#which is exactly what ive been trying to push my coworkers to do for a year

[irl]

i cannot wait until the next meeting at work

#txt #i spoke with my boss about how no one is taking their breaks #and this is causing people who otherwise would feel bad about wanting to and so they are also not taking their breaks #and that she needs to start advocating for her employees #and she agrees and would like to see us at least taking our paid 15s #which is exactly what ive been trying to push my coworkers to do for a year #so she will be bringing it up at the next meeting #and she has already given me permission to jump in and speak about it as well #i need to write talking points down #its very important

[sodasback]

Origin Story - Part 3

ER Nurse Rafe x ER Nurse Reader

Part 1 Part 2 

Warnings: Unprofessional work environment stuff. Alcohol consumption. Cursing. Unedited, will go through and edit later.

Not my photo. All credit to owner/creator. <3

The next couple weeks you focused on being a new nurse in the Emergency Department. Your life was filled with shifts with a preceptor and tons of classes and trainings. 

You were thankful for being so busy because otherwise you would be constantly ruminating on the night at Crazy 8′s and what you said to Rafe. You can’t believe how drunk you got in front of your brand new coworkers and how shamelessly you flirted with Rafe. And the worst part was: you didn’t know how he took it. Really the last time you said more than a couple words to each other was when he started your IV that next morning. It seemed like everything was okay, but you flushed every time you saw him on the floor. And then you’d curse at yourself for having such a crush on a guy. 

-

You were by yourself in the med room, finishing up at the Pyxis, pulling meds for your patient when Rafe walked in. 

“Hey Y/L/N, I feel like every time I see you, you’re running around. How’re you doing?” Rafe asked, taking your spot at the Pyxis. 

“Doing good!” You told him, almost too enthusiastically. “How are you?” 

Rafe let out a little chuckle at your new formality with him. “I’m good.” 

You hesitated for a second looking at Rafe’s back while he faced the Pyxis, wondering if you should bring up what you were thinking. 

“Listen, Rafe.” He turned around once he heard the serious tone in your voice, causing you to look down for a second before meeting his gaze again. “I want everyone here to see me as competent and I want to maintain everyone’s respect, including your’s. ...so that night at the bar, when you took me home I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I’m just really embarrassed that I-” 

“Y/N, you don’t have to say anything. Everyone here has had a night at Crazy 8′s and you didn’t say anything that night that you should worry about, okay? I already know you’re a badass nurse who’s more competent then some of our seasoned RNs. You have all of our respect, including mine.” 

You smiled at him and nodded. 

You started to turn away, but then stopped yourself, “But didn’t I kinda throw myself at you when you brought me to my apartment?” You asked, putting your hand to your forehead and scrunching your eyes shut, only peeking at him when you heard him chuckle breathlessly. 

“Uhh, yeah, you might have tried to flirt a little. But like I said, you didn’t say anything I didn’t want to hear.” He looked you in the eyes, trying to gauge your reaction.

Your lips parted and you opened your mouth to speak, when your preceptor for the day popped her head in. “Y/N, come on, bed 12 is going for CT.” 

-

The following weekend was Edgar’s birthday which brought everyone back to Crazy 8′s that Friday night. You were determined to go and only maintain a slight buzz and classy behavior the entire night to make up for the last time you were at the ED crew’s favorite bar. 

The night started out with everyone buying Edgar shots and of course, Edgar dancing the night away. At one point, Edgar and you were out on the dance floor with everyone else. The birthday boy had a cocktail in hand he was sipping from. You didn’t notice, but as the two of you danced, Edgar saw his best friend behind you. Edgar mischievous grin grew on his face before forcefully twirled you away from him and into Rafe’s chest. 

“Woah, watch where you’re twirling Rookie. If you wanted to dance, you could have just asked, you didn’t have to tackle me.” He teased.

You rolled your eyes, “You flatter yourself too much Cameron. You can thank your bestie over there for launching me into you.” As you let Rafe grab your hand and twirl you around. 

“Oh, don’t worry I will.” He smirked, and nodded at Edgar who made an obscene gesture that the 2 of you just laughed at. 

The two of you continued to dance for a few songs and it was innocent enough, until a sensual song came on. Your hands had a mind of their own as they moved to rest on Rafe’s shoulders and his settled on your waist. 

As the song continued and the alcohol coursed through your veins, you felt your inhibitions fading as your fingers laced together behind his neck and he pulled you closer as his hands gripped lower on your waist and the small of your back, dangerously close to your ass. Your smiles both faded as you looked into his eyes and your lips parted. 

The song was coming to an end. “I think I need some air” You whispered, still looking in Rafe’s eyes. He looked toward the balcony patio and turned, firmly holding your hand, pulling you behind him and maneuvering his way through the crowd for you. 

The cold air hit you and instantly sobered you a little, which honestly, only made you more sure of your attraction to your new coworker. It also didn’t help that outside was completely empty. It was just the 2 of you. 

Rafe pulled you close to the railing where there was a beautiful view of the city lights. “Better?” He asked as he leaned on the railing. 

You followed suit but shivered at the cold metal hitting your skin coupled with the chill of the outside air. “Yeah. Just a little cold. But good.”

“Here” Rafe said, as he slipped his flannel off. 

“Oh no. It’s okay, I’m fine-” 

“Just put it on Y/N.” Rafe smirked at you. You smiled and slipped it on, not missing the sweet smell of his cologne wrapped around you.

You both leaned on your elbows against the railing and looked out at the view in a moment of silence. 

“So beautiful” you muttered in a blissful tone. 

“Yeah” Rafe agreed quietly, but you turned to see he was looking at you and not the view. Your eyes widened ever so slightly and your mouth dropped open a little. Before you could stop yourself your lips were on his. 

You felt like you had been struck by lightning and you couldn’t stop from moaning softly against Rafe causing him to let out a gentle grunt before you both opened your mouths and deepend the kiss.

The kiss was only getting more passionate when you had a moment of clarity. You pushed at Rafe’s chest and pulled away. “Shit!” You cursed closing your eyes, hitting your palm to your forehead and turning away from Rafe.

“Y/N-“ Rafe tried to stop your impending freak out he already knew was coming.

“I’m such an idiot!” You exclaimed. “I can’t believe I’m making out with my coworker I’ve known for what? Like 3 weeks?!”

“Hey! Relax. It’s fine.” Rafe tried again.

“Of course you think it’s fine! Every girl at work probably throws themselves at you! And now you think I’m just another-“

“Y/N!” Rafe grabbed your shoulders, “Chill! I’ve never made a move on a coworker before, so don’t worry about that. And I don’t see you like that. You’re not just some girl.”

“Rafe we barely know each other!” You reminded him,  “Can we just forget this happened please?!” You asked exasperated and still freaking out. You didn’t miss the disappointment flood Rafe’s face, but you were too freaked out and buzzed to do anything about it.

“Yeah, of course.” he agreed easily. 

You shuffled your feet back and forth and took a deep breath.

“Are we good? Is it gonna be all awkward now?” You asked, still stressing.

Rafe laughed, “Why ‘cause you’re a bad kisser?” He teased and answered your question for you.

Your mouth dropped open in offense, “Shut up! Take it back!”

“Make me!” Rafe furrowed his brow at you. And you punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow! I’m just kidding. Lighten up, Rookie. Yeah, we’re fine. ...Are you good?” He asked, giving your hand a squeeze.

“Good.” You smiled, squeezing back. “Kay, I’m gonna go back in first, okay?” 

And you started to turn, “Wait, Y/N.”

You groaned, “Cameron! Don’t make this harder! We can’t-” 

“I was just gonna say, I kinda need my shirt back, if we’re gonna play this off.” He said. 

You almost died from embarrassment. “Oh yeah! Right, right right! I’m so dumb. I’m sorry- I “ 

“Y/N!” Rafe stopped you from going off on a tangent while laughing at your ability to easily fall back into a freak out. 

“Yeah” You agreed and shrugged off his flannel, handing it back to him.

Of course, you panicked when you got home and tossed and turned worrying about what happened between you and Rafe.

Then, you got a text message from an unknown number

Unknown #: Stop worrying about it.

You knew it was Rafe, but you didn’t have his number saved. 

You: How do you have my phone number, stalker?

Rafe: We have unit directory, Rookie.

You: Likely story. How’d you know I was worrying?

Rafe: Lucky guess ;) We can forget it happened 

Rafe: ...if you want to.

You stomach dropped and you took a second before you dialed Rafe’s number. 

“Hey” He greeted. 

“What if I don’t want to forget it happened?” You asked. 

#rafe cameron #ER Nurse Rafe #nurse!rafe #nurse!reader #Rafe Cameron x Nurse!Reader #rafe x reader #rafe x y/n #outer banks #obx

[marvelgurl]

Off-Limits: Part 7

Characters: Tom Holland X Reader Osterfield (eventually), Harrison Osterfield

Word Count: 3270

Warnings: Language, Angst, Fluff, 

A/n: This is Part 7 of the Off-Limits series. I am going to start off by saying I am not a dancer, in any way, shape or from. That being said if the dance part of this fic doesn’t make sense I’m sorry, I did try my best to make it make sense. What I can say is that I love music, I am very passionate about it as well. Hopefully that will make up for the “dance” writing. (probably not though)

I used choreography from this video (not all of it but small bits)

Song: Inner Demons By Julia Brennan 

Tags are Open for this series.

As always Feedback is always welcome. Good and Bad, it really does helps me.

Also Sorry for the super late upload. I hopefully will have part 8 uploaded on time.

Tumblr Masterlist  Series Masterlist

“Tom…”

You looked around for him, but all you saw was your mother sleeping in a chair next to your bed. You could have sworn you heard his voice.

Great I’m hearing things. You let out a sigh as you thought to yourself.

You closed your eyes, throwing your head back onto your pillow. You brought your hand up to your face, as you tried to rub it across your face you realized that it was harder than it should be. You opened your eyes to see your hand was wrapped in gauze. You couldn’t remember what had happened. You started freaking out a little bit. The machine that was next to you started beeping loudly, which wasn’t helping you at all. You covered your ears as best as you could.

Your mother woke up to the noise, she looked over to see you grabbing your head. She came over to you, she put her hands on the sides of your face.

“Y/n, honey you need to calm down.”

The door opened, nurses and a doctor came rushing in. They were moving around checking everything. One of the nurses put something into your IV. You opened your eyes to see your mother looking at you, you focused on her and slowly your heart slows back to a normal rate.

“Mom…” You felt like a child again, tears welling up in your eyes. You grabbed her arm to pull her closer, she just held onto you.

Harrison and Tom came running through the door. They had seen the nurses and doctor run into your room. They were prepared for the worst. Once they saw that you were awake a sigh of relief washed over them. Harrison came up next to your mother and hugged the both of you. After a few moments you all let go, tears were threatening to fall from all of your eyes.

You looked up to see Tom standing close to the door. You made eye contact with him, only to realize he was on the verge of crying as well. Then you started thinking about what you had heard. Did he actually say those things or was it all in your head? What about Nadia? You quickly looked away from him once your doctor started speaking.

“Well, not exactly how I thought you would wake up, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say we are glad your awake.” Everyone agreed.

“You just about gave me a heart attack Y/n.” Harrison gently pushed your shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I woke up to…” You stopped yourself, you looked towards the door at Tom and back down again. “I can’t remember what happened. I saw my hand all wrapped up and I just freaked.”

Tom couldn’t help but think that you had heard everything that he had said. He really hopes that you did because he meant every single word. Now he just needed to figure out whether or not you would even allow him to come back into your life.

 “Y/n, there are somethings I would like to discuss with you.” Your doctor looked around at your family and Tom. “Is it okay to speak with everyone in this room?”

You looked over to Tom. He was about to leave when you spoke up.

“Ye… Yes.” You had a feeling you knew what this was about. It was time for it to come out. It’s time for the truth to come out.

“Okay.”

The doctor had Tom move over to where Harrison was, so that it was easier. He went over to his computer. Pulling up your file, before turning back to the four of you.

“You came in about a month ago for a checkup, all of your levels were where they should be. Yesterday we did some blood tests when you first came in, now they are way below where that should be. You are severely malnourished. I am also positive if I were to have you stand on a scale you would have lost quite a bit of weight. Not to mention the damage to your liver, from the alcohol.”

You had put your head down when he was talking to you. You could feel everyone was staring at you. You let out a shaky breath and you brought your legs up to you. You were trying to make yourself as small as possible. You could feel yourself starting to retreat. Trying to get away from this, but now it was time to talk.

“I lost myself.” You looked over to your mother, Harrison, Tom before looking back at your hands. “I haven’t been eating very much, some days not at all. I sleep too little or too much, not finding joy in the things I used too. I definitely not talking about my feelings when I should have.”

“Y/n.” Harrison put his hand on your shoulder. You didn’t look up, you just kept talking.

“I let my mental health deteriorate and it took a massive toll on me physically as well. I was starting to slowly pick myself the fuck up. That was until yesterday. I saw Luke and it all just started coming back.”

“Why didn’t you talk to someone?”

“I couldn’t. Not with how things were. I was trying to do it by myself. I’m sorry.”

Your doctor started talking to you about treatments and he strongly suggested that therapy would be helpful. He wanted to keep you for a couple of days, to make sure that you stay on the right path. He left you with your family and Tom for a while. He had other patients to go see but he would be coming back to check on you.

You called your boss to let her know that you couldn’t come into work for a few days. You let her know what had happened. She was more than understanding, she was happy that you were okay. She told you to take as much time as you need.

After you got off the phone with her, everyone sat there in silence. They were in shock and didn’t know what to say. Your mother had to go to work, she hugged you for a little while then kissed you on the top of the head. Tom got up to take her home, but Harrison stopped him once again. He whispered something to him before leaving with your mother.

“Y/n...”

You looked up to see him getting up to move closer to you. He stopped just before getting to your bed. He was looking down at his hands.

“Tom…” He looked to you. “I need to ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Were you talking to me when I was out? I heard your voice, but I don’t know if it was really you or just my brain trying to mess with me.”

“Your brain wasn’t messing with you darling.” He moved a chair to sit right next to your bed. Once he was sitting down, he grabbed ahold of your hand. “I was talking to you. I don’t know how much you heard of what I had said, but I can tell you that everything I said was completely true.”

“Damn It Tom!” You took your hand back. “You can’t say things like that, you have a girlfriend.”

“No, I don’t.” He leaned back in his chair.

“What? What happened to Nadia?”

“We broke up the day after I helped you home from the pub. I was just so focused on you all the time. Like I said earlier I fell in Love with you a long time ago. That wasn’t fair to her, and I couldn’t do that to her. We talked about it for a while, and we decided to break-up.”

“Tom… I can’t do this.” You could see tears welling up in his eyes, and you could feel them in your eyes too. “I love you, but I need to figure things out. I need to get back to myself before I bring someone into this. It wouldn’t be fair to you at all.”

“Darling I understand.” He grabbed your hand again. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to lose you again. Not in my life or…” You squeezed his hand.

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

You pulled on his arm to get him to stand up, you pulled him into a hug. You just held onto him. Eventually you let go, but just to move over. Tom laid down, pulling him into you. The two of you just stayed there long enough to fall asleep.

With the amount of damage, you had done to your body, you had to stay in the hospital for a week. You had a fair amount of visitors while you were there. Your boss came to visit you a few times, some of your coworkers came to see you as well. Your favorite visitors were the Holland boys. They were there the most. You hated that they had to see you like this, but you were happy to see them.

There were times that you were alone. Those were the worst moments; you hated the quiet. You could only watch so much television. You were going stir crazy by day three, but you knew that there was no way they were going to let you go home. You were able to talk your doctor into letting you go home at the week mark. He only allowed it if you had someone at home to help you and make sure you are staying on track. Harrison was more than happy to stay with you.

Harrison and Tom came to get you from the hospital. When you got to your flat, you were hesitant to even walk in. From what Harrison told you about that night, you didn’t know what to expect. The boys saw your hesitation.

“Y/n, Its okay. We are here for whatever happens.” Harrison put his arm over your shoulders before pushing open your door.

“okay…”

You slowly walked into your flat. Making your way through, there was an uneasy feeling coming over you. especially when you got closer to your bedroom. You stopped in front of the door, taking a deep breath before turning the knob and pushing it open. When you flipped the light on you were expecting the worst, but to your surprise it looked like nothing was out of place.

You looked at the dresser and you saw a different lamp, a new jewelry stand and a new bottle of your favorite perfume. You also saw scratch marks in the wood, you slowly traced along them with your finger. Your memory of that night started coming back, it looked like someone had cleaned everything up as well. The glass and the blood were gone. You started feeling the bubble slowly coming back. You stopped and just started breathing. It calmed you down enough to keep going,

You looked over to your bed where you had left the photos, but they weren’t where you left them. Instead, they were made into a collage. When you got closer, you saw some other photos, and notes in there too. Photos you remember throwing away when you were upset. You climbed onto your bed, taking it off the wall. You sat down and just stared at it, there were some photos in the collage that weren’t even in your box.

You saw the notes were from friends and family. Your heart was so full of happiness that once again you started crying. You can’t believe that someone would do this for you. you pulled the frame close to you, you just hugged it.

You didn’t notice was the boys standing in the doorway watching you. They were both smiling. Tom wanted to make you feel more comfortable when you were able to come back home. He talked to Harrison about it, then they put his plan in motion. Harrison was the one who cleaned up the blood and replaced the things on your dresser. Tom reached out to some of your friends and asked them to write notes to you. He also searched through a bunch of photos to find the right ones. He made sure to leave space around the edge for you to add more in if you would like. He was just so happy that you liked it.

You look up to see the boys, then set the frame down on to your bed. You got up and walked over to them, pulling them into a hug.

“Thank you.”

You guys spent the rest of the night talking and watching movies. It was like old times; you were glad to have them in your life again. You didn’t want this to go away. You were fighting to stay awake, instinctively you curled into Tom’s side.

“I think it’s time for someone to go to bed.” You felt a small chuckle go through him.

“No, I’m awake. I’m just resting my eyes for a second.” You could hear Harrison laughing too.

“Oh, is that what it’s called. What about the snoring?”

“Warming up my vocal cords?”

“Alright. Let’s go.” Tom stood up, grabbed your hands to pull you up. You let out a groan in protest.

“Tom, I want to stay out here.” You looked up at him trying to give him puppy dog eyes and you pursed out your lower lip ever so slightly.

“That’s not fair darling.” He looked over to Harrison. “A little help here mate.”

“Nope, I am staying out of this one.” Harrison put his hands up. He just smiled at the two of you.

“Fine, you win.” He let go of your hands, but he moved to a different seat. He just gave you a smirk.

“Rude.” You keep eye contact with as you moved over to Harrison and placed your head on his shoulder. “I guess us Osterfield’s need to stick together.”

“Y/n, you really should go to bed.” Harrison looked down at you.

“I guess I am a little tired.” You stood up sending Tom a smirk before walking to a closet and pulled pillows and blankets out for the boys. You placed a set on the couch next to Harrison and placed the second on Tom’s lap.

“Goodnight boys.” You walked to your room, closing the door behind you. Tom was right you needed to sleep. You were exhausted, it seemed like as soon as your head hit the pillow you were out.

Tom and Harrison just watched as you went to your room.

“Ugh. Your sister is going to be the death of me.” He just threw his head back.

Harrison just laughed at him. “Come on mate, just get some sleep.

After a couple of days, you decided to go to the studio. You needed to clear your head. Your boss had given you a key, so you could work on your solo piece. You don’t know how much you would accomplish tonight but you still needed to try.

Harrison and Tom tagged along. They wanted to make sure you got there safe. They also just wanted to hang out with you. After getting inside the building, you lock the door behind you guys. You didn’t need to turn on the lights, there were emergency lights along the hall. They were spaced out enough that it lit the whole thing up.

You went to the changing room, quickly changing into the clothes you had in your locker. You walked to the main studio and flipped on a few lights, before heading to the control booth. The guys just sat along the wall; they didn’t want to disturb you too much. Turning on the system and plugging in your phone. You still haven’t picked a song, which is the worst. That should have been the first thing, but nothing was sticking out to you. You decided to just let your music play, hopefully something would just come to you.

You walked out to the center of the studio and just laid down, laying your arms out to the side. Half of your body was in the light and the other half was in the shadows. You closed your eyes, breathing in and out, just listening to the music. You were trying to feel every beat. You wanted the music to do all the moving for you. You wanted to let go of all the control you had and just be in the moment.

The boys started recording you. This was the first time in a while that they saw you dance. They watched you closely to see what you were going to do next.

Slowly you began to move, you kept your eyes closed the whole time. As you sat up you kept your head back and slowly rolled it around till it was faced down. Your hair fell down off your head and surrounded your face. Letting your arms drag behind you, while pulling your legs in, making yourself sit Criss-cross. Your hands moved to cradle your head; you moved your head from side to side. Taking your right hand, moving it across your body to your left knee, pulling it up. Quickly letting go, you move your right hand behind you to prop yourself up. Then swinging your right leg around, causing you to pull yourself up slightly. Your body ended up in the dark part of the studio. Your right foot was now flat on the floor, causing your leg to be in a 90-degree angle, while your left knee was on the ground.

You put your elbow onto your knee and your chin into your hand, before throwing your head back. You bring your arms around to brace yourself, as you move your body to the ground. Once you hit the ground your left hand is extended out above your head, while the right is keeping you propped slightly off the floor. You move your legs up slowly so that you are almost in the fetal position, but before your legs could even hit your stomach you threw them out.

Moving onto your back. You planted your feet on the ground, lifting up your pelvis, while your hand grabbed at your shirt like multiple people were trying to pick you up by your shirt. Then you dropped your pelvis back down and lifted up your torso up and down, almost like you were doing half sit-ups.

You worked through the rest of the song. Just letting your body do everything.

You could hear the music coming to an end, quickly you ran over to the booth. You grabbed your phone and paused it, it had two seconds left in the song. You were just staring down at your phone out of breath. Your hand came up to cover your mouth, you could feel yourself getting emotional again. You backed up to the wall and sank down. You pulled your knees to your chest and buried your face in them, your arms just wrapped around your legs to hold them in place.

The boys came running after you. when they say you on the ground, they were worried that you were going to have another anxiety attack. Harrison kneeled down in front of you, he placed a hand on your shoulder. You looked up to see his concerned face. You smiled at him and placed one of your hands on top of his.

You sat there for a little while, eventually you just felt emotionally drained. You got up and took your phone, turned everything off. You went and changed again, then you left.

Off-Limits Tag list: OPEN!

@aidinniram

@houseofflufff

@justafangirlduh

@shrutipatel08

@thevelvetseries

@bella03riv

@call1800coochie

@adriannauni 

@sarahjoestewy-blog

#Tom Holland #Tom Holland X Reader #Tom Holland X Reader Osterfield #Reader Osterfield #Harrison Osterfield #RPF Tom Holland #RPF FanFic #Fan Fiction #FanFic #New Series #Tom Holland Fluff #Tom Holland Angst #MCU Cast #MCU Imagine #MCU #Holland Brothers #Fluff #Angst #Off-Limits #Off-Limits Part 7 #Peter Parker #Spider-Man #Spiderman

[tigerdrop]

hey i just wanna say the long posts genuinely make my day. also can you talk more about gordon freeman character because the way you write him makes me quake in my gay little boots

i would love to talk about gordon freeman. thank u for the opportunity

the first thing i need to communicate about gordon is that this dude sucks. and i say this in the fondest way possible. he is a bitch from the moment he drops into the world until the moment he goes out. if you dont believe me, give it another watch! gordons mouthy and rude for no real reason, at least so far as “being a regular dude on his way into work” goes, and this dude goes around calling his coworkers names with zero provocation. (of course, we all know that the reason is because its a funny guy improv stream that borrows a bit from freemans mind, but im talkin from a character sense.)

but my argument isnt just that gordon freeman sucks. its that he sucks in a very specific way that i find insanely endearing. i love this dude. i love to hate him. hes awful in a very mundane sense - weve all known a guy like this, at least if youve spent too much time online - and its cathartic to watch him suffer because of it.

gordons a smart guy. as written, hes gotta be - hes a recent MIT grad, on his way to work at a top-secret research facility to do weird shit with crystals and theoretical physics. but the thing about smart guys is that theyre often......selectively intelligent. we can see this in the way that he has a hard time navigating his surroundings, and needs the science crew to guide him through it and keep him alive.

this is one of those things that is a natural consequence of somebody going through the game for the first time, but that i am interpreting as “gordon is kind of stupid sometimes”. its uncharitable but its not like he doesnt deserve it. he likes to boss around the crew as if he knows what hes doing, when he often very much does not, and is fond of demeaning their intelligence. hes real bad about this with tommy in particular, treating him like hes a kid whos playing at being a scientist when tommy is actually a decade older than him. all i am saying is that gordon ought to stay humble. hes awful cocky when he perceives himself as better than others.

which, i think, tracks with how cocky he gets when he gives up on the whole “well-meaning citizen” thing and just unloads bullets into people. he puts up a front of being a Nice Guy, you know, just some dude caught in a bad situation who doesnt like seeing his companions obliterate every NPC they come across, but that doesnt stop him from cackling like a fucking madman and mowing down aliens (and soldiers) every once in awhile. when he stops seeing himself as helpless and starts seeing himself as the one in control, the gloves come off. he gets mean. and i think thats very sexy of him

this, among other things, is why i am insistent that gordon freeman is a control freak. he desperately wants to be in control of the situation at all times, shepherding around the science crew primarily by bitching at them, but its of limited success. its futile. sisyphean. tommy, coomer, bubby, and benrey exist almost to torment him with exactly the thing that would make him suffer the most: a gaggle of people running around causing problems for him, but he cant go anywhere without them b/c hes reliant on them to make it out alive.

its perpetual suffering, and its cathartic to watch. and funny, too. and if youre a little weirdo like me, its very, very enjoyable. how twisted up he gets when nobodys listening to him! how sweaty and frazzled he must look. its cute, and it also makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him and tell him to just be a little nicer. he wants control but he doesnt know how to attain it, he doesnt know how to play nice like a real leader. i think its a neat contrast to gordon freeman as we know him in HL2, where he literally is the leader of the resistance and has to live up to it. this is gordon freeman but if he was moe through helplessness.

