summarize this au as much as possible for length convenience, but Vlad has been steadily growing more and more controlling. More emotionally manipulative. More agitated at Danny for not using his powers.

He wants Wayne Industries under his thumb but he's been steadily growing more and more concerned with Danny. He's started grabbing him, yanking him around, shaking him; trying to goad him into using his powers. He gets angry when Danny doesn't react, or tells him he doesn't want to use his powers. He hasn't outright attacked him, but he's getting there. This has been happening over the time it takes for Bruce to indirectly offer Danny sanctuary at his home.

It all comes to a head when Vlad stops going to parties at all -- something Danny has to pretend he isn't upset about -- because Vlad doesn't want him around other people anymore. Vlad rarely goes now without him, and only leaves to go to a Wayne function or to handle something at VladCo.

Danny can't wait for Vlad to leave long enough to escape. So he leaves during the night of a big storm. Vlad's locked him in his room, but Danny doesn't bother trying to go for it; he goes to the alarmed window instead. Danny's been repressing his ghost half so long that he can't access his powers immediately anymore -- he can feel it, he knows its there, but he can't quite reach it.

He breaks the lock by hand.

Immediately the alarm goes off through the entire castle, filling the room with red, and he scrambles for the rope the Wisconsin Ghost left for him a few months back. Danny's already out and climbing down the side of the castle before Vlad even reaches his door -- the only good thing about the entire room being ghost-proof is that Vlad can't get in that way.

The rope ends before it reaches the bottom, and he's still twenty feet in the air. It won't kill him if he lands it right. Danny takes his chances, and drops. He breaks his ankle, but he survives.

And he fucking books it to the back garden. He hears Vlad shrieking over the thunder and rain.

I'll save the full experience for a future oneshot, but Danny makes it out into the nearby woods and forcibly experiences what it's like to be in a horror game, trying to hide from the thing that's hunting you. There's only one thing going through his mind; "i'm going to die"

I have this mental image for this scene. Very stereotypical horror imo. Where Danny is hiding behind a tree, with a hand over his mouth, and Vlad is a few feet away from him, glowing ominously red through the trees, trying to search for him.

Danny doesn't get away from this unscathed, but he does get away alive. That's all he could ask for. He gets away by getting his ghost half awakened long enough to transform into Phantom and fly to Gotham.

But he gets to Wayne Manor, he gets to Bruce. Or, at least, Alfred answers the door from his insistent pounding. Danny's just in tears and Alfred gets him in the living room, wrapped in a towel, with ice on his swollen leg before he has to step out and alert Bruce.

Bruce already breaks multiple traffic laws on a nightly basis. And that's just with the sheer existence of the batmobile itself, not including the speeding and military artillery attached. He breaks double the amount trying to speed back to the cave and get out of the suit.

Right off the bat: Bruce will know, at least before Dick enters the picture, about danny's powers. He'll figure out something considering the fact that Danny traveled from Wisconsin to New York in a single night. That'll be a bit of complicated affair, but I've already got something in mind.

Actually it'll probably be very soon after Danny joins the family, because Bruce tries to offer to fight for custody for Danny - the state Danny was in at arrival is clear enough evidence for a trial. But Danny immediately shuts it down, says it's not going to work and then Vlad will know Danny's with him and he won't be safe. He tells him that Vlad cannot know Danny was with Bruce.

Danny's biggest regret was not telling his parents he was a halfa, and while he doesn't want to tell mister wayne (yet), he does tell him about Vlad being one. He needs to know why Danny can't be seen with Bruce. So he tells him, and Danny's current plan is to just hide out from Vlad until he turns 18. That way, he has no more legal jurisdiction over him. After that? He's not sure.

And to wrap this up, since this has already gotten very long and I can make more posts about this au later; I've thought about it, and I'm going to say that Danny does become a vigilante before Dick enters the scene. He goes by, as you probably guessed; Nightingale. "Gale" for short.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #tales of the passerine au #i dont want to overemphasize how much vlad sucks but also i dont want to downplay it. but also i didn't wanna make this post too long #i didn't emphasize enough on vlad's possessiveness but i wanted to make this post as general enough as possible for the au.#for some more wiggle room in the future if i make more posts about this au.#the consequences for Danny repressing himself was not a concern i was focused on for the post but i am thinking about it and mulling it ove #i'll be blunt my main specific reason for why this occurs shortly after tue is bc it means dani doesn't exist yet and it means i dont have #to include her in the continuation of this au. i love that girl but she's a dead weight. i dont wanna come up with an elaborate reason as #to why she's not in the picture when i can just say 'she never created in the first place' instead. i don't have anything for her to do #I don't want to risk giving her a poor plot line just so that she exists in au.#sometimes i really hate just how long my posts get. i feel like it kills my engagement. but i also don't want to make posts that have #a part 1 and part 2 just because I think it got too long.#i feel kinda bad for having Danny take the spot of 'first partner' from Dick. But that was part of the reason i was inspired to make this a #i've already got the skeleton of a reasoning for danny becoming a vigilante being made in my head.#He can't go by Phantom since that risks drawing Vlad's attention -- a new vigilante showing up in Gotham. a place the visited frequently #who goes by the name Phantom? He'd be on that faster than chickens on meat. and nightingale has familial meaning behind it due to being #part of an ancestral name. it follows robin's theme of using it to honor his parents while still having its own unique enough lore to stand #on its own without feeling like a cheap copy. plus the bonus meta reason that it follows the bird theme. which personally is vital to me #my other alternative to Nightingale is Sparrow. mostly because it has good phonetic structure for a hero name. not too many syllables #a good balance of consonants and vowels. dont want a hero name with too many syllables or unbalanced consonants. or worse; both.#my reasonings is that hero names should be easy for a civ or teammate to yell while still being understood. max amount of syllables before #it threatens to become too wordy is 3. If it goes over 3 it should have a balanced consonant-vowel ratio. Wonder Woman is a good example #some things got cut here that were in the initial oneshot. like danny giving bruce his physical ghost core and showing up bloody.#the first son au

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celaenaeiln · 1 year ago

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something i’d love to see more of is angsty rebellious teenage dick grayson. i don’t know why i enjoy the trope but the image of dick “golden boy” grayson getting plastered with roy as he slowly sinks into depression before somewhat getting his shit together is an interesting picture

also he just seems like the guy to get impulsive piercings. dunno why

oooh yeah that fantasy's a guilty a pleasure of mine.

I am 1000000000% an enforcer of Dick was not an angry robin. And he wasn't because the comics show just how happy his demeanor was and how fun he is. But angsty teen Dick? 16/17 year old Dick?

I LOVE IT.

Again throwing a little bit of canon in

"When we started this you were open and encouraging. You were my father...but these last few years...all you've been doing is trying to control me even more."

This is so loaded.

The anger Dick feels when Bruce is trying control him, trying to lock him in a cage in the batcave because of worry, has so much ao3 potential.

Like angsty teen dick is so complicated to think about because Bruce acts a bit like an alcoholic father and Dick's compartmentalization issues come from his parents' death. So what would this result in?

I have no fcking clue.

Because Dick would totally get wasted with Roy, hazy blue eyes staring emptily into space, watching with a flushed cheeks as his short black hair fans out on the back of a beaten blue couch at Roy's place, just breaking down quietly as Roy rants and screams about life's injustices in the background, slinging an arm around Dick and jostling him.

Or maybe he and Roy would also go bar hopping, both of them sloppy drunk, laughing and crying at the same time while they max out their daddies' credit cards and then crash somewhere in someone's pool. Maybe they end up inadvertently on Katy Perry's Friday Night music video.

Or maybe Dick would be a hurricane of disaster, lashing out with knives of sharpened words stabbing the deepest, sorest spots of pain in people, his anger alighting a fire in all. He would be magnificent, ferocious, and catastrophic.

He could be any of these three and all three at once.

He would feel the need to act out if Bruce was becoming more controlling.

BUT AT THE SAME TIME, Dick raised Bruce and that perpetually sense of responsibility he's instilled into himself from a young age as well as his self-sufficiency is never erased so one night he would be blacked out from the excessive alcohol but next morning 6'o clock his body's walking up and he's going through his morning routine like a machine and out the door to work. He just keeps going like this day and day until he collapses and the titans intervene or Bruce drags him back to the manor, screaming in love and fear and Dick screams back and the cycle begins.

Nightwing (1996) Issue #135

Like canonically Dick ran away from home at 16, got a job, got caught up in a major anarchist group, and did a whole freaking investigation while Bruce sulked in the cave because Dick ran away.

There's so much angsty dick potential that could go in so many ways because he's such a complex character that all of them apply.

LOL!!! I totally think he would get impulsive piercings too. Maybe when he's drunk and pissed and then the next day he would wake up be like wtf. He'd sit in turmoil and a little regret for a while and then be like whatever because these piercing are freaking cool.

Bonus: no one (except the og titans and Alfred bc Dick never keeps anything from Alfred and the titans are family) ever find out about the piercings and it's kept a tightly guarded secret until a decade later when he does something in the batcave and one of the batkids notice and they're like, "DICK YOU HAVE A PIERCING?!" The rest of them just about break their neck whipping their head around to look at him. Dick just shrugs nonchalantly because time has tempered him and goes, "oh yeah. I guess. I forgot." Bruce passes out and wakes up on the floor to Dick hovering worriedly over him while the rest of the family watches in amusement at his predicament and also half brokenly because their golden boy big brother has piercings. Plural.

Bruce gasped out a pained breath, "Piercings?"

Dick stared at him silently, gemstone eyes holding his gaze as the quiet of the cave melted the seconds into hours. His eyes slowly slid from Bruce's to where the rest of the family was standing, watching them with bated breath for his answer, before they met Bruce's hopeful ones again.

"No." Bruce, with all the strength left in his body after recovering, raised a questioning eyebrow as Dick continued, "I don't have any piercings and never did."

"Hmn." But he swore he could've seen-

The kids erupted in protests.

"Dick, come on!" Jason hollered, pushing forward. "We clearly saw it there-"

"Where?" Dick asked, spreading his arms wide and invitingly, offering them to see for themselves.

The piercing they had all gotten the barest glimpse of was gone from where they had seen it on Dick.

"But you said you! You said, 'yeah. I guess so. I forgot.'" Stephanie put her hands on her hips, "Admit it Boy Piercing!"

"Boy Piercing?!"

"Fess up, pretty boy!"

"Steph," Dick visibly bit his lip to keep from laughing, "I was joking. You guys should've see your reactions - they were so funny!! Dick has a piercing. OMG. You people were hilarious."

Damian clicked his tongue. "Enough Richard! Did you implement metal into you skin like a heathen? Richard, how could you?! Who dare touch-"

"No Dami!" Dick quickly interfered to prevent a possible murder on his behalf, "I was just kidding, okay? Besides, did you guys even really see it? Like full on?"

Harper crossed her arms. "Close enough."

Dick quirked his eyebrow at that. "But you didn't actually see it right? You thought you saw something shining and turned to look. C'mon you guys know what it is - peripheral vision hallucinations. Things you see in your peripheral vision that aren't real because you are tired," He pinned a look at each other, emphasizing the words, "and stressed."

Dick pressed his lips together and folded his arms. "Time for bed. Now. I know you all haven't been sleeping for the past few days so you all are going to bed. At the manor." Dick finished, shooting Jason a look when he tried secretly shuffling toward his bike.

The rest of them were unmoved for a moment but quickly caved under Dick's patented "I'm mom-ing you."™ stare as Jason liked to call it.

They trudged upstairs while Bruce and Dick watched in companionable silence.

Bruce turned to look at Dick as the sounds of their bickering and footsteps faded away.

"How did you do it?"

Dick hummed distractedly and tilted his head to look down at Bruce still sitting on the floor. "Do what?"

Bruce growled, impatience, annoyance, and apprehension swimming in his voice, "Don't lie. To me. How did you hide it? Now. And for so long?"

Bruce watched tensed as the tip of Dick's tongue ran over the ridges of his top row of teeth, the first sign of anger he had seen from him in weeks. The pink flesh of his tongue barely avoiding cutting itself on the slightly too sharp canines that Dick loved to call his vampire teeth since he was little. He had even threw a veteran-dentist-scaring-tantrum in the dentist's office when the man suggested shaving them down once.

Bruce watched warily as Dick crouched down, balancing on his balls of his feet like a cat on a fence, and forcefully tamped down the sudden urge to pull out a hidden batarang when the boy grinned, eyes lighting with the wild fire of joy and madness from his robin days that still had Bruce on edge for decades.

"How did you it?" He asked again, not sure if he really wanted to know anymore but the principle remained. There was no way Dick's activities could be hidden for so long. He didn't invest in his detective following skills for something like this to escape his observation. But at the same time Dick had evaded his tracking skills when he was seventeen and ran away from him. But something so obvious as a piercing would never escape his notice. But a whole 17 year old boy also shouldn't have escaped his notice. However, Bruce had improved. He had gotten better at his job and his skills. Right? Right, of course, he was the best in the world. Dick definitely did have a piercing. But...on the off chance...what if he really had just seen a flash of light? Sweat on a body? The edge of a birdarang? Peripheral vision hallucinations? "Do you?"

"Do I what?"

You already know what I'm asking. Bruce thought, frustrated with Dick for lying. Frustrated with himself for not knowing if Dick was lying.

"Do you have piercings?" Bruce ground out.

Dick laughed, his voice echoing like choir bells in the spacious cave and bouncing off the stalactites to create a ringing, haunting melody as he leaned in closer to Bruce.

"C'mon, B! You know every showman's got his own tricks," Dick grinned brightly.

And you're the whole damn circus. Bruce hissed viciously in his mind.

Dick's eyes twinkled back at him.

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avengerscompound · 4 years ago

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The Tower: Happily Ever After - 5

The Tower: Happily Ever After An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist | Character Refrence PREVIOUS //

Pairing: Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 1601

Warnings: Pregnancy

Synopsis: Almost 40 years after Elise Cooper first crashed into Natasha Romanoff outside the library at Columbia University, she and the Avengers are adapting to a near-immortal life together with their large brood of children. Yet things aren’t perfect. Life is moving on without them and they’re starting to discover who isolating being immortal can be.When Angela comes and asks Thor to take the throne of Asgard once more, the group leaves Earth in the hopes that they will find their Happily Ever After there.

Chapter 5: Farewell to Our Old Life

It was kind of strange how little there was to organize for us regarding our move. There was packing, but we couldn’t exactly hire a moving truck so it needed to fit in bags that we could carry or it had to stay behind. That was difficult. We had had a long time to collect a lot of things we considered precious to us. The glass artwork that Thor and I had inadvertently made on our honeymoon was the thing I wished we could bring the most. It would stay in the fountain in the entry and hopefully, we’d come back sometimes and see it.

Thankfully, most of our things were fairly portable. We also wouldn’t need a lot of clothes because Asgard would provide things more fitting for the palace, and it’s not like we would need any furniture. Mostly it was just personal effects and tech that Tony wanted to use there.

Other than that it was just letting the doctors know I was leaving, pulling Marya out of school, and organizing the party.

It was still leaning on the stressful side though - especially considering we were still waiting to hear what the rest of the kids were going to do.

Even though Rose and Paul had appeared closest to deciding to come, it was Billy and Teddy who came back to us first with a yes. They had also said they wanted to do a bonding ceremony when we were there, which added another level of excitement and another level of stress.

Rose and Paul came next. They said that they would try it out and see. The concern about their children’s lifespan was a big issue for them, but Paul also said he’d be crazy to give up at least trying to live on Asgard as actual royalty.

As expected it was Eddie who took the longest to decide. He really did love his job, and I think even with his talk about having children, he, Lyra, and Rory were still right into the rich, young party lifestyle. He was worried about what they’d lose going to Asgard, rather than focusing on the things he might gain.

No one pressured him though. Any questions the three had were answered as honestly as we could and if we didn’t know we’d send word back to Asgard and Loki would come and give the answers they were looking for if at all possible. Eventually, he decided that he’d give it six months for us to settle and make sure things with Stark Industries and the Avengers was transitioning smoothly given our sudden departure, and then he and his family would join us there to try it out. He mentioned maybe doing six months on each planet or returning to Earth for a month or two every year, but we were all just glad he was willing to try it out, and his delayed departure from Earth was a good idea. He even promised to come and visit when his new siblings were born.

When our goodbye party began, the whole family was excited for this new chapter in our lives and sad to say goodbye to the last.

Many of our friends were elderly or had passed on, so the party was going to be a mixture of different people. Clarke was still around, though Jax had passed a few years ago. We’d lost Rhodey and Fury, though Hill was still running the day-to-day operations of the Avengers, even in her old age, and Coulson had retired after years as successfully being director of SHIELD. Vision was the same as ever, and people often came to him for direction when it came to the Avengers. Carol also hadn’t changed though she still spent more time in space than on Earth. A lot of the people we had met that had seemed so young when we met them, were all not officially middle-aged. Even Peter Parker who was only fifteen when I met him was now pushing fifty and had a wife and daughter of his own.

They would all be at the party, including a lot of the new Avengers lineup. Most of whom were much heavier hitters than any of us, even when we were wielding Mjolnir. It was definitely going to be sad to say goodbye.

“It’s going to be okay, you know?” Wanda said, snapping me out of my mini-trance as she ran a brush methodically through my hair.

“No, I know,” I said, tilting my head back.

“Then tell your brain that,” she teased.

I giggled and leaned up and pecked her lips. “I’m sorry. I would if I could. Just hormones I guess. Feeling stressed.”

“Well, stop it,” she scolded playfully. “It’s bad for the babies.”

She began to braid my hair and I hummed as her fingertips grazed over my scalp. “Imagine it though, Elly,” Wanda said. “All the kids nearby - the new babies.”

“You’re a baby-oholic,” I said, laughing softly.

“It’s true,” she says. “I am.”

She ran a hand around my side and pressed it on my stomach. “I can’t wait to meet them,” she said. “They already have such busy thoughts.”

I looked up at her and I’m not sure whether it was the look of pure and complete love in her eyes or the way the light caught in her hair, but I was struck by how beautiful she was and how much I loved her. She smiled and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I love you too,” she said and picked up a strand of silver wire with black opal and threaded it into my hair. “All done.”

I stood carefully and straightened out the skirts on my blue lace cocktail dress. “How do I look?” I asked.

“Perfect as always,” she said. “Let's go say goodbye to our friends.”

We made our way down to the party deck where the party was only just starting up. Bruce, Steve, and Clint were all already there, but there was no sign of Tony, Natasha, Clint, Sam, Thor, or Bucky.

Some of our kids were there and their kids all played out in the garden atrium that was built on the protruding wing of the tower and the party deck opened out into. I greeted everyone and as I made my way around the room more people arrived.

