#danny is growing restless

[justafanwarrior]

I think it would be only fair if Dani hated this and rejected Clark as a father. The second he introduces her like this her head snaps toward him and she practically growls at him that it is not her name, she is Dani Phantom not Kal-El. She does not need a father she already has one (and a half, Vlad may be a fruitloop but he's getting better and is also funding her travels, he's not her father, never will be after everything but he is a semi-trustworthy actual adult figure in her life).

She longs to go home, wants to call for her father Danny, wants to snuggle in his arms and let him take her through Space to discover something new (to her), cuddle with him as he tells her about whatever star, galaxy or planet he brought her to.

When she has a particulary bad day he takes her to a planet, travels around it with her and then takes her to the Infinite Realms to discover the ghostly counterpart of this planet.

Maybe when she'll feel less violated she'll ask if he can take her to Krypton. But now she can't. Not when she knows the second she'll fly away the boy scout will follow her, track her down, try to chain her to his family for 'her own safety' because he was afraid Luthor would find her.

Her core pulses with anger at the very thought.

'I want Danny, I want my dad', Dani thinks to herself as Superman nods but keeps introducing her as his daughter anyway.

Dani was travelling the world. She had a blast! Sure, Batman was constantly trying to catch her, and Superman kept finding her no matter what she did, but Wonder Woman was so cool! She was a live Amazonian! The only ones she had met were the dead ones, like Pandora. She kept Danny updated on her adventures.

A month later; she starts to destabilize. Wonder Woman is the first one to notice, but Dani knows what’s going on. She needs to reach Danny. She needs his help.

She never made it.

Instead, she wakes up in the Justice League infirmary, hooked up to multiple machines, and in her human form. Superman is sitting by her bedside and helps her pull the respirator out of her throat when she gags.

She gets the full story almost immediately. When she collapsed, Wonder Woman caught her and brought her to a place called the Watchtower—where she was now. They found her cells dying of an unknown disease and had tried everything to save her. They noticed that her DNA had been falling apart: it needed to be stabilized. (She already knew that it was a possibility) Initially; they had tried to use Wonder Woman’s dna, but her body rejected it. Batman’s had been used next, but it had also been rejected. In an attempt to save her, they injected her with Superman’s dna. Her body accepted it, and now Superman was genetically her father. The dna she carried before was only half of her dna now.

She felt violated. Betrayed. They had messed with her dna and had changed it without her permission. She wanted to be angry, but she knew it was for her best interest. She knew that Danny wasn’t going to be happy with the situation whenever he found out, though.

[redflagshipwriter]

Batmom Cass : enter Barbara

Part one of 2

“You did good work,” Barbara said, in a casual tone. Proud.

Timmybird nodded and gave a flash of teeth in a smile. Didn't believe. It's nothing, look away. “Glad you think they'll pass.” He rolled his neck. “I don't want anyone to be able to prove he's Danny F.”

Cass watched their interplay casually, hair damp from the post-patrol shower and comfortably swimming in an oversized sweatshirt. She played with the ends of the sleeve as they talked.

“They can suspect it all they like, but it'd be hard to disprove this is a separate kid.” Barbara ran her palms over her wheelchair handles in an unconscious tic that meant she wanted to go, go, go. “Still, I like the idea of keeping him out of the public eye until we nail down what's going on in Illinois. This GIW group is bad news.”

Cass bit her lip and flexed her toes, uncertain. Danny was getting restless. And he was a teenager: he needed to be in school. He needed to learn, stretch his wings, grow.

But safe. He needed to be safe, first.

The trouble was she didn't know how to make him fully safe. She'd had him for four days now. Judging by the report of his death, Danny baby had been homeless and on the run for more than a month. He was hiding. Even when she was in the room, he was looking for attacks. Who was he looking for? Dad and mom Fenton? GIW group?

“-gonna hit the showers,” said her little brother.” Cash barely registered him heading to the batcave bathrooms. She was internally weighing her bat nosiness sense against her worry about pushing Danny for answers too soon.

“Am I good to meet him, Mamabird?”

Cass blinked back to awareness. “Mama bat,” she corrected. “Yes.” She cracked her lower back. Mm. Too much standing after patrol. She needed to move a little. “Breakfast. Baby wakes up soon.”

Barbara snorted. “I'll go to bed after,” she said wryly, because they had been flying and solving into the morning light. Riddler was out on the streets. “Did someone check with Alfred about adding me to the breakfast table?”

She didn't know. Cass hummed and flipped over to walk on her hands up the stairs. It sent a pleasant ache through her upper back. Stabilizing her core and legs was just the right amount of casual challenge to make her body feel better.

“Christ,” Barbara said quietly, and huffed out a laugh. The elevator dinged. “I'll see you upstairs.”

Barbara Batgirl beat Cass to the top. Cass huffed in displeasure at the loss and flipped back to her feet. She ducked into the first bathroom they passed to wash her hands.

Alfie was in the kitchen in his morning waistcoat and a thin, comfortable button up shirt. Casual day!

“Good morning, Miss Cassandra,” he said. The kitchen smelled like yeasty bread. Cass sneezed happily and peered around to see meats, cheeses, and fruits.

“Morning!” She chirped. “Barbara wants to stay for breakfast,” Cass said. Barbara wheeled in a moment later, sheepish.

“Good morning, Alfred,” she said. “If it's not too much trouble-”

“It's no trouble at all,” he reassured. “Miss Cassandra, would you add an extra place setting?”

Cass hopped to it, mimicking the placement Alfred had made. It was a nearly full table today. Timbird, Batdad, Dickbird, Cass, Danny baby, Damibat. And now Barbara bat.

She heard a jaw-cracking yawn before Danny swung open the door. “Good morning,” Danny baby yawned through his hand. His eyes were bleary. She watches with amusement as he shuffled in, face down. “Have a good ni-”

He stopped. Eyes on Barbara bat.

New adult, he was scared?

No. Cass rapidly calculated and shifted his shifting body language into emotions. Surprise, joy, love-love-lo-wrong! Not love! Sad. Wistful.

“This is my baby,” Cass said, pretending she didn't notice the reaction. “Danny. This is Barbara.”

Barbara must have noticed Danny's reaction to her. She didn't move closer, lifting a friendly hand from across the countertop.

Danny looked haunted. Danny looked small. “It's nice to meet you, Barbara,” he said. Weak smile.

She had to talk to him, Cass realized. She had to talk with him today. No more delaying. After breakfast, she would talk.

[sleepy-writes-stuff]

DP X DC PROMPT #25

(#) = Notes at the end of post

(*) = Just me building off of other ideas.

✦

Family Reunion

Clockwork sends an adult Danny, newly appointed Ancient of Space, on a mission through time again. Except this time, it isn't located on Earth, but a distant planet he's never even heard of before. Clockwork didn't tell him any specifics on what he was supposed to do or when he was supposed to return to his own time, just to blend in and have an experience. He would know when it was time to return.

Needless to say, he has a blast! His core is bursting with happiness at getting the chance to explore this unknown corner of the universe with a sky full of constellations he's never seen and fascinating locals. Considering he might be here a while, he buckles down and learns all about their culture and their traditions and even eventually learns their language without having to use the two-way translator Clockwork gave him.

He spends decades there, not even having to worry about how he never appears to age, the people here being incredibly long-lived. However, he eventually meets someone. Someone he falls head over heels for. He gets married. He has kids. He watches them slowly grow into adults as well. It isn't until one of his sons informs him that he's expecting his own child(1) that Danny feels a tug at his core.

He ignores it, but over the course of a few weeks, it's gone from the occasional pull to a full-on yank at his entire being, along with a sense of dread that something was going to happen to this wonderful little planet. To his family.

He becomes restless and loses so much sleep, it's a miracle he can even stand. His family are worried for him, but he assures them that he's just feeling a little under the weather. One night, he's sat up in bed, unable to sleep again. His gaze is fixed lovingly on his spouse, but nonetheless sad.

He doesn't miss when all the soft sounds of the night stop and a green glow appears behind him.

"It's time to leave, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"There isn't any way I could stay? I can't bring them with me?"

"I'm afraid not. There are some things that can't be changed or stopped, even when they fall into your domain. I'm sorry."

"Why send me here just to make me abandon them like this? What was the point?"

Clockwork is silent, but when Danny turns to look at the ghost, he's gone.

Danny takes a few more precious days to spend time with his family. Kiss his spouse. Hug his kids. Feel the strong kicks of his grandchild he won't be there to witness the birth of.

The night he leaves, he places a letter on his spouse's nightstand, gently kisses their forehead, and disappears in a flash of green, never to be seen again.

Years later is when Danny gets the news. That the planet Krypton is no more and that his family is gone. He searched the Ghost Zone for them, but he never knew the location of Krypton in the cosmos. Their afterlife is beyond his reach, in a place that isn't even on the Infamap.

He nearly drowns himself in grief when he finds a sliver of reprieve in the form of a news broadcast. An extraordinary man in blue and red with the kryptonian symbol for such emblazoned on his chest is shown fighting off multiple enemies at once. He is the spitting image of his father and Danny as well.

He had a grandson. His grandson was alive.

✦

(1) This was Kara, not Clark. Danny left before he even found out about Kal-El being in the oven, so there will be a misunderstanding at first. Then Kara pops up later, and Danny just bawls his eyes out that he had two surviving grandchildren without even knowing it this whole time. How he first meets either of them is up to you!

(*) What this means power-wise for Clark is yours to decide. As well as what Clark already knows about his grandfather from the stored information his father left him. What his father thought of Danny disappearing without a word is also up for you to decide.

[fukcnoplease]

Things always go wrong

Pt2 Pt3 Pt4 Pt5

Danny paced the halls of pariah dark’s castle, well his castle but even after a few years he wasn't used to that, as Frostbite watched in silence. His king isn't usually this restless before a council meeting but his distress was understandable. As his eighteenth birthday approached the council was getting more and more pushy for Danny to take up his role as king. Frostbite had used his leeway to allow the young king time to grow up and in the four years since his first transformation he had only been called to council a handful of times. It was an impressive feat less because they needed a king and more because the observers were anxious to keep the young king on a leash. 

This council meeting was called hastily as the anti-ecto laws had been passed recently and the GIW as well as the Fenton parents had become bolder in their pursuit of ghosts. The Fentons had almost captured one of Danny's rogues and it was too close of a call for the council to overlook. 

On top of that Dani was supposed to be coming home today. The young clone had taken to traveling the world as soon as she was free to. Her unstable nature had forced her home only a month after departing and it had taken months to convince Danny to let her go off alone again. Her destabilization had been easy to explain, as a clone she had been created without a ghost core and with continual use of her powers and no way to replenish her energy she had used her own body's ectoplasm to feed her powers. Frostbite was unsure if she would ever form her own core as her creation was unique but Danny had pushed. The idea Danny had come up with was to take a piece of his own core and give it to Dani, maybe jump-starting her own core cultivation in the process.

After defeating pariah dark Danny had begun absorbing his core, a way of proving his claim to the throne Frostbite had explained, and with it his own core had almost doubled in power. While unstable itself as it was still settling into its new power, it was possible to take a sliver and still keep the core at a healthy level. If Danny pushed for a bigger piece than strictly necessary, well no one but Frostbite would ever know that.

The council had rioted at another ghost having a piece of the king's core, it was usual for families to share cores in times of need but a king having a royal family was unheard of. Some of the council was against it all together and some were quick to try and coronate Dani a princess. Danny did his best to shield her from the council and made her promise to visit at least once every few months and call weekly. It had been a battle but Dani had accepted conditions as well as a phone Tucker had made for her. Then she was off, traveling the world and bringing back souvenirs and stories. 

A couple years had passed like that and they had finally settled into a comfortable rhythm. A rhythm rudely interrupted by Danny’s looming birthday and his parents lack of self control. He was supposed to be at Sam’s house, ready to hug Dani when she arrived and with a whole day of movie marathons and nachos planned. Instead he was stuck pacing his entrance hall as Sam kept him updated on the happenings in the living realm. 

“Your majesty,” Frostbite rumbled, “perhaps it is time you enter the council’s chamber. An intermission can only last so long.”

The monarch hummed but didnt stop pacing. Every turn caused his layered cape to billow behind him in a strange way, as if it was floating underwater rather than being manipulated by wind. The king's crown had dulled from a fiery bonfire into a thin misty glow that wrapped in a circle over his head. Jazz would tease him for it, ‘It looks like the aurora borealis, your love of the sky bleeds into everything doesn't it?’ and she was right, though he would never admit it. Even as he combed his hand through his hair and the crown, the misty fire dissipating around his hand before gathering again, it still twinkled as if far away stars were shining in the crowns light. 

Danny spared little thought to his regalia as he paced. A wave of dread had come over him midway through the arguing and he had called a pause so they could recollect themselves. He had tried to check in with Sam but she wasn't responding. He had heard nothing from Dani either and something deep within him was screaming something was wrong. He couldn't abandon a council meeting on a hunch and honestly it was one of the few times he didn't want to have to abandon the council meeting. If only because it would mean nothing was wrong.

Dani had had some close calls over the years and while she had really come into her powers she wasn't as strong as Danny and the one time she had been hit by Maddie Fenton still held fresh in Danny’s mind.

His phone buzzed.

Sam had replied.

Eco-Terrorist: We cant find Dani

It was the only message Danny needed before he was off. Ripping a hole in the dimension himself as he crossed back to his preferred plane. He barely noticed Frostbites thoughtful hum as he moved to bring the news of the king's departure to the council.

The precious seconds Danny took to arrive at Sam’s house were spent spiraling as to all the worst things that could have happened. The fear doubled as he stepped through Sam’s wall to find her holding Dani’s phone and pacing herself. Tucker sat at the desk scouring what looked like security cameras on his laptop as Danny popped back into view.

If Sam yelped it was only because she was too stressed to try and cover it up.

“We found her phone in Amity Park, she hadn't been responding and it had been almost an hour since she was supposed to show up.” Sam stressed, she was flexing her hands around the phone. 

“Since she usually messages us if she is going to be late we decided to check if everything was alright. When we saw she was in the park and hadnt move in a while. We left immediately.” Tucker added. He had a wobble to his voice and a shine to his eyes. Danny gritted his teeth. “All we found was this.” Sam said as she threw Dani’s phone on the bed as if it had personally been the thing to commit the crime and went back to pacing, flexing her hands in and out of fists.

“Do we have any security footage that might help?” Danny asked. 

“Ive been looking but the park doesnt have much cctv except around the perimeter or playground. Its been useless. All Ive seen is the Fenton-mobile.” Tucker paused, Danny could hear him swallow as the same thought passed through all their heads. “You… you dont think…” 

“Ill go check the lab.” Danny said before he vanished. Already making his way through town as Sam and Tucker raced to follow him. 

It didnt take long for Danny to make it to his house, the ghost shields were down but the Fenton-mobile was nowhere to be seen. It gave Danny little hope but he made his way down to the basement, transforming into his human form just in case. He made his way through his kitchen and down the stairs where he looked into the lab and into his worst fear.

Dani lay still on a metal table, restraints on her arms and legs and waist as a trickle of ectoplasm dripped from her left arm onto the floor. She wasnt even in her ghost form. He jumped the stairs and made it to her in two strides. 

“Dani? Can you hear me?” Her head was lolled to the side but her eyes were open, if only barely. She blinked and squirmed slightly, making a grumbling sound before going still again. She was alive, likely drugged, definitely bleeding out. Her arm had a gash in it and two tubes attached to needles lay on the floor beside her. The tubes were tangled and thrown about, as if someone had tripped on them and then let them be. Rage bubbled within Danny but he forced himself to focus. He would not let Dani bleed out because he was too busy seething at his parents. He grabbed whatever he could use as medical supplies and wrapped Dani’s arm before trying to break her restraint.

Electricity coursed through him and he cursed. Refusing to let panic take over he turned to his parents computer instead. There had to be something that could undo the restraints and regardless he had to wipe whatever information they had on Dani. What he found was a conversation log of Maddie Fenton and an Agent W discussing payment and proper handover specifications for a ‘perfect specimen’ Maddie had found. The money was staggering and Danny’s rage almost made him crush the mouse he was holding. 

At one point, Sam had offered up the idea of destroying the lab and joining Jazz at Gotham U where she had chosen to go for college. They had toyed with the idea, saying it was for the future or it was a last resort, but ultimately never gone through with it. It was a bad idea to drag a meta equivalent to Gotham and in all honesty, Danny wasnt comfortable leaving Amity. He hated leaving the town limits even if necessary, he couldnt imagine choosing to live somewhere else. But right now, staring at his bleary, injured, unstable sister, he decided he would have to. 

His rogues would be pissed and he didnt really have a solid plan but he refused to let this happen again. To anyone.

It was little hassle to find the unlock to the restraints and erase the computer completely. His parents didn't trust the cloud and the physical copies they had would be lost in the fire. Tucker had copies of everything anyway. Dani moved to sit up but really only managed to roll off the table. Danny caught and he shared some of his ectoplasm to try and help her heal. It wasnt much but she started to regain lucidity.

“Danny?” she whispered and Danny hummed in response. Their cores hummed at each other, the harmony encouraging her healing. A boom rattled the building, it was far away but it snapped Danny back to the present. They didnt have time to sit there, he didnt know when his parents would be back and he needed to leave. 

He laid Dani on the floor as he went around and dismantled as many things as he could, leaving the vulnerable pieces in the open. Finally he turned to take the ectoplasm filter that powered the entire house. When he ripped it off its mantle alarms started blaring and he turned and grabbed Dani, hauling her up into his arms as he ran up the stairs. He heard her giggle something about bumpy rides and he was out the door and barrelling towards his beat up car parked across the street. 

Jazz had given it to him for his sixteenth birthday. Apparently she had originally planned to buy it for herself for her move to Gotham but Sam had managed to convince her parents to buy Jazz a brand new car. Something about the public transportation system being dangerous and it being the first thing Sam had asked for that had been manageable. It was beat up and an old red but Danny loved the car and used it often. He worried he would have had to keep his parents away from it, in case they try and ghost proof it but they never even noticed it. He parked it across the street and they just assumed it was the neighbors. No one had lived in the houses around them for years.

He shoved Dani into the passenger side before hoping the hood and sliding into the drivers seat. He didnt know he could do that.

Shoving his key into the ignition the engine roared to life. He managed to get down the street before his house exploded. The shockwave sent the car forward and he managed to catch Dani’s head before it met the dash. His windows rattled but none of them broke, a small victory he thought. 

His mind flashed to all the things he had had in his room, his home. His memories, his souvenirs from Dani, all his space and nasa memorabilia, all his clothes and any pictures he thought were important. His family, his friends, his school, his only solid portal to the Infinite Realm. 

His emergency supplies.

“Fuck.” he whispered as he kept driving. Dani giggled and said something like ‘language’ but Danny was too busy swerving through traffic to hear her. His phone buzzed and he jolted, he maneuvered to pull it from his pocket as he tried to check it only to barely miss an oncoming car and drop it into the footwell of Dani’s seat. He cursed again and kept driving. He wasnt going to stop until he was well and out of Amity. He focused on driving and harmonizing with Dani as he drove. 

As they raced across Amity his core began to pulse with panic. The lingering pain from losing his home exploding into waves of fear.

He wasnt stopping. The pulsing grew more intense and Dani whimpered in her sleep. He tried to calm down but something felt so intrinsically wrong with leaving and his core felt like it was going to burst.

The pressure grew as they got closer and closer to Amity’s border and as they crossed it something in Danny popped. 

He almost blacked out from the pain. The car swerving as he tried to regain control of himself. Something had broken and it felt like he was tilted on an axis. He could barely see and was forced to pull over. His breathes came in short painful gasps and he bit back a scream. He was trying to ride through the pain when his phone rang. Grasping for it he picked up and brought it to his ear.