“helpless” is, i think, a great way to describe him. a core bit of imagery in half life is this sense of railroadedness and helplessness, with gordon freeman being put into play like a chess piece and having no choice but to move forward. and this iteration of gordon leans into that by being totally dependent on the science crew in order to make progress and Not Die. and hes also subject to the whims of benrey, local eldritch weirdo who has basically made it his life mission to fuck with gordon.

gordons anxieties dont help with that. if he wasnt so fun to stress out and fuck with, the science crew probably wouldnt do it so much! too bad for him that they like fucking with him so much that he was driven into a panic attack (multiple times, even, depending on your interpretation). hes got that real neurotic mindset. always worrying about shit that could go wrong, and attempting to exert control over his surroundings in an effort to control the anxiety.

IMO the real way to nail the Neurotic Gordon Freeman Experience is to combine the ever-present anxiety with his pervasive sense of self-loathing. he openly states that he has no friends and nobody seems to like him, and to that, i really gotta say, i wonder why. he doesnt really seem to factor in that hes kind of a bitch, and has way too high an estimation of his own intelligence relative to everybody elses. its really one of the worst ways to be: aware that people dont like you, but unaware of exactly why. if he was like, 10% nicer, he probably wouldnt have had half as many issues getting through black mesa, but also, its funny to see him squawking his way through the game. so, you know.

its stuff like that that makes me headcanon him as a dude with low self-esteem in general. convinced that hes not likable, not attractive, out of his element......impostor syndrome, except that theres some truth to it. this is a guy who truly does not realize how good he has it: he really is just an average shitty dude, and yet, somehow, benrey took a shine to him. some poor motherfucker out there actually likes him and wants to suck his dick. thats dedication

also, i keep bringing up “repression” when i talk about gordon. and hopefully, what ive been talking about helps explain why. he has a strong desire to be a regular dude, not just murdering his way through black mesa, but if hes pushed hard enough he leans into it. gets bossy. picks up a cigar off a dead soldier and takes a long drag, before smacking forzen around with a pistol and ordering him around. gordon freeman is a regular, kind of anxious guy who likes competitive swimming and streaming on justin.tv and making anime references, and he is also a guy who takes a filthy pleasure in making a trained soldier his bitch. and i didnt make up any of this shit - this is purestrain canon, baby. this is a guy with problems

to me, this screams the kind of guy who represses a lot of shit b/c he doesnt feel like its morally decent. you run into this guy a lot online: the wokeboy, the online leftist, the guy who spends too much time on social media websites. (like reddit. i think he would actively use reddit and he would never get any appreciable amount of karma but he never stops posting. its sisyphean! cathartic.) from the way he talks about “bootboys”, i think it tracks. he knows about imperialism, he knows about feminism, but at the end of the day hes your average american white dude who struggles with internalizing it.

a lot of those dudes struggle with sex and gender issues. (dont we all.) when youre trying to be a Good Person(tm), you spend a lot of time thinking about your own relationship to sex and kink and all that shit. and i maintain that a too-online dude who buries a lot of his control freak tendencies would also try to bury a lot of weird sexual shit in an attempt to seem Normal and Well-Adjusted and not like a little freak. i justify this by the sheer number of times gordon blurts out weird sex shit as a joke. there are only two outcomes to making that many piss jokes: either youre secretly a piss guy, or you lathe-of-heaven yourself into becoming one. i will stand by this

ive talked a lot about why this dude sucks. now, let me talk to you about what makes gordon so much fun to write. first things first: hes funny! a subjective evaluation, yeah, but both in- and out-of-character, hes aiming to be funny. and being the straight man to everybody else plays into that whole “helplessness” thing.

secondly: underneath it all, there is a good dude under there. gordon worries when his companions get hurt, he tries to clean them off and patch them up, and hes got his lil leftist heart in the right place. you could even read a lot of his bossy, bitchy demeanor as him wanting to make sure everyone gets out okay and doesnt hurt themselves. when it comes to animals and anti-imperialist sentiment, gordons a pretty good guy.

hes the kind of guy who would probably see a dog on the street and get excited and play with it, but would get really prickly about the correct way to put dishes in the dishwasher. control freak tendencies.

finally, subjecting such a miserable, tormented guy to even more psychological anguish is really, really fun. you feel a little bad for him, but he kind of deserves it. so many problems he goes through are purely of his own making, and if gordon would just relax and quit trying to hard to maintain control - of himself, of the people around him - and own up to having Problems and Issues, he would be a happier guy. but thats why its fun to bend him until he breaks. being a little control freak myself, putting gordon freeman thru psychosexual torment is cathartic.

when it comes to writing his thought processes, the fact that he is canonically some kind of psychotic (yes, i am boldly claiming this. suck me) and i am also canonically some kind of psychotic makes it easier to write what i think his thought processes are. i just give him my brain issues of “getting lost in thought” and “overthinking fucking everything”. a touch of paranoia helps. even if i dont explicitly label him as schizophrenic please know that i am writing him as a paranoid little nutcase at all times because, uh, you write what you know.

paranoid. anxious. of the mindset that everyones out to get him (which isnt helpful when everyone is out to get him). repressed and deeply Not Normal but trying so very fucking hard to be normal and well-adjusted. a control freak with sadistic tendencies who also really, really likes getting bullied by his best frenemy. a hapless little nerd who sounds really cute when his voice starts to break from nerves. and, most importantly, a dumb jock. do not ever forget this.

thats gordon freeman, babey. hope that helps

#asky #careposting

[vikingpoteto]

middle children must unionize

read on ao3 ______________________

my contributior for @batfam-big-bang

Summary: Jason realizes no one is taking care of Tim - not even Tim himself. He decides to do something about it.

Notes: I can't stress enough how grateful I am for joining this event. First of all, stan the mods. Stan my beta reader team, @timmydrakewings, @stormleviosa and @sun-lit-roses. Stan my artist team @houser-of-stories, @reese-haleth and @anicomicqueen To all of these amazing talented people that, for whatever reason chose to help me with this story, I can't stress enough how grateful I am. ________________________

Jason doesn’t keep in touch with the Bats after Bruce’s gone.

Batwoman only trusts him as far as she can throw him. Dick is not easy to avoid, but Jason keeps their contact to a minimum nonetheless. Ninja girl doesn’t speak with him. Replacement… Well. Jason does have a weird professional relationship with the kid. As professional as you can get with someone you tried to kill. Barbara will probably never forgive him for making Dick cry so many times. Brat girl will probably never forgive him for trying to kill Replacement. The other one, whatever his name is, is low-key/high-key terrified of Jason. As for the gremlin... Well, he’s like 10? 11? Jason doesn’t hang out with children, not even assassin ones.

So yeah. Not on friendly terms with anyone in the Wayne family.

However he is an instigator at heart and, while whatever they’re doing in the Batcave is none of his business, he’ll be damned if he doesn’t finish one of his rare visits by stirring things up a bit.

Dick usually makes sure he doesn’t do anything too outrageous, but a distraction comes in the form of Gremlin, who shows up demanding to know why Dick is late for their training session or whatever. The brat sends Jason a scathing look but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge him. Dick only smiles patiently and waves Jason goodbye, leaving Replacement unsupervised. Before heading out, Jason approaches Replacement, who’s sitting by the batcomputer.

“So,” he starts. Jason notices when the kid flinches a little. Your regular guy wouldn’t, but Jason was once a bat too. “How does it feel to be replaced, Replacement?”

Replacement’s shoulders go stiff for half a second.

When he turns to face Jason, however, his expression is empty.

“Predictable,” he says.

Jason quirks an eyebrow up. “Meaning?”

“I was only a Robin because I was, how can I put this, a coworker?” Replacement turns his eyes back to the computer and starts typing. “It was a no-strings-attached sort of deal. Bound to end at some point.”

That’s… new.

“You’re legally adopted into the Wayne family,” Jason hears himself reminding him.

“Yeah, ain’t that a pickle,” Replacement laughs. “Can you guess who forced Bruce to do that? My money was on Dick, but now I think it was probably Babs or Alfred.”

Jason stares, unsure what to make of that. Before he decides, the kid stands up.

"I have always been a patch job, so being dismissed is to be expected. I'm just overstaying my welcome at this point."

“You can get dismissed? I thought this was an until-your-untimely-death sort of gig.”

That was not how Jason expected this conversation to go, like, at all. He had never seen Replacement looking so… worn out? Lifeless?

“I don’t know, man,” Tim frowns as though he made himself confused. “God, I’m sleepy. See you around, I guess.”

And Jason watches him leave the cave with his shoulders hunched and an empty stare. Dick and Gremlin are so preoccupied with their sparring session that they don’t seem to notice. Jason sticks around for a few more seconds, stunned, before he realizes what he’s doing. He goes home.

Jason can’t stop thinking about what the kid said.

It’s not that he didn’t think something of the sorts, especially when he was angriest at Bruce. He had thought about how Batman trained his children to be soldiers and, like soldiers, they could be easily replaced. After all, what was one more problem child joining their broken family? What’s another deadly brat being thrown at some creeps wearing literal clown costumes?

He did think of them as Bruce’s kids though.

Not that Batman had any expertise in healthy parenting techniques, but Jason didn’t have any healthy son experiences to compare so it didn’t matter much. They were Batkids for the better and mostly for the worse, and if something happened to them, well, the crusade must go on.

He never thought of Robin as someone that could be sent home out of the blue, like your average GC Pig. A disgrace to the family? Sure. See, kids, we don’t talk about cousin Jason. He got himself killed and came back all crooked. That’s what happens if you kill murderers or forget to brush your teeth. Still, the idea of being dismissed for no reason never occurred to Jason. It was absurd, because, as far as Jason knew, his replacement was the perfect little soldier. Why would he walk away?

Dick fought with Bruce. Jason… well. You know. Brat girl had to move cities or whatever? Or she died, but got better? Jason doesn’t really know anything about the chick. Either way, he knows she became Batgirl soon after. Tim, however, had nothing stopping him from staying masked. Why would Replacement talk about being Robin as if it was a summer job?

Does that mean that the wimpy kid Jason has been bullying was really that cold and detached?

He thinks about it until his head hurts and he starts remembering times with Bruce and Dick and Alfred and suddenly he doesn’t want to think about it anymore.

It’s a good thing Jason is good at compartmentalizing, because that’s what he does. He pushes thoughts of Batman and Robin to the depths of his mind and forgets about it.

He doesn’t find out until weeks later.

He’s not visiting the manor because he wants to. It’s just that there is this stupid encrypted information he needs for a case and he isn’t exactly tech savvy. He doesn’t think Barbara would do him a solid - she’s still ignoring him for… whatever. He doesn’t even know. Probably something about hurting Dick’s pwecious feewings or eating the last cookie Alfred made. Either way, Jason first tries contacting Replacement directly. Only when the kid doesn’t pick up he forces himself to go to the cult headquarters.

He needs that data, dammit, and whoever called programming logic, was out of their damn mind. If true, execute commands 1, 2 and IV, it said. If what was true? Jason read and read and still didn’t get what it was referring to. And why would someone name the commands regular numbers then just… throw a fucking roman number? Just to spice things up? Whoever wrote that damn code should get a bullet in the foot.

“Jay!” Dick grins at him, although he looks unamused by the fact that Jason is coming in through a window on the second floor. “You do remember that we have a door, don’t you?”

“I like to keep ‘em guessing,” Jason says. “Which room is the kid’s? I have a job for him.”

Dick tilts his head to the side, confused. “Damian is at school?”

And then there’s that. A lot to unpack. First, Jason is deeply offended that Dick thinks he would ever go there after Gremlin, the child that likes to criticize Jason's  skills despite the fact that a) Jason was trained by Damian's father and then b)Jason was trained by Damian's mother. Second, Damian Wayne. Going to Gotham Academy. Does he wear the uniform? Does he have homework or does he threaten the teachers with a sword until they quit? Did anyone explain to him the concept of playing tag before he murders a bunch of 9 year olds? Jason has so many questions. If only he had time.

“I said the kid . The human one, not the imp.”

“Oh.” Dick seems taken aback. “Oh, he... Jason, Tim isn’t in Gotham. You didn’t know?”

Jason groans. “Are you kidding me? You annoyed him into leaving the planet with his alien friends again, didn’t you?”

“No, he… I actually don’t know where he is now.”

Jason blinks in surprise. So Dick didn’t pick Bruce’s habit of microchipping his kids?

“What do you mean you don’t know? How do you lose a whole Robin? The uniform is basically a traffic cone.”

Dick sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. Jason had seen Bruce do just that so many times he forgets for a moment whatever stupid joke he was about to make. When did his older brother become the dad?

“He left a while ago. He barely spent any time here at the manor after I gave Robin to Damian, so…”

Jason freezes. After I gave Robin to Damian, he says. Being dismissed is to be expected, the kid said weeks ago.

“Dick. What the fuck did you do?”

Dick looks surprised at the raw anger in Jason’s voice, even though he shouldn’t fucking be. Jason remembers the distant voice on that day. He did think that was oddly cold for Replacement, even if he was a calculating nerd. Except that wasn’t him being cold. That was him lying to himself.

Jason would know. He spent most of his childhood telling himself he didn’t need a loving father. A good part of his teenage years telling everyone that would hear that he didn’t care at all that Bruce kept holding him to the standards of the perfect son that went away. It’s a lot easier to pretend you didn’t care because it makes it hurt less when things are taken away. Jason was a fucking pro at that technique, so much he wonders how the hell he didn’t notice earlier.

“I did what I had to do,” Dick says, defensively. The way he does when he’s second guessing himself, but still in denial about it. “Tim’s a hero of his own right and he’s capable enough that…”

“That you fucking fired him?” Jason barks.

“Damian needs Robin, Jason! He’s just so lost and being Robin gave him a sense of purpose, allowed him to actually be a child.”

“No shit Gremlin is a child! What about Replacement? He’s, what, 15?”

“He’s 17, how do you not know your own brother’s age?”

“Whatever! He’s just a teen and you basically just told him to fuck off.”

Dick sighs. “Look, I tried to help Tim. Tim’s friends tried to help Tim. But he’s a mature person and he wanted some time for himself.”

Ain’t that a familiar song. A good dose of leave me the fuck alone while still wearing a goddamn bat on his chest and making sure to make enough noise to draw attention. He doesn’t like how close it hits to home, how Dick, who’s supposed to be the best of them, ends up being just as shit as recognizing emotions as any other Bat. Jason laughs without any humor.

Incensed, Dick’s jaw sets in challenge as he adds: “I trust Tim and I respected his choice to leave on his own mission, because he knows what’s right for him.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night,” Jason says. “You’re right. Give the demon what he needs. Replacement is a grown ass adult because you respect him so much .”

“Jason, I didn’t say that…”

“He was never a kid here, Dick, even I know that. You all keep throwing shit at him, messes for him to fix ‘cause it’s fine, it’s little Timmy, he’s so fucking capable, he can take it. Have you ever considered that he was always an adult because you all are the fucking children?”

I have always been a patch job sounds awfully similar to I’m here because he got lonely after you left.

But apparently Dick is done exercising his brotherly patience and Jason hit a nerve.

“What do you know about him? You never bothered to talk to him, to spend time with him. You don’t know shit about Tim.”

Jason scoffs. Dick’s face grows unevenly red.

“You don’t, Jason! You were busy trying to kill him. Remember that bonding experience? Must have been fun for him. Having the hero he grew up admiring trying to murder him?”

Jason throws the first punch. Dick easily dodges, the motherfucker, the damn superior Robin.

Screw it, Jason thinks as they start yet another classic Robin Brawl that would only end when Ninja Girl mysteriously dropped from the ceiling and kicked both of their asses.

Jason doesn’t hear from the cave for a while. His phone gets a weird virus, so he guesses Oracle heard he pushed Dick down the stairs. He just tosses the whole thing away and decides that screw his stupid case with the weird code, screw detective work. The biggest detectives aren’t around anymore. He'll just call Kory and convince her to help torch the place up and hopefully the new Batman and Robin will have to deal with the aftermath.

The next time Jason hears from his brothers, it’s a frantic call from Dick that makes Jason’s blood turn into ice: freaking Ra’s Al Ghul is in Gotham doing his whole Head of the Demon thing. He grabs his bike and he’s still on the comms with Dick as he heads to the manor because Alfred is in there.

“What did Gremlin do?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Dick answers and Jason can barely hear him over the wind. He’s probably swinging around Gotham as he speaks. “It was Tim. Tim’s back and Ra’s is after him and everyone he cares about.”

Fuck. This is the kid Dick trusted to go out alone on a self-discovery journey or whatever. Jason wonders what the hell he had been up to get that much unwanted attention.

In the end, everything works out, kind of. No one on their side dies, but Tim does get thrown out of a window. Of a very, very, veeery tall building. Jason still thinks he got off too easy. As smart as he is, Tim shouldn’t have survived a run in with Ra’s.

Jason is curious enough about it to stay in the cave after the fact. He and Dick sit near Tim’s bed while Leslie works her magic. Dick doesn’t take his eyes from his little brother’s pale face for even a second.

“We almost lost him,” he whispers at some point. “Again, we… I almost lost him.”

“But you didn’t,” Jason says, voice flat. “You saved him.”

Dick bites his lower lip hard enough to break the skin. Jason punches his shoulder to snap him out of it.

“Jay, about last time…”

“Ugh, don’t apologize, you freak. Why can’t you just bottle up your emotions and pretend nothing happened like the rest of this stupid family?”

That makes Dick give him a weak smile. If not for the bottling up part, for the part in which Jason admits they’re a family.

“You were… well, not right. I still think Tim shouldn’t be treated like a sidekick anymore,” Dick continues, despite Jason’s disgusted noises. “But he shouldn’t be left alone either. No one in this family should.”

Jason pretends to be gagging long enough that Dick gives up on trying to be a sensible adult and returns to silently watching over his brother.

After that, it’s a matter of stalling and by stalling he ends up watching the other Bats. He finds from Alfred that Ninja Girl isn’t looming over Tim’s bed because she’s in Hong Kong. Brat girl comes and goes the whole night and Jason doesn’t understand why she can’t simply sit down and wait as a pile of nerves like Dick is doing. At some point, she reads the morning newspaper and starts making so much fuss the one Jason doesn’t know the name - Dave? Dylan? - takes her upstairs to calm her down. Damian is nowhere to be found

In the end, Jason manages to be there when Replacement wakes up. Everyone is busy celebrating, too elated that Replacement is fine, so much they forget Jason is still lurking around. No one sees when his face goes pale and he feels like he’s going to puke.

“How did you know I was going to catch you?” Dick asks.

Tim gives him a tired smile. “You’re my brother, Dick. I knew you’d save me.”

Fuck.

Fuck. It’s like looking into a goddamn mirror, except Tim is so much better at this than Jason ever was. So much that he might even be fooling himself.

But he can’t fool Jason. Dick wants to believe in the best of them, he wants them all to be sane and safe and happy - as much as a Bat can be, at least - but Jason is more of a realist. He knows no one can plan that far ahead. He knows Tim went to a meeting with the Head of the Demon fully aware that he would most likely be carried out in a coffin. Considering Dick’s misstep from a couple months earlier and the fact that Tim had already assigned him and Damian a task, Batman was the last person Tim was expecting to show up.

Of course Dick would save him, any of them. Despite his issues with Bruce, Jason had his hero worship towards his brother restored pretty fast. Dick, the golden boy, the perfect son, loved him no matter what and Jason loved him back. Knew now that Dick had love enough to go around for all of them - all of them. But did Tim know that?

Tim finished his little mission, wrapped it all pretty with a bow, making sure no one kicked the bucket. Except for himself. Timothy Drake-Wayne was the contingency plan for Batman’s contingency plan, but he didn’t care enough to make a plan for himself.  

Bruce is gone. Dick is painfully blind. The Drakes are dead. Alfred has his hands full. The Behemoths or the Little League, or whatever the hell the super kids call themselves now, were just that. Kids. Jason curses to himself, because, if no one else will watch out for Replacement, it’s none of his fucking business.

It’s not.

However…

Jason doesn’t know how to put his not-plan in action. He can’t exactly walk up to Tim and say hey, I think we’re not so different, you and I, so I’m worried for your safety. I know I tried to kill you, but that like... two years ago, get over it. Let’s be friends.

Before he figures it out, he hears that Bruce is back. The real Bruce.

He doesn’t know how to feel about it, so he decides to put some distance between him and the family one more time as he takes some weeks to process. He goes out of town to hang out with his friends. He is done with Gotham bullshit for a while.

Unfortunately, Jason finds himself facing his worst enemy: the damn encrypted data.

He hates that dealers now do their thing through the internet. Who the fuck buys marijuana online? Where is the poetry in that? The class of being friends with the sketchy guy that lives around the corner and hangs out with you while you smoke? If they’re gonna sell oregano online to rich white kids, fine, but they’re selling heavy stuff to people that live in his territory and there is a thing bigger than just drugs, if Jason’s hunch is right. He could confirm it by cracking the numbers he stole from their stupidly unguarded computers.

Except the encryption is too complicated for him to access the files.

Well, isn’t that the perfect excuse to take a visit to the kid’s apartment.

Because that is the situation right now. The kid is emancipated, controlling Wayne Enterprises and living by his damn self. There is so much to unpack that Jason wants to throw away the whole suitcase.

He should probably do just that, or at least that’s what he thinks when he climbs to Tim’s balcony (in his head, he hears Dick’s voice going what do you hate about front doors, man?) and he is immediately pushed to the ground.

He is wearing his helmet, sure, but it doesn’t make it less painful when someone fucking stomps on his head, forcing his face against the floor.

“Fuck,” is all Jason thinks of saying.

He then kicks his assailant in the shin and is satisfied when they tumble backwards. Unfortunately for him, they - she - doesn’t fall over the railing, she just stays away long enough to give him time to stand.

A bald girl wearing a distasteful crop top glares daggers at him. She is already back on her fighting stance - one that looks way too familiar for Jason’s taste - ready to strike. And strike she does.

Her movements are similar to Jason’s - fast, strong, unpredictable, unfair - but she has the advantage of being more slender and having more freedom of movement in the small space. All Jason can do is defend himself and not get tossed over the edge. Who the fuck is this girl? Why is she attacking him? Doesn’t she know he is the freaking Red Hood? He just wanted the damn-

“What on Earth are you guys doing on my balcony?”

The girl freezes. Jason does not. He lands a punch straight on her nose and she falls backwards, her mouth opening in pain even if no sound comes out.

“What the hell, Hood!”

Tim rushes to the girl’s side.

“What the hell Hood?” Jason parrots, indignant. “I just got here and she attacked me!”

Tim frowns and turns to the girl. “Is that true?”

Instead of answering, the girl holds her bloody nose and glares at him. She uses her free hand to show Tim four fingers. Tim sighs.

“I know it’s the fourth time you’ve had your nose broken,” Tim gives her a wry smile. “But the three other times you had it coming. And maybe even this time. Why did you attack Red Hood?”

She makes the gesture of someone walking with two fingers then points at Tim’s balcony door. Jason doesn’t know a lot of ASL, but those don’t seem to be the same signs Cassandra uses.

