#ability to dislocate? not entirely sure there but it looks really fucked when I move certain ways)

[peapod20001]

One of my many talents is the ability to do things, but not know I can do things

#random post #I’m being silly for the most part lol #tho I’m always surprised when I draw smth nice or am able to do smth well #shocked like when a deer sheds their antlers lol. like ‘WHATHFUCK IS THAT?!?!’ #every day I forget I draw and every day I remember that fact #I may always be thinking about my ocs. but I’m not always thinking about drawing if that makes sense. like it’s 2 separate things that mesh #sometimes. so if that isn’t coherent I’m experiencing the consequences of my actions (hunger and thirst) #anyways when I first played beatsaber I shocked everyone and myself when I was able to keep up the faster paces #I guess I’ve just had practice with quick things like that before? I play a game where it’s very ‘push button at right time’ and that one #also goes pretty fast. idk tho. anyways I learn things about myself and it’s fun (like when I realized my right shoulder may have the #ability to dislocate? not entirely sure there but it looks really fucked when I move certain ways) #I’ve also noticed my left eyebrow will subconsciously just raise on its own. not like the Rock style or anything lol but you can obviously #see it. also I can lift my right brow on its own without moving any other muscle on my face so that’s neat #I can also move my ears! it’s from all those years of trying to keep my glasses on my face lol #anyways I’m rambling and I need to eat now so <3

[rotshop]

*slams into your inbox* I just read through mag reader and Deimos headcanons again and I love it. I would def be interested in seeing more! (Also are you sure you don’t wanna hold his hand? Even just a little?) -Echo

gonna do a funney little mix of ideas here ,,,,, lol ,,,,,,,, also yes i am sure <333 i go 'hey check out this funny fish' and then i hold his head underwater.

[ tw brief, light violence, body horror and gore / blood ]

context

auditor + mag s/o ;

-OK OK HEAR ME OUT .

-you weren't originally an aahw project. while they're definitely the biggest company of sorts around there's still a few others that are like them but not exactly them hanging around nevada. you happened to be in some facility they decided to raid due to them having some possibly useful information regarding the anti-aahw . she's definitely a little less than enthused to get a call from her agents that she should come check this out but ,, when she lays her eyes on u that immediately melts away

-he's VERY very curious about you. keeps you close which is kind of nice bc it means you're treated pretty well but also it means a lot of being watched. audi just has like. a habit of unconsciously ''''''''studying'''''''' you. they're always noting little behaviors of yours down mentally and asking you little questions abut how you came to be and what abilities you hold.

-believe it or not he actually DOESN'T want you in fights. she knows you're incredibly capable but the thought of you getting too involved in a bunch of clawing and tearing again makes her get uneasy. she just prefers for you to stay by her side, with the excuse that you're a body guard of sorts for her (you aren't, she's got several other, more disposable mags that serve that role just fine.).

-HOWEVER. there is one time where he doesn't get an option in that. a few contractees and dissenters attempted a raid on the base audi was at, hoping to try and get some sort of bargaining chip to make deal with. before they can even really attempt to try and land some sort of hit on them you're already pouncing on the nearest grunt, blood already spurting and painting the walls red in mere seconds of your arrival. it honest to god shocks her into stillness, her just watching motionlessly the entire time, only really moving once to dodge some limb you'd mindlessly thrown her way after tearing it from its socket. WHILE SHE IS IMPRESSED ,,, she still scolds you a little for being reckless while trying to scrub the blood off of you with a wet rag, huffing that 'you could've gotten seriously hurt' if you were any less careful >:/

-however he does do the thng where he like. cups both sides of your face and then presses his forehead against yours. you have to lean down a lot for him to do so but still. sighs a little while brushing his thumb under your eyes and tells you to be more careful from now on.

-auditor is not immune to favoritism and it shows. someone brings it up (shakily, of course) and she just shrugs and goes 'idk what you're talking abt' while petting you who's got your head on her lap. said person promptly gets 'dismissed' after.

-hates whenever anyone tries to put some kind of muzzle on you, even if its just for the jaw dislocation thingy it still makes him go kind of '>:|' . he'll let them for like. a day at MOST (unless you keep trying to get it off, then chances are he's just gonna take it off for you. nobody really bothers asking / trying to get it back on you bc he just sends them a sharp little glare before they even can. if you REALLY need it that bad then he might try and convince you to keep it on a little longer or otherwise take your mind of it, he still feels really bad about it tho . )

sanford + mag s/o ;

- :)

-you two knew each other before he dissented / you became a mag. worked pretty close together and were just close in general !! you didn't know dei super super well since he worked in a different area but you two met a few times and hit it off pretty well.

-anyway ! he doesn't take your magnification well. at all. the first few times he saw you after it were the worst, mostly because those few times were primarily because you were lashing out at agents for one reason or another (mostly maltreatment from guards / people being shitty in general) . for the first while its so obvious that you're just exhausted from what's happened to your body that was NOT meant to become this, that you're tired and on edge from not being allowed any real rest. it makes him feel fucking terrible to see how awful of a state you're in and know that there's next to nothing he can really do to help.

-it especially hits him when he notices the other little changes. there's some specific moment where he's holding onto you far too tightly, clutching at the back of your jacket while he does his best to keep composed. you always had this habit of giving a half jokey hum of some stupid little joke or even just a 'what's wrong, big guy?' whenever he seemed off or tense, he can't help but make note of the lack of real response from you in the moment other than you wrapping your arms around him as well. another time, maybe he tries to make some little inside joke after something reminded him of it, looking back at you with a little smile. it hits him with a special punch to the gut when he notices your confusion, you just can't recognize it. you don't remember it anymore. you don't remember a lot of your old self or interactions anymore.

-you two end up getting split up at one point or another. orginally, he'd planned to run away with you and deimos buut,,, one way or another, you weren't really able to get out. he goes looking for you a bunch but eventually he has to stop when it gets to be too much and he can't find any real sign of you, he's quiet for a long time after it.

-HOWEVER . he does eventually find you in some abandoned warehouse him and the others had planned to look for supplies in. the entire time he's in there he keeps hearing sounds he thinks are just dei or hank but every time he asks or comments on it they just give him a look of confusion or a little 'what are you talking about?' it puts him really on edge, it's worse when he's in one of the further corners, digging through a few boxes and desperately trying to ignore how much it feels like someones there. anyway umm lol its just you ,,,, ehe . it takes him a solid minute to process that its you but as soon as it clicks he's yelling your name and running up to hug you. doesn't even stop to think that you could totally tear him a new one right then and there he's just too happy to see you. dei and hank both come rushing over after hearing him, dei recognizes you too and is just kinda 'oh hey !! friend !! :D' while hank stands there and just kinda stares.

-is able to take you back to base without too much argument from the others. he does his best to fill you in on everything that's happened in hopes you'll explained what happened on your part too. even if you don't he can't be too upset since he's just too gd happy to see you again ,,,, chances are you stick around him a lot . deimos is nice but u don't remember him super well and hank makes you uneasy lmao . its ok he thinks its funny though, just laughs a little whenever you stand in his doorway in silence until he notices you :)

#rot writes #sanford x reader #auditor x reader #madcom x reader #madness combat x reader #madcom imagines #madness combat imagines #echo anon #oughghghgh sleepy .......... snsnsnsnsnsnns

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Stalker x Stalker, Part 1

Part 1/13, 51.3k words

Next part

Guys, I'm a whole five layers into procrastinating right now. Procrastinating my schoolwork with Alternate Ending, Alternate Ending with Miraculous TikTok, Miraculous TikTok with house chores, and house chores with this... it's like when you do something long enough in a game and you level up at it except instead of getting really good at jumping I'm extremely productive in the worst ways

Nonetheless have some Timinette

Perma taglist: @nathleigh

When Tim learned that his favorite designer was moving to Gotham, he had been conflicted.

On one hand, she was coming to Gotham! Things he ordered wouldn’t take what felt like years to arrive! There was a chance of actually seeing her in person!

On the other hand, why would anyone even want to move to Gotham? Sure, Tim had never left despite his wealth, but only because he’d gotten Stockholm Syndrome-d into liking the place by the time he was legally able to leave. MDC had no such attachments. If she was moving to America then why not pick Metropo -- ew, actually, no, fuck Metropolis -- somewhere safe?

He tipped his head back against the couch to stare at the ceiling for a moment, mulling over his options in his mind.

He sighed and pulled his laptop to himself. He’d watch her for a bit to make sure she adjusted well to Gotham and that would be the end of it.

~

Marinette hummed as she fell back on her new bed.

It had been a long few months for her. She’d thought she’d be happy when Hawkmoth was finally defeated but, in the end, she’d just been bored. It turns out that adrenaline and dopamine are hard to get when your brain is wired for only using them in life-or-death situations.

And what better place to experience life-or-death situations than Gotham?

Of course, it wasn’t as consistent as Paris’ one or two akumas a day, but she could make do. One scrap of adrenaline a week was better than none at all.

So far, though, she hadn't had much of a chance to get that adrenaline. She’d spent the first seven days moving in. Obsessing over what color drapes she should use, obsessing even more about the locks she needed to put on her windows…

But now she was done with all that. And she had underestimated the time it would take to get settled in so she wasn’t going to be getting any commissions for the next week or so. Which meant the boredom was back tenfold.

Until, suddenly, it wasn’t. High-pitched screaming started up, growing in intensity until it was practically rocking the foundations.

Marinette ran to the window and her face lit up when she saw a green gas slowly rolling over the city and heading her way. “YES!”

Tikki gave her a disapproving look.

“I mean… oh nooooo those people are so scared I guess I’ll have to help them.”

She smiled ‘innocently’ at her kwami before grabbing her purse and ducking out her door. She looked around and saw all her fellow tenants looking confused.

“It’s just fear gas, right?” One of them asked.

She didn’t know why they were asking her, she was just even less likely to know what was going on than they were, but she answered nonetheless: “You’d think so, but everyone has gas masks, so… there’s probably something else going on.”

Her neighbors exchanged grim looks before disappearing into their houses.

She shrugged to herself and locked her door. They were dealing with it, probably.

She found a dark alley and did a quick glance around -- left, right, right, left -- before mumbling to transform.

(She made sure that every part of her was covered, despite not really liking the look of it, because there was no way she was just going to step into an unknown gas without making sure that it wasn’t going to hurt her.)

Marinette hesitantly walked towards the green cloud despite her instincts and the people around her yelling that it was a very, very bad idea. She couldn’t feel anything, thank the kwamis, but her suit was steaming which was decidedly not good. She stepped further inside, her skin crawling (she had to hope this was unrelated to whatever acid was in the air).

She kept her gaze up determinedly to avoid looking at all the quickly decaying bodies on the ground as she slipped through the cloud in search of the source of the gas.

She came upon Poison Ivy after an hour of searching. She was, predictably, sitting on a giant flower. Less predictably, though, smaller versions of the flower sprouted off of it and released the acidic gas into the world. She considered just trying to sneak up and cut off all the stems, but decided against it. Even if Ivy somehow missed her doing this, she would probably just be able to regrow everything.

“Hey!” Marinette chirped as she dropped from a roof.

Ivy turned to look at her and Marinette saw confusion make its way across her face. “Who’re you?”

She looked down at her suit. Her entire torso was red with black polka-dots, her arms and legs were pure black save for red fingers, her face was blacked out and almost featureless outside of white lenses over her eyes.

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“... I don’t know. Polka-Dot Man’s daughter or something?”

“No! I’m Ladybu -- wait, did you just say Polka-Dot Man? That’s a thing?”

Poison Ivy shrugged. “I mean, he’s dead, but yeah he was a thing. Anyways, are you on my side or not?”

‘No! Obviously not!’ her mind screamed, but outwardly she just shrugged and said, “Depends, why’re you doing this?”

“Humans are killing the earth, so I found a way to kill humans without killing the earth, too!”

No one could see it because of her suit, but Marinette opened and closed her mouth like a fish for a good minute before she brought her brain back enough to choke out her answer:

“Oh. Bold choice. Really interesting. Um. Consider: no?”

Poison Ivy sighed. “Listen, kid. I like ladybugs, they help my plants, so I’m going to give you one chance here: leave.”

Marinette brought her finger to her lips, tapping the fabric over her mouth repeatedly as if thinking, and then tossed her yoyo and cut the flower that Ivy was sitting on.

Ivy gasped in surprise as she fell, but Marinette’s moment of victory lasted approximately half a second before Ivy was lifted off the ground via vine.

Every single plant in the area suddenly perked up and made a beeline for her.

‘Oh. I’m fucked.’

Marinette jumped to avoid the initial attack and summoned a lucky charm. She looked down at the machete in her hand and her nose scrunched. Great.

A vine wrapped around her ankle and yanked her back to the ground and she hissed out a curse as her legs protested the harsh landing. She had bigger problems than probably broken legs, though, because there were other vines heading her way. She looked at the machete in her hand and swung it at the vine attached to her foot.

Well, at least the machete was sharp, she supposed.

She rolled away from the attacking plants and her legs screamed in protest at the fact that she was putting weight on them, but she took a few quick breaths and bit back bile and continued on like everything was a-okay.

She looked at where the flower had been. Ivy had made a throne of sorts out of flowering vines. She laid across the armrests and conducted the vines attacking Marinette with a lazy finger.

Marinette yelped in surprise when something wrapped around her waist and pulled her away from the plants. She hit ground -- or, rather, roof -- and skidded over the concrete for a few feet before she came to a stop.

Black Bat and Signal. Oh, thank the kwamis. Help had finally come.

“Thanks,” she said shortly, slipping out of the grappling wire.

The three of them made a hasty retreat, disappearing inside a place a few buildings down. An office building, she thought as she dropped herself into a desk chair.

“How do you deal with her all the time?”

“Well, usually, she doesn’t do this much,” said Signal with a half-hearted smile. “It’s been a while since she’s been on the whole ‘kill everyone on Earth’ thing.”

Marinette raised her eyebrows behind her mask but then shrugged it off and took a quick look out the window. Ivy’s plant throne was rolling around on the ground as she searched for them.

“She’s got plants releasing something airborne that apparently kills everything but plants. Best option is knocking her out somehow. You got something in your tool belts for that?”

Black Bat shook her head.

Marinette hadn’t really been expecting them to, but her shoulders still sagged a little with disappointment.

“I can distract her pretty well,” said Signal after a few moments. “You two can work at taking her down.”

She hesitated. “It’d probably be more efficient to have two people as bait. I’ll help you.”

“I don’t like the idea of putting you in danger,” said Signal.

She shrugged. “I’ve already got two broken legs... and I think a dislocated ankle but not really sure on that one.”

“You what --?!”

“You heard me. Hurts like hell. It’s fine, though.”

How did she know they were looking at her with wide eyes when she couldn’t see their eyes?

She leaned back in her chair, twirling her machete absently as Signal and Black Bat talked.

(Well, they weren’t exactly ‘talking’. Black Bat and Signal just looked at each other and made vague hand motions every once in a while. She tried to follow along, but apparently her ability to know every language did not cover bat-ese.)

Black Bat, eventually, gave Marinette two thumbs up and apparently that was all she was going to get because Signal and Black Bat were already heading out the window they’d come in through.

Marinette sighed and followed after them.

Was it easier to dodge when there were two people? Not really. Or, maybe, Ivy had somehow gotten stronger in the five-ish minutes they’d been gone.

The two of them stood back to back, slashing and hacking through as many plants as they could, but there were far too many and they were quickly getting overwhelmed. Marinette barely managed to notice the one trying to snake around their legs before it could turn them upside down. Signal had grabbed her by the shoulder once to keep her from getting clobbered by a vine carrying a bat (which, by the way, what the fuck?!).

She yelped when she felt Signal get torn away from her and turned to watch him get thrown into a car. The metal crumpled under the impact, which did not bode well for the not metal person that hit it.

She managed to weave her way over and cut him out of the vines attempting to cocoon him, then wondered how she was supposed to check his pulse when any exposed skin meant touching acid. Thankfully, though, he stirred and his mask tipped up to look at her.

“’m fine,” he slurred.

She was skeptical, but she stepped back a step.

“Three!” Said Signal suddenly, which would have been helpful if her brain was in fight mode and not ‘help partner’ mode. It wasn’t, so a vine attempted to impale her Dean Winchester style.

The vine did not succeed in its murder attempt, but she kinda wished it did when it sent her flying into a nearby telephone pole headfirst. She groaned in pain and slid to the ground, head spinning with what was probably a concussion if the way her stomach turned meant anything.

She didn’t get to throw up, though, as something came up and blocked her throat. She struggled against the vine around her neck, hands fumbling for her machete at her side. How does one close their hand again?

Nope, those are eyes. Open those again, please. Please?

And then, suddenly, she was able to breathe again. She slumped against the wall and took deep breaths to get her lungs back into working condition.

She peeled her eyes open despite the pain and looked around. Black Bat had knocked out Ivy and was now tying her up. Signal was making his way over, using an escrima stick as a kind of cane.

She shook her head as if trying to clear it and then looked at the ground until she found her machete again. She struggled for a moment to get her body to work enough to reach for it and grab it, but she got there eventually so it was fine.

“Miraculous Ladybug,” she murmured, tossing it and watching it dissolve into ladybugs.

She blinked until her brain started working again and looked up to see Signal and Black Bat both leaning over her. She couldn’t read their expressions through their armor, but she was pretty sure they were more tense than they had been since the last time she’d really looked at them. Which was wild, because the last time they’d been surrounded by acidic gas.

“You’re a meta.”

She gave a shrug. “Kinda. You’re welcome, by the way.”

He sighed. “There’s a no meta rule in Gotham.”

“Aren’t you a meta?”

Signal didn’t answer, just offered her a hand up.

She hesitantly allowed him to pull her to her feet and she stretched out her newly fixed body. Kwami, she wouldn’t take being intact for granted ever again (or, at least, not until the next fight).

Signal and Black Bat had another one of those silent conversations and eventually Black Bat went over and collected Poison Ivy.

Marinette raised her eyebrow at the hand still in hers and Signal sighed and moved his grip up to her bicep.

“Can I take you to see Batman?”

“Do I actually get a choice in this?”

Signal winced. “Not really.”

She sighed. “Thought so. Alright. Let’s go.”

Welp. She’d lasted a whole week in Gotham. It had been fun while it lasted, she supposed.

~

Listen, sometimes you accidentally stumble across someone’s secret identity. It wasn’t like he was trying to figure out who Ladybug was, hell there was no way he could have even known she was going to show up in Gotham at all.

But then a cloud of green gas started rolling towards them while he was… watching over her and he had paled. He didn’t know if it was Joker Gas, Fear Gas, or something of Ivy’s creation, but if there were that many people screaming it probably needed more than just the usual gas mask or respirator.

He hadn’t relaxed until Marinette had ducked out of her apartment and started running away from the gas. Good. Despite her being new, she wasn’t stupid --.

Except then she swerved into an alleyway. Tim’s eyebrows furrowed and he ran across rooftops to where he’d seen her disappear. He saw her look around anxiously, checking for something. She was panicking, he thought -- of course she was, she had no real experience with Gotham’s bullshit.

He prepared himself to drop down, to be all ‘Hello random citizen who I do not know, I’m here to take you to safety’, only for red light to envelop her. He stared in stunned silence as she shifted awkwardly in what seemed to be a knockoff Spiderman costume and then headed out.

Ah. Well, now he understood why she had picked Gotham of all places.

He didn’t get much time to mull it over, though, as the gas started getting closer. He hesitated before calling it in, just in case his family had somehow missed the giant thing slowly taking over the city.

“Hey, so… bad news, guys, there’s apparently something going on downtown. Gas. Seems to work with just skin contact.”

“Black Bat and I are on it,” said Duke.

Tim nodded despite knowing that they couldn’t see it and started working on getting civilians to safety. Most of the bats had some parts of their faces or arms uncovered for reasons to connect with victims, so it was really up to Cass and Duke this time.

He worried his lip anxiously the entire time.

And then the ladybugs washed over the world and he felt his lip tear. Ah. That wasn’t great. Bruce was going to be fucking pissed about the newest illegal meta.

‘Well, guess it’s time to learn how to be a defense attorney in the half hour it takes me to get back to the batcave’, he thought, pulling out his phone…

It took him an hour to get to the batcave, which was both really good and really bad. Good because he’d gotten twice the time to learn defense than he’d thought he would; bad because he was the last one there and Bruce looked like he was about to explode.

Marinette had pulled the top part of her suit down like a hood -- he hadn’t even realized there was a zipper over the face -- and was now sitting on a railing and sipping at a Caprisun beneath a black surgical mask.

She looked up at him briefly when he dismounted Redbird and he watched her eyes narrow just slightly before her gaze returned to the bats on the ceiling.

“Since everyone is here, I suppose we can start,” said Bruce, his voice carefully calm.

Marinette finished off her Caprisun and pushed herself up to stand on the railing. “Hi. Ladybug. French hero. Nice to meet you guys.”

Tim waved at her and she smiled enough under her mask for her eyes to crinkle.

“I know about your no meta rule, but I’m not really a meta. Got magic jewelry.” She pushed some hair behind her ears to show off her earrings. “So I really don’t count myself and you shouldn’t either.”

Bruce shook his head a little. “It doesn’t matter that you’re not a meta on your own, you’re a liability to have in the city.”

Marinette rolled her eyes and wordlessly pointed at Duke, which was a good point.

“We know we can trust him.”

“We can trust her,” Tim cut in. His entire family turned and gave him wide-eyed stares behind their masks and all he could do was shrug. “She’s been doing hero work for four years, if she was going to go bad she probably would have already done so.”

“How do we know she’s the same person?” Asked Bruce.

Tim tipped his head towards Cass.

Cass huffed a little and then looked at Marinette.

Marinette shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. “Um…?”

Cass nodded slightly and then made a motion not much unlike a referee at a baseball game. ‘Safe’.

Everyone in the room visibly relaxed. Marinette, upon seeing this, relaxed herself.

“Seriously, though, don’t you guys want someone that can reverse physical damages on the team, anyways? None of you have powers of any kind except him, it’s probably better to have me for now and risk me turning later than not having me at all.”

Bruce sighed and shook his head exasperatedly. “That’s not the point.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Oh? Can someone tell me what the death count would have been for today if I hadn’t stepped in?”

Silence stretched for a few moments.

“Exactly. I get you’re cautious or whatever, that’s your whole ‘thing’, but kwami you’ve passed cautious and gone all the way to paranoid and stubborn. Relax.” She hopped over the bats and pulled the bottom of her surgical mask up to try and take another sip of her empty Caprisun. “Right, someone get me out of here? I’m tired of being questioned.”

The bats were all quiet for a moment as they considered this.

Tim hesitantly raised his hand. “I can take you home.”

She grinned and pointed at him. “Congrats, you’ve officially won second best bat.”

“Who’s first?” Said Tim, who was not offended.

She pointed at Cass. Cass perked up a little.

Ah. He rescinded his offense -- his not offense, sorry -- because, yeah, fair enough.

Marinette smiled and turned to Duke. “I guess you’re going to blindfold me again?”

“Yeah, sorry,” said Duke, rubbing the back of his neck. “Bats orders.”

Bruce grunted, which was B for ‘Yes, but why would you call me out for it?’

Marinette smiled and rolled her eyes. She turned to Steph. “How do you put up with all these guys? You only have Black Bat and she doesn’t talk -- or, at least, I don’t think she does.”

“Oh, there’s more --.”

“Spoiler,” Bruce warned.

Steph rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Yeah, she’s not the only one but the other two are a little… uptight sometimes. Glad to have you on board.”

Marinette looked a little confused but she nodded. “Fair. I like your mask.”

“Thanks! Yours is cooler, though.”

“They’re… they’re the same…” said Duke with a confused frown.

Marinette and Steph both gave him affronted looks.

“Excuse me?” Said Marinette, and Tim was reminded that she was a fashion designer. He silently said a prayer so Duke could get into heaven. “They are completely different! Look at the stitching, hers has a --.”

Bruce strode away, fingers pressed to his temples despite his cowl being in the way, which amused Marinette enough for her to stop chewing out Duke for not noticing the all-important stitching. She shook her head slightly and turned back to Tim.

“You said you were gonna take me out?”

He nodded slightly. After Steph tied the blindfold on Tim led her to Redbird and Cass helped her get on behind him. He made sure that she was holding on tightly before sending his family a tiny two-finger salute and taking off. She buried her face in his back.

He came to a stop outside a cafe and, when he propped his bike up, she pulled her blindfold from her face. She scrunched up her face at the sudden light and he pretended to fumble with the clasp of his helmet to hide his smile.

“I can walk you the rest of the way home,” he said. “If you’d like.”

She laughed a little. “I’m a hero, too, y’know. I don’t need your protection.”

He crossed his arms. “Oh? Then why were you using me as a shield from the wind earlier?”

“Because you assholes didn’t give me a helmet!” She said, giving him a playful punch on the arm. She hesitated. Her head tipped to the side. “Thanks for coming to my defense earlier, by the way.”

He smiled. “It’s nothing, really. And don't worry about B, he’s just a bit of an ass when people first show up.”

“Oh, yeah, thanks, I was so worried about what the guy that dresses up like a bat to fight crime thought of me,” she said, but her shoulders relaxed all the same. She glanced at the cafe he had pulled up to and smiled. “Do you know if this place is any good?”

“I know it has coffee,” said Tim.

“Ah, the world’s second greatest detective strikes again.”

