#here we are

[corkinavoid]

Thank you, @aceinacorner, for this gem:

You are the inspiration for

DPxDC Ring of Rage? More Like Ring of Engage [pt. 3]

[<- part 2]

Duke narrows his eyes.

He swears Tim was not in the Cave just five seconds ago, and yet, in the brief moment when Duke wasn't looking, he just materialized out of motherfucking aether. Smelling like Chinese food and holding a chicken skewer that looks so good that Duke's mouth waters.

"Can I have a piece?" He asks, the divine smell of food overriding the urge to ask 'where did you get it' or 'how did you get here'.

Tim nods, smiles, and hands Duke the whole skewer before going for the elevator.

Is it Duke's hallucination, or is he really humming something as he goes?.. Actually, that doesn't matter. The chicken tastes even better than it smells, and Duke is perfectly willing to keep his mouth shut in exchange for food.

You don't talk with your mouth full, after all.

~☆~

Cass watches Tim over the table. She hasn't heard him coming into the dinner room - no steps in the hall, no rustle of clothing or breathing. It's like the boy has somehow appeared right in front of the door out of nowhere before entering.

What's more, he seems obviously not hungry, picking at his food with an absent, if a bit dreamy, expression. Granted, Tim always picks at his food, but Cass can see the difference between 'Tim's mind is busy with a new case and therefore too distracted to eat' and 'Tim already had dinner elsewhere and is too full to eat now'.

The bags under his eyes are also not as dark as they usually are. Come to think of it, Cass hasn't seen him in a bad mood for a few weeks now, which shouldn't really be that strange, but it's Tim. The smallest of inconveniences can put him in a bad mood.

Tim notices her looking and raises an eyebrow.

Cass blinks and goes back to her plate. Whatever is keeping her brother happy, it deserves her full approval.

~☆~

Jason is... not so sure as to what is happening.

He did notice that Tim was really chill lately, but this is going a bit overboard.

"Did you spike it with arsenic, Replacement?" He asks, suspiciously looking the offered cup of coffee over without taking it. Tim - surprisingly, actually - doesn't react to the nickname in the slightest, instead giving Jason a deadpan look. Then, he brings the cup up to his mouth, takes a sip, and hands it back again.

Okay, well, that proves no arsenic, at least. It's still very weird. Tim doesn't just buy coffee for people, and he especially doesn't buy coffee for Jason.

"Am I going to owe you something for it, or what?" He asks, slowly reaching for the cup. Tim sighs.

"No. It's just a drink - my boyfriend loves it, and I think you'd like it as well," he explains with a shrug, and Jason is honestly too befuddled to ask about anything. Including the boyfriend part.

No, but since when does Timbers have a boyfriend? He sure hadn't mentioned anything about it to any of the others.

The drink turns out to be not coffee but something else, tangy and thick, and when Jason takes the lid off, it's green like Mountain Dew.

It does taste great, though, and later Jason considers asking Tim for another one. He hadn't had anything better in ages.

~☆~

Damian strikes through the last one of the training holograms, breathing heavily. And yet, just as the 'simulation complete' message pops up in the air, he hears a step behind him.

He turns around faster than a lightning, and-

Finds Timothy's neck at the tip of his katana, with his hands up in surrender.

"What are you doing here?" Damian sneers, lowering his weapon, and Tim swallows. Not because of surprise or fear, though, he clearly had some half chewed up food in his mouth.

"Inaccurate drop off," he says, looking Damian straight in the eyes, "I was aiming for the main floor."

He smells of Indian food and spices, and Damian almost sneezes.

"What do you mean 'aiming'?" He demands, but Drake just waves him off, heading towards the elevator up.

"No worries, I'll do better next time," he shoots a smile over his shoulder, "See you on patrol!" And with that, the elevator doors close after him, leaving Damian alone.

Drake has always been strange, but this is too much even for him.

Not that it's Damian's business. He huffs and starts the simulation over again.

