#so now I finally decided to just cave in and write the draft at least

[fiepige]

Me: I'm not gonna start writing another fic until I've edited and posted every chapter of my current fic so I can put all my energy into finishing it.

Also me: Has just started writing a fic about Hobie and Sage because the fic idea would not leave me alone!!!

[sehodreams]

last day surprises

TW and Tags: slasher!Wonbin, mentions of violent acts (death of a character), heavy dubcon/almost noncon (well... hard to explain), dark!riize, blowjob, p in v, no condom.

WC: 3.4k

Summary: Wonbin swore he had changed, he was better, he had a job he liked, and he had met you, so why did you have to ruin everything?

Comment: don't you hate when I'm such a cunt? having a thousand unfinished drafts I decided to write something nobody asked for. I just wrote this because I NEEDED TO WRITE SOMETHING TO NOT LOSE MY MIND, I've been swamped with work so I wanted to relax a bit, it's something I did pretty quick so it probably has inconsistencies and grammar mistakes (when have I done a fic with perfect grammar in first place?).

Breathing as silently as you could, you watched the shadows moving in the dim light of the night that trespassed the curtains of your room.

Tears were still flooding and your shoulders were shaking, but you couldn’t do anything about it, even if you tried to force yourself to stop, they kept moving on their own, and the only thing you could do was bite your lip and cover your mouth with the palm of your hand, praying with open eyes that god, if there was even one, helped you and let you live at least one more day.

One more day and your cab would go for you in the morning, just like you had planned with your best friend the day before.

The thumb of his steps over the hardwood kept tricking your mind into believing he was far away from the closet you were hiding in, and you had thought that perhaps God had given you the gift of protecting you, but he was the one making the decisions at that moment, he was playing God, and he wasn’t as kind.

If only your friend had never teased him. If only she had listened to you and had left him alone. If only.

‘’You’re too noisy’’ he opened the door and you tried to close it back immediately, nails almost breaking from how much force you were using to not let the door go, gripping on it to not let him in (or to not let him drag you out).

‘’I didn’t do anything’’ you cried and did your best to fight him, ‘’I swear I never laughed’’.

‘’Don’t lie to me’’ the same hand that prepared your cold drinks when you woke up, that carried your bags and held the door open for you when you arrived now held it to stop you from closing it, ‘’I saw you, you were laughing with her, you’re just like her’’.

‘’Wonbin, I never laughed at you, I swear, I always treated you good’’ you tried to make him remember, ‘’We talked a lot, don’t you remember? I told you about my family, and my job, and my home.’’

Your voice waved with every word that left your mouth, and when you thought he was finally weakening, he used more of his strength to create a bigger gap between the door and the frame, enough for one of his arms to enter and grab one of your wrists and tighten it to hurt you.

You hissed, trying to shake him off, but it was useless, and soon, when he got tired of your little game, he completely pulled the door open, pulling you with the same strength and rage, grabbing your hair instead of your wrist, dragging you out of your cave.

‘’Liar’’ he repeated with his stern voice, full of hate, and with a touch of what seemed like pain and deception. ‘’You’re just like her, and you’ll end up just like her’’.

His grip on your scalp made your head burn, and you closed your eyes and cried his name when he dragged you to his feet.

Not knowing what else to say, you don’t know why you said it, but you didn’t have many options to ponder, so you said the first thing that came to your mind ‘’I-I never agreed with her, I thought you were cute, I think you are cute, really’’.

You felt the weight of your words on your head, when his hand debilitated for a second, and you felt a light of hope illuminating you, the same ray of light that infiltrated between the curtains and that told you how late it was.

‘’Then why aren’t you looking at me?’’ he asked, tugging even harder your hair, making you yelp in pain before you answered.

‘’I’m- I’m’’ I’m scared, you wanted to say, but you knew it would make him angrier. ‘’I’m sorry’’.

You opened your eyes, looking at his feet first, dirty brown shoes covering them, to then move your eyes up, passing through his dark pants, and his silver black belt, arriving at where you were trying to avoid when you closed your eyes.

His shirt still had your friend’s blood drenching its front, and you could even distinguish the prints of her hands when she tried to push him away.

His green-striped shirt was the last thing your friend teased him for, telling him how he looked like a creep when you two arrived from your night walk.

You saw how his eyes were different after she left the comment in the air, and you had no idea why, but all your instincts said he wasn’t in the mood for it, so you quickly pushed her inside when he opened the door for you, telling her with your eyes to shut up when she lifted one of his eyebrows at your attitude.

But she never listened.

Hours later when the lights went out in your shared room, she decided to go to the first floor of the old cabin to leave a piece of her mind one last time before the two of you left first hour the next morning.

‘’Can’t believe I paid so much for this shithole’’ your friend said, leaving you alone while you took a shower, wait for me, you screamed under the water, but she was already gone when you finished getting dressed in the darkness.

You found your phone as you could in the obscure room and turned on your flashlight to walk down the stairs and search for her.

Five minutes later, after calling her name numerous times, receiving no answer from her, inside the kitchen, you saw her body on the floor, blood pooling around her and dirtying your sandals, liquid touching your feet and starling you with the wet sensation before you illuminated her and saw her lifeless eyes.

You screamed and your phone slipped from your hands, falling to the pond and splashing the red fluids to your bare legs with the fall.

His steps, because of the shoes he wore all the time, boots perfect for the woods but heavy on the floor, made soundly thuds, indicating how close he was to you.

Running to one of the single rooms on the first floor, you tried to hide from whoever was out there, but deep inside, you knew who did it.

And you weren’t wrong, your hunch, as almost always, was right.

Your hunch had told you to treat him good, to sweetly say good morning and ramble about the weather and other things you saw with your friend while he prepared breakfast and she got dressed for the day.

Wonbin wasn’t exactly bad at the start, he was just… different.

He never smiled when you two arrived, he didn’t even dare to maintain eye contact, and when you talked with him sometimes you felt you were talking more to the air than to a person, but there was something inside you that pushed you to be overly nice to him, perhaps the same thing that pushed your friend to treat him like shit.

‘’You’re still not looking at me’’ his voice interrupted the memories of you telling your friend to not treat him like that, and you had to move your eyes from the stain on his shirt to his face.

His blonde dry hair seemed lighter at night, almost white, and you sobbed when your eyes inspected his face and a drop of his own blood dripped down his cheek because of a scratch.

It definitely was product of your friend’s manicure, nails always long and sharp enough to cut skin, she once even hurt you when you tried to hold her hand while you were walking through a tough area in the woods and she tripped over one of the many rocks, so it wasn’t hard to deduce how he got that cut there.

‘’I’m sorry Wonbin, I’m sorry’’ you didn’t know what you were apologizing for, it was the only sentence that came out of you.

‘’How sorry are you?’’ he replied to your constant mumbles.

You couldn’t answer, how sorry were you? You didn’t do anything at all, you shouldn’t even feel like that, but there you were, on your knees, with his hand on your hair, his eyes looking down at you, and your heart flinching of fear.

‘’Show me how sorry you are’’ he continued.

The same hand holding you in place pushed your face to his crotch, a bulge was already there, and your breath hitched when you understood what he wanted.

‘’I never- I’ve never done it’’ you sobbed, palms over his thighs to stop your chest from touching him.

Your cheek was pressing his zipper, which felt cold and slightly painful against the soft skin of your face.

‘’I never let anyone free either, there’s a first time for everything’’ he answered, both hands now resting over your head and pressing you to give him what he wanted.

He smelled earthy, like the wet puddles near the river, and you somehow found yourself inhaling the aroma again, to maintain you sane and ignore the stronger smell of your friend’s blood in his shirt had.

With shaky hands you pulled down the zipper, the sound extremely notorious in the quiet house, and your sobs were quickly silenced with his cock intruding your mouth.

He let you take your time with it, sighing with the superficial licks you gave to his shaft, letting you get used to it before he ordered you to open your mouth enough to accept him inside.

At least he wasn’t rough, his hand wasn’t a grip on your hair anymore from the moment he made obvious his needs, posing on the back of your head and even caressing it while guiding you.

Not daring to interrupt the sudden softness he had with you, you let him use you, as if you were only an object for him to satisfy himself, and it was wrong, but you found yourself not hating it.

Your brain turned off for a second, a line of saliva escaping your lips when he pulled out and pushed back in with a deep thrust, making you dizzy with his flavor, and an unrecognizable pressure started to build in your abdomen.

Tears kept rolling down your cheeks, it was horrendous how you were giving the first blowjob of your life to your friend’s killer, and it was even worse that you weren’t dying to push him away from your face.

‘’Shit’’ he exhaled when you started to move your head on your own, choking yourself with his length and gripping on his pants with the pressure traveling from the pitch of your abdomen to your cunt. ‘’You like sucking cock, uh? Were you lying when you said you had never done it before too?’’

You stopped for a second, wrapping one of your hands to the base of his cock to move it up and down while you talked. ‘’I’m not a liar’’ you defended yourself.

 You never lied, you did think Wonbin was cute.

Even with his terrible outfits, his ugly straw-like hair and his awkward attitude, he gave you unusual amounts of attention you had enjoyed, like always receiving you with fresh juice when you walked down the stairs and preparing bags with things you might need in the forest.

Your friend had noticed it too, saying how it was his job and for you to not get swayed, he was only the service there, and the treatment you received wasn’t anything special, but you knew why she was like that, resentful, because she wasn’t the one receiving it, and you, her fat friend, were doing it when it should be her.

Grabbing you by the hair again, he dragged you to the only bed in the room, covered by a clean set of bedsheets, laid flawlessly by him, without a single wrinkle in sight, until he tossed you over them and ruined the perfect image he had created.

He felt you were sincere when you said you weren’t a liar, but how could you think he was cute? No one had ever called him that, saying how his face was frightening instead, with those big eyes and his forever dark gaze studying them, hating his equally black hair so much that he decided to dye it to avoid those comments.

It didn’t work, they said how he looked even more like a freak now, and he thought he had left those violent responses well behind in his life, until your friend appeared and broke him again.

She wasn’t the only one breaking him though, you had played a significant part in his mind wanting to repeat past patterns, he even swore he could’ve ignored her if you hadn’t laughed that day.

It was just hours ago, before your daily walk, that he recognized the gray clouds gathering in the sky, and that his body moved on his own, running to give you one of the raincoats he had stored for emergencies. He gave you the coat with a small smile, and you accepted it with a wide one, making him feel something warm install in his chest, making him weak for you.

He thought you were different, and then he heard you laughing when your friend called him an idiot, finishing the job your friend had started so eagerly since you two arrived there.

You had laughed because you thought he was adorable.

‘’Take your shorts off’’ he ordered, watching you stay still in the bed, tears flooding and your hands shaking on your sides. ‘’I’m getting tired of you not listening.’’

You heard him clear, and not wanting to see what he would do when he got fed up with your behavior, your hands tucked down your baby blue pajama shorts.

When you watched them slide down your legs you saw how little red dots appeared on the fabric and the dry blood scrap down like old paint.

His hands were clean, unlike his clothes, so it was probably he was washing them when you walked down the stairs.

They felt cold over your thighs when he made you open your legs for him, and you shivered for the sensation of his big palms touching your large thighs.

He put force into his grip to see how deep into your skin he could go, thinking how good it would feel to sink into your bare skin.

Moving your panties to the side, he was welcomed by your shiny entrance leaking for him. ‘’Fuck, are you enjoying this?’’ he asked, happily surprised by your excitement, ‘’You’re even sicker than me.’’

You didn’t like that affirmation, but you didn’t want to deny anything to him anymore.

His thumb grazed your clit teasingly, enjoying how the little bud jumped in front of his eyes and you shook from something else than fear.

You would rather die than admit it, but it felt good.

‘’You like it so much’’ he said more to himself, showing you the first wide smile you had ever seen from him since you got to that place.

He licked his thumb and groaned at your flavor, admiring you there for a good minute. Your hair was ruffled, your gleamy eyes were looking at his, and your chest was moving up and down, making your hard nipples noticeable through the white t-shirt you wore to sleep. When he saw you wearing your pajama a couple of days earlier, you keeping him company while he made your breakfast, he had salivated more to the picture of your round unsupported chest calling for him to taste them than to the fresh food in his hands.

Now that he had you dripping for him, pussy clenching around nothing, waiting for him to touch it again, he pushed his middle and ring finger inside you.

Knuckles deep, he felt his cock twitching every time you moaned his name when he shoved his fingers with force in and out, biting his lip to not moan at the feeling of you making a mess in his hands.

‘’Fuck-fuck’’ you let your head fall, and you should’ve wanted him to stop, but you were so close to your orgasm, you closed your eyes to ignore the reality of the moment, permitting him to touch you, only begging to cum inside your mind.

His hands pushing your legs up made you aware of your surroundings again.

You couldn’t even ask him what he was doing when he plunged inside you, sliding his cock without any kind of signal, forcing your walls open to accept his length.

It was a pain you had never felt before, a good pain, but the stretch had burned a little, making you whine as a response.

He, on the other hand, sighed of relief, shuddering at the long-missed sensation of a warm real person accepting him.

Messily moving his hips, he didn’t wait for you to get used to him, and he thrusted as deep as he could, completely bottoming out, making you slightly bounce in the bed with each hard smack.

Your skin and his were creating a loud echo inside the room and you moaned his name with how good he was fucking you.

You honestly would’ve enjoyed it so much, free of guilt, if he hadn’t done that. You would’ve even pulled him closer to you if only your friend’s blood wasn’t drenching your t-shirt too.

‘’Take it off’’ your fingers tried to reach for the hem of his shirt, but he kept with his rhythm, groaning with your velvet walls perfectly wrapping him, ‘’please, please.’’

The begging was hot too, but he didn’t want to do it, so he only stopped his movements to take yours off instead.

You lifted your arms for him, and when he had the impure fabric in his hands, he decided to clean some of the sweat accumulating in his forehead with it, tossing it to the floor when he finished.

He looked strangely handsome when he did it, like a normal man you would’ve met in the city, maybe in a club or a bar, one of the kind that usually ignored you to dance with your friend.

But he was with you that night, and you cried when he went back to fucking you, remembering that he wasn’t just any man, making you feel even dirtier with his wet shirt sticking to your abdomen.

It was on purpose, he couldn’t hide it, the amused breath he let out told you how much he wanted to taint you too.

Launching to your breast, he rocked into you while his mouth maintained itself busy with your nipples, taking turns with his hand, making eye contact until you felt the past interrupted orgasm coming back.

He looked so drunk with your chest and your cunt, you couldn’t help but moan louder when the same hand playing with your nipple went down, pushing its way between his solid abdomen and your soft tummy, until it found your clit.

You were already clamping his cock when he started to play with your clit, and he left your chest to moan on your mouth when you cried and writhed under him.

Spreading your legs wider, you didn’t care that his shirt felt disgusting against your skin anymore, or that his steaming breath was directly falling in your open mouth, you simply wanted to cum.

His mouth joined yours when you said his name one more time, a broken Wonbin that made him weak once again, pressing his lips against yours while his hips rutted harder into you to help you obtain your well-deserved orgasm.

He came not much after, letting all in your insides, painting you with his cum to mark you.

You were his the minute you smiled at him and said his hair was pretty the first morning of your stay.

‘’One time is not enough to earn my forgiveness’’ he said, and you eagerly nodded.

You convinced yourself that, when you straddled his lap, it was because you wanted to live, and that it had nothing to do with the fact that he had made you cum for the first time in your life and how you wanted to feel it again.

The next morning you woke up with his weight sinking in the mattress and his hand moving your hair out of your face, making you open your eyes to see him staring at you with a tenderness you had never seen before. He was wearing a clean change of clothes, but with a particularly weird aroma, like the smoke after a campfire.

‘’It’s raining, roads are closed until it stops’’ he murmured to not startle you, ‘’sorry honey’’ he finished, and you closed your eyes, tired of thinking, only praying that your cab didn’t ask you to reschedule, because you doubted he hadn’t burned your things too.

[1waywardbirdlane]

you said you didn't write anything but have lots of ideas, so let's play! 🌤️How do you (would you) interpret the game mechanics in your fic?

Once again, thank you so much for sending me this!! it really truly means a lot <3

I’ve been drafting this response all week, but eventually I did just kinda let myself ramble. There are a lot of other ideas I have, but i’m going with this for now.

I think the way combat is broken down in bg3 is helpful to writers, especially those who may need guidance or inspiration when writing battles. It literally breaks down the things characters can feasibly do within the universe in one “turn.” 

For instance. Shadowheart uses her Action to cast Spirit Guardians to create protection for herself, then casts sanctuary on Gale with her Bonus Action because she knows he’ll need his Action to cast Mage Armor on himself. Meanwhile Lae’zel is running at the enemies approaching Shadowheart because she needs Concentration to maintain Spirit Guardians. Or does she also need concentration for Sanctuary…. SEE? I dunno I think it gives you a lot of fun things to play with… or to throw out and/or modify for your purposes (self indulgence and fun being absolutely valid ones).

You could further use your knowledge of the characters’ powers to help color the themes and vibes of your story. Maybe Wyll features a lot because you want to explore that deep and dark allure of the Infernal… and maybe you also want a lot of bloodshed. Karlach is already an obvious strong candidate for addition, but so is Lae’zel. Or maybe you just can’t stand being without that damned vamp and you want him to explore his infernal powers and influence after he ascends…

I think I’d like to see more writers include the Illithid powers in their stories.  Do they become an integral part of your battle strategy? Do you go too far? Do you feel yourself slipping into madness? Doing things you wouldn’t normally do? Which other characters in the party decide to use them? Does it strengthen the telepathic connection between those that do? Does that make it harder to turn off? Perhaps only you and your lover have used tadpoles and you’re practically in each other’s brains 24/7, then another companion decides to use one and suddenly they can hear…. Everything between you and lover. Everything.

Going back to that battle, some of these powers/game mechanics can factor in further with creating scenarios/interactions or dialogue… Lae’zel gets surrounded by enemies while Gale’s longer range spells keep enemy reinforcements at bay but you/Tav got stuck against a bugbear that just. wouldn’t. die. (Bad dice rolls) Finally Shadowheart’s Concentration breaks and an archer seizes the opportunity, hitting her with an exploding arrow that knocks her back into a stone wall that partially collapses on her. You realize you have to use your tadpole. You order Gale and Lae’zel to get Shadowheart and run for the entrance. You use Force Tunnel to fly to the center of where the enemies are grouped, knocking a few enemies aside and your Passive Ability Culling of the Fold finishes several of them off. Gale and Lae’zel have reached the cave entrance and turn back to look for you. You summon the Repulsor Ability to blow them all off their feet for good…and nothing happens. The Emperor whispers something in your ear about The Luck of the Far Realms, and suddenly the power that erupts from you explodes outward as if you’d never whiffed it in the first place. Once you’re safely out of the cave, Gale uses Telekinesis to take over carrying Shadowheart while Lae’zel charges you, shrieking terrible things in Githyanki. At least you imagine they’re terrible, based on the rage on her face. You stumble backwards a few steps, half-heartedly because you know there’s no escaping her. She sweeps your feet out from under you, and before you know it you’re on your back and Lae’zel’s knife is against your neck. She’s furious with you. How could you be so troubled by a lousy bugbear? How could you not be there to protect Shadowheart? How could you let her be hurt? Gale mutters something under his breath about being Bloodless every morning and he told you it would eventually catch up with you. 

I know a lot of us also like playing dress up with our characters, and I do too. I kind of love managing the inventory of the whole party. I’m not saying that the in-game system/UI is great, but I enjoy leveling up each character and tracking what they’re wearing to give them the best bonuses. I can imagine myself writing bits about inventorying the loot in the evenings at camp. Arguing whether or not Lae’zel or Karlach needs the armor upgrade more. Whether or not they should hold on to this necklace in case it’s needed later or let Gale eat it.

One thing I love doing is looting a LOT of armor, even stuff I know I won’t need. I send it to Karlach or Lae’zel, or Halsin once he joins the party. They can carry the most weight. Once they’re decently loaded up I take them to a merchant and sell all my wares. A waste of in game time? Lol probably, but it’s how I get enough coin to be able to buy any fancy armor/potions/weapons etc that I want to. But for a writer that could be a fun way to explore relationships, especially if you just made it two characters running that errand. Maybe the party finds a horse which you load up with your goods and then you could include any of the companions. I think that could also possibly be a cool way to frame the story. Like, every few chapters there’s a shorter one that’s just a long conversation while your characters make these trips. It could be your main ship. Or a side ship that brings some levity to break up the battles. It could always be the same two characters, or it could be Tav with a different character every time. Maybe they’re never from your main characters’ perspective. Maybe Scratch tags along and they’re written from his perspective.  You can track relationships, passage of time or distance they’ve trekked. The first few trips are to the Emerald Grove. One is from the camp by the lake, but the others are from the camp under the Blighted Village, and on those trips you have to watch out for rogue goblin patrols. Then suddenly they're walking through the endless night of the Shadow Cursed Lands, trying hard to keep each other’s spirits up. Karlach tells you all the stories she heard about Jaheira when she was younger. You vent to each other about camp struggles. Gale refuses to be convinced he doesn’t need to sacrifice himself. Astarion has been pensive and secretive since he learned his scars are in Infernal. Shadowheart is the only one not struggling with the curse and is determined to become a Dark Justiciar… When they reach Act 3/ Baldur’s Gate, one trip bumps them into an old friend of Karlach’s, and on another you stumble upon the Society of Brilliance.

And there’s obviously a wealth of story beats, moments, dialogues that you can pull right from the game (like I have done a lot here). Probably almost all fic I’ve read has done this, which I think is fun, and smart! You still get to write/choose how you get your story there. 

What do you guys think?

[folliesandfolderols]

Writing prompts days 101-104

From this prompt list. If you’ve read this far, I’m not sure you need any explanation, but the short version is I hadn’t written any fiction since 2019, I set a goal to write at least 150 words/day in 2024, and this list was my way to restart. Also I abruptly decided on day 2 I would write an entire Tim/Damian story connecting all the prompts, because I am Good at Judging My Limits. /sarcasm Anyway, I finished the rough draft a while ago and am now unlocking the old entries as I edit.

Read from the beginning here, or on ao3 here.

Days 96-100 here

***

11. “I’ll make you feel good, I promise. Just trust me.”

34. “Not so fast, bun.”

70. “I-I promise I’ll be good.”

78. “Let me ride you.”

101. “Lift your hips up for me.”

103. “Look at you, coming undone before I’ve even started touching you.”

106. “Sweetheart, you’re so responsive to my touch.”

107. “I think you’d look even better under me.”

120. “You only get to watch.” “B-but—” “No buts, sweetheart.”

***

They dropped off their passengers, Cass, and Stephanie where Jason was waiting and practically flew to Leslie Thompkins. On the way, Tim texted Katarina to get to a safehouse Damian had previously set up for her. After that, he called Dick and asked him to go to Metropolis and move her. Obviously she had been suspected of passing along information to the wrong people. 

That call turned into him persuading Dick to take care of Katarina and get some rest before coming to Gotham to check on Damian. Dick finally agreed, but it was a close run thing.

The new Redbird, though it was substantially more outfitted than the original, wasn't really made for people suffering bullet wounds to stretch out comfortably. Damian remained silent for the trip. Whenever Tim glanced over to check on him, he had one hand over the wound in his shoulder, adding his own strength to the pressure dressing they'd hastily applied in the field. His skin had turned chalky gray.

"Almost there, Dami," Tim said each time.

Damian kept his eyes closed and didn't respond.

Leslie had obviously been warned by the others, waiting at the back entry to her clinic and resigned about it. Tim had stopped taking it personally a long time ago, but he still felt a pang when she leveled a tired glance at him and sighed. "He's practically a baby. Isn't dying once enough for you people?"

I hope so, Tim thought but didn't say, as she helped Damian limp to the exam room.

"I was never a baby," he heard Damian tell her before the door swung shut. Tim tried not to remember all the ways that could be true.

