#central is the one with flash right?
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the-sprog · 6 months ago
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I'm still thinking about Gwen Stacy in Gotham.
She doesn't have a ton of characterization unfortunately because she's one of the prime example of fridging (and I think her death is important to the Spider-man mythos, totally, but is also a drop in a sea of a larger issue), but there IS also Ghost Spider (Spider Gwen) that we can look at.
Gwen is, much like MJ, someone who complements Peter. She's the scientist side of him. Smart, determined, willing to put herself on the line to help him.
She understands Spider-man.
She's the daughter of a police officer. She had to bury both her parents before she made it to college.
Dying, especially at Peter's hands, would fuck her up majorly. But also she would worry more about what Peter must've felt like, to bury yet another person he loved. Because she understands the feeling. And I don't think she'd regret getting involved. Her dad gave his life to save New York (I'm more referencing the live action film because I do NOT want to deal w detangling more than 60 years of comic books and retcons) and she didn't hesitate to do the same.
When she finds herself in Gotham, she's stuck in the middle of a Joker attack. The whole situation is so reminiscent that she doesn't even compute that she should be dead and that she's not in the clock tower anymore until she's looking for Peter and realizes that another set of vigilantes are on the scene.
She finally breaks down when she's led towards some paramedics by Robin, calling out for Peter, looking for him, the suit, anything, out in the crowd. She makes eye contact with Robin. She can't see his eyes from behind the domino mask. It's then she starts shaking.
"We ain't in Kansas anymore, Gwenny" she can hear Peter say and it makes it all worse.
Meanwhile Robin is assessing her and her green water stained clothes.
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K but the fact that Wally and Hartley are working together in a state-of-the-art, bajillion dollar funded, relatively unsupervised, sci-fi science lab??? Sure, they work in different departments and on different floors but HELLO?!? The hijinks potential is astronomical!!!
These two are probably the worst people to have unsupervised in a lab setting because they will just do whatever the fuck they want and it will work and that's the worst part. Hartley and Wally would create the portal guns from Halo on their lunch break because it looked cool and then they wouldn't even consider the consequences of what they've just unleashed upon the world.
Wally was building time travel devices as a child. Hartley was building mind control devices as a child. Considering consequences isn't really their forte.
God, I sure hope that building has good supervisors.... and insurance. Lots of insurance.
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bi-writes · 8 days ago
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attached | ghost x f!reader
i have no idea what it is that binds us together. but it doesn't really matter.
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type: one-shot (8.4k)
cw: zombie apocalypse au, mature language and content, suggestive language and content, dark!ghost, dark!reader, reader described as curvy/plus-sized + has hair long enough to braid, graphic depictions of violence + murder + gore, depictions of suicidal thoughts + intentions (no actual action), mentions of depression + sadness + loneliness, depictions of assault + harassment (not by ghost), horror movie vibes, unprotected piv, allusions to baby trapping, cumplay, oral (fem!receiving), 18+
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Death can be a curious thing. It used to be something definitive. Exact. It used to mean the end of something.
No, now it's a beginning. Not a sweet beginning, but a beginning nonetheless. It turns a new tide. Reactivates cells that were once dead. Sparks nerves that used to be dormant, that used to be dark. It makes muscles move even when they aren't supposed to. Brain-dead, but still hungry.
He hasn't been able to understand the phenomenon quite yet. He's tried. He's picked up a few books and tried to do his own research, but it's difficult when there is no way for him to view the cellular structure of it all on a micro-level. He cannot see the way it grows or how it takes over. He hasn't been able to figure out what techniques it uses to keep a body awake even when the central organs no longer function the way they're supposed to. What keeps it moving? What keeps the feet running and the stomach hungry and the saliva warm?
Why is it that when he plunges his blade through its heart, it still kicks? The brain is its engine, as with his own body, but this is different. The brain runs even when it has lost its necessary components. Blood circulation, oxygen, the things it needs to thrive; but this state of being is not like his own. It doesn't need the same things it used to need because its purpose is not to keep a body running. Its purpose is to eat. To infect. And that is all.
He likes to play games these days. He has a lucky silver euro, one he pried off the dead body of someone that he hated. He spit on that body before raiding his pockets. He hated that fucking brute; he disgraced the style of wearing a mask by using a fucking t-shirt instead. Perhaps Austria is a beautiful country, but it certainly produced one of the most unlikable of men. He thinks even if the world was still right-side up, he would've killed him anyway. The only thing useful about him was that he was carrying a few extra magazines and this coin in his front pocket.
Every morning, when he wakes up, he makes whatever will happen that day a game. If the coin lands on heads, he gets to kill himself today. If it lands on tails, he has to endure 24 more hours before he can play again. The rules are simple. The game is easy. Everyone knows how to play it, but not everyone will like to win it.
Today, he decides to do something different. Today, he decides if he wins, he will wait another day. He has never won this game; he decides if he can't win it, he'll manipulate it until he gets what he wants.
It hits the table with a light clink. It rattles around in a few circles before settling, and when he leans back in his chair, he sighs. He knows what it will be even without looking, but he looks anyway. When he sees the carved outline of its face-side up, his eyes flash. He won.
He never wins.
Something is keeping him here. He chooses not to ask questions. There isn't anyone to ask anyways. No one answers when he speaks. He doesn't think there is anyone left to listen.
If someone would ask him why he doesn't just put the muzzle to his temple and pull the trigger, he would just say that it was because that was how the game is played. Those are the rules. He can't try unless that's what it tells him to do. There is no fun in cheating the game; it wouldn't be proper, it wouldn't be correct. It would be grounds for disqualification, and that just wouldn't do, not for him.
He has to do things the right way. Always. It's how you keep order in a world that has none left. It's how you maintain structure even without the lines drawn in the sand. This is the way things are done; God is not waiting at the end of a very long staircase, He is rattling that coin on the table and waiting for Ghost to take a peek.
He thinks it keeps landing on tails because perhaps God is tired of playing this game with him; Ghost has never been surprised. He will always be ready for disappointment. Giving a gift is no fun when the recipient simply receives it.
It landed on heads today. He won the game. He tried to play it differently, but someone won't let him.
There's snow on the ground this morning. It snowed all night, coating the ground in a few inches of powdery ice. He looks away from the window and back towards the mirror, continue to run the razor over his head. His blonde hair falls in clumps in the sink. He keeps it neat and short, close to the head, and then he does the same with his face. He cuts the stubble close, keeping his face clean, but it doesn't wipe away the rest of his face, the things he can't just cut away. The scars, the ridges, the skin that closed over wounds angry and white and uneven. He can see his teeth through the broken skin above his lip, the yellowing of them now that he only brushes them a few times a week with his lack of proper toothpaste, and he grimaces when he sees the new red spots of raised skin left behind from the dirty mask he wears now. He dips his toothbrush into his bottle of water before brushing, careful to scrub his gums properly before spitting into the sink.
When he finishes, he makes his way back into the bedroom to get dressed. He did the washing yesterday; he found a creek only half frozen over, and he made use of the bar soap he keeps and managed to clean off most of his clothes. He feels a little better slipping into his cargos now that they aren't drenched in sweat or dirt. He tucks a long-sleeve into his pants before putting a thick windbreaker on over it, but he finally feels complete once he slips his mask on over his face. In the mirror, he adjusts it, making the skull straight, and he blinks back at himself. The mask does more than just hide him from the dead.
It keeps the living walking a careful circle around him, and he wants to keep it that way. He hasn't spoken to a single person since it began. He stopped counting the days once his boots ran out of space for notches. Anyone he sees now, he scares them off with one look, or he puts them down before they can take a step closer to finding out if he's real or not.
He doesn't take chances. He has always had a special skill, being able to sniff out the bullshit before it begins. He leans into it now, and it isn't a bullet wasted if it stops the chaos before it can wind up.
He still wears his tactical gear. He can't part with it. His holsters have not failed him, still buckled around his thighs. His vest is still strapped on, and without it, he feels naked. He has long since discarded of the Union Jack patch on his chest; there is no king nor country anymore. They are colors in different shapes, and they mean nothing now; they were buried a long time ago.
His backpack feels light. He's running out of bullets, and he doesn't like how it feels. Nowadays, he has to go further and further to get what he needs, and recently, he's taken to picking up everything and simply moving to make the trips all the easier with no home to go back to.
It's not all that different to the life he had before. He never stayed in one place too long then either. He signed the shortest leases, and he would move once it was up, never lingering and never buying more things than he could carry in the back of his truck. His memories are in his head and nowhere else. He keeps no trinkets. He saves no pictures. There is nothing from the old life that needs to be brought into the new. He shifts between both lives, one foot in the past and one in the future, and he thinks that's what really makes him live up to his name.
He's a Ghost. A drifter. Standing between two places at the same time, not knowing which to stay in and which to leave. It would hurt, if he was really human inside, if he could feel anything at all.
But he's not. His insides are nothing but organic matter. His head is a clock, ticking, counting down, but he's not aware of when it runs out.
He digs the heel of his boot into the snow to gauge the depth. It barely comes up over his toes. He huffs a little before taking a peek at the map tucked into his vest. He had circled a place just north, a main street he is hoping will have a stash of things he will need.
Ammunition. Weapons. Food. Water. A new book, for fuck's sake, maybe a Sudoku puzzle that isn't already scribbled into.
The forest gives him cover, so he sticks to it. Out in the open, he would stick out, dressed in all black. He keeps to the trees, ducking under the leaves and trying not to leave too much of a track behind. He doesn't plan on staying in that cabin again, but if he must, he doesn't want anyone seeing a way to come back to it.
The one thing he does appreciate about this new place is the quiet. It lingers, and it's calm, and when he breathes, the world breathes back. He feels like he had always been telling everyone to shut up, but now, his voice hasn't been used in months. Even when he passes other people, he doesn't speak to them. If they don't spot him, he keeps to the shadows, and if they do, they don't see him for long enough to know what hit them.
It's a good stash. The store had been rifled through by now, but in the office, there had been a nice drawer filled with supplies. A few boxes of ammunition, a revolver, and a new blade to stick in one of his boots. He picks up some other odds and ends. Batteries. A roll of yarn. A small sewing kit. A few pens. His backpack feels a little heavier, and it's a weight he appreciates when he makes his way back outside.
He sticks to the alleyways as he searches for the roof over his head for the night. He decides the cabin he slept in last night was too close to the road; if anyone was driving or following it, they could find that place too easily, and he wouldn't be able to sleep another night comfortably there knowing this truth.
He finds himself veering off road just enough. It's fucking cold, freezing, and he's grateful to the mask for helping him keep it together as he ducks under the wind and keeps an eye out for any nearby landmarks. Sometimes, on slow days like this, he would sit on a ridge and kill infected for sport. Practice focusing his sight, calculating the wind, keep his mind in check by hitting his targets and ridding the world of another one of those things.
There are different kinds of hunters out today.
He hears them before he sees them. He knows what kind they are when he hears their laughter. Low and untamed, sloppy and fucking messy. They always are. These kind spoil their treasures. They eat their food until it makes them sick, and then they do it all over again. They never learn their lesson.
When he settles his rifle down along a fallen tree, he eyes them through his scope. There are two of them. Both are fattened, with dark hair and lazy eyes, and they look greasy. Their clothes are in ruins, and their packs are light, and Ghost figures that they look enough alike to be perhaps brothers, or maybe cousins. Their smiles are equally as sadistic. The taller one tugs something along, and when Ghost aims the scope down a little, he sees her.
Her.
He's dragging her by her legs. She's kicking, but it's hard for her to do much when her arms and legs are bound by mismatched bits of fabric and rope. She's crying, that much is clear, squirming as she spits and gargles around the gag in her mouth as she tries to break free. She has heart, but she isn’t a fighter. If she was, she would’ve realized her teeth could snap that fabric of her gag, and she would know that the knot they’ve tied succumbs easily to upwards pressure.
He follows them. They keep going, dragging you and laughing as they make it to a makeshift camp hidden amongst a clearing. There's a few tents set up, a small dip in the earth to hold a campfire, and when they settle on tree trunks to sit, the smaller one takes a blade and cuts your gag off, leaning over you with a low chuckle. They mean to maim and to take and then to kill, and you know this when you look into his eyes.
"Hello, darling."
"Bite me."
He laughs again, dropping onto his knees over you, but when he gets close enough, you sit up with what little strength you have and bite him along his ear. The cartilage rips, and you tear half his ear off, and then he's scrambling off of you, screaming, holding the side of his head as he rolls around in circles in the snow. He colors it red, and you snarl with satisfaction. Ghost takes a deep breath in and lets it out shakily. The look in your eyes–he can taste that, roll it around on his tongue. You did not clock the poorly-tied knots, but you do see opportunity, and you are the kind to take it.
"You bitch!"
Just as the taller one is about to get on top of you, Ghost decides he's seen enough. He closes one eye, lines up the sight, and he lets out a cool breath as he drops the both of them within a second of each other. They fall easy; a bullet clean through the back of their heads, and now they're finally quiet again. They will not get up, either.
Your lip trembles as you look towards the trees. You watch as the leaves rustle, and when you see a man emerge from the thick of them, you start to cry. You think maybe you're seeing things; you must be so dehydrated, so hungry, that a reaper has come for you, and you are much deader than you thought.
The reaper stares down at you curiously. He swings his rifle over his shoulder, tilting his head to the side as he bends, getting a blade out of his boot before he cuts the restraints that bind you. He doesn’t hesitate when he does this; he does not deem you enough of a threat to keep you bound.
You sit up slowly, wiping your face, and when you meet his eyes, you're surprised to see how human they are. They're dark, but alive, and he has blonde lashes and pale skin underneath. He covers himself, but you can still see him. There's a man under there, not a reaper.
Just a man.
I hate men.
You shake off the rest of the restraints, turning your wrists and ankles and flexing your muscles for good measure. When you realize you are nothing but a little shaken up, you look back up. He's still staring at you, hard eyes lowered in a glare as he looks you over. He's sizing you up, maybe, deciding what to do with you. You meet his eyes one more time before gathering the saliva into your mouth and spitting onto the floor. It's a garbled mess of blood, from the flesh you had severed from that man.
He blinks slowly at that, makes some decision that he doesn’t voice out loud, and then he starts to walk away.
You stand on shaky legs, taking it as your cue. You watch as he rips open the flimsy tents that those men had left behind, and he's already grabbing backpacks and rifling through them for goods. He already starts filling his own vest and backpack with the things he finds; some flashlights, fishing line, more food and ammunition. You follow him, moving to the other tent beside it and starting to grab their things and toss them outside. You get to your knees and open the packs, laying out what you find carefully. They have interesting materials in here, ones you associate with explosives. C4. Lighters. Batteries. Wiring. You clench your jaw when you pull out the last box in the bag.
Condoms.
Bunch of pricks.
He finds your discoveries useful. He opens up an empty pack he found and fills it to the brim with supplies. When he zips it up, your stomach drops when you think he might toss it over his shoulder and leave. It only sinks for a moment before he turns the backpack around, holding it up for you.
You pause for a little and think. It only takes a few seconds for you to decide to stand up and slip your arms through the straps.
When he walks again, you follow.
The sun is setting by the time you find somewhere to sleep, but it looks like luxury to you. A quaint little brick house tucked between the hills, a ways from the road and positively hidden. He spotted it through his scope a few hours ago, and he made a beeline for it. It's difficult to keep up with him; he has incredible stamina and the longest legs. He moves like a ghost, too quiet for his own good. You would never know from looking at him how stealthy he could be. For such a huge man, you would never notice him before he could get the drop on you. It makes you conscious of your own steps and how loud they are, and you try to mimic the way he moves as you keep walking.
You don't know why, but you think he must be very pleased with how quiet you've gotten. You don't know why that fact pleases you, too.
He makes you stay outside when you arrive. He pulls a small handgun out of his backpack, and he checks the chamber before handing it to you. He clicks his tongue, forcing your eyes on his, and he puts a finger to his mask-covered lips, telling you to keep quiet. You take the gun from him, pointing it at the ground and holding it at your side, and he touches a knuckle under your chin before he twists a silencer onto his own gun.
You watch with rapt attention as he clears the house. His movements are quick and calculated, and he keeps low to the ground. It's mesmerizing. Big and capable, one with the shadows. The only thing you see in the dark is the white of the skull over his face, and if you didn't know it was him, you would think that you have just seen God.
But God isn't real. Apparently ghosts are.
He is back outside in less than ten minutes, nodding his head at you. You take it as your cue to come towards him, and you hand him the gun back when you pass him. You go into the house and immediately start to light some of the candles scattered around. You set your backpack down, rubbing your shoulders out, and you take a seat on the couch.
It hits you then, the gravity of it all. Men are your captors, and then they are your savior. They'll never leave you alone. They'll never let you go. You were ruled by their iron fist in a previous life, and you will endure their wrath in this new one.
You start to cry. It's the first sound you've made since screaming. You cover your face with your hands, and you don't know why you feel safe enough to cry, but you do, and it comes out of you fast.
He tilts his head to the side as he watches you. It's a strange thing to see something so...alive. He's used to only seeing things moving that can't speak back to him. If he does see things alive, he puts them down as if they are rabid dogs.
He can't find it in himself to kill you. Something is so odd about it. About you.
Everything about today seems more than coincidence. He won the game today. And then he found you.
When he tries the sink in the bathroom, he's surprised to find it working. He grabs a bowl and fills it with water, and when he comes back into the living room, you are staring at one of the flickering candles blankly, shivering. You have stopped crying, but your face is still wet with fat, lingering tears.
It looks like you've been hit by a brick wall. Your hair is matted in places, in tangles. It’s in desperate need of a cut. It's stuck to your face around the perimeter, caked by sweat and mud and dried blood. Your clothes are in ruins; you wear a ripped jumper, thin jeans, and the soles of your boots are starting to fray and come off, and he can see where you've tried to mend them unsuccessfully with duct tape. You wear no jewelry, and your fingernails need to be cut. Those men have left marks on you, but those will fade.
He kneels in front of where you sit on the couch. Using a threadbare cloth, he dips it into the water and raises it to your face. You show no resistance. You let him wipe your face off, the tears, the dirt, the blood. It stains the cloth ugly, but you can't look at anything else except for his eyes.
They're so dark. Brown, like bark, like honey. You haven't spoken a word to him yet, but the silence is sort of bliss. All you can hear is the drip of the water when he rings out the cloth.
He helped you. He didn't have to. He could've kept walking, but he stayed with you. He didn't leave you. He could've walked away again, but he let you follow.
He isn't a good man. You know that. Anyone who has lasted this long isn't a good person. You've done the same. You've let it take you, once or twice, let the snarl in the back of your throat guide your hand. You've let the voices fester, let them eat at the acid in your stomach until they begged for more, and you won't admit it, but it felt good. Felt good to protect yourself. To rid the earth of something terrible. To say no.
He must understand that. He's decorated in its essence, the one of understanding, the one that says I know what it's like to take matters into your own hands, and he did it with you, too.
He's doing it now, cleaning you up, and you don't know him, or his face, or his name, but you'll try hard to give it back. To give him something. To tell him you are worthy and not useless. It doesn't show today, how far you've come, but you'll try.
"Thank you," you finally whisper. He's dragging the cloth over your bottom lip, and he blinks rapidly, as if a bit startled by hearing your voice. When you speak again, it's to tell him your name, and he thinks for a few moments before continuing, wiping under your jaw.
He doesn't sleep that night. He stares out the window, like a guard dog, and he lets the soft breaths of your sleep keep him awake.
The gas lighter on the stove still works. It takes a match to light it properly, but when the fire starts, you take some of the soup cans from your pack and make breakfast.
Your smile when he comes into the kitchen nearly blinds him. You look more rested than yesterday, and you ladle some soup into a bowl for him, setting it down at the table. He notices the two bowls, his and yours, and he notices that his bowl has more food.
It is then that he decides to keep you.
What he doesn't know is that you've decided the same. The world has thrown you the way out. A man, built like a bear, happy finger on the trigger and capable of getting you out of harm's way. You need to convince him that you are worthy. You need to convince him that you are valuable. A keepsake.
Men are what start wars, not what end them. Men are the cause of chaos and destruction, it is prevalent throughout history, and it is why you are here now, in a place that doesn’t exist, where people don’t breathe the same air anymore. A man thought himself correct, but he was wrong, and he didn’t listen when someone told him otherwise. They are the ones that take advantage of your vulnerability, and instead of trying to understand it, they use it to get what they want.
You can do the same.
You start by mending his clothes. He's laid some out to dry after washing, and you notice the tears in his shirts. When he comes back a little while later, with dinner hanging off his shoulder, you are seated on the couch, feet tucked under you, with a needle in your hand as you sew up one of his shirts.
You've bathed, found new clothes, warmer ones, and your hair is braided and off your face. He hates to say he prefers you a little dirty, but he likes this, too. A natural beauty. A soft face.
You make a real dinner that night. There's canned vegetables that you try to spruce up with the spices you find in the cupboards, but the real meal is the venison you're served. He butchers it outside like a professional, and he sears it on the stove with a perfect touch. When he feeds you that first bite, your mouth explodes with flavor. Your belly is full that evening, and when he blows out the candles for bed, he eats you out in the dark of the corner bedroom.
He's not sloppy like you thought he might be. Not overeager. He's easy with it, casual. Big hunk of a man smothered between your thighs, and he laves his tongue through your folds like his very own personal dessert. He drinks straight from the source, holy water spilling sweet between his teeth, and when he gets his tongue inside of you and holds it there, you nearly leave earth for somewhere else. You come like that, too, his filthy mouth sucking on your clit before he's slipping that tongue in you again, and you mewl against the bed as he tucks his hand under your ass and spreads you wider.
He tells you his name a few nights later. He doesn't speak, not ever, but when you're crying around his thick fingers, he whispers it against your ear.
"'s Simon," he growls, and you know what he means by that. He wants you to say it while you bounce on his fingers, when you rut against his thigh. He wants you to say his name when you're coming undone riding his face, when you're wetting his mask with your pussy and making him choke on your cum. Such a wet, sweet girl you are, and sometimes he skips wash day for his mask so he can shove it into his mouth and pant around it and taste you while he fucks his own fist.
It's insanity, he thinks, as he's cleaning his rifle. The idea of traditional. But it's what befallen him, what he sees all around him, and he tucks his index finger into a hole too small to pinch himself just to make sure he isn't living a dream. You're in the kitchen, mending more clothes, something warm boiling on the stove. There were seeds in the greenhouse, and you're saving them to plant in the spring, so for now, you make do with canned goods and whatever Simon hunts for during the day. You found books in the attic, and you read them at night, head in Simon's lap as he plays with your hair or rubs your sore ankles or cuts your nails. You're the only one that ever speaks; he hasn't said a word to you except for telling you his name, and you're content to be the only one that uses their voice.
He always listens. You told him one time that you loved the shade of green that the trees wore, and he came back one day with a sweatshirt of the same color for you. He noticed you trying to mend those terrible boots, and he found a new pair for you, your size this time, barely worn and fit for winter. He brings lots of things for you; books, clothes, even rocks sometimes, when he just thinks he found one that you might like.
You do like them. You have started filling a small bowl with the ones he brings, and he notices you rifling through it sometimes, just looking at them, and it makes his chest swell with pride.
Like giving a treat to a dog. Like giving him a fucking bone.
He teaches you how to shoot. You know how to pull a trigger, but that’s the extent of your expertise. He teaches you how to stand, how to turn the safety on and off, how to hold the gun between two hands so not even his own can take it away from you. He makes sounds when you please him. Hums low, lets out a soft breath, sucks in the air through his teeth. You can’t see his face, but the way he looks at you when you fire a bullet and knock bottles off their ledges, it warms you, all the way down your spine, reaching your toes. You want him to keep looking at you this way, so you try hard, and he notices.
You’ll never be what he is, but the small victories are what have him chubbing up in his cargos and falling asleep between your thighs. You give, and he takes, and he keeps coming back for more.
He teaches you that distance is your strength. You aren’t like him; you aren’t built like a brick house, you won’t be bigger than a lot of your opponents. You need to keep them away from you, however you can. He makes you good with that gun because it’s your best chance, but in the even that you lose it or you run out of bullets, he shows you how to aim a hatchet so that the blade always lines up between someone’s shoulders.
The way you listen makes him salivate. The way you blink up at him and say yes, Simon and take his orders, it makes it difficult to keep away from you. 
Today marks two months in the house tucked on the hill. Simon hunts, and you cook, and you live in some sick, twisted housewife fantasy at the end of the fucking world. Simon provides, and you keep, and when the box of condoms falls out of your backpack one day, you glance at Simon for just a moment before he's on you.
It's animal, that first time. He tackles you practically onto the carpet of the living room, and he props you up onto your elbows and only pulls down your jeans enough that he can fit his cock between your thighs. You hear the tear of the condom wrapping, and then he's laying over your back, sinking to the base, cock nestled inside of you as he grips your throat gently and fucks you into the carpet. Poor beast, he's definitely going to need his knees massaged after this, but you can't think about that much when you're taking the fattest cock of your entire life and trying to survive underneath him. It's that fine line between pleasure and pain that you're desperate for, and you pull threads out of the carpet as you try to hang on and take it like a good girl.
You can hear his voice. It's low, and subtle, but he grunts with each agonizing thrust, hips snapping against your ass as he fucks you back onto him over and over and over again.
It's primal. Nasty. You wish he wasn't wearing a condom, you want him to be in your skin, you want him to fill you until you're full, let it spill over, and then do it all over again. You want him to bite into your throat and tear, and you want him to eat you and then put you back together, and then do it again and again and again.
"So big," you gasp, and he falters at that. You recognize it, the need for praise, and you latch onto it with claws and stay there. I need him to stay here with me. "So good...so good t-to me, Simon–"
He groans. It's music.
Keep me. Keep me. Keep me.
