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#miraculous episode 100
colorful-horses · 11 months
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My review of Miraculous Ladybug S5 so far is that it has a lot of scenes that I like in theory, but in action just end up being very silly and way over dramatic
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weaverofink · 2 years
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Second chance
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splendidcyan · 6 months
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Realizing how close we are to the end of the year and how much art I haven't posted????? Here's some sketches from this summer/fall that were me art directing the Ladybug PV as if it were more SpiderVerse-y
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littlemourningstar · 2 years
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THE SCOOTER. THE HAIR DOWN. THE BUBBLES.
Ooooooh boy Adrien is in trouble.
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timey-milart · 2 years
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Happy 1st aniversary of Ephemeral!! Another what if.. 😃
(idc if was yesterday, also this post have 1 year too so... yeahhh)
I'm mostly more active on Instagram, but difficult situations require quick action, sooo Hi again Tumblr
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sundrop-writes · 5 months
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Emergency Contact
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Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader
You choke on your words, but you swallow them faster.
Just want you to be my Emergency Contact.
Summary:
After Jason miraculously comes home from his brush with Deathstroke, you’re both feeling it in very different ways. You have an unexpected physical wound from the battle, and he has many (very expected) emotional wounds. You help each other heal. Even if it’s very stubborn on both your parts.
Jason Todd x GN!Powered!Reader. Enemies/FWB to Lovers. Angst and Hurt/Comfort. (Slight Smut). Set during Season 2, Episode 5.
Word Count: 10,400
DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link
THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.
Detailed warnings and author’s notes below the cut.
...
Warnings: general emotional angst, Jason has a self deprecating inner dialogue, (kind of) enemies to lovers - more like annoyances to fuck buddies to lovers, friends with benefits to lovers, the reader and Jason have a bantering/argumentative nature to their relationship, the reader is meant to be 100% gender neutral (the reader is never referred to in the third person, so there is no need to use they/them pronouns, but the reader is not called she/her or he/him), Jason calls the reader ‘babe’ (imo, a completely gender neutral term and he would call anybody that), mentions of alcohol (Jason drinking a beer), the reader character has ice powers (not entirely relevant to the plot but I couldn’t help myself lmao).
sexual themes throughout, mentions of sexting (no detailed descriptions), mentions of sexting in public, mentions of the reader character sending nudes to Jason (no detailed descriptions of the photos), one scene with detailed smut (but it is not the primary focus of the fic), the reader’s genitals are not described in any specific way, some dirty talk, Jason is more dominant and the reader is more submissive, penetrative sex, Jason is annoying even during sex, Jason has a pain kink (even when he’s a dom, he’s a painslut, I don’t make the rules), scratching/marking (Jason receiving), slight humiliation kink.
mentions of canon level violence, mentions of kidnapping (in alignment with canon), mentions of Jason being beaten by Deathstroke, mentions of Jason’s near-death experience (being dropped off the building), gun violence, the reader is injured - has a bullet wound/bullet fragment in their stomach, mentions of blood, descriptions of first-aid, mentions of puss from an infected wound (theoretically, not something that happens in the fic). That should be everything.
A/N: The title for the fic comes from a song by Pierce the Veil of the same name. It’s a newer song, and it’s one that I absolutely went to when looking for a title for this fic. The concept of becoming someone’s emergency contact is about upgrading the relationship from casual to much more serious, and just the whole song, and specific lyrics in it suit this fic so well. I highly recommend listening to it paired with this fic.
This was based on a request from my old blog, but obvi I don’t have that ask anymore - the request was about Jason getting shot and having his wound attended to by the reader, but I changed it to the reader getting shot cause I thought that was more interesting and less common. If the person who made that request sees this and finds my new blog, I hope you enjoy it! And in general, I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it.
This is another re-post from my old blog, and I do have a sequel for it in my drafts, which I am not actively working on. And before I post the sequel, I do plan on tweaking this and revamping it a little, but I figured I would repost this for now just to have the masterlist complete on this blog.
...
If asked, you would be hard pressed to explain your relationship with Jason Todd. 
The best way you could describe it would probably be - friends with benefits? 
But most of the time, the two of you weren’t even friends. You weren’t the type to hang out casually, or spend time alone together if it didn’t involve ripping each other’s clothes off. 
If you ever exchanged secrets or those precious bits of your most raw selves, it was by mistake. It was through sarcasm, or coming off the tired lips of someone who had just been exhausted by a few orgasms. The two of you knew each other well, quite literally inside and out. But you always made a deep, concerted effort to hold each other at arm’s length. And maybe that’s part of what all the snark and harsh words were for. 
It wasn’t all arguing. You were friendly. You could be civil, at the very least. 
Right from the moment you had first met Jason, you had found him to be so damn annoying, a shitstain on the earth - yet, someone you couldn’t stay away from. The line between flirtatious banter and a truly grinding argument was always so thin with the two of you. 
… 
You hadn’t expected that your life would be truly changed when you walked into that safehouse in Chicago that day. You truly thought nothing of him when his eyes landed on you - in those moments, a completely anonymous stranger, raking his eyes over you like you were a piece of meat. It was a gaze that immediately made you feel naked, something that made you want to smack him. You told yourself it was because he was being a pervert, not because of the heat that curled in your gut at feeling so intensely desired by him. 
He had been sitting on the couch sipping a beer like he owned the place, his thighs spread wide in a way you immediately decided was arrogant and annoying rather than hot - showing off his muscle tone as if it was trying to break through his jeans. Definitely annoying. Definitely the stance of a fuckboy trying to look bigger and badder than he was. He definitely was not attractive. 
When Dick led you, Rachel, Gar, and Kory further into the condo that seemed far too conspicuous to be a safehouse, the stranger you would later come to know as Jason quickly spoke up. 
“Who are your friends?” He asked. 
As he rose from the couch, his eyes lingered on you. Though his words seemed more out of curiosity, you couldn’t help but feel that bite of something more salacious lingering in his voice. 
It caused you to scoff and roll your eyes. 
“Not important.” Dick declared, his voice snippy. He was clearly annoyed with this new guy, and you could tell that your perceptions of him were definitely not ill-informed. 
“Who’s he?” Kory asked, going for the obvious question. 
“Not important.” Dick parroted out the words again, sounding much shorter with his patience. 
“Anybody want a brew?” Jason asked, motioning with the beer bottle in his hand. 
“Brew?” You twisted your eyebrows with disgust, staring him down as you commented on his odd choice of slang. 
He didn’t get to reply, as you were trampled over by Gar’s enthusiastic voice in your ear. 
“I do!” He said, raising his hand with excitement. 
“No, you don’t.” You quickly told him, reaching out to grab his hand and put it back down. “It’s disgusting.” 
You had a grand suspicion that Gar had never drank beer before, and he had no idea what he was truly asking for. Rather, he was simply taking advantage of trying new things because Dick and Kory were incredibly slack parental figures and he was away from home for the first time. 
“No, no one wants a brew.” Dick sighed, shaking his head. He threw Jason a small glare and you resisted the urge to laugh. 
“That can’t be Adamson.” Kory said, motioning toward Jason. 
This left you confused. But you didn’t question it. 
“He’s not Adamson. Adamson’s in the bathroom. Unconscious.” Dick explained. 
“Hi, I’m Rachel.” Rachel told Jason, offering him a sweet smile - being her usual sweet self. 
“Jason.” He introduced himself, in that moment, finally giving you a name to that obnoxious face. 
“I’m Gar!” Gar said with a grin, to which Jason nodded. 
Jason caught you glaring at him, and looked you up and down again, as if trying to willfully tear off your clothes with his eyes. It made your skin itch with heat and you would forever deny that it was a feeling you liked. 
“What can I call you, babe?” He asked, his voice entirely slimy, the kind of tone he would have used to recite cheesy lines to Tinder dates, you were entirely sure of. 
Before you could come up with some clever reply, Dick sighed in frustration and started balking again. 
“Okay, who we all are doesn’t matter right now.” He pressed, his neck so entirely tense that veins began to pop from the skin. “Can we just chill out, relax, sit on the couch and watch TV or something?” 
It seemed that he wouldn’t get his wish. 
Gar quickly charged around the table, finding something else to get strung up about. 
“Yo, when did you get another one?” He asked, putting his hands on both of the expensive cases on the long dining table - a copy identical to the one you knew to be containing Dick’s Robin outfit. 
It made you curious, and the answer that followed certainly surprised you. 
“That one’s mine.” Jason said, his chest literally puffing out with pride as he stated the fact. 
“No way.” You scoffed. 
“Yes way.” He quickly argued back, the whole exchange sounding entirely juvenile.
“This one’s yours? Wait, you’re Robin too?” Gar quickly put the pieces together. 
“I thought you were Robin?” Rachel commented, tilting her head toward Dick with curiosity. 
“I am.” Dick said firmly. 
“He was.” Jason corrected, a cocky smirk forming across his lips. 
“Batman really lowered the height requirement, huh.” You said. 
The words flew from your mouth before you could stop them, seeing as it was likely the only thing you could nitpick about Jason’s appearance. Between his stunning sharp jaw, his piercing blue eyes, his oddly appealing wild hair, his muscle tone being somehow visible beneath his baggy clothing - all of it made you equally frustrated and annoyed with him, and your baser urges couldn’t resist the low-hanging fruit. 
You felt victory and a slight pang of guilt when Jason deflated because of your comment, shrinking back into himself at your words. 
He didn’t have anything to say in return, he simply sipped his beer. 
“Wait, how many Robins are there?” Gar said, beginning to excitedly ramble at the thought. “Are there a lot? Cause I would love to-” 
“Okay, quiet.” Kory cut him off, clearly becoming annoyed with all of this dancing around the point as much as Dick was. “Sit.” 
Her words were firm, and you couldn’t help but to listen. You found yourself collapsing to sit on the couch while Rachel and Gar took seats at the dining table. Jason continued to linger in the middle of the room, staring at Kory and Dick as their frustration filled the air. 
“Bathroom.” Kory told Dick, and then they left to deal with whoever - or whatever - Adamson was. 
Jason sighed and took a seat beside you. When his eyes fell on you, you set your jaw and glared at him. You didn’t give away a single ounce of the heat you were feeling as his eyes locked with yours. 
“Even if I am the shorter Robin, I can assure you that everything else about me is… very long.” He lowered his voice and whispered those last words, crowding into your personal space as he did so. 
It sent shivers down your spine, his silken voice making the words sound too tempting. Even if you twisted your face and said ‘gross!’ causing him to dissolve into laughter, you didn’t make an effort to move away from him or put any space between your two bodies on the very large couch. You told yourself it was because you were tired from a very long day of travel, not because you were enjoying the smell of his strangely expensive cologne from this close by. 
His grin was still entirely smug, and you couldn’t stand it. 
When he raised the beer bottle up to his mouth again, you reached over and put a hand on his forearm, forcefully dragging his arm down as you made a snide comment. 
“That shit is disgusting, why the hell do you drink it?” You asked. 
You found your face drifting toward his again and if asked, you would say it was a form of intimidation - not that you were being drawn in by an unconscious attraction to him. 
“Because I can.” He replied, just as snide as he slipped your grip and sipped on the drink. 
You mocked his words in an entirely childish voice, and then you raised a single finger up to it and skimmed along the neck of the bottle. It took only a single moment of concentration with your skilled powers to freeze the beer inside solid. He thought he felt an extra chill coming off his hand, but convinced himself that he imagined it. But when he kept it tilted and nothing came out to meet his lips, he shook it and then stuck an inquiring eye inside the bottle. 
When he saw that it was completely frozen, he looked over and saw you grinning, and little did you know - that was the moment he became completely taken with you. You were one of the most annoying people he had ever met, and he found himself so intensely attracted to you. 
Even if it was getting under your skin by arguing with you or fucking your brains out, he knew in that moment - he had to get inside you and drive you insane the same way that he knew you would for him. 
… 
When Dick left to go check on his old circus friend Clay, Jason winked at you and said ‘don’t miss me too much’. You made a show of putting a finger near your mouth and audibly gagging. 
Later that night, when Jason didn’t return, you hated the curl of disappointment that panged in your stomach. You wanted to hit yourself for staring at the door, waiting for the second Robin to come in behind Dick. 
You hated yourself even more for replying to Jason’s texts. 
Apparently he had taken your phone out of your jacket pocket when you went to the bathroom (not to see Adamson - a different bathroom, to pee). And he had put himself in your contacts as ‘Hot Guy’. He had also sent himself a text from your phone that read ‘omg Jason you’re so hot, will you fuck me?’. And then replied to it from his own phone with a picture of his cock. 
Unfortunately, the only thing you could mock about the picture was poor lighting. 
When you told him as much, he quickly remedied that with several more pictures - ones with better lighting. He sent a video with very distinct audio. You would deny that you rushed to put your headphones in to listen to it while you sat on the train with Kory and Gar. You would deny that it drove a hard, hot pain between your thighs. 
You dug through a folder and sent some pictures of your own. You told yourself it was to prove to him that you were too good for him - to show off something he could never actually have. To tease him. 
You would deny that you loved the compliments he gave you, that you ate up the affection like a plant lovingly soaking up the sun. 
When you were sexting him, you had no clue that you were ever going to see him again. It was almost mindless, something for a dopamine hit to distract yourself from all the chaos going on around you. You weren’t doing it because you actually liked Jason. You didn’t have any real attractions toward him, or any real plans to carry out all of the bold things you said in those messages. 
You had no clue that you’d end up living together. 
When you did find out that Dick would be taking Jason into the newly reopened Titans Tower along with you, Gar, and Rachel, you didn’t make a big deal of it in your mind. When Jason made flirtatious remarks toward you in person, you brushed him off. You put up a wall. 
You told yourself that he was nothing more than a cocky, shallow guy who would use you for sex and then throw you away - something you could never actually build a proper relationship with. And if you were supposed to live together, be some kind of team like Dick expected you to be, then you couldn’t be messy. You couldn’t get emotional. 
You had no clue that on one of those first nights living together, your self assured discipline not to give into your lust for him would break like a wafer cookie, and you would be in his bed faster than a sea turtle running into ocean. 
… 
“Fuck, babe, you feel so good on my cock.” Jason grunted, his face buried in your neck as he thrusted deep inside of you. The loud squelch of artificial wetness coming from between your thighs as he worked his hips, working you open with a needy, demanding pace. “Bet you love this cock, huh? Tell me how fuckin’ much you love it.” 
“Shut up.” 
The words came from your throat as a weak whimper, much less powerful than you had intended. 
You didn’t want to give him any more power than he already held over you - he had you weak and willing on his cock, something you would have never admitted could be true until it was happening in these moments. 
Though you would never admit it aloud, you loved the way he handled you. Having you pinned against the bed with his fingers digging into the flesh of your hips, having you breathless and moaning as he fucked into you with fast, obviously skilled strokes. Your nails cut into the flesh of his back, and he let out a low rumble from his gut as the sharp sting sent a wave of pleasure through him. 
You hated the twinge of lustful embarrassment that curled in your gut when he chuckled at your words. 
“Oh, you want me to shut up?” He asked, slightly breathless from the act himself, moving one hand beside your head to raise himself up slightly to look in your eyes. 
He was sweaty, disheveled, his hair a mess, his muscles taught with the effort as he continued to pound into you. You hated that you had imagined him much like this before, and that this outlived all of your fantasies. 
“Yes.” You fired back. “Just shut up and fuck me.” 
He bit his lip - something you didn’t know was him trying to hold back his orgasm, so utterly turned on by your bratty defiance, the twinge of a whimper in your voice as you said those words. 
“You weren’t tellin’ me to shut up when I was texting you.” 
He said, all hot breath fanning across your chin, his hips spearing forward in sharp, hard hits that made your skin smack loudly together. It made you work hard to suppress moans deep in your chest in a way that was painful, like venom inside your lungs. You wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of your sounds, of knowing just how good he was fucking you - even if he could see it written all over your pleasure twisted face. 
“You only begged for more when I was tellin’ you how I was gonna lay you on my bed. Take you apart… make you scream my name.” 
He reached his other hand from your hip to the point where you were joined. He began touching that tender place, making sharp, vicious strokes that were almost vengeful. Tears easily gathered in your eyes and he let out another chuckle when you choked on a deep, pleasurable wail. 
“Tell me, how many times did you touch yourself reading what I wrote?” 
He asked, leaning down to whisper the words right in your ear. 
“How many times did you cum thinking about me?” 
“I didn’t.” You choked out, digging your nails deeper into the skin of his back, causing him to grunt as the pain mixed with the pleasure flowing through him. 
“Sure, babe.” He smirked down at you, turning that look into something absolutely pavlovian that would forever make you feel his cock deep inside of you when you saw it, rather than feeling annoyed. 
Maybe from that point on, it was a bit of both. 
In an effort to shut him up, you reached up and claimed his lips. It was supposed to be a kiss, but it was mostly teeth. When you bit down on his bottom lip, snarling, he tasted blood and the way he moaned at the pain was absolutely unmistakable. It was something you remembered and used against him many times after that. 
… 
You wouldn’t allow yourself any room for self hatred when it came to that break in your self control. When it became an ongoing thing, you spun it as positive in your mind. 
It was just sexual release. You and Jason both needed it. It paired well with intense training and the heavy studying that Dick made you do. It lowered your stress levels a lot, and it helped you get through the day. 
The more time you spent around Jason, the more you got to know him, and the more you came to realize that he was nowhere near shallow. You easily saw that he was caring, deep, complex, troubled. The more time passed, you found yourself falling for him and the more you deeply denied it. Because it was just sex. 
Things were good between the two of you, and you knew that if you added anything else to the mix - any complicated, mushy feelings - you would fuck it up. 
You were especially reminded of this - how important it was not to fuck things up - just a day or so before every other force aside from you railed Titans Tower and began royally fucking things up. 
