garbblogan

[garbblogan]

It's beast boy's turn!

I'm overall happy witth these. I imagine bb as someone fond of really comfy clothes but mostly he sticks to his uniform since that allows him to transform at will. He's just a silly little guy, and i like him like that.

[garbblogan]

All my reactions to this TerraJinx masterpiece:

The roller coaster dives into its third loop and Jinx closes her eyes, the wind rushing her face and Tara laughing beside her. The climax of the loop tips them completely upside down and Jinx opens her eyes.

The world fractures. The solitary, brief moment stretches like putty into a plural of humid, dragging seconds as dread locks fingers around Jinx's spine.

No.

She stares down at the sky, past their feet dangling in the coaster car. It's neon pink, clear, not a cloud in sight. It's also traced in jagged lines, a mess of shattered pottery. Jinx cranes her neck to watch the ground, looming and twisting closer as time slams back into place and they fly forward, ever forward.

The coaster exits the loop and pain blooms in the back of Jinx's skull, pooling like a bloodstain, and she grits her teeth, closing her eyes.

No. Not here, not now. No.

Jinx opens her eyes. They are sideways. Tara's hair whips across both their faces. She screams, hands in the air, and the moment it takes to register that it's thrill, not fear, could stop a heart.

Not here. There is so much that could go wrong. Every structural support groans with potential disaster. There is so little Jinx can do. The sky is broken. The tracks are interrupted.

Not now.

Jinx closes her eyes and draws in a breath.

With a jolt, the coaster shudders around a final curve and slows. The loading bay slides into view, and Jinx almost breathes out. Instead, she keeps her knuckles wrapped around the handles on her lap restraint and mentally flips through the handful of things that could still go wrong. The ride isn't over yet. There's still the attendant, standing with hip cocked at the controls. The kids in line leaning against the gates. The tracks.

"Jinx?" Tara shoves her hair from her face, grin faltering. "Hey, are- are you okay?"

A whoosh of air washes over them as the coaster slides into the station. The clamor of gears, of brakes releasing and people talking envelops them. A click. The lap bars release.

Jinx stands. The world tilts. She curls her nails into her palms and strides robotically to the exit. The pink pulse of neon disaster drags behind her, catching at her shoulders as Tara snatches her backpack and jogs to catch up. "Hey, what's-"

Shades of pink flare. The exit gate swings wide onto a walkway quickly melting. Hordes of faces crumble, smiles breaking into pieces. The little hairs at the back of Jinx's neck lift. She is too close to the ride.

The soft tang of electricity settles on her tongue. It's the millisecond before a lightning strike. Jinx is lucky, until she isn't.

She grabs Tara's wrist and she runs.

The restroom door slams against the wall, someone jumps out of their way, and Jinx's knees hit cold tile. She throws up. The stall door jerks open and closed again and Tara is at her side. She pulls back Jinx's hair, fingers cool on her neck. Then leaning, she reaches behind them and the stall lock clicks quietly into place.

It's horrible. It's always horrible, and it should be that much worse to have a witness. To be seen brought low to the public restroom floor, gripping the toilet. To be seen by Tara, of all people, her palm worried between Jinx's shoulders. But through the acid, and the blaring pink, cuts cool relief. If Tara is here, holding Jinx's hair at the back of her head, then she is not out there, standing near, or under, or riding on top of tons of twisted steel. Other people are. But not Tara.

It should be small. Please let this one be small.

It takes being empty, forcing her breath as if through a straw, for the pink to fade. For the pain to drip toward the back of Jinx's skull like water down a drain.

"Just breathe," Tara whispers next to her ear. "It's okay. You're okay," she's saying, but her eyes aren't sure. Whether it's perception, or just fear, Tara is not looking at Jinx like she got sick on a roller coaster. Tara's looking at her like something is really wrong.

It could have been.

Jinx drops her forehead to the toilet rim. Disgusting. She's already so gross. "Karmic backlash."

Tara's hand stops. "What?"

"You screw with luck and luck screws with you. I-" A leftover wave of nausea grips Jinx's world. She squeezes her eyes shut and Tara drops a hand to her waist. Through the haze, Tara's touch feels almost... protective.

"Is something going to happen?"

"Not anymore." Jinx starts to shake her head. The room spins and she grits her teeth. Irritation creeps into the space left behind by pain. The actual backlash is over, this is just the crummy aftermath. Which has no right to linger when she's thrown up everything that could possibly be in her system. "You have to be kidding-"

When the dry heaves are finally over and her stomach stops trying to wrench itself inside out, Jinx sits back and realizes her whole body is trembling. Her clothes are soaked in sweat. They're sitting on a sticky bathroom floor and Tara just watched her throw up. Multiple times. Mortification burns red-hot down Jinx's spine and she plants a hand on Tara's shoulder, ready to tell her to go.

Tara kisses her head. She pushes Jinx's damp bangs back from her forehead and presses another kiss to her temple. "I'm sorry..."

Jinx swallows then wishes she hadn't. Her face burns as she clears her throat. "You shouldn't apologize for things you didn't do."

Tara shrugs a shoulder. Her body is curled around Jinx's. Even here, even now, she leans in. Jinx's heart beats fast.

"Luck is like guitar strings and I've broken them, before." Jinx's voice comes from somewhere else, maybe thirty seconds in the future when she's a bit more conscious. "I pull them one direction, and things go my way. So I keep pulling. The farther I pull, the more the tension to snap back the other direction grows." She thinks Tara is holding her breath. "I tempt fate and it bites like a rattlesnake."

"Are you okay?" Tara whispers, breath warm on Jinx's cheek. "I mean- Does it hurt? Are you still...?" Her thumb sweeps this little repeating arc over Jinx's arm. She's 90% sure Tara isn't even aware of it.

"I'm fine." Jinx closes her eyes. She opens them. Thin, snaking pink lines traverse the roof. The plumbing. The map of Jinx's skin. The cracks do not widen. Nothing glows. "Everything is fine." Disaster averted, quite literally. This time.

Tara nods slowly. It's not much of an explanation. She doesn't push. Instead, she tucjs her hair behind her ear and drags the backpack into her lap. "Water?"

"...Yes."

Tara hands it to Jinx. Then she hesitates. Her fingertip lifts to Jinx's cheekbone. "This- This happens to you a lot."

Jinx traces the stickers on Tara's water bottle. "I wouldn't say a lot." It's if she tries to prevent the disaster, anyhow. Like jumping in front of a bloody train.

"And you... don't tell anyone."

"Why would I?"

"Jinx..."

Jinx tilts her head and takes a sip. "Yes?"

She expected a scolding. Disappointment, at least. Not Tara setting her head on Jinx's shoulder and wrapping her arms around her waist. "Thanks for telling me."

"I-" Jinx touches Tara's hair. Messy and soft. "Of course."

"You feel better, right?" Her grip goes lax. "Frick, is this too- ?"

"Stoppp." Jinx pushes Tara away. "I'm fine, it's an occasional and annoying side effect of being able to whatever I want all the time. Worth it, if you ask me." She rolls her eyes. "I'll feel three times better once we get out of here."

Tara leaps to her feet, grabbing the door latch.

"Wait!"

She pauses, watching as Jinx smoothes her shirt and fixes her hair. "You look amazing." Tara's eyes are ridiculously blue and her smile is crooked and Jinx rolls her eyes again, harder.