“Danny? We saw the explosion, are you ok? Did you find Dani?” Sam said, crackling over the phone.

“Mhm. Dani is with me. We are going to Gotham.” Pain cracked his voice as he struggled to breathe. “ ‘s not safe. Need Jazz.” Was all he could manage before he was heaving.

“Danny! Stay where you are. We have ectoshots with us and we can-” Sam was cut off by an explosion behind Danny’s car. He whipped around to see a white van crashing through traffic. Danny slammed his foot on the gas and turned back to the road. The pain in his chest dulled as his desperation to protect Dani slammed back in full force. 

“Meet. In. Gotham.” Was all he could growl before he hung up the phone and drove in what he hoped was the direction north east. 

~~

currently obsessing over dpxdc shenanigans

I just love seeing danny act like a cornered animal

[alwaysonthemend]

Author's Note: Inspired by this wonderful post. Thank you so much @tripthelightfandomtastic for some incredibly sexy dialogue and @edgingthedarkness for calling it to my attention 🤭

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. Jake x fem!reader / rough sex / sir kink / unprotected p in v sex / digital penetration / oral / brief overstimulation / use of gag / some name calling (brat, slut) / minor cock warming at the end / begging / possessiveness (nothing too major) / please let me know if I missed anything.

Apologies for any typos/ spelling mistakes.

Enjoy <3

~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think I need to sleep for at least 12 hours tonight.” Jake tells his twin, patting his pockets for his wallet to pay the bill. “I’m exhausted.” 

“Oh is that why you were being so pissy today?” Josh’s grin is smug as he finds his own wallet first and fishes his card out and tosses it onto the waiting bill before Jake can. “Makes sense.”

Jake’s eyes narrow and you fight a tiny smile, trying not to let your amusement show. Jake can be a little moody when he’s tired. And just… in general. 

“I’m the pissy one?” Jake counters, flicking Josh’s card off the bill and placing his own there instead. “I seem to be remembering things a little differently.” 

Jake’s tone is snarky – just a tiny bit more accusing than Josh’s had been. You already know that Jake had a… rough day today. He’d told you about it in the car – Josh had been demanding retake after retake and Sam had quote on quote, “disagreed with every fucking thing I said just for the hell of it.” In all honesty, knowing the Kiszkas, it had probably been all three of them being more difficult than necessary while Danny had to play mediator… Not that you’d said that to Jake. God, no. You’d only listened, allowing him to vent; nodded and frowned at the right moments. Clearly, tonight’s meal and a few drinks with Josh had done little to help Jake’s temper. 

Josh opens his mouth to retort but you interrupt. “I’m going to run to the restroom.” Both sets of matching eyes flash to you as you speak. Josh grins and Jake nods, sliding out of the booth to allow you to exit.  

In addition to his sour mood, Jake has been jittery the whole night. You’d noticed from the moment the two of you stepped into the bar that he had other things on his mind – whether it was a new song or riff or lyrics you couldn’t quite tell. But he was distracted. You know already how common it is that he grows restless, as if there’s so much energy buzzing beneath his skin that he’s hardly able to stand still. At first, it had almost been hard to be around when he got like this. His restlessness so palpable you could practically feel it coating your skin. At first, you would simply move to another room, allow him to sort himself out on his own. But after a little while, it became easier to tune him out – to still navigate around him when he gets like this. His aura has gravity of its own, you’ve come to discover. It’s hard to be apart from him for too long. 

He’ll deny it if you ask him if something is wrong. He’ll say he’s fine – that he’s not upset about today anymore and that he’s acting perfectly normal. So you don’t bother asking. Instead, you simply allow his energy to wash over you as you watch him interact with his twin at the booth. 

By the time you return, they seem to have momentarily put their little dispute on hold as they both turn to look at you as you approach the booth. 

“Are you ready, love?” Jake’s voice is smooth – neutral. Betraying nothing of the chaos that you know lies within. “We paid the bill while you were gone.” 

“Halfsies.” Josh supplies and Jake’s eyes cut to him for a moment before landing back on you. You nod, smiling at the two of them as they exit the booth in almost complete unison, each twin now holding himself in the exact same manner as the other as they prepare to leave. “It was nice actually getting to see you.” Josh continues as the three of you walk through the restaurant and to the door. “Jake always keeps you to himself when we’re home.”

Josh is teasing; you can tell by the slight dimple that has appeared on his left cheek as he speaks. But Jake tenses ever so slightly beside his twin as you all come to a stop on the sidewalk outside. The night air is warm – humid enough that it makes your skin feel sticky. The joys of a Tennessee summer. 

“He can be just a little selfish, I suppose.” You answer back, thinking nothing of it. But again, that energy around Jake seems to increase, his chocolate eyes flashing in the light spilling out into the air from inside the bar. 

“Am I not allowed to miss her when we leave?” Jake queries, slipping a heavy arm around your waist in such a way that it almost feels possessive. “Plus, I’m always stuck with you.” He says to his twin, grinning a little. “Who would blame me for wanting her to myself when we are home?”

Josh’s brow raises, a knowing glance shot towards you before he regards his twin. He senses Jake’s energy – the restlessness; senses that he could easily poke the bear and start a senseless argument that would no doubt descend into an actual fight. But he holds himself back, metaphorically biting his tongue as he gives Jake a little grin. 

“Can’t blame you at all, brother. Not at all.” His grin turns a little wicked. “But maybe you should share her more often – she was my friend first, afterall.”

So perhaps he hadn’t decided against poking the bear afterall. You fight the smile that threatens to overtake you, realizing that now might not be the time to pick sides by agreeing with Josh. He had been the one to know you first. He’d been the one to introduce you to Jake, even. But Jake needs no reminder of that little fact right now. 

“I see you plenty.” You offer, feeling the pointed squeeze of Jake’s fingers into your hip, “Plus, you constantly blow my phone up with texts. We talk plenty, Joshua.” 

Josh grins and shrugs his shoulders, looking pleased anyway. 

“Great seeing you.” Jake offers. “But I’m sick of you already.” 

Josh laughs, completely unaffected by his brother’s words. He’s used to it. He knows deep down Jake doesn’t mean them… too much.  

“Love you too, Jakey.” Josh grins at you – the exact same grin that Jake gave him just a moment ago. “Lovely to see you as always, Y/n. Hopefully someone lets me see you again before we leave.”

“I hope so, too.” You answer him, laughing just a little despite your best efforts.

Josh gives a theatrical sweeping bow before turning on his heel and disappearing to his Jeep, laughing the whole way. Jake scowls and tugs you away towards his own vehicle, that heavy arm still pointedly around your waist. 

He opens your door for you, a soft “Princess” leaving his lips as he dips his head a little. You grin and climb into the car and he closes the door behind you. 

Jake playing guitar is sinful. But Jake behind the wheel of a car? It’s downright indecent – something that no matter how many times you see it, it still gets you just a little. The thick muscles of his forearm twitch and move beneath his newly tan skin (thank you Europe tour) and the clench of his jaw as he watches the road has you clenching your thighs. To your credit, you only stare a little bit as he drives the two of you back to his house (His house, not yours. Something that once again feels pointed.) Neither of you speak much, the silence between the two of you just as comfortable as idle chit chat. Fleet Foxes flow softly from the speakers, filling the air between the two of you that seems to grow thicker and thicker with each passing moment. 

“See something you like?” 

You startle, eyes cutting up to see the curve of Jake’s lips as he continues staring out at the road ahead. Apparently you had been staring too much – enough for him to notice, anyway. Cheeks flushing, you shake your head in denial. 

“Just thinking.” 

His brow raises and it does nothing to quell the heat pooling in your lower belly.  “About?” He urges you on, tilting his head as if to hear you better.  You open your mouth to give a bullshit answer but he interrupts. “And don’t say work or the weather. I already know what you’re thinking.” Your jaw snaps shut. The fucker.  

“If you know, then why did you ask?” Your tone comes out a little brattier than you meant it to and Jake’s fingers tighten on the wheel. Seems that Josh isn’t the only one who’s going to poke the bear tonight. 

“Because I wanted to hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

A sharp exhale is the only evidence you have that Jake heard you. Refusing to give you a response, he flicks on the blinker to turn onto his street in a way that somehow seems snarky. It doesn’t take long before he’s pulling into his driveway and putting the car in park. Dark eyes turn to you, looking almost black in the dim light of the car. 

“Get out.” 

His tone leaves no space for arguing and you quickly unbuckle and stumble out of the car. Jake doesn’t wait on you – crossing the driveway to the front door in long strides, fishing for his key from his pocket. As you follow, you admire the broadness of his shoulders, the dominance within his gait alone, and yet another thrill of anticipation curls down your spine and settles between your thighs. He opens the door, not even sparing a glance backwards at you. He knows you’re following, knows you’ll follow him into the very depths of Hell if he asked. 

You expect him to pounce as the door closes. But instead, he merely slips his shoes off and places them neatly by the door. His keys and wallet are placed on the foyer table. Your shoes join his by the door. Then your purse on the hook. You walk deeper into the house, making your way into the kitchen – one eye on Jake as he moves about the space, orbiting you but not yet taking the step to touch you. It puts you on edge in an odd, delicious sort of way. He’s like a shark who’s scented blood; not yet going in for the kill, but instead waiting for the right moment to strike. You grab a glass from the cabinet and pour yourself a glass of water from the sink. The cool liquid doesn’t at all soothe the fire running through your veins. 

Not a second after you place the glass on the counter, you finally feel the heat of him pressing up against your back. His arms circle your waist and his lips hover over the sensitive skin of your ear. 

“I don’t mean to be so possessive.” He murmurs, his lips brushing against your skin. “Or pissy. ‘m sorry.” He mumbles, voice low. The heat in your belly simmers just a little, easing into something softer for a moment. 

“You have nothing to apologize for.” You answer him, tilting your head to the side as his kisses trail softly down your neck. 

Using his grip around your waist, Jake pulls you tighter against him. You tilt your head back towards him and he kisses you – soft but urgent. His hands caress your sides, your hips, then come up to cup your jaw as his tongue slips through your parted lips. He’s thorough, kissing you as if he’s savoring a meal. 

“Why are you being so sweet?” You’d been fully expecting a night of Jake using you to get all his frustration and energy out – an occurrence that you were more than looking forward to. His sweetness is a welcome surprise, though not at all how you saw this night going. 

He kisses along your jaw before seizing your earlobe between his teeth, nipping delicately before his mouth trails lower. His hips press into you and there’s no hiding the hard line of him in his pants, hot and pulsing against you. 

“I just want you to know how much I love you,” He whispers against your neck, giving you more kisses, “and how much I respect you,” another kiss. “because I'm gonna fuck you like I hate you.” 

All the air leaves your lungs and your heart feels like it might beat out of your chest. The earnestness and simplicity with which he utters such vulgarity is the sexiest thing you’ve ever experienced, leaving your brain empty of anything beyond your desire for him. But he’s taking too long now, his sweet kisses no longer enough and leaving you hollow and aching for him to fulfill the promise of his warning. The words slip out from your lips unbidden. 

“Why don’t you get the fuck on with it, then?”

His body goes rigid for one beat, maybe two, and then he spins you impossibly fast, a hand against your stomach, pressing you back into the wall. He captures your wrists with the other, holding them prisoner above your head. 

“Fuckin’ brat.” He groans against your mouth and the rough timbre of his voice floods your veins with a wave of primal need for him. “This is the thanks I get for trying to be sweet to you?” His shoulders are tense, the muscles taut with pent up energy and frustration. You aren’t sure what it is that’s got him in such a state but you want to replace it all with lust. You want him to take it out on you – to give you the overwhelming pleasure that you know he’s capable of delivering. “Well?”

“Fuck me.” You demand in lieu of answering him and his eyes seem to come alive as his nostrils flare at your tone. “Sir.” You add, the word dripping with sarcasm, making a mockery of the title that he’s more than earned in the bedroom. 

His breathing changes and there’s a war in his eyes that you’re determined to win. He leans down, his face only inches from yours. “I don't think you know what you’re asking for, Princess.” The nickname, the growl of his words rumbles up through his chest and every nerve ending in your body flares to life. 

His mouth collides with yours in a kiss – a rough, demanding thing as he plunges his tongue between your lips, seizing your mouth as his. Lust strokes down your spine and wetness floods your panties as he takes your ass in his hands and hauls you up against his hips. Your back presses into the wall as you use it for leverage to get closer to him. You lock your legs around his waist as your hands settle on his shoulders, the muscles quivering beneath your touch. 

Heat floods your body in an addictive rush, setting every inch of you aflame as his lips trail down the column of your throat, nipping and biting as he goes. But they aren’t gentle as they had been before – no, the sting of his teeth lets you know that your neck will be a mess in the morning, a painting of swirling purples and reds that will stand as testament to how far you pushed him tonight. The hedonistic, lecherous part of you is only excited further by the thought.

With your legs still wrapped around his waist, Jake walks backwards and turns you. Before you can even open your mouth to ask him where he’s going, your back hits the kitchen table. He hadn’t used as much force as you know he could have, but Jake had placed you hard enough onto the wooden surface that the breath in your lungs freezes for a moment as you glance up at his looming figure above you. He presses in close, roughly gripping your knees and shoving them apart so that he can walk forward and take up the space between them. 

“Hands above your head.” The words are rough – more of a growl than anything and you instantly comply, suddenly feeling unable to do anything other than what he asks of you. His fingers trail down your torso, his touch searing your skin even through the fabric of your blouse. His fingers trail underneath, slipping up your stomach and then behind your back. He tugs the blouse off you and onto the floor. With impressive skill, he then unhooks your bra behind your back and tosses it away as well, eyes now trained on the hard peaks of your nipples as you lay there exposed for him. He pauses, as if drinking in the sight of you, and impatience has you speaking before thinking once again. 

“You just going to stand there and stare?” As soon as the question leaves your mouth you know that you’ve really done it now. Jake’s gaze turns wicked, his grin devilish, as he shakes his head at you. 

“Y’know you’re lucky,” He begins, stepping back from you and unbuckling his belt. His fingers work slowly to pull it from his belt loops. When he at last gets it free, he reaches down and grips your hands where they rest obediently above your head, “that you’re so pretty. Otherwise I wouldn’t put up with that fucking mouth of yours.” Slowly, teasingly, he wraps the leather of his belt around your wrists and then cinches it tight, securing your wrists tightly together and then placing them back down onto the table above your head. 

Your body tingles with sinful pleasure and excitement at the feeling of being bound, at being kept where he wants you. Despite your mouth saying things before you can think them through, you desperately want to please the man above you. You want to worship him, to give him anything and everything he could ever ask of you. You begin to respond to him but he silences you with a heavy hand over your mouth. 

“Careful, Princess. Before I make you shut up with my cock, yeah?” Eyes wide, you nod and Jake lifts his hand with a satisfied nod. “What do you say to me?”

“Yes sir.” The words are shaky, thick with lust. It takes all your focus to make your brain form the words, to make your lips form the correct sounds. You can hardly think beyond the lust swirling inside your head. 

Jake doesn’t reward you with praise for your compliance as he normally would and disappointment trickles through you for the briefest of moments. But then his mouth is on your nipple, his fingers digging into your hips to hold you still. He bites down and you whimper, core pulsing as his tongue swirls around the hard bud to soothe the sting. Then he’s trailing lower, searing kisses working their way down your belly until he reaches the waistband of your skirt. Jake bunches the fabric up around your hips, exposing your damp panties for him to admire. You wish desperately that he would take the damn skirt off completely but you know that you’re in no position to be making requests. 

“Look at you.” His words are honey sweet, dripping with thinly veiled desire. You can feel his hot breath on your clothed heat, his white teeth flashing as he grins up at you smugly. “You’ve ruined these poor things, haven’t you?”

You whimper as he trails the pad of his finger over your clothed clit, causing your hips to jump up towards his hand. Jake hooks his fingers in your panties with his left hand, shoving the fabric to the side – clearly unwilling to even take the time to pull them all the way off you. Then his other hand is hovering over your center, fingers running through your slick as he hums in approval. Without any more warning, he plunges a finger inside of you, curling upwards deliciously and instantly finding that spot inside of you that drives you crazy. 

You cry out, back arching up off the wooden table. Your hands lift up off the table and then slam back downwards, anything else feeling uncomfortable thanks to Jake’s belt keeping them bound.

“So responsive.” Jake shows no mercy, quickly sinking another finger inside of you. Distantly, your foggy mind realizes that – even though he promised to fuck you like he hates you, you know that he would never do anything without properly prepping you first. If you were able to focus on anything other than his fingers, you might have thanked him. Instead, all you can do is moan as he works you masterfully with his fingers. 

“Jake.” You plead as he abuses your sweet spot over and over, keeping you hovering over the edge of release. “Jake, please.” You beg again as he gives no indication that he’s heard you other than grinning devilishly. “Jake, I can’t- I need-” The words won’t form right no matter how hard you try, the agonizing pleasure proving to be too much. 

“I know exactly what you need.” Jake answers darkly, “But you’re not asking nicely, are you?”

Eyes clenched shut, you shake your head frantically. “Please, sir?” You try instead, hips bucking forward to try and find some sort of friction. “Please make me cum? Please, please, sir.” Even to your own ears you sound pathetic but you can’t be bothered to care. All you can think about is how badly you need to cum, how incredible his fingers feel. All you can think about is Jake. “Sir, please-” 

“Enough.” Jake’s fingers leave you, and you whimper loudly in protest. But you’re silenced as Jake suddenly tugs even harder on your panties. The fabric digs harshly into your skin, and then you hear the sound of fabric tearing. Jake rips them from you, and then he’s shoving the ruined fabric into your gaping mouth, silencing you as the taste of your own arousal floods your tongue. Wide-eyed, all you can do is stare at him. 

Jake, looking entirely too smug and pleased with himself, eases his fingers back into your aching cunt and has you back to the edge in mere seconds, your whimpers and cries muffled by the panties shoved between your lips. Finally, Jake’s mouth descends onto your clit, his fingers never once slowing or faltering as he sucks your clit mercilessly. Your orgasm swoops in – quick, overwhelming, the pleasure white hot as it rocks through your body. Muscles quivering, you scream through your make-shift gag as Jake moans into your pussy, his eyes closing as if the taste of you is a gourmet meal. 

When at last he pulls away, you're left there in a daze – aching for more of him already. Clearly just as desperate to feel you fully, Jake grips your hips and brings your ass to the edge of the table. With impressive speed Jake rips his shirt off over his head and then even quicker has his trousers off and discarded to the floor.

His cock – achingly hard and the head glistening with precum, has your mouth watering. He steps between your legs once more and instinctively your legs wrap around his waist, bringing your slick pussy to rsst his beautiful cock. Jake hikes your skirt up higher to your belly and then his left hand finds your hip – his grip bruising. Gripping his length in the other, Jake runs his cock through your folds, gathering your slick before nudging the blunt head against your entrance. 

“Fuckin’ take it.” He growls, sheathing himself fully inside of you at last. Jake groans deeply and you moan the best you can through your gag. Giving you no time at all to adjust, Jake’s pace is immediately brutal. After three hard thrusts, his cock brushing against your sweet spot each time thanks to the angle of your hips, the sting of him quickly bleeds into pleasure. The table creaks and groans beneath you, the legs screeching against the kitchen floor as Jake pounds into you.

"Such a slut." Jake groans, but somehow he makes the word seem like a compliment. The wet squelching sound coming from between your legs would be embrassing if Jake didn't look like he could fall apart already. "You like it when I treat you like this?"

You nod frantically in answer, loving every second and still wanting more.

"'Course you do." The words escape through gritted teeth, his voice shaky despite the hard persona he's putting on. "Shit, Y/n."

