#starry's writing

[starry-bi-sky]

Blood Blossom Au: before the nightingale sings

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for my batdad blood blossom au, the one where Vlad poisoned Danny with blood blossom extract and Danny ran away from him and ended up tumbling into the care of one Pre-Robin Battinson Batman :). A quick oneshot telling the tale of the tragic deaths of the Fentons

TW: Major Character Death Warning

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Not all deaths are created equal.

That is a valuable lesson in life to learn. One that Danny learns when he is eleven years old, standing in the pit of his parents’ creation; the culmination of their life’s work. The portal to the other side, the realm of the dead. To the infinite. 

He learns that when he’s eleven years old, in a hazmat suit that sags on him, and boots that clunk when he walks because the only ones that fit are his mom’s, and even those are too big. In gloves that he has to clench his fists in because otherwise they fall off. In goggles that slide down his nose even when he’s tightened them the farthest they can go. 

He learns that when he’s eleven years old, choking on giggles that harmonize with the laughter of his friends’ who stand at the mouth of the tunnel. Sam’s holding a polaroid in her hand. They’re just being kids. 

They’re not laughing when Danny’s hand hits the safety lock — the one with faulty wiring, the only one in the tunnel. The only one he could possibly hit. They’re not laughing when the portal buzzes to life, and the lights inside switch on row by row as the generator begins to rumble and hum. 

They’re not laughing when Danny dies. They’re screaming. They’re not screaming when he comes back.

Not all deaths are created equal.  

Some are poetic, beautiful. The satisfying close of a book as it comes to an end, of the hardback thumping soft against the pages like the sound of a door closing. A train run its course.

Some are violent; unsatisfying; unfair. The unexpected shattering of an egg as it rolls off the countertop when nobody is looking, the unmistakable crack as it falls to the floor. It is abrupt and messy. 

But most are just… unremarkable. Unintentional. Clumsy. 

Danny’s family dies one night in late January. He is thirteen years old, barely a month away from fourteen. It is unforeseen. It is preventable. It happens. 

It happens like this: 

Their water heater breaks one Monday in January. It’s old, sitting in the garage, and has dealt with nearly sixteen years of Fenton-grade chaos and shenanigans. Of parents tossing scraps and junk into the garage as brief storage to come back to later. Of illegal tune-ups on their vehicles that result in something exploding. Of little children running around and knocking things over, playing with poles and sticks they find on the ground, on the shelves. Of being lived and used.  

Something had to give. 

Jack Fenton notices it immediately when he comes upstairs that very afternoon — his children at school, his wife downstairs — to grab something from the garage. The very same scrap and used material they store like squirrels to use later. 

He stops what he’s doing to fix it.  

It wasn’t supposed to be permanent. 

Despite what many believe, Jack Fenton is not the idiot people make him out to be. He knows what he’s good at, he knows what he’s not. He knows he can be passionate and obsessive and single-minded about things. He knows that he is a scientist, an inventor; an engineer. 

He knows that he is not a plumber. That fixing water heaters is not something he knows how to do, not safely. And he loves his family. What he does is only meant to be temporary — a fix meant to only last a few days until they can call someone in who can fix it for them. 

So Jack Fenton futzes with the water heater, gives it a temporary stitch to last a short while, and reminds himself to call a plumber later that day to come in and fix it. He turns and leaves the garage with the part he came for —  a sheet of metal for his wife to melt down — and disappears back downstairs. 

He does not make that call; it slips from his mind. 

It is not his fault. 

One day passes, then two, then suddenly it is Thursday. The water heater has still not been fixed, the water heater has been forgotten. It is nobody’s fault.  

Danny asks his parents at breakfast if he can stay over at Tucker’s house for the night. Just one night. They’re going to study for their math test and then play video games until midnight, but he only tells his parents that first half. 

He’s been doing well in school. Really well — better than he has in a while. There’s been a delightful lull in ghost appearances for the last few weeks. The living don’t know why, but Danny does. The Winter Truce always calms the dead down for a while, something about how the Zone cleanses itself twice a mortal year and that fresh wave of ecto clears out the old and brings in the new. 

This year Danny got to participate. He’s feeling the effects of it too, and he’s been sleeping consistently well for the first time since the accident. 

It’ll never happen again. 

His parents agree under the condition that he doesn’t stay up late, and Danny harmlessly lies through his teeth and agrees. He goes and throws overnight clothes into his school backpack, and when he leaves for school with Jazz his parents are already departed into the lab. 

The last conversation he has with his sister is in her car on the drive to school. Inane, mindless conversation to fill the air and pass the time. Jazz comments on how relaxed he’s been lately; Danny tells her about the Winter Truce. She listens in rapt attention. 

She tells him that she’s glad to see him so well-rested. She thinks her little brother’s been growing up too fast these days. She thinks he’s been too tense. Too caught up with the spinning of the world around him that he forgets about himself sometimes. 

When they reach school, before Danny can get out of the car, Jazz looks to her little brother and says; “I love you.” 

Her little brother’s cheeks turn an embarrassed shade of red. He makes a scrunched up, grossed-out face, but can’t hide the smile pulling across it. “Don’t be a sap, Jazz. I’ll see you later.” He tells her, yanking his hood up over his head. She hears the bashful, ‘love you too’ before he walks away. 

That is the last conversation she ever has with her brother. 

Thursday is unremarkable, passing by in its normality as it always does. There’s one, maybe two ghost sightings; shades lurking around in curious infancy that are easily spooked away by the presence of a greater being. Danny doesn’t even have to go ghost. 

Thursday evening is even less so. Danny goes to Tucker’s house — Sam has a prior arrangement with her slam poetry club — and the two of them study for an hour before they toss their textbooks aside and reach for the game console. 

Danny sleeps in Tucker’s room with one of the extra blankets on his bed, curled across the room in one of the bean bag chairs. It shouldn’t be comfortable, but to Danny it is. He sleeps throughout the night, the portal shut down by his parents before they’d gone to bed. 

Early Friday morning, before the sun has even risen yet, before it’s even so much as a concept to grace the horizon, the water heater breaks again. It was supposed to be fixed. 

Carbon monoxide is a silent killer. Odorless and scentless, it kills within minutes. It fills the house like a shadow casting over the ground, creeping into the rooms. 

Danny’s family die in their sleep; painless and unaware. 

It’s not Jack Fenton’s fault. He didn’t mean to.  

Nobody wakes up with their alarms. 

Danny wakes up to Tucker Foley’s alarm on Friday morning, and he turns his head intangible and shoves it into the beanbag chair like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. Tucker gets up before him, and throws a pillow at him as he reaches for the alarm. 

There’s laughter, messing around. The both of them get dressed, and Danny has breakfast with the Foleys that morning. He takes the bus to school with Tucker, and they meet Sam by their lockers. 

To him, everything is as normal as it should be. There are no ghosts for him to fight right now, school is as school does, and he’s on top of all his schoolwork. 

He does not see Jazz at all that morning, he doesn’t notice. Their schedules are so different, their routes on different paths, that it’s not uncommon for Danny to not see Jazz until he gets home some days. That’s if there’s no ghost attacks. 

At lunch, he gets approached by her friends. Worried creases between their brows, they ask him if he’s seen Jazz. She hasn’t shown up to any of her classes. She’s not answering their texts. It’s unprecedented of her; unheard of. 

Danny doesn’t admit to the concern that swells in his gut when they tell him this. He shrugs at them, and says he hasn’t seen her either. But it was probably nothing to worry about; she might just be sick and sleeping it off. 

He offers to text her and let them know if he gets a response, and that seems to ease her friends enough that they shuffle away in uncertainty. He keeps his word, and does exactly that. He pulls out his phone and opens her contact, and shoots her a message.

‘Where are you?’ 

He doesn’t get a response back, Danny is left on sent. He puts his phone in his pocket, and with a sense of unease creeping in the back of his mind, goes on with his day. He gets no response by the time the final bell rings; and he tries not to be worried. 

The house is quiet when he opens the door. Unusually quiet. He drops his backpack to the floor, it lands with a hearty thunk, and begins to take off his jacket. “Mom! Dad!” He yells. He hangs it up, and slips his shoes from his feet. “Jazz skipped school today!”

A laughable untruth that would get his sister all riled up normally; she should be able to hear him from the front door if she was in her room. The house just stays dead silent. 

He can’t even hear the usual banging and crashing from the lab. His unease returns. He reaches for the intercom that leads directly down to the basement, and presses the button to turn it on. A burst of static, and then he speaks;

“Mom? Dad?” 

Danny lets go, and waits for a response. He gets none back. That never happens, not when the house is this quiet. Not when he knows they should’ve heard him. 

Something sickly and fearful borns in the pit of his stomach, and begins to snake upward. He heads for the lab. The cool metal of the door is familiar in the grooves of his hand, and he doesn’t even need to think about the code as he punches it in;  he simply lets muscle memory guide him. It’s been the same since he was little. 

The door hisses as the pressure is released, and he swings the door open. He takes the stairs down two at a time. Something is wrong. His parents aren’t answering him. His feet pound against the metal. 

“Mom? Dad?” He calls again, more worried, more frantic. More scared. His voice echoes down the stairwell, and he reaches the bottom before it’s fully faded. The lab is empty. The portal is still shut down. 

It was four in the afternoon, they should still be down here. 

Danny races back upstairs, fear-raised nausea coiling in his throat. “This isn’t funny you guys!” He yells when he reaches the top, shoving open the door with more force than necessary. His head swims, his voice cracked. 

He checks the garage, the car is still there. 

“Mom!? Dad!” His voice bellows out throughout the first floor, loud enough that it bounces back at him and rings against his ears. He’s never raised his voice this much — mom would scold him if she heard him. But she doesn’t show up. “Jazmine!” 

Finally, he goes upstairs, and he can’t tell if what he’s feeling is anger or terror. Something is very, very wrong. 

He swings the door of his parents’ rooms open first, and there they are, with the lights still off and the curtains still drawn. As if they hadn’t left their bed all day. Some of Danny’s fear lifts from his shoulders just by the sight of them, but he’s still trembling. Something is still wrong — the room smells… off. Not good, not bad. Just… off. 

He swallows dryly, his throat still thick, and steps into the room. “Mom, dad?” They do not stir. “Didn’t you guys hear me yelling?” 

There is only room static. Danny’s heart shrivels in his chest with a tenfold return of terror, he feels ill. He remembers, just now, that they’re not heavy sleepers, and his dad should be snoring like a freight house. 

Danny reaches their bedside in seconds, hand outstretching for the covers, “Momma? Dad?”

Not all deaths are created equal. 

But many of them are accidental. Unmeditated. Shocking.

Danny Fenton finds his family dead in his childhood home. He runs to his neighbors in hysterics, inconsolable, in tears. Nine-one-one is called, but there is nothing that can be done. They were dead for hours by the time Daniel Fenton returned home. 

He sits on the front steps of the neighbor’s house beside FentonWorks, his jeans slowly becoming wet from the snow that was unable to be scraped off, and watches the paramedics cart out his family beneath white sheets. There are police cars blocking off the street, yellow tape blocking off his house, red-blue lights lighting up the block, an ambulance on the scene. He is wrapped in a shock blanket, and he is missing his jacket and his shoes. His tears are freezing onto his face, he can’t feel the chill. 

Not all deaths are created equal

But all of them are unforgettable. 

[starry-stan-blog]

🪷

wip wednesday ft. oblivious sqq and white lotus binghe !!

[starry-bi-sky]

I'd be the voice that urged Orpheus When her body was found I'd be the choiceless hope in grief That drove him underground

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Jason is gonna be sick.

Memories swirl in his head, laughter ringing like bells in his ears, and bring with it a torrid feeling of rising horror. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth; a rock sinking in his gut. The image of a woman and a smile made of stars burns behind his eyelids.

Danny.

He met a woman named Danny last month, with eyes blue and green like a watercolor gradient. She stopped him in the middle of the street, acting as if she knew him. Except Jason didn't know her, and his attempts to correct her only made her grow confused, only made her grow insistent.

That he was her Jason, her fiancé.

Jason had told her she was wrong, that she had the wrong guy. He'd gotten icy with her, had been rude as he told her he wasn't her damn fiancé. He left before she could say anything, left her clutching her hand where a ring sat.

Except she'd been right. He just hadn't remembered.

He's gonna be fucking sick.

A memory hits him vivid and hard like a gunshot wound. A bullet would feel better than this.

They're dancing in a kitchen somewhere -- their kitchen. They'd moved in together. Fuck, they'd moved in together. Somewhere on the outskirts of Amity Park, Danny's city in an apartment that wasn't too big or too small.

Music is playing from Danny's phone on the counter, Jason's tongue forms the words 'Across the Stars' before he can even recall the melody. It was Danny's favorite, he can't blame her, it's a beautifully sad song.

It's early morning; they're still in their pjs. Sunrise is spilling through the windows, putting the room in a wonderfully lazy glow. It's straight out of a romcom, it leaves him with the dredges of something ridiculously fond. Jason can't remember why they started dancing, but he can't take his eyes off her. She had some sort of health problem, he can't remember what, but he bets it will come to him.

The memory of Danny looks at him like he's the most beautiful thing in the world, a smile on her face like it's the easiest thing to put there. She looks at him like she's madly in love. She is; they are. Jason's remembering it now, and it's hurting him.

It fades away with the music.

But Jason's mind isn't done torturing him; the floodgates have been opened. Another memory quickly takes its place.

Jason's gonna be sick. There is a churning in his stomach.

Movie night. They're watching something on the small tv Danny's got in her living room. The two of them stuck under a blanket, Jason's head on Danny's chest, listening to her impossibly slow heartbeat as her fingers weave patterns through his hair.

They've done this plenty of times. A bowl of popcorn sitting on the floor by their feet, which are tangled up in each other, and movies of their choice playing on the screen.

Jason's got a hand under her shirt, idly tracing the raised Y-scar carved into her chest. Years old, she told him, given to her by her parents when they suspected her of being a ghost and wanted to cut her open.

("I can kill them for you." Jason told her, immediately, without thinking. He remembers being confused about why that threat came to him so easily, and why he knew on instinct that he could do it without blinking. Jason frightens himself a little by how willing he is to spill blood.)

(But Danny doesn't seem to mind. She laughs, something sad in her pretty blue-green eyes, "You'll have to get in line with my brothers and friends. They want to, too.")

(He blinks at her, he presses a kiss to her sternum, right where the valley of the 'y' met the stem. He feels a little less frightened. "Gladly.")

The memory itself isn't special, but it unlocks the rest of every movie night they've ever had. Sometimes the night ends with them falling asleep. Sometimes the night ends with lips and teeth; Danny's got fangs, and she's used them more than once.

He's fucked up. He's fucked up so bad.

Jason's seriously going to be ill.

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(He doesn't know what the memory is about. He just knows that Danny is laughing and sitting on his hips, the two of them in the grass at some park as she kisses his face like she's trying to leave freckles in her wake.)

("My darling." She croons, holding his jaw in her callused hands. Her hair curtains over them both. "My sun, my earth. My heart beating. My beautiful, handsome, Jason Todd.")

(She's being poetic, and Jason's face is burning in a blush that threatens to swallow him whole. He's grinning like a fool, his hands caught around her waist like fishhooks. "Aren't you supposed to say 'my moon', not 'my earth?'" He asks because if he listens to her any longer he'll combust.)

(Danny kisses him quick and leaves him wanting; leaves him chasing. She's smiling at him and his eyes lock onto her fangs. She could rip out his throat in one fell swoop, and he'd let her. "Maybe, but you're the earth because I'm the moon. I am inexplicably drawn to you, my love.")

