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thelightofthingshopedfor · 5 years ago

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Fic author ask meme

haha so @veliseraptor tagged me literally months ago, as in so long ago I have no idea when it actually was, and I didn’t get all my answers typed up until...now. actually a lot of them were typed up a few months ago and then I finally finished this yesterday on the plane home. no, I don’t know why either

Author Name: 100indecisions on AO3

Fandoms You Write For: it's pretty much all Loki at the moment and has been for the last several years. I've written for other fandoms in the past and I have others on my WIP list, but yeah, it's like 95% Loki.

Where You Post: everything is on AO3, and I do mean "everything" because I get obsessive about that sort of thing. I do still have an FFN account under ladymoriel and most of my fics are reposted there, although none of my most recent fics are because I haven't gotten around to digging up cover images for them. also FFN sucks but I crave attention/validation and there are still some people who only use FFN, so I'll get around to it at some point.

Most Popular One-Shot: for some reason “the state of my head” has 1,157 kudos on AO3, so I guess it would be that one.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: technically “the adventures of tiny Loki and Thor (and friends),” because it’s a multi-chapter fic (boy is it ever) and it has 1,020 kudos, but if we’re talking actual planned fic it would be “the kindness of strangers” at 623.

Favorite Story You Wrote: man, I don’t know. I’m partial to “I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart” because I like my headcanon and I think I structured it well, and “all this that is more than a wish is a memory” gets points for being the longest thing I’ve actually finished. but honestly I don’t know that I have a single favorite.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: haha well I'm sure there's been more than one, but if we're talking about the fic I was most nervous to post, I think that honor would go to my Grandthorki fic "I will kiss you till your breath is found," which is the most explicit AND most fucked-up fic I've written so far. I was nervous about...so many things with that one.

How Do You Pick Your Titles: probably 99% of them are song lyrics. sometimes I'll start with a specific song that's relevant to the fic itself in some way, but I also have a whole list of song lyrics that sound like good titles to me whether the rest of the song has anything to do with the subject of the fic. often I'll come up with a good lyric early in the process, just like "oh yeah I've had this hanging around in my list for ages and it works here"; otherwise, once I've finished or nearly finished a fic (or much earlier, actually, if I'm obsessing over an aspect of writing it that is...not actually writing, which happens a lot), if I still don't have a title I read through my whole list and make a much shorter list of titles that seem to fit this fic. if nothing from there seems just right, I’ll go hunting through my iTunes library and then Google for semi-relevant song lyrics. on occasion, though, the title comes first or otherwise shapes the direction of the fic, like with "I will kiss you till your breath is found"--I had a vague idea of what I might want to do, but it was very vague and I hadn't committed to it, and then I just happened to listen to some Sufjan Stevens and went "heyyyyy I know exactly what to do and it's terrible and I'm gonna do it, I have a title now, I have to do it"

Do You Outline: it depends on the fic. for long ones, at a minimum I'll write a bulleted list of plot points I need to hit, which often ends up being basically two or three pages of a zero draft that I then struggle to turn into actual prose...and then I often re-do the outline at least once or twice as I go along so I can compress it into something more useful that fits on one page and I can cross stuff out as I go. (if a list can’t fit on one page/view, there’s basically no way I can hold all of it in my head at once.) I often end up with shorter lists of scenes I still need to write and specific things to hit during revisions, too. for short fics it's not really necessary, although I often do still write up something similar if I've let it drag out over way too much time and I can't keep straight what I wanted to do with it. (don't be me.)

How Many of Your Stories are complete: welllll, as a rule I don't post WIPs because I know myself well enough to know that that way lies several different kinds of madness, so in general, my only completed fics are what's up on AO3, and everything there is complete. in practice that's not 100% true because I'm very bad at deadlines and I have a few different fics where I couldn't finish in time and I either posted the first chunk of the fic that still functioned as a self-contained story even if it wasn't the full story I'd planned to write, with the intention of properly finishing it later, or I did the same thing but worse because the part I posted was...not really a complete story. in my defense I've only done the latter a couple times, and in the case of "going down to nowhere" I really thought I'd be posting the rest soon because it was all written, it was just extremely rough, and for various reasons I still haven't gotten around to revising and posting the remaining 80% of the fic. (as far as the opposite issue goes, I have 0 finished fics that I haven't posted anywhere, because I'm too obsessive about being complete to do anything else. I think I do have one old, extremely short, very bad Lost fic on FFN that I never reposted to AO3 because I decided it sucked...and if we're being completely technical about it, I have some stories I wrote as a little kid that are technically fanfic because they featured licensed characters, but nobody wants to see those. all the other old stuff I haven't posted, including at least two Neopets fics, never got finished and that's the only reason I never posted them anywhere.)

In-Progress: uhhhh. well, this made me realize my posted WIP list is out of date, not because I've finished anything on it but because I have MULTIPLE short fics that were supposed to be QUICK so I figured I didn't need to bother putting them on the list and then they weren't quick because I am so fucking bad at 1) sitting down and actually writing and 2) finishing anything. But yeah, basically what’s on there.

Coming Soon: fuck, I don’t know. Half the fics on my WIPs list are ones I thought I could crank out in one or two sittings, AND YET. But I’d like to finish the rest of my Whumptober fic soon, because that one really should be pretty easy...and I’d also like to finish the short little Endgame fix-it I thought of on my way out of the theater, where 2012!Loki hops universes and revives IW!Loki...and then there’s the even older IW/Endgame fix-it that’s basically just “everything is fine because I say so, let’s have a little recovery”, especially because I’m like 90% sure that one’s almost done but probably some of it needs typing up and then it all needs stitching together...oh, and finally getting around to finishing typing one of two notebooks reminded me that the other theoretically short fix-it where the Guardians pick up both Thor and Loki is also nearly done, I just need to finish typing it. so...one of those, probably.

