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eilidh-eternal · 4 months

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“Single mom x Johnny” this, “single mom x Simon” that.

I want single dad Johnny/Simon and the single reader next door who is helplessly in love with them and their kid.

18+ MDNI

You never wanted kids. You’re convinced you would turn out to be just like your parents. That’s probably why you don’t have a ring on your finger or any sort of boyfriend or partner to speak of.

You never wanted kids.

Until Johnny goddamn MacTavish.

You’re in love with the man who always walks his little girl to school every morning, crooked pigtails flouncing with each too-big step she takes to keep stride with his long legs.

Madly in love with the way he smiles down at the tiny girl, even tinier hand held firmly in his as she dodges cracks in the pavement, and the shriek of her laughter when he lifts her by the arm, swinging her through the air to the next chunk of concrete.

Hopelessly in love with the broad shoulders he hoists her up on, little legs swinging with arms wrapped tightly around his neck and her chin resting on top of his head, blowing stray hairs of an overgrown mohawk out of her face.

Dangerously in love with the way he lets her cling to his front when it rains, like a little koala wrapped around this tree of a man who holds an umbrella in one hand and has a firm hold on her with the other.

Happy. He looks so happy with her. Like she’s the sun he orbits; the star that lights up his world.

You’re just a comet who occasionally passes them by.

——

Johnny never thought he would be doing this alone.

He’s so far out of his depth. Never even had the chance to dip his toe in the water before he was shoved into the churning ocean.

He still remembers every life-altering detail of that day. The phone call after the 16 hour flight back to base. The frantic drive to the hospital. The impossibly tiny, wailing little girl, all alone in the social workers office.

She’s all he has left of her. Of them.

His best friend. His partner in crime, for more years than he can remember. The person who understood better than anyone who he is, saw him through his darkest moments, and loved him with her whole heart.

Gone.

But he smiles for her. Because of her. Isobel is the light in the abysmal darkness that he’s drowning in. The buoy he clings to when he can no longer hold his head above the surface. She’s everything. His past, his present, and his future. And she’s sitting at the table refusing to eat her dinner.

“’s not right.” Her little nose scrunches, turns up at the meal, and she pushes the bright green plastic away, matching miniature fork sent skittering across the table by the force of it

Johnny lowers his own fork and swallows his frustration with a sigh. “‘s yer favorite. Wha’s wrong with it? ”

Her brows knit together as she studies the tray, little creases forming between them and she slumps in her booster seat. “Mommy didn’t make it.”

No. She didn’t.

Johnny was never the cook in the family. That was all her. She’d chased him out of the kitchen after he’d burnt one of her expensive pans and he was thus forth relegated to chopping, and occasionally peeling, duties.

“I know.” His chair scrapes against the floor when he pushes back from the table, moving to crouch down where she sits beside him so that he’s at eye level with her, and he pulls the fork and tray back towards her. “But mommy wouldnae want ye to go to bed hungry, aye?”

“I wan’ somethin’ else.” He watches her little bottom lip jut out, brows still pinched and face twisting into a stubborn pout.

“Wha’d’ye want?”

“Quesadilla.” She drags out the ‘ee’ sound, emphasizing her clumsy command of the foreign language in her already thick Scot’s accent.

He enjoys Mexican food. Loved the tacos Alejandro and Rudy shared with him and his team during his time in Mexico. She’d learned how to make them for his birthday.

Nowhere in Glasgow made anything like it. Not then, and not now.

“I cannae make a quesadilla, leannan.” Her little lip wobbles, eyes turn glassy, tears already welling up in the corners and threatening to spill down chubby cheeks. She sniffles, drags the backs of her hands across her eyes, and Johnny feels what’s left of his heart splinter, another little piece of it withering away to nothing with each fat tear that rolls down and collects at her chin. He unbuckles her from the booster and gathers her into his arms as he stands up, taking her with him to sit in his own chair at the table.

Her little shoulders shake, hiccuping with each muffled sob against his shoulder and tiny fingers fist the material of his shirt. “Miss ‘er,” she warbles, and his arms tighten around her small frame.

