100 Days of Deathduo
Customer Service AU!!
This is made for @mintyteasoup because they are so very cool. Happy birthday Minty! You are so beloved. I hope I did this au justice, even though I've never worked in customer service these are all real stories haha.
Oh, this was exciting. Well, the job itself wasn’t, and Icee had originally wanted to work somewhere else, a library maybe, or a teacher’s assistant, or something, but this was a decent enough option. It would give them money at least. And Clover was here, worked here, and was an assistant manager here, which was the exciting part. Clover was so cool. Working at a store was just stocking shelves and bagging items right? So it would be fine.
They were a tad nervous, it was a new job, a new situation, but it would be fine! Probably. And so, Icee walked up to the store doors and waited for them to open automatically. It made them feel like a jedi whenever it happened, and they sneakily looked around before holding their hand out to pretend they were using the force. Only for the doors to not open. Right. The store was closed.
Icee got their phone out and texted Clover. They texted her on the app they had downloaded for work, instead of discord, which was a bit strange, but this was a work related thing! And so should be kept in the work app chat messages. Which was great. Amazing, really.
Oh. According to Clover, Icee was supposed to go into the side entrance. Not the front entrance. That made a lot of sense, actually. Just as she said, when they got to the correct door, it was unlocked. And Clover was on the other side when Icee entered. Which was such great news.
“Icee! Hello! Welcome to your new job. Here, let me show you where to clock in and then I can instruct you what to do. We haven’t opened yet but there are a few things we need to do beforehand. Any questions?” Clover asked.
Icee shook their head, and headed to the clipboard, signing in and logging their hours. It was a fairly straightforward thing, really, just writing their name and the time they entered the building. What job would Clover assign them? Maybe Icee would have to restock some of the shelves, or put away some of the items.
“Great, now that that’s done, I’m gonna show you to the cleaning supplies and the bathrooms, which you will be cleaning during your morning shifts. All the newbie’s do it.” And oh. Clover was assigning the bathroom duties to Icee. They made a face showing their displeasure.
“Clover. Clover do I have to? Can’t I help somewhere else?” Icee asked. Clover just looked at them amused.
“Sorry Icee, that’s not how it works. Bathroom duties don’t care about friendships.” She says, shaking her head and gesturing to follow.
“Please Clover? What if I get you hot cocoa? And gummy worms?” Icee begs, a last ditch effort. Clover just laughs again.
“No. And we both know you are gonna do that anyways. Even though you absolutely do not have to ever.” She smiles amusedly. “Now come on, follow me to the cleaning closet.
Icee follows, grumbling under their breath. So much for Clover being the exciting part of the job.
—--
It was a pretty average Tuesday, not the busiest but busy enough that there was a steady stream of customers at Clover’s register. It was nice sometimes, getting into the lull of scanning and bagging items, making pleasant small talk with the customers. Sure, occasionally there were a few rude ones, but today had been pretty calm in terms of the customers.
“Hello there.” Clover politely smiled as she started scanning the items, smiling at the customer in front of her while she worked. They let out a polite hello, but when Clover looked up, their eyes were focused on something behind her. Which wasn’t too strange, they were probably checking out some of the items required to stay back there.
And then Clover felt a chill down her spine when she heard a voice directly behind her say “Boo,” as she felt someone poke her shoulder, and she yelped and swiftly turned, properly startled.
“Icee! How could you do this to me?” She asked as she started laughing, seeing her coworker and friend in front of her. They just laughed in response and grabbed one of the spare keys from the counter behind Clover before waving and leaving, continuing to chuckle.
Clover shook her head fondly and looked at the customer who was also laughing slightly. “You saw them, didn’t you?” She asked, and she she grinned when they nodded their head. ‘I will get them back, don’t worry.” She responded as she gave them their order.
—------
It was Icee’s first day at the register without assistance. They were really moving up in the world. Kind of. Maybe just moving up in the store, but hey, progress is progress. It was going smoothly, really, and Clover was only a text away if they needed help, which was pretty nice.
They smiled at the man who was next and focused on scanning and bagging the items, making sure to put the bread on top and ask if he wanted a bag for his milk, doing all of the things that a good register worker did. It was perfect. And then the man’s card declined when he tried to pay, and he started walking away before they realized what has happened.
“Sir? Sir, your card declined.” They called out, but the store was loud and a bit busier than normal, and they didn’t think he could hear them. So obviously, Icee did the only logical thing to do.
And jumped directly over the counter. They apologized to the next customer in line and started running over to the man. “Sir, your card declined!’ They said, huffing from the sprint. I’m so sorry, but would you, uh, possibly come back to pay?” They said, as calmly as they could while out of breath.
