#and doesn't just have a big hole that sloshes it all over your face when you try to quickly inhale water between customers in the summer

[birdantlers]

can people stop fuckin bricking amazon for the tiktok water bottle I'm not a consumerist trendygirl I just live in texas.

[katsukikitten]

All I can think about is if you needed help hanging some lights in the trees for your patio, Uraraka would be the first to volunteer. She doesn't like the idea of anyone getting up on a ladder and possibly hurting themselves since she can gently float to whatever height. That and she loves your patio and your little back deck during the summers. Lots of late girls nights were held there with little more than a few candles and the stars for improvised lights. She knows youve been dying to get it set up but unfortunately just never made time for it.

So Urakaka bakugou and momo surprise you. Grabbing the lights you've had stored in your shed for a couple of years. Stringing them up while Denki keeps you busy for the day. So by the time you get home it's evening. The sun is lazily sinking behind the horizon, yawning in mellow oranges and reds. Denki asks if he can have a drink with you on the back deck and you, of course agree. Either grabbing a quick beer/hard seltzer or making him a mixed drink. Tonight you just happen to make slushie margs since it was so hot for this late spring day. Denki makes hard work of making sure you don't face your french doors or kitchen sink window as he expresses his excitement about the day. That's when you notice something is starting to smell really good.

"someone's grilling." You giggle to denki, "We should crash the party."

A jest that Denki laughs at because the two of you had done it before when Bakugou was swamped with work. The neighbors were none the wiser, besides you brought tons of drinks for ever.

"We should." Denki laughs again, "Right now come on!"

He grabs onto your wrist. Sloshing his margarita and yours as you go to take a sip. Stepping outside onto the little deck with two chairs that step down three steps to your gorgeous brick patio. Painted in the soft golden glow of the lights you bought ages ago.

"Surprise!" Shouts and normal voices as the patio is packed with your friends. Bakugou smirking and Kirishima winking from the grill. Izuku teaching Sho corn hole, Mina passing around shots to Jiro, Momo and Urakaka. Tears come to your eyes, threatening to spill over as a light breeze makes your garden flowers dance.

"Wow. I've never been so- so fucking lucky." You grab onto Denki into a big hug before making your rounds to everyone else, fighting tears from having such a great friend group despite you losing your quirk.

"Thank you."

[jinmukangwrites]

Nightwing BTHB: Slowly Running Out Of Air

Star / Done // Moon / Requested // Eye / Next

Ao3

Summary: Dick wakes up chained to the bottom of a pit. Then, it starts filling up.

Warnings: Kidnapping, Hopeless Situations, Permanent Injury, Amputation, Blood, Drowning

---

To nobody's surprise, waking up is absolutely a bitch. 

He groans and shifts, trying to find his bearings, and the first thing he notices is that there's a rattling of clinking metal as his foot moves. Morbidly curious, Dick peeks his eyes open; all he sees is his own hand and a metal wall. 

Dick's head pounds like one of the seven dwarfs got stuck in his skull and is trying to mine themself out through his eye sockets. Dick wouldn't be surprised if that dwarf was named Grumpy. 

One thing this is helpful for is that he can immediately tell that he's Nightwing. There's no other time in his daily life he would wear black gloves with blue stripes going down his middle fingers. 

His causon immediately rises with this new information. Nightwing waking up somewhere like this—with a headache, on the ground, with the sound of what's most likely chains, is never good. 

He risks shifting again, making it seem like he's groggily beginning to wake up from whatever drug he's been hit with just in case someone is watching. There's definitely chains clinking down by his feet, specifically his left ankle. 

He peeks his eyes open to better survey his location, however all that he discovers is more rusted metal walls and floor of the same material. The wall is rounded and about a foot and a half from his face. When he stretches his leg that's not connected to the chains, he hits the wall behind him. He glances up, and sure enough the walls around him expand upwards what must be a little less than fifteen feet. There's a grate laying over the mouth of the walls, showing more ceiling higher up and shrouded in shadows. 

