Run, Rabbit
here it is, the first fanfic I’ve ever written of tadc. I did this pretty quick so sorry if it’s not the best. I just love angst (and if you couldn’t tell, also Jax)
Tw ~ fear, panic, mentions of being prey, unintentional fearplay, grabbing, angst
word count ~ 1.5k
Jax was scared. That didn’t happen often, but he was terrified at the moment.
All because of Caine’s ‘newest adventure’ that he had no say in agreeing to. God, he wished he wasn’t in this stupid circus.
It had all started when Caine had run out of ideas for their daily adventures. The ai ringmaster searched for any possible game to play. He wanted to find something ‘new’ and ‘interesting’ for them to do…
Everyone was confused as he started talking excitedly about hide and seek, tag and all those other childhood games they knew as kids… Jax didn’t know how those were anything new, he couldn’t count how many times they played those games already while here.
Despite his reluctance, Jax decided to question Caine about how those were considered inspiring… that was his mistake.
Apparently, uttering a word in the quiet meant that he volunteered himself for the demonstration.
Caine had levitated over to him with an ‘I’m glad you asked!’ and that’s when his fate was sealed. If he could only keep his lips as closed as his teeth.
So now Jax was running. Fast. Though it wasn’t really doing much for him because at the moment…
He was doll sized.
Caine decided to make it ‘easier for him to win’ by shrinking him. According to the ai, he was much too tall to win at hide and seek…
Well… more like a mixture of rules form the multiple games, hide and seek, tag, etc. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. All Jax knew was that he was being hunted by giants, the others, and he needed to run and hide for his life.
Technically, he wasn’t going to be killed, but… that’s how it felt… some twisted part of his mind told him that if caught, he would die, that he was in danger…
He hated how his digital body was a rabbit. Maybe that was why he was freaking out so much over being the ‘prey’ of this game. Hit too close to home with these new survival instincts he was experiencing for the first time.
Even as the fastest one in the circus, his loss of height made it near impossible to go faster than any normal sized person and he was out in the open at the moment, nothing but the vast area of the tent with nothing to hide inside.
Jax was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of footsteps… large footsteps that shook the ground beneath him… there were only a few people in the circus who could actually make footsteps…
Well, at least he wasn’t found by the crybaby. That would be humiliating.
The thudding got louder as the giant got closer and Jax was really panicking now. He didn’t like to panic, and he definitely didn’t want whoever found him to see him panicking…
So he continued to run… but he knew he’d have to face a giant eventually, whether that be getting caught or having to be seen by Caine to be grown back after winning.
He wasn’t paying attention to where he was running until he ran right into a giant building block, falling on his back. The blue letter ‘L’ on it mocking him as he rubbed his head.
That’s when he heard it..
“Jax!”
The volume of her voice hurt his ears as he looked up…
And up…
And up at the gigantic rag doll that was a few feet away, looking at him with a terrifying triumphant expression.
Jax immediately began to backtrack, scrambling back on the hard floor away from Ragatha, not able to take his eyes off her.
That didn’t stop her from stepping closer, a smirk on her face as she closed the distance between them in just two normal sized steps.
He watched her kneel down, Ragatha’s hand moving towards his tiny body.
Jax felt his ears press down against his head… well.. that’s embarrassing. He looked pathetic at the moment, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was the instincts buzzing around his head, telling him to run and hide. It wasn’t a game for him now…
The rabbit felt the giant hand wrap around his waist, lifting his feet off the ground like he was an actual toy. He hated that feeling, but he couldn’t speak more than a slight whimper that made it past his lips.
Ragatha was talking to him. He could see her giant mouth moving… but he couldn’t pay any attention… just staring wide eyed as his lips were open in a slack jawed frown, his solid yellow teeth on display.
Jax felt his body trembling, his arms stuck at his sides in the fist and his legs limp, held so high off of the ground.
“H-hey doll face…”
He tried to give his signature grin to save face, but that was much harder than he thought…
“Uh.. Jax?… are you okay? You look a little pale.”
He noticed that she didn’t mention the shaking, or the wide-eyed stare, or his ears firmly down against his head…
“I’m fine… congrats. You won the stupid game.
Now, p-put me down.”
Jax tried to convince Ragatha to put him back on solid ground in an attempt to be snarky… honestly, anything was better than being held by a giant, even if it meant having to look all the way up at her.
“Uh… shouldn’t I take you to Caine?”
Right… he forgot about that, he’d need Caine to unshrink him, but the thought of not being on the ground within the next five seconds made him want to curl up and shake more than he already was… he couldn’t do that in Ragatha’s hand though, he’d never hear the end of it.
