#i worked all month on this shit

[valiantvillain]

It's here. It's done. Chapter 2 of Duty, Diligence, Devotion.

The truth came stalking into Miraz’s tent the very next evening. 

Her suspicions about Astarion’s likely tenuous relationship to life had ascended to their peak. The pale elf had made no mention of the night before, gave no inclination that he had heard a paladin’s poor excuse for stealth creeping out of her tent. Nothing but let himself be caught watching her movements a breath too long, always providing the perfect opportunity to smile at her with more than friendly fascination. Indeed, his attentions seemed to have only grown bolder: taking his time brushing past her, touches lingering upon her arm and shoulder even when she had donned her armor and could scarcely feel his touch through the chainmail, sidling up next to her a little too casually. All too intimately. With every sarcastic retort she issued, the more readily she could expect another instance of flirtation,a thread of strain in his smile and his movements marred by the undercurrent of a sudden nervous energy that had not been there the previous day. 

Then there had been the boar. Or rather the exsanguinated corpse of one. Against Astarion’s dismissive protest, Miraz had knelt to investigate. It had borne no obvious injury, not even a trickle of blood staining the ground. As though death had come to the beast on the wings of natural causes. Perhaps a disease that had worn away the defenses of a young and healthy boar, its bristly coat shining with the luster of youth still. But the edges of bloodless flesh and the two needle-like puncture in its throat told a different story. An icy finger of dread trailed down her spine as she fought the urge to cut an accusing glare towards the elf peering over her shoulder. 

Had he been perturbed, had his voice wavered with the alarm of yet another danger to prey upon them in the night, she might have granted him some benefit of the doubt, however meager. Might have allowed herself yet another shred of it, despite all the misgivings. Instead, his words dripped with annoyance, knowledgeable as though reciting words he had memorized from a well-read book. It was too easy, too nonchalant, too practiced. As if he had rehearsed the lines a thousand times before in preparation for this very moment. Yet all Miraz could see when she got to her feet was the jagged edges of an old wound that bore too many similarities to those of the boar peeking out from beneath the lace of his collar. Instinct and reflexes tightened her grip on her hammer as his airy assurances that he would keep watch from vampires sailed past her ears, his chill touch light as feathers as he reached to place a hand on her shoulder. Practically protective. 

If Astarion had detected anything unusual about her, any stiffening of her limbs, any particular flintiness in her gaze when they returned to camp that evening, he gave no indication. But maybe that too was part of the charade. The pretense of unsuspecting normalcy. 

If she had wanted to play mind games she would have stayed in Baldur’s Gate. Stayed her grandfather’s pet bastard and submitted herself to his endless tests. Years of practice had made them practically second nature, instilled in her an inherent paranoia that saw fit to underscore every interaction, analyzing every word and expression for a whiff of intrigue or insult. It had made her clever, as grandfather had so loved to remind her, made it easy for her to sniff out a lie like a dead body beneath the floorboards. The powers of a paladin had only honed the keenness of her nose to that of a hunting hound. It was exhausting, to always be alert, always rigid and detecting, unable to cease pricking her ears for the merest hint of deception. Only ever able to relax in the presence of her friends, a handful of children once left on the steps of Baldur’s Gate’s temples. 

Astarion, she noted, had elected to seat himself beside her with an air of familiarity. All cheeky grins and fluid flattery as he all but reclined against her side. The smell of rosemary and brandy that came with the elf being too close eked its way past the woodsmoke of the fire and the spices of a potato soup. For all the good the meal did Astarion, for his eyes gleamed hungrier than ever. 

There she lay then in her tent, struggling to succumb to sleep on her bedroll yet again. Victim to a fitful mind and a sense of grim expectation. She lay still, willing her eyes to remain closed, her hands to remain idle and wrapped around her pillow instead of her weapon. Yet behind her eyelids, a sliver of pale light sliced through the shadows, the flutter of canvas sounding in her ears. 

Then the footsteps. Light and cautious with the barest rasp of shifting gravel. Drawing nearer and nearer. Right towards her. Her heart quickened, pounded in her ears as every muscle in her body tensed, bracing for an attack. A moment to strike. Even as she tried not to let on that she was indeed awake. Awake and very much aware of the eyes raking the length of her body like a voyeur’s salacious stare, could feel them like a wandering hand. Revulsion threatened to twist her mouth into a scowl and give her away.

Go away and I won’t have to hurt you, she silently warned, hoping the intruder did not notice her fingers cautiously stir beneath the blankets. Her unwelcome visitor knelt beside her, its breath fanning across her face while a cool hand swept her hair away from her neck. Her eye twitched. She heard a swallow, a deep shuddering breath. The hand wove gracefully through the tangles in her hair to plant itself beside her head. Then it bore down upon her. 