“She attacked me because she thought I was trying to break in?” He asks. “You have a bodyguard now?”

Tim stands and holds out his hand to the girl. She begrudgingly takes it and lets him pull her to her feet. “Why don’t we all go inside before someone notices the Red Hood on my balcony?”

Jason grumbles in annoyance but does make his way in. Tim is right behind him and Jason can’t help but think he’s acting as a shield in case the girl wants revenge for her nose.

“Come here, Pru, I’ll get something cold for your nose.”

Jason takes a look around. As they cross the living room, he notices it looks like a shiny rich person apartment you’d see in a magazine. Jason wasn’t sure what he expected of Tim’s new crib, and he knows the kid just moved in, but the fact that the place looks like a hospital’s reception makes him feel some sort of way.

Fortunately, the kitchen is a bit better. Not much, but it’s something. There are papers spread across the table, dirty glasses in the sink, a mug full of black steaming tea, Tim’s laptop open on top of a pile of books, and there are pictures on the fridge. Jason remembers vaguely Dick mentioning that one of the kids had a thing for photography and another liked drawing. He has to assume Tim is the photographer as he takes a good look at them: one of Brat girl’s grinning face with a big heart magnet, one of Tim and Cassandra sharing the same reading chair, one of Bruce in one of those fancy sweaters he used to wear at home, one of Dick and Cassandra doing handstands, one of a red head kid, behind him Tim, a muscular girl and an even more muscular guy. Jason doesn’t need to be a detective to figure those, even without the uniforms, are Impulse, Wonder Girl and Superboy.

“So,” Tim starts. He hands the girl a pack of frozen peas and shrugs at her dirty look. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Without ceremony, the girl takes a seat by the table and tries to steal a glance at Tim’s laptop. He casually closes it and smiles at her. She scoffs.

“First, you explain the bodyguard,” Jason says, gesturing to the girl.

“Right. Where are my manners? Pru, this is Red Hood. Hood, this is Prudence.”

He doesn’t turn to her so she can read his lips or use gestures to speak, so Jason figures she isn’t deaf, only mute. Maybe it’s something like Cassandra?

“Really? Prudence? That’s ironic. ”

She shows Jason her middle finger. Definitely not deaf then.

Unlike Prudence, Jason doesn’t make himself at home. When he crosses his arms and doesn’t say anything for a minute more, Tim reads his silence correctly and adds, “We’re working together for a while and there are a lot of people that want us dead, so you’ll have to forgive her. She saw a suspicious guy trying to get into my place and she assumed the worst.”

Jason quirks an eyebrow. Tim can’t see his expression behind the helmet, but he sighs nonetheless.

“Come on. She couldn’t know I sometimes work with the Red Hood too.”

I sometimes work with. Ouch. Jason supposes that’s fair, though. Tim hasn’t exactly been informed of Jason’s newfound empathy or his protective streak.

“How did you know where I live, by the way?” Tim asks.

“Alfred told me you moved,” Jason says. “I got your address from Cassandra.”

Tim’s brows disappear under his messy fringe. “Really?”

Jason nods. “Took a lot of convincing before she believed I didn’t want to kill you in your sleep.”

At that, Tim snorts. He’s still grinning when he asks, “What did you want it for then?”

“Tech support,” he says as he fishes a small flash drive from his pocket. “I was hoping you could crack some files for me.”

Tim takes it and nods. “I’ll check it out. I’ll send the results to you as soon as I have them. Anything else?”

Again… ouch. Apparently imprudent girl is welcome to kick back and hang out, but Jason is just a fellow associate that came to hand in an assignment and promptly piss off.

Then Jason realizes that that was exactly what their relationship was like before Tim went around the world to fight Ra’s al Ghul. Damn.

Well. It’s not like he can take off his helmet and stick around when there is a stranger in there, especially when Tim carefully introduced him as the Red Hood instead of good ol’ Jason Todd. He just wanted to check on the kid and he did. No need to get all clingy. That’s Dick’s thing, not his.

It isn’t until much later that Jason realizes how pointless the visit was. He wanted to see if the kid was okay. He suspected he wasn’t, but it wasn’t like he had any idea of what to do about it.

Lucky for him, Tim looked a lot better than last time. Less dead eyed, more like he has some sort of purpose. The fact that Dick is included in his little photo collection must mean they made amends. Whether it was because Jason’s whooping Dick’s ass or in spite of it he’ll never know. Based on what he knows about Tim, the kid might have just worked everything out by himself and forgiven Dick on his own terms.

Despite his decision to take care of Tim from then on, Jason is definitely not great at it. He doesn't think he lost the rights to admonish Dick for not talking to his brother. The fact is Jason isn't great with words. He wants to help Tim through actions.

Still the question remains: how?

(And Tim emails him the files he needed 8 hours later and Jason worries that the kid didn’t sleep, which… great. This is just great.)

Less than two nights later, someone gets into Jason's frequency. He's about to head out for patrol when a creaking sound inside his helmet precedes a familiar voice slightly twisted by static.

"Red Hood, this is Red Robin. Do you copy?"

Right. He goes by Red Robin now.

"What you want, rep… kid?" Jason inwardly winces at his misstep.

There is a moment of confused silence before Tim mercifully decides not to ask what that was. "I'm pursuing a lead in your territory."

Jason hums. "What's it? I'll handle it."

"No!" Tim says too fast. "I mean… it's my case. I just thought you could take the night off? Please?"

This is supposed to be the smart Robin, right? He does know that Jason isn’t a complete moron, right?

“What’s in it for me?” Jason asks.

If this was Damian, he’d get a colorful death threat. If this was Dick, a winded speech on how brothers are supposed to have each other’s backs and he's just asking for a tiny favor, Jason, don’t make me make my ex-girlfriend hack into your phone and block Netflix again. Tim, however, knows that everything has a price and has an answer ready.

“You owe me for those files I decoded for you.”

Straight to the point. No bullshit. Jason is starting to really like this kid.

“Fair enough. You go follow your lead and I won’t murder you for being in my territory.”

“Always a pleasure doing business with you, Hood.”

Jason didn’t say anything about taking the night off, though.

Jason knows that, if he was working alone, Tim wouldn’t ask for permission. He would let himself in and out of Jason's territory assuming Jason wouldn’t even notice - he’d done it before as Robin, and Jason did notice but pretended not to. He can’t track Red Robin as easily, but the fact that he doesn’t want Red Hood around means there is something or someone he can’t control tagging along… and who’s the one person even Tim Drake can never control?

“Brat girl,” Jason mutters to himself, a cocky grin spreading on his face. One of his informants just confirmed he saw Batgirl driving whatever the fuck that is that capsule vehicle into an empty building just south of Jason’s place.

Oracle is probably out of town again, otherwise she wouldn’t allow her precious not-daughter to be messing around with Tim in Jason’s territory. But then, if most of the rumors are correct, even Barbara can’t quite control the new Batgirl.

He wonders what the duo are up to as he lets himself into the abandoned place through a hole in the ceiling. Red Hood walks on the rafters in the dark until he can hear familiar voices. He stops on his tracks when he notices that Red Robin and Batgirl aren’t alone. Wonder Girl and Impulse stick out like bright red sore thumbs against Gotham’s darkness.

Red Hood hears enough to know they’re planning on saving someone - one of Impulse’s friends? - from a local group connected to Black Mask. Their plan is solid, but it’s hardly a task herculean enough to warrant the presence of a speedster and an amazon. Red Robin makes it sound like it’s absolutely necessary nonetheless, assigning each of them a role that fits their powers and going over every little detail. It’s the first time Hood sees the kid in a position of leadership and he thinks it suits him. He seems extremely at ease.

Actually… that’s not quite it. He’s not as wary of the world as he is when he’s with the Batfamily. Not Batman’s perfect mini-detective, not Nightwing’s model little brother, not WE CEO. He’s still very much a hero, a Robin, but it’s possible to see he’s seventeen under the cowl. Even his posture changes, his shoulders relax and he allows himself to be… God, himself. That must be the first time Jason sees Tim completely in his element, no tension, no (metaphorical) masks.

Real Red Robin stays close to his friends. Very close. Hell, Impulse is almost sitting on his lap, his arm firmly wrapped around Red Robin’s waist as he points at some sort of map his wrist pad is showing. Batgirl is clinging to his other side, her chin resting on his shoulder using the excuse to see better what he’s showing. Hadn’t those two broken up?

Then Red Robin says something so softly not even Hood picks up. The other three teens get tense. Impulse nods and disappears in a gust of wind as his friends wait in silence.

Half a second later, something hits Hood’s back at a very alarming speed because of course Red Robin noticed someone listening and sent his speedster friend to get him. He curses while he falls, barely managing to roll fast enough to avoid serious knee damage when he lands.

“Jason!” Red Robin whines not unlike an embarrassed child crying out mom, not in front of my friends!

“Maybe check who’s spying on you before sending a child bullet careening into their back, will ya?” Jason complains.

Wonder Girl frowns. “Is that…”

“The Red Hood,” Batgirl confirms in a flat voice. “Yup.”

“Isn’t he a criminal?” Impulse asks, genuine curiosity in his voice.

A facepalming Red Robin groans. “He doesn’t do crime anymore.” Under Batgirl’s skeptical glare, he corrects, “He doesn’t do bad crimes anymore. What are you doing here, Hood? You said you were taking the night off!”

“I said I wouldn’t shoot you for being in my territory,” Hood corrects. “But I didn’t say anything about your super friends, because I didn’t think you’d be breaking so many rules in so little time. Really? Bringing metas to Gotham?”

Red Robin simply shrugs. “What Batman can’t see doesn’t hurt him.”

Batgirl snickers and Hood grins a little under his helmet.

“Little Timmy,” he gasps, resting his hand on his chest in mock shock.

“Shut up, why are you here?”

“What, you can’t tell me there is a case and expect me not to follow up.”

The other three kids look from Red Hood to Red Robin. It’s obvious that whatever Tim’s verdict is, they’re going to accept it. Even Stephanie. And she knows Jason (sort of).

“Fine,” Red Robin groans. “But no shooting anyone.”

“No promises.”

Wonder Girl and Impulse are obviously wondering whether they’re joking or not. Knowing they’re completely serious, Batgirl makes a face and pokes Red Robin’s cheek. He frowns at her and the two of them seem to have a conversation consisting of weird mouths and head shakes for a moment. Jason would know. He and Dick used to do that all the time. Finally, whatever face Red Robin is making convinces her and she lets out a defeated sigh.

“Well then, ladies,” Batgirl deadpans, “let’s get this bread.”

Despite Dick’s best efforts, Jason never quite fit in with the Titans. With Tim and Stephanie, however, he can work.

Breaking into one of Black Mask’s hideouts is a piece of cake, if not outright fun. He has to hand it to Stephanie. She is not as cunning as Barbara or as deadly as Cassandra, but the girl can blow up a marijuana deposit like no one else.

Sure, the smoke makes them at least 30% high—all of them except Impulse, whose metabolism won’t let him get intoxicated, to which… Just R.I.P. you funky little man, Jason really feels for him.

Even with the little diversion, there were still plenty of crooks to fight. Wonder Girl takes care of most of them on her own— amazons, man —and soon enough Impulse comes running, carrying a dark-skinned boy wearing power-dampening cuffs who keeps yelling at them in Spanish. At that, Red Robin announces they’re retreating.

Tim looks a lot more comfortable with his peers than he is with the Bats. Part of Jason wonders if he could’ve been like that. If he would have ended up differently if he had actually stayed with the Titans and made friends like Tim had. He tells himself not to go down that path, because he is who he is, he certainly doesn’t make friends in that teen sitcom way and you can’t change the past.

He is genuinely glad that Tim has those friends, though. He’s glad that he can feel that way despite the hint of jealousy.

As they leave a ruined hideout behind, Wonder Girl and Impulse are drowning Red Robin in hugs and cheering so loud one would forget they’re still in Gotham. Their friend laughs with them even with the stress of being so rambunctiously rescued. Batgirl slaps her arm around Hood’s shoulder and admires the Titans being loud as if congratulating themselves on the job done.

If all of them— all of them—are still smiling themselves silly as they leave, it’s only 50% because of the marijuana.

Jason quickly learns that Tim doesn’t like owing people. When Jason asked Tim to crack some encrypted documents, he just needed the damn files. He didn’t expect the kid to show up to tear down the place when Jason decided he had enough reason to dismantle the operation.

“What, you can’t tell me there is a case and expect me not to follow up,” Red Robin quips as he nudges a goon with his foot. The man groans, but doesn’t get up. Seemingly satisfied, Red Robin crouches down and starts cuffing the man to another by his side.

“Remind me to never ask for your help again,” Red Hood says.

Red Robin glowers. “I saved your ass from getting stabbed about three times.”

“I shot the kneecaps of four guys trying to murder you, so don’t expect me to thank you.”

They hear sirens. Red Robin stands. “Well, guess our job here is done.”

Hood nods. It’s been a while since he fought side by side with a fellow Bat, just him and another Robin and... it was nice. Roy and Kori are great partners and all, but they don’t have the same training a Robin does. They don’t get the specific maneuvers and the subtle secret signs. The fact that it had been so fun fighting side by side with Red Robin makes Jason feel like his not-plan of taking care of the kid was finally going somewhere.

Then Red Robin stretches his arm to grapple his way out of there and gasps.

“Red?”

“Uh…” He is now pressing his hand to his side.

“Is… is that blood?”

“Uhhhh…”

“Did you get stabbed and didn’t notice, you freaking idiot?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groans, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes over the cowl. “Why me?”

Red Hood sighs. “Relax, kid, it doesn’t look that deep.”

“I’m gonna have to call Batman,” Red Robin whines. “A’s gonna kill me.”

“Over a tiny stab wound? Don’t be a pussy, I’m sure you can stitch that yourself.”

“The stitches aren’t the problem, it’s just the medicine…” Red Robin says, making vague hand gestures. “I have no spleen.”

And then there’s that.

“I’m sorry. You what?”

Red Robin pulls a guilty face visible even under the cowl. Jason wouldn’t blame Alfred for killing him. He has no spleen and he just… decided it was a good idea to bring a staff to a gunfight at one of the grimiest places of Gotham.

Tim Drake-Wayne, everyone, smartest Robin to date.

Jason, however, decides not to kill Tim for his stupidity. He recognizes that particular frown. It’s the I-messed-up-and-I-don’t-want-dad-to-find-out face.

The GCPD sirens are getting closer.

“I’ve got a big collection of antibiotics back at one of my safehouses,” he mentions casually. “I could patch you up so A doesn’t have to.”

Tim’s wide eyes are evident. Jason wonders if this is him being able to read the kid too well or if Tim straight up sucks at hiding his emotions. It’s probably a bit of both.  

“You know. As thanks for helping me.”

“I thought you wouldn’t thank me.”

“Don’t push it, kid.”

By now, they can see the red and blue police lights.

“Lead the way.”

He rolls his eyes and drags the kid to his bike. He really hopes the pigs didn’t see them, because it’s bad enough that a hero showed up to Red Hood’s bust, he doesn’t need any cops thinking that he kidnapped Red Robin or any shit like that.

“Are we going to the one behind the new theater or the one around crime alley?” Tim casually asks.

Jason freezes halfway through mounting his bike. “How the fuck do you know about those?”

“I know the location of all of your safehouses,” Tim admits.

“Batman knows about my safehouses?”

Tim quirks an eyebrow. “Last time I checked, I’m not Batman.”

...oh.

That’s… nice. Kind of. A confirmation that he can trust the kid to have his back.

“Smug nerd,” Jason mumbles.

Tim only chuckles in response. They set off to Jason’s place.

The rest of the night is peaceful. At least for a Bat’s standards. Jason helps Tim disinfect his wound and stitch it closed while Tim raids Jason’s medicine stash until he finds the ones he needs. Jason promises to hook him up with his supplier so he doesn’t have to rely so much on the cave. By the time they’re done, Tim’s lips are permanently curled upwards.

When he starts shuffling awkwardly as if looking for a way to say goodbye, Jason nonchalantly announces where he can find clean towels and clothes, as if this is a thing they do everyday. Tim seems baffled, but thankfully he doesn’t call Jason’s bullshit and obediently heads to the bathroom. By the time he’s done, Jason is fixing a meal for the two of them and some stupid movie is on TV—never the news, god, Jason hates watching the news.

Like a skittish stray, Tim is unsure of what to do with himself at first, but he catches the cue fast enough. He sits on the couch all stiff and restless until something on the screen grabs his attention.

“You like Wendy the Werewolf Stalker?” Tim asks, eyes wide.

“Do I like fucking what?”

Jason just needed the background noise to avoid freaking out about  how weird he’s being right now. Apparently, that was the wrong answer. Tim launches a rant on how amazing Wendy is and half of it goes over Jason’s head. He just gets that apparently Tim and Superboy both have a crush on this werewolf hunting chick and they used to spend hours watching her instead of doing actual work at Titans Tower.

He also manages to actually eat the food Jason made, which is a win in Jason’s book.

It’s a nice night, overall.

It becomes, not a habit, but a thing. Tim sometimes shows up to one of Jason’s safehouses needing a stitch job or medicine. Jason doesn’t know how he nails which one Jason is at currently or if he just goes to every single one still bleeding until he finds Jason. Or even if he just lets himself in and takes care of his wounds without any help. If so, Jason wouldn’t blame him. He’d choose his crappy hideouts over Tim’s soulless apartment any day.

On the third time it happens, Tim isn’t hurt at all. He just wants to bitch about Vicki Vale stalking him and his supposed ex-fiancée that he's actually trying to date. Jason feeds him real food, as usual, and listens to what he has to say, as unusual. They end up on the couch watching A Nightmare on Elm Street, which, oddly enough, has Tim getting overly enthusiastic about going to bed because he’s curious about the magic behind Freddy Krueger. Jason tells him to let him know if any dream demons show up when he leaves Tim dozing off on the couch.

Tim starts texting Jason. At first, it’s all very professional. Messages like 1 of the stupid crooks in your territory almost killed robin yesterday do smth abt it followed by I don’t care that he’s a demon in a kevlar vest Hood you didn’t have to deal with nightwing crying afterwards!!! Then they slowly shift into something more casual on the lines of is dis u? An d attached a picture of Elizabeth Bennet wearing the red Power Ranger helmet which… What sort of context led to that meme being created?

Jason pretends not to care, but he preens with pride when Tim laughs at his dark jokes. Stupid gallows humor that would have made Bruce call an expensive therapist and Dick squirm in discomfort have the kid snorting coffee out of his nose.

It’s like they’re friends.

Part of him sometimes toys with the idea of them being normal kids —or as normal as you can be in Gotham—and he realizes that he would’ve made friends with Tim so fucking fast. Dick is the golden child and all of them would end up worshiping him and respecting him as their older brother, of course. Tim would be added to their family and Jason, not-murdered, regular problem-child Jason, would resist him at first, but he would soon see that he wasn't just an annoying nerd. He was a fun, annoying nerd. They would gang up on Dick, as younger brothers ought to do, and Jason would protect Tim from bullies and Tim would use his good son credit to get Jason out of trouble with Bruce.

This, however, may be as good as it gets for people with their fucked up upbringing. Jason already knew Tim wasn’t your regular spoiled rich boy and they bond over having shit childhoods even if they don’t talk about it.

All in all it feels nice to be looked up to. To have the kid come to him when he’s in trouble. To have someone looking at him with a shine in his eyes like the one Jason has when he looks at Dick. It makes Jason feel like he’s worth something. He sees Tim get comfortable with him after weeks of acting like a stray cat and he knows the kid feels the same. It’s a new feeling for both of them.

It’s like they’re really brothers.

Being part of the Red Robin fan club, Jason finds out, gives him good credit with the Bats.

Bruce and Dick are always going to be concerned about Jason’s slightly loose moral compass. Gremlin is always going to hate him because he’s a Gremlin. Barbara tolerates him at best.

Stephanie, however, shows up unannounced to one of Red Hood’s busts and laughs it off when he complains about Batgirl ruining his rep. She then invites Jason to watch a movie with her since they finished early. He thinks that’d be very weird, so he refuses. Unbothered, she says an airy “Maybe next time” before leaving.

He thinks a shadow once told him to come by the manor more often, almost giving him a heart attack. He thought Cassandra was in Hong Kong, for fuck’s sake; when did she come back?

One time he texts Tim for tech support and no one but the Signal shows up at Jason’s doorstep with a codebreaker and a list of instructions from Red Robin. Duke doesn’t look as wary of Jason as he once was and the two quickly fall into friendly banter, complaining about Tim’s nerdiness.

Jason knows if he asked Steph about it, he would never hear the end of it. Cass isn’t the easiest person to hold a conversation with. He guesses Duke is decent enough not to dwell on it, so he asks,

“Why are y’all suddenly okay with me?”

Duke quirks an eyebrow at him. Fortunately, he’s smart enough that Jason doesn’t need to explain further. “Tim trusts you,” he says simply. “Tim is the holder of the one brain cell of this family, so long we follow his cues, we’re golden.”

Jason doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Why, you don’t want us around?”

He mumbles something about it not being a big deal. Duke shrugs it off and changes the subject. Jason knows he’s doing it for his sake, because Duke might be the kindest person in their whole messed up family. Jason feels bad for refusing to learn his name for so long.

So it seems like two-thirds of the Batgirls and Signal were always less worried about Jason’s past than they were about his rivalry with Robin III.

And, fine, Jason does get a little jealous of that but he’s mature-ish enough to take what he can get. Plus Stephanie is funny as shit and it’s always fun to annoy Barbara by getting Batgirl involved in his fights, especially when Red Robin is around to back him up.

Everything is sort of nice now.

Sometimes, however, Jason wakes up in a cold sweat with the taste of copper in his mouth and a nightmare gunshot still ringing in his ears. He tried to kill Tim. He could’ve killed his little brother. He’s thankful for the times the nightmares come when Tim is sleeping over, because he can walk to the living room and check on the kid. Remind himself that Tim is alive and breathing under the old blankets and that he’s forgiven Jason. When he isn’t around, Jason is absolutely not above calling him in the middle of the night, making up a stupid case he needs Tim’s help with. For all his smarts, Tim never seems to realize Jason’s true motives.

Now that he thinks about it, he notices that Tim is on good terms with a lot of people that tried to kill him. Jason. Damian. That Prudence girl. He doesn’t find out the details, but he does hear something about Stephanie fucking him up and she’s now his best friend. Jason is more than a little concerned about that forgiving side of his.

Red Hood hates a lot of things. If he were to make a list, it’d take days to write it all down. He knows for sure that on the top of that list would be clowns. There is nothing he hates more than clowns.

Scarecrows are a close second, though.

Definitely close to a tie as he watches Red Robin stumble. “I think…” he mutters. “I think my rebreather is broken.”

“ Shit.”

Red Hood has to think fast. Fear gas is every-fucking-where and he lost sight of Scarecrow three canon-fodder crooks ago. He doesn’t have an extra rebreather, because he’s wearing his helmet and that does the job. He’s used to fighting alone. Not that having another rebreather would do them any good now that Red Robin has already breathed the nasty toxins.

In the end, Hood decides to take the defeat for what it is: a defeat. He throws a smoke bomb on the ground and grabs Red Robin by the waist, ignoring the startled squeak the boy lets out. They need to get out before Scarecrow’s goons realize what they’re doing.

“Stay with me,” Red Hood hisses. “Whatever you’re hearing or seeing, it’s not real.”

They’re five minutes away from his nearest safehouse. It’d be faster to take one of their bikes, but he can’t risk it in case Tim starts hallucinating halfway there. They can make it there swinging, he can keep his brother out of danger.

“I’m fine,” Red Robin says. The way he’s limp in Hood’s hold, says otherwise.  “We’re going home. We’re safe.”

“We’re going home. Close your eyes. Focus on my voice.”

He does it.

“It’s just us now,” Hood reassures him. “We’re on the way to a safehouse where no one can find us and you can rest until the toxin is out of your system. Safe, easy.”

“Steph is fine, Bart is fine, Cassie is fine,” he chants, “Cass is fine, Alfred is fine, Dick is fine, Tam is fine, Pru is fine.”

He keeps listing people that are fine, because of course his fears are all about his friends being hurt. Surprisingly, Hood recognizes all of them. He’s heard Tim talking about all of them repeatedly and he knows their names and personalities, even if he doesn’t have all the faces to match. He isn’t surprised that his friends come first then their family.

“That’s right, kiddo,” Jason encourages. “Who else?”

“Dad..” Tim’s eyes shoot open. “Dad’s gonna kill me. Dad, Dad will know I’m Robin, he’s- He’s gonna take Robin away from me, I can’t- This is the first time I’m being useful.”

Fuck.

