#dc shoes fans

[eclaire-went-bam]

i've been stalking the batman rogues fandom since about 2019 i believe and tbh the horniest enjoyers of any iteration of the riddler are the fuckinG PAUL DANO RIDDLER STANS. i could never repeat what some of you fuckers have said to me in private .... what some of you have told me you've done ... I'M SO AFRAID OF YOU GUYS HIGHKEY???

[wil-fae]

when it's a rare sunny day in gotham, it's time to break out the skateboard

[molsquinn]

absolute unit on the court‼️

[noisilyscreechingsong]

Eyes

Dp x Dc Crossover Writing Idea

“Red Robin!”

When he backtracked to find the owner of the voice he was a bit surprised to find a young boy, maybe eight years old if he had to guess, dressed in a red sweatshirt that dwarfed him and a pair of gym shorts that had seen better days.

Not many Gothamites called out to the vigilantes, a silent agreement to stay out of their way and not to look too closely. This kid however stared up at him with bright blue eyes unafraid of getting the Red Robin’s attention.

A fan?

Before he even opens his mouth, the kid gives him a small, hopeful smile, eyes shining with something that reminds him of himself when he was that age and following Batman and Robin with his camera around his tiny neck.

“I brought you a gift,” the boy say with nervous excitement. He enthusiastically swings off the backpack he had on to dig through the contents, taking his eyes off the vigilante and showing his unwavering trust that nothing bad would happen to him while Red Robin was here.

The boy pulls out what appears to be a jar wrapped in newspaper, the worn page ripping in some spots to show the clear glass underneath. Small hands present it like it’s Red Robin’s birthday (which it wasn’t).

He takes it cautiously, the kid hasn’t been hostile but this was still weird, and pulls it closer with enough space so if it’s a bomb it doesn’t blow up in his face.

It’s got weight to it and the slight sloshing tells him it’s filled with liquid. He carefully unwraps the ‘gift’, keeping his eye on the boy who stands waiting anxiously.

Tim almost drops the jar as soon as he sees what’s inside. Only his reflexes from over the years held on and his expression turned neutral.

A pair of eyes sit at the bottom of the jar. The orbs were crudely extracted, tissue floating around them like a mane of hair around a head.

He turns the jar to see the irises and… he knew these eyes. The slimy green is filmed with death, but he recognized these eyes from the number of times the owner locked them onto him, the cruel possessiveness they possessed when they gazed at him. Never again apparently.

Tim doesn’t speak for a while, not knowing what to say, but also thoughts racing too fast to form any proper sentences.

“Do you like it?” The small, nervous voice interrupts those thoughts.

What an innocent question on an equally innocent looking face.

“How did you get Ra’s Al Ghul’s eyes?”

The teasing chatter over the comms immediately hushes into shocked silence.

“I took them from his body, so you knew he was dead. I burned the rest so you don’t have to worry about him coming back again. The Pit there is gone anyway,” the child explains easily, not fazed in the slightest from the words he speaks.

“Grandfather is dead?” He hears Damian whisper over the comm.

So many other questions were flying through Tim’s head. He looks the kid over again.

Black hair and blue eyes. In any other situation the kid might have been a possible Wayne adoptee. He’s not a clone from what he can see though. Despite the coloring he doesn’t really look like any of them. Pale skin like Tim, but has freckles. The same kind of nose as Damian, but wide, round eyes. Jaw kind of like Jason, but his body shape is too narrow. Bright, almost icy blue eyes like Dick, but eyebrow shape is flatter. Lip shape like Bruce, but from the kid’s anxious lip biting he could see the faintest trace of dimples.

“Who are you?” He asks instead of the other million and one questions.

The boy blinks almost like he wasn’t expecting the question. He’s cheeks color pink with blush as he grins widely.

“I’m Danny!” He introduces cheerfully like he didn’t just hand a vigilante a jar of eyes.

“Hi, Danny,” Tim greets almost dumbly. “Want to tell me why you gave me this?”

Danny scoffs his shoe against the pavement in what appears to be embarrassment.

“Well, I know when you ask someone for something, it’s nice to give a gift or something. Like I did something nice for you so maybe you’ll do something nice for me?”

He takes a moment to absorb that child-like reasoning.

“So you want me to do something for you and you thought I would like Ra’s Al Ghul’s eyes in exchange?”

Danny studies him and fidgets with the large sweatshirt sleeve.

“I just thought you would like proof. Like the whole ‘bring me the heart of my enemy’ kind of thing. Do you not like it? I couldn’t just take a picture ‘cuz I didn’t have a camera with me, I know you like photography. I can do something else for you if it’s not enough,” he offers worriedly.

Tim freezes.

“How do you know I like photography?” He demands.

Danny tilts his head curiously.

“Because Tim Drake likes photography,” he says like it’s obvious, “and you’re Tim Drake.”

Well. This is less than ideal.

“Red Robin, take him back to the Cave,” Batman instructs over the comms.

Yeah, he was getting there.

“Do you know the other’s’ identities?”

Danny nods and hums affirmatively. Tim waits.

“Oh! Yea. Batman is Bruce Wayne. Robin is Damian Wayne. Red Hood is Jason Todd. Nightwing is Richard Grey-“

“Okay. That’s enough.”

Tim glances around the empty alley they were standing in, checking to make sure no stray people heard. Luckily they were truly alone.

“Danny, do you want to come back with me?” He asks, but it’s not really a question. The kid was coming back regardless, it would just be better if he went willingly.

Unsurprisingly, the kid lights up like a little sun at the offer.

“Really?” He nearly shouts in excitement.

“Yeah, kid. I parked my bike a few blocks from here. You ever rode a motorcycle before?”

Danny shakes his head, nearly bounding on his toes.

“Not in this lifetime.” And wasn’t that odd wording? “Are we gonna grapple there?”

“Think you can hold on?”

“Yeah!”

He kneels down so the boy can climb onto his back and lock his arms around his neck and hook his feet together around his torso. Danny is worryingly light as he stands.

The kid is the picture of an excited and overeager child as they carefully fly over rooftops and then drive back to the Cave. Even when they park inside the safety of the Batcave, Danny’s eyes are filled with child-like awe and wonder, so curious and chattering with questions and wild imagination. It would be cute, endearing even, if the jar of eyes wasn’t sitting heavily in his pocket.

Alfred came down not too long after their arrival with a tray of healthy snacks and some waters. Danny happily munches on the apple slices as he wanders around where Tim can see him.

The rumble of the Batmobile can be heard almost an hour later after Tim has to tell Danny not to touch the weapons for the fourth time. The kid’s attention is drawn to the sleek black vehicle as it parks by Tim’s bike. He trots over with wide eyes as the doors open and Robin exits, then Batman.

Unfortunately, Dick is in Bludhaven and Jason is visiting Roy and Lian this week. Cass and Steph were gone as well and Duke was sleeping. It was just the three of them and this kid with Alfred as the only buffer.

Danny stares openly, curious, as the duo makes their way over to the computer where Tim has claimed his sit.

Tim turns the jar that he set on the table so the eyes are facing them and slowly leans back again, suddenly very tired. Damian flexes his hands into fists tightly while Batman is very still.

“Hi,” Danny chirps like nothing is wrong, oblivious to the tension in the air.

Batman takes a measured breath. Robin glares down at the child, but remains silent for now.

“Who killed Ra’s Al Ghul?”

Danny blinks blankly.

“Nobody.”

“You’re saying he just dropped dead?” Damian sneered in sarcasm.

“Death took him,” the child says simply as if that explained everything.

“How?” The word is demanded and emphasized.

“Like Death takes everyone. His expiration was overdue.”

Bruce frowns and Damian almost snarls.

“I demand you start making sense!”

Danny glares back in offense.

“I’m being very clear! Maybe you should ask better questions!”

The twelve year old growls at the smaller child and Batman has to place a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him from attacking.

“Danny?” Batman questions after a tense moment.

The boy’s arms are crossed in irritation, but he blinks out of his glare to stare up at the man.

“Yea?”

“How do you know our identities?”

“Oh, memories.”

Danny looked like everything he said made sense and it was driving Tim up a wall.

“Memories,” Bruce repeats.

“Uh-huh,” Danny nods confidently. “From the Lazarus Pit.”

A jolt goes through Tim as he recalls what the boy said earlier about the Pit.

“Didn’t you say the Pit was gone?” He asks before Bruce could continue his line of questioning.

Danny turns with a bright smile as if he was proud Tim remembered.

“Yea! Well, gone from this world anyway.” Tim was concerned. “I took the memories from it before sending it back where it belongs.”

“Okay. How did you know how to ‘take the memories’ and send it back? Back where?”

“I was born from it. Duh. It went back to the Realms or I guess you’d call it the Afterlife,” Danny actually rolls his eyes as if they should already know this.

“Born from it?” Damian asks with a wavering voice, hidden well from the child but not from them. “Nothing has ever been born from the Pits.”

“That you know of.”

And wasn’t that the kicker.

“So, to clarify, you come from the Pits. You know who we are because you took the memories from said Pits. Death took Ra’s because his time was up. And you took the eyes from his corpse to give to me because you thought I would like it as a gift so I would do something for you.”

Danny positively beams.

“This is why you’re my favorite!”

Damian grinds his teeth harshly.

“What is it you want Red Robin to do for you?” Batman asks in strangled hesitation.

“Oh!” Danny perks up like he remembered and hops over to Tim with pleading hands. “Can you please make me an identity? You’re really good at all that stuff and I was hoping you could find me a family. Someone to adopt me. A nice family, with a bed and family dinners and a dog. I always wanted a dog.”

Tim has the sudden urge to scream.

[kettlefire]

As Good as Good Gets (DP X DC Snippet)

Richard "Dick" Grayson is the golden child. In the eyes of the public, and in the eyes of the league. Dick is a sweet, caring son, a man who went from being a sidekick to being a hero. The pipeline from Robin to Nightwing had many people applauding his dedication to keeping Gotham safe.

No one knew the full story, not truly. No one but Bruce Wayne himself. And maybe a certain butler. Many don't know that Dick only became Robin to stop him from hunting down and killing the man who killed his parents.

No one really knows about the harsh fights and arguments he has had with Bruce. The times when Dick would find himself cut off from the Wayne name for a week or so. No one knows that the first person Dick warmed up to was Alfred. Having been bribed with cookies.

Things weren't always this good, trusting, happy relationship between Bruce and Dick. It had been a rough ride, a complicated one. But that was okay, because it got better.

Dick stopped being so moody and angsty. He grew up, he learned, and he changed. He became an older brother, found people that needed him. Needed him in a way that the citizens of Gotham didn't need him.

His brothers like to call him annoying. A goody two shoes who Bruce trusted more than everyone else. They couldn't fathom how someone like Dick could be so stupid and bubbly at all times.

All times, except when shit hits the fans. Despite the name calling, despite coining Dick as the stupid Wayne. They all knew better. They knew that when it mattered, Dick Grayson always pulled through. He was a force to be reckoned with when needed.

The whole Wayne family was a force to be reckoned with when called for. It didn't have to be under the guise of costumes and vigilante acts. Whether he was Officer Grayson or Nightwing, Dick was a man with his morals and values.

One night on patrol as Officer Grayson, Dick found someone who needed that force. A force willing to protect and care for the innocent. The hurt. The damaged, yet still good.

It started like any other night. A call of shots fired by an empty warehouse. There was no sighting or knowledge of any rouges being there, so Dick took the call. Told the team he'll contact them if it seems more than just a civilian incident.

The warehouse was dark, reeked of copper and oil. It didn't take long for Dick to find the trail. The liquid he found looked like the person had been dragged before walking. There was a clear struggle, even with the mess and emptiness that was the warehouse.

That wasn't Dick's biggest concern. The concern lay in just how much blood there was. Too much for any normal person to lose and still manage to stumble through the warehouse.

It wasn't just blood. It wasn't that much, but Dick could spot the strangeness in the liquid. The mixed in green that had an eerily similar color and glow as a certain pit.

Without thinking, Dick followed the trail. Barely remembering to make contact with his family. Give them an update on what he found. Words telling him to stay put for backup went in one ear and out the other.

Something in Dick's gut was telling him he couldn't wait. He needed to find the source. Whoever was currently bleeding out in this warehouse. He silenced the comm, moving further through the dimly lit building.

Then Dick found it. Or more so, he found him. It was just a boy. A boy that reminded Dick too much of the youngest Wayne. A boy sat against a wall, looking pale and weak.

Red and green coated the front of the boy's shirt, arms wrapped tightly around his middle. An attempt to stem the bleeding. A puddle had already started to form beneath the boy, and Dick moved without thinking once again.

He quickly found himself kneeling beside the boy, hands carefully reaching out. Before Dick even touched him, the boy flinched. Eyelids suddenly opened, wide and terrified blue eyes landed on Dick's.

In just that one look, Dick knew what he had to do. The haunting, terrified, and pained look in the boy's eyes told Dick everything he needed to know. The boy was in danger. Someone had hurt this kid, and it was clear it wasn't the first time.

The boy struggled weakly against Dick's touch, terrified whimpers, and barely coherent pleas spilled from the kid's lips. It had Dick's heart aching, clear as day the poor kid has been through hell and back.

It took a lot of reassurance, gentle touches, and promises of help before the kid let Dick take a look at the bleeding wound. A promise on Dick's soul had been the final thing that earned him any semblance of trust. A strange promise, but Dick was willing to make it.

That concern turned to pure anger the moment Dick managed to pull the sticky shirt away from the wound. The sight of a Y-incision cut perfectly into the skin, stitches tight on the skin, but blood still leaking heavily from the wound.

It didn't take long for Dick to realize why. Despite the perfect surgical care of the wound, a good couple of stitches had broken. Leaving gaping spots for that red and green liquid to pour out of.

The boy was deathly silent, tears streaking down his cheek as wide blue eyes stayed trained on Dick. In that moment, Dick knew he had to help. Had to get the kid to safety, patch him up, and find out what kind of monster would do this.

It didn't matter if the kid was human or not. It didn't matter if the kid had special abilities or not. No one, absolutely no one, deserved to be vivisected.

The kid was shrouded in mystery, but that mystery only seemed to grow and become clearer when Bruce had entered the scene. The boy had tensed, eyes flashing a bright glowing green.

Lazarus pit green.

It set a pit of dread in Dick's gut. His mind brings forward memories of Jason. Jason, after his revival, after his dip in that cursed pit. The same flash that his brother would get if he got too angry. Too emotional.

As much as Dick wanted to focus on finding who did this, if it had any connection to Ra's al Ghul. He couldn't. Not when the kid tried to get up, to pull away as Bruce and the others made their way closer.

Right now, Dick only cared about making sure the boy was okay. Fixing those stitches, getting him a meal, and a warm bed.

He needed to get this kid someplace where he felt safe and secure. Comfortable and protected. Dick wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the promise he had made, but he wasn't letting anyone get to the kid.

That included his family. As strange as it seemed, Dick put himself between the others and the kid. Shooting them all a glare that they had only ever seen a handful of times.

Dick lifted the poor boy up in his arms, cradling the crying child close as he led the way out of the warehouse. Ignoring the questions or confusion coming from Bruce and the others. As Dick walked, feeling the trembling boy clinging to him, he made a rather obvious realization.

Maybe the eldest son really was more like Bruce than he expected. Just a few short moments the the boy, a boy that Dick didn't know his name, and he was ready to pull out adoption papers. To give the boy a safety he so desperately needs.

Give him the chance that Bruce had given him all those years ago.

[prttylilbunny]

RANDOM!HAZEL HC'S

summery: some silly hazel hc's:3

warnings: nothinggg

notes: bleh:P

CANNOT talk to girls for the life of her, like she doesn't even know how she got with you, the first time talking to you her palms were sweating and she was just ranting about the fight club

is the sweetest girlfriend ever:( she brings you little rocks from every trip she goes on😭 she also buys you little knick knacks to cheer you up!!!!

soupsoupsoup, she is a soup enthusiast!!!!!! she likes learning new recipes and making you test them ! she cooks them while listening to music and dancing around and you just have to wait till she's done doing her thing😭

her shoes are DESTROYED, she seems like one of those people that doesn't change pairs of shoes, she kept the same pair that she's had for yearssss

her favorite subjects are def history, English and math!! she's a nerd your honor!!!! a nerdy nerd!!!

she loves marvel and DC!!! she's definitely a big spiderman fan! she also loves superman and batman!!! she of course has Lego Batman sets!!

is obsessed with yellow jackets:3 SOMEONE HAD TO SAY IT!!!! her favs are nat and misty:P

listens to weezer🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 like this girl mostly listened to weezer and tv girl ong 🤞

loves horror movies but is also scared of them, like she'll put on a scary movie for fun but then she gets too scared and holds onto your arm☹️

for anniversary's takes you on an all day date:3 she'll take you out to every meal and she'll take you to shops and just eeeee she's so sweet>_<

[halitis]

do i have anything anything against jason as a character? no. i actually like him quite a bit! i think hes really interesting!

BUT DO I THINK SOME JASON FANS ARE FUCKING DUMB AS FUCK?!?? YES BITCH WHAT THE FUCK?

im gonna go through all the shit wrong with this comment thread one by one because jesus fucking CHRIST!!!!

