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#i do actually think tims been going by black bat for a while
oifaaa · 9 months
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My belief for the future au is that when they forced Bruce to retire they also forced Tim to move on from being Robin
It's how they got both tim and Bruce to show up they told Bruce it was an intervention for Tim and told Tim it was an intervention for Bruce - its called time management
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batfamluvr · 2 months
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Hi, I don't know If you take requests, but could you please right about the reaction and thoughts of the bat boys toward finding out their partner was pregnant? Please and thank you
A/N: I do take requests, love. And I've got you ❣️
Bat-boys find out you're pregnant🍼
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Dick Grayson's first thought is worry. He doubts how he'll make it work; crimefighting, his job, then his relationship with you. And he'll wonder how Nightwing will interfere with his life, and how Bruce will react (he'll spoil the child endlessly).
Reassurance from Donna, Alfred, or Bruce will part his fog of worry and distance. He'll hit the ground running to rectify his isolation. I mean breaking the news to friends and family, arranging play dates with Roy and Lian.
"I'll be safer on patrol," he whispered," I promise, hun." You had broke down after so long of trying to remain calm. But seeing your lover return home with bruise after bruise would weigh anyone down. Especially one pregnant.
Dick's hand would always be on your belly, reminding himself that you both are safe and he's doing a great job. It's what he needs to hear, that he's making the city safer for you both.
He is 100% a handyman. Dick will build cribs, changing tables, repair toilets, fix creaky cabinets. And he'll baby proof the house." Don't worry, babe," he assured you." Just relax. It's just a clogged drain."
Jason Todd's first thought is if he'd be a good father, after everything he's been through and done. He even wonders if he deserves to be a father, or if he deserves a nameless grave. However, leaving is never and will never be an option for him. I truly think he'd be the most active out of the bat-boys.
Jason's love language has always been acts of service, and it would thrive during your pregnancy. Your house would be booby-trapped and SECURED. He'd teach you the basics of a gun, and he'd ensure your pregnancy cravings are stocked. Jason would also wash your back when your belly grew too large.
Jason would let you shop for baby and maternity clothes with his card. His only request is that you don't get the baby anything too vibrant because it's an eyesore. If anything, he'd prefer neutral tones or black on the baby.
The weather becomes his interest after the baby's birth." Do you think they need a jacket?" Is his favorite line." Don't you think it's a little hot for them to be wearing long sleeves," he'll wonder. Or the baby is swaddled and he'll question," do you think he's overheating? I'd be hot if that were me all wrapped up like that."
A child is the only thing to make him stand steadfast on his refusal to kill. Not Bruce, not Dick, not even you. Your child brought forth a new mindset, one of not wanting to see a killer reflecting in the innocent and chocolate eyes of his child (Jason's eyes are brown. Argue with a wall).
Tim Drake isn't as present as one would believe. His activity is inconsistent, and it's harder to reach him because he's usually working. But he wants you to sit with him, to bring the baby and let him play around in his office.
It warms his heart to return from a meeting and his baby is sprawled out on his pastel blue teddy bear blanket and cooing. You're dangling a rattle over him, and Tim would strut over and kiss you on the cheek." How's it going, love?" He'd ask and rub the baby's cheek." They being good?" His eyebrow would raise playfully.
The baby would be raised around Bruce and Alfred more than his actual parents. I also see Stephanie caring for the baby and even babysitting if you work or just need rest. Cass would swoon over it, so prepare for tons of peeled oranges and Cass making your bottles.
Alfred would surely read your baby literature. He'd be sitting in the library, baby on his lap while y'all rest, reading from a dusty and old book that's sure to ignite your allergies.
Damian would try his hardest to be a fun dad because he never got that. It's been well documented that he wouldn't dare put a child through his life. So I think the farthest he would go is teaching you enough to defeat the average Shadow/Assassin. But he would not want you killing.
I think he'd lean into Bruce's "No-Kill" mantra after having a child. If you even want to enter vigilantism; he'd understand if you choose not to. It's a thankless job; it's isolating and bruising.
But I think if the kid did continue training, that's when they'd truly bond. Damian and he/she would laugh and joke between rounds; he'd show them the best way to throw a punch, and he'd teach mercy. That's also when they'd meet the other side of their family---the Al Ghuls. But Damian would have strict stipulations on what they learn. No instant kill moves, no brainwashing, none of the narcissistic sentiments Talia filled his head with.
I also think you, Damian, and your kid would lead fairly healthy lives. Not overboard, but the occasional protein shake or morning run; maybe even a little weight lifting. Or if cardio is your speed, he'd install a home-treadmill or a pool.
Bruce Wayne's first thought would be his age. How he's climbing in age and his job usually doesn't lead to gold and sunsets. He'd be happy because he sees it as a second chance. His first two sons saw the angry and vengeful side of him, so that's how they grew up; Tim sought him, and Damian came stained with blood.
But with you and the baby, he could actually be a father. He could raise the baby from infancy and make bottles and hush cries, like he wanted to with Dick and Jason. He could show the baby his favorite movies and just talk to them, even though the baby would respond with drool and coos.
He wouldn't have to be alone anymore. Bruce would set his child on a straight path; the world has enough Bats and birds. They could just...be. They'd would carry on the Wayne name.
Bruce would spoil you and his baby rotten. He'd watch over the baby like a hawk; each cry, each coo, each babble would send Bruce into a fit of worry. He'd leap up from his seat and check the cradle, only to find a giggling baby with his feet in the air. Then he'd chuckle, which would make the baby giggle even more. " You got me, little one. You got me," he'd utter and return to the Bat-computer.
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aprocessionofthoughts · 6 months
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Sleepy Summons
whumptober23 day 29- scented candle fandom- dp x dc TW- none summary- Danny just wants to go to sleep
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Dick was kind of embarrassed. But at least everyone would be embarrassed with him. If they made it out alive.
Look, they had thought it was a simple cult, but apparently there was at least a little magic at play, because they had managed to capture not only Dick, but also Jason, Tim, and Damian.
Batman was supposed to be on his way, but he had been out of town so it might take him a while. Dick just hoped these cultists took their time with the summoning. 
The cultists began to gather around the summon circle which had been lined with candles.
Well, it looked like they wouldn't be that lucky today.
The chanting started and the candles glowed brighter as the chal lines glowed green. Then suddenly a figure appeared in the center of the circle.
Dick stared for a second, unsure if he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing.
There was a boy, maybe between Damian and Tim’s age standing in the center of the circle.They had black hair and blue eyes, and were holding a toothbrush and toothpaste.
The boy blinked at the cultists around him and looked over at the tied up bats.
“Ummm….” The boy said.
Some of the cultists shifted and started muttering among themselves.
Then the boy sniffed the air. “Are those pumpkin spice scented candles?”
“They had a sale.” one of the cultists said.
“Shut up, Jerry.” the potential leader said.
“No, no. I like it.” said the boy. “But now I'm hungry for pumpkin pie.”
“Me too.”
“Shut up, Jim. We’re not making conversation with the foul demon.”
“Wos, okay. I didn't think I smelled that bad.”
“Shut up.” snarled the lead cultist.
The boy held his hands up, accidentally squeezing the toothpaste. He stared at his now toothpaste covered hand. “Look what you made me do.”
“It doesn’t matter.” the leader gritted his teeth. “I summoned you–”
“Actually, it wasn’t just you that summoned me.”
Dick could see the leader trembling with suppressed rage. 
“As the leader of this group, I command you to obey my orders.” 
“But, like, dit you get to be the leader through a cote or did you just appoint yourself.” the boy said, ignoring him.
“He kind of just appointed himself.” said one of the other cultists.
“Dud, that sucks. Are you guys really willing to put up with this?”
“Shut up!” the leader screeched.
“No, he’s right. I want to vote for our leader. What do you guys think?”
Several of the other cultists nodded.
“I vote for you, Freddie. All in favor?”
“Aye.” said everyone but the leader who was spluttering with anger.
“You can’t do that! I’m the leader! I gave you all the leader !”
“But we gathered all the ingredients and drew the circle!”
The boy spoke up again. “What do you guys even get out of this?”
There was silence for a moment.
“You know, I actually don’t really know. What about you Jerry?”
“No. What about you Linda?”
“I just thought we were going to get drunk or something.”
“Demon, I command you to be silent!” the leader said, looking like he’d finally had enough.
The boy glared at him. “First of all, I’m not a demon. Second of all, I don’t feel like being quiet. And third of all, I was finally going to get to sleep on time when you guys summoned me. So, I’m sure you’ll all understand that I'm a bit peeved. And lastly,” the boy stepped out of the summoning circle and the cultists scrambled back. “You were fools for thinking that you could control creatures from the other side of the veil. Most of them would kill you, but since I already showered and don’t feel like washing blood off of myself tonight, I’ll just leave you for the bats.”
The boy's eyes began to glow a bright blue and his hair moved in a nonexistent wind. Frost began to sweep from under his feet toward the cultists. Ice climbed up their legs and crept up until it completely covered them.
Then the boy turned toward them.
Dick swallowed. He hated the occult. He just hoped that whoever this was would leave them alone. He had said he’d leave the cultists for the bats, but still, you could never be certain with the occult. This being was probably not even human.
The boy stepped forward and Dick tensed as he reached out and touched Tim on the shoulder. The ropes holding him fell to the ground, and the boy repeated the process with all of them.
When Dick had removed the tape that covered his mouth he asked, “Who are you?”
“Look,” the boy had rolled his eyes, “I’m tired and I don’t have time to play twenty questions with you right now. If you want, you can just ask your sad trenchcoat man about the Infinite Realms, and also, tell him to stop selling his soul. It causes a lot of paperwork.”
With that, the boy disappeared.
------------------
Damnny groaned as he appeared back in his bathroom. He abandoned his toothbrush and toothpaste and rinsed off his hand, before heading to his room and collapsing on his bed.
He’d deal with all the problems that summoning caused tomorrow. Or next week. As long as Clockwork didn’t say anything, he could take his time.
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perotovar · 1 month
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bloody kisses — part one: less than zero
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pairing: shane morrissey/tim rockford rating: E (18+) mdni word count: 5k content: vaguely takes place in the 00s, age gap (shane is 23, tim is 40), internalized homophobia, hurtful names (fairy boy, faggot, queer as a slur, etc), a gay porn magazine, lots of references to peter steele of type o negative (and his playgirl issue), male masturbation, acab, some angst, if i missed anything lmk! dividers: @saradika-graphics beta: @chronically-ghosted (ily ♥)
summary: shane has been in denial about himself for a while. newly single and with the help of one of his favorite singers, he opens his eyes to a new venture he could possibly take: the cop he sees on a semi-regular basis, detective tim rockford.
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for updates, follow @oakslibrary and turn on notifications ♥
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The kid was a fucking regular at this point.
Tim just happened to be in the station every time the kid got caught. Maybe he was doing it on purpose, who knows. 
And God help him, Tim sorta liked the little shit.
“Don’t you ever get tired of coming here, Shane?”
“I told you, my name is–”
“I’m not calling you that and you know it,” Tim sighed exasperatedly, rubbing a large hand over his face. “Why did you steal the magazine?” Tim’s voice was almost bored when he asked.
Shane stayed quiet, picking at the chipped black nail polish on his fingernails. He was looking down, chains jingling from how quickly he was bouncing his leg. Was he nervous? Tim didn’t think the kid was ever nervous. Or, well. Acted like it, at least.
Shane Morrissey, twenty-three, twenty-four next month, was found at a convenience store stealing an issue of Playgirl Magazine. Tim wasn’t judging, but his reading on the kid veered off in, well, the other direction. He had the vibe that Shane could go either way; either aggressively straight, or trying to cover something up.
“Look, I really don’t care why, kid. I’m not going to… judge you, or something–”
“Whatever, old man,” Shane sneered, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away from him. “Can I just get my community service and go?”
Tim quirked a brow and crossed his own arms over his chest, standing tall behind the chair pushed into the interrogation table. Tim had asked Ron to turn the microphones in the room off. Tim knew the kid better than anyone here, and he knew Shane wouldn’t talk if he knew he was being recorded. Or he’d go off about aliens or “drones” or whatever other bullshit he came up with next.
Shane wasn’t an idiot, Tim knew that. Shane knew that. He just had a hell of a wall put up.
Tim sighed and pulled the chair out. He spun it around so he could sit on it backwards, arms perched on the top. “Kid,” Tim started. “Listen, I’m not going to do anything. It’s a fucking magazine and this is New York City. Your little theft is pretty far down the list of my priorities right now.”
Shane actually looked a little offended, looking at Tim incredulously.
“I’m going to let you off with a warning this time. And to be honest, I don’t want to see you back in here anytime soon, okay?”
“Aww, kicking me out? Thought you liked our little chats,” Shane batted his eyelashes, an exaggerated pout on his lips. He rolled his eyes after that and rested his chin in the palm of his hand, bored.
“I said I didn’t wanna see you back in here, Morrissey.”
Shane looked at him, big brown eyes squinted accusingly.
Tim reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, digging out a business card. He slid it across the table until it was next to one of Shane’s hands. He didn’t really know why he was offering this to Shane. Well, he did, but he couldn’t really say, ‘I see a lot of myself in you,’ without Shane taking it the wrong way. This wasn’t one of Shane’s normal petty crimes. Shane didn’t strike him as the type to steal this sort of thing. He’d vandalize the side of a building or go on joyrides. Things that were mostly just annoying. This magazine was… different.
Tim had his fair share of this sort of thing. He got into being a cop because he got caught when he was in his twenties. He was angry at the world because people didn’t accept him, so he lashed out. He got the feeling that Shane was the same way. Things were different in the 80s, so hiding this part of himself worked for Tim. He didn’t want Shane to feel like he had to.
“If you wanna talk, give me a call, okay?”
Shane rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, but Tim held up a hand to cut him off. 
“I know, you don’t want to call a cop, but I promise I’ll be off duty. I’ll just be Tim when you call, not Detective Rockford.”
Shane blinked at him before a giggle bubbled out of his mouth. “Your first name is Tim?”
It was Tim’s turn to roll his eyes. He sighed heavily and got up, pushing the chair back in. “Or don’t call me, whatever, kid. I’m just saying, if you need someone to talk to about… anything, just. I’m all ears, alright?” He kept things vague on purpose. Once he was back at the interrogation room’s door, he turned back around. “Seriously, I don’t wanna see you back in here again, alright?”
Shane raised his eyebrows, eyes wide as a mocking facial expression crossed his features. “Whateverrr,” he sighed, standing from his own chair. He looked down at the business card on the table and picked it up as the door clicked shut. He rubbed his thumb over Tim’s name before stuffing it in the pocket of his leather duster.
He hastily left the interrogation room and made his way toward the exit, but was stopped by a secretary.
“Shane Morrissey?”
Shane cringed as he froze, staring at the older woman. He glared a little, but raised his arms in defeat. “Yeah? What?” He bit back at her.
“Detective Rockford said you had personal items,” she said sweetly, rolling her chair to the wall of lockers behind her.
Shane raised a brow. “I didn’t bring anything–”
“Here you go, sweetie. Don’t go getting into trouble now!”
Shane sighed and grabbed the black plastic bag from her. “What did this old man give me–?” He gasped as he looked inside the bag, cheeks burning. It was the magazine he’d stolen. The Playgirl magazine. He squeezed his eyes shut and got out of the station like a bat out of hell.
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Honestly, the only reason he’d stolen it was because Peter Steele was on the cover. He was in that convenience store for a pack of smokes and saw the frontman’s face on the cover, bare chest on full display, with a large hand cupping the cock in his underwear.
He’d been staring at the cover for a few minutes too long, because the convenience store clerk waved his hands in front of his face. “You gonna buy somethin’, man?” The clerk’s name tag said “Dante” and he looked very bored. 
Shane shook himself out of it and looked up, the bright red of the magazine piercing the corner of his eye. “Uh, yeah,” he cleared his throat, digging into his baggy pants to pull out his wallet. “I’ll get a pack of reds,” he mumbled, pulling out a couple greasy bills.
Dante didn’t bother asking for his ID and just turned around, digging into a drawer below the case of cigarettes for the key to open it.
Shane’s eyes were like a magnet, pulling directly back to the magazine. He looked at Dante’s back for a second, and quickly rolled up and stuffed the magazine into one of the deep pockets of his leather duster. 
Dante pulled out the pack of cigarettes and locked the case shut again. He sighed as he tossed the pack onto the counter. “That’ll be ten bucks,” he said, voice monotone.
Shane handed him a ten dollar bill and turned to leave.
“Hey!”
He turned back, standing in the doorway just as the bell dinged above him, and saw Dante’s bored face now looking angry. “The fuck you doin’, man? Put that back!”
Shane raised his brows and looked down, the magazine poking out of his pocket. He looked back up at Dante’s face and booked it, running as fast as his legs would take him. 
His lungs burned as heavy boots thundered along the concrete, chains and jewelry clanging against each other. He turned down an alley and gasped for air, leaning against a dirty wall with his hands on his knees. He waited until his breathing was back to normal and checked his surroundings. When he figured the coast was clear, he took a step out of the alley. 
“‘Scuse me.”
Shane whipped his head around and saw a cop standing there. “What?” He frowned, voice having a little more bite than was probably necessary, but well, Shane hated cops.
“You just come from a convenience store down the road?” The cop pointed his thumb in the direction behind himself.
“No. Can I go back to what I was doing?”
“What were you doin’?”
