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vivwritesfics · 5 months

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No Need To Ask

Chapter Twenty-Six - The Hunt

The Norris' were a notorious crime family in the UK. One of many. With Norris, the head of the family, running operations with his son, Lando, they work to keep Y/N Norris, Norris' daughter protected. Life in a crime family wasn't something they wanted for her.

But with tension with one of the Spanish crime families rise, Norris and his now deceased wife come up with only one plan, offer their daughter to the Sainz's or risk an all out war.

1.7K words

Warnings: guns, kidnapping, major character death!! LIKE SERIOUSLY MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH

guy's im so sorry for this one

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Carlos watched the video again and again. He analysed anything he could from it, but there wasn't a lot to go on. It hurt to watch, seeing his pretty little wife in such a state. He watched it to the point he could see the bump forming. Their baby was growing. Through all of this, their baby was still growing.

He gave his phone to Lando, who had his best men taking a look at things. If anybody could find where the video had come from, it was them.

"Hello, Sainz. I believe I have something that belongs to you," the man in the video had said. Carlos couldn't see his face, just his wife on the floor.

He nearly snapped his phone in half at the sight of her. On the floor, a dishevelled mess. Hair greasy and matted, eyes bloodshot and tears staining her face.

"Now, what I want is simple. Leave two million pounds in a suitcase outside of the Mirabelle House hotel and it shall be collected at a time of my choosing. You have twenty-four hours to drop off the suitcase and retreat back to the Norris house. If the suitcase isn't there in the allotted time, I'll put a bullet in her pretty little head. I'll be watching."

The video zoomed in one Y/N, on her face as she sobbed. She looked so broken down and Carlos's heart was breaking.

This shouldn't have been the first time he saw his pregnant wife with a baby bump. It shouldn't have been from this video.

"Sir," Called one of Lando's men, striding towards them. He was a tall man that easily towered over Lando, but Lando was still much more powerful than him. It was clear by the way Lando stood tall and the man had his shoulders slumped. "We've traced the video back to a house maybe five minutes away from the Mirabelle House hotel."

"Great," said Lando, sitting back on the sofa.

Carlos just stared at him. They knew where Y/N was, yet Lando had sat back down, like he didn't care. "What the fuck are you doing?" He roared, that rage he had felt when Y/N first disappeared still there.

Sitting around for four days didn't help. Carlos wanted to tear the city apart, but Lando and Oscar held him back. Waiting was all they could do.

"Go and fill a suitcase with money," he said, switching on the television.

"Lando," Carlos growled. He was going to lose his shit.

"He's probably watching through the cameras! If we act like we're getting the money together to take to Mirabelle House, we can go onto the house and get Y/N!" Lando insisted.

It was at times like this that Lando showed his maturity and intelligence. It was his father's doing, how he had trained his son before he had died, Carlos realised.

He let out a breath through his nose (embarrassed that he hadn't thought of this plan himself) and went upstairs. As he went, Lando shouted up to him, telling him where he could find a suitcase and enough money to make it look like they were putting two million pounds into the suitcase.

Carlos was smarter than that, though. He put his body between the security camera and himself as he placed the two hundred pounds with of fivers into a suitcase. The suitcase didn't look very full, but Carlos pushed the bills to the side to make it look much fuller than it was.

When the suitcase was ready, Carlos carried it downstairs. Lando had received the address from his men and the two of them, along with Oscar, headed out to the car. "What about weapons?" Asked Carlos as he opened the trunk of the car.

Lando tapped the side of his nose as he pulled up the carpet inside of the trunk up, revealing the guns.

"Do we have a game plan?" Asked Carlos as he armed himself.

Oscar placed a gun into the waistband of his trousers. "Lando and I will deal with any men while you push forward and search for Y/N," he said and walked over to the drivers seat of the car.

Lando and Carlos couldn't protest that. Oscar was probably the calmest out of the three of them, the least likely to accidentally send them into the back of another car.

After Lando pulled up the GPS, they set off. The first upbeat, happy pop song came on the radio and Carlos was quick to switch it off. They certainly weren't going to be dancing in the moonlight tonight.

They drove past the Mirabelle House hotel and Carlos couldn't help but look around. Was the man that stole his wife away here? Was he waiting to snatch the money and go back to Y/N?

Some of you may be wondering why isn't Carlos just paying him? He certainly had the money. But this was a tale as old as time. Carlos knew exactly what would happen if he was to hand over the money. As soon as the money was in the man's hands, there would be a bullet in his wife's head.

They pulled up in front of the house. It looked incredibly unassuming, a simple town house in the city. Three bedrooms, maybe.

Oscar parked the car as though this was a normal day, as though they weren't about to go and rescue his best friend. The three of them climbed out of the car, keeping their guns in the waistband of their trousers.

They walked up to the house, Oscar leading them. They couldn't ring the bell or bust down the door, not without threatening Y/N's safety. So, Oscar got down onto his knees and worked on picking the lock.

It was one of his many talents, something he had learnt before Webber had taken him in. In fact, it was one of the reasons why Webber had taken him in.

As Oscar worked on the lock, Carlos and Lando noticed a camera, pointing directly at them. Fuck, that couldn't be good.

But, luckily for the three of them, the kidnapper was too busy watching the cameras in the Norris and the Sainz households. A grim smile had spread across his face as soon as he'd seen Carlos put the money into the suitcase and drag it out of the house. Soon enough they'd be back and he could go and get the money.

"Your fucking husband," he laughed as he looked at Y/N, the gun he was going to use to get rid of her in his lap.

Suddenly there was a commotion from up stairs. With no time to grab Y/N from her cell, he held his gun up, pointing it at the door.

Up stairs, Lando and Carlos shot the men waiting in the stairs. It wasn't a part of the plan, for Carlos to stay behind and deal with the men, so Oscar pushed forward.

It didn't matter that they weren't following the plan, thought Oscar as he pushed on. Aside from the two men on the stairs, there didn't seem to be anybody else in the house. But Oscar still kept his gun out as he made his way down to the basement.

It was just a hunch, her being down in the basement. The video had been dark and he couldn't really think of where else she would be.

The door at the bottom of the basement stairs were shut. Slowly and carefully, with one hand still holding his gun, Oscar pushed the door open.

A single shot cut through the frigid air of the basement.

Oscar didn't react right away. Red blossomed on the right side of his white shirt. And then his body dropped to the floor.

"That shot was meant for you," hissed the kidnapper as he turned back towards Y/N.

Y/N who's hands were covering her mouth. Y/N who couldn't believe what she had just seen. Y/N, who's best friends body was laying just a couple of feet away from her.

Suddenly, as the kidnapper reloaded his gun (he hadn't expected this, had loaded the gun with a single bullet for Y/N), somebody else came running down the stairs.

There was another shot and Y/N couldn't stop herself from screaming.

But her husband ran through the door as her kidnapper fell to the floor, dead.

His fingers wrapped around the bars of her cell as he reached towards her. "My darling wife," he whispered as Y/N grabbed a hold of him. One hand cradles her stomach as she stood up and rushed towards him. "How do I open this?" He asked, his voice calm as he pulled at the door of the cell. It didn't budge.

"There's a key. In his pocket," she said, her voice trembling.

Carlos searched the body, pulling a key out of a dead mans pocket. Neither of them had addressed the body of their friend on the floor.

As soon as he got the door open, Y/N ran into her husbands arms, tears streaming down her face. She sobbed into his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tight. "Oh, my love," he whispered as he kissed the side of her head. "Mi amor."

But then Y/N pulled away from him. She walked over to the body on the floor and fell to her knees. "Osc," she said, as if it would magically bring him back. Fat tears rolled down her cheek as she grabbed his hand. "Oscar."

Placing his hand on her shoulder, Carlos tried to pull her away. He was gentle, though. A harsh hand would never be laid on his wife again.

"No!" She suddenly screamed, throwing herself over the body. "I won't leave him! I can't leave him!" She screamed, eyes shut as she cried into Oscar's suit jacket.

With his touch still gentle, Carlos picked her up. "It's okay, mi amor," he said, holding her in his arms. "We'll come back for him, Lando and I."

Y/N simply cried as Carlos carried her away, carrying her out of the house.

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bluecollarmcandtf · 19 days

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Typical Day for a Mall Cop

My name's Bill, and I've been a guard at the mall for almost a decade now. It wasn't my dream job, but life has a way of creeping up on you with kids and a mortgage. I needed something to pay the bills, and I've always had a knack for watching over people.

Like any other weekend, the mall is fairly busy, so I stay on my feet and patrol the halls for most of the day. Occasionally, I'll check in with the other mall cop, but my time is mostly filled with watching shoppers come and go. If anybody gets too rowdy, a stern look is enough to keep them in line.

A lot of the time, teenagers will loiter in stores. Some of them even try and bring their skateboards in, but it isn't too hard to make them adhere to the mall's strict policies. They might be young and clueless, but that doesn't mean I'll cut them any breaks.

Over by the fountain, I see one of the boys I admonished a week ago. I think I caught him shoplifting or something. Thieves normally get banned from the mall, but I didn't do that with this one. He said something that completely caught me off guard; he said he could hypnotize me.

I laughed in his face.

Amused inwardly by the boy's foolish claim, I walk over to check in with him. I'm sure he'll remember the security guard that almost kicked him out of the mall last weekend.

The kid is chatting with his friends, but they fall quiet when they notice me looming behind them. Like we'd discussed last week, I drop to my knees and kneel in front of the troublemaker. He explained that this is the best thing for me to do when I see him around, and I can't help but agree. I know the boy deserves my respect.

I plant a kiss on both of his sneakers, and then wait for him to speak first. It takes a minute because he and his friends are busy cracking up over some unspoken joke. Whatever it is, clearly went right over my head.

"How you doin', mall pig?" the boy laughs.

I smirk at the nickname he's given me. We've gotten in the habit of calling each other by these pseudonyms, and I don't mind it.

"Very good, sir," I answer, using the name I've come to associate him with, "How are you?"

"Fine, I guess," he shrugs, "I spent your cash on kicks for my crew."

That reminds me of last week again. The boy had made it seem like a good idea to give him all the money I had, which included the paycheck I'd earned for last pay period. On the ground, I had a close view of all the vibrant sneakers the teenagers were wearing. It was nice to know he'd put my gift to good use, even if my wife had been pissed that I'd come home without my month's salary.

"You have another check for me, fat ass?"

His friends laugh at his new nickname for me, but I shake my head and answer a solemn, "No, sir."

The teenager groans and leads his gang of friends away, already bored with me. It seems like he's just going to leave me there, kneeling in the middle of the mall, until he turns and beckons me to follow. Inwardly, I'm glad that he's not done with me yet. I've come to enjoy our interactions a lot.

I follow the boys, crawling behind them all the way into a bathroom.

"If you ain't got any cash to keep me and my crew entertained, then you're gonna have to do something to make us laugh," he explains.

"Of course, sir!" I smile, trying to express how willing I am to impress him and his friends.

"We'd find it hilarious if you dunked your head in each toilet," he adds blandly.

I light up. He's just explained how I can be of service and now all I have to do is follow through. I'm sure it'd be hilarious for them to watch a fully grown security guard giving himself a few swirlies. That's peak comedy!

"Watch this, sir!" I laugh, crawling over to the first toilet and shoving my face into the water without any hesitation.

I know the guy that's supposed to clean these bathrooms, and it's obvious he slacks off because there are skid marks all over. I try not to think about it as my cheeks and forehead brush against the bottom of the bowl. When I pull my face out of the flushing toilet, my ears pop and hear a roar of laughter behind me. The kids find it hilarious, which only fuels my desire to keep going.

With a gaping grin, I shuffle over to the next stall and repeat. There are six toilets in the men's restroom. Some are cleaner than others. The last one is a clogged mess, and the boys find it hilarious when I come up with toilet paper plastered to my face. I laugh through it all, even if the urge to puke is growing.

By the time I'm done, I'm soaked in toilet water, and the teenagers are in tears.

"Alright, toilet guy. That was disgusting," the leader of the pack chuckles, grimacing in my direction, "You have a car or something?"

"Yes, sir. I've got a minivan in the parking lot."

"A minivan?" he seems disappointed, "Hand over the keys anyway. We wanna drive around."