Do You Accept Prompts: in theory, although I...don't think I get prompts often enough to know one way or another? plus my brain is The Worst, so my general reaction to actually getting a prompt is basically "that's interesting but I have never had an idea in my life, ever, and apparently I'm not starting now", with an added element of social anxiety or something because it's Somebody Else's Idea and that puts a mental block on my ability to develop it as my own idea. so...anyone's welcome to send me prompts, with the understanding that I might well never do anything with it and if I do, it might take literal years.

Upcoming Story You’re the Most Excited For: I also don’t know. I mean, in recently typing up some older stuff (like the one where the Grandmaster decides publicly executing Loki sounds like a fun idea, from which I posted a couple excerpts recently) I got excited about those again, which is a good reminder of why I want to stay on top of my typing, but I don’t know if I’m more excited for one specific fic than others.

Tag Five Fanfic Authors to Answer These Questions: I have no idea who might have answered this months ago so I’ll just say that if you read this post and you want to answer these questions, please consider yourself tagged. yes, that means you.

#fanfic #writing #ask memes

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kineticallyanywhere · 7 years ago

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WIP Excerpt - World Walkers

So I have an outline for a fic where Roy joins Cindy and Cisco to hunt down an inter-dimensional menace, and along the way they pick up Beastboy and Bumblebee and meet everyone’s favorite batboys (like Jason Todd). The only thing is it’s long and character driven so I’ve been hesitant about funneling time into it (given my other projects I still haven’t finished) but also I just want some solid action and fun for my baes. Also I wrote this whole scene (from chapter 2) and I’m supes proud of it and want to at least share this.

Small chunk of context: this is a slight canon divergence from current Arrow, as Roy is still in hiding and trying to embrace his new life and identity... with mixed results. (So the narration swaps between his cover name (Jason) and his real name (Roy).

Red Arrow

Roy Harper died in prison, early 2015.

A year later, Jason Troy moved to Gotham. Apparently cars were always getting busted there for one reason or another, so mechanics were in high demand. Unfortunately for Jason, not high enough enough demand to pay a stable living wage to the grunts at Ma and Pop shops — the “additional property taxes” probably played into that. Jason didn't argue about it. He and his roommate paid their fifty bucks to the sharp guy in the suit once a month and nobody had any problems.

Roy Harper, convicted of vigilantism, had a beef to pick with organized crime.

Jason Troy kept his head down. He wasn't so sure about his roommate, though. They'd met on Jason’s first day at work at the body shop, and hit it off pretty fast. They'd also both been desperate for a step up out of Gotham’s dregs, and soon Jason's new buddy Roy (ha) had gotten Jason a second job with him at a bar in midtown and was eating Jason’s Captain Crunch every morning. Jason drank his beers, so they called it fair.

Roy Drake, though, had some sort of bone to pick with all authority. He was a perfectly great coworker and got his jobs done, but one could hardly ask the man for a glass of water without at least the briefest moment where he seemed to size you up to see if you were worthy of it. Oliver had trained Roy well enough--

Jason.

Jason had been trained well enough to be able to read the way Roy -- Drake -- the way Drake would smother down a full-on explosion into the meekest of eye twitches every time the shop boss called him “son”. The boss called everyone that, even the girls. Still, Jason awaited Drake’s final eruption day with an excitement bred by morbid curiosity. Sure, Drake would get fired, but it would be a spectacular blaze of pride and daddy issues.

In the meantime, bartending was still a skill Jason put to use three nights a week. Drake worked the weeknights that Jason didn't, and they both worked Saturdays. This didn't mean that Drake never showed up at the bar during one of Jason’s shifts for one reason or another, but he didn't usually do so on a slow night, at top speed, half stumbling over a misplaced chair, to leap over the bar counter like a gazelle and slide through the kitchen door while shouting, “I’m not here!"

The kitchen door swung back and forth in his wake. Jason was pretty sure the middle aged man at one of the tables missed a few heart beats. Jason’s hands paused for a moment before adding the two clean glasses in his hands to the stacks. He leaned over to call through the kitchen door. "Are you not?”

Drake shoved the door open with his shoulder to poke his head back out. At some point in the last ten seconds he’d tossed his leather jacket. As he said, “No, I'm not. Roy Drake is not here today,” he tossed the neck of a kitchen apron over his head. Then he flung himself back into the kitchen. From inside he shouted, “Benvolio is though!”

Jason exchanged a blank look with the regular at the bar counter. She was halfway through a dissertation she came to announce that she was quitting every other week. Tonight she was halfway through her weekly regular - her husband would pick her up in twenty minutes, before she started flirting with her reflection in the mirror behind the counter but after her sentences slurred into single words. She gave Jason a wobbly shrug.

Jason rolled his eyes and shook his head. Back towards the kitchen, he shouted, “Benvolio is the cook, of course he’s--” The slam of the back exit door echoed all the way to the dining room.

Drake's head poked back through the kitchen door. He snapped a hair net over the scratch of white hair at the crown of his head and looked Jason dead in the eye. “Yeah. He's right here.” He pointed sharply to himself with a gloved hand, nodded, and vanished back inside. The door gave a few final swings before finally stopping.

The regular - Carly - waved her glass around. “T’ll B’n’vllio I w’nt fries,” she managed to say in more than one word. Her tolerance was improving.