“Your dad isn’t here. And you’re not Robin, kid, you’re Red Robin,” Jason reminds him.

“That’s… that’s right. I failed him. I failed Dick, so…”

Double fuck.

“That’s bullshit,” Jason says, but it’s hard to keep the conversation going while he’s carrying Tim’s weight.

They’re two minutes away from safety before Tim starts struggling to get away from Jason. He doesn’t say anything else, which may be more concerning, he just grunts with the effort and squirms. Jason really hopes no one was paying attention enough to notice what looks like Red Hood kidnapping a terrified Red Robin.

“Shit- Stay put, Red, we’re almost home,” Jason says.

Tim’s breath catches and returns, erratic, and Jason can’t bear to look at his horrified face, he hates to see the utter fear that has his brother’s already pale complexion turn ashen, his lips pressed into a line so tight it has got to hurt. Jason starts listing the names of the people that are supposedly fine and that catches Tim’s attention long enough that Jason can swing straight to the fire escape of the abandoned building where he set his hideout.

He sets Tim on the dusty mattress on the corner in a hurry and tosses his helmet aside. He starts undoing Tim’s safety measures so he can remove his cowl. Unlike Jason, he doesn’t wear a domino mask beneath it and Jason makes a mental note of talking to Tim about that later.

“Almost there, Timbers,” Jason says. He rips off his own domino without caring about the sting, hoping a familiar face will help. “I’m here. Now, where do you keep your fear gas antidote? I know you carry some around.”

Tim unconsciously reaches for a particular capsule on his bandolier. That’s enough of an answer for Jason, who pushes his hand away not as gently as he should and reaches for the small vial inside.

“Jay,” Tim whines. “Jay, you’re okay, right?”

Jason blinks, confused. “Of course I’m okay, Timbers. I’m right here.”

And as he rushes to grab the first aid kit under the sink, Jason starts to freak out. This gas isn’t causing hallucinations as much as it’s making Tim feel paranoid, it seems. What if it’s a new formula? What if the antidote doesn’t work? What if Tim keeps having anxious thought after anxious thought, until his heart gives in and-

“Jay!” Tim calls, desperate. “Jay, we have to get Kon! He’s- He’s in danger.” He starts getting up.

“Nope!” Jason pushes him right back into the mattress. “Kon is fine, he’s invulnerable, remember? He’s probably doing superdouche stuff in Metropolis.”

“He’s not, he’s- He’s gonna kill himself, Jay!” There are tears welling up in his eyes and Jason feels like someone just punched him in the gut. After all the shit they went through, he had never seen Tim cry. “He’s gonna sacrifice himself to save everyone, I can’t lose him, please, I’ll do it instead. He’s- No! Please, don’t do it!”

There we go. There are the hallucinations they all know and hate. Tim stretches out his hand as if he’s reaching for an invisible Superboy, so Jason takes the opportunity to start rolling up his sleeve and cleaning the inside of his elbow. Lucky for him, he always has a sanitized syringe. Now he just needs Tim to stay still.

What if it doesn’t work? What if I make it worse?

“Kon El, no,” Tim gasps. “KON EL! CONNER!”

Jason had never seen Impulse going full speed. But he did meet Barry Allen back when he was Robin and he never forgot the deafening noise of someone breaking the barrier of sound. More familiar is the noise of his freaking wall exploding. Before Jason realizes, he’s being ripped away from his screaming brother. He hacks and struggles, but there isn’t a lot he can do when a kryptonian steel arm presses against his throat, effectively pinning him to the wall.

“Give me one reason not to kill you,” Superboy growls, his eyes already glowing red.

Jason would be impressed with the boy’s ability to look murderous if he wasn’t about to have his head melted. He struggles a little more. Superboy doesn’t even seem to notice. Jason then pathetically raises the syringe in his hand and manages to choke out:

“A-antidote.”

Superboy blinks once. His eyes return to the regular shade of blue. He blinks twice. His expression shows only confusion when he releases Jason, that promptly falls on his knees. Jason coughs, touching his throat as if to make sure it’s still intact. Damn clone.

“What happened to him?” Superboy demands.

Tim isn’t trying to get up anymore, but rather convulsing on the same spot, screaming wordlessly in horror, tears streaming freely down his pale cheeks.

Jason coughs some more before he’s able to say something. “A-ask that first next time, will you? It’s… it’s fear gas.”

“And, what, am I supposed to believe you were helping him?” Superboy snarls.

Jason groans. He doesn’t have time for this. Tim has his eyes firmly shut and every scream, every time his voice breaks, it feels like someone is slashing at Jason’s chest, robbing him of air almost as effectively as Superboy did.

“I was about to do that before you interrupted,” Jason shows him the syringe again. “What do you think?”

Superboy squints at him, unhappy with his response.

“We don’t have time for that,” Jason snarls. “At this point, he’s gonna have a heart attack. I need you to hold him still.”

Superboy bites his lip in hesitation but Tim screams his name again and he winces as if the sound is kryptonite for his ears. Finally, he nods and crouches down by the mattress.

“It’s okay, Rob,” he says. “I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

At that, Tim miraculously relaxes for a second. Jason kneels by his side again and holds the outstretched arm Superboy is keeping still.

“Don’t hurt him,” Jason warns. Judging by the look Superboy gives him, the only reason he’s not getting the laser eye treatment is because he’s the only one around capable of helping Tim.

“No,” Tim whines. “Not Jason…”

Jason freezes. Superboy’s eyes start to glow again.

“Not Jason, not again,” Tim continues, delirious, his expression twisting in pain. “Please, please, don’t, help him, HELP HIM!”

Jason stabs the needle into his pale skin and it’s a miracle that he does it right, because he is shaking. Fuck this. Fuck Scarecrow. It’s wrong, it’s horrible to hear Red Robin begging like that. He hates the way the kid startles with the needle. He’s thankful that Superboy makes sure Tim stays put, because he doesn’t think his trembling hands could do that now.

“It’s okay, Timbers,” Jason hears himself saying, “it’s over now.”

“Please,” Tim sobs again, “I- I’m gonna solve this.”

God. Jason grabs his hand. “You did enough, baby bird. You solved enough already.”

Tim whimpers, but finally starts relaxing. It seems like the antidote is working its magic and the boy falls right asleep.

Superboy refuses to leave, much to Jason’s chagrin. It doesn’t surprise him, though. Conner is Tim’s favorite conversation subject when he’s in a good mood and apparently the clone is ready to just fly to Gotham if he hears Tim’s voice.

“You know, metas aren’t allowed here,” Jason reminds him.

Superboy has been stomping back and forth around Tim’s mattress. He's so angry that Jason is worried he’ll break the floor any minute now, but he stops to give Jason the biggest, meanest glower of the night. He doesn’t look anything like the mental picture Tim painted of him. Even with his ripped skinny jeans and 90’s leather jacket and dumb earrings, Superboy looks absolutely murderous.

“I’m not going anywhere until I see that Tim’s fine,” he says.

Jason sighs.

“Why are we here?” Superboy snaps. “Why didn’t you call Alfred or… or Batman or…”

“Because we don’t do that,” Jason cuts him. “Red Robin is not Batman's sidekick. If we can solve shit without involving Batman, we don’t involve Batman.”

It’s their unspoken rule, Jason knows that since the first time they fought side by side - the first time they had a sleepover - and he brought Tim home to patch him up. They don’t call dad or their older bro if they’re in trouble, because that’ll lead to them being in more trouble. They simply watch out for each other as much as they can.

Superboy isn’t happy with that explanation, but, before he can murder Jason for real, Tim stirs.

Jason and Superboy are kneeling by his side at the same time, which says something, since Jason doesn't have superspeed.

“Timbers?” Jason calls.

“Jay…?” Tim mumbles and his voice is still a little raw from all the screaming. He blinks and his eyes set on his best friend. “Conner? What are you doing here?”

“You called,” Superboy says simply. “I told you all you had to do was call my name.”

“How’s the head?” Jason asks. “You're still smart, right? You can’t afford to lose your brain cells, Timbers, with your ugly face they’re all you have.”

Tim snorts. Then groans. “Fuck off, Jason, don’t make me laugh.”

Jason smiles at him and he doesn’t notice the weird look Superboy is giving them.

“Rob? Do you remember what happened?”

Tim starts to sit up and Superboy is faster than Jason in wrapping an arm around his shoulders to steady him. He helps Tim rest his back against the wall and the grateful look Tim gives him makes Jason frown a bit because he feels there is something there he’s missing.

“Hmmm… We were fighting Scarecrow,” Tim says. “Fear gas, broken rebreather...” He looks at Jason as if seeking for confirmation. When Jason nods, he continues, “Jay got me out of there and the rest is… Wait. Where is Scarecrow? Did he escape?”

“That should be the last of your worries, Timothy, you almost died of fear,” Superboy scolds.

Tim sighs. “Oh, to be a young vigilante in the XXI century… passing away of fright.”

Superboy doesn’t get it, judging by his expression, but Jason does and he laughs out loud. He doesn’t miss the way Tim’s lip quirk up.

“See, baby bird, this is why I wear a helmet and so should you,” Jason says.

“Okay, but have you considered that we’d look stupid if we were all the man in the iron mask?”

Jason raises an eyebrow. “God forbid a whole family fighting criminals in leather fursuits look stupid. We wouldn’t fucking want that.”

Tim laughs, even if his voice is still a little hoarse, and Jason is relieved.

He is so relieved to see his brother fine that he doesn’t pay attention to the fact that Superboy still has his arm around Tim’s shoulders. That Superboy’s eyes get all soft when Tim laughs. That Superboy looks a little hurt when he offers to fly Tim home, but Tim refuses, saying that he’d rather spend the rest of the night here.

“I mean, if that’s fine…?” He glances at Jason, reminding him of those first sleepovers, when he was still unsure whether he’d be welcome or not.

Jason is so done feeling or letting his brother feel like an outsider. “The mattress is big enough for both of us, I don’t see why you’d go back to your own apartment when you can just sleep on a perfectly good mattress on the floor.”

“Hm. Cool then,” Superboy says, but instead of flying out through the giant hole he made on the wall, he shifts his weight from one foot to another awkwardly, clearly stalling.

Both brothers notice it. Neither has a problem interpreting Superboy’s fidgeting. Jason finds it annoying, but Tim gives him a pleading look. Jason sighs.

“You can stay too, big guy, but you gonna have to sleep on the floor.”

Superboy’s face lights up and he definitely doesn’t look like he wanted to melt Jason’s head just a couple of minutes ago. He rambles that it’s all good, he just needs to text Ma Kent to let her know where he is and he’s used to sleeping on the floor of the barn with Krypto and the cows (Jason would find that more upsetting if he didn’t know there is a cow somewhere in the Wayne manor too and Damian sleeps in the cave with it all the time).

In the end, Tim bullies Jason into giving Superboy the thickest blanket he has around. He tries suggesting he should sleep in the blanket and let Jason and Superboy share the mattress, but shuts up mid sentence under their glares.

It’s probably the most awkward sleepover so far, but Tim grins at Jason, grateful, and turns his back to him to be able to talk to Superboy in hushed whispers.

Jason tunes out their conversation and focuses on the fact that he did it. He saved Tim. It doesn’t make up for the times he fucked up in the past, but it sure makes him feel better about the present. He’s also thankful that Tim stayed instead of going to his own place. Hearing your little brother scream in fear for your life isn’t something enjoyable and Jason is sure he would have nightmares about if it wasn’t for the fact that Tim was laying right there in front of him. It’s the sound of his brother’s muffled laughter, mixed with Superboy’s, that lulls him to sleep.

Jason should have noticed then. But he didn’t.

For an intelligent guy, Jason can be really stupid sometimes.

The thing is… Jason is smart. He’s not Tim Drake smart, but he’s still a good detective. He’s also fairly sociable. Or at least he used to be, before he, you know, died and went through all the trauma, etc. He is no Dick Grayson, but he can hold a good conversation, pick up the right social cues, all that crap.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t mess up sometimes.

You see, months go by. Red Hood and Red Robin don’t often go on the field together, after all it’d do a number to both of their reputations, but, when they do, one of them always ends up injured and the other carries him home. It’s like a curse, the universe telling them to stick to their off-patrol partnership. Then a couple of weeks go by and they miss the feeling of fighting side-by-side and there they go again.

Tim keeps showing up at Jason’s place whenever he feels like it and he even hangs around Jason’s visiting friends sometimes. Kori adores Tim from the first time she puts her eyes on him. Roy takes a little longer to warm up, but even he can’t resist the kid. Jason likes it. He likes having his brother around. He likes that they get on like a house on fire.

So much he forgets Tim is a master of hiding shit.

On the week nearing Tim’s 19th birthday, Jason goes to his apartment. He doesn’t realize until he’s halfway there that he hadn’t been to Tim’s place since the night he met Prudence, which is odd, because it’d been basically a year and a half. Still, Tim goes over to Jason’s place all the time. The fact that Jason doesn’t repay the favor has everything to do with the fact that Jason hates Tim’s magazine apartment and nothing else.

Right?

Instead of going for the door, Jason uses his signature move and just swings to the balcony. The door is unlocked - Jason really has to have a talk with Tim about security, they’re in Gotham, for fuck’s sake - and he lets himself in.

To Tim’s credit, the place looks more well lived in now. There are mismatched pillows on the couch, a forgotten mug and a couple of books on the coffee table. Jason recognizes his copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and makes an annoyed sound noticing Tim’s bookmarker is still somewhere in the middle of the book even if it’s been weeks since Jason let him borrow it.

“Tim?” Jason calls. It’s half past nine, a little early for vigilante standards, but…

He hears the sound of someone sputtering and coughing from the kitchen. There he is.

Jason heads there and finds Tim desperately grabbing paper towels to clean coffee he apparently just spilled on his bare chest.

“J-Jason!”

“Jumpy aren’t we?” Jason comments. “What’s up, baby bird?”

It’s clear that Tim had just woken up, judging by his messy hair and the fact that he’s wearing nothing but red sweatpants with Superman’s symbol all over. His mildly terrified expression is weird, though. Tim is usually slow in the morning, but not that easy to startle.

“What are you doing here?” Tim whispers, clearly panicking.

The fact that Jason never visits Tim’s place suddenly comes to his mind. The possibility of him not being welcome hits him and it’s surprisingly painful. He thought they were doing well, that the kid liked him. All this time, was he being arrogant?

As his brain scrambles for something to say, something to think, he notices a sound that he hadn’t registered before: the shower.

Suddenly Tim’s rapidly reddening cheeks and doe wide eyes gain a new meaning. Jason forgets the hurt and a sly smile stretches on his face.

“Oh my god. Oh god, this is priceless. Baby bird, do you have a lady guest from last night?”

Tim makes a weird choking sound and this is too good, Jason is too delighted, look at little Timmy go, already getting it. (Jason would’ve chosen different pants for the morning after, but alas.)

Then a voice calls out: “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

A male voice.

Tim’s face becomes three shades darker, now perfectly matching his pants. Jason’s grin is now frozen on his face, his eyes wide with the realization.

The shower stops.

“Tim?” The voice calls again.

“I’m fine, Kon!” Tim responds and his voice is surprisingly even, considering he looks like he’s having an aneurysm.

That’s a bat for you. Master of hiding their emotions.

Sort of.

Kon, Tim said. Jason realizes that Tim isn’t wearing Superman merch. The sweatpants are Superboy themed.

Jason still remembers Superboy’s protective streak all those months ago and the fact that he woke up to the two of them holding hands - at the time, he thought nothing of it, because it had been a stressful night and he didn’t blame either boy for wanting to make sure the other was okay - and he thinks of all the subsequent times Tim went on and on about Conner and how a couple of weeks ago Tim just stopped mentioning Conner altogether.

God, Jason is the worst detective ever.

Tim pushes Jason out of the kitchen and towards the living room, presumably farther from the bathroom where his boyfriend with super hearing was showering.

“Fuck,” Tim mutters, “ fuckfuckfuck… ”

And he looks and sounds so distraught that Jason loses all the eagerness to tease him, concern quickly replacing any initial surprise he might have been feeling.

“Look,” Tim murmurs, looking anywhere but at Jason’s eyes, “it’s not… we’re just…”

Tim scrambles for words and this is so unlike him - Tim always has a plan, always knows what to say - it takes a moment for Jason to catch up on why he’s a stuttering mess. Jason had been so excited to find out his little brother had a boyfriend he forgot he lived in a world where homophobia was a thing.

“Timbers, chill out.” Jason grabs Tim’s hands from where they’re still resting on his shoulders. “It’s just me.”

Tim dares raise his gaze to meet Jason’s and it hurts a bit to see still a little fear in his blue eyes. Jason gives him an encouraging grin.

“I can’t believe you officially bagged a kryptonian. Way to go, kid.”

His shoulders slouch in utter relief right before he starts blushing again. What a cute kid.

“You keep calling me kid. You’re not that older. And don’t say it like that,” Tim mumbles.

“Like what? Like you’re snogging Superboy?” Tim punches him on the shoulder and Jason laughs. “Now I know why you were in such a hurry to leave the manor, you wanted your own place to bring your boyfriend over…”

“That’s not why I left and who said anything about a boyfriend? Maybe this was just a one night stand.”

Jason gives him a condescending look. “Timbers, I might have not realized you’re gay, but I do know you. You’re a boyfriend kinda guy.”

Tim rolls his eyes and mumbles something about assuming shit. “I’m bi,” he says.

“Cool,” Jason says, a shit-eating grin never leaving his face.

“Fuck,” Tim groans and lets himself fall on the couch. “How do you de-escalate an emotional situation so fast?”

“It’s a Bat thing, and you know how to do it too. All of us are trained to avoid emotions like the plague.”

“I was not prepared to come out when I got up this morning,” Tim admits.

Humming, Jason finally realizes that Tim doesn’t want to skip the emotions for this one. He sighs. The things he does for his brothers.

“It’s not a big deal, though,” he says. “I mean, you’re happy right?”

“I’m never happy.”

“Don’t quote Zuko. You started the real talk. You don’t get to bat your way out of it now.”

A sigh. “I’m happy. Conner is… the best.”

Jason nods. “Then it’s all good. I’m sure all the others would say the same.”

“You can't tell them!” Tim snaps, his eyes suddenly wide with panic again. “Seriously, Jay, you can’t-”

“Calm down, kid,” Jason cuts him off. “When did I make a habit of spilling your secrets to the B-man? It's none of their business.” Tim visibly relaxes and Jason adds: “Actually… Want me to make your house Dick-proof?”

“...what?”

“I mean, not kryptonian dick, you’re clearly into that,” and he ignores it when Tim pops him on the back of the head. “I mean Dick Dick, our brother. I could set up a better security system so you don’t have to worry about one of your siblings walking into something scarring, especially the clingy one.”

“No security system can stop Dick’s clinginess.”

“How do you think I keep him off my place?”

That’s when their little pow wow gets interrupted by more kryptonian skin than Jason ever wanted to see as Conner walks in with nothing but the smallest of the towels wrapped around his waist.

“Babe, what is--” He notices Jason and slips on literally nothing, barely catching himself before falling on his ass. “ Shit- I mean, nothing, I mean, we were just binging Wendy!”

Jason doesn’t say anything, but he does give Tim a look that says it all. He wasn't judging earlier, but he is now. Tim gives him a look that definitely means shut up.

In the end, Jason stays for breakfast.

It’s only mildly awkward, because he and Tim fill the silence talking about the latest case Jason’s working on while Conner makes them pancakes. Judging by the fact that he’s getting the ingredients from a bunch of plastic bags, he must have brought all the food with him. If anything, Jason is grateful that he and Alfred are no longer the only people trying to get Tim to eat actual food.

When Tim turns to Conner for his opinion, leaving Jason to enjoy his coffee, Jason looks around and notices that there are new pictures on the fridge. There are some of those disgustingly cute pictures of Tim and Conner, their cheeks pressed together as they make weird faces for the camera. There is a picture of Conner by himself and, again disgustingly, he is smiling at the camera as though the most precious person in the world is behind it. Both pictures are held by a sun magnet. There is a new candid shot of Cassandra, one of Alfred-Alfred holding cat Alfred, a new one of Dick and even Damian is in there.

And, his heart stops for a second, because now there are pictures of Jason as well.

They’re carefully placed far from each other, but there are three different pictures. There is one of Jason wearing his Lord of the Rings shirt, eating cereal on the couch, a confused expression on his face. He remembers when Tim took that picture, because Tim waited until Jason had his mouth full before calling hey Jay? and snapping the picture right as Jason looked at him, his cheeks like a chipmunk's. The second picture is a candid of him smiling, leaning against the rail of some safehouse balcony. The shot was carefully framed to not show anything distinct of the surroundings, just Jason and Gotham’s sky.

The third one is a selfie. In it, Jason is asleep, his lips parted and face relaxed, his head resting on Tim’s shoulder. Tim has a shit eating grin on his lips as if there is nothing funnier to him than his giant older brother falling asleep on him in the middle of movie night. Tim had the decency of drawing a mustache on Jason’s face to decrease sappiness, but that effect is ruined by the fact that the picture is held by a magnet that was clearly Iron Man but Tim had painted it red to look like Jason’s hood.

Jason had sworn off killing, at least for a little while.

But he would gladly kill again for his little brother.

As he gets ready to leave, he turns to Conner and deadpans, “I don’t have to tell you that I can and I will make kryptonite bullets, do I?”

“Jason!” Tim scolds.

“What? I’m the first of the family to find out. Least I can do is taje care of the shovel talk.”

“Stop threatening my boyfriend.”

Conner blushes profusely and mouths the word boyfriend with marvel and ugh. Just… ugh . Jason is happy that Tim is happy, but he and Conner are apparently that kind of couple and Jason wants to have none of it.

“So, first we kill Damian,” Jason starts.

“No,” Tim says.

“Aw, come on, you didn’t even consider it!”

Cassandra waits until they decide their plan of action (it’s probably going to be Tim’s) and keeps her expression carefully neutral as not to show which one of them she agrees with (Tim).

The thing, Jason realized, is that all of them have favorites in their family and knowing that makes it easier to tear them down. Dick can fuck off with his I love you all equally bullshit, because he clearly always favors Damian. Damian swings between Batdad’s little boy and Nightwing’s murder baby. Tim will easily lose focus whenever Steph is involved. Steph is oddly protective of Duke, for some reason. Cassandra is mostly neutral. She’s everyone’s favorite, including Bruce’s, but she’s also the deadliest of them all so she is no one’s weakness. She does, however, have a soft spot for Tim over any of her brothers. Since Jason became close friends with Tim, he entered Cassandra’s selective protection bubble and he’s now, by all definitions, untouchable.

Or at least that’s how he felt when she chose him for her team right after Tim.

“We kill Dick first,” Tim knocks down the little Nightwing action figure on the carpet. “Cass, you’re the only one who can take him down. Jay and I distract the others while you do the job. Damian will get personally offended by that and will grow reckless.” He knocks down the little imp figurine. “I can take care of him then. Steph will be hiding somewhere ready to strike. She is best in close range combat. Jay, I need you to take her down before she gets too close.” He pushes down the Barbie doll someone dressed as Batgirl, because apparently they couldn’t find blonde Batgirl merch and they were very offended. “Then we win.”

He may sound impressive, but the whole time he’s speaking he has his head resting on Cass’ lap and she is carding her fingers through his hair as a villain would do to their evil pet cat.

“Can’t I murder the demon brat?” Jason complains.

Tim glares at him - again, not very intimidating while he’s basically lying on his sister’s lap.

“You know Steph would wipe the floor with me. You’re the only one I can trust to get her.”

“Unless…” Jason turns around. “Du-”

“No.”

“Come on, I’ll give you ten bucks.”

“Jason, we’re all rich, you can’t buy me.” Duke doesn’t even raise his eyes from his book. “Plus last time I let y’all drag me into this shit, Steph knocked off one of my teeth with Tim’s staff.”

“If you hadn’t killed me, then she wouldn’t have taken revenge,” Tim argues.

“And yet you’re planning to kill Dick counting on the fact that Damian will try to avenge him.”

“Wet blanket,” Cassandra says.

Tim and Jason go into a giggling fit as Duke sputters, too indignant to put his thoughts into words.

In the end, Duke still doesn’t join them.

As they expected, the enemy was listening to their plan - Jason is sure Dick was against it, but Stephanie and Damian are definitely not above spying - nonetheless they still played their parts as expected: Steph and Damian tried protecting Dick first and foremost, but not even the two of them combined could take Cassandra. Not with Jason and Tim backing her up.

Cassandra knocks Dick down and sits on his back. The large yellow paint splash on his chest proves that he’s dead. Rather than being upset, Dick starts doing push ups with his sister there as the rest of his siblings and Steph fight to death.