~☆~

If Dick didn't witness it with his own two eyes, he would have never believed it. Alas, he did, and even though the swirling green vortex has already disappeared like it was never there, Tim, whom the strange portal just spat out on the floor of the Cave, is still here.

"What the fuck was that?" He nearly yells, and Tim looks up, a face of perfect innocence.

"What was what?" He returns the question, and Dick can't find the words to explain, so he just wildly gestures to the place where the portal has been less than five seconds ago. Tim blinks, "Oh, that. That was my date."

Dick chokes on his breath.

"Your date?" He parrots, hoarse and breathless, and Tim nods, like there's not a single thing wrong with anything that has just happened. "Since when do you go on dates? Wait, I thought you were engaged, you said it was cheating to date anyone else, even if you didn't know the spouse, you said-" he cuts himself off, feeling his own face slowly falling and his stomach sinking down in horror. "No. No, don't tell me."

But the shit-eating grin on Tim's face is already proof enough.

Dick clears his throat. Takes a deep breath.

Seeing that Tim is still in one piece, and, well, that he did just casually come out of a magic portal in the middle of the Cave, it's probably safe to say that it's not the first time.

And, judging by the mirth in Tim's grin, it's also safe to say he's been rather enjoying it.

Dick releases one long, loud breath and forces a smile on his face as well.

"So, how is it?" He asks, trying in vain to sound light-hearted, not suspicious. Tim's smile gets wider, and there's a glint of excitement in his eyes now, which Dick considers a good thing, all in all.

"Oh, I thought you'd never ask."

~☆~

Bonus Scene (that somehow turned out longer than I planned)

~☆~

"Where's Tim?" Bruce asks when all the rest of his kids are already seated around the table for breakfast.

"At Danny's, probably," Steph shrugs before digging into the waffles on her plate. Bruce frowns.

"Danny's?" He asks. He hasn't heard that name before. Is that a friend of Tim's?

"Drake's paramour," Damian clarifies, not bothering to look up from his own food, and Bruce's mind comes to a screeching halt. He blinks stupidly, looking around the table and sincerely hoping it is some sort of a prank, but Cass smiles and nods, and Dick has an expression of pure exhaustion on his face, and Duke is huffing a snort of laughter at him for it.

"Since when-" Bruce starts, but he is suddenly cut off by a glowing circle that appears just a few feet away from them all.

It grows quickly, morphing into a vortex, a green and ominous tear in reality big enough for a person to walk through, hanging in the air a few inches over the ground. The space around it feels staticky somehow, and the color is too bright to look at directly, and it definitely doesn't belong to their dining room. But before Bruce is able to say another word or do anything at all, Tim steps out of it, his hair and clothes ruffled.

"Oh, fuck," he mutters upon seeing them all, and turns around, sticking his head into the vortex just as it starts to close. The vortex pauses.

Bruce is almost too stunned to move.

His kids don't share the sentiment, though, most of them not paying the portal any attention at all. Bruce would have reprimanded them for the poor awareness of their surroundings if he didn't notice how Damian simply glanced up at it before going back to his food.

They saw the portal. They just didn't deem it dangerous. For some reason.

Tim's face comes back out, and he turns to Bruce. His expression looks different than before: a bit smug, a little mischievous, and just a tad bit nervous.

Then, another head pops up through the surface of the portal. A boy - or at least they look like a boy - with snow white hair that floats in the air and bright, almost neon blue eyes. His skin is far too pale for him to be human, and- he has freckles that look like constellations.

For some reason, that's the part that makes Bruce finally resign to the fact that this is just how his life is. With breakfasts interrupted by green portals and otherworldly boyfriends - because who else might it be, really - before he even had his morning coffee.

"Hi!" Said otherworldly boyfriend grins and waves his hand. "I'm Danny, Tim's fiance," he introduces himself, and Bruce conjures the last scraps of his scattered mind to smile and nod back.