… 
It was a morning just like any other at Titans Tower. It was delightfully quiet - even though Dick demanded that everyone get up at ungodly early hours to begin training, you had somehow managed to wake up before everyone else and you were enjoying the peace it brought you. 
When you got up to see that Jason was already in the kitchen, standing at the counter as he munched on a bowl of cereal, you wanted to scorn the idea that your peace would be interrupted. But instead, you found yourself willfully suppressing a smile. 
You yawned and walked over to the counter, grabbing a bowl from one of the cupboards, thinking that cereal was just the right idea on his part. A deep frown cut through your face when you poured out the rest of the cereal box he had left on the counter, and a very measly amount fell into your bowl. 
“What kind of asshole only leaves three fucking cornflakes in the bottom of the box?” You scoffed, causing him to chuckle. 
“Learn to count, babe.” He told you, speaking with his mouth half-full. “That’s more than three.” 
You rolled your eyes. You were likely exaggerating - but still, it seemed rude to you to leave such a small portion, barely a handful, in the bottom of the box. 
“Or did I make you cum so hard last night that I knocked the common sense out of your head?” He added on, throwing you that signature smirk that made heat bloom between your thighs. 
You let out a sarcastic snort, giving him a purposefully disgusted grimace as you lifted the bowl up and dumped the remaining cereal into his portion instead. 
“You might as well take these.” You told him. “And don’t flatter yourself, you’re not that good.” 
You moved behind them, distracting yourself from the conversation by making a cup of coffee. 
“Oh really?” He perked up, rising to his full height, pure mischief in his voice. “It didn’t sound like it last night.” 
Much to your horror, he then began imitating your moans. 
“‘Oh, Jason! Oh, fuck me! More!’” 
It was a cartoonish, pornographic imitation, something he likely wouldn’t have done if the others were anywhere within earshot. Oddly enough, even though your relationship was casual, you still kept it guarded and private, as though it were some precious secret that needed to be kept from the others. 
“‘Jason, please, your dick is the best! Oh, make me cum!’” 
But that was the farthest thing from your mind as embarrassment curled in your stomach, the reaction he likely wanted to draw out of you. You hated that you didn’t truly know if it was accurate or not, because sometimes - yes, he did fuck your brains out and make you completely mindless on his cock. 
But you would never admit that he was right. 
“Shut up.” You sighed, causing him to dissolve into laughter, feeling as though he had won. 
But you wouldn’t simply leave it at that. 
Instead, as you pushed the button on the machine and your coffee began to drip, you turned around and gently placed your fingers on the side of his cereal bowl. You froze all the milk inside of it solid, making it into one large frozen chunk with the spoon stuck inside when he wasn’t looking - distracted, staring at your face, looking for any trace of the reaction that he had drawn out of you. 
You just glared, and he smirked once more. 
When he picked up the spoon again and went to take another bite, the entire bowl came with it. He sighed in defeat when he realized what you had done. 
“You know, it’s so damn annoying when you do that.” He sighed. 
“I know.” You grinned at him. 
He couldn’t help the butterflies that fluttered in his stomach at this. He resisted the urge to grab you by the sides of your head and steal the grin of your mouth with his own. He told you that it was out of annoyance, and not affection. He told himself those lines were most definitely not blurred when it came to you. 
… 
Confessing your feelings to Jason would not have been your choice. 
Given the choice, you would have let your feelings quietly live and die inside of you. You would have just kept Jason as a friend. You would have even dropped the amazing sex if it meant staying on good terms with him. 
But the stakes rose pretty quickly, and things were taken out of your hands. The choice was stolen from you and Jason entirely against your will. 
When you found out he was missing, supposedly kidnapped by Doctor Light on the heels of some misguided plan - something inside of you shattered. Up until that moment, if you thought it was just a stupid crush, or an infatuation inside of you that would easily fade with time - you quickly found out that you were wrong. 
You went through the stages of grief like a rocket. 
Denial. Staring at the door, waiting for him to walk inside at any moment. Just like you had back at the safehouse.
Anger. Being so pissed at Dick at the other older Titans that you could barely breathe. How had they let this happen to him? How could they make him feel so inadequate that he felt the need to go out on his own, half-cocked, clearly doing something in the name of looking for their approval? 
Bargaining. You would have traded places with him. You would have been the one, alone and scared and stranded if it meant that he got to be at home safe. You would have gone with him to carry out the stupid plan if he had only asked. Why hadn’t he asked you? 
Depression. You wept in your room, hands clasped over your face, letting out chest-shaking sobs as you thought of the possibility of him never returning home again. You realized the possibility of him dying was very real and it made your lungs burn. 
And then finally - Acceptance. You finally accepted that your feelings for him were something bigger, and if it meant that you were the only person in the Tower who truly cared about him (probably aside from Gar) - the only person who didn’t just see him as a pawn to be used against Deathstroke - then you had to do something about it. 
So you laid out your love for Jason. You put it all on the line for him. You accidentally confessed to him, showed your feelings in a gesture so quiet it screamed. 
You knew that for someone who stepped up to become Robin, someone who scorned cops for pummeling down on the innocent when they were supposed to be protectors - stepping up to try and save his life meant a love bigger than anything else you could have done. 
And he was terrified of it. There was a big justice in your love for him. And to him, there was an even bigger justice in giving you an out to escape it - to escape loving him.  
… 
Hectic. 
That was easily how you would describe the last few days at Titans Tower. 
Between the unexpected arrival of Rose - Dick taking on another stray because, like Rachel said, he couldn’t resist a bird with a broken wing. Finding out that she was related to one of the deadliest men on earth that the Titans apparently had previous history with. And then Jason going off on his own without telling you, some botched hostage trade, and the group picking up yet another stray - a strange boy who had saved Jason’s life. It was all a blur of hectic chaos that had you snapping your neck to keep up. 
Sleep was scarce and you couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a proper meal. 
But you weren’t truly worried about any of that. 
Dust had been kicked up around your life, and you couldn’t wait for it to settle before you made your next important decision. 
Even though the wounds were still tender, you knew that things were safe for now, and your number one concern was Jason. 
The minute he had gotten in the door, even though he was slightly hobbled and clearly sore from whatever Deathstroke had done to him, he rushed out of your sight. He was clearly eager to get away from everyone like a wounded animal sulking away to lick his wounds in peace. And when you had chased him, ignoring a nagging pain in your own side from the fight, he had slammed his bedroom door in your face, entirely uncaring of the fact that you called out his name, concerned for him. 
The rest of the group was distracted with Conner - not knowing what he had been shot with or how to fix it. You hated it, but in the eyes of the group, yet again, Jason and any of his problems fell to the back burner. 
After you had taken a short shower and changed your clothes, you found yourself here. Standing in front of Jason’s closed bedroom door, hoping not to face another cold rejection. 
You wondered if he would be sleeping, wondered if you should interrupt his peace. But you knew that sleep was unlikely after everything that had happened. 
So you took the leap. 
You raised a fist, once again pushing down that stinging pain coming from the right side of your stomach. You reasoned that it was probably nothing more than a bruise forming there. And you knocked on the door. 
A few moments later, the door was jerked open, and Jason glared at you. 
His eyes were dull and tired, and there was a large bruise forming on the side of his mouth. Probably one of many others that you couldn’t see, from the way he had been walking earlier. He likely hadn’t been sleeping, but you had disturbed him. 
“What the hell do you want?” He grumbled out, his voice dull, lacking any true fight. 
“I wanted to check on you.” You told him, entirely honest. “I know it might seem stupid, but I wanna see how you’re doing.” 
Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. 
He wanted to agree that - yes, it was stupid. It should have been obvious how he was doing after being kidnapped, beaten, and dropped off a building. But he was an idiot who had gotten himself thrown headfirst into that mess, thinking he could handle it. And he didn’t need to go crying to you about how badly he had fucked up. He had made a poor choice and he deserved all of the consequences. It was a simple fact of life. 
“I’m doing just fine, thanks.” Jason said, entirely snide and sarcastic. “Look, I don’t need your help, okay? So fuck off.” 
It was a set of harsh, cutting words. But he thought getting distance from you would be best. This whole thing had woken him up from the sweet little fantasy the two of you had been participating in. He was a natural born fuck-up. And sure, he could have you for a while, play around a bit - but he could never truly make you happy. Eventually, he would fuck you up too. He was a harsh poison and it would be better if he got out of your life before you felt the full effects. 
He moved to shove the door closed and upon instinct, you reached up and fought him on it. Unconsciously, you winced as a sharp pain came from the injury in your stomach, reaching for it with your free hand as you held the door open with the other. It should have been no big deal. With your meta abilities, you usually healed quicker. You weren’t even used to feeling it when you got hurt. You were probably just feeling it worse because you were tired. 
You tried to ignore the pain. But in a moment, Jason’s eyes went wide with worry as his gaze darted from your face, knit with pain, to where your hand was nursing the injury. Any sense of smarmy discontent dropped from his features, immediately being replaced with a softness and worry for you. 
“You’re hurt.” He said quietly. 
He let the door fall open again, reaching for your hand to inspect the injury himself. 
“I’m fine.” You played the card this time, exchanging his lie for your own. 
It was an odd play. He had lied about not being so torn up inside, emotionally devastated as he was, and now you were lying about not being physically injured from the fight. The two of you made an odd, but perfectly matched pair. 
Jason barreled right past your words, and you were easily pliant to his touch as he removed your hand from the injury. You certainly were not expecting for him to find anything incriminating under your hand. But he glared at you when he found bright red spread across your palm, a glossy wetness leaking through your shirt. 
“You’re bleeding.” He grunted at you. 
Clearly, he was disappointed in the fact that you had neglected to bring this injury to the group’s attention. Pissed off at the fact that you weren’t in the medbay with Conner receiving some treatment right now. 
Maybe you could blame it on the chaos. Maybe you could blame it on the fact that with everyone so emotionally distraught, you didn’t want to be just another problem for everyone to fuss over. 
“Whoops.” You breathed out sarcastically. “I didn’t even notice.” 
That last part was honest. In all the adrenaline, all your worrying over whether or not Jason was going to live as you watched him dangle so high off the ground - you truly hadn’t paid any mind to the injury. 
“You didn’t-?” Jason huffed out in anger, but didn’t bother finishing the sentence. 
Perhaps he partially understood himself, knowing how the adrenaline from a fight could stamp out pain. Or perhaps he knew how truly stubborn you were and he didn’t want to waste his energy arguing with you. 
“You need this treated.” He added on. 
No matter how fucked in the head he was, he never wanted to see you hurt. That was something he would definitely waste his energy on - wearing down your stubbornness until you let him or someone else in the house take care of the injury properly. 
“Conner is worse off than I am.” You shrugged. “He needs the attention more.” 
“Then let me help you.” He said, an impatient nagging rising up in his throat. “Bruce gave me some first aid training. One thing that means I’m not totally useless.” 
The words made your chest ache for him, a pain that easily competed with the bleeding wound. 
“Jason-” 
You wanted to argue with him. You wanted to tell him he had infinite worth to you. 
But of course, he cut you off. 
“Just go sit on the bed.” He told you, quiet, but a firm command that you couldn’t ignore. 
He gently pushed past you, on a quest for some supplies to patch you up with. You then found yourself drifting into his room almost mindlessly, your hand clutching the wound again upon instinct. It was a place that you felt oddly at home. The nights you had spent in that bed since coming to Titans Tower, your head delightfully empty as he had fucked you hard and fast - they were by far your favourites. 
You would say it was because of the sex, and not just because you got to be wrapped up in Jason’s arms. Maybe everything had changed. Maybe your answers were different now. Maybe you were raw and tender and Jason wasn’t prepared to chase you in that devotion. 
But that was just the thing. With you and Jason, there was never any sense of devotion. You and Jason were always hard and fast. Teasing each other, verging on the edge of vengeful. It was a flame that burned intensely hot - but it was never anything soft. It was never anything that prompted you to knock on his door so late, wanting to check on his well being. It was nothing that prompted you to make chase to put your life on the line for him. 
Even just knowing that he had the intent to attend to your injury, called himself useful because of it - the thought cradled you like a warm blanket. It had you balancing on the edge of a dam holding back a barrage of feelings that you had been quelling down since the moment you had first put your lips on his.
“I told you to sit.” Jason’s voice came from behind you. 
He had raided the infirmary and now had a handful of supplies - luckily without anyone seeing him or questioning why. When you turned to him, he was closing the bedroom door behind him, sealing you both in with this newfound soft intensity, the tired lull of two people unwilling to hold back that softness anymore. It was entirely dangerous, and entirely life-saving at the same time; and neither of you realized it. 
“Since when do you get to boss me around?” You told him, your voice low and lacking any true spirit or sarcasm. 
It was in the same vein as the banter the two of you usually threw around - bickering about who was a bigger asshole, who was more stubborn, who was better in bed. 
You expected some kind of sexual comment in return. You could almost hear it now - he was the boss of you because he made you melt on his cock, made you mindless and dumb with it. 
But, no dice. 
The longer you stared at him, catching bits of the fresh pain swimming through those gorgeous blue eyes, you wished so badly for the mischief and sarcasm and light to come back and bite you the way that it used to. 
It only made your stomach churn harder at the whole situation. Things had officially changed between you and Jason. You had yet to find out if it was for the better, or for the painstakingly worse. 
Jason sighed through his nose. 
“You can be such an asshole sometimes.” He told you. Coming from him, and given the nature of your relationship, you knew it was almost a compliment. “Will you just sit down and let me help you?” 
Even though you were utterly terrified of the swelling of emotions you felt, bound to come to a head - you did. 
You sat on the edge of the bed and he placed the supplies beside you. 
When he mumbled out a quiet ‘lay back’, and you did, his cool fingertips at the hem of your shirt pulling it upward felt strangely more intimate than any other time you had been in this same position. It wasn’t heady, you weren’t granted the distraction of his mouth on yours and his tongue shoved between your lips while a harsh throbbing nagged between your legs.
This was quiet, and calm, and gentle. 
When you caught his eye above you as he wiped away the blood with some clean gauze, you saw nothing but pity and worry and sparkling affection for you. You almost dared to call it something as epic and dangerous as love, buried deep in his eyes. He worked with the most delicate touch, almost as if he was afraid to break you, before he glanced down and inspected the wound. 
His brow furrowed with even more intense worry, guilt nipping at his insides when he got a good look at it. 
“I think I see a bullet in here.” He told you, and then he moved around the bed and grabbed his phone, turning on the flashlight to have a better light to inspect it. You felt intensely naked, intensely caught when he began shining the light on your stomach with a harshly inquisitive look across his face. “Definitely something shiny. You got shot and you didn’t fucking tell anyone?” 
It was only then that you realized when you had gotten the wound - the exact moment clicking into place in your mind. 
“It was only a ricochet.” You argued quietly. “It’s not that bad.” 
Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes, and began sorting out his supplies, preparing to pull out whatever was lodged inside of you. 
… 
Dick explicitly told you to stay put. 
They only wanted the more experienced Titans, the Varsity squad on the case when dealing with Deathstroke. He blamed young naive incompetence as the reason Jason had gotten captured in the first place. You blamed him and Bruce pushing Jason out, making him feel like he needed so desperately to prove himself. But it was something Dick wasn’t ready to hear - an argument you weren’t going to have with the very stubborn team leader. 
Instead, you went for the silent route. You trailed the rest of them out of Tower, and when Dick strayed away from the rest of the group, his head on a swivel as he glanced back and forth, seemingly wanting to assure that none of the others were following him - you followed your gut instincts and went after him. 
You hid in the shadows and the moment that Deathstroke hit the button and those panels scrolled up, revealing Jason stranded on that scaffolding - you couldn’t help yourself. 
“Jason!” 
You screamed out his name, you leapt forward. 
Dick didn’t have time to scold you, not before the gunfire started. 
Kory came out of nowhere - seemingly, she had the same idea as you. Putting her life on the line for an emotionally repressed man that she hadn’t admitted her feelings for. But she was there because she was in love with the other Robin. (Or rather, a man who claimed over and over again that he wasn’t Robin.) 
Things quickly became a blur - flashes of flame as Kory fought, battling with the muzzle flashes from Deathstroke’s guns, limbs flying as they fought each other. You didn’t see it, but Deathstroke raised and aimed at you as you rushed toward the window, blindly going after Jason. In response, Dick charged forward, redirecting the gun as he pulled the trigger. You heard the sharp ‘ping’ sound of metal on metal - what you couldn’t see was the bullet hitting one of the metal beams in the ceiling. But you certainly felt it when it sliced into your side. 
At the time, it was nothing compared to the fear you felt for Jason. 
His eyes were wide with terror, and you could only focus on getting him to safety. You had no idea that a large part of his panic came from seeing you in the building. He had hoped that Dick would keep you away from all of this. But there you were, standing a few feet away from a man with a gun who was shooting around wildly. Jason would have delighted in being dropped off the building to his death if he had to see you get fatally shot when he could do nothing but squirm on the other side of the glass. 
You put two hands on the glass, banging on it - of course, it was no use. It was inches thick, meant to keep people from going through it at this height. Working entirely on instinct, you put your palms flat across it and began forming ice crystals over it, hoping to make it rigid and breakable if it was frozen. 
Once there was enough ice, you quickly looked around and spotted a metal pipe there for the in-progress construction of the building, so you grabbed it and rushed to smash the glass with it. You felt victorious as it shattered, and Jason flinched away from the shards, putting you one step closer to freeing him. 
Though the moment the glass was cleared, leaving the wind whipping around you, his first words of greeting to you were not celebratory. 
“What the hell are you doing here?” He barked at you, clearly angry with you. 
You felt a dull ache in your chest at this. You thought he might be relieved, happy, pleased. At the time, you couldn’t interpret his harsh reaction as worry for you possibly getting hurt. 