“Ah know, leannan.” More hiccups. More tears that seep through his shirt and brand his skin.

You should be here. You’re supposed to be here. With her. With him. With them.

“How ‘bout we go down to the shops? Ye can pick whatever ye want for dinner. Dinnae think they’ll have quesadillas, but I’m sure we can find somethin’ ye like.” She lifts her head from his shoulder, tips it back to peer up at him with bleary eyes and sniffles. Wipes her hand across her eyes again.

“Cheesy noodles?” It’s thin and reedy, poor little throat still tight and full of grief that he knows feels impossible to speak around.

“Aye, we can get cheesy noodles.” He brushes an errant strand of hair away from her face, tucking the unruly curl behind an ear where it probably won’t stay. Just like her mum’s. So much like her mum. She considers him, his offer, and toys with his shirt.

“And sticky pudding?”

“Whatever ye want, leannan.” She really shouldn’t have something so sugary right before bed but he doesn’t have it in him to deny her. Is just glad the tears have stopped. That she’s willing to eat, even if he has to bribe her with junk food and sweets. He sends her to put her shoes on while he cleans up in the kitchen and grabs his own shoes and keys.

——

He’s there.

He’s standing in the pasta aisle with his little girl in the buggy, smiling at the way she makes grabby hands at the dismal selection of boxed macaroni, and he pulls one down from the shelf to hand to her. She inspects it, turning it this way and that way, pointing to something on the packaging and saying something that makes him laugh.

You’re frozen in place, jar of pasta sauce halfway to the basket in your other hand, and you can’t move because the sound of his laughter causes something in your brain to misfire. Causes the electrical signals between neurons and synapses to jumble together and sets your nerves alight. You think you might really be frozen, body unwilling to move an inch away from where you stand now, by your beautiful neighbor in the middle of a goddamned Tesco, until a little voice is addressing you.

“Hi miss neighbor!” Johnny’s head whips around and when his gaze lands on you it feels like your stomach’s turned to lead. “We’re havin’ cheesy noodles f’r dinner!” She holds up the box in her hand and kicks her feet excitedly.

You’re currently kicking yourself for making what you’re sure is an expression closely resembling that of a fish out of water. Mouth agape, brows raised and eyes slightly widened in surprise. When your mouth finally remembers how to move you smile at the little girl waving her box of noodles and powdered cheese in the air. “Hello, Isobel. That sounds like a lovely dinner.”

His brows knit together, one of them quirked at a curious angle. “And how d’ the two of ye know each other?”

Isobel’s foot connects with his thigh and his head jerks back around. “She’s our neighbor. She gave me the tablet,” she whispers a little too loud, cupping a small hand in front of her mouth. He turns back to you with the same jaunty brows and a quirk to his lips.

“So ye’re the one responsible for the wee heathens late night sugar-induced marathon.”

“M-marathon?”

“Aye, she was bouncin’ round the house all night, the little devil.” He ruffles her hair and she swats at his hand.

“I- I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…” You don’t really know what you’d been thinking when you’d given her the Tupperware full of sugary confections to take home after she’d spent the morning helping you root around in the flowerbeds in front of your home. She’d been watching out the window for hours until she was suddenly right next to you, asking what you were digging for.

“‘s alright. Ye’ll just have to make up f’r it.”

It’s your turn to pinch your brows and tilt your head in confusion. “Make up for it?”

His lips part in a full, genuine smile, like the ones he gives Isobel, and your leaden stomach suddenly feels like it’s lodged in your chest, full of butterflies and other fluttering things you don’t dare to name.

“Oh aye. Reckon ye owe us a dinner since ye’ve skipped right to dessert.”

Next>>>

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luxaofhesperides · 4 months

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Soulmate AU: First Words + End of the World ; requested by @justwannabecat!

Duke has long since accepted that he doesn’t have great luck. Most things in his life tend to go wrong very quickly, or complicate situations he was already struggling in (see: being a meta and getting his powers in the middle of a fight). Having an incomprehensible soulmark is an unpleasant discovery on the morning of his nineteenth birthday, but not entirely unexpected.