1. "that thing" first of all. What. she is literally just a evil-aligned poc woman. she has been raised in this environment and as a result of that this is really the only life available for her and thats the tragedy of her character!

2. "why did she get with roy" THEY ARE FUCKING SOULMATES. THEIR ENTIRE THING IS THE INHERENT LOVE THEY SHARE FOR EACH OTHER WHILE ALSO VALUING THEIR MORALS ABOVE EACH OTHER. IT IS THE COMPLEXITY OF RAISING A CHILD TOGETHER AND ALSO TRYING TO FIND MIDDLE GROUND. IT IS BEGGINT THE OTHER TO CHANGE AND KNOWING THEY WONT.

3. "MY BABY JASON" YOU CANNOT SAY THAT AFTER YOU JUST INSULTED JADE.... LITTERALLY CANNOT. the biggest fucking hypocrytical statement i have ever fucking heard!!! bro!!! jason is Nawt a good person! he just flat out isnt! he has done so much horrid shit, not just to his familt, but to roy's family too. like he is not ur sweet innocent traumatised boy, he is a fucked up grown ass man who was hurt and decided to take that pain out on others. he is no fucking different from jade except he thinks hes doing rhe right thing, at least jade knows she isnt

4. "lian baby mama is jason now" ive talked abt this before, but sexism in fandom spaces when it comes to mlm ships is so fucking common it is fucking absurd. why are women only used as babymakers for ur gay characters?? why can they not be complex characters while men can???? it is fucking absurd how common it is in dc fandom and i frankly dont know why im shocked by it! women are regressed to one of three roles: evil villain who abused male love interest, baby maker, BAMF with no complexity or character at all and it is honestly so fucking tiring and just, boring to read??? like how do you not just hate it??????

5. "unemployed" honestly. i have no words. all im saying is it is No Fucking Shock that the woc is being pushed into these awful stereotypes.

now we are up to the worst part. the final comment...

6. "how are you gonna sleep with my man" ROY LEFT JADE. NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. roy was on an undercover mission and fell in love with jade and got her pregnant! he left because he would not be able to arrest her!!! all she fucking knew was one of the first people she truly ever loved had fucking gotten her to trust him and then left her, she had to deal with that pregnancy BY HERSELF. SHE LITTERALLY SAYS SHE SPENT THE ENTIRE PREGNANCY WAITING FOR ROY TO COME BACK TO HER, AND SHE WASNT EVEN MAD SHE STILL LOVED HIM.... she didn't even realise his identity for years!

also why is it always the woman's fucking fault if she gets pregnant? it takes two to tango! roy is as equally responsible for that pregnancy as jade is!

7. "AND THEN LEAVE YOUR KID" OH MY GOD.... [EXPLODES YOU WITH MY MIND] JADE. CANNOT. LEAVE. THE LEAGUE. BUT SHE DOES NOT WANT TO RAISE A FUCKINF CHILD THERE BECAUSE SHE KNOWS WHAT ITS LIKE!! SHES BEEN THAT KID!! jade knows fucking better then to delude herself into thinking she can raise lian safely while still stuck in her life, but lian is her number one priority always!! forever!! she pushes roy and lian away because she knows she is dangerous for them and because she thinks she doesnt deserve to have them and that love in her life!!!

8. "lian should be embarrassed to have her as her mum" i actually fucking wish nothing but hell upon you. have you not fucking read. just a single thing in ur life actually? just like actually can you read??? because i have met TODDLERS with better media literacy than you. LIAN HAS ISSUES WITH HER MOTHER. THIS WAS A BIG PART OF HER STINT AS SHOES. SHE IS DEALING WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF LOVING HER MOTHER, THE WOMAN WHO LOVES HER AND CARES FOR HER, WHILE ALSO ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT SHE ISNT A GREAT MUM.

im sorry this is so messy and has so much shouting it actually has me fuming when people r so fucking stupid, idc if you dont like a character but dont just ignore all the bits of a characyer that make them redeemable or interesting to prop up ur male blorbos????

[judesmoonbeauty]

Jude Jazza's IF Prison Guard Story Set: "Immoral Interrogation"- Story One

MDNI. NSFW. This is part 1 of the story. Translations will include heavily cropped screenshots as mentioned here. Fan translation only. Not 100% accurate. Please expect grammatical errors. Cybird owns everything. Feel free to re-blog, but please do not post my translations elsewhere. Thank you, for you support! ☾.

CW: DC/NC (?) I don’t think it needs this, but some might feel triggered.

Okay, let’s go now while there’s no guards.)

(The exit is just up ahead—)

???: - Stop right there.

When a sharp voice called out from behind me, my shoulders flinched and my feet came to stop.

???: Raise yer hands ‘n c’mere. Any unnecessary movements ‘n I’ll shoot.

The commanding voice was indifferent, and it didn’t sound like a mere threat.

If an escaped prisoner such as myself were to resist, I’d be shot dead by the enemy.

(Because I can’t die now….I have no choice, but to obey.)

I raise my hands and look backward —

— His cold amethyst eyes stared straight at me.

I was arrested and thrown back into prison, where I was roughly rolled onto the cold floor.

As I lay on my back, the man casually placed his foot on my defenseless stomach.

Kate: [Gasp]……!

???: Prisoner number R5328...If I’m not mistaken, yer one of the intelligence agents from the neighborin’ country.

???: Ya were imprisoned after a failed attempt to steal secrets from this country…

Kate: Ha….you know me so well. Are you a fan?

When I responded sarcastically so as not to be overwhelmed by his spirit, he laughed mockingly at me from deep in his throat.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: I’m a guard of this prison. I’ve got all the prisoner’s information memorized.

Kate: But that doesn’t look like a guard’s uniform.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: I’m off duty today. Was ‘boutta rest up when I saw ya tryin’ to escape.

Kate:…..You’re so loose-lipped. Is that okay? Telling me that you’re off duty.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Even if ya know that much, it ain’t no skin off my back.

I guess that’s not just big talk.

I’d heard before that the guards of this prison were superior, and that once you’ve been caught, you’d never escape again.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Seems like no matter how much they tortured ya, ya wouldn’t say thing.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: What’s more, it takes a lotta guts to plan a prison break. I like a lively woman.

Kate: Walking all over the woman you like, the guards of this country have extremely great tastes.

As I collapsed in a wretched state, I glared at the guard, provoking him.

Even though my stomach was being stepped on, I didn’t want it to reach my heart, so I mustered my best bravado.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Yeah, those defiant lookin’ eyes.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Even though yer a prisoner with no power ‘n no freedom, ya still haven't given up, have ya?

The foot that had been stepping on my stomach moves away slowly.

I thought it was a chance to sit up, but when I tried to move, I put pressure on my legs, so I couldn’t move carelessly.

……That’s when the guard shoe came between my legs.

Kate: …..Ahh.

The tip of the shoe gently stimulates the space between my legs, making me let out an unexpected cry.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Yer so cute it’s worth torturin’ ya.

(Such bad taste….!)

The guard finally removed his foot, as if he was satisfied that I’d raised my voice.

Giving up on escaping, I got up and sat on the prison bed.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Maybe ya were plannin’ on meetin’ up with yer friends after escapin’…..but it pointless.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Feel sorry for ya, but ain’t no one comin’ here to help ya.

Kate: On what basis….

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: I was readin’ somethin’ interestin’.

The guard handed me a newspaper that was printed in my country.

The shocking headline read, “BETRAYAL BY OUR COUNTRY’S OWN SPY.”

(This, is about me….?)

— Two months ago, it was reported that a a spy sent by our country had been taken prisoner by the enemy country.

However, newly discovered evidence shows the spy had been in contact with the enemy even prior to being captured.

Kate: I’m a traitor who’s been in contact with an enemy army?!

Kate: That’s BULLSHIT! I’d never do that!

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..That’s the reality.

(Huh….?)

Was it just my imagination that those muttered words sounded soft somehow.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..Well, ‘course they’re gonna make ya out to be a traitor.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: If they say they’re gonna abandon a spy who’s sworn their allegiance ‘n worked hard,

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Not only does that sound bad, it’s affects morale.

Kate: ……

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Betrayed by yer homeland, ya got no one on yer side.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Even if ya escape ‘n go back, they’ll silence ya by killin’ ya.

I know the guards are taking this chance to crush my spirit, make me despair, and trying to win me over —

(Is there really no one who wants me to comeback alive….?)

— My heart sinks at the information before me.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: ….But, if ya spill all the information, I’ll be on yer side, sound good?

His words seep into the cracks of my crumbling heart like a sweet poison.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Country doesn’t matter. …..I’ll be yer sole ally.

Kate: …..Seems like, you plan to seduce me with sweet words, and then extract information from me?

Kate: I’m saddened by my homeland’s decision, but I’m NOT going to give up information -…..mm!

Suddenly, the guard kisses me hard, cutting me off.

I tried shaking him off, but he pulled on the chains that cuffed my arms, and pushed me down on the bed.

Kate: N……ngh…..ah……

The more I struggle and resist, the stronger the kisses become.

My lips were bitten, my tongue sucked, my breath melted, and my thoughts become muddied and caved —

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: ….Ha, looks like it feels good.

Kate: How does this feel good…..Tss, Nngh…..

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Denyin’ it even though yer makin’ sucha sweet voice?…..Bad woman.

The guard reached down to my breasts. While kissing me, his large hand cups and squeezes them.

Because the prison uniform was thin, I could clearly feel the guards' hands, and my body inevitably became hot.

Kate: Ah……Nnghaa……!

I tried to hold back, but I let out a moan due to the sweet ache.

Hearing this the guard parted his lips from me with a somewhat satisfied smile.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..Wasn’t it yer country that betrayed ya first? Then, it’s okay if ya betray ‘em too.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: If ya tell me everything, I’ll make ya feel even better?

The guard’s fingertips move down from my chest.

They trailed down my stomach, between my legs, and under my clothes.

Kate: ……haa.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: If ya want me here, then have a nice chat with me.

In this situation where I had no one to rely on, the guard's words sounded extremely appealing.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Force size, strategic objectives, chain of command, codes….

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..Share all the information ya know.

The combination of pleasure and fatigue begin to dull my thinking.

But before my mind was completely overtaken, I came to my senses.

Kate: I won’t tell you anything….!

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..Why’re ya so stubborn? I can’t understand it.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Is there anything in yer homeland that ya would go to such lengths to protect?

As he spoke, the guard’s fingers came in and penetrated my muddy spot.

Kate: Ahh…….

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: I don’t dislike it. Ya can tell me all by yerself how good it feels when I touch ya.

The guard’s fingertips crushes my secret bud, and stimulates my shallow spots.

My body writhes in inescapable pleasure.

Kate: Let go……Mmm….Tss

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: I’ll stop if ya spill.

Still, I can’t give up information about my country just because of a lewd interrogation.

Kate: Ah…..I….made a, promise….

Amethyst-Eyed Guard:….A promise?

The finger movements that tormented me, came to a sudden stop.

Kate: When I was a child….there was a boy from a neighboring country that I was friends with.

Kate: I hope to meet that boy again someday…..

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: …..

Kate: Shortly after the promise was made, the two countries went to war….

Kate: But if the war can be brought to an amicable end, diplomatic relations may be restored…..!

….At present, the country where I live is somewhat on the losing side of the war.

To return the situation to an equilibrium and conclude peace, we spies had no choice but to gather information from neighboring countries.

Kate: That's why I can’t share the information, so that way I can reunite with that boy, Jazza, someday…..[1]

After being tortured and interrogated by the guards, what I ended up spilling was not information about the state, but a promise I made as a child.

It was the number one reason why I became a secret agent... and I guess I just blurted it out.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: ….Forget about that promise ‘n take it easy.

Those words were supposed to encourage me to confess, but for some reason, the guard's expression contorted as if he was enduring pain.

For a moment, the color of his eyes, which seemed to be tinged with bitterness, seemed to overlap with the color of the boy with whom I had made the promise.

(…..But, I’m sure it’s just a mistaken resemblance.)

Kate: I won't listen to a man from an enemy country whose name I don't even know.

Kate: I won’t divulge any information, and I will fulfill my promise someday.

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: ……

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: If ya can’t forget or break yer promises….

Amethyst-Eyed Guard: Inside the adult cage, you’ll be teased, tormented, ‘n loved by me.

The amethyst eyes lit up with a sadistic color, and my body shivered. Was it fear —

Ftn [1] Kate actually calls him Jazza-kun here. AWWWW!!!!

Jude: Tell me everything I wanna know, and I'll make ya feel even better. Kate: No. Jude: *Proceeds to finger her anyway* (I think you missed the point babe.)

Just you all wait for part 2 .........because dayyumm.

[Master List] [Part Two] Dividers: @.natimiles

Tags List: @sh0jun @theimaginativelyreticent @sapphire-323 @letter-from-afar @nateko @cosmowgyrall. @lunaaka

Please let me know if you want to be added to my tags list by commenting below.

[starsstuddedsky]

Needles and Knives

red hood!jeno x doctor!reader

...

“Don’t you dare die,” you say, gripping the scalpel.

“Already did that,” Jeno mutters, eyes fluttering. “Didn’t agree with me.”

...

summary: Jeno’s plans never included you yet somehow you worm your way into his life. Being a vigilante isn’t easy - but neither is loving one.

genre: angst except i can’t stop them from making jokes so like fun angst. little bits of fluff here and there

warnings: gore, mentions of death, violence, cursing

wc: 16k

a/n: dc fans i am so sorry. my knowledge of these characters comes from wikipedia. medical workers i am so sorry. the medicine in this is NOT accurate. if ur neither maybe you can fully enjoy this fic. i hope you do :) this is as proofread as its going to get..... as always i appreciate any sort of feedback you can give. i hope this story leaves you as delusional about jeno as i am <3

Not for the first time, you open the door to your apartment to find a man covered in blood on your couch. At least he managed to keep it off the floors this time. 

You can just see the back of his head from the doorway, black hair sticking up from where he slouches on the couch. The head seems to be intact, which is a bit of a relief—being a surgical intern means you’ve become numb to gore, but not fully immune to the nastiness of patching up a tear in his scalp. 

“Still alive?” You ask as you kick off your shoes. Your feet ache from standing for the past eight hours. 

Jeno huffs a humorless laugh. “More or less.” He twists to look at you, holding up a very sad looking plant. “Which is more than I can say for this poor thing.” 

You drop your bag behind the couch and cross to stand in front of him, his head swiveling to follow you. He sets the dead succulents down on the side table. The tuft of white that hangs over his forehead bounces with the movement, stark against the rest of his black hair. 

 His shirt is already off, discarded to the side. At work, you’ve become just as numb to bodies as you have to gore. You haven’t quite managed that with Jeno despite seeing him shirtless on the regular since he seems to find himself covered in blood on your couch at least once a week. Still, you can’t really be blamed for being a little flustered when he looks like… Well, that. He’s got more abs than ribs and broad shoulders that give way to thick arms of pure muscle. But you can never truly ogle because he inevitably is covered in too much blood for you to ignore. 

“I think I just popped the stitches,” he says, referring to the wound on his stomach that is once again bleeding. “No new shit. I think.” 

“I don’t think that’s actually any better,” you say. “You know we usually tell patients to refrain from strenuous activity after they’ve been stitched up.” You retrieve the medical bag you definitely don’t keep stocked from the supply closet at Gotham City Hospital. 

“They usually get pain meds, too,” Jeno grumbles, even though he’s never once complained about the actual pain of being stitched back together. 

You kneel in front of him, focusing on what was once a deep gash. He showed up with it a couple days ago, spewing more blood than he physically should be able to produce. It’s already half healed, though the new stitches will still help. 

“They usually aren’t getting blood on my couch either,” you say. “We can do this all day.” 

Jeno doesn’t answer, staying quiet long enough for you to peek at him and make sure he hasn’t passed out from some injury you don’t know about. Instead you find his dark eyes, filled with an intensity that wasn’t there when you were children. You still find it hard to believe the kid that walked with you to school every day for three years has grown up into this—all hard lines and guarded expressions. Every time you look into those eyes you are reminded how little you know about him. 

Here’s what you do know: Jeno and his family disappeared when you were twelve. Vanished in the middle of the school year, leaving the house next to yours half full of their belongings in the flight. And then you didn’t see him for another twelve years, long enough for you to graduate high school, and then college, and then med school. Long enough for you to get a prestigious internship in the surgical program at Gotham City Hospital, which had you moving three states over into an apartment you had to rent without even doing a walkthrough. It’s this apartment—the one that he sits in now—that brought Jeno back to you. Again, he’s become the boy next door, though you still can’t reconcile your memories of the little boy with this man, who never smiles. You barely recognized him. But he recognized you, and even though he didn’t seem all that interested in having friends, he found out you were a med student and just happened to need stitches. And then he needed help with a broken wrist. And then a black eye. And then, and then. 

It didn’t take you long to figure out he’s Red Hood, one of the newer vigilantes of Gotham City. Or, more accurately, it didn’t take you long to figure out he’s a vigilante. It did take a while to figure out Red Hood, but his eyes eventually gave it away. One look told you he’s cold on the inside. One look told you he’s a killer. 

