#electric bullet news | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sunsburns · 1 month

Text

four or five moments (ii.)

pairing: wade wilson/deadpool x fem!assassin!reader

summary: you're literally just trying to do your job, and it's going great so far, you've killed trask, all you have left is to stop that truck from leaving new york. few problems: deadpool can't stay dead, you're having a moral dilemma and why is that car getting closer? oh shit-!

—or: deadpool literally hits you with a car

word count: 4k+

warnings: fem reader, wade being nasty, flirting, sex jokes, canon violence, there isn't too much plot, blood, strange conversations about morality, wade being annoying, he also breaks the fourth wall a few times, i did not pre-read this pls bare with spelling mistakes

notes: i was peer pressured to write this. it literally strays off from the og plot so bad you get whiplash!!

part one

All you really need is four or five moments.

Four or five moments to prove that you're better than them, that you wouldn't stoop as low, to prove that an eye for an eye will only leave two people blind. No blood will bring mercy. No. But it might get you some peace of mind knowing that they can't hurt you anymore, knowing that there's one less asshole on the earth that's trying to hurt you and the people you care about. It is heartless, you're well aware, but you are not trained to have much of a heart, much less to care.

You remind yourself of that fact as lights blur into neon streaks and speeding vehicles race by. Your heart pounds in your chest, adrenaline sharpening your senses, and the stab wound on your leg becomes a distant throb.

You leap onto a motorcycle conveniently left unattended by a fleeing warehouse worker, hot-wiring it with practiced ease. The engine roars to life, and you peel out onto the road, weaving through traffic. The bike vibrates beneath you, a sleek, powerful beast responding to your every command.

Behind you, Deadpool is a persistent shadow. You catch glimpses of his red suit and mask as he commandeers a car, recklessly swerving through lanes to catch up to you. His determination is infuriating, but you can't afford to be distracted. You grit your teeth, focusing on the chase.

Your earpiece crackles to life, and a familiar voice comes through. "I've got eyes on your tracker," your handler says. "They're heading towards the docks. Be careful; we don't know if it's a set-up."

"Understood," you reply, voice steady despite the chaos.

As you near the docks, the industrial landscape looms ahead, a labyrinth of shipping containers and cranes casting long shadows in the dim light. The truck is just ahead, its taillights glowing like beacons.

You accelerate closer, and with one hand, you grab an energy gun, in a quick movement, you shoot at the truck doors, immediately regaining your grip on the handle afterwards. The doors fly open, revealing giant metal scraps and wooden crates.

You nearly curse, swerving out of the way when a pipe tumbles out from the back of the truck, crashing onto the road. The clang of metal on asphalt echoes in your ears. You slow down by the truck's blind spot, knowing you'd have to stop it, especially now that the cargo was confirmed to be in it.

You stay ready with your gun, pulling it from the holster on your thigh. You wait a beat, then another, and as the truck starts to pick up speed, you make your move and roll up to the driver's window, shooting through the glass. The bullet flies through the driver's head, causing him to slump forward, pressing on the horn. The blaring sound drowns out your second shot, which takes down the man in the passenger seat before he can shoot you.

The truck starts to slow, veering erratically before it crashes into a building with a deafening crunch of metal and shattering glass. The impact takes down a few light posts and parked cars, sending debris flying. Broken electrical wires dance and crackle around the wreck, their sparks reflected in the spray of a burst fire hydrant.

"Great job," your handler's voice crackles through your comms. "Dispose of the truck. No witnesses—"

The connection cuts off as you are violently hit from the side by a black car. The force of the impact sends you flying off your bike, tumbling across the rough asphalt. Your suit and helmet take most of the fall, tearing and cracking under the friction. Your visor shatters, the protective plastic lining breaking at the base.

You feel the sting and burn of broken skin on your arms and legs, grime and dirt mixing with the blood seeping from your cuts. Your vision is blurred, and a high-pitched ringing fills your ears. Every breath you take is shallow and painful, your ribs protesting with each inhale. Biting the inside of your cheek, you push yourself to pull off your broken helmet, tossing it aside. You blink hard, trying to focus your vision and spot a figure approaching.

Through the haze of pain and confusion, you recognize the distinctive red and black suit. Deadpool. He strides towards you with casual confidence, katana in hand, his eyes hidden behind the mask but undoubtedly filled with a mix of amusement and determination. The streetlights cast eerie shadows on his suit, highlighting the dried blood and grime.

"Please, don't be mad, honeybuns." Deadpool's irritating voice is the first thing you can hear when the ringing stops. He's standing before you, gloved hands out for you to take.

You don't move, heaving, "What the fuck, Wade?"

