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fanaticalthings · 1 year ago

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I really like the idea of the bat kids designating Dick and Jason's apartments as sibling gathering spots but for opposite reasons.

Sibling needs some comfort? Some eldest daughter advice? A shoulder to cry on or just a lil getaway spot from the chaos of Gotham? Dick's apartment is perfect.

But if a batkid wants to complain, maybe wants to talk shit about Bruce, or maybe even wants to discuss a lil felony in a judgement free zone? Jason's place it is.

And I like to imagine that while Dick readily keeps his doors open and reminds anyone that they can drop by anytime, it's the opposite for Jason.

Dude's got his place riddled with traps and locked up to the high heavens. He makes it obvious he doesn't want visitors, and vaguely insinuates that there are bombs rigged somewhere in his apartment so there's a always a 50/50 chance you might get blown up if he's feeling particularly bitchy one day.

But does that stop his siblings? Absolutely not. Unlike Dick (who assigns himself as the guiding older brother), Jason has been forcefully labelled as the older sibling you go to if you need to complain and stir up havoc. The hundreds of traps in his place mean nothing. And it's worse because Jason is never prepared for when someone drops in.

-----

[Jason, 3 hours into his sleep, blearily waking up to a weight on his chest at 4am]:

[Damian, perched atop him, eyes dead-centre locked onto Jason without blinking]: Hello, Todd-stop screaming it is unbecoming-I just came to tell you that father won't allow me to adopt another stray I found on patrol.

Jason, half-asleep and like 70% sure he's hallucinating: Wha-

Damian: I need you to blow up his car.

Jason:

-----

[Jason, arriving home after a 6 hour patrol, exhausted out of his mind, turning on the lights]:

[Stephanie, previously baking brownies in the pitch black darkness before Jason arrived]: Oh hey! Just thought I'd drop by, y'know, for fun.

Jason: Bruce yelled at you again.

Stephanie: Bruce yelled at me again.

And yes, while most of the time, it ends up as wholesome sibling bonding, sometimes the other batkids just feel like inconveniencing Jason just whenever, because what are siblings for?

[Jason waking up and seeing all of his traps and security systems disarmed and very deliberately broken in a way where he'll have to replace all of them instead of being able to reactivate them]:

[Jason, immediately dialing his phone angrily]: Tim, I swear to GOD-

-----

[Jason giving himself a rest-day and cooking some meals]:

[Dick somersaulting in through the open window unannounced (he missed his brother)]: Whatcha up to, littlewing? :>

Jason: GET OUT-

-----

[Jason casually reading a book, feeling a sudden chill up his spine]:

[Cassandra standing in the corner without so much as an exhale, watching Jason intensely. Who knows how long she's been there]:

Jason: Are you here to kill me

Cass:

Jason: Just make it quick.

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aroseforyounme · 3 months ago

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Cw: child abuse-verbal/emotional slightly physical, depression, disassociation, self-esteem issues

notes: caleb x non mc!reader; unrequited love

Part 1 Part 2

'Why,' you wondered, watching the two of them up ahead in a world of their own, 'was I even invited?'

You weren't planning on going out, the half eaten dinner on your dining table and the cued up movie on your phone could attest to this. You were planning on losing yourself to horrors of the fictional kind and try your absolute best to not wallow on your terrible luck in love.

And yet he had called. And like a fool you had answered.

"A fair," he'd told you, and you swore you could hear affection in the chuckle he'd thrown your way, "want to come with?"

And you. Foolish and hopelessly in love you. You had to say yes.

You should have realized that he didn't meant just the two of you-should have remembered that where there was a Caleb, there would always be a MC. The two of them were attached at the hip, orbiting around one another as if just being one step away from each other was too much. Most would think it was just Caleb, but it was MC too. The two of them hovered, touched, stayed glued to each other.

It was sweet, sickeningly so. The sort of sweet that gave cavities and famous poets would write heartsick poems about. It was something closed, intimate, a sort of story with a beginning, middle, and end. A story with two main characters and a love that blossomed and grew steady across different seasons.

And you, background character Y, were meant to stand idly by and let their story unfold in small chunks and then all at once.

So again, you wondered, kicking a loose rock and watching it skip across the street, why the hell did they invite you?

Your first meeting wasn't necessarily ideal. You had been home alone, staring out the window when a baseball crashed through and hit you square in the face. You remembered the crunch of bone, the way you flew back slightly. You remembered the way someone had yelled and the hands that had cradled your head and then nothing else.

