#and would chuck food from the bag out into the yard

[sidetongue]

Officially introducing Junie, the cutest girl ever 

#she was surrendered because the owner had too many dogs #and would chuck food from the bag out into the yard #Junie was struggling to get enough food #and is skinny enough to prove it #so she began resource guarding against the other dogs #her name in her old home was junior #but she's too cute to be a junior #so junie it is #she is beautiful and sweet and social and lovely #fine with the dogs and cats and chooks and kids #she is just perfect #junie #fosters

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Hm, you can give us a WIP from both original works?

Sure!

Darian/Jude:

"Oh, you're the binge drinker with the big budget." Jude says, straightening slightly. His eyes flick over him again, with more consideration. "So what's the catch?"

"I think the 'binge drinking' is the catch for most people." Though after a second he admits, "How do you feel about construction?"

"Less than positive when it impacts me day-to-day, why?"

"Your apartment," Fuck, hasn't even officially made an offer yet and he's already thinking of that space as belonging to the other man, "Is one of the only finished areas of the house. I just moved here a month ago and I'm renovating the entire place."

"As long as you're not putting up drywall or hammering in flooring at two in the morning I don't think that will be a problem." Jude tells him. "Do you do anything else?"

"I have other hobbies, but I mostly take care of the estate." Their estate now, so strange. But that's the easiest way to summarize seven hundred years of social and business dealings that he's overseeing for Ellie while she's sleeping. "What about you?"

"I've done a lot of odd jobs since I was sixteen, retail, food service, some work as a mechanic, but I'm trying to become a professional familiar."

He blinks. He hadn't even taken that title and he'd worked for Ellie for-- "How long of a contract are you looking for in the future?" Would be contracted to Pulse and always on-call and available, would be shuffled around from individual contract-to-contract for years at minimum.

"A decade."

"Can I ask why?" Usually professional familiars are looking to make the connections to get something out of the Preternatural community, favors, immortality, something.

"I'd prefer that you didn't."

Marcus/Aaron:

It's starting to get colder, a miracle, really, that it hasn't snowed yet. It's snowed before on Halloween. Can't believe it's already November as the holiday slips by. Can't believe he's heading towards another Christmas completely alone. He tries not to think about that as he gets to the house. It's empty. Sun's been going down so early now, he guesses Marcus is able to take care of his business earlier in the day. Whatever. He goes towards his room, but pauses in the hall, skin bristling and a growl in his throat.

There's a new smell in the house. A soft perfume that has the sweetness of honeydew and citrus, a feminine smell. A human one. He doesn't think he would have cared that much, doesn't think his wolf would have either because the house never really felt like his territory any more than the motel does, but he can smell Marcus too. Smell his scent tangled up in the perfume and he smells so happy. He's never smelled the vampire happy before. He doesn't like the way his instincts whimper when he realizes that his mate is happier without him around. Happier with someone else. He tries to bite that back. He doesn't care. He doesn't want anything with Marcus in the first place, and it's just as likely that smell is coming from a familiar, not a lover. Certainly doesn't smell any sex in the house as he makes his way to his room.

Focused so much on that, he doesn't realize how much his room smells like Marcus until he's stepping inside and dropping his bag near the door. but his space is drenched with the smell of his mate, so much so that he's half certain that the fang is hiding in the closet or under the bed for a moment as his eyes adjust. But no, the room is dark, and there are no signs of the fang lurking. Just the overwhelming smell of comfort. It spills out from the giant dog bed on the floor, one of the person-sized ones that the pack had in abundance in the den, this one stuffed with pillows and blankets, that his mate must have deliberately scented and placed inside.

The stubborn part of him wants to shred it all and chuck the remnants all over the front yard for the parasite to have to clean up. But his wolf is trembling with its joy, a softness, a peace, flooding his senses that he hasn't felt since he was with the pack starting to overtake him. Can't stop himself from shedding his clothes and shifting into his hybrid form and immediately sinking into the den his alpha made for him. Like everything else, Marcus clearly wanted the finer things here too, but he can't bring himself to complain when the bed is so full of the softest blankets he's ever felt against his skin.

It's probably a good thing that he was already asleep before the fang came home, because no doubt he would have heard how fast and constantly his tail was wagging the whole time otherwise.

#tanco speaks #ask #asks #consume!verse

[lightvsdark18]

Alice tucked Grim into bed and slowly closed the door, heading downstairs to refill her water bottle and place it in the fridge for the next day. She held a plastic water bottle to drink in her room when she faintly saw green lights through the windows on the front doors.

What is Firefly doing out this late?

She approached the door and swung it open to see the black haired, horned figure on the front yard wearing a starry robe.

"Firefly," she called, "what brings you here?"

"Child of man, good evening. I wished to pay you a visit before the night ends."

She closed the door behind her and walked over to him. "So, what are you wearing that robe?"

"It's the attire the third years wear on their birthday."

Birthday?

"It's your birthday?" He nodded which made the young woman a bit sad.

"My apologies for not inviting you. I wished for you to join, however, my worries of how you would react if you heard my name stopped me. But I do not desire to leave you out completely."

He presented a plastic container in front of himself. "They are food from my home, Briar Valley, my dorm members made for my party. May we enjoy them together?"

"Yes, come inside." She turned back to the old dorm and gestured for him to follow. She led him to the lounge and requested him stay quiet for the cat is asleep. He chucked and promised, placing the container on the coffee table and peeling off the lid carefully.

She ran to the kitchen to grab plates and another water before sitting beside him on the sofa. The two talked and ate the treats he brought, enjoying each other's company and retelling stories of their home.

His gaze turned curious and focus as she stopped talking to drink some water for her dry throat. "There's something I might ask you." She looked up and gestured for him to ask.

"I heard rumors of you about you facing an overblot during the break, blackmailing Crowley to letting you stay in the school."

He slightly smirked at the blackmail part, then frown as he asked the hard-hitting question. "Being from another world... I originally brushed that specific rumor off, but it has been stuck in my mind for awhile now. Tell me, are you from a different world?"

Her heart sank at those words. "Yes, I am."

His eyes widened slightly, then looked away and touched his chin. "How interesting." His gaze turned back to her. "And how did you arrive to this world?"

"I don't know." She faced the fireplace. "I woke up in the coffin, or gateway, and that's it. I don't know how I got here or why I'm here. I can't even remember what I was doing before waking up in your world. But I do remember it was raining and I was running in the dark, but that's it."

He held his chin in thought. "Is that why you weren't scared?"

"Hm? What did you say?"

"Have you been looking for a way to return home?"

"Well, Crowley is apparently looking into it for me, but I'm not holding my breath."

He studied her face, trying to read her expression. Sad? Tired? Angry? He was unsure on what she was feeling.

He took her hand between them and lifted it up to his lips. "Since you are new to this world, I would gladly teach you everything I know of my world if you wish."

He softly kissed her hand and a bit of a blush colored her cheeks. "I, appreciate the thought. Thank you."

He smiled at her. "I must go. My retainers are probably looking for me."

"Oh, okay."

The two stood up and walked towards the doors where he opened it and glanced back to wish her a good night. However, she stopped him and asked him to wait for a second, running up the stairs and down the hallway to her room.

She had been working on a painting since getting those art supplies from the mystery bag. She picked up the finished painting and quickly went searching a white paint pen to draw her symbol, then raced back downstairs.

She breathed heavily and presented the art work to him. "Happy birthday, Firefly."

A small painting of a starry sky greeted him. He smiled and took it into his hands. "Thank you, I will treasure it."

He walked out into the cold air as she stood in the doorway, waving towards him and wishing him a good night.

"Sweet dreams."

The door closed, her shadow disappearing from the window as he walked away. However, at getting onto the path to the Hall of Mirrors, he stopped and turned back to the dorm. The wind blew through and carried his long black hair, gripping the art work to his chest and smiling as his heart felt at ease.

"You're a charming woman, Katelynn."

#excuse me as i die from sweetness from the ending #twisted wonderland #alice #malleus draconia #written work #stories

[bollur]

I'd like to request 10 comfort fics pls and thank u

i'll give you some dumb moments instead;

suddenly your bedroom door flung open, revealing you sitting in the middle of your bed with a bag of chips, freezing mid dump of a grotesque clump you were going to deposit into your mouth. "can i help you?"

scanlan, your new intruder, sauntered in and deposited himself onto your bed, landing on his back. "i have some excellent advice for you."

concern flashed across your features, lowering your hand back over the bag. "but i didn't ask for any."

"too bad," the gnome began making himself comfortable, pulling out his lute and you felt your soul leave your body. "i'm thinking and you're the only one who talks to me."

looking into your chip bag for a moment, you shrugged and slammed the handful into your mouth, throwing the bag between the two of you and getting comfy yourself. "actually fair - preach it, my man."

.//.

you were hiding, shoe in hand as you crept from behind the couch, eyes trained on the wall, concentration so deep on your face one would assume you were thinking. "what are you doing?" asked pike from behind, making you jump.

looking over your shoulder on your hands and knees, you shushed her, motioning that she needed to keep her voice down. "you'll scare it away."

her blue eyes looked from your face to the shoe, to the spider, and then back to you. she gasped. "you're gonna kill it?" you blinked once, twice, before moving in for the kill. she grabbed you before you got too far. "don't - spiders are living beings too! you need to treat them the way you want to be treated."

you nodded furiously. "exactly, killed without any hesitation."

"no!" she shouted scoldingly.

.//.

the sound of tiny plops hit your ears as you expertly skipped another stone, watching it bounce across the lake. "ah," you sighed, lightly jostling the handful you had. "isn't it beautiful out here?" you asked rhetorically, breathing in the fresh air.

"take this you fucking lake!" viciously shouted grog a few yards from you, chucking a whole ass fucking boulder into the water.

you sighed peacefully. "just so fucking magical, you know?"

.//.

"give a moment, i'm thinking!" a voice spoke in your ear frustratedly.

chest heaving, your legs carried you as fast as they could, hurdling over fallen logs and rocks to make sure you don't trip. the sound of maniacal laughter in the distance behind you. quickly slipping behind a tree, you rubbed your ear and angrily, but hushed, spit, "the fuck you mean give you a moment?"

"simply because i possess a plethora of superfluous knowledge, does not mean i am able to outline a proposition for you in an instant," pericval shouted at you. "such matters take time."

the laughter began getting louder, and you wished you could sink into the tree as you dropped to a squat and screeched, "you need to quit your fucking fancy rich people talk, i am literally going to fucking die!"

.//.

"you're all three preposterous," rubbing his brows together, percivals shoulders were tight as he stood in front of you, grog, and scanlan. this gala was important, and here the three of you stood covered in food and alcohol, ruining your very expensive clothes, and disturbing a wonderful night. "where is your class?"

it was silent for a moment, the three of you shared looks, percy tapping his foot against the floor. you shrugged and offered, "i don't know, have you checked up your ass?" and immediately you and scanlan high-fived each other.

looking suspiciously yet extremely concerned at the gunslinger, grog asked, "how does your ass give classes?"

"haha, i fucking got you!" you shouted, finger-gunning the visibly extremely stressed-out man as you backed away with a skip, catching on your dress and toppling over into the snack table and bringing the whole thing down.

#the legend of vox machina x reader #the legend of vox machina #vox machina x reader #critical role x reader #percival de rolo x reader #percy de rolo x reader #percy x reader #percival x reader #grog strongjaw x reader #grog x reader #grog strongjaw #pike lightfoot #pike lightfoot x reader #scanlan x reader #scanlan shorthalt #scanlan shorthalt x reader #percival fredrickstein von musel de rolo iii #percy de rolo #percival de rolo

[reporterleroux]

"What if we lived together?"

Characters: ig!tubbo, ig!ranboo, ig!tommy x gn!ghosthybrid!reader (/p, all together)

A/N: Ok so this has been on my mind a fair bit, thinking about you being best friends with the Bench Trio and how one day you randomly popped up with "what if we all lived together?" As a joke and they were like YES SURE OK and you went looking for a spot and stuff

!SOME LANGUAGE!

-------------------------------------------------------

You started the day with the sun glaring through the slit in the curtain burning through the sleepiness if your eyes as if it was trying to say "GET OUT OF BED NOW." So thats what you did. With a groan, you slid to sit over the side of your bed, taking a moment to adjust to the fact you just woke up, before heading down into the kitchen of your single occupant house to make some breakfast. You dug around the cabinets, wandered around the kitchen, attempting to find anything.

"Ah shit."

You whispered in annoyance as you remembered. You were meant to go out to the market the day before and got distracted by multiple other things, therefore leaving you with no food anywhere in the house. You sighed in frustration, you really need to talk to Phil, see if he can help you get distracted less, because otherwise, well, you get this. You sighed in defeat of your past self, and went upstairs to get ready for the day. You jumped into the shower, pondering what chaos you and your best friends would be getting up to today.

You floated through the walls of your silent home, the only sound heard was your light humming as you were doing so. You grabbed and threw on your usual attire, knee length multi-pocketed shorts, a small-ish pocketed belt, a white shirt and some fingerless leather gloves. You liked pockets, they were a useful tool for you considering you were never seen holding any form of bag, ever. You made sure you had all the stuff you needed in your pockets, medical stuff, money, and other things, before you slipped on your off-white trainers and went out the door, headed towards the market.

"The market is on the way to the bench, I can grab a quick breakfast there;"

You grabbed the small clock from One of your many pockets, and looked at it.

"I've got time, as long as I don't get distracted, I'll be fine."

You said to yourself. Though past experiences would prove otherwise. You were usually roughly the 2nd one to the bench, only stopping for a few seconds to look at things on the way.

When you finally made it to the market, it was bustling with life. It was Sunday, so there were more stalls up, therefore more customers. You looked around for a bit before deciding to settle on a simple bagel, it'll fill you for now anyways. You looked at the clock again.

"HUH? HOW?"

You questioned, almost choking on your bagel. It was 10:30, you were about half an hour late. You thanked the stall owner before sprinting off towards the bench.

You could see the boys from a distance, but they couldn't see you, so you decided to play a small prank on them. You went into a full phantom state, making everything you wear plus yourself invisible, before flying up towards them. You stood behind them, them un-aware of your presence, and you slapped Tommy against the back of his head.

"WHAT THE FUCK? WHO? WHAT? HUH?"

He started shouting, whipping his head around while rubbing the back of it with his hand. The other 2 boys did the same. That's when you ghosted through the small gap between Ranboo and Tommy, grabbing Ranboos crown and placing it on your head in the process. That's when you made yourself visible again, still floating with Ranboos crown wonky on your head, laughing like there was no tomorrow. When Tubbo and Ranboo noticed, the started laughing as well.

"Y/N!"

Tommy shouted. You continued to laugh.

"I got you SO GOOD!"

You managed to get out between laughs. Tommy looked pissed, but you could tell he found it funny as well. You weren't his best friend for nothing. You sat in the small gap you ghosted through earlier, and stared to chat with they boys, Ranboo taking his crown back doing so.

You all talked for a while, before the most random question slipped off your tounge.

"What if we lived together? Y'know, like in the same house that we built and chose the land to live on."

Silence was brought among the group. You were slightly worried, thinking you said something wrong, before Tubbo spoke up.

"Y/N... That's- That's a great idea!"

Ranboo and Tommy nodded in agreement.

"Come on! Let's go find somewhere now!"

Tommy said as he grabbed the nearest wrist to him, that so happened to be yours, and started dragging you away from the bench, the other boys close behind.

The 4 of you wandered for a good hour or so, with a few distractions for you in-between, before stumbling upon Niki.

"Oh, hey guys!"

Niki called in a cheery voice.

"What are you up to?"

As to which you responded;

"Hey Niki! Were just looking for somewhere we could live, like an empty plot of land or something."

Niki's eyes visibly lighted up.

"I know somewhere great! It's peaceful but also nearby to prime path, you get what I mean?"

She stated, as to which you all nodded. You walked for a little bit before reaching a slight hill, traversing up it before you were met with a empty plot of land. It was a beautiful area, and Niki was right, it was nearby prime path. The view was one of the many amazing things about the area, but that's not what caught your eye. Oh no. In fact, it was the brightly coloured flower field, just over a few yards away from you. You ran straight over while the others were talking about the land with Niki, unaware of your sudden, but close by disappearance. You laughed while you chucked yourself into the flowers, taking in every moment.

"What are you thinking Y/N, should we build our house here?"

Ranboo asked turning his head, realising you were gone the whole time. It didn't take him long before he saw you running though the flower field and around the nearby trees, clearly having the time of your life. He nudged the other boys and simply pointed towards your figure, showing them your visible enjoyment, before they all turned back to Niki, knowing what the other 2 were going to say.

"Yes Niki, we will build our house here."

-------------------------------------------------------

A/N: FINALLY CAN GET THIS OFF MY MIND LIKE WOW but yes imagine them being your best friends

Or even better

Just them

Have a great day!

#dream smp #ranboo #ranboo x reader #tommyinnit #tommy innit x reader #tubbo #tubbo x reader

[weeb-writor]

Bakugou’s S/O dies in a crash, leaving him a single father

Hello, gonna be very honest I forgot how to read properly and read a request wrong and wrote a 3000 word fic for it, woohoo! But i mean at least you guys get a fic from it, lol. Italics are flashbacks, bold is reality trying to pull him out of his head, and the regular text is reality. The actual request should be up tomorrow. Reader is neutral and I didn't specify the birthing process! Hope you all enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

Bakugou’s S/O dies in a crash leaving him a single dad, he has flashes backs of your life together.

TW: Death, depiction of a car crash and blood. Kinde heavy angst

Words: 3052

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I am so sorry sir but there's nothing we could do for them, w-” The doctor went on but the words slurred together in Bakugou's mind. This isn't how it was supposed to go, you were both supposed to grow old together. Supposed to send Kaori to her first day of school together. To bully the shit out of her first significant other. Go all out on each and every one of her birthdays. To give her at least 3 more brats to hang out with...to cry as you sent her off to college. This isn't how it was supposed to go, he was supposed to protect you, to be your hero. Everything you both had promised to each other was slipping through his grasped fist and the flashbacks were not helping either.

“Watch where you are going, Pomeranian.” You said to him.

“Pomeranian? The fuck, watch your mouth shitty extra!” He roared back at you.

“I think you’re the one who needs soap in his mouth, you're cursing every other word.” You cocked a brow at him.

“Whatever you god damn extra, get outta my way i'm gonna be late.” He backed off shocking his small group of friends.