He had been hoping for something simple, a common one like hi it’s nice to meet you or sorry, didn’t mean to bump into you.

What Duke gets instead isn’t even words.

Scrawled across his left hipbone is a string of symbols glowing a faint green. They’re not in a language he recognizes, and the symbols seem to move, shifting ever so slightly so they look different every time he blinks.

“Well,” he says after a solid five minutes of staring into the mirror, unable to rip his eyes off his soulmate’s words, “I hope theirs looks nicer than mine.”

He spends his birthday in a bit of a daze, enjoying time spent with the Waynes and his friends. It’s hard to be fully present when he’s all too aware of the soreness on his hipbone flaring up each time he moves. It’s hard to keep his mind off of it, wanting nothing more than to search for answers, unravel the mystery of his soulmate’s first words.

“Something on your mind?” Jason asks, as the attention shifts off of him for a brief moment as Harper and Cullen get ready to leave and everyone rushes to give their goodbyes,

Duke shrugs, carefully keeping his hands still so they don’t drift to where his soulmark is hidden beneath his clothes. “Yeah. Nothing you need to worry about, though.”

Jason looks him over critically, then nods.

Duke resigns himself to being investigated by the rest of the Bats. If he’s off enough that Jason had to comment on it, then that means everyone’s noticed and are trying to figure out what’s happened. They’re not going to ask him, because they think he needs space to work through whatever’s got him so distracted, but they’re also not going to just do nothing.

This won’t be the first time they’ve done this. Duke expects it. Frankly, it would be stranger and much more concerning if they didn’t try to dig up all his secrets the moment they caught wind of him hiding something.

He’ll tell them about getting his soulmark soon. Soulmarks can appear on any birthday between the ages of thirteen to twenty five; they might suspect he got his, but they won’t be able to confirm.

For now, Duke can keep his soulmate’s first words (whatever that gibberish means) to himself.

He makes the decision then and there, as his birthday party winds down, to tell them in a week.

And because his luck is abysmal, a world ending threat hits five days later and suddenly there is no time for soulmarks and first words.

Duke is the last to arrive at the Fortress of Solitude, hitching a ride from Superboy to get there. The biting cold and the harsh winds keep the place far from the reaches of the rest of humanity, surrounded by nothing but deadly white.

Desolate as the landscape is, it’s still in better shape than the rest of the world.

Things would be better if it was alien invaders. It would be more bearable if some sort of cosmic colossus tried to eat their solar system. At least then there would be something physical that they could fight.

Instead, the world is breaking apart, the sky and earth both fracturing to reveal glowing green faultlines. Timelines are getting mixed up and muddled; just yesterday, Duke had to evacuate a building that had been demolished forty years ago, then stop a gang leader who wouldn’t be born for another eight years from taking over a neighborhood block and holding the residents hostage. Strange creatures are appearing out of nowhere, crawling out of shadows and tide pools and from beneath the roots of trees, all horrible, monstrous things that go after people with teeth and claws.

The Flashes and the rest of the speedsters are nowhere to be found. The last time anyone get communication from them, it had been Impulse sending Red Robin a glitchy, barely audible video chat saying something along the lines of “trying to fix—unstable—keep us here—never been alive before.” All things that are very concerning to hear, made worse by the fact that no one had been able to contact them at all.

The quiet loneliness of the Fortress of Solitude is a welcome change from the constant screaming, death, and destruction that’s taken over Gotham as well as the rest of the world. Last he heard, even Justice League China was at the end of their rope.

“In here,” Superboy instructs, guiding Duke through the halls. There’s no time to look around at Superman’s secret base. All his focus is stuck on staying conscious for another few hours to see if this gathering of heroes is able to find a solution to the world breaking apart.

Batman stands besides Superman. Both nod at Duke when he enters the room. Wonder Woman is watching over John Constantine as he writes something on the floor, muttering under his breath. The rest of the Justice League lean against each other, visibly exhausted as they wait for Constantine to finish up what he’s doing. A few other heroes are here too, and Duke goes to join them where they lean against a wall, fighting to keep their eyes open.

