we do what we must because we can
pairing: tim drake & jason todd
chapter: 1/3
word count: 2.4k
desc:
“Dude.” Not-dead-Robin-Jason sighs. “Are you gonna tell me why you just appeared out of thin air? Or am I gonna have to call my boss?”
“…What are your Batman’s interdimensional protocols?”
A scowl makes its way across Jason’s face. “My Batman? Don’t tell me there’s more than one.”
Tim wrinkles his nose. “There’s like a nexus of Batmen, to my understanding. A batverse, if you will.”
”I will not.” Jason immediately spits back. Typical Robin. Shame he’s going to die horribly.
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my friend and I were talking about what if jeremy became a guidance counselor when he’s older so here are some random headcanons for that idea
“did you know mr. heere caused the squip incident of 2004?” “no way??? mr. heere wore his pants backwards last week there’s no way he had a squip” “maybe that’s why they don’t make them anymore.”
everyone knows “mr. heere” as the school’s cryptid. too damn tall. his wife is an actress, or is his HUSBAND a game designer??? he talks to himself sometimes. he’s got mountain dew varieties in the first aid kit in his office.
“one time mr. heere just grabbed open circuitry. I don’t know.” <- he’s immune to electricity post-squip
he has a group of ten children who follow him around like lost ducklings
he runs the performance art club (he’s got a hands-off club running approach. He runs it solely so that they’re able to meet every week, because the club can’t exist without a teacher or counselor)
christine stops by it sometimes and the kids are like IS THAT CHRISTINE CANIGULA??? THE FAMOUS ACTRESS??? WAIT SHES YOUR WIFE???
all the kids are swarming her for pictures and autographs and she’s like “jeremy your kids have great taste in musicals”
btw he is married to both christine and michael in this. he wears two rings, one for each of them.
“mr. heere, you sometimes say wife, and sometimes say husband, uh… um… is your partner non-binary?” “oh! sell, uh, you see, christine is, they’re my wife, but my husband is michael, he’s a different person, I’m uh—“ “mr. heere is a player!” “n-no, guys, I’m polyamorous.”
one day the kids mention an indie fighting co-op game and jeremy is like “oh wow that finally came out? my husband worked on it a few years ago.” and the kids are BEGGING him to bring his husband in. as if his husband is a toy for show-and-tell.
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I think one of the worst moments in buffy history is them framing xander's speech about riley in into the woods as like... correct in any way. it makes you really dislike Xander (even more). Buffy's boyfriend literally cheats on her with vampire prostitutes lol and then tells her that if she doesn't forgive him on the spot he's leaving forever. and then we're supposed to buy that Xander is correct in saying that it's all Buffy's fault and that she should run after Riley to beg him to stay?
It's sooo infuriating how Riley is framed as 'the one who got away' when really he's 'the one who was so cripplingly insecure that he couldn't handle his girlfriend being stronger than him and having her own problems because he's made his entire identity about his girlfriend instead of getting the fuck over himself'
the real reason why xander doesn't want buffy to dump riley's ass as she should is so clearly because he projects onto riley. subconsciously he thinks that if someone 'normal' like riley can be with buffy then he also has a shot. newsflash it wasn't riley being 'normal' it was riley being an insecure condescending freak just like u
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"i can't sleep - can i stay here?"
It’s probably not good form to answer your door when you hear knocking in the middle of the night, especially not when you’re apparently now living in a death game. But it’s with absentmindedness, not caution, that Shuichi goes to open the door with.
No one has died yet. Maybe no one will.
(If they do, then. Well. Shuichi won’t survive this game anyway more than likely. As a detective, he’ll be a target.)
The door swings open to reveal Kaede, in pastel pink pinstriped pyjamas with piano keys wrapped around the sleeves. Whatever she usually does to tame her hair down has clearly abandoned her, because it looks a little like a bird nest. The little voice of logic that lives in Shuichi’s brain says it looks like shes been tossing and turning - and the bags under her eyes corroborate this.
There’s a beat of awkward silence before they both start babbling.
“Kaede! What are you- I mean, can I help you- Are you ok, or-”
“H- Hi! This is probably like, wildly inappropriate and you can tell me to leave, but-“
Shuichi accidentally catches her eye and immediately looks away, ignoring the rolling wave of shivers that rack him. She cuts herself off, before she starts chuckling, mostly for lack of anything else to do. He smiles at her, managing to avoid eye contact this time, and the silence that follows isn’t so awkward now.
Have they really only known eachother two days?
“Sorry, I’m- I don’t know what I’m doing here, I just…” She begins again. Her voice is quiet, with none of the usual loud enthusiasm that follows her. It’s almost off putting to see her so unsure. “I hate it here.”
She says it like it’s a secret. Like they’re not all trapped, and afraid, and might never be going him again. Maybe for her, who has been leading the charge to get out, that she is as scared as the rest of them perhaps is a dark secret. There’ll be no stopping the… death game, if they lose hope. If she loses hope.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Shuichi says. If he’s secure in anything, it’s that he’ll follow her through this, even if none of the rest do. Their trust is a new, coltish thing, but it’s warm and fuzzy in his chest.
