#stealing from warehouses

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"POLICE THINK PRISONERS ARE ROBBER GANG," Winnipeg Tribune. May 8, 1934. Page 1. --- Six Men Held Believed Connected With Recent Warehouse Raids ---- With the swift round-up of six suspects, Monday night and early today, city police believe they have the men responsible for an amazing series of warehouse raids and shopbreakings which have been staged in Winnipeg during the last six months.

The men under arrest are: Nick Gregarchuk, alias Council; Nick Shewchuk, Mike Kushma, Pete Belanosky, alias Bailey; Jack Harris and Fred Belanosky, alias Bailey. The first four will face burglary charges. Harris is charged with receiving stolen goods, and the last man is held for investigation. All six were remanded until tomorrow in city police court today. Harris is out on bail of $1,000. The others are in custody.

Although the quartette who will face the burglary charge have only been linked by police with one warehouse raid, they are believed to have staged a number of others.

Looking For Cache Meanwhile detectives are looking for a huge cache of stolen goods which they believe exists somewhere in the city.

Some idea of the extent of the gang's operations, in the opinion of the police, was gained when a warning was issued today to any store- keepers in Winnipeg or points farther west who have bought the following goods through other than regular channels: Overalls, tobacco, cigarettes, watches, jewelry, drug supplies (particularly asprin tablets), fountain pens, musical instruments, cigars and toilet goods.

"Storekeepers who have pûrchased any of these goods through other than regular channels should notify the police immediately. Otherwise they may find themselves facing a charge of retaining stolen goods." said Chief of Detectives George Smith today.

Some Goods Recovered Council, Shewchuk, Kushma and Pete Bailey are believed to have been the men who broke into Ty- son's storage warehouse, 128 James st., on the night of April 22 and stole $1,800 worth of aspirin tab- lets. A quantity of the stolen tablets has been recovered, but the majority of them are still unaccounted for and are believed to have been disposed of among unsuspecting shopkeepers who have bought them at bargain prices. Harris is charged with receiving some of the stolen tablets.

Entrance to Tyson's warehouse was gained by climbing the fire es- cape and forcing entrance to the top of the elevator shaft. It is because a number of other warehouses were entered by similar means that police believe the same gang were responsible for those raids as well.

[citrus-soda]

Really interesting to me in how Nonoy seems to already be familiar with Giroda when you first catch him after that whole false wish envoy business. Nonoy even calls him by name... How do they know each other? Acquaintances somehow... maybe friends? It's totally possible that she just knew of him because he's been hanging around near Florawish, but the idea of these two striking up a friendship is so cute. The duo of outcast Faewish sprite and intern dream-warehouse keeper... waaaaaa....

[multi-mused-menagerie]

@mckeitbeautiful​     asked     :

“oh, you’ve out dumbed yourself.” // akutagawa@ray

          “ Bold of you to believe that I’ve reached my peak of dumbass ” , Ray snarks back, turning his attention away from the situation at hand to give the mafia member a quick glare. This was just pathetic. First, he gets caught in some stupid net and now Akutagawa comes by to make fun of him ? This was just lovely. Let this be the last time he allows Dazai to goad him into a bet.

         “ Why is there a net here in the first place ? Are you hoping that Atsushi somehow finds his way into a Port Mafia warehouse while in tiger form and just gets caught ? ”

[arsnof]

Ghosts that should exist soon if not already

Notifications/typing noises in otherwise empty spaces

People waving you over from the side of the road and asking if you're their Lyft. Disappear the moment you look away

Abandoned warehouses that sometimes reverberate with an unheard bass

'Cold spots' where you can't get signal (that cannot be otherwise explained)

That dispensary with the blacked out windows? It used to be a Blockbuster until the manager got shot. If it's the right kind of night and you look real close and cup your hands to block out all the light? You can watch it happen, but they might see you

Newsletters from startups that no longer exist

Hype House haunted by the reason they had to make an apology video

Pictures of a stranger in your camera roll

At 2:30 every morning you can hear a ringing bell coming from the elementary school. Thing is, they switched to a digital tone in 2013. Also, it cannot be captured electronically

Welcome to Denny's what can I start you on? You already ordered? Wait.. Tall, pink hair? *sigh* Been dead for a mtonth and she's still stealing tips

[suliigwp]

Vroom vroom rookie reader pulling up to the paddock dressed so good ? compared to her usual maybe lazy outfits ? and it’s because Lewis started to style her and give her tips bc yk showing up w style ✨

Styled by 44

Rookie!Reader x Platonic! Lewis Hamilton/Paddock

Rookie!Reader Series here

SULI: Rookie Reader is back! Love her relationship with lewis and lando(I can't help myself) hope you enjoyyyyyu

Warnings: none

She was minding her business—coffee in one hand, phone in the other—when she felt a shadow. A judgmental shadow.

“Okay. I’ve held it in long enough.”

She looked up. Lewis. Arms crossed. Eyebrows raised. Dressed like a goddamn magazine cover.

She blinked. “Hi?”

He pointed at her outfit like it offended his soul. “What... is this?”

She looked down. Hoodie. Baggy sweatpants. Crocs. “It’s cozy?”

“Cozy is not a personality trait.”

“I disagree.”

He leaned down slightly, like he was talking to a small animal or a child who just drew on the walls. “Listen to me, yeah? You are a professional. You’re walking into the paddock. This is Formula One. It’s not your living room.”

She sipped her coffee. “...It kind of is though. I nap here.”

Lewis pinched the bridge of his nose. “No. Nope. I’m intervening. This is a style intervention.”

She tilted her head. “A what?”

“Style intervention.”

A long pause.

“…You want to style my inventions?”

He blinked. “No. I said—”

“You want to style... inventions? Like my car? The race suit? Because I don’t think that’s allowed—”

“INTERVENTION, baby. Inter-ven-tion. Like help. Like when your friends corner you because your life is off track—”

“Ohhhh,” she said slowly. “Like rehab but for ugly?”

Lewis stared. “Yes. Exactly. That.”

She nodded like she understood. She did not. “So you want to... dress me?”

“Correct.”

“Like, in clothes?”

He squinted. “Yes?”

“That’s... a little weird.”

Lewis physically took a step back like he was in pain. “Why is this so difficult?”

“I’m just making sure I understand! English is weird! One minute you're saying 'fit' means outfit, next minute it means you think someone’s hot, and now you’re trying to put clothes on me—”

“I’m not putting clothes on you, I’m choosing the outfits!”

She pointed at him. “SEE? That’s what I mean. That sentence is terrifying.”

He ran both hands over his face. “Okay. Look. I’m not trying to marry you, I just want you to stop dressing like a lost intern at a tyre warehouse. That’s it.”

“…Tyre warehouse?”

Lewis gave up. “Just—Thursday night. My suite. I’m fixing this. No crocs allowed.”

She perked up. “Can I bring snacks?”

“Yes. But if you show up in that hoodie again, I’m setting it on fire.”

She looked down, offended. “This hoodie has sentimental value.”

“It has mystery stains.”

She took another sip of coffee. “Fine. But if you make me wear heels, I’m pushing you into a lake.”

He smiled, victorious. “Deal.”

Later that night, he texted:

🕘 Thursday 9PM. Come humble.

👜 Style godfather is waiting.

🔥 RIP hoodie.

...

The outfit was offensive in the best way:

Low-rise office pants in faded blue. A tiny, ruched baby tee—barely brushing her waist. A silver belt hanging loose on her hips. Thin sunglasses. Heeled boots. Her hair actually done for once.

It looked like 2002 met office core.

From inside the bathroom, she shouted:

“Lewis?!”

“Yeah?”

“Is this shirt meant to stop this high up?"

“Yes!”

“It’s basically a sports bra!”

“Exactly!”

“Lewis.”

“You’re welcome.”

She stared at her reflection. There was a little sliver of stomach showing. And the pants—they:re classy, but that shirt was anything but.

She cracked the door open. “If you say anything mean I’m stealing your dog."

Lewis turned around from the couch—then froze.

She stepped out. Slowly. Did a little awkward spin. “You’re quiet.”

He looked like he forgot English. “You... look wicked.”

Her face dropped. “Wicked?? As in bad??”

“No! No, no—wicked means fire. Wicked means good. Like... crazy hot.”

She squinted at him. “Are you lying? Because I look like I just stepped off a Bratz doll bootleg commercial.”

“You look like a problem,” Lewis said. “In the best way.”

She blinked. “A... what?”

He stepped closer. “I mean if I were twenty-four and dumb again, I'd walk into traffic for you in that outfit.”

“I think that’s a threat.”

“No. That’s admiration.”

She eyed the sunglasses on the table. “Do I need the glasses? I feel like a backup dancer from 2003.”

“Put them on,” he said.

She did.

Lewis made a sound that was not human. “Fuck. Okay. You’re going to cause injuries tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said, smug. “Maybe they’ll crash from staring too hard.”

Lewis laughed, but he was still clearly struggling. She looked like trouble. Like she had somewhere better to be and was only gracing the paddock with her presence out of pity. It was perfect.

Then he held out a hand. “Now. The hoodie.”

She hugged it. “You can’t take it. It’s my comfort hoodie.”

“No. It’s a war crime. Hand it over.”

She dramatically let it go. “This feels like betrayal.”

Lewis tossed it across the room. “It feels like fashion.”

She turned once more in the mirror. “You sure this isn’t too much?”

“I’m sure. You’re going to ruin lives tomorrow.”

“Yay.” Then she looked him dead in the eye. “You’re a wicked, wicked man.”

He pointed at her. “You did it again. That’s not how we use it—”

...

She wasn’t supposed to be early.

In fact, she was known for being five minutes late to everything—press, media, even the damn grid once (she blamed traffic; no one believed her). So when she pulled up to the paddock before the rest of her team, people noticed.

But it wasn’t the timing that stunned them.

It was the fit.

Slick black trousers, tailored within an inch of her life. Open-collar white shirt, cufflinks gleaming under the sun. Hair actually done. Designer sunglasses that looked like they could cut glass. And a slow walk like she knew every single camera was on her.

People stared.

Phones came out.

Someone dropped a coffee.

“Since when does she dress like that?” Pierre asked, eyebrows up.

“Since Lewis got to her,” Alex muttered, already scrolling through her tagged posts.

And sure enough, there it was—an Instagram Story from the night before, half-cropped but unmistakable: Lewis holding up a rack of clothes while she stood in front of a mirror, frowning at herself in an oversized Balenciaga jacket.

@lewishamilton: “She finally let me help. It’s over for you all now.” ✨👗

Lando didn’t say anything.

He just stared from across the paddock, helmet still in hand, half-stunned.

She looked dangerous. Not just because she was fast, not just because she drove like she had no concept of fear—but because now she looked good doing it.

Scary good.

Effortless in that “I-didn’t-even-try-but-my-suit-cost-more-than-your-car” way. Minimal makeup, but enough to make her eyes hit different under the paddock sun. A slight curve to her lip like she knew she was being watched and didn’t care.

“What is this?” her engineer asked when she got to the garage. “You look like you walked off a Vogue cover.”

“Lewis,” she said simply, tossing her bag on the counter.

“...as in Hamilton?”

“Yeah. He said if I’m going to drive like the devil, I might as well dress like I own the place too.”

Post-practice interviews were chaos.

Every question: “New stylist?” “Big debut?” “Was this planned?”

She rolled her eyes. “I wear sweats one day and the world loses its mind the next.”

“You always wear sweats,” the reporter laughed.

She glanced at the camera and said dryly, “And you always wear that tie, but I don’t bully you for it.”

Lando laughed—just loud enough for her to hear.

She looked over. Raised an eyebrow.

He mouthed: You look good.

She smiled.

Back in the garage, Lewis was already texting.

Taglist, comment to be added;

@angstynasty @cryinghotmess @mits-vi @dramaticpiratellamas @mimisweetz @mrssaturday @chiara8104 @moonlight-girls-posts @linnygirl09 @rue-t @danielricroll @the-vex-archives @trees-are-books @blodwyn4u @yoruse @ccrickett-t @l-a-u-r-aaa @multifans-things @woderfulkawaii @azrinableuet @mayax2o07 @everyday-is-sunday365 @devilacot @faithxyu @miniaturedreamchild @nishimura-mimura @pookynknowntranger @elliott-calls @nemo-fish @sadprimrose

Make sure you can be tagged!

[humanjarvis]

bloodlust

synopsis: you’ve never known real power. sylus lets you taste it.

tags: nsfw & dark (mdni), sylus gravely injures people who upset you, you like it and fuck him in front of their writhing bodies, he then wipes them from existence with his evol, love confessions, avoidant reader is back, reader thinks they're weak, reader exalts sylus, reader needs therapy, size difference, fingering, vaginal sex, kinda? implied to be their first time but u can decide for urself bc what a first time this would be, blood, violence (obviously), sylus is still nice but definitely leaning into the legendary criminal persona, he’s also obsessed with you, i think that’s it?? pairing: sylus x reader word count: 2.7k

a/n: try psychoanalyzing THIS

You’d always known you were a vengeful person. 

From the day you’d started hating your babysitter for insulting your favorite toy, to the time you’d tried to explode your leech of a landlord with your mind every month, you’d been well aware: you did not take kindly to being wronged. 

You had no true power of your own, no—timid and unimposing, you’d been forced to restrict your retaliation to the hypothetical, the mental. Death wishes, prayers for misfortune, and fantasies of karma were your safe haven—the space in your mind where no one could reach you with insult or ridicule, where the judgment of others was your sole prerogative. 

For years, you’d lived this way, worked this way. Discredited and discarded, excluded and exploited, you’d sought comfort in your capacity to think, to imagine. To imagine retribution for those who would never be dealt it—at least, not from your inconsequential hand. 

But this time, your mere imagination would not be enough.

For the last month, a clique of obnoxious coworkers had been harassing you nonstop, stewing in jealousy after your recent promotion. Day after day, they’d tried to break your spirit, and day after day, they inched closer to success. The thinly veiled barbs, harsh criticisms, and shameless attempts to steal your work were eating away at you, no matter how vividly you imagined retaliating in the safety of your mind, dissolving each perpetrator to dust for their needless hostility. 

The dam broke the day they’d found your weak spot, launching a full-on attack on you. Not your skill, not your work, but the unchangeable traits that already kept you awake at night, wishing you could be something greater. Your shyness, your weakness, your simple approach to the world—everything that made you who you were, they’d picked apart.

You don’t recall how you’d gotten home that day—only the wings of a crow fluttering above you as you floated down the familiar streets on autopilot. You’d stepped through the door withdrawn nearly into catatonia, recoiling from sounds and flinching from touches. 

Sylus hadn’t liked that. 

After years of lonely independence—not what you’d chosen but all you could handle—you’re still adjusting to relying on someone else to preserve your honor. Especially when that person has everything you lack: an imposing form, an authoritative voice, effortless assurance, and unrivaled strength. 

Sylus can make your hypotheticals—your unfulfilling, pathetic hypotheticals—into reality. Without lifting a finger, without breaking a sweat. 

So when you return to his home in a shell of dejection, drained of the life you’d graciously breathed into his, that’s precisely what he plans to do.

Someone had upset you—terribly so. The moment he’d claimed you, held your trembling, uncertain form in his, he’d set a very high price for that.

In the back room of Onychinus’s main warehouse, your body tremors in anticipation. Tonight, your defenses are more than psychological. Tonight, for the first time, you’ll know the intoxicating security of capability. 

As you wait for Sylus’s cue, your mind wanders to the aftermath of that day. Once you’d come back to him, looked into his eyes with something more than blankness, he’d approached you. Gathering you into his arms, he’d asked what’d happened—who’d happened—pressing sweet kisses to your temple and lips whenever your voice would break. 

He’d holed up in his office after he’d seen you to bed, compiling all the information he could find—a lot, with his resources—on the three men who’d tormented you. Their names, addresses, roles in the company, aspirations—anything that’d be useful in luring them to his turf. 

And now, he’s asked you to stay out of sight and wait for his signal as he lulls his suspects with the false promise of a good deal. 

Just as you feel the familiar impulse to flee threaten your resolve, a too-realistic caw and the steady flaps of metal wings snap you out of your thoughts. As the omnipresent crow lands on your shoulder, nuzzling your cheek in programmed affection, you walk slowly to the heavy door, steeling yourself before sliding it open. 

In the dim light of the square room, you feel his presence before you see him, his cool authority drawing you to him like a magnet. You come to a soft stop behind his chair, draping one arm over his shoulders, the other on his chest, as he introduces you as his partner. And with a tense, shuddering breath, you tighten your grip on him as you raise your eyes to meet the men who’d nearly broken you. 

Apparently, though, your true reunion has been put on hold, as their careless eyes are busy ogling your body in proprietary glee. 

When Sylus clears his throat, they seem to remember where they are and who they’re with, and three pairs of eyes finally deign to meet yours. Almost immediately, those eyes flicker in recognition, the faces of their owners blanching with nerves.  

And that reaction is the smoking gun—the only evidence Sylus needs to enact their damnation. 

In an instant, crimson ropes with black undertones snake around the men’s immobilized bodies, suspending them in midair before inching up to muffle the groans that catch in their rigid throats. 

Rising from his seat, Sylus bends to kiss your forehead before blocking your view with his back. “Don’t peek, sweetie,” he hums as he extends one large hand, dancing his index finger in a line of X’s. As he moves, hundreds of tiny, twisting cuts appear around each man’s neck, their countless wounds dripping with thin streams of blood. 

Completing his design, he clenches his fist, and the ropes tighten to drain their prey at a much greater volume. 

A few seconds later and he drops his hand, the men’s half-emptied, half-alive bodies hitting the floor in one simultaneous thud. 

From behind the broad panes of Sylus’s back, you're not supposed to see his carnage, the way his victims can’t even beg him for mercy with the blood clogging their windpipes. 

But with your hands on his narrow waist, supporting you as you peek around him in disobedience, the image of what he’s done for you and its surprisingly comfortable weight settle on your now relaxed shoulders. 

It’s not the mess on the floor, but the principle of his actions—the urgency with which he moved to avenge his own.

You want to thank him. You want to worship him. 

Oblivious to the desire thrumming in your heart, Sylus finally turns around, ready to usher you out of the room. When he reaches for you, though, you intercept his arm, panting softly up at him with wide eyes.

Mistaking your expression as terror, he moves to step back, but you shake your head vehemently and tug him toward you, your feet firmly rooted in place on the tiled black floor. 

Wordlessly, you paw frantically at his shirt and belt—anything that can come off—with your usually nimble fingers trembling and clumsy from the rush of energy in your veins. 

As you manage to undo the first button of his shirt, realization dawns on his face, lightening his stormy garnet eyes in a mix of shock and relief. 

“You’re a naughty little thing, aren’t you?” he breathes, his large hand covering yours on his buttons and freezing your advances momentarily. 

With an impatient huff, you look up at him and open your mouth in protest, but he speaks before you can. 

“For a moment, I thought I'd made you fear me again,” he admits with a shaky chuckle. “Evidently I was wrong, and although I'm glad to know that…are you sure you want to do this here, sweetie?” he checks, peering down at you with a searching gaze. 

Finding your voice, you use his loosened shirt to pull him down to your height, caressing his chiseled jaw in your hand. “I want you to take me. Here, in front of all of them. I want them to watch the man who’ll take their lives take my heart in his hands. Will you do that for me?”

He’ll do anything for you. 

And so, softly maneuvering your body, Sylus repositions you to stand in front of him and angles your gaze to the reflective steel ceiling, not allowing the filth on the floor to enter your line of sight. He supposes they can look at you—it won’t matter for much longer, anyway—but he refuses to let you look at them any longer, to let your intimacy be tainted by the memories of what they’d done. 

Slowly, he trails his unoccupied hand down to grope your full breasts, humming in approval when he feels your pebbling nipples. Pinching your right peak softly, he murmurs into your left ear, surrounding you on all sides. “You like what I’ve done, I presume? Are you pleased with me?” 

Moaning softly, you arch back into him, pushing your chest further into his welcoming hand. Tilting your head back as far as his iron grip allows, you turn your face to brush his cheek as his fingers continue working your aching nipple. “It’s not what you’ve done to them,” you breathe against him, “it’s what you’ve done for me.” 

With another moan, you rock your hips back between his legs, feeling the sizable bulge that grows harder with each reaction you give him. 

With the strength in his one free hand, the other still aiming your gaze toward the ceiling, he tears the front of your flimsy dress open, your breasts spilling out in smooth bounces. 

Sylus groans deeply at the visual, his palm coming up to grope and knead your tender flesh between his calloused fingers. 

“Tell me,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the pulse in your neck. “How should I take you, hmm? Hard and fast, so they know I pace you, or slow and deep, so my love is clear?”

Leaving your breast with a last tug at your nipple, he lowers his hand to dip his fingers under the hem of your exposed panties, gliding between your glistening folds. Extending two long digits, he slips them into your fluttering entrance, sliding in and out with ease from the intensity of your arousal. 

As he pumps his fingers inside you, your walls clenching around him in search of something larger, you’re barely able to formulate a response. Luckily, your answer is simple.

“Everything,” you moan to him. “Everything you can give me—I want it all.” 

With a rumbling groan, Sylus gives you a final deep thrust with his fingers, dragging them inside your walls to collect all of your essence. Pulling them out of you with a wet pop, he swiftly sticks them in his mouth, swirling his tongue around the digits as he savors your taste. Standing up on your toes, you push your mouth to his, slipping your tongue past his lips to steal what’s left of your flavor. A string of saliva connects you as you part, only snapping when Sylus shifts to free the heavy bulge from his straining slacks. 

Mewling, you try to push your hips back, desperately searching for whatever friction you can find. But with a light tap to your hip, he holds you in place, thwarting your attempt to bring him closer. “Be patient for me, won’t you?” he asks. “I’ve wanted you like this for so long—surely you’ll let me lead?”

And although you’ve vowed against letting anyone lead you, letting anyone take charge of you lest you get burned, you remember the power he’d gifted you only an hour ago, the writhing bodies still littering the floor behind you. His grand display of care, devotion, and understanding. Without a second thought, you find yourself nodding frantically in his embrace, his hand on your jaw briefly loosening with the force. 

With a soft, unnecessary apology, you still, allowing yourself to fall pliant in his hands. Against your ear, you feel his lips curl into a smile.

“Eyes up,” he whispers as he sinks into you.

The intrusion is slow, and thanks to the wetness leaking out of you, you suction in his oversized length with only a slight discomfort. With a gentle push, he fully seats himself inside you, and you both release a breathy moan—yours at the wholeness, his at the tightness.