“Comin’ right up!" came from the kitchen.

Jason… didn't want to know. He knew that Drake got up to things he wouldn't talk about, and Jason had his suspicion about what those things were. Parts of Drake's irregularity of schedule, despite actually having a regular work schedule, were very familiar to Ro-- Jason. If Jason’s suspicions were right, though, then he'd have to cut ties with Drake immediately - for the safety of both of them - and Jason didn't want to do that. Drake was the best friend Jason had managed to make in his new life and he didn't want to throw it away. So he'd play innocent. He'd keep his head down.

He'd hide his roommate from potential pissed off hostiles. Because if Jason had learned anything about Drake within the first thirty seconds of shaking hands, it was that Drake would eventually, inevitably, punch someone important in the face.

So Jason went back to work.

It took ten minutes for Carly to finish her fries and for anyone new to walk in; a Latino couple, a young man and a woman, with a critical amount of suave hair between them. They weren't holding hands but the way they moved in each other's space and bounced verbal fire was pretty telling.

“--nothing wrong with a good homage,” the woman was saying as her partner held the door open.

“This is gonna be about the movie again, isn't it,” he guessed, shutting the door behind them.

“It was a good movie!”

“I know, babe, I showed it to you.”

“Don't know what was wrong with that guy,” she hissed. She led the way to the bar counter.

The guy gave his partner a comforting shoulder pat and made eye contact with Jason. "Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Jason replied automatically. For a moment, his mind was somewhere else. Something about this guy brought up memories. A trick arrowhead, a cell phone camera…

The guy squinted at Jason. “Have we met before?" he asked.

Oh, I hope not, Roy thought to himself. Out loud, Jason said, "I don't think so,” and shook his head. He took in the guy's BB-8 shirt and leather sleeved jacket. Curled hair, red jeans, eyes big and sparkly enough to make dogs cry? Quite the aesthetic. Roy was pretty sure he'd remember a guy like that, but he was coming up blank. Mostly blank. Jason kept his face innocent, but something about the eyes, maybe…

It’s all pretty freakin’ cool, right?

Where had he heard that?

“Hey, so, we're pretty new to the area,” the guys girlfriend was saying to Jason. He turned his attention to her. If her boyfriend really had met Roy Harper before, it was better if neither of them remembered it. “I've got a friend of a friend around here, and we're trying to find him, but I think his phone is dead. He wasn't at the place we were supposed to meet, so we've been asking around and someone said he hangs out at a local bar a lot, but--”

“There's three bars on this block alone,” Jason finished for her. His thoughts flew back to the kitchen, but his face was simply curious. His stream of thought was quickly devolving into a colorful array of swears, a language which he'd been picking up from Drake via exposure. This was how you asked around for someone who wasn't looking for you.

She smiled and Jason analyzed that smile for any sinister tick or violent gleam but she only looked tired. “Exactly,” she huffed.

“This is our fourth try,” the guy said with a dry smile. He wasn't looking Jason up and down anymore, attention averted by the conversation.

“I don't know the name of every customer,” he said.

The woman laughed at herself. “No, of course not. We're just…” She rolled her eyes and slumped. “We're really desperate. He's just-” she held a hand just over six feet off the ground “-about yay high? Black hair, kind of a hunk?”

“You just described half our customers,” Jason told her.

The semi-almost-familiar guy tapped her arm. He waved his hand around his forehead and said, “And he had the--”

“Right!” She turned back to Jason. “He’s got this patch of white hair at the front.”

Jason’s eyes almost slid right over his own shoulder to the kitchen door. He managed to stop at Carly, who had reached the stage of being pleasantly out of it and played the beat off with a shake of his head. “I dunno,” he said. He looked between the both of the couple to avoid unnatural eye contact. He looked down at the counter like he was thinking - and spotted the handle of a pistol under the woman's jacket. He hid the hitch of his breath under a sigh and shook his head. “I only work three or four nights a week.”

In Jason’s mind’s eye, he could imagine Drake standing on the other side of the kitchen door, sweating. Good. If these people didn’t get to him first, Jason was going to start throwing his own punches. Jason had really liked these living arrangements, why was he always befriending trouble magnets.

Maybe it was him. Maybe he was the trouble magnet.

The couple shared a look that Jason didn’t know how to read - something between questioning and certain, which was a meaningless description.

“Sorry I can’t be more of a help,” Jason said. It was a hard balance to walk between pushing them out the front door and being casually disinterested.

To Jason, the woman said, stiffly, “No, we get it. It’s fine.”

The woman pressed her hands to the counter as if to get up, but to Jason’s - internally smothered - dismay, instead of leaving, the guy took a seat next to her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t we take a break?” To Jason, he asked, “You got menus?”

“Yeah, sure.” Jason handed them a couple menus from under the counter. “Hit me up when you need me,” he told them, and took the temporary escape to close out Carly’s tab. Her husband would be there soon.

While he helped Carly fumble through her wallet, he kept an ear down the bar.

“I’m not hungry, Cisco,” the woman said.

The guy - Cisco? Was that a name? - leaned on the counter and closer to her side. “You gotta eat something, Cindy,” he said, softly. “This isn’t gonna sort itself out in a day. How many days were you on this before you came to me?”

Cindy didn’t respond.

“Cindy?” Cisco prompted.

When Jason turned to swipe Carly’s card in the register, he caught a glimpse of Cindy hiding the bottom half of her face behind her hand. Cisco skillfully hid a sigh behind a deeper breath (Digg used to do that a lot) but Jason couldn’t get a look at his face without giving himself away. For a few moments he just focused on punching the right numbers into the register.