(Plus you’ve seen the now-iconic leather jacket hanging in his entryway.) 

But though you can’t call his eyes warm now, they aren’t cold either. He regards you with a softness you’ve never seen before, or maybe just never noticed. You duck your head and turn back to the stitches. 

“If you pull these again, you’ll be sewing them up yourself,” you mutter. 

“Well, how else am I supposed to see you?” Jeno asks. “You only ever make time for me when I’m bleeding.” Despite his earlier complaints, he doesn’t flinch as you begin the sutures. In fact, he doesn’t show any sign that he’s even noticed. 

You roll your eyes. “That's because I took an oath. Something about saving lives, and something about ‘no matter how much I want to take a hot shower and pass out for the next twelve hours, I’m legally obligated to keep my weird neighbor alive when he shows up begging for help.’” 

“Who said anything about begging?” 

You pause, needle in hand. “I can leave you like this, you know. You can finish it yourself if you really want to.” And you know he can. You’ve seen the scars. So many scars, which tell the story he hasn’t told you: the oldest on his forearm, perfectly straight, the result of a real surgery; the thick ones on his back that look like they were never stitched up; the cut on his arm that looks like it tore through muscle yet was carefully stitched up; the scar on the back of his neck that looks like it should have broken his neck; and the angry red scar on his left knee that he said he stitched up himself a couple months before you moved in next door. 

You open your mouth to tell him he’s really on his own now, but Jeno says, “I guess I can beg.” 

You pause, then say. “That’s just terrible.” You have to look away so you continue the stitches. “You can do way better than that.” 

“Oh, YN, great saver of lives,” Jeno says, “please do me the great honor of stitching me up. Again.” 

You hum. “Better but still room for improvement.” 

“I would die without you. I would get on my knees if I could. Please, please, do not stop stitching me up.” 

You grin at him and almost get a smile back, his eyes truly warm. You take it as a win—or at least a vast improvement from how he was two months ago. You finish the stitches, sitting up straight. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll sit still long enough to let these actually heal, will you?” Not that you know how long that is. You noticed a while back that most of his injuries heal far faster than they should. He shouldn’t need to come to you for minor injuries yet he does, over and over again. It doesn’t make any sense, but as long as he keeps showing up on your couch, you’ll keep taking care of him. 

Jeno looks at you like he wants to say something but isn’t sure if he should. Maybe this is it. He’ll finally tell you exactly how he gets his scars. How he became the Red Hood. 

Instead, he says, “Nah, probably not.” 

You sit back on the couch beside him, sighing. “I watched a seven hour surgery today, and you know what I learned?” 

“Hm?” He turns, cheek resting on the couch. For a moment you see the boy again, cast in gold from the afternoon sunlight. You can just picture his smile, the way his whole face melts into a gooey happiness. You blink and he’s gone. 

“Surgeons are dicks,” you blurt out, forgetting what you were going to say. “They never want to believe patients, and I get it, sometimes they’re annoying and think they know best, but this girl came in three months ago complaining about pain and Dr. Park called her a junkie. She came back in today and collapsed in the waiting room because he never actually examined her. 

“She was having a heart attack, and if he just listened the first time, it might have been salvageable, but the second one ripped her heart to shreds. Dr. Nakamoto said he’d never seen someone survive a heart that looked like that.” 

“But she did survive?” Jeno asks. 

“Yeah,” you say. “For now. She needs a heart transplant, though, so it’s a waiting game.” 

He nods. 

“I don’t get why Dr. Park or any of the other doctors couldn’t run a simple EKG. It’s not difficult and it would have saved her life but they took one look at her and assumed she was a junkie,” you say, “and I can’t even complain about it because Dr. Lee will just say some shit like ‘medical decisions are more difficult than you think’ because that’s easier than actually checking if his surgical team gives a shit about their patients beyond death rates.” 

You sigh. “The worst part is, they aren’t even bad doctors. They know the medicine, and the procedures they can do—it’s really incredible. I don’t know, sometimes I worry you can only be good at medicine or good with patients, and it’s impossible to be both.” 

“You really think that?” 

“I don’t know.” You shrug. “I’m just tired.” 

Jeno nods, letting silence settle between you. It’s far too comfortable to just sit with him like this, a peaceful solidarity you’ve only ever felt with him. You won’t give it meaning, won’t think about it any more than another afternoon on the couch together. That’s all this is. 

“I should take a shower,” you say. 

“I should get back to my place,” Jeno says. Neither of you move. 

.

.

Lee Jeno doesn’t consider himself to be consumed with rage, despite what the headlines say. Yeah, the mask is intense, but he doesn’t use it to incite fear among all those who look upon his face. He just needed to keep his face hidden from Bruce (and, as much as it pains him to admit Bruce might be right about anything, he can’t deny that keeping his identity hidden is ultimately the right move). 

He tosses the magazine on his desk. He’s got to stop reading the tabloids. They’re rotting his brain. But somehow they’re the only reliable source on the current crop of Joker’s little worshippers. Jeno still can’t believe it took him six months to realize the ads were calling for new recruits to the cult. 

He feels the pit of anger, deep in his stomach, writhing at the thought of that man. Revenge would be too kind. Jeno will take him down, no matter what. 

Maybe he’s a little consumed with rage. 

But he can’t ignore the recent distractions. He’s spent the past week sitting behind the computer doing whatever investigative work he can, any excuse to avoid pulling the stitches again. You really didn’t seem like you were joking about making him do it next time, and it was a bitch to stitch up his knee on his own. The angle alone would make his ribs pretty much impossible. 

Jeno sighs, tapping on his keyboard to bring the computer to life. Three monitors light up, the far left screen featuring the feeds of all the security cameras that show the apartment building that he very legally tapped into. The far right screen shows three different news feeds, local to Gotham, national news, and an international broadcast, volume off, subtitles on. The middle screen remains blank, ready for him to pull up whatever information he needs. 

Hunt Joker. Get revenge. 

It was simple when he first got his memories back. Those were his only goals. But then he had to train, become a better fighter, establish some sort of half-life in the city–which meant figuring out how to pay rent, which meant figuring out which billionaires he could reasonably steal from without them noticing. He admits it’s foolish to have Wayne Enterprises on the top of the list, but the bastard owes him. 

Six months passed by before he finally set this place and a couple other safe houses up. And then another six passed, and Jeno is still no closer to revenge. He is supposed to be better than before, but all he’s done is steal some lunch money from people too rich to notice and take down a couple men who liked to pick on the weak. He hates that he did more in tights than he’s done becoming Red Hood. 

He let his life become too simple. Day after day of hunting criminals and keeping them from hurting anyone ever again. It was freeing, no debriefings with idiots that would tell him that he should have acted differently—should have acted with more mercy. He makes his own decisions and no one is there to judge him. It’s proof he never needed anyone, even if hunting Joker is taking a little longer than it would if he had Wayne Enterprise resources. 

And then you showed up. 

He leans back in the chair, the joint squeaking. Jeno still doesn’t know what to make of you popping back into his life. He hasn’t been the kid you knew for so long he almost forgot about him. That kid died the day his parents yanked him out of school and moved to Gotham city. His parents worked back breaking shifts in one of the factories, while Jeno lasted a month in school before he realized he could stop going and no one would care. He learned how to survive Gotham quickly, and pretty soon he thrived. He barely even noticed when his parents died. 

You bring back memories of suburbs and eating ice cream before it could melt onto his hand. He remembers this one time you were walking back home after school and you tripped and skinned your knee. There was so much blood, Jeno freaked out and thought he’d have to carry you (which he definitely couldn’t do back then), but you just stood up and gritted your teeth and walked all the way back. It didn’t surprise him at all to find out you’re a doctor now, not when you were always so hardcore. 

It came in handy pretty quick, too, though he’ll at least admit to himself that his powers probably won’t let him die. It just turned into a routine for him, a nice way to end his day (though his work “day” generally ends at dawn). 

But nice is for a boy that doesn’t exist, not for the justice he seeks. He can’t keep pretending to be someone he isn’t, and someone as smart as you can’t keep pretending to believe his lies. He focuses on the security feed, watching a dark sedan roll past. 

He can keep avoiding you. It would be easy to clear out of here, especially when you spend most of your time at the hospital anyways. He could do it now—you’re in the middle of one of those endless shifts where you sleep in the hospital. You complain so much about being exhausted that he doubts you’d notice that he left, at least for a month. You’re not friends with him, Jeno doesn’t have friends. You just took an oath to save lives, and he forced you to save him. You wouldn’t even miss him. 

But even as he contemplates it, he knows he can’t do it to you again. Even if all you are is the person that patches him up every other night, you deserve some explanation. A goodbye. 

Rain begins to fall, slow at first, then a steady patter, the gentle wind strong enough to send the rain against the window. 

He hears the truck engine rattling down the street before it finally comes into view on the top left camera. Strange, the bottom right camera covers the opposite side of the street but shows nothing. He keeps an eye on the truck, which rattles by, frowning at the bottom right screen. 

Not just an empty street. Though the sky is dark in the background, the pavement and sidewalk are still dry. Jeno curses, getting to his feet and grabbing his belt. He loads the pistols, clipping on the extra ammo to his belt alongside the gadgets while keeping an eye on the other cameras, trying to see if he missed anything else. Two more screens play on a loop, the transition more obvious with the rain. He pulls on the mask, grateful he made it waterproof. His jacket is last, riddled with holes he never had the time to sew back together. He keeps his knife in his right hand, checking the cameras a final time—all showing empty loops—before ducking out the window onto the fire escape. 

The jacket is thick enough to keep the rain from actually soaking him, but the cold seeps through. It brings an ache to his bones, an empty feeling like his body doesn’t quite belong to him. He presses a hand to his heart, the pressure bringing a new ache that reminds his body his heart still beats. 

He jumps the rest of the way down from the fire escape, landing in a puddle of water that splashes beneath his boots, sending water up to his knees. He needs eyes on the situation. Ideally he’d go to the roof, but there’s too much daylight to be out in the open like that, turning him into a sitting duck. He opts for the alleyways instead, looping around the back of the building to where he can see the street without being seen. Whatever is going on, he needs to drive the action away from his place. 

He scans the road, settling on the dark sedan parked in front of the corner store. It wasn’t on the security camera feed when he left, and as he watches, two tall men with dark hoods pulled over their heads slip out of the back seat. They approach the apartment building with the confidence of residents, though Jeno can tell from here they don’t. He memorized his neighbors a long time ago, but even if he hadn’t, Jeno has seen enough gangs to know bruisers when he sees them. 

But who do they belong to? Who knows where Jeno lives? The people he’s been skimming from? He hasn’t been stealing enough to warrant this kind of a response. No, his life as Jeno couldn’t have attracted these men. 

So it’s Red Hood? Anyone that knows about Red Hood should know better than to send two goons that could be taken out this easily. Jeno switches the knife to his left hand and pulls out a pistol, turning off the safety and cocking the hammer. 

Before he can squeeze the trigger, he senses something, the rain behind him falling on something other than pavement. He drops to the ground and rolls until his back is against the wall and a dumpster protects his front. A bullet buries itself into the pavement where he had been standing a moment ago. 

He moves again, vaulting over the dumpster, catching the man holding a pistol at the end of the alley by surprise. Still in the air, Jeno squeezes the trigger, hitting the man in the stomach. He lands on his feet and crosses the alley in two quick strides to kick the man as he falls. His hood falls off as he lands on his back, revealing an assuming face. Like the other men, Jeno has never seen him before. 

Jeno kicks the gun out of his hand and snatches it from the pavement, slipping it into one of the extra holsters on his belt. He glances between the front of the building and the back. The two goons out front had to have heard the noise, which means he doesn’t have much time before they make it to the alley. But he’s got no idea what might be around the other corner. 

He crosses back to the dumpster, keeping an eye on the man behind him as he waits. The man at the other end groans but doesn’t call out for his buddies. Rain overflows from the gutters, falling in spurts rather than droplets. Thirty seconds pass and Jeno only hears the rain. Are they waiting for him? Circling around to trap him between them? 

He adjusts his grip on the knife in his left hand, holding it so that the blade is nearest to his pinky finger, his thumb wrapped around the bottom of the base. He keeps the blade facing out, stepping to the front of the apartment building. Instinct guides him to the left, giving him enough time to block the bat with his right arm, sending a shock up his shoulder. 

He steps closer, letting the man—one of the goons from before—pull the bat back for another swing. Jeno swings the knife up, catching the man’s jacket but missing blood. He drops the knife and twists, turning so that the man is behind him and ducking to catch the arm still swinging the bat and flip the man over using his momentum and the bigger man’s weight. He hits the pavement hard, sending water splashing all over Jeno.  

The second man catches up from the other end of the alley, firing wild shots that don’t come close to hitting him but force Jeno to step back. Jeno pulls a throwing star from his belt, sending it cutting through the air to knock the gun out of the man’s hand. With his right hand, he takes a shot at the man struggling to get off the ground, catching him in the back. He falls again and this time he doesn’t move. 

The second man charges out of the alley, the throwing star gone from his hand, though it still drips blood. He has a crowbar in his other hand, like these guys want to be stereotypical goons. He moves about as well as the other man, all power and zero agility. Jeno dodges him easily, letting him take a couple swings before he shoots him in the head. The man drops a couple steps away from his buddy. 

Jeno glances around but the dark sedan has left. No one else ventures out to investigate—probably because Jeno still holds a gun. He retrieves his knife and the throwing star, going back to the first man that he shot who still groans at the end of the alley. Blood mixes with the iridescent swirls of run off, red overtaking the blended greens and purples. 

He kneels on his chest. Rain falls on the back of his mask“Who sent you?” 

The man gurgles a laugh. “What’s it to you?” 

Jeno pushes his knee a little harder. “I asked you a question.” 

“Fuck you,” the man says. He tries to spit but the mix of blood and saliva ends up splattering on his own face. The man suddenly turns, moving with more strength than Jeno expected. At the same time that Jeno points his gun at the man’s head, the man pulls a gun from inside his coat, pressing it straight into Jeno’s stomach. Neither of them hesitate to pull the trigger. 

.

.

Caution tape is up in the alley next to your apartment, but the rain seems to have washed away any sign of the crimes committed. It pounds into your head relentlessly, soaking you through your coat. 

Though you’ve been living here less than a year, Gotham’s reputation has held true. Working in the hospital has given you even more experience with the diversity of types of people the city attracts—good, bad, and everything in between. You even worked on a guy who apparently turned out to be a Batman villain a few months ago. 

Between working at the hospital and living in the city in general, you’ve gotten used to dissociating crime scenes with the sense that you’re actually in danger. Besides, you live next door to a vigilante. Who are you to say this is even a crime scene?

You don’t think anything of it until you open your apartment door and catch the unfortunately familiar scent of blood. Wind and rain crash through the open window, pulling your stumbling feet forward to find the source of the blood. 

Jeno didn’t make it to the couch this time. He lies just inside the windowsill, barely sitting up with his back against the wall. One hand clutches his stomach, red blood spilling over the black shirt. His head hangs low, hair soaked by that rain that still falls on him through the open window. The red mask sits in his other hand.

For a scary moment, he doesn’t move. 

You drop your bag, rushing to him. You can’t stop your voice from shaking. “Jeno?” 

He groans when you shake his arm. “Ow.” 

You curse as you slam the window shut and lay him out on his side, keeping his hand over the wound until you can get a better gauge on what it is. “What the hell did you do to yourself?” 

He doesn’t answer, only groaning as you try to reach your medical bag while keeping pressure on the wound. You finally get it to the ground, pulling out the scissors and slicing through the shirt so that you can see the wound—a gaping hole framed by bullet fragments  where his stomach should be. 

“Fuck.” He needs a hospital, a surgeon that’s done more than assist on an appendectomy, but you can’t bring yourself to dial 911. It would bring too many questions on Jeno, who has clearly avoided hospitals for a reason. And he came to you. He trusts you, even if you don’t trust yourself. You have to save him, if only because you’re the only option. 

 You set out the equipment, spraying them with alcohol to sterilize them and get ready to cut. 

“Don’t you dare die,” you say, gripping the scalpel. 

“Already did that,” Jeno mutters, eyes fluttering. “Didn’t agree with me.” 

You gape at him but he seems to have slipped back into unconsciousness. You force yourself to look back at the bullet hole. You can only yell at him if he’s alive, so you push away the thoughts and get to work, replacing any insecurity with arrogant belief that you know what you’re doing.

.

.

Death is nothing like falling asleep. For one thing, it fucking hurts. Jeno supposes the method might have played a factor. He used to think getting shot point blank might be better than being beaten for hours and then blown up (he now has the experience to decidedly answer that question: marginally better). But death itself. It hurts. 

And resurrection? All the pain of death with none of the peaceful end. Jeno remembers crawling out of the ground, forcing his muscles to work even though his body still suffered from the wounds that killed him. 

But it was the pain that forced him to keep moving, the pain that still fuels him now, a never ending ache deep inside that no time will heal. 