He grinned. “I assume you're the greatest detective?”

“Of course,” she said. She looked inside and tipped her head slightly, considering. “Everyone in there is hipsters, so it’s either really bad or really good. Either way it’s really overpriced.”

He hummed his agreement.

She sighed and pulled her wallet out of a hidden pocket. If they lived in a cartoon a fly would have flown out of it when she opened it.

“I’ll pay,” he offered.

Her eyes widened and her face lit up for half a second before she schooled it into a teasing smile. “Wow, gonna buy me a drink and I don’t even have to pretend to flirt with you? Score!”

“Do that often?”

She batted her eyelashes. “No. I’m a law abiding citizen who would never use creepy old men to give me drinks while underage because America’s drinking laws are bullshit. I’m a hero and I would never break the law. Obviously.”

For some reason, he didn’t quite believe her.

Nonetheless, he just rolled his eyes and led her inside.

#timinette #timari #shutterbug #timmari #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #tim drake #red robin #stalker x stalker #maribat

[keilemlucent]

lavender latte: viii

(M (for now!)

hawks | takami keigo x reader

ao3

chapter 1   ||   chapter 2  ||   chapter 3   ||  chapter 4   ||   chapter 5   ||  chapter 6   ||  chapter 7  ||  chapter 9  ||

masterlist

word count: ~4.7k

realities, huh. 

warnings: descriptions of blood and bodily injury, post-traumatic symptoms, panic/anxiety attacks 

----

oof. wow. here it is, part one of the BIG boy chapter. please mind the warnings on this one!! trauma and post-traumatic symptoms are a big theme in this chapter and the next. 

as an author, these have been some of the harder, more vulnerable chapters to create and i hope that the writing shows this  :’’’^) all that said, enjoy :’^) 

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Keigo was fucked up.

Or he had fucked up.

It was hard to tell the specifics of his predicament, considering how hard he’d hit his head.

 ‘Hawks’ was known for his speed, his skill, and his ability to finish fights off before they even had a chance to truly start. He prided himself on his prowess, the product of his own diligence and meticulous training. Normally, Keigo kept to these high standards without fail and with faltering. 

On the rare occasion he did get injured, it was usually simple scrapes or bruises.

Except, sometimes time, his shortcomings created much more than scratches. 

 His left arm was twisted the wrong way, wrenched from its socket. His skull ached, hair sticking to the back of his neck and cold.

Keigo blinked slowly, vision tilting and blurry against the asphalt he’d crashed onto. He’d sent his feathers to finish off what was left of the fight, knowing that he was, bodily, down for the count.

It hadn’t started as a large fight, notably. It shouldn’t have gotten so bad. The first alert he’d received just made it seem like petty burglary. Quickly after arriving on the scene, it escalated into an entire firefight spanning several blocks. 

He’d been one of the first heroes there, naturally. It wasn’t hard to disarm and pin most of the villains down, but quickly, things got out of hand. Figures forming from the afternoon’s shadows, quickly turning the simple de-escalation into an all-out brawl. 

Keigo pushed himself from the filthy ground, coughing up spittle and blood on the blacktop below. It wasn’t from an internal injury, he knew, just a bitten tongue and cheek that made the drippings of his mouth pink and cloudy. 

He sat up, forcing himself to his feet as more heroes arrived, finishing the job out of sheer numbers. Mentally, he cursed his mistakes and his stupor. The media circus and bureaucratic bullshit he was undoubtedly going to have to deal with made him audibly groan. Keigo could handle pain without question, but his least favorite parts of his job were the nuts and bolts of it all.

 Maybe it was the head trauma or the fact he’d just gotten sloppy lately, but Keigo didn’t even notice the oddly large amount of shattered glass at the scene or the shadows that loomed and weaved without rest nearby, though they never moved to the offensive. 

...

You sat on your couch, boot propped up (as usual), and a pillow hugged in your arms. 

Typically, you weren’t one to watch the news, but the moment you’d seen the alert from your phone about ‘large scale villain attack- Hawks and Miruko on the scene!, you’d rushed to turn on any channel that had coverage.

Which, creating a sense of dread in your gut, was most of them.

You watched the varying camera angles of the fight, squeezing the pillow tightly in your arms like the pressure would comfort you.

 The fear and terror was such a contrast to the absolute bliss of the first couple of weeks of you and Keigo’s relationship.

During that time, your text-based communication hardly changed, still ambiently throughout the day and including the exchange of many memes and well-placed photographs and selfies. 

The messages had changed, somewhat, truth be told. There was a sweetness to it, soft, warm, and new. The bantering never stopped, but woven within each of your words were small, tender lines that were new to you both.

Wonderfully new.

You found that Keigo was particularly affectionate over text, but it was nothing compared to him in-person.

You hadn’t really expected him to be clingy. Not based on the way he texted and talked previously and how he was generally portrayed by the public.

But god, was he.

He came over several other nights, always bearing food, drinks, and a bright smile. He wouldn’t even think of settling for the evening in the comfort of your couch (or bed) until you’d been showered in kisses and teasing touches, always seeming hungry, maybe even starved. 

He was careful, however, to never go too far or touch too much. 

When you two would finally settle on the couch, usually finding yourself strewn over each other in some way, Keigo would continue heaping on affection in any way he could, subtle or otherwise. You returned the gestures, giving your own too.

You craved the heat of his body in the same way he hungered for yours. 

You found that, as the nights would wear on, he tended to slip his rough hands under any top you might be wearing, settling his grip on your sides or back. He’d either press and massage, or just ambiently draw shapes. At first, you thought it was some sort of sexual preamble, expecting his touch to drift higher and hungrier.

 It took you a night or two of it to realize it wasn’t like that at all— 

Keigo just craved contact.

It all made sense, though your revelation surprised you a bi at first. 

One night, with his head in your lap, you had simply hummed out, “I never thought you’d be touch-starved.”

Keigo hummed as you ran your nails around the shell of his ear, “Mind elaborating on that one?”

“You’re always touching me when we’re together,” You replied simply, heart squeezing at the little twinges of anxiety you could see forming around Keigo’s eyes. “Not that it's a bad thing— I really love all of it, it’s just sweet. I didn’t think you’d be so affectionate and touchy. I would dare to say, it's cute.”

That comment turned Keigo’s cheeks bright red, though you hardly got much of a chance to tease him about it before he was on you with another wave of soft kisses and squeezes.

Maybe, you were a little touch-starved yourself.

And definitely, surely, falling into each other simply and sweetly felt like heaven. 

 ...

 But all of that syrupy goodness was gone, the flavor of it stale and rotten.

All you could focus on was your TV screen as Hawks was being pulled from an alleyway. The camera angle was poor, the quality shaky, but the picture was clear as day to you.

Keigo was walking, barely, most of his weight bared into Miruko’s side. He looked half-dead when he first emerged, limbs twisted painfully and face downcast.

He brightened up a moment later. You weren’t even sure that anyone would’ve caught the change in his expression if they didn’t know him as intimately as you did.

 Your chest tightened painfully when he gave his most dashing smile, pearly white teeth stained with blood that was rushing from a wide cut on his forehead. The juxtaposition of him being purely fucked up mixed with the shining expressions he was flashing at the media made your stomach churn with dread.

He’s hurt.

And it seems bad.

You chewed your bottom lip until it ached. 

The newscast kept playing, showing the wreckage of the scene, all of the hurt civilians— it was a few cities over, but you swore you could hear the sirens just outside of your window.

You dug around for your phone, typing out a message to Keigo, fingers shaking as you did.

 [you]: hey i saw about the attack? how are you doing?

 Texting him was the bare minimum, wasn’t it? If you could, you’d call. But based on the way he was reported to have been taken to a nearby hospital, he wouldn’t be answering his phone any time soon. 

It didn’t feel like enough, but what more could you do?

You felt uncomfortably powerless.

A very lucid, perhaps cruel part of your mind rang out amid your quiet panic:

Get used to it.

 You fell back into the cushions, unable to turn off the screen, though unable to do anything other than watch and churn. 

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 Keigo didn’t have a great recollection of the day's events after sustaining his fairly significant head injury, not to mention the shattering of the bones in his right arm and a few in his left leg. Not to mention his sorely dislocated shoulder. 

Pain blotted things out memory, he knew.

Hospital trips were few and far between for Keigo, but in the unfortunate circumstance he was stuck and strung up with wires and IV tubes, he was more than well taken care of. 

He was aware, somewhat, of the Commission’s hold on the scruff of his neck, though complacent in it. His good attitude and impeccable, nearly-perfect performance earned him the best medical care they could provide. 

Some sweet girl, a student from the west, was brought in to heal his wounds. Healing quirks of any significance were rare, so it was always interesting to see how they worked and manifested.

The girl’s quirk came at the price of any energy his body had, but he was completely patched up in a number of minutes. Fatigue be damned, he was happy to be quickly and easily put back together. He made sure to put on his best camera-ready smile as the girl traced symbols on the backs of his hands, fingers shaking and shyly smiling.

She was probably starstruck, all things considered. Meanwhile, Keigo was exhausted and out of it.

All through it, all of it, the actual fight and subsequent medical nightmare, he had slipped into a far different mindset than the one he’d been occupying for the last couple of weeks. 

Consequently, he hadn’t thought of you at all. 

You didn’t even cross his mind. 

Keigo could’ve blamed it on hitting his head, but that wouldn’t be entirely fair or truthful. 

All the same, the absence would burn later. 

...

Keigo flashed a dopey smile to the door of his hospital room when he spotted a familiar puff of bright yellow hair. 

Despite his stupor, familiarity still resonated. Besides, his PA stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the greyscale scrubs and antiseptic. 

“Akane! I knew you’d never be far in my time of need,” Keigo relaxed against the hospital bed he was still resigned to. He was to be discharged as soon as possible for the bevy of press reports he would had to complete. Not to mention the mountains of paperwork he’d probably have to file and sign. 

Akane kept a stern but humored expression as she shooed a nurse out of Keigo’s room. She was shorter than most, face cut with sharp angles and high ridges. They were dressed immaculately as always, a well-tailored black suit with crisp-looking dress shoes. All professionalism, trained and honed by the Commission in a similar way to Keigo, though it was implicitly recognized. 

“You’ve got a press conference in thirty with Miruko,” Akane didn’t answer his greeting, though Keigo could tell by their quick nod that it was at least acknowledged. They rolled a small suitcase next to the bed. “Extra hero costume in there. I called your normal hair and makeup, they’ll be in a few minutes after I leave. It’s been a while since you’ve been this injured in a fight, so put on a good show for everyone, won’t you?”

Akane’s sarcasm always brought a smile to his face, contrasting so starkly with their well-pressed hems and seams. 

Keigo quickly sat up, dropping his feet to the cold linoleum below, “Always a show.”

He quickly began to re-robe into his new garments, tired mind returning to its trained roots. 

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 You had been watching the newscast for hours, probably (definitely) against your best interest.

You’d have plenty of time to kick yourself for it later.

You couldn’t stop watching the repetitive footage and bland media, despite the report that ‘Hawks’ was safe, well and receiving treatment. 

Until you saw him, you couldn’t rest—- Or that’s what it felt like, anyway.

The image of him bloodied felt painfully etched into the forefront of your mind. The contours and highlights of Keigo’s wounds were uncomfortably bright and hot, nestled next to swirling images of your own. Uncomfortably vivid sensations and colors of your own stitched-up wounds that once wept blood themselves.

If you steeped in it all too deeply or for too long, your breathing would quicken, memories unbridled in the way they sucked down.

Sweat dripping down your brow, you willed your breath even and slowly despite how you definitely were having trouble handling what you were experiencing. 

As the evening wore into night, you remained wired.

You convinced yourself, despite the thorns that ran deep, you would be able to rest once you saw Keigo well. 

Eventually, there was an announcement for a late press conference, a conclusion to the media frenzy.

You knew you’d stay up for it, no matter how long it took to air. You knew he was fine, it had been confirmed over and over throughout the coverage, but it wasn’t enough.

You just need to see him.

Then you’ll be fine.  

Keigo is fine.

No amount of reassurance comforted you. You were sinking too deeply in your throes, ungrounded and crackling within your own fragile mind. 

The memories of blood and gore and hot, white fear rolled over you, suffocatingly close to how you’d felt less than a month prior. 

On the cold cement floor of the tea shop, you had Keigo’s feather, the knowingness that he would be there.

Yet, now?

You were alone in your dim apartment. 

No Keigo.

No villains.

Just you and your skull. 

 You had to pull yourself back when you felt your quirk begin to activate with your adrenaline, thankful for the low stimulation of your apartment, and the pillow in your arms being exchanged for the plushie Keigo had gifted you. You forced yourself to ground, counting your breaths, and holding yourself together. 

(Maybe the trauma of your own run-in was deeper than you wanted to acknowledge.)

You pushed the thought aside as the live footage of the press conference began. It was better to compartmentalize it all, wasn’t it? Why not shove it back where it was easier to not deal with? You’d get a therapist or something.

If Keigo is okay, you’ll be okay. 

The press conference decor was coated with the diamond insignia of the Public Safety Hero Commission, along with a few sponsors and nearby police departments. Local heroes and police officers sat around microphones with plastic waterbottles, ringing around the focal points of the events:

Keigo and Miruko. 

Seeing him, perfectly in uniform and switched-on didn’t make you feel better.

If anything, it made you feel worse. 

Before everything, when he was just your regular you pined after, you saw and heard of him doing heroic duties all the time.

But, it was different when Keigo was your partner, yet living an entirely different reality from yours. In the safety of your apartment, and formerly the teashop, that line of difference was somewhat blurred, or, it at least appeared to be.

But while Keigo was shiny and dazzling, charismatic and blunt as ever on the stage of the conference, the contrast turned polar. 

As there was a jeer of laughter, Keigo grinning as Miruko clapped a hand on his back, your stomach rolled. 

Seeing him fine and good-as-new wasn’t soothing.

It was like pouring moonshine on a brush fire. 

Every moment of the conference highlighted the separation between the two of you, the feeling of fear and now loss so strongly in your mind, it started to taste like the tannin of a rotten wine . 

The concoction was made even viler as the memories of injuries didn’t fade or falter.

Your chest ached.

 The press conference droned on in front of you, but none of the content of it registered. It was all sickly background noise to your own pains

You pressed the plushie against your stomach, ignoring the phantom stabs of rancid-yellow that traced up your leg from your booted foot. 

...

“From what we can surmise, there’s activity of several different villain groups in this area that are connected. This incident is related.”

...

You were getting to yourself, you had been all evening. The problem was you couldn’t climb out— 

Not if you weren’t honest and self-aware.

Too bad you were actively spiraling away from anything even close to the latter and former. 

...

“There is much we don’t know at this time, but it is clear there must be further investigation into the roots of the attack.”

...

You recognized, even then, that Keigo was going to be in harm's way because of his job, constantly. He was always in danger.

It just felt different, having to see it play out in front of you, isolated from him in all ways except the glimmer he showed the cameras and the gore he bore prior. 

The absences burned. 

 Your gaze moved to your phone, the device still dormant. 

With a thick, sticky swallow, you resigned yourself to sitting back into the cushions of your couch, spiraling and numbing as you had been hours. 

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 Following the press conference, Keigo had one priority— 

Sleep.

Despite Akane’s nagging that they ‘really needed to talk to him’, Keigo was exhausted after being healed and wanted nothing more than to go home and rest for as long as he could make himself lay still. 

Maybe, he could’ve handled a patrol (if he had had anything significant of his wings left), but he could not stand the idea of dealing with bureaucratic bullshit in his wrung-out state. 

At this admission, Akane sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“Fine, but you need to come to the office as soon as possible,” Akane seemed exasperated after such a long evening (now night), of dealing with the attack. “Seriously, or your publicist is going to kick both of our asses.”

Keigo didn’t ponder too far into the topic of whatever Akane needed him for. Far too mentally wiped-out to bother with what was undoubtedly bureaucratic bullshit. 

He rolled his eyes, sending a feather forward to trigger the automatic doors ahead, “I’ll be sure to come in— It’s not like I don’t have a backlog of paperwork to finish.”

“That too,” Akane sighed, pausing outside of the doors, just dimly lit under the lip of the entrance of the building. “Feel better, quick. And please, stay safe.”

Keigo raised an eyebrow, “You know I always am. I’ll see you around tomorrow, bright and early.”

Keigo flew away so quickly, he didn't notice Akane’s pinched expression and set jaw and she waved goodbye. 

 ...

Nearly featherless and on the edge of total exhaustion, Keigo dragged himself back to his penthouse. His mind and body ached, his thoughts messy and disorganized. 

It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar state, though he didn’t get to it often. 

He had ample training to not get like this. The fuzziness he was clouded by should’ve been tossed aside easily; he blamed his own overcast on the healing he received.

(And, not that he, perhaps, had more on his mind as of late) 

More on his mind meant more to forget. 

It wasn’t until he toweled off from a quick shower that he even looked at his phone. 

It wasn’t until he saw your single text that you even came to his mind.

Keigo called you nearly instantly, jaw going tight.

It made sense that he’d forget, he rationalized. 

The portion of his psyche that was trained to be a hero was the same part that struggled the most with his feelings for you. All of the affection, validation, and deep admiration (and perhaps more) was slowly but surely allowing long-dormant parts of him to awaken— 

Yet, all of the new roots and growth aside, he’d forgotten about you in the chaos of the day. 

Maybe a passing, subconscious twinge in his gut, but otherwise? Nothing. 

A bit of guilt chewed him as the line began to ring. 

 You laid across your couch, curled up with the plushie in your arms. The news reports played like white noise, your mind long having gone to gum and static. You alternated between different horrors of memory and sensation. 

The buzzing and shrill sound of your ringtone made your jump, pulling you from your stupor.

 [birdboy <3] calling...

 You immediately picked up the call.

“Keigo?” You asked, trying to ignore the continual light shaking of your hands. 

“Hey, dove,” His voice was cool and calm. “Sorry, I just saw your message now. I figure you saw all the news, but I’m all good, no worries! How are you?”

Oh.

Was it that easy?

The gears in your skull turned far slower than you wanted them to.

He’s fine, (Y/N).

He’s so unbothered. 

Everything is fine.

You tried to comfort yourself, taking a few methodical breaths.

“Dove? Are you there?”

Get your shit together.

“Yeah, I am.” You shook your head. “I was worried, that’s all. My bad. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“The news really plays things up, huh?” Keigo laughed with a sigh, scratchy from the speaker. “Sorry about the media circus. They like the drama.”

“Uh-huh.” You replied, feeling yourself begin to spin all over again.

Drama.

Dramatics.

...

Calm down.

It wasn’t that simple.

“Hey, dove, are you alright?” Keigo spoke casually from the line. Maybe there was some concern in his tone (or you just wanted there to be). You couldn’t fully tell.

You sank back into the couch, bending your good leg into your chest, “I was just worried, is all. I freaked myself out.”

“I’m sorry about that, angel,” Keigo clicked from the phone. “I don’t get banged up too often. Besides, they always stitch me back together quickly! It’s just like this sometimes.”

“‘It’s just like this sometimes’,” You repeat mechanically, processing so slowly it was painful. Your voice sounded far off— 

You felt like you were drowning.

Why couldn’t you handle seeing him hurt?

It’s part of his job. 

Why does this all feel so bad?

 “Can you come over?” You asked, praying that he’d say yes, and maybe, maybe, you could have your fears be assuaged with some contact. Some support— 

“Sorry, dove, the healer they got for me really drained me,” Keigo yawned from the other side of the line. “I think I’m gonna hit the hay. But, tomorrow is just an office day for me, so I can come by after?”

Your heart sank in your chest, faster and harder than you could try to make yield.

“That works,” You replied, despite how rotten you felt. “Take care, okay? Get some rest.”

You hung up abruptly, not waiting for his reply, and lowering your head.

Tears drip from your eyes, soaking the plushie in your arms as you finally let out the sobs you had been holding back for hours.

 ...

 Despite Keigo’s exhaustion, he knew that the entire phone call was so off. You’d never hung up that quickly before, and you sounded a bit off.

None of it sat right. 

He shot off a kind text or two before knocking out for the night, nodding off just after sending them.

 ...

 You hardly slept. 

You felt like you were being eaten alive as the night wore on and the moon remained high.

It was all metastasized, unchecked. Breathing exercises had stopped cutting it at some point, your own thoughts and methodical actions lost in the soup of it all. 

You ‘rationalized’. 

He’s a fucking hero, he’s going to get hurt. It’s part of the job and you need to get over it.

That doesn’t matter! It’s still terrifying to see someone you care about super injured!

You knew all of that though.

None of it was new.

What was new, and harder to understand, was the storm that had buried itself like a barbed arrow between the two halves of your brain.

The rest of it.

The complex miasma of feelings that were only set off by the events and subsequent feelings you tried to rationalize. 

The mental thunder-cracks kept you tossing and turning, any sleep light and flighty. Your eyes burned and dripped through the entire night, soaking your pillowcase. 

By the time morning light began to shift in from the heavy curtains of your bedroom, you might’ve felt worse than you did the night prior.

Your mouth was dry, tongue tacky, and swollen in your mouth. You forced yourself out of bed, methodically showering despite all of the energy it took with your leg still recovering. 

You felt hazy beyond belief, fatigued, and purely awful.

Quickly, you nested for the day, still damp from your shower and sore from your lack of sleep. Tucking into the couch, you covered yourself with blankets and held the plushie to your chest, not even bothering to turn on the TV.

 Keigo, meanwhile, prepped for his office day. Since his wings were sparse, he made an extra effort for his face. Bit of concealer to brighten his dark circles and smooth out the finer lines around his brow and under his eyes.

It seemed pertinent to cover more, wipe away his anxieties as his gaze flickered to his phone on the countertop of his bathroom.

You’d never responded the night before. You hadn’t said anything— not even giving an indication that you’d seen the message.

Truthfully, now that the drum of the press and his de-facto role had died down, your lack of contact filled him with burning anxiety. 

You two had a habit of texting each other in the mornings, little sweet greetings and the occasional messy selfie that the other adored. Keigo typically woke up earlier than you, but still. 

He gave you a call.

 You robotically picked up on the second ring, hardly looking at your phone and its caller as you held it to your ear, “Hello?”

“Hey, angel!” Keigo’s voice seemed too chipper from the other side of the line. “I just wanted to call and check-in. You just sounded a bit off last night, is all. Are you doing okay?”

“Oh,” You sounded hollow, far-off, and sticky. 

There was a pause, your numbed out psyche far-too slow and miswired to say anything else.

“(Y/N)?” Keigo asked. “Are you there?”

Your name shoved you a bit closer to reality. 

 “Yeah, I am.” You blinked, your name making you twitch, “Sorry, I’m just not feeling well.”

“Awww, since last night too?” Keigo’s wings beat in the background of the call. “Is that why you wanted me to come over?”

Sort of, not really.

Your voice shook as you quickly were losing the will to keep it even, “U-um—”

How do you even explain?

Your quirk spun alive, the feeling of shrapnel and rusted nails running jagged lines down your spine.

You need to be honest.

“I j-just,” You sniffled back tears, though fruitlessly. “I just got really scared.”

You covered your mouth with your hand, holding the phone away from your mouth and praying that Keigo couldn’t hear the muffled sobs you forced to stay in your throat.

 “It’s alright, I’m okay!” He tried to assure you, tensing at the doorway to his balcony. “Everything is totally fine, there’s no reason to be scared.”

You went quiet on the other side of the receiver, all sound muffled and mixed. It made Keigo chew his lip, tightening his grip on the phone.

“I know.” Your voice broke at the same moment as Keigo’s chest tightened. You sounded so hurt. 

It pricked those seldom-used parts of his brain alive. 

It was those weird tingles and shooting bits of cortisol that screamed ‘protect them’. They screamed to life at your distress, hot and bright.

“Dove, are you alright? Are you crying?” Panic seeped into his tone as his feathers rippled from soft to razor-sharp in his instinctual rise. 

“I just got so f-fucking scared,” You choked, voice fizzling on the line. “Keigo, I’m sorry, I just— “

Your voice broke into tears, sobs echoing from the phone.

Keigo’s grip tightened, heart-pounding and feathers vibrating.

He acted before thinking too hard about it. 

“(Y/N), I’m gonna come over, okay? I’ll be there soon,” Keigo assured you, and himself, truthfully as he tore open his balcony door and launched into the sky

 You sputtering out an affirmative as wind-whipped into the receiver. 

Burying your face in your hands, you felt dread weigh you down from the inside out. 

 ||||||||||||||||||||

 ko-fi

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taglist: @thepandapopo @hawksexual @sinclairsamess  @darcia22 @inhalingsoysauce @yee-fxcking-haw @aproperthottie @seasalttrioforever @msgrungie @mia--merc @a-monsters-love @peach-buns-unicorns@amethyst-rose-17 @mega-bastard @an-untamed-rose @ravioliplease @keigosangel @gobestupidelsewhere

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#salem writes #hawks x reader #takami keigo x reader #hawks #takami keigo #my hero academia #hawks x y/n #hawks x you #lavender latte #takami keigo x y/n #enjoy y'all hehe and SMOOCH

[someonewhowannadielol]

My name is JK (Alien!Jungkook! x Human!Reader)

PART TWO (SEQUEL TO ‘MY NAME IS 01001010 01001011′)

CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE

LINK TO MASTERLIST

Warning: Tooth-rotting fluff, Jungkook being a cutie, ok the real warning tags are Daddy kink, birthday sex, innocent reader being trained (???), lots of hicks and marking, cunt slapping, oral sex, uhh and jk being a competitive baby.

