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im-totally-not-an-alien-2 · 1 year

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Danny never would have thought he would have become a stalker. Yet, here he is watching his crush jump from rooftop to rooftop.

He isn't really sure when it started. All he saw was a vigilante around his own age kicking the butts of people way stronger than him with pure skill and hard work and he swooned. He liked this Robin, Tucker claimed that he had a type: Fierce, can kick butt, took crap from no one, had dark hair and had a soft spot for animals. There were other things on that list too, most of which was just him comparing Robin to Val and Sam.

His core sang in his chest, demanding that he protect his vigilante. Seeing as Amity was quiet and safe nowadays thanks to the portals exploding Danny could really feed his obsession of protecting people if there was nothing to protect them from.

So now Phantom his following his crush around helping him from behind the scenes. An intangible pipe here, a patch of ghost ice there, and no one would ever have to know.

And best of all Robin was safe.

Damian had been having a streak of good luck lately and it has him in a good mood. Sure, he's felt eyes on him for the past few weeks, but other than informing Grayson nothing had come of it.

Until today that is. He failed to move out of the way in time and expected to be thrown through a wall for his mistake.

Instead a wall of ice materialized out of nowhere and blocked the attack.

#fanfiction prompts #prompts #dp x dc #robin #damian wayne #deadserious #dead serious #danny phantom #danny fenton #tw: stalking #tw: stalker #danny is too scared to introduce himself #hes less afraid of the bats and more afraid of Robins rejection #danny: wht if he thinks im a monster?!#danny: the horror

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thefreakandthehair · 6 months

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@eddiemonth prompt, oct 4th: Rejection | Arsonist’s Lullaby - Hozier | Lost a/n: pre-steddie post-s4, angst with soft, happy ending because I'm a marshmallow. un-betaed because I'm challenging myself to write these in under an hour. read on ao3 | link to series on ao3

All Eddie Munson has ever wanted to do is play music.

That’s it. There are other hobbies, of course, other things that bring him joy– D&D, fantasy novels, art– but ever since he was a kid, whenever a teacher would ask what he wants to be when he grows up, it’s always the same answer.

I wanna play music.

As a kid, it seems less daunting. He just has to practice, he just has to play, he just has to have the passion to make it big. To be the next Kirk Hammett, or Eddie Van Halen, or Ozzy Osbourne if he can teach himself to carry a tune.

Making friends is hard, but he manages to find a few in middle school who can play the instruments he can’t– drums, bass. Eddie takes the role of frontman, not exactly a singer still but he’s charismatic enough to get away with it at their school talent show.

High school comes, and Corroded Coffin is revamped. New vibe, new members. He’s older now, a little more jaded with each rejection.

No one wants their EP, recorded by hand in Gareth’s garage onto cheap cassette tapes.

No venue will let them play, and Eddie knows that it’s probably because they’re in high school but hadn’t The Cure started in high school?

No one believes in them, trying to push them– especially Eddie– to consider more successful careers, safer paths.

But eventually, they book a regular gig at The Hideout and Eddie’s certain this is it. This is their big break. Until they play week after week, staring at the same five plastered faces every Tuesday. If they can prove themselves though, the owner will have to let them play on a Friday or Saturday.

He never does.

The final nail in the proverbial coffin comes after Eddie’s final senior year. Being accused of murder should have beefed up his credibility if nothing else– he’s already been traumatized, terrorized, and hunted like a goddamn dog, nevermind almost killed via hoard of angry mutant bats. Surely, he’ll catch at least one break.

And then the owner at The Hideout tells him he can’t play there anymore.

The hoards of people who still blame him for Chrissy Cunningham’s death are too much for him to manage himself and, in his words, Eddie’s driving away good business. His heart shatters, his breath catches, and Eddie leaves without a word because if he were to try to speak, all that would come out is either an enraged scream or a choked sob and Eddie doesn’t want to risk either.

He drives around aimlessly for an unknown amount of time, just circles around the outskirts of Hawkins. Maybe I’ll just leave, he thinks. Indianapolis might be far enough. Maybe Chicago. Fuck it, maybe Argyle and Jonathan can put me up for awhile in California. Eddie wants to go somewhere that makes him forget just how lost he is, how unwanted and forgotten he’s become. Being the social pariah is only fun when he’s making speeches on cafeteria tables, not when it boots him out of his one and only career path.