Clarke came over and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and smiled, hugging her tightly. She had aged well, not as well as I had obviously, but while her face was lined and she was a little frailer looking, she had kept in good shape and she continued to color her hair. It would be easy to think she was in her early fifties rather than her mid-seventies. Her eyes were what gave it away. What had once been vivid violet had faded to pale lavender and were slightly cloudy. They were heavily lined at the corners, the years having carved deep crevices to mark each time she was happy or sad or angry or worried. It was still my Clarke though and I was going to miss her.

“I can’t believe you’re not going to be here when these two are born,” she said, indicating to my stomach as we pulled apart. She was one of the select group of people I would be totally fine with touching my stomach unasked - but she never assumed. “Where am I going to get my baby kisses from?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I guess you’ll have to visit me on Asgard.”

“You can do that?” She asked.

“I mean… I’m the Queen. I think I can pull some strings,” I teased.

She laughed. “God, thinking of you as a Queen is such a trip.”

“Hey Auntie Clarke,” Billy said, appearing behind us. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

Clarke hugged him and looked around. “It’s been too long. Where are those kids of yours.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to them,” he looked over at me and narrowed his eyes. “You go sit down, mom. You know you’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

“I am taking it easy,” I argued, holding up my hands. “I’m just standing here.”

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t make me page Dad Tony.”

“Heaven forbid,” I laughed and he wrinkled his nose at me and led Clarke out to the atrium. I got myself a little plate of appetizers and a glass of punch and went and took a seat.

It wasn’t long until the whole room was teeming with people. The Avengers had gotten to be a rather large collection of people since the original six had been reluctantly dragged together all those years ago. Having so many of the people who meant so much to all of us here at the same time couldn’t help but make me think about how I’d first joined this group that would one day be my family.

All those years ago I had been a traumatized woman in her mid-twenties, just trying to get by. I didn’t have many good friends, because it took a lot for me to trust people. It took a superhero to get through and with her, so many other people flooded in after. I was so grateful to them, and so in love with each of them to this day. It would be hard letting this life of ours go, but it was inevitable. I still had my 9 chosen people though, and I always would. I was glad to be taking this next step with them at my side.

// NEXT

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is-it-art-tho · 3 years ago

Text

This is Chapter 9!

Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. Chapter 6. Chapter 7. Chapter 8.

Summary: Dick begins the healing process.

By all accounts, Dick should not have survived.

That was what he gleaned from murmured conversations between nurses and snippets of news coverage. His medical records had filled in some blanks, too.

Concussion, multiple fractures, internal hemorrhaging, lacerations, cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest. The words had played on a loop in his head ever since his doctor had first said them, and even now Dick couldn’t quite make any sense of it.

The doctor had smiled at him afterwards, informed him of how lucky he was to be alive. “Usually when someone goes into cardiac arrest in the field, they don’t even make it to the hospital,” she’d said. “Good thing Batman was there, huh?”

“Batman?”

“Mhm. EMTs saw him. He must have been doing CPR before they got there.”

“Hm,” was all Dick had offered in response, but internally he had clung to those minor details like a drowning man grasping at driftwood.

The majority of that night was lost to him. Listening to the news helped somewhat, but reporters only knew so much. And none of the others – Barbara, Tim, any of them – had been very forthcoming, either.

Dick hadn’t pressed, though. The haunted look in their eyes whenever they came to visit him in the hospital had been enough for him to decide never to bring that night up again. He already hated that he might have inadvertently become added fodder for future nightmares; no need to throw gas on the fire.

He could live with not-knowing what had happened if it meant keeping them from reliving it.

“Richard?”

The young voice dragged Dick’s gaze away from the curtains he’d been staring at to the doorway. He’d been back at the manor for nearly two days now, in bed mostly, and in that time he had yet to see Damian except for the ride back from the hospital.

Now the boy was standing at the threshold with a tea service in his hands, his mouth curled in an uncertain frown. “Am I… interrupting?”

Dick smirked and made a show of looking around the empty bedroom. “Yeah. I’m pretty swamped here, as you can see.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I know, but it was a dumb question, anyway. You know you’re never interrupting, Damian. C’mon.” Dick waved him in with a jerk of his chin then froze and winced as a jolt of pain shot up his spine and into his head.

Damian entered stiffly and set the tray on the bedside table, shoving aside pill bottles and a glass of water.

“Damian?” Dick asked after what felt like a long pause. Damian’s eyes were locked on the tea set, his face scrunched in a way that made him look nervous and uncomfortable and young.

Dick reached out with his good hand and tugged on the boy’s sleeve. “Hey, you okay?”

“Of course, I am,” Damian snapped, pulling his arm out of reach. He scowled at a bookshelf. “Drake is having a difficult time.”

“Tim?” Dick tried to push himself more upright and quickly aborted that mission with a hiss when he felt a sharp tug at the sutures across his abdomen. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“He blames himself for what happened. For not locating you sooner.”

“He told you that?”

“I overheard him talking to Stephanie.”

“Aw, Tim.” Tim had been noticeably distant, it was true, but Dick had interpreted it as general anxiety about the whole situation. Never in a million years would he have guessed that Tim had managed to convince himself this was his fault.

Damian muttered something, hands now shoved into his pockets.

“What?”

“I said he is a fool. To act as if he is the one who…” Damian swallowed hard, glowering at the carpet.

Birds were gathering and chirping in a bush by the open window, and though the curtains were drawn to protect Dick’s concussed brain from harsh light, hazy beams still found their way in, spilling across the floor and along the foot of the bed.

“He is not the one to blame,” Damian finished.

“No one is.” Dick couldn’t tell if it was the drugs or his injuries that were making this conversation so hard to follow, but he felt like he was missing something, straggling two steps behind. “At least, not any of you.”

Damian looked at him with open disbelief. “I failed you, Richard. If not for my ineptitude, you wouldn’t have– I should have gone with you when you left that night. None of this would have happened if I had just–”

“Stop.” Dick had meant it to be firm, but the word sounded more like a plea. His head was really pounding now, and keeping the pain out of his voice was becoming increasingly difficult. “You can’t let yourself start doing that or else you’ll never stop. It was a freakish, sucky thing that none of us could have anticipated and therefore probably couldn’t have avoided, either. And yeah, maybe if you had been there it wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe something worse would’ve happened instead. We don’t know and we never will, but what I do know is that you did the best you could in the moment.”

“And it was not good enough.”

“Damian–”

“It is my job to be good enough,” Damian maintained. “If I can’t protect you then…” He let the rest go unsaid, his lips pressing together as his eyes glistened. “I am supposed to be able to protect you.”

Oh. So that’s what this was about.

“Damian,” Dick tried again, and what was meant to be a sigh turned into a low groan as his ribs refused to cooperate.

Damian tensed, wide-eyed.

“We’re good. I’m okay,” Dick promised before the boy could sound the alarms. Then, “I’m not Batman anymore, Damian. You’re not my Robin. You don’t have to put that kind of pressure on yourself.”

And again, Damian gave him a look like Dick still just wasn’t getting it, like he missing something glaring and obvious and not worth explaining except to say, “Yes, I do, Richard.”

Dick started to say something, but Damian continued, “You are saying that excessive self-reproach is counter-productive. I understand the sentiment. And I appreciate it. Thank you.”

He turned to the tea service and begin pouring a cup, his entire demeanor changed, suddenly casual . “How is your pain?”

“I…” Dick paused, once again feeling off balance and too slow as the tone and subject of the discussion switched so suddenly. “A four.”

“So, a seven,” Damian deduced, taking one of the pill bottles from the nightstand and opening it after checking the label. “Alfred said if it is above a five then you are to take two of these.”

Dick considered fighting him on this, reluctant to lose the rest of the morning to a drug-fueled haze, but the pulsing ache beneath his skull and the one radiating through his ribs made it difficult. He let Damian tip the capsules into his open palm and threw them back without complaint.

“You got anything planned this morning?” Dick asked, accepting the cup the tea Damian held out.

“Nothing important.”

“Great.” Dick reached across his chest with his good arm to pat the open space in the bed beside him.

After a brief hesitation, Damian circled the mattress and climbed in, his movements so careful that Dick hardly jostled at all.

“What language are you on right now?” Dick asked, settling back into the pillows. It might have been psychosomatic, but already he was feeling drowsy.

“Hungarian.”

“Huh. What happened to Korean?”

“Too easy. I finished that a week ago,” Damian said dismissively, though there was a self-satisfied smirk tugging at his lips.

Dick chuckled. “Show-off. How far along are you?”

“More or less conversational.”

“Nice.” Dick’s eyes were closed now. “Show me something.”

“I am not circus monkey, Richard.”

“Y’know, I grew up in the circus,” Dick mumbled. “The monkeys were my favorite. Miss those little guys.”

He thought he heard Damian sigh – or maybe it was a laugh – before the boy asked, “What do you want to hear?”

“That song Bruce hums all the time. The one he sings when he thinks he’s alone. What’s it called?”

Damian’s voice sounded muffled and far away when he answered, “Am I Blue.”

“Yeah. That.”

Damian cleared his throat and began to recite the lyrics in near-perfect Hungarian. He paused occasionally to search for a word, at times reversing to correct a conjugation before moving on.

Dick was almost completely gone now. The bed had fallen away, and he felt like he was floating through the air with Damian’s voice as a welcome backdrop.

He didn’t notice the quiet chatter had stopped until Damian asked, “Richard?”

“Mm…?”

“You’re not just Batman to me. I mean, that is not why I feel responsible for your wellbeing.”

“’Kay. Y’too…”

After a brief pause, the gentle half-singing began again, and Dick slipped away on the familiar melody.

______________

All of the lights were off in the den when Alfred breezed in with a tray of hot chocolate just as A Charlie Brown Christmas began on the TV. Cass and Stephanie’s arms sprang up from their spots on the floor like weeds, and he placed mugs in their waiting hands before circling around to the others. Tim, curled up on the sofa, accepted his with a muttered thanks without looking up from his phone. Bruce took one for himself and one for Damian who was smushed into his side, mouth hanging open in dead sleep. When Alfred got to where Barbara and Dick were sharing a blanket on the couch, he smiled and set their mugs on the end table.

“Thanks, Alfred,” Dick whispered, glancing over at Barbara’s head on his shoulder to find that she had fallen asleep.

“Of course,” Alfred said. He set the tray aside and took a seat in a nearby chair. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” Dick answered, perhaps a bit too quickly because Alfred raised a dubious eyebrow at him.

“Honest,” he added with a rueful grin.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

They sat in silence for a while, the only noise coming from the TV and hushed laughter and whispers between Cassandra and Stephanie on the floor.

The air was thick with the ghost of Thanksgiving dinner and fresh hot chocolate, creating a warm bouquet that was at once comforting and nostalgic. Bruce had a faint smile on his face as he watched the movie, colors and lights splashing across his face. He had one arm draped over Damian’s small frame as if holding him there.

At some point, Tim had stowed his phone and turned so that his legs dangled off the armrest and he could see the screen better, hot chocolate clutched between his hands.

It was one of those admittedly rare moments where there was no clock ticking anywhere in the background. There was work to be done, for sure, but it was not a looming obligation. Tonight, the city for once was quiet. Dick couldn’t remember the last time he had passed an uninterrupted holiday in this house.

“Something is on your mind,” Alfred noted, taking a small sip from his mug.

“I was just thinking about today.”

“Nothing short of a miracle,” the older man said, instantly understanding.

“No kidding. It almost feels suspicious. Like the calm before the–”

“Don’t,” he said firmly, his face illuminated just enough by the TV for Dick to register the stern frown there. “I will not allow you to sully this gift with your dark premonitions. Just enjoy this for what it is: a welcome and much needed respite after the events of the past few weeks.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Dick conceded, cringing a little in self-reproach. “Sorry, Al.”

The old man nodded, his face softening. “Now, would you mind telling me what is actually on your mind?”

Dick let out a breathy, half-hearted laugh. “You’re good.”

“I am indeed.”

With a sigh, he looked toward the TV. A Black Friday commercial was advertising half-priced gaming systems.

“Hey,” Tim whispered, waving his arm at Stephanie.

“What?”

“Get me that.” He pointed at the commercial, and Stephanie scoffed at him before resuming her muted conversation with Cass. After a few days and a much-needed conversation, Dick was happy to see Tim back to his normal self.

“It’s been a while,” he admitted now, returning his attention to Alfred who was watching him patiently, “since I’ve heard from Jason. Over a month, actually. Not the longest we’ve gone without speaking, but it’s the longest in a while.”

The cup paused halfway to Alfred’s mouth, his brow creasing. “Over a month?”

“Yeah,” Dick sighed. “We went on patrol together in October and things got a little rough. I said some stuff and we haven’t spoken since. I’m not even sure he’s still in the city.”

When Alfred continued to look at him, Dick asked, “What?”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how has your memory been as of late?”

Dick adjusted himself, gingerly repositioning Barbara’s head on his shoulder when he felt her beginning to slide off. “Fine now. I can’t remember much of that night. Or, pretty much anything, really. But otherwise I’m all right. Why?”

“And the others? What have they told you?”

“About what happened? I haven’t asked. I didn’t want to... Well, you know.”

“Indeed,” Alfred said with a somber nod, setting down his mug. “It is a night, or a week, rather, that I’m certain we would all like to leave firmly in the past. But even so, I believe there are at least a few details that you ought to know.”

#damian wayne #dick grayson whump #nightwing #nightwing whump #batman fanfic #batfam fanfic #batfam fanfiction #batman fanfiction #AllOurBrokenParts #dick grayson #whump #hurt/comfort

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mrslilyrogers · 5 years ago

Text

Betrayal Part 5

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: (AU) Set in New York. You and Bucky have been married for 5 years. He’s the love of your life and you are his. At least, you thought you were until he started slipping away from you, coming home late and smelling of another woman’s perfume? You are in denial. Are you just losing your mind or are you really losing him?

Author’s notes: Hello guys! For those who want to get tagged, please just message me in my ask. Without further ado, here is Part 5. Hope you’re all ready :D

Warnings: Cheating, Angst

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

“Come on, pick up pick up,” Y/N said into the phone as she called Bucky. She looked at Lizzie who whimpered in her sleep, her fevered skin flushed. Immediately after her argument with him, she stormed to their room and locked the door. She didn’t care where he slept anymore. Whether he stayed on the couch, or went back to his mistress, that was all up to him. She wasn’t going to tolerate this, she couldn’t even if she wanted to. The fact that he couldn’t even face her, couldn’t even look her in the eye and tell her the truth was the tipping point. She married a coward. She thought they could fix this, but how could it be fixed when no one wanted to face the truth? She’s had enough. Her love wasn’t enough to fix this marriage and she would choose herself and her daughter before he drowned them both. She had finally decided, come tomorrow morning, she’d take Lizzie with her and figure out how they would go from there. She promised herself tomorrow she would be strong but tonight, tonight’s my time to grieve.

She couldn’t help her nagging suspicion to check downstairs to see if he had actually stayed. It wouldn’t have mattered either way but she wanted to know. Her padded footsteps across the dark, empty living room floor solidified her suspicion.

She married a coward.

She picked up their wedding photo on the table by the couch, hardly recognizing the two people madly in love staring back at her. Since when had they become strangers? She didn’t even know how long she’d been standing there, staring at the picture frame in her hands. All her dreams of a happy family with him crushed and all for what? She hoped it was worth it for him. She took a step back, leaving the frame facing down, not having the courage to look at it any longer and headed to the kitchen. How else would she grieve anyway without the help of her favorite bottle of wine?

At some point way past midnight, after consuming more than half the bottle while she tortured herself scrolling through their old pictures on her phone, she knew she had to call it a night. Everything looked better in the morning, she reminded herself as she dragged her feet up the stairs to check on Lizzie. She hoped to God it was true, how else would she survive?

The sight of Lizzie stopped her in her tracks. What the hell happened? Her skin was flushed as she shivered in her sleep, curling her body into a ball with her tiny hands clutched at the blanket. Y/N ran the few steps to her and immediately dropped the back of her hand on her forehead, feeling herself sober up as quickly as Lizzie’s heated skin shocked her. This was bad. This was really bad. She had a full blown fever in a span of a few hours. Was that even possible? She seemed fine, she said she was only tired, How could they have missed this? Her panicked mind moved before she even registered what she was doing, “Come on, pick up, pick up,” she begged into the phone before his voice sent her straight to voicemail. Damn it! She paced the room, calling Bucky again.

“Mommy? I don’t feel so good,” Lizzie croaked from her bed. Y/N rushed back to her, immediately tucking her phone back in her pocket as Lizzie vomited right where she was.

“Sorry,” she rasped, laying her head back on her pillow.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay. Mommy’s gonna get you cleaned up, okay?” Y/N tried not to let her alarm show, her hands shaking when she changed her out of her soiled clothes.

“Baby, mommy’s gonna be right back, she’ll just get you medicine okay?”

When Lizzie just nodded, she quickly ran to their medicine cabinet to grab the thermometer and Children’s Tylenol. She added some washcloths too and a basin full of water, hoping she was doing the right thing. When the normally fussy Lizzie didn’t even complain about the taste of the medicine, she knew just how bad she felt. Worry and panic gnawed at her as she tried to remember how her mother used to treat her when she was sick. Wiping the tepid washcloth over Lizzie’s skin, she tried to think of her options. She should call Nat despite the late hour. Bruce should know what to do even though he always says he wasn’t that kind of doctor. Those PhDs had to count for something right? After placing the cloth on Lizzie’s forehead, she measured her temperature. Please don’t let it be too high, please don’t let it be too high. 102 °F. Shit.

She paced the room again and wrung her free hand as she waited for her best friend to answer her call but to no avail, she got redirected to voicemail. Shit, shit, shit. This time she called Bruce, not caring anymore that she’d be waking them up. When no one answered, Lizzie whimpered again.

“Mommy, I’m dizzy,”

Y/N took that as a bad sign and put her soothing hand on her child’s forehead. “I know, sweetheart. Does anything else hurt?”

She just shook her head and raised her blanket higher.

“Alright, baby. Rest first okay? Mommy will take care of you, I promise,”

She picked her phone up again, giving a quick text to Bucky to call her as soon as he could before calling Steve, somehow knowing he’d know what to do. She needed his calming authoritative nature while her mind had gone haywire. He has always been the one in their group to call for emergencies, it just came with his hero complex.

“Hey, Y/N, what’s going on?” Steve asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Steve!” He heard her frantic reply on the line, making him sit up on his bed. “I can’t contact Bucky, he isn’t home and Lizzie, she’s sick. She has a fever, she’s thrown up already and I--”

“Hold on, hold on, Y/N, calm down. Have you given her anything?”

“I just gave her Tylenol but she’s still burning up and I think she’s nauseous, I don’t know what to do. Nat hasn’t picked up so I couldn’t ask Bruce what else I could give her, I should bring her to the hospital right? What am I saying? I’m bringing her now,” Steve could hear her panicked footsteps while she gathered everything she needed.