“None of your business, pig,” Shane rolled his eyes and turned to leave, but the cop grabbed his arm and cuffed him. “Hey! Fuck off!”
“No can do, kid. Clerk called about a kid matching your description with a, uh… well, an interesting magazine in his pocket,” the cop grumbled, tugging on the Playgirl poking out of Shane’s pocket.
Shane’s cheeks burned in embarrassment and shame, eyes squeezing shut. “Fuck.”
“C’mon, fairy boy.”
“I’m not–!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Before Shane knew it, he was in the back of a cruiser and was headed toward the station.
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He couldn’t even look at the magazine now. Shane laid in his bed, in the middle of his messy bedroom, and stared at the ceiling. The bright red of the magazine cover was just out of sight. The heavy guitars and vocals from his shitty speakers pierced the silence of his room, soothing his anxious thoughts. His mind drifted off to Detective Rockford. Or Tim, he guessed. He leaned over his bed and dug through the pile of clothes he’d discarded when he got home.
Tim’s business card now in hand, he laid his head back against the pillow and stared at the embossed text. The first thing that came to mind was Tim’s gravelly voice saying, “If you wanna talk, give me a call, okay?”  
What would he even say to someone like Tim? Tim was a cop. He wasn’t exactly Shane’s first pick in literally any scenario.
Shane sighed and tossed the card onto the pile of clothes. He looked over to his left at the magazine laying next to him on his wrinkled sheets. Peter Steele’s come hither facial expression stared back at him. 
He’d had these… thoughts for a while now. Feelings he had no answers for. He wasn’t gay. He couldn’t be. Shane liked women, he liked pussy. He did.
Did he?
He picked up the magazine and started looking through it. Of course, there were photos that went along with the cover, of The Green Man standing in front of a mirror without a shirt. He stuck his large hand down the front of his pants, lips parted and eyes closed. Shane adjusted how he was laying, feeling a minor stirring in his pelvis. Obviously Shane was looking at the woman Peter was heavily making out with on the next page.
The photos started to get a little more risqué as he went. They started out pretty tasteful, with Peter laying on a bed, fully clothed, and a hand gripped around his cock through his jeans. But they quickly became… less tasteful.
Shane stared at a photo of the singer sitting in a chair, completely naked, with a large hand wrapped around an equally large, hard cock. Shane’s own cock twitched in his boxers as he felt a light sheen of sweat at his hairline.
“What the fuck,” he whispered to himself. He slammed the magazine onto his sheets and stared at his tented underwear. There was a small wet spot where there was precum already gathering. He started to breathe unevenly and worriedly looked up at his ceiling. He couldn’t even hear the music in his room from the rushing of blood in his ears.
He leaned over his bed and frantically searched for Tim’s business card. He didn’t even know what he was thinking, but he was terrified. He grabbed the landline on his nightstand and stared at the bland text on the white background.
He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He couldn’t call Rockford when he had a fucking boner.
An image of Tim’s face flashed behind his eyelids and he gasped, cock twitching in interest. His eyes snapped open and he frowned. “What the fuck?”
He looked down the tent in his boxers and felt betrayed. It was bad enough that he was hard when thinking about a man, but a cop? He couldn’t fucking believe it.
“This is bullshit,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. He refused to entertain his dick at all.
But his dick wasn’t listening, hard and starting to throb underneath the thin material.
He sighed in defeat and looked up at the ceiling of his bedroom. “One time,” he breathed. “I’m doing this one time. No one ever has to know.”
Before he knew it, his boxers were thrown onto the messy pile on his floor and his hand was curled around his cock. He moaned at the relief he felt, thumbing the head teasingly. He shut his eyes, Tim’s face appearing behind his eyelids again. He groaned. Whether from frustration or arousal, he couldn’t tell and honestly didn’t care at this point.
He slowly built up a rhythm, stroking himself steadily. He bit his lip and sunk further into his sheets, feet planted flat on the bed. He started fucking his fist, lifting his hips off the bed. The cool air coming in through the window gave him goosebumps all over and made him whine weakly. He was thankful the music was turned up enough that he couldn’t hear himself.
“Good boy.”
Tim’s voice whispered in his ear. His imagination started to run wild, imagining Tim sitting on his bed and watching him. 
“Show me how you get yourself off, baby.”
Shane groaned, the steady beat of his fist on his cock speeding up. The cool metal of the jewelry he wore on his hands had grown warm, giving him a delicious friction. It grounded him, telling him it wasn’t actually possible for it to be Tim’s hand around him. 
“Want me to touch you?”
Shane nodded to himself, eyes shut in bliss. “Please,” he whispered. He slowly removed his hand and gripped himself with his left hand. It was a little awkward, but it was enough for him to imagine that it was someone else. That it was Tim. 
“Fuck,” he huffed, rubbing the head with his thumb. “Gonna–”
“Come for me, Shane.”
Shane nodded to himself and sped up his left hand. Precum dribbled out of the tip, easing the way as he fucked his fist. It felt like only a few seconds had passed, completely lost in his own world. And maybe it had been only a few seconds.
“F-fuck!” He whimpered, balls drawing up. He groaned, stroking himself through it as he came hard, thick white cream covering his hand. 
He came down slowly, panting hard as he kept his eyes closed. Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked down at his chest. He was completely covered in his own spend and he felt heavy. That was probably the most intense orgasm he’d ever had alone.
He picked up Tim’s business card and shut his eyes in defeat.
“Fuck.”
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One Week Later
Shane had no idea how he got to this point. He was laying on the concrete outside of a club downtown. His face was throbbing and he was exhausted. The faint sounds of people shouting kept him conscious as he rolled onto his back. His vision was blurred and the buildings towering over him started to spin.
“Hey! Get the fuck back up! I ain’t done with you.”
Shane groaned and tried to look up at whoever was yelling at him, but his body felt too heavy. That didn’t last for long, though, because the next thing he knew, he was being hauled up by a man twice his size.
“You gonna try that shit again, faggot? Huh?” The brute’s breath smelled like shit as he spat in Shane’s face. Shane twisted his face in disgust, his head pounding even more with all the yelling.
“Nah,” Shane smirked, eyes barely open. “I’ll suck your cock before I do that again.”
The brute squawked in disgust and punched Shane square in the jaw. Shane laughed shakily, suddenly feeling more alive than dead. He was past the point of feeling any of the pain.
“Aww, c’mon, you don’t like it when someone sucks your cock?” He taunted.
“Alright, break it up, you two,” the bouncer for the club barked, pulling the brute off of Shane. Shane sagged against the wall he was pressed up against, head hanging low. “You okay, kid?”
Shane snapped his head up, but groaned in pain before he could react. He could’ve sworn that it was someone else’s voice for a second… 
“Kid?” The bouncer shook his shoulders and handed him a plastic water bottle. “I said, are you okay? You got somewhere to go? Someone you can call?”
Shane drank from the bottle with shaking hands and looked at the bouncer, eyes half-lidded. The man was big, had dark skin, a beard, and thick ropes of hair cascading down his back. He was really handsome, in Shane’s opinion. He didn’t have the energy to fight with himself about it right now.
“Y-yeah. There a phone nearby?” He croaked, licking his dry lips. The bouncer nodded and hauled Shane up onto his feet. Shane lost his footing at first and fell into him, gripping onto the man’s thick waist.
“C’mon, man,” the man grunted, basically carrying him to the club’s phone. Thankfully, the bouncer brought him to a quieter area of the club. “Can you call them yourself?”
Shane’s throbbing head moved to look up at the bouncer. He nodded slowly, opening and closing his eyes like a cat falling asleep.
“I’ll be in the hall if you need me, okay? I’ll get you another water.”
Shane hummed and picked up the club’s phone, gently pressing it to his ear. He dug into his duster pocket and pulled out Tim’s business card. It was all rumpled up and dirty, but he could still read the numbers, surprisingly. He’s pretty sure it takes him far too long to dial the numbers, but the faint sound of the phone ringing tells him he actually did it.
Tim picks up on the third ring.
“This is Rockford.”
A shiver travels down Shane’s spine at the familiar gravelly voice.
“Th-thought you were ‘just Tim’ with me,” he says weakly, a faint smile on his face.
“Morrissey? Didn’t think you’d actually call me, shit. Are you okay?”
“Peachy,” he grunted. His voice sounded pinched when he said it, his face curled up in pain again. He’s pretty sure the brute split his lip because that’s throbbing now too.
“Where are you, Shane? I hear music.”
“C-club downtown. Got–” he paused, swallowing around a lump of pain in his throat. “Pissed someone off.”
“Shit, kid. Do you need me to come get you?”
Shane groaned in pain as an answer and nodded, even though Tim couldn't see him. The bouncer came back, putting another plastic water bottle in front of him. Shane made eye contact with him and nodded in thanks. “Can you–” He gestured to the water bottle, asking for the large man to open it for him.
“Is someone there? Give them the phone, kid.”
Shane didn’t answer and just handed the phone to the bouncer. He didn’t hear the one-sided conversation and just laid back in the swiveling office chair, the now opened bottle in his hand.
The bouncer hung up the phone and chuckled down at Shane. “You got friends in places I didn’t think you would, man.”
Shane smiled, eyes shut. “We’ve got history,” he said vaguely.
“I’m sure you do. He’ll be here soon.”
Shane had no idea how much time passed, but the sound of Tim’s low, soft voice in his ear woke him up. When he opened his eyes, Tim’s tired, handsome face greeted him, making him smile softly. 
“You came,” he said softly, genuinely a little surprised, and tried to stand on wobbly legs.
“‘Course I came, kid. Said I’d help you out. You okay coming back to my place?” 
Shane hummed and wrapped an arm around Tim’s broad torso, fingers fiddling with the tank top’s material. He was wearing one underneath a button-up. He probably just got off work.
“Take that as a yes,” Tim sighed. He looked to the bouncer, and nodded in thanks. He led Shane out to his Caprice and buckled him into the passenger seat. “Keep drinking that water, okay?”
Shane mumbled in response and lolled his head against the back of the seat.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, kid, Jesus.”
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“Hit ya real hard, didn’t he?” Tim grunted, pressing a wet washcloth against the cut on Shane’s cheekbone.
“More of a lovetap.”
Tim sighed and cupped Shane’s face in a large hand to hold him steady. Shane held his breath, eyes glued to the focused expression on Tim’s face. He studied every detail, never getting a chance to be so close to him before.
“Why were you at the club, Shane?”
Shane sighed and looked down at Tim’s broad chest underneath the tank top. He’d taken off the dress shirt when they walked in the door of Tim’s apartment. They were sitting at the bar in Tim’s kitchen, Shane’s chunky boots on the bar of the stool Tim was sitting on. He looked at the slacks pulling at Tim’s thick thighs and forced himself to look elsewhere, inadvertently giving Tim room to clean up the blood on his split lip.
He hissed in pain at the sting and mumbled, “Wanted to get out of my apartment.”
Tim gave him a look that said, ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
Shane rolled his eyes and shrugged. “I dunno,” he sighed. 
“That was a part of downtown I didn’t think I’d find you in, to be honest,” Tim said softly. He picked up another damp washcloth and cleaned up some of the dirt on Shane’s neck. “Couple more blocks and you’d be in the… more colorful side of town.”
Shane froze, eyes wide. “What are you saying?” He asked defensively, eyebrows furrowed.
“‘M not saying anything, kid. Just making an observation,” Tim shrugged back. He removed his hands slowly and nudged Shane’s chin with the knuckle on his index finger. “There ya go. Lookin’ good.”
Shane blushed a little and looked away. He crossed his arms over his chest and mumbled, “Thanks for getting me.”
Tim smiled softly. “Sure, kid. You got anyone to let them know where you are?”
Shane shook his head and didn’t say anything.
Tim nodded and didn’t press any further. “Well, I’ve got a couch if you want somewhere to sleep for the night. Sorta late now.”
Shane turned up his nose at first, but deflated, too tired to keep the mask on. He didn’t say anything else and just walked over to Tim’s couch. He laid down on his side, facing the back of the couch and hugged himself.
Tim’s eyebrows turned down in concern, but he left it alone for now. He got up and took his shoes off, quietly making his way into the kitchen. He got Shane some water and left it on the coffee table.
Tim looked at Shane’s sleeping form one last time before he turned and went to bed.
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Shane’s entire body ached. He turned his head and groaned in pain.
“Awake?”
Shane opened his eyes and immediately shut them, the light from the window blinding him. He tried again, looking over at Tim standing in his kitchen. He was wearing that same white tank top from the night before and some plaid pajama pants. His normally put-together hair was ruffled and starting to curl.  Shane’s heart pounded at the sight.
“Sorry, I know it’s bright. Want something to eat?” Tim asked gently, holding up a pan and spatula.
Shane turned his body but couldn’t, legs getting all tangled in a blanket. When did he get that? He looked down and noticed his jacket and boots were off. He looked up at Tim and raised a brow.
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t want you getting dirt on my couch,” Tim grumbled, turning back to his cooking. 
Shane felt… something in his stomach. Were those butterflies? He didn’t get butterflies in his stomach. Least of all for a cop.
“You like eggs?”
Shane looked up again and nodded.
“Think this is the quietest you’ve ever been around me, kid,” Tim chuckled, cracking an egg into the pan. 
“Sorry,” he croaked, voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Don’t be, it’s alright,” Tim hummed. He transferred the eggs onto a plate and grabbed a fork, bringing it over to Shane. He sat on the edge of his coffee table and handed the younger man the plate. “Eat, please.”
Shane looked at the plate of scrambled eggs and almost cried. He couldn’t remember the last time someone did something like this for him. He took the plate and started eating quietly.
“How you feeling?” Tim asked softly, taking a drink of his coffee. He held the mug in both hands between his thighs, Shane’s eyes glued to the sight.
“‘M alright. Sore,” Shane mumbled around the eggs.
“I’m sure you are,” Tim snorted. “I mean how are you feeling, kid.”
Shane shrugged, chewing silently. “Fine.”
Tim sighed and got up, walking back to his kitchen. Shane frowned to himself as he finished off his eggs. He set the plate down on the coffee table and stood up. He really was sore, but pushed through it as he walked into Tim’s kitchen.
“You wanna know why I was at that club?” 
Tim froze at his opened refrigerator and slowly turned toward the younger man. He shut the fridge door and gave Shane his attention, leaning against the counter to the bar.
Shane shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He kept his eyes downcast as he spoke, staring at the hole in his sock. “I was at that club because I wanted to… I dunno, see more people like… like that.”
Tim crossed his arms over his chest, listening intently. “Like what?”
“Like–” Shane sighed in frustration. “Gay people,” he mumbled. “Got the address mixed up, so, this–” he gestured to his face. “Was the result.”
Tim smiled internally. There it was.
“I felt– I’ve been,” he paused, looking for the words. “I don’t really know. I don’t,” he sighed in defeat.
Tim hummed in response, unsure if Shane wanted his advice or not.
“If you’re gonna be a dick, I can just leave. I don’t wanna hear what you have to say,” Shane frowned, looking up at Tim with a hard expression on his face.
“How do you know what I was gonna say?” Tim replied, shrugging easily. Shane stared at Tim’s bulging biceps, the tank top revealing more skin than he’d ever seen.
“Well–! You’re,” Shane frowned, cheeks warm. “You’re a cop. You guys are always saying shitty things to guys like me.”
“Sure, some–”
“Don’t ‘not all cops’ me, Tim.” 
Tim’s eyes widened at the response. Not necessarily the words, but the fact that Shane actually called him by his name. “Alright, I get it,” he said softly. “I know you’ve had a lot of bad experiences with cops, I’m sorry.”
Shane huffed in response, but didn’t retort. 
“I mean it, though. I wasn’t going to judge you, Shane,” Tim said, stepping closer to him. 
Shane’s breathing picked up, looking at Tim’s large hand on the bar’s countertop. “You weren’t?” He asked shakily.
“No, kid,” Tim chuckled. He cupped Shane’s face and gently rubbed the pad of his thumb along the split in his lip. “You can’t keep getting into trouble over this sort of thing. There are other ways.”
The air left Shane’s lungs, big brown eyes staring at Tim’s handsome face. He was so close now, Shane had no idea what to do. “L-like what?” He breathed shakily. He stared at Tim’s lips, subconsciously licking his own.
Tim looked over Shane’s face, trying to read his body language. Not yet. He took his hand away and grabbed a glass, filling it with water. “Talking about it, for one,” he said quietly.
Shane exhaled a heavy breath and looked down. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest he thought he was going to pass out. Was Tim about to kiss him? He looked at the back of Tim’s head, eyes looking over the curls intently.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Shane said quietly. “Not right now anyway.”
Tim turned around, face unreadable, and handed Shane the water. “What do you want to do now, then?” He asked, leaning against the bar’s countertop again.
Shane set the glass down and stepped closer into Tim’s space, eyes glued to the older man’s lips. He looked up at his eyes, then back down at his lips. He surged forward and pressed his mouth to Tim’s, kissing him roughly.
Tim grunted into it, arms raised at his sides. It took a second for his brain to kick in and he pulled back, turning his head to the side slightly. 
Shane’s cheeks burned and he felt like an idiot. He turned away and grabbed his jacket that was hanging over the back of one of Tim’s dining room chairs.
“Shane, wait,” Tim started, but Shane ignored him, roughly pulling his chunky boots on.
“Don’t,” Shane snapped. “I’ll be out of your hair.” His face was hard and left no room for argument. He stormed over to the door of Tim’s apartment, heavy boots thundering loudly across the hardwood flooring. 