Somehow, he ends up in Loch Nora. He can’t face Wayne right now, he doesn’t want to bother Robin or Nancy, he’s already let Jeff, Gareth, and Freak down in the worst way imaginable, and if he goes to his mom’s or Chrissy’s tombstones with one more sob story, he’s afraid they’ll start haunting him. Steve’s become a friend over the last year or so it makes sense. Process of elimination and all of that.

He doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to realize that he’d started driving that way before he ruled everyone else out.

Steve welcomes him like he always does and offers him a beer, sitting with him in companionable silence on the couch as they watch Monty Python and The Holy Grail and laugh at the same parts. Eddie knows Steve can see that he’s upset but instead of asking questions Eddie isn’t ready to answer, he just sits a little closer with their thighs touching and one arm strewn over the back of the couch, just barely grazing Eddie’s shoulder.

The movie ends and Steve moves to switch the tape when Eddie finally speaks up.

“The Hideout kicked us out. Can’t play there anymore.”

Eddie sees Steve freeze from behind before turning, his eyebrows knitted together above his nose. “Are you fucking serious?”

He nods and sighs, lifting one hand to chew on this thumbnail as he looks at the wall beyond Steve.

“That’s bullshit, dude. Why? Because of the protestors or whatever?”

He nods again.

“Want me to go down there? I’ve still got my bat around here somewhere. It might be nice to swing at something that’s not trying to like, eat me.”

Eddie huffs a small laugh through his nose and meets Steve’s eyes, their righteous anger blending with his own as he sees Steve cross his arms over his chest. It’s hard not to stare.

“Well, then at least I wouldn’t be the only guy in this town wanted for murder.”

Steve shakes his head and just chooses another movie, Howard the Duck this time, before returning to his spot on the couch. It’s one of Eddie’s favorite movies but he can’t focus to save his life because Steve is even closer now, his arm draped fully across Eddie’s shoulders and creating a space for Eddie to easily just… rest. So he does.

The title sequence starts and Eddie’s head drops to the side, resting on Steve’s shoulder. It’s one of his favorites but he can’t follow the plot to save his life. All he can focus on is the way Steve’s fingers trace symptoms and shapes against the cotton of his tee shirt, and the steady rise and fall of his chest, and the feeling of Steve’s head leaning against the top of his.

“I had a new song and everything,” Eddie whispers, surprising both himself and Steve.

Steve hums and tightens his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, a ghost of a hug. “Play it for me sometime?”

All Eddie Munson has ever wanted to do is play music. And maybe he still can.

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batricide · 5 years

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cool, okay, back on my bullshit with all my bat feelings. an anon asked if i’ve done this meta and i haven’t, so here it is.

so. there’s tension between damian and bruce from the get-go in injustice, and we’re never really told why. if we take cues from the game (though that entire scene doesn’t make sense) then it’s because bruce didn’t save jason, which fits in with my reordered robin theory in which tim and jason were switched, and jason has only recently died.

and damian? was close with jason. his death is the start of the crack of his relationship with this father, and every time bruce doubles down on his beliefs he shoves damian further away.

damian is really empathetic. it’s easy to miss because he hides it underneath layers upon layers of armor. bruce’s lack of restraint or limitations on what he’s willing to do to someone horrifies him. injustice’s version of bruce is someone who truly believes that the ends justify the means - which means he’s apt to do some heinous things to people until they see his side of things. installing viruses in cyborg, kidnapping hawkgirl and replacing her, beating people within an inch of their life - all of it is fine to him so long as they’re not dead.

but it’s not fine to damian. damian is afraid of his father. which is why he doesn’t go home until after he’s gotten the superpills. its important to note he’s not going with the intent to fight. if he was going to do that, he wouldn’t be doing this:

or respond like this:

or this:

he’s here to make amends, or at least try to. he still loves his father and he wants to be forgiven, this is something that will carry on ten years later in injustice 2. damian wants to come home. he comes to try to talk to his father honestly. but he’s terrified to do so and took the pill as a means of being able to defend himself from his father if it came down to it.

damian is a highly trained fighter, but hes also a tiny thirteen year old boy who knows he can’t overpower a man twice his size and weight.

and bruce? gives him bullshit.

bruce’s entire argument really hinges on ‘you, my thirteen year old son, didn’t take my side in this argument’. because, i have to put this in bold, the league was not executing the criminals they were removing from arkham. they were just transferring them to a more secure facility. and as far as damian sees it, bruce doesn’t like it because it’s removing an element of his control.