“What the heck bakubro! If I said that to you I would be dead! You’re caught by the balls already!” Denki said pouting

“Whaddyah just say dunce face? I am not and it doesn't matter. I went easy cause they're so insignificant I wont see them again.” He said with a shrug as they walked into the training yard where their class was meeting.

“Alright, today we have a few helpers from other classes to help you with physical combat skills without the use of your quirks. Pair up with them, if you can actually beat them the first go than you pass. If you don’t, then well you fail, and will do supplementary training with me after every class.” Aizawa said, zipping himself into his sleeping bag.

“Hello class 1-A, Im Y/N. I am in charge of everybody you're about to fight, we've all trained in various types of Martial arts, and uhh you're probably all gonna lose but try your hardest alright?! I've got match-ups based on your physical abilities, so let's begin.” You said getting everyone into their pairs.

“So much for never seeing them again, huh?” Sero said laughing at the fuming bakugou.

“Yeah you’ll be seeing a lot more of me Pomeranian boy, but for now let me wipe the floor with you.” You said getting into a fighting position. He remembers how he lost that fight, terribly he might add. You only offered to help him after the loss, ignoring all his cries of protest. He didn't only lose the fist fight, he lost his heart to you. He had hoped you would never give it back to him, but here you are giving him his heart back. He hated these images, he wants them to stop.

“Bakugou”

“Go on a date with me.” You said as you and bakugou walked back to the dorms together after a sparring session.

“What!?” He yelled at you a deep shade of red.

“You know, on a date, and then you know if all goes well like 2 more before you kiss me and ask me to be officially yours because i'm not easy, you know?”

“Who asks like that!” He continued to yell.

“What did you want some flowers too, bakugou.” You giggled at him.

“You damn, dumbass! Fine but we're going now!” He said grabbing your hand and pulling you away.

“Wait but we are sweaty and I wanted to look nice! You're such a tyrant, Bakugou!” You sang as he pulled you away but slammed into his back as he came to a halting stop.

“Katsuki...call me Katsuki.” He said looking to the side with a blush. This moment was precious to him, your stupid giggle always brought brought blood rushing to his cheeks and made his heart race. As precious as it was, he begged his mind to stop, he didn't want to see what he couldn't have anymore… he wants to forget.

“Bakugou!”

“You know, if i knew you were so messy I wouldn't have moved in with you.” Bakugou yelled to you as he put up one of your many blankets that were always littered around the house.

“Sorry not Sorry, Kat, it's your fault for keeping this damn house like an ice box all the time.” You said as you shoved some more takeout into your mouth.

“And why did you order takeout, i wanted to cook instead of eating that shitty and so unhealthy food.” He nagged you some more but you only giggled. He smiled, that had become his favorite sound.

“Because Mr. Pro- Hero some of us are college students barely staying afloat! It's my last semester so let me live, you ass! Also you are so much like your mother babe, it's kind of funny.” You said to him. His head was bulging in irritation as he sat next to you.

“I can't believe I want to marry you…” He said shaking his head with a sigh. You put down your takeout and stared at him with wide, teary eyes.

“You want to marry… me?” You said to him, he chucked at you before placing a black velvet box in your hand.

“Yeah, so say yes and put the ring on.” He blushed looking away from you.

“You jerk, this is how you ask me? And like an idiot of course I'm putting on the ring with no hesitation.” You giggled around your tears, admiring the ring you had just placed on your finger.

“Yeah, as I recall, you asked me out the same way. Whaddyah want some flowers?” He teased you with a grin. You looked at him with burning passion before your lips met, engaging in a fiery dance of passion. Stop, stop. Please just stop, he begged his brain. At the moment he thought it was perfect, it was so you and so him. Now, he wished he did it on tv or yelled it from the rooftops. Maybe then it would have shown the universe, or god, or whatever was taking him from you just how much he needed and loved you. Just maybe it would have permitted this outcome.

“Bakugou!!”

You and bakugou stared down at the little 6 pound baby. She was sleeping peacefully for the first time since the girl came home, which was 4 day ago! Maybe it was because you had just taken her to meet her grandparents and she didn't want to deal with her grandparents much like her father.

“Give me that baby!” his mom said swopping the baby into her hands. You only giggled at her excitement but Bakugou threw a fit.

“Mom! She's a fuc-freaking newborn! You’ve got to be gentle and support her head! You’re gonna hurt her, it's dangerous” He shouted at his mom.

“Oh hush you ingrate. If that was true believe me kid you’d be dead by now, would've saved me a lot of trouble. Now come on little Kaori, I know you've got it.” She said looking down at Kaori.

“What's she got?” You asked curiously. The blonde did not respond, only blew a little stream of air on the baby's nose and then turned her towards you and the blonde next to you who was still pouting. The baby stirred before waking up giving you all the meanest mug you had ever seen come from a baby.  She stared at bakugou and then at you before going back to sleep.

“She’s got the bakugou bitch face or the bakugou glare or even the bakugou mean mug. However you want to call it but that doesn't matter cause she’s got it.” His mom said placing the sleeping baby in the basinet you guys had brought.

“Did that brat just glare at me!?” Bakugou whispers, causing you to burst into full belly laughter.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” he said to you trying to hide his small smile that was brought out by your laughing.

“Nothing, I just love you and I believe you just said H-E double hockey sticks so we're getting takeout on the way home, love.” You said kissing his cheek. He only stuck his tongue out at you before mumbling a quick ‘i love you back’. It's getting more painful now he's drawing closer to the day he knew his mind was counting down to. As much as he wanted to relish in the memory all he could think of was how Kaori wouldn't remember you or your melodious laughing. How he should have said I love you more clearly in that moment. He wanted it to stop, he wanted the flashes to stop, the memories to stop but they wouldn't and he knew because they were telling your story.

“BAKUGOU!!”

“Come here, dumbass I wanna cuddle!” Bakugou yelled from your bed.

“Hold on I just wanna call your mom and make sure Kaori is okay. It's the first time Kaori has been away so long. She’s only eleven months, she's probably scared without us.” You said with the phone in your hand pacing.

“Babe, if you are so worried you should know I called my mom while you were bathing. Kaori is chasings around my mom's fat cat. And my moms gonna call when they are putting her to bed so we can say goodnight. Now, get over here and quit worrying I want to cuddle you.” He said finally getting you relax enough to lay down, you rested your head on his chest.

“You're such a good dad, you were worried enough to phone your mom.” You said breathing in his caramel scent.

“Of course I did, I worry about you and Kaori whenever yall are out of my sight. I love you both too much yet not enough at the same time.” He said to you kissing the top of your head.

“Katsuki I want us to always be this way, I want to always be with you and kaori smiling. I love you both too much too.” You said back to him straddling him to meet his eyes.

“I want some more brats and a cat and a dog. I want everything with you. And I want it for forever” He said looking up at you with passion. He needs it to stop, he can't relive the same nightmare. He didn't want the image of you dying in his hands to replay, but that's where his mind was heading, wasn't it?

“Bakugou!? Can you hear me!?”

“You know when people said you become boring when you have a baby I didn't believe them but were totally boring. We just did 10 over the speed limit to pick up Kaori.” You said taking a glance in the mirror to see her cute little grumpy face.

“Baby I realized we were boring when we went to that baby store on our day off to look at baby stuff and we went “ ohh” and “awhh” to every third object we saw.” He said back to you with a chuckle. You giggled at him and your eyes fluttered shut for just a second, it was a second too long because when you opened them you slammed into a car ahead of you that had just been in an accident causing a pile up. Behind you a semi rammed into your suv doing terrible damage to the car and everyone inside. Bakugou was the first to wake and quickly fought to get himself free. Once he did he was all over you but you were in far worse shape and the metal of the car dug into you, slicing you open, and locking you into place.

“Noo.. Kat get Kaori first.” you whispered to him.

“Y/N, i'll get you out first, you're right here. Then we’ll get kaori together.” He said tears spilling from his eyes.

“Katsuki, please get Kaori first. Please, i'll try to get loose myself” You plead with him, he thought about it but you were more stuck than her and you were bleeding heavily from the metal cutting into your abdomen.

“Katsuki Bakugou! Her first, then me! I’ll wait for you, promise.” That was all he needed to hear, his heart ached for his little girl who was crying softly more shocked than hurt.

“It's alright baby we're gonna get you safety and then dadas gonna come get mommy and we’ll all go home cuddle.” He said as he pulled the baby from her car seat, recognizing ‘home’ and ‘cuddle’ she clapped at him. He planted gross, wet kisses all over her face before dashing to the place where he saw all the flashing lights congregating. It was a pretty big pile up so there were a lot of ambulances. He took the first one open.

“This is Bakugou Kaori, she’s eleven months and has no allergies to anything or any medication. I'll be coming back with Bakugou y/n who has a pretty deep gash in their abdomen and isn't allergic to any medication either.” He said as the EMT took his baby from him. He almost didn't want to leave her but he knew you were waiting on him, so he dashed back to your totaled car where he saw people crowding your figure as they had just pulled you out.

“Y/N!” He said dropping to the ground taking you from the girl who was holding you.

“Come on, you're bleeding a lot we’ve got to get you to the ambulance.” He said tears cascading from his eyes as he tried to lift you while simultaneously slowing your bleeding but as he lifted you not only did you scream, blood rushed out of your gash at a very alarming rate.

“We can't lift them, they're losing too much blood, the ambulance got to come down here….They’ll die if we take them down there.” Someone said as Katsuki placed you back on the ground. He wanted to yell at them and tell them they were wrong but he knew they weren't. As well as he knew the ambulance wouldn't fit down here, it was hard for him to fit through the cracks of the cars. He had to try though for you, for Kaori, and for himself.

“You're all hurt, go get to an ambulance and get some help, idiots.... And please, I'm begging you, make one of them come down here.” The group of people nodded as they raced for the ambulances.

“Told you I’d wait on you, Kat.”

“Yeah, you did such a good job, baby! You are so strong, love. They went to get help, everything's gonna be alright.” He whispered to you clutching your body closer to him.

“Who are you trying to convince me or you.” You laughed coughing up blood.

“Stop laughing, dumbass this isn't funny.” He gritted his teeth at you.

“Alright then stuffy, onto the serious business. I want Kaori to grow up knowing what love is, so tell her all our cheesy stories. I want her to grow up knowing she is so loved by you so tell her everyday from me and you that you love her more than anything. I want her to know she can come to you for anything so don't be such a hardass to her when she starts to rebel a little…. I don't want her to forget my face or my voice too much, so as much as it might hurt at first show her all the pictures and videos we took over the years. And when she's old enough to understand what happened tonight tell her she doesn't need to go to my grave if she ever wants to talk to me, I'm always watching over you both, promise.” You paused to throw up some more blood. “And now for you my love, I won't say anything to cliché. Like ‘i want you to find love’ cause we both know I am the jealous type but if it happens don't worry I'm not turning over in my grave. I want you to keep following that dream of yours if anyone can be the Top hero and a single dad it’s you, Kat. I want you to indulge yourself and eat takeout sometimes that stuffy diet of yours isn't fun. Be sad for as long as you need but just don't hold it all inside and try to continue on like everything is fine. It's okay to cry, to need a break or some help or both really. Lastly, Bakugou Katsuki, I love you and I am so sorry we didn't get that always and forever we wanted.” You said using the last of your strength to caress his cheek. He sobbed as he grasped your hand and held it tighter to his cheek.

“I love y-” he tried to say but stopped as he realized you were already gone. You didn't get to hear it back from him… the scream that ripped from him was pure anguish in its finest form. He should've been quicker to say it. He should have said it more often. He just should have. And now he was begging his head to stop playing these flashbacks to stop driving the knife further into his heart, he had a daughter he was trying to live for. He just wanted it to stop.

“DADA DADA”

Just like that he was drawn from his head. He looked around to see his friends and family staring at him in concern and his daughter at his feet with fat tears rolling down her face. He quickly picked her up, cursing at himself as he probably just scared her.

“What are you crying for you, little brat?” He started but paused as fat tears of his own rolled down his sunken cheeks “Everything's gonna be alright soon, so we shouldn't cry for too long okay, Brat.” He said as he hugged Kaori tighter than he should have. Somewhere in his mind he did believe it. That he and his daughter would be okay but for right now he was trying to stay afloat in the waves of suffocating flashbacks.

#bakugou katuski x reader #bnha bakugo katsuki #bakugou x you #bhna x reader #mha x reader #mha fanfiction #bakugou katsuki #very sad #angst #poc writers

[route22ny]

What My Korean Father Taught Me About Defending Myself in America

Born in 1939 during what would be the last years of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, my father, Choung Tai Chee, also called Charles or Chuck or Charlie, came to the United States in 1960. He was flashy, cocky, unafraid, it seemed, of anything. Wherever we were in the world, he seemed at home, right up until near the end of his life, when he was hospitalized after a car accident that left him in a coma. Only in that hospital bed, his head shaved for surgery, did he look out of place to me.

A tae kwon do champion by the age of 18 in Korea, he had begun studying martial arts at age 8, eventually teaching them as a way to put himself through graduate school, first in engineering and then oceanography, in Texas, California, and Rhode Island. He loved the teaching. The rising popularity of martial arts in the 1960s in Hollywood meant he made celebrity friends like Frank Sinatra Jr., Paul Lynde, Sal Mineo, and Peter Fonda, who my father said had fixed him up on a date with his sister, Jane, in the days before Barbarella. A favorite photo from his time in Texas shows him flying through the air, a human horseshoe, each of his bare feet breaking a board held shoulder high on each side by his students.

When I complained about my wet boots during the winters growing up in Maine, he told me stories about running barefoot in the snow in Korea to harden his feet for tae kwon do. His answer to many of my childhood complaints was usually that I had to be tougher, stronger, prepared for any attack or disaster. The lesson his generation took from those they lost to the Korean War was that death was always close, and I know now that he was doing all he could to teach me to protect myself. When I cried at the beach at the water’s edge, afraid of the waves, he threw me in. “No son of mine is going to be afraid of the ocean,” he said. When I first started swimming lessons, he told me I had to be a strong swimmer, in case the boat I was on went down, so I could swim to shore. When he taught me to body-surf, he taught me about how to know the approach of an undertow, and how to survive a riptide. When I lacked a competitive streak, he took to racing me at something I loved—swimming underwater while holding my breath. I was an asthmatic child, but soon, intent on beating him, I could swim 50 yards this way at a time.

For all of that, he was an exceedingly gentle father. He took me snorkeling on his back, when I was five, telling me we were playing at being dolphins. There he taught me the names of the fish along the reef where we lived in Guam. He would praise the highlights in my hair, and laugh, calling me “Apollo.” And as for any pressure regarding my future career, he offered something very rare for a Korean man of his generation. “Be whatever you want to be,” he told me. “Just be the best at it that you can possibly be.”

Only when I was older did I understand the warning about being strong enough to swim to shore in another context, when I learned the boat he and his family had fled in from what was about to become North Korea nearly sank in a storm. In Seoul as a child, he scavenged food for his family with his older brother, coming home with bags of rice found on overturned military supply trucks, while his father went to the farms, collecting gleanings. His attempts to teach me to strip a chicken clean of its meat make a different sense now. I had thought of him as an immigrant without thinking about how the Korean War made him one of the dispossessed, almost a refugee, all before he left Korea.

When I began getting into fights as a child in the U.S., he put me into classes in karate and tae kwon do for these same reasons. He loved me and he wanted me to be strong. I just wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take on a whole country.

We moved to Maine in 1973, when I was six years old. My father had taken us back to Korea after I was born, to work for his father, and then moved us around the Pacific—from Seoul to the islands of Truk, Kawaii, and Guam, in his and my mother’s attempts to set up a fisheries company. Maine was his next experiment, and not coincidentally, my mother’s home state. On my first day of the first grade, in the cafeteria, after a morning spent in what seemed like reasonably friendly classes, my troubles began when I went up to take an empty seat at a table and the blond haired, blue-eyed white boy seated there looked up with some alarm and asked me, “Are you a chink?”

“What’s a chink?” I asked, though I knew it wasn’t a compliment. I had never heard this word before.

“A Chinese person. You look like a chink. Is that why your face is so flat?”

This was also the first day I can remember being insulted about my appearance.

“I am not Chinese,” I said that day, naively. In a few years I would learn I was in fact part Chinese, 41 generations back, but at that moment, I tried to explain to him about how I was half Korean, a nationality and situation he had never heard of before. Half of what? And so this was also the first day I had to explain myself to someone who didn’t care, who had already decided against me.

He was a white boy from America, and he was repeating insults that seem to me to have come from a secret book passed out to white children everywhere in this country, telling them to call someone Asian “Chink,” to walk up to them, muttering “Ching-chong, ching-chong.” To sing a song, “My mother’s Chinese, my father’s Japanese, I’m all mixed up,” pulling their eyes first down and then up and then alternating up and down.

I was struck, watching Minari a few months ago, when the film’s Korean immigrant protagonist, David, is asked by a white boy in Arkansas in the 1980s why his face is so flat. “It’s not,” David says, forcefully—so many of us have this memory of someone saying this to us and responding that way. Why did a boy in Arkansas and a boy in Maine, in their small towns thousands of miles apart, before the internet, each know to make this insult?

When I got home from that first day at school, I asked my mother what the word “Chink” meant, and she flinched and covered her mouth in concern.

“Who said that to you?” she asked, and I told her. I don’t remember the conversation that followed, just the swift look of concern on her face. The sense that something had found us.

I was the only Asian-American student at my school in 1973, and the first many of my classmates had ever met. When my brother joined me at school three years later, he was the second. When my sister arrived, four years after him, she was the third. My mother is white, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American, born in Maine to a settler family. I have six ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, but none of them had to fight this. I don’t know how to separate the teasing, harassment, and bullying that marked my 12 years of life there from that first racist welcome. It makes me question whether I really had a “temper” as a child, as I was told, or whether I was merely isolated by racism among racists, afraid and angry?

My father dealt with racism throughout most of his life by acting as if it had never happened—as if admitting it made it more powerful. He knew bullies loved to see their victims react and would tell me to not let what they said upset me. “Why do you care what they think of you?” he would say, and laugh as he clapped me on the shoulder. “They’re all going to work for you someday.”

“Don’t get even, get ahead,” was another of his slogans for me at these times. As if America was a race we were going to win.