"Do not lie to me, Markov." She flicks Tara's arm on the way past and Tara ducks to kiss her shoulder. They both ignore the lady with painted eyebrows who stares at them in the mirror with horror and confusion as they walk by.

Outside, Tara bursts out laughing. "Did you see her face??"

"Maybe she's mad because we didn't wash our hands." Jinx fishes a stick of gum out of Tara's pocket.

"'Harold, they're lesbians!'"

"I think you should win me something."

Tara looks at her solemnly. "Whatever the fuck you want. What do you want?"

"Well, what are you good at?"

"Not baseball." Tara winces, rolling her shoulder. "Or anything where you throw a ball, really."

"Hm." Jinx tips her head to a booth set up around a tower, target, and a comically oversized mallet. "How strong did you say you were?"

Tara flicks deepwater blue eyes from Jinx to the game. Her smile skips several heartbeats. "No clue. Wanna find out?"

"Let's." Jinx slips past Tara and sets a dollar on the counter.

The booth manager gestures grandly to the mallet. "Step right up!"

Jinx mimics the gesture, and Tara laughs softly.

Her long fingers wrap comfortably around the handle, lifting the mallet to her shoulder. She scuffs at the ground with a dirty sneaker, then sets her feet.

Jinx takes her in. Head to toe, every line of Tara's frame speaks to lean power. She holds her head like a hero. Jinx lifts her fingers to her lips and lets out a long whistle, the kind that makes Tara jerk her head up and send Jinx the look. The 'oh my gosh not in public' flattered and flushing look.

"Encouragement," Jinx calls, leaning up against a neighboring booth.

"Riiiight." Tara ducks her head back to the game, ears still red and a smile tugging on her lips. She takes a couple practice swings. Rolls her shoulders.

The man at the booth is trying not to roll his eyes.

Jinx is constructing a snarky comment to put him in his place when Tara winds up and drops the mallet.

Well.

Jinx will just let the bell at the top speak for them. It chimes high and clear and final, and there is pride in Tara's shoulders, and Jinx takes note.

It's a good day. Thank god it's a good day.

"The answer?" Jinx loops her arm through Tara's, squeezing her bicep. "Off the charts."

Grinning and ducking her head, Tara looks everywhere but at Jinx. "Kory could do better. And Vic, or honestly, even Vic."

Jinx captures her gaze. "I don't care."

Tara's blinks quickly.

The booth manager props his elbows on the table. "What would you ladies like?"

"Hm..." Jinx makes a show of studying the options, her hands on her hips. Plushies, inflatables, and motorized toys blur together. They're the last thing on her mind. She's too busy being so very aware of Tara standing just behind her. "Winner's choice."

"Uh..." The gravel crunches softly as Tara steps forward. Her chin rests on the top of Jinx's head, leaving Jinx fighting a smile. Tara is exactly the right height for this. Their bodies fit like the bars in a lock. "I like the giant snake."

"You would."

"Do you want something else?"

Jinx leans back into her. "Just you."

