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lailyn · 3 years

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Supermarket Sweep

“Now remember, guys. We are here to get a few items, and these items only,” Stephen warned.

“Come on, Stephen. Live a little.” Tony slung an arm around his husband’s shoulders. “It’s been a while since we’ve gone grocery shopping together. You never want to take any of us with you when you go.”

“Yes, because when I go to the shops to get bread, bread is what I get. Not a gazillion boxes of mince pies and Christmas pudding.”

“They were on discount!” Tony argued.

Stephen rolled his eyes. “It’s already Easter, of course they were!”

“They were covered in edible gold dust,” Tony said with a defensive shrug. “Loki said the puddings looked really pretty.”

“Yes, they were,” Loki said dreamily.

“Fine, but no more! It’s not the healthiest thing, eating Christmas pudding for breakfast every day, and I had to do it for weeks,” Stephen ranted. “Can we please get something you’re actually going to eat this time? Here, if we stick to the grocery list - ”

“Yes, yes,” Loki sighed, grabbing the list out of Stephen’s hand.

“Thank - ” and Loki crushed the list in his fist and dropped the ball of paper onto the ground, “ - you,” Stephen finished glumly.

“Tsk-tsk, Loki,” Tony chastised. He patted Stephen on the back and bent to pick the crumpled list from off the ground.

“Thank you...“ Stephen’s voice trailed off at the sight of Tony chucking the list into the trash can. “Tony.”

“Tsk-tsk, Stephen. Why do you always concern yourself with such inconsequential matters?” Tony asked, mimicking Loki’s crisp accent. “You’re going to give yourself wrinkles.”

He ruffled Stephen’s hair affectionately, before making his way toward the store entrance where Loki was already pulling out not one, not two, but three shopping trolleys. “Hey, Lokes, wait up!”

“Wrinkles,” Stephen muttered, resisting the urge to finger his face for fear of finding new ones. He was sure a few had just cropped up and they had not been here five minutes.

__________________________

Loki stood at the fruits and vegetable section, half-listening to Stephen and Tony argue over the merits and demerits of getting imported fruits over local, seasonal ones for Happy Hogan’s fruit basket, who was currently in hospital recovering from something called a pacemaker operation.

Loki did not understand why they were making their own fruit basket as a get-well gift instead of doing the conventional thing by ordering it online.

Stephen had said something about how a personal human touch would make anything more special and...Loki could not very well argue with that, having acquired not one, but two personal humans of his own.

Oh look. A little human.

"Hello," he said mildly as a woman pushed a trolley past him.

She only gave him a suspicious look before clearing her throat.

Loki took a few steps to the side to allow her access to the ready-to-eat chilled soups and packaged salads.

Soon, he found himself locked in a staring match with the toddler sitting in the trolley.

Loki wondered what it would be like if they had little humans of their own. Their place was certainly big enough for a dozen of them.

He reached for the 'Free Fruit for Kids' display basket, picked a banana from the pile of loose fruits and held it out to the boy.

"Eat it," Loki commanded.

Tony lunged and grabbed the banana out of Loki's hand, before dragging his lover down the aisle as far away as possible from the boy and his mother, who by now, was looking seconds away from calling the police.

"Loki, you can't feed other people's kids without their permission!" Tony hissed, while Stephen apologised profusely to the woman in the background.

"I see," Loki murmured, unperturbed. "If I wanted to feed little humans, I have to make sure they are my own."

"Huh?" Tony asked in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

Loki only hummed appreciatively at the revelation and walked away. This required some thinking and quite possibly a serious discussion with his humans.

________________________

“Sumac? What do you even use that for?”

Loki shrugged. “It’s the only one we don’t have. It is not my fault that the ancient Romans settled for so many letters in their alphabet system.”

Loki was obsessed with the supermarket’s own-brand must-have A-Z selection of spices. He hardly cooked but whenever he deigned to help out in the kitchen, Tony and Stephen had better use one if not most of the spices.

“What do you mean? There’s plenty of spices starting with S.”

“Name one.”

“Sage.”

“You said sage makes your eyes water.”

“Salt. Salt begins with ‘S’.”

“Salt isn’t a spice.”

“Is too.”

“A spice by definition is a seed, fruit, root, bark or other plant substance. Salt isn’t any of those, is it?”

“You just want to collect all the bottles, don’t you?”

“They’re pretty,” Loki said simply. He nuzzled his pout against Tony’s stubbled jaw. “I like pretty little things.”

“Yeah?” Tony asked huskily. “What else do you like?”

Loki’s smile widened.

_______________________

“You do know there is a reason why supermarkets are laid out the way they are?” Stephen asked dryly upon finally locating his husbands in the cereal aisle after a fruitless search of the first few aisles, which they had obviously bypassed. “This is why it takes ages shopping with you guys.”

His two husbands appeared to be engaged in a hushed but heated discussion about something.

Stephen frowned. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Tony and Loki said, almost in unison.

“Loki, please step away from the trolley,” Stephen requested politely.

Loki tried to stand his ground in front of the trolley, but groaned in frustration when Stephen simply put his hands on Loki’s hips.

Loki could never win against his husband’s tactile style of persuasion. Very, very reluctantly he stepped away from the trolley.

Stephen dug through the boxes of all sorts of sugar-free, multi-grain based breakfast cereals, all offerings to appease Doctor Stephen Strange.

Just as he expected, right at the very bottom of the trolley, were a few boxes each of Frosties, Fruit Loops and Honey Nut Cheerios.

“Can you leave me just one?” Loki pleaded. “Please?”

Stephen had to smile to himself. Innocent subterfuge aside, Loki could have used magic to conceal his treasure trove of teeth-rotting cereal but he did not.

He replaced the healthy cereals back on the shelf, leaving Loki’s selection untouched in the trolley.

Tony and Loki stared at him in bewilderment.

“Live a little, right?” Stephen sighed. “Just as long as you eat them, I’m happy.”

Stephen had never seen Tony beam more proudly or Loki’s eyes shine as bright, and he wondered if he had not been bewitched, just a little bit.

_______________________

“That was such a good trip, wasn’t it?” Tony gushed as he stepped out of the portal.

“Yep.” Stephen had to agree. “There was no magic, no stealing, no stabbing. I think we did alright, considering.”

“We did awesome,” Tony corrected. He had to pause in the midst of gushing to enjoy the sudden kiss Stephen was planting on his mouth. “See? I was right. We should do more of these things together, just the three of us.”

“Oh.”

Tony and Stephen turned.

“What is it, Games?” “Did you forget to get something?” They spoke at the same time, noticing the frown on Loki’s face.

Then Stephen noticed a brown paper bag in Loki’s hand that had not been there when they left the store. “What have you got there, babe?”

From the bag, Loki slowly retrieved a chocolate Easter bunny half the size of a football. Then he took out two more, arranging the three of them neatly on the kitchen counter.

“I don’t eat chocolate, but thanks anyway,” Stephen said, relieved that Loki’s secret purchase had simply been chocolate. Their not-strictly-human husband had brought back some strange items in the past.

Loki rummaged through the paper bag again.

“There’s more?” Tony raised an eyebrow. “Sorry to disappoint you, Lokes, but the bunnies are 100% chocolate, they only wrap them in gold paper - ”

A tiny Easter bunny joined the family of three on the counter.

A silence so absolute fell over the house that Loki could practically hear his human husbands’ fantastic brains turn and their heartbeats pick up pace.

“What do you think?” Loki asked, hoping his shaking voice would not give his fears away .

“What do we - ” Stephen swallowed hard. “Are you saying that you’re - ?”

Tony was lost for words. He hurried to Loki’s side.

“No, no.” Loki shook his head vehemently. “No…” Before he could hesitate for too long, “But I could be.”

The tightening of Tony’s arm around his waist gave Loki the final push he needed. “I suppose what I am trying to ask is...could we be?”

Tony and Stephen’s exchange of stunned looks lasted only a second before Stephen dropped the grocery bag he was holding onto the floor. He marched across the kitchen and closed the distance between them.

Before Loki knew it, Stephen had wrapped his arms around them both, engulfing his husbands in a rough hug.

“I’m in.” Stephen kissed Loki and Tony’s temples one after the other, over and over. “I’m so fucking in.”

“Tony?” Loki called his name uncertainly.

“Gosh, Loki. You promised you wouldn’t make my eyes water,” Tony managed.

Loki bit the inside of his lip. “I would apologise for that, but uh, does that mean you’re in?”

“Of course I’m in, silly!” Tony laughed. “Someone needs to inherit all my billions!’

#ironstrangefrost #ironstrange #frostiron #strangefrost

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bekaraar · 4 years

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Musicians AU for the AFTG Bingo

Relationships: Kandreil, Kandrew, Kevineil, Andreil

Words: 3631

Warning: past character death

Read on Ao3 here

tea leaves in a guitar

Neil had always wanted to come here. This was Rishikesh in the flesh, majestic Himalayas and the flowing Ganga (Ganges). He took a moment to actually take it all in and made his way to his rented car, contemplating how to thank Stuart for this trip.

Neil knew he wasn’t an easy person to convince. He got it from his mother, so it said something about Stuart’s side of the genes when he managed to convince him to take this trip. It had started with a YouTube video of him playing the keyboard and singing at a shady bar that had gone viral, effectively shutting down any chances he had of continuing to work undercover for the Hartfords. So, he’d agreed, seeing his uncle’s point for letting the hype about the video die down. His uncle had also made the point about the music of Rishikesh and he’d be lying if he said that wasn’t what actually convinced him to go.

And as he looked at the road winding up the steep mountain, he finally understood what exactly made the Beatles come here.

Kevin Day wanted to form a band for a very long time. He had always been in one, but it was never his band per se. It was Riko’s or the Moriyama’s. Never his. For once in his life, Kevin wanted a band that was his.

That had been until he met Andrew Minyard, drugged to the deepest depths of hell (because somehow the word ‘high’ never really seemed to fit. The drugs dragged one down). It was rocky at first, but he got through to him.

It was using something Riko always said.

Everyone wants something.

So, he found out what Andrew want (a reason to live) and instead of taking advantage of him for that, he had worked to giving him that. And along the way, they may have realized they meant more to each other than wanted to admit, and it had taken three attempts and stilted half conversations before Kevin just decided to kiss Andrew (after asking for his explicit permission, of course). It had speeded things up considerably.

They just needed one more person. And Rishikesh was the place he intended to find one.

Determination, Andrew mused, was a good look on Kevin. He looked regal, as he walked into the hotel. Kevin Day had a purpose, and he would not leave without fulfilling it.