“Y/N wait, where the hell is Bucky? Should I try looking for him now?” He asked, already putting his shoes on. Y/N barely heard him, checking her driver’s license in her purse and grabbing her car keys before remembering...

“Shit!”

“What?” Steve asked, his heart in his throat. What now?

“Steve, I’ve been drinking! I need to call you back, I have to book an Uber,”

“No. Stay where you are. I’ll come get you,” his calm voice ordered, belying the anger he felt inside. If Bucky wasn’t already dead, he’d be sure to kill the jerk himself.

_______________________________________________________________________

Bucky woke up with a splitting headache as he stretched his sore muscles from the odd angle he fell asleep in. His bent legs burning from squeezing himself into the small couch of his office. He sat up, groaning, while he massaged the tense muscles of his neck. He had been so mad after receiving that text from Celeste. It had been almost a week since he ended it with her, the day that Lizzie with her big and generous heart, proudly smiled at him when she thought she had solved his problem by making her uncle Steve go for her career day instead of him, her actual father. He still remembered it like a blow to the stomach, knocking the air right out of him. His daughter, so giving and thoughtful and he’d inadvertently pushed her away, pushed them away. It still sent chills to his spine to think of just how close he is of losing them. So instead of facing his wife last night, instead of admitting his mistake, he let his demons get the best of him and ran. Ran to drink himself into oblivion but her face was all he could see. The disappointment she felt for him etched in her features. She had lost hope and he knew it. What was he going to do? Drinking definitely wasn’t it. The more sensible part of his brain told him. But his whole life, that’s all he’s ever known. Rumlow’s laughing voice echoing in his head, “You’ll always get your answers at the end of a bottle,” Bucky cursed himself. He thought he’d buried that part of himself when he met Y/N, when she gave him her smile and her heart without a care of his past and he was selfish enough to take it. He should’ve known he’d fall back in, it’s just who you are. Just when he thought his night couldn’t get any worse, his phone vibrated from his pocket, a text from Celeste. Right, just what he needed. Of course, it was going to get worse.

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

So there he was almost at midnight, knocking at her apartment door, hoping he’d get this over and done with fast enough. He really wasn’t in the mood for any of her theatrics, he just wanted it to be over. She opened her door slightly and flashed her seductive smile before revealing herself in her new form-fitting red lingerie. Bucky rolled his eyes and groaned. Why couldn’t she take the hint? It turned out she didn’t at all. She took his groan as a good sign and wrapped her arms around him.

“Missed you Bucky,” she pouted before she rose on her tiptoes to try and kiss his neck. Bucky immediately pushed her by the arms away from him.

“Stop, Celeste. That’s enough!” he barked at her.

“What the hell, Bucky!” she screamed back at him, indignant.

“We’re over. I already told you, so please just stop with your messages and your calls. You knew this wasn’t gonna last,” That was true. The moment she saw the ring on his finger and still pursued him, he made sure to let her understand that their relationship was never going to get any further from being physical, that was their arrangement.

“What we have is good, Bucky! How could you let this go?” She pleaded, launching herself at him again to change his mind, hoping that he’d remember just how much he loved her body and how she could make him forget.

“Stop!” Bucky said, grabbing her arms again to push her away. He didn’t know what the hell he saw in her now. He always thought they were on the same page, she thrived on the thrill and he needed an escape.

“So what’s your plan now? Go back to your boring wife and play house with your family?” She scoffed while Bucky stiffened, feeling his jaw tic.

“You’re a broken man, Bucky. You need me, I can help you.” She let her fingers trail his chest. Bucky’s eerily calm demeanor disguised the storm he felt brewing inside. He grabbed her hand in a bruising grip, his voice menacingly low as he told her,

“Don’t you dare talk about my family like that. If you want to continue destroying your life, then go ahead, chase another married man for all I care. I am out.” He walked away from her, striding out the door while he felt his blood pump in his veins.

“I hate you, Bucky Barnes!” She screamed from the open doorway.

You and me both, he thought to himself. You and me both.

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

He let out a sigh as he leaned back on the couch and massaged his temples, his dry throat working while the events of the night played on a loop in his head. What a fucking mess I made. His head pounded as shame filled him. He couldn’t go home and face Y/N right away, not while he was drunk and desperate for forgiveness. She didn’t deserve him drunkenly begging his apologies. He was fully planning on begging and groveling however way she wanted him to but not while his mind was muddled with alcohol. What was it she said again? Drinking and evading were what he was good at. It had hurt but she was right. Thankfully, he had just enough sense to crash in his office. He was a mess, but he was willing to do anything, anything to have his wife back and make her happy if she’d let him. He didn’t deserve her, he knew that too, but he was a selfish man. He needed her, she was the only woman he ever loved, the only one who made him feel right. Suddenly, his phone lit up from the coffee table in front of him, his brows furrowing when he saw Y/N and Steve’s missed calls. Dread formed at the pit of his stomach as his blood ran cold making him run as fast as he could out of his office.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Where is she?” Bucky’s voice boomed around the emergency waiting room while he ran straight to Steve. Steve’s jaw muscles clenched as he watched his friend run a hand through his disheveled hair, his skin pale, and his sweat and breath reeking of alcohol.

“Where the hell were you, Bucky?” Steve squared his shoulders, standing up. “Your daughter is sick! And your wife has been looking for you! What the hell has gotten into you lately?” he asked accusingly, his voice rising. Several heads in the room turned to them but Steve couldn’t care less. His friend was going to have a piece of his mind.

“I know, I know. I fell asleep at my office,” Bucky replied knowing how pathetic he sounded even to his own ears.

“Bullshit! Do you really expect anyone to believe that? God damn it, Bucky! Look at you!” Steve’s nostrils flared, his hands balling into fists at his sides. The normally restrained Steve with his easy smiles gone, in his place was a man on the brink of losing control. He thought of Bucky as a brother but the overwhelming urge to punch him was so strong he was considering it. If they were anywhere but at the hospital for Lizzie, he was sure to have done it already. Lizzie, the sweet little girl he loved as his niece, was sick while her dad looked like he just came from someone else’s bed. Steve had his doubts at first but looking at him now, he was sure.

“How could you do this to your family? You, of all people, should know better than this!” He jammed his index finger into Bucky’s chest making him stumble back but he remained silent and accepted everything his best friend said knowing he deserved it.

“What would’ve happened if I hadn’t answered my phone? Y/N almost drove Lizzie in her state of panic, even though she’d been drinking. Did you know that?” Steve’s gruff voice made Bucky’s eyes flash with alarm before he looked down, gritting his teeth. He could feel Steve crowd in on him, taunting him and he wished he’d just punch him, hurt him. He deserved it. He deserved worse.

“Steve,” Y/N’s quiet, assertive voice interrupted them. She laid her hand on Steve’s back to calm him down, making him step away from Bucky and let go of the huge breath he’d been holding.

“Lizzie’s asleep. She’s feeling better now. The results of the tests shouldn’t take long,” she informed both of them, her eyes avoiding Bucky’s.

“Steve, you should head home. I’m sorry I woke you up, I’m not even sure if this was even an emergency. I think I might’ve just panicked,” she tried to keep her voice light but her smile didn’t reach her eyes, her back remaining rigid.

“Hey, no. You did the right thing,” Steve reassured her, nodding. She gave him a small smile before hugging him.

“Thank you Steve, really. What would we have done without you?” Y/N spoke to his neck. He rubbed his hand along her back, willing her the strength and comfort she needed to face her husband.

“Don’t worry about it. Everything would be fine. Are you sure you want me to go?” He asked her gently.

“You’ve done enough. You should rest. I promise to text you how it goes,” she said encouragingly at him. He nodded at her before turning to look coldly at Bucky. He strode away from them not bothering to say goodbye to him but Bucky reached his hand out, grabbing his arm.

“Thank you Steve, for being here. I mean it.” His voice was raw with sincerity, trying to convey just how grateful he was to have a brother in him. Steve’s jaw tensed before he nodded once and pulled his arm out of Bucky’s grasp, leaving him and Y/N alone together.

“Y/N…” Bucky said as he faced her, guilt and shame written all over his face. She turned to face him finally, her expression blank, as she asked him in a calm and steady voice,

“Do you love her?”

Her resolve not at all betraying the riot inside her mind and heart, ignoring the pain that lodged itself deep in her chest. At last, she had the courage to ask what she wanted to know all long, what kept her awake at night when she thought of him and where he was, what he was doing with her. Did she know him the way she did? Did she run her fingers down his spine the way he liked? Did she kiss that soft spot behind his ear that made him shiver? Did she love him? Did he love her? It seemed all her questions ended and revolved around that. Funny how only three words were all it took to change their lives forever.

Bucky’s breath caught in his chest as he swallowed a lump in his throat. This was it, he thought, she was going to leave him.

“Y/N, please. I wasn’t—”

“Answer the question, Bucky. Stop treating me like I’m stupid. I deserve to know,” she cut him off in her eerily resolved voice, and raised her chin. She looked so brave and so regal and he was so so stupid to have taken her for granted, to have neglected her. He could never forgive himself.

“No, Y/N, no. God, I’m so stupid, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pleaded frantically as he grabbed her hands in his, only to have her flinch and pull herself away harshly from him as if his touch burned her.

“Y/N please—” he tried again.

“No, no, don’t touch me,” she said, emotion finally seeping into her voice, her eyes brimming with tears that she would not let fall down. Not for him, never for him anymore.

“I don’t love her, Y/N. I love you. You’re the only one, please listen,” he tried again, his voice sounding pathetic to his own ears.

“Stop, Bucky. It doesn’t matter!” She said, her nostrils flaring, eyebrows drawn together. She huffed, regaining her control as she drew in long breaths, and shook her head, “It doesn’t matter,”

Bucky felt his world spin, fear pulsing in his veins as he stood frozen, while his wife told him there was nothing he could say or do that would matter anymore. He had made his choice, he had to lie in it. Still, while his mind understood and knew what she was saying, the heart was a treacherous thing, and his hoped and fought against all odds to have her listen, to get her back.

“Y/N, please. I love you. Let me explain, I’m begging—”

“Bucky, Stop. I can’t,” she shook her head, unable to finish, not knowing what to say as she took several steps back.

“I can’t even look at you right now. I just, I can’t,” she continued to shake her head, her thoughts and feelings stuck in her throat. She was disgusted with him, she couldn’t even stand him. And he just stood there, watching her longingly, his hands clenching at his sides when she started to walk away.

“Y/N wait… I don’t mean… Just, can I stay for Lizzie? Bring you guys home?”

Y/N had never heard him sound so small and unsure. She let out a breath she’d been holding, he was Lizzie’s father after all, no matter how he treated her, that wasn’t ever going to change. She nodded her head, knowing how much it would break her heart to have him still here but she couldn’t just think of herself, she had to think of her daughter, and she’d do anything for her.

“Thank you,” she heard his defeated voice say above the din as she put one step in front of the other, not once daring to look back at him while the sea of chatter and activity in the emergency room droned on, leaving a sorrowful man standing in the middle of the waiting room watching the one thing in his life he did right walk away. Her voice a constant echo in his mind, “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,”

Part 6

_____________________________________________________________________

A/N: Sorry to have misled you in the ending of Part 4! Hope you enjoyed this one and let me know what you think!

Tags: @wannabedaphne @pinkisokay @jgiiy @scarletnerd05 @93generation @i-ship-it-ironically @ilovesupersoldiers @joannie95 @xapham @hazel0clouds @foreveralone19588 @angstytoddd @nsfwsebbie @thisishowdynastiesareborn @learisa @bucky-fanfiction @guns-and-angels @mylife-love-and-other-things @iheartsebastianstan @tinystudentfirepurse @captainamerica-is-bae @cloudyskylines @chipilerendi @yesfanficsaremylife @mcueveryday @visiblethirdspace @afterlaughter27 @mr-robot-x @captainchrisstan @agusdoti @mrsfox79 @cha-lyn @xoxabs88xox @rinkashirikitateku @racing-against-the-sunset @thefridgeismybestie @inactivewhore @doyleme1103 @rynabarnesrogers @remilupin22 @winterboobear11 @marvelousbarnes @groovyhumantrashherring @sarcastic-and-cool@enchantedcruelsummer @princesskhy @unlikelygalaxygiver @atomicsoulcollecto@fandomsfallnomore @ritzintherabbithole @too-many-lanes @jxtr610

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes imagine #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes #steve rogers #marvel fic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #betrayal

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boop-le-snoot · 4 years ago

Text

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 18

First time reader click here

TWs/Summary: We stan ✨women in science✨. Bruce uwu. Twitter social media AU nobody asked for. Stephen and Tony are dicks and I'm not talking about their anatomy. Setting up mood for Bruce smut, ngl. PTSD makes things spicy. I'm depressed so please be kind ✌🏻💀🙃

"I really do wonder how can you two fit those egos of yours in your pants," I kept my tone forcefully casual, cheerful even. "Why don't you just fuck already?"

I was met with stunned silence. Suddenly, the room seemed far too large and the people in much too quiet, staring at me with various expressions of horror obvious in their faces. As the strange friendship began developing between me and the team, my "outbursts" - how Steve liked to call them - lessened considerably. I had no need to provoke them into giving me attention, just striking up a casual chat was enough. The Avengers were great conversationalists, to my surprise.

Tony and Stephen, when paired, were the exception. I could count on one hand the amount of times they successfully came to a conclusion without fighting like cats and dogs. It was like each man had made it a personal mission to verbally top the other, more often than not resulting in a thirty-minute shitshow ending with one storming off in a dramatic flourish. It was mind-boggling how two supremely intelligent men could not find a way to communicate efficiently without infuriating the rest of the team.

Plus me. One way or another, I was almost always around. In the beginning, it was hilarious to see the free circus but it got old really quickly when they couldn't decide on dinner or a movie, leaving the rest of us starving and bored. Or the great Cloak debate - that one lasted days and the fussy thing was so upset, it point blank refused to part from Peter for a substantial amount of time. It's pretty fucking creepy that a semi-sentient, ancient piece of outerwear watches you when you sleep - just sayin'. I personally interjected with my own snark and sass whenever Tony and Stephen got too heated, successfully drawing the attention to myself. The fight broke up and I had amazing sex with Tony later, it was a win-win scenario.

Yet, Tony and Stephen didn't stop. To me, their way of "talking" (and I use that term loosely) looked a lot like unresolved sexual tension. Stephen frequently used his greater height to tower over Tony in a childish attempt to establish dominance; the engineer was no rookie and responded with extravagant peacocking such as "subtly" tapping the bracelet that hosted his nanotech suit or parading at dinner in a $30,000 custom made designer outfit. Because Tony could.

I was pleasantly surprised when Natasha started laughing at my remark. Full-blown, belly laugh. Those were rare, coming from the Widow, her usual mirth was quiet, sophisticated, just like her. Deadly (adorable). Bucky followed suit, snorting together with Clint and Loki.

Steve looked none too pleased with me. But then again, was he ever? "Doll, don't be rude."

"Brat," Bruce said at the same time, palming his face.

"People always call me a brat. And guess what, Steve?" I popped my hip, twirling a cotton candy pink coloured Dum-Dum between my fingers. "What can you do about it? Nothing," I shrugged, leaning my head against Bruce's shoulder affectionately.

Steve just shook his head in disappointment. "Can we get back on topic? Please?"

"Captain, I think that Stark..." Strange began talking with Tony dramatically groaning in the background and I instantly tuned out the useless babble. Steve should've been smarter and revoked speaking rights from Tony and Stephen. Or asked Loki to magically render them both mute for ten minutes.

"You're not wrong," Bruce quietly whispered next to my ear. "Ten bucks says Wanda meddles and those two finally work out their frustrations," The scientist hid a grin against my head. I felt the amused, giddy energy radiating off him like a plasma beam.

"I don't even have to bet," I rolled my eyes. "If she doesn't do it, I will."

Both Tony and Stephen were throwing me equally infuriated glances. One promised me a good, hard fucking and the other saw me a short, poisonous lecture on appropriate behaviour in the nearest future - you can guess which is which. If I had it my way, I'd skip the lecture and go straight to a hot, filthy threesome with two men twice my age. I wasn't blind, Strange was hot as hell and could be decent and even nice once in a blue moon.

He could, but he wouldn't be. I wanted that raw, unadulterated lust, tension so concentrated it walked the razor's edge between violent craving and repulsion. Ever since the incident with Clint, I had this ugly mess inside of me, like a live wire about to snap. My brain was constantly racing, darting between how utterly useless I am in a group of supers and embracing my normal-ness, amplifying it by hosting game nights and spending time trying to convince people to start a dungeons and dragons campaign. Or something.

My sleep was like Swiss cheese, riddled with holes where I stayed awake for one or two hours at a time in the middle of the night after waking up sweaty, with my heart hammering out of my chest. Sometimes I dreamt of Clint's lifeless, sickly white body, sometimes the whole room flooded with blood and I couldn't stop it no matter what, there was so much of it, I drowned in it, I startled up with the taste of it in my mouth. Rarely, the worst of it came - the one where Clint was alive as millions of millions of little fluorescent, poisonous jellyfish burst out of him and he screamed and screamed and screamed...

I had PTSD. Yay, me. As if my uselessness wasn't enough of a burden, my brain decided for me that it wasn't good enough that I saved Clint and now it was punishing me for being close to a group of people who routinely saved the WORLD.

I contemplated my usual habits - going to a party, getting trashed and dancing until my legs were numb. I just wanted to shut my brain off for a moment, give it a hard reset so-to-say, but with Tony on my back like a jet-pack, I didn't doubt he'd show up to the place and drag me out of there even if I was kicking and screaming. And he was a Stark, a billionaire, so visiting my dad in Cali wouldn't be possible on my own. Tony would gas up the jet and the rest of the team would find and excuse to tag along, too. As much as I loved being the baby menace who could get away with anything, I hated the way they all herded me, like I was an actual child. I couldn't get away from myself, not even for a moment.

I had the backup-backup plan and I was going to have to execute it. Desperate times, desperate measures. "I don't doubt y'all enjoy listening to Tony and Steph flirt," The nickname escaped unmoderated from my lips before I could catch myself. "But what are we doing for Halloween? I need to know if I gotta get a costume," Bruce chuckled next to me and wrapped an arm around me, happy for the distraction. Unlike me, the scientist was obligated to listen and participate in the avengers-themed discussion. Which was difficult because the engineer and the sorcerer constantly bickered, inadvertently taking over the talk.

"Halloween?" Steve groaned.

"We should do something," Bucky side-eyed his boyfriend. "For the children." Something told me he wasn't thinking of the children, at all. The man was positively leering, probably thinking about what kind of a tight suit he could convince Steve to squeeze into.

"A party!" Tony immediately exclaimed, interrupting Stephen mid-setence.

"Tony, no," Steve stated firmly.