The last thing Tim saw was Shane’s retreating form and the sound of his front door slamming, the sound echoing throughout the apartment.
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stealingyourbones · 1 year
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Hey Bones, I saw your thing about a Bat family member becoming a ghost and it reminded me of a very heart breaking au a friend and I came up with a while back that I don't remember if I submitted or not. Either way, be prepared to have your heart broken.
Tim is dead. He's been dead for a while actually. But No one seems to have noticed. He looks and feels just as solid as he did before he died, even if he's got a lower body temperature and doesn't seem to get hurt on patrol beyond bumps and bruises. Never anything that would land him in med Bay, never anything that would make his family check on him.
No one has noticed the way he doesn't eat anymore, or the fact he doesn't sleep. He's extended his patrol hours and cut back on time at Wayne Enterprises. He's pretty sure not even Alfred noticed. He knows the Kryptonians aren't worried about him not having a heart beat and they have no reason to tell anyone. They know he has a special device that can hide him from their senses and tests it on Kon a lot to make him focus on spacial awareness beyond his hearing. He used it a lot before he died. They just think he hasn't turned it off in a while.
Tim remembers how he died. Not fully, but there are pieces. He remembers he was fighting someone on a bridge and he didn't call for back up because he thought he could handle it. He doesn't remember who he thought he could handle. He remembers something stinging his arm. A bug? No a bug couldn't bite through Kevlar, it was a needle. Then everything started going dark and he was stumbling back. His back hit something hard and he tiped over it. He thought he could land on the other side. He remembers wondering why his suit felt so damp and heavy as the world went black around him.
Tim's body is still at the bottom of the bay where it will likely stay forever with so, so many other bodies. It makes Tim wonder, why him? Why not everyone else who ended up down there? Why not everyone who has died in Gothem? Did he come back like Jason did, is it something to do with being a vigilante? Tim checks his own pulse again while he's alone. Yep. Still dead. He continues on his patrol and tries to shove those thoughts away.
So what if Tim's dead? He's still here and he still has work to do. His family is full of detectives. If they can't figure out that something as important as death has happened to one of their own? Well then Tim thinks they need to pay more attention. He ignores the pain that curls in the back of his mind at that thought.
It's been 6 months. Why hasn't anyone noticed? Tim can't help but wonder if they ever will.
Howdy its me @bonebrokebuddy answering. I'm Twone's (twin bones) twin who is helping answer asks because this fucker has like, over 100 of them in her ask box and I help her with making prompt ideas frequently so she trusts me to not horribly fuck up her account.
This is my first answer for her I've written because I had my screen on low brightness and on darkmode, so your profile jump scared the shit out of me when I scrolled past it. Therefore im answering this one first.
Anywho, from my chronic inability to write angst here goes: Tim died, came back and none of the Bats seemed to care. So what? It's not like his best friends hadn't done the same thing. And he was tired and sick of the Bats thinking his entire life revolved around them.
So he packed up his bags and headed to Kansas.
The Bats might not be worried but neither was Kon or Bart. They're actually thrilled after getting over their initial grief that Tim now has also personally experienced death and came back. The funeral was a rather small, breif, and quiet afar. Kon made sure to help locate Tim's corpse and Bart helped with the eulogy (surprisingly heartfelt and moved them all to tears.)
Sure, they're sad that Tim died but he's right in front of them, it's a little more difficult to morn when you've been laughing at said dead guy who got stuck halfway through phasing out of the wall. And now Tim can keep track with them!
Kon is a little pissed that Tim can now go intangible and escape his TTK so he can't take away Tim's coffee anymore. But it's kinda worth it. The first time he took Rob on his favorite flight path, he's never wanted anything else than to hear Tim's breathless laugh and see his frighteningly perfect smile again. They now often go on flights together, high above the clouds with no-one else but them for thousands of miles around. (it almost felt like a date)
Bart knew this would happen one day. He was from the future, of course he knew that Tim Drake, formerly Red Robin, died at age 19 and changed his alias to The Grey Ghost. It doesn't mean that Bart doesn't morn the passing of his friend. Tim means a lot to him and the brief guilt that he did not stop Tim's death also quickly passes. He can finally show Tim that hiding space in the walls that no one else can get to without phasing through the wall! One other thing. Bart is unsure if Kon has noticed yet, which he knows Kon isn't the most observant of the old young justice crew but he has to have noticed it by now. Ever since Tim left Gotham he's developed an insane appetite despite claiming that he didn't need to eat while in Gotham and also being dead so why does he need to eat? (Unknown to Bart, Kansas doesn't have as much ambient ectoplasm as Gotham and Tim is starting to experience the withdraw symptoms. If the trio don't realize how to fix Tim's worsening symptoms soon, Tim might actually die for good this time.)
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mangoisms · 8 months
Text
circle k (back to you)
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summary: in which you're just the graveyard shift employee at circle k bombarded by vigilantes.
━ chapter eight: where did i go wrong? | read chapter seven
━ pairing: tim drake x f!reader
━ word count: 3.7k
━ warnings: canon typical violence, blood, etc
━ masterlist
━ a/n: sorry for disappearing! essentially, i started grad school and it is So Much Work. but if you'd like some unnecessary rambles on tim and wally's relationship here and in light of their og meeting in robin (1993), you can also find my thoughts on that here <3
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 The next day, you don’t hear much from Steph. 
She does text you a few times, mostly reassurances and that she’s working to pull something together. You don’t quite understand but she was so convincing the day before, you let it go. 
You mostly spend the day—after sleeping in—learning your new phone, excited at having something new and so high-tech to play with. Flash texts you several times during the day. Blurry selfies and equally blurry pictures of Keystone and Central. Even a couple of the New York skyline, as he informs you he decided to drop in and visit a few friends. 
You can’t send him much. The clouds that hang in the sky, waiting to pour down on unsuspecting Gothamites at a moment’s notice. The feral cat that hangs out in the alley by your apartments, who you get close enough to to catch mid-hiss. The person on the subway carrying what you suspect to be a possum in their bag but Flash insists is actually an opossum. Whatever the difference is. 
There is a difference!
idk sounds made up
You’re from the city. Of course you think that.
ok WOW
you’re blaming my dead parents for where they settled????
Yes.
wow
You go into work in relatively high spirits, considering everything. 
Black Bat stops by for some gummy worms and a can of Red Bull and you tease her a bit for it.
“Signal’s influence?”
“Better than coffee.”
“Fair enough.”
Red hasn’t been by, you think, watching her go. Not yesterday and not today, though it’s early. He usually stops by nearly every night, if not for a couple minutes. But nothing specifically decrees that he comes by… You’re just used to it, you suppose, and last night’s absence was noticeable.
There’s still time, though. Maybe you’ll see him later tonight. 
Overhead, the AC turns on. They fixed it, along with that electrical issue Red Robin caused last week. It works a little too well, though. These last few days have had you uncomfortably cold, so today, you come armed with a hoodie—Tim’s hoodie, the only piece of clothing you’ve ever managed to steal from him. A bit baggy on him and even more so on you, it’s a pleasant shade of azure blue. One of your more precious possessions since it’s, like you said, the only thing you really have from him. Also a bit of an indulgence right now but… you’re past the point of caring. 
Maritza pops by a little while later, waving at you. 
“Hey, Mari. Here for a Slurpee?”
“That, and I was wondering if you guys have any pain cream… Abuela’s back is hurting her and we ran out yesterday,” she says, lips pursed, glancing at the aisles. 
“Pain cream,” you repeat thoughtfully, stepping around the counter. “We should. Let’s see.”
She follows you to one of the center aisles.
“How’s summer break been so far?” you ask, running your eyes over displays of toothpaste, disposable toothbrushes, and other basic items. 
“Boring,” she sighs. “It’s too hot to do anything.”
You chuckle, tucking your hands in the pocket of Tim’s hoodie; your fingers are cold. They always seem to be. “Books are excellent ways to preoccupy the time.”
“Think I’ve read every book at the library,” she grumbles, which probably isn’t that much of an exaggeration. Gotham’s public library system is drastically lacking; it was only in May did Wayne Enterprises announce that they were investing more money into it. By now, they probably haven’t reached the library here in the Upper West Side. 
“You should check out GU’s then. Kids get free library cards and our selection is fairly expansive. I’m sure you could get away with checking out some things for your abuela, too. At least until they fix everything in the one here.”
“Huh. Maybe.” She moves ahead of you, scanning the rest of the aisle. “Oh, hey, you guys do have some.”
She reaches for a box. 
The door opens. You turn. 
The wink of the kitchen knife is the first thing you see, then the trembling hand, and then the owner to whom it belongs, too. A scrawny man wearing a grey hoodie, the same hood pulled over his head. 
It’s not great at hiding his face, you think dimly, every muscle inside you locking into place. Mari freezes behind you, breath audibly catching in a gasp as he turns the knife sharply on you.
For a second, the three of you just look at each other. 
You break the silence first. 
“All the money is in the register. Take it.”
A lengthy pause, one that amplifies the dread petrifying your insides. Your new phone, with Flash’s contact info, sits in the pocket of your hoodie, weighing it down; your fingers are laced together, cold, hovering right above it and you recall the rundown you’d been given by Flash last night, the… other not-quite-normal aspects of your new phone. 
“Okay, so, on top of the League encryption stuff, there is something else.”
“Are you tracking me?”
“Not… exactly.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Your location is logged with the League,” he admits. “But it’s secure. You’re registered with me, so only I can look at it. My wife’s phone is like yours. Her information is there, too. A lot of us do it with our families. Not just to keep sensitive information secure, but there’s… a risk that comes with being with us.”
You frown at him. “Does she know?”
He looks horrified. “Of course she does. I don’t go around just tracking her without her knowledge. That’s weird. And messed up. I don’t even actively do it. Not unless she’s been kidnapped or she wants me to. That’s what I’m trying to say. Your location is being tracked but I’m not peeking in on it. No one is, unless a need comes up. An emergency kind of need. And that brings me to my next thing.”
He pauses, looking at you, calculating, but you just nod for him to continue. 
“You have my number,” he says. “So, you can call me. For emergencies or if you just want to talk about your day. But in the case that you can’t call me, if you’re in some kind of danger…” He plucks the phone out of your grasp, turning it over in his hands, pointing to the power button on the side. “Press this three times and it’ll send an SOS signal to me, along with your location. I’ll come. Okay?”
“Are you… sure?”
He seems affronted. “I don’t just do this for anyone. I thought you’d have seen that by now. You’re…” he stops, frowning deeply. “You mean a lot to me, kid. If I can save you, if I have the opportunity to keep you safe, I’ll take it. I wouldn’t ever ask you to leave Gotham because it’s your home and I know the Bats hang around but… this just makes me feel better. You have a direct line to me. Use it.”
“Batman probably won’t like that.”
“Batman can suck it,” he says petulantly. “Especially after what he did to you last week. I take care of my own. No matter where they are. Got it?”
You got it. 
The thought still astounds you even now, that Flash cares that much about you and how ironic it is that you don’t even know who he is under the cowl but maybe you don’t need to. This is still him, isn’t it?
And you would heed his words. Of course you would. You have no interest in dying. You have no hangups about being saved. Flash didn’t think you incompetent, it was just a precaution, a necessity for living in the world you do.
That is true now more than ever.
Especially with how aware you are of Mari behind you, too. 
“Take your hands outta your pockets,” he says.
Your pulse pounds in your ears.
“Just take the money, man.”
You have to be careful but quick. If you could just unlace your fingers and reach for your phone…
Of course, you have no idea how quickly the signal will reach Flash or how fast he’ll even be able to get here…
You guess you’ll just have to trust him. Trust him and his capabilities.
A step forward. A bead of sweat rolls down your back. You can hear Mari behind you, her breath quick and uneven. You’re most worried about her, to be honest. If you go down, what’s going to happen to her? You dread to think about it.
“Take your hands out of your fuckin’ pocket,” he hisses; despite the severity of his voice, his hand is trembling. You don’t get why he won’t just grab the money and go. 
He must think you can call the police or something but even then, it’s not as if the GCPD are reliable. As if they can do anything. 
As for you, there is nothing else you can do. You need to call him. 
“Mari, run!” 
Your hand grapples for your phone at the same time. 
You hear the snick of sneakers on the tiled floors, your fingers slip over the sides of the new case currently hugging your phone, and he surges forward and then—
Just a mere spark, one that jolts you as you realize what happened. It’s small at first, then bigger, then massive, a forest fire eating you alive from the inside out, burning white-hot. 
You can’t do anything. 
You stare at the man in front of you, closer now, close enough to dig his knife right into the soft flesh of your belly. His eyes are wide, too. Like he can’t believe he just did that. Neither can you.
But the worst of it comes when he pulls the knife out. 
The sound that escapes you is foreign to your ears. Your knees give out. One hand presses to the source of your pain, the other lands hard on the tiled floor; your wrist smarts, your arm trembling as you hold yourself up. 
You’re barely aware of anything other than the pain. Throbbing heat, warmth rapidly spreading through the front of your shirt and hoodie. Your vision blurs, from tears and from the pain, your heart pounds so hard, you feel it in your teeth, hear it in your ears above the rush of your blood. 
You manage a glance behind you, relieved to see Mari is gone and hopefully back in the safety of the apartment building next door. Ahead of you, the man is scrambling to get the cash register open, cursing like a sailor and eventually yanking it off the counter and smashing it on the ground, ducking out of your view.
God, you need to call Flash. Not 911, they won’t get here in time, no way, you need him. Before the man decides to cut his losses and kill you. You hope he’ll just take the money and run, but you’ve seen his face, surely he knows that puts him in that much more danger of being arrested—
The door opens. You hear your name from a familiar voice and then someone steps into view. 
Tim’s eyes are wide as he looks at you, horrified, but behind him, your attacker shoots up from the ground and you choke out a warning, an urging to run, to get out of here, you don’t know what you’d do if anything happened to him, no, no, you can’t lose him like that. 
He whips around just as the man swings himself over the counter, letting out something of a war cry, cash held in one hand and the knife in the other. It gleams red under the light. He lunges.
“Tim!”
But his fatal injury does not happen. Instead, you watch him duck out of the way, moving faster, more gracefully than you’ve ever seen, like he’s done this before and the man doesn’t expect it, stumbling with his own momentum. Not stopping, either, Tim grabs the man’s wrist, heaving him over his shoulder until he slams into the ground hard. It’s brutal. It’s violent. It’s nothing you’ve ever seen from Tim, your Tim who… who hates needles and always bemoans going to get the yearly flu shot with you and Steph, your Tim who can get impatient, snippy, but not violent. 
You don’t understand. With the haze of pain, that fact feels oddly upsetting. 
The door opens again. He whips around, geared up for another fight, but it’s just Spoiler, it’s—
Golden hair, familiar blue eyes. A face you know by heart. Even with the bottom of her face hidden. 
They’re both at your side in an instant. In good timing, too, because your arm gives out but before you can crash to the ground, Tim catches you, turning you over in his arms and gently laying you back onto the tile.
“You’re okay,” he says quickly, eyes scanning you frantically. “You’re okay.”
All the movement tugs at your belly, flames flaring for a brief moment, making you dizzy with pain, choking out your voice, leaving you to blink the tears out of your eyes and look up at your friends.
You don’t like the look on their faces. Horrified. Full of dread. It hurts you. 
“Fuck,” Stephanie Brown, also known as Spoiler, says, digging through pouches in her utility belt. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Oracle, where is the nearest hospital?”
“I know where it is,” Tim says, snapping into action, his hands reaching for the hoodie. “Off Murphy Ave.”
Rrrrrrip.
He tears through the front part of your hoodie—his hoodie—like it’s nothing. Both their faces drop as they see your shirt underneath it but you’re more focused on the first part of what just happened. 
“Did you—have to tear it?” you whine. “This is the only hoodie I have from you…”
“You can have all of my hoodies,” he promises, reaching for the hem of your shirt. 
Another ripping sound. 
Steph reaches underneath you. “Didn’t go through.”
Tim nods. “The sooner we get her to the hospital, the better. I don’t like how much blood she’s losing.”
“I can hear you, you know,” you mutter, more petulant than you want but considering you are bleeding from a stab wound, you think you get to be. 
They both let out strained chuckles. Tim reaches for one of the pouches of Steph’s belt. You wonder how he knows which one to open. You wonder a lot of things. Where he learned to kick ass. Whether he has always known Steph is Spoiler. How he is so calm right now. It tickles at you, like you have all the pieces to the puzzle but the full picture still isn’t coming out. 
And oh, yeah, the burning throb of the stab wound is really sapping your concentration, too. Cold creeps in at the edges, your fingers feeling icy as you clench them. You shiver violently, though it hurts to move like that. 
“You’re gonna be fine,” Steph says soothingly, squeezing your hand. “We just really need to get you to a hospital to guarantee that.”
“You should—fuck!” The gauze Tim presses to the wound sends shockwaves of pain through you. Black spots appearing in your vision, breath squeezing in your throat.
He says your name loudly. “Breathe.”
“Fuck you,” you wheeze out, trying and failing to curl away from the pressure he is currently applying to your wound. “That—hurts—”
“I know,” he says, pained. “But I have to. We have to. I’m sorry.”
“He’s right,” Steph says, brushing some of your hair away from your face. “Come on, talk to me. Ignore what he’s doing. What were you going to say before?”
“My phone,” you mumble, shivering. “Flash gave it to me. S-Said if I press the power button three times, it sends a distress signal to him.”