"Oh, are we on a first-name basis now? I think I like it." Wade Wilson hums, and when you still don't take his hands, he kneels before you. The smell of sweat and gunpowder wafts off him, mingling with the metallic scent of blood. "I know this all seems a little confusing—"

"You hit me with a fucking car, you dick!" you belt out, eyes wide with rage. The pain and exhaustion make your voice hoarse, every word a struggle.

"Well, yes. But it's only fair—"

"Fuck you."

"Listen to me." He says a little desperately, and you're glaring at him through your tears. Wade doesn't let it get to him, instead, he calls out your name, barely above a whisper as he looks at you. "You are getting innocent people killed." He tells you. "Look around. This might not be a cul-de-sac, but there are civilians, and they're hurt. We need to leave. You need to call it."

You glance over his shoulder, tired eyes scanning the area. He was right. Dock workers are running around, shouting and helping people out of the old building the truck had crashed into. It's late at night, but not late enough for the place to be deserted; people are still at work, still trying to get by.

You wince as you watch a pregnant woman being led out of a crashed car by her husband, a gash on her head. The smell of gasoline and burning rubber fills the air, mixing with the acrid scent of smoke from the crashed truck.

"Killing shitty people is one thing," Deadpool tells you, and you hate the way his voice is almost earnest. His tone is different, more serious, a stark contrast to his usual unserious demeanour. "But I'm familiar with your no-witnesses rule. This would just be mass murder if I let you keep going. Not exactly my piece of cake. Just..."

He stops, letting his head hang for a moment as if he were too repulsed to say it. You can see his shoulders slump slightly, a rare show of genuine emotion. "Oh god, I can't believe I'm about to say this," he grumbles, "Four or five moments. That's all it takes. Just stop and think. It's all it takes to be a hero."

You grit your teeth, hating that Wade Wilson is your voice of reason. The biggest asshole in New York, and here he is lecturing you on morality.

Hairs are falling out of your braid and sticking to your forehead, yet you don't care. Sweat mixes with blood, creating a sticky mess on your skin. You can only glare at him. "You're the last fucking person who should be telling me how to be a hero."

Wade sighs, loud and obnoxious, his mask wrinkling around his eyes as he scrunches up his face. "I'm sorry I hit you with a car. You kinda deserved it after killing Trask. He was my last chance at becoming pretty again. Now I have to stalk another crazy scientist." He taps his chin thoughtfully, "I always figured I'd end up chasing a mad scientist again, but not under these circumstances."

It's when you can no longer hold yourself up with your arms that Wade takes in the gravity of your injuries. He winces, watching you crumble to the ground before him. "Oh, wow, that's a lot of blood," he notes, his voice suddenly devoid of humour. The sight of your blood pooling on the asphalt seems to pull him back to reality. "Should I take you to a hospital? How many fingers am I holding up?"

He doesn't give you a chance to answer.

"Three? No. Two? Yikes. It's worse than I thought." Wade stands, and the worry in his voice is poorly masked by his usual sarcasm. "Here we go. Up, up!" When he moves to pick you up, you start turning away, your body protesting every movement.

"Wade, wait—" you rasp, trying to stop him from touching you. Your voice is weak, barely above a whisper.

But it's too late. When he reaches for you, your body phases, a faint white glow surrounding you as his hands and arms fall through your body as if you're a ghost. He recoils, jumping back while a squeamish sound escapes his lips. He stares at you, then his hands, then back at you on the ground as you try to sit up again, confusion and amazement written all over his masked face.

"Oh. My. Motherfucking. Fuckballs." Wade gasped, eyes wide behind his mask. "Did my hand just go through you or is all that cocaine finally kicking in?"

You ignore him, holding onto your side as it throbs with pain. Every movement sends sharp, agonizing waves through your body. "Fuck."

"No way, you're a fucking mutant?" His tone is a mix of awe and excitement, like a kid discovering a new toy.

It's not like you kept it a secret. You used your abilities whenever you needed to, and sure, it was useful at times, especially in your line of work when you needed to get through locked doors and hidden rooms or just for the element of surprise. But it's draining. Leaves you winded after only a matter of seconds. You've always had a hard time controlling it when you're slightly delusional though. You must've hit your head really hard. Maybe that's why you haven't shot Deadpool, yet.

"Shut up, Wade."

"Hey, no need to be ashamed of it." He reassures you while trying to pick you up again. This time, he is more cautious, his movements slower and more deliberate. When he succeeds, you can tell he's grinning like a child underneath the mask.

He carries you back to the same fuckass car he hit you with, holding you with one arm under your knees, the other supporting your back. There's a faint skip to his step as if you're not on the verge of losing consciousness. While kicking open the back door, Wade continues his chatter, and you really wish he'd killed you on impact.