Joker may have held the bat, but Batman didn’t stop him. He never stopped him. Jeno remembers the look on his face, the shadowed glimpse of it that he could see. He remembers dying, hearing the Joker cackle, and Batman calling out to him—calling him Robin. 

He remembers the pain. Pain he can live with. Pain makes him who he is. He can’t let go of the pain, not when it is all that he is. 

But the pain ebbs away when you’re around. And for the life of him he can’t convince himself that it’s a bad thing.  

.

.

You manage to get Jeno into your bed after you finish patching him up—which was six grueling hours of pulling bullet fragments from the hole and praying he didn’t bleed out. No one should have been able to survive the amount of blood that seeped out of him but by some miracle (though maybe it’s a curse), his heart keeps pumping. 

He woke up just long enough to let you sling an arm under his shoulders and half carry him into the bed. You spent the entire time praying he wouldn’t pull apart the stitches and bleed out for real, but it seems like luck was finally on your side. 

You should get up. You should clean up the blood, or at least wash it from your hands. You can only find the energy to drag your armchair next to the bed and sit beside him. His chest rises and falls with even breaths. 

Still alive, for now. 

He mumbles again, voice too low to make out any words. His eyes flutter but remain closed. Does a man like him dream? 

“What happened to you?” Your voice cracks. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t show any sign that he can hear you. “You disappear for weeks at a time. You rarely show up when you aren’t bleeding. But you never talk about it, and you don’t smile anymore. I don’t think I know you anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.” 

You managed to hold back your tears, push all the emotions away to keep him alive but they come flooding back now. Tears spill over as you watch him breathe. 

“Your heart keeps beating but are you really alive?” You ask. 

He doesn’t answer. 

.

.

You moved to Gotham in August. The heat was so bad that crime rates were down–making it miserable to carry box after box up two flights of stairs since the building didn't have an elevator. You’d only been here twice before, both times on school trips, never on your own. 

But your friends all live back in your college town, and your parents were busy dealing with a lawsuit against your neighbor for the mailbox war, so you were stuck moving on your own—which wasn’t all that terrible since the apartment came half furnished. Still, you had to figure out a way to get a mattress up the stairs, along with a car full of clothes and all the rest of your belongings. Between the heat and the prospect of stairs, you weren’t exactly stoked about living in the city. 

Two trips had you wheezing for air, leaning outside your door to catch your breath. The door to the apartment next to yours swung open. You hoped someone wasn’t already complaining about the noise you were making. Instead a tall, broad shouldered man stepped out, wearing a simple black t-shirt and cargo pants. 

He turned around, revealing cold eyes and a face that looked like it spent most of its time frowning. But behind it all something familiar called to you, buried deep behind the bitter front. You remembered a boy who cried because he stubbed his toes, a boy who would fight you to make a wish on every dandelion that lined the sidewalk on the walk home. 

He froze, a tiny frown in his brow. “YN?” 

“Jeno?” 

You set down the tote, stepping around it to get a better look at him. Your eyes jumped between his, trying to decipher the hardness behind them. Though it had been over ten years, you still thought of the sweet boy who lived next door often, always wondering what happened to him. 

It seemed that the years had not been kind to him. Though he grew taller and filled out considerably, he had an emptiness behind his eyes, the kind that comes from too much hurt. He looked like it had been years since he last smiled. He barely seemed to react to you, guarding every expression as if you could be some sort of threat. 

“You’re taller,” you finally said. 

“It has been a while,” he said. 

“I think ten years qualifies as more than a while,” you said. 

He just nodded. “You’ve moved here?” 

“Just today,” you said, gesturing to the boxes. 

“You’re on your own?” 

You shrugged. “My parents are bringing a load later in the week, so it’s really not that much stuff.” You paused but Jeno didn’t run away, so you figured it was safe to ask, “How long have you been living here?” 

“In Gotham since I left.” He pauses, eyes flicking between yours. For a moment you think he’ll tell you everything. Then he says, “Here specifically, only about six months.” 

You should have asked. Maybe it would have made things simpler, maybe you wouldn’t be dancing between fantasy and reality, balancing a tedious act of ignorance. 

Instead you asked him if he’d help you move your mattress and what the pizza delivery situation was like. 

.

.

Jeno wakes up sometime in the middle of the night. You snap awake from your dozing as he shifts. 

“Sit still,” you say. “I don’t think I can put you back together if you fall apart this time.” 

Jeno blinks. Even in the darkness you can see eyes are still glazed over in confusion. 

“You were shot,” you explain. “Point blank from the looks of it.” 

“Ah,” he says. His soft voice carries in the quiet hours of the night. “That’s what hurts.” 

“Never make me do that again.” Your voice shakes despite your best attempts to steady it. The tears from earlier try to weasel their way back out of your eyes. “You should have died.” 

He reaches out, except he really must be feeling weak because his hand barely makes it to the edge of the bed before it hangs limp. 

“‘M sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t want to get shot.” 

You blink back the tears as anger courses its way through you. “I don’t think anybody gets shot on purpose,” you snap. 

He tries to snort but it ends up sounding like a short exhale through his nose. “Fair enough.” 

“I’m not a good enough doctor for all of this,” you say. “This isn’t a hospital. I don’t have sterile equipment, or a blood bank, or an extra set of hands, I mean, if anything worse happens, you could be in real danger and there’s nothing I could do about it, and I can’t—” You pause, taking a deep breath. “I don’t like when I have to admit I can’t do something, but with you, it feels like that’s all I can do.” 

“You saved my life,” he says. “It doesn’t really feel like you couldn’t do it.” 

“It was a pretty fucking close call,” you say. “Gunshot wounds aren’t particularly easy, and you had to go and get shot in the stomach.” 

He shifts, hand running over his torso beneath the blanket. “I didn't pop the stitches, though,” he says. “I gotta get some points for that.” 

You glare at him, though he probably can’t see it in the darkness. “Don’t make fun of me. I’m trying to be serious.” 

“So am I,” he says, “it was not easy. I sat still for two full days. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve done that?” 

Ask. Get a real answer from him. Stop shying away from who he really is. You have to talk about it. 

“Well, get used to it,” you say. “You’re staying in this bed. I don’t care if I have to tie you down.” 

Jeno actually smiles. It’s been far too long since you’ve seen that smile, softening the hard lines and curling his face into something sweet. “I could be into that,” he jokes. 

And maybe it’s because there are blood stains on your shirt that will never come out and you haven’t slept in about thirty hours and you came far too close to losing the only person you really care about, but you laugh. “Just shut up and get some rest.” 

“You should rest too,” Jeno says. “You look terrible.” 

“Yeah, well it’s your fault,” you say. 

He pauses then says, “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“Well, don’t apologize.” You sniffle. “It’s harder to be mad at you.” 

He smiles again, and you can’t even pretend to be mad at him anymore. It’s too hard on your heart, which has been through far too much for any more lies. You smile back at him. 

.

.

After a day, Jeno can walk around on his own. You called out sick from work, despite his insistence that he’d be fine on his own. He had to bribe you to convince you to sleep on the couch, since you would barely let him go to the bathroom, let alone move back to his own room. He won’t complain too much, though. He forgot how nice it is to wake up to someone. 

He sways on his feet, holding a hand up to stop you from helping him. He forces even breaths, determined to make it to the couch without any help. 

“You don’t have to do this,” you repeat for the thousandth time. 

“I told you I’m fine,” he grunts. Two more steps and he’s there. He takes a deep breath, ignoring the way his entire lower half screams at him. One more step. 

He collapses onto the couch more than anything, but he makes it. He lets himself slouch a little, head resting against the back of the couch. How many times has he sat here like this? So many hours spent waiting for you, watching the sun inch across the room. But most of the time it’s been like this—you at the opposite end, always a cushion separating him from you. 

The fake wooden floor is stained deep red, pooled around where he laid while you worked on him. He wonders what would have happened if you weren’t there. When he first came back he thought he was invincible, and his healing has saved him from a lot–but he’s never truly put it to the test. Could he have survived without you? 

His mask still sits where he pulled it off underneath the windowsill. He peeks at you from the corner of his eyes, your head turned towards it. Say something. 

You stare at the mask, clearing your throat. “I hope you didn’t pay too much for that shitty costume,” you say. “You don’t even have armor.” 

“YN,” Jeno says but you refuse to look at him. 

“Seriously, walking around dressed like a vigilante is going to get you killed.” 

“YN. You know it’s not a costume.” 

“What, you made it yourself? That’s even worse, I mean, it’s one thing to dress up like these guys but trying to be one of them, that’s just plain stupid. I can’t believe—”

Jeno shifts to the center cushion and wraps his fingers gently around your wrist, forcing you to look at him. “I am one of them.” 

He lets go of your wrist and watches you process the words, trying to figure out any other meaning. Your eyes dart between his, panicked and desperate. For whatever reason, you don’t want to admit it, and it’s been fine. But Jeno is tired of feeling like he’s lying to you. 

“I know,” you finally say, sighing and looking away again. He hates that it feels like he’s let you down. But he won’t apologize for who he is. 

“Why didn’t you ever ask about what happened after I left?” He asks. 

You’re quiet for a long moment. “I think I was afraid. It didn’t take long to realize what you were—or at least that you were wrapped up in something twisted—and then it was obvious whatever happened to you here wasn’t good, and I wasn’t sure if I should know that.” 

Jeno nods, gaze traveling to the window. He can see some scattered rooftops, mostly shorter residential buildings of the area. Farther in the distance, skyscrapers stick out. He’s spent more years in this city than not, grown to love it like family. But unlike family, the city doesn’t love him back. It’s not capable of it. No matter how much of his blood lines the streets, Jeno will only ever be one of millions that call the city home. 

Yes, what happened to him here wasn’t good. But it wasn’t all bad, and it’s not over yet. He won’t give up on the city just because of the past. 

And there’s you now. He has these moments where his heart beats so hard it feels like his chest will burst in the good way. He no longer ceases to exist when he isn’t fighting. Jeno worms his way back into reality, not separate from Red Hood, but no longer overshadowed by him. 

“I’ve had a lot of time to think these past couple weeks,” Jeno says. “Time to figure out what I want. For the longest time, it was revenge. It didn’t matter how I got it, how many people had to die. I would avenge myself no matter what. 

“And then you came into my life, and I would catch myself wondering what would have happened if I could have stayed back then, how different my life would be. I even wondered what would happen if I took off the mask, permanently. 

“But this is all I know how to be, and, I think even when I get my revenge, I won’t be able to leave this life behind.” He pauses, tilting his head away from the window and waiting until you meet his eyes.  “I don’t want to die again. I don't want to live this miserable half life where all I think about is getting back at the people who wronged me. I want to live, and when I’m with you, I feel alive.” 

You stare at him, eyes adorably wide. Maybe he's been a little too good at keeping his feelings hidden. It’s alright. He can wait for you to work it all out. It’s not like he’s got anywhere to be. 

“I like being with you,” he says. “I like who I am when I’m around you, and I like you. I mean, you’re stubborn and you always have to have the last word.” He smiles at your bewildered eyes. “But you care so much, not just about me, or your patients, but about everyone, and everything.

“Like your little houseplants that keep dying no matter what you do. I mean, it’s hilarious that you can save my life but you can’t keep a succulent alive. Or the way you talk about the street cats, and even the rats. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had sympathy for the cockroaches.” He finally manages to cut the rambling off. For a long moment you’re too quiet, and he begins to feel the inklings of fear worming its way up his stomach. 

“I don’t know about that,” you finally say, voice soft. “I think they might be radioactive here.” 

He waits but you don’t say anything else. He knows he shouldn’t ask, that he already has his answer. Still, he can’t help it. “That’s all you have to say?” 

Your eyes slide to the floor. “I… I don’t know.” 

“You feel something,” he says, reaching a tentative hand out to rest on top of yours. You freeze beneath him, eyes darting between his hand and his eyes like you can’t decide which you’re scared of more. 

“Tell me I’m not crazy,” he pleads. “Tell me you feel at least a fraction of the way I do.” 

You squeeze your eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “I do care about you,” you begin slowly, “I care about you too much. You have this life, and I know you need it, and I want you to have everything that you want, I just don’t think I can be a part of it when it inevitably destroys you.” 

He squeezes your hand. “It won’t destroy me,” he says, “I won’t let it.” 

“You died.” Your voice shakes. “I don’t think I could handle that.” 

“I won’t let that happen again!” Jeno says. “Things are different now, I’m not the same person I was when I died.” 

He won’t die again. He’s sure of it, not just because he’s learned from his mistakes but because he has something else to live for now. He has more than the family that pushed him to be more than he could, he has his own life, goals outside of revenge. But grounding it all is you, the first person he thinks of, always. He won’t die when it would hurt you this much. 

“Even if you could promise that, it’s not enough.” You look away from him. “I don’t want to die either, and it seems like that’s inevitable around people like you. The loved ones always die first.” 

He opens his mouth to say he would never let that happen but the words die in his throat. He can’t guarantee that, and one look at you proves even if he could it wouldn’t matter. It’s not enough. 

“I think I love you,” he whispers. 

You smile sadly. “I think I love you too. I wish it was that simple.” 

He sighs, resting his head against the couch cushion. “I don’t suppose supreme embarrassment is a good enough reason to let me go back to my own apartment, is it?” 

He watches you purse your lips out of the corner of his eye. He pretends not to see the tears threatening to spill over. 

“I have to go back to work,” you say, voice steady. “I suppose sleeping in your own bed won’t be a problem.” You turn stern. “As long as you swear you’ll actually rest.” 

Jeno winces. “I don’t think I can do anything else.” 

“And yet you will,” you say. Jeno knows it’s worthless to argue, especially when he really can’t promise he won’t do anything. He goes where he’s needed. 

But until then, he’s perfectly happy to wallow in the embarrassment of getting shot and shot down. 

.

.

(please enjoy a brief interlude until i figure out how to fix thing shitshow)

The city always smells cleaner after a good storm. You enjoy walking to work, though the piercing wail of sirens makes it harder to appreciate the way the city almost smells like spring. Green has returned, sprouts of grass and early flowers blooming. You can walk and breathe and pretend like your heart isn’t dragging along behind you. 

Jeno haunts you. You dared to check on him before leaving and found he has reverted back to the one word answers and solemn expressions, a shadow of a person. He barely even looks at you, and you can’t even blame him. You’ve done more than break his heart; you can bear the consequences of doing so. 

Because it doesn’t really matter. He will keep getting hurt and you will keep patching him up. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. 

Even if you can’t stop dreaming about him. 

An ambulance wails past, turning into the hospital. You try your best to push the Jeno thoughts away, preparing yourself for the inevitably grueling day. You push open the doors, the security guards now familiar. You smile at them, the movement of the muscles feeling foreign, and take the elevators to the fourth floor, heading to the locker room for the surgical interns. 

You’ve barely changed into your scrubs when Jaemin appears. 

“Wow,” he says, biting into an apple. “You look terrible.” 

You glare at him. “You look worse. How long have you been here?” 

He shrugs. “I got a whole six hours of sleep in an on-call room, so I’m actually doing great. You, on the other hand, look like you spent the two days fighting guys who wear pinstripe suits and call their henchmen goons.” He eyes you for a moment. “And you lost.” 

“That’s pretty much how I feel,” you say. “Though I still think you act like the criminals in this city are cartoon villains.” 

“The aquarium was attacked by a crocodile-man last week and the guy that stopped him cosplays as a bat,” Jaemin says. “I don’t know how you take any of this seriously.” 

It helps when you have a melodramatic version of the bat guy bleeding out on your couch every other week, you think. 

“I don’t know, being afraid for my life helps,” you say. 

“Oh the crocodile guy just wanted to free his people,” Jaemin waves his hand. “He wasn’t going to hurt anyone.” 

“His name is Killer Croc.” 

“Semantics,” Jaemin says. “But seriously, you’re okay? Nothing happened?”  

You shrug. “I just haven’t gotten enough sleep, I’ll be fine. Why are you acting so weird?” 

“You haven’t heard?” Jaemin asks. “Dr. Moon and Dr. Jung were both attacked three days ago. Dr. Jung is in the ICU and Dr. Moon is still missing.” 

“What happened?” 

“Police don’t really know yet,” Jaemin says, “but it’s connected. These big guys in suits with these weird black hoods were seen around both of their places before the attacks. They found Jaehyun in his apartment, beaten pretty bad, he’s been in a coma ever since.” 

“Wow,” you say. You’ve worked with both of them quite a bit. You spent a week learning about skin grafts with Dr. Moon, a star plastic surgeon. Jaehyun gave you an extra shower curtain when you mentioned you tore yours when a cockroach crawled up your shower brain while you were in it. They’re both good, nice people, not the type to get involved in trouble—definitely not trouble like this. 

“Is Jaehyun going to be okay?” 

Jaemin purses his lips and shrugs. “Still not sure. He had some pretty serious injuries, most of which were patched up but apparently he had some bad head trauma. They called in the Lee Taemin from Central.” 

“You didn’t shit your pants meeting your hero?” 

“YN,” Jaemin says sharply, “a good friend of mine was in the hospital, and the best neurosurgeon in the country, the guy I will one day convince to be my mentor, was called in to save his life. Of course I was shitting my pants.” 