"Good morning, Danny. I'm Bruce." He has no idea what else to say; it seems like a bit late for shovel talk, but a bit early for welcoming speech.

"Would Young Master Danny care to join us for breakfast?" Alfred's calm, but still slightly amused voice comes from the door. Bruce turns to look at the butler with a sense of exasperation - is he really the last one to learn anything in this house? - but the man seems... well, not surprised, at least not on the surface. But his grip on the pitcher of orange juice is just a little too tense for him to have been in the know all along.

Danny turns to him and smiles nicely - his teeth are also way too sharp for a human - before shaking his head, "No, sorry, I was just dropping Tim off."

"For God's sake," Tim rolls his eyes, "Just put on some pants and come out, I refuse to suffer through this alone."

Dick chokes on his toast. Steph gasps, her eyes snapping between Tim and Danny in delight. Cass snorts and kicks her under the table. Damian groans.

"Spare me from the details of your personal life, Drake. Need I remind you that I am thirteen," he narrows his eyes.

The constellations on Danny's cheeks shine just a bit brighter, and Bruce has no idea what that is supposed to mean, but his guess is along the lines of embarrassment. Especially when the boy completes it with rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"You mean to tell me that, at thirteen years old, you don't know what sex is?" Tim deadpans, running a hand through his hair in a useless effort to smooth it and taking his seat at the table. Dick's coughing fit comes back with renewed force.

"We didn't-" Danny starts, still kind of hovering midway through the portal, but Damian pays him little attention.

"I do. Yet, I prefer my mind free of the knowledge when it applies to you."

"I want all the details, though," Steph pipes up, looking at Danny from her seat, "Can you, like, sprout tentacles or something, because I know for a fact Tim likes that kind of-"

"Steph!" Tim yells at her, face red, and then turns to Danny, who suddenly has a very interested, if a bit mischievous, look on his face, "Don't you dare."

"Yeah, okay," Danny snorts and disappears back in the portal. Bruce half-expects it to close after him, but the vortex stays.

Which probably means the boy - the King of Infinite Realms, Keeper of Unseen Worlds, Eyes of the Universe - is going to be right back.

After he puts on some pants, supposedly.

Bruce watches Tim rub his face in frustration while Steph giggles and elbows him in the side, and sighs. This is so not how he expected this morning to be.

[bleepzip]

shooting star 🌟

[theartingace]

Been working on some centaur clothes, exploring more options- especially for my much more clothing-focused Mountain Culture and Merchants And then for funzies DRESS-UP DOLL and way too much chatter!

First a couple Runner outfits - first the average casual harness most Runners would wear around home base, allows family members to rider comfortably at any time but more importantly the make and decorations are personal and declare group affiliations. Wearing no harness or at least a girthband basically says you are unridable or unaffiliated with a herd. Second image is an above-average armored battle harness- front end is plated for protection while charging, back end harness is all about additional contact points and stability for the rider to hook a foot in for their acrobatics.

Next, a comparison between Mountain robes and Merchant robes! The first, Mountain robes are heavy expertly woven rugs with lots of fiber decorations and fur and wool linings to keep comfy in their alpine homes- our model is quite a bit lankier than the usual Mountain folk so he gets less coverage but he'll stay cozy regardless. Second is the more svelt Merchant Trader robes! These are more light and loose linen fabrics, meant to block the sun in their more Mediterranean climate and more importantly- show wealth and status. Wrapped legs are common and almost entirely decorative.

And lastly: some assorted armors- this would be an EXTREMELY uncommon sight in my own headworld as the interactions between the metallurgy-rich eastern human kingdoms and the centaurs is usually pretty tense or business oriented at BEST and hostile to exploitative at worst so the chances of them crafting such large difficult pieces of fitted armor for any of them would be rare one-offs at most. But it's still fun to think about!

[succo-al-limone]

💫💫💫

Other versions with her boytoy under the cut

[iceeericeee]

Reblog if you think polyamorous people are valid

[critter-of-habit]

9 years late onto the Cartinelli train

[ato-dato]

I found my one and only gomens fanart from 2019 so it had to be redone. Naturally.