Two decades after his death, writing in my diary while on a subway in New York City, I began counting off all of my activities as a child—choir, concert band, swimming, karate and tae kwon do, clarinet, indoor track, downhill and cross country skiing—and I asked myself if my parents were trying to raise Batman. Then I looked down to the insignia on my Batman t-shirt, and I laughed.

These lessons my father gave me—to be the best you can be, to fight off your enemies and defeat them, to swim to safety if the boat sinks, and in general toughen yourself against everything that would harm you—these I had absorbed alongside certain unspoken lessons, taken from observing his life as a Korean immigrant. To have two names, one American, known to the public, and one Korean, known only to a few intimates; to get rid of your accent; and to dress well as a way to keep yourself above suspicion. Did I need to train like a superhero just to be a person in America? Maybe.

But if I thought of superheroes, it was because my father was like one to me, training me to be like him.

One legend I heard about my father when I was growing up is the story of a night he was being held up at gunpoint, while he was unpacking his car. Whoever it was asked him to shut the trunk and turn around and raise his hands in the air. He agreed to, slamming the car trunk down so forcefully, he sank his fingertips into the metal.

By the time he turned around, the would-be stick-up artist was gone.

He would often ask me and my brother to punch him, as hard as we could, in his stomach. He was proud of his abdominal strength—it was like punching a wall. We would shake our hands, howling, and he would laugh and rub our heads. One time he even used it as a gag to stop a bully.

A boy on my street had developed the habit of changing the rules during our games if his team started losing. We had fights over it that could be heard up and down the street, and one day I chased him with a Wiffle bat, him laughing as I ran. My father stepped in the next time he tried to change the rules during a game and prevented it, telling him all games in his yard had to have the same rules at the beginning as the end—you couldn’t change them when you were losing. When the boy got mad, he said, “I bet you want to hit me, you should hit me. You’ll feel better. Hit me right here, in the stomach, as hard as you can.”

The boy hauled off and punched my dad in the stomach. I knew what was coming. The boy went home crying, shaking his hand at the pain. His mom came over and they had a talk. The rule-changing stopped.

I tried teasing my classmates back after being told to by my father. Stand-up as self-defense requires practice, though: During a “Where are you from?” exercise in the second grade, I told my classmates and teacher I had “Made in Korea” stamped on my ass, which elicited shocked laughter and a punishment from my teacher. I remember the glee when I called a classmate an ignoramus, and he didn’t know what it meant—and got angrier and angrier when I wouldn’t tell him, demanding that I explain the insult. When told to go back to where I came from, I said, “You first.”

Increasingly, I just hid, in the library, in books. When given detention, I exulted in the chance to be alone and read. I was an advanced student compared to my classmates, due in part to my mother being a schoolteacher, and I learned to make my intelligence a weapon.

The day several boys held me down on my street and ran their bicycles over my legs, to see if I could take it, as if maybe I wasn’t human, that felt like some new horrible level. I don’t remember how that ended or if I ever told anyone, just the feeling of the bicycle tires rolling over the skin of my legs. The day I bragged about my father being a martial artist to my classmates, they locked me in the bathroom and told me to fight my way out with kung fu, calling me “Hong Kong Phooey,” after the cartoon character, as they held the door shut. This was the fourth grade. After I got out of that bathroom and went home, I told my father about it, and he told me it was time to take tae kwon do. I had to learn to defend myself.

I would never be like him, never break boards like him, but for a while, I tried. I still cherish the day he gave me my first gi and showed me how to tie it. I learned I had a natural flexibility, which meant I could easily kick high, and I took pride in my roundhouse and reverse roundhouse kicks. But after a few years, my father took issue with a story he’d heard about my teacher’s arrogance toward his opponents, and he pulled me out of the classes. “It is very dangerous to teach in that spirit,” he told me. And he said something I would never forget. “The best fighter in tae kwon do never fights,” he said. “He always finds another way.”

I have thought about this for a long time. For the ordinary practitioner, tae kwon do and karate prepare you to go about your life, aware of what to do in case of assault. They offer no guarantee, just chances for preparedness in the face of the violence of others as well as the violence within yourself. At the time I felt my father was describing the responsibility that comes with knowing how to hurt someone, but I came to understand it as a principled if conditional non-violence, which, in this year of quarantine and rising racist violence, is one of the clearest legacies he left to me.

Like many of us, I have been trying to write about these most recent attacks on Asian-Americans, some of them in my old neighborhood in New York, and I keep starting and stopping. How do we protect ourselves and those we love? Can writing do that? I know I learned to use my intelligence as a weapon to keep myself safe from racists, starting as a child, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like enough. The violence is like a puzzle with many moving parts, but the stakes are life and death. “You’re really going to homework your way through this one?” I keep asking myself. The people attacking Asians and Asian Americans now are like the boy I met on my first day in the first grade. They don’t care whether or not we are actually Chinese—the primary experience Asian Americans have in common is mis-identification. The person who gets a patriotic ego boost off of calling me a “chink” isn’t going to check if they’re right about me, and I don’t imagine they’ll stop their fist or their gun if I say, “You’re just doing this because of America’s history of war in Asia,” even though we both know this is true. And so I have been thinking of my father and what he taught me.

The most overt way my father fought racism in front of me involved no fighting at all. He founded a group called the Korean American Friendship Association of Maine, which helped new Korean immigrants move to Maine and find work, community, and housing, along with offering lessons on how to open bank accounts, pay taxes, file immigration paperwork, and get drivers’ licenses. For both of my parents, community organizing, activism, and mutual aid like this were commitments they shared and enjoyed and passed along to us, their children, and this led to much of my own work as an activist, teacher, and writer. I am not my father, but I am much as he made me.

There’s a difference between fighting racists and fighting racism. Where my father stayed silent, I have learned I have to speak out, which has felt, even while writing this, a little like betraying him. And as a biracial gay Korean American man, I don’t experience the same identifications or misidentifications he did. I am mistaken for white, or at least “not Asian,” as often as I’m mistaken for Chinese, and have felt like a secret agent as people speak in front of me about Asians in ways they would not otherwise. I learned most of my adult coping strategies for street violence from queer activist organizations after college.

Even as I write, “I wonder if he ever felt fear living in America,” it feels like a betrayal, especially as he isn’t around for me to ask him. I think again about how my father always made a point of dressing well, for example, but it always felt like more than that. Men wearing suits as a kind of armor, that isn’t so strange. He had his suits made at J. Press, wore handmade English leather shoes—shoes that fit me. I sometimes wear them for special occasions. Among my favorite objects of his is a monogrammed J. Press canvas briefcase, the name “CHEE” in embossed leather between the straps. After his father gave him an Omega Constellation watch when I was born, he eventually acquired others. For a time I thought he did this aspirationally, but most of his family in Korea is like this: Well-dressed, with a preference for tailoring and handmade clothes. All of my memories of my uncles coming from the airport to visit us involve them arriving in their blazers.

The first time I followed my father’s advice to wear a sports jacket when flying, I received a spontaneous upgrade. I didn’t have frequent flyer miles and the person checking me in was not flirting with me either. There was nothing but the moment of grace, and the feeling that my father, from beyond the grave, was making a point as I sat down in my new, larger, more spacious seat. Because I had never tried out this advice while he was alive.

Like much of my father’s advice, it came from his keen awareness of social contexts, and it worked. His wardrobe came from the pleasure of a dare more than a disguise. You don’t acquire a black and gold silk brocade smoking jacket in suburban Maine because you want to fit in with your white neighbors. Sometimes his clothes were a charm offensive, sometimes just a sass. The jacket advice may well have been an anticipation of racist treatment, of a piece with perfecting his English so he had no accent, and raising us to speak only English. My mother spoke more Korean to us as children than he did—a remnant of her time living in Seoul.

Now that I am old enough to choose to learn Korean, I still feel like a child disobeying him, just as I do when I dress too casually, or acknowledge that I’ve experienced racism. I know I am just making different choices, as you do when you are grown, but also, I am stepping out from behind his program to protect myself. I feel the fears he never spoke about, and instead simply addressed with what now look like tactics. At these moments I miss him as much as I ever do, but especially for how I would tell him, this may have protected you. It won’t protect me.

In my kitchen the other day, as I was making coffee, I fell into the ready stance, with my right foot back, left foot forward, and snapped my right leg up and out in a front snap kick. This is the basic first kick you learn in tae kwon do. And you do it again, and again, and again, until it is muscle memory. You move across the room this way and then turn to begin again.

I wasn’t sure if my form was exactly right, but it felt good. Memories came back of the sweaty smell of the practice room, the other students, the mirrors on the walls, the fluorescent lights. All those years ago, I had thought my father had put me in those classes in order to become him, but as I sent my practice kicks through the air, I remembered how even learning them made me feel safer, protected at least by the knowledge that he loved me. I could not have said this at the time, but after those attacks, I had feared I wasn’t strong enough to be his son.

I still fear that. I suppose it drives me, even now. It is dehumanizing to insist on your humanity, even and perhaps especially now, and so I am not doing that here. Each time I’ve tried to write even this, a rage takes over, and then the only thing I want to do with my hands doesn’t involve writing, and I stop. But I know from learning to fight that hitting someone else means using yourself to do it. My father’s advice, about fighting being the last resort, has given me another lesson: You turn yourself into the weapon when you strike someone else—in the end, another way to erase yourself—and so you do that last. In the meantime, you fight that first fight with yourself, for yourself.

You may never be able to protect what you love, but at least you can try. At least you will be ready.

Alexander Chee is most recently the author of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. A novelist and essayist, he teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.

#asian-american #anti-asian hate #racism in america #alexander chee #long reads

[kelslikedevil]

For You.

content by kelslikedevil

credit to iamdorka for gif

warnings: minimal cursing, fluff, risk taking behavior

requested: no, after colsons antics with the windshield i wanted to write a oneshot where he does something risky and the reader is shocked by it

----

I'm on the roof

You texted colson

you had planned out a date for the two of you, you had been swamped with work at the company and found little time for him when he was home. You decided during your lunch break you’d take some extra time and the two of you could spend time having a roof picnic.

so am i 

ur not here

needless to say you were confused at his response, you were the only person on the roof. The entrance hadn’t even opened yet. you texted him back

im the only one on the roof

It didn’t take that long for the mystery to unravel, when you heard him faintly shout your name from behind you. “Y/N!” you furrowed your eyebrows spinning around only to see him on the roof of the building next to yours. you both rushed to the edge, he was already late and by time he made it over here your break would be over. 

“Colson,” you pouted, “What are you doing over there?”

“you must’ve sent me the wrong address,” He said looking down at your earlier texts, he made an O with his mouth, “never mind, I’m just dumb.”

you sighed shaking your head, “You’re not dumb baby,” you said, still a bit bummed out. you sat at the edge of the roof, your legs dangling over as he did the same.

“‘m sorry I fucked up our date, I know you were looking forward to it,” he told you, “i know it would’ve been dope.” he added. You tried to hide your disappointment as he asked you bout work, but Colson saw right through it.

“What are you doing?” you asked as he got up looking around the roof and started to walk away.

“watch out,” he said, before you realized what was happening he charged, long legs sprinting as he ran off the roof jumping. you flinched gasping as his upper body hung onto the roof about few yards from you. 

“Colson!” you shouted jumping up and rushing over to him as his chucks pressed against the side of the roof pushing him up. 

“A little help here babe?”

You were fuming as you grabbed him by the red shirt he was wearing, pulling him with all your strength as he rolled onto the roof. “Colson what the fuck!” he just put his life at risk like a dumbass.

And he was laughing. 

"I can't believe you just jumped from a fucking roof!" You shouted at Colson, pulling him into your arms. You slapped his chest, "You're so fucking stupid!"

“i thought you said i wasn’t,” he teased squeezing you in response. 

“Well i changed my mind!” 

Colson laughed loudly, "'common princess, I'm fine just a scrape on my knee," he said kissing you, "I've done worse, I’ve been hit by a bus."

you kissed him back for a moment before you pulled away shaking your head. “You dumbass,” you sighed, you wanted to be mad at him, but it was difficult with his sweet kisses and charming smile. Oh, and the blue eyes that held all the excitement and rush of his previous action.

“i told you so,” he chuckled.

“yeah well i didn’t wanna believe it,” you shook your head, he got up quickly, pulling you up with him.

 “Well I’m hungry, you promised me a picnic for neglecting me,” he teased, pulling you to the blanket and fast food bags you put for the two of you. You’d gotten his favorites from his favorite local burger joint he took you to the first time you ‘hung out’ “Aw sick! you remembered!” he said digging into the bag grinning like a child, you kept looking at him with disbelief as he bit into his burger. He looked at you with his mouth full, “What?” he asked his words muffled by the food he was eating like a pig, “Aren’t you eating?”

“I just can’t believe you did that,” You repeated, making Colson chuckle as he chewed and swallowed. he put his burger back down as he turned to you pulling your figure next to him. 

Colson smiled softly as he cupped your cheek, looking you in the eyes, “Y/N I’d jump off a billion roofs for you,” He murmured, “That’s how much i fuckin’ love you.”

You fought off a laugh because he still had sauce on his mouth, so you took a napkin and wiped it off, making him chuckle. “I fuckin’ love you too, fuckin’ nut job,” you mumbled placing a loving kiss on his lips. “But don’t ever do that again, just double check where you’re going next time.”

#mgk #mgk fluff #mgk oneshot #machine gun kelly #machine gun kelly fanfic #fan fic #colson baker #colson baker fluff #machine gun kelly fluff #fluff #roof dates

[platonic-prompts]

Creatures from Folklore: Slavic Region A-D

You ever need different creatures to base things off of, or just want some legends for a setting? Or heck, you ever just want to chuck a creature at someone and say you’ll figure it out? Well, do I have the posts for you. This one will focus on the Slavic Region but I’ll make more at a later date

Ala are considered to be demons of bad weather in several folklore, including that of Bulgarians, Macedonians, and Serbs. Their main purpose is to lead thunderclouds that produce hail towards fields, vineyards, or orchards to either destroy the crops or to loot and take them. They are very voracious and really like to eat children. Though one shouldn’t assume they limit their tastes to Earth, no. They sometimes try to devour the sun and moon which lead to eclipses and if they succeed it means the end of the world. People who encounter one may find their mental and physical health as well as their lives at risk. It is, however, possibly to gain her favor by approaching with trust and respect. These good relationships can be very beneficial since she (the ala) can make those with her favor wealthy and save their lives if they are in danger. Ala can take on many different forms: black wind, giant creatures with no distinct form, a monster either humanlike or snake like witha  huge mouth, a female dragon, a raven, various human and animal shapes. Ala can also possess people’s bodies. They live in the clouds or in lakes, springs, hidden remote places as well as caves, inhospitable mountains, forests, or even a huge tree. Usually hostile towards humans, they have powerful enemies capable of defeating them like the dragons.

Alkanost have an incredible voice, capable of making anyone who hears her song might forget everything in their search for paradise. A creature of good who resides in the garden of the gods or whatever version of heaven required, the alkanost has the head and bust of a woman and the rest of the body is that of a bird. Sometimes this creature lays eggs which assist in the changing of winter to spring. Basically she wouldn’t sit on her eggs just dump them into the Ocean-Sea and when they reached the bottom the weather would turn fair. Though i think that takes her out of the running for parenting awards.

Anchutka is a small malevolent spirit, residing most often in water or a swamp. Even without wings, it is capable of flight. One of its nicknames is the one without heels. This is a common theme to look for, as oftentimes evil forces have a limp. Though in some storied this spirit has lost their heels because they got bitten off by a wolf. This spirit is often a sidekick to a water spirit called Vodyanoy, and as such you should never say its name aloud since it will always show up.

Aspid, a type of dragon with a beak and other birdlike elements, resides primarily in the mountains, preferring solitude. When it invades a region, nearly always it caused universal devastation.

Baba Yaga: I’m pretty sure a lot of people know about Baba Yaga, the witch who lives in a hut with chicken legs and goes around in a mortar and pestle. She does carry a broom though, but she only uses it to sweep away her tracks.

Bannik is a spirit who rarely does any good for anyone. A mischievous spirit that has the appearance of an old man with long claws, he’s a spirit that inhabits the banya (steamhouse). Whenever people bathed in the banya, they would always leave on the third or fourth session to let Bannik have his privacy. They would leave him offerings of soup and regularly thank him. Bannik had the power to tell the future and if asked a question he would softly touch the askers back if it was a good future or flay it if it was a not so good future. Oh and Bannik, when angry, would claw off the skin of those who annoyed him. The banya was also the place of Russian childbirth, so there were measures taken to keep him from interfering. Part of the midwife’s job was to keep him away. And with good reason. Legends say that he ate or flayed children. So therefore the midwife would dip stones in the water and throw them in the corner to distract the steamhouse spirit.

Bauk hide in dark places and holes and abandoned houses. There they wait to grab, take away, and devour their victims. They have a clumsy gait and can be scared away by light and noise.

Babay, possibly the same thing as the bubak, isn’t often described so children will come up with what is most terrible for them. But despite this, Baby has been described as a black and crooked old man. When he is descibed he tends to have some traits such as muteness, lacking arms, or walking with a limp. He carries with him a bag and a cane. Baby lives in a forest or a swamp or a garden only to come out at night to walk the streets and scoop up the children he meets. He will walk close to windows and watched the children sleep. If they aren’t he’ll scare them with noises. Or sometimes he even hides under kids beds to take them away if they get up.

Błędnica is a forest demoness, who leads people astray before leaving her victims alone in the midst of the forest to die of starvation or be eaten by animals. She is usually described as a young and pretty girl. The only way to chase her away is to use strong spells or to sacrifice something at home or during your hunt.

Blud is a fairy in Slavic mythology. An evil deity who causes disorientation and leads a person around and around aimlessly.

Bukavac lives in lakes and pools, coming out at night to make a loud noise. A six-legged monster with gnarled horns, it would jump people and animals and strangle them.

Bubak is often represented as a scarecrow with a skeleton as frame, which is connected with darkness, it is a type of boogeymen used to scare children. The skeleton often is describes as wearing a heavy black coat where it hides the children it steals.