Rosemary and bergamot swarmed her flared nostrils. 

Miraz had known it. She had been right all along. 

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[xxplastic-cubexx]

graph

bonus:

[choccy-milky]

modern AU seb and clora's first interaction 📘📗 (and by modern AU i actually mean super trope-filled high school romance set in the 80's/90's LOL)

[quadrantadvisor]

Pairing Off, in which the Waynes meet the Fentons, just not all at once. 2,443 words

-

Damian feels less than positively about the new girl in his grade.

Danielle Fenton has already garnered a bit of a reputation. Her uniform is clearly second hand, and rumors abound about whether she has joined them at Gotham Academy on a merit scholarship or as “one of Wayne's charity cases.” Neither is true; Father has offered no fiscal support to the Fentons, and yet both she and her older brother attend the Academy, leading Damian to believe they've somehow paid their own way.

Her lower class status and midwestern accent ought to make Fenton a target, but her response to being cornered or talked down to by other students was an unsettling combination of cheerful and aggressive. She is now mostly left to her own devices, despite her notoriety. 

Damian has no interest in the girl. While it is true that she excels in both mathematics and social studies, her performance in English and science are unremarkable, and she poses no challenge to his rank at the top of the class. If he finds himself pushing harder in certain classes this semester in order to maintain the edge, it's no one else's business.

Now if only she would leave him alone.

Damian preemptively slams his sketchbook shut, just as a brash, inconsiderate, annoying girl hops up to sit on his desk. “Hey Dami, what're you drawing?”

“It is none of your business,” Damian seethes. “Remove yourself from my personal space before I-” he isn't allowed to threaten classmates with bodily harm, imply that he has brought weapons to school, or use words that are derogatory to women “-do so myself. By force.” He would avoid her altogether if he could, but Fenton is annoyingly (suspiciously) sneaky. He can only ever seem to sense her when she's just about on top of him.

Fenton merely laughs, high, bright, and joyful, and Damian grits his teeth. “Did you draw me yet?” she asks, and doesn't move an inch.

“No, I have not drawn you. I never said I would, and I have no plans to. Stop asking me.”

She shrugs and kicks her feet. “Maybe you'll change your mind. Can I see what you're working on?”

Damian pulls the sketchbook a tad bit closer to himself (a protective reflex that shows his weakness, he should be better than that by now.) “Never, imbecile.”

Fenton sticks her tongue out at him like a child. “Mean,” she says, still smiling. “I wanna see your art. It's so good!”

Damian tilts his nose up at her. “Of course it is, plebeian, I have standards-” he starts, but is cut off by the teacher entering. Fenton slides off his desk and heads to her own seat. Damian stows his sketchbook in his bag and tries not to think of the unfinished work inside, featuring a girl with dark hair, light eyes, and a mischievous grin.

-

There's this brownstone on the outskirts of Crime Alley, an old townhouse recently converted into commercial space. There's a coffee shop on street level, a tattoo parlor down the stairs, some sorta wine emporium on the second floor, and on the third, a little second hand bookshop

It's outside the border of Jason's territory, but he feels sorta responsible for it, given that he frequents the place.

It's a little out of his way, but the atmosphere is nice, alright? Clean, with soft lighting, but not sterile or corporate like the bigger places downtown. The owners are an older couple who Jason has met a couple of times, and they seem pretty happy with the new location. They're collectors, really, who run the shop to make ends meet.

Mostly, Jason talks to their employee. Jazz.

Jazz works in the afternoons and evenings, after her classes. She goes to Gotham U, double majoring in pre-med and psych, on top of a full time job, because she's almost as insane as a bat. She assures Jason that she does alright, gets a little downtime to study on her shifts.

She always makes time to talk to Jason.

Jazz is an interesting person to talk books with. She cares less about plot and literary themes, and more about diagnosing every character with their own personal malady of the mind. She dissects their thought processes and behaviors, ruthless in her analysis.

She's gonna be a brain surgeon someday, open people up and see what really makes them tick. Jason doesn't doubt it for a second.

So maybe Jason is a little bit in love with her.

It's not a big deal. Obviously it's not going anywhere. It's just nice to have something normal, to talk to someone normal, about normal stuff like books and college and sibling antics.

Jazz's stories about her sibling, Danny, rival Jason's own, and his family is fucking disastrous. Jason isn't actually sure if Dan is older or younger than Jazz is, or, for that matter, what pronouns he should use for them, since Jazz mixes it up pretty regularly. He knows that Jazz absolutely adores them, though, and it's heartwarming, the way she smiles as she talks.