(Jason becomes so quickly heart-full that, really, the only response he can give is to flip them around so he can kiss her into the dirt. And he's never really listened to Hozier, but he's starting to understand the man when he says; 'I could never define all that you are to me'.)

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("Oh, I've died once." Danny tells him in one hazy evening, sitting on the counter with whiskey in her hands. They've both had a little too much to drink, but Jason remembers this moment vivdly.)

(He turns to stare at her in horror. She smiles at him, dark and bittersweet. "I got back up.")

(He can't imagine dying, but it feels familiar to him. He closes the distance of the kitchen between them, brows furrowed. He puts his glass down, and cages her legs between his arms. "When? How?")

("I was fourteen. My parents lab; in their pursuit of science, they never really noticed if their children got caught in the collateral. It hurt." She says, and points to a scar he's always wondered about: an ugly mottled one, big, that goes through her stomach as if she'd been stabbed. Or impaled. Starburst burn scars litter her side, her legs, her palm. He's always wondered about them, but never asked.)

(Jason traces the scar on her stomach in mute horror, Danny's breath close to his ear. He listens to it like a dying man drinks water. "I don't remember being dead." She mumbles, taking a sip of her drink. "I just remember waking up.")

("They got you killed." He's never hated anyone more.)

(Danny remains silent, and when Jason looks up, her eyes are hollow like a corpse. "No," she murmurs, "it was my fault.")

(She doesn't bring it up in the morning, when they're both nursing hangovers. Jason admits, he's too afraid to bring it up.)

--------

(He proposes to her at the top of one of Amity Park's hills, beneath a sky full of stars and no moon to be seen. There's no cloud in the night sky, and the air is warm.)

(She says yes.)

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(They're dancing again, they like doing this. They do it often. Jason cooks; they dance; Danny tells him about anything and everything, and he soaks it up like a sponge.)

(They're talking about Star Wars this time, and Jason has never been more in love. Granted, he doesn't remember being in love before meeting Danny. He hopes there wasn't anyone he loved before this; he doesn't think he can love them anymore.)

("Broken Heart Syndrome is a very real thing!" Danny rants. They're listening to Across the Stars again, and he stops to lean them both against the counter. "And while it's rare to die from it, it can still happen! Especially if you have a weak heart, like mine.")

(Jason huffs, but finds it hard to argue. He's listened to her heartbeat. It beats worryingly slow, and if he cranes his ears and listens hard, he can hear the whooshing sound it makes.)

(She's assured him before that it's harmless, but he's not always convinced. He worries.)

("Well," he scoffs, placing his hands on her hips and rubbing circles into her skin with his thumbs. "It's a good thing I don't plan on breaking your heart anytime soon.")

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More memories fill up his head, like a room being flooded with water. Some of them mundane, some of them sweet, some of them steamed. But one thing stays certain; he deeply, gravely loves this woman.

And he fucked it up.

The memories all come at him at once, and a deep, pained groan rolls over him like a wave. Dick looks at him as he hunches over, he can feel eyes burning into him.

"I'm gonna be sick." He says aloud, yanking off his helmet as a choking heat of dread hits him like a hot flash. Damian takes a wary step away from him. "Oh, I'm gonna fucking vomit."

The little brat snarls at him; "Don't you dare." and takes an even further step back from him. Tim gets out his phone, and Jason has half a mind to try and kill him again. "There's a trashcan over there if you're going to."

"Please do." Tim says gleefully.

"I had a fiancé." Jason says, and it's really not something he wants to admit out loud to his.. uh, family. But it's more for himself; to confirm this dreadful, beautiful truth than to let them know. "Oh, I've screwed up."

He's got to find Danny, he needs to apologize. He needs to explain himself. He needs to find her yesterday.

--------

He finds her, he does. But he finds her buried six feet under, two weeks too late, with flowers growing at the foot of her grave. Jason feels like Orpheus standing at the foot of Eurydice's grave.

DP x DC prompt - Who gets amnesia twice?!

Danny and Amnesiac!Jason

Jason has an accident as Red Hood which causes which to suffer from amnesia - he ends up with Danny and the two build a life together

One day, Jason leaves for something and tells Danny that “he’ll be back soon.”

Coincidentally Jason regains his memories from before Danny (maybe he meets his family or a rogue or gets into another accident) - but regaining his old memories causes him to forget Danny due to the confusion

Jason resumes his life prior to Danny - and poor Danny is worried about his bf/fiance/husband and goes to look for him - maybe when he finds Jason, Jason doesn’t recognize him and acts coldly/suspicious towards him

So Danny decides to go live in the GZ semi-permanently for a while and fakes his current living identity’s death

Jason starts remembering Danny and goes to find his lover only to come across a grave

[last-starry-sky]

let it out pt. 1 - 141xreader

(aka - the unhinged fivesome fic i've had cooking for ages and decided to finish for my stupid mental health)

[NSFW - MIND THE WARNINGS - MDNI: 4.9k, alcohol/drinking mention, implied past misogyny, smoking mention, everything from here on is dub-con (this is your only warning): kissing, nipple-play, biting, dry humping, mmmf foursome (sorry, someone gets left out in this part 😔), also, possibly the worst cliffhanger i've ever left a chapter on.]

You knew you should have locked the door.

“What in the hell’s gotten into you?” Soap shouted, more drunk than loud, blowing right through the door. Didn’t even bother to knock. 

Not that it mattered. The room was still mostly empty, with only your duffel thrown in the corner to mark it as any different from the hundreds of others. If you were lucky, you would all be leaving again in a few hours, and this ugly, anonymous, concrete box of a base in the middle-of-nowhere would be nothing but a hazy memory. One in a long string of others that would soon fade back into nothing. A boring footnote at the end of a frustrating mission.

You sighed as you rolled to face him. You had been staring at the ceiling on your shitty little bed, arms crossed and still fully clothed, minus your boots. Those you’d kicked off once you’d returned to “your” room, letting them crash into the corner not caring what they took with them. You’d thrown yourself down onto the thin mattress with a huff, intent on stewing in your anger for the rest of the night. Maybe in the morning you would be able to face your “teammates” with more than a forced smile. 

Soap stood over you, hands on his hips, dark eyebrows pushing a thick crease into the center of his forehead. His cheeks were still slightly blushed from the first few rounds of celebratory, post-mission drinks with the team. The ones you had just skipped out on. 

What should have been a relaxing evening to bond with your teammates had felt like a joke. You had quietly sat at the table with the four other men, sipping your beer while they laughed and animatedly told stories. Soap had even thrown his arm around you more than once, usually at the point his story where you had tried to do something. Tried.

“Can’t leave out the part with Medic!” he had said, “She’s the only reason any ov’ us made it out in one piece!” 

You’d answered his friendliness with a terse, cold smile. It’s like he had gone on a completely different mission from you. You’d made an excuse to visit the bathroom while Price and Gaz had gone out for a smoke, making a break for your room.  

“Nothing,” you lied, jaw tight. The short nails digging into your skin as you turned away. “I’m fine. Just don’t feel like drinks tonight.”

“Ah, you’re a shit liar, Medic,” he said, a playful edge to his harsh tone, as he pointed at you. He moved to the side of your bed, his blue eyes able to keep boring down into you. 

You chose ignore him, rolling over to your back to stare at the ceiling again. Fuck him. He didn’t outrank you. He let out a frustrated huff and sat down on your bed. The frame creaked loudly as he did, rolling you suddenly against as his weight dipped the mattress. 

“Come on, Medic. Talk t’ me,” he pleaded, his voice low and soft. The crease in his forehead remained. “You’re not acting like yourself. What’s wrong?” 

“Don’t know, Soap,” you said letting out a breath as you continued staring at the water marks in the tiles above you. Anything to keep your eyes from wandering to his face. Those sad, puppy-dog eyes of his would have cracked your resolve instantly and you knew it. “Just don’t understand why I was even needed on that mission.”

His concerned face came into view as he leaned over you. 

“The fuck you mean by that?”

You sat up and backed away, averting your gaze pointedly away from him as you pulled your knees to your chest. You didn’t want the image of him hovering over you to get too comfortable in your head. Thankfully, he moved to let you sit up. You were over your little pity party anyway. You were ready to talk like an adult. 

“Don’t act stupid, Soap,” you said softly with just a little bit of petulance left in your tone. “All four of you did the same thing all mission.” 

While he continued to stare at you: open mouthed and confused, you moved, throwing your legs over the side of the bed to sit at his side. You tried to put some distance between the two of you, but you had scant room left as he was already in the middle of your tiny mattress. It forced you to press your knees and thighs to his. You could feel his warmth bleed through his jeans. How that man could run so warm was a medical mystery, one that made you shiver. 

“What?” he asked, turning to you with eyebrows raised, all the more concerned. “Wha’d we do?” 

You rolled your eyes and shot an exasperated look his way. How could he be so dense? Did he not even realize how the whole team had been treating you for the past month? 

“What did you do?” you answered him mockingly. “You spent the whole mission making me feel useless! Anytime any of you got injured you were pushing me away! Me!” you said pointing at your chest. “I’m a medic, Soap! Your medic. That’s the whole reason I’m here! I’ve been doing this job for years! I’ve been on multiple special forces teams before this. What more do I have to do to prove to you I can do my job?” 

Soap was silent, which concerned you. He stared down at his hands between his legs. You could feel he was holding something back, something he didn’t want to tell you. A tear rolled down your cheek. You had a feeling you knew what the root of the problem was.  

“Is it . . . is it because I’m a woman? Is that why?” you asked, wiping at your eyes. It was painful to even say it. You’d faced this before, you weren’t stupid. Some, no, scratch that most, teams were a boys only club, and you just had to grit your teeth through it until you were reassigned. “You know, if you want a man-”

“No!” he yelled, interrupted you, grabbing for your hand as you wiped away your tears. You snatched it out of his involuntarily. 

“Then what is it?” you snapped back, still in no mood to dick around. If you needed to talk to Price and get your bag packed tonight, then so be it. You’d rather take care of this sooner than later. 

Soap wrapped his arms around you, surprising you. He held you to his chest for a moment, running his hands down your back. You tried to push yourself away, shoving at his unyielding stomach and squeaking out his name against his chest, all to no avail. He was just too strong. 

“Calm down, hen. Calm down. Don’t fight me,” he said softly in your ear. “Give me a chance to speak m’ piece, hear?” 

You complied with a groan, ceasing your struggle. This wasn’t professional, obviously, but you couldn’t find a reason to fight it anymore. You let him hold you for a moment, the constant thrum of his heart pounding in your ear. He was so warm too. You wished you could give in, just melt into the surrounding heat of his arms and chest. You knew it was just because you were stressed and hadn’t been touched in, fuck, it had to be months now, but still. 

“You’re right. Sorry. Sorry we treated you like that,” he confessed. 

His hands slid over your shoulders, releasing you from most of his steely grip. You didn’t try to wrench away this time, but you did rest your hands on his chest. The feel of his pectoral muscles, even though they were softened by the cotton of his shirt, made you tremble. This was terribly dangerous territory to be treading in. 

“Didn’t mean to. Honest. We’re all just . . .” he trailed off, letting his head cock to the side as he flexed his hands on your upper arms.

You pulled away, just enough to look up at his face. You didn’t want him to hide, not now. You were teammates after-all. You actually wanted to stay teammates for once, not get bounced from team to team, from one group of assholes to another every six months. The wear of never being able to put down roots, let alone connect to the humans you were keeping alive was starting to fray your psyche. Some days you felt like little more than a sentient med-bag. 

With the 141 though, it felt different. You didn’t want to lose that. You’ve been together through the standard life-and-death situations and made it out alive. You’d slept side by side in the gravel, shared cold MRE’s in the dark, even tended to each other’s wounds when they’d let you. There was no need for him to hide the truth from you. Besides, you’d been weak for Soap from the moment you met but managed to keep it professional, barely. You’re pretty sure the cocky bastard knows it too. As much as you wanted him, you valued your job and position over any selfish need for sexual fulfillment. 

“We’re scared shitless ‘a losing you,” he continued with a pained sigh, leaning in to press his lips to your eyebrow, strong, calloused hand gripping your bicep. 

Oh. His words made your brain flat-line. Well, you thought. This was . . . new? A team that actually cared about you?

His hand cupped your jaw; warm, rough fingers smoothing over your cheek and neck. You closed your eyes and bit your lip, partly from pleasure, partly to suppress any embarrassing noises. There was no way was this happening. 

“We all are,” he continued, warm breath fanning across your face. “Know you can handle yourself. It’s just . . . anytime it gets hot and we start getting hit, something in me . . . all of us . . . just wants to protect you.”

You smiled, lip falling out of the grip of your teeth. No one had ever said something so caring to you before, least of all a fellow soldier. 

“That’s a dumb fucking reason, Soap,” you said weakly back to him. 

You thumped a fist on his chest once, trying to cover your wavering voice and vulnerability with sarcasm. You wished he would take the bait like others had in the past, but he didn’t. He sat there in silence, still holding your face, waiting for you. You sighed as he pressed his hand to the small of your back. 

“Do you know how stressed out you guys made me?” you finally let out. Tears piqued in the corner of your eyes again, hazing your vision. “Like everyday? Your lives are in my hands and you wouldn’t-”

“I know,” he interrupted you with a groan, hand moving up your back to stroke at your neck. You sighed, leaning into his hand as he massaged you. “‘s not right. I’ll talk to the guys later about it, if you want. Doan think we don’t want you, because we do. Honest.” 

He looked down at you with those blue eyes, practically glowing with emotion, and . . . how can you refute him when you can read him so plainly? His eyes spoke sadness through that stare in a way that words failed. There was also something darker there: a drunken, feral hunger that’s blowing his pupils wide as he cradled your head. It’s eating those precious blue irises until there’s nothing left but a dark pit of lust. Your hand clutched tighter on his shirt, pulling the collar enough to reveal his collarbone. It’s a pit you’re both precipitously close to falling over.  

“I would . . . appreciate that,” you sighed as his thumb stroked over your cheek. 

You tried to keep your eyes on the scar on his chin, but it only drew you to his lips and that delicious dark stubble. He had been back on base for less than a day, but he still hadn’t shaved post-mission. You wondered if he had taken your half-joking comment about how men are more attractive with facial hair to heart. You broke your eyes away, not wanting to countenance that line of thought. At least not while he was still tenderly cradling your face. 

“Would rather be there to say it myself, though” you continued airily. 

Soap drew his fingers out over your face, his thumb grazing over your bottom lip. You let your eyes fall shut again despite yourself. You felt his hoppy breath waft over your face as he tightened his grip on the back of your neck. 

“Get it all out . . . in front of everyone,” you said, finishing your thought with a struggle.

“Yeah,” he said, his nose nudging yours. “Let it out.”

Before you can stop him - fuck, like you wanted to stop him now - he pulled you into his lap, slotting his mouth over yours for a kiss. There’s no warning. No gentleness or confessions. Shit like that fell fast to the wayside in the military. It had made you sad at first, the loss of intimacy inherent in building a romantic relationship, but fuck it. You need this. You give into his lead completely: the desperate way he forced himself into your mouth, all passion, teeth and tongue. You balled both your hands in his shirt and hold on for dear life.

He hummed, pleased with himself, as he broke away to kiss down your neck. You’re no better though. You’re moaning right along with him, telegraphing loud and clear how well he’s breaking you down, how much you want him. He doesn’t waste time as he sucks hickies onto your throat, rucking up your shirt to paw at your bra at the same time. Alone time is another one of those luxuries the military makes you ration: never knowing when someone will burst in the door to call you away. He’s obviously hungry to get your tits out and he’s not letting a second go to waste. 