"You got it, sir," I say, fishing the fob out of my damp pockets.

He swipes the keys out of my hand eagerly and turns to leave the bathroom. I start to follow the boys out, but he stops me.

"Why don't you stay in here 'till you dry off," he snorts, "You can spend that time in the corner, thinking about what you can do for me next time I'm at the mall."

"Yes, sir," answer, and the boys leave.

Briefly, the thought of getting back to work crosses my mind. I really should be out there keeping an eye on the vendors and their merchandise, but that goes away. Like suggested, I stare at the dirty tile wall and begin to brainstorm what I can do for the boy the next time I see him.

My walkie goes off now and then with the voice of my coworker wondering where I am, but I ignore it.

After an hour or so, I've dripped mostly dry, but a strong stink still lingers around my head. Still, I've come up with a few different things I could have ready next week. It'll take some overtime to make extra cash for the boy. My wife won't be happy about that, but it'll give me a chance to actually have cash ready for him when he asks for it.

The only other thing I have to offer is the perks of my job. Maybe his friends and him would like a tour of the security office? I'd give them free reign of everything in the confiscated bin.

Speaking of my job, I should probably get back. My partner is probably angry at me for not answering the radio. He'll be happy when I tell him I'll take the late shift for the next few days. Hopefully he won't say anything about the smell. God, it's awful!

Just another day working as a mall cop!

#hypno story #mind control #hypnotized

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brucewaynehater101 · 7 days

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So I was reading "Kidnapping Tim's dignity" by Sophie_Vers and "Suffer in Vogue" by InkpotSprite, which btw, mind the tags and content warnings in the endnotes before reading because holy fuck!

And while they aren't the first to depict Tim being the exception to Jason's 'Protect Kids' schtick, it got me thinking of the principle of "if one of us isn't safe, none of us are safe"

So here's some loosely connected ideas exploring that. Bending canon ahead

Also I fused that Mafia!Tim idea with this because it's fire

Feel free, but not pressured, to add on however you want

==========

Titans Tower occurs before Stephanie becomes Robin. It, + other incidents, convince Bruce to bench Tim for the foreseeable future

Steph becomes the Fourth Robin and has the help of Tim for training, the batcomputer + more

Stephanie's dies during her run as Robin and is buried, Bruce at least has the decency to pay off the bills for the funeral eve if she wasn't legally adopted

How does she get revived? Let's say Tim is experimenting with Lazarus Water. If it can bring back Jason, it can bring back his friend

And since he succeeded at reviving Stephanie, if anybody else (like say, Kon & Bart) dies, he can just whip out the pit juice

Since Stephanie died under Batman's tutelage, she makes the decision to hide her revival from Batman, and Tim helps set her up with a new identity

At some point between Tim trying to revive Stephanie and helping her get a new ID, Duke joins the fray. Idk how but they meet & he gets in the know about Steph's revival

Then his parents being Joker Gassed happens, and Bruce—thanks to a little red robin whispering in his ear—takes him in as his ward/foster/adopted kid

Fuck it, let's add in Cassandra as well, girl speedruns hopping into Gotham like another League runaway she's heard of and comes under Batman's wing in no time

And you don't hide shit from her so Cass and Duke are in on Stephanie's resurrection and are trusted Secret Keepers

==========

Despite all that's happened, Stephanie isn't going to let go of being a vigilante, but she doesn't want Batman looming over her either

Plus the others are up for some teenage rebellion so they copy after their Big Brother Jason and become crime lords

Introducing the gang; The Undying Carrion

(named them after Carrion Crow, which is very intelligent and a scavenger)

Works like Tim Gang in the Gang AU but with Tim, Steph, Cass and Duke as shared leaders

They need leader names, fuck

Lemme think . . .

Introducing, the Carrion Crows!

Stephanie / Carrion Violence

Tim / Carrion Thread

Duke / Carrion Light

Cassandra / Carrion Promise

Explanation Times!!

// (Violence - nce) + t = violet, which is purple!!

Hence why Stephanie calls herself violence! Okay that's a Canon Event but there's also other meanings to the name

Stephanie didn't just die, she was killed or murdered, an act of violence

Stephanie is on the field more than the rest of the Carrion, and knows how to rock your shit, she's well trained in—and expecting—violence

She's motivated partially by Jason's violence against Tim

Why call themselves Carrions? Stephanie started this all after being returned from death

// Tim became Robin because what little faith in Batman remained was a thin, fragile thread, and while he restored Gotham's into a tightknit spider web, his own faith degenerated into a thread that snapped with Stephanie's death

Likewise, his adoration for Jason, the Second Robin, is hanging by a thread, especially as the other three voice their disdain for Jason's more recent action in Titans Tower

Plus the logic Jason has for hating Tim, Batman has for abusing Tim, and he has for loving those two still, barely has a thread of logic to them

Like spider webs, he's able to take mere threads and weave them into inescapable traps, make unseen firewalls and find the thinnest threads of knowledge on the internet

He makes a secure spiderweb of safety nets and contingencies for the gang for countless possible situations

// Behind Stephanie, Duke is the most well-known of the Carrion Crows, he's like a lighthouse of directions for the gang

He is also able to lead mass swaths of people at once, while Stephanie is better with smaller groups, or doing it one-to-one

Because he leads a larger statistic of people at once, foes tend to be lured to him like moths to a flame, thinking if they take him down, the whole operation comes toppling

Even if they do put Duke out of action, they're in for a rude awakening when the rest of the Carrion Crows come to the rescue

He and Steph know how to put all eyes on themselves so that Tim and Cass's activities go unnoticed

Why think of mysteries with too little clues to wonder about, when you can look at this spectacle of a spotlight and galore of violence?

His name is also a nod to the fact that despite all the trauma he's went through, he has more childhood innocence compared to the rest of the four; more light in his eyes so to speak

// Cassandra, the renegade, the renegade . . .

She made a promise to herself even before she met The Bat; She will not kill, for it is wrong, all have the right to live, and none the right to revoke it

She does not kill for all deserve a sufficient judgement; all victims the ability to gain closure how they see fit (this sets up possible future arguments between Jason and her)

Where as the other Carrion may take the liberty to transform 'No Killing' into a fate worse than death?

She is the only one who's made this promise, and thus the only one you can trust to not make you beg for death due to it transforming into mercy

And if you make a promise to the Carrion? You better go through with it, because she'll know when you've broken it

==========

The gang starts off as basically welfare.

Here's free lessons of essential life skills, here's free nursing and doctor training, here's free education and shelter— legality? Who cares?

Eventually, however, they meet bottlenecks of lacking legal options as illegal gangs do

So Tim starts looking into ways to circumvent this. lo and behold, the Drake Industries he is set in inherit

Tim starts catching up on everything he'll need to know to be CEO as a fricking teenager and starts discussing the possibility of even doing so under eighteen

For plot convenience, Jack and Janet are ecstatic that he appears to be so passionate about this and help him speedrun inheritance

Badabing badaboom, with Tim weaving in the Undying Carrion and Drake Industries together, business is booming on both sides as they feed into eachothers growth and profits

The Drake's, in the dark, are wiping tears above their smiles. They're so proud of their boy!

Tim unfortunately has to play Loving Son™ more than ever, but hey, worth it

Fuck it, it's helping Gotham, so Tim even enlists Kon, Cassie and Bart as honorary and substitute leaders in case of emergencies, gets them up to speed

(hey maybe even have Bart info dump about the Undying Carrion when introduced to it be it due to history lessons or it's place in the future)

Idk what their Carrion Titles would be lol

Also how will they utilize their powers without giving themselves away? 🤔🤔🤔

==========

Oh yeah, what do they all do as the heads of their gang?

Well, they're very remote and hands off in practice due to civilian and bat-vigilante lives, so unless they can find the time;

Tim is the tech genius, encrypting and hacking like no tomorrow. Plus his ability to gather information is like no other

He can even double as an info broker when nessecery

He does most of the bureaucracy when it comes to working Drake Industries and Undying Carcasses both at once, but others help him shoulder the burden

Cassandra specializes in getting a read on people with her knowledge in body language

She can tell who works best where, who to trust, who to play, who to investigate, etc.

Duke does most of leadership possible remotely. He also utilizes his meta powers without outing himself as Signal

Stephanie—with an undone death—is able to act as a physically present leader for the gang, and is the one on the field if nessecery

In a nutshell, Tim does tech + organization and DI & UC, Cass passes judgements, Duke does remote leadership, and Stephanie does fieldwork and physical leadership

As the four leaders, they have meetings and discuss how to proceed with their gang

==========

So yeah, Batman + non-criminal allies and Red Hood are sniffing around the Undying Carrion because, hello? New gang? Who dis?

Especially if one of them catches a look at Stephanie's eyes as Violence and sees them flash Lazarus Green, giving the name 'Undying Carrion' a whole 'nother meaning

That also boosts their motivation to uncover what the fucking is going on here

==========

Anyways Jason slander because I'm a Hater™

Stephanie proposed becoming a crime lord since she didn't want to work under Batman, still wanted to help people, and crime is still a big fucking problem so "if you can't beat 'em, join em"

However, she is also aware of the mess that is Batman and Jason's relationship after the latter revived, plus Jason beating Tim up to high hell, and fills in Cass and Duke about this

And having never met Jason nor caring about his Robin days nearly as much as Tim Drake, she has a very low opinion of the Second Robin

Especially with Jason's audacity to claim he protects kids whilst doing the Titans Tower

And whatever the hell he was pulling didn't stop her from biting the dust

So yeah, she's a hater and she makes it KNOWN

She's super vocal about her criticism towards Batman and Red Hood

"Batman's second Robin died due to circumstances out of his control, so I won't grill him for that, but to allow Red Hood to break into Titans Tower and beat the Third Robin to near death and later allow the Fourth to die is something else entirely!"

"Speaking of Red Hood, what happened to 'protecting the children'? look at you! You beat Robin—a teenager—into the dirt for daring to care about his community! for feeling obligated for throwing away his childhood so he could play Therapist for Batman!"

"Shouldn't you be throwing hands with Batman instead? The Third Robin threw away so much for him and the Fourth Robin gave her own life!"

"Or is the problem that they do care for their communities, and have the power to fight for them and defend ourselves?"

"Was the Third Robin not only exempted from your rules, but actively targeted by you because he could defend himself? Do only protect children when they can't fight back? When they're utterly helpless? In Gotham?"

"Forget being an exception, why did you see fit to grant the idea that children should be protected from harm an exception? Are the kids in Crime Alley safe from you at all?"

"Argue all you want for yourself, but the fact remains that you've displayed not the power, but the willingness to torture those you claim to protect, and we won't stand for it, I least of all."

"If one of us isn't safe, none of us are safe."

Maybe Stephanie's slip for the tongue "one of us" can clue Red Hold in on Carrion Violence being a teenager, whoopsie daisies

But yeah, arguments for those under Red Hood or The Undying Carrion abound

Lord help you of you're under Red Hood, and The Undying Carrion

I'm thinking about the Twitter Wars . . .

==========

Hey maybe she even whispers the idea that Red Hood is infact a copycat of The Joker and is just playing the long con, building a reputation and trust so he can burn it all away and watch the improving community collapse and despair

It'd explain why he brutalized the Third Robin like how The Joker did the Second Robin but has yet to do the same with Batman and is obsessed like the Joker is, she's just saying . . . 👀👀👀👀

Not as Carrion Violence of course, that'd be the biggest target in her back yet!

It's small suggestions here and there only Tim would be able to trace back to her

I'm just saying, with the Carrion Crows being Waynes (not matter how unofficial) and Tim running Drake Industries they're experience with PR could be weaponized *handrub*

Jason has to throw in his own rustic abilities but it's gonna be tough, woof

==========

Is Cluemaster still isn't jailed yet, he's done for with the Carrion Crows on his ass

==========

The four are also gonna beat Jay's ass into the dirt when they find out he knew about Damian since he was under Talia's care and never brought him up

Or maybe not, Red Hood isn't on good terms with Batfam or Carrion, and if he did go single father he'd have assassin's on his undertrained ass

But also

That kid's in a fucking cult for fucks sake what the hell man?

==========

Oh yeah, the Batclan side of things.