Nonetheless, you ignored his harshness. You would save him, whether he wanted to be saved or not. You draped your body through the window, reaching out to him. You made an effort to keep most of your weight planted on the floor of the building, in case the scaffolding wasn’t stable enough to hold two people at once. 
“What do you think?” You replied, pure sarcasm dripping through your voice as you reached behind Jason and began fiddling with the rope around his wrists. 
The position put the two of you in intensely close proximity. Jason caught a whiff of your unique scent, the shower gel you used that mingled with your body’s natural oils; and he felt so painfully at home. For the first time that night, he held back tears. He couldn’t help but to lean his forehead on your shoulder, taking comfort in having you so near after being on edge and terrified for so many hours. You resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair, to cradle him and give him further comfort. You forced yourself to focus on the task at hand - getting him to safety. 
Behind you, at the very back of the room, Dick and Deathstroke wrestled with the remote for the explosives attached to the scaffolding. 
Just as you managed to get Jason’s wrists freed, Deathstroke hit the switch, and the bombs went off. 
… 
You winced loudly as Jason dabbed at the wound with disinfectant. 
“I would say sorry… but, you’ll thank me later when this isn’t swollen and leaking puss.” He told you, throwing you a small smirk. 
It was smug. It was the usual kind of humor that he gave you. 
It was comforting to know that every trace of the Jason you knew hadn’t been stolen by Deathstroke. 
You held your breath as he pressed down with the medicine-covered gauze again, drawing much less of a reaction out of you this time. 
“Great mental image, Jay.” You replied, your voice dull. It lacked any of the true bite you wanted to deliver in response to him. “I’m sure it’s such a turn-on thinking about my puss.” 
It was meant to be a joke. But even unconsciously, it was an acknowledgement of that dangerous line - the line between truly caring and just using someone for sex. The line between having someone in your life as a body to get off with, and being so… homely with them. 
You and Jason were towing that line dangerously. It was a thread that you were balancing on, and it would either break, or you would cross to the other side and be forever bonded to him. 
Jason shrugged. “Maybe I don’t have to be turned on by you all the time.” 
There was more stuck in his throat. Another dangerous acknowledgement of that line. 
‘Maybe I just have to care.’ 
Both of you lulled into silence because neither of you dared to say it. 
After a few moments, Jason put down the gauze and hesitated to reach for the tweezers. He knew that pulling the bullet out would be painful, but inevitable. It was a lot like the state of your relationship with him. Break it off, and find happiness elsewhere, or acknowledge this big thing swelling to fruition between the two of you. Have Jason fuck it up eventually. Painful, but inevitable. 
“You shouldn’t have to be hurt like this.” Jason said quietly. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt for my sake.” 
There it was again - words with a dangerous double meaning. 
You looked up at him, pure pain knit across his face, and for a moment he looked from the tweezers to you and he could hardly stand holding your gaze. 
‘It’s worth it.’ You wanted to say. ‘For you, I’d bear any pain.’ 
The words lived and died behind your eyes, and your tongue decided on something else entirely. 
“It’s nothing.” You told him. 
You downplayed the pain, pretending that the injury was only a minor inconvenience for you. And in the grand scheme of life, it was. With time, it would heal. Losing Jason would be something you’d never heal from. 
Jason shook his head at this statement. 
He forced himself to reach for the tweezers then. He handed you his phone, a silent agreement that you would hold the light as steady as you could. He knew you well, too well, and he knew that you needed something else to focus on to push away the pain. He put his free hand on the plush of your stomach, pulling back slightly to hold the wound open while you held the light on it. 
When the sharp metal of the tweezers breached your wound, you wanted to swear. You wanted to call him an asshole as the pain shot through you. You wanted to scold him for leaving the Tower and being kidnapped in the first place. But you knew that even if it was playful or sarcastic, fueled by the bite of your pain, it was not what he needed to hear right now. So instead, you held your breath, and gripped his phone hard, keeping the light steady as you bared the sharp shocks of pain. 
After a moment of digging around that felt like an eternity, he pulled out the fragment and held it up to show you as you collapsed back against the bed, panting with tears stinging the edges of your eyes. 
“It’s not nothing.” He declared sharply. 
You couldn’t conjure a response. You knew he was right. And you didn’t want to be forced to admit it. 
Instead, you turned off the light from his phone and relaxed into the bed, closing your eyes as he walked around to the trashcan and threw out the bullet fragment. It fell into the bottom of the plastic wastebasket with a very small ‘ping’ - making you wonder how something so small could cause so much trouble. 
Jason quickly returned to you, dabbing more disinfectant into the wound in a way that made you groan and flex away from the touch. Once again, he did not apologize. 
There were a few moments of muddy silence with nothing but your slightly labored breathing, trying to contain your sounds of pain so as to not make him feel any further guilt about the whole incident. 
Your mind churned, and you couldn’t help the next words that came from your mouth. 
“I meant what I said.” You told him. 
At the sound of this, his hands immediately stilled. You felt his eyes on you, and you forced yourself to open your own and look up at him once again. He stared you down with intense examination. He looked for any ounce of falsity, any sign that you were lying, even posturing to make him feel better after everything that had happened. 
He didn’t find any. 
You thought he might acknowledge you, that he might say something back to return your mighty words. Instead, he simply reached for more gauze, and began putting a final bandage on your wound. 
… 
The explosion caused a sharp rattle through your ears. It shocked you and made you dizzy and put the whole world off-kilter. The only thing you could perceive past the mind-numbing hum in your brain was the feeling of Jason’s rough glove gripping tightly onto your wrist, so you gripped back as hard as you could. 
When you blinked open your eyes, you were half-hanging out of the open window, the edge of the floor cutting into your waist as you held onto Jason by nothing but his wrist. His whole body weight created a harsh burn, straining on the muscles in your shoulder as you watched him dangle hundreds of feet above the street. 
Panic flooded you. 
You scrambled to reach out with your other hand, and the moment you moved, your shirt slipped against the sleek, polished material of the floor and you began sliding out the window. You gasped and Jason stilled his panicked flailing immediately. 
“Don’t move!” He shouted. 
“Give me your other hand so I can pull you up!” You shouted back. 
Beyond the unpleasant hum of your eardrums rattling, you still heard chaos behind you. Gunshots, the grunts of fighting, Kory and Dick’s voices yelling. They were busy with Deathstroke, they couldn’t help you or Jason. 
Jason looked up at you with glassy eyes. 
He knew that with all his gear weighing him down, even with the training you had been doing, you wouldn’t be able to pull him up. Not by yourself. And if you weren’t careful, his body weight would just pull you out of the window and cause you to go tumbling down to your death along with him. 
When you saw that frown etch across his lips, that filthy look of dawning - you glared at him. 
“Give me your other hand!” You screamed, your voice raking across your throat like hot coals. A hot boiling rage at the fact that he seemed almost determined to die. 
There was one thing he was determined about. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to take you down with him. 
His gloved wrist started to slip from your nervous, sweaty palm, and you tried hard to hold on tight. You formed large shards of ice, hoping you could create some kind of bond there by freezing your hand to his. But it would only be temporary with gravity trying to tear the two of you apart. 
“You have to drop me, Y/N.” He said, nothing but pure mourning on his lips. “I’m dead weight.” 
You both knew it was a horrendous double meaning. 
He thought he was a dead weight to your life. 
“No!” You immediately defied this thought, that feral rage ripping at your throat once again. “I’m gonna pull you up. I’m gonna pull you up!” 
You reached your other hand down and tightly wrapped both of your hands around his wrist, yanking upward. The harsh movement caused you to slide even further out the window. You were now dangling dangerously over San Francisco with only the thickness of your thighs giving you any real stability on the intensely high up floor. It made you dizzy, and the only thing you had to focus on were the wet wells of Jason’s eyes staring up at you. 
“It’s no use!” Jason said tearfully. 
You ignored him. 
You cast your chin over your shoulder, and began shouting. 
“Help me!” You screamed, trying desperately to get the attention of Dick or Kory. “Help me! Fuck!” 
“You have to let go.”
Jason’s words immediately shifted your focus back to him. 
But of course, you refused. 
“I’m not letting go of you!” You declared sharply. “Not that easily.” 
As he stared up at your tearful eyes, he knew that you meant it as more. 
Unfortunately, it was the one thing he was terrified of. 
He thought that you saw him as some shiny perfect thing, something good and worth having in your life. He thought that you were incapable of seeing the poison, the true fuck-up that he was. If you didn’t let go of him, sooner or later, just like everyone else in his life, you were going to get burned. 
So Jason did what he had to do. 
He began prying your fingers off his wrist, trying his best to keep you stable while he forced himself from your grip. 
“No!” You shrieked. “No, no, no-” 
You didn’t have much room to fight him about it without falling out of the window yourself. 
You made a move to readjust, to get a tighter grip on him - and it was the one deadly move that caused him to slip out of your touch completely. 
You were forced to watch on in chest clenching horror, blinking through heavy tears as he began hurtling toward the ground. 
… 
If not for Conner - a literal miracle - swooping in and saving Jason at the last second, then you would have spent the rest of your life regretting those moments, wondering what you could have done differently to save him. 
When Jason finished taping down the bandages, making sure the wound was clean and secure, he laid his palm flat on top of it. It was a kind of ‘kissing it better’ that instantly spread warmth curling through your gut. It was a touch so incredibly tender - especially compared to the heated, aggressive groping you were used to from him - that it caused a whimper from the back of your throat. 
You knew it was unlikely, but you hoped that he hadn’t heard it. 
“All done.” He said quietly. 
You instantly felt regret when he took his hand away and began tidying up the medical supplies. But you forced yourself to sit upright, now feeling only muscle soreness and a much duller pain coming from the area. You felt intensely thankful for his care as you pulled your shirt back down, righting your clothes back into place. 
“You’re free to go now.” Jason told you, his voice still low, as though a single decibel would shatter the delicate peace between the two of you. 
You felt your heart sink. 
In an instant, you understood what it was - he was concerned about your physical wellbeing, but he didn’t actually want to have you around. Just like his reaction to you showing up at the hostage exchange - he didn’t want your presence there. 
You heaved a sigh and got off the bed as Jason busied himself with gathering up the used gauze to throw it away. As you put your hand on the doorknob, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to leave. 
It was something else. 
It had to be something else. 
Jason hadn’t let himself drop off a building in some desperate ploy just to get away from you. He had been trying to save you. 
He was so utterly willing to give his life for yours. 
And now he was trying to back down from that. 
You turned and faced him, leaving the door closed. When he turned from ditching things in the wastebasket, he froze. He was entirely surprised that you were still there.
The two of you locked eyes, both staying still - like a predator and prey locked in a stalemate, wondering who would run first. 
In this situation, you weren’t sure who was the prey. 
You were both so vulnerable. 
Jason thought it would be selfish to get caught up in all of this, to finally admit those dangerous feelings he had for you. When he cared for things, he usually ended up breaking them. Of course, it was never on purpose - he was an idiot. Everything he touched, he fucked up. He had made that more than evident with his last braindead plan, the outing to prove that he was worthy of being Robin. Something that had gotten you shot, probably could have gotten you killed. 
If you stuck with him any longer, you probably would end up being killed. And he would never forgive himself for that. 
He would be better off ripping himself from your hold, as much as it hurt. Giving you a dose of that heartbreak now so that you could get over him and go after better things. 
As you stared at Jason, you could see all the pain boiling underneath his surface. You wondered what he was thinking, what the hell he was churning over in that intense brain of his - but you didn’t dare to ask. 
You knew that he needed to be held right now - in every sense of the word. You knew that he needed to be cared for the way he had cared for your wound, pushing past the pain in order to heal. You wondered if he would lay down and bear it or if he would continue to fight you. 
You were the one to bravely step forward. Though Jason was tempted to ask you to leave, that thing inside of him yearning to marinate in his isolation because he deserved it, he pushed it down. He let his hands naturally come to sit on the plush comfort of your waist as you put a gentle touch on both his shoulders, leaning into his body ever so slightly. 
You laid your forehead on his cheek, right next to that ugly bruise that had been left on him, and he let out a contented sigh as he felt your warmth envelope him. For the first time since his feet had touched the ground, he felt calm. He felt safe. 
You smoothed a hand across his shoulder, and raised your head, using your touch to gently tip his face toward yours. He quickly realized that your intention was to kiss him. And something ached in his heart - something painful and longing. He knew that it would not be needy and haste with the intention of pile-driving toward sex like your other kisses had been. He knew that it would be the metamorphosis of your relationship that he was not prepared to go through. 
He nuzzled along your forehead, gently stopping you. 
“Please don’t do this.” He murmured quietly into your skin. 
He knew that it would break him. 
He knew that this was the moment - like Gatsby reaching up toward the stars - this would be the moment that he was tied to you forever, damned by his love for you. Only, much different than Gatsby, he wasn’t destined for some grant fate if he didn’t have you. He was on a one way path to a messy death, and he was determined not to take you down with him. 
Tears pricked the edges of his eyes at the thought. 
You pulled back, just enough to properly look him in the eyes, and your own tears formed when you saw that pathetic puppy dog looking back at you. 
“Why not?” You demanded, much sharper than you intended. You knew he was fragile and you didn’t want to upset him any further than he already was. 
“You know why.” He replied, his voice barely scraping above a whisper as the emotion clutched at his throat. 
Jason wanted to hold onto you forever, but he was also a realistic person. He expected that any minute now, you would rip away from his arms and charge out the door, entirely angry with him, and this would finally be over. You would finally be safe from him - safe from any nasty fate his life could conjure up for you. 
You hated what he was asking of you - asking you not to care for him anymore. As if you could somehow switch it off. Impossible. 
“I meant what I said.” You repeated yourself, still entirely firm in this conviction. “I’m not gonna let you go that easily.” 
You leaned in, planting your lips on his in a light kiss. A pained sigh ripped through you when he didn’t make any moves to kiss you back. 
“Jason, please.” You whimpered out desperately. “If you get to bandage my bullet wound, then I get to do this.” 
Jason wanted to spell it all out for you, plain and dirty. He wanted to get angry, he wanted to scream. He wanted to rush along the inevitable. He wanted to tell you what a poison he was to the world, that he deserved to die and you deserved better things. But he had the utmost feeling that you wouldn’t listen. 
“Please, stop pushing me away.” You whispered against his lips. 
Instead, he listened to your plea. He let himself indulge in this selfish softness for once. 
He reached up and grabbed your jaw, pulling you into a firmer kiss, declaring every ounce of passion and terror that he was feeling in those moments. You answered it all right back - digging your fingers into the shoulders of his shirt, letting out a hot huff against his cheek as you leaned into his body. 
He would never be perfect - but he was yours.
...
PLEASE NOTE: I do have a sequel in mind for this, but I don't know when I am going to have it finished and posted. Please do not ask me to write more of this or ask me when the sequel will be coming. If you are going to comment, please comment about the body of work here that I have already written.
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gayofthefae · 2 months
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I don't care about anything else. No matter what happens, we were miraculously right and episode 100, "Buck, Bothered and Bewildered" was about Buck being 'bothered and bewildered' by his jealousy over Eddie.
And that is a WIN.
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formulapai · 5 months
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LIVING WITH ENDO (AND OSCAR)
an Oscar Piastri fluff/angst scenario
Tumblr media Tumblr media
scenario: what it’s like living with endometriosis, with your boyfriend’s support. (might do a second part.)
warning: mention of surgeries, blood, vomit, eating disorders, depression, bruises.
pai’s words: THIS IS BASED ON MY EXPERIENCE!! as much as endo is the same for anyone suffering with it, the impact it has on the body and mind, the pain, the treatments, and a lot of it is purely personal !! as someone who has been living with it for more than ten years and has tried everything the French Healthcare has to offer, even going into alternative medicine and such, this is my experience that I’m writing and it can be a little different than some people.
to anyone having questions about it, having doubts or just curious, my dms and requests are always open, I’ll be honored to make this illness a little more known. :)
to anyone fighting against it everyday, I’m so sorry. you’re not alone, i 100% stand with you as a fellow endowarrior (this term is always making me wheeze but I love it!!). we’ll get through this eventually !
THE NIGHT
You’re laying awake on your shared bed, not even able to move an inch because of the sharp flash of pain coming and going, not letting you take a real breathe as the movement of your diaphragm creates waves after waves of pain. Despite your pain medication, it’s a common occurrence and you’ve yet to find a solution to it, just waiting for it to pass, tear-stained face staring at the ceiling in a silent prayer that you’ll be soon free of it all.
You feel Oscar move next to you, his calm breathing picking up as he slowly wakes up, first grumbling about the early hours but then noticing your state. He doesn’t know what you need, doesn’t dare to place his hand in your lower belly to try and massage the pain away. It’s an “all or nothing” situation as his body warmth and his soft touch can either calm you and your body down or create another episode of agony, and not even you can predict it. He knows you’re aware he’s up, your face completely still as to not stress your body even more, and he press closer to you, close enough to comfort you as much as he can, far away enough to not touch you.
He can see your diaphragm broaden its movement slowly, your breathing finally beginning to get deeper as you feel the episode fade away lazily, not at all in a hurry to leave you alone. Even from under your sleep shirt, he sees your muscles flexing and relaxing as waves of pain appear, your body reacting naturally despite your tries to stop it, the flexing of your abdominal muscles making it worse. It’s a normal response, really, just like your arm will flinch automatically when you hurt it, a mean to get away from whatever hurt you. But when the only thing hurting you is your own body, it doesn’t work.
It takes a few more minutes until you take your boyfriend’s hand, guiding it to your lower belly and letting it stay here, feeling it starting to massage your body as soon as it touches it. It’s not miraculous, the pain still present, but it helps both mentally and physically as your shoulders relax ever so slightly. You always complain about him being way too warm on a regular basis, but how happy you are for his warmth right now. With your lover pressed to you, his soft praises in your ears and your body finally letting you rest, you fall into a deep slumber, thanking whoever has put Oscar in your life.