“Thought I’d find you here,” a gruff voice said flatly behind you. 

Both you and Soap looked up in shock at the large, masked, black-clad figure filling your doorway. You didn’t even hear the door open. Wait, fuck, had Soap left it open this whole time? You tried to wriggle away, pushing at Soap’s shoulder, not wanting your Lieutenant of all people to see you like this: shirt half off, face flushed with fresh, wet bites coloring your neck. Soap held on to you though, his full strength holding you to his body as you tried to kick away. He simply tucked back into your neck, continuing to blindly unclasp your bra. 

“Medic’s stressed, LT. Wanna help?” Soap mumbled playfully, giving up on getting under your bra, switching instead to pulling your shirt up off your chest. 

Soap is putting you on display for your superior officer: a present with the wrapping peeled off the corner, just waiting to be torn in to, tempting the other man to join. Your eyes are wide, pleading silently with Ghost to take even the smallest amount of mercy on you. Your brain is racing to concoct some plausible story to get both you and Soap out of this mess with your jobs and it’s not looking good. 

Ghost continued to lean against the wall, arms crossed across that broad chest, masked face passively observing you and Soap without a hint of emotion. Soap managed to peel your shirt off of your chest, forcing your arms off of him for a moment to push it up. It’s Ghost, however, that grabs it from behind, guiding it up off your arms, tossing it behind him. It sends a shiver up your spine how silent he is. You didn’t hear him approach, but you can feel energy radiating off him as he stands behind you. 

Soap does away with your bra with those practiced, nimble hands of his once it’s exposed. Once you’re fully bare, he’s pushing you off his lap to kneel on the floor in front of you. You stare down at him as he kisses his way across your chest, his hands stroking up and down your ribs while pressing your breasts together at their peak, mostly so that you aren't forced to face Ghost in this state. A gasp catches in your throat as Soap finds his prize. He sucks a nipple into his mouth and you can’t help but screw your eyes shut and let out a high-pitched whine. You’re silently glad it wasn’t his name. 

You feel Ghost’s gloved hand scrape along the back of your neck: thumb on your spine, long fingers curled around your artery. Your skin prickles underneath it.

“Gotta plan, Johnny?” Ghost asks him, deep voice rumbling gravel-rough as he tests his fingers against your skin and you whimper. You know he’s strong. Know he can snap necks with those hands. You’ve seen it. Fuck if it isn’t making your pussy clench at how gentle he is, how rough he could be. 

“Fuck, LT. Stayin’ right here,” He says breathlessly, breaking away only long enough to answer your superior. 

Soap cups a breast in each hand, gently squeezing as he moves to lay an open mouthed kiss on your sternum. He tweaks your wet nipple with a moan, absorbed already in his own pleasure. Soap always was too loud. Too vocal. 

“Ain’t she fuckin’ beautiful, Ghost? Doan be shy. Join in.”

Ghost’s fingers flex on the back of your neck again, breaking your stare away from Soap as he works kisses over to your other breast. You weakly wrap your arms around Soap’s shoulders, finding comfort in holding him, something solid in this tumult you’ve been thrown into. He’s at least obvious with what he wants. Ghost is a variable, an unknown. You still aren’t sure what he’s going to do even as he closes his fingers deliciously around your throat; weak moans falling from your mouth. 

He could easily turn on his heel and have the both of you court marshaled by morning. You know it. You know he could read the fear in your eyes when you first saw him. He’s seen it before. It’s life and death. The fear of whatever decision he makes, it may change both Soap and your lives forever. His eyes are as dark and unreadable as Soap’s are bright and expressive. The flex of his gloved fingers on your neck and the subtle shift of his hips in his tac-pants makes you bite your lip. A swipe of his thumb over your lip, pulling it out from your teeth, tells you his decision without a word. 

That’s when Soap finally locked his lips around your other nipple. He sucked hard, teeth scraping over the sensitive bud. Ghost’s hands kept your head locked, eyes boring down into you, standing over you, keeping you beneath him, powerless. You closed your eyes, locked your fingers into Soap’s mohawk and moaned, throwing your head back as you let it out. 

Ghost let go of your head suddenly. He walked in awkwardly large steps around Soap as he rounded your bed. 

“Keep that mouth quiet then,” he said, an order to himself. “Can’t have the whole base showin’ up.”

You felt the mattress sink behind you a moment later, followed by Ghost snaking his arms around you. One hand on your stomach, one on your jaw, locking you in place. You shuddered, leaning into the cold, rough texture of the gloves on his hands. You could feel the buttons on his shirt as his chest pushed flush to your back. 

Fuck, he’s so big. So strong, you thought. Not that you had much time for that. The hand on your stomach left to pull up the bottom of his mask before quickly falling back in place, his other hand tilting your head back to slot his mouth over yours.

It sent your mind into another galaxy. This shouldn’t be happening, your closest teammates: Soap and Ghost, both pawing over your body, touching, kissing, pleasing you. You were all beyond unprofessional at this point. Never mind how much you’ve been fantasizing about this, about all of them. 

It had been a tortuous downward spiral ever since you swore you would be right behind them, ready at a moment's notice to put them back together, to put your own body on the line to save them. That was your promise, your personal mission: to get them home alive. You wondered if that was what triggered this protective attitude of theirs. Not that the in’s and out’s of how you all ended up like this really mattered. The reality of the situation was: If Price ever found out you were all dead.

Soap’s hands brace on both of your thighs as he begins to kiss down your torso, a new goal in mind. 

Ghost, your god damn lieutenant, of all people, always so cold and calculating. You felt he should have been the last person listening to Soap’s crazy ideas to crawl into your bed. He shouldn’t be holding you like a china doll, petting your face as he peppers gentle, unsure, little kisses over your lips. You shouldn’t be demurely shying away from the skin he’s revealing to you, but here you are. You lay your hand over his on your hip and he breaths a silent groan across your mouth. He just stays like that for a moment, holding and listening to you as Soap lays messy kisses south of your navel, tickling you with his head and facial hair. 

“Ghost,” you moan, gripping his gloved hand, hoping it goads him into what you want: kissing you deeper, as Soap pops open the fly of your pants.

It does. He obliges immediately, pushing himself into your mouth, swirling your tongue with his. Your cry covers his whine. It all feels too good, too much. The rain breaking loose over the parched desert soil. It didn’t matter anymore, the consequences. You just wanted this. You were ready to take as much as they could give until the flood swept you away. 

“Woah,” a familiar voice called from the door. 

Fuck. You know that voice. Gaz. 

Ghost’s hand on your jaw kept you from breaking away. He wasn’t done with you yet. You feel Soap turn away from working your pants off. The door creaks partially shut behind Gaz as he enters, sticky bottoms of his boots squeaking against the clean floor. 

“Came to check on Medic,” he continued, far too cool and collected. “See if she’s okay. Didn’t, ah. Didn’t expect this.” 

He isn’t backpedaling out of your room. He isn’t apologizing or telling the other men to break it up. Fuck, he’s walking farther in.

“Coam on in mate,” Soap said to Gaz cheerily, his accent slurring thick. “Workin’ on cheerin’ her up right now. Room ‘nough for all of us,”

Soap looked up at you, shit eating grin plastered across his face, as Ghost finally broke your kiss. He pulled down your zipper: hands slowly pushing away the fabric at your waist, peeling your fly open to reveal your underwear. 

You heard Gaz whistle as he walked up to the bed, just the same as Ghost had. Gaz hummed as he approached the three of you, stopping to observe like you were a blushing nude in a piece of art and not a human being. If Soap had been emotional in his approach, and Ghost had been careful, Gaz was hungry. He wasn’t interested in wasting time asking questions. He was here, this was happening, and that was all that mattered. 

“Where you want me?” he asked, eye flicking between Ghost and Soap. 

“Stayin’ right here, sergeant,” Ghost said against your lips, absently commanding the man. It should have concerned you how easily they talked about you like you weren’t even there.

“Can’t even steal a peck?” he said cheekily, leaning down so that the brim of his blue hat tickled your temple. 

“One,” Ghost said, releasing you with a growl.

Gaz’s hand gently turned your head toward him. You breathed a sigh as he leaned in to press your sensitive, kiss-bruised lips to his. He moved slowly and sweetly, pulling your bottom lip between his teeth to test it, but never breaking away. Each of them kissed so differently and it drove you mad thinking that all of this had been right here just waiting for you. 

Ghost wasn’t one to wait for his turn. Your lips were his. He’d claimed them already, and Gaz, as much as he liked the man, was testing his limits. He pressed his face into the crane of your neck, mask jutting into your jaw awkwardly, sinking his teeth in to what skin he could reach. The first bite shocked you enough to make you pull away from Gaz with a gasp, leaving Gaz grinning at the man behind you. 

“Nice play,” he said nicely, smiling with his teeth barred. 

He knew it was better to play fair in a situation like this and let his superiors take the lead. They were his brothers, not his enemies, after all. Besides, you had so much more to offer him. Like those beautiful tits, nipples still shiny with Soap’s spit, just begging for attention. He took off his hat, tossing it around the metal post of your headboard, and set to work.

“Cheap though,” Soap mumbled against the skin of your hip. 

Ghost grunted in response, continuing his line of bites down your neck as you whined in his grasp. 

Gaz didn’t respond, or even seem to mind. He’s humming around your nipple, flicking his tongue across the very tip. A trail of sparks shoot up your spine. His fingers gently petted across your breast, squeezing with just a bit of pressure as he reached your nipple. 

You gritted your teeth together, suppressing a moan. With all three of them working together, it was just too much. If you didn’t stop yourself now, there was no telling what wanton, stupid things you would say.   

“Harder, Gaz,” Ghost commanded. His voice rough, breath hot and ragged down your neck. 

Gaz obeyed, teeth testing the nipple in his mouth, pinching the one in his hand. You bowed back as much as you could in Ghost’s grip, a whiny moan ripping from your throat. 

“Beautiful,” Soap whispered, nuzzling at your pussy through your pants. He cleared his throat. “LT. Need yer help ‘ere,” 

You feel Ghost lean over your shoulder, looking past your exposed body down to Soap between your trembling legs. Soap’s bright eyes avoid your pleasure-drunk gaze, focusing entirely on the massive man behind you. He cracks a wide smile as their eyes lock. 

“What y’ need, Johnny?” Ghost asked, his gloved hands gripping into the flesh of your torso. 

Soap dug his fingers into your cargo pants, his smile on the edge of manic. 

“Lift ‘er up. Get these off,” he answered, throat bobbing as he spoke with denial, anticipation, lust. 

“On three,” Ghost responded, wrapping both his strong arms around your chest, locking you into place. 

Gaz had only a moment to pull off you before the count began. When Ghost reached “one”, he lifted you off the bed easily, allowing Soap enough room to pull your pants down to your knees. 

Ghost set you down, this time onto his lap. You blushed and he groaned, realizing he was now holding you down with both hands against his brutally hard cock. 

Soap was already stripping your pants off fully, throwing them with a flutter behind his back. His eyes were blown wide, blue irises fully consumed by his pupils. His chest heaved, struggling to catch his breath, as he held your legs wide enough to push his way into the drenched gusset of your panties. 

“Fuck,” he said, running his thumb up the slick-soaked fabric. 

You turned your head out of the crook of Ghost’s shoulder, struggling in vain to catch your breath. Gaz was right there, unfortunately. He caught your lips again, pushing his tongue into your mouth to quiet your pitiful mewling as Ghost rolled his cock into the plush of your ass. Gaz’s  hands cupped your breasts again, grazing alternately at your nipples just enough to send that delicious tickle down your spine. 

Soap huffed a hot breath against your clothed cunt, making you shudder against the hands containing you. 

“Ca’ wait t’ taste that pussy,” Soap moaned, his nose grazing your clit through your panties as he pushed his face fully against your leaking core. 

Ghost groaned at Soap’s words, sinking his teeth into your shoulder. You cried into Gaz’s mouth, making him break away. Ghost pulled away as well and looked over at Gaz. 

“Gaz,” Ghost asked, suddenly devoid of  emotion. 

“Hmm?” Gaz answered, looking away from you as he pet at your face, wiping away your tears. 

“When you left, where was Price?”

Gaz thought for a moment, pausing to look down at you with eyebrows knit together. 

“Cap? Not sure. After I left to find-”

“You just left him?” Ghost interrupted him tersely, leaning over into Gaz’s face, jostling you around like a doll. Soap grumbled as your pussy was wrenched away from him. Ghost wrapped a hand in Gaz’s collar to pull him close. 

“Yeah?” Gaz answered, nerves trembling his voice. “Why-”

“Because he knew I’d follow you here. Just like the rest of you did,” your Captain’s dull, almost disappointed voice answered from the dark just outside your door. 

A spike of fear shot down your spine. Oh, you were all so screwed. 

a/n: yes, part three of Girl's Night Out is still coming! consider this an extra anniversary treat dedicated to everyone who sent kind messages while I clawed my way out of this bout of depression. (✿◠‿◠) ❤️ part two to this thing . . . idk when y'all want it??

[starriegalaxy]

I’m biting FFau Eclipse

He deserves it </33

Hexcii um-

My jestie in good conscience -

I don't think that's a good idea -

(Suggestive sequel under the cut!)

Tagging : @crabsnpersimmons @amarynthian-chronicles @ping-ski

[frxggie-baguette]

[pollyannawog]

Now that it's finished: all the illustrations I made for my Kieranpon fic ✨✨

Original AU by @shima-draws

[sobredunia]

they vibin :]

don't worry about that last one don't worry about it

taglist for the creators and AUs of the characters in the animation under the cut!

Kanako from UNDERTALE ROM LEAK by @keksalot404

Ceroba from Underfell yellow by @pantamonte

Chujin from Undertale gold by @s0ckh3adstudios

Dalv from Vitale Yellowfell by @stringsbasement (i want him so bad. i'm sorry)

Sirius by @here1snyan i'm sorry for massacring your boy but there's no way i'm doing all those gradients and effects consistently in every single frame

Axis from the StarryScreenBuddy AU by @therealcallmekd

(the reason why the end was censored is bc it's heavy lore spoilers of an AU a friend is making, and she doesn't wanna reveal it just yet. it's redswap by @fuji-iri btw. i love mentally ill people who would rather die than admit they're experiencing grief)

oh also art taglist

@rotkad @butchlesbianyaoi @blackfright @beetroot-merchant @ashs-hellhole @h3xt0r @bree-sae @helloidkwhatimdoing-0 @zecrisketch

[starryiguess]

Boothill Touchstarved HC

Boothill x GN! Reader. goofy goober is a little touchstarved

★ I feel like Boothill would value skinship. Most of his body is machinery and he can’t really feel you. His head is the only exception because that is the one that survived the impact.

★ He might grumble on how annoying it is for you to pinch his cheeks, but let’s be fr, bro is touch STARVED.

★ He is really good with kids. (Not going to elaborate). THOUGH, RANDOM IDEA, WHAT IF CLARA AND BOOTHILL MET?? That would be so cute like genuinely. Father-daughter bond right there.

★ He would be really gentle with you. Boothill has that lingering, soft touch that feels like a feather brushed your skin. He knows how valuable human life is; he used to be human himself. Because of that, he’ll appreciate the smaller things more.

★ He’ll really try to hide his feelings, but you can tell how he’s truly feeling.

Your warm hands squeezes his cheeks. It’s unbearably warm on his face. Boothill lets out a steady breath as he relaxes, closing his eyes. He can feel every curve of your palm. The way it presses, rubs, and… pinches?!?