Andrew could do this now, the open stares and layered glances. It was allowed, without repercussions, because Kevin was his own person now, and wanted to come out. Andrew knew better that everyone how taxing a secret could be.

He had kept his end of the deal and Kevin had kept his. He had made that fact explicitly clear to Kevin after his first week sober. He had let him know that their this, was his purpose now, even though the drums couldn’t be for him what the guitar was for Kevin.

Kevin had just looked at him with a watery smile and said, “I know.”

So, here he was, with his boyfriend (it still gave him a thrill, even after a year), on the hunt for a musician, while also relaxing and teaching. He couldn’t say he hated the idea of it, but he didn’t particularly like the details either.

Nothing good comes without the bad, anyway.

He took a deep breath and followed Kevin into the ashram.

This, he thought, was trust.

Neil walked into the ashram, and almost immediately wanted to walk out. It wasn’t like he didn't expect something to go wrong, but this was still hilariously unexpected. Just the kind of joke the universe liked to play on him. So, he took a deep breath and walked in.

It is a small place, with something akin to a middle range hotel rooms on the top floor. The floor downstairs is for common meals, shows, and socialization and chai.

He takes comfort in the familiar lettering of Hindi on the board. India had been one of the best trips in his memory, having grown up here for a certain time.

He used it to distract himself from what he knew he was avoiding: the fact that Kevin fucking Day was here.

If the universe wanted anything to happen, it would make it.

He took comfort in the small things.

Neil made his way up to his room and surveyed it.

It had been years since he’d had such an attachment to his bag, but something in him prickled all the same at leaving it unsupervised.

He swallowed his inhibitions and left his bag in the room, making his way downstairs to what he knew would be a meet and greet before the actual yoga and music sessions started the next day.

Andrew didn’t really want to be there, but Kevin did, and he was, as Aaron would say, whipped.

He followed Kevin downstairs, looking for someone to talk to, as Kevin got swept up by the large variety of people looking to talk to the famous Kevin Day.

(There it was. That trust again.)

Interesting people, Andrew thinks, are both rare to find and ridiculously relevant to his mood.

It is a tough and laborious thing to be both hot and captivating. Kevin does it unknowingly. Andrew hates it. And him.

He mad his way to the drinks table, and since there was no alcohol anyway, he entertained himself by trying to mix some of the most ridiculously colored ones.

He could have sworn he felt a gaze burning a crater on the back of his head, and when he looked, he found icy eyes ices and face framed by flames.

Neil did not want to run into Kevin Day or Andrew Minyard.

Of course, the universe (or whatever fucked up being controlled it) didn’t listen to Neil. Ever.

Neil knew he had a conversation with Kevin that was long overdue, but he had intended to avoid Andrew at all costs, a plan that went flying out the window as soon as Andrew decided to walk over to him with a challenge in his eyes.

Kevin could hide pretty much everything behind his press façade, but seeing Nathaniel here was something took him enough by surprise that he had take a moment to gather his thoughts in a bathroom, for fuck’s sake.

So, he excused himself, and went over to Nathaniel, only to find him looking at Andrew with very challenge that he used to look at Kevin with. The one that Kevin knew meant that Nathaniel found Andrew worth his time. Which was saying something. He smiled and went over to Andrew.

(He almost didn't want to interrupt their conversation. It reminded him too much of another person, another life.)

“You know,” he said, making direct eye contact with Nathaniel, “I have to agree with Andrew. Tea is truly despicable.”

Neil stared at Kevin, who calmly stared back and he knew that Kevin saw the exact moment he decided not to run because he saw it in the soft smile he had spent years trying to forget.

So he looked Kevin in the eye and said, “Is that so?”

One of Andrew’s favourite pastimes was riling up people, and his favourite person to tease was Kevin with his pretty lips that he would purse just so when Andrew told him that he was “obsessed” and that cute horrible -really he hates it- nose that he scrunches up when he’s concentrating and Andrew pokes him in his ribs.

Really, he’s Andrew’s favourite, but Neil might be the second.

It’s entertaining (or as close as anything is going to get) to see him twist that perfect mouth that Andrew can imagine doing so many other things-

He takes a breath and looks at Neil, who is now having a very energetic conversation of the merits and demerits of tea and coffee respectively and if Andrew hadn’t spent so long convincing Neil he hated tea, he might even team up with him here but Andrew was nothing if not outrageously dedicated.

Andrew exhales softly and apologizes to Bee and to tea as a whole, as he says:

“I agree with Kevin. Tea… is man’s worst invention.”

It was a blessing that Neil was looking at him right then because Andrew saw Kevin choke on air as he heard what Andrew said next.

“So, why don’t you try to convince us to like tea?”

Neil smirked and met his challenge head on.

“Prepare to lose.”

He gave them one last cursory glance as he walked away.

“I thought you loved tea?”

“I do,” Andrew says, smiling softly, as he and Kevin make their way up to their room.

Kevin huffs in amusement and Andrew smiles as he pulls him down for a kiss.

“You seem to know him.”

Andrew watches Kevin sigh and run a hand through his hair.

“He’s Nathaniel.”

Oh.

Neil had made his getaway nicely, but the complete shock of Kevin deciding not to confront him right there still stayed. He knew he was just putting off the inevitable, but he decided not to speak of it till Kevin did.

He just hoped Kevin still shied away from the truth how much he did in the Nest.

Neil distracted himself by planning to introduce those imbeciles to the delights of tea, even if he had to sweeten it enough to choke the devil. Neil smiled as he took two packets of tea from his suitcase, his favourites. But for Andrew, he had a different flavour in mind.

Chocolate tea.

Neil hated it. With every fibre of his being. He’d rather drink hot chocolate if he had to introduce his body to the sickly-sweet concoction, but that was exactly why Andrew would love it.

Minyard had no clue what was coming at him.

As for Kevin, Neil had given up on his liking tea long ago but he had one last angle to give this.

Kale-honey tea.

(for his voice)

Neil loved his voice. It was just the perfect balance of rough and caressing, deep enough to envelope him just so.

It also matched perfectly with his own voice. Neil missed all of it. The last two years they had shared before Riko’s suicide. And then Kevin had left. Neil had pushed him away after that.

Maybe now was the time to forgive.

Neil sighed.

He wanted to kiss Kevin senseless, slowly and wanted to be kissed by Andrew.

He made himself a warm cup of chamomile tea and watched the distant mountains as the wind caressed him softly.

If he heard someone playing the song he and Kevin had composed, he wasn’t surprised.

Kevin looked at Andrew as he realized just how fucked they were.

“So, that’s Nathaniel.”

Kevin nodded

“Wow,” Andrew’s treacherous mouth said, “You didn’t tell me he’s so hot.”

Kevin shook his head and rubbed his neck.

“I expected him to hate me.”

“Kevin. Look at me.”

Kevin did, almost irritated.

“You left Jean and him for a good reason. Sometimes, you can’t save everyone you want to.”

“I know. It’s just,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “Jean was his partner.”

Andrew held Kevin close as he cried.

Neil studiously avoided Kevin and Andrew all through the morning and tried his best at lunch, which turned out be a little hard considering the fact that there was two of them and one of him. Finally he acquiesced, and turned to look at what turned out to be only Kevin.

“Yes?” he asked testily.

Kevin swallowed inconspicuously and met Neil’s gaze.

“Why don’t you hate me?”

“Why do you think I don’t hate you?”

Understanding dawned in Kevin’s eyes.

“You think it was my fault.”

“Well,” Neil said, raising his voice just a little bit “Whose fault was it? Jean’s?”

“No, I-”

“You don’t get to apologize! Your apologies won’t make him any less dead! Riko may have killed him, Kevin, but it was you who handed him the knife.”

Kevin stepped back as if he’d been slapped.

“Neil, listen-”

“No.”

Kevin stepped aside to let him go. As he stared at Neil’s retreating form, he felt a suffocating hopelessness course through him.

Andrew came up to him, and placed an arm around his waist and led him up to their room, but Kevin didn’t wasn’t any of that right now.

“Hold the fuck up, Neil.”

Neil turned to look at him and opened his mouth to give him a piece of his mind but Kevin stalked over before he could.

“Do you even know why I left? You think a stupid injury could push me to leave?” Kevin laughed, twistedly, and it sent shivers up Neil’s spine.

“You know, he saw us. All the time, when we thought we were safe? He saw us. He saw me with you. You with Jean. Jean with me. He took advantage of it.”

Kevin took a deep breath in.

“He knew I’d do anything for you both.”

Finally, Neil understood.

“He broke your hand out of jealousy.”

Kevin nodded.

“And I left so that I could get you out.”

“But you didn’t realize to what extent his anger ran.”

“No,” Kevin sighed. “I didn’t.”

It sounded a lot like defeat.

Neil stared at Kevin.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Kevin stared flatly at him.

“Because you disappeared off the face of the fucking earth.”

Neil sighed as he stared at Kevin.

“I never really blamed you anyway.”

“You what.”

Neil sighed again

“I’m sorry. I just- You know we had something right -”

“Uh.”

“What?”

“See, I’m dating Andrew-”

“Oh,” Neil said.

“Yeah,” Kevin says.

Neil looks away, slowly.

“The challenge is still on, though?”

“Oh, yeah,” Neil says, the glint returning to his eye.

Andrew needed to hide his favourite teas from Neil. He knew it wouldn’t be long till he figured it out, and he did not want to take that chance.

He had discovered exactly eight packets of chocolate tea scattered in his and Kevin’s baggage and devised increasingly ridiculous places to hide them, much to Kevin’s amusement and disgust.

“We have no clue how long that’s been there, Drew,” he said regarding the small box of coffee Andrew found behind the cupboards.

Andrew just smiled as he transferred the coffee powder to a jar and emptied a packet of tea into the coffee box.

(If he hid a packet in Kevin’s guitar, no one had to know.)

The more that Neil thought about it (and he thought quite a lot) it seemed extremely unlikely that Andrew actually hated tea. It even seemed impossible.

If anything, Neil knew Kevin as well as he knew himself (better even, the Nest wasn’t the best) and he knew Kevin absolutely loathed tea (something about Irish coffee) and it seemed obvious that Andrew was just the contrary kind of person to develop a taste for it just to annoy Kevin. It’s something Neil would do if Stuart hadn’t already conditioned him to liking tea. So, the obvious conclusion was this: Andrew was clearly lying. Now Neil just needed to confront him.