He stretched out in the driver's seat and let everyone know they'd arrived. Jason checked in from the immigrant legal advocacy group he'd woken up. They were working on temporary shelter for the people brought to their doorstep while Cass and Stephanie worked on meeting their even more immediate needs in the interim.

After an hour, Leslie texted him to come get Damian. He met her at the door. Damian blinked at him owlishly, domino gone. His bloodstained costume hung in tatters around his torso, most of his skin above the waist bared.

"Painkillers?" Tim asked, wrapping Damian’s undamaged arm around his shoulders.

"He's on Vicodin and antibiotics." Leslie handed him two prescription bottles. "Follow the instructions exactly. Being a hero doesn't free you from the possibility of addiction. He needed blood. Make sure he takes iron, too. I know you're all intimately familiar with wound care so I won't bore you with further info, but that bullet came damn close to the brachial artery and it could've been horrific. Absolutely no vigilante activities until six weeks from now."

"Got it. Thank you, doctor." Tim hesitated. "Does it help to know he got this because he saved a couple of women from being trafficked?"

Her face shifted into a sadness that impressed deeper lines around her eyes and mouth. "Maybe a little."

Damian fell asleep almost immediately. Tim drove to the cave at a careful speed, doing his best to avoid the potholes and road hazards that the car's sports suspension exacerbated. He parked and got out to see Bruce looming in wait, still in full costume except the cowl.

"Don't," he warned, shutting his door gently in hopes of letting Damian sleep through whatever recriminations were about to come his way.

Bruce, of course, ignored him. "Your information was faulty and you didn't catch that fact?"

Okay, they must be doing this right here and now, then. Tim crossed his arms and fixed Bruce with a steady gaze. "It came from a trusted source who didn't know she'd been burned. Her information’s been invaluable to our progress."

Bruce nodded. "So you failed to protect her and you failed to prioritize the civilians' well-being."

"We did lose five of them," Tim admitted. "We had no way of knowing that Falcone had decided to set his own men against his dirty cops."

"You went in with inadequate recon and nearly got forty innocent people killed."

"Forty-five." Bruce's head tilted in reluctant inquiry, and Tim clarified. "Forty-five, counting our team."

“Completely unacceptable.” Bruce swooshed his cape dramatically as he turned on his heel, striding back toward the Batcomputer. “You all acted in an irresponsible and reckless manner tonight. This is what comes of partnering with Hood unnecessarily.”

“This was Jason’s case to begin with!” Tim protested, a flush of real anger making its way up the back of his neck. “And if you listened to the comms recordings you would know he tried to tell me we should call it before it all went sideways.”

“And then you allowed yourself to be baited by Damian into continuing in spite of it.” Bruce sat in his chair, back pointedly toward Tim.

Tim dug his fingers into his thighs and prayed to a God he didn't believe in for the wherewithal not to commit murder tonight. “Damian didn't bait me. I'm glad you brought him up, though. In case you care, he's recovering from a gunshot wound in the passenger seat here and could really use his bed.”

“A gunshot wound he wouldn't have incurred if not for perpetuating the same foolhardy behavior he evidences far too often in the field. He’s benched until further notice.”

A bark of incredulous laughter escaped Tim’s mouth before he could swallow it down. “Bruce, hello, do you know what year this is? Damian is an adult. You can't bench him without forcing the rest of us to take sides that I don't think you want to gamble on being in your favor. And if you wanna call what he did foolhardy, fine. It was also fucking courageous and saved two women from exploitation. Damian took a risk and decided his body was worth sacrificing for their safety, which is precisely what you've trained all of us to do as easily as breathing. If anything, tonight proved that he's got his priorities exactly where Dick hoped they’d end up, back when he first gave him Robin. In other words, your first Robin succeeded in making your last Robin a real hero. I'd tell you that you should be proud but honestly I don't care if you are right now. I need to get your son to bed.”

Bruce's only response was, "Hn."

Tim rolled his eyes, grateful they were still hidden, and walked around to open Damian's door. To his disappointment, Damian's eyes were open, tracking his movements. His face had gone expressionless, a decent indicator that he'd heard the entire conversation.

"Hey." Tim kept his tone soft and his movements slow. "Let's get you upstairs."

Damian nodded, gaze riveted to Tim's face like it was his only point of reference.

Together, they hobbled to the elevator, then up the stairs again to the bedrooms. Damian stayed silent except for an occasional grunt of pain, but by the time Tim leaned him against the hallway wall and swung open his bedroom door, sweat stood out in a fine sheen across his face.

"I cannot get into bed while I'm this filthy," Damian protested when Tim tried to direct him toward the mattress.

Tim peeled off his domino to better meet his gaze, wincing at the pull on his skin. "You can't shower, either." Damian swayed in place, jaw set in the way that meant Tim wouldn't be able to talk him out of it. Tim sighed. "Okay. Let me help you to the bathroom and you can at least clean up with a washcloth and some water in the sink. Sound okay?"

"It's acceptable." Damian leaned into Tim's side heavily enough to make him widen his stance.

Tim helped Damian get out of what was left of his clothes, then sat him on a towel spread across the toilet lid. He ran warm water and soap into the plugged sink while he rummaged under the sink for chlorhexidine.

"Ha! Found it." Tim brandished the bottle in triumph, then faltered. Damian's look was so intense he felt it like a physical pressure against his skin. "What is it?"

"I heard you speaking to Father when we parked in the Cave." Damian swallowed, nausea shadowing his face for a brief moment. "Your defense was . . . unexpected."

Tim huffed and shut the taps off. "Why unexpected? Bruce was being an ass. I know it's because he was scared and angry about you getting hurt, but that doesn't give him permission to talk that way about you."

"Perhaps I deserve his disapprobation." Damian accepted the dampened washcloth Tim handed him and began to clean up.

"You did the right thing. I'm impressed by you."

The words came out of his mouth so easily that for a second, he couldn't understand why Damian faltered in his movements and turned red. Then the reality hit him and he spun around to face the doorway to hide his face, yanking a drawer open as if that had always been his purpose. "Just gonna grab a cotton ball to clean the skin near the wound that isn't bandaged."

Damian's voice sounded strangled. "Very well."

Once clean, Damian consented to be dressed in pajama pants and helped into the bed. The frame was high enough that even his long legs needed to hop a little to sit on the mattress. He winced as he scooted across the sheets.

Tim fussed with the pillows, piling them to lessen Damian's chances of rolling over on the hurt shoulder in his sleep, and to keep the wound elevated above his heart. The cats started warbling in protest outside the closed door halfway through the process, so he let them in. Alfred chirped at him till Tim lifted him up to the mattress, but Pennyworth and Kent leapt up to press comfortingly against Damian’s shins.

"There," Tim said once they and the pillows lay in the right configuration. "That's decent. Can I get you anything else before I leave?"

Damian looked at him askance. "What do you mean, 'leave?'"

Tim frowned, confused. "I have work so I need to get to sleep? Plus you need rest so I wanted to clear out and let you get it."

"Ah." Damian lifted his chin, expression once again remote. "You may leave. If I require anything else I'll notify Father."

Tim nodded. Damian didn't need to know he'd be spending the night in his old bedroom on the opposite end of the hallway. Just in case.

Before he got halfway to the door, Damian's irritated words stopped him in his tracks. "What makes you think I need you to 'clear out' in order to rest? I have been trained since toddlerhood to obtain sleep under the most challenging of circumstances. Your presence couldn't possibly undo my abilities."

Tim started to reply, paused, and then jerked his head back in realization. Pivoting back to face Damian, he asked, "Dami?"

Damian scowled at him, but his fingers plucked at the gold thread of his bedspread. "What is it?"

"Would you like me to stay here with you?" Damian swallowed, and Tim thought, too late, I should've phrased it in a way that let him save face.

Damian surprised him again, though. He dropped his gaze and said, "It would be a prudent decision, considering I am recovering from a gunshot wound and the subsequent blood loss."

"Okay." Tim stepped toward him, then back again. "I just need to run to my old room to get some stuff. I'll be right back."

He dashed down the hallway, snatched up his spare toothbrush and some pajamas, and ran back to Damian's room again. Damian was asleep by the time he closed the door behind him again. His eyes slitted open like his cats’ when Tim started walking toward the bathroom.

"Go back to sleep," Tim whispered. "I'll join you as soon as I'm clean."

He took one of the fastest showers of his life. Something that lived adjacent to that grabby thing in his psyche preened in satisfaction when he stepped out of the water smelling like Damian's bath gel and shampoo. Once he dressed and brushed his teeth, Tim padded out of the bathroom and toward the bed once more. Fresh with the temporary alertness of his shower, he had to resist the urge to go lift the cover on the easel and check out Damian’s latest painting. 

Damian woke as he watched and inched backwards so Tim could join him, ignoring Alfred’s trill of protest. One hand reached across the mattress, grasping at the sheet like he was trying to grab Tim but couldn’t quite reach him. Tim’s chest immediately turned to goo at the gesture.

“Don’t worry, Dami, I’m here.” He lifted the blankets and joined Damian, lying on his back.

Moving with caution, Damian edged closer until he could rest his head on Tim’s outstretched arm. Almost instantly, all his muscles relaxed into Tim’s side. Tim smiled as his head grew heavy where it lay on Tim’s bicep.

“There you go.” He kissed the top of Damian’s head and caressed his hair with his free hand. “Get some sleep, sweetheart.”

***

The next night, Tim dropped in to check on Damian in person, not trusting either Dick’s or Bruce’s assessment of his well-being. Sure enough, he found Damian flushed with fever and striding around the library at full speed, examining the shelves.

“Damian.” Tim grabbed the elbow of his unhurt arm and stopped him in his tracks. “You're obviously fighting off an infection. What's so important that it can't wait for you to rest?”

A muscle in Damian’s jaw spasmed with frustration. “I can’t find a copy of Al-Kunūz al-fannīyah fī al-rumūz al-Maymūnīyah in the original Arabic. I know it used to be here and now it's disappeared and I know it must be Todd who took it if it’s gone but he denies it and I—”

“Hey, hey.” Tim slid his hand up to squeeze the back of Damian’s neck. Damian heaved a gusty sigh and hung his head, eyes closing in defeat. “It’s okay. Let me help you. Here, sit down and I'll look, all right?”

Damian collapsed into a suede wingback chair, confirming beyond any doubt how wretched he was feeling. The cats promptly swarmed into his lap, complaining vocally about having been deprived of their preferred seating for so long.

Tim looked through the shelves in the right section and surrounding areas carefully, but he didn't see the title. They all were fanatical about returning the books to their proper places thanks to Alfred’s stringent training, so he didn't think it could be anywhere else.  “You’re right. It's not here. I'm ordering a copy online.” He pulled out his phone and did just that, after looking through a couple of international book dealers. 

“Guess what I did find, though?” He waggled a copy of Ghabat al-haqq in Damian’s direction. Damian gave an impatient “tt” and Tim smiled. “I know. But at least it's the same author. How about you sit there and I read to you?”

“Very well,” Damian allowed, with more grace than Tim had expected. 

Tim sat on the loveseat opposite him and began to read. At the end of the first page, he glanced up to find Damian sitting bolt upright, gazing at him in what looked like shock.

“What is it?” Tim looked down at the flowing script, rereading quickly. “Did I butcher the pronunciation of something? I'm not super good at Arabic yet and I've mainly learned fus’ha, so it's probably annoying for me to read this. Sorry.”

“No, I—” Damian closed his mouth, swallowed, and continued carefully, “I hadn't realized you spoke it so fluently. Your pronunciation is adequate.” A pause, then, as reluctantly as if Tim held him at gunpoint: “I enjoy listening to you read.”

“Oh!” The tops of Tim’s ears blazed with heat. “I, uh—should I keep going?”

Damian nodded, relaxing into the depths of his chair. “Yes.”

By the time Tim got to the fifth page Damian’s eyes drifted shut, and he only read four more pages before the first soft snore interrupted him.

A text from Cassandra vibrated his phone. How's Damian?

Tim shook his head. How had she known he'd be with Damian? He typed, he's grouchy feverish etc all the things u wd expect 

Recovering though?

Tim snapped a picture of Damian drowsing and sent it with promise u will delete

She sent back a heart and I promise. Okay if I tell Stephanie what you told me?

Tim tapped his phone against his chin, considering, then shrugged. sure

He fell asleep on the loveseat, and by the time they both woke up it made more sense to spend the night again.

The following night Bruce and Tim were on patrol, so it proved convenient to return Redbird to the Cave and see if Damian was asleep yet. He was, but he blinked awake as soon as Tim approached his bed.

“How're you doing?” Tim whispered.

Damian gave Tim an unguarded smile that warmed him like firelight. “Better now you are here.”

Well, if Tim had been looking for proof he'd taken his Vicodin, that response would have provided it. He'd planned on going back to the Nest, but Damian’s words made him waver. “I could stay,” he offered, heart in his throat.

Damian said nothing, but moved to leave one side of the mattress available and pulled the covers back. Tim leaned over and kissed his forehead. “I'll shower and join you.”

While he waited for the water to run hot, a text came through from a number he didn't recognize. How's the baby bat?

Jason’s latest burner, then. When had the others decided he was the Damian news source? Though, considering how taciturn both Bruce and Damian could be, he guessed it was a logical conclusion. If they knew he and Damian were together, anyway. 

ok, he replied. gonna spend the night at the manor keep an eye on him

Jason texted back, Make sure that’s all you keep on him, Timmers. 🚫🍆💦🍆🙅‍♂️

Tim rolled his eyes and didn't bother with an answer. The most Damian was up for right now was the occasional kiss, and even then he sometimes looked a little dizzy afterward.

The third night, Dick texted him as he was driving home. hey Tim can you check on Dami tonight? I know it's out of your way and I'm sorry but I don't trust him or Bruce when it comes to taking care of himself and I know he's been working full days at the office. I'd do it myself but I've got things I need to take care of closer to home like our mutual friend.

So Katarina needed help with something. Considering they'd upended her whole life again, Tim didn't begrudge her Dick’s presence. yeah sure no problem i was going to call him but i can go by

A long pause. Tim waited to see what the response would be. He had a theory that Damian couldn't hide much from Dick, or at least not for long.

Finally, Dick texted back, Thanks! I really appreciate it. So clearly with the lack of follow up questions, he suspected something was going on. Tim considered just telling him but rejected it when a wave of nausea splashed through his gut. Damian could handle that conversation when he felt ready.

By the fourth night, Tim gave in and packed a bag to supplement what supplies he still had at the Manor. He hadn’t realized how empty the house was without Alfred to make it a home. Something about Damian only having Bruce’s accusing terseness for company rubbed him the wrong way.

“Hey,” he greeted Damian as he entered the room.

Damian, currently balancing a sketchbook on Pennyworth’s back while he lounged in an armchair, set down his pencil and gave him a guarded nod, eyes fixed on the suitcase in Tim’s hand. “Hello.”

Tim laid the suitcase on the bed, opened it, and crossed to the walk-in closet. “Did you already have dinner?” he called over his shoulder as he pushed Damian’s clothes over to clear some space for his own.

“I haven't, no. You?”

Tim emerged clutching a half-dozen hangers. “Nope. Order in or cereal?”

Damian scoffed. “None of us can expect to operate without more protein than that. The new vegan place near the airport has an acceptable range of options. I'll put in an order now.”

Tim started buttoning his shirts’ collars around the hangers. “Sounds good. Get me something fried, please.”

“As you wish.” Damian began typing on his phone while walking away.

When Tim carried his toiletries to the bathroom, it was to find Damian’s belongings mysteriously relocated to a single side of the sink.

On the eleventh morning, Tim awoke groggy, still recovering from the work week and Friday night patrol, which always had an extra flair in Gotham. The cats were gone for once, having deserted the room when Tim opened the door to come to bed. Damian curled around him, the sleeping big spoon, and his morning wood pressed against Tim’s ass. Tim couldn’t stop himself from rolling his hips back to return the pressure. His hand was no substitute for sex with Damian, but he hadn’t wanted to ask when the other was clearly not feeling up to par. 

Damian gave a sleepy groan. His grip on Tim’s arm tightened as he thrust against him���and then loosened again with a sharp inhale. He’d hurt himself with the unwary movement.

Tim rolled over with caution to face him. “Good morning.”

Damian’s face was pale, but the slight smile he offered carried genuine warmth. “Good morning.”

Tim smiled back. “This,” he dropped one hand to palm Damian’s erection through his shorts, “seems hopeful.”

Damian’s eyelids fluttered in response to the caress. “Sleeping with you without sex as a component is all very well, but less satisfactory since I’ve been feeling better.” He made to reach for Tim but thoughtlessly moved the hurt arm and froze.

“Looks like most of that blood transfusion isn’t making it to your brain,” Tim teased, scooting closer. “Here, let me take care of you. Roll over onto your back, on the pillows so you’re propped up. Lift your hips up for me.”

Damian obeyed, angling his hips to allow Tim to pull off his shorts and underwear. Once naked, he reached for Tim once more, this time with more caution, but Tim caught his wrist with gentle fingers. “Not so fast. You only get to watch.”

Damian’s eyebrows converged in consternation. “But—”

“No buts, Dami. I’ll make you feel good, I promise. Just trust me.” Tim ran his fingertips up Damian’s length as he spoke, watching with fascination as it twitched beneath them, leaking a few drops of precome. Damian flinched and whimpered, already panting. “You’re so responsive to my touch. Look at you, coming undone before I’ve even started touching you.” He ducked, sucking at just the tip, lapping into the slit as he stroked the rest with a loose grip. Pulling off, he added, “It’s really fucking hot.”

He stood to strip in front of Damian’s avid gaze. Before he could ask, Damian said, “I’ve got lube in the nightstand drawer, there. Condoms too.”

Tim got the lube and a condom out and climbed back on the bed, kneeling between Damian’s outstretched legs. He poured the lube into his palm. “I’m gonna get myself ready for you.” He started with one finger just to tease, throwing his head back and groaning as it breached his entrance. “Oh fuck. It feels so good, Dami. I’ve missed having you inside me.”

Damian grabbed the sheets beside him as if he needed an anchor. His voice came out cracked. “I’ve missed—" He cleared his throat. “I’ve missed being there.”

Tim dropped his gaze to fix him with a lazy smile, adding another finger at the same time. “Yeah? You been getting off without me? Tell me more.”

But Damian shook his head, eyes tracking every movement of Tim’s, a hunter deprived of the opportunity to capture. “I haven’t felt well enough to follow through till this morning.”

Tim had to pause to lean on his clean hand and kiss him on the mouth. He just . . . had to. One kiss turned into another, and another, until he shuffled his knees beneath him again and kept kissing Damian while he continued opening himself up. It wasn’t easy, but he managed. Amazing how motivational sheer horniness could be.

Damian tore his mouth free and tried to move it to Tim’s chin, but Tim jerked back and put his free hand on Damian’s chest to hold him down. “I told you no,” he said, all stern rebuke, then grabbed the lube bottle to pour more on his fingers. “Be good or you won't get what you want.”

Damian let his head fall back, suitably cowed. “I–I promise I’ll be good.”

Tim had to stop moving and close his eyes because his entire body caught on fire. Or, at least, he was pretty sure it had, but he couldn’t look because that would involve opening his eyes and seeing Damian choosing to obey him and he might die. Or come. Whatever.

A few deep breaths later and he felt safe to look again, though he avoided Damian’s face and instead focused on his cock. “Okay, I’m gonna just—" He ripped open the condom and slid it on while Damian quivered, aborted movements just barely checked.

“Drake,” he whined. “This is unfair.”

Tim couldn’t resist kissing his forehead, and that meant he also couldn’t resist kissing down to one damp temple, then over to the other, then his mouth again. Damian parted his lips at the first glancing touch like he was starved for the taste of him. Tim sighed into the kiss and let him suck on his tongue.

He pulled back and kissed the tip of Damian’s nose after a minute. “Frustration looks good on you.” He swung one leg over Damian’s lap, straddling him and reaching back to take his cock in hand. “I think you look even better under me. Let me ride you.”

Damian nodded, still watching him with that predatory focus.

Tim sank down, inch by inch, always a little surprised at the amount of stretch Damian’s hardness required. He had to remind himself to keep breathing as his body opened up. At last, his ass rested flush with Damian’s hips. 

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, rocking in place just to enjoy feeling this full. 

Damian moaned in response. His head lolled back against the dark oaken headboard. His hands had gone limp and his shoulders relaxed. Only the rapid rise and fall of his chest gave away his arousal.

The power he’d surrendered set Tim alight with satisfaction. “Fuck, Damian, you’re so good.” Damian whined again, eyelids heavy with lust. “Look at you, holding so still for me just because I told you to.” He leaned his head onto Damian’s unhurt shoulder, struggling for control. “Can’t believe you let me do this,” he mumbled into the soft warmth at the crook of Damian’s neck.

Damian turned his head and nuzzled him. “You’ll reward me, won’t you?”

The warm affection in his tone turned Tim’s bones to liquid. “Of course I will, sweetheart,” he managed to reply. “You’ve earned it.”

He leaned back onto his hands and started swiveling his hips, rather than lifting up and down in a motion that would probably jar Damian’s wound. Damian groaned in response, but stayed stock-still while Tim did all the work.

He trusts me so much, Tim suddenly realized, and the revelation hit him in his brain, heart, and dick, too many feelings to process all at once. He had to jolt forward and hide his face in Damian’s neck again. 

The sudden movement seemed to take Damian by surprise; he gave a shout like he’d been punched in the gut and his cock throbbed with his orgasm. Tim couldn’t wait anymore and grasped his own erection, rutting against Damian’s abs while he fucked into his fist until he came all over Damian’s belly.

They breathed against each other for a timeless space, heedless of the mess between them. At last, though, Tim had to lift himself free before the condom couldn’t do its job anymore. He took care of it, then went to the bathroom to get a warm washcloth and a towel so he could clean up Damian too.

“Mm,” Damian said, watching Tim dry off his groin. “Can we go back to sleep again?”

Tim hesitated, keeping his gaze glued to his task. He should do more casework, find out where Falcone had gone to ground, finish setting up a new identity for Katarina, check in again on the people they’d freed. But if he got up and started doing all that, Damian would feel obligated to do the same, and he really needed his rest to fully recover.

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

He took the washcloth back to the bathroom and rinsed it out, then returned to cuddle up into Damian’s side. The world wouldn’t go to hell if they rested for another hour. Probably.

days 105-108 here

[scifimagpie]

Writeblr Q&A

So, both @palebdot and @dyrewrites were kind enough to tag me, and I finally had a minute to answer this!

1) What motivates you to write?

It's more of a compulsion, really. Things get stuck in my head; characters stroll in and start saying stuff, or going through scenes, and then I get that electric buzz that makes me absolutely have to scramble for either my notebook or my laptop.

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

From a recently completed work, the Prairie Weather trilogy, which I want to shop around and see if I can get published traditionally:

Before him gaped the yawning gulf of his own fuckup. It was dizzying. He’d heard of staring into the abyss, and the abyss staring back, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so mortifying.

I tend to be at least a bit more poetic usually, but this line just kicks so hard.

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

Right now, probably Isabella from the Hell Saga - she's just so good-natured, down for anything, and fundamentally kind and hopeful. She really goes through the ringer in book 2, which I'm working on now with my coauthor, though. This is another series we're hoping to go trad on, so cross your fingers for this irrepressible, bisexual Latina and Hispanic counsellor with a strong socialist streak!

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

The first draft can be really fun, but there's something to be said for that second-draft, "all the pieces are in place, now I just have to tweak them" experience. Finishing a book is also a hell of a rush. But that real, fixated feeling of being in the thick of it, often while listening to a playlist I've made specially for the project - that's definitely the good stuff, too.

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Characters, dialogue, worldbuilding, and description - in no particular order. I'm really good at making up little people, making them friends and lovers, and then putting 'em through the wringer.

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

The community and enthusiasm are really winning me over, and I've been pleasantly surprised by the relative skill of my friends, too!