"Tony, YES!" Clint perked up. "A snack bar. A bar-bar."

"I will not be helping you all if you get alcohol poisoning," Stephen crossed his arms.

"So it's a party," I stated firmly, throwing a contemplating look at Wanda and Pietro. The twins looked unsure but excited. I knew I could count on fellow young people to support my decision to have fun, dance a little, drink a little. Let loose. To nail my point, I turned to Bruce with a mischievous smirk. "Fifty bucks says Stephen is too stuck up to show up in costume."

"Beg pardon?!" The sorcerer exclaimed. His eyebrows threatened to meet his hairline.

"I think you give him too little credit, Princess," Bruce winked at me and we solemnly shook hands. It was great having a fellow partner in mischief. Loki's approving smirk just sealed the deal for me.

"It's not my fault you sometimes act like you have a stick up your butt," I gave in the way of explanation, shrugging my shoulders innocently in Stephen's direction. "I'm just pointing out the obvious."

"I don't dare to imagine what's been up yours," The sorcerer retorted dryly, in an uncharacteristically childish fashion, arms still crossed. It almost looked like he was pouting.

"Tony," I simply said, leering salaciously at the man.

"Ooh, kinky," Clint reached over and we promptly high-fived each other in the wake of multiple embarrassed groans emanating around the room. "Strange, you're a boring old man, get over it."

"And you regularly end up in dumpsters, Barton," Strange retorted quickly. "Not my idea of fun."

"You wouldn't know fun if it hit you in the face!" Tony grinned triumphantly, confident in his superiority over Strange. Look at that, the team was doing the work for me and I didn't even have to try.

"I'll show you fun," Stephen retorted darkly. It was obvious the man was planning something.

"Ok, boomer," I raised my eyebrows in muted satisfaction before turning around and grabbing Bruce to drag along with me. "I'm confiscating your best scientist to amuse myself. I am bored. We will go and do actual science whilst y'all argue. Bye."

My patience had run out. We were examining the parasites we found in the murder-anthropods-from-space, codename MAFS, courtesy of yours truly, and their amazing properties to penetrate cell membranes and feed on metals in organic life forms. Without Bruce's help I understood maybe half of it but he had the patience of a saint and dutifully and understandably explained to me the finer points of studying aliens. Signing half a dozen NDAs was never more worth it.

Steve's sigh consisted of 99% suffering and 2% disappointment. Natasha face-palmed silently in the corner, clutching a mug of coffee, a poster child for existential dread.

"Wait for me," Tony whined, going for the door and promptly being stopped by Steve pointing out the team needing his input on one mission or another. The engineer sighed. "Baby girl, don't let the green mean to start any experiments without me." Tony instructed, pointing an accusatory finger in our direction.

I clutched at Bruce dramatically, feigning hurt feelings and was rewarded with a swift motion of his arms. I shrieked delightfully at being thrown over the scientist's shoulder as he hastened his pace towards the elevator, hightailing it out of there. "I'd never snitch on science daddy," I wiggled my eyebrows in Tony's direction, sticking a hand down the back pocket of Bruce's pants, dangling over his shoulder like a happy sack of potatoes.

The lab smelled strongly of alcohol and bitter chemicals, the solution that Bruce developed to ensure the optimal state of the alien pathogens. The man's genius never ceased to amaze me: Bruce came up with the needed formula in the span of a few hours while running low on sleep, post a Hulk-out session.

We put on our protective gear - "science onesies" I called them - along with a respirator and goggles and set to the segregated part of the lab where the specimens were kept under a blue light. The glass wall between Bruce's and Tony's lab was dimmed; I reflected in it, looking positively futuristic in my double-stacked white platformed boots and white hazmat suit.

"Wait," I motioned to Bruce to come over.

"Oh, right, our music," He was already half-way to being in total Science Mode. "Friday, please put on the "Get Schwifty" playlist, 60% volume."

The playlist that me and Bruce came up with for our lab sessions. The man was such an adorable dork. Thirty percent my music, thirty percent of his indie rock shit and forty percent 00's bops. In other words, utter perfection.

I finally managed to fish out my phone from my pants. "No, let's take a selfie," I struck an impressive pose and pointed the camera as Avril Lavigne sung the first verse to Sk8r Boi.

Bruce laughed but abided by the request, giving me bunny ears in the photo, tapping the fingers of his other hand on my waist to the rhythm of the song.

"He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy!" I sang along, switching my Instagram to stories and posting the short clip of us just vibing with the caption #sciencetime, Bruce laughing openly behind his respirator. I looked cute and silly in my outfit.

"Send the video to me, I'll post it on my Twitter," Bruce requested. I indulged him then put my phone away, ready to conquer the world of microbiology. Or die trying. Science was calling...

THE TAG LIST IS NOW OPEN! @another-stark-sub @mostly-marvel-musings @vozit @littlegasps @pilloclock @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads @hermione-grangers-wife @individualistfem @sleep-i-ness @capbrie @lillsxd @agustdowney @dee-vn @justanotherblonde23 @fanngirl19 @persephonehemingway @softie-socks @schemefrenzy @letsby @cutenessloading @romeo-the-cactus @jelly-fishy-babie

#stephen strange x y/n #bruce banner x y/n #tony stark x y/n #stephen strange x you #bruce banner x you #tony stark x you #stephen strange x reader #bruce banner x reader #tony stark x reader #party favours #bun writes #avengers social media au

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bisexualsforprompto · 5 years ago

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I think this is sort of a prompt, but hear me out, Damian is always the "smoth flirt" in every daminette fic i've read so far, but what if for the first time in his life he starts being "the awkward teenage boy with a massive crush" with all the awkward laughing and blushing and mumbling: why did i do/say that!?!? That kind of stuff.

We’ll Have Tomorrow

Shoves this down your throat, “HAVE SOME MORE FLUFF!”

Anyone know the two obvious references lol? One is the title.

Family ‘fun’ night was not something Damian wanted to be doing. Everytime West-Reeves had one he made sure that the flyer didn’t make it home, so his family didn’t know about it.

But this year was different, this year West-Reeves mailed flyers for Family fun night.

Though Damian couldn’t imagine how it could be fun and he begged Bruce not to make him go, his father insisted. Damian sighed, his family and fun were oxymorons. His only hope was that he wouldn’t have to interact with anyone, and that his family would decide to leave early, but all that changed when he saw Marinette Dupain-Chang sitting alone on the bleachers. Before he could stop himself, he rushed up to her.

“You are an adequate companion.” Damian blushed before turning his head away. His face was beet red, so much so that it looked like he was going to pass out.

“T-thanks?” Marinette whispered as Damian ran off without another word.

‘Stupid!’ He berated himself as he walked over to his family. ‘You are an adequate companion?! Very forward Wayne! You may as well be the playboy they call your father!’

Damian huffed as he walked behind Dick. He folded his arms and inadvertently started pouting.

“Sooooo,” Jason teased, “Who was that?”

“None of your business, Todd!” Damian barked causing Jason to hold his hands up in mock surrender. Damian straightened out his school uniform, proud that he got Jason to stop his nonsense until-

“Demon Spawn was talking to a girlllll.” Jason singsonged. Dick held in a laugh while Tim laughed shamelessly. Luckily for them, Bruce was talking with one of the teachers and wasn’t there to get them to stop.

Damian’s face heated up, it was enough his family was mocking him, but Damian did really like Marinette and he would not let his family screw it up...well not before he screwed it up himself. He sighed, rubbing his temples. Between seeing Marinette and dealing with his insufferable family, it was going to be a long night.

Damian made his way to the concession stand with his brothers, he was trying to stay away from the crowd, but unfortunately for him where his brothers dragged him was one of the more popular places.

Damian was quick to recognize the two people running the concessions as Sabine Chang and Tom Dupain, Marinette’s parents. They had only met on a couple occasions when they picked Marinette up from an after school club, which wasn’t often. They seemed very nice, but Damian prayed they wouldn’t talk to him because then his idiot brothers would find out more about Marinette, which would certainly lead to disaster. Damian tried to hide behind his brothers before they saw him.

“Hey there Damian!” Tom said in accented English. Too late.

Damian cleared his throat, “Good evening Mr. Dupain, and Mrs. Chang.”

“Please dear,” Sabine smiled, “Call me Sabine. I’m guessing these are your brothers? Marinette told us you had quite a few!”

“Yes these would be-“

“We’re his brothers!” Dick beamed, “It’s very nice to meet you! Would Marinette happen to be the girl over there?” He pointed to a young girl in a pink hoodie sitting on the bleachers, who was focusing intently on her sketchbook.

“Yep, that’s Marinette! You really can’t pull her from her work.” Tom let out a chuckle, “I’m Tom Dupain by the way, this is my wife Sabine.”

“A pleasure! I’m Dick Grayson, the one on my left is Jason Todd, and the one to my right is Tim Drake.”

Jason got an evil glint in his eyes when he realized the girl they pointed to was the same one Damian had spoken to before turning red as a tomato.

Sabine gave Tom a worried look, “I wish she wouldn’t work so much. This was supposed to be a day where she spent time with her friends without stressing.”

Jason smirked, “If you want I’m sure the Demon could keep her company.”

“The Demon?”

Dick flicked Jason on the ear, “He means Damian. You really shouldn’t call him that.”

Jason shrugged. Damian’s facial expressions were screaming at his brothers to not make him go, but Sabine and Tom didn’t notice.

“Would you sit with her dear? Even if you can’t tear her away from her work, I’d at least like her to talk with a friend.”

Before Damian could answer, Dick spun him around and pushed him off into Marinette’s direction. Damian scowled before seeing the hopeful expressions of Marinette’s parents' faces. He sighed to himself and walked over to her.

“H-hi.” Damian stuttered before clearing his throat. ‘Great start Wayne...’ He chastised himself.

Marinette looked up briefly, a blush forming on her cheeks. “H-hey there Damian. You are how? I mean, how are you?”

Damian fought a blush, the way she stumbled on her words was maybe a little cute. He gathered some confidence, he was a Wayne. He was Robin. Talking to a girl, pshh! Child’s play. He could do this.

“I’m well. How are you, Marinette?”

“I-I’m grool!” She facepalmed and her face got red, “I was going to say great, but then I was gonna say cool and I got-“

“Grool.” Damian smirked. Marinette gave him a shy smile, he felt his cheeks get hot. He could not do this.

As Marinette took a deep breath and her face turned less red she opened up her sketchbook, “I’ve been working on a commission for a couple of the seniors going to prom, w-would you like to see?”

Damian nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. She grinned and opened to a bookmarked page.

On it was a spectacular navy blue gown that Damian ended up picturing Marinette in.

“Beautiful.” He said, still lost in his fantasy with Marinette in the dress.

“T-thanks Damian. That a lot means...Means a lot.” Marinette giggled.

Marinette went back to sketching silently and Damian pulled out his own sketchbook. He set out to work, sneaking glances at Marinette from time to time as she focused on her drawing, sticking her tongue out slightly whenever she erased something.

Before he knew it his father, brothers and Marinette’s parents were at the bleachers.

“Marinette it’s time to go!”

Marinette quickly snapped out of her fashion trance and hurried down the bleachers. She waved a goodbye to Damian as he followed her down to go back with his family.

Bruce exchanged greetings with Marinette’s parents. Damian and Marinette looked at each other once before blushing and looking away. Dick gave Jason a knowing smile. Jason, with a gleam in his eye, started poking Damian, causing him to drop his sketchbook. Before he realized, it was in Dick’s hand and a page had already been ripped out.

Damian continued to argue with Jason as Dick silently made his way over to Marinette.

“Here,” he said, gently pressing the paper in her hand, “I think he’d want you to have it.”

As Dick walked back Marinette opened the folded paper and gaped in awe. Pink settled onto her cheeks as she stared at the majestic sketch of her done by Damian. She folded it and stuck it into her pocket.

Her brain was going into overdrive, but she knew she needed to see Damian before he left the school grounds and talk to him, maybe he felt the same as her.

But when she looked up all the Waynes had disappeared and her Maman and Papa started leading her to the car.

‘Next time, Damian.’ She thought as she studied the portrait of her, ‘Next time.’

Damian closed the car door wordlessly, imagining Marinette in the brilliant blue dress again, a blush forming on his cheeks. Maybe he could tell her how he felt.

‘Next time, Marinette.’ He thought, looking out the window, ‘Next time.’

#maribat #daminette fluff #daminette #damianette

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thebibliomancer · 4 years ago

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #228: TRIAL and ERROR!

February, 1983

AT LAST! The trial of Yellowjacket!

Its been over a month in-universe and about a year out of universe but here we are. The Trial of Hank Pym.

Although the time getting here was mostly farting around with other stuff while Hank sat in prison. Can you believe Scott Lang is the only person we see visit him?

The Avengers found time to experiment on an immortal child who thought jumping into the sun was a good idea but not to visit Hank?

I’m not saying that Jan should have had to put herself through that and Tony is clearly feeling too guilty over the whole thing. But Cap didn’t visit? Hawkeye didn’t? Mr. Lets Bust Hank Out?

Possibly they did off-screen. The Hank arc has been kind of suffering from Shooter’s inability to balance writing and EICing. I feel that if redone, there would be more to the arc.

Anyway, the trial!

We skipped the first two days. Its the third day of the trial now.

The graphic guy went above and beyond for that Sad Composited Hank graphic.

I like the AN AVENGER’S DARKEST HOUR thing.

I also like the setup for recapping the necessary details.

Ex-Avenger attempts to heist the government would be big news so all the information is conveyed as this news report.

INCLUDING COURTROOM SKETCHES

God, that’s good.

That’s good comicing. Amazing.

Look at Thor in a courtroom sketch. Superb.

Look at that cheesy graphic for the coverage. Does anybody in Marvel even use a domino mask?? Everything about this is amazing.

People may say that Frank Miller revolutionized using media talking heads for social commentary in his comics. Maybe. Maybe so. But how many courtroom sketches did he include? Huh?

So apparently the reason why we’re on day three of the trial is that days one and two were entirely debates over whether Hank was even fit to stand trial.

I’d’ve thought they would get that out of the way ahead of time.

And Hank wants his day in court. So who was arguing he wasn’t fit to stand trial? The prosecution?

Apparently, the prosecution tried to argue that Hank’s history as a hero made his crimes more heinous, as a legal argument.

Which, uh? Um? Uh?

The defense objected that this was prejudicial but they were overruled.

The news recap ends when She-Hulk turns off the television angrily for reminding her of her legal career.

She-Hulk: “Leeches! I haven’t met Henry Pym, but he can’t be the creep they’re making him out to be! And that prosecutor -- ! I know it’s his job, but do they all have to be sanctimonious?! I hated that when I was a practicing attorney, and I don’t hate it any less since I’ve become She-Hulk!”

Reminds me that her nemesis in her original Savage She-Hulk book was an Assistant DA called Buck Bukowski who was a real sexist douche.

He mellowed out over the course of the book, mostly by learning that a death he blamed She-Hulk for was sorta his fault, but I wonder if she left LA so she wouldn’t be tempted to throw him out to sea.

She-Hulk is also still super bored (in New York??) and wanders downstairs to see if anyone is up to anything interesting.

Downstairs in the gym, she finds that the Caps are training.

The Captains America and Marvel.

Cap(tain America) is doing some combat training with Captain Monica Marvel.

This will not be at all confusing to have them on the same team.

Anyway, this training sequence is amazing so lets just have it all:

Cool stuff, Caps.

The training has to be cut short because Cap(tain America) has a prior commitment but still good stuff.

She-Hulk applauds Captain Marvel’s showing but Marvel waves it off as thanks to Cap(tain America)’s training. Which Cap(tain America) waves off as thanks to her being a quick study.

Its like a self-perpetuating modesty loop in here.

Cap excuses himself to go to his prior engagement.

Captain Marvel: “It’s easy to see why he’s called a living legend! He’s very good! And his grasp of strategy is second to none!”

She-Hulk: “Yeah, he does pretty well for a guy with no powers, but I could take him!”

What a this era of She-Hulk thing to say, She-Hulk.

Captain Marvel tells She-Hulk hey maybe not! Cap has stood up to some pretty tough customers, including Jen’s cousin the Hulk.

Which She-Hulk didn’t know!

Y’know, after Bruce (or recently implied to be Joe Fixit Actually??) started Jen’s origin story, the Hulk has not much further relevance in the Savage She-Hulk book. Jen doesn’t even give any indication that she’s keeping up with his exploits.

Not surprising, since the book was trying to be its own thing. And Jen’s life just starts to implode not very far into her solo so she doesn’t have time to also worry about Bruce.

Captain Marvel mentions that all of Cap(tain America)’s run-ins with the Hulk are recorded in the Avengers computer archives and She-Hulk concedes she should give that a look.

Hey, she finally has something to do in New York!

Captain Marvel also tells She-Hulk that she’s going to head home.

She-Hulk: “You have a place in the city?”

Captain Marvel: “Not this city... New Orleans.”

She-Hulk: “NEW ORLEANS?!?”

Captain Marvel: “Sure! It’s a snap to commute -- when you can travel at the speed of light! Take care!”

And then she nyooms off!

NYOOM!

It’s a good point! I hadn’t considered it but yeah, Monica can just commute. No need to uproot her life to become an Avenger.

I guess that’s why the decision was so easy for her to make.

She-Hulk is still at the window, wishing she could lightspeed to Malibu, when Thor and Janet arrive from court.

Janet thanks Thor for coming to court with her. Which he says no big to because “Time given to one’s friends is well spent. Would that I had given more time to poor Henry before this.”

You’re a cool guy, Thor.

The mention of Hank has Jan break down a little.

Jan: “Oh, Thor! Why has this happened to us... to all of us? We’re Avengers!”

Thor: “But still we are human -- aye, even a ‘god’ such as I! None of us are immune to wounds of the spirit. We err... we misunderstand. Janet? Is there anything more I can do?”

Jan: “No! No... I’m all right! We mustn’t dwell on the past. The future’s all that matters!”

Thor: “But...”

Jan: “I don’t want to talk about it anymore!”

Geez.

We’ve seen how affected the Avengers have been by what Hank has done and what they think he has done. We’ve seen Jan is more messed up by it than the smile she puts on lets on.

But the plaintive questioning of how this could be happening to the Avengers still hits hard.

Thor respects Jan’s wish to end the discussion to the frustration of She-Hulk who has been watching this conversation from the upstairs window.

She’s frustrated that Jan won’t just let it out, that Thor just let the subject drop.

She-Hulk: “It’s that blasted Avengers’ tradition of ‘respecting the privacy of members’ personal affairs.’ The founding members carry it too far! Can’t they see how it hurts them? And Jan -- ? Why does she hold in all that grief and heartache? Why doesn’t she cry and scream and shout and get it out of her system?!”

Jen and Jan are two very different people!