Cikavac, a mythical creature from Serbian mythology and it kinda feels like a basilisk but way weirder. This thing is a bird that has a long beak and a pelican-like sack. You can acquire one at the low low price of your sanity and clear face. For you see, in order to get one, you need to take an egg from a black hen which a woman now needs to carry under her armpit for 40 days ( is now a good time to note that chicken eggs hatch after 21 days or so) and one cannot confess, cut nails, wash their face, or pray. After that the cikavac would suck the honey from other people’s beehives and suck milk from other peoples cows and then bring it back to their owner. It would fulfill its owner’s wishes and it would allow its owner to understand the animal language.

Chort, a demon or a humanlike spirit in Slavic folk tradition.  They are not exactly evil characters. Yes they try to trick people into selling them their souls in exchange for useless gifts. Yes those people are carried off into hell. But they are sometimes tricked into doing such things as building castle walls in a day. Sometimes is depicted as trying to bring evil characters to hell. A small, hairy man with a tail, horns, and one or two hooves. But due to shapeshifting abilities, the chort is able to appear in nicer forms and tries to trick people while in them. Though these transformations aren’t and can’t be complete, so there’s a way to know if one is dealing with a chort whether it be by small horns in curly black hair or a hoofed leg hidden within high boots. Though they share similarities, a chort is not the devil.

Čuma, aka kuga, is a personification of the plague in Serbo-Croation myths. Typically appears as an old woman wearing white, though in some cases has been depicted as a young woman. Direct mention of them were avoided and were usually referred to by godmother or aunty. According to belief, they lived in a far away land where they came from to infect people. Due to their hatred of dirtiness, if they found a dirty household they would be eager to infect it. Due to this, if a plague appeared,every house and its occupants must be thoroughly cleansed. In addition one could make offerings to of food, clean water, basil, and a comb.

Domovoi are household protectors, generally seen as kind spirits though they would harass the family they protect if said family was rude or unclean. This usually took the form of pulling small pranks until the family corrected their behavior. While domovoi are shape shifters, most depictions show them as small, bearded masculine creatures which are reminiscent of hobgoblins. In order to complete his chores and to fulfill his duty of protecting the house, the domovoi would assume the shape of the head of the household, sometimes working in the yard while the real head of household was asleep. (Guess spirits don’t have to worry about identity theft charges). They were also capable of turning into animals, rarely taking the form of a dog or a cat. Another facet of the domovoi was their ability to act as an oracle. Predictions are as follows

Dancing and laughing= Good fortune would come

Rubbed the bristles of a comb= a wedding would happen soon

Extinguished candles= Misfortune would fall upon the household.

Dziwożona, a type of female swamp demon from Slavic mythology, sometimes called Mamuna or Bognika, who lived in the thickets near rivers and streams and lakes. Thought to appear with foul weather around trees and swamps, they are known for being malicious and dangerous, and usually were previously living humans. Several types of people would be at risk of turning into one after death, such as: midwives, old maids, unmarried mothers, pregnant women who die before giving birth, and abandoned children who were born out of wedlock. Some depictions include an ugly, old woman who had a hairy body, long straight hair, and I quote “breasts so huge she uses them to wash her clothes”. I don’t know what that actually means and I don’t want to find out. She also wore a red hat with a fern twig attached. In case she wasn’t weird enough, she’d watch women with their little children.  Just chilling around making the kid sick and making schemes to get the mother away from the kid when she’d replace the kid with one of her own, a foundling/changeling.

#i spent 5 hours on this #you better appreciate me lookigng through a bunch of stuff only to find exactly what was on wikipedia #info post #not a prompt #Creatures from folklore vol I #that's what im gonna call this part #part 1 of...idk 3 4 or 5

[starrysupercell]

Heavily based off of @aroacenita's headcanon post, about Belle and Byron's sibling status and background. In honor of the Gold Arm Gang Season starting today, and Belle's debut.

Warning: slightly heavier than what I've written before. But not much detail, just implications really.

--------

"If you don't shape up, young lady, what future will you even have?" A male voice scolded.

"Anything I want, I guess." She said, off handedly.

"Oh, why can't you behave more like your brother?" That was their mother, she sounded so distraught. "Why can't you be well-mannered like he is?

A scoff, "Oh that'd be perfect, wouldn't it? A flawless replica of you."

"What's with you and thinking we're just controlling you-?"

"Because that's exactly what you're doing!" She exclaimed, "Why do you think I don't want to dress up, and go out to social gatherings and 'leave a nice impression for the gentlemen?'" She air-quoted. "You've always dragged me along, and I'm sick of it!"

"Now don't be ridiculous, Belle." Their mother said. "When you were little, you loved dressing up and coming along with me to places."

"You forced me when I was little, and you're still trying to now! And now you're forcing him too! Do you honestly believe this is okay!?"

"We aren't forcing anything on you two. Studying is a must. You're only being dramatic, Belle."

"This more than just the damned studying! I'm talking about everything! I'm not stupid. I know your tricks--!"

Byron heard a smack, and he flinched where he stood outside the closed door, eavesdropping.

"You watch how you talk to your mother." Came the stern, simple command.

There was a stunned silence, and then hurried steps to the door. Byron ducked away further down the hall out of sight.

Belle passed by, a hand on her cheek. Her long black hair trailed behind her as she hurried away, and stomped up the stairs to retreat to her room.

"God, what are we going to do with her?" Byron overheard. "I have no clue.... she's beyond all reason."

"...Do you think that school will be able to handle her? What an embarrassment it's be if she's expelled from there...."

"...." The younger kid frowned, unsure of what to make of what he was hearing, and then slunk away.

_________

The tears shed were anger more than anything. Humiliation and outrage made her bury her face in the pillow she hugged now.

She could just hear their criticism. 'How unbecoming. Dry your face. You look highly unpresentable.'

They've been trying to mold them into perfect cookie cutter shapes since they were little. She hated it, and fought it because that wasn't her.

But sometimes... she miserably wracked her brain over what else she could pursue. She's been corralled into this lifestyle against her will, Maybe... her parents were right..? She should just... accept it?

She would just conform to this sense of defeat.

There was a knock on the door.

"Leave!" She barked, not caring if it was a serviceman, definitely either of her parents, or...

"It's me." Byron.

She paused. "What do you want?"

"May I enter?"

She sat up, annoyed. "For what? Go away, you brat."

"I brought chips."

"...." Belle wiped her face, and compromised to herself that if Byron even mentioned her red eyes, he was being kicked out. She stood, and walked over to the door. He was leaning against it, and stumbled at the sudden entrance, but quickly fixed himself.

'Nosy,' she thought, and snatched the bag he offered. "You sneak," she commented, looking over the bag. "They don't allow junk food like this."

"It's great for bribery." He smiled, walking past Belle. Case in point.

Belle opened the bag, and grabbed a handful. She smirked and rose her voice into the 'proper speak' she was taught. "Oh! Preposterous! How greasy! This will smear the walls and fatten one up in a mere hour!" She snickered and bit into the chips, making some crumble and fall onto the carpeted floor.

Byron thought the mess itself was quite distasteful, but decided that it was well deserved. Besides... that did sound like their mother. He also laughed along.

---

She hated her hair. It was waist length, got in the way, tangled easy, and when it was loose, windy days were the worst.

Like right now. She couldn't even sit on the roof without it going wild.

'But proper women have long hair.' Oh, whatever. Proper women have it shitty then.

Belle sighed. There was around a month left before she'd be shipped off like the porcelain doll they wanted her to be. A month until her 18th birthday. A month until...

"Are you going to jump?" She heard. She looked up with irritation to the balcony outside of Byron's room, where he stood.

"No, dumbass." She told him.

Byron's look of concern turned to a very offended one. "Mom says cursing isn't becom..."

"Mom says cursing isn't becoming," she interrupted him to mock. "Yeah, I know. I've heard it before, you wuss." She looked back out to their vast yard, hoping he'd either leave or shut up.

Byron frowned, glaring at the top of her head.

"Being angry only hinders your thoughts," she snarked again, just as insulting a tone. "Since you can only have one at a time, you should listen to that." Byron narrowed his eyes down at her and he went back to his room.

About time.... Belle lost herself back in her thoughts. The sun was starting to set. A month left to plan. Unless her parents suddenly began to care, nobody was none the wiser to her plot. She was going to get out of here.

Unbeknownst to her, Byron walked back out quietly with a beaker filled with some concoction from his chemistry set at hand. It was harmless, but he had gloves on and his nose covered with his other hand for a reason. He leaned over the balcony and tipped out the contents over his jerkish sister. "Ugh! You little shit!! What even is this!?" She exclaimed in disgust.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were still out here." Byron said with a shrug. "I guess you didn't know that rooftops aren't for people to lay on. Dunce." He said, stepping back now as Belle angrily scaled the tiles. He miscalculated her speed, because she managed to reach him and grabbed his sleeve. He pulled back. "Let go of me!" He struggled to get away. There was a ripping sound and he stumbled back in surprise. Belle nearly fell forward too, but she clung to the railing. Byron ducked back inside to the safety of his room, sticking out his tongue at her.

Belle fumed, using the sleeve to wipe at least some of the disgusting-smelling chemical off, and then chucked it at his glass door.

____________

The week of her birthday, Belle feigned innocence. She apologized, and dressed well and "came to terms" with their final decision.

"I'm so happy that you're finally listening to reason." Her mother fawned over her, stroking the cheek that had been struck some time ago. "It makes me feel proud to have a daughter."

"Hmm," their father said. "It's about time."

Byron stayed quiet. Something was off, but it was rude to speak out of turn, and unwise to fling unproven accusations.

The night before she was set to get on the plane, Belle was ready. She packed everything she could into a single backpack. She didn't want to take too much. It would slow her down and she needed to get as far away as she could in a few hours.

The last thing she wanted to do was leave a written message. Not for her parents- they deserved no goodbye. No, it was for... Byron.

The problem was, she didn't know how to say it. She read over what she's written so far.

*Sorry for leaving you with them. I just couldn't bear it any longer. You need to wise up too, Byron. Don't let them brainwash you, okay? Get out of here when you can. Later.*

...It didn't feel right. He wouldn't agree with what she had to say. He would see it as an insult. This was somehow a lot more difficult than deciding to leave. ...She didn't 'have' to leave a note, did she? Belle sighed in frustration.

She tore the paper to remove the message and was left with a scrap piece. She balled up the message and shoved it in her pocket. Using the smaller piece, she scrawled out her message and got up. All she had to do was drop this off, and then leave. She stepped out of her room.

The house was dark and quiet. She stepped lightly toward Byron's room. Sound asleep. She was simply going to leave the note, but then spotted that treasure pile of snacks. Darn it. It wasn't a part of her plan, but she couldn't resist. She lifted a bag of chips very carefully, and a twin pack of sweets for the road. She placed her little note down in place of those with held laughter, then left to return to her room.

She opened her window, and hoisted her pack over her shoulders. Next she picked up the fashioned rope she made of quality cloths to tie to her heavy bed.

Typical, sure, but this would make a lot less noise than stairs and doors. Plus, in this way she could ruin the many precious dresses and skirts she was made to wear on her way out.

She threw the long cord out and climbed out as it rolled down the slope and then over the edge. She treaded carefully over and stared down at the yard.

Almost there. Belle began to climb down. As she made her way down, the heavy anticipation she felt at her chest alleviated. She was doing this. She'd be free.

As her feet hit the ground, she had already decided. Come morning, the first thing she would do was get a haircut. Chop it as short as she always wanted it to be.

---

Byron always woke up early. This time around, he was awoken by the surprised exclamations of his parents.

"She's gone!"

"Really? Are you sure?"

"I went to make sure she was getting ready, and there was a rope of clothes out the window!"

Gone. She left.

He stayed awake, staring up at the ceiling in deep thought. Why didn't... she just listen? And stay... He would never understand her fighting at every turn.. nor his parents' subtle shift in their attitude toward him after that, like they almost expected him to do the same.

It'd be around two weeks later when he'd get a craving for a treat. They were intent on making sure he didn't even step out of line- he was ticked off.

The last package of his favorite dessert was gone, along with a bag of chips. Just a torn piece of paper was in its place.

"thanks, dumbass." was all it said.

Byron.... didn't know what to feel.

#Brawl Stars #Brawlstars #Belle #Byron #Goldarm Gang #Season 6 #Fanfiction #Writing #ask to tag #can someone talk in depth to me about byron and belle lol

[iselsis]

Pieces

Summary: Jason Todd accidentaly breaks one of those stupid antique vases, and Bruce is going to kill him as soon as he finds out.

The vase fell to the ground with a splintering crash and broke into a million tiny pieces.

Jason slapped a hand over his mouth to hold back a panicked scream. He- He hadn’t meant to, he’d just turned around too fast and his arm had bumped into the table with the ugly and probably ridiculously expensive vase had gone straight over the edge.

Jason couldn’t stop the tears that welled in his eyes and spilled over, the first tears he’d cried since his mom died, and they were all for some stupid vase. Shit, Bruce was going to kill him for this, and if he didn’t do it himself, he was just going to toss Jason back onto the streets and let Gotham do it for him. It had only been a few weeks since Bruce had kidnapped him, but Bruce and Alfred had been so nice, and it was so weird, but that was all over.

Bruce was going to see the broken glass and flip his shit, and then he was going to deal with Jason the way Jason had been expecting him to for weeks over backtalk and being caught stealing food. Bruce had never hit Jason, and for a blissful day and a half, Jason had thought that maybe if he stayed out of big trouble, then Bruce wouldn’t hit him at all. As soon as his guard had come down, though, he’d gone and screwed it all up.

He was going to get a beating from Batman, and then he was going to be kicked back to Crime Alley, marked by the media as Wayne’s foster kid. If he didn’t die from internal bleeding or a cracked skull from the beating, he’d never last the night.

Unless Bruce never found out.

Jason inhaled sharply and quickly scrubbed the tears away. He had to work fast, and he couldn’t let Bruce or Alfred catch him being upset, because then they’d ask and there was no way they wouldn’t notice.

Jason pulled off his hoodie and spread it on the floor, then started snatching up the largest pieces of glass and throwing them onto his makeshift body bag. In his haste, he cut himself on a sharp edge, but he hardly noticed except to think that he’d better not get blood on the carpets too.

“Jason?”

Jason yelped and jumped up, throwing himself between Bruce and the broken shards of their relationship. He hadn’t even heard the man approach, but he was only twenty feet away.

That was such a stupid move. He could have played nonchalant, slid his hoodie over the glass, and just pretended that he was really interested in the carpet or something. Bruce would have bought that! He was a total clueless idiot! But no, Jason had just gone and panicked worse than he had when he’d been caught stealing Batman’s tires, and even Bruce would be able to read the guilt in that yelp.

It didn’t even make sense to be more scared now. Bruce wasn’t even wearing his reinforced gauntlets that would have let him cause more damage and longer like he had when he was Batman, but somehow the thought of Bruce – not Batman, not the Dark Knight, Bruce who bought him clothes, and books, and always asked Alfred how much Jason weighed and if he was gaining enough weight fast enough when he thought that Jason wasn’t around, and smiled at him like a creep whenever he walked in on Jason reading in the library – beating him made him feel sick in a way the threat of his father and Batman never had.

Bruce frowned and stepped closer. Jason did his best not to flinch and further show his guilt, but when Bruce reached for him, Jason stumbled back, directly onto his hoodie and the glass beneath it. None of the glass cut through the thick material, but it cracked damningly under his weight.

Bruce didn’t look down at Jason’s feet, just reached forward again, eyes zeroed in on Jason’s hand. Jason backed up again, but only made it half a step before crashing into the small table behind him.

“I’m sorry!” Jason cried and dropped to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest and covering the back of his head with his hands, his eyes clenched tight shut so he wouldn’t have to see the blows coming.

“Jason!” Bruce exclaimed, and Jason felt an ugly sob building in his chest. Bruce was so mad, he was so mad….

There was a second crack of glass as Bruce must have stepped in it, meaning he knew not just that Jason was hiding something for sure, he knew that it was the probably priceless vase that had been in the Manor longer than Jason, and he might have hurt himself and gotten even more mad at Jason, and he was right there.

Jason sniffled pathetically, but he couldn’t stop crying, which was stupid, because crying always pissed his dad off more, but he just couldn’t stop.

There was another slight crunch of glass as Bruce shifted his weight, and Jason could literally feel the heat emanating from Bruce’s body.

“Please, I’m sorry! It was an accident, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Jason cried, pressing back as far as he could.

Huge hands wrapped around his thin wrists and effortlessly pulled them away from Jason’s head. Oh god, Bruce was going for a kill shot. Jason was going to die and even though he’d always expected to die young, he wasn’t ready. He had dreams, kind of, and plans, and half of Sense and Sensibility left to live for.

Bruce pressed both of his wrists into one hand and held them above his head, and Jason could feel the shift of air as the other hand reached for his face.

Warm, calloused fingers lightly touched his jaw and tilted his head. Jason flinched down, but Bruce made a soft, gentle noise that was so out of place that it shocked Jason long enough for Bruce to tilt his face up. So I can see how mad he is before he let’s me have it, Jason thought in dread.

“Jaylad, you’re hurt,” Bruce said, but that wasn’t true and it didn’t make any sense because Bruce hadn’t hit him yet.

“I’m sorry,” Jason sobbed, pleading with his eyes for some mercy.

Bruce frowned severely and let go of Jason’s wrists and chin. Jason ducked back down and threw his hands back over his neck and head as he heard Bruce stand slowly.

Jason felt the air shift again and braced for the contact, but it came as one hand braced carefully against either side of his rib cage. Jason had just a moment for confusion before he was lifted into the air and tucked against Bruce’s solid, warm, relaxed chest.

“Sh, sh, Jaylad. Everything’s okay,” Bruce hummed and turned around to face back the way he’d come. “Let’s go take a look at that finger.”

“What?” Jason whimpered thickly, keeping his arms tense between his chest and Bruce’s.

Was Bruce just going to carry Jason to the front door and chuck him out? That would be better than being beaten and thrown out, but his heart twinged in what felt like physical pain at the idea.

“Jason, I’m not mad at you.” Bruce rubbed a firm circle in Jason’s trembling back, but it didn’t hurt at all. It felt nice, way too nice for someone who was about to kick him back to the streets. It wasn’t fair for Bruce to be so nice. It wasn’t fair. “And if I were mad at you, I still wouldn’t hurt you. You’re my son now. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.”

That- That didn’t make any sense, and Jason felt like his head was spinning. If Bruce hadn’t been holding him, then he might have fainted.

“B-but-” Jason choked out around his tears.