"Being a mutant is great! Plus, it's not the early two thousands anymore, or whatever timeline Stewart was in. Man, they sure did hate mutants in that trilogy."

He sets you down in the back seat gently, his hands surprisingly delicate. "You know, I always knew you were different. You hit me harder than regular people. I just figured you really hated me."

"I do." you mutter.

"Oh, my little sweet buns, I'm sure you do." To your annoyance, he pokes your nose playfully. "But you can't hate me too much right now, I'm literally your knight in shining armor. See, I can be nice, especially to my fellow mercs. You'd bleed to death if I left you there."

"Only because you hit me with a fucking car," you snap, the pain and frustration boiling over.

"Good to know you're still harboring great anger towards that. Means you're still conscious. Keep being mean to me, baby, that's how I'll know you're okay." He pauses before shutting the door, looking at you lying on the backseat, bleeding and all the glory that comes from it. "And it also turns me on a little bit. God, I can't believe your suit is torn and not one bit of extra cleavage is exposed. What will it take for a guy to get some rated R nudity over here?"

And with that, he slams the door shut, the car shaking with the force of it. The sound makes the ringing return to your ears, and you bite back the urge to curse him. He takes a seat in the driver's seat, starting the engine and rushing out of the scene before first responders arrive. The car roars to life, and as he speeds away, you feel your consciousness slipping, the pain and exhaustion overwhelming you.

The two of you sit in silence for the most part, only the sounds of the engine running and Wade humming the tune of a song you think is from The Greatest Showman soundtrack. You force yourself to stay awake. Mostly because you don't trust him, but it's also because you fear that if you let your eyes close you won't wake up again. Yeah, it's mostly because you don't trust Wade Wilson.

"Where are you taking me?" you finally ask, and you hate the way your voice sounds weak, barely above a whisper.

"Just a little safe house I know." He tells you, glancing back at you for a quick moment. "Very homey, trust me."

"What about the shipment?" you murmur, your mind struggling to stay focused.

"What?"

"The truck," you repeat, fighting to keep your eyes open.

"Oh, don't worry. That's no longer our problem." He says, "We're about to enter a whole new setting. That truck is forgotten plot."

Wade takes a sharp turn, and you wince as your body shifts uncomfortably in the back seat. The pain is getting worse, each bump in the road sending jolts of agony through your body. You grit your teeth, trying to stay conscious, but it's a losing battle.

After what feels like an eternity, the car finally comes to a stop. Wade gets out and you hear his footsteps crunching on gravel as he walks around to your door. He opens it carefully this time, his usual wiseass demeanour replaced by a rare show of genuine concern. He scoops you up gently, and you're too weak to protest.

The last thing you remember, before everything goes black, is the sight of a grand mansion looming ahead, its imposing silhouette framed by the moonlight. The large iron gates creak open as Wade carries you through them, the gravel path crunching under his boots. The mansion, with its towering spires and Gothic architecture, looks like something out of a fairy tale, a stark contrast to the violence and chaos you just escaped from.

When you wake up, the first thing you notice is the softness of the bed beneath you. The second thing you notice is the smell of lavender and the faint hum of medical equipment. You try to sit up, but a sharp pain in your side makes you gasp.

"Whoa, easy there," a deep, accented voice says from beside you. You turn your head slowly, the motion making your vision swim. A towering, metal-skinned mutant sits by your bed, his imposing figure softened by a look of genuine concern. "You need to rest. You are badly injured."

Your throat feels like sandpaper as you rasp, "Where am I?"

"The X-Mansion," he replies in a soothing tone, the accent heavy but comforting. "Wade brought you here. You’re safe now. I am Colossus."

You try to take in your surroundings, your head feeling heavy as you look around. The room is vast and elegant, with high ceilings that seem to reach the heavens. The walls are adorned with rich tapestries and framed paintings, depicting serene landscapes and grand historical scenes.

Large windows let in the soft, golden glow of morning light, casting gentle shadows that dance across the floor. It’s a far cry from the dingy, rundown places you’re used to, especially that old apartment with its creaky floors and peeling wallpaper.

Your eyes finally land on Wade, who is slouched in a chair in the corner. He’s flipping through a Playboy magazine with exaggerated interest, still in his dirty suit from the night before.

When he sees you stir, he grins and waves a hand in your direction. "Morning, sunshine," he says cheerfully, his voice carrying an unnerving mix of sincerity and teasing. "You gave us quite a scare. But, I've got to say, that hospital gown is doing wonders for your figure. I love the blue. Great contrast to that black you're always wearing."