After one sublime moment, your bodies almost merged with your closeness, he pulls out slowly, leaving just the head of his shaft inside you before surging forward in an all-encompassing thrust. Mouth falling open, you unconsciously tilt your hips back to meet him, and he growls his approval. 

“I’ll give you everything,” he rumbles with another deep thrust. “Everything you want, everyone you want it done to—that’s my promise to you,” he vows, biting your ear. “Not a single being will harm you without paying the price—the price they pay as they look up at us with their last glances, wishing with all they have left to be in my place instead.” 

As he speaks, he quickens his measured strokes into powerful snaps of his hips—pacing you, just as he’d said. His promise and his movements are all too much, and you feel a sweet ache start to spread within your lower belly. 

Trying and failing to match his bruising thrusts, you babble out your admiration, the words that have circled your brain since he’d first told you his plans. 

“Thank you,” you pant, drawing in shuddering breaths. “I-I know I shut down on you sometimes, but I’m not used to having someone to care for me—having someone who can. I’ve only ever protected myself, a-and only ever in my head. I’m not strong enough, or assertive enough, to do anything you do for me and I love you so much for it—love you so much that I’m jealous of you, and it only makes me love you more,” you finish with a whimper. 

At your confession, Sylus grips your hip in his hand and fucks into you with renewed fervor, jostling every part of your body but your head, still securely angled toward the sky. The pounding starts a quake in your legs, and you slump into his strong chest, entrusting yourself to him as he pushes you both over the edge. With a few more sharp thrusts and a stinging bite on your neck, he spills into you in thick, hot spurts, and the sensation has you gushing around him. With an unrestrained cry, you dig your nails into his arm, and he presses impossibly closer to you.

“However much you think you love me, know that it hardly compares to the obsession I feel towards you.” 

As you’re lost in the pleasure of your joint release, murky red and black wisps coil around the figures twitching on the floor, enshrouding them in an eerie haze. With near inaudible crackles, they erode the forgotten flesh of their targets, twisting and curling, bending and snapping, until the floor is cleared of sin. 

Sylus, who’d captured your attention with a devoted kiss in the comedown of your orgasm, slowly releases you once his work is done. Breathless, you hover near his mouth, eager to ask for more, when you notice his firm grip has left your jaw—you’re free to look as you please. 

With his length still inside you, pulsing softly and coated with your combined essence, you twist in his arms, expecting the lifeless shapes on the floor to sully the peace of the moment, to resurface the desolation in you that'd led to their demise. 

But as you peer down at the shiny black tiles, you see nothing but yourselves—a smaller figure entwined in the consuming embrace of a much larger one.

“How do you feel?” a deep voice purrs into your ear. Craning your neck to look at its pleased owner, you sensually press yourself back, burying his already hardening length deeper into its nest. With a soft smile, you claim his lips in an unhurried kiss, tender and reverent and lewd.

When you pull away, he splays a possessive hand over your abdomen. He rests his chin atop your head as he resumes his pumps in and out of you, gradually quickening his controlled movements. 

Fluttering your eyes closed, you breathe in with contentment. The air around you has grown a little lighter with the deletion of those who’d dared to waste it.

[kxsagi]

“𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐞, 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐚”

a/n: i am so down bad for dante sparda (mainly the version of him in the new netflix anime)

not only is he OP, white-haired, muscular, ripped, and tall, he’s also funny, sarcastic, protective, caring, and mine

(i am not lying when i tell you i binge watched the entire season 1, 8 episodes in one sitting and it took 3.5 hours)

definitely suggestive content inside btw!

the motel room smells like cheap smoke and cheaper whiskey. the walls are paper-thin, the flickering neon light from the “VACANCY” sign outside bleeding through the curtains like a pulsing headache. you’d almost rather be back in that alley surrounded by demon guts. almost. 

dante lounges on the bed like he owns the place. boots kicked off, jacket discarded, and shirt peeled halfway up his torso, showing off a slash across his ribs that’s still bleeding. of course, the smug bastard doesn’t even flinch because he can heal himself. 

you drop the med kit on the table with a hard thunk. 

“you wanna explain why you dropped in like a dramatic ex during my mission?” you ask, tone sharp. “or do you just enjoy ruining my night?” 

he grins, slow and infuriating. “missed me, sweetheart?” 

“missed the way you swing in late, steal my kills, and leave me cleaning up your mess? yeah. like a migraine.” 

he sits up, wincing slightly as he does. “c’mon, don’t be like that. i did save your ass.” 

“i had it handled.” 

“sure you did.” he pats the bed next to him. “now come on. patch me up before i start bleeding on these nice sheets.” 

you snort. “did you forget that you can heal yourself? plus, the sheets are already stained. pretty sure someone died on this mattress last week.” 

“perfect ambiance for us then.” 

despite every instinct screaming at you to leave him to suffer, you grab the whiskey and some gauze and make your way over. kneeling beside him, you press the rag against the wound, maybe a little rougher than necessary. 

he hisses through his teeth, eyes flashing. “you mad at me or just into pain?” 

“depends. you like it rough, sparda?” 

his gaze locks on yours. heat rolls off him like a storm. “with the right person? always.” 

your breath catches in your throat, but you don’t let it show. not entirely. instead, you press harder against the wound, watching his muscles tense beneath your fingers. 

“tell me,” you say, voice lower now. “do you flirt with every hunter who tries to kill you?” 

“just the ones who make it interesting.” 

you should roll your eyes. should finish patching him up and walk away like none of this is getting under your skin. but it is. he’s cocky and reckless and stupidly attractive in that bad decision kind of way, the kind that ends with broken furniture and bruised lips. 

your hands drift lower, fingers brushing against the edge of his belt as you check for more injuries. 

he leans in, breath warm against your ear. “you gonna keep touching me like that, or are you just teasing?” 

you glance at him. “if i said i was teasing?” 

he grins, eyes dark. “then i’d say tease harder.” 

you’re close. too close. his hand comes up, slow and deliberate, thumb grazing your cheek like a challenge. you lean in, not kissing him yet, just hovering, letting the tension coil tighter. 

“you’re dangerous,” you murmur. 

“baby,” he says, voice low, “i’m the safest bad decision you’ll ever make.” 

the space between you snaps. your lips crash into his, all heat and teeth and frustration. his hand tangles in your hair, the other gripping your hip, dragging you onto his lap like he’s been waiting all night for this moment. 

you grind down, and he groans against your mouth. 

"fuck. been thinking about this since that warehouse job,” he mutters, lips trailing down your jaw. “you remember that? when you nearly stabbed me?” 

“you deserved it.” 

he chuckles, low and rough. “probably.” 

his mouth finds your throat, kissing a line down to your collarbone. your hands fumble at the hem of his shirt, tugging it up and over his head, tossing it aside like it’s in the way (because it is). your fingers trace the fresh bandage, then drift lower, skimming over his abs. 

“you really gonna fuck me on a bullet wound?” you ask, teasing. 

“you really gonna stop me?” 

his tone is cocky, but there’s something feral behind it. like he needs this. needs you. not just for release, but to feel alive again after facing death one too many times. maybe you need it too. 

you roll your hips again, lips barely brushing his. “say please.” 

he huffs a breathy laugh. “you’re evil.” 

“and you like it.” 

he kisses you like he’s proving a point. like he’s staking a claim. and maybe he is. 

you lose track of time after that. your bodies move in sync, messy and desperate and addictive. somewhere between kisses and muttered curses, you forget why you hated him in the first place. 

when it’s over, you’re tangled in sheets that smell like smoke and sweat and something almost like satisfaction. 

you lay there for a moment, catching your breath, heart pounding against his chest. 

“so,” dante says, voice muffled against your shoulder, “you still mad at me?” 

“depends.” 

“on?” 

you glance at him, smirking. “how fast you can recover.” 

he laughs, a real one this time. deep and warm and stupidly charming. 

“baby,” he murmurs, “you’re gonna kill me.” 

“that’s the plan.”

© 𝐤𝐱𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢

a/n #2: this part had me in a chokehold so bad, i know bro is on the verge of dying here but i sent this pic to all my friends and they had nothing appropriate to say

[joshujihan23]

You’re safe with me

☆ pairing: mafia boss!seungcheol x girlfriend!reader

☆ synopsis: the mafia scene was something that isn’t unfamiliar to you since your boyfriend is THE mafia boss, so is it surprising that you got involved as well?

☆ trigger warning: mentions of violence, abuse, torture, blood, degrading terms such as weak, mentions of injuries such as bruises, cuts, scars.

☆ author’s note: my LONGESTT fic yet. not sure how i feel about this.. do let me know how it is!

————————————————————————

you were overwhelmed with fear, your eyes shielded by the numerous tears filling your eyelids, dripping down your cheeks simultaneously.

you were exhausted. frightened. nervous, anything relating to fear.

your hands were tied with thick, rough rope, and trapped behind the chair you were sitting on. your legs scarred, filled with bruises and cuts from the whips given by his enemy’s subjects. their sinister laughs, their amused expressions, were printed in your brain.

and the scene when you got kidnapped, was replaying again and again. apparently seungcheol betrayed his best friend, alex. and his revenge? kidnap his love of his life, torture his beloved, until seungcheol strikes a deal with him.

and best believe, you knew who the enemy was. the person that ‘fought for you’ against seungcheol.

which in the end, seungcheol won.

and he is here today to get his revenge, after he has risen in placings in the mafia scene.

but whatever that got you in this situation didn’t matter to you at that point. the pain, the fear in you, took over your mind, leaving you to dread whatever that was coming up next.

you heard footsteps approaching, slowly but firmly. you sighed with a shaky breath, preparing yourself for the worst.

it has been hours, and seungcheol hasn’t arrive.

and that is killing you slowly but surely.

just then, you felt a hand, rough and callous, grip onto your cheek. you winced, looking up at him weakly.

only to see that it was alex, with an evil smirk plastered across his face.

you gulped, trying to move your face out of his grip.

only for him to return with a harsh slap across your cheek, making you yelp in pain.

“your prince charming isn’t coming, love. just give it up.” he snickered.

“he will, he definitely will..” you mumbled.

his eyes gazed down your figure, his smirk widening as he does so. he took a step forward, his tall figure standing before you, making you gulp. he grabbed onto your cheek harshly, his cold hand come into contact with the small bruise forming on your cheek from all the torture you’ve been facing, making you wince.

that made alex chuckle darkly, giving you another slap across your cheek.

“such a weak woman, are you? need your knight in shining armour to continuously save you. guess what, pretty? he isn’t coming.” he said in a mocking tone, his eyes shifting to the orange glow at the corner of the dark, eerie warehouse.

the sun is setting. is seungcheol not going to come soon?

before you could even turn to face the sun ray creeping into the warehouse, you felt alex harshly gripping onto your chin.

his face inched closer to you, his breath hitting the tip of your nose gently, a stark contrast to his menacing gaze.

“i fought so hard. i fought so hard so that you could be mine. but what did my dear best friend do? steal you from me. if you were mine, we won’t be having this issue here, darling.” he spoke, his voice low and dark.

he let out another dark chuckle, his other hand gripping onto your thigh tightly.

“now, let me enjoy this time with you. the time which i longed for for all these gruelling years..”

his voice lingered at the end of the sentence. before you could even say anything, he smashed his lips onto you, making you yelp. panicked, you started to fumble on the chair, making some efforts to remove the string that tied both of hands behind your back.

but alex didn’t back down. in fact, he grabbed your cheek harshly with his hand, while using the other to hold your body down on the flimsy chair.

before you knew it, you felt his cold hand playing with the hem of your shirt, as it creeped underneath it. feeling the chills going up your body from the sudden contact, you yelped, but was quickly silenced when he bit your lip recklessly, penetrating his tongue into your mouth, exploring every single inch of it.

you tried, you tried everything in your ability to stop him. you wanted to yank your leg forward to kick him, but his grip on your thigh was so, so strong.

and that’s when you heard a rip.

puzzled, you looked down, only to see that your shirt had rip, due to how old the material was.

alex cackled, his eyes widening in disbelief.

“lord and behold, such smooth and milky skin. tempting, are we?” he growled.

his lips returned to attack yours, his fingertips grazing against your chest, making shivers go down your spine.

“don’t be scared, sweetie, let me take care of you.”

and that moment, you hear gun shots fire right outside the warehouse. cursing under his breath, you could almost see the screws in his brain turning, as he continued to make out with you.

“shh, don’t be frightened, princess. let me just feel you a bit more.”

his hands creeped down your body, reaching against your thigh. he squeezed it harshly, making you flinch. he hiked your skirt up swiftly, his fingers brushing against your inner thigh.

no. he can’t do this. he just can’t.

you tried to shake him off, but he just won’t budge. feeling the tears trickling down your cheeks, you heard the large, wooden door burst open.

“get your hands off her.”

startled, you saw that alex turned his head, his smirk widening.

your eyes glanced to the door as well, and you couldn’t be more relieved.

seungcheol, standing right there, with all his other members.

alex got off of you, brushing his hands together, while walking towards seungcheol with a menacing grin.

“well, well, well. look who we have here?” alex announced.

you saw seungcheol whispering to his other members, as they began to scatter.

“let’s end this with a duel, the first to surrender, loses.” seungcheol declared, his right hand playing with his gun skilfully.

“fine, but no weapons, fair and square.” alex rebutted, throwing his gun aside.

“deal.”

and it all began, the fistfighting. the two men began throwing punches at each other, kicking the other with full force. seungcheol swung a fist against alex’s cheek, making alex return with a strong kick against his legs.

invested in the fight, you didn’t realise that your hands were free, and a pair of arms wrapped around you.

you turned around, to see that it was jeonghan, seungcheol’s most trusted member, and certainly your favourite except for seungcheol.

he placed a hand on your head, trying to reassure you as much as he could.

“you’re safe with us. your injuries, does it hurt, how much does it hurt.”

with this many questions, you could guess that he was trying to distract you from the fight. but your eyes remain glued onto the two men, who behaved relatively animalistic.

seungcheol seemed like he was winning, until alex kicked onto his leg harshly, making his knees buckle. he knelt in front of him, before alex pulled out a knife from his pocket, grazing it against seungcheol’s neck.

“it’s over, buddy. just give up and give me your girl, and we’ll be all good.”

your eyes widened, you wanted to go to him, but jeonghan pulled you back, telling you that it was too dangerous. but seungcheol kept his menacing gaze, his eyes fixed onto alex.

“you will never get her, you aren’t good enough for her.”

you heard seungcheol wince, watching closely, the knife dug deeper in his neck, blood dripping onto the knife slowly.

frightened, you did the thing that only seemed right to you, although it might be deemed as rash.

you escaped from jeonghan’s arms, scurrying onto the floor, and

BANG.

the shot fired, silencing the entire room.

the entire room stood still, almost as if time has stopped.

the body fell on the ground, limp and bleeding, but he was still breathing, since his chest was still rising, slowly but surely.

your hands clenched onto the pistol, your hands shaking from the shock you have. your eyes darted around, only to land on seungcheol.

his facial expression was unreadable, the blood on his neck still dripping.

and that made a wave of fear rush over you, as you watch seungcheol walk towards you.

“i-i’m sorry i didn’t know why i did that i-i was just so scared i’m so-”

and that’s when you felt his soft lips on yours, his hands wrapping around your waist gently. his kiss was so soft, so gentle, yet there’s a lingering feeling of possessive, protectiveness.

at the familiar touch, you gave in immediately, returning the kiss.

breaking away, he placed his forehead against yours, taking that moment to calm his breathing.

“you did the right thing, princess. if it weren’t for you, i would have lost you completely. you’re so brave, so so brave.” his hand ran through the strands of your hair, brushing it away from you.

he looked down, seeing the complete mess that you were in. the torn shirt, the crumped skirt, and most importantly, your injured body, his heart broke almost immediately.

he took off his jacket, wrapping it around your body, making you wear it.

“it’s going to be cold, wear this so that you won’t fall sick, alright?” he mumbled, his sweet tone lingering in the air.

“cheollie..” you sighed shakily, your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer to you. you buried your head into his neck, feeling his blood trickling on your neck. you held onto him tightly, your breath becoming more and more shaky from fear.

that absolutely broke seungcheol’s heart. the only times when you actually called him ‘cheollie’, was when you were scared, when you had so much fear in you it hurts his heart. that made him pull you closer to him, as if he was protecting you from the rest of the world.

“you’re safe with me now, princess. i’ll protect you better, i swear.” he mumbled, his breath tickling your ear gently.

“sorry to.. ruin the moment. but what are we doing with this animal?”

the both of you turned around, to see joshua leaning forward, watching alex carefully while kicking his unconscious body.

“leave him here, we’ll teach him a lesson.” seungcheol spoke, in such a simple, yet evil tone.

he turned his attention to you again, his eyes softening at the sight of your tear-filled, doe eyes.

“i have one favour of you. tell me everything he did, and that will determine my punishment for him tomorrow.”

————————————————————————

the soft music of the movie played in the background, the sweet scent of the candle he lit up filled the room.

after the both of you got home, he immediately carried you in bridal style, and towards your bedroom. he sat you down on the mattress, while examining the state that you are in.

the bright, bruising red mark on your cheeks, the ones that he always hold on to seek comfort. your torn shirt, the shirt that you always told him not to throw away because it meant so much to you, but because of today, it got destroyed. your thigh, covered in red marks, with bruises and cuts trailing down your leg, the pair of legs he just loves to touch because it was just so, so soft.

and most importantly, your lips. the pinkish, soft lips that he loves to connect his lips with, was now bruised, swollen, and split.

he cupped your cheeks, gently so that it won’t trigger any pain when he did so. but seeing you wince softly at the touch, his heart immediately broke.

he placed his forehead against yours, letting out a shaky sigh.

“fuck, i didn’t want this job of mine to danger you. what did i do.. i’m so sorry princess. i’m so sorry..” he mumbled gently, his eyes tracing your face.

your gaze was locked onto his, watching his eyes soften as he examined your injuries. seeing the guilt building in him, you quickly placed a finger on his lips, shushing him.

“don’t be, at least i’m safe with you now, right?” you replied, your lips brushing against his.

seungcheol let out another shaky sigh, placing a peck on your lips, giving himself a reminder that you are actually safe with him.

“you’re right, you’re so so right. let me take care of you, please. i need to see you feel better before i can do so myself.” he whispered, his hand grasping onto yours gently.

seungcheol stood up, taking one last look at you, before he walked off to the bathroom. a few moments later, you see him walking back towards you, with a basin filled with water and washcloth in one hand, and the first aid kit in the other.

he sat in front of you, his weight sinking the bed down slightly. he placed the basin on the bedside table, dipping the cloth into it. he wrung it gently, as he brought it closer to your face.

“this is going to sting, be strong for me, okay?” he mumbled gently, waiting for your approval while he continued to stare into your eyes.

when you nodded, he sighed softly, dabbing the wet cloth onto the wounds on your face. feeling the sting, you hissed, your hands clenching onto his arm.

he stopped for a moment, watching how your face clenched up, your eyes closing a little from the pain.

“i know i know, it hurts right? i’ll be quick, i promise.” he said reassuringly.

he seemed to treat your injuries pretty quickly, and before you know it, he was already done. your body was filled with bandages, small plasters, and oilment to treat the bruises. he placed the cloth back in the basin, placing a gentle kiss on your lips.

“you did so well, princess. so good for me.” he praised, a small smile forming on his lips.

you gave him a smile in return, before kneeling forward, while placing a hand on his chest. your eyes was fixated on the scar on his neck, the one he got while he was in the fight with alex.

“relax baby, now it’s my turn to take care of you.” you said softly, holding onto the wet cloth, the same one he used to wipe off the dried blood.

your actions made seungcheol chuckle, his eyes glued to every little detail that you did.

“alright princess, i’ll be good.” he replied, another chuckle escaping from his lips.

————————————————————————

you treated his injuries pretty quickly, while he took the moment to order some food for the both of you to eat.

after all, after a day of fighting and torture, the least the both of you could do was to eat.

and the food came pretty quickly, with the both of you sitting on the couch in the room, with a movie playing in the background, cuddled in each other’s arm, while eating the fried chicken from your favourite restaurant.

taking a piece of chicken, seungcheol placed the meat at your mouth, waiting for you to eat it.

“say ahh~” seungcheol cooed, making you giggle, as you at the chicken.

“i’ll never believe how the most powerful mafia in this country is the softest person when it came to his girlfriend.” you teased, placing your head on his chest.

seungcheol chuckled, his fingers running through your hair, while he admired your facial features.

“well, although you had the mafia boss wrapped around that little finger of yours, you should know that you are in fact, the safest person that anyone can be on this planet, when you’re with me.”

.

.

.

.

.

bonus:

seungcheol walked into the warehouse, seeing that jeonghan and joshua has already tied alex up on the chair, the same chair you sat on yesterday.

“p-please let me go! i’m so sorry for kidnapping y/n let me go please..” alex begged, his eyes desperate and pleading.

seungcheol only let out a mocking laugh, his hand twirling the gun in his hand around.

“y/n shared with me everything that you did, now let’s do the punishment according, shall we?” seungcheol looked at jeonghan and joshua, who gave a knowing, yet menacing smile.

“should’ve known before you kidnapped the girlfriend of the most powerful mafia.” joshua said, while trying to hold back his laughter.

“and trying to win her back? you’re pathetic, even for a normal human being.” jeonghan added, while cracking his knuckles.

seungcheol walked closer to alex, his eyes eyeing down at the man, who seemed smaller, and more afraid, making him laugh once again.

“let’s make it quick and easy. i need to get back to my love. where should we start?”

[eveningcherryblossoms]

It's A Beta Life, Not A Better Life | Part 6

A platonic yandere Batfam x neglected beta reader story

Unlike Bruce and Dick, Jason had never known your mother. As a matter of fact, he hadn't even known of your mother's existence until news of her death destroyed Bruce in one blow and you came to live at the manor.

Jason was thirteen then, scarcely a year off the street. Even to this day the past still haunted him–trying to ignore pangs of hunger as he dug through the dumpster, huddling by a fire in an oil drum with other street kids, stealing whatever valuables he could get his hands on. Then there were the Batmobile tires and suddenly he was removed from all that to the home of literally the richest pack in Gotham. Suddenly three meals a day, a comfortable bed, hot showers, brand-new clothes, medicine for sicknesses, even school were no longer a dream he'd had to give up on after his mother's death.

Then suddenly, you arrived.