You had come to in a hospital, staring up at the ceiling as your irritated mother told you all about how she had to come home early from the gala and deal with the mess you had caused. You remembered the way her hand tightened on your wrist, deep blue nails digging in. You knew she wouldn't do anything more than bruise and so you didn't try to snatch your hand away. Instead you let her tighten her grip, staring at that ceiling and wondering at the fact that you honestly couldn't feel your nose.

The doctor had come in at some point, but you processed their arrival through a heavy fog. A concussion. A broken nose. Something about a care plan, something about rest.

Your mother had nodded agreeably to the instructions, throwing in jokes to make the doctor laugh-feel more at ease. She had shed the crabby countenance she always seemed to have in your presence and slipped into her role as loving mother. It dropped the moment the two of you got into the car. She had snapped at you three times to get into the car-had huffed in irritation and snatched the seat belt from your shaky hands in order to clasp it. You hadn't said a word, still floating.

When you got home, they were standing there. There were two of them-a young boy and girl around your age. You had seen them around, but you hadn't actually ever talked to them. They seemed overly insular, only really talking to themselves and one other boy before he'd moved away. You remembered the way the boy stood slightly in front of her, his posture straightening the closer the car got. His smile was so apologetic you almost felt like you were watching one of your mother's performances. It was a little too practiced, a little too perfect. Your mother blew right past them, muttering about the broken glass and her ruined plans, but you stopped in front of them, curiosity making you wait-assess.

The girl had turned to follow your mom's path, her eyes furrowed. She made an abortive move, as though to follow her, before she stopped, biting her lip with anxious energy. The boy, however, had looked at you. You realized, with a jolt, that his gaze had not moved from you from the moment you had entered your driveway. His eyes seemed to burn with a sort of knowing that made you want to simultaneously shrink away and bask in the attention.

"Hi," he had said, his smile still quirked in practiced apology, "I am so sorry about the ball. Are you okay?" The words were rehearsed, so plastic you could feel the insincerity coating every syllable. He wanted this to be quick, to end this interaction and get back to what he knew. You could hear the role you were meant to play in his question. You were meant to say something simple. Easy.

A concussion. Your broken nose a blot on your face. The bruises you could feel blooming under your eyes.

You said nothing, squinting at the boy. His smile stayed in place although you could see it twitching just slightly. You forced your answering smirk away.

"Yeah! Sorry about your face and also the window! Caleb literally jumped through the window after we saw you fall (and that maybe made the window break even more)! We didn't meant to, I swear! Caleb tried to grab your head before it hit the floor but it was too late! And the vase! We-"

A sudden shriek filled cut through the rambling of the girl in front of you.

"-we may have also possibly broken a vase." She finished, her voice sheepish.

Your mother yelled your name. A sharp sound that had you turning your head toward the sound and away from the two kids in front of you. You sighed, your headache worsening the longer you stood there.

"It's fine," you had said, your voice flat. You didn't look at them as you made your way towards the door.

"We can pay for the damages!" She had yelled out suddenly and before you could take another step, she was in front of you. She pulled out her hand and in her palm you saw it.

A crumpled up bill. A singular dollar.

You remembered the silence. The way she looked up at you beseechingly, wiggling the dollar as though it would make it more enticing. You remembered the boy-Caleb-sighing and walking over to her and closing her fists around the dollar, arguing with her. They had kept going back and forth but you hadn't cared about a single thing they'd said.

It was ridiculous. What was a dollar supposed to do to fix a window and your mother's most priceless vase? (Her words, you knew for a fact she had 4 others that looked exactly like it gathering dust in storage).

And yet, despite your mother's screeching growing louder, despite the fact that your headache spiked the longer you stood there, despite the way your entire face ached.

You laughed.

It had hurt, but it was a pain made dull by Caleb's confusion and the girl's (who's name you now definitely needed to know) answering grin.

"Don't worry about it," you told her, "it'll be fixed in a second." As soon as you stepped into the house really. Your mother wouldn't let you rest otherwise. You smiled at them, really and truly, ignoring the way your nose started to bleed.

Your mother screamed again. It was time to go.

"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Caleb had asked, genuinely sincere this time.

"Yeah," You remembered telling them, lips stained red by the blood trickling from your nose, "I'm always okay."

You thought that would be the end-that they would go back to their world of 2 (and occasionally 3) and you would go back to staring listlessly out windows or sleeping the day away, trying to get rid of the perpetual fog that surrounded you. Silence would once again envelope you, only to be broken up by your mother's infrequent and not at all welcome, visits back home.