“That’s kind of him,” Tim mutters, sounding, dare you say it, jealous, which, in your haze of pain, just pisses you off. 
“You absolute asshole, you don’t get to—”
“Stop it!” Steph snaps, lunging for your phone. “Tim, focus on saving her life and not on being an ass right now, okay? I’m calling him. We need that kind of speed. She’s losing too much blood and the hospital is too far.”
He sobers significantly. A bloodied hand reaches for yours. You’re only aware of it because you see it, the sight of his pale skin covered in your blood, his fingers wrapping around yours. He squeezes.
“Can you feel that?”
“K-Kind of.”
“Do it, Spoiler.”
“I’m doing it, Timothy.”
She is. She holds your phone in gloved hands, pressing the button three times, then scoots away from your head, lifting your feet over her lap. 
Tim continues his work, the pressure he continues to apply to the wound making your head spin. Exhaustion creeps in at the edges, making your eyelids drag with each blink. 
No, no, falling asleep is bad. You’ve seen enough movies and TV shows of injured characters to know that. You have to stay awake. 
Steph watches you, concerned. “How long—”
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence as a sharp gust of wind hits all of you. It knocks things off the shelves and then, all of you are blinking up at the Flash, blue lightning fading away.
He breathes your name and in the next blink, he’s next to you, on his knees. 
“Hey, Flash,” you croak. 
“Hey, kiddo,” he says softly, a gloved hand resting tenderly on your forehead. He looks at Tim and Steph. “Hospital?”
“It’s—”
Tim cuts Steph off, staring hard at Flash. “She’ll most likely need a blood transfusion. Her blood type is AB positive—”
“And she’s allergic to penicillin,” Steph tacks on quickly. 
“Got it.” He sweeps you into his arms and you whimper at the movement. “And the hospital?”
“Intersection of Murphy Avenue and Elliot Circle,” Steph tells him.
“Be careful,” Tim stresses. 
Flash gives him a frosty look. “I got it. You’ve done enough.”
Stop fighting, you want to say, but Flash is delightfully warm and you’re so tired. If you rest your eyes for just a little bit, that’s fine, right? 
“Flash—!”
A sharp tug in your belly, gravity pulling on you, and darkness falls over you like a blanket. You surrender without fight.
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Voices puncture the veil of darkness. Soft murmurs, soothing tones. 
“She’ll be okay, Red,” a woman murmurs. “You got her here on time.”
“I know, Lin,” someone else says and wait, you know that voice. It’s Flash. He sounds so… harrowed. “But I just… I don’t know.”
“You know what the doctors said. The danger is gone. And with you here… maybe…” she trails off, tone implying something you aren’t privy to.
A deep breath. “Do you think so? I could’ve, earlier, but I didn’t know if it would hurt her and I didn’t want to take the chance…”
“Well… I think you’re a big softy and she means a lot more to you than you ever realized. So… maybe.”
“Maybe,” he echoes back and you want to know, want to ask what exactly it is he and this mystery woman are talking about but you slip back under again.
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The next time you resurface, it’s to cutting words and a tension so thick, you feel it, too, even with all your senses muddled, knee-deep in a haze.
“I don’t mind her,” Flash says coldly. “But you, too?”
“She’s my friend. I have a right to see her, too,” someone else says—Tim, you realize. It’s Tim, his tone cutting, temper on the rise. 
“The way you’ve treated her these past two months doesn’t say much about friendship to me.”
“I was going to tell her—”
“Oh, you were going to tell her? Only after you finally fucked it all up being caught hanging out with your friends when you explicitly said you were too busy to hang out with her? Yeah, that’s real great.”
“You haven’t told her,” Tim points out petulantly. 
“Really mature,” Flash scoffs. “I have a good reason to keep it from her. What’s yours? It’s not like you were deprived of her attention. You’re friends. Why the hell would you favor Red Robin over Tim Drake?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand—”
“No, I bet you don’t, because it’s easier to excuse yourself that way, isn’t it?” he seethes. “You’re just like him, you know. Just like him.”
You don’t know who they’re talking about. Or maybe you do and it’s just not coming to you. But the comparison isn’t a kind one. The way Tim snaps back in the next second affirms that. 
“She wasn’t talking to me! I was—worried!”
“So, you should’ve talked to her! Instead of going behind her back and befriending her as Red Robin! What the hell did you achieve by doing that?”
“We were going to tell her, too, you know,” the woman from before says, her tone disapproving. “Very soon, in fact. But his situation is different from yours and you know that.”
Silence stretches on.
“Well, I still want to see her,” Tim says quietly, the fight leaving his voice.
“How—” Steph. Her voice cuts out, thick in a way that is unfamiliar to you. She clears her throat. “How is she?”
“Stable,” the mystery woman informs her. 
“Why hasn’t she woken up?” Tim asks. You can just hear the frown in his voice and the vision of him forms easily in your mind, that familiar wrinkle between his brows, pretty pink lips pursed. 
“Anesthesia still needs to wear off,” the woman says. “She’ll wake up soon.”
“But until then,” Flash cuts in, tone still severe. “Feel free to make yourself scarce. Stephanie can hang around. But you? No way in hell.”
“You think she wants that?” Tim shoots back, anger returning. “You don’t know anything. You have no idea. You’re assuming—”
“Yeah, I am. She’s not awake. She can’t tell us. Until then, I—we—can make those decisions.”
“Oh, that’s great. I’m sure she’ll love that—”
“I know what you’re thinking and we’re doing this with good intentions. You can’t say the same, can you?”
That doesn’t help. Fans the flames, if anything, as they keep arguing. 
Ugh. You don’t want to hear this. 
Like mercy, you slip under again. 
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reblogs are appreciated!
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taglist: @peachesona @knoxx-seresinbradshaw @kikis-writing-service @sweetistic @soundsfunbutno @ginevraxrogers @fridaenpina @skcj24 @bath1lda @omfg-its-tay @laughydaphne @fhrjrirj @iamthesimpmother @alittlelateforstars @thaliadoesthings @scarlett13 @zelabee @coffee-love-alltheabove @benstormy @sad-girl09 @lockofspades @thereallchristine @thatonecroc @1lellykins @jelsafan0 @hearttjason @kno-way-home @moniverse05 @bat-h-tic @ghostindeath @escapism-r-us
[ask to be tagged! either here or my inbox <3]
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irradiatedsnakes · 2 months
Text
the Big TMA Furry List
this list with commentary/choice rationale below the cut :] i wrote a lot of thoughts down do please check it out.
jon: common raven
martin: tan jumping spider
sasha: southern flannel moth
not!sasha: red postman
tim: jackson's chameleon
melanie: eastern copperhead
georgie: triceratops horridus
basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)
daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)
elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.
gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)
annabelle: white-booted racket-tail
jane: cabbage white
michael: spiny softshell turtle
helen: common hermit crab
oliver: black vulture
peter: risso's dolphin
mike: caelestiventus hanseni
jude: black kite
agnes: ???
nikola: stealing major's carousel horse
jared: american dog tick
breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information
dekker: mouflon
gertrude: great tit
leitner: domestic cat (persian)
manuela: gray long-eared bat
rayner: olm
salesa: sea otter
simon: dodo
elaboration below !
jon: common raven
this was a choice i made before i even finished listening to the podcast back in 2020. jon's 1000% a bird to me, and the curious nature of corvids works well here. plus, i think a bird so universally ominous as a raven works perfectly as a horror protag :P i used to draw raven!jon with a couple troodon traits, mostly just cus it was fun, but i wanted to make my designs more grounded for this iteration. made them plantigrade, didn't get silly with body styles like i have with mp100 designs.
martin: tan jumping spider
if you've been here for a while you'll know that my furry martin has gone through about two million iterations. he started off as a european pine marten, to bold jumping spider, to chinese pangolin, to nine-banded armadillo, finally to nurse shark.
out of all of these the spider and the shark are my favorites. i wanted to go back to the jumping spider though- the design is really fun and i wasn't able to get the expressions right, but i'm more confident in my skills now and i'm having fun with the design. i may revisit nurse shark at some point. i switched from bold to tan jumper- i originally chose bold just cus they're my favorite jumper, but their stark black/white and iridescent aqua coloration just doens't work for martin. so, the tan jumper!
sasha: southern flannel moth
another old choice. species chosen because of a friend's fic, pharos by right (another i'm planning to reread now that i'm dipping my toes back into tma..)! southern flannel moths are poofy and orange, and their caterpillars are those super painful teddybear ones. i really like the design.
not!sasha: red postman
wanted to have her be another lepidopteran, and with all the many examples of mimicry among the group i thought red postman was a fun choice. doesn't look anything like a southern flannel moth, but that's sort of the point.
tim: jackson's chameleon
yet another choice from the oldtimes- most of the main characters are, i've mostly switched around the more secondary chars. first suggested, i believe, by @/ofdreamsanddoodles. i think there's something very fun about chameleons being basically a living mood ring & tim's Descent s1-3 showing physcially not just through the worm scars but through like, constant stress coloration during s3.
melanie: eastern copperhead
one of my favorite choices. i have a young copperhead specimen named after her. this one is quite vibes-based, but i do really like the copperhead as a viper that is not deadly. and i'm always a sucker for the "animal perceived as scary and violent that in actuality only strikes when under extreme stress" thing in furry assignments.
georgie: triceratops horridus
another favorite choice. visually, i really like how this works out, and trikes as a social and protective animal works well. she's literally got a shield on her face. horridus was chosen because i like the shape of the head and horns better than prorsus.
basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)
got a little cat/dog thing going on for dasira. i like the inversion of the usual cat/dog dynamic with their unhealthy devotion instead, and visually it just works very well for them both.
daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)
yeah i know this one's an exceedingly obvious choice.
elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.
it's the institute logo! it's him! barn owl for elias specifically because of its very sleek look, designing him went fantastically. also, i can make the eagle owl's face disk work as a mimicry of ben meredith's muttonchops, which i think is a fun design bit to give to magnus.
gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)
certified gerryguy @/gerrydelano's choice. to quote a discord message from 3 years ago (sorry ron): "i feel like.........my INSTINCT is some kind of canine because like. the whole symbolism thing about being either an obedient or rabid dog. something something muzzled all your life. being a dangerous figure if people only see the silhouette but you just want scritches and nobody'll get close enough to you." black dog symbolism + breed which has ears cropped and tail docked, unecessarily molded for a Purpose which the dog has no say in
annabelle: white-booted racket-tail
sort of my original choice- she used to be part white-booted racket-tail, part anna's hummingbird. kept with the racket-tail cus it's fun and very cute. i've had a couple people express surprise that she wasn't a spider, but i think that's way too obvious. hummingbirds, though- they steal the webs of spiders to use as material to make their nests, but can sometimes become trapped in the webs and eaten by the spiders themselves. which is probably the metaphor-via-fursona-assignment i'm most proud of in this whole list
jane: cabbage white
the cabbage white is a butterfly whose caterpillars are routinely parasitized by the parasitoid wasp the white butterfly parasite. in case you're not familiar, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on (usually) caterpillars, which hatch on the still-living caterpillar, devouring it from the inside before eventually emerging from the consumed husk of the host. also, i really liked the image of parasitoid wasp larvae emerging from an adult butterfly, rather than a caterpillar.
michael: spiny softshell turtle
for michael and helen, i wanted to choose animals which were, in some way, their own home. turtle is an obvious choice- and spiny softshells are a favorite of mine, and sufficiently strange-looking.
helen: common hermit crab
see previous entry. also please google "hermit crab without shell"
oliver: black vulture
bit of an obvious choice, but i adore vultures so i had to. black vulture chosen because i think the monochrome color scheme + straighter face work better than a turkey vulture for him
peter: risso's dolphin
i really like the idea of a cetacean for peter and the lukases as a whole, a famously social animal for the seemingly contradictory nature of this lonely-but-huge family, plus with so many cetaceans being endangered getting that lonely angle (risso's specifically are not, though, as peter is lonely through his own choice, not by circumstance).
mike: caelestiventus hanseni
it's a dimorphodont. he feels like a pterosaur to me, and i like the idea of a vast avatar as a usually short-flying arboreal species, for the unnaturality/contrast of it.
jude: black kite
black kites are one of the species of kites known to intentionally spread fires by picking up burning sticks to flush out prey.
agnes: ???
the only one i'm still undecided on. will update.
nikola: stealing major's carousel horse
i can't top that
jared: american dog tick
great choice from @/magnusarchivememes. Takes Your Blood And Gets So Big
breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information
vaguely russian animals that are large and imposing but remain somewhat generic. which is the hog and which is the bear is not consistent.
dekker: mouflon
dekker has very much mammal vibes to me. the mouflon is a neat species of wild sheep. i think the noble, imposing but kind image of the ram works well for dekker as that sort of true-good hero figure, and mouflons in particular are very nice looking with good shapes. the statement giver in distant cousin describes dekker as "though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me." which i think this sheep works well with.
gertrude: great tit
i wanted all the main eye avatars as birds, just like how i give them all glasses. just a fun little treat for me. great tit was chosen for gertrude as a kind of classic british bird, and as tits in general are VERY fiesty despite their round and adorable appearance. i really like this image of a great tit posing with a dead mouse like it's a hunter with a trophy deer. the cheek markings also work really well to bring to mind the image of old person jowls.
leitner: domestic cat (persian)
vibes. also i like the idea of him as a spoiled domestic animal. if i remember correctly, this was also @/ofdreamsanddoodles' suggestion
manuela: gray long-eared bat
she's a bat. what's to say. WELL actually okay there's the perception of bats as blind but actually having quite good vision which i think meshes in a fun way with the dark, and the way manuela does her sciency stuff.
rayner: olm
i mean, yeah
salesa: sea otter
largely design-oriented, suitably scruffy. ocean animal with strong social bonds, it was a slam dunk soon as i thought of it.
simon: dodo
how couldn't i, come on.
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piedpiperart · 10 months
Text
Phantom in Gotham 3
Chapter 2
"Anyone see the ghost tonight?" Tim asked when they'd gathered around the bat computer after patrol. Out of all of them, Tim had been most focused on the mystery surrounding the ghost kid. He'd found a little bit about the extent of Casper’s powers, that he was young, alone, and was in danger but couldn't or didn’t want to ask for help from the bats. Nightwing also mentioned the ghost's favorite color was blue, but Tim thought he might be making that part up.
"He was with me for a while,"Dick said, climbing onto another chair with a cup of cocoa in his hands. Where he’d gotten it, Tim had no idea. "But he disappeared after I met with Jason."
"You think maybe he followed Jason?" Tim asked, sitting up straighter. "He just got back from some sort of mission, right? A ghost and a zombie hanging out doesn’t sound like a good idea."
"Yeah, and thanks for telling me you guys have been haunted for the past month,"Red Hood piped up. Everyone in the room turned to look at him as he stepped off his bike, signature helmet in hand. Jason ignored Dick's excited greeting and the Bat's hard stare. "You coulda’ told me he was just a kid. I almost shot the poor guy. Not that it woulda hit him,"Jason added under his breath.
The room was silent, and Jason made a face. "What?"
"You saw him?" Dick asked incredulously.
"Like, actually saw him? The ghost?" Tim added, fingers twitching to type on the computer.
"Yeah, goes by Phantom by the way," Jason said, commandeering a chair. "He's about Timmy's age, bit smaller. Short white hair, black jumpsuit, pointy ears, pale skin, and glowing green eyes. Cute little fangs too."
"Green eyes?" Batman grunted, the whole room once again tense at the implications.
"Yeah yeah, I'm getting to it,"Jason sighed, plopping down into the comfy chair. Without the green haze he didn't feel like starting an argument. If anything, he could really go for a nap. He dragged his hand over his face exasperatedly before continuing. "Anyway, after almost shooting him, Glowstick tells me that I'm contaminated with ectoplasm, or in our case, Lazarus water. "
"Ectoplasm?" Tim repeated, turning to the computer to start on a hunt for info about it. Jason nodded.
"It's what ghosts call it. Says his kind of ghosts are from a different realm connected to ours, where some portals open and let ghosts or ectoplasm through sometimes. Think that's how the pits were made,"Jason said, leaving out the part about Phantom telling the other ghosts about the pits. He hoped maybe the kid or his king might be able to do something about them so he wouldn't have to think about them ever again.
"How do you know he was not lying to you?' Demon Spawn scoffed, and Jason only rolled his eyes.
"If you'd let me finish,"Jason drawled. "He explained a lot of this stuff because he thought I was like him."
"He thought you were a ghost?" Dick frowned.
"Sort of. He said there's different types. A ghost is reliant only on ectoplasm, but there’s also Halfas, who are part human but have more ghost parts so they also need ectoplasm to function. And then me, who didn't have any ghost parts but still had ectoplasm,"Jason explained, feeling like he should have gone home for a nap before this whole conversation."Phantom said I was contaminated with it, and offered to get rid of it."
"He what?" Dick exclaimed, the room erupting in similar arguments.
"Did you let him?" Tim asked, and Jason let out a groan. He just wanted a nap.
Batman shot Jason a look, opening his mouth to no doubt say something about the dangers of ghost children lurking in alleys when Jason interrupted. 
"Shut up,"Jason snapped, and everyone quieted. 
"I did let him."Jason added, glaring at the others so they didn't interrupt him. "We talked. He didn’t even touch me. It worked, and he sort of just, pulled all the ectoplasm out of me." Jason explained, dropping his arms to his sides after waving them in a way the ghost kid was. 