“But nothing,” Bruce said, a hint of Batman’s steel in his tone. “If anyone hurts you, I will beat them up. You are mine, and I would never abuse you like that.”

“But the vase-” Jason’s voice hitched, but he had to say it. “I b-broke that vase, and it probably cost more than I do, and, and-”

Jason was jostled as Bruce’s chest jolted with a burst of laughter.

“Jason, I should be thanking you for breaking that,” Bruce told him, stopping his back rub to playfully ruffle Jason’s hair. “I’ve always hated that vase. It was an ugly eye sore that my Great-Aunt Edna bought at a yard sale for two dollars. Alfred would never let me throw it out.”

Hope sprung in Jason’s chest, and he sat up as best he could in Bruce’s arms. He had to see Bruce’s eyes, he had to be sure.

“You’re really not mad?” Jason whispered.

Bruce smiled softly and shook his head.

Jason’s breath caught on another sob, this one of utter relief instead of complete despair. “You- I can stay? You won’t kick me out?”

Bruce’s smile turned into a serious frown. They reached the empty kitchen, and Bruce opened the door without answering. Jason’s heart pounded wildly in his chest every moment that Bruce didn’t answer, but he didn’t dare press.

Bruce set him on the island, putting them nearly eye to eye. Bruce was still taller and so much broader, but it was the closest thing to equality they would get, and it settled Jason’s nerves just a bit.

Bruce took Jason’s chin between his fingers again and forced him to look into his dead serious eyes. Jason was transfixed by the intensity of Bruce’s gaze, even though he had no clue what going to happen to him next.

“Jason Peter Todd, I will never kick you out, do you understand me?” Bruce said, with more power and conviction in his tone than Batman. “I will never throw you out. When you leave this house, it will be because you are an adult and you want to, and even then, you will always be welcome to come back. I am never going to hit you or kick you, or abuse you in any other way. You are my son, and this is your home. You are safe here.”

Jason sat there in complete shock. He completely and totally believed that Bruce meant it – for the moment at least, because his dad had said that he’d quick drinking sometimes so seriously that Jason had really believed him, and he’d heard his mom say that she was going to quit for real this time so many times, but he’s sure that for the moment they are in, Bruce really, really means it.

The fire in Bruce’s eyes toned down and he placed a small kiss on Jason’s forehead before letting go. “Now, let’s get that cut cleaned and bandaged, then I’ll go clean up that vase. Do you want the Batman and Robin bandaids, or the Justice League baindaids?”

 Jason had wandered off in almost a trance after their talk, his fingers freshly tended to with a Robin and a Wonder Woman themed bandaid over the cuts on his fingers. Luckily, the cuts hadn’t been deep. Still, it bothered Bruce that Jason had been so panicked that he’d so desperately tried to hide his mistake. Bruce would definitely have to keep an eye on Jason to make sure that he didn’t try to hide injuries after patrol – if he ever actually came on patrol.

Bruce would much rather have Jason stay home and safe at the Manor instead of joining Bruce on patrol. Batman didn’t need a Robin so much as Bruce needed his son to be safe.

Jason had thrown himself so fully into being Robin that Bruce couldn’t stand to take it away. Not after agreeing to train Jason had finally settled some of that roiling anxiety in Jason’s eyes that Bruce had been sure would send him running back to the open mouthed grave that was Crime Alley.

The events of that past half hour, though, shed a bit of light as to why that anxiety was there in the first place. Jason didn’t trust Bruce to mean it when he said that he wanted Jason to stay permanently. He had months before Jason would be even a little bit ready to hit the streets. Maybe Bruce could convince him by then that he didn’t have to be Robin and risk his life to earn his place in the Manor.

Failing that, he could convince Jason that he and Batgirl were in desperate need of technical support. He could give him enough training on running comms and hacking cameras that he would know enough to feel useful, and then Alfred could get “sick” and need Jason to fill in for him. Jason responded well to praise, even though he tried to hide his blushing and smiles behind his hands and blustering attitude. While that as a less preferable option, it would keep Jason out of harm’s way long enough for Bruce to hammer into his thick little skull that he mattered to Bruce beyond just what he could do for him.

He was still musing on that and sipping his coffee at the kitchen table after having dumped the dustpan full of blue and white shards – because he did know how to use a broom - into the trashcan, never to be spoken of again, when Alfred came into the room.

Dammit, he’d forgotten to throw out-

Alfred picked up the bandaid wrappers from the counter and wordlessly stepped over to the trashcan to throw them away. When he saw inside, he stopped.

“Master Bruce, why are the remains of a Kangxi vase in the trash can, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked, giving him a pointed accusatory glare.

Trust Alfred to be able to know what dynasty or era, or whatever the hell Kangxi meant, a pile of broken glass had come from by sight.

Bruce took a long sip of his coffee. “That is some worthless knock-off my Great-Aunt Edna bought at a yard sale and Jason is never to think otherwise.”

Alfred’s irritation softened, and he sighed with mild, but fond, exasperation. “I suppose I acted too soon in bringing out the more breakable antiques. With Master Dick’s departure, I had assumed that they would be safe.”

Bruce felt a mild twinge of sadness at the mention of Dick’s sudden absence, but he pushed it down. He’d already made those mistakes, and he would not make them with Jason.

“With our boys?” Bruce scoffed. “I doubt they’ll ever be safe.”

Alfred sighed and threw the wrappers into the trashcan. “I was afraid of that.”

#Jason Todd #Adoption #Batman #Bruce Wayne #alfred pennyworth #hurt/comfort #past child abuse #bruce wayne is a good dad

[sleepywinchester]

Fool For You Pt. 5 ⏤ Oscar Díaz.

Summary:  You are back in your hometown Freeridge to take care of your sister Jasmine and your father after being away for six years. You left Freeridge looking for a better life but in that process you had to let go of someone you loved. But you’re back and things are not the same but they sure feel like it.

Words: 2K+

Warnings: N/A

A/N: Hola!!!! Hope everyone is safe at home! This continues the story as a some sort of a series re-write. It won’t be something of all the episodes but the main ones of where Spooky appears. Hope you guys like this and always feel free to leave some feedback is so appreciated it.  | MESSAGE BOX | HAPPY READING!!!

(english is not my first language, might be some typos around)

Title: Ain’t Nobody Business 

Chapters: Uno - Dos - Tres - Cuatro

“There is enough food in the fridge to last you at least two weeks,” you told Cesar as you left the bags of extra things for him on top of the counter. “Clean towels and bed sheets in the closet.” 

Cesar looked around your apartment in silence. His body language told you he was deeply unsure about him staying here. 

“It’s not much but… is quiet,” at that moment Lunch Money started to loudly sound in the background. You turned around to see Jasmine dancing to it in the backyard. Your eyes went back to Cesar, “Ish.” 

He gave you a flat smile, “Thank you.”

“It’s the last I can do…” you told him. 

He furrowed his eyebrows, “How can someone like you be with someone like my brother?” Cesar’s words were cold and filled with resentment towards his brother. You sighed softly holding both arms crossed onto your chest. 

“Oscar is going through a lot right now,” you told him, “he didn’t want this for you. It’s-,” you let out a sigh trying not to say too much, “it’s complicated, mijo.” 

“Everything is always so fucking complicated and I’m not your mijo.”

“Damn,” you scoffed, “for someone who hates his brother, you damn sure act like him.” Cesar rolled his eyes looking away. “That’s just life, Cesar,” you said. “For now, tienes un techo y comida and you don’t have to sleep inside a car by the street or random hostels. You’re safe here.” 

It was hard for Cesar to see the good in this fucked up situation, after all he was just a kid to have all these problems and to be out of a home. He looked at you with sad eyes before sitting on your bed. “I’m here because Monse is making me say yes to this but… thank you, you’re right I hate my brother but you’re good for him.”

“I’ll see you at school,” you said softly, “try to stay out of trouble. Por favor.” 

Cesar nodded and the corner of your lip curved. Grabbing your bag from the counter you walked out of your place with a duffle bag hanging from your shoulder and strolled to Oscar’s. There were a couple of Santos in his front yard as usual. All of them giving you respectful nods as you made your way into the house. 

Oscar got startled by the loud sound of your duffel bag when it hit the floor. He was cooking something in the kitchen. You chuckled at the way his entire body shook. 

“¿Todo bien?” 

Oscar shook his head, “You scared the shit out of me.”

“The big bad Spooky,” you mocked. 

He clicked his tongue, “Shut up.” Once finally in front of him, he held you by the waist and placed a kiss on your lips. “How'd it go?” He looked you in the eye, silently allowing himself to show the worry he felt through his eyes. 

You gave him a look that let him know he was being well taken care of. Since Oscar was a kid taking care of his little brother has been his only job. He might not have taken the best decisions while doing so but making sure he was okay was always his priority. 

“Cesar is at my place and for now he is safe but…” you sighed, “he is a kid, Oscar. He shouldn’t be in the streets. He needs his brother, he needs to be in his home.” 

Oscar clenched his jaw, having a seat in his small dining room. 

“¿Tu crees que yo quiero que el este en las calles?” he told you, his eyes still full of worry. “Es mi hermano y lo amo pero… esto es complicado.”

You sat across the table from him, “I get that is complicated but there has to be a way to make this right. How long until the prophets know he’s staying at my place? Or something worse happens…” 

“Don’t say that,” he cut you off.

“He is not part of The Santos anymore, you can’t protect him,” you told him. “I know his friends are scheming and trying to look for solutions.” Standing up you looked down at him, “You should do the same.”

Oscar arched an eyebrow, “Do you have any ideas?”

“Maybe start with your boss, Cuchillos?” 

His shoulders tensed at the sound of the name Cuchillos, standing up he stood tall in front of you. “Cuchillos was the one who told me to kick him out, unless I have a good plan that benefies her, I can’t speak about it.” 

You caressed his arm trying to soothe the stress away, “We will figure this out… I don’t know how but encontraremos la manera.” Oscar kissed your forehead, holding your face with his hand.

After the small intimate moment you went into his room and smiled at the smell of Fabuloso. “Did you clean?” You shouted from the room.

Oscar appeared behind you, “Si.” He leaned against the door frame watching you place your bag on top of his well made bed.  

“Where can I put my things?” You asked him. 

He smirked as he walked behind you and reached his dresser opening the first two drawers of it. “Here,” he said and then opened the closet, “and here.”

“You really made some space for me…” you were a bit shooked of how much space Oscar had created for you. He was looking at you with sparkles in his eyes. 

“Wanted you to feel at home so…,” he held your hand and walked you down the hall and into an empty room. In there there was a made up desk and chair, right in front of the window. You recognized the room from years ago, it was his mother’s room.

“You,” you turned to look him in the eye, “you did this for me?” 

He shrugged, the small smirk didn’t vanish, “I know you’re going to need a quiet space to work and there’s always people here… I can’t expect you grading papers by the kitchen when there’s a lot of guys just shouting by the window.” 

You tiptoed your way to his lips, giving him a soft long kiss.

“I guess you liked your small office,” he whispered. 

“I love it,” you said, looking over your shoulder at the space, “but I know it was your mother’s room… It looks like it’s never been used.”

“Is because I haven’t,” he said. “When she died I got rid of all her stuff except this,” he reached the desk and grabbed an old notebook from it. “It was her… kind of a diary. It was the only thing that wasn’t toxic..” 

He held onto that notebook like it was the only good memory he had of his mom and maybe it was. You kissed his cheek, “Thank you.”

“Is nothing,” he whispered back. 

“It is,” you said softly, caressing the side of his face. “You are making sure I am comfortable here and that I feel like home. I love that and… I love you.” 

Oscar’s eyes sparkled when he heard the words I love you. He instantly began to kiss your lips. The soft kiss turned into a more passionate one in a matter of seconds. Your body began to get heated. Leaving the notebook back on top of the desk, he then proceeds to lift your body and carry you into the bedroom. 

/ / / 

You were woken up by a chicano rap sounding loudly from the backyard. Letting out a harsh groan you stood up from Oscar’s bed and walked out of the room. The house was empty but it smelled like someone just lit a cigarette, the smoke was still floating around. Following the music you walked to the backyard to find Oscar and Sad Eyes working on the red chevy impala. 

A smirk formed on your face, watching how sexy Oscar looked working on his beloved car. Sad Eyes cleared his throat when he noticed your presence. Your boyfriend's eyes met yours in a matter of seconds, then his sight went down to your body, chucking to himself. 

You looked down and remembered you were only wearing your Selena shirt. 

Oscar got off his car hood and walked towards you, “Buenos dias.” 

The smile on your face was kissed by his lips, “Buenos dias.” 

He pulled back, looking down. “Nice shirt.” 

“I know, right?” You winked turning around and walking back inside to get ready for the day. 

You weren’t surprised to see Oscar’s fridge to be fully stocked and the coffee freshly made in the coffee pot. He was the leader of a dangerous Mexican gang but damn was he domestic as fuck. You began to make breakfast for you and the two cholos working hard outside. 

“¿Que haces ma’? Oscar entered the kitchen sweat spots showing on his grey tank. 

“Making breakfast for us and Sad Eyes,” you said going back to chopping chilli peppers. 

He slipped the tank off his muscular body as he walked towards the bathroom. “Sad Eyes went home to his ruca. I’m taking a shower.” 

“More for me,” you muttered as you shrugged. 

“Heard that!” He shouted from the hallway, making you laugh.

While Oscar took a shower you continued to cook the rest of the breakfast. You made scrambled eggs with tomatoes and chilli peppers, toast and bacon. Once those were done you served it nicely on a plate and poured coffee for the two. 

“Yo, that smells amazing,” he walked into the kitchen.

Sitting down you shrugged smugly, “¿Que? You think you’re the only one who knows to cook?”

Oscar sat down smirking, “No, reina. You do your thing too.” 

“You better say that,” you said as you began to eat.

“Damn,” he said as soon as he took the first bite and continued to eat.

It was nice to see him eat and enjoy your food. When you two were teenagers you didn’t have this domestic feel, not even weeks ago when you were sleeping with each other. He would always cook or you would always have to run out the door. Staying with him was giving your relationship a whole new aspect and to be honest, you liked it. 

“Good?” You had a sip of your coffee. 

“So fucking good,” he said between bites.

You smiled, “It was made with love.” Oscar’s eyes looked up and shot a wink as he continued eating. “Are you driving me to work?”

“Do you want me to drive you to work?”

“Si.” You said without hesitating. 

Oscar licked his thumb, “What about your co-workers and shit?”

You shrugged, “I told you I don’t care what people say. I’m with you and if they have something to say, they better not say it to my face because I’ll react.”

He was so proud and turned on by your sassiness and by how sure of what you wanted you were. “I’ll drive you, chula.”

You were biting on your bacon when he said that, smiling you winked at him and continued to have the rest of your food. 

He drove you to the school, his hand rested on top of your thigh through the short trip. This type of normal was new for you two but it felt good for both. 

“Look at us being official and shit,” Oscar said, “you made me breakfast, me driving you to work. You are staying with me.” He held your hand and kissed the back of it. 

You leaned towards him and kissed his cheek, “I love it.”

“Yo mas,” he said back. 

He pulled over by the school just in the same moment Cesar and his friends were strolling in. All of them instantly spotted the bright red Chevy and began to whisper between them. You also spotted the principal waiting outside the school. 

“Ma’,” Oscar held your hand before you could step out of the car.

You looked into his eyes, “Mhm?” 

“Careful,” he almost whispered. 

You nodded as you gave him a soft smile and stood out of his car. You ignored the stares some of the students were giving you and strolled into the school. As you continued to walk towards your classroom the principal Ms. Gonzales joined. 

“Good morning,” she spoke after clearing her throat.

Taking a deep breath in, you looked at her and smiled. “Buenos dias.” 

“I noticed that Spooky dropped you off at school today?”

“I’m sorry,” you stopped walking and stood in the middle of the hallway.

“I don’t want to seem like I am in everyone’s business-,”

“That’s something everyone says when they are about to get in someone’s business.” 

She fixed her glasses, arching her eyebrow, “Spooky is the leader of the Santos and I don’t like to explain to the parents of the students that one of my teachers is dating the leader of a gang and also teaching history.”

“My personal life doesn’t take any of my capabilities of teaching these kids.”

“Well, it does get in the way of the image of this school.”

You rolled your eyes not believing what she was saying, “Image? Are we in fucking Brentwood? We have gang members as students, there’s no image to keep up. This is Freeridge.”

Gonzales' eyes went wide open after you cursed in front of her face. “Y/N that is not the proper language to use with your boss.”

“¿Y estar de metiche en mi vida personal lo es? I’m sorry Mrs. Gonzales but what I do outside or work or who I date is none of this school or your business.”

Part Seis

tags are open

@flamingweasley​​ @dolanackles​​ @lcandothisallday​​​ @mmelissarenee​​ @donnaintx​​ @blckgrl-sunflower​

#oscar diaz #oscar diaz x reader #oscar x reader #oscar spooky diaz #on my block #omb #mine #elsie writes #fool for you #fool for you updates

[bi-the-way-132]

La Vie en Rose

1 - Don't Forget About Me

Summary: Everything about her is perfect. Her grades, her looks, her personality, everything. Desiree Hale is known as little miss perfect all throughout middle school. But when she makes the transition from being in eighth grade to being a freshman, everything changes. Not because of the change in her surroundings, but because of a girl. A girl with gorgeous brown locks and stunning eyes to match, with a voice that sounds like an angel and a smile that could melt anyone's heart. The moment Desiree laid her eyes on the girl, she knew there was something different about herself.

Word Count: 3,205

Warnings: None

Please do NOT copy, rewrite, or translate onto another site. Permission will not be given if asked for it.

Water splashes on the light gray concrete, soaking the people nearby. Meat sizzles on the grill, sending a delectable aroma through the air. Adults and children cover the lawn, chatter fills the surrounding space. The Sun's rays beat upon everything it can reach, making anything hot to the touch. This is what a Fourth of July party looks like. People having fun interacting with each other and forming relationships with people they had just met.

But not me. I've been sitting in the corner underneath an enormous oak tree with my journal full of short stories and other random notes. No one has bothered talking to me. It's not like anyone would want to talk with the girl who has her face buried in a journal. They're too busy enjoying the sun and partying. I'm not a big fan of the sun. Or parties. I'd much rather sit inside and read or write all day.

