#his most treasured memory is between him and bruce

[krdaaaa]

Jason Todd is a momma's boy AND a daddy's boy (but he doesn't want to admit it)

You can pry this from my cold dead hands.

#man will jump to defend talia #dunking on Bruce is like breathing air for him #doesn't mean he won't freak out when B man is hurt or sick or sad in any way #only Jason gets to make fun of his dad no one else #dc #dc comics #batman #his most treasured memory is between him and bruce #i will never not cry about it #waaaaaaa

[mlmxreader]

Auguries of Innocence | Bane x gn!reader

anonymous asked: Bane: Hiya! Hope alls well 🖤. May I please give you a request to use the following prompts for big tiddy Bane X non-binary, male, or gn!Reader: "Look, you're gonna be alright"+ "I got you, don't worry" Thank you very much 🖤! 🐍anon

summary: when you need him most, Bane is always, and will always, be there for you in any way that you need him to be.

tws: brief nudity mentions, swearing, poetry???

support your fanfic writers by reblogging what you read & enjoy

Bane hadn't expected it. The hammering against his thick metal door, the desperate cries of his name, but when he opened it and he saw you, the surprise soon turned to worry; you were soaked, shivering and shaking as you sat down.

He gave you a towel, and furrowed his brows as he handed you a cup of coffee once you had sat down on the uncomfortable and stiff sofa. He knew for a while that you had been staying with Bruce Wayne, and never really took much notice, until he saw that you had brought a suitcase and a backpack with you.

It didn't take him long to figure out what had happened, and as he sat down opposite you, there was little that Bane could do or say.

"I got you, don't worry," his voice was just a slight grumble, reassuring like a thunderstorm after a scorching summer. "You'll be alright."

You nodded, sniffling as you swallowed thickly and tried to regain some of your composure. "Promise?"

Bane nodded slowly. "Of course. You're more than welcome to stay for as long as you like, I like having you around, you know that, my spectre."

You were shaky as you smiled, unsure of what to do with your hands and what to say, but you knew Bane well enough; you knew that he would never turn you away or turn on you when you needed him, when you needed him above everyone else.

You sipped your coffee, murmuring softly. "Thank you…"

"No one will ever hurt you again," Bane growled, shaking his head. "I will make sure of it. All you have to do is tell me, I don't care if someone was merely rude, or if they punched you - they won't see another day."

"Bane-"

"My spectre," he huffed, glaring at you. "Don't argue."

You put the coffee down between your feet and ran your hands down your face, cupping your mouth. "I'm not. I, I won't. I've… I've had enough arguments today."

Bane sighed, moving closer and moving the coffee cup safely out the way before he knelt down between your legs, his hands on your calves as he groaned softly. The only indication that he would have smiled if he could. "Memory, hither come, and tune your merry notes; and, while upon the wind your music floats."

You furrowed your brows, hands clinging to his mask by instinct as you tried to remember what he was quoting; it was always something old, something that you never would have known if you didn't know him.

His niche intelligence meant that you could listen to him talk for hours; that voice helped more than you wanted to admit, too.

"I'll pore upon the stream where sighing lovers dream, and fish for fancies as they pass within the watery glass."

His hands dragged up to your thighs as he rose slightly, the metal of his mask glittering in the dim lights of what you could only call his lair; Bane never stayed anywhere for very long, but regardless of where he went, he always made sure you could visit if you so wanted to.

If you ever needed him.

He treasured you, was loyal to you.

"I'll drink of the clear stream, and hear the linnet's song; and there I'll lie and dream the day along."

He pressed the cold metal to the side of your neck, knocking the skin slightly in an attempt to mark it but to no avail; every time, he always wished that he could have sunk his teeth into your skin and he could have tasted the salt of your sweat on his tongue. The soft rise and fall of your breath against his lips. Bane wished, he wished and he wished, that such a thing was possible.

"And, when night comes, I'll go to places fit for woe, walking along the darken'd valley with silent Melancholy."

Your breath hitched when you felt the harsh huff of his breath, filtered through the cold mask, against your ear; he had you pinned to that harsh sofa, but you didn't mind, hands on the straps of his tactical vest as you closed your eyes and allowed yourself to become lost in his safety, his security.

Loyalty and dedication. Support and encouragement. The fierce need to defend and to guard. To protect. His hands were rough when he tugged at your shirt, fingertips shining from the dewdrops that had landed on them.

"I think we should take this off, spectre," he breathed out. "Get you into something warm and dry… I think I might have a few things lying around."

"You sure?"

"Of course," Bane agreed, pulling away. "I won't look when you… take what you want to take off."

"I wouldn't mind if you did," you said quietly. "It's nothing you haven't seen before."

He laughed, the sound muffled and hoarse. "But you know I won't if you don't want me to."

He got up and turned around, covering his face with his hands just to make sure that you knew he wouldn't look as you began to strip; you didn't mind at all, Bane had seen everything. You had been together long enough that, when there was time for it, you were happy to share the shower with him.

Helping him wash his back and letting him scrub you down. Bane had always been so good to you.

"Bane," you whispered. "Turn around."

"I shouldn't," he grumbled, taking a step away from you and heading towards his wardrobe.

You couldn't help but to laugh. A pink outline had formed around the contours of his mask. You made him blush; so long being together and you could still make him blush.

You were more than impressed with yourself, if you were honest; Bane was a beast of a man, known for his brute strength and durability, known for being more than brutal even when he didn't need to be.

And yet there he was, blushing like a schoolboy and keeping his eyes tightly closed when he held out one of his shirts and a pair of his trousers for you to wear. You took them, rewarding him with a kiss to the edge of his mask that only made him grumble, the pink outline becoming a harsher colour.

"Are you decent?" He asked after a while, and when you told him you were, he took a seat on the sofa, and stole a swig from your coffee. His eyes raked up and down your body, and he nodded in approval. "You should wear my clothes more often, robin redbreast."

"And why would that be?" You scoffed, raising a brow.

"You look a lot better in them," Bane admitted, tapping his thigh and growling with what you knew to be delight when you sat on his lap. "Now that I have you all to myself, I can actually see."

You rolled your eyes at him, your hands on his broad and strong shoulders as you hummed. But your face fell, and you swallowed thickly when you felt a tightness in your chest. "Y'know, as exciting as it is to actually be able to be your… y'know, Partner in everything but crime… I can't think of why Bruce would-"

"Don't worry about him," Bane hissed. "Look, you're gonna be alright, my little robin redbreast, my spectre… you'll be alright. I'll make sure of it. I'll look after you."

#mlem writes #bane fanfic #bane fanfiction #tdkr bane #bane dc #bane x reader #bane x you #bane oneshot #dc bane #bane #tdk fanfic #tdkr fanfic #tdk #nolanverse #the dark knight trilogy #the dark knight #tom hardy x reader #tom hardy imagine #tom hardy fanfic #tom hardy

[sparkypantaloons]

Mosaic

Tim hadn't even particularly liked Jason. They hadn't had the best introduction and nobody could say Jason was easy to get on with. But Bruce loved Jason and Tim loved Bruce. If Bruce needed to keep his promise to make it through, then Tim would make sure that he did.

Batman needed Robin. Even if they aren't who they were.

~

Bruce is in his study. Tim hasn't seen him in hours now. Doesn't dare try the door, can only assume it's locked. 

The older man lasted the morning, at least. Much longer than Tim had thought he would. And if the others noticed the tightness in Bruce's jaw during lunch, they didn't comment on it. Just like nobody commented when Bruce excused himself for the afternoon. Locked himself away in Bruce Wayne's cave, rather than Batman's. 

Tim sighs, picks up a lone roller skate. Faded red with silver lightning bolts down the side. It's tiny, must have belonged to Jason when he first arrived at the Manor. Eleven years old and yet to hit a growth spurt. 

Tim looks for the second skate. Rummages through the last of the debris in Jason's closet. The dregs of a childhood cut short, gathering dust for far too long. 

There are board games and stationery and magazines. Old clothes and broken trinkets and hand-me-downs from Dick. There are more notebooks than Tim can count, with stories and homework and case notes scribbled in them. One of them is full of <i>Jason Peter Wayne</i> and <i>Jason Todd-Wayne</i> written over and over again, like the eleven year old was testing them out. But most of what else is here is just teenage rubble. Little worth keeping. No second roller skate. 

Tim places the first carefully on top of the discard pile. They can't give away just one, after all. Clicks a photo on his camera. 

It's taken the best part of two days. Many hands make light work, but none of this has been light. Not just the emotional toil, the mental upheaval of clearing out a life cut short. But the physical too. Getting rid of Jason's old bed had nearly done Bruce's back in. Even with Dick and Tim's help. And Jason has— had... so many books, that they've filled five boxes already. Tim knows he'll feel every one of them tomorrow. 

The room, once all that was left living of a story half told, is nearly empty now. There's the bottom of the closet left to clear. The last few boxes to take to the charity shop. A few posters still on the wall. Little left to say that Jason Todd-Wayne had lived here. Had a home here. A family. However unconventional. 

Tim thinks Bruce is taking it pretty well, all things considered. 

He'd eventually agreed to clear out the room, strip it bare, ready for redecorating. End its days as a memorial shrine. He'd been doing well until Tim had found the marks on Jason's door frame. One for Bruce, six foot two, aged— the number has been scribbled out. And one for Jason, five foot four and a half, aged twelve and three quarters. 

Bruce had let his fingertips rest over the scrawled handwriting. Had stood there a little too long. Eyes wet and wistful. 

He had an old copy of Treasure Island clutched to his chest. Fat with damp and age. A one eyed teddy bear squeezed between his fingers. Threadbare and worn. 

Jason had come with these to the Manor and Bruce couldn't bear to see them go. 

"A photo." Tim had suggested, gently moving Bruce so he stood against the frame. The last thing they needed after two days of work was Bruce deciding he couldn’t go through with it because of a doorframe. Tim snapped a picture of the older man, still six foot two, next to his name still scrawled in the wood. 

The room looks strangely sad once it's empty. The walls a faded mosaic of where posters and furniture have been removed. The carpet still flat where wooden legs have stood. 

The windows are open, and the fresh air of the spring evening brings light to the otherwise heavy room. 

Tim stands in the doorway, snaps a photo before he leaves. Just as a little insurance. In case Bruce can't bear the changes they've made. Tim will upload it all into a file, create a time lapse of the changes. Somewhere for Bruce to revisit. If he needs to... 

~ 

The next day the contractors come in. They rip up the carpet and strip the walls. The ensuite gets knocked through and the old light fixtures swapped out ready for new ones. 

Bruce is conspicuous only by his absence. When 4pm rolls around and he still hasn't shown, Tim finally caves and checks on his whereabouts. Bruce had promised to see this through, after all. The computer shows that Batman never came home last night. Is holed up in his Crime Alley safe house from the looks of it. 

Tim tries not to think about the first time he trailed Bruce there. The way the older man was slumped in the shower. Bleeding and sobbing and delirious with grief. Begging to join his boy. It was a long time ago now, Tim tells himself. Bruce wouldn't be that reckless again. Not after so many years. 

Besides, it had been Bruce's promise to change the room. Make it new. Exorcise the ghost of Jason's childhood, that still haunted that corner of the Manor. He had promised to see it through. Even if it was Tim who had become the driving force. Always the one to pull Bruce back from the brink, help him to get the job done right. Batman still needed a Robin. Even if neither of them are who they were.

So it's Tim who spends all day lurking in the corridor outside Jason's bedroom. And Tim who the contractors call when they make a discovery. 

At some point during all of the deconstruction they find another bundle of notebooks. Wrapped in newspaper and string and hidden behind a loose floorboard. 

Tim doesn't throw them out like he did the others. But he doesn't look at them either. Fifteen year old Jason still deserves his secrets, no matter how long he's been gone. Instead, Tim puts them in his own bedroom, in the hidden drawer of his desk. For safekeeping. 

He doesn't tell Bruce. 

~ 

It takes the contractors a couple more days to fit the new bathroom, lay down the new floor and prime the walls. Then Bruce finally reappears. Paint bucket under one arm and Damian's hand in his other. 

Dick is behind them, holding onto Bruce's shoulders and steering him through the door. The lightness in Dick's eyes a direct contrast to the tightness of Bruce's jaw. 

Tim turns on an old radio, he and Dick lay down giant dust sheets to cover the new wooden floor, and then together the four of them begin to paint. 

When Jason originally moved in, Bruce had let him decorate his new room as he pleased. It was Jason's first after all. But Jason was eleven, so two walls had been black and two a garish red. Now they're slowly turning a cool mint green. A soothing balm over the fading past. 

It only takes a few hours for Bruce's jaw to slacken. For him to engage in the banter with more than grunts or nostril flares. When Cass comes up at lunchtime with sandwiches he actually smiles. Though he always has one for Cass. Tim tries not to think about it. 

They work past sunset, eager to get three coats on before they call it a day. Damian sits on Bruce's shoulders to carefully make sure the paint meets the ceiling. Tim and Dick are relegated to the floor. Lie awkwardly on their sides, tiny paint brushes in their hands. The wood beneath them hard and uncomfortable. 

When they're finished, the room looks very minty. Maybe even... too minty. The thought makes a hysterical laugh bubble up in Tim’s throat. He snaps a picture of the empty room when they're done, and leaves before his laughter escapes. 

~ 

On the sixth day they move in the new furniture. A modern, king sized bed, to replace the four-poster eleven year old Jason had chosen. It has a headboard made from a repurposed pallet, that Damian has skilfully decorated. Tim can't tell if they're meant to be birds or leaves, but against the mint of the wall it almost looks like a garden. Nice enough. Tim thinks. 

They bring in a new dresser and the refurbished bookshelf from Martha's old reading room. Fill it with Jason's favourite books from the library. The only concession to the room’s former inhabitant that Tim would allow. Damian has painted this as well. Little pictures that will only show when a book is taken from the shelf. A little gift for the reader. 

Next to the bookshelf they create a reading nook. A giant armchair and footrest. Covered in cushions, and throws, with a luxurious rug underfoot, and a warm lamp and side table to boot. 

Tim snaps another picture. Reckons he'd have been a pretty decent interior designer in another life. 

By dinner time they're done and Tim whips out the final flourish. A small bird seed table that sticks to the outside of the window. 

"For the Robin's." He tells Bruce, sprinkling sunflower seeds on the little tray. 

Bruce squeezes Tim's shoulder but doesn't speak. For once, Tim doesn't need him to. 

~ 

On the seventh day, Jason comes home. 

He's still in his hospital gown. His broken leg propped up in the wheelchair, toes poking out the end of the cast. The nasal cannula wraps around his ears, passes the scar where they shaved his head and glued his skull back together. It runs down to the oxygen tank on the back of his wheelchair. The bruising around his jaw and his eyes is a sickly yellow colour now, no longer the awful black they'd been when Tim had found him. But the swelling has gone down at least. His eyes are still bloodshot, where the capillaries have burst, making his irises a striking green. His mutilated rist and missing fingers are hidden below layers of bandages. He looks small in the chair. He's lost weight in the hospital. But he's here. He's alive. 

That's all that matters, Tim thinks. 

Jason offers a small smile when the family greet him at the door. Dick and Steph hold a welcome home banner between them, Damian at Dick's other side looking furious with the balloons he's holding. Duke blows a party horn and is popping party poppers and Cass steps forwards to offer Jason a giant Bat-plushie. Jason lets out a weak laugh, wincing slightly as it jostles his broken ribs. 

“Babs is sorry she couldn’t be here.” Dick says. “But she’s challenged you to a race down the drive when you’re ready.”

Alfred pushes Jason carefully into the Manor, and the rest of the family subtly retreat as Bruce steps forwards to greet his son. Tim lingers. Watches as Bruce crouches beside the wheelchair, eyes level with Jason's, his hand on the back of the younger man's head. "I'm so glad you're here, son." Bruce murmurs, his other hand finding Jason's. 

Tim doesn't hear Jason's reply. Looks away awkwardly as both men wipe at their eyes, whisper quiet words to each other. Tries to ignore the ache of longing in his chest. 

When Bruce stands up, Tim steps forwards. "Congrats on not dying again." He says, with more levity than he feels. The sight of Jason's mangled body still follows him sometimes. Tim's not sure this patchwork version is much better. 

Jason shrugs his good shoulder, tries to feign an air of nonchalance. "I made a promise, didn't I?" His voice is still hoarse from where he screamed his throat bloody. 

Tim nods. Follows as Bruce pushes the chair through to the dining room to join the rest of the family. 

They have tea and cake and cucumber sandwiches, but Jason has only had half a cup when he starts to flag. 

"I'll take you up." Bruce says, noticing the younger man's exhaustion. 

Jason shakes his head. "Five more minutes." He says. He beckons Tim over. "I can’t— Tim, if it's that room, I can’t—“ His words come out staccato, like he's a robot learning to speak. 

"Don't worry." Tim soothes. "I took care of it." 

Jason nods, jaw tight. Looking for all the world like Bruce and entirely unconvinced. 

"I made a promise too." Tim reminds him gently. 

He doesn't hear Jason's reply. Bruce re-appears and wheels him from the table. 

~ 

Tim is in the Cave. He’s going over the case file again. It's the only way he sleeps these days. A terrible bedtime story of how Jason Todd-Wayne was nearly lost to them a second time. If Tim studies it enough, he can see all the opportunities he nearly missed to figure out where Jason was being held, can identify all of the discoveries that were just flukes. Can make sure he never cuts it that close with his family's lives again. 

It's not that he even particularly likes Jason. They didn’t exactly have the best introduction and nobody would say Jason was easy to get on with. But Tim loves Bruce and Bruce loves Jason. Tim loves Dick and Alfred too and they love Jason as well. In the worst possible way, Jason gave Tim this family and whatever has happened between them, Tim owes the man for that. If keeping Jason safe and whole and here keeps them together, then that’s what Tim will do.

Besides, he thinks. The family of my family, is family.

It’s getting late, or early. Nearing 3am, so he clicks off the computer. Heads up towards the house. Bruce had cancelled patrol tonight. Had asked Luke and Kate and Helena to take care of things. For once, everyone had been in agreement.

Tim finds himself wandering past Jason’s new, old room. The door is slightly ajar, light spilling out into the hall.

He knocks lightly, pushes it open.

Bruce is asleep in the reading nook. Head back and mouth open, snoring softly in his robe and slippers. Jason watches him from the bed, like he can’t quite believe he’s there. Surrounded by the machines and wires keeping him stable. Keeping him alive.

“Want me to get him out of here?” Tim asks quietly.

Jason’s eyes slide to Tim. He shakes his head.

Tim walks over to the bed, hands Jason the bundle of notebooks, wrapped together in paper and string. Jason looks at him wide-eyed. “Where did you—?” He stops when his voice cracks.

Tim shakes his head. “The guys who did the bathroom found it.”

“Did you—?”

“No.” Tim says, perching on the end of the bed.

Jason’s fingers on his good hand tremble, as they slowly pull at the string tying the bundle together. He unwraps the paper. There’s a leather notebook with the Wayne insignia on it. An old symbol Bruce’s grandfather had used. The notebook is stuffed full of papers. Jason opens it slowly.

“Bruce gave it to me.” He says quietly. “When I first moved here.”

He pulls out his adoption certificate, near enough pristine apart from the crease in the middle. There are photos as well. Some of Jason and Bruce, some of Bruce and Dick, that were clearly taken by Jason. Lots with Alfred and with Ace. There are some of Jason’s mother. Of his first day at school, long before Catherine fell sick and Willis turned mean. Where he’s barely five and toothy grinned, a giant mop of curls atop his head. There are letters his grandma wrote him, before she passed away. Birthday cards and Christmas cards and at least two Hanukkah cards. Jason draws a shaky breath, as he spreads them about his lap.

“I can digitise these for you, if you like.” Tim says, carefully picking up a picture of Jason and Bruce, bundled up in the snow. A deformed looking snowman stood between them. Jason has always had so much more of Bruce than the rest of them. Than Tim.

Jason flinches. “I— Tim.” His voice breaks. “Why?”

Tim shrugs. “Then you can look at them whenever. On your phone and stuff.”

Jason shakes his head. “No, I mean…” He gestures to the room, to himself. “All this. Me. Why are you…”

Tim stares at him. Thinks of the way he had looked when Tim found him. Limbs twisting away from his body, blood bubbling at his lips. The glassiness of his eyes…

Tim’s seen dead bodies before, saw his first at the circus, all those years ago. Jason’s was different. It wasn’t the thought of losing the man himself that had hit Tim in that moment. But everything else Tim would lose because of it. That they’d lose Bruce again and permanently this time. Tim would lose Bruce and then Dick would become Damian’s father, instead of Tim’s brother, and Alfred would lose himself in the sorrow of losing Jason and Bruce both, and why would Cass stay if Bruce wasn’t here to be her father and then the only family Tim had left would all be gone. All because of Jason.

“I tried to kill you.” Jason finishes desperately when Tim doesn’t speak.

Tim shrugs. “Ages ago.”

Jason stares at him incredulous. “This room.” He croaks. “It’s—“

<i>I didn’t do it for you.</i> Tim wants to say. <i>I did it for Bruce. For my… for my Dad. Mine. Not yours.</i> Because Jason had rejected Bruce, rejected him over and over again in a way Tim never could. But Bruce needed Jason. Needed him alive and home and safe. So Tim needed him that way too.

Bringing him home was the only way it would work. The doctors had made clear that Jason was still in very real danger. That without constant care and support his condition could easily destabilise. That he might never recover as it was. 

Bruce was desperate, but Jason refused. Couldn’t do it. Couldn't go back to the Manor with the ghost of his childhood still haunting the halls.