His eyes widened in shock from the sensation.

(Insert Boothill asking why Reader is pinching his cheeks)

(Reader asking if he wants them to stop).

(Insert silence and hesitant look on Boothill’s side).

[Sorry, it’s kind unfinished, but I didn’t know how to write the rest of the parts so you can use your imagination]. (╥﹏╥)

[starry-night-author]

June of Doom Day #28

"Say something." | Cold Shoulder | Gag |

June Of Doom Prompt List @juneofdoom

"Oh Herooooooo," Villain singsonged as they stepped into the dark room. Hero sat facing away from them, shoulders relaxed, head down. "Still hanging out in here, are you?"

No response.

Villain pulled up an office chair behind them, flopping down and leaning back, hands behind their head. "Superhero not letting you attack random villains again? That must be soooo hard for you."

Hero didn't so much as move.

Villain scowled, rolled their eyes. Hero really was rubbing it in thick. "Can't believe you don't even have a babysitter anymore, did Superhero get tired of dealing with you?"

That didn't even get a raise out of them, the way it usually would.

With a frustrated groan, Villain stood, pacing behind them. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?! It was my fault that you were given the wrong information, but I didn't know you were going to stake your entire mission on it! And you were mean to me when I was explaining the layout to you, so you deserve it." Villain pouted.

Seconds went by. No response.

Villain rolled their eyes. "Look, you don't have to be this rude about it, you're fine, nothing bad happened! And I'm not apologizing again."

Nothing.

"Hero?"

The only sign that Hero was even alive was from their breathing.

Finally, Villain moved to storm off. "Fine, then. I'll give you space."

No response.

"Say something, you idiot."

Silence.

Now fed up, Villain turned back to them, nudging their shoulder. "Hero come on, this is petty-"

Hero slipped sideways as Villain pushed them, and it was only Villain's quick movements that stopped them from falling out of the seat. Villain caught them, gasping as they caught sight of their face.

Hero was very much unconscious, and there was a band of silver tape over their mouth. Their head lolled back on Villain's shoulder, and that's when they caught sight of the envelope placed in Hero's arms.

It was signed by Supervillain.

Villain's heart dropped.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[starry-bi-sky]

show me how to lay my sword down long enough to let you through - clone^2 ch1

A little boy has landed in Amity Park, and he looks suspiciously like the 13-year-old Damian Wayne living in Gotham. Good news: he landed in front of Danny just as he was finishing up his fight with a ghost. Bad news: the little Damian-look-alike doesn't speak a lick of english, has a sword, and seems very keen on using it whenever he can. Against Danny specifically.

Danny already has his own issues to deal with -- like how it's not even been a year since he found out he was a clone of Bruce Wayne specifically, with all the identity issues that come with such a revelation -- and a stab-happy six year old that was very obviously a clone of Damian Wayne was not one of them. However, the kid was alone in a foreign country, and despite his hostility, it's very clear that he's terrified.

Call him a bleeding heart, but Danny takes him home.

------

womp i wrote it and posted it. truly, it was only a matter of time before i did. my clone^2 au except now it's a fic! Here is the humble beginnings of this au if anyone is interested. The full thing is also posted below the read more if you want to read it here instead.

------

Danny knows more than he probably should about ghosts, ectoplasm, and all things relating to it — courtesy only in partial credit to his parents and largely to every ghost, spirit, mythological creature, and conceptual entity taken sentient form he’s ever come across in the last two years of his run as Phantom. 

For example: he’s learned how to classify the difference between a ghost and a spirit when the words are synonymous with each other. He knows that ghosts cannot pass into the Realm of the Living without a naturally-made or manmade portal that splits the seams between dimensions like holes being chewed through a shirt. 

He knows that spirits are just weaker could-be ghosts that are trapped in the Living Realm, unseen by the Living, with unfinished business until someone can come along to help them move on. He’s helped quite a handful of them in the last two years thanks to his clairvoyance, but the city has more spirits than he could possibly know how to deal with. So his efforts are like trying to empty a pond with a bucket. 

Danny still tries, anyway. One afterlife saved is one afterlife saved, right? 

What he also knows is that natural made portals are exceedingly rare. That they occur when ectoplasm in any given area for some reason or another currents against each other, condensing and building in energy and density until eventually something gives and like snow on top of a roof it caves in and creates a portal. 

He knows that these natural made portals typically only last a few seconds at a time, and vary between the size of a rodent and a marsupial no bigger than a wallaby. He knows that most natural portals only last from a few seconds to a few minutes, with the record-holder being five minutes from a portal that was the size of a toddler. 

And the reason they never last so long is because ectoplasm is an energy, like most energy, it usually has somewhere to go. It cycles through plants, through the animals, through the ground, anywhere it can reach. It’s cousins with solar energy in that sense. Meaning it, usually, has little opportunity to clash and current with the rest of the ambient ectoplasm in the area.

But it does happen, albeit rarely, and only for a few seconds. Like the equivalent of a static shock; it’s only there for a moment before it collapses in on itself and disappears. 

So with that being said, Danny likes to think he’s — maybe not an expert — but fairly knowledgeable about the existence of natural made portals. The Ever-Infinite Bridge Between Realms is ever-expanding, ever-growing, and with it so is the information he has on it. Anything could become obsolete in a moment. 

And the only reason he’s thinking about it is because his parents were talking about portals in the kitchen earlier that evening, talking about their portal specifically, but Danny latched onto it, and his mind wanders. He’s not sure why they were talking about it, the portal has been running, unfortunately smoothly for the last two years. He has the scars and eyebags (and trauma) to prove it. 

Besides, his mind should be on other things. 

Like the goddamn flying snake he’s been chasing across the city skyline for the last thirty minutes. An amphiptere his mind unhelpfully supplies, a word he grabbed nearly two years ago when he first started out as Phantom and was desperately looking up the various ectoplasmic creatures slipping through his parents’ portal. 

Some of them didn’t have proper names — like a three-eyed fox he once saw with the tail of a peacock and hooves of a goat. He managed to lure it out of the alleyway it backed itself into with a nasty burger. It tore into it with the fervor of a starving coyote and Danny let it finish eviscerating the burger before sucking it into his thermos.

It was incredibly disturbing to watch at the time, since the thing had an almost beak-shaped muzzle, but now he wishes he was back in the alleyway trying to coax out a ecto-fox-griffin thing rather than chase after what was basically a dragon with no legs — it doesn’t even have the decency to be a wyvern. 

He’s only keeping up with the stupid snake due to his grappling hook, something Danny made a year ago in order to keep up with the ghosts flying around the city, and his best fucking self-made invention yet — made from the discarded inventions from his parents’ lab — with his jawbreaker gloves coming in at close second, if only because he gets to call them his jawbreakers. 

(It was remarkably simpler than the grappling hook — he just reinforced the knuckles on his gloves.) 

Because as much as he likes running, he was going to give himself a heart attack if he chased every ghost he came across on foot. It’d take him all night just to find one. And there was something inherently freeing in the terrifying, adrenaline-rushing sensation of soaring through the air with nothing but hard ground below and endless sky above. 

The amphiptere twists its head and looks behind it, and Danny gives it a little shit-eating grin from behind his mask and a small, two fingered salute. The mane of feathers behind the snake’s head puffs up like a frilled lizard, and it opens its maw to hiss — this distorted, almost screeching sound — at him menacingly. 

Danny, in response, scoffs under his breath and waves a hand in front of his nose. “Ugh.” he mutters, scrunching up his nose as the snake’s hot breath hits him square in the face. “Someone should throw you one of those dental doggie treats.” 

The snake, of course, doesn’t hear him over the sound of its shrieking and the wind. When it twists back around, it dives to the ground, flicking its tail harshly like it’s hoping to hit him as it goes down. 

Finally, Danny thinks, dodging out of the way with a twist of his body, and follows it down into the factorial district of Amity Park. It’s already disappeared somewhere when his feet hit the sidewalk, but the buzzing of his ghost sense still tingles on the back of his neck like a seventh sense. So it’s still nearby. 

Danny’s grappling hook retracts with a quiet, zipping noise. He hooks it onto the loop of his jeans, and stalks down the side of the road. 

Spirits linger beside the buildings. Men, women, and kids wearing clothes from all different time periods congregating in groups and conversing with one another, playing, watching him. Cities never sleep, they doze, and the dead come out at night when the living aren’t there to wake it up. Danny’s spoken to them many, many times. 

“Excuse me.” He murmurs, tapping a man in overalls and a railroad cap on the arm. If it weren’t for his faint green glow and how he wisps at the edges, the man would almost look alive. The man turns to him, his eyebrows climbing up his forehead when he sees Danny. “Have you seen a flying snake coming through here?” 

The man blinks at him, “As a matter o’ fact,” he says, adjusting the cap on his head, “I have. Flew down the road like a bat out of hell.” The man points down the street, and Danny leans around him to see. “Thought it was gonna knock me righ’ out my work boots.” 

Danny presses his mouth into a thin line, making a low ‘hn’ sound in the back of his throat. “Did you see if it went into one of the buildings?” He almost hopes it did, he could probably try and sneak up on it that way. Man, he needs some kind of stunner or something. 

“Right in there.” The man tells him, pointing to an old brick factory with the windows grimy and cracked. Of course, Danny sighs out of his nose. If he squints, he can see a green glow coming through the glass. 

If he’s lucky, he won’t run into the Box Ghost while he’s in there. He turns to the man and nods politely, “Thank you.” And when the man nods back, Danny turns and hurries down the street. He weaves around the spirits congregating around him, he’s heard from one-too-many spirits how irritating it is to be walked through by the Living. 

The door is rusted and locked when he finds an entrance, only made worse by the chain wrapped around the door for good measure, with a padlock. Of course. Rolling his eyes, Danny reaches for his pocket and pulls out a lockpick — too many times doing this has taught him to bring one along, just in case. 

(Man, he was envious of ghosts’ abilities to just phase through things. It would save him a lot of trouble. And roadburns, bruises, broken bones, and every other injury known to man.)  

He jams the lockpick into the padlock, jiggles it roughly, and unlocks it with a soft click. “They need better locks.” Danny mutters, pulling off the chain carefully with quiet, metallic clattering, and putting it on the ground. He jams the lockpick into the door lock, and with a little more finesse, unlocks that one too. 

The door opens with a heavy creak that has Danny scrunching his shoulders up to his ears and his mouth pulling back with a sharp inhale. Shit, he freezes in place, darting his eyes around for the amphiptere. 

He sees its glow off in the corner, stark ectoplasm green against the red brick walls, half hidden behind empty conveyor belts and forgotten, empty metal barrels. It doesn’t notice him, with the door open he can hear a loud crrrchk-ing followed by intermittent bangs. 

It’s chewing on something, wriggling around like a cat playing with a toy mouse. Danny silently creeps in and slips through the gap between the door, closing the door behind him slowly. His eyes never leave the amphiptere. It still doesn’t notice him. 

Two years isn’t that long to teach yourself how to be stealthy, but when you’re doing it every night, you learn quickly. Danny keeps himself low to the ground and his footsteps light. The amphiptere is oblivious to him; its clanging, hissing, snarling drowns out the room to any other noise. 

As he gets closer, Danny unhooks his thermos again. There’s a quiet click as he opens the lid with a press of a button, and the thermos hums to life in his hand, warming up against his palm. He creeps around the conveyor belt, his breathing slow and steady. 

When he reaches the amphiptere, its back is facing him. It coiled itself close to the ground, its jaw clamped around a metal barrel that’s been crushed like a tin can down the middle. Danny clenches his teeth, discomfort shivering down his spine. That could’ve been his arm had it decided to fight back. 

Silently, he raises his thermos at the snake, and with his arm steady, his thumb slams one of the buttons. There’s a recoil like he’s firing a gun, and Danny finds his purchase on the ground as a beam of light lashes out and hits the snake. 

The reaction is immediate. The amphiptere drops the barrel with a hideous, furious shriek and lashes out, trying to escape from the beam dragging it towards the thermos. But Danny’s long since learned that the pull of the thermos is much stronger than most ghosts, so long as he doesn’t disturb the tractor beam. 

One thing is for certain — keeping the damn thing steady is one hell of a forearm workout. His arms used to shake after a fight, and they’d feel sore in the morning. Not so much anymore since Danny started working out with Sam.

(Tucker declined when they asked him if he wanted to join — he’ll stick with his tech and walking on the treadmill.)  

When the amphiptere disappears inside the thermos, Danny slams the lid back on and slumps with relief. Finally, he groans quietly, clipping the thermos onto his belt and pressing his hand to his lower back to stretch. There’s a satisfying pop-pop-pop, and Danny sighs from his nose. He’s calling it a night. 

He glances at the time on his phone. It was three am, fantastic. He has school in four hours. 

Other than the snake, tonight had been blessedly quiet. Danny spoke to some of the spirits lingering around Third and Main downtown, got some of their information so he could start helping them with moving on — two murders and then a simple fetch quest, — chased down a few other ghosts — most of them just ecto-entities, but there was a young ghost child who he had to play hide and seek with before she would agree to be taken home in the thermos. 

He also got into a fight with a fellow teen ghost who wanted to see the “Death-Touched” and if Phantom was as good a fighter as the rumors say he was. Danny’s been called “Death-Touched” since the night he snuck into the lab and released every single ghost his parents had trapped in cages, that wasn’t unsurprising. A little a lot ominous at first, but Danny is nothing if not adaptive. 

He’d kicked the other teen’s ass, dragged him into the thermos, and moved on. 

But other than that, tonight had been tame. So before Murphy can come and kick him in the teeth, Danny’s calling it a night. 

Danny is one step towards the exit when he hears a loud, suctioning noise followed by something akin to a glacier cracking down the middle. His heart sinks instantly to his feet, and the chill of his ghost sense crawls up his throat and freezes the back of his teeth. No mist spills out, yet. 

Ah, fuck. Danny stifles a groan, turning back around. There goes the rest of his night. 

A portal the size of an acorn swirls into existence right before his eyes, and then rapidly grows. Swirling like a whirlpool, it grows bigger and bigger until it’s half the size of him. The bigger it gets, the tenser Danny becomes — the bigger the portal is, the bigger the ghost that can slip through gets. 

Please don’t make him face the snake’s fucking cousin. Danny prays, rapidly scurrying back with his hands raised defensively. He scowls under his mask, and waits tersely for something to fall through. Whatever comes through, he hopes it’s friendly. Or slow. Or maybe both. 

Danny doesn’t get another winged snake. 

Instead, a child stumbles out of the portal. A non-glowing, living-colored child who couldn’t be any older than six, and who rapidly spits out a phrase in a language Danny doesn’t catch. Danny’s hands drop slightly from his side, bewilderment settling in the back of his throat. 

As the child rights himself, the portal dissipates behind him with a hissing sigh. It takes Danny’s ghost sense with it, and the chill evaporates from his mouth. 

Oh, oh no. 

Danny’s heart drops from his feet straight into the ground. Six feet into the ground. Oh, fuck. 

That was a living child. That was a living child. That was a whole-ass living child.

If natural portals were rare, then whatever the hell this was — teleportals, Vlad’s teleports, whatever — was unheard of. The only time he’s seen a portal that transported someone from one place to another on the same plane of existence was Vlad. His man-made teleportals. 

Natural portals between one place to another? He’s never heard of such a thing. And one just opened in front of him and spat out a child. A human, living child. A portal just kidnapped a child.  