THE DAY
It started great, you woke up early and in pretty much no pain, motivated enough to make breakfast as the Australian sleeps soundly in the bed. You should’ve seen it coming when waves of nausea were starting to make themselves known the more you cooked, preparing your favorite French food, some Pain Perdu. It’s really not in Oscar’s food plan and his trainer will hate you for it, but you certainly don’t care.
It doesn’t come as a surprise when you finally throw up, your whole body spasming as it tries to get whatever was the problem out of it. It’s mostly bile as you haven’t had the chance to eat yet, the liquid burning your throat as it comes up, sweat marring your forehead at the sheer effort of standing despite your muscles begging for a rest. It hasn’t happened in a few days and you were enjoying it, able to eat and drink whatever you wanted without being overly stressed about how your body would react. Guess the fun is now over.
The doctor told you that it’s quite normal to have GI issues when you have endometriosis, even when it’s not commonly talked about. But, like every other symptoms, no real remedy exists apart from antiemetic medicine but you’ve found out quite early that it doesn’t really make it better so you’ve decided to not take it anymore, opting to just wait and deal with it. Oscar didn’t know about all this when you two started talking, barely knowing endometriosis and just thinking it was bad period pain. It always comes as a shock when he sees how much deeper it runs, how hard it makes your daily life.
This nausea thing made you develop an eating disorder, or so your therapist is saying. As you’re scared of vomiting, you try to escape food as much as possible, waiting for your body to feel better so you can eat in large quantities to make up for the lack of food. Your boyfriend knows it, your friends too, truly everyone sees how you avoid food like it’s the plague, but no one can say anything against it, knowing the reason behind it and having no solution. It’s hard, it’s painful, for both you and them, as you’d rather not do this to yourself, but it’s the only way you can live a somewhat normal life regarding this issue.
As you feel better, mere minutes later, you wash yourself before continuing breakfast, knowing well it’s now only for Oscar and not for you. You settle for hot hibiscus tea, crossing out coffee for today as it fuels the inflammation caused by your illness, something you really don’t need at the moment. Your collection of tea is impressive, your close ones all searching which tea is good and which tea is bad for you, gifting it every occasion they get, hibiscus and Nettle being your favorite ones as you feel their effects on your body.
THE STAINS
Ever since your surgeries and thanks to your special birth control, you’re not supposed to have periods anymore. Sadly, it still happens like your doctors told you it could, just not as regularly and serious as before. Your hemorrhagic periods, lasting without ever being stopped as your cycle was pretty much nonexistent, is replaced by a blood flow still heavy but not as much, making itself known only a few days a month. It still comes with all the complications of it, the searing pain making you pass out, the muscle aches, the nausea and diarrhea. You can’t complain, you’ve lived way worse.
Of course, it decided to happen today out of all day, as you’re standing in the McLaren garage, watching your boyfriend overtake another one of his colleague and securing P3. It’s probably the stress of it all, strong emotions tend to trigger episodes and you curse them as you feel the change in both your body and mind, your periods always hitting you bad mentally. You quickly excuse yourself to Oscar’s driver’s room, abandoning the race watching right in the middle of it, knowing that he’ll understand but still feeling bummed out. Apart from the obvious toll on your body, the grasp it has on your mental state is insane, leaving you battling with depression, something you’ve learned is one of the most common outcome with endo.
You take your time changing clothes, cleaning yourself in the toilets and putting a pad you’ve thankfully put in you bag before going, knowing you’ll have to change it in less than an hour with how heavy your flow can be. You slowly make your way to the massage table, laying on it as you pray it’s only going to be blood and not everything usually accompanying it, especially not the pain. It’s a vicious circle, you know it well, as you’re scared of the pain so you become tense, so tense that it creates pain, the condition feeding off of your stress and the movement of your muscles, most importantly your abdominal ones. So you try to distract yourself, you go on social medias, you read online, you watch videos. You busy yourself until you realize you really need to change your pad, scurrying towards Oscar’s bag and hoping he has some as he usually does when you two go out, always so thoughtful.
People are cheering outside, the race probably ending in a positive way and your heart swell at the sheer joy emanating from the garage. Still, you don’t seem to find anything in the bag, your hands shaking as small sniffles echo in the room, feeling absolutely stupid for not predicting your period. You can’t even hear the door opening behind you, feet stilling for a few seconds before they make their way to you, arms wrapped around your shoulders.
“- Hey, what’s wrong darling?
- I’m dumb, that’s what’s wrong.
- What happened ?
- I’m having my period and I didn’t even bring anything and now I’m going to bleed out everywhere and ruin my clothes.”
Oscar presses a kiss to your head and gets up, walking towards a drawer and taking out some pads, bringing them to you. You stare at him, as you accept them, still sniffling as you let yourself fall into his arms, thanking him quietly. You don’t know where you’ll be without him, probably bleeding out everywhere like you just said.
“- You’re not dumb, it happens to forget things. And you have me, right ? You know I always bring way too much of these with us.
- I know, thank you. Really, thank you Oscar.
- It’s alright, dearest. Go get changed, I have to get back there but I’ll be quick, I promise. We’ll go back to the hotel after that.”
You nod, pressing sweet kisses to his neck where you face is buried before letting him go, thanking him once again.
THE SURGERY
After yet another scan, you’re finally allowed the surgery, a long and draining battle you’ve won. Endometriosis is still not taken seriously by most of the doctors you’ve met, mostly overlooked as pain every person with an uterus has to live with and nothing more, so it’s a relief when you meet a specialist willing to help you. It’s a simple surgery, called laparoscopy, leaving only a few incision scares on your abdomen and promising an almost pain-free life, or well, years. It’s rare that only one surgery is enough to annihilate the problem in its all, it happens, thankfully, but it’s still quite uncommon or so the surgeon said. It’s pretty logical, as the tissues will appear again eventually, growing back where they’re not supposed to, creating new inflammation nests.
It’s stressful, as every surgery is, but you like to think of it as a good stress, completely opposite to the fear Oscar is feeling as the hours tick by, getting you closer to the surgery. Theoretically, he knows it’s a safe surgery, a small one, one the surgeon has done many times. Still, the love of his life is going to be put under anesthesia and under a scalpel and he can’t help but feel terrified by it. It’s not going to be lengthy, less than two hours, which is not that long for this kind of surgery, but he already knows he’s going to bite his fingernails off while waiting.
He’s updating your close friends and family members as the door opens, your bed being rolled inside the room as you slowly wake up, still loopy and giggly because of the anesthesia. The two nurses tell him that the surgeon will come later to check and talk with them, assuring Oscar that the surgery went very well before leaving the couple alone. You’re still quietly giggling to yourself, lifting your arms in front of your face and making random shapes with your hands, almost snatching the IV a few times so he interrupts you, sitting next to you and making sure your hands stay away from the crook of your elbow. You look at him with a wide, toothy smile and start to play with his hair, tugging at it as you try to give him some horns, the hair not sticking up no matter how much you try.
You spend the next hour drifting in and out of sleep, the anesthesia wearing off and pain slowly creeping in. The doctor makes his way in the room, giving you the ok to go home as long as you’re not alone, prescribing pain medication and planning a meeting with him a month from now. The two of you listen to his advices, Oscar noting everything he needs to buy such as ice packs, and you’re soon discharged, your boyfriend leading your wheelchair towards his car. He takes it back to the nurse when you’re settled in your car seat, thanking her for lending it even when it’s the official protocol. What can he say, he’s too polite.
The healing process is tiring but worth it, your belly adorned with scars and bruises slowly fading away, swollen and tender. You’re thankful for the break as Oscar is able to stay with you through it all, his family and yours visiting you and allowing you to have a pleasant distraction. Your close friends come too, deciding that a gossip session in the middle of the living room as you eat pasta is the only remedy you need, to Oscar’s despair. He likes them, he truly does, he doesn’t like to be chased from his own living room though. He snickers as he leaves the couch, leaving you with a lingering kiss before he goes in another room, logging in his computer. In the end, the healing process is fine, you were glad for anyone helping you through it, you were even more thankful for your boyfriend. And if you have to get a second, a third, even a fourth surgery, you’ll be ok as long as you have him.
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inuyashaluver · 6 months
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Could you write something for maya le tissier ?
sick days - maya le tissier
maya le tissier x reader
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description: in which you and your girlfriend both get each other sick, meaning you need to take care of your girl
warnings: swearing
a/n: i’m such a maya girl like i would do anything for her, I LOVE WRITING FOR HER AND THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST OMG ENJOY
⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆
if there was one thing to know about your girlfriend, maya, she never got sick. it’s not even her being stubborn or anything, she just never got sick. you, however, always got sick, small colds being common in yours and maya’s household.
whenever you were sick, maya always took care of you. this girl devotes all her time to you just to make sure you’re okay. “baby, eat this, please” a bowl of soup was passed to you, you look up at the girl appreciatively, “thank you, maya baby”, she smiles down at you with a sympathetic grin, moving her hand to cradle your face. “my poor girl” you sniff at her, a glare evident on your face, “why can’t you ever be the sick one?”
she lets out a small laugh, stroking your cheek with her thumb, “sorry, my love, i don’t get sick” she grins, sitting next to you and absentmindedly stroking your thigh as you watch an episode of love island together.
“if you were a bombshell, i’d dump anyone for you” you gasp at her words, nearly choking on your soup. “even if you had a partner?” she nods, eyes still trained on the screen, “well, have you seen yourself?” she exhales, “god” she turns her head to look at you, you were bright red and just staring at her with wide eyes.
“you’re cute” she pinches your cheek, grabbing your finished soup and taking it to the kitchen, returning with a cup of water and your medicine, she holds it out to you as she sits back down. “maya, no” you plead, “maya, yes” she coos, smiling brightly when you swallow the pills and drink the water with a scowl.
“i’m sorry, baby, if i could be sick instead of you, i would 100%, now let me kiss you better” she placed a sweet kiss on your lips, smirking at you. if only she knew how hard she jinxed herself.
you miraculously woke up better the next day, lying on top of maya in bed, completely cuddling into her. her phone lightly played a video in the background, you knew she was awake. you move to straddle her waist, looking down at her with a bright smile, “nurse maya! i can breathe again!” you inhale through your nose, she grins at your actions.
“that’s great, baby” she remarked in a nasally voice, she sounded congested. “you alright, lovey?” she sits up slightly, leaning against the headboard, holding onto your thighs so you don’t move.
“i’m fine, love” her nose was a little red, it was a cold day in england but she was absolutely sweating. “i don’t think you’re fine, baby” you hold a hand up to her forehead, a slight fever. “oh my god” she looks at you confused.
“what?” she sniffs. “baby, you’re sick!” her eyes widen, “what! no, silly, it’s probably allergies” she scoffs, “my love, you don’t have allergies,” she lets out an exaggerated groan, “ugh, why do you remember everything!” you look at her with fake annoyance, “because i love you?” an amused smile graces her features.
she leans forward to whisper in your ear, “i love you too” and before she pulls away, she gives you an affectionate kiss to your cheek. you smile at her shyly, grabbing her hand and fiddling with the ring she rarely took off.
“now i get to play nurse?” you smirk at her, she shakes her head and leans back, her head resting on the headboard.
“this is all your fault, i never get sick, but your cute, little face did this to me!” she waves her finger around her face, raising her eyebrows at you.
“excuse me! who ‘kissed me better?’ that was all you, le tissier!” she goes speechless for a second, mouth slightly agape,
“if you last name me again, i will break up with you” you gasp at her words, “so, i am just a bombshell to you” you cover your face with your hands, she lets out her famous giggle, the one that makes your heart ache.
“you’re my girl” she coos, moving your hands and interlocking your fingers with hers, she moves forward to kiss your lips repeatedly. you can’t help but giggle at her, spurring a smile into her kisses.
she pulls away from you, her eyes gently tracing your features, she sighs and pulls you closer into an embrace, she nuzzles her head into the crook of your neck. “i’m sick, nurse” she mumbles, your skin vibrates when she speaks into it. you place a hand in her hair, gently scratching her scalp with your nails, she melts into you and the both of you stay like that for a while, just cuddling as you comfort maya.
you coerce your girlfriend to move to the couch, only with the promise that you’d cuddle and wouldn’t leave her. she lies completely on top of you, hands under your shirt, now she’s cold. both of you are bundled in a blanket, watching a mindless movie, the two of you would watch the movie for two seconds and then whisper to each other in random conversation, maya never letting go of you.
she needed to take her medicine and try and stomach something, you attempt to move up but she gives you a death glare. “what do you think you’re doing?” she was genuinely mad, your eyes widen in shock, “baby, you need to eat something” she lets out a laugh, “no i don’t” your face turns stern, “yes, you do, give me 25 minutes?” she shakes her head immediately, “no” she whines, putting her head in your neck again, pushing you into the couch with her body.
“maya, please” you pat her back to make her look at you, you give her a pout, your eyes glistening. “i’m setting a timer” she gently moves off you, she lets out a huff as she sits up, looking at you sadly. “my poor girl” you coo, cupping her face between both of your hands and placing a sweet kiss on her lips, pulling away to look at her, scowl still evident, you pepper kisses all over her face, provoking a little giggle from her, you smile, “there she is” placing one final kiss on her lips, “can that time count as your 25?” she questions, “what? no!” you quickly run to the kitchen.
you make her soup, rushing to place it on the coffee table before sprinting back out, making her a tea, getting her water and medicine and placing it all on the table. you rush and sit on the couch, looking at her expectantly to start eating. “you still have 2 minutes” she smirks, you shrug at her and pull her down into a hug, kissing her face all over again, giggles from both of you completely filling the room. “baby!” she laughs, holding onto you tightly.
you continue to spread kisses all over her face until her timer goes off. “time!” you grin, pushing her up, shoving the soup into her hands. she shakes her head at you, completely amused. “if you showed this enthusiasm during training, my goodness” she jokes but not without a little sniffle, you lightly slap her arm, shoving the spoon into her hand and smiling at her encouragingly. she begins to eat, you let out a sigh of relief, gently rubbing her back in comforting circles with your hand.
she eats her soup and takes her medicine, already feeling better. she places it on the coffee table and makes you lie down again, setting over the top of you with a bright grin. “kiss me better, nurse (y/n)?” you grin at her, “baby, i’ve been kissing you better” she frowns, “i don’t feel any better, though?” you look up her, “wait, actually?” you put your hand on her forehead again, she still had a fever, it had gone down quite a bit, thankfully. she nods at you with a pout, she’s clearly pulling your leg.
“oh, my poor baby” you coo, “mmhm” she whines jokingly, you grin at her brightly, pulling her into a sweet kiss, she hums into you, lasting for a couple of seconds before you pull away, “woah” she breathes against your lips, “what?” you whisper, “i feel so much better” she marvels, giving your hips a light squeeze, “do it again” you laugh at her brightly, she can’t help but join you.
she places a hand on your cheek, pulling you into another loving kiss, after a few seconds, she pulls away with an exaggerated ‘mwah’, she gives you a quick peck on your cheek before snuggling into your chest, quickly falling asleep.
you both wake up the next morning, she gives you multiple kisses on your cheek, you smile and wake up, opening your eyes to your girlfriend hovering over you with a cheeky grin. “hi, you, do you feel alright?” you reach out for her, your arms gesturing for her to give you a hug but she just pulls you to sit up instead.
“baby, no fucking joke, i’m better”, she was so serious, looking at you with a surprised expression, “kisses fucking work, this isn’t even us being cringe” she gives you a light shake, placing a quick kiss on your lips, “oh yeah, good morning, my love” she sings out, you’re still laced with sleep, staring at her slightly confused but just deciding to go with it.
maya swears that you kissed each other back to health, definitely not the strong medicine the both of you had taken. everytime you got sick, maya secretly hopes she does to, wanting your home remidies more than anything.
⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆
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liked by alessiarusso99 and 44,232 others
mayaletissier: sick days are the best days
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yourname: how about you tell everyone the truth of why you love sick days?
↳ mayaletissier: don’t act like you don’t enjoy it!
↳ yourname: no, i do!
↳ mayaletissier: i do too!
↳ ellatoone: i now pronounce you, wife and wife, you may kiss the bride
↳ yourname: oh ella! if only you knew
↳ mayaletissier: you heard the woman, pucker up!
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ilikekidsshows · 5 months
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I'm not sure if people still remember but I have always been in the camp that Chloé was a jerk who got what she deserved in the season three finale of Miraculous, a failed hero. When season four first started airing, I also believed that her character regressing in season four could be a reasonable reaction to what she went through in said finale, because she did not have a good time and her lashing out in hurt made sense.
Then season five had the characters talk at length about how Chloé's trauma doesn't excuse her behavior (with Mylène parroting stuff Astruc has said to Chloé fans on twitter if the true source and targets of this part of the episode aren't obvious), in the same season where Chloé traumatizing Marinette is used to excuse Marinette's less likeable behavior. Chloé is made responsible for Marinette's character flaws while also being 100% responsible for her own character flaws when both of their character flaws are stated in-show to be caused by trauma caused by another person. The double standard is obvious.
If I'm going to look at 'Rocketear' and call it out on its character assassination of Nino, I need to look at what the writers did to Chloé and call it out on being the exact same thing. It's not often you see a villain character get character assassinated, but it sure happened here. Chloé might have been a jerk, but she was never whatever seasons 4/5 turned her into.
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ralfmaximus · 7 months
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Heroes & main characters get hurt a lot in SF/action shows.
Bonked on the head to make them unconscious, hit with phasers set on stun, knocked out during a terrible vehicle crash at the end of a chase scene.