“If I had lived it wouldn’t even look like that now.” He had sobbed, half delirious on pain meds, to Tim one night. “I would have changed it. But he just wants me stuck as that stupid kid forever.”

“What would it have looked like?” Tim had asked. “I’ll sort it.” Tim had promised.

"Don't worry about it." Tim says, dismissing the words that Jason can't get out. 

Jason looks pained, opens his mouth to say more. A loud grunt from behind cuts him off. The two of them turn to Bruce.

He blinks at them bleary eyed, confused by his own snoring waking him up. “What time is it?” He asks.

Tim checks his watch. “Half three.” He says.

“Jason.” Bruce stumbles towards them. “Are you okay? Why are you up?”

“‘m fine.” Jason says quietly. He’s turned his attention back to the photos and cards and letters in his lap.

“What’s all this?” Bruce voice is tender, as he sits himself next to Jason.

Tim rises, excuses himself. Leaves the two of them to each other and their memories. The part of Bruce’s life Tim will never be part of. Limbs and heart aching as he climbs into bed. The week finally over.

He falls into a deep and empty sleep.

~

Tim wakes the next day to his curtains being pulled open. Sunshine spilling across his face. “S’too early, Alfred.” He rolls over, moans into his pillow.

A large hand runs over the back of his head, calloused fingers through his hair. “It’s nearly four, Tim.” Bruce says softly. “Time to get up.”

Tim tries to detangle himself from his sheets. Twists under Bruce’s hand so he can see the older man. “Where’s’Alfred?” He mumbles, wiping his eyes.

Bruce runs his hand over the back of Tim’s head. Lets it rest on his shoulder. “He’s helping Jason with his dressing change.”

“Oh.” Tim blinks.

Bruce drops his eyes. “I know these last few months I’ve been—“ He cuts himself off, squeezes Tim’s shoulder. “I know I’ve been focused on your brother.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Tim says, cutting off Bruce’s apology. He doesn’t need to hear it. Doesn’t care, particularly. Has long since made peace with his rank in the hierarchy.

Bruce frowns, drops his hand. “But I do worry about it.” He says. “I worry about it a lot.”

Tim doesn’t know what to say to that. So he doesn’t say anything.

Bruce holds a hand to Tim’s face. Looks at him with a small smile. The kind of smile that makes the corner of his eyes crinkle. The kind that Tim can count on one hand how often has been directed at him. It makes his stomach swoop. 

“I know I don't say it very often, Tim…” He clears his throat. “But I’m so glad you’re here, son.” 

The words sound as soft to Tim’s ears as freshly fallen snow. Soothe the longing in his chest, if just for a moment. He holds his hand over Bruce’s, gives him a smile in return. “Me too, B.” He says. “Me too.”

#batfam #batfam fic #spbfic #batfic #batfamily #bruce wayne #jason todd #tim drake #batfamily fanfic #batdad

[a-very-tired-bitch]

Why Jake Marshall might be my favourite witness in Ace Attorney

Inspired by this post, give it some love y’all.

I am a whore for Ace Attorney (specifically Klavier Gavin, sir I am looking respectfully). This is news to nobody who knows me because since I’ve started replaying it I have not shut up about Miles Edgeworth. The game is excellent, especially in terms of their characters, which also isn’t news to anyone but I want to particularly talk about Jake Marshall.

Obviously, SPOILERS for mainly ‘Rise from the Ashes’ from AA1, but I will mention things from previous cases so warning for that. Also, DISCLAIMER: these are just my opinions and my interpretations of this character and the case he appears in.

First and foremost, SL-9 is a tragedy. Seven lives were irreparably damaged due to one man’s greed and hunger for power. The whole case had such potential to be a victory and instead became a bitter defeat for almost everyone involved. So, let’s look at the characters who were a part of this:

Angel Starr - She was an excellent detective and interrogator to the point where she was known as the ‘Cough-Up Queen’ (iconic) and evidently was passionate about her work, judging by her intense hatred for the prosecutors who got her laid off.

Bruce Goodman - Most of the information we get about Detective Goodman is related to his murder which says a lot, in and of itself, but I think it takes a certain kind of pure-hearted naivety to ask the man who closed up the very case you have suspicions about to open it up again.

Miles Edgeworth - SL-9 was his first big case and he took the evidence he was given trustingly and produced a verdict in court that he was almost certainly exceedingly proud of, only for it to be the source of the rumours that plagued him for the next two years (and what followed - Mr Edgeworth I am so sorry).

Ema Skye - Despite having locked away a lot of her memories of the case, the event was extremely traumatic for her without even considering her age at the time and the aftermath of it resulted in a rift between her and her sister, her only family, even causing her to alter the course of the rest of her life by dedicating herself to forensic study (an absolute queen).

Neil Marshall - The man had been a promising prosecutor, his talent probably only comparable to Edgeworth, the youngest ever to receive the ‘King of Prosecutors’ award (I think) and, in his earnest and successful effort to save Ema Skye from the serial killer, Joe Darke, he is murdered (nooo don’t die ur so sexy aha) by Damon Gant to further his career and influence.

Lana Skye - A genius detective, Lana was well on the way to becoming one of the best prosecutors in history as well as a well-liked and well-respected figure among the police and lawyers alike, only to be manipulated into obeying the whims of Gant for two years due to her love for her sister.

Jake Marshall - Two years ago, Marshall had a promising detective career who had an extremely close relationship with his brother and he lost both of these violently, didn’t get closure for two years and became cold and obsessive over the case as a result.

This case follows the classic (and also favourite) premise of mine where a cast of grizzled, worn down characters are brought together by one of them, usually by the most driven or focused, to re-explore their shared past to uncover the truth. In this story, we still have the common tropes (the good man murdered to set the events in motion, the flirt with bitter anger, the easy-going hiding their darkness, the figure of authority succumbed to evil and the treasured character whose death still haunts them all) written with the familiar, winding narrative of Ace Attorney where characters of varying depth all lead to the character at the crux of the story, usually hiding behind a front.

So, you might be thinking, that character, that’s Lana Skye, right?

Wrong.

It’s Jake Marshall.

Don’t get me wrong, Lana is at the centre of this case. It’s well-established from get-go and, as we, the player, find out more and more about SL-9 it keeps coming back to Lana Skye. So why does the narrative hinge on Jake Marshall?

Mainly because, if it weren’t for Jake Marshall, the case wouldn’t have happened to begin with. He needed closure for the death of his brother that he knew was tied up with some sort of foul play but he never got the chance to prove it, having been cast aside as soon as the trial of Darke was done. Much like Lana, he changed after that case, became colder and more obsessive behind his easy-going façade, focused solely on SL-9. For two years, along with Angel, he tried to get the case opened up again, becoming increasingly desperate as it came closer and closer to transferral, and finally begged Goodman to help him. This set off the chain of events that became ‘Rise from the Ashes’.

Jake is an extremely guarded character, using his cowboy persona almost as a shield, and this is evident in the first few parts of the case where we can barely get any information out of him until we call him to the witness stand and slowly unravel his story. And with that, he unravels too.

The day after the trial, we see almost a completely different man - he’s resigned to his fate, all the desperation and adrenaline he’s held onto has slipped away, leaving behind an incredibly sad person. His kindliness shines through a bit more which was introduced in the way he speaks to Ema, but now he offers it to Phoenix as well in both appreciation and respect for what he’s undertaking. Jake gives him his story and quietly leaves to turn himself in because he doesn’t see the point in fighting anymore - the straws he was grasping at have fallen out of reach and now he sees someone else probably with the same purity and fire that his team had had during SL-9 that he can pass the mantle to.

I think that this is where the true tragedy of the case lies: once Phoenix discovers the truth and frees the people who worked on SL-9 from their chains, they change. Lana smiles for the first time, Angel’s snappy banter softens into friendly teasing,  Jake, although only for that one moment, opens up a little, and Miles Edgeworth has a midlife crisis (understandable but you did NOT have to do that to Phoenix). And once we see this, we see how badly this case affected all of them. We see what people they used to be before they were broken down  by SL-9, the friendships they had (Jake and Angel feel like the epitome of bisexual solidarity, sue me), and in particular, at least for me, Jake’s grief at the loss of his brother. Because, for all the focus on injustice and the truth, an innocent man died and no one really got the chance to grieve in their determination for retribution. It’s only in the moments before Jake turns himself in that we see him even speak about his brother in a way that isn’t related to the truth that they’re all searching for. And that’s just so sad.

But, yeah! This one’s a bit of a doozy but I suddenly had a lot of feelings about this one cowboy and I needed to yell about it.

#jake marshall #ace attorney #rise from the ashes #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #ema skye #lana skye #damon gant #neil marshall #angel starr #an analysis? #character analysis? #a very haphazard look at my latest brainrot

[analviel]

Bruce's way of showing affection to his kids are different:

Dick are hugs. (Touch is his expression and his comfort and his love and his spirit and the wounds are too fresh to make him have to learn a new way of expression. Bruce was lucky to have Alfred.)

Jason is time. (He wasn't one to hold onto material things. He wants to, but he's learned his lesson and between his life and his treasured books, Jason has his priorities straight and Bruce had a hard time in the beginning to make him take anything he can't bring with him. So memories it is.)

Tim are toys. (Toys, Bat-toys, Tim-toys. Gift giving is the language Tim recognizes the best. His parents were distant but they meant well, they loved him, more importantly he loved them. Being remembered is very important to Tim and so is keeping things to remind him of their presence.)

Cass are words. (Cain rarely if ever talked to her. Words are the first things that are Cassandra's for Cassandra. This is probably the one Bruce had the most trouble with. It occurs to him that he didn't need to, Cass can understand him just as well, but then he realized right after that Cass of all people deserve to learn the word love in the way it's meant to be.)

Damian is space, specifically accommodations of his pets. (You have a place here. You and everything and anything you love have a place here.)

#tim drake #dc #robin #batfam #dc comics #red robin #dick grayson #batman #jason todd #damian wayne #bruce wayne #cassandra cain #nightwing #red hood #batgirl #black bat #orphan #and i write #love language #bat-love #characterization #batfam headcanon

[flyingkiki]

We played dangerously (1/?)

Because we need more stories that show us just how much of a dirty boi Timbo is. The more smtty #TimRae the better. So excited for this story and delve heavily into their drama and dirty deeds. Strap yourselves in, bbs. it's a steamy one.