You were wrong.

At first it was just MC. She would come often, sometimes dragging that other boy-Caleb-with her, sometimes alone. Her chatter would would fill the space around the two of you. She didn't seem to care that you didn't speak too much-unused to having someone there who wanted to actually listen. She spoke enough for the both of you, anyhow and you were content to listen, to let the chatter breathe life into your sometimes too quiet house.

Caleb came in bits and pieces-the real him that is. Oh, he was a constant physical presence, hovering right behind MC and staring at you with too sharp eyes. But the initial versions of him was shallowly polite. He'd laugh when prompted, make a joke to fill the space that MC would sometimes leave for him. But he was never truly talking to you-never really present with you. His body was present in the space between the three of you, but his attention, his focus was on MC.

And that was fine. You had found his attention to be too intense, his perception too much. Whenever MC made an offhand remark about your mother being gone, his eyes would flash with something close to understanding and you found yourself tripping to make a quick excuse, not yet ready to have the truth of the matter pulled out in the open.

It was in those moments that his focus would shift, his deep purple eyes would flicker to you and you knew that he knew.

The fact that he was just waiting for you to acknowledge it made it worse.

You remembered the first time you made him laugh-actually truly laugh. It had just been the two of you-a first since MC and Caleb were generally attached at the hip. But she got held up at home and had apparently pushed Caleb out the door and told him that he absolutely needed to come over and tell you that she couldn't make it today.

You had stared at the phone on the counter in confusion before turning to him. The only thing he could offer was a shrug. The two of you stared at one another in awkward silence before you sighed, shrugging yourself and asking if he wanted to play video games. His eyes lit up for the first time you'd met him and he agreed.

He beat you. He beat you so bad it was so embarrassing. By the 5th win, you could feel the smug energy radiating off him and in a fit of embarrassed rage you tried to push his controller out of his hands. But you missed. You don't even know how you missed, but you missed him entirely and ended up falling face first onto your floor.

He looked down at you.

You turned your head and looked up at him in astonished silence.

The game loudly chimed that you were last place and Caleb was, irritatingly, first.

"Listen," you started, hands flying up to stop what you knew was going to start, "don't even-"

He laughed. No, he cackled. Loud guffaws escaped his mouth as he pointed down at you and you could feel embarrassment warming your cheeks. But beneath that, way way down inside to a point that you refused to acknowledge, you felt something else.

Pleased.

"Stop laughing!" You yelled, but all it did was make him laugh harder, tears gathering in his eyes. With a huff and a smile you tried to hide, you rose to your feet, sitting on the couch and watched him try to pull himself together. You didn't notice the smile you'd tried to hide blossoming across your face, small and warm. You didn't notice that your voice had gotten soft, fond almost.

"It wasn't that funny."

And when he stopped laughing, when he wiped the tears from his eyes and looked over at you, he smiled back. Wide and showing just a bit too much teeth. Something that was wholly and completely his.

It was real.

"Are you okay?" He had asked, chuckles spilling in between the words.

"Yeah," you had said, and something unfortunate had clicked into place for you, although you didn't know it yet, "I'm always okay."

He had opened up more then, started coming over on his own sometimes with an excuse to beat your ass in games again. And you'd let him in each time, bickering over the controls and the game itself until one or both of you were laughing. Inevitably he would wander towards the kitchen, humming neutrally as he picked apart your meager offerings.

(Your mother never truly went grocery shopping and you didn't know how to cook so you were surviving off instant meals and snacks).

He never made a comment but you felt bad all the same.

And he noticed, because of course he did.

That was when the random food drops off started. He would come over with containers in his hands, saying something about how he and his grandmother made too much and they could not keep eating left overs, MC would kill him.

The first time he brought a container over, filled with food that you remembered offhandedly saying you wanted to try, you almost cried. Your hands were trembling when you took the container, your eyes stung and you couldn't speak past the lump in your throat.

But he didn't need words. He didn't need anything. He had placed a hand on your head, not ruffling it like you'd seen him do with MC. No, he just placed it softly on the top of your head, a grounding presence.

(That must've been the moment you had fallen in love. It had to have been).

Their duo didn't become a trio. Not really. They were still Caleb and MC-still a planet and it's moon orbiting one another over and over again until the end of time. It was just that sometimes-once in a while-they would open up and let you hover uncertainly in their gravitational pull.