You, Bruce's biological child with the omega he loved. Versus him, a street rat Bruce adopted on what he wouldn't have been surprised to be but the whim of an eccentric rich man–even if said man was also secretly the vigilante of Gotham, whom he'd been assisting as Robin. It should be obvious who was more important between you and him.

Jason would take the truth to his second grave, but the truth was he unintentionally acted like a two-faced omega antagonist in one of those cliche brainless novels. What was the Chinese term for it again, white lotus? Green tea bitch?

One might argue that him presenting without warning so close to your arrival was something beyond his control, as was his heat-addled self rambling of insecurity and inferiority to Bruce. Jason could not help wincing in secondhand embarrassment whenever he remembered his own actions back then anyway.

His young omega self even acted so obviously scared of you then. Like he was at your mercy, like with one word from you Bruce would cast you off back into the street. Why the fuck did he act like that again? It wasn't deliberate; Jason would've sooner beat himself up than act like a victim and villify a pup to secure the love of said pup's father.

But he still did that. Deliberate or not, his going omega self did keep acting scared around you. He also did keep hanging out with Bruce, Dick, and Alfred without mentioning you–sometimes because he genuinely forgot to, but some other times because he actively decided not to say a word.

When Joker killed him in that warehouse, Jason thought it was divine retribution.

Then, inexplicably, he came back to life. He got taken by Talia to the League of Assassins and dipped in the Lazarus Pit, coming out even more inexplicably an alpha. Full of power and rage and craving for vengeance. Any thought of you was set aside after that.

By the time Jason realized it, you had grown up. An alpha pup, still newly presented. But already daring to bark and strut around Crime Alley like you owned it.

(You really didn't. You just walked there normally to and from school.)

Had Jason remained an omega... Well, who knew how he would've treated you. As things were, he merely instructed his lieutenants to keep an eye out. He had given you a warning, so if you dared mess around in his Crime Alley Jason wouldn't hesitate to scruff you all the way back to Daddy Bat.

Jason scoffed to himself. That would be his way to make amends for his omega self's actions, without losing his dignity as Red Hood–leaving your discipline to your pack alpha.

Another goddamn alpha in this goddamn pack, Jason thought, exasperated. If you were a beta...

He paused. Blinked. Imagined a world where you did present as a beta. Grinned to himself.

Hah, yeah. No way. If you were a beta and dared go about his territory like that... Jason wouldn't hesitate to claim you for himself and the pack.

Who told an unclaimed beta to wander by their self?

As you hit another bullseye, you marked down two months.

Currently, you were in one of your late mother's properties. Your mother had used most of her inheritance to purchase properties around the world and had them rented out–all but the ones in Gotham, like this one. You had known about it from the start, and for about nearly two months you'd been using the Gotham properties to train or research in under the guise of checking them out.

People who knew you were doing so would only assume you were scouting for a den or nest out of the Wayne pack. It was a common practice for the 'elites' to have their private place as soon as they presented, and even without the Waynes being connected to you, you still could pass as one thanks to your mother.

You reloaded the gun in your hand, used a hand mirror to check the corner, then darted down the path once you saw the path was clear. When two opponents suddenly stepped from either side of the intersections, you ducked and took down the one closest to you with a sweeping kick, dodging the other's bullet by the skin of your teeth. You aimed and hit the shooter between the eyes, then turned around and threw your whole weight into the first attacker that had quietly gotten up intending to ambush you.

You shot them as well. As the first attacker fell back with blood spraying from the forehead, a holographic notification appeared before you:

STAGE CLEARED.

Satisfied, you shut down the VR and took off your headset. That wasn't bad at all–you had improved steadily these two months. Hardly enough to take down a real pack yet, moreover to make you feel safe. Oh well, baby steps.

Your faint smile morphed into a frown when you recollected yesterday's event. For once in his life Dick seemed to have meant his latest promise–to help you as an omega. He still didn't fulfill the promise, citing an emergency in Bludhaven, but did thrust a pile of blankets and hoodies soaked with his scent into your arms before leaving.

That was... unexpected. You couldn't afford anything unexpected at this stage.

You slowly tapped a forefinger to your other arm. An 'emergency in Bludhaven' kept Dick away and inadvertently rescued you from being discovered by him. You remembered many more occasions where emergencies kept him in the neighboring city.

Could you maybe, probably, arrange for something to keep him there longer?

me the first time writing Jason's pov: Oh no he's too kind here gotta rewrite

me the second time: ...have I maligned your character, Jason?

Taglist: @randomlyappearingartist @bellethesleepypotato @nirvanaxx1942 @tenswife @galaxypurplerose @shycreatorreview @cupid73 @time-shardz @mikusamsan @simpingpandas @kore-of-the-underworld @elmichi0 @mirabilis-polaris @farsketch @altumsomnum @hai-there-how-are-you @vanessa-boo @ashjade19 @yandere-enthusiast @a-lurking-fae @hyperfixatedcatlover @leeiasure @luckynemi @lowkeyjarrr @lunoorbonoor @deathbynarcisstick @tacendxx @staarflowerr @anonlikesfics @magical-panda2 @whognuthis @arwenyukiamoto @hon3ydewcaram3l @lilyalone @jazzyspaceghost @teabutnerdy @bunbunbread @darktrashpoetry @conqcakes @sleepdeprivedcrappywriter @unrelatedlily @ciatin @ratchetprime211 @mybones537 @anonasatoruu

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Burglars Foiled In Smiths Falls," Ottawa Journal. May 7, 1934. Page 2. --- Constable Enters Warehouse When Safe Ready to Be Blown. ==== Special to The Journal. SMITHS FALLS, Ont., May 7. - Smart work on the part of the local police, early this morning, prevented a daring burglary at the Gamble Robinson Co., warehouse, situated on Victoria avenue, where Constable Beckett, on making his rounds, discovered the back door broken open and the safe combination removed, holes drilled, and soaped, and fuse laid ready to light. The policeman entered the building, but the would-be safe-blowers had been frightened away by his arrival and, although a thorough search of the district was made, no trace could be found of any suspicious persons. Reports from the company state that had the safe been blown no loss would have been sustained, as only papers of value to the firm were in it at the time of the attempted robbery.

Police are of the opinion that the affair is just another incident caused by the many men who are roaming the roads. Two other affairs which occurred here recently have also been credited to the transients. Friday night, a negro entered a local restaurant and, after partaking of a meal, refused to pay for it. Brandishing a razor he made his exit before police could be called, while on another occasion a number of small children at play on a street near the Canadian Pacific station were accosted by a strange man who made off with a bicycle, property of one of the boys in the party.

A strict check is being kept on all transients known to be in the district, and it is expected arrests will follow.

[fxstpace]

like real people do.

“There’s something going on,” he says. “A chain of robberies, not random. It’s clean, professional—in and out in under four minutes. I’ve been watching them hit warehouses all across Marmoreal. Whatever they’re after, it’s coordinated. And I can’t keep up on my own.”

ɷ pairing. spider-man!phainon x detective!fem!reader ɷ contains. romance, angst, action, smut (oral sex, fingering), slowburn, spider-man!au, detective!au, mild enemies to lovers!au. profanity, injuries, blood, violence, mentions of drug abuse & human experimentation, etc. ɷ word count. 19.5k

Phainon thinks he’s a pretty good guy.

Okay, maybe not, like, great. He’s not out here winning humanitarian awards or remembering to replace the Brita filter before it turns green. But still. He flosses most nights, and tips well on the rare occasions he orders pizza for dinner. He saves cats from trees, catches robbers in the middle of getaway attempts, and makes a decent grilled cheese when the mood strikes. In the grand cosmic scale of morality, he figures that puts him somewhere between a broke college student and a D-list superhero with a heart of gold. 

Which is why, as he’s currently being pursued across rooftops by New Okhema’s most persistent detective, Phainon feels the situation is a little unfair.

“I don’t deserve to be chased like this!” he yells over his shoulder, breaths short, voice muffled through his mask as he narrowly avoids tripping over a pipe. “I’m a pretty good guy!”

The boots pounding behind him don’t slow. “You’re obstructing justice!”

“You’re harassing a concerned citizen!”

He vaults over a low vent and instantly regrets it, the rooftop pitching sideways beneath him as he skids and catches himself just in time to avoid faceplanting into a rusted-out AC unit. Graceful. So graceful. Just like the comics. His heart’s doing the worst kind of cardio in his chest, the kind that feels like guilt and adrenaline and that specific brand of dread that only ever shows up when you’re behind him.

Because if there’s one thing Phainon’s sure of, it’s this: you hate him.

Maybe not, like, hate-hate. Maybe not enough to tase him out of the sky. But enough to chase him across rooftops with the hopes of finally arresting him for good. 

He can live with that. He’s been hated before. (He just wishes it didn’t make him kind of want your approval.)

“You’re breaking at least three laws just by standing there!” you shout as he swings up and over the next building.

“That’s slander!” Phainon shouts back. “I counted two!”

You’re getting closer. He can hear it in your voice—less winded than his, more focused. He’s not sure if he’s impressed or terrified. Probably both.

“Do you ever take a break?” you snap as you land behind him with a clean, practiced roll.

Phainon whirls around, arms raised. “Do you ever let anyone live?”

Your eyes narrow like you’re imagining the paperwork it would take to make his disappearance look like an accident. 

“Okay, okay! Truce! Five minutes.” He backs up, hands still in the air. “No chasing or tasers. Please.”

You don’t answer, which means you’re at least considering it. He’s getting good at reading your silences, which is probably not a good thing. He should stop doing that. He should stop noticing things about you at all—like how you always pull your sleeves down when you’re thinking, or how you furrow your eyebrows when you’re about to disagree with someone but don’t want to start a fight.

“Look,” he says, tone dropping, just a bit. “This isn’t about me dodging patrol or stealing snacks from that convenience store on 14th Street—”

“You stole—”

“Borrowed,” he corrects quickly. “With intent to pay.”

You stare at him. The wind rustles your coat. Somewhere, a siren wails and dies out.

“There’s something going on,” he says. “A chain of robberies, not random. It’s clean, professional—in and out in under four minutes. I’ve been watching them hit warehouses all across Marmoreal. Whatever they’re after, it’s coordinated. And I can’t keep up on my own.”

He expects you to laugh. Or roll your eyes. Or say something sharp and cutting that’ll make his stomach twist in that way he hates—because you’re usually right.

“I think they’re watching me,” he adds, quieter now. “I think someone knows who I am.”

The wind blows sharp across the rooftop, carrying the tang of rain and smoke and summer dust. It scrapes over the worn brick under Phainon’s boots and rustles your coat, but you don’t move. You just look at him, your face unreadable in the way that always makes his stomach knot a little too tight. It’s the kind of stillness that unnerves him—not because he doesn’t know what you’re thinking, but because he wants to. More than he should. Phainon’s chest rises and falls, just a little too fast.

“That’s a bold claim,” you say slowly.

Yeah. He knows. He also knows you’re not brushing him off, which is scarier than if you had. You’re listening, evaluating. That furrow between your brows is your tell—he’s seen it before, in passing shadows and glimpses from across precinct crime scenes. The way you tilt your head slightly to the left when you’re filing pieces together in real time.

“You have proof?” you ask.

Phainon knows you won’t move without proof—not a whisper, not a theory, not a gut feeling scraped together from caffeine and paranoia. But he doesn’t have clean lines or neat bullet points. What he has is scraps; disconnected threads; a slowly closing hand around the back of his neck every time he turns a corner too sharp. And that feeling—that awful, skin-tight certainty—that something out there has started moving towards him, not away.

“I don’t have anything concrete, but… I’ve been tracking the hits since the first one three weeks ago,” he says, starting to pace now, in small, tight circles, just enough movement to bleed out some of the nervous energy crawling up his spine. “They’re too clean. Like, unrealistically clean. No alarms triggered, no broken doors, no fingerprints. They even bypassed the retinal scanner at one of the biotech labs. Who does that? And for what? They’re not stealing cash or valuables. They’re taking very specific things—equipment, hard drives, chemical canisters.”

“Show me,” you say. Your eyes don’t leave his face. (Well, the mask. But he swears you’re looking through it.)

He blinks. “What?”

You cross your arms. “The footage. The files. Whatever you’ve got. If you’re serious about this, I need to see everything.”

“Oh.” Phainon’s voice pitches up an octave in surprise. “Cool. Okay. Should we, like, grab dinner? I know a good deli down at Kephale Plaza. Best dill pickle sandwiches on this side of Okhema.”

Phainon didn’t lie. Chartonus’ Deli, tucked between a laundromat and a building that’s had a For Sale sign tacked onto the door for fourteen years, does serve the best dill pickle sandwiches in New Okhema City. The fluorescent sign above the deli flickers intermittently—CHART NUS’ on a bad night, HARTONUS DEL when it’s feeling generous—and the inside smells like mustard, old fryer oil, and vinegar.

He’s perched in the booth furthest from the window, under a buzzing ceiling light that flickers every now and then. The vinyl seat squeaks every time he shifts, and the table has a wobble. There’s duct tape across the far corner of the laminate, and someone—possibly Chartonus himself—has carved NO CRYING IN THE DELI into the tabletop.

Phainon has his mask pulled up just past his nose, letting the cool air hit the sweat still clinging to his neck. His hair’s damp, and there’s a tear in the seam of his left glove he only just now noticed. His sandwich is halfway demolished, crumbs gathering on the dark fabric of his suit, pickle juice already soaking into the paper wrapper.

He looks across the table at you. You’re the only person in here not eating, only sipping from a chipped ceramic mug of what Chartonus had claimed was coffee with a shrug. Your coat’s slung over the back of your seat, and your badge is tucked out of sight, but everything about you still screams cop—straight spine, steady eyes, the way your fingers twitch every time the door jingles.

“I told you,” Phainon says around a mouthful of rye and mustard. “Best sandwich in the city.”

“This is where you wanted to debrief?”

He shrugs. “They know my order here.”

You roll your eyes and pull the folder Phainon had handed you on the rooftop from your bag, placing it on the table between you. “You said these started three weeks ago?” you ask, flipping it open.

Phainon nods, brushing crumbs off the table. “Warehouse on Little Thorn. Then a lab two nights later. Then another warehouse. Then the lab again, but a different wing. They’re hitting specific targets, looping back, almost like they’re refining their technique.”

You glance up. “Any pattern to what they’re taking?”

“That’s the thing.” He leans in, placing his half-eaten sandwich on the paper wrapper. “It’s weirdly… modular. Like, they’re not emptying vaults or swiping entire systems. They’re taking parts. Pieces. Very specific ones.”

He slides a finger across one of the printouts. It’s a manifest list from the Little Thorn warehouse, half the lines redacted, but a few still visible.

Carbon-neutral polymer casings

Fiber-optic microarrays

Refrigerated storage containers, Class III

Unknown compound, biohazard sealed

“Doesn’t scream smash-and-grab,” you say, studying the list.

“Exactly. This is purposeful.”

You turn another page. “The cameras—”

“Looped,” Phainon says. “Every time. Not just disabled. The footage looks uninterrupted, except for this weird flicker—like it skips half a second. But the timestamps don’t change.”

You sit back in your seat, fingers drumming on the edge of the table. He watches you think—sees the line between your brows deepen, the way you press your lips together when something doesn’t add up. He likes watching you think. That’s a problem.

“Do you think they’re testing something?” you ask. “Or building it?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d help me figure out. Detective Brain and Spider Legs. The dream team.”

“Never say that again.”

He gives you a one-shouldered shrug and returns to his sandwich. “Can’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.”

You shake your head and go quiet again, flipping slowly through the rest of the folder. Pages rustle under your hands. The old man behind the counter mutters something unintelligible to the deep fryer. Outsider, a police cruiser drives by without slowing.

When you speak again, your voice is lower. “You said you think someone’s watching you.”

Phainon freezes with a piece of pickle halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowers it back to the wrapper. “I don’t think,” he says. “I know.”

You look up.

“Two nights ago, I was tailing one of their runners. Lost him. That should’ve been the end of it, except when I got home…” He hesitates. “My apartment’s locked down. Triple bolted, windows sealed, motion sensors in every hallway. And yet, my closet door was cracked. My spare suit was missing. Nothing else.”

Your expression hardens. “Did you call it in?”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure. Hello, 911, someone stole my crime-fighting spandex, I think I’m being haunted by a bunch of dudes with attitude problems.”

You don’t laugh.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Deflection. I know.”

“You should’ve told someone sooner,” you say sharply. “If someone has your gear, they might have access to your—”

“They won’t,” he cuts in. “The tech’s locked down. Biometric, failsafes, the works. But it means they were inside. Not watching from across the street. Inside. And that… that’s not normal.”

You nod. “You think it’s connected to the thefts.”

“I think I’ve been getting too close,” he says, quieter now. “And someone wants me out of the way.”

You lean forward, resting your elbows on the table. The cracked TV in the corner flickers, playing a rerun of some late-night court drama with the volume turned down low. A door slams shut somewhere in the back. The deli is empty now except for you two.

“Then we need to get closer,” you say.

Phainon blinks. “Wait—we?”

“This is serious,” you say simply. “And if someone’s watching you, they might come for me next. This is bigger than your usual masked hero antics, Spider-Man. So, yeah. We.”

He’s staring again. He knows he is. He should probably say something witty or obnoxious, but his throat’s dry and his heart’s doing that thing again. “Cool,” he says finally, and it comes out a little too quiet. “Cool cool cool cool cool.”

You push the folder back towards him, then stand and grab your coat off the back of the chair. “Tomorrow night,” you say. “Bring everything else you’ve got. We set up a timeline, match it to police records. I want this mapped out by morning.”

He gives a mock salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

You pause at the door, just long enough to glance over your shoulder. “Wash your suit,” you say. “You smell like mustard.”

The bell jingles as the door swings shut behind you. Phainon stays in the booth for a while, finishing his sandwich in silence. The TV buzzes in the corner. The ceiling light blinks once, then steadies.

The alley off Cortland Street feels shadier than it is in the almost-darkness. Every step Phainon takes echoes just a little too sharply off the damp brick walls, the soles of his boots scraping against cracked pavement slick from the afternoon rain. The air is thick with the tang of gasoline, rotting leaves, and whatever chemical sludge is leaking from the storm drain at the corner. It’s the kind of place you walk faster through on instinct, even if you’ve got super reflexes and unnatural strength.

But for once, he’s early.

The wall behind him is papered with maps: big ones, small ones, some he stole from news kiosks and the city library, others he scrawled himself in the middle of the night, half-asleep and hunched over his kitchen counter with a sharpie in his mouth. He’s patched them together like a spiderweb, the red and black marker lines bleeding over each other, looping through neighbourhoods and dead ends. It’s messy, barely legible in some places, but it serves its purpose.

He shifts on the overturned milk crate he’s using as a seat and pulls his mask halfway up to breathe properly. The flickering streetlight above him hums like a dying bee. There’s a smear of mustard on his glove from the sandwich last night. He tries not to think about how long it’s been since he’s properly showered.

He hates waiting. But he’d never admit that he’s anxious. Especially not for you.

Your footsteps break the quiet—sharp, sure, even. The same way they always sound when you’re walking up behind him like you’re about to read him his Miranda rights.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. That would be too obvious. Too eager. “I was starting to think you ditched,” he says instead, flipping a page in the notebook balanced on his knee.

“You said nine,” you answer. “It’s eight fifty-nine.”

He smiles, just a little. Can’t help it. “Wow. A punctual cop.”

You walk past him, wordless, and he catches the faint scent of your shampoo—clean, sharp, maybe citrus? (He needs to stop.) 

You step up to the wall of maps, arms crossed. The light glints off the corner of your badge, half-tucked beneath your jacket. You tilt your head to the side, the same way you always do when you’re processing too many things at once. God, he’s noticed that too many times.

“This is a mess,” you say flatly.

“Organised chaos,” he corrects.

You shoot him a look, then kneel to examine the clustered marks around Marmoreal’s industrial sector. Your fingers trace a wide red loop that sounds four separate Xs.

Phainon hops down from his crate and joins you, dropping into a crouch beside you. “Those are the first confirmed break-ins. They form a pretty clear arc if you connect the dots. Started on the western edge. They’re moving clockwise.”

“So whatever they’re after is in the centre,” you muse.

“Bingo,” he says, tapping the innermost circle. “And guess what’s smack-dab in the middle of the whole thing?” 

He holds up a photo of a nondescript warehouse, overgrown with weeds, one wall tagged in massive purple spray paint that says I HATE BEES. It’s ugly. You frown and say, “That place?”

Phainon nods. “Used to be a government R&D site during the old tech boom, but it was supposedly shut down after an acid leak took out the foundation. Now it’s just a lot with a locked fence and shit ton of asbestos.”

“Why hasn’t anyone investigated it?”

“Because it’s boring,” he says. “There’s no power running to it. No reported disturbances. No reason for patrol to bother. But if you dig deeper—like, old permit records and city zoning logs—there’s a basement that’s sealed off. No blueprint access since 2013.”

Your silence stretches. Phainon watches the gears turning in your head and realises—again, and with an unfortunate amount of clarity—that he likes watching you think. He really, really shouldn’t.

“So they’re not just building something,” you say. “They’re hiding it.”

“Or staging it.”

“We’ll split up,” you say. “Tonight. You take the chemical plant on Fifth. I’ll hit the battery storage facility near the docks. If either of them gets hit, we regroup.”

“Copy that,” he says lightly, brushing the dust off his gloved palms as he stands beside you. “Though I think you just want to get rid of me.”

“I want to get results,” you correct, already scanning the nearest cluster of notes on the map again. “And we’ll cover more ground this way.”

Fair, rational, efficient. So typically you. Phainon swallows down the inexplicable disappointment in his throat and tries to focus. “The chemical plant’s been shut down since the fires in March, but I’ve seen movement there—shadows mostly, heat signatures. And one of the power boxes was tampered with last week. Could just be squatters, but…”

“But this group doesn’t leave power boxes half-cut,” you finish, glancing at him. “They don’t miss steps.”

Exactly. He doesn’t say it out loud, but the tension in his shoulders eases a little. You’re starting to see what he sees. 

You turn back to the wall, fingers brushing one of the maps again, slower this time. Your brows are furrowed, the crease between them deeper than usual. “I’ll have to log this in quietly. My team’s not going to love me going off-grid again.”

“Your team doesn’t know you’re chasing me around rooftops?”

“They know. They just don’t know why,” you say. “Which is probably for the best.”

He huffs out a half-laugh, kicking lightly at the cracked asphalt near your foot. “Flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Still. Thanks for not turning me in.”

You shrug. “You haven’t made it worth my while yet.”