All of that to explain why Red Hood is keeping an eye on a brownstone that technically falls outside of his territory.

There's a girl inside that he needs to keep safe.

-

“Hey bud, late night?” Dick asks the man lying prone in an alley, a block away from the Iceberg Lounge.

The response is slurred with sleep and muffled by a cheek pressed hard into asphalt. “S'at you, Dick?”

“Sure is. We've got to stop meeting like this,” Dick tells him, and means it.

The guy's name is Dan. No last name offered, which was fair, since Dick hasn't mentioned his.

What was weird was that Dan didn't give Penguin his last name, either, when he signed his employment contract. Just Dan.

Penguin has been trying to expand his influence into Bludhaven, and Dick's been trying to figure out why. Cobblepot is a very Gotham sort of gangster, all wrapped up in the city's ideas of style and respectability; Dick honestly would've thought that Blud was beneath him. He needs to figure out who he's contacting and what they're offering him, and he needs to do it before Penguin can get a foothold on his turf.

Running into Dan was a side effect. Dick didn't mean to keep doing it. It's just that Dan has this weird habit of completely disregarding trivial concerns such as his own health and safety, and doing weird shit like, as a random example, getting tired, laying down, and passing out. In the middle of the street. In Gotham.

The main part of Dan's job seems to be bouncing at the club. It makes sense—if you wanted to hire a guy as muscle, you couldn't do much better than Dan. He's at least 6 and a half feet tall, with a chest wider than Jason's. 

But Dick has also seen Dan traveling with Penguin before. Add in the fact that it's almost impossible to dig up info on him, and that tailing him is somehow even harder, and a picture starts to come together. A very vague, very suspicious picture.

It's too bad that Dick sort of likes him, and that he's incredibly hot.

Dan has removed his face from the alley floor, and is in the process of pushing himself up. “Not your business, man,” he retorts. “What are you, a cop?”

Dick can't help a wry chuckle at that. “Not anymore.”

“No shit?” Dan asks, hauling himself to his feet. He towers over Dick like that, but it's hard to be intimidated by a man whose cheek is red and pockmarked by little bits of gravel. Dick is legitimately embarrassed that he finds it charming. He needs to get better taste in men. “Yeah, no, that makes sense,” Dan continues, looking Dick up and down. “No way they could keep your ass on the force.”

“Oh yeah?” Dick asks.

Dan snorts. “I can smell the idealism on you from here.” He starts walking, heading straight past Dick, who falls into step beside him. “You remind me of this kid I know.”

Dick gives an interested hum, hoping that if he doesn't interrupt, Dan will elaborate, but no dice.

“So, where're you taking me this time?” the big man asks, still leading, and Dick stifles a grin at how silly the whole thing is.

“Maybe if I take you out for coffee, you won't faceplant onto any more concrete,” he says, reaching up to brush off some of the little rocks. Dan stutters to a stop as Dick touches his cheek, letting him, then strides off again as soon as he's done.

“Don't care, as long as you're paying.”

Dick stops him with a tug to his arm. “Coffee shop's this way,” he explains, pointing, and Dan doesn't hesitate, pivoting to take the lead once again. Dick rushes to keep up with his not-date, a criminal who he literally picked up off the street and who has no idea where he's going. He can't see his own smile, but he knows from experience that it is both delighted and a little manic. He admits to himself, begrudgingly, that he likes his men with something wrong with them.

-

The biggest reason that Tim played so much Doomed with Ghost_Boy, a couple of years ago, was that they were the only player he knew who kept hours as weird as his were. There were worse reasons to form a friendship. Ghost_Boy was a great player, and was always funny in chat. They were upbeat when things went well, and they were sarcastic but not bitter when things went poorly. Playing for the game's sake eventually changed to booting up the game to hang out with Ghost_Boy. They talked about how different their lives were, with Ghost_Boy in the midwest and Tim in the crime capital of America, and they talked about the things they had in common, like falling asleep in class. It was Tim's favorite form of stress relief, back then, when being Robin was new and overwhelming.

Then Tim got busy. No, that wasn't true—Tim had always been busy. More like, Tim's life fell to shambles, over and over again, and he stopped making time for stress relief when the very concept seemed out of his reach.

That was over dramatic. Tim fell off the game, and didn't keep in contact with his friend. That's all there was to it.

That was all there was to it, until a few nights ago, when he booted up his old Doomed file for nostalgia's sake and found a message from Ghost_Boy, sent a couple months back, that said he was planning to move to Gotham and, if Tim wanted, he'd be happy to meet up.