Unfortunately, Damian wasn’t as angered by Dick’s demise as they expected and is still a good match for Tim. Until Tim gasps and goes Titus, don’t eat that! It was an obvious ploy, but still got Damian to let down his guard and whip his head around looking for his precious dog. Tim shoots him without hesitation and Damian goes on a rage soliloquy.

Jason would appreciate it if he wasn’t having such a hard time with Stephanie. Apparently Barbara has been feeding her steroids, because the girl is now as quick as a ninja. She hits Jason in the kneecaps with Tim’s staff - they’re not even in the same team this time, how the fuck did she get Tim’s staff??? - and shoots him point blank in the chest. And damn, that shit hurts. He bets it’s purple under his shirt too.

Steph is mid celebration when her victory whoop turns into a pained groan. Twin splotches of red and yellow bloom on her back as Cassandra and Tim lower their guns.

“Fuck,” Jason complains. “Couldn’t’ve done that before she killed me?”

“We win,” Cassandra says.

“Shouldn’t you be fighting to the death now?” Dick asks. Now that Cass is off his back, he’s lying on the side like one of your French girls. Jason wishes Cass would shoot him again.

“I would never betray Cass,” Tim says.

“We rule together.” She walks to him and stands on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead.

Tim grins a wicked grin because he knows he is Cassandra’s favorite and everyone can die mad about it.

Steph and Damian start shouting their complaints at the same time while Dick laughs his ass off. From his lawn chair, Duke is glaring at them as if he can’t believe he’s legally related to any of these weirdos.

His gaze meets Dick’s and his older brother looks absolutely elated with pride even though all of their siblings are yelling about paintball.

Jason simply smiles back.

#jason todd #tim drake #red hood #red robin #batfam #batfam big bang 2020 #poteto writing #red bros #collab

[the-good-noodle-kf]

Redacted (First) Impressions

My Saiou Winter Exchange Gift for @evil-muffins

Prompt: Pre-game fic, angsty w/ a side of fluff

Hope you like c: 

I.

Life has no meaning.

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 “My name is ******* ***. My audition number is three-hundred fifty-one.”

“I’m… always looked down on and.. I probably deserve it. So, I thought, fuck my memories huh? It’s not like I care about anyone. Just… I don’t want to be weak anymore. I want to be rewritten as someone less weak. Maybe I could be someone to look up to, like a leader. But, it doesn’t matter what I am; I’m desperate, and isn’t that what you want from people? People so desperate that they’ll willingly offer their lives away to become part of a killing game?”

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 -

Every day is a string of bland pointless blurs that bleed into the next like watercolor paint. 

So, why not make life as interesting as possible?

-

Kokichi Oma stares blankly. He presses down on the lit power button of his computer monitor, effectively shutting it off. It’s done. That’s it. The chance that they’ll consider him is low, but maybe they - Team Danganronpa - will find value in him that no one else has. He barely got a submission number. It took hours of staying awake, eyes peeled, staring at the stinging blue light of the screen until he requested an audition as fast as he possibly could. Even still, he ended up with number three-hundred fifty-one. He wonders how someone could possibly get the first audition. 

Applying for Danganronpa has become much more… commonplace, ever since they began using simulation technology. As strange as it may seem, not everyone is exactly willing to stake their lives on a show, but for some, their memories are a small price to pay for becoming a part of the show. Though it might also have something to do with the prize money, Oma doesn’t care much about that. He’s omniscient enough to know that he definitely doesn’t have a very high self-worth… or self-preservation for that matter, but it’s not like he can change that just from being aware of it.

II.

School is boring.

Each additional day of school he's feeling more tired and drained, regardless of how much he falls asleep in class. What is the point of working if he has nothing to work towards? 

III.

Shuichi Saihara.

It’s the name of his new coworker… the one he’s supposed to be training. Oma’s worked at the place for not even a year, yet his boss says he’s qualified to teach the boy that was hired just a few days ago. 

“Thank you for shopping! Have a great day!” He repeats his response, with his cyclic forced smile bridging his cheeks. It’s almost robotic, in how habitual and automatic it’s become after saying it to every single customer once they’ve paid. He looks to Saihara once the little bell on the door rings, signaling the exit of the customer, and he’s back to his normal expression. It’s not a frown, but it’s definitely not a smile either. “And that’s it. Did you want to try?” he offers, not really sure himself.

Saihara’s staring at him closely, like he doesn’t know what to make of him, but yet he still startles at the response. His brows furrow together but he does nod, so Oma moves aside and lets Saihara stand in front of the register instead. Saihara mumbles as he looks down at the keys, “I wonder why...”

Oma tilts his head at the unfinished sentence as he assesses Saihara. He’s taller than him, and he seems nervous. Oma can also see that he’s good looking, but he probably isn’t a very popular or outgoing person, judging by his mannerisms. 

IV.

Working is… habitual for Oma. It’s not that he particularly hates it, and he does make money, but he only does it because he knows that he’d otherwise be doing legitimately nothing, and doing something at least makes him feel a little better about himself. Regardless of how much he dreads being a functional human being in general, he has to - he has to because he’s terrified of what will happen if he stops. 

V.

“Ah, Oma-kun,”

Oma looks over with curiosity at the other as he restocks shelves. It’s only the two of them right now. There haven’t been many customers because of the cold, dreary weather. It’s also a Monday, so people are too busy working or at afterschool activities to have any need to stop at the relatively small convenience store. 

“Your cheek…” Saihara trails off, scratching his wrist, and Oma reflexively lifts his hand and brushes his fingers over the scrape, reminding him of it with a slight sting.

He lifts up the corners of his cheeks, walls raising, “hmmmm?” 

“W-wait, I have-” Saihara cuts himself off as he runs off into the employee’s only door. It’s a little room with a few tiny lockers that Oma throws his school bag in on the days he comes straight from school. Saihara comes back with a bag of his own and huh- Oma didn’t expect Saihara to have so many Danganronpa pins, or any really; there’s a little Monokuma keychain hanging from one of the zippers too. He raises his eyebrows and even smiles a little bit at the thought of someone else liking what he likes, but it’s smothered by the fear of being known, of showing who he really is, and Saihara is oblivious to all this as he tugs a band-aid out of the front pocket and hands it to Oma. 

It’s like his mind fizzles like a burnt-out lightbulb for a second when Saihara, instead of just handing him the band-aid like a normal person, envelops Oma’s hand with his own and deposits the band-aid with the other. Oma’s sure that’s not normally how people give other people band-aids, or anything, but the feeling of Saihara’s shockingly warm hand is gone as quick as it arrived when he releases him and smiles. Oma’s even more embarrassed because he actually briefly considered if Saihara was a warm or cold hands person, which isn’t normal, because who does that? Who thinks about their co-worker’s hand temperature - who he doesn’t really know, but seems really nice, if handing him a band-aid could be considered a point of reference. 

Oma’s not even sure what tangent his mind is going off on this time, so he looks down in his hand at the band-aid and sees that - huh, it’s got Kyoko Kirigiri on it. He must’ve mumbled her name aloud because Saihara gasps and has an expression that almost reminds Oma of a dog wagging its tail. “You watch Danganronpa?” Saihara grabs his hands again, and Oma knows he can’t blame his blush on anything else but Saihara if questioned. 

He squeaks out an “mhm,” and tries to look back at the band-aid that’s now fallen on the floor after Saihara grabbed his hands, and he ends up just looking at their hands. Why is he so focused on Saihara holding his hands? 

Saihara lets go and runs to put his bag away again, at least, that’s what Oma assumes. It gives him a moment to pick the band-aid up off the floor and come to realize why, in fact, Saihara handed him the band-aid in the first place. ...Does he… expect me to put this band-aid on my face? 

...But, it would be rude not to. So he opens the band-aid and sticks it on his face, approximating where he puts the cottony part over the place on his face that’s stinging the most when he brushes his finger over it. It wasn’t even bleeding, but Saihara practically beams when he comes back, and the rest of his shift goes by like a fog. He’s not really able to focus on anything after experiencing that - he was completely unprepared. 

VI.

Oma isn’t sure why he keeps thinking about Saihara. He’s ashamed of himself. Why does he keep going back to the feeling of Saihara’s hands on his? It was completely… platonic? Except Oma doesn’t think that word works either, because there’s no way him and Saihara are friends, even if they’ve spent a total of fifteen hours together total since he met Saihara three days ago; he’s known him three days, and already, he has some dumb, crush, or something. He doesn’t know what to do with it, and having not had any physical contact that wasn’t bodily damaging with someone in as many years as he can remember, isn’t helping him. He groans aloud as he face-plants into the open textbook on his mattress. He wouldn’t call it a bed, since it has no sheets and sits on the floor instead of being sandwiched between a bed frame. 

He peers over to the side of his resting place where his little trash can is and of course, there’s the band-aid that he peeled from his cheek immediately after getting back from work last night - not home, he’s never “home” when he’s here - and of course everything he looks at is reminding him of the boy. 

He’s not supposed to do this - to want to be held; he’s not a damn child. He definitely can’t count the number of times he’s thought about Saihara hugging him on one hand. He’s not supposed to do this. 

For one of many times, he wonders why he’s like this. Why is he like this?

VII.

Oma’s something of a… target, at school. He fits the parameters perfectly; he’s small, short, effeminate, generally weak, quiet. It’s nothing dramatic like being beaten up within the school, luckily. It’s the little things, like being tripped in the hallways by an upperclassmen’s ‘conveniently’ outstretched foot and then snickered at, having a book of his be hung high above his head, out of his reach, by another student until he repeated whatever idiotic thing they wanted him to say, the occasional mockery, his belongings getting stolen when he’s not looking, being chosen as the designated monkey in the middle as his belongings are tossed between two guys that think they’re the absolute pinnacle of comedy, and various other meaningless things he deals with.

School is something he can handle, though. 

VIII.

“Oma-kun.” Saihara ducks his head as he pushes his phone into Oma’s hands. It’s open on the contacts screen, and Oma stares at it for a second, the unfilled contact info, before realizing it’s Saihara’s roundabout way of asking him for his number. He smiles a little and Saihara’s eyes widen, his expression becoming pretty serious as he takes in Oma’s grin. 

Oma doesn’t realize he’s smiling until Saihara points it out, “You’re smiling.” 

Even though he’s a little self-conscious now it’s been acknowledged, he still nods, and smiles even wider; he hands the phone back to Saihara, his number in place.

IX.

He wishes he could handle being home as well as he can handle school.

X.

Saihara texts Oma a lot. 

He’s constantly sending messages about anything and everything, especially Danganronpa. As Oma reads through he wonders if Saihara just texts him every time he thinks something. It doesn’t bother him though; every time he gets a new message he smiles in a way that he would deny if he were face to face with Saihara. 

It’s a little weird, but hearing Saihara’s thoughts and theories and opinions is so interesting. Oma really hopes Saihara doesn’t get discouraged by his own lack of response. He doesn’t ignore him, but his replies are far and few between - things like little smile emotes and one-word responses. He doesn’t exactly know how to reply otherwise.

He can’t help but feel hesitant. Talking about his own opinions makes him feel self-centered and narcissistic, and he wants to be anything but that. What if Saihara thinks that he turns everything around to make it about himself? Saihara probably doesn’t want to hear what he has to say anyway… Oma’s come to accept the fact that people don’t want to hear what he has to say, so he stays quiet. 

That doesn’t stop him from reading all of Saihara’s messages over again and grinning secretively under his blanket.

XI.

Saihara invites him over the next day. It’s Sunday, and neither of them is scheduled at work, so Oma accepts. 

Getting ready is nerve-wracking for Oma, because he can’t remember the last time he had a friend to hang out with. It’s such a “normal people” thing to do - leisurely spend the day with friends. It’s a thing that feels so out of the ordinary to someone like Oma. He puts on a long sleeve shirt but then changes out of it after his nervousness makes his body temperature rise, and the sleeves feel a little too tight and warm. He puts it on again because of how bare his arms feel in a T-shirt and maneuvers around the floor and out the door before he can change his mind or before his aunt notices his presence. 

The first impression Oma has of Saihara’s living space is that it’s quiet. It’s also pretty neat and ordinary, and Saihara makes no mention of any parents or relatives which leaves Oma feeling a little curious. 

The day is surreal. He and Saihara talk and watch some of the earlier seasons of Danganronpa while eating some artificial tasting junk food, and it’s fun. It’s so fun. He’s shocked about how natural it feels, spending time with the other boy. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so content, ever had a true, genuine smile on his face for so long - ever had someone else have such a genuine smile on their face in return. 

Saihara asks him things and he answers them, because if he’s asked, then he can talk about himself. Oma’s glad that Saihara wants to know about him just as much as he wants to learn about Saihara.

He wants it to last, and there’s a twisting feeling in his chest because he’s already convinced that it won’t.

-

When Oma gets back, it’s late enough that he has to sneak in through his window - the apartment is on the ground floor, and the screen already has holes torn into it that make it easy to reach in and remove before placing it back and latching it in. The brass latch reminds him of the color of Shuichi’s eyes as he locks it - Oma’s not sure when Saihara became Shuichi - and he’s so caught up in Shuichi, and talking to Shuichi, that he jumps when a door slams, shaking all thoughts of his day out of his mind. 

XII.

Oma doesn’t know what to do. The day after visiting Saihara had been one of the worse ones recently, and Shuichi catches onto it through his messages somehow and asks him if he’s okay of all things.

And Oma replies, “why?”

Oma doesn’t know what to do when Shuichi Saihara sends him the five-word message, “because I care about you…”

No one cares about him. That’s just how things are. There’s no way Saihara actually cares about him. Why would he? 

XIII.

If Shuichi cares about him, then why couldn’t his parents? 

XIV.

He’s not exactly sure when he and Shuichi became friends, but he supposes it happened somewhere between Shuichi making it known that he was generally concerned for Oma’s well being, (that’s never happened to him before; have someone be concerned? About him? The ridiculous idea rolls around in Oma’s head like an optimistic interposition), Oma realizing that on his days off, he’d long for Shuichi’s presence, and their countless messages to each other that make the longing a little more bearable. 

It’s new to Oma. He’s never… craved the company of another. It makes him feel pathetic, but also… kind of lonely. 

It makes the moments when he’s around Shuichi all the better. 

XV.

He becomes Kokichi to Shuichi. Being addressed by his given name, despite giving Shuichi his explicit permission, makes Kokichi feel giddy.

XVI.

School isn’t so bad… especially on the days that Shuichi takes the train over so they can walk home together.

Side by side.

 Hand in hand.

 XVII.

He wants to kiss Shuichi.

XVIII.

Kokichi’s room is a less depressing place when he has Shuichi to sneak in. The two of them waste time by watching movies on Kokichi’s computer or playing board games that Shuichi carried in. 

XIX.

Shuichi speaks up from behind the register when the store is devoid of customers. “I noticed…” he starts, scratching at his wrist, and Kokichi looks up to make eye contact “at first, you always had this smile on, but it was just pretend…”

Kokichi doesn’t have time to react before Shuichi’s continuing his train of thought.

“But when I asked for your phone number, you had a different smile for the first time. It made me really happy to see that I made you smile for real…” Shuichi fumbles with his hands, but Kokichi doubts that Shuichi’s more embarrassed than he is after hearing something so… sentimental. 

XX.

Shuichi’s favorite thing about Kokichi may be seeing him smile, but Kokichi’s favorite thing about Shuichi is feeling his warm arms enveloping him when they hug.

Kokichi’s feelings have escalated so much that he’s drowning in them, and he doesn’t ever want to come up for air. 

XXI.

Oma’s long sleeves usually hide the finger-sized bruises on his arms, but he can’t hide the ones around his neck.

Shuichi goes on high alert as he shuts the door behind them. It is the first time he’s seeing where Kokichi lives - besides when he snuck into Kokichi’s window with snacks to watch a movie on his computer - but it isn’t the time to take notice of the dilapidated state of the furniture and wallpaper. All he can focus on is the alarming marks on Kokichi’s neck that look like someone shoved him up against a wall and didn’t let him breathe for who knows how long. “What happened?" Concerned, he reaches a hand out to gesture and Oma flinches. 

Oma wants to tell him, “I forgot to lock the door, so my aunt got mad,” because, she didn’t want him to begin with, it’s not her fault she got stuck with him after his parents left. He wasn’t wanted. At least he had somewhere to sleep, his aunt would tell him, and Oma thought she was right. 

But he can’t tell him that, because that would mean seeing the look in Shuichi’s eyes as he realizes Kokichi is a burden to him too.

“It’s nothing,” he deflects.

It’s silent as Saihara mumbles, but in a way that’s loud enough to hear, “I knew something was off when we first met. When you got so guarded about how you got that scrape on your cheek. I thought maybe someone was bullying you at school, but after we started walking together, I knew that wasn’t the case.”

Oma shrinks back, but Saihara keeps going.

“I didn’t push it at the time, because it was none of my business, but… was it… your guardian?”

He says “guardian” because Oma hasn’t spoken a word to him about his aunt. But the silence is Shuichi’s answer.

“Kokichi, you have to tell someone- you can’t just let them-” let them what? Give him what he deserves? He’s a problem child. A burden. A -

“I can’t.” Saihara doesn’t understand. Oma doesn’t even have it that bad. It could be so much worse, and he can stick it out for a few more years, can’t he? 

A failure. “It won’t get better if you don’t report this!”

Oma avoids his eyes. “Shut up.”

A mistake. “I’m trying to help,” he says pleadingly, desperately.

“Maybe I don’t want your help! I’m not some problem that you have to solve Saihara!”

Saihara’s lips thin and when Oma expects him to retaliate he just - leaves. He turns around and runs off, shutting the door behind him.

It’s only after he’s gone and Oma is standing in the middle of the quiet, empty room that Oma is encompassed in the feeling of absolute dread. 

XXII.

Saihara doesn’t show up for work the next day. Oma feels guilt gnawing at him during his shift, because it’s all his fault. He shouldn’t have pushed Saihara away. He texts him “sorry” and “can we talk?” through budding tears and hopes Saihara can forgive him. 

XXIII.

He hasn’t texted him back anything in the past forty-eight hours, so Oma sighs and lets his feelings pour out in a long message when Saihara doesn’t answer his call. He tells him that he’s sorry, and that he doesn’t want Saihara to hate him.

XXIV.

The water cup he filled the night before has an almost stale taste to it in the morning, but Oma drinks it anyway because his throat is dry, and he can’t summon the energy to get up even though he’s been sleeping for the past thirteen hours. He’s still tired once he sets the cup down so he scrolls mindlessly through his past messages to and from Saihara before staring at Saihara’s last message to him, before their fight. He hasn’t said anything since.

He doesn’t go to school; he’s already sleeping again by the time it starts and he’s too preoccupied to care.

XXV.

With no reply, Oma gets worried really quickly. It’s unlike Saihara to completely… cut him off. He at least figured Saihara would reject his apology upfront instead of hiding away and giving him the silent treatment. 

His chest makes that twisting feeling again and he feels unbearably nauseous when he goes to Saihara’s apartment and no one opens the door. There’s not even the telltale sound of footsteps towards the door to signal someone checking who’s there. 

It’s like no one’s home.

-

He sits curled up in his blankets and practically spams Saihara with messages of “please answer me” and “tell me that you’re okay” but Saihara answers none of them. He’s sweating, and heaving, and he doesn’t care if Saihara hates him, he only wants him to say something. Oma needs a reply so he doesn’t keep panicking like he is now, thinking something happened to Saihara; he feels sick, and he can’t stop thinking about it. 

XXVI.

Oma tries to rationalize. Saihara doesn’t have any family, and after Oma shut him out, maybe he simply… left. Just because he disappeared doesn’t mean something bad happened.

But, Oma thinks, what if something bad did happen. What if Saihara was abducted - or - or - killed? The thought of Saihara being dead makes Oma so uncomfortable; his throat feels like it’s closing up and it’s hard to swallow his own saliva. He’s growing more and more anxious each day he shows up to work and Saihara isn’t there beside him, despite being scheduled. 

XXVII.

The metal of the buttons and zipper on his clothes feel especially cold against his skin as he gets ready for school. He probably looks terrible, but he can’t find it in himself to worry about that. 

He has more important things to worry about.

 Saihara is more important.

XXVIII.

Oma remembers sending in his Danganronpa application and thinks, this would be the perfect time to forget everything I’ve ever cared about, but then, what if Saihara comes back?

He wants Saihara to come back.

He wants to say sorry for shutting him out when he shouldn’t have.

He wants to have more long conversations about whatever comes to mind. 

He wants to see Saihara smile at him again.

He wants to sit next to Saihara and watch movies for hours on end. 

He wants to feel Saihara’s hands on his like that day when Saihara gave him that stupid Kirigiri band-aid. 

 He wants Saihara to forgive him.

XXIX.

His aunt makes him feel worthless.

XXX.

He should’ve kissed him when he had the chance.

XXXI.

Oma lies in his unmade bed, staring up at the ceiling, phone in hand. 

It’s been over a week. 

 Why hasn’t Saihara replied to him? How can he fix this? Did Saihara forget about him like everyone else has?

 His eye sockets are weighed down by a combination of depression and sleep deprivation.

His phone speaker blares through the silence - his alarm - his mind supplies through the ever-unchanging headache. He turns it off, already awake, and forces himself out of the temporary comfort of his blanket’s embrace, and gets dressed for work. Because he has to. Because he doesn’t know what else he’ll do if he doesn’t.

Because he hopes Saihara will show up. 

(He doesn’t.)

 On his walk home from work, he’s approached and pulled into a car, hearing the engine and looking out at the silent street as he falls into panicked unconsciousness. The initiation for the fifty-third killing game commences.

-

Ouma hesitates as he comes to the memories section of the contract. Even after everything, the participants won’t get their memories back... he won’t remember ever meeting Saihara; he won’t remember falling in love. He’ll know of nothing but whatever backstory Team Danganronpa cooks up for him.

But...

Saihara’s gone. As hard as it is to think about, Ouma doesn’t think Saihara will be waiting for him once the simulation ends. No one cares about him anyways, so he might as well make things interesting, right?

 ...right?

Ouma’s nose is tingly; his lower eyelids are about to spill over as he signs the contract, signing his past and present away. 

 Two doors down, Shuichi Saihara does the same.

 I.

Life has no meaning.

I also posted this on my Ao3 Account (More A/N there)

#SaiOu Winter Exchange #fanfic #oumasai #omasai #kokichi ouma #shuichi saihara #kokichi oma #ouma kokichi #oma kokichi #saihara shuichi #kokichi x shuichi #shuichi x kokichi #saiouma #saioma #angst #pregame #pregame ouma #pregame saihara #pregame saiouma #danganronpa v3 #hurt/comfort #tw implied/referenced abuse #fluff #gift #saiouwe2019

[swellwriting]

LOVER 4/18

- THE MAN -

Bucky x Reader/ The Winter Soldier x Reader

A/N: You do not need to be familiar with the song/ Album to read this!!!

Word Count: 2.3k      Part 3      Series Masterlist   Part 5

Warning: Mentions of injury and blood on the wrists that may be triggering to some. (though not intentionally, they are self-inflicted...handcuffs suck.) Also Sexual references but nothing major. The usual violence.

Summary:  “You were tired of being handcuffed to a bed not allowed to leave, you hated being denied drugs and then sedated for hours on end. You wanted to have control again.”

Nat told Tony to stop holding back on your meds, and of course, he listened. Not exactly in the way she intended it to be done though. They kept you heavily sedated, unconscious for an entire day after your first “session” with Wanda.

When you finally came to you felt so groggy, you knew something was wrong. You ate the cold food placed beside your bed and decided then and there that you were going to put an end to these games, whatever Tony was playing with you. And if this meant never seeing Winter or Bucky again, you didn’t care. You were tired of being handcuffed to a bed and not allowed to leave, you hated being denied drugs and then sedated for hours on end. You wanted to have control again.

Before you were too weak to break out of your chains, but the poison has completely run its course so you take your bandage off to see your wound almost completely healed, there is a dark bruising around it and red angry lines in your skin. It will leave a scar but it fits in fine with all the others so you don't really care.

You push your bed tray onto the floor and twist the chains around your hands gripping them roughly and yanking hard on them. The handcuffs don't come free but you rip the metal bars on the sides of the hospital bed clean off, great.

You push your blankets down and all the metal junk clanks together like you’re a damn human wind chime. You push your feet against one of the metal bars and pull your hand away, the cuff digs into the skin of your wrist cutting the sides open and you try to ignore the pain since you can feel the chain weakening and then it snaps, metal clangs to the floor and you look up to see if anyone heard it and is coming.

If the nurse did hear she definitely would be running the opposite direction anyway.