He wants to tease you for that. Wants to say something dumb and stupid about buying you a terrible coffee from a 24-hour diner or bribing you with Chartonus’ sandwiches, but instead, he asks, “You have a burner?”

You nod. Phainon reaches into one of the hidden pouches sewn inside his suit—past the web cartridges, the crumpled snack wrapper, the broken-off pen cap he meant to throw away yesterday—and pulls out his own cracked phone. The screen’s a mess of spiderwebbed lines, the plastic casing half melted at the edges from some accident involving an exploding rooftop generator last week.

You raise your brows. “That’s a phone?”

“Technically,” he says, unlocking it with a swipe and opening a new contact. “Give me your number. I’ll send coordinates if I catch anything tonight.”

You rattle off a sequence of numbers, and add, “Burner ends in zero-nine. Don’t call me unless it’s urgent.”

“Define urgent.”

“Explosion. Gunfire. Alien invasion.”

“So… brunch?”

Phainon’s lucky day starts with a pigeon dive-bombing his head, continues with a missed web shot that sends him careening into a fire escape, and somehow still manages to improve—because you said yes to brunch with him. 

Or, well, with Spider-Man, which is still him, but in that weird, glass-wall kind of way. You don’t know what he looks like beneath the mask, don’t know his name, his address, his real voice, or the fact that he thought he was going to be late because he tried to hand-sew a rip in his suit and pricked his thumb seventeen times.

He tries not to make a big deal out of it. He really does. But the truth is, it’s been 36 hours since the last robbery attempt, he hasn’t been chased across a rooftop in at least two days, and now you’re sitting across from him at a sunlit table in a tucked-away café where the chairs don’t match and the menus are handwritten in cursive chalk. (And you ordered pancakes. That alone feels like a sign from the universe.)

Phainon takes a sip of his burnt espresso, after pulling his mask up to let it rest on the bridge of his nose. He leans back in his chair, letting the sounds of the café fill the silence—coffee machines hissing, silverware clinking, someone arguing gently in French at the counter. It’s the kind of place that feels too warm for a conversation about conspiracy rings and illegal tech trade, which is probably why he chose it. Something about soft pancakes makes even the worst theories easier to digest.

You flip through a manila folder with highlighter streaks and dog-eared corners, diagrams of circuits, and what look like stolen security camera stills, all stacked and filed with precision. He’s seen you interrogate a guy in less than five words before. Watching you cut a pancake with that same level of intensity is kind of terrifying.

Also: kind of hot. But that’s not relevant.

“So,” he says, because the silence is beginning to grate at him, “have I won you over with my sparkling personality yet, or are you still planning to arrest me after this?”

You hum and reach for the syrup. “I can’t decide if you’re more irritating in daylight or when you’re dangling upside down on a fire escape at 2 a.m.”

Phainon takes a sip of espresso, squinting through the bitter taste. “Why not both?”

You glare at him.

“I’m trying to be helpful,” he says, quieter now. He leans in a little, lowering his voice in case someone’s listening. “I know I’m not the most traditional source, and I’m aware I’m breaking, like, a thousand chain-of-command rules just by talking to you, but I’ve been watching these people for weeks. And I’ve never seen anything like this. They’re too clean. Too prepared.”

You nod. He can tell you’ve already connected the dots. You’ve probably connected ten more he hasn’t even noticed yet. Your eyes are sharp, alert, focused in that laser-sight kind of way that makes his skin itch under the mask.

“I went by the Marmoreal site last night,” you say. “Didn’t go in, though—just circled. But there was movement in the back. A truck with no license plate.”

“Same model from the Fourth Street hit?”

“Couldn’t see,” you admit. “But the sound was the same. The engine was too quiet to be local, so it was clearly modified.”

Phainon exhales slowly. “So they’re still active.”

“Very.” You stab at a piece of pancake and glance up at him. “You sleep at all?”

“...No,” he mutters, sheepish. “But I took a power name at a bus stop for twenty-seven minutes and dreamed I was being eaten by a vending machine, so that counts.”

“Healthy,” you deadpan.

He shrugs. “You’re one to talk. When was the last time you took a break that wasn’t… this?”

“I’m not the one with a possible concussion and jam on my mask.”

“I like jam,” Phainon says.

You shake your head, but he catches the faintest hint of amusement in your face, quickly hidden behind your coffee cup. He doesn’t say anything; just watches as you lean back in your chair, face finally relaxing into something that looks a little less like a detective building a case and a little more like a person enjoying a few minutes of peace.

That’s when it hits him: this is the first time he’s seen you still. Not mid-chase, not interrogating, not tearing through evidence. Just you, and pancakes, and a soft patch of sunlight warming your sleeve.

He’s in so much trouble.

You glance at him, then, like you can feel it. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly, fiddling with a sugar packet. “Just thinking.”

You narrow your eyes. “Dangerous.”

“Extremely.”

“Why’d you bring me here?”

He looks up. “What?”

“This café. It’s nice. Quiet. You could’ve picked anywhere.”

Phainon hesitates. He wants to say it’s because it’s his favourite. Because the coffee’s bad but the people are nice. Because the chairs don’t match and the chalkboard menus always misspell something. Because it feels safe. Because maybe, somewhere in the back of his idiotic brain, he wanted you to like it.

Instead, he shrugs and says, “Thought you’d appreciate the pancakes.”You study him for a second longer. Then, finally, finally, you smile. “Don’t make a habit of being right, Spider-Man,” you say, spearing another bite.

It turns out that Phainon’s theory is, horrifically, right. 

One week. That’s all it takes.

Seven days of split patrols and encrypted texts, of cataloguing movement and double-checking routes, of scribbling half-mad notes in the margins of maps and losing sleep trying to figure out what the connection is. He’d hoped, stupidly, that the quiet meant progress. That maybe, maybe they’d spooked whoever was behind it. That maybe the worst thing waiting for him that week would be another broken web-shooter or a pigeon with a vendetta.

[22:41] Detective Brain: Battery storage facility. Crossfire. I’m okay.

You’re okay. That should be enough. It should settle the spike of cold panic in his chest, should anchor him where he stands, balancing on the lip of a lamppost on 39th Street. But he rereads it again. Then again.

His fingers tighten around the edge of the lamp. The city breathes below him, neon-drenched and unaware. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren howls. Closer, a car door slams and someone yells about a parking ticket.

Phainon jumps.

The wind is sharp against his skin as he swings, the air slapping his cheeks even through his mask. He’s faster than usual—more desperate than smooth. It’s a graceless sprint across rooftops, the kind that leaves him barely clearing ledges, boots skimming waterlogged gutters, lungs burning. He doesn’t know if you’re hurt. You said you’re okay, but “okay” is such a vague, terrible word when it comes from someone who faces dangerous situations for a living.

The warehouse by the docks comes into view fast, hulking and silent beneath the sodium lights. There’s a scorch mark across the landing bay door, the acrid scent of melted insulation still curling up into the air. Two squad cars are parked askew outside the chain link fence, but the cops are gone, or inside, or too distracted to notice the figure scrambling onto the roof with shaking hands.

Phainon crouches low and peers through the skylight.

You’re inside, standing near a bank of empty battery casings and shattered glass, a radio pressed to your shoulder. You’re not limping. No visible blood. His heart slows half a beat. He taps lightly on the glass. You look up fast, instinctive, already half-reaching for your weapon before you register him. Your eyes narrow, but only briefly. Then you jerk your chin towards the fire escape.

He meets you on the second floor, slipping in through a side window. You’re alone in the room, save for the mess of forensic markers, scorch marks, and the bitter ozone of post-explosion cleanup.

“I’m fine,” you say, even before he can speak.

“You’re not fine,” he snaps, more sharply than he means to. “You said crossfire. That’s not, like, a stubbed toe.”

“It wasn’t aimed at me.”

“That doesn’t help!”

He hears his own voice—too loud, too worried, echoing off concrete—and he turns away before you can see the guilt settling between his shoulders. He runs a hand over his head, dragging his glove against his scalp like he could rub the fear out through friction alone.

You step closer. Your boots crunch over a piece of broken casing. “Spider-Man—”

“What happened?” he cuts in. He needs to focus, needs to understand it before he spirals into full-blown panic. “Walk me through it.”

You sigh, but nod. “I was watching the south entrance. Nothing for over two hours. Then, just past ten, the sensors I set up on the west wall tripped. I saw three figures, all masked. One of them had a disruptor—fried the cameras before we could catch a clear face.”

“Lithium?”

“Gone,” you confirm. “They knew exactly where to go. They broke open the storage lock, took one unit, and left the others untouched.”

“Only one?”

“One. And Spider-Man—” your eyes meet his again, steady now, serious—“they weren’t just fast. They know how to fight. They looked trained for this kind of shit.”

He exhales through gritted teeth. “You think they’re building something.”

“I think they already have,” you say grimly. “And they’re just waiting for the right battery to turn it on.”

Phainon shifts his weight and finally asks the question that’s been sticking in his throat like a splinter. “Did they see you?”

“I—I don’t know. Maybe,” you say.

“Maybe?” His voice rises again.

“I lost one in the dark. I think they doubled back. I’m not sure.”

Phainon wants to scream. Or punch something. Or grab you and teleport you somewhere far away where no one has disruptors and no one bleeds on cold warehouse floors. But he can’t do any of that. He can only stand there, vibrating with a kind of fear he doesn’t have the vocabulary for.

“I should have been there,” he mutters.

“You were across the city.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

You step into his space, close enough that he can hear your breath. “Spider-Man. Stop. I’m not dead.”

“Yet,” he says.

“I’ve been trained for this,” you say. “I know how to handle myself.”

He doesn’t doubt that. Not even for a second. But he also knows what it feels like to arrive too late, to find a scene that’s already stained with the blood of his loved ones. He drags a hand down his face. “You need backup.”

“I’ve got it,” you say, your voice firm. “I’ve got you.”

It’s not meant to do what it does, but those words dig into him deeper than any bullet could. He stares at you for a beat too long, every possible response crashing into each other like waves in his skull.

Finally, he says, quietly, “Yeah. You do. Can I take you home?”

Phainon expects you to disagree. Instead, you let your shoulders slump with relief, and say, “Yes, please.”

The wind cuts sharp along the docks when he leads you out, the air heavy with the smell of brine, old smoke, and burnt copper. There’s a metallic haze still lingering over the scene, but you don’t flinch from it. You walk steadily beside him, chin up, even if your hand hovers just a little closer to your holster than usual. He doesn’t miss that.

The streets are quieter now. Most of the cops have cleared out. A few plainclothes agents hang back to assess the scene, but they barely glance up when he web-slings both of you onto the nearest rooftop—low enough to keep out of view, high enough to get some space from the mess below. You don’t complain. You never do. Even now, when your knees must ache from crouching in dark corners, when your head probably pounds from the tension of nearly being caught in open fire, you simply follow him, like it’s normal. Like you trust him.

Phainon keeps his hold light but steady around your waist, one hand braced just beneath your elbow. You’re warmer than he expects, heat leaking through your jacket into his gloves. Every time he moves—shoots a string of webs, pulls you forward, steadies your landing—he feels you adjust to match him. Fluid. Familiar. (He shouldn’t like that as much as he does.)

Your building’s only three blocks away, and you whisper the directions into his ear. Phainon doesn’t want to rush it. He doesn’t want to leave you alone, not yet—not while your jaw is still set a little too tight and the adrenaline hasn’t fully drained from your bones.

When he finally lands on your fire escape, he lets go reluctantly.

You ease away from him, brushing your hair back, your expression unreadable as always. “You don’t have to walk me all the way up.”

“I know,” he says, already crouched on the rail. “I just… wanted to be sure.”

“Thanks.”

He nods and tries to act casual. Tries not to stare too hard at the soft light spilling out of your apartment window, or the way your fingers fidget at your sides like you’re still half in the fight. He wants to ask if you’re okay again, wants to tell you that the word “crossfire” nearly gave him a heart attack. But you’re already halfway to the window, unlocking it and ducking through the frame.

“Spider-Man?” you say, just before you disappear inside.

“Yeah?”

“Do you, uh, want to come inside?”

He blinks. Of all the possibilities that had been ricocheting around in his head—“stay safe,” or “thanks for the ride,” or “you’re worrying too much”—this had not made the cut. Not even close.

It stalls him, mid-perch, one gloved hand gripping the rusted iron railing of the fire escape, the other resting loosely on his knee. The mask hides his face, but he’s pretty sure his surprise is obvious anyway, just in the way his breath catches or how still he suddenly goes.

Your silhouette is soft in the glow of your apartment’s light. You’ve already kicked off your boots inside the window, standing barefoot on the wooden floorboards, one hand holding the window open, the other resting lightly on the frame.

“I mean,” you say after a second, brows furrowed. “Only if you want to. You don’t have to or anything. You probably have rooftops to gallivant across and—”

“I want to,” he says quickly, too quickly. Then he clears his throat and tries again. “I mean—yeah. If you’re okay with it.”

Your mouth curves, not quite into a smile, but something close enough to make something twist behind his ribs. “You literally carried me three blocks through the air. I think we’re past the point of stranger danger.”

He huffs out a short laugh and swings one leg over the windowsill. It takes a bit of maneuvering to avoid smacking his knees against your desk, and he’s painfully aware of every scuff his boots leave behind on your floor. The space smells like laundry detergent and something warm—coffee grounds, maybe. Or cinnamon. The kind of smell that makes his shoulders start to relax before he even realises it.

Your apartment is small but lived-in. A stack of case files teeters on the kitchen table next to a mug. Your precinct jacket hangs over the back of the couch. There are photos pinned to the side of the fridge with mismatched magnets: city skylines, a blurry shot of you at what looks like a precinct holiday party, someone in a ridiculous Halloween costume posing like a superhero. Phainon feels something tug deep and stupid in his chest.

“Make yourself at home,” you say, heading into the kitchen and flipping on the kettle without needing to ask. “I’ve got tea or instant coffee. No milk, though. Sorry.”

He stays standing for a second longer, then slowly pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his belt. His mask stays on. He lifts the bottom edge just past his mouth, enough to breathe easier, but not enough to risk—well, anything else.

“Tea’s good,” he says.

You nod, moving with a kind of efficiency that reminds him again that you’re still running on fumes. There’s a scrape as you grab two mugs, the clink of metal as you stir one without sugar. You hand him the other without ceremony.

He takes it carefully, fingers brushing yours. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” you return, then gesture to the couch. “We can sit. If you’re staying a few minutes.”

He is. He knows he is. He follows you to the couch and lowers himself into the corner, stiff at first, like his body hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s safe here. With you. There’s a blanket balled up on one side and an old remote wedged between the cushions. You move them without thinking and curl one leg beneath you, facing him.

“So,” you say. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Phainon frowns. “The break-in?”

“No,” you say, looking at him squarely. “You. You were… panicked tonight.”

Phainon goes still. It’s not immediate—not sharp like a flinch, but a quiet kind of freezing, like someone’s gently pulling the emergency brake in his chest. He doesn’t look away from you, but he doesn’t answer either. His tea cools between his fingers.

You shift forward a little, your voice low. “Look, I’m not asking because I’m nosy. Or because I want some dramatic unmasking moment sort of thing. I just…” You pause, exhale. “I got lucky tonight. That’s what it was. Luck. If I hadn’t ducked at the right second, if they’d come around the corner just a little faster—”

“But they didn’t,” he says quietly, cutting you off.

“That’s not the point.”

You’re sharper now, sitting straighter, your knee pressed to the cushion. Your eyes flash—not with anger, but fear, the kind you don’t let people see if you can help it. But he sees it. And worse, he knows it. He recognises it in the widening of your eyes, the way your fingers curl against your palm.

You swallow. “I’m scared, Spider-Man. I know you’re helping. I trust you. But this—this thing we’re chasing… if something happens to you—I won’t even know your name. I won’t know who to look for. Or if I should look at all. That’s not just reckless, that’s—cruel.”

He flinches at that. You notice.

“I just want to know who’s standing next to me,” you say. “That’s not so much to ask.”

“I can’t,” he says, before he’s even fully processed it. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.” Your voice isn’t raised, but there’s a new edge to it now, sharper than anger. Hurt, maybe. Disappointment. It slices straight through his armour. “You trust me with your life out there. Every night. You trust me not to shoot you in the back, or get in your way, or blow your cover. But you don’t trust me enough to know who you are?”

“It’s not about trust,” he says quickly, too defensively. “It’s—God, you think I don’t want to tell you? You think I don’t—don’t lie awake wondering what would happen if I did? I think about it all the time.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

He looks at you, then. You’re not angry. You’re scared. Scared of whatever’s coming next. Scared of losing control, of losing him.

“You don’t understand what that means,” he says. “If you know who I am—really know—it changes everything. You don’t get to walk away from that. You don’t get to un-know it if something happens. If someone finds out—”

“I’m a cop, Spider-Man. I’ve seen worse things than secret identities.”

“It’s not just mine,” he says. “It’s everyone around me. You knowing—you become a target.”

“I’m already a target.”

“Not like this,” he bites out. “If someone traces it back to you—if they think you matter to me—”

“I do matter to you.”

You suck in a breath like you didn’t mean to say it that way. But you don’t take it back. You sit there, across from him, eyes steady and hurting and unshakably honest. And all Phainon can think is: Shit.

“You do,” he says, barely audible. “Of course you do.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

He closes his eyes, and rubs a hand over the edge of his mask like he can somehow erase the pressure building behind his skull. “Because the second I do,” he says, “you stop being just a cop with good instincts and better aim. You become mine. And that makes you vulnerable in a way I don’t know how to protect you from.”

You shake your head, frustrated. “You don’t get to make that decision for me. I’m not asking for your social security number, or something. I’m asking to know who’s at my side when the bullets fly. When the lights go out. When it’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep because I think I saw someone watching my window. I need more than a voice behind a mask. I deserve more.”

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell you you’re wrong, because you’re not. But still, he stays silent.

You stare at him for a moment longer, and when it’s clear he won’t budge, you get up. The mug of tea still has steam spiralling out of it as you walk to the sink and set it down, the sound softer than your next words: “I think you should go.”

Phainon doesn’t try to stop you, or ask you to reconsider. He simply nods, and stands. There’s a strange heaviness in his limbs as he pulls the mask down over his face, tugs his gloves on with fingers that feel numb. He moves to the window but pauses with one foot already on the sill.

“I do trust you,” he says. “More than anyone.”

It’s not that you’re avoiding each other.

It’s that you’re both avoiding each other—which, in practice, amounts to the same thing.

Patrols become asynchronous: silent intel dumps in the encrypted folder, maps updated with colour-coded marks that speak more than either of you will via text. There are no more late-night debriefs on rooftops, no post-mission walks home, no casual banter about who has the worst taste in energy bars. When you text, it’s clipped, tactical. When he replies, it’s mechanical.

(‘West dock checkpoint cleared. No sign of activity.’

‘Copy. South alley tripwire still intact.’)

Phainon doesn’t know what hurts more: the silence, or the fact that it’s entirely his fault. Maybe he was right. Maybe the secret is safer kept. Maybe you are less of a target this way.

But God, it’s lonely.

There’s a rhythm to the city that used to make sense—pulse and swing, fire escapes and antenna towers, the rough percussion of tires against potholes. But now it all feels flat. The rooftops are colder. His landing sticks a little less clean. Even the pigeons don’t heckle him like they used to.

It’s been two weeks. Two long, aching weeks, until, at 3:37 a.m., Phainon receives a text from you, and it takes him less than a minute to reply. 

He doesn’t stop to think, or worry if this is a trap, or a joke, or worse—if you’re still mad at him. When he lands outside your apartment, the window’s already cracked open. Inside, the lights are on low, and there’s a corkboard spread across your living room wall now, half-covered in photos, schematics, lines of red string and sticky notes scrawled in tight, impatient handwriting he recognises from your field memos.

You don’t greet him. You just hand him a folder, your eyes dark with something between fear and exhaustion.

“Biotech division out of Theoros Labs,” you say. “It used to be focused on adaptive immunotherapy, but they lost funding three years ago and went dark. The shell company they reopened under is tied to a private security contractor out of Styxia. And guess what their latest research files are tagged under?”

Phainon’s already flipping through the pages. His gloved fingers still. His stomach drops.

ARACHNID-BASED ENHANCEMENT TRIALS – SUBJECT 33550336. MODEL NAME: FLAME REAVER.

He looks up. “They’re trying to replicate me.”

“Not just replicate,” you say, shaking your head. “Weaponise.”

Your voice is thin, dry, like it costs you something to even say it aloud.

“They’ve been pulling data from old surveillance—fight footage, patrol patterns, even the way you move. You know how we assumed they were looking for high-density batteries to power a device?” You tap one of the diagrams on the corkboard, the spine of it shaped like a human thorax with branching nodes along the shoulders. “Turns out it’s a synthetic neuromuscular system. And this—this lithium core—it’s the ignition switch.”

Phainon stares at the blueprint. It’s rough, unfinished, but horrifyingly clear: a bipedal unit, modelled after him. Spinal cord wiring where his web shooters would be. Photoreactive visor instead of eyes. Muscle clusters designed for explosive vertical leap. Neural sync modules buried in the wrists and calves.

A Spider-Man, stripped of the man.

“Why?” he says, voice hoarse. “Why build this?”

“I don’t know yet,” you admit. “But someone out there sees you as more than just a vigilante nuisance. They see you as a prototype. A formula. Something to replicate, mass-produce, and control.”

He sinks onto the edge of your couch, folder open in his lap. The diagram stares back at him, accusatory and unforgiving. It’s him. The curve of the stance, the wide-set shoulders, the way the unit’s balance favours its left side, just like he does when his knee’s aching. They didn’t just study him; they dissected him.

“How long have you known?” he asks quietly.

“A few days,” you say. “I wanted to be sure. Didn’t want to come to you with a hunch and nothing to back it up.”

“And you texted me anyway.”

You meet his gaze across the room. “Because it’s you, Spider-Man. Look, I know you think hiding your identity keeps people safe. But this? This proves it doesn’t. They’re coming for you whether or not I know your face. They already have your gait, your voice, your power levels. They’re not trying to figure out who you are anymore. They don’t care. They just want to turn you into something they can sell.”

He sets the folder down. His hands won’t stop shaking. “How… did you find out about all this?”

“Don’t get mad.”

When Phainon doesn’t say anything, you sigh and look away. 

“I visited the old R&D site. Alone.”

“Are you serious?” Phainon gestures so wildly that his web cartridge knocks against the back of your chair. He stands abruptly. The folder falls from his lap, papers scattering across your rug. “You went alone. To Theoros. To Styxia-backed labs that specialise in high-risk bioweapons. Without calling me.”