You roll your eyes, too exhausted to respond properly. The gown feels scratchy against your skin, and every movement sends sharp pangs of pain through your body.

Colossus, noticing your discomfort, shifts slightly. "How are you feeling?" he asks, his voice deep and steady.

"Like I got hit by a truck," you mutter, sending a glare in Wade's direction.

Colossus chuckles, the sound deep and resonant, like rolling thunder. "Do not worry about him. We will take care of you."

Despite the throbbing pain and overwhelming fatigue, a wave of relief washes over you. For the first time in a long while, you're surrounded by people who genuinely want to help. You close your eyes, letting yourself sink into the softness of the bed. "Thank you," you whisper, the words feeling strangely comforting. For once, you don’t feel the need to be constantly on guard.

Wade's grin widens as he leans back in his chair, stretching his legs out and adjusting his mask. "Anytime, honeybuns. Anytime."

As you drift in and out of consciousness, you feel the cool, soothing touch of a wet cloth on your forehead. The gentle pressure is a welcome contrast to the persistent throbbing pain.

The sound of soft murmurs and quiet footsteps fills the room, creating a cocoon of calm around you. At some point, you notice Colossus's massive hands, surprisingly gentle, as he carefully tends to your wounds, applying bandages with precision.

Eventually, a teenager with short hair and a no-nonsense expression enters the room. You learn her name is Negasonic Teenage Warhead. She carries a phone in one hand, handing Colossus a stack of clean bandages with the other. The faint scent of antiseptic and medicinal herbs fills the air, mixing with the crispness of the freshly laundered bed linens.

Hours pass, or maybe it's days—it's difficult to gauge. When you next wake, the room is dimly lit, the golden light replaced by the softer hues of early evening. The pain has dulled to a manageable throb, and the heaviness in your limbs is slightly alleviated. Wade is still there, his previous outfit swapped for sweatpants and a dark green sweater, though he keeps his red and black mask on. He lounges in the chair beside your bed, now engrossed in an iPad, giggling softly to himself.

"Oh, man. Instagram reels are crazy," he snorts, shaking his head as he scrolls through the screen.

He looks up and hums when he sees you're awake again. "You're tougher than you look," he comments, turning off the iPad with a flick of his wrist. "Most people would have keeled over by now."

"You wish."

"Oh, trust me, I do." Wade nods vigorously, his mask bobbing with the motion. "I tried injecting poison into your IV, but your body rejected it."

"Don't worry. My handler will kill me for you."

Wade groans, dramatically rolling his eyes as he gets up from the chair. "You’re still worried about that? I already told you, the truck and all that shit is past plot. We’re in the sequel now, babe. There are new rules. Who knows, maybe this is your redemption arc where you join the X-Men. Though, I will miss your assassin era. You were so sexy in that suit."

You make a face, "Fuck off."

Just then, the door opens with a soft creak, and Colossus enters with a tray in hand. He’s followed closely by Negasonic, who carries a stack of fresh bandages. Colossus places the tray on a small table beside your bed with practiced ease. The tray is filled with a bowl of steaming soup and a couple of slices of crusty bread, the aroma wafting up and making your stomach rumble.

"How are you feeling?" Colossus asks, his voice calm and reassuring as he sets the tray down.

"Better," you admit, managing a small smile. "Thanks to you guys."

Negasonic shrugs nonchalantly, a small smile tugging at her lips despite her usual scowl. "Don’t mention it. Just doing our job."

Wade groans, clearly troubled by the kindness. "Oh great, now you’re all buddy-buddy. What am I, chopped liver?"

Colossus chuckles, the sound of a comforting rumble. "You must eat something. It will help you regain your strength."

You nod gratefully, and with Colossus’s help, you manage to sit up enough to sip the warm, comforting soup. The broth is rich and flavorful, and the bread is soft and fresh. As you eat, you can’t help but feel a strange sense of belonging. Despite the pain and the chaos, you’re surrounded by people who care, and for now, that’s enough.

Wade, not one to be left out, scoots his chair closer, setting it right next to your bed. He stretches out, propping his elbows on his knees as he leans in. "So, what do you think of the X-Mansion? Pretty swanky, right? Lots of rooms, big kitchen, danger room for training... and other things."

Negasonic scoffs, her eyes narrowing. "Gross."

You finish your meal, feeling a bit stronger. As Colossus helps you settle back into the bed, you glance at Wade. "Why did you bring me here?"

Wade’s expression shifts, becoming uncharacteristically serious. He looks at you with sincerity. "Because you’re one of us. And because... well, everyone deserves a second chance."