Tara's hand tightens on Jinx's hip. "Uh, we'll take the snake."

~~~

The music is low, reedy violins, and Tara tastes like cotton candy and sweat. Jinx drops a kiss below her collar and Tara takes in a sharp breath.

"For the record, this is sappy." Letting her head fall back to the seat, Jinx lifts her eyebrows at Tara. She takes a moment to notice the level of tension in Tara's shoulders. Whether there's hesitation in her body language, as she straddles Jinx on her hands and knees.

Tara smiles, eyes a little distant. "I mean, these things are supposed to be." She lifts her head, gaze wandering over the sea of pink, white, and red decorations. "Nobody actually comes here for the ride."

"Take many girls down the Tunnel of Love, heartbreaker?"

Tara looks down at her. "No... Just- just one."

How... How is she supposed to respond to that? How is Jinx supposed to say anything at all when Tara holds her hair back, and kisses her forehead when she's all gross, and pretends that the extra water bottle clipped to her bag is there for no reason in particular, certainly not for her girlfriend who can go entire days without drinking anything.

What is Jinx supposed to do? What is she supposed to say? She's running out of ways to play this casually.

...She's running out of reasons to want to.

Jinx threads her hands in Tara's hair and tugs her down. A muffled sound of surprise escapes between their mouths, but Tara moves a hand to Jinx's waist. Her touch is warm, her fingers long and sure in the way that makes everything they do look sexy, but Jinx wants more than that. More than catcalls and clothes on the floor.

She breaks off the kiss. Tara laughs, forever a fan of her impulsiveness. The sound dies out as Jinx pulls her in again. But not for a kiss.

Time slows and Tara holds very, very still as Jinx holds her head to her heart.

The heart-shaped boat bobs around a curve in the heart-shaped path, gliding under a heart-shaped arch. The violins croon. Jinx has forgotten how to breathe.

This is horribly uncomfortably, she can feel her face getting redder by the second, and why on earth did she do that?

The boat bumps the edge of its narrow channel and they both jump, and that settles it. Jinx is out of her mind. Why couldn't they just swap shirts like normal people? She loosens her hand from Tara's hair.

Except that as she does so, the boat settles back into its normal path and so does Tara. It's instant. In one moment her shoulders drop, muscles melting like golden honey into Jinx. She winds her arms around Jinx's waist and, turning her head just slightly, touches a kiss to the notch between Jinx's collarbones.

Tara is impossibly warm. Jinx's head swims. She counts four more turns. The music fades and the light begins to change, and as they sit up, Tara smiles almost shyly and there is something suddenly very wrong with Jinx's insides.

They step into sunlight. They're holding hands, and they're wearing the same clothes they were when they got on, but Tara is all over Jinx. Her breath covers Jinx's skin, her smile is in her bones, and Jinx can still taste the way Tara's hands slid over her curves.

They've had sex. More than once, and Tara wasn't even her first. And yet Jinx stands in this daylight, listening to Tara convince her to try a tower ride that drops three stories, and she has just been touched for the very first time.

[garbblogan]

make grocery shopping fun!

[garbblogan]

Reactions to this excellent TerraJinx story:

Tara did this.

She did this.

Jinx is flushed, hair splayed electric pink against the white pillowcase, in the dim of the room, and she's laughing, fangs out. Laughing. Tara made- Tara made her laugh.

Laughing, so it must not have hurt, so she must not be upset, so Tara must be doing things okay-

Tangling her arms behind Tara's neck, Jinx pulls her close. Warm chest to warm chest. The heat rushes straight up to Tara's ears.

"You're marvelous." Jinx kisses the tip of her ear and tugs on it, just once, with her teeth. "Penny for your thoughts."

"You're good? Are you- you're doing good?"

Laughing again. It's short and so- just so full of happiness, like she's really at ease here, like she's having a good time and maybe there's nowhere she'd rather be? "You're checking in on me? Sexy. And sweet."

That shouldn't make her choke the way it does, but it does. This isn't Tara's first time, not at all, but it's her first time with her, and she just wants to... it should be... Is she doing this right?

"The real question is..." Tucking Tara's hair behind her ear, Jinx settles back against the pillow to look at her. "How are you?"

Tara's heart drops. She's doing something wrong. Something tipped Jinx off, something's making her think... "Great! I- No, this is- It's great. I'm having a great time. Here. With you. Did you-?"

Jinx grips her hips firmly, fingers spread, and fear flashes in Tara's throat but then Jinx rolls them over and Tara's shoulder hits the bed. The mattress bounces slightly. It's like wrestling, that was like when she and Kory tussle on the living room carpet except... except she and Jinx have very minimal clothes on (is Tara supposed to take those off? She thinks she's supposed to take those off.) And they're in bed. And it's completely different, actually, that was a horrible analogy, but what would it be like to wrestle Jinx, sometime...?

Jinx shifts closer and Tara stiffens, ready.

But she just tucks an arm under the pillow and lifts her eyebrows at Tara. They're lying eye to eye. "Pillow talk." She smiles and it's so gentle it hurts, it might as well be those sharp teeth to Tara's carotid. "Did you like that?"

"I- Yeah."

"Do you have any idea how pretty you are?"

Are there right answers? "I- Probably not?"

There. There, she's... laughing again. That's good. That, above all else, has to mean everything's been good enough up to this point. That it's okay. "I like you. A lot. And the answer is no, you have no idea how pretty you are."

Jinx taps Tara's nose. Tara blinks. "Is it- Wait, how much?"

"Hm, what units do they use for attractiveness? Let me think..."

"No, the-" Tara catches her breath. Should it be this hard to breathe, right now? She's not used to feeling this way, but she's never done anything like this with a girl before. This is... she's not sure how it's supposed to feel. "The liking. You said a lot? It's a lot?"

She shouldn't have asked that. Why did she ask that? Because now the teasing, and the smirk playing at Jinx's lips are gone, and she is watching Tara with beautiful, serious eyes.

"I like your smile," Jinx says softly. "And the dirt under your nails. And the way you squint half the summer because your sunglasses never last more than a week."

Her fingertips are tracing Tara's wrist, slow circles. Tara wants to cry.

"I like you too," she manages.

"Is it too soon? Did we rush this?" Jinx searches her face. "I feel badly that you didn't know how I felt yet. Tara, I would never sleep with you..." Hand on Tara's low back, stealing her breath, but she forces herself to inhale. To let the warmth slow her racing heart. "...If I didn't care about you. Deeply."

"I know that." She didn't know that. "I- I'm the same, actually." She isn't. "So, it's fine? I did okay?"

Jinx is looking at Tara like she can't quite figure her out, and hell is she pretty, furrowed brows and careful eyes and locks of loose hair that don't quite curl, and it's all a color that makes Tara feel like she has a fever. Like she could touch the tip of her tongue to Jinx's eyelashes and taste bubblegum candy.

"I liked it," Tara says. "Let's do it again."

And it takes earnest eye contact, the right jokes, and exactly the right words, but finally Jinx rolls over her and runs light, testing kisses along Tara's neck.

Tara closes her eyes. And now she's the one laughing, relief flooding her head, her hands moving with confidence and direction now.

If she's on the bottom, it's so much easier, so much more okay. She's not hurting her, then, Jinx wants it and she's leading and Tara isn't doing something wrong because if she did Jinx would just get off. Lean back. Push Tara away. Leave.

Tara presses her palms into the hallows of Jinx's curves and closes her eyes, tilting her head to take the kiss.

It's okay.

[garbblogan]

My reactions to this adorable fanfic:

It's still magic, it's still electricity, it's still impossible, endlessly improbable, that Jemma has chosen her.

Tara stops at the kitchen threshold, the book folded in her hand and her chest under thin t-shirt breathing hard through fierce lungs, fierce wonder. She looks upon god, bathed in late morning sunlight, pursing her lips and bowing her head over some academic publication. Everything smells of coffee and butter.

Tara lets the yearning in her ribcage win, crossing the vestibule between her and the altar, their breakfast bar, setting aside her book and wrapping both arms around Jemma. She would kneel, if she could. It's enough to bow her shoulders, arch her body around her and kiss her soft neck.

Jemma tilts her head, welcoming the embrace. Touches Tara's arm where it cradles the firm, prominent swell of her stomach, as if Tara's trying to do her part in carrying their unborn child. "There's coffee beside the fridge."

"I love you," is Tara's whisper, raspy in its just-awakened honesty, rough in its emotional depths.

And Jemma's smile is soft. Her fingertips the whisper of hazy summer breeze winding through Tara's hair. "I know."

She takes Jemma's wrists in cool, long fingers that Jemma has heard called those of a guitarist, or a pianist, when they have touched neither.

Rather, the hands of a surfer, boarder, drummer, lover, take her wrists and angle them to her mouth.

Jemma twists to face Tara. "Come here." A thrill jars her as Tara leans into her outstretched arms, slides her fingers under Jemma's thighs, and lifts her onto the counter. She's dizzy with it. Exhilarated.

Impossible to tell whose mouth makes contact, only that it's made. Jemma cups Tara's jaw, just dipping her own head to bridge the narrow gap between them. Tara keeps her hands on Jemma's thighs, gripping and pulling herself in, craning her neck to catch Jemma's mouth.

A laugh breaks sudden into the air, Jemma's as Tara tugs her off the counter and onto her hips. The impulsive motion jumps her heart into her throat like the drop on a roller coaster, dragging a delighted gasp from her throat. Tara grins, flipping her hair and stepping back from the counter, hands clasped under Jemma now. She goes smiling into the next kiss.