"Simon, please–" You scratch at his arm, not satisfied until you feel blood. When you break the skin, he laughs, a breathless laugh that has your eyes rolling back in your head as he shoves your face into the carpet and mounts you like a fucking horse. The deep slap, slap, slap of skin is enough to send you away, send you home, your mind foggy as your pussy squeezes him for all he's worth. The slick of the condom is pleasant, but you want it raw. You want every part of him carved into you, and you arch your back, suck him in, whine and cry and beg for him to just, "please, Simon, I need it, I need it."
"Need wot?"
The sound of his voice is whiplash. He hisses when he sinks deep, staying there, holding you at a sharp angle so he can knead your ass and watch it bounce back on him. He sucks on his teeth, and there's drool slipping out of your mouth. That accent, his voice, like velvet, from deep within his chest. You want to hear more of it.
"Be a man," you gasp. "Be a man, and fuck me."
He doesn't see the desperate look on your face when he slips out of you. He doesn't see the relief that washes over you when you hear the condom come off, latex crumbling as he tosses it, but he feels the warmth of your pretty pussy when he sinks back in, skin to skin, and feels you clench for dear fucking life.
"Fuckin' Christ," Simon groans, and you reach back for him, gripping his arms, forcing him to fall over on top of you. He settles with his elbows on either side of your head, and you bow your back and grip the carpet again as he fucks into you nice and slow, deep, fat head leaking precum and making you cry because finally, yes, please, this is it, what I want, I'll have you forever.
You're so pretty. Even in his past life, Simon never got to have anything pretty. He was too ugly, too big, too awkward. Any woman of good faith stayed 100 yards away, as if his mere presence was a warning alarm, some invisible radius that kept them away from him. He always thought it was for the better. He always thought good riddance, they shouldn't have me, I shouldn't have anyone. Not when only days before, he had tortured a Russian militant until he had no teeth and hung his severed fingers on twine around his own neck.
But you won't run away. He's given you opportunity. He's left the cottage and staked out the outside just to watch you, and all he sees is you moving between windows, shaking out the dust from old blankets and washing the dishes. All he sees is you sewing his clothes and cooking his food, and when he comes back inside, all he sees is your smile and your face and your pretty mouth that falls open when he makes you come all over his hand.
Now it's the end of the world, and he lets a coin flip decide whether or not he lives or dies. And even when he flips it now, it never agrees. When he asks to die, the coin tells him no. When he asks to live, it’s always interrupted by you.
Yes, it tells him. Yes, yes, yes, because it's been keeping him here, because it knows, because it saw, because he couldn't see both sides of the coin, but he can see it now, plain as day, and she's underneath him now, letting him inside, and she's begging him to come and to fill her up, and she's crying because he's such a big man, and she wants him everywhere and always and all at once, and Simon is nothing if he isn't an insatiable bastard that can finally be fucking selfish.
The way you say his name could make him move mountains. That soft breath you take. The falter of your voice. The whine. The world has gone quiet, but he'll make a new one, and he will leave it at your feet for you to step on or pick up.
Whichever you choose. You can do no wrong.
When he comes, he moans. Into your ear, he lets you hear him, lets you bask in his pleasure as he spurts hot inside of you, hauling you a little higher on your knees so he can make sure you come, too. He gives you the palm of his hand to grind on, fucking into you at the same time, humming deep when he feels you squeeze around him and shatter like glass.
He takes his mask off for the first time that night. You see his face, all of it, not just glimpses when he lifts it to eat or to drink, you see the whole thing. He has a terrible looking face. Something only a mother could love. Too old of scars to be from this new life. They slash across his brow, across his cheeks. He has a jagged nose, and the skin around his lips had been reconstructed poorly from however they had been slit.
He's a terrifying piece of flesh. He is surprised when you lean in and kiss him. He's even more surprised when you kick off your jeans, turn over, and fuck him again.
The mantra that sounds like mine repeats in his head over and over. He feels it, deep, warm and beating under his ribs alongside his heart that hasn't moved in a long while.
He found you in those woods, kicking amongst predators, and he took you home with him. Picked you up like a stray, fed you, clothed you, and now you've stayed. For a moment, he thought it wasn't real. Thought your full belly is what kept you here, the warm house. He didn't mind pretending, but he figured it wouldn't last.
He doesn't think that anymore. Not with the way you kiss his severed face. You nuzzle into it, cup his cheeks, and he finds it agony when you pull away.
He hovers now. In whatever room you are in, Simon must also be in it. If he leaves, he makes you board the doors, and you are only allowed to open them if he knocks in his special way. He tested you once, came back earlier than expected, and he was so pleased you did not open the door to his casual knock and only the special one that he made you come one, two, three times with your thighs locked around his face.
A terrible thing happens.
Not to you.
You're searching the greenhouse. Hoping to find some flower pots for the herb seeds you found, you're rummaging through the cabinets beside it. Your gun is sitting away from you, and although Simon would chastise you for this, you feel safe here, and it doesn't bother you.
It flings itself at you. It cries, what used to be a teenage girl, reaching for you because it wants a chunk of your softness, of the life you pump into the muscles that keep you running. You're protected by all the clothes you wear for the weather, and it is slow because of the cold freezing their rigid, dead bones, but it does not lessen the hunger, the fight, the determination to eat and spread.
Before it can bite, the back of its head explodes. You close your mouth and shut your eyes as rancid brain matter splatters the white snow and you, and it is wrenched off of you immediately. Simon stands there, his pistol in hand, and you have never seen him quite so angry as he is right now.
His eyes are wild. He heaves under that tact vest, breathing hard, and his grip on the handgun shakes, so much that he has to shove it back into the holster at his thigh and lean over to pick you up off the ground.
He jostles you. Growls. Is nearly an animal himself as he shoves you up against the glass of the greenhouse and snarls.
"Wot the fuck is wrong with ya?!" Simon snaps. "Is y'r fuckin' head on?!"
It's so quiet in your head even as he yells. Your eyes tear, but not because you're upset. You reach out and cup his face gently, and he stops. Stops talking, just watches, just looks at you as he bends and leans his forehead against yours and squeezes you to his chest.
What is this thing you have? What have you become? What innate thing has festered between you? He’s gripping the edge of the glass so hard, you hear it crack under his hand. There is some kind of sick sense of devotion among you. Some kind of responsibility. He’s angry because something under his tongue tasted bitter when he saw you struggling. It won’t be this easy. He won’t make it this easy. If he doesn’t get to die, then neither do you, and he will make sure of that, because that is the only way this game can remain fair.
You never wander to the greenhouse again. He makes you promise (lest he wastes his cum between your thighs instead of inside you, that's it, promise me).
Another terrible thing happens.
Not to you.
They're wanderers. When they knock at the door, they don't use Simon's special knock, so you don't open it. Instead, you blow out the candles and hide, peeking at them from the fogged window in the attic.
They are men (you aren't surprised, they seem to be the only thing that survives nature's heavy hand). Cold. Shivering. One of them is bleeding, you can see it from the blood trail he leaves in the snow that seeps from somewhere under the hem of his jeans. The one uninjured tries to force his way through the door, but Simon added more deadbolts to it, and it doesn't give under his weak attempts. You trade your handgun for the rifle, aiming it at them. If they get through the door, maybe you can draw them back out, keep them away from the house.
You try to stay quiet, but the healthier one uses his body and a log of wood to get through. They're desperate, desperate enough to not care that breaking through the door cuts him severely, splits through his jacket. The second man limps behind him, getting inside, and you decide to put the rifle back.
You will stay quiet until Simon gets back. Your strength is not being a bulldozer, so you'll hide until he can be that for you. You steady your breathing; even if they make it to the attic, you won't go quietly. You tried that last time, and if it wasn't for Simon, you'd surely be naked and dead in that clearing that you were dragged to.
This time, if you go, you will take someone with you at least. Severed ears are not enough. You will not make them artists, you will make them forgettable and unrecognizable, and you will give back what they give you tenfold. Even if it kills you.
It takes them all night before they finally make it to the attic. They eat your food and take showers in your bathroom and stink up the living room, you can hear them. And when their bellies are full and their minds wander, you dread the pull of the attic door as he wrenches it open and the ladder falls.
You manage to kill one as he drags you out from the corner. He latches onto your ankle, and as he pulls, you put your finger on the trigger of your handgun, and you put one right between his eyes. The other takes advantage of your moment of pause, turning you over onto your stomach so hard the gun flies across the attic from your hand. He tosses you down from the attic, and you land on your side in the hallway, and you cry as you get to your elbows and crawl, trying to get to your feet, but he's larger than you.
He catches you in the kitchen. Slams you over the kitchen counter, using his weight to pin you down, but Simon taught you better than that. He taught you not to give in. He taught you not to give up. You think about him when your fingers find the discarded fork on the counter and you drive it right through his fucking eye.
You don't stop. You don't let his cries keep you from bringing your arm down again. And again. And again. You make his face your blank canvas, and you paint it with your anger. For every man that ever touched you. For every man that ever thought himself worthy to have you. For every man that tried to make your body his prize, you poke a thousand holes in him, and you scream with him as you do it until he can't scream anymore.
You're holding the fork and standing over him when Simon comes home. His handgun drawn, silent as he makes his way in, his body visibly relaxing when he sees you. He glances at the man at your feet, still alive, gurgling there, choking on his own blood as he tries to breathe through the holes that are scattered across his face and neck. You meet his eyes, and you smile. It's uncanny to do it now, but you are happy to see him.
"There's..." You sniffle, wiping your face with your sleeve. "There's another i-in the attic."
You don’t get to see him smile under the mask. You don’t hear the near purr that leaves him as he climbs the ladder and sees the perfect place you’ve left your mark. He’d frame it if it wouldn’t rot.
You twirl the fork in your hand before going to the sink, dropping it in there, and you close your eyes as you listen to Simon's footsteps as he goes into the attic. It takes him a little less than an hour to get the bodies out the back door, and when he comes back inside, you're already wiping up the floor in the kitchen.
There's nothing to talk about. This is normal. This is just another day. Tomorrow, you might have to do it again, and you'll still cook dinner after sunset and clean the kitchen like you're doing now and sit Simon on the edge of the bathtub and cut his hair.
Simon found chocolate on his trip today, and you make cake with it. You sit in his lap under the candlelight, and you feed each other, bite by bite, and you giggle when Simon gets it all over his lips.
You kiss him to clean it off, and then you reach for another bite of cake. There's some measure of satisfaction you feel when your tongue finds the dent in the fork prongs from when you used it earlier. The chocolate tastes better somehow. Sweeter.
You catch him in the morning, limbs tangled with yours under the sheets, flipping a coin. You smooth a hand over his thick chest, along his pudgy stomach, and you watch with him as the coin lands on the bedside table, falling flat.
It comes up tails.
He decides then that he doesn't have to flip it anymore. It's pointless. He asked for answers, and he got one.
You were not luck. You were fate. And because of it, the coin will always land the same way.
His thoughts are interrupted when you reach for the coin. You twirl it between your fingers, thinking. He doesn't see what you see, but that's okay. Maybe he'll let you play now. Some other game, a better one.
Heads or tails, win or lose, alive or dead. Either way, you are attached. Woven together, thread by thread. There are no vows to say in this new place, but you aren't tested by the same kinds of things. There is no law to keep two people together, no governing power of men that say if left is truly left and that right is really right.
You are drawn together by shared experiences. The same trauma. You won't leave each other not because you said you wouldn't leave, but because there is no one else in the world that has seen the same things you have seen and has done the same things you have done. There is no one else in the world that will forgive you for what you had to do to survive. That will love you not just in spite of it, but because of it, because you did what was necessary, and you are here now to learn a lesson and not suffer its consequences.
It's just a game. If you win, he wins. If you lose, he loses. If you're alive, he's alive.
And if you're dead, then he must be, too.
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deadsetobsessions · 3 months ago
Text
Snart Jr.
Lovely prompt by @stealingyourbones in her long prompts list, in which Danny Phantom meets the Rogues of Central City! This will have multiple parts, I just haven't written them yet.
Disclaimer: I know very little about Captain Cold and Mirror Master despite having watched some of the Flash. The general vibe I get from Flash is that Flash just really cares about his rogues as evidenced by how he talks to them and doesn't immediately one-shot them like I'm pretty sure he could do. And that Captain Cold is a snarky asshole that just wants to steal things and follow his plans as planned? Tbh, the whole mini-arc/episode with him just felt like Snart was trying to coordinate the world's riskiest group project. He was so done by the end lmao
"Huh. That's new."
Danny hovered an inch off of the ground, having just been spat out by swirling green portal. He was going to have to get back to the Zone later to hot potato Skulker through a couple of portals in revenge. He had a math exam he had to study for, dammit.
Danny sighed. Might as well see what's happening. The portals rarely lead somewhere boring, and Danny was bored. He floated further in, form going intangible and invisible as he passed through thick but insulated marble walls. See, Jazz? He could totally plan ahead. He's also learning that he could probably rob a bank easily, but Danny would never.
"Never been spat out in a bank before," he hummed, eyes flickering on the numerous forms of cowering people in the lobby. The goons scattered about don't see him, but it would take another ghost to even detect his presence so it was to be expected. He moved further in with little hindrance and soon touched down onto polished floor behind two incredibly suspicious individuals.
"What-cha do-ing?"
The two figures, currently and obviously robbing a bank, whirled around in surprise. Their respective weapons whirred to a start before they stopped, baffled by the meta teen standing there with his white hair waving about and innocent look pasted all over his face.
Leonard Snart knew instinctively that the kid was so full of shit. He'd bet his entire plan on the fact that the kid knew exactly what kind of shit he was stirring. Still, Snart was guilty of a lot of things but direct child-endangerment wasn't ever one of them.
"How'd you get in here, kid?" Mirror Master raised his laser pistol, ready to distract and divert the kid with threats of violence- which Snart glared at him for- or with his hall of mirrors that he'd run to.
Danny shrugged. "I walked. If you guys didn't want me here, you should have guarded the place better."
"They were supposed to," Snart drawled. He cased the kid. Teen. The kid had a weird halo effect, that seemed to draw the eyes to the stylized letter on his hazmat suit. The kid was young. Meta. Non-hostile. "You trying to stop us?"
Danny shook his head. "Nah. Came from the Ghost Zone so 's really non'a my business. I was just being nosy."
Snart gave a curt nod and nudged Mirror Master back into cracking the security measures.
Mirror Master scoffed. "What the hell is a ghost zone?"
"I mean, it's pretty self explanatory, right? It's a zone where ghosts live. Hence, you know, Ghost Zone." Danny did a little jazz hands (oh, yeah, he was definitely gonna get Jazz to make that joke sooner or later) for emphasis.
Snart paused for the slightest bit before continuing with his task. Did ghosts exist?
"...Did the Flash send you here, kid?"
"I'm not a kid," Danny scowled, walking right up to them. He got enough of that from his own Rogues, thank you. "And what's a Flash?"
"The Flash, kid." Mirror Master corrected, shoving monitors and PC's and expensive looking office chairs into... a mirror dimension? Danny shrugged and rolled with it.
"Who's that? Your boss?"
"Local superhero, not our boss. You're not from here," Snart quickly deduced as a small smile wormed onto his face from successfully cracking the security without setting off an alarm. They'd have ten minutes before the system cycles the access codes again and flags the fraudulent ones. That should be enough time.
"Superhero? Are they fast? Actually, where is here?" Danny glanced around at the now bare security office like the Flash would show up.
The guy in green and yellow took everything not nailed down to the ground. Danny respected that, even if he kind of wanted to stop the robbery. But he's not really supposed to interfere. That would be uber rude, since it looked like the guy in the fur jacket seemed like he had planned everything precisely.
"You're in Central City, kid. Did you take a wrong turn trying to get to Keystone or something?" Green-yellow guy snorted.
"Gonna be real honest with you, I've got no idea where that is. What state are we in?" Danny followed as the pair rushed to the safe doors. He could offer to phase them through but no matter how flexible Danny's morals have become over the years, he was going to draw a line at actively helping a person commit crime.
"Kansas. Do you teleport? Are you a teleporting meta?" Snart asked, eyes intense as he both glared at Danny and pressed an ear to the safe door.
"Nah, I wish I could teleport. Getting to school would be so much faster. Kansas? Huh, I've never been."
"How lost are you, kid?" Mirror Master incredulously paused from robbing the packages that were delivered to the bank.
Danny shrugged. "Oh, I'm Danny. Who are you guys?"
"Captain Cold. That's Mirror Master."
Danny shifted as the safe clicks open. "So, uh, are you guys the villains here?"
Captain Cold shot him a weird look. "We're actively robbing a bank, kid. That should be obvious."
"Also, you're acting real calm for a kid speaking to two of Fawcett's best super-villains." Mirror Master chimed in, laser-ing off locks on deposit boxes and shoving cash and stuff into his mirror dimension.
Danny padded in after them. "Eh, you haven't shot at me- not even on sight- yet, which is more than I can say for law enforcement, so you're pretty chill in my book."
Captain Cold snorted, pointedly taking his freeze gun and breaking off a large manual lock. "I believe it's my job to be the chill one. Plus, we don't kill. The Flash would be up our... business if we did. It's not worth the trouble."
"You can say ass. I've heard worse."
"Not from me, kid."
Danny hadn't had that kind of consideration from anyone in a long time. Even if it's a bit... mother-hennish, the halfa couldn't find it in him to be annoyed. "Ah, okay. Well, you also haven't kidnapped me or tried to stop me from following you, so..."
Mirror Master shoved a giant painting into his dimension. "You haven't tried to stop us; it'd be weird trying to stop you."
"Makes sense."
"Heh. You're alright, kid. Though... who's kidnapping you?"
"My fruit loop of a godfather. It's a thing," Danny avoided the searching gaze like a pro.
"Hold this." Captain Cold said suddenly, giving Danny a massive dufflebag.
"Wait, what?"
Captain Cold began stuffing the bag with cash and once the money in the vicinity (not that much) went in, he said "Go look around. Having another person in here is a risk so you might as well make up for it."
Danny's calling it. Captain Cold was full of shit. The guy's a big softie. Danny smiled sheepishly and agreed. Danny circled the place, pointing out expensive looking stuff- "for fun" and not because they were nice to him- when he felt the tell-tale zaps of an anomaly in Clockwork's domain.
"Move!" He shouted at the two villains, both of whom dove out of the way. Instinctively, Danny threw out his gloved hands and iced the floors, instincts bristling at the incoming danger. His jaw dropped as a blur encountered the ice and went ass over tea kettle onto the floor, unable to stop its own momentum.
"Oh shit!" Danny uttered, eyes wide as the blur slammed into the opposite- reinforced- wall with a pained shout. The stopped person was wearing red, with a lighting bolt motif all over their uniforms. That implied speed. Speed implied "The Flash." Danny knew a hero when he saw one and he just iced him. Shit.
"What-" The Flash groaned. Mirror Master and Captain Cold gaped.
"OhmyancientsI'msosorrygottagobye!" Danny shouted.
"Hey, wait, kid-!" Captain Cold shouted. Danny ignored him, going invisible in a panic and sank into the ground, mortified. After thirty seconds of self-hatred, he zoomed out and away. Danny held his head in his hands as he flew back to where Amity was...
Only to stare down at the empty plots of land where his city was supposed to be. Danny shoved a hand into his chest and pulled out his phone.
[No results for Amity Park. Did you mean "Amity Arkham"?]
"What."
Any research he did after that only turned up a Jasmine Fellona, a budding neurobiologist in her field, and other people that were adjacent to the people Danny knew. But nothing, nothing from Amity Park.
"Oh, yeah, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy."
---
As the Flash stood around to keep an eye on the hand-cuffed villains, he couldn't help but ask.
"So, uh, Snart. Did you... get a kid?"
"What." Snart asked, incredibly done with this shit.
"You know. Snart junior? With the ice and everything?" Flash gestured at the un-melting ice that covered the floor leading into the safe. "I mean, I'm not thrilled you're pulling your kid into a life of crime..."
"No."
"Wait, you had a kid and didn't tell me?" Mirror Master asked, mildly offended. "That was your kid? No wonder no one shot at him!"
"He's not my kid." Snart gave Flash the stink-eye. "And don't you have a couple of baby sidekicks running around?"
"C'mon dude, you're so obviously fond of him. It's okay, you don't have to hide it." Flash avoided the topic... in a flash.
"Can someone arrest me right now so these idiots can be removed from my vicinity?" Snart snarked to the approaching officer, jerking his head to point at the beaming Flash.
"You and me both, buddy," Officer West sighed.
---
One trip to the zone and a stressful conversation with Clockwork later, Danny was found in his keep, smacking his ghost head into the ghost wall of his ghost keep. Danny would unleash a Wail if it didn't have the nasty habit of bringing everything around him.
Apparently, he got "Amity'd," a process which meant Amity spat him out like an over chewed dog bone and refused to take him back.
"That doesn't even make sense! I left there a bunch of times! And came back!"
"The city has decided that it was your time to leave, Danny." Clockwork spared a wane smile for the curled up boy-king.
"I have people to protect there! My entire life! My haunt!" Danny yelled, breaths that he didn't technically need coming shorter and shorter. The neon green of the Zone whirled in and out of his vision in a dizzying shudder of anxiety and incoming panic.
"It wasn't your haunt, I'm afraid. The city nurtured you as a young spirit- thus shared her haunt- and has decided that it was time for you to... leave the nest, so to speak."
That stopped Danny's panic in its tracks. "Are you telling me she NightVale-d me? Some kind of involuntary coming-of-age bs?"
If he weren't on the edge of hysterical laughter, Danny would take a moment and proudly say to Mr. Lancer that he had paid attention in class.
"...Yes."
"Fuck." Danny dropped his head down in despair. His head made a loud thunk. The bag of cash he'd accidently made away with sat innocently at his feet. Further proof that it wasn't some nightmare he'd wake up from anytime soon.
---
Danny slumped over the desk, exhausted. Technus had lent him a ghostly hand and hacked into government data bases to re-establish his social security number and all the other dumb bits and bobs that he needed to establish his identity because Amity was an actual ghost town. Ghost to reality, ghost to real life. Ancients, Amity even had their own data network, which he couldn't access outside of Amity itself. This meant that Danny couldn't even call anyone. Ugh.
"I gotta find a place to live," he mumbled to himself. Danny, despite knowing that he needed to do things, did not move for another ten minutes.
Then, as his phone alarm went off, buzzing on the table. Like... Clockwork... Danny sat up straight and wiped all traces of wallowing self pity off his face. The people in the library- students- gave him solemn nods of solidarity. Danny nodded back and left the library.
He wandered around Fawcett City, somewhere Clockwork had recommended he stayed. With Clockwork, recommendations tended to be life-important (plot-important?) orders. Danny liked the place, really. It gave off the weird and settled "what-the-fuck,-Box-Ghost-did-you-have-to-destroy-the-mall?" vibes Amity constantly gave off after the ghosts started coming through. He thought he even saw a talking tiger! Awesome.
"Hey, are you new here?"
Danny looked down. His reflection stared back at him.
Did he have another kid? Did someone clone him again? Ancients curse you, Vlad!
"Uh- yeah."
"Oh. Do you need help getting around? I was born and raised here all my life, so I can totally do that!"
Oh thank the Ancients, this wasn't another Dani. Just a weirdly similar looking kid.
"You know I'm a stranger, right?"
"I don't think anyone helping Nanny Mae pick up her oranges would hurt kids," the kid said archly, but with a grin so like Dani, it made Danny miss his younger sister.
"Okay, you got me there. But still."
The kid sighed. "I know how to be safe, thanks. I'm Billy!"
"Danny. Nice to meet you."
"Okay, Danny, where you off to?"
"I'm actually trying to find a place that'll be cheap to rent." He's sixteen, but Danny could totally pass as eighteen. "I'm thinking about moving to Fawcett. It's nice here, with all the ambient magic and stuff."
This got him a wide-eyed look. "Do you use magic?"
"Something like that."
"Cool."
Danny took in the considering glint in Billy's eyes and decided that it was future!Danny's problem. Present!Danny was currently occupied with trying to stay off the streets. That giant bag of cash he'd accidently absconded with would be helpful and Danny felt kind of bad... but his growling stomach had chased that away quickly.
"This way!"
Danny shrugged his wavering morality off and followed the kid, shouldering his new and stolen duffle bag. If anything happened, he could just go ghost. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's happened in this city, Danny made sure to check.
"Have you been by the zoo?" Billy began to rattle off his favorite details about the Fawcett city zoo as he wove around the city.
Danny didn't think he'd actually have to go ghost.
"Not yet, actually. Is it true that there's a talking tiger there?"
"Yeah! Tawky Tawny! He's my friend!"
"Awesome."
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zylev-blog · 7 months ago
Text
The batkids decide to hop on the trend.
Dick, walking as Steph records: We’re vigilantes. Of course we have to be over dramatic.
(Cut to Nightwing back flipping off of Wayne tower)
Tim: were vigilantes. Of course we have issues with caffeine.
(Cut to a video of Tim as Red Robin snoring while hanging from a grappling line. Batman can be seen in the background facepalming.)
———
Damian: No.
Tim: oh come on, Robin, we’re all doing it.
Damian: I refuse to partake in such idiotic videos.
Tim: (while Damian is still behind him) We’re vigilantes. Of course we get to punch people without getting in trouble.
Damian: actually—-
Tim: Robin, you’re supposed to play along—
Damian: I am not going to spread false information—
Steph, interrupting: well, I’m not one of Batman’s sons so he legally can’t yell at me.
Tim: wanna bet?
(Cut to Batman scolding all three of them about the improper use of force)
—-
Duke: we’re vigilantes. Of course we go to Batburger.
(Cut to Duke happily eating a Batburger meal, and playing with a Signal toy)
Duke: what? I’m allowed to have hobbies.
——
Steph: we’re vigilantes. Of course we can scare anyone we want to. Right, Black Bat?