“Did you get to meet him?” 

“I thought it would be weird to introduce myself to him, but I did happen to visit Jaehyun while he stopped by, and happened to mention I wanted to pursue neuro when he asked.” 

“And?” 

“And he said it was a smart decision. Or said only the smartest thrive. He’s very confusing.” 

“So basically you’re obsessed?” 

“Yep.” 

You lean against the metal lockers, letting the cold press against the back of your neck. You think about Jaehyun, hooked up to machines with a whole team of doctors, including a star doctor, all working to keep him alive. How long will it be before that’s Jeno, except no machines, no team, just you? How long before you won’t be enough? 

.

.

Jeno has discovered all there is to know about his ceiling. There’s eleven cracks, tiny fissures in the paint that’s at least ten years old. The color is off white, not cream, though in the corner above the door, they did a touch up with a paint that has slightly more blue. He can tell what time it is from the angle of the light coming through the window. 

He’s beginning to run out of things to learn. 

He misses you, so much. He wonders what your ceiling looks like, if it’s got its own little galaxy of cracks. He misses sitting on your couch, knowing that he’d see you soon. 

 He can’t remember the last time he got out of bed, and he can’t even blame it on the gunshot wound. He's not fully recovered, but he doesn’t need to lay in bed all day. He should be up and moving, keeping himself in shape, or at least hunting down the guys who attacked him. All he managed to do was set up an alert with the license plate of the car he saw, feeding it through all the security cameras he could get access to. 

But otherwise he lays in bed and stares at the ceiling. 

Getting this dejected over a rejection makes him feel like a teenager—not that he ever went through this during his teenage years. He can put on the mask and be Red Hood, but Jeno? He doesn’t know how to be Jeno alone, he doesn’t want to learn. He had his parents when he was younger, then Bruce, and Dick, and the family that began to grow among them. Despite all he used to whine, he’s never truly been alone. 

Will he be alone now? Will Jeno even exist without the people around him to keep him going? Or will he truly become Red Hood, letting the man behind the mask cease to exist. 

He knows what Bruce would say. The mask can’t exist without the man. But Bruce is the reason he put a mask on in the first place. He can philosophize all day long, it’s his fault Jeno ever died. He doesn’t have to listen to the man’s words. 

Jeno rests his hand over the wound. He hardly feels the ridge where the stitches are. He wonders how the wound will scar. 

It doesn’t make any sense but even though his body heals unnaturally fast, the scars remain. It’s like his body remembers dying and wants to remind him—even though he came back once and he’s stronger than ever before—he’s still human. 

And there’s nothing more human than a broken heart. He should be grateful it’s only metaphorical. 

Jeno sighs. The worst part is he knows how dramatic he’s being. But it’s only been 28 hours. He can allow himself a little bit of time for the dramatics. Bruce takes like a month off when a civilian dies under his watch. 

He pulls his blanket closer, wondering if it’s too far to put on some music—something loud, maybe. 

Instead he hears a ding, a notification from his computer. He sits up a little too fast, feeling a tug on his stitches, though they don’t fall apart. 

He can’t spare too much thought to them, not when his screen lights up with feed from a security camera, zoomed in to show the license plate of a dark sedan, the numbers he remembers. It rolls past, camera shifting down the block as Jeno drops into his chair, typing rapidly until the screen zooms out. The larger screen reveals the sedan is one of many, traveling in a line together. 

He sets up the second monitor to plot their movements across the city, a bright red line tracing the few turns they take. 

The windows of each car are tinted, concealing those within. But, with his previous encounter, it’s safe to assume there’s plenty of hired muscle in the six cars. It could be anywhere between fifteen and thirty men, headed this way. 

He watches them draw closer, tapping his finger on the desk. They caught him by surprise last time. On a good day, he wouldn’t sweat odds this bad, but it’s not a good day. He can still feel his insides healing. 

It’ll be a tough fight, but he’s planned for this. He’ll rig the place, take down as many as he can and get to one of the other safe houses. 

The Jeno that lived here will disappear. And it will be for the best. 

He changes into his suit, moving as fast as he can without hurting himself. He stuffs as many weapons as he can into his pockets, his belt weighing extra heavy around his waist. 

Then he gets to work on the bomb. A smaller explosive, more of a popper than a true bomb, but enough to take out his computer and all of the evidence he’s left behind here. 

He wonders if the police will come. Will they question you? Surely someone has noticed he spends a lot of time with you. You’d never give him up, but would you defend him? Would you go on television, tell the world Red Hood is just a man? You’d look good on television. 

You wouldn’t though. You wouldn’t say a word, not to the cops, not to anyone. 

He’s really going to miss you. 

He checks the map. Still five blocks away. Except… The cameras first picked up the sedans in the upper east part of the city, by the Sprang River. They mostly traveled west from there, they’re still north of him. 

They stop at a light, just two blocks away. He watches, waiting for them to turn. 

The sedans roll straight ahead, passing the apartment. He frowns, staring at the screen but the cars keep going, one block, two, and then they pull to a stop. 

Jeno curses, grabbing the keys to his bike. It was never about him. 

.

.

The sun peeks through the windows of the hospital, the only sign time passes. The setting sun casts the parking lot in gold, making even the ugliest cars shine. You pause to peek outside, for once not in a rush. You have to scrub in with Dr. Qian in twenty minutes, but until then, you have a rare moment of freedom. 

Because you’re standing at the window, you see the exact moment the cars pull up. They form a line, like a row of beetles, stopping in front of the entrance, blocking the parked cars. As soon as they roll to a stop, the doors fly open, men streaming out all wearing black hoods. They line up in front of the car closest to the entrance, whose doors had remained closed since stopping. The driver exits first, another hooded man, though considerably smaller than the rest. He opens the door to the backseat, head bowed low. 

The man in the backseat takes his time. Pale hands peek out of the carefully fitted suit, the only open skin you can see. He steps out from the car and the line of men bend into sharp bows. He closes the door and you finally get a full look at him: from the suit to his shoes, he wears all black, but most striking is the black mask that covers his face. It melts into his suit, keeping every inch of his skin hidden save for his hands. 

He must say something, because the men straighten and vanish from your view, streaming into the hospital. 

Is it too late to alert security? There has to be twenty men, and with how Jaehyun looks, you doubt they’ll be able to hold them off. 911, then? It’ll take the cops forever to respond, and it’s too late. They’re already here. 

You could call him. He’d come. 

Despite all your instincts screaming at you to hide, you turn around. The lobby is packed with the final rush of visitors, and 9-to-5 staff getting ready to leave for the day. It’ll be safer to pack in with them than be caught on your own, and maybe you can warn security before mass panic breaks out. You rush down the hall to the large open space in the front of the hospital. 

Maybe it’s the adrenaline, but everything feels too normal. A father holds his child’s hand as they walk to the bathroom. A nurse whispers furiously into her phone. An elderly couple hold hands, clipboards to the side of them. You scan the small crowd, looking for a security guard. 

Instead you find a brute of a man, black hood tipping back as he raises a gun above his head and fires it a couple times. 

“Everybody quiet!” He growls. “On the ground!” 

You drop into a squat, hands automatically coming above your head as screams echo. Someone yanks on your coat, knocking you off balance. Your heart nearly stops but it’s just Jaemin pulling you to sit beside him with a wall at your back instead of the open hallway. 

“Thank you,” you whisper. You slide into a seated position, back against the wall. Jaemin crouches next to you, keeping one hand on the wheelchair of the patient he must have been with before all of this. You peek at him and recognize him as Yoon Jeonghan, the guy that got hit by a truck while biking. He looks like he’s trying to decide if he’s included in the “on the ground” order. 

The goons pick on a couple people, shoving them to the ground. 

“Hands above your heads!” One of them orders, pointing his gun at random. You raise your hands again, Jaemin following more reluctantly. 

Ten minutes pass as goons escort people from all over the hospital, the lobby quickly becoming packed. Half the patients are in wheelchairs, clinging to IV drips while the doctors and nurses glare at the men. Finally, it seems they have collected everybody, and a quiet tension falls over the room. 

Then the man in the black mask strolls in. 

“What’s the saying?” He asks, muffled voice carrying in the open space. “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” He clasps his hands behind his back, strolling along, peeking at the cowering hostages. 

“He doesn’t have a pinstripe suit,” Jaemin whispers. 

“I don’t even think he’ll call the henchmen goons,” you whisper back. 

Jaemin shakes his head. He’d probably tsk if he didn’t think it would get you both killed. 

“I bet they’ll still beat us up,” you whisper. 

“If you don’t shut up, they definitely will,” Jeonghan mutters. 

Jaemin rolls his eyes and makes a face at you. You bite back a smile. You’ve tempted fate enough. 

“The name you all will know me by is Black Mask,” he announces. 

This time you can’t help the smile, turning away from Jaemin to prevent yourself from laughing out loud. Even Jeonghan mutters, “Very creative.” 

“I have a list, you see,” Black Mask continues, “people that owe me. They know what they’ve done. I promise if your name is not on that list and you don’t make a fuss, no harm will come to you. I’m a reasonable man.” 

Reasonable men don’t play dress up and shoot up hospitals, but you figure he’s due for a dramatic speech. At least he’s explaining why he’s here. 

Black Mask pauses in front of one of the nurses—Shotaro, a good nurse who you’ve worked with several times. He grabs him by the shoulder, sending him sprawling to the floor. 

“This one,” Black Mask announces, waving at his goons to pick Shotaro up. They half drag him away as Black Mask continues to make his way through the crowd. 

“This is more efficient, you know,” he says. “I’ve tried other methods, but there were some complications. So, I thought to myself, if you’re all in one place, why not just go to the source?” He points at another nurse, Sehun, but Dr. Bae steps in front of him. Black Mask pauses, tilting his head to peer at her before gesturing to the goons to drag them both away. Dr. Bae puts up a fight, trying to twist out of their grip, but one of the men tosses her over his shoulder and carries her out. Sehun follows, stumbling behind. 

Dr. Moon, Jaehyun, Shotaro, Sehun, and Dr. Bae, though it seems like she wasn’t originally a target. All good, hard workers, not the type to make mistakes, definitely not collectively. You watch as Black Mask creeps closer and closer. 

You’ve worked with all of them. Only a few months ago, a case of a man with terrible burns on his face. Your blood runs cold as Black Mask stops in front of you. You stand up, a heartbeat before he points. 

“You,” Black Mask says, venom seeping into his voice. “You owe me.” 

“I remember you,” you say, keeping your voice soft. 

“You remember what you did to me,” he says. 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” you say, “and neither did anyone else in this hospital.” 

He raises a hand and smacks you, and before you can react, two of his men grab your arms, dragging you away whether your feet move or not. You try to think of something witty or smart, but all you can think is how much you don’t want to die. 

They take you to the stairs, carrying you up two flights of stairs before depositing you in an empty patient room. One of the men stays with you, guarding the door, while the other vanishes. 

You glare at the man, face stinging. Jeno would tell you not to provoke a psychopath. 

But Jeno’s not here. You shouldn’t want him to be, because even if he could be here, he would only get himself hurt, and you won’t be responsible for causing him any more pain. 

He said he loved you, even after all he’s been through. He wasn’t afraid. 

You don’t want Jeno here, not to save the day. But it’d be nice to apologize to him. And if there was only one person you could say goodbye to before you died, you’d want it to be Jeno. 

Maybe you do want Jeno to save the day. Just so you can apologize. Just so you can tell him you were wrong. Just so you can finally admit the truth. 

.

Jeno’s bike screeches to a stop a block away from the hospital. He parks it in an alley, covering it with a tarp and trusting that the locks will prevent anyone from stealing it. He hopes he’s swiped it from the impound lot enough times for the police to leave it alone too. 

He climbs to the roof of the nearest building, moving painfully slow, between the pull of the stitches and the exhaustion of healing such a large wound. But from here he can see the line of black cars in front of the hospital, the setting sun reflecting on the metal, making it difficult to see. He switches to infrared, the mask buzzing a couple times before picking up on the mass of bodies in the main lobby. Majority of the building is far too empty for a place of medicine. 

From his memory of studying the schematics on an off day, he remembers the west facing wing houses the operating rooms, which explains why the infrared picks up a couple small masses. But with the rest of the hospital empty, the four rooms on the third floor stand out. Each holds two bodies, one significantly larger than the other. 

That’s where he’ll start. 

A better fighter would get a better gauge of the situation. Maybe spend more time determining which are civilians and which are hostiles, or figure out exactly where they’re holding people. But Jeno has always worked best flying by the seat of his pants. He still doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but these must be the hostages important enough to separate from the main group. 

It would be safest if you were on the first floor, just one of many in the crowd, but the selfish part of Jeno wants you to be where he can see you. Where he can save you. 

He can’t waste any more time. He shoots the grappling gun, pulling on it to build momentum even faster and angle himself directly at the window. It shatters beneath his feet, and he tucks into a tight ball, rolling once before springing onto his feet. He ducks as the big man swings a crowbar at him, wincing at the sharp pain near his stomach. He takes a quick strike with his knife, slashing up across the stomach first, then across the throat, finally driving the knife into the man’s heart. He crumples to the ground and doesn’t move. 

Jeno pulls the blade out, wiping the blood from the knife on his pants and sheathing it. He turns around to find a figure in a white lab coat, cowering in the corner of the room, hands over their head, glass shards scattered around them. 

He crouches down in front of you, brushing the glass off your shoulder. You peek up at him, eyes softening as you recognize him even though you’ve never seen him in the mask before. There’s a small cut on your cheek. His thumb moves on its own, swiping at the blood and doing nothing but spread more on your face. 

“Are you okay?” Jeno asks. The modulator of the mask twists his voice into an unrecognizable beast. It’s perfect for protecting his identity and intimidating low lives, not so great for comforting the scared victims. Maybe he should tweak that part of the suit, make it adjustable. But you don’t flinch, standing up and shaking the rest of the glass off. 

“I’m fine,” you say. “How did you get here so fast?” 

“These are the same guys that shot me,” Jeno says. “I had a tracker out on the car, which led me here.” 

“Sionis,” you say. Jeno frowns. He knows that name. 

“Roman Sionis, that’s the guy doing all of this,” you explain. “He was a patient three months ago, really bad damage to his face. He’s targeting the team responsible for his care, doctors, nurses, everyone he blames for what happened to his face.” 

“Which includes you,” Jeno says. 

You nod, eyes tight. “Which means they weren’t after you when you got shot.” 

“Hey,” Jeno says. “I’m fine. You patched me up, and I’ve got the super healing, so if either of us was going to get shot, I’d rather it be me. It’s not your fault.” 

“I know,” you say, though you don’t sound like you believe it. “Should you really be jumping through windows, though?” 

He shrugs. “Didn’t pull the stitches. I swear.” 

You purse your lips but let it go. He wishes you would just say what you’re thinking but you look away from him, glancing at the door. 

“They took three more of us up here, and they probably know you’re here by now.” 

Jeno nods. Resolve the situation, then talk. 

“I’m going to clear out the rooms one at a time,” he says, “then work my way downstairs.” He unholsters a gun, handing it to you. You raise an eyebrow. 

“I’ve never used one of these.” You reluctantly take the gun out of his hands. 

“Point and squeeze the trigger,” he says. “It’s semi-automatic, you don’t have to do anything to reload. If they’re close enough you won’t even have to aim.” He forms your hands around the gun, teasing your fingers into the right position and turning off the safety. He lets his hands linger, waiting for your eyes to meet his, though he remembers a moment later that the mask conceals them. 

“Get the rest of the hostages and stay together,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” He forces himself to let go of your hands but doesn’t step away yet. 

He should say something else. Maybe apologize for what he said. Take it back. But he meant every word of it, even if you did too. He’s said all he can, and if that’s still not enough then at least you’re still alive. 

“Go save the day,” you finally say. “Then… I’ll see you after.” 

He nods, turning away and striding to the door, stepping over the body. “Wait for me to clear the rest of them, then get the hostages out of here.” 

He pulls the door closed behind him, trusting that you will be fine on your own. He doesn’t have time to worry, ducking to dodge the knife that flies toward him. He doesn’t let the man get a second chance, sprinting as fast as he can and burying his knife in the man’s heart. He’s turning a second later, using the man’s body as a shield against the second man in the hall, who doesn’t hesitate to fire a couple shots. Jeno throws the first man’s body on him, his knife following quickly after, burying itself in the man’s forehead. 

Like always, his pains melt away when he’s fighting. He barely feels the tug of the stitches, or the exhaustion he felt earlier. This body was made to kill, and that’s what he’ll do. 

He ducks into the room next to yours, knocking the guard to the floor and stabbing him. The hostage, a woman wearing a white lab coat, stands. 

“Wait here,” he says. “I’ll clear the rest of this hall. Don’t go outside unless you want to get shot.” 

She nods slowly. 

Jeno clears the other two rooms similarly, quick and far too easy. He hesitates at the stairwell. He should clear the rest of the civilians if he wants to resolve things quickly, but it feels wrong to leave these hostages to you—you were a hostage yourself only a few minutes ago. But it’s irrational. He knows you’re capable of protecting yourself, and smart enough not to get yourself killed. He has to trust you and do his job. You were the one that told him to save the day. 