[amanitacurses]

Reach

[gramnel]

[mediumgayitalian]

“I’d pick you up at the airport.”

“What?”

“If we were normal. I would — have one of those signs, you know. When you came back from your adventures.”

“Oh.” Nico snorts. “I’m still fucking off all the time when we’re normal? And you’re not coming?”

“It is woven within your very soul to fuck off as you please,” says Will sagely. “You get antsy. You know, like a house cat.”

He laughs when Nico shoves him. Less when he loses his balance and rolls into a tree, but he crawls back, anyway, kicking Nico’s ankle as he lies back next to him, folding his hands over his ribs. Nico watches him for a moment, tracing the round edges of his knuckles, until Will’s smile begins to twitch with him knowing, and he looks hastily back to the sky. It’s embarrassing, Will’s snorting huff of amusement, but more than that it’s electrifying, zapping a trail down Nico’s spine and making him shiver.

He can feel the heat Will is always throwing off, blazing every centimetre from his shoulder to his heels, a hair’s breadth away, a millimetre of distance.

“What else would it look like?” He clears his throat. “Our, um. Our normal?”

Will hums. “New York, probably. Big-ass penthouse with your trust fund.”

“I’m a trust fund baby?!”

“Hey, Nico, how much does dish soap cost?”

Nico opens his mouth, and closes it again. Will’s snickers get louder. Is it considered bad etiquette to banish one’s significant annoyance to the Underworld? Only permanently, probably. If he only keeps him there for a couple weeks it should be find. A couple weeks would be appropriately humbling.

“And what do you contribute?” Nico asks, instead of answering. (Not because he doesn’t know. Obviously. Because he is dignified, that’s why.) “Your dimples and boyish charm?”

“Yes, obviously.”

Well.

“…Okay, fair.”

Will snickers triumphantly.

“You still a doctor?”

“Mhm.” Will shifts, mouth curled in amusement. “Paediatric in Mount Sinai. We live close, by the way. You said it’s cause it’s close to Central Park but really you like to hide my lunch in the mornings to have an excuse to come see me.”

“Sounds like you forget your shit a lot, actually.”

“That, too.”

He looks over and smiles at Nico and for a moment he is convinced, wholly genuinely and truly, that the sun that’s been hiding behind the clouds all day has finally peeked out, because he can actually feel his whole body warm, in that slow-rising, penetrating way; he can actually smell the surge of sunshine in the air, feel the red glow in the backs of his eyelids, taste the brightness of the light. Every one of his neurons sinks into his system, sighing, cells reacting to thousands of years of memory of the gentle warm of the Earth’s closest star.

But the sun is not shining, and there is only Will, and his too-big teeth brush against the bottom of his lip, and his dimples show, and his eyes crinkle, and he is more radiant in even his old stained camp shirt and fraying jean shorts than his father has ever been and could ever hope to be. A thousand planets could thrive under a hundred blazing stars and none could come close to him. He knows it, how those ancients felt, the drunken surety as they stood and challenged the gods, swore up and down that their beloveds outshone Venus, Diana, Juno; Will does, Will does, and Nico understands intimately the hubris in a way he scoffed at as a child, because the words bubble and boil and threaten bursting inside of him now. What claim have the Olympians? Over sunlight? Over beauty? Over Will?

“We’re happy?” he says instead, choking hoarsely over the veneer words, over the blocked desperation, truth. “In our normal, we’re happy?”

“Always,” Will whispers. He twists onto his knees, crawling the two inches over to press close, close, closely, hand gentle on Nico’s stomach when he tries to sit up, and presses his lips to Nico’s cheek, dry, twitching with his smile, shaking with his laughter. Nothing is funny, and he isn’t joking, but Nico can feel the giddiness bubbling up and out of him the way sadness flows out in tears; when Will is giddy he giggles, constantly, hiding it barely in his hands, and now he presses it into Nico’s skin, because he knows how Nico aches to hear it, how he watches him like he’s burning it into the ridges of his brain. “I am always happy with you, Niccolò.”