The history between them ran deep and long, mostly unspoken, messy, and painfully raw. Years later, here they are - older and carrying just a little bit more baggage than necessary. Tim and Raven reflect on their dangerous history and sift through the extra baggage they acquired.

~~~~

“You’re quitting?”

Raven frowned and crossed her arms defensively. She steeled herself as Red Robin stared at her, a look of total disbelief on his face as he processed what she just told him. She ignored how a heavy feeling settled low in her stomach.

“I’m taking a sabbatical,” she said levelly.

“For an undefined period of time,” continued Tim, his voice strained as he drew his eyebrows together trying to process what he just heard five minutes ago. “That sounds like quitting to me,”

She pressed her lips together as she tried to ignore the harsh press of Tim’s emotions against her. She watched him stare at her from across the briefing room, the sound of their computer working on data broke the heavy silence between them. “It’s my life, of course it’s indefinite,”

Tim blinked and followed her stance, crossing his arms as he studied her intently. “I’m not trying to take control of your life, Raven,” he bristled.

Raven tilted her head in challenge. For whatever reason she felt annoyance crawl under her skin. “It sounds like you are,”

“I’m not,” Tim pressed, sighing loudly. With a huff he pulled off his mask and threw it on the briefing table. Raven watched it slide on the flat surface before looking back up at Tim’s confused blue eyes. “Look, I don’t want to fight. You can do whatever you want, Raven. You’re right, it’s your life. I’m sorry if I sounded controlling,”

Raven hummed in acknowledgement. She knew he meant well. She knew Tim well enough that he wanted to understand the situation at hand. She shifted under his gaze and ignored how her stomach gnawed painfully. “When are you leaving?” Tim asked, his tone softer as he slid into the seat across from her. Raven watched him grab his mask and fiddle with it absently. The atmosphere shifted and her stomach churned painfully.

“In two weeks,” Raven replied and sat down in front of him. She watched Tim press his lips together and frown at the news. “I got into a special program. School starts early in August,”

Tim swallowed and threw her a torn look. “I’m glad you’re going off to university,” he began. He paused to inhale as he tried to think. “And this is not something you could do, like part-time online or something?”

Raven frowned at the way he tried to find ways to make her stay. “No,” she said. “Our work is a tight schedule as it is,”

Tim nodded in agreement. He gave a halfhearted smile. “At least I tried,”

Her stomach lurched without her consent and she ignored the jumble of emotions in the room. Her decision was final. This conversation made the move incredibly real. Pain settled low in her stomach. She needed to pack and get things going. “I want a life outside of the Titans, Tim,” she said. “Most of you have lives outside of the Tower. Gar does his stupid acting. Jaime has his family and volunteer work. You run WE, Tim. You all get to do something outside of our uniform. I just want something as close to normal as I can get, whatever that is for Rachel Roth, even if it’s just for a while.”

Tim sighed. The tension was palpable as Tim frowned. His brows furrowed and he nodded. “Yeah, I respect that, Rae,” he said, voice low. Running his hand through his hair, Tim leaned back into his chair with a huff. “Yeah, okay. Yeah,” he breathed and looked deep in thought. She felt the faint press of his carefully controlled emotions. “We’ll make some preparations for your transition and make sure that everything is in order. I’ll let the Justice League know,”

There was a beat of silence between them. Raven was surprised how methodological the conversation was. Then again, was she really expecting an argument for her to stay? There was an inexplicable pin-like pain in her chest she could not shake off. Wasn’t this what she wanted? Sighing softly, she assumed their conversation was done and stood up. Tim probably had to file a report to the JL. She had to pack up and get going with her life – they all did. Raven swallowed a thought.

“Well, thanks,” she said and turned to leave the room. She heard Tim stand up.

“Hey,” Tim called, voice slightly strained. Raven paused and turned back around, eyeing him curiously. Tim swallowed and his brows pressed together and there was a cautious look on his face. “This is not about –”

“No,” Raven cut him off sharply. “It’s not.”

Tim sighed and his shoulders lowered slightly. He caught her blue eyes and Raven watched an expression she cannot quite place cross his face. He offered her a tentative smile and nodded, his brows still furrowed and still looking torn. “Okay,” he breathed. “Yeah, good.” He paused before continuing. “We’ll tell the team after dinner tonight.”

Raven nodded. Her stomach felt heavy, she had enough of this conversation. It was done. “I’m going to start packing up stuff,” she said and made her way towards the door.

“Everyone’s going to miss you, Raven,” Tim said as she opened the door.

She paused at the door, hand resting at the metal doorframe. Her finger tapped the frame thoughtfully as a few stray thoughts ran through her mind, before turning to look over her shoulder, catching Tim’s piercing blue eyes. She sent him a tight smile and buried whatever errant emotions tickled her heart. “Yeah, I’ll miss everyone too. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

She did not come back anytime soon.

~~

Tim forgot when he was last in the Gotham Public Library – perhaps back when he was still in high school, 11 years ago? He wasn’t all too sure. His high school memories were blurry, given how his vigilante life was far more exciting than high school calculus.

But he was sure that the Gotham Public Library did not look this modern or dazzling since he last stepped into it when he was 15. The large library atrium was cleared out from its usual chairs and tables and instead filled with cocktail tables, round tables with sparkling black and gold table settings, buffet tables lined the walls, upbeat jazz music and heavy conversations filled the usual quiet halls, and every single one of the Gotham’s elite was dressed to the nines.

It was a charity dinner with plates going for the thousands. There was a silent auction too, some collectors’ books were up for grabs. The library was launching a new exhibit with some new codex they found out of Gotham. Wayne Foundation was funding most of the research and restoration work that went with it, and tonight’s event was supposed to help cover costs for the library’s expansion projects.

He idly listened to some politicians talk to Bruce and his siblings, Damian and Cass. Jason had moseyed off somewhere (likely browsing through the bookshelves or bidding on some of the collectibles in the silent auction) – lucky for the asshole. Tim wasn’t really paying attention. There was a lot going on, Tim barely kept up if he was being honest. A business merger was keeping his mind preoccupied, he was flying out to Japan tomorrow morning, and tonight’s dinner was the last place he honestly wanted to be at – but press as CEO of WE was important, Bruce liked to constantly remind him.

“So I was saying to him, ‘Johnny, son, if you don’t pull your pants up, that’s gonna be a lawsuit waiting to happen,’,” said the old man, assistant city treasurer – or whatever – to their small group. The old man heartily laughed, wheezing into his champagne glass. Bruce looked like he just swallowed bad caviar and cleared his throat while Damian and Cass made no effort to hide their bewildered faces. Tim sighed.

“Well, it does sound like a lawsuit waiting to happen, Mr. Peters,” Tim absently fiddled with his scotch glass and wondered if he should get anything stronger to get him through the night.

The man made a wounded sound and said something before slinking off. Bruce and Tim shared an exasperated look. Damian clicked his tongue, absently tapping his glass of orange juice. “This party is terrible, father,” he sniffed and icily scanned the crowd. “May we leave early?”

Bruce eyed his teenage son blandly. “We came here together, we leave together,” he said.

“Tt,” Damian frowned and took a sip from his orange juice.

Tim glanced at Damian, mildly feeling sorry for the 16-year-old gremlin. He remembered how he felt over these galas when he was younger. Internally grimacing at the galas when he first became CEO back when he was 17, Tim hid his displeasure behind his scotch glass while taking a sip.

They milled around more, talking to investors and guests from Gotham’s elite and academe. Tim smiled politely and held conversations where necessary, idly wondering when the night would be over. The crowd soon gathered in the middle of the atrium at the soft chime of a bell, signaling the start of another round of speeches from the library. Tim and his siblings slowly followed Bruce and the rest of the crowd towards the atrium. Tim caught Damian and Cass sharing bored glances.

“We’d like to thank everyone for being with us tonight,” said the Gotham Public Library Head Librarian, a well-dressed elderly man. The man went on with library expansion updates and the latest figures on tonight funds that were raised. Tim barely listed as he checked his phone for his flight details Tam sent him earlier. Ignoring the polite applause that filled the room, Tim continued to discreetly scroll through his itinerary.

“Tonight we’re also delighted to announce the opening of our exhibit, the Life Codex: Ancient Celebrations of Life. The library is honored to house this latest discovery and carry out the research, restoration, and preservation work of these recent discoveries,” the librarian droned on about ancient documents and the restoration work involved. Tim felt Cass nudge him and he blinked, looking up from his briefer. He stared at her quizzically.

“Attention,” she whispered. Tim offered her a sheepish look and pocketed his phone. They both turned their attention back to the stage. He caught sight of Jason’s large built shuffle in next to them, looking utterly bored. Since Jason was ‘legally alive’ again, they had roped him into attending a few events once in a while – much to the older man’s displeasure.

Mr. Tompkins, the Head Librarian, went on to discuss the project details that had gone underway since last month. Documents from Africa had been flown in and the research team had been working on restoring paper and decoding the codex. Tim barely listened as the elderly man droned on and silently wondered if he could still catch some sleep before his flight in the morning. His phone vibrated and he pointedly ignored Cass' look as he pulled out his phone to check an update from Tam.

"Doctor Collins, Dean of Gotham University's history and anthropology department is leading this project and she has built an excellent team for this project. Doctor Collins?" The head librarian welcomed an elderly woman with salt and pepper hair up on stage. Tim drowned out the speech as Dr. Collins started talking about the project, briefly looking at his phone and going through the project document for tomorrow's meeting with the Japanese tech firm. Tim wondered if he could at least get some good sushi while in Tokyo. Perhaps he could ask Tam to squeeze that into his schedule, they could --

"Hey, isn't that…" Jason paused and squinted at the stage. "Huh."

"Tim, look,"

Tim closed his phone and glanced at Cass curiously before turning his attention to the stage. Tim stopped short at what he saw.

Dressed in a flowing halter gown with a modest v-neck and a teasingly stylish slit up her right leg, a strikingly familiar woman walked up on the small platform offering the crowd a tentative smile and a modest wave. Tim watched the small woman carefully shuffle across the platform as a few more members of the research team were introduced. He blinked and stared at the violet-black haired woman and felt his throat tighten.

As if sensing his stare, dark blue eyes caught his light blue ones from across the hall. They zeroed in on him, easily catching him in a sea of hundreds.

There was an inexplicable tightness that seized his chest briefly, as Tim stared back at the woman, watching transfixed as emotions flickered across her face before quickly slipping back into a small pleasant smile and keeping her gaze briefly at him before turning to her colleagues and chuckling at something they were whispering to each other on stage. Tim watched and stared at her, schooling the surprise on his face, and just drinking in every familiar slopes and planes of her face because it had been what? Five? Six? Years since he last saw her.

"That's -"

"Rachel," Tim cut off Cass, blinking away his brief surprise and instead stared intently at his (former?) teammate.

"Rachel Roth leads our research team. Is there anything you'd like to say, dear?" Dr. Collins asked, turning to the group on stage. Rachel looked surprised before shaking her head and waving her hand in decline. "Ms. Roth does excellent work in ancient runes and languages, and restoration work. It's a pleasure to have her on the team. She's a guest lecturer at Gotham U, so if you're lucky, you best sign up for her special lecture series on ancient runes."

Tim watched as Rachel blushed at the praise, ducking her head briefly before chuckling at something a blonde haired woman next to her said. The group on stage shared a laugh and Tim watched curiously at the familiar sight of Raven smiling. There were few more pleasantries on stage before the group had their photo taken

“If we could invite Mr. Bruce Wayne, Mr. Lucius Fox, and Mr. Tim Wayne, to come up on stage for a quick photo with the rest of the team? After which we can proceed with our evening, and hopefully get your support in our library’s expansion work,” the head librarian called.

Tim blinked as Cass nudged him and pulled him out of his thoughts. Clearing his throat, he handed Cass his drink and quickly walked up the stage, following Bruce and Lucius up the small steps. Pulling on his practiced Tim Wayne-CEO-of-WE-smile, he dutifully shook hands with Dr. Collins and the head librarian. He briefly caught Raven’s stare as he moved across the stage to shake hands with people on the stage. Their gaze briefly met and her lips quirked into a small smile before quickly turning away and shuffling to the end of the line and out of reach for any other contact without attracting too much attention on them. Photos were taken swiftly and before Tim knew it everyone was ushered off the stage and he was wrapped up in a rather lengthy conversation on library work and the ongoing renovation projects.

Tim discreetly tried to look over his shoulder, barely catching a glimpse of the familiar slope of Raven’s shoulder disappearing into the crowd.

“Bruce Wayne,” Dr. Collins walked up to them just as the head librarian excused himself. The elderly woman beamed and quickly shook Bruce’s hand.

“Julia, it’s nice to see you again,” Bruce smiled warmly. “You know my son, Tim,”

Tim smiled and shook her hand. “Dr. Collins, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, easily pulling himself out of his thoughts of trying to find Raven in the crowd.

“Mr. Wayne,” The elderly woman beamed and regarded both men in front of her.

Tim chuckled. “Just Tim, please,”

“I worked with you parents, Jack and Janet, many years ago on a few of their archaeological digs, back in their early years. I met you when you were a little boy once or twice. I must say I am impressed at what a successful grown man you've become, Tim,” praised Dr. Collins. The elderly woman hummed and smiled. “CEO of Wayne Enterprises,”

Tim chuckled, pulling on his best boardroom smile. “Thank you,”

“Also, this makes me realize that time certainly flies when the young boy you last saw in diapers has become the CEO of the world’s most successful conglomerate,” Dr. Collins chuckled, beaming up at Bruce with a mischievous smile. “That does make me feel old,”

Bruce chuckled as Tim politely made a face and their small group fell into an easy conversation. “The last eight years with Tim as CEO have been the best years for the company,”

Tim grinned playfully over his scotch. “Careful, is that praise I hear?”

The small group fell into an easy conversation discussing work and the research project. Tim quickly gathered that Dr. Collins was an old family friend of the Waynes, particularly of Bruce’s parents. He kept rapt attention to the conversation, nodding and chiming in where necessary, while occasionally glancing around the room for even a hint of purple or black.

Feeling distracted by tonight’s discovery of Raven, Tim was ready to excuse himself from the conversation and pretend to make a phone call. That seemed to be the best way to try to look around and catch Raven.

“There you are,” Dr. Collins glanced over Bruce’s shoulder and beamed. She beckoned for whoever was behind Bruce to come closer.

“I was looking for you,”

Despite the years that passed, Tim recognized the familiar voice in a heartbeat. He watched as Raven appeared from behind Bruce. He schooled his face, trying to fight away any signs of recognition and familiarity towards the black haired woman. Tim watched in a mix of curiosity and internal surprise as Raven smiled softly at their group and confidently walked up to them. From the slopes of her shoulder, the elegant movements of her hands, to her black-violet hair, deep stormy blue eyes, and that achingly familiar errant dusting of a few freckles just around the hollows of her neck, Raven looked exactly like how he remembered her. Tim blinked and absently tapped his scotch glass as he stared openly at her, a sight he had not seen in years.

“Rachel, please meet Bruce Wayne and his son, Tim. As you know Wayne Enterprises provides extensive funding for our work,” Dr. Collins said, waiving at both men in front of them.

“Mr. Wayne,” Raven began, moving her champagne glass into her left hand and went to shake Bruce’s hand. A smile appeared on her face as she and Bruce exchanged pleasantries. There was no air of familiarity between them, despite the schooled smiles that stretched across both of their lips. Tim knew that practiced look from all the undercover missions he had seen, been with, her. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for all your support,”

Raven turned to Tim and he watched as her smile immediately curled up just a tiny bit more in that familiar teasing way he had not seen in the last six years. There was that achingly familiar twinkle in her eyes he often saw back in the day, reserved for rare occasions, and Tim found himself smiling back at Raven and eagerly drinking in her familiar presence. “Mr. Wayne,” she said to him, a small quiver in her voice that no one but him seemed to pick up. She reached out and shook his hand.

Tim gave her hand a brief squeeze and he was pleased to see how the corner of her lips curled into a familiar amused smile he remembered. “Just Tim,”

Raven hummed and nodded, pulling her hand back. “Thank you again for supporting the research and restoration project,”

“What were you busy with before joining this project?” Bruce asked curiously. There were little updates from Raven throughout the years as she left the team for university and eventually work. While in the early years of her sabbatical Tim kept some updates on her, these eventually became less up to date as Raven eventually seemed to do her own thing.

“I was in Iceland,” Raven supplied and explained that she worked on an ancient runes translation project with the local university for six months.

Tim felt a distant memory tickle the back of his mind and he ignored the tight feeling that accompanied those distinct memories. He ignored the whisps of memories that teased his mind. Dark blue eyes briefly caught his stare and he watched that familiar curl in the corner of Raven’s lips appear. Tim smiled in return. “Iceland is a beautiful country,” he commented.

Raven stared at him, dark blue eyes intense as he remembered them. “It is,”

“We’re glad that Rachel has joined our project. She’s a fine addition to our team,” commented Dr. Collins. The elderly woman smiled teasingly. “And we’re definitely hoping she’ll considering staying in Gotham after the project ends,”

Raven rolled her eyes in amusement. “We’re just two weeks into the project. We have a long way to go,”

Tim looked at her curiously. How could he have missed her entering Gotham?. “You’ve been here for two weeks?”

Raven looked at him as if catching the slight jump in his emotions at this little discovery. “Three actually, if you count my moving in week,” she shrugged in amusement.

Three weeks. Tim stored that information for later, for a later conversation, and ignored how it settled uncomfortably in his stomach. He instead smiled at her and titled his head curiously. “I hope the transfer into Gotham wasn’t too difficult,”

Raven made a face. “It’s been interesting,” she said and Tim easily caught her familiar teasing lilt in her voice.

“Let us know if you need any assistance getting you settled, I’m sure we can send over someone to help you with your apartment,” Bruce offered, smiling charmingly at Raven.

Raven waved him off. “It’s just a few more boxes, nothing really major,”

Tim watched as a young woman tentatively approached them and offered the group an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said to the group and quickly turned to Raven. With a quick tilt of her head towards the right, she made a face. “The University Press wants to talk to you,”

Raven made a face. “Oh, Why?”

“Just stuff about the project and the lecture,” supplied the young woman. She offered Raven a wry smile and made a face. “Also one of them asked if you were single,”

Raven rolled her eyes before smiling tightly at Bruce and Tim. “I’m sorry, if you’d excuse me. It was really nice to meet you. Thank you again for all your support. I hope you’ll visit the library again and we could show you around our work,” she said. Quickly turning to Dr. Collins, she nodded politely. “I’ll see you later, Julia,”

Smiling at Bruce and Tim, she tilted her head and there was an amused glint in her eyes as she stared at them. “Gentlemen,” she then turned on her heels, casually drank the rest of her champagne with just a little bit more purpose and seemingly bracing herself for what was about to happen next. Standing a little taller and squaring her shoulders, Raven followed the young assistant towards the press. “So, what did you tell them?” she asked, amusement lacing her voice.

As the conversation between Dr. Collins and Bruce resumed, Tim took a long sip of his scotch and stared at Raven’s retreating form. A million thoughts ran through his mind and he silently wondered just how fast he could get through his business trip in Tokyo. Sushi would have to wait for another time.

#timrae #tim drake #teen titans fanfiction #raven roth #raven #timrae 2021 year of smut and steam #be ready for baggage #lots of drama #and lots of steam because WE KNOW THESE BBS

[amonrawya]

The Greatest Gift of All

(Inspired by^ for the people who asked :D hope it was worth the wait!)

*

Long before the war, before Captain America or the Winter Soldier, there was simply Bucky and Steve. At least, that's what history says. But they missed out one very important person, a girl called Y/N.

Women in those times often found themselves with little opportunity, and only two easily attainable pathways in life: wife and mother. But Y/N carved out a life for herself that defied all expectations, and it all started in Brooklyn.

She dived headlong into scuffles, usually next to Bucky in defence of Steve. Regardless of the opponent, Y/N stood by them both, and often held her own quite impressively.

Her dress style borrowed from more masculine cuts, and Y/N was never seen without her cap. A lot of people had a problem with this, but she shut them up fairly swiftly.

Everything about this girl drew Bucky in, a battle he fought with little effort. They reveled in each other, flaunting their love at every opportunity. More than a few were jealous that the rough and tumble girl got the best looking boy in town. 

In a way, before even coming of age, they started an adult life together. The three of them moved into a flat. Y/N and Bucky took hard labour jobs, or anything they could get. They had little room to be picky. 

Both managed to hook steady summer jobs at the local docks. They used most of their money to keep a roof over their heads, buy food, and pay for Steve's medical needs. He attended art school, and sold his work every now and then; but physically, he was in no condition to work.

The war appeared on the horizon, just as they started to pull themselves an inch above the poverty line. Y/N saw it coming, the inevitable. She treasured every second they spent together, and dreaded the day when the draft came.

A lot of the older women she worked with were disrespectful, looking down on her pre-marital relationship with Bucky. They claimed she couldn't possibly understand their grief, despite the fact Y/N had seen Bucky off at the docks that very morning. 

In truth, they already planned on being married, but at the time, they simply didn't have the funds. Bucky promised, once the war ended, that ring would be on her finger.

Except, he never came home. Not properly. The person Hydra gave back to Y/N was damaged and jaded, angry at the world, angrier than she ever saw. But still, they loved each other. Though she never forgave them for stealing away his innocence, for trying to snuff out the light in his soul. A part of him would always belong to them, and she hated it.

Refusing to stay home while they risked their lives, never knowing, Y/N trained as an army nurse, working specially with the Howling Commandos unit.

Then one day, she went out to welcome them back from a mission. Every face looked devastated, but none more so than Steve. His eyes, red-raw and streaming, seemed incapable of rising from the ground. At first, the realisation didn't process, the idea simply incomprehensible.��He promised.

Dugan was the one to finally break through and catch Y/N as she fell, holding her as the tears poured. Once he shook off his daze, Steve took his place, sharing in her grief.

Her world fell apart so quickly, with no warning and no mercy. Their commanders celebrated the capture of Arnim Zola, while Y/N and Steve sat, staring at an empty place at their side.

Everyone mourned Bucky, and swiftly after, began to mourn Y/N, too. The loss took a part of her...the sparkle, the happiness, the laugh that lit up her face. It all vanished. She worked hard, looked after them all, but only Steve was able to make her smile. Even then, it looked pained.

So when Steve went down with the plane, the very last shred of Y/N died with him. No tears left her eyes, no screams ripped up her throat. A cold numbness took over, freezing the woman from the inside out. 

V-Day came and went. The Commandos stood and drank to their lost comrades, and Dugan silently drank another...for the loss of a bright, fiery girl who had virtually nothing to lose, and still lost everything.

She spent her days as a robot, doing nothing but going through the motions of badly imitating life. The flat was empty and quiet, yet somehow, bursting with the ghosts of her loved ones. Nightmares plagued her, terrible images of Bucky's body, forever trapped in a freezing hell, nothing but food for the birds. And Steve, his body...was it cast adrift in the ocean? Or destroyed, burnt to ash in the belly of a metal beast. 

They were simple folk before the war turned them into soldiers, into weapons. Before symbols and flags stole away their names, driving them to sacrifice their lives for a greater cause.

Y/N knew their fight against Hydra was important...knew the honour behind their sacrifice. But when it's you left sitting at an empty dinner table, it's much easier to be angry and bitter.

She never married, never settled, bouncing around countries working as an army nurse. The Commandos slowly died around her, each one fading to grey as the curtain drew the show to a close. Each death, each funeral ripped open her wounds, bigger and deeper each time. Until eventually, Y/N let the blood flow freely.

Or at least, that's what would have happened. But one choice, one decision, made by a boy she thought dead in the far future, changed it all.

*

Bucky Barnes struggled to find himself again. His memories were mostly all returned, if a bit hazy and fragmented. He had Steve there to right any wrong recollections, and connect with on their shared experiences. But something always seemed to be missing, a piece of the jigsaw that hadn't been found.

He remembered Y/N. He remembered her clearer than anything. She was glowing like honey in the sun when Bucky closed his eyes and brought her back to mind.

