#the pirates just gtfo because that is very much not what they signed up for

[natileroxs]

I think one of the biggest missed opportunities in all the Gear 5 at Marineford fics I read (still love them btw) is the fact that if Luffy had gone Gear 5 there would be nothing that could stop Zunesha from stepping over the Red Line and coming to see their oldest friend Joy Boy.

[aerialsquid]

Metashipping?

Title: The Men Upstairs Fandom: The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie Pairings: Batman/Joker (…sort of), The Man Upstairs/OC Characters: Finn, The Man Upstairs, Batman, Joker, Original Male Character Tags: Meta Fic, Dating, Legos, Metafiction, Symbolism, Parenting, Fatherhood, Businessman Description: Borrowing from the meta reveal at the end of The LEGO Movie, where we find the plot to be a metaphor for a child playing with his father’s Lego sets, this offers a ship-ish look at the meta subtext behind The LEGO Batman Movie. Closet nerd Jack goes on a lukewarm date with a closet LEGO collector, and finds a Batman in dire need of a Robin…and maybe a Joker too.

"-so the main goal is increasing our audience base by 40%. Which let me tell you, is hard when we've got a 30% churn rate, but our senior initiatives team is expanding the database capabilities to-"

Jack made eye contact with the overexpensive coffee maker on the other side of Hank’s overexpensive kitchen. This was he didn't date people in the business. Why in the heck had he decided he should go on a date with someone in the business? Especially one who was just some stranger he’d met on a dating app?

Oh, right. Because he was an idiot who had a hard time saying no.

“Yeah, audience segmentation’s tricky,” Jack said with as much passion as he could manage, which was the same amount of passion he raised for an extra ketchup packet at McDonalds.

“Exactly!” said his date, raising his glass of wine emphatically. “Especially when the sales demographics are changing so fast.”

Jack’s plan had been to get to the bar, have two drinks, and if the guy wasn’t done being dull by two drinks Jack would find an excuse to go wash his hair. Unfortunately, when they got to the bar a sign in the window indicated it was closed due to “Personal Issues, Don’t Ask, But It’s All Her Fault”. Jack’s date had mentioned that his own house was right up the road, and his kids were at tutoring. They could still enjoy a few glasses of fancy nineteen-whatever French wine, and they wouldn’t have to worry about overpaying for imported cheese and French bread.

And Jack was an idiot who had a hard time saying no.

Jack was considering discretely texting his BFF an SOS for GTFO support when the door opened. A kid with a frizzy, curly mop of hair and a solemn expression usually reserved for priests conducting funerals entered, one hand tugging along a younger girl and the other holding a tiny bag of bulky toys.

Hank snapped around, wine sloshing out onto the cheese platter as Jack leaned out of splatter range. “Finn? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Susan!”

Finn looked up at his father with a dulled expression. “She didn’t show up.” The kid sounded as if this sort of thing was business as usual – being left behind, left out, ignored, forgotten. The younger girl took the bag of toys from his hand and wandered off into the depths of the house with it clutched tightly to her chest.

Hank rose to his feet, nearly snapping the stem of the wineglass in his hand. “And how did you get home?”

“Bus.”

“Bus? You went on the bus alone? The school just let you get on the bus alone?” Hank’s voice was rising in pitch with each sentence, heading towards a shriek. It didn’t seem to make a dent in Finn’s dulled demeanor.

“Yeah.” He gave an idle shrug.

“Oh, I am going to murder them!” Jack’s date stormed upstairs, likely to get his phone, leaving Jack forgotten next to the fancy cheese.

Jack and the kid stared at each other.

“You’re…Finn, right?”

“Mhm. He’s pretty mad,” the kid noted. He grabbed a slice of cheese with cracker and stuffed it into his mouth. “Who are you?”

“Jack. I’m a friend of your dad. We were…talking.”

“About business?”

Jack opened his mouth for a yes. Then he looked the kid in the eye as Finn stuffed grapes into his mouth, and considered the sad way that the word ‘business’ had tumbled out of his mouth. Hank had barely talked about his family life but Jack knew enough about Hank’s job to practically do it himself.

“Honestly, I hate business,” he said instead. Jack leaned over, elbows resting on his knees. “What do you like, Finn?”

Finn shrugged. “Stuff. TV shows." When it was clear Jack wasn’t going to move on to another topic, he mumbled, “Legos.”

“Oh. Cool. I love Legos.”

The sound of a very angry middle class white man tumbled back down the stairs. Hank’s exact words were muffled but the intent and emotion behind them was fairly clear.  Jack winced.

“I think your dad’s gonna be busy for a while.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think I should leave?”

“I dunno.”

Jack sucked his teeth and considered the matter. Something about the kid just made him ache. It was that look in his eyes, like this was inevitable. A kid shouldn’t feel like he was an extra load.

Jack knew that much from experience.

“Hey, Finn? You want to show me your Legos?”

“Wwwwwwow. When you said Legos, I didn’t think you meant you were running an entire Lego store out of your basement.”

“Dad collects them,” Finn said. “And builds them. He’s got all the sets. He likes to build the sets.”