And next episode? They're fine. No TBI. No lasting effects. No trouble remembering things, no personality shifts, no anxiety about getting hurt again, phasered again. I mean a Star Trek phaser is like getting tasered, right? Same idea.
The Stargate series, like Trek, routinely transmogrifies its characters into monsters, uploads them into computers, swaps bodies, ages them into geriatrics or children, duplicates them, converts them into energy and back again thousands of times. With no lasting effect. Without extended recovery or rehabilitation.
Hell, they rarely even talk about it. Me, I still talk about the time I fell at a theme park and hurt my leg so badly I thought it might be broken. I limped for weeks, avoided stairs, watched my leg turn various shades of purple & green. And that was not nearly as interesting as having my DNA rewritten by The Ancients.
You know who gets it right though?
The Expanse.
Early in the series Holden & Miller receive a lethal dose of radiation, equivalent to watching a nuclear detonation way too closely. And very realistically, they soon start exhibiting the signs of severe radiation sickness: malaise, vomiting, whole body pain.
But because it is hundreds of years in the future, medical technology has advanced to the point that they are saved. Their radiation sickness is cured!
If this was Star Trek or Stargate, nobody would show any ill effects afterwards. Next episode they'd be 100% normal, and any future callbacks would be a throwaway line and possibly a joke.
Not in The Expanse. Here, our characters are shown to suffer the aftereffects of their ordeal. They have permanent subcutaneous ports installed in their arms so they can continue to receive medicine for the rest of their lives. Because as miraculous as 23rd century medicine may be, they cannot cure radiation damage. They can only treat it.
And if our characters fail to get their treatments? They suffer for it. They'll eventually die from it. And the show revisits that theme and never lets us forget it, because those ports are visible whenever our characters are seen without sleeves.
I was just thinking about this after watching the episode of Stargate Atlantis where Sheppard literally gets turned into a man-sized insect then at the end of the show he's shown completely healed. Ha ha, I was a bug. How wacky is that?
If that happened to me I'd never stop screaming.
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I think the worst part about Miraculous' decline in quality is that I can't even enjoy it.
I want to love the bad writing so badly, but I can't do that when the bad writing in question is:
Marinette literally stalks Adrien and this is seen as a strange, albeit romantic quirk of hers.
The show's lore takes much "inspiration" from Chinese mythology and philosophy, but nobody on the writing team seems to have any knowledge or respect for Chinese people.
A cop is blatantly racist toward Marinette's mother and Marinette ends up apologizing to HIM. Thomas 100% backs this creative decision. (Not even acknowledging the fact that one of his main arguments against Chloe stans that he loves to use is that she made an ignorant remark about Chinese food.(Also that same episode, they based Marinette's uncle's akuma design off Dragon Ball Z despite him being Chinese rather than Japanese.))
[EXTREMELY MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 IMMEDIATELY UNDER THE CUT.]
After Gabriel's death, Marinette never tells Adrien that his father was Hawkmoth, and instead leaves him to believe that he was a good father. Adrien literally never gets justice or closure for all the abuse and neglect.
And more!!! :)
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magicalrocketships · 6 months
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☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?
Oh, I'm sure I've talked about this before but L U C K I L Y I retain zero information, particularly when I'm tired, so this means I get to explain it again.
SO, the plot which I won't ever write because it gets pretty dark and it also requires me to make up an injury (I got the idea from the first series of Chicago Fire, where the dude whose name I've forgotten (no, really, I retain no information anymore) has a life-changing made-up ?neck? injury where he requires surgery and it will take one year+ to recover from the surgery so he self-medicates and then it's miraculously fixed by a dazzling new surgery in one episode after making it an entire plot for an entire season):
Canon divergence somewhere along the way, maybe the pandemic doesn't happen, maybe he never really got as publicly involved in streaming, whatever, but what's key is that Max doesn't have anything really going on outside of racing and it's this year
So Daniel's left RB/Mcl, and Max is focused focused focused on racing and maybe he gets his first world championship a year earlier but whatever happens, he doesn't build that strong sense of home outside of racing (no cats, no partner, no online streaming, just what's becoming an unhealthy focus on racing and winning at all costs)
Then there's an accident. It happens off-track, so it's not a racing incident, and it's not Max's fault. His car gets hit. And Max is injured. He breaks something in his neck (I am assured this injury does not exist in the manner employed by Chicago Fire. For the purpose of this imaginary not-to-be-written fic, it 100% exists).
Max is told he can't race, maybe forever, but likely for at least a year post surgery
(and at this point I'm just going to c&p from the chat fic doc I saved months and months ago, and it's going under a cut with a content warning here for suicidal thoughts, some mention of disordered eating and childhood abuse, look after yourself, pals)
surviving to drive: the max verstappen recovery story (~3k)
Anyway max realises that he has exactly one (1) thing in his life, racing, and it's just come crashing down and he's v emotionally unhealthy as we know and has nothing else going on so when he loses racing he believes there is literally no other reason to keep going plus he's in hospital
anyway daniel ignores all of max's emotionally unhealthy bans on hospital visitors and sneaks in to see him and he's like... "something is very wrong here"
he leaves and max thinks he's chased him away but then daniel comes back later that day and he's like, "you don't have to have the surgery in this hospital, you can have it done in any of these places *presents a list* so pick a place and we'll go there instead"
so yeah they just go somewhere else and daniel rents them a house and just hangs out with a secretly suicidal max who sees precisely no reason to wake up every morning if he's not racing
and daniel has precisely zero idea that max is still here/alive/whatever just because daniel is there every night and every morning and max doesn't want daniel to have to see him like that
ANYWAY max is very clearly not in a good place and his dad sends him messages telling him how he can improve his recovery and get better faster
it becomes more difficult for max to hide the fact that he's alive mostly by virtue of not being dead right now
and he's had the surgery or whatever and he's looking at a 12 month recovery so he's definitely out for the whole of the next season so daniel's like, "It doesn't matter how long recovery takes, take your time" which of course he has precisely zero idea of how to deal with since he's been racing so long and has nothing else in his life
Something happens idk he breaks a glass and Daniel finds him with cut hands and a piece of glass idk and Daniel's like, "a new crisis! I can help with that! this is clearly not something that max has been dealing with daily for weeks now, it's a new thing!"
so he's like, IT'S THERAPY TIME BABY, no more clutching a handful of broken glass and bleeding everywhere, superdaniel is here to help
yada yada finds max a therapist and max HATES IT, HAAAAATES IT, he's uncomfortable and the therapist makes him feel worse and he still wants to like... not be here if he can't race today, he can't wait a whole year
and daniel asks him how it's going and Max lies because why wouldn't he and he's been doing miserable things his entire life that he didn't want to do so what's another thing on top of everything else
meanwhile Daniel's like... hmmmm this is scary Max looks worse
and he sits in on a therapy session and half way through he's like, "nope, we're ending this, sorry, bye, you can have the money for the whole hour but we're never speaking to you again"
points out to Max that that therapist was awful and why didn't Max just tell him how awful it was and how it made him feel
Max, who's never had a choice over anything in his entire life: "..."
anyway he gets max to try another couple of therapists and in the end there's one who is NOT monstrously awful and does not make Max feel like he wants to scratch his own skin off
so Max gets THERAPY and it becomes clear that max's childhood was weaponised beyond belief and he doesn't even know what foods he likes and doesn't like
because he never got a choice and he was always on some kind of food plan that his dad could withhold or not according to how max was doing in every other area of his life
well of course, he gets a whole year of therapy and it turns out his dad was an abusive asshole and he is BLOCKED from Max's phone
and Max has to do things like "make sure his life has more than just racing in it"
so he reads a book
the first one he's ever read
he tries food and tries to figure out if he likes it or if it's just a source of energy he has to eat anyway
he gets a PLANT
it DIES
anyway whatever he gets therapy and he lives in a house with daniel and is allowed to feel some things because he never really felt anything before
and daniel goes off and does some promo stuff idk and films some shit from the house and max is maybe in the background or something and no one's heard from him in ages and in fandom it's all like MAX IS IN DANIEL'S HOUSE etc
and the drive to survive people get in touch and are like, can we interview you for the series even if you're not on the grid, do some stuff about your recovery etc etc
and max is like... i guess
he's not, like, actively suicidal any more because his life has actual pillars of stuff that isn't just racing
his life isn't just like dependent on one jenga tower of racing with the pieces falling down
like, he can't wait to get back to racing but he's like, six months in to therapy or whatever and he's been living with daniel and it's... nice to just... watch movies with him and eat stuff and play computer games (daniel banned racing games so max has had to... compromise)
and maybe there are some... warm feelings
some best friend shit when he's never had real time for a best friend
some "i could probably spend more time with daniel in a forever kind of a way and not get tired of it" you know
BUT ALSO, daniel blowing up his life for max, he saw max in that hospital room and didn't once question what it would mean to him to step back and just... fuck shit up so that max would be okay
anyway drive to survive team show up and they do a bit of interviewing and it is VERY CLEAR that this isn't a natural fit for an episode because Max has, for once, got some shit to say
so they come back with an idea for a spin off documentary that's just Max and this injury and getting back to driving
because Daniel has kind of been fielding red bull this whole time, saying "he's not racing this year, leave him alone, give him some space", and he's got to go out and talk to them or do some promo stuff with them, whatever, he's going away
Max says the timing is good because he can do the main body of the interviewing about what's come before etc, then Daniel can come back and do his bits
and then the docu team are like, "where do you think you'd be right now if you hadn't crashed" and Max looks at the camera and says, "dead, I think" and the team know they're on to a winner because Max has realised that actually, driving like you don't care if you're alive if you don't win isn't actually okay
anyway Max does the documentary interviews and Daniel comes back and Max tells him he can talk about whatever he wants, it's fine but when the team ask him about helping Max when he realised he wasn't coping, Daniel won't give any details and says it's Max's story to tell and he just wanted to make sure his best friend was okay
not realising that he looks very much in love during this idk
ANYWAY SOME TIME PASSES and they do a bit more documentary stuff and Max is preparing to race again and Daniel is doing some stuff with red bull and he flies out somewhere to do an interview and photoshoot for some magazine or other.
The first clips from the documentary are released and they're on youtube and clipped up for instagram and Max posts them but the first picture is just like, 'this contains discussion of suicidal thoughts' etc
Daniel is preparing for this photoshoot and interview
anyway the first clip is about Max in hospital and they go straight in for the kill, Max saying, "I didn't want to live if I couldn't race.
"I didn't want to see anyone, I didn't want to speak to anyone, I shouted at the nurses, I just wanted to get somewhere so I could figure out how not to wake up again. And then Daniel walked in.
"He didn't know how bad it was, he didn't know anything specific, but he knew something was wrong and he got me out of there and he brought me here and got my surgery moved. And he didn't know he saved my life that day. He won't know until he sees this. But he saved my life that day."
END OF CLIP ONE, start of clip two
"You were suicidal," the interviewer says
"Yes," Max says. "The only thing that stopped me was that I didn't want Daniel to find me. He'd moved me to a different hospital and he'd rented this place for us so it was close to the doctors, and every day I woke up and he never knew that he kept me alive just by being here."
"But he found out in the end."
"Not how bad it was. Just that it was bad. And he got me help. And when that help didn't work, he got me more help. He's the best friend I've ever had, and I still haven't been able to tell him how bad it got."
end of clip two, start of clip three
except this clip is DANIEL
"I snuck in to see him in hospital. he wasn't doing great. He was kind of lost, and I didn't really know what I could do, but, like, I figured he needed some space so I got him some. Different hospital, different views, nothing to remind him about racing."
"But he was struggling?"
"Yeah," Daniel says. "He struggled. It was hard to see him when he couldn't race. He's my best friend. It was hard when he wasn't doing so well. But he's doing great now."
smile smile etc Daniel being happy
then a final max clip i think
"Do I still have that drive to win? God, yes. I'm going to win. That hasn't changed. I just want to live as well. I want to wake up tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after that, and win."
then a final slide with the documentary logo on and some suicide prevention helplines, idk
ANYWAY imagine Daniel, if you will, at a photography studio about to have pictures taken, crying his eyes out in the toilets because he's just found out Max wanted to die
so Daniel, who is always very professional, entirely bails on both the photo shoot and the interview so he can go home because he needs to see max
and Max lent him his plane because that's a normal thing excessively rich world champions have so it's not a fucking nightmare getting back from... wherever the interview is, somewhere not that far away in europe
and Daniel chooses to respond to Max's documentary clips on instagram
[ASIDE, my beloved friend as I was telling her this over Telegram, in response to that above: WHY????
Me: because this is MY 4am hurt comfort fic baby]
so anyway he makes a text post that just says Max is the bravest and best person he knows, he's fought so hard to be here, and that there hasn't been a day in Daniel's whole entire life that would have been better if Max wasn't here on this planet, and he's so glad he stayed
and then another one which is like, if anyone else feels like they don't want to go on, please stay, people love you, here's some helpline numbers etc
and Max just replies to him with a blue heart
important to understand that this is my four am comfort fic so it is ENTIRELY appropriate that Daniel walks through the door and both hugs him and starts to cry
and Max hugs him back but does not cry because Max has broken through a lot of shit in therapy but he is not a crier
but he IS accidentally in love with Daniel
and Max makes some Choices in his life, as Daniel does, but this choice involves touching Daniel's cheek and glancing at his mouth and then up at Daniel and Daniel kind of nodding and then there is a KISS
which is badly timed really considering that today has been very emotional and Daniel is still crying and has been travelling etc and they've never actually addressed any of this
so Daniel needs a moment and he goes into the bathroom to stare manfully into the mirror and wash his hands and face and when he comes out Max doesn't let him say anything, just launches into a multi point in-person powerpoint about how they should be together
[my friend: maxplaining his way into a relationshippp]
which Daniel, it turns out, entirely agrees with, but he's really kind of emotionally burnt out right now and would really just like a hug and a sit down, so he tells Max yes, of course, but could they just talk about it later and hug right now
How good is Max at listening to instuctions to stop talking?
not marvellous it turns out but daniel kind of likes it when max gets enthusiastic about stuff
even if the stuff in this case is a multipoint argument in favour of them being quite gay together
OH OH OH now we skip forward a bit
to when Max is racing again
first or second race out there for red bull
and daniel is kind of tied to red bull again
anyway Max WINS
hurray etc he's a conquering hero with a recovered broken neck
so once he's out of the car idk he's done the bit with the team and he spies daniel and goes over to hug him, which the cameras in general love, and then he goes off to do some kind of next step celebratory thing, cool-down room, whatever
only partway there he's like... um
has a feeling, one or two, you know the kind of thing
max hasn't historically been very good at feelings
or healthy choices
but anyway, he decides to act on this one, which is to go back to where Daniel is, and kiss him
which is as much of a surprise to daniel as it is to the whole of the media who are still around to film him
and then Max just turns back around and heads for the podium, so there's a very nice accidental shot of Daniel, afterwards, just smiling and ducking his head and touching his thumb to his lip
which turns into a very popular gif
for reasons
Anyway!! there is a LOT of discussion about Max losing his edge now his focus is not only racing
the documentary talks a lot about Max's childhood abuse and limited food intake etc etc but doesn't mention his dad by name
Daniel races again somehow but probably not in the fic
daniel ends up losing some bet or other and has to do a computer game live stream from his living room of some cosy game idk and the whole thing is interupted by max just living his life in the background
max getting up and sleepily saying morning, max going for a run and kissing him hello, max going in and out of the sim, idk, the two of them making weird noises at each other because they still do that
OH I forgot they buy a house together like immediately after getting together
somewhere green again and it's in both their names because they've lived together for a year already and whatever
and still don't tell anyone they're together even though red bull has them residing at the same address
and ZERO people realise until after the kiss on screen
and obviously the docu clips suggest they've been staying together
and Max gets to say to Christian that they literally own a house together when he expresses some degree of surprise at kissing in public
not their fault no one noticed
Forgot to say that max and Daniel get filmed driving about and max stalls his car and doesn’t know if he likes olives and maybe they forget they’re being filmed
And also that when the documentary finally airs all its eps Netflix on Twitter are like “lol bet you can’t figure out which bits we filmed after they got together and which were before because we certainly can’t, lol”
And Daniel’s in the comments, like “do I get a prize if I get it right”
He gets 9/10 clips right but no one but max knows
Anyway when they buy their house max has zero shits to give about the decor so daniel just gets a decorator in and the only thing max wants is a fancy catio for when they’re not there and his new cats want to go outside
Daniel arranges this because he’s a sucker for max.
anyway that's general plot of surviving to drive: the max verstappen recovery story, the end.
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tenpintsofsundrop · 1 year
Text
Emergency Contact
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Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader
Leave me something - or let me out. I'm starving. Push me, pull me. Waiting for the start of:
Things that I want, this happily ever after. You choke on your words, but you swallow them faster. Just want you to be my Emergency Contact.
Summary:
After Jason miraculously comes home from his brush with Deathstroke, you're both feeling it in very different ways. You have an unexpected physical wound from the battle, and he has many (very expected) emotional wounds. You help each other heal. Even if it's very stubborn on both your parts.
Jason Todd x GN!Powered!Reader. Enemies/FWB to Lovers. Angst and Hurt/Comfort. (Slight Smut). Set during Season 2, Episode 5.
Word Count: 10,400
Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link
If you want to be notified whenever I post a new fic, make sure to follow my library blog @sundropslibrary and turn on notifications there.
List of detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.