Tim immediately replied in the affirmative, and then he freaked out that he'd done that and started cyber stalking the guy. He couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be embarrassed by this behavior. He knew who he was.

Daniel Fenton was, in fact, a real teenager from a real midwestern town (Amity Park, Illinois.) He had moved to Gotham right when his message said he would, and lived with his older sister, Jasmine (who had custody over him,) and his younger sister, Danielle.

And that was where Tim was planning to stop his research, for the sake of his friend's privacy. Once he confirmed that he wasn't being catfished by either a supervillain or a run-of-the-mill creep, he was going to stop looking.

But Danielle Fenton's situation was incredibly weird.

Apparently, she had never lived with Daniel, Jasmine, and their parents before. Instead, after she was born, she'd been adopted by the kids’ godfather, eccentric billionaire Vlad Masters, and he was still her legal guardian. It was only after the Doctors Jack and Madeline died that she moved in with her siblings and started attending Gotham Academy, states away from her adoptive parent.

Vlad Masters was a man of eclectic tastes. The stories about him in the news were always covering some weird investment he had made, like purchasing a cheese castle in Wisconsin, or buying up property in Green Bay just to have a stake in the Packers, or pouring money into experimental forms of alternative energy. He was always refined in his public appearances, but he had the desperate edge of new money wanting to fit in with the old. Tim knew of him, but had never given him much thought before. He'd never made a move into Gotham, after all.

But the whole story was bizarre. Masters had gone to college with the Fentons, the three of them creating their own field of study in “Ectology,” before Masters had been contaminated in a lab accident, bedridden and unable to finish his degree. Jack and Maddie had continued their research, garnering just enough interest in their work to receive the funding needed to keep afloat, until some sort of breakthrough a few years ago added validity to their theories. They were practically celebrities in the niche forums Tim skimmed through. Masters, meanwhile, stopped working directly in the sciences and instead turned to networking, gaining some generous help from the friends he made and playing the stock market like a fiddle, until he was one of the most well known and lucrative investors in the world. He owned a few companies publicly, and managed some others under the table (Tim had to snort at the ridiculous naming of Dalv Co.) 

And then the Fentons had kids, and they raised two of them (seemingly quite happily, if the photos on their memorialized facebook accounts meant anything.) And then, for some reason, they named the third one nearly identically to their second child and gave her straight to Vlad. Masters raised the girl in Wisconsin, until suddenly relocating to Amity Park and becoming the town's mayor. There he stayed, until the Fenton's recent passing in a lab accident of their own.

Tim doesn't know what it all adds up to. But there was something going on, with both Vlad Masters and the Fentons, and if there's something nefarious in Masters’ actions or his wealth, it could be entirely possible that Daniel was a plant—a way for him to get an in with the Waynes. Tim has to be cautious, and he has to get to the bottom of this.

That's why Tim is waiting in a coffee shop, pretending to be engrossed in his laptop while keeping an eye on the door, waiting for the appearance of a teen with black hair and blue eyes.

Tim idly thinks that Bruce had better not adopt this one.

[kurikorso]

oh shit look who it is!!

please click him for better quality

[bacchuschucklefuck]

[territorial-utopia]

Huzzah! It's birthday time! I'm slowly accumulating more and more things I like (latest additions this vest I made and a travel typewriter! Still need to fix the latter one though)

Sure has been a year.

[raiiny-bay]

some WIPs from the 80s AU i never finished

[foxprints]

Happy Pride Month 💛🏳️‍🌈

Featuring Murderbot, ART-Drone, and Amena. Can you identify all the flags featured? There are 13 total!

[moth-flowers]

moth-flowers #21

[dailyfigures]

hiiiiii everyone i'm just popping in to say that i probably won't be online much for a bit, meaning the queue will go on as always but i can't really answer asks much :( will be back on track as soon as i can!

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i can't stress enough how this is probably like top five interactions between scott and charles for me its so silly

[X-Men Unlimited #1: "Follow The Leader"]

[choccy-milky]

the place me and my roommate were supposed to move into today was so disgusting and uninhabitable we just took our stuff and left and now we're gonna be staying at airbnbs and hotels until further notice/until we can find a new place hopefully quickly...........im in my homeless drifter era y'all!!!😍😍so if im not as active then thats why LMFAO

1 like = 1 prayer

[fishfingersandscarves]

oh my fucking god. the stupid fucking job thats been stringing me along for 2 years is getting someone else to do the cover.

IM SO MAD.

IM SO FUCKING PISSED

FUCKING PAY ME YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES

IVE BEEN DONE WITH THE ART FOR 7 MONTHS

[heartorbit]

a mob of emus for an artstyle game on twt! ^_^