Face covered in muck, hair tousled and streaked with grease from the boats, soot on the very tip of her nose and a cap perched jauntily on her head; wearing the deepest expression of concentration as she aimed a hanful of rotten fish guts at the sleezy Connell boy from Fifth, who decided his opinion on her backside mattered. The image shone crystal clear. Her laughter, rolling out from between curved lips, beautiful and full of mischief. 

It never failed to make him smile. Or cry. Or sometimes, both. He missed Y/N than he thought possible for a human being. 

Bucky often wondered about her life, whether she went on to marry, or maybe even have children. Was she happy? Did she bury him and move on? If they met today, would Y/N even recognise the man he was now? 

More importantly, in his mind, something he both feared and longed to know: would she still love him?

Unbeknownst to Bucky, Steve saw all this. Understood, to a degree, his pain. But he and Peggy never got the chance to bond so strongly. He knew Bucky needed him, but Steve also knew he needed Y/N more.

So once his goodbyes were said, he looked one last time at Bucky, and smiled beneath his suit as he vanished into time.

*

The living room looked exactly the same as he remembered. Bucky's coat, slung over the back of the chair, his sketchbooks strewn around the desk. Every rip and chip. His heart swelled with nostalgia, and pain, thinking of the life they were supposed to have.

What must have been in their heads...running off to fight, so eager to throw everything away. And who was left to stare at empty beds and eat breakfast alone every morning? Y/N.

His chest constricted, hearing the keys in the door, the lock rattling three times before letting her in. His nerve faltered for the briefest second, wondering if he was ready to see her again.

"Who the hell are you?!"

Time's up.

Slowly, he turned, and watched as Y/N's eyes widened, all the bags in her hands falling to the floor with a crash.

"...Stevie?" The name came out as a whisper, nearly inaudible.

He grinned, laughing as tears stung his eyes. "Hey, spitfire. Long time no see."

"Steve!" She launched herself at him, arms wrapping around his neck and clinging on for dear life. 

Catching her by the waist, he swung Y/N around, burying his face in her hair. They held onto one another as if they might vanish if they let go. But after a minute, Steve gently pushed her back.

"How? How are you here? What are you wearing? I don't understand, Steve, they said you died! Your plane went down in the ocean," she stammered, hand on his forearm with a grip like a vice.

"I survived. The serum kept me alive in the ice for seventy years," he said, questioning his own sanity momentarily; standing in the flat again made everything that happened seem like a distant dream.

Y/N frowned, brows knitting together. "What? Did you hit your head? Steve, this is 1945."

"I know, I came from 2023. I'm alive," he said, and saw her mentally backing away, so added, "I'm alive, and so is Bucky."

Her head snapped up, eyes immediately filling with tears. A dozen emotions whizzed through them in a second; disbelief, pain, hope. It shone clearly in her face as she stepped closer.

What did you say?" She asked, voice choked as she brought her shaking hands up to her mouth.

"Bucky's alive," he repeated softly, "and I can send you to him, in the future. But we don't have a lot of time. You need to listen to me, carefully, and do what I say."

She spluttered, struggling for words. "I, but...what about you?"

"I've made my decision," Steve said, and gently took her hands in his, "now, please, listen."

*

Bucky watched the machine, feeling a wave of numbness wash over his insides. Nothing was a better deal than the pain, the cruel sting of betrayal fighting to be felt. But he beat it back, unable to allow those thoughts validation.

Steve gave up so much for him, he fought for years to get him here. Steve deserved this. And no matter how wrong those words sounded in his head, he resolutely stood by them. 

The seconds ticked by, noted by Bruce's countdown. A flash of guilt almost made Bucky explain what was going to happen, explain that Steve left them. Left him. But he possessed no energy to speak, they'd see in a second, when no one appeared-

Zap. A blinding flash of light.

There's someone there.

Bucky frowned, hands falling from his pockets. Did Steve change his mind? Did he...

All the thoughts in his head stopped as the figure stepped down. Too small, too lithe for it to be Steve. Bucky's heart rate quickened, something in his unconscious already registering his recognition. 

The suit fell away, and if he weren't frozen in place, Bucky wouldn't have been standing. A quiver shot through him, nearly buckling his knees. Shock, fear and pure disbelief all delayed his reaction.

Y/N looked around, amazed, but turned to stone as she set eyes on him. Her face went utterly blank, a strangled sound leaving her lips.

Wearing her yard slacks, with a small bag on her shoulder, her face covered in dirt, hair streaked with grease, cap perched on-top, slanted to one side...she was everything he remembered, and his heart tried to leave his chest to go to her. To be whole again.

But fear held him back. She didn't know the things he'd done, the person he became after the train accident. What if-

"Who is she?" Sam asked, glaring as he stalked towards her, an accusation rising on his lips.

Bucky answered without hesitation, or thinking; the question had been asked countless times over the years. It always recieved the same reply. "My doll."

Sam stopped short, glancing between them, the way neither took their eyes off the other. He nodded, brows still closely knit, and backed off.

Slowly, Y/N approached, encouraged by the sound of his voice. She reached out carefully, when she got close enough. Trembling fingers brushed his cheek, and a shudder ran through her. 

"My Bucky..." She said quietly, eyes roaming over his face, a small smile tugging at her lips, "...you're here, in front of me. Alive."

He swallowed dryly, heart thundering away beneath his skin. "I'm different...you don't know..."

No sooner had the words left his mouth that her eyes found the cold metal where his flesh used to be. In reaching to hold it, she'd been taken by surprise.

Gently, Y/N took the hand in her own, examing the limb with a careful gaze. Moments passed, and she met his eyes again. Bucky steeled himself for rejection, for the disgust and horror.

Her hand went back to his cheek, and he involuntairly leaned into it. The warmth seeped into his blood. She stood on her tip toes, the smile on her lips blossoming into a bright beam of sunlight. "You've always been my Bucky, and always will be. Metal appendages and all."

He fell apart and dove down to capture her lips, clutching her to him with the hunger of a starving man. She pulled herself in, hands tangling in his brown locks, and both tasted salt on the others' lips.

So filled with joy his heart could burst, Bucky revelled in the feeling of holding his girl again. Laughing through the tears, he buried his face in her neck.

Thank you, Steve, for the greatest gift of all.

#marvel #writing #creative #youtube #movies #sacrifice #steve rogers #endgame #captain america: the first avenger #bucky barnes #bucky angst #bucky barns x y/n #bucky fic #bucky x you #bucky imagine #sam wilson #lovers #i love him #love story #time travel #angst with a happy ending #here you guys go #i hope this is okay!

[singtheskyandfightlikehell]

BatFamily Headcanons: Stuffed Animals

In an attempt to productively combat my recent writer’s block, I’m practicing writing the batfam characters through short character study fics (which I will post once I make enough) and comparative headcanons. I might end up making short fics out of these, as well, since some of them got a bit long anyways

Today I decided to explore how many stuffed animals each member of the batfam (plus an adjacent character or two) has, what they think of them, how they got them, etc. I’ve got eleven characters on this list (and I’m still missing some, sorry)

Bruce:

Bruce put aside stuffed animals when he was eleven, deciding it was time to become serious. However, since acquiring children, he has been gifted a number of stuffed animals, ranging from a small and realistic brown bat to a child-sized bear wearing his cape and cowl. None of the children know this, but he keeps them all in a prominent position in his walk-in closet. Sometimes, when he has a particularly nasty fight with one of his kids, or he discovers something (like an injury) that they were hiding from him, he’ll tell the stuffed animals all the things he struggles to tell his children in the hopes that, one day, he’ll figure out how to express himself when it actually counts.

Alfred:

Alfred has no stuffed animals of his own, but he keeps the old, worn teddy bear that was once Thomas’ and later Bruce’s, alongside the somewhat lopsided bunny that Martha attempted to sew for Bruce when he was two. They sit side by side in a spotless glass cabinet filled with other memories that various members of the family have at one point or another attempted to cast aside.

Dick:

Dick has a pair of stuffed elephants, Eleonore and Zitka, and a teddy bear of his own, all from the circus. Most of the time they sit on the shelf under one of his nightstands, but when he has a particularly bad day, he’ll hold them all tightly until he falls asleep. If he’s crying, he finds it slows the tears to press kisses to the tops of their heads, or just smoosh his whole face into them. Sometimes, if he’s having a particularly good day – especially if no one else is sharing in his good mood – he’ll tell them about whatever made him happy. The rarest occasions are a bittersweet combination of both, the moments when he dwells on his happiest memories of his parents. When this happens, he is more likely to address them than his family, talking to them like old friends who were “there” for the things he’s recalling. It reminds him of the parties he would host as a small child, attended by his stuffed animals and his parents and sometimes other people from the giant family that was Haly’s, and for just that moment he’ll feel suspended somewhere between grief and content.

Barbara:

Barbara had lots of stuffed animals growing up, but as she got older, she gave most of them away. The only one she kept was a little otter that her father gave her for her first birthday. She doesn’t remember this, of course, but they have an old home video of that day which she’s seen a few times, and she know it’s one of her dad’s favorites to watch when he’s feeling nostalgic. She does remember the way she used to drag the otter with her everywhere she went when she was about four, and it’s so worn now that all of its original fluffiness has disappeared. She sets it up near her main computer and uses it in place of a rubber duck.

Jim:

When Babs decided she was too old for her stuffed animals, Jim was instructed to give them away at one of the Gotham children’s toy drives he helps run as commissioner. Only about half of them ever make it out of the house, because he keeps looking at them and remembering little moments that involve each of them. He has two boxes full of them that he swears he’s going to bring to the next drive, but he’s been swearing that for over ten years now.

Jason:

When Jason first arrived at the manor, he swore up and down that stuffed animals were dumb kids toys that he was way too old for. The first time Dick showed up at the manor after Jason was there, he brought a plush dog he’d picked up on the way there, unsure what to get his surprise new brother but not putting an excess of thought into it either. After all, he wasn’t about to ask Bruce what Jason might like. Jason made a show of scorn and tossing the toy in the trash, but when Dick was gone he dug it back out. When he was sleeping, he clutched the dog protectively against his chest like it might be snatched away at any time. When he wasn’t sleeping, he kept it hidden in a box wedged under a floorboard beneath the bed, alongside his other contraband. It was there when he died and it’s still there now. Every time he’s in the manor, he thinks about sneaking into his old room to retrieve it, alongside some of his other old belongings, but he never does. His reasoning alternates between not caring, being too old for toys, not wanting to set foot in his old room, and not wanting to get caught caring after all these years.

He does however have an obnoxiously long bright red snake that Roy won at some sort of archery carnival game while they were supposed to be tracking a suspect. He’d griped at Roy for wasting time with frivolous games, a complaint that was very on brand for their relationship. He’s pretty sure Roy saw through him, though, and understood the real reason he was so antsy to leave the carnival, given his soft apology later that night. He also recently acquired a floppy stingray, a gift from Lian for his latest birthday. She told him that she’d gotten to pet a stingray at the aquarium where she’d bought it, and it reminded her of him. Specifically, she’d said he was, “Kinda dangerous and maybe a little scary, but actually really soft to anyone who’s nice enough”. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that description, but the gift had a place of pride, resting atop an old model of his helmet that Roy had “defaced” with a sweet message that always made Jason smile.

Cass:

Cass grew up without stuffed animals, and was honestly a little confused at first about why she might want one. The first one she ever got was a tiny key-chain cat that was given to her by a little girl she saved. She was unsure what to make of the object itself, but she treasured it as a symbol, proof that she was doing good in the world. It was Steph who convinced her to look for more, to look for stuffed animals in her “style”. Eventually, she got two of the most different ones she could find: an iridescent octopus packed tightly with beans and made of a coarse fabric, and a large fluffy goose that squished like a cloud and was made of the softest fabric imaginable. She likes tossing the octopus lightly in the air to feel the weight of it, and faceplanting into the giant goose. She also has a big bear holding a plush heart that Steph got her for their first Valentine’s.

Tim:

Tim’s relationship with stuffed animals is a bit more complicated. He had five growing up: a dog, a bear, a lion, a rabbit, and a lamb. They had names, stories, personalities, and they were his friends (his only friends, at the time). When he was seven, he woke up one day to find them gone. His mother scolded him for his tears, explaining that he was too old for baby toys, and that his attachment to them would only hinder his path forward. For years, he felt ashamed whenever he thought of his grief towards them, because he knew they were just toys, he knew he was being a baby about it, and yet…

It wasn’t until he was fifteen years old and stumbled across an article about autistic people and the projection of feelings onto objects that he understood why he had been willing to sneak out at night to search through pawn store after pawn store and – once – the landfill in the hopes of seeing his beloved toys again. As a teen in the Wayne household, he knew he could get as many stuffed animals as he liked, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so after what had happened before. He got one giant, floppy moose, barely half a foot shorter than himself, that he clings to like an octopus when he manages to lay down, whether he succeeds in falling asleep or not. Additionally, on a night after Jason made amends with the family, Tim returned to his room to find a fifteen inch plush latte with a cute little face on the mug portion and a sticky note on top that simply read: Sorry for trying to kill you a bunch. My bad :) He keeps it on top of his dresser, and while he doesn’t really hug it, he did discover it was the perfect object for chucking at his siblings’ heads whenever the situation calls for it.

Steph:

Steph loves stuffed animals. While she never got any of the fancy brand name ones, or the luxuriously soft ones, or the hyper-realistic ones, her mom had a tradition of buying her one for every birthday, Christmas, and Easter. She soon had quite a collection, and – like Tim – she gave them all names and personalities. She played out complex scenarios with them and the few dolls she had, designing an intricate world of wild concepts and plots. She also used her stuffed animals to conquer her fears, like thunderstorms and darkness, by pretending they were all more scared than she was, so she had to be brave for all of them. Steph still has her whole collection, as well as quite a few “nicer” (though equally loved) ones that she has acquired from various Waynes. At this point, pretty much everyone in the Wayne family has given her a stuffed animal at some time or other. For a couple of years now, she has taken to posing with her massive collection and making fake family Christmas cards to send out to everyone she knows, where she will update them on the well-being of any plushie they’ve given her.

Duke:

Duke also has a great love of stuffed animals, although he doesn’t match Steph for quantity. He only had a few beloved animals growing up, all of which he’s held onto (a panda, a penguin, a turtle, a frog, a leopard, and a pikachu). Since being fostered by Bruce, Duke has taken to searching out and buying only the rarest stuffed animals he can find: an anteater, a platypus, a manatee, a sloth, and an axolotl have made the cut so far. Bruce knows about this and has taken to keeping an eye out for anything interesting whenever he’s out. After accidentally mentioning it at a gala one time, it has since become his favorite topic, as getting drawn into an intense discussion with Bruce Wayne about where to acquire strange plushies for his son elicits one of two reactions from his guests: delighted awws or hilariously awkward attempts to steer the conversation back to high society definitions of business and pleasure. At Duke’s request, a large shelf was built around the top of his room, so that all of his stuffed animals can sit comfortably and be clearly seen.

Damian:

Damian was much like Jason when he arrived at the manor in more ways than one, but his determination to prove himself above stuffed animals was certainly on that list. He sneered at his siblings’ attempts to treat him like the child he swore he wasn’t. And honestly, even after he began to lower his walls just a little, he still wasn’t particularly fond of stuffed animals. Sure, he privately thought they were cute, and sure he might (might) find himself holding one at night if it happened to have been left in his bed by an annoying sibling, but in general he preferred live animals to fake ones. Real animals had personalities and feelings, fake ones did not, it was as simple as that, no matter what Stephanie claimed. But as time went on, Damian found himself acquiring a small army of stuffed animals against his will. Some of his siblings (Jason, Tim, sometimes Duke) gave them to him because they found it funny to watch him growl about how he was not an infant in need of deceitful comforts. Some of his siblings (Dick, Cass, sometimes Duke… sometimes his father as well) would give them to him because they knew he liked animals so they assumed he’d like imitations of animals as well. Steph would just give them to everybody, every now and then. But regardless of motive, Damian soon found his room overflowing with stuffed animals that were moderately cute but ultimately pointless.

It wasn’t until a patrol a few years after he’d taken on the mantle of Robin that he discovered a solution. Tim had hidden a tiny stuffed bear in the medical supply compartment of his utility belt, a felt bandage wrapped around its little head. He hadn’t been wounded, but the young girl he’d rescued had been bleeding from a wound that looked worryingly dirty. The bear had fallen out of the pouch, right into her lap, and she’d stared at it with wide eyes, surprise halting the flow of her tears. She’d held onto it the whole time he disinfected her arm and bandaged it, and afterwards he had insisted she keep it. For the first time that night, she’d smiled. After that, Damian began taking a few of his many stuffed animals out on patrol with him, ready to hand out to any and all injured, lost, or otherwise traumatized children once he’d rescued them from their troubles. Eventually he began running out of toys he’d been gifted, even though he kept getting new ones, so at some point he begins to regularly sneak out for the sole purpose of acquiring stuffed animals to hand out. He never tells his siblings, but he suspects they’ve found out anyway, when the presents they give him drastically decrease in size.

#batfamily #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #duke thomas #cassandra cain #stephanie brown #barbara gordon #jim gordon #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #jayroy #stephcass #my headcanons #i stole elements of the hc for dick tim steph and duke from my own personality lmao #also the only portion of this that draws on canon (to my knowledge) is the stuff about dick #i've seen stuff about him having a stuffed elephant with both of those names so i decided to just give him two #can't go wrong with extra elephants #but yeah i hope there's nothing that like blatantly contradicts any of this stuff #i'm trying to speed read a bunch of comics rn but i keep reading like 50s-80s era primarily #so there's a number of characters i haven't really gotten to yet #also i've discovered i find green arrow comics more entertaining so lowkey i keep reading those instead oops #i have a very convoluted list of what i need to read to hit the major plot points of batfam and arrowfam #but i also lowkey feel like major plot point comics are gonna tell me less about characterization #filler episodes are where its at #but there's no reading order lists that give me 'best filler issues' sorted by character

[ragingbookdragon]

I’ve Finally Found Something For My Shelf

Batmom Story!

A/N: This was the first Batmom story I ever wrote. It’s actually one of the best pieces that I’ve written before I got better at writing. Enjoy! -Thorne <3

Everyone had a shelf in the Batcave; it was kind of a given. They were placed side by side starting with Alfred, then Bruce, and then (Y/N). When Dick came along and joined the family, they built his shelf after (Y/N)’s. Each time someone new joined the family, they put up a new shelf. The shelf itself was more symbolic than anything; mostly saying that they had a spot in the family, but over the years, items found their way on their shelves.

Alfred’s shelf was simple: a photo of him and the Wayne’s, a photo of him with the entire Batfamily, and a rare china set that Bruce and (Y/N) spent years tracking down in order to give it to him for Father’s Day.

Bruce’s shelf contained exactly four items: the first was the last photo he and his parents ever took, the second was his and (Y/N)’s wedding photo, the third was a picture of him and Alfred on Father’s Day, and the fourth was a picture of him and all the boys sandwiched together, out cold on the couch after movie night.

Dick’s shelf contained various items: his BPD badge, a picture of him and his birth parents, his mother’s bracelet, a picture of him and Bruce and (Y/N) at his high school graduation, a photo of him and all his friends, and a photo of him and his brothers.

For a long time, Jason’s shelf lie covered in dust. But when he came back, his most prized possessions made their way up: a photo of him and (Y/N)-with ice-cream all over their faces-smiling, his favorite book, and the first Red Hood he had (before he replaced it, of course).

Tim had his items: a bag of his favorite coffee beans, a picture of him and Conner and Bart, the booklet of newspaper clippings on Batman and Robin he collected when he was a kid, and a photo of him with Bruce and (Y/N) on either side smiling after he gave his first speech at W.E.

Damian, much like his father, only had three items: a picture of him snuggled between a sleeping Bruce and (Y/N), and the two hilts of his grandfather’s swords.

But (Y/N)’s shelf was always empty. Many times her boys asked her why her shelf never had anything of memory or value. She always responded with, “I haven’t found anything to put up there just yet; but don’t worry, I will one day.” She always said it, but never did; until one night.

           It was mid-July and everyone was happy patrol was over; no one likes sweating and smelling in skin tight suits. When they got back to the cave, it was a race to see who could shuck their suit off and hit the shower first. First place meant the fastest relief to all the sweat and grime. Somehow, Bruce always won, despite him wearing the most and the heaviest suit. But once they were all showered and satisfied, they all returned to the cave and went about the night how they usually did. Bruce sat at the Batcomputer listening to a caffeinated Tim explain the newest updates he’d installed, Dick and Damian talked about anything and everything as the lightly sparred, and Alfred and Jason sat at the table with books between them as they drank tea. All that was missing was the matriarch who’d left to go upstairs saying, “I’ll be right back, I forgot to grab something.” They eventually heard her coming down the steps humming, and carrying a large tote. Mindful of the song she was humming; Jason looked at Alfred and murmured, “Well, she’s humming Satisfied from Hamilton, so she must be in a good mood.” Alfred smiled and responded.

           “Indeed she must be.” They all watched her walk a few steps before setting down the tote and rearranging the things inside. Bruce swiveled around in his chair and spoke.

           “Love, do you need any help?” (Y/N) paused and smiled at him, making his heart flip.

           “No thank you dear, I can handle it.” She picked up the tote again and continued on her way. By now, everyone was watching, wondering what she was carrying; Dick propped his chin atop Damian’s head asking,

           “Mom, what do you have in there?” She glanced at him and grinned.

           “Nothing you need to worry about Dickie. I got it.” He snorted and shrugged his shoulders, but kept watching.

           Their eyes followed their matriarch as she walked over to her shelf and put the tote down in front of it. She bent over and picked up a can of pledge and a rag and sprayed it. (Y/N) ran the rag over the shelf cleaning away the dust that had sat there for years, until it was gone. Then, she set the rag down and bent over again, reaching into the tote. The boys watched curiously as she pulled out a picture and set it right next to the beginning of the shelf. They looked at it and saw that is was her and Alfred, sitting on the patio outside, books in their laps, tea in their hands, their faces joyful. She moved over, dragging the tote with her and bent over again, this time pulling out and placing a picture of her and Bruce. Bruce was in his Bat-suit smiling faintly, holding an over-the-moon (Y/N), who had one leg hanging down his arm, the other in the air like a Rockette; she had one arm around his neck, the other struck out like a magician saying ‘Ta-Da!’ (Y/N) paused for a moment and a fond look came over her face before she moved and placed another photo up. This time, it was her and a costumed Dick pulling the same poses her and Bruce had, except Dick was the Rockette this time. His head was tipped back and he looked like he was laughing as (Y/N) smiled, despite struggling to hold him up. She laughed at the photo and moved again, and put up a photo of her and Jason. They both sat on either ends of the couch in the study, slouching, with their elbows on the arm rests-but sitting properly enough to look bad-ass- and each held a glass full of amber liquid. Jason had his hood on and (Y/N)’s face was raised slightly, a haughty look on her face. Jason liked to call it ‘Red Hood and his Bad-Ass Ma’ photo. (She could never get him to pose all nicely for the camera because, ‘I’m not letting someone use a ‘cute’ photo against me and ruin my bad-boy image’.) (Y/N) grinned at the photo, pulling out the next and placing it up. She and a suited Tim stood side by, Bo staffs resting along the back of their shoulders, grinning like maniacs. The next photo she put up was of her and Damian. She had put on the OG Batgirl suit and stood behind Robin, hands on his shoulders as he had his arms crossed, arrogance strung on his face; a prideful smirk playing her lips. She moved one last time and pulled out one more photo, and her heart swelled at it. She lay next to Bruce on their bed, the boys laying anywhere and everywhere there was room. She had her back snuggled up to Bruce’s chest, who had an arm wrapped around her middle, the other wrapped around Dick, who lay on his other side. Damian was curled up on her chest, arms wrapped around her, and Tim lay between her and Bruce, under her arm and head on her shoulder. Jason lay on the other side of her, facing away from everybody, but her arm wrapped under his head and her hand laid flat against his chest where his heart was. It was one of the most treasured memories she ever had, all her boys with her, and for once not fighting.