"What did he do with it?" Bruce questioned, and Jason just reached into his bag to pull out his newly acquired paperweight. He tossed the sphere to Bruce, who reluctantly caught it.
"He froze it with ‘Ghost Ice’. Said it won't ever melt and I'll have a nice paperweight forever. He did apologize for not being able to make it into a cool statue though, so that’s fun,"Jason stated blankly. Batman observed the green and blue swirly ball before passing it to Tim, who was making grabby hands at it. "Not sure about his other powers, but he could manipulate ectoplasm, fly, freeze stuff, and go invisible and intangible. He also had a symbol on his chest on some sort of hazmat suit, sort of like a hero would, but it was.. Odd."
"Can you draw it? The symbol?" Tim cut in, passing Jason a paper and pen. Jason drew the flaming D with the P on the inside and passed it back, aware of all the eyes on him staring warily. 
"And how do you feel?" Dick asked, hovering a bit, arms stretched out to touch Jason but not actually touching him."Is it gone for good?"
Jason sighed. How did he feel? "Tired mostly, but lighter. Phantom said to find him if it came back, but it shouldn't. I don't feel angry anymore though, no green rage-"
Before he could end his sentence, Dick scooped him into a hug, proclaiming he was so glad and happy for Jason, who just leaned into the hug. Maybe he was a bit too touch-starved and tired for this sort of conversation, but Jason didn't really care at the moment. Bruce watched with narrowed eyes, but he could see the relief and hope swirling in them too.
"You should stay at the Manor tonight, for observation,"Bruce said, and Jason just shrugged, which made Tim give him an odd look and Dick looked like he was about to start crying with happiness. "Did he say what he wanted in return?"
Jason batted Dick away and shook his head. "He didn't want anything. Pretty sure the kid was just curious about the pit rage, and wanted to help in case I turned out to be like him."He scoffed,"Hell, if I knew all I needed was a scrawny ghost kid to get rid of the rage, my life woulda been a hell of a lot easier these past few years." 
Everyone nodded in agreement at that. Dick softened in relief that nothing bad would happen because of this, and if anything, the little ghost that followed them was more of a help than what Damian called an annoyance. "What about the Halfas? Did he say more about those?" Tim asked. "I haven't heard of the Ghost Zone, or anything about Metas with ghost powers."
"S'not a meta. Different species more like. All the ghosts and Halfas are in hiding,"Jason said,"Apparently there's a secret branch of the government that hunts them. Mentioned some sort of Anti-ectoplasm act or somethin’. Phantom didn't elaborate, but I'm guessing Halfa's are half human, half ghost, and very rare. Figured he was in Gotham because he's looking out for one or all of them."
"All of them?" Bruce grunted.
"Only three halfas in the world, that he knew of,"Jason nodded, letting the information sink in. "That's why the kid was so eager to help, I guess. The Ghost Investigation Ward hunts anything with ectoplasm, for experiments, weapons, power sources, you name it. Kid thought they might come after me since they have something to detect ectoplasm. He said something about no one choosing to come in contact with the stuff and once you have it’s hard to find someone to teach you about it. Think he’s probably a hero or something in the Ghost Zone."
"Definitely something we're gonna look into,"Tim nodded,"He'd mentioned he was in danger before on patrol, so I bet the reason he didn't want our help is cause we sort of work with the government and might have to turn him in, I guess."Tim said, then added. "I'm looking at the Anti-Ecto Acts right now. Looks like it was snuck in with a bunch of bills about the environment to get passed. Jason's right, anything with ectoplasm falls under this. States that they're not classified as sentient, and gives funding to the ‘Ghost Investigation Ward’ to get rid of them or study them with whatever means necessary should they 'invade' earth."
"How have we not heard of this before?" Damian asked, folding his arms with a scowl. Jason figured this sort of topic was one Damian hated most. Kid valued all life, even the afterlife apparently. 
"Well, if all the ghosts and Halfas are hiding, and the law is hidden, there wouldn't be any sort of outlier that would gain our attention." Tim muttered, skimming the documents pulled up on the computer. "There's blatant dehumanization in this, it’s horrible. This shouldn't have been passed."
"Did Phantom say anything about their dimension?" Batman asked, getting to the point.
Jason hummed, "Said it was also called the Infinite Realms. It's where all ghosts are from and they rarely come to the human realm unless there's a thin spot, or man-made portal. Some ghosts have the power to make portals too, but Phantom can’t, I don’t think. Didn't say much, just that it was all made up of ectoplasm and ruled by the Ghost King."
"Ghost King?" Tim hummed. The kid was typing away furiously on the computer, and Jason was pretty sure he'd be like that all night. Now that the kid had some sort of mystery on his hands, there was no way he'd let it go. Bruce merely grunted, in a way that Jason thought meant 'how could we have missed a whole other realm of super powered beings in another dimension who happen to come to their realm on so many occasions that a secret government organization was formed to get rid of them.’ It made Jason smile smugly at being the first one to find out about it.
Jason eyed his green and blue sphere, now being examined by the Demon Brat, and felt something like peace for the first time in a long time. He knew he owed it to Phantom to help him with their GIW problem now. Not that they wouldn’t have before, but he felt indebted to the kid. Glowstick didn't know how long Jason had been struggling with the pit madness, just offered to help as soon as he noticed. It was heartwarming. 
"You said Phantom was Tim's age?" Bruce suddenly asked, and the room groaned collectively.
"You can't adopt a deceased teenager, father."Damian scowled.
Chapter 4
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hijinxinprogress · 6 months
Text
YouTuber!Stephanie
Stephanie has a youtube channel (she 100% gives it a name like gotham_after_dark or bat_interpreter) where she follows Batman and mocks him, she definitely also makes content on tiktok and instagram
She’s recording fights with rogues and him interrogating questioning people and doing voice overs in a goofiest growl she can for batman but she also does voices for everyone else (it gets to the point where penguin puts a hit out and is actively trying to expose the youtubers identity bc steph does this terrible whiny british accent when she’s imitating penguin)
She starts her channel right after Bruce fires her from Robin and still does it to this day
Bc if she’s gonna get shit for not being Tim might as well go all the way right?? She’s just doing the opposite of what Tim’s doing or outright copying him depending on which would annoy them the most
Stephanie records batman dangling some guy off a roof for the 37th time this week while going “You said the cheese on the nachos at your restaurant was imported directly from Italy but I saw you…THIS CHEESE IS FROM A GROCERY STORE…in GOTHAM… do you know what batman does to liars??”
Batman’s chasing the joker? Again? Here comes Stephanie with her fucking camera “Joker baby, you know that fight with Cobblepot meant nothing to me” “You know what, Bats? Fight whoever you want!” “Why are you going to Cobblepot’s lair with a grenade launcher? Baby…?” “Well, if the wellbeing of fucking Oswald is sooo important to you, you fucking cheater ☹️ I’m gonna kill him” “HUH” Stephanie’s joker voice is pretty good but she stops when Jason follows her channel after admitting he watches it (however Damian gives zero fucks and edits in his scarily accurate joker impression and will break into Jason’s apartment at random to do his joker impression)
Stephanie’s Duke impression is just her making puns in a bad robot voice and Duke hates it sm bc she’s saying shit like “Don’t signal for backup bc I’m already Signal-ing this ass whooping” “The yellow is the Signal for you to run” “Hey hey hey, night time is when you do this stupid shit rn is Signal Time” “The sun is my Signal to be vigilant-y” “Setting off that alarm should’ve been enough of a Signal for you stop” (Dick made tshirts and Duke refuses to talk to him when he wears them)
You legally have to be a level 79 hater to be a vigilante in gotham so most of Steph’s videos esp after Bruce has pissed her off are just her shitting on batman in a terrible growl “Damn, I’m getting too old for this…my knees hurt so much” “Nightwing thinks he’s funny, asking me if I remember the dust bowl…mf I remember the fucking big bang” “I’m so good at this, I don’t think anyone knows I’m a vampire” “Bruce Wayne owns gotham general and can’t cure Alzheimer’s?? I hate that asshole, I don’t even remember where tf I’m going” “I wanted to be Spider-Man and now I’m this” “Ooh, I’m Batman and I hate fun, happiness, and joy” “Don’t do crime, be like me…perpetually bitchless and breaking kneecaps” “Some people need coffee for a pick me up but I just need to see a purse snatcher piss their pants” “I don’t actually meld into the shadows, I just have Apple Maps and it takes me the long way”
Batman’s fighting or arguing with black mask?  Stephanie has been waiting for this moment so every video with black mask is just her making fun of black mask to the point where there’s barely any batman slander “My real names fucking Roman so I had to go all out with this stupid ass costume…I’m not even a real gothamite, I’m from metropolis” “Sionis…I don’t care… you blew up thirteen hostages” “ITS NOT MY FAULT, OKAY?! Did you know you’re supposed to wash masks? Especially if you wear the same one everyday? Bc I fucking didn’t” “…Sionis…” “THERES MOLD ON MY FACE and this mask smells like ASS” “Everyone knows that, you moron…How do you think I found you? I can smell your stench from damn near two miles away…” “I’m like scary though right??” “No, Sionis, you just have poor hygiene…and issues” “Dammit, I’m like a dollar tree version of two face” “Not quite, what’s lower than that? Dollar tree is too good for you…don’t tell joker but Harvey’s way-”
Stephanie has a two hour video of batman grappling across Gotham just shitting on metropolis and sixty seven minutes of it is just Superman slander in a terrible growl
There’s short clips of cass suddenly disappearing or appearing out of nowhere before and after dismantling someone with the michael myers theme playing in the background (Cass does dramatic flips and landings every time steph records her)
When Bruce complains about the threat to their identities and compromising ongoing missions/investigations, Stephanie (who is purposely trying to piss him off) just looks him dead in eye and goes “Well, you’re not the boss of me sooo” so Tim gives a presentation and shuts down every single argument Bruce makes just to be contrary bc he’s a fucking asshole
Tim only has a problem with it when Stephanie and Damian start working together bc Damian  does concerningly accurate impressions and Damian keeps making Tim sound like a fucking idiot and it’s worse bc he can mimic his speech patterns (“I can’t do this anymore… I’m sad and pasty… Call the fifth robin, you know…the only competent robin…”) 
Like Damian’s repeating one of Tim’s caffeine concoction induced rants about bagels in Tim’s voice while Steph is growling at him to focus in her batman impression
When Tim brings his complaints to Bruce about Stephanie’s youtube account, Bruce cites Tim’s own argument back to him so Tim takes over editing and recording to be an asshole
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castrian-amore · 3 months
Text
Bitter, had the Heart
Dead Tired (Tim Drake x Danny Fenton), Tim Drake-centric, unfinished, the author is plotting, temporary death, please check out ao3 for full tags list.
4/46 Chapters | Word Count: 5751
Chapter 4: You Stole my Fuckin' fruit snacks
Tim and Dick snuck into the warehouse through the upper floor window. The one they normally entered though. Jason was cleaning his nails with one of his knives waiting in the warehouse which had a few small collections of boxes stacked around the area. The lights flickered above making the scene eerie. The walls were creaking in the autumn Gotham wind. 
This entire thing had been last minute, but it had been 
Decided over a silent breakfast and staring at Dick. They had to go and meet this mysterious vigilante who had stayed so far from them for so long. It was better they do it now than let B be the one to meet. Both rescheduling their plans for the evening. 
“Heyo Little wing!” Dick greeted a smile plastered across his face as Jason glanced off. His helmet set off to the side just wearing the red mask over his eyes for the moment. 
“Hey,” Jason greeted back giving them a nod as he gave a spin to his knife before sheathing it. 
“Where is Mr. Distortion?”Dick asked with a smirk crossing his arms as Jason shrugged. 
“Fuck if I know, he comes and goes as he pleases. I’m not the boss of him.” Though Tim wouldn’t pick up on what Dick did. He could only read so much into a person. Dick was really good at it. While Tim could tell if people are lying Dick could tell you what about and could direct the conversation where he wanted it a lot easier than Tim could. 
“So what made him change his mind? Getting caught in action by us?”Tim raised an eyebrow at Jason. 
“You two are really just working on the same case but trying to tackle it from different sides. He has valuable information and wants this case closed as much as you do.” 
“And how long has he been working on this case?” Tim was pressing.
“3 years.” 
“The murders didn’t start until 6 months ago.” 
“That’s what you think Replacement. It’s his case I’ve just been making sure he doesn’t get himself killed by my men,” a nonchalant shrug came from Jason’s shoulders. The tenseness in them though told him something else was going on. “Don’t know why he’s fucking late though.” 
“Guess he got held up,”Dick chuckled until an empty cardboard box hit Jason in the head and bounced off towards the bats.
“YOU TRAITOROUS BITCH.” 
They looked towards the voice and dropping from a small spot in the roof was the masked figure they’d seen running from the crime scene 5 days ago.
He wore no respirator this time but his goggles remained on. He was angry, that was for sure. He landed with a roll unsheathing a fucking batarang?!?! Oh yeah wait. That tracked. He had thrown one at the guy.  Hit him actually. 
Jason merely smirked as if this kind of response had been expected. Dick moving to pick up the cardboard box. Tim watched as the kid(?). He was short, okay?
The man with black hair whom they could Assume was distortion began his onslaught onto Jason. A swipe to the man’s arms as Jason blocked and moved to punch the kid who ducked underneath slipping between his legs and nailing a kick to the back of Jason’s knee dropping him down a bit as he used Jason’s shoulders as a vantage point flipping the man who was easily close to a foot taller than him. Jason hit the ground, hard. That didn’t unmotivate him though. 
“Feisty tonight Dis.” 
“Fuck you.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Jason feigned innocence as he kicked Distortion off of him sending the man reeling. Dick and Tim watching the man correct his position mid air to land sliding backwards hand on the ground knife behind him. 
“Yes you fucking Did!”He hissed out as he charged again blade against blade before Jason managed to knock the batarang towards Red Robin and Nightwing. Tim picking up his batarang. 
“Hey, Red I think that’s yours anyways right?”
“Yeah it is. So wait, what did you do?” 
“One second.” Jason groaned out as Distortion wasn’t letting up and got a solid kick to his chest knocking the wind out of him. Tim thought he might have even heard a clean snap at some point as Jason landed a hook onto distortion blood beginning to trickle from his nose. Ignoring it though he pressed on. 
“You went to my safe house,”Distortion began as he skillfully knocked Jason’s blade away and threw a kick at him. The leg going just above Jason’s head. “And stole my SHIT.”
“I left a sticky note! Also,”Jason caught Dis’s leg before flipping him this time arm against his throat. “Are you not taking it easy?” 
Dis landed a hit on Jason’s nose sitting up coughing a tad. “WITH NO APOLOGY.” 
Dick tapped Tim’s shoulder to show him the box in question. It was an empty box of fruit gummies. A sticky note haphazardly put on it saying ‘took your last pack’. 
“I’d fight him too,”Tim nodded. “Especially if he did that to me.” Tim had a small laugh and couldn’t help but look at the silliness of the situation. Though it became clear Dis was lagging. 
The fight finished not even 30 seconds later as Jason slammed his hand into Distortion’s leg and the man crumpled holding it. 
He began cursing in… was that fucking Esperanto? Kid still landed a small kick on Jason’s ankle which had him cursing. 
“You owe me so many fucking gummies you Dick head.” 
“Yeah yeah whatever.” Jason offered a hand down to Dis who stood up moving to sit on a box as Jason went to go grab his first aid kit. 
“So You’re distortion.” 
“One and only.” 
“Reminds me of Robin with less murderous tendencies,”Tim looked over at Dick. 
“I have to agree,”Dick chuckled, pulling over boxes so they could sit. “So, are you finally okay with meeting two of the bats?” 
“You’re stuck, I’m stuck. Guess it’s finally time to get my head out of my ass and ask for help.” 
Jason came back with a kit the two bickering as Jason moved to cut away his loose fitting pants revealing the neatly wrapped wound soaked now in fresh blood. Tim could pick up that the man hadn’t really wanted to ask for help. He obviously was hesitant, untrusting. It seemed his walls were so far up, that it was a miracle Jason was close to him at all. 
“Well it’s nice to meet you though I wish we could say we’ve heard of you.” 
“I would be concerned if you had heard of me.” Distortion clarified flinching away from the other as he cut away the bandages handing him a tissue for his bleeding nose. “After all there is the whole ‘Batman doesn’t like Metas rule’.” 
“You’re a meta?” Dick asked, leaning forward on his knees a bit. Dis nodded and held his hand up letting his hand fade from view. Right as he did it though he gave a sharp gasp of pain. 
“Fucking hell,”he hissed out through gritted teeth. 
“My hand slipped.” 
Jason’s hands didn’t slip. He knew his elder brother far too well. He was hiding something. Dis wasn’t supposed to have outed himself. The cry of pain was the only explanation. The two of them seemingly having a quiet conversation to himself and Tom gently poked his brother’s side to see if he noticed it too and he did give a small nod in response. 
“You’re the one who ripped their stitches,”Jason chided as he continued to work otherwise carefully. 
Dis mouthed the words mocking him only eliciting another harsh pull from Jason. 
“The case?”Dick redirected them back on task. 
“Yeah, sorry. The case has been going on for 3 years. It’s the entire reason I ended up Gotham.” 
“You’ve been here for 3 years? For a case?” Tim couldn’t hide his surprise at that. You didn’t just come to Gotham for a mere case. 
“Not for this case but it did kinda fall into my lap yeah.” That made more sense, but still raised his questions for just how long this kid had been working under their radar. Not just how long, what was he capable of?  