Cass: (nod)
(The next series of videos is a compilation. The first is Superman being scared, followed by Green Lantern, Flash, Cyborg, Starfire, Dick, Tim, and a failed attempt to startle Wonder Woman. Cass isn’t even upset about not being able to scare the woman, she accepts the defeat with grace.)
——-
Dick, Tim, and Steph: we’re vigilantes.
Dick: I’ve gotten stranded on the moon. Don’t ask.
Tim: I got lost in hell.
Steph: I accidentally followed Green Lantern into space.
Tim: what? When?
Steph: turns out if you hug a Green Lantern really tightly, their life support on their ring will support you too
Dick: yknow, Batman shouldn’t find out about this-
(Cut to Batman’s lecture about the proper use of protective gear when going to space)
——
Dick: we’re vigilantes. Of course we’re best friends with all of the villains.
(Cut to Red Hood kicking down a door)
Jason: hey (bleep), you’re late to dinner
Dick: (currently tied to a chair and gagged)
Jason: hang on, I’ll help. (Shoots everyone and unties dick) Harley said she’s going to rampage if you’re not there in five minutes.
Dick: Blame these guys, not me! (Jumps through the nearest window, shattering it, and the sound of a grapple is heard)
——
Jason: I’m a crime lord
Dick: and I’m a vigilante
Jason: and you’re ruining my video, (bleep) off. (Shoves Dick out of the frame, ignoring Dick’s muttered cursing) now that we got the riffraff out, let me start over. (Brushes imaginary dirt from hands) I’m a crime lord. Of course Batman fights me every other day. I look forward to the day I can break his kneecaps.
Dick: (shocked) Hood!
Jason: what?
Dick: he’s your dad too!
Jason: yuck, don’t remind me.
——-
Duke: we’re vigilantes. Of course we know all of the gossip. (Very obviously looking around) like for example, Superman has the biggest crush on Bruce Wayne—
Clark, who was obviously eavesdropping: Nonononononono—- (trying to turn the camera off as he darts into the frame. There’s a flash of red, blue and yellow as Duke and Clark fight over the camera)
——
Tim: we’re vigilantes. Of course we visit other cities.
Wally, as Kid Flash: What the (bleep) are you doing in Central City?
Tim: I’m honestly not sure, it’s so bright that I think I’m blind.
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dcxdpdabbles · 8 months ago
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DCxDP fanfic idea: In 30 minutes or less!
Danny is a delivery man.
He got the job after realizing his resume was severely lacking in terms of working experience.
Also when he needed more money for his own purchases. There is a big difference between begging his parents for an allowance and earning his own spending funds.
The thing is, no matter where Danny applied, he was not getting a call back. Jazz warned him that a majority of Amity Park didn't hire them - as she also attempted to get a part-time job when she was his age - because of the Fenton last name.
She swore and hissed, but she couldn't prove that it was the reason they weren't hired. She just heard the talk around the town. They all said they wouldn't want to hire from the lunatic family.
That whenever a Fenton went , something bad quickly followed.
It stung, that not even Nasty Burger wanted him. That placed hired people under sixteen for Pete's sake. But Danny was resourceful. If Amity Park hadn't hired him, then he would just try the other place he had civilianship in.
The Infinite Realms.
Danny figured that if societies existed with the Realms, then they had to have a form of currency. He just needed to find one that used the same one as his world did.
FrostBite was more than happy to point him in the right direction. Since his people were the ones to spend generations attempting to map out the Realms, he had found a part of the ghost zone that Danny could blend into easily.
It was only a thirty minute commute from Danny's family portal. He could easily make that after school.
Thus, Danny flew to the portal location FrostBite told him about and ended up in a place called Central City. He found employment very quickly at Joel's Pizza, and for sixteen dollars a hour he was racing across the city to give some sizzling pizza pies.
. He was given a company scooter, but Danny preferred to fly. No one saw him as he never turned off his invisibly until he arrived at the destination. He got great tips for his speed, and his boss was fun to work for.
His parents are proud that he has a job and is not causing trouble. His friends also have their own jobs so Sam and Tucker have to plan their meet ups now- buts that's just a part of growing up.
The only thing that made his part-time difficult was the ghosts. Not all of them bothered him now a days but a few still did.
Like Young Blood. The brat didn't seem to care that Danny was going to be late to a shift since he had no concept of the importance of adult responsibilities. He was able to text his boss an apology using school as an excuse, but he was still thirty minutes late and sporting a black eye.
Joel stared at him for a long moment, muttered something in Spanish, before handing him five pizza boxes, and told him to take it to the central city police department. Danny was supirse he didn't even lecture him.
When he got to the station, the person in front told him to wait a moment since it was the forensic department that ordered food. He waited a few minutes until a blond man came down the hall, with a cheerful smile.
That smile fell when Danny turned to look at him. There was a brief flash of something dark that crossed his expression before the smile was back ten fold
"Hello," Danny said, standing up. "Order for Barry?
"That's me!" The man grins, holding out a wad of cash "Keep the change."
Wow. A fifty dollar tip!
"Sure thanks!"
"Welcome kid!"
Danny practically skipped away, Barry Watching him climb onto his scooter and slowly blending back into the traffic.
He turned to look at Officer Dawn "Is it just me or was that kid covered in bruises?"
Officer Dawn's mustache twitches with displeasure. "He definitely was. Looked fresh, too. Not only that but he works for Joel Pizza"
"This Joel a trouble maker?"
"The opposite, he was a foster kid. Once he aged out and got his own business, he started hiring teenagers in similar situations. Usually, his staff are all kids who are having a rough time. If things are too bad, he makes reports, but we try to avoid it. Don't want to lose one of the few trustworthy safe spaces for those kids." Officer Dawn's hesitates for a second before he carefully asks."A cop poking around may spook them, but a forensic chemist won't. Do you mind finding out what the delivery kid's deal is for me?"
"I look into it." Barry promises already knowing the Flash is also going to be following the boy just to make sure he safe.
He hates it when kids get hurt. Remind him too much of Wally.
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wonderjanga · 1 month ago
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Billy and Bars
Now, as you probably know, most of the time Billy is ages 8 to maybe 15 (that’s what I’ve seen anyways) and of course, his Captain Marvel form looks like an adult. So, it wouldn’t be strange for an adult to ask another adult to go to a bar with them. Which is why Billy is caught in a dilemma. On one hand, he could just say no, but after a long mission where they’d all spent like two days on an alien planet under constant heavy fire from a cute and cuddly, yet surprisingly bloodthirsty race? It’d be weird not to accept. They might suspect him for being a kid! And boy, Billy does not want that. But on the other hand, he’s not of legal drinking age.
He ends up going with them anyways. Now, all the heroes are sat at a dingy bar in Central City, out of costume, of course. Though, some of them cough Bruce cough Diana cough Arthur cough and you can’t forget Billy, still in Marvel form. (He took a page out of Supe’s book and wore glasses. He’s also for some reason wearing Hawaiian print. (He didn’t have actual adult clothes and needed to borrow from a bargain bin))
Billy thankfully found a loophole for this whole mess. That’s right, this guys gonna be sipping virgin margaritas for the rest of the night. And, he try as many flavors as he wants because you wanna know the best part? Bruce is paying for everything! If Billy could jump in joy, he would. It didn’t matter that Hal was a little obnoxious when drunk off his mind. He’s dealt with worse and it’s not like it’s all that bad. He’s kinda funnier than usual this way. He gets the spend the rest of the day with people he considers friends, that’s all that really matters.
GL: “Dude, why do you keep ordering virgins?”
Crap. What does Billy say to that? Right off the bat, Billy ignores Solomon’s first, and quite frankly, wild lie to tell.
Marvel: “Hmm? Oh uh… I… like the way they taste…?”
He’s a bad liar.
Aquaman: *drinking beer* “Try again, bud.”
Okay… It looks like he might have to listen to Solomon after all. Gosh dang it.
Marvel: “Uhm… I kinda used to maybe sort of might’ve had an addiction and had to go to AA a long time ago.” *Sips drink*
He was always better at lying when the lie was already prepared.
*Whole table goes silent*
Marvel: “Uh… I’ve been sober for a while. Like…” ‘Twelve years, Billy,’ Solomon supplied in his head. “…Twelve years.”
*Table is still silent.*
Flash: *Interrupts silence by slamming hands on table* “Dude! You cannot keep dropping Marvel Lore Bombs™️ on us like this!” (Btw this is the same universe as the Marvel Compilations post. I didn’t mean to write it like it was the same universe but I might as well connect them cause why not)
Marvel: “Whaddya mean?”
Superman: “Well, Marvel…” *scratches back of head* “You kinda have this tendency to… Gosh, how do I put this?”
Martian Manhunter: “You drop obscure information about yourself at random times.”
Wonder Woman: “Then you just go about your day like you didn’t say it in the first place. For example Cap, you can’t just tell me that at some point you were an Amazonian, you were there for my birth, and then just walk off.”
GL: “Marvel, how old are you?”
Marvel: “Uuuuuuhhhhhhh….”
Batman: “You date back to having existed before Mesopotamia. I want to know the answer to that question Marvel.” *Bat-glares Billy while sipping from his drink.*
Bruce was definitely going to add the AA thing to his quite small folder on Marvel.
The night continues on with the other members of the JL grilling Billy for more information about himself, which Solomon helps with by either supplying him with lies, or with things previous champions did. By the time the night was over, Billy never wanted to go to a bar again. He unshazamed in an alley and went home to his little place. He bee-lined to his sleeping bag and just when he was about to fall asleep, something popped into his mind:
‘Why didn’t I just say I didn’t like the way it tastes?’ That thought kept him up for a couple more hours.
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You know how Danny’s ghost sense is his ice powers? (Ice breath)
What about other powers? Why ghost sense do they have?
So for this AU (right before YJ season one) Dani’s 14 and has been traveling the world when her core developed enough to have a ghost sense. But she has fire powers.
So whenever a ghost is near, Dani bursts into flames.
It’s very inconvenient. But she deals with it.
One day, while visiting Coast City, she bursts into flames. People are freaking out.
Dani hasn’t been able to master her powers yet, but she didn’t think there would be a ghost nearby in Coast City.
Green Lantern comes and stops the fire, but by then, it burned down a nearby tree.
When Hal looks back to see if the girl is okay, she gone. One of the bystanders said she sprinted away. What was old is that the girl didn’t seem shocked, just annoyed and scared.
So Hal assumes she’s a meta and passes the word around that there is a fire-meta who can’t control her powers.
Weeks later, Flash runs into a young girl in Central City, and strikes up a conversation. Eventually flash brings up her parents and the girl gets angry before bursting into flames and disappearing. So flash updates everyone and tells them that teh meta girl also has invisibility.
Dani was just have a nice conversation with the Flash when she felt a ghost in the area (she was mad because now she would get caught by two superheroes instead of one)
Eventually, she gets caught and someone offers to train her (doesn’t matter who) and she joins Young Justice.
Things are going great until Jazz calls in a panic, and tells her that Danny’s missing.
At the same time, Batman sends YJ to a GIW compound because there are rumors that they caught a ghost child to experiment on.
It’s Danny in his ghost form. Unfortunately, Dani entering the GIW premises sent of the ghost alarms and now she’s been captured too
Yikes
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seiwas · 1 year ago
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₊˚⊹。this feeling inside of me— | gojo satoru
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wc: 1.5k
summary: you make gojo realize that this twisty-pop!-y feeling in his stomach might just be jealousy. 
contains: written with f!reader in mind but no pronouns are used, mild jealousy, mentions of some of the students, lots of stifled laughs and held back grins!, mostly fluff really, gojo just doesn’t understand what he’s feeling! 
a/n: split this into two parts: the first half (this one), lighter and more central to reader’s perspective, while the second half (the next part), darker, and more central to gojo’s perspective. best read after ‘so this is what it means to be in love’ because there are some references made! 
collection masterlist: conversations on love 03. so this is what it means to be in love + (extended scene) too good to be mine <-you are here -> 3.5b. —will i ever bring you peace?
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Gojo’s been… hovering lately.
He hangs around you a lot more than usual, following your footsteps around your apartment as if he didn’t just spend the night and stay in bed with you all morning. 
You’d think that’d stop at work, but nope. 
For someone who hates sitting still, Gojo’s spending an awful lot of time doing nothing while watching you rifle through folders and documents you’re meant to type away. He sits by the chair in front of his desk, feet propped up and fingers tapping on the wooden surface enough to push you just to the point of going a little crazy. 
Tap.
You could have sworn you’ve read this line already. 
Tap.
This paragraph feels entirely too familiar at this point. 
Tap—
“Satoru,” you sigh, smile half-annoyed-half-guilty as you switch your attention to the man in front of you, “do you have extra work to finish today?” 
You’re trying to ask kindly, after all, Gojo rarely chooses to sit by the paperwork he’s been assigned to do (even though he doesn’t really do any of it because it’s mostly left to you). 
He stops tapping, moving to rest his cheek on one hand as he flashes you a grin so lovesick you think it’s infectious—the corners of your lips are curling up too. 
“Just working on spending more time with you.” 
Of course he says something like this; the most powerful man in jujutsu society transformed into the ever-charming sweet-talker that being your lover brings. 
You roll your eyes, shaking your head as you chuckle—the look on your face a reflection of his. As annoyed as you are that he’s distracting you, you’re endeared. 
“You didn’t have to come with me, you know.” 
Today is his day-off after all. 
He hums, eyes set on you with cerulean sincerity, “It’s boring without you, though.” 
Strands of white fall to kiss his eyelashes and you reach forward to brush them off—his hair is getting longer now, you note. No doubt he’s going to ask you to accompany him for a haircut soon. 
His nose scrunches under the space your fingers hover over and you draw them back, “Clingy.”
—which he’s always been, but even moreso lately. You don’t know where all of it is coming from, how it’s even possible for him to be clingier than normal, but the past weeks have definitely shown you that he is more than capable. 
Gojo loves grocery runs, but only when he’s able to wander around the breakfast and candy section while you go through the long list of essentials and ingredients that need stocking up on. 
Not last week though. 
Instead of beelining straight towards his usual spot, he stayed right where you were, pushing the cart whenever you needed him to and reaching up on the top shelf for things you’d normally have to ask some other kind sir to get to. He stays close to you, body draping over yours as you line up for the checkout queue—long limbs, long torso, long everything engulfing you.
It’s endearing, and cute, and oh so Satoru, but the days after that find him following you everywhere—picking you up after pottery with Megumi (as if you can’t make it back home alone), insisting on doing a taste test on cooking lessons with Inumaki, and even joining you on that afternoon yoga class you reserved for (initially) just you and Yuuji. 
You wonder what’s causing this, why he’s acting this way lately.
“Well, I have to be or else Yuuji might really steal you away from me.” he jokes, elbows propped on the table as he rests his chin on clasped hands. 
You know that he isn’t actually threatened by Yuuji—just that he wants more attention from you, some that you give to the pink-haired boy too eagerly and so easily. 
Still, it’s weird whatever he’s feeling right now, a bundle of unrest bubbling in his stomach these days. He isn’t familiar with it, doesn’t really know what to call it, just that he knows when it hits—like knots waiting to pop at any minute.  
You stand up from your seat to make your way to him, glancing at the clock across the room; you suppose there’s no point trying to squeeze in any more work for the last 20 minutes before you’re set to clock out. 
Gojo pats his thigh, as if beckoning you to sit; he manspreads like crazy but you think it makes sense for moments when he wants to hold you like this. 
Once you position yourself on his lap, he snakes an arm around your waist as you sling yours around the back of his neck, landing a soft peck at the tip of his nose. The hand resting on your hip rubs gently. 
“Is that comment still bothering you?” you ask, scratching the short buzzed hair of his undercut. 
You catch his eyes then, sky blue with a troubled sea.
Now that he thinks about it, it probably did start with the videos. 
Gojo Satoru is a man of many accolades: the strongest, a lone child prodigy, the best teacher (self-proclaimed); at some point he was also the world’s saving grace, and you’d think after that he’d decide to lay low for a bit, have a change of pace—but no.
The man you love has also, apparently, become a social media heartthrob after garnering attention for vlogging your dates. For the memories, he had said, but of course, it’s never just that when he’s as pretty–if not prettier–than the models you see on magazines and billboard posters. The video goes viral and suddenly you’re made very aware of just how coveted he is across all generations. 
He feels the first pop! in his stomach when he finds the comment under a 10-minute video of your day out in the park. He blacked out, he’s sure, but some loser said something about how you were so hot and completely out of his league.
As if he doesn’t know that already, but it’s how confident user ManInATux69 typed that you should just leave Gojo and be with him instead. That one stung a bit; maybe even got to his head, and it’s ridiculous because it really is just some faceless person on the internet. 
But maybe that’s really how this feeling started. 
“Of course not,” he pouts, eyes avoiding yours as he looks to the side, brows furrowed.
You stifle a giggle as you wait, biting the insides of your cheek as you stare at him. A mental countdown until—
“Maybe a bit.” he mumbles after a few blinks, pout deepening as he turns to you. He always comes around to tell you the truth, without fail. 
It’s endearing, and cute, and oh so Satoru. Your Satoru.
“You wanna tell me how you’re feeling exactly?” 
If there’s one word Gojo will use to describe you, it will always be lovely. You have always been so gentle, so kind, never pushing, always asking lightly. 
You’ve sat through all his non-answers, so he thinks it’s just right, fair, that he gladly offers up his heart to you, now nestled into the palm of your hands as he lays all these feelings down, bare, intended just for you. 
He takes your free hand and places it right at his center, the space between his chest and abdomen. It’s warm as his hand dwarfs yours, forming it into a fist and twisting it into his skin. 
“Feels like a knot first,” he begins, before jerking your hand slightly as if to emulate a pop!, “then it pops.” 
And you think, that for all he sees and knows, it’s ironic that he can describe a feeling so vividly yet not know what it’s called—what it could possibly mean or be. 
“Do you think you’re jealous, Satoru?” you ask, smiling, fighting back a giggle (again), tone teasing. 
Hm, he thinks, is that what this is? 
Jealousy? 
He stares at you, lips parted slightly as you watch it register to him slowly. 
“Would explain why you’ve been hovering,” you chuckle, stroking small circles with your thumb. 
“I have not been hovering.” he snaps out of it, almost offended. 
You give him a look, eyebrow raised and mouth set in a smirk as if to say: really?
He relents, taking your hand to interlace your fingers with his, “Maybe a little.” 
Kisses are dotted along your knuckles, his eyes closed as if to ground him. You’ve known Gojo for so long that you can tell when he’s still figuring out how to say whatever it is he wants to—and your heart warms at the fact that this side to him is one he only entrusts to you. 
“There’s no competition, you know,” you whisper, the sky opening back to you, “I love you.” 
Your words are weighted, meant for him to hold and keep in the parts of him that doubt what he means to you. And it might sound a bit silly, to be this affected over a comment from some nobody, but you don’t want to leave any room for uncertainty—for your inaction to once again feed into his insecurity. 
He hums, soft vibrations flowing through his lips still pressed against your hand. Red is starting to bloom across his cheeks to his nose, and he mumbles, “Just want to be sure I’m good to you.”
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a/n: the first and second part wouldn’t have fit in tone if i put them in one fic, so i split them! the second part will be a bit darker, more serious, but will discuss more of where the feelings stem from in the first place! 
thank you notes: to niku @stellamancer for listening to me and being there when i seriously needed it writing this!! & to dilly and somi my bbgirls!! @crysugu @soumies for always cheering me on, especially during the slump!! 
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comments, tags, and reblogs are greatly appreciated ♡
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leclsrc · 1 year ago
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do you want it? ✴︎ cs55
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genre: summer love!!!, slight age gap, porn w plot basically...
word count: 10.5k  
Whatever preconceived notions you have about your summer at the beach house are all toppled over when your parents announce the arrival of a guest, who happens to be your dad's friend. title from this
auds here… hiii :) req'd by several people! few notes... carlos is aged up a tad, the age gap is 21/33 so not too bad (i aged him up bc the age gap was 7 yrs and i was like. Huh. thats tame). if ur not into that (tho everything is consensual and reader is legal) its ok! anyway im sorry this came so late i had like 6 anons asking ab carlos and lana haha. also big thanks to dani whose work got me thru 4 writing ruts
nsfw warnings under the cut!
18+ because... sexual tension, penetrative sex, dry humping, oral sex (m and f receiving), deepthroating, semi public sex ish?, praise central, size kink, like a flash of spit kink sorry..., overuse of the term good girl
Half past noon and after a particularly snappy call from his manager, Carlos bites the bullet on summer plans and decides to accept what is arguably the least glamorous offer on his roster. By no means a dazzling standout, the offer to stay at a family friend’s house in Comporta seems to be the most comfortable option—besides, he doesn’t feel himself to be in the glitzy mood for cities like Los Angeles or Monaco.
Lando, beside him, is thus the first to get wind of the news that “grumpy old man” Carlos will not be accompanying him to the ultimate, tequila-flavored “summer extravaganza” in Morocco.
“You’re boring,” Lando moans, pacing the room. Outside, London’s skyline moves passively. Carlos hangs up his phone call with his assistant, receives a picture of his flight details, and looks up amusedly.
“Portugal is not boring.”
“Morocco. DJs, drinks, girls.” Lando raises one hand. “Comporta. Family friends, apple cider, sand in your eyes.” He raises another hand a few inches lower. “See the difference?”
“I appreciate the difference.” Truth is, Carlos has needed this kind of quiet, calm time off for a while now. The season gets heavy and intense and tiring, and sometimes just staying by the beach with a beer is the best kind of reprieve.
“You’re getting old,” Lando says with a sour grimace. “Old.”
“That is,” Carlos says, searching for the word, “defamation.”
Lando shrugs, moves off the subject as he shoves a handful of crisps into his mouth. “Are you meeting family there?”
“No.” Both of his parents are out of the country for the next few weeks; Carlos was invited by his dad’s friend, though the bond they share is more friendly than just the standard uncle-nephew type of relationship, and they often refer to each other as just friends. “Just friends. Gallery owner and a company owner, I think.”
Lando whistles. “Rich.”
In response, Carlos nods. “And their daughter, who’s visiting from university in the States.” The details are fuzzy in his head, but the gist is about right.
“Sounds boring,” his friend snorts. “Come on, mate. You, me, Daniel. One last chance to watch Peggy Gou’s set and take shots and have fuuun.” He says the last part with the suave that would only rival a preteen’s.
Carlos, for a second, lets his resolve waver. Maybe it would be better watching loud DJ sets, dancing, getting all flushed with alcohol. But he blinks and shakes his head anyway. He hopes his decision is the right one, that summer in the beach house ends up being worth it. It’s a few weeks by the beach, anyway—what’s the worst that could happen?
Any recollection of your childhood almost instantly connects to the beach house in Comporta, big and wide and right by the coast. You spent fall, winter, and spring in a constant bumbling state of excitement to spend summer there. Your parents owned it, and often offered family friends to take up residence there when summers in the city got unbearable; for the most part, though, it was the three of you and, on rare years, a guest.
Your summers there have since smudged into the same few memories, of your mum and dad’s faces, of swimming and the learning curve of sailing, of bonfires by the beach on cold nights. And they have since become just that: memories. Summers grew sparse with time, and eventually the idea of meeting distant family friends became more embarrassing than exciting; by the time your parents moved you out of Europe for college, you’d lost almost all memory of the house.
So when your parents ask if you want to fly back to Comporta and spend a few “quiet” weeks there, you figure there’s no harm in seeing what the house is like and what summer can offer you beyond the weekly club outings. Instead of the usual quiet and overall lack-of-bustle that comes with summers, however, you open the front door to three housekeepers dusting every surface in your immediate eyesight.
“Are we hosting a wedding?” You ask when you find your parents tending to two sweaty glasses of champagne. You gesture faintly to the cleanfest inside. “What is going on?”
“We have a guest,” your mother says as she gets up to hug you tight. “Staying for the summer.”
“You said this summer would be quiet,” you deadpan, eyes narrowing underneath your sunglasses.
Your mum pinches your elbow. “I wasn’t lying,” she defends, raising her eyebrows. “Carlos’ son is coming.” She pats your arm. “You know? The race driver! He’s close with your father.” And, leaving no space for you to voice your dissent, she slips back into the house through the screen door, your father kissing your cheek then following suit. Your mouth parts, thoughts beginning to rush with implications of what your mother has just told you.
Carlos—if you’re correct—is Carlos Sainz, Sr., a good friend of your dad’s, and his son is Carlos Sainz, Jr., another good friend of your dad’s, because if there’s one thing rich Europeans do well, it’s the repetition of names. You’ve never met his son, only heard of him and seen a few pictures, but being so far detached from life here, you can’t even shape his face.
All you recall is the fact that he should now be thirty or older, which makes him rather older than you—and therefore effectively incapable of providing any break from any possible summer boredom. For fuck’s sake, he’s close to your dad. You’re at the top of the stairs when you hear the commotion by the front door, peeking at the foyer to catch a glimpse of him.
He’s solo, you observe; upon a glance into the front parking, you notice he’s driven here in a Ferrari, one a bit too modern for your taste but beautiful nevertheless. He carries only two pieces of luggage, and the sun blinds you for a moment before he’s finally at the doorframe, smiling politely, talking to your dad in casual Spanish.
He is, for lack of better word, insanely handsome. He wears a polo that shows off much of his arms, that flex as he puts down his luggage to shake hands with your parents; you follow the movement of his hands to watch one comb through his thick hair, then down to his smile, back up to his brown eyes, deep and so, so pretty.
Maybe this summer deserves a little less begrudge, you decide as you retreat back into your room, still brewing with residual annoyance.
Your parents send him off after a drink and a brief conversation, catch-up, tour of the downstairs area. Carlos knows his room is supposed to be upstairs, but the problem arises in the fact that there are two upstairs rooms and he doesn’t know which one he’s supposed to be staying in. Setting his luggage down for a minute, he knocks on the first door; permissive silence greets him for half a minute, so he turns the knob and prepares to enter.