Kevin was trying to bake his sorrows along with the cookies that he was trying not to burn when there was a knock at the door of their room.

He opens it and Neil walks in looking around, as if it was his room.

Kevin raises both his eyebrows, and with all the judgement he can muster, says, “Excuse you?”

Neil looks at him with an air of Oh my god, can you believe this idiot , and says,“I know Andrew hates tea.”

Kein grins like Neil just gave him three kittens.

“You just won me twenty dollars.”

Neil stares at him like a grumpy cat and Kevin is realizes just how well he knows Neil.

“Andrew and I bet over how long it’d take you to come down here.”

Neil continues staring at him.

“Andrew bet till you’d last till the evening and I said you wouldn’t wait till then.”

Neil breaks out into a grin as he stares up at Kevin.

Kevin takes a deep breath.

I want to kiss you, he wants to say, but doesn’t.

It had taken ages for his thing with Andrew to make sense and he didn’t want to ruin it now.

He offers Neil some cookies when he leaves.

Andrew wakes up more tired than when he slept.

He walks out and sees Kevin surrounded by approximately eight batches of cookies. Andrew does enjoy his baking, but he also enjoys a working body.

He walks over to kevin, who is looking out the window mournfully.

“Neil?” Andrew asks Kevin and he looks over at him with the same mournful face he had been regarding the teas with.

“I wanted to kiss him,” Kevin said honestly, and Andrew looked at him almost amusedly.

“What if even I wanted to?”

Kevin’s eyes widened and he choked on his own spit.

“What the fuck?”

Andrew continued looking at him with a slight smile on his lips.

“Answer me.”

“I’d be fine with that,” Kevin replied, confused, “Only if I can too.”

Andrew smiled fully and pulled Kevin down for a kiss.

He couldn’t wait for Neil to come over.

This was their last evening free before the performances and enrichments started. Enrichments, Neil thought with scorn. Too much of a pride to call the classes.

He sat back in his chair with a book, a fictitious one of no great value, but it was enthralling just the same. He still had an hour to meet Kevin and Andrew, and he was unable to concentrate.

It seemed weird to him, the fact that Andrew was blatantly flirting wit him, yet Kevin seemed almost hesitant to make a move when he so clearly wanted to. Something he knew Neil wanted too. Andrew, Neil felt, was the unknown in the equation, the unforeseen. Neil would never have seen himself falling in love with someone whose personality could only be described and ‘whimsical’ and ‘cat like’.

There was also the fact to consider that he was five feet and dating Kevin Day.

He sighed, and then sighed again at the fact that he seemed to be sighing a lot these past few days.

He got up and put away his book. If wasn’t able to concentrate on anything else, he’d rather concentrate on the tea dilemma, as he liked to call it.

It was now clarified that Andrew loves tea. Neil just needed evidence.

Neil would be lying if he said that he missed the thrill of the undercover jobs that he did for Stuart, but this, he thought was taking it too far. He was hanging over a busy street and his only anchor, was the narrow windowsill of windows that were almost a feet apart. He just had to make across five to reach Kevin and Andrew’s room.

He allowed himself a moment’s relaxation before moving.

Andrew realized that seeing his boyfriend’s ex who they were both not over yet snooping in their kitchen should have set Andrew’s alarm bells on fire, but the only thing his brain could come up with was hot damn, and honestly, that was not helpful.

Judging by the way Kevin was looking over at Neil, he probably felt the same.

Not helpful at all.

Usually, Neil thought, getting caught would mean death, but this time, getting caught meant embarrassment.

Exclaiming “Ah hah!” while holding a box of tea leaves (it was chocolate!!!) was not quite the impression that he wanted to make, but what was done was done, so he improvised.

“I found your tea!”

In retrospect, saying that with the same tone a diabolical villain would use was also not a good idea, but neither Kevin nor Andrew seemed to think so.

Andrew looked at Neil, enamoured.

“Fuck,” he heard himself saying, “Can I kiss you?”

He saw Neil eyes get wide and a blush creep up his neck in the prettiest way possible before he covered the distance and did what he had been waiting to do for years days.

He kissed Neil.

Much to Kevin’s chagrin. They were so hot, it was unfair, his brain thought and he could only hope he hadn’t said that aloud.

Later that night, Neil lay on the couch, next to Kevin, hugging him, as Kevin slowly told him about the last three months he spent with Jean before it all went to shit.

Andrew was inside, on their bed, furiously typing away at something that he refused to share with any of them. Neil walked over to him and sat down next to him. He was still not as comfortable with Andrew as he was with Kevin, which was understandable.

Talking to Kevin had been like falling back into a routine he didn’t know he missed so much. It was natural, happy, and though there was always going to be that grief that came with everything they’d fought and everyone they’d loved and lost along the way, they were here now and they were going to make it.

“So,” Andrew said, not looking up, “Where’d you find the tea?”

Neil laughed at looked at him softly.

“In your guitar. And speaking of which, I won our little competition.”

“Oh,” Andrew said looking up in interest, “Would you like a prize?”

Neil laughed, then sobered up.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I do.”

Kevin came and sat down next to them on the bed.

“What a about our band?” he suggested. “We need a back up vocalist, someone good on the keyboard, and you fit the bill.”

Neil looked at them incredulously, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“What do you want to name it?”

Andrew looked between them, eyes sharp.

“Tea leaves in a guitar.”

#aftgbingo #2020 #aftg bingo #kevin day #andrew minyard #neil josten #kandreil #kevineil #kandrew #andreil #aftg #the foxhole court #tfc #tkm #trk #all for the game #fanfic #jay speaks #musician au

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cetaceans-pls · 4 years

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A Piña Colada, Heavy On The Piñas (Bru&Jay)

Charity commission for @setsailslash who is both charitable and a massive enabler. Thank you for being kind as you empower the neurotic middle-aged man within me

Through costumed vigilanteism, Hawaiian shirts, and corned beef dinners, Jason and Bruce rebuild a relationship one day at the beach at a time.

Batman - All Media Types, Bruce Wayne & Jason Todd

On AO3 here.

Charity comm info here.

And away we goooooooo.

It doesn’t happen often, that Batman needs to work a case outside of Gotham for long enough a stretch that Bruce Wayne has to announce an impromptu vacation and actually follow through with it. There are whispers that human traffickers in the Caribbean have decided to crawl up the East Coast, with Gotham now a hotspot of terrible activity, and after months of trying to put the fear of Batman into the gangs with little abatement, it’s time for a vacation right at the source. Things are getting tumultuous, and time’s of the essence. If he doesn’t step in now, he won’t be able to for months, probably, and that settles it.

Bruce Wayne is going to be in the Bahamas, baby, and Batman’s going to be busy in Cuba while they’re down there.

As has become tradition by now, any longish-term work trip abroad means that someone has to come with him. You almost die of three gunshot wounds and a side of dysentery one time in Zambia while hunting meta-animal poachers, and suddenly you aren’t allowed to travel internationally without a chaperone. If the villains of the city could see him now, oh.

(He still hares off on missions that are far, far too dangerous for any of his brood, despite their vehement protests about how he defines their competencies and his need for support, but that is one of the many, many hills Bruce would be happy to die on.)

Bruce clears his schedule for a good two weeks and sends a memo off to the League, before pulling up the family chat group up on the mainframe. The single most secure and heavily-encrypted messaging service in the world, more impenetrable even than the system outfitted for the Justice League, and the five most recent messages have Dick spamming eggplants and Damian growing increasingly incoherent with rage while maintaining perfect punctuation.

It’s in response to a photoshoot Bruce did earlier in the year for a charity event. He’s mostly naked and it’s mostly tasteful, right up until Dick drops the eggplants, but better to get phallic symbols from his children than from the spam his corporate Twitter gets, probably.

Maybe.

Time to recruit a chaperone; it’s only 3 in the morning, he imagines everyone’s awake, except for Alfred. Alfred never goes on his trips with him, anyways, so it doesn’t really matter.

(Tim had said it was like how countries don’t let their presidents and vice presidents fly in the same plane; losing one is unbearable, losing both is apocalyptic. Bruce thinks it’s terribly flattering to be the vice to Alfred’s stoic leadership, even if he would never say it.)

B: One week trip to Cuba to look into the Contreras trafficking ring. Pick amongst yourselves who will be joining me.

Every single time he lives in the vain hope that all of them will have a serious discussion to figure out schedules and weigh the merits and demerits of their skill sets against what’s needed for the mission at hand.

Every single time, the person who accompanies him is the person who replies first.

Bruce is completely and utterly unsurprised to see Stephanie, Tim, Dick, Cass, and Damian typing, even though Damian at least should have been asleep hours ago.

Bruce is surprised by who’s first past the post.

J(ustin) T(imberlake): FIRST FUCKERS

That is, indeed, a first.

Maintaining his calm is touch and go for a minute there, but peace comes back, eventually, along with the absolute revelation that Jason has willingly chosen to accompany him for the next two weeks. He would think it was an emergency signal, a call for help, but Jason hadn’t used the monkey-with-its-hands-over-its-mouth picture, so.

It’s so idiotic, they’ve been somewhat reconciled for years at this point, but in the dark of the cave Bruce cannot resist the giddy, hysterical smile that takes him by the mouth.

They plan to take the private jet to the Bahamas, and a couple of hours before departure Bruce takes great care to be seen having lunch obnoxiously at a luxury hotel. He’s kitted out in a Hawaiian shirt and flipflops despite the grey miserable snow decorating the streets of Gotham, all for maximum annoyingness. According to their agreement, Jason will be squirreling himself aboard the jet as the pilot; he’s likely already there. Bruce, meanwhile, jovially requests a takeaway neapolitan baked Alaska despite the fact that:

Le Chevalier does not do takeout

The concept of a baked Alaska is probably offensive enough for the head pastry chef to consider ritual disembowelment to preserve her honour

Ice cream is far, far too pedestrian for such an establishment

For better or for worse, billionaires do tend to get their way, and after tipping the wait staff four times their monthly income to see them through the near future, Bruce wades through dirty snow to get to Alfred and the car waiting to take him to the airport.

It might have been meant as an insult, that his dessert order is in a beautiful glass container wrapped up in aluminium foil to look like a crinkly swan from a dodgy buffet, but he mostly just thinks it’s charming.

He hopes Jason will, too.

“You took your sweet ass time.”