I turned the page in my notebook and began jotting down random thoughts that pop into my mind. As I looked up to relax my eyes, I noticed a girl my age approaching me in a bright blue two-piece swimsuit with a bright smile on her face. I smiled back and watched as she sat next to me on the grass.

"So, what brings you to this miserable party?" She asked, her smile not fading.

"My parents are friends with the hosts." I deadpanned. "You?"

"My parents are the hosts." She chuckled.

Silence. We stared into the distance and watched my little sister -who's only six years old- jump into the pool with a bright pink ring sitting around her waist as my dad caught her. I smiled when I heard her screams of joy.

"What's your name?" The girl said as she cleared her throat.

"Oh, it's Desiree." I stuttered, clearly being thrown off guard by the sudden question. "What's yours?"

"Zoe." She replied.

More silence. That's enough of our conversation. It's obvious neither of us gets out there or talk to others often. We've only said six things to each other. And every time we try to converse, it always starts with her asking a question.

"Wanna come to the pool with me? I think it's a lot cooler than sitting out in the sun." Zoe comments. "You don't have to if you don't want to."

"Actually, that sounds nice. I'll be right back." I said, standing up as my arms naturally spread to the sky to release tension.

"If you're changing, I could show you where the bathrooms are." She commented.

"That's alright. Your mom told me where they were when we got here." I replied, grabbing my bag and hurrying into the house and towards the bathroom.

Once I was inside, I quickly stripped off my clothing and changed into my black two piece. I turned to look at the mirror and pulled my dark brown hair into a high ponytail to prevent it from getting wet. Smiling, I made my way out of the bathroom and found Zoe standing by the door, waiting for me.

The two of us ran to the pool and dove into the deep end with grins spread across our faces. Fully submerged in the water, I opened my eyes and looked to my right to see Zoe watching me. I smirked and began swimming to the surface. As I broke the fine line between the water and air, I felt my lungs gasp for air and my wet hair stick to the back of my neck. There was no point in that ponytail. I quickly stroked to the edge of the pool where I met with Zoe and got greeted with a splash of water to the face. I let out a dramatic gasp and pushed water towards her as well. Before we knew it, we made our way back out to the middle of the pool again in a huge water war. The two of us looked up to see my dad running towards us from the surface. I took in as much air as possible into my lungs and dove under the water just before he got to the pool. Zoe continued swimming in place and tried to protect herself from the oncoming tidal wave, but it was no use. Dad hit the water, and I felt myself get pushed towards the other side of the pool. As I felt the water calm down, I quickly resurfaced and swallowed a breath of fresh air.

"Dinner's ready, girls." Dad laughed as he swam over to us.

"That wasn't necessary." I said, brushing loose strands of wet hair behind my ears.

"I know. I just wanted to make sure you heard me." He replied as he stepped out of the pool. "I was also extremely hot."

Zoe and I glanced at each other and laughed, making our way out of the water. We hopped in line and draped brightly colored towels around our shoulders to dry off a bit. I grabbed a paper plate and collected a hotdog, some condiments and a small bag of Doritos. I thanked the man standing by the grill for the meal and scanned the yard for Zoe to find her sitting under the tree we met at. Smirking, I rushed to the grass. Standing at her side, I placed my food onto the ground and lay the towel flat next to where Zoe had done the same. I then sat criss-crossed on the fabric and dug into my meal.

"Tell me something about yourself." I prompted, breaking the silence.

"Oh, I uh, I play guitar and bass. I'm planning on trying out for the Jazz Band at my high school at the beginning of the year." She replied simply.

"What school are you going to?" I questioned.

"James Madison. You?" Zoe answered.

"Wait, no way, me too!"

"Really? What classes are you taking?"

I told Zoe almost every single one of my classes. Art, choir, French, and theatre for my electives. Earth science, honors language arts, secondary math one, and world geography for my core classes. Zoe's classes were a lot more complex than mine. Band, creative writing, and debate for her electives. Earth science, honors language arts, secondary math two, and AP human geography for her core classes. Not to mention if she makes it into the jazz band she'll have an extra-curricular.

We talked about our friends and lives in middle school. How I was perfect with grades and had little to no issues while she had to deal with drama and barley passing classes. Why we both made such big changes for high school is a significant question that neither of us know the answer to. The conversation dragged away from school and ventured into our home lives. Zoe told me about her brother Connor, and I told her about my little sister Brooke. She talked about how Connor has changed. How they used to be friends and would play with each other when they were younger and how they've drifted over the years. How much she wishes they could be close again and how it can't happen because of things he's done.

Zoe has dealt with so much shit throughout her life. From fights with her brother to being ignored by her parents, all she wants is to be seen. Usually I'd say the two of us are different people, but in reality, we aren't. After Brooke was born, I felt lost. My life took a sharp turn I didn't see coming. But yet again, doesn't everyone who has younger siblings been through the same thing I went through? I bet it doesn't last as long for them as it did for me. The rejection, I mean. It's been six years. Six damn years and my parents still give Brooke the attention they gave her when she was born. And what have I been doing? I've tried getting them to notice me, but it never works. I learned how to paint and made them something for their anniversary. It ended up in the basement. I drew my dad something for his birthday and it ended up in the basement. I learned how to sculpt things out of clay and made a sculpture for my mom and it ended up in the basement. Everything Brooke makes gets hung up or put on display. Everything I make gets put away. On the outside, we appear as a happy family. On the inside, we appear as a happy family. But it doesn't feel like it.

I finished eating quicker than I had expected and offered to throw Zoe's trash away for her. After many tries, she gave in and let me, telling me to grab her a Dr. Pepper while I was by the drinks. I complied and grabbed myself one.

"Thanks." She said as she popped the tab on the can, sending small droplets of the soda into the air.

"It's no problem." I replied, doing the same.

Everyone at the party had resumed their activities before the meal in no time, which meant Zoe and I had returned to the pool. We were floating on a raft together, chatting about anything that came to mind, when we suddenly felt someone flip the raft, throwing us into the water. I screamed and accidentally swallowed a bit of water. Zoe did the same. We both resurfaced, coughing the liquid out of our lungs while diabolical laughter rang through the air.

"What the hell was that for, Connor?" Zoe yelled, continuing to cough.

"Your screams were hilarious!" He laughed, falling dramatically into the water.

I eventually caught my breath and finally got a glance at what this Connor character looks like. He has pale white skin and unruly dark brown hair. He's incredibly slim with little to no meat on his bones. I brushed loose strands out of my face and tucked them behind my ears. A wave came from behind me, water splashing across Connor's face. I turned to see a wicked grin on Zoe's face. I know exactly what's happening. A water fight. I quickly dove under the water as the fight began, the siblings splashing each other with water. Reaching the concrete wall of the pool, I swung my leg onto the ground and popped myself out. I cautiously ran over to a bucket of water balloons and grabbed one, chucking it at Connor's back. He turned around with a playful glare, paddling himself towards me.

"Shit, shit shit shit shit." I muttered under my breath, grabbing as many balloons as I could, sprinting onto the grass.

I heard Connor leave the water and his wet feet against the concrete. I turned around to see Zoe climbing out of the pool herself, rushing to the pool house. Getting distracted with Zoe's actions, I felt a balloon hit the back of my thigh. My head whipped around to see Connor running in the opposite direction.

Zoe ran up next to me and handed me a super soaker, saying, "Those balloons aren't getting you anywhere."

I gladly took the gun and searched the yard for her brother when I saw an arm disappear behind a bright green bush. Pointing at the bush, we nodded at each other and sneaked up on the boy. I verged left while she went right. Slipping into the groups of people, we approached the bush with smirks on our faces. Zoe held up her fingers, silently counting us down from three. Three, two, one! Both of us blindly fired our super soakers at the bush, hoping we hit Connor. Swifter than we expected, he emerged from the bush and threw his hands into the air in surrender.

"Okay! I surrender!" He yelled.

"We'll forgive you if you get us popsicle." Zoe said, not putting her gun down.

"That's not how surrender works." Connor fought.

I squirted him with water. "Well, it's how it works around here."

"Jesus, fine." he replied, walking over to the cooler with his hands remaining in the air.

"Keep your hands where we can see them." Zoe called out.

"I am." Connor said. He grabbed three rocket pops and headed back over to us. "Have we made peace?"

"Yes." Zoe and I said in unison, each of us taking one popsicle.

As all of us peeled the wrapper off the cool treat, Connor and Zoe's dad approached us. "We're starting fireworks in the front if you'd like to join us."

"We'll be there in a minute." Zoe smiled.

She snatched the wrappers from all our hands and tossed them into the trash. I hurried over to my bag and slipped on my pair of blue shorts, completely disregarding my shirt. No one will care if I'm wearing a swim top and shorts. And besides, it's way too hot. She held out her arm to me to which I took, hooking my arm around hers. For only knowing each other for a few hours, I think we're getting along well. I've never clicked with anyone so easily before so this feels too easy. Maybe Zoe's being forced to hang out with me. It doesn't feel forced, though. Or maybe our personalities function perfectly together. Whatever it is, I don't think it matters. The bond we have is like a friendship that started many years ago. But it's only been hours. And hopefully, it lasts much longer than hours. Maybe we can have what those friendships that last for years have.

Skipping towards the gate that separates the backyard from the front, I grinned and started humming the theme to The Wizard Of Oz to myself. Zoe must have heard me, for she began singing the song. I laughed and sang along as we joined the rest of the party. Glancing around the area, I found an empty spot on the grass. I pulled Zoe to the spot with me and noticed it was right next to my family.

"So that's where you went." My dad commented, throwing a handful of glow sticks at me.

"Did you not just see me chasing Connor around with a squirt gun?" I questioned, taking a seat on the grass, pulling Zoe down with me.

"Apparently not." He replied.

Zoe, Connor, and I each grabbed a handful of the glow sticks off the grass and cracked them in one snap. Light illuminated in our hands and I took one of my red sticks and poked Zoe's shoulder. She poked me back with a blue one. And the war began. We poke each other back and forth with the glow sticks, breaking into a fit of giggles.

"How about you two use the glow sticks for something other than poking each other?" My mom recommended.

"No, I don't think we will." I replied, continuing to poke Zoe.

"Yeah, this is a lot more fun." Zoe added, poking my arm.

After poking each other for way too long, we tired of it and grabbed those plastic connectors and connected the ends of the glow sticks, forming bracelets just in time for the sun to set, putting us into darkness, the glow of streetlights illuminating our surroundings. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright white light appear. My head snapped to look at the light to find it was someone handing a sparkler to a small child. I smirked and turned to Zoe to find her looking at me. Her cheeks dusted with a light shade of pink as her gray eyes flickered away from my blue ones.

"Hey, wanna go get some sparklers?" I asked.

"Sure!" She smiled.

We headed over to the table that held all the fireworks and grabbed a few sparklers. A man neither of us knew lit them up for us, and off we went into the middle of the street. We waved the sticks around in the air, creating patterns with the sparks. I tried spelling my name in cursive, but spelling Desiree in cursive isn't the easiest thing, and neither is Zoe. Instead, we drew pictures like hearts, stars, and cats. Yes, we drew cats in the air with sparklers. Why would we not? Is that not something that everyone does? Eventually the flammable portion of the sparkler was no more, and we had to toss them into a bucket of water on the curb.

The rest of the night was full of laughter and pure joy, something I sadly haven't experienced in a long time. Fireworks were exploding around every corner you turned. People were running in the street with explosives in their hands, with no fear in their eyes. Zoe and I quickly tired of the noise and went inside. Zoe dragged me upstairs to her room. And it looks exactly what you'd think it would look like. Periwinkle bedding with pink decorative pillows and a white chunky knit blanket displayed across the foot of the bed. The walls are a lighter shade of blue with pink flowers painted on top. White panels cover the bottom half of the walls, creating a sense of contrast. Above her bed sits a display of all the pictures she's taken with her friends and boy, is there a lot.

"Sorry, it's kind of messy right now." Zoe apologized.

"It's alright. My room is in worse condition right now." I laughed. She laughed too.

She began explaining to me how she discovered her bedroom was the perfect place to view fireworks. By simply flicking off the lights and pulling up beanbags to the window, it gave us a front-row seat to a firework show with no noise. You can see the explosions of bright colors for miles and miles across the city. Some are mere specs of light, while others are large bursts of color that illuminate the room. The sounds of the explosions are small pops, some being more powerful than others. The two of us sat in a comfortable silence for quite a while before a pair of feet came down the hallway and towards the bedroom.

"Des, it's time to go." My mom said, cracking open the door.

I groaned and stood up. "Thanks for making this party a lot more tolerable." Zoe said.

"It's no problem." I replied. "So, maybe I'll see you at school?"

"Yeah, maybe. It was nice meeting you." Zoe stood and followed me out of her room.

"You too." I smiled.

Once downstairs, Zoe joined a group of people in the backyard while I headed out to the front door behind my family. I slid into the backseat and pulled my phone out of my backpack to see multiple texts from my friends. I responded to them one by one and quickly resumed my quiet and reserved personality I had at the beginning of the day. Eventually all my notifications had receded, and it left me staring out the window of the car, watching as buildings and fireworks sped past us in blurs. Suddenly I gained the feeling you get when you think you forget something somewhere, but you don't know what it is. After sitting and thinking about it for a bit, I realized what I had forgotten. I forgot to ask for Zoe's number.

#dear evan hansen fanfic #dear evan hansen #deh fanfic #deh #zoe murphy #oc #connor murphy #larry murphy #zoe murphy x oc #bisexual fanfic #pansexual fanfic #lgbtq fanfic

[zippiestdraws]

Choking Curiosity Ch 9

ftm reader x Michael Myers

read on ao3

The microwave clock says five-fifty am when Michael creeps into the house. He shakes the dew out of the mask’s hair and reaches for the kitchen towel to wipe off the latex.

The book is new. He saunters to it slowly, leaving it untouched other than plucking the note from the cover. Your request in writing is met with indifference, barely read, but his thumb rubs over the inking of your name at the bottom.

He’d seen it amongst your things, but this trinket he can keep. He pockets the paper, crumpling it in his grip, and picks up the book. Beginner’s Guide to American Sign Language.

Michael snarls under the mask. Past anger wells in his chest at the words, fighting to vent through his fingers. They tried to make him use sign language in Smith’s Grove. He never wanted to learn to communicate better, even if out of spite, it was what he could control. The only sign that really stuck was the middle finger.

Michael climbs the stairs with a harsh grip on the spine, sparing a glare towards your bedroom door and throwing the book into his room before him.

*** You wake up with purpose this morning and only spend half the amount of time as usual sitting in your bed before getting up.

Fussing with the bedhead in the mirror, you brush your teeth when a thought hits you. You haven’t seen your new roommate brush his teeth.

Ew.

You sigh. You’re going to have to get him a toothbrush and some deodorant, you can’t imagine being on the lam has left him smelling decent. You gag. He better not have touched your toothbrush.

The book is gone from the counter, which you count as a win. There’s no response to your note, but you’ll take what you can get. You just need to remember to study your book too, when you get back.

Thinking about the cookout, you stop short.

‘Was I supposed to bring a dish?’

You groan, hopefully they won’t judge you for bringing some chips and dip.

You get dressed what would be considered way too early, but you need to get gas anyway, and luckily you did because, as you leave your house, you see Abtin approach from his yard.

He gifts you a tomato from his garden, to your surprise, and begins to tell you how his plants are doing. He tells you he’s gonna cook the rabbit that keeps eating his cabbage if he catches it, in the way he jokes for shock value.

“So, hey, is that your brother I keep seeing behind your house? He keeps coming and going-”

You choke on your own spit.

“I’m just messing with you, I know what it is.” He laughs and slaps his knee. You don’t know what you would say if you could say something. What excuse could you give? You hope he doesn’t mean what you think he does, but you’re the only person he gossips to anyway.

You’re relieved when he moves on to critique the spray paint still out front, but at least Halloween is next month and then you’ll probably be able to paint the house.

In another ten minutes, you pocket your tomato and make it to your car to drive for the first time in probably two months. Hopefully you’ll have enough gas to make it to a station.

*** You’re lucky you filled the tank before leaving because you got lost twice trying to find the turn off indicated on the map. Finally, on another turn back, you see a faded red flannel tied around a tree, and upon closer inspection, an old dirt road hidden at an odd angle.

When the trees part into a wider clearing down the road, you slow to a stop in the drive of what appears to be a tricked out log cabin. Putting your car in park, you jump at a loud whack nearby, someone splitting logs in your peripheral.

Jake is wearing what looks like a cowboy hat, but you’re more enamored with the way his arms look in his sleeveless vest when he swings the axe. You close your mouth and remind yourself he’s spoken for. Stepping out of the car and grabbing the food you brought, he waves to you, then points to the cabin. Right on time you see Dwight and someone you don’t know lifting a wooden picnic bench, and you jog over to help because Dwight looks like he’s about to get squashed.

At its destination, the other man introduces himself as David and slaps hands with you, throwing his arm around Dwight. It’s almost surprising, the two of them look like a stereotypical high school nerd and bully, but David tussles his hair like an older brother.

After letting go, he pulls you over to where some logs are felled around a firepit to “grab a beer and meet the queers”. You laugh at the overtness of it, and again as a girl with red hair chucks a bag of marshmallows at his head when she hears him say it. Maybe finding someone like you isn’t a lost cause here.

“Hey!”, when David opens the cooler, you look up to see Laurie standing there pointing at you. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” you smile, glad to see a familiar face.

“I came with Meg and Claudette,” Laurie gestures at the two other women who nod to you.

“I’m Meg and this is Claudette, to be clear,” the girl with red hair clarifies and nods her head across from her, “and over there is Ace- and so help me, Ace, if you shoot that at me I will roast you over the fire.”

You turn towards who she’s speaking to and see an older man sitting in a blue, plastic kiddie pool struggling to fill a small water pistol while laughing.

“Here you go, mate.” David grabs your attention trying to hand you a beer.

“Oh, no thanks, I gotta drive home tonight-” you put your hand up, but he presses it into your palm.

“Come on, relax, just one won’t hurt. And if you get hammered, you can just camp out here like everyone else.”

It’s in your hand now and you nod at him, but you don’t want to reveal that you think beer tastes like shit.

Dwight returns with Jake and firewood in tow, Ace squirts the water gun at them ‘to cool Jake down’ and you duck out of the way as they drop the tinder into the pit.

“Hey, glad you came,” Jake says, dusting splinters from his hands.

“He brought chips!” You both hear David yell over from the table, presumably with his mouthful.