Jemma presses in, trusting Tara's capable hands, strong enough to pull her from the edges of self destruction and certainly strong enough to hold her now. She fits their bodies together as close as the curvature of her stomach allows, locking her ankles behind Tara's back. Winding her arms around Tara's neck, one hand fisting in her hair and eliciting a muffled whimper.

Tara has taken them all the way to the wall, Jemma realizes at the slight impact of her lover's slim shoulders against it. Barely worth noticing, until Tara frees her mouth with a gasp. Smiles up at her. "Hey." That crooked smile, the darling chipped tooth. "Good morning." Thumb rubbing circles on bare thigh.

"Oh, I'd already gotten the message." Jemma brushes Tara's hair out of her face, and watches her laugh. Sunshine. Pure sunshine. She is such a softie, when you get down to it. Startling, really, how so few seem to realize.

Tara relaxes, leaning against the wall, as though this were a comfortable, everyday sort of position. Far from Jemma to complain, though. Not when they are so close Tara's breath lifts her ribcage gently, firmly, against Jemma's stomach on every inhale.

Jemma shifts her hips, on a hunch it may make her easier to hold, and Tara's body language dips into concern.

Her grip tightens, one palm traveling to support Jemma's low back. "Um. Are you comfortable?"

Jemma cradles her face. Kisses her mouth long, hard, marking Tara's lip lightly with her teeth as she leaves. "Yes."

Tara's runs her tongue over her mouth, erasing the pinprick of blood. Using the wall at her back, she lowers them slowly to the ground, apparently unconvinced. Her other hand drifts to Jemma's back as well, short nails scratching lightly.

Jemma purses her lips and studies her. The careful neutral expression. The tell-tale ghost of a line between her brows. The way she focuses on the motion of her hands and not meeting Jemma's gaze. Jemma taps two fingers twice against Tara's chin, jerking her attention back.

"Tara. What is it?"

She flushes. Sort of shrugs, eyes already beginning to wander.

Jemma reaches behind herself for Tara's hands and moves them to her middle.

She freezes, attention cemented in place now, her emotions pulled out of hiding to swirl, vibrant and anxious, behind her deep-water blue eyes.

Jemma closes her hand over one of Tara's, flattening them both against her stomach. "Talk to me."

Tara stares at their hands. "I-" She squeezes her eyes shut. Blows out a deep enough breath to drop her shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Jemma runs her thumb over Tara's knuckles. "Mm."

"It's... I thought I was ready."

A slight stirring flutters deep in Jemma's belly, the sort only she can detect. The sort she rarely notices anymore, thanks to all the stronger, more focused movements that have mostly replaced them. A stray thought passes through-- she wonders how likely it is that their daughter could decide to kick at this precise moment, under the precise location of Tara's hand, and whether that would prove helpful or difficult. "Are you scared?"

That lovely half-smile, sheepish now.

Jemma squeezes her hand. "Good."

Tara's smile turns a bit more real, the corner taking on the same confused tilt as one eyebrow.

"Do you think I'm not?" Jemma asks gently, lightly. She runs her free hand over where her formerly toned midsection --which she had frankly been quite proud of-- has instead considerably rounded out. A small price, in her opinion. "This is... It's terrifying."

As Tara watches, a flicker of something like disbelief crosses Jemma's face. Something like wonder.

Tara is in wonder too, and she bends to prove it. She presses a kiss to Jemma's belly, to where the love of her life's body protects, grows, and carries their kid, and I am in awe of you, of this, is what the kiss says. You amaze me. In so many ways. In all the ways.

Jemma clears her throat. "I love you too, you know." And sometimes her voice comes out brittle around the edges. A little fragile. And the crazy thing is no one else could tell. No one else could feel how much she means what she says, how it is bravery, and going against every protective instinct she has to say it and mean it.

It's Tara's freakin' honor. To be the one who gets to hear that and understand it. She sits up and opens her arms. And as though she has anticipated this, Jemma is already moving her legs out of the way so she can sit sideways on Tara's lap, where she can rest her head on her shoulder.

Tara wraps Jemma up in her arms and kisses her temple. Jemma closes her eyes, and exhales, and washing over her is this sense that she doesn't have to be strong right now. She doesn't have to defend herself here. She can... She can be...

Well, she can be the one who's... who's protected. It's...

She trusts her.

[garbblogan]

i dont know anything about beast boy but i like drawing fuzzy guys and he fits the bill

[garbblogan]

Did a Disco Doodle :)

Yes, I do ship Beast Boy and Terra ;)

[garbblogan]

All my emotions reading this top tier angst:

Blood. There’s… so much blood. Pouring from his arm. From the stump where his elbow used to join his forearm.

“Hold him still.” Tense. Roped together with sheer grit, iron netted under every square inch of Robin’s skin. “Cyborg, I said hold him–”

Victor curses, hands floundering. Drowning in an attempt to find a hold beneath it. Beneath the blood. “I’m trying, man, I’m–”

Garfield screams.

The sound sends birds from the treetops. Squirrels across the crackling forest floor. Animals, everywhere, fleeing the screech of his pain.

It shudders through Raven’s bones. Up her arms. Rattling in her skull. Bouncing between red-fleshed walls of pain. It’s borrowed pain.

She bites into her tongue as Garfield’s back slams into the jagged ground. His head lolls. He moans. It’s almost a word. Almost a gasping, desperate name.

Raven lifts her head. Her eyes wander the wall of splintered trees. They fall on the gap between trunks, the figure standing at the entrance of the clearing. At the foot of the path that leads out of this little pocket of horror.

Tara hovers halfway between here and nowhere. Between falling to her knees at Gar’s side in chest-heaving sobs, and… Turning around. Fading into the woods.

Raven sees the thought cross her hazy eyes.

“Dangit, we’re losing him!”

Beneath Raven’s hands, Garfield’s limp body rocks with their effort. With the force of Robin wrenching the tourniquet until it cuts creases into green skin. With the thundering impact of Victor’s massive, wide spread hands pumping a shallow, narrow chest.

Raven closes her eyes.

“Dangit, dangit, no!”

She reaches into his mind. Plunging into an arboreal growth of a different kind: The jungles of a childhood in Africa.

“Come on, man, don’t do this to us, don’t you dare–”

Raven stops in front of a tree. You know you can’t stay here.

The boy nods. He swipes a soft brown hand at his nose. I know. But it hurts.

Raven holds out her hand. Leave that to me.

He reaches for it. And as her fingers close around his, she flips the switch.

Heal.

Garfield’s eyes fly open and his back arches, hips bucking and– A wet sound fills the air.

An awful, wet, squelching sound.

Victor flinches from the spray of blood, wordless, garbled horror escaping from his throat. His metal clangs as he scrambles across the ground.

Robin’s on his feet. Blood drips from his cheek. His chest heaves, his hands crimson and hanging still at his sides as he stares. At the end of the tourniquet, lying limp and torn. “Raven.”

She blinks. The carnage fades to black. Her hands are still on Garfield’s leg. Warm with blood. She opens her eyes. His shattered body reappears. “Richard.”

Robin’s words catch in his throat. “What did you do?”

Raven follows his gaze. From the midst of the blood, deep within a stump of shattered bone and crushed flesh… Something emerges.

Garfield’s body twists as he lets loose a sound that is not a scream, not a wail, not any sound that a human throat is capable of. Something animal and primal that mangles his throat and goes on and on and–

The alien heat of Kori’s arms snags Raven by the waist and drags her clear. Robin fumbles with his belt, shouting for the extra sedatives in the car. Horror drops Victor’s jaw and peels his eye back to the white. Sticks snap behind Raven.

These are quiet. Quieter than Raven’s heart beating steadily in her neck as her eyes trace the long, unfolding tendril whipping at the shattered tip of Garfield’s elbow. Growing. Thickening.

A spatter of blood hits Raven’s forehead. Kori’s arms tighten. Raven’s breath rushes in and out of her body in steady, tangible waves. She can picture the air in her lungs. In… Out…

Straightening. It’s straightening, now. Branching out, smaller tendrils sprouting from the end…

Crack.

His cry cuts out.

Raven’s eyes close. She sinks back into Kori’s grip as silence takes over.

Ten seconds before the crickets remember their mantra.

Twenty before Robin thinks about moving, the leaves shifting under his boots.

Thirty before–

Raven opens her eyes in time to see Garfield’s chest flood with breath like it’s his first.

A short, ragged, unmistakably human cry slips from his throat. He struggles to sit. Gasping for breath, as he digs his fingers into the soil. As he turns massive eyes to his lifted, quivering hand.

His right hand. The one Cinderblock just ripped off.

Crick-crick…

The back of Raven’s head vibrates as Kori clears her throat. “Friend Gar?”

His sideswept hair and the angle of his head shadow Garfield’s face. His hunched shoulders ripple as he turns his hand to check the other side.

It’s pale. A nearly translucent green. A bleached, hairless alien limb a dozen shades above normal, with deeply wrinkled fingers.

The hand quivers. Moves.

Every knuckle of every finger cracks in a cascade like gunshots as Garfield folds them into a fist.

“Are–” Kori draws in a breath. Preparing to plow ahead, even as Robin stares stock-still and revulsion flickers in Victor’s eyes. But not Kori. She peers directly at Garfield, head slightly cocked. “Are you well?”

Garfield laughs. Raven can’t help flinching as it breaks the air, thick and wet and choking. There is a purple-mottled bruise growing over the center of his throat.

Unfurling his fingers, Garfield watches them peel away from the wrinkled skin of his palm. A long string of clear mucus follows, clinging to his fingertips. Garfield doesn’t look up as he nods, slowly.

“And I was just going to ask someone to give me a hand.”

Raven closes her eyes. Opening them, she turns her head.

The path is empty.

