#note vivian is her middle name not first

[hithisiszooz]

Vivian Masters, my friends call me Viv at least they would if i had any friends

[yall-batman-fanfic]

Our First Meeting Involved Murder and a Cult - Batman x Magician!Reader (Part 1/2)

Note: I'm not used to writing 2nd Person or "[Name]", I'll be using the name Vivian Pryor for the reader in these stories.

Synopsis: Thriller-mystery lover and Symbologist, Professor Vivian Pryor, is the topic of Gotham when a murder took place at her debut book launch, and who better to solve the mystery but Batman! As Batman explore the murder and the attempt on the Professor's life, he comes to two hypothesis: a self-gain plan of a rising author and a cult leader that has disappeared from Gotham for a while now. To figure it out, he first needs to find out the Professor and why this cult wants her.

Vivian Pryor loves Dan Brown's novels. When she was sixteen, she remembered reading his first book, Digital Fortress, and became obsessed with the twists and turns of the plot. Then the first Robert Langdon book came and her step-father, Adam Royce, called her love for the books more an obsession. He remembered driving her to the bookstore and lining up to be for every book signing. Hell, it was one of the reasons why Vivian moved to Gotham City since Gotham University was the only place that offered the very same major as the main character of the books: religious iconology and symbology. 

Vivian was a smart girl, her late mother and her step-father would always say she was smarter than anyone in the class. They weren't even shocked when she skipped a couple of grades in middle school. In high school, she would have skipped a couple of grades if she hadn't gotten with the wrong crowd -- some occultist group who went out battling demons -- but she got her life back together and was back on track. She was grieving around that time. Her mother just died and when she learned that some bloke in Liverpool could talk to the dead, she was all in. But after a certain incident, which she refuses to talk to her father about, Vivian returned to her studies and never tapped into the power she awakened in her time with the occultist. 

But Vivian wasn't all just book smart, her upbringing wasn't the most conventional with her and her mother always moving from place to place, until it brought them to Liverpool, England,  where they met Adam Royce who became Vivian's step-father. She was street smart, too, and most of her peers at Gotham University would say that it's that that got her to get that scholarship and put their professors in their place whenever they were being too cocky. Or whenever the spawns of Gotham's elite and powerful thought it would be a good idea to mess with those in the university's scholarship program. 

"She didn't have the accent, but Vivian Pryor has the temper and the mouth of the English," said one of her close friends when they were interviewed about the woman for the launch of her book, and made the headlines in Gotham for donating half of her book sales to a charity that focuses on supporting and helping several orphanages and free schools, and provides teachers for those who have learning difficulties. 

While Dan Brown's books, specifically Robert Langdon-centered books, inspired her career and success as a museum curator, professor, and now writer, there was one thing that she also yearned to have that every protagonist in those books had. A  thrilling adventure filled with clues, mystery, and decoding symbols and riddles. Alas, the closest thing to decoding a riddle was the works of the Riddler, which bore her to death. Hell, if she had a death wish she would mail the Riddler all the answers he would broadcast to Batman just to embarrass him. Or send Batman the answer whenever he was taking too long to apprehend the villain.

Vivian Pryor has it all. Her dream job. Financial stability. The ability to help one of the foundations that helped her get the scholarship to Gotham University. She was still lacking a few things: Romance -- as her friends would keep reminding her -- and adventure. 

Who would have thought she would find both in one case that involved the Batman, a cult, and at the very center of it was her? Specifically, her book launch centers around her book on: The Symbology of Gotham's Sacred Sects and Founding Families.

~*~

Vivian Pryor was freaking out. She has been since that morning after learning a few days prior that her one-hundred-guest list tripled when Bruce Wayne suddenly sent back his reply to the invitation to attend the event with a personal thank you letter to her for donating such an amount.

"I can't believe this," Vivian said to her stepfather whom she had on the phone for a video call. Adam Royce was there with her younger siblings. "I mean, I doubt my sales are even close to the money they throw at these charities! Do you know how much Wayne bid on some music box that Cobblepot wanted? Two million! Who throws away money just like that? I can't even buy a second slice of pizza without calculating if it would financially cripple me until the next payday!"

Adam could only laugh and say with his thick Liverpool accent, "You better believe it, love, because it's happening. This is it, your hard work is paying off, so enjoy it! And with the money you're getting, enjoy that extra slice of pizza without worry. All right?"

But tonight was the big night, and she can't screw this up, or else she'll be on the front page of every newspaper as the new best-selling author who threw up all over her guests because of a stage fight. Why was she even so scared? She's talked in lectures in front of hundreds of students and her colleagues -- but this was different. This was in front of Gotham. This had the press and everything. This has people like Bruce fucking Wayne!

"You okay, Viv?" Her agent asked.

"Yeah, I just -- I just need to use the bathroom real quick!" Vivian ran out of the room she was in and crossed the hall that was Gotham University, where she was hosting the event and was navigating through the people in there to head to the bathroom, and she should have watched where she was going because --

WHAM!

Vivian fell on the ground after slamming into what she thought was a wall. 

"Are you okay?" 

Only it wasn't a wall.  Looking up, Vivian was sure she had a concussion because bending down to help her was none other than Bruce Wayne. 

"I-I am so sorry, Mr. Wayne -- I wasn't looking where I was going!" Vivian got up on her own, dusting her high-waisted tweed pants and tweed jacket.

"I should be the one apologizing, I also wasn't looking," Bruce said. "You're Vivian Pryor, the woman of the hour."

"Yes. I am."

"I read a couple of the pages of your work, specifically the chapter about the Wayne family."

"I hope you didn't take offense with it."

His brows furrowed. "On the contrary, you did a good job in the research you did and the words you used to describe my family. It grounds the name from the pedestal that it's been placed on. If you're planning to write a more focused book on Wayne's history, I'd be glad to show you the archives kept in the manor for more authentic and intimate research."

Normally, any girl would blush with the innuendo of billionaire-philanthropist-playboy Bruce Wayne was putting out there, but Vivian was an honorary Liverpudlian (as dubbed by her high school friends there). She won't be easily swayed by that. 

Before she could say something to ruin any future access to the Wayne archives for any future books, Vivian's agent called for her back to the room as the guests were all settling down. 

~*~

Oh, how things went from bad to worse. It happened just like that and no one saw it coming. In the middle of her talk about one of the chosen subject matters in her book -- the chapter on the Waynes -- the projector was suddenly blocked by a large shadow of a hanging body.  A scream erupted from the crowd as they saw the body hanging from the high ceiling that was of Vivian's agent. 

And before she could realize what was happening, too stunned to find her good friend dead and her body hanging there like a display, Vivian was tackled down. It was Bruce Wayne who tackled her down as the man was one of the honored guests who sat on the stage with her. 

"Wha -- why?" Vivian stuttered.

"Are you okay?" Bruce asked.

She should have answered yes but as she looked into his eyes that was sincerely concerned, she answered truthfully "No." Then her gaze went beyond his shoulder and there she saw, throwing knives stabbing the white screen where her head was angled at. "No... I'm, I'm not alright."

After being saved by Bruce, Vivian was brought to the GCPD to be under their protection, and for the next few days she was guarded day and night in her apartment. But then, one evening, something happened.

It happened when she was sleeping, in the most unexpected way possible, and she wouldn't have woken up if IT hadn't alarmed her. Smoke was coming inside her room, and beyond that she could hear the officers trying to kick down her door. Vivian leapt out of her bed and tried to push the door open by the knob was too hot to hold and there was something blocking the way.

"HELP!" Vivian called out. But no one can hear her. Turning to her bed, she saw her window and she quickly went to it to escape -- she'll deal with the five-story drop later -- but it was locked. She can't open it! Placing her hands on the glass, Vivian pushed, putting her energy, into it until the glass broke, and just in time as Gotham's vigilante appeared to save her.

She was saved by Batman.

She couldn't believe it.

After the fire, Vivian was placed in a different location for her safety. She was given some of her things -- clothes, personal belongings, and her phone in that place. And while there all she could do was think. Why was this happening to her? Who would want to kill her? Why was someone trying to kill her? And why did they kill her agent? Her friend who helped her through all of this was dead. The friend who made this possible was murdered and her body was put on a display! Just imagining had Vivian running to the trash bin in the room.

She was too sick to hear the door opening. Her mind was too clouded with the memory of her agent's body dangling there and then flashes of her past -- the deaths that followed her -- to feel the new presence in the room, and only did when a hand was on her shoulder.

She turned her head and in a moment, she saw a face she never thought she would. "Mom?" 

"Professor Vivian Pryor."

It wasn't her mother. Far from it. Her mother had long, auburn hair that was lighter than hers, green eyes with long lashes, pink lips, rosy cheeks, high cheek-bones. Not a hulking of a man wearing a bat costume and holding a handkerchief for her.

"Batman," she mustered up to say.

"Professor Pryor," he said again.

Vivian accepted the handkerchief and got up with the Batman's helping hand. She excused herself to get a glass of water and plucked from her mint to chew. She felt a wave of embarrassment that she breathed out vomit breath at the Batman's way. 

"Does Commissioner Gordon know you're here?" Vivian asked.

"No. And I think it's best that he doesn't. Because I don't think you'd like him to hear what I'm about to say."

Vivian's brows furrowed, her silence urged him to continue.

"After investigating the venue and your home, there was one question that kept me wondering. Why now?"

"Excuse me?"

He told her about his investigations in Gotham University, her venue, which lead to more mysteries, and then in her burned apartment that also had more mysteries than Gotham City. He told her about what he found, the knife that was supposed to kill her, and what caused the fire, which had no ties to anyone he could think of but for one…

"Your book tackles a lot of dark secrets in Gotham, from its streets, the gargoyles, the religious cults, and the families. I'm sure you've caught the attention of some families who want to keep certain details secret. Am I wrong?"

"No... There are some -- I won't mention who -- who expressed their anger when I sent them the copies of the book. These are all researches from Gotham library archives, which are accessible to the public. It just so happens the public are not interested in digging deeper into those types of resources."

"The details of these emails?"

"They mostly threatened my career."

He hummed in thought before continuing. "If those families have expressed their opinions about the book, and if they did plot this elaborate scheme to kill you for it. Why just now? Why wait when the book is printed and has sold copies? Why start these murders on your launch?"

Vivian narrowed her gaze at him. "Are you implying something, Batman?"

"You're an author selling an unpopular genre. Who has an unknown name but for the circle she's in. You don't exactly have a conventional history, suffering from money problems. And a fan of mystery-thriller books. It won't be a surprise if you did something to capture the attention of the people to buy you --"

There was a sudden force that pushed him back, slamming him to the wall, then a gust of wind that pinned him there that felt like someone was stepping on his body. Then he saw it.

Her eyes. The ones that were deep brown were now glowing like the sun, and her outstretched hand was pointed at him, keeping him there. Vivian approached him, since he was taller than her, she forced him down to his knees as she sneered at his face, "Fuck you! You're just like any other cop here in Gotham! Trying to find an easy win! You think I don't know how this looks like for me and my career? I know! But right now, I don't care because my friend was murdered and I want to find out who did it! But here you are accusing me of this scheme I..." she turned her hand to a fist and Batman was choking, but she let go. Vivian turned away from the vigilante. 

"So, you are a witch," Batman coughed.

Vivian turned to him with wide eyes, eyes that were now brown, "what?" she questioned him.

Batman smirked. "You're a smart girl, I'm sure you'd know why I did that."

"You asshole!" Vivian was about to slap him across the face but Batman caught her wrist. Then with his free hand, he held up a couple of photos.

They had markings. A spell.

"One was placed on your door at the venue with a post-it note, and the other carved on the entryway of your room. A protection spell, I guess?" He said, his smirk not faltering.

"I didn't think the Batman believed in magic."

"I've seen my fair share of it. But it's not always the first thing that comes to mind, especially in Gotham." He frowned. "This time, I should have. I didn't bother to know about these markings at first. I thought it was just some sort of ritual for you. A symbol you found in your research, a joke since you and your Agent laughed at it. But my ignorance almost killed you. I'm sorry."

"I wouldn't have died. The spell would have saved me. It's a protection spell from all external harm."

"Still, I shouldn't have brushed it off. Because if I hadn't, I would have found out who is after you as soon as possible."

"What do you mean?" 

Batman took her hand and brought Vivian to the table to sit, he warned her about what he was going to show her but when he placed the photo down, Vivian choked a sob at the sight of her agent's body. It was mutilated with a knife carving on her flesh.

It brought memories back to her. Memories she buried in the back of her mind. Names she wished to stop hearing. Voices that cried for her name for help.

"No. Please," Vivian cried.

"I'm sorry, but I think only you can decode this, Professor. Because a similar one appeared on your apartment walls as well." Batman showed another marking made with the soot of the burned wood.

Taking a breath, Vivian faced the first photo, the one of her dead friend, and forced herself to decode the message. She asked for a pen and paper, which the Batman provided, and wrote down the message, each symbol she interpreted brought memories of her previous life that had her feeling them again. Then she turned to the next photo and she did this quickly and slammed the pen down. 

Batman took the paper and read her neat handwriting:

"Blasphemous witch hiding with mortal men. You dare spread our secrets to the world just as Judas sold the Lord with silver? Your punishment will be fitting for your kind. Come from whence you hide and face the retribution of the Lord, follow the path that only your kind can find."

Batman turned to her in question, "what does this mean? What secrets did you speak?"

"I don't know -- I don't know what the fuck they're talking about!" Vivian got up, toppling her chair, and started pacing, biting her nails. Batman watched her as she tried to find something to cope with what she was feeling. And for a moment, the Dark Knight's cold exterior faltered as he saw the image of an anxious boy who never got over his grief. 

He saw it the moment he met her eyes. 

While she looked fine and a little nervous for the event, he knew the look of fear, grief, and anger. He could see that everyday in the mirror.

Then he heard her sob and whisper: "Please, don't touch me... please, stay away..."

But no one was touching her. It was just them in the house. Then he remembered. People like Zatanna can see beyond the living. Batman approached Vivian and took her hands, and brought his cape around her. He can't see what was haunting her, but the least he could do was give her the comfort of the living and the safety of somewhere to hide. To not be alone. He let her hide there until she stopped her cries, until she finally looked up to him and whispered she was alright.

"I'm out of practice," she began. "Something happened years ago that I can't... I just can't bear to use my magic again. And there are times when I get overwhelmed it loses control and the ghosts know when I can't ignore them and they make themselves known."

Batman nodded. "I'll inform Jim about this and try the one who wrote it."

"You know who?"

"I have a hunch. But they mentioned a path, I'll find it."

"You don't even know what path they meant."

"I can figure it out."

"Gotham is a labyrinth. Even your bat-sonar can't navigate through it. Besides, this path isn't something that someone, even the bat, would know... You need the eye of a witch to find it."

"Can't you just make a spell to let me see the path?"

Vivian chuckled. It was the first time she laughed or smiled since the incident. "Listen, Bat-brain, It's not hidden by a spell. The path is hidden in Gotham," she made a gesture for him to follow her to her bedroom as she continued to explain whilst she started to change out of her pajamas. Batman turned around to give her privacy as she changed but his eye caught the mirror in the room and he saw her. Her body. She was only wearing her underwear. For a university professor she had a lean figure, and she had a tattoo at her side starting around the level of her breast and down to her hip. A spell maybe. She was attractive as he observed her entirely, not that he did not find her beautiful at their first encounter as Bruce Wayne, but –

He quickly diverted his gaze from the mirror and focused on the lecture he was getting.