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

My Youtube playlists are absolutely required tools for my writing, a lot of the time. Sometimes I can write without them, but boy do they help. Some of them are also related to my D&D campaigns, but I'd like to think all of them are pretty well-curated.

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

The Underlighters series' underground city setting is probably one of the coolest things I've ever come up with. I was somewhat inspired by The City of Ember, but that book frustrated me so much that I vowed to write a much better version. Hopefully, I did. I tried to make it reasonably cohesive and somewhat scientifically justifiable.

However, I always tell a story about Underlighters - when I was trying to figure out the pollination situation for crops, I was doing research at about 2 in the morning one day on various pollinators and getting nowhere. Can bees live underground??? Some bees and wasps nest in the dirt, but that's not necessarily helpful. What about solitary bees and pollinators?

Startling my then-boyfriend (now husband) from his game, I threw my arms in the air and yelled, "Fuck it - cave bees!"

And so I decided that underground apiculture was an acceptable solution.

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Try some different strategies and don't be afraid to rotate between projects. Try writing in point form, using different software, doing voice dictation - it can take a long time to figure out the exact right hacks to make your story flow.

10) Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters:

Well, that's easy!

@pinkchaosart @nattheauthor and the chaps above have been wonderful; also tagging (in no particular order): @ventela1 @omokers @nethilia @whalleyrulz @chicorybones @zillanovikov @sabotabby @nic0thecreat0r @chiefwritesbook @eldritch-selachii @holdmyteaplease @koala2all

[teriwrites]

Preptober Vol. 1

AKA in which Teri actually talks about writing

Forgive the rambling, it's been a minute since I've actually sat down to write something for tumblr.

It’s that time of year again, when leaves are changing and Spooky Season is in full swing and I realize I need to get myself into shape for NaNoWriMo next month.

This year feels a little different, and I think I've reached a crossroads with my relationship to NaNo. It's year 13 for me, which means officially over half the Novembers of my life will have been spent dedicated to writing stories. And while I absolutely love the tradition, I think I've started looking at it less as a year-by-year event and more how it fits into my life long-term.

Just about every year, I've gone about NaNo in a very traditional way: come up with a story idea, outline it and prep in October, and then write 50K+ words towards that idea in November. And I love doing that, I think I could continue writing that way for a long time.

But where I'm at with my writing, I have less free time and energy to dedicate to it outside of November, so at this point, I'm sitting on a pile of WIPs that I'd love to continue. But with NaNo typically comes an influx of new ideas, and it's all getting a little too crowded in my head to think I can actually hold onto all of them.

This is a very rambley way of saying that I think I need to start looking at NaNo a little differently. Writing new stories every November is fun, but it's a little less exciting now that I've done it 12 times over than when I was just starting out. It's something that's comfortable, I could continue it, but NaNo's role was always to push me to take steps in my writing that I never had the discipline to do myself. And while that used to mean actually plotting and putting words down for ideas that floated around in my head, now I think I'd be better served by using the structure of it to move myself forwards in stories I already have written towards.

All of this to say that I'm stuck between pushing myself to write the second draft of Beyond Alder Creek during November (which will mean a nasty fight against my inner editor but at least will finally be forcing me to work on it) or adding more to my first draft of The Lies in the Legend.

There's also a chance I'll cave and work on a new idea that's been bouncing around my brain for a month or two, but I'm hoping I can hold off on it this year.

I guess we'll see! But I really do need to make a decision soon, either option is going to take a decent amount of prep time lol

tl;dr Teri decides to be a NaNo Rebel and has a Lot of thoughts about it

[xviruserrorx]

Title: "The Rain Before The Rainbow"

Chapter 7/7: "If I'd Stay Up With You At Night, Had I'd Known How to Save A Life"

(Prev Chap-Edited) (Next Chap-Edited) • (Prev Chap-Non Edited) • (Edited Chapter) • (Story Masterlist)

This fic was originally written around late 2019-early 2020 ish, but was abandoned for reasons and now I'm gonna re-write it to but I have a no-delete rule so I'm posting all the original drafts here for anyone who still wants to see them. "But Virus these are terribly written" you may say and, yeah I know, this story was one of the first things I had written after a 5-6 year writing hiatus... But here they are terrible Grammer and all!

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy (Tv & Comics)

Relationship(s): Five | The Boy & Everyone

Character(s): Five | The Boy, Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves, Vanya | Viktor Hargreeves, OC - Ymir Cyprus

Important Tag(s): Alternative Universe - No Sparrow Academy, Comic Book Elements, Time Traveling, Five-Centric

Rating: Teen and Up

Warning(s): Major Character Death, Cannon Character Death

Word Count: 3,873/41,006

The Hargreeves return from 1963 and find they have averted the initial Apocalypse. The siblings return to life as it once was but now together and not expecting impending doom. Five begins to adjust to life with his siblings how it used to be but knows something is missing. By something, he means someone. What happens when Five decides to jump back in time and try to save Ben. Is he successful? Or will he face the consequences of his actions?

"The End To The Beginning, The Beginning To The End" - Tumblr | Ao3

->Next: N/A

Continue reading below or read the edited version on Ao3

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Klaus/Diego(POV)

A month 

31 days

And Five still hadn't came back  

Everyone blamed themselves for what had happened.

Especially himself, he had lied to the others and to Five about Ben, yet he still hadn't come forth to everyone. Diego never brought the topic up to him again knowing what had happened that night with both brother's cuddled up in one another.

"You know this would be the last thing he would want you to be doing Klaus," Ben hovered over him as he threw back what might've been his 9th shot of whiskey.

"Shut up, Ben," He tried pulling his coat further over his head to block out his ghost brother but with no prevail. He finally caved in to talking to his brother he had been trying to ignore the whole day

"Come on Klaus, 3 weeks down the drain everyone's worried about Five but you can't stay intoxicated until he comes back." 

"Watch me," his words were beginning to slur as he tried to order another shot. Klaus raised the shot glass and signaled to the bartender as he slammed the glass back on the bar, black lipstick smeared where he had drank from.

"No can do Klaus, that was your last call, cut off time already so you get water," the bartender knew him personally much like his friend whom was a paramedic.

"Is it at least flavored water," he asked as the glass was placed in front of him.

"I can make you a non-alcoholic drink if you prefer that to water," he was leaning against the counter talking to Klaus. It was a slow night and already 1am. 

"When do I do non-alcoholic, Matt?" Klaus joked as he laid his head down on his arms.

Matt shook his head at Klaus, "is someone coming to pick you up? Brother, sister, girlfriend,  boyfriend if you have one yet." 

"He's right Klaus you can't walk home all fucked up like that, at least let him call Diego for you," Ben's voice was laced with desperation to his older brother.

"No one's coming, just me, Myself, and I tonight, Matty," Klaus was given a questioning glance from the bartender as he took a drink of his water.

"You sure, I practically have your brother's number memorized. I can call him for you." Klaus frantically shook his head, "he's gonna be mad at me." Words he would never say slipped out due to his nine plus whiskey shots he drank minutes ago.

"Klaus, Di is never mad at you as long as he knows you're safe," Ben's words passed right over Klaus as the séance ignored him.

"He usually seems almost relieved whenever he walks in here to take you home, seems like a good big brother." 

Klaus smiled to himself, Diego was a good brother he couldn't deny that. But for him he never considered himself a good brother in return. More often than not he felt more like a failure compared to everyone or a bother than an actual brother. He was always just the druggie or junkie brother who could see the dead.

"He is, just I never told anyone I was going out so they're probably all frantically looking for me like ants when they lose their line." Matt laughed at Klaus' comparison for his siblings.

"Well, like I said I know his number I can always call him up for you, I don't mind." 

Klaus gasped, "Matty do you like my brother?" The bartender chuckled and looked at Klaus, "Cute, but not my type." He finished polishing a glass before looking at his watch. 

"You think my big brother wouldn't bottom for you," Klaus chuckled as Matt's eyes widened.

"The way he's dressed, Definitely not… are you implying something Klaus?" 

Klaus shrugged his shoulders as he stood from the bar stool, "I mean my little sister is possibly bi, kinda always thought at least one of the other 5 were, you know…. too." 

"Well I think you and me can both agree your brother doesn't look like the one to hook up with someone that looks like me nor you."

Klaus started moving away from the bar slowly, his strides wobbly and staggered, "You never know Matty old pal." He pushed open the bar door slipping out into the dark night.

"What are you gonna do… Walk home Klaus!? It's almost 2 in the morning and you're drunk out of your mind." Klaus waved his hand to shoot Ben away as he staggered down the sidewalk.

The alcohol already was hitting his system as he made his way to the familiar place he spent most of his adult life. A guy about his height stood at the end of the end of the dark alleyway as he made his way over to the familiar guy.

Klaus dug in his coat pocket and waved a wad of cash in front of the guy while the man pulled out a small bag filled with pills that his body was craving. They both exchanged items as Klaus quickly made his way out of the alleyway and walked down towards a busser area. 

Young women and men alike stood at a designated place. Almost all of them were dressed in clothes similarly to how he was dressed walking up to cars that would stop and pass by. Some climbed in the cars that stopped while others would walk back to their group of people as the car's drove away.

Eye quickly glued to him as he walked past the area. His chest was practically bare with the black lacy see through crop-top he had on along with his tight leather pants and leather heeled boots. His fur coat hung from his shoulders as he brought up his finger to fix his black lipstick, had been drinking not through a straw he knew it was probably smeared in most places.

He took notice of some cars that slowed down as certain windows were rolled down as he paid no attention to them. He wrapped his coat closed and crossed his arms over his chest and walked faster out of the area Klaus knew exactly what it was.

"Hey, love wanna head back to my place?" A man, about his age asked. He was leaning against his opened window with one arm while the other hung over the steering wheel. He Slowly followed in his car while Klaus picked up his pace and walked faster away from the creep.

"Sorry, my body's not for sale tonight." Klaus could hear the clicking of his boots as he reached into his pocket pulling out a lighter and a cigarette. Lighting it he noticed the humming of the engine that belonged to the car no longer sounded like it was a parrot on his shoulder. He succeeded in taking in a puff from the cancer stick before he heard Ben gasp behind him. A hand grabbed his upper arm spinning him back around.

The guy was now in front of him as his car was parked a few feet back, "then what's a cute thing like you doing dressed like this and in this area?" The man moved his hand to grab Klaus' wrist while his other one snaked to his lower back. The cigarette previously in his hand had dropped to the ground as surprise stunned him for a couple seconds.

His eyes roamed Klaus' body as Klaus tried to pull away out of the man's grip with no prevail. He noticed the situation caught the attention of some of the other men and women in the area as they looked over, some watching to see how far it goes.

"I was just passing through and this is how I always dress." His words slurred slightly, enough for the man to realise Klaus was drunk as the hand on his lower back moved slightly south and he was pulled closer to the man. His body was pressed slightly up against the perverts with his face lingering close to Klaus' ear.

"Well I can just give you a ride to where you're going, yeah? That way a pretty sweet boy like you is not in this area anymore and mistaken for something you're not." His words had this hidden white lie behind them and we're spoken with a lightness as if to not scare him away.

Before he could get his drunk, drugged induced body to cooperate he was tugged slightly to the car. He tried to pull away but his body was like jello and not listening to his brain. He heard chatter grow more amongst the group of people, some yelling things while he heard Ben doing the same, unable to physically do anything though. He was tugged closer to the car before he heard heavy fast footsteps near him.

"Hey!" 

'Thank goodness'

"Let go of him." The voice was familiar to Klaus.

A arm caught his weight as the man pushed him away scurrying to his car before driving away. He felt the presence of a taller man as the hand holding him up gingerly wrapped onto his petite frame. Klaus turned his head towards the hand that was still gripping onto him as he moved his gaze up to a familiar face.

"Matt….?" 

The 6'3 bartender in front of Klaus pulled him gently in the direction of his car and slid Klaus into the passenger seat before sliding into the driver's seat. "Are you okay?" He saw his eyes glance over Klaus before moving to start the car up.

"What-Why are you here?" Klaus didn't know why the guy he only saw when he wanted alcohol was here saving him from some creep.

"You know Klaus a 'Thank you' would be in order for him?" Klaus ignored Ben's comment as he continued to look at Matt.

"Because I called your brother to come pick you up…..I didn't realise you ventured off that far in such a short amount of time." Klaus didn't know what to say, he didn't want Diego to come pick him up and be a bother to his brother. Yet in the same way he wanted to go home he also wanted to stay out on the streets where he could obtain all the drugs he wanted. His rested head on the window felt heavier and heavier, probably from the drugs and alcohol in his system but also due to the fact it was 2 in the morning. 

"It's always today…….. did something happen on this date, Klaus?" 

Klaus wanted to close his eyes and pretend the last month maybe few were all just a fever dream. The apocalypse coming twice, spending 3 years in the 60s and forming a cult, vietnam and meeting Dave, then meeting him again only to further insure he would get killed. Five coming back home and then finding out little sweet Vanya had very deadly powers probably more than all of them combined. 

Then Five left again this time no one knew for how long and once again the family was falling apart. Certain siblings acted as glue and once the glue left everything else crumbled and fell to the ground. He looked up to the rearview mirror seeing where Ben was sitting in the middle back seat.

"Yeah, something did...a long time ago." 

~

Diego chucked a file onto his desk startling the rest of the team that were in today. Everyone turned towards him as he ran his hand over his face before talking.

"10-year-boy, went missing 24 hours ago, was last seen at the park downtown by his 19 year old sister…… the case was handed off to us because nearby surveillance cameras caught him leaving with a man in the same grey trench coat and top hat as the 7-year-old girl who went missing four weeks ago in her own front yard." 

He threw the other file in his hand on his desk as he circled around and grabbed another file from the cabinets. His throat felt dry as he began to speak about the next thing.

"A 13-year-old boy that went missing 10 days ago was found this morning by some tourist in the middle of a forest…. The MO is consistent with our guy. He was sexually assulted and mutilated on many parts of his body." 

He put his weight against his desk as all the others started reading through the files. He didn't know how he was getting sleep at night with everything going on. If he could consider one to two hours sufficient sleep.

The sun had set hours ago as only ceiling LED lights and lamps kept the place illuminated. They all had loved ones waiting at their individual homes for them to return home to. 

"Hey, Hargreeves" his head shot up at his last name with Nico waving him over.

"The cap wants you in his office," he gestured over towards the office up against the wall by the far right. He nodded his head as he made his was over to the door, letting himself in and closing it behind him.

"What's up Lupo?" 

"The thing with your brother….have you had any leads on it." Diego took a breath and sent his gaze to the floor.

"Were not sure where he's at exactly, but nothing has drastically changed so we know he hasn't messed with the timeline yet." 

"And that missing persons report you filed on him?" 

Diego shoved his hands into his pockets, "Just a precaution in case anything did happen to him." A moment of silence passed by till Lupo spoke.

"You know Kraken you can take a day off every once and a blue moon, i've known you for sometime now and one thing I learned about you is that you never take a break." 

Diego scoffed, "a break is the last thing I need right now Lupo, what I need is to find this bastard doing all this and get my little brother back home." 

Lupo lit a cigar in his mouth taking a puff out of it, "tell everyone to head home it's getting late, you guys are on this case like a pack of bloodhounds sent to track a sent." 

Diego turned around towards the door with his hand on the doorknob, "If only we were as good as the bloodhounds." Diego stepped through the door letting it fall back into place as he stepped out to the team. 

Moving feet followed by lights flickering off and goodbyes were sent each other's way as they all made it to their individual cars. Diego slid into the drivers seat as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He started the car before taking a glance at the caller ID.

He pulled the phone to his ear, "what's up Allison." 

"Did Klaus tell you anything about him leaving to do something today or where he was going." Allison's voice sounded bothered, almost frantic in a way.

"No why? What happened?" Diego had his hand on the steering wheel waiting for Allisons response.

"He just disappeared a couple hours ago without telling anyone, I thought he had been in his room the whole time but apparently not." 

Diego cursed under his breath as he started to drive to the academy, "by a couple of hours how long do you mean?" 

"I don't know six maybe seven?"

He gripped the steering wheel tighter as he turned the corner, Klaus ...... "I'll be there in a couple minutes. Did you check the rest of the house?" 

He heard Allison talking to somebody then redirected back to him, "Vanya's checking the last of the places right now." 

Diego was worried and frustrated at the same time yet all he could tell them was he was on his way.

----

"So you're just gonna let our little brother be out when we know he could possibly be hurt or other worse things!" Diego brought his hand up running it over his face.

The three eldest siblings were gathered in the living after they had searched the house for Klaus and no one could find him. Vanya was checking last places that she knew he might be which left the three alone with each other.

"Diego we don't even know if he's out doing something or not." Allison tried to argue with Diego as Luther stood beside her.

"Al you know exactly what he is doing right this second, don't play dumb!"

"She has a point, Diego, we're not gonna waste our time searching the city for him." Diego clenched his jaw at Luther's words as Vanya stepped into the room.

"Klaus isn't a waste of time you asshole." He tightened his fist as Vanya interrupted the conversation which Diego was glad she did.

"I still can't find him……. I'm really worried." Diego walked over, hooked his arm around Vanya and pulled her closer to him. He felt her arms wrap around him as he kept his hand on her back.

"Of all day's Luther, I think you'd at least care a bit…..just on this day." Diego's urge to try to knock some sense into the eldest sibling was held back by his sister hugging him.

"It's not that I don't care Diego, we all know what Klaus does!" Diego bit his lip trying to gather his words before speaking.

"What Luther?! What exactly does he do since you apparently know everything despite you hardly caring about him?!" 

"Diego...please don't." He looked down at Vanya as she laid her hand on his arm.

"He goes and gets high off his ass, we all know this Diego." Diego crossed his arms over his chest.

"Yeah and? Do you know about all the times he's OD? Or possibly all the times he's been pushed around in the streets… he actually tries Luther, he's the one that checks himself into rehab not anyone else, he wants help but because he's surrounded by ghosts all the time it permits him from getting clean." 

He moved away from Vanya out of fear of hurting her if he got mad and slightly paced up and down the small area where they were standing in the living room.

"Yes Ben died t-today, why do you think Klaus went out in the first place….when everything with Five happened he kept relapsing because what do you expect! If Five actually did fucking die this time I don't think he would want to know that!" He noticed when his voice slightly cracked when he brought up Ben and Five.

Silence brooded over the room with only the faint echo of Diego's voice still ringing in everyone's ears and the cracking of the wood in the fireplace. Allison moved over and sat in one of the chairs by the fireplace with her hand over her mouth, While Vanya slowly sat down on the couch behind them eyes trained to one spot on the ground. He saw the realisation hit them all that Five could indeed be gone forever.

That afternoon after they had run into his room, he had gone into the station and put in that missing person report. He didn't want to risk something else that happened to Five getting mixed up with them thinking he just time traveled somewhere. Even though they were all guaranteed that he time traveled somewhere, the fact that he was already gone for a month made them all more on edge.

The fear that crept up on him causing his mouth to go dry and his hands to become clammy made him sick to his stomach everytime they found a young boy's body dumped somewhere. The anxiety would leave but the thought of Five still being out somewhere in time or even possibly locked away somewhere would bombard his mind. 

"I'm going out to look for Klaus, It's your guys choice to join me if you want." He walked out of the living room gathering his keys and coat before exiting the Academy.

Something hung in the air that he couldn't quite place his finger on but knew the feeling too well. The inability to take a deep breath, like everything kept moving around him but he was in a standstill. Or exactly the opposite, the world was moving too fast and he couldn't catch up. Lights sped by as well as different establishments. This sparked a feeling Diego hated and wanted to get rid of 

The city quickly became ingrained into his head like a language, every twist and turn felt automatic. Searching the streets for their youngest brother relentlessly tired him out the first day he was gone. The second day felt like he was denying everything and anything. In a way he wished he was still in the same year somewhere where he could be found. Diego wanted to find him and wanted to bring the small boy home. 

He continued to search and look past different bars or clubs of any kind. At this point he didn't know if he was looking for the séance or Five. He hopped down at several places, most being able to say if they had seen his brother and they automatically knew who he was talking about. Others he pulled up a picture of Klaus on his phone and showed bouncers or bartenders. In the end he got a no in return or reference of another bar or club to check.

The shut his car door and slipped into the leather seats pulling his seat belt across his chest. After the 5th bar and the 3rd club he still hadn't the faintest clue of where Klaus was. A part of him wanted to turn back around and go home knowing their brother might return in the morning. But the word 'might' scared him and forced himself to keep driving. 

The ringing of his phone startled him as he started to doze off at the wheel, accidentally swerving into the other lane. He pulled into the nearest rest stop and took his phone looking at the caller ID.

It was someone of not much importance that he didn't bother to spend the ten seconds to put it into his contacts. But enough that he recognized the seven digits that were displayed on his screen.

"Hello?" He answered the phone unsure if the voice on the other end would be familiar or it was his sleep deprived brain telling him that the digits in that order made sense.

"Oh Diego right? It's Matt the bartender from the bar your little brother comes to." 

Everything quickly clicks in his head as he switches his turn signal on, pulling out of where he stopped momentarily and into the turning lane.

"Yeah, Is he there?" Please let him be there.

"Not at the moment, he left a minute or two ago. But I can go grab him before he wanders too far or gets hurt." Even though this was just some bartender he could hear the slight worry in his tone for Klaus.

"Thank you, I'll be right there." The line ended abruptly on both ends but he didn't think about it, only trying to remember the way to the bar his brother frequented so very often.

[cdelphiki]

I'm very curious to know whether the present Batfamily noticed that Jason has gone missing? I just fonished your time travelling fic the Time Before and I have so many questions! Is that something you'd even want to focus on? Mayby little Jay should stay in the past? Third time is the charm right???? But worried Bruce is soo juicy! Maybe the past and present Bruce can have an adoption war? I cant decide how I'd like this story to go haha

Ahhhhh I really need to finish that story. I actually know the answer to everything, since I had the whole thingy planned out before I started (or at least I knew the end game and had the final scene already drafted out)

I am going to happily answer everything, but I"ll put it under a break because its SPOILERS FOR THE TIME BEFORE!!!!! for chapters that will come out I have no idea how long from now. I hope soon, but I don't see any real time on my schedule for at least the next month. 😭

Seriously, this is major Spoilers don't look if you hate spoilers.

So Jason staying in the past would be super interesting just in him getting to have a second go at it and this time not die, etc, but I feel like I'd have to have him slowly lose his memory, idk. I just feel it would be weird and difficult for a self-sufficient adult (even if hes only 19 and is a certified Baby because of that, he does support himself and is completely on his own) to have to redo childhood, and be so dependent. At least he’s 9 and not like 2, but yeah. That would be hard. But the angst potential there 🥺 BUT alas, that is not the plan.

Jason is going to end up back in his 19-year-old body. The time travel body switcher device only throws a consciousness back in time for a set amount of time, and they'll know here soon the exact amount of time it is. Hal or whoever it was Bruce asked for advice is gonna be like 'oh yeah i just dealt with that stupid thing a couple months ago' and tell them it's harmless and Jason's consciousness (and Black Mask's) will go back to their original time and bodies in like 3 days or something. Or maybe I'll pick some really random number, like 62.43 hours, because "well it was programmed on [some random planet] and is going off how they measure time!"

I MENTIONED SPOILERS RIGHT, because I'm legit just gonna tell yall everything here.

So there will be a bit of angst because Hal will say something like 'well as long as their future selves are still alive they'll pop back no problem. The catch is, the future self is basically uninhabited (meaning very vulnerable). There's not baby jason suddenly up in the future. Since Jason got shot at the start of the fic, it makes Jason just think he's either gonna pop back to nothing and be dead or just never return, and he's quite upset about it but trying to hide it. He doesn't let himself go back to sleep again the whole time he's in the past.

BUT, back up in the future, a certain Batman gets a weird reading on his computer coming from Black Mask's place, and goes to investigate and finds Red Hood bleeding out and an unconscious Black Mask. He quickly takes Red Hood to the cave for treatment and gets GCPD to pick up Black Mask. He probably did something wrong. They'll find something to charge him with, even if its just shooting Red hood.