He's chained to the bottom of a metal pit. 

This doesn't sound good at all. 

He closes his eyes and stills, trying to figure out where he is and what he was doing to end up here. He was obviously doing something on patrol… perhaps a mission? He's not sure, the drugs in his system, while milder than most he's woken up with before, is making it really hard to recall much of anything. Honestly, the last thing he remembers is getting a phone call from Jason. 

He slows his breathing, stilling so that he looks asleep to anyone watching. 

Come on Dick. Just retrace your steps. You got a phone call from Jason... You answered… there was a hole in your sock. He wanted… what did Jason want…

"Big bird?" A voice calls, the tones becoming distorted as it echoes down the metal pit. "You up?"

"… Hood?" Dick tries, opening his eyes and looking up. Jason doesn't sound hurt or particularly startled, but Dick can't see anything above him other than the grating and the ceiling. 

"I've been up for the past half hour," Jason's explains, "m'not hurt. But no one's come yet."

Dick nods to himself. So they've been captured together, but their captors might not be watching. "You in a pit too?" Dick asks, slowly working himself up so he's sitting. 

He grabs onto the wall for balance when he gets to his feet. There's a heavy shackle definitely around his ankle, one that's not coming off without the key or very specific tools. It's tight too, he can feel it squeezing awkwardly against his tendons and bone. The chain connecting the shackle to an eye-hook in the floor looks several feet long, wound up in a neat pile on the floor to his side.

"No, tied to a chair up here," Jason answers as Dick begins to take stock of himself. He's been close to completely disarmed of anything useful. The only things he can find stock of is a few wingdings, some smoke pallets, his escrima sticks…

The things that are missing include his stash of small explosives, his rebreather, and his lockpicking set. Three things he's usually good at remembering to pack. 

"Do you know what happened?" Dick asks as he bends down to inspect the chains and the eye-hook. The chains are almost a half inch in diameter and expertly wielded. The chains have bits of rust here and there, but none that would suggest breakage any time soon. The eye-hook is probably his best bet, as it's thick and heavy-duty, but clearly just screwed into the floor. 

"You don't remember?" Jason scoffs, amusement in his tone. Dick grins, Jason either doesn't know or he, himself, needed some time to recall. "We were going through the Narrows before we got sniped by tranqes."

Dick brings his hand up to the bit of skin that's exposed to his neck where he immediately feels a sharp pinch of pain from what's definitely irritated skin thanks to a barbed dart being yanked out from it's target. 

That's right. They were sniped. It was just a simple patrol together, just for the heck of it, and next thing Dick knew he was collapsing to the ground with his body feeling floaty and far away. 

He huffs. "Why can't Gotham criminals ever be normal?" 

Jason snorts in response. 

Dick kneels down by the eye-hook and wraps his hands around it, looking for the best grasp despite the awkward shape and angle. Once he feels like he has an okay enough grasp, he begins to turn. 

It doesn't budge. 

"How stuck are you?" Dick calls before trying again at the hook. 

It still doesn't move as Jason answers—it must be glued in somehow. "Pretty stuck. Chair's bolted to the ground, used way too much duct-tape, took everything useful."

Dick opens his mouth to ask how likely Jason thinks he'd be able to escape on his own, but then something groans within the walls of the pit. 

"The hell?" Jason murmurs. 

"Uh, Hood?" Dick calls anxiously, walking over to where the noise came from. He places his hands on the wall and frowns at the distant rumblings under his fingertips.

Jason answers with a frustrated and cautious voice. "There's a TV on the wall in front of me, it just turned on."

Dick hums and looks down at the seam where the wall meets the floor. He frowns when he notices small sections of grating; thin but strong graphs of wire cover small little holes in the wall, barely three inches in diameter. 

However, when he turns around, he counts about 8 of these holes. 

"The quality is really bad," Jason continues, "but I think it's of you."

"What's going on?" Dick looks up and sure enough, what looks to be a small and cheap looking knockoff of a GoPro sits taped to the grating above him. 