"Salem, Massachusetts wasn't the only place that had witch hunts. Gotham did too," she put on her blouse and tucked them in her tweed pants. "Since it was dangerous to have their gatherings for sabbaths and other rituals, the witches in Gotham found chambers within the walls, and they made a symbol to be their map to guide them there."

"And what are those symbols?"

Finished, she got out wearing her tweed jacket. "Have you noticed how Gotham is littered by gargoyles, Batman? I'm sure you do since that's your usual hiding place, I bet."

"Just tell me how to find the path --"

"You can't. Trust me, I tried to show someone the path but they can't."

"I'm not like everyone else."

"Hubris is what brought Icarus to his death." She then reached for her pocket and revealed a box of cigarettes. Batman frowned. "I only use it when I'm stressed. And trust me, I am."

"We're taking the Batmobile. And no smoking in the car.”

[matchamilkislover]

In The Darkest Corners, 3.

pairing: vi x fem!oc (y/n with a name)

warnings: mature themes, MINORS BEWARE, suggested violence, just general arcane-ness.

word count: 1,880

synopsis: after somehow successfully breaking back out of stillwater prison, olive still has a long ways to go with prisoner 516.

author’s note: originally published january 2023.

don’t forget to read parts 1 and 2 first!!

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ

"Holy fucking shit."

Olive still couldn't believe they had done that. She'd done a lot of ballsy shit in the past year, but breaking into a prison and then breaking a prisoner out of said prison definitely took the cake.

"What? Never pulled a prison break before? Shocker," 516 retorted smugly. Olive rolled her eyes as she followed her towards the lanes, keeping up pace as best she could.

"You know, I still don't know your name," Olive remarked. "I can't just call you 516." As she spoke, she had a near miss with a pipe that apparently wanted her foot.

"Oh, you can call me anything you want," she replied with a devilish smirk. "But if you really want to know, my name is Vi." With a look back at Olive, Vi took one step forward off a ledge and dropped into an abyss of undercity. Olive stumbled to a stop, dumbstruck, unsure of whether to blindly follow or chalk it up to 'Vi' being crazy and call it a day. Except she couldn't do that - not if she didn't want to go back to square one.

Ugh.

Walking up to the ledge her companion had just stepped off of, Olive looked down and felt a wave of dizziness hit instantly. She had built up some skills over the last year, but this — this was damn near foolish. Regardless, today was apparently a day of firsts, and Olive wasn't about to lose it at the first drop.

She had to admit, the feeling she got when she let herself drop off of the high story roof was nothing short of exhilarating. She quickly tumbled onto the next level and raced after Vi, who was already quite a ways ahead of her. Olive refused to acknowledge her already aching muscles as she raced after the former prisoner, swinging across gaps and leaping off from story to story. After what felt like both forever and no time at all, they arrived at their destination.

The middle of the lanes.

Olive watched Vi breathe it in, staring at the smoke and neon lights littering the desolate streets like she had been waiting for this for forever. She watched her, entranced, until she realized what she was doing and shook it off. She can't afford to notice how attractive Vi was, not with what she would need to do, and especially because of her asshole persona — but she was undeniably attractive. Never mind that. Olive was pulled out of her thinking haze by Vi signaling Olive to follow her. Obliging, she jogged up to be next to her.

"Where are we going?" Olive asked, having to keep her fast pace to stay in step with the taller woman.

"Somewhere we can get a good start." Vi replied, looking back at her. "That is, if you can keep up." Olive rolled her eyes and muttered an insult under her breath, exaggerating the sway of her hips as she continued on with Vi. An awkward silence descended upon them and, desperate to at least not be completely miserable during this whole escapade, Olive spoke up.

"So, what does Vi stand for anyway? Vivian? Victoria? Vienna? Viola? Victor? Violence? Vi-"

"Violet." Vi cut her off abruptly. "It stands for Violet. But nobody's called me that since-...well, not for a long time. So don't get any ideas about it."

"Whatever you say, Vi-o-let," Olive replied cheekily, accentuating each syllable. Her breath was suddenly knocked out of her lungs when Vi grabbed her by the front of her shirt and roughly shoved her against a wall.

"I said, you don't get to call me that," she growled through gritted teeth, her face suddenly hardened and stony. "Got it?"

"Got it," Olive squeaked, taking a haggard breath when Vi decided she was appeased and let her go. "Do we have some sort of problem? If you keep grabbing me like that my shirt won't last the rest of the day." She glared at Vi from the side of her eyes, starting to regret whatever possessed her to break the brute out in the first place.

"No problem," Vi replied. "I just don't want you getting any ideas about us being 'friends' or anything. We're both only here to get what we want. No more, no less. Got it?"

Olive paused for a moment, caught off guard. "Got it. No friends."

The pair continued through the lanes until Vi came to a sudden stop in front of what looked like a particularly revolting food stand. The creature running the stand broke a huge, toothy smile when he noticed Vi walking up — did they seriously know each other? When she really thought about it, Olive wasn't all that surprised, but she still had a slight aversion to the smell wafting from the stand.

"Jericho, buddy! How's it been down here?" Vi exclaimed, a smile Olive hadn't seen before suddenly spreading across her face. Jericho replied with a series of grunts and gestured for them to sit down. Vi sat down instantly, Olive...apprehensively. She watched as 'Jericho' turned and started filling a bowl, seeing that when he set it in front of Vi that it was full of what looked like giant blue slug type creatures. Olive's lip curled up instinctively in disgust and had to hold back a gag. She watched as Vi gorged herself on the food, wondering how someone can eat something like that and still look hot. Impressive.

"I'm sorry, but are you going to question him or not?" Olive leaned over to whisper to Vi.

"No." Vi replied swiftly.

"But isn't that why we're here?" Olive asked, her voice rising slightly with urgency and confusion.

"We're here cause I'm hungry," Vi replied before stuffing her mouth again. "Oh, Jericho, this is better than I even remembered." She said in almost a moan as she finished off her bowl. Jericho grunted again and took the bowl, sliding a piece of paper towards Vi under one of his giant fingers in return. Vi shot Olive a knowing smirk and stood up without waiting for the other to follow.

"Where are we going now?" Olive asked as she and Vi traveled further through the undercity. Without a word, Vi flashed her the scrap of paper Jericho had given her. Olive's heart skipped a beat when she saw the symbol etched on it.

"The brothel??" Olive whispered harshly as she stepped in front of Vi and brought the both of them to a halt. "We can't. I-I won't do it, not if I don't need to."

"Shit, Olive, what the fuck are you doing?" Vi exclaimed, furrowing her brows. "Unless you don't want my or anyone else's help, we haven't exactly got another option. Just follow my lead and you'll be fine."

"You don't underst-" Olive cut herself off and took a breath. Not wanting to reveal too much about herself to someone like Vi, she continued. "Fine. But we need to be in and out."

"Whatever you need..." Vi replied sarcastically.

The two of them continued in silence until they arrived in front of the shambled building, which now seemed even more looming to Olive. Vi strode in confidently, which left Olive to linger behind until she forced herself to go in. The smell of smoke and sex filled her nostrils the way it had done so many times, and she felt like even the walls could see her.

"What information could I get from these people anyways? How?" She quietly wondered out loud to Vi, who slowed to face her.

"If you want people to talk to you, you have to convince them that you have what they want," Vi replied with a smirk.

"And what do I have?"

Vi circled around her, looking her up and down. "You're hot, cupcake." She suddenly moved in closer, forcing Olive against the wall and raising one hand to block her right next to her face. "All you have to do is choose — man, or woman?" Her eyes were dark with an intoxicating look, staring so deeply into Olive that she felt like she might melt.

"Right. Got it," Olive said breathlessly, still unable to tear her eyes away from Vi's. The taller pulled away slowly and smirked before she continued down the barely lit hallway. Olive straightened up and tried to swing her hips alluringly as she followed. At the end of the hallway, they came upon a door that Vi knocked on twice. When it opened, it revealed a small elfish woman that Olive often wished she didn't recognize.

"Vi," the woman said, gasping and putting down her teacup. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes."

"Hello, Babette," Vi replied as she slowly entered the room. Olive truly started to question her own decision making abilities as she followed.

"And Miss Whitlock," she continued with a hint of surprise in her voice, taking a long drag of her cigarette. "I do hope you've come by to tell me you've had a change of heart...you'd be so popular with the patrons." Babette raised her eyebrows as she looked at Olive expectantly.

"Sorry, but no, Babette," Olive sputtered nervously, avoiding Vi's suspecting gaze.

"Oh come now," the small woman continued. "Think about the earnings you would bring in. You'd just have to let yourself go a little bit."

"I said no, Babette." Olive stood awkwardly for a moment before turning around and walking out of the room, the silence booming in her ears. If she was going to be stuck in the brothel until Vi finished up business, she might as well try and do what she said.

Shit, was she going to hate this.

She strutted through the hall until she found a rather lovely looking woman in a fox mask.

"Hello," she said in what she hoped was a seductive voice. "I'm Amryn, love. What's your name?"

—

Vi sauntered down the hall with a new air of confidence. She knew who to find and where to find them — but first, she had to find Olive. A few doors down, she could hear her silky voice floating out of a room, along with someone else's. Approaching closer, she saw just who she was looking for, but not in the way she expected. Olive was draped across a chaise longue with one hand up, playing with a strand of hair. She had a sultry smile on her face, and was now listening to a woman in a fox mask talk about something or other. Not that Vi was listening — she was distracted watching Olive's suddenly intoxicating features. Shaking herself out of it, she stood fully in the doorway and leaned on the frame, crossing her arms casually.

"I hate to interrupt this lovely conversation, but I'm afraid we've got to go, Cupcake."

[eld-red]

some other fun facts about vixy in my hc of her!!

- vixy is half-deer/half-fox. fox from her dad’s side, deer from her mom’s.

- vixy has two older siblings. they are also technically her half siblings—they all have the same dad but different moms. she’s also the only one out of their family that’s multi-species

- she has an oldest brother name viktor, and another older sister named vanya. vanya is a mechanic that lives on corneria. viktor is a soldier turned mercenary who was stationed on katina but found his way to macbeth.

- vixy has. dead mom trauma. the wound doesn’t hurt all that much anymore. sometimes it just hits her and she has to be by herself for a little bit

- as soon as she could, when she was 18, she filed a petition to change her last name to her mom’s. she hated the association she had with her dad and his last name. he just thought she did it for “business” reasons, or that she was doing it so that people didn’t think she was getting things handed to her. she has a really complex relationship with her dad.

- her middle name is andromeda. victoria andromeda reinard

- she was always a born performer. from a young age, she would sing for people at her dad’s meetings or investors. she took music lessons as a little girl. she’s played a lot of different instruments, but she always finds herself coming back to the guitar and baritone ukulele.

- she grew up on katina, but she and her sister convinced her dad to let her enroll in the CCTA. the CCTA is where she attended high school. she never went back to katina after that

- vixy and james were never actually friends in high school. they always saw the other around, they were in some classes together, but they just had wildly different friend circles that never really overlapped. but she always liked him. she found him to be genuine and real in a school full of phonies

- vixy shared a class with beltino and lived near vivian (hare). beltino had a knack for sound mixing and being bass guitarist, and vivian loved playing the piano. they always joked that they would start a band if the CCTA and college went south, with vixy as their lead singer/guitarist and primary lyricist. their band name flitted between “Vixy Rei and the Prions” and “Vixy Rei and the Living Dolls”

- she would frequently pretend to take notes while she was actually songwriting. she would sometimes get in trouble during class for doing this. luckily no teacher was ever cruel enough to read it outloud to the class.

- vixy’s family was family friends of andross. so the two have known each other for a very long time. one of her first jobs was working as an intern in his lab. he really mentored her. they both viewed the other as family.

- vixy and james met again when they were 19 and 20 respectively. they were both in their second year of college. they met by complete chance again. in andross’ lab, of all places.

- an idea that vixy’s had ever since she was a litte girl (that she was able to bring to fruition eventually!) was finding a way to purify the air on venom or at least making the very hostile environment more livable. she was always enraptured by the air footage of venom, the big temples and ruins—and she’s always wanted for scientists or historians to be able to set up colonies on venom and be able to do field research. the venomian air purification project put her in a lot of very dangerous situations. people wanted that patent from her so they could profit off it.

- vixy wanted to name fox fionnbharr/finbarr. it was her maternal grandfather’s name. and if she was born a boy, its what she’s always wanted her name to be. she and james concede by letting it be his middle name. james finbarr mccloud jr.

- after her time in the CDAS was really beginning to wear down on her psyche, she was considering going back to school to get her certifications to be a teacher. but she wanted to teach little kids. or, she’d find a job as a pianist for the art school, the CMSA/cornerian magnet school of the arts

- sometimes, if she’s out in public, someone will recognize her from her “local cornerian band” days. she always finds it funny when a teenager would be the one to recognize her for it.

i have. so mant things to say about her

[rhodeybugg]

Before The Dawn; Chapter 1, Expansion

V was found shortly after Tessa turned Nine.

Accompanying her parents to the local dump, she had noticed a mostly still living worker, badly damaged but desperately attempting to hold on, and very excitedly requested they attempt to repair her.

Tessa insisted she could do most of the work herself, but her father helped her with the more delicate processes, helping guide the tools in his daughter's hands while replacing the screws in the abandoned worker's back plating.

J watched with a burning sense of curiosity and interest, as they both stepped back to allow the newly brought-in worker to power back on.

She wobbled a bit. The poor worker looked terrified, staring up at her new human masters in fear, then to J, in her pristine dress and neatly kept pigtails.

She took a deep breath, and sighed.

The company had designed their drones with a secondary way of communication, a way of keeping silent when humans had priority in speaking, allowing them to pass on information or commands without making as much as the hum of a servo.

Where am I? What's happening?

J gave the trembling worker a look of reassurance.

You've been..

She considered her words carefully.

..Re-homed. These are your new masters, i'm-

V's optics widened.

Re-homed? Oh, no, no! Malachi will be very upset when he finds me missing! I must be returned immediately!

J cocked her head to the side.

She could hear Tessa and James discussing something, but she focused more on the conversation that she and V held on their own frequency.

Malachi?...Your old master?

V nodded.

Yes! He was…

She looked around.

The size of that girl there! Soft blonde hair and bright blue eyes- and I must get back to him! If his parents find out he lost me they-

J shook her head.

..I don't think they'll be too upset.

V finally looked down at her hands, the rips and stains on the velvety red dress they had found her in, her gaze drifting to the tools surrounding her.

J could see the emotions cycling through her processors. Confusion. Recollection, anger, sadness, and then acceptance.

She finally looked back up to J, a hint of sadness in her voice.

….Is this….is this a good home, then..?

J nodded.

Warm sleeping quarters, weekly maintenance and system checks, and the finest oil you'll ever drink.

She smiled as Tessa approached the newest drone again, sitting down on the floor in front of her, offering her a clean dress and already beginning to tie ribbons into her hair.

Home..?

V smiled up at Tessa as J nodded.

…home.

_-_-_-_-_-_

Surprisingly, it was Tessa's mother who took a liking to V, and was even given the choice of naming her, by Tessa.

Vivian.

A name that suited her, similar to how Tessa had affectionately designated J as "Jamie", even though they were usually addressed as the single letter that identified them on their arms.

Maybe it was how V listened to orders. How she nodded with excitement and followed Louisa with loyalty around the manor, listening to her rambles, taking notes for her, and carrying items. How she sat without protesting in the den while Tessa's mother hummed and worked to sew up old dolls and dresses, how she'd sit and untangle the yarn when the box got tossed around.