“Hey,” he greets, voice low. “Hanging in there?”

Wonder Girl sighs. “Somehow. I don’t know how much longer we can do this. There’s just too much…”

“We’ll get through this. I mean, even without us out there, plenty of civilians have formed rescue and relief groups to help with keeping things under control,” Speedy says, gently knocking her arm against Wonder Girl’s. “We just gotta keep going. No giving up.”

“What’s this plan, anyways? I just heard that they needed me here to some attempt to fix things.”

“Well, without the speedsters, you’re kind of the only one who can help with time and power related stuff,” Speedy says.

“That’s definitely a stretch. My powers don’t really have anything to do with time. It’s all just light and shadow.”

Speedy shrugs. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you? Too late to complain about it now.”

Duke doesn’t get a chance to say anything else when a loud clap catches his attention. The entire room goes still and silent as Constantine stands up and surveys the circle and symbols he’s written, taking up an entire corner of the large room.

“Alright,” he says. “Time to get started. Remember, let me do the talking. If you have to speak, it’s only to back me up or when a question is directed to you.”

Batman nods to the other Justice Leaguers, and suddenly everyone is falling into formation behind Constantine. Duke hurries to join them with Wonder Girl and Speedy, taking a place on the edge of the group where he’s a little closer to the circle than the others.

Constantine begins chanting. His voice is steady though none of the sounds make any sense, refusing to form themselves into recognizable words, and the air the in the room feels heavier. The chalk circle glows a blinding white and Duke can see magic swirling through the air, his power kicking in the let him watch as reality tears and a glowing star in the shape of a boy comes out of it.

Duke blinks, forcing his power down. The hypnotic swirls of magic fade from sight, but the boy still glows, bright and terrible as he floats above the circle and surveys them all. A crown engulfed in blue flame hovers above his head and the fabric of the cosmos is draped over his shoulders as a cape.

Just from presence alone, Duke can tell that this figure is now the strongest existence in this universe. He hopes this boy king is kind; no one, not even Superman, would be able to beat him in a fight.

The boy king opens his mouth and speaks, but it’s not words than comes out. A strange static like sound emerges, but light and almost melodic.

His left hipbone burns.

Duke gasps, hand flying down to it, and the boy king’s gaze snaps to meet his.

The world stands still. No one moves. No one dares to breathe.

And then the boy king drops to the floor and walks out of the circle.

“I thought you said that would hold him!” Batman hisses at Constantine, who is looking more and more distressed.

“It was supposed to! I wrote it specifically to hold the King of the Infinite Realms!”

The boy king glances at Constantine. This time, when he speaks, it’s in smooth English. “Did you name the king in your circle?”

“Yeah, I named Pariah Dark… Bloody hell, you ain’t him, are ya?”

“No,” the boy king smiles, “I’m Phantom.”

The cape and crown fade away, and suddenly it’s not an all powerful, terrifying king standing before them, but a young man with white hair and green eyes who looks Duke’s age. Like he could be any other new generation hero in the room.

“Phantom,” Duke repeats lightly, just under his breath, but it makes Phantom look at him again.

He walks forward, ignoring the other heroes’ aborted attempts to stop him, coupled with Constantine’s frantic back off motion happening behind him. Phantom leaves the circle and the Justice Leaguers behind to stand before Duke, a soft smile on his face.

“Hi,” he says softly, “I dreamed of you.”

“You—what?”

“I dreamed of you. I have for years now. To think that being summoned was what made us meet—” Phantom breaks off into a breathless laugh.

Duke swallows, then drops his had from where it had been pressed against his hip. “So we’re really—? You have my first words too?”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Batman stiffen up. Maybe he should have just told them the day after his birthday, but in Duke’s defense, this is the definition of extenuation circumstances.

“First words?” Phantom repeats, “Is that… Do we have different soulmate connections?”

“I think so. Here, everyone gets the first words their soulmates say to them appearing somewhere on their body.”