You repeat your actions, place your feet on the other bar, push and pull, your other wrist gets cut open but you don't stop, you are so close, snap! The handcuffs and the bit of chain that was connecting them to the bed hang from your wrists but you are free, you feel free. As if the chains were weighing you down you feel light, at ease and it’s great, but you didn’t think this through.

What now? You look around the room and then get up and walk down the hall.

-

“I just don’t trust her, she seems wrong. Not that you can ever really trust a woman,” Tony jokes as him Sam and Steve are standing in the hallway outside the medical ward.

“So if I was a man, you could trust me?” You ask as you lean against the wall, the chains and cuffs hang broken from your wrists covered in blood from the cuts they left, blood drips down your arm and onto the floor where you riped your IV out.

“Not particularly,” Tony says and looks you down head to toe admiring your handiwork. “I take it you’re feeling better, why don't you go back and lie down,” he says and it’s so condescending you can’t help the eye roll that comes by instinct.

“I'm tired of being told what to do, of being held a prisoner even though I have done nothing wrong.” You argue.

“You say that with a lot of confidence,” Sams asks, knowing your ledger is just as red as Bucky and Nats.

“I've never done anything wrong to you guys.”

“Spring!” Wanda says, walking into the hallway seemingly the only person concerned about your bloody hands and the trail on the floor behind you, “what did you do?”

You hold up your bloody hands and shrug, aware that there wasn’t really any explaining you could do. Bruce walks down the hallways and is quick to act.

“What the f-,” he stops and wraps his hands around your wrists gently, stopping the blood flow and then walks you backwards down the hallway back to your room, glaring at Tony the entire way. This was his fault in Bruce’s eyes, he told Tony that the handcuffs should have been removed days ago.

Bruce sits you down and Wanda removes the handcuffs with her powers and you thank her, but she isn’t happy with what you’ve done and you can tell on her face.

Bruce starts cleaning the wounds and stitching you up.

“I'm sure you don’t want to “talk” today,” Wanda asks, still unsure of what to call this thing you are doing, this treatment?

“No we can, I'm fine, was just tired of those cuffs, we can start now if you’d like.” You try to sound not so upset but you’re so tired of being treated the way you have been, of being told what to do, of being talked down to and treated differently. You remember the first time Hydra tried to treat you differently than Winter, and you remember the fit you threw to make sure it never happened again.

It’s what your mind goes to as you close your eyes, Wanda’s red glowing hands the last thing you see before the memories start like pressing a play button.

-

“Asset, you can’t go on this mission, It’s one for The Winter Soldier only, it’s too high stakes and you aren’t ready.” An unnamed officer explains to you as if you are too stupid to understand him. You are stood in one of the labs, having your blood drawn by a lab assistant to your left who seems nervous, looking over your face to see a reaction to being told no.

“Did Winter say that?” You ask.

“No, I did.” Strucker, the Head of your Hydra base among many others, said sternly and you went quiet. “You aren't as strong as him, you aren't as quick or skilled yet, we can’t afford to let this mission fail because we let some girl handle it.”

And something about the way he says that makes your blood boil with rage, like a kettle boiling over you are unable to contain your inner thoughts.

“So If I was a man I could go on the mission. If I was a big strong man I could handle this simple intel mission on my own. I'm so sick of being built up to be this big weapon for Hydra, your big threat only for you to ridicule me and limit me to missions that require seduction and tight dresses as if I couldn’t slit a man’s throat with pants on!”

The unnamed officer lets out a laugh and you give him a deadly glare before looking back to Strucker. He ignores you and you continue, you’ve said too much to take it back so you might as well vent.

“I'm so sick of running as fast as I can and trying to learn everything as fast as I can, perfecting my skills, proving I can be better than Winter in some things. Now I’m left to wonder If I could be Hydra’s number 1 soldier if only I was a man since that seems to be all that’s holding me back!” You yell which startles the lab assistant who is quickly finishing up taking your blood sample, removing the needle and then backing away to the safety of his desk.

“Perhaps you’d be number one if you weren’t sleeping with your coworkers,” the officer jokes, clearly referring to you and Winter even if they aren't certain of what’s going on.

“Yes because that would be a total one-sided thing, I should be punished for seducing him, yet he shouldn’t get reprimanded at all for fucking me as if it would be a one-person job that I’m doing all by myself!” You say with vigour, hatred laced in your voice for the officer. You don't know his name but he is quickly becoming the person you hate most, and that says a lot since you are in a room with Strucker.

“Well if it is a two-man job you just let me know.” The officer says and it would sound like a joke but the look in his eyes tells you it’s everything but, a threat he wishes he could hold up to. He leans in close as he unties the rubber band from your arm, touching your skin with grabby fingers, putting his face all too close to yours.

Perhaps it’s because you know they see you as just a woman who can’t control her emotions, they paint you up to be so bad, a hostile and reckless killing machine but they don't trust you. So in your mind, it’s okay that you’re mad, that you’re fed up and you’ve had enough. 

You want to be taken seriously but everything that’s been wired into your brain says there is only one way to show that. So before he can even finish laughing to himself at his own joke, or before he can imagine fucking you in his head you put an end to his thoughts altogether. You close the distance between you in seconds and tackle him to the ground.

“Oh if I was a man, then id be The Man.” You say as you spit in his face. Strucker, the head of Hydra stands there and watches, not stopping you, wanting to see the weapon he created in action. You grab your knife from your thigh holster and slit his throat wide open deep. There’s so much blood that your hand is dripping wet before you pull it away. There is blood splattered on your face and in your hair, your knees are in the puddle that’s quickly growing and u smudge it across the floor and get up.

“Make sure your officers know their place, I am not below them. Number 2 on your list is still miles above them, I am no one’s toy or object. I do my job and I do it well, I deserve their respect!” You say with wild eyes, covered in blood, yet you don’t scare Strucker in the least.

“I’ll make sure they are aware, Asset Number 2,” he says your given name so boldly, to remind you that you may be no object of the officers, but you are his object, his asset and he is Hydra.

Just then Winter walks in completely confused by the scene in front of him, but he has to act like he doesn't care too much. He can’t let them know he is really in love with you. Sure they may be onto the fact that something is going on, especially after what the now dead and forever nameless officer said to you.

There is no harm in sexual relations between their top two soldiers. They aren't about to try to actively stop you, but they aren't going to openly allow it either. Soldiers, Assets they think you have no feelings, so there no harm in acting on basic human needs right? Who else did they think Winter would want to sleep with? Some lowly officer? A lab assistant? No, of course not, he chose the closest thing to his equal, or that’s how they see it anyway.

You walk past Winter without a word, you aren't mad at him. You want nothing more than to fall into his arms and cry and complain but you can’t do that here, can’t show weakness. So you walk down the hallway with your head held high. The officers and lab rats stare as you pass them, a bloody smeared smile on your face daring them to test you, showing them what happens when they cross a line with you.

Earning your respect, or maybe just fear.

“So what do you think, Soldier?” Strucker asks Winter, seemingly calm and uncaring to the whole event that just occurred.

“I'm not sure what you mean Sir?” Winter replies, standing up straight, monotone voice.

“I'm sure you can deduct what happened here, the officer on the floor pushed the other asset a little too far, made her mad and this is how she reacted. What do you think?”

“I think you made her into a weapon first, and then a soldier after. Which I don't think is a problem, just needs to be handled differently, and certainly, with a level of respect I had seen her not getting in the past.” Bucky answers clearly, trying to give a well-thought-out answer.

“I think you’re right,” Strucker says with a sickening smile as he picks up a phone and then calls some officers to the room to clean up the bloody mess.

Winter can’t help but smile inside, he should be angry that someone pushed you this far but he’s glad to know you’re standing up for yourself. He feels like he doesn't have to worry as much.

-

“That was nothing like what you showed me the other day,” Wanda says with wide eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, it’s just where my mind brought me.”

“I've seen worse, don't worry about me.”

Bruce is patching up your wrists still, eyes wide as he doesn't look up at you.

“Sorry Bruce, I should have waited until you were further away I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay. Now I know not to piss you off,” he jokes, looking up at you with a lopsided smile.

“We have to agree not to piss each other off I guess?” You joke back and he chuckles, finishing patching you up.

Tony had left the floor before the memory started, so it wasn’t accidentally projected into his mind but Steve and Sam were still down the hall, just close enough to have to witness that.

“You were harsh earlier,” Steve says, concerned.

“Harsh? I was right and we just saw that. She’s not innocent!” Same argues.

“Are any of us really?”

LOVER TAGLIST:  @bluemadcnna​​ @theboywhocriedlupin​ @siriuslyimmoony​​ @littlebittcrazy​​ @blackloveangel13​ @chipilerendi​ @galacticstxrdust​ @theseuscmander​​ @finnofamerica​​ @draqcnheartstrinq​ @aspenholland​  @carolinesbookworld​​ @bluerorjhan​ @jjacobs89​​ @livininwinteriamyoursummer​​ @itsjust-evalyn​​ @mayakblack​​ @hail-ey-sader​  EVERYTHING TAGLIST: @jordan-ia​

JOIN MY TAGLIST HERE

Part 5

#LOVER #Bucky x Reader #bucky barnes xreader #the winter soldier #the winter soldier x reader #bucky x you #the winter soldier x you #bucky fanfic #bucky imagine #bucky oneshot #bucky series #mcu fanfiction #MCU #marvel #bucky angst #the spring soldier #winter x spring #fanfiction #imagine #oneshot

[septic-dr-schneep]

that fic with jackie and henrik gave me so many feeeeeels ;~; I somehow feel like jackie wouldn't care too much for his own safety after he hurt henrik so badly, and when he does get injured, he wouldn't want to face henrik unless he completed his mission. and I can't stop thinking about someone bringing him into henrik's hospital, unconscious and bleeding, and henrik feeling angry and guilty. (can you tell I'm a whump fan lmao)

Ooooh, boooy, you asked for this by sending me such a great whumpy scenario…

JSE Fanfiction - In Time Of Need (Part 3: Discord #2)

Summary: Jackieboy returns, but he’s not in any condition to make amends with the doctor he hurt so badly. Schneep has to save his life first. 

Schneep thought about him as soon as he pried his eyes open each day.There was a tangible emptiness when he stumbled out of bed, shrugged on hiscoat and made his way down the hall toward the lab, only to find that Jackie wasn’twaiting for him outside the locked door.

It wasn’t right. His throat always felt dry and tight when he rememberedthe terrible things he had said…the terrible things Jackie had said to him inreturn. Each morning, they made him pause with his hand on the handle, his keyin the lock, leaning his head against the doorframe and trying to remember howbreathing worked.

“I don’t haveluxury of running away! I have to watch Jack breathe through machines…”

“I know you,Henrik; you stay because you feel guilty!”

His hand shook, sweat causing his fingers to slip against the smoothmetal doorknob. He knew. He knew it was true, but that didn’t mean hearing thewords from Jackie of all people had hurt any less.

He should never have let him leave. He should have begged with him tostay; he had heard the shock and the regret in the hero’s voice as soon as he’drealized all of the hurtful things he’d said. If Schneep had asked him, he would have stayed just to make up forwounding him so badly. Instead, Schneep had told him to leave. He hadn’t beenable to stomach looking at him, muchless try to go about his day with him.

If Schneep hadn’t raised a fuss about him leaving in the first place,Jackie never would have said those things. He would have gotten a hug before heleft instead of a pathetic touch of the hand. He should have supported hisfriend. Jackie was trying to cope in the best way he knew. Search for Anti. Itwas his answer to everything. Schneep should have understood that.

Guilt burning bitterly against the back of his eyes, he did his best tocollect himself, slipping into the lab. As soon as he laid eyes on Jack,however, the tears took full shape, blurring his view until he hastily scrubbedthe back of his sleeve over his face and crossed the room.

“G—Good morning, Jack,” he whispered, laying a hand over his creator’s.He could almost imagine that Jack’s fingers twitched underneath his own, but heknew they hadn’t. For a long minute he simply stared at him, taking in his palefeatures. His cheeks were getting scruffier day by day. Schneep would need toshave him soon. Such a simple task, but he didn’t want to think about it. Hecleared his throat, lifting his voice a little more to fill the deep void ofsilence.

“I haven’t even had my coffee yet. You know I need that caffeine, but Itend to you first. Not very many people get Dr. Schneeple’s pre-coffeetreatment…You are special. You get spoiled,” he rambled softly as he changedthe IV bags. “I wonder if I were to put coffee in these IVs, if you would openthose eyes. You cannot resist good coffee. Or…heh. Banana milk. You wouldsurely wake up for that, wouldn’t you?” His voice broke as he attempted a weaklaugh and his faint smile faded. “…My Jack. You are something. You do like toplay with our little brains, don’t you? But this…th-this is…more than that. Iplayed with yours a-and I…I did it wrong.”

“You were theone who put Jack in this coma in the first place by failing him—like you alwaysdo!”

“I wish…none of this had happened. I wish I had never even touched you.If I hadn’t, you—you would be awake now. You could have done it yourself. Youwere stronger on your own, Jack…you…you never needed me.”

As soon as he said it, he couldn’t stand to look at Jack anymore,whirling around and making a beeline for the door. He knew Jack wouldn’t bealone for too long; Chase would be coming to watch over him within the hour,which gave him the excuse to escape.

Somehow, facing Jack wasn’t even as difficult as facing his coworkersevery day. They were making more and more comments about how haggard andexhausted he looked, but they couldn’t complain about his work. Schneep madesure that his work didn’t suffer because of his family. All he could do wasinternalize, internalize, internalize until he got in the taxi and could cry itout on the way home. The taxi driver had learned by now not to ask anyquestions.

Until then, however, he had to stay collected. The patients passed backand forth before his eyes, all blending together, none of them too extraordinaryor memorable. They weren’t who he was thinking of, but he forced himself totreat them nonetheless. They were important. He had to do his best for them,just as he would for his family.

“Are you okay, mister?” the little girl sitting on his examination tablequestioned cautiously as he fit her cast on her arm. It was pretty sad when hispatients noticed how grim he was.

“Don’t you worry,” he assured her with a weak smile. “Dr. Schneeplesteinjust hasn’t had his coffee today. I will be just fine.” Lies, lies, lies, lies. Everything was a lie.

The little girl didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t get a chance tokeep prying further; both she and Schneep were distracted by the small swarm ofdoctors making a commotion on the other side of the hall.

“…Male, mid to late twenties, medium build, multiple contusions and lacerations—He’staken a blow to the head—”

“Sir? Sir, can you hear me? Can you tell me who you are?”

“We all know who he is, Rena;this is Jackieboy Man!”

No. No.

Schneep’s heart surged up into his throat just as the pit of his stomachplunged, tools falling through his hands with a shattering clang as he boltedacross the hall with reckless abandon, shoving past the other startledphysicians and latching onto the edge of the gurney with clammy hands.

“Jackieboy?” he gasped out, his breath quickening in a race with hisheart and his stumbling skips to keep up as he was dragged down the hall. Themore his eyes widened, the more he could see the subtle difference between thered in Jackie’s suit and the bloodstains. There were too many. “Jackie, Jackie,what have you done?”

The hero shifted slightly at the sound of his name, prying half-lidded eyesopen to wander toward the lights overhead, though it wasn’t as much of a reliefas it should have been. Even with the shimmering rings of silver light aroundhis pupils, indicating he’d used his powers recently, his gaze was too glazed,too dilated, Schneep agonized. Sticky, half-dried blood was crusted over histemple, on his hood, in his hair—he had to have a concussion.

“I don’t—where is he? I’m not down yet, I’m not…lemme back…” the olderEgo murmured blearily, his hands twitching as if he were about to try pushinghimself upright. Schneep promptly snatched the closer one, squeezing ithelplessly.

“Stay still, stay! You’re in hospital, you’re hurt; you have to stay sowe can help you!” he implored, to which Jackieboy’s brows furrowed in minglingpain and confusion.

“H’spital…?” He tried to shake his head, hissing through his teeth as he earneda spike of pain for his troubles. “No-o-o,” he whined, letting his head fallback and blinking heavily. “No…no, not here…”

“What?”

“Get…get me outta here, I don’t want—H’nrik’s gonna kill me if he sees…Ifhe…sees…”

Fairly quivering with unspoken disbelief and a faint twinge of anger,Schneep clutched his hand all the tighter. “You’re not going anywhere! You’re goingto be okay; just stay with me.” He spoke too late. After his friend’s nextflickering blink, his eyes fell closed and didn’t reopen. “Jackie! No! Jackie, openyour eyes…Jackie! Stay with me here!”

“Schneeplestein, you need to step back,” one of the other doctors began,grabbing at his shoulder. “He needs to be—”

“No, shut up!” Schneep half-sobbed, half-screeched, wrenching out fromhis reach. “I’m going to save him!”Though it went against everything in him, he pried his grip away fromJackieboy’s limp fingers and ducked around the gurney so he could wildly pointthem in the direction of his preferred operating booth.

Though he performed the surgery (accepting very little help from thenurses along the way, never thinking to thank them where they did assist), Schneep wasn’t there to seeJackieboy transferred to a room. As soon as he was stabilized and Schneep couldbe certain that his lung wouldn’t collapse again, he promptly excused himselfto the nearest supply room, dumped several packages of gauze out of theirassigned bin and retched into it.

Nothing substantial came up, given that he hadn’t eaten anything todayand he’d only taken a few moments between patients for water, but he couldn’tstop. He wasn’t even sure why! He hadsucceeded. He had saved Jackie’s life; he was safe, so why did he still feel so chilled, so terrified?

It wasn’t that he wondered what could have happened if he hadn’t savedhim; he knew exactly what would have happened. A pneumothorax led to low bloodpressure, low blood pressure led to shock, and shock led to…He was all too wellaware of the “what ifs” and over the years he’d become a master of pushing themaway. Why was this different?

The nauseating sensation didn’t abate as he pushed the bin aside andstumbled back into the hall, waving vaguely in acknowledgement as one of thenurses read his mind and called Jackie’s room number out to him. When he foundthe proper door, he didn’t hesitate to go in, but as soon as he shouldered thedoor closed behind him and looked up, his breath hitched and he instinctivelyrecoiled, the door handle digging into his lower back as he pressed against it.

Jackie. It didn’t look anything like him; he was stripped of his mask andhis jumpsuit, leaving nothing but a bare, colorless face and a medical gown andbandages and blankets around his waist and an IV lead and a nasal cannula andhe—he was still unconscious.

Comatose.

Jack.

The fear became realization, the realization became dread, and the worldswerved out from under him. As soon as he hit the floor, the doctor curled intohimself, tucking his face between his knees and clutching his hands close tohis aching chest. This wasn’t Jack. This was Jackie, which only made it worse, because Schneep had put him there. Deep down, he knew thathe was to blame.

If you hadn’tfought with him, he wouldn’t have been distracted! You know he was thinking of you instead of how recklessly he was fighting! Youput him here, just like Jack! Just like J̡a̷ck. You failed the b̀o͜th of them.

It seemed his taxi driver wasn’t going to be seeing his tears today; theywere already spilling over and he was helpless to stop them. His only instinctwas to stifle the sobs by snatching at the hem of his coat and burying his facein it until he was near-suffocating.

A mere four feet away, unnoticed by the distraught younger Ego, his herostirred.

#youtube #jacksepticeye #fanfiction #youtube fanfiction #dr schneeplestein #jackieboy man #major character injury #whump #angst #feels for days #hurt comfort #jackistein #i live for queerplatonic jackieboy and schneep #i'm sorry #answered ask #Anonymous

[lulachamberlainfanclub]

I enjoyed the whole game, but the moment that made my heart sink was that conversation with the switchboard operator in act IV. It felt like she was talking directly to me, not Shannon. It made me think, and what if all this effort I'm putting in my life is pointless and I'm just part of The Machine?

Oh jeez, yeah. That scene is so resonant to me that I transcribed it for the blog.

It used to be up until two years ago that I worked as a projectionist for a fairly upscale Los Angeles movie theatre chain. After about a year of hard labor scooping, selling, and eventually sweeping up popcorn, I got moved to the projection booth. This was the summer of 2010, and our theatre still showed 95% of its movies through 35mm film projection. I was so proud to be a projectionist. It was a tactile job with a century of incredible history. A final human touch between the director’s vision and the audience’s eyes. I’ll admit to getting fairly emotional when Terrence Malick shipped a letter with every single print of “Tree of Life” calling my profession “the last remaining artisans of movie exhibition.”

About two years after I started as a projectionist, my theatre announced that they would soon switch from 35mm film to 2k digital projection. This was quickly becoming the industry standard, and for good reason. The digital “prints”, really just a terrabyte hard drive with an encrypted movie file on them, were cheaper and easier to produce, ship, track, and control than film prints. The actual on-screen image wasn’t as good, but a digital print would never scratch or tear. A few of my coworkers jumped ship when we made the change. We went from a team of about a dozen to ten.

The first few months of digital projection were disastrous. None of us had been properly trained, which was made things even harder when the new digital projectors and servers were constantly faulting and failing. Sound and light cues didn’t hit correctly until we trained ourselves to work around the system’s failings. The company never listened when we said things weren’t working - they knew that the early days of digital projection would be difficult, and they weren’t the ones who had to take the blame for that difficulty so what did they care?

The writing had been on the wall for a while by the time the company announced that they’d be moving from manual digital projection to full digital automation. Nobody in the projection booth at all, just a single central server updated weekly on-site, that would run sixteen separate screens. We’d be losing our position as projectionists, so we’d be booted back down to ripping tickets and selling concessions.

If you’ve ever tried to sync more than one laptop to a single printer, you know that computers aren’t exactly 100 percent when it comes to networking. It took the company four more years from the announcement of automated digital to the day they first implemented it. It took another year after that for them to try their first full day of automated projection. Again, nothing worked. The projectionists who used to cue lights and sound and push buttons and lower faders were now tasked to stand next to the servers as each movie started - just to make sure things went smoothly. They never did, of course. We had to manually cue lights and sounds, just like always. But our bosses could use that as an excuse to devalue our labor. “All you do up there is push buttons.” “Anyone could do what you do.” “We never see you actually working.” Our team dwindled from about ten people at any given time to between six and seven. I guess one thing I can’t complain about was a lack of shifts.

Poppy: You know… there’s something that bothers me about the process, besides the fact that I’m training my replacement, who isn’t even human… Here’s what I mean: how long do you think it should take to time my every move and recreate that timing in an automated switchboard? Rough estimate.

Shannon: A couple days?

Poppy: That’s what I said, but this has been going on for over a year! And a very dark thought has started to nag at me… What if there is no cheap machine that’s going to replace me? What if it’s cheaper just to keep me here, filling in for the rhythm of the operators… What if I’m the cheap machine?

This exchange brought about a profound sadness in me. I felt like I was at my own funeral. What the hell was I doing standing around for $12.75 an hour babysitting the robot that would replace me? Three months later, I quit with no notice. I walked into my boss’ office and told him I had a new job. After eight years I left, without even saying goodbye to anyone. Coincidentally, fifteen minutes later another projectionist quit on the spot, and that same night still another put in her notice. I’d like to say I started a labor revolt, but everyone had just been planning to quit and nobody told anyone else.

Shannon: Why don’t you just quit?

Poppy: In this economy? No, you’re probably right. Working in silence for peanut shells, waiting to be replaced by a robot… It doesn’t sound very dignified, does it? The reality is that I’ve been working here my whole adult life. I came here as a girl, and I’ll leave as a middle-aged woman… I don’t know if I’m ready to be her yet.

#personal #Kentucky Route Zero #facebook-reality

[fuck-customers]

This is going to be a bit lengthy, and even though it was a small purchase and only a few bucks, I caught a scammer and im proud of myself. Plus the whole thing was insanely extra and annoying so I’m just gonna share it with you.

So onto the story…

Last night I was working a closing shift. Around 8 (2 hours before closing), a woman and her son come up to my register to check out. At this point there are no other customers. She has 12 red mangoes, and that’s all.

I go to ring them up but halfway through me typing the produce code for them, she asks, “these are the ones that are $3 for $1, right?” So I pause mid-code type, change it to a price inquiry, type it in, and inform her, “errr, no, they'e 88 cents a piece.”

Sooo… here’s where it gets good. We’ll refer to my coworker in produce by the name “Richard”. It is extremely important to note that Richard always wears a black company hat while on the clock. Next to no one else does this.

She tells me, “well Richard over there in produce said they were 3 for $1.”

Okay… at the time I wasn’t really thinking about it, but looking back I think my subconsious kicked in and smelled something fishy. Here in good old Colorado, and at my store, mangoes are never 3 for $1 unless we’re having one of our special 3 day sales… in the summer. They haven’t been that cheap in I don’t know how long, and my 2 year anniversary is in February, so I’ve been there long enough to know about that. Additionally, There’s been no other customers coming up with complaints about the price, which if it’s wrong, mangoes are popular, so I would have heard about it by now. And it was the last day of our weekly ad cycle so, what even?