While Jason got Carly’s receipt to her and greeted her husband as he came in, Cisco got Cindy to mumble over a few menu options with him.

When Drake had busted through the doors, Jason had expected him to be running from some giant henchmen in suits, hot on his tail, bullets ready to fire and maybe even a knife to throw. The couple that was actually looking for him were none of those things. Well, the woman, Cindy, did have a gun, but other than that Jason would have almost believed that they really were just looking for a guy who’d ghosted on them. He certainly didn’t expect professional pursuers to be arguing about poor work habits.

Jason wanted an excuse to go back to the kitchen to talk to Drake himself, but he couldn’t just leave them at the counter without an excuse. Maybe he should drop a glass or something. No, the new manager would kill him.

Jason had gone back to cleaning glasses when Cindy slapped her hand down on the counter. They’d been whispering about something that Jason couldn’t hear until she said, “Alright, if I eat the fries, can we do this the easy way?”

“Yes,” Cisco said immediately.

“Fine. Bar guy!”

Jason lifted his eyebrows in surprise and turned from his glass. It wasn’t the worst thing a customer had called him but the sudden burst caught him off guard.

“Can I get a plate of fries?”

Jason put his rag and glass down. This was his chance. “Yeah, let me go tell the cook.”

On his way to the kitchen he looked over his shoulder when Cisco called, “And some water?” As Jason nodded to him, he mouthed “Sorry.”

Okay, no way these people were looking to drag Drake away and beat him up in an alley. Drake had to be paranoid, or overreacting. Plenty of people carried guns, especially in Gotham.

As Jason pushed through the door, he heard a thump and an “Ow!” Just as the door was swinging shut behind him, he heard the woman hiss, “Don’t apologize to him, he’s lying to us!”

Nope. Not paranoid. Definitely time for an escape plan.

Jason found Drake sitting on the counter, playing a game on his phone. He didn’t look up when Jason walked in, but said, “Yo, Troy, you want some fries? We still got some.”

“Good. Plate ‘em,” Jason told him, and then snatched the phone out of his hands. “Plate ‘em for the woman at the bar who’s looking for you. The woman with a gun.”

Drake’s eyes widened. The hairnet really tied the look together. If Roy Harper wasn’t potentially about to lose his cover, his new life, and his best friend’s front teeth, he might have laughed.

In a loud whisper, as if his pursuers might somehow hear through the door, twenty feet away, he said, “Did you tell them I’m here?”

Jason indulged him by whispering loudly back. “Of course not.” He started throwing fries from the heater to a plate. He couldn’t stay in the kitchen too long, it’d get suspicious - but if he came out with the plate ready it might buy him an extra minute.

Drake hopped off the counter. “You can’t tell them.”

“Why would I tell them?”

“You’re like, an upstanding citizen and shit.”

“I’m not-- wait. Drake are they cops?”

Drake didn’t answer, he moved towards the small window in the back door and peered out into the alley.

“Drake!”

“They’ve probably already got people out back. Shit. I gotta--”

Jason thumped him over the back of the head. He was shorter than Drake by give or take half a foot, but felt no less capable of intimidating him by sticking a finger under his nose, even with a plate of hot fries balanced on the other hand. “You keep your ass in here and tell me what you--”

“Bar guy!”

Jason and Drake both froze. The call had come through the still closed door to the dining room. It was the woman’s voice.

Jason jabbed Drake in the chest for good measure. “Stay. Here,” he ordered and then he pushed back into the dining room with his shoulder. Jason had… meager confidence that Drake would actually stay put.

Back at the bar, Cindy sat up straight when she saw Jason walk in with the fries. Cisco had his head on the bar. The middle aged man was still at his table, typing away at something on his laptop. They weren’t alone. Roy couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

“Jason,” he said, as the door closed behind him.

“What?” Cindy said.

Jason tapped his nametag with one finger.

“Oh,” Cindy said and then moved on immediately. “Listen, make his water a shot of something random.”

Jason put the plate of fries in front of them. Cisco grabbed a couple without lifting his head and they disappeared behind his hair.

“Cheap random or expansive random?” Jason asked.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s for a bet,” Cindy said. “Actually, make it something terrible.”

Cisco groaned.

Jason pulled a smile like his heart wasn’t starting to pound. “Do I even want to know what the bet is?”

Cindy’s grin was vicious. “You’ll find out.”

Fu--

“Are you sure we haven’t met before?” Cisco asked. He’d brought his head up and started squinting at Jason again.

Cindy had caught him lying before, Jason couldn’t risk an outright lie again. Jason squinted like he was trying to remember - if they were looking for Drake, then they might have seen Jason with him before - and shook his head. “I don’t know, man, maybe? I’ve moved around a lot, been here less than a year.”

Cisco hummed and stuck some more fries in his mouth. Cindy opened her mouth to say something but Cisco kicked her under the counter. She swung her head around to glared at him and he stuck a fry in her still open mouth.

The weird casual couple action wasn’t distracting Jason anymore. He tried to take a quick scan of them for any more concealed weapons, or police badges, but came up empty. Cindy carried herself strongly, but Cisco was too casual to be a regular fighter. Roy was confident he’d be able to at least give Drake an escape route, if it came down to it.

Jason turned to the liquor wall to look busy. “Red or green?” he asked, pointing between two bottles.

“Red,” Cisco said.

“Solid choice,” Jason said automatically. “Red’s so much cooler than green.”

“Preach.”