Bruce doesn’t dignify that with a response, placing the ice cream-laden swan on Jason’s lap. He looks painfully normal in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks, hair neatly tucked under a pilot’s cap. Not for the first time, nor for the last, Bruce wonders what it would have been like to successfully raise a single child to be happy and normal. If Damian or Tim called him tomorrow and said they wanted to become accountants, even his experienced investigative mind can’t predict how he’d react.

“It’s dessert,” he says, instead of talking about accountants. “It’s good to see you, Jason.”

Jason squints at him, before tipping his jaunty little hat. “Welcome aboard, Master Wayne. It’s a pleasure to have you flying with us.” He’s pitch-perfect as a courteous pilot, though the feral does come out a little when he rips the swan’s head off and eats the ice cream meringue like it’s a hamburger, held in his hands and staining his pristine white gloves.

Bruce is very proud of himself. An entire 3 minutes already, and they haven’t argued yet. “Thank you for agreeing to help on this mission,” he says with studied casualness as Jason bites off a hearty chunk and makes a pleased sound when he hits ice cream. He doesn’t ask why are you here , because Alfred taught him better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Collaboration is an important part in crime-fighting, and-”

Jason’s laughing, and Jason’s definitely laughing at him, but that is still not them screaming at each other, so it’s still a win. “Old man, I’ve been up to my literal goddamn eyeballs in cocaine cleaning out the Escabedos this past month, the universe owes me a break. Nothin’ like crippling a trafficking ring, you know how it goes.”

It can’t be helped; Bruce’s eyes drop to Jason’s legs, as he tries to figure out if the slim cut is capable of hiding a couple of Jerichos. Jason catches him doing it, and his grin turns into a bright show of teeth. “If you’re looking for my friends, they’re stowed in cargo. C’mon, Bruce, as if I’m gonna roll through security with thigh holsters.”

The slacks hide no guns, but there are distinct lines where the fabric draws taut across Jason’s thighs. Bruce quirks an eyebrow.

“Loaded thigh holsters,” Jason corrects himself, rolling his eyes. “Now go and have a seat, I’m gonna lose my fuckin’ mind if I don’t have a welcome drink in a hollowed-out pineapple in like 5 hours.”

That’s all right; Bruce has a box full of rubber bullets that fit perfectly into any of Jason’s top 3 preferred guns. He’s got a whole host of techniques to counteract Jason’s less savoury habits, and the baked Alaska is merely the start of it. When Batman puts his mind to trying to kill with kindness, it’s a fearsome sight, and Bruce is putting everything on the line for this trip to both 1. Address the kidnapping and distribution of Cuban doctors into the world of black market medicine, and 2. Get Jason sweet enough on him that Bruce can extract a promise for weekly dinners home at the Manor.

It’s a big task, but he’s got the Caribbean and the family chat group on his side; Bruce feels closer to invulnerable than usual, as he nods brusquely at Jason and leaves the cockpit.

He’s brought plenty of reading material for the flight; a solid fifth of it are notes on Jason’s likes, dislikes, and peccadilloes. As the jet begins to taxi, Bruce neatly writes down ‘Welcome drink in pineapple (alcoholic?)’ in the Like column, and takes a moment to appreciate this littlest of little victories.

They separate on arrival, Jason disappearing with the ground crew, Bruce going through the rigmarole of being very loud and very attention-grabbing in the airport terminal. It’s all been cleverly planned; after the flight, they would get some time to themselves. Jason can head straight to the beach villa, if he wished, while Bruce will be going around Nassau like a very visible, very good-natured, concussed idiot.

By the time they meet up for dinner, the sky’s gone dark, Jason’s gone a deep glossy brown, and Bruce is nursing the standard headache he gets when he has to pretend he enjoys being a billionaire playboy. Bruce had considered splurging on a fancy seafood dinner for their first night here, but Jason isn’t and has never been the type to be moved by money, so instead he comes back to the villa with a bag full of corned beef and conch stew.

Jason takes a look at the selection, and snorts. “Did you for real not get us any rice or fries or anything?” He peels the lid off the stew before the answer comes, and is slurping it right from the lip like it’s a glass of milk.

Bruce is horrified but also a little amused. It’s likely a rite of passage for a lot of parents, learning to buy separate servings so that when your children inevitably grubby up the food, you still have a plate to turn to. He goes at his own meal with as much dignity as an exceedingly bendy plastic spoon can afford.

It’s delicious, and sitting on the darkened balcony nibbling on a worryingly tough bit of conch while his dead-not dead son guzzles soup like a garbage disposal come to life, Bruce feels exceedingly human and quietly, deeply happy.

Maybe Jason hadn’t been the only one who had needed a bit of a break. There are some crises that are hard even for (especially for) the Batman.

He melts into the feeling and just listens as Jason, who seems to be in an unusually chatty mood, talks about all the little things that he had filled the evening with: how the Caribbean felt on his ankles then his knees then the whole of him, the taste of soursop ice cream on a hot day, and the absolutely atrocious carving of a monkey made of coconut that he’s bought for Damian.

Bruce can’t remember the last time he’s heard Jason sound this casually at peace with anything; it must have been many, many years ago, when Jason was in the dreamlike sweet spot between being newly-adopted and so sure that it was all a cruel joke, and when he was Robin and the desire to make the world just and fair had him baring his fangs. He knows he did wrong by Jason, but it really would be nice if he could figure out where it was he had misstepped, instead of just when.

All children should be able to sit on a beach with their parent and almost choke on beef when they start laughing so hard a bit of it goes down the wrong pipe as they recount Dick’s latest quest to be Tinder’s most popular ass shot.

“Dick’s great loves are his family, being a good man in a bad world, and the entire region of his body between his nipples and his knees,” Bruce says, mostly an honest observation of his eldest, which makes Jason choke in earnest now, wheezing and laughing and potentially dying of corned beef.

It’s one of the better dinners Bruce has had.

Nips2Knees: Okay there’s no need to go changing usernames just because you two are having a great bonding experience!!

Nips2Knees: What is this even supposed to mean?! Alfred’s gonna shame me next time I show up for breakfast Jay honest to God

A few hours after that , and the Batwing is skimming the waters breaking against the sea walls of Malecón, Havana. People are still up and about despite it being the wrong side of midnight, but the jet is also a submersible, so as soon as Bruce and Jason have clambered across the low barrier the entire ship just quietly, ominously sinks into the water.

“That’s never gonna not be creepy,” Jason says, shuddering theatrically in the warm breeze of the late night.

“You never used to have a problem with the sea,” Bruce hears himself saying, and wonders why his brain hadn’t seen fit to stop that dumb little observation.

Miracle of miracles, Jason just shrugs. “There’re just a hell of a lot of ways to drown, what can I say?” He tugs his leather jacket to sit more neatly on his shoulders, looking strange and a little alien for a whole host of reasons. The white streak, the imposing build, the strange luminescence of his green eyes, just.

Jason Todd is a magnet for attention, which Bruce is glad for right now because it gives him an excuse to very carefully not think about if rebirth in the Pit counts as a drowning, and if blood flooding the lungs counts as a drowning, and if-

He fixes his wig, fusses with his fake, full beard. “Your disguise isn’t exactly Havana at night, Jay.” Leather jacket, linen shorts, a neon pink shirt. When a breeze comes by and the pant legs flutter, the gun holsters flicker in and out of sight.

They’re loaded, clearly, and not with rubber bullets either despite Bruce’s considerable efforts.

It’s as smooth a deflection as Bruce will manage. The hook lands, and Jason is even polite enough to give a nibble as he takes a once-over of Bruce’s look for the evening. “Rich comin’ from you, B, you got a dead possum on the head and the chin, and you kinda look like a depressed middle-aged man who’s gonna go home to Nantucket and splurge on a top-end sit-down lawnmower ‘stead of communicatin’ your mid-life crisis to your wife Nancy.”

Bruce self-consciously pats his padded belly, a paunch disguising enough tech and weaponry to topple most democracies. “This is top-quality virgin hair,” he defends his costume. “The Batman can’t be seen here, but what is yet another depressed man past his prime? It’s the perfect disguise.”

He can’t remember that he’s ever worn socks underneath sandals before, and this much moustache is making him want to sneeze, but a loud oversized Hawaiian shirt smoothes over the wicked angles of grappling hooks and batarangs like magic made of bad taste. It’s better than a pair of glasses, for god’s sake.

Instead of railing against Bruce’s definition of ‘a perfect disguise’, Jason just stares at him for a long while, dead-eyed and silent. “B….. B, I need you to be honest with me right now, this is some life or death shit right here. Is that, for the love of literal Christ, a wig made of your own damn hair, you absolute fuckin’ weirdo?”

“Of course. Who else’s would it be?”

Some seabirds startle when Jason shrieks with laughter, and Bruce looks around to make sure they haven’t given away their position, even if the area is pretty deserted.

“You’re a fucking leather-face cosplaying virgin , B, god, you’re killing me right now, I literally know how that’s like.”

“ Jason!” Bruce scolds him, aghast at he’s not even sure what.

Tim D: Is everything okay why is Bruce called the Virgin now

Tim D: I can go pick you guys up but one of you is gonna have to do this art history paper instead

Tim D: This better not be you two getting high I was grounded for 2 months the last time somebody in my school smoked a joint and you two are off your heads in Cuba smfh

Havana’s architecturally the stuff of dreams, if you dream of human flight powered by cables and grappling guns and dapper scarves taking the place of aerodynamic capes. Absolutely stunning buildings, built low and sturdy and pretty, festooned in ornate decorations and art deco carvings that jut out like they’re begging for a hook and a swinging man.

Bruce’s clothes are double-sided, with the outside looking as pedestrian as possible while the inner lining is really the ghost of Ghillie suit futures. Where couples make out by the sea at two AM, he’s just an amiable foreign man trotting around with socks that go up to almost his knees. When he needs to get altitude or go a little invisible, it’s a little bit of indignity in an alley somewhere, and he’s off as he hopes he remembered to turn out both socks this time.

Jason’s patrolling the docks, on assignment to trace the exit route the smugglers are taking. Bruce is reasonably sure nobody’s going to die tonight; Jason’s trigger happy tendencies are tightly correlated to the annual income after tax of the perpetrator at hand, with some allowances made for the power dynamic between the criminal and the victim. With enough time, Bruce thinks that he could come up with an excellent formula that describes Jason’s prescription of murder, but for now he’s pretty sure desperate men trying to survive by way of smuggling other men isn’t going to be a death sentence.

The kingpins in Gotham though, oh, that’s going to be a Mess.