So Bruce and Alfred have Jason's body and they take good care of it and get him on the mend, but hes nOT WAKING UP!!! It's very concerning. Bruce is haggard. Idk if he finds the device black mask had or not, and if he does, he gets the same info from Hal past bruce got, too. So maybe he knows Jason is coming back, maybe he doesn't. But he keeps vigil at Jason's bedside, because despite what Jason thinks, Bruce loves him dearly. Unless im specifically writing an abusive!bruce AU, my Bruce always loves Jason dearly. It's just Jason who might not believe or understand that.

Anyway. Theres lots of tears in the past the closer to Jason's return gets, won't go into detail, but then he pops back up into the future. It just felt like he fell asleep, so he wakes up kinda groggy and feels the pain in his stomach and is like oh. so im just gonna die now. but NOPE. HE ISN'T Because Bruce is sitting right there at his bedside and they have a heart to heart 🥺 Jason is kinda forced into the conversation because obviously being a teenager he wants to jump right back to his angry i-hate-you-dad attitude but Past Bruce is still so fresh in his mind and all the good warm feelings he had he breaks pretty fast.

Then I'll bounce back to the past for like an epilogue or something and show little Jason waking back up in himself and he's being carried to bed by Bruce or something and FREAKS OUT. Absolutely goes mental. But future Jason had already told Bruce how to win Jason over by getting him books and food and talking about going to Gotham Academy so he gets won over very fast. (I think they're just gonna act like he got there and he had amnesia but social services dropped him off and does he not remember that? but he remembers everything else now??? and go from there. BbJason will see his bear and his picture and everything in his bedroom and kind of relax and think maybe they're truthful. He can at least give this home a try. They haven't hit him yet.)

And thats basically it. Everyone lives happily ever after. Baby Jason grows up to not die at 15, and big Jason moves back in with Bruce and, like, goes to college or something. Thank you Black Mask for trying to kill him, he saved everyone. 

[vargaslovinghours]

Half a dozen in one (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5)

Oh no the Apotheosis is back and it wants to play, that’s never a good thing

Scriabin is not into it

I wanted to draw King Scriabin but I goofed up the crown so bad lol, at least his face is cute ✨

Pokemon Vargases! From that time that I forgot how to draw their Pokemon versions lol. You have to approach Espeon!Edgar gently, he’s easily spooked

Sylveon!Scriabin is such an attention hog, poor Edgar haha

*puts my feelers around you condescendingly*

Sleeping on each other, always ♥ Even sleeping, they’re still intertwined lightly, Edgar’s hand on Scriabin’s shoulder and Scriabin’s on Edgar’s arm ♪

I had an idea about Scriabin “reading” Edgar’s mind by guessing how he feels about something, but I unfortunately forgot the specifics just as I was writing it down, so frustrating

I do remember that it was something a lot closer to how Scriabin felt about that thing and he was describing how he felt, not just Edgar, but he realized too late

Made him feel isolated :(

Apology hugs 💕

Who wrote this eviction notice, this is a cave?? I just think they turned out really cute here haha ♪

Stop being naked >:0

Don’t wanna get used to it >:(

After all the Father and Daddy puns, I had to lol. Lady!Edgar with her hair down is just so prettyyyyyy

Two mops, makin’ out

For whatever reason, I started a teeny tiny little ScriAnimal series - first up is Scriabat with hand-wings because lol

I was watching a video of someone with their bird who was munching on the inside of their glasses stem haha

Scriabird is here to scream and knock things off the counters

And cutely chew on things

We are stopping this sketchdump for a Jake appreciation minute ♥ Thank you for appreciating Jake, now back to our regularly scheduled programming

A quick and silly digital doodle - waxing via tape is not recommended

Got the urge to draw dragons again, Scriabin needs to settle and Edgar is in protecc mode. His hugs are even harder to escape than normal!

The original sketch for sleepy Edgar - I couldn’t decide whether to use “World’s #1 Dad” or “World’s Best Dad”, so I just used both for the final version lol. Did Todd give it to him? Did Scriabin? Did they both get him nearly-matching mugs??

One of the early drafts for the ‘17 redraw; this was actually all drawn on one layer (on purpose! lol), which was a really fun experiment with some brushes I rarely use. I liked the angle of Edgar’s face too, he looks so smug haha ♪

Tiny Edgar doodle for a quick reference, he’s so cute ♥

I wasn’t kidding when I said it took a while to get Alone Together right, I was this close to giving up and just doing it the easy way several times before finally getting the trick down - I’m glad I didn’t but sheesh!

I started a pretty long mini idea that I managed to get like 90% of the way through before deciding I didn’t like it lol, but there were still some really fun poses and expressions

“What is it?” Light concern Edgar ♥

Probably the most complex panel of the set, as much as I like the leg poses I’m also frustrated by them lol - didn’t help that my page smudged >:P

A little bit of expression practice, the cute thing is Scriabin

I heard it, we all heard it, everybody saw!

Couple’a Scriabins to practice hair differences. I’ve gotten used to making him simultaneously fluffy and sleek like on the left, but I really love a True Floof look too, with many more starts and stops, it’s really fun ♪

Uppies!

Oscillates between “Why” and “You can’t tell me what to do”

Brain baby Weirdly enough, this was actually inspired by a skin-horror idea I had but decided was a little too body-horror-y and so I repurposed it lol

Some goofy matryoshka dolls haha. They remind me of Near’s finger puppets from Death Note somehow hmm

More hair differences, using opposing methods of line directionality while shading and texturing Scriabin’s hair. Pushing up from under gives this really nice line weight; it’s harder to do consistently because I keep wanting to sweep down, but when it works, the shadows fall exactly where they should and it’s lovely ✨ And like I said, pulling down is a lot easier, and because of that I can get these really uniform lines - I prefer the tapered effect, but pulling definitely has its uses and-

Hey wait a minute-

Golden floof ✨ This is actually really hard to see IRL lol

Edgar Warmup to see if my tablet was working properly, didn’t have time to pull up refs so from memory it is!

And that’s February through May again! Lots of silly little things, and a surprising number of scrapped larger ideas hmmm

[always-andromeda]

Ooooh shit it’s my problematic fave: hate to love him, love to hate him, god help me it’s a good thing this man is cute

“The World Ender” for Calvin, pretty please ❤️ extra detail: reader is also a writer, and Calvin and reader are a bit competitive (maybe he’s even jealous of her at times, but she has no clue about that), but reader gets some particularly bad feedback on her writing (not from Calvin, from someone else), and she starts to doubt her abilities to the point where she’s extremely discouraged and down. Calvin catches her crying and puts his ego aside and steps in to comfort her/encourage her. The relationship of these two is sort of like enemies to lovers vibes. Thank you!

Author's Note | your juicy, big brain thoughts absolutely kill me, hon. like I planned on keeping these under 1,000 words but you gave me this prompt and my brain went NYOOM and now we have over 1,300 words of a scenario that I'm in love with and it's all your fault!! (in a positive way, lmao, love you, bb)

This is so stupid, you think to yourself as you mope on the stairwell of your publishing company’s building. After years of working through all of your anxiety and procrastination and the logistics, you’d published a book. Your first one since your debut a few years prior. You did the thing that everyone said you couldn’t do and that was come up with a worthy follow up.

And of course some asshole critic had to give their two cents. Amongst the flood of praise from your peers and the general public alike, some snot-nosed, insolent, slimy book reviewer had written a scathing review.

Uninspired. Incompetent. Unintelligible garble. This book is a waste of paper.

You scrolled through the review, skimming through each line that seemed tailor-made to make you break down completely. Had everyone simply been lying? They'd all told you that you were so talented. A promising young author. Had you really fallen so far in the years it took to build up your confidence again?

Calvin was particularly annoyed to find the elevator was out of order. After the particularly taxing meeting with Langdon, Calvin hated the idea of having to go back down the stairs. On the walk up, he'd been so confident. Finally ready to set a deadline for the first draft of his next book only to find out that Langdon hated his ideas and wanted him to go back to the drawing board.

With his ego shot, he's almost delighted to find you sitting on the steps as he rounds the corner onto the bottom floor.

The back and forth he has with you isn't playful, by any means. From the moment he'd overheard you say that you thought his first book was overrated at one of Langdon's parties, he'd been perpetually holding his nose up. At least his book was being sold. Sure, it had been years since he'd finished something that lived up to it...but at least he was working.

You, on the other hand, had taken a break for a few years. Too much pressure from the industry had made you cave. Calvin had scoffed at the news; he thought you were weak. A delicate little flower that couldn't handle criticism.

Calvin remembered reading your book the week it came out. Unusually, he devoured it all in a few sittings. And even if he was grasping for straws...he couldn't find anything he glaringly disliked. He thought he would have written a few passages better here and there. But that was just him being picky. On a technical level...it was brilliant. He'd closed your book shut when he finished it and simply decided that he was never going to give you the satisfaction of knowing his thoughts.

The urge to make up some bullshit insult upon spotting you is strong, yet, it subsides when he hears a high pitched cry. Then a short sniffle. Are you crying?

You hear his shoes stepping on the stairwell as he gets closer and you wipe away your undereyes with a knuckle.

Your head whips around to find the source of the intrusive sound. "Calvin?"

He sees your bleary eyes. Clearly red. Nose still running just a little as your back straightens in his presence. "Y/N." he greets coldly. He tries to keep his nose up. Tries to pass by as if he doesn't care even in the slightest that he caught his rival breaking down in the harshly lit stairwell. As if the idea of making some snide comment with the express purpose of kicking you while you're down didn't make him feel downright sick inside.

But as he reaches the step you sit on, he gives into the compelling urge to sit beside you. Almost instinctively you grimace to yourself and scoot a little further away.

Smoothing your hair back and sighing you ask, “What do you want from me this time, Calvin? Planning on saying I told you so?”

Really, Calvin can't think of anything to say. There's nothing aside from a bone-chilling awkwardness seeping into his touch as he slowly pats your back. Because if he knows one thing, he knows that you don't need him adding onto whatever pile you've got forming in your head.

"Are you okay?" he raises an eyebrow behind those tortoiseshell glasses and it makes you want to cry all over again. Are you really about to accept comfort from the notoriously full of himself, arrogant, douche, Calvin Weir-Fields? The answer to that seems to be a yes as you sob out loud, burying your red face in your hands.

"Why am I like this?" you ask, muffled by your hands.

"Ummm...I don't know...?" Calvin tries slowly.

You look at him suddenly, "Did you read the new Times article today? The one by Robert Novak?"

Of course he had. He drank in every single review. Mostly trying to find someone else who could possibly give him a reason to dislike your book. Robert Novak should've been his best friend for that task. He was relentless, tearing into your pages like he was being paid per word. Maybe he was. Maybe that's why he used so many run-on sentences and pulled random critiques out of thin air.

Regardless of that, Calvin was sure that by the end of the article that Robert Novak had no idea what he was talking about. And, frustratingly, your book was actually good.

"Yeah, it was...certainly one hell of a read."

"I put everything into that book. And he said it was garbage. I spent months pouring out my entire heart...and this one asshole...manages to get to me."

Calvin puts his hands up to explain, "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure the guy is a hack. One second he's writing about how your main character's character arc was nonexistent and the next he's claiming that the plot line doesn't justify the changes that the main character went through. I mean," Calvin chuckles nervously, "Pick a side."

You stare forward for a few seconds, processing for a few seconds before Calvin has the chance to ramble again, "You actually read my book?"

Calvin tries to loosen a little, screwing his face up into a nonchalant grin, "Of course...just for...comparison...purposes. Gotta keep in tune with what the public is consuming these days..." 

You stifle your own smile at his forced demeanor. You know what a truly indifferent Calvin looks like and this isn't it. This Calvin is sweet.

He waves the excuse away, "Never mind. Just know that...Robert Novak has no fucking clue what he's talking about. I'd be willing to bet that snob didn't even read it. Probably had a deadline to hit so he came up with whatever bullshit he could while skimming it. Wouldn't be the first time some asshole half assed something just to fulfill a quota."

Calvin knew that situation all too well from every time he had to rush to finish one of his short stories for review and publication. Just some asshole...half assing a project...whereas you had channeled your soul into your work. How dare he be such a snob?

You nod slowly, already beginning to feel better. "So I assume you liked my book."

"It was...alright." Calvin cleared his throat, "Tolerable." Perfect.

"You really expect me to believe that?" you cock an eyebrow at him.

"Hey, don't get too full of yourself."

You scoff playfully, "You're one to talk."

Calvin just stares at you. And he feels like he's looking at you with brand new eyes as he laughs at himself and concludes with a light smile, "Yeah. I am one to talk."

[solarwonux]

24H || Seuncheol 

mechanic!seungcheol x reader

soulmate!au

w.c: 6.5k

warnings: talks of death, angst, self doubt

note: hello everyone I am not completely back yet, I am still on hiatus. I have been writing this one shot since the release of 24H. I have rewritten it many many many times and have a abandoned it many times as well. Anyway, this is the finished product and I hope you guys like it as much as I do. Thank you for reading and please let me know your thoughts. And thank you @sunlightwoo​ for literally witnessing it all lol.

Also maybe one day I’ll post the original draft of this one if anyone is interested. 

P.S. this is a part of a soulmate universe in which all the members are going to have a story, but that’s gonna take a little while lol, but I hope you all stick around until them

masterlist

Hour 1 - 17:00

Seungcheol threw the wrench on the pile of tools next to him before rolling himself out from underneath the car he was working on. “I don’t see the point in it, Shua.” He sat up, grabbing the towel he had next to him, and tried his best to wipe the black smudges of his fingers. “I’m already a disappointment to my parents, why not add one more to their list?” He shrugged, eyeing his best friend who had decided to come and visit him at the car shop he worked at. 

“I think Shua has a point; you can’t brush this off. You don’t want to end up forgotten in a ditch somewhere.” Jeonghan said, pointedly resting his forearms on top of the hood of the car he had been working on. 

“I’m not going to end up in a ditch and forgotten. The higher-ups--” Seungcheol stuck a pointer finger out and pointed at the cement ceiling, “are just going to set me up with someone.” He stood up and brushed off his whitewashed jeans, the only ones he seemed to wear as they had various oil stains etched into the creases of the fabric. In actuality, he had many of the same pair, and each of them had their own unique patterns of different oil stains. 

“But wouldn’t it be better if you married your soulmate, your other half, your partner in crime, the person the Stars destined you to be with,” Joshua spoke in rushed sentences as he ran a frustrated hand through his jet black hair. His wedding ring shining in the light of the sun, glowing in all its glory. A reminder that he had chosen the path that he and Jeonghan were trying to get Seungcheol to take. 

Sometimes curiosity would seep in s when he saw how happy his best friends were with their soulmates, or when the ticking of the clock scarred into the skin of his wrist, and got too loud to ignore. Seungcheol knew he didn’t belong on that path. He was never one to follow the crowd, and the proof was in his parent’s disappointment when he decided to study music instead of medicine. 

“Nope.” He stood up and closed the hood of the car. He could feel their glares burning holes into his scalp as he strode over and opened the driver’s door. “I’m a firm believer that soulmates are made not found.” Seungcheol grinned before getting behind the wheel and inserting the keys into the ignition. He had spent all morning working on a minor problem in the engine; he was hoping that after many failed attempts, he would finally be able to get the car to start again. 

With a deep sigh, he turned the key listening as the engine sputtered a few times. The hope and confidence he had gained diminishing with each hiccup until, finally, the car roared back to life. A sigh of relief leaving his chapped lips along with a light laugh. He rested his forearms against the old battered steering wheel, peering through the windshield, catching Joshua’s nod of disapproval. He turned on his heels and walked out of the large garage door of the shop.

Seungcheol knew his friend’s meant well, and he knew they didn’t want him to end up unhappy with someone that wasn’t his other half. But how was he supposed to be sure that happiness was a given? When at the end of the day, everyone’s given soulmate was chosen at birth by a group of old white dudes calling themselves Stars.

Hour 2 - 18:00

“What are you going to do then?” Jeonghan closed the hood of the car and dusted his hands. His blonde hair grasped the light of the afternoon sun. Seungcheol placed down the paper bag that contained his and Jeonghan’s lunch on top of the aluminum table they kept in the far corner of the shop.  “I don’t know...eat lunch.” He stated, shrugging and started taking the contents out of the paper bag. “Shua leave?” 

Jeonghan rolled his eyes and pushed himself off the hood of the car. He strode over to where Seungcheol was and took the burrito he had held out to him. “Said he doesn’t want to stay and watch you ruin his life.”

“I’m not ruining my life,” Seungcheol sighed, shaking his head and sat on top of the table, unwrapping his burrito. “I’m choosing the road not taken.” He finished before taking a decent bite out of his burrito. 

“That’s ruining your life in my book.” Jeonghan gave him a pointed look and unwrapped the foil of his burrito, cursing when he noticed some its contents start to fall out of its confinement. “Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about how they look?” He dug inside the paper bag and took out a napkin to clean off the salsa stain of his grey graphic tee. Jeonghan rarely dressed down, unless he was working. Though, sometimes he’d show up in outfits Seungcheol always deemed to clean for the oil splatters he would obtain throughout the day. 

“If looks were the all end tell-all, you’d be an actor instead of the owner of your father’s car shop.” 

“Are you calling me sexy, Choi Seungcheol?” Jeonghan gasped, making the other boy scoff in annoyance. Seungcheol took another bite of his burrito, the salsa running down the stubble of his chin and sighed. “Cause may I remind you I am happily married.” Jeonghan jokes, raising his hand, wiggling his ring finger. 

Seungcheol squinted as the ring got caught in the crossfire between the heat and summer sun. The churning at the pit of his stomach started up again, along with the little voice annoying voice that lived in the back of his head. The red block of numbers on the inside of his wrist laughing at him as he tried his best to push the thought to the back of his head. Like he had done his entire life.

“Sure...but that would just be an excuse, and it wouldn’t be fair towards the other person.” He shrugged, finally cleaning his chin the rest of his mouth. He crumpled up the foil in his hands before throwing the ball he had formed into the paper bag. “It wouldn’t matter soon anyway; I don’t have much time left.” He jumped off the table and made his way to shelves where they kept most of the tools along with small spare car parts they might need some time in the future.

“How much time do you have left?” Jeonghan asked a little too exasperatedly than he would’ve liked, but Seungcheol had managed to catch his tone, and it was starting to make him feel uneasy. He closed a drawer he had mindlessly opened and dropped his head. Seungcheol hated looking at his timer because it never brought a good reaction out of him. He hated the way the anxiety would filter in through his veins as he let his mind wander to the what-ifs. 

For as long as he could remember, he only allowed himself to stare at the number scar before bed but never enough to dwell on it. Last night he had twenty-four hours left; now he was positive the timer had reached the single-digit zone, and to be frank, he was afraid. He didn’t want to feel the pressure against his chest and the shortness of his breath. He didn’t want to feel the shaking in his hands and sweat that formed against his brow bone. Seungcheol had already chosen, but he knew that the second he glanced over at the timer, his doubt would start to run free. And he hated that feeling more than anything, but he also hated Jeonghan’s burning gaze staring him down as if he were doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. So he caved. 

He turned his wrist and pushed the bracelets he used to hide his soulmate mark with his other hand. His breath caught itself in the back of his throat, his lungs closing in like two crushing walls as he saw the numbers ticking down. For a split second, he wondered if he had chosen the right path if his parent’s and his friends had been right all along. But he had been so sure just like he was confident that his name was Choi Seungcheol, that he had chosen right, so why was he letting his thoughts take over. 

Maybe it was the teachings of the Stars he grew up reading at home and at school, or the guilt has finally started to consume him. Whatever it was, he decided to push it aside, bury it deep inside the archives of his mind. He had chosen right, and he wasn’t going to let any false pretenses change his mind.

“Five hours.” 

Hour 3 - 19:00

Seungcheol moved the straw of his bubble, creating soft caramel tidal waves in the cup. He had already picked out all the tapioca pearls leaving him to deal with the unpleasant honeydew tea he had ordered. The soft melodies of an old pop song played in the background, drowning out the flirting going on between the lovers in front of him. He kept his eyes trained on his cup; it had started to accumulate the condensation that came with the humidity of the summertime. His index finger traced over the water droplets that had fallen onto the table, creating a small picture of nothing. 

Jeonghan had dragged him to their usual boba shop after closing up the shop for the night. He had given Joshua a frantic phone call, claiming it was a 911 type of emergency. Seungcheol wasn’t sure how they weren’t tired at having the same conversation, and why they couldn’t let him live with the consequences in peace? If he ended up unhappy, that was his problem, and he would eventually deal with it, but he couldn’t stand the way everyone around him always seemed to have an opinion on how he should live his life. 

It had started the day he was born, scarred with a mark against his own will. It carried out onto his childhood, his parents and teachers telling him how to sit, how to dress, how to speak, and how to breathe. When he left for college the same day his parents decided to disown him, he had finally felt free. He thought for himself, walked for himself and lived for himself. But now his best friend’s the ones he thought he could always count on and he felt knew him better than anyone in the world. Where the ones were trying to guilt-trip him into making a choice, he had made years ago, and frankly, he was getting really tired of it. 

“Are you even listening to us Seungcheol, this is your future you're putting at risk,” Joshua whispered angrily, his grip on his cup grew tight enough his knuckles had started turning white. 

“Why does it matter?” Seungcheol lightly flicked the straw of his drink before pushing it away and crossing his arms. Jeonghan and Joshua both looked at him as if he was growing a third head, annoying him even more. He wasn’t sure why this was such a big deal to them, it wasn’t their life getting ruined. 

“It matters because we don’t want to see you dead.” 

Hour 4 - 20:00

“Are you serious? Do you guys actually believe that kind of stuff?” Seungcheol shook his head and looked out the restaurant window. The sun had finished going down for it’s deep slumber and in return awakened the night life of the city. He took in the people smiling and laughing as they joked and clinged onto one another. He saw limbs start to give out as the alcohol they had previously consumed started to replace their blood. Seungcheol found himself wishing he was one of those people, where the one controlling his body wasn’t the one that gave up on their dreams but instead still held onto that small sliver of hope. It would at least be an escape for a little and most importantly it would be an escape from the painful talk his best friend’s were giving him. 

“Fuck you Seungcheol.” Joshua spat out, quickly he stood up grabbing his coat and shrugged it on. “I’m not going to stay with you and watch the clock count down until you die.” He stuffed his hands in his pocket and took out his wallet before throwing some money onto the table. “Are you coming with me?” He said before facing Jeonghan who was biting his bottom lip in contemplation. Seungcheol saw the gears turn in his head as he thought over his options, his eyes traveling between the furious looking Joshua and himself. 

“Joshua calm down, look there have been some cases in the news lately of mysterious deaths and the only thing they have in common is that their timers went out before they got to meet their soulmate. I don’t know if it's all connected but it can’t just be coincidence Seungcheol.” Jeonghan stated, he tapped his forefinger against the wooden table as Joshua eyed him down waiting impatiently. 

“And what if it is, what if I do find this person and then they turn out to be horrible? You guys got lucky but my life has never been a series of unfortunate events since the beginning of time so who's to say this is any different?” 

“If you keep sitting here and mopping and feeling sorry for yourself, you’ll never find out.” Jeonghan nodded before taking out his wallet and throwing money onto the table. He hated the pity he saw behind his eyes. It only frustrated him because to him it felt like they had given up on him already. That they were planning his funeral without him leaving the world yet. Seungcheol wasn’t entirely convinced that death was at the end of this unfortunate journey, he sadly hoped it was. That way his friend’s would actually have something to pity, but he was alive and healthy (for the most part) so their pity in Seungcheol’s eyes was uncalled for. 

“Then let me find out. Everyone is always telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, I didn’t need you guys to also be one of those people too. You’re supposed to be my friends but here you are nagging me like you’re my parents. If I’m not worthy of hanging with you guys anymore because I’m not married and I have no interest in ever getting married then just leave me alone. I’m better off by myself anyway.” 