Jack’s jaw hung open as he wandered the basement, staring at models of Isengard and the Sears Tower that were almost as tall as he was. The figures could have been shop models for how perfectly they were built, each Stormtrooper storming the plains of Hoth and pirate swinging across the ratlines of the Black Pearl in perfect position. “Your dad collects enough Legos to build a literal house and he had me talking about demographic segmentation?” That asshole.

Jack followed Finn around as Finn named off the sets in regimented order. The constructs were built box-picture-perfect but each had some endearing little quirk to it. Firefighters were trying to get a kitten down from the Eiffel Tower. Gremlins had invaded Hogwarts and built a crude airplane on the parapets so they could sit on its wings.

“He used to keep them to himself, but now we play together sometimes. When he’s not doing business.” Finn said the word business like it was a slur, which was something Jack could get behind.

“I love it. This is amazing. Oh my god, is that a Batman set? That’s huge!”

“That’s Arkham Asylum. It’s from a set. This is Wayne Manor, I built this one, and the Batcave one.”  Finn pointed to an immense house construct.  It was furnished with at least two dozen rooms, each with small chairs and tables or cute little plastic toilets. On the shelf below it was what was indeed the Batcave, full of at least a dozen Bat-appended vehicles.

“Have I mentioned I’m a huge Batman fan? Huge.” First crush huge, but he wasn’t going to say that in front of the nine-year-old.

“Really?” Finn gave Jack a once-over. Jack realized what an absolute square he must look like, wearing his finest business casual and looking as professionally average as possible. It made him regret everything he was doing with his life.

“You want my cred? I got cred.” Jack whipped his phone out and swiped through Facebook, back through the carefully curated archive of incredibly dull, employer-safe vacation and brunch imagery. He stopped on a specific photo and held it up, gloating.

“This was me last year at Halloween.” he said, pointing to the central figure in a generic ‘badly lit people at table in bar with beers and arms around each other but not in a sexy way’ shot. “Check out what I’m wearing.”

Finn leaned in to look at the picture, then giggled. “You have Batman pajamas?” he squeaked, one hand over his mouth.

“Batman pajamas with cowl.” More of a onesie, really. There’d been a sale at ThinkGeek.

The first real smile Jack had seen on Finn for more than a few moments began to creep to the surface. Upstairs he could still hear the faintest of yelling—if Hank was the kind of guy Jack thought he was, he’d be there a while and ask to speak to at least two managers. Jack’s eyes roamed the table until he found the airport set (with a little TSA and metal detector, wtf).

“So now I’m going to need you to show me your Batman cred. Trivia time. What if, uh….so what if there was a plane coming into Gotham city that was full of bombs, and explosives.” He leaned over to the ‘Old West Gold Mine’ set and grabbed a pile of TNT. Finn looked mildly concerned as Jack distributed the explosives around the plane like salt on pasta.

“Aaaaand it got taken over by ninjas!” Jack ran to the Samurai set and plucked up fistfuls of ninjas. Finn’s expression went from concerned to alarmed.

“You’re mixing up the sets…”

“It’s fine, I’ll put them back later.” Jack was on a roll now. He grinned eagerly, distributing the ninjas on top of the plane and walking a few of them inside. He looked over his shoulder and eyed Arkham Asylum. “They’re toys, right? What’s the point if we’re not playing with them?”

Damnit, he was going to entertain this small child if it killed him.

“—and I always come to work with a smile!!!!”

Jack grinned wide, wiggling the tiny Joker menacingly between his fingers. The little pilot cap balanced on the molded hair fell off and he quickly balanced it back on top of one tiny green spike.

Finn was silent, staring at him from the other side of the table. The little pilot figure that Jack had forced into his hand hung loose between his fingers. Jack could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. “You should be terrified,” he prompted.

Finn offered another of the apathetic shrugs that were starting to be cheese graters on Jack’s soul. “Why?”

Jack pitched his voice high again. “Because! I will be taking over the city!” he made the little Joker dance back and forth.”

“Hmmm.” Finn’s eyes roamed around the model city as he let out a noise of unclear emotion response.

“What? I mean it!” The high pitch in his voice grew higher and just a shred more desperate. He felt like someone trying frantically to start their car by turning the key again and again, each roar of the engine even more subdued and upsetting.

The moment of ‘hmmmmmmmm ‘ stretched out again, until finally Finn looked up, humor dancing in his eyes, “Batman will stop you.”

Yes!!!!

Jack blew a gleeful raspberry. “Pffft!”

“He always stops you.” Finn insisted.

“No, he doesn’t!”

“Yes, he does.”

“No he doesn’t!”

“Like that time with the two boats?

“Your dad let you watch—I mean, this is better than the two boats!” Finn was still looking up in skepticism. Jack wracked his brain, trying to yank in what little shreds of his improv classes hadn’t been violently repressed by his mind. “Tonight is going to be different! Tonight is my greatest plan yet! And trust me, Batman’s never gonna see it coming.”

“Like that time with the parade and the Prince music?”

“Hey, quiet! Your city is under attack by Gotham’s greatest criminal masterminds! Including...”