“I love you,” Nico says, fiercely, and it will never be enough, not in English, not in Italian, not in Greek, but he will try. “Te amo. Capiscimi? I love you, Will, I —”

“I know.” The tiny little vibrations of his laughter are — intoxicating; Nico is drunk, ascending. “I know, di Angelo. Sap. I love you, I know.”

He dissolved into giggles into the crook of Nico’s neck, and Nico is lying, still, facing the clouds, and he is warmed, and he is warmed, and he is warmed.

[johnnyy-guitarr]

hi i hope you all like these wretched things i crafted with my own two hands

[merumis]

by the time kuroo turns 23, he's the richest he's ever been.

you both know it's not much. you're still renters, but he could afford to pay your half of it if he wanted; could cover your end of the groceries (the ones from the budget stores, aldi, trader joe's) if you asked; more than half your furniture is thrifted, and you have more diy decor than you'd like to admit, but there's a check for 375 dollars made out to his grandmother sitting on your coffee table. he sends one every month.

when you both stumble into your apartment—a little drunk, kuroo half-an-edible in, both just starting to come back down—that little check shouldn't be the first thing your eyes land on. but they do, and you peel yourself off of kuroo to look at it. you lean over the coffee table and squint, your hair falling around your face as you scrutinize his little signature.

"when you gonna send this off?" you ask. when you turn your head to look at kuroo, it feels a little wobbly—like if you turned fast enough, your head would keep spinning without your body following.

he's setting down a whole slew of things on your counter: gifted bottles of wine that have red bows tied around their necks; three gift bags with tissue paper threatening to spill out of them; a pair of sunglasses that you don't think he started the night with. he spreads his hands out on the counter when they're finally free—stretching out his neck and his shoulders with a few soft pops as his palms slip across the granite.

"tomorrow," he replies, and then laughs. "felt weird to send a check out on my birthday."

you hum and walk over to him—on the other side of the island, so you can look at him while you grab one of his hands, lightly playing with one of his fingers.

"happy birthday," you say, "by the way." you bob your head to the last three words and you catch the way the right side of his mouth curves upwards—exposing just the tip of his canine. he glances back then, turning towards your stove. you follow his line of sight and find 12:16 blinking back at you.

"think you're a little late."

you lean over the counter to swat at his chest, and he laughs—maybe a little harder than deserved.

"you know i wasn't," you say, and kuroo shrugs.

"whatever you say," he replies, all dragged out and a little stupid.

he's wearing a sweater that he bought with his first big paycheck. he'd passed it four times in the mall before he went in, just to get a closer look. he winced at the price tag and you told him you'd venmo him for half—he wouldn't accept it, so you bought him lunch later and ate it in his car while a little brown paper bag sat in his backseat.

it's soft, you know. you reach out mindlessly, pinching the material between your forefinger and your thumb. he lets you, though visibly amused as you rub the cotton against the pads of your fingers.

"did you ever think you'd get here?" you ask him.

"where? to twenty-three?"

"no," you groan, elongating the 'o' sound as you drop your head down. you still feel a little floaty. "like, here," you add. it's not very descriptive. "yuppie-ville, making money, whatever."

he laughs, "yuppie-ville?"

"there's a plant store two blocks down."

"yeah," he says, "yeah, okay." he takes in a breath. you're still holding his sweater, so you can feel the way his chest swells. it pushes against your fingers for a moment, until he expels the breath with a solid no.

you hum a little question in reply.

"no, i didn't think i'd get here." he chews at the side of his mouth for a second, and you watch the way his eyes narrow at nothing, focusing somewhere behind you. "i thought i'd be back home by now. probably working dad's hardware store."