Bruce is generally opposed to imposing justice by way of death. It’s hard to put into words exactly why that is, but it has a lot to do with lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Jason’s a lot like Diana like that; he looks at context and background and history and class, the story of a person’s life, and when he pulls the trigger, it’s with the weight of his convictions behind him. He’s the antithesis to the sort of killer Bruce would be; somebody with a checklist for a brain, and if a person passes the critical mass of allowable crime, they’ll be put down.

They’ll all be put down, whatever their motivations, whatever their stories.

He mostly wants Jason to stop killing because he worries that some trick of not-quite-genetics is going to kick into gear, and Jason’s going to become as bad as Bruce, and then where will they be?

It’s pretty standard night-time musings; it’s not the first time Bruce has thought about how not a god nor any meta-human could ever compel him to formulate a kill switch for his children. It’s not even the first time he’s done it in the shadow of a massive bronze bell in a cathedral, really. It’s a first time with a beard, though, so never let anyone say that he didn’t try new things.

A man in a crisp white linen suit cuts across the plaza in front of them, like a glowbug in the humid darkness of a Cuban night. Bruce squints, and yes, it’s Orian Contreras, right down to his glossy moustache and his leather loafers, the man to turn to if your underground fighting ring or brothel needs some illicit medicine men.

Luck’s in the air tonight; Bruce had thought it would take days of tailing the small fry before he would even clap eyes on Orian, but here we are.

The Vedado district is filled with terrible, no good, horrific crime against Bat-approved architecture. All glass and steel and the absence of cornices and sticky-out drainpipes, god. The similarity to downtown Metropolis is absolutely appalling. Orian, at least, has the makings of a classic Gotham villain, because he arranges to meet in the Colón cemetery on a moonlit night, where mausoleums and sturdy granite Jesuses are as plentiful as the streetlights are rare.

Bruce is sat on the shoulder of a particularly fearsome avenging angel who’s threatening the entire eastern quadrant of the cemetery, and the amplifier hanging around her thumb helps him listen in on Orian’s important and extremely dull meeting a few hundred feet away. Logistics, even the logistics of human trafficking, are a lot more boring than one would tend to expect.

One of Orian’s men is talking about the diesel cost per square foot of shipping container when a shadow alights on the angel’s other shoulder. A slip of pink is still visible around the hips, but Jason looks surprisingly well-camouflaged just from zipping up his jacket and sitting in the odd-angled way the youths tend to, breaking his silhouette and his shadow.

“Anythin’ good, B?”

Everything that’s being said is being recorded, Bruce reminds himself when his first instinct is to go shush. Nagging Jason for shirking the docks to come by is only legitimate after he’s checked the status of Jason’s progress.

A second taken to double-think things through is an hour saved of being angry with each other.

So Bruce just shakes his head. “A list of names of crooked export officers, some plans around next month’s shipment. No mention of the big players, or where they’re getting the doctors.”

There’s a sharp crack of a tupperware being opened, and suddenly there’s roasted corn being waved in front of Bruce’s nose. He isn’t hungry, but he takes it anyways. He’s forgotten what the metabolism of someone in their twenties is like; it vaguely reminds him of when Dick had first become Nightwing, and had kept kit-kats stuffed down his temperature-controlled gauntlets. Where in his costume Jason had managed to keep takeaway, Bruce can’t even guess.

“We-ll, it’s all quiet on the docks. Can you imagine, a legit work-life balance, with no poor underpaid dockhand unloading shit at fuck AM? Crazy. And there’s just less crime overall, too. I only needed to beat up like two muggers in the past four hours.” There’s a crisp crunching noise from where Jason’s sat; it sounds like a taco of some sort. “Got a list of ships that routinely go to ‘Canada’, allegedly, which’re probably our best lead for transport.”

“Good work, Jason.”

Jason doesn’t immediately reply, and they just settle in silence for a while. Somebody is politely asking why they couldn’t hold these meetings in their offices, or at least at a restaurant or something, and Orian starts what can only be a 20-minute diatribe into how he has standards , and how suspicious it would be to have twelve men sitting around a table whispering very quietly in the middle of a restaurant, you idiot , etc., etc., etc.

Gone to the place where Bruce is not quite part of the world, a meditative state that’s somewhat restive but leaves him ready to roll into action at the slightest provocation, he startles more than he would like to admit when Jason leaps off his perch to land with the barest of thuds on the plinth bearing their angel.

He looks down, at his son.

Jason looks around, at this little township of the long dead. “I know some really amazing poets got buried here, so I’m gonna go for a walk and pay my respects to my fellow dead. You got shit under control here?”

Bruce nods, astonished that Jason took the effort to seek him out, and is taking even more effort to check in with him. Their villain is at this point talking about how money didn’t grow on trees, and how they were supposed to be a professional outfit. The Cuban accent is lilting and sounds half-a-step away from song at the best of times; it’s a little bit of a shock to the system to hear a crime lord sing-song his way through complaining about service tax. It lends an air to the unrealness of the night, and as Jason disappears into the maze of tombstones, Bruce tries to take a guess about who he’s going to go visit.

Dulce María’s buried here, he remembers that from his deep-dive into Cuban history and culture. Her name had been familiar; he had seen some of her works on Jason’s bookshelf way back when. He had remembered her the way he remembers the things Jason likes to read and Tim’s preferred brand of rechargeable AAA batteries; he remembers because they’re important to someone important to him.

There’s a poem she had written, and it had stuck in his memory after he had consumed every bit of writing in Jason’s room in those early days of burning grief.

The corpse of a pond is the mirror:

It’s a ghost

Of a living water that shone one day,

Free in the world, lukewarm, suntanned.

Does Jason know that he has always been and always will be the pond, Bruce wonders. Will Jason ever realise that the corpse and the ghost is always, always Bruce, literal death notwithstanding.

It’s heavy thinking for this late into the night, so Bruce tucks the thought away, and returns to the cold corn given to him by a warm son.

PennyOne: @TheVirginBrucie Master Bruce I fully appreciate your concern for my wellbeing in these sickly times, and I do understand that I am at somewhat higher risk with my age, but if you do not stop making all the electrical appliances in the kitchen spritz me with disinfectant if I so much as look at them, I will be very cross with you.

St. Ephie: Yo Alfie supplexed the coffee machine when the hidden nozzle got him right in the eyes B you better watch yo back

Days two, three, and four pass by in much the same way. Jason goes out to enjoy the beach and hoard weird gifts for people, and Bruce sleeps by whichever window lets in the sound of the ocean best. They have dinner together, which feels a little more miraculous day by day, and then they take the Batwing to Cuba in the deep dark night.

It’s surprisingly restive and productive. Day three is when Bruce finds out that the Contreras recruiting campaign involves having crooked Ministry of Health officials going to medical schools and recruiting junior doctors for ‘service abroad’, ostensibly as part of the important Cuban tradition of exporting skilled doctors in times of great need. Nowadays doctors and nurses are needed more urgently than ever, and a lot of doctors are saying ‘yes’ out of a sense of duty and a wary respect of an official in uniform.

He has a list of people who have accepted bribes and done the dirty, and figuring out what to do with it is still a bit of a concern. Handing it over to the authorities is difficult when he’s not familiar with the police here and won’t be able to hold the crooks or the system accountable once he leaves. They don’t have a Cuban League member, which is a tremendous oversight, so it may come down to getting the Martian Manhunter to come by and put the fear of something into the criminals as a deterrent while they recruit somebody for the region.

Orian appears to have kowtowed somewhat to the requests of his underlings, because on night five of this mission Bruce finds himself with a Cuba Libre, light on the rum, on the rooftop of Hotel Inglaterra. Jason’s not with him tonight, away with the Batwing to a city a couple hundred miles away that they suspect is the target of a lot of the recruiting effort.

It’s a little lonely.

He’s two tables away from where the team are meeting up, sat on a comfy sofa and the very image of a beleaguered father waiting for his family to come up after him. A few days into the trip and the beard is now starting to look a little worse for wear without Alfred’s tender loving care, but it does help sell the image of somebody at that stage of their holiday where they look both quite relaxed and very downtrodden.

Today they’re discussing pushing up the shipment date, because the underground scene is all well and good but black market hospitals with an endless supply of doctors is a goddamn cash cow at the moment, on account of a global pandemic and everything. Bruce had bugged all the seats on the rooftop terrace when he’d arrived a couple of hours earlier, bumbling from end to end while ooh-ing and aah-ing as he took pictures of the city lights. They’ve got a few real estate properties that they are thinking about converting into illegitimate hospitals for the rich and the desperate, and Bruce absent-mindedly sends off the locations for all these condemned buildings to Lucius so that Wayne enterprises may step in.

If the buildings are in reasonable shape, that’s extra beds for the sick and for those helping the sick, so it’s a win-win, really. After a long, long career as the Bat of Gotham, it’s sometimes such a stupid relief when a problem shows up that Bruce can actually solve with just money.

It’s halfway through a heated battle on the importance of buying air conditioning units (“It snowed in Massachusetts just last week, Nicolás, use your brain ,”) that a text pops up in the family chat.

J(ustin) T(imberlake): Doesn’t look like the smugglers have a presence here, but look at this

J(ustin) T(imberlake):

J(ustin) T(imberlake): I didn’t know flamingos existed past sundown wtf

Damian Wayne: FATHER what is THIS I must DEMAND that we acquire THESE FLAMINGOS for the MISSION.

It’s a funny feeling, to almost get motion sickness at how Damian’s texts hit peaks and valleys over the course of getting his point across, but Bruce will be absolutely damned before he brings in yet another ill-advised animal to the menagerie haunting the Manor and Alfred’s dreams.

He’s partway through composing a long, winding explanation on how the Manor didn’t have the resources to keep a flock of flamingos healthy, the numerous legalities involved in the importation of wild animals, the embargo on Cuban goods, and a dozen other reasons furnished with references, before a soft click catches his attention.

Bruce looks out the corner of his eye, and sees that the meeting must have hit a snag while he hadn’t been paying attention, and now three of the five men had their hands suspiciously tucked under their jackets, right at their waists.

The bug is pretty damn high-tech but it’s not any sharper than a human’s ears, which would imply that the man with the slicked-back dark hair closest to it is the one who’s got his finger on the trigger.

Shoot-outs aren’t common in Cuba, all things considered, but if things go south here there are a hell of a lot of tourists and staff and people just enjoying a night out here that could so easily become collateral.

Time for plan B.

Bruce presses down hard on where the belly button would be on a chubbier man, and imagines he can hear the hiss of the smoke bombs expelling their non-toxic wares from where they’re tucked into plant pots under smoke detectors.