You didn't think of it this way at first. You were honestly just happy to be included-to feel something beyond the steady chill of being a ghost in your own life. You had been drifting for what seemed like forever and they pulled you down, dragged you into the present.

You hadn't minded that you were always the one walking a step behind them if the sidewalk only allowed enough room for two. You hadn't minded staring at their backs, an audience member to their two man show. You hadn't minded being their spectator. Not if it meant that you get to bask in their warmth-in their glow.

In his glow.

It was vibrant and you found yourself addicted to it. You didn't think you could go back to the quiet-the stillness-you once found comfort in. The silence had become too loud, unwelcoming. You were no longer accustomed to the way it would press against you-once soothing, now stifling. You didn't want go back to the shade you once were, so you clung, stubbornly refusing to see what was right in front of you.

A leech, that was what your mother had called you. And maybe you were. You hadn't cared though, hadn't cared so long as they continued to share some of their heat with you.

But it shifted as you grew older-came into quiet focus and something in you, something small and rebellious, took notice.

The first number on your new phone had been his. He'd plucked the phone out of your hands the moment you finished setting it up and input his number, smiling over at you when you squawked in (pretend) indignation.

"In case you need me," is what he had said, tossing the phone back and raising a singular eyebrow at you. You'd scoffed at him at the time, refusing to acknowledge the soft flutter in your chest at his words.

"And if I never call?" You remembered the way his smile had shifted, his teeth flashing as he let out a slight chuckle.

"Well then, I guess I'll just have to call you, huh?"

"Careful," you murmured, your voice tinged with something you refused to name, "say stuff like that and people will get clingy."

You remembered the way his eyes had flashed with something, how his voice became an octave lower. He'd said it so quietly as thought it were meant to be a secret shared between the two of you. And wasn't that thrilling? Wasn't that hopeful?

"Well," he whispered, his voice a faint caress against your cheek, "wouldn't want that, now would we?"

He called you every other night at 12:45am on the dot. You weren't sure exactly why that time, but you found yourself putting an alert on your phone to make sure you were in the right headspace to receive his call. You would wrap yourself in your blankets, and settle yourself right beside the window sill. You liked to lean on it while staring out the night sky, his voice a steady rhythm in your ear.

You talked about everything and nothing. It would jump from the weather to your plans for the future to random hypotheticals the two of you would throw at one another. You found yourself opening up-truly opening up-in those quieter moments. In the cover of night, you'd open your mouth and spill secrets that only the dreary walls of your house had witnessed.

You spoke of a father that left before you could even walk. You spoke of a mother that blamed you-that wanted you to repent for the crime of being born. You spoke of fears that couldn't be given a proper name-of feeling as though you were one step away from disappearing completely.

You spoke and he listened.

And then he spoke.

Of death. Of a catastrophe that changed his life and the fallout being an orphan. Of feeling like he's simultaneously too much and not enough. He spoke and while you knew there was a lot he wasn't saying, you took what he gave and cherished it all the same.

The day may have been reserved for her. His expression so loving, it caused you to turn away. But the nights, the nights were reserved for you; this was something you could point to for anyone that dared to undermine your presence in his life.

Until you were reminded of where you truly stood.

It was a stormy night. The sky opened up and you watched on your spot in front of your window as rain pelted the ground. Lightning flashed across the sky and you quietly counted to 5 as thunder boomed. You smiled a little to yourself, staring up at the night sky.

Your alarm chimed, telling you that it was 3 minutes to 12:45. Caleb would be calling any minute. You continued to watch the lightning streak across the sky, almost losing yourself in the moment.

He didn't call.

Not that night, nor the next, or the next. Through it all the storm raged on.

You had asked him, fiddling with your jacket and head turned to where MC was saying goodbye to her other friends. You had asked him what happened-if he was just falling asleep early.

"MC doesn't like thunderstorms," he had said, face angled to watch her, "I was with her. Didn't think to give you a call." You blinked turning to look at him, finding him already looking at you.

A leech, your mother had called you. You hadn't wanted to listen to her but staring at Caleb in that moment, that was all you could hear reverberating in your skull.

"Ah, okay," You managed to say through a throat coated in molasses, "that makes sense."

There was no storm that night. He called you at 12:45. You lasted 2 rings before answering.

#'I'm always okay' you say...you know. like a liar #caleb x non mc reader #lads caleb #i haven't written in years oh my goodness #you could probably tell i wrote this in one sitting because it was very much stream of consciousness going on

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