Jake’s gaze falls down between the two of you, eyes trained on where he moves in and out of you, his skin growing shiny with sweat. His hair sticks to his temples and the side of his neck, his necklaces swinging and clinking in the air between the two of you. “Look so fucking good stretched around my cock.” 

You can’t answer, the feel of him moving inside of you too perfect to think of anything else. Jake’s hips slap against yours, his impressive stamina allowing his pace to remain fast, mercilessly, without faltering for even a second. It doesn’t take long for the heat simmering in your lower belly to rise, your body plummeting once again, head first, towards your second orgasm. Jake’s mouth is open, his brows furrowing as his own release draws nearer and nearer. His hand reaches up and pulls your ruined panties from your mouth at last and instantly your cries – once muffled, echo throughout the room along with the sound of Jake’s skin slapping against yours.  

“Say my name when you cum.” Jake orders, his thumb finding your clit and circling the swollen bud. His touch isn’t gentle – the pace just as brutal as the pace of his hips slamming into yours. Your orgasm hits you like a freight train and you scream Jake’s name, the muscles in your body convulsing violently. 

“Oh fuck. Fuck, Y/n.” Jake’s pace finally begins to falter as your walls clench around him. Jake’s left hand braces against the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip. A litany of curses and groans fills the air as Jake spills inside of you, the feeling of his hot release making your eyes roll back. Your body burns with pleasure – pleasure that is dangerously close to bleeding into hot agony from overstimulation. 

Finally, Jake stills, his cock softening inside of you as he breathes out shakily, one hand coming up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Still staying inside of you, the feeling of him there somehow comforting, Jake reaches up and unbinds your wrists. He brings each one to his lips in turn, kissing the red skin where the leather had been digging into you. 

“I love you.” He offers, his brown eyes now regarding you with a soft, almost sympathetic look. “My princess.” His fingers gently trace over your lips, his touch reverent.

“Love you more.” You murmur tiredly,

“Impossible.”

<fin>

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[vivwritesfics]

Keep On Rolling - MV1

Chapter One

Summary: Lando's best friend having feelings for anyone on the grid? Impossible, right? She worked with them, sharing her friendship with the grid with the world via the FormulaY/N youtube channel.

After film a video including... spicy water (alcohol), everything changes between her and a certain world champion. Good thing she hasn't had a crush on him since his F1 debut, right?

Right?

2K words

Hello everybody! Long break, I know (life throws curveballs), but I'm taking the blog in a different direction. Hope you guys like my first F1 imagine, I'm really passionate about it.

Series Masterlist

"Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Paddock Pals," Y/N said to the camera, holding her microphone in her hand. "Now, if you're new to the channel or don't remember the first installment, Paddock Pals is where cameraman James and I go around the Formula One paddock, dressed in the best disguises, and try to have the weirdest interview possible with the drivers," she explained. "Whoever recognises us first wins the game."

Y/N L/N was maybe the biggest name in Formula One youtube. She brought something to the game that nobody else had - access to the drivers.

Growing up as best friends with Lando Norris had its perks. She got to make a career out of her friendship and got to travel the world. She wasn't much into the sport until she met Lando. Now, she was a woman obsessed.

"As you can probably tell, James and I are not yet in disguise. We're filming this the night before so we had head straight there tomorrow, catch them bright, early, and unaware." She was stood in her hotel room in Australia, going over the previous installment of Paddock Pals. "Last time we got caught out by the honey badger himself, Daniel Riccardo. So, this time around, Danny Ric is going to be helping us out by letting us do a pretend interview with him when we need to."

The cameraman walked over to the mirror, showing himself. "This year we're making predictions on who we think will catch us out. I think it'll be Charles this year," he said. "He's been suspicious for a while, always asking when we're doing the next episode."

"As always, I think it's going to be Lando," said Y/N when the camera turned back to her. "I always try to leave him until last because, if anybody is going to catch us out, it's going to be him."

After that, James cut the camera. They needed a break, a moment to gather themselves together. "You really think Charles?" Y/N asked as they changed over the head of her microphone. Usually, it was the FormulaY/N microphone, but she changed it to a generic black one for the Paddock Pals video. "Not Max or Oscar?"

"And why would I say Max?" Asked James with a grin. Y/N glared, but she didn't push. Charles was a good choice. He spent almost as much time with Y/N as Lando did. Her audience loved him, and she lived to keep her audience happy. That was what brought in the money. "Want to put a wager on this one?"

Y/N shook her head. She positioned herself ready to start filming again. They filmed late into the night, Y/N showing off the props and the outfits they were going to wear for the rest of the video. Her phone buzzed once, and they had to film the whole section again.

By the time they were finished they had barely any battery left in the camera and were ready for bed. James had left to go to his own room but Y/N was sitting on her bed, texting Lando. It wasn't anything important, wishing him good luck for tomorrow and complaining about the heat in Australia.

And then it was a restless sleep. When Y/N woke up in the middle of the night, she stayed up scrolling through her comments. It didn't make getting to sleep any easier for her, scrolling through the comments on her youtube videos and social media posts. There were positive fans, most of them seemed to be young women. But there were some, commenting on her appearance and calling her friendship with the grid fake. Some said she didn't know what she was talking about when it came to Formula One, that she was only there because she was sleeping with Lando.

Of course, none of it was true. It played over in Y/N's head nonetheless. Normally, Y/N would text Lando when this happened, but he was asleep. And sleep was desperately what he needed leading up to the qualifying.

Eventually, Y/N fell asleep, her phone still in her hand.

Y/N and James woke up to their alarms in the early hours of the morning. They got up, set up the camera and got into their disguises. "You're so lucky I was obsessed with special affects as a kid," said James as he attached the fake nose to Y/N's face. He placed a bushy moustache under it and handed her the coloured contacts to put in.

Y/N's clothing was heavily padded, hiding her shape. She had her hair hidden up in a cap and an obviously fake press pass. She just had to help nobody looked too closely.

James did his own disguise. He changed everything but the camera, but they just had to hope nobody noticed that, either. Once they were ready and had given an update to the viewers, Y/N and James made their way down to the paddock.

"A lot of people have been asking us to include Alonso and Stroll in these videos. Truth is, I only do these videos with the guys I'm close with. Fernando is such a legend that I get nervous around him, and I just haven't spent that time with Lance," she explained to the camera as they walked.

"And now, for our first victim," said James.

The drivers that walked past were the ones Y/N didn't have anything planned for. Sargeant, Stroll, Checo Perez. Y/N and James waited and waited until somebody came by.

Oscar Piastri. The poor, young Australian was Y/N's first victim. "Oscar! Welcome to your first home race in Formula One!" Y/N shouted, calling him over for an interview. The second question was normal, something Oscar was happy to answer. But then Y/N got a little strange. "As all F1 fans know, the man who had your seat before you loved to do a shoey. Have you managed to try one yet?" The question itself wasn't strange, but it was about to be.

Y/N slowly eased off her shoe as Oscar answered the question. When he answered no, not yet in Formula One, Y/N passed him her microphone. "Hold this for me," she said and picked her shoe up from the floor. She grabbed a can of beer from her coat pocket and poured the contents of it into her shoe. "Here, try mine."

Oscar's eyes went wide. "Uh, no thanks," he said and passed the microphone back to James. Without finishing the interview, Oscar walked away. Y/N couldn't blame him, she would have done the same.

"Warm up complete. Time for the real thing," said Y/N brushing down the hairs of her fake moustache.

The next driver to walk past was poor George Russell.

Y/N went on and on, asking the drivers the weirdest questions she could think of. Most finished the interview, or walked away before it had finished. Halfway through, Y/N had her interview with the honey badger himself, Daniel Riccardo. It wasn't a real interview, but they made it look as such. The end of the interview was made to look like a success.

After that, Y/N interviewed Ocon, Tsunoda, and Leclerc. Charles went on the longest out of any of the drivers. Y/N asked him questions about Ferrari and how sad he is after almost every race. He looked at her with confusion when she spoke, and Y/N thought she had been found out.

Y/N moved on. It was Verstappen next. Y/N asked weird questions and got the perfect response. He definitely knew, she thought as he laughed. Towards the end of the interview, Y/N felt the hat come off her head, revealing her hair. She gasped and turned around to see Charles stood there, her hat in hand. "I knew it!" He cried, using her hat to smack her shoulder. "I knew it was you!"

"And there you have it, folks," Y/N began, placing her hat back on her head. This time it didn't hide her hair. "This years winner of Paddock Pals is Charles Leclerc! What do you win, Mr Leclerc? Bragging rights, of course," she said and passed her microphone to the Monégasque.

Charles did an acceptance speech. Like everything he and Y/N did together, it was all for a laugh.

"That concludes this years episode of Paddock Pals. Thank you everybody for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and join us next week and in Azerbaijan for the next race."

James cut off the camera. "And we're out," he said and pulled off his fake nose.

Y/N did the same, pulling off the fake nose and the moustache from her face. "Did you have any idea?" Asked Y/N, turning to Max. The heat in Australia was sweltering. Y/N worked on taking off her multitude of padded jumpers, leaving her in a loose, classy shirt and a pair of shorts.

Not answering, Max looked away and let out a laugh. Of course, he knew, thought Y/N. Shaking her head, she turned away from him. "Good luck, Super Max," she said and took her leave, walking away from the Paddock.

It wasn't race day, but her viewers didn't have to know that. It was qualifying and Y/N wouldn't miss it for the world. James left the paddock, going back to the room to begin editing the video. Y/N made her way to the grandstands to watch. She loved nothing more than sitting with the McLaren fans to watch the qualifying and the race. In most laces Lando's fans were her fans, but they were also respectful, asking for selfies before the qualifying began so she could watch in peace.

***

Race day meant race day vlogs for Y/N. Everything from getting ready to after the race, the people wanted to see it all. Y/N tried to dress her best for every race, this time a McLaren shirt with a white tennis skirt.

Cameraman James didn't accompany her for race day vlogs. Sometimes he was in them, watching the race alongside her, but that was a rarity. Y/N had a separate camera for her vlogs. The video quality was worse than when James had his big camera, but the quality wasn't what people were there for.

After having breakfast and getting her final bits ready, Y/N headed down to the paddock. It had become a tradition that she heads down there to wish Lando good luck. She filmed herself going down to the paddock and wishing Lando luck, but turned off the camera after that.

"You look tired," said Lando as Y/N put the camera down.

Y/N shrugged her shoulders. "I thought my makeup covered it up," she answered, leaning against the wall.

Rolling his eyes, Lando put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her away from the wall. "You could have texted me if you couldn't sleep."

"And make you tired before the race? No way, Norris."

Lando laughed. "You better get going to the grandstands," he said, walking her to the edge of the garage.

Nodding, Y/N followed him. "Good luck out there, Lando Norris," she said and kissed his cheek.

Y/N filmed herself making her way to the grandstands. She turned off her camera for more selfies with the fans and waited for the race to begin.

The race started smoothly. Of course, Verstappen was on pole, but that's why they called him Super Max. He had Sainz, Hamilton and Leclerc behind him. Lando was stuck in the midfield, but Y/N still cheered him on.

Lap twenty and Lando was taken out of the race. "Shit!" Y/N cried, standing up. She watched as he was stuck in the barrier and thanked God he was near the pits. He drove the car into the garage and Lando climbed out.

Biting her nails, Y/N pulled out her phone and texted Lando.

Letting out a breath, Y/N pulled out her camera. "Update on the race, Lando has just retired after a crash. He's okay. He's in the garage right now and the race is still ongoing. Our favourite driver might be out of the race, but our second favorite is still going," she said and put the camera down.

Y/N sat back in her seat. She turned her attention back to the race, keeping her phone on and in her lap in case Lando needed her.

[disillusioneddanny]

A Place in this world

Danny took a breath and let it out slowly as he started to get ready for the day. It had been six months since his parents lost custody of him since he had been welcomed into the folds of the Wayne Family. Since Batman himself had saved him from his parents’ experimentation table. His parents were now safely locked up in Arkham Asylum where they would spend the next ten years serving their punishment and Danny was safely living within the confines of Wayne Manor.

Things had been going rather well so far. The Bats had been insanely understanding about Danny wanting to live a normal life now that the portals had all been shut down. The most they requested from Danny was the occasional help on their gadgets and Danny was more than happy to help with that. He had more fun working on the Batmobile and Batplane than he ever did being a vigilante.

And they had encouraged his special interests! They even indulged him in it, letting him have his own little study dedicated to just his experiments and inventions. It had been amazing when Bruce had first shown him all of the spaces that were just for him. He had a bedroom that was as big as his parents' old living room and had an entire space dedicated to his inventions. And on top of that, Bruce had encouraged him to build his own portal so that if he wanted to go to the ghost zone he could. He had even made a space in the Batcave that was just for him if he ever decided to build it.

Six months in and he hadn’t decided yet if that was something he wanted to do. He hadn’t gone ghost a single time since he had moved to Gotham. He was starting to miss it if he was going to be honest. There was something about his ghost form that was just truly comforting. It just felt wrong, though, almost like it was taboo to do such a thing. Which he had no real reason to feel that way. Batman or well, Bruce, had assured him multiple times now that he was more than welcome to change into his ghost form whenever he wanted. Had just requested that Danny let him know if he was going out when he was Phantom so that they wouldn’t think he was a new rogue or anything of the such.

He was missing it, though. The longer he went without shifting into his ghost form, the tighter his skin felt. It was starting to feel like he couldn’t fit in his human form anymore. He could feel himself growing more restless as the days went by, and could feel himself fraying at the edges.

Which was why he was letting himself spend the day in his Phantom form even if it was kinda terrifying the more he thought about it. It was the first time since Batman had saved him and none of his new family had ever really seen him in this form before. It was nerve-wracking but he was going to do it.

He let the bright rings wrap around his body and breathed out as he felt himself change into Phantom, it felt like taking a deep breath on a cold winter’s day. He let himself phase through the door, using his powers a little more than he used to dispel some of the pent-up energy.

The Fenton’s had hypothesized that ecto entities relied on ectoplasm to live, that they needed it like humans needed oxygen. But that wasn’t quite right. Ghosts were ectoplasm. Despite the fact that they were sentient and sapient-looking beings, they were more closely aligned with plants. They created their own energy to survive. And Danny had been letting the ecto that his ghost form created build up inside of him and now he was just about ready to burst from all of it.

“It’s fine,” he breathed out before floating out of the room. His feet were mere inches from the ground as he made his way down the stairs and into the breakfast room where he could already hear the rest of his family sitting around talking and preparing for their mornings. The only people who lived in the manor were Alfred, Bruce, Damian, and Duke. So it wasn’t like everyone in the Wayne family was going to be there to see him. Jason lived in Crime Alley, Dick was in Bludhaven, Steph lived on campus, Cass was in Hong Kong and well, no one actually knew where Tim lived now that Danny was thinking about it.

Why did no one know where Tim lived? He shook his head, he was distracting himself from the matter at hand. And that was having breakfast with his new brothers and adoptive father.

Things quieted as he floated through the wall and gave them an awkward smile. “G’morning,” he mumbled, dipping his head down as he took his usual seat beside Damian.

Bruce gave him a small, proud smile. “Good morning, Danny. Or should we call you Phantom when you’re in this form?” He asked and Danny felt his cheeks blush, a bright green color when he was in this form.

“Danny’s fine. Phantom’s just what I went by when I was out as a hero,” he said, stabbing at the pancakes placed in front of him. “Sorry, I just–”

“No need to apologize, Daniel,” Damian said, a small smile on his face. “We are happy that you feel comfortable enough to show us this side of you.”

Danny gave him a small smile. “Yeah, I uh, I realized I’m needing to take better care of my ghost self. And you guys are safe, I don’t have to worry like I did with the Fentons,” he said quietly.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Bruce asked him, arching a brow in curiosity.

Danny let out a quiet hum as he cut up his pancakes, frowning at the slightly strange texture. Dick had warned him that Alfred’s pancakes weren’t the best but he wasn’t expecting them to be like straight-up rubber. Jason had said that no one had the guts to tell him that they were gross and well, Danny had eaten much worse than rubbery pancakes.

“My ghost side has a tendency to create bonds with people I consider family, so it’s wanting to create those bonds with all of you,” he said carefully, staring at his rubbery pancakes rather than at his new family.

“I think that’s completely okay,” Bruce said with a small smile. “Can you explain a bit more about the social aspects of being a ghost? I think that we would all appreciate a quick lesson so that we can better support you.”

Danny blushed again and nodded. “So ghosts are protective creatures,” he said with a snort as he rested his chin on his hand. “It’s like your own personal protector but on top of that, we’re very social creatures who rely on one another, we get power from it actually. A lot of ghosts bond through fighting with one another, it’s a way to bond. But also indulging in activities together is another one. So, going out to hang out, spending time together, that all helps build the fraid bonds. A ghost’s family is its fraid. So the closer I get to you, then you’ll become my fraid which comes with a few perks? I guess you could call them perks.”

The halfa wrinkled his nose as he wracked his brain to figure out how to explain the perks. “Since you’re humans you’ll get access to a few of my powers,” he said slowly. “Sam, Jazz, and Tucker all turned kinda liminal because of our fraid bonds. It gave them some enhanced strength, they were able to see in the dark, and the shadows pulled to them a little more so it was almost like they could turn invisible at night. So you guys would get some of those same benefits.”

“That sounds awesome!” Duke said excitedly, a wide smile on his face.

“What benefits do you receive?” Damian asked with a frown, tilting his head to the side.

“I get the benefit of having stronger bonds which will make me stronger as well. I’ll also know when you’re in danger or not–something that I think will be a bitch considering your night jobs,” he said with a soft laugh. “But family bonds mean I’m healthy. If I have a lack of fraid bonds I’ll get sick and weak and grumpy. It’s why I finally gave in and changed to this form because I could feel it start to happen.”

Bruce frowned as he mulled over the information that Danny had just thrown at him. “What do we need to do to create these bonds with you?”

Danny blushed a bright green. “Spend time with me.”

“Tomorrow we shall go to the park together and take Titus on a walk,” Damian announced. “I shall have the strongest bonds with you, Daniel. Just you wait.”

Duke snickered. “It’s not a competition, Dami. We’re doing this for Danny’s health and to be closer to our brother.”

“And I will be the best at it, I will become Daniel’s favorite brother,” Damian exclaimed.

“You just want super strength so you can fight Jon,” Bruce said with a laugh and Danny giggled into his hand.

“I don’t know if you’ll be as strong as a Kryptonian, Dami. But I did see Jazz pick up the fridge like it weighed nothing one time,” Danny said thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side as he tried to think more about how strong his friends and sister were by the time he had left Amity. “So maybe don’t pick a fight with Superboy, it might just end with you covered in a lot of bruises.”

Damian huffed out a sigh. “I will still be the best brother, regardless,” he said, pushing his lower lip out in a pout. Danny snickered and took another bite of his rubbery pancakes, chewing far longer than he had ever had to chew a pancake before.

Danny just mustered up a small smile for his new family. Hopefully, this would go well.

Did you enjoy? Read the rest on ao3 here

[nelkcats]

Stardew and the halfas

When Tucker told him that he needed to relax and recommended a game about being a farmer, Danny frowned and pushed him away. How could it help him to know how long tomatoes took to grow?

However, after a restless night, where his parents had shot him (curiously by accident), the halfa noticed the downloaded game on his computer and sighed. It must have been Tucker, but he had nothing to lose by trying.

He never thought that he would become addicted to said game, or that he would want to marry Sebastian (something about him was just- well, attractive, even halfas weren't immune to falling in love). The problem was that his schedule was strange and Sebastian didn't like any of his gifts!