A child who, Danny realizes, is holding a sword. A katana, of all things. One that was designed to match his size. A child who was, for a lack of better words, wearing something Danny would expect a ninja to wear. A child who was dressed from head to toe in black. 

A child who looks suspiciously like a baby-faced Damian Wayne. Brown skin and green eyes and all, but with youth still clinging to his cheeks. It couldn’t be Damian Wayne himself — that boy was thirteen, and Danny would’ve heard from Sam if something happened to him. 

So this meant either two things: Damian Wayne was just now turned into a child and dropped into Danny’s lap, or this was a clone of Damian Wayne. Danny was thinking it might’ve been the latter. 

Fuck you, Murphy, he thinks instantly, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip. This was mean. 

He stares, uncertainty — and perhaps a little bit of nausea — forming a pit in his chest, as the child makes eye contact with him. The air is silent and thick — with dust, asbestos, or just the silence, Danny isn’t sure. Maybe all three. But they stare at each other for a long, suffocating moment. 

Then the kid — Damian — lunges at him, his sword quickly unsheathed.

“Shit!” Danny dives back, just barely dodging being grazed by the gleaming blade. That was fast. Danny isn’t around living kids often but that was too fast, that much he knows. Kids don’t move that fast on their own. Not without being taught.

Damian spits something at him in that foreign language, his face twisting with anger, and the kid turns himself and lunges once again. Danny dodges again, swatting the sword away reflexively with the side of his gloved hand. 

“I can’t understand you.” He tells him, his voice comes out rougher than he meant it to, and it comes out muffled from his mask. Please tell me you know English, he hopes, hopping up onto the old conveyor belt. 

“'Akhbirni 'ayn 'ana walan 'aqtulak.” Damian snarls, chasing up after him with worrying ease. Danny swats away another stab at him, frowning when the blade leaves a cut in his leather glove. It doesn’t reach skin, but the fact of the matter is that Damian still cut his glove. 

He doesn’t know English either, great. Perfect. Fantastic, even. Danny backs up on the conveyor belt, twisting away from Damian’s attacks with… well, not relative ease, the kid is faster than Danny’s expecting, but he’s not getting hits in. So some ease. 

But Danny’s been fighting ghosts for the last two years. Fighting entities capable of moving at the speed of light leaves you with quick reflexes and even quicker eyes. Damian jumps up to try and kick him in the face, and Danny ducks down and dashes off the conveyor belt, hopping to the next one over.   

When his feet hit the belt, he uses the momentum to leap up onto a rusty shelf. His fingers dig into the sides, and he climbs, vaulting his legs up to the top once he’s high enough. He twists around and stares down at Damian, instinctively crouched on his fours. “I’m not fighting you.” Danny says sternly, watching the kid hop after him. “I don’t fight the living, and I don’t fight kids.” Living ones, that is. Youngblood was fair game. 

Damian scowls, pointing his sword at him accusingly from the conveyor below. “Tawaqaf ean alrakd wawajahani 'ayuha aljaban!” Then he’s jumping up after him, doing an impressive flip in the air before latching onto the lower shelves and climbing up. 

Admittedly, Danny is rooted to his spot with disbelief. What the fuck? “Who taught you that?” He says unwittingly, bewilderment slipping into his voice. Seriously — who taught him that? What six year old knows how to do a backflip at this age? Who made you, kid?

Naturally, Damian doesn’t answer him, and Danny grabs his grappling gun and aims it at the rafters. With a quick pull of the trigger, the hook shoots out and wraps around one of the beams. Danny yanks back, and he braces as the cord yanks him forward in return. When he reaches the beam, he pulls himself up as the cord unravels itself and retracts back into the gun. 

Danny shoves his gun back onto his belt, and disappears into the shadows of the ceiling.

Just in time, Damian was at the top of the shelving unit he was just on, and the kid stomps his foot angrily. Briefly, a smile tugs at the corner of Danny’s mouth, amusement fizzing out in his lungs. “Tawaqaf ean alrakd!” The kid yells, his hands shaking at his sides. “'Ayn 'akhadhatni ya Lieazir!” 

He swivels his head around, his face scrunched up in the dark room as he searches the rafters. Danny silently crawls across the beam, stooping low and moving slowly, and never taking his eyes off Damian. 

The kid is wound up like a spring, and jumpier than a war vet on the Fourth of July. It’s a little funny, but as Danny creeps through the ceiling, the kid only grows more frantic. The only light coming through is the muffled, yellow dim of the streets, and the moonlight that was in the middle of waning from gibbous to crescent. Good enough that Danny can see the kid’s face shifting from anger to fear. 

“Laeazir!” He yells again, and his voice cracks. Danny stills. “Akhruj huna Lieazir!” 

Okay, it wasn’t funny anymore. Danny holds his breath, watching as Damian’s expression fluctuates between scowling fury and wild-eyed panic. He’s twisting on his feet, whatever lethal grace he had earlier from their brief fight is gone now, replaced with clumsy, fawn-like alarm. 

Damian breathes in deeply, and Danny can see the whites of his eyes when he turns his head wildly in his direction. “Azhar nafsak!” 

He’s scared. Danny realizes, pricking up slightly from the rafter. He’s scared. That’s why he attacked him, he’s scared. Of course he is, Danny thinks, feeling like an idiot. He crawls over the beams again, creeping around Damian, keeping his gaze sharp on the kid’s feet. With how much he was spinning, he’s a little worried he was going to fall off the shelf. 

Of course he’s scared, he thinks again. He’s a kid, he doesn’t know any English, and he’s alone. Danny can’t imagine what’s going on through his head — of course he’s scared. He must be terrified. He looks terrified. 

Danny raises himself up carefully, gripping onto the rafters, and dashes across quickly. Damian whirls around towards him, his hands flying to his katana at his sheathe. His fear smothers on his face, and Damian tenses up defensively. 

The grappling gun finds its way back into Danny’s hands, and Danny shoots it at a beam connected to one of the pillars. When it catches, he leans to the side, and lets himself fall. The cord goes taut, and Danny flicks a small button on the side that allows him to lower to the ground with some relative ease. 

With his back to Damian, he hears a quiet scuffle and the shelf creaks. When his feet touch the ground, he tugs on his gun and the cord retracts. Danny can hear quiet, rapid-approaching footsteps coming up behind him, and he shoves his grappler back into its place and whirls around. 

And immediately, reflexively, catches the blade being swung at him with both hands. Shit, he wheezes out harshly, eyes widening in shock. The blade digs into his hands, but there’s no sting — his gloves had taken the brunt of the hit. They were probably ruined after this, but Danny’s less upset over that more than he is relieved. 

Damian glowers up at him, and this close up, Danny can very barely see a watery sheen covering his bottom eyelashes. His heartstrings pull, but it doesn’t stop him from curling his fingers tight around his katana to prevent him from pulling away. 

“Let me help you.” Danny says, rushed. He doesn’t understand him, the obvious part of his mind whispers. He needs to get him to understand him. Damian’s arms tremble slightly, he pushes down harder on Danny’s hands. But he doesn’t budge. 

He tries to yank it back instead, and it gives slightly — only for Danny to readjust his grip, despite the fear spiking in his heart. Cold metal kisses at part of his palm. It’s cut through his glove more. “Put the sword down.” 

“'Ayn 'ana.” Damian snarls at him, there’s still a tremble in his voice. “'Ayn 'akhadhatni.” 

A low, frustrated sound emits in the back of Danny’s throat. “I can’t understand you.” He snaps, if the kid would stop trying to kill him for five seconds, maybe they’d be able to get somewhere. “And you can’t understand me.” But if you’d stop attacking me, I could figure out a way how. 

Something takes mercy on Danny — because Damian gives up on trying to take back the sword. He lets go of the handle, and Danny sees an opening. Immediately, he tosses the sword off to the side, ignoring the clattering and skidding it makes against the concrete floor. The kid is fast, but Danny is faster. He wraps his hand around Damian’s forearm and yanks him forward. 

Damian yells angrily, and Danny traps his arm against his chest and twists him around so that his back is to his chest. Danny is also stronger. Both as a given from his size, and what he does every night. Trapping Damian against him is easier done and said, and Danny immediately sits them both on the ground once he has a good purchase on him. 

“'Utliq sarahi!” Damian yells, thrashing against him violently. Danny simply tilts his head up to prevent Damian from headbutting him in the chin, and wraps an arm around his torso tightly so he can fish for his phone. “'Ayuha alqadharatu! 'Utliq sarahi!”

Danny doesn’t know what he’s saying but he can guess, and he readjusts his arm when Damian nearly slips out. “No.” He says curtly, and when he gets out his phone, he sets it down briefly so he can pull his glove off. With his other arm preoccupied with keeping Damian still, Danny tugs it off with his teeth instead.

Silently, he inspects his palm for any injuries from the katana. He hadn’t felt anything, but it doesn’t hurt to check. He smiles faintly, relief weighting off his shoulders, when all he finds is a small cut near the meat of his palm. Not even deep enough to bleed. It stings, but it won’t even scar. 

He picks up his phone again, and with his mask on he can’t use the facial recognition. Danny taps in his password with his thumb, and quickly pulls up a translator. In his arms, Damian continues to thrash around, twisting and trying to pretzel himself out of his grip. 

“'Ana Damian Al Ghul, dam Ras Alshaytan!” Damian demands. Danny is a little worried that he might bite him, and he hoists him back up onto his lap when he tries to wriggle down. “Yajib 'an tastamie li'awamiri ya Lieazir!” 

Al Ghul. Danny’s never heard that last name before, and he pauses from his typing to frown. “Hm.” Damian — the original, that is, not the clone in his arms, — went by his father’s surname, and Danny can’t remember if it was ever released what the mother’s last name was. 

He quickly swaps the tab on his phone to a new one, and types into the search bar: ‘Damian Wayne mom last name’ and clicks enter. There’s a few seconds where his phone is loading, and then it pulls up the results. And with it, is a chunk of text from the top article: Damian’s mother was kept anonymous for her privacy’s sake. Who she was, what her name is, it’s all unknown other than that she was Chinese-Arabic. A remarkable feat of anonymity in the grand scheme of things and the all seeing eyes of the internet. 

“Hn.” Danny’s mouth presses into a line, and he glances down to Damian. Original Damian’s maternal surname was unknown, and now he knows that his clone was calling himself Damian, what was the off chance that ‘Al Ghul’ was a random last name given to him, and wasn’t actually his mother’s surname?  

…Not likely. Or it was a low chance. 

Putting that aside, he swaps back to the translator and converts what he wrote into Arabic. Damian’s mother was Arabic-Chinese, and the language Damian was speaking didn’t sound like Chinese. So, fingers crossing, he hopes it’s Arabic. 

Turning up the volume as far as it could go, he looks back at Damian, whose struggling and yelling has slowly begun to cease. Danny doesn’t trust it, and he smiles a little amusedly, that’s not going to get me to let go. He checks the translation to make sure it’s what he wants it to say, and then hits the play button. 

[I can’t understand you, but my name is Danny. I want to help you.] 

Damian jerks, hitting his head against Danny’s chest in surprise. “'Utliq sarahi 'ayn 'ana?” He sneers, “'Ana last bihajat limusaeadatikum.” 

“I just said I can’t understand you, bud.” Danny sighs, once again adjusting his hold on Damian. The kid kicks at him and misses him entirely. His arm was starting to get tired from the strain of holding Damian on its own, so Danny puts his phone behind him and swaps them. 

He honest to god gets hissed at when he has to adjust Damian as well, and Danny pauses for a moment just out of pure wonder at the boy in his arms. He was hissed at, as if he was scruffing a stray cat. He was so telling Sam about this when he gets this kid home.  

Smiling faintly, Danny pulls his other glove off with his teeth, checks for injuries, and then with a little bit of contortion, grabs his phone and pulls it back up. Then his train of thought catches up to him, and he freezes just as he’s about to type into the translator again. 

Take him home? The kid? Danny can’t do that. There wasn’t any room in the house, and how would he explain this to his parents? 

‘Hey mom, dad, this is Damian. He’s a clone of my genetic template’s son! Yeah, yeah, that template, the one who just so happens to be the old college buddy that you accidentally cloned instead of dad? The one who just so happens to be capable of suing our family out of existence if he happened to catch wind of my existence? Oh, where did I find him? Last night while I was out. Why was I out? Oh, because I just so happen to be the Phantom, your sworn enemy and the ghost-hunting vigilante who you are convinced is also a ghost. Can we keep him?’ 

Yeah, yeah, he can see how well that would go down. He might as well take off his mask and tell Bruce Wayne he had a clone already. But… where else would Damian go? He doesn’t know any English, he was alone in a foreign country with no money, no way to get home, the worst thing Danny can do is abandon him right now. 

Danny presses his mouth into a thin line, a frown beginning to pull at the corner of his lips.

…He could figure something out with his parents, Jazz will help him once he explains the situation. And if he can get Damian to agree to stop trying to kill him, then they can both make it back to Fenton Works before sunrise… Hopefully. 

Pressing his mouth into a thin line, Danny starts typing into the translator again. [You’re in America right now. The translator doesn’t translate the name of my city well, but we’re in Illinois. You are very far from home.]  

Damian jerks once again, twisting his neck to look up at Danny with disbelief. “'Amrika?” He says, the corner of his up curled up. Danny nods curtly, he doesn’t need to know Arabic to know what ‘Amrika’ means. “Hadhih Amirika?” 

Danny nods again, “Yeah, America. You’re in Amity Park.” He points to the ceiling, and gestures around them slowly. Damian watches him carefully, his eyes narrowed. “Am-i-ty Park.” Danny says, enunciating the syllables slowly. 

Green eyes narrow at him further. “Amity Park.” Damian says, slowly and sharp. When Danny nods, he drops his head and Danny tilts slightly in order to see as Damian casts the room a disdainful look. “Amity Park.” He repeats, voice full of enough venom to kill a full grown man. 

He can’t help himself, he snorts to himself and grins underneath his mask. The sound causes Damian to snap his head back up at him, and return his glower full force. He tries to wriggle again, but, like all other times, it’s in vain. 

“Sawf tutliq sarahi.” Damian orders, mouth twisting back into a scowl. Danny almost wants to tell him that his face will freeze if he keeps doing that. He’s already got his thumb hovering over the keyboard. “Yajib 'an 'aeud 'iilaa aldawrii.” 

Danny types into his phone, [I want to help you. You don’t know English, so getting around on your own will be next to impossible. If you promise not to attack me, I will take you back to my home and we can figure out how to get you home.] 

It’s… okay. Danny doesn’t really want to help the kid get home. Wherever that is, it’s teaching a child how to kill people, and it’s making clones of people. Statistically, that’s a bad sign. It also means that, for all intents and purposes, Danny should help the kid get home so he can find out whatever this organization is and, hopefully, put a stop to their cloning. 

However, Danny has his own city to take care of. Amity Park is full from head to toe with ghosts and spirits, and with his parents playing whack-a-mole with the portal’s door controls, he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the city for even a few days. His parents can catch a lot of ghosts in only a few days. 

His parents can spill a lot of blood in only a few days. 

The evil cloning organization that made Damian will just have to be something Danny can leave in the capable hands of the older, more experienced heroes. For now, he can try and stall Damian’s homecoming and also keep him safe by keeping him housed. 

Damian, instead of wriggling again, slumps against him with a throaty huff. Danny peers over his head, checking to see if he was just pouting or had, somehow, passed out. Damian was scowling, his shoulders slumped up slightly, and Danny internally coos. 

He’s pouting. It was adorable.