Genre: Fluff, Smut, if you squint and look closely, a little bit of humour.

Word Count: 5.6k

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

It had been a week since Jungkook had, ahem, dicked you down. And it has been the best week of your life so far – he showed you things you had never seen before, the most beautiful scenes that your eyes feasted upon. You both had gone to the Neon Valley, it was a vast blue-purple lake that lit up at night due to the minerals on the sand bed below, and the lilies residing there would dance every night.

They fluttered, swung and swayed – and simultaneously, Jungkook and you too, had danced – he took you in his arms and as you both slow danced to the humming of the diva-crackers, you couldn’t help but look at his gorgeous face, adorned with a smile that you’d never replace for anything in this universe. You could feel yourself falling for him, he twirled you with ease, and as you stumbled back into his arms, he lost his balance trying to save you from falling and splash! 

You both had ended up in the hot water, and despite the current situation, you both had burst into boisterous laughter which echoed across the plain field around. In the shining moonlight, Jungkook’s face was more lit up than the neon water they were in, his long hair sprawled across his forehead, as he pushed it back with his left hand, while holding your waist with his right arm.

Jungkook looked at you with such intensity, you didn’t really know how to react. both of you knew you wanted more than just cuddles on your couch that was too small for Jungkook, more than grocery shop romances, and trekking on the artificial mountain, and more than watching movies together,, more than cuddling under the tree at the main park, more than making fun of each other, you wanted each other so much more badly.

“Kiss me,” Jungkook whispered, his face getting dangerously close.

“I’m scared,” Of course you were, but you didn’t move away from me.

“Of what?” Jungkook’s eyebrows bunched up like they always do when he’s confused.

“Of falling. Of drowning,” you answered as you looked into his eyes, how could someone not fall for him?

“Well, I’m already drowning, so don’t be scared, silly,” Jungkook’s eyes formed from his usual doe eyes to half-moon crescents and, you were no longer afraid to fall.

Because he was there, he will always be there, right beside you.

Fuck. You couldn’t help but curse as you saw the red spot on your lavender sheets, they were my favorite sheets. You had really bad mood swings when you were on your period, and you were basically uncontrollable. You saw Jungkook’s figure on the left side of the bed, sleeping peacefully, his chest heaving up and down as he breathes consistently.

“Baby,” you whined, as you almost pushed him off the bed. There was no way that you were going to the pharmacy to get the goods, so he was your only choice possible.

He stumbled as he got up, sleep still swimming in his eyes, as his hands went up to rub them, trying to get rid of the slumber that had taken over him.

“Yes, princess?” he asked in his hoarse voice – which turned you on (especially a lot now, since your uterus was sad, lonely and angry). His eyes travelled to the blood on the sheets, and it would be an understatement to say that he had a heart attack.

He immediately engulfed you in his arms, “Are you hurt anywhere?” he said, unable to breathe, because fuck, if anything ever happened to you, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

The worry in his eyes was making you feel guilty; did he even know what was happening?

“Jungkook, chill,” you laughed a little before directing him to the side of the bed, telling him to sit.

“Humans – well, only females – have to go through a period of time where they bleed. From down there,” you explain, and watch him go into a slight state of shock.

The poor baby just woke up 2 minutes ago, so this was probably hard to digest.

“You… you’re bleeding… and you don’t go to the hospital?”

“Does it hurt?” he asks in the timidest voice ever, careful not to offend you. He remembers once he asked you about body hair and since it was your biggest insecurity (cue Middle School flashbacks when you were the only girl with a slight unibrow and mustache), you couldn’t help but lash out on him.

“Yeah, it hurts a lot in my tummy,” you said on your way to the bathroom, “I need my supplies though, could you get them for me?”

Half an hour later, Jungkook returned with five bags of chocolates, chips and snacks – enough to feed a small village. The entire week, he kept studying you (you swear you saw him looking at you and writing notes in his small notebook, like a detective. Sigh) and your mood swings and tendency to eat the weirdest food combinations – he couldn’t help but gag when he saw you dip a whole cucumber in peanut butter.

“Kookie, cuddle with me,” during the day you would make grabby hands at him, and get him to massage your back, but at night you’d be the complete opposite – wanting to sleep as far away from him as possible. He also noted that you were more sensitive to jokes during the week, so he kept them at a minimum, and his praises at a maximum.

“Baby, you know, you look so cute in my arms,” he cooed, as he kissed your cheek while cuddling. He didn’t miss the blush that crept on your cheeks either.

Also, despite all the bleeding, you were ready to jump his bones anytime. He hasn’t had this much sex with anyone in one week. Not that he minded it.

You were more than ecstatic when you saw your favourite-est food in the world stocked in the human section of the grocery store. Spicy Hot Korean Ramen! You still remember when eating this used to be a challenge, back on Earth.

As you stacked the basket with half the stock, Jungkook couldn’t help but look at the ingredients – what was it that made you love them so much?

He was well, more than shocked to see all the different kinds of spices that humans could barely tolerate, chili flakes, red pepper oil, habanero flavored seasoning… he couldn’t let you eat this!

“Baby, this is too spicy for you, maybe we should buy this,” he pointed to the boring chicken and cheese flavored ramen. No! You were going to buy the spicy one and that’s finalized. Of course, Jungkook looked at you, and couldn’t argue. He doesn’t think he could argue with you even if he tried to.

Back at the apartment, Jungkook bit his tongue, trying not to say “I told you so,” as you fought your tears while eating the horrendous noodles. You were positive you could never feel your numb tongue as you chugged down the glass of strawberry milk that Jungkook handed you.

As expected, Jungkook was prepared for the stomach ache you experienced throughout the night, and gave you medicine to recover.

Before sleeping, you heard him sigh before saying, “I told you so,”

Jungkook had noticed you a lot, ever since you moved in with him. You didn’t have much belongings anyways, because you were only allowed to carry 100 pounds of baggage on the space craft, so you only carried the essentials. (Yes, you brought an oven. Yes, it was 77 pounds heavy. No regrets.)

While getting accustomed to his cozy, but huge apartment, you couldn’t help but trip over furniture. At first, it was his coffee table in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator. Every time you would get something to eat, your pinky would hit the leg of the table, causing you to splutter nonsense and then cry about it.

His bed was also higher than you expected it to be, so every day, for an entire month, after waking up you would underestimate the height – and always, always fall down from it.

He was extremely shocked by your ability to ignore pain, and to continue suffering every day because of the same cause at the same place. It’s okay, because now he’d hold you as you stepped out of the bed, and moved the coffee table to the other side of the kitchen.

He also noticed that humans don’t always have a thought out sleep schedule, they did as they pleased. Last night, you were pretty much half asleep at 4 AM, as you tried to finish the last episode of the new Netflix series.

“You were so sleepy, yet you continued to watch it without even understanding what’s happening?” he asked as soon as you woke up, to which you shrugged.

Again, next week, you forced yourself to get up at 5AM in the morning, so you could go for a jog. After all, you were thinking of getting more fit, all you did was lay on the couch. But as you headed in the bathroom for a shower after the run, he couldn’t help but think that humans are weird.

The first time Jungkook heard you crunch your bones, he was so scared, you almost though he would faint. He threw his game controller on the floor, as he ran towards you – thinking you had dislocated a limb, or something.

“Kookie, I was j-just stretching,” you could barely make out the words, trying to hold in your laughter as he tried to make sure you were okay.

With a sigh, he ran his hand through his fluffy – much longer – hair now, as he headed back to continue his game, “Baby, you’re so weird,”

“But you still love me?” you asked as you joined him on the couch, laying your head on his lap.

“I will always love you. Even if your bones crack,”

Bonus: When you got up at night for a midnight snack, you were surprised to see that Kookie wasn’t in bed with you. You later found him in his office, studying about how a human’s joint makes loud popping or cracking sounds because of the gas gathered there. He was finally content to ensure that you were safe.

Of course, you smothered him in hugs and kisses, because he always looked out for you. Always.

After a few weeks of being in Corellia, you had started to well… miss Earth. It was natural to do so; you’d lived your entire life there.

“I miss the sunsets, they were so pretty,” you spoke as you showed him a polaroid of you and your sister with the sunset behind you both. You pointed towards the one sun you had, and the purple, pink and orange hues of the clouds.

In an attempt to make you happy, Jungkook gave you a chocolate, they always made you happier, and he’d read somewhere something about chemicals in it making humans happier. But he was surprised to see you dancing (terribly) to a pop song, that seemed a little annoying, but he could deal with it.

The song had seemed to lighten your mood a lot, as you danced along with him happily, and as you looked at him, you felt happier. His long, wavy hair bounced as he danced with you. His eyes were smiling, and it was so pure that you laughed along. You were happy finally.

Until two weeks later, when you came across a photo of you and your high school class, trekking up a mountain on your senior trip to the north. Jungkook saw you sad again, missing Earth and your loved ones. Some were dead, some didn’t make it here, and some lived on the hotter side of the planet.

He put up the same pop song again, and cuddled with you on the couch. For the first time ever, you really felt grateful to God for something. You felt grateful that you were alive, and that you had Jungkook along with you. He looked how he looked every day, wearing a casual white t-shirt and grey baggy sweatpants. You adjusted yourself on his lap, and looked at him, and looked into his brown eyes. As you traced his face with your finger, he laughed, “Princess, do you feel better?”

You smile at the word of endearment, kissing his cheek, “You make me realize the difference between a house and a home. A house is a place, made with bricks and concrete, and materialistic items. But a home, is so much different. A home is where you feel belonged, a home is a place where you get that feeling of love. You make me finally realize how Earth was more of a house for me, but here, in your arms, I finally feel like I’m at home,”

You never thought Jungkook would be an overprotective boyfriend. Or a way too over protective boyfriend. During sex, he would go crazy on your body – sometimes treat you like a china doll, fragile and easily breakable, and sometimes it would be rough and harsh, not that you minded it.

His apartment was well, more suited for Jubal people because the ceilings, the bed, and of course, the kitchen cabinets were all bigger in height and size in comparison to your apartments back on Earth. Often, without thinking Jungkook would put food on the top most cabinets, and you often either felt too embarrassed, or too stubborn to ask for his help.

Which resulted in you – dangerously – climbing on the shelf to grab your precious food. This was a routine now, so you didn’t exactly pay attention to your limbs – just letting your muscle memory do the work for you. Right foot on the counter, and then you push your left knee as well, until you’ve made yourself stable on the counter top. Then, you stand up, holding the cabinet handle. Today was the same, but Jungkook had recently scrubbed clean the shelves, so they were more slippery than usual, and there was a fleeting moment when you thought you were about to fall (which would, by the way, give you the nastiest head injury), and before you realized it, Jungkook had looped his arm around your waist.

You were still shocked – chips in hand – when he settled you on his lap, almost like a child.

“Princess, what were you thinking?” he says as he lets you turn around, so you straddling his lap.

“I just wanted some chips, Kook,” you say with an amused grin. He was obviously distressed, as he sighed while running his hands through his hair, like he would when he was frustrated.

“Baby, you have to tell me if you need something from there, okay? What if you had hurt yourself?” his voice seemed to get louder with every words, and just like that, your amused grin was replaced with a pout, as you lowered your head.

 You didn’t mean to make him angry like that.

Looking at you, he knew he couldn’t ever stay mad at you. It was physically impossible for him. He hugged you, and your head rested on his cheat, feeling his fast heartbeat morphed into a more, stable and steady beat, “I’m just always worried for you. Even if everything is wrong, it’s alright, you’re the only good thing in my life,”

It had been ages since you had gone to a festival, and there was going to be a carnival-like festival in Corellia soon. You didn’t think Jungkook would be that interested, so you were quite surprised to see him… so excited about it.

“It comes twice in a year, you have to come! I’ve heard they’ve made it more human themed this year, so you feel welcomed, but we’ll have our traditional rides too!” he spoke with a gleam in his eyes, as you both got ready.

Jungkook of course, made sure you were wearing at least five layers of clothes, two pairs of gloved, and three pairs of socks. It was night time, and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of you looking like a walking marshmallow.

“Baby, you look so cute!” he exclaimed, holding your hand. The dead town looked really alive tonight, as the red, yellow, purple and other multicolored lights lit the place up, to make it feel even more alive. You were really shocked at the amount of people present, but that’s what made it even more fun.

The first thing had to be food, you got two plates of fries, because, well, is it even possible or human to share food? And that too, fries? No way. 

Jungkook had recently discovered ketchup, and now he would dip everything in it before eating. Ramen, dipped in ketchup. Chips, dipped in ketchup. Bread, dipped in ketchup. And now, you saw him cover every single chip in ketchup before eating it. While you thought this was disgusting, you were still amused by his new found love for it.

You both scared a giant cup of strawberry milkshake, that looked like it was out of a romcom, cotton candy pink color, with whipped cream on top. And naturally, the cherry. Your noses touched, as you both drank at the same time, and you couldn’t help but want to live in the moment forever.

You both had spent the night, either enjoying rides that were too scary, and hazardous to experience but at the same time too fun to miss out on, or competition with each other to the next level. You knew Jungkook had always been a competitive little shit, whether it was about who would cook better and faster, or about who loved the other one more, he was always in a competition. This was no exception either, as you both we immersed in a car racing game, where you were well, obviously losing.

You had never really been the best at arcade games, and this car games was extremely frustrating, because the goddamn seat was too big and your legs could barely reach the pedals on the bottom while holding onto the steering wheel simultaneously. He laughed as you struggled to multitask, and at one point you didn’t realise you were going the wrong way until you heard Jungkook laughing so hard, he was struggling to breath. Three tries later, Jungkook had had his fair share of victories as he put you in his lap, and told you to focus on the steering only. He’d handle the pedals part. Together, you guys had broken the fastest record of the day and of course, he had to congratulate you. And the congratulations came in a form of a heated kiss – which wasn’t liked by the Jubals waiting in line to play the game.

Later, you both had way too much fun beating others in basketball as you paired up, and beat a Jubal power couple. Then came the bumper cars. The same Jubal power couple had hit your and Jungkook’s car so hard that you almost flew across the set-up, if it wasn’t for the seatbelt, and Jungkook’s arm around the waist. It was safe to say that Kook took his revenge by hitting their car repeatedly, as he shoved them into a corner. You kissed your over protective boyfriend on the cheek, he was just so fricking cute.

You both ate more food than you could handle, and as you were walking, Jungkook bought a donut and tried to feed you.

“No! No, Kook, I swear!” you tried to get away from him, but he held your waist as he pushed the donut in your mouth, smearing it over your cheek in the process.

“Kook!” you exclaimed, as he kissed you, and licked away any leftover icing.

You couldn’t help but blush when he smirked, “Sweet.”

At the end of it all, you pushed Kook into a small photo booth that sat on the other end of the carnival.

“Please? Come on!” you tried to show him your puppy eyes, and turned your lips into a pout.

“But baby, I don’t look good in photos!” he whined as you inserted the money to take a four portrait photo.

“Please? Just this once? For me?” you pouted again, and pushed him in with you, and you tried to drag his arms.

“You can’t give me the puppy dog face! You know I can’t say no to that!” he whined, adjusting you in his lap.

“Just pose, Kookie,” you said as you closed the red curtain on the side. In the first one, your arms were around his neck as you laughed and looked in the camera, and he looked at you, pouting. The second one, you both looked at each other and smiled, his hands in your hair. The third had been him grabbing your face, squishing you cheeks and bringing you closer (but because of the movement – it was also blurred, at which you were disappointed, but Kook assured you it looked good), and lastly, in the fourth one, you were kissing passionately, while Jungkook smiled in the kiss.

You both climb the small hill, where people are buying and lighting their lanterns in an orderly manner. You both buy one, and you end up writing “JK X Y/N” on it with red paint, and before Jungkook lights it, he adds a red heart, and “4EVER,” underneath which looks so cheesy, that it makes you laugh.

He looks at you, and kisses your forehead. Around 10:30, everyone lets go of their lanterns, and you both also let go of yours, letting it fly in the sky, as Jungkook cups your cheeks and pushes your hair back, before kissing you, sweet and slow.

The night had come to an end as all the Jubals were leaving too. You didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was definitely i-can’t-walk-o’ clock, as Jungkook gave you a piggy back ride without any questions when he saw you stumbled into others. In one hand you held the teddy bear he had won from the water gun thingy, and in the other you held a cotton candy like sweet – but it wasn’t exactly cotton candy. It was blue and purple, and shined because of the crystallized sugar on it.

The last thing you remember was resting your face where his shoulder and neck met and mumbling, “This was the best day of my life,”

If someone had told you that you’d have a cook off with an alien in two months’ time, you would’ve laughed in their face. But. Here you were. Trying to cook the best alfredo pasta he would ever taste in his life.

You tried to glance on his cooking station multiple times, only to be pushed back, “Baby! It’s supposed to be a surprise!”

Jungkook really seemed to be absorbed in the cooking process, and you were starting to feel deprived of his love and adoration that he would usually shower at you when he was not working in his office.

30 minutes later, he brought you his favourite dish, the one that his mother used to cook for him when he was younger. It was orange red-ish coloured deep fried small cutlets, that smelled… amazing. You couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it tasted like, it was salty, but in a different way. And so, so, yummy. You were a little insecure when Jungkook took a bite of your pasta, and showed no emotion.

Oh no, you had tasted it and it felt pretty normal, juts how you’d make it on Earth. Was he allergic to something in it?

“Baby, what did you put in this?” he asked, but he didn’t seem to stop eating it. He didn’t speak anything until, well, he finished the dish.

“Can you make that for me every day?”

It had been over six months, since you and Jungkook had been seeing each other. Naturally, as a couple you both did fight – mostly over stupid stuff, like which restaurant to go to, or disagreements on what to buy etc. But you both would always sort it out, no matter what it was, he was always by your side.

It was his birthday, and Jubals never really celebrated their birthday – “Why would you celebrate this? I’m just one more year near death,” he said as you told him about ‘Earth Traditions’.

Albeit to whatever he said, you made yourself busy when he went out to meet the gang. You’d met them a couple of times before, being much closer to Taehyung because he never really questioned whatever you did, and just went along with it. You had enjoyed Jimin and Jin’s company as well (mostly because they cooked for you, not gonna lie).

As you hung up the balloons that said, “Happy Birthday!” individually, you had started to well, decorate yourself as well.

You knew how Jungkook always looked at you as if you were the most pure creature in this universe, his innocent little baby, so you decided to dress the part. Dressed in white panties, with a small bow on them, you adjusted your pink tinted, bra that came along with it. It left little to the imagination, as it was see-through, but there were small bows on each nipple, making you look like a present. You’d never really been the one to dress up in stockings as well, but here you were, tweaking your garter, as the pink shaded white see-through material latched on your legs as a second skin. Now, you waited patiently.

He finally came, around half past seven, and looked better than ever. You’d worn your silk robe that you would usually wear around, so he wouldn’t suspect anything. He looked so happy, his eyes crunched up into its usual crescent shape as he laughed while blowing the candles and eating your home-made cake. He had always loved your baking, so when you made his favourite Oreo cake, he was really, really happy. You’d made him a teddy bear – you were bad at sewing, but hey! A for effort.

“Kook, there’s a present in your bedroom too,” you said as you took his left hand and guided him in the bedroom. You had given him several gifts already, so why were you giving him another one?

“Baby, you didn’t have t-“ he stopped as soon as you dropped your robe in front of him, letting him take in the sight of you, clad in your lingerie that he had only imagined in his wildest fantasies.

The light hearted aura around him seemed to vanish, as a darker shade took over his eyes. Without speaking anything, he carried you bridal style, to the bed and laid you down softly on it.

“Gonna let me taint you, angel?” he asked, and at the sight of him, you couldn’t help but moan and nod.

“Use your words, baby,” he said as he let his fingers roam on your figure, and lit a fire in your core, making you overwhelmed.

“Yes, Daddy, please make love to me,” you whine, but he tsks on your choice of words.

“Angel, my princess,” he says as he leaves a trail of wet kisses from your neck to you collarbone, sucking on it, “I’m not going to love to you today, I’m going to fuck you, baby”

You gasp as he circles around the bow on your nipple, before ripping the thin material completely, letting the cool air hit your vulnerable skin.

As Jungkook just keeps looking at you, his long hair shadowing in front of his eyes, you can’t help but feel needy, “Daddy, please, touch me,” you whine, trying to get ahold of his hand.

He gently brings his mouth down, sucking on the little tip of your nipple, as his tongue works magic around it, and you’re already starting to get wet.

“It’s u-unfair that you’re all d-dressed up,” you moan, as you try to take off his white t-shirt. He chuckles as he takes off his shirt, letting you look at his god-like body. You were speechless when you first saw him, and you still are every time you both have sex.

His lean body, is just perfect in every way, and the way the moonlight hits his face, giving his face the shadows that come along with the highlights, you were dumbstruck at how breathtaking he was.

While Jungkook loved to mark you, mark your body, make you his, today was harsher, much more aggressive as he bit your chest, making you cry out in pleasure. He painted your body in hues of purple and bright pink, using his tongue to make each bruise feel better. As soon as he reached the hem of your underwear, he stopped, and that resulting in a whine from you.

“It’s my birthday, and you said I deserve anything on this day. So, princess,” he said, unbuckling his belt, and you swallow hard before he lets his cock free, ”let me fuck those beautiful tits,”

He pushes himself into your mouth without any warning, letting you groan and whimper as you produce enough saliva to make him sopping wet, “Good baby,” he whispers as he lets his dick between your tits.

You smiled, as you held your breasts together, and he slides his hardening member between them, “fuck baby, you’re so soft, so pretty for Daddy,” he murmurs obscene praises as you whimper in pleasure from the friction between your breasts.

He places his cock between them, and first experiments with his movements, and as time passes, he becomes faster, and messier. You both didn’t mind the mess, as his pre-cum lands on your chest, collarbone and nipples, and you can only whine in pleasure while letting him use your body.

His movements go from steady and fast to uncoordinated and stuttering, as he pulls out and pants, letting him catch his breath.

“Fuck, baby, they felt like heaven, but there’s something else, way better,” he grins as pulls himself down on your body, and looks as you underwear, directly. It makes you whimper, when you feel his hot breath through the thin material. He laps his tongue on it, and it feels so good, but not good enough, and you wish he would just take it off.

“Daddy, please, take it off,” you whine and he pulls your legs further apart and digs his face between them.

He smirks and looks at you, already fucked out as a blush stays on your cheeks. Angelic.

“Keep the stockings on, okay, sweetheart?” he says as his finger traced down your leg, as you shiver under his touch.

He comes up to you and cups your face, pressing a kiss against your cheek – and it felt so chaste in comparison to what you both had just done.

And before you could realize, he slips his fingers under the hem of your panties, and shreds them into pieces.

“What do you want from Daddy?” he stops in front of your clit, spreading your lips, waiting for your answer. He knew you were shy, too shy to speak vulgar words, but you were just so needy right now.

“Daddy, I need your tongue,” you speak, and let his tongue sit flat on your bud, it gave enough stimulation, but at the same time not enough, and you just needed more. You couldn’t help but buckle your hips into his face, and that resulted in his getting up and looking at you, making eye contact.

“You’re being ungrateful now, huh?” he says as he smacks the bud hard, where seconds ago he let his tongue rest. It’s painful, but at the same time, it just feels so, so good. He smacks it two more times before letting his teeth sink in your inner thigh, as you let lewd noises escape your mouth, as he further marks your thighs, and you knew, for sure that they would last a long time.

After a lifetime of teasing, he lets his tongue slurp the cum that escaped your pussy, as he went to town on it, eating you out as if he’s been starving for years. You let your moans escape as he slips his tongue inside you, and lets his nose rub against your clit. You were so close, just about to fall off the edge as he pulls himself away, and you whimper, grabbing the sheets as if your life depended on them.

“Your cunt is always, always so pretty and tasty for Daddy,” he smacks between your thighs again, making you gasp, “always ready for Daddy,”

His ruffled, brown hair shines in the dark of the room, the moonlight being the only source of light, illuminating his face.

He lets his dick enter you, gently, until you reach your limit and instead of waiting like he always does, he rams back into you again, letting you adjust with his steady movements, as you grab his hand and hold it. He always holds your hand when he’s being rough, to let you know that he can stop anytime. (but u is a hoe)

He slides out until only his tip is inside you, and lets himself into you all at once, fast and reckless. Wild. It isn’t long before your walls clench around him, “Daddy, I-I’m so close,” you say as your rub you clit, slowly with a continual movement.

You orgasm starts first, hot and sticky liquid, dripping down you thigh, staining your perfect stockings, and soon Jungkook follows, as his head buries in your neck, and he groans before letting himself loose.

“Happy Birthday, Kookie,” you whisper before letting him take you to the tub, where you both well, fuck again.

LINK TO MASTERLIST 

A/N: It’s always so fun to write alien!jk, and I hoped you guys liked it. Also, a huge thank you to @bisoo-ausucre for supporting me so much!

Could you please help me decide what to write first? Frat boy!jk OR titanic!au with Jimin as Jack? 

As always, requests are open, and so is my inbox. See you next time!

