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incrediblyaccuratethoughts · 1 year

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I’m Gonna Tell ‘Em (Don’t you Dare)

Ao3

Tim just wanted coffee. That’s really all he desired in life. Coffee. His position as Red Robin. And Wayne Industries to get its shit together for one goddamn day. In that order.

“Are you shitting me? I was a fucking crime lord you little terror, I don’t give a fuck-”

He’d done an all-nighter in the Batcave. Again. Trying to crack a cold case he was sure had something to do with Riddler's vague warning a few nights ago. And he was so close, but his eyes had started to close for just a little too long.

So tell him why he walked into an argument that seemed to be based around the topic of murder, at 7 in the morning. Between Jason and Damian. Who both tried to kill him at least once. Respectively.

“And I am the Demon Prodigy of the League of Assassins. I could kill a man before I could speak.”

Tim stands in the doorway, contemplating if his need for coffee is higher than his potential rate of getting maimed in the dining room.

“Yeah, but you were fucking sheltered inside the bases like goddamn Rapunzel in her-”

“I was not sheltered. You of all people should know of Mother’s harshness for disobedience-“

“Oh and I’m sure you were so disobedient Mr. Goody Two Shoes-“

Ultimately, the urge for coffee wins. Tim crosses the kitchen as unnoticeably as he can, skirting the edges and keeping his footsteps as light as he can manage on 10 hours of sleep in the last week.

He’s busy, okay?

“I’ll admit I wasn’t raised to go against the orders of a higher-up but that did not mean-”

“Bull. Fucking. Shit.”

“Did my propensity for sneaking animals into the house escaped your notice? I thought you were better trained-“

“So what? You save every bird with a broken wing you come across, but you’d willingly slit the throat of a human?”

“Yes, Todd. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

The coffee pot is half full. Tim counts this as the one redeeming factor of this morning. The threat of getting stabbed is nothing in the face of sweet, sweet caffeine.

“What’s your fucking number then?”

“I can’t possibly know the exact-“

“Oh no, you don’t get to pull that shit on me-“

Tim considers pouring himself a cup, but he’s gonna drink the whole thing anyway and he’s exhausted enough to zone out during Alfred’s inevitable lecture, so he takes the whole pot and tips it back.

“I was sent out for missions when I was barely more than a toddler. You can’t expect me to remember every-“

“Ra’s had files on every fucking mission I did while brain dead and high on Lazarus rage, there’s no fucking way he didn’t have an exact-“

Tim chugs his precious coffee. The temperature is surprisingly cool enough that he doesn't immediately burn his tongue. Not that a few scorched taste buds would stop Tim from inhaling the only thing between him and unconscious. But it’s the thought that counts.

“What’s yours then, Todd?”

“Nope. Not until you tell me yours first. I’m not about to have you raise the number because I told you mine.”

“That’s preposterous. I would do no such thing.”

Tim calculates his chances of making it back out of the kitchen with a quarter pot of coffee in his hands and decides his caffeine fix is safer off with a few counters between him and his homicidal brothers.

And yah know. His physical well-being. But that’s pretty low on his ‘fucks to give list’ at the moment.

“I don’t trust a fucking word coming out of your mouth-“

“There’s an easy way to settle this if you’d just-“

“What? Shut up? Drop the argument? No fucking-“

“We can write it down separately and then show it to each other at the same time."

“…huh.”

Tim looks up in genuine fear when both of his siblings go quiet. That’s never a good sign. Not in this house.

There’s a window to his right that he could probably smash through if it came to it.

Neither of them are looking at him though, just regarding each other with much less animosity than a few seconds ago. Tim decides he’s probably fine and goes back to his coffee.

“I will go retrieve a piece of paper and two pens.”

Damian leaves the room and Tim freezes like if he stays still enough it’ll keep Jason from noticing him. Unfortunately, now that his older brother’s attention is directed to his surroundings and not just screaming at a 12-year-old, he makes direct eye contact with Tim.

“Oh hey, Timmers. How long have you been here?”

Tim stares at him blankly. He- doesn’t know what answer Jason wants from him and he’s not willing to face his older brother’s wrath if he’d been having what he thought was a private conversation.

“Sorry about the noise. I hope we didn’t wake you up.” Jason says after it’s clear that he isn't getting answers out of Tim.

As if the manor isn’t literally soundproofed. For this exact reason.

Tim’s 17 years of social etiquette training won’t let him just not answer the open-ended comment, but god does he wish that it did.

“No, I was already up.”

Jason nods as if he was expecting that answer. Which is fair. Tim’s sure he looks just as tired as he feels. His eye bags could hold all of his emotional trauma. They’re Guchi.