She hadn’t remembered exactly how they all wound up in there, but she still welcomed her babies. But of course, a hand in someone’s face, followed by a foot in someone’s side ruined the moment when they woke up. (Y/N) looked at the photo and laughed at the memory of after they woke up. Damian's hand in Tim’s face who shoved him away, resulting in him knocking Jason, who in turned shoved back, and like a Newton’s cradle, knocked Tim into Dick, who ended up shoving back at Jason. Thus, resulting in an even bigger fight as the two oldest began horsing around, only to be dragged into the two young one’s fight. Eventually it became a free-for-all and arms and legs were flying around until Bruce shoved all four of them off the bed with his foot. They hit the floor and stared at him in shock as he glared at them, then wrapped his arms around a giggling (Y/N), and buried his face in her neck. Damian looked at Tim, who looked at Jason, who looked at Dick. Dick’s face set into a pout and Jason piped up, “Hey Golden-boy, is that old man feeling on our mom?” Dick’s pout turned into an evil grin.

           “You know what Jaybird, I think he is.” Jason looked at Tim and Damian and tipped his head to the still giggling (Y/N).

           “What do you guys say we save our mom and teach the old man a lesson?” Bruce popped his head up, glaring at them as he stressed,

           “Don’t. You. Dare.” He watched their faces set in wicked grins and they all pounced on him. (Y/N) rolled away just in time to avoid being squished when arms wrapped around her and hauled her over their shoulder. Jason ran to the door.

           “I got Ma! Let’s get outta here!” The boys all jumped up and ran after a fleeing Jason, followed by an irked Bruce.

           “Get back here with my wife! You’ve had her all week! It’s my turn to spend time with her!” Dick turned around and stuck out his tongue as he slid down the banister, catching Tim and Damian who flung themselves down too. Damian turned to Bruce, who stood at the top of the stairs.

           “Catch us if you can, Father!” The giggling quartet of boys ran off into the Batcave with an equally giggly mother in tow. Bruce smiled at the top of the stairs before remembering why he was annoyed and hauled butt after them.

           “Hey! I’m still serious about it being my turn!”

           (Y/N) giggled a little and wiped her eyes as she remembered the memory and a set of strong arms wrapped around her waist. She looked over her shoulder and saw Bruce, who kissed her cheek before nuzzling into her neck. “You finally found something for your shelf.” She shook her head excitedly.

           “Oh I’m not finished yet!” He pulled away, an amused look on his face.

           “Oh?” She grinned and picked up the tote, walking back to her and Bruce’s picture. (Y/N) reached in the bag and pulled out an action figure, setting it up in front of it. Then, she moved to each of the boy’s pictures and placed one in front of it. The boys had all gathered around to look at her shelf and they burst into laughter, which resulted in (Y/N) beginning to pout.

           “Stop laughing at me. It’s not funny!” This only made the boys laugh harder. Bruce wrapped his arms around her again.

           “Is this why you kept going to Bat-Burger every other weekend?” (Y/N) felt heat rise to her cheeks and she cleared her throat.

           “…Maybe…” He kissed her cheek again. Finally the boy’s stopped laughing and looked at the actions figures. Tim spoke first, voice laced with humor.

           “How many Red Hood action figures did you get?” Everyone began laughing at that and when they calmed down, she spoke.

           “Enough that I don’t need any more Red Hood action figures.” They started laughing again, and when they stopped, they all hugged their mom. She placed kisses where she could: the top of Damian’s, Tim’s cheek, Jason and Dick’s shoulders (the two boys towered over her, c’mon). (Y/N) squeezed them all tight and spoke.

           “Hey boys, I’ve finally found something to put on my shelf.”

#batmom imagine #batmom imagines #batfamily imagines #batfamily x reader imagines #batfamily x reader imagine #batmom x batfamily #batmom x batfamily imagines #batmom x batfamily imagine #bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne imagines #bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne x reader imagines #bruce wayne x reader imagine #dc comics #dc imagine #dc imagines #batman #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #robin #alfred pennyworth

[iam93percentstardust]

hey! i hope you’re having an amazing day. this is just me popping in your inbox to say that’s youre one of my favourite writers and you got me really interested in winteriron (honestly one of the cutest ships) are there any fics/authors ii could reccomend?

Hi there! Thank you so much! I love this ship so much, they’ve got such potential for both fluff and angst. They really are one of my favorite ships to write and I’m glad I was able to write so much for them this year. I certainly do have plenty of recs for you, starting with my favorite authors:

@riotwritesthings: started writing last year, I highly recommend just about everything Riot writes but especially Road Hazards, Melt into Me (Your Words are My Own), and When is a bed not a bed? (When you’re not in it)

@hddnone: so many stories and all so good! Has nearly 100 Winteriron works on ao3 and you will not regret reading any of them, though fair warning that some of them are Team Cap Critical. Especially recommend Honey Pot, You’ve Got Mail, and A Bit(e) of Danger

@monobuu: mostly an artist but sometimes writes stories as well. i recommend Ravioli, Invincible Summer, and Meet the Fam

@tisfan and @27dragons: can’t make a Winteriron rec list without including the both of them. They work together a lot but you should definitely take a look at their own stuff as well. I recommend Safe and (the) Sound, Kiss Me Thru the Phone, and Stark, Naked

@ad1thi: currently taking a bit of a hiatus and working on non-Marvel works but I love everything Adi writes, particularly her entire Bollywood but Make it Gay series, which isn’t always Winteriron but wonderful nonetheless. I recommend the Greek Gods AU, 1000 Lives (For You), and we’re connected

@the-winter-writer: lots of smut and all absolutely fantastic! I like Precious Treasure, Winter Wings, and Instinct

@rayshippouuchiha: definitely an iconic writer for this fandom. Really great if you’re looking for genderbends. Writes a lot of absolutely incredible fics and not just for Winteriron but my personal favorites are The (Not So) Great Pretender, Fearful Symmetry, and The Mistletoe Kiss Polka

Finely Honed (jaqen_hgar): once again very iconic. you’ve probably read at least one of their works even if didn’t know. I recommend Shameless, Today’s Forecast, and Practice Makes Perfect

@lovelyirony: mostly writes ficlets here on tumblr and a multishipper (I don’t know why I’m saying that like it’s a bad thing, I’m a multishipper), also a fan of Sharon Carter and that’s the thing that made me follow her so you know

@amethystinawrites: I only recently started working their works but I’m loving everything I’ve come across so far. I recommend Tech Support and I Won’t Hold My Breath

AvocadoLove: also writes a lot of Stony and Stuckony, which I love a lot, but for their Winteriron works, I recommend Amalgam and Dead Man’s Switch

Dracusfyre: another one I’m new to. I literally just started reading their works today so I don’t have any recs for them yet but one of my friends loves them so I’m going to go with you should definitely take a look at their works

Eirlyssa: has some anti-Team Cap works so keep an eye out for that if that’s not your thing but writes very good Winteriron. I recommend Guide Me Home (Guide My Heart) and Always (I’ll Be There)

@imposter-human: one of the first MCU blogs I ever followed! I recommend childhood memories, speak my language, and lost in translation

As for specific works I like:

Four Strings and Second Chances by Vashoth

It was reluctance to let one of his finest inventions ever out of his grasp that made him take a couple days over a week to send the arm to Pepper’s office. But all things considered, Tony figured that sending finest prosthetic that had ever come into existence--literally grasping an olive branch--was one of the classiest gifts he’d ever given. He’d included a note and everything. ‘Barnes,

Can help with installation. Or not. Up to you. --Stark'

Who is the Mechanic? by @akira-of-the-twilight

The Asset watched as his handlers brought in a stranger—a man with a metal object stuck to his chest that was hooked to a car battery.

The handlers shoved the man onto the stool where many who had operated on the Asset’s arm in the past had sat before.

“Asset,” one handler said, “meet the Mechanic. He will be responsible for the upkeep of your arm. Should anything malfunction, kill him.”

The Asset eyed the Mechanic. The Mechanic was glassy-eyed and unresponsive.

He’d probably be dead in a week.

The Fix by SleepsWithCoyotes

Right, because Tony...Tony fixes things. He remembers thinking that, not for the first time.

Paths are Made by Walking by @potrix-the-queerschlaeger

The road to recovery is long, winding and a different one for every person walking it. Bucky chooses to help himself the only way he knows how; by doing what he does best.

Or, alternatively; the one in which Tony is a mess and accidentally kick-starts Bucky’s protective mother hen instincts.

The Evidence by StrivingArtist

Didn’t notice. Right. Sure. Two brilliant minds, two super spies, and a god didn’t notice when the chattiest man they knew stopped making sound. They just seemed happier than before. Brighter and more cheerful than before. They just seemed like they were more comfortable with him around when he was stone silent.

Fuck it.

He knew they noticed.

And he knew they liked him better this way.

Shadowed Hearts and Winter Souls by NotEvenCloseToStraight

The mid-1800s and Antonio Carbonell Stark is caught in a scandal with his lover. Desperate for a chance to escape the trouble and his own broken heart, Tony accepts a proposal from a mysterious Russian heiress and flees the country.

Natalia Romanova is in trouble of her own and has enough secrets to make Tony's head spin but somehow they settle into a fake marriage and calm day-to-day together, and everything works... until her half brother comes home and their life is disrupted again.

James is somber and silent, brutal and nearly broken and scarred, a soldier of the resistance. His heart is cold and gaze like ice, but his hands are hot and lips are warm and Tony finds himself ignoring the blood on James's palms and the shadows in his soldier’s eyes, and falling in love.

When danger lands at their doorstep, Natalia and Tony have to pack up and leave, running away in the middle of the night and leaving their men behind.

The distance between Tony and James gets longer every day, and Natalia has been keeping a secret for that can’t be hidden much longer. With no place to call home and a thousand miles between them and the men they love, what are Tony and Natalia supposed to do?

Puppy Love by Reioka

Bucky is learning to become a person again. When some guy starts crying all over Natasha's dog, he decides he's doing better than he originally thought.

Describe Your Perfect Date by ali_aliska

After getting turned down by Bucky, Tony decides it’s time to move on from his massive crush. He tries online dating—Pepper’s idea, not his—but the only thing worse than getting rejected is getting rejected and finding out your soulmate-level match is Clint Barton, all in the same day.

Clint, of course, does not let opportunities like this go to waste, but he’s driving Tony nuts for a good cause, he swears.

Bucky’s just trying to do the right thing and fails spectacularly, but it all works out in the end.

Rocket Science by marsmaywonder and orbingarrow

Sleep-deprived and under-caffeinated, grad student Tony falls asleep in a conveniently empty classroom and wakes up in the middle of Bruce’s Physics 101 course. After seeing a groggy Tony fumble a simple question, actual-student Bucky offers to tutor him. In a moment of “oh no; he’s cute” panic, Tony takes him up on it. Now, in addition to his already complicated life, Tony has to figure out the answer to the incredibly messy question: “How do you look like you’re failing the class, when you literally wrote the book?”

What’s Good for the Goose by Taste_is_Sweet

For this nonny prompt at the Imagine Tony and Bucky comm on Tumblr:

"A soulmate AU where an immortal goose shows up one day to lead you to your soulmate, the challenge is surviving the goose." (Full prompt in notes.)

We all have soulmates, and every soulmate pair shares an animal guide. The Guide is there to lead you to your One True Love, and they represent the aspects of the psyche that you both share. They appear when you're about to meet your soulmate, and often materialize in moments of great personal crisis, offering hope and support. There are stories upon stories about how someone's Guide appeared to lead them to their One True, or how the barest glimpse of their Guide eased their hearts and gave them hope in the midst of despair. The newly-rescued almost always attribute their Guide with giving them the strength and courage to hang on.

Animal Guides are ephemeral, ethereal, and elusive. They are, most often, no more than a warm presence or flicker out of the corner of one's eye. They are incarnate symbols of perseverance, optimism and hope. Foretellers of happiness, and the grand destiny of love.

Except for geese. Geese are assholes.

and so, we unfold by TheKitteh

Senbazuru. Thousand Cranes.

An ancient Japanese legend that promises anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the gods. Some stories believe you are granted happiness and eternal good luck, instead of just one wish, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury.

Bucky’s not big on believing in any legends, not after all that has happened. He just wants to create something for a change, not destroy.

He needs to prove himself that he can be trusted to handle something delicate. He doesn’t need a promise of a wish come true. He just,- needs to do this for himself.

He doesn’t need noticing how sad, tired Stark looks. Doesn’t need to want to do something for the man, when he can barely do anything for himself. --- Tony simply goes through days and motions. He deals with the Avengers, with R&;D, with the rewritten Accords. All of it, it’s nothing new really. He just wants to get things done.

What’s new is seeing Barnes hunched over the coffee table, one step away from ripping a glossy magazine apart in the middle of the night.

And why the hell Barnes keeps looking at him during the days after like he’s a puzzle to be solved?

Welcome to the Winteriron fandom! We’ve got a lot of incredible authors and artists both and this is just the tip of the iceberg!

#alle answers #winteriron #fic recs #have a great day as well! #hold-our-destiny

[whereflowersbloom]

Questions

Damian found his girlfriend standing out on the lovely vine-shaded balcony, dressed in civilian clothes and staring out into the city. Night turned Gotham into an endless sea of luminescence. Skyscrapers around the city glow with the light of thousands of residents inside, creating trails of brilliance that ascend up towards the starry sky. It is quite beautiful, in its own way. The soft evening breeze caressing her ebony hair, creating wafts of lavender and rosemary in the air. Had she always been this breathtakingly beautiful? Slowly, Damian set his gaze towards the stars above. The precision that Raven studied the sky with passion, it fascinated him. It was as if she was reading lines from a story book, but instead there was a mass of speckled lights as she was connecting them, tracing invisible lines.

Raven took a deep breath of fresh night air and sighed, a mix of contentment, and something else, she couldn’t point it. “Have you ever considered what your life would be like If you had taken a different path?” Her breath hitched on the last word but her eyes had glance sideway to his large calloused hand still in hers, for someone who appeared to be controlling and unapproachable, Damian was surprisingly gentle and affectionate. The question caught him off guard. He felt a bubble of longing as he remembered her words that night at the carnival when she had called him kind and generous, nobody had ever spoken that way about him. That night something inside him changed, high and fenced walls began to crumble down.

Soaking in the view a little longer, Damian waited a few minutes before deciding to speak. He supposed that the saying that one’s life flashes before their eyes must hold some kind of truth, though he was not dying, and yet he had been dangerously close to the gates of death several times. Raven was his anchor amidst the unpredictability of their life as titans, always bringing him back from the turbulent waters. He couldn’t stop himself from recalling the most memorable moments of his unusual and complex life. He exhaled a long audible breath as he begins.” My life had been long decided before I was born into this world.” He murmured to the whistling wind, his words sounding faraway, even to his own ears. He would rather not relive any of the horrors he’d seen, the terrible acts he had committed in order to build a new world, make it better. What a blind and naive child he had been. At some point he had been ready to surrender his sword, his Robin suit, his claim to fight for others, offer her perhaps a normal life if that’s what she wished for. He would give her anything she asked for in a heartbeat. He squeezed her small hand tighter, Raven immediately noticed way he’s gripping onto it, like she’s the only thing keeping him tethered to this world. “After some time coming to the tower, I contemplated a rather uneventful, ordinary life. If my parents had conceived me under very different circumstances. If mother loved me more than her own insatiable ambitions. If father wasn’t the eccentric, mysterious millionaire Bruce Wayne or a vigilante consumed by his thirst to serve justice.” There was a tone of melancholy in his voice, the promise of a different retelling of a story. His story. “It wasn’t all bad. Mother…she used to read to me, every one now and then, nights like these. Tales about the greatest leaders in history, others about the origin of the Al Ghul dynasty. I treasured those moments.” He looked over at her, and he didn’t seem to recognize her for a moment, like the memory had been so strong it had actually confused him, taking him back to that instant. This was the most he’d ever really said about his mother. His past as an Al Ghul. Sure he’d shared some stories, about certain things he enjoyed and disliked. But he never spoke about Talia with such profound emotions. This was personal and precious to Damian. It saddened her. Saddened for the pain in his emerald eyes that he was trying to hide. Another long breath was blown between his full lips, and he deflated again, like he was accepting the undeniable truth. “Perhaps I would have met Jon at a local school and we would play basketball after classes and Greyson would be the team’s coach. Maybe we would have crossed paths at the extensive and valuable Gotham Public Library. I would have offered to treat you a cup of Earl Grey tea. A part of me believed I’d have picked Veterinary medicine as my bachelor degree.”

She looked at him with such intensity and Damian thought her violet eyes grew deeper, darker, more reflective. She was weighing her own reflection in his eyes, trying to see through him like she always did. And they both were visualizing, a different life consisting of trivialities, a simple lifestyle, maybe in the countryside, a rather nice and quiet house, perhaps similar to the Kent farm with some slight but substantial improvements. “What about you?” He abruptly asked her, startling her. Oh she had never been sure about her own future. “As the daughter of an inter-dimensional demon. I didn’t think a future was possible for me. A happy family, a stable romantic relationship, loyal friends. Everything was endless blackness when I was trapped by Trigon. What I have right now is more any blissful future I could have imagined.” She muttered softly. This companionship between them, the mutual care, the tender loving, the sense of equality between them, the feeling of belonging to each other beyond any outer interference because they chose one another. Their family and friends. Everything was more than enough. Damian was unconsciously too absorbed at how she looked at the whole world as one precious thing, values life in every form and shape. Her unnatural powers gave her the ability to look into something and see what others can’t. It was fascinating. He was thankful too, sincerely appreciated what he had. His father, troublesome siblings adoptive or not, his teammates and Raven. He is product of the flames which burnt him, his actions, his choices and the will that made him grow formidable instead of breaking. They both were. This woman was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his human days with.

“There’s something that wouldn’t change. You. It’s always been you, Raven.” He’s got a dazed look in his eyes, a familiar bright gleam to them that hadn’t been there earlier, but he flashed her a dazzling smile at her, one that make her insides jump. Raven let his words sink in. He wanted her even if things were different and joy seeped through her whole body.

She just felt greedily wanting more time with him, every moment and experience. She loved him, from the possessive way he held her or how he kept on touching her the instant they are alone and he felt he same. They have been together for a few years now, it took them some time to announce it to their significant others. No matter how things turned out, they have this genuine, real and consuming love. That emotion when you felt like your lungs are out of air when your lover is away from you, everything was so intense and yet so tender, you were worried it would break between your fingers like crusty autumn leaves. She focused on him.

Damian looked out of his depths. He’d always been so controlled and measured, knew the weight of his every word and was completely unflappable despite whatever life threw at him, but now he didn’t. He seemed as if he was nervous, unable to spell out his own feelings. Hesitant. Could be her imagination but she sensed a slight agitation awakening in him.

“Marry me, Raven.” The words are said with his whole heart. They are genuine and honest and very him. He couldn’t hold back the words any longer. Why wait anyway? theres simply no time when you’re busy saving the world day-to-day. There’s no question to calculate when is the right right or your fated person, no formula for the correct time. Timing. There’s no use reminding about the past or the life they would have dreamed to have. The present was a gift and ultimately what matters the most. They have been romantically involved for 4 years now. He knew she was the one the moment he gathered courage to ask her out, court her properly the way he had been taught. Initially, he planned to propose differently but it felt right. This conversation only strengthened his resolve to make a Raven his wife.

“Damian.” She breathed with astonishment.

“No buts. Marry me.” He commanded with an eyebrows raised stopping her from coming up with an unnecessary excuse, content filling his veins and the marrow of his bones, flooding him with a blanket of warmth and hope. He didn’t want to wait anymore. He wanted her, now and tomorrow and the rest of his existence, and she loves him. Like he knew she’s always had her doubts on if she could be loved or she did before they started dating.

Her bottom lip trembled momentarily. She felt a bit like she can’t breathe properly, but then Damian is reaching up and gently cupping her cheek, and she exhaled shakily as he runs the pad of his thumb over her lips. He was looking at her dead serious, asking her to marry him. “I’m not taking the chance to wait too long.” Damian whispered urgently. His tone more serious than before. Her heart was hammering in her chest. They moved in together about a year ago. Were they ready to take the next step?

It felt too real all of a sudden. Too damn real, and she wants to drown in it this moment, in this bottomless sea of feelings for him. She wanted to pretend that this is real and more than that, she wanted to say yes. Damian Wayne didn’t take a no for an answer. When he was determined, he did everything posssihke to get it, one way or another. And she loves him nonetheless. Raven felt her heart flutter, her chest tightened ever so slightly as she finally exhaled. “Yes. I’ll marry you, Damian.”

“I love you.” Her voice breaking as tears are rolling down her cheeks and the small smile on her lips. It was easy to find herself gravitating toward Damian, falling back into that wordless sync they had. To feel herself being pulled into his personal space as he crowded hers. Until they faced each other with barely inches between them and her breath hitched as he snaked his arms around her, emerald eyes softened, glowing against the moonlight, they didn’t leave her, and his arms made the distance between them disappear. Their lips are barely touching but he can feel the softness, the plumpness of her mouth, like an overripe fruit. She brushes her lips against his and Damian rapidly kissed her fervently. His lips breathing silent ‘I love you’s. The low giggle that rumbled up through her could not be contained though she tried. She knew several language but no words could describe this ecstatic happiness.

Damian is overwhelmed by the sweet taste, the delicious scent, the warm feel of her. He was intoxicated and drunk off their hungry kiss. He trailed his hand on her waist up her back and feels her heart hammering against her ribs and wonders for a moment if she’s feeling as consumed by the kiss as he is. If she is as incredibly happy as he is right in this moment. He didn’t need a different life, this one was exactly what he wished for.

Damian made a mental note to ask Jon to accompany him ring shopping tomorrow. Tonight he had plans to celebrate his engagement with his gorgeous fiancée.

His lips brushed hers in a soft, tender rhythm once again. Once. Twice. Thrice. Harder, and a little bit hungrier than before, until her fingers are intertwined in his hair and his solid body is pressing against her frame. He lifted her up effortlessly, taking a few steps back, taking her back to their bedroom. Two figures bathed in tranquil starlight disappeared.

Oneshot because I need fluff. Final edit

Thank you to @chromium7sky @ravenfan1242 @deep-in-mind67 and all my readers for motivating me to write. This might be the last chapter for a while. 💜💜

#damirae #demon birds #damian wayne #raven roth #jon kent #dick grayson #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #jason todd #tim drake #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #batfamily #batsiblings #robrae #teen titans #oneshot #writing #dc fandom #dc universe #batman universe #talia al ghul #ras al ghul

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Treat Your S(h)elf: I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine, by Roger Scruton (2009)

You could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.

- Sir Roger Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher’s Guide To Wine

When I first got talked into investing in the dreams of my two cousins and their French families to continue to manage an old French vineyard I thought of Roger Scruton’s book. I already had this book on my shelf alongside his other works. Re-reading it nudged me to take a risk and go for it.

For one I have always loved wine and have drunk it from a very early age. Secondly what could be more cultured or civilising than to marry body and mind through the palate of philosophy and wine?

And finally, and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to escape the madness of modernity - as well as make peace from war as a British combat veteran of the Afghan war by not so much as coming home but finding a new one - by getting back into nature with hard honest graft on the land that Mother Nature blesses.  All of this I found especially appealing.

Of all the things we eat or drink, wine is without question the most complex. So it should not be surprising that philosophers from Plato and Socrates onwards to our contemporary times have turned their attention to wine: complex phenomena can lend themselves to philosophical speculation.