Over at the round table discussion, there’s increasing heat in their whispered argument, but it’s thankfully cut short when the fire alarm finally starts squealing.

Bruce obligingly follows the instructions of the staff, hustling along quickly so he can get changed and scale up the back of the hotel to tail the gang. If they’re planning to ship out the ‘goods’ soon, then they must be holding the doctors somewhere.

It’ll be a good job well done if Bruce can liberate them before he nails Orian to a wall, he thinks, as they head out from the Old Town and back to Verdado, home of shitty buildings.

They might even wrap up quickly enough that they can have a week or so just being in the Bahamas; it’s an excuse to see what he can do to shore up the islands for a more turbulent future. He’s been remiss in educating himself on the development of island economies. It’s definitely not an excuse to get more time with Jason, or at least not entirely just an excuse.

Bruce stalks them all the way to the poorer side of town, to a warehouse where heavy-duty locks on the windows and doors would prevent entrance and exit. Promising, promising. He lockpicks his way in and hides near the rafters, as gelled-hair-man goes to unlock a shipping container, and drags a young man out by his arm.

He’s close enough to make out the words; they aren’t good ones.

“So you’re the rat that’s figured out how to leave its cage, yes?” Orian drawls in standard villainy, coming in close to take the boy by the chin. “Do you know what we do when little rats like you try to hurt our important work?”

Once again, a lot of hands go to waists, and the poor, poor boy shudders and shakes and does not break his gaze . “If I am a rat,” the kid says, voice high and terrified and unbelievable steadfast, “you are a rabid dog, you bastard.”

Style points for spitting right in Orian’s eyes, thinks Bruce.

Points rescinded for getting on the nerves of a trigger-happy crimelord, thinks Bruce, as he pushes off and swoops down as vengeance dressed like a dad-bod on vacation.

He really should have listened when Alfred said that sir should consider at least a bulletproof vest under the Hawaiian shirts, please.

Jason’s still splashing around the Laguna de Leche trying to take a picture of the flamingoes that is so cute that Dami has enough motivation to badger the great Bat of Gotham into bring home a screaming shitting pink bird in the Batwing, when the call comes through on the comms.

“‘Lo, what’s up?” he answers, squatting awkwardly to get a close-up of a sleeping flamingo’s face. An absolute moneyshot, baby.

“Jason,” and it’s Cass, terse and urgent and unhappy.

Jason’s got no idea what’s going on, but it’s easy for the hindbrain to infer; Alfred not being on the comms means he’s prepping the med bay, which means an injury. This time of the night, it’s always one Bat or Bird at home with Alfred while everyone else spreads out like the good version of a plague to blanket Gotham, so that’s why Cass is there. Jason’s the one being called, which means he’s the one closest to the crisis.

It’s Bruce, it’s got to be (stupid fucking ) Bruce. Jason’s racing for the Batwing before he thinks to even answer.

“Hit me.”

“No comms contact. Injury, bad injury. Alfred says, bleed out. Jason, help .”

There’s swamp mud on the shiny surface of the ‘wing, and there’ll be more on the interior because it’s not exactly the time to stomp around on the Welcome Mat to clean his boots. “I’m gonna go fetch, Cass, so don’t worry, okay?”

God love her, Cass actually sounds reassured. “Thank you,” she says, careful and sweet as anything. “Location sent, Jay. See you at home?”

“See you in a bit, kid.”

God actually fucking damn all modern aeronautic engineers for never seeing fit to give jets some fucking accelerator pedals. It’s hard to take your aggression and stress out on a vehicle when all the thrusters are fucking hand-held.

God extra fucking damn Bruce McBatman Wayne, for having Jason over as back-up and refusing be backed the hell up.

Bruce’s location comes up, along with his oxygen level and pulse, and god only knows how Alfred sneaked a sensor onto a man so pro-secrecy he gets his flu shots undercover.

It’s Colón cemetery, of fucking course it’s the cemetery, no one can ever say that Bruce isn’t the marquis of modern melodrama, and Jason decides it’s acceptable if he just screams the whole 200 miles back to Havana. This is his penance, for being strung out on coffee at 3 AM and spontaneously deciding to try and reconcile harder with his father.

If the man has the cheek to die, Jason’s going to legitimately lose his fucking mind (again).

Bruce looks down, and sees his son.

Jason is cursing up an absolute storm, blue enough to potentially rouse the mothers buried here who will tut at him and go “Language, young man!”. What a sight that would be, an undead legion of parents scolding a dead-now-alive vigilante man in front of a different man cosplaying middle-aged normalcy on its deathbed.

Wild. Bruce laughs, and then wheezes. Blood loss does a number on your breathing, just one of those things that he doesn’t often need to think about. Does a number on your ability to think normal things too, but he’s like that even when most of his blood is inside his body, so Bruce would hate to make excuses.

“What the fuck is wrong you, there are like a bajillion hospitals you could have gone to while undercover, why are you always like this?” Jason is doing that scream-whispering thing, that skill learned by all night-time vigilantes, as he rips off Bruce’s shirt to survey the damage.

It’s not particularly pretty. Taking out half a dozen armed men in the full suit wouldn’t be enough to make him break a sweat, usually, but dressed like a casual dad with his centre of gravity a little off from the equipment strapped to his belly, it was a little harder.

Add to that trying to incapacitate without killing or even seriously injuring anyone while weaving in between gunfire as he kept the kid from getting shot, and all in all it’s a downright miracle that Bruce only has three through-and-throughs in shoulder, gut, and thigh, and maybe three cracked ribs. He eventually managed to subdue Orian and his men, cuffing them in an empty container to be dealt with later. He had also released all the prisoners while sluggishly bleeding out all over, and had barely been able to escape their confused gratitude.

Their usual rendezvous point is by the seawall in Malecón, but the cemetery was closer and more convenient for a dying man, you see. When he had ascertained that he had lost enough blood that he legitimately would pass out and bleed to death before he could get help, he had finally given up and called the Cave.

Alfred, damn him, had somehow already known that things had gotten out of hand. Bruce is willing to bet the beard wig is bugged, which is an intriguing bit of imaginative engineering, but even complimenting Alfred on his ingenuity hadn’t preserved him from being chewed out while Cassandra interjected occasionally with quiet calls of his name.

Black spots have been dancing in his sight for a while now, but he’s happy they’re around the edges and don’t obscure Jason. “I like your shirt,” he manages to groan out.

Jason doesn’t even pause for breath in his tirade, as he pulls out a nasty little switchblade from his boot and proceeds to tear his pretty lime-green shirt into absolute shreds. “Jesus, I don’t even get to keep this shirt, and for what? Dumbass bleeding out, didn’t even bring any first aid for a goddamn mission.” The blood-clotting powders that hide in little sugar sachets come out, poured liberally into the latest holes in Bruce’s body, and they froth a soft pink before they start to plug him up. “Why in the hell didn’t you call me in before you went full Rambo, you idiot? I thought I was here to be your goddamn backup. Was it so important to keep me and my guns away from your toys, B, that you’re happy to die in a fuckin’ cemetery just to keep shit quiet?”

It is, Bruce notes with some distant satisfaction, a new record. It took them 5 full days before Jason lost his temper with him. His heart is full, even if his veins are not.

He pats Jason on the cheek, as Jason wraps padding to his ribs and immobilises the arm on his bad side with a sling. Oh, that rum and Coke has gone straight to his head. “Just recon,” he murmurs, a little stern so that Jason doesn’t pick up any bad vigilante habits from him. “To find where the kids are kept.” Breathing hurts, moving hurts, talking hurts. “Warehouse, left tracer there. They were about to shoot one of the kids.” Another breath, a cough, some bloody saliva dribbling at the corners of his lips. Pity, Bruce had grown questionably fond of his loud overshirts. “No time to do anything. Kid was mouthy, got on their nerves.”

Bruce smiles, or tries to, and hopes the pink teeth aren’t too off-putting. “Reminded me of you. Wanted to save him.”

That’s the important part, the message he absolutely needed to pass to Jason because whatever goes on with bullets and bad guys and the Outlaws and the Pit, to Bruce all things Jason and Jason-adjacent are important and good and always, always deserve to be saved and protected.

He doesn’t think he gets his point across, worries a little that this might be a self-centered way of structuring his relationship with a man who’s no longer happy to be his son, but it’s the whole truth of the matter.

On God, on the angel at whose feet he’s huddled together, on every good thing Bruce has ever managed to do either as a billionaire or a Bat, the most important things of all the important things in the world is that Bruce is always going to try-try-try for his family.

They have a moment that might be tender but is definitely quiet, Jason slack-jawed and tense, Bruce loose-limbed and punchdrunk. There’s a lot of noise over the comms right now, it’s too much to parse, but Bruce in his head thinks he’s wrapped this up quite nicely. He probably won’t die tonight, and if he does it won’t even hurt too much. As far as missions abroad go, this has to count as an out-and-out success.

Jason very pointedly isn’t looking at him when he finally continues with his triage, and isn’t particularly gentle though he is incredibly careful as he fireman hoists Bruce into the Batwing, whose paintjob will need a touch up from where it’s scraped up against the tops of the more ambitious mausoleums.

Putting on the seatbelt felt a lot like getting his ribs broken all over again, but that’s not really enough pain to make Bruce groan, which is nice. The air-conditioning and the seat cushions in the jet are also very nice.

He’s most of the way to being unconscious before Jason’s done with pre-flight checks and radioed PennyOne to forewarn their arrival.

It probably is just his subconscious letting him hear what he wants to hear, when Jason’s voice floats towards him to let him know that “You literal dumbfuck, ever think that sometimes I want to save your ass too?”

It’s a nice dream.

When Bruce wakes up, he’s on the cot in the med bay, and someone’s been conscientious enough to turn on the heating in the mattress. It feels sublime against the inherent chill of the cave, and he feels surprisingly sharp and chipper despite the close-ish dance with death. He’s hooked up to all sorts of machines, which is pretty standard Alfred, and a bag of blood transfusing back into him hangs from the side.

If the own-hair wig had tickled Jason, what must he think of Bruce’s own-blood bag?

Keeping as quiet as he can, Bruce sits up. The family had a habit of piling up in and around the med bay whenever someone was injured seriously enough to be unconscious, and it heartens him like nothing else to see the mess of sleeping children. Damian is curled up a corner, head pillowed against what looks like a shaved coconut, and Cassandra is tucked on top of a cabinet, back pressed to the wall. Dick and Tim have staked out the sole sofa in the room, and while they both would never accept it as gospel truth, they’re both snoring lightly with their heads tipped back. Stephanie’s face is unseeable, sleeping sitting up in a hard plastic chair with her mane of hair covering most of her face.