So they could agree on colors, at least.

Jason made quick work of grabbing a shot glass and filling it. While he did, Cisco said, “Y’know what, make two.” He turned to give Cindy a confident look down his nose.

She smirked and raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re that confident?

While Jason got out the second glass, Cisco pushed the first one in her direction. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then stopped dead. His face went blank, mouth still half open, and for a solid two seconds, he was completely still. Then he blinked. Then he closed his mouth. Then it opened again. Then he looked at Jason.

Roy froze at the sight look on Cisco’s face: Recognition.

Shit. Play it off, play it off.

“Something on my face?” he asked.

His partner looked at him, concerned. “Cisco?”

What the hell gave me away?

Cisco’s eyes were wide and he opened and closed his mouth, covered it with one hand, looked over his own shoulder, back at Jason, moved his hand onto his cheek and his elbow onto the table. “Nothin’,” he said. His voice got higher and his smile got wider and faker as he kept going. “What. It’s good. We’re all good. ‘S fine here, what’s up?” He turned his mouth back into the palm of his hand. He pointed at the bottle in Jason’s hand. “Shot?”

Jason had no idea how to read that. Where did this guy know him from? Jason was still drawing a blank. Cisco had glanced over his shoulder at the middle aged man, still typing away, so maybe he wasn’t interested in outing Roy either. But how would he know Roy was in hiding? Going under a fake name might have been enough of a clue.

How did Roy know this guy?

Jason focused on filling the second shot glass. Cisco started drumming his fingers across the table. Cindy was giving them both a strange look. Jason put the bottle back before getting their glass of water. Jason was surprised how steady his hands were. If his identity was on a string before, that string had fraied to a thread. A thread held up by a guy who his best friend was hiding from in a hairnet in the kitchen.

Jason was really starting to like this life. It was normal, or as normal as it got in Gotham. He had a great roommate (-- well --) and their place had laundry machines and the dishwasher didn’t work but they were both pretty good about not stacking dishes in the sink and Roy was almost able to think about girls again without thinking about--

“Do you have a pen?” Cisco asked suddenly.

Jason startled a bit and said, “What?” before catching himself. “Yeah,” Jason said - somehow his voice didn’t crack - and tossed him one from his waiter’s apron.

Cisco snatched it up and slid the napkin out from under the water glass. There was already a wet curve on it from the glass, but it didn’t get in the way of his drawing.

He drew an arrowhead. Roy’s stomach turned to lead.

Cisco looked up at Roy for a reaction. Roy didn’t even know what his own face was doing anymore. It probably didn’t matter. This guy’s girlfriend had a gun a foot from her hand.

Whatever his reaction was, it wasn’t what Cisco was looking for. On the other side of the line of wet napkin, the side closer to himself, he drew a circle. Then he drew a zigzag across the circle. It looked kinda like the logo for The Fla--

“Oh--” Roy said allowed before choking himself off, and pushing himself into a coughing fit.

The Flash. This guy - Cisco - was friends with the Flash. They’d only met once, years ago. Roy knew they were the same age, but Cisco’s style had been much less mature before (BB-8 shirt notwithstanding).

The civilian man was still at his table. Felicity would have told the Flash and his friends what Toy had done to help Oliver.

Roy was still coughing. Cisco pushed the glass of water towards him. “You okay?”

Roy punched his chest and cleared his throat. “No, yeah, I’m good.” He cleared his throat again and gestured to the hallway at the back of the dining room that led to the bathrooms. “If you guys could just -- ehmm -- give me a second.” He made short eye contact with Cisco and jerked his head towards the back.

Cisco’s eyes widened and he nodded, a bit over dramatically. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Cindy was still looking between the both of them. “What?”

Roy let Cisco tell his girlfriend whatever he needed to and made his way to the bathroom. The men’s bathroom only had two stalls and Roy made quick work of making sure they were empty. As soon as he was sure the room was empty, Cisco came through the door.

After one last peek through the door before shutting it, Cisco said, “Roy Harper!”

“Cisco! Uh…” Roy couldn’t remember his last name.

“Ramon,” Cisco filled in.

“Sorry.”

“Nuh-uh, don’t sweat it.” Cisco clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve had bigger things to worry about.”

Roy clapped him on the shoulder, too. They’d clearly never been all that close, but Roy remembered liking Cisco, and there were seven levels of relief hitting him in that moment, not all of which he was able to identify. “I’ve seen news from Central City,” Roy told him. “You guys aren’t going for cakewalks either.”

Cisco shrugged. “Meh. Could be worse right now. Team Flash is in that ‘Calm before the Big Bad’, y’know what I mean?”

Just took out the guy who’s been trying to kill and/or mess with the Team Boss for the last six months; waiting for the next one. “Yeah, I know that feeling,” Roy said, laughing a bit at the familiarity of it all. Before Roy could let himself follow the rabbit hole of vigilante talk -- he was out now, he was normal -- he had to ask, “What gave me away?”

“The shot glass,” Cisco said.

Roy took three full seconds to try and figure out what that meant before asking, “What? Was… the red and green comment?”

“Huh? No--” Cisco squinted at the ceiling for a second. “Well now that you mention it. No, I -- oh.” He planted his hands on his chest. “I have superpowers!”

That answered nothing and brought up six more questions.

“You’re a metahuman?” Roy looked Cisco up and down again. He didn’t look… what was a metahuman even supposed to look like? Roy’s experience with metas extended as far as Barry Allen and what he’d seen on TV. Somewhere along the line that left the impression that metahumans only showed up with great fanfare and a costume.