~~~

“Hey–” Garfield holds up his hands and laughs. A splotchy, jigsawed line marks the connection of his right forearm to his elbow. His arm looks grotesque and stitched on. It seems to be functioning normally. “–I’m just glad I didn’t grow another head.”

“Indeed,” Kori agrees quickly. Robin and Victor exchange glances.

Tara stares at the floor and rubs the back of her neck. She hasn’t moved from the chair in the corner. Not when Garfield was lying limp and unconscious in the med-cot. Not when he woke up complaining and whining for a drink of water. Not a word, not a spark of interaction from her since she returned from her hours-long ‘run’, soaked to the bone and gasping for breath. The walls shake as the storm continues to rage overhead. Neither she nor Garfield have looked at each other once.

“I mean, this is a good thing.” Garfield twists his hand in front of his face, eyes darting across it. “I didn’t lose my hand! Okay, I lost it, but I got it back, anyway.” Something flickers behind his gaze, then vanishes.

Raven narrows hers.

“We’re glad you’re okay, too,” Robin finally says. He gestures vaguely and uncomfortably. “How does the… rest of you feel?”

Garfield blinks wide eyes. “Huh? Great!” He bubbles into another laugh. “Come on, you guys, this is good news! I didn’t die! My hand is literally good as new. Stop acting like it’s a funeral.”

Tara’s fingernails tug at the stitching in the hem of her t-shirt. The end of a thread slips loose. She latches onto it and pulls.

“Man.” Victor breaks the silence –and the mood– with a chuckle of his own. “How did you do that? Grow half an arm?”

“Dunno.” Garfield flashes his teeth. “Guess it’s just basic biology, huh?”

“No.” Raven can’t help herself. “It’s not.”

“Bones, muscle, organs. Blood.” Garfield ticks them off on his fingers. “Humans got ‘em, animals got ‘em. And I change my bones and muscles all the time. So why not grow them?”

He has no idea what images that brings to mind.

“It is truly renewed?” Kori drifts into the air, leaning forward to hover over the cot. “Returned and restored and operative?”

With a smirk, Garfield offers her a handshake.

A gleeful squeal bounces off the walls of the small room. “It is completely normal!” Kori jams her fingers between his and Garfield’s teeth snap into a smiling grimace.

“Uh, Star, it’s– it’s still new, y’know–”

“Excellent.” Kori spreads his fingers to align with her own slenderer, longer, and more elegant versions. “Most impressive.”