Warnings: general emotional angst, Jason has a self deprecating inner dialogue, (kind of) enemies to lovers - more like annoyances to fuck buddies to lovers, friends with benefits to lovers, the reader and Jason have a bantering/argumentative nature to their relationship, the reader is meant to be 100% gender neutral (the reader is never referred to in the third person, so there is no need to use they/them pronouns, but the reader is not called she/her or he/him), Jason calls the reader ‘babe’ (imo, a completely gender neutral term and he would call anybody that), mentions of alcohol (Jason drinking a beer), the reader character has ice powers (not entirely relevant to the plot but I couldn’t help myself lmao).
sexual themes throughout, mentions of sexting (no detailed descriptions), mentions of sexting in public, mentions of the reader character sending nudes to Jason (no detailed descriptions of the photos), one scene with detailed smut (but it is not the primary focus of the fic), the reader’s genitals are not described in any specific way, some dirty talk, Jason is more dominant and the reader is more submissive, penetrative sex, Jason is annoying even during sex, Jason has a pain kink (even when he’s a dom, he’s a painslut, I don’t make the rules), scratching/marking (Jason receiving), slight humiliation kink.
mentions of canon level violence, mentions of kidnapping (in alignment with canon), mentions of Jason being beaten by Deathstroke, mentions of Jason’s near-death experience (being dropped off the building), gun violence, the reader is injured - has a bullet wound/bullet fragment in their stomach, mentions of blood, descriptions of first-aid, mentions of puss from an infected wound (theoretically, not something that happens in the fic). That should be everything.
A/N: The title for the fic comes from a song by Pierce the Veil of the same name. It's a newer song, and it's one that I absolutely went to when looking for a title for this fic. The concept of becoming someone's emergency contact is about upgrading the relationship from casual to much more serious, and just the whole song, and specific lyrics in it suit this fic so well. I highly recommend listening to it paired with this fic.
This was based on a request from my old blog, but obvi I don't have that ask anymore - the request was about Jason getting shot and having his wound attended to by the reader, but I changed it to the reader getting shot cause I thought that was more interesting and less common. If the person who made that request sees this and finds my new blog, I hope you enjoy it! And in general, I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it.
...
If asked, you would be hard pressed to explain your relationship with Jason Todd. 
The best way you could describe it would probably be - friends with benefits? 
But most of the time, the two of you weren’t even friends. You weren’t the type to hang out casually, or spend time alone together if it didn’t involve ripping each other’s clothes off. 
If you ever exchanged secrets or those precious bits of your most raw selves, it was by mistake. It was through sarcasm, or coming off the tired lips of someone who had just been exhausted by a few orgasms. The two of you knew each other well, quite literally inside and out. But you always made a deep, concerted effort to hold each other at arm’s length. And maybe that’s part of what all the snark and harsh words were for. 
It wasn’t all arguing. You were friendly. You could be civil, at the very least. 
Right from the moment you had first met Jason, you had found him to be so damn annoying, a shitstain on the earth - yet, someone you couldn’t stay away from. The line between flirtatious banter and a truly grinding argument was always so thin with the two of you. 
… 
You hadn’t expected that your life would be truly changed when you walked into that safehouse in Chicago that day. You truly thought nothing of him when his eyes landed on you - in those moments, a completely anonymous stranger, raking his eyes over you like you were a piece of meat. It was a gaze that immediately made you feel naked, something that made you want to smack him. You told yourself it was because he was being a pervert, not because of the heat that curled in your gut at feeling so intensely desired by him. 
He had been sitting on the couch sipping a beer like he owned the place, his thighs spread wide in a way you immediately decided was arrogant and annoying rather than hot - showing off his muscle tone as if it was trying to break through his jeans. Definitely annoying. Definitely the stance of a fuckboy trying to look bigger and badder than he was. He definitely was not attractive. 
When Dick led you, Rachel, Gar, and Kory further into the condo that seemed far too conspicuous to be a safehouse, the stranger you would later come to know as Jason quickly spoke up. 
“Who are your friends?” He asked. 
As he rose from the couch, his eyes lingered on you. Though his words seemed more out of curiosity, you couldn’t help but feel that bite of something more salacious lingering in his voice. 
It caused you to scoff and roll your eyes. 
“Not important.” Dick declared, his voice snippy. He was clearly annoyed with this new guy, and you could tell that your perceptions of him were definitely not ill-informed. 
“Who’s he?” Kory asked, going for the obvious question. 
“Not important.” Dick parroted out the words again, sounding much shorter with his patience. 
“Anybody want a brew?” Jason asked, motioning with the beer bottle in his hand. 
“Brew?” You twisted your eyebrows with disgust, staring him down as you commented on his odd choice of slang. 
He didn’t get to reply, as you were trampled over by Gar’s enthusiastic voice in your ear. 
“I do!” He said, raising his hand with excitement. 
“No, you don’t.” You quickly told him, reaching out to grab his hand and put it back down. “It’s disgusting.” 
You had a grand suspicion that Gar had never drank beer before, and he had no idea what he was truly asking for. Rather, he was simply taking advantage of trying new things because Dick and Kory were incredibly slack parental figures and he was away from home for the first time. 
“No, no one wants a brew.” Dick sighed, shaking his head. He threw Jason a small glare and you resisted the urge to laugh. 
“That can’t be Adamson.” Kory said, motioning toward Jason. 
This left you confused. But you didn’t question it. 
“He’s not Adamson. Adamson’s in the bathroom. Unconscious.” Dick explained. 
“Hi, I’m Rachel.” Rachel told Jason, offering him a sweet smile - being her usual sweet self. 
“Jason.” He introduced himself, in that moment, finally giving you a name to that obnoxious face. 
“I’m Gar!” Gar said with a grin, to which Jason nodded. 
Jason caught you glaring at him, and looked you up and down again, as if trying to willfully tear off your clothes with his eyes. It made your skin itch with heat and you would forever deny that it was a feeling you liked. 
“What can I call you, babe?” He asked, his voice entirely slimy, the kind of tone he would have used to recite cheesy lines to Tinder dates, you were entirely sure of. 
Before you could come up with some clever reply, Dick sighed in frustration and started balking again. 
“Okay, who we all are doesn’t matter right now.” He pressed, his neck so entirely tense that veins began to pop from the skin. “Can we just chill out, relax, sit on the couch and watch TV or something?” 
It seemed that he wouldn’t get his wish. 
Gar quickly charged around the table, finding something else to get strung up about. 
“Yo, when did you get another one?” He asked, putting his hands on both of the expensive cases on the long dining table - a copy identical to the one you knew to be containing Dick’s Robin outfit. 
It made you curious, and the answer that followed certainly surprised you. 
“That one’s mine.” Jason said, his chest literally puffing out with pride as he stated the fact. 
“No way.” You scoffed. 
“Yes way.” He quickly argued back, the whole exchange sounding entirely juvenile.
“This one’s yours? Wait, you’re Robin too?” Gar quickly put the pieces together. 
“I thought you were Robin?” Rachel commented, tilting her head toward Dick with curiosity. 
“I am.” Dick said firmly. 
“He was.” Jason corrected, a cocky smirk forming across his lips. 
“Batman really lowered the height requirement, huh.” You said. 
The words flew from your mouth before you could stop them, seeing as it was likely the only thing you could nitpick about Jason’s appearance. Between his stunning sharp jaw, his piercing blue eyes, his oddly appealing wild hair, his muscle tone being somehow visible beneath his baggy clothing - all of it made you equally frustrated and annoyed with him, and your baser urges couldn’t resist the low-hanging fruit. 
You felt victory and a slight pang of guilt when Jason deflated because of your comment, shrinking back into himself at your words. 
He didn’t have anything to say in return, he simply sipped his beer. 
“Wait, how many Robins are there?” Gar said, beginning to excitedly ramble at the thought. “Are there a lot? Cause I would love to-” 
“Okay, quiet.” Kory cut him off, clearly becoming annoyed with all of this dancing around the point as much as Dick was. “Sit.” 
Her words were firm, and you couldn’t help but to listen. You found yourself collapsing to sit on the couch while Rachel and Gar took seats at the dining table. Jason continued to linger in the middle of the room, staring at Kory and Dick as their frustration filled the air. 
“Bathroom.” Kory told Dick, and then they left to deal with whoever - or whatever - Adamson was. 
Jason sighed and took a seat beside you. When his eyes fell on you, you set your jaw and glared at him. You didn’t give away a single ounce of the heat you were feeling as his eyes locked with yours. 
“Even if I am the shorter Robin, I can assure you that everything else about me is… very long.” He lowered his voice and whispered those last words, crowding into your personal space as he did so. 
It sent shivers down your spine, his silken voice making the words sound too tempting. Even if you twisted your face and said ‘gross!’ causing him to dissolve into laughter, you didn’t make an effort to move away from him or put any space between your two bodies on the very large couch. You told yourself it was because you were tired from a very long day of travel, not because you were enjoying the smell of his strangely expensive cologne from this close by. 
His grin was still entirely smug, and you couldn’t stand it. 
When he raised the beer bottle up to his mouth again, you reached over and put a hand on his forearm, forcefully dragging his arm down as you made a snide comment. 
“That shit is disgusting, why the hell do you drink it?” You asked. 
You found your face drifting toward his again and if asked, you would say it was a form of intimidation - not that you were being drawn in by an unconscious attraction to him. 
“Because I can.” He replied, just as snide as he slipped your grip and sipped on the drink. 
You mocked his words in an entirely childish voice, and then you raised a single finger up to it and skimmed along the neck of the bottle. It took only a single moment of concentration with your skilled powers to freeze the beer inside solid. He thought he felt an extra chill coming off his hand, but convinced himself that he imagined it. But when he kept it tilted and nothing came out to meet his lips, he shook it and then stuck an inquiring eye inside the bottle. 
When he saw that it was completely frozen, he looked over and saw you grinning, and little did you know - that was the moment he became completely taken with you. You were one of the most annoying people he had ever met, and he found himself so intensely attracted to you. 
Even if it was getting under your skin by arguing with you or fucking your brains out, he knew in that moment - he had to get inside you and drive you insane the same way that he knew you would for him. 
… 
When Dick left to go check on his old circus friend Clay, Jason winked at you and said ‘don’t miss me too much’. You made a show of putting a finger near your mouth and audibly gagging. 
Later that night, when Jason didn’t return, you hated the curl of disappointment that panged in your stomach. You wanted to hit yourself for staring at the door, waiting for the second Robin to come in behind Dick. 
You hated yourself even more for replying to Jason’s texts. 
Apparently he had taken your phone out of your jacket pocket when you went to the bathroom (not to see Adamson - a different bathroom, to pee). And he had put himself in your contacts as ‘Hot Guy’. He had also sent himself a text from your phone that read ‘omg Jason you’re so hot, will you fuck me?’. And then replied to it from his own phone with a picture of his cock. 
Unfortunately, the only thing you could mock about the picture was poor lighting. 
When you told him as much, he quickly remedied that with several more pictures - ones with better lighting. He sent a video with very distinct audio. You would deny that you rushed to put your headphones in to listen to it while you sat on the train with Kory and Gar. You would deny that it drove a hard, hot pain between your thighs. 
You dug through a folder and sent some pictures of your own. You told yourself it was to prove to him that you were too good for him - to show off something he could never actually have. To tease him. 
You would deny that you loved the compliments he gave you, that you ate up the affection like a plant lovingly soaking up the sun. 
When you were sexting him, you had no clue that you were ever going to see him again. It was almost mindless, something for a dopamine hit to distract yourself from all the chaos going on around you. You weren’t doing it because you actually liked Jason. You didn’t have any real attractions toward him, or any real plans to carry out all of the bold things you said in those messages. 
You had no clue that you’d end up living together. 
When you did find out that Dick would be taking Jason into the newly reopened Titans Tower along with you, Gar, and Rachel, you didn’t make a big deal of it in your mind. When Jason made flirtatious remarks toward you in person, you brushed him off. You put up a wall. 
You told yourself that he was nothing more than a cocky, shallow guy who would use you for sex and then throw you away - something you could never actually build a proper relationship with. And if you were supposed to live together, be some kind of team like Dick expected you to be, then you couldn’t be messy. You couldn’t get emotional. 
You had no clue that on one of those first nights living together, your self assured discipline not to give into your lust for him would break like a wafer cookie, and you would be in his bed faster than a sea turtle running into ocean. 
… 
“Fuck, babe, you feel so good on my cock.” Jason grunted, his face buried in your neck as he thrusted deep inside of you. The loud squelch of artificial wetness coming from between your thighs as he worked his hips, working you open with a needy, demanding pace. “Bet you love this cock, huh? Tell me how fuckin’ much you love it.” 
“Shut up.” 
The words came from your throat as a weak whimper, much less powerful than you had intended. 
You didn’t want to give him any more power than he already held over you - he had you weak and willing on his cock, something you would have never admitted could be true until it was happening in these moments. 
Though you would never admit it aloud, you loved the way he handled you. Having you pinned against the bed with his fingers digging into the flesh of your hips, having you breathless and moaning as he fucked into you with fast, obviously skilled strokes. Your nails cut into the flesh of his back, and he let out a low rumble from his gut as the sharp sting sent a wave of pleasure through him. 
You hated the twinge of lustful embarrassment that curled in your gut when he chuckled at your words. 
“Oh, you want me to shut up?” He asked, slightly breathless from the act himself, moving one hand beside your head to raise himself up slightly to look in your eyes. 
He was sweaty, disheveled, his hair a mess, his muscles taught with the effort as he continued to pound into you. You hated that you had imagined him much like this before, and that this outlived all of your fantasies. 
“Yes.” You fired back. “Just shut up and fuck me.” 
He bit his lip - something you didn’t know was him trying to hold back his orgasm, so utterly turned on by your bratty defiance, the twinge of a whimper in your voice as you said those words. 
“You weren’t tellin’ me to shut up when I was texting you.” 
He said, all hot breath fanning across your chin, his hips spearing forward in sharp, hard hits that made your skin smack loudly together. It made you work hard to suppress moans deep in your chest in a way that was painful, like venom inside your lungs. You wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of your sounds, of knowing just how good he was fucking you - even if he could see it written all over your pleasure twisted face. 
“You only begged for more when I was tellin’ you how I was gonna lay you on my bed. Take you apart… make you scream my name.” 
He reached his other hand from your hip to the point where you were joined. He began touching that tender place, making sharp, vicious strokes that were almost vengeful. Tears easily gathered in your eyes and he let out another chuckle when you choked on a deep, pleasurable wail. 
“Tell me, how many times did you touch yourself reading what I wrote?” 
He asked, leaning down to whisper the words right in your ear. 
“How many times did you cum thinking about me?” 
“I didn’t.” You choked out, digging your nails deeper into the skin of his back, causing him to grunt as the pain mixed with the pleasure flowing through him. 
“Sure, babe.” He smirked down at you, turning that look into something absolutely pavlovian that would forever make you feel his cock deep inside of you when you saw it, rather than feeling annoyed. 
Maybe from that point on, it was a bit of both. 
In an effort to shut him up, you reached up and claimed his lips. It was supposed to be a kiss, but it was mostly teeth. When you bit down on his bottom lip, snarling, he tasted blood and the way he moaned at the pain was absolutely unmistakable. It was something you remembered and used against him many times after that. 
… 
You wouldn’t allow yourself any room for self hatred when it came to that break in your self control. When it became an ongoing thing, you spun it as positive in your mind. 
It was just sexual release. You and Jason both needed it. It paired well with intense training and the heavy studying that Dick made you do. It lowered your stress levels a lot, and it helped you get through the day. 
The more time you spent around Jason, the more you got to know him, and the more you came to realize that he was nowhere near shallow. You easily saw that he was caring, deep, complex, troubled. The more time passed, you found yourself falling for him and the more you deeply denied it. Because it was just sex. 
Things were good between the two of you, and you knew that if you added anything else to the mix - any complicated, mushy feelings - you would fuck it up. 
You were especially reminded of this - how important it was not to fuck things up - just a day or so before every other force aside from you railed Titans Tower and began royally fucking things up. 
… 
It was a morning just like any other at Titans Tower. It was delightfully quiet - even though Dick demanded that everyone get up at ungodly early hours to begin training, you had somehow managed to wake up before everyone else and you were enjoying the peace it brought you. 
When you got up to see that Jason was already in the kitchen, standing at the counter as he munched on a bowl of cereal, you wanted to scorn the idea that your peace would be interrupted. But instead, you found yourself willfully suppressing a smile. 
You yawned and walked over to the counter, grabbing a bowl from one of the cupboards, thinking that cereal was just the right idea on his part. A deep frown cut through your face when you poured out the rest of the cereal box he had left on the counter, and a very measly amount fell into your bowl. 
“What kind of asshole only leaves three fucking cornflakes in the bottom of the box?” You scoffed, causing him to chuckle. 
“Learn to count, babe.” He told you, speaking with his mouth half-full. “That’s more than three.” 
You rolled your eyes. You were likely exaggerating - but still, it seemed rude to you to leave such a small portion, barely a handful, in the bottom of the box. 
“Or did I make you cum so hard last night that I knocked the common sense out of your head?” He added on, throwing you that signature smirk that made heat bloom between your thighs. 
You let out a sarcastic snort, giving him a purposefully disgusted grimace as you lifted the bowl up and dumped the remaining cereal into his portion instead. 
“You might as well take these.” You told him. “And don’t flatter yourself, you’re not that good.” 
You moved behind them, distracting yourself from the conversation by making a cup of coffee. 
“Oh really?” He perked up, rising to his full height, pure mischief in his voice. “It didn’t sound like it last night.” 
Much to your horror, he then began imitating your moans. 
“‘Oh, Jason! Oh, fuck me! More!’” 
It was a cartoonish, pornographic imitation, something he likely wouldn’t have done if the others were anywhere within earshot. Oddly enough, even though your relationship was casual, you still kept it guarded and private, as though it were some precious secret that needed to be kept from the others. 
“‘Jason, please, your dick is the best! Oh, make me cum!’” 
But that was the farthest thing from your mind as embarrassment curled in your stomach, the reaction he likely wanted to draw out of you. You hated that you didn’t truly know if it was accurate or not, because sometimes - yes, he did fuck your brains out and make you completely mindless on his cock. 