Given the disastrous trend of Robins biting the dust or being brutalized by previous ones, Robin is benched indefinitely, especially with Tim admitting that he's going to focus more on his civilian life

Particularly getting that CEO status in Drake Industries and playing the Prodigy Image for PR

Also the Carrion stuff but Batman doesn't know that

Bruce sort of has his hands full simultaneously training daylight hero Signal and recent partner Batgirl

as do they but he doesn't need to know why

Batman is sweating bullets after learning about the rapidly growing Undying Carrion and realizing they have to investigate this. Especially if he knows about Carrion Violence's Lazarus eyes

Cassandra and Duke meanwhile are sweating because they have to investigate themselves without getting caught

Just because Tim is benched doesn't mean he's wholly out of the game

He does lots of duty on the batcomputer as he did during Stephanie's Robin time

Plus, since he's gone Computer Man, he spends more time with Barbara and learning technology with her

Which is later exploited by Carrion Thread

So yeah, with the Batfamily infested with three moles, It's gonna be rough not raising suspicion but slightly easier with each other to trust

Plus they can do some espionage for the Carrion side of things

==========

Suffice to say that the Carrion Crows and maybe even Young Justice become much closer thanks to this, so if something real bad happens like Tim's Sixteenth birthday, he'll trust them to have his back and to give a shoulder to cry on

And to think this started off as Jason Todd hate . . . And also Batman hating . . .

Oh yeah, I never established wtf Stephanie"s fake ID was, just that Tim helped her get one, should probably toss that in as well

Tim doing experiments until he can, in cases of emergency, revive his family with Pit water makes sense.

I do love that this AU focuses on Steph, Duke, and Cass because they can be overlooked by fandom and canon (I'm glad Tim is a focus as well, but he's not nearly as overlooked as the other three).

I'm always down for Bruce bashing, and I like the idea that they are slowly driving him nuts. He has no clue why this new gang is always ahead of him, and he just wants to figure it out. Fuck him, though.

The role for Steph in this is great. I think that Bruce is too limiting for her character. She should be able to make her own decisions with support, not dictations of lines. She's too used to making her own decisions for some random ass man to tell her what she can and can't do. It doesn't matter that Bruce is Batman and a billionaire. Steph deserves the respect to be a leading decision maker of her own life.

In this AU, she's able to shine as the brilliant, fierce, and strong person she is while being able to lean on Duke, Cass, and Tim.

Duke and Cass have it rough with two separate vigilante (ish) personas, but you did mention they kind if work not as frequently as Steph is able to.

As far as Jason, there's very few fics that address how his attack on Tim would affect his reputation in Crime Alley. That, more than anything, would devastate the man. The kids of Crime Alley, whose trust is hard earned, losing faith in him. I don't remember which fics address this, but even fewer actually have Crime Alley find out about Red Hood attacking Robin. That whole situation is tricky to navigate as a fan of both Tim and Jason.

Anyways, I love the amount of detail you put into this AU. What part of Gotham would they control? Would they be fighting with Red Hood for Crime Alley, or would they set up territory in another section? Or do they not have territory?

I'd be down to hear more about this AU. Stuff like what their outfits are like, what missions they tackle, how the public treats them, etc.

#dc comics #tim drake #dc universe #cass wayne #steph brown #duke thomas #dc au #thank you for the ask!!!!

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 7 months

Note

Aita for banning my homeless, pregnant sister from my house?

My sister (31 F), has been pregnant with her child for a few months now. She lost everything a couple weeks prior to finding out. I (28 F), saw it coming. She's always been a bad person. She'd steal things from my home, the store, even at church. She enjoyed spreading nasty rumors about people in our family to other family members just to see them fall out and never speak again. She even got our aunt to cut off our cousin, who as a result became homeless for about a year. She was never once sorry. She openly enjoyed the negativity she spread.

When she came to my door after months of no contact, with a positive pregnancy test and a sob story, I gladly let her in. She told me and my boyfriend (29 M) about how she'd gotten kicked out of her ex's place because of her pregnancy. My boyfriend and I both felt really bad and told her she could stay as long as she needed.

But it was hell. She'd steal things from our home and sell them, use our private life as a gossip topic with the family, and even try and pit my boyfriend and I against each other over ridiculous things. We didn't mind the messes she made or the neediness, because she was pregnant, but that wasn't the best either.

We also found out that the real reason she was kicked out was because she'd cheated on her ex weeks before she'd even known she was pregnant.

We finally had enough when she pretended to leave the house secretly and recorded the two of us being intimate. We found out when the family was discussing it on Facebook a couple days later. My boyfriend went out the next day and bought a cheap trailer from a nice guy who even brought it over for us and set it up real nice for my sister while she was out doing God knows what.

My sister came back fuming. Understandably?

She was angry for a bit, throwing things and breaking them, but then cried about how we clearly don't love her and don't give a fuck about her baby and how it's supposed to grow on the streets. Even though she isn't on the streets. She's probably crying in that trailer as I type this now.

The trailer has a tv and everything, and we even provide her with food, keeping her fridge stocked 24/7. We buy her clothes every time we get ourselves some, and we even pay her phone bill. That doesn't stop her from crying to the family though, and the majority of them have shunned my boyfriend and I as a result. Still, I don't see any of them stepping up and helping her the way we are.

Still, it feels really fucked up to kick your homeless sister out while she's pregnant and doesn't really have anybody else. I see her going in and out of her trailer every day, looking sad and lonely. I feel bad. I'm honestly on the verge of bringing all her stuff back into the house and setting up her room again, but a little voice in the back of my head tells me I shouldn't

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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braxlrose · 11 months

Note

head canons where the reader is like trad goth or something like that?? 😁

OFC!! I absolutely adore trad goth women 😍 (totally not my type at all, wink wink nudge nudge. they definitely shouldn't say hi to me in the dms at all. No way jose) but anyways, I didn't know which guy you wanted so I did all of them!

SOFT/SFW HCS FOR TOKIO HOTEL W/ A TRAD GOTH GF

bill

-literally LOVES doing your hair, whether it's slicked back, teased up, gelled up, shaved on the sides, different colors, different textures, HE LOVES IT.

-if you dye your hair hair other colors than just black, he would beg you to let him dye it. he gets all the shit for it too. And even picks up snacks for you while doing it. But it's kind of chaotic bc the mf is impatient af 💀

-if your hair isn't naturally black he will also help you touch up your roots

-THIS MF LITERALLY BEGGED YOU TO TEACH HIM HOW TO DO YOUR MAKEUP

-he watched so many videos on YouTube to figure out how to do your hair and makeup

-SHOPPING SPREES ALL THE TIME

-you guys get so much stuff and you always do runaway/model shoes for eachother

-he loves listening to new music, so when you introduced him to bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Bauhaus he was super excited

-LOVES tagging along to your nail appointments to watch your nails get done

tom

-so bc he has a lot of fangirls, you got harassed a lot too. and these fangirls were commenting on your appearance all time. sending letters to you and tom, death threats, screaming stuff at concerts, harassing and stalking you and tom. It got to a point where tom had to hit one of the girls who tried to come at you with a switch blade. pookie is so protective 😘

-the way you do your makeup is literally magic to him. like he's seen bill do his makeup, but yours is so much more intricate.

-he literally loves it when you leave kisses on him from your black lipstick

-he gets internally pissed off whenever an interviewer talks about your appearance, it's crazy obvious

-hes a little fucker and acts like he's dying whenever you're touching up your roots because of how strong the hair dye is

-he goes to places like sephora w/ you to buy new makeup when you run out of something you need and he's so surprised by everything in there. he had no idea how much makeup one store has

-he thinks you look super fucking hot in your outfits too.

-he got you black lingerie and quote on quote said he thought you would like it because it was "goth", but he definitely just wanted to see you model for him

georg

-as we know, georg has AMAZING hair. so he let's you try differently hairstyles on him all the time

-whenever he walks by a store and sees an outfit you may like, he goes in and buys it immediately as a gift for you

-if you're overly obsessive about music or gothic celebrities, he'll let you lay in his lap and let you talk for hours

-if you have a lot of tattoos on your body, he loves tracing them

-he gets annoyed as shit whenever anybody talks about you and will glare down anybody who stares at you funny

-dont come for me for the stereotypes but if you like movies like Frankenstein, he will 100% watch it with you. he loves you more than anything in the entire world so whatever you like doing he will do it with you

-he loves it when you scratch his head if you have acrylic nails, it feels so nice and he will fall asleep so quickly in your lap

gustav

-like I've said before, I fully believe gustav LOVES LOVES LOOOOVES alternative women. I think I mentioned that in the rockstar post. so bc of this, he thinks you're insanely hot.

-he sits on the bathroom counter and let's you practice your eye makeup on him

-bros eyes actually widened when he saw what you looked like without makeup. NOT IN A BAD WAY OR ANYTHING THOUGH. he thought you were totally hot with makeup and w/o it you were even hotter.

-if you have your eyebrows shaved off, he literally won't stop touching the place where your eyebrows used to be. apparently it's "super soft" 💀

-if you were platforms that make you taller then him...OH MY GODDD he'll probably cum in his pants.

-I'm 99% sure sub gustav has a mommy kink or atleast a fem dom kink sooo

-he gets so mad whenever anybody sexualizes you. yk that video of Rent A Poarch or wtv it's called where th is singing Schrei and then Gustav goes and punches that guy. well if it gets to a point where someone has made you uncomfortable as fuck, that's what he'll do

taglist: @hearts4kaulitz @burntb4bydoll @spelaelamela @bored0writer @fishinaband @billsleftnutt @dead-tapes @tokiiohot @bluepoptartwithsprinkles

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ckret2 · 8 months

Text

Chapter 19 of Human Bill Is The Shack's Prisoner But They Haven't Told Anybody Yet (title tbd), featuring: Wendy!!! Who hasn't been told yet! But she sure as heck knows something is going on.

also featuring: Bill wrangling Mabel into a secret plot against her better judgment; guest appearances from Soos, Melody, Thompson, and baby dragons; and digging into what Wendy's got going on under the "cool girl" facade.

####

Sitting on the attic bench, Mabel said, "Okay, here's an abstract one."

Lying spread eagle on the floor staring at the ceiling, Bill said, "Hit me."

"A president, an astronaut, and a movie star."

Bill paused. Bill looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. Bill said, "Which president?"

"Your favorite."

Without hesitation, Bill said, "Bury the astronaut, bed the—"

"Stop doing it wrong!"

Bill sighed noisily. "Betray the astronaut, befriend the movie star, and betroth the president."

"Really? You never marry politicians over artists."

Bill hesitated. "I don't?"

"Which president are you thinking of."

"I'm not playing anymore."

"Bill. Which president—"

"I quit. I'm bored now."

"Give me a hint," Mabel insisted. "Is he on a dollar bill—"

Bill sat up and pointed out the attic window. "Oh wow, what's that!"

Mabel's head whipped around to look.

"It's a change of topic!"

Mabel whipped back to glare at Bill.

"No—no, I'm serious, don't give me that look." Bill lowered his voice. "I've actually been meaning to bring this up. It's something I need your help with."

Mabel gave him a skeptical look—behold the coward, trying to weasel out of admitting which president he clearly had a crush on—but said, "What is it?"

Bill glanced around. "Not out here. Anyone could listen in. Somewhere private."

Mabel pointed out the window. "But Candy's mom's about to pick me up..."

Bill stood up and peered out into the early nighttime dark. "Not for at least fifteen minutes, she isn't. I'll be quick. Come on."

"You're acting really suspicious."

"No, I'm acting secretive. You're the suspicious one. When have I ever given you any reason to be suspicious of me?"

Mabel raised a brow.

"Point taken. When have I given you any reason to be suspicious of me this year?"

Mabel raised the other brow.

"Any reason this week."

"You have had a good week," Mabel conceded. "Fine, but I'm not taking you somewhere private without taking precautions."

"Fine," Bill said. "What precautions?"

####

He looked in dismay at the sock gloves tied onto his hands with yarn. "You couldn't have at least given me the colorful socks?"

"Sorry! Dipper's socks are thicker than mine and all he has are white. I'm not taking any chances."

"You hate me."

Mabel shut the bedroom door. "Okay!" She sat on her bed. "So tell me what it is you want."