Even though Jax knew it was probably easier to just let her carry him to Caine, he still got a feeling of dread about the fact she had turned down his demand… he felt like it wasn’t taken seriously.
“I can walk on my own. "
He grunted while squirming in her fist. She opened up her hand so he was laying on her flat palm. He moved to stand but struggled to balance from the plush fabric surface of her skin.
Ragatha chuckled at his statement.
“Yeah, right, and let you get lost on the ground somewhere? No way. Caine probably wouldn’t even see you down there.”
Jax groaned in irritated acceptance, with a slight undertone of fear from the prospect of being carried for who knows how long since Caine liked to roam around often.
“Fine… take me to him then, and make it quick. I don’t got all day.”
He made a show of sitting cross-legged on her palm and crossing his arms, forcing his ears back up with will power and spite. Jax kept his surprised yelp to a minimum as she started walking with her giant strides again, refusing to look at the floor very far below to him.
Caine was smaller than Ragatha so it wasn’t too hard to look at him, but those giant teeth made him shudder like the first time he arrived here.
Finally… he was set on the ground and with a snap from the ai he was back to his tall self. Jax relished in his size and internally sighed in relief as the nightmare of being a tiny hunted rabbit was over with. He wanted it all to be put behind him, never thinking about that again until… he realized that those instincts didn’t go away.
He was still… jumpier than before, more cautious with noises… and though he didn’t have one, he bet if he did, his nose would twitch like crazy every time he froze at a loud sound.
Don’t get him wrong, he still showed no fear on his face, talked back to the others and NPCs during adventures and frequently screwed with anyone unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity… but now it was slightly different. He was slightly different.
Something about feeling like small prey in a twisted game of chase, even if it was only in a digital reality, stuck with him… and once those weird new survival instincts unlocked over running from the giant characters he was stuck with… they couldn’t be put back in the bottle that easily.
Jax hated this. Why did his digital body have to be a rabbit?
No one seemed to mention it though, whether they even noticed his strange behavior or not. Though Ragatha gave him some odd glances once in a while that he met back with an unamused glare.
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hope you guys enjoyed! Might do more like this later, please send me asks and such! The brain rot for my fandoms is real :’)
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tag list:
@da3dm @i-am-beckyu @lunar-but-little
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67 and/or 38!
alright the last one of these I tried to answer is currently an 8K WIP so here goes nothing [ins. ralph wiggum ha ha I'm in danger gif]
We've got Hands by Barns Courtney on deck, a fun little rock anthem about meeting a cutie at a show and then losing their number and trying to find them. Going looking in the streets even!
This would be a fun missed connections AU - both humans or else a Dream who is taking mingling with humanity a LITTLE too seriously, a little like a bender, and a Hob who organizes shows, sometimes does security for them. It'd be a little love letter to a very specific brand of twee indie romcom films. i will not name a setting or a time period because that was the thing that ruined me last time!!
So one night, at a show - not one of his - Hob sees Dream, it's a fuckin' coup de foudre. The thunderbolt. Love at first sight. Dream is wearing a leather jacket, black lipstick, and a determined sort of expression that suggests he is a) utterly shittered and b) here looking for a fight.
Hob gets it. He does. He used to go looking for fights all the time. He watches from across the crowd as Dream finds his. When he takes a punch grinning, like a fucking lunatic, not even defending himself, Hob shoulders his way across and intervenes to try and make peace. Dream has, of course, chosen the most unlikable possible person to get into it with, and when certain Objectionable Comments are made, well, it's a bad look, he knows, but Hob decks the guy anyway before his buddies throw him out. And then Hob is left to deal with Dream, who is kicked out too, for starting it, except kicking him out actually means taking him home, because Dream is too drunk to get back to his, and also refuses to tell Hob where he lives.
Dream is flirting with Hob the entire way back, and saying things like "You need not have come to my defense," and sort of feeling up the arm Hob has offered to steady him with, and just. Just staring a lot at him, with very blue eyes. Hob resolutely deposits him on his sofa with a glass of water and a quilt he actually knit himself, and then goes alone to his room. After a second thought, he locks the door. He does not trust his resolve, not with this man.
Sometime in the morning - morning for decent people who weren't up until 4 AM, not yet morning for Hob - he wakes up and sees Dream standing in his room, like the world's hottest hungover sleep paralysis demon. "What the fuck," says Hob, muzzily, "I locked that."
"Why," asks the world's hottest hungover sleep paralysis demon, "Are you afraid of me?"
Hob, more awake, remembering last night, says, "No. But you were very drunk. And very persistent."