He started to get desperate and visit forums of the game, found someone who had the same problem with Elliot, and somehow they started talking. Jason seemed pretty frustrated, and they bonded out of mutual frustration. Neither of them was willing to consult guidebooks out of simple pride, but they appreciated the recommendations.

So they bonded over Discord calls, trying each other's strategies, and quickly became friends. To the point that they did a farm in multiplayer. They had spent so much time in the game that they both almost forgot their problems in the real world.

After Danny didn't go online for a while, Jason decided to invite him to Gotham. The boy took a few hours to respond but in the end he accepted.

Tim couldn't believe it when he passed a coffee shop and saw Jason laughing with a guy (very suspicious, in a sweater, and what the hell... were those fangs?), they were both very close to each other pointing at something on their phones and laughing .

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 19 - "What if we're wrong?"

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: -

A/N: Sort of Danny's perspective and a different side to Prompt 4, probably not as creative as the awesome reblogs and comments but hope people will still like it. Also posting this early too because I am an impatient B and going to be busy with work tomorrow again.

Danny looked nervously up at his sister who was giving him an encouraging smile and had placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. His gaze wandered back to the paper in his hands, a face with a confident smile printed largely on it. A cutout from a business magazine Jazz had happened to read.

"It's not too late, we could still just turn around and go back to Amity." Danny muttered, the paper crumpling ever so slightly in his hands. His sister sighed, wishing that her brothers best friends could have come along with them.

"Danny, it will be fine." She told him her hand moved from his shoulder to rub comforting circles on her brother's back. "Let's settle into the hotel first. We have your entire semester vacation to figure out how to continue from there."

"But Jazz, what if we're wrong? Just because I was adopted as a baby and that Ancestry thing I did in middle school contacted us about someone matching up with the DNA I sent there in middle school, it doesn't mean that he is…"

"Danny." Jazz cut in, lightly pushing her brother forward so he would start moving. "You are starting to overthink again."

"But we could be wrong!" Danny insisted once more the paper now completely crumbled in his hands. "This sounds too good to be true! And you know that good things don't just easily happen to me! I know something is going to happen to mess it all up or maybe I will mess it all up and…"

Jazz turned on her brother to make him face her, they had barely managed to step out of the airport before her brother fell into another spiral, one of many he had ever since that Ancestry Agency had contacted them. She cradled her brother's face in her hands making him look at her.

"Danny. When you had that school project about Ancestry in middle school, Mom and Dad admitted to having you adopted as a baby but not your twin brother you already freaked out then. You did that whole DNA thing with the school project as cover in hopes that your brother might have done it too. When nothing came back from it, what did I tell you then?"

"That I was an idiot to do it behind your back?" Jazz pinched her little brother's cheeks with a fond smile.

"Not that, what else did I say?"

"That I will always be your brother no matter what?"

"And?"

"And… and that I shouldn't lose hope because you would help me if I really wanted to meet him."

Jazz changed her hold on her brother from cradling his face to hugging him tightly. "That's right idiot. So if you really want to go back to Amity Park we can easily do that, there is no need for you to panic." She felt her brother nodd into her shoulder. "So do you really want to go back?"

"I guess… I could at least see if all these magazines are telling the truth and if he really is living a good life." Jazz pulled away from her brother now holding him by his shoulders and beamed at him happily. Before leading her brother to the hotel she had booked for them.

Both did not notice that their little exchange had happened in perfect view of a surveillance camera and had gotten caught by someone who had gotten interested in their movements ever since a certain someone had a little freak out in regards to finding someone that shared his DNA.

Later at night on the same day, Danny found himself unable to sleep. Feeling restless he decided to take a look at the night sky's of Gotham in hopes to calm his growing nervousness ever since he arrived in this city. Jazz was sleeping peacefully in the room next to his, so to not disturb her, he changed forms, turned invisible and phased through several ceilings until he reached the roof.

Once there Danny dropped his invisibility as well as transformation and just sat on the roof, not on the edge mind you, but by the door that usually would have led up here doing his best to look as much as a normal civilian trying to enjoy the night sky as possible. He had heard about Batman not wanting any Metas in his city, Phantom probably wouldn't be very welcomed either then.

Danny sat there staring up at the cloudy skies, frowning how with the light pollution and clouds he was unable to see even a single star. He was contemplating the pros and cons about changing form and flying above the cloud level to see the stars when he heard a soft thud not too far from him. Too silent to be picked up by normal hearing but his ghost enchanted one picked it up.

"You are not from Gotham, are you?" Danny tensed at the voice that resounded over the roof. His head turned towards where the voice came from and noticed the figure shadowed by the clouds, glad in red and black colores. "Gothamites know not to be out on roofs at night."

Danny swallowed but didn't move as the figure stepped closer. "You are Red Robin."

"So you know of me?" Danny watched how the other twirled around a bo-staff, if he didn't know better he would have said that the vigilante appeared nervous.

"My best friend kind of told me about the vigilantes of Gotham when he learned that I was going to visit the city." He carefully admitted to Red Robin and Danny wasn't lying Tucker had prepared an entire list about Gotham's vigilantes as well as all the celebrities. Danny was very thankful that he had not mentioned to his best friend that Tim Drake-Wayne might be the twin he had been looking for for years now. That would have been a whole other ordeal he didn't want to deal with yet.

"Got a favorite yet?" The vigilante asked and did Danny imagine it or was his tone weirdly hopeful?

He shrugged as answer, noting how the vigilantes' shoulders appear to drop in disappointment. Though a moment later Red Robin walked a bit closer and crouched, while Danny had yet to move from his sitting position. "So… why are you out on the roof late at night?"

"I was hoping to see the stars."

"The stars?"

"Stargazing always helped me calm down." Danny admitted turning his gaze from the vigilante to the cloudy sky. He didn't take his eyes completely off the other, his shoulders were still tense but for some reasons his body wanted to relax in the other's presence.

"You went up on a roof late at night to calm down?" He eyed the vigilante, wondering why the other was so interested in Danny right now but also wondering if Danny was really going to dumb his whole emotional turmoil on a complete stranger. What would Jazz say if she knew about this? Probably psycho analyze this whole situation and reason that Danny just wanted someone not involved to just listen to him without the objectives Jazz wasn't able to provide.

He eyed the vigilante once more, noting how the other appeared to be just as tense as Danny was, before opening his mouth. "I am only in Gotham because the twin I have been looking for for years lives here."

The vigilante hummed, sounding interested, indicating for Danny to continue. "I don't even know if he knows about me or would even want to see me. For all I know he doesn't even know I exist. Mom and Dad adopted me from the orphanage as a baby but not my twin brother."

Danny started to ramble on not noticing the sharp intake of air Red Robin took. "He may have a perfectly good life! And here I am appearing out of nowhere and possibly destroying it! What if I mess up his whole family dynamic! I mean how crazy is that? A stranger just appears out of nowhere saying he is your twin with no proof other than the stupid mail from an Ancestry DNA Testing facility stating they found a DNA similar to your own? Ancients, this sounds even more stupid when I say it out loud!"

In his rant Danny hadn't noticed Red Robin having come closer and their hand carefully hovering over his shoulder. "Hey…"

He looked up sharply at the vigilante next to him that was now placed on his shoulder, radiating a warmth that felt grounding to Danny. "I am sure it is not as bad as you think it is. If those Ancestry people contacted you, they might have contacted your twin also and who knows he could possibly be very interested in learning more about your whole situation?"

Danny blinked at the vigilante that was apparently trying to give him a reassuring smile despite the upper half of his face being covered by a mask and he couldn't help but return the smile with a small grateful one of his own.

The vigilante looked like he wanted to say something else but Danny's phone suddenly started buzzing, he hurried to pull it out of his pockets noticing several texts from his sister arriving in a rapid fashion.

"My sister." He muttered, looks like Jazz had woken up and tried to check on him like he was still a little child, he smiled fondly at the phone.

Side eyeing the vigilante, both stood up. "I uh…"

"You better hurry back in. She will probably grow more worried the longer you stay up here."

Blinking at the vigilante, Danny nodded, moving towards the door that would lead back into the building while the vigilante started to move towards the edge of the building. Before Danny could try to see if the door was locked or open he turned over his shoulder wanting to voice his thanks to the other for listening to his ranting but found the vigilante gone.

Staring for a moment before shrugging Danny let his eyes wander over the roofs of the other buildings just in case before deciding to forgo his transformation and just phase through the floors invisible without it until he reached his room.

In the shadows on the roof of the building to the side Red Robin arched an eyebrow under his mask before turning to the coms. "Meta status is confirmed. Also Nightwing, think you can help me create the most natural and unsuspicious situation for me to meet him tomorrow? I already have a couple of ideas."

"I think we can work something out easily RR."

"Good."

"It sounded like there was a whole lot more to this twin situation than we originally thought."

"Yea..."

"Chin up Red! We will get to the bottom of this!"

"He likes stargazing..." Red Robin mutter to himself, not really listening to his siblings on the coms. "I will take him to the planetarium, first chance I got."

[mokulule]

A Pinch of Salt snippet 1

Chronologically first story in the Salt in the Bones AU @clockwayswrites and I are working on together (go check out the snippet Clock posted) - so much brainstorming, it's so much fun. This story is how Danny and Constantine meets.

“What the hell man, do I look like some kind of restless spirit to you?”

When Danny decided to investigate some ghostly rumors at the abandoned construction site of a nearly completed mall about an hour from Amity, he did not expect to turn a corner and get a face full of salt tossed at him. His assailant, a tired looking, blond, middle aged man in a sandy trenchcoat that had seen better days, just continued staring with narrowed eyes and the hand that had done the throwing still slightly raised.

“Okay, so I haven’t slept in three days, but dude, really?” He brushed his sleeve across his mouth to remove the salt but only succeeded in getting more in his mouth, he stuck out his tongue in disgust.

Still no give from the sad trenchcoat man.

“What are you?” the man finally spoke.

Danny stared open-mouthed, rude much! So that’s what trenchcoat wanted to go with! Fine! Two can play that game.

“Covered in freaking salt that’s what!” Danny shook his head so it rained salt speckles around him.

“It’s everywhere,” he groused spitting at the floor trying to get the taste out. “Seriously, save that for the shades and the fries.”

Having expelled most of the salt, he noted something else. He moved his tongue around for a moment pondering, then froze.

“Is that… Rosemary?!”

He had a sudden sinking feeling in his gut, took a moment to sense past the surface of noir-reject and was assaulted by sheer wrong-torn-wrong. He took a step back in horror.

“What are YOU? Why are you seasoning me? Do you eat people?!” Danny had thought he’d be dealing with a poltergeist, not whatever weirdness this man was.

For the first time he got a reaction.

“I don’t bloody eat people!” Constantine blurted in consternation, taking a step toward the creature posing (annoyingly realistically) as a teenager, who promptly took another step back.“Could have fooled me,” the creature countered, “what with that thing you have going.” He gestured vaguely up and down at Constantine’s entire person in disgust.

It really shouldn’t matter what some not-poltergeist thought of him, but something about him just rubbed Constantine wrong and he bristled.

The next moment the creature spluttered and coughed from the holy water he’d just thrown at him, but huh, no burning.

“Not a demon either,” John remarked, allowing himself a smirk as the creature looked at him open mouthed, eye twitching.

“Where the hell are you keeping this shit, did you just pull it out of your a- wait, demon?” He blinked and stopped his tirade.

“Demon?” he repeated, “demon’s exist?”

And suddenly it was Constantine reevaluating, because that sounded genuine, and the kid, because oh God it was just a bloody kid, might reek of death magics, but now that he was paying attention the malice wasn’t coming from him. It was coming-

A wail, angry, hateful, sorrowful tore apart the silence. It was cold to the very marrow of his bones freezing him in place.Down the hallway energy crackled in a growing storm of malice throwing around dust and debris from the construction. Cardboard, and forgotten tools was sucked into it and it was slowly moving towards them. Shit.

“That’s not a poltergeist either,” the kid remarked quietly at his side. And for a moment he’d forgotten he had a bloody civilian on hand. He cursed, grabbed the kid and booked it in the opposite direction from the sodding spectral storm.

[crystalquillcreates]

tl;dr a theory/headcanon on why halfas are so powerful

I AM USING MARIE KONDO STANDARDS: IF CANON DOES NOT SPARK JOY, I THROW IT OUT!

Alive and dead; that is the thing that sets halfas apart. And honestly, why would that make them more powerful? If anything, being half-human should make them weaker, unable to take more hits without dire consequences. However, I propose this: 1) Halfas are so powerful because the human side of them allows them to change.

Ghosts are by nature set in their ways. Their identity will always orbit around the person who they were when they die and to try and be someone else is just as damaging to a ghost as being unable to do their Obsession. It's feasible for a short while, but an extended period will hurt them. This means that powers that are locked behind being compatible identity-wise will forever be out of their reach. An electricity core ghost trying to learn to make fire? Forget it! A shadow core ghost attempting to learn temporal manipulation? Ridiculous! But halfas' identities are still changing! They can grow and become someone else outside of who they were when they died. And like all living persons, they can shove themselves into being someone they are not with a lot less damage than a ghost. So a halfa like Vlad, who has a fire core, pulling on the manic energy and restlessness of a lightning core long enough to make ectoplasmic lighting is on the table. The sheer amount of different powers that Danny learns is a by-product of this. 2) Halfas can rely on their human half to do things that full ghosts cannot do, the most powerful of which is the Ghostly Wail. Remembering their death is one of the worst things a ghost can do. They are after all creatures that spawned from the dying wish of a person to stay alive just a little longer, please! Ectoplasm is highly sensitive to emotions and they are made of it, so remembering your death is basically going through it again, pain included.

But halfas are also made of flesh and blood. The brain can go through extremely traumatizing experiences and still keep functioning. Ghost-speak (or at least the version of ghost-speak analyzed by @sinorim-pisani in their linguistic anthropology post) is feeling made sound, radiated out by a ghost's core. The Ghostly Wail is a halfa screaming all of their emotions, their memories, the intrinsic experience of dying out for every ghost to hear.

Remembering death hurts for a ghost, badly enough that the Wail shoving the experience of dying right at them would End most ghosts on the spot. But halfas can remember their death, can face it without Ending, and can force other ghosts to re-live it through ghost-speak, even if it still hurts the halfa. Those reasons are why halfas are in a league of their own.

[plainclothesdisaster]

Red Knight Chapter 6 - Masks

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Beginning | < Prev | Next >

---

Some nights later Jason was wrapping up some Red Hood business outside a local pub when he noticed something off about the ghosts. But not the curse ghosts— the regular spirits around Gotham that he’d started to see after his first encounter with Danny. Ever since he’d started fighting the curse ghosts with Danny, the regular crowd had stopped actively causing him trouble, but it didn’t change the fact that seeing all manner of bizarre and terrifying creatures that no one else did could be incredibly distracting. Like it was right now.

Dozens of ghosts of all sorts were running (flying, jumping, what have you) down the streets, away from something. A look in that direction didn’t reveal anything obviously wrong, and there were no sirens ringing. Regular people on the street were still just going about their business, so it couldn’t be that bad, right? He didn’t know enough about ghosts to know what could spook them like this. Jason, perhaps noble and perhaps stupid, set off in the direction they came from, toward whatever had made them run.

He followed the trail of fleeing ghosts and the growing sense of unease in his stomach. It led him downtown, under one of Gotham’s many bridges– a wide interstate overpass that let large shadows pool underneath. The few streetlights that worked did very little against the darkness.The unsettling energy he’d followed was so strong here it made him want to turn tail like all the other ghosts had. Every instinct said it would be unwise to stick around.

Then he recognized Danny’s voice. The clipped tones of the conversation made it instantly apparent he wasn’t catching up with a friend. From this distance, stationed behind a graffiti-covered concrete pillar, Jason couldn’t make out exactly what was being said.

He risked getting closer, turning invisible and maneuvering to the next column in. It was enough to finally parse the words of a voice he didn’t recognize, with a formal accent he couldn’t place.

“How much longer are you going to play this silly game?”

“I have a good reason for being here. An entity like this can’t be allowed to stay topside unchecked. You’re the ones who pointed it out, remember?”

“Irrelevant! You are stalling. the lesser kings grow restless.”

“You know I don’t give two shits about what those uptight raisins-“

“You are well aware that there are more important matters that need your attention. Your duty is to—“

“I don’t work for you.” Danny’s tone gained a dangerous timbre that sent a shiver down Jason’s spine. He caught his breath behind his teeth.

The warning also shut up the other speaker. The silence hung for a long moment. Then Danny spoke again.

“I will make an appearance in the Zone when I get a chance. Until then get lost.”

Jason caught a whorl of green in his peripheral and assumed it meant the other speaker obeyed Danny’s command. He had to fight his own instincts to abscond as well. He was certain if the words had been directed toward him he wouldn’t have been able to resist either.

He still wanted to bolt. He wondered if Danny had sensed him lurking there. That was a conversation he certainly was not supposed to hear, and the smart thing to do would be to get out of there before he got caught. But some of the uneasiness had faded from the atmosphere when the other speaker left, and Jason reminded himself that this was Danny. Danny wouldn’t hurt him.

Probably.

He came out from around the corner before he could chicken out, striding over like he’d just walked up. Danny brightened as soon as he saw him, which made Jason’s gut do a funny little flip.

“The ghosts are acting weird. Everything okay?” Jason kept his voice even.

“Oh, yeah,” Danny replied breezily, “Nothing to worry about.”

Lies. But Jason didn’t press even as he burned with curiosity. Better not to raise suspicion. Danny didn’t seem interested in questioning what Jason was doing here either, equally avoiding having to talk about the previous conversation.

“So.” Danny got that familiar conspiratorial look. “Since we’re already out here. Let’s go hunt some curses.”

//

A curse ghost gnawed on a gaudy statue of a golden bull in the financial district. The ticker on the outside of a gleaming skyscraper scrolled, reading some headline about record stock prices. A man slept on the bumpy ledge beneath the statue. He shivered as black goo, invisible to him, dripped down onto his side. The curse ghost loomed over him, the same shape as the bull, as if it were its shadow.

Then, without warning, Danny was on top of it. He whooped as the bull bucked, but he rode it rodeo style, holding on to its neck with one hand like some sort of gothic cowboy. Jason stared mutely, aborted plans replaced by incredulous disbelief. Maybe this was how Bruce had felt when he jumped into fights as Robin.

“Where the hell did you learn to fight?” Jason pulled his sword, positioning himself to help corral the beast away from the buildings.

“Self taught, mostly. Can’t you tell?” Danny wielded a whip of green energy in his off hand, snapping it at the bull’s sides when it got too close to anything breakable.

Of course Danny had no formal training. Nobody who had any sense of self preservation would fight with such reckless abandon.

“But you know what they say about grabbing the bull by the horns.” Danny did just that. Jason rolled his eyes. But a moment later he felt a buzz of power in the air and Danny wasn’t smiling anymore. He was focused on his hands, on the bull, almost like this stupid stunt actually had a purpose.

Then the bull let out a piercing shriek, twisted in a horrible convulsion, and launched itself sideways like a cannonball.

It crashed into the side of Gotham Central Bank, taking Danny with it completely through the stone brick wall. Alarms immediately started ringing. Shit. Jason jumped through the hole in the wall after them. With the amount of times this place had been targeted by rogues, Batman had it at the top of their surveillance priority. They had a matter of minutes before one of them showed up.

“We gotta go!” Jason shouted through the dust of falling rubble. “Fast!”

Danny faced off against the bull in the middle of the lobby. “Going! As fast! As I can!” He punctuated each phrase with a blast at the bull. Jason felt the power behind each one in his throat.

The curse dodged a blast. Then, as if Danny were a matador flashing his red cape, the bull charged.

Jason reacted before any thought surfaced. He strode once, twice, then swung his sword in a wide arc. It sliced through the curse ghost’s side, knocking it away from Danny and sending it sprawling to the marble floor.