"Okay," Bill said.

He told her.

When he was done, she studied him with a thoughtful frown.

"What? I thought you'd love the idea!"

"I do," Mabel conceded. "The problem is all the other things you could do once you get your hands on it."

"From inside this shack? Not a lot."

"Mmm... It is a great idea..." Mabel screwed her face up. "I'll think about it."

"For how long?

"Give me a day."

"We don't have a day to spare. We're working in a very narrow timeframe if we want to pull this off."

"And whose fault is that?" Mabel planted her hands on her hips. "You pushed this on me at the last minute so I couldn't think it over!"

"I did not," Bill said, affronted. "I only thought of it myself a couple hours ago. Do you think I'd have wanted to do this last minute if I'd thought of it any sooner?"

Mabel wouldn't put it past him, if he thought the pressure would make her more likely to agree. "I'll consider it."

"For how long? Look, kid—it's a great idea, you know it's a great idea, but the longer we take to get started the less likely it'll happen, and if you don't do your half I can't do my half, and then the whole thing's ruined—"

"Hey!" Mabel pointed at Bill. "I said I'll consider it! If you try to make me answer before Candy's mom gets here, it's gonna be no."

"Okay, okay!" He raised his socked hands. "So, what—by morning?"

Mabel thought, then nodded. "Okay. I'll decide by the time I'm back from Candy's."

Bill cracked a wide smile. "I know you won't let me down." He glanced out the window. "And good timing; your ride should be here in..."

He trailed off. Mabel had put her glass pyramid from Ford in the window so it could catch the sunlight, and Bill was completely focused on it. "Hey, where'd you get that?"

Mabel looked at the pyramid. "Oh, that? Grunkle Ford gave that to me."

"He did?" Bill looked at her with undisguised shock. "What for?"

This was it. This was Mabel's opportunity. The moment she'd prepared for. With a casual shrug, she said, "To commemorate my initiation."

Bill's eyes widened further. "Your initiation?"

"Uh-huh. Into the Mysteries."

"Into the MYSTERIES?" If Bill's eyes got any bigger, they'd fall out of his skull. "Hold on a second! Did Stanford join a mystery cult? And he didn't tell me? Which one! Is it about me?"

Mabel tipped her head back. "I'm sorry, Bill, but I don't think you've been initiated into the Mysteries. I can't tell you what they're about."

"It's about me," Bill insisted. "It's got to be about me, why else would it involve..." He flailed one socked hand at the pyramid.

Out the window, Mabel glimpsed headlights sweeping by below. Perfect timing. "Sorry, Bill, that's my ride!" She put on her sleepover backpack, scooped up a doll—Allie-Ann the Alien could come this time—and tried to shove Bill toward the door. "Move. I'm not leaving you in here unsupervised."

As Bill was pushed, he twisted around to stare in wonder at the pyramid. He tripped over a pile of Dipper's dirty clothes and stumbled shoulder first into the wall. "Ow. At least give me a hint! Where did the Mysteries originate? Are we talking the original Greek stuff? Fishmasons? Cheap knock-off Cabala? Real Kabbalah? I've been expecting Sixer to get into that for years. It can't be, I didn't have anything to do with Kabbalah—"

"Who said the Mysteries have anything to do with you!"

"But the pyramid—!"

Mabel got Bill out of the bedroom with one last big shove and slammed the door. He stumbled over his feet and almost hit the wall again before righting himself. Mabel jogged past him to the stairs. "Bye, Bill!"

"Kemetism," Bill tried. "I'll be so disappointed in Ford. At least tell me it isn't Kemetism!"

"See you tomorrow!"

Bill groaned. "Hey! Remember what we talked about!"

The door slammed.

Bill dragged his hands down his face. His fluffy hands. Right. He'd forgotten to ask her to free him.

He looked at one of his hands suspiciously. "It's not Kemetism, right?" he asked it. "You wouldn't do that to me."

He manipulated the sock into a hand puppet, deepened his voice, and said, "Of course I wouldn't, Bill. You taught me to have better taste than that." Gah, terrible impression. He sounded more like Stan than Ford.

Bill could go downstairs and pester one of the humans into freeing him from his sock gloves; or, he could figure it out himself, in case they tried to restrain him like this again.

Bill sat on the floor and started chewing through the yarn.

####

Wendy's parents looked at the forest differently.

They both had a tendency to go still and quiet when they were surrounded by trees, but that was where the similarity ended. Her father looked at the forest with Knowing, and her mother looked with Seeking.

Her father was a lumberjack. Her father was a Corduroy. He stood in the forest like he was a tree himself: still, tall, skin rough like bark, rooted to the spot by six generations. Wendy didn't know why "family trees" were illustrated as branches and leaves. They were root systems; your ancestors were buried deep below your feet, and their bony grips on your ankles slowly pulled you down into the dirt too.

Her father looked at the trees like he already knew every secret they held—every ancient lightning scar, every squirrel love affair, every bird with too many eyes and every eye in search of a bird. If you asked him where the Hide Behind was, he'd point at a tree without hesitation, and then he'd tell you to stop staring.

That was the thing with him: stop staring. He knew everything about the forest, except the things he didn't, and the things he didn't know he didn't want to know—and he didn't want his children to know them, either.

When her mother stood in the woods, eyes upturned, quaking like an aspen, she was like a pilgrim in a cathedral, standing weary and rapturous in the nave and gazing up at the stained glass windows. In later years, she'd seemed like a pilgrim who'd just realized she'd walked into the wrong god's church.

Aspens weren't native to Gravity Falls. You found them around Portland.

Her mother always wanted to know more. She talked about things her husband didn't and asked about things he wouldn't. But Wendy didn't think she was ever happy with the things she found out.

One of Wendy's last memories of her mother was of seeing her standing on the overgrown path to the old, abandoned Corduroy family cabin in the woods. Staring at it like it terrified her, but like she had some question she couldn't leave without asking it.

Her father, knowing what he knew and refusing to seek more; her mother, always seeking but never comfortable knowing; and Wendy was somewhere in between.

Wendy had worked in the Mystery Shack long enough that she knew where its occupants were, the way she knew where her heart and lungs were. When there weren't tourists, she could hear the pipes in the morning and know Mabel was showering upstairs—it was always Mabel, everyone else in the shack either showered before Wendy arrived for work or after she'd left for the day—and she could hear the TV through the "Employees Only" door and know from the cadence of the muffled murmurs whether it was playing an English or Spanish station; and she knew when somebody was cooking and could tell who it was based on the smell; and through the floor boards she could hear the washing machine in the cellar, but she could predict when laundry day was coming two days ahead of time because Soos had run out of white dress shirts and switched to blue.

She did the same thing at home. From her room, she was always aware of where her brothers and her father were supposed to be—there was a little hole in her awareness where she felt like her mother should have been—and each thud and smell and footstep and shut door confirmed her instincts. She wondered if she got that awareness from her mother or her father.

From her post behind the cash register, she was quietly, casually aware of where everyone should be. And when something was wrong, she knew.

####

Mabel came into the shack through the gift shop entrance, wearing her sleepover backpack and carrying a stuffed doll under her arm. "Hey Wendy!"

"Hey, Mabel." Wendy glanced at the ceiling under the upstairs bathroom. She could still hear the pipes running to the shower. Huh. Maybe Dipper decided he didn't want to stink this summer. "What's up?"

"Not much, not much." Mabel heaved herself up to sit on the counter next to the cash register and set her alien doll beside her. "So. Wendy. Home girl. I need a little help, and I hear you're the gal to help me."

"Oh, yeah?" Wendy propped her chin in her hand. "What kind of help?"

"You have a fake ID, right?"

A surprised smile crept across Wendy's face. "Yeah? Why?"

"The gas station cashier knows my family too well for me to use mine."

Wendy laughed. "Okay, you know what? I'm in, just to find out what a thirteen-year-old needs a fake ID for. I can't do drinks, but anything you need to be eighteen for, I've got you covered."

"Awesome! I'll see you after work?"

"How about my lunch break? Thompson's picking me up to go get something." Since the start of summer, Soos had asked Wendy not to keep her lunch in the kitchen fridge anymore. He said it was because between his own household and the visiting Pines, there wasn't any extra space. It was too crowded. "Too crowded" was the same reason he'd also asked Wendy not to eat in the kitchen, or use the indoor toilet, or spend her break in the living room. Wendy had her doubts. "We could get lunch at the convenience store instead of a drive-thru."

"Even better! Thanks, Wendy! I'll see you at lunch!" Mabel waved as she ran to the living room.

Upstairs, the shower turned off.

Wendy stared at the ceiling. Huh.

####

When Soos escorted the first tour group of the day into the gift shop, Wendy greeted him by bursting out laughing. "Your suit."

For almost two weeks now, Soos had been conducting his tours in a slightly-too-tight, slightly-too-short suit jacket Wendy would bet he'd had since high school. He hadn't said anything about it, but Wendy figured something had happened to his normal coat on the night he and the Pines had been dealing with that thing they refused to talk about.

But today, he finally had his usual, properly-fitted jacket back on; but the sloppy repairs done to the huge gashes in the back stood out like a sore thumb. "Man, you never told me your paranormal problem did this much damage."

Soos winced. "Is it that bad?"

"Dude." Wendy laughed. "The back of your jacket is shredded. It looks like you escaped a horror movie." She paused. "Uh—the repairs aren't bad though! They look great. You did a great job."

"Thanks, but it's okay. I'm gonna work it into the show. I'm telling the tourists a mama dragon almost killed me."

Wendy's eyes lit up. "Did you finish the baby dragons?"

Soos glanced around to make sure none of the shopping tourists were listening too close, then picked up a cardboard box. "Boom. Check 'em." It was full of live lizards with rubber bat wings attached with alien superglue. "Awesome, right? I'm gonna set up a terrarium for them in the museum. I'm putting in some red Easter eggs like they just hatched."

"This is gonna blow the tourists' minds." Wendy fished around under the cash register for a bag of chips and dropped a couple in for the lizards. "So... what was going on here a couple weeks ago? You never told me."

"Um." Soos immediately lost the ability to meet Wendy's gaze. "Well. It's—it's complicated."

"What, is it still a secret? I figured it was over by now," Wendy said. "It wasn't actually a dragon, was it?"

"No."

"Then what, a werewolf?"

"No... I really can't—"

"A ghost?"

Soos paused. "Define 'ghost.'"

"Uh... any kind of dead person."

Soos squirmed uncomfortably under the weight of the interrogation. "Does it count if the person should be dead, but, for some reason, is not?"

"Did we have another zombie uprising?"

"Not exac—"

A muffled voice shouted, "Hey!"

Something above the shop thudded. Wendy saw a light flicker. Wordlessly, she and Soos looked up.

"HEY! This isn't what we agreed to!" The thudding traveled across the ceiling, meandering through the gift shop. A few tourists gasping in alarm as the lights swayed over their heads. "If you think you can keep me locked up in here, you'll regret it! Let! Me! OUT!"

Everyone in the gift shop—Soos, Wendy, and a dozen tourists—fell completely silent, looking up. The ceiling creaked and rattled above them one final time before falling silent.

Soos swallowed hard. He let out a strained laugh. "Whoops, heh. Guess you guys found out what happens to tourists who don't buy anything. Am I right?"

The tourists laughed.

"Ha! Yeah, you guys get it! Wendy, hold down the fort a minute, I've gotta... check on something I forgot to deal with. Um. With the... spooky sound effects."

He rushed through the "Employees Only" door.

####

When Soos cracked opened the bathroom door, Bill's face was inches away, wet wavy hair dangling all over his face, irritated red eyes glowering straight into Soos's.

Soos flinched. "Dude. You jumpscared me."

"Nice of you to finally free me from the bathroom." Bill elbowed past Soos.

Soos rubbed his stomach where Bill had shoved him. "Hey, Bill—I know getting stuck stinks, but uh.... if you shout like that, the tourists could find out about you, you know? And you don't want that."

Bill whirled around. "Correction: if you don't keep your promise to let me move freely around the shack, you cause the tourists to find out about me, and you don't want that! We both know you'd never give me any rights if I didn't make the alternative worse for you—so if you don't want to risk getting arrested for kidnapping, don't put me in a position where I have to make things worse."