Before either he or Jason can say anything more, the almost mechanical groaning in the walls becomes louder and then Dick finds out what those little holes near his feet are for. 

Water pours through each hole, immediately sloshing around his shoes. Panic and understanding shoots adrenalin through his veins, he kneels down in the water that's already around his ankles and forces one of his wingdings into the middle of the eye-hook, using it as a handle for him to better turn. 

At least the water isn't cold. 

"Wing?" Jason calls, and Dick grunts as the hook stays stubbornly in place. "What's going on? I can't see anything."

One of Dick's hands slips in the water and he curses, bringing his hand up to see the fabric of his gloves cut through. "They're filling it with water."

"You for real?!" 

Instead of answering, Dick tries again to break the eye-hook. Nothing works, all he does is cut the skin of his palms. 

He swears colorfully as he stands back up, glaring down through the water that's now to the middle of his shins and contemplates kicking the hook, however he has a feeling that all he's going to accomplish is gaining an aching foot. He looks up at the grating. 

"Let's say, hypothetically, that I managed to throw a wingding at you, would you have any chances of catching it and getting out?" 

Jason's silent for a beat. "Maybe. If you throw it right at me. Also I hate that you call those that."

Dick rolls his eyes and adjusts his footing, looking at the chain and trying to calculate how heavy it's going to be. He should be fine. He just needs to rise with the water to a point where he can reach the grating. Once Jason's free, he should be able to help get Dick out of this literal death trap.

He explains his plan to Jason, and while it doesn't sound as thought out as it should be, it's still all that they've got. 

That water slips over his knees, up his hips, to his chest, and eventually above his shoulders. 

Once it became impossible to stand any longer, Dick forced himself to begin a steady tread despite the chain around his ankle. He knows the higher the water rises, the more heavy the chain will become...

But he's strong. He's good at swimming. With the amount of times he's been tossed into various harbors, he has to be. 

"Wing?" Jason calls around when Dick has risen with the water to about the halfway point. Dick's left leg already burns from the strain of the chain, but he's been doing alright so far. 

"Just focus on escaping, little wing," Dick calls, kicking his unshackled leg furiously as the weight on the other drags him under for just a moment. 

The water continues to rise, and soon it becomes almost unbearable to continue swimming like this. But he has to. If he doesn't, he'll sink and drown. 

Eventually, just as his legs are beginning to go numb with strain, he manages to hook the tips of his fingers around the grating above him. With a shot of adrenalin, he realizes that this is it. This is his last shot. It all amounts to these last moments whether he'll manage to escape, or if this is where he dies. 

It's moments like these where he never feels more alive. 

He forces his hands to get a better grasp as he already holds one of his meager stash of wingdings in his grasp. He works to lift himself up into the small few feet of air above the water, but he only goes up a couple inches before he's violently stopped by a tugging on his left leg. 

Dick's stomach sinks. 

"Uh, Hood?" He calls, forcing the coming panic out of his voice as the water steadily rises higher. The ripples tickle his Adam's apple.  "I can't- I can't get higher. You're going to have to help me aim."

"Alright," Jason says, his voice calm, which must mean Dick's unsuccessfully managed to keep his cool. "Follow my voice, I think I'm to your left."

Dick nods slightly to himself, but not too much because his chin would dip in the water that way. Working the grate like it's a set of monkey bars, Dick turns step by step until Jason tells him to stop. He keeps one hand white knuckled on the bars and then brings his other hand up as far as it can go, the wingding resting in his dripping fingers. 

The shackle digs into his ankle as he tries to tug himself more upwards. 

"Okay, a little to your right," Jason instructs, and Dick does as he's told. "Kay, aim up, alright?"

"Yeah," Dick gasps, his chin slapping the water. "Right."

He throws the wingding to the best of his limited abilities. He knows he misses when Jason makes a small growling noise. 

"Put more power into it."

Dick can't help it. He lets out a burst of hysterical laughter. Power? He can barely move as it is, the only power that he's going to get with his hand just over the bars of the grate is going to come from his wrist. 