Seungcheol knew that as soon as the words left his mouth they had been a mistake, but mistake or not he would never take them back. No matter how the luck of hurt flashing in their handsome features affected him more than it should’ve. These few hours could be the last of his life and instead of living it to his fullest with his closest friends he was pushing them away. Just like he always did whenever he felt too comfortable or afraid. 

“Jeonghan let’s just go, he’s already made up his mind. He’s not going to listen to us.” Joshua sighed, the exhaustion was evident on his face. It was clear he had given up long before the events of tonight. He knew how stubborn Seungcheol was, he knew that once he sets his mind to something there’s no way to turn it back. Seungcheol suspected that’s why he hadn’t tried as hard as Jeonghan to convince him to change his mind. 

“Cheol, just think about it okay. You don’t have to go out and actively look for that person but just keep an open mind and they might just appear right before you. I know you think that we’re trying to do this to change you or to get you to settle down, but we don’t want to turn on the news tomorrow and have your names be part of one of the victims. If you can’t do this for us or yourself at least do it for you mom.” Jeonghan nodded one last time before scooting himself out of the booth. He stood sending a glare to Joshua that wasn’t missed by Seungcheol and somehow it made him feel uneasy inside. He didn’t want to be the one to cause a rift between him and Joshua’s friendship, they had known each other longer than they had known Seungcheol. For half of their life’s Seungcheol was simply an outsider between the threesome. He didn’t know at what moment they became inseparable, but now he wished they hadn’t. 

At least they wouldn’t be involved in the webs of Seungcheol’s complicated life, and they certainly wouldn’t be here showing the utmost care for him when he himself felt like he was unworthy of it. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow” Jeonghan mumbled before dragging Joshua out of the restaurant, mumbling angrily underneath his breath. Seungcheol knew the small comment was Jeonghan’s way of holding onto the little amount of hope he had for his friend. The hope that he would walk into the car shop tomorrow morning and see Seungcheol passed out drunk, his drool stain embedded into the checkered pattern of the old battered couch in the office, because he couldn’t remember how to unlock his front door.

Though, it was a phrase full of hope, it wasn’t a promise, and it felt more like a goodbye to Seungcheol. It made him uneasy and Seungcheol hated feeling uneasy because it only made the ticking sound of the clock tattooed onto his skin louder. 

The front door bell to the restaurant sounded, signaling that someone had walked in or out. He turned to face out the window again and saw Jeonghan and Joshua in a heated argument before Jeonghan kept dragging him away by the ear this time. The scene could’ve been comical to him at some point, but now he just wondered if they were all going to be okay by the time the night ended and morning came again. 

Either way it was clear to him that they had walked out of his life, maybe not for good but they also wouldn’t be the first ones either. 

Hour 5 -21:00

Seungcheol paid the bill and exited the restaurant quietly, his best attempt to remain invisible. It would be a lie if didn’t admit how scared he was after Jeonghan and Joshua left him alone with his thoughts for the first time since he awoke that morning. 

Would his faith really be death?

Or where they using their evil tactics against him to convince him to do the right thing. Needless to say he was scared, more scared than he ever was whenever he thought about falling in love. 

He had once, a long time ago, back when he was still studying music production in college, before he dropped out and took up a job at Mr. Yoon’s carshop. During the three years he was there, all the songs he had composed resembled something about her. Whether it was a phrase she had said or the way the color blue seemed to make her honey doe eyes pop. He was in love, head over heels, ready to give it all up, his friends, his pride, his dream, his life, everything under the sun, for her. He had his bags packed long before she had agreed to run away with him. 

In fact, he almost did, but the morning as he stood underneath the winter sun, waiting at the bus stop with two overprized one way tickets, with his fingers threatening to fall off from the cool. Everything became clear to him, she had abandoned him and their plan. She had given up on him, just like his parents had when he first told him he was going to follow his dream, instead of theirs. 

Seungcheol was angry, it boiled inside of him like an overflowing calderon, and the closer he got to the university and his dorm, the more it spilled over. In a frenzy he had entered his home and destroyed everything he owned. His studio setup, his computer, his many notebooks that were filled with lyrics, because everything had been touched by her and he wanted nothing to do with her anymore. Not after she had lied boldly to his face the night before when they shared the most intimate moment with each other. 

And just like he promised to her underneath the moonlight, he gave it all up, but this time because she had broken him. 

There was a letter she had left for him to find. It didn’t come into his possession after he had stopped attending classes and was living on Jeonghan and Joshua’s couch. The university had called him to pick up his belongings from his dorm after he dropped all his classes on whim one Saturday afternoon. When he did, when he opened the front door of the wretched dorm room, the room that once held so many beautiful memories turned sour. The toe of his shoe was met with a brown paper envelope, his name scribbled neatly on the back. Instantly he knew who it was from. 

Seungcheol had once prided himself in memorizing the way her letters curved with one another. A useless talent he now wished he could forget entirely. With a hesitant he opened it and skimmed through, not wanting to linger long enough on every single one of her words so it would hurt less. 

In the end it did.

It hurt more than her leaving him stranded on the bus stop that morning. It hurt more than finding out that the little things she had strategically left at his place had mysteriously disappeared when he came back home that morning. It hurt more than giving up entirely on a dream so pure that it ended up tainted. It hurt more than dying, or so he assumed because now he finally knew the truth. A truth he had been blinded to the entire three years they spent lost in each other’s thoughts and arms. 

She didn’t love, and she never did. She had a passion that consumed her to the point of greed and when she realized she wasn’t going to achieve her dream with Seungcheol at her side. 

She left and he had given up love for good. 

Which is why Seungcheol was so against the entire soulmate phenomenon. If death was the outcome then so be it, even though the thought of his mom finding him out he was dead scared him to the point it welcomed chills to his body. He was stubborn though, and his father always hated that about him because it reminded him of his younger self. But Seungcheol was never going to give in, no matter how loud the click on his wrist was ticking and how fast he found himself walking.

There was a little bit of hope. It was reserved for special occasions and those had been a rarity in Seungcheol’s life for longer than he liked to admit. But it was still there, buried deep inside, behind his walls and his pride. And it was threatening to burst out into the open, because as much as Seuncheol was scared of falling in love again, this time with a complete stranger, terrified him. The thought of not knowing if his life was really at stake was far scarier. He was gambling with his life line and that was a risk he found himself not willing to take. Though he would never admit to himself and especially not to Jeonghan or Joshua. 

He was in complete denial at least for a slight second. Yet, he had started to walk with fever and hastily. He was desperate, he didn’t know where to start or how to start or if he should even start. He just walked, until his body was running on autopilot. He didn’t know where he was going or where  he was going to end up, but the only thing on his mind was that the timer was blaring inside of his eardrums at an alarming rate, and the hope he kept at bay spilling out of his pores. 

He needed to find his soulmate before it was too late. 

Seungcheol didn’t want to die, he still had a dream to achieve. He will do it, he had promised himself that much. And he wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from again. 

Hour 6 - 22:00

Seungcheol was panting, bending over, with his sweaty palms against his jean clad legs as tried his best to put the air back in his lungs. 

He wasn’t sure how long he had been walking, all he could remember was bumping into a few people along the way and mumbling sorry’s underneath his breath when they had sent him glares his way. But he had ended up at the park across the street from his studio apartment, the one he rarely lived in because more often than not. The old raggedy couch at the car shop had been his home for as long as he had worked there. He had bought it last year after saving up enough money, in hopes of it becoming his new beginning, his safe space, where he could jump right back into working on his one goal in life. 

Though, the first night he had spent there, he had hated it. Occasionally he would give it a second chance. He had given it many second chances, but the outcome was always the same. He would stay awake until four in the morning, get frustrated and then end up running laps at the park until sunrise. 

This park had been his sanctuary, the one his apartment couldn’t provide, so it was no surprise his body had carried him here. He felt at home here, the hollowing of the wind chiming and wrapping around him like a blanket of safety. Here, in this park, Seungcheol felt comfortable enough to let his mind race through the thoughts he would keep hidden behind a wall. 

He straightened himself out, running his fingers through his wet sweaty hair and made his way to the park bench by the basketball court, where he would occasionally lay down in the middle and look at the sky, counting the lack of stars in the sky. He knew they were there, but because of the city's light pollution they were invisible to his eye. Those were the only stars he trusted, not the ones that used the Universe’s gifts for their own selfish desires and to control everyone. 

The stars in the night sky, the one’s he used his imagination and intuition to connect with, trusted him. They were the only one’s in his life that believed in him, even when he couldn’t believe in himself, and it made him feel at ease knowing that at least someone out there was rooting for him to win this losing battle.

Seungcheol took a deep sigh and placed his palm over the watch on the inside of his wrist. He had only two hours left, and he would rather not witness the time ticking down. He could hear it, it was drumming loudly against his eardrums, loud enough to the point in which he couldn’t hear the wind and the tree’s surrounding him singing their natural melody. The last thing he needed was to see the visual representation of his last breath nearing him. 

He wanted to fight, but he was tired. If tonight was his last night living a life he had been so cruel to. He would at least take his last breath at the place he felt most at home. 

So, he sat back and closed his eyes tightly. He felt the wind against his cooling skin, the familiar shivers running up his spine. For the first time since he woke up that morning he felt at peace. 

Hour 7 - 23:00

The ringing of his phone startled him. He had only had his eyes closed for about five minutes. Only five minutes of peace before it was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He let out a frustrated sigh and fished out his phone from the pocket of his oil stained light washed jeans. His gaze and heart softened when he realized his mother was the one calling him. Without hesitation he unlocked his phone and placed his phone to his ear.

Silence. He was met with silence, until a choked sob broke it, his heart shattering in the process. “M-Mom, what’s wrong?” Seungcheol sat up. His eyes grew wide. The anxiety running through his body making his leg bounce. 

“Joshua called me. He was freaking out saying that you were making a mistake. What is talking about? You’re not thinking about leaving again?” His mom spoke. Seungcheol could visualize the almost heart attack Joshua had given his mother when he called. He could visualize the color draining from her face as her hands shook while she dialed his number. Seungcheol’s mother was an over thinker and she always thought about the worst possible scenarios. Especially when it came to Seungcheol and his brother. Joshua knew what he was doing when he had called his mother. He knew that his mother was his weakness. Despite the differences they argued about over the years, Seungcheol loved his mother and knowing she was in such distress because of him, scared him more than what he already was. 

“Nothing mom, he’s over exaggerating. Jeonghan, him and I had a small argument earlier but it’s nothing mom. I’m okay.” He spoke into the receiver lying through his teeth. He wasn’t fine, although he was in his sanctuary and at peace. His timer finally reached the fifty-nine minute mark and his heart was racing to the point he was scared it would literally squeeze through the spaces between his ribs and rip through the safety of his skin, onto the concrete pavement beneath his feet. 

“Are you sure? He sounded really scared and worried, what did you guys fight about?” The words came rushing out of her mouth at lighting speed. He knew that question was coming and although he tried scouring through the files in his mind to come up with a concrete answer that would make his mother worry less. He couldn’t. There was no answer he could give her. If she lied she would know, but if he told the truth, his mother would certainly never be able to recover. 

He knew he could prevent her heartbreak. All he had to do was get up and start walking again, let his feet carry him as his intuition and the Universe led him to where he needed to be, but he stayed seated. His hand closing into a fist taking the roughness of his jeans between them, the frustration, fear and anxiety coursing through his veins faster than before. Maybe if he wasn’t such a coward, maybe if he didn’t let his own selfishness consume him to the point it clouded his judgment, he could’ve let himself do what he needed to do. What he wanted to do. 

“It’s not a big deal, Jeonghan asked him to be his best man and I got a little upset. Tomorrow we’ll be fine and laugh about it.” He said letting out the breath he had been holding in. He knew he sounded like he had just ran a few miles rather than sitting down in complete silence and stillness. 

“I know you’re lying but I have been able to get the truth out of you, so I’ll drop it. At least I know you’re okay and you’re still here.” Seungcheol’s mother stopped speaking for a second, he could hear his father whispering something to her and his mother answering in agreement. “Visit us tomorrow, your brother is coming over tomorrow for dinner. Your dad wants to see you.” She half whispered the last part and it brought a slight smile to his face. For years Seungcheol and his father had not been on good terms, whenever they saw each other, his future always became the topic of conversation. His father always shared his disapproval and disappointment on how Seungcheol’s life had turned out. His father expected too much from both him and his brother, he had dreams in which he had tried to instill in them. It wasn’t enough that one of his sons had achieved his dream, his pride was attached to the two of them. And knowing that Seungcheol always refused, always followed the beat of his own drum, wounded his pride. 

His mother and brother always tried their best to bridge the gap between them that had only grown deeper over the years. 

Seungcheol admired their commitment, but just being in his father’s presence fully aware of how he felt towards him was only a simple reminder of what he did not want to become, and it only made him resent him even more. 

“I don’t know mom, I work until late tomorrow and I wouldn’t have enough time to go home shower and change. Maybe some other time.” Seungcheol whispered. The wind blew causing a single leaf to escape its perspective branch. Seungcheol watched it closely as it flew down, landing on his lap. He picked it up in between his forefinger and thumb, twirling the steam as he listened to his mother sigh out. 

“Just come after work...it’s important.” 

Seungcheol wanted to say yes. The simple three letter word was one of the hardest ones to say. With the urgency in his mother’s voice, he knew that she wasn’t lying and that whatever his father had to tell him. It was important. But Seungcheol didn’t want to make a promise he could not keep. For he didn’t know if his tomorrow would ever come. If the last thirty minutes (indicated by the timer on his wrist) would be the last thirty minutes of his life. 

He wondered if it was possible for time to run faster than before, and the quick ticking sound in his head proved that he was right. It was now drowning out the sound of his mother’s low and desperate pleas. 

“M-Mom I’ll see what I can do, maybe if Jeonghan is in a good mood I can convince him to let me off early, I’ll try to be there by dinner time.” The almost empty promise escaped his throat, running past his teeth and perfect lips faster than he could stop himself.

“Perfect. We’ll see you tomorrow.” His mother cheered. He could hear and sense her happiness through the receiver of his phone and it shattered his heart. When tomorrow came and what Jeonghan and Joshua both claimed to be true would happen. What would be his mother’s reaction?

“I’ll try mom, you know I’m not good at keeping promises.” He half joked, the tears had started to pool in the corner of his eyes. He looked up at the night sky, making eye contact with the moon. They had once been intimate, but over the last few months they had been disconnected, the stars surrounding her protecting her from his own selfish needs and acts. He missed her, he wished he could feel her light upon his skin, caressing him and holding him in ways he wanted to be held. Ways in which he needed to be held. Though, he could feel her reluctance as he took in her beauty. She was there with him, keeping him company as the last twenty minutes of his life counted down. 

“You always find a way to keep them Seungcheol. I’ll see you tomorrow night. I love you.” 

“I love you too mom.” He whispered before the line went dead. Seungcheol sighed, bringing down his phone from his ear. He stared at his mother’s contact name, trying to decide if he should call her back again. Tell her that he wasn’t fine that he was scared and that he wanted to be in her arms, singing the song she always sang to him whenever his imagination betrayed him, plaguing his dreams with nightmares. But he didn’t again, his own pride and reluctance, the one he gets from his father and the reason why they clash so much kept him calling her back. 

Instead he looked at his timer one last time, noted that there were ten minutes left and placed his phone down next to him on the bench. He took in his surroundings one last time before leaning his back and closing his tired soft eyes. 

Hour 8: 24:00

“Excuse me?”

Seungcheol opened his eyes upon hearing the sound of the soft voice behind him and the light tap on his shoulder. He sat up quickly looking around frantically. He only had five minutes left and his peace had been disturbed. He turned around his gaze falling upon someone he had only seen in his dreams. 

“You dropped your phone.” You said shakingly, handing him his phone. He assumed that it had fallen through the cracks of the bench; he had been so deep in his thoughts he didn’t hear the thud of it hitting the ground. 

“Oh um, thank you.” He spoke quickly, taking his phone. His fingers accidentally brushed over the soft skin of your wrist, the familiar digital clock appearing before him and the ticking sound became loud enough to the point he couldn’t hear the nagging voice that had stayed with him for the last twenty five years of his life. Quickly he glanced down to his wrist and then at yours, he could feel the fear radiating out of your pores as the seconds counted down faster than the speed of light. 

Seungcheol almost laughed. In fact he felt the laugh suppressing itself in the back of his throat. But as the timer finally reached the infamous zero’s, his last breath didn’t come, and neither did yours. He watched as you looked around frantically before your eyes found his. You let out the sob you had been suppressing for the entirety of the day. Your knees gave up on you and you leaned down hugging your calves, burying your face into your thighs, the sobs came quickly and Seungcheol sat there not knowing what to do. 

It was like his body was acting on his and he stood up, rounding the corner of the bench and crouched down. His shaking arms wrapped around you tightly, running a soothing hand down your back, smoothing out the wrinkles of your navy blue sweatshirt. 

The next words we muttered, were words he never thought he would say again. But again it felt like he wasn’t in control of his body. It felt like after the timer hit the long awaited double zero’s his body belonged to someone else, almost as if he had been reborn again after twenty five years. 

“It’s okay, I am here.” 

[t-lane-writes]

I want to report a milestone. *grin* I’m one-quarter into the 3rd draft of Crystal Spring Valley. It was quite surprising, actually, because I thought there was one more chapter needed to complete the First Turning Point (or Inciting Incident, whatever you call it), but as I wrote the final two sentences of chapter #17, I realized -- this is it. Everything that comes after, is a reaction.

I re-read the last couple of chapters, eliminated most glaring mistakes, repetitions and the such. And now I can move ahead.

I have a solid plan for the next Act ( thanks @echo-bleu ;) ) Actually, for the rest of the book. I think I know the motivations of the characters here, I know what’s the important decision they’ll have to make. I don’t even have to move any chapters around -- it was enough to just shift the focal points a little. Of course there will be re-writes, to make those motivations clearer, conflicts more sharp, but yeah. The plot stays the same.

It feels like I’m writing with plot in mind, not the characters. But the truth is -- for me at least -- if the plot is solid, I’m working on detailing the character motivations, so they make sense with regard to where the story is going. If I just let the characters decide what to do, and they took me on this journey, it would be a mess. And they would probably end up in a cave and wait for the storm to pass, while the story would be happening to someone else.

Whatever works right? Anyway. I’mma plunge ahead now! :D

[folliesandfolderols]

Writing prompts days 112-117

From this prompt list. If you’ve read this far, I’m not sure you need any explanation, but the short version is I hadn’t written any fiction since 2019, I set a goal to write at least 150 words/day in 2024, and this list was my way to restart. Also I abruptly decided on day 2 I would write an entire Tim/Damian story connecting all the prompts, because I am Good at Judging My Limits. /sarcasm Anyway, I finished the rough draft a while ago and am now unlocking the old entries as I edit.

Read from the beginning here, or on ao3 here.

Days 109-111 here

***

30. “Where do you want me to touch you?” “I don’t know and I don’t care — I just want your hands on me. Please.”

33. “Beg and maybe I’ll think about it.”

108. “And I think you’d look fucking hot when you’re on top of me.”

111. “Just sit on my fucking face already.”

***

By the time he finished reviewing all the audio again, Tim had found so much information that it was time to turn it over to Bruce for advice. He drove out to the Cave and called the files up on the screen near Bruce's main workstation, waiting for him to return from patrol.

Damian stepped out of the elevator while Tim flipped through Oracle's channels, listening to everyone's night and glad to not be trapped with mobsters' conversations for the moment. Tim spun around in his chair, unable to keep his smile a normal size at the sight of him.

"Hey! I thought you'd be asleep so I didn't want to bug you." Mindful of the cameras, he kept his seat. Just because he was reasonably certain Bruce knew about their relationship didn't mean he wanted to give him any more information than necessary.

Damian's answering shadow of a smile nearly made him forget his prudence. "You can always text me. That won't wake me up if I have gone to bed." He pulled up a chair and rolled near enough to Tim that their knees brushed. "You're ready to show Father what you've found?"

Tim scooted closer so one of Damian's legs slid between his own. "Yeah, even Jason finally agreed that we'd be smart to bring Bruce in for this last push. Not that he's happy about it, but he doesn't want to risk more victims than we absolutely have to."

Damian made an aborted motion, like he'd been about to reach for Tim's hand and thought better of it. "I finally received the copy of Al-Kunūz al-fannīyah fī al-rumūz al-Maymūnīyah you ordered today. It's in better condition than the copy we used to have."

Tim beamed. "Glad I could help."

Now Damian did take his hand, though he swiveled his chair to block the action from the nearest cameras. "You were very helpful." Tim blushed, and promptly wanted to roll his eyes at himself. If Damian noticed, he was kind enough not to point it out. "I don't know if Father is on his way back yet, but it's very late. It makes more sense for you to spend what's left of the night here."

“Oh, it does?" Tim inquired, keeping an innocent lilt in the words. "And there's no benefit to you, of course."

He half expected Damian to scowl at the teasing, but all he got was a haughty look down his nose. "The benefit to me is the same as to you. I believe we are better together."

Tim's heartbeat sped up to a tempo better suited to a sprint than a quiet conversation. "Damian," he breathed out, gripping his hand too tightly, but Damian gave no sign of discomfort. "How irresponsible is it if we just leave this info for Bruce and go to bed?"

Damian's eyes widened. "Perhaps—perhaps we could go and then return before he gets here?"

Tim checked Bruce's transponder. Fifteen minutes out. "We could be really quick?"

Damian shot to his feet. "We could."

They walked as fast as they could to the elevator. By the time they got to the stairs, they were running, skipping steps along the way while Tim laughed at his own foolishness.

Once they crossed the threshold into Damian's room, Tim immediately tripped over Alfred the cat, who hissed in disapproval and took off like a streak. Damian lifted Kent and Pennyworth from his pillow and carried them to the hallway, then Tim slammed the door behind them and pressed his back against it. Damian leaned on one arm over him and kissed him, soft, careful pressure at odds with the impatience of his dash upstairs. Tim stood on tiptoe and cradled his face in both hands, kissing him back just as carefully. Damian deserved to be treated like something precious. God knew he wouldn't ever be gentle with himself.

"Dami," Tim sighed against his mouth when it felt like he might melt into the wood at his back. He started kicking off his shoes. "Where do you want me to touch you?"

He meant it in the "do we have time to focus on non-essentials" sense, but Damian groaned at the question. "I don't know and I don't care." He nipped Tim's bottom lip, his hands gripping Tim's hips with demanding pressure. "I just want you to touch me. Please."

Oh. A sudden realization struck Tim: they hadn't slept together since the night Damian had driven over after he'd figured out what to do with the audio surveillance. It would explain why he was shaking all over. Or maybe that was Tim.

He pulled back and looked up at Damian through his lashes. “You really don't care?” He dropped his hands to Damian’s ass and squeezed. “I can touch you anywhere?”

“I've said so.” Damian kissed a gentle progression from his temple to his collarbone. 

Tim tilted his head to give him more room. “In that case I want more than—oh,” as Damian nipped at the crook of his neck. “Take off your shirt, I wanna feel you.”

Damian pulled away enough to obey, then lifted Tim’s shirttail. “Stop wasting time and get this off too.”

Tim laughed and helped him get the collar over his head. “Happy?”

Damian picked him up in a fireman’s carry, sending a surprised “oof” from Tim’s mouth as his belly hit Damian’s uninjured shoulder. Damian strode across the room, a man on a mission.

“I'll be much happier when I see you in my bed again.” He tossed Tim onto the mattress and pulled back the covers, motioning Tim to move so he was lying on the sheets. “I had to wash my bedding, and now—” He cut himself off and stripped the rest of his clothes off before crawling to join Tim. Only a large bandaid covered the site of his wound.

Tim hummed with happiness as they pressed together skin to skin. “And now, what?”