He doesn’t bother with the stairs, jumping in the open space between the flights and using his grappling hook to control his fall. If he wasn’t hurt, he’d just drop the three stories, but it’s only a little slower this way. He retracts the hook with a button and sticks it back into his belt, pulling out his knives. 

He makes it halfway down the hall before he sees the first figure, raising his knife on instinct. He drops it a moment later, picking out the scrubs from here. The nurse sprints past him, barely glancing at him. More and more people follow, until a stream of people flood the hall. They part around him, allowing Jeno to make it to the lobby as it clears. Only a few people remain, mostly patients that struggle to move on their own and the people that stayed behind to protect them. 

Where is Sionis? Where are all of his men? Even in the flood of people, they would have stood out. Did they hear the commotion upstairs and run? One of the men fired his gun a couple times, maybe they went to investigate. 

No, they wouldn’t have let the hostages go if that were the case. He curses himself for not trusting his instincts, turning around to get back to the stairs, but the hallway is still blocked by all the people clamoring to leave. 

It takes painfully long to get to a stairwell, but he finally makes it. That’s when he hears the gunshot—different from the pops before, no this is a sound he recognizes. This is his gun. 

.

.

You wait until the hallway is quiet, peeking out the window for good measure. Nothing moves, the bodies on the floor limp. Blood pools around the three, puddles bright against the white tiles. You wait for another heart beat, holding your breath but the only movement comes from the blood, trickling down the hall. 

The door creaks open beneath your fingers. It feels like your footsteps echo as you hurry to the closest door. You make it to the first door, hand on the doorknob when you hear it—footsteps echoing from the stairwell, the opposite side of where Jeno left. They thunder up the stairs, at least ten men. 

You open the door a crack, whispering a sharp, “Stay hidden!” 

You don’t give whoever is behind the door a chance to argue, closing the door and sprinting to the stairwell as fast as you can. You hear a shout just as you cross into the stairwell, sprinting forward. You take one step toward the descending flight but see dark heads bobbing in the space between the stairs. You curse, turning and heading up. 

Shit, shit, shit. You can only go up. The men from the other end of the hall burst into the stairwell, your heart sending another shot of adrenaline through your body and pushing you to take steps three at a time. Even as you feel your body working harder than ever before, you know it won’t last. You have to find somewhere to hide. 

You burst onto the fifth floor, cringing as the door slams against the wall. No chance they missed that. 

You run as far as you dare, ducking into a storage closet and curling into a ball in the farthest corner, hiding behind a wall of bedpans. You shove a hand over your mouth, trying to cover your heaving breaths. Bile rises in your throat as the sprinting catches up to you but you swallow hard, closing your eyes and praying. 

Jeno’s gun rests in your other hand. The cold metal helps calm you down, your breathing evening out as you hear a door bang open. A moment later then there’s another bang. You hear footsteps in the hall, then another. They must be checking room by room. 

You’re about halfway down the hall, maybe five rooms in. You don’t have much time. 

You raise the gun, letting go of your mouth to hold it with both hands. Your finger drops to the trigger. Point and squeeze, Jeno said. You can do that. You aim it at the door, bracing your arm on your knees to keep them from shaking. 

You flinch at the next bang, feeling the wall shake. They’re in the room right next to you. They trash the room, sending vibrations through the floor, until it suddenly stops. 

You’ll have to move fast, you can’t give them any chance. 

Light cascades around as the door is thrown open. You squeeze the trigger, keeping the gun aimed at the large mass in front of you. There’s a loud bang and the gun slams your shoulder back but the man stumbles backward. You squeeze the trigger again and this time he goes down. 

A second man dodges the falling body, taking a step inside but you squeeze the trigger again and again and again and he falls too. 

Shit, how many shots was that? You clench your teeth but they seemed to have learned the lesson for the moment—nobody follows. 

“Alright, that’s enough fun.” You recognize Sionis’ voice from behind the mask this time. “Come out on your own or get dragged out. Your choice.” 

“I’d really rather stay here,” you say, voice shaking. You force yourself to your feet. 

“Fun way it is,” Black Mask says. This time two men push their way through, one blocking the other. You shoot and it hits the front man in the shoulder but he doesn’t go down. You squeeze the trigger again but nothing happens. 

You throw the gun at him, hoping to catch him in the head but he just knocks it away. You start pulling things from the shelves, throwing as hard as you can. It does nothing to stop them, grabbing you by the arms and heaving you off your feet. You twist and kick and try to bite but they don’t seem to notice. They hold you up in front of Black Mask in the middle of the hallway. 

“You are a feisty one,” he muses, watching you thrash. 

“Let me go,” you say. You try to growl but it comes out more like pathetic begging. 

“I’d like you to calm down a bit,” he says. 

You open your mouth to tell him to fuck off but apparently that was some sort of signal because one of the men raises a fist and brings it down hard on the top of your head. 

It sends jitters down your spine as your teeth clang together. You blink tears away, your head lolling forward a little. The floor blurs beneath you—no it’s your eyes, struggling to focus. 

“Now, on with business,” Black Mask says, clasping gloved hands together. “I—”

You nearly fall to the floor as one of the men holding you—the one you shot in the shoulder—falls to the ground. You tilt backward as the second man goes down but a tight hand around your arm yanks you backward. 

Black Mask pulls you into a patient room, the bed pushed against the wall next to the bathroom. He pulls you away from the door until your back is against the window. He keeps his hand tight around your arm, pressing something hard and cold against the side of your head. Your brain still reels from the hit but you don’t have to think hard to figure out it’s a gun. 

There are a few shouts from the hallway but it falls quiet quickly. Only one pair of boots echo in the hall, solemn footsteps that pause by the door. Then Jeno appears in the doorway. 

Blood splatters cover the shirt, concealing the bat motif. It seeps into his leather jacket, though Jeno himself seems to be unscathed. He holds a gun in one hand and his knife in the other. 

“That’s close enough,” Black Mask says when he tries to step inside. 

Jeno’s mask covers his eyes, but if it didn’t, you’re pretty sure he’d be glaring. “Let the innocent go. Settle this like an adult.” 

“Innocent?” Black Mask cackles. “Sure, I’ll let the innocent go. I already did that.” He grips your arm tighter, pressing the gun harder into the side of your head. “But this one isn’t innocent.”

He taps on the mask. “I don’t wear this for fun, I’m sure you know. But I’m not like you. I don’t hide to protect myself or my loved ones—I don’t even have loved ones, and you know why? Because this idiot and the idiots at this hospital don’t know how to do a simple facial repair!” 

“They were third degree burns, you’re lucky to have a face,” you say. 

“Shut up!” Black Mask screams, shoving you. Jeno takes a step forward but freezes when Black Mask turns back to him. 

“One more step and you’ll be cleaning some brains off your mask!” He takes a breath, lowering his voice. “I’ll be the first to tell you, that’s no easy task.” 

“Let the hostage go.” Jeno sounds cold through the modulator.  

“And you’ll let me go?” Black Mask huffs a short laugh. “I don’t think so. Your reputation precedes you.” 

“Then you know what will happen if you pull that trigger.” 

“Leave now and I’ll leave this one alive,” Black Mask says. 

“What, half mad after you spend a few hours with your tools?” Jeno says. “Your reputation precedes you, too.” 

Black Mask sighs. “Then it seems I have no choice.” The gun presses hard against your head. 

“I’ll be seeing you around,” Black Mask says. You squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for the shot but the pressure on the side of your head vanishes. 

There’s a loud bang, and for a moment you’re sure you’ve died, but then you feel a hard shove on your chest. Your legs hit the wall but it’s not enough to stop you from tumbling out the window, nothing but air beneath you. 

You barely raise your arms out before something tackles into you, an arm wrapping around your waist. You wrap your arms and legs around whatever they find, clinging like a baby monkey to Jeno’s side. 

He raises the other arm, shooting the grappling hook and pulling hard. You snap in the air, swinging up higher than you had fallen until you’ve crested the roof. 

“I got you,” Jeno says, arm wrapped so tightly around you you’re crushed against his side. 

He takes all the weight as you fall onto the roof, bracing the landing with his legs, somehow remaining upright. 

You can only cling to him, waiting for your brain to sort out what happened. You aren’t dead. Black Mask threw you out the window. Jeno caught you. You repeat the words over and over in your head until they almost make sense. 

“We’re back on solid ground,” Jeno says. 

“Mhm.” You don’t let go, keeping your arms tight around his neck. 

“You’re safe now,” he says. 

“I know.” 

He pauses. “You can let go.” 

“Not ready yet.” 

“Okay.” 

For a long moment all you can hear is the pounding of your heart. It lessens and you start to hear tires screeching on pavement down below, people shouting, sirens wailing in the distance. 

“Black Mask is getting away,” you say. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeno says. “I’ll get him when I get him.” His hand ghosts over your back. “All that matters is you’re okay.” 

“I’m fine,” you say. “Physically fine, at least. Just trying to sort out my head.” 

He hums, second arm wrapping around you in a true hug. You let yourself linger in the moment, breathing in the sharp scent of blood on his jacket. It smears against your scrubs as you press closer to him, turning them slimy against your skin. The jacket hides the warmth of his body, a hard layer separating you from him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

You lean back, letting go of his neck to rest your hands against the side of his mask. Whatever it’s made out of is hard, a thin metal that curves around his features yet doesn’t bend beneath your fingers. It doesn’t look anything like Jeno, the pale eyes concealing the most human part of him. He reaches up, pulling the mask off. 

Sweat makes his hair stick to his forehead, which is creased with concern. His eyes flit between yours, dark and full of everything. For too long when you first ran into him, he would look at you with cold emptiness. Though you can’t read everything behind them now, he doesn’t bury all his feelings. He lets them shine through. 

“It’s not your fault,” you begin, letting your hands fall to his shoulders. “Too much has happened, and that guy hit my head, and I thought I was going to die, so it’s hard to tell what I want to say. What I’ve been meaning to say.” You take a deep breath, looking at his forehead instead of his eyes, at the white streak of hair that clings to his forehead. “But if I don’t say it now, I think I’ll chicken out and never say it. 

“I’m kind of a coward,” you say. “I don’t want to get hurt—I mean, like, don’t let anybody anywhere near my heart to keep it safe, and it works. I’ll find an excuse, any excuse to push them away. 

“I did it to you. Yeah, I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to think about you dying because it always sends me into a spiral, but those were all excuses. It doesn’t matter that you wear that mask. That doesn’t change anything, and I won’t hide behind it anymore. 

“I love you,” you say, “so much. So much that it’s making me brave. I don't want to be a coward anymore. I want to love you. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I love you, I really, really do.” 

Jeno doesn’t say anything for a long moment, looking back and forth between your eyes. He doesn’t frown or smile, his face a mask itself. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Apparently near death experiences lead to radical reflections and revaluations of life values.” 

And then he smiles, a real smile that curls his eyes and sends your stomach hurtling in somersaults. He presses his forehead against yours, your hands still resting on his shoulders. 

“Don’t apologize for things that aren’t your fault,” you say. You brush his cheek with your thumb. “Save your applogies for real fuck ups.” 

He snorts. “Think there’s going to be a lot of those?” 

“Somehow I think I’m going to get stood up a lot,” you say. “It’s okay, though. That’s just what happens when you date a superhero.” 

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “I’m no superhero.” 

You kiss his nose. “Whatever you want to call it. But you’re a good man, Lee Jeno, through and through.” 

Jeno brushes his lips against yours, barely a kiss. He moves hesitantly, like he’s scared you’ll crumble in his hands. 

Well, you’re not going to die, he made sure of that. You are here and alive, and so is he. You grip the neckline of his jacket, pulling him into a crushing kiss. You press your lips harder against his and his arms tighten around you, finally kissing you back. 

It’s terrifying, how much you trust him. Like jumping off a cliff and knowing he’ll catch you—which basically he just did—you have to let go of the fear. Even when his arms are wrapped around you and you can feel him with every atom, it isn’t easy—a part of you will always want to run away, protect yourself. But you’re done running. Jeno put a gun in your hand and told you to fight. You can do that for him—for yourself. 

You will hold onto him and you will love him and he will do the same for you. It’s all you can do. 

.

.

Bonus: 

Jeno doesn’t know how you slept on this armchair. The back is stiff against his back and he can’t hang his legs off the side without the arms cutting into the back of his knees. He can tuck his head against the wing but it leaves his neck at an awkward angle. 

It’s for the best, though, since he needs to stay awake anyway. He shifts the chair until it’s against the side of the bed and sets his legs back on the edge of the bed, crossing one over the other and resting his elbows on the armrest. You raise your eyebrows at his feet but don’t tell him to move. He’ll give it a good twenty minutes before he tries to sit on the bed. He wonders if you’ll kick him out if he just asks outright if he can curl up next to you. Better to ease into it. 

You look radiant, wearing a big t-shirt curled under the blankets. Your lips curl into a little smile every time you catch him looking at you (which is pretty much always). 

“I’m going to invest in a big ass taser,” you say, still listing out your plan to keep yourself safe. “And some heavy duty pepper spray.” 

“I can teach you how to shoot a gun,” Jeno offers. 

You make a face, nose scrunching. 

“No?” 

You shake your head slowly. “No thank you. My arms hurt.”  

“How about some hand-to-hand?” He asks. 

“Are you going to be able to keep your hands to yourself?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

You look pointedly at his hand, which has found yours, fingers tapping on your knuckles. Huh, he didn’t realize he was doing that. He raises both hands, holding them up like a criminal waiting to be arrested. 

“My bad,” he says, setting them in his lap. Your bottom lip juts out for a second but you’re too proud to ask him to hold it again. He bites back a smile at the little war behind your eyes. 

“How’s your head?” He asks. 

“Concussed,” you say flatly. 

“You want to sleep?” He asks. 

“Not yet,” you say. You finally concede, reaching out a hand for him. He puts his feet down, slipping out of the chair to sit on the edge of the bed, clasping his hand over yours. Your shoulder rests against his hip. You blink up at him. 

“What?” He asks. “Is this okay?” 

You nod slowly, studying him with piercing eyes. He gets the feeling you see right through him, so he turns his gaze to your intertwined fingers. 

“What did you think of me when you first saw me? When you moved here, I mean,” he asks. 

You pause for a long moment. “Honestly?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I thought you were unemployed for at least two months.” 

Jeno snorts. 

“I mean pretty much every time I knocked you were wearing sweats and half the time you looked like you had just woken up!” 

Jeno scratches the back of his head with his free hand. “I don’t wear sweats that often.” 

You pause for a moment and he doesn’t dare peek at your face. “When you asked me to sew up your scalp, I figured it was either vigilante or something worse, and then I saw Red Hood on the news and I just knew.” 

He looks at you, head tilted down to see the top of your head. “Really?” 

“It looks like you,” you say. You pause before adding, “Plus you’ve got that leather jacket hanging in your entryway. What’s up with that, by the way?” 

“What?” 

“Your ‘suit.’ A leather jacket and cargo pants?” 

“They’re functional,” he says. 

“Your name is Red Hood and you don’t even have a hood. It’s a mask.” 

“Well a hood doesn’t exactly protect you,” he says, “and it strikes fear into my enemies.” 

You snort. “Does the black t-shirt help with that?” 

“Yeah, I can’t defend that one,” he says. “It’s cheap and easy.” 

“No wonder you died,” you say. 

“I take personal offense at that,” Jeno says. 

You yawn. “Okay buddy.” You scoot over a little. “Just lay down already.” 

Jeno grins, shifting to pull the covers up and slide his legs down them. He stretches out, rolling as close as he dares to you. His arm hovers over you until you shake your head and pull it over your waist, shifting until he all but lays on top of you. Your shoulder presses against his chest, his head resting on the same pillow only a breath away from you. 

“If you wanted to cuddle you could have just asked,” you say. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” 

You turn your head to meet his eyes, nose brushing against his. He could melt into your eyes, so warm and full of a happiness he hardly recognizes. He hopes he looks a fraction as happy as you do—and he hopes you know it’s only a fraction of how he feels. 

He didn’t think he’d ever feel happy again. Even if he finally got his revenge on Joker and Batman, it would be bittersweet at best, the end goal of a bitter fight that started when he dragged himself out of that grave. 

But he is happy. It’s the warmth that courses through every fiber of his body, the way his heart pounds every time he looks at you, the hope he feels when he thinks of the “after.” 

“You know it’s been years since the last time I smiled?” He says. 

“Yeah, I could tell.” Your eyes soften impossibly more. You rest your hand against his cheek again, fingers soft and careful as they trace the lines of his smile. They work their way to his lips, ghosting over the soft skin. 

“I think that part is over,” Jeno says. “Hating the world.” He presses a kiss on your thumb. “I’d like to be happier now. 

“Red Hood is a part of who I am, and it always will be. But Jeno is too, and I won’t let go of that.” He tightens his arm. “I’d like to hold onto you, too, though.” 

You grin. “I’d like that too.” You press a short kiss to his lips. “But my head hurts and right now I’d really just like to go to bed.” 