She became much more skilled at the tasks that required finer detail when she got her glasses. Realizing that V's internal optics had been damaged beyond repair, she was given a pair at first to simply test, then, to keep, when she managed to pick up every needle that had fallen from Lousia's sewing box.

Being collared was the highest honor that could have been given. While the more rebellious workers saw it as derogation- being seen as a pet, something to claim and boss around, those in J and V's place saw it as acceptance. The leather fit snugly around their necks, a silver tag sitting in the middle with the Elliott family's crest engraved, a sign that they were important.

They were loved.

To V and J [and Tessa, at least], it felt like acceptance.

It felt like officially being seen as a part of the family.

N's introduction was nothing glamorous, unfortunately. A simple butler discarded when his original owner, a sweet, elderly man, passed away in his sleep.

N had been heartbroken, and J could see it in his demeanor when he followed her through the manor- he remembered. He was mourning. J knew, Tessa knew, and it took nearly a month of constant reassurance that Tessa wasn't going anywhere anytime soon- that she was still young and had her life ahead of her, for him to calm down and grow attached to their caretaker. J felt sorry for him. She tried to mourn with him, wondering how it would feel to lose the human they were created to serve- wondering if she would live her battery life to see Tessa-

…she never let herself think much farther than that.

If he'd had a tail when Tessa placed the collar around his neck, J knew it would have been wagging wildly. For the first time since he had arrived, N expressed genuine excitement and happiness- love. Eventually after his "promotion" she began to let N sleep beside her when she guarded Tessa at night, even if he somehow always fell asleep and ended up curled up at the foot of Tessa's blankets [which was J's spot, but she didn't mind to share.] It felt nice to have someone else around.

Niko, was the name he'd been given. He liked it.

Cyn and Grimm were found at the same time, coming from the same family. They were siblings, owned by a wealthy family, somehow more snobby than the Elliots could ever be. They were used for show. Kept clean and tidy and then flaunted around on leashes and pedestals, used by the humans to compete and see who could make their workers look the fanciest: treated like show dogs, never shown any true love, only seen as an object to dress up.

They were discarded after an incident involving another contestant.

Cyn wasn't afraid to tell their story, she seemed rather proud of it.

There was another worker involved, dressed in fancy red ribbons and bows, she had insulted Grimm and attempted to rip up his attire [which was absolutely devastating to him, as she'd managed to rip his favorite jacket in half]. Cyn wasn't having any of it, and while she skimmed over most of the gruesome details, it was clear that the other drone was damaged worse than Cyn had been.

Cyn still had a working processor. Red ribbons didn't.

They had been labeled as aggressive and haphazardly discarded, Cyn could no longer hold her head up high to display her status- she wobbled when she walked and often had to have support, using her hand to guide her head when making gestures or moving herself around quickly.

And Grimm was there for her.

J wasn't sure about him. He was quiet- reserved, normally keeping to himself or hiding behind Cyn, holding onto his sister's hand when she walked and shying away whenever V or N tried to talk to him. He kept his thoughts hidden behind his curtain of curly black hair, no matter how much Tessa tried to brush it out of his face. J let him be when she could, save from the occasional passed on order or question, to which he would give a simple nod or a head shake, a "yes ma'am" or "no ma'am".

And for the longest while, it was just them in Tessa's circle. Collared, loved, and pampered. The pile at the end of Tessa's bed grew, with J being the one consistently keeping watch, no longer just over Tessa herself, but over her siblings, knowing how much they meant to tessa- and herself. She had been there from the start. She was the one designed to protect, to keep Tessa company, to guard her, to keep her happy. No matter how many other drones came or went, that would always be her purpose, and she would fulfill that purpose until her last moment.

No matter what.

[ncisfranchise-source]

It’s almost hard to believe, but the NCISverse reaches quite the milestone with the April 15 episode of the mothership, and to celebrate that, Entertainment Tonight put together NCISverse: The First 1,000.

The special both looks back at the very beginnings of NCIS—introduced as a two-parter on JAG—as well as the spinoffs that already exist, and ahead to the 1,000th episode itself and the two new shows still to come (the prequel Origins and the not-yet-titled Tony and Ziva series set in Europe). NCIS is currently in its 21st season and Hawai’i its third. Sydney is coming back for a second. Los Angeles aired 14 seasons, while New Orleans ended after seven.

Below, we’ve rounded up all the fun reveals from the special.

Cast’s Most Shocking Moments

Over the years and across the shows, there have been some unbelievable moments, from deaths to big relationship steps to major returns. And just like fans, the stars have the ones that surprised them the most.

Both Sean Murray (McGee) and Brian Dietzen (Dr. Palmer) name Kate’s (Sasha Alexander) death at the end of Season 2. “No one saw it coming—except if you go back and you look at the actual footage, you see Michael Weatherly [flinch] before she gets shot because he knows a burst of blood is about to hit his face,” Dietzen adds.

CBS

Rocky Carroll (Vance) says his character’s wife being killed off, while Noah Mills (Jesse) points to Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) getting her arm broken in the Hawai’i Season 2 finale.

For Diona Reasonover (Kasie), hers is probably the same as many fans’: Ziva’s (Cote de Pablo) return in the Season 16 finale after she’d been presumed dead. “They didn’t tell me. I found out with America, and boy was I surprised,” Reasonover recalls. “I literally pulled the script up on my phone and was like, ‘That’s not supposed to happen.’”

Mark Harmon Made It All Possible

ET‘s Kevin Frazier, who hosts the special notes, “None of it would have been possible without the distinguished service of this man, who seemed to know right from the start just where the series was going.”

Gary Cole, whose Parker has taken as team leader following Harmon’s Gibbs retiring to Alaska, says, “He’s the reason the show got on the air, pure and simple. Solid movie career going. He was a go-to series lead actor.”

Weatherly (Tony) recalls the first thing Harmon said to him: “‘You eat lunch with the crew.’ And it wasn’t a question.”

In a 2003 interview, shown during the special, Harmon said, “This show will work as a team or go down as a team, and that’s how I’ve always looked at it.” (We’ve seen how true that is over the years with the various cast changes.)

NCIS‘ Early Days, Starting With JAG

Weatherly notes that he did over 300 episodes of the mothership (he’ll be returning in the upcoming Paramount+ spinoff about Tony and Ziva) and what stuck with him from his first day on set. “In the middle of my first paragraph, [creator] Don Bellisario walked onto the set and said, ‘What are you doing, modeling? Don’t just stand there. Surprise me! Entertain me!’ and I just changed my simple thing, which was I didn’t care who found me entertaining. I just entertained myself, and I’ve been doing that ever since.”

Two JAG Season 8 episodes introduced the characters of Gibbs, Tony, Ducky (the late David McCallum), and Abby (Pauley Perrette), who would go on to be part of NCIS. They were joined by Robyn Lively as Vivian Blackadder, who didn’t make it to NCIS—and is the role that Jennifer Aniston had been considered for. (Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, Andrew McCarthy, and Patrick Swayze‘s names were all brought up to possibly play Gibbs.)

Harmon reveals that his character almost had a different name. “I read Leroy Jethro Gibbs and I said, ‘Wow, I like that name.’ Then for a brief second when I’d decided I really liked the idea and the project, the name changed. All of a sudden it was Bob Johnson or something like that,” he shares. “I just went, ‘What? No, it’s gotta be Leroy Jethro Gibbs,’ and the creator said, ‘No, you can’t play a guy named Leroy Jethro Gibbs.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ Then it went back, so I was happy about that.”

Originally, NCIS was pitched as Law & Order in the navy, half case and half courtroom, according to Frazier. But the investigation part tested best with audiences, who were also impressed with Harmon.

“Because it was two episodes of JAG, it wasn’t really a proper pilot,” says Weatherly. “And even when we started airing, they called it Navy NCIS, which is Navy Naval Criminal Investigative Service. You can’t make that up.”

Remembering David McCallum

NCIS Season 21 paid tribute to McCallum and his character with its second episode, which saw a surprise return from Weatherly, reprising his role as Tony. “That was a very emotional day, seeing everybody,” Weatherly says. “Not a dry eye on that set.”

According to Carroll, “David McCallum was 70 years old when the series started, 21 years ago. And the story goes he told his wife, ‘I’m 70 years old. What if this show goes seven years? That’s a long time.’ And he ended up being with the show for 20 seasons.”

What’s to Come in Episode 1,000, Prequel Origins & Tiva Spinoff

First of all, the good thing about the ever-growing franchise is that characters from shows that ended could easily come back; LA‘s LL COOL J is currently recurring in Hawai’i Season 3. Eric Christian Olsen (Deeks on LA) does point out in the special, “I’ve always said that Marty Deeks ain’t dead. I think there’s plenty of room for these characters to come back.” And Harmon acknowledges that he’s asked “a lot” about returning.

Harmon is returning to the franchise, in a way—as narrator and executive producer on the prequel Origins, following Gibbs beginning in 1991 as he starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling NIS Camp Pendleton office where he forges his place on a gritty, ragtag team led by NCIS legend Mike Franks.

“I think seeing Gibbs coming up as a young guy is going to be fantastic,” says Murray. Weatherly suggests, “maybe Mark Harmon can play Gibbs’ father.”

As for the Tony and Ziva spinoff coming to Paramount+, they’ve been raising their daughter, Tali, together. When Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe, try to figure out who is after them, and maybe even learn to trust each other again so that they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after.

“Cote de Pablo and I are also getting ready. Moving to Budapest for the summer of 2024, and it is Tony and Ziva now trying to raise their tween daughter and save the world. What could go wrong?” Weatherly asks. “We’re incredibly happy to be making something for the streaming platform because it gives you a little bit more latitude and shooting overseas.”

But first, there’s the 1,000th episode of the franchise, NCIS‘ “A Thousand Yards,” NCIS comes under attack by a mysterious enemy from the past. Also, Vance tries to mend fences with his estranged son by explaining why, despite the ongoing dangers of his job, he still chooses to stay at NCIS.

“All of NCIS is suddenly put under attack, so now you get to see NCIS: Hawai’i, NCIS: LA, NCIS: Sydney coming in to help,” teases Katrina Law (Knight). We already know Lachey and LA‘s Daniela Ruah (Kensi) are guest starring.

[nightsidewrestling]

D.U.D.E Bios: Viola Nye / Vi Lucifarian (2021)

The Family Pride Vi Lucifarian

Same pic as Vi has not changed at all

The first of the seven sins, the always proud Vi isn't the sharpest woman in the world, but she knows enough to destroy anyone, including teams and stables by using the power of pride. Once she knows you're proud of yourself, she'll manipulate you into an egotistical monstrous version of your former self.

"Rise and shine, cupcake"

Name

Full Legal Name: Viola Dorothea Nye (Née Lum)

First Name: Viola

Meaning: Means 'Violet' in Latin

Pronunciation: vi-O-la

Origin: English, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak

Middle Name: Dorothea

Meaning: Feminine form of the Late Greek 'Dorotheos' which meant 'Gift of God' from Greek 'Doron' meaning 'Gift' and 'Theos' meaning 'God'

Pronunciation: door-o-THEE-a

Origin: German, Dutch, English, Late Greek

Surnae: Nye (Née Lum)

Meaning: Originally indicated a person who lived near a river, from Middle English 'Atten eye' meaning 'At the river' (Lum: From the name of towns in England called 'Lamb', probably from Old English 'Lum' 'Pool')

Pronunciation: NIE (LUH-mb)

Origin: English (English)

Alias: The Family Pride, Vi Lucifarian

Reason: Vi is the eldest of the seven and is her father's 'pride and joy'

Nicknames: Vi

Titles: Miss, Mrs, Ma'am

Characteristics

Age: 42

Gender: Female. She/Her pronouns

Race: Human

Nationality: British

Ethnicity: White

Birth Date: September 5th 1979

Symbols: Horeshoes, The Colour Purple

Sexuality: Straight

Religion: Christian

Native Language: English

Spoken Languages: English, French, Spanish

Relationship Status: Married

Astrological Sign: Virgo

Theme Song: 'You Don't Own Me' - Lesley Gore (1999-2012), 'Little Lion Man' - Tonight Alive, Dave Petrovic (2012-)

Voice Actor: Rosamund Pike

Geographical Characteristics

Birthplace: Blackpool, Lancashire, England

Current Location: Unknown

Hometown: Brigg, Lancashire, England

Appearance

Height: 5'6" / 167 cm

Weight: 150 lbs / 68 kg

Eye Colour: Brown

Hair Colour: Brown

Hair Dye: All exceptthe sides is dyed purple

Body Hair: N/A

Facial Hair: N/A

Tattoos: (As of Jan 2021) 10

Piercings: Ear Lobes (Double, Both)

Scars: None

Health and Fitness

Allergies: None

Alcoholic, Smoker, Drug User: Social Drinker

Illnesses/Disorders: ADHD

Medications: None

Any Specific Diet: Vegetarian

Relationships

Allies: (As of Jan 2021) Damien Lucifarian, Billie Lucifarian, Geia Lucifarian, Honey Lucifarian, Eli Lucifarian, Sara Lucifarian, Yeray Marino, Flo Marino, Bano Marino, Judi Marino, Rino Marino, Nat Marino, Mac Marino, Ros Marino, Zac Marino, 'Monster' Mike, Sakurako, Ash Thunder

Enemies: (As of Jan 2021) Kirby Kingston, Eddie Kingston, The Rhydderch Clan

Friends: Bienvenida Marino. Pelageya Winter, Honey Di Napoli, Elinor Herbert, Saraid Grady-Sullivan Giselle Herbert

Colleagues: The AEW locker rooms / Too many to list

Rivals: Evil Uno, Rey Fénix, Adam Page, Chris Jericho, Britt Baker

Closest Confidant: Quentin Nye

Mentor: Damian Lum

Significant Other: Quentin Nye (43, Husband)

Previous Partners: None of note

Parents: Damian Lum (62, Father), Marion Kay (63, Mother)

Parents-In-Law: Hari Nye (63, Father-In-Law), Zarina Nye (64, Mother-In-Law, Née Das)

Siblings: Ulysses May (39, Half-Brother), Wanda Ott (36, Half-Sister, Née Lum), Tristan Lum (33, Half-Brother), Xavia Aaron (30, Half-Sister), Sullivan Lum (27, Half-Brother), Yasmine Lum (24, Half-Sister), Roger Lum (21, Half-Brother), Zella Lum (18, Half-Sister), Astor Bush-Kay (39, Half-Brother), Zoe Case (36, Half-Sister, Née Bush-Kay), York Bush-Kay (33, Half-Brother), Xanthia Abbey (30, Half-Sister, Née Bush-Kay), Wystan Bush-Kay (27, Half-Brother), Vivian Bush-Kay (24, Half-Sister), Ulric Bush-Kay (21, Half-Brother), Twila Bush-Kay (18, Half-Sister)