Damian busied himself sucking on Tim’s earlobe, then said, “Now they no longer smell like you. I have grown accustomed to at least one pillow bearing your scent. It's unacceptable.”

Tim clutched at his shoulders and shivered with delight with the scrape of Damian’s teeth against the tender skin below his ear. “I can fix that tonight.”

Damian’s nimble fingers made quick work of opening his jeans. "What if I want you to make the whole bed smell like you?"

Tim laughed, angling up his hips to help pull his pants down. “Beg and maybe I’ll think about it," he teased.

Damian gave him a derisive look as he sucked a bruise into Tim's shoulder. "Please. As if I wouldn't have you begging me in a matter of moments as long as I offered to bottom."

All of Tim's blood supply abruptly relocated to his dick so fast he went light-headed. "I—" He swallowed and tried to talk through the wad of cotton currently masquerading as his tongue. "Is that on the table?"

Damian huffed, all exasperation with Tim's denseness as he licked his way down to a nipple. "I'm merely stating that there's only one of us who knows how to make the other beg. It certainly won't be me debasing myself in such a fashion."

"Got it." Privately, Tim felt certain he could recall a few times Damian had let a "please" slip out in bed, or five minutes ago at the door, but he decided to get his own back with a different strategy. "You did say I could eat you out, though. And I think you'd look fucking hot when you're on top of me."

Damian bit across his chest, leaving tiny bruises behind. "Did I say that?"

Tim grabbed his hair and tugged his head back to see his face. To his surprise, Damian didn't fight the motion. Tim gave him a gentle shake, and Damian's eyes went half-shut. "Hey. Just sit on my fucking face already."

After a pause so long Tim almost took it back, Damian replied, "All right."

The response surprised Tim enough that he accidentally tightened his grip on Damian's hair. Damian grunted in response, body going lax on top of Tim's, head lolling on his chest. 

"Oh, look at you," Tim said, his tone rough with appreciation. "I love seeing you like this." He petted Damian's hair, combing through it a few more times while Damian slow-blinked in feline satisfaction. The occasions when he truly surrendered to Tim’s wishes were few and far between, and Tim hated to rush him, but . . . "C'mon, sweetheart." He dropped his hands to Damian's shoulders and tugged. "Up you go."

Damian only made it far enough to kiss Tim again, a little sloppier this time, lips slick as he devoured Tim's mouth. Tim groaned, too loudly for a house that had surveillance in its halls, and tore his mouth free. "We don't have time." He nipped Damian's chin in mock reproval. "Stop distracting me. We said we'd be really quick."

"I've changed my mind. Father is more than capable of—" Damian sucked in air between his teeth when Tim grabbed his thighs and pulled him up to straddle his face. "More than capable of—" He broke off again with a muffled shout as Tim began licking him from his entrance to his balls, long strokes with his tongue as flat as he could make it. "Oh fuck." His fingers tightened on the headboard hard enough to make the wood creak beneath his grip.

Tim did his level best not to laugh in triumph at that reaction, a struggle made easier by a sudden knock on the door and Dick's voice calling, "Dami? You okay?"

Damian moved lightning-fast as a matter of course, but this time it was like he teleported straight off of Tim's face and to the floor where his clothes lay. Tim jerked upright, grabbing a corner of the sheet to rub his own saliva off his chin and cheeks. "Shit, Damian, did we lock—"

"I don't know," Damian snapped, yanking his boxer briefs up. He raised his voice to call, "I'm fine—I will be there shortly."

"What do I do?" Tim whispered urgently. "Where do you want me to go?"

Damian shot a glare over his shoulder as he buttoned his pants. "I am not ashamed."

Well, in that case. Tim switched to a more conversational tone. "Me neither. I wanted to make sure you don't mind, is all." He got out of bed and pulled his own pants on. Damian walked to the door and ducked to pick up their shirts.

Tim glanced down and realized the head of his cock was showing where he'd pulled it up into his waistband. "Hey, give me mine."

Damian tossed him his shirt, and swung the door open to reveal Dick standing there in post-patrol sweats. "Hello, Richard. I didn't expect to see you tonight."

Dick's gaze flitted from Damian's exposed chest, to Tim pulling his shirt down to his hips, to the unmade bed. Tim could see the second his suspicions, confirmed, morphed into incredulity. "Are you two serious right now? You had to have known Bruce was on his way back and you were going to try to run out the clock like this?"

Tim shrugged. "He deserves to get some trauma from us instead of the other way around for once."

At the same time, Damian said, "He knows better than to disturb us."

Dick stepped in and closed the door behind him. "I wondered what you two—but I didn't want to risk ignoring sounds with your injury being so recent—" He grimaced. "How long has this been going on? Wait, what is this?"

A surge of protectiveness had Tim snapping, "That's none of your business, Dick," but Damian shook his head at him and he fell silent.

Damian turned back to Dick. "It's all right," he said, and Tim blinked. That sounded like reassurance of a preexisting worry, but why?

The deep divot between Dick's eyebrows confirmed his concern. "But—Dami—" His gaze shot to Tim again. Tim tilted his head, trying to understand the issue. Dick looked just as worried about him as about Damian, which was a change from the norm.

"Richard," Damian said, voice firm. "I assure you. It's all right." He pulled his own shirt on. "We are well."

"And are you happy?" Damian gave him a dubious look, and Dick sighed, running his hand through his hair. "I'm sorry, it's only that a few things just clicked and I'm trying to understand."

Oh. He was remembering the conversation he'd had with Tim when Tim was still getting in his own way with Damian. No wonder he was struggling.

Tim crossed the room to stand at Damian's side, not touching him but close enough to feel his body heat. "I can't speak for Damian, but I'm happy." Talking plainly about his own emotions made him feel like he'd just walked nude into a press conference, but maybe he could spare Damian the same embarrassment.

Damian surprised him, though. "In this, you may speak for me," he replied, voice low and private. Although his mouth stayed serious, his eyes smiled down at Tim, warm with fondness.

Tim lost his breath at that look. An unfamiliar feeling reverberated through his chest, tightening his throat and sending his heartbeat into overdrive, but it wasn't unpleasant.

God, I love you so much.

Dick spoke before he could properly panic. "Okay. Good. Then . . . this is just weird instead of troubling. I'll get out of your hair. Tim, wanna come back to the Cave? I was hoping you could walk me through the info at the same time as Bruce since they have a couple of things going on in Bludhaven."

"Yeah. Sure," Tim replied, his tone so normal that it shocked the tiny portion of his brain not shrieking what the fuck what do you mean LOVE. Picking up his shoes and socks, he followed Dick out the door.

It wasn't until he heard the door click shut that he realized he'd forgotten to say goodbye.

day 118 here

[popculturebuffet]

Static Shock: Shock to the System and Aftershock Review

“You know what? 13 years ago, me and some friends sat in a restaurant all night and daydreamed about the kinds of stories we would tell if we had the chance. We wanted to expand the concept of superhero to include characters that kind of looked like us, who had some of the same background, experiences and dreams as we did. We wanted to create something fun that a new generation would respond to the same way we responded to our childhood heroes -and damn if we didn't succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Today, Static Shock is a household name with millions of fans of all ages (Is there stuff I'd do differently? Yeah, almost all of season four but why nitpick?) Static is the most successful thing I've ever helped create and I'm both proud and gratified that people have taken it into their hearts. “ 

Dwayne McDuffie, Co-Creator of Static and Writer for Static Shock

This review is dedicated to Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III.                                                        Rest In Power Static Shock is awesome. I grew up with the show watching it both first run on the WB and second run on Cartoon Network and loved it as much as I did other large parts of my childhood courtsey of DC like Batman the Animated Series, Teen Titans and both Justice League Shows. What makes this unique among the DC Properties is that Static wasn’t really a big name when he got a show. He wasn’t even part of the DC Universe. 

See as I had no idea for probably a good decade, Static actually came from Milestone Comics, a company ran by and focused on african americans. The goal was understandable: While black heroes existed at the time, and there were some fantastic ones like Storm, Jim Rhodes and Steel... these guys weren’t the center of their universes. The big faces of the big  companies, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash.. were white. So milestone was a shakeup of that with the main teams and heroes all being black, from Icon, an alien who’d lived among man but rather than end up in kansas like say superman ended up imprinting on a slave woman centuries ago and has been with us since, who was encouraged by an energetic teenager named Rocket to put on a costume and do something with his powers and his community, Hardware, a tech genius who had his work stolen by a white asshole and wanted to fight back and BLood Syndicate, a group of gang members all caught in the “The Big Bang”, a huge fight between all of Dakota, the midwest city where the comics take place, that ended when the police released a bunch of experimental gas that gave them all super powers. 

As most of you who have watched the show already know, this is where Static comes from. Static was the company making their own Spider-Man, i.e. a nerdy teenager who suddenly gets super powers, in this case Virgil Hawkins who at the prodding of a friend took a gun to The Big Bang to get revenge on a bully. .but ultimately couldn’t go through with it, decided it wasn’t him and got rid of the gun and ran.. and still ended up in it, becoming Static, a young hero dedicated to using his powers to fight other “Bang Babies”.. a term that dosen’t really sound that great and they really should’ve thought through. But Phrasing aside the character was great and I look forward to reading more and only haven’t because I have to buy the issues gradually, but DC is currently re-releasing the individual issues of Static, Icon, and Hardware weekly in anticipation of a reboot of Milestone Coming in May digitally on Comixology at only 2 bucks a pop, and rereleased the original print collections that were long out of print for 10 bucks each, though i’m getting static on it’s own since i’ts really not that much less expensive as it only collects four issues while Icon and Hardware both collect 8, so I can wait a bit there on Hardware and already own Icon: A Hero’s Welcome.. and really need to review it at some point. 

While Milestone’s output was good, at least from the two books i’ve read, with Robert Washinton III, who sadly not only ahs also passed but was fucking homeless for a while  in the 2000′s.. what the actual hell, writing Static alongside Dwayne McDuffie, whose later moved onto animation writing tons of Static episodes all of them classics including the school shooting episode, the first three rubberbandman episodes and both Anasazi episodes. Point is it had good writers and artists and even had a distrbution deal with DC, so they had a leg up on the glut of other comic book companies.. but happened to start at the start of the comic book crash, a huge downturn in sales in the 90′s as the speculator boom, i.e. a bunch of people assuming every number one would be worth golden and silver age money, forgetting a character has to BUILD INTREST and this stuff takes time, and whose attempts to sell fast flooded the market with comics no one wanted,, caused the roof to cave in and with a bunch of assholes pegging milestone as a “Company for black people” rather than you know, a company trying to add fucking diversity and represntation to the comics industry, and that simply wanted a unvierse that was centered around people of color instead of white guys. The company eventually had to shut down, and was left to lisencing.  This is where the show comes in. Producers HAD been trying to make shows based on Milestone for a while, as far back as the mid-90s and the company was was all for it but the closest it got was an x-men style team series using various characters whose first draft was terrible and whose second draft by Alan Burnett, a producer on various DC Animated shows who’d go on to produce Static Shock, that McDuffie and others really liked but sadly did not get picked up. eventually though with presistance Static ended up getting a series and as I said McDuffie went on to write for it though he did not develop it. Some changes went into place naturally to make it work for an early 2000′s kids show and while i’ll probably miss so since again, only read one issue as we go. But due to Milestone coming back my intrest was peaking, hence finally reading the copy of Icon I had to buy from the library years ago due to keeping it overdue but am now EXTREMLEY glad I own as i’ts incredibly rare and really damn good, and wanting to read static, doing so lately since it’s finally on digtiial and again not too expensive. So join me as I give you a shock to the system and revisit this hell of a series to see if it holds up.. which just to cut that short it does and i’m only holding off binging MORE because I want the first two eps to be fresh enough in my head to review properly.. and also go over the various voice actors because that’s a thing with me now and charcter co-creator dwayne mcduffie because he’s awesome. 

As I like to do when covering a series first episodes, let’s run down the voice cast. 

First up is an UTTER LEGEND, and I use the term voice acting legend a lot, and mean it every time and have good reason to use it when I say it, and Phil LaMarr is a GOD in the buisness, having done a metric ton of voice acting roles, and being easily the most proflific black voice actor in animation. He’s also done some acting work, mostly in pulp fiction which I have not seen, but his true staying power and talent is in animation so here’s just the roles I feel are most notable or may not be very notable but i’m bringing up anyway because it’s my list. 

His roles besides Virgil include Lester Payton the Texas Ranger who showed up for one very good episode of king of the hill to be badass and show up the hickish, stupid and very punchable local Sheriff, Gearld’s obnoxious older brother Jamie O on Hey Arnold, Hermes Conrad from futurama, Carver from the Weekenders (PUT IT ON PLUS DISNEY), Axel Foley for exactly one bit in Clerks the Animated Series, but anyone whose seen it will know exactly which one, Micheal on the Proud Family, Black Vulcan on Harvey Birdman (In His Pants), Hector Con Carne and Dracula on Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Evil Con Carne, Jack on Samurai Jack something I didn’t know for decades (and I didn’t know about the carver thing till today though i’ts obvious in hindsight), John Motherfucking Stewart on Justice League and later Steel and Adult Static in the Unlimited seasons, Osmosis Jones on Ozzy and Drix, Bolbi Strogofski on Jimmy Neutron (And yes i’m just as shocked as you are.), Wilt on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Marcus on Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Bull Sharkowski on My Gym Partner is A Monkey and Also a Sociopath Please Help God My Life is a waking nightmare..... okay the rest of that title is implied but we all watched the same show, we all know in our hearts that was the title

Moving on, he was also, and yes there’s MORE: Maxie Zeus on The Batman, Philly Phil on Class of 3000, Both Robertsons AND Fancy Dan on the Spectacular Spider-Man, Jazz on Transformers Animated, Kit Fisto and Bail Organa on Star Wars the Clone Wars, Gambit and Bolivar Trask on Wolverine and the X-Men, Aquaman I, L-Ron and Green Beetle on Young Justice, J.A.R.V.I.S. and Wonder Man (Simon Williams) In Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Gabe and Carny on Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters (Really miss that game and have been snapping up what cards I can get lately), Baxter Stockman in the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (And there’s also an awesome photo of him with 2003 Baxter... the two best together in one place. I got chills), Dormammu (I’ve come to bargin) in various Marvel Shows, Noville in Mighty Magiswords, Zach’s dad Marcus in Milo Muprhy’s Law, Craig’s Douchey Brother Benard on Craig of the Creek, showing he’s clearly come full circle, And Mr. Scully on the Casagrndes. And given It took about two paragraphs to cover all of this, yeah, I MEANT legend. 

Next we have Kevin Micheal Richardson as Virgil’s Dad Robert, and it’s the first time since I started introducing Voice Actors on a show that i’ve overlapped. I already covered him during the second episode of legend of the three caballeros, but for the short version he’s also very acomplished, very damn good and I somehow missed he played the old blind guy in hey arnold> Needless to say the dude is awesome. 

Virgil’s Sister Sharon is played by Michele Morgan who was in the rap group BWP and did some smaller roles outside of this the one exception being Juicy on the PJ’s, which I have not watched much of but REALLY do not like, though i’ll at least give it credit for being a decently long lasted black claymation sitcom at at time when there were, and hoenstly still aren’t, many black animated shows. 

Back to long casting sheets, next up is Jason Marsden, who is one of my faviorites as i’ve realized recently as Ritchie. As I also found out only recently he started on the Sitcom Step By Step and while that show is .. ehhhhhhhhh, he is great in it because he’s great in everything. He also apparently has his own internet variety show which I have to watch now. His roles include Max Goof, ironically given I was just talking about that role a few days ago, Haku in the english dub of Spirted Away, Micheal, the kid being yelled at by a bunch of 80′s cartoons characters not to take drugs in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue!, Nermal in the DTV Garfield movies and The Garfield Show, Tino on the Weekenders (SERIOUSLY DISNEY), Snapper Carr on Justice League, Rikochet on Mucha Lucha! for the last season (Why I do not knkow and while I love the guy he was not the right choice), Felix on Kim Possible, Chase Young on Xiaolin Showdown (WHich I did not realize was him and now I do easily his best role and I REALLY should’ve), Red Star and Billy Numerous on Teen Titans, Speedy on Batman Brave and the Bold, Impulse/Kid Flash II on Young Justice, and Fingers on Kaijudo. He hasn’t done as much lately which is a shame but hopefully i’tll pick up again. 

Next up is Hotstreak, Virgil’s brutal bully turned unhinted pyromancer played by DANIEL COOKSY, another actor i’m happy to talk about and another faviorite I haven’t seen much of lately. Daniel was an actor from childhood, playing Budnick on Salute Your Shorts, but he quickly gained a long and storied catalogue of VA Work: His first big roll was as Montana Max on Tiny Toon Adventures and if there is a god he’ll be back for the reboot, Stoop Kid on Hey Arnold, the incomprable Jack Spicer on Xiaolin Showdown, far and away his best role and part of why Chronicles sucked so bad was he was he didn’t get to reprise the role, The titular Dave the Barbarian, Django of the Dead on El Tigre (Had no idea), Kicks utterly insufferable big Brother Brad on Kick Buttowski and apparently he’s back at it again after laying low for a bit as he’s voicing Snag in Long Gone Gultch.. which I already really needed to watch but hot damn, I missed him. Sign me up. 

Frieda, Virgil’s crush and close friend who in the comics was his main confidante and love intrest but here is eventually pushed aside, is voiced by Danica Mckeller whose work didn’t seem all that familiar.. until I found out she was Ms. Martian on Young Justice. Hello, Megan. Very talented and she did get a major role in a dc show eventually so good for her. Can’t wait for season 4. 

So with our major players out of the way,  let’s talk about Dwayne. McDuffie is an AWESOME man and my respect has grown for him more and more with time. A writer and editor at Marvel, McDuffie has a decent resume doing smaller but awesome books, which I got most of for free last year when Marvel was giving out free digital collections due to the lock down, like Damage Control, a sitcom set in the marvel universe about the company that picks up after superhero battles and the logistics and antics that insue and Dethlok, about a pacfist trapped inside a cyborg zombie. He was as mentioned one of Milestone’s founders, and wrote Icon, Hardware and co-wrote the first few issues of Static. He’d go on to a pretty stacked career in animation, writing on this show and Justice League before becoming  story editor and show runner for Unlimited , even making a return to comics as a result writing the Marvel miniseries beyond and an arc of Fantastic Four in which Black Panther and Storm filled in for Reed and Sue while the two of them worked on their marriage after Reed did.. pretty much everything he did in Civil War. He also became head writer and show runner for Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien, revamping the franchise a bit, and Alien Force, at least the first two seasons are awesome and I feel people overreacted on the changes. Ultimate Alien is okay, but has it’s problems but the finale was awesome and left the man’s legacy on a high note.. as he sadly passed in 2011 due to heart complications. He is truly missed and produced some utterly amazing stuff whlie he was alive. So on that melacholy note let’s see what happens when his creation hits the tv screen shall we?

Shock to the System:

This episode is written by Christopher Simmons, who is apparently a huge art designer guy.. but i’m not sure that’s the same chirsptoher simmons. Much more notable is the writer of the episode after this Stan Berkowitz, who was showrunner for season 1 and has done a LOT of DCAU work and is suprising talent, having written a lot of awesome Justice League episodes including Secret Society and The Royal Flush One. Point is we’re in first class hands.  Before the episode itself I want to talk about the intro and how it’s unique among DCAU shows. Like most Western Animation the intros for DCAU shows didn’t change much over the seasons with the most I can see is JLU changing up the footage to preview the current episode and later adding Hawkgirl to the intro after her return to the team. I THINK superman the animated series changed some of it’s footage too, but I can’t confrim it and may of just been imagining it. As i’ve talked about on my blog it’s normally a pet peeve of mine, mostly because shows you know, change after season 1, characters get added some one shot characters used for the intro never return, and after a while it can feel dated especially in more recent shows where the status quo is not at all set in stone and things change quite a bit. But sometimes it can be good enough that either the dated elements don’t matter or general enough that you don’t need to change it and i’ts just that good.. and given Batman the Animated Series has both in spades, you can see why i’ts probably my golden standard for intros and after superman the animated series DC mostly followed suit. But being part of the teen superhero boom of the 2000′s Static is unique in that it splits the diffrence: It’s intro gets the character across perfectly like a good intro should starting with Virgil getting out of bed and running a comb across his head before showing off to his sister to bug her and literally running into his dad who hand shim his bag and smiles, silently showing off his family. He then runs to school and runs into some trouble.. and said trouble changes for each intro, with Rubberband Man for season 1, Kanga (Whose name I only know because I happened to run across it) for season 2 and your guess is as good as mine for seasons 3 and 4, though Hotstreak is a constant. They still save some money for seasons 1 and 2 by recycling some animation.. but that’s alright with mea s it was good animation, and the improtant thing is cycling out old villians for new ones, while Season 3 is the only out and out redo to show off Richie taking on the Gear identity, adding about 10 seconds of intro to let him show off.  Seriously it’s an utterly great intro and like the other DCAU intros outside of superman, stuck in my brain. 

The other change that’s ENTIRELY diffrent from the rest of htem is that the music changes each time. The first two have the same formula just with a difrent vocalist and backing track: a superhero theme but with some hip hop beat boxing over it. The first intro is fine enough, not specattcular but stilll god. The second song.. is eh. Not really great and feels like a marked downgrade from season 1 and just dosen’t blend an ocrehstiral superhero theme with the beatbox elements NEARLY as well. The third song though is my faviorite.. even if I HATED Little Romeo as a  kid because I really did not like his nick show, it’s more a straight up rap song, but it has a faster beat that fits the intro better, and Romeo’s bragging fits Virgil’s character and penchant for Spidey quips perfectly. I also find it ironic that the theme that blends in with the dcau the most, the first season’s, is the one from BEFORE they decided to put it in the same universe. Still this season’s intro slaps, I just like the LIttle Romeo one a bit more.  The opening scene is picture perfect. Some masked crooks looting a warehouse are loading some stolen TV’s into a van when suddenly the lights come on one by one above one of the crooks before his tv switches to various channels before going haywire. Cue our heroes’ entrance. Let’s tak ea good look at him

Static’s Costume is awesome. While I prefer the season 3 redesign, and clearly DC agrees as the redeisgn was used for both pre and post new-52 when they used him, and while he’s getting a fresh design for the reboot, said design takes a lot of cures from said outfit. As for how the outfit differs from the comics itself  this is the design he had in the comics

It didn’t change much from the first issue, with the exception of his now iconic big puffy jacket which was added pretty early into the character’s history but I was unaware of that and just assumed he had the bodysuit the whole time. The more you know. But as you can see outside of the cool puffy jacket over a costume the two couldn’t be more diffrent. While the Dakotaverse outfit is more a standard superhero outfit, with some regular clothes touches on top the first cartoon outfit comes off more realistic, looking fantastic, but still coming off as something two teenagers could realistically have thrown together with what clothes they could buy, while still looking awesomely superheroy. IN short it’s perfect and only topped by the season 3 onward look...

But the slicker look, with an even cooler jakcet and the new colors all fitting the lighting ascetic better, but fits: not only has Virgil come along farther since he started, but with Richie now having a genius brain as Gear, he can provide a far slicker, far more professional superhero outfit on the budget the two have.  This show is just great  at costume design. 

So getting back to the episode at hand, Static puts up a huge sign in elecrticy saying “Bad guys here”, PFFFT, and then hides away and narrates that a few days ago he’d be the last person anyone would’ve expected to be a hero. Cue Flashback. 

We meet Virgil Hawkins on an average day: rapping into his razor, getting into a petty argument with his older sister Sharon, as a younger brother myself I relate to this, and talking to his dad who tries to get them to cut that out. We find out his mom has passed via his sister making really terrible eggs and saying that’s how mom made them. Exposition! Though we do get a great bit through this as when his sister gets distracted by her boyfriend calling, he uses the opportunity of her leaving the room to dump the eggs.. after having earlier jokingly prayed to his mom for a way out of breakfast. “Thanks for looking out for me mom” That’s both very sweet and very hilarious. 