"I'm not drunk right now."
"Clearly still very persistent," says Hob, not only more awake at this point, but also considerably more in love with this stranger.
"I feel like shit." He says it while looking at Hob and sounding tremendously regretful. Hob honest-to-god blushes. Later, he thinks. In the actual morning. After a good breakfast.
He lifts up the covers. "Well, come on then," he says. "We can still snuggle."
Dream crawls in, and Hob nuzzles his face a bit into his hair. Dream sighs happily and settles himself into Hob's arms, presses his bony back into Hob's warm and naked chest. All the tension melts out of him. Hob wonders what sort of breakfast his stranger would like. Starts mentally planning something, and then dozes back off to sleep. When he wakes up at his morning - noon - the space next to him is empty and the bed is cold. But there's a phone number on his hand, and a smiley face.
Only Hob drools, when he sleeps, and the last three numbers are hopelessly smeared. He panics, a little. Starts dialing numbers, looking in the phonebook, asking around at shows with his stranger's description. It's the opposite of trying to find a goth in a haystack. That would be so, so much easier than this.
Dream, for his part, had to leave for work, but it's fine. He's sure this man will call him. He knows where he lives, of course, but Matthew insists he has already acted 'sufficiently fucking unhinged' and 'cannot show up on some guy's stoop, he lives in Greenpoint dude, you will get the cops called on you'. So Dream tries to wait. He thinks, over and over, of this man who threw an easy punch in defense of his honour and then looked, bizarrely, bashful about it, who threw the same arm around him and used it to tug him closer and huff softly into the back of his neck the next morning, and Dream knows it's not exactly the normal speed of things, but he's in love. He's in love, and his happy confidence that he was going to be phoned the same afternoon - or, maybe he was busy, the next day then - or on the weekend, surely? - or - has vanished.
It's not his stoop. That's what he tells himself when, on the fifth day of not hearing anything, he finds himself picking up oranges and putting them back down again at the bodega a block from the mystery man's apartment, staring at the door as if sheer willpower might summon him. He starts getting flowers for his sisters at a Greenpoint florist. At his lowest moment, he does an entire load of laundry at a laundromat three blocks away, and spends the whole time staring out the plate glass windows furiously people-watching. Maybe he doesn't even live there. But it had seemed like a home. It had - felt like one. More than Dream's own apartment ever has.
Hob is giving up hope as the week wears on. New York is huge. Brooklyn is huge. What if he was just a tourist? What if he lives in Delaware? He didn't look like someone who lives in Delaware. He's even fallen behind on his fucking errands because he's been going to every show he can find, shows that he thinks would be his stranger's scene, staring at crowds looking for black hair, black lipstick, blue eyes.
And after nearly a week of these mortifying shenanigans, he finally sees him again - at the bodega of all places - and Dream looks, frankly, furious, until Hob holds up the back of his hand, the faded incomplete phone number (he morosely started avoiding washing the spot after fearing it might be all he would have as a memento), and Dream realizes that Hob had wanted to phone him, he had.
Hob hands him the sharpie he always keeps in his pocket, says, "Here. For next time. Something that lasts longer."
And Dream, of course, takes it from him, wearing the same wondering small smile he had when Hob invited him to come cuddle, and then he's staring at Hob again, except this time he's not drunk, he's not drunk, but they are in Hob's local bodega, which Dream apparently either does not know or care to consider, because suddenly strong hands are wrapping around the back of his neck and he's being kissed, sweetly and hungrily, and Hob is making a piteous noise of happiness into his mouth, and Dream is slotting a thigh between his legs, mother of Christ, right in front of the sandwich counter. Hob pulls himself away and breathlessly asks, "Can I take you home? Again?" and Dream smiles and takes his hand, the one with the faded blue scrawl Hob can finally wash off, and pulls him out the door.
They're half way down the block before Hob remembers he forgot to buy the gnocchi. He makes them go back for it, because he's pretty sure they'll be hungry in a couple hours. And he still owes his stranger a good meal.
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Ody Does Math
“Good morning, teacher.” sang the kids, faces radiating vitality.
Indeed, it was a good morning. You can hear the larks chanting in the forest, oak leaves whispering secrets of the wind, and see the open fields bathing in the blazing sunlight casted by Lord Helios. Every bit of this scenery was calling for your attention.
But now is not the right time for that. Commented Athena, in her mind. Now is the time for their math class, and none of them can escape this fact.