“Yeah, sorry I didn’t bring something better-” you start to apologize but he tells you not to worry about it, chips are great and you brought enough so that David can’t eat them all. David yells back that he takes that as a challenge.

You can’t remember the last time you’ve laughed this much.

It’s a warm enough afternoon that you don’t need to light the bonfire yet, and David gets the grill going while Jake runs back to his cabin to grab the meat. At this point you remember the tomato in your pocket, pulling it out and setting it on the table sheepishly.

“Nice tomato! I always bring a vegetarian option for everybody too, Jake keeps them separate on the grill for me.” Claudette smiles at you from across the table as she sets down some plates.

“Thanks, my neighbor actually gave it to me from his garden this morning before I left.”

The two of you talk, and you learn that planting marigolds with tomatoes is a great way to prevent pests and Claudette knows a whole lot about gardening because she happens to be a botanist.

Meg sits down next to her and listens happily for a couple of minutes before calling Ace over to challenge him to an arm wrestle.

“Don’t let him near the grill, everything he touches burns…” Meg whispers out of the side of her mouth as he walks over. You catch Laurie’s eye from where she’s standing with Dwight, Jake, and David at the grill, exiting the conversation before swiftly making her way over to you.

“I’m gonna show (Y/n) where the bathroom is.”, her hand lands on your shoulder, you guess you have no choice.

You swing your legs around the bench and follow her off towards the cabin with a shrug. When you’re a few paces away from the group, she hisses to you under her breath without looking and you almost miss it.

“Have you seen him again?”

It takes a second before you register what she’s talking about, but you respond before you come to a full conclusion on what you tell her.

“No, not since the first time.” She opens the front door of the cabin and you avoid eye contact. You hope your body language reads ‘upset’ and not ‘hiding something’. “I don’t want to talk about it right now…”

Laurie lets it drop, but sounds irritated when she points out the bathroom. On the way back you whisper a ‘sorry’ and she responds with a ‘me too’. You scrunch your brows in confusion, but head over to the grill. She disappears from your side but a thirty seconds later a stream of water hits you in the side of the head.

You yelp in shock and duck, but Laurie keeps squirting the gun, catching Dwight in the crossfire.

“It’s on!” David yells, dropping the tongs on the grill and vaulting over the table after her. Laurie runs to the other side of the kiddie pool that you see Ace getting out of, holding a beer aloft.

There’s a stand off on either side of the water, broken by David launching over it and landing one foot in the drink to lunge at Laurie, only for her to jump out of his reach. Almost in slow motion, everyone watches as his one foot slips on the plastic and he goes tumbling down, soaking his pants and getting a face full of grass. Everybody has a good laugh while he climbs out with a flurry of curses and peels off his shirt.

Damn.

Jake calls over as he sets one huge plate of hot dogs and burgers on the table and follows it with one of corncobs and what’s probably the veggie patties that Claudette mentioned. Meg whistles at the sight of the food and starts serving hot dogs after passing the vegetarian plate to Claudette, everyone falling in at the table to eat.

*** You eat until you’re stuffed, unashamed as everyone else does the same. The sun is sinking in the sky now, casting a pleasant glow through the trees. Jake deems it enough to start the fire and you approach to watch curiously as he strikes flint onto the dry brush and blows on it.

When he’s finished he tells the group to keep an eye on it while he fetches the s’mores stuff.

“I thought we put it out right here-” Dwight turns toward the logs, confused, but Jake takes him by the arm to bring him along to the cabin.

“I brought it inside because the chocolate was melting.” Dwight seems to accept this and follows along.

When they're out of earshot, Meg leans in towards the log you’re sitting on from her own.

“Jake is proposing tonight! I think he’s doing it!” She squeals a bit in excitement and tries to look like she’s not watching when Dwight looks back before ducking inside.

You share in their excitement and join Ace in stoking the fire into a roaring flame. You watch the smoke dance and carry some ashes into the air and lean back happily. The sky is turning from purple to deep blue now. The light from the fire dances off the trunks of the trees, and you take in the nature of your surroundings as your friends chatter around you.

You squint at a shape between the trees and it moves behind a thicker trunk.

White mask.

*** Michael would never admit to himself of ever feeling jealousy, but a certain irritation of possessiveness grows as he watches. His stomach rumbles at the food, but it’s of little relevance to him.

He spots Laurie and his knife is already in his dominant hand. The strings are connecting what he’s seeing to the same feeling of what he saw watching the teenagers in 1978. This time Laurie is collateral. Funny.

All he has to do is wait.

He could go after the two that already diverged from the group, but he wanted you separated. He moves closer to where you will see him.

The firelight flickers over your form, creating a beautiful moving sepia of you that reminds Michael of the old photographs in the asylum. As you poke at the fire, it licks towards your fingers and that are drawn back sharply.

What sounds would you make when it touched you?

Your eyes had a dream like quality, observing the realness of your habitat, peering through rose-tinted glasses to only see the welcoming nature when surrounded by the lurking sharpness of it.

He may have felt smug when the illusion broke around his presence.

Michael moves out of your line of sight, but he humors over the way a human freezes like an animal in the headlights.

The annoying man who fell in the pool speaks. Michael doesn’t like the way he looks at you.

“Oi, (y/n), you look like you’ve seen a ghost, what’s got you bothered?”

You snap out of it quickly, looking towards him and then shaking your head.

“Um, yeah sorry, I’m just...cold. I’m gonna go get my jacket from my car, I’ll be right back.”

You skitter off nervously, Michael can see the confusion on some of the other faces.

You make it to your car before scanning the woods and spinning to check your blindspot, but you don’t need it, Michael is already walking toward you and you can see the way the orange of the distant campfire glints off of the knife he’s brandishing. You step back, you don’t want to be intimidated, but you fear for what he’ll do to your friends.

The car door stands between the two of you when you open it, pulling out your jacket without breaking eye contact. It’s seeming like you can’t escape him.

“How did you get here?”, you whisper, not knowing exactly where Jake and Dwight are.

You wait for an answer, and when you give up on one, he turns his head deliberately toward the backseat of your car and back to you.

You’re incredulous, the main question you don’t want to elaborate on is “how?”, but you wave it away to get to the point.

“Please.”, you don’t know what you’re appealing to, but you hope there’s some leverage you have in the way he sees the situation. “Please don’t hurt these people. I’ll-”

What will you do?

You don’t know, but you have to save them from whatever he’s planning.

“I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll-I’ll leave right now, okay?” He just stares at you. He twists his knife once.

“The car is open, I’ll go make an excuse to leave and be right be right back, I promise.” You hold up your hands placatingly.

You do a quick jog back to campfire and it looks like you return shortly after Jake and Dwight.

“So, what’d I miss?”, you hope you don’t enter as clumsily as you feel.

Jake and Dwight turn to you on the log and Dwight is wearing the biggest sheepish smile and looks like he cried a little bit. You can see the little gold band on Dwight’s left hand and smile back, issuing proper congratulations.

You force yourself to say it, feeling guilty for springing it on them during a sentimental moment.

“I wanted to stay for the s’mores, sorry guys, but I gotta get home.” Some sad ‘awws’ erupt from the girls and Laurie looks at you suspiciously.

“What, are you afraid of the dark?”, David jeers as you say your goodbyes.

“No, I just have work tomorrow.”, you grimace.

he responds with a hum of acknowledgement before laughing.

“Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave.”

You give him a good natured punch in the shoulder before waving to everyone and heading out.

Approaching your car once more, you can see Michael’s silhouette in the backseat and gulp. Sliding in and starting the car like normal, you try not to look back, but in the mirror you see the shadowed eyes watching you.

It’s easy to imagine how vulnerable you are to him in the backseat. The ride home is awkward, but only for you.

#Slashers #slasher x reader #Michael Myers #michael myers x reader #male reader #trans writers #choking curiosity #alcohol tw #but its just a beer mention

[is-it-art-tho]

This is Chapter 3!

Chapter 1    Chapter 2

Summary: Jason will not let this happen again. He can't. But what if he's already too late?

Jason hated Halloween.

It didn’t used to be that way. There was a period, a lifetime ago, when he loved trick or treating.

Even now, he could still feel the bulky zombie teeth in his mouth, could hear the sound of miniature candies rattling around a plastic pumpkin bucket. Years of practice covering Bruce’s own bruises and scars had turned the older man into a savant with a palette and latex, and Jason could still picture the depths of Bruce’s eyes as he hovered practically nose to nose with the younger boy, skillfully crafting gruesome wounds and sutures across his face.

Back then, Halloween had been one of the few times a year when Jason and Bruce got to dress up for fun rather than battle or ritzy, soul-sucking fundraisers. It was a day when blades were made of plastic and Styrofoam rather than steel, and the things that lurked in the shadows were not deadly adversaries but friends and neighbors. A time when they moved with their feet planted firmly on the ground instead of along rooftops or soaring through the air, and the coming of night did not bring with it danger or violence.

On Halloween, blood tasted like food coloring and corn syrup. The bruises on Bruce’s face were bright and fake, and his scowl, usually menacing, was little more than a poorly disguised grin.

“No, you gotta be scary!” Jason had complained once after glancing up to find a wide smile on Bruce’s blotchy green face.

And Bruce had laughed, a full-throated sound from deep in his chest before promising, “Okay, okay, I’ll try.”

But that was then, and dwelling on those times now was an exercise in masochism.

These days, Halloween was easier to get through from inside a bar or holed up in his apartment. While miniature witches and cartoon characters trickled into the streets, he intended to spend the night plastered, eating too much food, watching mind-numbing TV, and praying the “No Candy” sign on his door would be enough to deter any would-be sugar gremlins.

As he kicked up his feet in nothing but his boxers and started scrolling through a selection of movies on the TV, though, he couldn’t quite manage to sink into the blissful detachment he so desperately craved. He shifted on the couch and glared at a movie synopsis without taking in any of the words there, a growing sense of frustration twisting through him.

It had already been two weeks and still his stomach was in knots, and he found himself swinging wildly from fits of aimless rage to bouts of queasy silence as Dick’s words reverberated through his head. Or rather, not his words, but his quiet.

And Jason hated himself for it because hadn’t he wanted this all along? To be free from the shadow of the bat? To assert himself as his own being with his own code? Hadn’t he personally waged war against them; wanted them dead?

How stupid to think a year and change of tenuous comradery might change any of that, might undo years of animus and at times outright violence between them.

They were right to keep him at arm’s length and expect him to be exactly what he had shown himself to be – a killer. It didn’t matter that it was because of them – because of Bruce’s inane code – that he hadn’t killed anyone in almost two years. Some things could not be undone. If anyone understood that, it ought to be him.

He glanced towards the linen closet in the hall where a duffel bag was crammed behind a couple towels and bed sheets. Inside was the new body armor he’d had Harper help him create. It was almost identical to what he usually wore, except this edition featured a brilliant red bat insignia across the chest. He’d been planning to start wearing soon.

He scoffed at himself.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. And maybe he wasn’t. But damn, if this didn’t still suck.

A ringtone went off, and Jason hopped up and made his way to the drawer in his kitchen where he kept his burners. He fumbled around before finding the dinky flip phone with a new message that simply said:

He’s out.

Jason sprinted into his room and emerged again in his Red Hood gear – the classic all black version – leaving a box of takeout and a scrolling screensaver on his TV as he slipped out the door.

The thick tires of his bike squealed against the asphalt as he tore around corners and down the still-sleeping streets of Gotham. Slowly, the store fronts, overpriced apartments, and new construction crumbled to ruins around him. Windows were replaced with graffitied plywood, buildings stood gaping and abandoned, some blackened with decades-old fire damage, others missing all together, just piles of rubble and garbage and overgrown weeds in empty spaces that reminded Jason of missing teeth. Even with the harvest moon drenching the city in pale light, these few blocks remained in shadow as if some invisible force hung overhead, blocking out the light.

Hood was headed for The Yards, a rougher part of town that reminded him of his old stomping grounds in Crime Alley. There were no trick or treaters out here. The few folks that walked the streets were mostly junkies and barflies and scantily clad girls. They noted him and offered nods of acknowledgement, unafraid.

He’d spent enough time in these parts now, that people who might typically shy away from cops knew that as long as they weren’t hurting anybody, he wasn’t going to bother them. It was a point of pride for him, that his reputation preceded him in that way; it made it easier for him to help the people who needed it most.

He pulled up in front of a defunct pizza shop and sauntered in through the boarded-up door, past the grimy tables and yawning brick oven, through the kitchen, and out the back door to the small alcove behind the restaurant lined with dumpsters and buzzing with the sounds of rodents and pests scurrying through trash.

A kid was sitting with his back against one of the dumpsters, a collection of glass bottles beside him. On the brick wall opposite him, Hood noted splatter stains over a glittering pile of broken glass. As if on cue, the kid picked up a bottle and flung it into the wall where it exploded in a spray of old beer and golden-brown shards.

Hood slipped off his helmet and tucked it under his arm so that he was only in his domino. A lot of the kids around here preferred when he stayed in the helmet. Some thought it was cool, but others, he could tell, found him easier to talk to that way. It was the eyes, he thought. There were certain things that were easier to admit aloud when you weren’t looking someone in the eyes.

This kid, though, was not one of them.

“Yo,” Hood said, walking over to slide down the side of the dumpster so that they were sitting side by side. Not touching, but close enough that a shift in weight, an adjusted leg could easily result in contact. This was another thing that not all kids around here liked – the physical closeness.

“Hey.” The boy didn’t look at him right away, instead waving his fingers over the bottles as he hunted for the next one to throw. He landed on a retro Coke and weighed the thick glass in his scrawny hands.

Hood watched him chuck it at the wall and grin at the explosion before asking, “How are things with you?”

Fry – that was what everyone called the kid around here; Hood had no idea why – shrugged, and his grin faded. Not into a frown, but a careful absence of expression. An absence that managed to say I’m fine and Please ask me what’s wrong and Please help all at once. It was the kind of look that Hood recognized too well; one he’d practiced in a mirror on more than one occasion when he was a kid, hoping someone would see it and understand.

They never did.

“Henry’s back,” Fry answered.

Hood already knew this. He had little informants all over this area; it was what the text had been about. But still he said, “Already? What about the trial?”

“He got bail.” Fry toyed with the neck of a new bottle, still not looking Hood in the eyes.

“And?”

Fry shrugged again, and Hood inwardly cursed the whole goddamn police department. It was a song he’d heard too many times before. Scumbag gets put away, makes bail, goes straight home, takes it out on the family, GCPD is nowhere to be found.

Stopping bank robbers and metas was easy. Those guys were loud and when they went away, they went away for a while. But this stuff, the villains who masqueraded as family men, as loving fathers and husbands – those were the real monsters. The masks they wore were more effective than any cowl or secret identity Hood had ever seen.

And it seemed that no matter how much time he spent talking with the kids in this area, working with them, trying clumsily to help them understand what to expect from social services and offering them numbers to some of his burners, he still felt like he wasn’t doing enough. There weren’t enough hours in the day, there wasn’t enough of him to singlehandedly pick up the pieces where the entire system was letting these kids – these families – down.

And God was it letting them down.

He wanted to get up right then. Every instinct in his body was screaming for justice, for revenge, and he wanted to go straight to Fry’s place and then to the GCPD to tell them to do their damn jobs and where they could find Henry’s body.

And maybe he should do that. It would be easier and more effective than anything the cops would do, and he felt now like he suddenly didn’t have anything to prove anymore. He was who he was, and if that made him the bad guy then so be it. A small price to pay in the grand scheme if that’s what it took to get things done.

As the rage swelled and Hood got ready to stand, he felt a small hand wrap around his. He looked, but Fry was staring away, his cheeks glistening in the orange glow from the light mounted above them on the brick wall.

And just like that, all of his restless fury melted into something dull and simmering, and Hood took a breath and tilted his head back against the grimy dumpster. “I’m sorry,” he sighed.

Fry shrugged again and sniffled. “What are you doing here anyway?” he asked, letting go of Hood’s hand to wipe his face.

“I can’t just come hang out with the coolest kid I know?”

Fry offered a shaky laugh. “Wanna try one?” He offered another Coke bottle and Hood took it.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he sent the bottle careening into the wall. Something about the motion reminded him of throwing a batarang – like muscle memory.

“Whoa!” Fry shouted. “That was a good one! Do it again!”

Fry shoved another bottle at Hood, and Hood chuckled as he launched it at the wall, the sharp crash mixing with the Fry’s delighted whoops.

And though Fry was now openly elated, there was still something in his face, a deep, unwavering kind of hurt.

It was the kind of pain that Hood knew would stay with the kid even if he managed to set Fry up with the best family in the best city tonight. Even if Hood made sure nothing bad ever happened to him again for the rest of his life, that wounded shadow would cling there, if only barely.

It was the mark of a kid who had experienced too much too soon, during those formative years. A kind of broken that could not be fixed, but instead was lived with, grown into, like a childhood birthmark or a scar.

It wasn’t the debilitating kind. He’d seen those kids too, the ones who were already so far gone, the scars so numerous and deep that it would take a miracle to reach them. Fry wasn’t there yet, and Hood just hoped he’d be able to help before he got there.

“So, no trick or treating, huh?” Hood asked. “What? Too good for candy or something?”

“Don’t have a costume. My mom said she would make me one but then…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged again.

Hood stared at him for a while then popped up, saying, “Wait right there,” before jogging back through the restaurant. He returned holding a leather jacket. This one was more casual than the one he wore on patrols; it lacked the sewn-in armor and additional slots for concealed weapons, but it matched his Red Hood jacket close enough.

“Stand up,” he said, and Fry obeyed, eyes wide. “Turn around.”

Fry turned and Hood slipped the jacket onto Fry’s small frame. It dangled off of him like a cloak and must have been fairly heavy judging by the slouch in Fry’s shoulders, but when he turned back around, he was beaming.

“Yeah,” Hood said, smiling and looking him up and down. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Oh–” He reached into his own jacket and pulled out a spare domino. “Put this on.”

Fry put it on, and the way his smile grew to encompass his entire face was almost cartoonish.

“Nice,” Hood said with a grin.

“I’m the Red Hood…?” he whispered. Then he looked up into Hood’s eyes. “I’m you?”

“Looks like it.” Hood breathed through the ache in his chest that made him want to change his mind and urge Fry to be somebody – anybody – else. A voice in his head moaned:

You don’t want to be me.