Wine is complex not just in the variety of tastes it presents – ‘wine tastes of everything apart from grapes’, I once heard a crusty old French vintner say – but in its meaning. Only the most woodenly literal-minded would deny that wine has a meaning: in its history, its role in human social life, in religious and other ceremonies. Though they drink it copiously over dinner at High Tables in their Oxbridge colleges, academic analytic philosophers do not spend as much time as they might in this kind of investigation of meaning or significance of wine – what we might call a phenomenology or a hermeneutic investigation.

Of course, there are more narrowly phenomenological questions which wine raises.

How do vintners or winemakers manipulate the underlying biochemical material to create the kinds of taste which they intend their wine to have? Does the ‘terroir’ of a wine really make a difference to taste, and if so how? What is the basis of evaluative judgements about the quality of a wine?

Arguably only those who actually make the wine and those who are life long wine connoisseurs can conceivably answer that on some experiential and technical level. But these are not the only philosophical questions in this area: the hermeneutic questions have their place too, in an understanding of the phenomena.

Sir Roger Scruton’s 224 page book is about the hermeneutics of wine rather than its psychology or phenomenology more narrowly conceived. Scruton, the late great conservative philosopher, is that rare breed who comes closer than most to bridging the gap between the grass roots and the High Table in answering such mysteries.  The result is an engaging, insightful, informative and (in parts) a very funny book. It is immensely readable, more in the anecdotal style of Scruton’s England: an Elegy (2000) or On Hunting (1998), than his more heavyweight philosophical works, such as The Aesthetics of Music (1997), Sexual Desire (2004), Beauty (2009), and his writings on Wagner and high culture. He does often come across as curmudgeonly, but his (written) relations with women, music and poetry are very delicate and tender. And so it is with his love affair with wine. It is indeed a very personal book and its is warmly personable, like the man himself, and it contains so much of Scruton’s distinctive wit and intellectual personality, it ought to be of interest not just to wine enthusiasts (whom Scruton likes to call ‘winos’) and philosophers but also anyone curious enough to understand the place of wine in our world civilisation.

The first and obvious thing to say about Scruton’s book is how the title of the book is of course a play on words. It’s a playful wink to Eric Idle’s “Philosophers’ Drinking Song,” in which the Monty Python cast, lightly disguised as a group of Australian philosophers all named Bruce, list the world’s thinkers from a drinking standpoint. This includes the couplet slightly amending Descartes’s proof of his existence: “And René Descartes was a drunken fart / ‘I drink therefore I am.’”

The pun on words is Roger Scruton’s way of taking the Monty Python couplet seriously. After all Descartes was a serious man and though he was born in Touraine, the rich French wine region, did probably not drink much. He treats all this as a paradox that G.K. Chesterton might well have toyed with - that is, as a truth standing on its head to attract attention - and examines the drinking of alcohol as a way in which human beings learn more about each other, fellowship, some of the deeper realities, God, and not least themselves.

In this Scruton is a wise philosopher who teaches us how wine cultivates our moral virtue and our civilisation. He encourages us to recognise that stream of liquid descending from our pursed lips into our throat as the red or golden chord that runs from heaven to earth, and binds everything in-between into a cosmic whole. Wine both reflects and helps constitute our participation in all strata of reality, and points the way to our redemption, divine or otherwise.

In Scruton’s Prelude (a musical term, of course) where he quotes Emerson “who commends the great wino Hafiz [a Persian poet] in the following words: “Hafiz praises wines, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy.” This is echoed in Scruton’s terms that “by thinking with wine you can learn not merely to drink in thoughts, but think in draughts. Wine, drunk at the right time, in the right place and the right company, is the path to meditation, and the harbinger of peace.”

The book is divided into two parts, labelled ‘I drink’ and ‘therefore I am’ respectively. The second part of the book is more strictly philosophical - Scruton starts it with the nice conceit that ‘therefore I am’ contain the whole of philosophy, each word standing in turn for reason (therefore), consciousness (I) and being (am). But arguably wine and Scruton enthusiasts will probably get more out of the first part.

The first chapter is a nice description of his own discovery of wine as a young man. Warmly written, the chapter is devoted to his friends who made him “fall” for wine (or is it he who made them fall?) and his acquisition of a 1945 Château Lafite, “the greatest year from the greatest of clarets”. His first memories are happy ones of his mother’s home manufacture of elderberry wine in a post-war England where the French (and Spanish and Portuguese) grape had not yet “conquered the suburbs.”

“For three weeks the kitchen was filled with the yeasty scent of fermentation. Little clouds of fruit-flies hung above the jars and here and there wasps would cluster and shimmer on the spilled pools of juice.” Other Englishmen of Scruton’s generation will recognise and sigh at this description as many fathers - including my own - made his own beer and wine from motives of both fun and economy.

Thus ill-equipped, Scruton goes to university ignorant of the rich variety of wines available even then to an English wino. At Cambridge and, later, in Paris, a succession of tutors, patrons, and friends not only introduce him to a growing list of wines but also teach him how to drink them. Some of the wines he is given are complex and expensive Burgundies, others cheap French supermarket vin ordinaire.

But Scruton discovers that all have certain inherent qualities that an educated palate can discover by drinking them attentively and appreciatively. By learning their provenance and history, he enriches his knowledge of the locality that produced the wine — and he can imagine (I would like to believe this is so) that he can glimpse the character of the local people in the wine itself. He learns finally that certain wines go with certain things, not merely certain foods, but certain occasions, certain friends, certain thoughts, even certain topics of conversation. He becomes a wino.

When in his early middle years, Scruton buys a farm in southern England, he discovers to his delight an array of homemade-wine equipment, identical to that of his mother’s elderberry experiments, on the kitchen floor: “I listened to the bubbles as they danced in the valves, and studied the wasp-edged puddles on the tiles. I had come home.” Yet it is a different person who comes home. Scruton celebrates his good fortune not with elderberry wine but by opening and drinking in quiet happiness a treasured bottle of Château Lafite 1945 that had accompanied him in the long wanderings now ended. For, by this time in his life, Scruton is a confirmed Francophile in his drinking tastes.

The chapter ends on a remark concerned with the “new habit, associated with American wine critics like Robert Parker, of assigning points to each bottle” which should not only be “viewed with nothing but contempt” but also compared to “assigning points to symphonies, as though Beethoven’s 7th, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, Mozart’s 39th, Bruckner’s 8th all hovered between 90 and 95.

Perhaps his second chapter ‘A Tour de France’ is the best one. This is a very personal, but informative and interesting, guide to Scruton’s favourite French wine regions. starting in Burgundy, down to the Rhône Valley, the Pyrenees and ending in Bordeaux with T.S. Eliot’s description of a spiritual journey that applies equally to a journey through wine:

We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring


Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

With much reason, Scruton does not think very highly of blind tasting: “To think that you can judge a wine from its taste and aroma alone is like thinking you can judge a Chinese poem by its sound, without knowing the language.” I let out a whoop of appreciation when I read this. In one clean swoop he casually casts aside the resultant snobbery that comes from the ritualising and self-importance of blind tasting events.

I think blind tasting whilst sincere is also an exercise in showing off. I’m not saying people don’t have a nose for wine or can tell certain elements but blind tasting is not the best way to truly appreciate the full complexity of wine. Indeed in my embryonic wine making experience (by watching my cousins and the managers on our vineyard) I would say terroir is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of wine making and it determines the difference between good wine and a bad one.

It’s great to read that Scruton defines himself as a terroiriste. Not the French word for a terrorist! But a believer in the French word, terroir. It is derived from the Latin word terra meaning earth or land. It’s a word coined by the French to express a wine’s sense of place. There is no English equivalent for this word. It was originally used to distinguish the wine making practices of old world wine. In other words terroir is how a particular region’s climate, soils and aspect (terrain) affect the taste of wine alongside the traditions gone into producing the wine. Some regions are said to have more ‘terroir’ than others. Johan Joseph Krug (1800–1866), the famous champagne producer, once suggested that “a good wine comes from a good grape, good vats, a good cellar and a gentleman who is able to coordinate the various ingredients.” No trace of terroir.

But I think Krug is wrong and vintners as well as the wine industry as a whole have come to the same realisation of the importance of terroir. Back in the 1980’s, many of these ‘terroir-driven’ wines were actually affected by wine faults including cork taint and wild yeast growth (brettanomyces). Vines thrive in a range of soil compositions from highly draining granite and schist based soils to limestone and clay and vines, in turn, react to these different soils in different ways. And on top of the differing soils, certain areas of the world have such unique combinations of geology and topography that interact with specific sun exposures that the resulting wines have distinct characteristics that cannot be found anywhere else.

Nowadays terroir is used to describe practically every wine region. Because much of European wine (old world) is steeped in tradition it is easier to get a sense of terroir. It’s a bit harder in a place like Napa or Sonoma (new world) because of the looser laws that govern winemaking but younger winemakers are coming around to the idea of terroir and trying to express the land. But certainly in France today vintners - as they come to increase their geological knowledge and environmental understanding and find ways to marry that to their unique artistry and craft - have realised the unique role terroir plays in the wine making process.

The next chapter looks at wine from “elsewhere:” Here Scruton looks at the Middle-East where wine was born; Greece where Bacchus, Dionysos, and more importantly, Eros used to hover; the United States; Australia, New Zealand and their misspelling of Syrah as Shiraz, the Iranian city of poets, gardens, nightingales and last but not least, wine; a few lines on South Africa, then Italy, Romania and Spain. But “travel narrows the mind, and the further you go the narrower it gets. There is only one way to visit a place with an open mind, and that is in the glass”.

Scruton had already warned the reader in the previous chapter not to read the “elsewhere” chapter: “After punishing body and soul with Australian Shiraz, Argentine Tempranillo, Romanian Cabernet Sauvignon and Greek Retsina, we crawl home like the Prodigal Son and beg forgiveness for our folly. . . [Bordeaux] is the wine that made us and for which we were made, and it often astonishes me to discover that I drink anything else.”  I rather fancy he is being tongue in cheek here.

This is for the “I drink” part of the book. Its author then moves to the “therefore I am” part which often needs much deeper philosophical knowledge than perhaps than even your average educated layman might have some difficulty having if they are not versed in a basic  understanding of aesthetics as philosophical discussion. But here his aim is to rescue wine from the philosophers and the so-called wine experts.

To those who have never been captivated by the complexity of wine and the way it is bound up with western civilisation, a book on the philosophy of wine might be dismissed as the typical product of conservative snobbery and elitism. But this would be a mistake. Scruton is not a snob about wine (nor, for that matter, about anything else). On the contrary, one of the strongest themes in his writing is his deep love of the everyday, of the simple pleasures of society as he imagined it once to be, where people were at one with the land and with the traditions of their culture. According to Scruton, this is something that (although it probably never existed) should be open to all, but which is being destroyed by the march of modernity. (In a nice aside, he asks: ‘Who am I to stand against the tide of history? Come to think of it, I am the only person I know who does stand against the tide of history’.)

In passing, Scruton evokes the great philosopher Avicenna who lived in Isfahan (Persia) during Islam’s Golden Age (980–1037 AD); he was a wine aficionado who recommended drinking at work defying “the Koranic injunction against wine, citing it as an example of sloppy reasoning,” that does not take into account whether it is a small or a large amount. Scruton (p. 133) also points to the fact that “in surah xvi, verse 7 of the Koran wine is unreservedly praised as one of God’s gifts. As the prophet, burdened by the trials of his Medina exile, became more tetchy, so did his attitude to wine begin to sour, as in Surah v verses 91-92. Muslims believe that the later revelations cancel the earlier, whenever there is a conflict between them. I suspect, however, that God moves in a more mysterious way.”

Scruton is very quite skeptical that the vocabulary used by so-called experts to describe wine is of much help: “If I say of a wine that it has a flowery nose, lingers on the palate, with ripe berry flavours and a hint of chocolate and roasted almonds, then what I say conveys real information, from which someone might be able to construct a sensory image of the wine’s taste. But I have described the taste in terms of other tastes, and not attempted to attach a meaning, a content, or any kind of reference to it. The description I gave does not imply that the wine evokes, means, symbolises or presents the idea of chocolate; and somebody who didn’t hit on this word as a description of the wine’s flavour would not show that he had missed the meaning of what he drank or indeed missed anything important at all. Our experience of wine is bound up with its nature as a drink [which] endows wine with a particular inwardness [and] intimacy with the body [that is not] achieved by any smell, since smell makes no contact with the body at all, but merely enchants without touching, like the beautiful girl at the other end of the party. . . Nothing else that we eat or drink comes to us with such a halo of significance, and by refusing to drink it people send an important message —the message that they do not belong on this earth.”

Again, I found myself saying amen to that.

The good part of the second part is Scruton trying to make a case for the cultural uniqueness of wine. In one sense, Scruton is right to do this: it is undeniable in many parts of western culture, wine has played a unique role in religious and social rituals, which no other drink has. But he can push his point beyond plausibility when he attempts to argue that because of the qualities of wine itself – and what it is to drink it properly – nothing else could play this role (more on this later).

The argument starts well, with a very illuminating discussion of the distinction between the various ways in which a substance can intoxicate. There are those that merely stimulate without altering the mind (like tobacco, for example). Then there are those which have mind-altering effects, but whose consumption itself brings no plea- sure (e.g. heroin). The third category contains those things which alter your mind and bring pleasure in their consumption: cannabis and forms of alcohol other than wine are his examples. Wine, Scruton argues, is in a fourth category of its own: here the alteration of the mind is internally related to the experience of consuming it.

These distinctions are very useful, and the distinction between the third and the fourth category is subtle but certainly real. It relates to the question of what non-human animals can and cannot do. Scruton makes the nice observation that an animal cannot savour wine (or any- thing else). In being able to savour or relish the taste of wine, a person no more separates out the effect of the wine from its taste than they can separate the meaning of a piece of music from its sound. Although one would not realise this from reading the thousands of words that are written daily about wine, wine would not be the drink it is if it did not intoxicate.

The last two chapters deal respectively with wine and whine, and being and bingeing. Though Scruton has something to say in favour of Puritanism, he castigates the ease with which “puritan outrage [and in particular, prohibition, but also sexual behaviour] can be displaced from one topic to another, and the equal ease with which the thing formerly disapproved of can be overnight exonerated from all taint of sin.”

He vehemently protests against “the humourless mullahs,” and the misuse of drinking, but also rejects the idea that fermented drinks are just shots of alcohol, and insists on their social functions across civilisations and time: “The burden of my arguments is that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is a culture, and that this culture has a social, outward-going, other-regarding meaning. . . When people sit down together sipping drinks, they rehearse in their souls the original act of settlement, the act that set our species on the path of civilisation, and which endowed us with the order of neighbourhood and the rule of law.” But he has not much against drinking alone, and ends with a few words from the Chinese poet Li Po (700 BC), the same poet whom Mahler used in his Lied von der Erde (though in a very approximate translation):

A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.


Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,

For he, with my shadow, will make three men.

Scruton points out in several brilliant passages, the prohibitionist, like the modern day Islamists and moral police in the West and the all too familiar binge-drinker are alike in their ignorance of the virtue of “temperance.” They can envisage no stopping place between abstention and alcoholism. Their absolutist logic, he argues, is like objecting to a first kiss on the grounds that it will one day lead to a divorce. And neither can really understand drinking for any reason other than to get drunk. 

Scruton confirms the wider value of temperance in our lives: “Virtue should be cast in human form if it is to be humanly achievable. Saints, monks, and dervishes may practice total abstinence; but to believe that abstinence is the only way to virtue is to condemn the rest of mankind. Better to propose the way of moderation, and live thereby on friendly terms with your species.”

As it happens, the occasional bender may actually have therapeutic qualities in moderation (i.e., if indulged in infrequently). George Orwell, who can hardly be accused of lacking a puritanical streak, thought that people should get drunk every six months or so. The experience, he thought, shook one out of one’s regular complacency and could be compared in this to a weekend abroad. Certainly it very often produces a feeling of greater humility in those who can remember what happened. Yet getting drunk is something that most drinkers do very rarely, if at all.

Changing our mood and outlook is a very different matter. Under the influence of a moderate amount of alcohol, our inhibitions are loosened. Shy people become bold, the tongue-tied talkative, the dull lively, the unimaginative fanciful, and the isolated social. (Even “mean drunks” usually start the evening in festive and forgiving mood.)

That last loss of inhibition is the most important because it promotes the fellowship that is the basis of a decent society. Not all intoxicants perform this vital function. Cannabis and similar drugs tend, if anything, to imprison the taker within his own consciousness (however expanded it may seem to him in his dreams). Except for those who lose themselves in alcoholism (and consequently become asocial in their attempts to deceive others about their condition), however, alcohol is a profoundly social drug. At the same time, not all varieties of alcohol are equally social in their effect. This thought leads Scruton to narrow somewhat the scope of his enthusiasm. Having rejected teetotalism, he continues: “The real question, I suggest, is not whether intoxicants, but which. And - while all intoxicants disguise things - some (wine preeminently) also help us to confront them by presenting them in re-imagined and idealised forms.”

Scruton makes a fascinating and intriguing point related to our historical relationship with the vine to make wine the highest ideal form. He claims that wine derives from a crucial historical transition in our relation to the earth – when human beings settled, put down roots and stopped being mere hunter-gatherers. In a memorable phrase, Scruton claims that in this way wine celebrates ‘the earth itself, as the willing accomplice in our bid to stay put.’ But of course one could say similar things about distilled spirits and beer. Such drinks are not made in such an incredible variety as wine is, but Scruton’s point is not about variety but about the intrinsic and relational qualities of the drink itself.

In the end, one cannot help feeling that he is relying a little too much on the sheer panache of his writing to help his argument bounce along: ‘Wine is not simply a shot of alcohol, or a mixed drink. It is a transformation of the grape. The transformation of the soul under its influence is merely the continuation of another transformation that began maybe fifty years earlier when the grape was first plucked from the vine.’ Wine is a transformation of the grape, to be sure. And the mind or soul is transformed in its consumption. But these two transformations are so very different that it is hard to see what can literally be meant by the one being the continuation of the other.

In fact, Scruton’s view is not just that wine is unique as a stimulant, but that it has to be drunk in a particular way in order for the harmony of taste and intoxication to take hold. It is not hard to agree with Scruton’s argument that there are more or less civilised ways of drinking wine. And this part of his thesis is very plausible: ‘The burden of my argument is ... that we can defend the drinking of wine, only if we see that it is part of a culture, and that this culture has a social outward-going, other-regarding meaning. The new uses of wine point towards excess and addiction: they are moving away from the old way of drinking, in which wine was relished and savoured, to the form of drinking typified by Marmeladov, who clutches his bottle in a condition of need.’

However I still found all this a tad unconvincing in that he makes a case that only the savouring and relishing of wine can play a central cultural role as opposed to other spirits - think of Scotch whisky for the Scots and beer for much of Northern Europe or even tea(!) for the English. So my apologies to Roger Scruton but I remain sceptical of his argument that of all stimulants, wine is uniquely civilising, however much I want it to be true.

I think Scruton is also wrong to despise cocktails. A well-made cocktail is as complex a set of taste experiences as a good Bordeaux. A good-strength cocktail is the perfect prelude to the theatre, giving one exactly the right lift to help the play to entertain, but not suppressing one’s appetite long enough to spoil a post-theatre dinner. It can be the booster rocket that starts a convivial evening. But the cocktail has its limits. The alcoholic strength of most cocktails reduces their usefulness both as an aid to sustained fruitful conviviality and to the kind of imaginative introspection that Scruton thinks necessary for a happy life.

That aside, Scruton knows that the best (including Li Po’s poetry) should be kept for the very end. The bouquet (of the wine, but in French the word is also used for the finishing of a firework) comes with the Appendix: What to drink with what, though here the second what does not stand for food, but for philosophers. This part of the book I very nearly coughed up my wine as I found it terribly amusing to pair a suitable wine, as one would with food, to a philosopher one might be reading.

St Augustine: Drink a glass of Moroccan Cabernet Sauvignon, though “the City of God requires many sittings, and I regard it as one of the rare occasions when a drinking person might have legitimate recourse to a glass of lager [which I did in Odessa, while reading Scruton], putting the book to one side just as soon as the glass is finished” [which I did not do, since I had three glasses, each of which containing half a liter].

Francis Bacon: “Any discussion of his insights should, I think, proceed by the comparative method. I suggest opening six bottles of a single varietal—say Cabernet Franc- one from the Loire, one from California, one from Moravia, one from Hungary, and if you can find two other places where it is grown successfully you will already have given some proof of the inductive method—and then pretending to compare and contrast, taking notes in winespeak, while downing the lot.”

René Descartes: “As the thinker who came nearest, prior to the Monty Python, to stumbling on the title of [my] book, Descartes deserves a little recognition. . . He has ended up as the most overrated philosopher in history, famous for arguments that begin from nothing and go nowhere. I would suggest a deep dark Rhône wine [that] will compensate for the thinness of the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza: “The last time that I understood what Spinoza meant by an attribute it was with a glass of red Mercurey, Les Nauges 1999. Unfortunately, I took another glass before writing down my thoughts and have never been able to retrieve them.”

Immanuel Kant: “And when it comes to [his] Critique of the Judgment, I find myself trying out [several wines], without getting any close to Kant’s proof that the judgment is universal but subjective, or his derivation of the ‘antinomy of taste’— surely one of his most profound and troubling paradoxes, and one that must yield to the argument contained in wine if it yields to anything.”

Friedrich Nietzsche: “Although we should drink to the author of The Birth of the Tragedy, therefore, it should be with a thin, hypochondriac potion, maybe a finger of Beaujolais in a glass topped up with soda-water.”

Edmund Husserl: “I recommend three glasses of slivovitz from Husserl’s native Moravia, one to give courage, one to swallow down the jargon, and one to pour over the page.”

Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sartre’s great work of philosophy, L’être et le néant, introduces the Nothingness that haunts all that he wrote and said. . . If ever I were to read Sartre again, I would look for a 1964 Burgundy to wash the poison down. Small chance of finding one, however, so there is one great writer whom I shall never again revisit—and I thank God for it.”

Martin Heidegger: “What potion to complement the philosopher who told us that ‘nothing noths’? To raise an empty glass to one’s lips, and to feel it as it travels down—noth, noth, noth, the whole length of the tube: this surely is an experience to delight the real connoisseur.”

In conclusion I really enjoyed reading this book (again and again).