“So what do you know?” 
“Hood wanna be a doll and grab my file since I’m currently injured,”The kid had a flair for the dramatic as he feigned a hand to his forehead leaning backwards on the crate looking absolutely “injured”. 
“Fucking spoiled prick.” 
“SAYs YOU!” 
“YEAH SAYS I DIS! I’m the one who has to deal with your fucking bullshit all the time!” 
All Tim could currently think about was how Jason had claimed he had not much to do with Distortion but from what he could see the two were remarkably close. Tim wouldn’t understand but he was admittedly jealous. He wished he could have had a better relationship with Jason from the beginning. 
One that hadn’t ended in him being called Jason’s replacement. Tim wanted the Robin spot, honestly. He had taken it when Batman needed him most and needed back up and all he had gotten was shit for it. Maybe he had still been salty about that. The Robin who was the smartest but at what cost? He was the longest reigning Robin before Damian came along and forced Tim to change his name and realign himself. 
When Tim had rebranded as Red Robin he had sort of gone on a quiet rampage. His morals thrown out of the loop in anger and he made some not so great decisions. Jason had found him then beating the shit out of a drug runner who had murdered an innocent little girl. It had been Jason who pulled Tim off the man in his late teens. 
Jason who apologized to Tim for how he treated him, and that he was really trying to work on his anger and had confided in Tim about how badly his anger issues affected him to that day. He had called it Pit Rage. An ever consuming anger he couldn’t get rid of. Jason just seemed more relaxed than he had, ever. Maybe this person was doing some good for him. 
Jason came back over handing Dis the manilla folders with neat labels and tabs. 
“Year one we have out first 2 victims.” He pulls out photos. “Small but noticeable markings. Missing heart. Missing kidney. Blood everywhere, but it was almost more surgical?” He hands over the photos. “Then we have year 2. 5 in total. Same thing as the first two. Missing heart. Missing Kidney. Same symbols but we watch the motives slowly get more and more deteriorated. The kills start to get messy.” 
Tim and Dick flipped through the photos noticing the same thing. “Like the person who did it in the first place was loosing the reason that they started doing it in the first place.” 
“Yeah.. that’s what I was thinking,”Dis admits. “You’ve seen the most disturbing ones from this year, so I won’t go into detail about that. Here’s what you need to know that I know. I’m meta, and one of those abilities allows me to see things and understand things not known to the human eye, specifically on the field of the supernatural. Thing that one chick who I keep seeing posters of, uhhhh Hood help me out?” 
“Zatanna.” Jason was mildly amused at him not knowing who she was. 
“Yeah her. She’s dripping with magic, I kinda have access to see it, not access it but it’s an entire thing. Not important. What is important is how those abilities relate to this case.” 
“Okay..”Tim nods taking in the information at hand. He was useful. 
“Those markings are a language. Nothing that still breaths should be able to read it but those who have sold their soul, or been touched by Death themself can read it. Don’t ask Hood he can’t read it.  I kind of can? Think like I understand it but it’s borderline untranslatable.” 
“So our culprit either soul their soul or was touched by death and survived?” Dick clarified looking over to Tim who was thinking the same thing. Ra’s and John Constantine might prove useful to this case. 
“Exactly. Ghost Speech can’t easily be translated, but I did manage to do it after going through like 5 languages until  I could get it into English. Belong, to live, to die, again, trust not the living, friend.” Dis set the folder down. “I’ve been staring at those words for 3 years and I got nothing.”
“Belong, to live, to die ,again, trust not the living, friend. That sounds like a warning?” 
“For who? Us? The serial killer is the one who’s torturing and murdering people!”Dis exclaimed. “Look, Red, Nightwing. I get it. You probably don’t want me involved but I am useful. You need me on this case!”
“Look, we’re not going to turn you away or down. This is more information than we’ve been able to get in the entirety of the case.”Dick began slowly. “But Hood mentioned you were weary of Batman. Red and I can respect that but if we officially bring you into this case you know he will get involved. He already is in terms of this case.” 
“Bring me in.” 
Tim and Dick shared a moment of surprise between each other. Jason would do that? For Dis? 
“I’ll act as messenger when needed. It’s only a matter of time before the next body is dumped in my alleyways right? You let the kid help and report information to me and I’ll act as messenger.” 
“You know this will mean you’ll have to be at the BatCave more, right?” 
“Trust me, I’m painfully aware.” 
“I have a question though,”Tim spoke up. “You removed a viscous green substance from the bodies. What was that? It  was glowing.” 
“Ectoplasm.” 
“Pit water, but more pure,”Jason translated as he finished sewing up Dis’ leg.
“I still don’t know what that means,”Distortion whispers under his breath as Jason ignores him. 
“So definitely something supernatural related,”Dick merely took it as a clarification.  
“Exactly.” 
“So our murderer is what, undead?” Tim rubbed his forehead a little in frustration. 
“Probably.” Dis moved to examine the wrapping on his leg a moment before looking at the group as a whole. A small quirk to his lips as if he wanted to say something else but held back. “I’m not completely against working with Batman, but it’s just--” 
“Just?”Dick pressed gently. “We won’t tell, you know. I hope Hood has spoken that much of us.” 
“Yes, I know you two won’t tell. That is why it’s you two here. Closest people to the case right? I’ll help from the sidelines. Give you my information. Share, what I can but what I need is if you discover a body let me see it before you do anything.” 
“What do you mean?” Tim crossed his arms a little, in a more relaxed way than before. 
“I’m going to be honest, I think we’re up against a ghost. Which means a whole lot of issues for more than just you and I. If I can get my hands on the ectoplasm left on the scene I can start working on tracking him.”
“You mentioned Zatanna earlier. Do you think bringing in people who know that sort of magic will be any help?” Dick asks genuinely. 
“No. No. No Magic users.” Distortion’s words were quick. Dick and Tim shared a look recognizing the panic in his voice. Jason said nothing off to the side either. The words hard to understand and distorted in their own right. Was that how he got his name? Jason walked over and rested a hand to his shoulder, the young man taking a deep breath, or really, several. The room dropping a few degrees.
How powerful of a meta was he? Tim noticed Jason’s hand grabbing the youngers wrist face dropped in serious thought as he counted heartbeats. Distortion pulled his arm away from him. 
“I’m fine Hood,”he hissed out before looking back in the direction of the two. “No. Can you imagine how widespread the chaos would be if any of the mainstream powerful magicians found out about a Ghost being strong enough to commit murder? It would turn Gotham into even more of a bloodbath.  They exist but they’re not supposed to be powerful enough to be so--so.” 
“Consistent?” Jason offered before stealing Distortion’s arm again to check his pulse. 
“Hood.” Another threatening glare between the two of them. Silent, but a conversation nonetheless. One Distortion obviously lost. “But yes. Consistent. There’s a reason Ghost’s aren’t commonplace here.” 
“Wait, here,”Dick frowned this time. The two would be having serious conversations about not only Jason but his apparent ward. 
A deep breath from Distortion. “Whoops, yeah, I’ve said far too much.” 
“If you’re from the future, we've dealt with that kind of stuff before,”Tim offers an olive branch to the man. A hesitance in doing so. 
“As long as you understand one thing, I don’t care how you identify me,”he chuckles standing up as Hood frowned and released his hand. He moved and made his way witha limp to the front of the warehouse. 
“Dis!”Jason called out after him. “We need to ask about you--”
“Shut it Hood!” A frustrated groan and hands running down the side of his face. “Just know that I don’t exist. You never saw me. You don’t know who I am. It’s safer for everyone that way.” 
And though, they saw him leave it was like he was gone and never was there in the first place. A cold chill coming in through the now open door and causing Jason sigh sitting down where he was. 
“He’s a character,”Dick started. “His mood dropped there at the end.” 
“Yeah.. he mentioned Justice League Dark to me once in passing too. I think he has beef with them. “ 
“It would explain why he’s so testy about magic users, especially if he can see the things they can too, without a spell.” Tim spoke up rummaging through the file some more looking over the hand scrawled tedious notes. Even the original workings through several translations with picture through history of Ghost speech written on the walls. It was more than Tim had ever thought he would have on the guy. 
Dammit. Tim hadn’t gotten the chance to apologize to him. Fuck. Maybe he could chase him? He couldn’t be super fast with that injury,  but then again he did have that whole weird disappearing act up his sleeve. 
Tim was missing something. They both were missing something and it seemed very important they figure it out to unlock this case. He wished the man had the clean photos of the writing but it seemed he had similar bad luck with them. There were photos but they sure were blurry as fuck. 
“Red.” 
“Huh?” He looked up between the two to see which one called him. It was Dick. 
“Any other questions to Hood? We gotta go finish our patrols before B starts asking questions.” 
“Fuck, yeah. I have questions, too many, though. Distortion was honest all the way through. He hesitated on saying he was a meta though, and the fact he doesn’t want people to think he exist is concerning.” 
“He lets me know he exists.” Hood snorts motioning to the discarded box of gummies from earlie. 
“He trusts you, that much is obvious,”Dick gave a small chuckle. “Guy has more walls up than the fucking pentagon, but at least we could hack past those.” 
“He wears his heart on his sleeve honestly,”Hood pulled off his helmet to reveal the domino mask underneath. “Trust me. He’s guarded about his past. About what and who he is but his real personality shines through a lot. I take him to the soup kitchen for me and he watches me back during particularly rough land grabs from other mob bosses.” 
“He knows about the pit, which is more than any other civilian has ever found out,”Dick pointed out. 
“You could say that again, this answered a lot if he’s right but fuck. It also gave us a lot more fucking questions.” Normally Dick would be on his ass all day for that swear jar money, it seemed he had decided not today. 
“Let me be clear. What he said is right. He’s a fuckin’ ghost for all things considered. He knows far too much shit to be just a civilian. Trained too much to be a civilian. If he doesn’t have training he has experience. His knowledge of things far beyond our reach, our control? It’s uncanny.” Hood motioned for the file back and Tim gave a whine. 
“Calm down Babybird I’m just gunna go make you a copy really quick of what’s in here,”there was an obvious eye roll to his voice that caused Dick to snort. 
“Leave him along Little wing,”Dick teased lightly. “The mans was distracted on a date Wednesday and he’s been out of it ever since.” 
“NIGHTWING, once again NOT a date!” Tim insisted looking at his traitorous brother. 
“Uh huh, tell that to your little black haired friend who was laughing at practically everything you said.” A smirk as Dick playfully leaned on his knees. 
“You are not doing this to me right now, I swear to god.”
“A date?”Jason’s turn to smirk leading the duo into his office. Medical supplies sitting on his desk as he moved to the copier.
“We can’t leave without that file,” Dick began moving to flop onto Jason’s couch. “So I’m going to temporarily enjoy this~”
“It wasn’t a date,”Tim insisted. “We literally just fucking met!” 
“So you took him to a coffee shop and paid for his food and drink?” Dick offered.
“He’s my partner for the semester for my 101 Linguistics class!! We have a lot in common!” 
“Dateeee~~~”
“No.” 
“I don’t know Babybird, that does sound like a date.” 
“You two are fucking impossible oh my god. He’s smart and speaks a million and a half languages guys! We started talking about those. He knows fucking Tagalog!” 
“Oooo the baby bird got himself another genius to fool around with,”Dick wiggled his eye brows. 
“Are those copies printed yet?”
“Almost,”Jason smirked. 
“I might as well just finish this shift alone tonight. Face the wrath of B of doing it by myself than deal with you two.” Tim goes for the door.
“Okay okay,”Dick lightened up. “We’re glad you finally found a friend, not a date, a friend.” Jason and him shared a look which caused Jason to snort. Motherfuckers.
“I have friends!” 
“A non-superhero friend,”Jason emphasized as he began gathering papers and clipping them together. “You‘ve needed one of those. One you’re not constantly worried about on the field. Or even better, one who won’t die as easily.” 
“Hey!” 
“He’s right though RR,”Dick spoke back up this time. “Proud of you. We do have to go so we’re gunna take those files and scedaddle. Anything else we need to talk about?” 
“One more thing about Dis… he’s a good kid. I promise, but he can be brutal and obsessive at times. If you see shit involving him going down I need you all to promise to not intervene unless his life is in danger. He can handle himself but he is also,”Jason contemplated his words there for a moment. “He’s got the skills down and the experience under his belt but he has plenty other things going on that can leave him vulnerable during battle. There’s a fine line between him fucking with people and him struggling. If he uses his meta powers, join in because he’s doing to fucking drop afterwards.” 
“Drop?”Dick sounded concerned and they both shared worried glances. “Is that why you were checking his pulse earlier?” 
“… yeah.” 
“Can we ask what specifically you were looking for?”
“I promised i wouldn’t rat him out. I am not going to break his trust like that.” 
“Fair,”Tim took the paper’s from Jason’s hand folding them neatly and shoving them into his belt. “Ready to go Big Bird?” 
“You bet. Catch you on the flip side Hood.” 
“You too Nightwing. RR, get some fucking sleep please. I will call Kon.” 
“You wouldn’t dare.” Tim would have made eye contact if it weren’t for the masks. “I slept a day or two ago!” 
“A day or two ago,”Dick mimics. “Yeah exactly the problem, now come on Red.” Dick almost dragged him away before Tim could respond to Jason’s threats any further. 
“THIS IS NOT DONE HOOD.” 
“YES IT IS RED.” 
“FUCK YOU.” Cue Tim flipping off the Red Hood as they left. The quiet sounds of grappling hooks going off and then silence settling over the warehouse and Tim left with far too many questions and concerns. What kind of Meta can’t handle using his own abilities? He thought that wasn’t how that worked. 
At least Tim had gotten something out of tonight. He had liked Dis. The man was a firecracker and funny when he wasn’t being serious. A bigger Damian if you would, but at least Hood had a better control over this one. At least he trusted this one not to outright stab him. Ha, Big Damian. Their little brother would definitely clash with Dis if/when they met. Tim was almost excited to see it happen. 
“So what are we telling B again?” Tim voiced silently as they were a few houses down. 
“We found a lead but had to turn off coms so we couldn’t be found. The lead wanted total security.” Dick replied with ease. “Hey Oracle.” 
“Nightwing—“Tim didn’t get to finish his statement before Oracle’s voice came online. 
“Ready? I’ve been spewing lies for hours now Nightwing. You owe me.” 
“Yeah yeah. I know. I’ll come by and make dinner one night, we can watch a movie.” 
“Movie night?”Tim asked.”Can I join?” 
“Yes you can Red, thank you for asking.” 
“We should stop the small talk before B spasses.” 
“Probably. Reconnecting.” 
B’s voice was immediate. “Nightwing, Red Robin, report. Why were your coms offline?” 
Tim was letting Dick trip over himself with this one quite enjoying the show.
————————
Damian Wayne liked to think, no he knew himself to be the best of the children when it came to several things. Grades(mostly only being topped by Drake), Fighting, and most importantly Stealth. The only other one coming close to him being Greyson with his light feet and acrobatic training. 
So when his father had come to him telling him tonight he would be checking up on Hood instead of their normal routines, honestly, Damian had been excited. Excited at the prospect of a fight. Excited at the idea of proving himself worthy to his father. 
What he had been told and what he knew though were two different questions. 
He knew Red Robin and Nightwing were supposed to be patrolling the docks. 
He knew Jason Todd Aka Red Hood was acting quiet and suspicious and had been for months. 
He knew that Father would be annoyed that the trio of them were meeting. 
What he had been told though was another thing.
He’d been told to keep his head down. 
He’d been told that Red Hood was violent, Damian had already thought otherwise in the guy who made him vegan cookies and sneakily brought them to the manor and set them on Damian’s bed every time. He got along with Todd even if it was in their silent sparing sessions during his rare visits. 
He was totally not jealous to see the very obvious affection he was showing for somebody— some nobody. His father had asked him to watch Jason and then leave and report back, that was all. He was to not engage and while originally the plan had in fact been to just hang out with Jason for the night, things had obviously changed. 
Something felt off about the stranger clad in black. Whispers through the air like a mistake. Something was wrong with that guy, and not just in the fact that he was obviously injured. Something was just off. That also meant he didn’t trust that man around Todd. 
He moved closer keeping an eye on what was going on the slow curling and whisp of ideas floating inside of him. 
The pit calls
It whispered. A familiar feeling when Todd was near, yes. A longing feeling drawing him closer to the man with Lazarus water running through his veins, but it had never called this loud before. He hadn’t even told the others he could tell when he was near the pits of Gotham. The festering bubbling green waters. 
When the stranger left, his feeling of the pit began to die down to the quiet hum of the familiarity of Jason. 
And then it was behind him. 
“You did a pretty good job hiding you know.” 
How was he able to see him… Damian looked back unsheathing his katana pointing it at the stranger who was leaning against the door to the building bright green goggles glowing with that unearthly Lazarus green. 
The man put his hands up stepping out of the shadows. Gently moving to push the katana out of the way as he began to circle Damian, and for the first time in his life. 
Damian felt like prey. 
Like the predator before was watching with a smirk. He gave a gentle smile but Damian noticed the sharp fangs protruding from his mouth as he gave a sinister smile. 
“If you weren’t radiating ectoplasm I wouldn’t have been able to detect you,”he gave a low chuckle that reverberated through Damian’s veins. 
“Who are you?” Katana remaining up as they seemed to circle each other. Damian in a defensive position. 
“Come on, I think the question you’re more curious about is what I am.” 
“Then answer whatever question you wish.” 
“So cold for the young Robin. Red and Nightwing have so much more spunk than you.” 