You blink, surprised by the depth of his words. Before you can respond, he’s back to his usual self, grinning and turning on his iPad. "Plus, it’s not every day I get to play hero. I gotta milk it for all it’s worth. And no, Colossus, I will not join your boy band, thank you very much."

The metal man grunts, waving a hand dismissively before walking out, Negasonic following right behind him. Wade stays seated next to you, his lips curled into a wide, amused grin that seems to stretch just a bit too far was he watches you.

"You're never gonna take that off?" you ask him.

Wade's laughter is a low, rumbling sound that feels almost too bright for the quiet room. "Oh, no fucking way," he says, his voice dripping with mock seriousness. "I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m ugly under this. Trust me. You’d be repulsed. Like, horror movie-level repulsed."

You give him a look, your eyebrow arched in disbelief. "I doubt it."

Wade leans in closer, the grin on his face widening. He taps his chin thoughtfully with a gloved finger, the gesture oddly contemplative. "Maybe next time I’ll take it off for you," he says, a taunting tone in his voice as he raises his brows. "Maybe that and a little more."

"There's a next time?"

"I mean, as the famous words of Natasha Bedingfield say: the rest is still underwritten."

"God, you’re fucking ridiculous," you mutter, the words coming out with a mix of exasperation and reluctant amusement. "I can’t wait to get out of here and never see you again."

Wade's shoulders slump, the white eyes of his mask narrow at you, "What, that's it? No steamy sex? No heavy petting? Is this how it ends? Not even a kiss?"

"Fuck no. Get out."

reblog to support your writers!

1K notes · View notes

luveline · 3 months

Note

Idk if you've ever written it, but like, hotch having to save bau!r after she's been kidnapped and tourtered and shit and when hotch finds them, babes is BLEEDING and shit and like barely coherent but spewing the absolute most random bullshit to hotch bc their panicking and whatnot?

thank you for requesting 💌 fem, 1.2k

Hotch has felt sick for three days.

He stands with his ear pressed to his shoulder, as though holding the ear piece further in will bring news of you quicker. His hands are up and ready, torch and firearm held aloft, wrists crossed.

Morgan has to go in first. Morgan, because if you’re dead, Hotch will take actions that will disbar him from being Unit Chief. He can’t keep his head, not if you’re gone. His anger will swallow him whole, and he will do things that can’t be forgiven.

His stomach churns, waiting, waiting, waiting. The sky is dark as pitch and the house they surround doesn’t stir for a time.

Then, low and long, carrying heavy through the air like a sledgehammer to his chest, is the reed of your screaming. It’s a strangled sound, sobbing to begin with, begging as it ends. Hotch hears your, “No, no, please! Please! Please.” Your third please fractures into a writhing scream as the pain begins again.

Hotch’s arms twitch, threatening to fall to his sides. You’re alive, but…

“Okay, we’re going in,” Morgan says through the ear piece, clearly having heard the same agony as Hotch. “Right now. Team two with Hotch. Everyone ready?”

You must have screamed so loudly for it to get through walls. That’s all Hotch can think as he follows behind the second team, the sounds of cracking wood and tight footsteps ahead.

He’s not in the room, but he’s down the hall, he can hear the fuss as he hurries forward. “Drop the weapon!” Morgan shouts, evidence of his own anger in the sheer booming volume of his voice. “Drop the weapon now! Drop it!”

A sharper crack as a bullet hits something and a thud. Hotch forces himself into the room just in time to see a large, short-haired figure fall to the floor.

You’re covered in red and purple and brown, blood in long lines and gushing from deep wounds, a mess of it. He doesn’t even know where to start, your gutted, exhausted sobbing like a knife in his stomach, your limp hands hanging either side of the strange chair you’ve been strapped to. “Morgan,” you say, audibly relieved and yet your pain obvious and electric as you gasp for air, “Morgan, you have to get me out.”

“I’ve got you,” Hotch says, holstering his gun in one breath and by your side the next.

A SWAT agent begins to saw through your binds with a serrated knife. Hotch’s hands stutter on the metal ends of the chair, wanting to touch you but terrified he’ll put a hand in a wound he hasn’t noticed.

“Hotch,” you say, and your relief is worse now. Like you aren’t covered in your own blood, like his being there has fixed everything.

“Y/N,” he says back, holding your elbow carefully, “it’s okay, it’s all right.”

“You have to get the straps off of me. I need to go home-”

“I know, that’s what we’re doing. We’ll get them off of you–”

“–I have to go home, Hotch. You have to take me home.”

He knows that medical are close behind them, they’re coming in just as soon as the building has been cleared, and there’s more than enough agents to have it done in the next thirty seconds. He has to assess you in that time. He can take care of you.