“I called you when I had proof—”

“You shouldn’t have gone in the first place!” he explodes. “What the hell were you thinking? Do you want to get dissected? Shot? Replaced with one of those—those things—”

“You weren’t talking to me!” you shout back. “What was I supposed to do? Wait until they raided another warehouse?”

“I was trying to protect you,” Phainon grits out. “And instead you threw yourself into a place that could’ve had armed personnel, pressure sensors, live prototypes—anything.”

You throw your arms out. “And what was the alternative? Sit on my hands while they build a weaponised version of you? Wait until there’s a second Spider-Man crawling up government buildings with a built-in kill switch? I don’t know how to sit still, Spider-Man. Not when I’m this scared.”

“You think I’m not scared? You think I haven’t been replaying every second of that night at the docks? That I haven’t imagined a dozen versions of how it could’ve gone wrong? You think I’m not scared every time I don’t hear from you for a few hours?”

“Then why didn’t you say any of that? Why did you shut me out?”

“Because if I said it out loud,” Phainon spits, pacing again, hands flying to his head, “then it would be real. It would be—you would be real. Not just someone chasing me on my patrol route. Not just someone who’s helping me out. You’d be a person I’d have to lose.”

You blink, thrown. “You think you’re going to lose me?”

“I know I could,” he says, almost like it hurts. “Because it’s already happened. Every time I get close—every single time—it ends the same way. Either they die, or I leave first. Because that’s the only choice I ever get.”

He doesn’t even hear how loud his voice has gotten, doesn’t notice how he’s gesturing wildly, storming back and forth across your living room.

“I can’t protect you from this. I can’t protect you from them. I can’t even protect myself. You want me to give you a name, but that’s the one thing I can’t do. Because once you have that, it’s over. You’ll look at me differently. Or worse—you’ll stop looking at me. And I can’t—God, I can’t stand that.

“Do you know what it’s like to see yourself turned into a blueprint? To see a file full of numbers and heat signatures and recorded footage and realise someone out there has broken you down into a fucking algorithm? That they don’t see a person—they see a weapon?

“I didn’t sign up for this shit! I didn’t even sign up to be Spider-Man. I just… was. And now they’ve taken that and turned it into something else. Something that walks like me and fights like me and could kill you without thinking. And the worst part is that if you’d died at that lab, I—no one would’ve even known. You’d just be another casualty they scrub from the records—and that would’ve been my fault.”

His voice has dropped to a whisper. His hands are trembling.

He doesn’t realise until you do—until your eyes go wide, and your breath catches like you’ve been sucker-punched.

His mask is gone, not pushed halfway up, or nudged for a sip of tea. Gone. Somewhere in the middle of that breakdown—while he was talking too fast and breathing too hard and tearing at his suit like it was suffocating him—he took it off.

His hair’s a mess, flattened by the fabric, and his face is flushed, mouth parted slightly as he sucks in breath after breath. There’s a bruise blooming along his cheekbone, and a cut healing just beneath his chin. He looks young, with silvery-white hair and bright blue eyes that are rimmed with the redness that comes with exhaustion and caffeine.

“...Oh,” Phainon says, stunned. “Shit.”

You blink, slowly, as though grounding yourself in reality again. “You took your mask off.”

He starts to lift a hand to cover his face, instinct kicking in too late. Gently, more carefully than anything else that’s passed between you tonight, you reach up and take the mask from his hand. Your fingers brush his knuckles, and he flinches, but he doesn’t pull away.

Phainon drops his hand and lets out a shallow breath. “I… didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to,” you echo. “Jesus.”

Phainon can’t say anything, so he simply stands there, feeling as naked as the day he first stepped onto a rooftop and dared to believe he could protect anyone. His heart pounds loud in his ears. He can feel it in his throat, his fingertips, his teeth.

“Can I— Will you tell me your name?” you whisper.

He wets his lips, and says, quietly, “Phainon.”

You nod, once, and say it back. “Phainon,” you repeat, like it’s a truth you’ll guard with your life. “Okay. I’m not afraid of you. And I’m not leaving. So either you let me help, because you asked me to, or I break into another lab and do it anyway. Your call.”

Phainon stares at you: you, with your voice barely holding steady; you, standing in your living room full of maps and stolen schematics and caffeine-fueled desperation; you, tired and stubborn and loyal enough to make him fall to his knees.

“Okay,” he says quietly.

You reach out, then, and Phainon thinks you’re handing his mask back to him, but instead, you wrap your arms tightly around his torso and pull him into you. 

He doesn’t move at first. You’re pressed to him, arms wrapped tight around his torso like you mean to hold the pieces of him together before they scatter to the wind. Your cheek rests just above his heart, right where it beats too loud and too fast, thudding like it’s trying to break free from his ribs. His hands hover uselessly in the air for a second, fingers twitching, stunned by the contact, by the way you came to him so easily, so willingly, after all of it.

He exhales. The air leaves his lungs like it’s been caged there for years. His shoulders drop an inch. His spine slackens just enough for him to bend down.

He lifts his arms slowly, like he’s learning how to move again. His fingers brush your back, light and unsure, but you don’t flinch. You don’t pull away. So he lets his palms flatten, one at the curve of your spine, the other curling loosely over your shoulder.

He breathes in.

God, it’s you. Soap and smoke and citrus shampoo. A hundred times he’s seen you crouched beside him on rooftops or hunched over a laptop, bathed in the blue glow of surveillance feeds. But this is different. This is you, pressed to him like you belong there, like the world outside can wait. 

His grip tightens, no longer tentative—arms looping fully around you now, hands grasping like he needs to keep you tethered, like if he lets go, you’ll disappear back into a nightmare or a lab or a headline with your name misspelled. His chin tips forward until his face rests in the hollow of your neck, and it’s instinct, not thought that guides him there. His breath stirs the hair at your temple. He swallows hard.

(It’s you. It’s you, and you’re warm and safe and alive in his arms.)

Phainon closes his eyes and pretends like everything else in the living room doesn’t exist—the weaponised duplicate in the file folder, the surveillance footage broken down to frames per second, the machine built in his image but stripped of everything human. He forgets about the mask you dropped, crumpled on the floor, and the voice in his head screaming that he’s made a mistake, that you’ll leave once the shock fades, that nothing good can come of this.

Instead, he listens to your heartbeat. He memorises the slope of your shoulders beneath his palms, the soft way your hand has fisted in the fabric of his suit like you’re afraid he might vanish, too.

It comes to him—terrible and quiet and so obvious it aches.

He could be in love with you.

Not the kind of love he can shove into the seams of his second life. Not the safe, arm’s-length affection that lives behind jokes and shared intel and the occasional brush of fingers across a coffee cup. No, this is the dangerous kind. The kind that makes you stupid. The kind that makes you soft. (The kind that makes you want.)

He wants a future he doesn’t dare picture. He wants to walk down the street with you in broad daylight. He wants to take off the suit and be Phainon, just Phainon, and know you’ll still look at him the same way.

(His hands tremble. You hold him tighter.)

It’s that simple. You don’t push. You don’t speak. You just breathe against his chest, steady and unwavering and constant, like you always are. Phainon presses his mouth to your hair. His eyes sting, but he doesn’t cry.

It’s five in the morning, and Phainon is walking down a cracked sidewalk beside you with his suit half-zipped, his mask stuffed into your hoodie pocket, and a buzzing under his skin that he’s trying really hard to ignore. You’re beside him, arms crossed against the early chill, leading the way like this—walking, together—is something you do all the time.

It’s not a date, he tells himself. It’s really not. 

But you mentioned waffles. And your voice had been tired but warm when you said it. And he hadn’t wanted to leave yet.

So here he is. Not skipping, because he’s got some dignity, but definitely walking with a little too much bounce for someone who found out he’s being reverse-engineered into a murder bot a little over an hour ago.

The city’s quieter than it ever gets during daylight, the kind of hush that only exists in the space between the last bar closing and the first train running. A low mist clings to the ground, curling around traffic lights and benches and empty newsstands. It’s eerie, maybe, but not unfriendly. Like the city’s holding its breath right along with him.

Phainon doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be feeling. Dread, maybe. Paranoia. Existential terror. But instead, all he feels is this weightless hum in his chest, the kind that makes you walk a little taller, swing your arms a little looser. The kind that makes you forget you’re still half in your gear and probably look completely insane.

You glance over at him as you cross the street, the corner of your mouth twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Staring at me.”

Phainon stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m not,” he says, too quickly.

“You are,” you say, not unkindly. “Like I’m going to vanish or something.”

Phainon rubs the back of his neck, grateful for the relative darkness. “Well. I mean. You did break into a lab by yourself, so I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Okay, fair,” you concede, nudging him lightly with your elbow. “Still. You’ve got that face on. The one that makes me feel like I’ve got, like, a mysterious smear of radioactive ink on my forehead.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You do have a face,” you say. “That’s the problem now, remember?”

Phainon huffs out a laugh and looks away, suddenly all too aware of the morning air on his skin, of the fact that he’s not wearing his mask, of how easy it is to joke with you. He’s not sure what scares him more: being turned into a weapon, or feeling like this.

You walk in comfortable silence for a block or two, hands tucked into your sleeves, your breath fogging slightly in the chill. The sky is bruising lavender and gold now, the edges of dawn beginning to soften everything.

Phainon chances a glance at you. You’re watching the sky change colour like it’s a magic trick only you know the secret to, your expression soft and unreadable. There’s a crease between your brows, faint, but it smooths a little when a breeze picks up and rustles your hair. You look tired, not just from the lack of sleep, but from the kind of exhaustion that sinks into a person when they’ve seen too much, done too much, but still can’t stop moving.

The diner sign glows into view at the end of the street—warm yellow and flickering red, letters half-burnt out so it reads INE R & GILL if you squint. There’s a figure leaning against the counter inside, wiping down the same spot with a rag that’s probably older than both of you, and the place smells faintly of grease and syrup.

You pause in front of the glass door, one hand on the handle. “This place okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Phainon says before he can stop himself.

You smile and push open the door. The bell on top jingles, and the waitress glances up from the far end of the counter. She gives you both a once-over, raises a tired brow at Phainon’s boots and long sleeves, and gestures to a booth without asking questions. That’s the nice thing about New Okhema City; nobody cares too much.

You slide into a booth with a contented sigh. Phainon sits across from you, knees knocking against the underside of the table. The vinyl squeaks under his weight, and the Formica is sticky, but he doesn’t care. His hands feel strangely clean without gloves. The menu sticks to his fingers when he flips it open.

You don’t even bother looking at yours. “Waffles, scrambled eggs, hash browns. Extraw syrup.”

“That specific, huh?” Phainon says.

You shrug. “Gotta know your diner defaults.”

The waitress arrives with two glasses of water and a notepad. “You kids look like you’ve been up all night,” she says, though she can’t be more than a few years older than you and Phainon.

“We have,” you say sleepily, “but we cracked a supervillain conspiracy, so it was worth it.”

The waitress doesn’t blink. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” you say, and Phainon nods too, grateful. She leaves without another word.

Silence stretches between you again, but it’s easy now, filled with warmth. The sky outside shifts more boldly into gold and peach, casting long shadows against the window. Phainon leans back into the booth and lets himself exhale slowly, deeply.

Your foot brushes against his under the table. He freezes. You don’t move it.

He looks up, and your eyes meet his over the rim of your water glass. There’s something quiet there, soft around the edges—exhaustion, sure, but something else too. A kind of trust he’s not sure he deserves. (Still, it’s there.)

Phainon thinks about how this shouldn’t be possible. How the night started with fear and screaming and blueprints of his body, and somehow ended with this booth, this silence, this person across from him.

[18:04] Detective Brain: Spidey-lookalike broke into storage depot by Kephale Plaza. I’m already on scene. It’s not you, right?

[18:05] Detective Brain: Phainon. Please respond.

Phainon is already out the window by the time your second text comes through, barely bothering to latch it behind him. His fingers fumble for the web shooter at his wrist, and his heart is a fist hammering against his ribs. He almost misses the first jump—lands hard on the ledge and has to steady himself with a rough palm against brick.

He doesn’t even suit up properly. His gloves are half-fastened, the zipper of his suit stuck one-fourths of the way up his spine, but there’s no time to care. Phainon swings hard across the city’s mid-rises, momentum jerking through his shoulders, his aim slightly off with each launch. It doesn’t matter. He’ll take a bruised wrist if it gets him to Kephale Plaza thirty seconds faster.

Kephale Plaza is a glass-and-steel monstrosity, flanked by wide loading docks and a security perimeter that no longer seems to matter. Phainon can hear the distant thrum of police radios as he swings into the industrial district, following the echo of sirens. Squad cars line the street outside the storage depot, lights flashing in fractured red and blue across the cracked pavement. Officers are forming a perimeter, but there’s no crowd. They’re keeping it quiet.

He lands on the roof of an adjacent building, crouched low as his eyes sweep the scene. 

He finds you posted just outside the warehouse’s side entrance, pacing like you’re trying not to burst out of your own skin. Your bulletproof vest is cinched tight, and your standard issue sidearm is still holstered—but your fingers are twitching near it, like you’re weighing every possible outcome of the past ten minutes. Your hair’s tied back, but loose strands stick to your face from the sweat already clinging to your skin. He’s never seen you look so still and restless all at once.

He leaps down from the rooftop, landing in a crouch just behind a darkened patrol vehicle. No one sees him yet. He keeps to the shadows as he makes his war towards you.

The second you hear the shuffle of his boots, you whip around—and relax just as fast.

“Jesus,” you exhale, taking a step forward. “Okay. Okay, thank God. I wasn’t sure you’d even seen the message.”

“I left the second I did,” Phainon assures. “What’s the situation?”

Your lips tighten, and you turn, nodding for him to follow you a few paces away from the rest of the officers. Behind you, the front entrance to the warehouse stands yawning and dark, a single loading dock shutter half-raised.

“It showed up fifteen minutes ago,” you say, pulling out your phone and flicking to the security cam footage. You angle the screen towards him. “Took out the motion sensors, and walked in through a window on the north side. No sign of forced entry—it knew exactly where to go.”

The footage is grainy, flickering, but the figure is unmistakable.

It moves like him. Too much like him. In the footage, the figure slinks down the hallway with the same kind of gait Phainon sees in himself. Every footfall, every pause, every angle of entry—it’s like watching him pace through a mirror.

Only this version is sleeker, meaner. Its limbs are thicker with muscle plating, and its suit—if you could even call it that—is matte-black with streaks of purple circuitry flashing along the ribs and spine. There’s no emblem, no mask markings, just a blank, silver faceplate that reflects the ceiling lights like a shuttered camera lens. One blink and it’s gone, vanishing into the blind spots of the camera feed like it knows exactly where every pixel falls.

Phainon swears under his breath. “They built it,” he mutters. “That’s Flame Reaver.”

You glance up. “You sure?”

He nods. He’s gone through your stolen documents so many times that it feels like they’ve been branded into his skull. “Positive. Same proportions, same gait. But it’s not scanning the building. It’s buying time.”

“For what?”

Phainon doesn’t answer at first. He’s too focused on the still-looping footage. The moment the prototype slips out of view, he sees it—a flicker of something. It wasn’t raiding. It wasn’t looking for intel. It walked into that depot like it had a schedule to keep.

The realisation hits him like a slap to the sternum.

“Wait,” he says sharply. “Where’s your radio?”

You blink. “What?”

“Your radio,” he repeats, scanning your hip and vest and frowning when he sees the wire coiled but your earpiece missing. “You always keep it on.”

“I took it out for a second. There was interference on the line.”

“No.” Phainon turns, scanning the scene again with a new sharpness in his eyes. “No, that’s wrong. This—this whole thing—it’s not a distraction. This is the distraction.”

“What are you—”

His head whips around, eyes scanning the perimeter. You were just here, right beside him, one step behind. Your breath was fogging the air. You were talking.

Now you’re gone.

Phainon’s heart lurches.

“Where is she?” he hisses aloud, and suddenly he’s on the move—scrambling up onto the nearest shipping crate, trying to get height, trying to see. The precinct line’s holding firm around the building. There’s no breach. No one has come or gone.

Except you. Except whoever—or whatever—came for you.

He swings to the rooftop in seconds, breath tight in his lungs, wind clawing past his ears. His eyes sweep the blocks below in sharp, jerking passes—alley to alley, rooftop to ground, looking for anything that feels off.

On the north side, nestled between two disused factories and a rusted chain-link fence, an unmarked van idles in a narrow alley, almost hidden in the dip of a service road. Its brake lights pulse once, too soft to draw attention, but deliberate. A second later, the engine stutters and dies. The door clicks shut. Phainon stills.

From this height, the sounds of the city thin into a muffled hush: sirens echoing somewhere far behind him, police radios buzzing with disjointed chatter. But that alley, that van—it’s too smooth, too clean. There’s no urgency to it, no panic. Just the slow, mechanical precision of something following protocol.

A figure steps away from the van, heading down a side street without looking back. Their stride is steady. Familiar.

Phainon freezes.

It looks like you: the same jacket, same utility belt, even the soft sway of your hair against your collarbone. Your badge glints faintly under the streetlight—your badge. Not a replica.

Except it’s wrong. You’re not there.

You wouldn’t leave the perimeter without backup, wouldn’t ditch your squad without a word, or abandon the very scene that had triggered every instinct in your body just ten minutes ago. At least, not without telling him.

And whoever—or whatever—this is, it’s walking away like it knows the exact timing window it’s working with. Like it wants him to follow.

“They’re splitting us up,” Phainon breathes, the words ripping themselves from his throat. Suddenly, the air feels thinner, sharper. His lungs burn.

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think before launching himself off the rooftop with a grunt, webline snapping out, slicing through the fog-damp air. He swings low, barely clearing a lamppost, and lands in a crouch beside the van. He can smell petrol, faintly.

Phainon yanks the door open. It’s empty—no driver, or equipment. Just the sharp, sterile scent of plastic and ozone. It’s a burner vehicle, then. One they didn’t plan on keeping.

“Damn it,” Phainon curses under his breath. He spins on his heel, already moving—until he hears a faint crackle. The buzz of a police radio. Your police radio.

He follows the sound, weaving between crates and dumpsters until he skids to a stop at the mouth of the alley, and finds your comm unit on the ground. One of the earbuds still dangles loosely from the coil, blinking a faint blue every few seconds. The rest of the radio is scuffed; not broken, just discarded deliberately, placed just far enough from the van to suggest you followed something willingly—until it was too late.

A boot scuff mars the concrete nearby. There is another drag mark next to—a toe, maybe. Someone shifted. Or struggled. Phainon crouches low, brushing his fingers across the ground. His mind races through probabilities, scenarios. None of them are good.

It wasn’t just a prototype in the warehouse. That was the shell, a puppet to get the cops talking, to trigger an investigation. Something visible, something obvious. 

But this was the play: lure him in with the decoy, use it to lock the precinct’s attention, then send the real threat to steal what they really needed—you.

Phainon grits his teeth as he stares down at your radio. His mind flashes to the schematics you’d shown him on your wall. Neural mimicry, behavioural mirroring, photo-accurate masking. It wasn’t a bluff. They had footage, voice samples, enough to build a close-range approximation of him. They’d studied him down to the limp in his left knee.

Of course they had enough on you. You were the officer who was most often assigned with the task of tracking him down, after all.

He thinks of your laugh; the way you tilt your head when you’re about to argue; the furrow in your brows when you’re thinking too deeply. If they’ve copied that—you—down to the way your voice hitches when you say his name—

His stomach flips.

“They took her,” he says aloud, more to steady himself than anything else. “They took her.”

Phainon’s fingers twitch, curling tight into fists. His web shooters press firm against his wrists. His gloves are still half-fastened. He fixes them now, fastens every strap, zips his suit the rest of the way up roughly. The breath in his chest is shallow and burning, but his hands are steady. 

He swings back up to the rooftop, lands in a three-point crouch, and bolts across the ledge without a second thought. Every muscle in his body knows where he’s going: the old R&D site, the remnants of what used to be the government-sanctioned Theoros Labs.

It’s a twenty-minute drive through the industrial corridor to get there. He’ll make it in seven.

Every swing feels sharper now, each launch of webbing tighter, more exact. The buildings blur past him, and his breath comes in hard, rhythmic exhales. He can’t afford to be wrong. Can’t afford a detour. The further they pull you away, the less chance he has of reaching you before whatever they built decides it doesn’t need you alive.

Phainon lands on a rooftop, skids into a roll, fires another web and propels him back into the air. Hold on, he thinks. Please, just hold on.

The air near Theoros Labs smells like ozone and old metal.

Phainon lands hard on the broken rooftop of a utility shed just outside the main building. It’s darker here than it should be. The outer perimeter lights have all been shut off, either manually or by remote override. Only a few flickering emergency bulbs remain, casting a jaundiced glow over the facility’s skeletal frame. Ivy creeps up the cracked walls, half-swallowing faded corporate logos and biohazard signs. The chain-link fencing has been torn down in places and rusted through in others. 

It’s too quiet.

He moves carefully, sticking close to the shadows as he approaches the main entrance—what’s left of it. The glass doors have been forced open, one of them dangling from its hinges. Inside, the lobby lies still and cold, floor tiles coated in dust. But someone’s been through recently. Fresh boot prints disturb the grime, overlapping in frantic patterns. You were here. He follows your footprints past collapsed hallways and rusted biohazard doors. Most of the rooms are stripped—just empty labs and decaying workstations—but the deeper he gets, the cleaner it becomes. Dust thins. Wires appear. Lights flicker to life as he passes.

They’ve reactivated the lower level. Phainon descends a wide staircase lined with old safety tape. The sub-basement has power. Soft white fluorescents hum overhead. The floor is concrete, sealed and buffed, with clean drag marks across it. The walls are lined with black server towers, cords feeding into sealed doors.

Phainon stops mid-step; there’s a tingle in the back of his neck. Someone else is here, too. His muscles go taut, fingers curling half-ready near his web shooters.

“Ah, Mr. Spider-Man,” a voice drawls, drawing out the vowels. “Or should I say… Phainon?”

There’s a hiss behind one of the sealed doors to the left. A vent releases a thin ribbon of steam.

“Don’t be shy. You’ve already made it farther than most,” the voice says, and this time, it’s accompanied by footsteps echoing against the polished concrete, slow and confident. “I imagine you have questions. That’s good. I admire curiosity. It’s a very human trait.”