It’s a picture of chaotic peace.

“Hello, Jason,” he calls to the son he can’t see.

Right on cue, there’s the sound of boots trying to be somewhat quiet on concrete, and Jason appears from behind him. “How’d you figure I hadn’t just abandoned you?”

Bruce shrugs. “I didn’t. I just hoped.” He cranes his neck to try and look back at Jason, but it tugs on his ribs something awful. He gives up, and goes back to trying to keep them talking. “Nothing short of sedation would have everyone here asleep at the same time. I assume Alfred had a hand in this?”

“You’d guess right.” Jason appears and hops up onto the bed, crowding Bruce in the narrow space. “You’ve been out cold for three days now, and Alfred dosed up their pancakes but good this morning. Cass is just taking a nap, though, and you know me, I need a hell of a lot more ‘n that to take me out.”

Bruce does in fact know. It’s alarming that Jason is immune to any of Alfred’s numerous League-sourced concoctions. At least part of them are magic, because half of the people in this room have gone through training so brutal they’re immune to most Earthly interventions.

Jason’s got one up on everyone there. The Lazarus Pit gives a random assortment of questionable gifts along with life, it appears. At least he got to enjoy the pancakes.

“How are things in Havana?”

“Tim and Dick went in and shut it all down. Apparently Nightwing’s got contacts with some higher-ups in the Cuban policing and judiciary system, which I’m gonna assume is because his ass makes him mad popular on LinkedIn, and Orian’s crew got picked up. We cut off the snake’s head.”

Bruce knows Jason well enough to know what’s coming. It’s not going to be anything good, but there’s something there, in having Jason drop this clear of a hint.

“And Orian?”

Jason just grins at him, a vision in a leather jacket over a fluorescent orange t-shirt that just says Morón , paired with weathered grey leggings. He looks vicious and unstoppably kind. “Like I said. Snake’s head got cut off.”

Bruce shuts his eyes, and breathes. It’s that formula, yes, about income disparity and the misuse of a position of power, preying on the goodwill of people too good to get out of the way.

Orian was a snake, and if it were up to Bruce, all of his men would have been put down too, so.

Bruce groans, and massages his closed eyes to stave off a headache. “I really wish I had a hollowed-out pineapple full of something really alcoholic, right now.”

The tension that had held Jason taut and ready for a fight upon his admission of casual murder disperses, quietly and all of a sudden, and it’s so palpable Bruce wants to groan again.

“See, I had a think about that, and I have some ideas,” Jason tells him, and even without looking Bruce knows what that toothy grin looks like. There’s the warm weight of a hand resting just ever so gently on his hip, there is quite possibly a lot of affection in the air.

He finds himself smiling right back, and it’s a good, good feeling.

(And that is how the whole family ends up joining Bruce on a weeklong holiday in the Bahamas, with long, sundrenched days on the beach and some quality parkour in Cuba in the nights.

Bruce gets three straight days of everyone in the family razzing him for being the only of them, Alfred’s lily-white ass included, to have gotten legitimately, hideously sunburned.)

(It’s the best vacation he’s had in entire lifetimes.)

A/N: On God there is nothing I like better than a bit too much depressing introspection clad in bright patterns somewhere warm and humid aaaah.

Also this is not explicitly stated anywhere but 100% all the kids have to wear Black Bat style masks with built in respirators, and everyone’s got fanny packs filled with testing kits so that they can drop them around like candy.

This is how proactive vigilanteism stopped an epidemic from KO-ing asylums and penitentiaries in Gotham you heard it here first.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #batman #charity commission #despite the s in the name #i hadn't realised until i was doing this that #the bahamas were more than one island #hope y'all enjoy the topical sprinkling of covid-19 lore #sure looking forward to when mankind buries these important lessons #under capitalism come urgh june or something #whale writing

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onlyjihoons · 7 years

Text

it's all gucci,baby; p.j.h

a/n; very much inspired by @stormae ‘s Gold Leaf to write this, special shoutout to my friends and @jjeehoon and @markleetrashh for helping me through my writers’ block:”)) i hope you guys enjoy it:))

starting line: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, can you not act like a dick for a second?”

synopsis: inspired by quite a few sources, School 2017, The Inheritors and Gold Leaf by stormae, where jihoon’s the hottest chaebol of Seoyul High, a school for only the aristocrats and extremely wealthy. you, the daughter of the managing director of a broadcasting company, are on good connections with everyone, except jihoon.

warnings: mild language,, special appearance of older brother!rowoon,, except a few spoilers from various scenes of School 2017 and The Inheritors

genre: fluff, earpick of angst

“Make connections, not friends, because those people are bound to betray you one day.” Your father reminded you, before your first day in Seoyul high.

The world was a cruel place, he said, Never trust anyone, unless they open up their vulnerable side first. Unfortunately, in Seoyul high, no one ever did easily. They were too busy comparing their limited edition designer bags, sneakers, shoes, vacation getaway, or even cars. No one ever made friends. They made connections.

Now, the fine line between friends and connections is what made life in Seoyul High a nasty place to be at. With connections, you’re wary of each other, always walking a fine line, you could get bullied with the snap of your fingers, just because you said something the tiniest bit offensive.

Friends definitely don’t do that. They stand by you through thick and thin, for better or worse.

So far, you have made it through the first half of the last school year making lots of connections, and a few genuine friends. Your connections were constantly begging you to get them backstage passes to music shows to catch a glimpse or if they’re lucky, an autograph from their favourite idol. Of course, you initially denied, until they offered something in exchange. Like, a shopping spree at Sephora, or a staycation in Fiji. Not like it would break their bank anyway.

You were nominated by your teacher to be part of the exemplary student council of Seoyul High, which you were grateful for. At least, because the student councils are actually genuine, contary to popular belief.

Your few friends were part of the student council as well, but they were from other less-stuck-up classes. Your class, 4-1, consisted of the richest chaebols in your year. In addition, the class with elite students with exemplary results. Not forgetting strong connections with the people everyone wanted to be “friends” with.

The student councils in school had duties, such as keeping the conduct of the students to even help organise events for any special occasion. You cursed your impeccable luck as you were dispatched to a new duty called ‘fruit duty’, which was to simply make sure students take their fruits after buying their set lunch. It was redundant, you thought, but no one could go against the school honestly, no one wants to be at a risk of being expelled.

Everyone obediently took their fruits, which you were thankful for. It made your job so much easier, except for one student.

Park Jihoon.

Your classmate, and also seatmate. Jihoon was the son of the CEO of a chain of luxury hotels across the world, which earned him holiday trips during every school break. You had to give him the merit of being one of the better looking guys in Seoyul, with girls at his every step willing to throw themselves at his feet. However, he was cold to anyone and everyone, who barely smiled in school, except around his group of 11, in which they called themselves Wanna One.

Since the first day of school, Jihoon seemed to hate your guts for no apparent reason. Even though his father and and your father were on good business and personal terms, the both of you don’t seem to see eye-to-eye with each other. “You guys make a perfect couple” was what you often heard at dinners with Mr Park and his family. You and Jihoon would politely agree, but once the both of you were out of the suffocating dinner for “some bonding time and fresh air”, the fantasy of the Parks and your family were shattered, you and Jihoon would scoff at each other.

You were friends with one of the members, Daehwi. He was one of the more friendlier members, who are genuine to his friends. You and Daehwi had met at your father’s broadcasting station as he had to look over the clothing his father’s company sponsored for a recording. He was nice, charming and caring, unlike Jihoon.

You couldn’t exactly figure out why Jihoon would just not follow the damn school rules(not like he would get punished for it anyways, with him whipping out his father’s hotel card) and make the lives of the student councillors much easier. Strangely, he only decides to go against the rules whenever you’re around, just to get on your nerves.

“Park jihoon,” You sighed, today, Jihoon did not take his fruit yet again, “Will it hurt you to just lift your precious hand to take the damn fruit?”

Jihoon stopped in his tracks, stepped beside you and smirked, “Yes, Y/N, indeed, the Rolex on my wrist is stopping me from doing so.”

“I’ll have to issue you demerit points for not complying with a student councillor’s instruction, no?” You raised your brow, taking out your mobile phone.

Before you could even unlock your phone, Jihoon flicked your phone out of your grasp, and caught it behind your back.

“Y-yah!” You frowned as Jihoon waved your mobile phone above his head, “Give it back!”

“Why would I?” Jihoon teased, with that innocent smile planted on his pink lips, as his face inched closer to yours, “You would tarnish my perfect record, sweetheart.”

Your heart started to beat wildly at the proximity of your faces, you couldn’t deny that Jihoon was cute, to say the least. But being such a jerk wouldn’t make up for his pretty little face. It just made him ugly, a total turn off. Sometimes you wondered why girls still fall for him despite his shitty attitude towards people.

You snatched your phone from his grasp, as you scoffed and stomped away, glad that your shift ended. As Jihoon watched your silhouette storm out of the cafeteria, he shook his head, “She’s so nice to mess with.”

Most people would hire personal tutors for last minute mugging of tests, then score with flying colours. But some people would actually study on their own, using their own brains and legitimate smarts to get their desired grades.

People had different studying methods. Some use flash cards, some practice, and some make notes. You and Jihoon just so happened to be the ones who study best doing notes, and also the only ones in 4-1 to actually use their own smarts.

You never knew Jihoon cared about his grades that much, until later today.

While you were blasting music in your ears, writing your geography notes, an angry Jihoon stormed towards you, ripping out your earpods out of your ears.

“What?” You scowled, annoyed that someone would rudely interrupt your rare study time in school.

“Is this your way of getting back at me?” Jihoon seethed with anger, face red with rage.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, can you not act like a dick for a second?” You barked, focusing back on your notes.

“Look sweetheart,” Jihoon sighed, “I don’t know what grudge you have against me–”

“Hey, you were the one who acted all mean to me first, Park Jihoon,” You pointed, “Let’s not push blames now, shall we?”

At this point of time, your classmates were watching the whole saga unfold, gossiping amongst themselves.

“I want all of you to get out of this classroom right now,” Jihoon growled, but no one moved, “out, NOW!”

With that, the students filed out of the classroom, only leaving you and Jihoon alone.

“Now, Miss Y/N,” Jihoon’s lips smiled a tight line, “I don’t really know what I have done to offend you–”

“Your existence is a mere offence to this world,” You retorted, “Cut to the chase, Park.”