This is a change from the comics it turns out as I was utterly flored to find Virgil’s mom alive and well when reading the first issue of Static. Turns out this was a change made during development and one Dwane McDuffie admitted in the interview I got the tribute quote from to not liking as he had a good reason for having Virgil have a nuclear family, as most black families in media at the time were just one single parent and a kid or two with the other having either left or died. He wasn’t too bothered by it as while he preferred what he came up with in the first place, the show DID get some really good stories out of her being gone and didn’t just have her be absent because shut up. Virgil is still working over her death and the way HOW she died ends up playing an important role in this episode and gives Virgil a dislike of guns, as she died to gang violence. So the change wasn’t for stupid or racist reasons, but likely both to keep the character count down while giving them something to work with for storylines. Or it could’ve been for stupid reasons and the writers simpily made lemonade out of that very dumb lemon, either way it ended up working.  Virgil also plans to ask his friend Frieda out. Frieda was a bigger deal in the comics, being Virgil’s friend and confidante as well as his ocasional love intrest, but here while she was inteded to at least be his love intrest here, that sorta fizzled out. As for the best friend role we meet her replacement in Richie, which McDuffie conceded was the kind of change a studio would make swapping out a female character for a male one. That being said the crew made the best of it and Richie is awesome, a bit of an overcompensating dipstick at times, but a good sounding board and pal for virgil and funny as hell too. He was also gay, something only revealed post series by McDuffie.. but unlike say Dumbledore, it’s a bit easier to swallow here: The early 2000′s were an even worse time for gay characters in tv let alone cartoons, and if they couldn’t kiss or have sex scenes on regular tv, there was no way we were getting any representation in a children’s show. So it was largely just hinted at by Richie overcompensating in how “into girls” he was and i’m once again fine with this being word of god as it was literally the best they could do and his counterpart in the comics was also gay, if not as relevant.  Ritch encourages Virgil to work on his opening to ask her out as it’s awkward as heck, hits a bit close to home.. but I do appricate the show just .. having him try and ask her out from the first episode. They likely would’ve drug thigns out a bit granted had they used Frieda more, i’m not blind to the convetions of the time. .but as someone who got the very wrong idea from tv that just waiting around meant a girl would like you eventually, when no you need to actually try even if rejection happens, I honestly wish we had more of this in media than the other garbage morals at the time. 

So he prepares to , not helped by her mentioning guy after guy is asking her out.... but before he can F-Stop, the future hotstreak, shows up.  F-STOP

That being said...... it’s not as bad as the original gangster name for the comic’s version, Biz Money B. Yes BIZ MONEY B

So yeah while F-Stop is no more intimidating, it at least means I can stop laughing. Francis, because I can’t type F-Stop without laughing and this review is already behind, shoves Virgil out of the way and agressively hits on Frieda, even saying “you smell good”, the international sign your a douchebag and also to call the police. Virgil steps up to the guy and gets PAINFULLY slammed into the lockers, something I give the animation team a lot of credit for, as you can FEEL how fucking painful that was. Virgil is saved by Wade, another local gangbanger who in the comics was a close friend of Virgils but here saves him seemingly just because.. seemingly. 

On the way home though Virg’s problems don’t end as naturally, the giant sized asshole with nothing better to do has his goons corner virgil before VIOLENTLY beating him.. off screen but the noises, and the clear brusies including a black eye, on virgil afterwords.. just holy damn i’m suprsied they got away with this but it shows just how horrifing it was and that this is a step above regular bullying, which make no mistake is absoluttley terrible and the series would later do an episode on it and school shootings, into straight up gang violence. Wade shows up again and gets the bastards to flee.. but also makes it clear he can’t keep doing this.. and forces Virgil to meet him at his base under the bridge. And it’s a tense sequence, with Virgil KNOWING this is a bad idea but having no real choice and Wade making it abundantly clear that he wants Virgil to join his crew, and makes a chilling point: while Virgils dad RIGHTFULLY dosen’t want his son to join a gang as Virgil points out.. he can’t be there for him all the time and eventually one of those times, Francis will be around. And he may not surivive that. Virgil nods noncomittaly.  At home it gets even more grim as he dosen’t open up to his family, understandably as his dad would jsut say to call the police and well.. we’ve seen how the police treat black people. At best they’d just try and use Virgil as an informant and that likely wouldn’t end fucking well for Virgil. Ritchie points out he can’t join a gang, virgil’s mom died that way.. see told you it’d be important to the plot.. but I like how the story dosen’t offer an easy answer.. well okay he gets electric powers soon enough but without the fantastic element this is just an innocent kid caught between either joining the very thing his mom hated or hoping a system not built to protect him will keep him alive. It’s utterly saddening and chilling and holy shit is it amazing a cartoon in the early 2000′s was able to get away with.. ANY OF THIS, and they handle it great, paired down a bit from the comics but even then it’s still incredibly balsy they got THIS much in. 

Naturally Wade calls in his favor and our hero is forced to come running.. and soon finds out Wade’s brought him in for a massive gang war. Welcome to the big bang, baby. He hands Virgil a gun as things get started and Virgil.. drops the thing and tries to escape, in a harrowing sequence.. and runs into Francis because god apparently REALLY hates this kid today. As if to prove that the police show up and while that prevents a beating, they demand they disassemble. then release untested gas on them because of course they do. 

As a result the big bang truly begins, with the various gang members getting mutated.. and naturally so does virgil. Though he wakes up the next day seemingly fine. How’d he get home? Does his dad know where he was?

I don’t know and we’re not getting any answers, but Virgil soon finds weird stuff happening like his clock shorting out, change being attracted to him and his razor going wild. It’s only once he get sback to his room he gets an inkling of what’s going on and calls Ritchie to meet him at the Junk yard.. though it is a bit of a dick move as he dosen’t you know, tell him anything about Wade or Francis right away. He does at the yard though.. and that he has powers, having finally figured out how to use them to a point. And the series does provide a decent justification later as to why he’d get this so quickly: Virgil is a smart kid, gets great grades at school and apparnetly there’s even an episode later where he gets a scholarship to a fancy genius school. So him getting how elctromagntisim works or being a quick study on it makes perfect sense. 

Richie suggest the obvious.. to become a superhero. And the thought.. hadn’t occured to Virgil. It’s honestly a nice twist on the old trope. That he hadn’t thought of it, not because he’s selfish or any of that or needs to learn a hard lesson, those have been done.. simply because the rush of getting his powers, and implicitly of having a way out of his current predciament, a way to keep Francis off his back and keep Wade from pulling him in further. His own path. But once i’ts brought up.. he jumps on it. Part of it is being a nerd like you or I, of course he wants to.. and being a good intetioned one, he knows this is the right thing to do. It’s waht makes a superhero a hero: Anyone can get powers in a universe like this, esepcailly the dcau, but it takes true courage and heart to use them selflessly and knowing you’ll be in danger. It’s why I love surperheroes: they often didn’t ask for this but they do it anyway because somebody’s gotta. We also get an intresting wrinkle is superman is, at least I think in this episode I could’ve missed it or misremembered things, mentioned as a fictional character. That’s because originally like the comics this wasn’t part of the DCAU.. but eventually the crew decided it shared staff from it, shared a network, both first run and on reruns, why not just make it part of the DCAU proper. I fully support this decisionf: While i’m midly annoyed unlimited never really used anything from static shock outside of Static himself in the time travel episode, despite you know Static and Gear having BEEN to the tower and not being much younger than Kara and defintely older than Courtney, I chalk it up to weird rights issues or something like that. But having Batman, Batman Beyond, Superman, Green Lantern and the Justice League itself all guest star was a good idea, and expanded both static’s universe and gave the DCAU something differnt as most heroes in it were older and more experinced in contrast to the up and coming virgil. Again really would’ve been nice if he and gear could’ve been a part of the expanded league but production might of just been too far ahead or, given he had his own series, they might just have wanted to stick to toher characters. Also begs the question why Icon or Hardware wasn’t adapted for the expanded League but hey, questions for later and the tricky logisitics of the milestone rights might’ve been the issue. I don’t know I wasn’t in the room. 

So we get a costume montage, including Black Vulcan from Superfriends, who again ironically would be voiced by Lamarr not too long after this, though weirdly they DON’T use his outfit from the comics for this montage. I mean why not? It fits the gag and would’ve been a good second to last choice.But what could’ve been aside we get our winner and cut back to present day...

Thanks boys. Static finds out one of the things in the warehouse is a shipment of computers for the school and can’t help but show off, showing up to the school, where Frieda and Richie are setting up for the dance, and dropping off the computers, and even saying his catchphrase for the first time “I’ll put a shock to your system” (Which Richie chimes in with awesome line and I agree, great catcphrase), before helping set up and flirting with frieda. 

Though as Richtie says he’s a natural. He’s not wrong as he can work a crowd. .but back it up too as his first run out had him easily taking out the crooks, and as many teen superheros and fans of heroes of hte type, myself included will tell you, getting it right in one is not easy. Not even Miles MOrales was immune. All Static needs now is a villian. 

And the end of the episode provides one as we see, in horrifc and once again damn suprising detail most of hte new metas aren’t doing so good and are melting and other stuff and we catch up with Francis whose burning up.. and naturally given that hair, though given he named himself F-Stop it’s the least of his problems, he’s got fire powers and escapes to “Have me some fun”

So with that we end episode 1. And it’s excellent, a great way to introduce the hero and while the warehouse opening is a bit superflous, it is a decent addition, showing our heroes first outing in costume and giving us a bit of an action scene to get us through the very heavy rest of the episode. But the rest of the episode is no less grippping, telling the tale of a teen caught in an unwinnable scenario who suddenly finds a way out. And speaking of which waht of Wade? Will we see him again? Is he perhaps Ebon, the series big bad as I thought when I was a kid? What comes of the man who directly caused static’s origin?

Yeahhh that’s the one mistep I think the pilot makes. Frieda is understandable as that was likely a simple change in creative direction. This though? Why build this guy up if your not going to bring him back. I mean where he went was probably the grave, as he probably did due to his mutation, but it’s still VERY weird to spend a whole episode focusing on this guy, building him up as a big personal threat to our hero.. and NOT have him become the series big bad. And maybe he WAS supposed to be ebon and they just changed their mind. I don’t know but it bothers me it bothers me a lot. Otherwise though flawless. ONe more to go. 

Aftershock: We open outside an electronics store, as our heroes watch the news reacap what happened in the first episode, with the media dubbing it the Big Bang and revealing their could be hundreds of “Metahumans”, as Virgil dubs after deciding the media’s term “Mutant” dosen’t fit, a nice wink to the fact that that’s the term used in dc comics and I believe milestone but could be wrong there. Me I like the term, has a nice ring to it. 

At the store while Richie mulls over waht this means Static finds out he’s a human CD player.... this was before mp3 players and streaming on your phone made them horribly obsolete mind you and if you don’t know what one is congradualtions you live in some sort of bubble and you made me feel really old junior. 

Frieda happens to be there and Virgil quips “What’s the matter they run out of britney cds”. Dude she’s not bad. Also be careful what you wish for man. Nickeback returned the year after this. You have not truly suffered through bad music yet my young friend. They spot a kid looking feverish, and he soon turns into a purple werewolf, as you do. It’s a bang baby.. those are richie’s exact word and you may not want to start a panic there bud. Just saying your best friend is one. THeir not all like this. Our heroes book it only to run into Francis who naturally refuses to let them leave and only doesn’t try to beat up Virgil because Virgil points otu the werewolf and nonplussed, he goes to fight it, scarring it off by revealing his own powers. He’s now dubbed himself Hotstreak which points for getting an actually good name kid. No points for what happens next as unsuprisingly getting powers did NOT mak ehim a better person and he attacks Virgil who blocks with a garbage can lid and thankfully is blasted into an ally. Richie tries to guard frieda for damn obvious reasons but gets hsi shirt burnt up because shut up Thankfully Static shows up, and we get our firsdt full on superhuman fight as both fight each other with aplomb, and it’s a damn good fight.. and one that goes pear shaped for Virg as he’s caught off guard when he finds out Hotstreak can use his powers to fly, and tackles him and his previous trauma causes him to freeze up. Thankfully , as Frieda put in a call earlier, the fire department arrive and HOt streak has to retreat, though Virgil is bummed that he “Choked”. And I love this as it not only shows Virgil’s inepxerince, as this is his first time fighting a bad guy but that just because he HAS power now dosen’t mean trauma and his previous fear of Hotstreak goes away or you won’t freeze up from time to time. It dosen’t make him weak or anything like some assholes would call it .. it makes him human. Humans make mistakes, and it makes him all the more relatable that he’s not pefect and that he did freeze up as I know I certainly would at last once in the circumstances. 

Things don’t get better at dinner as Sharon and Pops argue over the bang babies with Pops calling them a meance and Sharon pointing out Static exists so they can’t all be bad. See assuming a group of superhumans are bad because a handful of them ar edick sis why the x-men had to get their own island nation. You can only save an ungreatful populous so many times before you say “fuck it i’m getting my own island, pay me for life saving drugs, save your damn selves and stop doing genocides on us. Kay thanks”. But he does bring up a valid point that rattles his son: We don’t know anything about the Bang Babies or their biological structures and it’s likely they might further mutate into monsters, Static included. 

Virgil, understandably, wants to check this and thus he and richie compare blood samples in science, to no real conclusion. She he checks out with his doctor who assumes he’s sexually active in a great getting crap past the radar bit and a bit of realisim, but he agrees to the test though if something came up he would have to tell Virgil’s dsad and is up front about this. Nice dose of realisim.

That night City Council has a meeting and the Mayor TRIES to deflect Papa Hawkins questions about the bang babies which again, while being a judgmental ass as not every person hit was a gang member (Virgil, and as we discover later some others), and not every gang member is there by choice, some by circumstnace some, like virgil almost was, because they HAD no other option. Again years of reading x-men may of just made me a bit touchy on assholes admitely assuming superpower people bad. But it’s clear the public is upset and while she says an investigation is underway... Virgil and Richie are not only not convinced, but figure she’s actively covering it up. And unlike everyone else there who probably suspects the same, they can do something about it and tail her.  It’s during this, and cleverly as I didn’t realie till writing this using similar skills to his human cd player act, Virgil listens in and discovers whose behind it: Edwin Alva, whose apparently richer than bill gates and a beloved phinarophist Alva, as it turns out, was actually the arch enemy of Hardware in the comics, taking advantage of the guy in his civiliian idtentiy and thus casuing him to launch a war on the asshole. He does transition into this series well though, being the one behind the gas that caused it and with the mayor agreeing to back off, planning to simply dump the info about the big bang on a disc then destroy everything for now till the heat dies down. Yup sounds like a corprate douchebag. 

Static tails him, finds the lab and infiltrates it, stealing the disc.. but getting caught by Alva’s goon, and trapped in a glass prison, forced to use ALL his power to escape and barely getting out alive, but not before bouncing off alva’s car. Still he now has the proof.. and meanwhile Hotstreak, who I was wrong did get captured, is forced to take pill sbut spits them out once the orderly is gone. Dude.. WHY DIDN’T YOU WATCH HIM. Make sure he swallows that shit especially since, as he has no powers right now and can’t harm you. 

Hotstreak escapes off screen and our heroes discuss the disc before he shows up, and we get a REALLY fucking amazing scene: Virgil ducks into an Alleway and ritchie is worried.. and Virgil disarms him with just one word responses Ritchie: Virg you can’t take him.  Virgil: Gotta. Ritchie: Well at least wait for the fire department Virgil: Can’t.  It’s simpile but it gets the point across: This is his fight, he can’t wait for help, and people need him. And this is what makes a true hero: It’s easy to be a hero when everythings going well.. but it’s the true ones who stick it out against the odds and fight anyway. And he’s going to.  So we get one hell of a fight, though naturally Hotstreak burns up the disc. And I do like this as it dosen’t feel contrived.. yes Static could’ve left it with ritchie.. but he wasn’t thinking in the moment and dind’t really have time to think abotu the disc, only that people were being hurt and he was all they had between them and Hotstreak. It was no choice at all. Still that pisses Virgil off that the last night’s work is now worthless, and he fully charges up and curbstomps francis who retreats into a clearing. Hostreak brags when static follows, as even he’s figured out Static needs to be around metal, as he’s usually on his disc or the street, and in the park there suppodsidly isn’t any. But he’s not THAT smart as Virgil points out two things: one, he hoped to do this on PURPOSE so they wouldn’t be around people and no on e would get hurt and 2).. this is a city, there’s metal everywhere.. and he awesomely and cleverly proves it by unlodging a sewage pipe with his powers and dousing his foe, winning and proving his stuff. I love this solution, it’s a clever spider-man type way to disarm him, using smarts and the einvroment instead of just brute forcing it. Though the sewage part wasn’t intetional our hero still won and gets praise from the people dumb enough to follow the fight. 

However at home Virgil points out it was  Pyrrhic Victory and shows off his smarts by telling the tale behind it, which I didn’t know,because tv tropes didn’t exist yet: king pyrhus fought the romans and WON.. but had so little armies left that he still lost overall. That’s what this feels like to Virgil: he beat hotstreak but any chance at a cure for Bang Babies and Alva going to jail for causing them is gone. His mood does get a boost though as the doctor calls and reveals he’s fine, he just has a bit too much elctrolytes and just needs to lay off teh salt. He celebrates, we get a quick gag and the episode ends

Aftershock is another stellar episoe, giving us Virgil’s first super foe and a personal one at that, while showing some growth. As richie tells him he’s not virgil anymore he’s static and he can’t let his past get to him.. and he does’nt going from cowering in fear to easily beating his foe with simple logic. It’s a good followup that answers questions you may have from the first ep, like what does this do to virgil’s body, who supplied the gas, and why has no one done anything about this, and sets up another villian for Static in Alva. Great stuff. I highly recommend these episodes and the show as a whole: it’s fast paced, grounded and enjoyable, having just enough levity to not be too dour but just enough tension and stakes to be intresting. A throughly fantastic superhero show and one that i’d certainly love to revisit on this blog If you have an episode of static or the dcau in general you’d want me to cover, my comissions are open and details are on a tab on my blog or can be gotten simply by asking me via ask or dm. Tommorow we’re going deeper underground, there’s too much damage in this town as the Lena Retrospective continues. So expect gay ducks, straight ducks and some terrfirmains. See you next rainbow. 

[cosmicbash]

One the angsty prompt ideas I’ve been thinking about is Kells practicing how to cook for weeks so he can surprise Em by cooking him dinner, maybe for an anniversary or something, and on the day Kells has planned to surprise him, Em is hours late, leaving Kells alone for the evening. If you’re interested maybe you could write something like this? 🥰

3 years together. One thousand and ninety five fucking days between him and this old dorky man.

It's insane. Downright impossible to believe but Colson knows it's as real and true as the 2 year sobriety chip he's got hung around his neck on the gold chain Marshall gifted him with it this morning.

Both their relationship and his sobriety are as intertwined as their lives are now. Marshall's like the glue that holds all of his pieces together. Picking Colson back up, time and time again whenever he shattered in the beginning and filling in the gaps with his own loose pieces until it was Colson's turn to do the same. Which, by then, it only made sense to combine their puzzles and broaden the picture.

Now Marshall swoops in for Casie's PTA meetings he can’t make during tour. Holding the phone and helping him FaceTime for soccer games and school conferences when flight delays or bad luck keeps him late.

Colson tags along to Whitney's first few dates out in LA, weaving through the public spaces Marshall never could without drawing attention just to make sure she's safe and respected.

They tag team any situation involving the girls, even though Alaina and Hailey both still snicker at him from time to time, and Casie rolls her eyes at Marshall's rules. They're more than just dating now.

They're family.

And even just thinking about that brings tears to Colson's eyes.

Or maybe it's the onions. Baze said chewing gum helped mitigate this fucking problem but goddammit does it burn-

"Fuck!"

He has no idea how he got it in his mind that he could actually cook a meal, let alone a full anniversary dinner for Marshall but here he is. A pot and pan already cooking on the stove and his fingers knicked a dozen times in his rush to cut up more veggies for the sauce. 

It's insane.

But Colson's following through with it anyway, because he fucking loves Marshall and that bastard cooks dinner for them every single holiday or occasion so it's about time he stepped up to the plate and did it himself. 

Plus he's been secretly practicing for weeks with Baze over both FaceTime and a few in person lessons. Perfecting his simmering styles and meat seasoning to make the tastiest meal he can manage all on his own.

So far the last three times he's made the dish his bassist had given stellar reviews so there's little chance he'll somehow fuck it up tonight knowing it's for Marshall…..at least, he hopes.

The minor setbacks his butchered fingers have brought aside though, so far everything was coming along perfectly. His noodles are boiling (never over the rim, thank you wooden spoon trick), his meats marinating, and as soon as he tosses these sliced onions in his sauce will be cooking down beautifully.

All in all the night is starting to look like it just might be perfect.

Until 6 o'clock passes by and Colson's ears never pick up the click of the front door knob, or the hum of Marshall's escalade pulling up front outside.

The food's still simmering, minutes away from being actually done so he doesn't worry too much. Sure he was hoping to have a sweet moment where his boyfriend comes home and catches him cooking at the stove like a traditional housewife, but seeing his face when the food's done and plated promises to be just as cute.

Besides, Marshall has always fit the housewife role so much better than him anyway. Even the apron Colson's wearing is one of the older rapper's, stolen from his small collection in the pantry to protect his designer sweater.

Colson doesn't start to worry at 6. Traffic can be a bitch.

7 though? And then 7:30 when his texts go unread and his calls ring all the way through to voice-mail? That's when the blonde starts to fret. 

He's luckily put off plating because some brief flash on uncertainty had run through him after the food finished so it's stayed warm and simmering on the stove. But even that had to come to an end before 7:30 because his sauce would singe or his noodles might squish, so now Colson's trying to keep busy by perfecting the presentation. Shaky fingers swiping around the edges of Marshall's plate to clean up a splatter of sauce. Every Chopped Judge rambling off feedback in his head until he has it looking like something he's certain even Gordon fucking Ramsey would ask for a bite of.

By 8 the dinner table is set. His plate, Marshall's, the bucket of low alcoholic wine they both love chilling as a centerpiece. Colson even lights a few candles and adds some flowers from this mornings gift exchanges to keep himself from screaming.

There's a pit in his stomach that's steadily been growing though. Every passing minute and glance to his phone where he finds no change only carving it deeper. 

Marshall should be home. He never runs this late at the studio without a call, let alone without a message. He's treated his work like any other 9-5 job since before they ever even got together, always strict about his routine and careful to make up for over run hours by leaving earlier the next day. Usually Colson likes to bust his balls and insist he live a little more spontaneously but tonight isn't the one to pull that.

Especially not if it means Marshall's going to completely forget to check his fucking phone and leave him trying not to think the worst.

Colson only males it another 5 minutes before he caves and texts Paul. Fingers tapping fast across his screen to draft multiple desperate sounding messages before he finally settles on a "Em bust his phone again?" That feels just casual enough to not embarrass him in the off chance Marshall decides to burst through the front door seconds after it sends.

The door stays closed though and Paul doesn't open the message at all. 

Now Colson can't even start passive aggressively eating dinner on his own if he wanted too. The pit in his stomach has torn itself open wide into a nauseous chasm. Every scary possibility he wanted to avoid thinking about spilling forth from the dark trench like ghouls.

He's dead. Some crazy fan broke into the studio and shot the whole place up. No one's gotten around to tell him yet, that's all. They're too busy dealing with the fallout.

No, Em's security is beyond top tier, and with how close Colson and his current bodyguard are he knows the guy would call him immediately. Marshall's fine.

Unless… what if he was in a car accident? Or some road rage incident gone fatal? Colson's seen Marshall's short temper flare up while driving. They've made dozens of jokes about it in the past, so is it really that unreasonable to believe?