Danny recovered quick enough to whip out a thermos and zap it up. Jason’s heart thudded. He’d panicked for a moment. He’d panicked when he thought that thing would hurt Danny.

“Thanks,” Danny tossed over his shoulder with an easy smile.

Jason nodded mutely.

He didn’t look after other people. Everyone was disposable and replaceable in this line of work. Bruce taught him that. He couldn’t start worrying after someone else’s life, not when they chose to risk it. Especially not someone who was practically a stranger.

But this wasn’t a stranger. This was Danny.

“We’ve got company,” Danny muttered, eyes toward the hole in the wall where they’d crashed in.

Spoiler stood in the gap, silhouetted by hazy moonlight. “You doing bank robberies now, Hood?”

He wouldn’t get any sympathy from Steph, but then again he hardly knew her. At least it wasn’t Tim. Or Bruce.

“Mind your business,” he snapped. “But no. You can check. Money’s all still there.”

“Right, right. And would he have anything to do with the giant hole in the wall?” She gestured to Danny, who gave a meek little wave. “Your new… partner?”

Danny choked on a chuckle at the same time as Jason barked, “Not my partner.”

Steph smirked. “Sure. Anyway, Batman is on his way, so you can explain it all to him.”

Danny froze, tension in every muscle. Jason shifted, angling himself in front of him.

“I’m actually gonna skip this session with Dr. Bats. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

Jason gestured to Danny with a tilt of his head, and Danny fell into step beside him as they bolted for the atrium stairs.

“Shit,” Steph hissed as she leapt after them. “Oracle, you tracking them?”

Fuck. Babs getting involved spelled signs of having their shit wrecked and on display for Batman to see before the sun rose. Jason lifted a hand to scan the frequencies on his helmet coms, hoping, halfheartedly, that he was still coded into their channel.

Batarangs whizzed past their heads as they careened up the stairs and burst out the doors onto a mid-level courtyard. They ran to a stone railing that looked over the street two stories below.

“This can be easy if you just answer our questions.” Steph appeared in the doorway as Jason turned. His eyes darted, scanning for options. Flat walls on either side of them. No good grapple point off the edge. They could go back the way they came- through Steph- but he wasn’t confident they could get past without having to hurt her, which. No, he wasn’t going to do that.

Beside him Danny practically bounced on his toes, his eyes doing the same dance. They had a lot more options for escape if they relied on Danny’s powers, but that meant outing him as meta-adjacent. That couldn’t happen— in that they both seemed to be in silent agreement.

“ETA 5.” Batman’s voice crackled through Jason’s helmet. They still used the old frequency after all.

“I have visual.” Oracle now. “Spoiler, keep him talking.”

“What are you doing here tonight, Hood?” Steph took a step closer, but she still maintained a healthy distance. She wouldn’t make a real move till backup arrived. Smart.

He just had to give Danny enough of a window to get out of sight. Then Danny could disappear for real, and Jason could deal with the Bats on his own. He just had to have hope that Danny had enough self preservation instincts to run when he had the chance.

“Who’s your friend?” Steph continued despite his silence.

“I’m Danny,” Danny replied, again with a chipper wave. Jason glared at him through his helmet.

“Danny, did Red Hood put you up to this?”

Danny snorted. “No. I mean, not really.”

Funny to think that Jason could make Danny do anything at all.

“It’s alright. We’ll make sure he doesn’t cause any more trouble.”

“That seems unlikely.” Danny threw him a glance.

“Shut up,” Jason hissed.

“We’ll take him from here.” Spoiler took another step forward. Batman would certainly swoop down at any second.

“Thanks for finally giving us an excuse to bring you to heel, Hood. I hear Arkham is real cozy this time of year.”

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is. Of course he’d be treated like the other Gotham rogues. Foolish of him for expecting any better from the old man. He clenched a fist.

“Oh,” Danny stopped his fidgeting. The air around them went still. “Nah. I don’t think you will.”

Jason blanched. Danny couldn’t be stupid enough to use his powers now, could he?

“Losing visual.” Oracle’s voice crackled through static. “There’s– it’s some kind of interference.” Around them the landscaping lights in the courtyard flickered. Jason swallowed. Yes, it seemed, he could be that stupid.

“Danny, what–” Jason began, voice low, but before he could finish he felt a hand grab the back of his jacket. Suddenly he was invisible, and then suddenly he was weightless, and then suddenly he was flying. Spoiler shrunk beneath them as they crested the rooftops. Up he went over Gotham, dragged by Danny’s firm grip on his collar, streets whizzing past at dizzying speeds below.

Jason opened his mouth and a thousand things didn’t come out. He just gaped, strung along behind Danny like a fish on a line.

Cold wind pulled at Jason’s jacket as he glanced up at Danny. His face was a shadow, unreadable.

Danny didn’t slow down until he circled down onto their usual Crime Alley rooftop a few short minutes later. Jason felt gravity turn back on as Danny released him, gentle enough that he didn’t even stumble. Like he’d done this before.

“Fuck,” Jason half whispered.

“Sorry. Would have given you more warning, but it kinda would have defeated the purpose if she caught on to the escape plan.”

“No, that’s–” He rubbed a hand over his mask. “Now they know you’re a meta.”

“Not a meta.”

“Whatever. Now they know you’re someone they should know about. Once you are on the radar of the Bats you don’t just get off. They’re going to come after you.”

“They can try.”

Jason paced across the roof. “I’m serious. You should have gotten out when you could have. I could have dealt with them alone.”

“I couldn’t just leave you there.”

“It was stupid of you not to.”

Danny stood across from him, arms folded petulantly. “You cowing to their interrogation wasn’t a smart option either.”

“I would have been fine. I’m very good at lying. And if that was another bull pun I will strangle you.” Danny smiled sharply. Jason groaned. “And they wouldn’t really hurt me. Family, remember?”

Danny fixed him with a glare. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt you.” The words were icy. Jason bit his cheek. From what he’d shared, Danny would know first hand how much family could actually hurt you.

“Whatever. I’m going home.” Jason turned to leave. Danny hmphed but didn’t press it. They exchanged curt goodbyes and parted ways.

Jason simmered with annoyance the whole way home. He could see it now, how it would pan out. Bruce would find out about the ghosts, about the curse. He’d swoop in and try to fix everything, and then he’d try to fix Jason. This was the crowbar that Bruce would use to pry open the door back into controlling Jason’s life.

And Danny— he tried to imagine a world where Bruce tolerated Danny. Removed from all the ghost weirdness, he was prime adoption bait, from the looks to the tragic backstory and the fraught familial relationships. But he was certain Danny would also react very poorly to Bruce trying to control him. And Bruce would absolutely try to control a powerful meta in his city.

None of this changed the fact that the city was still cursed. Nothing to do but keep fighting. Only now they’d have to always be looking over their shoulders.

//

The next morning he dressed as Jason and took his bike to Gotham University. He posted up outside the science and engineering building where he knew Danny had class. If Bruce had tracked Danny here, Jason wasn’t about to let him face Batman alone.

Maybe he was being paranoid— They only had Danny’s first name and his face, nothing else. It had been less than 24 hours since their encounter with Spoiler.

Yeah. No. He wasn’t going to underestimate them.

The towering oaks and manicured lawns of the campus felt foreign to him. It hardly felt like Gotham at all, not the real Gotham. The tall iron fences around the grass made sure to keep the real Gotham out. He scanned the doorways for campus security. Jason stuck out enough he wouldn’t put it past them to try to kick him out. He considered just aborting this pointless escapade and leaving when a stream of students began wafting out of the doors.

Danny appeared among the crowd. Jason’s feet froze to their spot. Danny smiled when he saw him, surprised.

Danny made his way over to, breaking off from the other students. “Isn't this a bit far from your radius?” He looked natural here, a bookbag slung casually over his shoulder, notebooks under his arm. Like he belonged.

“Gotta get some fresh air once in a while.”

The corner of Dannyʼs mouth quirked up and Jasonʼs stomach twisted.

Danny waited for Jason to, presumably, provide a reason for being there. “Making sure Batman doesn’t come after you” seemed like a crazy, unreasonable thing to say. Especially in that moment, as a sunbeam poked through the clouds and students chattered around them about homework and sports and parties.

As if reading his mental gymnastics, Danny offered a lifeline. “You want to join me for lunch?”

“Sure,” Jason replied almost too quickly, grateful for the excuse. He allowed himself to be led toward a cafe a few blocks away. He couldn’t help but scan the streets as they walked, looking for any hint of potential snoopers. The fact that there were so god damned many Bat-minions now made it more difficult to hone in on any one obvious tail.

Danny nudged him with an elbow, a questioning glance on his face. Was he being that obvious? Beside him Danny walked with the casual air of an ignorant civilian. More relaxed than a native Gothamite. Like he hadn’t just barely avoided a disastrous confrontation with the Batman. It only made Jason more paranoid.

They made it to the cafe without incident and found a table among the crowd of other University goers on their lunch break. As they ordered and settled in, small talk came as easily for them over pastrami on rye as it did between punches. Danny told him about the complex physics theories he was studying in class and Jason listened earnestly. Jason reminisced about his own schooling, non traditional as it were, and talked of the hours he spent in Bruce’s libraries.

His gaze wandered to a table by the window where a couple sat, laughing. First date, maybe. A next thought tried to follow that one but he strangled it like a firm hand around a throat.

“Itʼs not often I get to see your face in the outside world.” Danny pulled his attention back.

“Appreciate it while you can.”

“I am.” Danny smiled and Jason was suddenly acutely aware of his gaze focused only on him. “It’s unfair really. You get to admire these good looks all the time.” He gestured to himself and put on a false pout, hair flopping over his face.

Jason rolled his eyes playfully, but it stirred up a lingering concern. Oracle had caught Danny’s face on camera. That meant it was only a matter of time until she- and Bruce- found him. All that could have been avoided if Danny had a hero persona like the rest of them.

“Why donʼt you wear a mask?” Jason asked. “Itʼs like hero 101 shit.” He didn’t mean for it to sound as accusatory as it did.

Some of Dannyʼs brightness faded. “Iʼm not a hero.”

He raised an eyebrow. “So youʼre just a guy with superpowers fighting monsters every night. In jeans.”

That earned him a reluctant smile. “Pretty much.”

Jason lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Batman has your face now. He knows you have powers. He knows you work with Red Hood. Wouldn’t it be easier if you kept that separate from-“ he gestured to the books, the cafe, his life- “this?”

Danny sighed, leaning back and folding his arms. “There’s not really a point in keeping secrets. Batman can’t stop me. We’re careful. And it’s not like the ghosts are gonna talk to the tabloids.” “Weʼre not that careful. One wrong move or stray camera could destroy your life.”

Danny laughed, dry and harsh. “Danny Fenton is dead. I donʼt have a life to destroy.”

Jason paused. He hadnʼt found anything in his searches to suggest that was true. And it made no sense. Danny Fenton had dreams. He wanted to finish his degree. He hoped to work for NASA. Jason hadn’t imagined that conversation. Something didn’t add up.

“How does a dead man register for college?”

“With some half-baked forgeries and an excellent hacker on speed dial.”

“And wouldnʼt it still be bad if the undead college studentʼs life got ruined?”

Danny looked away. “It doesnʼt matter.”

“It doesnʼt matter?“

“I’m here to fix a ghost problem.” His voice got tighter.

“You said you werenʼt trying to do ghost stuff full time.”

“Trying, yeah. Emphasis on trying.”

“Not very hard, I guess.”

Danny grabbed his bag and stood up from the table in one abrupt motion. He looked down at Jason with cold eyes. “At least I try.”

Jason flinched at the hint of malice behind the words. Danny wasn’t wrong. Jason Todd was dead, and he had no intention of changing that. He didnʼt need to. He had his mask and the kingdom he’d built with it. He didnʼt need to be Jason.

But Danny had dreams as Danny. Jason had seen the yearning determination in his eyes as heʼd looked at the sky. Danny was a good liar but not good enough to fake that.

“Where are you going?” Jason snapped.

“Why do you care?”

Danny turned and brushed past tables of other diners as he stormed out. Jason clamped his mouth shut to stop himself from snapping back. He didn’t move from his seat. He fumed silently. Nothing that he’d found online had pointed to Dannyʼs death. No death certificate, a hospital stay, an obituary, a gravestone. Nothing.

He thought about going after Danny. A good friend probably would have. Instead he remembered snippets from that overheard conversation. Duty, the other person had said. Something about Danny’s duty. Nothing to do with fighting Gotham’s curse, from the way they said it. Some other thing entirely.

//

Danny didn’t show up that night. Jason waited on their roof (fuck it all, he’d started to think of it as theirs) but midnight came and went with no sign of him.

Jason tuned into the Bat coms after barely fifteen minutes of silent sulking. A pang of worry lingered in his gut. Batman could have found Danny, and— and what? He doubted they could lay a finger on Danny, let alone capture him. He’d already been in and out of Bruce’s security undetected.

Still. He listened on the coms for any mention of their escaped meta, but it was just a standard night of patrol. Tim and Cass out in the field, Oracle guiding them. Bruce must not have been listening in closely because they’re lax on chatter on the frequency. It’s like a personal radio drama just for him, except it’s a window into the life that was no longer his.

Still, Danny’s silence didn’t feel good. Jason remembered the hardness in his eyes from that afternoon, The apathetic bite of his tone. But Jason banished any hint of guilt that tried to squirm its way out of him. Fine by him if Danny wanted to ruin his own life. That clearly wasn’t his responsibility.

“Disturbance at Robinson Park. Destroyed property. Perp unclear.” Oracles voice came steady and clear over the coms.

“On our way. Is it Ivy?” Tim responded, businesslike.

“Negative. The path of destruction points to something large, animal-like. But I can’t spot it. It’s like it’s invisible.”

Jason’s ears perked up at that. That was a curse ghost, no way it could be anything else. And as much as he loved to imagine Tim getting his whole ass handed to him by an invisible monster, he really should go deal with it because the bats would be in way over their heads.

Well, except for the fact that Danny wasn’t there. He’d never fought a curse ghost alone. For as good as he’d gotten with the ghost weapons, he didn’t always come out of these fights unscathed, even with Danny’s backup.

He sent Danny a text with the location- curse ghost here. Maybe that would make him get over his sulking and get out here to help.

Minutes ticked by with no response. Tim and Cass sounded more harried on the coms. Danny would almost certainly tell him not to fight it solo if he were here. He gritted his teeth. Jason didn’t need Danny’s approval. Or his permission.

He checked the straps on his holsters and sword then took a running leap off the roof.

By the time he got there the park was already in chaos. Tim stood on the path and swung his staff at nothing. Cass crouched by the swing set which was sprawled in a half crumpled mess. Neither of them looked at the curse ghost, which gnawed on a corner of a park bench.

In an ideal scenario Jason could lure the curse ghost away to avoid explaining anything to them. Then Tim’s head snapped toward the bench, alerted by the crunching of old wood between invisible jaws. Cass also tensed, ready to pounce. Fuck.

Together they attacked. Predictably, Cass’s foot and Tim’s staff went right through the mass of oily shadow with no resistance. It took actually seeing it happen for Jason to fully appreciate just how screwed they were. Normal weapons couldn’t hurt it. They couldn’t even touch it.

Annoyed, the beast stopped snacking and with a massive clawed hand it took a swipe at Tim. Tim didn’t see it coming, obviously, so he took the hit hard to the side, sending him tumbling to the dirt.

“Red Robin!” Cass leapt after him only to catch a lazy swipe from the ghost's tail, knocking her down into the bushes.

“Backup heading your way, hold on,” Oracle's strained voice came through his helmet. More Bats wouldn’t solve this. It would only end up with more of them hurt. But they knew too much already without Jason exposing his ghost powered weapons too. He just needed the right opportunity.

The beast prowled toward where Tim was still righting himself. It cackled like a hyena, jaws wide and full of sharp teeth. It lunged.

Jason was faster. He took two bounding, half-floating steps, swung his sword and caught the ghost in the jaw. He shoved it back from Tim as it yowled.

God fucking dammit. So much for laying low. But he couldn’t just watch them get hurt.

“Hood?”

“Infrared.”

“What?“

“Use infrared vision.” He looked down at Tim as he found his feet, keeping the ghost in his peripheral. He remembered Danny calling out the infrared detectors as part of his arsenal of gadgets (“Helpful if you can’t already see them.”) and he didn’t want Tim and Cass flailing around totally blind.

“And stay out of my way.”

The ghost lunged again and he met it with his sword. They clashed, and for all Jason’s bravado, his arms shook as the beast parried his swing. He threw it off with a surge of effort. Thankfully Tim listened and had scattered to the edge of the lawn where Cass had resurfaced from the bushes, out of the radius of the fray. But looking to check on him had been a mistake— Jason felt a claw slash into his calf before he could dodge. He sucked a breath through his teeth. He’d had worse. But he was reminded again that he’d never faced the full ire of the curse ghosts alone. He’d always had Danny to trade blows with.

Now the ghost looked at him, only him, with hungry black eyes and that insufferable cackle dripping from its lips.

“I’ve got visual on infrared.” Oracle, still in his ear. “It’s showing up as a cold spot—some kind of giant wolf.” Hyena, Jason corrected mentally before barely dodging another swipe of its claws.

“Got it,” Red Robin chirped. Jason dared another look to see he had indeed donned infrared goggles from his kit. “Going back in.”

Jason’s heart clenched. “No,” he grunted over the coms he was definitely not supposed to have access to, “Stay out of it.”

The ghost took the opportunity to launch itself at him. Jason found himself pinned under its massive paws, staring up into that gaping, laughing mouth.

“Hood!” If he didn’t know better he’d think Tim actually sounded concerned. Which—fuck, that didn’t mean anything since he couldn’t do shit to help.

Jason found his pistol and wiggled himself just enough room to press it to the ghost’s belly. He pulled the trigger and green energy exploded into the shadow, tossing the ghost off of him and fully exposing Jason’s own ghost shit for Oracle and everyone to see.

“You can’t hurt it,” he barked at Tim as he rolled to his feet. “Stay the fuck back.” Tim didn’t protest. For once.

Now that the guns were out he gave up any attempt at subtlety. He got nasty with his blasts and pulled nothing from his punches, calling every ounce of that green energy to the surface. He must have looked like a glowing menace to Tim and Cass, but he had little room to care. The ghost fought back with eager viciousness. Jason ignored the snap in his wrist, the teeth grazing his side, drawing blood. He just had to beat it down enough to capture it.

After another round of traded blows finally, finally, the curse ghost started looking worse for wear. It panted heavily, long black tongue lolling out of its mouth, and it oozed black sludge where Jason’s sword had left the deepest marks. He holstered a gun long enough to pull the thermos instead, and as it lunged toward him one more time he sucked it up in a beam of light.

The silence that followed was beautiful. He bent over halfway to catch his breath. He did it. He fucking did it. He did it without Danny.

From the other side of the lawn, Cass whistled. Jason stood and turned to face them, intending to take a quick bow before exiting stage left, but— there was Bruce. Batman had arrived sometime during the brawl. He stood protectively in front of Tim and Cass.

“Red Hood. Report.”

Nice to see you too. He rolled his eyes and turned to leave.

Then Bruce tried a different angle.

“Where is your new partner?”

Jason bristled. Batman being suspicious of him was one thing, but bringing Danny into the equation made the pit under his heart roar in protest. He turned back before he could think better of it. “None of your business, old man. Stay out of it.”

He didn’t appreciate the thin press of Cass’s lips or the hint of Tim’s chuckle.

“Let us help you.” Batman extended a hand. And oh if Bruce didn’t sound just a bit soft, and the offer sounded almost genuine. It only made his hackles raise further.