#bts #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #Jungkook bts #bts smut #bts scenarios #bts imagine #bts scenario #bts reaction #bts reader insert #bts preference #Jungkook scenario #Jungkook imagine #Jungkook smut #Jungkook x reader #Jungkook fluff

[willadisastercry]

Sleep deprived Keith annoying the crap out of the other paladins before crashing

Tw: depiction of sleep deprivation, insomnia, needles.

Keith has trouble sleeping sometimes... but this is a new level for him. His teammates can’t remember the last time he looked well slept and neither can he. They also don’t remember him being this hyper or social with them, like literally ever.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Shiro so annoyed,” Lance whispered over a crouched Pidge as they peered around the corner into the control room.

Keith was hovering around Shiro as he typed away on the panel in front of him, working out the strategy for their next mission.

“Well, if you really think about it, the Galra are kind of like space Russia, they have a lot of real estate, the people are really tall, and—hey, wait why wouldn’t we infiltrate the loading dock first? That’s the most reliable route because the lions won’t be far, we can just cloak them ya know, like all stealth? and if we go in where...”

“I think his mouth is twitching, watch. There it is, it did it again!” Pidge pointed out, her eyes wide in amazement.

The older boy’s mouth was indeed twitching, the corner pulling up like he wanted to say something as well as drop someone, but he refrained from both.

“I think I would’ve punted Keith across the room by now... do you think Shiro meditates, he must meditate, ya know? He’s always so calm and reasonable, always telling us that we have to breathe and whatever, no one can possibly be that zen without—“

But before Lance could finish his analysis on Shiro’s freak ability to be so zen, the basis of his argument shattered with an explosion from their team leader.

“I can’t even hear myself think, Keith!” Shiro started, a vein very visibly pumping away on his forehead as his face took on a dark flush.

“I have been watching the same surveillance loop for five minutes now beccause I can’t focus with you rambling in my ear!”

The red paladin’s face fell, his antsy pacing halted and his hands tapping his side like he was anticipating something. He took a breath. He hadn’t realized he’d started trembling.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—fuck,” Keith said before turning away, “I’ll leave you alone.”

Lance and Pidge nearly toppled over with how aggressively they flung themselves away from where they had been perched while they eavesdropped. Mostly out of curiosity at how Shiro would handle a manic-ly energetic Keith.

They could hear Shiro cursing under his breath, then ushering an apology for being so harsh but Keith likely didn’t hear it as he hightailed it out of there. He moved so quickly he didn’t even notice the pair as they stood planted in the center of the hallway failing to feign even the slightest of nonchalance.

Shiro ducked his head out to find that Keith had already disappeared and became wildly flustered when he found the very guilty-looking pair instead.

“Uhuh,” he cleared his throat, “do you guys know what’s going on with Keith? I didn’t mean to be such a dick, but he’s like next level tweaking out and I have no idea why...”

“Uh, we’re not sure either,” Pidge replied, “but he’s been like this all morning.”

“Yeah, he made Coran snap and crack a crystal in half earlier...”

“Oooo and Allura stained her dress when he wouldn’t shut up about how human mice carry infection and probably shouldn’t be near food and then she like flung her coffee...”

“And poor Hunk was trying to entertain his ramblings about the how hard it is to attain cinnamon in space and that it should be rationed and ended up burning a whole batch of snickerdoodles...”

“He was bouncing off the walls, it was weird” Pidge resolved. “And Keith never has that much energy.”

“Yeah, he’s been rambling, that’s my thing! The kid hardly says more than five words in one sentence and now he can’t shut up,” Lance added, scratching his head.

“Okay,” Shiro looked like he was running over in his head a million possibilities of what could be wrong, “will you two go check on him for me... and let him know I didn’t mean to yell at him?”

“Of course.”

“We’ll let you know if we figure it out,” Lance promised before they started after their friend.

They checked the common room first as it was the next room on their way and found only a grumpy Hunk scraping the singed bits off of the plate of cookies in front of him.

“D’you see Keith?” Pidge asked, surveying the sight before her.

“No,” he gruffed sadly, taking a bite of one of the cookies and breaking it off with a loud snap.

“Okay, keep an eye out, we think something’s wrong...” Lance looked around, “I know where he might’ve gone but we have to grab something first, let’s go.”

They took off at an urgent trot, once again more out of curiosity than concern because this just didn’t occur. Keith is a guy of few words, so when he speaks it’s usually sarcasm, not a rapid flurry of silly questions that seem more like the goofy blue paladin than the tempered red. This was weird for him. And they just wanted to know why.

But their curiosity changed quickly into fear as soon as they entered the hallway of the training room because they could hear the intense whir of the simulator working. From down the hall.

“Shit Keith,” Lance said activating their bayards they stopped to pick up on the way.

“He’s got it on the highest setting—not even Shiro can handle that intensity solo,” Pidge noted as they raced for the door.

“This kid’s got a death wish,” Lance deadpanned as he wrenched the doors of the training room open, only to be immediately met with Keith’s strangled scream as his head snapped against the floor with a sickening crack, the sentry that threw him across the room quickly closing the distance between them.

Lance ran forward and knelt down, slowly lining up shots and taking down the new sentries as soon as they regenerated while Pidge made her way to the kill switch.

By the time she got to the lever and tugged it all the way down Keith was dangling from his twisted arm and throat, shuddering gasps the only noise he was able to make in protest.

Lance had just taken out the second sentry cornering Keith with a head shot when every robot assailant powered down at once, the one choking Keith releasing his grip on his throat first, his arm pulling at an awkward angle as he fell before it was released. The pale boy let out a shrill gush before clamping his lips together tightly and pulling his slumped form up with the help of the wall.

“What the fuck was that, mullet?!”

He refused to make eye contact with his worried friends as he went to storm out like before, but this time he moved slowly, gingerly.

“I needed a good workout... to clear my head,” was all he managed. They could tell he didn’t want to let on that he was in pain, but the way he grimaced when his arm swung as he walked as well as the obvious bump protruding from his shoulder where no bone should be told them otherwise.

“Oh, that’s a load! That was not a good workout, that was a good ass-whooping! And I’m not entirely sure there’s anything left in your head to clear after the way it smacked the—“

“You’re hurt,” Pidge blurted. “The sentry dislocated your shoulder, I’m staring at the head of your right humerus and I shouldn’t be able to do that...”

“Oh... huh,” was all the mind he seemed willing to pay to his injury, his eyes bleary and wider than usual as he continued to walk away from them, but they persisted.

“We’re taking you to get that checked out by Coran. Right now,” Lance ordered.

“I’m good,” he assured, shouldering the door with his other arm.

Lance reached the door handle first and pulled on it, keeping Keith from going anywhere and spurring a low groan when his bad shoulder was jolted.

“Lance...”

He looked so tired.

He closed his eyes and continued to lean heavily into the hulking door of the training room. Under the bright artificial lights his skin looked greyer than it usually did, every bone in his face sickly accentuated and sharpened, the staple bags underneath his eyes hanging heavier than ever.

“Keith, you’re hurt and something else is obviously wrong so NO, we’re not letting you storm off to go pout to maintain your stup—“

“Shut up—“

Keith’s vision tunneled, his eyes fixed in a clearly unfocused haze as he stared at nothing.

“What?” Lance questioned, very caught off guard by the sudden interjection.

“I s-said shut u-up,” he whispered as he sucked in a shuddering breath.

The shrillness of Lance’s chastisement made his head swim and he blinked away the haze that came with the sudden levity.

“Hey, take it easy...”

It seemed the more he tried to control the tremor in his voice the worse his entire body seemed to shake.

He was fading; he could feel it.

The exhaustion had given way to anxiety as the adrenaline dripped dry allowing him to fully feel the pain in his shoulder as it pulsed angrily.

It was like the tide was washing out, the tumultuous waves of the storm that settled itself in his chest receding just before the next wave surged, and then he could feel everything he’d been ignoring.

Every individual bone seemed to ache with weariness and the pressure behind his tired eyes was so immense that it made him unsteady.

“Woah, what’s going on man?”

The floor suddenly seemed to shift beneath him, like he was walking on one of those moving conveyer belts in the airport that made your feet feel weird once you were back on solid ground.

“I think you should sit down,” Pidge urged, tugging worriedly at the hem of his shirt.

As much as his pride wanted him to protest he couldn’t seem to muster enough energy to even disagree let alone have a shred of cofidence that he could possibly get himself back to his room on his own.

They seemed to understand by his silence that he wouldn’t push away their help now and then he could feel firm hands on his good shoulder and back, guiding his trembling frame down to the floor where he came to rest his head on the knee that wasn’t bouncing.

“Where you at, mullet?”

The tinier hand had never left the middle of his back and rubbed soothing circles on the tense muscles beneath it.

“Can you tell us what you feel like right now?” Pidge asked before moving a hand to steady his restless leg.

He took a strained breath.

“D-dizzy... c-cold maybe, I-I don’t know why I can’t stop s-shaking.”

“That’s okay, don’t worry about that.”

“Here, this’ll help,” Lance added as he draped his jacket over Keith’s back, careful to not have it touch his injury.

“How’s your shoulder? Is anything else hurting?”

Keith thought about it for a solid minute, finding it sort of difficult to organize his thoughts and give Pidge an answer.

“Hurts a lot. S-so does my head... I have a headache—maybe... maybe a migraine I d-don’t know.”

“Is that what was bothering you before? The lights are pretty bright in here so that’s probably not helping... why don’t we start heading to the infirmary, before it gets worse?”

He nodded slowly against his knee and lifted his head up, his eyes still pressed together tightly. He pried one open to test his head but the swirling nausea and general agony that followed was answer enough.

“You don’t have to keep them open if it hurts.”

He hummed in acknowledgment and steeled himself as they took up his good arm and pulled him to his feet then waited for him to give the go ahead before making their way.

It was almost worse when his eyes were closed. The pounding in his head had only increased while they guided him, each step rattling his brain around so painfully that it almost distracted him from the instense heat in his shoulder.

He didn’t know why his head hurt so bad and why it was making his eyes so sensitive. He knew he’d hid it, but not hard enough to warrant this. He was also really tired, practically jumping out of his skin every few moments when he let his head tip forward slightly as if to nod off, which was entirely strange and alarming seeing as he was so drowsy he almost fell asleep while still walking.

He hadn’t noticed when they made it to the infirmary, only realizing when he was being pushed to sit down on something and a light was being shone across his now opened eyes.

“No! Oh-ouch,” he inhaled sharply when the light retreated and he was left seeing a blurred strip of bright white across his field of vision.

“I apologize, my boy, it had to be done. No concussion though! We have dimmed the lights for your comfort, the aversion is most peculiar given your injuries... “

He proded Keith’s shoulder blade and the inflamed area around it, earning a hiss when he tested the dexterity of the limb.

“The scanner detects significant ligament damage that will need to be corrected in a pod after I er... set the joint in its proper place. It will hurt for only a tick and I have several nerve blockers and muscle relaxers I can inject in the area to make the process less painful. Does that sound manageable to—“

But Coran didn’t get to hear Keith’s answer, the way his face greened and he clamped a hand over mouth was telling enough. He bit back a sob as he lurched forward, not enough time or notice for anyone to prepare before Keith was dry heaving, but they didn’t really need to worry because nothing but saliva came up.

“Were you at all ill before this today? This is the first time you’ve been sick to your stomach... when was the last time you ate?”

Silence only followed for a dobash before all three launched into different themes of admonition, but they all had the same anger to them. He knew they meant well, that they were just worried, but the bite to their words made his eyes sting like hell and he was seriously worried he wouldn’t be able to keep the tears at bay before Shiro was there telling them to be quiet.

He turned his head away and tried to breathe normally, but his chest was working up and his head throbbed pitifully and the movement made the burning in his shoulder deepen to where he had to hold his breath to keep from aggravating it. But Shiro’s warm, human hand was pulling his face towards his own, his eyes taking in Keith’s form and coming to several conclusions at once, the tension everywhere, the darkness under his eyes, the tightness in his jaw, the way his hands shook entwined about themselves...

“Keith,” his voice was so low and warm, he felt his chest pang at the gentleness in it. He closed his eyes, he knew what was coming next and he was both relieved and terrified for it.

“When was the last time you got a solid night’s sleep?”

He waited, even though they both already knew the answer and then it was when his hand moved to cup the top of his head that he finally broke. He didn’t need to speak for Shiro to know the answer.

Too long. It had been entirely too long since Keith could remember going to bed and waking up refreshed, each night only more frustrating than the last as he laid his head on his pillow and closed his eyes, knowing full well it wouldn’t work. Nothing did.

This week had been too much though. Running on empty on far too many missions followed by a dozen insomnia-induced late night training sessions trying to tire himself out in order to snag only a few hours of rest.

He’d just kept excerting himself and not ever properly recharging, but not on purpose, he physically couldn’t.

That part wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t help that, but he could let people know he was struggling and he had purposefully not alerted Shiro.

“Shit, Keith,” Shiro murmured with Keith’s forehead on his chest as he held back the sound of his crying, “you have to tell me when it gets bad like this! It’s not safe for you to be fighting and training when you’re not properly rested, you know that...”

Coran resumed analyzing his shoulder.

“And now you’re hurt because I snapped at you—Keith, I’m so sorry, I should’ve realized...”

“D-dont,” he managed through stiff breaths as Coran worked his bad arm gently out of his shirt, “s’not your fault, never is.”

Shiro set his jaw and eyed Coran who looked at him sadly and nodded.

“This conversation is far from over, but we have to get that shoulder fixed right now.”

Coran asked Pidge to gather some supplies and Lance to help him brace Keith.

“You’ll feel a small pinch in your arm now.”

He did. The area felt cold with the liquid that was now under his skin and Coran rubbed it for a minute before moving near his collarbone.

“This one might burn, but you’ll find it entirely numb in a dobash.”

This one was quicker, less to inject, longer to rub in so it spread. It burned and itched, earning a groan before he felt less of Coran’s fingers and more of just pressure.

“Oh, that’s... better.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

He felt someone kneeling behind him holding just below his shoulder and around his chest. Someone else was in front of him holding his arm up with their hand on his other shoulder, Shiro’s hands on his shaking one.

“Now I trust you’re familiar with what is about to happen, do you want me to explain what I am doing or—“

“Don’t explain, just—“

The pain that exploded with the hollow pop that followed was even grosser than the sound itself. Keith’s vision whited for a second and he was immediately ashen and panting as his body worked through the shock of the correction, his ears rang and so he wasn’t sure if he had screamed or not but with the way his throat ached he’d assumed he had.

Exhaustion weighed on him like a sopping wet blanket, making it difficult to keep his head up let alone his entire upper body. He wasn’t sure how long he had been leaned against Shiro’s chest once he started coming back to himself and realized he was the only thing keeping him upright.

Something was compressing his shoulder, pulling in places he didn’t quite like as it was wrapped tightly around the still damaged joint, making its way around his chest and back several times. Shiro held him away for a moment while something fell around his neck that held his arm against his chest and had an attachment to secure it to his side.

He tried to open his eyes and see what was going on but they were so very heavy and he was in awe of how he wasn’t entirely asleep by now, almost thankful for the steady ache behind his eyes as it was forcing him to keep them closed.

“You still there, Keith?”

He hummed into Shiro’s shirt in response.

“Hey, so we’re going to forgo the pod to repair all the torn ligaments for a little while. Coran thinks it’s best that you catch up on your sleep without the being frozen part... we’ll see how you’re feeling tomorrow, does that sound alright to you?”

It sounded superb to him. Truly.

He wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline crash or the general daze from sleep deprivation, but he was entirely checked out. Sufficiently out of it to care much about anything other than Coran’s lovely altean painkillers and the comfy pillow his head was now resting on.

Once he was laid down he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness almost immediately, the last thing he knew before he was consumed in bliss was the blanket that was being pulled up to his chest and Shiro calming words.

“Rest, buddy.”

And he finally did because now he actually could.

He wasn’t sure if it was the level of exhaustion he’d brought himself to or the threat of pain when he awoke, but whatever it was keeping him asleep he was grateful for it. Coran never even had to administer a sedative to keep him down during the night, just pain killers so he wouldn’t be woken up by his shoulder.

He slept for a day and a half after that, everyone taking turns watching over him while he slept so Shiro didn’t bring upon himself a similar fate.

The next time he was conscious coming deep into the next night, nearly early morning. Shiro stirred in the chair he was posted up in when Keith groaned and tried to turn over but cried out instead.

“Crap, what—hey... you’re okay,” Shiro soothed as he held Keith’s searching hand away from the thick layer of bandages covering his shoulder.

“It hurts, Shiro! It h-hurts!”

“I know, Keith, I know it hurts.”

Shiro sounded sad, Keith didn’t want to make him sad.

“I’m sorry...”

“You don’t need to be sorry for anything, bud.”

“I was stupid, I shoulda t-told you—just didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’m always going to worry about you, Keith. All of us are going to worry until you stop giving us reasons to,” he laughed weakly as he ran his hand through Keith’s hair while his breathing returned to normal.

“And until then, we’ll be here to make sure you don’t get pulverized by the training simulators and aren’t walking around delirious from not having slept in a week, okay?”

“Aha, yeah... okay.”

He tried to doze off again, but the steady pulse of pain in his shoulder seemed to prevent it. After an hour of trying, Shiro called Coran in who agreed it was also time to go into a pod.

“You will feel as good as new in no time, number four.”

Keith nodded absently as he rested his head back against the cushion in the cryopod before its doors closed with a whoosh and then cold surrounded him, lulling him off into another much needed sleep.

#keith whump #whumpee #vld #voltron whump #voltron fic #whump tropes #keith kogane #voltron fandom #keith angst #sleep deprived af #vld shiro #takashi shirogane #vld lance #vld pidge #worried teammates #keith needs a nap

[ncssian]

family therapy

summary: cassian is sick of watching nesta and lucien fight all the time, and decides they need professional help. (oneshot)

a/n: this takes place in the same crescent city universe (not a crossover just an au) as this oneshot. you don't need to read that one to understand this one, but they exist in the same world/timeline.

"And how does that make you feel, Lucien?"

"It makes me feel like I dislocated a shoulder, because I did," the fae male grumbled.

Nesta scoffed without looking at him. "You're such a pussy."

"Can't be worse than being an insufferable bitch."

From his spot in the corner of the room, Cassian's jaw ticked at the insult, but he kept his mouth shut. The therapist, Helen, gave Nesta and Lucien a firm look. "What did we agree to about communication in my office?"

A few moments of silence, then Lucien muttered, "Sorry." Nesta echoed him.

"Don't say it to me," Helen said in her smooth tone. "Say it to each other."

"I'm good," Nesta said.

"Nesta." The low warning came out of Cassian's mouth before he could help it. Helen turned to look at him for the first time all session. "And who are you again?" she asked, confused.

Cassian flustered, wanting to be left out of this as much as possible. "I'm her ride," he said honestly. His massive dove-gray wings explained the rest.

Lucien snorted. "Is that what you're calling it now?"

"Okay, I've had about enough of you—" Nesta grabbed for a couch pillow to smack Lucien with.

It was plucked out of her hand before it could make contact with Lucien's scarred face. Nesta whirled on Cassian, glaring. "You promised you'd stay out of this," she hissed.

"I'm paying for this session," he said simply, the calm to her raging fire.

Helen was eyeing all three of them like she didn't get paid enough for this, but she pursed her lips and waited until everybody had settled before speaking again.

"Now," she said tersely, "why don't we start at the beginning?"

***

It was Elain's birthday party, and this year she'd wanted a rager. Lucien, ever the dedicated male, had set up a fine enough party using his dad's money and extensive list of rich friends.

Nesta wrinkled her nose at a pair of grinding werewolves as she walked through the crowded living room, wondering where her sister was in the midst of all this. Cassian's presence was a warm force at her back, keeping her from getting smothered by random Vanir on all sides. She self-consciously tucked the skirt of her minidress down, wishing she hadn't worn white when so many...liquids were sloshing around.

In the dim pink light of the room, she caught a flash of gold and red near the cake table. Her eyes narrowed, locked onto its target, and she sped up her walk until she was face to face with Lucien Vanserra.

"Nice whorefest you've set up, kid."

Lucien turned to her with a fake smile, ready to fight instantly. "Nesta," he greeted sweetly. "Still beating that joke to death, I see."

Years ago, when Nesta had been drunk and feeling particularly vengeful, she'd found herself taking Lucien's father, Helion, to bed. Even now, she liked to remind Lucien of it every now and then by making stepmom jokes at him. And she wasn't about to stop.

"It's not a joke." Nesta didn't bother with the fake smiles. "It's part of my very real multistep plan to marry your dad, make Cassian my lover on the side, become your stepmother, and ruin your life by inches."

"I think you overestimate your ability to ruin my life any more than you already have." Lucien poured something bloodred into a plastic cup. Was he drinking wine at a rager? Gods, she hated him.

"Where is Elain?" she snapped.

"With her friends. You know, because she actually has them."

Nesta sneered. "When are you planning on breaking up with her so she can lead a better life?"

Lucien raised his cup in announcement. "Around the same time you plan on quitting being such a bitch." And then, he tipped over his cup. Wine poured all over the front of her dress, dribbling into her cleavage and soaking her bra. He looked Nesta in the eye. "So, never."

Nesta didn't blink. She didn't know where Cassian had gone off to, and she didn't care. Without looking away from Lucien, she plunged her hand into the three-tier cake on the table— Elain's birthday cake. "This," she smeared the chunk of cake across Lucien's face, "is why your family doesn't love you." She shook clumps of frosting off her hand.

If Lucien was hurt by her words, he hid it well with a smirk. "That's not what your sister was saying last night—"

At that moment, Nesta headbutted him— she rammed into his torso and took him all the way into the wall, then the floor.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he spluttered beneath her, trying to fend off her tiny hands as they slapped at his chest.

"Fuck you!" Nesta screamed at him.

If people hadn't been watching before, they definitely were now. Out of the corner of her eye. Nesta could see Cassian appear at the edge of the crowd, spot Nesta beating the shit out of Lucien, and then immediately turn around to mind his own business.

Good. He knew better than to interfere when it came to Lucien.

Lucien, being taller and stronger, managed to shove Nesta off his body and into the cake table, but before he could pounce and elevate the fight even further, he was hauled backwards by a pair of small hands.

"What the hell is going on here?" dainty Elain Archeron roared.

***

"And where is Elain in all of this?" Helen asked.

"She stayed home, lest this get any more incestuous than it already is." Lucien crossed his bare arms over his chest.

Cassian snorted at the word "lest", because really, who used that in their everyday vocabulary if they weren't Nesta?

Lucien narrowed his eyes at him, one russet and one gold. "What's so funny, angel?"

Cassian had to reign in his smile. "You talk like Nesta," he said. "And sometimes Nesta talks like you."

"That's stupid," Lucien said at the same time Nesta said, "Don't be stupid, Cassian."

The pair glared at each other, only to instantly look away.

"Well." Helen inhaled a deep breath and looked at her notes. "There are a few things I'd like to touch on during this session, especially after what I've heard about this birthday party." She glanced up at Nesta and Lucien. "You two used to be fairly good friends. Can you pinpoint when the animosity began?"

"Well," Lucien pretended to think, "it might have something to do with the time she fucked my dad."

Nesta scoffed. "Like you sleeping with my sister is any better."

"Which happened first?" Helen asked.

Nesta was silent, which was answer enough. Cassian would have rather been anywhere else than discussing Nesta's past sex life, but he knew she needed this.

"Nesta, what was your reasoning behind this?"

Cassian knew this answer, but he didn't know if Nesta would admit it.

Her blue-gray eyes burned with indignant rage. "Do I need a reason? I liked him, I was of age, so I slept with him."

Lucien shook his head. "I'm surprised you stopped at my father. You could've gone through all my brothers, too. Remember that crush you had on Eris?"

Nesta gasped, looking at Lucien with horror and— embarrassment. Cassian narrowed his eyes, torn between being offended on his girlfriend's behalf and being intrigued by this new piece of information.

"You promised you would never tell anybody," she said, her voice uncharacteristically high. Lucien squinted at her. "Are you crying?"

"No!" Nesta blinked furiously.

"There's nothing wrong with crying," Helen assured her. "But Nesta, I have a feeling you're not being entirely honest with us, and we can't get anywhere without honesty."

Nesta glared with red eyes at the wall, and Cassian met Lucien's gaze and held up his hand in a wait gesture.

Once Nesta was decidedly calm, she let out a breath and grumbled, "He was my first friend."

Lucien glanced at her, surprised, but didn't say anything.

She crossed her arms over her chest. "When we moved to Crescent City, he was my only friend, and I thought we liked each other. I thought we understood each other, but then he— " she swung her glare around to Lucien, "was just using me to get to my sister."

"That's not—"

"This is Nesta's turn to speak, Lucien," Helen cut him off.

Nesta was talking to Lucien now. "The showing up at my house late with beer, hanging around with me all the time while your friends were out having a life— it was all so you could get closer to Elain, because she trusted anybody I liked and you knew it."

Lucien's mouth tightened. "That's why you slept with my dad? Because I took Elain out on a date and you wanted revenge?"

"You forgot about me as soon as you had her. We were drifting apart long before I did anything with Helion, trust me."

Lucien was quiet for a long time. "It's true that I liked Elain from the day you all moved in down the street," he finally said. "But she was never my friend the way you were. And just because I liked spending time with her doesn't mean I didn't like spending time with you. It's comparing apples and oranges; I loved you both."

Nesta blinked. "But you don't anymore?"