“I can show you spunk.” He bolted forward at the man who dodged hands behind his back. Dangr. Danger. Danger. It filled his senses no, it consumed them. What the fuck was he. His Lazarus sense was on fire. Blinding. Nauseating.
So when he felt the stranger pulse with the energy of the pits calling upon it from just somewhere he felt overwhelmed dropping to the ground unable to stop himself from puking. He expected the figure to attack him. Kill him in his moment of weakness. 
But no. 
Instead he felt a gentle gloved hand rubbing his back and the figure was crouched next to him rubbing small circles. 
“Shit, sorry kid. I just wanted to fuck with ya’ didn’t think you were that sensitive to me,”he apologized with genuine concern in his voice. “Fuck.” 
He smacked his hand away wiping his mouth breathing heavily. The figure stepping away getting the cue.
“Leave Gotham… you thing.” 
“Thing? Now that’s hurtful.” The man chuckled. “Look. I am sorry for what it means from a stranger. I got to go and I’m sure you do too. I don’t think you want your fellow birdies to find out you were here right?” 
“I don’t follow directions from monsters.” 
“I’m not a monster.” 
“You radiate danger. It’s in your entire being.” 
“I didn’t realize I still radiated that. I didn’t even know those infected could still pick up on me, different breed and all.” 
“Different breed?.” 
A small gentle smile. “Different breed of those infected with that you guys call the pits. I’ll keep away now that I know though, but if I have to fight near you kid. You’ll have to get that sense of yours under control.” 
“I can’t control it.” 
“Yes you can.” 
The man handed him his katana back before backing up again. 
“I’ll stay right here,”The man gave a smile moving to sit down himself. “Close your eyes. Feel where all the energy is.” 
Damian hesitated. Would this be weakness? Was he the enemy? He slowly adjusted to sit like him closing his eyes focusing on the feeling. 
“Imagine it as a bubble. A giant bubble as far as your reach will lead you.” Damian could feel the waters through the man and feel Jason and his movements next door. 
A slow growing toxic green bubble seeming to encompass all he could sense. 
“Good. Now take a deep breath and deep in your chest pull that bubble in with every breath. Slowly. It’ll overwhelm you if you try to reign it in al at once.” 
Damian obliged, what the fuck was he doing. “No. It’s not working you are lying to me.” 
“I’m not lying.” 
“I am not going to listen to someone maddened by the pits far more than Hood.” The man put his hands up again. 
“Then be my guest to faint next time I do more than flare my abilities.” 
“Who are you…” 
“A friendly,mostly.  if you need some help, though Feel free to ask Hood all about who I am.” 
And with a blink of an eye he was gone, and Damian knew he was right. He had to fucking move. He rose with shaky knees. 
His father did not need to know about the powerful entity able to bring him to his knees. Maybe he did? Would the being be able to bring him to his knees too?
No. He would not his weakness. He would not let anyone know what a walking pit of toxic waste that person was. Not until he could determine what exactly could bring him down. For now, all his Father would know was that Jason was going over some of his own investigations details. That is all. He moved positions to readjust himself to look into one of the windows. Only leaving when the sun began to peak over the horizon. 
He was surprised his body handled making it back at all. Ignoring the brief look of concern and comment from Alfred about how pale he looked as the child changed and headed to bed for the few hours of sleep he would obtain. 
He wasn’t going to tell anyone about that. 
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dairy-farmer · 29 days
Note
Actually? Can't stop thinking about this possibly expanded Time-Loop Of Bad Ideas AU? Because EVERYONE could get one! That Idol was made for Life Lessons and good at it's job!
Why NOT Moar Loops~☆?
And? Was GOING to suggest the whole BatFam. But this time not together. BUT THEN? My muse(adhd brain) smacked me and called me a coward! Go BIGGER they demanded! That sexy, sexy genius(me)!
That bust was probably not in Gotham! Or at least, not FULLY in Gotham. Maybe it was Superman, maybe someone else, but SOMEONE saw the Idol when Bruce found it.
We have PROTOCOLS, Batman.
That YOU made.
GDI. He sighs, but admits it's true. And Magic Bullshitry means getting scanned for Curses and Compulsions. Everyone up to the Watchtower. *various Bat Children groans of annoyance* No getting out of it. Come on, better this then getting possessed.
They Zeta up. Annoyed but here.
It's late and they'll probably miss dinner.
Come to find out? Fuckin EVERYONE but Captian Marval and Wonder Woman, who knows Magic, is off doing "Magic". Just... unspecified, vauge, could be anywhere, "Magic".
REALLY?!
AND they get pulled into a last minute, emergency, meeting about where they should store the Idol. Because all Wonder Woman and Marvel can TELL them about it? Is "Yep, Cursed. Probably."
And so they are annoyed. Everyone is arguing. Tensions are getting higher and higher. Somebody mutters a snide comment about somebody ELSE'S sidekick, and? Punching breaks out. Shoving. The big three stand to break it up.
But it's too late.
Some IDIOT throws a CHAIR. Their target, being a trained hero, OBVIOUSLY dodges. Which means it sails right across the table and HITS THE IDOL. Crash!
BOOM.
Everyone is slammed back by a lightshow and huge wall of air. Wonder Woman is FURIOUS. Marvel scared. Everyone gets checked out. Everyone, Go Home and isolate for AT LEAST 24 hours. Report any symptoms or strange thoughts.
They go home. Go to bed. Midnight.
Click.
Everyone locked in their own little Loops.
Now, some of those affected? Lesbians. Married and grossly, gooey, shmoopy, "No, yooou~♡" hang-up type In Love. Or just not in to him.
But! How many people in Loops? Do you think? Get that Bad Idea impulse~
Feel their eyes get drawn towards the Highly Competent and Sexy, Red Robin? Pretty-boy Tim Drake? Their Friend, colleague, or the son of such? It's a time loop. Who would ever know? They HAVE always been... curious.
I mean, they'd treat him right. It's not like they're HURTING anybody! Doing anything against his consent. It's just a Bad Idea.
Batman would murder them. Nightwing would help. Launch them straight into the nearest black hole. Or it would CHANGE things. Their relationship altered forever. Or... well, he's their Brother. Their Son.
So many reasons Not Too.
But it's a Time Loop.
They wear you down. Mentally and emotionally. You get lonely. A little bit crazy. Start doing things you know you shouldn't.
Like eating out your Boy until he's sloppy and ruined, fingering him for hours. Just to feel that sweet heat in your hand. Lazily resting you head on a trembling stomach, not letting him escape. Not hearing him ask for it to end, only whimper that it's too much. Because he's so good for you. And always has been.
Or finally breaking down, when the loneliness gets unbearable. And clinging like an octopus, as you bend your little Tim in HALF. Rolling and snapping your hips like you want to crawl inside his skin. Soaking in the pleasured cries your punching out with every thrust. How CLOSE you finally are.
Sneaking in windows, early in the morning. Teammates, Supers and Speedsters. Crimelords, here to pound him rough and sweet on his own bed. People who should NOT, but do~
Why so early? Uncle Clark?
What brings you to Gotham, Hal Jordan?
Hi, Roy, looking for Jason?
Even crossing paths, as choices diverge things. Ah, Aquaman! Your Majesty, what did you need me for?
All while Tim is, in his OWN Loop? Discovering that Sex is actually kinda awesome. And that he should never be left unsupervised. But mostly the first one!
And THIS time? Because I am a generous and benevolent Enabling Jackass? He DEFINITELY steals Dick's "time to threaten Deathstroke" burner phone. And uses it for purposes other then intended.
One stack of info, several shiny new crates of ammo, and showing up in Dick's Robin costume later? He's in Cairo getting his guts destroyed by a supersoldier. The day resets before Slade even breaks a sweat. Tim on the other hand? Passed "fucked incoherent" about three hours back and would probably shoot him, if the dick weren't making him too uncoordinated and stupid.
Nonetheless? Bats pull miracles. And Tim finds Constantine. Who refuses to TOUCH anything of the "learn a life lesson" variety. Since too many deity have it out for him.
But he is just a man.
And finds himself suddenly MUCH more agreeable and willing to try, after being dragged into another room and slammed against a wall. Blown by Batman's kid.
Nothing like face fucking a Robin to motivate a man to greatness, he discovers.
Which? Is when everyone gets their assorted bank of Loop memories. Lot of boredom for a few. Lovey Dovey bonding for others. Life lessons etc.
But?
Oh.
Oh My God.
Kon is panicking. As it filters in. Tim, bro, he can EXPLAIN! Constantine has cut off in amusement. Because, see? This? This right here is why he avoids- blah blah blah- *white noise* *Distant sound of Kon panicking and his Phone trying to explode itself with texts*
Because HOLY SHIT. Tim stares into the middle distance and realizes? So... SO many people jumped at the chance to fuck him. Like... A LOT.
So many.
His head is FULL of getting RAILED. Kon looks like he's gonna cry. Clark is ripping the door off the hinges. He can explain! Kon no longer looks like he's gonna cry. Explain WHAT, Clark?!
Tim fucked...So Many People.
Or was it Fucked By?
Both?
Does.... does he have Boyfriends now? Bootycalls? A harem?
..............whoops?
*arguing over Tim only gets louder as more Heros show up*
-🐼🐼🐼
all of them taking the opportunity to fuck tim- including some people tim's horny brain hadn't even gotten to considered but now had memories of fucking!😭😭
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kuromitos · 1 year
Text
May the best hero win!
[Dick Grayson x GN!Reader x Jason Todd]
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Plot: what happens when two batboys have a crush on the same person? Chaos. Petty Chaos.
Note: more storyline based on my OC that I'm too nervous to share with. The reader has a hero name called 'incognito'
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It was supposed to be a regular night. A typical run down of the latest mission in Gotham. But we are talking about the Wayne Family here, or should I say the batfamily, there is nothing 'normal' or 'typical' about them.
Instead of going to collect the Intel from their reliable source, like they are supposed to do, Nightwing(Dick) and Red Hood(Jason) are fighting each other on top of a rooftop. With Red Robin(Tim), the signal(Duke), Spoiler(Steph), and Robin(Damian) watching them from another rooftop and taking bets on who will win the fight. While the black bat(Cass) goes off and completes the mission.
How did we get to these events? Well, things first started earlier in the night. Batman contacted the members of his family to gather inside the Batcave for their briefing before patrol, "we have received Intel earlier in the month that shipment of a new drug is coming to Gotham in the coming week." Batman stated while pulling up the required information on the back computer.
"A new drug?" Nightwing asked, "I ain't heard anything about no new drug." Red hood said with a mad tone, his regular tone. "That's because it's technically not new." Red Robin pulled up articles and reports from his wrist computer to the bat computer for everyone to see. "It's originally a chemical used in medicine but somebody decided to use it as a base for a new drug. There have been huge reports of it in Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore. Recently, there's been rumors of it spreading to Gotham and now it's have been confirmed."
"The problem now is we don't know where the shipments is being dropped off." Batman said, changing the info on the screen to a photo of three men. "That has only been shared privately with these men only. But we have a double agent that was able to get the location for us and going to give it to us at the usual location on top of the Lincoln bank building. " He concluded his small speech with his back to the group because he doesn't want to see their faces of annoyance from them.
"The agent is . . . . Incognito. " "UUGGGGHHHH!"
Now hearing those groans you would think that they hate or can't stand the person called 'incognito'. Quite the contrary, they love them and consider them as an extended family member. What actually causes those groans were the two guys that like incognito some much more than everyone else. So much they turned it into a petty competition.
"I'll go" "I'll go"
They both turned toward each other when hearing each other voices and glare at each other. Those glares were signs to everyone around them that this was going to all night. Especially when Duke uttered the words "not this again."
"Don't you have to be bludhaven right now? Dick. " "Don't worry about that, Jay. I settled things before coming over. What about you, huh? Shouldn't you be covering crime alley or hanging out with the outlaws?" Dick smirks at his brother's poor attempt at jabs. "Just got done with a mission, dick head. " "Then you must be tired. I'll do this little info collecting-" Jason interrupted dick with a finger shoved in his face. " Don't give me that crap. You talked to them last time. Im going this time!" " Come on Jason. I'm just looking out for you. You don't think straight when you're around them." "Better than you. At least I think with my brain here" He points at his head, "and not the one down here." Jason grabbed his private part in a vulgar manner, which got a reaction out of dick. Pissed off. He was about to retort back but he was stopped by hearing Bruce scream at them both, "Enough! " which grabbed their attention. Jason still grabbing his. . . Little hood.
"Both of you going to the meeting point, then. Whoever gets there first can collect the information. I don't care who does it, just go!" Bruce yelled at them. They both stood there for awhile before Jason run towards his motorcycle screaming 'I'm getting there first!' With Dick on his tail also screaming, 'No you won't. '
~~☆~~
That's how we got to where we started. They raced thru the city using their personal own shortcuts until they bump into each other on top of an apartment building. Both felt they won't get their private moment they wanted with the double agent of their dreams, they decided to fight the other. First one down on their back, wins.
At first simple sparring quickly turns into a full-on brawl. Going at each other for at least an hour. Neither holding back on the other. While throw petty insults at each other too.
"Dickhead"
"Blowhard"
"Man slut"
"Zombie"
They took so long on this fight the other kids stop their patrol to watch and place bets. Jason was getting the winning votes.
It looks like the fight could go on forever since neither one looks like stopping anytime soon but a certain stop them in their tracks.
"Got it." They both turns towards the voice to see black bat with a piece of paper in her hand. "Got what exactly? " Dick asked with his hand on Jason's jacket, tight in his fist. "The location. It's the docks." She jump away from the two and probably back to the big bat. Everyone else follows her, forgetting the other two men.
Hearing they lose their chance, they let each other go and awkwardly stand beside each other. Their stupid fight got in the way. They missed the person who stole their affection. All because of their petty fighting. Hopefully this would be a lesson for them both to stop this -
"First one back, can meet them on the next meet up"
"You're on. Don't blame me when you lose. "
*sigh* nevermind. They're hopeless
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Sorry if they are ooc here. I hope to improve my skills soon.
I'm also might do a part two if you guys like it enough.
That's all I got. Bye for now ( ≧∀≦)ノ
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punkeropercyjackson · 3 months
Text
I truly believe that i never would've cared about the Batfam long enough to stick around the fandom til now and plan to stay as long as i can if they were like what fanon stans want them to be canonically.Jason is unironically one of the love's of my life as a selfshipper who started reading comics because of him but i detest the 'better' version of him they've created and same goes for the rest of the Bats and all the non-Bats they've ruined to prop them up
No,i don't want to hear about a white man adopting kids just because they have blue eyes and canonical good parents being bashed or killed off so he can replace them.No,i don't think it's right to reduce one of the most iconic and influencel character's in comics history to a chronically happy dumbass manchild who's obsessed with his looks and sex and as an irl eldest sibling i feel personally insulted by what they've done to Dick because they don't know how siblinghood works.No,i don't like that Tim is always either getting demonized and called a bigot and abuser and 'incel' for being a realistic teenage boy constantly dealing with nonstop bullshit thrown at him in addition to already having childhood trauma or woobified and bamfified into a white male power fantasy-Often coupled with sexualization which is just plain horrifying because he's a fucking toddler.No,i don't feel taking an extremely rough and tough and canonically uncomfortable with society's ideas of femininity and what should be romance chinese girl and literally silencing her wants by erasing that she learned how to talk and how even before that she had major attitude and not only feminizing her but having the audacity to not even make her feminine in a chinese way and instead go the white girl femininity route
No,i don't enjoy seeing a brown arab boy who's already a victim of islamophobic stereotypes in canon have even more added onto it by adultifying him either for bashing or simping and even fucking animalizing him so the white boys he's shipped with can 'domesticate'(an actual term i've seen used for him multiple times)him.No,i don't care that Jason being an angry goth asshole and morally gray is hot to you so you decided to erase his canonical trauma response of not being open to dating or sex unless it's with someone he's super close to due to how much hurt he's been through because you see traumatized men as a fetish instead of people and think you're not being ableist because you're a cis woman.No,i don't think i'm being 'too mean' by insulting and saying i fucking hate people who leave out the ONE black Batkid we've ever gotten in all almost 100 years of Batman comics for no real reason yet inserting the blonde white girl who's not even Bruce's daughter in any way because she DATED HIS SON and is basically dating his actual daughter now while doing it in the most mid fanarts and headcanons imaginable and when he's literally everything they love in white boy protagonists from other medias but they refuse to relate to autistic and queer black kids of any kind
I hope everybody who popuralized it back when the fandom was starting out rots and you're foul as hell if you perpetuate it too,i'm 10000000% serious from the bottom of my heart
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britcision · 1 year
Text
Alright, not a lot for you this WIP Wednesday, I have been doing a lot of spring cleaning! But here you go, just a lil Jason getting out there to keep an eye on his family
Featuring Harper Row for the first actual time, cuz she’s great and she deserves to be here!
First part of chapter 13, the rest is, as always, in the tags. Title is subject to change
———————
Hello Crime Lord My Old Friend
About twenty minutes after dropping Danny off at his dorm, Jason was suited up and ready to go.
Well, he’d stayed outside until he’d seen Danny shut the door behind him first. Jason had some fucking manners, though if pressed he couldn’t name who’d taught him them.
Danny’s dorm was about fifteen minutes from one of Jason’s better safe houses, as it happened. Jason had never been to a dorm, but from Danny’s stories?
A step below Teen Titans’ bunks, and those had sucked. Less privacy, smaller rooms, and more people? Who weren’t even part of the same team?