Regardless, Dick brings his hand down and grabs another one of his weapons. He counts in a blink of an eye that he only has five. 

He tries again, following Jason's instructions, and this time he gets closer to his younger brother, but it curves to the left and lands itself, apparently, into the screen of the TV. Breaking it.

"You're fine, big bird," Jason says, "you're gonna be fine. Let's just try again."

Dick can't respond. The water is brushing against his upper lip. If he could respond, he's sure he might laugh again at how hopeless this all is. 

He tries again, and all he can hear is Jason saying it slid under his chair before the water completely rises above his ears. Dick's just managing to strain and keep his nose above the surface, but already if he breathes too loudly droplets will try to suck into his lungs. 

He has two wingdings left. He can barely properly aim, and he can't even hear Jason all too well either. 

He sucks in a breath and holds it just as the water rises over his nose. 

He tries. He really tries to keep his calm and aim at Jason once again with muscle memory. He's been in deathtraps before. 

Yet, the second he lifts his second to last wingding, the water stops rising right near his elbows. Just above his head. 

And how cruel is that? 

He doesn't know if he can risk this. If he aims and fires his last two wingdings completely blind like this and misses, then it's over. 

He can hold his breath longer than most. But it doesn't matter how long he can hold his breath if he's chained down just below the surface. 

Dick looks down at the shackle around his ankle, then feels the sharp wingding in his hand. 

He needs to buy time. For himself… for Jason. He needs the shackle off so he can rise above the water and aim. 

Before he can let fear talk him out of it, he lets go of the grating above him and allows himself to sink further into the water with the weight of the chain. 

His ears are ringing and he can practically feel his pulse trying to burst from his neck, but he keeps his breath locked in his lungs and he keeps his eyes trained on his ankle. 

Before he can talk himself out of it, he lets the adrenaline drive him as he plunges his own weapon into his ankle, right below the shackle. 

Blood bursts from his leg like a cloud. Agony hits like a truck. But he keeps cutting, he keeps cutting because he has to. The adrenaline helps numb it a little. But it's all he can do to keep from screaming and sucking in the blood stained water as he hits the bone. 

It takes a good few tugs and a few more desperate slices for him to finally feel the weight of the shackle and chain drop. Before he can allow what just happened—what he's just done—to hit him, he kicks up and forces himself to swim until he reaches the surface. 

When he reaches air, he's not sure if he's coughing, sobbing, or screaming. 

It hurts. It hurts. And soon enough, the water will drain him out of every single drop of his blood.

With shaking hands, he lifts himself so he's as close to the grating as possible. He has just a second to process how scared Jason looks on that chair, like he's trying to understand or process what just happened. Dick wonders if he knows what it means for Dick to be above the water. Dick wonders if Jason thought he drowned. Dick wonders if Jason saw the whole thing on the screen of a shattered TV.

Dick allows himself just a moment to mentally apologize to Jason before he gets his whole arm out of the grating and aims with perfect precision straight into the tape holding Jason's arm to the chair. 

Right then, it feels like all the strength seeps out of him. He almost falls back into the water, wheezing, but he keeps his grasp strong and closes his eyes. 

He's okay. He's okay. He's-

Water laps into his mouth and he can taste blood.

Now he knows it's sobs escaping through his teeth. 

He holds on and forces himself to ignore the blood tasting water, ignore how weak and nauseated he's becoming. He holds on until there's a sound of a gun firing on the padlock keeping the grate down. He shifts to grab the lip of the pit as Jason lifts the grate. For a second, he slips and almost falls back into the water, but then strong hands grasp under his arms and heft him out.

Next thing he knows he's on his back in a puddle of water and blood and just trying to catch his breath. 

"Holy shit, fucking- Wing? Can you hear me?" 

Jason's panicking. Dick's coughing water. He's screaming water when Jason begins to wrap a torn piece of cloth from his leather jacket around his leg. 

A tourniquet. 