Jack scrambled for the Arkham Asylum set, ripping tiny plastic figures off their pedestals and out of their cells.

“Riddler! Scarecrow! Bane!” He snapped the characters down to the table one by one, their arms upraised in defiance of the law and common decency. “Two-Face! Catwoman! And let's not forget Clayface! Poison Ivy! Mr. Freeze! Penguin!”

Jack dove into the plastic bin of spare minifigures and started yanking out random bodies, slapping capes and hats onto scowling figures and setting them down on the table one by one.

“Crazy Quilt! Eraser! Mime! Tarantula! King Tut! Orca! Killer Moth! March Hare! Zodiac Master! Gentleman Ghost! Clock King! Calendar Man! Kite Man! Catman! Zebra-man! Annnnnnd the Condiment King!”

He paused, panting as he set the last little caped figure on the platform, tapping a tiny red bottle into its hand. A row of hastily cobbled second-stringers stretched out down the length of the table, all glaring menacingly towards the perfectly constructed cityscape.

Finn raised an eyebrow at him. “… Okay, are you making some of these up?

“Nope, they’re all real!” Jack winked. “Probably worth a Google.”

Hank came down the stairs just as Batman was delivering t-shirts to the orphanage, and stayed silent until the Batmobile slid elegantly into the Wayne Manor and Batcave sets.

“What are you doing?”

Both Finn and Hank froze, their expressions of childish guilt almost identical.

“We’ll put it back, Dad,” Finn mumbled.

“We just saved Gotham City anyway, so I think this episode’s wrapped up.” Jack sat back on his knees, disconnecting the Joker from his little balloon harness. Finn was already collecting up the ninjas and running away to quickly put them back into position.

“Well. I’m glad you have that handled,” said Hank, his expression carefully free of every emotion, including that of apathy, which on reflection was kinda impressive.

Jack rolled the airplane back to its landing pad next to its little government-empowered metal-detecting autocrats.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this? Heck, why isn’t this the first thing in your dating profile?”

“Some people think toy collecting’s a little childish.”

“Some people can suck my Loot Box Exclusive Batarang Multi-tool. Seriously. This is great.” He began stripping the plane of tiny bombs.

“Hey, Hank? Why don’t you have a Dick?”

Jack’s date stopped, jaw working as he tried to muster up a reply. Jack’s penny dropped and he rushed in with “A Dick Grayson! A Robin! Red shirt, yellow cape, green tights. Sorry. Finn says you have about fifteen different Batmans but there’s no Robins.”

Hank blinked. “Oh. I think the dog ate it. I haven’t replaced it, I haven’t been into the media tie-in sets for a while.”

“You should get one. Actually, I will buy you one if I have to.”

“Uh. Why?”

“Batman’s got all this crap but he hasn’t got a family. I had to dig the Alfred out of the back of the Wayne Manor set. Batman needs people to back him up, always has. And Robin’s his son. I mean he’s adopted, or at least the Dick Grayson one’s adopted, and they’ve got this really tight bond, and I feel like Finn would really relate to that.”

“You sure you’re not getting a little too into this?”

“It’s not me who’s getting into it. I mean, not just me.” Jack looked over his shoulder at Finn, who was cleaning up the discarded piles of Batvillains and neatly placing them back into Arkham. “It’s him. Kids work out stuff through play, and his idea of a strong person isn’t one that needs to deal with sidekicks. His Batman doesn’t need a family, and he definitely doesn’t do ships.”

“Ships?”

“Relationships. Connections. He’s not even that into the Joker and lemme tell you, every good Batman has some twisted fixation on Joker. This the kind of Batman you get in the Nolan movies where he’s emotionally stunted, not the kind that winds up opening up to people like in some of the better comics. I’m not sure that’s…”

Jack abruptly stopped the word fountain flowing from his mouth, biting down hard on his thin lip to keep the words inside. His gaze fell away as the weight of adulthood abruptly fell down on his shoulders. Here he was, a grown man with a professional job, messing around in some other guy’s basement with his Lego models like he was one of Finn’s colleagues here for pretend play and video games after elementary school, talking his head off about the significance of superheroes having sidekicks.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m a huge dork.”

“No. It’s, um.” Hank peeked over Jack’s shoulder. “Hey, Finn? We’ll clean this up, why don’t you go start your homework?”

“Okay, Dad.”

Hank lowered his voice once Finn had scrambled up the stairs. “It’s hard to get him out of his shell with other people,” he whispered. “He’s up in his head so much of the time, and he’s so shy with other kids. I’ve never seen him just click with someone like that. I’ve been trying to play with him more but I can never seem to get it right.” He reached over and readjusted the angle of the airplane, almost looking guilty for needing to do so. “I don’t think I’m on his level. I spend so much time around people hyperfocused on the profit line that I forget how to be a kid.”

“You’re saying I’m immature?”

Hank smiled. He reached out to take the Joker from Jack’s hand, and his fingers lingered a few moments longer than necessary against Jack’s skin. “I’m saying that’s not the worst thing in the world for me right now.”