Jeno nods, shifting away only to turn off the lamp on your bedside table. He curls back around you, tucking his head against your neck and pulling you as close to him as he can. He is Jeno, he is Red Hood, and he isn’t alone anymore. 

thank you for reading!! likes, reblogs, and comments are always appreciated

[dilfhos]

TRAINRIDE

#!WHO; DABI x fem!READER

A! i hope u ignore this cus its stupid but I think dabi/touya being a total scum to huge endeavor fan reader should be a thing

+ (i added my twist to it; at the time this was sent, i was on my dc shit heavy and id already started it)

#!CW: deadoves!n0nc0n, dirty talk, degradation, humiliation, implied exhibitionism, gaslighting, touya arc if you squint real close! dabi has dick piercings bc i said so

tagging: @mostlyheinous @scariusaquarius @dabislittlemouse @nyx--knacks @the-grimm-writer @ectologia

Dabi hated taking public transportation, especially now.

It subjected him to having to conceal his identity for one, blending into the fleeting crowds with dark, long clothing. It didn’t bother him as much had it been any other time, one where he wasn’t on constant guard or easily irritated by familiar phrases and his face.

Dabi only gave a quick glance to the glass behind him, eyeing the way his big hood hung low on his head, hand deep into his trench pocket as the other supported his balance. He drew his hood lower at the glance from a man on his left.

The train eased to a stop and the doors slid open as the crowd swarmed to bring in and send out more people. When the doors closed and the train began to move again, he found himself being thrown forward. A small yelp came from the woman in front of him, turned partially.

He was about to mumble something before his eyes made contact with what she was wearing.

Seeing that you were brazenly adorned in merchandise of the number one hero, he scrunched his nose up at the sight of your complimentary accessories before finally settling on your face. Preoccupied with your phone to notice his oggling, you shifted, body moving with the force of the train as it started moving.

Dabi didnt mean to look, but the subtle quake of your chest piqued his vision and he wished he wasn’t met with those same fucking eyes. How cringe you looked with the familiar navy phone-case you had on the back of your phone to match.

In fact, if Dabi wanted to, he’d stand there and count every one of Endeavor’s paraphernalia and the number could be well over three. You really walk around like that? Parading your favorite hero on your body like a fangirl poster.

He chuckled darkly before rolling his eyes. Yeah, you probably had one or two of them in your room that you fuck yourself to at night to boot.

The train was only a little crowded but not enough to fully obscure your body from his view. You were dressed in jeans, the denim pairing with a snug t-shirt that sculpted your chest perfectly under his gaze. On the back he could see the familiar bright flames. They were disgustingly familiar, completing the stoic features of the hero on the front.

“Endeavor, huh?” You finally glanced up, a bit surprised to find barely anyone on board at this point. A few men sat adjacent, some sleep, others occupied on their own devices and papers or simply dead in gaze as they awaited their respective stops.

Then him, of course.

Turning fully around you face the source of the comment and your heart began to hammer.

Under a subtle glance or two, he didn’t look too out of the ordinary. Dark pants, shoes and a coat on his back, he could’ve as easily passed for some unremarkable human being cold and exhausted from days events. However, under the certain proximity, you had a clear view of his face, unmistakably his metal-littered, scarred face and the dangerously piercing gaze to match.

You parted your lips but he held up a finger, silencing you before you could squeak a sound. He glanced around toward the few other occupants in the car, noting them to be of no significance until his eyes returned back to yours, the silent threat of impending danger weighing heavily in the air around you.

“Are you-are you going to kill me?” You finally said, voice sickeningly timid. Wide eyes peered up at him, height clearing yours as he slowly backed you towards the side of the car.

“He your favorite hero?” Dabi ignored your question, eyes flickering to your chest before his hand followed. You squeaked in surprise as he boldly placed his hand against your breast.

Jerking away, you prepare to to defend yourself when he gripped your wrist.

“To answer the question, I’m not gonna kill you. ‘M just gonna hurt you real bad though,” You’re spun before another word is uttered, the rattling of metal against wheels loud enough to drown your protests.

“Please don’t do this,” His hands were exploring your body, running up your thighs and cruelly pinching at the skin on your sides before settling on the hem of your jeans.

“Please don’t,” You whimpered shakily, meeting the villain’s eyes in the glass.

“I just feel like ya personally insulting me y’know?” He grunted over the sound of his belt clinking. His hand was back on your side now, nails digging into the meat of the exposed skin until drawing a wince.

Dabi shuffled forward until your hands were pressed against the wall of the train, steadying yourself. His other made quick work of yanking down your jeans until they rested around your thighs, panties on display before his hungry gaze.

“D-don’t. I’ll scream.” By now, you’d been reduced to a whimpering, teary-eyed mess, your frantic gaze shifting through the other riders for a witness to what was going on.

But they were all too preoccupied to care.

“Yeah, for who?” The passengers that did notice were the wrong ones.

You met the greedy eyes of the man closest to you and the way his own dropped down to your connected bodies. Dabi was quick to notice that and chuckled before leaning down toward your ear.

“Still your idol, doll? This is his society, you know? The one on your ridiculously, ugly top,” He snickered, his fingers hooking into the side of your panties.

Before you could cry out, his scarred hand clamped over your mouth at the same time as his cock breached your cunt. You tensed, nothing escaping you but a muffled gasp as he shoved himself past your tight ring of resistance. Your eyes were wide, peering back at you in the glass, reflecting off of the pain and horror present.

“Mm, so tight.” He licked the shell of your ear and you release a shuddering sob. He began a snappy, brutal pace, the thick cock dragging heavily through your dry walls. Every time he pulled away, you felt every vein, every metallic orb scraping against gummy insides.

He slammed back into you at the same time the train screeched over rusted tracks, grunting with every stroke, his thin hip bones snapping against your ass.

His grip was bruising as he held onto your waist, his wrist only flicking to push and pull you back onto his dick. His other hand remained pressed against your mouth to muffle your cries and moans. You reached behind to at least try and push him away, alleviate the grating pain he was causing but your attempts were laughable as he only slapped away your efforts.

Dabi sped up, stumbling forward until your front was pressed against the metal interior, body squished between hot and cool. The hand over your mouth dropped to hang loosely around your neck, tilting your head back to meet his. The hood over his head only served to make him all the more menacing with the shadow that casted over his grotesque features.

“What do you think Mr. Endeavor would say if he saw his biggest fan being defiled like this? Probably be disgusted huh? I mean, allowing a complete stranger to fuck you on public transportation.” Your eyes closed as you imagined the twisted look of repulsion on your favorite hero and the image brought you to more tears.

You hiccupped as he trailed fingers down in between your legs to brush against your clit, missing the way his grin widened at the way you suddenly tense up. You released a pained moan at the way your pussy clamped down on him.

“So sensitive,” He chuckled at the way you try and bite down your orgasm. He could feel you start to relax, your cunt pulsating around him as your juices started to slick him up.

Overhead, the sound of the loudspeaker crackling at the next stop had Dabi’s eyes glancing up, as if now aware of the time. Releasing you, his hand fell to your other hip where his blunt nails dug as his pace quickened.

“Stop’s coming up,” He mumbled. You didn’t really hear him though. You were busy trying not to give in to the way his cock was filling you up, the pain parting into pleasure, your juices beginning to fall and squish around his dick.

Your head hung low; you couldn’t even look at your reflection in the glass anymore, at the way your brows furrowed over glossy, blown eyes. The way your wet lips part to release silent moans. You were despicable. You couldn’t call yourself a fan of the great Endeavor anymore, not after this.

Not after him.

Dabi’s feet planted firmly, his hips suddenly stuttering to a halt. He was quick to conceal your squeal with his hand again as his dick twitched in your cunt. Your teary eyes widened as you felt warmth flooding you, too horrified to even move save for your trembles.

He was still going, slowly rutting his nut back into you with shallow strokes. It was only until you heard a chime overhead that he pulled away with a content sigh.

Dabi eyed the way his cum was beginning to seep down your thighs, dripping into your bunched up jeans and an idea formed in his head, one that had him grinning sadistically.

A moment later your trembling legs finally gave way allowing you to sink onto the floor.

He began to fix himself, adjusting the hood on his head. He threw a cocky salute to the man eyeballing him earlier and a final disgusted look down at those eyes on your shirt. He then shook his head with a forming smile, walking away and leaving you on the floor of the cold train. The whooshing of the doors were deafening in your ears as you looked up to greedy eyes.

Back at the hero agency, Endeavor’s phone lit up and a notification from an unknown number had his brows furrowed in confusion at the link. His scowl only deepened after further investigation.

DILFOS. do not plagiarize my content—current or archival.

[grahambaham]

So I've been complaining about “pit madness” a lot lately and I’d like to clear up that I don’t mind it being used as a plot device sometimes. Like, for example, Dark Matter by mysterycyclone uses it to create more conflict for Peter who we see struggling with it. I like that. That’s a cool way of adding to the dc universe, as long as it’s acknowledged as not canon and made for the purposes of the fic.

What I most certainly do have a problem with is using it as abuse apologia, as someone who read my earlier post called it. 99% of the time the pit madness is introduced as a way to excuse the actions of people under the influence of it, no matter how bad, making it so that the victims of that madness cannot blame the person who did all those things because it wasn’t really them. Fans of Jason are always the ones doing that because they can’t like a character who isn’t a perfect goody two shoes and have to find new ways to victimise and excuse him. It also makes it easy for the other Gotham/Bludhaven vigilantes, like Bruce Dick and Tim, to forgive him and be able to easily accept him back into the family without acknowledging that they’ve ever been wronged by Jason in the first place.

It happens in other media and fandoms too. Using any sort of implied mind control or emotional manipulation or just mental illness of characters to excuse the hurt they’ve caused.

As a plot device for fics though, that’s not used as abuse apologia or shit like that? Love it. It’s always super interesting to see, especially when new and interesting characters are shown as “under its influence”. Btw the excusing and stuff isn’t just about Jason, it’d be utter dog shit if they used it as an excuse for these other characters to do horrible things and be easily forgiven or whatever, so this isn’t Jason specific.

[milkymora]

✧ 5 dl boys - headcanons pt 2 ✧

~NOTE: i have readed @cyrilvows on my dl post & couldn’t find the words to THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. you made my day, literally, the only way i can thank u for being so nice is writing these!!! (つ╥ ╥)つ *biggest virtual hug eversjshsi* hope u enjoy!! they’re all SFW, and the pics used aren’t mine! ct to the respective owners on pinterest. xoxoxo, Mora

ꞝ Ayato S.

his body (torso, shoulders & back in particular) has a lot of birthmarks and moles. whenever he gets asked about them he jokes about “y’know the legend that says all your moles are the places you got kissed in your past life? well, i was very lucky!”

has an obsession for cinema. he loves its dim ambience and eating caramel pop-corns while watching all sorts of films.

he can’t tan. like, at all. during summer, whenever he stays for more than 10 minutes under the sun trying to get slightly darker, he gets red as a lobster.

ꞝ Laito S.

he’s a comics reader. he likes DC & marvel a lot! his favorite character is deadpool, he finds him to be hilarious.

loves vans shoes with all his heart. especially the black & white checkered slip-ons. he dresses a lot like a skater boy, wearing oversized hoodies & ripped jeans with small chains on its sides.

his biggest fear are needles. he passes out at the mere thought of blood analysis.

ꞝ Kanato S.

is a toys collector. dolls, peluches, action figures, everything. he particularly loves monster high, lalaloopsy & my little pony.

likes melanie martinez a lot. his favorite album is crybaby, and his favorite song is “carousel”. he loves her creepy lyrics and tranquil bases.

he cosplays! and he’s great at it. especially dark lolita dresses, suit him amazingly.

ꞝ Reiji S.

is a fan of literature, russian one precisely. he reads around 30 books per year, and a good percentage are regarding this theme.

can speak so many languages. 7 to be exact: japanese, english, russian, korean, chinese, german, french. he’s perfectly fluent in all in of them.

he’s vegetarian & also celiac. he has to follow a strict diet with gluten-free foods since he was born, and doesn’t like meat. he loves fish though.

ꞝ Kou M.

an otaku since his early years. he grew up with sailor moon, lady oscar & other shojos that he still loves. the one he’s most attached to is kodomo no omocha.

has a septum piercing! he likes golden/rose golden jewelry and has so many pieces, since he likes to change it every 2 months. (he does favor a small golden ring, OR a classic pink balls septum)

has an addiction to strawberry flavored milk. along with vanilla pastries. and haribo gummies, too.

✧ (u guys can find the other boys in this post!)

~i really hope you liked these, tbh i wasn’t planning on writing dl headcanons about the other boys but u motivated me so much!!! and, AGAIN, THANK YOU SO MUCHWKEHWLDN ILY

[livelaughlesbian00]

"Butch Awakening" BTVS Dream Storytime ft. Spike

I knew I liked women as a teen, but realizing I didn't like men came in college and hit me like a truck. Realizing I'm lesbian was a tougher pill to swallow than believing I was bi. But that's a long story that maybe I could tell later...

However my butch awakening experience from a couple years ago is more fun and easier to tell.

And it involves this sassy fucker. Shoutout Spike ✌️

As a kid in elementary private school, I had an attempt at a tomboy phase. Reflecting back, part of it stemmed from a "pick me" internalized misogyny mindset, but the other part of me felt comfortable and confident when I wore those 2000s DC skate shoes, hi tops, had shorter hair, etc.

I wanted to wear the private school uniform pants but as many butches can probably relate, I had an ass, growing hips, and calves and these were uniform pants designed in 2008-2013. So I settled for baggy jumper dress, baggy shirt, baggy sweatshirt, tights, biker shorts over them, and converse. I could tell something was different but I didn't exactly know why yet.

I tried befriending boys and wanted the bond I saw the non popular boys have with each other as opposed to what I saw in my class's popular Catholic sporty girl crowd. (In middle school I was obsessed with "The Outsiders". Curious if any other butches were). I didn't fit in with the girls in many ways, including my geekiness. I soon learned that I did not fuck with everything my boy classmates said or did. Seemed like I was a weird in between that didn't exist.

That tomboy phase did not last long as a ballerina & theater kid who loved dancing and musical theater. I was pretty good too. I slipped back into femininity before experiencing some gender envy towards pretty men in late high school. As it turns out, femininity (and "liking" men) was just another performance for me, but I loved performing which caused that years-long confusion! So I was "on stage" constantly.

Then came a day in college where I suddenly realized I really wasn't attracted to men, could do without them romantically and sexually for the rest of my life so I should probably dump my boyfriend, and really just wanted women (and as I've grown to accept, people with similar gender experiences as me). Yay lesbian! But I wasn't a butch yet. Butch L was still in hiding.

I started thinking back with a new clarifying lens at so many memories in my childhood. I questioned the "crushes" I had on men in a whole new light.

Then Spike materialized in a dream with priceless awakening insight

I had started watching Buffy for the first time a year or two prior to realizing I was lesbian but put a pause on it. I came back to watching it shortly after my lesbian awakening, which at the time, felt more like an identity crisis. I had a lot of unpacking and reframing to do that I couldn't avoid now. I had previously wondered if I had a crush on Spike because I struggled defining the feelings I had about his look, demeanor, and how female fans swooned over him. That would get cleared up real quick though.

One night I dreamt I was a part of the Scooby gang. We all met at the library in the high school as we prepared to take on the "big bad" of the episode. Buffy, Faith, Willow, and Cordelia stood by me as we looked up at Giles and Spike talking on the stairs.

I looked at Spike with admiration as he shared something important with everyone, but my focus quickly drifted over to the other women standing next to me. Dream me was so jealous of how they looked at him. He held their attention in a way I didn't. I thought about how Drusilla and Buffy wanted him in a way they wouldn't want me.

I eyed his style up and down and grew jealous of how cool it was. So dream me did exactly what anyone would do. As he spoke, I started replacing my clothes with a style closer to his á la 2000s Barbie dress up video game.

Woke up with the realization that I just had really bad lesbian gender envy (and women attention envy) for Spike. I decided that since I was so jealous of his style I could just take parts of it to make it my own. So I did and still sort of do.

Old fit check of stolen Spike look below~

Thanks Spike for appearing in a dream years ago to confirm the fact that the "crushes" I had on men were purely gender envy 🫡

That gender envy realization led me down a path for navigating lesbian masculinity and butch values that I hold now!

[i-yap]

Hello, good evening, how is everything there?

I was wondering if you could write something about Dick taking his cute girlfriend [Us] shopping (clothes, shoes, jewelry) and also what it would be like to do grocery shopping with him. I love going to the supermarket, it is one of my favorite activities.

By the way, you are like an angel fallen from heaven, there are so few writing about Dick and the Bat-family in general, I feel like writers who are fans of them are becoming extinct.

I just hope they continue making content with these characters, maybe the fandom will resurface once again.

praying for DC and Warner.

Bro same, Idk why but it feels like the fandom is dying but also batfam content is dying? Like I don't remember the last good batfam show was out ..fingers crossed ig.