“You can’t help,” he ground out. And it was true. If Bruce couldn’t help him before all the ghost stuff, he absolutely couldn’t help now.

Jason took off toward his bike. If he was fast they wouldn’t catch him. He hoped he wouldn’t have to dissuade them further.

“Jason!” Batman broke his own rule to call out his name, and it was almost enough to get him to stop and go back. Almost.

He slipped between the trees and ran deeper into the shadows.

//

Jason had two more nights of worrying. Of listening in on police scanners (since he hadn’t been able to reconnect to the coms since revealing he had access) for any hint of Danny. Nothing.

Maybe Danny got wise and skipped town. Jason went to Danny’s apartment to check if he’d left. When his knock went unanswered he phased himself in through the door. A quick glance around said all of Danny’s stuff was still there. No sign of a fight. Jason stood in the center of the tiny apartment feeling like an ass. Now that he’d been there with Danny’s permission it felt wrong to be breaking in unannounced. Danny wasn’t just a suspicious unknown meta anymore. He was— well, he was something. Still suspicious. But undeniably on his side.

Danny could be MIA for any reason. Something could have happened with his mysterious family maybe, though that thought did nothing to calm Jason’s nerves.

He let himself settle into the more likely possibility that maybe Danny simply didn’t want to see him. It wouldn’t be hard for him to avoid Jason, break ins aside. Danny could simply vanish anytime he sensed Jason nearby. Maybe he’d been stupid for pushing Danny to talk. Dumb of him to think that Danny owed him anything real.

He opened his phone like he was going to text Danny, but after typing and deleting various attempts at concern or apology or both he just shoved the phone back in his pocket, message unsent. Their text chain only pertained to the curse ghosts after all. It’s not like Danny owed him a response for anything else.

On the third night, out of nowhere, Danny sent him a text.

You up?

Jason nearly frisbeed his phone across the safehouse when he saw the notification. It was just barely 2 am- he had finished his rounds and called it a night early. He hurriedly tapped a reply.

Where have you been?

Meet u at roof.

Jason didn’t know whether to be mad or relieved. He ended up pulling his pants back on and rushing out while feeling a strange cocktail of both.

As soon as his feet hit the roof Jason could tell Danny was off. His shoulders sagged, his face looked less full, eyes filled with less light. Suddenly Jason was less certain his absence had anything to do with their fight and instead everything to do with whatever caused him to look like this.

“What happened to you?”

“What are you talking about. Iʼm great.”

Jason raised his eyebrows, asking for more. Danny sighed and changed the subject. “Sorry I didnʼt reply about the curse ghost the other night. Did it do any real damage?”

“Tried to eat the park benches.” Jason leaned up against the stairwell wall next to him. Danny grimaced, and Jason left out the part where it nearly wasted Tim and Cass. “But I handled it.”

A bit of sharpness snapped back into Dannyʼs eyes. “Wait, what?”

Jason tapped the thermos on his belt. “Added ‘em to the soup collection. What, didnʼt think I could do it on my own?”

Danny hmmed in reply, his usual enthusiasm still dimmed. But Jason could see wheels turning behind his eyes.

“No faith at all. I’m insulted.” Jason cracked a smile.

“Did you get hurt?”

“Do I look hurt?”

Danny tilted his head knowingly. Jason pulled his jacket closer.

“I’m fine. And Either way, it was probably a good thing to keep you off the Bats’ radar for a bit.”

It wasn’t, however, a good thing that Danny looked like he’d been chewed up and spat out. Jason bit his tongue to keep himself from prying.

“The Bats were there?”

“Tim and Cass. Couldn’t let them get their shit wrecked by an invisible ghoulie.” Then he added, quieter: “Or Bruce’s.”

Danny let out a huffed pained noise under his breath. Suffice to say that his opinion on Batman hadn’t changed.

“We have limited time till they get more involved.” Jason leaned closer, trying to catch Danny’s eye. “So I have to ask— Where is this all going? Weʼre bagging these things night after night, but that doesn’t stop them from appearing. There has to be an end.”

“There is.” Danny pressed his lips together.

“The curse is actually just one entity,” he continued, “These ghosts we’ve been fighting- they’re like offshoots of it. The root is like… the queen of the curse. She’s the oldest one here, the initial kernel that grew into something powerful enough to spawn all the others.”

Jason blinked. “Then why havenʼt we gone after her?”

“I have. When I first got here. It sucked.“ He pushed up off the wall they were leaning against and paced across the roof. “She’s dug her claws in real deep, and all the power her minions get feeds her too.”

Jason did not like the sound of a foe that even Danny had trouble facing.

“But we’ve been cleaning up curse ghosts left and right. That must be putting a dent in her, right?”

“That’s the hope, yeah. So that next time I face her, it shouldn’t be such a disaster.”

“We.”

“Huh?”

Jason got off the wall to follow him. “Next time we face her. No way I’d miss out on sending her packing after all this.”

Danny was quiet a moment. “Right. Yeah.”

The hesitation in his voice was certainly not a vote of confidence. Jason did his best to ignore it.

“Anyway.” Danny said, shaking off a bit of the funk hanging over him, “It’s been too long since I’ve bashed curse heads. You up for a little tête-à-tête?”

“Always.”

They tracked a curse ghost to an old office building at the edge of Crime Alley. It was a remnant of when this place used to be Park Row, an imposing tower adorned with art deco details, now crumbling with neglect. They followed Danny’s senses up to the executive floor, where large wooden desks and rows of retro office chairs sat fading.

For a couple of long minutes as they stalked the dark halls, Jason feared the trail had gone cold. Then, from the conference room in the corner, he heard a pale keening moan. Danny flashed him a look, and then they began their usual dance.

Danny took the opening, crashing in through a half-screened window. Jason followed, blocking off the door. The rhythm came easy, like a set of ping pong across the conference table with the curse as the ball. He matched Danny’s pace more easily than normal, and he felt a curl of warm smugness in his gut before he took a glance at Danny. He looked downright sluggish compared to normal, like gravity had turned against him for once. His limbs moved heavily through the air, and when he twisted too fast Jason caught a wince snarl through his features.

The beast hadn’t stopped keening, but it was slower to get back to its feet now. Just a few more good hits and then they could wrap this up and Jason would demand Danny tell him what was wrong.

Then something happened that Jason never thought heʼd see.

Danny went down, hard. A sudden whip from the beast's tail sent him plowing through the wall, then another, then deep into a stack of ancient metal file cabinets with a nasty crunch. He didnʼt get up.

A spike of fear shot down Jasonʼs spine. A flicker of his old rage laced the next few swings of his sword, but right then he was grateful for it. It was enough to give him an opening to pull out the thermos. He sucked the curse up before it got any closer to Danny.

Then Jason stopped thinking as his legs carried him to the divot in the cabinets where Danny laid unmoving.

“Danny?”

Danny groaned, still alive. Half alive. Whatever.

Jason didnʼt know what to do. He reached out his hands and they hovered over Dannyʼs crumpled torso. The white of his t-shirt revealed growing red stains. And also, worryingly, green.

This was the part where Danny would sit up and crack a joke. Where he would tease Jason for worrying. Where heʼd smile that infuriating smile. But he didnʼt. His breath came in shaky rattles. His eyes stayed closed.

“Fuck.” Jason stopped hesitating and put his arms under Danny, lifting him gingerly from the dust and debris.

“Wha-?” Danny mumbled.

“Iʼve got you.”

Danny relaxed into his arms, his head resting against his chest, and Jason felt his heart stutter. Danny was too cold in his grasp, too light. But Jason didnʼt have time to worry about that. He needed to get Danny somewhere safe.

In a daze, he made his way to Dannyʼs apartment. Danny didn’t wake throughout the trip, just let out little pained sounds whenever Jason jostled him too much. When they arrived at the apartment, Jason used his jacket to phase them through the door. Glancing at the unmade bed, he opted to lay Danny down on the torn up couch instead— better to not get blood all over the sheets.

Jason knew where the first aid kit was from when Danny used it on him, so he grabbed it from the kitchen. Then he took the hem of Dannyʼs torn shirt and pulled it over his head. Any qualms Jason had about the invasion of Danny’s privacy died when he saw the wound on his side.

Huge gashes raked across his abdomen in parallel, torn deep into the skin. Claw marks, Jasonʼs brain provided numbly, though these claws must have belonged to something even bigger and nastier than the curse ghosts. Something worse than anything Jason had seen.

What the hell did this?

“Jason-?” Dannyʼs eyes fluttered half open.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jason admonished.

Danny blinked slowly, still out of it. “Didja get ‘em?”

He was still worried about the curse ghost? Jason nearly bit his tongue. “Yeah.”

Danny leaned back and closed his eyes again. “Good. Thanks.”

Fucking hell.

Jason turned off his brain and let his hands do the work of patching up Dannyʼs side in mental silence. Danny didnʼt stir as he disinfected the wounds, as he taped butterfly bandages over them, as he pulled a fresh shirt over Dannyʼs head. If it were anyone else Jason would have needed to do stitches, but with Danny he knew better. His accelerated healing would take care of it quicker than he could pull the stitches back out.

The pack of bandages had been nearly empty. Seems it wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt. Something ugly twisted in Jason’s stomach at that thought. So instead Jason looked at Dannyʼs face, free from worried creases in sleep. Danny looked so vulnerable, so peacefully human. Jason fidgeted with his hands.

“Not so invincible after all, are you?” he breathed.

The space between them felt smaller than it had before, all pretenses of keeping his distance shattered. What once had been a wide gulf, gaping like the wounds on Dannyʼs side, collapsed like an imploding star.

Jason couldnʼt stop himself. He reached out with a timid hand and closed the remaining distance. He pushed aside the lock of dark hair that had fallen in Dannyʼs closed eyes, his fingers brushing featherlight over Dannyʼs forehead. Reverent and tender. Danny shifted and sighed.

Jason froze. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. He couldnʼt do this. It was like holding an overripe strawberry in his palm— he didn’t trust himself not to crush it. He shut his mind off again as he fled for the door, leaving Danny to wake up alone.

//

Danny showed up on their rooftop the next night, no sign of the injuries from the night before, looking chipper as the day they met.

“Thanks.” Danny said, handing Jason a paper wrapped burger.

Jason took the gift without rising from where he sat. “For what?”

Danny responded by lifting his shirt to reveal the gashes in his side. They had sealed over in puckered pink scars. Fast, maybe even more so than Jason had expected.

“For the patch up.” Danny pulled a second burger out of the bag and sat on the ledge next to him.

Jason waited for him to say more. To offer an explanation for the wounds, or what gave them to him, or where he’d been. Danny just bit into his burger and chewed wordlessly. He looked off somewhere in the distance.

“I could have handled it.” Jason broke the silence. “You shouldn’t have been out fighting like that.”

“I’ve had worse. Plus, now I’m fine.”

“Not caring about getting hurt just because you heal fast isn’t a good battle strategy.”

“Who said I was good at strategy?” Danny had that damnable smirk on his face.

“Either way. You could have left it alone for another night. Gotham’s been cursed as long as I’ve been alive.”

“Longer than that.”

“So it can definitely survive one night without its blue-jeaned protector.” Danny scowled, but didn’t argue further.

Jason reminded himself he shouldn’t care. Danny didn’t owe him anything, and he liked it that way. Any more info on Danny’s life would just serve to entangle them more than they already were, which he very much didn’t need. The only answer he really needed at this point was how to stop the curse ghosts.

He still hadn’t had any luck in cracking the pattern though. Even with the added info about the heart of the curse- the queen- progress was slow going. He’d shifted his efforts to finding her specifically, but so far she’d proven incredibly elusive. There was just too much violence in Gotham to parse what was tied to the curse and what wasn’t.

They finished their meal in silence as sirens wailed in the distance.

Jason stood and stretched. “Almost can’t imagine this place without a curse, though. It’s part of the charm.”

Danny crumpled his burger wrapper and tossed it in the bag. “Once it’s gone you and the Bats will actually be able to change things for the better though. It won’t be such a Sisyphean fight anymore.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sisyphus? Didn’t peg you for a mythology fan.”

“I’ve, uh, taken some practical mythology courses.” Danny blushed, which sent Jason’s stomach tumbling.

Jason honestly couldn’t picture a Gotham without all the corruption and violence and greed. What would that place even look like? Would that Gotham even need a Batman? Or a Red Hood?

Or a Danny?

“What about you?” Suddenly Jason had to know.

“What about me?”

“After the curse is gone. Will you stay?”

Danny’s lips turned down. Thoughts spun behind his eyes. Jason’s gut dropped and he regretted asking. He didn’t know which answer he wanted to hear. He didn’t know which would be worse.

Danny opened his mouth to reply. Then a curse ghost crashed onto the balcony below them, stealing his answer away.

//

Another week went by with no lead on the curse’s cause or its queen. Jason, for his part, had kept it professional when it came to Danny. They met nightly, hunted curses, then parted ways. Like following a script. He ignored, with great effort, the spike of worry he felt every time Danny took a hit, or the way his whole body clenched whenever he thought he saw the shape of a cowl following them in the shadows. He couldn’t let himself lose focus.

Find the queen. End the curse.

So far the bats hadn’t actually bothered them any further, which meant that either they had bigger fish to fry, or that he still had one scrap of good will left in Bruce’s eyes. But he wouldn’t bet on it. Which is why they needed to find the queen and finish this quickly. Then everything could go back to normal.

He’d go back to running the Crime Alley scene uninterrupted, and Danny would go back to… something else. College? Jason wanted to believe it, but after their conversation in the cafe, he couldn’t be sure. He thought about never having to fight another curse ghost with Danny and it made his heart do an unpleasant twitch. He wanted the curse to be gone, he reminded himself. Wanted the bats to have no reason to be suspicious. Wanted to be done with all this ghost bullshit.

At least that’s what he told himself.

Jason had gone out scouting for leads on the queen when he found himself at the graveyard. The slant of the evening sun had turned the familiar stones a shade of pale golden even through the overcast sky. It wasn’t the first time he’d been back here.

He stopped walking at a particular knoll. The headstone at his feet read Jason Peter Todd. The grass had long regrown over where he’d dug his way out. He wondered if Danny had a grave, one that had been erased from the records.

Ghosts- regular ghosts, not curses- floated about, semi transparent. They must be pretty weak if they were only half visible even to him. Or at least he thought so, based on what little Danny had told him about how ghost biology worked. The ghost of a woman, older but not old, floated closer. She looked at him expectantly.

He gestured to the headstones around them. “One of these yours? I can, uh, clean it up a bit for you? If that helps?”

“I don’t- I can’t- remember—“

“I’ll read some names. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

“Abigail? Chelsea? Lorraine?” He stopped at a grave with fresh soil. “Sarah?”

The light shifted as the sun slanted lower. He noticed her neck- deep purple bruises wrapped around her windpipe with the distinct outlines of fingers.

Anger twisted in his stomach. “Or maybe it would help more if I found who did that to you.”

The spirit’s eyes snapped to him, suddenly sharp.

“Hurt.“

The tone of her voice sent a spike of fear down his spine, gravely and staticy and filled with so much anger.

“Whoa, whoa. You okay?”

The ghost woman shuddered and changed in front of him. She warped into a heinous visage with sharp teeth and pointed fingers, her hair twitched at wrong angles in a writhing cocoon, her eyes turned to pools of inky black.

“Hurt. Hurt him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him kill him kill him kill-”

Jason’s own rage leapt to a sudden, blinding boil. It felt like fire ants swarming under his skin, hot and sharp and bright. He felt the woman’s pain as if it were his own, and felt the need to cause pain ten fold in return. The beast under his heart roared, hungry for revenge.

He relished how familiar it felt, the clarity of purpose, the surrendering of will, the open bleeding wounds that could only be paid back with more blood. He thought about the relief he’d feel if he finally put a bullet through the Joker's brain. Better if he made Bruce do it. He’d hurt the other Robins as a motivator, kill them if he had to. He’d do whatever it took to make that bastard feel hopeless, to make him bend, to bleed, to make him suffer like he had—

Oh, fuck. Jason blinked away just enough of the green in his vision to stumble backwards. He needed— he needed to feel the crunch of bone under his hands, the taste of fear–. No—no. He needed to get away, needed distance between himself and the vengeful ghost. He ground his teeth as he fell to the earth. He dug his nails in the dirt as he clawed backwards, away.

He spat blood— he’d bit his tongue. He scraped at his holster, whipping his pistol out. Its weight steadied his hand as he trained it on the spirit.

“Knock if off,” he spat at the ghost, poisonous heat still raw in his voice.

The pressure of her pain didn’t relent, still clawing at his insides, scraping into the oldest parts of his anger with black heat. He pulled on his own energy in return, desperate. It leapt readily to his call, building at the tip of his gun.

“I said fuck off!”

He shot, and the cannonball of green energy barreled into the ghost. She wailed but she didn’t stand a chance. Her form dispersed in green flames. The claws around his heart vanished with her, leaving him feeling raw.

Easier to beat than a curse ghost. But the encounter left him feeling more than twice as rattled.

Then he rolled onto his knees and dry heaved over the grass. Flashes of what he’d wanted to do to his brothers, to Bruce, surfaced through the clearing haze in his mind. He could have done it. If he’d had any less awareness of the cause of those thoughts, he was certain he would have.

Cold sweat simmered over his skin. He curled his arms around his legs like it would make him warmer, or settle his stomach. It did neither.

He could have killed them.

Danny would have stopped him, he thought. The thought had no real backing in reality, but he believed it all the same. If Jason had actually gone after Bruce and the others, Danny wouldn’t have let him do it.

It provided enough hypothetical comfort to allow him to remember how to breathe.

He raised his eyes just enough to look at the empty air where the ghost had just been. He almost didn’t see it, but once he focused it was unmistakable. A wisp of black shadow, identical to what it looked like when Danny blasted apart a curse ghost. But she hadn’t been a curse ghost. Had she? She’d been completely harmless. Normal, until—

Jason leapt to his feet, wallowing forgotten. He had to get to his computer.

//

“I figured it out.” Jason had the patience to knock at Danny’s door when he got to his place instead of crashing through the window like he wanted to.

“Figured what—Huh?” Danny, in sweats, coffee mug in hand, allowed Jason to barge past him into the messy apartment.

“How the curse ghosts show up. The pattern. The cause.”

He pulled the thumb drive from his pocket, plugged it into Danny’s computer and sat down in the desk chair. “They’re connected to deaths.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Shut up and let me finish. Not just any death.” He pulled up a map with an overlay with points for all Gotham deaths. They far outnumbered the curse ghosts.

“You said not everyone comes back as a ghost, right? What makes them more likely to?”

Danny leaned on the arm of the couch. “A death or a life that’s especially violent or unjust, usually. Combined with a strong sense of purpose unfulfilled. But the curse ghosts aren’t like that. They’re the kind that exist without consciousness. They are the abstract purpose of fear and suffering.”

“But what if they didn’t form like that from nothing?”

Danny tilted his head, bidding Jason to continue.

“What if the most violent, least just deaths-“ he pressed a key isolating those points on the map- “resulted in ghosts that somehow got turned into curses.” He clicked another key and brought up the layer of curse ghost sightings. It matched nearly perfectly.

Danny’s eyes widened. “It all tracks. Except for the fact that ghosts can’t just majorly change their nature like that.” He paused. “Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Something more powerful than them triggers it. Something else is actively changing them.”

Jason smiled. He could tell they already made the same conclusion. “The queen?”

Danny nodded, excited now. “The queen.”

“We just gotta find deaths that are likely targets for her. She’ll come out to change them, and then we zap her up.” Danny pulled out his phone and began tapping furiously. A moment later the familiar sounds of the police scanner came through the tinny speaker. ‘Retired’ vigilante his whole ass.