To his surprise, he finds somebody already inside, a figure by the mirror on the other end of the room. What catches his eye is not the tiny skirt, but the half-tied bikini top currently being wound around two fingers at the centre of your back. You’re basically clothed, but Carlos can’t decide if he’s thankful or not—he doesn’t have time to when you catch him in the mirror and turn around quick, mouth agape.
“Can’t you knock?!” You ask, catty.
“I did—I knocked, but you—there was no answer,” he explains profusely. “I’m Carlos. Sorry, apologies. Truly.”
You introduce yourself. You’re his friend’s daughter, this and that, and you’re visiting from the States to spend summer here. He apologizes again when you finish. 
“Well, seeing as though this is my room,” you shoot back, “that must be yours.” You gesture vaguely to the one down the hall. Amused and a little embarrassed, he mouths apologies as he closes the door.
Carlos exits, departs and doesn’t have time to take in the room before he’s facedown on the bed. Any sleepiness he’d collected from the trip over, from the day drinks, from the headache that’d been blooming at the temples of his head, has dissipated. His mind’s been imprinted with one image only, and it’s down the hall in a tiny skirt.
Lunch brings lemonade and pasta, two staples for every summer meal. You, however, find yourself hopelessly distracted by the presence of your guest, and despite your best efforts, the churn in your stomach disables you from fully enjoying the carbonara on the table. The conversation between Carlos and your dad ends up taking your attention instead. “So you’re racing again in a few weeks?”
“Sí,” Carlos nods in-between forkfuls. Then, to add, “Busy, busy times.”
“Well. It’s the worst of our days,” your mum says, a quote she picked up from—of all places—a BBC sitcom she watched to tears last winter. “You are a talented driver, Carlos. Very cultured. I’m sure you’ll enjoy Comporta.”
“I have not been around much,” he says; his gaze flutters over to his glass, which is devoid of water or lemonade. “Any recommendations?”
“A lot, cabrón. Our daughter will be happy to take you around,” your father says on your behalf. He turns to you. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, sure,” you say, allowing a terse smile. “There’s some places around here that aren’t so boring. But that’s being generous.” Carlos laughs at your joke, raucous and goofy, and you would definitely be lying if you told yourself it didn’t get you blushing a little bit, eyes casting themselves to your still-full plate.
“While you’re here, Carlos,” your dad continues, “I have an old car in the garage that could use some looking at. Are you—would you know how to—?”
Carlos nods, accepting the favor—then the conversation naturally slides into one of cars and racing. Carlos chronicles his journey in Formula One, his Toro Rosso days back then when he was younger, his McLaren period, and now, his time representing Ferrari. He talks of pet peeves on the grid, annoyances but also praises for the sport.
“I’d appreciate the downtime, actually,” he explains, “that I’d get from working on a car instead of in one.” He laughs, eyes briefly meeting yours. He looks away, then looks again. He can’t help himself. He wonders if he’s being obvious, if you can tell the way his looks are anything but casual. “Can you pour me a glass?” He adds.
“Yeah,” you mutter, sitting straight to pour lemonade into his waiting glass. You meet his eyes and almost pour it over the pasta. The rest of the lunch is uneventful, a series of adult conversation you can’t seem to engage yourself in fully, and whether that’s because of personal preference or Carlos’ presence, you don’t make an effort to try.
“…ney. Honey.” Your mum’s voice distracts you from your thoughts; when you look up, half the table is clear and Carlos and your dad have ventured inside to deposit plates at the sink. 
“Sorry. Wh—sorry, what?” You blink.
“Your father and I are heading out for the evening. Carlos will be working on the car. That okay, or you want to come along?”
“Um…” You pretend the latter is even an option before shaking your head. “No, I’ll stay.”
“Good.” She strokes your hair. “He could use the company.”
You follow her walking figure inside, where you station your eyes on Carlos. He’s sipping a lemonade. His eyes meet yours for a second and your face is outrageously flushed when you realize you’ve been caught staring, just like his had been earlier when he walked into your room.
You’re hellbent on solving a Sudoku puzzle when the dinner bell rings, and you have to finish it on the stairs. Your dad’s always been a stickler for arriving to dinner on time—every meal, but a gargantuan emphasis on the last—and you’ve been victim to scoldings about being five to six minutes late, an instance you don't wish to repeat.
9, you scribble, bare feet moving with speed through the living room, indoor dining room, then to the patio door. 4 comes next, your footsteps following the smell of grilled meat. 8, you write as you turn into the outdoor dining area. You’re halfway through 2 when you stop, look up, and find Carlos preparing dinner.
“Oh—” You pause. “You rang the dinner bell? Are my parents not…?”
“They are at a dinner,” says Carlos, eyes meeting yours briefly. It reminds you of earlier and you clear your throat, looking away. “So I hope my cooking is good enough.”
“It smells great,” you offer, seating yourself down and pouring a glass of wine. He sets the plate down—just-cut steak, a smear of potatoes. “Christ, you cook better than Dad.”
“I take that as a compliment,” he laughs, sitting across you. “Listen, I want to apologize for accidentally walking into your room earlier.”
Your face warms. “No, it’s okay. I was just surprised.”
“It was wrong of me. Let’s start over. I’m Carlos.” He reaches over to shake your hand, still standing. You take it, eyes flitting over his hand, spotting no glinting ring on his finger. With a saccharine smile, you assure him it was an honest mistake, so he segues into a different topic, the corners of his mouth turning up. “So, do you have an itinerary for me tomorrow?”
You hum, passing the wine over to him. “A bookstore, an ice cream parlor, and a bike ride. Anything else is seriously not worth it. You’ll have the next few weeks to explore town. If the house gets that boring.”
“I haven’t been bored so far,” he says, eyes glinting.
“Oh?”
“You know, with the car fixing.” He points vaguely to where the garage is. “But it’s only been a day.”
“Car fixing is boring,” you state matter-of-factly. “You’ll have fun tomorrow.” You cut into the steak and bite into the forkful you stab at, eyes fluttering.
“Good?” Carlos asks, smiling a little.
“I love it,” you mumble. “You’re so good at this, Carlos.”
Carlos retires to his room that night, and finds that today has held a collective motif of losing his shit. He’s anything but sleepy. Restless, wild-eyed, combing hand after hand through his hair. God, if he’d known you were this pretty—this hard to resist, on his first night here, no less—he would’ve been watching some DJ spin out a set with Lando right now.
Instead, he finds he can’t stop himself from thinking about you, the way your eyes had fluttered when he tried saying something on the edge of flirty. Your hair. Your hands, your fingers, lithe around the stem of your wine glass.
I love it, you’d said, you’re so good at this, Carlos. You knew exactly what you were doing, skittish tone putting him on edge. Despite himself, he can’t help but squeeze himself through his pants when he sits down on the edge of the bed, breathing heavy to purge himself of thoughts so low and dirty.
You’re so pretty. You’d be so easy to wreck, make his, goad little moans out of you, get your lips around him, puffy and pink and pretty. He wedges his eyes shut tight and hopes these thoughts will dissipate as the week passes.
Something tells him he’s wrong, though.
The tour is delayed because your dad insists he go fishing with Carlos three days in a row, but eventually (likely due to your mum’s insistence) it pushes through. You greet him with a smile, waiting by the door, wearing a sundress. Sundresses will definitely be his demise.
You’re a good tour guide, though, Carlos figures when you’re finished pointing at every turn and sign and dictating what goes where and where the passage to the coast is, when you’ve even quizzed him about where you are and where the house is supposed to be.
After he points in the correct direction, you nod approvingly. “That’s how my dad made sure I wouldn’t get lost,” you explain when he laughs at your choice of tour guidance. 
“And you were what—twelve?” He asks, walking beside you. It’s fairly empty in town, a few tourists mulling about carrying shopping bags and plastic cups of juice.
“Try fourteen,” you argue. 
“Well, quizzing a, uh—a fourteen-year-old is really not the same as quizzing a grown adult.”
“Ha. Call me when you can’t find your way home tonight,” you diss sarcastically, making a turn toward the bookstore down the street. “Okay, here we are. Don’t get too excited. They’re just books.”
For a relatively empty town, the bookstore always has new batches of titles, displayed proudly for natives and tourists alike front and centre. But you’re already going to the right side of the store, busying yourself with looking at the signs. 
“The classics shelf is always my favorite,” you say, already walking ahead of him. Your dress bobs softly with your legs as you pace, short and sweet and white. You turn and his eyes slide back up instantly, and he hopes he was quick enough. “Do you have any authors you like?”
“I am not a big reader. You?”
“Huge,” you say, smiling a little. “Okay, we can browse. Are you into any genre…?”
Carlos proceeds to tell you his track record in the literary field includes: reading half the Harry Potter series, a car manual, and a few other titles in Spanish he cannot recall the name or plot of. But, he adds, he’s always wanted to read, found the activity so quiet and still and perfect, so he allows you to lead him through the titles stacked on each table and condensed on each shelf. He points at, sometimes, or picks up covers he finds appealing.
“How about—?” He reaches for a pink cover that reads It Ends With Us, but your hand loops around his wrist before he can pick it up and you’re pulling him into another aisle.
“…Not that.” You continue perusing the books around you, your hand still wrapped around his. With your free finger, you point at the top shelf, and tiptoe against the bookcase to try and get it. You come close, but not close enough.
Carlos, behind you, is successful, not even needing to tiptoe to reach for the red hardbound you’d been pointing at. It also means he’s pressed up against you, heavy and big, and the sensation dizzies you. When he finally pulls it off, you turn to him and find respite in the proximity—you two are so close, every exhale out of your lips causes a puff of air to blow against his hair.
He steps backward. You smile and gesture toward the book he’s holding. “That’s a good one.”
“Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” He reads out the author’s name in one fluid sentence, his Spanish accent becoming naturally more obvious.
“Okay, colonizer.” He knits his brows. “Trust me,” you insist. “One Hundred Years of Solitude—so good. It was one of the first books I read front to back twice in a row.”
“Wow, what an honor,” he teases sarcastically as you move along the aisle, fingertips brushing against the indents of the books. You turn to narrow your eyes and stick your tongue out. Unfortunately for Carlos, the effect this inflicts upon him is not oh she mocked me, but oh how would it look if—
He needs ice cream. Or to just get out of this aisle.
You punctuate the day with two cones of it, melting way too fast in the heat of summer. He’s already half-finished with his vanilla, and you’re taking your time with the lemon sorbet you’d gotten for yourself. Apparently, this is the only other highlight the town has to offer, and judging by the fact that most of the other stores are expensive clothes, souvenir shops, and a Bible bookstore—yeah.
Carlos is also more than sated with the three books in the paper bag he’s holding. Scratch that—six books, you bought a haul for yourself—but it’s not a particularly heavy load, so he’s fine. His phone has been buzzing with Lando’s update requests that he’s been deliberately ignoring.
“They make the best ice cream,” you rave, smiling. You lick over the melt on your lips. “Right?”
He might actually drop his cone now. “It is delicious.”
“Well…” You look around, your hair flying with every turn of your head. Lick over lips again. Again, and again. He has to look away.
“…Do you wanna stop by anywhere else?” You turn to him and ask, licking over the tip of your ice cream cone.
It’s hard for Carlos to pretend he’s looking around your surroundings, at the signs and storefronts, and not at your sticky lips, your pink tongue just peeking out to lap at the quickly melting gelato around your hand. His eyes flit downward, to where the hem of your tiny white dress has flown up in the coastal wind, exposing more of your thighs.
“Carlos?” You repeat, voice sweet and waiting.
He snaps his eyes back up and wills his voice to remain passive. “We can head back.”
So you do, meaning your tour ends around noon, and your parents greet you both with lunch and the round of inevitable questions. Did Comporta live up to your expectations? What books did you get? Was our daughter a good tour guide? The latter, Carlos answers with a smile—very good. You allowed your face to flush, blamed it on the sangria.
Now, though, it’s the brink in-between chilly and hot, sticky traces of the summer afternoon still lingering in the air, mixing with the cool of dusk when you decide to exit your room and fix yourself a glass of something, preferably sweet and alcoholic. An empty driveway save for a Ferrari means your parents are gone, leaving you and—if you’re lucky, which you hope you are—
“Carlos,” you call out from the window you’ve just tugged open with the expertise of somebody who’s lived here for twenty-one summers. “Thirsty?”
He looks up from where he is, outside, continuing his operation on your dad’s car. The hood’s been cranked open, and his long hair is damp with sweat, flying gently in the face of the sunset breeze. He smiles when he sees your figure peeking out.
“For what?”
“Whatever you want,” you respond, taking your bottom lip between your teeth. His white shirt’s stained with oil and dirt, tainting it beige and grey, the tight fit even tighter from his sweat. You can make out the outline of his abs just underneath. 
He squints. “Beer?”
You make an exaggerated eugh face to tease him, but duck back inside to bring your homemade aperol and an open, frosty beer outside. When he sees you, he walks closer, smiles and takes a swig of the drink you offer. He makes a noise of satisfaction and you have to make a real effort to maintain a semblance of normalcy, eyes averting from his lips to gaze instead at his solid shoulders, his build, big and tall.
“What’s the problem with beer, hmm?”
“Tastes like shit.” You raise your aperol. “The sweeter, the better. How’s Dad’s car?” You blink, sidestepping him to try and gauge his progress.
“Casi termino.” You look at him, raising your eyebrows, and he translates. “Almost done. It wasn’t that destroyed, if at all.”
“You think he’ll let you drive it when you’re done?” You ask playfully, swiping your condensation-wet finger over the side of the car. You turn, smiling expectantly; Carlos laughs a bit, shrugs.
“It is just a favor. But if he does, I’ll make sure you get to come along.” He says. “You like that?”
“Mmm,” you nod, sipping on your aperol. You part from your straw, lips stained, and smile up at him. “I do.”
His gaze is stuck on your lips. You lick over them, and he looks away with a slow blink. You watch as he ruffles his hair, rounds the car and crosses his arms to view it from the back.
God, he’s handsome. You think of the long-winded nights you’ve been spending trailing your fingers over your legs or texting inspired paragraphs to friends back in university about him. Their responses are almost always Send pic now and a cacophony of heart eye emojis when you manage to snag a stolen shot of him doing just about anything.
His gaze is scrutinizing, every little detail of the car, and eventually he closes the hood again. “Should be good by tomorrow.”
“Where’d you learn to fix cars?” You ask sweetly, nearing him. The wind bites at your legs, your flowy skirt bouncing sporadically and held down by your free hand. When your eyes flit to his, waiting for his response, you find them snapping upward. He’d been distracted.
“I work with cars, so it comes natural.” You lean on the hood of the car and he comes to stand in front of you, his eyes pointed downward at you. “That’s not a very good habit,” he adds.
“Drinking?” You pout, raising your half-empty glass. You blink up at him, the corner of your smiling lip caught in your teeth.
“Biting your lip.” His gaze is intense. “You do it a lot, I noticed.”
You smile, leaning backward a little. His resolve is breaking. “Can I borrow one of the books you got earlier?”
“The three ones you bought not enough?” He raises a brow, downing beer again. Some of it dribbles out of the corner of his lip. You’ve never been one to like the taste, but you’d lick it off him if you could.
“I just wanna browse it,” you push. “I’ll return it tomorrow.”
“Fine,” he relents. “I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”
He sees you the next day after lunch, which you’d skipped because you “weren’t hungry.” You’re wearing a dress, hair clipped into a bun when you excuse yourself to pick up an earring in front of him. He almost thinks it’s a fib until he sees it, the pink gem on the floor.
“Sorry,” you say, voice mellow, and then you’re bending over to pick it up. You’re wearing pretty lace panties underneath.
Carlos clears his throat and excuses himself, adjusting his shorts as he goes upstairs.
He gives you Norweigan Wood after dinner, like he promised earlier in the week. Two raps on your door, and when you open it, he’s already handing it to you with a quiet smile. “Goodnight,” he says, his voice clipped.
“Our tour isn’t over yet,” you tease, tossing the book onto your bed and descending the steps back downstairs. Confused and interested, he follows you, to the back area of the house, past the swinging screen door, down the steps, and onto the sand.
“Tour?” He repeats, for clarification. The only things to tour are sand and twigs.
“Yeah, Carlos. This is the real tour,” you joke, walking backwards. Every step sends your foot sinking into the cold sand, slowing your pace until Carlos catches up, matching your steps once he does. “Comporta—real and unfiltered.” You both laugh at your hyperbolic, MTV-worthy statement, and he waits for more, entertains you further.
“What is so real about this?” Carlos laughs, allowing himself to humor your little schtick.
“Well, mister. This isn’t bookstores and ice cream parlors.” You point to a nearby spot in the sand, just by a rogue stick. “This is where I smoke without getting caught. Near enough that I can run back in seconds, but faraway enough that my parents can’t immediately see what I’m doing. Granted, I don’t need to be sneaking around much, but if you ever want to do something in secret—”
The implication sends Carlos into a spiral of thought.
“—here’s your spot.”
“So you smoke,” he says when he sits himself on the sand, observing the now-dark skyline of the area. You continue pacing around a little, and when you raise your arms up to stretch, he catches a glimpse of your abdomen, the waistband of pink lace underneath the low rise of your denim shorts.
“Occasionally. Don’t play Holy Mary,” you warn, standing in front of him and stretching your hand out to reveal a box of Marlboro Reds. 
“Wasn’t planning to,” he responds, taking a stick and inserting it in between his lips. “Got a light?”
“No,” you tease, taking one for yourself and sliding your lighter out from your pocket in one quick motion. The flame illuminates your face, casts a light on your thin white tee and on the bikini top you have on underneath. You puff out a small cloud of smoke, and Carlos reaches up to take the lighter.
“I said no,” you giggle, your lips knotting into a pout. You hold the lighter just out of his reach, red and bold against the bleak evening. 
“Give it.” He sits up higher, reaches harder; he almost gets it, but you step backward and raise your arm out of reach. Again your shirt rises with the movement. The view he gets, this time, of your hips, the lace that hugs the area there, is much more close.  The laugh you emit sends a cloud of smoke out.
“No, no,” you continue, laughing, a sweet sound.
Carlos gets up, tries again to lunge for the lighter. At this point he doesn’t even care about the cigarette in between his lips, just wants to entertain you. He tries again but you’re quick with it, ducking every lunge just in time.
“Come on,” he goads, laughing himself. You pace backward, smoking, until your ankles hit the shallow shore water, water that goes deeper and deeper until you’re knee-level, still smiling at him mischievously. 
“Fine,” you relent, shrugging. You throw your hands up in surrender, in the process taking the stick out of your mouth to blow smoke out. “Do you want it? C’mere, then.” You beckon him closer, wave the lighter tantalizingly so he steps closer, closer, until you’re holding the flame to the cigarette between his lips.
He’s so tall, he has to bend a little to let you light it, his eyes meeting yours, illuminated by the pale moon and the orange of the flame.
It all goes to plan. Once you light it, you place two hands square on his shoulders, whirl him so he’s behind you and thus even deeper in the water, and with all your might, push him into the sea. 
“Brat—” he manages to gasp out as he goes, the word leaving his lips in the first and last puff of smoke he lets out. He surfaces, every dip and ridge of his abs and chest accentuated, his linen polo near invisible with how saturated it is with water. His long hair, too, sticks to his forehead; he combs it backward, reveals his amused-irritated eyes, the dead cigarette spouting seawater and ash.
He spits it out. You stare and pinch the soggy stick in between two fingers, stuffing the trash into his chest pocket. “That’s bad for the environment.”
“I am freezing,” he says in response, but you’re just stifling a laugh.
He narrows his eyes, and with unsurprising ease given his build, picks you up and carries you over his shoulder. You barely have time to protest, almost dropping your own cigarette into the water, kicking and pounding on his back to please put me down. You can feel the water getting deep, deeper, and when he finally dunks you in, it’s only a second of dryness before you’re submerged in the chilly water.
Your cigarette dies, and you manage to collect it, because you’re not in the interest of leaving your stick floating; you wedge it into your pocket.
“You’re such”—you gasp for air—“a dick!”
You’re smiling, though, flailing your legs to stay afloat. Carlos can’t help but stare, entranced with the way your eyelashes stick together, damp, the droplets of water on your cheeks, your two hands wringing saltwater out of your hair, and when you swim upward, the way your white tee leaves nothing to his imagination.
You can tell. He can tell you can tell—because the next thing you do, with some faux exaggerated sigh of annoyance, is say, “Can’t swim, too heavy,” and you’re taking off your shirt so all he sees is the red of your bikini top underneath. The white tee bobs softly with each passing wave, and you’re smiling up at him. Checkmate, you’re saying. I’ve got you. A skittish, playful smile on your lips.
“I can help you swim,” he offers—retaliates, more like, his height offering him great advantage. He finds your bare ankle underwater, guides it to wrap around his waist. Naturally, your other leg follows until you’re flush against him, held up by him so you don’t need to wag your legs around just to stay above water.
Your hands go on his still-clothed shoulders first, then eventually around them, fingers linking at the nape of his neck. Your smile is wicked. You’re so sinfully pretty. He wades deeper, holds you all the while, two big hands on either side of your waist, thumbs rubbing over your sides so you can shiver.
“‘M so wet,” you say, voice shaky with chill and laughter. His grip tightens and he has to squeeze his eyes shut to try and pretend you didn’t just say that.
He dips you underneath the surface to surprise you, and your shriek is cut off by the water—he pulls you up quick, laughing, but underestimates his strength because as he tugs, you barrel right onto him, forehead bumping his.
Your eyes are closed, and you momentarily detach from him to wipe salt out of them. “Ass.”
“Brat,” he responds.
You open your eyes to find he’s close, so close you could just lean forward an inch—an inch—and you’d be meeting his lips. You wonder how they feel, how he kisses. He’s confident everywhere else, would he kiss you like that, too? You lean closer, a wrecked gasp escaping you.
“You’re so pretty,” you say, and it’s supposed to be teasing, but your breathy voice is genuine, honest. A thumb swipes over his eyelashes, causing him to blink, then the bridge of his nose. He leans upward, tries to catch your lips, but pauses, his eyes fluttering open and closed.
“This is wrong,” he says in a quiet breath, making no move at all you stop either of you from kissing right now.
You want—need—to kiss him, but you can play the long game if he wishes to. Your eyes flit back up to his, dark brown and reflecting the moon.
“Then let’s head back,” you suggest, even if both of you want anything but.
Long game. He guides you back to shore, picks your tee up, uses it as a sieve for any loose ash and cigarette bits in your path back to shore, even finds your red lighter that’s now dispensing water. He apologizes for not having anything to dry you with, and drops you off at your room with a puddle in both of your wakes.
“Thank you again,” he says, his voice a whisper through your ajar door. He observes your room with what little vantage point he has. The posters on the wall, the art, postcards. The laptop on the bed, open. The phone charging on the nightstand. The thong hanging out of the hamper.
“No problem,” you say back, voice saccharine. Your hand wraps around his wrist. “See you tomorrow.”
Even if you’re doused in seawater, he can still smell the traces of your perfume, the summery sweet of it, when you close the door. He stays for a second, blinks, relishes in the hint of floral.
You spend three days walking on eggshells around each other, testing the limits of interaction.
Your night at the beach was risky, dangerous, thrilling—but it was fun, sending you both into antsy, restless trains of thought. Carlos self-medicates with coffee, beer in the afternoon, working on your dad’s car, and the first two hundred pages of the Marquez book you insisted he pick up. He spots you sometimes, lounging on the beach with his book in your grip, the waistline of your bikini bottoms leaving a tanline he can’t stop staring at when you walk back into the house.
But he can’t act on it—he was the one who labeled it wrong, the one who suppressed himself, held the urge back. He told you it was wrong. And it is wrong. He’s older, he should be wiser; he’s close with your dad; and a cacophony of other rational reasons he shouldn’t be playing into this skittish summer crush.
“Dad said the boat’s free,” a voice says, and he looks up from his book to find you standing in front of him, wearing nothing but a bikini top and a skirt, loose and riding low on your hips. Your lips stretch into a sweet smile. “Wanna come?”
He really shouldn’t. “Sí.”
So he goes. He’s thirty-five. That’s a grown age. If anything, he’s capable of making sure he stays responsible. He dog-ears his page and picks up his beer to follow you to where the boat is docked. He’d been on your dad’s yacht earlier in his trip here, to go fishing, but it’s quieter today, bobbing softly atop the water. You lie yourself down on the sunny side of the boat, sunglasses over your eyes.
“Stay anywhere you like,” you say charmingly. It’s silent for a while, Carlos seating himself on one of the lounge seats in the shaded area, and then you’re moving around on your towel.
You peer over your lenses, blinking and sitting up, and this is when he knows he can’t do it.
“Carlos,” you call out. “Can you put sunscreen on my back?” You get up again, rifling in your bag for the bottle of sunscreen, dragging a hand through your hair to comb it out. It falls in loose waves, swishing when you turn to hand him the bottle. He pretends he’d been distracted on page 210 when he accepts it, watching as you sit in front of the seat, your back turned to him, your little figure in-between his spread legs. 
A minute passes with no hand at your back. “Go ahead, move even slower,” you joke, and the tension breaks a little; he humors you, laughs and apologizes.
“It’s because hour hair is in the way,” he says, touching it gently, combing it to the side.
“Wait—” You dig through your bag again and pull out a blunt pink ribbon, slipping it into his hand. “Can you braid it for me?”
“Braid?” He doesn’t know jack shit about braiding hair. “I don’t know how.”
“At that age of yours and you don’t know anything about how to please a girl,” you whistle lowly. “Adult virgin?” 
But you guide him through it despite your teasing, teaching him to divide your hair in threes, weaving one strand over the other until “it looks half decent.” He fucks up a few times and your hair looks odd at some point, but in the end, it’s—well, it’s a braid.