But She-Hulk, and Hulks generally, are about letting your feelings out. And Jan van Wasp has long been about playing the flighty sprite.

I’d crack joke about She-Hulk being this invested in the drama of the Avengers already but Jan is her friend. They presumably went car shopping together.

And She-Hulk has very few friends and almost zero female friends. Her one female friend died in a convoluted car accident and then She-Hulk mostly had a male supporting cast. Thank goodness she’s here on the Avengers with its two whole other women.

Meanwhile, at Stark International, Cap(tain America) has come to pay a visit.

He hasn’t been able to reach Tony in days. And Tony’s secretary told him that Tony has locked himself away in his private lab and that he doesn’t want to see anyone.

But if he didn’t want to see anyone, he should have thought twice about making it so that the security system will let in any Cap that flashes an Avengers ID.

Cap is particularly worried because of that nasty argument they had about Tony dating Jan. Tony has been pretty down since they broke up and Cap doesn’t want to see him fall apart like Hank did.

And.

Tony is. Doing. Maybe not okay.

He’s sweating a lot and unshaven and monomaniacally focused on a project.

Cap finds him holding up an enormous piece of machinery and doing SCIENCE.

This is the final evolution of Tony’s guilty conscience regarding Hank Pym.

Iron Man: “Remember how Moondragon used her mental powers to mess with our heads? Well, it’s my theory that she’s responsible for Hank’s recent troubles! I aim to prove that with this cerebral scanner! This baby should tell us whether or not Hank did the crazy things he did because of some outside mental influence! I hope I’m right!”

I mean, he raises a fair point! I don’t think its the case because what would it have benefited Moondragon to make Hank do what he did? And if its an inadvertent thing, she mind controlled a lot of people when the roster change-up was happening back in #211 so why did only Hank get affected? Plus, it doesn’t really match up with what both Hank and Jan have been saying about his behavior deteriorating before then.

But, Tony is going to Tony. And he, like many fans and writers and editors, just want a simple nonsense explanation that can make a distressing thing go away.

Cap points out that the ginormous machine can’t exactly be dragged down to the courthouse but this is just the prototype. Tony is going to have a miniaturized version ready by Monday.

Cap: “I see. Tony, how long have you been up?”

Iron Man: “I don’t know... 30... 40 hours, maybe. What difference does it make?”

Cap: “It makes plenty! You’ve had some rough sledding lately... You can’t keep on driving yourself this way!”

Iron Man: “But I have to do something for Hank. I feel that I let him down... In so many ways.”

Cap: “You can’t help him if you kill yourself in the process!”

Tony is going to Tony. I think that in some ways he might have a more overdeveloped guilt complex than Peter Parker or Matt Murdock.

For Reasons, I’ve taken a look at how things are going in the Iron Man book around this time and oof. Poor Tony.

Over in Leonia, New Jersey, Vision and Scarlet Witch are watching the trial coverage on the news and-

Okay.

1.) How do you make watching the network news so moody and dramatic, Vision? Do you ever actually relax?

2.) Do you two just wear your costumes around the house? Surely you must have other clothes? Vision? Do you have other clothes?

Some other stuff is that Wanda has been holding up Jan and Hank as the ideal marriage so this whole thing has been weirding her out. Although Vision has had a less rosy opinion of it, having been there for it with all of the marrying the split personality nonsense involved.

Although I don’t know why issue #68 is referenced. I don’t think that had anything to do with anything. Issue #60 is where the wedding happened.

Bet whoever put that caption wishes they had access to the internet.

I kind of wish we got more stuff like earlier, got to see Avengers not currently on the team and other heroes that worked with Hank Pym reacting to his disgrace exit from the team and then arrest. Wish we could have had Vision and Wanda try to visit him in jail.

Meanwhile, Long Island Sound.

A LOCATION OF EVIL

A suited man arrives and knocks on 13308 McKinley.

He is Dr. Chen Lu and he is expected.

Moonstone/Dr. Karla Sofen meets Dr. Chen Lu at the door and shows him in to the secret science basement where Egghead is running an experiment with the latest scientific equipment that can be begged, borrowed, or stolen.

I’m figuring... mostly stolen? Right? Like Egghead’s plan was to steal all the resources he needed? Because, ugh Effort?

Moonstone interrupts Egghead to let him know Dr. Chen Lu has arrived and Egghead is thrilled! He rushes from his seat to shake his hand.

And the sentiment is returned by Dr. Chen Lu who is eager to join Egghead’s project.

Y’know, Egghead is a jerk and is stealing all of his resources but his project will hugely improve medical science and he’s getting criminal scientists off the street and into some actual science jobs they can be excited about.

Dr. Chen asks how Egghead isn’t dead because he was pretty sure he was told Egghead was dead. And Egghead sure has a tale to tell!

In Defender #43, Egghead set up Cobalt Man to reach critical mass and explode to distract the Defenders so he could steal a magical star. When Cobalt Man found out, he was pretty pissed and decided to blow up Egghead.

Egghead: “We had a bit of a falling out, you might say... and he ended the situation most dramatically. Witnesses actually assumed we’d both perished. In actuality, I had been teleported by an experimental mechanism to relative safety in the New Jersey swamps... and unlike death, one can usually return from the state of New Jersey!”

Damn, Egghead! Criminal genius that you are, you’ve found the only New Jersey joke I’ve ever laughed at! Fiend!

I think its the glasses adjusting what does it.

Anyway, Egghead’s and Dr. Chen’s cool conversation gets interrupted by Tiger Shark and Shocker bursting through the ceiling fighting.

Beetle flies in after them and apologizes for the mess but says ‘really Shocker had it coming, man, fuck Shocker.’

Beetle and Moonstone jump in to separate the two.

Hey, you might be wondering how the Masters of Evil are out of jail when last time we saw them was getting arrested after attacking the Avengers like dumbasses?

Check that panel where Iron Man is lifting a really heavy thing. There’s a news broadcast about a bunch of prison escapes. Good job on the same issue setup, Stern!

Shocker complains that Tiger Shark called him a two-bit hood but Tiger Shark says in his defense that Shocker IS a two-bit hood (Not inaccurate...) who nearly screwed up the isotope heist. But Egghead says that Shocker is an important part of the operation.

Then Tiger Shark notices Dr. Chen Lu and says a slur.

C’mon, guy. Don’t be like that.

Dr. Chen Lu: “Speaking without thinking seems to be second nature to you, Tiger Shark. In the interest of our future partnership, I shall excuse the insult to my race... this time! But I warn you, do not use that word in my presence again, or you shall answer to -- THE RADIOACTIVE MAN!”

Tiger Shark hurriedly says that obviously he didn’t mean to offend. Because Dr. Chen Lu Radioactive Man fwooshed into his green skin (dammit comics whats with you and Asian people and green skin?) radioactive form and costume.

But with Radioactive Man on the team, the Masters of Evil are finally complete and ready for the next step of EGGHEAD’S BOLD PLAN.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye returns to his apartment from his day job, kind of looking a steady paycheck in the mouth. Sure the big wad of bucks is nice but its sooo boring. Thank goodness he has Avengersing to keep things exciting.

He then sings a short bit about “Best of both worlds -- !” because Hawkeye.

Hawkeye sees the news broadcast about the Hank Pym trial and even though he hasn’t been called to testify (because he wasn’t part of the team when Hank was caught with his hands in the government’s cookie jar) he figures what the heck, he’ll go to the trial anyway to show moral support.

And he does! In full costume!

In fairness, so are Thor and Captain America.

I guess Captain America and Hawkeye don’t have publicly revealed identities. But they couldn’t have thrown a suit on Thor?

Please put Thor in a suit. For reasons.

She-Hulk and Wasp are wearing nice court clothes.

Although She-Hulk seems uncomfortable in her nice court clothes.

(By the by, She-Hulk showing up at all makes Hawkeye warm up to her a little, since he figures that in her own way she cares about being an Avenger as much as he does.)

By the way, notice who wasn’t in that picture? Hawkeye leans over to whisper to Cap where is Iron Man? Annnnd Cap thinks maybe he just got wrapped up in his cerebral scanner project.

At this point in the trial (day 4), Hank has finally been called up to the stand to testify on his own behalf.

So, of course, given Hank Pym’s luck, the courtroom explodes.

What a dynamite conclusion to this arc!

The Masters of Evil (Moonstone, Radioactive Man, Tiger Shark, Shocker, and Beetle) jump into the court through the exploded ceiling, grab Hank Pym, have Shocker blow up the load bearing wall, and then run out while the Avengers are distracted holding up the entire ceiling!

An action scene fast enough that I can believe, yes, the Avengers didn’t have time to react to it before it happened.

But Thor is strong enough to hold up the ceiling, so Wasp orders Cap to get the crowd to safety and has She-Hulk and Hawkeye follow her to go after the Masters.

Cap: “Jan’s really coming into her own as group leader! Even Hawkeye’s snapping to at her orders!”

Good. I’m glad that people keep telling me that Wasp is doing a good job as Avengers leader.

Seriously. Given the way that the Avengers book handles teamwork and the idea that the Avengers even have a leader sometimes, I’m glad that the book is explicitly conveying that Wasp is doing good.

Hawkeye net-arrows Tiger Shark, She-Hulk tackles Radioactive Man, Wasp confronts Beetle, and nobody confronts Shocker because its just Shocker.

Beetle scoffs at Wasp trying to stop him but has to eat his words pretty soon. Her Wasp stings being souped up in this recent stretch of comics hasn’t stopped being a thing.

Beetle: “Ow! Maybe I was the one who spoke too soon! Even with my armor, I can feel a little of the Wasp’s bio-stings! If I can’t shake her, she might blow my micro-circuits!”

Very glad that Wasp continues to be an effective fighter in her own right and not just the distraction ‘fly around and pester people.’

She-Hulk just throws Radioactive Man out of the panel, mocking him for being green as her without any of her sweet moves.

Tiger Shark wants another go at She-Hulk after the way she stomped him in #222 but.

Oops guess I shouldn’t have mocked Shocker. Since he was ignored, he can sneak up behind She-Hulk and use HIGH INTENSITY VIBRO-SHOCKS to rattle her bones to dust.

Except, no. I should have mocked Shocker, a little.

Because even though the HIGH INTENSITY VIBRO-SHOCK rattles She-Hulk so that she chatters out “T-t-think a-a-again, y-y-you w-w-walking q-q-quilt!”, she grabs Shocker’s hands and holds him up in the air for Hawkeye to short out Shocker’s gauntlets with a couple of magno-volt arrows.

Shocker crumples, confused because one of the other Masters was supposed to be covering Hawkeye.

Radioactive Man tackles She-Hulk so She-Hulk just belts him away.

So Radioactive Man concedes, well, okay, She-Hulk is stronger than him. But brute force and being green aren’t the extent of his powers. He’s also radioactive, radioactive.

He hits She-Hulk with a controlled burst of gamma rays, which shifts her back into Jennifer Walters.

Hey, Jen! First time you’ve appeared in this book in this form.

She’s less than pleased. In fact, she starts screaming “No! Not this!!” and begging someone to help her.

Thankfully, the Masters put her out of mind as not a problem anymore.

And the dominoes fall.

Tiger Shark smacks Wasp out of the air, freeing Beetle to blast Hawkeye. And nobody can stop Moonstone from nerve pinching Hank Pym and pulling him into a truck.

Thor and Cap run out of the courthouse, presumably having gotten everyone to safety.

Thor: “Ho, villains! You’ve not won the day yet! Not as long as a single Avenger stands!”

Thor do what Thor do and what Thor do is throw Mjolnir.

Exceppppt its at Radioactive Man and Radioactive Man can still deflect Mjolnir with energy fields. Radiation can do that. Mjolnir doesn’t exist in real life so we can’t prove that radiation can’t do that.

Radioactive Man deflects Mjolnir right at Captain America. He gets his shield up in time but it still knocks him on his ass.

The Masters all book it into the truck while the Avengers get to their feet.

Wasp orders Hawkeye to shoot out the tires to the truck. But before he can and before it can be fruitless, a getaway truck explodes out of the truck and flies off more quickly than the Avengers can chase.

And by “the Masters all book it into the truck” I mean, “except Shocker” because they ditched him.

With the Masters escaped, Wasp turns on the shocked Shocker and rips off his mask and demands he tell them where the Masters are going.

But the shocked Shocker is too shocked to answer. He seems out of it, really.

So Wasp changes the question. Who is behind this? Why did they want to kidnap Hank Pym?

Shocker: “Why? It... it was his idea! Dr. Pym’s idea... He arranged for us to free him!”

DUN DUN DUUUUU- no wait we know thats not it

whats your game shocker

Sometime later, Hank Pym wakes up in Egghead’s lab. And, of course, immediately leaps up to kick the shit out of Egghead as soon as he sees him.

Alas, Tiger Shark holds him back.

Egghead: “Don’t restrain him too tightly, Tiger Shark! He’s of no use to us injured!”

Hank Pym: “I’ll ‘use’ you, Egghead! You’re responsible for ruining my life! You manipulated me into stealing that government adamantium... and set me up, when your scheme failed! You’re mad if you think you can make me help you now!”

Egghead: “Pish-tosh!”

Good rejoinder, Egghead.

God, this also cracks me up.

Egghead says that he’s in the middle of a great experiment and that he needs the world’s greatest biochemist, Hank Pym.

Hank is still on the ‘why the hell do you think I’ll help you, I hate you so much.’

So Egghead has the tv turned on.

Anchorman, Non Burgundy: “... Authorities were stunned by the news that Dr. Pym had planned his own abduction! The Avengers refused to comment on the Shocker’s confession, but polygraph experts confirmed --”

Egghead explains that Shocker was a patsy. His gauntlets were secretly rewired with special circuits that brainwashed him into believing what Egghead wanted him to. So thoroughly that it fooled a lie detector.

Egghead: “As far as the world is concerned, Henry, you are now most assuredly a criminal. No one will believe otherwise. Not the police... not even your former friends. You have no one to turn to in this world... except us! Join the Masters of Evil, Henry! We will give you a new life!”

Hank Pym: “All right... I’ll do it!”

DUN DUN DUN!!

Wow, so I guess Egghead wasn’t just being petty. He was also systematically destroying what little was left of Hank’s life to force him to work on SCIENCE project with him.

Proving his innocence and ‘getting his dignity back’ was all Hank had left to him.

Geez, sucks to be Hank Pym!

Psst, follow @essential-avengers? Like and reblog?

#Avengers #Egghead #Masters of Evil #Hank Pym #the Wasp #She Hulk #Hawkeye #Thor #Captain America #Captain Marvel #monica rambeau #Iron Man #not doing so well #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #SUPERHERO LEGAL DRAMhaha just kidding it gets interrupted #lot of interesting trajectories the avengers are going on in this issue #so far so good on the Stern run

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jeaniegreysummers · 4 years ago

Text

crying power || Jean & Bruce

WHO: Jean Grey-Summers ( @jeaniegreysummers ) and Bruce Banner ( @hulkout ) WHERE: Stark/Avenger’s Tower WHAT: Jean has spent weeks planning a big science experiment, with a single intended goal - to bring Erik Lehnsherr back from the dead, sans Phoenix. She recruits Dr. Bruce Banner to assist. WARNINGS: death mention, murder mention WORDS: 3.7k

JEAN: The widely held view within the walls of the Institute was that the Avengers were a bunch of over-hyped frat boys in receipt of extensive preferential treatment, and Jean was loath to disagree with them. After all, the X-Men had been fighting this world’s battles for decades before Nick Fury put together his merry little band of misfits, and all they got for their efforts was sent to Salem to hide behind masks and pretend they were ‘normal’ (whatever that meant). The Avengers got praise. They got accolades, got medals, got their faces plastered on billboards and songs written to celebrate their glories -- with one notable exception, at least from the original team.

Bruce Banner.

She’d researched him, before, followed him through with both a personal and scientific curiosity. He was a man born human who tried to make himself something more. He was a man playing with genes on government contracts, and it went wrong. He was a man who, it could be argued, deserved what he got.

But he was a man who, when given the potential to destroy entire cities, went on the run for years at a time. He was a man who took the role of scientist on a team where he could be the heavy hitter. He was a man who was very hard to find, a man who filled the role of pacifist far more than his friends.

And he was a man Jean needed, despite her previous feelings on him, despite everything else.

(Jean was good at putting aside personal feelings for the mission -- at least until the mission was over. She’d learned that from her father.)

Avengers Tower was a fortress. Its defences had been bolstered after the siege, even if Stark had backed down remarkably quickly (and uncharacteristically quickly, Jean noted). Still, the Phoenix could move her through in an instant, could have her in the labs a couple of seconds before the alarms started blaring.

Heels clacking against the linoleum, Jean stepped out of the darkness, coming into the direct eyeline of the very scientist she’d been looking for. “Dr. Banner,” she said, holding out her hand for him to shake. “A pleasure to finally meet you. Do you mind telling Mr. Stark’s lovely computerised assistant that I’m here for a meeting before I get shot at? That wouldn’t end very well for anyone involved.”

BRUCE: Inadvertently, people who often strayed too far from the limelight always made themselves a target. One small slip up and the mystery was far more notable than any secrecy. Still, it never surprised Bruce if someone knew his name, and surprised him far more if someone knew his face when he was much more human and much less green, donning a lab coat and a pair of reading glasses.

F.R.I.D.A.Y sent out an alert that someone was in the facility — not the actual housing unit — but credentials weren’t given. Typically that meant that Tony had allowed them past the new functionality they’d put in place, working endlessly on code and bantering over F.R.I.D.A.Y’s own comments through the night. It was almost easy to fall back into the routine of it — being Tony’s tech-guy. His science guy. The person he always counted on to be sitting on the lab stools well into the night.

It had been easy to fall back into being an Avenger too.

Which was why the snake of nerves in his stomach uncoiled and hissed at the sight of an X-Men in the lab. His safe haven. His safety room. The room of safeness where he drank his tea and poured over a biochem journal when he was stressed—

“We don’t really do the gun thing anymore,” Bruce balanced around the pencil between his teeth, hands preoccupied with realigning a piece of equipment, “If you were going to get shot, it probably would have been before the big doors opened for you.” With a hiss and a click, the mechanics slid into place, Bruce turning his attention toward his guest. Tony’s guest? Jean. White? No. Grey. “Hi. Uh,” Bruce dropped the pencil, looking at his hand afterward when he thought about the possible saliva transfer. Gaze flickering over the smooth, cool one of Jean’s, he hesitantly gripped her much smaller ones in his own, “Bruce. Well. You know that. You just called me by name. Anyway, hi — what are you doing here exactly? Tony’s not here. Well, I mean, he’s here, he’s just not here.”