Siblings-In-Law: Raabi'a Keo (40, Quentin’s Sister, Née Nye), Dara Keo (41, Raabi'a’s Husband), Sixte Nye (37, Quentin’s Brother), Eun-Yeong Nye (38, Sixte’s Wife, Née Yun), Tri Gim (34, Quentin’s Sister, Née Nye), Gyeong Gim (35, Tri’s Husband), Uno Nye (31, Quentin’s Brother), Hyeon-Ju Nye (32, Uno’s Wife, Née Mun), Winona Nye (28, Quentin’s Sister), Xystos Nye (25, Quentin’s Brother), Amita Nye (22, Quentin’s Sister), Bragi Nye (19, Quentin’s Sister), Kestrel May (40, Ulysses’ Wife, Née Coy), Heath Ott (37, Wanda’s Husband), Gardenia Lum (34, Tristan’s Wife, Née Day), Titus Aaron (31, Xavia's Husband), Symphony Bush-Kay (40, Astor’s Wife, Née Clay), Ryland Case (37, Zoe’s Husband), Primrose Bush-Kay (34, York’s Wife, Née Cobb), Odin Abbey (31, Xanthia's Husband)

Nieces & Nephews: Kolab Keo (20, Niece), Makara Keo (17, Nephew), Pich Keo (14, Niece), Sok Keo (11, Nephew), Yeong-Hui Nye (17, Niece), U-Jin Nye (14, Nephew) Chae-Won Nye (11, Niece), Byeong-Ho Gim (14, Nephew), Ji-Hye Gim (11, Niece), Earl May (19, Nephew), Jane May (16, Niece), Flint May (13, Nephew), Imogen May (10, Niece), Magnolia Ott (16, Niece), Laurence Ott (13, Nephew), Naomi Ott (10, Niece), Daisy Lum (13, Niece), Vance Lum (10, Nephew), Orinda Bush-Kay (19, Granddaughter), Noble Bush-Kay (16, Grandson), Montana Bush-Kay (13, Granddaughter), Lyric Bush-Kay (10, Grandson), Kyrie Case (16, Granddaughter), Justice Case (13, Grandson), Ivy Case (10, Granddaughter), Huxley Bush-Kay (13, Grandson), Gray Bush-Kay (10, Granddaughter)

Children: Adam Nye (22, Son), Paulette Nye (19, Daughter), Benjamin Nye (16, Son), Olivia Nye (13, Daughter), Charles Nye (10, Son)

Children-In-Law: None

Grandkids: None

Great Grandkids: None

Wrestling

Billed From: The Underworld

Trainer: The C.R.C Wrestling School, Damien Lucifarian

Managers: Damien Lucifarian

Wrestlers Managed: None

Debut: 1999

Debut Match: Aisling Rhydderch VS Vi Lucifarian. Vi won by pinfall

Retired: N/A

Retirement Match: N/A

Wrestling Style: Trickster

Stables: The Lucifarians (1999-)

Teams: Post

Regular Moves: Over The Shoulder Arm Drag, Forearm Smash, Leg Sweep, Chokehold STO, Keylock, Diving Somersault Evasion, Beheader (Neck Wrench), Lineage Ender (Standing Moonsault Double Knee Drop), Lion’s Den (Crucifix Pin), Family Pride (Leg Trap Sunset Flip Power Bomb)

Finishers: Wish For This (Shooting Star Knee Drop), Flowing DDT, DDT

Refers To Fans As: The Prideful, The Prideful Ones, The Vain, The Vainglorious Ones

Extras

Backstory: Viola is all too proud of her achievements in the ring and in her life, but as the saying goes 'Pride comes before the fall’, and given how prideful she is, everyone expects her to have the worst downfall of the Lucifarians. She met and married her husband, Quentin Nye, at eighteen and had her first of her five kids at twenty. Both she and her dad are from Blackpool, England and her dad brought her up to get back up after every fight.

Trivia: Nothing of note so far

[thatesqcrush]

The Auction, Pt. 2

Bryan Kneef x Reader. CW: discussion of sex work, "being bidded on/purchased" touching of reader - but its consensual, vaginal fingering, language. WC: 2K.

You met with the brains of the organization for a long time. Her name was Cordelia and according to her, you were “a perfect candidate” as she eyed you up and down.

“How does this work? Is this safe? ” You asked, crossing your arms and narrowing your eyes. “How much of a cut do I get? And don't bullshit me.”

“Ah, I’ve always appreciated a woman who gets down to brass tacks.” Cordelia replied. “The cut is 50/50, off the books. We’ll screen your sexual health, of course. While those results are pending, we’ll vet you - make sure you’re of sanity and have no criminal background. This is all done behind closed doors - no one in your immediate life would be the wiser. If that’s all clear, we will arrange the date for the auction. In the meantime, we like to invest in our ladies once they’re cleared - meaning we’ll make arrangements for hair, makeup, clothes, and the like.”

You swallowed hard. “I can assure you, I’m clean. I haven’t had many partners prior.”

Cordelia nodded. “Well, then we have nothing to worry about.”

**

Your test results came and you received a clean bill of health. The next step was to be primped and polished. Naturally you were middle of the road - some days you could be really girly and other days, not. You weren’t tethered to any one style. But it had been awhile since you were ever able to relax, so when you were sent to a spa for a day of treatment, you jumped at the chance.

After, it was onto shopping.

You felt like Vivian from Pretty Woman as salespersons brought you dress after dress while you got your hair and makeup done. The request from Cordelia was ‘sexy, not slutty.’

You settled on a red hot mini dress with a v-neckline and center ruching for added dimension. Finishing the look was a pair of simple heels that showed off your toned gams and a pair of jeweled hoop earrings. You hardly recognized yourself in your reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror in the store. ‘This is one night; you’re playing a role.’ You told yourself. You figured if you repeated it enough times, you’d believe it.

An unmarked car came to collect you once you were done, driving you straight to the location where the auction was taking place.

You knew there would be other women there from Bonnie. What you didn’t realize was that you’d be going very last. Your nerves were starting to fry and your stomach was twisted in knots. You sipped water through a straw so as to not ruin your lipstick. Finally, there was a rap on the door and Cordelia poked her head in.

“Darling, it’s your time to shine. Now go earn your worth.”

**

You could hear raucous laughter, cheering and applause from behind where you stood. The music pounded and you could feel it in your bones.

Finally, the door opened - it was pitch black on the other side, save a spotlight. You said a quick prayer, even though you weren’t very religious as you stepped into the light.

Once there, the light adjusted to a more dim version and you were able to focus your vision on the crowd before you. Music played quietly in the background before a woman began to speak - someone who sounded very much like Cordelia.

What she says next and what is said after, is all blur. Bids begin to roll in and it’s in that moment you realized you were nothing more than a hooker, using your body as a means to an end. Humiliation flowed through you - you didn’t feel like you - you didn’t feel as good as you thought. Instead your worth was measured in bank rolls.

You scanned the room, men of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds were there, waving their black AmEx cards like they were charging a steak dinner. And that’s how you felt - you were a lamb being slaughtered.

The gavel banged and you heard Cordelia exclaim, “Sold! To Mr. Bryan Kneef for two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

You whipped your head at Cordelia. Had you heard her correctly? Two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars? The fact that you got to keep half made your head spin.

“And that concludes tonight’s auction. Winners may come to collect their prizes in the back.”

Cordelia wrapped her arm around your waist and began to whisk you away when you heard someone thank ‘Mr. Kneef for his payment.’ You turned to see who he was and in the dimmed light you saw it was ‘Mr. Mysterious.’

And you damn near passed out.

**

You sat in the room you were originally in. There was one security camera in place and Cordelia advised that winners liked to meet first before any further advances were to come.

Your leg bounced as you drank your water again. You felt as if you were there for hours but realistically it was mere moments.

The door opened and Mr. Mysteri—Kneef walked in. You smiled nervously at him and extended your arm. “Hi. Bryan, right?”

Bryan didn’t reply. Instead he gave you an intense, smoldering look. His cologne wafted over you, warm and woodsy causing your skin to goosebump.

You brought your arm back and clutched your hands behind your back. Bryan took another step towards you, as if he were trying to get a closer look at his purchase.

“Take off your clothes.” Bryan requested quietly. You opened your mouth to say something but the look in response along with a perfectly arched brow caused you to snap your mouth shut. “I want to see what I bought.”

You reached around, undoing the zipper - thankful it was along the side and not along your back.

You slid the dress off, strap by strap. You hadn’t worn a bra - just a nude thong which wasn’t even fancy - simple and basic, meant more for avoiding lines than anything else. The dress pooled at your feet and you stepped out of it. You moved to kick off your heels when Bryan interrupted you.

“Leave them on.”

You nodded and stood up, anxiously awaiting the next move.

Bryan removed his jacket and folded it neatly, hanging it over a chair. He began to roll up the sleeves of his dress shirt, showing off his muscular forearms with thick, meaty veins.

You looked up and saw the small security camera and realized this private show wasn’t so private. The sound of a finger snap brought you back to the present and you whipped your head towards Bryan. Your heart began to race and you wondered if you should just bolt. You tried to mentally measure the distance between you and the door.

Bryan approached you. His gaze softened, as if he were sorry for what he was about to say. “I’m going to touch you now. At any point if you want me to stop, I will. Consent is very important to me.”

“It is to me too.” You replied, meeting his gaze. After a beat, you continued. “You can touch me.”

His warm touch began rather innocently, along your arm up to along your shoulder. As he walked around you, he kept touching and feeling. His hand got to your ass and he let out a deep rumble as he squeezed the fat of your flesh.

Bryan walked around you. When he came around to the front of you, he cupped one breast with his hand, feeling the weight against his palm. You did your best to remain stoic, ignoring the bolt of pleasure that had shot down to your core. That changed when he firmly twisted your nipple, as you let out a moan as he did so. That earned another arched brow from him, as if taking mental notes.

He rounded you again, and you felt him close the small gap that remained. You felt his cock, hard, pressed against the small of your back. His fingers gently traced your arm and then brought it up, so it was around his neck. He ran his hand back down along your side, and you trembled under his touch. You were certain your heart was beating outside of your chest. When he got to the side of your ribs, he splayed out his hand, so his palm was against you. Slowly, his hand made way down to the apex of your legs.

“Open.” He rumbled in your ear quietly and you followed his instructions. Your breath hitched as his hand cupped your mound. Bryan’s fingers then moved to stroke you softly, teasing your clit and then moving back to stroke your folds. Your pussy grew wet, your breath became more labored as he continued his ministrations. You bit your bottom lip as he slowly but surely worked you to orgasm. Just when you thought you weren’t going to be able to take anymore, Bryan sunk a thick finger inside your soaked pussy. Your pussy clenched around his finger tightly and you let out a wrecked moan in response.

“You’re so wet and we haven’t even started.” Bryan murmured. His beard against your cheek added another layer of sensation. There was no resistance when Bryan sunk another thick finger and began to pump them in and out of you. The sound of wet filled the room and your legs felt wobbly as you gripped around Bryan’s neck harder. Your other hand found his free hand and you brought it up to your breast, encouraging him.

“I’m so close.” You panted. “Oh fuck!”

“Come for me like a good girl.” Bryan growled as he rubbed your clit with the fat pad of his thumb. He used his other hand to pinch your nipple again and you arched against him, coming so hard that you drew his fingers further in.

“That’s it, that’s it.” Bryan praised. “Oh sweetheart we’re going to have so much fun.” He slid his fingers out of you and you whimpered at the loss.

Bryan spun you around to face him. You were a mess as you watched him admire his wet fingers in the light. Bryan brought them to you and you took his fingers into your mouth, cleaning them of your juices and then imitating as to what you could do with your mouth.

Bryan gave you a salacious smile as he withdrew his fingers. He traced them along your cheek, leaving a wet trail to your mouth where he rubbed your bottom lip.

“I definitely got my money’s worth with you.” Bryan replied. “Go home, get some sleep. I’ll have arrangements made so we can have even more fun.”

You watched as he walked away, grabbing his suit jacket and exiting without so much as a second glance. You stayed frozen in place for another five minutes or so, until you realized you could redress and go home.

The car ride home left you with more questions than answers and more horny than ever. Your battery operated boyfriend ran through its battery as you replayed the evening over and over as you were too wired to sleep from the earlier events.

Eventually you did, with Bryan’s name still on your lips.

TBC.

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[emeriethevalkyriegirl]

Nesta Archeron (Harry Potter AU)- Chapter 9 (It Shall Be...)

Summary: The first years have come forth to receive their houses. They represent not only their strengths but their personalities.

The first years passed through two double doors that were as tall as a skyscraper tower. When they made it inside, the room looked like a cafeteria but more elegant. The light in the room was caused by a bunch of candles that were floating in mid air. To make it more suitable, the ceiling had been replaced with a night sky with millions of stars.

“There’s still a ceiling.” Emerie pointed out as Nesta’s left. “It’s just been bewitched to make it look like a night sky.”

“Oh, no wonder I can still see parts of the ceiling.” Nora replied.

The first years stopped when they noticed a strange hat. It was dark brown and wrinkly, like it’s been used for decades. Nesta leaned over to Emerie and whispered, “Is that the sorting hat?” she asked as Emerie shrugged. “I think so.”

“Wait right here please.” Viviane said as the children waited just before the first step. “Before we began, my husband would like to say a few words.”

Nesta looked at Nora with confusion. “Husband?” Nora nodded. “Kallias. High Lord of the Winter Court. His age was never confirmed but they say he’s one of the oldest high lords in history.”

A middle aged man stood up from a seat behind the table from the stairs. He was wearing glasses, a wizard robe, and a wizard hat. “I would like to state a few ground rules. First years please note, that the dark forest is strictly prohibited to all students.” Kallias stated as the students were left to wonder what it was. “Also, Professor Beron has asked me to remind you that the third floor is also prohibited.” Nesta noticed that Kallias was directing his attention behind the students. Nesta turned back to see another middle aged man. He was wearing a dark shirt with dark brown pants and he looked at the students with a horrifying glare. What made him more terrifying was the cat that was next to his legs. Nesta kept a small note in her mind to stay away from Eris’s father.

Kallias sat back down in his seat and let his wife continue. “When I call your name, you will come forth and sit on the stool. I will placed the hat upon your head and the hat will sort you into your houses.” Viviane looked on a scroll of paper and called out the first name.

“Emerie Stone!” Emerie’s heart skipped a beat. She knew a lot of things. How to bathe a newborn dragon. How to look for a unicorn in the dead of night. How to make the perfect green tea. But she was not prepared for her name to be called first.

Emerie walked up to the stool and sat on it. Viviane placed the hat on her head and the hat had begun to speak. “Alright then, my first victim.”

“What?”

“I know exactly where to put you. Ravenclaw!” Emerie smiled and sighed as the other Ravenclaws cheered for her. Emerie got off the stool and sat down with the other Ravenclaws.

“Morrigan Fallout!” Morrigan smirked and sat on the stool. The hat didn’t even have to be on her head to know her house. “Gryffindor!” The Gryffindors cheered as Gwyn whispered to Nesta, “There’s not a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn’t in Gryffindor.”

“Nora Bonnette.” Nora gulped and made her way to the stool. After she sat down, the sorting hat was on her head and it had begun to speak. “Let’s see....let’s see...I know, Slytherin!” The Slytherins cheered as Nora made her way to the Slytherin table.

“Gwyneth Bedara!” Gwyn shook on the inside as she made her way to the stool. The hat was placed on her head, its voice making her flinch. “Ha! Another twin. I know just where to put you. Hufflepuff!” Most of the Hufflepuffs cheered but Cerridwen and Nuala were the loudest. Gwyn blushed and made her way to the Hufflepuffs.

“Catrin Bedara!” Catrin nodded and made her way to the stool. The sorting hat was placed on her head. “You must be the other twin. Correct?” The hat asked a question. Catrin tried not to nod. “Yes, I am.”

“Then have it be, Hufflepuff!” Catrin sighed in relief, grateful that she and Gwyn won’t have to be separated.