Lucien didn't answer, and eventually Helen cleared her throat. "I'm really proud of the progress we just made, but I'm afraid our time is up."

Cassian sat up at that. "You can't cut them off here, they just had a—" he waved his hand, "breakthrough or something."

"And it was very powerful," Helen nodded. "Which is why I suggest going home and reflecting on what we learned today until our next session."

It was Nesta and Lucien's turns to sit up. "There's another session?" she demanded.

"As many as it takes until you two are at a healthy place with each other again." Helen smiled in a polite way that surely made Nesta feral, Cassian knew. He had a suspicion that his pockets wouldn't see the end of this.

Lucien was already getting to his feet and stretching. "Yeah, maybe we should just hug and make up now and call it a day."

At the look of blatant disgust on Nesta's face, he rolled his eyes. "Or maybe not, damn."

Helen got up and smiled that fake smile again. "See you next week." She turned to Cassian. "Should I email you the invoice now or later?"

***

Despite the day's revelations, Nesta and Lucien didn't last a minute once they left the therapist's office. Or rather it was because of the recent revelations, that they felt the need to return to normal.

"You look like such a douchebag in those shirts," Nesta snapped.

"It's just a shirt!"

"WHERE ARE THE SLEEVES?"

"Like I'm going to take fashion advice from someone who's boyfriend only wears black like it's wartime!"

Cassian didn't think that was fair. His shirt was dark gray today.

Nesta and Lucien's voices blended into one jumbled shouting match as they furiously walked out of the building.

"You know what, don't even bother calling me for our weekly recaps this time."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"I'm blocking your number right now." Nesta was digging her phone out of her bag.

"Good," Lucien seethed. "Text me when you get home safe before you do it!"

"Fine!"

"Good!"

They spun on their heels at the same time, Lucien storming away in one direction while Nesta did her furious little speedwalk towards Cassian in the other.

At the end of the street, Cassian gathered Nesta in his arms as he prepared to fly them home. "Why can't you just tell him you care for him like you do with your sisters?"

Nesta braced her hands on Cassian's biceps and glared. "Because he's not like my sisters. He's a male."

Cassian's lips quirked up in amusement. "So like a brother?"

Nesta grumbled something unintelligible, but she didn't deny it. Cassian had a feeling she wouldn't be blocking Lucien's number anytime soon. Still, he was proud of the progress she had made today.

Dropping a kiss onto her hair, he spread his wings wide and shot them into the sky.

***

a/n: i said bryce and ruhn but make it nesta and lucien. also the fight scene was better with shiv and roman from succession 😭 hope you guys liked it.

if i was supposed to tag you but didn't or if i wasn't supposed to and i did, it's probably because i have you on the wrong tag list! just shoot me a message so we can fix that.

tagging: @ladywitchling @sjm-things @thewayshedreamed @drielecarla @sensitiveillyrian @superspiritfestival @aliveahaahahafuck @cupcakey00 @sayosdreams @rainbowcheetah512 @claralady @thebluemartini @nessiantho @missing-merlin @duskandstarlight @lucy617 @sleeping-and-books @everything-that-i-love @clolikescloquetas

#nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #lucien vanserra #ncssianwrites #nessian au #nessian fic

[venusandromedadjarin]

Nevarro City

Ch. 2, A Glint of Beskar

18+ for eventual smut, gore, 1.8k words

Somewhere to your left you hear weird babbling sounds, and if you didn’t know better you’d think it was a baby. Weird, there’s never been children in the cellar before… Your left eye opens easily, but pain shoots through the right and you lift a hand up to feel the jagged, split skin on your cheekbone. Tenderly, you poke around and feel how swollen the skin is. You hiss at the stinging. Attempting to move your head to look around gives you two things: a clear idea that this is definitely not the cellar, and a brain splitting flash of pain through your head. Slowly, you try to complete a checklist of your body, hoping that everything will function, even through the pain. At this point, you can’t remember much and have no clue who you’re with or where you’re at.

Taking a deep breath proves too hard, as heat floods through your core and burns at your swollen sides and, albeit, broken ribs. One of your shoulders feels like it was recently dislocated and popped back into place, and you can’t flex your left hand. A quick memory floods your vision, giving you insight to why your hand is currently unusable. Thank the Maker I saved my head with my non-dominant hand, who knows if I’ll need to fight my way out of here.

A loud thumping sound echoes from the back of the hull behind your head and you hear two sets of footsteps ascend up the ramp. One is heavy, fleetingly similar to ones you remember from somewhere else - but you aren’t entirely sure where - and the other is slightly panicked by the sound of it. Whoever it is starts to mouth off but you hear a grunt followed by a loud hissing sound. You can smell the vague scent of tibanna gas as someone gets locked into a carbonite block.

Against your will, you cough and even though you try to cover up the groan of pain from the sudden use of your throbbing chest, you know whoever is behind you can hear it.

“You’re awake.” The voice is definitely male, but deeply modulated through what you can only guess is that Beskar helmet you vaguely remember seeing. By this point, you have enough bits and pieces of your memory that you remember being distracted by the glint of it. You try to respond to the figure you still can’t see, but all that comes out is a strangled groan. He comes towards you and you can hear that weird babbling again, but still don’t see anything. Finally, he’s to the side of you, just enough so that you can look over at him.

From where you’re laying, you’re parallel with his stomach which is slung with a weapons belt stuffed with ammo and blasters. His chest is covered in shiny Beskar, and you vaguely remember the armor on his lower arms biting into your legs and back when he picked you up. Even though you can’t see his eyes behind the helmet he’s wearing, you somehow know he’s looking you over too, probably fully taking in your wounds.

Suddenly, a flush creeps up your neck into your cheeks. Silly, really, considering you know you look like death. You try to talk again, but he slowly shakes his head, “Don’t. Kolto will have to do, I’m out of Bacta.” He doesn’t explain anything else before reaching above you to remove a black bag from a cupboard. Clunking it down on the right side of your head, you hear him dig through it before pulling out bandages and a small syringe. Your heart rate increases as he starts wrapping your left hand, and you bite your lip against the grunt of pain you almost let out. That helmet looks up at your face, lingering a little too long before looking away.

“This will hurt,”  he tells you before stabbing your vein with the needle, an instant burn creeping through your bloodstream before everything goes black again.

The airspeeder lurched beneath you as you took off, blasts echoing around you in the middle of the night. The pitch black lit up in increments with the bursts. The shop and the hut were both blazing hot with fire, and the smoke lingered in your lungs as you tried to speed away. Just as you were both bolting, you heard Teckla scream behind you, her clothes sizzling as she went down from a blaster shot. Somehow you made it out, rising up and out of the bandit attack, almost in the clear to escape to Navarro City. It’s not far, you could have made it.

A single, deadly blaster beam hit the right engine.

You weren’t far off the ground, unlucky considering you knew you’d live through the crash. Hurtling down, you braced for the impact of the hard ground. The Quarren below you chuckled as you hit the dirt, sprinting toward you in the dark. The surrounding blaster shots in the small village, plus the increasing flames, started to give a clear picture of the creature as he grabbed you by the hair.

Fuck, you knew what was coming next and still didn’t know how to prepare.

The squid-faced bandit threw you up against the side of one of the currently untouched huts, tearing your shirt from your shoulders. The impact of the wall, plus the previous crash makes your vision falter, but not before you see the guy reach his hand down to undo his belt and-

You thrash, finally able to produce a shrilling scream that echoes through the hull. Within seconds, the man who you can only guess is a Mandalorian drops down from above and calmly, but quickly, comes to your side. Half awake and half terrified, you jerk away from his outstretched and gloved hand, hitting the metal behind you before realizing it was just a dream. Breathing heavy, you realize his hand is on your cheek, a gloved thumb lightly rubbing circles near your temple.

He must realize it too, since he quickly jerks his hand away, but continues to look at you through the helmet.

“Sit up.” He commands, and you obey with only a little bit of pain. The Kolto must’ve worked, but who knows how long you’ve been out. The man in front of you starts to lift the edge of your shirt before you bat him away, panicking slightly. A modulated scoff escapes from the helmet, “Let me look.”

He tries again, this time catching your hand as you respond the same way. “Stop it,” he commands. “Let me check your ribs, they were broken.”

All you can do is breathe out a small, “Oh.” You lift the torn overshirt over your head, grunting a little at the stiffness in your shoulder. If you didn’t know any better, you would think the slight tilt of his helmet means he feels just as awkward as you do seeing you in the dirty sports bra you’re now wearing.

He crouches over a bit to get a good look at the yellow and green bruises splayed up and down your sides.

“Maker, how long was I out?”

Before answering you, he reaches out and lightly lays one palm against your right side before reaching for your bandaged hand with his other hand. You grimace at the light pressure, but it doesn’t hurt enough to ask him to stop. Before you can think about it anymore, he removes his palm and unwraps your hand, still holding it in the other glove. Maker, his hands are huge compared to mine.

“A couple days.”

You jerk your eyes away from your bloody and bruised hand, “What?”

“I have business on Nevarro. We just landed, you need clothes.”

Before you have the ability to ask more questions, or process being back on your home planet after so long, he drops your hand and gives you a large black shirt. You stare at him until he shakes it at you, “Put it on.”

Doing as he says, you stand up, feeling unbalanced on your feet, your boots uncomfortable underneath you. He hands you a bag of, what you can only assume are, credits and motions towards a floating capsule at the back of the hull. The capsule comes forward when he flicks two fingers.

You suddenly feel warm, warmer than you should in the dim and cold space.

“Let’s go. I’ll meet you in half an hour.” Without another word, he steps onto the ramp and heads toward the building in front you.

Navarro City.

It looks oddly the same, but so different at the same time. Slowly, you follow after this mysterious man, questions reeling in your head. Is this actually a Mandalorian? How did he get the armor if he’s not? Where’d he get so much Beskar? What does he want with me? What’s in that capsule?

Who is he?

The obvious questions, like how will he know where to meet you, don’t cross your mind as you enter the walls of the city. Ahead of you, in the crowds, you can see the glint of his helmet as he walks into a cantina. You decide to actually shop for clothes and such before worrying anymore about him. The city is full of so many people, that only a few cast odd glances your way. You don’t stick out much even though all you have on are boots, torn leggings and a huge black shirt. It’s hot though, the sun beating down on the black fabric and making you feel feverish.

A small hut with a Kubaz sitting outside looks like a good place to start. It takes your eyes a second to adjust inside, but you’re soon stunned by the selection. After years of wearing the same filthy clothes, or at least the same types of clothes, this makes you feel like a giddy child. You’re suddenly stricken by a memory of Teckla taking you shopping as a teenager, but you sniffle quickly to keep the prick of tears at bay.

The Kubaz follows you inside, obviously the shop owner, but allows you to freely look around without bothering you. Finally, you settle on the basics (a few shirts, a few pairs of pants, undergarments, and a jacket) before looking at other things you may or may not need. You decide to get a new pair of heavy leather boots, contently sighing at the fact you can burn the old things you’re wearing. The credits you spend on the duffel bag and clothes don’t even make a dent in the amount of credits you were given.

When you exit the shop, you immediately notice the man leaning against a building across from you, his helmet glinting in the sunlight. You don’t realize he’s looking directly at you until he starts briskly walking towards you when a drunk from the cantina next door whistles at you and attempts to get your attention.

#din djarin #the mandalorian #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian fanfiction #mando x reader

[heartsywritesthethings]

Tickling! Plus Ultra! 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

<This chapter contains mentions of Manga Spoilers>

“We’re nothing alike.” Bakugo growled at the villain in front of him. “I’m way more cooler than you. I’m gonna be the number one hero.”

“Sure, sure.” Dabi said, waving his hand dismissively. He looked Bakugo up and down, a smirk still plain on his face. Bakugo wanted to blast that stupid look off of that face. It was like Dabi was so calm about everything going on, not at all worried about Bakugo or anything else for that matter.

“You’re all gonna be dead. The pro heroes are going to rip you losers to shreds.” Bakugo said, sparks of flames jumping from his fingertips just thinking about when he would be able to safely fight back against these villains. Of course, he wanted to put out a fight now, but it was definitely too dangerous for him to fight back. Even he knew that. 

“Like the last time? Please. You should know by now that the heroes are just about as useful in these situations as the quirkless. The only difference is that they make more of a mess.” Dabi said and licked his lips. He looked around thoughtfully, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. “Listen, you and I both know how a fire can burn, right?”

Bakugo didn’t respond. Just glared at him. 

“Right…well, from my observations of the heroes and others like us…they’re far too dangerous to be in the hero business.” Dabi continued, unbothered by the silence of the boy in his care. Bakugo wondered what he meant by that, but didn’t voice his curiosity.

“Take the Number two…well, I suppose, thanks to you, he’s the number one hero now. Endeavour.” Dabi said, spitting out the name as if it were a piece of trash. Bakugo supposed that the league of villains would hate the pro heroes, but the way that Dabi spit out Endeavour’s name made him think that maybe there was something else there. 

“Fire. While people like your so-called teachers will try to convince you that the fire you use can be used for their own good. To save…that is not fire’s true nature. It is only to burn.” Dabi said, pressing his fingers against his scarred chin. He turned back to Bakugo and smiled. 

“You’re talking fucking nonsense! I can be a number one hero with my flames of fury!” Bakugo said, throwing a ball of fire towards Dabi. The villain easily stepped aside, using his own flames to push Bakugo’s aside.

“We can use our quirks to burn down the false heroes like Endeavor. We can expose them for who they really are!” Dabi laughed, stepping closer to Bakugo. He raised a hand and it looked as if he was going straight to Bakugo’s neck. Then, he stopped. 

“You know all about these heroes who claim to better the world, but are only in for their own selfish reasons. After all, the traitor amongst your class informed us about the weaknesses of your dorm so we could snatch you up. Not very heroic.” Dabi tisked, shaking his head. “And then there’s your dear friend Shoto. Has he ever told you about how he had gotten that scar? Why he refuses to use his left side?”

Bakugo went back to being silent. He was seething on the inside. Of course he knew about Half and Half’s scar and the reasoning for it. Ever since the fight between him and Deku, the entire class knew about it. Shoto was slowly coming out of his shell and telling jokes, but they all seemed to be related to his past trauma. 

But the thing that was really bothering him was the mention of a…traitor? Someone among their ranks that willingly handed out information to the league of villains? Who the hell would do something so damn stupid? 

“I’ll let you think about that for a while, little fireball.” Dabi said, patting his head on Bakugo’s spiky hair. 

~

“Oh she’s really giggling now.” Toga laughed as she continued to dig her fingers all over Uraraka’s stomach. She poked around and dug her fingers into Uraraka’s navel. All the poor girl could do was laugh as the tickling continued. It became apparent not too long ago that she definitely couldn’t get herself free from the nomu’s grip.

“EhehahahahahahAH! Nohohoho! Plehehehehehease! Ihihihihhi caahahahahan’t!” She laughed and giggled, her laughter spiking up every time that Toga’s wiggling tickling fingers swiped over her belly button. Unlike Deku, she wasn’t one to wiggle and squirm when she was tickled. All of her energy was usually spent just laughing and trying to think of some kind of counterattack. Not that there was any hope of doing that now. 

“You know, your cheeks are usually pretty pink, but this is ridiculous. You’re super ticklish all over this cute little belly. Is that why you leave it so exposed all the time?” Toga teased. It seemed impossible, but Uraraka turned an even darker shade of red as she was teased. This was just about her biggest weakness when it came to tickling. Sure, she was pretty ticklish, but it was the teasing that really got under her skin. Just as she felt as she couldn’t take any more, Deku yelled from the other side of the room. 

Using only 10% of his concentrated power, Deku twisted and broke free of the intense grip of the nomu. The monster growled, it’s fangs snapping together in frustration. It reached for him as he landed carefully on the ground. 

“Well, I guess I should have worn you out a bit more.” Toga said, stopping her torment of Uraraka and instead pulling out her knives. “Looks like i’ll just have to cut you up a little bit before taking you in as my pet! How fun!” 

Deku jumped again, darting out of the grasp of the incoming nomu. He kept a close eye on Toga as she lept towards him. Using his quirk, he darted out of the way from her as well. Instead of looking frustrated, Toga looked thrilled.

“You’ve grown so much my little Deku!” Toga said, shifting her stance in order to face where Deku was bouncing now. It was hard to actually get a good look at him as he was jumping around the room. He was using the ceiling and the surrounding walls as he did so, using basically anything he could as a jumping off point. 

He needed to get the others free, but he didn’t know how exactly he was going to do that. It wasn’t as if he could pry them out of the nomu’s grip without seriously injuring them. These monsters were ridiculously strong and any attempt to just pry his friends away using brute force would probably end up in some dislocated shoulders and hips. So how–?

A sharp stab of pain darted through his leg and he stumbled during his run, half smashing himself into a nearby wall.

“There we go! I knew I would get you eventually if I just kept throwing my knives!” Toga laughed, getting another handful of her knives in order to get another shot. It didn’t appear as if she would stop until he was a bloody heap…she was having far too much fun. Suddenly, Deku stopped. He stood between Toga and his captured friends.

“Toga. I’ll go with you. Willingly.” Deku stated with more confidence than he felt. He was terrified of what this maniac would do to him. Especially after all of that tickling had taken him apart so carefully. 

“No! You can’t!” Uraraka exclaimed, straining against the Nomu’s grip.

“Don’t give up yet, Deku! You can take her!” Kirishima yelled. Honestly, Deku was kind of surprised to hear something from the red head. He had been quiet most of this ordeal anyways. Strange. 

“Aw, you’ll give up that quickly. I only just pricked you. No fun.” Toga said with a small pout before putting her knives away. As disappointing as it was for her to stop her chase, she was relieved that her new little pet would so willingly run into her arms.

“Only if you free my friends. If you don’t, I’ll have to fight you and believe me, I’ll win.” Deku said, pointing a finger at himself. Just against Toga and this other guy, he could definitely win. He’s seen them fight enough to know their styles. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy, but he had confidence in his abilities now. Thanks to the training that UA had put him through, he definitely had the strength.

But

If it meant that his friends would be freed…he would gladly give himself up. It’s what a true hero would do. 

Toga thought about this, bobbing her head from side to side as she entertained this idea. Sure, she could probably fight her best, but she had never seen her little green bean jump around as fast as he was right now. But, what would that mean for his little friends? Where would they go? Surely to some pro heroes who were always so bent on getting them behind bars. But, jail was so goddamn boring.

An evil smile spread across her face. 

~

Todoroki sent his ice wall at the monsters in front of him. It broke through both the wall of the dorm and the wall of nomus. A few stumbled aside and he managed to catch one in an actual ice trap. He also set ice across the ground, giving Shoji a clear icy path to where they needed to place the mattress. Without hesitating, Shoji pushed himself across the ice and towards the spot they had agreed upon. As he did, several Nomus reached out and swiped at him. Todoroki used both sides of his body to fend them away from Shoji. 

Even Mineta was helping. Well, as much as he could. He yelled as he tossed his purple balls at anything that happened to move.

Which also happened to include Todoroki himself. One of the purple balls stuck right in front of his foot and he lost his balance. Rather ungracefully, Todoroki crashed to the ground. He slid to a stop in front of another nomu, which proceeded to pick him up by his shirt. 

“Sorry!” Mineta yelled, the top of his head already beginning to bleed. He didn’t stop throwing his balls everywhere he could. Some bounced harmlessly off the ground while others hit Nomus and made them stick to the place they were already standing. 

“Now, Shoji!” Todoroki yelled as the heavy arms wrapped around him. The crushing weight was enough to push the air from his lungs. 

Shoji tossed the mattress onto the ground before getting caught himself. Two different nomus grabbed him, tackling him to the ground. 

Tsuyu had assured him that she would be able to get Iida to a specific part on the ground because of her perfect aim with her tongue. Todoroki just hoped that this was true. Though he did have a few back up plans, this was the one that he found the most promising.

Iida dropped onto the mattress. The nomus all turned to look at what had just happened. Not soon enough, however, as Iida began running in the direction of the school as soon as he got his balance.

“We’re coming, guys. Hang in there,” Todoroki muttered breathlessly.

~

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like if everyone was as powerful as we are?” Dabi wondered, getting comfortable on a nearby chair. He tossed his legs up, resting his feet on a table. He lazily bounced around a blue ball of flame between his fingers. “If these so-called heroes were held to the same standards as what they call villains.”

Bakugo ventured a few steps from where he had been standing. Dabi didn’t seem to mind his moving. Slowly, Bakugo began to look at his surroundings, looking for any way to escape.

“We’re just trying to keep these shit heads accountable. They all try and tell everyone that we’re the bad guys when we’re just trying to show the flaws in the heroes as a whole.” Dabi said with a wave of his hand. “They will claim that we’re in the wrong when we’re just taking you on a short ride around the city. They’re the ones who are holding you and your class hostage in that shit building they’re calling your dorms. They’re the ones who willingly send you back to shit homes at the end of the day.”

Bakugo looked over at Dabi curiously. He didn’t think that a villain like this would be this concerned about living arrangements. Dabi noticed his look.

“I’m just saying. If they were anything like what a school should be, they would have had a real talk with some parents already. I mean, some of these kids don’t exactly want to go home, right? Listen, fireball, if you stick with us, you won’t have to worry about your ma wailing on you all the time. That ain’t what parents are supposed to do.” Dabi said.

Just for a moment…a tiny moment…Bakugo considered it. After everything he had been through in the hero course, getting muzzled, getting told he was a monster, being put through hell trying to train for some dream he had come up with as a kid. He was still a kid, damn it. 

“We’re back! Thank you for the escort!” Toga said as she bounced into the building. Bakugo tensed as she sauntered in. Tailing behind her was the rest of the villainous crew…and that damn nerd Deku.

“You were stupid enough to get yourself kidnapped, Deku?” Bakugo barked at his friend. Midoriya looked a little sheepish, but shrugged. He seemed too nervous for a rebuttal. It was weird to see him this nervous ever. Sure, he was a little bit of a crybaby at times, but this was different. His usual hopeful look was completely gone. 

“What took you so long?” Shigaraki asked, scratching at his neck as he did so. He seemed anxious to leave.

“I wanted to have some fun with my new pet.” Toga whined before leaning over and giving Deku a huge kiss on the cheek. Deku huffed in disgust and rubbed at his cheek to get rid of the spit she had left over. Gross. He made his way over to Bakugo, standing near him.

“How are you holding up, Kacchan?” Deku asked, looking his friend up and down for any kind of wounds. When there didn’t appear to be any, a small relieved smile played on his lips. 

“I’m fine, idiot. What about the others? Did they take you too?” Bakugo asked, nudging his friend in the side. Deku’s smile became strained and he rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

“Uh…well…not exactly. I kind of…followed them.” Deku said with a nervous chuckle. Bakugo smacked him on the back of the head.

“You idiot! Now we’re both stuck here.” Bakugo huffed with a roll of his eyes. How the hell were they supposed to get out of this now? Not that he had been placing all of his hope on Deku, but this definitely wasn’t good.

“It’s alright. I left a clue or two for the authorities to find so that they could get to us faster.” Deku said with a small nod. Bakugo grit his teeth. Hopefully, they would be found in time.

“Let’s hurry up and get out of here before some–” Shigaraki said before the wall behind him blew up.

There, standing amongst the rubble, were pro heroes ready to free the students captured by the league of villains. 

They were saved. Thanks to the hard work of their fellow students and the clues that Deku had dropped along the way during his transit, the pro heroes were able to quickly track down where the students were being held. Uraraka and Kirishima were also able to follow along, despite Toga’s best efforts to tickle them both too crazy to even think about following them. 

11/25

GA!babe

#25 Days of Fics #11/25 #submission #GA!babe #Tickling Plus Ultra #this is great babe but also uhhhhh DABI #he is quite literally all I care about I'm so sorry I'm just focusing on him full stop #I will never tire of dabi and bakugou interacting in any way shape or form #it just be like that #mha #bnha #tickle fic #never underestimate my simping #again sorry I posted this bad boy late

[thatblondeperson]

TimSteph, taking care of chronic injuries!

Hey look, another ask that got buried! Sorry friend!!!! 

This is all preboot, RR/Batgirl era.

Ok so Tim is super extra imo when it comes to treating any kind of sickness, injury, ANYTHING. He’s the type of guy who will go to CVS and buy out the entire “cold + flu” aisle as soon a Steph gets a runny nose. He absolutely drowns her in cough drops and tissues. I can see him being extremely attentive as well. Like bringing blankets and pillows around the clock, happy to carry her from point A to point B, almost insisting to do so on occasion, and just sitting with her for as long as she desires/needs company. He absolutely pays no mind to germs. Steph can cuddle all she wants.

Steph is similar but less extra. She’s got some more classic home remedies that Tim doesn’t have. She absolutely would baby the hell out of him if he got sick though, and probably more often than not she has to put her foot down on him trying to patrol even if he’s completely out of it and burning up. Tim has a hard time relaxing, but eventually the time is used for him to catch up on sleep. Tim getting sick is like a mini-hibernation. I can see Alfred stepping in occasionally if they were both sick because Tim’s an absolute mess, and Steph can only do so much before she gets wiped out. They’re hopeless and completely out of service if they’re both ill at the same time. Error 404: Dorks not found. 