The boy is silent for a long minute, a scowl carved like marble in his face, and Danny is content — no, wait, slightly content. He still wants to get home at a semi-reasonable time, — to wait him out. He is stronger, bigger, and faster than him. Eventually, Damian makes a low grumbling noise, something Danny can almost mistake for as a groan, before the kid slumps against him. 

“​​Hsnan, sa'abqaa maeak hataa natamakan min 'iieadati 'iilaa aldawri.” He says, sounding significantly less full of indignant rage, and more so full of indignant irritation. He also no longer wriggles, and Danny feels hope sparking low in his gut. Did he finally get through to him…?

More seconds pass by with the two of them just sitting there in silence, before Damian wriggles again — but rather than trying to escape, he twists his head to give Danny a dirty, expectant look. Danny frowns, confused, and then jerks — Oh! Oh! 

He fumbles for his phone, [Was that a yes? Nod if it was a yes?] 

Damian scoffs at him, looking very much like Danny was nothing more than dirt under his shoes. But he nods curtly, “Naeam sa'adhhab maeak.” 

Danny cheers, loudly. The hand curled around his phone punches skyward, like a fistbump to the ceiling, and Damian drops his head away from him. He yells something at him — probably telling him not to be so loud, but Danny pays it no mind. He’s only focused on the pure, utter, relief, pouring into his lungs and trying to trick itself out of his mouth as a laugh. 

Yes, yes! He convinced him! That’s one less worry to worry about, and as Danny drops his hand with his phone, his other arm starts to loosen up around Damian's waist — something Damian very much notices. As he stiffens up and is halfway through shoving himself out of his grasp. 

Danny lets him go, remembering abruptly the mask on his face. He lets Damian get to his feet, but he’s quickly scrambling soon after, not to grab him again. But to scramble for the katana he’d tossed out of the kid’s reach. Damian exclaims behind him, but Danny has his fingers curled around the handle before the kid can chase after him. 

When he stands and faces Damian again, the kid is all puffed up with rage again. Danny doesn’t doubt that, if the kid is trained to be some… kind of ninja…. that he has more weapons on him. But Damian looks more focused on his sword, so Danny holds up his phone-hand in a gesture to hopefully make Damian wait before he attacks him. 

“Wait, wait, wait!” He cries. Damian does, fortunately, and Danny quickly types into his phone again. [I will give you back your sword, and I will show you my face when we reach my home. But you must promise you won’t attack me once I do.] He pauses for a moment, and then types in as well: [I’ll also show you how to use the translator so we can talk both ways.] 

He doesn’t know if Damian even knows what his… father? Looks like, or what his feelings on him are if he does. But Danny was going to cover his bases, and if there was the off chance that Damian held negative feelings for his dad, he didn’t want the kid to attack him, again. 

(It probably wasn’t a good idea to do this at home, but at this point Danny just wants to be in his room.)

Damian eyes him up suspiciously, tense as a wooden plank and hunched like he was ready to pounce anyways, but he nods curtly. “Aeidak.” 

“Okay.” Danny breathes out, slowly straightening up. He’ll take that as Damian promising not to attack him. “Okay, good. Good.” Lowering his hand, he pockets his phone back into his jeans and flips the sword around so that the blade is pointing downwards. He holds it out for Damian, and the kid, quick as a whip, snatches it back from him and sheathes it into its scabbard. 

Great, finally. Now he can leave. Danny’s hands drop to his sides and he wriggles his fingers at Damian, absently gesturing for him to grab his hand. He turns his head away, searching for the door. “Let’s go.” 

No hand takes his, which Danny should have expected, so he drops it back to his side and leads Damian to the exit. The kid sticks close to him, but keeps just barely out of sight from his peripherals. His steps are quiet, Danny would say almost silent but that wasn’t the case. If he wasn’t paying attention, though, he probably wouldn’t have noticed. Ninja stuff, probably. Danny’s a little, no, a lot concerned that he’s so good at that. 

Ancients, bud. He thinks again, disbelief returning like a hand around his throat. Danny keeps glancing back at Damian to make sure he was still there. Just who, exactly, made you? 

When they get outside, the night air hits them cooler than it was inside. Spirits were still lingering around the sidewalks, chattering amongst each other and throwing him various, curious glances. Danny suppresses a frown, but can’t stop himself from making a low ‘hm.’ 

They probably felt the shift in the atmosphere from the portal opening. It may have dissipated, but the excess was still lingering around. Without his focus solely on Damian, Danny can feel it too. Like a fog in his chest. Or, perhaps more accurately, like going through the day in a tired glaze, only to be hit with pin-startling clarity. The spirits were probably trying to soak up as much as possible in order to gain a stronger physical form. 

Which, unfortunately for them, wouldn’t happen from this portal alone. Too many spirits trying to do the same thing. Not enough ectoplasm. 

He leads Damian down the steps, and over to the sidewalk. On instinct his hand reaches for his grappling hook, but Damian, still loitering in his peripherals, tenses up. Oh, right, Danny thinks, and switches for his phone instead, this is a two-person trip. 

It’d probably be rude to just grab Damian and start flying. Damian might try and stab him, or worse, try and get out of his hands again. The mental image of Damian falling nearly fifty-feet in the air flashes behind Danny’s eyes, and he represses a shudder.

Yeah, let's tell him first. 

His fingers fly across the screen. [I’m going to use a grappling hook to get us back to the house. It’ll be faster. I’m going to pick you up, hold on tight.] 

Damian scoffs at him, but nods. Danny pockets his phone, swaps it out for his grappling hook instead, and lets Damian look at it for a minute before he crouches down and wraps his free arm around Damian’s legs and hoists him up. 

Something gets said to him by Damian, harsh and scowly, probably an insult, but he wraps his arms around Danny’s neck and his legs tight around his torso. At this point Danny just rolls his eyes and adjusts his arm to hold him tight around the waist. “Hold on.” He mumbles, and points his gun to the sky. 

Flying through the city is admittedly trickier with the extra weight on his front and only one hand free, but Danny takes it as a challenge rather than a problem — if only so he doesn’t think too much on it. Damian’s fingers claw into the back of hoodie the moment his grappling hook pulls them through the air, it borderlines almost painful, and Danny doubts he could drop the kid even if he tried. 

There are a few close calls where Danny nearly clips the edge of one of the skyscrapers, but it takes one easy twist and a little bit of spinning to correct the angle. The threat of it sends a rush of adrenaline through his veins, and Danny can’t say he didn’t laugh a few times. Becoming Phantom turned him into an adrenaline junkie, he thinks.  

Damian doesn’t seem to be having much fun though, his grip suffocating on Danny and his face buried into his shoulder. He’s choking Danny a little, but he wouldn’t dare try and correct it while in the air, and it’s only bringing him mild discomfort. 

Not fast enough but all too soon, Danny is touching down near the residential area of Amity Park where the buildings are too small for him to grapple through. He drops onto one of the apartment rooftops, and his feet are barely touching the ground before Damian clambers off him like a wet cat trying to claw its way out of a pool. 

With the sound of his grappling hook receding, Danny laughs low under his breath. “Flying not for you, bud?” He asks, slightly breathless and grinning under his mask. The hook clicks into place in his palm, and Danny shoves it back onto his belt. 

The kid glares at him amidst brushing off his clothes and patting at his sides. His hand brushes over his sword, and when he feels the hilt still there, Damian drops it. The kid straightens up like a soldier — immediately killing Danny’s sky-flushed mirth in the process — and stares up at him, awaiting orders.

Danny’s smile falls, and he clears his throat. Okay, he thinks, checking himself over for anything out of place, before looking back to Damian. Resolve hardens like cement in between his ribs. He’s not going back. Not if I have anything to say about it. 

He moves around Damian and steps over to the roof ledge, swiveling left and right for the direction of his house. Which is unnecessary, he can see Fenton Works from a mile away, but he does it anyways. Anything to distract him from the discomfort that’s been sledgehammered at him. “This way.” He murmurs, gesturing for Damian to follow. Shuffling feet, and Danny can sense more than see the little boy at his side. 

Considering the way he saw Damian hopping around earlier, Danny is confident in his ability to roof hop with him — confidence well deserved because Damian follows him with relative ease. Which is still real damn worrying, but he can dwell on it when they get to the house. 

Still, he keeps a close eye on Damian the entire time they’re leaping rooftops. The boy was six, he didn’t have the same stamina nor height that Danny did — it’d be too easy for Danny to lose him on the way to the house because he couldn’t keep up, or he decided to change his mind while Danny was distracted and book it in another direction. 

They reach the house in no time, and Danny’s fishing for his key from his belt the moment his feet hit the concrete of the rooftop. Damian remains behind him, an ever-constant shadow as Danny ducks under the various legs, wires, and poles of the OPPS Center and unlocks the door to the roof. 

Getting to his room is a relief. The strange, buzzing sensation that settles through Danny’s eyes like a thin film whenever he’s using his ‘scary eyes’ dissipates, and he’s kicking off his boots with a low sigh before he can really think it through. He’ll put them back in their place when he’s done — but for now, he just wants them off. Damian pools in behind him, slinking off to the corner of the room as Danny shuts the door. 

His room is spotless — a cleaning habit he’s kept meticulously since he wanted to be an astronaut. He had planets hanging from the ceiling, glow in the dark stars muttered against the walls, and posters of astronomy, Dumpty Humpty, and NASA plastered beside the stars. And a large corkboard hanging above his desk. 

“Finally.” he groans, twisting his hips and stretching out his back before reaching over and turning on the hanging lights. A soft orange glow fills the room, and Danny turns just in time to see Damian jump in surprise. He’d moved over to Danny’s bookshelf on the opposite side of the room, his body half turned away and tilted like he’d been inspecting it. 

Danny stifles a smile, and tugs off his thermos and grappling hook and places them on the desk. Damian straightens up, shuffling away from the bookshelf and back over to him, his brows beginning to furrow with a look of determination. 

He marches towards him, “Laqad wasalna 'iilaa manzilika, walan ealayk 'an tafi bikalimatik watakhlae qanaeaka.” 

Danny doesn’t know what he’s saying, but Damian points to his face while he’s speaking so Danny figures it out relatively quickly. Besides, it’s not like he’d forgotten either. He has to take off his mask to sleep, and it’s easier to change when he’s not wearing it. He grabs his phone from his pocket.

[I know, I’ll take off my mask. But remember: you can’t attack me.] He hits play, and watches Damian scoff for the nth time, roll his eyes, and nod. As if to reassure him, or to prove that he wasn’t going to attack him, Damian folds his arms behind his back. 

Briefly, Danny feels himself nearly frown again at Damian’s almost soldier-like posture. But he has time to worry about that later, he shoves his phone back into his pocket. Danny raises his hands and curls his fingers around the bottom of his mask. 

Carefully, mindful of the straps, Danny pulls it off. The cool air immediately rushes over his damp forehead, and he quickly shakes his head with bated breath to get the strands of hair plastered to his skin off. He locks eyes with Damian, tense, and with air trapped in his lungs. 

Damian’s eyes widen comically, his scowl softening for a moment. For a moment, Danny thinks that maybe things will be fine…ish. But then Damian’s face is scrunching up again, his face sharpening angrily, and his hands reach for his sword. 

“Dijaal!” He hisses, fire lighting in his eyes as he grabs for his katana.

Danny takes a step back and holds his hand out, narrowing his eyes defensively. “Hey, hey, hey!” He hisses back, he points a finger at Damian accusingly, arching an eyebrow. “You promised!”

Apparently, the tone of ‘no takesies-backsies!’ transcends language, because Damian freezes where he stands and simply remains glowering at him. Danny raises his eyebrow higher, locking him in a staring contest, and Damian takes his hand off the hilt. 

Great. Good. Fantastic even! Crisis avoided, and no parents woken up in the process. That’s a success if Danny’s ever heard one. He keeps his eyes on Damian, before slowly reaching for his phone again. It’s like having a stand-off with a bull. A tiny, six year old-sized bull with a sword rather than horns, but a bull nonetheless. 

He gets his phone out safely, and gets out the translator. Again. [I know I’m a clone of your dad. I didn’t ask to be. I still want to help you.] And he does, he so much does. Danny was a bleeding heart, forever and always. If he can help, he will. He hopes that the blood he is made from won’t stop Damian from accepting that help. 

Damian stares him down, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to analyze Danny’s every move. Danny stays still and lets him, waiting for the jurisdiction of the small assassin. 

Whatever it is that Damian sees, it causes him to drop his hands to his side with an irritated sigh just like before. He says nothing, but the resigned slump of his shoulders tells Danny all he needs to know, and he beams. 

Success, he thinks, laughing quietly in earnest. [Stay here.] He quickly types into his phone and plays. He reaches for his thermos. [I need to release the ghosts in my device, then I’ll show you how to use the translator.] 

He plucks the thermos from his desk and tosses his phone over Damian’s head and onto the bed. It bounces, Damian grumbles something under his breath, and the phone bounces again. Danny puts the mask down, and dances out the door and down into the lab with practiced ease.

When he returns, Damian is snooping around his room, looking around his desk this time around. He straightens up when Danny steps into the room, and Danny doesn’t bother addressing it — instead he grabs his phone again and gestures for Damian to sit on the bed with him. 

It takes a painfully long amount of time to show Damian how to use the translator, with a ton of repetition and fiddling around. But they manage, finally, to get a system up where Danny will type something into the translator, play it back to Damian, and then hand the phone to Damian. Damian then would swap the translation, use text-to-speech, and play it in english. 

Naturally, text-to-speech has its flaws, and Damian is only recently learning how to read, so Danny figures out the translation errors on his own. They don’t talk for long, Damian is shut off, snooty, and reserved to him. All Danny knows is that his name is Damian Al Ghul, and he is the blood son and second heir to something called the League of Assassins. 

How cheery. “League of Assassins” sounds definitely evil. Ancients, Danny doesn’t wanna know. He’ll have to get involved if he knows any more. 

He lets Damian fiddle with the translator more in regards to searching his closet for clothes for Damian to wear. He doesn’t have any shorts that will fit, but he pulls out an old NASA t-shirt that still somewhat fits him, and tosses it to Damian. 

After much arguing, he gets Damian to wear it, and he gives Damian the bed. That takes less arguing — Damian is all too happy to sleep in a bed rather than the floor, and Danny pulls his beanbag chair out from its nook to shove it under his desk. 

He’s still awake by the time sunlight begins peeking over the buildings, his eyelids heavy and sore with exhaustion, and his limbs feeling loose and disconnected. He’s fixed up his gloves — torn from the katana, but now half-heartedly sewn up with thread and a lot of muttered swearing on Danny’s part. His mask is shoved in a hidden pocket in his backpack along with his thermos. 

Damian is fast asleep in bed, and with nothing else to do, Danny keeps his sharp eye on him. Swamped in Danny’s shirt and curled up under the covers, Damian is teeny. Well, he was small even before that, but it is even more apparent when tucked under blankets meant for people bigger than him.

And, for perhaps the third time that night, Danny is hit with just the sheer longing of how much he wants to help him. Danny is the hand that feeds, and Damian has a lot of teeth. The cut of his gloves is more than proof enough of that. But Danny wants to help him, Damian has no one else here to. Danny, so far, is the only one who can help him.

He is also hit with the sheer magnitude of what he’s just done — the terrifying revelation that Danny’s just taken in the clone of his template’s son. What the hell does that make for him and Damian’s relationship? Genetically, Danny is technically his father, but they’re complete strangers to one another. 

What does that mean for Danny? It’s been four months since his parents revealed their betrayal. Their lies. Their backstabbing, earth-shattering, fifteen years of astounding— the truth to Danny about his… birth. Four months isn’t long enough to deal with something like that. He is still questioning everything he does — whether his actions belong to him, or to Bruce Wayne.