Garfield laughs awkwardly. Tara watches a spot on the tile.

~~~

“You, uh, think it will always be– splotchy, like this?”

“I don’t know.” Raven tosses the sleeping bag on the floor.

“Bet it’s just ‘cause it’s new.” Garfield’s teeth gleam and his eyes flick across the wall, seeing something distant. “In a week it’ll be good as new. Heck, it’s already good as new, it just doesn’t look good as new.”

He laughs, that hesitant half-chuckle everyone has been hearing constantly since the incident. Since he got his arm ripped off and grew a whole new one.

“Hey.”

Raven sighs and lifts her head to meet Garfield’s baffled gaze as he leans over the edge of the bed.

“What are you doing?” His eyebrows wiggle and furrow. Beneath them, he pointedly flicks green eyes from the books stacked beside the sleeping bag to the pillow in her hands.

Raven tosses the latter at the head of the sleeping bag. “Setting up camp. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Well, duh.” Garfield rolls his eyes. “But, uh…” He refastens them on Raven. “Why?”

“You nearly died.” She sits back on her heels and reaches to detach her cloak. “We are not going to leave you alone all night.”

Garfield’s eyes wander away again. “Where’s Tara?”

Raven’s hands slow. Folding the cloak, she sets it aside and traces Garfield’s gaze to the window. It’s opened, inviting in the cool breeze of a quiet night on the bay. The sweet smell of after-rain seeps damply into skin and fabric alike.

The low hum of a passing motorboat fills the space between them.

“Out. She left for some fresh air.”

Garfield nods slowly. The lighthouse beam trolls across his blank expression. “And she’ll be back when…?”

“I don’t know.” Raven shakes her head. “She didn’t say.” She slides her feet into the sleeping bag. “But as soon as she gets here, you’re her problem.”

Is it mercy? Or just willing ignorance, dragging the lie out of its box time after time. Day after day. Ignoring the way Tara slows on every open road, turns her eyes to the sky at every plane. The way there is something in her smile. The catching, flickering expression every time Garfield reaches for her hand.

The way her every disappearance could be the last.

“Yeah.” Garfield smiles. He sits back against his pillow. “Dude, am I looking forward to that. Sleepover with Tare, getting rid of you.” He folds his arms behind his head and closes his eyes. The jigsaw gleams stark and glossy in the gray light. “Win-win.”

“Don’t make me change my mind.” Raven lifts her hand and across the room, the lamp’s colors invert. She closes her fist and the light vanishes. “Would you like to be alone when you grow your second head?”

The call of tired seagulls. Low and mournful. Garfield shifts in the hospital cot.

“No,” he doesn’t quite laugh, and Raven closes her eyes.

Breathing out, she lifts her hand and finds his waiting. His fingers lace between hers in half a heartbeat, tightening flush against the back of her hand.

Raven lowers her fingertips to rest against his knuckles and complete the grip.

Garfield curses softly. “Dude, you’re colder than death.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

“Y’know, maybe you should be the one hooked up to a heart monitor.”

Then he shuts up.

Their breath stays regular and shallow. The gulls keep crying outside.

“She loves me, you know. I– I know she does.”

Raven watches the spiral shadows of the ceiling fan.

“It’s not that.” Awkward laugh. “It’s not that she doesn’t love me, it’s– it’s something else, and–”

He trails off. Water swells in the pipes, then fades.

When Garfield speaks again, his voice whispers rough-edged with emotion.

“An arm. An arm, Raven, what’s wrong with me? What am I– what the heck am I made of?”

“Bones,” she answers. The fan keeps turning. “Muscle and blood. Same as the animals, same as the people.”

“Right.” He laughs. Bitterly. Raven closes her eyes and lets the honesty of it wash over her. “You’re the one who said it’s not basic biology, that this isn’t…”

There it is. There is, finally, the break.

“It isn’t normal.”

“No.” The slick polyester material squeaks under her hair as Raven shakes her head. “It’s not.”

“Gosh, Raven, you suck at pep talks.”

“And the rest of us are all so normal, too.” She sighs. “You’ll never fit in again.”

The shadows turn in twenty minute circles as the lighthouse peers in, then turns away. Garfield’s choking laugh turns ragged. Raven’s arm falls asleep.

“She loves me.” He sucks in a shuddering breath. “I thought she loved me.”

“She does.” Raven drops her gaze to the chair in the corner. Near invisible in the dark. “It’s something else.”

His sobs quiet, eventually. Around the same time his fingers slip from hers as he slips into the silence of sleep. Raven watches the black shift past midnight and, eventually, lighten toward gray dawn.

And somewhere, camped in a wooded mountainside, a girl with rain in her hair lifts her eyes to the distant, glimmering lights of a tower far away. And she thinks about not coming back

[garbblogan]

All of my reactions to this masterpiece:

The door closes them into utter silence and Dick lets out a sigh. It fills the small space. Tara heads straight for the fridge and he keeps standing there, taking a minute to...

To something.

Cool grey light from the windows washes over the old furniture. The middle of the afternoon. They'd spent all night at the biggest, most important library in Europe, Dick's fingers gliding longingly over ancient spines, even more ancient titles, and he hadn't read more than a paragraph. Breathlessly. Hidden in the corner, knowing every second he wasn't keeping watch was a second they were in danger. He couldn't tell you a thing about it now. The paragraph he'd read. The book title.

He just remembers the ten year old euphoria of getting lost in a place you just belong.

His throat burns and Dick coughs. Gripping the left side of his ribcage, he steps into the bathroom and spits blood in the sink.

The sink cold and unyielding beneath his grasping fingers.

Tara wraps her arms around him and presses her forehead to his back. "Don't get blood in our sink," she murmurs.

Dick swallows. "I won't." Her grip is too tight, fingers digging into his bruises, but when he reaches for her hands, she is gone.

Footsteps into the next room.

He drops his hand back to the edge of the sink and sighs again. The sound of his forehead against the mirror reverberates gently across his skull.

"It's fine. It's just a little bit. I'm fine," Dick announces to the apartment when he steps back out.

Tara barely nods. Fingers curled around a bundle of curtain.

Dick holds his breath, heart beating in time to his own footsteps, as he crosses the room to join her.

There is nothing to see outside. Nothing, besides quaint, old-fashioned downtown streets. Kids running around and parents patiently, or not so patiently, shopping. He can almost hear the Jingle Bells blaring. Christmas. As seen from three stories away.

He lets out his breath and it fogs the window. "Do you remember when we were fourteen?" (When she was fourteen. When he was sixteen. When she almost brought down a cliff killing a massive scorpion that was hunting her. When they first met.)

"We never were." Tara's eyes flicker across the scene from a dream. Because it is. A dream. A movie. They're spectators. "That was someone else."

"Yeah..." Before, before everything. Before impossible choices and an endless parade of death. Before he broke Batman's solitary rule. Before falling and hitting the ground so hard he broke every bone in his body. Before his body, faced with no other option but stubborn life, healed into one he didn't recognize.

Before he ever would have thought to touch her.

"We grew up, broken, together," he wants to say to her, sometimes. "I think the threads of you are laced into me now. Like vines up a house." He'd never say it. He dreams about it over and over. Those exact words.

"Do you regret it?"

It wouldn't have taken him by surprise, three years ago. Two. It does now.

"I... No. Yes." Dick swallows a mouthful of blood. "I don't know."

This is what being laced together means. Knowing the exact pattern, the way her shoulders and chest move as she breathes. You are supposed to use your diaphragm, down in your stomach, not your other muscles. That's what natural, relaxed breathing is. He could name the muscles she uses when she's scared. When she's angry. When... when it's now. When it's... he doesn't know what to call this.

His ribs ache and Dick grasps the windowsill. Leans into it, closing his eyes into the pressure up his shoulders. He is here. He is here.

The sun is not shining and they are not arguing about whether they should decorate a palm tree or a plastic evergreen. Or maybe they are. But he isn't. They aren't here.

He is.

Dick inhales and straightens. He slips his fingers into Tara's hair, hand resting on her cheek. "Hey. Come on."

An hour ago, he watched her slit a man's throat. One arm trapping him against her chest in a chokehold, one hand gripping the blade. Dick helped her get rid of the body. They got down on their knees and scrubbed the floor, shoulder to shoulder. Not a single patron heard. Not a one knew. He watched her hit a concrete wall. The second time that day blood ran down her wrists. He wiped them clean with his wet shirt in the bathroom because she wasn't going to.

She tears her gaze, slowly, from the window to stare at him like he's crazy.

"Tara?" Voice quieter, almost pleading. His hand is cold and her skin is warm. He can never get the thermostat high enough, can never keep his bones from filling up with ice. He could. Technically, he could crank it up. He could say to hell with it, and knock the temperature up to seventy-five.

But He would know. Somehow, He would know.

That's the part that Dick hates. The knowledge that's it's not the cold. It's not living in basements and cabins and constant winter. He could be in Miami.

...He could be in L.A., and he still wouldn't be warm.

Tara closes her eyes and lets out a breath, harsh in the silent space, and she is here again. For a little while, she is here again.

"Hey." Dick can feel himself smiling. "Hey," whispering into her hair.