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves wine and wants to try identify what, in all its complex connections with so much of what is valuable in civilisation, might be special about drinking it. I think he does a wonderful job in looking at the philosophical and religious questions related to wine, from the Koranic injunction against alcohol to the true nature of temperance. These questions take us far from the vineyard at times, making excursions into terroir as different as Wagnerian music dramas and the philosophical nature of smells. His arguments as well as his beautiful prose are fresh, original, teasingly provocative, but also joyous.

This book is only about 224 pages but fun to read either in one sitting or dipping in and out at pleasurable intervals.

There are pages of useful advice on what wine to buy that are also glimpses into what to look for in the wine. I think his recommendations are good ones even if he leans too heavily into French wines. As someone who co-owns a vineyard I can say with reasonable confidence that I know my French wines but also wine from South Africa but confess my ignorance of wines from the new world such as California or Chilean wines. But I see that as an opportunity to discover rather than stay in my comfort zone. Here Scruton gently prods you along to do just that.

As an aside Scruton, who never shies away from his staunchly conservative Tory beliefs, perhaps forget to mention one juicy vignette in that Karl Marx’s political and philosophical ideas were probably inspired by wine. Indeed Karl Marx’s family were the happy owners of a vineyard in Trier, a small affluent Rhineland city, on the rolling hills of the Mosel River Valley. The family sold it due to hard times. Then as now these vineyards of the Mosel Valley remain mostly small-scale, are still known for their fruity white wines, and especially their lemony Rieslings and agrotourism. It seems the politics of wine (tariffs and import taxes) played a larger role in the history of leftist thought than their quaint appearance might suggest. In the early 1840s, the economic struggles of these very vineyards inspired Marx to criticise the draconian Prussian government - and in the process, some historians argue, begin developing the theory of historical materialism for which he is best known. In fact there is a delightful book I can recommend written by Jens Baumeister called, ‘How Wine Made Karl Marx a Communist’ (2018) if anyone is interested in reading more about that.

Of course it’s always hard to know how seriously one is supposed to take Scruton in some of his more extravagant comments in the book, like many things he says in his other books: ‘you could say that wine is probably as old as civilisation; I prefer to say that it is civilisation, and that the distinction between civilised and uncivilised countries is the distinction between the places where it is drunk and the places where it isn’t.’ His desire to outrage and court controversy rises to the surface, and can result in some of the funniest moments in the book. But as with everything he writes, some of Scruton’s claims must be taken with a pinch of salt or more appropriately, with a glass of claret.

Indeed I prefer to picture his words as if he was one’s old and familiar drinking companion sitting on weather beaten leather chairs and making provocative but teasingly good natured remarks out of a desire to amuse rather than to be boorish or loutish. Indeed this book is best enjoyed with a glass of wine on hand whilst sitting on a comfy old worn out leather chair curled next to log burning fire as the light dims outside.

I would whole heartedly agree with Roger Scruton that wine is a “drink that causes you to smile at the world and the world to smile at you.” Instead of imprisoning you inside a solitary introspection, it takes you out of yourself - and your ideas with you - to mingle with others and their ideas. Wine is therefore a voyage of discovery - and rediscovery - in many senses. And for this I can happily raise my own glass and say amen to that.

But what glass of wine would I raise when reading Scruton’s own book?

Well, one bottle won’t do. So temperance is out of the window then - sorry Roger. You will need a good  French Sauternes or Barsac (preferably 2014) with the nostalgic autobiography, a finely bodied Bordeaux wine (I would go with a more complex wine from Saint Emilion) with the philosophy section of the book, and a champagne (of course) to drink with the philosophical jokes towards the end of the book.

Oh go on then, finish off with a tipple of Cognac before bed time, I am sure Scruton wouldn’t begrudge anyone that pleasure.

#treat your s(h)elf #books #book #review #book review #reading #roger scruton #scruton #wine #drinking #society #culture #civilisation #history #philosophy #ideas #marx #toryism #tory #conservativism

[thenexusofsouls]

Flock- what is your muse's family like? How do they get along with them? (Tony)

Eagle- is your muse courageous or cowardly? What might cause them to act in the opposite manner, if anything? (Ethan)

Sparrow- what artistic or creative hobbies does your muse have? What is their favorite or most treasured creation? (Natasha)

Cardinal- how does your muse recover from strong emotions? How do they recouperate? (Michael)

{i am the caretaker of souls} This got long, haha, so I’ll put it under a cut.

Flock- what is your muse's family like? How do they get along with them? (Tony)

So... Tony’s relationships with various members of his family are complicated and not always positive, but the following five people mean the most to him, and with each of them, he’s tried to do the right thing at least at some point in his life. With some it worked better than others, for varying reasons, but I’ll focus on these and describe his relationship with them a little:

Father, Howard Stark: Oh boy. Where do I begin. There was so much wrong with Tony’s relationship with his dad. Both of them were incredibly intelligent and very arrogant, and that caused a huge ego clash between them, but for different reasons. Howard never felt that Tony lived up to his expectations as a son, although half the time he didn’t really give him half a chance or bother to notice when Tony did do something productive, constructive, good, noteworthy, etc. Tony wanted his father’s love, attention, and approval, but often went about it the wrong away, trying to stand out with bad behavior rather than positive achievements. Whenever they met in the middle and could have had a chance at bonding, the two of them were so defensive or closed off that they just couldn’t open up to each other. This never really got resolved, and then Howard was killed, so Tony was left with not only a huge hole in his heart from the love he felt he never really got from Howard, but also an emotional wound that would never have any closure.

Mother, Maria Stark: Tony loved his mother to bits, although when he was younger he often pretended like she worried to much and sometimes smothered him. From Maria, Tony got the love he felt he never got from his dad, but it was almost too easy. She just gave it unconditionally, and in some ways that offset what he wasn’t getting from his dad so much more because of the dramatic contrast in how his parents treated him. She was the softer, forgiving, understanding, encouraging parents in contrast to Howard’s aloof, distant, businesslike fathering. She was the one person in his life that he felt safe going to in any kind of vulnerable way, and losing her left Tony feeling very alone and isolated in a way he couldn’t express to other people... so he bottled it all up.

Girlfriend/Wife, Pepper Potts: Ugh. This relationship, in my opinion, was terrible and toxic. He was distant, defensive, and he abused alcohol to an extreme. Also he put her in danger either by accident or inadvertently with things he said or did. His communication was never the greatest and his coping mechanisms were unhealthy at best. She shamed Tony for his trauma responses as if they were personality flaws he should be ashamed of (scattered memory, nightmares, panic attacks, etc.), used walking out on him as a threat and emotional weapon against him whenever she just didn’t feel like dealing with him, and often was not there for him when he needed her. But... Tony genuinely loved her and something must have been good enough for both of them for them to want to make it work, and somehow, eventually, it did. I think once Tony knew he wasn’t going to lose her (the threat of her always just wanting to leave really kept him on edge in a way that was damaging to his mental health), he calmed down and some of his behaviors and coping mechanisms actually got better, which then in turn made Pepper want to stay with him and work it out, so those two things fed off each other in a positive way. Her actually marrying him brought about an emotional stability Tony never had before, both within himself and in a relationship. He settled down considerably after that and was much more stable mentally once he had her full support. He loves her with all his heart and there isn’t much he wouldn’t do for her.

Older Daughter, Carter Stark: This is going to sound terrible, haha, so I’ll preface it by saying that Tony loves Carter immensely. She’s his daughter and all he wants to do is keep her safe and make sure she has the best life she can. But... in many ways, she’s also a symbol of some of the worst times in his life, some of the worst things about himself, and some of the worst things he’s ever done. He slept around, he let people down, he got people killed, he wasn’t there for the ones he loved, etc. She reminds him of a lot of things about himself that he wishes weren’t true or didn’t happen. Her existence has also made him wonder on many occasions whether he might have other children whose mothers never knew he was the father or chose not to even inform him. He loves her, as I said, but there’s also just this aching pain and guilt he feels with her that he didn’t do enough for her, didn’t protect her well, or even that her life might have been better had she not known him. Some of that is his own anxiety telling him things that aren’t true, but some of it is due to events that happened that he knows have affected Carter’s mental health that Tony feels responsible for, either through his own actions or by the company he kept at the time. So Carter reminds Tony of the worst, lowest, and most broken aspects of himself, and I think that will always cause him to believe that he was a terrible father to her. He’s spent many hours wishing that he had done more for her in some way and had been able to be a better father than Howard was to him.

Younger Daughter, Morgan Stark: If Carter is a symbol of how bad a father he could be and some of Tony’s worst qualities, the Morgan is a symbol of the best he could be. Morgan in many ways is Tony’s redemption. Other people outside looking in might say his actions during Endgame were redeeming, or that he had moments before that throughout the franchise that helped redeem parts of him along the way, but in Tony’s mind, Morgan is his redemption. She’s what happens when he does things right. Carter helped contribute to this because he didn’t want to make the same mistakes he made with her, and he sought to correct as many as he could. His own father also contributed because Tony had a big example of the kind of father he never wanted to be, and he tried to avoid that at all costs. Stepping back from the Avengers and focusing on his marriage and being a father to his daughters was far better for his mental health, even with the guilt and sadness of everyone’s failure in Infinity War. So the years during which he raised Morgan were Tony’s most stable and healthy as far as his own mental state. If he was ever concerned about the legacy he would leave - and he was - he knew he was leaving something pure and positive behind after his death, whenever it might be, with Morgan.

Eagle- is your muse courageous or cowardly? What might cause them to act in the opposite manner, if anything? (Ethan)

Ethan is actually pretty damn brave, considering he’s lived a number of years in fear. Before he entered into this nomadic lifestyle in an attempt to keep other people at a distance, he was protective of his friends and girlfriends. As he and his more recent girlfriend Kelly dealt with the creature infesting their house, there were many times when he was woken up in the middle of the night by her or suddenly startled by her screaming and had to get up and see what the problem was. He would always go on the offensive, investigating with something held as a weapon, letting Kelly hide behind him. He was scared, but he wasn’t about to let her get hurt. The problem was, there wasn’t really anything he could do about it in the end.

When Ethan is by himself, it’s a different story. He’s willing to be that shield or put himself in danger to protect someone he cares about, but if it’s just him alone, he’s not stupid. He’s not looking to throw his life away for nothing. So when he’s alone, he’s a lot more attention to his self-preservation instincts.

Sparrow- what artistic or creative hobbies does your muse have? What is their favorite or most treasured creation? (Natasha)

Dancing. Specifically ballet dancing. Allow me to explain. You might think that she’d never want to touch pointe shoes again with how ballet was used against her in the Red Room. It was used as a conditioning tool, both for its strenuous and physical demands and difficult skillset necessary to master it, but also for other typical brainwashing techniques it provides, such as the use of repetition, association through music, and creating a sense of isolation through competition with others around you. However, something weird happened after Natasha defected to SHIELD. She started to dance for herself. She only did it when alone, sometimes with music but often times without any. Somehow, she took this thing that had been used against her and made it her own. It became a source of comfort, almost like the dancing itself had been a wounded friend, and somehow by only doing it privately and emotionally, she was helping it to be something more positive every bit as much as it was helping her heal.

While dancing, Natasha lets her mind wander. She allows herself to feel things she doesn’t express to others. At several points in her life when things hurt her emotionally, she took time out to dance. Such as when Wanda dredged up memories of the Red Room in her mind, when Bruce left her, and often during the years between Infinity War and Endgame. As far as hat her most treasured creation is... I suppose it isn’t something solid she can hold in her hands, but every time she dances, she feels like she’s created something good. And I would definitely say it’s treasured because it’s cathartic for her and helps her to feel whole and less anxious, and there's incredible value in that for her.

Cardinal- how does your muse recover from strong emotions? How do they recouperate? (Michael)

Since the word “recover” is being used, I’m assuming the strong emotions in question are negative ones? Anger, sadness, frustration, fear, those sorts of things? Typically, he needs to take a step back and be quiet and/or alone for a time to reset himself. Michael does have a temper, and he does feel emotions like sadness and grief very strongly, so sometimes he needs to step back and make sure that he doesn’t make any rash decisions based off of emotion. Quiet prayer usually helps, but if not that then just sitting quietly alone for a time, preferably out in nature somewhere, usually serves to reset his internal composure and steady his mind. Michael doesn’t like to act impulsively or in anger, so if he feels himself about to do that, he usually steps away. The one exception is when someone he cares about is in danger, then he might act on his protective instincts. Regret follows, but again, he finds prayer to be comforting to him in those types of moments.

#{ i am the caretaker of souls } ᵒᵒᶜ #headcanons #muse: michael #muse: ethan cavender #muse: tony stark #muse: natasha romanoff

[strokingtheego]

No Skirting Around

Pairing: Logic|Logan/Morality|Patton. NSFS, Minors DNI

"It really isn't like Patton to skip out on movie night," Roman picked at the chocolate on his popcorn, inspecting it almost suspiciously, as though it might be the most recent victim of a certain, crasser part of Creativity. (He'd be wrong. All Remus had done was let it sit open on the counter, and now half the kernels under the surface had the consistency of day-old jerky.) 

"Usually he's the one to be all about treasuring family bonding time, if we could opt out from the beginning, I would have! Not to slander the collection of titles, but one's evenings might be better put to use planning the world's next great musical." 

Virgil bit back a cough-laugh. "Your 'What's In A Name', right, I can see the headlines now." His own popcorn had been left mostly alone, but the feeling of the bag felt a little off. "Well, he did make sure we all got our 'Popcorn from Pops', so he probably still wants us to go, even if he can't." 

"And the passion for a healthy, well-oiled dynamic between all of us truly admirable, it is- but I would much rather continue moving my works in progress into the works of art category."

Virgil squeezed his bag a little tighter. "He's.. working through his own thing, remember? And with everything going on, he deserves a night off to process, at least."

By the time they reached the living room, onesie-d and cast in the bright orange opening of The Sixth Sense, Roman was quiet. 

Virgil popped a kernel into his mouth.

"...there's hidden marshmallows in mine."

A loud, distraught gasp from the prince ("Share?") as they settled into the couch, but not before peering curiously over at the blanketed mass of fabric that spilled onto the floor.

"Love the skirt, Mindmeister."

____________________________

Logan was going to die. Tap, tap, over his parted knees, the feeling of soft curls over his thighs. Quiet, now. Only the trained instinct of keeping a straight face through difficult interactions could keep him from jolting out of his seat at just the feeling of fingers stroking circles under his thighs, creeping up over the softer fabric over his waist. They weren't even through the first few scenes, they hadn't even started- Logan was glad the room was dark, or he'd be scarlet, despite his best efforts. Why did he ever agree to this. It was completely unnecessary, if it was for this reason that Patton wanted to be exempt from the movie screening, then he might as well have stayed in his room as well, waited for him there, and whatever happens would really be no one else's business but their own. There was no reason for him to come out at his request, in a floor-length skirt, thighs spread expectantly in the dark of the living room. He could leave, at any time, right now, if he really wanted to.

But you don't want to, those infuriating fingers seemed to coo, trailing warmth over his ankles. Do you, baby? Logan waved the memory of that word away almost frantically, definitely burning up now, at the recollection of the first time the metaphorical heart had murmured it into his throat, and all the other, just as humiliating moments involving- that.

Different problem, instantly, because now the hands had changed course, pushing the folds of cloth higher, over his knees, and all Logan could remember was a breath against his ear, careful instructions and warmth over his throat and he couldn't move, as the skirt lifted high on his bare hips, hands admiring the test of obedience with every gentle squeeze to his ass. Flying colours. Good boy, Logan. They moved, back down to his knees and Logan exhaled, the odd bit of pride joining the heart hammering in his chest, trying to focus on the movie, on Virgil fighting Roman for his marshmallows back, on anything else besides the warm weight of arms over his lap, the feeling of fingers gliding close, much too close to the inside of his thighs and he set the popcorn he'd been crushing silently between his hands down as he took a breath. He choked. 

Patton pumped his cock again, seemingly delighted, as the heavy fall of his hands against the couch turned into a vice grip on the cushions. The stroke that followed was thankfully slower, thumb kneading under the head, careful pumps up and down, with one hand on his hips and he took it, eyes shut and shivering, trying, in vain, to bring air back to his lungs. The movement stopped, resting instead at the base of his now unmistakable need, a bittersweet kind of reprieve. Or so he thought, because the warm wet of a laughing mouth pressed to the tip and parted- 

"Logan? You good, bud?"

The two other sides in the room were looking right at him, Virgil with concern, Roman with squirrel-cheeked curiosity. Haley Joel was crying onscreen. The room felt like a tangible space, finally, for the first time since he stepped into it. 

Patton wasn't as forgiving. Another, long lick upward had him shift, shrug noncommittally at the other two as the warmth sucked gently around the head. Logan was fairly sure he wasn't surviving the night with his dignity intact. 

"Hm? Oh, I'm- fine. Why wouldn't I be?" That should not have sounded as breathless as it had.

"We-ell, for one-" Roman had somehow swallowed all the marshmallows back to gesture grandly around the room- don't take that idea- fuck, f uck- the imagined cotton was beginning to tear under his nails. He could feel the shoulders shaking from underneath the blanket. "-you've been giving Bruce Willis bedroom eyes since the movie began, which- I don't blame you for, but-"

"If you're tired," Virgil cut in, maybe a little too forcefully, but ultimately ignored the look Roman shot him to turn back, "You should go to bed. Patton's not here either, I'm sure he'll understand if you need a break."

Oh, he's here, he bit back, if only out of frustration as Patton gripped his hips, swallowing him down and Logan felt a little like crying himself, squashing down moans before they could rise and he shook his head, forcing himself to pop a few kernels into his own mouth. 

"No. I'll be okay."

"Are you sure."

"Of course. I apologize for worrying you two."

Roman snickered, "Oh, I wasn't-" Virgil shoved a marshmallow though his teeth.

"Okay. Don't push yourself." 

After what felt like hours, Virgil turned away, and the shuddering gasp that followed was more than a little embarrassing. Still, the relief coursed through his chest, even as laughter ran vibrations over his hips, into his spine and the mouth moved from the twitch of his dick to kiss teasingly over his hips. I'm sorry, I had to. Logan didn't particularly feel like dignifying that with an answer. The lips nudged apologetically just under his navel, planting kisses over his thighs before they disappeared completely, the imprint of them still warm and Logan was allowed to breathe, release the tension in his shoulders, let his chest rise a little higher as his eyes closed, at least for a minute.

A click of a bottle shut. 

The shock of the realization came before the shock of a slick forefinger pressing into him, a hand raising his knee over a shoulder, a high noise of instinctual delight rising in his throat. Logan could not have clamped that hand over his mouth quicker.

Pat- Patto-n! The heart didn't respond, pushing a second finger further in, spiraling leisurely into that one, tiny spot of vulnerability and it was all Logan could do not to just splay out then and there, hot breath fogging his glasses as he ground his heels into the carpet. 

"Patto-nn-" came the urgent whisper, barely audible over the gasp that shoved past it. "This- this is not what was discussed-"

Patton shut him up with a hard suck to the head, ecstatic with mischief as he stroked that spot inside him with incredible dexterity, kissing idly down the underside as Logan peeled the blanket back in desperation,  just enough to watch bright blue flicker open. 

Patton looked starved. 

His glasses were askew, curls pushed back from his face and precome shone on his bottom lip like the world's crudest form of gloss, mouth red and parted in a laugh that once was welcoming, trustworthy, not at all as predatory, dark and consuming. The blue in those eyes burned- and Logan was frozen.

Morality nudged his nose into the neatly trimmed nest at the base of him, and Logan watched him inhale, dragging utterly indecent lips back up to the head. 

Quiet, Logan. You promised.

The fingers curled in deep, pulsed white-hot to his toes, the tight warmth of a mouth engulfing him to the hilt, and the cushion ripped as Logan convulsed.

Call my name, Lo.

Patton hadn't pulled the blanket down all the way, just under his eyes and Logan watched the silhouette of a soft mouth drink him down, rocking a third finger into him as the bottle clicked shut. His hips shook, knuckles white against the couch as he gripped the tartan and his knees had long since gelatinized, whimper after whine punching out of his throat as the pace picked up on his prostate.

Patton-

His back had arched off the couch at this point, wracked with exhaustion, eyes lidded behind his glasses and his mind had gone blank, unsure if he was watching Virgil and Roman squabble over caramel or Bruce Willis playing with soldiers or the bob of Morality's throat as come dribbled past his chin.

Pat- Patton-

Shaking. He can't stop shaking. His arms were numb, The slow, purposeful torture continued, urging every muffled noise out of him as flashes sparked behind his eyes and how many minutes were left- seconds till it was over-

P a t t o n-

The credits. Virgil- Roman- they were packing up. Virgil was saying something he didn't hear, and Logan could hardly care whether or not what he had replied was a coherent thought or not. The living room was dark. 

The fingers found his face, warm, comforting, "There's my baby."

My good boy. You did so well, Logan.

Please. The only word he could think, to beg and part of him didn't even really know what he was begging for- "Pat- Patton please-" 

Hands tore the blanket off his lap, rending the seams of the skirt along with it, a darkened silhouette of want and gleaming blue leaning over his spent, shaking form, and whatever was left of his conscious mind left him about the same time Patton took him by the thighs and fucked all the way in.

Logan had always stood a good few inches over Patton. Now, watching the embodiment of the human heart loom over him, he thinks, maybe this is how it was always meant to be.

The couch slammed back into the wall. 

"Fuck-!" 

Patton- Patton Patton Patton-

The mouth met him halfway, kissing his cries away, calm and sweet and almost everything he could ask for.

Fuck me like you promised.

You promised, Pat.

Patton shoved his legs apart.

The pace was unrelenting, Logan spread the width of the couch and still keening, gasping, grasping for anything that might anchor him to the present  as his entire system struggled to keep up, garbled fuck-blissed noise and soft, murmuring words that shot shivers through his nervous system  as Patton nailed him deeper and deeper into the back of the seat and so good, so good for me, Lo, you did such a good job- 

"Ple-pl-ease-! Ff-fuck-"

Yes God harder yes-

Down- onto the seat itself, knees to ears and the shirt was unsummoned- neither of them had the particular state of mind to take it off in any way calmly and the sound that tore from his throat could barely be human, Morality jackhammering down into that tight, desperate spot with a laugh just as breathless and Logan screamed- streaks painting as high as his shoulder and clawing- begging- splotches of white under his eyelids blinking in and out of focus and all he could see was blue-

"P-Pa-ah! Pat'n- Pa-"

Beg, Lo.

"Ple-ple-eease-ples-"

Hot. Hot- Hot- liquid heat washed down below his spine- Morality had his thighs trapped behind him- fucking in so deep he choked from the sheer feeling of being full and Logan could care less what position they were in now, sinking on and off with every harsh slap of skin against his thigh and hands, over the damp of his chest as slick and come dripped down his taint and balls. 

"Pleas-e, pl-pl-uhn-" 

"Louder."

"Please! Patton-"

His back hit the cushions and Logan keened, whining at the sudden emptiness before hands hauled his hips up- and the cock thrust into him so hard his forearms smacked into the armrest, stars blinding him a good split second as Patton gasped into his ear and he shook violently- God, he could feel everything, feel Patton shudder as heat welled rapidly in his lower belly and the dry orgasm rocked him against the form above him, had him claw at the tartan as his spine snapped rigid against Morality's slow pace in, legs kicking out involuntarily, voice fuck-blissed and broken and warm- 

A warm pair of lips, by the time his consciousness drifted back into him, pressed carefully to his forehead. The world spun, blurred- and settled on the smiling face inches from him, freckled and waiting, concern lining the tired slant of bright blue eyes. They were still on the couch, from what he could gather, long past their set sleep schedule, sticky and sated  and the world should be coming back into focus by now.