And this? This just takes the fucking cake.

Danny breathes in deeply, snapping himself out of the slow-creeping spiral threatening to drag him under the waters of his mind. His eyes flick to the window. It’s too early to think about this. Much, much too early. He slinks into his beanbag with a low groan, stifling back a groan. 

He can worry about the identity crisis and his crisis of autonomy later. Later, when he’s not mind-numbingly exhausted and already mentally fragile from that alone. Not when there’s a teeny baby assassin sleeping in his bed who happens to be his son? Cousin? Brother? template’s son’s clone. 

With sunlight peeking through the windows, he slinks out from under his desk to prepare for another day.

[starry-stan-blog]

nanowrimo day 22 update

[upon-a-starry-night]

Marvel Incorrect Quotes

*Y/n being interviewed*

Interviewer: So y/n, what makes you happy?

Y/n: Natasha

Interviewer: awee. okay- What makes you scared?

Y/n:... Natasha

Interviewer: oh? okay.. uhm. What turns you on?

Y/n:*sweating profusely*... N- Natasha

Interviewer: are you going to answer Natasha to every question

Y/n: *on the verge of tears* N- n-

interviewer: -No?

Y/n: *softly*  ᴺᵃᵗᵃˢʰᵃ

[last-starry-sky]

Simon constantly teases you about how short/small you are. It upsets you, makes you feel singled out, weak, incompetent. Turns out he’s just dying to know how well you can fit him, how big his cock would look next to your hands and feet. Won’t shut up about it during sex either. A dash of mean Simon + his untapped size kink

eeeeee im gonnafuckining explode OKAY FOR REAL I WAS DYING WHEN I SAW THIS. thank u, beautiful, patient anon, for blessing me with this prompt!! I hope I did it justice!

ghost x petite!f!military!reader

(MDNI - NSFW uhhhh grossly inaccurate military stuff, creeper, bully simon :), i’m using “petite” as in “shorter and smaller than the average woman” trying to keep everything as open and vague as possible, oral, deep throating, ghost has a raging size kink, unprotected piv, also this is LONG (5.6k) 💀 i'm sorry!!! skip to the end for smut if that's all you want!❤️) 

It’s been the same fucking comments from your lieutenant all week. Day in, day out and it’s starting to wear a sore spot into your hardened skin. 

“Muzzle up. Arms tired already? ‘s a big rifle for someone your size to carry.”

“Keep pace with the group. Your short legs aren’t their problem.”

“Shoulders back! Chest out! Some’ve y’ need all the height you can get!”

All you can do is grit out a “yes, sir” or “no, sir” and push yourself even harder to keep up with the taller and stronger men and women around you. The massive Brit in charge is running your training group. While you expected this to be hard (your CO hadn’t been mincing words when he pitched it as “advanced”) but you never expected this. 

First of all, from the very beginning, he seemed to have a problem with you. Only you. There were a handful of women in the group, but you were unfortunately the shortest and smallest. Not that it bothered you. You’d spent your whole life this size. You were used to it. It was everyone else, especially the wanna-be, alpha males that flocked to the military like flies, that gave you grief over it.

The second you all lined up off the transport, you could feel his eyes on you. You tried not to stare back while the other Brit, Captain Price, gave a short introductory talk. You hadn’t heard a word of it. He stood there, flanking the captain, in a black, skin tight t shirt, with his obscenely muscled arms crossed over his ridiculously broad chest. A buzzing filled your ears as his black eyes bored into you. His stare so hot and heavy it made you sweat. His eyes were all of his face that he left uncovered, the rest was hidden by a skull mask and balaclava. You tried to ignore him, but you swore you saw the ink on his arm flexing as the captain introduced him: Lt. Ghost.

From the first training exercise, a simple one on one spar, he pulled you of all people from the women’s group to demonstrate on. What could you do? Refuse? He had at least a foot and close to one hundred pounds of muscle on you. You tried not to shake as you squared up at the opposite end of the mat. 

He told you to rush him, to “show him what you got”. Well, you tried. Once he gave signal to start, all you could do was try to fake him out. You ran at him before quickly darting to the side, trying to get behind him using your short stature to your advantage. Unfortunately for you, he was crazy agile for a large guy. He pivoted on his foot, watching you as you tried to fade to his left. You steeled yourself when he caged you in his arms, sweeping your feet off the mat. Your world was a blur until he slammed you roughly down onto the mat. Your breath was knocked from you, your vision spinning. You heard the crowd around you let out a collective “OH”. It took you a moment to realize he had you pinned. Your legs and hands held painfully down with his own. 

“‘sat all y’ got? Givin’ up already?” he grunted out with a gravely laugh while he stared down at you. He leaned down until his chest was pressed to yours, that stupid mask just grazing your face. “Or y’ got some fight left in y’? 

Hell yeah you still had some fight in you. You managed to slip out one leg from under him, jamming your knee quickly into his side. A kidney hit was dirty, you knew that. You wouldn’t dream of doing it in a normal spar, against an evenly matched partner, but he deserved it for picking on you; for picking a woman when he could have easily dominated any of the men in the room. He reacted exactly as you expected: crumpling forward in pain. You didn’t waste a second pulling your hands and legs from his grip. Another cry rang out from the crowd when you rolled out from under him, ready to jump on his back and make the pin.

“Olright, olright,” he said rubbing at his side, sitting up with a grunt before you could pin him. “I yield, y’ cheatin’ lil’ git. Next up.” 

He pointed at one of the other soldiers to come forward and take your place. The man gave you a fist bump as you left the mat and you told him “good luck”. You knew he would need it. When you turned around you saw that Ghost’s gaze had never left you. 

-

You walked back to base on Friday with your blood boiling, failure weighing heavy on your psyche after a long, hot afternoon of sniper training. You had given all you could; had put up with extra hard, extra long training, with comment after comment about your size and strength. 

Shorty. Shrimp. Rifle looks like it weights more than you. Gonna manage that?

Up early, in late everyday, almost too tired to eat and shower by the end. You had a mind to march right into Price’s office and tell him you were leaving that night. You’d made it a week, that was good enough for you. You would rather face hell from your CO back home than endure another hour of this. The second you sat down on your bunk, however, you passed out.

The exhaustion must have snapped something in your brain. You woke up a few hours later groggy and sweaty, your bunk mate snoring away. You were half on your bed with your feet still in your boots. You rolled onto your back with a groan, wiping the dried tears and dust from your cheeks. 

You let your weak arms fall over your face. You felt pathetic. You honestly wanted to just lay on your thin mattress and cry in the dark until the day started. Another day of enduring that British cunt with a superiority complex calling you short and weak, of singling you out in front of your peers, of making you question your career up to this point. He was eroding the very core of your person at this point, and you didn’t know how much long you could take it. 

You let out a sigh and, with more than a little effort, pull your sore, battered body out of bed. What you really needed was to shower, to think this out, and then find Captain Price to talk. No good would come from rushing into a decision in this state. 

You enjoyed your shower. It was nice to have all of the hot water and the whole communal space to yourself. You took your time getting dressed back into your rumbled clothes in the empty locker room. Nothing but the sound of dripping water echoing off the tile around you. 

Leaving the showers, you looked up and down the bare corridors, only enough of the overhead fluorescents left on to avoid a safety hazard. Your hair dripped onto your shoulders while you stood in the center of the hall. Price’s office had to be somewhere around here.

You wandered out of the barracks, down hall after hall of the same, painted block walls and plain tile floors, until you started seeing name plates posted haphazardly on the wooden doors. Your eyes wandered from door to door until you found what you were looking for: a sheet of 8.5x11 paper taped crookedly outside an office with Cpt. Price scrawled across the middle.

You let out a sigh of relief as you brought up your hand to knock on the door. It was almost over. The captain seemed like a reasonable man. He would surely be willing to listen to you, maybe give you some sound advice on whether you were actually cut out for this level of training. Before your hand could land on the door, a gloved hand came out from the shadows of the hall in front of you to rest above yours.

“What’re you doin’ here?” he whispered harshly.

You didn’t even need to look up to know who it was. You closed your eyes in annoyance, balling your hands at your sides. Of fucking course he was here. Right at the last hurdle. Right before you could seek relief from a superior, his superior too. You let out a long breath through your nose before you opened your eyes to face him.

“I came to talk to Captain-” you started speaking with a wavering voice before he cut you off.

“Not in. Not yet, at least. Had a long night.” 

He leaned against the door, starting down at you again. God, he fucking annoyed you. You’d never had a CO that frayed at your nerves like he did. How dare he come off so cool, gripping his oversized biceps with his stupid skeleton gloves. 

You stepped back from the door. “I’ll come back when he’s in then. Sorry-”

“Can help you if you need somethin’” he interrupted you again, casually canting his hips forward, moving his hand to the door handle. 

You shook you head. While you really wanted to give him a piece of your mind, you would prefer not ending this with a disciplinary, so you bit your tongue. 

“I don’t need anything from you,” you answered with just a bit of venom.

He heard it, you were sure of it. He clicked the door open, letting it fall open to reveal the dark room inside. 

“No. I think you do, small-stuff.” When you didn’t make a move, just let another angry breath out your nose and furrow your brow deeper, he shifted to the side and pointed inside the room. “In. Now. That’s an order.”

You clenched your teeth and did as you were told. Not that you had an option now. 

-

You walked up to the desk at the back of the room. Price sure did keep his office in a state. Papers and folders were piled across his desk. A landline phone and old desktop computer were shoved to either corner of the desk. More folders and binders piled over the keyboard and hid the keypad of the phone. You heard Ghost’s boots squeak lightly on the tile behind you, then the door shut with a click. Another, soft click followed. He flipped the light switch, illuminating the spot right above you with hazy, yellow light. 

You turned to face the man who’d gone out of his way to made himself your nemesis for the past week. He silently sauntered up to you, stopping behind one of the chairs in front of the desk. You crossed your arms defensively over your chest and tried to make your face placid while he pulled the chair out. He took a seat, well, he tried too. He could barely fit his massive fame in the little chair. It groaned underneath him as he mirrored your pose, arms crossed and legs spread. 

You sat silently staring at each other before he asked, “Well?” with a roll of his shoulders. 

You picked over your words, trying to detangle everything you had thought up in the shower. Ghost bouncing his knee pulled you back to reality. It was like the threatening hiss of a rattlesnake's tail. Better to just get it out than keep him waiting.

“Do you have a problem with me?” you squeaked out, eyes on you boots. The direct route it was, then. 

“What?” he asked, confused.

You looked up at him, exhausted, eyes pleading. “Look, I know I’m short and not as strong as the other guys . . . especially the guys, but the way you talk to me-”

“Don’t have a problem with y’,” he said throwing his arm across the back of the chair, readjusting while he raked his eyes up and down your frumpy form. Probably looking for something to complain about. “If’m bein’ honest-” he started before cutting himself off and turning his head. 

You uncrossed your arms, letting them fall to your sides. “What . . .” you questioned, gesturing with your hands in front of you. “Then why do you-”

He jiggled his knee a few more times before turning back to face you. “Little thing like you,” he said darkly, so deep and low you almost didn’t hear it. He clenched his fingers on his pants as he cleared his throat. “You keep up with the rest’ve ‘em well enough. Ain’t got a problem.”

“Little thing,” you whispered, repeating him sarcastically. 

Ghost groaned at that. Honest to god groaned in front of you, sending a shiver up your spine. You froze as his heavy eyes found their way back to you. 

“Yeah. You sure are,” he said scraping his fingers down his pants. “Spunky, too. Used t’ fightin’ for your place. Like that. Makes me wonder-” he trailed off as his large eyes wandered down from your face to your chest. 

You were shocked. No way. You had to be misinterpreting this. Maybe you were still sunstroked from yesterday, because there was no way you were reading him correctly. 

“Wonder what?” you piped, blush pinching at your cheeks.

“Wonder . . .” he said rocking his head back and forth, trying to tie a sentence together. “Wonder if y’ can be sweet, too.” He let you stew in wide-eyed disbelief for a moment as he gestured at you. “Wonder what you look like underneath all that.” Your stomach clenched as he tilted his hips forward, spreading his legs wider, to palm is cock through his pants. “Wonder if it matches what I’ve imagined.”

You would be lying if it was just your stomach clenching after that shameless display.

It was crazy how it all made sense now. The constant attention. The names. You thought he was being overly hard on you, picking at you, trying to get you to drop out. You rubbed a hand over your heated face. He was a grown man (a large one, too) that was acting like a little boy with a worm on a stick, chasing the girl he liked around the playground. You thought he hated you and all this time he was actually getting off to you. You felt like an absolute moron. 

“Doesn’t have t’ leave this room. If you’re interested,” he said in that deep gravel, still trying to keep himself together. 

You let him sit in silence for a long, tortuous, moment. 

“And if I’m not?” you finally asked. 

He nodded to the door behind him with his head. “Then leave. Talk t’ Price in the morning. No harm.”

“No foul,” you finished his phrase, running your fingers over your bottom lip. 

Silence hung between you for a hot moment in the cold, stale air of the office. You had a hard time believing he would just let you go at this point. Not that you planned to, the danger intrigued you too much to walk away. This line of work had made you a wholly different animal, it’s why you were here. You ran into war zones, battlefields, hostage negotiations, the places others couldn’t run out of fast enough. You’d been dealing with the people that most couldn’t stomach, the ones that couldn’t function in civilian society, for so long that they had worn a place under your skin. This lieutenant, Ghost, he had been in this just as long, if not longer, than you. He had to feel the same. Fuck, he had be worse.     

“What . . . what do you want?” you finally managed to ramble out. 

He let out a rough hum of satisfaction. You hated how you responded to it. You rolled your thighs together and, fuck, you were wet. You let out a small, shuddering breath. You’d gone a week with no praise, no kindness, and now here he was, the big, bully Brit who’d made your life hell practically purring over you. 

He trained his hungry eyes on you and motioned up with a flick of his fingers. “Wanna see ‘em. Don’t even have’t take your shirt off.”

A part of you wondered if this was all a trick as you slowly rucked your t shirt up to expose your stomach. That would track with how your week had gone so far. He was so blatant and open though, gripping the chair beneath him like he was about to launch out of it at a moment’s notice. He groaned as you pulled your shirt up to reveal your plain black sports bra. It was nothing special, standard issue, but it kept you strapped down. Not that you really had all that much to contain. 

He ran his hand over (what you assumed) was his mouth under the balaclava. He waited a moment for you to continue before urging you forward. 

“Come on, love. Don’t get shy. Wanna see ‘em.”

You slipped your fingers underneath the wide band at the bottom, hesitating only a moment before you pulled everything, shirt included, up over your head. You stared down at your chest while you balled your clothes in your hands.

“Not much to see,” you whispered, watching your nipples perk and skin pucker under the AC.

“Fuckin’ hell” was all he said. You dared to look up. “Fuck,” he continued, “Fuckin’ . . . get over’ere. Just fuckin’ dyin’ t’ get my hands on you.”

You dropped your clothes on the floor, closing the few steps between you quickly before falling forward into his grasp. You weren’t sure if you were ready for what this desperate, mountain of a man was about to unleash on you, but fuck did it excite you. Once he had you between his legs, gloved hands scraping up your back and around your waist, testing his fingers as he held you, but he didn’t do anything but look. He stared at you like you were made of glass. 