it harkens back to the conversation bruce and dick have in the batplane. that bruce doesn’t talk to people, he doesn’t explain himself. he’s either right or you’re wrong and he won’t explain himself. he’ll just stop talking and leave until you agree. there is no option where he sits and listens to an open and honest dialogue, no scenario where he entertains that he might be in the wrong or maybe things aren’t black and white.

on prime earth damian had to bend over backwards to prove to bruce that he wasn’t a monster. it was damian who spent months digging through the sewers for martha’s pearls. damian who had to prove he was capable of loving titus. damian who constantly had to show that he was capable of empathy and thinking of others - bruce did none of the heavy lifting in that father-son relationship, he made damian climb the entire hill and still continues to put little effort into it.

and injustice bruce is even less empathetic and expressive than prime bruce.

which is why you get a confrontation like this:

this goes beyond dick’s accident and ties back into what clark said about bruce not tending to his son’s who are grieving because they lost friends in metropolis. damian’s fed up with never meeting bruce’s expectations. but more than that, he’s fed up with his feelings coming second to bruce’s.

and like bruce, he sits on them until they explode. but he does his best to convey his needs and what he wants and when he can’t handle something, and when people ignore them, that’s when he explodes.

that doesn’t justify any of the violent outbursts, but he was raised in a really unhealthy environment and was thrown into another one where negative feelings are dealt with by kicking the shit out of bad guys. not sitting down and sorting through them.

damian also has a thing about being touched. which, tying back into why he felt comfortable coming back here, probably ties in to his expectation that he’s going to get the lights knocked out of him. it’s what would happen in the league - we see that in the brief glimpses of how talia parents him and athanasia. toeing out of line is grounds for getting the shit beaten out of you, and while things should be different here. they aren’t.

and from how bruce reacts he’s not wrong to expect it.

so alfred nearly gets squished and damian runs over to him. and alfred’s first question is to ask for bruce. he apologizes and he means it.

and that seems to be grounds for damian to just tap out and go.

damian deduces that hawkgirl isn’t hawkgirl, blows some stuff up, it’s a bad road. bruce calls after him because i honestly think he wanted to try to talk to him - not to have a serious heart to heart with him about what just happened, or what happened in arkham, but to try to manipulate him into taking bruce’s side. this is a theme moving forward. bruce will dangle forgiveness in front of damian, but only when it benefits him and can be used to control him.

i’ve read this issue like a million times but this is the first time i realized that this is where he takes dick’s suit. i think this was his way of telling bruce that he didn’t deserve to use dick’s memory the way he uses his parent’s death - as justification for what he does. but damian also doesn’t do anything with it. he puts it in a box and doesn’t look at it, just shuts it away and moves forward with his life until dick passes the mantle to him in an attempt to steer him back on the right path.

so.

bruce is angry at damian for dick’s death but he won’t admit it. injustice’s bruce doesn’t really do feelings in the open, he just doubles down on his belief set and takes anyone who doesn’t agree with him as a traitor. he instead uses damian’s “betrayal” - ie, damian standing with clark instead of him - as justification for icing him out. that way he can ignore all the people who have reminded him time and time again that it was an accident.

he’s also really, really violent. the grab he makes for damian is really ugly and damian’s hesitance to come home and even try to make amends is explained right then and there.

bruce loves his son. but bruce also can’t stand that damian won’t do what he says. so from here on out, bruce will ignore damian unless it benefits him.

alfred clearly loves damian and damian loves him fiercely in return, but alfred is blind to a lot of the terrible shit bruce does out of parental love. he enables a lot of bruce’s shitty behavior without seeming to realize it.

if they’d just had an argument, without someone there to take bruce’s side over damian’s, things might’ve gone better because at least they’d air it out - but it’s more likely bruce would’ve gotten fed up and walked away.

damian himself is a mess and this entire encounter just drives him further away from his father and further down the path he’s walking, because he’s just burned that bridge in a blaze of shitty parenting and borderline child abuse. the next issue damian’s discarded any notion that bruce is a good person or justified in anything he does. damian is done trying to reconcile with him because he knows it’s never going to happen, he’s seen how bruce sees him and wholeheartedly rejects it.

this isn’t to say that damian is a saint. he’s a very flawed, very broken person who went from one abusive parental situation to another, to another and he’s got bad habits from all of them, many of which he isn’t aware of or doesn’t think are a problem. because talia and bruce were controlling and physically abusive and were very upfront about the kind of people they are, whereas clark hides all his darkness behind that boyscout smile and telling damian he’s good and worthy of people loving him.

okay i think i’m done with words.

#ooc.#meta.#ok to reblog #tw child abuse

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