“So now for candy,” Hood continued. “I’m guessing there’s not much around here to work with.”

Fry shook his head.

“If you want, I can take you to one of the rich neighborhoods where they give out the good stuff. I’m talking king-sized name brands.”

“You’ll let me ride on your motorcycle?” Fry’s voice edged toward an eager shriek.

“Yeah, long as you promise not to make that sound again,” Hood laughed. “And that you won’t fall off,” he added.

Fry nodded vigorously as Hood clapped him on the back and steered him back through the kitchen saying, “Then let’s blow this joint.”

After they’d gotten on the bike and Fry had securely wrapped his arms around Hood’s mid-section, he asked, “Um, Hood…?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you… walk with me, too?”

Hood went still for a moment. His grip tightened on the handlebars as he turned around to smile, saying, “Well, duh. You think I’m gonna let you get all that candy to yourself?”

And Fry smiled, squeezing Hood’s torso even tighter and burying his face in the young man’s back as they roared down the street – slower, of course, than usual.

#batman fanfic #nightwing #jason todd #dick grayson #red hood #dick grayson and jason todd #dick grayson & jason todd #batman fanfiction

[reddogf13]

Crossing fates web ch 2

Pennywise x Beverly

summery: Beverly's life had drastically changed since childhood. claws, sharp teeth, the urge to devour human meat. a aggressive clan of vampires trying to claim her forcing her to flee from LA back to Derry for a save haven. where something else has awakened to the sensation that a female deadlight had arrived. a web of coincidences from their pasts have the two questioning fate.

status: In progress

rated: M - fowl language and gore

previous chap: Crossing fates web ch 1

next chap: Crossing fates web ch 3

_____________________________________

~ch:2 A game of steps~

“fuck, fuck, fuck!” she repeated in her run back to the apartment. As if it weren't bad enough with a whole clan of vampires stalking her, she now had the clown after her. Beverly refused to stay here another moment and decided to flee southward out of north america. Planning to live smack on the equator line where the days were longest. Regretting she wasted so much money here.

“I'll have to beg for gas money... or rob my meals.” not particularly fond of that, even if her meals were scumbags.

Chucking her things back into her car to drive only to the town line. Stopping at the site of the whole vampire clan waiting for her. Red eyes blinking among the long black tree line of pines. That smug old man standing there to happily greet her.

“i told you, its not safe here!” he shouted from the towns edge. “Come join us and we'll put everything in the past!”

the fury burning inside her trumped her urge to flee Derry. “fuck you! I'll never leave if it means keeping you away!” she cursed to them all out the car window.

“you'll die in there if you don't! You'll see what really lives there! I'll wait for you to come crawling back!”

Beverly growled as she reversed her car and back to the hotel for another exhausting unpacking. “guess this is my home for a while.” dropping straight into bed while unable to do anything else.

The next morning she woke to an urgent call from her college. “hello?” she answered, wondering what they would deem so important to call about. Surely it wasn't some small stupid message of how sorry the school was that the massacre happened.

“hello, is this Beverly marsh?”

“yes.”

“i am the colleges new dean. I've been trying to reach you. Are you aware of the tragedy that happened on the campus? It happened a week ago in the night.”

“yes … I was there and got away. … I moved back to my home town in Maine to clear my thoughts.”

“we're very sorry to hear you went though it. The reason why were calling is to help you through it. The governor has worked with the survivors and the grieving families during this hard time. Giving out checks to cover therapy, hospital bills, or funeral costs. We have a check for you, but we never found you at your dorm to deliver it and we have no other address on file. All your school year costs plus new living arrangements will also be covered by the school to help you.”

“oh thank god. I need money so badly right now it'll go a long way.” a weight lifted off her shoulders.

She talked with the new dean to get a apartment arranged for her in Derry covered for the next 6 months. A direct deposit of $2,500 for immediate needs and another check of $12,000 will be mailed to her in a few days.

“alright miss marsh that covers mostly everything. Their is one last thing and that's your schooling. I understand if your not ready and there's no rush, but would you like us to transfer you into a new school where you live?”

“oh, yes! It would be really nice to have that back again.” setting up her paper work to be delivered to the Derry college nearby. Finding only one small snag in a class unable to be transferred over. Which was no big deal. It'd be a nice lone class to take for the year to get her readjusted with everything.

“this school year will be covered for you. We've loaded a student funds card for you to pick up from the school. A counselor will speak to you as well.”

“thank you so much.” passing good byes before hanging up. “now to load up the car, again.” only needing to shove the pre-loaded boxes into her car to drive to her new furnished apartment. Settling down fully into the place after the last box was unpacked. “i should go out and buy some much needed essentials.” looking over her tooth paste and pretty much empty shampoo bottles. Heading out to walk down to the mini market. The nice thing about Derry was almost everything was in walking range. Saving the need to buy gas all the time like back in LA.

Unknown to her the clown was keeping watch from a distance. A warm feeling filling his chest at knowing a female was in his territory. Even if it was the half human Beverly he fought with years ago. He couldn't waste such a rare chance to court her. To reject the possibly of having a close companion he'd been wanting for so long same as the chance at having children. He decided to start by bringing gifts as a peaceful gesture. “but what would she like?” with females it was normally food. “but Beverly may not appreciate a dead body at her door step.” thinking back to how she was eating one of her own yet left it hardly touched. “i should gather things a human would like.”

remembering back to that holiday with all the hearts. Humans giving each other plants, shiny metals, or … food. “guess in some small way females crossed in similarity's.” walking through the forest brush out toward the Neibolt house. The front yard filled with weeds and junk having tall colorful sunflowers strangely growing. No surprise to him that flowers were attracted to him, a being of energetic bright light. Plucking enough for a tight bouquet he stretched out his fingers long and black, as the legs of a spider would be, to create silk. Wrapping the bundle neatly together for presenting. Silk turning into a bright red to form a lovely bow for the final touches.

Returning to Beverlys apartment where he set the flowers at her door step. Off to hide someplace nearby in waiting for her to return. Excited when she did after a short time with bags in hand. The first reaction she gave to the gift not being too good. Beverly glaring down at the sudden gift she was tempted to stomp all over. Assuming it to be a gift dropped off by that creep stalking her from outside of Derry.

Thinking back to him seeming too afraid to enter the town she picked up the gift. The urge to stomp on it lifted by the sweet smell of the bouquet, not from the sunflowers themselves but the silk. A really exotic scent she assumed was extremely expensive for someone to spray. The ribbon itself a expensive silk unlike many bows someone snagged from a dollar store. She took them inside with the bags for a more thorough inspection. Catching a whiff of a earthy scent that didn't belong to the sunflowers. One of refreshing pine mixed with a comforting hot brewed dark coffee. She couldn't help but take a few more inhales as the scent helped relax her nerves. It wasn't like any mans calone or shampoo scent she had smelled before on any guy trying to snag her attention, nor a girl.

The gift had clearly caught her attention more then any others given to her. Aside from that postcard with the poem from so long ago, but that had been lost to the ages from her moves between homes. She'll try to find out the gifters identity later after she gets settled into her classes. Setting up a meeting with a college counselor over the phone before heading out. Taking her car on the small drive out to the campus. Nervous about passing through a small patch of forest. All that driving on the run past pine trees had really affected her.

Rushing inside the office building for her meeting as soon as she arrived. Talks with the counselor of the traumas she faced, for the most part. Couldn't give all the details without looking like some loon or a possible part of the massacre back in LA. During her meeting she slowly turned distracted by that aching feeling deep down.

her mind snapped at her body. “ugh, no! This isn't the time for this to happen!” That urging burn to bed someone was the worst, but not only symptom. She probably wouldn't be able to sleep in the upcoming days. School was going to be a chore to get through. EVERYone would be looking at her, it was as if she became a love magnet during this. It was already getting on her nerves and hardly started.

Having managed to focus long enough to get things set up she hurried to get home. A single class set for her this year to get back into schooling after everything. Deciding it best to take things easy as who knows what would hit her this year. Between the clown and the creep vampire stalking her, her hand could be forced to deal with one. Maybe she could handle the vampire alone, but the clown? Her and 6 friends had to deal with him, but at least he wasn't a sexual creep. Just incredibly annoying and cruel toward his food.

“I'll deal with whoever shows their face first.” sighing in entering her apartment. Starting up a small meal in the hopes it would somehow curb her aggressive appetite. Planning to take a cold shower before heading off to her class late in the night.

Meanwhile Pennywise was living off the high feeling of presenting something she liked enough to keep. While also dealing with an annoyance dipping in and out of Derry. A stupid leech of a vampire stepping his foot in like testing the temperature of a water pool. Usually he did not care for other odd little creatures passing through his territory. They were a meal all the same as the humans living in Derry. This one in particular wanted something, but was too scared to commit in grabbing it.

What ever it was, Pennywise didn't care. “grow a back bone already and get it and leave. Or step inside to become a meal.” he snarled in thought. “whatever, I have more important things to focus on.” wandering around to “shop” for what else she may like. “a meal would be best.” sensing her lights were so dim, they must not be doing well. He caught her scent faster then her energy, which was abnormal. He should have seen her coming across the galaxy if she was in good enough health.

Searching for a good meal was being more difficult then he thought. Going back and forth on various humans all day on what would taste best vs being more filling. He knew what he liked, children filled by fear making the meat taste perfectly. Like the most tender steak grilled in various fresh herbs that melted in the mouth on the first bite into it. That worked for him, but each of his kind had different tastes. Although one particular thing seemed to be an appropriate meal.

“finally jumped into the deep end?” grumbling at the stupid vampire waltzing into the territory. “desperate for a meal?” now that it was dark he was lurking around for something. Following the vampire now on if he would be a good meal. He was ancient, but vampires were a bit more … lively due to all the life force they sucked out of the blood they ate. “i don't think she'd appreciate eating a stale belt.” he huffed, tempted still just to kill the parasite annoying him all day.

“what poor sap is he hoping to hunt tonight?” following along from a distance across the roof tops.

The old leech strolling across the large parking lot of the Derry college campus. Locking onto someone exiting late into the night. What surprised Pennywise was who it was.

“Beverly?!” much more invested in what was going on now. Questioning if he should interfere or stand back. She could fight him, but she could also get hurt and he didn't want that. He watched the scene closely as the two crossed paths.

Beverly was tiredly walking back to her car when she saw him. Unlike the other times though, her body locked up at the sight of him in the large open parking lot. A few cars scattered here and there providing no possible blockage between the two. This had happened a rare few times in large open spaces when locking eyes with a male.

“you're quite a hard catch.” he lightly growled with a step forward.

her body convinced her to take a step forward as well. Not in approach, but for an event to begin. The old vampire couldn't tell, but Pennywise certainly noticed and he was revolted.

“shes dancing with him?!” snarling to himself. It was an important courting dance of steps and the goal was to eventually embrace at the middle. Each side would take a turn in a step and each would get closer if the other liked the move. Males took the first step and the females would usually join on compulsion. It was all up to if the male made the right moves from then on, otherwise the females would scratch them off the possibles list. Even if a dance was properly completed there were so many other errors afterwards that could get them black listed.

The male took another step with one more following to approach her, breaking the started dance. She snapped from her paused position to face the vampire with aggression and wanting to get far away.

Watching it come to an end perked the clown up massively. Yet some part still hurting that he wasn't the first to do courting steps with her. Switching over to aggression when that parasite didn't take the rejection well. Beverly bolted but didn't get far when the vampire tackled her. Snarling teeth bared at each other with claws thrown around in a viscous fight. All the roaring and aggressive snarling sounding like wild animals fighting over a carcass.

The noises echoed across the open air for a good while then died down. Beverly wheezing out what little air she managed to get for her exhausted body. She shred the old vampire into a bloody mess, but it wasn't enough to get him to back off. She didn't have the energy to keep up with his blows smacking her around the tarred pavement. She realized too late she didn't have the energy to fight, that she should have ran. Now she was beaten down into a limp mess on the ground with the creep straddling over her.

Her body couldn't move, only uncontrollably shiver from the various wounds her exhausted body couldn't take anymore. Beverlys eyes teared up in knowing what was about to happen. Fighting on passing out or accepting it as to not suffer as much. She tightly shut her eyes unable to do anything else with her mind not noticing the aggressive weight on her was suddenly lifted. Sounds in the background were muffled too badly to make out anything. Her body laying still on the floor even when she found the weight over her was gone. Perhaps playing dead as some part thought it best, or remaining still to recover some energy to run for it.

A pair of hands gently lifting her up jolting her to attack again. Slashing at whatever had her a few times until she was brought against something. Catching that soothing scent surrounding her against something soft and very warm. Held within the strange surroundings had her feeling safe enough to relax. Body passing out between the exhaustion and recovering from her injury.

Pennywise breathed out in glowing heated snarls at what he saw. That parasite beat Beverly down and was about to do something unspeakable. It took the clown a mere second to be on top of the bastard him self. All his teeth bared down as he shredded into his chest. Holding him down by claws gripping between the exposed rib bones. His blinding deadlights burning into the vampires flesh far worse then the sun would. Leaving the vampires head a pile of ash while the body collapsed in a pool of bloody meat shredded off from the clowns claws.

With the disgusting male left dead, his attention turned to Beverly laying limp on the ground. Stepping over he crouched near to gently lift her up into his lap. Flinching at her lashing out in a blind panic he tightly held her to his chest in soft restraining. Holding her there to keep her claws away while calming down. A smile crossing his face when she curled herself deeper into him in accepting him as something safe. Not wanting to move before she recuperated he kept holding her close. Cocooning his body around hers to warm her chilled body. Catching her sweet lovely scent while she took in his.

A refreshing scent of chilled strawberry's mixed with lavender. He purred happily in taking in the scent having missed such smells for so long. Females always had sweet scents while males had something more earthy. The scents on human females could never compare no matter what bottles they used. Focusing on her condition he carefully looked over her. Covered in bloody gashes that rotten pile left on her. They weren't healing as fast as they could with deadlights. Paying further attention to those made his concerns more urgent. He thought they would be dim, not flickering like they were. They were dying and wouldn't pull through the night unless he helped them.

“she needs to eat.” he thought, looking around for something to hunt. Eyes glaring back onto the body not too far. He rather not feed her any part of that leech but it was the best option for her. Shifting as little as he could to drag the body closer. Punching his fist through the ribs to rip out the heart. Thinking that she was too weak to fully eat he ripped a small bit of heart to thoughtfully chew up to a shredded pile. Feeding her the small bits she swallowed down on little chewing. When the whole heart was eaten down he could already see the deadlights in her improving. Dim, but a steady glow that would hold her for a little while until her next meal.

Stable enough he could move her someplace safer for the night. Shifting her around as little as possible in not wanting to disturb her as he did. Down back to his nest he fixed up the wagon to be more livable in. a bed over a large mass of spider webbing stretching wall to wall in a overall circular den. Her own personal cocoon den he made just for her to be safe and comfortable in. stuffed with blankets to various pillows she could hide in. females didn't like sleeping in open space, they preferred dens that were a little tight. Soft bedding materials filling what space they didn't fill inside them. Tucking her in to keep warm, another thing that both halves liked in their species. They could handle the cold fine, but preferred warm temperatures.

He sat outside the dens entrance, head resting on his crossed arms at the small round entry way. Watching her condition over the hours she slept. Partially fascinated by how the deadlights took charge in some ways while the rest appeared human. He saw she had claws and teeth like his, but were gone now. Body healing all the gashes shut through the night that no human could do. Yet, her blood fell unlike his and her body wasn't as tough in a fight. Those dull vampire claws mostly left annoying red marks across his skin. Her wounds fully healed he knew she would need to eat again.

Fighting his internal want to stay around her he left her alone to go hunt. Again taking careful consideration of what he would pick for her. While gone Beverly woke buried under warmth and comforting scents. Tempting her to go right back to sleep in catching up on all the time her body had gone without.

Shooting up at remembering what had happened hours ago. “where am I?!” fighting off the layers of blankets she was wrapped in. the nice soothing scent no longer calming her like it used to. Fighting her way out of the bundle to fall out of the small webbed up den. Groaning on the hard wagon floor she landed on. Body wracked with pain even with all the gashes gone. She got to her feet to give her surroundings a quick look around. Seeing the wooden insides covered in shelf's holding many trinkets. A pot belly stove in the corner with a orange small glow lighting up the place. Anxious about not recognizing the place she went right for the door to gently open it for a peek outside.

“no vampires.” she thought from her cautious look around. Stepping outside she gave a further look around. That she then recognized as the water drainage system along with the place being home to IT and his massive junk pile. Beverly didn't take the time to question why she was here. Making her escape from the pipes before IT could return and see her fleeing.

Beverly slammed and locked the door behind her after entering her apartment. Sore muscles causing her to wince with each movement. Difficulty walking to the couch a mere few feet away to collapse upon it. Laying still to catch her breath with as little pain created as possible. While sitting there the tugging in her chest escalated, similar to how it was before entering Derry.

“why?” she questioned the feeling. It didn't trigger until she left the clowns lair. “is he the reason? Is the tugging toward him and not Derry? But why?” the longer she sat in her apartment the worse she felt.

She was so comfortable in that bundle of blankets. it was the best sleep she had, had in a while. The relaxing smell filling that wagon made her feel safe. Connecting that she had smelled that scent before, on the flowers. Looking at the bouquet sitting on the table in a threading that looked exactly like that threaded bed she was in. ignoring the pain, she rose to grab the flowers to then mash them down into the trash. Not wanting anything to do with them if they came from IT. The scent wafting up when tossed down sending a wave of warmth through her.

That burning ache coming forth to annoy her again. She growled as she headed to take a cold shower to numb that enough to somehow sleep. Under the running water she thought back on what happened last night. Was that not really the vampire and IT in disguise? No, that didn't seem right to her. “why bother dressing up as that annoying vampire to mock her with. Seemed IT would favor mocking her directly as the clown or as her deceased father if anything. Then to only bring her home to be tucked away in bed. Last time he took her down there she woke on the cold moist stone floor.

“What happened to the vampire then?” trying to remember as much as she could, but it was all fuzzy. blocked by the painful exhaustion that hit her then. “IT didn't want to share his victim?” the idea making more sense then being simply saved. “guess I'll never really know. The clown wont tell me and hopefully that vampires long gone after the confrontation against IT.” doing her best to relax in the shower.

#It (2017) #pennywise #beverly marsh #pennywise x beverly marsh