“Nesta Archeron!” Nesta gasped. She almost forget that she had a name. Nesta made her way to the stool and sat down. The sorting hat didn’t waste time on introductions. “Ah, I see...a fellow Archeron. Your father was fond of cats you know.” Nesta had nearly forgotten about the ball of fluff that was sitting in her lap. Nesta smiled a little. “I guess he was.”

“Now then, where shall I put you child.?” he asked as Nesta trembling, thinking of the horrible thought that the hat would put her in Gryffindor. “Not Gryffindor. Anywhere but Gryffindor.”

No Gryffindor? Too bad. Then it shall be...SLYTHERIN!”

Lucky was startled by the outburst but Nesta held her close. After she made her way to the other Slytherins, Nora hugged her wrapping her arms around her neck. “I’m so glad you and I are in Slytherin together.”

“Me too.” Nesta replied as Lucky meowed and purred against Nora’s lap. Lily the toad leaped onto the cat’s back and hugged her as well.

The young Slytherins chuckled, happy to see their pets getting along. Sure her other friends were in the other houses, but at least none of them were in Gryffindor.

[lady-literature]

for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

Read on Ao3 | part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 (final) | deleted scene

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ��shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her. 

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be  very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly. 

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement. 

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

[athys-obelia]

summary: the non dysfunctional!imperial family au hcs no one asked for 😳👉👈

character/s: anastacius de alger obelia, claude de alger obelia, athanasia de alger obelia, jennette de alger obelia

here's part 2 :)

let’s set our stage, shall we?

first of all claude n anastacius’ dad is dead coz we don’t like him at all ew

so ana is the emperor, and claude is his heir presumptive (aka he’s got the strongest claim to the throne rn, but this can be changed by the birth of someone who has a stronger one - ie, anastacius’ child who would be the heir apparent) also bc “i know my mom and i gave u lots of childhood trauma that you prlly won’t be recovering from because therapists aren’t a thing here but here’s a crown you might get to make it better”

claude’s in a position where after the birth of ana’s kid/direct descendant, he’s gonna be given a duchy that athy should inherit after him while still retaining the title of prince

but after hearing of diana’s pregnancy, ana tells her and claude he doesn’t really plan on having children and wants to make their future kid his successor

he basically reserves a spot for their child in the directory and rather than announcing anything publically, anastacius names her athanasia after the sex is confirmed

then this mf obviously pulls a clown move and gets penelope pregnant and complicates things, ultimately naming her jennette, finding the name fitting - ‘god is gracious’

and really, what could be more evidence of god’s grace than the child he’s now fathering, when he thought his legacy would be ending with him?

anyways!!!

so since athy and jennette are born near the beginning of ana’s reign, both claude and anastacius are wayyy too busy trying to bring back the empire from the literal brink of bankruptcy and a possible war to really spend time w their kids

it’s alright, though!! lily is hired as athy’s nanny, while jennette gets kiel’s mom as hers

they all still live together, though obviously the main palace is for ana + jennette while claude + athy are in a separate one

this 'separate one’ is ruby palace after ana dismisses the concubines and he definitely 100% did this on purpose, and whenever he’s summoning claude he’s such a shit about it and goes about it the way you’d summon a deadass concubine

on a separate note, it’s surprisingly claude who visits athy first - he’s seen her here and there with lily but hasn’t ever had the chance to spend time w her. but now it’s almost been a year since athy’s birth (or diana’s death), her first birthday is fast approaching, and he is drunk

lily is a reallyyyy light sleeper and enters the nursery upon hearing someone inside

she doesn’t expect to see the prince standing above his daughter’s crib, a strand of her golden hair between his fingers as he just…stares at her

she approaches quietly, curtsying in greeting - he’s too absorbed to notice, and after a few minutes of silence lilian tells him, “babies can get lonely too, your highness.”

he glances at her then, confused. “how?” he really can’t understand how this girl, who can’t even speak yet comprehend something like loneliness

“princess athanasia is very responsive to her surroundings, much more than children her age usually are,” lily says, “and i like to believe children are able to tell when their parents are with them.”

he scoffs - what a foolish thought. still, claude sits by her bedside, and before he can register it, he’s taken over by sleep

the next night, claude makes his way towards the nursery and stiffly asks if athy could sleep beside him for the night - it’s fairly late, but lilian allows it

he’s gone to the main palace too early the next morning for athy to be awake, but she spent about two minutes tops worrying about the strange surroundings, saw the shiny chandelier and fancy bed and decided yes, she doesn’t mind this kidnapping

this becomes somewhat of a regular occurrence soon enough, and sometime that week she wakes up in the middle of the night with her nose pressed into something soft and literally falls off the huge ass bed at the realisation that this something soft is actually her papa’s hair (you just know that hair smells great i mean uh-)

this mans wakes up and peeks at her on the ground, reaches out to grab her from the front of her nightdress (he swears it’s exactly how he’s seen lilian do it) and plops her back onto the bed

she backs up OBVIOUSLY, you don’t just wake up with a random ass man in your bed and just vibe together?? lee jihye is dying but he glares at her for disturbing his sleep and athy pulls her act together in 0.000001 secs as claude pulls her closer and goes back to sleep

as athy grows, claude starts allowing her to visit his office during the day until it becomes a sort of ritual - he’d have tea and milk prepared and she’d come, sitting somewhere completing a puzzle or sum while he works

mans nearly tears down the entire imperial palace the day she doesn’t show up until he finds her in the garden, teaching jettie the 'proper’ way to hold a teacup during tea parties while lilian and roger’s wife, vivian, watch

athy emotionally blackmails asks him to join the tea party, so half an hour later, anastacius finds his brother sitting on the grass with a plastic teacup that athy’s filling with hot water as she lectures him to learn to fix his posture from lily so he can sit like a “proper dignified lady”

so in the beginning, jennette actually ends up spending more time with claude than her dad. though one day, the brothers are in the audience hall when athy runs in with felix running after her telling her not to run (there’s a shit ton of guards surrounding anastacius so felix has orders to be with princess athanasia when claude is with ana)

anastacius is used to this sight, and watches, smirking at his brother’s subtle smile as athy offers him this wonky looking flower crown - claude accepts it wordlessly, and ana wants to slap his ass to sanity, who wouldn’t thank their kid when they do adorable things like this??

but then they hear another voice, and in comes jennette with vivian not too far behind her. now jettie has a much cleaner looking crown in her hand, but she glances at her father’s elaborate and beautiful crown all embedded with gems and glittering and then at the one she’s fashioned out of daisies

she's always thought she was much like her uncle - jennette was so fascinated by the plain daises, they weren’t flashy but caught her eye all the same - while athy was shiny and bold like her dad

but now she’s second guessing her choice, how could she make such a simple crown for her dad, the emperor??

claude sighs from beside anastacius and literally picks off his brother’s crown before tossing it towards a very tired felix

athy urges jennette forward, and with a bright red covering her entire face she offers the crown. jennette glances at her uncle for comfort before muttering, “for papa”

anastacius.exe has crashed

this blushly, embarrassed, and apparently talented at flower crowns kid was his?

long story short he forgets to breathe or react and jettie thinks he hates the crown and hates her and won’t ever like to see her again so she starts getting teary

claude pushes his brother’s head down before athy can be convicted for murder

ana 100% almost faints when her tiny chubby fingers delicately place the crown in place, he’ll never admit it but he closed his eyes and almost hugged her instinctively as she shyly adjusted some of his bangs around the new headpiece, muttering, “papa pretty”

jennette rushes back to her sister, who’s glaring daggers at the emperor

anastacius tries to smile to calm jennette a bit and maybe look nice enough for his niece to not kill him in his sleep

right well kiel becomes the royal playmate for both the princesses - athy has her classes with him since she’s advanced and honestly they’ll be going back forth with infodumps one minute and he’s teaching her to make paper airplanes the next

(she writes notes on the paper airplanes the next time she’s in claude’s office and flies them towards him, stuff like, 'does uncle cius also snore loudly like papa?’ and he gets seriously offended like a pissbaby)

jennette first met kiel when he was visiting his mom - vivian had to leave for a bit and she taught him a bunch of flower names and their meanings in the meantime - he makes sure to research a new flower every time he visits her, and brings her a bouquet of said flowers she always knows them but never says anything coz she doesn’t wanna hurt his feelings and he gets so excited as he tells her about their meanings it’s so cute

speaking of jennette - claude and ana may seem worlds apart but they’re at the same level of emotionally constipated

ana watches his brother and niece interact and he craves that, an unconditional, timeless love that can’t possibly be tainted by ulterior motives or the like, but he just doesn’t know how to approach little jettie

it seems easy enough - she’s a smiley, sweet girl and theoretically would be friendly if he is to approach her

but gods he’s just so ashamed - such a sweet babe grew without either of her parents and he doesn’t have an excuse because holy hell, even claude is close to athy

he’s being served food in his chambers when he asks the maid about jennette, and she tells him how among her first words was 'love’ and the brunette would just stroll the palace pointing at people and declare “love you” and watch their face light up

thats so CUTE OMFG

his jaw is touching the floor when he’s told that his daughter knows the names of every worker within the palaces

at this point he’s honestly questioning whether this child is his at all

he’s absolutely horrified at the realisation that this maid, who doesn’t even work in jennette’s part of the palace, knows more about her than he does - hell, he hadn’t even asked vivian to keep him updated on her growth, what right does he have to stick himself into her life now?

now, the maid quietly suggests starting with something small like inviting jennette to tea and

of course he goes about it the wrong way??

poor jettie thinks she’s being tested by the ruthless emperor on her etiquette and spends the entire day practicing with claude after athy guilted him into it

she’s so nervous in front of her dad that he honestly feels even guiltier, and anastacius hurries to grab her hands in his to calm their tremble as she reaches to serve him tea

she apologises lmao and he’s just so flustered himself that he orders for her to sit down and instructs her through a few deep breaths

as she calms down, ana serves her the tea before asking whether girls her age even drink tea

she says no and you can literally hear the crickets

he slides the cup he’s poured for her over to his side before gesturing towards the deserts (it was claude’s daughter-luring pro tip) on her side

“you look like you read a lot,” ana says, before asking whether she’s been reading anything interesting lately

“i don’t, actually,” she tells him shyly

anastacius laughs at how of all things his hate for books is what she got from him - and only when jennette chuckles does he realise that he said that out loud

he lets her go around her bedtime, feeling rather… energized? he doesn’t know how to explain it, but it’s a good feeling

he’s busy again the next day, but has an aide send her flowers - the same ones she had put in her flower crown for him

yes lucas is still sleeping in the palace, yes athy still finds him

so athy sees the flowers from uncle cius and is enraged, literally walks up to her uncle and demands he leave jennette alone if he’s only gonna break her heart by neglecting her

and so we have fifteen minutes of the emperor of obelia stuttering as he explains himself to this seven year old

smfh his cluelessness reminds her of her own dad and she takes pity on ana’s suffering soul

the next morning, to give him a chance to redeem himself, athy asks all four of them to have breakfast together - they accept the invitation, and despite an awkward start, the meal seems to be going well

peace is not written in this family’s fate however, and this is where the first coughing up blood thing happens

ohhhh the palace staff almost gets massacred that day

athy’s limp body is moved to jennette’s room since it’s the closest - lily bursts into tears at the very sight of her princess, jennette refuses to eat or drink until her sister can, felix hears his heart break, claude is barely holding himself together

ana is livid - who dares poison a member of his family? what has he even done to earn the privilege of calling these girls his family, when he can’t protect them, at the very least?

claude absolutely refuses to leave her room and finishes all his work right outside her door, lest she wake up in pain again

anastacius can’t keep his own anxiety about jennette at bay, insisting she sleep with him as long as claude stays with athanasia - he can tell she’s drained, and she ends up sharing some of her worries late at night. he soothes both her worries and her cries, letting her curl up into him despite it being a rather uncomfortable position

the family is thrown into chaos again once they realise it was never poison, but athy’s own magic that caused this

aka when chibi lucas drops by and voodoos her back to 100%, everyone legit starts worshipping the ground he walks on - he saved their precious princess!!

ana insists on making him athy’s royal playmate after hearing she isn’t fully healed yet

what does this give us? well, a very very early lucas vs kiel

since they’ve both got the title of royal playmate, they constantly argue on whether being the future duke alpheus is a better title than the future royal magician

the girls are always dragged into this - athy always takes kiel’s side to avenge blackie, and jennette likes kiel too, but the young magician sir saved her sister!!

so.

when vivian passes away due to an illness, it’s like roger is an entirely different person

jennette + kiel + athy all help with the funeral preparations since she was a mother/aunt to them all

felix seems to be paying extra attention to kiel

it isn’t long after this that roger decides to send him to arlanta for his studies, leaving behind two disillusioned princesses

athy spends her time viciously studying to stay ahead of arlanta’s curriculum, while jennette takes an interest in cooking

(athy tries and fails spectacularly; lucas laughs at her and jettie accidentally serves him his favourite food too salty to be edible)

a/n: this would be the first of the two parts, so stay on the lookout, hope y'all enjoyed n have a great day <3

edit: part 2

[vivithefolle]

Hi Vivi, can you share some thoughts on the "Hermione deserves to be/should have married to XYZ because she is way too good for Ron" mentality of this fandom??

I’m gonna copy-paste a Quora answer of mine, because recycling is important!

Claiming that Ron is “out of Hermione’s league” is a statement rooted in sexism, classism and probably a bunch of other -isms.

It might seem like I’m just throwing buzz-words around but let me explain.

First off, the sexism.

Oh, the sexism.

As I’ve pointed it out in yet another one of my answers  (I’m so sorry for drowning you all in a plethora of links), Ron is very much a female-coded male character.

Ron is emotional, wears his heart on his sleeve, has anxieties and inadequacies, walks off in order to cool down, has a temper, puts other people before his needs, and pretty much adopts Harry when he rescues him in the second book. He’s the Heart of the Trio: he doesn’t rely on sole logic, he can believe something without proof, he is sensitive and thus is the easiest to hurt emotionally.

Whether you call it a “beta male”, a “wuss”, “defying gender roles” or a “soft boy” is your own business, but the core of it is that Ron doesn’t meet the standards for people’s vision of a “desirable” masculine figure.

The little things Ron quietly performs in the books - when he helps Harry into his pyjamas in Chamber of Secrets because Harry’s arm is bloop; when he’s worrying about Hermione’s whereabouts in Prisoner of Azkaban; when he helps Harry unwind after his visions in Goblet of Fire; when he puts food onto Harry’s plate and wakes him up from his nightmares in Order of the Phoenix; when he beams that Hermione was “perfect, obviously” when she passes her Apparition test - all those caring gestures don’t seem like much, but if you bother to think about it, they paint an enormous picture.

Who gets Hermione to stop overworking while making her feel good about her accomplishments? Who comforts Harry from his nightmares and cares for him in the dead of the night, when nobody is awake? Who makes sure his friends are healthy and happy? Who wards off the dark and depressing thoughts, be it with his fists or a joke?

It’s Ron.

When you think about it, “traditional masculinity�� in Harry Potter is as much frowned upon as “traditional feminity” is - which sometimes bites Rowling in the butt when you remember how she obviously seems to consider that Hermione and Ginny are the only desirable kind of girls.

Vernon Dursley? The entrepreneur “king of the household” prejudiced suburbian middle-class Dad? Fits in the usual tropes of traditional masculinity.

Dudley Dursley? The typical “boys will be boys” spoiled middle-class only child who’s the apple of his parents’ eyes and even takes up boxing, as if he wasn’t traditionally masculine enough.