But you would never admit that he was right. 
“Shut up.” You sighed, causing him to dissolve into laughter, feeling as though he had won. 
But you wouldn’t simply leave it at that. 
Instead, as you pushed the button on the machine and your coffee began to drip, you turned around and gently placed your fingers on the side of his cereal bowl. You froze all the milk inside of it solid, making it into one large frozen chunk with the spoon stuck inside when he wasn’t looking - distracted, staring at your face, looking for any trace of the reaction that he had drawn out of you. 
You just glared, and he smirked once more. 
When he picked up the spoon again and went to take another bite, the entire bowl came with it. He sighed in defeat when he realized what you had done. 
“You know, it’s so damn annoying when you do that.” He sighed. 
“I know.” You grinned at him. 
He couldn’t help the butterflies that fluttered in his stomach at this. He resisted the urge to grab you by the sides of your head and steal the grin of your mouth with his own. He told you that it was out of annoyance, and not affection. He told himself those lines were most definitely not blurred when it came to you. 
… 
Confessing your feelings to Jason would not have been your choice. 
Given the choice, you would have let your feelings quietly live and die inside of you. You would have just kept Jason as a friend. You would have even dropped the amazing sex if it meant staying on good terms with him. 
But the stakes rose pretty quickly, and things were taken out of your hands. The choice was stolen from you and Jason entirely against your will. 
When you found out he was missing, supposedly kidnapped by Doctor Light on the heels of some misguided plan - something inside of you shattered. Up until that moment, if you thought it was just a stupid crush, or an infatuation inside of you that would easily fade with time - you quickly found out that you were wrong. 
You went through the stages of grief like a rocket. 
Denial. Staring at the door, waiting for him to walk inside at any moment. Just like you had back at the safehouse.
Anger. Being so pissed at Dick at the other older Titans that you could barely breathe. How had they let this happen to him? How could they make him feel so inadequate that he felt the need to go out on his own, half-cocked, clearly doing something in the name of looking for their approval? 
Bargaining. You would have traded places with him. You would have been the one, alone and scared and stranded if it meant that he got to be at home safe. You would have gone with him to carry out the stupid plan if he had only asked. Why hadn’t he asked you? 
Depression. You wept in your room, hands clasped over your face, letting out chest-shaking sobs as you thought of the possibility of him never returning home again. You realized the possibility of him dying was very real and it made your lungs burn. 
And then finally - Acceptance. You finally accepted that your feelings for him were something bigger, and if it meant that you were the only person in the Tower who truly cared about him (probably aside from Gar) - the only person who didn’t just see him as a pawn to be used against Deathstroke - then you had to do something about it. 
So you laid out your love for Jason. You put it all on the line for him. You accidentally confessed to him, showed your feelings in a gesture so quiet it screamed. 
You knew that for someone who stepped up to become Robin, someone who scorned cops for pummeling down on the innocent when they were supposed to be protectors - stepping up to try and save his life meant a love bigger than anything else you could have done. 
And he was terrified of it. There was a big justice in your love for him. And to him, there was an even bigger justice in giving you an out to escape it - to escape loving him.  
… 
Hectic. 
That was easily how you would describe the last few days at Titans Tower. 
Between the unexpected arrival of Rose - Dick taking on another stray because, like Rachel said, he couldn’t resist a bird with a broken wing. Finding out that she was related to one of the deadliest men on earth that the Titans apparently had previous history with. And then Jason going off on his own without telling you, some botched hostage trade, and the group picking up yet another stray - a strange boy who had saved Jason’s life. It was all a blur of hectic chaos that had you snapping your neck to keep up. 
Sleep was scarce and you couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a proper meal. 
But you weren’t truly worried about any of that. 
Dust had been kicked up around your life, and you couldn’t wait for it to settle before you made your next important decision. 
Even though the wounds were still tender, you knew that things were safe for now, and your number one concern was Jason. 
The minute he had gotten in the door, even though he was slightly hobbled and clearly sore from whatever Deathstroke had done to him, he rushed out of your sight. He was clearly eager to get away from everyone like a wounded animal sulking away to lick his wounds in peace. And when you had chased him, ignoring a nagging pain in your own side from the fight, he had slammed his bedroom door in your face, entirely uncaring of the fact that you called out his name, concerned for him. 
The rest of the group was distracted with Conner - not knowing what he had been shot with or how to fix it. You hated it, but in the eyes of the group, yet again, Jason and any of his problems fell to the back burner. 
After you had taken a short shower and changed your clothes, you found yourself here. Standing in front of Jason’s closed bedroom door, hoping not to face another cold rejection. 
You wondered if he would be sleeping, wondered if you should interrupt his peace. But you knew that sleep was unlikely after everything that had happened. 
So you took the leap. 
You raised a fist, once again pushing down that stinging pain coming from the right side of your stomach. You reasoned that it was probably nothing more than a bruise forming there. And you knocked on the door. 
A few moments later, the door was jerked open, and Jason glared at you. 
His eyes were dull and tired, and there was a large bruise forming on the side of his mouth. Probably one of many others that you couldn’t see, from the way he had been walking earlier. He likely hadn’t been sleeping, but you had disturbed him. 
“What the hell do you want?” He grumbled out, his voice dull, lacking any true fight. 
“I wanted to check on you.” You told him, entirely honest. “I know it might seem stupid, but I wanna see how you’re doing.” 
Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. 
He wanted to agree that - yes, it was stupid. It should have been obvious how he was doing after being kidnapped, beaten, and dropped off a building. But he was an idiot who had gotten himself thrown headfirst into that mess, thinking he could handle it. And he didn’t need to go crying to you about how badly he had fucked up. He had made a poor choice and he deserved all of the consequences. It was a simple fact of life. 
“I’m doing just fine, thanks.” Jason said, entirely snide and sarcastic. “Look, I don’t need your help, okay? So fuck off.” 
It was a set of harsh, cutting words. But he thought getting distance from you would be best. This whole thing had woken him up from the sweet little fantasy the two of you had been participating in. He was a natural born fuck-up. And sure, he could have you for a while, play around a bit - but he could never truly make you happy. Eventually, he would fuck you up too. He was a harsh poison and it would be better if he got out of your life before you felt the full effects. 
He moved to shove the door closed and upon instinct, you reached up and fought him on it. Unconsciously, you winced as a sharp pain came from the injury in your stomach, reaching for it with your free hand as you held the door open with the other. It should have been no big deal. With your meta abilities, you usually healed quicker. You weren’t even used to feeling it when you got hurt. You were probably just feeling it worse because you were tired. 
You tried to ignore the pain. But in a moment, Jason’s eyes went wide with worry as his gaze darted from your face, knit with pain, to where your hand was nursing the injury. Any sense of smarmy discontent dropped from his features, immediately being replaced with a softness and worry for you. 
“You’re hurt.” He said quietly. 
He let the door fall open again, reaching for your hand to inspect the injury himself. 
“I’m fine.” You played the card this time, exchanging his lie for your own. 
It was an odd play. He had lied about not being so torn up inside, emotionally devastated as he was, and now you were lying about not being physically injured from the fight. The two of you made an odd, but perfectly matched pair. 
Jason barreled right past your words, and you were easily pliant to his touch as he removed your hand from the injury. You certainly were not expecting for him to find anything incriminating under your hand. But he glared at you when he found bright red spread across your palm, a glossy wetness leaking through your shirt. 
“You’re bleeding.” He grunted at you. 
Clearly, he was disappointed in the fact that you had neglected to bring this injury to the group’s attention. Pissed off at the fact that you weren’t in the medbay with Conner receiving some treatment right now. 
Maybe you could blame it on the chaos. Maybe you could blame it on the fact that with everyone so emotionally distraught, you didn’t want to be just another problem for everyone to fuss over. 
“Whoops.” You breathed out sarcastically. “I didn’t even notice.” 
That last part was honest. In all the adrenaline, all your worrying over whether or not Jason was going to live as you watched him dangle so high off the ground - you truly hadn’t paid any mind to the injury. 
“You didn’t-?” Jason huffed out in anger, but didn’t bother finishing the sentence. 
Perhaps he partially understood himself, knowing how the adrenaline from a fight could stamp out pain. Or perhaps he knew how truly stubborn you were and he didn’t want to waste his energy arguing with you. 
“You need this treated.” He added on. 
No matter how fucked in the head he was, he never wanted to see you hurt. That was something he would definitely waste his energy on - wearing down your stubbornness until you let him or someone else in the house take care of the injury properly. 
“Conner is worse off than I am.” You shrugged. “He needs the attention more.” 
“Then let me help you.” He said, an impatient nagging rising up in his throat. “Bruce gave me some first aid training. One thing that means I’m not totally useless.” 
The words made your chest ache for him, a pain that easily competed with the bleeding wound. 
“Jason-” 
You wanted to argue with him. You wanted to tell him he had infinite worth to you. 
But of course, he cut you off. 
“Just go sit on the bed.” He told you, quiet, but a firm command that you couldn’t ignore. 
He gently pushed past you, on a quest for some supplies to patch you up with. You then found yourself drifting into his room almost mindlessly, your hand clutching the wound again upon instinct. It was a place that you felt oddly at home. The nights you had spent in that bed since coming to Titans Tower, your head delightfully empty as he had fucked you hard and fast - they were by far your favourites. 
You would say it was because of the sex, and not just because you got to be wrapped up in Jason’s arms. Maybe everything had changed. Maybe your answers were different now. Maybe you were raw and tender and Jason wasn’t prepared to chase you in that devotion. 
But that was just the thing. With you and Jason, there was never any sense of devotion. You and Jason were always hard and fast. Teasing each other, verging on the edge of vengeful. It was a flame that burned intensely hot - but it was never anything soft. It was never anything that prompted you to knock on his door so late, wanting to check on his well being. It was nothing that prompted you to make chase to put your life on the line for him. 
Even just knowing that he had the intent to attend to your injury, called himself useful because of it - the thought cradled you like a warm blanket. It had you balancing on the edge of a dam holding back a barrage of feelings that you had been quelling down since the moment you had first put your lips on his.
“I told you to sit.” Jason’s voice came from behind you. 
He had raided the infirmary and now had a handful of supplies - luckily without anyone seeing him or questioning why. When you turned to him, he was closing the bedroom door behind him, sealing you both in with this newfound soft intensity, the tired lull of two people unwilling to hold back that softness anymore. It was entirely dangerous, and entirely life-saving at the same time; and neither of you realized it. 
“Since when do you get to boss me around?” You told him, your voice low and lacking any true spirit or sarcasm. 
It was in the same vein as the banter the two of you usually threw around - bickering about who was a bigger asshole, who was more stubborn, who was better in bed. 
You expected some kind of sexual comment in return. You could almost hear it now - he was the boss of you because he made you melt on his cock, made you mindless and dumb with it. 
But, no dice. 
The longer you stared at him, catching bits of the fresh pain swimming through those gorgeous blue eyes, you wished so badly for the mischief and sarcasm and light to come back and bite you the way that it used to. 
It only made your stomach churn harder at the whole situation. Things had officially changed between you and Jason. You had yet to find out if it was for the better, or for the painstakingly worse. 
Jason sighed through his nose. 
“You can be such an asshole sometimes.” He told you. Coming from him, and given the nature of your relationship, you knew it was almost a compliment. “Will you just sit down and let me help you?” 
Even though you were utterly terrified of the swelling of emotions you felt, bound to come to a head - you did. 
You sat on the edge of the bed and he placed the supplies beside you. 
When he mumbled out a quiet ‘lay back’, and you did, his cool fingertips at the hem of your shirt pulling it upward felt strangely more intimate than any other time you had been in this same position. It wasn’t heady, you weren’t granted the distraction of his mouth on yours and his tongue shoved between your lips while a harsh throbbing nagged between your legs.
This was quiet, and calm, and gentle. 
When you caught his eye above you as he wiped away the blood with some clean gauze, you saw nothing but pity and worry and sparkling affection for you. You almost dared to call it something as epic and dangerous as love, buried deep in his eyes. He worked with the most delicate touch, almost as if he was afraid to break you, before he glanced down and inspected the wound. 
His brow furrowed with even more intense worry, guilt nipping at his insides when he got a good look at it. 
“I think I see a bullet in here.” He told you, and then he moved around the bed and grabbed his phone, turning on the flashlight to have a better light to inspect it. You felt intensely naked, intensely caught when he began shining the light on your stomach with a harshly inquisitive look across his face. “Definitely something shiny. You got shot and you didn’t fucking tell anyone?” 
It was only then that you realized when you had gotten the wound - the exact moment clicking into place in your mind. 
“It was only a ricochet.” You argued quietly. “It’s not that bad.” 
Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes, and began sorting out his supplies, preparing to pull out whatever was lodged inside of you. 
… 
Dick explicitly told you to stay put. 
They only wanted the more experienced Titans, the Varsity squad on the case when dealing with Deathstroke. He blamed young naive incompetence as the reason Jason had gotten captured in the first place. You blamed him and Bruce pushing Jason out, making him feel like he needed so desperately to prove himself. But it was something Dick wasn’t ready to hear - an argument you weren’t going to have with the very stubborn team leader. 
Instead, you went for the silent route. You trailed the rest of them out of Tower, and when Dick strayed away from the rest of the group, his head on a swivel as he glanced back and forth, seemingly wanting to assure that none of the others were following him - you followed your gut instincts and went after him. 
You hid in the shadows and the moment that Deathstroke hit the button and those panels scrolled up, revealing Jason stranded on that scaffolding - you couldn’t help yourself. 
“Jason!” 
You screamed out his name, you leapt forward. 
Dick didn’t have time to scold you, not before the gunfire started. 
Kory came out of nowhere - seemingly, she had the same idea as you. Putting her life on the line for an emotionally repressed man that she hadn’t admitted her feelings for. But she was there because she was in love with the other Robin. (Or rather, a man who claimed over and over again that he wasn’t Robin.) 
Things quickly became a blur - flashes of flame as Kory fought, battling with the muzzle flashes from Deathstroke’s guns, limbs flying as they fought each other. You didn’t see it, but Deathstroke raised and aimed at you as you rushed toward the window, blindly going after Jason. In response, Dick charged forward, redirecting the gun as he pulled the trigger. You heard the sharp ‘ping’ sound of metal on metal - what you couldn’t see was the bullet hitting one of the metal beams in the ceiling. But you certainly felt it when it sliced into your side. 
At the time, it was nothing compared to the fear you felt for Jason. 
His eyes were wide with terror, and you could only focus on getting him to safety. You had no idea that a large part of his panic came from seeing you in the building. He had hoped that Dick would keep you away from all of this. But there you were, standing a few feet away from a man with a gun who was shooting around wildly. Jason would have delighted in being dropped off the building to his death if he had to see you get fatally shot when he could do nothing but squirm on the other side of the glass. 
You put two hands on the glass, banging on it - of course, it was no use. It was inches thick, meant to keep people from going through it at this height. Working entirely on instinct, you put your palms flat across it and began forming ice crystals over it, hoping to make it rigid and breakable if it was frozen. 
Once there was enough ice, you quickly looked around and spotted a metal pipe there for the in-progress construction of the building, so you grabbed it and rushed to smash the glass with it. You felt victorious as it shattered, and Jason flinched away from the shards, putting you one step closer to freeing him. 
Though the moment the glass was cleared, leaving the wind whipping around you, his first words of greeting to you were not celebratory. 
“What the hell are you doing here?” He barked at you, clearly angry with you. 
You felt a dull ache in your chest at this. You thought he might be relieved, happy, pleased. At the time, you couldn’t interpret his harsh reaction as worry for you possibly getting hurt. 
Nonetheless, you ignored his harshness. You would save him, whether he wanted to be saved or not. You draped your body through the window, reaching out to him. You made an effort to keep most of your weight planted on the floor of the building, in case the scaffolding wasn’t stable enough to hold two people at once. 
“What do you think?” You replied, pure sarcasm dripping through your voice as you reached behind Jason and began fiddling with the rope around his wrists. 
The position put the two of you in intensely close proximity. Jason caught a whiff of your unique scent, the shower gel you used that mingled with your body’s natural oils; and he felt so painfully at home. For the first time that night, he held back tears. He couldn’t help but to lean his forehead on your shoulder, taking comfort in having you so near after being on edge and terrified for so many hours. You resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair, to cradle him and give him further comfort. You forced yourself to focus on the task at hand - getting him to safety. 
Behind you, at the very back of the room, Dick and Deathstroke wrestled with the remote for the explosives attached to the scaffolding. 
Just as you managed to get Jason’s wrists freed, Deathstroke hit the switch, and the bombs went off. 
… 
You winced loudly as Jason dabbed at the wound with disinfectant. 
“I would say sorry… but, you’ll thank me later when this isn’t swollen and leaking puss.” He told you, throwing you a small smirk. 
It was smug. It was the usual kind of humor that he gave you. 
It was comforting to know that every trace of the Jason you knew hadn’t been stolen by Deathstroke. 
You held your breath as he pressed down with the medicine-covered gauze again, drawing much less of a reaction out of you this time. 
“Great mental image, Jay.” You replied, your voice dull. It lacked any of the true bite you wanted to deliver in response to him. “I’m sure it’s such a turn-on thinking about my puss.” 
It was meant to be a joke. But even unconsciously, it was an acknowledgement of that dangerous line - the line between truly caring and just using someone for sex. The line between having someone in your life as a body to get off with, and being so… homely with them. 
You and Jason were towing that line dangerously. It was a thread that you were balancing on, and it would either break, or you would cross to the other side and be forever bonded to him. 
Jason shrugged. “Maybe I don’t have to be turned on by you all the time.” 
There was more stuck in his throat. Another dangerous acknowledgement of that line. 
‘Maybe I just have to care.’ 