Soos patiently waited for Bill to finish spinning the narrative in his favor. "Okay," he said, "granted. But I just sort of accidentally didn't tell someone else to listen for you while I was giving a tour." Soos spread his hands in what he hoped was a conciliatory gesture. "Perhaps, in the future, you could make spooky ghost noises to remind me you're up here, so I can go 'Oh no, I forgot the triangle guy is taking a shower' without the tourists suspecting anything, instead of escalating straight to self-endangerment? That—that seems mutually beneficial, right?"

Bill considered that. He screwed up his face. He said, "Sure! Fine. That's fair." His voice was a lot more chipper than his sour expression. Soos wondered if Bill was aware that his face gave stuff away. "Next time I should just get Stanford to supervise. He'd say I have an hour and he'd be back in sixty minutes and zero seconds."

"Yeah, I don't think Ford wants to do that. Lately he's kind of busy with the whole figuring-out-how-to-kill-you thing."

"And I don't want to shower. Nobody is happy." Bill turned away from Soos. "Is Mabel home yet?"

"Uh, I think I saw her in the kitchen—"

And just like that, Bill lost interest in anything Soos had to say. He drifted down the stairs, stumbled on a couple of steps, and was gone.

####

Soos returned to the gift shop. "Thanks, Wendy."

Wendy dragged her gaze down from the ceiling. "Sure, no problem." She opened her mouth to ask what all that had been about; then decided she didn't need to hear again that she couldn't be told anything about whatever was going on here. But something was going on.

Whenever a customer wasn't checking out, Wendy listened to every creak and sigh of the wood, the way her mother once listened to the wind rustling in the birch trees. There were so many more thuds and thumps in the shack than there used to be; she'd noticed it for days. From her post behind the cash register, she was quietly, casually aware of where everyone should be. And when something was wrong, she knew.

There was something wrong in the Mystery Shack.

Time to start seeking.

####

Mabel trotted out of the gift shop in a dark blue sweater with an old-fashioned Polaroid camera knitted on the front. The camera lens was a piece of reflective plastic that looked like it had been popped out of a pair of sunglasses. She was also wearing a pair of cheap plastic reflective sunglasses with one lens missing, so Wendy didn't think there was much mystery about how Mabel had made this sweater. Mabel plopped down on the steps outside the shop beside Wendy to wait for Thompson's arrival.

"Okay," Wendy said, "I've gotta ask. How did you know about my fake ID?"

"Robbie said Tambry told him!"

"Oh, you guys are hanging with Robbie?" Wendy wondered if he and Tambry were back together again. She should ask Lee; he'd be the most likely person to know who it wouldn't be awkward to ask.

"A little. He's working on a music video that he wants creepy synchronized twins for, so he asked me and Dipper. We met up to talk about the details."

"Oh dude, he mentioned he was working on some kind of spooky song. Something about the 'ghost of childhood'?"

"That's the one! We're the childhood ghosts."

"Awesome. Let me know how it goes."

Mabel gave her a thumbs up. "Okay, I answered your question, now you have to answer one!" Her voice dropped to a faux whisper. "Why do you have a fake ID? Is it so that you can work at a casino across the border where you rendezvous with a handsome foreign spy?"

Wendy laughed. "What? No." She looked around. "I'll tell you, but you can't tell anybody else. Except Dipper I guess, he's cool."

"Promise!"

Wendy took off her flannel shirt, tugged her hair over her shoulder, pushed aside her undershirt to expose her right shoulder blade, and turned her back toward Mabel. "Check it out."

"Whoa! Tattoo!" Mabel poked the bag of ice tattooed on Wendy's shoulder.

"Yeah, I got inked in February. I think it's cool. Like, it's a weird tat, right? Who gets a tattoo of a bag of ice? But if you know, you know. That makes it personal." Wendy pulled her shirt back on and buttoned it up. "Plus, in like five years, I'll probably be dating someone who goes—" she put on a false high voice, "'Hey Wendy, why did you get this tattoo?' And I can go," Wendy squinted off toward the distant trees and adopted a faraway voice, "'It's a long story. About the greatest fight of my life. When the world... nearly ended.' All serious. But then it's still a dumb bag of ice."

"That's such a cool idea. We should all get matching tattoos!" Mabel pulled up her sweater sleeve, showing off her rainbow rock bracelet. "What if I get it on my wrist! So that the tail of the shooting star wraps around it like a bracelet! Do they have glitter tattoos?"

Wendy chuckled. "I don't know, but that sounds awesome. But you guys are gonna have to wait like, five years to get yours. Ooor, get a fake ID that says you're eighteen." She winked. "Robbie's talking about getting one too. He wants it on his chest, over his actual heart. I'm still waiting for a really funny time to be like, 'Oh, you haven't done it yet? I already got one.'" Mabel laughed.

Thompson pulled up, and they piled into his minivan.

####

Wendy wasn't quite sure what she'd expected Mabel to need an 18-year-old's assistance for (her best guess had been helping Stan commit voter fraud), but nowhere on her list had she considered—

"Scratch cards," Mabel said to the cashier. She would have looked like a real slick customer, with her serious expression and reflective shades, if one of the lenses hadn't been missing. She was a 50% slick customer. "I'm gonna need to see, uhhh..." She pointed at three of the scratch cards on display behind the cashier. Their art displayed a purple unicorn, a diamond-encrusted tiara, and a neon beach party. "All of these!"

The cashier gave Mabel a skeptical look. "How old are you, again?"

Wendy leaned on the counter beside Mabel and quickly said, "She's with me! I'm buying." She slid her fake ID across the counter to the cashier. "Mabel's just my... uh... helper?"

"Psychic helper!" Mabel said.

"Psychic helper," Wendy agreed.

"Yeah, I can tell which cards are gonna be winners," Mabel said.

The cashier looked between them, looked at Wendy's ID, and shrugged. "Okay," he said. "You said you wanna get... all of these?"

Wendy went quiet, trying to figure out how much that would cost. "Um."

"No no no!" Mabel waved her hand. "I just wanna see them all. You know. For psychic purposes."

"I can't hand customers cards they haven't paid for. You might start scratchin' 'em."

"That's fine! Can you just... hold all of them up? One at a time? So I can get a really good look at each of them?"

The cashier stared at Mabel, then gave Wendy a weary look.

Wendy smiled nervously. She regretted not asking Mabel what she was planning. "Please? It'd be really cool of you," she said. "Also, I'll leave you a tip." She only had like fifteen dollars. She hoped she could cobble together a decent lunch cheap enough to afford leaving a tip.

The cashier sighed heavily and grabbed the unicorn scratch cards first.

While the cashier showed Mabel every card in all three of her chosen categories one by one, Wendy and Thompson circled the convenience store, prowling for food. Wendy grabbed a cereal bar, a protein bar, a couple flavors of jerky, a bottle of milk—added together that had to be, like, four and a half food groups, right?—and drifted over to the ice cream. "Oh, dude. Check this out, they're selling Summerween ice cream." She pulled out a pint and waved it at Thompson, showing off the jack-o'-melons on the packaging. "I thought Summerween was only celebrated around here. Is Doug & Jimmy's a local brand?" She didn't think she'd ever heard of the brand before. She studied the packaging, but only learned that all proceeds went to an (unnamed) charity.

"I don't recognize it. What flavor is it?" Thompson asked.

"Watermelon sorbet." The only other two Doug & Jimmy's flavors on the shelves were marionberry and huckleberry, which was about as stereotypically Oregonian as you could get. Maybe they were local.

"Aw, I don't like sorbet."

"Hey, Thompson! Buy me this pint, I'll pay you back later."

"What! Why don't you pay for it?"

"I've gotta use the last of my money to tip the cashier." She hoped Mabel had brought her own money to pay for the scratch cards. Wendy doubted she could pester Thompson into that. "C'mon, man, it's only like four bucks. I get my paycheck this afternoon, I'll pay you back." She shook the sorbet in his face. "And it's for charity. Are you gonna notdonate to charity?" She gave him an impish grin.

Thompson sighed, but held out his hand for the ice cream.

There were piles upon piles of unicorn-ed, tiara-ed, beachy scratch cards on the front counter when Wendy and Thompson came up with their purchases. The cashier said to Mabel, "So, that's all of them. Which do you wanna buy?"

"Hmm." Mabel put her hand to her chin, making a show of looking thoughtful. "I think... I'm gonna have to sleep on it and come back in the morning. I'll let you know then."

The cashier stared at Mabel in disbelief. The cashier stared at Wendy in disbelief.

Wendy grimaced. "Sorry, man. She's got this... process?"

"I've got a process," Mabel agreed, nodding firmly.

Wendy shrugged. "Psychics, you know?"

The cashier sighed heavily and shoved the scratch cards aside to scan their food.

Back in the van, Mabel watched as the convenience store disappeared behind them; then, laughing, reached into a hidden pocket in her sweater behind the knit camera, pulled out her cell phone, and stopped the video recording.

Wendy glanced back, did a double take, swallowed her mouthful of jerky, and said—with no small amount of awe—"Did you hide a camera inside a picture of a camera?"

"Yeah!" She pointed at the sunglass lens. "It sees through this like a one-way mirror."

"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen."

"I thought of it myself!" She played back through the video, rewatching to make sure she'd gotten reasonably clear shots of all the scratch cards.

"Why were you recording in there, though?"

"So I can show all the scratch cards to a real psychic!" Mabel stuck her phone in her skirt pocket and beamed at Wendy.

How much did Wendy believe that? Considering this was Gravity Falls, she figured the odds Mabel had turned up a real psychic were about 50/50. "Who is it? Anybody I know?"

Mabel was silent long enough for Wendy to turn and give her a questioning look. Mabel smiled winningly and said, "It's a secret!"

Wendy shrugged like it didn't matter. "All right, sure." There were a lot of secrets in the Mystery Shack these days.

####

"Omigosh are these baby dragons!" Mabel squealed. Several tourists turned to look at her.

Melody laughed. "Yeah! Soos 'hatched' them this morning." Out of sight of the tourists, she winked for Mabel's benefit. "He's gonna set up a terrarium for them this weekend, but for now they live in the shop." She saw Wendy coming and relinquished the cash register to her. "Hey, Wendy. How was lunch?"

"Hey Mel." She took back her seat. "Gas station junk. I found this, though." She held up her pint of half-eaten, half-melted Summerween watermelon sorbet.

"Oh, that's so cute! I've never seen that before, do they do that every year?"

"Dunno, first time I've seen it. I think the brand's new, they only have like three flavors."

"This'll only be my second Summerween," Melody confessed. "Last year, nobody warned me about it. I thought I was going crazy when I saw a bunch of kids running around in Halloween costumes in June. Some guy in a scarecrow costume knocked on my door and tried to scold me for not having any 'Summerween spirit' when I didn't have any candy. He calmed down when I told him his costume was awesome and asked if he'd explain the holiday to me. I think I gave him a bag of sour snakes? It was the only candy I had on hand."

"You really dodged a bullet," Mabel said.

"Oh yeah," Wendy said. "You're from Portland, right?"

"Yeah," Melody sighed. "There's nothing awesome like Summerween there."

Wendy wondered, not for the first time, how Melody could voluntarily move from Portland out to Gravity Falls. The local quirky holidays weren't that alluring. Anyway, everything Wendy had heard about Portland suggested it was the kind of city that would love to adopt something weird like Summerween.

Mabel said, "this is Dipper's and my second year too. Summerween sophomores!"

"Summerween sophomores!" Melody laughed. "This year, I'm going all out. I promised not to spoil the details, but Soos and I are doing a couple's cosplay, it's gonna be great."

"That'll be awesome! Hey, can you mention that in front of Dipper? We haven't made plans yet, and I'm worried he'll try to flake out on doing a twin costume with me this year. Maybe he'll be more interested if he knows some adults are doing it!"

"Ha! Yeah, I'll let him know."

"Oh, hey, Melody," Wendy said. "You're going in the house, right? Could I ask a small favor?" She held out the sorbet. "I know Soos doesn't want me using the fridge but, would you mind sticking this in the freezer just until the end of my shift? I don't wanna stick it in the cooler out here, I'm worried a tourist will walk off with it."