Jason was infinitely relieved that Danny didn’t ask him how he’d had this epiphany. He very much did not want to tell him about the ghost from the graveyard and what he’d almost done. Or the fact that the woman had warped into something like a curse ghost because of him, not the queen.

“How will we know which death she’ll use?” Jason pulled at a cuticle. Night had fallen since the graveyard, and the scanner was a constant buzz of chatter and codes.

“We’ll know.” Danny tapped his leg with restless energy. They waited and listened as the minutes turned into nearly an hour.

Eventually Danny broke the silence. “You don’t have to come,” he said quietly. Guiltily.

“Are you joking?”

“The queen- the true curse- I encountered her once. Before. She’s– she’s not like the others.”

“So?”

Danny fiddled with the half-finished belt on his desk. “This junk only does so much. You’re still fighting with a handicap.”

The unspoken offer was there- a cure, a fix, a permanent silencer for his rage. A fix which was tied up in his own power- if he could even really call it that. It still felt borrowed more than something of his own.

He folded his arms. “Almost everything I’ve ever fought has been stronger than me. Why would I stop now?”

“You sure I can’t talk you out of this?”

“I’m insulted you even tried.”

The chatter on the radio crescendoed, pulling their attention back.

“Killer Croc and Scarecrow reported at the North Docks. Batman spotted on scene, perps still on the loose. Two DOA.”

Jason jumped to his feet. “That’s gotta be it, right?” Danny stayed where he was on the couch a moment before he rolled to stand.

“You ready?”

“Always.”

“Let’s go.”

They rode their bikes side by side through the streets till the apartment blocks turned to squat warehouses at the harbor’s edge. They ditched the bikes when they spotted police cruisers, opting instead to weave their way between shipping containers on foot till they found the scene.

A handful of cops lingered around a shipping dock. Cameras flashed as they took photos of something near the water’s edge. No sign of Croc, Scarecrow, or Batman. Whatever confrontation had happened it was already long since. Danny led him to the top of a container where they waited and watched.

“I take it she won’t come out with Gotham’s finest hanging around?” Jason asked below his breath.

“Doubtful.”

Minutes ticked by as the crowd of cops began thinning. The energy in the air practically crackled. Danny had lost his usual nonplussed air- he shook out his fists and paced the length of the container. They waited until the last of the cops drove away, leaving the dock in a deceptively peaceful sort of silence. Anticipation coiled in Jason’s stomach.

“Maybe I’m wrong. She might not show.” Jason crouched, unmoving.

“She will.” Danny spoke with zero doubt. Through all his impatient fidgeting his eyes never left a spot at the end of the docks. Where, Jason assumed, the man had drowned. He couldn’t see a body. But Danny had a sense for these things.

Suddenly Danny stilled, and Jason snapped to attention. He crouched beside him, looking out to the dark water. Nothing changed for a long moment.

Then the light shifted colder and dimmer, like the streetlights suddenly weren’t as effective at pushing back the dark. Their sodium yellow glow turned pale sickly gray. A thin layer of mist rolled across the water and over the shore.

Jason knew what the curse ghosts felt like. He’d felt it nearly every night for the last six weeks. This wasn’t that. Where the curse ghosts were hot fury and gunshots, this was a slow smooth knife of dread, cutting deep and settling in.

Danny sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. It sounded more like a hiss.

And then Gotham’s curse herself appeared.

A black cloaked figure glided across the water, barely distinguishable from the black of night around her. a circlet of shadows hovered over her head. As she moved Jason realized that it wasn’t just a cloak— the figure was shadow all the way down, writhing and shifting in the illusion of human form.

Around her a pack of curse ghosts followed at her heel like obedient hounds. The dripping goo of their bodies looked garish next to hers, all shimmering mist and elegance. As terrifying as she was, there was something deeply familiar to her. Both elusive and enticing.

Jason chanced a look at Danny. He’d stopped pacing. He had never seen such dangerous focus on his face before.

The queens entourage stopped at the dock Danny had been watching. Out of the water in front of her something blue and luminescent rose up— a ghost. The ghost they’d been waiting for.

Whispers filled the air in lower frequencies that thrummed through his body more than he actually heard them. He couldn’t parse words at this distance, but the meaning became clear enough. The queen extended a claw-like hand toward the fresh ghost. And, just like the one at the graveyard, it began to warp into something awful right before their eyes.

“Stay here,” Danny bit out below his breath. Jason recoiled at the thought of hanging back, but Danny shot him a look with such intensity that he choked on his retort.

Danny jumped down. He landed on his feet in the open cement of the shipping yard, fully visible under the glow of the desaturated street lamps.

“That’s enough.”

Danny’s voice shook with the same rumble as the whispers, cutting through them like ice. The curse queen and her entourage turned their attention to him instantly.

“Come out to play again little king?” The queen's voice was unexpectedly smooth, like cool silk down his spine. “I do find our games so enriching.”

“I find them rather dull personally,” Danny answered. His body language was nonchalant, but there was still an edge to his voice. He tilted his chin toward the warped ghost. “Neat trick.”

“You like it? Gotham’s restless dead truly thrive once I remake them in my image.”

“They’re not yours.”

The temperature dropped ten degrees in the span of a heartbeat. The queen’s pack of curse ghosts began lurking onto shore and positioned themselves in a wide circle around Danny. Jason tensed. “This city is mine. Anyone who comes here is mine to keep.” She turned her attention back to the new ghost. “And mine to devour.”

The shadows around the queen flared and the new ghost convulsed with a horrible garbled cry. Black goo exploded from its eyes, its mouth until it was covered. It fell to the queen's feet, a heap of sludge that writhed like worms. She laughed, a haughty rumble that had Jason’s hair standing on end. When the ghost rose a moment later on shaky, inky legs, it took the form of a hound. Just like the others.

Around Danny the lights flickered and popped. The queen laughed again, this time a piercing cackle.

And then the hounds attacked.

In the analytical parts of Jason’s mind, he had accepted that he’d never seen Danny fight with his full strength in any of their brawls. He hadn’t truly understood what that meant until now.

Barely a week prior Jason had managed to scrape a win against just one curse ghost by the skin of his teeth. Now Danny fought seven. At once. The shipping yard turned into chaos as Danny blasted curse ghosts in rapid succession, throwing them into shipping containers with such force the containers bent and toppled. Swaths of black goo splattered across the dock every time Danny landed a hit. Flashes of green and shadow exploded against one another like toxic fireworks.

Danny spared no breath for his usual quips and banter. Instead, his lips pressed into a firm line, broken only sporadically by a flash of his fangs as he tore into the hounds with easy viciousness. Jason practically chewed through the inside of his cheek. He could barely keep up with the pace of the fray as Danny’s glowing form darted through the gauntlet of claws and ink. He gripped the hilt of his sword from his hiding place. He could help. He couldn’t just watch. But just being in the queen’s presence still felt like a skeletal hand around his throat.

Danny faced off against two hounds from the dock side. He didn’t see the one from behind. Fuck that. Jason jumped.

He swung the sword in a wide arc downward and, just as its jaws reached Danny, relieved the curse ghost of its head. Goo splattered to the dock with a satisfying thunk.

Danny whirled on him, palms alight with energy. His eyes went wide in a kind of panic. “What are you–”

“I’ve got your back.”

Before Danny could protest, Jason stepped for another swing of his sword, catching another hound in the side. No room for Danny to argue. They fell into the rhythm of battle.

This Jason knew how to do. Armed to the teeth with Danny’s gadgets and weeks of practice, the clawing fear became background noise to the rush of adrenaline. He slashed heads and unleashed blasts and zapped with the thermos. Sounds of metal slicking through muck rang out, alongside the pained grunts and roars of the curse ghosts and his own frenzied breathing. As the dock got covered in more and more goo, he found himself grinning. He’d gotten rather good at this.

He looked to Danny, hoping for one of those sharpened smiles. Instead, Danny looked back at him with that same strained panic.

Jason saw now that Danny was focusing on keeping the curse ghosts away from him, enough that he’d taken more than one nasty hit. It threw Jason’s rhythm, enough that a hound got its teeth into his arm. He hissed in pain. Danny was there an instant later, ripping the beast off of him by its neck and tossing it back into the harbor.

“Quit hovering. I’m fine.” Jason growled.

“I told you to stay back.”

“I came here to fight.”

“Just let me handle it.” Danny stepped in front of him, throwing up a green energy shield to push back another curse ghost.

Jason ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be scolded like a child. He’d had enough of that from Bruce.

They were down to just two hounds left. The queen watched from the end of the dock. Danny went for her, two bounding leaps and a green sun in his fist. The newest curse ghost— the one they’d just watched turn— leapt out from behind her. They clashed and tumbled back through the open large bay doors of a dry dock warehouse.

The queen stalked forward after them. Neither of them reappeared, but the sounds of crashing metal and breaking glass rang out from inside. Jason ran toward it.

He got inside the warehouse just as Danny subdued the new curse ghost, sucking it up into his thermos with a grimace. The queen stopped before him, her shadow wide and menacing like wings surrounding her.

“What I don’t understand is why you keep playing this little game?” Her voice filled with cloying sweetness as she bent closer to Danny. “Why not just end it? What are you waiting for?” Dannyʼs eyes shifted across the room and found Jasonʼs. A mistake.

The queen whipped her head around with a crack. Her eyes- two black holes in her face, somehow darker than shadow- locked on him. His stomach dropped.

“Or should I have asked who?” The queen's full attention hit him like a flood. She had no mouth but Jason could hear her smile. Every nerve he had left was telling him to run. Every muscle in his body refused to move.

Her whole body twisted to face him, slow as dread. Jason gripped tighter on the sword in front of him. He swallowed a shallow breath.

“What do we have here? One of my wayward knights? So wonderful to finally meet.” The queen took one smoky step toward him.

Then every lightbulb in the warehouse exploded.

“He’s not yours.” A snarl ripped out of Danny like an earthquake. It cut through the sudden darkness, layered with unnatural echoes and tones that Jason felt under his skin. He tore his attention away from the queen to look back at him.

His eyes burned bright like a signal fire under heavy eyebrows, even more prominent with all the lights out. But that wasnʼt what made goosebumps rise across Jasonʼs skin. He’d never seen Danny angry. Heck, heʼd rarely even been more than annoyed. But now he was outright furious.

Sure, the weight of the queen's presence had struck a chord of fear in Jason, deep and instinctual. But that didnʼt hold a candle to what he felt now. He looked at Danny and his mind filled only with terror of the primal sort. Like a hare caught in the jaws of a wolf. Prey amongst a predator.

The queen threw back her head and laughed once more. It sounded like groaning metal and dissonant strings.

“Then stop me!” She screeched, and she lunged toward Jason.

As the swirling mass of shadows convulsed in his direction, Jasonʼs reflexes kicked in and he threw the sword up to block. It didnʼt matter. A shadowy talon sliced clean through it. The top half of the blade clattered to the ground unceremoniously.

Shit. Heʼd really started to like that sword.

Then he realized the sword wasnʼt the only thing the talon had cut.

He looked down. A thick spear of shadow extended through his stomach and out his back.

The queen laughed louder as she pulled it out of him with a wet schlick. He put a hand to the spot. Instantly his palm was drenched in red. Blood, so much blood. Warm and sticky and wet. Running out of him like a faucet.

Distantly he heard Danny yell out to him. He wanted to lift his broken sword to strike back, but his mind hadn’t caught up with what his body already knew- the fight was over. He’d lost. Embarrassing, really. After all his bravado he still wasn’t even in the same league as a real threat. Not even close.

A dull fuzzy feeling started overtaking the sharp bite of adrenaline in his system. That wasnʼt good. That felt like dying and he really didnʼt want to do that again. As his legs gave out and he fell to his knees, he realized he didnʼt really have a choice.

He looked up across the room again as his vision started to blur. Dannyʼs face was warped in absolute fury. The shadows around the edges of the room cowered back. He blinked and there was a flash of blinding white light. Every nerve in his body iced over with terror.

His eyes wouldnʼt focus. The world turned into a slideshow, flashes of images and sounds that lingered on the back of his eyelids. He clung to them like a lifeline.

A flaming crown. A starburst of shadows. The pungent smell of gasoline and ozone and iron. Cold, so, so cold. Black being ripped from black, pained terrible screeching. Neon green, brighter than the sun. Cold, deep chasming cold, down to his bones.

He crumpled to the cement.

A howling wail that nearly broke his heart.

And then blissful oblivion.

[tourettesdog]

DPxDC Prompt where when Jason is resurrected, he does not become fully conscious. He lays in his coffin, at rest while his body slowly absorbs the ambient ectoplasm of Gotham and tries to fix the improper formation of his core.

The rest is not altogether peaceful. He often has nightmares, and has no way of escaping them. The ambient ectoplasm in Gotham is sustaining Jason, but what repairs the ectoplasm is managing are agonizingly slow.

-

Danny has been living in Gotham for awhile, having moved there with Jazz as soon as she turned 18. Gotham has its own host of ghosts, but Danny feels at ease without the constant strain of ghost fights.

That is, until he feels something amiss in the Gotham cemetery.

The cemetery feels wrong, in a way Danny can't place. It reminds him of Amity, how restless it is-- only different. Wrong. He keeps visiting the cemetery, trying to find the source of that feeling. The entire graveyard is saturated with it, and all Danny can do is sit in the graveyard and talk into the quiet. He lets emotions flood from his core, trying to exude an air of calm that might settle whatever restless spirit haunts the grounds.

It works, at least. The sense of restless agitation eases when Danny flares his core, settling into a quiet comfort.

It becomes stronger, too. Danny can feel it coming from a newer section of the graveyard, and he curiously wonders why he's drawn more and more to a single line of headstones.

Wonders why the one on the end seems to stand out, the name Jason Peter Todd burning itself into his dreams.

Wonders why he feels a kinship with this boy's grave, when he can't even see a ghost attached to it or feel any resonance of a core. Nothing stronger than the blob ghosts that haunt the grounds, at least.

Only ever those strange emotions and that restless energy that quiets with the sooth of his own core.

Yet one day when Danny visits the graveyard and flares his core, he's startled when another one answers his.

-

[I originally posted this prompt in the Batpham server and it ended here, but several of us expanded on it and what I’m posting after this are the additions I added in that discussion, some of it edited.] Jason never actually digs out of his grave. When he finally awakens and tries to dig at the coffin he actually slips through it into the soil above. A hand thrusts its way through the soil and pulls him the rest of the way up

Danny is the only one present when Jason comes out of his grave-- when he pulls him free, a ghostly inversion of Robin who he knows to be a halfa. In his confused state, however, Jason does not linger in the cemetery. He runs off, and even though Danny's half ghost and can get around fast, Jason is now too and knows the city well enough that he manages to slip away. He's terrified, confused beyond reason, and hiding.

Jason hangs about the city, and at times he goes up on his favorite gargoyle to think-- and that's the first time Babs sees him. She thinks it's just a mistake-- her own imagination-- because as soon as she looks again, he's gone.

But it keeps happening. Dick swears he sees Jason near the manor grounds when he goes to visit. Alfred swears he sees him in the rear view mirror of the car one day. Tim swears he sees him while heading home one night. Bruce sees him on patrol, long enough for the two to lock eyes, but before Bruce can even open his mouth he's gone. And Danny isn't helping, because he's Looking for Jason still, trying to help, and this suspicious kid keeps turning up in the weirdest places and at a glance he looks like Jason too.

And it fucks with Bruce's head so badly. He can't say anything about it for days, and when he shakily admits it to Alfred the butler tells him he saw the same thing-- and when the others also share this, all of it lining up too perfectly, that's when Bruce approaches the grave and finds it empty.

During this, Jason naturally grows more bold after his initial shock and confusion dies down. He's a bold and smart kid, even if he's confused and afraid. He's just trying to investigate and see how Gotham (and his family) are doing and figure out how he can approach Bruce. He sees Tim and can’t help but feel forgotten and replaced, but without the rage from the pit he's trying to be a bit more level-headed and think things through.

Jason is also learning more about his new physiology, which keeps him distracted and his mind busy. Trying to figure out himself as much as those around him. But some things still haunt him and cannot be so easily ignored.

An encounter with the Joker sets Jason off.

Jason sees the Joker and that rage and hurt builds inside of him and he manages something similar to a wail. It's the most broken sound Danny's ever heard. It's nothing like his wail, it's more like choking and static and more a feeling in the chest than a sound. Jason died from inhaling smoke and didn't have any dying screams. It’s a shattered, raw wall of reverberating emotion that has no justice.

And Danny goes to it-- stumbling, because it's raw enough to punch at his core-- and he just finds the kid he's been looking for knelt on the ground, keening and sobbing his heart out. Danny goes to comfort him, tentatively wrapping an arm around him while they're surrounded by Wreckage (and a clown-shaped dead body).

And when the bats get there they finally get a good look at the specter they've been seeing all around Gotham, and it's absolutely Jason-- with another boy beside him... And the Joker's body, twisted and bloody. But when Bruce gets close, Jason startles, visibly terrified and hurt, and Danny hides them both from view and whisks Jason away to hide him.

Bruce let the Joker live-- and now Jason has killed the man and that horrified expression he caught on Bruce's face won't leave his head. He feels like a monster, destroyed with grief and hurt, and doesn't know what to do.

Danny takes Jason home, and he’s just a fucking Mess. When they get to the apartment Jazz is just about to leave. She was sleeping but the reverberating “wail” woke her and she’s been in a mad dash to grab all of their weapons to storm out and see what the hell has happened.

But right before she can leave, Danny appears with Jason in tow and all of Jazz's questions die on her tongue when she catches sight of the kid. Danny's told her a lot about Jason since he first met him-- and about the cemetery even before then-- and she's been trying to give advice and help out in whatever was she can from a distance. And now, seeing this kid actually here and just the sheer wreck that he is, she can't help but feel fiercely protective of him. She doesn't even know what happened down in the streets, just that Jason's in distress and needs help.

No questions asked, she helps Danny sit him down on the couch, wrap a blanket around him, and make some hot chocolate to try and get him to relax. She certainly has plenty of questions she Wants to ask, but that's not what's important right now. Right now she just has two severely shaken boys that need a safe place and time to calm down.

And even once she knows what happened, Jazz is nothing but supportive. Hell, she's happy to see the Joker is gone, but she doesn't focus on that because it's also not what's important. Instead she just does what she can to make a comfortable space and lets Jason know she's there to listen if he needs to talk.

And at first Jason is hesitant around Jazz-- and alarmed at first that Danny brought him to someone he doesn't know-- but Jazz is so patient and understanding. Jason can't help but relax around her. In a way it hurts, because it reminds him of his own family, but he'd rather have this than nothing, not knowing what reception he'd get back at the manor.

Danny's terrified Batman will want to hunt them both down. He knows this kid used to be Robin, but Jason's own reactions to Batman aren't making Danny feel more secure. If anything, he has a bone to pick with Batman himself now.

And Bruce is just left to reflect on what's happened, knowing that something of his son is still lingering. And he can't stop thinking of that Feeling the wail Jason made left in his chest. He keeps going back to his empty grave, hoping he might find him there. Hoping he might get to apologize to more than just the flowers.

Danny finds Bruce at the grave-- as Bruce, not Batman-- and he puts it together. He thinks he already knew it too, since while he refused to look up Jason Todd's name, it's Too Familiar.

Danny confronting Bruce angrily, expecting the man to rise to his challenge, but all he's met with is just a grieving father who desperately wants to see his son again.

And Bruce recognizes this kid and knows Danny knows where Jason is, but instead of demanding to know where he is he just asks if his son is okay. Because after feeling that wail and seeing what he saw that day, Bruce knows Jason must resent him. He doesn't even know what Jason is anymore, but he knows he's still the kid he loved and he's hurt and Bruce doesn't think he can fix that. He just wants to know if he's okay, and for Danny to tell him that he's sorry. That if Jason ever want to come home, the door will always be open.