JEAN: The answer seemed simple to anyone on the outside, to those who still believed the carefully crafted story that Jean’s propensity for dragging herself (and others, now) from the grave was a secondary mutation meticulously honed. For all intents and purposes her resurrections had been flawless, and if she wasn’t as close to Scott as she was, she may not have noticed a difference -- but she did. She saw Erik shift, felt the cool off her husband’s skin, saw how Maddie’s smile twisted just a little too sharp. She knew it was the bird within them, knew the effect it could have, knew how it could blend things until the horrific was justifiable.

Jean couldn’t use the Phoenix to bring Erik back, but she needed him. She needed him as a father, of course -- needed him more than she’d needed almost anyone. She needed him as a leader, too. The future they had built, the legacy he left behind, that was threatened by the Black Knights. It was threatened from the inside as much as outside forces. Genosha balanced on a knife’s edge, and she needed to guarantee safety for her daughter.

It’ll be Rachel, one day. Jean wasn’t going to allow that to happen. She’d always been a pragmatist -- a soldier’s daughter.

“You’re telling me a Stark backs away from things that go boom?” Jean asked, an eyebrow raising. She managed to keep her more aggressive thoughts about Iron Man to herself, managed to train her voice to a careful tease rather than anything too condemning. She wasn’t particularly concerned about the concept of Bruce refusing her, but she always preferred to use her words than her powers -- and she wasn’t entirely sure how it would work with the Other Guy. She’d seen the wreckage in South Africa post Scarlet Witch intrusion. “See, the doors didn’t open. I scattered my molecules, went through the wall. I think that’s why your electronic friend is having a mild coronary.”

Tony’s not here. Jean held back a snort, and simply nodded instead. “I know he isn’t. I sent him to my lab in Genosha.” He was easier to distract than she thought he would be, although Jean did get the distinct impression Stark was aware he was being distracted and went with it regardless. He got the opportunity to dig around her archives, after all, so it was a win win. “I was looking for you. I have a case I’d like to get your input on.” Jean reached for her bag, pulling out a stack of papers which she set on the workbench between them. “I was looking into the Cradle,” she said. “My colleagues seemed to think it was a thing of legend, but I’m not so sure. Every myth has its place in reality, right? Now, imagine the Cradle, combined with that nanotech Stark boasted about at the Expo. Imagine it combined with the energy I can provide, or take from the people around me.”

Jean allowed the words to settle, eyes flashing with just a hint of orange as she finally met Bruce’s gaze. “I could bring my father back to life,” she said. “I could bring him back to life, but I need you to do it. What do you say?”

BRUCE: It would have been easy to get defensive - to say that there’s no way he would be stepping toe into anything that so much as even sort of resembled Cradle. That he wouldn’t be participating in playing God anymore and that his time years and years of time for all of the nonsense was over. He’d gone into hiding for a purpose after all — but the notes in his desk drawer currently, the ones marked in blue and black ink with little comments from FRIDAY as he worked, said otherwise. The ones with the exact nonsense he hated - like time-travel.

And then, the words really hit him. “You ... Erik’s dead?” Dark eyelashes fluttered, dipped in cherry red in the right light, and Bruce had to hold himself back. He strayed away from the news. Purposefully so, considering most of the time it was negative things (like the world exploding, or Bruce going on a rampage, or more terrorist attacks on meta-humans and mutants).

The ache clawed it’s way from his stomach and into his throat, and for a second the whole world flashed green, tilting sideways and knocking into his skull like the angry fists of a small child who was too large for his age. Uncontrolled, like a battering ram.

Caramel eyes flickered down to clenched fists on the metal table in front of him, indents of his fingertips marring the edges in warped zigzags where his hold was too strong. Where Hulk’s hold was too strong. His reflection in the same metal table showed that same jade at the corners of his temples too.

“How did it happen?” Using her words as a bartering chip, Bruce would get his answers. After all, she couldn’t access it without him, without Stark (and deep inside, he’d hoped that Tony would say no if Bruce asked him to).

The scientist ignored that the same rumble of hurt in the guts of him called out for Erik, his new friend, his new maybe-something if Bruce didn’t fuck it up. He would bring Erik back. He didn’t really have a choice. “How did it happen?” He repeated again, less strangled this time.

JEAN: There was that word again. Dead. So final, so complete, so absolute — to everyone but Jean Grey, it appeared. To everyone but the people Jean Grey loved the most (her best friend, her sister, her teammates and fellow soldiers … it was only a matter of time, she told herself, before they were all back on firm ground) it lasted beyond human compression, spanned centuries and even longer. Legacies lasted for a millennia but death? Death drew on even after that.

Death wouldn’t draw on for Erik Lehnsherr. Logically, they needed him. Emotionally, Jean had been half alive since he took his final breath. Scott could scarcely get words past the lump in his throat. Maddie was shifting, changing, questioning. The world wasn’t on its even keel anymore, and they had battles and wars facing them they had no idea how to handle alone — and he was her father. More than anyone else, he was her father. He raised her, cared for her, protected her. Challenged her.

Was killed, by her.

“He’s—” Jean wanted to correct him, wanted to say something like not alive or not breathing or temporarily indisposed, but those would be lies. She couldn’t feel him anymore. Neither could Lorna, who lost her due north. “He’s dead.”

And then she got a front seat to Banner in all his grief, in all she needed to know to realise she’d been exceptionally strategic in choosing him for this request. She knew this already, of course. Erik taught her compassion, taught her love, taught her how to decode messages and read faces and expressions — but he also taught her how to plan, how to read people.

How to use people, that small voice provided. Jean pushed it to the back of her mind. That wasn’t what this was. She could do it by herself, if she wanted, if she so desired. The only reason she was here was because she was trying to do things differently, trying to learn from past mistakes. Trying to be better.

(But there was still a part of her that hoped, when that flicker of green came across his irises, when his grip increased on the steel of the table. There was a. part of her that yearned for a fight, a flicker that turned into a spark. We haven’t had a challenge like this in a while, the Phoenix crowed. A good way to expel some energy. A good way to level New York, more like.)

Jean clasped her hands behind her back, wringing them together as she waited. Charles’ lessons were still clear and bright in her mind. She was strong enough to hold him back, perhaps, if she tried — but getting into his head wasn’t what she was here for. Making him comply wasn’t who Jean was.

It wasn’t who she wanted to be.

The moment passed, and she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. She didn’t react at all. He asked the question she knew was coming, and she steeled herself, prepared for a rejection.

We could make him do it. We could. Stop holding yourself back. We have all the pieces, now, you and Madelyne. Why ask anyone else—

“It is a very long story,” Jean prefaced, “and from what I understand, you will want to know each detail. I’m not sure I can provide that much. There’s a lot even we don’t know, as X-Men — as mutants — but I’ll tell you all I can.”

Where to start?

“There is a cosmic force,” she began, “an entity I’ve only known referred to as the Phoenix Force. It is, for lack of a better term, the embodiment of life itself. It’s capable of great feats, and draws even more power from the universe if it has an appropriate host.” This time, Jean did chew on the corner of her lip, did lose some of the strength in her shoulders and confidence in her stance. “I’ve been its host since I was eighteen years old. It always protected me, brought me back when I was injured or … or when I was killed. It did the same for my husband, after Central Park. But there’s a cost.

“It takes everything in you, and makes it stronger. Anger becomes rage, affection becomes passion. Love becomes all consuming, but so does hate. And in my ignorance, I split a piece of this force, and it found a home in Erik. It … changed him. Altered him. Encouraged him to make decisions he would normally measure more carefully.”

She didn’t want to talk about the missiles, not in detail. She didn’t want to tell this man how she scarcely held her father back from committing a massacre against the very people Banner had fought alongside with the Avengers. She didn’t want to tarnish the memory that still existed of him in the public consciousness — a flawed man, perhaps, but ultimately heroic for what he had done for his people.

“He was a danger to himself and others,” she settled on. “I made the decision, as I did for myself many years ago, to end that particular threat before it went any further. We saved the world, but I lost my father. My sister lost her father. My people lost their leader, my husband lost his light, and Erik lost his life.” She sucked in a breath, brought her hands around to the front. “I hope if we can restore the latter,” Jean continued, “the rest might fall into place.”

Wishful thinking, perhaps. Wishful thinking — but God, wasn’t that what the X-Men were built on?

BRUCE: One talent that Banner and Hulk actually shared was the ability to stay quiet; read the room for tells, evaluate situations based on the now rather than the could be. While the scientist in Bruce often disagreed with Hulk’s methods of ‘smash now, ask questions later’ there was definitely something to it.

The urge to put his fist through the metal table quelled just a few moments after it had appeared, but there was something about Jean’s story that just didn’t add up to him. So you and Scott took it into your own hands to decide whether or not he got to live or die? Bruce didn’t actually say it, but the desire was strong. Lucky for him, he had much better self-preservation than Tony or Clint, and he let the woman finish her explanation before he even tried to comment.

“You know death does not come with convenience, right? If it’s not the…” He swallowed, “Phoenix, it will be something else.” Like lack of forgiveness, or Erik coming back a lifeless zombie. There wasn’t an exact science, to resurrection. At least not yet. After all, it was one thing when you had an internal power that was able to bring sustenance back to regenerative cells, it was another when you were starting from scratch, like with the CRADLE. Bruce would have to write algorithms based on Erik’s DNA: mutated DNA.

He said so, a moment later, but his words were not dismissive in nature. Instead, they were just facts.

Bruce Banner was going to help bring back a man who was likely better off dead. But you don’t want him dead either, Banner a voice betrayed in his psyche. How obnoxious, to be betrayed by his own subconscious. The physicist had spent countless hours staring at DNA. Sorting how to evolve and demonstrate it differently when being accessed through a different source code. Pulling it apart like the strings of a handmade sweater, like he’d done with his and Hulk’s. While he was specifically oriented in gamma-radiology, it should have been less complicated to perform tasks with something much more humanoid than Hulk would ever be.

“Okay.” Bruce said finally, twirling his hands around one another with some thought, “I’ll help you.” He should have made conditions. Should have said, But if things go wrong, it’s your fault. But he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Wanted to see his friend again. Wanted to share a connection with someone who was inherently good, despite what the outside world may have perceived.

Standing from his stool, Bruce marched forward with an odd confidence, “It’s going to take me some time to write the code. I need his file. Uh, anything you can get me pre-Auschwitz.” Bruce looked at her from under his fringe, one sturdy finger pushing up the rim of his round glasses.

JEAN: No one thought of Jean Grey as the brains of the operation in the early days of the X-Men. They all had their respective roles. Scott was the stoic leader, Warren was all charisma and private school charm, Bobby was the comic relief, Hank was the scientist and Jean … well, Jean was the girl. She was the one who tried to hold them together, the person who knew instinctively when someone was upset long before she went venturing into their mind (perhaps a little too far in the early days, before she learned restraint -- before she learned that curiosity shouldn’t win out against sanctity), the one who defended Charles and softened Scott and hardened Warren in the places that mattered.

No one thought of her as anything other than the girl on the pedestal, or the body rotting six foot under. No one thought of her past the tragedy, a life ended far too soon and then violently brought back into the present, constantly within and without, years missing where she was absent from lives that moved on without her. (Bruce said death wasn’t convenient like she wasn’t the person who knew that the most, like she hadn’t lived and died more times than anyone could ever imagine). She opened her mouth to say that, to tell him what it really felt like to be dragged from the dirt, how it was better than the emptiness that Erik was lingering in now.

Death still terrified her. Every part of it, every aspect. They said it was the unknown that scared people, about what happened after. Jean knew, and she still hated it, still ran from it at every opportunity -- still couldn’t leave Erik in it, no matter what.

It wasn’t a lack of love that killed him. It was a lack of choice. She wanted to say that, too, wanted to ask Bruce if he’d ever stared a monster of cosmic proportions in the face and felt it calling to him. She thought he would understand, thought the Hulk would give them something of a shared foundation, a trust that would linger (because to have anyone near Erik, she needed to trust them immediately, wholly). Instead, she found nothing but suspicion on his face, found she was staring down the barrel of a gun instead of the compassion she had expected from his reputation.

But she wasn’t here, in the end, to make friends. She wasn’t here to be the Jean Grey that had portraits hanging in the Institute, or counselled her friends after a hard battle. She wasn’t here to be the golden girl, the shining beacon of morality. She was here for a single purpose, and she was here as a scientist.

“I have it all in here,” Jean replied, tapping the side of her temple. “I did my homework before I came to you.” Weeks and months of scouring through records and minds, trickling her way through states and countries to gain information that was long thought lost (but nothing disappeared forever. Jean knew that). “I’ve been coding it, on my personal system. I can send it through.”

The information read cold, clinical. She tried to think of it that way, as she manufactured this plan -- as she realised that it was going to work. But there wasn’t a part of Jean that could maintain that for long. She nodded once, allowed her gaze to drop from Bruce and move to the CRADLE, instead.

(It was Erik who first sat down with her, she remembered, long before the X-Men were even thought of. It was Erik who said, you’ve got a lot more in your head than you let people see, don’t you? It was Erik who first said sometimes telepaths have the most to hide, the heaviest burden to carry. It was Erik who helped her know physics so she could deconstruct it.)

It wasn’t a logical plan, but it was the only one she could make, the only choice that didn’t choke her.

“Let’s get started.”

#discord #char: bruce banner

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medea10 · 4 years ago

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My Review of Kaguya-sama: Love is War - Season Two

Season One Review Here.

Here we go again! Those crazy kids, will they ever confess their feelings for each other?

HISTORY: Love is war! The first one to admit love is seen as weak and is thus deemed the loser in this fight. That reigns true in the minds of student body president Miyuki Shirogane and student body vice president Kaguya Shinomiya. Both of them are mad for one another, they just won’t admit it. So, Miyuki and Kaguya play mind games with one another to see if they can make the other crumble. In a war with many wins and losses, who will be the first one to admit their feelings for the other?

SEASON TWO: While the mind games are still happening, it seems like they’re going towards a cuter case (at least when it comes to Kaguya). Yes, she still covers her tracks so she comes out looking cool as a cucumber, but inside she’s a mess. We start the season off with Kaguya wanting to celebrate Miyuki’s birthday. It’s just that Miyuki is stubborn about celebrating his own birthday or even receiving gifts (due to his upbringing). And then we add a few more road-blocks to this story with the addition of new members of the student body.

Then we end this memorable era of the student council as new members are set to take place with an election. Despite the sad atmosphere with remembering all the fun stuff that occurred last season, everyone will be coming back to their old positions for the upcoming school year. I mean, this was the third episode! It would be a real cock-tease if everyone left their positions this early in the season.

NEW CHARACTER: Let’s enter the Student Council Election arc! With the disbanding of the previous student council, it’s time for the students to choose their next president, vice president, etc. Miyuki was skeptical about continuing his reign as president, but he’s going to run for a second term. While Miyuki is still popular, a first-year student is ready to take him down. In comes Miko Iino! She’s seen as a sticler for the rules. Even when she’s in the student council, she doesn’t waste time scolding every member (except Chika) about minor imperfections. Here’s what you might recognize her from.

*Miko is played by Miyu Tomita (known for Crim on Interspecies Reviewers)

LICENSING: This anime is licensed by Aniplex of America (just like season one) and is EXCLUSIVELY streamed only on FUNimation. I wouldn’t be so pissy about this if sites like Crunchyroll and Hulu hadn’t already streamed the first season from the start, but FUNimation and Sony want to keep the series all to themselves. The company’s a monster!

THE DUB: Holy crap, the unthinkable has happened and FUNimation has scrounged up an English dub to this series. But only for this season! What the shit is going on? Is it like when Crunchyroll and FUNimation shared the anime Free! for a while? Why is it only this season that’s being dubbed? Well anyways, if you’ve read my thoughts on season one, you’ll know that I had “strong” feelings towards this getting a dub. Meaning, the narrator had to be voiced by R. Bruce Elliott! Well…they did voice the narrator with someone from Space Dandy. I just didn’t expect it to be voiced by Space Dandy himself! In short, Ian Sinclair is voicing the narrator and I am okay with this. He’s no R. Bruce Elliott, but Ian Sinclair is friggin’ awesome. I actually think the dub is really good from what I’ve heard so far. There’s only a few episodes available at this date and time, but make your own decisions here. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

ENGLISH CAST: *Kaguya is played by Alexis Tipton (known for Honey on Space Dandy, Lala on To Love Ru, Iris on Fire Force, Mizuki on Baka and Test, Aoba on Keijo!!!!!!!!, Hana on Prison School, and Saya on Blood-C)

*Miyuki is played by Aaron Dismuke (known for Al on FMA, Hiro on Fruits Basket, Kakeru on Fruits Basket 2019, Van on Escaflowne [redub], Marx on Black Clover, and You on Deadman Wonderland)

*Chika is played by Jad Saxton (known for Charla on Fairy Tail, Hana on Fruits Basket 2019, Koneko on High School DxD, Dorothy on Black Clover, Tamaki on Fire Force, Megumi on Food Wars, and Chika on Love Live Sunshine)

*Ishigami is played by Austin Tindle (known for Accelerator on Index/Railgun, Kaneki on Tokyo Ghoul, Karma on Assassination Classroom, Marco on Attack on Titan, Natsuo on Domestic Girlfriend, and Sunakawa on My Love Story)

SHIPPING PART II: Ooh boy, we’ve got some extra cute moments between Kaguya and Miyuki this season. From Kaguya giving a slice of cake to Miyuki for his birthday to the star-gazing moment where Miyuki grabs Kaguya and things get a little too close for comfort, this season was getting a little hot and heavy! Although, we didn’t get another moment with sick Kaguya this season! And it becomes increasingly clear to both characters that it’s getting harder and harder to put up that façade in front of one another. In the case of Kaguya, she ends up going to the emergency room only to learn that her “heart condition” is just the love for the president.

Even though we don’t get any kind of love confession this season, we do get some choice moments like Kaguya becoming friends with Miyuki on LINE, Kaguya’s run-in with Miyuki’s father, and of course that awkward position in a locked room between the two star-crossed lovers. You know what I’m talking about, the misunderstanding position. Literally every high school anime has this happen at one point!

MUSIC: So…no cute ending theme like Chika’s from last season? Crabapples!

Aside from that, the first time I heard DADDY, DADDY DO, I was a little skeptical on the visuals they chose to match the music. Thankfully, that only lasted for two episodes at the most and the rest of the time I’m dancing around to this catchy theme.

And while I’m on the subject of music, has anyone else noticed the amount of 80s music references that was shown throughout the season? Maybe I’m just stuck on that episode where Kaguya is trying to vogue like Madonna.

FUNNIEST MOMENT: Underwear and man-whores! So much misunderstanding it was too much for me to contain my laughs.

ENDING: The last couple of episodes revolve around the school sport’s festival. Surprisingly, we get a fair amount of time dedicated to long-time holdout Ishigami. He ended up doing something quite surprising by joining the cheer squad and was willing to participate by dressing in drag for a skit. I find Ishigami made a cute girl. Then, we get some cute Miyuki x Kaguya shenanigans when Miyuki’s father visits the sports festival.