So as a recap - at this point, I have a woman and her son at my register, claiming the mangoes are 3 for $1, and she’s specifically using an employee’s name to convince me she’s right, but I am doubtful. Already the beginning of a good scam story, right?

Well, here’s where it gets even better. Let me tell you how our conversation went.

Her: Richard in produce said I could have them for 3 for 1.

Me: err, okay well let me call and see.

Richard (over the phone): hello?

Me: hey, man, so what’s going on with the mangoes? Like, What price are they back there?

Richard: um… 88 cents. Wait… let me double check and look at organics too hold on.

Me: okay. *puts down phone and turns to woman* well, he’s saying they’re 88 cents a piece as well but he’s double checking.

Her: well I just talked to Richard back there a minute ago! Richard told me that I could have them 3 for $1. He was wearing a hat! Richard told me that was the price!

Richard (calling me back on the phone): yeah the regular ones are 88 cents. Organic 98.

Me: and there’s no sign anywhere that says 3 for 1? I have a woman up here saying that you said she could have them at 3 for a dollar. 

Richard: ..no? They'e 88 cents.

Her: Richard back in produce told me!

Me, knowing I was speaking to Richard but asks anyway: right uh.. is this Richard?

Richard: yeah..?

Me: well there’s a woman up here claiming that YOU told her that the mangoes were 3 for a dollar.

Richard, annoyed: is it (brief description of woman at my register)?

Me: yes.

Richard: I saw her in my department but she didn’t speak to me. I haven’t talked to anyone. I’ve been on lunch for the last half hour.

Me: okay, thank you. *sets phone back down, turns, faces woman, and looks her right in her eyes*

So I just got off of the phone with Richard, and he says that he didn’t tell you that, and that he’s been on lunch for the last half hour.

— so at this point she seems to understand that her scam isn’t working, but refuses to back down. At this point in getting a line but I’m INVESTED in this at this point, and there’s nothing I can really do at this point anyways because she won’t back down, so i am stuck there while she changes her scam from “Richard in produce told me” to now we are at -

Her: *turning towards the store and looking around* well it must have been somebody else then!! Who was it? I know he had a hat…

Me: …right well, Richard is our produce manager, sooooo….

She begins scanning the store for employees to pin this on, but hilariously, since she picked 8pm on a Tuesday night, the store is practically a ghost town void of both customers AND employees. Literally the only other employee that she can see besides me and Richard is a guy working in the meat department back room behind a glass wall.

Now, the thing is, is that the meat guys basically never leave their area, and they don’t rove the floor either as right next to the meat counter there are double doors leading to the back room. While they do face produce, they’re not exactly close to it. They have a coffin case in between them, and the doors for the back room that produce uses are literally on the opposite side of the store that meat counter is.

To her credit, I think the woman knew that trying to pin it on the meat guy, Who actually conveniently was wearing the same color and type of hat as Richard was, was ridiculous and wouldn’t have made any sense because she didn’t try to blame him for this. So not as stupid as you’d think, but still pretty questionable.

Anyways, I feel like at this point ive done all I can do, and she STILL won’t leave or accept me all but calling her a liar (all over wanting to pay $4 for almost $11 worth of mangoes, like really lady if you'e gonna pull a scam do it for something that’s WORTH IT), so i call the manager on duty.

However, I was trying to get to the MOD before this woman did, because in MY EXPERIENCE scammers and liars will absolutely talk and walk all over you as soon as a manager shows up and lie to their face - and unfortunately managers always believe the lies and get away with it. I knew if I was able to explain the situation first, it would be different - given that my current manager WILL bend rules, but is also known to stick up for us cashiers.

Luckily, I spot her pushing a cart down an action alley towards us, so I book it over and explain everything as fast as I can. At the end i say, “but you know, She’s…” my manager tries to finish, “She’s being rude?” But I reply, “She’s lying is what she’s doing. She’s lying.” And my manager says “oh, okay. Call (supervisor) up here to deal with the lines.” So I do, as at this point we had accumulated a long one.

So she walks up and asks this woman what’s going on, and in the SNOTTIEST, RUDEST tone she says, “Who are you?” It kind of surprised me because at this point while the scammer was being mind numbingly annoying, she had been reasonably polite, so for her to get so hostile over a manager kind of surprised me, but at this point, thank god, said manager was in charge and dealing with it now.

I took care of a few other customers while they were talking, and as soon as my line was done i excused myself and hung out by my supervisors register, which happened to be close enough to listen but far away enough to not be involved.

And I can hear what they'e saying - my manager having been informed of the scam, is holding firm on the 88 cent price, and the woman, for some unfathomable reason, is still insistent on the price. I think at this point she knew she was caught and was trying to leave gracefully by making it seem like a mistake, but it was really annoying.

Her: it must have been in the online ad.. unless the online ad is wrong.

Manager: they haven’t been that price for a while, MAYBE it was like that 2 weeks ago… (so not in any recent ad she might have “gotten confused” about.)

Even better was that… now, I didn’t find this out until afterwards as my supervisor started to ask me what was going on and since I was explaing it I didn’t hear this part of the drama… but my manager came up to me afterwards after she was done talking to the woman, that apparently the woman switched tactic again, never mentioned Richard, and instead said that she had called the store and asked about the price and whoever was on the phone, was now the magical entity that told her the mythical price of 3 for $1

Absolutely fucking hilariously, said manager said that she had gotten a call like that, answered it herself, and knew for a fact that she did not tell this woman they were 3 for a dollar.

Fucking OH MY GOD WOMAN, you got caught! It’s been obvious for the past 10 minutes that you'e not fleecing any of us! You can save yourself the most dignity by just… FUCKING OFF!

The whole thing was super obnoxious, but handle-able and im proud of myself for sticking to my guns and glad that my manager backed me up and stood firm, as orginally, before i said that the woman was lying, she started telling me to just give them to her for that price. So it was nice that she took me seriously and stood her (our) ground.

The only frustrating thing is that since I have borderline personality disorder… I’m not afraid of confrontation by any means (obviously) but sometimes my body overreacts to my emotion as well. So while I was keeping a cool and level head on the outside (believe it or not) my body was giving me away… my face was flushing, my voice was uneven, my body became stiff and weird and gangly, on top of shaking… too much adrenaline. But other than that I’m happy on how it worked out. Luckily I think my supervisor saw I was a bit jittery and sent me on my break to cool off.

And may I also say, that there’s few other customers that I hate as much as ones who name drop when the person they’re naming didn’t do what they claim they did. Richard seemed mad but cool and collected.. I know if someone did that to me like she did to him I would be stomping over and being like “she said WHAT now? No I did NOT!!!!!!” Back tf up. But that’s just another reason I don’t wear my name tag… can’t use my name if it’s not broadcasted!

But anyways kids, just keep in mind that name dropping is actually a really common way of scamming, it gives the illusion that they really did talk to someone when they didn’t. So it never hurts to double check with that person.

#submissions #fuck customers #cashier problems #happy ending #fuck retail #embarrassing #retail justice #submission

[amma-af]

mid-life crisis fast approaching lmao.

bruh moesha made 30 seem hella old. im freaking 29, im definitely not old.

do all 30 year olds feel this? is this fucking cliche? is this what being a millenial feels like?

freaking. andell seems like she should be at least 45 shes had a business forever, she looks oldish, hella independent with ehr own moneey, yeah she keeps getting played by her lover but the d is probably great and she doesn’t need “love” bc she’s not dependent on it for basic necessities. but she needs love so she has hope. she’s woke but understanding when someone who doesn’t understand yet. she supports the kids but says it like it is. i can def see some bits of myself in her but bruh, at least 35? bc im 29 and 1 im not as independent, and 2, im def not as old.

but i also kind of get how shes a 30 year old but do 30 year olds get the respect of older people? does andell get respect from older people? idk man tv makes teens look like 20-something and 30 eyar olds look like my mom. dee hangs with andell, she’s def not 30. but then again we hang with older people, no?

are 30 year olds friends-ish with teens and like older folks all at once a millenial thing? i mean i def have older friends bc of work, and hang with my siblings who are a generation older and as a teacher i talk to kids who are teens but i wouldn’t be friends with them? unless you consider my nieces and nephews, and some much younger coworkers.

but if im “superior” to them in some way im basically a mentor and ugh. maybe andell is 30.

that same moesha episode has gotten me thinking about highschool. and what a fucking shitfest it was. i mean, why the hell was i so pressed instead of just being a fucking kid? like, i def ended up where i wanted to and realized it sucked even more (college), esp the way i did it initially, but once i got over the fucking ivory tower and american dream bc i reallized it was never made to include me to a certain extent (the whole identity crisis over foreclosure of identity from the every day--being unwanted by the same thing interpellating its allegiance to you, how all that crap felt of being a --insert almost every pressed identity grouping here-- at a fucking --insert ever agrandized fucking included, repressive identity force here--insitution. high school wasn’t bougie enough i think. like everyone was like closer to the ground class wise so maybe it didnt feel like a big enough ocean yet. a friend told me post highschool or maybe at graduation that im going to be the big fish in the little pond trying to swim in the ocean or some quote like that. fucking i was, if not socially which i honestly didnt even try and fucking got ostracized from anyway, def on top academically and fucking TEACHERS were trying to push me down but like i still got to exactly where i wanted to go. and i fucking had a wonderful time there. got kicked out but became a whole ass human being who found so many homes with people and so many loving arms and caring friends and fucking insane moments and memories and fucking became who i am today--a fucking cool as andell like adult with a full and complete social life if not financial or career life like im ok dude. ive accomplished enough even if capitalist might make me feel like i havent accomplished anything. much like the racist ass teachers made me feel and the racist ass kids made me feel about being smart in a fucking shitfest and where the other brown kids were just in competition with me. i had no friends. i lie, i had a few. and i had the respect of a few. and i guess that makes like maybe a dozen people--hold on let me count, i think 9 people, that im cool with from high school, 3 who are close to me, 1 who fucking hates me post-college life and would try to talk shit or ruin me maybe but i miss her and we were fucking close at some point. and then a bunch of people who probably dont give a shit no longer bc we’re all adults who need to move on with our lives. i hope theyre not petty and hate me just bc of high school.

i wonder if any respect me now lol. aside from those i know, do any of them like feel bad kind of for not being a better person to me? maybe i was a bitch too though. but thats only bc i was lowkey power hungry and just wanted to get into fucking the college of my dreams and had been fed that academic success led to fianncial success and overall joy de vivre  or however oyu fucking spell it.

id still be down to be friends with whoever wants but dont have the time or energy to deal with the pettiness. i think this year was supposed to be our 10 yr reunion and idk if theyll do it bc of covid or not but fucking would i even wanna go? im still so traumatized from it idk if id wanna be judged that hard again.

fucking, i wish i was chiller back then. had realized i could be creative and look good and be more confident if i wanted to. but i guess i wouldnt be who i am had that shit not happened but i also suffer from extreme anxiety adn depression now so like maybe, people could ease up on the judgement and hatred and constant barriers and shit talking and like, lowkey bullying down a notch. these white and white washed brown kids had me fucked up.

i wish i had just like, been able to chill and be accepted a little more. but i wish the people who were chill with me couldve been more  comfortable or confident in being who they were. 

i remember ending freshman year, confident that i would have friends at the end of high school sitting between the coolest and queerest two people i could imagine showing off my hot pink ipod 3G or whatever. and then hanging out in the city with a few people on the last day. i dont even remember what we did. maybe olive garden in times square? it was def times square. the big toys r us in the city with the dance dance revolution. who the fuck were the people with us? was that even freshman year or is that a memory from some other time? i dotn fucking remember much of the good times in high school anymore. more shitty times.

but fucking, if people had been loyal would i have been a diff person? def s j and j and then later n but w during the first year and d all hugn out with me in college. and made freshman year bareable and some sitll continue to make life bareable and for me to feel loved in this day adn age adn i know the freindshipsare genuine now but i wonder if id have more people from high school as my friends just bc i fucking get attached to people bc of the whole empathy thing and like we knew eachother for good chunks of our lives, we should keep up with eachother and make sure we’re ok. but also like, did we even show care back then?

i wish id lived the teen life a little more though. like my husband did. like so many of my more normal than me feeling friends did but i wonder how many of my college friends actually liked their high school years lmao.

fucking. whatever. i probably wouldnt go to the reunion if it happened tho, fucking miss me with that shit.

andell is cool. she didnt get mad at moesha for missing her party since hs ehad a great time on her birthday thanks to her, and instead was proud that she put out a good newspaper. im def like, maybe if aliha missed my party id be happy and proud of her for her acocmplioshed but id still be pouty adn idk if that makes me much younger tahn andell or if thats just the whiny cancer gemini in me.

omg we need andells chart to udnerstand if she’s actually 30 lmao and just mature for her own age or if that show is trippig about depicting her as 30 bc shes def oldr. wonder how old the actress was.

thats an easy google fix but im just gonna keep watching and pondering lmao.

man there were some teachers at that fucking school who did not wanna see me succeed in life. and to have your advisor be that teacher really fucks with you. what a fucking bitch i think she hated me. the other people im friends with loved her tho but i think she was really just a racist. she pushed me hard but made things harder for me for no reason. thank god i got out of there in one piece, and with some confidence left in me. 

i need to go to therapy again fuck. 

[saintkimora]

well here is how work was on saturday and sunday

so first is saturday! it was a pretty good day. i got like 3 credit cards i think. i actually dont remember much about it but i do remember that it was the day i officially realized i have a crush on one of my managers! his name is steve and he is REALLY cute and he has such a fun personality! and his hair looks really good and he has such a nice ass and hes nice to me even though i know hes only so nice bc the strategy for the managers here is to use positive reinforcement to motivate the workers. also him, my coworker juliet, and i were all talking about fruit in the break room and he literally asked “are grapes a fruit?” now THAT is a man

so i got in that day and i saw the other iconic manager sarah and she was talking to someone so when i came in she stopped and she was like “hi perry!” and then she turned to the person she was talking to and said “hes my favorite” which was nice. and then she was telling me about our goals for today and she was like we need these credit cards today so she told me to “go sprinkle my perry dust everywhere and get these cards” and thats exactly what i did at first! i got 2 v quickly but then i kinda flopped for the rest of the day so i felt bad about that but then i got one more towards the end. the store as a whole only got 4 credit cards that day and the only other one was from steve. so i was kinda happy bc even though we didnt reach our goal (the goal was like 11 i think) i still did relatively well compared to my coworkers

and also i got so many compliments on my shirt that day, from both my coworkers and the customers! and that made me v happy bc caleb told me all my clothes were ugly but here i am getting all these compliments from my coworkers and customers and even customers who arent even at my register! so i wonder who the one with bad taste really is. that reminds me steve also complimented me on my shirt that day which made me happy he was like “perry you are always killing it with these shirts” again i know as a manager he has ulterior motives for being so nice to me but idc it still feels good to have a man be nice to me again 

speaking of caleb at one point i saw a customer and he literally looked just like caleb from behind so i thought it was really him and i almost had a heart attack like even after i realized it wasnt him i was still sooooooo nervous which was annoying bc i was hoping that he wouldnt have as much of an effect on me anymore but it seems im still kinda scared of him. and i have been getting kinda sad about him lately bc even though i know it wasnt entirely my fault that the relationship became what it did i cant help but think about all the things i did wrong and all the areas in which i fell short as a boyfriend that lead to him losing interest in me. thats also why i like work bc it keeps my mind occupied so i dont have to think about those things as much

anyways! during my breaks i did talk to my coworker juliet a little and it was so much fun!! and as i said earlier steve joined us at one point and we were all talking and it was really nice. and at one point juliet asked me if i liked milk and i was like no and she actually set me up bc steve got like mad about it bc he really likes milk apparently hes so cute lol

and now for sunday! i only worked like 4 hours and 45 minutes that day. BUT i got 5 credit cards!!!! and the store as a whole only got 7! nut. the other 2 were from my coworker yolemny who was kinda cold to me that day but she seemed to be in a bad mood in general so i didnt take it personally. but i was so MAD bc this one girl was gonna sign up for a card but she didnt have her id on her and if she did i would have gotten 6 cards which wouldve been a personal best for me

i was still happy about it though, like i got the first 4 in my first 2 hours and during the hourly updates over the walkies nicole (another one of the managers) was like “perry got 4 cards so far and hes only been here 2 hours so he is showing that it can be done. so we need everyone to keep pushing these cards” and honestly it was iconic bc at one point yolemny was on the register next to me and we were literally getting back to back cards together! and for the other hourly updates steve would refer to me as the man on fire since i was getting so many cards

like it really makes me happy when the managers praise me so much. like i know these managers probably dont actually like me and are just being so nice bc its part of their strategy to keep me happy and motivated so i keep getting cards for them. but still, it feels nice to actually be good at something for once since ive been sucking at everything ive tried to do for like the past year. and even if their kindness isnt genuine it still makes me feel accepted which is greatly appreciated since ive felt so alone for pretty much the past year and a half (excluding the 2 months where my relationship w caleb was good). so yeah i really like this job and i like the managers and my coworkers and i like feeling useful and important to someone again, even if its just because im good at getting people to apply for credit cards. so yeah i actually look forward to work now bc i get to be good at something and i get to see steve and i get to talk to my coworkers!

so thats pretty much it. i dont have work again until friday. i do have a meeting w my therapist tm so that will be fun. i might finally be going out w the new grindr guy this week too, but ive kinda already given up on that bc i dont really know how to talk to him and im 99% sure hes not gonna like me that much, but if anything at least itll get me out of the house for a few hours. i am also gonna start going to my schools gym! im gonna schedule an appointment to have like an “orientation” tour type thing where someone shows you how to do everything since i have no idea how to work out. im really nervous about it but i might be able to get danielle to go with me that way i dont have to do it alone so if she goes it could be fun! its just bc i want something to do since i still have way too much free time for my liking. and i might as well try to get more fit that way i can look better in all the cute clothes i want and hopefully find a man easier. so thats my plan for the week! 

#personal

[thebeckychronicles]

Post 16: What next?

Tomorrow is my sixth chemo session and I’m dreading it. I’m past the halfway point in my treatment. When I first got diagnosed my main concern was getting better, I didn’t think about the emotional or psychological aspect of it really. Except for some bouts of extreme emotion for the most part I’ve just felt bewildered and kind of apathetic at this whole debacle. I think back to when I was laying on that table getting the biopsy done and as the needles were making their way into my body all I could think, “How did I get here?” That is the question. How did I get here?

I’ve stated before that I didn’t really know how to explain how I feel about this situation. Now, I think the best way I’m able to describe this is that I feel like this disease has hijacked my body, my life. It’s hard to believe that this is Jennifer Martinez-Lorenzo. This body, this life- all feel like a stranger to me. I don’t know this person and I don’t know how to accept this as my reality. Like I said, I’m still bewildered and confused at this situation. And by situation I mean my life.  

All I’ve been focused on is the physical aspect of my disease. I’ve been focused on getting that 100% negative PET scan; that’s been the goal. As I’m nearing the end of my treatment, because of the assurance that I’m responding well to it, I’ve had more time to think about how I’m feeling and the emotional repercussions of having a life-threatening illness like cancer. It sounds ridiculous but I didn’t realize just how much I’d be living with cancer even after I finished treatment; and I didn’t realize just how much cancer wormed its way into the crevices of my life.

It’s weird, I never thought being sick would create triggers in my life but here are some: - The smell of saline makes me throw up, in and out of a hospital setting. - I’m slightly claustrophobic now- this wasn’t the case until they started putting me in different enclosed machines for PET/CT scans, MRIs, etc. - I have panic attacks in the shower. Every. Time. I’m not really sure why, I think it has to do with the fact that in the shower I first noticed my hair falling out and I always get tired and have to sit down. It’s every time I get in the shower I wonder how else is the chemo gonna make itself evident in my body. Thank you chemo. I don’t shower with the door locked in case I need my mom to help me out of my panic. I’m 20 years old and I have to give myself a pep talk every time I get into the shower. Awesome. - Repetitive noises are terrible, strangely enough they also send me into an irritated panic. I think it has to do with the fact that when you’re getting chemo done the IV machine that they set up makes an irritating beeping noise every time the next chemo drug needs hooked up. And since you’re in a hall full of people getting chemo and not only do you hear your machine go off but theirs too - The smell of mint, this used to help with my nausea and now it’s become the cause of my nausea. Awesome.

The most terrible part about this whole thing I that I can’t look at my home the same way. I’ve lived here my whole life, this home holds my childhood, my adolescence, my achievements, my failures. This home has seen it all. Now I can’t stand being at home. I can’t look at my bedroom the same because since I’ve started treatment my bed has been my place of convalescence. No matter how many times or how often I wash my sheets I can still smell the chemo and saline. I can’t look at my bedside shelves the same because that’s where I put all my medical paperwork and medications. For days after getting treatment no matter what I do I can’t get the taste of chemo out of my mouth or off my skin. I recently went back to work and it is the biggest relief. You know cancer’s got you messed up when the best part of your week is coming to work (I love where I work and my coworkers but seriously). I left that job in December before I got sick- so there’s very little there that reminds me of being sick. My parents and sister were concerned about me going back to work what with the compromised immune system but I needed to. It helps that they’re so great and willing to accommodate my needs (thanks Trav and Miguel). I said that I don’t feel like myself, that my life and body feel hijacked by this disease. Going to work brings me a sense of normalcy that I desperately need. It’s such a relief to go somewhere that has no ties to my illness or my convalescence.

Which brings me back to my point. I strongly, strongly dislike being at home. Even though within these walls I’ve gotten better, this has also been the place that has seen my worst days. It’s the place that has seen me on the floor unable to move, has seen me throw up a range of foods and colors, has seen me in the most intense pain of my life. And even though this house has seen so much of the joy in life, I can’t help but come home and be reminded all over again about the fact that I am sick. That I’ve been sick.

I thought that as I approached the end of my treatment I’d feel relief. While there is some, I’ve come to the realization that Becky may be gone soon but she’s taken pieces of me with her. I’m not plagued by the fear that I’ll be diagnosed with cancer again, or that I’ll face some complications from my treatment down the line but I feel like I’ve lost a bit of my peace of mind because of this. In some way, shape or form I think I’ll be carrying Becky with me for the rest of my life. I know people think that once you get diagnosed with some life threatening disease and then you beat it that you need to live a fully positive and carpe diem life for the rest of your days. And I agree, my priorities and perspective/attitude on life has definitely changed and I’m not pessimistic. But to say that I don’t at all think about what next or what if would be a lie. I don’t mind Becky being something I think about for the rest of my life; there is no escaping the fact that she took up the better part of a year from me and she’s a part of my life story, I don’t mind her being there in the back of my mind. I just don’t want to be ruled by her.

I thought that once I was done with treatment, or at least getting closer to the end of treatment that everything would go back to normal. I’d take my life and body back. I’d take my identity back. I feel some relief but I also feel a lot of anxiety. I’m not exactly sure what I’m anxious about, maybe all the emotions I haven’t really dealt with upfront. Maybe it’s trying to learn how to move past this disease. This disease that went off like a bomb in my life and now I’m dealing with the shrapnel it left in its wake.

You know how in movies the protagonist gets diagnosed with terminal cancer or some other life threatening disease and that pushes them to do all the things they had wanted to do but were too afraid to do? I used to think that was very clichéd and I mean it is- but I definitely understand that now. I’ve felt antsy these past few weeks and I used to think it was just antsy to be done with treatment, to close this chapter in my life, to reclaim my fucking life back. And yes I am so ready to be done with this whole thing. I am ready to feel like myself again. Yes, while I am absolutely ready to be done with this disease, I’m more anxious to figure out how to pull myself out of this free-fall that cancer pushed me into.