The SWAT agent cuts your last bindings and you immediately attempt to get up, gasping in pain when four hands push you down at the same time. “Sit down,” Hotch says, “Y/N, just stay there, just for a second.”

“No, no, let me down, I need to go home, I haven’t looked after anything and– and the laundry’s piled up, and–”

“Honey,” he says firmly, “I’m gonna take you home. I am.” He meets your eyes, panic and tears and concerning bloodshot clouding your vision. “I’m gonna take you home, but please stay still. Just until the EMS is here. Just so they can look at you.”

“I want to go home now,” you say, nearly shrieking, grasping at his arm. It’s so loud in the room with so many people speaking that he’s almost glad for it.

Your fingers slide down his sleeve and leave streaks of gore in their wake. Your hands are caked in your own blood. Done with his bargaining, you push up into his arms and get onto one of your feet, an incredible amount of force behind you as you get your way. Your knees buckle immediately —Hotch scoops you up and dumps you back in your chair, even as you cry and cry into his chest.

“No, I need to go home, I have so much to do, I can’t stay here,” you whine, pain eating at your voice, your fingers weakening where they’re pressed to his stomach.

“I promise I’m going to take you home,” he says, ducking to speak directly into your ear. “Do you trust me? I promise I’m going to take you back home. Please, please, sweetheart, trust me.”

You hiccup, tears thick running down your cheeks, and orange where they collect at your chin, chest heaving as you border incoherency. “I do trust you. I– I trust you, I just–”

He takes a showful breath. “Deep breath. I’ll bring you home soon.”

“All my plants are dead,” you mumble, blood smudging over your eyelids as you rub them harshly.

Hotch holds your wrists.

— <3

He keeps his promise (though you don’t remember him making it, not beyond what Morgan recounts). Hotch takes you home when you’re well enough to be there, and he, done with pretences, stays for a while as you recover.

“What are you doing?” you ask, more tired than you’ve ever been in your life, peering at him through sticky lashes where you lay in bed.

He’s odd to see without shoes. “Nothing,” he says, misting the leaves of your window plant with a frown. “Just hoping I can bring this one back to life.”

You’re not sure why he’s so worried about the plants. It can’t be judgement; he knows exactly why they died.

Well. Whatever professionalism was between you is well and truly gone. You wonder what it is you said to him that made him finally snap, but it was nice to wake up with his hand in yours, and it’s nicer still to see him each morning. When you clear your throat and look at him longingly, you know without asking that he’s going to find his way back to your side, and kiss your cheek, hands smelling of fresh soil. He does it all with ease.

“You brought me back to life,” you joke weakly.

“I had much more help than the plants.” He’s been panicky around you sometimes since he found you again, but not scared. He tilts your face gently one way and then another. “You look pretty, but very tired. Why don’t you sleep some more, hm?”

“Can I… I mean, do you think you could…”

He takes your arm as he settles in to comfort beside you. His fingers begin to trace a gentle line down your arm, meandering around cuts and bruises.

You close your eyes, hesitant of the darkness. “Are you sure I’m okay?” you ask quietly.

“You’re home, honey. Safe and sound.”

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner x y/n #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner blurb #aaron hotchner drabble #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner fanfic #aaron hotchner fanfiction #hotch x reader #hotch #hotch x you #hotch blurb #hotch drabble #criminal minds

1K notes · View notes

halcyone-of-the-sea · 11 months

Note

Hello, Congratulations on the 5k follows!!

I discovered this fandom a few months ago and have been living for your writing ever since.

I was thinking as a drabble of the taskforce gentlemen coming home at the crack of dawn from a long mission and seeing their spouse's hand, limp on the ground peeking out from the side of the couch. All the panic and worry going thru their heads, so much bubbling up, horrible scenarios. They rush over and find you sleeping on the floor. The power had gone out last night and the hardwood floor was the coolest place to be (you didn't want to open the window because you know how they worry), so you were watching stuff on your phone and drifted off. Crisis averted!

Thank you for your time 💜

—Wide-Eyed Panic

⇢ ˗ˏˋ 5k Drabble Masterlist ࿐ྂ

╰┈➤ ❝ [Why were you behind the couch?] ❞

I’ll start by saying all of them would be concerned and immediately go into panic mode—why were you behind the couch? Why was your hand sticking out? Why, in God's name, were you not moving? Cue the horrible thoughts and flashes of what went on in their work lives.

John Price ➺

John entered the house with a sigh, slipping off his boots as the door was closed and deftly locked behind him. Grunting under his breath, the man rubs over his face, the lights off as he calls out with a tired grumble to his voice.