She shakes her head and presses against him. Leaning forward, so she doesn't have to step closer.

Please be here, he tries to make his hands say. I want you here. I want you.

"Come on," Dick asks one more time. There's a great big chair in the room, not a recliner, but some old fashioned swivel rocker, with an old fashioned pattern. He laces his fingers through hers and tugs them toward it. There's reluctance in her step, like waking up from slumber.

Dick lets go, sinking into the deep chair, something small and childlike in his chest flaring to life in joy, simple amusement at a simple comfort. There was a chair like this in Alfred's study. He would spin, and spin, and spin for hours.

Tara hovers, one hand on the arm of the chair like she's trying to figure out what it is. Her shadowed eyes find Dick's.

He's smiling again. Like he just can't help it. "Tara."

And it's exactly true, what she said. That they were never fourteen, never sixteen, that those were two different people, because Terra and Robin are not the same as Dick and Tara.

She sinks into him and he wraps her up as best he can, covers her in as much warmth as someone freezing to death alongside her possibly could.

Robin never would have held her. He never would have stood at the window with her and looked out at a world they didn't belong in, and understood. He never would have understood. Robin would have smiled the winning smile he gave every girl and told her she was great to have on the team.

And Terra would have believed him, for twenty minutes. And she never would have wanted to kiss him.

"Don't leave me," and it's a plea. She's begging.

"I couldn't," and it's honesty. "I don't even know how."

Robin would never know how this felt, and more than that, he wouldn't get it. He wouldn't see the importance. He wouldn't even see the appeal. He knew what he wanted, and it was right there in front of him, a path he was sprinting down in full confidence that it would take him exactly where he wanted to be.

It wouldn't. He'd never get that, either.

Dick loops his arm behind her shoulders and kisses Tara. Their lips are both chapped, but hers are peeled white and red, from an entire night, week, existence of picking at them, stripping the skin off as fast as it returns. 'I love this, too,' he wants his mouth to say. 'Even this. Especially this.' He can't tell if the tang of blood is his pain or hers.

But they are laced together. Vines up a house. There was one wall, and they had to climb it, and if they were going to climb it they needed two threads, not one. They needed...

He could leave, and he'd still need her. That's the horror, that's the beauty, that's the fear. He could leave and he would be halved. He isn't whole alone, not anymore. Leaving wouldn't be cutting off his arms, his legs, it'd be cutting off his skin.

He's crying now. Things are getting out of hand, he's crying now, a mess of salt on his face, on hers, on her hands and her mouth, and this is where things get hard to understand. Because he is too much. He cares too much, and she doesn't know what to do with that. He doesn't know what to do.

He isn't Dick alone. There is no Dick alone, there is just Dick and Tara. Vines up a house, so tangled and snarled as to be inseparable, if you took her it would kill him.

It would kill him.

Something would live on. Survive. Transform, again, become someone else. But Dick would be dead. And he's grown to really like Dick.

He doesn't want to die.

Robin was fine being alone but Robin had a choice. Robin didn't... Robin has no idea what he's been through. Not a clue.

He can't be that close. No one can be that close. They can share beds, and share lives, and share bodies, but he will never be allowed into her pain. She keeps them separate. His hurt here, in this box. Hers there, in that box. The boxes are made out of the same wood, at least in parts, they sit right next to each other on the shelf, nearly touching. But they stay latched and locked. If his fingers brush the box on the right, if he dares to OPEN his box on the left...

He can't. He just can't.

Tara plants her hands on his chest and pushes him away. Her feet hit the floor with a thud and she walks out.

Down the hall. Out. The apartment door slams under its own weight behind her.

Dick sits in the chair in the silence. The dark had already begun falling, sunlight giving in and giving up so early, but he... he hadn't noticed, until now.

It's always there, nowadays. Always on the tip of his tongue, and he thinks she knows. He thinks she might know.

It's the only time they're separated, really. They go to work together, go to bed together, operate around each other in the same space like two satellites in orbit. Until they get too close to touching. Because to Tara, it's a collision. It's a thundering crash, the smell of smoke and fire and wreckage and the dust of something that used to be but isn't anymore. It's a death sentence.

I love you.

He keeps almost saying it.

She keeps leaving.

They keep waking up looking each other in the eyes.

[garbblogan]

The bestie always fulfilling my RobTerra needs 💛❤️

The heat of her breath bloomed across his cheek.

“Your hair is getting so long.”

Dick grinned into the dark. Shifted closer, rolling his shoulders like that could wipe away the sticky sheen binding them skin to skin. "Kinda."

“No, seriously.” Her voice loud her body a whisper. The tips of her hair brushing his arm as Tara shook her head. He felt more than he could ever see. In the way her shoulders shifted under his hands. He traced the blade of her scapula. "When I say long, I mean looooong."

Dick laughed into the space between them. His heart beat hard inside his chest, pushing against the ribcage, making some room. "What do you want me to do about it?"

She was rubbing the locks between her fingers. And they were locks, thick and curling the longer they got. Tara wasn't wrong.

"Should I go for a mullet?"

A snort. She shoved his shoulder into the mattress. "No."

"Some guys can pull it off."

“I said no, no way.”

“You sure? I think I could be one of–”

She cut him off with a kiss.

Mouth warm. Soft.

A gasp escaped his lips when she pulled back. He heard the smirk. His eyes fluttered shut to imagine it. “Nuh-uh. Sorry. You’re good-looking and all, but…” He thought she could be wrinkling her nose. Making a face. “…not that good-looking.”

“Huh. So I am good-looking.”

Another push to his shoulder. Her hair across his chest again, striking as she whipped her head back and forth. “I didn’t say that.”

“Actually, you just did.” Running his hand through her hair, now. Tasting the honeyed, golden strands with his fingertips. Avoiding the knots.

Behind his eyelids, hers flutter closed. Eyelashes, a shade lighter than her hair, suddenly his whole world. “You could pull it back into a ponytail,” Tara muttered. “You’d look just like one of those anime…”

The words died. Dick's eyes opened into the thick, heavy darkness that only lived sixty feet under.

The illusion shattered with the moment. The heavy, buzzing industrial sound of a heater kicking on. The slam of a metal door down the hall. His room was not soundproof.

He never knew what it was going to be. What phrase, what memory, what tiny slip and stupid little detail brought them back to who they'd been.

What they'd done.

Dick settled back against the bed next to her. Muscles aching, skin set alight with a longing for ten seconds ago. For just ten seconds more. “Yeah.” Pain spiked through him at the sound of her thick swallow. “You’re right.”

She reached for him and inhaled deeply. Face buried in his neck. Taking in the scent of sweat and salt on his skin. Was she... was it a soft shade of almost brown she saw? Or was it...

And just when Dick was clearing his throat and picturing lush meadows- her back under the sun, tender grass teasing her skin, the wild boy under her woven from the same downy green that pillowed his head and laughing like a wildflower- Tara pulled back to kiss him again.

[garbblogan]

Teen Titans: Starfire (2024)

written by Kami Garcia art by Gabriel Picolo, Rob Haynes, & David Calderon

[garbblogan]

My entire reactions to this peak fiction:

She was never taught the language of love.

His lip is split and the blood is running down his chin.

Never taught how to hold. How to murmur. How to touch.

His mouth open. Fangs glimmering in wet shock.

She doesn't speak it.

His eyes wide pits of green fear. The hallway erupting, someone wrapping large hands around her arms and pulling her back.

So she speaks with her fists.

"I'll do it again," she'd said. "I will hit you again."

They're talking about moving her somewhere else. Putting her somewhere else.

His blood is still on her hands. They scrubbed them clean but her knuckles are stained. Her chest flushed with pride.

She was never taught the language of love. So she's sitting across the table from a beautiful boy, messy soft hair falling just right, and a bruised, swollen lip. And he won't look at her.

[garbblogan]

All of my reactions while reading this fantastic fanfic:

“What brings you here, anyway?” He tilts his head. “Who are you?”

“No one,” she says without thinking. Pulse spiking and palms going clammy, a moment later.

His eyebrows shoot up. “‘No one?’ Huh, your parents were certainly creative. I’m Gar.”

Flustered, she shakes her head. “Tara. My name is Tara. It’s just…” She folds her arms. “I’m not exactly supposed to be here.”

“But of course, the price of resources has skyrocketed. Our product, in turn, has been forced to…”

“How is your mother? Ever since I caught word of her illness…”

“I do relish the caviar. I believe our gracious hosts have opted for the Beluga sturgeon variety. It has a certain note of…”

It’s… It’s huge. Huge, and bathed in gold and silver, half-filled with whirling reds, and greens, and blues fanning out in full, elegant skirts. Spotted with crisply tailored tuxedos in shades of black and charcoal and white. Tables laden high and heavy with more kinds of food than she could imagine.

A shoulder hits her back.

Tara stumbles and flushes and catches her balance and turns around, but there’s no one there. Er– there’s lots of people there. People looking her way, wondering about the underdressed, unaccompanied, and awkward girl gaping like a waif off the street–