Phantom’s gaze darts down to Duke’s hip, then back up. “Oh. I get dreams. Where I’m from, we dream of our soulmates, and the closer we get to meeting them, the more we remember the dreams.”

“And you dreamed of me.”

“I did.”

“As touching as this is,” Constantine interrupts, and Duke gets to watch as Phantom rolls his eyes, “We summoned you here for a reason. Our world is falling apart at the seams and we need someone powerful, from the Realms, to help us fix it.”

“Okay.”

“...What do you mean ‘okay’?”

“I’ll help,” Phantom says.

“Just like that? No deal to be made, no price to be paid?”

“Just like that. I’m not one for deals anyways. If I can help, then I will. But I do want to see what the problem is with my soulmate by my side, if you don’t mind.”

Batman steps in, fixing Duke with a steady gaze, a barely noticeable tilt of his head. “Signal?”

“Yeah I’ll go with him. Of course I will. The sooner the better, in fact, because everything’s gone to shit.” Duke turns to Phantom, taking hold of one of his hands. “It is really bad out there,” he warns, “If you need help—”

“I’ll ask for help from others in the Realms,” Phantom says. “No offense or anything, but if it’s really that bad, I doubt living mortals will be able to do much to fix things. It’s why I was summoned, right?”

“Right. Let’s get to it, then.”

There’s a flash of mischief in Phantom’s eyes, and cheeky grin stealing across his face for a moment, before he says, “Aye aye, captain!” and picks Duke up like he weighs nothing and flies up through the ceiling.

Duke is able to hear everyone’s surprised, panicked shouts before they’re outside the Fortress of Solitude and Phantom is flying them away. He only needs a few directions from Duke before he finds the first of the large fractures in the sky.

“Yikes,” is all he says, which is not a great thing to hear. “I think I know how to fix it, though. We’ll need to do a little investigating as to who, exactly, started messing around with reality, but once we find the source, it’ll be an easy fix.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”

“Even better than meeting your soulmate?”

“I haven’t slept for more than four hours all week. Knowing there’s an end in sight beats everything else.”

Phantom laughs, throwing his head back and Duke can’t help but drink in the sight of him, so ethereal and bright and full of life. “Fair enough! Got any ideas as to where we should start?”

“I’ve got an entire crew of detective vigilantes,” Duke replies. He’s not taking any more chances. No more waiting to talk about important things; he messed up by keeping his soulmark to himself, so he needs to make sure everyone meets his soulmate before shit goes south again.

“Let’s go find them, then!”

They take off again, soaring through the skies that are barely holding themselves together.

The world is still ending, and every hero is being stretched thin, but held carefully in Phantom’s arms, racing head first into a solution, Duke can’t help but feel that everything’s going to be alright now.

He’s had enough bad luck. Now, his soulmate with him, bearing the title of King with grace, things are finally starting to look up.

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp fic #prompt fill #my writing #when its the end of the world but youre soulmate is here and ready to help fix it #meanwhile constantine had gone ON and ON about how dangerous summoning realms beings are #and all the precautions they have to take and how to be specific when making deals etc etc #it was supposed to be only the justice league but with the world ending they wanted their proteges and allies with them in case things #went wrong w the summoning. and with the rest of the bats helping out in gotham and around the east coast #signal gets to join batman. plus hes got his meta powers that could help in the worst case scenario #NO ONE predicated signal and the GHOST KING being SOULMATES #batman leaves for gotham immediately. updates the rest of the team w 'ghost king successfully summoned. he's signal's soulmate.'#and does not respond to ANYONE after dropping that bomb on them lol #they do all get to meet phantom when they join forces to find whatever doomsday cult caused all this #and the world gets saved!!#also. semi related to all this. the speedesters are gone bc time went wacky and they tried to fix things. but then the speedforce kinda #came to life and trapped them. so they have been lowkey eaten by the speedforce bc the speedforce is the true eldritch monstrosity here #anyways. thanks for the prompt!!#working on ur other two prompts now :)

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