“I’m back,” his voice echoes, the tone moving through the darkness far louder than it should have. There’s no answer. “Love…?” Pausing, John blinks slowly at the wall, ear twitching to the utter silence of the home. No water in the pipes. No buzzing of electricity. No you. Eyes rising, they dart around quickly as his finger moves out to the light switch. A small push elicits nothing, just as he thought. The power was out.

Dread slowly creeps into John’s chest.

Hand reaching behind his back, the man’s fingers inch over the smooth metal of a pistol, grasping the weapon before he begins walking forward. He keeps silent, feet moving to where he knows the wood won't creak.

His mind runs.

Why was the power off? Where were you? Why didn’t you respond—were you hurt? John’s mind goes to blood and bullets, his jaw clenching tightly as the pistol comes out to rest in front of him; hands shifting the grip as he takes a soothing breath. Panicking wouldn’t help anyone, but it would be pointless to lie about how his heart hammers.

“Fuck,” he growls, eyes going tight.

That’s when he sees it. Blue eyes widen sharply.

“Love!” John shouts, all other concerns about intruders meaningless to him. Your hand was sticking out from behind the couch, a dark shadow in the low light. He rushes over as you jerk, yelling in alarm as he rushes to grab you, pulling you up into his arms and pulling you away into the closet across the room.

“John!” You blink rapidly as you’re set back against the wall.

“Shush now,” he grunts, eyes panicked. “Keep awake, let me look.” A hand moves all over your body, searching and pulling at clothes to touch the skin for any wounds. “Tell me where it hurts, then. Quickly. We have to move—”

“John, what the hell,” you push at him, moving him back. Your eyes try to adjust to being so rudely awakened at such an hour. “What are you doing?!”

You weren’t hurt.

The Captain’s face pulls in with confusion, back against the closet door and now in more darkness than ever before. He can barely make out your face before you sigh and put your hands against his arms.

Things begin to calm down as his hand rests at your hip, nearly tight enough to bruise. In his other is the gun just before you put your hand to it and softly peel the item away from him—putting it on the shelf that you know is to your left.

Hands find John’s cheeks as he pants.

“John,” you say his name again. “...what happened.”

“Why were you on the ground?” He forces out firmly, voice a low grunt. “Why were the lights not—”

“The power went out for everyone, okay?” You speak slowly, rubbing your thumbs over his beard. “It was on the news. I didn’t open a window because I knew you would worry about that—the floor was cool and it was getting too hot in here.”

Your mind tells you to explain quickly and fluently. You move forward and press your forehead into John’s as he sags with a great exhalation of breath—his arms circling you tightly until your spine might crack.

He doesn’t speak for a long while, just holding you.

“Scared me,” he mutters, missing you deeply on the forehead, speaking into your skin. “Fuck, you scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

He keeps you to his chest, eyes fluttering shut and his spine hunching over you, fingers splayed over your back. You run your hands through his hair and calm the swelling of your heart.

You can feel his pulse mirroring your own.

Simon Riley ➺

When he sees your hand, he freezes.

Simon wasn’t a stranger to the lights being off in the home—you opted for lamps and low light more often than not; this wasn’t new. He had only quirked a brow when he came home to the pitch-blackness, off from his recent deployment and eager for a warm bed to fall into. He admits he’d let himself calm down on the car ride home—your home was where he could relax and release tension until it became as unimportant as an ant on the pavement.

But when he’d closed the door silently behind him and walked the few steps it would take to enter the living room, where he was sure you were still up either reading or watching something on your phone under a blanket, his body had stiffened immediately.

Your hand sticking out from behind the couch. Limp.

Lifeless.

He’d been staring at it for only a few seconds before the memories came back—the ones of gore splattered to the walls and ceiling of an old flat back in Manchester.

Simon’s thoughts had hit him like a bullet.

Not again.

Rushing forward like a bear, the man slips along the hardwood as his knees go down, shaking the home at the force at which he grabs at your body and flips you from your side to your back.

You gasp awake and instinctually throw out a fist, connecting with a stone chest as you hiss and blink in panic.

Fingers ruthlessly dig into your shoulders, wide brown eyes open, and…and afraid.

“Simon?” You mutter softly, all fear in your heart is squished in an instant.

The man breathes through wheezes, balaclava fabric moving from the force of his breaths. His fingers are shaking, blinking as his head jerks to look your lying form up and down swiftly.

You hesitantly put a hand on his cheek and he flinches before nuzzling into it.

“Don’t…” he takes a quivering breath into his lungs, and after, loosens his grip on your skin. Simon’s hands go to your waist, dragging you up and stapling you to his chest. “Don’t do that again.”

His voice is low. Vulnerable.

You blink, hands holding him back on the floor.

“...The power went out,” you try to explain only half of it softly, muffled by his neck.