“How is it?” You ask, and he can hear your smile.
He does the job well enough for a first-timer, he thinks, finishing it with the ribbon, which he ties loosely lest you’re unhappy with the finished product. It becomes easier to move your hair out of the way, and once your back is saturated with sunscreen, you unfold your legs and get up, turning around and smiling down at his sitting figure.. Loose tendrils of hair frame your face, the braid resting at your back softly, already loosening.
“Your hair can be braided, too,” you comment quietly, knotting a rogue few strands in your fingers. It hasn’t been this tense since that night at the beach, but that ended before the tension rose further—this, now, keeps going. You step closer and he leans back, smiling. “Can I?”
He blinks, nostrils flaring, then nods, his grip on your hips gentle when you sit on his lap, your legs on either side of his. You smile coquettishly, feeling how hard he is underneath you, the denim of his jeans rough against the skin of your bare thighs. Your skirt’s riding up on them with every little shift you make, just to rile him up.
Carlos drinks in the sight of you, sunkissed and on his lap, legs sprawled out, pretty little face framed, bottom lip in your teeth. You’re inviting him closer, your gaze meeting his with sleepy, demure eyes—do something. You look so fucking precious, so pretty. It makes him want to give you everything right now.
You reach forward, make an attempt to try and weave his hair together—but he grinds upward, your breath hitching and a whimper punched out of your mouth.
Your hands are shaking now, barely able to piece his hair together with how good his clothed cock feels pressed against you, where you need it most. 
“Carlos,” you gasp, and all he can really think is—where’d all your fight go? You were so used to being a brat and a half, now you’re whimpering, on the edge of begging.
“Be quiet,” Carlos grunts, digging his fingers into your hips. His other hand lifts your skirt, bunching the fabric around your hips for a better view of your cunt rubbing against the bulge in his pants. The damp fabric of your panties is swallowed between your lips with every grind you make forward and he has to stop himself from cursing out loud at the sight. “Good girl.”
Your hands move from his hair to his shoulders, sturdy and broad; you can feel him squeeze your waist with both hands, then pull you down against him, just once, so your weight presses down on the hard shape of his cock. It makes him shudder and you whine out loud. You resist the urge to grind over it; you’re already so wet you’re making a mess on his jeans.
His praise, mumbled deep and slow in your ear, gets you feeling all warm, almost ditzy. Your hips roll on their own, chasing the delicious drag of rough denim against your clit, slick soaks into and through your panties, making the material cling to the shape your folds. Carlos’ hands are rough when they wander and grope, hiking this godforsaken skirt up so he can press a thumb against the centre of your folds.
“Been so good for you, Carlos,” you whine, circling your hips against him. He can’t stop staring at your pretty, fucked-out eyes, your bitten lips. He shoves two fingers in-between them, imagines how they looked just a few days ago slick with ice cream—now your tongue is laving over his hand. The braid you'd just taught him is quickly unraveling with every nod of your head. “‘M gonna—can I—” The pleas leave you quick, your voice choked.
Euphoric, your mind lifts, foggy and saturated with pleasure, the braid almost completely undone now. His praise is so addictive, gets you worked up and needy. Come on, he says. Make a mess. His accent, his deep voice, the way it rumbles right through you—his voice drops, his touch a little heavier as he presses harder.
You gonna cum for me? His thumb rubs faster until you’re gasping, shuddering, little ahs leaving your lips. He’s got the upper hand now, but you can hear the strain, the suppression in his voice as he rubs over the soaked fabric; you feel his cock growing under you, getting harder. 
P—please—I want to—please let me, you say breathlessly, and you’ve never needed it to the point of begging before, but Carlos is different. He keeps going, doesn’t give you permission, rubbing faster, your heart hammering in your chest.
Feel good?
Y—yeah, you whimper, trying your best not to fall apart here, on your dad’s boat, where anybody could walk on—or maybe see you from afar, humping your dad’s friend in broad daylight. He loves watching you like this; you’ve somehow become even prettier, face flushed and voice shaky.
Come on, he goads. Be a good girl. Cum for me.
It’s the only instruction that matters to you right now, your body seizing with it and cute little moans escaping you as you finish. You catch your breath against his chest, craving warmth even if it’s hot—maybe you’re craving him, his touch, Carlos, just Carlos. You maneuver yourself so legs, exhausted from shaking, are on one side of his body—he holds you close, humming.
He rubs a steady hand across your lower back, gentle and firm and you want him so much more now. “Are you okay?” He asks. “Talk to me.”
“Perfect,” you pant against his polo, fingers playing with the stitching, tugging the collar down so you can mouth at his skin. His hand plays with what’s left of the braid, winds the pink ribbon around his fingers. “Let’s go for a swim.”
“And we drove the jet ski around, too,” you say gleefully, your damp hair bobbing with every move of your head. Your face is sunkissed, a little sore from being in the sun for most of the afternoon. Carlos laughs along from where he is at the grill—he’s cooking for dinner, on a quest to make burgers because he’s known for making the best ones back in Madrid, apparently. Your dad, of course, insists on joining, and the two have been asking and answering questions while you and your mum sip rosé at the table.
“Did you have fun?” Your mum asks, her head turning to address Carlos.
“Yeah, tons,” he replies with a smile, his eyes meeting yours for a brief second. You know what he means. It’s been only two days since the afternoon on the boat, and since then you’ve mostly swam and ridden around on the jet ski with Carlos—nothing more.
“See, sweetie,” she adds, placing a hand over yours. “I told you this summer would be fun with him around!”
“Mmm, yeah,” you say, nodding and parting from your glass, “I can really count on him for some excitement.” The statement catches his attention and he almost trails off, eyes returning to yours, before he continues speaking in Spanish to your dad about something or other.
The burgers’ reputation precedes them, and is warranted, you learn later when you’re biting into it for the first time. The remainder of dinner passes by in lively conversation, the sun setting low underneath the Comporta horizon, wine taking the place of rosé. Carlos mentions the racing world again, about how he’ll be back into the thick of it sooner than later, and you pulse with something akin to sadness.
Your parents, apparently so grateful for the blessing that is Carlos’ burgers, offer to clean up and before long, they retreat to their downstairs bedroom. Upstairs, you marinate in your thoughts, blinking up at your ceiling, twining your pink ribbon around your fingers as your hair dries splayed over your bedding. You let your arm down, in the process bumping your elbow against a hard surface.
Upon investigation, you find it’s a copy of Norweigan Wood. 
Carlos is at his desk, taking a timezone-separated call about simulation and season prep, when two soft knocks go at his door and it creaks open. He turns the chair away from the desk to see who it is. An ankle steps in first, then more leg, and then you—in a lovely, pretty pink lace dress, your face illuminated by the moonlight outside. One hand clutches a copy of his book; the other, the ribbon he’d used on your hair earlier.
He’s nursing a bottle of beer, just to help ease the drag of the day, and he watches you approach him, your footsteps quiet against the hardwood of the floor. Wait, he mouths, finishing the call in a hushed tone, and when he hangs up you approach him again.
“I thought you should have this back,” you say, offering him the book. Your eyes rake over him, wearing the same getup he’d worn to dinner—denim jeans, because he’d ducked out to buy food, except he’s ridden himself of his shirt. 
He takes the book, places it on the table, continues staring up at you. “And I thought you should keep this.” The ribbon, pale pink, is now looped around his wrist and tied into a delicate ribbon at the apex of it. You admire your handiwork with a smile tugging at the corners of your lips.
You lean down, face just shy of his. “We shouldn’t,” he manages to eke out, his voice strained.
“But you want to,” you respond softly. “No one’s going to know. Our little secret.”
His eyes are shut, contemplating, and then he’s kissing you—the only thing you’ve wanted, craved, touched yourself to the thought of over the course of the summer. You reciprocate immediately, parting your lips to let him kiss you deeper, a whimper leaving your mouth. He kisses like he knows he’s a good kisser, and he really is. His scent is intoxicating, a drug, sending arousal and desire straight through you.
You part, eyes half-lidded as you stand straight again. You cock your head slowly to the side, and with your head’s movement your hair follows, gathering on one side. It exposes much of your shoulder and collarbones, which lay underneath the thin lace dress you wear to sleep, and which is now subject to Carlos' unwavering stare. He has no shame, eyes raking over you, up and down and back up. One hand curled around a bottle of beer, the other coming up to slowly graze the back of your thigh.
Your breath hitches. “Do you like the dress?” You ask softly, teasingly. It’s nothing special, Carlos, you seem to say; it’s just a nightie.
His hand is rough against the thin skin of your leg, traveling upward. He gives you a nod in response; he does like it, the sheer material, the pink color, the loose way it hugs your body. Roughly, he voices his assent. “Come sit on my lap.”
“Wait,” you say, pouting. Your knee rubs softly against the material of his jeans, and you slowly sink onto your knees, hands placing themselves on your thighs. His grip goes from the back of your thigh to your hair, combing it softly, cradling your face. 
“Let me,” you say, letting your silence imply everything unsaid. He’s going crazy, losing his mind.
“So pretty,” he says, nodding. his voice thin. “Go ahead, baby.”
The petname gets you dizzy. You lean forward, resting your face on the hard bulge in his pants, smiling up at him. You’ve got these big, doe eyes, begging him, and he’s not so sure he even has the upper hand anymore—he would do anything you asked, any request that left those pretty bitten lips. He gathers your hair in two hands, forms a messy, unclean braid, crisscross at the back of your head just so he has something to grip while he fucks your throat.
You make quick, deft work of unbuttoning his jeans, and he watches, leaned back on the chair, legs spread wide with bent knees on either side of your body, caging you in. Carlos’ eyes are half-lidded, a hand at your braid, bringing his beer to his lips, swallowing before he sets it onto the adjacent desk.
His cock is big—thick, intimidating—and you can’t help but wonder how you’re going to fit the whole thing in your mouth without choking. It twitches in your palms the longer you stroke him, precum weeping from the head and slicking up your palms. Gruff expletives, in Spanish and English, slip past his gritted teeth and the sounds travel directly to your core, causing you to instinctively press your thighs together to soothe the ache blossoming there.
You take head of his cock into your mouth, feel it roll over your tongue, heavy and warm. Drool gathers in your mouth and your fingers dig into the muscle of his thighs in anticipation. The hand wound around your braid, pressed against your head, presses heavier slowly, slotting the first few inches of cock into your mouth while avoiding the back of your throat. You relax, letting your lips seal around the length, cheeks hollowing and tongue lulling at the underside. He curses.
You continue bobbing your head, lewd noises leaving your mouth with every move you make; it embarrasses you, but also sends slick gushing out of you.
Tears prick at the corners of your eyes when the tip of his cock grazes the back of your throat; you cough, fingers heavy as they dig into the flesh of his still-denim clas thighs; drool trickles onto his balls. The hand remains there, though, pushing you and keeping you pinned in place as he slowly thrusts upward. You haven’t even gotten him all the way.
You gag and sputter, eyes fully watering the harder Carlos bullies his cock into your throat; you’re dizzy with arousal and submission, maybe one, maybe both, you’re too far gone.
“Easy,” he orders, and you will yourself to breathe nasally, relaxing, burying more of him in you. He loves seeing you like this, hair all pretty—his braid, too—and on your knees, trying your best to please him. “Being so good for me, good girl,” he says, losing resolve. You’re so pretty when you cry, eyes rimmed and bloodshot, tear streaks all over your cheekbones.
He ruts shallowly into your throat, every move punctuated by a guttural gag from your end—once, twice, a third time, before finally he releases you. You let out a cough, and a gasp, breathy, a string of saliva connecting your lips to his tip. He doesn’t want to cum yet—not like this. You gaze up at him, big eyes anticipating, and he guides you upward, on the bed.
He kicks his jeans off and readjusts his briefs, watches you scramble to position yourself on the bed, sitting down properly. “Will you fuck me now?” You ask, your sweet voice raspy. He likes knowing he’s the reason why.
You inch yourself backward so you’re fully on his bed, a hand traveling to stop your tiny dress from riding up any further. He steps closer, one knee on the bed, caging you in again, and stops you. His gaze flickers down to your legs, forces your knees apart so he can see in between them. Your pretty cunt’s soaked through your panties. “Don’t hide from me,” he says, voice rough as he steps back off the bed and kneels beside it.
“Carlos,” you breathe, letting him have his way with you. Your mind’s all fuzzy, but it’s okay—he takes care of you. 
Strong arms snake around your thighs and pull you toward him until your cunt is level with his face. His breath, warm, fans against you, muted by the thin fabric of your panties and it does nothing to help the unadulterated, dirty arousal throbbing in your cunt. He bites at the flesh of your inner thigh, then hooks two fingers into your panties and pulls them aside.
The taste of you is so good; it goes straight to Carlos’ head. And all of your embarrassed, whiny whimpers, the way your fingers knot helplessly into his hair as he drags his tongue up your cunt — that drives him absolutely crazy. He licks at your pussy, sticks his tongue in, nudges your clit with his nose, ekes whimpers and debauched moans out of your lips.
He pushes two fingers into you, doesn’t give you time to adjust before he’s fucking them in and out, moans spilling out of you involuntarily. It’s lewd, it’s dirty, getting his friend’s daughter all spread out for him like this, but Carlos loves it. More, you sob, more, please, I need—yeah—
His skilled tongue doesn’t let up, continues toying with you, licking up all the arousal oozing out of your cunt. He eats you, fucks you with his fingers, until your eyes are welling up with overwhelm and the need to release, your hands pulling at his long hair—your pussy dripping, quivering, right at the edge of your orgasm.
Any of the reservations you had are now out the window. Your grip on Carlos’ hair is tight, pushing his head deeper into your pussy and grinding against his mouth mindlessly.
I’m cumming—!
Your voice is so dirty, so lewd, so needy, when you finally finish around him, slick dripping out and your pussy twitching, clenching and unclenching around nothing as you release. Panting, you hoist yourself on your elbows, your braid surprisingly intact, and pout down at him.
“I said fuck me.”
“So you complain,” he responds with a coy smile, his lips shiny with your slick. You want him to fuck you stupid.
He does eventually, gets you all calm and lying down on the bed, knees to your chest. Your feet cross and uncross with anticipation. He lets his cock rest first on your stomach, where it twitches, smearing precum under your belly button.
“That’s where you’ll be,” you say, stroking him. When he finally does begin thrusting into you, he wishes he could save the image of your pretty eyes fluttering closed, puffy lips open in a whimper.
Your legs tremble with the size you’re taking, his hand gentle as it is firm on your hips, forcing you to take him, take him good, take him better. Good girl, he’s saying, good fucking girl. Inch by inch, you struggle to take all of him, his girth thicker than what your cunt is willing to take. You’re positive you’ll feel him in your stomach.
“Carlos,” you whimper, voice aching.
“Fuck,” is all he can muster, watching your pussy swallow him. “So tight.”
He’s drunk on the feeling of you, wet and clenching around him, so tight. He can tell you’re high on it too, on the stretch of him, the way you keep trying to meet every thrust, legs already beginning to tremble with pleasure and deep arousal. He bottoms out, an expletive leaving him in Spanish, and then slowly begins to fuck in and out of you.
He watches your face, the way your brows knit as you take him, take his cock, eyelides fluttering. “So good,” you moan, mouth open. He drops a glob of spit onto your tongue, tells you to swallow—you do, presenting your empty tongue to him. Good girl, prettiest girl—any and all praise leaves him in dizzy, heady breaths.
“Teasing me for so long,” he pants, his dick splitting you in half. “This what you wanted? Hmm?”
But even in your cloudy mind, you find the grit to retaliate, teasingly, a cloy smile on your lips. “You said it was wrong,” you gasp out with every thrust. “Fucking your friend’s daughter.”
“But you love it,” Carlos goads. “Do you?”
You nod, cockdrunk, but it’s not enough. “Use your words, pretty. You can do it.”
“I do, I love it. I need more,” you whine, getting off on his teasing, on the implication that this is all wrong, that neither of you should be doing this. “Needed this so much, Carlos.” You crack your eyes open to watch the bulge in your abdomen, the shape of his girth splitting you open. He slams into you harder and you try to squirm away, but he keeps you pinned in place.
“And if your dad walked in?”
You gush slick all over him. “Carlos,” you plead.
“Saw his daughter taking his friend’s dick?” He says it low into your ear, bending to make sure you hear all of it. “Taking it like a good girl, too.” He pulls out, slaps your ruined hole with his dick, then shoves it in deep again, groaning when you cry out—getting off on you whining about how sensitive you are, the way you tremble under him and around him. Your pretty little face, all sweaty and ruined.
“I’m gonna—fuck—I’m, Carlos—I’m gonna cum,” you say, nodding. You’ve probably cum twice already, little bursts of pleasure causing your cunt to twitch around him, sensitive. “Can I—?” 
“That’s it,” he praises. “Come on, cum for me. Been so good for me.” You tremble around him as you finish, broken moans fucked out of you with every surge of his hips forward.
He’s close, too, having held off fucking you for the past how many days, and you can tell; his thrusts get shallower, faster, until his hips are stuttering and he’s panting your name out, long hair framing his flushed, pretty face. You reach up to comb a hand through it. “Cum inside me,” you beg, watching him go crazy, his nostrils flaring and eyes blinking quick. 
He pumps his cum into you, thrusting several times as he rides it out, fucking you full of him, of his cum. You relish in the feeling, of being his girl, his good girl. “You’re a mess,” he comments, his face buried into your neck. He pulls out, both of you sighing at the sight and feeling of his cum dribbling out of you, onto the bed.
You unfold your legs, sitting up despite how sore you feel. Your dress is damp with sweat, and slick, and cum. “I feel a mess.” You pout.
“You look pretty.”
“Can I sleep here tonight?” You ask, voice meek. He nods, holds you tight as you both drift off, like he knows that you won’t be his to call his by the time the summer wanes and Comporta is left empty again.
“It’s the post-race interview,” Ali calls. “Hurry!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” You hop into the living room, tossing her the bag of popcorn she’d requested you to cook. Fall has officially dawned upon the city, adorning it with orange and red leaves, jazz music and cold nights—and weekends watching races.
Around you, all your university friends watch with intense gazes at the winner of the latest Formula One grand prix—something none of you had been remotely interested in just months prior.
You watch, eyes glittering, at the winner. Tan skin, long hair, jogging over to the journalist. Sainz, what a stellar drive! She sounds awestruck, genuinely taken aback by his dominance on the track today. She asks for a message in Spanish, as always; a few words of inspiration, and then, just as a fun little tidbit—did you have a good luck charm today?
He smiles to himself, like he’s just heard an inside joke and seems to think for a minute. “No, not really.” Then he combs a hand through his hair. There, looped around his wrist, is a pretty, pale pink ribbon.
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stealingyourbones · 1 year ago
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Short DPXDC Prompts #960
Dan was just depositing a check at Central City Bank when the doors burst open revealing Captain Cold, cold gun in hand, and a confident sneer on his face. “If everyone does as I say, no one will be hurt.” Everyone else at the bank knew the drill. Everyone in their right mind in Central City is ensured for Rogue theft. They all start removing jewelry and valuables from their person and get ready to hand it to Cold. Dan didn’t do anything. He just stood there standing at Captain Cold thinking how he can avoid this. He has a meeting with a client in ten minutes for his independent business coaching business and he cannot be late. He unfroze and started walking to Cold, intentionally looking as unintimidating as possible. Captain Cold keeps his eyes and gun trained on Dan, eyes with his glasses but no doubt calculating every movement Dan makes. Dan is within arms reach of the guy and sighs,“Look, I appreciate the excitement in my day, but I have a multi thousand dollar deal that’s going to go down the drain if I don’t make it to the meeting in ten minutes. Can I get back to you in 3-5 business days and skip this for now?” Cold blinked. He hasn’t had anyone respond so nonchalantly to him before but he respects the man’s cordial request to belay his robbery. “I expect a cut of that deal’s earnings.” Dan smiles, “Perfect,” He rifles through his pocket and pulls out a card, “Here’s my number. Call me when you’re available.” Captain Cold nods and slides the card into his pocket. The halfa walks past Captain Cold and through the Banks doors towards his car. He turns his ringer on. He’d rather not miss a call from a Flash Rogue.
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archieimagines · 2 years ago
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touching din | din djarin
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Summary: The three times that Din bends his own rules and engages in physical touch. 
his primary love languages are acts of service and physical touch. i will die on this hill. i started this one just to indulge in the thoughts of touching his lovely face. it’s been in the works for a while and although i know it’s far from perfect, i’m glad that it finally gets to see the light of day! warnings: bad language, potential incoherence? idk i’m very tired but i hope you like it tags: plenty of fluff, plenty of indulgent, sfw touching, and then a good handful of angst. rollercoaster central. this takes place over a period of time, so part of it comes after finding out grogu’s name, which is why he’s referred to as many things! word count: 4650 written by: archie support me on ko-fi!
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The travelling between planets would’ve been excruciating if not for your life partner and your adoptive child. The three of you made rather an unorthodox family. A runaway from Corellia, a Mandalorian and a… a sweet ball of green. An unorthodox family, indeed, but loving.
The Child chirped and bubbled away on your lap, apparently having a conversation with you while you sat in the pilot seat. You listened attentively, made agreeing noises at all the right moments, the lights of hyperspace travel filling the cabin with slow flashes. He really was so cute. You’d tell him it often, and you’d tell him that Din thought so too, even if he’d never say it. That much was obvious.
It was in the way he carried him, the way he protected him. The occasional pat to his head, or the quiet rub to his long ears as he slept. He wasn’t the type to openly say it, but it was clear, and that was what counted.
The Child reached out to the knob atop the gearstick, fingers wiggling.
“Baby, no. We have to always ask Din about the ship, hm?” You bounced him gently on your knee in an effort to ease the sad coos- but there was no need. A gloved hand reached around you, exposed fingertips closing on the ball. It was unscrewed and placed into the waiting green hands, content whirs and chatters soon filling the air.
The warmth in your chest grew into a smile as you dropped your head back, peering up at the helmeted man that stood just out of sight. “That’s a yes, then?”
A nod. “That’s a yes.”
“I didn’t hear you come up.”
He nudged his head to the Child, voice soft, “You were having an important conversation.”
And then he did what you loved.
He reached a slow hand out and stroked it over the top of your head, coming to a gentle hold at the nape of your neck, and leaned in. Your eyes fell closed as the cool beskar met between your brows, and you didn’t need to see him to know his eyes were closed too.
A beskar kiss.
You heard a soft sigh through his voice modulator. This was the way his people would show love. He made no move to break away, even from the awkward angle at which he leant. He savoured the moment, breathed with you, his thumb running back and forth over your skin. You weren’t sure if he could feel the goosebumps that his touch rose every time, his fingertips slipping into the lower roots of your hair.
He loved to touch you, you could tell. It wasn’t easy, and these moments were few and far between with his action-packed lifestyle, but the tenderness of these touches clearly meant so much to him. To you.
Without disturbing the occupied bundle on your lap, you reached for Din’s other hand. It hung by his side until you took it in your own, slowly raising it to place your kiss on the knuckles of his fingers. You kept it there a while, backs of his fingers to your lips, his helmet pressed to your forehead. The warmth of those digits filled a void left by the cold beskar. The warmth of human touch.
Long moments slipped by as you absorbed it until you became self-conscious. He hadn’t pulled away, but you weren’t even sure how he’d felt about it with his covered expression, so you let out a resigned sigh and lowered his hand.
But he surprised you.
His fingers opened up instead, laying delicately on the side of your jaw, his similar hold on the back of your neck still in place.
His thumb reached out to meet the corner of your lips, before tentatively, almost shyly, brushing over the centre of them.
He wanted more.
You were only too happy to oblige, lips raising into a delicate peak, placing a tender kiss to the pad of his thumb. Soon, he shifted, placing his index finger there instead. Then his middle. Each of his fingers tapped to your lips, and you made sure to place your affection on the tip of each one, giving in to the urge to smile.
He loved this.
You heard the tinned sound of a sigh before his fingers slipped away once again, soon followed by his reluctant leaning away.
He stood tall above where you sat, visor staying fixed on you. He was just looking. Just peaceful. You shone an easy smile, somehow both cosy and breathless from the moment.
His helmet turned towards the green being on your lap.
He blinked up at Din, and soon, a confused coo filled the cabin.
Din shrugged one shoulder. “You’ll get it when you’re older.” And with that, he settled back into the passenger seat, arms crossing over his chest. “Rest up,” he called, presumably to the pair of you. “We’ll touch down for fuel in six hours.”
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Din’s bunk was the epitome of comfort. Cramped, yes. Warm, yes. Especially with two bodies. It’d easily become stuffy in there with the panel sealed while the pair of you shared his thin mattress, and you’d always wondered how he managed to keep his helmet on even in that environment. Or perhaps… He couldn’t feel the stuffiness because of the beskar. Or maybe… He was just always stuffy in there, used to closed air.
Your eyes raised from where you’d had them closed, cheek pressed to the chest of his flight suit to mimic sleep. Early mornings after a long, well-deserved sleep often came like this, and there was something so soul-healing about laying there to absorb his calm, peaceful presence before getting up for what would likely be another day of action.
Watching his visor for long moments, working out if he was still sleeping or looking back at you- it had become somewhat of a hobby. Sometimes, you had convinced yourself, if you looked hard enough, you could see the slightest shape beneath the vision slot of his helmet.
You weren’t sure if they were really there. But, in the dim light of the bunk, you could swear the bridge of his nose casted a shadow that caused a darker shadow inside the mask. His lashes were dark and long, and they fluttered slowly as his eyes closed in steady blinks, looking back at you with such leisure.
But then… Had you made that up?
You squinted, straining your eyes until you were sure— yes, you’d made it up. He was still sleeping.
But it didn’t hurt to imagine he had long lashes and a strong nose, perhaps even a strong brow to match. It didn’t hurt to imagine you could see the faintest outlines of the man you love.