Cisco smiled and rubbed his hands on his pants. “Wild, right? Turns out three out of three people standing within two feet of a dark matter explosion get irreversibly mutated. Anyway, so the shot glass--”

CRASH

Roy and Cisco flinched at the sudden noise from the dining room. They shared a quick look and then Cisco let Roy step past him to peak out the door. As Roy moved, he said, “Please tell me that wasn’t your girlfriend.”

“She…” Cisco bit his lips for a second. “I can’t promise that.”

Roy carefully pressed the door open. The door was around a slight corner, so he couldn’t see the bar counter from his vantage point, but he could see the dining tables, and the two armed thugs in suits - a man and an exceptionally tall woman - with guns. One of the suits had latched his arm around the neck of the middle aged man, his buddy had her gun to the customer’s head. The table with the man’s laptop had been pushed over; that must have been the crash.

“You know where he is,” the woman was saying to someone by the bar, out of sight - Cisco’s girlfriend, no doubt. “Just tell us, and this nice man gets to go home.”

What the hell had Drake gotten himself into?

Roy quickly and quietly pulled the door back shut. The next bit of dialogue took place entirely in rapid harsh whispers.

Roy started with, “What the hell did you bring here?”

Cisco bounced back, in matched whisper, “What are you talking about?”

“There two guys with guns out there!”

“Frack. Lemme see.” Cisco leaned around Roy to peer out the door for himself. As he took in the situation, he looked more confused than allarmed.

“What is it you want with Drake, what did he do?”

Cisco pulled the door back shut. “Who?”

“What do you mean who? Roy Drake, the guy came in here looking for!”

“We didn’t know his name, we just knew he was here.”

“Why are you looking for him? Why are they looking for him?”

“I don’t know! I mean, I know why we are, but I don’t know what they--” Cisco cut himself off to point an accusing finger at Roy. “Ha!”

“What?”

“He is here!”

“For the love of-- yes! He’s in the kitchen.”

Before Cisco could get off whatever victory comment he had, and before Roy could get any more answers as to what the heck was going on, a loud voice from the dining room carried through the door.

“Fellas, fellas! This isn’t necessary, is it?”

That was Drake’s voice.

Roy panicked. He had his whole head out the door before Cisco grabbed him by the shoulders and stopped him there. They were lucky the guys in suits hadn’t noticed them, but Roy’s heart was beating in this throat. He shouldn’t be this freaked out, he was trained better than this, but it had been so long and Drake was just a guy (maybe) and this setup in Gotham had be so great (for what it was) and what if he had to get new paperwork all over again? Could he even risk contacting Felicity again for new stuff if he ended up with these new suit guys on his ass?

From Roy’s new vantage point, he could just see the outside of the bar counter. Cisco’s girlfriend, Cindy, had stood up from her stool and faced her stance towards the men and kept her hands on either side of her head. She looked far too casual for someone under threat of death, but then again if she was hanging with a mainstay of a superhero vigilante team, Roy could get a pretty good idea of in what situation she and Cisco might have met. Her attention was turned over her shoulder though, and she watched as Drake leaped over the bar counter and into Roy’s vantage point. Drake had pulled the hairnet and apron off, but he must have left his leather jacket in the kitchen. He also carried himself far too casually for the situation.

“I’m the one you’re pissed at,” Drake was saying. “Nobody wants to pay the guy to scrape blood out of the woodwork tonight, right? The Falcones just had that shoot out, none of the cleanup guys are gonna be available till next week.”

“Real quaint town you’ve situated yourself in here,” Cisco whispered. Roy elbowed him.

Roy didn’t have any weapons on him. A mini crossbow, or a throwing dart - or hell, even one of his escrima sticks - would have given him options, at least.

“The boss wants a few words with you,” the woman was saying to Jason. A cruel smile had slipped onto her face, and her buddy was smirking. “You’ll come along like a good delinquent?”

Drake grimaced like her words had offended his taste buds. “‘Good delinquent?’ How about we talk about your quip skills in the van, yeah? Yours could use some work.”

The woman’s face turned from confident to sour, but she relaxed her grip on the gun as Drake made a step forward, as if to go with her. Before he could take another, Cindy grabbed his arm.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

He smiled a bit, and took her hand off his arm. “Don’t worry, miss. We’re all gettin’ home safe.”

Then he took a few more steps forward and held his hands out to his sides in a ‘here I am’ gesture. “Well? Take me to your leader.”

“Hehe,” Cisco half-snorted in a laugh. “I like this guy.”

The woman didn’t. She moved the gun from the middle age man’s head to Drake’s chest. “Don’t get cocky, asshole.”

Guns are mid- to long-range weapons, the Oliver in Roy’s mind chided. Treat them like it.

The gun snapped out of the woman’s hand and into Drake’s in a fraction of a second. Drake slid a step back, a shot punched through the dining room, and the thug that had been holding the middle aged man fell to the ground. The woman’s face broke from stern control to surprise and panic.

Drake had all of half a second to smirk back at her before the front doors burst open. Two more big thugs in suits already had their guns out when they took in the situation and then opened fire.

Roy hadn’t realized how far out from the bathroom door he and Cisco had gotten. They both ducked behind the wall for cover and shots kept firing. He couldn’t peer out to look without risking getting hit by a stray shot, or becoming a target himself, but he was pretty sure at least one shot had fired closer to the back of the room, from the gun Drake had. Or maybe Cindy had pulled out her own piece, but Roy still didn’t know what she and Cisco wanted with Drake, so who would she be shooting for?