The man who steps into view is tall, lean, draped in a sleep lab coat far too pristine for a place like this. His shoulder-length hair is slicked back, and most of his face is covered by a visor. His ID badge is clipped to his chest, name and clearance codes etched in a crisp black print.

LYCURGUS – Division Lead, Neuroadaptive Intellitron Systems.

Lycurgus smiles like he’s greeting an old colleague. “This facility was never truly abandoned, you know. That was just a convenient myth. Theoros was… restructured. Privatised. Reoriented towards more ambitious pursuits.” He gestures to the space around him. “Welcome to our prototype cradle. Or, as we researchers like to call it, Stage Zero of Irontomb.”

Phainon’s voice is low, sharp. “Where is she?”

“Your detective, yes?” Lycurgus says. “She is safe. Unharmed, though mildly sedated. She’s being prepped for mapping. It’s better if she doesn’t wake up mid-scan—the sensory feedback can be unpleasant.”

Phainon steps forward. “You’re going to let her go. Now.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” Lycurgus tilts his head. “She’s far too important. As are you.”

He moves towards a glass-paneled observation window. Behind it, a dark chamber pulses with slow, blue strobe lighting. Machines hiss softly within. Something looms in the shadows—taller than a man, hunched forward, hooked into a loading rig like a sleeping animal.

“I know what you think we’re doing here,” Lycurgus continues. “Mass production. Automation. Violence. And, to be fair, yes—we are building weapons. But not just weapons. We’re building evolution.”

“You’re building copies,” Phainon corrects.

Lycurgus lets out a chuckle, quiet and indulgent. “Flame Reaver was a crude iteration. Incomplete, too reliant on mimicry. It served its purpose—chased its prey, gathered its data, misled your little precinct. But Irontomb… Irontomb will do more than chase. It will predict, integrate, override, think.”

He turns back to Phainon. The placid smile fades, replaced with something hungrier.

“We’ve spent years reverse-engineering your every decision. Every rooftop sprint. Every moment of hesitation. Every kill you didn’t make. We mapped your instincts, modeled your reflex latency, simulated the split-second calculations behind your webbing patterns. All of it.”

He taps the side of his own head. “But it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. Something the data couldn’t replicate.”

“You mean her.”

“Yes.” Lycurgus’ smile returns, tight and reverent. “Your control variable. Your compass. We needed to understand how a creature like you formed attachments, what altered your judgement. What humanised you.”

Phainon’s voice is a growl. “She’s not a variable.”

“She’s your pivot, Spider-Man. The reason your risk matrix fluctuates. The reason you pause before you strike. She made you less efficient, and, therefore, more valuable. Which is why we modeled her too. Her responses, her patterns, her tone modulation, her biometric data when she’s afraid. It’s poetic, really. We used her to finish the algorithm that began with you. The perfect balance of speed and restraint.”

The lights behind the glass pulse brighter. The figure in the chamber stirs. It’s not the Flame Reaver. It’s something else.

Its silhouette is bulkier than his, but it looks wrong. It has slender limbs with plated joints; a split mask—half red, half mirrored black; a narrow torso fitted with impact dispersal panels. Something that looks like a spine runs down its back, glowing faintly green. Phainon doesn’t recognise the material, but he can feel the heat rolling off it through the glass.

“It’s a neural sync model,” Lycurgus says, not even trying to hide his pride, “coded from your reflexes and her empathy thresholds. It’s capable of piloting independently or under network command. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t panic. And, most importantly, it doesn’t forget.”

Phainon’s heart hammers. His blood feels like it’s gone cold. “You’re trying to make a Spider-Man that doesn’t need a person inside.”

Lycurgus meets his eyes. “Exactly.”

The machine twitches, then steps forward. Its footfalls are silent. Too smooth.

“You two were only ever reference material,” Lycurgus intones. “And now that the template’s complete—well. All we need are the final scans.”

“Where is she? Where is she?” 

It’s all Phainon can do to stop himself from ripping Lycurgus’ throat out. The scientist merely adjusts the sleeve of his lab coat, as if the demand were a mild inconvenience.

“She’s nearby,” he says coolly. “Lower containment. Cell B-4, off the neural calibration wing. You won’t get far without triggering lockdown, of course. And even if you do—by the time you reach her, Irontomb will already be online.”

Behind the glass, the machine lifts its head. The sound it makes isn’t mechanical. It’s worse—soft, distorted, like the playback of a familiar voice through cracked speakers. It twitches once, then again, shoulders rolling into a combat stance eerily like his own.

Phainon doesn’t wait. He fires a webline directly at Lycurgus and yanks. The man stumbles, but Phainon slams him against the server wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Wires clatter. A tower crashes sideways.

Lycurgus laughs, even as Phainon pins him in place. “You think you’re here to save her,” he says, breathless, “but you’re too late. She’s already part of it.”

“I swear to God—” Phainon hisses, pressing the heel of his palm to Lycurgus’ throat. “I swear to God, if you touched her—”

“I didn’t have to,” the man croaks. “She volunteered. Not knowingly, of course. But those scans she took from our systems? They included a compressed tracer file. As soon as she opened them, our systems opened her. The sync began the moment she pieced it together. Everything she knows—tactical behaviour, voice modulation, interrogation strategy—it’s all feeding the AI as we speak.”

“You fed off of us.” Phainon’s grip tightens. Lycurgus grunts.

“Yes,” the scientist says. “And you should be proud. Irontomb won’t just replicate your choices—it will refine them, strip away all the guilt, the softness. It will be cleaner. Smarter. Perfect.”

Something shudders behind the glass. The observation lights dim.

A low thrum starts up from behind the glass, like a heartbeat filtered through static. The strobe pulses once, then again, casting the chamber in a deep, electric violet. Inside, Irontomb lifts its hand with unsettling grace and slowly curls its fingers into a fist. The joints click into place with too much precision. A webline ejects—thin, metallic, laced with a crackle of electric current—and shoots into the rafters. It latches onto the ceiling brace, and just like that, the chamber is empty.

The reinforced door behind Phainon slams open with a hydraulic hiss. He whirls around. Lycurgus barely has time to flinch before Phainon’s hand closes around his collar and hurls him to the ground. The scientist crashes into the wall beside a rack of servers, skull cracking against plastic. A second later, the emergency klaxons explode to life, screaming overhead in jagged bursts.

CONTAINMENT BREACH. HALL A-7. PRIORITY UNIT ACTIVATED.

Red warning lights flare to life, pulsing in harsh rhythm. The sterile corridor floods with shadow and noise. Phainon bolts.

There’s no time to think—he fires a webline into the open mouth of the elevator shaft and dives. Wind roars past his ears. He drops three floors in seconds, catches himself on a rusted support beam, and slams down onto the concrete sublevel with a bone-jarring thud. His boots hit the ground hard enough to rattle the pipes overhead.

The lower corridors are not like the rest of the facility. There’s no dust, no decay. These halls are clean, too clean—like the world above was only a façade. Bright, artificial light hums from the ceiling. Every footstep echoes.

He sprints forward, ducking under support beams and sliding past corners. NEURAL CALIBRATION →, the wall tells him. He follows the signs, pulse thundering. Every flicker of motion at the edge of his vision makes him tense. Every blinking light feels like a red eye watching.

Phainon skids to a halt in front of a door labelled Cell B-4.

The door is solid, made of reinforced steel with a flat-panel biometric reader. There’s no handle, or keypad. Phainon swears. “Come on, come on—”

From the other side, something shifts. He hears a voice, muffled and strained. “...Phainon?”

He chokes on relief. “I’m here.”

You’re alive.

He scrambles to his web shooter, fingers flying over the dial. He adjusts the pressure valve, toggles it to maximum discharge, and fires at the scanner from point-blank range. The panel erupts in sparks. Circuits shriek. The door eases open, exhaling sterile, recycled air into the hallway.

You’re inside, strapped to a containment recliner, limbs limp but intact. Wires trail from your temples, your clavicle, your pulse points. A monitor nearby is still running diagnostics—waveforms still climbing and falling in time with your heart. Your eyes crack open, bleary, and your head lolls to the side.

“Hi,” you whisper, voice thin as gauze.

“Hi, yourself,” Phainon says, crossing the room with long strides. His voice breaks.

His hands go straight to the leads, fingers trembling as he tears them free. Adhesive snaps off skin. Electrodes clatter to the floor. He moves gently, cradling your jaw to keep your head upright as he removes the final lead from behind your ear.

He lifts you from the chair. Your body sags against his chest, legs folding beneath you. You groan softly as your feet try to hold your weight, but he doesn’t let them. He tightens his grip until you’re fully anchored against him. You smell like static and sedation. Like cold metal and something scorched.

“Irontomb,” you breath, half-slurred. “It’s awake. It… used me. Ran simulations. My voice. My—”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know. We’re getting out of here.”

You lean heavier into him with every step he takes away from the chair. Your breathing is uneven, shallow. But Phainon can tell you’re coming back—your pulse steadying, your fingers twitching where they rest near his collar. He wants nothing more than to get you out, to break every wall between here and the surface, to make you forget this place ever existed.

But the walls hum. The lights tremble. He’s not fast enough. The reinforced door behind  him explodes inward.

Irontomb barrels through in a burst of silver and red. The strobe overhead flickers with the force of its entry, casting the scene in freeze-frame shadows. It doesn’t look like a machine as it charges. Phainon spins, turning his back to the blast to shield you. Debris pelts his shoulder as the room shakes. Irontomb stops, silent and still, in the doorway. Its mirrored mask splits slightly, revealing a narrow gleam of green light that pulses in rhythm with the lithium core humming somewhere deep inside it.

The voice it speaks with is your own.

“Phainon.”

The blood drains from his face.

You stir weakly in his arms. “That’s not—that’s not me—”

“I know,” he whispers.

It tilts its head, mimicking the motion exactly. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s within ten feet. Your aim skews left. Your heart rate spikes.”

Phainon doesn’t respond. He adjusts his grip around your waist, gently easing you towards the floor behind him.

“You always protect the variable, even when the variable is hunting you down,” Irontomb says. “That makes you predictable.”

Phainon doesn’t wait for it to move. He fires. A blast of webbing snaps towards the machine’s legs—but it dodges, not quickly or instinctively, but perfectly. It anticipates his angle, catches the web in midair with one mechanical hand, and yanks hard.

Phainon is ripped forward off his feet and slammed into the wall hard enough to fracture plaster. He recovers fast, flipping up and sticking to the ceiling. His shoulder throbs. The moment Irontomb lunges again, he launches, meeting it midair. They clash in a whirl of webbing, steel, and bone. Irontomb fights like it’s studied him for years—and it has. It parries his kicks, reads the tension in his arms before he swings. It knows where he’ll move before he does.

Every strike Phainon throws is met with a calculated block, every dodge answered with a counter-blow. The machine is faster. Stronger. But not desperate—and Phainon is desperate.

“The server room!” you shout, and Phainon sees you staggering up to your feet, still valiantly trying to fight whatever they injected into your bloodstream. “Take it to the server room! Follow me!”

Phainon doesn’t hesitate. He hears your voice—unsteady, but clear—and that’s all he needs. He spins midair, flips back onto the ceiling, and fires a pair of quick weblines towards Irontomb’s shoulders. They stick, just barely. The machine lunges to rip them off, but Phainon yanks hard, using the momentum to slam Irontomb face-first into the far wall with a screech of metal on metal. The moment the machine hits, Phainon’s already moving.

“Go!” you shout again, breath ragged. “Don’t fight it here—they control the lithium core from the server room!”

Phainon tears towards you, lands beside you, and sweeps an arm around your waist to stabilise you just as you start to buckle. Your skin’s cold with effort, sweat sheening your forehead, but your grip on his suit is firm. 

“Can you run?” he pants.

“Can you carry me?”

He grins through bloodied teeth. “Always.”

He hooks one arm under your legs and lifts you effortlessly, pivoting towards the corridor just as Irontomb peels itself from the wall. The lights in the hallway ahead flash red with the alarm, casting everything in pulses of warning. Phainon doesn’t look back. He runs.

You clutch at his shoulder as he barrels down the corridor, webbing the corners ahead of him to pivot faster. Irontomb’s footsteps are thunder behind you—precise, mechanical, relentless. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t pant. It just follows, its gait perfectly even as it absorbs every new piece of data from your movement, your trajectory, your speed.

“It’s learning again,” you murmur.

Phainon grits his teeth. “Tell me where to go.”

“Left!” you gasp, pointing weakly down the branching corridor as you cling to his shoulder. “The blueprints said the server room was by the freight lift, and I—I stole Lycurgus’ key card before he sedated me—”

Phainon veers sharply, feet sliding for purchase on the slick floor as he swings you into the left hallway. Behind him, Irontomb adjusts its trajectory instantly, recalibrating mid-chase, its movements eerily silent save for the low whir of its servos and the electric buzz of its core. Every footstep lands with surgical precision, not wasting an ounce of energy.

He finds the lift shaft up ahead, the gate already torn off its hinges—someone had passed through here in a hurry. Phainon doesn’t stop running. He fires a webline to the upper scaffolding and swings both of you through the open shaft.

The moment you’re both airborne, Irontomb enters the shaft behind you. You hear it climbing. It doesn’t need webbing. It’s fast, powerful, climbing straight up the walls like a spider. A cold burst of static prickles the back of your neck as you look over Phainon’s shoulder and see its split-face mask glowing faintly with that same green hum pulsing in time with your own heartbeat.

“Don’t look down,” Phainon mutters through clenched teeth.

“You mean don’t look up,” you reply, voice tight.

He doesn’t argue. Two more floors. That’s all you need.

Phainon angles towards the next level’s opening, yanks hard on the web, and swings both of you clean through it. You hit the ground hard, momentum rolling you both across the floor in a rough tumble. He absorbs most of the impact—shoulder first, then hip—but keeps you tucked in his arms the whole way.

The server room’s door looms ahead, sealed with thick glass and reinforced by a biometric panel.

“Can you override it?” he asks, already placing you down on your feet.

You stagger once, then nod. “I—I can try.”

Phainon presses a palm to your lower back, steadying you as you stumble towards the wall-mounted keypad. You swipe your stolen access card—Lycurgus’ clearance still hot in the system—and slam your hand against the override scanner. It flashes yellow, then green.

The second the server room door hisses open, Phainon knows it’s wrong. The air is too clean, too still, not like a hospital, but lifeless, like the room itself doesn’t care if he walks in or burns alive. Server towers stretch in columns across the floor, blinking. The lights aren’t just white, they’re clinical, buzzing just above his pain threshold. Everything smells like copper and static and scorched plastic.

At the far end, housed behind reinforced glass, is the core. It pulses, like a heartbeat, except it’s not alive. It’s lithium, it’s electricity, it’s something that was never supposed to breathe—but it is, somehow.

He doesn’t like it.

He crosses the threshold, half-dragging you with him. You’re a weight he doesn’t mind carrying—you’re grounding, real, a reminder that not everything in this godforsaken place is synthetic or made in a lab.

“I’ll buy us a minute,” he mutters.

You don’t respond. You’re already gone—mentally, physically—moving with purpose even though you can barely stay on your feet. He wants to help you, wants to make you sit down, but he doesn’t. You’ve always been like this: stubborn, focused, razor-sharp under pressure. He admires it even when it scares him.

He stations himself at the door, arms braced and knees bent. His ribs hurt. His head’s still ringing from the last slam against the wall. But adrenaline is louder than pain.

The wall explodes. He hears it before he sees it—the thrum of Irontomb’s feet, the deep thunk-thunk-thunk of heavy footsteps.

“Phainon,” it says again, in your voice. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s—”

“You said that already, dipshit,” Phainon snarls, hurling himself forward.

He slams into Irontomb. The impact jars through every vertebra in his spine, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give it time to recalibrate. His shoulder clips its chest hard enough to knock them both off balance, and they go crashing through a row of server towers in a spray of sparks and shattering plex.

Irontomb hits the floor, skidding, its limbs flailing for a fraction of a second. Phainon’s already on it, knee to the chestplate, webbing its arm to the ceiling in a single fluid movement.

“You don’t get to use her voice,” he spits, voice hoarse, hands shaking as he fires again. Webs stick to its mask, its joints, anything he can reach. “You don’t get to be her.”

Irontomb doesn’t flinch. Its head tilts again, that creepy mimicry sparking rage like gasoline in his chest.

“She is a variable,” it says, still in your voice. “All decisions lead back to her. All risk converges.”

He grits his teeth. “Shut the fuck up.”

It wrenches its arm free from the ceiling and drives a knee into his ribs. Something cracks—he doesn’t have time to find out what. The air is knocked out of him, but he rolls, using the momentum to web-sling up to the overhead rigging.

He fires a line down, yanking hard. Metal groans, and a rack of exposed conduit tears free, crashing down onto Irontomb’s legs. The machine stumbles, crushed under the weight for a beat too long. Enough for Phainon to dive.

He hits it again, fists slamming into metal, fury blinding him. He doesn’t have a plan anymore, doesn’t need one. He just needs to keep it away from you. Even as he fights, he hears the beep of the console across the room, feels the glow of the core intensify.

You’re doing it. You’re actually doing it. Irontomb knows.

It shoves him back with unnatural strength. Phainon hits the wall hard enough to dent the steel. Before he can stand, it’s already halfway across the room, limbs unfurling, shoulder joints clicking, webline primed to fire—

“No,” Phainon croaks. He pushes himself up, panting, every inch of him burning, and fires. Web meets Irontomb’s leg. The pull is immediate. But instead of resisting, he yanks himself towards it—into it—slamming shoulder-first into the side of its neck just as it raises an arm to fire at you.

They crash to the floor, grappling, fists slamming into one another like machines. Except Phainon isn’t one. His body gives, bruises, bleeds. Irontomb’s doesn’t.

“Your biology is compromised,” it says. “You are inefficient, slower, in pain. The variable will not survive long without augmentation.”

“You’re not her,” he spits. “You don’t even sound like her.”

Out of the corner of his eye—through the haze of pain—he sees you rise to your feet, the console spitting warnings in every direction. Your hands hover over the control screen. One more step, one more command—

The core behind the glass begins to scream, not audibly, not to the ears, but inside his skull. Irontomb shudders beneath him. Its limbs jerk erratically, the green glow from its spine flickering. Sparks burst from the plates along its back.

You did it.

Phainon throws himself back just as Irontomb seizes violently, crashing to the floor, limbs twitching. Its mask fractures. Smoke pours from the base of its spine as the lithium core begins to destabilise.

He doesn’t exhale until the lights stop flickering. He’s already moving before the sound fades completely, his muscles sluggish, overworked, body bruised—but moving. His chest is burning. His lungs taste like copper and ozone. His ribs feel cracked. But none of it matters.

You’re still on your knees, hunched over the console, and for one horrifying second, you’re not moving.

“Hey.” He drops down beside you fast. “Hey—hey. You good? Talk to me.”

Your head lolls towards him, eyes glassy with exhaustion but alert. You nod and he catches your weight as you say sideways into his shoulder.

“I’m here,” you say, voice like sandpaper. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, you are.”

He pulls off his mask and folds one arm around your back and steadies you against him, his gloved hand cradling the back of your neck, just to prove you’re really here. Still warm. Still breathing. Your heart thuds weakly through your shirt when he presses his other hand to your chest, just fast enough to reassure him that the nightmare hasn’t reset.

You lean into him more fully, your head tucked under his jaw, like you’re afraid to look at the room behind you. Good. You shouldn’t have to. He’ll look for both of you.

The servers are smoking. Irontomb is a heap of metal now, sparking quietly beside the remains of a shattered cabinet. One of its hands is still twitching—reflex, probably. Not real. Not alive.

Still, Phainon keeps you close.

You shift, barely enough to get your mouth near his collarbone. “You okay?”

Phainon lets out something halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Gonna need twelve years of physical therapy. Minimum.”

Your breath catches on a tired laugh. It sounds like a miracle.

“You look like hell,” you murmur, slurring a little now, like the adrenaline’s finally wearing off.

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, pressing his forehead to yours. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

It’s three in the morning, and the sky is the colour of soot.

The city below doesn’t sleep so much as it holds its breath. The clamour of traffic has thinned to a distant hush, streetlamps stutter, and a single train rumbles across a bridge miles away. Sirens have long gone quiet. No engines scream. No horns beg for way. The night is still, but not gentle.

It’s a stillness born of aftermath—sharp-edged and hollow, as if the concrete itself remembers what happened.

Phainon hangs upside down from a rusting fire escape three storeys above your apartment window, legs hooked neatly over a bar that groans faintly under his weight. He’s perfectly still, suspended in gravity’s indifferent hold, his fingers hanging loose above the cracked sidewalk below.

This is how he thinks best lately: inverted, half a world away from the one that keeps asking him to play hero. The metal is cold through his suit. The air smells like dust.

He’s grown used to these late hours. He’s begun to need them.

After Lycurgus vanished off the grid, escaping into whatever black-market pipelines recycles men like him—scientists with messiah complexes and fingerprints scrubbed clean—Phainon finds his pulse only slows in those long hours between dawn and dusk.

He watches your window. It’s open again, just slightly. It always is now. He’s never asked you why.

The official line is a “biochemical systems breach.” It’s what the public got. But the real reports—classified, sealed, redacted in wide black strokes—told a different story. Theoros Labs didn’t just go rogue; they were funded, sponsored, protected. There was infrastructure behind Irontomb, names buried in layers of clearance, strings running all the way up into the gut of the government. Someone had authorised the prototypes. Someone had approved neural mapping. Someone had known what they were doing.

You’ve testified three times already. You come home each time stiff-backed and silent, eyes rimmed in exhaustion, your voice quieter than usual like you’re still somewhere inside the sterile halls of the oversight committee. You never tell him the details, but you don’t have to. He’s seen the files. He’s seen it in person. He knows what Irontomb made of your voice, how it pitched your laugh, how it whispered his name. He knows what it did to you.

You both have nightmares now.

Sometimes it’s Irontomb itself, eyes burning green behind a mirrored face, moving too perfectly to be real. Sometimes, it’s worse: it’s you, only not. It’s him, only cold. Versions of yourselves that weren’t forged in kindness or fear, but in numbers and algorithms, in prediction models and nerve signal scans. He wakes choking, palms clenched, sweat cold on his back.

That’s when he comes to you, climbing through the window, silent and unmasked. You never greet him. You just shift in bed, roll slightly toward the wall, and make room beneath the blanket without opening your eyes. Some nights he lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. Others, he faces you. Sometimes your fingers find each other under the sheets and tangle in that uncertain, half-asleep way that makes the silence easier to bear.