Sated, you turned your cheek back to his chest, eyes falling closed to mimic his slumber. Or at least—
“Morning.”
— What you thought was slumber. 
His voice was groggy in the modulator; that intimate morning voice. Deeper, softer than usual.
It brought a smile to your lips. “Morning, my love. You were awake?”
“I have been for a while.” His arm tightened snug around your body in his hold, half atop his. “I like to watch you wake up.”
A soft laugh. “Not creepy, hm?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Silence lapsed with his low tone. All was quiet. Not the whirring of the ship, not the sounds of the forest he’d landed the Crest in the clearing of. Only the delicate air of his breathing inside his mask, catching in the voice modulator so quietly that ordinarily, you wouldn’t be able to hear it.
The thought stirred a deep intimacy in your chest. No one else would get to hear this. No one else would get to lay with him like this, press against his armour-free body like this. You splayed a hand over the cloth of his chest, toes wiggling from an uncontainable contentment with how your leg rested over his. Not an ounce of beskar between the two of you.
But yet… 
Gentle fingertips trailed upwards, over his upper chest, swirling delicate patterns in the creases of his fabric. Your eyes remained closed, focusing everything on him, the warmth that met your touch when you worked past the collar of the flight suit, meeting the skin of his neck.
It wasn’t the first time you’d touched him so. Of course, after this long together, you’d been intimate many a time-- You were both human, after all... But the helmet had always stayed on.
Your fingertips splayed over his throat, and it vibrated with his low hum.
It was no secret by now. He loved to be touched.
You could just imagine him there beneath the visor, eyes closed, brow relaxed. His face caught in a long moment of calm where it was often riddled with worry, or effort from the fighting. Bringing him such serenity like this was the least you could do for him, showing him that he’s loved. So, so loved.
Slowly, your touch crept just a little further up, seeking his jaw. But as your knuckles knocked the edge of his helmet, a gentle hand closed around your wrist in warning. He didn’t need to speak.
Your voice was the softest murmur. “I won’t take it off. Can I just- Feel you?”
He didn’t move, not for a while. You raised your eyes, peering up at him from where you were nestled in his chest, as if you could possibly read his facial expressions.
His hold eased, thumb lazily rubbing over your veins before letting go, and you found a buzz of warmth in your chest. He trusted you with his most precious boundary. Silently, you vowed to always protect that trust.
Delicate fingers worked upwards, feeling for hair from his chin. But, a soft gasp- There was no beard. The gentle prickle of cropped hairs caught your fingerprints as they swiped along his jaw, and you marvelled at it.
“You shave?” The words came out with a soft, amused breath of disbelief, eyes rounded in surprise. For some reason, it’d always made sense that he’d be bearded, long-haired. He had no reason to shave, knowing that no one would ever see, but now that you knew, it clicked.
Of course he’d shave. Din was a particularly thorough person, he was always driving himself forward to do a perfect job of his work: of course he’d take care of himself too.
“If it grows too long, it’s uncomfortable. Catches in the modulator.”
“Ah,” you hummed, brushing along the ridge of his jaw in the confined space. There was something about feeling his jaw move as he spoke, verifying that he really was human, really did have goings-on behind the mask that shielded him from the world. There wasn’t much room in there to move freely, only your fingers able to reach his face, but it was comfortable. You could feel the soft sway of his breath on your touch. “What colour is it?”
“Black. Brown, black.”
You hummed, eyes fixed on his visor lazily, though you weren’t really looking at him. You were visualising as you studied the contours of his lower face, mapping him out as best as you could in your mind, nails brushing through the stubble on his cheek. They trailed towards the corner of his lips, where you noticed the strands got longer. A moustache?
The smile that lifted your face was automatic, beaming at the realisation. You followed the direction of it, above his upper lip, soon finding a little sparse patch on his philtrum. Your eyes drifted closed, imagining the way it might feel to kiss him now that you knew this; how his facial hair would scratch your upper lip, your chin. Perhaps it would be almost sore on your skin if you kissed him long enough, hot enough--
His lips raised to press a real kiss to the centre of your fingers. Slow, shy, even a little clumsy.
A rich gasp pulled from your throat. It was electric to feel his lips on your skin, pressing the affection directly onto you, after these long years of going without.
You let your fingertips lower, finally feeling the shape of his lips, that subtle cupid’s bow as it raised into yet another peck, slow and tender against your touch. Your brows drew together, fighting the emotion that welled up in you, trying to make you cry. You weren’t all too sure why-- this was just- so much. It was so much, to feel him like this, to receive his first kisses like this. Something you’d never even imagined you could have.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured against your fingertips, tone almost a caress. His own fingers raised to brush at the corner of your eye. One must’ve slipped out.
You didn’t even know he was looking at you. Your lashes fluttered open, gaze meeting where you imagined his eyes would be. “I can’t help it,” you whispered. “You’re perfect.”
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He’d lied to you. He’d massively, irrevocably, intentionally lied to you.
Your jaw ached from your grit teeth as you fought back angry fires in your heart, determined not to cry until you’d pulled your family safely off this forsaken, evil planet.
Din had been tasked with a mission of political undertones involving the spice market. He was masking as a bounty hunter to get information, so this time, the importance was in keeping the right people alive.
Of course, it didn’t work, and those people were now trying to kill you.
Your fingers trembled as you fought against the clock and the jolts of blasters firing at the ship to strap Grogu into his passenger seat. Your eyes were bleary, but you had to focus, secure him in safely. You wouldn’t take anyone’s safety for granted after this stupid stunt.
“Get her in the sky!” Din shouted up through the hatch, pushing his voice so loudly against the fighting and blasters below that it almost outgrew the modulator, his real voice peeking through. 
Grogu’s sweet eyes peered up at you, giving a questioning gurgle. The poor thing had no idea what was going on, was probably terrified by it all, and even your demeanour on top of it, but you didn’t have time to explain.
“We need to go!”
You buckled the baby in tightly and fought your emotions to ruffle a quick hand atop his head, hoping to soothe him even a small degree before falling into the pilot’s seat, specifically buckling yourself in, and jamming the engine on with jerky movements. 
The Crest resisted you, far too old and rickety by now to be good for quick getaways with a cold engine, but with some slow drags, turbulence from knocking through trees and extra laser blasts from below, she was finally in the air.
You heard the distinctive sound of fighting downstairs, someone being kicked off the ramp at an easy 400 feet altitude, and then the mechanical sound of the ship being closed off again. 
The ladder creaked with Din’s climbing, and you didn’t look back to him as he collapsed into the other passenger seat, not ready to talk to him yet. You were still seething, and wouldn’t engage with him until you’d pulled up safely out of the planet’s atmosphere.
Long moments of quiet dragged by. He knew you by now. He didn’t need to see more than the square set of your shoulders to know that he shouldn’t speak yet unless he wanted to upset you more. That, and you still didn’t look at him even as the minutes neared a full hour, focused on getting to the nearest hyperspace route.
He glanced to Grogu, who sat there blinking, clueless as he could be. He must’ve known something was going on, even if he didn’t know what exactly Din had done.
Din reached a gloved hand out, petting lightly on the green boy’s head. He still didn’t speak.
Eventually, your frustrated fires ebbed into a more containable state, you shifted the Crest into light speed, and unbuckled your belt with a heaved sigh. “Downstairs, Din.”
You stood, instructed Grogu not to touch a thing, headed down the hatch, and pointedly avoided looking at Din the whole time.
The body of the ship was chaos. Lazed burns in everything the three of you owned, strewn across the floor and torn from the struggle. Clearly, he’d really had to put up a fight. 
It was his own fault.
Boot on metal as he stepped onto the floor beside you. You finally looked at him.
You didn’t need to see his face to know he was exhausted. It was in the way he held himself, the way his arms just hung there by his sides, strong shoulders visibly slouched to the trained eye.
You reeled on him. “Why didn’t you let me in on it?”
Silence.
“Less of that, Din. Speak to me, I need to understand.”
There was a pause before his voice came. Firm, but gentle, as if pointedly trying to keep the peace. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.” You pulled an upturned crate closer and planted yourself on it, trying to keep the buzz in your veins under control, but your tone was clipped nonetheless as you gestured to a crate nearby. “Go ahead, let’s hear it.”
He sighed and tugged the crate over, perched on the corner of it opposite you. His knees were parted and elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together as he thought through his facts. The best way to make you see that he’d done the right thing.
“I couldn’t tell you my true location because if you knew, your presence would have soiled the plan.”
“So you’re telling me I’m a hindrance.”
“No.”
“That’s certainly what it sounds like-”
“It needed full discretion to work. I’d told them-”
“I can keep fucking secrets, Din.”
“I know you can.”
“So you lied? Told me you were on the other side of town? How was I supposed to get to you if something went wrong?”
He sighed, his head dropping forwards in exasperation. “I told you to stay on the ship.”
“That’s not always possible. You know it’s not! Hunters still have fobs fixed onto Grogu, Din, there’s no escaping that!”
“I couldn’t have you interrupting or we’d all be dead. I’d told them I was alone- no, look at me.”
Your jaw was aching from how you grit your teeth as you forced yourself to look up at that visor, the weight of frustrated tears brimming at your waterline. You gave a small nod.
“Listen,” he started. “I’d told them I came alone. If you’d known my location, you would have interrupted.”
“To save your skin? Yeah, I would.”
“Exactly. We’d both be dead, and the hunters would take the kid.”
“You think I can take care of him without you? We don’t stand a chance without you around, Din.”
He paused. Quiet lapsed, and you had no idea what he was thinking. Sometimes, he really gave nothing away, and it was infuriating. He didn’t let you in. He would rarely open up to you about what was going on inside that beskar that hid everything from you. Everything.
Sometimes, you were sure you didn’t even know the man you were committed to. He held so much of the power in this setup. He knew everything about you, everything was done by his thinking, and yet he didn’t need to disclose much at all. He’d keep you in the dark about everything.
What he was feeling, what he was thinking… Hell, even when he smiled at you he kept it to himself. You’d grown to handle those, but this, actively lying to you. As if you couldn’t follow instructions. As if you couldn’t be trusted.
You sighed as the drops in your eyes welled up enough to fall over your cheeks. You pulled yourself off the crate and approached the ladder to the cabin, calling over your shoulder. “Go clean up or something,” you sniffled, “I need a minute away from you.”
The clang of footsteps behind you, a gentle hand on your shoulder.
“Hey. Look at me.”
“I can’t, Din.”
“Why not?”
Such a simple question, such an impossible answer. You closed your eyes, struggling to pick out words that might illustrate what’s going on inside. The ache that sank your chest, that made your throat feel heavy with uncried frustrations. None of this was okay. Perhaps after you’d cooled down, you’d be able to see that mask as anything other than a barrier between you, that keeps him safe from your eyes. But for now, you couldn’t bare it. You scrambled to express it, but all you could let out was a strained “It hurts.”
Another moment of silence. Then, carefully, “What hurts?”
Clearly, he didn’t mean for his words to bring on the tidal wave of emotions and thoughts that you’d been keeping at bay.
“This, Din. All of this! Living in a ship, wondering if I’m gonna make it back in every time I step out of it, and not even being in on missions that risk your life! It’s like you’re cut off from me. Like we just live in the same space and I’m just there to entertain you. But it’s- it’s-!” You heaved a sigh, head buzzing with the force of the thoughts that were spilling out. They were so honest and raw from brewing for far too long. They must’ve been sharp as they came out, they must’ve hit him like a ton of bricks.
But of course, that damned beskar hid everything.
“It’s hard to be with a man who doesn’t trust me.”
For once, his voice rose. “I trust you more than anyone in the gal-!”
“You almost died because you didn’t trust me enough to let me in! You’d rather die than trust me!”
“That’s not how I-”
“That’s what your actions are telling me, Din. They always do. You never tell me what you’re thinking. I have to guess, but I can’t even read your fucking face. I live my life in question marks because you don’t even give me the option to-”
“You know I can’t show you my face.”
A deep breath left you, shaky and tired. So much pressure had alleviated in your head, like you’d finally emptied the contents of your mind onto a platter before him. And now that you could see it too, heard what you’d said, you felt almost ashamed for it.
Criticising the beskar was too far. That was his way of life, and had nothing to do with how he felt towards you. For sure, it was frustrating sometimes for you didn’t even know what your life partner looked like, but his culture was part of him. And you loved him.
“I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-- What are you doing?”
He reached by you to snatch some fabric from a nook, and he folded it into a long strip without so much as a word.
“I’m- I’m trying to apologise-”
“You don’t have to. How can you trust a man you can’t see, right? We’ve been together so long, and you still don’t know who I am.”
You were stunned beneath the guilt that crashed over you. He took your words in so deeply, and fed them back to you plainly. You could see how you must’ve hurt him, with sentiments like this.
Your eyes welled with tears again. Whatever had come over you had clearly wanted to hurt him, but that wasn’t you. Your thoughts were too chaotic to pinpoint, swarmed with hurt and pain that was only now built on by the fact that you’d treated him so terribly. You’d sworn to him long ago that you accepted his Mandalorian binds, loved them even, but you’d let them get in the way with one incident.
“Don’t cry,” he spoke, modulated voice gentle. “I’m- I’m understanding you.” A calloused thumb brushed along your outer lashes to pause any tears that wanted to fall. “Let me help.”
And there was darkness.
He tied his makeshift blindfold behind your head in a loose knot, keeping your eyes in darkness. “Din? What is this?”
He kept quiet, and you heard shifting, something being placed aside.
“Why do you never-”
You cut yourself off when his hands took your wrists and lifted them gently, until your palms splayed on his stubbled cheeks. He gave a long sigh, and you imagined he’d closed his eyes.
Your heart jolted. He was here before you, bare, no helmet. When he spoke, his voice rang out clear and pure, the true timbre of his voice without modulation.
“I said, I trust you more than anyone in the galaxy.” His face moved with his words beneath your touch. “I’d move planets for you.”
He left you breathless. You dove at the chance, fingers tracing over his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose. It stood high and strong, just like you’d always imagined.
“This… This isn’t risky? I didn’t mean to offen-”
“You didn’t offend me. I know it’s hard, I feel it too.” He guided your hands to his lips, and he placed gentle kisses to your fingers.
The lump in your throat welled up again, your nose stinging from the tears that you tried to hold back. The thought of him struggling with his culture simply because he wanted to be close to you. “You do?”
“You know how many times I wanted to take it off? This seems… This is the best way. I’m not breaking any rules.”
You gave a watery, sniffly laugh. “This is the way?”
A hum of humour. “This is the way.”
You let your touch wander over his face, mapping it as well as you could. The curve of his eyelids, the strength of his browbone. He breathed softly, and you could feel the air on your palms as it pushed through.
You wove your fingertips into his hairline, pushing his locks back and bunching them up in your grasp behind his head. It was surprisingly long with unruly waves, and so, so soft.
He leaned in with a sigh until his forehead met yours, hands falling to their home on your waist.
And before you knew it, his lips were on yours. His warm, sweet lips fit perfectly against yours, and your head spun. It was so much, feeling him so close after nearly losing him, arguing with him, and your first kiss in the long years of being his. The first actual kiss.
He was unsure and clumsy in his affection, a little hesitant.
Clearly, this was his first one ever.
You let a hand trail to his jaw, guiding with a gentle touch. He soon settled in, became more confident in his kiss, even if it was still clumsy.
And it was perfect. The determined nibbles to your lips, the soft scratch of his moustache on your upper lip, the way he tugged you closer even as you were pressed against the ladder.
When it finally slowed to a stop, he murmured softly, so much closer than he’d ever been. The sound reached deep inside your mind to soothe your soul and make you crave more of his kiss. “I won’t ever treat you like that again. I’ll give you full disclosure of my missions, every single one. Alright?”
“Alright,” you agreed, breathless and flustered, “On one condition.”
“Hm?” He was clearly lost in this touch, so starved for so long, and it showed in his voice. He was utterly entranced with this new feeling, someone else’s fingers on his skin, words the last thing on his mind.
“We do this more often.”
A low laugh rumbled in his chest, nose nudging on the tip of yours. “Deal.”
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cypherscript · 5 months ago
Text
Linchpin Part 2
"I am not familiar with this group. Batman? Superman," Wonder Woman asks the two with the most hidden knowledge of Man's world.
Hal Jordan just groans into his hands, "Not those buffoons. I used to hear jokes back when I was in the Air Force. They're almost as bad as the area 51 conspiracists. Always claiming our bases were haunted by high level ecto beings. Ghosts aren't even real!"
Batman is listening to something on his earpiece, "Ghosts are real, Lantern. One is a member of the JL Dark "
"When was anyone going to tell me?! Now I look stupid."
Red Robin mouths to batman, 'Now?'
Batman pointedly ignores that and continues, "That knowledge has always been available if you read the reports properly. Regardless, Oracle has provided me with some more information on this organization; a comparatively small G-List government group tasked with hunting down, capturing and experiment on beings of ectoplasmic origins or ghosts to civilians."
T̵̪͗h̵̬̊ē̴̤y̵̪̅ ̸͇͗h̵͙͂ẽ̸̘l̶̎͜d̸̗̃ ̵̼̆o̴̪͐ȕ̷̞r̸͚̚ ̷̗́c̸͚͐i̶̙̔ť̵̟y̷͔̚ ̷̧̒h̴͕͑o̵̼̊s̸̰̈t̷̙͝a̷̯̓g̶��̧e̴̦͐,̴͔̋ ̸͉̒t̵̩͌ḩ̴̋r̵̜̐e̵̙͝a̷̡͋t̵̜͌e̷͉̕n̸̼̾ě̸̩d̴͎̕ ̸͖̏o̵̱͒ụ̴̑r̴͈̚ ̷̨͂p̴͓̎e̴͍͝o̸̼̍p̶͕̋l̴̛͔ȇ̵̟/
(They held our city hostage, threatened our people.)
Ť̵̹h̷̙̓e̴̯͗ ̵͎̑G̷̣̀r̷͜͠e̴̩̽ą̴̍ẗ̷̪́ ̵̜͌O̵͕̿n̸̲͒e̸̤͝ ̴͇̄t̴͈̋r̴̡̍i̶̩͊é̴͙d̷̞͋ ̶̬͌t̸̮̀ö̸̢́ ̸̯̎f̷͍̽r̸͚̿e̶̬̎e̶̯͠ ̶̡͛t̴͙͗h̴͖̓e̷̥͝i̸̞̎r̶̳͑ ̶̭͐c̷͔̀ì̵͎ẗ̶̙ỷ̴͚
(The Great One tried to free their city.)
B̵͔͆a̷͖̔b̵̧̑y̶͕͒p̴̪͝o̶̰͗p̵̪͛ ̴͒͜s̸̱̊a̴͇̐c̸͍͠r̴̩̃í̸͕ḟ̶̤ǐ̷̘c̴̛̱ȇ̷͙d̵̮͆ ̴͓́h̴̙̓i̵��̲m̵̗̌s̶̥̓ë̶͜ḻ̴̑f̶̖͝ ̵̥̆j̸̫̆u̷̮̍s̷̖̀ṯ̷̀ ̵͑��t̴͔͛o̵̦͘ ̴̗͊g̷̠̎e̷̱͗t̶̘́ ̵͔͠t̷͎͆h̸̬̀o̷̟͆s̷̤͝e̸̹̓ ̴̮̈́j̸̛̮ê̶͓r̸̤̈́k̷̮̄s̷͎̽ ̶̨̅o̵̖̊u̴̺͑t̶͍̃ ̶̭̂ö̵̮́f̶̖̕ ̸̺̌A̶̯̋m̸̯̿i̴̲͆ẗ̵̡́y̷͕̓.̸̛̭
(Babypop sacrificed himself just to get those jerks out of Amity.)
T̴̨̉h̸̻́e̶̲̊ỳ̸͕ ̵͚̊r̴̥̔ë̶͈́ṅ̸̫e̸͓͝g̷͔̎e̷̖̕d̴͚͌ ̵̹͒ó̶̤ṉ̵͒ ̷̹̚t̷͔͌h̵̿ͅè̷͜i̴̐͜r̷̪̄ ̵̩̒d̴̛̮ě̴̠a̴̞͛l̸̻̐ ̴̹̿t̴̙̓h̴̯́ó̴͍u̷̠̾g̷̟͝ẖ̵̏ ̸̭̚a̷̤͌n̵͖̎d̷̬̔ ̴̈́ͅA̵̜͗m̵̬̕ȋ̵̠ṯ̸̓y̷̟̓ ̵̺̄P̶̥̉ä̴̫́r̸̪̂k̵͈̑ ̵̥̈́î̸͇s̸͓͂ ̴̡͒n̷̩͛o̵̰͑ ̸̠̚m̵̨̀o̴̭̔r̶̥̔e̵̼̋.̷͙̆
(They regened on their deal though and Amity Park is no more.)
Red Robin takes this new information and inputs it into the Watchtower's computers and pulls up a satellite image of Amity Park, IL and just finds a blackened hole in the ground several miles wide.
Batman's suit groans as his fist clenches before turning away from the table, "Superman with me, Red Robin contact Cyborg. We're bringing this group to justice. No organization should have the ability to wipe an entire city off the face of the earth."
"Right behind you, Batman." Superman quickly takes off after him.
"What about the rest of us," Flash yells at him as he leaves.
"Everyone else should pool their resources together and try to come up with a way to slow down, stop or even reverse the Decay Field. Technology, magic, I don't care even ask your rogues if need be but this needs to be stopped."
______________________________________________
Base Gamma-5, IL
Superman and Batman stare down on an old seemingly unused military base. Superman's eyes shimmering as he looks over the area with his x-ray vision.
"So?"
"Skeleton crew of scientists, minimal guards but there is definitely activity underground."
"Any centralized location?"
"What, hoping for a big open room where all the bad guys can get together and start throwing hands?"
"..."
"Don't look at me like that, I blame Kon and Jon, I don't even know how that phrase became a common thing."
"Hn. I was asking for a central area to reduce any unnecessary structural damage our encounter is likely to cause."
Superman focuses as he resumes looking, freezing in place as a rictus of anger covered his face and he takes off. Explosions of steel and concrete echo through the forest as Superman flies through the base's defenses and high speed. Bruce gives a withering sigh as he fires off a grapple and follows behind Clark.
Shortly after Bruce finds Clark deep into the base, a large metal door ripped off its track and him threatening a scientist. "What is the meaning of this, who is this?!"
"What is this, you mean. It's ectoplasmic scum."
"You better pick your words carefully, that is a dead child in a TANK. I have VERY short patience for people like you."
Batman appears behind him, "I'd listen to him if I were you."
The scientist sneer at the sight of him, "Batman. I see you managed pull yourself out of that ecto-contaminated cesspool you call a city. You still reek of it."
Superman lifts him even higher and shakes him in one hand, "Don't look at him, looks at me and answer my question. WHO. IS. HE."
"P-Phantom. He was an ectoplasmic entity that breached the veil five years ago. He was the strongest power level in decades. The last time something like him was detected was in 1902 in North Carolina. Psychics all over three states surrounding it felt it appear."
"Who killed him?"
"Agent A, just over four years ago. He bagged him in a small town called Amity Park. There's records he had been there for over a year, check them."
"We can't, Amity Park has been a smoking crater for some time."
"What? Did the ghosts do it?"
"You did it, your organization did it," Superman shakes him hard to make his point.
"Superman."
Superman drops the scientist on his ass, "Fine, you deal with him. I'm likely to do something we'll both regret if he stays in my sight. I'm going to go get Phantom's body."
"Why is the Justice League even here?! You should be thanking us for purging this planet of that ectoscum!"
"That is a child."
"It's scum! It just looks like a child, there have been records putting its age at over 2 millennium in Rome where it burned-."
Batman sighs internally before giving a swift jab to one of the scientist's pressure points making him drop like a sack of potatoes. Clark mutters something as he removes the poor boy's body from the vat.
"I don't want to hear it, Kal."
"I didn't say anything, Batman."
"Hn," is all Batman says as he throws the scientist over his shoulder and plugs a USBat into a nearby server and has Oracle let off some of her rage st this organization.
______________________________________________
Flash is staring over batman's shoulder at the body on the gurney, "Is it just me or does he look familiar?"
The boys black and white hair now dry is fluffy over his face, scars litter his form in lightning strike patterns.
Batman gives him a look as he starts scanning the body.
"I mean not like I know the kid, just like I feel like I seen him around somewhere."
"I understand. I also have that feeling but it could simply be the radiation talking."
"Radiation" Flash screams before he zips across the room.
"Low levels, barely over a smoke detector's level."
"You think you're real funny don't you?"
He just raises and eyebrow, "do you have any information on our issue? Have your rogues anything to add?"
"Nah, even the ones from from the future don't know anything. Which is weird if you think about it; how can there be a future if the universe is eating itself?"
"Because time is most likely fluid right now, we're in the middle of the choices that make it set in stone and affect our future."
"Since when do you know about time travel?"
"I have some experience in it, unwanted experience but experience none the less."
"Right... so who is he?"
Batman pulls up a medical record on one of the doctors tablets that soon span into multitudes of windows, "Daniel Fenton. Son of Drs Fenton and Fenton. Saver of the critically endangered purple back gorrilas, Senior at Casper High, suspected meta but proved negative after a lab accident when he was 14. Godson and beneficiary of deceased billionaire Vladimir Masters. Lifetime ban on handling chemistry equipment..."
"Lab accidents? Lifetime ban in chemistry class? Sounds like my kind of kid."
There is a puff of thick sulfury smoke as a british voice speaks out, "Oi Batsy, I heard ya discovered the universe was ending, just came to see if- BLOODY FUCKING HELL. Why is there a dead kid on the table?!"
Batman counts to ten in his head and turns to Constantine, "What have we said about teleporting into the Watchtower?"
"Forget that! What have I said about keeping bloody dead kids out in the open?"
"You haven't."