“And does Alfred know you’re drinking straight from the pot?” Jason motions to the carafe Tim’s clutching like a lifeline. Because it is.

Tim opens his mouth to lie through his teeth, but is saved by Damian’s re-entry. Wow, he’s never been so glad to see his stab-happy younger brother.

True to his word, the kid’s carrying a few pieces of paper and pens. Tim could leave now. He could casually walk right past them, out of the kitchen, and back to the cave to keep working on his case, but dammit, he’s invested now.

He’s still not sure what this argument is about exactly, but he’s willing to wait a few more minutes to satiate his curiosity now that he’s tentatively sure that the argument isn’t going to evolve into physical violence.

“I’ve acquired the tools to finish this once and for all, Todd.” Damian announces, sliding half of his spoils to Jason.

“Great. We’ll write our body count down and on 3 we’ll turn ‘em around. Got it?”

“Don’t tell me what to do” Damian grumbles, but writes dutifully anyway. The kid would be funny if he didn’t back his threats up with swords.

Tim is. Still lost, but he’s always secretly wondered how many people his brothers have killed. In a morbid way. Mostly because he wants to know if the murder attempts on him were a particularly special event or just a pattern. For his mental health's sake.

“Got it?” Jason asks, holding his paper close to his chest so no one can peek. Tim doesn’t know who would, considering he’s the only one in the kitchen that’s not a part of this squabble, but Damian copies the movement and Tim finds himself inching closer, taking the last swig of his coffee.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

They flip the papers around and for a moment the kitchen is quiet.

“FUCK YEAH!” Jason pumps his fist in the air with a whoop. “Ha! Take that, Demon Brat! I’m the Robin with the highest kill count!”

Tim spits out his coffee and coughs violently. It’s partially because he got some in his lungs, but also to cover the incredulous laughter bursting uncontrollably out of him. It takes him a good few seconds to get his breathing under control, but when he looks up, his brothers are staring at him.

For a moment he’s tempted. So fucking tempted. Because he hasn’t told anyone anything more than bits and pieces about his time with the League. Hell, the only reason his family even knows about his little stint playing lap dog for Ra’s, is because he choked out a vague explanation about his missing spleen when he went into sepsis.

They don’t know about the missions he was sent on. The people he sold out. And most importantly, the multiple bases he blew up because he was crazier than the Joker after Bart and Kon’s death and then the near miss with Bruce.

The bases he absolutely didn’t evacuate. With hundreds of people inside. A few actually avalanched down mountainsides, and he’d eat his Batarang if any of them survived.

The only word he’d confidently use to describe his mental state then, is feral.

He didn’t have to blow them up. He really didn’t. A good few of the bases he’d never actually seen before he snuck in to level the place, but he’d been having a shitty year so naturally, he was going to make sure Ra’s got to have one too.

Not to mention that Tim was as depressed as he’d ever been and wasn’t particularly giving a lot of fucks about if he died during his warpath. He’d already lost a spleen, what were a few more organs?

So this argument? This competition? He finds it objectively fucking hilarious.

Damian and Jason are still staring at him in bewilderment, and for a moment -just a wild moment- he thinks about telling them.

Explaining how he was just. So done. And could only think of one way out, so he systematically hacked into every base he could get his hands on. Stole as many files as he could during his time constraint. And then blew all of them sky-high.

Thought about telling them how on one particularly bad night, gone through every log of the people in those bases. How he hadn’t been ‘sick’ as he claimed the week after he managed to crawl out of his safe house.

He was just too horrified to look anyone in the eye.

It would be funny to watch his family’s expressions go through the five stages of grief and add a few more just for funsies, if they even believed him at all. But no. Tim had his secrets and he was going to take them to the grave.

He grinned at his brothers, patted Jason on the shoulder with a quiet congratulations, and strolled out of the kitchen.

Tim had cases to solve and letting his family assume he wasn’t capable of murder was better for all of them in the long run.

No matter how wrong they were.

👻

In my defense. Writing prompts make the brain noodle go brr. You can blame @coffinbirds and @batcavescolony for these posts.

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side-shuffling-hyperfixations · 1 year

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Hearts Like Wild Animals

Summary: I stopped pulling my punches. Peter Three had told his brothers as much from the start but this was the first time they had actually witnessed it.

A/N: Dark!Peter Three fic. I don't know if I consider this “canon” to my characterization of him. I just thought it would be an interesting experiment to see his affection for the others verge on the darker side.