So the episode before the second season finale, we get a full episode dedicated to Ishigami. In episodes prior to this one, we were getting a taste of what’s up with our favorite gamer. There was talk of Ishigami being a violent psychopath in middle school with the way the faceless rumormill has been talking. Apparently when Ishigami was in middle school, he would frequently talk to this girl in his class. But then this girl gets a boyfriend! That wouldn’t bug Ishigami until he overheard that boyfriend cheating on this girl. It does get worse with what this scumbag tries to do. And that’s when Ishigami beat the crap out of him!

Unfortunately for Ishigami, his class and the girl walked in when he was pummeling the shit out of this dude. And so the truth gets warped! Especially when dude starts lying by saying Ishigami did this because he was jealous of their relationship. Because of the altercation, Ishigami was suspended from school for a time, had to see a councilor, and was forced to write a letter of apology to the jerk he beat up. That last one, he was unable to do so. If you were in his shoes, you wouldn’t write an apology letter either, you’d write a note that simply says...

“Go to hell, Dumbass”!

Amazingly, those are the exact words Miyuki told Ishigami to say to that jerk. Miyuki was the first person to open up to Ishigami after this incident. Despite the harsh time Ishigami had in middle school, after starting high school he learned who his real friends are, both from the student council and the cheer squad. I really should state that I was happy to see Ishigami get an episode revolved around him. He was introduced only half-way into season one and felt like he didn’t make that big of an impact with me. Ishigami this season stood out a lot more and I was very satisfied with the results.

Now in the final episode, Kaguya lost something dear to her. Her phone! Let me explain. She was given a flip-phone when she was 5 years old to only be used for emergencies. Kaguya really didn’t use her camera until she was in the student council and these photos are pretty special to her. So imagine her shock and horror when it falls off the school building and being told that she can’t retrieve her photos. Just as well, she had an obsolete flip-phone. Even me, with my retro media collection, I don’t own one of those! But now that Kaguya has joined the rest of society with a brand-new smart phone, she was able to join LINE and all of her friends shared with her the photos they took during those special moments Kaguya thought were going to be lost to her forever.

In the final segment, it wasn’t really anything romantic-driven. It was just another game brought on by Chika. Basically they all took turns blowing up a balloon until it pops. Or, an anime version to the Spongebob Squarepants episode, “Wet Painters” where Patrick blows a giant paint bubble. And leave it to Chika to inadvertently blow up the balloon by doing something you wouldn’t expect. It blew up, blew everyone and the school away while DADDY DADDY DO plays in the background.

We end with Kaguya and Miyuki standing up together and the narrator assuring us that the war of love is not over.

I love this series, I truly do. I just feel like the way these stories were set up, I feel as though the first season should have ended with the 3rd episode of the second season. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the ending to the first season with the firework episode. It’s just that this particular episode gave us the end of the student council, Kaguya actually called Miyuki by his first name, and with Miyuki announcing his candidcy for president again, it opens up for more to look forward to with season two. But that’s just my thought on the matter. I’m sure this was the setup in the manga, but in the 12 episode dynamic with the anime feels weird. And same can be said about having the Ishigami episode right before the season finale. I’m glad this story was told, I just wish it was placed better in the 12 episode anime season setup.

Despite my tiny gripes there, I enjoyed this season very much. There’s definitely been a lot of development between Miyuki and Kaguya this season with some overused tropes and surprising moments no one expected. I can honestly say I didn’t expect Miyuki to take Kaguya by the shoulders as he talks about stars and constellations. Although, I did expect Miyuki to freak the fuck out sometime afterward because he thought he acted like a dork. But we get the main duo get a little closer with certain moments like the star-gazing episode, Miyuki’s birthday, and Miyuki adding Kaguya to LINE. So it once again leaves us on the hopes of a season three. Unfortunately at this date and time, no word on that happening! So maybe I should go on and read one of the 15+ volumes of the manga.

If you would like to watch the second season of Kaguya-sama it seems like the only one that has it available is FUNimation, with the English dub airing once a week. But if you would like to watch the first season, Crunchyroll and Hulu have it available for streaming.

#anime review #kaguya sama: love is war #kaguya shinomiya #miyuki shirogane #chika fujiwara #yu ishigami #miko iino #kaguya sama wa kokurasetai

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snickletastic · 5 years ago

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A Fake Mustache {Jason Todd x Reader + Dick Grayson}

warnings~ minor sexual assault, creepy older men, cursing, alcohol

summary~ dick and reader must go on an undercover mission to retrieve information for bruce, but come across a few dilemmas along the way

a/n~ hey guys! ive been getting some pretty crappy writers block recently, and i ended up writing two versions of this story, but ultimately decided this was the winner. im not quite sure if this idea had been done before, so im sorry if it bears any accidental similarities to anybody elses work. i really enjoyed writing this one, so i hope you guys like it :)

Jason tugged at the hem of your dress inadvertently, tuned out of the conversation you and Dick were having. The tug made you stop mid-sentence and turn to look at your boyfriend. His hair was scruffy, his jacket collar crooked. He looked like a disheveled 12 year old, despite being the giant he is.

“What’s up?” You questioned him.

“..Huh? Oh, nothing...” Jason muttered before leaning closer into your ear so Dick wouldn’t overhear, “Can we go soon?”

You gently rolled your eyes at his request, “Sure, Jay. Let me finish talking to your brother first.”

Jason groaned, turned, and walked to the nearest seat to wait for you to finish talking. Dick side-eyed his younger brother and continued the conversation, “So this mission will only take one night, but it’ll be a few hours.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Yup,” Dick nodded, “Iceberg Lounge, 9 p.m.”

“Works for me, I’ll see you then,” You began to walk away.

“Wait!” You turned around, “Wear something nice,” Dick said cheekily, earning a loud scoff from Jason, who didn’t appreciate the comment.

You gave Dick an awkward thumbs up and took Jason’s arm, leaving the manor before Jason got too unruly. While walking out to the car, Jason dragged behind you.

“Will you pick up the pace?” You whined.

Jason stopped in his tracks, “I don’t want you going on this mission with him.”

“Why not? It’s perfectly safe, there won’t be any fighting involved. It’s just an undercover mission,” you shrugged.

He crossed his arms, “I should be the one you go undercover with. Not him.”

“I love you, but you know he’s a bit more charismatic with the bad guys...you just speak with your fists.”

“Yeah well,” Jason awkwardly tramped past you, “It works.” he murmured.

You checked the time on your phone, 8:58. Dick still wasn’t there, and you were standing outside of the lounge in the freezing cold. The music was blasting so loudly that you could feel the vibrations on the sidewalk. The line of shady individuals was beginning to get longer as the peak party hours crept up. A loud engine echoed from blocks away, making you shutter. Loud cars are so obnoxious. It seemingly only got more and more boisterous before you realized it was driving towards the club. A bright red Corvette pulled up along the curb, and the window rolled down revealing non other than Dick himself.

“I thought I told you to wear something nice,” he sneered. You choked at the bluntness of his comment, about to defend your dark purple cocktail dress. “Relax, y/n, I’m just screwing with ya. You look beautiful,” he winked and revved the engine, making the crowd outside of the club stare at both of you.

“You’re drawing too much attention! I thought this was meant to be a low-profile mission,” you complained.

Dick raised an eyebrow, “How isn’t this low-profile?”

You furrowed your eyebrows, “Is this Bruce’s car?”

Dick scratched his head, “....Yeah...um...don’t tell him I borrowed it for the night....please?”

“Only if you stop being so flashy with it,” you crossed your arms.

Dick got out of the car and tossed his keys to the valet. The crowd was still looking at him, and the women were especially captivated by his presence. You cringed at all of the eyes set on you, but Dick bathed in the attention. He wrapped his arm around your waist and led you to the door, giving the bouncer a wad of cash in order to skip the line. When the club doors opened, the music deafened your ears.

Dick continued to steer you through the crowds, shoving through creepy men who stared at you and shimmying past rowdy women who were throwing themselves at him. Finally, the two of you stopped before a red rope and a booth filled with older men in suits smoking cigars. Your mouth gently dropped at the sight, it looked like it belonged in a movie scene. There were two young women squeezed in between the group of men, whispering into their ears despite being more than half their ages. You shivered at the sight and squeezed Dick’s hand unwittingly. He quickly turned his head towards you, scanning your face for danger. You just scrunched your face and mouthed, “sorry.”

A large man interrupted your silent exchange, “Who are you?”

“I am John Booth, this is my, er- partner,” he looked around the area, then motioned a hand towards you, “Beth...Macanudo.”

The bouncer raised his eyebrow and scoffed, “Beth Macanudo?”

You half smiled and bounced upwards on your heels, “That’s me!”

The bouncer looked at the both of you brazenly, seemingly in disbelief that you belonged behind the rope. Before he turned you away, a voice piped up from behind him, “Let them in.” The bouncer didn’t testify, immediately unhooking the rope to allow you in.

You avoided eye contact with the large group of criminals, looking at the floor as you moved into the booth. Dick sat on the outside, unwittingly pushing you close to a creepy old man who was eyeing you up and down while licking his lips. You felt nauseous, but decided to stay quiet to avoid blowing cover.

Dick scanned the table, then let out an audible groan. You looked up to see no one other than Jason on the other side of the booth- wearing a fake mustache. You immediately covered your face with your hands, shaking your head at the situation you’ve now been put in. He had a blonde woman awkwardly squeezed between him and a crime lord, but he was clearly ignoring her; staring at you. His poker face convinced you to play along with the scheme.

Dick cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes at his brother, clearly angry that he didn’t trust the two of you enough to do the mission alone. It bothered you, too, but you should have expected nothing less from Jason; who once slashed a mans tires and smashed his car windows for catcalling you while you both walked past him. His jealousy could get reckless, but his protective side could borderline loony. Now, he sat with 7 playing cards in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, staring the both of you down.

“What are your names?” He stayed in character.

“John Booth,” Dick slyly wrapped his arm around your shoulder, “This is my girlfriend, Beth Macanudo.”

Jason let out a laugh, “Macanudo? Like the cigar?” He lifted the box sitting in front of him, “Which just so happens to be the exact brand we’re smoking? Brilliant.”

Some of the crime lords laughed, some looked suspicious, examining the pair sitting at the end of the booth with ridiculous names. “What are you getting at?” Dick squinted.

“Oh, nothing,” Jason leaned back into his seat, “Listen, fellas, I know these two. They’re legitimate.” He assured the group, who seemed to mellow out at the verification.

Dick stiffly took his arm from your shoulder as Jason’s glare become harsher. Was Jason really ridiculous enough to blow the cover? You considered it for a moment, then decided he wouldn’t put you in danger like that. You twiddled your thumbs on the table, trying not to look at Jason, displaying resentment towards him for being such a child. In the middle of your thoughts, you felt a pair of hands clutch yours. “What are you so nervous for sweetheart?” The old man to the right of you licked his chapped lips again.

“Er-um, nothing. Just...tired, is all,” you uncomfortably murmured, trying not to draw attention from the meeting.

“If you’re tired, we could head back to my room upstairs,” the old man inched closer to you, his breath hitting you face. It smelled like booze and smoke, making you choke up. Jason immediately noticed the man's hand on yours, and you trying to pull away. He felt his temper rising as Dick was oblivious to the interaction next to him, rambling on about drug trades. He shifted uneasily, trying his best not to lose character.

He tried to catch the attention of Dick with eye contact and small nods towards you, but he clearly wasn’t catching on. That is, until you yanked your hands away from the man so hard that your elbow hit Dick in the arm.

“What’s going on?” Dick questioned the man grabbing at you.

Jason bounced his leg, trying to keep himself quiet.

“She just wants a little love, is all!” The creep grinned and reached for your thigh.

You backed further into Dick and pushed the man away.

Jason rubbed his temples watching the scene play out, trying to stay calm.

Dick didn’t want to blow your covers, but he couldn’t sit there as you writhed towards him trying to get away from a pervert. “Don’t touch her,” Dick pushed his arms away from you, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Who the fuck d’ya think you are? If I wanna fuck your bitch then that’s what I’ll do, understand?”

A gun cocked and the three of you stopped quarreling, turning your heads towards Jason who was now standing up with a pistol aimed at the creep. “One more word and I’ll fucking kill you.”

The criminal gulped, “Don’t be so brash, son. It’s just a whor-”

Jason leaned across the table and pushed his gun towards the mans temple, “Remove your hands. Now.”

The old man let go of you and leaned back into his seat, avoiding the gun.

Jason motioned his head towards the exit for both of you to leave, and he finished speaking to the group before joining you guys.

“That...was...um, eventful,” Dick rubbed his neck awkwardly.

“Did we even get the information we needed? Was that a waste of time?” You questioned the two men.

“Trust me, princess, we got all the information we will need to take those men down.” Jason put his hand on the small of your back as you exited the club, passing the security guard. “We just need to get it back to Bruce.”

Dick nodded, “Alright...I’ll go get the valet to get me the car.”

Jason blinked, “Valet? Dick, there’s no valet here.”

“Yeah there is. I gave him the keys to the Corvette,” Dick assured Jason.

“Trust me, man, I frequent this place for the criminals. There’s no valet.”

“Shit!” Dick shouted exasperatedly, “Bruce is gonna kill me.”

“I didn’t bring a car, I came here on a bus...best not to leave tracks,” Jason scratched his head, “Call an Uber?”

Dick was still agitated at the loss of the hundred-thousand dollar car, but took his phone out and dialed a number, walking to a quieter place to speak.

“So, you didn’t trust us, huh?” You crossed your arms at your boyfriend.

“What? No. I mean, yeah. I trusted you guys; it’s the criminals in there that I don’t trust,” He pointed a thumb towards the club, “I know these assholes too well to let you come here without me.”

You couldn’t argue with him, knowing he meant the best in his own way. “Well, the mustache is a new addition. You grow that overnight?” You chuckled.

Jason brushed his mustache like a villain, “All it takes is some willpower and good genes,” He joked before taking it off, then sticking it on your arm.

“Ugh! Ew!” You peeled it off of your arm and examined it, “How did they fall for this? It looks like a small hamster!”

Jason laughed at your comment before becoming suddenly serious, “Oh...um, by the way,” He leaned closely into your ear, his hot breath making you shiver, “Don’t tell Dick that there actually is a valet here.”

You laughed and slapped his arm before Dick came back, bewildered. “I reported it to the department. Apparently it’s the funniest joke when a cops Corvette gets stolen from right under his nose, as if it doesn’t happen on a daily basis.”

masterlist

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shellheadtm-a · 5 years ago

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while i’m sitting here nervously chuckling to see if we go into curfew mode/shelter in place...

amanda’s guide to 616 tony’s relationships with characters you know from the mcu. otherwise known as how things are very different.

pepper: tony’s not married to pepper. he’s never been in a relationship with pepper. they pined after each other for a while, pepper got married to happy, happy died, she and tony banged, and then tony deleted his brain and that was pretty much that. by the time tony got around to asking pepper out, she was seeing someone, the weight of happy’s death was there (she asked tony to cut happy’s life support with extremis), and they’d both moved on. they definitely do not have a kid - 616 tony is childless. they’ve been good, good friends over the years, but now have mostly grown apart, and pepper’s doing her own thing as rescue.

rhodey: not much changes here besides the fact that rhodey is a former employee of tony/former ceo of stark/former iron man. while tony was pulling his life together while in recovery, rhodey was iron man. then he became war machine, and is also a liason to the us military for stark. he and tony are still pretty much bffs, despite the fact that they’ve had their spats over the years. tony loves rhodey a lot and tells him that frequently. they use ridiculous code names for things like mama hen and papa bear. when rhodey died tony rebooted him out of death. it’s like that.

happy: happy was pretty much the same. former boxer, tony hired him as a chauffeur. tony saw pepper and happy making eyes at each other and did his best to push them together. happy was in and out of tony’s employ for literal years, sometimes doing his own thing, for a while running literally all the pr and charity stuff (and doing a damn bang up job of it too, during the stark solutions days), and eventually was beaten into brain death during civil war. tony caused the blip in his life support at the request of pepper because happy didn’t want to spend his days like that. tony misses him a lot.

peter: 616 peter is a good deal older than mcu peter, and tony wasn’t really a mentor. instead, you can argue he kind of adopted peter as a little brother (which was a much better take on that friendship, no i do not take criticism). but civil war happened, tony convinced peter to reveal his identity for the sake of regristration/keeping peace, aunt may got shot, everything went to hell, and there’s been a long, slow healing process between the two of them. they can work together nicely enough...usually. but during the parker industries days there was some serious animosity going on - slapfights via the stock market. now, though, they’re starting to move on, and be able to act like grown adults and talk.

steve: oh boy. tony has some major fucking heart eyes for steve rogers. the avengers found steve in the ice, and he’s been tony’s literal attached at the hip bestie ever since, even though they break up more than a junior high school couple. instead of bickering, these two are all unnecessary touching and waxing poetic about each other and acting as each other’s biggest fans. tony has a captain america memorabilia collection. steve’s temporary death utterly destroyed tony completely. look for one, and the other probably isn’t that far behind. the avengers always function better when these two are in sync.

bruce: complicated. super complicated. bruce was a founding member, tony will tell you he is absolutely bruce’s friend, and he really is! but their relationship is...tumultuous. tony saved bruce’s life, but inadvertently caused the hulk as a literal manifestation via gamma bomb. he does love bruce, he does. but he’s also done shit like shot bruce into space because he’s something of a danger in the eyes of...well. just about everyone. (to be fair, that was the illuminati, and boy do i have opinions on the illuminati.)

thor: 616 tony and thor have been through the shit, both together and against each other, and have come out the other side still friends. the big three (tony, steve, thor) is called that for a reason. they’ve got a super tight relationship. but they’ve all three fought hard against each other, as well, and there was a point in time (after the thor clone particularly) where it looked like tony and thor were quitsies. not so much, apparently, thor’s a big tony supporter when tony and steve are feuding. tony (and also steve) have pretty much told odin to get fucked over their boy.

nat: nat and tony met while she was still a russian spy. that’s right. nat started off as an iron man villain. but once she switched sides and joined the avengers...listen. nat and tony have in the past had this...on again off again thing. how serious it’s ever been is up to you to decide, but they’ve been a thing. nat drags tony into things and he goes along willingly because he trusts her completely. he always believes nat has a good reason for doing what she’s doing. it’s been pointed out before but like...the level to which he did not care she had all this info on him (and clint, and bucky, and logan) could not have been more in the negative numbers. tony loves nat. tony trusts nat. enough that he doesn’t spaz the fuck out when she breaks into his bedroom and sits there waiting for him to wake up.