"I shouldn't have had to, its implied!"
"Hn"
"Wait a second... this kid looks like... no couldn't be. That was ages ago."
"You too" Flash asks him as Constantine ponders on the boys face.
Constantine's face turns sharp, "what do you mean? You think you've met him as well?"
"Yeah but we just can't place it. Who does he look like to you?"
"Reminds me of a protector spirit I made a deal wit a couple decades or so ago. It was tasked to guard a rune for me. Indigenous populace referred to it as the Great One Who Breathes the Cold."
"Oh yeah? A spirit huh," Flash interjects, "What'd he ask for in return, Booberries?"
"An Astrolabe of all things, smartarse."
"He's not a spirit, we can see him so it's not like Boston and he has DNA. We were able to track his medical and public record. I've got what I need, I'm calling a meeting to collaborate ideas on how to fix this."
"Right, Bats, I'll just-"
"Mandatory meeting, Constantine."
"...Right."
__________________________________________
"What about those noxious pits one of your villains constantly uses?"
"We can't use the Lazarus Pits; they don't bring back the dead only the dying."
"Besides," Constantine interrupts, "Body doesn't have an ounce of soul tethered to it."
"What about time travel," Booster asks, "I can just pop back before these MIB wannabes kill the kid. Boom, Problem solved."
"We don't even know what changing that much will do."
"How about a localized time rewind," Raven asks, "If we just rewind him and not everything else."
"Nah, love. Decay field's already in play. The likelihood we rewind him and he doesn't know how to reverse it is to bloody high and we wasted the energy to only fail."
"Lantern, how much time do we have before the wave comes back?"
"The guardian's projected a time frame of two weeks before it returns to the earth."
"Not a lot of time but we've had shorter timeframes to save the universe."
"Hn" Batman turns to the Flash, "If need be we may need you to Flashpoint the event."
ALERT: Intruder in Medbay 1.
ALERT: Intruder in Medbay 1.
"I got it," Flash says before zipping off to the medbay, hoping to graze past the point of the Flashpoint.
"Isn't that the medbay with the body," Wonder Woman asks as Batman gets up to follow after the flash.
"Yes."
Everyone's comms went off with the Flash's voice, "You guys better get down here. I found our intruder but I can't touch him. He's just standing-"
"Flash," Superman puts a finger to his ear. "Flash do you copy?"
__________________________________________________________
Amity Park, IL 4 Years, 4 Months ago
"-Over the body of the kid... Wait where am I?" Flash frantically looking around at what was obviously not medical bay of the Watchtower and instead looks like a back alley of a moderate city frozen in time.
"Amity Park, Wallace," The old man says with a smile in his voice.
"That's not possible. Amity Park was obliterated off the face of the earth."
"Use your process of elimination, Wallace."
Thoughts zip through Wally's head as he comes to the obvious answer, "This is before the city was destroy. Do you know what you're doing?! Time travel causes nothing but problems, after the last flash point I swore I would never do it again!"
"I know more about time travel than you will know in multiple lifetimes. I am known as Clockwork here, I was once the master of time; it was my job to maintain the structure of the timelines even when you 'Flashpointed' a timeline to make sure the right outcome comes to be."
"Then why is the universe ending?!"
"I miscalculated the hatred some of my kind felt towards young Daniel. As such to betray our dimension to those that would sooner purge us. I cannot physically intervene in a past event but you can and for once I give you permission to fix the timeline and save your world. You have two weeks to save Danny Fenton."
"Wait, betrayed? I don't even know how they killed him how do I save him?!"
"You'll figure it out, you always do. By the way you may want to destroy your comm. Time in."
Flash's comm comes to life with his own voice, "I don't know who you think you are-." Flash rips his earpiece faster than could be seen and smashes it into the ground.
"Rightrightright... Right, two weeks to save some kid from bargain bin men in black... How hard can that be?" He spins in place, replacing his costume with his civilian cloths and stepping out of the alley to walk around the city.
___________________________________________________________
Thanks to @phantom-things and @a-lost-time-traveler for the Zalgo text translations. It didn't occur to me that people wouldn't be able to read it even at its lowest setting. I've learned and just parentheses'd the translations. I tried to make the two timeline but I just couldn't get the dead squared idea to flow properly so unfortunately I can only give this one. I'm gonna start working on the part three when I have time tomorrow. sorry if the quality's terrible.
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fanficimagery · 2 months ago
Text
Joining the Biz.
When the hotels are all booked up, your cousin asks if a few friends can crash at your place. You accept, not knowing you'll be meeting some people who will become lifelong friends and get a shot at doing what you once loved. [Part Two of Three]
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Words: 7.4K Author's Note: There's only a very brief Jey/Reader interaction in this. Oops. Just trying to set up Reader for part three, but at least there's some fluff that will make you smile. Hopefully..?
Over the next few days, your house becomes hang-out central. You even meet Liv, Finn, JD, and Carlito, but you don't click with them as you did the others.
It becomes obvious right away to everyone visiting your home that there's a connection between you and Jey, though the two of you dance around it. When he's not training at the arena or at the gym, he's snuggling you on the couch in the living room or just affectionately teasing you. Damian had volunteered to swap rooms with him, but you assured Damian that nothing overly intimate would be happening with Jey and explain your reasoning to him like you had explained to Jey's family. He understood and then dropped it, but you occasionally caught him smiling in sympathy at you when he saw you tucked into Jey's side.
Friday morning, your main three houseguests find you printing out a large picture of Roman. When asked why, you explained how Solo wanted you to crack Roman's serious facade, so you were going to sit ringside holding up a sign for him. And when they saw what you had written, they laughed, and Rhea took it upon herself to add red hearts around Roman's picture.
You drove to the arena early, flashing your backstage pass to be let in right away rather than wait in line. You had found your seat, which just so happened to be near the steel stairs leading up to the ring and took a moment to snap a few pics of the filling arena and post them. After posting them, you then had to clear out your friend requests yet again because the fans were interested in seeing who the woman that Jey, Roman, Jimmy, Dominik, Damian, and Rhea were posting about. Jey had posted about your workouts together, plus a few pics of your ass in your gear, but Dominik, Jimmy, and Rhea had posted your drunken dancing and Rhea's entrance stomp. Roman and Damian, however, posted group photos of all of you together or candids taken around your home and thanked you for opening up your home to their craziness.
And that, apparently, got their fans hella interested in you.
When the show starts, you keep your sign down by your feet until the perfect moment. Instead, you sit there cheering and booing as wrestlers come and go, snapping pics and video here and there. And when it's time for The Bloodline to come out, you boo Solo along with everyone else. However, when Solo notices you are booing him, his eyes squint as if he's trying to keep his mean mug in place and you're quick to form a heart with your hands and blow him a kiss. His lips purse as if to fight back a smile and you mentally cheer.
As The Bloodline talks, you grip your sign with one hand and prepare your phone with the other to take video. You boo as they talk and then scream when Roman's entrance song starts to play. Immediately you start to record on your phone.
Roman walks down the ramp, looking pissed off and intimidating as hell. You scream along with the fans, holding your sign out in front of you. As Roman nears, you cheer even louder and manage to garner his attention. He notices you first, keeping his expression neutral, but when his gaze darts to your sign and then back to your face, the wiggle of your eyebrows is his downfall. He barks out a laugh, realizes his mistake, and mouths I hate you while stomping up the steps. Half of your sign is a shirtless picture of him, but the other half reads Daddy's Home along with all the hearts Rhea had added.
As you watch The Bloodline and Roman argue back and forth, your phone vibrates with a text message.
From JeyBae: DID YOU JUST CRACK ROMAN ON LIVE TV?! To JeyBae: Yes. Yes, I did. Tell your baby brother I expect all my WWE shirts within the month. He'll know what I'm talking about.
Jey sends back laughing emojis and you send him the video of Roman when he reads your sign and cracks.
And when you get home later that night, you have a text from Roman promising to get you back for that.
You don't believe Roman until that same weekend, everyone's winding down at your house again after hours of shooting promos and having their pictures taken to refresh the web page. This time the guys are cooking, so you're free to lounge around and sunbathe with Rhea off to the side. However, just as you get comfortable, Solo and Roman take it upon themselves to grab you by the wrists and ankles. You scream as you hang between them, eyeing the pool with trepidation. Both men are laughing, bringing up how you made them crack on live tv, and no matter how much you say that it was all Solo's idea, the two Samoans swing you and then launch you into the pool.
Monday night has you attending Raw, ringside yet again, this time reppin' Jey with a Yeet sign and wearing his merch. You cheer and boo along with the crowd, surprising those around you when Dominik and Rey both break character when they spot you at different times. Dominik fist bumps you as he passes by, but your tio Rey takes a moment to pause and hug you before getting back into character. A few people around you ask why the Mysterio's are friendly with you, so you throw them a bone and admit that Rey's your uncle and Dominik your cousin. After that, they decide to leave you alone when they realize you're invested in the story telling going on in front of you.
When you get home, you're in high spirits. But then you realize that when Damian, Jey, and Rhea get back to your place, they'll have to pack and get some sleep before they have to wake up at four in the morning so you can drive them to the airport, and your mood plummets. And since you had eaten after leaving the arena, and the others had eaten at the arena, you decide to take a shower and crawl into bed.
Close to midnight, you feel yourself being moved and your eyes flutter open. You're curled on your side, and you see Damian and Rhea crawling into bed in front of you.
Rhea smiles, voice quiet. "One last sleepover."
A hand slides over your stomach, and you slide your own hand over it, sliding your fingers between Jey's. He's held you like this a few times, but you never touched his hand. Tonight, however, you'll allow yourself this moment. "I'm gonna really miss you guys."
"We're gonna miss you too," Damian says.
"Get some sleep, baby girl." A kiss is pressed to the back of your shoulder. "We still have a few hours before we gotta be on the road."
Though you're sad, you still manage to fall asleep while being cuddled by Jey.
Later, when their alarms go off, everyone's dragging their feet downstairs. You take the Range Rover, letting Damian drive. Rhea sits up front with him, and you sit in the back with Jey who refuses to let you sit far from him.
Damian parks at the airport so you can get off with them, and you help Rhea carry her bags inside.
When everyone gets to the point where you'll have to stay behind, they each take a moment to thank you.
Rhea goes first, dropping her bags and pulling you into a hug. "Thank you for this week. I didn't expect to find another family member when Dom suggested we stay at your house."
"You will always be welcomed here. Always." As you pull out of the hug, you wrinkle your nose when you feel your eyes stinging with tears already. Rhea laughs, her own eyes glassy as she steps back.
Damian steps up next, and you wetly laugh when your head barely meets the middle of his chest. "See you around, hermana."
"Don't be a stranger, Priest. You guys all have my number. Use it."
"I will." He squeezes you one last time before stepping back, he and Rhea starting to walk off. "We'll give you guys a moment."
As you turn, you're immediately engulfed by Jey. This hug is different than every one he's bestowed upon you since meeting you and you can't help but melt into him.
As your arms wrap tightly around his waist, you hide your face against the side of his neck and the two of you just stay there like that, not speaking. Then after a moment passes, you say, "This isn't fair."
"Right guy, wrong time, right?"
You huff a laugh. "Your brothers and cousin gossip too much."
"Nah. They just want to see us happy. You make me happy."
His words make your heart ache and your throat swell with emotion. "You make me happy too, but-"
"I know, baby girl. I know. It's like you said, this isn't fair." When you and Jey finally pull free from the hug, you can't meet his gaze. Not until he gently cups your face and makes you look up, pressing his forehead against yours. "We'll figure it out, yeah? It's only been a week, but already I know that whatever this is, it's different."
You sigh. "I can't do long distance."
"You will." Jey presses a kiss to your forehead and then steps back, smirking. "I'm not letting you go, baby. We're gonna text and Facetime so much that you're gonna be sick of me."
"You're ridiculous."
"And you're mine. Remember that."
You gulp, his possessive words stirring something within you, but you manage to squash it less he notices. Jey continues to walk backwards with his bag, smirking, and then turns to head to his gate.
As you walk out of the airport, you're filled with sadness and loneliness, but also hope for the future.
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You've never had an issue sleeping alone, in fact you preferred it, but you have trouble getting used to an empty bed this time around. You manage to cope though, especially when your new friends keep their promise to check in with you every other day. And not to mention that you get to see their alter egos appear on Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown which gives you a reason to text them, making fun of their storylines.
In between of keeping in touch with Jey, you manage to focus on yourself and grow your business of IT work, having enough resources to hire a few individuals and purchase a few work vehicles so no one had to drive their personal vehicles to any locations. And though you hadn't realized it at the time, spreading out the work actually lifted the weight that had been on your shoulders.
On Raw, you can say your favorite storylines are the Terror Twins beating the shit out of Judgement Day any chance they get, and Jey stepping up to protect Damian and Rhea when they need it. You don't really have a favorite storyline on Smackdown, but you do watch for Roman and Solo, and their ongoing battle for Tribal Chief. You get annoyed with the Bloodline when they accept Nia Jax into their ranks, making their faction even stronger. And then during one brutal beatdown on Roman, Jimmy finally makes his grand return to the ring. Roman and Jimmy aren't enough to take on the Bloodline, so Jey surprises everyone by rushing to their rescue. It's a mini reunion of the old Bloodline, and the new Bloodline seems to think twice about attacking them before retreating.
It's when you're Facetiming with Jey, teasing him about when the Creative team is finally going to give every fan what they want- his date with Rhea to Waffle House- that you get a call from your Tio Rey. You make up an excuse to hang up with Jey, not wanting to clue him in about Rey randomly calling you, and then call your Tio back.
"Hey, Tio," you greet when Rey picks up. "What's going on?"
"Mija, how are you?"
"I'm good. Work is keeping me busy."
"That's good, that's good." Rey falls quiet for a moment before saying, "Listen, I know I spoke about you possibly joining the business, but I need to know how serious you are about it."
"I mean, I wouldn't mind," you say. "I miss it. Miss the training and everything, but let's be serious for a second, Tio. I'm in no shape to suddenly get into a ring."
"You're in great shape, mija. It wouldn't take much to get you fit for the ring."
You chuckle. "If only, huh." Rey says nothing. "Tio?"
"What if I told you I got you a zoom meeting with Paul? Would you listen to what he has to say?"
"Shit. Are you serious?" Your heart starts to beat double.
"Yes." He chuckles. "I remember how much you loved wrestling and since you've made so many new friends within the business…"
"I'll do it." The words are out before you can second guess yourself. "But I have conditions of my own, Tio. The storyline has to be pretty decent if I'm to agree."
"I'd expect nothing less. I'll text you the details."
"Alright, Tio. Thank you. I love you."
"Love you too, mija. I hope your meeting goes well."
You're a ball of nerves and anxiety when Rey texts you the information about your video call meeting with Paul "Triple H" Levesque, the meeting only being in a few days.
You keep the meeting a secret from your friends and tell your Tio not to tell Dominik because your cousin wouldn't be able to keep it from Rhea. And to distract yourself, you keep busy with work.
The video call with Paul comes and goes, and you end the call feeling like you're on cloud nine. The storyline they're looking to drop a newcomer into is that of a female presence alongside Roman Reigns, of all people. They want someone who can be serious, but also a little goofy since they're looking to tone down Roman's alter ego since he's become very likable once again.
You had explained to Paul that you would love to work with Roman as a female ready to kick any other female's ass who dares to lay a hand on him, but you're not looking for a romantic storyline. Against your better judgment, you admit to having a very personal relationship with Jey Uso, and you rather not make things weird by your alter ego getting it on with Roman's alter ego. Paul chuckled away your worry, especially when you went on to playfully ask when Jey and Rhea were going to get that Waffle House date because you were waiting for it just like every other fan.
Paul talks a bit more about how Roman will be treating this newcomer like a little sister and be protective of her as she will be of him, and you're liking the idea more and more. And when he sees your very obvious interest in wanting to be that person, he slyly admits that Raw and Smackdown wrestlers will be making appearances on each other's shows, so it'll be likely that you see Jey Uso more frequently.
When you finally admit you're seriously interested, Paul tells you that there will be more phone calls and a meeting in person to be had in the near future. Since this isn't the normal way to bring in a new wrestler, the higher ups will want to see you in action.
"Noted, sir. If I'm to wrestle in person so you can see my skills, there's only one female I want to go against, but she needs to swear to secrecy about not letting it slip that it's me she's meeting with."
"Who do you got in mind, kid?" He had asked.
"Ripley," you mused. "Her technique is right up my alley. Plus, she's a friend."
"Jesus. Don't tell me I'm gonna have two brutal forces on my hand."
You smirked at him through the camera. "Can you imagine a team-up with us? We'd tear your female roster up."
Paul had chuckled. "How are your mic skills?"
You shrugged. "Not sure, but I don't have stage fright. I'm good at talking shit, but I will have to remember to censor myself. I have a potty mouth when I'm pissed off."
"That's what the production team is for. They'll bleep if necessary."
"That's going to be a lot of bleeping."
"I'm sure it can be handled." There was a moment of silence as Paul looked at something off screen. "Well, so far I like what I see. You seem like you have a good head on your shoulders," he'd admitted. "Why don't we exchange numbers, so we don't have to go through the hassle of emailing. Then when I get everything set up for our face to face, we'll fly you out so we can see you in action."
"Yes, sir. Thank you so much for this opportunity."
And after a quick exchange of numbers, the video call was ended, and you texted your Tio the good news.
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Over the next few weeks, you change up your routine to make more time to work out and even change your eating habits. You even call a mandatory meeting with your employees, telling them that you're taking on a second job that's unrelated to what you're currently doing. If they wish to walk away, they're more than welcome to do it with no bad blood between you, but if they wish to stick around then they'll be getting a pay raise since they'll also be taking on a fair bit more of the work. Your new hires have no problem with a pay raise and decide to stick around, learning their new schedule for when you'll be out of town.
When you finally fly out to meet with Paul, your Tio Rey, Rhea, and the higher ups, you're driven to a random gym to keep your presence a secret. You walk in with the hood of your hoodie pulled up and you watch Rhea warm up in the ring. For a moment you just watch her and then you head in.
As you approach the ring, Rhea takes notice of you. Smirking, you pull down your hood and her eyes widen in delight.
"Shut the fuck up!" She practically yells in elation. "You?! You're the new blood?"
Laughing, you hop onto the side of the ring and step through the ropes. "Hopefully."
Rhea embraces you with more laughter, squeezing you tight.
"Good. You've met already," Paul suddenly says. Stepping up to the side of the ring and looking up at the two of you. "So, here's how this is going to go.."
As Paul tells you what he and the other higher ups expect to see, you strip out of your hoodie and toss it aside. You pull your shirt off, leaving you in a sports bra and your leggings that are more than acceptable to fight in. You take the time to stretch, asking questions here and there to make sure you're on the same page of what they want to see. And when you begin, you and Rhea take the time to warm-up by running back and forth across the ring, bouncing off the ropes and dropping to the mat so the other could hop over whoever was down on the mat at the time.
Then when Paul tells you to fight, to feed off one another's energy and read each other's body language, you and Rhea lock in the middle. Each of you takes hits and kicks from the other, acting as if it were a real match and you were seriously injuring one another. You take turns climbing onto the ropes, but never properly get a moonsault in. You surprise everyone when you 6-1-9 Rhea, but Rhea ends your little session when she gives you the Riptide and pins you with her provocative pin.
Panting and heaving, you lay there on the mat as Rhea falls onto her own back, catching her breath as well.
There's a silence that follows before several rounds of applause break out.
"Atta girl, mija!" Rey cheers.
"That.. was impressive work for being rusty," Paul says. "How do you feel?"
"Honest answer?" You ask, breathing heavily.
"Yes."
"Rhea's pin kinda turned me on a little bit." Rhea and Paul bark out a laugh, and your Tio shakes his head in amusement at you. "But in all seriousness, I feel great. I haven't done that since I was a teenager and it.. it felt like coming home."
"I'm glad to hear that," Paul says. "We're all impressed, especially since you kept up with Rhea so well. You weren't joking that your technique was right up alley. I think with a few months of training, you'll be good enough to be introduced."
"Really?" You slowly smile, eyes turning misty.
"Yes. In the meantime, you need to make your presence known on social media. You have the option of keeping your private life private while making a new profile that's just for your public life as a wrestler, or you can start integrating your wrestling life into the profiles you currently have."
"Uh, I think I'll make some new profiles. I'll post some private life moments for the fans so they can get a peek behind the curtain in my life, but nothing too personal that they can track down where I live."
Paul nods, knocking his knuckles onto the mat. "Sounds good. And good work in the ring. I'm glad your uncle just wasn't all talk."
You grin. "Thank you for taking a chance on me, sir."
"Thank you for being an asskicker. Now, I'll be in contact. I'll get you a contract soon and we'll talk some more."
"Yes, sir. Thank you again."
Paul and the others take their leave, leaving Rey and Rhea with you. As they disappear, you can't help but burst into tears. Rhea laughs, rolling over on top of you and straddling your hips as she grabs your wrists and squeals. Rey joins the two of you in the ring, and you end up laughing as Rhea can't stop cursing and just being excited about you possibly working with her.
"So, what's this about a faction I've been hearing about? Do you already know where you're going?"
As you wipe away your tears, you sniffle. "Yeah. There's a storyline that requires a female companion and Tio Rey told them I could possibly be a good fit."
"And I was right. You were magnificent, mija."
"But it's all still a secret, so Rhea, you can't say anything!"
"Got it, got it. My lips are sealed." She crawls off of you and you sit up, laughing at her smile. "This is awesome. I hope you come to Raw. You can be our tiny terror triplet."
You huff a laugh, shoulder checking her. "I thought Uso was the triplet?" She snorts. "Seriously, I'm banking on you and Jey finally getting to go to a Waffle House, only for Damian to obliviously be third wheeling. You should become a throuple. I'd ship it if no one else does."
Rhea laughs. "Shut up. Don't give them any ideas."
Rey finally helps you to your feet, making sure you're alright and that there are no injuries that need to be looked over. You want to spend more time with Rhea, but she's got to get back to the arena before anyone becomes suspicious. But before she leaves, she tells you to keep her in the loop about what you can and when you'll possibly be making your debut. You assure her you will and to keep a lookout for your new public social pages where you'll start off as inconspicuous as you can by posting about how you want to get back into shape and what not.
When it's just you and your Tio Rey left, you hang out in the ring to listen to all the pointers he has to offer. He works with you for a couple of hours before he buys you dinner and sends you back to your hotel.
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For your contract signing, your Tio Rey sits in on the meeting with you to explain a few things here and there. You're aware that your public socials will mostly need to be posts as if your alter ego was posting or anything related to fan interactions/charities/upcoming shows, but that you can also have personal pics/videos so long as you explain you're posting as your real self and not your wrestling self. However, since your impending appearance on the show is being kept on the down low, you're only to post work out videos or get ready with me videos and show no inkling of you getting into the business.
The topic of body art comes up because when you're under contract, any tattoos need to be approved beforehand. You assure Paul that there's not really anything you plan to get at the moment and understand you need to run any future ideas by the higher ups.
When Paul and some of the Creative team spitball ideas about how to start showing your face associated with the business, you have an idea. They hear you out, and though the dynamic between Dom and Rey is overused, you ask them to bring it up again. You can start flying out to shows to watch your family do work, but then get upset one night when Judgement Day starts beating down on Rey. It'll give you the opportunity to jump the barricade and shield your Tio, only to get into an argument with Dominik in the ring, tearing down those he now calls his family. You suggest Liv and JD attacking you, and Finn and Carlito attacking Rey while Dom stands back, unsure of what to do.
As you were talking, you hadn't seen the team taking notes. Only when Paul chuckled and joked that you should take up a part time job as a writer, did you finally sign the contract. Rey was ecstatic and Paul welcomed you aboard, telling you to go home and continue doing what you were doing. They'd bring you in soon.
. . . .
When you get back home, you don't change anything in your routine. The only thing that changes is that you start posting videos on your breaks, videos that Rhea immediately starts following and hyping you up for.
It takes a few days, but eventually you notice an uptick of followers from those you made friends with within the WWE community. Your comment section is full of encouragement and playful flirtation, but it isn't long until the trolls find your page. Some shower you with compliments because of your affiliation with certain wrestlers while others troll you. But since you're under contract, you can't lash out at their pathetic criticism less you want to be reprimanded by the higher ups at WWE.
One day, you're really feeling yourself and decide to do a pole workout. You wear a pair of cheeky workout shorts and a very pretty workout bralette, and get to work. There are no provocative dance moves, instead you decide to show off the strength of your arms and legs by climbing, twirling, and going upside down on the pole. You even show off your flexibility, and when it's all over you post the video with the song Play Hard by David Guetta, Ne-Yo and Akon. Immediately, the likes and comments roll in. And ten minutes later, Jey has you on Facetime.
"Yessss," you drawl as you answer the video call with a grin.
"You really gonna do me like that, baby?" As you stare at Jey, you see he's in a locker room, towel draped over his shoulder. You chuckle at his pout. "I know you danced in the past, but I didn't know you were still able to do all that."
"Of course I can still do it. Pole dancing is quite the workout. And it's fun when the person you want to see sees it." You wink and Jey squints his eyes at you.
"You still in them little ass shorts?"
"What is it with you and my ass?" You laugh, heading towards the body length mirror you have in the hallway of your home. Standing in front of the mirror, you angle your body so your ass can be seen as you twist, aiming the camera over your shoulder. When you see the screen white out for a second, you freeze. "Did you- did you just take a screenshot?"
Jey smirks. "Yes, and? I miss my girl. I need this."
You blush, heading shaking in amusement before heading to your living room and falling onto your couch to relax. "You're ridiculous."
"You know it! But as much as I've missed seeing your face and booty, there's actually a reason I called. Big Uce needs a favor."
You roll your eyes. "How many times have I told you and everyone else that my house is your house? If someone needs a place to crash, my house is open."