Phainon stares at your open window, at the way the curtain ghosts inward on the faintest breeze. The world looks soft from up here, but his world is down there, just beyond the windowsill.

He drops from the fire escape without a sound.

The thud of his landing on the balcony is soft. His boots press against the worn stone for half a second before he steps toward your window, one gloved hand brushing the glass as he ducks inside.

Your apartment is dim, lit only by the sleepy spill of orange streetlight filtering through the curtains. The air is warmer here, touched with the faint smell of cinnamon and coffee roast, and the remnants of detergent in your sheets.

You’re curled up under the blanket, spine facing him, shoulders rising and falling in that slow rhythm he’s memorised. He doesn’t know if you’re asleep or pretending. It doesn’t matter. You always know when he’s here. You always leave the window cracked just enough.

He toes off his boots quietly, then strips off the top half of his suit, the fabric sticking to sweat-damp skin. His body aches with something deeper than bruises, like fatigue. But it fades the moment he lowers himself into the mattress behind you.

(He’s in love with you, he’s pretty sure.)

“Do you want to date me?”

The question startles Phainon so much he almost drops the wire he’s threading back into place, and nearly slides off the metal railing altogether. He catches himself with a clatter, boots locking tighter to the beam, arms splayed for balance.

“...Sorry, what?” he calls down.

You’re standing several feet below him, arms crossed, watching him with an unreadable expression—equal parts brave and vulnerable. You don’t repeat the question. You just lift your chin a little, eyes steady.

Phainon blinks at you from his upside-down perch, hair hanging towards the concrete, the city stretching behind him. He’s in his suit, sleeves rolled up, mask bunched around his neck, grease on one knuckle, a thin wire looped loosely around his fingers. The early evening air is warm, golden light pooling along the skyline.

“You—you mean date-date?” he asks dumbly, like there’s another kind.

You nod once, not smiling. “Yeah. Date-date.”

Phainon stares at you, the wire still slack in his fingers. The sunlight’s catching on the edge of your cheekbone, painting it gold. You look so certain, so calm, like you haven’t just thrown his entire nervous system into a tailspin. 

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then he scrubs a hand over his face, smearing a bit of grease across his jawline. “Okay. That’s—just to be clear, you’re asking me if I want to date you. Like, go on dates, hold hands, maybe make out a little? Eat food together that isn’t waffles at five in the morning?”

“You make it sound so romantic,” you say dryly.

“I’m hanging upside down in my Spider-Man suit with wire cutters in my hand,” he says, voice rising an octave. “You kind of caught me off-guard.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You want me to come back when you’re right-side up?”

Phainon laughs, but it’s strained, caught somewhere between breathless and disbelieving. He shifts slightly on the bar. “No,” he says. “No, don’t—don’t go. I just…” His fingers curl loosely around the railing. “You really mean it? Like, seriously?”

You shrug, but your voice softens. “Why would I joke about that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, have you met me?”

You walk a step closer, now standing directly beneath him. “Yes. That’s kind of the point.”

Phainon stares at you, still upside down, still blinking like he hasn’t quite caught up with reality. His breath stutters, shallow through parted lips. The last of the sun has dipped below the horizon, and now the city is painted in deepening blue, rooftops etched in sharp lines against a sky the colour of cobalt ash.

You, however, are still golden; still lit from the inside out, like the question didn’t cost you anything, like you didn’t just tip the entire balance of his world in six words flat.

He swallows hard.

“I want to,” he says. “I want to date you.”

You nod, just once. But the tremble in your exhale betrays you. “Okay.”

You shift a little closer to where he’s hanging. The wind tousles your hair. You squint at him.

“Can I kiss you now?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth. No sound comes out.

His brain is screaming, Yes, God, yes, obviously, what do you think I’ve been dreaming about every night for the last year? But what actually escapes his mouth is an undignified, “I mean—yeah. If you want.”

You smile, small but warm, and step forward until you’re close enough that he can see the flecks of light in your irises. His pulse pounds at the base of his throat.

“Hold still,” you say.

And Phainon—Spider-Man, night-patroller, rooftop-skulker, awkward wreck of a man in love—holds so, so still.

You reach up, slowly. Your hand is warm as it cups the curve of his cheek. He flinches a little, not because of the touch, but because of how gentle it is. He’s not used to being touched like that. Your thumb brushes the edge of his jaw, dragging across the grease-stained skin. He forgets how to breathe.

Then, you lean in and kiss him.

It’s awkward, at first. The angle’s all wrong. You have to stand on your toes, and he has to tilt just right, his body swaying slightly with the breeze, but none of it matters—not when your lips touch his, not when the world goes so achingly, impossibly quiet. It’s soft, firmer than he expects, and yet not rushed. You kiss him like you’ve wanted to for a long time, like you’ve thought about it, like the moment had already existed somewhere in your mind long before you asked the question.

Phainon melts. He doesn’t move for the first few seconds; just hangs there, lips barely parted, letting you take the lead because he’s terrified that if he so much as breathes, you’ll disappear. But then something in him sparks—an ancient, quiet want—and he kisses you back.

He moves slowly, deliberately, meeting you where you are. His lips are dry and chapped from hours in the wind, but he’s warm beneath them, and his breath hitches in that small, helpless way that always happens around you. He tightens his grip on the bar, as though holding himself in place is the only way to keep from falling for real.

Eventually, you pull away.

His eyes open slowly, lashes low over dark, dazed pupils. His lips are parted, red and kiss-bruised.

“That was…” He clears his throat. “Wow.”

You smile, head tilting. “Still want to date me?”

“I want to marry you,” he blurts, then immediately flushes crimson. “I mean—hypothetically. Not now. Obviously not now. I’m hanging upside down. I’ve got wire cutters in my pocket. But you get the idea.”

You laugh, and he grins. 

“Come down, you idiot,” you say, still smiling. “Before your brain floods and I have to explain to emergency services that Spider-Man died because he let his blood rush to his head.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mutters, already adjusting his grip. With a practiced motion, he swings backward once, then forward, and flips cleanly down onto the concrete beside you in a crouch, landing with a thud and a soft grunt. He straightens slowly, rubbing at the back of his head.

When he looks up again, you’re already walking towards him. You grab the front of his suit, tug gently—and then kiss him again, properly this time. He melts into it, hands hovering at your hips. You take the initiative again, stepping closer, your fingers sliding up his chest to cup his face as your mouth slants against his. The second kiss is deeper, more certain, less careful.

When you pull away, you don’t go far. You rest your forehead against his, both of you breathing hard. His hands settle around your waist now, not hesitant anymore, not unsure.

“You’re sure about this?” he whispers.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

He kisses you again, because he can, because he wants to. Because there’s no machine looming over his shoulder, no countdown, no artificial voice running simulations on how to hurt you best.

There’s only this: you, and him, and the golden hour dimming into twilight. Phainon lets you pull him back into the world right-side up.

Phainon thinks he’s a pretty good boyfriend.

Okay, maybe not, like, great. He has a running tab of things he’s fumbled: texts left on read for six hours because he was halfway across the city chasing someone with rocket boots, half-finished promises to pick up groceries, laundry that’s been folded but never quite put away. Date nights sometimes fall through. Movie plans get postponed. He loses track of time a lot.

But he always comes home. He always makes you laugh, even when you pretend to be annoyed with him. He never forgets the dates that matter, and never lets you go to sleep without hearing that he loves you, mumbled or whispered or scrawled on a Post-It if he’s back late. He’s trying. God, he’s trying.

And right now, looking at you—messy-haired, breathless, flushed and sprawled across the mattress like you belong there, like you belong with him—he thinks maybe he’s doing alright.

Phainon kisses down your ribs, trailing his mouth across your stomach. You shift beneath him, a little restless, a little expectant. He likes that—you trusting him enough to be open like this. It still hits him sometimes, like an aftershock, that you let him touch you like this. That you want him to.

He exhales slowly as he nudges lower, one arm curled under your thigh. His lips brush the inside of your hip, the softness of your skin, and he feels you shiver. Gently, he moves lower, and flicks his tongue over your clit.

You gasp, hand threading into his hair, and he smiles against you, slow and lazy and a little smug. He likes knowing he can do this to you. Likes knowing exactly how your breath hitches when he moves just right. He doesn’t rush. He never does with you. Every motion is measured, learned, almost reverent. He listens—to the catch in your throat, the flex of your fingers, the little half-sigh you try to swallow and can’t.

His grip on your hips tightens as you shift, as your thighs close around his shoulders, and he groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating softly between you.

“Phainon,” you whisper, voice thready. He loves the way you say his name. He hums again in response, and the way you respond to that—your spine arching, your mouth letting loose a litany of moans—makes him want to give you more.

When he finally slides two fingers into you, careful and deep, you let out a sound that makes him smile. Phainon exhales against your thigh, the sound shaky with restraint. Your muscles flutter around him, every inch of you wound tight. He watches you fall apart in increments—your fingers twisting in the sheets, your jaw slack with pleasure, your chest heaving.

“Right there?” he murmurs, half-teasing but wholly focused.

You nod, or maybe you don’t—you’re too far gone to speak, but your body answers for you: the way your hips shift, the way your leg curls around his shoulder, the soft whimper that escapes your lips. He presses in again, just a little firmer, curling his fingers the way he knows you like.

His mouth trails slow kisses along the inside of your thigh, tongue flicking over sensitive skin. He never rushes. He never wants to. Not with you.

“Phainon,” you breathe again. “Oh, fuck—”

He presses his mouth back to your folds, his fingers still working inside you with the same care. He’s mapping you like he’s been doing since the beginning—like every sigh is a star to chart by, every moan a signal flare. He’s learned to read you in a language no one else gets to learn.

You’re shaking now, your whole body strung tight as wire beneath his mouth. Your nails bite into his shoulder and you don’t even seem to notice—don’t seem to care—because you’re so close, teetering at the edge of your orgasm, sharp and sweet and inevitable.

A few more strokes and sucks and licks have you coming for him—arching, gasping, crying out his name. When the aftershocks start to fade, he eases off, kisses the softest parts of your skin as you tremble under him. His fingers slip from you gently. He brushes a hand over your thigh, up your hip, until he’s sliding over you again, kissing a slow trail back up your ribs and chest until he’s beside you.

Your eyes are closed, lips parted, still catching your breath. He watches you—eyes half-lidded, lashes damp, chest rising and falling—and then you blink up at him, a smile tugging at your lips like you’re not quite sure how to speak yet. Your skin is still warm, flushed in a way that makes Phainon want to memorise every inch of you all over again.

He brushes his knuckles over your cheek in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to say. “Still in there?”

You blink once, then smile with that crooked little grin he loves. “Ask me again in five minutes.”

He huffs a soft laugh and shifts to lie beside you, propping himself up on one elbow. His hand trails lazily over your stomach, fingers smoothing across the soft skin just above your hipbone, drawing idle shapes.

“Not bad for a guy who forgot to buy milk this morning, right?” he says.

You laugh and shove his shoulder. “Phainon!”

“I mean, I might’ve failed you on the breakfast front, but I like to think I made up for it in… other areas.”

You scoff, but it’s half a laugh, and the sound curls like a ribbon in Phainon’s chest. He watches the way your face softens when you’re amused—how your eyes crinkle at the corners, how your mouth fights not to smile wider.

“That’s debatable,” you say, rolling to face him fully.

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You sounded pretty convinced a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.” Phainon grins, and leans forward to bump his forehead against yours.

He feels like his heart’s trying to claw its way out of his chest, not in the life-threatening, nine-storeys-up, villain-hurling-him-off-a-building kind of way, but the kind where it’s just him and you, tangled in sheets, skin flushed. The kind of moment that makes his brain go a little fuzzy and his chest go tight, because he’s pretty sure this isn’t just a good day—it’s the day. The one people write songs and poems and stupid rom-coms about.

(You’re right there, inches from him, breathing the same air, and all he can think is: I hope I never forget this.)

He tries to play it cool, like he’s not falling apart from something as small as the curve of your smile, the way your fingers brush along his jaw like you’re trying to memorise him right back. But it’s a losing battle. He’s smiling too hard, the stupid kind that tugs at his cheeks. 

“You’re staring,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says, without even pretending otherwise. “I know.”

His hand is still on your waist, the tips of his fingers tracing small, slow patterns into your skin. He wants to tell you a thousand things—about how he’s never felt safer than he does when he’s beside you, about how it doesn’t matter if the world ends tomorrow so long as he got to know what your laugh sounded like when it was just for him. But the words get stuck somewhere behind his teeth.

You roll your eyes at him like you always do when you’re trying not to smile. “What are you thinking?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth to say something clever. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “That I like you.”

“Yeah?” you say teasingly. “I had no clue.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I think this isn’t real. Like I’m gonna wake up in some busted rooftop vent or in the middle of a car chase, and all this’ll just be some nice dream I had when my brain was low on oxygen.”

“It’s real,” you whisper. “Do you want me to kiss you like real people do? Because I will. Don’t test me.”

(Phainon kisses you first, just to prove he’s real enough to do it.)

[athenalvss]

ENEMIES OF THE HEART ( Bruce wayne )

summary: Bruce Wayne has a serious weakness for beautiful, thieving women.

pairing: Bruce wayne x fem reader

open request ‐ dc masterlist

Is committing robberies wrong? Of course it is, but stealing from corrupt rich people and leaving poetic clues behind each heist wasn't bad, at least not according to your ideals. You don't kill, you don't harm innocent people.

But there were people who didn't think the same, and one of them was Batman.

And there he is again. On the rooftop. In the shadows. Breathing as if the world weighed on his shoulders.

"Oh, Batsy…" you whisper, fearlessly, with a crooked smile. "Don't be mean to me, I'm being good."

He doesn't respond immediately. Only his silhouette emerges from the rain, like a threat made flesh. Wet, bloody, exhausted, but still standing. Still imposing.

"You don't know what 'behaving' means," he growls in his deep voice, as if he could split you in two with just it.

"Oh," you looked at him, sadness showing on your face. "So, will you teach me how to be a good girl?"

He takes a step closer, ignoring your teasing. Rain trickles down the outline of his jaw. He's breathing heavily. And you can tell.

His eyes bore into you from the shadow of his cowl. If you didn't know him so well, you'd swear he's about to collapse. But he doesn't. Because he's Batman. Because he'd rather bleed out on the concrete than show weakness.

"You're breathing like you've run a marathon," you murmur, head tilted slightly. "Or like you've been stabbed. is the last one, right? Because you're in pretty good shape."

He doesn't respond. But his hands clench, and his body, which seemed made of steel, falters. A step. Half a step. Enough for you to take the next one without hesitation. You stand in front of him. So close that you feel the warmth of his body despite the icy rain.

"Let me see the wound."

"No."

"Batsy, be nice to me," you whisper, raising an eyebrow. "You're bleeding like a fucking tragic poem. Let me help you."

"I don't need your help."

"Don't be a liar, Bats," you reply, still smiling, but lowering your voice. Your voice is soft, almost intimate. "Did you give Robin a night off? You have great timing to get seriously hurt."

You see it in the slight wobble, in the way he clenches his fists to keep from falling. He's holding on out of pure pride.

"I could leave you here," you say, taking a step closer, pressing your chest to his. "I could turn around, jump over that ledge, and let the rain wash your silhouette off the ground."

He doesn't respond. But he doesn't move away either.

"But I won't. Because, you know... I care about you." Your index finger dares to rise, brushing against his jawline. "And I'd be so bored if you weren't here in the city."

You don't really expect it. But you don't hesitate when his body gives way a little to you. A minimal weight. A silent surrender.

"Come with me, Bats" you whisper, putting his arm around your shoulders. "I don't want you to bleed out before I have a chance to have fun with you."

He grunts something in protest, but not enough to stop you. You guide him through the alleys to one of your many hiding places, a forgotten warehouse disguised as a mechanic's shop. There, amidst the junk and secrets, you carefully remove part of his suit.

You finish the bandage and lean over him to reach something on the table behind him. Your body brushes against his.

"You're being very quiet, Batsy," you whisper, lowering your voice as if telling a secret. "If you keep that up, I'm going to think you're into me."

"You're not being professional"

"I never was. But neither are you, considering the way you look at me every time I appear. I don't know if you want to handcuff me or kiss me.'

Silence.

Your faces are close. Unbearably close. "Or both, I don't mind," you add, with a dangerous smile.

Your mouth is a breath away from his. The tension crackles between you, electric, almost unbearable. But you don't. Not yet. Instead, you simply rest your forehead against his.

He doesn't pull you away. He doesn't move. But he's no longer breathing with control. He breathes forcefully, his jaw clenched, as if he hates you for having that effect on him.

"Why are you tempting me?" he murmurs, and his voice doesn't sound like a plea, it sounds like a curse to himself.

"Because you like it when I do" you answer without hesitation, your lips barely touching his, with that smile you only use when you're winning. "And you don't know how to ask me for more."

Then, without warning, he grabs your arm. Not violently, but firmly. He pulls you toward him. Your faces are millimeters apart. You can feel the heat of his rage. The heat of his desire. It's the same thing. Fused together.

"This is a mistake" he growls. But he doesn't stop.

Thunder cracks the sky, and in that flash, you see his lips tremble before they come close to yours. The kiss isn't soft. It's not sweet. It's like him: intense, held back for too long. It's an explosion of something that has been cracking at his control for months—maybe years.

He kisses you like he hates needing you. Like you're his addiction. And you kiss him back, with fire.

When you pull away, just for a second, you breathe against his mouth: "You're going to think about this all night, aren't you?"

He doesn't answer. He can't. Because he still has you on his lips. Because he hates himself for giving in. Because he hates himself more for wanting to do it again.

And you, with that same sinful smile, turn around, and take all your things to return to your night walk, and you turn around one last time before vanishing into shadows.

"See you next time, Batsy."

[novelistwriter]

Just a Baby

DP x DC Prompt

Things were going normally during a night of patrol for the Batfam. The only thing of note to happen was Tim somehow losing his staff after a confrontation with some of Penguins' men.

Things got a little more concerning when Damian had somehow managed to lose his sword during a fight with some Talons. The sword was not found after they were done with the Talons.

Things got really serious when Duke's escrima sticks had vanished from his suit while he was on patrol. The Batfam decided to put trackers on their things, as they've come to the conclusion that someone is stealing from them, and it isn't Selina (they checked).

The very night they put on the trackers is when Talia came with some Assassins to try and get Damian to become the Demons Head. Immediately after they repelled Talia and the Assassins is when Joker decided to launch an attack.

When Joker was dealt with, Oracle informed them that three things had been taken, Nightwing's Domino Mask, Jason's Guns, and Batman's Utility Belt. None of them even noticed when they had been taken.

While Nightwing heads to a nearby safe house for a replacement Domino, the rest of the Batfam will head to the location that their stolen equipment is. None of them expected to see who their thief is when they reached the abandoned warehouse that Oracle led them to.

It's a boy, around 5 or 6 years of age, clumsily trying to keep Nightwing's Domino on with one hand, the other holding Damian's sword. Duke's escrima sticks are on the floor in front of the boy. Jason's Guns, still in the holsters, and Bruce's Utility Belt make an X across his torso. Tim's staff is on the back of the boy, likely being held up by the Utility Belt and the Holster. When the Boy noticed them, they could see he had one blue eye, and the other eye, partially covered by Dick's Domino, is Lazarus Green, tears began to well in the boys eyes.

Clockwork looks at his King's new life, having lost all of his family and becoming the last Halfa to exist because of the GIW. His Ki g had almost perished, but his subjects saved him at the last second, but the damage done to his core was already getting worse. The only way to save Danny was to take his core and place it in a CADMUS clone, who is made from Bruce's DNA, slated for disposal and put him in a place where he'll gain a new family to love him.

[iydiamartinx]

THIS IS WHY THERE'S ONLY ONE BED

Pairing: Jason Todd x Reader x Roy Harper

divider by: cafekitsune & omi-resources word count: 4.1k synopsis: Caught in a storm after a mission, you, Jason, and Roy are forced to share a motel room—where they end up helping you sleep in more ways than one.

a/n: It's 3 am and I'm half asleep editing this so I blame that for any errors or if anything sounds weird. To my Anon who requested this, I hope you liked it ♡ To my under 18 readers, sorry guys this one is not for you.

warnings: Dom Jason & Roy, DP...

The rain was biblical. A curtain of water hammered down from the sky as if the heavens themselves had opened up. Your boots sloshed through ankle-deep puddles as you sprinted from the abandoned warehouse to the rusted-out pickup Roy had hot wired earlier. Jason was right behind you, muttering curses under his breath while stripping off his soaked gloves.

“Hell of a storm,” he growled, slamming the door shut behind him.

“No shit,” Roy snapped, wringing out his drenched red hood. “We need to get off the roads before we hydroplane into a ditch.”

You leaned back in your seat, arms crossed, watching lightning carve jagged veins across the sky.

The only open place for miles was a flickering roadside motel that looked like it belonged in a slasher flick. Faded sign. Buzzing neon. A cracked Vacancy light sputtering in the window. The lobby smelled like mildew and nicotine.

“There’s only one room left,” you announced flatly after speaking to the man at the desk, dropping the key onto the table between you three with a dull clack.

Jason blinked. “You’ve got to be kidding, let’s just sleep in the car. and save the cash”

You shot him a look, arching a brow. “You want to sleep in a metal death trap during a lightning storm?”

He didn’t answer, but his scowl deepened. For someone who always claimed being adopted by a billionaire hadn’t changed him, his inner snob was definitely showing.

Roy leaned against the wall nearby, shaking rain from his hair. He let out a sigh as he dropped his soaked cap to his side, water dripping onto the already stained floor. “We’re lucky there’s anything at all,” he said. “I vote we take the room. Worst case, I steal a pillow and sleep in the bathtub.”

Jason’s jaw ticked. “I swear to God, if you snore—”

“Then you can sleep outside, princess,” you snapped, snatching the key back off the table with a roll of your eyes. “Let’s go.”

The three of you braved the torrent once more, pushing through the downpour as you made your way across the lot and veered toward the exterior staircase. Rain lashed at your backs, soaking through already-wet clothes as you climbed up to the second floor, your boots squelching against the slick concrete.

You were halfway down the corridor, counting the faded room numbers, when a figure stumbled toward you from the opposite end.

A man—middle-aged, soaked, and reeking of alcohol—swaggered closer, barely keeping his balance. His grin was crooked, yellowing teeth on full display as his bleary eyes landed on you.

“Well, aren’t you a looker,” he slurred, gaze crawling across your body without shame. “Hey honey, if those two can’t fuck you right, good ole Earl’s just next door.”