So she simply nodded to their greeting. So far so good. She gave a quick glance around the classroom. Odysseus, her favorite student, seemed rather eager for the class. He’s doing good as always, Athena thought. Eurylochus, on the other hand, seemed quite unsettled. Curious. Is it because of his homework? Athena wondered. And as she set her eyes on the next student, she called:
“What are you doing there, Mr. Polites?”
She could see his panic alright. But soon as Polites reclaimed himself she heard him say: “Sorry, Ms. Athena. I was just trying to pack this bag real quick.”
“What for?”
“Er, Ms. Athena…I don’t suppose this is the right place to say—”
“What for, Mr. Polites?”
He sighed. “It’s for a friend of mine, really. Today’s his birthday.”
As he finished, Athena caught a glimpse of the mild blush on Odysseus’s face. It wasn’t hard to figure out what exactly was happening here, but she merely said:
“Well, in that case, I might as well congratulate this friend of yours with a ‘happy birthday’. Hope he gets to be a valiant warrior, a warrior of the mind. And yes, you may sit down, Mr. Polites.”
As everybody settled on their seats, Athena quickly chalked a line of Greek on the blackboard. It reads: ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΑ ΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΙΚΑ (Elements of Geometry). As soon as she finished, she said:
“Welcome to today’s math class, everyone. We’ll begin with a discussion on a simple problem in your textbook. Now, please turn to page 43, and evaluate the problem quickly. I’ll ask for your ideas in a few minutes.”
It’s not hard. Thought Odysseus. Just some simple geometry. You draw a perpendicular BC at point B with half the length of AB, and…
“Mr. Eurylochus, if you may?”
Eurylochus’s hesitation was all written on his face. And his silence was loud enough to speak for his cluelessness. I should help him. However, it’s not my turn. Thought Odysseus.
Athena apparently noticed something. “Mr. Odysseus, if you may?”
“Yes ma’am. You need to draw a perpendicular BC…now we have an auxiliary right triangle ABC, right? Draw an arc with center C and radius BC intersecting the hypotenuse at a point D. Then draw an arc with center A and radius AD intersecting AB at a point, say E. Now E should be the golden ratio point.”
“Good job. Now prove it.”
”Prove it?” now it was Odysseus’s turn to hesitate, but he hoped that he didn’t show it. However, Athena was quick to pick up something…else. “Well,” he started, “all I gotta do is…huh, what’s this bag for?”
A look at Polites was sufficient to explain everything.
“Mr. Polites! You seem quite eager to hand the present out, I see. Why don’t you give Mr. Odysseus a hand, by proving this point E to be the golden ratio point as he claims?”
Polites was eager, alright. He stood up swiftly, and said, “May I have a chalk, Ms. Athena?” After a moment Polites finished the proof on the chalkboard, saving the day. Then Athena complimented both Polites and Odysseus, and the class moved on.
But Eurylochus was uncomfortable with the compliment that Odysseus had received. Geometry is his strong point alright, thought Eurylochus, but let’s just wait till we get to arithmetics.
…
And soon they got to arithmetics. But there were only 10 minutes left for the class. So Athena decided to give a little quiz.
“I have a challenge, a test of skills.” said Athena, “the problem is, are you all ready for it?”
All nods. Ok. “Then let us begin by introducing a geographic fact. This is Troy, 600 miles away from us if you travel by sea. Now suppose that a ship travels at a speed of 5.755 miles per hour without the wind, and it is heading from Troy to Ithaca in full speed, and when it is 2.8 miles away from Ithaca it takes a turn to Temesa, sailing through 290 miles in total, and from there to Aeaea 158 miles away. Suppose the ship sails in a uniform speed, without any wind. How long does it take in total?”
Odysseus could see their expressions clearly. He could see Eurylochus busy doing the calculations, which wasn’t a surprise at all since he was so good at it. I could use a good right-hand man like him. Odysseus thought. And let’s see how Polites is doing. He seems to be struggling with it, which is not a good sign…
But what are you doing, Odysseus?
He had no idea. To be honest he haven’t even figured out how a decimal point works, but he’ll do it anyway, after all he’s a warrior of the mind! What do those miles add up to? 420? 420 divided by 5.755 is…730, right? Wait that 730 looks so familiar…isn’t that twice as long as 365 days? My goddess, that’s a really long time!
“Mr. Odysseus, what’s your answer?” From afar, he could hear Athena calling to him. But this time, there is no more hesitation. He had found his confidence. He knew his result to be true, though somehow he doubted the validity. But he’s gonna answer it anyway, knowing that had it been wrong, the fault was not his at all, but Athena’s. She provided the data, didn’t she? So nothing can go wrong. Just you chill, just you stand, just you answer.
”Ma’am…it’s two long years.”
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