"Oh. Sure, no problem." Melody took the pint. "You leave at like three on Fridays, right?"

"Yeah. Thanks!"

####

Three came and went, and Wendy went as well.

She didn't pick up her sorbet—exactly like she'd planned.

####

(Thanks for reading! Please toss me a comment if you enjoyed, I love hearing y'all's thoughts and I'm excited we're finally getting to Wendy snooping around!)

#wendy corduroy #(for the art)#bill cipher #human bill cipher #(for the fic)#gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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girlsweat · 7 months

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Staying on my Couch

When you ask if I know anybody who needs a roommate, I offer to let you crash at my place for a few days. You tell me you don't need help moving, showing up at my door with two bags and whatever's in your pockets. I offer to take the couch, but you already feel bad about the situation. The first week consists of you trying to stay out of my way. It breaks my heart. I assume you're just getting comfortable and try to leave you be.

Your mood doesn't improve. The job hunt isn't going well, and you're hoping I don't ask for help with the bills. Finally I catch you, making you sit up so I can join you on the couch. You swear up and down that it's not me; I've been nothing but kind to you. But I feel like I could do better. I tell you to take a short break from applying to recharge.

The next few days I try more to make you feel at home. Insisting you eat with me rather than reheating my cooking, learning more about your life before you got here, and watching shows together on the couch. You aren't happy, but you're starting to be happier. Seeing those rare half-hearted smiles, noticing you tense up less when I'm around. It makes me happier than I thought possible. When you ask to see my bedroom I have to contain my excitement. I had been keeping it clean for days now, much longer than I did in the past. I sheepishly watch as your eyes dart around the room. You leave after a minute or two, content to not comment on any of my clothes or the posters on the wall.

Your phone not working catches you off-guard. You guess mom finally decided to stop paying for you. I don't want to pry, instead offering to add you onto my phone plan. You tell me you're very grateful, even if your contacts didn't get saved somehow. I never tell you I swapped the SIM card while you were asleep. Betraying the trust you have in me hurts. But I was so happy to see how soundly you slept now.

The nicer I am to you, the more comfortable you get around me. And the bolder I get. Your wallet's been empty for days now. The money went back to you, of course. Until one of those jobs calls you back, it's not like you need your ID for anything. I find some nice looking clothes I came across on clearance. They fit surprisingly well, even if some of them aren't your style. Once, we both fell asleep on the couch. I tried to apologize, but you laughed it off. It was the first time I heard that laugh.

On the day you ask again to see my bedroom, you hear me talking to somebody at the door. There's something familiar about the other woman's voice. I'm very sorry ma'am, but I don't know who you're talking about. She's gone by the time you show up behind me to ask. It was a missing persons case. Things like that scare me. I gently grab your hand. This is it. This is your chance to help me worry less. Your opportunity to make me happy, just like I made you happy.

#...i dont know what to tag this as.#cnc kidnapping #kidnap fantasy #Im gonna use kidnapping tags even if it doesnt exactly fit the bill. also this is vile I should apologize #ideas #this was supposed to turn into petplay. It still can! If this gets a part 2 #but I also wrote it on a whim #long post

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multiversed-daydreamer · 9 months

Text

Pet

Pairing: Dark!Joel x Dark!Tess x Mildly!Disabled!Reader

Summary: Joel and Tess spot you, new to the QZ and immediately take an interest in you. However, they'll discover you're smarter than you look and not so easily trusting as they might like.

A/N: A spooky fic for the spooky season. Let me know if you want me to continue. This chapter isn't too spooky but it'll get there next chapter and so forth. Thank you @patti7dc for the beta read. I appreciate you! Check out my Masterlist for more!

Tags: MDNI, Mentions of kidnapping, Mentions of potential noncon, Stalking, Manipulative!Tess, Reader has a mild physical disability but can work.

You grit your teeth in annoyance as sweat drips down your temple. It was annoyingly hot and working outside with the sun beating down on you hasn’t helped. Neither did the giant fire raging right next to you. Ugh. Body burning detail. It paid better than most, which is why you took the shift, but you’ll never get used to the rancid smell of cooked flesh. You’re not strong enough to lift the bodies, but you help shovel the ash out and keep the fire burning. You were relieved to learn you weren’t the only one on shift to not be able to lift a body, there were plenty of others that taught you how to tend the fire and where to put the dead ash to keep yourself busy for an entire shift.

He watches you discreetly. You’re far too distracted trying to keep up with everyone else to notice him. He prefers it that way for now. He’d first seen you a few months ago, new to the Zone and trying to figure out how rations work and what jobs were the best to take. From what he could tell, you went back and forth between the easier jobs, like street sweeping and wall painting to cover up Firefly propaganda, to the harder jobs that paid a bit more, body burning and sewer maintenance. What had initially caught his attention about you was the fact that you had some kind of disability. You limp when you walk, and your hands seem to shake when focused on a task that requires finer motor skills, such as counting out rations or writing your name on a sign-up sheet pinned to the wall. It also shows when you talk, your speech is slurred as if you’d been drinking. It has him wondering why the fuck FEDRA has you working. Sure, you’re technically abled-bodied, but they should at least help you out a little bit by reducing your weekly mandatory shifts.

Tess notices you at a market about two weeks after you get to the Zone. She notes immediately that you’re not with anybody, seemingly quiet and observant. She also picks up on the tension in your body when people veer into your personal space, looking very much like a frightened animal. She nudges Joel who had been trying to barter down a price for a can of peaches. “Let it go, we’ll get some from Bill and Frank next week.” She whispers to him, her eyes never leaving you. Tess doesn’t work many shifts, instead choosing to stay hidden and playing her role as everyone’s boss in the shadows. FEDRA often looks the other way, due to discount prices on pills they sell to the officers, and the knowledge that Tess and Joel practically run the QZ anyway. She nods toward you. “Who’s Little Red Riding Hood?” She asked curiously.

Joel looks around the market before spotting you in an oversized red sweatshirt with your hood up, as if you don’t want people to look at you. “Oh. Haven’t caught her name yet. She showed up about two weeks ago on body burning detail of all shifts.” He scowls at the reminder, he still has no clue why FEDRA would let you take such a shift. Sure, you’re a hard worker, but it’s got to be awful on your body. It’s too hard on him, but a little thing like you? He shakes his head and looks away. Fucking FEDRA pricks.

Tess watches him curiously for a moment, her eyebrows raising at his words. “No shit? I’d assume she’d be able to get away with painting the whole week.”

“I’ve seen her paintin’ a couple ‘a times. They don’t offer it every day.” His eyes flick back to you before meeting Tess’s again. They were comfortable in what they had together, but every once in a while, they found it fun to bring in a young submissive playmate for a night or two. Often clients they sell to, most of them hit on Joel anyway, and a fair share flirt with Tess as well. It wasn’t hard for either of them to find a willing sub. ‘Pets’ they call them. Young twenty-something boys or girls take back to their shared apartment and use as an outlet when neither of them feels like submitting to the other. “Are you interested?” He asked, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice, trying not to let on that he was very interested in more than just one night with this one. No. He wants to keep this one. Safe and unbothered by the harsh labors FEDRA inflicted on everybody else.

Again, Tess raises an eyebrow at him. “Are you?” Not bothering to hide the shock in her voice. Joel shrugs as they move through the crowd. They follow her at a distance, neither one of them knowing if it’s intentional yet or not. “I mean, if you’re serious, we need to have an actual discussion about it.” He nods, she’s right. This one is far different than any of the others.

“Yes, I’m serious. And you’re right, we need to plan first.” He admits. They finish their business in the market, keeping an eye on you for the time that they can before leaving to head back home. Once they are inside, Tess turns to eye Joel, who is setting a small pack of beans on the table, their only find for today. It’s a good thing they’re heading up to Lincoln soon.

“So,” she started, crossing her arms and leaning against the counter. “This girl… she’s not at all our usual type.”

Joel settles into a chair, sighing as he stretches his legs. “Ain’t that the truth? Real skittish like, from what I’ve seen. Eager to prove herself though. Wants to keep up with everyone else.”

Tess nods, he certainly has her interest with his unusual find in their next potential playmate. “She with anyone?”

“Nah. Not from what I can tell. Comes alone, and goes home alone. Haven’t seen much of her outside of shift, but she wasn’t with anyone today.”

Tess nods, thinking. “Any interactions?” He shakes his head.

“She’s a shy one, doesn’t seem like she’s comfortable enough to even want friends yet. But she’s polite, professionally friendly, but not overly so. Mostly keeps to herself from what I can see.”

“And how exactly do you plan on approaching her with this?”

Joel goes quiet for a long moment, thinking. “I’m not gonna be the one approaching. You will.” Tess scoffs, shaking her head, already shutting him down. He leans forward, holding up a hand to stop her oncoming protests. “She’ll likely trust a woman sooner than she’d trust a man. If you’re the one to approach her, you’ll have a better shot. I can tell you’re not completely onboard anyway, if you’re the one to try and get her up here, you might be more game for this. Or if you decide you don’t want her, we can look somewhere else. “

Tess nods along. “Alright. I’ll see.”

You’ve been here for about a month and this is only the second day you’ve managed to get off. You make your way through the crowded streets. Damn, did everybody get today off? You head into the market, you have saved up quite a few rations, and are hoping to get enough to last you at least until your next day off.

You buy an extra pair of shoelaces for one card, it can’t hurt just to have. You’re perusing a table with canned soup and bags of beans on it when you feel someone brush up against your shoulder. You glance over to catch somebody wearing a brown jacket next to you. You step over to give her some room, paying five rations for a bag of beans and four rations for two cans of soup before gathering your purchases in a bag you brought with you.

“Haven’t seen you around before.” A woman to your left says. This time you do look at the person who’d brushed against you. She’s tall with long light brown hair and attentive green eyes like it was uncommon for her to not know strangers. Her mouth was crooked in a way that could’ve been a grimace or a smirk, you couldn’t tell which it actually was.

“It’s a big QZ. Crowded too. I haven’t seen you around either.” You return, watching her mouth curl into a definitive smirk. Her eyes trace down your body, and you wonder if she's sizing you up for dinner. Fuck. You hadn’t meant to offend.

“When’d you get here?” She asked as if already knowing it hadn’t been long.

“About a month ago. What about you?”

She chuckles at your response, “Hmmm. About twelve years back now. Arrived with a whole group.”

You watch her for a moment. You want to ask how they all managed to make it, but you worried it would give away far too personal information about your own trek here. So you nod and step away from the stall, planning to say an awkward ‘nice to meet you’ before disappearing, but the woman steps with you, seemingly more interested in you than the food she initially came to buy.

“I’m Tess.” She holds out a hand to you, and your own intrigue rises when you notice that she's wearing rings. Jewelry isn’t too common anymore, outside of keepsake necklaces and wedding rings. The sight of some that had multiple rings clearly just to wear has you fighting not to raise an eyebrow.

You take her hand after a moment, pronouncing your own name slowly as you shake her hand. Her grip is firm and her fingers are warm when they curl around yours. She repeats it back to you and you can’t help a little smile when she gets it correct the first time. A lot of people don’t understand you the first time, it’s always a small victory when a few people do.

You and Tess end up walking the market together. She explains certain booths and why they’re there. She gives you small tidbits of information on some of the people you cross too. Nothing personal, just what they buy or sell and why it could be useful depending on the circumstances.

Afterward, she ends up walking you home too. You notice people eyeing you two curiously, and you wonder why people would suddenly take interest. You’re pretty sure she hadn’t even realized the attention the two of you are gaining, or if she does she’s ignoring it. She’d been asking you questions about why you came to the QZ and who you came with. You’d answered the first, but not the second. You’d been alone by the time you’d made it to Boston, but you had zero interest in letting anybody know that.

“I left with a group, we made our way here.”

“Any of them make it with you?” She inquired. It was awfully bold of her to ask, but part of you immediately liked her because of that boldness. All day Tess had been blunt, bold, and confident. Someone who doesn’t bother to sugarcoat things, something you appreciate, because you hate trying to sugarcoat things as well. It often leaves people thinking you mean something else, or that something isn’t as bad as it seems, which could be deadly in today's cordyceps-infested world.