Chronic injuries are a constant process. Steph obviously has a ton just from Black Mask alone. I’m sure she gets aches and pains on the regular due to the severity of the torture she experience. Power drills would leave some lasting abdominal pain for sure. Hell, I wonder if it makes cramps worse for her? It could in all honestly. She may need serious pain meds during that time of the month which are of course always kept on hand. On top of that, the physical trauma definitely left endless mental trauma. No question about it. Not to mention that time she got lightly shot in the head. I say lightly because I forgot this was a thing because they don’t really address it again. I imagine that would cause occasional headaches/migraines, and I’m sure Tim likes to run a scan every now and again to make sure there isn’t any lasting damage. And of course, we return to the medicine cabinet for more pain pills. (Thank you @incoherentbabblings for reminding me of the gunshot.)

I headcanon that both of them get nightmares on almost the regular. They’ve both got it set that if one of them is in the middle of a bad nightmare, the other just holds them close, doing whatever they can to soothe them until the calmness sets back in. The nightmares get more spaced out some time after they move in together because I think the constant safeness of having someone beside them every night would eventually help them both sleep through the night better. It is hard to get back to sleep though. Both of them have been put through the ringer, they’ve both seen death of loved ones up close and personal, and I imagine a lot of what they’ve experienced is still very vivid and intense for them.

Tim’s got his own fair share of recurring pain. The boy doesn’t have a spleen and tbh I don’t know how he’s not getting sick more frequently. But extra precautions need to be taken to keep him from getting infections when he gets any kid of open wound, thank GOD Steph is a nurse. Tim has to be kept pretty healthy though if at all possible, which brings us back to my previous headcanon about him not caring about germs when Steph is sick? Yeah, not his smartest move, but Tim’s an idiot and forgets that he’s fragile. 

Both of them have regular joint issues. They’ve dislocated enough things for just about everything to make awful clicking sounds now and again. Steph doesn’t have as much regular muscle pain, she’s far more flexible than Tim is so she stays pretty loose and limber, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to work at it every day. Steph does yoga as a part of her routine. She gets Tim to join sometimes but he’s not very good at keeping up with it. He’s flexible too but not to her level, and he locks up easier if he’s had an especially tough night. They both try to put the time in to exercise when they can, spotting each other, keeping a routine going, because given how much they both get beaten and battered on the daily, if they don’t keep up with muscle pain, it’ll just get worse. On bad days when the pain makes any mobility difficult, massages ensue. They’ve got at least 15 ice packs in the freezer at all times, and a stack of heating pads in the medicine cabinet. And if all else fails, a nice hot bubble bath never hurts. With Epsom salts and everything. Steph likes to add a touch of lavender oil.

Immediate injuries they’re both very good at treating. Steph obviously has more technical knowhow, and she is the most medically trained of all the Batfam members, but Tim is detail oriented and good at focusing when he needs to so he can keep up just fine. They’re both good at stitches and general wound treatment, but Steph is better at consistent treatment. Tim will absolutely forget to switch out his bandages or clean things because his brain is soup and he cannot be bothered to think about injuries when he’s too busy with 50 other things on the constant. He needs to slow down. We get right back into “more prone to infections” again. Alas. Idiot. 

They both have their fair share of mental health issues, though Tim’s tend to be more intense. Steph has her ways of managing her own mental state but Tim gets stuck often. He falls into some pretty deep depression spells, and his anxiety acts up fairly frequently. Steph has started teaching him how to meditate, but also has a list of distractions and special remedies that she can utilize if need be. Movies and tea are a good base line, though Tim’s mind gets very far away sometimes and it’s hard to pull him back out. Like he almost wants to wallow in his sadness. Often she just tries to ground him as best she can so he doesn’t get so lost that he can’t come back. Steph likes to make sure that he isn’t always using patrol as a crutch for when he’s feeling upset or tense. It’s hard to sway him away from more pain when he lets himself get so close to the edge. It breaks her heart, sometimes she feels helpless.

Steph has anxiety as well, and some psychosomatic tics from her past abuse. She needs a lot of reassurance and gentleness when her mind starts racing. She’s still prone to trust issues, even now when she’s surrounded herself with stable people. She’s been let down and she fears losing her steady ground sometimes. Tim, let’s face it, hasn’t been the most reliable in the past, but I firmly believe that with some growing up he’d step up to the plate and try to be a solid home base for her to the best of his abilities. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon. He’s very good at being gentle. That’s canon as fuck. I will die on the hill that Tim is as delicate with Steph as one would be with a priceless porcelain heirloom. Fight me, the boy would never intentionally try to physically or mentally hurt her. He tries so hard to reassure her but I thinks he feels a little helpless sometimes too. Some of her trust issues are his fault, and he can’t just snap his fingers and reverse his mistakes. He tries his best, but there will always be scars. 

All in all, I think they’re both very tender and caring with one another. They’re both beyond broken sometimes, and they are a mess and a half. But they know each other, they know each others pain and sadness and I think once they got back together they’d settle very easily into a care routine. Both of them are carrying the weight of countless consequences and mistakes and hardship on their shoulders. Pain is just a side affect that comes with carrying so much baggage, but it’s a little easier to manage when they have each other for support. I do think some of it would get easier over time, and my wish for them is that they can move somewhere just outside the city, maybe by a lake. Far enough away that things are quiet, but not so far that they would completely leave the hero gig behind. I agree with the consensus that neither of them could fully quit. Tim would just sink into the background, but Steph would be out there in the field for many years. Justas long as they have somewhere safe and comfortable to return to, I think they’ll both be just fine. Plus smooches are the best fallback medicine for all ailments and we all know that they never run out of those. 😘💋

THANK YOU FOR THIS ASK! More than half of this was not anything to do with chronic injuries but fuck it. We’ve tapped into the hurt/comfort section of my brain and there is a lot of material there to work with. Idk when you sent this in but I hope it wasn’t too long ago. I hope this answered more questions than you ever intended to ask. 💜❤

#TimSteph #tim drake #stephanie brown #robin iii #spoiler #robin iv #red robin #batgirl #batfam #batfamily #dc comics #dc #batman #personal #ask tbp

[solei28]

Up in Smoke (Bucky/Reader)-Chapter 1

Up In Smoke Mater List

“We need you to back up the data now, Dr. Watts,” Captain Montgomery told you throwing a flash drive onto your desk. 

You looked at him raising an eyebrow. “I’m not finished with my report. I’ll back it up when I am.”

“Not an option. They’ve come.” 

It’s about damn time. You nodded at the captain and grabbed the drive. “It will take some time. Can you hold them back until it’s done?”

Montgomery walked to the door. “I’ll try my best. No promises.” 

You knew he wouldn’t be able to. You shoved the drive into the USB port and began backing up the files. The door slammed behind you and you knew you’d never see him again. 

The files were slow going and you knew they would get to you before the backup was complete. At least I’ll be done with this façade. You had been working undercover at the HYDRA facility for six months. Director Fury of SHIELD secured your false paperwork and got you in so you could track what they have been up to. HYDRA was slippery. Every time the Avengers and SHIELD thought they took them down, they would pop up in another part of the world. 

Fury had heard about you through the pipeline. An elite soldier that could infiltrate, dismember and take down an entire government in a single night without ever being seen. He found you in a small town in Denmark. You were trying to live a quiet life after early retirement. Fury could see you were bored and needed to get back into the fold. 

“I’m not going to force you to join SHIELD. I just need your help taking down HYDRA,” Fury told you over a cup of coffee. “After that, you can walk away.”

You were happy to take his offer. It got you back in the game and man how you have missed it. It came to you so naturally, putting on a persona and fooling the staff. You befriended a few other doctors easily and got loads of information on projects you weren’t involved in. 

Now, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had come and put an end to your little game. Finally. All you had to do now was download the files and pass them over. Well, at least that’s what Fury wants you to do. You, however, wanted to have some fun. 

You heard gunshots and chaos ensuing on the other side of the door. The files were 75% complete. 

“With all that HYDRA has been able to accomplish, you’d think their computers would run faster,” you said out loud, rolling your eyes. 

Standing up from your chair, you began to stretch. You knew it would only be a matter of moments before the Avengers came bursting through the door. The gunshots were closer now. The files were at 85% completion. You heard heavy footsteps coming closer to the door. You smiled to yourself, ready for the fun to begin.

  The door swung open with such a force, it hit the wall, where it stood embedded into it. The files are at 96%. 

“Ma’am, step away from the computer,” a gravelly voice commanded from behind you. 

“Give it a moment to finish, first,” you said over your shoulder. “It’s at 98% and counting.”

“Ma’am, please just step away from the computer,” the voice stated again slowly walking to your right. 

“100%,” you said snatching up the drive. You turned to face the man behind the voice. Raising an eyebrow, you said, “Now, I’m ready to step away from the computer, Sergeant Barnes.”

   Your face was unreadable, but inside you were bursting with excitement. You were standing in front of the one and only James Buchanan Barnes. You were going to have some fun indeed. 

He took a cautious step toward you, hand out. “Hand me the drive, ma’am.” 

You held the drive up and smiled at him, eyes dancing mischievously. “And, what do I get out of it if I do?”

James can see he’s going to have to take it by force. He studies you as he takes another step forward. “Listen, Ma’am. You really don’t want this fight. Just hand me the drive and let’s be done with this.” One more step forward. 

“But, this drive is very important. So, if I’m going to give it up, I need to make sure I’m getting something in return.” Now, it’s your turn to take a step forward. “What are you willing to offer me, Serge?” you purr. 

James can’t help the smile that spread across his face. What is this woman playing at? “You work for HYDRA, so there’s nothing I can do. And, since you know who I am, you should know I am not very keen on helping HYDRA.” He takes another step forward. 

“Well, if you won’t help me, why should I help you?” you huff out and pout. “That’s not fair.”

James is growing impatient. “Lady, give me the drive before I take you from you.”

“Now I’m really not gonna give it to you with that attitude,” you say raising an eyebrow and take a step back. 

James huffs air out of his nose taking a big step and closing the gap between you two. He is truly an intimidating specimen. He hovers over you, eyes intense and mouth in a thin line. You know he’s had enough of your games. However, your shenanigans have only just begun. 

The super-soldier is fast, grabbing your wrist. His grip is firm but he doesn’t hurt you. He knows his strength and what he is capable of. He can’t say the same about you, though. You give him a wink and sly smile. Then, in a split second, he’s holding nothing. You were gone and the only thing left was a thick cloud of dark grey smoke where you had been standing. 

James opens his hand and looks at it completely bewildered. What the fuck just happened? He whirls around when he hears you tut from behind him. 

The confusion on his face makes you laugh. “Weren’t expecting that now were you, Sergeant?”

 “So, HYDRA is making enhanced scientists now. I guess it’s one way to protect their precious research,” James spits out. 

You hold up your hands defensively. “Whoa there. You’re assuming a bit much. HYDRA didn’t make me. No one made me.”

James tilts his head to one side like a puppy, eyes boring into you. You could see the wheels in his head turning. He was trying to put the pieces together. “You’re a mutant?”

“Born and raised,” you say proudly. 

“So, HYDRA is hiring mutants as scientists, then. Won’t help you get out of this building with that drive, sweetheart.” James lunged at you.

This time he ended up choking on the grey smoke left where you popped out of existence. Now, you were at the door waving the drive mockingly at him. 

“I might be wrong, but I think my mutant abilities are exactly what’s going to get me out of this building.” 

James just smirked at you. “Wanna bet?”

You smiled wickedly at him. “Hell yes. When you lose, you’ll have to take me out to dinner.”

“Dinner?” James shakes his head even more confused. “Why would I do that? You work for HYDRA?”

You tut at him, waving a finger. “Still assuming my dear Sergeant.”

“Who the hell are you?” He cannot wrap his head around you. 

“The girl that’s about to win a dinner date with you,” you say and wink. 

“I don’t think so, lady,” a voice says from behind you before you’re abruptly turned to face them. 

“Hello, Cap,” you say to Steve Rogers. You feel James come up behind you. “Oh, my. Look at me, sandwiched between two super soldiers,” you say in mock distress. “Whatever shall I do?”

James goes to grab the drive from your hand. And, again, you’re gone leaving the cloud of smoke where you were. He looks at Steve, venom in his eyes. 

“I hope you know a nice place to make a reservation at. Preferably a place that has really good seafood.” You are standing in front of a large window at the end of the hallway. 

James and Steve look at each other then back at you. You could see the anger coupled with confusion on their faces. Steve talks into his comms to let the others know your location before both men run towards you. 

“I’m done playing games with you. Give me the drive. Now!” James says throwing a punch at you. You easily dodge it and dance around him, avoiding Steve’s blow as well. 

The men are putting in a lot of effort trying to land a hit on you. You were much too quick for them. It was effortless, the way moved out of harm’s way without even using your powers. Finally, Steve threw a haymaker at you and caught it in your hand. Now, it was your turn. 

Steve cannot believe how strong you are, turning his wrist to the point of dislocating it before kicking him in the abdomen. It sent him several feet back. James came in with a jab that you sidestepped allowing you to grab his arm. Using his own momentum, you easily flipped him onto his back. 

You looked up to see Steve throw his shield at you. When it was mere inches from your face, you used your powers and let it pass through the smoke and break the window behind you. As you popped back into existence, both men were already trying to subdue you again. Now, you were just smoking in out of their blows causing the men to hit each other. Finally, you grabbed both fists coming at you in each hand. 

You kicked Steve in the gut and sent him flying back before turning your full attention on James. “This was fun. Can’t wait for our date.” Before he can say or do anything you spartan kick him. He falls flat on his ass and you laugh. In another cloud of smoke, you’re gone, reappearing outside of the window. 

James gets up and runs towards the window, jumping out of it, trying to get his hands on you. Just as he’s about to grab your arm, he hears Fury’s voice. 

“That won’t be necessary, soldier. She’s with us.”

“What?” James spits out. 

You smile innocently. “I told you you were assuming too much,” you say and toss the drive to Fury. 

“Smoke was working on my orders at this facility. She’s the reason you all were able to infiltrate this base. We owe her a lot,” Fury explained. 

James looked at you shaking his head angrily. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Oh, come on. I was just looking to have a little fun. Do you know how boring and dull it is to work with all these lab coats? I needed a bit of exercise and you just happened to be my workout partner.” You smiled at him. 

James looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. “That was all for fun?”

“Yeah, and I got a date out of it.” You winked at him. Then, you put your fingers to your mouth and whistled. “I take it we’re done here?” You say to Fury. 

“For now. I’ll need you to come by the office later for a debriefing.”

You nod and turn to see your ride galloping towards you. The 6’5 black Clydesdale came to a halt in front of you. You smile fondly at the robotic demon horse. He was your pride and joy. “Hey, I missed you buddy.” You climb on his back and look down at the James. “Remember, a place that has good seafood.” 

James is left there, mouth open watching as you gallop away. He has so many questions. The first of which is when the hell was he going to see you again so he could make the reservation.

Hey, if you guys enjoy my content and want to help me continue creating it, consider buying me a coffee. It will help a ton!

@babygurl8840 @thenerdgirl10 @booktease21 @fanfictionrecommendations-com @suitelifedeluxe @thisisablogiguess2

#writing #bucky x reader #bucky barns imagine #Bucky Barnes #Avengers #AO3 fanfic #fanfiction #metal gear #soleizcreations #solid snake

[westgateoh]

A scene from a long fic I’m working on. Felt like sharing because Bruce and Jason. Encouragement is helpful if you like it. Thanks for reading (sorry about the spacing)

“What happened?” Batman growled, and the wind of the rooftop swirled his cape around him, like it was whipping him. He ignored it. “You’re favoring your right arm.”

Jason would deny it, but he was using the only arm that worked at the moment to hold a goon by his windpipe against the wall while Bruce zip tied the guy’s hands behind his back. From the whimper Jason heard, Bruce wasn’t taking any chances. “Dislocated shoulder in the fight. I’ll be fine.” He stepped back so that Bruce could shove the guy to his knees and tie his ankles. Jason would be fine, too. He turned to the wall, shoved his gun in its holster, and lined up his shoulder. He’d put his own shoulder back plenty of times. It hurt like a sonofabitch, but he’d done it. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and felt Bruce pull him back from the wall.

“Stop.”

Jason turned to look at him.

“It’s harder to do it yourself. Let me.”

Something in Bruce’s voice was softer than usual, more like a request than his usual demands.

It would be easier to have Bruce do it, so he nodded, and Bruce pulled him a little so that Jason’s back wasn’t against the wall.

He put one hand on Jason’s shoulder and then gripped his elbow. “Deep breath and hold it.”

Jason complied.

Bruce wrenched and Jason clenched his eyes through the pain and then it was done. Bruce still held Jason’s arm. “Better?” he asked.

Jason stared at the gloved hand on his arm, but he didn’t pull away. He just nodded.

“Good. Will you come back to the Cave and let Agent A do a scan to make sure everything’s stable in there?” Bruce was still holding his arm, and Jason couldn’t stop staring at his hand. “Hood?” Bruce says, his voice soft, so the guy on the ground couldn’t hear him. “Are you all right?”

Jason was years away, his vision filled with the memory of the first time he broke his arm on patrol with Bruce, when he was laying on the rooftop in the chill of October as Bruce stood over him, brushing his gloved hand through Jason’s hair and saying, “You’re going to be all right, Robin. It hurts now, but we’ll get you back to the Cave and fix your arm right up so it doesn’t hurt as badly. You’ll be all right.” And Jason believed him immediately, and let Bruce pick him up and carry him down the rickety fire escape to the Batmobile, where he laid him gently in the backseat and then put the car on autopilot so that he could hold Jason’s good hand the whole way home.

Dragged back to the present by the smell of asphalt and garbage from the alley below, he looks up at Bruce. “I’m fine,” he says, and pulls his arm away. “I have to go home.”

Bruce frowned. “Does your current home have a decent med kit?”

Jason brushed off his concern. “Yeah. Tim restocked it for me last week. It probably even has root beer lollipops,” and he didn’t say it to hurt, but Bruce flinched, clearly remembering the jar of root beer lollipops Alfred let Bruce keep in the med bay when they’d found out they were Jason’s favorite. Bruce would sneak them to Jason sometimes when he was sick, like they were carrying out international espionage or something by getting them past Alfred.

Jason blinked at Bruce’s reaction and shook his head. “You need anything else from me here?” he asked.

Bruce let go of Jason’s arm and stepped back. “No. Go home and rest.” He paused. “Oh, and add tonight to your casefile on the Marineli group. I’m certain it’s connected.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment before Bruce seemed to shake himself out of thought, and he took a step toward Jason, who couldn’t help his reaction of stepping back so now he was against the wall. He tried to lean and make it look intentional and casual, but Bruce took a step back quickly, like he knew he’d accidentally boxed Jason in.

“Come to dinner tomorrow?” he asked, and Jason closed his eyes, thankful that the lenses kept the action from Bruce. “Dick’s going to be there.”

“No, thanks,” he replied, and Bruce stiffened. “I’ll check in before patrol if you want, since so many things seem to be overlapping right now.” He paused and looked at Batman standing in front of him – they only had a few minutes before the police arrived at the scene and Bruce really still didn’t want the GCPD to know how closely he was working with the Red Hood, Jason understood that. He looked, though, and saw Bruce reaching out, trying to get Jason home, trying to help him.

It had been long enough since their last big fight, long enough for Jason to see how Bruce was trying to be there for him, trying to get Jason to come into the sphere of the Bats enough for him to want to stay, for them to be a family again. Jason saw that. He even wanted it sometimes, but thinking about things like family made Jason’s skin itch, made his chest tight, and made his nerves sing. Looking at Bruce practically vibrating out of the Bat suit, though, was enough to make Jason stop and think. “You want to get some pancakes?” he asked, rolling his bad shoulder slowly, keeping it loose.

“What?”

“Pancakes. There’s a new diner just outside the Narrows. I’ve been wanting to try it. I could use your ear for the Singali case, too, if you want to talk for a bit.” He could hardly believe his own words, but he found himself holding his breath waiting for Bruce to answer.

Bruce finally nodded. “Give me an hour. I’ll meet you there,” he said, and his voice dropped the Batman growl entirely, and he turned and disappeared over the edge of the roof.

Jason stood still for a minute and finally shook his head. “What the fuck did I just do?” he muttered to himself, and then he made himself move. He needed to change clothes.

Jason ordered a cup of coffee and an order of French toast before Bruce finally got there, sliding into the booth and pulling his faded black Gotham Knights baseball hat a little lower over his eyes. He was wearing a grey hoodie, dark jeans jacket, and torn jeans with green Converse and Jason had to admire his ability to move entirely unlike Bruce Wayne or Batman.

“I ordered already, sorry. I was really hungry,” Jason said, shoving a bite of French toast into his mouth. Their waitress, a tall redhead, came to the table and poured a refill for Jason and a cup for Bruce, who ordered some scrambled eggs and hash browns and a glass of orange juice. Jason asked her to bring him some eggs and bacon, and Bruce hid a smile behind his coffee cup.

Jason raised an eyebrow after she left. “Diner orange juice, B? Pretty big risk.”

Bruce shrugged. “Feeling a little run down. Could use all the vitamin C I can get.”

Jason blinked and swallowed a weird feeling of panic that surged at the thought of Bruce getting sick. The first time Bruce had caught the flu when Jason was a kid he’d been convinced Bruce was going to die and leave him the way his mom had, and he pestered Alfred to take Bruce to the hospital for three days straight and had fought nightmares for a month after it happened.

Bruce was fixing Jason with such an odd look right now that Jason wondered if he remembered that, too. “I’m okay,” he said.

Jason just nodded.

The waitress brought the rest of the food and they ate in comfortable silence for a bit.

“Damian made some hummous at my place last week that was better than any restaurant I’ve had here in the states,” Jason finally said. “Has he been cooking with Alfred?”

Bruce nodded and swallowed his food. “Yes. They’re on a mission to recreate every food Damian can remember from Egypt. The list on the fridge is pretty long.” He paused and added, “Some are more successful than others. Tim added some dishes from Russia that he apparently tried on a trip with his parents as a boy and now it’s a significant mission. Dick wanted to add some Romani dishes, but Damian says they have to master his own list first.”

Jason grinned. “Throw on Pork-n-Beans from Park Row for me when you get a chance. That’s some fancy cooking.”

Bruce snorted and Jason’s own smile widened. They chatted about food for a few minutes, and that led them to Damian’s tastes, which led them to Damian’s pets. Jason’s been wanting to ask about this for a while.

“A cow, B? Really?”

Bruce just chuckled. “God help me, I didn’t mean to let him end up with a menagerie, but it’s a better outlet for him than anger, which usually ends with he and Tim breaking something in an honest-to-goodness brawl.”

“They still fight?”

“Not as much as they used to, but Tim is nothing if not expert at button pushing, intentional or no.” He finished his toast and added, “I think the last time they fought the old Tiffany lamp in the den was the victim.”

Jason’s eyes widened. “And Al let them both live?”

“Their chore list increased a great deal for next month.”

It took Jason a minute to catch up, but when he did, “Tim doesn’t even live there full-time anymore. He still has chores?”

“He does after they broke that lamp,” Bruce said with a shrug.

Jason laughed, and Bruce’s chin snapped up at the sound, like he didn’t see that coming. He grinned, too, after a moment.

When the waitress brought them their bill and they finally wandered out of the diner, Jason realized that they never did talk about their case.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #batman #red hood #westgate fanfic #my fic

[randomguywithwords]

As The Dust Settles: Chapter 17 (Dabi X fem!Geten Slowburn)

Chapter 17: A Frozen Heart

AO3 Link: Here

Previous Chapters: 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Long chapter ahead btw. 2.8k.

–––––––––

For fifteen minutes, Dabi watched the broken, unconscious form of Geten breathe, every inhalation causing a shudder to ripple through her body. Every time she made a hacking cough, blood spurted from her mouth, making his fists clench tighter and his teeth grind against one another with building rage. Ten minutes in, he reduced Takame’s corpse to ashes to vent some feelings. 

That was all he could do. He couldn’t move her because of all the broken bones and fractures. The one thing he could was to shift her head an inch, to ensure she didn’t choke on her blood. 

All he could do was wait. The throbbing pain in his arms from blocking that hit was nothing compared to the pain in his chest at seeing her on the verge of death, enduring a merciless pummel that she didn’t deserve. 

He felt like every breath he took injected him with even more fury that he wanted to scream, to let the world know he wanted to burn it all. 

Stupid girl. Why can’t you see that you never belonged to the MLA? Why are you getting yourself killed for them? 

Geten shuddered as she coughed out more blood that stained the rusty containers’ surface. Dabi tore his eyes away. You could have stopped Takame before he went after her. You’re weak.

Wasn’t my fault I got sent on this damn assignment, he argued on instinct.

He paused, feeling his conviction disappear upon seeing Geten’s state. He ignited his arm, feeling the fiery torture wrack his already fractured limb. It didn’t expunge the guilt, but he liked to think that it could, somehow. 

Did Shigaraki know, sending two people whose quirks don’t work well against him? 

He was confronting Shigaraki when they got back, that was for sure. But for now, his attention was drawn to her. 

Is her breathing slowing? Shit. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling helpless, so utterly helpless. C’mon, girl, don’t die on me. Please. 

When he opened them, he saw two figures rushing towards them. He recognised one of them as the soldier who had welcomed them at the airport. 

“Help her first, I’m good.” He said as he extinguished his punishment. The two of them nodded. One of them stepped forward to lay a hand on Geten.

Dabi slapped it away with a glare. “Are you an idiot? She’s in no state to be carried.”