Luckily, the man seemed to only be annoyed instead of outright angry, and he came back without much of a hassle. And when they got back to their station, they saw Clover behind the register, smiling amusedly at them.
“You really shouldn’t leave your station unattended, you know. But it’s ok, you did your best and I'm proud of you.’ Clover said, letting Icee take their place back to complete the transaction. “Next time, you could always call me or the security guards, you don’t have to become an Olympian to try to catch someone.” She said, tapping the phone next to the register. “I’m always gonna be here if you need me.”
Icee just laughed, a bit embarrassed, and started finishing the transaction with the man.
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If you're writing for dp3 then Hiraeth from your prompt list would work SO well since they're all stuck in the void! 🤲🏽😭 We need Gambit fics its a DROUGHT HELP
♧ ⎯ LUCK O’ THE DRAW !
summ. You find the Devil himself at the end of the world. Surprisingly, it isn’t the first time you have. It is, however, the first time it hurts.
pairing. Void!Gambit x f!Anomaly!reader (established relationship. Kinda. Multiverse be funky like 'dat.)
w.count. 1.8k
a/n. Because Channing deserved that Gambit all those years ago, and I've come to (attempt to) deliver what the the people have asked. Masterlist here.
MOST PEOPLE MEET THE DEVIL at a crossroads, but you meet yours in— quite literally— the back end of fuckin’ nowhere.
It hurt more than it should.
Your heart practically stutters.
“Remy.”
Then he turns, and you wait for the flash of recognition in his eyes.
Nothing comes.
And then. And then.
Realisation— logic. The cold, hard truth: This isn’t your Remy LeBeau. Your Remy had died long before, in a Universe that was pruned and erased into nothingness by the TVA. Your Universe. The joke? That the Gambit before you is merely a variant amongst a million. The punchline? He looks exactly the same as the day you’d lost your own.
“Well, this is awkward. You know off-shoot Hawkeye here?” Wade says, astonished, before his eyes widened. “Ah. Tragic exposition time for the readers, I see.”
Your mind is still reeling. It feels like someone’s just jammed a chisel straight into your gut. “I— Knew a version. Variant, I guess,” you manage to correct yourself, distracted by the skirting trenchcoat and the all too familiar sound of shuffling cards.
Christ, it’s like he’d stepped right out of your memories.
Remy’s eyebrows shoot up as he studies you. Something in your chest pulls taut, threatening to snap as he speaks. “Apologies, mon ami. But as far as I remember, I ain’t never seen you before.”
“Ouch,” Wade winces, looking between you both. “What a classic trope! This is like, me talking to my past Mom in The Adam Project. Funnily enough, my Mom was you!” He snorts, pointing to Elektra.
You ignore Wade and offer Remy a wan smile. “I figured. It’s okay.”
…It is obviously, in fact, not okay.
You avoid him like a plague shortly after the entire commotion; it’s almost comical. Wade had managed to come up with a plan with the rest of the group, albeit a ramshackle, flimsy one, but you’ve hardly been able to pay attention through the bloodrush of shock rocketing in your head, anyway.
Being around this Remy is stunningly stifling.
The lilt of his accent, the sharpness in his smile; the flourishing of cards and the faint hum-drum of kinetic charge against his fingertips.
You’ve seen it all before, once upon a time. You never thought any of it could ever bring you to this bad of a heel.
It hadn’t taken long before you’d tried drowning yourself at the end of a bottle of brandy Logan had handed you that night. (The whiskey tames his mordance and makes him uncharacteristically civil. He’d said something along the lines of: Y’need this more than I do, bub; look like you’ve just seen a fuckin’ ghost. Shit, I guess you did, huh? )
“Mais la,” comes a huff. “Ain’t that mine?”
A frisson runs through your heart.
“Sorry,” you say, barely glancing up from the barrel fire tucked outside the team’s hideout. You’re not quite sure you can handle meeting his gaze. “I know I should’ve asked.”
A playful hum. Remy settles on the log adjacent to yours. “S’alright. No harm done, chèr.”
It takes everything in you not to flinch at the endearment. If he’d noticed, well— he’s smart enough not to mention it. He’s curious and it stands to reason; afterall, he’s never quite seen someone look at him as weathered as the way you do. It’s as if the effort itself to do so would be unbearable.
“Y’kno’, I been told I’m easy on the eyes. Not for you, tho’, eh?” Remy shoots you an amicable smile. It’s charming, if a little compelling. “Guessin’ I made bad on you where y’from? You done been boudéin’ since y’first got here.”
You let out a laugh. It’s the most brittle sound he’s ever heard come from someone.
“No, no,” you shake your head. “It’s… You just make me a lil’ homesick, is all.”