Jason is terrified too cause he truly wanted to kill the Joker, but he didn't expect to If he was going to kill him, it would be in a way he could feel with his hands. But the way he did it was in an uncontrollable show of power that he's not sure he could have stopped.

And Danny keeps trying to reassure him that he not only will get a better hold on his powers, but that he's not a monster. That what happened wouldn't repeat itself because the only reason it happened in the first place was because that was the man who Killed Jason and ghosts are emotional beings. It’s still a struggle.

Unfortunately, the Fentons make their way to Gotham. News of what is clearly a ghost killing a person-- villain or not-- is big enough to reach them in Amity. Jazz and Danny were only in Gotham because the parents couldn’t stomach their son being Phantom-- assumed Phantom was overshadowing Danny and turned a moment of trust into one of betrayal. The siblings were trying to lay low, but... well it was Phantom that was seen with the other ghost.

The Fenton parents come to the town with an entire Arsenal and approach the Batman, going on and on about ghosts, how dangerous they are, and in particular how dangerous These ghosts are. They lament about the Death of their own son, and the entire time Bruce is just-- shocked. He wasn't even sure what Jason was, and while the word ghost does seem to fit it still feels like his heart breaking all over again.

And he can't forget how broken Jason seemed, and how protective this Phantom was of his son. He doesn't believe the Fentons, but he does Fear them. He fears what they might do, and that's when he learns about the GIW and that these people are acting Lawfully in telling him, to his face, that they want to hunt down his son.

[pinklotushere]

If you're feeling heroes

Infinite Realms: Danny Phantom x DC x Marvel AU

Ok Background set-up:

Tim Drake, convinced that Bruce Wayne is still alive, leaves Gotham to search for him, following the path of what he believes are key "historical events." His journey takes him to the desert, where he and his friends discover mysterious runes.

But instead of death befalling his team, the runes turn out to be a veil between dimensions, and they are accidentally sucked into the Infinite Realms—a multiversal space where ghosts, spirits, and lost souls wander.

>>> The Infinite Realms:

The Infinite Realms are vast, uncharted, and connected to every universe, spanning an infinite number of realities.

It's a place of eternal unrest for souls who can not settle, their energy scattered across the realms.

Ghost King Danny phantom oversees this expanse, helping souls who are unable to find peace. His primary task is to evaluate and guide the dead, but things get complicated when some souls have unstable or underdeveloped cores, making them restless or dangerous.

Meanwhile, Vlad Masters (Plasmius) has been secretly aiding Ra’s al Ghul in the mortal world, providing ectoplasm (which functions as Lazarus water in this universe) to Ra’s, in exchange for the loyalty of Ra’s dead assassins. Vlad’s ultimate goal? To usurp Danny and take the throne of the Infinite Realms for himself.

On the other side of the multiverse, thanos snaps his fingers and 50% of the people turns to dust , Peter Parker and half of humanity has been sucked into the soul stone, they dont die though,It just causes a ripple in the fabric of the multiverse, their souls arrive in the Infinite Realms.

but Peter’s left deeply resentful, confused, and struggling with an unstable core

Someone, either Frostbite or Clockwork, takes notice of Peter’s arrival and brings him to Danny for evaluation. As usual, Danny’s focus is on making sure the new arrivals don’t cause trouble, which is complicated by his deep dislike of paperwork (he’s great at physics and biochem, but don’t ask him about statistics).

Danny is swamped with the paperwork for new arrivals when Peter walks in. His appearance is unexpected—he looks like someone who should have settled, but instead, his core is unsteady and kn the verge of chattering.

Peter’s unhelpful attitude only complicates things further. Danny is immediately concerned.

Peter, a genius by nature, peeks at Danny's paperwork and recognises the problem with Danny's administrative mess and offers a solution. Danny, impressed and possibly a bit desperate, hires Peter on the spot to help with the duties of the Ghost Zone.

As things progress, Peter grows more comfortable in the Ghost Zone, though he’s reluctant to fully settle.

Danny starts offering him more and more outrageous jobs in an attempt to keep Peter nearby and help with his unstable core.

What starts as offering him a simple assistant job escalates into more absurd roles—secretary, concubine, king regent, you name it.

Danny will do anything to keep Peter around because he feels Peter’s the key to fixing the realms—and his heart.

Peter, while impressed by Danny's devotion, is wary of the increasingly bizarre proposals. His love language, however, is acts of service, and he appreciates the lengths Danny is willing to go to help him.

Meanwhile, Tim Drake is trying to blend in with the League of Assassins' ghosts in order to track down clues about Bruce.

He quickly learns that Vlad is controlling the assassins, and, much to his disbelief, Plasmius wants to dethrone Danny.

Tim has access to Danny’s historical records, and after sneaking into the archives (probably under Clockwork’s watchful eye), he realizes that Danny is by far the best leader the Infinite Realms have seen in millennia.

Tim starts to believe in Danny’s leadership—and in his own chance to make a difference.

Tim's plan is an easy two steps:

1. Break the assassins free from Vlad’s control.

2. Go to Danny and explain Vlad’s plans, hoping Danny will be indebted and help him return home to Gotham. But, Tim, ever the tactician, also knows that if he takes down Vlad, he could demand Bruce’s return as part of the bargain.

Tim’s plan goes awry when he’s blasted with ectoplasm during an altercation, which leaves him vulnerable to the strange aura of the realms. His life force begins to drain, and he’s rushed to Frostbite’s domain for care. Panic sets in because his plan isn’t completed, and the pressure causes him to blurt out that he’s come to propose a deal to Danny. But he fumbles the words, not realizing what he’s implying.

The misunderstanding spirals out of control. Tim believes he’s asking Danny for an alliance, but Danny’s court interprets this as Tim proposing marriage. In a frantic attempt to clarify things, Danny blurts out that he’s already in a courtship—with Peter.

Tim, confused but intrigued, takes one look at Peter (the “pretty boy” in question) and casually says, “I don’t mind sharing.”

In the Infinite Realms, relationships of this nature are binding—and the realms themselves interpret Tim’s words as consent to begin the courtship process. Now, Danny is trapped in a situation where, if he doesn't follow through with the courtship (and marriage), his core could shatter, causing the Realms to collapse.

Danny, now trying to keep his new “court” intact, is caught in an increasingly complicated political and personal web. He has to decide his feelings for both Peter and Tim while also trying to maintain control of the Infinite Realms. The Ghost Zone’s stability is at stake, and there’s the looming threat of Vlad’s power grab.

As the stakes get higher, Tim, Peter, and Danny form an unlikely alliance. Tim continues to investigate Vlad’s manipulation of the assassins, and Peter starts to use his genius to help stabilize Danny’s leadership—and potentially help them figure out a way to stop Vlad. And danny? Danny falls hard

[builtbybrokenbells]

#19 Danny 😍❤️🌧️

Person A joining person B in the rain.

Pairing: danny x reader

W/c: 1.5k

Warnings: fluff!

sorry i suck so bad at answering my asks 😭 i hope you enjoy lovely!! 🫶🏻 thank you for requesting

Prompt list here

“Do you hear that?” You hummed, a smile lingering on your lips as tiredness danced in your eyes. Limbs were tangled in the sheets to the point where you no longer knew which body part belonged to who. You peeked up at your boyfriend through heavy eyelids, stopping for a moment to admire the breathtaking beauty of his face. His eyes were closed, but you knew he wasn’t asleep; his fingers were still tracing light shapes on the bare skin of your thigh that was draped over him.

“Hear what?” He mumbled, so close to slumber yet unwilling to give in. He was enjoying the moment of intimacy far too much to part with it just yet.

“The rain.” You whispered, straining a little harder to hear the pitter-patter of the droplets against the roof.

“Huh,” he cracked one eyelid open, peering towards the window. “Didn’t even notice.” He knew you loved the rain and all that came along with it. The smell in the air, the haze of grey clouds in the sky, the fog that lingered near the ground. You were a fanatic for lazy days, and rain always ensured you could get away with them. There was still a bit of light in the sky, letting you know that the day was nearly over, but you still had time to enjoy it if you wanted.

The gloomy skies were present from the minute you woke, but only teased rain for the rest of the day. You had taken full advantage of the weather, lazing around in Danny’s t-shirt alone in the earliest hours. When noon rolled around, Danny found himself free for the rest of the day, surprising you with his company. He was quick to join you in the relaxation; it started in the living room, sharing kisses and taking turns laying on each other while you ignored the television in the background. Then, you moved on to dinner, cooking while still finding it impossible to keep your hands off of each other. Then, you retired to the bedroom, where you found yourselves in the comfort of your bed as you continued your laziness even further. You were practically atop of him, your leg and your arm strung carelessly across his body while he held you there, ensuring you wouldn’t move away.

You did find your day of rest catching up to you. A sudden restlessness had taken over you as your body begged you for some form of excitement. He could tell you were growing antsy; he knew you better than you knew yourself most days. The life came back to your voice, the lull of sleep no longer calling to you. As much as he would have liked to cater to the need, the energy hadn’t seem to catch up to him the same as it did for you. “Come on,” you said, making a move to get out of bed. His grip on you tightened, a groan of protest sounding from him.

“Where?” He complained, unwilling to let you leave, let alone follow you.

“Surprise.” You said, fighting his hold with a laugh rising in your throat. Both of his eyes were open now, but not fully caught up to speed. He couldn’t help but laugh too, amused by your frantic attempt to free yourself from his arms. He rolled over, pulling you back into him with ease, but not because he was protesting your actions. Now, he was only trying to annoy you. “Let go!” You giggled, face pressed into his chest as he muffled your plea for freedom.

“Not until you tell me where you’re going.”

“I told you, it’s a surprise!” You complained, trying to pry his arm off of you. After a moment, you freed yourself from his hold, but not because you had won the battle of strength. He gave in, knowing that you wouldn’t stop fighting even if your life depended on it. If there was one thing for certain about your relationship, it was that he loved to tease, and you loved to fight back. It was fun, never allowing for a boring moment, and it was incredibly endearing. You missed it terribly when he was gone on tour.

Before he could even think about grabbing you again, you rolled off the mattress and to your feet, a smile of triumph on your lips. He didn’t need to point out that he let you win, because you both already knew. Plus, your elation was too charming for him to diminish. He loved seeing you happy, even if it meant he had to pretend to take a loss. Within an instant, you darted towards the bedroom door, disappearing around the corner and into the hallway. You could hear his slow footsteps following you, nowhere near as enthusiastic about getting out of bed. By the time you were at the patio door in the kitchen, he was only halfway down the hallway. When he heard you slide open the door, he picked up his pace.

“What are you doing?” He laughed, catching up to you before you could make your big break.

“Going outside.” You replied, not bothering to look back at him before you stepped into the rain.

“Y/n, get back in here. You’re going to get sick.” He said, leaning against the open door. It was quite the sight to behold; he was staring at you shirtless in the doorway, and you were dancing around in the rain on your back porch in nothing but his shirt.

“Come out here with me.” You pleaded, holding a hand out to him.

“No!” He laughed, finding the idea ridiculous. “Come back in here with me.”

“Mmm, no.” You shook your head, looking up to the cloudy sky as raindrops trickled down your face. Your smile was blinding, and you were already soaked.

“I’m not letting you back in here like that.”

“Like what?” You asked as if you had no idea what was wrong.

“You’re all… soggy.” He said, trying to place the right word to the description. “Cold and wet… and cold. Did I mention that?” He listed.

“Come here.” You tried again. You were stuck in a standoff. He wasn’t willing to join you, and you weren’t willing to give up. After a few seconds of silence, he let out a sigh of defeat, stepping outside and into the unfavourable weather. You let out sound that radiated pure glee through the air, stepping towards him and wrapping your arms around him.

“You’re crazy.” He said, but his hands were already snaking around your waist and he was looking at you with nothing but love.

“And soggy, apparently.” You laughed, finding his description funny and fully knowing that he didn’t mean a word of what he said.

“Yeah, crazy and soggy.” He agreed.

“But you love it.”

“How could I not?” He muttered, leaning down to press a kiss to your lips. The ran washed over you as the cool air enveloped you, but you were filled with nothing but warmth and light. No matter the weather, you knew he would always produce that feeling within you. He was a ray of sunshine, carrying the warmth with him wherever he went, and you were incredibly lucky to be able to experience it. “Is this good enough for you? Can we go inside now?” He asked, barely parting from you as he spoke.

“One more kiss.” You challenged, but the request was unimportant because he was already planning on doing it, anyway. You cupped his cheek in your hand as his lips landed on yours once again, savouring every bit of sweetness the moment had to offer.

“Okay, now get in the house.” He said, pulling away from you. “I don’t want you getting sick.” You gave a nod, accepting his demand as he gave you a light push towards the door. As you stepped away, his hand landed with a sharp slap on your ass, making you jump at the contact. You whipped your head around only to find him laughing at your reaction.

“I’ll lock you out here.” You threatened, stepping inside.

“You wouldn’t.” He brushed you off. He was right, and both of you knew it. You didn’t have the heart to be mean to him even for a second.

“Race you to the shower.” You said, ignoring his rebuttal and slipping your shirt over your head. You tossed it back in his direction as you moved towards the bathroom, not bothering to stop and wait for a reaction. He closed the door, listening to you giggle as you disappeared once again. With a smile on his lips, he chased after you, much happier with the dance in the rain knowing the reward that was now waiting for him. Then again, even if there was no promise of anything more than a kiss in the cold rain, he would still be more than happy to join you, because a moment with you was worth more than the world to him.

boyfriend Danny actually kills me. beating my head against a wall rn.

[allieisacrybaby]

Laundry Room Shenanigans

Danny Wagner x Reader 18+ ONLY

sooooo.....danny in sweats👀

Warnings: handjobs, cussing, heavy petting, teasing, it's pretty soft smut, but it's still smut, also very minimally edited, soooo yeah.

The sun pouring into the bedroom from the open blinds wakes you. Groaning at the intrusion of light, you embrace nature's alarm clock instead of burrowing deeper into the sheets. You stretch your limbs out, expecting to bump into an unconscious Danny, but your limbs stretch out fully, hitting nothing. With furrowed brows, you slap a hand out to Danny’s side of the bed, expecting to meet a warm body, but your hand meets the cold sheets instead. Finally, opening your eyes, you look to your side. Danny is not there. 

“Hmmph, he’s not normally a morning person.” you mumble to yourself, picking up your phone and checking the time—10:45 am. 

“Damn, I slept like a rock.”

Swinging your feet down onto the ground, you stand up and stretch again. Grabbing one of Danny’s sweatshirts lying on your vanity chair, you put it on and shuffle out of your bedroom to find your boyfriend. 

“Danny?” you call out into the house. 

“Laundry room.” his sweet voice rings out. 

You smile at his voice and make your way to the laundry room. Walking into the doorway, you find Danny with his back turned, dumping laundry into the washing machine. However, what catches your eye is that he’s forgone a shirt entirely, his bare shoulders and back on full display, and he’s clad only in a pair of grey sweatpants that hang deliciously low on his hips.  

You bite back the urge to wolf whistle at your man and waltz into the laundry room. 

You come up behind him, wrapping your arms around his torso and squeezing tightly, smushing your cheek into his bare back. You hum in appreciation at how warm his skin is, always running hot rather than cold, which you were not complaining about, especially on chilly mornings like this. 

“Good morning, Sweetheart,” he smiles, resting his hands over yours. “Did you sleep well?” he asks.

“Yeah, I just missed having you in bed this morning. I hate waking up to an empty bed. I already wake up to enough empty beds when you’re on tour, so when you’re home, it feels like you’re gone.” you ramble, overexplaining yourself.

“I’m sorry, honey. I promise tomorrow morning I’ll stay with you until you wake up. I just really needed to get this laundry done," he explains, squeezing your arms.

“It’s ok. I forgive you.” you giggle, squeezing him tighter in reassurance. 

Danny goes back to doing his laundry while you stay glued to his back. As you grow a teeny bit restless, your hands wander up the expanse of Danny’s toned chest, smoothing over his patch of chest hair you loved so much and back down to rest at his pecs, giving them a playful squeeze.

“Hey!” Danny yelps, swatting at your mischievous hands. You giggle again, hands finding their way back down to his waist. Not entirely done teasing your poor boyfriend, you begin running your fingertips up and down his v-line and through his happy trail. A deep groan rumbles past Danny’s lips, and a shudder racks his body, leaving goosebumps in its wake. 

“Hmmmm, handsy this morning, aren’t you, little minx.” Danny chuckles. 

 Turning in your grasp, he pulls you into him, immediately feeling the results of your persistent teasing poking at your thigh. You look up into his eyes, and they’ve gone completely dark, but his gaze is still soft and loving.

“You need something, Angel?” he asks, groping at your ass. 

“Mhmm.” you grin, biting your bottom lip.

Your right-hand snakes down his ribs and into his sweats, gripping his dick. He’s hot to the touch, and as you wrap your hand around him and stroke, he moans softly. You keep working over him, twisting your wrist as you reach his head and back down, keeping a steady rhythm.

“God, I missed this. Missed you.” he sighs. 

One of his hands releases your waist and comes to tangle in your hair. He uses his grip on your hair to pull you into a deep needy kiss. His tongue runs along the seam of your lips and begins nibbling on your bottom lip for access. You smile against his lips and open your mouth in compliance. His tongue snakes its way into your mouth, and it is a glorious feeling. Danny has always been skilled with his tongue. 

Your hand comes up to the head of his dick, and you run your thumb over his slit. Danny groans into your mouth, and his hips thrust into your hand.

“Keep going,” Danny pants, his hips starting a steady rhythm of thrusting into your hand. “I’m almost there.” he groans, kissing your lips hard, knocking into your teeth. 

You feel him twitch in your grasp, and you speed up your strokes. Danny’s a mess in your hands. A thin layer of sweat has appeared across his chest, forehead, and freckled nose. He’s panting like a dog into your mouth, and his kisses have gotten sloppy and rough. His legs have also started to shake a bit, and every so often, his knees buckle just the tiniest bit, and you know he’s almost there.

“Fuuuuuuck, I’m cumming.” he moans.

He is spilling his seed into your palm with a couple more strokes of your hand. You keep working him through his orgasm until the thrusting of his hips and his panting ceases. You pull your hand out of his sweats and smirk up at him holding your hand to his face and watching as a bead of his cum rolls from the tip of your finger and into your palm. He just rolls his eyes at your display. You reach into a basket of clean towels on top of the dryer and pull one out, cleaning off your hand. You throw the towel over Danny’s shoulder, and he rolls his eyes again at your antics.

“You think you’re so funny, huh?” he asks, pulling you back into him.

“Just giving you a taste of your own medicine.” you state, resting your hands against his chest.

“Hmm, I see how it is,” “So, I shouldn’t do this?” before you can respond, Danny’s hand plunges into your sleep shorts and runs through the slick that has collected between your lips. 

“Danny!” you squeal, thighs clamping around his hand.

“See! You’re just as worked up as I am, so don’t get all high and mighty on me, baby.” Danny states as he keeps teasing his fingers through your lips. Your hips roll into his hand, needing more friction than he gives.

“Nobody likes a tease, Danny.” you say between pants.

“Oh, baby, I’m just giving you a taste of your medicine.” His statement drips in condescension. You really should watch your words because your past statement comes to bite you in the ass.

“Please, Danny, Please just take me to bed.” you whine, knees buckling as his fingers find your clit.

“There’s my good girl using your manners for me.” Danny smiles, flashing his pearly whites. God, how the tables had turned. His hand slides out of your shorts, and both hands wrap around the backs of your thighs, hoisting you up around his waist. Your ankles cross behind his back, and you hold onto him as he walks you back to your bedroom.