You don’t want to lie to Tess. You think you might actually like Tess, but she’s still a stranger, and you don’t want her to know you’re on your own. “Just a handful.” You say absently not meeting her eyes. Drawing to a pause on the sidewalk in front of your building.

She stops with you, shifting to the side so you two aren’t blocking traffic. You notice a few people raising an eyebrow at you and Tess as they pass, and again, you wonder about their interest. “Did I make you uncomfortable?” She asks. She doesn’t sound offended or apologetic, simply curious.

“Uh… No.” You shake your head, focusing on her and not the people around you. “No, this is my building. I’m probably gonna head up. Curfew probably isn’t that far off.” You nod to the darkening sky up ahead.

“Oh.” She glances at the building, eyeing it for a moment, before nodding and turning to give you a small smile. “Well, I’m glad I can walk you home.” You chuckle at that. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Yeah. You too. Have a good night!” You turn and climb the steps to your building ducking inside. You glance back at Tess and give her a polite nod when she says ‘you too’ before turning and heading up to the apartment you now call home. You sigh as you unlock your door and get in, setting your stuff on the flimsy dining room table and going back to lock up for the evening. You sit on a chair and stare at the bag on the table. You did far more interacting than you’d planned on today. It was the longest conversation you’d held in weeks and now you’re exhausted. Your energy level was depleted by Tess, the pretty woman with bright green eyes who seemed to know the actual answers to the questions she’d asked you before you told them. With the rings on her hands, and the curious stares from everybody you’d passed by today. She was clearly somebody. Who she was though… You had no clue.

So Joel had a point. Big fuckin’ whoop. They were currently sitting across from each other at their table, drinking whiskey they’d gotten from Bill. Tess was recounting her day with you to Joel, who had opted to stay in today to keep from raising too many suspicions.

“The whole damn QZ was lookin’ at us today.” Tess groused as she took a sip of her drink.

Joel chuckles. “Good. Maybe they’ll take a hint and keep their fuckin’ distance from her.” He mutters, not bothering to hide his possessive intent.

Tess watches him with amusement sparking in her eyes. “You’ve never had issues with any of the others interacting with people.” She points out softly.

He meets her gaze head-on. “I want to keep her.” He states bluntly. Tess doesn’t seem surprised by this, judging by his behavior, he’d given himself away. Joel knows that if Tess isn’t interested he can fuckin’ forget about it, though. She told him all about her day with you. How she’d gotten your name and you had seemed completely oblivious to who Tess was. A surprise, honestly, considering you’d been here a month already. Damn, you must really be keeping your head low. It’s only a matter of time before you do hear about them though, he’d seen you getting closer to a few of the other regulars on the shifts he’s taken with you.

“She’s smart. Perceptive too. She definitely took notice of people watching us today.” Tess leans forward, raising a challenging eyebrow at Joel. “What happens when she figures out who we are and she wants nothing to do with us?”

That was another difference in you as a choice for their games. The others knew exactly what Joel and Tess were capable of and wanted to play their game anyways, hell, they were often also involved in shady shit of their own. Sometimes with Joel and Tess, and sometimes outside of them with others.

You were new and clueless, and from what they’ve gathered from you, you had zero interest in getting your hands dirty outside of actual work detail. Joel sat back and groaned, bringing his own drink to his lips and downing the whole thing in one go. He grimaced, making a puckered face at the bitter alcohol. Everyone they’ve brought home with them had been more than consenting. Joel finally found a potential pet that he wants to actually keep and it’s a high possibility that she might turn them down entirely. Consent had never been a problem before now. Technically they could just find someone else. It wouldn’t be too hard to find a willing partner. But Joel didn’t want to find someone else. He wanted you. “She’s… not supposed to be working in the condition she’s in. She’s going to hurt herself.”

“And it’s supposed to be our job to take care of her?” Tess challenges.

“It could be. She’d probably submit easily. She’s tiny and disabled, it’s not like she’d be a challenge for either of us.”

Tess just watches him, her face carefully not showing any emotion. “You want to take her hostage?” It’s not like they haven’t taken hostages in the past. But they’ve never taken hostages in their apartment inside the QZ, and certainly never considered holding a playmate hostage.

Joel sighs, pouring himself another two fingers of whiskey before answering. “Preferably not. But I don’t want to let her go either.”

Tess considers this for a long moment. “If she says no, and we keep her anyways we’re going to need to come up with a plan. She’s wary enough as is, getting her up here is going to take a while.” She pauses, Jesus. This is going to be way more work than necessary for a single pet. “Well, if we do hold her hostage, we have to keep her. Are you sure she’s the one you want?”

“Yes,” Joel answers her without hesitation. He shifts a little in his seat, trying to hide his own anticipation for what’s to come.

Tess watches him with shrewd eyes and knocks back her own drink. “Me too. Let’s figure out a plan, and start puppy-proofing.” She jokes.

While you are curled up in bed for the night, trying to find some rest, Joel and Tess are across the QZ making plans to make sure you never leave their bed.

#tlou #joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x reader #tess servopoulos #tess x reader #tess x joel x reader #spooky fic #disability representation #yes i am actually disabled

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telomeke · 1 year

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MY SCHOOL PRESIDENT EP.9 – A CALL FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY

(above) Ep.9 [3I4] 9.00

This little shared moment between Tinn and Gun is also MSP playing its part in Thai BL's collective support for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Thailand. The country is moving toward it, with Parliament having ratified a bill that will make this a reality, but they're not at the finish line yet and there are still hurdles to be overcome (i.e., it could still be pushed back at any time).

With this as the context, many Thai BLs recently have made it a point not just to raise awareness of the issue, but also to keep marriage equality in the forefront of public consciousness lest support for it lose momentum.

I think Not Me and The Eclipse also did this, but I'm not sure exactly in which episodes though (let me know in the notes, if you will, and also which other BLs/GLs joined the party).

I know Bad Buddy definitely did step up to the plate for this, with PatPran spotlighting the issue of LGBTQ+ marriage when they went through their Ep.10 khan maak on the steps of the Archi Faculty (and with a subtle callback too in Ep.11 – see this link here).

So this is MSP's turn at bat, and they're doing it with a sweet little flourish by the sea (maybe nodding at Thailand's popularity as a venue for beach weddings? 😉). Tinn is expressing his hope for them to marry one day, and Gun is radiant (if a little embarrassed and cheekily dismissive) at the prospect.

And in doing so they're keeping the issue alive in the public eye, while at the same time their joyful, puppydog innocence is helping to tear down stigmas and normalize what many still seek to demonize, by showing up the baselessness of othering smears on the simple issue of two people in love wanting their union to be recognized like anybody else's. 💖

A brief note on the Thai linguistics here though – Tinn IS being irredeemably cheesy, but his comment about switching from songwriting to marriage isn't quite as headslappingly klunky as the English subtitles would have us believe.

He's playing on the word แต่ง (pronounced something like dtaeng) which has several meanings, including to write/compose and to marry.

So at Ep.9 [3I4] 9.00 when Tinn talks about switching from dtaeng phlaehng (แต่งเพลง, songwriting, where phlaehng means song/music) to dtaeng ngaan (แต่งงาน, a colloquial term for getting married), his line is not quite as semantically dissonant in Thai as it is in the English subtitles (even if it is a bit corny 😂).

I think it would have been a better fit if they'd translated his comment more along the lines of "switching from writing songs to writing our marriage vows" instead. Ah well. 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, a tip of the hat again to My School President for finding a way to squeeze in a socially responsible (albeit very subtle) comment on the weighty topic of marriage equality amid all the light-hearted gamboling in this episode.

Neither the comment nor the context in which it's delivered detracts from the other. Even though they're making a political statement, there's nothing obnoxious or in your face about the delivery at all, which is the best way for a potentially-divisive message to land.

I do love this show! 😍

#my school president #tinngun #bad buddy #marriage equality #love is love #thai linguistics

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gallonwghost · 3 months

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A Photo of my privacy and enjoyment in life after the kosa bill passes:

#Stop kosa #This bill isn't helping anybody #It's making things worse #My parents already put restrictions on everything so the kosa bill will just be the nail in the coffin for me

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isnt-it-pretty · 8 months

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So for those of you who are unaware, I'm visually impaired. I have a rare genetic retinal disorder, congenital nystagmus, generally bad vision and astigmatism.

I bought new glasses today since my vision got worse again (yay for adult progressive myopia I suppose.) My insurance covered $250cad of the $717cad total. I paid the other $467cad out of pocket, which I don't really have the money to do alongside my other expenses.

I'm on government disability and am paying off student loans, so I don't have a lot of money to spare for things like this, but not having functioning glasses isn't an option.

If anybody has any money to spare (please only if you have extra) and would like to help, I have a Ko-fi, but please don't feel pressured to give. I know that things are hard for everybody right now.

This is the bill. It was $309.99 per lens and $99 for the frame, totaling to $717.00. Insurance (the name of which is censored for privacy) covered $250.00, and the remaining patient total is $467.00

#personal #disability #glasses #fundraising #fundraiser #visual impairment #pinned #pinned post

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mellori · 5 months

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Abigail Pent's chief interest in coming to Canaan house was the opportunity to study "Pre sovereignty, pre-cohort" history. Which is to say there is a time before the houses had a (or at least before this iteration of a) military and before anybody called the J-man himself an emperor.

I just know Jod tried to make the nine houses into a star trek style "post religion" socialist utopia and just couldn't fucking help inserting himself wherever anything he didn't approve of happened, which was (eventually? immediately?) basically everwhere until it all backslides into everybody's favourite form of government: religiously motivated fascism.

At first, he's the only person with any memory (at all? How tf did space travel happen again?) of prior history and culture, so he's able to point out the flaws that he perceives in other people's ideas in this new, enlightened democracy he's created.

People worship him for ressurecting them, sure, but this is the new and perfect world that he's created, obviously religion isn't allowed to interfere with government - that's from before the ressurection, it's practically barbaric.

But this is a democracy - and since he designed it, a perfect one at that. Even the Necrolord Prime, the Great Ressurector gets a say in politics. It's not a subversion of democracy when he uses his position to influence the democratic processes that he designed, because he designed them. Perfectly, remember.

So perfectly that whenever something happens that he doesn't approve of it must be the people involved who are flawed, not the process. Like all those fucking politicians from before that destroyed the world.

So each time an election rolls around he endorses new, better, smarter people. People who agree with him more often, people who listen to him, people who understand him, who think that he should be in charge. He reminds them that he thinks they should be in charge. Makes speeches about why it's good to elect people who think he should be in charge - leaders should be humble enough not to want the job of leading. Just like he is...

And he's immortal. I doubt it even took a hundred years after the first bill got passed that he didn't 100% approve of for that snowball to turn into a royalist avalanche.

#the locked tomb #tlt #john gauis #jod

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qqueenofhades · 2 years

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Hey, i just wanna say thank you for your political posts because this is the first time in literal years that i've felt any sort of understanding of the american political system and why shit is as bad as it is. Honestly I've even come out of reading a lot of then with optimism as weird as that may sound, because it seems like things CAN be made better and thats something i really needed to know.

So yeah uh, thanks. I guess.

Aha, you're welcome. I do try. There is so much toxic and illiterate political misinformation out there, from both right and left, that I am not always sure how much good it does, but at least I'm saying it, so, yeah. Ever since I started posting more regularly about politics, my block list has grown exponentially and looking at my notes is often an.... interesting.... experience, but there you have it.