Having so many questions was wrapping his stomach in knots, he had to look. He only managed to half turn towards the doorway before a shot whizzed through it and into the center of a crappy painting that hung on the wall. Now there was a hole right in the wall of a quaint little farmhouse. Nice.

Roy clung to the hope that if they hadn’t stopped shooting then they hadn’t hit each other quite yet. One of the guns out there was not a regular pistol. He’d only heard the sound of one reload over the noise. He thought he heard furniture falling, and wood splintering but it was impossible to get a good picture without actually looking. Someone shouted. Was it Drake?

Then there was a sound that Roy had no idea how to translate, followed by a thud and something snapping. Then Cindy shouted “Cisco!” and Cisco pushed himself into the doorway before Roy could stop him. Cisco stood in the door for a whole second (“Sharpen your reaction time, Roy. Read the room quick, find the danger points.”) before lifting a hand and some… something shot out of it. Something bright and blue and pulsing and Roy was far enough outside his hiding spot at this point to watch the woman in the suit fly across the room.

Roy read the room quick - every table overturned, three out of seven destroyed by bullet holes, Cindy standing next to Drake who was crouched against the underside of a table and holding his shoulder. Cindy leaned down to check on Drake - there was red between his fingers - a fifth thug pushed through the door shoulder first, a large gun already in his hands--

“Get down!” Roy shouted and tackled Cisco to the floor. Cisco’s yelp was cut off by the ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta of automatic gunfire flying above their heads. The thug aimed the gun lower but the bullets only cracked and bounced off the marble tops of the tables Roy and Cisco army crawled to shelter behind. Roy put himself between Cisco and Drake so he could rip off his apron and shove in into Drake’s bloody hand.

“You owe me an explanation, and every ice cream bar left in the fridge,” Roy told him over the hail of fire.

Drake’s eyes widened in surprise and then his smirk almost looked proud. As he said, “That’s fair,” the shots fell silent.

Reloading.

“Cindy!” Cindy moved to stand but Cisco calling her name was enough to make her hesitate. He gave her a look that was somehow both stern and pleading. She rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated show of pulling her pistol out of her jacket. Then she stuck it over the top of the table, barely looking, and a pellet of light - that was not a bullet - punched the guy with the automatic in the shoulder and he went down.

Then she vaulted herself over the table and popped the last man standing as she went. She marched confidently across the room though the carnage.

Roy, Drake, and Cisco all peaked cautiously over the edges of the table. Drake gave a low whistle. “Who is that?”

“Spoken for,” she tossed over her shoulder.

Roy gave a laugh at Drake’s expense. Drake was still bleeding quite a bit, though, and probably had a bullet in his shoulder, so it was only one (1) laugh.

Cindy got about halfway across the dining room before the kitchen door burst open. Roy had half a breath to yell, “Duck!” before a new guy in a suit shot his pistol towards her head.

She dropped like a flash and rolled towards the barstools. The guy in the suit vaulted over the bar, but when he landed Cindy swiped his feet out from under him with a sharp kick. His tailbone hit the floor the same moment another of his buddies came through the kitchen.

“How many people did you piss off?” Roy asked. He made sure Drake was putting pressure on his shoulder; he was.

“We don’t have time to tell my entire life story,” Drake told him.

Yeah, he’d be fine. Roy jumped over their barricade, the new-new guy - Thug #7? - launched himself over the bar, and Cindy sent her foot towards Thug 6’s face. Before Seven could made a grab for Cindy’s hair, Roy served him a front kick to the chest, sending him stumbling into the stools. Cindy landed her kick and knocked Six out cold, but some of thugs one through five, Roy lost track of which was which, were getting back up. Roy kept his fists raised and slid to stand at Cindy’s back.

“Oh, now it’s a party,” Cindy said. She was facing the front doors, which burst nearly off their hinges to let more guys in suits into the bar. It was getting pretty crowded. Roy realized suddenly that the customer from before was gone. He hoped the guy made it out okay. And maybe called the cops.

The thugs, whom Roy started assigning random numbers in his head, circled up around them. Cindy spun with him, back to back, in careful stances, to keep a read on them all. Maybe seven thugs (henceforth referred to as One through Seven) made the final circle, at least one was already bleeding from somewhere and not all of them held guns. Roy caught a close glimpse of Cisco pulling Drake’s curious head down, out of sight. Roy couldn’t let him and Cindy lose the thugs attention. Maybe Cisco could get Drake out.

Four said, “Are we quite done yet?” A british guy, fancy.

To Cindy, who matched him step for step, gun hand high, he said, “You do this often?”

“Not with a buddy,” she admitted. “You?”

Roy cocked a shoulder. It’d been a while for him, too. “Like riding a bike, right?”

“Here’s hoping. Duck.”

Roy dropped. A stun shot - or whatever she was firing - sailed over his head and knocked Three into a chair and to the ground. Roy took the surprise round to shoot out a leg and crack Five’s kneecap. Cindy dropped to his level and a gunshot sailed above their heads. Roy flipped over Cindy’s shoulders and caught the offending gun with his foot, acquainting it with the floor. A poorly-timed weave left a fist to sting Roy’s cheekbone, but the rest of the momentum and a well timed shoulder shove pushed Two back into One. A stun shot went off behind him.

A sharp crack came from the direction of the bathrooms. From the same direction, “Roy!”

Cisco tossed two sticks of wood - table legs, Cisco broke them off - and Roy caught one in each hand. They spun across his palms so easily into ready position it was almost like he’d picked up a pair less than a year ago. Almost like he’d been allowed to move like Arsenal less than a year ago.