Draco Malfoy? See Dudley, but toss in “upper-class posh aristocrat bully who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty so he has henchmen do it for him because he’s too rich for this sh-t”, would remind you of a few Christian Greys or Gatsbys.

Dolores Umbridge? Oh no, cat pictures, decorative plates, talks to teens as if they’re babies and PINK, SO MUCH PINK!!! So disgustingly feminine!!

Rowling very much frowns upon traditional gender roles - with Molly Weasley being an exception because Rowling feels very strongly about being a mother, and relates to Molly a lot.

Right - so, being a beautiful mess of paradoxes and contradictions (a “soft boi” who also punches bullies in the face, a fussy mother-hen who swears like a sailor, a tall athlete with badass scars on his arms who’s nurturing and sweet; in short, a wonderfully human character), Ron is obviously going to be a polarizing character. You painfully relate to him and get defensive when he’s criticized, you feel his characterization hits a bit too close to home so you hate him, or you disregard him completely because you can’t see anything “special” about him…

Now, onto another very, very sexist point that is often made.

People say that Hermione “deserves better” than Ron, often claiming that they “aren’t intellectual equals”, then citing Harry (who is mistaken as being some sort of slumbering genius but honestly, the kid is really a bit daft) or Draco (since apparently, being rich must equal to being intelligent) or, god forbid, Snape (because he’s a teacher and teachers are meant to be clever).

Soooo, I could go the loooooong way and pull out all the receipts that prove that none of these characters are perfectly intellectually matched to Hermione…

Or I could go the long way and simply give you this: this obsession with finding an “intellectual equal” for Hermione reflects the mentality of “women are not allowed to be better at something than their husband”.

Yep.

A woman has to be all-around pretty good at everything, whereas a man has to be the absolute best in his area of greatest competence (surely better than any puny female!) with a help-meet there to compensate for his weaknesses. People are very, very uncomfortable when Ron and Hermione reverse this dynamic. Hermione is extremely intelligent and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, but is complete pants at things like self-care and people skills. Ron is bright enough to keep up with her and strong in her areas of weakness.

Even if Ron was as dumb as a sack of rocks (he’s not), his other virtues are more than enough to “justify” Hermione loving him. (Because she needs an excuse?) But no. A woman has to be with a man who outdoes her in her area of greatest strength. - credit to @lytefoot

People don’t want Hermione to be with a man who’s her “equal.” They want her to be with a man who can be The Man so she can know the contentment of being The Woman.

But, with this sexist line of thought, how do we justify how Ron is supposed to be such a bad match for Hermione? Because if it was just about mere sexism, Romione would surely be more popular. Imagine! Ron happily raising the children, being a house-husband and proud of it, while Hermione is out there fighting for justice in the wizarding world! What a power-couple, defying norms and gender roles and not being the least bit conscious of it, prime OTP material for sure! So why do people still want Hermione to put Harry, Draco, or god forbid², Snape in Ron’s place? Is this an irrational hatred of redheads? An Harmionian’s delirious wet dream? A failure to separate the actors from their characters?

It’s all this and, quite frankly, something more: the inherent classism that comes with Ron’s status as an explicitly working-class coded character.

I know, I know, “Vivian! Calm down with the buzzwords, you’re starting to sound like an online pretend-feminist magazine!”

Or “Come on, people who don’t ship Ron and Hermione together aren’t all sexist or classist!”

Of course, of course! I know that! I’m not implying that!

But some of the “reasons” why they claim that Ron and Hermione can’t work - are extremely classist in nature, that’s just it!

Come on, think about it! What are the Number Ones arguments people always pull against Ron? Or the most common Ron-bashing tropes (look at fanfics and watch the number of stories that use at least one of those)?

Ron is stupid/mediocre

Ron is lazy/useless

Ron resents his wife’s hard work/success

Ron is a homophobe

Ron is a drunkard

Ron (the big prude who at 16 had never kissed a girl and sees a first kiss as the prelude to a wedding) is massively oversexed and cheats on Hermione with anything that moves

Not only do these “reasons” completely ignore ALL OF RON’S CHARACTERIZATION - except for the “lazy” bit but come off it, all teenagers are lazy and Hermione’s the exception to the rule - but it matches perfectly with the negative stereotypes associated with working-class white men in fiction.

It’s also very funny to note how many (assumedly middle-class or financially secure) fans look down on Ron for being “whiny” or “greedy” when he expresses the desire to have money of his own, or blame his parents for “not knowing when to stop” or “being irresponsible”, or even look down on them for being “too proud to accept help”!! Also how shocked people are when Ron dares to stand up for himself when Hermione or Harry act badly towards him. How dare this country boy not listen to the wisdom of his social “betters”?

So, obviously, because our Heroine can’t go with a Nasty, Mediocre Working-Class Man, she must be paired off with someone of Proper Status: say, a Hero that was raised in a middle-class home and might be a bit psychologically damaged but it’s nothing all those gold coins in his vault can’t fix; or this Rich Posh Aristocrat who actively rooted for her death, he’s a little bit eccentric and has some exotic pet-names to call you, but I’m sure you’ll learn to love him and will unearth the gold coins in his bank account… I mean, the heart of gold that lies within the surface; oh, why not a Way Too Big An Age Difference Teacher if you’re looking for a “cultured man” who has zero things in common with you; we can also bring Convenient Plot Device Famous Rich Foreign Athlete if you want some diversity and you don’t feel original!

But we can’t - oh, we mustn’t let her be with this Terrible Working-Class Boy! His brothers are fine, they have money, they have jobs, so they’re obviously Not As Mediocre. But let our precious Hermione be with this Just-Got-Out-Of-School hooligan? She can’t possibly be in love with him! You’ll see darling, you’ll get bored eventually! He’s too mediocre for you, you deserve a man who outclasses you - I mean, who can provide for you! You’re a fragile little flower who scars people for life when she’s not happy with them, what makes you think that this boy can possibly handle you even though he’s done so for the past seven years?

You wanted it, you got it.

People are shallow, have misconceptions about Ron’s character that they are unwilling to correct or use classist and sexist arguments to try to make it so that either Ron is the Devil himself / Hermione is a higher kind of being that can only orgasm if sufficiently “intellectually stimulated” / what-have-you.

[manananggal]

Written for the 13_Cases Prompt on the Trese Discord server by seductivevenus. Theme: Déjà vu + College. It's written in taglish and i’m too lazy to tanslate rn so... hehe. kinda follows the headcanon (?) from the fic Mumoo, Mumoo, Paano Ka Ginawa? that Alex went back to college to finish her degree. (naol! char graduating na din naman aqu)

..

Back when Lily was in second grade, she was seated to a girl named Alex.

Which, in her seven-year-old mind, sounded pretty cool. In a classroom full of Maries, and Annas, and Jennys, a girl having a boy’s name is unheard of. Her own name is pretty common too. She didn’t dislike it per se, but Alex (especially for a girl!) sounds waay cooler than Lily, so…

Alex was new to their school. She is fair-skinned, with shoulder-length hair with the darkest shade Lily has ever seen. She finds herself stealing glances at her new seatmate, her hair being a source of wonder for Lily.

The girl with a boy’s name is quiet. She doesn’t speak unless she’s called for recitation – she never raises her hand, but she knows the answer each time Teacher Evelyn calls her. Alex doesn’t speak until she’s spoken to and sometimes, she wouldn’t even answer then. Her being quiet is okay with Lily, though. Their house in Damka is noisy enough for her. Even their classroom is noisy enough for her.

The other kids, however, didn’t like Alex’s silence very much.

“Yabang naman neto,” Jen-Jen says, arms crossed as she walks back to her seat in the first row. Alex declined Jen-Jen Cruz’s invitation to play in their house afterschool . “Kala mo naman maganda,” She added, her upper lip curling in distaste.

Alex's demeanor didn’t change at all as she continued to eat her corned beef pandesal in silence.

Lily was confused, and maybe even slightly jealous. Jen-Jen was nice enough to her, but she was never invited to join them – not even for recess. Or even when they’re let out in the playground for PE. When she’d approach their group, Nicole, one of Jen-Jen’s friends, would say, “Puno na kami eh,”

“Alex, ‘bat ayaw mo sumama?” Lily asked, turning slightly to face her seatmate.

“Para saan? Marami naman sila dun,” It was the most Alex had said to her.

“Diba mas masaya kung madami? Classmate kami nung grade one. Mabait yun si Jen-Jen. Saka… maganda yung mga Barbie niya,”

“Kung mabait siya, bakit hindi ka nila sinasali pag nag-lalaro kayo?”

Others might assume Alex’s question as some sort of comeback, but even Lily’s young mind could understand the logic...? Sincerity...? of her words. Lily fell quiet as she chewed on her Square Lemon cheesecake.

Whispers started to spread that Alex is mean, and that she’s maarte for someone studying in a public school. After all, there must be something wrong with the quiet girl who turned down the chance to be friends with Jenny Cruz.

But when Lily’s too frustrated from having to squint at their teacher’s too-small handwriting on the black board (Kung sino man ang naka-isip ng alphabetical arrangement sa upuan, ang panget niya!), Alex would slide her own notebook closer to Lily, letting the other girl look from her notes. Alex’s writing is nice, especially for a second grader. A lot nicer than Lily’s Ate Camille, who’s already in grade six. The letters stay between the lines, and the pages of Alex’s notebook are clear of smudged eraser marks.

That day when Lily lost her Hi Catty pencil case, Alex lent her a spare pencil (newly sharpened, eraser on the other end intact, and without chew marks!). Lily looks up and gives her seatmate a grateful, teary smile. Alex gives her a smaller smile in return before resuming writing in her notebook. (Lily hoped that using the same pencil will make her own handwriting neater. It didn’t, but that doesn’t matter.)

When she opens her lunch box and sees that she’s having hotdog for recess for the third time that week, Alex offers to give her some of her baon. Lily took a single pandesal, and she swears she could hear the angels in heaven sing after she took a bite.

They’d sit together under the huge mango tree in the middle of the playground. Alex taught her to say “Tabi-tabi po,” before sitting. When it’s time to go back inside the classrooms, Alex would place a single, unopened chocnut in the base of the tree. Lily looked back once, and she could swear she saw a tiny person with skin as brown as tree-bark waving at them. She blinked, and the person was gone. She asked Alex if she saw it too, but all Lily got was a small smile.

Lily liked to think they were friends. Maybe even best friends. Which is why it hurt when one day, Teacher Vivian announced that Alex won’t be attending school anymore. She wondered if it’s anything she did. Maybe she annoyed Alex by being too chatty, or by eating her favorite corned beef pandesal one time too many. She didn’t think to ask for Alex’s telephone number – they didn’t even have a telephone at home. Besides, Aling Remy who owns the store in front of their house charges five pesos for five minutes. Her mom prepares her meals, and her dad picks her up from school, so there’s no need to ask for money.

Their class seating arrangement was changed, students were moved around, and Lily finds herself sitting next to a boy named Patrick who watches the same anime she’s seen and tells the same jokes she heard from yesterday’s Ang TV episode. As weeks turn into months, and months turn into years, Lily moved from using pencils to ballpens and intermediate papers and formal theme books, the girl with a boy’s name slowly faded from her memory.

Years later, when she enrolled back in college after taking LOA for a few years, Lily finds herself sitting in the back. It was the first day of classes, and she’s starting to regret taking the 9:00 am – 10:30 slot for Managerial Accounting, but the professor is highly sought after, and students are said to be lucky to be in his class. A girl wearing a long, black coat takes the seat next to hers.

Lily steals a glance at the person sitting next to her. The girl is staring straight ahead, her mouth set straight as she focused on what their Prof is saying. Her bangs (or is it a bang - singular?) looks cool, and while the long trench coat is way too hot for the Manila weather, the girl seems to rock it. She seems to disappear after class, and so Lily spent the next few weeks sitting next to someone who’s name she doesn’t know.

But that’s just college.

There’s something familiar about the girl, however, but Lily can’t place where she saw this girl before. Surely, someone with that distinct style would stand out. That’s the least of her worries, however, since Sir Lara had announced that there’s a quiz and she seemed to lose her only working pen.

“Shuta naman ‘bat ngayon pa…” Lily groans, as quiet as she can as she rummages through her bag for anything. She doesn’t really know anyone in this class. Within her circle of friends, she’s the only one who took this early slot to accommodate her work schedule. Being an irregular student, and an older student at that, she’s hesitant to approach these younger kids. 

She'll take this quiz with a crayon if she has to.

A flash of movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see her seatmate handing her a pen. “You can use this,” The girl offers. 

Her voice is a little deeper, but it suited her perfectly, completing the Queen of the Underworld vibe she has going on for her.

There’s something very familiar with the moment Lily finds herself in. It made her feel as if she’s forgetting a piece of a puzzle. But she could solve that for another day. Right now, the quiz is her priority.

“Mars, thank you!” She says, taking a relieved sigh.

Sir Lara started going around the room, reminding them to take one seat apart from their classmates before he hands down the answer sheets one by one. Lily was just thankful that she was able to study for this quiz last night.

When the bell rang signaling the end of that day’s class, she all but shoved her things inside her bag to be able to catch up with the other girl.

“Ate girl, yung ball pen mo!” Lily calls out.

The girl was already out in the hallway. Lily wondered just how many pockets her coat has, since she didn’t think she ever saw this girl carry a bag. “Uy, thank you ha.” She says, fishing the pen from her pocket.

“Wala ‘yon.” She regards Lily with a small smile. There is something that’s really, really familiar with the way her mouth quirks upwards.

“Teh, kung ‘di mo ‘ko pinahiram ligwak si watsung sa quiz. Ano palang name mo ulit? Ako si Lily,” She smiles, holding her hand out.

“My name is Trese,”

Wait… Lily heard that name before…

“Alexandra Trese.” The girl who introduced herself as Alexandra took Lily’s  hand and shook it.

“Wait, teh, parang kilala kita…”

“It’s been years, hasn’t it, Lily?”

[olivia200312]

Heat~ Bay! Optimus x Human! Reader (Lemon)

Plot: Y/N went into a heat thanks to her hormones but Optimus used his one big secret to help her. Tentacles. ;)

This is a lemon! Also, I came across 2 parts of one-shot about Optimus having tentacles and I had an inspiration to do it, only this place takes somewhere else.

This takes place in Transformers 5: The Last Knight (TF5 TLK).

WARNING: If you feel uncomfortable with this one because of the tentacles then leave!

Head area:

Brain: Processor / Brain Module

Head: Helm

Face: Face plate

Ears: Audio receptors / Receptor Orifice / Audials

Nose: Enstril / Olfactory Sensor

Eye brow: Optical Ridge

Eyes: Optics

Mouth: Intake

Lips: Dermas

Teeth: Denta/Dentas

Tongue: Glossa

Chest area:

Chest: Chassis / Thoraxal Cavity

Back: Hexa-Lateral Scapula

Spine: Bipedalism cord / Back Strut

Chest and back armour:

Chest plate

Back plate

Mid-section plating

Neck guard

Side plating

Arm area:

Arms: Arms / Restarlueus

Forearms: Bitarlueus

Hands: Servos

Fingers: Digits

Arm armour:

Gantlets

Shoulder pads

Arm guard

Lower area:

Pelvis: Pelvis

Butt: Aft / Skid-Plate

Thighs: Tibulen

Calves: Cadulen

Feet: Pedes - the high heel bits are called Struts or Heel Struts.