Maybe next semester Jason could offer to let Danny move in. He didn’t need need the safe house.
Red Hood could always buy the building. There were other apartments and while they weren’t luxurious, they beat half his other spots. The neighbourhood wasn’t bad either.
It’d be nice to pay Danny back a bit. Not have him closer. Just. Repay some of the debt by giving him a place to stay, rent free.
And maybe, just a little bit, the part of Jason that enjoyed the romanticism of his period novels kinda liked the idea. An estate for the king on your lands was a big deal back then.
A slightly more modern part of him thought being a landlord for his ruler would also be pretty funny. He figured Danny would enjoy that side too.
And it wasn’t like the guy could complain, since he’d literally given Jason back himself. Yeah, Jason was gonna pull that one out if Danny tried any familiar “oh I can’t accept this” on him.
Fixing his core was pretty damn god level on the favours spectrum. Jason could do whatever the hell he liked and Danny would just have to deal with it.
It cheered him up a little more, kept him in a good mood on the ride back to his safe house. It was more time where he couldn’t help Cass, but seriously?
Danny could change in a matter of seconds and be at her side not much slower. Walls, cars, goons, Jason had this feeling that none of it would slow Danny down.
And yeah, knowing that helped, but there was still a piece of him that only unknotted as he slid his helmet on and headed to the window.
“Hey, Black Bat. Busy?” He asked as the comms switched from earpiece to helmet display.
Of course he wore both. People kept trying to steal his damn helmet. That was also what the internal explosives were for.
The others all piped up when they heard him, Harper and Steph calling cheerful greetings around an ongoing conversation.
“Shit, Hood’s in, this mean I can go back to bed?” Bluebird teased. Spoiler cut her off immediately.
“Hell no, it can’t be a school night, Robin’s here! Great timing though Hood, we’re planning Red Robin’s eulogy and you have some experience there,” Spoiler chirped brightly, and Jason hesitated.
Sucked in a breath. He wasn’t gonna judge anyone else’s coping mechanisms until they got past “heads in a bag” levels.
Best to ignore it, since she wasn’t actually trying to set him off.
What the hell had Tim done since they’d left the manor?
Shaking his head, Jason settled into Red Hood and hopped onto the fire escape, scaling easily to the roof.
“Black Bat?” He repeated instead of answering, and half smiled when Spoiler groaned dramatically.
Black Bat answered in the considerate group pause.
“Not busy. Why?” She sounded amused, not even particularly tired, and Jason relaxed enough to slip all the way in.
“Thinking of going a little out of my way tonight. Wondered if you’d mind a tagalong?” Red Hood asked, hoping he sounded casual.
It wasn’t like he’d been planning to patrol the Alley anyway; his guys had already been told to handle it. He’d have to run around tomorrow night to keep the creepers scared, but he could have a couple off.
The tiny pause before her answer didn’t quite feel like judgement, but Jason muted before blowing out the sigh as she did. It wasn’t like the others needed to know he’d been stressing.
“Sure. Meet at the library?” She’d had his tracker up. Hood nodded, turning and running for the edge of the roof.
“Sounds good.” And they’d probably wound Spoiler up enough, she’d start plotting vengeance for being ignored soon. “So what the hell did Little Red do?”
“Brought Too Fine to the Bat Cave,” Spoiler told him with relish, not noticeably put out by the delay.
Not necessarily a good sign, since she was also this enthusiastic while actively plotting against him.
Wait.
Too Fine was Tucker’s hacker name.
“But he doesn’t know about us,” Red Hood said with a frown, catching an outcropping and swinging on.
“Oh, now you tell me,” Tim groused while the others snickered, “what a shame you didn’t think to when it’d have actually been helpful!”
News to Hood that he was on, probably still in the cave.
“He knows now,” Nightwing chimed in brightly, probably also travelling from the slight strain in his voice.
Hood paused for a moment, letting that sink in before attempting the next jump.
“Is he on comm?” He asked warily, because if Tim brought Tucker to the bat cave, it was entirely possible that they were all outed.
And that Tucker might tell Danny.
Shit, he still had to text Harley. Resolving to do it once he hit the library, he set back to running, throwing himself across another street.
Cass would probably take a little longer to get there.
“He’ll be back, he’s in the bathroom,” Tim explained with a heavy sigh, shaking his head. “It’s not all bad, he’s given me the full story on what happened in Amity Park. Witness account and all.”
“From a witness you let down to the bat cave~” Spoiler sang sweetly across the air.
Red Hood could hear Oracle rolling her eyes as she cut in.
“Tone it down, Batgirl. Bluebird, if you’re still thinking of heading in, could you swing past one last site on your way?” She said firmly, then lightening her tone for their current guest.
“Batgirl who? I’m Spoiler,” Spoiler grumbled, but didn’t push beyond that. None of them did when Oracle invoked the name she’d had second.
Bluebird snickered at her before answering the question, a hint of exertion suggesting she was on the move too.
“I’m not actually in a rush to go home, O, I got all dressed up so I might as well enjoy one last hurrah.”
Right, because she’d be going back to school probably when Danny did.
Harper had always been a damn good hero in Jason’s books, but she valued her retirement and none of them really wanted to ruin it. Unless, apparently, seven bats just had to stalk Jason’s new friends.
Hood would have apologized, but frankly if she’d said no, some of the others couldn’t have come to the gala to be a pain in his ass.
And then he couldn’t have had so much fun fucking with them.
Fine. One cool fruit basket for the Row household, and some rainbow cupcakes for Cullen. He needed practice on frosting roses anyway.
Although that also reminded him.
“Hey Bluebird, have the others filled you in on Phantom?” He asked, cutting off some more background chatter from Spoiler and Tim.
Nightwing and the girls had had hours by now.
“What, your new boyfriend?” Bluebird asked sweetly, and Hood rolled his eyes.
Probably hit the important shit then.
“Sent you a picture?” He asked instead, decidedly not entertaining that question.
Nightwing and Spoiler snickered. Hood flipped off their general directions, settling himself comfortably on the roof of the library to wait for Black Bat.
There was a short pause, the others now wondering what he was getting at. Good.
“In and out of suit,” Bluebird agreed, curiosity tinging with mild suspicion. Being out of retirement clearly wasn’t good for her.
Hood nodded, pulling out his phone and shooting Harley a quick text. It might be moot now, asking her not to mention Red Hood shit in front of Danny, but he might as well.
He still had to ask if Waylon knew. No reason not to do both, just in case. And see if Tucker knew when he got back.
“I know you’re outta the game, but keep the light show to a minimum if you see him around, okay?” He asked, scanning quickly over the list Danny’d cleared for public discussion.
He didn’t know if Tucker would have mentioned it, but he might as well. Cause of death was good, but Jason personally would veto “and the effects it may have now”.
Because fuck Bruce and his need for everyone to show him their weaknesses.
Bluebird definitely sounded curious now, and possibly like she was punching someone.
“Oh? He not big on the electricity?” She wondered aloud, and Hood grimaced.
Because if they were both at Gotham U in engineering… there was actually a chance Harper and Danny would run into each other.
Danny was older, but Harper skipped a couple years and he had no idea what year Danny was in. Fuck, they might be in the same classes. He couldn’t believe he’d never thought of that.
“Not exactly. You mighta seen him around actually, he’s a techie boy too. But he’s not a fan of the electricity flying around,” he explained, Nightwing making background noises that told Hood he hadn’t put the pieces together either.
Good. At least he wasn’t alone.
Bluebird made an interested hum, and probably a finishing blow considering the satisfaction when she spoke next.
“I thought he looked familiar. But then, he’s total Wayne-bait. Yeah, I can keep the good stuff under wraps if I see him around. Gonna guess he’s had some bad shocks in the line of work?”
Hood hesitated and in exactly the same instant Black Bat landed on the roof. Sam had given them all the warning about talking about a ghost’s death, so he could leave it at that.
But…
The way Danny had looked when he explained about Vlad. Yeah, he’d rather they took this seriously. He didn’t want any of his family to hurt Danny, even by accident.
“It’s how he died. He won’t spontaneously combust or anything, but it’s a bad memory.”
Silence reigned while the others absorbed that particular detail, Black Bat crossing to crouch on the roof beside him. Hood leaned over enough to bump their shoulders together.
He could almost feel concern radiating off her, which was an extra weird experience after literally feeling all of Danny’s emotions half the day.
Guess that was where Cass’s liminality was going. It made sense, kind of; despite her occasional trouble speaking, she was pretty much the clearest communicator in the family.
Having another back up way to make herself heard would only fit.
On a whim, he tried projecting comfort back to her.
—————
Tag list: @welcometosasakiworld @kyrianclawraith @someonebored0100 @stealingyourbones @starkcravingmad @frostedthroughghost @akikkobara @rainbowbunny0159 @littlefeather345 @violet-catsarelife @serasvictoria02 @wolfjackle @blacksea21090 @secretdestinywerewolf @anime-hipster-the-amazing @undead-essence @skitscratched @blackroserelina @snoodly-boop @trickerdi @mayoota-blog @xysidhe @idkmrpianoman @little-apricot-the-writer @chaoticmistake @the-legal-shipper @bun-fish @aroranorth-west @demon-cat-goes-woof @perfectwastelandcreation @onyxlightdragon @larks-and-katydids @peachesandcreamfemboy @jesus-camp-the-sequel @may-rbi @mothman-the-mothman87 @viyatrix @stargirl1331 @idfk-man10 @thedepressedrobin @skulld3mort-1fan @rootsmudge @ravenshadow17 @cankoking @phantom-dc @mentalcarebear @magic-pincushion @redamancyardor @lyra689 @itsparadoxlacuna
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kindlingkeen · 4 days
Note
(i'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, it's late, but i just realized a lot of this recently and i needed to put it into words so i hope you don't mind)
i've been thinking recently and while i don't mind fics with lazarus pit madness (or lazarus pit side-effects that basically amount to uncontrollable rage or violent blackouts, etc) if they are written well and the madness is handled in an interesting way, i've recently taken to mostly avoiding them because — well first of all so many of them are about tim, which. sometimes i want to read a jason fic that's actually about jason. anyway,, — i've realized that a lot of the time the "lazarus pit madness" is used to excuse everything jason has done since he was dunked. it's the reason he kills now, it's the reason he cut off those heads, it's the reason he beat tim bloody in titan's tower, etc.
instead of letting jason be a character who has his own morals, different and not what is usually considered "acceptable" as they may be, instead of exploring how they influence how he does things as the red hood, or how his own morals, his unique code affects his relationships with the batfam, he's just sort of… flat? he's made into basically nothing but a walking wall of seething green that's easily triggered and makes his black out with rage and is to blame for every violent thing he does — he is given no responsibility for his actions. and i've found that a lot of these fics end with the pit madness either somehow being done away with or at least being dealt with and then jason is back with his family happily ever after completely exonerated because it's not his fault, he didn't make those decisions, the pit did
i just,,, what about a jason who is aware of his actions? what about a jason who has thought things through and decided what kind of person he was going to make himself into? what about a jason who looked his trainers in the eye and knew he was going to kill them, who makes a plan and follows through, who didn't have to cut off those heads but he had a statement to make and maybe cutting them off was awful and horrible no matter that he decided they deserved to die but he did it because it needed done? and he's fully aware of what he's doing, he is responsible for his actions and any consequences. and he's going to do whatever he's going to do anyway. i think he's a much more interesting character that way
You 🤝 Me. Let’s be best friends. We can start a fan club, the let-Jason-have-his-autonomy club. I’ll be treasurer (fair warning, I plan to blow our budget on Red Hood stickers).
In all seriousness, yes, this, exactly this. I read a ton of these fics when I first got into the fandom, and I still enjoy a good pit madness fic from time to time, but nowadays I tend to want so much more for Jason.
For whatever reason, I think there’s a lot of “fast” fanfiction (as in the idea of “fast fashion”) written about Jason. It leans hard into a popular trope, hits those hurt/comfort vibes with a wrecking ball, and usually ends up absolutely nerfing Jason.
Writing a Jason who’s resolute in his mission and his methods, a Jason who is balanced and believable, is hard. Writing that kind of Jason and getting him to authentically reconcile with the Bats without sacrificing his autonomy is miles past hard. Reading that kind of Jason, staring uncomfortable truths in the face, that can also be hard. It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay (*grumbles unhappily*).
Thanks so much for the ask, anon, and for sharing your thoughts with me. 💙💙💙
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havendance · 7 months
Text
Batman for Dummies
Chapter 3: Starring NIGHTWING as the Cavalry
AO3: Chapter 3 | Read from the beginning
Fandom: Batman
Featured Characters/Relationships: Helena Bertinelli & Tim Drake, but look basically everyone shows up this chapter including, but not limited to: Dick, Barbara, Jean-Paul Valley, and Bruce too I guess.
Wordcount: 9100
Fic Summary:
In the aftermath of the quake that shook Gotham, Helena Bertinelli takes on the mantle of the Bat. (It isn’t like Batman’s using it.) If she’d known the cowl came with a certain moralizing little bird following her around — well, she probably still would’ve done it, but it would’ve been nice to know in advance. (Or: Tim and Helena team up 2: electric boogaloo. Now with more bats!)
We are back, baby! I got so much procrastination on my school projects done while editing this.
After two chapters of drama, it's time for something more chill and fun before we hit the endgame :)
Excerpt:
“Knock knock.”
Helena groaned and blinked. Someone was shining a flashlight in her face. At her side, Robby made some equally unhappy noises as he tried to pull the blanket over his head. It took Helena a second to wake up, but then it happened all at once. Someone else was there.
She kicked out, but her legs were still tangled in the blankets and the intruder easily dodged back.
Robby finally noticed something was wrong and sat up. “’Lena, what?” he said with a yawn. Then, more alert: “Nightwing?”
With the flashlight no longer shining in her eyes, Helena could see the black and blue costume she’d originally missed. She flicked on the LED lamp near the bed, and there he was, looking in far better shape than anyone inside the city had been in months. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“When did you get here?” asked Robby.
“To answer your questions: last night and I was sent to fetch you. B called a meeting,” Nightwing said.
Robby crossed his arms. “B knows what I think. You can tell him that sending you isn’t going to change that. No offense,” he tacked on apologetically.
Nightwing nodded. “So you’re both out then?
Helena exchanged a look with Robby. “Both?” she asked.
Nightwing shrugged. “He told me to get both of you.”
“Really?” she asked. “Because he was pretty clear on what he thought of me the last time we met.”
“Hey, I just got here.” Nightwing held up his hands. “I’m just telling you what he told me.”
Robby was looking to her. “Do you think he means it?”
Helena shrugged. “You know him better than I do, kid.”
“Well…” she could see the wheels in his head turning, “maybe. He did kind of try to apologize last time.” To Robin, not to the Bat. “I won’t go if you don’t,” he decided.
Helena turned back to Nightwing. “Who else is going to be at this meeting?”
“Me, Oracle, Azrael I think. It’s an all hands sort of thing.
So either she was actually included in that, or else he just wanted to chew her out in front of a larger audience. Helena knew she really shouldn’t get her hopes up; she’d been burned enough times before, but if he really was serious this time… Well, She never had completely managed to rid herself of the part of her that wanted for Batman to see her, to respect her. Though, admittedly, with the events of the past months, that part had gotten pretty small.
What were the options here? If they went and it turned out he was still an asshole, it’d be annoying, but she could just leave. A waste of morning at worst. But if they didn’t go and it turned out he was serious… Helena was honestly a little surprised that Robin had stuck with her this long. He'd been the only thing keeping her from spilling blood all over his precious bat symbol and he’d still chewed out Batman for her in the end. If Batman was serious, she owed it to the kid to at least give it a try. She knew he didn’t like being at odds with Batman, for all he was willing to be.
“We’ll come,” she said.
“Where are we going?” Robby asked.
“Clocktower,” Nightwing said. “I figured I’d come along with you once you got suited up.”
“How long until we need to be there?” Helena asked.
He shrugged. “Sooner’s better. It starts whenever everyone shows up.
She probably wouldn’t have been able to get back to sleep anyway. Helena stood up and stretched. “Well then, let a woman have her privacy?”
Robby dragged Nightwing out the door.
She could hear them talking in the other room as she stripped off her sleepwear and pulled on the Batsuit.
“You had me worried, you know,” Nightwing said.
“Really?” Robby asked.
“Yeah, I had to hear from O that you were hanging out in No Man’s Land.”
“Oh.” A pause. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Really? You come by every other week to bother me. Of course I’m going to notice when you stop. Then you stop answering your phone and of course I’m worried.”
“Um, I’m sorry?”
A snort, probably from Nightwing. Helena could empathize. “Punk. So, you and Huntress?”
“She’s the Bat,” Robby said automatically. Then, more suspicious: “And what do you mean?”
“I’m just saying, after all that shit you gave me for letting her see my face, where do I find you?”
“It’s not— I’m not— It’s practical!” Robby sputtered. “I’ve known her for longer! And there’s only one bed!”
“Sure, kid.”
“You agreed we weren’t going to bring that up!”
“I’m just saying…”
The conversation devolved into scuffling. Helena pulled on her mask and went around to the doorway. Robin was only half-way suited up and Nightwing had him in a headlock.
She coughed. “So, are we going?”
Nightwing let Robin go and he hurried to finish putting on his tunic. “I’m ready,” he said and headed to the exit.
Nightwing turned to her. “Ladies first,” he said.
She rolled her eyes, but headed for the door.
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