Cancer has made me question everything in my life. My relationships, my friendships, what I want to study, where I want to finish my undergrad, what I want to prioritize, where I want to be right now. These past two years I’ve been half-assing it or just coasting at life. I went to school because I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. I stayed in state because I worried I couldn’t do it out on my own. I didn’t try all that much in school because I didn’t particularly care to be there. I chose a major that I feel ardently about but chose out of convenience. I made choices because I didn’t know what I wanted for myself. I haven’t asked myself what I want to do, who I want to be in a long time. I haven’t felt excited about life or passionate about anything in a long time. I feel like I don’t know who I am, I’m questioning if I really wanted to be doing what I was doing, if I want what I thought I previously wanted. Life happens so fast, one minute you’re celebrating your 20th birthday; the next you’re on a biopsy tabled getting stuck with 10 needles. Having cancer has made me feel sort of frozen in time. There is no going back to B.C. (before cancer). Now I’m squarely in A.D. (after diagnosis). It’s a new beginning and I don’t know how to approach it. I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know what I want; when it comes to anything- and it’s freaking me out. It’s like some weird identity crisis. All I know is that I can’t stand to be at home, I can’t stand to be in Washington. All I know is that I need to be gone for a while. So I’m trying to figure out my options in terms of schooling and where I want to live. It feels like I’m freefalling but I don’t know which way is up. I’m antsy- so antsy because I don’t want to be here. As strange as it is, my desperation to escape my body, to escape my life is at an all-time high. I’m antsy to move on and figure out what I want for myself. I feel like cancer has pushed me to “live life to the fullest” but what the fuck does that even mean???? What does that look like on a day to day basis? Maybe that’s where my confusion lies.

Dealing with the emotional aftermath of cancer is like its own kind of trauma and I’m intimidated by the enormity of what I’m feeling because I don’t even know how to begin to unpack it all. I don’t know if any of this made sense. It feels like even after I’m done with treatment life will feel like an open-ended question. Which is frightening and paralyzing.

I’m thinking a lot of things and I don’t understand most of them. It’s the most frustrating thing.

#Hodgkins Lymphoma #cancer sucks #but life doesn't have to #the becky chronicles #i'm sad but its still lit

[effervescentmind]

Entry 21: 03.23.20 b

I wanted to talk more indepth about my job and housing concerns and also tie in another dynamic in my life right now. I met someone online in August and at first it was just a fwb type of arrangment. He would come over once a weekish and we would spend some time together, laugh and sleep together. Sometimes we would just sleep and not have sex but he ended up slowly staying over until the next morning and then it just became a regular thing for him to sleepover. He’s a nice guy and has his shit together, makes money and has a lot of awesome goals. He’s self-motivated, encouraging and funny and I really enjoy him. Sometimes we go out and we always have a good time but I didnt want anything and he knew that. I was still hurting and trying to figure myself out and redefine who I was after my last two relationships. He knew that and was ok with it but then starting hinting he wanted more. I denied him at first but eventually warmed up to him. He started to do nice little things for me and showed me he cared and paid attention to me. He would surprise me with little dates, gifts or practical things I needed. I would get good morning texts everyday and checked on throughtout the day...I’m speaking in past tense but all of these things still happen and on an even bigger scale now but he doesnt want to be in a relationship and I dont understand him. I did reject the idea at first but about a month or two later I told him I had feelings for him and he completely acted like he didnt talk to me about a relationship and tried to make me think I was confused. I showed him text messages and told him things he said to me...even when we went to the movies and he was talking about how he was going to teach his kids to swim (it was a reference to something in the movie) and he included me in his fantasy, as the Mother. Ive talked to him twice about it and tried to push him away but he comes back and tells me what I want to hear. I dont know though, the last time we spoke about it, he told me he didnt know what he wanted and that hes trying to figure out if he wants a relationship. He said hes used to women trying to be with him because they want to live off him but he likes that I dont try any of that with him. He likes that I have my own goals and plans for my career and life and supports me all the way but he needs time to figure himself out. I told him to do it by himself and not waste my time. He told me he wants me to be patient with him and he promises that he isnt wasting my time, thats its not just about sex. Then he referred to himself as a broken, rough flower that I can prune and water to my perfection and liking...I dont agree with that viewpoint. I dont think that I need to put in this much work and turn you into what I want. Shouldnt I like you for who you are? Shouldnt you be giving me all the communication, time and vulnerability I want and give too? Why must I be subjected to bullshit first before I get the man I deserve? No. I wont settle for that. I wont do it. There are plenty of other men out there and I know the mature, put-together, driven, loving man I seek is out there. I dont have to settle on someone because they like the idea of having me but still want to party and talk to more than one female at a time. 

I decided that I would give him a chance until I leave Texas. I am currently making plans like I’m single because I FUCKING AM and I will not let a man keep me in a place I dont want to be if he is not sacrificing anything for me. So, I’m waiting to see if he is warming up but at the same time not stopping my progress. If I end up needing to leave and he still aint tryna do shit with me then adios senor. At this point, I feel like he’s a better friend than a boyfriend for me. He has helped me alot. He has helped me fix my credit, paid my rent (without being asked) when I was going through it with BWW, bought me toiletries and encouraged me throughout these last months about my future but there is no emotional connection. He isnt there for me emotionally and there is no passion between us. I just don’t want to be with someone that has it all but can’t be emotionally there for you and does the bare minimum to keep you around. He’s not a bad guy, I just dont think he wants me like that and I dont want to waste my time. I’m finally ready to be in love and I want to do it with someone that makes my heart dance. He just makes my heart ache.

With that being said, my plans are changing by the day but currently I have five options. The first (chronologically) is to stay with my friend who referred me to BWW. We met at PFC’s in October/November. My original plan was to get another job, not renew my lease and get a room for rent while I save for a downpayment on a car. I wanted to put all my things in storage and take my time looking around for a nicer apartment that I felt was right for me. This apartment I currently live in, I rushed into to get away from a shitty relationship and I want better for myself. That plan slightly changed because I wasnt making money and stuck between jobs. So my friend told me I could stay with her as long as I needed. I was happy but quickly decided that it was a bad idea. I got to know her more and she is all over the place and does a lot of stupid things. She’s young, constantly quitting jobs, playing guys for their money, letting stupid boys break her heart, trying any kind of drug and no realistic plan for her future. She also has a quick temper, blows things out of proportion and is reckless. She texted me one day saying that she was going to move to florida and that I could take over her lease if I wanted. Then that plan changed and she doesnt know when shes leaving and keeps changing what shes doing. Then she got fired from her job and got pregnant by a dumb boy that I kept warning her to stay away from. I decided to look into other options. Havent told her and I dont plan on it, just going to keep it moving and avoid that train-wreck of a situation. 

My next option is to move into another coworkers house. She lives with her brothers and mother. Her mother travels a lot for work and currently is gone until the end of May. I would be renting out the master bedroom and bathroom for 600/month. Its a really nice, big house but I would have to leave at the end of may which is fine because I do want my own place asap. This last year living by myself has been wonderful and exactly what I’ve needed my whole life lol. I’m not afraid to live alone and sleep alone. It’s peaceful and I’ve done a lot of self-discovery. I stay organized and have all the space and quiet I need from the outside world. 

My third option is to stay with a friend and her boyfriend. The have a spare bedroom, are quiet and I hangout with them every now and again. It would be nice to stay with them because I know them a little more and they are much closer to my job than my other coworker is. Also, she works at PFC’s still so sometimes we could carpool and that would save me money on lyft.

The fourth option is to stay with my older sister in Jax. She called me last night and we talked for about 4-5 hours. We always do that. We wont speak for months and then just have a whole random purge one night lol. Anyway, after I caught her up on my life, she told me that she would help me in any way she could. She would send me money and if I wanted to, I could come live with her and the kids until I get on my feet. Her saying that lifted such a huge weight off my shoulders. She always has my back and I love her so much. I really feel that I may end up tying up all my finaical loose ends here and moving back to Florida with her. I never wanted to go back to Jacksonville but sometimes you need to take a step back to be able to move forward and it’ll be nice to finally meet my niece and nephew. And I havent seen my sister since she left for the Navy. We both went through so much pain and so many changes after that...It will feel good to have her around and rebuild our bond. I miss her so much. 

My last option is one that I hope to never have to do, because it brings me so much anxiety, and that is to talk to one on my aunts, on my dad’s side, and ask if I can live with them. I’m confdent that they would say yes but man...I’m not ready for all that. Theres too much baggage and unpacking I need to do before I can fully immerse myself into them. I want to eventually reunite and start creating a relationship but I know I need to do it on my own terms and from a distance for my own sanity. I’ll write more on that in it’s own entry. 

Well, thats where I’m at right now. Just waiting on this coronavirus to die down and see where that leaves me. Wish me luck.

#diary

[ecotone99]

[RF] Inhibitions make the man

Hey first time posting on Reddit, I wrote this story and just felt the need to share it. Feel free to leave any criticism positive or negative. Just thank you for reading

“Why are you sleeping, Tom?” were the last words I remember hearing before drifting off to a peaceful night sleep.

I begrudgingly woke up to intense screeching of my alarm clock, it sounded like when teachers used to scratch their witch like fingers down the chalkboard in order to get the attention of a class who was not prepared for the period as I was not prepared for another day in the machine. I went through the motions of my morning routine, gliding my feet along the floor in order to reach the next part of the day, to reach the next clog.

First put on the same clothes I’ve been wearing for weeks an off white t-shirt, blue jeans, and a belt I got from my father before he left me and my sisters. Next in the kitchen I drop two pieces of toast into the toaster knowing full well they will come out charred as a log in the fire just before it crumbles to ash. I pour my coffee into the mug, black as the black hole of a room I sleep my nights away in. My old beaten flip phone rings with my eldest sisters tone, ringing like an ear after gun has shot right next to it, without hesitation i send her to voicemail. I have no reason to listen to her ramble on about me seeing her and her kids. The toast shot out out of the toaster and falls on the floor the spring in the toaster shattering falling into the electronics burning out the circuit. I walk to pick up my toast from the floor to see a rat stealing one of the slices, with a sigh i pick up the remaining slice and put it one of my White Castle napkin ive been using as plates. Finally i'm ready to leave for my job as an accountant at the local bank.

I walk into work exactly on time as I do every day, but I hear a voice calling my name, I turn around to see nobody their and continue as I usually do. I once again hear my name in the distance like the echo of a dream you would have had months ago that you can't remember, but you know you had. I go to my desk and open my filing cabinet to get started to work only to find it filled with the ashes from the files, a loaded handgun, a rubber band filled with hundreds and a note saying “Had fun last night with my turn can't wait for the next one.” confused, and terrified I fall into my chair as if I had been frozen by ice and pushed backwards by a single finger. That’s when the voice I had heard outside returned, “I see you saw my note.” I do a full 360 spin in my chair to find who is their only to hear, “not going to see me out there, i'm in here” followed by quite snickering laugh.

“ Where are you!” I screamed as if I was speaking to someone on the other side of the building.

“You okay Tom?” asked a nearby coworker

“Don't let them think your crazy wouldn't want us to get stuck in an asylum would you?” whispered the voice.

“Fine, just tired.” I said in a hushed voice to the clog who pretended to care for me. He leaves walking down the same path in the office used by every person, walked down so often that there's clear footprints indented into the hardwood. “Who are you?” I cautiously asked not wanting to draw any more attention.

“ Don't you remember? You invited me out of the deepest cracks in your mind.” the voice spoke in a smug tone that clearly showed that although he did not control the body he was in control of the mind. “ im you, the you that's deep down i'm every dark impulse you have, every taboo you wish you could comite, I am the real you.”

“I don't want you here! What did you do?!? Where did you get the money and gun from?” I frantically asked wanting to know what the voice made me do the night before.

“Don't worry, the little old lady's family probably expected her to die soon anyway, besides now you can quite this job. I got you her money so no need to stay here and wallow in the collective sadness of this place.” the voice proclaimed with such vigor that my head began to throb.

The voice was right though the sadness in the workspace was like thick oil making everyone move efficiently but without hope for escape. In fear of submitting here and the voice doing whatever unspeakable things he wants i do as he says I walk to my bosses office unknowingly avoiding the footprints ive walked in so many times before. I tell my boss that I quite his hopeless job and left with a little birdy over my shoulder. Though I didn't want to admit it to the voice it felt good to leave on my own terms. I race to my office grab everything from my office that the voice left in fear of someone finding it and leave the building wondering what to do with my new found freedom, maybe i'll go and see my sister for the first time in years.

“Good idea” the voice boomed so loud in the back of my head that i collapsed.

I awoke over the fresh corpse of my beloved sister whom I'd tried to shut out of my like so many times. All she was ever trying to do was help me, comfort me maybe if I had let her in this never would have happened. The tears wouldn't stop flooding out my eyes like a damn that held back the entire Pacific ocean had broken all at once. I'd taken away my nieces mother, my father just left me and I never let my family back in but they just had their mother taken from them.

“Enjoying my handy work?” The voice sneered “Don't worry it wasn't brutal I just came in while she was making mac and cheese for when her kids get home in a while. She had just finished putting the water on the stove so i talked to her to by time for ot to boil then when it boiling was as rapid as the water pouring of niagara falls i shoved her face into the water until she drowned, all while her face burned and blistered. ”

Is this what I've become? I wanted to kill her just because she was reaching out, she hadn't done anything wrong ever she was the kindest soul I've ever met. It scared me that I would connect and she would just leave but that wasn't her plan she wanted to help me heal and now I killed her. I have to get rid of this voice before it takes over completely, but how do you get rid of something that only exist in your head? “Hey if I die you die to right? You live in my head so if I go so do you?” I said as I rush through tying a hangman's knot before I lose control

“But why would you want to do that?” The voice said but for the first time he sounded nervous “I do what you really want! You should love me!”

“Those impulses you claim I want to do aren't me, I never wanted my sister dead I just wanted to protect myself from her being gone! Now I don't need to protect myself because all I have is gone..” I slide rope over the steel beam exposed in her apartment securing it with a slip knot which I never thought I'd is when my dad taught it to me before he left, “...so you've shown me not to be scared and I'm not scared of you but I can't allow you to live even if it means I have to go with you.” I slide my head through the knot and the voice starts screaming.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do? You have a new chance at life without the ties of family, I've given you everything to make a new life won't you take it?” the voice asked as if he was trying to push me out the loop but it wouldn't work.

“I'm sorry sister, this is all my fault but I won't allow it to happen to anyone else…” my words trail off into the ray of sun coming through her window. I look into the light seeing how every life has purpose and I may have failed at mine but I can stop the voice from accomplishing it's. I accept that I must do this to keep everyone safe.

“WAIT… this isn't what I wanted for us, we we were supposed to do so much! You were supposed to accept me!” The voice screams, but it's voice fades for a second but then whispers its final words, ”So, this is fear.”

I kick the chair out from beneath me sending me and this voice, who's shown me everything I hate and love about myself, that it's not the dark impulses that make the man, everyone has those what makes the man is what he isn't willing to do.

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Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

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Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

San Franciscos Fort Mason park is empty in the early morning darkness, every surface the color of a used cast-iron pan. Its pouring rain, and Ive been wandering around since just after 6, trying to find well, Im not exactly sure. All I know is that, according to a Facebook post, members of one of the strangest fitness groups in the country are supposed to be meeting here right about now. But the Google Maps screenshot I pulled from the website seems to have directed me to a parking lot. Or the front door of the high-end vegetarian restaurant Greens. Its hard to tell.

I check Facebook again.

What are you planning to do for the first Monday of 2016? Sleep in? Lazily slog on into work? No need for that. Come join us for #DonutMondays at NPSF (Gil, dont forget the donuts!). Fort Mason. 6:25AM

Just as I start thinking Ill have to find my own doughnut, a woman in her mid-twenties jogs up to me looking equally lost. Shes dressed in a gray Adidas jacket, black leggings, and a tank top that resembles caution tape. Her wet hair is stuck to her forehead as though shes just been dunked in the Pacific.

Do you know where November Project meets? she asks with a slight accent. Relieved, I tell her Im trying to find them as well. Im Stine! she says.

And then she hugs me.

What distinguishes November Project is not just the fact that its freejust as instructors arent paid, members dont paybut the degree to which it actually is a social identity. The movement extends beyond exercising to encompass rituals and customs, social expecta­tions, and repercussions for failing to participate. Thats right: If you skip a November Project workout, youre not out any cash, but the fallout is arguably more severe. Youre, well, shamed. Online. Its weird.

Spoiler: Not a lot of people miss workouts. Teixeira calls it an absolute feast for someone studying motivation for exercise.

One member compared November Project to a church. More commonly, people refer to it as a cult. Never in the pejora­tive Im-trapped-and-I-cant-escape sense, though. More like, This is the greatest-tasting Kool-Aid in the world!

Laura McCloskey leads the San Francisco tribe in a high-intensity workout. Hugs and hand-holding are not optional.Jake Stangel

While we walk, Stine, whos originally from Denmark, tells me about her obsession with November Project. Shes been a member of the Boston tribebears repeating: tribefor about four months and is visiting San Francisco for the week. Its been such a great way to meet people. Cities can be lonely, but you have this instant community, she says, using a nice-enough line that begins to sound like propaganda as I hear other members repeat it.

Two people who say it a lot are Brogan Graham and Bojan Mandaric. They are November Projects cofoundersand they totally fit their gladiatorial-sounding names: 6-foot-tall, bald, tattooed former collegiate rowers. Back in 2011, when the friends were trying to stay motivated during a Boston winter, they agreed to work out every weekday morning at 6:30, keeping track of their progress on a spreadsheet named for that first month, November.

Then, for reasons neither can quite remember, they sent out a tweet to see if anyone would join in. Two people became three, and a movement was born. When the Boston tribe reached 300 people, Graham and Mandaric got matching tattoos.

In the past few years, fitness has developed into some­thing of a social identity — at least among plugged-in, upper-middle-class, roughly millennial-age urbanites.

It was a powerful turning point for Graham. During his sophomore year at Northeastern University, he was charged with assaulting a rival college rower. Though the charge was dropped in exchange for community service, he lost his scholarship and was kicked out of school. The experience shaped Grahams views on community and inclusion. Got a bad rap? I dont care, he wrote in the movements official history. Are you at November Project to be kind, work your ass off, and start your day right? Then thats all that matters.

As Stine is telling me how much she loves November Projects instant community, we find who were looking for. Unmistakably silhouetted against the foggy morning sky, about 40 people stand in a lopsided semicircle, arms crossed, heads bowed against the wind. They could be praying.

A woman in striped leggings and a North Face trucker hat climbs onto a park bench. Good morning! says Laura McCloskey, the San Francisco tribe leader, in a stage whisper. Were going to do a workout that I just came up with! I want everyone to break into groups of four! Find your four! Try to group up with someone you dont normally pair with!

Jake Stangel

Before we start, she asks if today is anyones first time. A few people raise their hands. I, not quite ready to give up my anonymity, do not. The newbies are directed to state where they come from, how they got here, and whether theyre single. A version of this happens at every November Project meetup, one of the traditions borrowed from Graham and Mandarics original Boston tribealong with chants, stair laps, a rallying move called the bounce, and, of course, physical affection. People come looking for a sense of belonging, Mandaric says. We foster that.

The same thing goes for November Projects other tactics for promoting inclusiveness. Hashtags are essential follow November Project on Twitter and youll see a lot of #hills­forbreakfast, #sleepwhenyouredead, and #justshow­up. Members usually don highlighter-colored sportswear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear. The result is a group of people who look alike, sound alike, and hug alike.

Toward the end of our workout, a man in my squat group finally discovers that I didnt announce myself as a new member. Were going to fix this, he says with a grin. He outs me to McCloskey, who has me wave to everyone during the group photo (another ritual) and apologize for not making my presence known. Eventually, everyone becomes part of the tribe.

Jake Stangel

In Graham and Mandarics crew days, their coach had a policy: If anyone missed practice, the whole team had to do dry-land workouts. It worked because nobody wanted to let the group down. When they started November Project, they knew theyd need a similar system for keeping people accountable to the tribe.

I feel a tiny bit of thisan expectation that no one is above the groupwhen Im teased for not introducing myself. But thats nothing compared to what happens to someone who doesnt show up for a workout. For that, November Project has perfected a bizarre, more 21st-century form of establishing accountability: online shaming. This is known as We Missed You.

From November Projects website: If you decided that staying in bed was a better option than working out with your friends (who you promised that youll be there) then your face will be featured here.

Members usually don highlighter-colored sports­wear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear.

By face, they mean embarrassing photos lifted from the shamed members Facebook profile or supplied by friends. Posts go on to explain that this person committed to attending a workoutmade a #verbal, in tribe-speakbut reneged. Screenshots of text messages and emails confirming said #verbal are posted, along with guesses as to why the absentee might have failed to show upanything from you must have gotten too drunk the night before to perhaps you were lost on a Segway tour. Its an elaborate expression of profound disappointment in the offending person, and there are hundreds of examples on the website.

Paddy OLeary, a member of the San Francisco tribe, remembers when he skipped a workout in 2013. A fellow member made him a We Missed You video; he hasnt missed a workout since. Other victims confirm the tactics effectiveness. You look like an idiot for sleeping in when everyone else is having an amazing time, says Holly Richardson, also in San Francisco. Its not worth it.

McCloskey makes no apologies for the policy. November Project is successful because it relies on word of mouth and accountability, she says. If I tell you that I will meet you at the corner of Market and Sanchez to run to November Project, come rain, snow, or dinosaurs, I will be there. In the event that someone sends one of those pathetic just cant do it texts at 5:55 am, we have the right to roast them. And roast we do.

Jake Stangel

Heres the fundamental thing about shaming: According to behavioral psychologists, its not supposed to work. Sure, it might force someone to make a change in the momentcontestants on The Biggest Loser shedding pounds before a national audience, for instancebut the effects dont always last. When your goals, attitudes, or values are shaped by external motivators, its unlikely youll stay satisfied or committed for long.

This is certainly true when it comes to working out. For decades, experts in behavior modification have tried to get people to commit to exercise. So far, nothing has worked, says Jack Raglin, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. It doesnt matter if youre paid to exercise, if youve paid to exercise, if you might die from lack of exercisemost people just dont stick it out.

Yet theres an undeniable element of shaming to this latest generation of exercise fads. It may have started with fitness trackers, which made people more aware of their activity levels in relation to othersreach 10,000 steps or your coworkers will know youre a slob. From there, programs began capitalizing on group pressure. In Orangetheory workouts, your calorie burn and heart rate are displayed on a screen. CrossFit posts scores as well, believing it encourages people to push harderand now its in 13,000 affiliated gyms worldwide.

But this motivation strategy, researchers like Raglin and Teixeira suggest, could be as doomed as any other. You may initially want to impress your peers or get your moneys worth, but those considerations rarely lead to true behavior change. If the standard adherence rate for exercise holds, Raglin says, half the people will stop showing up to these classes within a year.

Youd think this would apply to November Project too. After all, the threat of We Missed You is external. But there are some differences. November Project members are not paying anything to be there, the goals arent about burning the most caloriesyet people show up anyway. And many of them have been at this for years, without ever missing a single workout. Its clearly working for some people.

Jake Stangel

True motivation, Teixeira says, takes something extra, something intrinsic. If members of a group think they are gaining useful skills, feel personally valued, and perceive that they have control over their actions, they are more likely to fully commit. Teixeira believes November Project gives you a bit of all these things. And indeed, everyone I talk to seems like a lifer. But then again, I only talk to people who are there. The one real data point we have is that November Project continues to expand. A recent partnership with the North Face aims to help grow the movement.

Jennifer Hurst, an associate professor of health and exercise science at Truman State University, suggests November Project may be succeeding at pulling off a rare thing: positive shaming. It only works when the person truly cares what the shamers think, she says. The desire for social connectedness and the positive feeling some get from the environment must be worth the time, energy, and sacrifice. That explains why the rituals, cultlike as they seem, are so crucial. You dont want to disappoint people you hug, not to mention chant and bounce and dance with.

A number of years ago, Raglin and his colleagues found that married adults who enrolled in a recreational fitness program together had an average adherence rate of over 90 percent, compared to just 50 percent for those who enrolled on their own. The married pair didnt necessarily exercise together or even in the same room, Raglin says. They simply came and left together. Yet the social benefit was quite profound.

That may also help explain November Projects success. Members might not be married to each other, but theyre married to the group. And the group is what holds November Project together.

Jake Stangel

It turns out some November Project members actually are married to each other. At one of my workouts, a young couple tells me they met in the Boston tribe. The movement encourages this sort of thingleaders are expected to host mixers and speed-dating events. The phrase There will be babies appears on the blog and in promo material.

Yes, its all a bit creepy, and I dont blame passersby who look at us funny (there are many of them). And no matter how many times Im told that We Missed You is not about shaming, its about love, I wont be entirely convinced. But you cant deny the smile on these peoples faces. Nobody looks like that when theyre huffing it alone on a treadmill in their garage. I wont be heading up a November Project tribe back home in Santa Fe, but if one comes to my town, I wouldnt say no to a few hugs.

With dawn creeping over the edges of the city, we put our arms around each other and start to bounce. Yall good? someone says, in signature November Project whisper-shout. Fuck yeah! the group whispers back.

Surprising myself just a little, I say it too.

Meaghen Brown (@meaghenbrown) is a freelance journalist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the former online fitness editor for Outside.

This article appears in the July 2016 issue.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/