Lower armour:

Skirt plates

Aft plate / Skid plate

Thigh guard

Ankle guard

General/Internal components:

Muscles: Cables / Pistons - It depends on the area in question.

Veins: Fual lines

Stomach: Tanks

Lungs: Vents - used to stop the con/bot from over heating.

Heart: Spark

Tattoos: D-con/A-bot Insignias and the lark

T-Cog: The thing that allows all Cybertronians to transform, be that their arms or their whole body.

Bonus:

Penis: Spike

Vagina: Valve

Body: Frame

Note: the art goes to the owner!

-------------------------------------------------------

It's been like two days ever since the battle in the UK. It was hard and brutal kinda. First, Viviane managed tp get the staff, knights had awoken, Optimus Prime came back, who he called himself Nemesis Prime since he was being controlled, and many more...

Optimus left a few years ago to Cybertron to go find his Creators. He was gone for so long that everyone was worried if he was even alive still, especially Y/N was very worried and she even missed him a lot. She was very close with the Prime, even though he's Cybertronian and tall, he can still transform into his bipedal holoform so that he's close to Y/N's height.

A few years passed by and Y/N lived with Cade and other Autobots. It was hard for some bots because their leader was gone and Bumblebee was in charge. Let's just say that the bots didn't like it that the scout was in charge. Bumblebee tried his best to keep his team good, but almost all the time he got into fights and arguments with the bots. There were of course Dinobots and sometimes they do not listen. But everyone had to leave because the Decepticons were looking for them. They met a teenage girl named Izabella. The story continued and yadda yadda yadda. Hot Rod joined others and Cade and Y/N met a woman named Viviane. Cogman also joined and others too.

Later, they had to get the staff and they did it thanks to Viviane, but Optimus appeared and he called himself Nemesis, which was very strange. Everyone knew that he was being controlled. It was just... terrifying, especially when Y/N looked into his optics and they were... purple/magenta instead of gentle blue. Bumblebee even fought against Nemesis and he got almost killed! It was very sad to see this! Like when Nemesis ripped Bumblebee's wings off! Anyway, Bumblebee managed to wake Optimus up. He felt extremely guilty and he also almost got killed by the knights, they called him 'traitor'.

When the battle was over, the bots had to leave to rebuilt Cybertron, but they returned one day to visit others with their big ship. It was very nice!

Right now Optimus was spending time with Y/N. He missed her dearly and he wanted to be with her. Y/N was very happy when she saw him that she hugged him tight, even though he's metal. Cade and Viviane started dating and Tessa was very happy for them! Actually, everyone does.

Y/N was watching TV and Optimus was next to her, in his bipedal holoform. Did I forget to mention that Y/N lived in a big house? Yep. Ever since she helped Autobots to win the war (or fights) in Chicago and other places, she got noticed a lot by important people. Not only her of course, even Sam, Mikaela, Carly, Cade, Tessa, etc. She got A LOT of money then you think. Millions. She can easily support herself. She did not only support herself, but she also supported others, she even gave some money to charities. How nice was that?

Y/N's head was against Optimus' chassis, listening to his sparkbeat. The Prime had his arms around her, holding her protectively.

Y/N was paying attention to the TV until she started to think... dirty. Oh no... Her hormones were starting to control her. She started to think dirty about Optimus. She had thoughts about his grunts, moans, roars in pleasure, his spike... She even thought about how his glossa would like her. Oh boy... She's getting turned on. She was getting wet... She was trying to push her dirty thoughts away, but it was impossible. But what she forgot was that Optimus can actually smell it. Yes, they did had sex once, but the last time was a few years ago before he left to go find his Creators.

"Are you ok, sweetspark?" Optimus asked, feeling a bit worried.

"Y-Yeah," Y/N whimpered while rubbing her legs together and they're closed tight.

Optimus then finally saw what was wrong with her. He even smelled it quietly and he smirked! His sparkmate was in heat because of her hormones. Welp, time to fix that. "Would you like me to help you with your heat?~" He whispered in her ear.

Y/N whimpered and nodded. "Y-Yes, please."

"I want to try something with you. I think you'll love it, my dear."

Y/N became curious. He was gonna try something? She's now wondering what it was. "W-What is it?"

Optimus then turned the TV off and picked Y/N up bridal style. He walked towards Y/N's bedroom and opened it with his ped. Her bedroom was big so there was enough space to do... fun things. ;)

Optimus set Y/N down in the middle of the room. He closed the bedroom door and even closed the curtains to have privacy. Suddenly candles light up in a romantic way. The Prime stood a tiny bit away from Y/N. "Now, before I help you, I want you to not freak out, sweetspark. You have to trust me."

What was he talking about?

"Okay?"

Suddenly tentacles came out of his back! What? How!? Y/N looked very surprised. Since when did Optimus have tentacles? "How...?"

"When I was in Cybertron, Quintessa and Megatron did something to me while I was cuffed. I was unconscious. I was scared what others would say but I told my team one day. They accepted it. I was scared fo your reaction."

Y/N looked soft while still feeling hot. She found actually Optimus with the tentacles. She was shocked and surprised, but it made her sparkmate hotter. She walked to Optimus and cupped his cheekplate. "Optimus, it's alright. I am shocked and surprised, but you're still yourself. And, uhm..." She blushed.

Optimus looked at her a bit worried.

"And, you're hot with the tentacles," Y/N blushed redder, but she was telling the truth.

Optimus blushed blue but then his blue optics were filled in with lust. "Stand still and enjoy, sweetspark."

Y/N stood still as she felt Optimus' tentacles started to undress her. Not only that, but they started to stroke Y/N's body, especially her private parts. Y/N couldn't help but moan softly. It felt... amazing. The tentacles undressed her fully until she's naked and she was being lifted up in the air gently and carefully. Optimus made sure that she will not drop her. The tentacles started to spread around and one went between her legs while others spread her legs open. Her boobs were being squeezed gently and the tips were teasing her nipples. Y/N moaned.

Optimus chuckled while watching her. "Enjoying, sweetspark?"

"A-Ah, y-yes!~"

"There's more."

A tentacle suddenly rubbed her clit, causing Y/N to jolt and moan. She was slightly shaken because of pleasure. The tentacle started to rub her clit a bit faster to make her cum fast. Y/N was indeed cumming fast. "O-Optimus! A-Ah!~"

Optimus chuckled deeply and smirked. He watched as Y/N came. She even panted

"Are you ready for more, sweetspark?"

Y/N nodded and felt in fact excited. That's when her legs got spread more open so that it will be easy. A tentacle suddenly entered her, causing to gasp, moan and arch her back. It was very pleasurable. Optimus' growled lowly as his tentacle went deeper into her. Y/N felt no pain so it was ok. She moaned loudly as the tentacle started live in and out and it sped up.

"A-Ahhh!~"

Optimus watched her moan, pant, gasp, scream, and arch her back. He got surprised and flinched when Y/N grabbed one of the tentacles since her arms were free and started to suck. The Prime couldn't help but grunt quietly and shake a bit.

Y/N moaned loud as she continued to suck. The pleasure was just unbelievable! Optimus' tentacle picked up more speed and that's when Y/N felt a knot in her stomach, signaling that she was cumming. "O-Optimus, I-I'm cumming!"

"Cum for me, my dear," Optimus growled.

Y/N screamed as she came. The tentacle that she sucked left her mouth so that she could scream. The other tentacle stayed inside of her as her cum covered it and the Prime could feel it actually. It felt very nice. He gently pulled the tentacle out of her and laid her down on the bed.

Y/N panted as she looked at Optimus flustered. "T-Thank you, Oppi. I... I loved it." She showed a smile.

Optimus smiled, but then smirked and got on top of her. His spike was free this time. "Ready for the real fun, my dear?~"

Y/N blushed but felt excited again. This was going to be a long late...

There you go. I hope you enjoyed a Bayverse one-shot :)

[rhodeybugg]

Before The Dawn - Chapter 1

V was found shortly after Tessa turned Nine.

Accompanying her parents to the local dump, she had noticed a mostly still living worker, badly damaged but desperately attempting to hold on, and very excitedly requested they attempt to repair her.

Tessa insisted she could do most of the work herself, but her father helped her with the more delicate processes, helping guide the tools in his daughter's hands while replacing the screws in the abandoned worker's back plating.

J watched with a burning sense of curiosity and interest, as they both stepped back to allow the newly brought-in worker to power back on.

She wobbled a bit. The poor worker looked terrified, staring up at her new human masters in fear, then to J, in her pristine dress and neatly kept pigtails.

She took a deep breath, and sighed.

The company had designed their drones with a secondary way of communication, a way of keeping silent when humans had priority in speaking, allowing them to pass on information or commands without making as much as the hum of a servo.

Where am I? What's happening?

J gave the trembling worker a look of reassurance.

You've been..

She considered her words carefully.

..Re-homed. These are your new masters, i'm-

V's optics widened.

Re-homed? Oh, no, no! Malachi will be very upset when he finds me missing! I must be returned immediately!

J cocked her head to the side. 

She could hear Tessa and James discussing something, but she focused more on the conversation that she and V held on their own frequency.

Malachi?...Your old master?

V nodded.

Yes! He was… 

She looked around.

The size of that girl there! Soft blonde hair and bright blue eyes- and I must get back to him! If his parents find out he lost me they-

J shook her head.

..I don't think they'll be too upset.

V finally looked down at her hands, the rips and stains on the velvety red dress they had found her in, her gaze drifting to the tools surrounding her.

J could see the emotions cycling through her processors. Confusion. Recollection, anger, sadness, and then acceptance.

She finally looked back up to J, a hint of sadness in her voice.

..Is this….is this a good home, then..?

J nodded.

Warm sleeping quarters, weekly maintenance and system checks, and the finest oil you'll ever drink.

She smiled as Tessa approached the newest drone again, sitting down on the floor in front of her, offering her a clean dress and already beginning to tie ribbons into her hair.

Home..?

V smiled up at Tessa as J nodded.

…home.

           _-_-_-_-_-_

Surprisingly, it was Tessa's mother who took a liking to V, and was even given the choice of naming her, by Tessa.

Vivian.

A name that suited her, similar to how Tessa had affectionately designated J as "Jamie", even though they were usually addressed as the single letter that identified them on their arms.

Maybe it was how V listened to orders. How she nodded with excitement and followed Louisa with loyalty around the manor, listening to her rambles, taking notes for her, and carrying items. How she sat without protesting in the den while Tessa's mother hummed and worked to sew up old dolls and dresses, how she'd sit and untangle the yarn when the box got tossed around. 

She became much more skilled at the tasks that required finer detail when she got her glasses. Realizing that V's internal optics had been damaged beyond repair, she was given a pair at first to simply test, then, to keep, when she managed to pick up every needle that had fallen from Lousia's sewing box.

Being collared was the highest honor that could have been given. While the more rebellious workers saw it as derogation- being seen as a pet, something to claim and boss around, those in J and V's place saw it as acceptance. The leather fit snugly around their necks, a silver tag sitting in the middle with the Elliott family's crest engraved, a sign that they were important.

They were loved.

To V and J [and Tessa, at least], it felt like acceptance. 

It felt like officially being seen as a part of the family.

N's introduction was nothing glamorous, unfortunately. A simple butler discarded when his original owner, a sweet, elderly man, passed away in his sleep. 

N had been heartbroken, and J could see it in his demeanor when he followed her through the manor- he remembered. He was mourning. J knew, Tessa knew, and it took nearly a month of constant reassurance that Tessa wasn't going anywhere anytime soon- that she was still young and had her life ahead of her, for him to calm down and grow attached to their caretaker. J felt sorry for him. She tried to mourn with him, wondering how it would feel to lose the human they were created to serve- wondering if she would live her battery life to see Tessa-

…she never let herself think much farther than that.

If he'd had a tail when Tessa placed the collar around his neck, J knew it would have been wagging wildly. For the first time since he had arrived, N expressed genuine excitement and happiness- love. Eventually after his "promotion" she began to let N sleep beside her when she guarded Tessa at night, even if he somehow always fell asleep and ended up curled up at the foot of Tessa's blankets [which was J's spot, but she didn't mind to share.] It felt nice to have someone else around.

Niko, was the name he'd been given. He liked it.

Cyn and Grimm were found at the same time, coming from the same family. They were siblings, owned by a wealthy family, somehow more snobby than the Elliots could ever be.They were used for show. Kept clean and tidy and then flaunted around on leashes and pedestals, used by the humans to compete and see who could make their workers look the fanciest: treated like show dogs, never shown any true love, only seen as an object to dress up.

They were discarded after an incident involving another contestant.

Cyn wasn't afraid to tell their story, she seemed rather proud of it.

There was another worker involved, dressed in fancy red ribbons and bows, she had insulted Grimm and attempted to rip up his attire [which was absolutely devastating to him, as she'd managed to rip his favorite jacket in half]. Cyn wasn't having any of it, and while she skimmed over most of the gruesome details, it was clear that the other drone was damaged worse than Cyn had been. 

Cyn still had a working processor. Red ribbons didn't.

They had been labeled as aggressive and haphazardly discarded, Cyn could no longer hold her head up high to display her status- she wobbled when she walked and often had to have support, using her hand to guide her head when making gestures or moving herself around quickly.

And Grimm was there for her. 

J wasn't sure about him. He was quiet- reserved, normally keeping to himself or hiding behind Cyn, holding onto his sister's hand when she walked and shying away whenever V or N tried to talk to him. He kept his thoughts hidden behind his curtain of curly black hair, no matter how much Tessa tried to brush it out of his face. J let him be when she could, save from the occasional passed on order or question, to which he would give a simple nod or a head shake, a "yes ma'am" or "no ma'am".

And for the longest while, it was just them in Tessa's circle. Collared, loved, and pampered. The pile at the end of Tessa's bed grew, with J being the one consistently keeping watch, no longer just over Tessa herself, but over her siblings, knowing how much they meant to tessa- and herself. She had been there from the start. She was the one designed to protect, to keep Tessa company, to guard her, to keep her happy. No matter how many other drones came or went, that would always be her purpose, and she would fulfill that purpose until her last moment. 

No matter what.

[inkedstarlight]

Bittersweet: Chapter Nine

Summary: Cassian and Nesta finally meet. Officially, this time. Let the romance commence. Notes: Read it here on AO3! Warnings: very brief/non-explicit mention of sexual assault Bittersweet Masterlist

“Earth to Nesta?”

Nesta snapped from her trance to see Emerie waving a hand in front of her face.

“You’ve been cleaning the same spot for a good ten minutes,” Emerie gestured to where Nesta was scrubbing the counter with a towel. It was squeaky clean.

Nesta let go of the towel and cleared her throat. “My bad.”

Emerie pulled out the chair on the other side of the counter and sat down. It was eleven in the evening on a Monday, and they had just closed. The only other person in Rita’s was Lucien, and he was doing dishes in the back.

“You’ve been acting weird for the past two weeks,” Emerie stated blatantly. Her stare was unwavering. “And you’ve lost at least ten pounds.”

The incidence with Tomas happened two weeks ago. Nesta was doing a pretty good job of moving on with her life all things considered. She felt like shit, but she hadn’t missed a single shift at work. That had to count for something.

But she should’ve known Emerie would notice. She was like a fucking hawk, that girl. She saw everything.

When Nesta didn’t say anything, Emerie shrugged and got up from the stool. “At least try a little harder,” she said, referring to the coworkers’ challenge to get the most tips. She shot Nesta a sad look. “Thesan is beating you. Thesan.”