Tara forces one foot forward. The next. Step by step, and she’s ghosting across the edge of the echoing ballroom. Avoiding the tide. Struggling not to get pulled adrift into the sea of well-dressed, well-mannered bodies. But she can’t keep her eyes from wandering the room.

They’re all so tall, and confident, and dressed in silks and shades she’s never even heard of, talking about things strange enough to be another language, about owning companies, and kingdoms, and ships, and–

Tara freezes. Her heart lodges in her throat.

Gregor stands tall and proud, talking eloquently and energetically with a couple dripping with… diamonds. Those are diamonds. Gregor makes a point, tilting his head and lifting his eyebrows, and the red-handkerchiefed gentleman nods. An impressed smile graces his mustached lips. The lady next to him, color-coordinated with the handkerchief, looks ready to adopt Gregor. And Gregor, he… He isn’t looking this way.

Tara breathes out and shuffles a few steps back. She turns and ducks behind a pillar, careful to keep her movements casual and– and normal. This is normal. These things happen every day, she attends these things every day, she– she knows what she’s doing.

With long strides, she walks away from her brother. Ha, brother? Who? What brother? Don’t mind her, just keep talking, don’t look back…

Tara stops in the corner. A vantage point, where she can see– well, not everything, but most of it. But a lot of it. And…

She sags back against the cool, marble walls.

No sign of Brion. No sign of… of anyone else she knows.

Which is good, right? No one she knows, then no one who knows her. No one who can recognize and tell on her, no one who can get her into… trouble.

Seas, and seas drift by. Dress, after suit, after dress. Talking. Laughing. Back and forth, and all around, and no one– No one looks her way.

Why was she worried?

Tara curls her hand around the bruises on her wrist, squeezing her eyes shut as the pressure wells in her head. T–this was dumb. She’s risking Elodie’s wrath for this? Why did she even–

Rippling, care-free laughter rides the air. Above the clamor, above the static of nonsense. It rolls over her ears like a message, light and musical like a– like a river stream or something. Nothing like the false brass of forced belly laughs, or the broken glass chitter of a mouth-covered giggle…

It rings in her head. Bouncing off the walls of her skull long after it’s finished. Tara bites her lip and lifts her head. She pushes off the wall. She lifts onto her toes, peering over a hundred heads of perfectly coiffed hair…

There. A boy halfway across the room, dressed in a sea green tuxedo with his dark hair neatly slicked, his head tipped back.

Face still quirked in laughter to the amusement of the handful of adults stationed around him.

How old is he? About… could he be twelve? He… seems to be having fun. He seems to know how these things work.

He seems to belong here.

The boy opens his eyes. It’s too far to really see, but she thinks they might be green. And he… looks directly at her. And scrunches his nose in another smile.

Tara drops onto her flat feet. She checks over her shoulder.

No one in particular. No one looking his way. No one he could be… smiling at.

She looks back at the boy. He is looking at her, and he tips his head to the crowd around him, whose focuses have all shifted back to each other. And he rolls his eyes.

Tara’s heart thuds in her chest. A slow grin spreads over her face. She lets the tip of her tongue poke out, just for a second.

The boy crosses his eyes.

The sound of her own laugh under her breath startles her. Tara sets her finger on the skin beneath her eye and pulls it down, zombie style, and he…

Oh. He’s turning away. Nudging the shoulder of the man next to him, deep in conversation with a sharp-eyed, clean-shaven monolith. The boy says something. The man dismisses him with a gesture, never tearing his eyes or his attention from the conversation. The boy makes a face.

Tara glances around. She takes a step back, toward the balcony. It’s, um, it’s quieter out there, and less crowded, and there aren’t nearly as many people, or as much chance of getting spotted, and–

Surprise ties her in place as she takes one more glance. One more look over her shoulder that she shouldn’t. And sees the boy slip past the adults. And begin making his way across the floor to her.

Her drum of a heart takes up a pulsing rhythm again at the sight. At his hands in his pockets. At impossibly green, gold-flecked eyes gazing out beneath perfect dark hair, and perfect dark lashes. They are locked on… on her. And they sparkle.

He stops a few feet away. “Hey.” He rocks back on his heels. The smile never left his face. The best Tara’s ever seen, boyish and charming and shy, all wrapped up in a gap-toothed grin. “Where do cows go dancing?”

Something in Tara’s brain stutters. She blinks. “Excuse me?”

A sparkle. And a mischievous glint. “The meatball.”

There is the strangest, longest, briefest second, between his joke and her understanding, before the gold-inlaid floor fills her vision as she doubles over laughing.

When she straightens, it’s a new grin gracing his lips. Delighted. Relaxed.

“You came all the way over here to tell me that?” Tara shakes her head.

He shrugs, shoulders nearly touching his ears. “I–uh… Wanted to hear you laugh up close.”

Warmth floods her face and arms. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she lets out another laugh, this one nervous and not by choice.

She has never heard anyone say anything like that before.

“What brings you here, anyway?” He tilts his head. “Who are you?”

“No one,” she says without thinking. Pulse spiking and palms going clammy, a moment later.

His eyebrows shoot up. “‘No one?’ Huh, your parents were certainly creative. I’m Gar.”

Flustered, she shakes her head. “Tara. My name is Tara. It’s just…” She folds her arms. “I’m not exactly supposed to be here.”

Danger. Slipping from her lips. She checks over her shoulder, no one around, there’s no one around, right…?

Gar’s grin catches and pulls her attention back to him as it turns crooked, tugging on one side of his mouth. Revealing neat, white teeth. “A stowaway!” He holds out his hand, nodding to the doorway behind her shedding moonlight. “Let’s hide on the balcony.”

Tara stares at the offered palm. Her blood clamors in her veins, an uncertain marching band composed entirely of drums and cymbals.

“They’ve asked for my help upstairs. Just stay here.” Elodie had tied and untied the apron around her waist with a faraway look in her eyes. “Don’t go anywhere, and don’t talk to anyone. They’ll all be up there. Dukes, and earls, and countesses… And the last thing we need is you meeting the prime minister.” Her hand on the doorknob. Her mind on the dance floor. “Stay here.”

And she forgot to lock the door.

…But that doesn’t have anything to do with Gar. He won’t know unless she tells him, she won’t tell him, and everything will be fine. And the ‘don’t talk to anyone’… That wouldn’t even mean him, would it? Not Gar, with the beautiful eyes and the gentle smile. Not a boy her own age, just looking for some… Company? Fun? What is he looking for?

…It doesn’t matter. She’s knee deep as soon as they find out, anyway.

So Tara fits her fingers between Gar’s. And together, they escape into the crisp night.

The polite din of a party nearly two hundred strong fades into static. Tara hears her own breath, slow and shallow.

“Do you like constellations?”

She tears her gaze away from her hand, wrapped up in the secure, warm brown of his. He sees her looking and quickly lets go. Immediately, the North wind turns her hand cold.

Tara rubs it with her other hand and swallows. What was his question? “I– yeah. I love them.”

Gar looks at her like it’s a secret. Like the commonality is a shared shred of soul. “Me too. Show me your favorite.”

She folds her arms across the top of the banister, searching the skies for what she knows isn’t there any more. “Hydra. The sea serpent. But you can’t see it after May.”

“Funny.” Gar huffs a laugh. “We get that one in the southern hemisphere too.”

From the corner of her eye, Tara steals a glance. “The southern hemisphere?”

“I live in Africa. My parents are scientists.”

Her heart twinges painfully. “They’re here for the charity ball.”

He nods. “Why the sea serpent?”

Tara swallows. “I don’t know. I guess… Well, it’s the largest constellation in the sky.”

“Cool,” Gar says softly. Not good enough. He already knows that.

“It takes hours to rise at night,” Tara blurts out. “And…” She hesitates. His question ringing in her head. Why, why… “I like… how it does its own thing,” she finishes lamely.

“I like the Jewel Box cluster.” Gar hops up onto the railing. Like, actually sits on it, dangling his tuxedoed legs off the side and revealing rumpled black dress socks falling down his ankles. “It looks like four stars. Until you get a telescope and find out it’s hundreds.”

Tara bites into her lip. She steals a glance over her shoulder.

Half open doors, hesitantly admitting the night. It’s immediately drowned out by dozens of chandeliers and a ten piece instrumental band. There is no sign of her brothers.

Tara breathes out. And she turns back toward the stars, taking Gar’s hand and swinging herself up onto the bannister next to him. She pushes her hair out of her face. She asks, a little breathless, “What else do you like, Gar from Africa?”

His eyes shine stranger and deeper than the gaps in the galaxy. “Dude, so many things.”

“Tell me.”

Hours fall by, sand in an hourglass. The magnetism of his smile, his laugh, his casual attention draws her ever nearer. A black hole of infatuation. A night sky of potential.

It is worth every silent, locked-in hour that follows.

[garbblogan]

Spider-Man 2099 concept art from Across the Spider-Verse

[garbblogan]

Miles & Miguel 🕸 By Luciannys Camacho

[garbblogan]

The Anarchic Spider-Man! By Jhony Caballero

[garbblogan]

BB: Good news, we saw loads of cats on the way here.

Raven: What's the bad news?

Terra: They all had owners.