Both of you lulled into silence because neither of you dared to say it. 
After a few moments, Jason put down the gauze and hesitated to reach for the tweezers. He knew that pulling the bullet out would be painful, but inevitable. It was a lot like the state of your relationship with him. Break it off, and find happiness elsewhere, or acknowledge this big thing swelling to fruition between the two of you. Have Jason fuck it up eventually. Painful, but inevitable. 
“You shouldn’t have to be hurt like this.” Jason said quietly. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt for my sake.” 
There it was again - words with a dangerous double meaning. 
You looked up at him, pure pain knit across his face, and for a moment he looked from the tweezers to you and he could hardly stand holding your gaze. 
‘It’s worth it.’ You wanted to say. ‘For you, I’d bear any pain.’ 
The words lived and died behind your eyes, and your tongue decided on something else entirely. 
“It’s nothing.” You told him. 
You downplayed the pain, pretending that the injury was only a minor inconvenience for you. And in the grand scheme of life, it was. With time, it would heal. Losing Jason would be something you’d never heal from. 
Jason shook his head at this statement. 
He forced himself to reach for the tweezers then. He handed you his phone, a silent agreement that you would hold the light as steady as you could. He knew you well, too well, and he knew that you needed something else to focus on to push away the pain. He put his free hand on the plush of your stomach, pulling back slightly to hold the wound open while you held the light on it. 
When the sharp metal of the tweezers breached your wound, you wanted to swear. You wanted to call him an asshole as the pain shot through you. You wanted to scold him for leaving the Tower and being kidnapped in the first place. But you knew that even if it was playful or sarcastic, fueled by the bite of your pain, it was not what he needed to hear right now. So instead, you held your breath, and gripped his phone hard, keeping the light steady as you bared the sharp shocks of pain. 
After a moment of digging around that felt like an eternity, he pulled out the fragment and held it up to show you as you collapsed back against the bed, panting with tears stinging the edges of your eyes. 
“It’s not nothing.” He declared sharply. 
You couldn’t conjure a response. You knew he was right. And you didn’t want to be forced to admit it. 
Instead, you turned off the light from his phone and relaxed into the bed, closing your eyes as he walked around to the trashcan and threw out the bullet fragment. It fell into the bottom of the plastic wastebasket with a very small ‘ping’ - making you wonder how something so small could cause so much trouble. 
Jason quickly returned to you, dabbing more disinfectant into the wound in a way that made you groan and flex away from the touch. Once again, he did not apologize. 
There were a few moments of muddy silence with nothing but your slightly labored breathing, trying to contain your sounds of pain so as to not make him feel any further guilt about the whole incident. 
Your mind churned, and you couldn’t help the next words that came from your mouth. 
“I meant what I said.” You told him. 
At the sound of this, his hands immediately stilled. You felt his eyes on you, and you forced yourself to open your own and look up at him once again. He stared you down with intense examination. He looked for any ounce of falsity, any sign that you were lying, even posturing to make him feel better after everything that had happened. 
He didn’t find any. 
You thought he might acknowledge you, that he might say something back to return your mighty words. Instead, he simply reached for more gauze, and began putting a final bandage on your wound. 
… 
The explosion caused a sharp rattle through your ears. It shocked you and made you dizzy and put the whole world off-kilter. The only thing you could perceive past the mind-numbing hum in your brain was the feeling of Jason’s rough glove gripping tightly onto your wrist, so you gripped back as hard as you could. 
When you blinked open your eyes, you were half-hanging out of the open window, the edge of the floor cutting into your waist as you held onto Jason by nothing but his wrist. His whole body weight created a harsh burn, straining on the muscles in your shoulder as you watched him dangle hundreds of feet above the street. 
Panic flooded you. 
You scrambled to reach out with your other hand, and the moment you moved, your shirt slipped against the sleek, polished material of the floor and you began sliding out the window. You gasped and Jason stilled his panicked flailing immediately. 
“Don’t move!” He shouted. 
“Give me your other hand so I can pull you up!” You shouted back. 
Beyond the unpleasant hum of your eardrums rattling, you still heard chaos behind you. Gunshots, the grunts of fighting, Kory and Dick’s voices yelling. They were busy with Deathstroke, they couldn’t help you or Jason. 
Jason looked up at you with glassy eyes. 
He knew that with all his gear weighing him down, even with the training you had been doing, you wouldn’t be able to pull him up. Not by yourself. And if you weren’t careful, his body weight would just pull you out of the window and cause you to go tumbling down to your death along with him. 
When you saw that frown etch across his lips, that filthy look of dawning - you glared at him. 
“Give me your other hand!” You screamed, your voice raking across your throat like hot coals. A hot boiling rage at the fact that he seemed almost determined to die. 
There was one thing he was determined about. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to take you down with him. 
His gloved wrist started to slip from your nervous, sweaty palm, and you tried hard to hold on tight. You formed large shards of ice, hoping you could create some kind of bond there by freezing your hand to his. But it would only be temporary with gravity trying to tear the two of you apart. 
“You have to drop me, Y/N.” He said, nothing but pure mourning on his lips. “I’m dead weight.” 
You both knew it was a horrendous double meaning. 
He thought he was a dead weight to your life. 
“No!” You immediately defied this thought, that feral rage ripping at your throat once again. “I’m gonna pull you up. I’m gonna pull you up!” 
You reached your other hand down and tightly wrapped both of your hands around his wrist, yanking upward. The harsh movement caused you to slide even further out the window. You were now dangling dangerously over San Francisco with only the thickness of your thighs giving you any real stability on the intensely high up floor. It made you dizzy, and the only thing you had to focus on were the wet wells of Jason’s eyes staring up at you. 
“It’s no use!” Jason said tearfully. 
You ignored him. 
You cast your chin over your shoulder, and began shouting. 
“Help me!” You screamed, trying desperately to get the attention of Dick or Kory. “Help me! Fuck!” 
“You have to let go.”
Jason’s words immediately shifted your focus back to him. 
But of course, you refused. 
“I’m not letting go of you!” You declared sharply. “Not that easily.” 
As he stared up at your tearful eyes, he knew that you meant it as more. 
Unfortunately, it was the one thing he was terrified of. 
He thought that you saw him as some shiny perfect thing, something good and worth having in your life. He thought that you were incapable of seeing the poison, the true fuck-up that he was. If you didn’t let go of him, sooner or later, just like everyone else in his life, you were going to get burned. 
So Jason did what he had to do. 
He began prying your fingers off his wrist, trying his best to keep you stable while he forced himself from your grip. 
“No!” You shrieked. “No, no, no-” 
You didn’t have much room to fight him about it without falling out of the window yourself. 
You made a move to readjust, to get a tighter grip on him - and it was the one deadly move that caused him to slip out of your touch completely. 
You were forced to watch on in chest clenching horror, blinking through heavy tears as he began hurtling toward the ground. 
… 
If not for Conner - a literal miracle - swooping in and saving Jason at the last second, then you would have spent the rest of your life regretting those moments, wondering what you could have done differently to save him. 
When Jason finished taping down the bandages, making sure the wound was clean and secure, he laid his palm flat on top of it. It was a kind of ‘kissing it better’ that instantly spread warmth curling through your gut. It was a touch so incredibly tender - especially compared to the heated, aggressive groping you were used to from him - that it caused a whimper from the back of your throat. 
You knew it was unlikely, but you hoped that he hadn’t heard it. 
“All done.” He said quietly. 
You instantly felt regret when he took his hand away and began tidying up the medical supplies. But you forced yourself to sit upright, now feeling only muscle soreness and a much duller pain coming from the area. You felt intensely thankful for his care as you pulled your shirt back down, righting your clothes back into place. 
“You’re free to go now.” Jason told you, his voice still low, as though a single decibel would shatter the delicate peace between the two of you. 
You felt your heart sink. 
In an instant, you understood what it was - he was concerned about your physical wellbeing, but he didn’t actually want to have you around. Just like his reaction to you showing up at the hostage exchange - he didn’t want your presence there. 
You heaved a sigh and got off the bed as Jason busied himself with gathering up the used gauze to throw it away. As you put your hand on the doorknob, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to leave. 
It was something else. 
It had to be something else. 
Jason hadn’t let himself drop off a building in some desperate ploy just to get away from you. He had been trying to save you. 
He was so utterly willing to give his life for yours. 
And now he was trying to back down from that. 
You turned and faced him, leaving the door closed. When he turned from ditching things in the wastebasket, he froze. He was entirely surprised that you were still there.
The two of you locked eyes, both staying still - like a predator and prey locked in a stalemate, wondering who would run first. 
In this situation, you weren’t sure who was the prey. 
You were both so vulnerable. 
Jason thought it would be selfish to get caught up in all of this, to finally admit those dangerous feelings he had for you. When he cared for things, he usually ended up breaking them. Of course, it was never on purpose - he was an idiot. Everything he touched, he fucked up. He had made that more than evident with his last braindead plan, the outing to prove that he was worthy of being Robin. Something that had gotten you shot, probably could have gotten you killed. 
If you stuck with him any longer, you probably would end up being killed. And he would never forgive himself for that. 
He would be better off ripping himself from your hold, as much as it hurt. Giving you a dose of that heartbreak now so that you could get over him and go after better things. 
As you stared at Jason, you could see all the pain boiling underneath his surface. You wondered what he was thinking, what the hell he was churning over in that intense brain of his - but you didn’t dare to ask. 
You knew that he needed to be held right now - in every sense of the word. You knew that he needed to be cared for the way he had cared for your wound, pushing past the pain in order to heal. You wondered if he would lay down and bear it or if he would continue to fight you. 
You were the one to bravely step forward. Though Jason was tempted to ask you to leave, that thing inside of him yearning to marinate in his isolation because he deserved it, he pushed it down. He let his hands naturally come to sit on the plush comfort of your waist as you put a gentle touch on both his shoulders, leaning into his body ever so slightly. 
You laid your forehead on his cheek, right next to that ugly bruise that had been left on him, and he let out a contented sigh as he felt your warmth envelope him. For the first time since his feet had touched the ground, he felt calm. He felt safe. 
You smoothed a hand across his shoulder, and raised your head, using your touch to gently tip his face toward yours. He quickly realized that your intention was to kiss him. And something ached in his heart - something painful and longing. He knew that it would not be needy and haste with the intention of pile-driving toward sex like your other kisses had been. He knew that it would be the metamorphosis of your relationship that he was not prepared to go through. 
He nuzzled along your forehead, gently stopping you. 
“Please don’t do this.” He murmured quietly into your skin. 
He knew that it would break him. 
He knew that this was the moment - like Gatsby reaching up toward the stars - this would be the moment that he was tied to you forever, damned by his love for you. Only, much different than Gatsby, he wasn’t destined for some grant fate if he didn’t have you. He was on a one way path to a messy death, and he was determined not to take you down with him. 
Tears pricked the edges of his eyes at the thought. 
You pulled back, just enough to properly look him in the eyes, and your own tears formed when you saw that pathetic puppy dog looking back at you. 
“Why not?” You demanded, much sharper than you intended. You knew he was fragile and you didn’t want to upset him any further than he already was. 
“You know why.” He replied, his voice barely scraping above a whisper as the emotion clutched at his throat. 
Jason wanted to hold onto you forever, but he was also a realistic person. He expected that any minute now, you would rip away from his arms and charge out the door, entirely angry with him, and this would finally be over. You would finally be safe from him - safe from any nasty fate his life could conjure up for you. 
You hated what he was asking of you - asking you not to care for him anymore. As if you could somehow switch it off. Impossible. 
“I meant what I said.” You repeated yourself, still entirely firm in this conviction. “I’m not gonna let you go that easily.” 
You leaned in, planting your lips on his in a light kiss. A pained sigh ripped through you when he didn’t make any moves to kiss you back. 
“Jason, please.” You whimpered out desperately. “If you get to bandage my bullet wound, then I get to do this.” 
Jason wanted to spell it all out for you, plain and dirty. He wanted to get angry, he wanted to scream. He wanted to rush along the inevitable. He wanted to tell you what a poison he was to the world, that he deserved to die and you deserved better things. But he had the utmost feeling that you wouldn’t listen. 
“Please, stop pushing me away.” You whispered against his lips. 
Instead, he listened to your plea. He let himself indulge in this selfish softness for once. 
He reached up and grabbed your jaw, pulling you into a firmer kiss, declaring every ounce of passion and terror that he was feeling in those moments. You answered it all right back - digging your fingers into the shoulders of his shirt, letting out a hot huff against his cheek as you leaned into his body. 
He would never be perfect - but he was yours.
...
Final note: yes, I used to be @/pinkchubbiebunnie. That is still my username on AO3, so if you saw this fic posted on there, it is my fic. Please do not accusing me of plagiarising fics if you see this, because this is my own fic. This is my new blog. Feel free to follow me if you’re interested in my fanfiction and thoughtful discussions of the media that I enjoy.
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In Defense of Marinette
I like Marinette. While there are many valid criticisms of her writing, the same can be said for literally every other character and she's actually doing pretty well given that she's the main character. After all, in a show where consistent characterization is an ongoing issue, the one with the most screen time will probably be the one who's the biggest victim of the issue.
This is heavily exacerbated by the rule that supposedly governs Miraculous. Namely that, in each story, Marinette must make a mistake. Or, at least, so says the head writer:
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I really do not care what this guy says on Twitter or anywhere else. I only care about what's in the show because, if you have to go outside the text to understand the text, then you have no idea how to tell a good story.
However, unlike many of the tweets that I've seen, this one isn't some BS bit of lore. It's a writing rule and it has substantial backing in the text. It's extremely rare to have an episode where Marinette comes out smelling like roses and that's a problem because Miraculous has over 100 episodes. In other words, to follow this rule, the writers have to come up with over 100 ways for Marinette to be wrong so of course she's going to come across poorly. Why would you do this to your main character?
It's extremely common for kids shows to have a "lesson of the day" element to them. Someone always needs to learn something, but I've never seen a show misunderstand the assignment so badly. Learning a lesson is not the same as doing something wrong.
It's been a while since I watched the 2010 version of My Little Pony, but it really leaned into that whole "lesson of the day" thing and it actually knew what it was doing, so I'm going to talk about it briefly to discuss things that Miraculous should have done.
The first thing to note is that MLP had an unambiguous main character - Twilight Sparkle - but Twilight was not the one who learned all of the lessons. She had a pet dragon and a crew of five friends who would, occasionally, be the ones to learn the lesson because there were lots of lessons that simply didn't fit Twilight's character. Instead of warping Twilight to make the idea work (cough cough Ikari Gozen cough), the writers just let someone else have the spotlight for a bit.
This is an excellent way to build out your cast and Miraculous had plenty of opportunities to do it. For example, Lila should not have been Marinette's issue. The fact that Lila hates Marinette could have certainly stuck around, but the one who takes her down and learns to investigate her sources? That should have been Alya. A liar is the perfect enemy for an investigative journalist, but a poor enemy for someone who shines as a battlefield commander and overthinks when she's given too much time.
Another way that MLP would teach lessons was to have someone other than Twilight or the main crew cause the issue that they then had to deal with. This leads to one of the best moments in children's television:
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And, frankly? Marinette deserves a moment like this. That poor girl has been through hell and is never allowed to make the right call when it really matters. The show will even completely rewrite its lore to make her fail (see: Strike Back). That is such an awful thing to do to your lead! Shows about female empowerment should include women feeling powerful and, no, Lila and Chloe don't count!
Also, the show is literally about Gabriel taking advantage of people who are upset. You don't need to have Marinette make a mistake to shoehorn in a life lesson. Akumas are life lesson fodder and season 1 actually seemed to get this. I'm not sure why they switched gears to "Marinette is the star and, therefore, must always be wrong."
The final way that MLP taught lessons was to have Twilight do something wrong because having your main character do something wrong is a totally valid way to teach lessons. It just shouldn't be your only way because you know who is always wrong in children's media?
Villains.
They wrote Marinette like a villain.
And a large part of the fandom hates her for it because of course they do.
You're not supposed to like villains.
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This is more of a rant, but something that still baffles me about the show is, The Collector being the ONLY episode besides the last few S5 episodes where the main heroes get ANY significant leads on who the main villain might be (ignoring Chat Blanc and Ephemeral, because those were more Gabriel’s luck strike than anything).
I understand why they lifted suspicion from Gabriel initially, but Master Fu should’ve 100% doubted the “he can’t akumatize himself” claim at some point later on (seriously, Gabriel only had to make an akuma, detransform, and renounce Nooro), but with how incompetent he was as a Guardian, I’m surprised he could even make the “Grimoire owner = Hawk Moth” guess. And the MULTIPLE TIMES he went into the Agreste mansion, no progress. The LEAST he should’ve done is ask Adrien about the whole ordeal with the Grimoire - Adrien stealing it from his own father should at the very least raise some questions.
(A bit tangential, but a headcanon I have is, the suspicion falling on his father back then is what made him want to know what Ladybug is up to at all times - it doesn’t excuse his romantic advances towards Ladybug or his S4 behavior, but I think it did contribute heavily to the whole Syren fallout, even if some of it was just Adrien being grumpy for no good reason. Of course, this wasn’t Ladybug’s fault, and Adrien didn’t have the full context for the accusation when the audience did… so that’s another thing I blame on Master Fu, he seemingly never clarified anything to Adrien about the suspicion of Gabriel being a genocidal maniac)
And after that… the one to make progress is Mr. Plot Device Felix. In SEASON 4!!! And the only thing they could come up with was Felix seeing the miraculous because Gabriel’s tie slipped - a gigantic win button handed to him on a silver plate (though admittedly, his plan of tearing Gabriel’s pants was pretty cool).
Just remember, the main drama of Season 5 was the romance between Marinette and Adrien, and trying to stop the psychopath from recreating the world.
Really shows that our heroes have their priorities straight.
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