Nesta mustered a laugh. Thesan wasn’t great with customers, that was common knowledge. Neither Emerie nor Nesta were people persons, but they knew how to turn it on for customers. Thesan, on the other hand, didn’t make much of an effort. It wasn’t that he was intentionally rude, the guy was just quiet in nature. In fact, he was quite a sweetheart.

Which was why it was quite entertaining to watch Thesan and Helion interact. Where Thesan was an introvert, Helion was loud as hell. Not to mention it was clear that Thesan was crushing on him. But unfortunately, Helion flirted with every living, breathing thing and was thus completely oblivious. During Nesta’s first week at Rita’s, Emerie had spilled all the tea about their coworkers. Thesan was head over heels in love with Helion, Helion had never been in a monogamous relationship, and Viviane… well, Viviane had her own little love story. A complicated one at that.

His name was Kallias. They grew up together, from scheming little kids to rebellious teenagers to young adults. Best friends since they could remember.

Because Emerie grew up in the same small town as them, she knew everything. They all went to school together. She knew that Kallias had been in love with Viviane since freshman year of high school. She knew that Viviane felt the same way, but she would never admit it thanks to the hell she was put through during her childhood. Nesta didn’t know the specifics, and she never asked.

It also didn’t help that Viviane was in a relationship with someone else. They’d been together for almost two years. Emerie thought Viviane deserved better, that he wasn’t a very good person.

Anyway, Kallias visited Rita’s nearly every weekend after his shift at the fire station to grab a drink and more importantly, see Viviane.

Nesta thought it was ridiculous. She’d told Emerie as much when she’d brought Nesta up to date on their coworkers’ lives. Why wouldn’t they just admit they loved each other and get on with it already? It was pretty fucking simple; they were just making it complicated for themselves. Emerie wholeheartedly agreed and the pair then went on an hour long rant on the idiocy of romantic relationships.

And if she was being honest, Nesta didn’t care much about these people. Sure, they were respectable but they were a temporary fixture in her life. Once she secured a job in her career field, she was going to leave them all behind.

“We should get a drink sometime. Outside of work,” Emerie clarified with a look of disgust. “I’m sick of it here.”

Nesta knew that was a lie based on the relationship Emerie had with Rita and her wife. But she didn’t say that.

“Maybe,” Nesta responded distractedly, desperate to think of an excuse. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Emerie; no, Nesta liked her coworker. She just couldn’t muster the energy to go out with friends or socialize like that. “I’m pretty busy right now though.”

Emerie narrowed her eyes and scrutinized her.

“Stop analyzing me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

Emerie sighed and receded. She hesitated before saying quietly, “Is… is this the part when I ask if you’re okay and we get all deep and explore a new level of our friendship?”

Nesta slowly met her friend’s gaze. They stared at one another for several moments.

Then, they burst out laughing.

-------------------------

The next morning, Nesta was brewing her third cup of coffee when Elain padded into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Elain yawned as a greeting. She wore bunny slippers and an oversized hoodie. Elain only had one evening class on Tuesdays, so today was her only day - save for the weekend - to sleep in.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“How long have you been up?”

Nesta glanced at the clock. It was nine-thirty. She’d woken up at six after a sleepless night of tossing and turning.

But she simply shrugged instead. “Not long.”

Nesta poured the coffee into her mug, sitting back down at the counter. She watched as Elain bustled around the kitchen, scrambling eggs and slicing fruit. The morning light spilled through the dusty kitchen sink window, bars of sunshine reflecting off the tiled floors. Iroh basked in the sunspots, his black fur glistening as his chartreuse eyes blinked closed.

Elain and Nesta hadn’t spent much time together in the past couple weeks. It was Nesta’s doing, of course. She was actively avoiding her sister and everyone else. After Elain had tried to talk to Nesta after the whole thing with Tomas, she stopped asking Nesta if she was okay. Nesta assumed that Elain realized she wasn’t going to get an answer, that there wasn't really a point in trying.

But Gods, Nesta fucking missed her. And even though she wanted nothing more than to retreat to her bedroom as she sat there in the kitchen, she didn’t move from the chair.

You need them as much as they need you, her father’s voice echoed in her head.

Guilt stabbed at her chest.

“How’re classes going?” Nesta asked quietly. Elain looked at her over her shoulder with a surprised yet pleasant smile.

“Great! I’m so grateful to be at such a great college, but…” Elain bit her lip, hesitating. “My bio lab is going to be the death of me."

“You know you’re allowed to complain, right?”

Elain just gave her a smile. “Yeah, I know. It's just, considering where I was a year ago, I couldn't be happier to finally be enrolled in such a prestigious program. Even if that means the classes are brutal."

I wish I was like you. I take everything for granted.

“And have you made any friends?”

Elain had started school at Pryth U months ago and yet Nesta had no idea if she even had friends yet.

Selfish bitch.

A fond smile broke out on Elain’s face. “Yes, I have this really great group of friends: Lucien, Ressina, and Varian. It's just the four of us, but we've gotten really close.”

Nesta asked Elain more questions before excusing herself back to her room, claiming she was going to try to write today, to which Elain squealed and wished her luck.

Nesta hadn't written since their dad died. Prior to his death, she would write nearly every day. She'd been working on a novel for years. The plot had came to her in middle school, and it just grew from there. She'd never told anyone about it. Everyone knows how fucking hard it is to get your writing published, much less get high ratings. Nesta wasn't even sure if she was going to finish it. This was the longest she'd gone without writing or editing it. And she had a feeling that she wouldn't ever go back to it.

Dread filled her stomach as she thought of that prospect. What the fuck was she doing with her life?

Nesta’s phone buzzed, and she fished it out of her back pocket.

 Incoming call from Feyre Archeron.

It kept buzzing, Nesta merely stared at her sister's name on her screen. She couldn't think of a single reason why Feyre would be calling. But she pressed "Accept" before it could go to voicemail.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

Silence.

“Uh, what’s up?” Nesta asked. She collapsed onto her unmade bed. Iroh scampered past the door and jumped on the bed with her. He didn't waste a minute curling himself around her head.

"I was calling to see… maybe, I don’t know… uh, would you want to come to dinner tonight?”

I was not expecting that. And Nesta was about 95% sure this was Elain’s doing.

“Why?”

“I want you there," Feyre told her as if it were obvious.

“Why?” Nesta asked again. She hadn't seen Feyre since Thanksgiving despite her sister living just on the outskirts of the city.

That had been weeks ago.

“It's complicated," Feyre responded quietly. She seemed to pause before finding the words. "I've been so worried about Cassian, we all have. He'd never been deployed for that long - five months. It was scary. I guess I took that out on you. I don't know why..."

She drifted off. Nesta held her breath.

"I'm sure Elain told you, but he's home now. I've been more myself since he returned, and I want you to come to dinner. I… miss you.”

She rubbed her temple. “I don’t know, Feyre.”

I don't know if I can pretend to be okay for an entire night. I don't know if you even fucking want me there or if you just feel obligated. I don't know if I can be in the same room as your douchebag boyfriend. I don't know if I can be surrounded by your friends, most of whom seem to dislike me. I don't know if I can behave like a normal fucking person.

I don't know.

“Please?” The plea was soft, quiet. It was like she was almost desperate. But for what?

Nesta looked out the window where a blue jay - their dad's favorite bird - was perched on a bare tree branch. The leaves had long ago fallen, leaving the world naked and vulnerable. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

-------------------------

Feyre embraced her with an awkward hug when Nesta and Elain walked into the house. Nesta patted her on the back lightly, uncomfortable with the physical touch. Luckily, no one else seemed incline to embrace her. Rhys actually seemed to make sure he was as far away as possible.

Elain, on the other hand, gave everyone a hug. Mor gave a laugh as she squeezed Elain back, Aurra watching them with a smile. Interestingly enough, when Elain greeted Azriel with a hug, his tanned cheeks glowed red. It was almost imperceptible, but Nesta noticed.

Feyre took a step back to assess her. Nesta could see the judgement in her sister's eyes as she took in Nesta's noticeably thinner body. Luckily, however, she wasn't given the chance to comment on it when Elain piped up, "Where's Cassian? Nesta still hasn't met him yet."

"He's running a bit late," Rhys answered, glancing down at his phone. "Should be here in about ten minutes."

Everyone began to make their way into the dining room and Nesta followed. However, she was quickly tugged to the side when Amren swooped in out of nowhere and basically dragged Nesta into the privacy of the hallway. She stopped, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared at Nesta.

“Where have you been?” Amren demanded.

"What do you mean?" Nesta asked, playing dumb.

She hadn't spoken to Amren in a long time, even though they had each others' numbers. Even though Amren had repeatedly texted her, asking to get coffee or go for a walk or something else of the sorts. All of which went unanswered.

Amren rolled her eyes, and Nesta was convinced they went to the back of her head for a good minute. "Don't play dumb with me, Nesta."

“I don’t know, working?"

"Is that a question?" Amren rose a deadly brow.

Nesta huffed and mirrored Amren's angry stance. "Why are you interrogating me?"

“Because you've been radio silent for weeks. I had to ask Elain if you were still fucking alive," Amren explained. Then, she leaned in close like she didn't want anyone to hear. "I was worried about you, you bitch."

Nesta let out a sigh. "I'm sorry, okay? I've been busy. I do want to hang out, it's just that..." she trailed off.

"What? It's just that what?"

Nesta stared at the floor, unable to form words.

"Nesta, are you okay?" Amren asked, her voice softer.

Just tell her. Fucking tell her.

I was almost raped.

Just the thought was enough to make Nesta want to puke. She couldn't, it was too much and she wouldn't even be able to fucking say it and it's her fault, all her fault.

She breathed in through her nose and looked back up at Amren. She shot her the most fake smile she'd ever given. "I'm good. Seriously, I just got busy. It won't happen again."

Nesta saw the skepticism in Amren's eyes. But she conceded with a small sigh. "Well, don't do it again, okay? I seriously thought you were fucking murdered or some shit."

Nesta just nodded. Amren looked at her once more before gesturing with her chin back to the dining room. Nesta followed her.

When they rounded the corner, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Because sitting next to Feyre was the man who had tried to break into her apartment.

“Nesta!" Feyre exclaimed, calling her over from where she sat. "This is Cassian. Cassian, this is my sister, Nesta.”

Nesta simply stared at him like a deer in headlights and he stared at her, his lips parted in surprise. He was wearing a grey sweater, his long hair hanging down, no longer in a bun like it was the last time. He tucked it behind one ear.

"Are you stalking me or something?" Nesta said incredulously.

"I could ask you the same," Cassian retorted cheekily.

Feyre looked between them, a confused expression written on her face. "Do you guys know each other or something?"

"Something like that," Nesta mumbled.

Everyone's eyes were on them as they waited for an answer.

"Well as everyone knows, I live in the same building as Nesta and Elain," Cassian explained, waving a hand to the two sisters. "The other night, I got stupid drunk with a friend. He drove me back to my place and me, drunk off my fucking ass, tried to get into their apartment thinking it was mine."

The entire room erupted into laughter, Rhys choking on his food and Azriel looking up as if reasoning with the Gods.

"So when Nesta opened the door," Cassian continued, "she nearly beat me to death with a baseball bat."

Another round of laughter.

"Overreact much?"

Everyone's eyes flew to where Nesta sat. They seemed shocked. Nesta was too.

She didn't know why she said it, why she let it bother her. He was just so fucking frustrating, even his mere presence.

Cassian stuck his tongue out at her.

Feyre interrupted, her jaw agape. "You guys are acting like children."

Nesta got quiet after that. The conversation continued, thankfully taking the attention off her. As everyone laughed and conversed, Cassian looked over at her. His smile disappeared when he met Nesta's gaze. She just stared back at him, lips in a thin line. He seemed to try to gauge her reaction carefully, but her face was blank.

And so the night went on. Nesta didn't say another word after what happened. She avoided eye contact with Cassian. Avoided conversation with everyone.

It was half past eight when they all began clearing their dishes. Mor, Aurra, Azriel, and Cassian were all gathered in the kitchen cleaning up. Feyre and Rhys had excused themselves. It was just Nesta and Elain who remained in the dining room.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Nesta leaned over to whisper to Elain.

Elain nodded. "We'll head out right after, yeah?" She must've noticed the exhaustion in Nesta's face.

Nesta agreed, excusing herself from the table.

She walked down the hallway, peeking through every door to find the bathroom. She was about to push through a door on the left that was slightly cracked open when she heard voices coming from within.

“I’m worried about him. He’s not the same.” It was Feyre.

“He never is when he comes home, Feyre," Rhys said dejectedly. "It’s happened before. Cass just needs time.”

Cass.

Nesta tiptoed closer to the door, just enough for her to listen.

“No, what he needs is to see someone!”

“I’ve tried. He doesn’t want to go.”

“Try harder, Rhys!” Feyre cried, her tone frustrated.

“We can’t just force him to go, okay?”

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Do you even notice how lost your own fucking brother is? Do you even care?!”

Silence.

“Rhysand, I’m sorry. Gods, I’m so sorry. I know you care. More than anyone. I just… I don’t want to lose him.”

She heard them both breathing deeply.

“C’mere,” Rhys murmured. Nesta heard Feyre's footsteps as she presumably walked toward him.

“We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Together.”

“Always, Feyre darling.”

They got quiet, probably embracing each other. Nesta crept away from their bedroom door and into the bathroom before they could find her.

------------------------------------

Elain and Nesta had just unlocked their apartment door when Nesta groaned. “Oh, shit, I forgot my wallet in the car." She fished around in her bag to make sure it wasn't in there. "I’ll be right back.”

"I'll leave the door unlocked," Elain called behind her as Nesta made her way to the elevator.

She stepped between the doors, hitting the button for the parking garage. Gods, she just wanted to go to sleep. The night had been exhausting.

After a minute or so, she was approaching her car. She unlocked her door and grabbed her wallet that was in the middle console when a pair of headlights flashed past her, a car pulling into the spot next to her.

Before panic could set in, Nesta recognized who was driver the car through the window.

Cassian.

His car turned off and he emerged from the driver's door just a moment later. He looked over where Nesta was clutching her wallet to her chest staring at him. He gave her a tight-lipped smile before turning away and walking towards the elevator. Nesta had no choice to follow.

She walked just a few feet behind him as they made their way to the elevator.

"I'm sorry," Cassian told her, his voice sincere. He cast a concerned glance her way. "For embarrassing you at dinner. And if I scared you that night."

"You didn't embarrass me," Nesta snapped at him. "You were just being annoying as hell."

His entire body seemed to relax at her insult. Cassian tried to hide his smirk but failed. "I'm glad to see you're still your normal, hotheaded self. You got me worried at dinner with your stoic behavior."

Now she really glared at him. "Don't talk like you know me. You don't."

"Oh, sweetheart," he teased. "I think we're more similar than you think."

She scoffed. "I think that hubris of yours will be your downfall."

"You know, it's quite sexy when you use literary devices to insult me," he joked.

Nesta froze.

Was he coming onto her? Chills ran down her spine when she thought of the last time a man expressed interest in her.

It's not the same, she tried to convince yourself. He's not Tomas.

Cassian must've expected a heated response to his comment because he looked surprised when Nesta simply stared straight ahead. She seemed to be in a world of her own, oblivious to everything around her. Any trace of anger was gone, replaced by a cool indifference.

Cassian's face fell. "Nesta, I didn't mean to - "

He was cut off as the elevator door dinged opened and Nesta swiftly walked out.

-------------------------------

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