You stared at him, too. You hadn’t been this close since he’d pinned you on the first day, and you were pretty sure you’d been half-concussed then. You could see where he had eye black painted carefully around his eyes to fill the holes in his mask. You could see his long eyelashes, clumped together with that same oily black paint. It made the whites of his eyes stand out vibrantly. His large dark irises darted back and forth over your chest. You wondered what he was planning, what he was thinking. 

He didn’t leave you wondering for long. He pressed you forward, mouthing at your nipple through the mask. You let out a short whine, pussy clenching as his large hands kneaded at your waist. The feeling was like nothing you’d felt before. The fabric between you muted the translation between his actions and your pleasure. You could feel how eagerly he bit and sucked at you, but you were denied half of it. It made you dig your fingers into his shoulders in frustration.

“Want more?” he said haggardly, pulling off of you. He tugged at your belt, not waiting for an answer. “Then get these off.”

You did your best to undo your belt and pants despite your shaking and moaning while he dove back in, working harder at your other nipple. Once you’d dropped your pants down to your ankles he pulled you forward to step out of them, wedging you into the spread of his legs. You toed out of your shoes and then he kicked everything behind you, your boots banging loudly against the steel desk. You heard papers shift and fall, but couldn’t find a reason to care. He held you, running his gloved hands over your exposed skin while you shivered in font of him in nothing but your panties. 

He palmed his cock again before fumbling around to find his belt. You heard him click it open, the metal jangling as it went slack. 

“On your knees,” he ordered breathlessly. “Wan’ see what that little mouth can do with this.” 

You complied immediately, viciously curious as to what he was packing. If the tent in his pants was any indication, you had your work cut out for you. He popped open the button of his fly and then slowly unzipped. You couldn’t see anymore through his briefs than you had in his pants, but still, you leaned forward. You curled your hands on your knees, biting your lip, willing him to give you permission. 

“Go ahead,” he said giving himself one lazy, squeezing pump.

You put your hands on his inner thighs, right above his knees, testing the waters. When he didn’t say anything, you slid your hands up his legs, a soft, swishing sound following. You stopped at his crotch, pulling yourself forward before tentatively, gently, smoothing up his clothed cock. 

He groaned, covering your hand with his, forcing you to grip his girth. Your thumb just barely met your ring finger. 

“Fuckin’-” was all he could get out before pulling your hand off. 

He used his other hand to pull his dick out before pressing your hand to his hard, burning length. You gave him another pump, feeling how the skin stretched beneath your hand, then squeezing to feel how goddamn rigid he was. The tip of his cock made your mouth water. 

It was crazy. On you knees in front of him like this, you weren’t a competent soldier, a woman who held herself with poise and respect in front of her colleagues. He wasn’t an expertly trained, battle-hardened, special operative of the British Army. You were both human. Both hungry. 

You tipped his cock toward you to lap at the underside of the head. You met his eyes just as you closed your mouth around him, sucking the salt from his slit. He shut his eyes with a groan, letting his head fall back for a moment as he reached his hand up to grip at your skull. He opened his eyes to watch as he slowly bobbed your head down his cock. 

He gripped himself at the base, forcing your mouth to take him until you met his fingers. You did. Just barely, gagging as his head slid against the roof of your mouth to the soft palate at the back of your throat. He didn’t let you pull back. Instead, he traced the inside of your lips with his thumb, drool coating his black gloves.

“Lookit’ that,” he groaned as your throat pulsed and burned around him. “Little thing takes it all s’fuckin’ well.”

He let go of your head, letting you pull off of his cock. You stared at it with heavy eyes as your head spun from lack of oxygen, it glistened with your spit in the harsh light. He gave himself another languid stroke, watching you force air into your lungs while you sat practically naked on the floor between his knees. 

“Think you can take it in that little cunt a’yours like that?” he asked, stopping his stroke at the head.

You bit your bottom lip as you looked up at him. You gave him a slow nod. Any fear or paranoia you had before was long evaporated. You were wet, horny, needy. You needed him to give you something, and if he was going to give you a choice, you could do worse than getting railed until you couldn’t remember your name. You clenched, hands clawing at your thighs, as you watched him pump another stroke up that monster cock of his in front of your face before grunting out his order.

“Get up then. Against the desk.”

You scrambled up to your feet. He followed you, rising quickly from his chair to tower over you, pressing you backwards into the steel desk. Your hands reached out for purchase as he roughly gripped your thighs, throwing you on top of Price’s paper-laden desk. Folders and binders clattered to the floor, papers swirling across the tile as he shoved you down, ass right on the edge. 

He stood between your legs, hips flush to yours, his cock laying across your standard issue panties like a weapon. He pressed the weight of it against your skin with a groan, head spreading precum into your stomach. Quicker than you realized, he reached behind his back, coming back with a knife. It was almost invisible palmed in his large hand, only the tip of the blade winked from the tip of his thumb. With two quick flicks, he cut up the side of your underwear. He slid the knife back to wherever he had taken it from, like it was the most normal thing in the world, before pulling the now useless scrap of fabric from between the press of your bodies. 

He held the scrap of fabric in his hand for a minute, investigating it under the light before tossing it to the floor.

“Really are beggin’ for it, eh?” He said sliding his cock up the seam of your pussy. His easy, fluid movements as he rocked against you answered for you. “Fuckin’ wet just from that?”

You nodded, lacing your legs around his hips, trying to pull him closer. He pressed his hand into your stomach in response, squishing you against the desk hard enough to make you squirm. He pulled away enough to notch the head of his cock at your entrance.

“Needy little fuckin’ thing,” he said with a punch of his hips, nails biting into the soft skin of your stomach as his tip danced perilously on the edge of holding inside you. “Want it so fuckin’ bad? Want this inside y’?” 

He took himself in hand and watched as he pushed inside. You both groaned. You let your head fall against the desk with a dull thunk, eyes shut and legs shaking as he pushed deeper and deeper inside your slick hole. 

“Fuck.” He was breathless for the first time since you had met him. “Fuck are y’ tight. So fuckin’ small. Even gonna fit it all?” He rambled to himself as he took hold of your hips and watched himself fuck slowly in and out of you; hypnotized by the clutch of your greedy pussy pulling him in, resisting as he pulled out. 

You let out a small cry of frustration, tears pricking around your eyes. He was big, but that wasn’t the problem. You had taken your share of dick, you could take him. It was killing you how slow he was. He was lost in his own world, watching his cock slid in and out of you as you lay there silently begging for him to just fuck you already. 

“Quiet,” he whispered with a half-hearted harshness, hand trailing down to your pussy. 

You almost jumped as he began to rub a wide circle around your clit. Your slick barely dulled the rough texture of his glove. You shuddered, clenching around him, whining as he found a rhythm with his thumb and cock. Your clench punched the breath out of him. He fell over you, bracing himself with his arm. You could hear the hollow sound of his breaths behind his mask as he gave up trying to pump into your vice of a pussy. 

He nuzzled the cold plastic of his mask against your ear. “Not gonna’ last long doin’ shit like that,” he grumbled. He held himself up, pulling your face to look at him with a hand under your jaw. “Wha’d’y want?” 

You stared back at him with confusion. 

“Where d’y want it?” he clarified.

If you had a brain cell still functioning, you would have told him to pull out. It was the safer of the options he was giving you. 

But you didn’t. You moaned out, “Fuck. Inside me. Please,” like the absolute whore you had become once he’d whipped his cock out. 

Not one to question, apparently, Ghost was back in position the moment he heard you. He pulled your hips back to meet his, cock punching all the way in until you winced as the head hit your cervix. He took hold of one of your legs, hand running up the length of it, positioning it until it lay unfolded up his chest. He gripped his fingers around your ankle, starting at it as his other hand squeezed your waist.

“Lookit, fuck. Lookit that,” he said as he pistoned into you. You cut off the loud moan that he punched out of you. The change in angle was . . god it was like nothing you’d had before.  

“Like that?” he said, letting your foot dangle on his shoulder while he held your waist with both hands, driving into you mercilessly. 

If you could have answered, you would have spoke truthfully. You were sure. You would have moaned about how good it was, how he was so big and filled you so well. As it was, his powerful thrusts jarred you against the cool metal of the desk too much to do anything more than moan and hold on as more papers flooded the floor. 

“Got y’self off at all this week?” he asked, panting breathlessly.

You shook your head, a small whine of anticipation falling form your lips at the thought.

“Gonna nut just thinkin’ about you cummin’ on my cock,” he mumbled, trailing his hand back to your clit.

You let out a sad whine, bucking into his thrust as he touched you. You were close. So fucking close.

He began to circle your clit like before, finding that delicious rhythm with the pound of his hips that pulled you higher and higher, tighter and tighter, until dazzling sparks lit up your core. You reeled back with a cry, clenching his cock, arching as he worked you through your peak. 

His hand ripped away from you sooner than you’d like. He fell over you, both hands biting into the skin of your hips as he pounded into you as your pussy pulsed, any semblance of cadence or love-making gone as he chased his own high. You dug your fingers into his t shirt. The sweat drenched fabric was almost too slippery to hold on to. 

“Fuck! Too fuckin’ hot ‘n, fuck, tight. Fuck, ‘m gonna-” His weak series of sighs and groans, followed by the distinct feeling of his cock flaring inside you told you what he couldn’t.

He lay over you for a moment, panting as you both caught your breaths. You wondered if he was also stewing in the monumental realization of what the fuck you had both just done. You’d just broken so many rules. So much was at stake. He’d just cum inside a subordinate on his bosses desk, and you didn’t work for the same country. This was going to be a mess. You were sure of it. 

He pulled away from you, pulling himself out with a smothered whine. You crossed your hands over your middle as you watch him zip back up and adjust his mask. It was wild how he was back to normal within seconds. You half expected him to walk out the door and just leave you here like this. At least all of your clothes were here, save your sliced up panties. 

But he didn’t leave. He held out a hand to you, only letting you stare at it dumbly for a minute before he flicked his fingers toward himself, urging you to act. You took his hand and he pulled you up easily. He even let you slump against him after you sat up. You’d forgotten how tired a good lay made you.

Again, you expected him to leave you now that you were conscious and able to dress yourself, maybe leave you with a heavy warning (read: threat) to not talk about this. As you tried to shuffle to the side to try and get off the desk, he stopped you. His hands gripped both of your shoulders suddenly.

“The fuck y’ doin’?” he said, forcing you back in front of him.  

“Getting . . . dressed?” you answered with unease. 

“Funny,” he said with a single, dry, laugh. “You’re a funny lil’ thing, too.”

His hands skimmed down your sides before quickly seizing you by the hips, throwing you over his shoulder like a backpack. You gasped as your stomach landed on his solid shoulder, punching the air from your lungs.

“Think we’re done already?” he said, turning around. 

You watched as the desk, and the messy you had made on and around it, including your scattered clothing, circled back into view, then slipped away. He palmed a whole cheek of your ass in one hand, spreading you open enough for cold air to chill your leaking core, as he stalked toward the door. He probed a finger into your pussy, swirling the cum you felt leaking out across your folds. 

“Got a whole day off, y’know,” he said matter-of-factly as he opened the door. Completely ignoring that he had a naked woman slung over his shoulder like a caveman. “Think we should go back to mine. Relax. See what else that little cunt’ve yours can take.”

[horatiocomehome]

Hi my dream last night did something to me so here's a word dump I wrote immediately after waking up so I could get catharsis.

What if... instead of looping, Siffrin just came back to life?

~~~

You should've known it was too easy. No traps, only weak sadnesses, keys in relatively obvious places. It was so easy to get through the first floor.

But now there's a large sadness, and you've taken one hit too many.

As you fall to the ground you see your party close ranks in front of you. To protect you.

You see Bonnie, running up, with a crafted water.

Your vision is going dark.

There's a flicker, above Bonnie. It's…

The sadness it's arm above Bonnie it's attacking.

You tackle Bonnie. Something slams into your back.

You can't move anything except twitch your fingers you ca n't look up just at the floor

Bonnie's boots are there someone is screaming

You aren't g oing to make it.

You wanted more time w ith them you want to live you want t o stay with them you want to stay with them YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE YOU W ANT T O S T A Y W I T H TH

GAME OVER > continue > quit

You wake up from a deep sleep. You had a bad dream last night.

Someone's pulled the sheets up over your head. You toss them off.

Oh.

You aren't in your bed. You're back in your dream.

This is where you died.

It's quiet, now. No sadness. No party.

You look to the side, at the sheets you tossed off that weren't really sheets but your cloak, neatly draped over you where you were stretched out. Like a corpse.

Did you really die? But you're back here, so you couldn't have, right?

Maybe they gave you crafted water and it only just kicked in? But then where's the rest of your party?

There's a sickening certainty setting in to your gut.

You died, didn't you. And somehow you're back.

Your party left without you.

Good. They still need to kill the king.

Maybe… you can still catch up. You need to find them. You're okay! They'll be so happy to see you!

You stagger to your feet. You're a little light-headed, dizzy for a moment, then it passes. You put back on your cloak, grab your hat where it sits (right above where your head used to lie) and put it back on. Onwards you go.

There aren't any sadnesses, as you walk through the halls. Did they manage to defeat them all without you? Or was there some kind of reprieve after that large sadness?

You hope they got a bit of rest.

As you turn the corner, you see an open doorway, hear quiet voices coming through.

You don't know why you pause.

"—if we can't bring him with us, can't we bring him here at least?" you hear Mirabelle whisper, with a desperation that turns your stomach.

"I'm with Mira." Isa's voice is louder but still technically a whisper. He sounds so serious. "What if more sadnesses come? What if—"

You realize they're talking about your body. A shiver goes down your back.

"No." Odile's voice is steel in a way that makes you flinch. "We need to keep moving. We can't go back for them, or bring them with us. And sadnesses are just as likely to come here as that other room."

"BUT—" Mirabelle starts to protest.

You stop listening and force yourself to start moving forward. They don't have to fight! You're right here! You—

You freeze again as Bonnie walks through the doorway. They hug the wall as soon as they make it through the doorway, shooting a glance back over their shoulder before looking back down at the ground.

"Jus' need to make it to Dormont," they whisper so quiet you can barely hear. "I can do that. Just make it to Dormont. They'll all be fine."

They're sniffling as they shuffle along the wall towards you. Still not looking.

"I can make it back to Dormont. Then they won't worry about me and I won't hold them back like a crabbing baby and they'll be just fine and I'll freeze with all the other little kids and wait for them to—"

"Bonbon?" You ask.

They freeze, and turn towards you. Their eyes are dark and puffy.

When they lock eyes with you there's a beat and then they scream, terrified.

There's yelling from the other room. You ignore it. Your stomach is dropping like it's made of lead and you drop to your knees, stretching your arms wide. "Bonnie, no! See, look, I'm okay! I'm alright!"

They take a step back. "F-frin? Yyyou… died?"

"I got better!"

Bonnie tackles you into a hug and you don't have time to flinch as you fall back onto the tile floor, so you just wrap your arms around them. Over their head you see your other companions burst through the door, weapons at the ready.

"I HATE YOU," Bonnie is scream sobbing into your chest. "I HATE YOU I THOUHT YOU WERE DEAD YOU'RE A CRABBING IDIOT I HATE YOU."

Your heart twists but they're still holding you so tight, so you keep hugging them back. Your companions lower their weapons looking like they've seen a ghost.

Maybe they have.

You don't have time to think about it because then they're rushing in to hug you too, the warmth of their bodies pressing into yours, their tears dripping onto you—and you're crying as well, and even Odile, who hung back, has a glint on her cheek.

"I'm back," you say. Bonnie is still sobbing into your chest, but they've stopped yelling at you. "I'm alive. We're all going to be okay."