"i thought he sold last year?" he glances down to you, a grin inching its way into his eyes.

"he'd find a way to get me back there."

and though you know he didn't expect to be here yet, and you know this is probably the last thing he's thinking about—you keep watching the way he melts into the counter. and then your eyes flick up to his hair, that smells like the expensive shampoo he decided to splurge on last week, and then down to his arm—where you know he has a new tattoo hiding. it's a silly flash he got from an apprentice he likes—a whale that wraps around the side of his bicep.

"you look good," you say, without really thinking, but you're watching the way his hair has started to curl and you keep glancing down at his hands and you're still holding his sweater because he's still letting you. "here," you continue, "you look good here."

you might live in yuppie-ville, but when you first moved in, you were both surrounded by boxes and exhausted, so kuroo ordered you a pizza while you laid on the floor, and now he walks to work whenever he can because he likes to peak into the store windows on his way over. he still wears the t-shirts he got for free in college, and he switches between the fancy cologne you bought him in august and the cheap one he loves from two birthdays ago.

he wraps his fingers around your wrist.

"you're drunk," he says. a little heat finds its way into your cheeks, but you shrug.

"and you're high," you reply, he laughs.

"barely."

you've been at three of his birthdays now, and though you always love watching him at the party—where he's loud and maybe a little annoying, walking the room and hugging people you think you remember stories about—you find you always prefer the wind-down. they come earlier every year and this one, you note, might be your favorite yet.

you don't want to say he's getting old because, frankly, he's not. but you found a grey hair at the nape of his neck the other day, and you kept it your little secret. you couldn't find it the next night, combing your fingers through his hair while he slept on your chest, but you know its there. you think you could chalk it up to stress, or maybe the fact that the first pictures of his dad going grey start at twenty-one, but in a weird way it rounds him out for you; bridges the gap between the kuroo you hooked up with halloween parties and the one who mops your floors every sunday.

"we should go to bed," he says, finally, after you've both been holding onto each other over this island counter for far too long.

there's a part of you that wants to protest—that wants to watch him for a little longer; put on a record and stare at him and maybe finish the other half of his edible before bed. you think about combing through his hair, resting his head in your lap, memorizing the bump that lives right in the middle of his nose bridge. you think you could fall asleep on that big fluffy rug you bought—that might be the only full-price item in this apartment—and let the sun shining through your balcony door be your first order to wake up in the morning.

and then you think about ending the day in bed. the sheets kuroo bought you as a gift just because, the soft nightlight you found in the clearance section of a department store that changes colors when you tap it. you think about crawling under the covers and curling into his chest and the feeling of one of his old t-shirts swallowing you whole.

"okay," you say. "birthday boy's last wish, or whatever."

kuroo laughs as he pulls you towards your room.

"don't call me that again."

[decaflondonfog]

you know what i’d like to see? i’d like to see Andrew realise what Neil’s duffle bag means to him. that he’s carried his entire life inside that bag for years. that, after all, they’re not that different — it’s not like Andrew got to take much from foster home to foster home.

i want Andrew to start buying random things for Neil. little things, big things, unimportant things. small trinkets that don’t mean much, except they mean that Neil’s whole life can’t be packed into a bag anymore. that he can’t just run in the middle of the night.

by the time Andrew graduates it would take a whole moving truck to ever put all of Neil’s belongings in. and they’re scattered too. Neil has stuff that is his — only his — not just at PSU, but at the house in Columbia, and at Andrew’s new place too.

so when Andrew graduates — through kisses and promises and badly-hidden sniffles — he gets rid of the old duffle, and replaces it with a beautiful leather holdall (something good enough for Neil) so that Neil can pack his stuff and come see him on weekends or during break.

and Neil can’t fit not even a tenth of his things in it, but that’s okay because this bag isn’t a tool to help him run and hide. but it fits just enough for him to come and see Andrew: for him to come home.

[furiosophie]

[bunnithechubs]

came all this way had to explain, direct from Domingo.