clint: clint was part of cap’s kooky quartet, when the og avengers left for some personal time. even so, tony and clint did spend a good amount of time out west with each other, during tony’s recovery and when he finally picked up the iron man mantle again. tony made clint’s hearing aids. it was tony and steve who were there when clint was going blind. they bicker and pick on each other like...a lot, but if clint calls, even for something as stupid as detangling his fucking cable box, tony’s there to help. they’re friends, is what i’m getting at. clint was the first person tony offered the shield to after steve’s death, to be the next captain america.

carol: instead of barely existing in the same space, tony is friends with carol. he loves carol like...a whole lot. they might argue, and they might disagree (and i think it’s because in reality carol and steve are a lot alike and tony is a good foil to the both of them), but ultimately tony loves and respects carol like...so much. he’s her aa sponsor. he’ll be there to help at the drop of a hat. hell, even after she’s broken his windpipe and finally explains herself to him and thor he’s more than willing to do what needs to be done. she’s the one he trusted with the whole...mmm...hinky shit that was going on behind the scenes after civil war bc he had to have someone and who better than carol danvers?

wanda: sorry but the mcu screwed the pooch completely with wanda all the way around. wanda was another one that was part of cap’s kooky quartet (along with pietro) and like...she was one of them for so long, you know, like...she and tony have actually led teams together, he brought her into force works. i honestly don’t think he holds any animosity for shit that happened before civil war, enough that he can make jokes about it now. it’s not this weird...you’re grounded bc i said so bullshit with them. tony will call wanda sweetheart at the drop of a hat.

vision: tony didn’t create ultron, that was hank pym. the vision is a bit of a weird case in 616 but he’s tony’s??? friend??? enough so that during age of ultron (616′s aou) tony was as blinded as everyone else that ultron had been using the vision to fuck with them from the future. he’s the one who worked to get vision’s self-repair to function after avengers disassembled and it eventually kicked in. he’s the one who helped vision with viv. and he fixed viv’s dog??? like??? he’s not the creator of either of the things that came out of ultron initially but he is vision’s friend, thank you and goodnight.

sam: yeah sam and tony aren’t like. best buds. they view life and being a hero too differently, i think. but they’ve been on teams together and worked fine together. they were able to get their shit together after steve’s assassination. i’d argue tony initially gave sam a chance because he was steve’s friend, and then gave his respect on his own once he saw who sam is as a person. especially when he was filling in as cap. not best buds, can work together just fine.

scott: hey so uh. tony’s friends with scott!!!! i hate!!! what the mcu did!!!! tony’s the one who took a chance on scott when he got out of prison. he hired him. he’s supported scott as ant man, scott’s been an avenger, tony’s uncle tony to scott’s daughter cassie!!! tony’s the one who begged cassie to please, please stay out of superheroing bc he’d lost scott, and he didn’t wanna lose her too. when cassie was little she used to be at stark industries parties!!! like...there’s none of his mean-spirited bullshit there, tony has no problem going to scott and being like hey. i need your help. they’re friends!!!!

t’challa: they’re friends, karen. like t’challa’s been on and off avengers teams for years, and these two have enough in common it’s probably no surprise they can?? get along just fine?? they were part of the illuminati together there toward the end of the incursions (along with steve until they, you know, wiped steve’s mind). they went after the avengers when that toxin was let loose at mount rushmore, because tony, the idiot, broke them out of jail. they have an information sharing agreement between tony’s company and wakanda. they’re friends. and tony’s always been kinda in love with him, lbr here.

bucky: how about a complete one eighty from the mcu? actual friends. didn’t start off that way, no, bucky tried to kill tony the first time they met. because bucky’s...well. he’s bucky. instead he ended up being the new captain america, bc tony took one look at this idiot and said “oh no he’s dumb i have to protecc.” tony knows where bucky lives in indiana - you can bet your ass not everyone does. tony can and will drop everything if bucky calls him in the middle of the night and says “hey, i need you.” he does the work on bucky’s arm that bucky can’t. alpine likes him. he’s willing to support bucky’s solo gig. keep the oatmeal angst, this is the tony and bucky content i’m here for, with bonus small town fireworks.

guardians of the galaxy: they come as a group in this because.................................tony used to be one!!! he likes them just fine!!!! he used their ship as a space crashpad for a while and got into so much trouble with them!! jfc, tony and peter set up the quill network!!! he and gamora had sex like once in which she was not impressed!! he and rocket bickered and dickered back and forth!! angela!!! they all met angela together!!! i hate!!! the mcu take!!!!

edit: stephen: i forgot stephen. because i’m dumb. anyway!! yeah so...stephen and tony don’t bicker that way. they’re friends. stephen never answers his damn phone, but they’re friends. stephen was long time illuminati just like tony was, and they all got up to hinky shit together. it was stephen that wiped steve’s mind at tony’s go ahead. they weren’t on the same side during civil war, but since they mostly get along just fine, and aren’t like...Like That with each other at all.

and as for people like...harley, ig. sorry, pal, they don’t exist in 616 so there is no comparison. tony wouldn’t know who the hell they are. but there you have it. it’s done. i did it.

#constant //: ( about )#long post #long post for ts

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friendofkurt · 6 years ago

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not supposed to sleep alone

Summary: A slight accident leads to snuggles. Fluff!

Word count: 2218 words

The team was assembled in the living room watching a movie together. Everyone had returned from their various Christmas holidays over the last few days and now only one person was missing. You. You had texted the group chat a couple of days ago saying you were going to be stuck at home a few more days and since then no one had heard from you. Bucky was trying to concentrate on the movie playing on the obnoxiously large TV but he was having trouble focusing on Mulan’s journey. His thoughts kept circling back to you and what could possibly be keeping you away. Wanda had mentioned that perhaps you had rekindled an old romance with your high school sweetheart whom you had made plans to see over Christmas, and Bucky’s heart clenched at the thought. You had been with the team for nearly a year now, but it hadn’t taken more than a few months for Bucky to fall head over heels in love with you. Only you didn’t know that. No one did. Or so he thought. The entire team had their own more or less firm suspicions of Bucky’s feelings for you, but they each kept them to themselves, and the only one who seemed oblivious was you. Steve was worried that you weren’t really oblivious, but that you didn’t feel the same and was just trying to let Bucky down easy, Nat was planning a wicked way of getting you and Bucky together, Wanda sweetly hoped that love would prevail in the end and Tony and Bruce left it to you guys to figure it out, keeping busy in the labs.

Bucky was just thinking about how they would probably get a text soon saying that you had decided to stay to hang out some more with your old “friend” (boyfriend, Bucky inwardly grumbled, inadvertently making such a grumpy face at the thought that Wanda was convinced that he hated Mulan) when they heard the door to the elevator ding and someone making their way down the hall. Everyone turned around to see who was coming. They weren’t expecting anyone but the floor was only accessible to so many people and most of them were piled on the massive couch already.

You rounded the corner with a big, slightly self-conscious smile on your face. Everyone gasped and exclaimed all at once at the sight of you. There was a massive bruise, blue and purple, around your left eye, your left eyebrow was split and two strips of tape were holding it together, and when you discarded your jacket you revealed your left arm covered in a cast. “Hi guys,” you said sheepishly as Wanda, Bruce, Tony and Steve came to you to look over your injuries and ask what happened. Bucky was still sitting on the couch, stunned at the sight of you hurt. Nat was perched on the recliner observing Bucky carefully, unbeknownst to him. “I’m fine, guys,” you insisted as Wanda carefully led you to the couch and everyone settled in again, Mulan forgotten on the TV. You ended up next to Bucky and gave him a quick smile. He was still too caught up in looking you over to make sure you really were fine to react. You turned around again to the others, everyone clamoring to know what happened. “Well…” you hedged, a blush rising to your cheeks, “it was just an accident.” “What kind of accident,” Tony probed, sensing there was a good story there on account of the blush. You hesitated, but everyone was looking at you expectantly. “”Canoe….” you mumbled. “A canoe accident? In winter?” Steve asked incredulously, while Tony threw up a big laugh and said “This I gotta hear!” You looked around almost desperately but it was clear no one was going to let up before you told the story. So you did.

You and your brother had been dragged to a party at some of your parents’ friends and it was immensely boring. So you had made a drinking game out of it, taking a shot every time someone said something inappropriate. Needless to say you had both gotten drunk very quickly and when you went into the backyard to cool off and sober up (and maybe just to contemplate whether the rose bushes could use some fertilizer, courtesy of the vodka roiling in your stomach) you had come across a canoe. There was a hill just beyond the backyard which was altogether too tempting, and you and your brother had managed to drag the canoe up there before sobering up enough to realize how bad this idea was. You realized that about halfway down the hill when the canoe hit a tree root and went off road. Next thing you knew you were in the bushes cradling a broken arm with your brother hurling out the contents of his stomach all together too close to you. “So I had to stay in the hospital for observation for a concussion for a few days, which is why I couldn't come back before,” you finished looking around at your friends. Steve looked like he just wanted to facepalm, Wanda tried to hide her laugh, Tony didn’t, Bruce just shook his head as he checked your eyebrow to make sure the plaster was still stuck and Nat was inscrutable as usual. Bucky was still as a stone next to you and you decided to turn to him to move things along from your embarrassing story. “So what are we watching?” you asked settling into the couch next to him, grabbing a blanket and throwing it over the two of you. “Umm..,” Bucky mumbled, glancing back at the screen, completely at a loss. “Mulan,” Wanda supplied as everyone started to settle in on the couch again, “we can rewind it and start over again if you want,” she offered. “No,no, I can just jump in here, no worries,” you said, snuggling down. Truth be told you were tired from the journey and had a bit of a headache, so you were happy enough to settle in on the couch and not paying too much attention to anything. Bucky felt you snuggle into his side and he did his best to not seem like he noticed it. The entire team was very tactile with each other, always touching in one way or another, and Bucky enjoyed the gentle touches littered throughout the day. It was a far cry from his days with Hydra when every touch brought pain. But he still hadn’t figured out how to act when you touched him. Your hands left warm imprints on his skin and tingles up and down his spine and he enjoyed it far too much, so he tried to stay away from you without it seeming obvious that that was what he was doing. But there was no escaping it tonight. As the movie wore on he felt you sinking deeper and deeper into the couch and leaning more and more into him, finally resting your head on his shoulder and falling asleep. He sat stock-still in order not to disturb you, and Natascha almost had trouble keeping the smirk off her face. Almost. As the movie ended she casually suggested continuing with another one. “Uhh, we can watch Frozen!” Wanda exclaimed happily and immediately put it on. “Not for me, I’m out,” Tony exclaimed and got up from the couch, heading to the labs. “Me too,” Bruce said softly, “I’m heading to bed. Goodnight everyone.” Steve and Wanda wished him goodnight, and “Frozen” started playing. When Bruce left, a spot on the couch opened up next to you, and stirring, you stretched your legs out and your head slid down over Bucky’s chest to land in his lap. You gave a contented sigh, a little stretch and fell back asleep. Natascha smiled, Steve glanced at Bucky and Wanda was wrapped up in Elsa’s story.

When “Frozen” ended Wanda got up with a yawn and a stretch and said goodnight to everyone. Natascha suggested another movie and Steve squinted his eyes at her suspiciously. She raised an eyebrow at him, throwing a look at you and Bucky on the couch. He had moved his hand to your back keeping the blanket in place over your shoulder and you were still fast asleep in his lap. Bucky still sat completely still in order not to jostle you and wake you up. Steve gave Natascha a little smile and said “Sure. We never did get around to “Rapunzel” the other night.” He settled in again as Natascha put on the movie. It wasn’t long before Nat declared she wanted a drink. “You want something, Bucky?” she asked as she got up. “Um, some milk, please?” he said, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the situation. “Sure,” Nat said easily, “give me a hand Steve?” “Sure,” he said and got up and the two of them left for the kitchen. It was almost 20 minutes before Bucky realized they weren’t coming back. He craned his neck looking for them but they were nowhere to be seen. He was trapped under your sleeping form and while he secretly enjoyed being this close to you without the pressure of having to talk to you, he figured he should wake you up and get you to bed.

He started gently shaking your shoulder and you started stirring. “No…” you mumbled sleepily turning your face into his thigh. “Come on, Y/N, you have to wake up. You need to go to bed,” he said gently, stroking your back. “No…” you repeated, but you sounded a little more awake. You snuggled into his lap again and he brushed your hair out of your face. You seemed to be drifting off again so he tried again. “Come on now, wake up for me, don’t you want to go to bed?” he coaxed. You grumbled, rubbing your face on his thigh. You accidentally rubbed your bruise against his thigh and that woke you up. “Ugh..” you groaned groggily, slowly sitting up, cradling your face. You looked so disgruntled at the entire situation but Bucky thought he had never seen you look cuter. You were eyeing his lap again, so he decided to get up before you could settle in again. You looked so disappointed that Bucky couldn’t help smiling at you. “Come on,” he said, gently pulling your good arm to get you off the couch. You reluctantly stood up bringing the blanket with you, keeping it secure around your shoulders awkwardly with your broken arm. Instead of getting up and going to your room, you leaned into Bucky and snuggled against his chest. He stiffened for just a second but then he put his arms around you and indulged in your sleepy scent for just a moment. You mumbled something against his chest. “What was that?” he asked, taking you by the shoulders and holding you out from him so he could hear you as you repeated it.

“JARVIS counts as a person right?” you asked. “What?” he asked, confused. What was going through your mind for you to ask this now. “JARVIS,” you repeated, “he counts right? I’m not supposed to sleep alone. The doctor said so.” You leaned into his chest against, seemingly content to fall asleep right there. Bucky looked around for help, but the two of you were alone. He was pretty sure JARVIS didn’t count as a person, which left him to make sure you didn’t sleep alone. He briefly considered waking Nat or Wanda, but he was pretty sure Nat would kill him and Wanda needed her sleep. She wasn’t sleeping too great these days, so Bucky didn’t want to disturb her. It was up to him.

He gently guided you down the hall to your room, deciding he would sleep on the floor next to your bed to keep an eye on you. He turned on the fairy lights you had strung around your headboard and pulled back the covers to tuck you in. You obediently crawled into bed and seemed to settle in quickly. He reached over you to grab one of the extra pillows, but as he did so you took a hold of his hand and turned over snuggling his arm underneath you. He tried pulling away gently but that made you frown and tighten your grip on his arm, so he decided to lay down behind you and let you snuggle his arm until you fell properly asleep, at which point he would make his exit and head to the floor. The way you gripped onto his arm he had no choice but to snuggle up close to you, spooning the length of your body with his. You made a contented noise and Bucky allowed himself a little smile as he breathed into your neck and settled in. He would extract himself as soon as you were fast asleep.

It didn’t take long for Bucky’s chest to rise and fall in a steady rhythm, his breath warm on your neck. You allowed yourself a little smile as you snuggled closer, raising his knuckles to your lips and gently kissing them before settling in for the night with a contented sigh.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #soft bucky #fluff #mcu fluff #avengers #notcanon #snuggles

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leighlikesthing · 6 years ago

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“Being Robin Gives Me Magic!”

If you’re not a comics fan, or someone who maybe has read sporadically, or only certain things, the character of Robin is a divisive subject.

You see, there is an entire subset of people who think that the character of Robin in any incarnation is lame. A foil for Batman that drags the Dark Knight away from his brooding depths and into something more comical and wholesome.

And sometimes, that’s true. Robin does get used to lighten things up sometimes when things get too gritty; too dark, and there are people who see that as a bad thing; who think that Bruce Wayne should be this crazed loner bent on justice with nothing but his money, his toys, and his weary butler.

But let’s be honest here.

There’s only so many stories you can tell in that vein before things start to get really, really boring.

Think about it! Batman has been around for 80 years. That’s a very long time.

Here’s how a classic Batman story goes:

Bruce Wayne finds out, through being a billionaire playboy and having connections with the Gotham police, that trouble is afoot. He dons the cape and cowl, does the detective work, gets nabbed by the bad guy, figures a way out of it and turns the tables, turns the bad guy in and goes home to his big empty house and his sassy butler.

That’s gonna get old fast, right? Even with a decent rogues gallery, and Jim Gordon hanging around, and maybe a couple of fair-weather girlfriends, that’s not a lasting premise. If you want 80 years of storytelling, you have to give Bruce Wayne more to fight for.

Avenge parents: Check

Fight for the soul of the city that he loves: Cheeee-yeck.

But let’s be honest. Despite Batman’s status as a symbol, and a spooky myth of Gotham, at his core, Bruce is still a person. And people need other people, or else they’re just some weird guy sitting in a big drafty cave talking to themselves about JUSTICE while their butler hangs out upstairs and dusts his dead parents’ belongings.

Enter: Robin.

And not just Robin, but the idea that because Bruce Wayne lost his parents at such a young age, he’s spent one half of his life training and studying to be the greatest detective on earth to avenge their deaths and keep a similar fate from befalling other people in his city, and the other half building a new family. Because deep down, he’s still that scared little kid who lost his parents, and needs people.

And that might very well be the most human thing Bruce and Batman have ever done. He didn’t just train partners. He didn’t just take in strays. He built, for better or for worse, an entire family and network of people.

Don’t get me wrong. Bruce is bad at stuff. He’s emotionally distant, pretty cold, and he can be a pretty terrible father (See: Every time he’s punched one of his children. Included on this list are, at minimum: Dick, Jason and Tim).

However inadvertently though, Bruce did something else as well. Not only did he collect these troubled youths and orphans to be his babies, he gave them each other. These characters now have an entire baseball team of siblings to bicker with, tease, rely on and hug it out with.

They’re family.

The Batfamily, to be precise. And they are broken and weird as all get out, but they, in my opinion, much more than Batman, are endlessly entertaining to read about.

And theorize about. One of the great joys that exists on the internet is the massive pile of head canon, fan art and fan fiction all relating to what it’s like to be part of this huge, dysfunctional family.

Tim Drake snapchatting his and Bruce’s trip to Walmart? Thanks to @unpretty You bet your batt butt.

Lists of bizarre offenses perpetrated within Wayne Manor’s walls on any given Sunday? Gimme.

Tumblrs that depict fake Instagram feeds for these dummies? Delightful!

And the fan art.

If you’re not following @doc-squash, whose fan comics are breathtakingly pure and funny, showing the entire family as the passel of weirdos we all know they are, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.

Heartwarming Dick and Babs content with a side of salty Damian? @laquilasse is the human you want to follow.

Goofy love for Jason Todd? Check out @inkydandy.

Warm, snuggly family time? @kaylabeemarie has everything you need.

Yes, Bruce Wayne and Batman get the most attention out in the greater world. Yes, everybody knows Robin is a thing, and everybody’s got opinions and feelings on that fact, good and bad.

But those of us who can name all the kids who have come and gone and come back to the cave again, I feel, are the happiest of Batman fans. Because there is a corner of the bat-sandbox that we get to roll around in that the anti-Robin crowd doesn’t.

And we have way more fun than they do.

#Batman #Robin #comics #fanworks #fandom

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