The soldier gave a patient smile. “I’m not moving her. My special ability can teleport people to a nearby location I’m familiar with by being in physical contact. We’re bringing the both of you back to the airport where Compress will take you back to Deika.” 

“Ah,” Dabi said, leaning back, “My bad.”

With one hand each, the soldier touched each of their shoulders, while the other companion laid a hand on him. The teleporter closed his eyes.

In the next few seconds, Dabi felt a light tugging sensation, definitely smoother than the gunky horridness that was the Doctor’s method. The next moment, he found himself back at the airport on solid ground. 

“Keep her spine in line,” Dabi ordered, and the two obeyed, gingerly holding Geten in place. “How long till Compress gets here?”

“ETA ten minutes,” The teleporter announced. Dabi swallowed – If he doesn’t get here on time...

The night was quiet and of a cool temperature, but Dabi was still sweating, and the serenity of this scene was destroyed by the haggard breaths Geten was drawing. He kept looking at the sky, trying to spot a black dot in the darkness. When a seeming eternity had passed feeling more anxious by the minute, he saw it, illuminated by red lights. 

He heard the whirring sounds of the chopper as it closed in and landed. Dabi spotted the familiar orange-brown coat and the black hat of Atsuhiro Sako, and a painful smile of relief tugged at his lip. 

One thing Dabi liked about Compress was that despite his showman persona, he didn’t mince words, or speak when there was no need to. Sako raced out of the aircraft, compressed Geten and pocketed her. 

“You need me to do you, too?” Sako asked him. 

Dabi shook his head. “Let’s go. Thanks, you two.” He acknowledged the soldiers, who bowed in return and left. The two Lieutenants climbed into the helicopter and the pilot lifted off. 

“No headsets? I’m not going deaf here,” Dabi shouted over the whirring. 

“Chill, the pilot has a noise-cancelling quirk. He’ll activate it soon.” As Compress said this, the ruckus disappeared, as if they were back on the jet. Another pang of hurt poked at Dabi, thinking about his nonchalance at the start of the mission.

“You look like hell.” Compress noted Dabi’s arms and the dust and grime on his coat. 

“Yeah. Assignment was harder than we thought.”

“I presumed much. Who was it?”

“One of the advisors in my regiment, and his daughter.”

Dabi heard the surprise in Sako’s tone. “Oh, Skeptic’s gonna go mental. Not that he already isn’t.”

That got a chuckle out of Dabi, but it died as he thought about the damage Takame had done. 

“But you guys finished the mission, right?” Compress asked. 

Looking out the window at the night sky, he muttered, “Yeah.”

“You didn’t throw her under the bus, did you?” 

Dabi’s head flicked back to face Compress. “What the hell, no! Why would I?”

The performer raised his arms to placate his anger. “Sorry, last time you talked about her, you were ready to kill her or whatever’s in your head. You mean to say that you guys are on good terms now?”

Dabi sighed. “I just don’t hate her. And I have no reason to let her die. Shigaraki wouldn’t be happy.” He added as an afterthought. 

He gave a tiny sigh. “Well, I’m sure you have a thrilling story of how you two managed to get to this state.” 

“We definitely do,” Dabi said dryly. 

“Tell us all about it tomorrow. Go get some sleep tonight. The doctor has a cell activation quirk, he’ll fix you up first, then her.” 

“No, get her first. I’ll wait.” 

“Fine,” Compress relented after seeing the adamant expression on Dabi’s face. “You’re really...concerned for her. It’s weird.” 

Dabi replied with a yawn.

––––––

The doctor flipped through his clipboard. “Multiple fractures on her arms, five broken ribs, dislocated jaw and she suffered a skull fracture.”

“But you fixed all of it...right?” There was an undertone of a “You better have.” that the doctor understood, given the reassuring smile he wore at Dabi’s question. He was getting sick of people trying to calm him down with smiles, like that would help.

“I used my ability as best as I could, and it fixed most of it, but I only sped up the recovery of the cell reparations. We’ll be providing iron and calcium supplements to help her along, but she’ll be bedridden for the next few days.” 

“Any permanent damage?” 

“As long as she gets enough rest and doesn’t exert herself, she’ll be fine and back to normal in a few weeks.”

Dabi exhaled. “Alright. Thanks doc.” 

Dr Shimano nodded and left the room. Dabi looked at Geten, whose chest rose and fell at a stable pace as she slept, no longer shaking, a significant improvement from just an hour ago. 

“Sorry Geten,” He said. “I fucked up.” 

As the words left his mouth, he took a second to realise what he had just said. He blinked. When did I start caring so much? 

The air-conditioned room and the leather chair he was seated on let the remaining surges of adrenaline fade out, to be replaced by an ice-cold fist of realisation – The events that had transpired in the last couple of hours punched him in the face. 

He had not left her side once the entire time. 

You’re really...concerned for her.

He got out of his seat, staggering upon registering Mr Compress’ words from earlier with clarity, similar to receiving a fiery touch on his skin. What the hell? 

He glanced back at Geten sleeping, then he left the room with extended paces. I should get back to my room. Yeah, that’s a good idea. He pushed all thoughts of the girl out of his mind, focusing on the inevitable debrief from him the next council meeting, since she couldn’t –

He swore under his breath. Stop thinking about her. These thoughts, feelings, whatever they were. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was unnatural. Foreign. Probably dangerous. 

––––––––

The next morning’s meeting convened, in the absence of Lieutenant Apocrypha, with Dabi’s debrief of the mission. 

“Alright, Dabi, care to explain what happened?” Shigaraki drummed his fingers on the table.

Dabi stood up, wearing his trademark lazy expression, though he was actually fatigued. “So our target turned out to be a Mihara Takame, daughter of Shingu Takame, who was an advisor to Violet Regiment.” 

He noted the widened eyes of the old MLA executives. Hanabata’s gaze flickered between the desk and him. And was that a bead of sweat rolling down Skeptic’s forehead? It might have been his imagination.

“What?” Re-destro gaped, then turned to Shigaraki. “Grand Commander, I apologise deeply for this treachery. I had no idea —“ 

Shigaraki waved his hand. “Never mind about that first. Continue.”

“We got into a fight, which turned out bad for Apocrypha, who took most of the damage, but I managed to finish the assignment.” 

“Yeah, that’s the part I wanna know.” Shigaraki leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “Why did you guys end up taking the beating you did?” 

“Takame’s quirk was a shitty matchup against mine and hers. He just wouldn’t feel any pain. Impossible to incapacitate him.”

“And Apocrypha’s ice did nothing?” 

“No, it didn’t hinder him much.” 

“Then how did you kill both of them?” 

“I took out the woman first.” Dabi mimed twisting a neck. “For her old man, I concentrated my flames onto his head. Carbonized it. He probably died from brain failure or something.”

“Ah, copying Endeavour now, eh?” A small grin made Dabi bristle, though he concealed it. 

He shrugged. “What can I say? He’s got decent moves to copy, and I have the firepower to match his. Speaking of which, you might want to send a team to dispose of the body. I didn’t burn up the girl, only Takame.” 

Shigaraki frowned. “Why don’t you do it?” 

“Excuse me?” The coldness in the room spiked as the two stared at each other with venom. 

“I don’t know why you could cremate the larger-sized adult male but not the small girl. Go fix your mess.” 

“You’re really going to send me all the way back just to burn one more corpse?” 

“Yep.” Shigaraki’s eyes were still fixated on him, as though daring him to act out. What do you want? Something about the way his leader questioned him was off. Hell, he was never so interested in these small problems that cropped up. Dabi had talked to Twice before the meeting. According to him, a small riot broke out in the town centre over Shigaraki’s leadership, and the latter didn’t seem to care. 

Did you send the hit squad on us? Dabi’s eyes swept the room. Hanabata and Skeptic’s faces were whiter than normal, but that was because Takame was on their list that Apocrypha freaked out so much about, right? 

Dabi was about to argue further, but decided against it. He needed answers, and he doubted anyone in the room would offer anything worthwhile. Maybe going back would be helpful. 

He spun around and walked towards the door. “Fine. I’ll get to it now. Prep the jet, Skeptic.”

Without waiting for an answer, or for Shigaraki to stop him, he left the room, slamming the door behind him with a growl. He had to admit, though, that the solitude and this menial task given to him allowed him time to think about everything that had happened last night, and he kept coming back to the one name.

Mesa. 

That was all he got from the thug. A name that he couldn’t even be sure was real. Dabi was somewhat confident it was a legitimate answer: the thug was terrified of dying, especially after Dabi used his partner as a demonstration. 

When one was about to die, truths became more apparent. They stopped lying and told the truth, whether one was on their deathbed or backed up against an alley. 

Sensei had done the same thing. 

Dabi frowned, and quickened his pace. Which reminded him...that factory, it looks similar to the one that night. Guess I’ll look around there too. 

He emerged from the underground tunnel to the airport, a convenient distance from the mansion. And his face blanched. Why the fuck is she here? 

Geten was talking with the pilot, her posture bent, and Dabi didn’t need a doctor to tell him she was still injured. 

He marched up to her and waved off the pilot. “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m going back.” She said, her face tight with pain. Or defiance. One worried him, the other annoyed. 

“No, you’re not. You’re still fucked up, you’re going back to the hospital.” He pointed away from the helicopter beside both of them, which reminded him of a parent sending a kid to their room. 

And just like the kid, she was acting like a brat. “I need to go back. Please. How did you even know I was here?” 

“I didn’t.”

“So you’re going back to Tokugawa?” 

Dabi bit back a retort. “No,” he tried. 

Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re going, I’m going.” 

Dabi envied Sako for the issues he could solve with his quirk with one tap. He stretched his sigh out. “Alright. Fine. One condition.” 

“What?” 

“Go take a shower and change out of this. You look and smell like shit.” 

Geten seemed to be in no mood to shoot a returning insult. She nodded. 

–––––––––

The two took a helicopter ride, which Dabi figured was Skeptic’s way of flipping him off — he was in the mood for another private jet ride, at least up till Geten showed up. 

Along the way, Dabi explained what had happened while she was unconscious or hospitalised. She nodded, rather numbly, to everything. He felt like pressing her on why wanted to come along, but she looked to be in such a somber mood Dabi kept quiet once he was done. 

“Thank you,” Geten said, which caught Dabi off-guard. 

He stared at her. “Huh?” 

But she lapsed back into silence. 

Takame’s words really affected her, huh? He got the gist of it: Takame was pissed off. Dabi was too focused on finishing the job, and the concussion dulled his senses, even as he crept up to the both of them. He didn’t hear everything Takame said, but enough of it. 

He still had no idea what she was doing here. Guess he would find out. 

They touched down a while later, took another motorbike ride, also in silence, to the factory. When they got off, there was a rush in her step, as though in anxiety, to reach the site of their Pyrrhic victory. Although, Dabi managed to keep pace with her. 

Mihara’s body was still there, and the imprint of Shingu was visible on the stone ground. Geten took out some ice from her pocket and used them to shut her wide eyes, then adjust her broken neck. She looked like she was sleeping. 

Next, she fashioned her ice into a platform which carried the young woman. Dabi quietly watched all this unfold, not wanting to interrupt whatever she was doing. 

Then Geten walked towards the nearby forest. Taking out more ice, she formed a wide, curved object, which she used to shovel dirt. 

Oh, so that’s what she’s doing. 

As if in a trance-like state, he picked up some sticks off the ground, lit the tip of them and passed three to Geten, who had laid Mihara’s body in the grave and filled it with dirt. 

She looked at the makeshift joss sticks, then at him, and gave a quivering smile. She knelt down to place them on top of the grave. 

As she tried to stand up, she stumbled a bit with a wince of pain. Dabi grabbed her shoulders to steady her. “Hey. Don’t stress yourself.” 

Her footing is off, he noted that, as well as her constant flinching. Her ribs were probably still hurting. 

He sighed and muttered, “You – You can lean on me. Just don’t tell anyone I said that.” 

“I’m fine,” She said with less believability than a hero’s promise. But she did, after a pause, rest her head on his shoulder, as the two stared at the blue flame that slowly died, its bright azure radiance leaving small spots in their eyes. 

“Why’s it seem like you trust me all of a sudden?” Dabi had to ask. 

After a moment of silence, Geten mumbled, “I think...I think I just do. You’re not the worst.” 

That’s a first. 

“So why’d you bury her?” 

“Because…” She looked at her hands. “They didn’t deserve it. It’s weird, isn’t it? I got beat up so much by them, but I’m still respecting her.”

“No, it’s not weird. It means…” Dabi considered his next few words. “It means your heart isn’t cold.” 

––––––––

Nice chapter to write, though very long. I realised I had a lot to say so this is sorta still part of this arc, but I’m starting to transition to the next. And now writing these two just became a lot harder, given the change in character. 

So if you guys have any feedback on whether I’m too OOC on them, given what’s happened to them, do let me know. I’d appreciate it. I’m especially worried about my portrayal of Dabi this chapter, whether he’s acting too nice (for his character) too abruptly. 

I’ll have to do a long re-read of the whole story after a while to reboot and see whether their character progression is plausible. 

Nevertheless I hoped you enjoyed this chapter. 

And also yeah we’re starting to get into some Dabiten stuff. Should be fun, and hard to write. 

#bnha #mha #bnha fanfiction #mha fanfiction #mha fanfic #bnha fanfic #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #dabi #bnha dabi #mha dabi #geten #bnha geten #mha geten #getenloveweek2020 #dabiten #getenxdabi #dabixgeten #geten x dabi #dabi x geten #ATDS

[pilot-boi]

Beginnings: Chapter 1

Life at the Academy was stifling, with the expectations of his family hanging over his head everywhere he went. He had to get out. 

Had to get out there, in the universe, where it was full of shine and sparkle and his life could really mean something. Through the window of his dorm room, Jaune could see the glitter of the stars, a million worlds populated by billions of people. 

People in danger, maybe, who he could help. Who he couldn’t help from his dorm room. Out there in the real world, where something new and amazing and dangerous could finally begin.

Sketchy Departure

The firestorm ignites last thoughts of a life by candlelight. I'd gladly give my life for one night as a justice acolyte

AO3 LINK

Jaune stared at the note he had left for Sapphron on his pillow. It wasn’t much. Just an apology and an explanation of where he was going. Staring at it, though… He felt anger building inside him. He grabbed it and tore it up, letting the pieces fall to the floor.

If his older sister wanted to know where he was, then she could ask.

He glanced outside his dorm room, making sure no one else was out past curfew. Then he stepped outside, carrying all his personal items and a small assortment of rations in a bag on his back. It wasn’t much, but it would be enough to get him back home.

As he quickly walked towards the docks, thoughts raced through Jaune’s mind. This was what was best, right? With his grades dropping and the scholarship being pulled, there was no way he could keep going to the Academy.

‘You could always work hard and get your grades back up,’ something inside of him whispered, but Jaune pushed the thought aside. He was sick and tired of being the only Arc who wasn’t good at everything. The pressure to live up to others’ expectations for him felt smothering.

If he was being completely honest with himself, he had stopped putting effort into his classes ages ago. His grades had been going downhill for months, and his perfect attendance score had become… well.. A lot less perfect.

It wasn’t that Jaune hated being here. He loved flying. And it had turned out he wasn’t even that bad at it,after he’d gotten over his near-debilitating motion sickness. It was just… all these people expecting him to be something he wasn’t. Expecting him to stay at the top, all while plodding through each day doing things he hated.

It was just wrong.

Jaune needed something different.

The docks were silent when he arrived, and the only security guard on detail was fast asleep. Jaune slipped inside the pod nearest to the exit.

He turned on his vessel, the engine purring silently. He’d always hated these things. The controls were awkward and allowed for little actual pilot control. The fuel was inefficient, the steering relied too much on auto-pilot, and they always smelled like sweat.

Luckily, that meant the GAAP wouldn’t miss on if it happened to go missing.

---

“Log Date… Uh… I don’t remember how to do this, part three. There’s a planet in sight. I’m hoping I can land there before this piece of trash runs out of fuel. Hopefully there’s civilization there that has transports headed back home. Um, yeah. Signing out.”

Jaune leaned back in his seat, cringing as his stomach rumbled. He should have packed more rations. It had been three days since he’d left the Academy, and rations were low. He only had a few nutrition bars left, and his water was down to a few gulps.

The dashboard beeped, yet again reminding Jaune that he was running low on fuel.

Jaune closed his eyes tight. At this point, he’d be happy if he crashed.

---

Jaune was not happy when he crashed.

It had happened so fast. One moment he was entering the planet’s atmosphere, the next alarms were blaring and flames were streaming out of the left engine. He braced for impact… and then something hit his head and everything went dark.

When he finally woke up, red lights were flashing from the dash, and his ears were ringing. Something sticky trickled down his forehead, and his shoulder was on fire. Pain was pulsing up from Jaune’s arm. Everything felt numb and far away, but the longer he sat there, the sharper it became. The sharper it became, the more Jaune wanted to go back to sleep.

He groaned, looking down at his arm. It twisted in a position it definitely was not supposed to be in. Gingerly pushing the sleeve up, swearing every time the fabric touched his skin, he looked it over.

It could be worse. No bone sticking through the skin. Just bruising and the awkward angle. It was broken, that much he could tell. Basic medical classes back at the Academy told him to put it into a splint, since there was no bone visible.

His shoulder on the other hand…

Every time he moved was pure agony. It was dislocated. That was something he was something he was going to have to fix before he could move. Jaune had never done this before, but it couldn’t be that bad… right?

Jaune positioned himself against the dash, holding his shoulder with his good hand. One big breath in and… he pushed.

It snapped back into place.

Jaune screamed.

---

He had landed on Talbos Prime. Facts Oobleck had drilled into his mind in class floated through his pain-delirious brain. Dominant species: Nuxoin, an omnivorous species. Main export: Lumber and other natural resources. The entire planet was forest and a few freshwater seas. If he weren’t in so much pain, Jaune might have actually appreciated the scenery surrounding him.

Jaune had managed to get himself bandaged up, propping his arm with a splint kit. It wasn’t great, but it was better than nothing. Looking over his injuries, he was glad for once that his dad wasn’t human.

Blood already soaked the bandages on his leg, and the ones on his head were going to need to be replaced soon. It was obvious the crash would have likely killed him had he been completely human. Having a slightly thicker skull than normal humans, with the ability to replenish blood faster, was coming in handy in this sucky situation.

It still sucked though.

With the medical kit intact, he’d be able to keep himself alive until the ship was fixed. The ship was definitely fixable, but he would have to get to work soon if he wanted it to fly again. Talbos Prime didn’t have many populated towns, and the closest was over a day’s travel away. He wouldn’t make it.

Jaune readjusted the splint on his broken arm and set to work.

As much as Jaune hated these scrappy ships, they held their shape pretty well. He wouldn’t need to fix much, but what he did need to fix was time consuming. Hours passed as he worked. The first sun set and the second rose. A few of the local wildlife gathered to watch him at him at one point. 

He paid them no mind, hardly noticed them in fact with how engrossed he was in his work. When Jaune finally managed to focus on a task, he was focused.

The ship was already looking in better condition as the final sun disappeared below the horizon. Sealant held the tears in the wing together and covered the multiple cracks that littered the surface of the front window. The burnt engine parts had been replaced, and the fuel was slowly refilling. Thank god for GAAP adaptability fuels. As long as the planet had some form of fuel in the atmosphere, he could slowly refill.

Jaune sat inside the ship now, struggling to screw a panel back in. The screwdriver fumbled in his hand, dropping below the dash.

“Fuck! Where’d you go now?” He cursed the tool as he bent over and peered below himself.

He reached for it, but in doing so pulled his injured arm. He gasped in pain, recoiled back and held it to himself. Once it faded, he stared at the screwdriver with hatred. It was like it was mocking him. Too weak to grab a stupid tool. Too useless.

“I’m not weak,” Jaune growled at it.

He lowered himself down gently, wincing through the pain. He took the tool and finished screwing in the panel.

“Not too bad, Jaune,” he said, smiling at the interior of his ship. Only two more flashing lights to stop, and then he’d be homeward bound again. “Jaune Arc: Pilot, part-time mechanic, full-time genius.”

---

“Arc?” the flight instructor called, sounding incredibly bored.

A young Jaune stepped forward, looking confident and eager. The instructor sighed and opened the top of the small ship. The model looked and functioned similar to most GAAP standard single person vehicles, but was unable to reach half the altitude of the real things. Jaune clambered inside, trying his hardest not to fall over on his first day.

“Just a few laps,” the instructor ordered, glancing at her clipboard, “and then land here. Remember, this is the real test. You will be scored on your take-off, speed, control, and, finally, landing. This test is the true determinant to see if you make it into the GAAP Academy. Do your best, and good luck out there, future pilot of the Galactic Assembly of Allied Planets.”

Jaune grinned nervously, giving his sister a thumbs up as the top closed over him.

It was easy. The test flew by in a blur of whoops and speed. Jaune had been flying since he could reach the controls, as soon as he’d realised that at least there was one thing he was solidly good at. 

As he approached landing, he felt tempted to show off. Just a little wouldn’t hurt… right?

He increased the speed.

Just before it became too late, Jaune pulled up on the controls. The ship groaned under the sudden change, but it obeyed him. Gently, he set the ship down in front of his classmates. He hopped out with a grin.

The instructor looked furious.

“Arc!” She stomped towards him. “That was reckless and dangerous! Your flying was beyond GAAP regulations. I am surprised you made it past the entrance exams.”

Jaune clenched his fists, “I’m the best pilot in my class, ma’am. My transcripts prove that.”

“Not when you fly like that,” She scorned. “Report to your commander.”

Jaune turned and stalked away, anger clawing in his gut. He was a great pilot. He knew what he was doing.

---

Jaune ruffled his regulation-short hair and let it fall evenly over the bandages wrapped around his forehead. He was sitting outside of the ship, popping berries into his mouth as he waited for the fuel to fill back up. He figured out before he left that these ones were safe, and harvested enough to fill a small container he’d found on the ship. “Berries blue; good for you,” he hummed through a mouthful of the sweet treat.

The ship beeped and blinked to life, only slightly more jittery than it had been at the Academy.

“There you go, you piece of junk,” Jaune sighed, getting to his feet to pat the nose of the ship. “Now we can go home.”

The ship rumbled as he took off, but Jaune wasn’t about to complain about the ship now. It was certainly better than staying on Talbos Prime and paying off a Velm to not steal his last tank of fuel.

See you never again, Talbos Prime, Jaune thought as the forest planet faded into the space behind him. From now on, it was smooth sailing to Ventos Beta.

---

Two days

It was going to take him two days to get back.

Once the adrenaline of crashing, frantically trying to fix his ship, and getting off that planet had faded his body finally caught up with how badly he was actually damaged. He was quickly running out of bandages, and black spots were beginning to dance in his vision.

He looked back down to his arm. He couldn’t quite tell if he set the splint correctly, but at this point a poorly set arm was the least of his worries.

“Log date… uh… I don’t even know: I can’t help but shake the feeling that I’m slowly dying, which I probably am.” Jaune took a deep breath in, trying to not fall asleep then and there. “If I don’t put in another log tomorrow, I just wanna let anyone who’s listening to know that I’m sorry. Sorry, Mom. Signing off.”

He missed the off button several times before he finally hit it, bits of blackness taking up more and more of his vision. Leaning heavily into the chair, Jaune ran his good hand through his bloodstained hair, realizing he needed to change the bandages again.

---

“Log date, i-it doesn’t matter,” Jaune’s words were labored and his words often slurred together. “Ventos Beta…I can see it, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it in time,” He paused, taking a shuddering breath and putting a hand on his chest. The heartbeats themselves were rapid, yet they became progressively softer and less pounding than they were in the beginning. “I-I’m still sorry.”

Jaune didn’t even bother to say signing off, or even stop the recording.

---

“Why don’t you go meet our new neighbor?” Jaune’s mother suggested.

Her only son sank lower into the couch. His lower lip stuck out in a pout.

“I heard they have a son in your year.”

Jaune let out a long sigh, and changed the channel on the projected screen again.

“It’ll be good for you.”

He gave his mom a glance. She was staring back at him with a look that said “You are going to take these cookies and you are going to like it.”

Fine.

Jaune took the cookies, trotting over to the door of his new neighbor’s house. He rang the doorbell and tapped his foot impatiently. If they didn’t answer in the next fifteen seconds he was going to-

Before Jaune could finish his thought, the door swung open. A teenage Graeldur boy stared down at Jaune, a single rocky eyebrow raised in confusion.

Suddenly feeling very awkward, Jaune held out the plate of cookies. “My mom wanted me to bring these over as a housewarming gift,” he said.

“Uh… thank you,” the Graeldur said, taking the plate. “My name’s Ren.”

“I’m Jaune.”  

They stared at each, the awkward moment stretching out much longer than Jaune liked it. Ren finally looked down at the cookies, back behind him, and then back at Jaune.

“My parents aren’t home,” he said after a moment of consideration, that Jaune spent shifting from one foot to the other. “Do you want to eat all of these with me?”

Jaune grinned, “Sure.”

---

Jaune had never felt lonelier than he did now. Sitting in the pilot seat, watching the planet grow closer and closer, he felt like everything was collapsing in on him. He wanted his mom… oh god, his mom was going to be so mad at him. He could already hear his mom scolding him for being so reckless. He did completely deserve it, but that didn’t stop him from dreading it.