"See! Told you, man. You could have just showed up and she'd let you right in." Jey is talking to someone off camera and then he's scooting over, making room for another person. Roman enters half the screen. "Hey YN, how are you?"
"I'm good, Rome," you say. "How are things with you?"
He shrugs. "Could be better. My shoulder's been acting up, so the boss wants me to take a month off to heal and prepare myself for some storyline they wanna start me in."
"And you wanna spend that month here?"
You chuckle as Roman turns sheepish. "If you don't mind? It's just at your place, I know I won't be bothered if I go for a swim or soak in the hot tub."
"Come on down, Rome. It'll be nice to have some noise back in this house."
"Thank you. Do you think you can pick me up from the airport or should I get a rental?"
"Send me the details of when you'll be landing, and I'll be there."
"Alright. I'll go book the flight right now and text you right after." Jey takes over the call once more, grinning.
"What's got you cheesin'?"
"You. It makes me happy to see you treat my family like your family."
"Yeah, well they make it easy."
Jey continues to smile before it turns rather wistful. "The next time I ain't booked for anythin', I'm coming down. We have a lot of time to make up for."
"I'll probably see you before you see me," you muse. At his arched eyebrow, you say, "Dom and Tio Rey want me to start coming to shows. I'll probably wait until Roman leaves so I don't leave him alone here, but I should be coming to a Raw show at least once a month from now on."
"When you do, don't book a hotel room. You can bunk with me."
"Sure thing, Uso. Now get back to work. I wanna see you yeet that lame ass Judgement Day soon."
He laughs. "Your cuz is in that lame ass Judgement Day."
"I said what I said."
He shakes his head in amusement. "I'll see what I can do. Talk to you later, baby girl."
"Bye, Jey."
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When Roman gets to your house, you help him get situated in the room that he'll be taking over for the month. You hand him the keys to your Range Rover to use while he stays and tell him you have a friend that works at the local gym who can get him some private hours should he want it. He agrees to the private hours so long as you join him which ends up being the perfect excuse to work out alongside Roman and post those pictures and videos. After all, you'll be part of his faction when you start at WWE, so it'll be nice to have those pictures on standby after your affiliation is known.
You and Roman post serious pics of working out side by side, encouraging one another. Some videos are silly, though, especially the one Roman posts where he mentions that having a workout partner is actually fun. But when he pans to you, you're laid out on the floor, panting for breath, and giving him a shaky thumbs up that he laughs at. While you had a decent routine, Roman's was intense, and you cursed him the entire time he pushed you to your limit.
Monday and Friday nights are reserved for watching wrestling on your flatscreen, and Roman can't help but tease you when you get into it, especially where it concerns his cousins.
"When are you going to make it official?" Roman asks as he watches you watch Jey's match on screen.
"When I can travel along with you guys for a couple months at a time," you answer without missing a beat.
"What about your job?"
You wince as Jey is tossed from the top rope. "I can work from the road," you admit. "I have employees now that can do the house calls and I'll be available Monday through Friday, nine to five over the phone. The only thing keeping me from flying out is that I've yet to find a trustworthy house sitter for when I'm away."
The only sound that can be heard is the commentators announcing Jey's win before, "You really love him, don't you?"
You freeze and turn towards Roman. "Love is a.. strong word."
He rolls his eyes. "If you didn't love him, you wouldn't be finding a way to travel on the road with us. It's okay to have strong feelings for him. You can't help who you love, when or how it happens."
You turn sheepish, not wanting to talk about it anymore with Jey's cousin. Your feelings for Jey were strong and they had caught you off guard. You figured they'd diminish when he left, but you only missed him more, and those feelings grew every time you spoke on the phone. It also didn't help that all your mutual friends were rooting for the two of you to work things out.
Roman lets the conversation drop and the two of you continue cohabitating like normal, treating one another like the world's most annoying brother/sister.
When it's time for Roman to get back to work, you fly out with him to attend a showing of Smackdown. You wear his merch, even carrying a sign that proclaims Roman as THE tribal chief. Unknowingly, Solo and Nia add beef to your future interactions with them when Nia rips the sign from your hands and tears it in half. You merely smirk at her, however, earning a nod of approval from Roman and a few secret texts from Paul who's giddy that his wrestlers are unknowingly setting themselves up for your explosive introduction.
But before you can get to your introduction on Smackdown, you need to make appearances on Raw as the distraught family member who's tired of your Tio and cousin beating each other down.
. . . .
Paul gives you a total of three appearances on Raw, sitting ringside and shouting at your cousin when he takes things too far with his dad. Some fans start to suspect that you might join WWE, however briefly, since WWE usually pulls in a non-wrestling family members every now and then to spice things up. Unfortunately for those who don't know, you're very much into wrestling and know how to hold your own.
On the night of your so-called debut, you're sitting ringside yet again.
(Live on Raw)
Rey Mysterio walks out to an amped up crowd and when he spots you, he takes a moment to hug you and greet you with a kiss to your temple. As he slides into the ring to start warming up, the Judgement Day theme goes off. Dominik swaggers out with Liv hanging off his arm and your nose wrinkles as Liv openly laughs at you, mockingly wiggling her fingers in a wave when you try calling out to Dominik to stop this feud already.
He doesn't, and father and son go toe to toe.
Rey and Dominik trade blows back and forth, and even with the help of Liv… Dominik still loses the match. This enrages Judgement Day, and it isn't long until Finn, JD, and Carlito are running down the ramp to beat up on Rey.
From your side of the barrier, you're screaming at Dom to stop it. You ignore the camera crew when they film your reaction and when you see Finn pull out a chair to wrap around Rey's neck, you hop the barrier. The crowd cheers as you slide into the ring like it's something you've done all your life and you cover Rey's body, holding your arms out as you stare up at your cousin who's standing on the top rope, ready to jump on the chair around his dad's neck.
A microphone is slid to you, and you pick it up, pleading with Dom as you stand up. "Stop! Stop it, Dom. That's enough." Your voice cracks and you sniffle. "It's enough."
As Dom stares at you in shock, he slowly climbs down the rope and requests a mic as you remove the chair from Rey's neck and slide it behind you, glaring at Judgement Day surrounding you. "Prima, what the hell are you doin' in here?"
"What am I doing? What are you doing?" You ask in return. "This is your dad, Dom. Your blood! Cut the crap already and come home."
He's stunned silent before huffs, a cruel smile taking over. "Home? What home? And blood doesn't define family, cuz. You should know that. When was the last time you spoke to your old man, huh?"
Oof. Low blow, but part of the script. Paul did tell you to ad-lib the fight to get under each other's skin. Slowly, you stand, turning around in a circle and putting your back to the ropes rather than having someone stand behind you.
"Of course, I know blood doesn't define family, pendejo. But I seriously hope you don't mean to call this rag-tag team of cowards your family." The crowd laughs as those of the Judgement Day take offense to that. "You really think Judgement Day 2.0 cares about you?" You huff out a laugh. "You're delusional. The only one who cared about you in their own weird way was Rhea. She brought you in. She gave you a family. She kept you safe," you seethe at him as the crowd agrees with you. "Believe it or not, Rhea and Damian were the only loyal ones of Judgement Day, and you ruined a good thing when you betrayed them all for a Harley Quinn reject that has eyes for Finn when you're not paying attention."
The crowd ooh's.
"No! No that's not true," Liv screams when she rips the mic from Dom, shouldering her women's title as if it proves that she's the best. "I love my daddy Dom and he loves me. Rhea was toxic!"
"Toxic or not, she's clearly the better choice." The crowd cheers as you look Liv up and down, disgust evident in your features. "Have fun with Rhea's sloppy seconds."
You drop the mic, turning to help Rey up. However, Liv's scream of rage makes you pause, and you feel the weight of her championship belt connect with the back of your head. You fall forward and the crowd goes into an uproar. When kicks start connecting with your back, you curl up on your side and curl your arms around your head.
Liv gets in a few kicks before you take charge. Between one kick and the next, you roll onto your back and sweep Liv's legs out from beneath her. When she falls, you scramble onto your hands and knees and straddle the women's champion before grasping her hair in one hand and delivering blow after blow with the other.
The arena fills with screams and cheers, and then you're dragged off of Liv. As your arms are held behind you by JD, Finn and Carlito help Liv up. She attacks you with hits and kicks while Dominik watches from the corner, hands in his hair as he's torn between stopping the attack or not.
THIS IS MY BRUTALITY!
Rhea's theme song goes off, purple lights flashing, and the crowd is deafening as Rhea and Damian rush the ring. Judgement Day quickly abandons ship, and the Terror Twins stalk the ring back and forth, pointing and threatening the cowards as they run away.
You stand back, glancing warily between the Terror Twins and your Tio who's still laid out on the mat.
When they turn towards you, Rhea and Damian watch you with unsurety in their gazes. You're holding onto your stomach where Liv landed kick after kick, and when your Tio groans, you rush to help him to his feet. Damian beats you to it, however, and offers Rey a hand up much to the crowd's surprise.
There's another stare off before you say, "Thank you."
Damian's expression is kept neutral, but Rhea slowly smirks, licking her bottom lip in a rather seductive manner. You can feel your cheeks heating against your will, and she laughs before her and Damian are rolling out of the ring with a mock salute towards you and Rey.
After a moment, Rey heads for the stairs and you follow after him, the two of you leaning on one another as you make your way backstage.
(End of broadcast segment.)
The moment you make it behind the curtains and filming is cut, you're engulfed in a hug by Dominik.
"Prima, that was so good!"
Liv walks up beside you, squealing. "That was awesome. I hope I didn't hurt you. I felt a few of those kicks connect."
"Nah, girl, you're good." As you pull out of the hug with Dominik, you high five the blonde. "The more believable it is, the more people will wanna watch you."
She laughs, calls you crazy, and then steps aside. The rest of Judgement Day congratulate you on a great intro, and then Rhea and Damian are there putting you in the middle of their group hug.
"Mate, that was awesome. I'm so glad I don't have to keep this secret anymore!"
"What? You knew?!" Damian demands. Both you and Rhea laugh.
"Where do you think I was sneaking off to?" Rhea muses. "Paul wanted to see what YN was capable of, so I was her opponent for the trial matches. Needless to say, everyone was impressed."
"Damn. I wish I could have been there," he says.
"And ruin the surprise? Never."
After your friends release you, your Tio hugs you. "I'm proud of you, mija. You were meant for this life and I'm glad to be a part of it."
Rey's words make you a little emotional and you have to laugh less you start ugly crying. "Thank you, Tio. I'm looking forward to what's to come."
As soon as your Tio releases you, you're spun around and yanked into yet another hug. "Damn, baby girl. No head's up?" You laugh as you hug Jey, this hug being long overdue. "Does this mean you're going to be on Raw?"
You shrug as you step back, but Jey keeps you close by tucking you under his arm. "A contract is still in the works," you say, reluctantly lying to your friends. Your contract was already locked in, but they didn't know that. "At first I didn't want to fight, I just wanted to be what essentially is a hype man on the sidelines, but Paul thinks I'm destined for more. I was scared to step on the toes of the females still waiting to be called up to the main roster, but Paul says he saw something in me worth taking the risk."
"Damn right he did," Jey says. "You're ballsy."
You smile up at him, letting him press a kiss to your forehead. "But anyway, for now I'll be stuck in the middle of my cousin and Tio, playing the distraught family member. They wanna gauge everyone's reaction to me and if I'm liked enough, they'll plant me into a storyline either on Raw or Smackdown."
"Yeet," Jey says, clearly excited. "Everything's coming together, baby. Now let's go check that phone of yours. I'm sure Jimmy and Roman are blowing it up as we speak."
Author's Note: Reader is a little ass kicker. This is very self-indulgent, so don't just me haha. Let me have this.
Spanish translations: Hermana - Sister. Mija - Darling (term of endearment family mostly uses for younger girl). Prima/Primo - Cousin. Pendenja/Pendejo - Stupid girl/stupid boy.
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lady-ace · 1 month ago
Text
Injustice Ghost
(Putting out an Halloween post because why not? By the way, there will be mentions of blood and death, since this will talk about Injustice Billy, and what happened to him.)
Captain Marvel was missing.
Of course, the superhero comunnity was after the answers to what happened, and only got to know some things.
1-This was probably Circe's doing, going by the way the runes they found.
2-It could be undone.
3-The captain switched places with someone- and that someone could have come from anywhere in the multiverse. So, alternative universes were not out of the table.
It was going to be a long week, but it will be worth it.
/ / /
After a long mission and even longer meeting about said mission, Barry was hungry, (Well, running for a long time with no food and super fast metabolism does that to someone) and so decided to eat something in the Watchtower's kitchen.
As it was night and some people decided to go straight to bed after mission, some lights were off. When Barry opened the door leading to the kitchen, he headed for the light switch.
..That is, until he saw something in the dark. The only thing lightning up the room being the faint lights the window provided.
The thing he saw looked.. small. Where it eyes should be, Barry could see right through.
“Hello?”
Barry asked, and received no answer. As the silence dragged on, he decided to flip the light switch he was reaching for earlier. Maybe it was nothing after all?
As the lights came to life, Barry saw the figure. No, the boy.
He was indeed small, maybe 8 to 9 years old. Skinny, too. The weirdest thing about him was that he simply didn't have eyes. Where his eyes should be, there were simply nothing, the borders of where the eyes were supposed to be were caked in blood. In fact, the boy himself seemed see-through, transparent.
The child, who was looking at the window previously, startled when the lights came on, looking at Barry directly before vanishing into thin air.
“Oookay. That happened. Good to know the watchtower's haunted.”
/ / /
Barry: “Did i tell you guys what i saw in the kitchen last night?”
GL (Hal): “No? What did you see?”
Barry: “I think i saw a spirit. No, i'm sure i saw a spirit. Or a ghost.”
GL, in a disbelieving tone: “Dude, what? Are you serious?”
Barry: “I swear. It was a child, and when i flipped the light on, it just looked up at me and vanished! Gone!”
Clark, who was more believing: “So, you're saying the watchtower's haunted? How would this ghost even get here?”
[Barry shrugs]
/ / /
Clark thinks he finally understands what Barry means when he comes face to face with the ghost himself.
This time, it was in the watchtower's recreation room.
Since a meeting was to start soon enough, Clark decided to be extra early, and waited patiently in the recreation room. Currently, he was the only one here, as Bruce was in the meeting room already, probably planning how it will go.
According to the jornal Clark was reading, today was a slow day, with only Central and Gotham being attacked by major villains today, what most likely will be brought up in the meeting.
A shuffling sound besides Clark had him looking up from the jornal, looking directly at something that he had heard about before.
“..You're the ghost Flash told me about, aren't you?”
He asked the spirit, who looked at him blankly.
“You.”
It said. It's voice had an echo quality to it, and was so impossibly quiet, almost a whisper.
“Me? What about me?”
Clark asked the boy, confused.
“Why?”
It questioned, instead of answering.
“Huh?”
The boy stepped closer, as if analyzing Clark's very being.
“Why?”
It repeated, louder and clearer this time. Clark was sure if this.. person (?) had eyebrows, he would be frowning.
“I'm sorry, i don't understand what you mean.”
Clark told the spirit, with an apologetic tone in his voice. It was more than clear this ghost was trying to tell him something, ask him something. And yet, it wasn't able to, or rather, couldn't bring itself to.
The ghost got even closer, one hand pointing to it's eyes.
“This. Why?”
It asked, it's voice filled with hurt, betrayal. Like Clark himself had done something unforgivable.
“..You're asking me why are your.. uh.. eyes that way?”
The ghost shook it's head 'no', and then used the finger that was pointing to it's 'eyes' to get some of the blood in it's face, and proceeded to walked even closer to Clark, now directly in front of him.
As Clark was about to ask something, the boy began floating. The spirit floated up, until it was eye level with him, and put the finger on the jornal Clark was holding, the bloody fingerprint being fixated on a specific news title.
“Multiple innocent lives unfortunately lost in sudden villain attack!”
These words now stood out against the other news coming from Gotham. Clark just read about this- Joker had escaped Arkham yet again, but this time, without anyone knowing, and had planted a bomb on park. Hidden from anyone's view, it went off, killing some people who were just enjoying the afternoon in the park that day.
“Were you one of Joker's victims, little one?”
Clark questioned in the soft tone he uses with scared children- since others in the league don't talk much with civillians after savings, the responsibility almost always falls either on his, Diana's or (surprisingly) Bruce's shoulders.
If this was the spirit of a child who's life was lost in a tragic accident like this, Clark would stop at nothing to give it rest. No one deserved to be stuck, especially since this ghost didn't seem all that happy.
..is what he thought, until the ghost shook it's head no, and then paused.
“Joker? But..”
It's voice was quieter again. It- no, he, looked like he realized something.
"..joker's dead. You..”
Before any questions could be asked, the ghost spoke up again.
“You aren't him, are you? I don't belong here. i don't want to be here. Go away!”
Was the last thing Clark heard the boy say, before he pushed him (or tried to, really, he phased right through him) and disappeared into nothingness, just like Barry had told him he had done before.
This isn't just a silly little fact told by friends to scare each other. The watchtower truly is haunted.
/ / /
(this will have a part 2, i just don't know when)
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estapa-edwards · 5 months ago
Note
https://www.tumblr.com/estapa-edwards/749598344164311040/sunshine-q-hughes
OOO! kinda inspired by this but jack with a gf who is super grumpy and he is a ball of sunshine!
OPPOSITES - J. HUGHES
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paring: Jack Hughes x reader
word count: 1.6k
requested? yes
warnings: use of y/n.
*¨¨* ≈☆≈ *¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨* ≈☆≈ *¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨* ≈☆≈ *¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨* ≈☆≈ *¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*
Jack Hughes was known for his infectious smile and perpetually sunny disposition. The star center for the New Jersey Devils, he was beloved by fans and teammates alike for his relentless positivity both on and off the ice. His natural charm and good looks made him a favorite among the media, and he handled every interview with the same easy grace.
Y/N, on the other hand, was the polar opposite. Known for her sharp wit and no-nonsense attitude, she had a reputation for being grumpy and aloof. A talented graphic designer, she worked for a major advertising firm in New York City. Her colleagues respected her for her skills but knew better than to cross her path on a bad day. Y/N had a tough exterior, built from years of being let down and hurt by those she had trusted most.
Their paths crossed one chilly autumn day in New York City. Y/N had reluctantly agreed to accompany her best friend, Emma, to a Devils game. Emma was a die-hard fan and had scored VIP tickets, which included a meet-and-greet with the players after the game. Y/N, who had little interest in hockey, was more interested in the free food and drinks that came with the VIP experience.
The game was an intense one, with the Devils clinching a dramatic overtime victory. Jack Hughes had scored the winning goal, and the crowd erupted in cheers. Y/N found herself caught up in the excitement despite her best efforts to remain indifferent. After the game, they were ushered into a lounge where the players mingled with the VIP guests.
Emma was beside herself with excitement, dragging Y/N from player to player, collecting autographs and taking photos. Y/N stood back, arms crossed, trying to avoid drawing attention to herself. She didn't notice Jack Hughes making his way over until he was standing right in front of her, flashing that famous smile.
"Hey there," he said, his eyes twinkling. "Enjoy the game?"
Y/N looked up, caught off guard by his directness. "Yeah, it was fine," she replied, her tone cool.
Jack chuckled, seemingly unfazed by her lack of enthusiasm. "I'm Jack," he said, extending his hand.
"Y/N," she replied, shaking his hand briefly.
"Nice to meet you, Y/N," Jack said, still smiling. "You don't seem like the typical hockey fan."
"I'm not," Y/N admitted. "I'm just here with my friend."
"Well, I'm glad you came," Jack said. "It's always great to see new faces in the crowd."
Y/N raised an eyebrow. "Even grumpy ones?"
Jack laughed, a warm, genuine sound that made Y/N's heart skip a beat. "Especially grumpy ones," he said. "They’re the most fun to win over."
Y/N couldn't help but smile, despite herself. There was something about Jack's positivity that was hard to resist.
--- --- ---
Over the next few weeks, Jack and Y/N began to see more of each other. What started as casual conversations at post-game events and social gatherings soon turned into regular text messages and phone calls. Jack's relentless cheerfulness slowly began to chip away at Y/N's defenses.
One Saturday afternoon, Jack invited Y/N to join him for a walk in Central Park. Y/N agreed, albeit reluctantly. She arrived at the park, dressed in her usual all-black ensemble, complete with a beanie and scarf to shield her from the cold. Jack, in contrast, wore a bright red jacket and a matching beanie, his smile as radiant as ever.
"Ready for an adventure?" Jack asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
Y/N rolled her eyes but couldn't suppress a small smile. "Sure, why not."
As they strolled through the park, Jack chatted about everything and anything, his enthusiasm contagious. Y/N found herself laughing more than she had in a long time. Jack's stories were entertaining, and his positive outlook on life was refreshing.
"You're like a ray of sunshine, you know that?" Y/N said, half-jokingly.
Jack grinned. "And you're my favorite rain cloud," he teased.
Y/N scoffed, but there was a hint of affection in her eyes. "I prefer to think of myself as a thunderstorm."
"Well, storms can be beautiful too," Jack said softly, looking at her with a sincerity that made her heart flutter.
As the days turned into weeks, Y/N found herself looking forward to their time together. Jack's optimism was infectious, and she began to see the world through his eyes. She realized that her grumpy exterior was a defense mechanism, a way to protect herself from getting hurt. But with Jack, she felt safe. His unwavering positivity made her believe that maybe, just maybe, she could let her guard down.
--- --- --- 
One evening, after a particularly challenging day at work, Y/N found herself at Jack's apartment. She had called him, her voice tinged with frustration and exhaustion. Without hesitation, Jack had invited her over, promising a night of comfort and relaxation.
When Y/N arrived, Jack greeted her with a warm hug and a cup of hot cocoa. "Rough day?" he asked gently.
Y/N sighed, sinking into the couch. "You have no idea."
"Want to talk about it?" Jack asked, sitting beside her.
Y/N shook her head. "Not really. I just... I don't know. Everything feels overwhelming."
Jack nodded, understanding. "Well, you're here now. Let's focus on making tonight better."
He put on a movie, a light-hearted comedy that Y/N would normally scoff at, but tonight, she welcomed the distraction. As they watched, Jack's hand found hers, and he held it gently, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on her skin.
Halfway through the movie, Y/N turned to Jack, her eyes filled with unspoken emotions. "Why are you so nice to me?" she asked quietly.
Jack looked at her, his expression soft and caring. "Because I care about you, Y/N. You're amazing, even if you don't always see it."
Y/N felt a lump in her throat. "I'm not amazing. I'm a mess."
"Everyone's a mess in their own way," Jack said. "But that doesn't make you any less incredible."
For the first time in a long time, Y/N felt tears well up in her eyes. She quickly blinked them away, but Jack saw them. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.
"It's okay to cry," he whispered. "You don't have to be strong all the time."
Y/N let out a shaky breath, resting her head on his shoulder. In that moment, she realized just how much Jack meant to her. He was her sunshine, her anchor in the storm. And maybe, just maybe, she could be his safe harbor too.
--- --- --- 
As winter turned to spring, Jack and Y/N's relationship continued to grow. Jack's hockey season was in full swing, and Y/N found herself attending more games, cheering him on from the stands. She still wasn't a die-hard fan, but seeing Jack on the ice, doing what he loved, brought her a sense of joy she hadn't expected.
One night, after a particularly intense game, Jack took Y/N to his favorite diner. They sat in a cozy booth, the warm glow of the diner lights creating a perfect ambiance.
"What's on your mind?" Jack asked, sensing her pensive mood.
Y/N took a deep breath, her fingers tracing the rim of her coffee cup. "I've been thinking a lot lately... about us."
Jack's eyes softened. "Yeah? What about us?"
"I never thought I'd find someone like you," Y/N admitted. "You're everything I'm not. You're kind, optimistic, always seeing the good in people. And me... I'm just grumpy and cynical."
"Hey," Jack said, reaching across the table to take her hand. "You're not just grumpy and cynical. You're smart, talented, and you have the biggest heart. You just don't let everyone see it."
Y/N looked down, her cheeks flushing. "It's just... scary, you know? Letting someone in."
"I know," Jack said softly. "But I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. You can trust me."
Y/N looked into his eyes, seeing the sincerity and love there. She realized that she did trust him, more than anyone she had ever known. And that thought both terrified and exhilarated her.
"I love you, Jack," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Jack's face lit up with a radiant smile. "I love you too, Y/N."
He leaned across the table, capturing her lips in a tender kiss. In that moment, all of Y/N's fears and doubts melted away. She knew that with Jack by her side, she could face anything.
--- --- --- 
Over the next few months, Y/N and Jack's relationship flourished. They balanced each other out perfectly, Jack's positivity complementing Y/N's more grounded perspective. Y/N found herself smiling more, laughing more, and embracing the happiness that Jack brought into her life.
Jack, in turn, appreciated Y/N's honesty and strength. She challenged him, kept him grounded, and reminded him that it was okay to have bad days. Together, they created a harmonious blend of light and dark, proving that opposites truly do attract.
One sunny afternoon, Jack surprised Y/N with a picnic in Central Park. They spread out a blanket under a large oak tree, enjoying the warm weather and each other's company.
"Remember our first walk here?" Jack asked, a mischievous glint in his eye.
Y/N laughed, nodding. "How could I forget? You were like a puppy, bouncing around with all that energy."
Jack chuckled. "And you were the grumpy cat, trying to pretend you didn't enjoy it."
Y/N smiled, shaking her head. "I guess you've grown on me, Hughes."
Jack leaned in, kissing her softly. "I'm glad to hear that. Because I plan on sticking around for a long time."
As they sat there, enjoying the peacefulness of the park, Y/N realized how much her life had changed since meeting Jack. She had gone from being a solitary storm cloud to finding her sunshine. And she wouldn't have it any other way.
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