so my younger cousin is flying in to visit from brazil on sunday, and will be staying here for like, the entirety of july. which, don't get me wrong, is super cool! i love the kid! but it felt like a super weird move, considering his parents are the SUPER strict and borderline helicopter parents. even the smallest prank/roughousing with him/his little sister would lead to a strict talking to from his parents, he couldn't ever do anything without their clear permission, that sort of stuff. so letting him fly at alone at 16 to a whole different country and stay there for a whole month seemed WILDLY out of character. additionally, it just felt like a super last-minute trip. it's not like we have any plans to do when he gets here, and the flight itself and stuff only got booked like, midway through june.
and i was talking to my mom about it, kind of trying to nudge some answers out of her, and after a while she went, "yeah, i think they're sending him over here to get away for his boyfriend. see if the distance breaks them off." which, first of all, surprised me because last i checked, they didn't KNOW he had a boyfriend. literally everyone in the family did EXCEPT for them because while that entire side of the family being semi-conservative, his parents (mostly his dad) are EXTREMELY old-fashioned. so clearly something already went wrong. and considering the only reason the rest of the family knew is because one person found out and it spread like wildfire, i have a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the one to tell them, either.
and second of all. they're sending him HERE. to try to make him forget his homosexuality. i couldn't do anything but just wordlessly gesture to the multiple pride flags scattered around my room, then to myself, because really? he has like two other cousins in the us and they're sending him to me? honey i am about to introduce this kid to queer scenes you have never even heard of. he'll be returning home with labels only shrimp can perceive
23K notes
·
View notes
John Constantine was in prison.
No, not a normal, mortal prison. Those wouldn't be able to hold him like this one does.
No, he's imprisoned in the Infinity Realm.
The warden of the establishment is Walker, someone whose blood sings Witch Hunter.
If that wasn't bad enough, with every second, it gets worse. Angels decided to interfere in a realm not in possession of their God.
Who's idea was it to go against the Infintiy Realm? Are they nuts?
"John Constantine," One of the messangers steps forward. There is no weapon in sight, yet.
"Under the scrutiny of Heaven, we were sent to retrieve you for a trial." Their voice clipped, blond hair shimmering a soft green and John is sweating buckets.
"Your deals with various demon folk and such shall be judged unter gods court and—"
A loud bang echoes through the hall, Walker's men are surrounding the beings of heaven and particular brave soul steps forward.
The lad is young, can't be older than Bat's Robin. He walks with an air of authority, white hair floating against gravity's rules and towering before the flock of messangers.
"How dare—"
The boy, the godling– growls.
He blocks their view of Constantine, staring them down.
Some of the angels fall back, wings arched and ready for a fight, weapons still not in sight however.
"I am Phantom, King of God's of the Infinity Realm." The child with a title too much for such small shoulders bear, introduces himself.
It sends the flock into mild panic. Constantine is just a bit satisfied at the change.
"Returns to your god and tell him this, every Constantine bearing the title Laughing Magician is under my protection."
For such a small stature, his voice is booming, the command thinly veiled as a threat and icicles forming around him.
"Tell him that if he ever dares to breach my territory once more, I will not hesitate to call war upon heaven."
The main angel of the flock, the one that had read out Constantines sentence, hesitated only for a moment before urging the others to leave.
Posture stiff and movements jerky.
They didn't expect to be told off like this, John muses.
He only slightly dreads when phantoms attention drifts to him finally, a light knock on the metal bars and the whole wall was gone.
"Follow me, John Constantine."
And John does.
He'll sweet talk himself out of this on the way to his doom. Like always.
—
("Unpopular belief, but I actually quite like you." Danny had stated once in the garden, sitting on a table and drinking tea. John hadn't touched his cup nor desert at all, cannot trust those of the infinite after all.)
(A rip into the green before them had created a portal, a gateway.
"Leave, Laughing Magician. Hold onto that necklace, it will ward off anyone with the intent to harm and deals as a warning to those working for the immortal."
And as John steps forward, his eyes meet toxic green.
"We will see one another again, sooner or later. Farewell, Jester."
The portal spat him out in his apartment in New York, if it wasn't for the protection charm, Constantine would have believed it to be a mere dream. A warning.)