The last six years have been unprecedented in American history, and even if we've grown more or less numb to the constant cavalcade of disasters, we shouldn't normalize them. Nor should we think that everything is totally fucked and beyond any kind of fixing. That sort of "nothing matters so just either give up or put all your hopes in a fantasy revolution to fix everything!" thinking is never going to do any good for anyone, and it's not even reflective of what's really going on. It's hard to tell among all the GOP screaming and extremism and threats, but 2022 is (at least thus far) representing the first sustained move away from Trumpism that we've seen since Trump first got elected. Things are getting better, and if there's a good result for Democrats in November, they have a chance to continue doing so. Even the professional liberal handwringers and concern trolls extraordinaire at MSNBC just ran this graphic:

Yes, the Republicans are so dangerous that they can't be allowed to get anywhere near power again, and I worry that too much of the country doesn't see that (and will be helped out by Democratic voter apathy, but we did just have that barn-busting result in deep red Kansas, so... yeah, I think Team Blue is paying attention). Yes, the Supreme Court will kill us all if it doesn't get fixed, and soon. But people who are acting like "oh it doesn't matter that the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, nothing is going to happen" like... what? The reason the Republicans are screaming about how it has never happened before is because it has never happened before. Because while we have had shitty terrible crime-adjacent ex-presidents before, none of them have been as bad as Trump. We don't know what yet, but this means something. I have been as skeptical of Garland as anybody, and I'm still waiting to see what comes when the J6 committee finishes its hearings. But this increases the public pressure for accountability, and the FBI followed up the raid by seizing cellphones belonging to Trumpy members of Congress (including coup-supporting GOP PA Rep. Scott Perry). The recovered documents are reportedly so sensitive that the FBI had no choice but to send in the gang to execute a search warrant, signed by a Trump-appointed federal judge and a Trump-appointed FBI director. Welp.

Anyway, the point is: boy, do I also struggle with the "things are terrible and there's nothing to be done" mindset. But it isn't true, the people who are telling you that have a vested interest in your disempowerment, and for all its flaws and failings, there's absolutely no reason we have to abandon our venerable old democracy to the absolute worst of what America has to offer. People voted en masse in Kansas and defeated Republican extremism -- IN KANSAS! There are some great progressive Democrats running for Senate, and getting just a few more will rid us of having to kowtow to God Emperor Joe Manchin and Grand Vizier Kyrsten Sinema every single time we want a bill passed. And we got that whole above list of accomplishments done in the worst possible political circumstances, so, uh. Maybe the Democrats actually do know what they're doing, just a little. (Also, I will personally pay ten dollars to anyone who can actually, thoroughly, and satisfactorily explain to me how the Democrats "are really a right wing party!!!" Just saying).

So yes. Things can get better. Things ARE getting better. Things can continue to get better if we continue to act in a way that makes that possible. Etc etc my favorite quote about how to engage with a flawed and frustrating reality: "you are not obliged to complete the work, but nor are you free to abandon it." Because. Indeed.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 9 months

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WIBTA for kicking my brother out?

Long story short, last year I (24) got my own apartment, it's literally only a 1 bedroom; I got it myself without a cosigner, I paid an entire year of rent up front, and I paid a triple deposit because it's my first lease anywhere, and I've never asked anybody to help me pay any of the bills, I even moved all my furniture in completely by myself without help from anybody including my mom or her stinky husband (32, ew) or my brother (19)

I lived here by myself for about 4 months when my brother and my mom's stinky husband got into a fight

(it was Stinkys fault, he was starting shit with all my moms kids and my brother was just the only one aggressive enough to put him in the hospital like he deserved, but my mom defended him and lied to the court so he wouldn't be deported, he's her only source of income atm because of her disability)

anyways, my brother went to juvie for a few months and the courts say he and Stinky can't live in the same house together anymore, since this happened a few days after he graduated high school, they decided to not try him like an adult for the sentence, BUT if he breaks the restraining order, he will be tried like an adult; so my mom asked if my brother could live with me for a few DAYS so she could get her own place, for her and her kids (including the brother STILL IN MY HOUSE), and divorce Stinky-mcgee

I agreed to do it under the radar because I would have to pay a huge fee to add him to my lease, but it's against my lease to have him here this long without adding him...and my apts are trying to rebrand as "luxury" to raise rent, so they're kicking people out left and right for very minor offenses like smoking cigarettes indoors or hanging clothes on their balcony, things TECHNICALLY against the lease but REALLY stupid. (and charging new people more than what the people being kicked out were paying)

they will 100% evict me if I don't pay to add him to my lease if they find out, so I can't even call the maintenance man (he's a snitch, he already snitched on me for having more pets than I said I did). So I can't get my AC fixed and its 110°F outside rn...if I get evicted, I don't have any savings and I will be homeless, BUT ANYWAYS

it's been 7months, and my mom hasn't even LOOKED for an apartment,

my brother has 3 jobs and a car, but instead of looking for an apartment he spends all his money on his girlfriend (20), and video games, and shoes (I get that he's still a teen, so he wants teen things), but he won't even pay for the grocery bill if I ask (I only ask for groceries, the CHEAPEST bill, since I work with food, I rarely eat at home anyways, so it's mostly HIS groceries) and he always says he doesn't have enough money

I am at my fuckin limit tbh,

but I'm not sure if he could get an apt the same way I did with his conviction history (he's been to juvie like 6 times for different things), and my mom has been evicted so many times for fighting people that I doubt she could co sign if they look into her renters history; and my older brother (27) won't co sign or take him in because he says my brother isn't reliable enough, and he doesn't want to take the financial hit if my brother gets arrested again and can't pay rent... (the other kids are still school age, so they don't count)

he's old enough to go to a shelter, but we use to live in a shelter for YEARS after a tornado took out our house and our dad, and he took it the hardest, so I think living in a shelter might be a trigger for him(?)...so I kinda feel bad for suggesting it(?)

WIBTA if i just packed his shit, put it in his car, and told him to go to either his girlfriends house or a shelter?

(I kinda feel shitty for even thinking of it tbh)

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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ckret2 · 10 months

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youve gotten a few asks about billford before, and your plans for ford's relationship with bill in your fic, but im curious if you personally ship it yourself/*like* it. and, just for the hell of it, if you have any opinion on billdip too, since that one's even more controversial.

I'm gonna put most of this under a cut since it's not only long, but also long about two different topics, but the tl;dr is:

Yeah, I'm a fan of billford. I don't think it's canon, inevitable, or necessary to their dynamic, and I'm still on the fence about whether things will tilt toward the romantic in my fic or if it'll stay platonic, but I do enjoy the ship a lot because it has a lot of (obsessive, weird, unhealthy, angsty) elements that interest me to explore in ships. Billdip, on the other hand, does nothing for me. I don't care about how people ship imaginary characters in their fictional fandoms and I'm not gonna block anybody for liking it, so this isn't a moral stance, here—I just don't like it personally.

One of the things that intrigues me most about a ship is the idea of love that's gone so far it isn't even love anymore but punched out the other side into unhealthy obsession, and "I'll spend the next thirty years of my life hunting you to death" versus "What if I turn you into a gold statue and carry you around to stare at you a lot" sure fit right into "unhealthy obsession." On top of that, some of my favorite ship dynamics are:

the worshiper and the person they've picked to revere as their god, either metaphorically or literally—with bonus points if the person they've devoted themself to doesn't deserve that worship and maybe isn't even all that special, and the worship actually reveals more about the mind of the lover than it does about the (un)divine nature of the beloved

the mad scientist and the muse who gives them ideas and inspires their work (one of my all-time OTPs has a line where the mad scientist says to his ex "we were each the muse to the other"), with bonus points if they both get so caught up in "what can we do together? What dreams can we make reality—" that they plunge into full "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" territory—and bonus bonus points if they eventually come out of the haze of SCIENCE and one of them is horrified by what they've done... but maybe the other one isn't.

two people who are wildly compatible with each other (similar hobbies, tastes, worldviews! they fill in the gaps in each other's personalities! they each happen to be the other's type! they understand each other like no one else can! whatever, fill in the blank!), but for some reason one betrayed the other, they've tried to kill each other, and now things are vicious and bloody and painful and raw between them; but if they talk to each other and accidentally let their guards down for even a split second, all that history is still there, they still like the same stupid movies and share the same stupid inside jokes no one else will ever understand and have the same stupid complementary life dreams, they could have been good for each other, but there's no road back to where they were before the betrayal. Their chemistry is like two huge magnets strapped to land mines: the attraction is as powerful as ever but heaven help them both if they ever touch.

or, alternatively, two people that have all that chemistry, but are just really toxic and do bad things when they're together and enable all each other's worst tendencies, even if they don't necessarily do bad things to each other; and they've got to navigate the fact that they might adore each other so much but they are objectively worse people when they're together.

I like ships with inhuman things. As a writer I like waxing romantic about the inhuman things and trying to convince the reader that yes, this too is beautiful and lovable when seen through the eyes of a lover. I will make you take the stupidest love interest seriously for five minutes. I've romanticized a sticky pile of goo, I've romanticized a robot spider, I've romanticized the concept of being a disembodied voice, I've romanticized a pteranodon made out of lava, and I'll romanticize a cyclopic gold-plated corn chip too, don't test me. Who better to adore a sentient triangle than a scientist-artist who sees the beauty in precise angles?

Depending on the headcanons and/or AUs you're working with, you can get all of these pretty darn easily out of Billford.

I like writing Ford as the awed naive intellectual, hungry for knowledge, for the secrets of the universe, for more, who was utterly dazzled and starstruck by this divinity who tantalized him with esoteric secrets—and who's been furious at Bill for thirty years for betraying him, hurting him, threatening his home and everyone he loves, but underneath all that also furious at him for not being what he advertised when he could have been that; and Bill, meanwhile, playing it cool, far too comfortable playing the role of faux god, but privately, secretly distraught that his favorite "student"—the one who takes Bill's "teachings" and gets creative and inventive with them, the one who always wanted to know more, not just about the universe but about Bill personally—his favorite student no longer worships him, doesn't even respect him, doesn't even see him as an equal, but looks at him like he's the scum of the universe, and Bill won't even admit that it bothers him but it's killing him that nothing he does can get his favorite to so much as smile at him again.

That's the dynamic in my head when I write them. You could play it as purely professional, a god disappointed to lose a worshiper like a boss disappointed to lose his best employee or a celebrity disappointed to lose the president of his fan club; or you could play it like platonic friendship, maybe a QPR; or you could play it like a romance. I like the zest added when you toss romance into this already nasty mess of emotions. I like capping off all that heartache with, "—and if things had turned out differently, maybe I would have taken your hand and traveled with you to the ends of eternity, if only you weren't [such a brutal heartless backstabbing piece of shit]/[unable to forgive a few white lies and some light torture]."

Billdip, on the other hand, does absolutely nothing for me. Not even just for the age reason—that does squick me out, but even if I try to look at it like "okay pretend he's aged up" or "stick it in an AU where they're both dumb kids having dumb kid crushes" I just, see nothing there. I don't even see anything there platonically. Like, legitimately—for the fic I'm working on, I've been trying to figure out what kind of dynamic/interactions they'd have beyond just "Dipper scowls at Bill a lot" and even on that level I've been struggling to think of something compelling between them. I look back on the fact that for a good few years billdip was the ship in the fandom and I go, "why? where's the meat? what do they do for each other?"

I'm forced to imagine that the ship must have been based on some combination of "fandoms naturally want to ship the everyman main character with the charismatic fun villain," "a bunch of teens with crushes on Bill were using Dipper as their self-insert stand-in," and "people assumed Bill wasn't lying when he said Dipper impressed him and didn't start revising that opinion until we got to see firsthand that he uses lines like that on everybody." It feels really uncharitable of me to the shippers to assume that their OTP is founded entirely on statistically average fandom trends and character misinterpretations rather than, like, y'know, traits actually present in the characters, so I'm taking it on faith that there's probably more to it than that and I just don't see it because it just ain't my jam.

When I do try to speculate harder on "how would I get them to interact with each other in a compelling way, like, just in a platonic sense?" my brain starts going "well, dipper's a nerd who's into the paranormal, he wants to know about mysterious things? maybe he's fascinated with bill as a mysterious thing? and maybe... idk, why would bill give a hoot about dipper—maybe bill takes advantage of that fascination, tempts him with more information, maybe he's amused by Dipper's curiosity about weird things—?" and that's usually about the point where I go "this is just, the way Bill and Ford met. This is the watered-down junior version of Bill and Ford's first few weeks." In trying to figure out what the heck Bill and Dipper would even talk about I keep accidentally recreating a less interesting version of Bill and Ford's dynamic.

I want and need Bill and Dipper to have an interesting character dynamic in this fic so being unable to come up with something that personally compels me has been actively frustrating me lmfao, but it does serve to illustrate my main point here: man, billdip does nothing for me so hard that I can't even see them platonically interacting.

#billford #(not tagging the other ship because 'i don't like it and don't get it' feels kinda like hate and i don't wanna put hate in y'all's tag lmao #gravity falls #about my writing #anonymous #ask

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