Dick writes as the agony in his left leg becomes blinding with each twist Jason makes in the cloth. 

"Jason- Jason I couldn't-" Dick tries to explain, but his brain is woozy and his chest really hurts. "I didn't-"

I couldn't breathe. I didn't think. I couldn't get out. I didn't want to die. 

"My leg- my leg, Jay- I can't-"

I can't breathe. 

"Just hold on, you're going into shock-" Jason says, his voice so much weaker than what it normally is. "All of our stuff is in here- I already pinged B."

No. No, not B. Dick doesn't need Bruce. Dick doesn't need Alfred. Or the Batcave. Or the medbay. A few pills of advil. A pat on a shoulder. 

He needs- 

"Hospital," he gasps through clenched teeth as Jason bundles up his jacket and puts it under Dick's feet to elevate them. 

Foot. Foot and mangled remains of his left leg. 

"Jay-" 

"Okay," Jason agrees, standing up and running to the other side of the room where—sure enough—all of their missing items lay. 

Dick stares up at the ceiling while Jason calls for an ambulance. He listens to the shakiness to his tone and how he seems to stumble over answers he must be being asked. If Jason's this startled… it must be really bad. 

Dick wants to look, but at the same time he knows he'll throw up the second he sees. 

He takes a deep breath and tries to fight the armada of problems trying to assault him. The drowsiness. The confusion. The nausea. The pain. The shock. 

But eventually, Jason's voice becomes a drone, and soon Dick's eyes are slipping closed.

He hears his name shouted before he falls unconscious.

When the black settles, the pain doesn't go away. 

-o-o-o-o-

When Dick wakes up the first time, it's chaos. Shouting voices, a mask pressing against his face. He tries to open his eyes and figure out what's going on, but then something nudges his leg and he sees stars. He tries to crawl back to himself, but it's like he's pinned with sharp needles through butterfly wings. Before he can even try to open his eyes again through the tears, something pinches the inside of his elbow, and Dick loses himself again.

-o-o-o-o-

The second time he wakes, it's quiet. He feels like he's eaten so much honey that it has replaced his blood. His arms are heavy as he brings them to his face to rub at his blurry eyes. 

As he rubs at them, he can feel the tugging of tubes running up his nose. The pull of a needle within the crook of his elbow. As he looks around, slowly realizing where he is—slowly remembering why he's here—the heart monitor picks up speed. 

Of course, that's when a body he didn't notice until now shoots up like they have been trying and failing to catch some shut eye. 

"Bruce," Dick calls weakly as Bruce zeros in on him. Dick's throat hurts. Everything hurts. He can't feel anything below his knee.

Thankfully, as he weakly holds his arms out, Bruce gets the message. Before Dick knows it, he's being gathered into Bruce's arms so he's sitting up and clutching to Bruce like his wrinkled suit jacket is his lifeline. 

"How bad is it?" Dick asks with wobbling lips and a wobbling voice. 

Bruce stills, then his arms tighten around Dick, and that's when Dick knows it's bad. A sob tears through his throat and he closes his eyes, pressing against Bruce. He wants to crawl away and not exist. He wants Bruce to make everything okay again. 

He doesn't want to open his eyes to look. So he keeps them closed and allows his tears to stain Bruce's tie. 

"They…" Bruce starts, sounding terribly unsure, "you were in bad shape. Shock. Infection already setting in. You lost a lot of blood... They couldn't save anything below the knee."

Dick wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He knows he was panicking back there, but he also purposely cut at his ankle to… to save his leg. 

He lost it anyway. He wants to laugh. Instead he sobs harder. 

Bruce tries to reassure him with the hopes the doctors have for a prosthetic, tries to explain he already has Lucius Fox on making one fit for Nightwing, but Dick can only cry and weep and mourn until eventually, he's practically boneless. He can barely keep his eyes open as Bruce lays him back down and tells him to get some more rest. 

"Sleep, Chum, everything will get better."

Dick can't find it in himself to believe him. He sleeps anyway, if not to just pretend his entire life isn't over.