Colson's pacing in the front haul when he calls Porter. Phone tucked between his ear and shoulder while he fights his shoe laces, heart racing in his chest. Prepping to fly out of the house the second Denaun tells him what fucking hospital Marshall's staying in, praying it's at the ICU section and not some fucking morgue.

"Kelly?" The older man sounds confused when he finally answers. Voice high and tone light like he's expecting this to be a butt dial. "What's up man?"

The lack of rush or worry in Denaun's voice almost soothes Colson's panic right on the spot. Surely he wouldn't sound so casual if something had happened. 

It's enough to keep Colson from immediately pleading for Marshall's safety at the least. "H-hey, uh nothing really-" Maybe Marshall is even with him right now, realizing how fucking late its gotten and how shit of a boyfriend he's been and that's why Denaun sounds awkward too. "Just uh, waiting for Marsh to get his slow ass home ya know? Sorry, aheh, I'm probably sounding like a fucking needy girlfriend right now, calling his friends and shit-" the longer Colson rambles the more embarrassed he actually feels in the moment.

God he must sound pathetic right now. Panicking over Marshall being a few hours late.

"Waiting? Didn't Marshall head out like 2 hours ago?"

"W-what?"

Colson's blood feels like actual ice in his veins.

"He isn't home? I mean, I know he was gonna stop at- fuck is it already half past 8? Marshall seriously isn't home?" Denaun's sudden panic only heightens Colson's own, but he can't get any more words to come out. Not with how a rock feels like it's jumped up his throat. "Shit, Ryan are you getting through to him? Try Paul-"

Ryan's there too? 

"What? Paul's gotta fucking answer-"

They can't get ahold of Paul either?

"Kelly have you-"

Marshall's missing. Colson's been standing around making dinner for hours, worrying over the portion sizes and appearance of his plates and Marshall's been fucking missing. What kind of partner is he? What will he even tell Hailey? Alaina? And fuck Casie is supposed to be coming up this weekend so they can all go vacation together before his next tour-

The front door bumping into his shoe startles Colson out of his frozen panic. Denaun's angry shouting dropping from his ear, as he twists and meets a pair of sheepish blue eyes peeking around the hardwood.

"Hey." 

Marshall's…..

"Is that my apron?"

So fucking dead.

"Is this your--" Colson's fingers are curling around the edge of the door so fast he doesn't even care that it makes his phone fly to the floor. "That's what you want to fucking say to me!?" His anger is boiling fast, replacing the cold in his veins with lava. "You fucking piece of-"

Marshall stumbling inside with the yanked door is expected, but the flash of bandages and a sling douse Colson's flames like a bucket of water. "Ow, fuck just give me a second to explain-"

He's hurt.

Now with all of Marshall visible Colson's hyperaware of dry blood splattered on his white graphic tee and scratches partially hidden within the rapper's beard along his cheek. "I got in an accident out on the M-8, it was minor but-"

Colson really can't handle all these rapid mood switches Marshall is putting him through today.

“You fucking idiot-“ Tears are bubbling up in his eyes and it’s like his hands can’t reach his partner fast enough. Pulling Marshall into his arms for a tight hug despite the pained noises his actions inspire. “Stupid, old asshole-“ Marshall’s hurt, the cars probably wrecked, but he’s home and that’s enough of a relief to finally smother that pit weighing down his stomach. “Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

A moment passes before he’s hugged back, shock more than likely freezing his partner up but when Marshall does loop his good arm around Colson he pulls him close. So close Colson is the one who’s bones feel like they might ache. “Can’t make any promises about that,” The older rapper’s palm feels warm when it climbs to cup his neck, Marshall’s face turning to press a kiss into Colson’s throat. 

That brush of lips is the final crack to release the flood gates.

"I love you."

"I know."

"I really really fucking love you."

"I know baby."

"I don't care how old your ass is, you better hold out and fucking die after me like a proper goddamn boyfriend, you hear me Marshall?" He's getting snot all over the older rapper's shirt. Full on smearing it across his own cheek and the fabric with every pointless rub of his face. "I love you so fucking much. Can't do this without you."

"Told you I'm not dying after you unless you kill me first, and I'm chasing you into the afterlife once you do go too. Fuck all the marriage shit, death ain't parting us either you brat." Marshall's tone is light and his palm is doing wonders to comfort him by rubbing circles into his back. It's enough to slow his hiccupped breathing down a few notches. "I dunno if you noticed but, I'm a little obsessed with you."

That drags out a wet snort. "Y-yeah?" When Colson pulls back to meet Marshall's eyes he swears he can see a wet shimmer starting to glaze over his partner’s as well. "Prove it then."

There's a flicker of something in blue eyes, so fast that Colson almost thinks he hallucinates the emotion altogether. But then Marshall's wrapped up arm wiggles between their bodies. The dark blue of the sling catching and sliding so his scratched up fist can shimmy its way partially out. "Planned on it-" There's something clutched tight there, black peeking out from between Marshall's finger and thumb. It's got Colson's heart dropping down into his stomach all over again. "What do you think I was driving so late on the M-8 for?"

"Marshall-" It can't be.

"Colson." But his shithead of an accident victim boyfriend is pulling back, both his good arm and slung arm awkwardly flailing in the air for a moment as he drops down on one knee. The visible wince not hidden as well as Colson imagines the man wants it to be. But Marshall's eyes are softening, and the blonde feels completely cemented in place. The only part of him moving being the uncontrollable shaky quiver of his bottom lip. "I had a whole moment planned, there were flowers, balloons, and those stupidly expensive alcoholic chocolates you love, but they all got absolutely trashed in the crash. Like, half of Detroit is probably going to think the Macies Thanksgiving parade started early. Paul called to have it all replaced, and honestly some intern is probably going to come banging on the door in about 20 minutes but I don't want to wait-" There's a flash of genuine worry that's furrowing the skin between Marshall's brows as he continues. "So I'm sorry this isn't gonna be that fancy perfect proposal you've always dreamed of-"

"Shut up." Colson's voice can't go above a whisper. His tone quick and clipped from how anxious he is to hear the man finally finish. "Just- shut up, ask me. Ask me Marsh, please-"

"Fine, always need to rush me."The rapper's lip quirks at the corners. Hands transferring the small box between eachother with a bit of fumbling. "Will you, Colson Baker-" Until Marshall can finally get it open with an audible clunk. "Legally commit to being with my annoying old ass forever?" 

[actuallybarb]

The Aftermath ~ Part 7

Summary: y/n goes to therapy, is a confirmed hoodie stealer, and gets a pep talk from sam wilson and wanda maximoff

Pairing: peter parker x reader

Warnings: swearing, angst, fluff, trauma, me attempting to write a therapy session 

Word Count: 3850

A/N: so many things. 1) i’ve never been to therapy (even tho i desperately need it) so i’m solely basing that off of Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan. 2) i live for sleepy tropes and i hella indulged. 3) sorry not sorry

                                                         //////////

“Your projects are due next Monday. Have one partner email me who your group is working with, and no, Mr. Thompson, you can’t work with students from other periods. Class dismissed.”

“Want to work together?”

We had been going to class together for a month now, but it always seemed like Peter was surprised whenever he saw me sitting next to him. Maybe it wasn’t surprise...

“Yeah. When do you want to work on it?” I shoved my notes into my already disorderly backpack and slung it over my shoulders. It was starting to get colder in New York, but I was still wearing t-shirts and shorts (mostly because I could keep myself warm and also because I’m stubborn as hell).

“Thursday? Or do you want to start sooner than that?”

“No, I can do Thursday. Are you going to the compound this weekend?” It wasn’t more than a whisper, but I still checked who was around before asking. You can never be too careful.

“Yeah, May’s driving me up after school on Friday. Want a ride?”

I smiled. “That’d be nice.” People were slowly making their way out of the building to head home for the day, but I was heading to Manhattan.

“You going home?”

“No, I’m seeing my shrink. I’ll see you tomorrow, Peter.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow, Y/N.” He turned right, I turned left, and I might have turned around and glanced back at him over my shoulder, just for a second.

But so did he.

/////////

Taylor’s office had a billion plants and as many windows in it. She always had a candle burning that smelled like clean laundry, and she liked to talk first whenever we met up. That’s why I liked her so much.

“Remember my crazy neighbor’s dog?” She was watering one of her plants when I walked in. “Guess who I accidentally ran over?”

“You ran over a dog?” I left my backpack by the door and grabbed my own watering can.

“No, not the dog. I ran over my neighbor while he was chasing after the dog.”

I laughed. “Like that’s much better.”

“Running over a dog is unforgivable, Y/N. A person is understandable.” We finished watering the plants then sat down at the huge floor-to-ceiling window that took up her back wall. Another reason I liked Taylor: I actually do stuff while I’m talking with her. It’s not like I’m sitting on a couch staring at her while I talk about my feelings, we’re on equal ground. The last couple visits I’ve worked on painting New York, but I haven’t made much progress because I’m a shit painter. “That’s not the point,” Taylor would say, “it’s all about going with it. Be a shit painter. Own it.” Yeah, we get along great.

“No more panic attacks since the first day.”

“Yeah? That’s great.” Unlike me, Taylor is a phenomenal painter. Her skyline had identifiable buildings. Mine had — I think one looks more like a tree than a building. (That’s one huge tree.) “Any nightmares?”

Oh. We’re going there today. “Just on bad days.”

“How often are the bad days?”

After the Blip and before Europe, my bad days went from every day to maybe once a week. Then Europe fucked me over. Now? I don’t know. “Whenever they feel like it.”

“C’mon, Y/N, you can do better than that.”

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “It’s not like it’s a cycle, like the moon or a period or our meetings. It’s sporadic, Taylor, and fucking exhausting.”

“Why? Why are the bad days so exhausting?”

I may or may not have angrily made a bird smash against a window in my painting. “Because I’m the only one who knows. Mom guesses, most of the time, but it’s like she’s still dancing around me. Dad sees it when he’s home, but he doesn’t know what to do. And—“ I almost said ‘and Peter.’ That would’ve been awkward. “And my friends make it better, but they’ve got their own shit to deal with, and I don’t want to dump any of my problems on them. And I know you’re going to say ‘Internalizing your pain is bad, Y/N,’ but it’s the only solution I can handle right now until I muster up the courage to actually talk to my mom again. I mean, last time I needed Jess by my side, how the hell am I going to handle it without her?”

“For starters, I’m proud of you for acknowledging the way to address the problem. And secondly, you don’t have to do it by yourself. I’ve actually been wanting to have another session with your parents, and now seems like as good of a time as any. Bring them around for your next session, and we’ll talk to them, together, about how you can get through bad days with their help. Okay?”

My lips quirked up, just a smidge. “Okay.”

“Now let’s talk about King T’Challa’s new suit, you can’t pretend you don’t have an opinion on it...”

///////

It was a bad day.

Which sucked, because it was also Thursday, and Peter was supposed to be over in half an hour to work on our project. And I was a mess.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Mom called from the living room. Her elementary school got out twenty minutes before Midtown, so she usually beat me home. “How was school?”

“It’s a bad day,” was all I said before I closed the door to my room. I didn’t slam it (not anymore) but I didn’t know anything else. I couldn’t tell if I wanted a nap, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to fly from rooftop to rooftop until I was too exhausted to come home; I didn’t know. Which sucked, because I’m the only one who could’ve told me the answer.

The was a light knock on my door. “Can I come in?” I didn’t respond, so Mom walked in. “Mind me asking why today was bad?” I still didn’t say anything, my face buried in my pillow. She sat at the edge of my bed, near my knees. “I can usually tell, you know.” It was a hushed voice that came out of her mouth - nothing like the loud and loving woman I’ve known almost my whole life. “You do a good job of trying to cover it up, but I can tell. Your shoulders are tenser than usual, and your eyebrows are crinkled together the second you step out of your room.” She sighed and put a hand on my back - her hands are always warm and usually smell like hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works because she refuses to use the government-issued ones at school. “You dad and I have no idea what you went through while we were gone. We have no idea what you went through in Europe. But we’re here for you now, Y/N. You carry this weight around with you, and I just — I want you to know that you have people to share it with. Maybe not the weight itself, but the pain it’s causing you.” She removed her hand and set both of them in her lap. “I don’t know how to make the bad days better, so I need you to tell me when you’re ready. I’m here for you, baby.” She leaned down and kissed my head, then stood up and started walking toward the door.

When her hand was on the knob, I finally spoke up. “Thank you.” It was barely a grumble, but she heard it.

The door closed quietly, and I finally decided what I wanted to do.

Cry. I cried. For at least twenty minutes. I cried because of my abilities, I cried because I lost Jess as a mom, I cried because I went to Europe, I cried because Quentin Beck was an asshole that fucked up my mental state for probably the rest of my life, I cried because I killed a lot of people, I cried because now I was friends with Peter but at what cost?

He showed up, eventually. I heard him knock on the front door as I blew my nose. Mom, bless her soul, kept him distracted until I came out of my room myself. It took me another twenty minutes to finally convince myself to leave my room, and at that point I was too exhausted to keep myself warm anymore, so the cold breeze blowing through New York hit me in full force. I slipped a hoodie on, grabbed my backpack, and took a deep breath before opening the door.

Peter was sitting at the counter while Mom washed the dishes from breakfast this morning. She was back to talking loud, and he was listening with a smile on his face. My door closed and his eyes immediately darted to me. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hey, Pete. Is it okay if we’re in the living room?”

Mom glanced between the two of us and tried to hide her little smile, but at least one of us caught it. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be in the office if you need anything.”

He must’ve noticed my bloodshot eyes; he couldn’t stop staring. “Is that my hoodie?”

Shit. Is it? I glanced down at the Midtown Tech logo and remembered getting drenched at the compound after the sprinklers unexpectedly came on. Then Peter gave me his hoodie. “Shit, yeah, it is.” I pulled on the sleeves to take it off, but he shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it, I have at least two more at home.” He pulled out his laptop and it was suddenly back to business. “Any ideas how we’re going to do this?”

We bounced ideas off of each other until we came to a rough draft, but it was getting later, and bad days always get worse at night.

“Shit, is it ten already?” Peter started gathering his things and stuffing them in his bag. “I told May I’d be home by ten, I hate being late.”

I pulled out my phone and sent May a quick text; we’ve had each other’s numbers since my first weekend at the compound. We lost track of time, he’s heading home now.

I figured. See you tomorrow :)

Peter stood up and started walking toward the door, and I followed him. I had spoken maybe twenty sentences the whole time (it’s a miracle we got this far in the project) but I couldn’t convince myself to say anything else before he left. And I wanted to. But I also wanted to cave in on myself — and we both know which option was winning that battle.

“Do you need a hug?” He basically had one foot out the door, but he turned around and asked me this.

“What?”

“Your heartbeat — it’s been off all day. And it still is right now, and — Do you need a hug?”

God, he was perfect. And I was so gone.

All I needed all day was a goddamn hug, and now he’s offering one, and tears started brimming in my eyes before I could even nod yes. He was so warm, and his voice flitted around in his chest, and I would’ve felt bad about getting tears on his shirt, except I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about was how the weight on my shoulders lifted when Peter Parker’s arms were wrapped around them.

“Are you going to be okay?” he mumbled in my hair. I only nodded again. “Okay.” He slowly loosened his grip, but not before he left a quick kiss on my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Another nod. “See you tomorrow.”

///////

Peter was going crazy. Since we hadn’t found any footage that could clear Spider-Man’s name without incriminating Peter he wasn’t allowed out as his alter-ego. And he was literally climbing the walls of the compound.

I was blowing gusts of air at him, trying to knock him down from the ceiling. We had officially finished our project only twenty minutes before, so I pulled up the EDITH footage from London, trying to think of how to clear Spider-Man’s name.

And then it hit me.

“Oh my god.” I ran to the computer and started typing away furiously. “I think I figured it out.”

He came back to the ground. “Figured what out?”

“We can just use the audio file from the video. Then your face doesn’t have to be in it at all.”

I found the file and played it over the speakers.

“EDITH! Turn off the drones.”

“Should I execute all cancellation protocols?”

“Yes, execute them all.”

It was perfect. Exactly what we needed.

“Peter.” I turned to him with a huge smile on my face. “This can save Spider-Man.”

“This can save Spider-Man,” he repeated. “Shit, Y/N, you just saved Spider-Man.” He wrapped his arms around me tightly and lifted me in the air, his laugh ringing in my ear. “I can still be Spider-Man!”

I laughed along with him. He set me down after a minute, but we were still standing unbelievably close together. One minuscule step forward and my lips would be on his. His heart beat jumped, and so did mine, but he didn’t pull away. Neither of us pulled away.

His tilted his head and kissed my cheek (which I still freaked out over) and then took a step back.

“We have to call Pepper and tell her.”

“Yeah, yeah.” FRIDAY started the call and Pepper was over the moon.

“We’ll get a press conference set up for tomorrow, and I’ll work on a statement. Peter,” this was the sternest I had ever heard her - even more serious than when she was talking to Morgan, “I know this is all good news, but you have to wait to be Spider-Man still. All of this press has to die down first before you can go out in the open again, okay?”

“Yes, Mrs. Potts.”

“Okay. I’ll see you two bright and early tomorrow.”

She hung up and Peter hugged me again. This one was way more subdued than the last one. “Thank you, Y/N,” he mumbled into my neck.

“You’re welcome, Pete.”

//////////

The press conference went well, according to Rhodey. “I think most of them were relieved to know Spider-Man’s not actually a murderer.” Everyone was dying to have Spider-Man come out and answer questions, but Pepper insisted no questions were being taken at that time, or ever.

MJ called Peter after the press conference was released to the public, and they talked for what felt like forever. The second he got the call I went to the training room: to distract myself or actually train, well, it doesn’t matter because both were done.

A simulation droid was about to “kill” me, but red magic tore it apart at the last second.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because Peter’s been talking on the phone for the same time you’ve been in here.” Wanda gave me a knowing look. You forget that she can read minds because she’s not invasive about it, but she’s always there, holding the information to either back you up or tear you down.

I sighed. “He’s talking to MJ. And I know there’s a high possibility that they’ll get back together but a part of me is hoping they won’t.”

“So you can be with him instead.” I gave a small nod. “Don’t give up yet, Y/N. I see the way he looks at you. You might have more of a chance than you think.”

“She’s right, kid.”

I jumped in surprise. “How long have you been listening?”

Sam smiled from the observation deck of the training room. “Long enough. Boys are stupid, they need all the help they can get.”

“I’ve given him plenty of help already. Literally.”

“Haha, very funny.” He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. If it doesn’t work out with MJ, shoot your shot. I have a feeling you won’t be disappointed.” He winked before leaving, and Wanda followed suit.

I rolled my eyes before telling FRIDAY to pick another random simulation. “Make it a good one.” And, boy, did she. It was the hardest one yet, and all of my concentration was going into it. I was so focused I didn’t even notice Peter walk in until after I had won.

“Damn.”

I turned quickly to see him standing near the door, his hands in his pockets. “Hey. How’d it go?”

“It was okay. She saw the news.”

“But…”

“But it’s not happening. I-“ he looked down at the ground, “I can’t trust her. Not when she lost trust in me. And I- I think I’m interested in someone else.”

I nodded along. I tried to keep my heart as normal as possible but it was beating too hard from my adrenaline to be controllable; I’m almost positive Peter heard it jump at the news. “That’s understandable. Who’s the, uh, the someone else?” God, please be me.

Peter’s lips twitched up to a small smile. “You’ll find out eventually.” He stepped further into the room and relaxed a bit. “Want to do a round together?”

I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I was exhausted, and I think I pulled a muscle, and I could already feel bruises forming where I ungracefully fell on my side. So I just shook my head. “Some other time.”

My room had a bathroom attached to it, and that’s where I spent the next half hour, standing under the blazing hot water coming from the shower. Once I convinced myself to actually get out and change into pajamas, I grabbed my laptop and climbed into bed. I was going home tomorrow, I deserved a few hours of shuteye.

Then someone knocked on my door and ruined the whole ambiance.

“Oh, you’re - I was just - I’ll just go.”

“No, Peter, what’s up?”

He was standing there, hair damp from the shower, black t-shirt and flannel pajama pants on, looking hot as ever. “I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie, but you’re already in bed, so never mind.” He turned to walk away, and I almost let him because I was on-my-ass exhausted, but I didn’t. I couldn’t, not when he looked like that (soft, but also hot as fuck).

“Come on.” He turned, and I opened the door wider. “I was about to watch Gilmore Girls, but we can watch a movie if you want.” I pulled back the covers and left plenty of room for Peter to sit beside me.

“We can watch Gilmore Girls, I don’t mind.”

The second I pressed ‘play’ on the third episode was the second my eyes could barely stay open any longer. I tried so hard to watch Jess win Rory back, but sleep caught up with me and I let it win. I used Peter’s shoulder as a pillow and decided sleep was a battle I didn’t mind losing.

////////

I woke up to my alarm, but as quickly as my eyes opened, Peter’s arm pulled me closer to him. I was too tired to feel embarrassed or excited about the fact that Peter Parker was in my bed with an arm wrapped around me. All I wanted to was to turn off my alarm and go back to bed, but my dad was picking me and Peter up in two hours and I wanted to bully Sam into making me pancakes again.

“Let go, Peter,” I ended up mumbling, “I have to turn the alarm off.” He moved his arm off and I sat up and grabbed my phone. “I’m getting breakfast.”

It must’ve been my lucky day, because Sam and Bucky were in the kitchen. “‘Morning, sunshine. Sleep okay?” I looked at Sam with a hard glare, and he laughed. Of course he knew Peter was with me, FRIDAY knows everything.

I sat next to Bucky and thought of fluffy pancakes to ward off my burning hatred for Captain America. “Sam, how much do you love me?”

“Depends on what you’re willing to give me in exchange for the pancakes.”

Of course he already knew my move. Typical.

“I’ll delete half of the embarrassing footage of you saved in FRIDAY’s hard-drive.”

Sam looked at Bucky suddenly, extremely confused. “I thought that was done months ago.”

He just shrugged and drank his coffee. “Must not’ve gone deep enough. Good thing Y/N is here to catch it.”

Sam glanced between the two of us and sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll make you some stupid pancakes.”

I smiled, then Bucky slipped me ten dollars under the counter and whispered, “Save me the footage.” I winked back.

“Can I have some too?” Peter, soft as hell, came into the kitchen and sat beside me. (His knee was brushing up against mine.)

“Only if you have something to offer.” Sam liked us, I know he did (that’s part of the embarrassing footage FRIDAY has saved) but he was usually a dick to us - anyone who wasn’t Bucky (and even then) - in the morning. It was always playful banter, but we knew not to step too far before eleven o’clock.

“I promise not to test out my new long-lasting webs on anything you own.”

“Deal.”

The pancakes were delicious (“hell yeah they were, I don’t mess around with pancakes”) but my dad was at the compound before we knew it, and it was time to face reality again.

“I saw the press conference,” Dad said when we sat down in the back, “and everything was very convincing. Congrats on getting to be Spider-Man again, Peter.”

He beamed. “Thanks, Mr. Y/L/N. Anything exciting happen at the hospital recently?”

They talked medical, while I sat back and listened to the engine. It covered up their hearts, but that didn’t matter, because both would’ve sent me right back to sleep. And it did.

We pulled up to Peter’s complex an hour and a half later. There were still plenty of daylight hours left, but we both left more homework to today than we would like to admit and neither of our parental figures would be pleased with that.

“See you tomorrow,” he said with a smile.

I smiled back, genuinely, (I was giving those out way more often now) and waved. “Bye.” Dad and I drove back and walked up to the apartment bumping shoulders. Our schedules didn’t line up very often because he was needed in the ER a lot of the time, but we always had a sort of silent understanding. He unlocked the door and let me in first, but when my eyes landed on the kitchen table, I stopped mid-step.

Blood. Everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, on Mom’s floral couch she claimed “added personality” to the living room. No one else was in the apartment, I could tell, but then it just raised more questions:

Who’s blood is everywhere?

Where the hell is Mom?

tags: @eridanuswave​ @vampirestrawberries​