1K notes
·
View notes
Leon is absolutely the boyfriend that leaves you with a stuffed animal covered in his cologne and smell to cuddle so, “you never have to sleep alone sweetheart” and im <3
Oh yeah, TOTALLY.
He knows how much you love cuddling him and how upset you get when he has to leave for a few days. So the moment you told him about the teddy, he went out of his way to find one.
You know that place where you can make your own bear? Yeah, he went there. He wasn't even concerned about the weird looks he was getting from children and their parents. He was just a grown ass man buying a teddy.
Leon had a hard time choosing the bear, but at last, he chose one that resembled him in a way. A blondish teddy with a little heart patch sewn right on its chest. To his amusement, the place also sold clothes for the bears. He almost laughed when he found a brown leather jacket, just like his. How ridiculous. Oh, you know he had to buy it.
“Would you like to add a scent to your bear?” the store worker asked him, but he didn’t understand right away.
“A scent?”
“Yes, we got a few in stock. To keep your bear smelling good!
“Uh, no. Thanks.” He thought they were joking, but that actually gave him a better idea.
When he got home, he quickly showered the bear in his cologne. The one he knew was your favorite.
He was so excited for you to see it, so when you got home he didn’t even greet you, he made you sit down and close your eyes.
“What’s going on?” you asked and got no response, instead, you felt him place something on your lap. You opened your eyes and gasped.
“Oh my god. You’re joking.” You laughed, he had outdone himself this time. The bear looked just like him. You wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, it was the cutest thing you had ever seen.
“Even named him Leon, look.” He showed you a certificate which, indeed, had his name printed in bold letters. “Now you’ll still be able to hug me even when I’m gone, sweetheart.”
2K notes
·
View notes
Snippet/prolog thing from a DP x DC fic that lives almost entirely inside my head outside of this & a few other bits.
Please feel free to take this as an overly long prompt haha
If anyone wants context to this let me know and I'll be happy to info dump at you lol
-
The kid had been eleven the first time John Constantine met her.
A little ghost girl, too small for the crowns and dominions that were rightfully hers, wandering the world alone and unattended because to stay in one place would drive her mad - or worse. He didn’t think himself as having a particularly soft heart, but there was something about little Stella Phantom that grew on him - a bit like a mold, he liked to explain. Maybe it was the way she swore like a sailor and kicked a demon in the low hangers with a feral grin the first time he met her. Maybe it was just how lonely she looked, small and slight in the large world she was so obsessed with exploring.
She had a family. A Grave of her own that worried about her, but who couldn’t follow her on her constant travels no matter how much they wanted to. Proof that being some of the most powerful beings in existence wasn’t enough to prepare you for parenthood.
Somewhere along the lines she started following John around. Interested in what he was doing, where he was going, who he worked with. It hadn’t taken long to get her folded into JL Dark. Zantanna had blanched when he’d shown up with little Elle, pulling in the big wigs from JL Light to argue about the ethics of involving a child in their work. As if Supes and the Bat had legs to stand on with their own brood so often in the thick of danger. Elle was safer under his watch than she’d be under the loose oversight the Titans had or whatever fresh hell was going on with Young Justice but hell if anyone would listen to him on that front.
He lost the war when she met Superboy Jr. and Robin V.
She’d adored them from the start, delighted at having children her own age around to spend time with. They formed a little team, working together here and there, then more often as they got older. She still worked mostly with JL Dark, but she was growing up. Spreading her wings a bit.
Elle was seventeen when the Bonds first formed. The spider-silk thin threads finally winding themselves into the heavy binds that spilled out of her Core and reached out for anchoring in the boys. It was sickeningly sweet, in the way puppy love always was. She was too young for Core Bonds like that to settle, of course, in the way children were always too young when they fell in love the first time. It was normal though. Ghost children the Realms over made Bonds only for them to fade or change as they grew, almost never anchoring to anyone til they were full grown.
She’d blushed as red as Marvel’s suit when she realized John could see them, stuttering and embarrassed. He’d teased her about it for a long time, about how much she’d grown up, how much trouble she was going to cause, how he was going to have to fight the big bad Bat and his pet boy scout when she inevitably dishonored their poor, innocent sons. It was entertaining, endearing.