Jihoon was slightly taken aback by your comeback, he then straightened his uniform, “I came back to realise that my chemistry notes were gone while i was eating. And I was making an educated guess on who on earth will steal my notes.”

“Your guess isn’t educated at all, Park Jihoon,” You hissed, “Why on earth will I steal your shitty notes when I can do them myself?”

“Then give the notes to me!” Jihoon fumed, “I’ll tell Woojin you like him if you don’t give me back my notes.”

You rolled your eyes, as you stuck your hand beneath his table, and fished out his precious chemistry notes and threw it on his table.

“Your childish coerce won’t get you anywhere babe,” You mimicked Jihoon, “And your brain’s too small to remember you actually kept them there after Chemistry.”

Jihoon was certainly flustered, as he whimpered “I’ll still tell Woojin you like him.”

“How do you know I like him and not you?” You chided, soon regretting your words.

“You what?”

“You’re a dick.” You stood up abruptly, pushing Jihoon with your shoulder intentionally as you walked out of the classroom, face bright beetroot red.

After the whole notes drama with Jihoon, the whole school seemed to sense the choking tension between the both of you, and also unanimous shipping of the both of you. Not because of a company rivalry, but more of a personal rivalry.

You couldn’t believe your own mouth acted faster than your brain, you confessed to your arch nemesis. You realised your deep feelings for Park Jihoon, the one that you’ve been bickering with for the past 4 years.

“I can’t believe I said that to that twit,” You folded your arms in annoyance, as your brother chuckled.

“You’re just blind, sister.” Rowoon kept his eyes on the road, as he commented.

“How am I blind? He’s cute, I admit that, but he’s so rude.”

“Jihoon isn’t bad, honestly,” Rowoon reasoned out, “He’s a nice kid.”

“Why do all of you all keep siding Park Jihoon?” You replied in exasperation, “He’s a spoilt brat that only knows how to use his face to get through anything.”

“Woah sis, i see that you’re jealous,” Rowoon teased, as the car pulled up in front of your dance studio, “Have fun at ballet!”

“Yeah yeah, I will,” You scowled, waving goodbye to your brother as his shiny black Maserati drove off into the distance.

“Y/N, what’s up with the black face? You would totally suit the black swan role right now.” Your friend pinched your cheeks as she cooed.

“Just some stupid jerk who made me annoyed in school,” You rolled your eyes, “When is the audition for Swan Lake? Count me in as the black swan.”

“Apparently its today…” You friend tapped her finger on her chin, “Oh! The little kids are joining us for the audition too.”

Soon enough, you hear excited chatters from the studio, as little girls with pink leotards and pink wrap skirts filed out the the studio, greeting the senior dancers with innocent smiles on their faces.

“Unnie!” One of the girls with big brown eyes greeted you, “I’m chosen as the small black swan! Teacher Kim told me you’re the big black swan, and she wants to see you dance!”

“Really? Your heart melted as you took her hand, “Let’s go in then.”

She dragged you excitedly into the studio, which was filled with parents of the little ballerinas. They were all dressed in designer clothing, a few pieces from Gucci and Chanel you recognised. There was a young boy that stood out though, in a pink Ralph Lauren polo tee with black ripped jeans, compete with Alexander McQueen sneakers.

Park Jihoon.

You were pleasantly surprised to see him at a prestigious ballet studio. You knew he was good at dancing, but not expecting him to watch a ballet that would definitely bore him to sleep.

The little girl that greeted you earlier, ran towards Jihoon with open arms as Jihoon greeted her with a smile and hugged her back. You guessed she was his sister, as he ruffled her hair affectionately as he passed her some water to drink from her sippy water bottle.

You looked away, not wanting him to recognise you in your leotard, stiff tutu and hard pointes.

“Alright ladies,” Your teacher began as she clapped her hands, “As we can see here, parents of the baby ballet class will be observing our audition for the Swan Lake recital in December, do remember to keep your posture and give your best. Good luck!”

You were more nervous than you were before you saw Jihoon, you were more determined to do better in the audition than you were as well. As you put on your Freed pointes, you felt a tap on your shoulders, as you turned your head, it was Jihoon.

“Good luck for the audition later, I heard from Jihyun that you’re really good.” Jihoon smiled, which you could tell was genuine.

“I don’t expect to see you here, Park Jihoon, I thought you were more into popping than ballet.” You shrugged, tying the ribbons of the pointes, “But thank you though, I really want that black swan role.”

“You’ll get it, I’m sure of it.”

“Woah, what is this? Park Jihoon being nice? I’m not used to it.” You teased, as he pouted.

“At least I’m not doing this,” Jihoon closed the space between the both of you, lips almost touching, “that’s rude, right?”

“Y-yes, super rude,” You stuttered, pushing Jihoon away from you as you pulled up your tutu, “Now get lost, I need to warm up.”

Jihoon could only smile to himself, “That was heart-throbbing.”

In the end, under Jihoon’s “observation”, you clinched the role of the black swan, the judges impressed with your facial expressions and strong techniques.

You could feel Jihoon’s eyes pinned on you as you performed a series of fouettes, a very difficult mastery the black swan had to perform. You nailed, the fouettes beautifully, much to your friends’ surprise as they all either ended up with either twisted feet or on the floor. You received a standing ovation after your performance, which you were thankful for.

“Y/N!” You hear Jihoon call out to you, as he carried Jihyun on one hand, her bag slung on the other side of his shoulders. “Do you want a ride home? We stay in the same area anyway.”

You tried to calm your beating heart as you saw Jihoon’s veins showing with Jihyun sitting on his arm, “It’s okay, Rowoon’s gonna pick me up later.”

“But he asked me to send you home though?” Jihoon raised his eyebrows as he seated Jihyun in her childseat at the back of his Mercedes.

Kim Rowoon, I’ll kill you when i get back home.

“Well, then thank you I guess?” You smiled sheepishly, as Jihoon held the door open for you.

The ride home was silent, you and Jihoon had almost nothing to talk about. The only sound that was produced throughout the ride was the constant whirling of the car engine.

Jihoon cleared his throat, “You did really well just now, you looked amazing.”

“Thank you,” You blushed, looking out of the window, not wanting Jihoon to look at your blushing face.

“But Jihoon-oppa told me something else when you were performing just now,” Jihyun piped up quizzically, which earned her a stink eye from Jihoon.

“Jihyun-ah,” Jihoon flashed her an obvious fake-smile, “it’s our secret, remember?”

“Ah yes, secret.” She giggled.

“What’s the secret, Jihyun? Can I be part of your secret gang?” You turned your head towards Jihyun, who was about to open her mouth and say something, but you felt something soft on your cheeks. When you turned back, Jihoon’s face was just centimetres away from yours.

“C-can you not know about it?” Jihoon blushed as he reclined back to his seat.

“You’re weird.” You frowned.

“Yah, Kim Rowoon, you’d better come out or you’re gonna be dead!” You shouted once you entered your home, searching through every room in the house.

“Rowoon’s out,” Your mother appeared, her face lighting up at the sight of Jihoon, “Jihoon! It’s nice of you to send Y/N home. You must be busy.”

“Not really, I live around here anyway, Jihyun-ie goes to the same ballet school as Y/N as well.” Jihoon scratched the back of his head.

“Would you like to stay for dinner? Your mom’s coming over for dinner too.” Your mother offered.

“Yeah, sure.” Jihoon smiled, “I’m sure Jihyun would love talking about the ballet recital that is coming up soon, she’s playing a role of a small black swan.”

“Really? That’s so cute!” Your mother cooed as she picked Jihyun up in her arms, “Tell me more about it sweetheart.”

As Jihoon saw the both of them retire into the dining room, he went around the house searching for you. The house was big, easily at least 10 rooms on each floor. There were a total of 4 floors, the roof was a beautiful infinity pool that reaches out to Seoul’s skyline. You could get a good glimpse of the N Seoul Tower, and every New Year’s the Parks would stay over at your place to catch the fireworks burst off at midnight.

Just as Jihoon was about to give up, you scared him as you jumped out from the corner of the bookshelf.

“Boo!”

“Yah!” Jihoon screamed, “You scared me.”

“I sure did, just by the look of your face.” You snickered. “Do you wanna go up? The weather is nice today.”

“Sure.”

You let Jihoon have a change of clothes, so that he wouldn’t actually soak his $1500 jeans into the pool of chlorine water. He easily fit into the clothes Rowoon grew out of, even though it was still a little over-sized, he still looks good nonetheless.

“Cola or Sprite?” You offered as he sat on the beach chair beside you.

“Sprite please.” Jihoon then got up from his seat to sit at the edge of the swimming pool, dipping his legs into the cool waters.

“You know, Jihoon,” You began as you settled his drink on the ground, joining him at the pool, “You’re actually nice.”

“Wow, you finally noticed,” Jihoon clapped his hands, “Well done Y/N.”

“Don’t make me take back my words.” You warned, sipping on your fruit punch.

“I won’t babe.” Jihoon winked, as you scoffed and pretended to puke.

The both of you quietly stared at the setting sun, which painted the sky hues of pink and orange, with cotton-candy clouds floating in the sky.

You sighed, you really wanted to confess to Jihoon once again, but you didn’t know how to.

“Y/N,”

“Hmm?”

“Do you know how to swim?” Jihoon asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m sorry I have to do this,”Jihoon pushed you into the pool, the cold water shocking your senses as you threaded water to get up.

“Yah! Park Jihoon!” You screamed, pulling his leg towards the water as he entered the pool with a soft splash.

Jihoon picked you up bridal-style in the pool, his hair drenched but his ever-so perfect face gleaming under the orange sun. He smirked, “I did that on purpose.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I can do this,” Jihoon swiftly closed the space between the both of you, pressing his soft lips onto yours. You wrapped your arms around his neck, as he slowly deepened the kiss, lips and hearts moving in sync.

“You know,” Jihoon pulled away, “I’ve been thinking of ways to confess to you and this seemed to be the best way to do so.”

“You know,” You mimicked Jihoon, “Our rivalry for the past 4 years weren’t really needed.”

Jihoon pressed a sweet kiss on your lips once again, “This is why I’m ending it, you’re my girlfriend now.”

“You’re such a jerk.” You huffed, playing with the wet locks on Jihoon’s head.

“But I’m your jerk.” Jihoon smiled.

#park jihoon #wanna one #wanna one scenarios #produce 101 season 2 #produce 101 scenarios #repost #Fluffy writes

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