Before you could even respond, both Jason and Roy stepped in closer—shoulders squared, jaws tight, their bodies a wall between you and the leering man.

Jason’s glare could’ve shattered glass. Roy didn’t say a word, but the murderous glint in his eyes said plenty.

The man didn’t seem to get the hint—or maybe he was too drunk to care. His gaze dragged over you once more, slow and shameless, before he gave a greasy wink and turned, staggering toward the room directly beside yours.

The second his door clicked shut, Jason muttered, “I’m not above committing a felony tonight.”

Roy cracked his neck, still watching the door. “If he even says one more word, and I’ll help you bury the body.”

You sighed and rolled your eyes, brushing past your two overprotective best friends as you stepped up to your own door. The key rattled in the lock, and the motel door creaked open with a long, miserable groan—hinges rusted and squealing like the place hadn’t seen a maintenance crew in a decade.

You stepped inside first, flicking on the light—and froze.

Jason nearly ran into you. “What—?”

“There’s only one bed,” you said flatly.

Roy squeezed past the two of you, tracking wet footprints across the peeling linoleum as he took a good look around. “No couch either,” he muttered. “Figures.”

Jason scoffed and crossed his arms as thunder rumbled overhead, rattling the thin windows. “Great. This just keeps getting better.”

You groaned and scrubbed a hand down your face. “Okay. Someone takes the floor.”

Jason didn’t hesitate—his gaze snapped straight to Roy. “You.”

“Excuse me?” Roy scoffed. “Why me?”

You arched a brow, unimpressed. “What happened to stealing a pillow and sleeping in the tub?”

He paused. His gaze drifted toward the cracked bathroom door. Slowly, cautiously, he stepped closer and nudged it open wider. The second he got a full look inside, he recoiled in horror and slammed it shut.

“Absolutely not,” he declared. “That tub is fucking filthy. I’m pretty sure it’s harbouring the next stage of biological warfare.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Then floor it is.”

“Like hell,” Roy snapped. “I’m not waking up with roaches in my sleeping bag. Again.”

You looked between them, already regretting every choice that had led you to this moment. One bed. Two stubborn idiots.

Roy huffed and paced a few steps, running a hand through his wet hair. Jason muttered something under his breath that you didn’t catch—but whatever it was, it made Roy’s head snap back around.

Roy threw his hands up. “You always have to make everything harder than it needs to be, man. You’ve been bitching since we started this mission—either deal with it or go pout in the rain.”

Tension crackled in the air again, and then—predictably—the arguing began. IIt went on for over five minutes, neither of them backing down, and when it showed no sign of slowing, you sighed—loudly—knowing you had to step in before someone got thrown off the balcony.

“Yeah? You’ve got a big mouth—why don’t you use that to talk yourself into a better hotel next time?” Jason hissed, stepping forward.

“There was none available, genius,” Roy snapped. “And I didn’t talk to the man, she did!” He jabbed a finger in your direction, then took a step forward himself. “If you’ve got such a problem, go sleep in the damn car like you wanted to in the first place!”

“I don’t have a pillow!”

Roy threw his hands up with a dramatic huff. “You’ve got a bulletproof jacket. Fold it and use it as a pillow. Problem solved.”

You’d had enough.

“Enough!” you snapped, throwing your arms in the air. “Jesus. You’re worse than children.”

They both blinked, caught off guard.

“We’re all tired. We’re all soaked. And we’ve all nearly died at least once in the last twenty-four hours,” you continued, stabbing a finger toward the bed. “We’ll just share the fucking bed.”

Jason grumbled something under his breath. Roy muttered a reluctant, “Fine.”

You gave them both a look—sharp and full of warning—and they wisely dropped it.

Reluctantly, all of you agreed that you needed to wash off the blood and grime clinging to your skin and clothes. There was no arguing about it—just the silent, shared understanding that you couldn’t crawl into bed like this, no matter how dingy the bathroom was.

Jason went first, then Roy, each emerging from the tiny bathroom with damp hair and towels slung around their necks. Steam still curled out behind them in thick waves, spilling into the room. The scent of cheap motel soap mingled with warm skin, leather, and something distinctly masculine.

Finally, it was your turn.

You sighed, grabbing one of the boys’ extra shirts and a clean towel before slipping into the bathroom. The water was lukewarm at best, but it did the job, washing away the dried blood, grit, and hours of sweat clinging to your skin. By the time you stepped out, the storm was still howling outside, thunder rumbling like distant cannon fire—but the room itself had gone still.

Too still.

You tugged at the oversized shirt you’d pulled on—one of Roy’s, judging by the faint cologne clinging to the collar. The hem brushed your thighs, your panties just barely concealed beneath it. Barefoot, hair damp, you crossed the room slowly, wringing out your towel as the air shifted.

You rolled your eyes when you saw the narrow gap left between them on the bed—just enough space for you, if you didn’t mind wedging yourself between two immovable, half-naked walls.

Jason sat propped against the headboard, arms crossed, grey sweatpants slung low on his hips, a muscle shirt clinging to his chest like a second skin. Roy was sprawled on the opposite edge of the mattress, shirtless, his joggers slung low, hair still wet and clinging to his forehead in messy strands.

Both of them looked up at the same time.

And neither of them looked away.

You felt it—their eyes tracking every step, every slow drag of your legs across the floor. The cling of cotton to your still-damp skin. The subtle lift of your shirt as you moved, just enough to tease the curve of your ass before you dropped your towel on the back of the chair.

Jason’s jaw flexed.

Roy’s eyes moved slowly over you, lingering just a beat too long before flicking back up to your face.

It wasn’t like you’d packed pajamas before this mission. The plan was to get in, get out, and be home in time to crash in your own bed—if the storm hadn’t stopped you. 

Sighing, you moved to crawl between the boys, sliding into the narrow space they’d left for you. The mattress dipped beneath your weight, and for a moment, no one said anything. Just the low hum of rain against the windows and the occasional creak of the storm-battered building filled the silence.

But after a few minutes, the cold crept in.

The blanket was too thin to be of any real use, and the motel’s ancient heating system had clearly given up when the power flickered earlier. The chill slipped through the walls and into your bones, slow and merciless. You curled in tighter on yourself, trying to breathe through the shivers—but it must’ve been obvious.

Roy shifted beside you with a quiet sigh. “Please don’t kick me.”

You blinked, confused. “What?”

Before you could ask again, he reached over and gathered you up, tugging you firmly into his chest. His arms wrapped around your waist. The heat of him hit you instantly—bare skin, warm and solid, radiating through the thin fabric of your borrowed shirt. You gasped softly, surprised by the sudden closeness, but he didn’t let go. One hand slid to the small of your back, holding you steady against him.

“You’re freezing,” he murmured, the words more to himself than to you. His voice was quieter now, thick with sleep and something else—concern, maybe.

Then, behind you, the mattress dipped again.

Jason didn’t say a word as he moved in, slipping in close and tucking himself against your back. One arm draped over your waist, his palm brushing lightly against Roy’s where it still rested. You were surrounded now—bracketed on either side by heat and solid muscle.

It should’ve felt crowded. Uncomfortable.

But it didn’t.

Between the two of them, the cold started to fade, your shivering easing bit by bit as their warmth settled into you. Roy’s hand remained firm on your waist, his thumb tracing slow, absentminded circles against your hip. Jason’s chest pressed flush to your back, his breath ghosting across your neck with every exhale.

None of you spoke.

But your heart was pounding now—not from the cold.

From awareness.

From the way Roy’s thumb dipped lower, brushing beneath the hem of your shirt—lazy and unhurried—before retreating back to a more respectful place on your waist. To the way Jason’s fingers curled just a little tighter around you every time your body softened against his

Your thighs squeezed together. You tried to focus on the storm outside, but it was nothing compared to the quiet heat building between the three of you.

You swallowed hard, lips parting. “Thanks,” you whispered.

Jason hummed low against your ear. “Anytime.”

Time passed. Outside, the storm continued its relentless assault, but inside the room, everything remained still—except for your heartbeat, quick and erratic beneath your skin.

Jason’s breathing had evened out behind you. Roy’s grip had gone slack in front of you. For a moment, you thought they’d both drifted off.

But you hadn’t.

Not even close.

Trapped between their bodies—warm, solid, far too tempting—you were painfully awake. Every brush of breath against your neck, every inch of bare skin against yours, kept your nerves lit like live wire. The heat that had started as comfort was now simmering beneath your skin, licking up the inside of your thighs.

You shifted, slowly, unconsciously. Just a little, enough to press your legs together. Seeking relief. Something. Anything.

You nearly gasped when Jason’s grip tightened around your waist with bruising intent.

“Stop moving,” he growled low in your ear, his voice rough with sleep—or something very close to it.

You froze, pulse skittering. “I can’t sleep,” you whispered back.

Jason’s lips grazed your shoulder, and the quiet rumble of his breath rolled against your skin as he leaned in.

“You keep grinding against me like that, sweetheart,” he murmured, darker now, “and you’re not gonna be sleeping at all.”

Heat surged low in your belly, a sharp pulse of desire cutting through the haze.

Your breath caught as you felt Roy stir slightly in front of you, shifting just enough to press his thigh between yours again—close, far too close. You weren’t sure if he was awake. You weren’t sure if you cared.

Jason’s hand spread across your stomach, fingers splayed low, thumb stroking slow against the edge of your shirt. “What do you need, then?” he asked quietly. 

“I—” You swallowed. “I don’t know.”

A beat passed. His lips grazed your skin again. “You want me to stop?”

You shook your head before you could think better of it.

Jason’s breath hitched. “Then keep still, baby,” he murmured, teeth grazing your shoulder now. “Or I’m gonna.”

Behind you, he pressed closer, his body fitting against yours like it belonged there. His hand moved, slipping past the curve of your waist, between your body and Roy’s.

And then under the hem of your shirt.

You sucked in a quiet breath as his fingers dipped lower, slipping beneath the waistband of your underwear. The touch was slow—testing, giving you a chance to back out but you only shoved your ass back into him, silently urging him to continue.

Jason groaned low, his lips brushing your skin. “Fuck,” he muttered, voice rough with restraint. “You’re soaked.”

You whimpered, barely audible, your hips twitching in response—but his hand tightened against you, holding you in place.

“Uh-uh,” he whispered darkly. “I told you to stay still.”

Your eyes fluttered shut, heat pooling deep in your belly, thighs squeezing around the hand still lazily exploring.

And then Roy stirred.

You felt the shift of his muscles in front of you, his hand moving to your waist—just inches from Jason’s—and his voice came low, hoarse with sleep and suspicion. “What’s going on back there?”

You opened your mouth to answer but at that same moment Jason slipped a finger inside of you and all that came out was a breathless sound caught halfway between guilt and desire.

Jason, maddeningly calm, murmured, “Someone couldn’t sleep.”

His tone was casual—too casual—for someone whose fingers were moving so deliberately, stroking you from the inside like he had all the time in the world.

Roy’s eyes opened fully now, sharp and glinting in the low motel room light. He looked down between you, the pieces falling into place with startling clarity. His voice dropped to a knowing murmur. “Well, shit, baby… you need help sleeping?”

Your body jerked when Jason curled his fingers just right, brushing a place inside you that made your head spin with pleasure. 

You whined as Jason curled his fingers towards that soft spongy part inside of you. 

A helpless sound left your lips, needier than you meant.

“Use your words,” Roy said, voice smoother now, dangerous in its ease. his gaze met Jason’s in the dark and Jason immediately stopped moving. 

You pushed your hips back instinctively, trying to find relief—but Roy’s grip held you firm.

Jason’s lips were at your ear now, breath hot. “We’re not doing anything unless you ask for it.”

Your throat worked around the ache building in your chest, in your stomach, between your thighs.

“Yes,” you gasped out, breathless. “Please—don’t stop.”

Jason’s fingers started moving again, slow but deliberate—teasing, then pressing deeper, dragging along every sensitive spot with calculated precision. He alternated his touch, one moment stroking inside you, the next circling your clit with maddening care. 

Your breath came faster, soft sounds escaping before you could bite them back.

In front of you, Roy had pushed your shirt up with one hand, the fabric bunching beneath your arms. He groaned when he got a full view of you in the dim light, his palm splaying across your ribcage, thumb brushing up toward your breast.

“Fuck,” he murmured, voice dark and reverent. “You’re so damn pretty like this.”

You squirmed in their grip, overwhelmed and desperate for more, caught between Roy’s roaming hands and Jason’s sinful fingers.

Jason’s mouth was at your ear again, his voice low and rough. “Think she likes the attention.”

Roy leaned in, pressing a slow, open-mouthed kiss to your collarbone as his hand gently cupped your breast. “Think she needs more.”

You whimpered, body caught in a tug-of-war between their hands, their mouths, their voices—both of them touching like they wanted to learn you from memory.

“You still with us, sweetheart?” Jason murmured.

You nodded shakily, voice barely a whisper. “I want…”

Roy smirked against your skin. “Yeah?” he murmured. “Then tell us, baby.”

But your words dissolved into a moan as Jason’s thumb found just the right spot—and from the way Roy’s eyes darkened.

“Come on, baby, use those words or we’ll stop and leave you all needy and aching.” Roy urged with a croon as he leaned down to a suck a nipple.

Your back arched off the bed with a cry and shakily you said, “I want you both, I want you both to fuck me.”

Jason stilled, his breath catching. Roy’s eyes darkened as he looked up at you with a gaze full of sin, “Then you’re gonna get exactly what you asked for, baby.”

In one smooth motion, Jason hooked his fingers into the waistband of your panties and tugged them down. The fabric slipped down your legs, discarded somewhere in the dark. Then he shifted behind you, his hands firm as he guided you up and over, so you were straddling Roy. 

You hadn’t even realized he’d shed his sweats.

The heat of him pressed against you, your thighs trembling slightly where they framed his hips as your pussy leaked all over him.

“Grind down on him—get that cock all nice and wet,” Jason ordered, guiding your hips down against Roy’s throbbing length.

Roy groaned, his hands replacing Jason’s on your hips as he began to guide you, sliding your slick pussy along the length of his shaft. You whimpered, each pass of his crown catching your clit and making your thighs tremble.

Behind you, Jason shifted again, gently pushing you forward, folding you over Roy, and began trailing hot, wet kisses down your spine—deliberately going slow—until he reached the curve of your ass. At the same moment Roy latched onto your nipple, nipping sharply, Jason sank his teeth into your flesh, drawing a cry from your lips.

“If I didn’t want to be inside of you so bad,” Jason muttered, voice thick with restraint, “I’d spend hours marking this body.”

Roy groaned his agreement, mouth full of your tits as he alternated between them—sucking, licking, worshipping each one with desperate, hungry attention. His hands forcing your hips to keep grinding down on him.

Jason pulled back just enough to swipe two fingers through your arousal, then spread it across your tight entrance. He took his time, gentle and slow, as he began teasing you open.

You barely had time to breathe before he pushed a finger inside—right as Roy finally sank into your pussy.

A keening whine escaped you at the stretch, at the burn, as both of them filled you. Your arms shook as you tried to hold yourself up, overwhelmed by the way they began immediately moving—one slowly thrusting in as the other eased out, keeping at least one of them buried deep inside you at all times.

Jason soon slipped in a second finger, slowly stretching you wider. Your lashes fluttered, breath catching with every movement, all thought drowned beneath the mounting pleasure.

“It’s too much,” you panted.

“Come on, baby,” Roy murmured against your skin, his voice thick with teasing heat. “You haven’t even taken Jason’s cock yet.”

“Too big,” you panted, voice breathless and shaky. “You both won’t fit.”

God, Roy was barely fitting already—the stretch had you trembling, every nerve lit as you struggled to breathe through the fullness of his cock and Jason’s fingers.

“You can do it, doll,” Jason crooned, mouthing kisses along your neck before his lips brushed your ear. “Don’t you want to be a good girl and take us both?”

A cry slipped from your lips as Roy suddenly snapped his hips upward sharply. You could only nod—dazed, dizzy on the sudden pleasure—barely processing what you were agreeing to.

You whimpered when Jason pulled his fingers from you, and then Roy eased out too, leaving you feeling suddenly cold and achingly empty.

“Patience, baby,” Roy murmured, gently shushing you. “It’s Jason’s turn to get his cock all nice and wet.”

Jason sank into your pussy slowly, thrusting just enough to coat himself in your slick heat before pulling out again, dragging a moan from your throat.

Roy returned almost instantly, pushing back inside you in one smooth motion, his grip tightening on your hips to keep you still and filled—right where he wanted you.

Your body tensed again as you felt the head of Jason’s cock line up behind you, pressing against your stretched entrance. He went slow, easing in inch by inch.

Your arms gave out beneath you as a cry tore from your throat, the stretch and burn overwhelming. “Oh fuck… it’s too much.”

Roy’s fingers found your clit, rubbing slow, soothing circles as he whispered gently, “You can do it. That’s it, baby… you’re taking us so well. Just relax for Jay, and push out against him.”

You were so tight around him that Jason had to grit his teeth, jaw clenched in restraint, holding himself back from sinking into you in one hard thrust.

All three of you let out a collective sigh as Jason finally bottomed out inside you. You were so fucking full. For a moment, neither of them moved, giving you time to adjust to having them both buried deep inside you.

Eventually, it was you who broke the silence with a low, desperate whine, trying to shift your hips—seeking friction—but failing, too overwhelmed and too thoroughly impaled to properly move.

Jason and Roy shared a grin at your needy state.

“Does our greedy girl need more?” Jason teased.

“Please,” you begged, all but sobbing. “Please, please, please.”

Your eyes rolled back as they finally started moving. They found a rhythm quickly—deep and stead strokes. The friction of both their cocks dragging along your walls was nearly too much, specially as their pace quickened, slamming into you and forcing screams of pleasure from your throat.

“Yeah, there we go, doll,” Jason grunted, his voice rough and ragged. As he hauled your limp body up by the throat. “Scream for us. I want that sleaze next door to know exactly how good we’re fucking you.”

His hand tightened around your throat while his other hand snaked in between you and Roy, fingers finding your clit, rubbing in tight, relentless circles.

It didn’t take long after that.

Your body stiffened between them as the tightening coil inside you finally snapped. White-hot pleasure surged through your veins, stealing the air from your lungs and washing your vision in blinding light. For a moment, the world slipped away, your awareness fading into static. You barely registered their own release—hot and sticky—painting your skin as they followed you over the edge.

When you finally came to, you were cradled in Roy’s arms, his chest rising and falling steadily beneath you, while Jason knelt between your legs, gently cleaning you up carefully.

“You back with us, doll?” Jason murmured, his voice low and warm.

“Fuck,” you croaked, a tired laugh bubbling past your lips. “This is one hell of a way to help a girl sleep.”

[vulnonapixes-dc-corner]

Not me thinking about a fic idea, where a Damian from another universe steals his siblings, cause their Damian doesn't value them enough. Needless to say. Damian isn't happy and wants his siblings back

Tim was the first one, cause he often "disappears". He got his coffee drugged.(his Tim died after blowing himself and Ra up in a suicide mission)

The next one was Cassandra, who he was able to confuse with his body language before he drugged her as well. (His Cass was devoured by a monster. She was unable to read its body language as they fought)

For Jason he used his most childlike voice to call out to him, to get him close enough to drug him. (His Jason bleed out all alone in a warehouse, after he saved some kids from getting experimented on.

He took Duke in the middle of the night, because he was the only one out of the family that sleeps.(His duke died on a lab table)

For dick, he just walked up to him as Damian and drugged him after hugging him. ( his dick was killed by his colleagues in the police station)

[rotary-supercollider]

Average leverage episode

Victim: please mr. Leverage. They bought my orphanage and they’re going to sell all the orphans I need you to stop them

Nate “Leverage” Leverage: I think we can get you some… leverage

Sophie: I’m going to start a bullshit argument now

Nate: please dont

Sophie: it’s going to last the whole episode

Nate: 🙄women (laughtrack)

Hardison: alright this is our mark Mr. Monopoly. He owns 16 weapons companies and took in 100000 billion million dollars last year. He just got into the orphan business and on the weekends he plays puppy golf.

Parker: whats puppy golf

Hardison: it’s like golf but you use puppies

Elliot: I’ve seen it. (snifffs deeply) not fun

Hardison: this guys ruthless. we’re going to be exploiting his one weakness. He really likes having a lot of money

Sophie: how?

Nate: we go steal an abstract concept

*they steal an abstract concept*

The mark: hello. I was impressed by your ownership of an abstract concept

Sophie: we’ll give you 50 trillion dollars for the orphanage

Mark: Zamn!!!

Sophie: 😏 we got him

*1 day later*

Sophie: here’s the 50 trillion dollars (holds up briefcase full of crimes)

The mark: I don’t want your money any more. I have a new plan. I’m goijng to dress all the orphans in hot dog costumes and start a theme park

Sophie: 😦

Elliot: we’re blown

Nate: Sophie throw the briefcase 💼 in the lake

Mark: whoa!! Thats wet money

Sophie: I can give you 5000 more orphans. Meet me at this unmarked warehouse in 6 hours

Mark: awooga

Hardison: Nate do you have a plan?

Nate: not yet

*Fade to black*

Nate: alright the marks on his way. Hardison what’s your 20

Hardison: I need at least 30 minutes to finish this Lego Taj Mahal

Nate: ok I’ll stall

Nate (playing bit character): I cooka da pizza!! Ohhhh (drops full pan of sauce on the marks head instantly killing him) mamma Mia (walks into the sea)

Parker: guys we have a problem

*6 Bad Men materialize out of thin air*

Elliot: 😒I got this 👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊👊🤛🤜🤛🤜✊🩼✊🦶🦵✊🤛🚪🦶✊🦵🤌✊🦶👊🦵✊✊👊🎷👊👊👊

*the Bad Men disintegrate*

Elliot: shit hes here (dives into a trash can)

*the mark reaches the building. There are orphans waving at him from the windows*

Mark: ok I’m here to take the orphans

The police: SIR YOURE COMING WITH US

Mark: what?? This is a completely legal orphan deal

Police: theres no orphans here

*police man grabs an orphan. Hes flat. Flashback to Hardison setting up 5000 cardboard orphan cutouts*

Mark: but what are you arresting me for??

Police man: sir you filled all of city hall with gravy

*flashback to Nate filling city hall with gravy while wearing a T-shirt that says “Im bad businessman”*

Mark: you can’t do this to me!!

Police: (arrests him)

Nate: heh. You could say he got... Leveraged

Parker: i have autism

Everyone: oh my god Parker shut up