Dick grayson x reader- Shopping headcanons

Best batboy to go clothes/fashion shopping . He has great style, can pull off anything, very supportive and all the store ladies are really jealous. He gives genuinely good advice and honestly he is like your personal styler and this point.

i dont think you even need to go shopping cuz he gifts you so many dresses and for home wear- his tshits exist?? why would be need sleepwear? why??

but its fun and I get it , sometimes even the perfect man forgets to buy something for his gf. He does keep track of whatever is about to finish, so idk honestly.

Maybe he drags you to go shopping, let him "spoil you" as if he doesn't do that enough already. Or if there's a gala and the 100 dresses in your closet arent enough?

um dressing room sex? yes sorry but yes. Honestly you probably will get jealous of hot seeing dick but dw if you don't initiate, dick totally will.

Mostly fancy ish stores, but unlike bruce he does shop as excitedly at smaller shows( you can find great deals there and really good fits)

Grocery shopping is so cute, he holds the cart and gets all the important stuff while you run around putting sweets and chocolates and while he might say "20 bags of chocolates may be a bit much sweetie, they'll go bad" he doesn't mean it. He is just teasing, and you know that so you play along with a pretty please and big pleading eyes. Thats all he wanted tbh, that and to pull your cheeks.

On the other hand if you look at a snack but don't buy it because you don't want to be excessive , he puts 5 of each in the basket without you noticing. you just notice when they show up in your cabinets .

Will need you next to him or in his eyeview, don't you dare run too far otherwise he will joke about tying you to him( actually considers it)

Will hold all bags and when you offer, he just gives you his hand and tells you that you have the responsibility to make sure not to drop his hand.

All smiles and excitement. Will want coffee afterward or during and will happily try out now boba places or anything cute you wanna have.

Will die if you guys share a piece of cake in a cute cafe..like that is so fricking cute, sharing a drink and a cake and omg he lives for it.

He genuinely enjoyed shopping with you and out of all batboys he is probably the only one that would enjoy it (maybe tim in certain cases) In the end, he got to spend time, compliment and dote on the love of his life..what more can he ask for?

lowkey wanna do all batboys now..maybe if I get time after the requests..i love grocery shopping too. the big American stores- literally dreamed of them growing up. the first time I went to America I just ran around the grocery shop( thebig ones) with my brother and it was so much fun.

[newx-menfan]

Laura Kinney isn’t the “Goodie Two Shoes” fans make her out to be…and other thoughts… 

Part 1: “The CRINGE”

Let’s be honest- we all KNEW I would eventually get here…after doing write-ups on Surge, Hellion, AND Prodigy…since X-23 is one of my all time favorite characters…

If there is one thing that drives me totally NUTS about X-23 fandom though (and fandoms, in general)… it is this weird fan attitude that Laura Kinney…aka “X-23”…aka “Wolverine”… can essentially “Do No Wrong”….

She’s the “BETTER” Wolverine. The less “TOXIC” version. The PERFECT Wolverine.

You see it in comic clickbait articles ALL the time- Laura is, essentially, the PERFECT answer to all the problems of the original character….

If you happen to mention ANY sort of criticism against X-23, textually or just about the character ingeneral - “She’s a bad friend”… “She can be kind of selfish”… “she is objectively a derivative character that is based off of a more popular X-Men”…people will look at you like you just kicked their puppy or said something really cruel…

And what’s interesting to me about all of this is… X-Men is KIND OF a book essentially about very flawed people, all trying to survive. That was, after all, Marvel’s WHOLE sell for years- they had the “relatable”, “real” characters…. where DC comics had “Gods”.

You would think, with characters EATING another planet, living out problematic “antebellum” Dark Phoenix fantasies, having psychic affairs, saying the “N-word” repeatedly, starting out as villains… it’s kind of accepted that ALL OF THE OTHER X-MEN have made terrible choices at some point or have been written BADLY….

Yet if you go on X-Men twitter… you will regularly see fans yelling that Jean Grey “is the most powerful X-Men” ever, Gambit or Logan are just these perfect “girl-dad’s”, or Storm can essentially NEVER be wrong…

And the PROBLEM with this is…it’s made writing these characters ALMOST LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE…

When Jean, for example, is at GOD LEVELS and ALWAYS morally right… what can you feasibly DO with her character anymore? If you create a villain to match her insane power levels… fans will be upset and complain that the fight wasn’t “fair” and inevitably pull up some vague comic panel to argue just why Jean really should have won …If a writer decides to de-power her OR makes her go evil, fans often will inevitably view it as sexist… so how can you write Jean Grey as still relatable? 

New relationships or Scott Summers dying?- Fans often get upset when writers break up the iconic Scott/Jean or Logan/Jean ships…or accuse writers of romanticizing toxic relationships…

Put her in a teaching/mentor/Headmaster role?- we saw what happened when writers tried it with Kitty, Storm, and Logan…they just became pretty boring….

Often writers solution seems to be… just killing Jean off…

This isn’t to shoot down criticisms like “Women in the Refrigerator Syndrome”, “plot armor”, ect…but I do think it’s important to talk about how… possibly… fandom has gone too far the other way… that fandom is basically guaranteeing characters will inevitably become obsolete or unusable… or cause writers to inevitably just repeat the same five stories for nostalgia sake, because they can’t do anything “new”…

This isn’t JUST female characters either- I would say characters like Gambit, Wolverine, Cyclops, Batman, and several others have pretty much the same logistical problem…they’ve been hyped up SO MUCH…that you can’t really DO ANYTHING with them anymore, for fear of angering their large fanbases….

Laura has relatively quickly developed this problem, and it seems like the shelf life of comic book characters is burning out quicker and quicker…

What is it about Laura, that makes her immune to any real criticism within her fan base, in a comic book series where it’s kind of accepted that every character is in some way…horribly flawed?

I am going to go through in these posts talking about why Laura really isn’t the perfect character readers constantly make her out to be… that she actually IS pretty similar TO Logan and a lot of the complaints against him CAN be tied to her as well… and that the biggest problem currently facing Laura AND COMICS in general right now, I would argue, is that writers are not able to admit that Laura or any of the other characters ARE sometimes wrong…or to quote Kitty Pryde…sometimes kind of a “jerk”…

———————————————————————

Part of the reason no one criticizes Laura, is because of her tremendously tragic backstory.

Essentially a modern version of “Frankenstein”; Laura is created to be a replication of the “Weapon X” experiment in miniseries “Innocence Lost”. (I know people tend to focus more on the “Pinocchio” allusions from the book, but I find the  “Frankenstein” allusions more relevant…)

Sarah Kinney opts into this program, because, like Victor Frankenstein: she desires scientific exploration without ethical scrutiny. 

Focused more on pushing the realms of scientific discovery instead of considering the consequences, Sarah manages to create a viable clone, with the caveat that it is female, because the “Y” gene from the sample is too damaged. It’s only when Rice, another scientist with a Wolverine-vendetta, forces Sarah to be a surrogate to Laura as punishment for her insubordination, that the ethical considerations truly start to come into play for Sarah…

Laura experiences extreme torture, radiation poisoning to activate her mutant powers, coating her claws without anesthetic, creation of the trigger scent (a pavlovian odor that causes her to black out and go berserk), forcing her to kill her Sensei and other targets (and her puppy, according to Liu…), and many other horrors while there.

Sarah, after seeing Laura’s potential for good after Laura spares Rice’s illegitimate kid from being murdered and Laura helping  track down Sarah’s kidnapped niece; tries to free Laura and destroy the facility…

Which leads to Rice coating Sarah with the trigger scent and having Laura murder her.

While Laura DOES manage to escape…she now has to live with the fact that she killed her own mother for the rest of her life…

This is pretty much the bare bones summary (I ignored Sarah’s own history of childhood trauma and abuse and the Rice subplots)….

Laura then goes to track down Sarah’s relatives in “Target X”, bonding with Megan, the angsty traumatized niece that had been kidnapped previously and develops her first real human connection.

It’s hard NOT to like Kyle’s adorable version of Laura; watching her riding on roller coasters with Megan, peeping in on people in windows, accidentally getting Megan into trouble by mimicking teachers, hanging out at the boardwalks in San Fran…. Laura is socially inept…but in a relatable way…

Things go to hell however, when it’s discovered that Debbie’s boyfriend is actually a facility agent and spying on them…

Laura fights the Sabertooth-like Kimura, saves Debbie and Megan, helps them go into hiding, and then attacks Logan with the plan to kill them both…only to get captured by Shield….and then is freed by Captain America…

Again a bare bones summary and nothing to really criticize, since Laura has little engagement with people in these situations and is the victim, despite doing some really horrible things. It’s a pretty reasonable storyline and it is, again, a modern comic retelling of “Frankenstein”…similar to “the Incredible Hulk”….

Laura is the monster of modern science, desperately seeking the answers of what it means to be human…

Sure…she kind of/sort of tries to kill Logan…but it’s understandable considering the situation…(and it’s not like Logan doesn’t have a history of trying to kill his own family members in comics…)

“NYX”…good and bad…is kind of the story that PUSHES the TRAUMA NARRATIVE to a ridiculous degree…

I get why on multiple levels…people, including Craig Kyle himself (writer of “Innocence Lost” AND ”Target X”) …HATE NYX.

And truthfully… I personally remember rolling my eyes, the first time I heard about it when it came out…

“NYX”, written by Editor Joe Quesada, was the first introduction of Laura, and technically came out BEFORE “Innocence Lost”/“Target X” but after Laura’s appearance on the tv show “X-Men Evolution”. Canonically…it’s a little more challenging but most fans AGREE NYX comes AFTER “Target X”….

Laura is in NYC and being trafficked by Zebra Daddy (yes…that IS HIS NAME IN THE BOOK…); becoming mute and withdrawn. 

When a john kills himself she meets another mutant, Kiden Nixon, and joins a ragtag group of homeless mutants…there’s a whole subplot about Kiden’s dead dad…Zebra Daddy comes after Laura and she kills him to save her friends…

In the end, Laura abandons her friends (because Laura has to be a “lone wolf”); but bumps into them years later after joining the X-Men…

While I will fully admit there are parts of Laura’s story that ARE handled pretty well…there’s also A LOT of voyeuristic panty shots in the art….a ridiculous amount of hand waving…and constant over-theatrics…

———————————————————————

Laura really is that character that teeters on an edge of cringe….

“Female Clone of Wolverine”- admittedly sounds cringeworthy to a non-comic book reader… (and people who remember HOW BAD “the Clone Saga” was…)

“Dating and obsessed with a ‘Draco Malfoy-esque’ sorta toxic copy of Jean Grey”- soundscringeworthy…right?

“Tortured weapon who is forced to become a teenage sex worker out on the streets of NYC and is goth and self harms…”- 100% sounds like an over the top show on CW….

I DO OBJECTIVELY GET why, when Laura first popped up into comics, a lot of male Wolverine fans saw her as just this “edgy CW-like attempt at new readership”… (technically she was CREATED on Warner Brothers “X-Men Evo”…so that’s not totally an inaccurate summary either…)

A teenage Wolverine…with boobs…

Hell…the director of “Logan”, James Mangold, didn’t want to feature her as a teenager…because he thought it sounded like a “CW show”….

“NYX” did feel like something out of a Frank Miller, “Batman: Year One” hallucination. That’s not to say it’s a BAD comic…but it definitely reflects the era of the 2000’s where everything had to be “gritty”….female characters were all heavily sexualized…it was at a time where “Skins”, “Misfits”, and “Gossip Girl” hyped up underage teenagers doing drugs, partying, and having risky sex….

One of the covers of “NYX” literally features Kiden with a pacifier…heavily hinting at “rave culture” and “ecstasy” usage…

I know a lot of modern readers take offense to this book and Quesada…but I do see the other side of it. A big part of Millennial early counter culture WAS indie sleeze….it WAS very hedonistic…it did fit the time period it was created….

“NYX” is a as much of a product of Millennial culture as “Academy X”, “the Ultimate verse”, or Grant Morrison’s “New X-Men” was… it was the same as how “Generation X” or “Jim Lee’s X-Men” was for the 90’s…how all of Claremont’s “Uncanny” and the spinoff books were products of the 80’s culture…and how Kirby’s “X-Men” was for the 60’s…ectera, ecetera…

And the common trend with all of them? They all have some PRETTY CRINGY MOMENTS.

I’m 100% sure, in ten or twenty years, we will look back and criticize how this era of comics incorporated embarrassing parts of youth culture…or writing styles…or counter culture…

But at the same time…her backstory… DOES start to feel a bit ridiculous. It does start to feel like this manufactured, over the top modern “Oliver Twist” or “Great Expectations” to get fans to essentially accept and sympathize with this fairly new character…Like someone just took a bunch of random origin stories and dumped them together in blender, to make the ultimate “SAD” character…

Is Laura really ALL that different from ridiculous characters like Adam the X-treme? Or Birdbrain? the lost Summer brother…Vulcan?

Yet we don’t take any of those characters overly seriously…

It’s moments like watching fans debate whether it’s right or wrong to use the Codename “X-23” for example, screaming at fans who are fine with it because they realize she’s ultimately a fictional character and Marvel on some level needs “brand recognition”…that even if her backstory does deal with real topics and issues…. do you remember that Laura’s backstory is pretty comicbook-y and absurd. 

As “cringy” as Laura SOUNDS on PAPER…she works because the writing ultimately did what it was supposed to do. Laura has objectively some of the BEST MODERN COMICS and even books like NYX, are pretty decently written, even if the subject matter and handling and culture are outdated from it.

Laura IS a great character…but she’s also kind of on edge of “cringy”…

And where we can kind of ACCEPT that cringe with Logan and his weird nose-less era…or Gambit referring to himself in third person… or pretty much EVERYTHING about Kitty (ninja…pirate…teenage prodigy…weird waifu for literally every male writer); Laura is this one character that you can’t criticize…or if you DO, it has to be solely around the sexualization of the character…and not the character itself…

I do understand fans getting attached to certain characters…in seeing their OWN trauma represented IN the character and reflected back…but at some point…I do think you have to see the humor of it all too…

That Laura isn’t ALL that DIFFERENT from other products of their time- like clone Superboy…FantomeX…Quentin Quire….Bloodstorm…Maggott…Adam the X-treme…

She just had better writing.

[marimayscarlett]

Americans are going thru it today, is there any way you could bless us with sweet facts about Rammstein and Richard? Thanks for your help, I know I absolutely live for your detailed posts, they're my favorite ❤️❤️

Hi 👋

First of all, my heart goes out to all American citizens who hoped, voted and fought for a different outcome. We live in very surreal and scary times and I just wish you all lots of strength and calmness for your minds 🍀🤍

Now on to some other, hopefully uplifting/interesting enough things to get your mind of things - maybe not all sweet ones, since I grabbed them from the top of my head so to speak and searched for the sources afterward, yet I hope they provide a little bit of distraction:

tiny little fact I love: Richard is actually a proper country boy. Eventhough he was born in the city of Wittenberge, he lived up until he was 7 in the german countryside in the little village of Weisen, which according to Google has 997 inhabitants. "That was a beautiful childhood with alot of nature, cats and dogs and a big family with two siblings."

as the most memorable (or miserable) jobs he ever worked in, Richard listed the following: window cleaner (since he suffers from vertigo), making shoes and selling them, going through an apprentinceship for becoming a cook and cleaning for an old lady who had stuffed poodles in her apartment.

if he could timetravel, Richard would choose to visit the period of the Knights Templar, 11th century, since he feels rather drawn to this history era.

a little fact about Richard and the gifts he gets from fans to his door step I think about regularly with mixed feelings: "I myself got a rose on my doorstep every day for years. Sure, it's nice - you always have roses at home, but there are so many unpleasant feelings involved. For a while, someone always left cigarettes in my mailbox. My brother always had to smoke the first one!"

Richard took singing lessons with a coach who also worked with Mick Jagger. Said coach scolded Richard a lot due to him smoking right before class - in one interview Richard mentioned he was so intimidated by that coach that he was ready to call his parents to pick him up. But he went through with it and worked a lot on his voice, which became quite beneficial for his singing.

Apparently, the idea of the infamous Flake-stew during "Mein Teil" came from Richard, who then actually was less than enthusiastic for his own idea: "I had the idea of Flake being cooked in the pot, then I realized, the first time we actually did it onstage, that it was too convenient, just stupid or not even funny, whatever. So I said, ‘I hate it’. But by that time, the rest of them had done it and loved it…"

The band actually considered various names before they settled for 'Rammstein': Tempelprayers, Mutter (mother), Milch (milk), Erde (earth).

A well known fact or rather, legend, but I think about it a lot: Richard recorded the whistling for 'Engel' it true chaotic composer fashion, namely while he was taking a bath and was struck by creativity. The band apparently didn't manage to record a better version, so his version was used for the song.

some song recommendations by Richard - these were his favourites back in 2009: 'Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails, 'Baby I'm gonna leave you' by Led Zeppelin, 'Sin City' by AC/DC and 'Personal Jesus' by Depeche Mode 🎶

I hope this helped at least a tiny bit! Sending you all the good and cosy vibes you might need 🤲🏼

Have some cuddly R+ guys for emotional support:

Sources: Rockhard magazine wir.sehen.euch rammwiki Emigrate Kerrang rammwiki Rammstein