A sensor on the dashboard beeped at him, telling Jaune that he was ready to make contact.

The autopilot on the GAAP ships might be one of Jaune’s least favorite things, but now that he could barely use his limbs he was grateful. The ship lowered itself into an open field, gently setting down and then powering off.

Jaune just had to use whatever bit of strength he had left to hobble over to Ren’s place. Just get to Ren’s house. That was all that mattered.

The sky was dark when he left. Each footstep echoed back in Jaune’s brain and made the simple act of walking unbearable. By the time he made it to Ren’s front door, he could feel consciousness slowly slipping away from his grasp.

Leaning heavily against the doorframe, Jaune was able to give two, hard knocks. The few agonizing minutes it took for Ren to answer made Jaune want to let his muscles relax and slump down to the floor. In fact… he let himself slump farther down the frame. Oh, this was worse.

The handle jiggled a bit until the door opened with a far too loud creak. Jaune managed to look up, meeting his friend’s eyes.

“Oh my god…” Ren’s eyes went wide as he took in the state his friend was in, almost forgetting to breathe.

Jaune pushed what little trace of a smile he could onto his face, “Hey Ren.”

The world went black and numb.

#rwby #jaune arc #lie ren #saphron cotta arc #mama arc #mine #my writing #space rwby #beginnings #chapter 1

[deadshctx]

hiya folks! spike here, with my angsty son FLOYD LAWTON. i have his bio up HERE and his full application under the cut. LIKE THIS POST and i’ll hop in ur dms for plots! 

IN CHARACTER:

basic info

full name: Floyd Lawton

face claim: Dev Patel

age (include physical age, if different): 30

gender & preferred pronouns: cismale, he/him

MBTI Type: ISTP

occupation: NOVA Contractor

aliases (if any): Deadshot

affiliations (if any): NOVA, ARGUS, Task Force X

1. Is your character human, mutant, metahuman, alien, inhuman, or other? If other, please elaborate: Human

2. What are your characters powers/special abilities, if any?: n/a

3. Please provide three headcanons for your character:

1) Floyd isn’t suicidal, but he has a death wish. There’s a sort of carelessness to the way he works that betrays the little worth he places on his life. He tends to deflect any observations about this with humor—most people who work with him know not to question. It doesn’t get in the way of him getting the job done. He just knows that his job is high risk, and if he dies...he just doesn’t care.

2) Of the members of the suicide squad, Floyd was probably the most level-headed. He was never the kind of costumed criminal the rest of them were, not the type to make flashy shows of his work or do it because of some innate desire. Sure, it takes a certain kind of person to become an assassin of his caliber, but make no mistakes: he has always just been in it for the paycheck.

3) A faraway dream of Floyd’s is to move to India with Zoe, where no one would be able to find them. If he could give it up—if he thought he’d ever be able to give up Deadshot—he’d do it in a heartbeat. He knows, however, that it’s never going to happen. He’s never going to be able to stay out of trouble, and he was just going to have to live with the havoc that would wreak on his daughter’s life.

4. List four personality traits (two positive and two negative) and explain how they influence your character.

+ focused

Floyd has always been good at his job. It was something that came naturally to him, always a fastidious, methodical young person who liked making plans only to revel in the chaos when he threw them out the window. Needless to say, Floyd is deadly.

+ adaptable

As much as Floyd likes following his own plans, he also is always ready to throw them out the window. He’s the kind of person who thrives in the moments when thinking on your feet means life or death.

- reckless

Floyd’s foolish actions haven’t gotten his various teams in trouble yet, but there’s bound to be a fuck-up sometime.

- flippant

A lot of the time, people get frustrated working with Floyd because he refuses to take anything seriously. The combination of his death wish and his sole motivation of a paycheck, Floyd has never found much reason to take anything too seriously, even situations that are life or death.

5. Provide three potential plots you’d like to explore. The admins will do our best to accommodate your plot ideas, but we can’t guarantee all requests.

1) I want to see him do something horrible to the people who experimented on him at Belle Reve. Not only would this just be a cool plot to play out, but I think Floyd has always valued that he’s managed to keep his mind his own. ARGUS and others have taken a lot from him, and a lot of the time, he’s felt like he’s nothing more than a killing machine that they rent out, and it was his own sureness in his sanity that often kept him from doing something drastic. Not being able to trust that anymore would make him furious, and his only coping mechanism has been violence. It would be a type of catharsis when he finally gets rid of all of them that I think Floyd would not have experienced before in his life.

2) Something that I think will be really interesting for Floyd moving forward would be for him to now have a more active role in his daughter’s life. He has been absent for so much of it, and now she’s six and like...a real person and that’s finally sinking in for Floyd. The things he does will blow back on her, and if there is anyone in this world he loves, it’s Zoe Lawton. Having to come to terms with the fact that if he wants this time to be different, he’’s going to have to do some things differently is going to be a tough pill for him to swallow.

3) It would be super fun if a character in game hired Floyd against another character in game. It would be hilarious to watch Floyd chase someone around and then give him a dumb reason for not going through with it honestly it would be great.

character bio

Before the ban, he wasn’t anyone, and after the ban went into place, no one noticed when he disappeared deeper into the forgotten reaches of the system. The ugly dregs of a new normal that no one wanted to look at.

Floyd spent some time in Belle Reve after the start of the ban, mostly because no one really knew what to do with the suicide squad. Eventually, the squad was split up and Floyd was sent to Star City to work as a private contractor for ARGUS. He was still very much their prisoner—the words just made it seem better than it was.

ARGUS controlled Floyd’s entire life at this point, and he had grown used to it. He had grown complacent, tamed unwillingly into obeying the routine that had become his whole life. At one point, he had been the most highly sought after assassin in the world. Now, he was just another cog in ARGUS’ machine.

That never sat right with Floyd, and he had never learned how to solve his problems without a bullet, which was why he put one in Waller’s head.

ARGUS, at that point, was quickly losing its foothold to NOVA, and in the ensuing chaos, no one had time to deal with a loose cannon asset no one liked working with. They tossed him back in Belle Reve and forgot about him.

But he didn’t forget, not through every single nightmare Belle Reve put him through. If the asset won’t be in use, they thought, we can put him to use right here. And they did, putting him into all sorts of fucked up scenarios and seeing if he could fight his way out of it. When he did, they’d convince him that it wasn’t real.

Finally, they got bored of their game, or NOVA needed a pinch hitter, or some other dumb fucking reason that Floyd doesn’t give a fuck about, and they released Floyd. Of course, they couldn’t do it like normal people, and they plopped him back in Star City with a new tracker in his arm and a thirst for violence he’d never felt before.

He doesn’t think it’ll ever go away.

sample

blood, violence tw

Floyd wasn’t doing well in the dormitory, to say the least.

For a while, he was okay, cracking jokes when he felt like it and more often than not sullenly going through the motions, just like everyone else. It seemed like he could be normal, that maybe he could be okay and that whatever had happened before that had kept him out of the field for so long was just a memory.

It was in the third week that the fighting started.

At first, it was a broken nose, a dislocated thumb, a black eye. Minor injuries, things that were unacceptable to NOVA but just shy of irredeemable. So, Floyd stayed in the house. And the more he stayed in the house, the more his anger grew.

He’d spent months in solitary at this point. Fuck it, a year, probably. He wasn’t ready to be thrust back into something so new and so overwhelming all at once. Every single person in that house had their dicks out like they had something to prove, and Floyd, who had absolutely nothing to prove, showed them exactly who was on top.

It wasn’t until he killed someone that they took him out.

Floyd thought about it, the way he felt standing over the body, blood pooling under his head and his eyes glassy and unmoving. Floyd wasn’t used to killing up close like this, relying on the safety of distance whenever he took out his targets. It was clean. Precise. He didn’t see the bloody aftermath.

It was fascinating to him. That was concerning to them.

So, they moved him somewhere alone, and Floyd hated it even more than the dormitory. The silence made his ears ring. At night. he woke up with nightmares of drowning.

Even then, lying awake in bed, he was consumed with the feeling of water entering his lungs. It had happened, he swore. They had told him at Belle Reve that nothing happened, showed him scans of his lungs, clear of any inflammation, and said that it had been a terrible hallucination. All in his head.

But he felt it. He could have sworn he felt it. Water, rising through his cell as he desperately searched for an escape, the feeling of his blood mingling with the water as he clawed at the walls. He remembered the feeling of inhaling water, the pain and shock of a rush of water into the delicate structures of his lungs.

He remembered being administered CPR.

He rolled over in bed. Would he really hallucinate CPR?

Fuck. He wanted to punch someone right then, but he couldn’t, because he got himself kicked out of the fucking dormitory. Way to fucking stick it to ‘em, Floyd.

He felt nauseous. He swallowed it back.

He knew the truth. He had to.

#starcintro

[msephy]

Upbringing chap 10/13

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9

Cross-posted to AO3

Earth 53 - Jason Todd

This region of the Himalaya outside of Lhasa, Tibet, hadn’t changed much compared to Jason’s memories, that’s to say, it wasn’t very different from what it looked like in his world. It wasn’t that surprising. After all, the mountains dated from long before the moment when their world diverged and not much could leave its trace on them.

Was it even how it worked? Possibly not. He didn’t know that much about the multiverse.

“Are you sure this is the way?” Bruce asked for the tenth time.

Or the hundredth, if you counted all the times he’d asked before they’d landed the plane. The mountain surrounded them, the trail bumpy, icy, and generally dangerous. They’d had one other signal from Talia, four hours ago, that had thankfully confirmed the accuracy of their direction but, still; they might in fact ben pushing to another hideout. Who knew how many Ra’s had.

“You can see the tracks in the snow ahead of us, can’t you?” Jason answered, annoyed. Also, trying to drive the damn bat-luge or whatever the name of this thing was. “Anyway, we’re late. They are about, what, twelve hours ahead?”

“Those aren’t tracks. Those would show over the snow. Those impressions are hidden underneath…”

“Sure, sure. Who cares. Nobody lives around here, except ninjas.”

“Ninjas are Japanese,” Bruce corrected automatically.

Jason swallowed back a snapping answer. Bruce was real talkative, also real nervous. The last snowfall, the one that had covered the depressions, had indeed fallen half a day earlier. They were late. And there were only a couple of hours left before dark.

Damnit.

As he thought about that, they finally reached a pike that their bat-snow-mobile wouldn’t be able to climb. Jason stopped the motor then, bracing himself for the cold, opened the door. They wore special armor but it was still fucking freezing.

And they were on their own, against the League of Shadows. There was no reaching for Dick from here, not that the kid would have been able to help much, from back in Gotham.

“Those dents,” Bruce thought out loud. “Old tracks made by a snow leopard, probably moving to a higher ground in search of food.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just, let’s, alright?” And let’s hope the opening he knew about would exist here. And that Damian would be there. And that they’d manage to fight off the fucking ninjas.

They moved silently. Then they had to throw a line to move up the pike, when it became too vertical to be climbed, which accelerated things a bit. Once they reached the top, Jason grabbed the edge to pull himself up – and had to let go with a squeal as someone tried to stab him.

Jason had dropped the line but got out a knife and stabbed it into the rock, once, twice, until it found a weakness and got it. The shock almost dislocated his shoulder. Shit.

He could hear fighting noise, way up. Bruce hadn’t even tried to catch him. Was it trust in his abilities or him not giving a crap? Bit of both, most likely. And, damn, Jason was hanging by a knife he wasn’t going to get back. How was he going to climb back up now?

Then he noticed the line, still dangling there. Aaalright. He extended an arm, slowly, and – yes, he could reach it. He tested it but nobody had cut it just yet. They sounded too busy to have checked that he hadn’t fallen to his death, so he was going to trust nobody was going to cut it just yet.

It was much slower to do this by hand. When he reached the edge again, he couldn’t hear a sound anymore. Though if those had been assassins, he had faith in Bruce beating the hell out of them. Still, Jason didn’t want to take chances.

He launched himself up, rolling in the snow, his knives ready. He ended up right next to an assassin and didn’t hesitate, stabbing him in the shoulder from behind. Another tried to jump at him, giving some air to Bruce. Good.

Jason tackled him before he could reach him, punching him in the gut. The idiot had been staring at his blade. Jason threw it on a third to distract him; Bruce had two others on him still. The man faced Jason, grim.

Jason grinned. Then ran, plunging forward – and went entirely past the assassin, moving on the one who was on Bruce instead. Bruce turned, throwing another batarang to the one who’d faced Jason and, just like that, they were done.

Seven assassins down. Jason sheathed his remaining knife. Fuck, that had felt good.

“They’re still guarding the entrance,” Jason said.

“Which mean Ra’s might not be done yet,” Bruce completed.

Then he smiled at him. Fuck, that was weird. Yet Jason couldn’t help but to smile back.

“Let’s go get some demons’ heads.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “There is only one…”

“I know, Jesus. Come on. It’s this way.”

This whole thing had slowed them down and now they were starting to lose visibility, fast. Thankfully, they were almost there. The entrance Jason knew of was a passage hidden in the ice and it was literally invisible. Even knowing it was there, it would be hard to find.

They finally reached the glacier and Jason put his gloved hands on the ice, searching.

“There is an optical illusion,” Jason explained. “The ice was deliberately cut that way, so it would look like a solid wall when it’s not. That’s what makes it hard to… Bruce?”

He looked around. No one. Panic gripped his gut. He had not left him there, had he?

“Over here,” Bruce’s voice called. “Hurry up.”

Jason closed his eyes and followed the noise and breathed in when he finally found the ice corridor. Bruce started to walk, briskly, as soon as Jason appeared. Jason followed, cursing.

“How the fuck did you do that?”

“Echo-location. Now hush. There will be more guards.”

And, of course, as he said that, they reached a big opened cave where about a hundreds of leagues were looking at a platform cut in the rock, where Ra’s was standing with a pale-looking Damian. The kid perked up as soon as he saw them.

“Father!”

“Detective,” Ra’s stated.

He looked terrible, his skin parched and tightened on his cheek, giving him corpse-looking features. His skull was almost bare, with only a few gray hairs remaining. Yet he stood as proud as ever in his green and gold regalia.

The assassins parted before him as Ra’s approached them. They didn’t attack, clearly having been told not to. Two of them stayed on each side of Damian’s. Jason noticed Talia, also surrounded by guards. She was kneeling a few paces away from her son, her arms bound behind her back. She was looking at him intently.

“Here we are again, face to face,” Ra’s said. Then, in this absurd way of his, he threw them each a katana, that Bruce and Jason both caught. Knowing the bastard, they were well sharpened, too.

Bruce didn’t waste time, lounging to attack. “But this will be the last time.”

Unfortunately for him, Ra’s was a much better fencer, even in this diminished state. Bruce was good, but he was still too young to face the Demon’s Head. What he could do, though, was distracting him while Jason walked toward Damian.

The leaguers let him pass, apparently surprised of how uninterested he seemed to be by the duel between Bruce and Ra’s. They had to think he was Jason Wayne despite the age difference; most of them wouldn’t know him well enough to realize.

They did stop him when he reached the platform where Damian and Talia were kept.

That’s when the metallic sound of a sword clattering on the rocky ground echoed in the cave. Jason didn’t have to turn to know it was Bruce’s: he could see as much in the assassins’ smug smiles all around him.

Jason smiled back, which seemed to surprise them. Then he jumped over the heads of the few who tried to bar his way, letting the katana go to unsheathe his guns, and started firing.

He didn’t actually touch anyone but they all rolled away by reflex. Reaching the platform, he threw one of his knives toward Talia, who’d taken advantage of the distraction to get rid of her guards. She cut away her bonds and ran toward Damian while Jason prevented anyone from getting close.

“You’re not my Jason,” Talia stated when they joined him.

“Nope, indeed. Hi, brat.”

“What are you doing here, Todd?” Damian asked in that belligerent tone of his.

“Saving your life. Thanks for the trail, by the way.”

“You’re very welcome,” Talia answered, nonplussed. She was frowning. Wondering where her Jason was, maybe.

“I meant, go help my father!” Damian demanded.

Right. Bruce had lost his sword again, and was surrounded by assassins. Apparently, Ra’s had decided to stop playing.

“Tell me you have an escape plan,” Talia whispered.

“Run very fast?” Jason murmured back.

He could throw a smoke bomb but the leaguers were used to those artifices as much as they were, and wouldn’t get distracted. Yet he had to get Damian out of there. Bruce would manage, if the kid was out of harm’s way.

And he had to act fact, before Bruce did something stupid.

“Let them go, Ra’s,” Bruce said in perfect timing. “You need a host body, take mine.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Jason aimed. The assassins around him tensed. Ra’s didn’t seem to worry much.

“I know your code, Jason. Even with your brother’s life on the line, you wouldn’t hurt me enough to stop me.”

Jason laugh had a manic edge, one he knew well but which made Ra’s frown. Bruce was livid, beneath the cowl.

“Jason. Don’t.”

“Ah, Ra’s, I’m sorry to tell you, but that one, he’s not my brother.” Jason smirked. “And I really, really don’t care about his code.”

And he fired.

###

Earth 53 – Jason Wayne

In retrospective, showing up in the Justice League’s headquarters unannounced though a purple portal had maybe not been Jason’s brightest idea. He wore the same unmarked gear as Bruce, with black, generic mask; nothing to inform them by sight of his own appurtenance to the League, even if he had been a member.

Batman was, of course. But not his shadow.

“Call the goddamn Cave, you have a line,” Jason argued for the sixth time. “Robin will be there, he can confirm my identity.”

“Robin isn’t part of the Justice League, and even he can be fooled,” Orion answered calmly, in a tone that said he wasn’t going to take a kid’s word on this.

“Then call Kal El,” Jason growled, aggravated. “He’ll vouch for me, and I vouch for him,” he added, waving toward Bruce.

The other-world Batman was waiting, patiently, but tense. Of course, he wouldn’t like being surrounded by semi-hostile meta-humans. Jason kind of agreed with him.

“Once again…”

“I’m here, Batman,” Kal said, walking into the room. “I heard you arguing from afar.”

Jason relaxed, relieved. Had Kal been worried about him? Bruce certainly wouldn’t have asked to keep an ear out, but Dick might have.

“His voice records don’t match,” protested Orion. “The protocols…”

“There is more to Batman than you know,” Kal interrupted. “But I agree, we should add his voice to the database.”

“The hell you are,” Jason snorted. “Can we go? I need to get to the Cave and talk with, you know, Robin.”

Kal would know he meant Bruce. Kal nodded and started walking with them toward the exit, trying not to glance at Bruce too often.

“He contacted us a few days ago in order to start researching about the multiverse. We found a contact out-world who might have been able to help, but apparently he was called away in a rush.”

Jason felt himself pale. Had something happened to Bruce? To Dick? God forbid, to Damian?

“Do you want a lift?” Kal asked in a lower tone. “Gotham city isn’t that far, but…”

Jason glanced back at Bruce. The older man didn’t say anything for a couple of seconds, lips pinched, but then finally nodded.

“Thank you, Kal,” Jason said. “I’ll owe you one.”

“No problem.”

They departed in a rush of wind, Jason grabbing Kal’s neck from behind while Bruce sat very rigidly in Kal’s arms. In any other circumstances, Jason might have laughed. His brother would have been mad enough at the indignity, he didn’t imagine what his Bruce was thinking.

In any case, he did understand how worried Jason was. With a family like his, all vigilantes putting their lives on the line…

They arrived at the Cave in minutes. As they stopped, they were met by Dick, who jumped from the computer seat with the exuberant squeal of “Jason!” before suddenly freezing. “It is you, isn’t it?” he asked, suspicious.

Jason grinned, so, so relieved to see him. “It is. Come and greet me properly?”

The teenager jumped in his opened arms, laughing with relief. “You’re here! I’m so glad. The other Jason is a moron!”

“So, he was here? Where is he? Ah, wait.” Jason looked at Kal over Dick’s head. “Thank you, Kal. I think we’ll handle it from there.”

“Are you sure?”

“You know better than to ask that. Thank you for the lift, and for the research about the multiverse.”

“We’ll talk about this later. Don’t hesitate to call if needed.”

And, with a rush of red wind, he was gone. Jason hugged Dick once more, relieved beyond words to see his nephew again. Then he sighed.

“So, Bruce? Damian?”

Dick’s face fall. “A lot happened. Damian was taken.”

“Tell me. But first, call Alfred, and please warn him that we have a visitor. This is Bruce from the world I ended up in. I assume it’s the Bruce from your Jason. Jason Todd, right?”

“Something like that. He was much younger though, why is this Bruce older.”

“He isn’t my brother,” Jason explained. “Come on, go warn Alfred. I don’t want him to have a heart attack if he sees an old Bruce going around like this.”

Dick nodded then rushed upstairs. Jason removed his mask and gloves and turned on the kettle to make some tea. He’d installed one in the Cave a way back, persuading Alfred to go sleep at a decent hour instead of waiting for either him or his brother. They could take care of each other.

“I’d show you around,” he told Bruce, “but you’ll recognize the layout. There are only minor differences and, of course, a technological gap. Nothing too bad, though. I’ll add you to the computer so you won’t have to hack into it.”

“Not the best security protocol.”

Jason snorted. “I’ve lived in your house for several days, Bruce. I met your kids. I would have noticed if you were all supervillains. Damian isn’t good at pretense.”

He felt worry churning at his belly, but five minutes wouldn’t change the situation. Jesus, Damian. Who had taken him? It had to be Ra’s, which was bad news. If they went after him, Bruce and the other Jason could be anywhere.

Dick came back, followed by Alfred. They’d apparently taken the time to go to the kitchen first, because the old butler was carrying a plate of fruits and biscuits. “Master Jason. Glad to see you back home. And this mister would be another Bruce Wayne, from what I her?”

“Yes, the adoptive father of the Jason who was apparently your guest.”

“That young man’s upbringing appears to have been quite peculiar.”

Bruce actually winced at that. Jason snorted. “So I gathered. Thank you, Alfred. I don’t think Bruce will stay with us for long, he’s just here to retrieve Jason then head back home, but…”

“Life does tend to have its own ways,” Alfred agreed. “I’ll prepare a room upstairs.”

Jason put the tea to infuse, preparing the cups for later. He stole a biscuit then proposed them to Bruce, who accepted one, stiff. Dick was still staring at him.

“Dick,” Jason sighed. “Please behave.”

“But it’s Bruce, only older! Do you have a Robin too?”

Bruce hesitated at that. “I adopted someone called Dick Grayson, too, yes. He isn’t Robin anymore, though. He preferred to become his own hero.”

“Awesome,” Dick sighed.

“Tell us about what happened.”

Dick straightened, a bit pale. “I don’t think it has anything to do with Jason Todd, except the fact that Damian left the manor because he was mad at being beaten. Your son is not very nice,” he added, talking to Bruce, who nodded. “Anyway, when we realized we went to look for him, but, nothing. Then we found out the League of Shadows was in town! And Jason Todd said that Ra’s might want Damian’s body?”

Jason paled. “His body? Talia would never let him.”

“I don’t think she had a choice,” Dick continued. “We realized they were there because I spotted her on camera. Then after they left, I mean, Bruce and Jason Todd, well, she managed to send a signal so they could track them. But now, I lost contact. They were in the Himalayas and told me it would happen, but…”

Jason put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Dick. And don’t worry. The mountains make it hard for a signal to reach, so it is normal.”

Dick nodded. No wonder he’d been relieved to see them. Left alone in the Cave like that… Maybe the other Bruce had had a point, having so many kids, even though it put them in danger. At least, they all relied on each other. They’d all come to the manor when Jason had arrived, to check on Bruce, to make sure he wasn’t a threat.

Jaso had always refrain from adopting any of the kids he took care of, at the foundation, because putting Dick in danger was already too much. Maybe he should think about this from another perspective.

“Do you have the path they followed?” Bruce asked.

Dick jumped back into the computer’s seat. “Yes, of course. I’ve tracked them down the whole way, until the signal was lost.” He opened a map. “The Batplan is there, you see? It hasn’t left. And they took the Batluge through this pass. I don’t know what happened next. I lost them around here but the signal had been patchy for a while.”

“I see,” Bruce said.

“Do you know where they are?”

“They might have gone to the same place I went to when it happened in our world. I was with Talia, though, not with your double. And it happened much later.”

Jason bit his lip. It was hours away. There was no point rushing there to intervene. Bruce seemed to think the same thing, because he thanked Dick without asking more questions.

“How did you get out of there in your world?” Jason couldn’t help but ask.

“Ra’s body was deteriorating quickly. He thought stealing another’s body was the only solution, but he wasn’t happy about it. I suggested an alternative.”

“Which would be?”

“To guide him to Nanda Parbat, a mythical city where the most pure of the Lazarus pit can be found. It would restore his body without him having to steal another.”

Jason nodded. Sounded like something that would work on Ra’s. However, his Bruce didn’t know about this place. What was he going to do?

But he had the other Jason, and possibly Talia, and Damian, despite his young age. They were going to make it. They had to. Right?

Right?

###

Notes

A lot of what is going on here follows the storyline of “The resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” which includes Batman #670-671, Robin #168-169, Nightwing #138-139 & Detective Comics #838-840. I mostly took things from Detective comics #838, including some of the dialogs. I’m aware this doesn’t follow the timeline properly, but hey, it’s another world.

Reblogs, likes and comments are very welcome :)

#byme #upbringing #jason wayne #jason todd #bruce wayne #my fics #batfamily