"I'm sorry I broke your glasses." 

Ah. Logan exhaled carefully, chest still slightly strained from holding everything in.

"You have also torn one of my better skirts."

Patton shrugged, the beginnings of a familiar grin tugging at the corners of his mouth and Logan shut his eyes, headache welling, "Well, you know I'm not the type to skirt around the main point." 

Breathe, Logan, breathe.

"You were okay the whole time, though, right?"

Third post-coital sigh of the night. "Of course. I would have told you if I ran into any trouble."

"Did you?"

Bright blue watched him from his shoulder, slightly unfocused, quiet as he waited before he managed a grin as Logan shifted to face him, brows furrowed in gentle reminder.

"Of course not. You were wonderful, Patton." 

The smile faltered, and for a moment Logan thought he'd said the wrong thing, before it curved into something much more genuine, eyes crinkling at the corners, into the familiar laugh lines as warmth crept slowly into speckled skin and Logan's stomach flipped several times in that instant. 

"I'm pleats-ed to hear that."

"You're reaching."

"For the skirt?"

"Zip it."

"I can't- the skirt's torn."

Fourth. Fourth post-coital sigh of the night.

"We should probably take this somewhere with more curtains, though."

"Because there are more drapes there, I got it-"

"Because I'm not done fucking you into every surface I can find, that's right."

Logan's mouth was suddenly dry. 

"Okay."

__

In the farther reaches of the imagination, Roman gingerly lifted the pillow off his head from where he'd tried to bury himself face first into his mattress.

"Are-? Are they done? Please tell me they're done? Please tell me they've realized we can also hear their telepathic messages?"

Virgil, at the foot of the bed, refused to remove the pillows duct taped over his headphones, turned up to max volume.

Oh- h f-!

Back into the burying hole, we go, and Roman didn't hear Virgil scream.

#not safe for sanders #nsfs logicality #nsfs logan sanders #nsfs patton sanders

[bookandcover]

What I miss most: “the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue.” ~June 8, 2021

I’m so glad to have finally read this book after it was repeatedly recommended to me by several different friends. Hanif Abdurraqib has an absolute gift for crafting essays that braid his personal experiences with the (sometimes seemingly cosmic, and therefore daunting to explain or conceptualize) forces of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and nationalism in America. He also jumps seamlessly in scale and in scope, summarizing the heart of something hugely complex—a masterpiece album, a regional sound, a decades-long relationship—without reducing the irreducibly complex, without sacrificing specificity, without sounding trite. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, although I haven’t read very much Creative Non-Fiction. Regardless, Hanif moves skillfully, masterfully. I love the collection’s confidence in narration, the love of language, the direct confrontation with that which makes us all deeply flawed (deeply human).

Each of these essays could stand alone. It’s a joy to read even one and Abdurraqib’s style shines through in just a couple pages. He crafts his stories with such dexterity. It’s clear that he comes from a background in poetry, as he celebrates language, builds vivid images, and thinks thematically. (I love the moments that are truly experimental—erasures of his own work, pieces without punctuation that flow on and on in one interlinked sequence). At the same time, he relies heavily on facts and content. Part of his conviction is born of research and depth of understanding. He knows his subject; yet, within this knowledge, he expresses personal preferences and sentimental love. I learned a ton from this book about music, about the history of particular musicians, about the relationship between racial inequality and self-expression within the field of music. Together, these essays form of complex tapestry of recent history in America seen through the lens of music. I absolutely loved the experience of coming to understand the interweaving of so many of our lives’ central questions and tensions through the history of music.

Art is inherently political, as many contemporary artists would agree (a viewpoint that counters the modernists before them who argued for the apolitical nature of art—art for art’s sake). Abdurraqib makes a very compelling argument for the deep integration of art with politics, social systems, economics, and trends. These things, however, are also deeply tied to the powerful forces of our choices, our identities, our love, and our compassion. It does not cheapen art of have it be so informed by, so shaped by political and social forces. In Abdurraqib’s worldview, art is the medium by which we reflect ourselves back to ourselves. And it’s also the medium by which we find freedom, by which we challenge ourselves to grow beyond the ways we understand ourselves to be. Race is the most central political and social theme that weaves throughout these essays, starting with the title of the book, which is introduced in the essay on Bruce Springsteen. “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” are the words that hang above Michael Brown’s memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. It might be hard to imagine an essay that weaves a Springsteen concert with a trip to Michael Brown’s resting place, a task that would certainly be daunting to any other writer, yet Abdurraqib navigates this with dexterity that seems natural, fundamental to how he thinks about the world.

Within the framework of race in America, some of the themes from these essays that I most appreciated and internalized included: Black joy (when it’s expressed and what it means), the markings of wealth (in the context of a journey out of poverty), and the policing of authenticity (or other forms of self-expression/emotion). Black joy is mentioned repeatedly in these essays, as something to be commented on for its rareness, while also positing the idea that music is a space that more boldly permits Black joy. Awareness of joy seems flow underneath these essays; it’s something not taken for granted, something treasured. I found this awareness of joy in the essay on Nina Simone’s Blackness and in the contrast between how she is portrayal by Hollywood and how she lives on in Abdurraqib’s childhood memories. I found this awareness of joy in the essay “Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough to Find Afropunk,” which focused on the exclusion of Black bodies from punk rock spaces (and the disregard for the handful of Black bodies that dared to enter anyway), while emphasizing the inherent survival in the African American experience that resonants deeply with punk rock’s values. A longing for a space that is joyful for Black people was addressed beautifully in the essay on Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, in which Abdurraqib wishes for a home in the darkness of the photo of the two of them, where he sees “a small & black eternity.”

One of my favorite essays in the collection was the piece “Burning That Which Will Not Save You: Wipe Me Down and the Ballad of Baton Rouge,” which focuses on the rise of three Baton Rouge rappers—Foxx, Lil Boosie, and Webbie—in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina, which changed the outlook of Baton Rouge and its relationship to loud neighbor New Orleans. The essay breaks down the fundamental pieces of the rapper persona (circa mid-to-late 2000s): shoulders, chest, pants, shoes. For each of these elements, the essential nature of each is discussed, particularly as they relate to signaling both wealth and self-confidence: the dream realized. I loved this essay because it brilliantly articulated something I’ve always sensed (understood in myself in certain ways), but been unable to well-articulate, which is the power of “markings of wealth” in the life of someone who has survived through poverty, or an understanding of the proximity of poverty. For this person, the possession of wealth (things that show wealth, that communicate its presence to others, whether or not there is a real depth of wealth) feels and is different. Someone wears their wealth differently if they are conscious of it. This is a different look than that of the third-generation millionaire’s son for whom a real depth of security is so deeply ingrained as to limit the frame of imagination to always include it. I loved how this essay explained that wealth is not an universally proud/cocky look, but instead braggadocios, something that has a lot of context, a lot of nuance, a lot to do with environment and habit and understanding of temporary/permanent.

Sports, another space in which the economic and political forces of America come head-to-head with the personal and lived experiences of diverse Americans, also center several of these essays. Abdurraqib has a similar appreciation of sports—spaces of fandom, spaces of mass-appeal, spaces where the struggles and triumphs of a few become the struggles and triumphs of many—as he has of music. The social discussion around sports also holds a magnifying class to systemic racism, a process which Abdurraqib unpacks and examines. Serena Williams is discussed as an example of the policing of Black self-expression (policing how she expresses anger, how she expresses confidence, i.e. “too loudly” for the white Western world), topics also addressed in depth in “On Kindness.” “Black Life On Film” tackles the way violence is romanticized and compartmentalized as part of the Black experience, allowing an observation of violence for white viewers that is unhinged from a need to alleviate it, to address it. These same tensions and problems bubble forth in the dialogue around sports, as the eyes of the nation are turned to popular topics, which are filtered through (nearly exclusively, exhaustively) the same biased lenses.

As Abdurraqib develops these complex themes, he relies on a few central tools that are essential to his literary project. To point out these common tools is not to say that Abdurraqib only has a couple tricks up his sleeve. These aren’t “tricks” at all. Instead, these seem important to how he thinks about the world, things that are inseparable from his mode of observation.

His most central tool is the “parallel events” essay structure. With this approach, Abdurraqib details what happened for him personally as events occurred elsewhere that rocked the framework and landscape of America. A collapse of time collapses distance. Abdurraqib seems to have experienced many of these such moments of collapse, as he vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing as particular significant events unfolded. The eeriness of these experiences are not lost on a reader; we’ve all been there. To say that Abdurraqib has experienced many of these is to, perhaps, point out how much current events impact and rock him (as they always do those who belong to the groups that are, time and time again, targeted and destroyed in America). But it’s also, perhaps, to point out the precision of Abdurraqib’s memory. He holds onto details like a vice, capturing for us in painful and poignant specificity the situation in which he personally broke against the tragedy of the news (as the news breaks to us, we break against it, like waves). One of the delicate powers of Abdurraqib’s use of this essay structure is the way that his personal narrative is not cheapened, nor lessened when set up against the national event, the event we all remember. Instead, one is given the right urgency and the other given the right intimacy.

This technique for framing an essay (an experience, a life) begins in the essay “A Night in Bruce Springsteen’s America” in which a white older man at a Springsteen concert tells Abdurraqib he was at another Springsteen show on the evening Lennon was murdered. While this man wishes that “no one gets killed out there during the show this time,” there’s no world in which, for Abdurraqib, someone is not killed out there during this show. The cycle of loss that is stitched into Abdurraqib’s environment, his racial identity, is too great for him to ever hold that same hope. I think that this technique of parallel events (one personal and intimate, one tectonic and tragic) is best maximized in the short piece “August 9, 2014,” a poetic erasure of Abdurraqib’s own writing. In the main text, Abdurraqib recounts something that seems, on the surface, like an every day experience: another passenger complaining on the flight he’s boarding, a mother asking to switch seats so her son can look out the window. With the bulk of the text crossed out, the secondary narrative that emerges from the remaining words is of another mother asking for her son. The date in the title clarifies that this secondary mother-son narrative centers on the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The longing, the seeking, the asking of both mothers exists in a poignant overly. Perhaps what the mother on the plane asks for is trivial, all things considered, but Abdurraqib never dismisses her impulse to shelter her son, from fear, but, at the same time, to let him see the world beyond the plane’s window. The personal and small that occurs in Abdurraqib’s unique experience takes on the sacredness, the elevation of the cosmic, the tectonic plate shifts of death/life, and also the heralding in of a new/old era in America with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

My favorite, though, of all these essays was “Fall Out Boy Forever,” one of the most personal in the collection. Abdurraqib places the loss of his closest friend to suicide into the context of the rise, fall, and rebirth (as if from the ashes) of the band they both loved. Abdurraqib’s long-term fan following of Fall Out Boy works like pearls on a string, moments in time that span years, yet unite into a collective personal narrative. This narrative rang so, so true to me, as someone for whom the bulk of the past six years has been shaped by my relationship to a specific band. Their narrative contains my narrative; my narrative contains their narrative. Their concerts, their albums, their successes, their growth—these things exist like glowing points on the thread of my experience. I recall my life within this thread, anchored by it. I know the previous time I was able to see my grandparents, down to the exact date three years ago, because it followed on the heels of a particular BTS album that played in my ears over and over that week. I know when and where I traveled within the timeline of their music. I know when my friendships blossomed, pinned to the backdrop that is their musical evolution. I know the ways they challenged and changed me, changed my writing, grew my sense of myself. I know how inseparable I am from BTS, and I saw this so poignantly reflected in Abdurraqib’s journey with Fall Out Boy.

Like any true fan (the fan who is not self-interested, the fan who is there for the ups and downs, the fan who is there for the real story), Abdurraqib observes the members of Fall Out Boy with such astuteness (this made me go and listen to more Fall Out Boy songs than I ever had before). I loved the way he captures the dynamic between the band members. He’s great at this in general (his insights into the intra-band relationships in Fleetwood Mac and the production of the album Rumors was also so engaging), but there’s a different intimacy, a different kind of care with Fall Out Boy. Abdurraqib’s ability to so clearly reveal his own close relationship with Tyler in the context of Fall Out Boy’s inner life is striking and heart-breaking—from Patrick’s frantic internalization of his music (performed for himself, yet in front of a crowd) without Pete’s complimentary/conflicting (necessary) presence when Abdurraqib seems him perform solo in Austin, to Tyler’s DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU patch that Abdurraqib casts into the pit at a concert after wearing it to shows for years. To me, Tyler leapt from these pages, alive in the space where Fall Out Boy and their audience come together, transcending his own life’s timeframe in the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue. This essay made me feel less alone in my experience of life perceived through the lens of music. This essay was Abdurraqib’s project at its most intimate, where the perception that happens through the lens of music is, most fundamentally, that of one’s self.

#they can't kill us until they kill us #hanif abdurraqib #music criticism #important reading #race in the context of music #art is inherently political #writing about race #writing about music #rap #hip hop #pop music #creative nonfiction #popular culture #black lives matter #fall out boy forever

[choco-glow]

Fall Like Rain On Sunday, Pt. 12

The next waffle was perfect, crispy golden and almost a perfect circle, with beautiful melted pools of chocolate dotting the surface, with two almost perfectly in the Eevee pattern’s eyes, and Jason passed it over to Steph’s plate as he chanted a few Latin prayers, grinning as she burst into cackles at his terrible imitation of a priest. He’d utterly butchered the old prayers, but eh, it wasn’t like he was practicing anymore, and it made Steph laugh, so he still felt it was doing right by a God he’d long since stopped believing in.

“Oh god, you’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Eh, technically I’m a Resurrectionist—” She snorted at that, loud and adorable and perfect (everyone always looked weirded out, and Jason had, early on, always done his best to snort the same way. Weird dead Robins had to look out for one another.) He snickered in response. “But yes, I’m a former Catholic. Used to go to St. Maria’s as a kid, before Father John cleaned the place up.”

“…And the chanting?”

“Look, we only fucked up one waffle! Gotta bless it before shit goes south again.” She laughed at that, bold and happy and loud, and he planted kisses all over her face before turning back to the waffle maker and getting it going again. Glancing back over his shoulder, Jason grinned to see Steph holding up a fork with a triangle of waffle, topped with whipped cream and one of the raspberries she’d washed up, and he took the offering with a nom, groaning as the concoction melted in his mouth. Chewing, he gave her a thumbs up, already planning on making one for himself, and she chuckled, spraying on whipped cream and tossing on raspberries with abandon, then diving right in.

“Ooohhhhh this is soooooo good.”

“And somewhat healthy, that’s the lowfat whipped cream and everything’s organic.” He grinned after swallowing his mouthful of heaven, mouth watering already as he watched the waffle maker count down with hungry eyes; together, they switched off and a half-dozen waffles for each later, plus bacon and eggs, they were settled on Steph’s tiny couch and snuggled up close, groaning over their shared food babies. Jason had tucked a warm blanket over them both, because the rain coming down outside was just a little chilly for his tastes, and her apartment was…definitely on the list to be reno’d.

“…mmm…”

“Hmm?”

“This is really nice, Jay…”

“Yeah it is…” He murmured, tucking her head into his shoulder and pressing a kiss to her forehead, scarred fingers gently playing with a long curl of her hair before shifting to comb through the rest of her curls, making her purr against his neck.

“Ohhhh yes…please don’t stop…” He chuckled and shifted just a little so that he could bring his other hand up; with both hands, he started working on the knots in her neck and shoulders, on up into her scalp and back down, careful to comb away her soft curls so that they didn’t tangle. Steph melted into his chest, all the tension from the week just falling away as they snuggled to the song of rain and thunder outside, and Jason hummed softly as she whimpered at the release of one particularly bad knot in her right shoulder.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

“Yeah…fuck…been hurting there for a while now…”

“Why didn’t you say something?” She snorted softly, then sighed.

“You know how everyone is…”Do yoga, work it out, or just deal with it.” Jason heaved a heavy sigh himself at that, wincing.

“Touché, not being a part of the daily Batdrama made me forget about Bruce’s general masochism about pain and aches. Well, tell ya what; whenever either of us is hurting, how about we either work on each other, or go see an expert? I’ll foot the bill.”

“Yes, please. I’m…well, I don’t know how to massage someone properly? I’m guessing you learned from Alfred…”

“Talia, actually, and Nyssa while she was part of the League. Ra’s thinks it’s stupid, because it’s a ‘women’s weakness’ or some bullshit, but Talia and Nyssa both used massage as a tool, among their subordinates and with one another. And me, I guess, I was the odd duck out; most of the men were under Ra’s, while Talia’s personal guard was exclusively female.”

“She knew you, though.” Jason smiled at that, sad at the memories, and nodded, kissing her cheek now as Steph shifted up to meet his eyes. He normally didn’t like making a lot of eye contact with people, hence the hood, but Steph…it was different. Like Nyssa, in a way…Talia I never did, because she would take that as a challenge, but Nyssa and I grew to be good friends, and it was…easy with her. B always thought I was interested in her, but no; she’s just a familiar soul, I suppose. Steph, however, was even easier; there was always something in her gaze that reminded him of his own reflection, and he was sure that could be psychoanalyzed into oblivion, but he wasn’t gonna go that deep.

“She did. Damian…probably doesn’t remember all that well, but I was basically his babysitter for Talia for the short time I was there; she trusted a Robin, even one as much a zombie as I was at first, because even with the Pit madness, I was…well. Protective.” She smiled a little, and he smiled back, stroking her cheek now. “I never shoulda left him there, but…well…”

“You did what you could.”

“Yeah…and Talia was fine with me kiting off; taking Damian would have gotten me killed again. I’m just so glad she turned him over to Bruce…”

“Me too. It’s…B’s not the greatest parent, but he’s really working with Damian, which is huge given the crap he’s pulled with all of us.” Jason chuckled at that, nuzzling her cheek, and she kissed him softly, settling against his side. He tucked her close, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders, and rubbed her lower back now, grinning as she melted back into his shoulder.

“I think Damian reminds him of Dick, in a lot of ways, just more aggression, like me. So, instead of Tim, who’s learned, like Bruce, to control all his emotions in one clean, collected package, he has a Robin with attitude and a whole lotta baggage again, and he’s having to jump through hoops that he could largely train out of both Dick and I. Fortunately, Damian’s just as stubborn as B, and it’s kinda great that he’s been able to force some changes of his own.” Steph chuckled at that.

“Like Batcow, Alfred the Cat, Titus…”

“Fuckin’ Goliath, and lemme tell you, Demon Kitty was not on the list of potential pets B was willing to consider.”

“Which was why Damian just brought him home and didn’t care.” Jason snickered, laughter rumbling through his chest, which made Steph snuggle in more, much to his delight.

“Yup, and the look on B’s face is one I’ll treasure forever.” She giggled, and kissed him again, and Jason melted into the kiss, groaning when her hand started rubbing up and down his neck. He rolled a little more onto his side so that her arm didn’t cramp, and let out a full body sigh, snuggling around her. “Ohhhh baby you don’t have to…”

“I want to, Jay…tell me if I do something wrong?”

“I doubt you will, but yes, if it comes up…fuuuuuuuuuuuck oh hell yeah, right there.” He almost whimpered when she started scritching his scalp, nuzzling her hair with a moan of relief. It was better than sex, in a way; this was…grounding, and comforting, and more intimate. “Ffffucksofuckinggood.”

“This is for making me waffles, you amazing, wonderful, glorious man. I’m not sure I’m ready for sex yet, so hairscritches are at least a decent substitute?”

“Sosogoodbetterthansex.” He mumbled out, and she giggled again, shifting him so that he was facedown in the pillows and Steph was straddling his hips, working her hands up and down his back over his teeshirt, and Jason just went limp, eyes rolling with relief as his scarred muscles were carefully worked free of kinks and knots. Steph had said she hadn’t a clue, but she was gentle on his back, not pressing too hard, nor was she too light on the scars; her hands were softer than his, less callused, and so the gnarled skin over each old wound didn’t tense or ache from too much sensation. She mapped out his back with care, and with a sigh, he reached a hand back and patted her thigh.

“Babe, don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not a genius, because that is amazing.” He could almost feel the brightness of her smile, and he chuckled as she leaned down to kiss his shoulder, purring at the warmth of her body on top of his. “Seriously.”

“I’m so glad…I hope your scars aren’t hurting?”

“Definitely not, not even twinging like usual from the rain…How about you?” She sighed a little, snuggling in closer, and he craned his neck around, worried. “Babe?”

“I’m…a little achy, but it’s in weird spots…I don’t wanna be gross…” She murmured, nuzzling his shoulder, and he gently rubbed his hand up and down her thigh, ignoring the awkward position.

“…It’s not gross if it’s things that hurt.” He murmured, and she shifted back, letting him turn and face her, green eyes earnest. “Cramps? Period? I can run out and get you whatever you need?” She blushed, shaking her head, then nodded, then sighed, and he gently drew her back into his arms, tucking her between his legs and wrapping the blanket around her, snuggling her close. “The scars Sionis gave you too?”

“…Yeah. I…Look, this is gonna be…really fuckin’ gross, but when he tortured me…he…he didn’t just limit himself to my stomach and breasts…” She murmured, gulping a little, and he closed his eyes, swallowing back the sudden rage. “He didn’t put the drill in me, thank fuck for that, but things are…kinda fucked up down there. And yeah, it’s my period going, so it’s just…extra gross…” Steph blushed bright red, and he gently stroked back her curls, eyes soft, patient. “…I have to wear the disposable underwear that old people use…”

“…Oh sweetheart, that’s okay. Does it work?” She glanced up, eyes brimming with tears, and he gently kissed her brow, her cheek, her nose, her lips, brushing soft kisses all over her face, but she nodded, one lone tear overflowing. He gently brushed it away, cupping her cheek. “Then that’s all that matters to me. I won’t be grossed out, I won’t be upset. Hell…when you do see me naked, you might run away. I’m…not exactly in great shape down there, either. Missing one of my balls and my dick ain’t the straightest.” He followed that with a fake grin, still embarrassed, deep down, but she saw right through him; Steph shook her head and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“If Roy and the others didn’t care…I won’t. Besides…” She huffed out a laugh, and he felt a real smile touch his lips again. “It just means we can be fucked up together. But…thank you for not being grossed out anyway. It’s…you’re the first person to know besides B and Leslie…and B only knows because he hacked the hospital records. And you’re the only person who’s…probably ever gonna see them, which…I’m fine with.” He smiled at that, and she smiled back, kissing him softly. “So long as you intend to keep that proposal available.”

“Baby, it’s all yours; hell, we could go out one of these days and get a set of rings.”

“…You really want a set?”

“Fuck yeah I do, I wanna be a kept man.” The snort she gave was absolutely adorable, and Jason grinned wide at that, feeling their previous good mood return finally, and Steph kissed him, full and happy and perfect, before snuggling back into his chest.

“…So, kept man…could you rub my lower back again? Cramps are hitting me hard…” He placed his hands over her hips, gently rubbing and warming the area, and Steph sighed, dropping her head onto his shoulder, the tension bleeding out of her limbs. “Fuck…thank you…”

“So welcome, sugar…Wanna watch something mindless?” She smiled, and as Jason grabbed the remote, she let out a soft sigh, snuggling in closer, and he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead once more, running his hand over her lower back and keeping her safe and warm.

Yeah.

He really loved Sundays.

#JaySteph #Stephanie Brown #Jason Todd #tw: past body mutilation #cuddles and snuggles #fluff and romance #discussion of period #supportive partner #waffles #gothambysunlight #solarpunkgotham #rainy sundays