Remy bristles with his deck of cards. A Charlier cut; a One-handed shuffle. It’s a mindless tic; your variant used to do the exact same with the exact same ease.
(Such a miracle, you remember thinking once, that there could be symmetries in the Multiverse. Now you learn, perhaps, it’s far more a curse. Either way, you can hear Remy’s doting voice in a distant memory, dimpling coyly at you: “S’just the luck o’ your draw, chèr.” )
You tamp down the memory before it could sink its jowls any deeper in you.
“You’re curious,” you say.
He makes a noise of assent. Revolution cut; One-handed shuffle. Repeat.
“I ain’t gon’ axe if y’ain’t wanna answer.”
It’s kind of him.
You forgot he was like this.
Witty, yet gentlemanly. The way Remy always has been.
Underneath the blanket of the night, the crackle of the flames limn the planes of his face in flickering, hazy saffron. The look in his eyes is sincere as they meet your red-rimmed gaze. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen him, and in this light no less: tall, cutting, strong.
Lively.
The last you’d seen Remy, he’d been drawn out and battered by the war. Not that he’d ever admit it; he always insisted on keeping up his sunny disposition despite the constant losing battles happening. (Sometimes you think you resent him for doing that; it’d felt like he’d taken the light of the world with him when—)
You thank your lucky stars the variant Remy doesn’t make a comment on how you must be staring so openly. It’s a feeble attempt to committing every detail to memory, you suppose, in case you don’t get the chance again.
“In my Universe, a war was waging against mutants.” Your nails tinker against the empty bottleneck of the flat whiskey you’d nursed, thinking of how to cut a bloodshed of a story short; to get your point across before you falter and lose your footing.
“There was a mission sanctioned, and during it— a decision had to be made at that moment. So… you chose. Easily.” Your brows pinch tight against your will. The molten burn returns to the back of your eyes. “You saved so many lives the day you died.”
Something catches in your throat when you realise your mistake, find yourself amending instantly, “He. He died.”
(It had been swift. A small mercy, all things considered. There wasn’t even a need to check for a pulse when you finally managed to reach for him.)
You’re fidgeting, too, with something in your other hand. Remy catches sight of it only now: a card, sitting pinched between your ringed fingers. Nine of Hearts. Its edges are torn and creased across the face, singed an ashen black.
A proverbial piece of Remy’s heart, carried to the end with you.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a cold rush over his body at the sight.
“…I’m sorry, chèr,” he offers quietly, inadequate as it is. He hadn’t expected that.
He can’t imagine how haunting it must be to look at someone you’d shared a lifetime with and be met with a complete stranger instead.
A living, breathing, ghost.
That unbiddable feeling of longing had always seemed to accompany the sight of him; but now it’s different. Now, there’s a blistering, brutal pain to come with; All-encompassing grief, thick as molasses in your lungs, overturning itself like a phantom from wherever you thought you’d buried it a long time ago.
The only way to smother it would be to reach out, to hold him like you had once before, and isn’t that an ironic inconvenience?
“No, no. I’m sorry,” you tell him, sigh coming out as an awkward laugh. A breeze passes and you inhale deep to ground yourself. Press your eyes shut momentarily to will away useless tears. “It must be so weird to hear all of this from me about— well, you, technically.”
“Mais, can’t ‘ave all been a bad memory, tho’, right?”
Right. No. It hadn’t been. There’s something else too. An undercurrent. Beyond the grief, the deep ache in your marrows— you think it’s nostalgia. Hiraeth. More bittersweet than it is painful.
It’s… It’s watching mutant schoolkids teaching him UNO for the first time. It’s the bickering over the beignets for breakfast, or your feet on his lap at the couch in the lounge after dinners with the rest of the X-Men. Lazy banter. Conversations that go everywhere and nowhere.
“Yeah,” you agree, feeling something bloom in your chest you thought long lost. “You taught me everything about your home, too. Down South. Told me about the bayou, the cypress trees. Your Cajun, your ways. We used to play Bourré.”
Talk of home has him ducking into a laugh. Remy had been in the Void far longer than the rest (he figures, at least)— he’s very nearly lost most of his fragmented memories to time by now. “Did I? Oughta’ play a game or two wit’ you.”
You buckle at that. “Ah. You were always the better player.”
Then:
He makes the leap before he runs out of steam. “Was we…?”
His finger darts between the space you two share.
“Oh, no,” you override, sheepishly. “No, we, we were good friends and stayed good friends. I was—” Your breath scurries; a reconsideration. “I was glad with that. You had a Southern belle named Anna Marie. A powerful mutant called Rogue. You two were good for each other.”
You must have given yourself away somewhere, though, the way Remy is reading you with a pinned gaze. It’s the same, levelled look you’ve seen before— the kind he gets in a game of cards.