Almost like he’d been Roy Harper less than a year ago.

Roy had half a second to think, “I’m gonna regret this,” before Seven asked for it.

For a solid thirty seconds, everything was a blur of swings and missed gunshots. Cisco’s assist had drawn some attention his way, but Roy managed to clock the one that went for the hiding spot in the back of the head; Four dropped like a rock and didn’t get up. A stun shot went off and Six dropped behind him before he could turn around. When he did, he tossed one table leg end over end over Cindy’s shoulder, which sliced open Two’s face. One more back-kick to the gut from her boot brought him down.

Huge arms wrapped around Roy’s neck from behind. A spark of absolute panic shot through him and then the thug who grabbed him - Six, he was pretty sure - shouted and dropped him. Roy pivoted and spent half a second savoring the sight of Cisco with both arms wrapped around Six’s neck. He had to have jumped to get up there, and he dug his heels into Six’s hips to stay grounded. Six stumbled backwards (Cisco had clearly never tried to choke someone before, but boy was he making an effort) and started to fall backwards towards the ground. Cisco was going to get crushed--

And then… and then a pool of bright blue light spread out on the ground beneath them. Instead of crashing to the floor, Cisco and Six fell into the pool - the whirlpool - and then the pool contracted in on itself and vanished.

There was a heartbeat, and then short burst of light came from the ceiling. Six fell out of the light, Cisco right after, and Cisco landed on top of Six, punctuated with a hard knee to the gut. Roy couldn’t tell if it was an intentional jab or of Cisco had just fumbled the landing and he was saved from cracking his own knee by landing on him.

But what the heck was that?

Roy caught himself staring. Suddenly he was aware of One standing next to him, looking similarly dumbfounded. They made brief eye contact. Roy whacked him upside the jaw with his table leg.

“Stop!”

The momentum of the room pulled to a halt. Cisco stood up off of Six, Cindy stopped with her gun pointed directly at Three’s face, which was wincing and bleeding from the nose. He peeked an eye open when Cindy didn’t shoot. Roy stood over One, who was moaning on the floor, and turned to the voice.

Seven stood at the far end of the bar, behind the table barricade. He had an arm around Drake’s neck, and a gun to his temple. Drake had one arm pinned between his back and Seven’s torso and the other hand was occupied holding the apron to his bleeding shoulder. Drake laughed around a grimace of pain. “Well, this is going great.”

Seven jerked his grip tighter, which caused Drake to clench his jaw, and shouted, “Shut up!”

Five - the guy Roy had kneecapped - hurriedly limped to stand by Seven. He pointed his pistol between Roy and Cisco and Cindy with one hand, and searched for objects to balance against with the other. His eyes were wide and sweat slipped out of the grey hair at his temples. His buddy Seven didn’t look much more settled about their situation. They were the looks of full-of-it assholes who, even with their muscle and numbers and guns, couldn’t take out less than a handful of freaks.

Roy couldn’t believe he’d forgotten how satisfying a look it was to see.

Seven, voice, admirably, only kind of shaking, said, “You let us walk, your buddy here gets to see the daylight again.”

Cindy marched forward, face set in stone, and Seven and Five both flinched - Seven’s finger twitched against the trigger - but Cisco grabbed her arm. She sent a glare his way, but he didn’t take his eyes of the thugs.

“You okay?” Roy risked calling to Drake.

Drake pshed. “Donate more blood than this at charity drives.” Drake’s eyes darted to the table leg in Roy’s hand, which had a not insignificant amount of blood on it now. “Didn’t know you could dance.”

Before Roy could brush it off, Cisco said, “It’s important to have hobbies.”

Seven tightened his hold again and backed up towards the gap between the bar and the back wall. “Enough chatting!” To Drake, he said, “You’re gonna get what’s comin’ to ya!” and continued to drag Drake around the bar and back towards the kitchen.

Roy caught Cindy growling, “Let me go, Cisco,” under her breath.

“Wait,” Cisco told her.

One wrong move, and that twitchy trigger finger put Drake in the dirt.

Several of the thugs lay unconscious on the floor, but the ones that still had their wits scrambled up. They made wide arcs around Roy, Cindy, and Cisco and followed Seven and Drake through the kitchen door. Roy could hear the back alley door slam shut behind them, and then it was over. No gunshots, no cracking wood, no shouting. Just--

A bottle slipped off she shelf behind the bar and shattered across the floor.

Roy sighed.

Cindy whirled on Cisco. “What the hell?” she… ‘asked’ wasn’t the right word.

“You can’t get your answers if he’s dead!” Cisco defended, his voice pitching up.

Cindy whirled away and marched a few steps to kick at a broken table.

Oh no, the tables. The chairs, the stools, the bar -- oh man there were definitely more bottles on the shelves ten minutes ago. The two shot glasses for whatever bet Cindy and Cisco made were gone, too. Roy dropped the table leg, which gave a single thump as it hit the floor, and ran his hands down his face. So much for this job. So much for his rooming situation. So much for keeping his head down. So much for this city. So much for Jason Troy.

Cindy and Cisco were still sniping back and forth but Roy didn’t really catch any of it until Cindy turned to Roy with, “And who the heck are you?”

Cisco opened his mouth as if to answer but then looked at Roy to defer to him. Looked like it was up to him to spill his cover or not. Not that it meant much anymore.

“Roy Harper,” he answered. “Who the heck are you?”

#cisco ramon #roy harper #jason todd #cynthia mordeth #fanfics #my writing #the flash #arrow #world walkers

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