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In all the wild world, there is no more desperate a creature than a human being on the verge of losing love. - Atticus

He can’t get it off. After so many years at this, he should have learned how to make all of it come off with ease but traces of it still linger, dark, dry flecks of red buried under his nails and in the bruised cracks of his knuckles to haunt him—him and his brothers.

No. They’re haunted by the blood. He’s haunted by the looks on their faces, all of the emotions they’re trying to disguise. Peter Two is better at it but the shock of what happened still has his eyelids pulled too far open and the line of his lips is pressed a little too thin. There are gears turning behind pale eyes that Peter Three can’t hope to read. Maybe he doesn’t want to.

Peter One struggles to keep it all in check. His face is still too young, too open to the other Peters’ reading. He’s…never tried to hide from Peter Three before. He’s never had to. Supposedly they knew each other too well. They knew each other as well as they knew themselves.

Is he realizing now, remembering that their bond was only a few hours old when Three called him “brother”? Is he remembering what happened the last time he trusted someone too soon? Has Peter Three dredged all of that horror and distrust back to the surface?

You saved him.

You terrified him.

Family is forever. Supposedly. Family loves each other unconditionally. Supposedly. His nails bite into his soiled palms against the urge to cry, beg, scream. He knows it isn’t his right to demand they understand but he wants them to! They should have known already! If they knew him at all, they would have grasped that his love is…a wild thing. He doesn’t want to call it obsessive but it is deep and desperate.

Family loves each other unconditionally. In his mind that means without restraint.

Was it really such a surprise to them? They should have understood already. He’d told them the truth from the start. I stopped pulling my punches.

What he feels for them isn’t in the same vein as what he felt for Gwen but it runs just as deep. Within those first few hours, he knew he loved them as surely as he knew his own name. And all they said in return was “Thank you.”

Maybe it’s his fault. Maybe he loves too far and too fast. That “Thank you” should have been his first sign that they wouldn’t figure it out as quickly. He should have impressed it upon them further before tonight. He should have been clearer.

You mean the world to me—all three of our worlds. You’re all I have. You gave me hope again. You give me strength. You hold the last of my heart, whatever Gwen left behind. I don’t know what I’d do without you. If anything happened to you, it would destroy whatever’s left of me. What breaks you breaks me. I can never let that happen. I’ll break them first. I’d break anything for you.

That’s all he’s ever done these past years. Until his brothers, he poured all that was left of himself into the city—and whatever or whoever tried to break his city, he broke first.

Now he has them and more importantly, they have him. He’ll give everything he has to them, for them, without a second thought. Tonight he can’t remember if there was a first thought. The clearest thing he remembers is that someone put their hands on Peter One with intent to break and that was unacceptable. Beyond that it was all white and red and the thunder of his wild, angry heart. Then it was Peter Two’s voice, hollering things he didn’t process, all of which amounted to the truth that he loved too much.

He was gentle again when he reached to pull Peter One off the ground. He tried to tell himself that it was the blood that made him recoil but that didn’t do anything to dull the agony of watching it. Peter One flinching, scuffing himself on the asphalt to dodge the touch of his brother, his protector…

Seeing that…For a split second, Peter Three had wished he could die on the spot.

Now he just wishes he could get the rest of the blood off so they could stop looking at him like that. Like he’s made of glass that will cut them if they get too close.

Peter Two’s eyes finally meet his. They’re as dim and cool as ice; he can’t see a thing in them. He wonders if the dread within him comes anywhere close to whatever Peter One felt, facing unrecognizable things in his eyes.

Maybe this is it. They can never love him as much as he loves them; he had known that from day one. Today’s the day they’ll decide that gluing him back together wouldn’t be worth the trouble and sweep the broken glass into the garbage to be forgotten. Better that than to risk their skin on his sharp edges.

Their final rejection might be the thing to end him but he’ll go with the belief that he stayed sharp to make them as safe as he could, and he was right to.

Peter Two pulls him close.

He hadn’t realized that he was shivering until now that he has warm arms around him. Still he can’t bring himself to return the gesture. He can’t touch him, he doesn’t deserve to, he doesn’t want to dirty his brother with any trace of the blood he spilled. He’s too precious for Three’s hands right now.

“That can never happen again,” Peter Two murmurs against his ear and it rings far louder than anything he had been shouting before.

He wants to say that it won’t.

But he loves them too much and they really don’t know him at all.

#marvel #spider man #fanfiction #peter parker #peter two #peter three #dark peter parker #peter 3 has anger issues #protectiveness #overprotective #angst #worry #brotherly love #unhealthy attachments #get this man some therapy #andrew garfield #tobey maguire #tom holland

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