Something discerning eclipses in his eyes.
He’d gotten the measure of you in an instant.
“Gambit musta’ been blind blind not t’see you.”
Ah.
You smile. It’s windswept. Resigned. “Well. Doesn’t matter now, does it? My Gambit’s gone. No matter how much I wish I can see him again.”
Remy’s eyes dart to your hands.
“Y’kno’, chèr,” he begins, something spirited in his tone. “In the world of cards, each a’ these and they suits hold a meanin’.”
He flourishes his deck, hypnotisingly smooth with every elegant cut, fan and spring. Every shuffle cascades as smooth as liquid in the sleight of his hands.
“Some of my folks back in New Orleans I remember, they learned me to read ‘em. Now, outta the whole deck? What you got there; the Nine of Hearts is also called the Wish card.”
The small laugh that punches out of you is bell-like. “Really?”
It’s warm. Bright. Musical to his ears. It washes over him, and he can’t help but hang on to the peal. He wanted to hear it again.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Remy clicks his tongue as he shoots you a sunny look. “Would never lie t’you, chèr.”
The cracks in your soul don’t disappear, but they surely lighten as you look gently at him. “Huh. Well, I guess I got my wish, didn’t I?”
He chuckles.
“Mais, I ain’t your Gambit but—”
He leans. Reaches out behind your ear with an empty palm, playfully revealing a gilded card from seemingly thin air with a sharp flick of his wrist:
Another Nine of Hearts. His. He hands it over to you, by way of meaning— I’m here, now.
New beginnings.
You take the card with a smile.
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Danny is the Crazy Old Man™️ of Gotham
So, the events of Danny Phantom happened decades ago
Like, Phantom Planet was one of the first instances of Superheroes in HISTORY. Early 1900's, just the Fentons were Insanely Ahead of their Time!
Danny is still a Halfa, but has allowed himself to grow old and live his best life before fully dying so he can accept his Throne in the Infinite Realms. He decides to experience Life in the fullest way possible, partying, drinking, making long lasting friendships that shape the lives of everybody he meets, all that!
Eventually, Danny's Party Life leads him to Gotham. And this place is just amazing!
It has all the comforts of Home, with so much more! He can Party! He can Fight! He can do anything he wants and nobody bats an eye, because a crazy old man getting into a fistfight in the middle of the road is just another Tuesday for Gotham!
He decides to spend the rest of his Mortal Life there. And this is still Early On in the DC Timeline, like, Batman Year 1 is happening Right Now.
He hangs around, befriends the local Homeless Population, and mostly just has the time of his Life! And he takes up the stereotypical Homeless Old Man look because why fight it? That's literally what he's going for!
He also unintentionally sets up a bunch of future events
He teaches Kid!Jason on his to steal Tires as repayment for driving off some muggers with a Baseball Bat (honestly he was looking forward to being mugged, it's a new experience after all)
He pulls Kid!Tim into an Alley after Tim gets caught out at night and gets chased by some Punks. He hides Tim behind a Dumpster and tricks the Punks into mugging him instead (Yay! He finally got mugged!)
He becomes kind of well known as the Old Man who wants to experience everything before he dies. He says as much too, not like he really has a reason to hide it. He just tells people "I want to live my life to the fullest, it don't matter if I live 10 more years or 10 more minutes, I'm gonna experience every second of it!"
He once walked into a Cloud of Fear Gas to see what it was like. Later he said it was a 6/10. "Not the worst thing I've had injected into my body!" He says with no Context.
He traded places with a Hostage during an active Crime Scene because he wanted to know what it's like.
He was once dared to take Batmans Utility Belt by another Homeless Guy as a joke, so he walked up to Batman later that night in full view of everybody else and just asked for his Belt. He gives up after a few minutes, and one guy asked "Why not fight him for it? It's an experience after all.". Danny replys "Nah, I've fought Vigilantes before. It was fun though, gotta say!"
...
This got away from me, but all this to say: Imagine the Bat Families Reaction when they find out "Crazy Old Danny" is PHANTOM. You know, THE FIRST SUPERHERO!
I imagine Constantine is having a stroll though Gotham after finishing up some business with Bruce, and just bumps into a homeless guy by accident.
Later that night:
Batman: Constantine, Why are you calling? Is it to do with the-
Constantine: Why the fuck is there a Homeless God in your City?
Batman: Wait wha-
...
Or imagine they know before Constantine meets him, and it goes instead like this
Constantine: Why the fuck is there a Homeless God in your City?!
Batman: You mean Old Man Danny? He's just a homeless guy? What do you mean?
Constantine: I swear on what's left of my Soul, that is a God.
Batman, a little shit: I don't think so, I would know (fully knows)
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