“I can’t sleep.” Kaede drags her hands down her face in a way that would be dramatic if she weren’t so clearly exhausted. “If it’s not too weird- you can say no, but I don’t really want to be alone and I was just wondering if I could, maybe… stay here, for the night?”
Before he can even react to the question, he’s opening the door wider, subconsciously making space for her at his side. She smiles shyly and walks through the door to his room, still hesitant but clearly pleased.
“I used to sleep with my uncle when I had bad nightmares, even when I was way too old.” Shuichi admits, flushing with the embarassing secret, but Kaede doesn’t laugh. She just softens when he adds, “I don’t want to be alone either.”
When they wake up in the morning, he has her hair in his mouth and she has somehow managed to not only steal his half of the covers, but kick her half off the bed entirely. She ends up having to run to her room to not get caught leaving his, but when they meet again at breakfast in the cafeteria, they’re the only ones at the tables who look well rested.
Prompt ficlets: send me one, link here!
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The phone rings, and rings, and rings, and Keith swishes the wine in his glass and lets it. He doesn’t count the minutes but he feels the stretch. He waits and listens until the rings seem to thin out, until they sound muddled and far away, until they finally pause, until there is a click in place if the incessant bells, until there is a break in the pattern that narrows Keith’s attention back to the sound.
“…Hello?” A pause, a beat, a moment. “Hi? Hello?”
Keith doesn’t answer. He knows this sound, this sequence of sentences, more intimately than anything else in the world. He hears this in his sleep.
He takes another sip of his wine, swallowing slowly, and for the first time he feels it go all the way down, imagines the way it splashes into his stomach to join the rest of the bottle, swishing and gurgling like a water skin.
“Can you hear me? Hello?” There’s a peculiar quality to voicemail Lance’s voice; a strain, almost, the feeling of holding back. Keith counts the seconds, one finger at a time.
Exactly four and a half seconds later, right in cue, is breathless laughter; muffled, as if Lance has attempted to hold the phone away from him. It doesn’t work very well, and the sound of his wheezy giggling takes up all the air in Keith’s lungs.
“Gotcha!” voicemail Lance crows, gleeful and corny and clear. “This is my voicemail. I’m terrible at checking it, honestly, so just call later, okay?”
Keith had not dialled Lance’s number with a plan. There was no goal in mind. There was nothing in his mind, actually; his fingers had worked without his explicit permission and by the time he caught up with them he was too far gone to stop.
But now he downs the last of his wine in one go, hoping to wash down the massive lump in his throat, and tosses the phone carelessly somewhere beside him. He hears it bounce and breathes for a moment before speaking.
“You know what your goddamn problem is, McClain?” he says, and his voice is slurred slightly and drawling like it does when he’s drunk but he’s not drunk so he doesn’t care. He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing, because there won’t be one. “You are too fucking endearing.”
Now he waits, although there’s no point in it. That or he runs out of steam.
His next words are softer, dulled.
“You are so convinced you’re annoying,” he sighs. Nothing he says is at all legible. “You delight in it, actually. Nothing makes you grin harder than when you’re sure you’re pissing somebody off.”
Without thinking Keith smiles, too, at the thought of it. He realises then that it’s hard, that his chin trembles too much to curve his lips right. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and he gags at the salty bitterness of it.
“But you’re just…you’re so goddamn bad at it.” It’s mean and he knows it is and he lets the sentiment draw out and linger. “You do stupid shit like pretend your voicemail isn’t a voicemail and no one is ever mad. Never. They can groan and roll their eyes all the goddamn want and it don’t mean a damn thing, McClain, you fucker, because you wrap your fingers ‘round peoples’ hearts and grip and squeeze and stay put like the fuckin’ parasite you are. No one hates your voicemail. Nobody.”
His voice cracks on the final syllable and he refuses to let himself cry but something escapes his throat anyway, a garbled mess if a sound, the sound a bullfrog makes as a heron shoves it down his throat. A bitter resignation kind of sound, a giving up kind of sound. Vaguely Keith registers the sound of a thump and a cracking pain in his skull. When he opens his eyes again he’s staring at the ceiling.
“Look at me,” he says, and his voice is hoarse and torn and rough as desert sand. “Look at what I fuckin’ do to myself. Can’t even blame you right, McClain, ‘cause it would be a goddamn lie.”
He registers at this point that there’s no way the voicemail is still recording. Good. He doesn’t care.
“You’re the only phone number I got memorized,” he confesses. “Sometimes I call when I know you won’t answer from a phone that ain’t mine. I got a burner phone, you know. ‘Sposed to be for when I run away but I only use it to call you and hear you pretend to answer.”
The massive lump is back in his throat and the wine makes his eyelids heavy. He doesn’t fight either.
“You have endeared me heart and soul, Lance, and I will never forgive you for it.”
His voice tapers off ‘til there’s no sound left to it.
“‘M sorry.”
The last thing he registers is a click, and the grating sound of a phone being left off the hook.
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