He waited for the Bonds to fade or shift. Weeks. Months. Years. As she turned nineteen, he started to wonder if they would stick around. If in another few years they might strengthen, begin the slow process of anchoring.
She was twenty-one when her boys - calling themselves Flamebird and Phoenix now - started dating each other.
The Bonds remained, steady and solid and painfully unanchored.
John stopped teasing her about them.
They hadn’t changed to accommodate platonic bonds, nor had they faded any. Their tendency to tangle around her like snare was another point of concern. Core Bonds weren’t meant to cause difficulty for the ghost they were born from, and they certainly weren’t meant to wrap around the ghost’s limbs and body in painful loops like that. They weren’t supposed to hurt.
When she was twenty three he started suggesting it might be time for intervention. The irony that he of all people would be trying to get someone to take steps to cut out the thing harming them was not lost on him. Nor was the way the fond feelings he had for the girl had skewed decisively paternal over the years in a way that his younger self would have mocked him for endlessly.
He felt better about broaching the subject knowing that her Grave had been suggesting the same thing. That he wasn’t overstepping the bounds of whatever odd partnership they’d developed over the years. John was, he had very reluctantly come to accept, the girl’s mentor if nothing else. His job was to teach her and guide her, not be her parent.
No matter what his old, battered heart might try and suggest.
Even still, he couldn’t help but be concerned.
She was twenty-five when they got temporarily launched into that broken, bleak world. When they met the Elle and Flamebird and Phoenix of that horrible dimension.
The three alternates’ bonds were anchored completely, tying the triad together in threads of silver and green. Not even Other-Elle’s complete, sickening deterioration into something cannibalistic and feral had been enough to break them. He can’t imagine how much it must have hurt to see that, for his girl to glimpse a world where something she’d longed for for so long happened, only for it to seemingly be at the expense of reality itself.
He helped cover for her, after their two groups had been mixed up and separated for the night - or what might be called night in a world that no longer had any light to make those kinds of distinctions in time. When she came back with the Flamebird and Phoenix of that world, after their little separation from the larger group he kept her two boys misdirected. Distracted Nightwing and Zantanna so they didn’t go asking too many questions he knew Elle wouldn’t want answered. The Bat John was helpless to do much about, but thankfully the big brooder seemed too intent on the desolate, lightless world itself to notice the way Elle’s gaze was going distant, bittersweet at the edges.
He didn’t know what, exactly had happened in the hours she was gone. He could guess, from the way the Other-Phoenix and Other-Flamebird looked at her, the way she avoided her boys. Loneliness and desperation made for an easy slide into bad decisions. John might just have to admit that Zantanna had been correct, all the times she’d said he was a bad influence on the girl. Not that there was any surprise there.
Elle’s Bonds were even more of a knotted mess than before. Offered something so close to anchoring only to find no purchase. They twisted about her throat like a noose now, ready to strangle the life out of her one day.
He signed off on her leave of absence when they finally made it back to their home dimension.
Anyone else would want details to write down. Would want to know the specifics of why and for how long and a whole mess of other details she either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. He’d get his ass roasted over the fire for the mess the paperwork was in, but that was fine. He’d endured far worse for far less important reasons.
Personal leave, he’d written.
Duration of leave: indefinite.
Reason for leave: None of your fucking business, Bats.
They shared a cigarette on one of the high catwalks in the Watchtower watching dawn break on the world below. Grateful to see the sun and stars again after those two days in utter blackness. They didn’t talk about her Bonds. About what happened. About how she hadn’t talked to her Boys since coming back. Just stood and smoked. He pretended not to notice her tears. She pretended not to notice his. Neither of them had ever been any good at goodbyes.
When the time came she bumped his shoulder in thanks - for the cigarette, for the company, for the years of friendship and family - before turning and stepping through the bright purple door standing impossibly in the middle of the walkway.
He glimpsed the green of the Infinite Realms and the distant shape of her Lair beyond. A world of worlds, paradise to one that never stopped, always off to find something new, something never seen before. It was against all odds that she’d even stumbled upon this one in the first place. A small speck in the crushing infinite.
When the door closed it did so slowly, a painful whine and a soft, mournful click all that marked her leaving.
John watched it bleed out of existence, and wondered if he’d ever see her again.
Six months later, the stars started to disappear.
640 notes
·
View notes