He only holds you harder, eyes open and blankly staring at the floor a foot away.

Johnny MacTavish ➺

Johnny hums a song under his breath, hanging his keys on the hook near the door.

“Dearie!” He calls to you loudly, itching at the side of his head and chuckling. “Don’t run too fast to me now, I’m all yours for two w—”

The light switch is moved by his finger, but no light illuminates his path to the living room. Pausing in the entrance, the man’s brows furrow tightly, speech cutting off like scissors to paper.

“...eeks?” Johnny ends his sentence, turning back around to look at the switch in confusion. “The hell’s going on with that?” He mutters to himself, a frown growing on his face before he refocuses on his mission to find you—now with the added task of figuring out why the power was out in the house.

“Swear,” the man grumbles, huffing while he runs a hand over his face, “if those kids down the street did something I’ll be livid. Little devils, I swear.”

Johnny steps farther into the living room, glancing around.

“Dearie?” He pauses, listening before calling out your name. “Where’s she off to?”

He sighs softly, wanting to hold you now that he’s home to do so—squeeze you in his arms and take in your scent again; he’d missed you immensely while he was away.

Johnny came across your hand sticking out from behind the couch by accident, moving to make his way into your bedroom thinking that you were sleeping. He sees an odd shape in the blackness and pauses, feet slowing to a stop.

When he notices that it’s a hand—your hand, he doesn’t even realize that he’s completely gripped the side of the couch and wrenched it back until the scratch of the wood floors screams in his ears.

You wake up to hands on your cheeks, sharp yelling, and your head being shaken up and down until you’re conscious.

“Dearie, hey! What the fuck,” the last sentence is growled on fast lips. “What the fuck.”

Your hands slap to Johnny’s wrists, nails digging in.

He breathes out quickly, looking into your eyes to look for dilation as the darkness forces him closer. “There we are, tell me where you’re hurting, now, yeah? Did you hit your head? Let me take a look. It’s okay, I’ll get you all fixed up, there’s no need to worry.”

“Hey!” Your hands push at his, trying to shove the brick wall away from you. “Quit it! Johnny! I’m fine! ”

The man pauses at your animated movements, blinking rapidly before his grip loosens.

When it’s obvious that you’re perfectly fine, he moves back and groans, thumb and forefinger digging into his nose bridge.

“Hell’s bells, Hen.” You glare, panting on the floor before you push yourself up.

“‘Hell’s bells’, me?” Johnny’s head plops to your shoulder. “You just shook me like a fucking rabbit!”

“Scared the shite out of me, you terror.” The man huffs. “Need to put a heart monitor on you.”

“Piss off,” you sigh, putting a hand to your chest to feel the pace of your pulse and the blood that runs furiously.

Johnny, moments later as he’s still resting on your shoulder, starts…laughing. Low at first, then gaining noise the more it goes unchecked—a deep rumble into chest-jerking amusement. You look down at him, the couch tilted and long scratches over the floor. Pausing, you blink at his shaking shadow before your lungs start quivering. The two of you bend over one another with shared, house-shaking laughter.

“What the fuck were you doin’ behind the damn couch?” Johnny grabs you close, kissing along your neck as he picks you up, dragging you to your feet.

“The power went out!” You giggle, chest hurting from the fast gasps of breath as more kisses are spread over your skin. “It was colder down there and I didn’t want to open one of the windows because I knew you’d throw a pouting match about it.”

“Christ, Dearie.” Lips meet your own. “I had half the mind to think you had a heart attack. Nearly gave me one.”

Kyle Garrick ➺

Kyle sighs as he rubs at his jaw, itching the skin and slipping out of his jacket.

“I’m home, Love!” He says, his voice echoing over the flat. “Want me to start on supper or have you eaten yet?” The man smiles, taking off his cap and putting it on the coat rack, sighing softly.

It was good to be back.

Bending down to unlace his boots, he pulls at them until they’re loose enough to slip out of, thumping to their sides on the rug until he reaches out and fixes them.

“What’s that, then?” He calls into the darkness, not hearing your answer as he quickly checks the time on his phone. “Fuck, it’s late,” Kyle utters to himself.

Walking into the kitchen, he touches the light switch only to be met with nothing. Pausing, the man’s face pulls in—fingers twitching at his sides as he glances at the window and the moonlight that seeps in to glare along the floor.

A deep frown takes hold of him, and he looks around once more before backing up.

“...Love?” Kyle wasn’t too concerned—the building wasn’t always the best, and power outages weren’t unheard of. But, damn, if the high of getting off of a deployment didn’t put him in a negative head-space when it came to a change in routine involving you.

Why weren’t you answering him?

Walking slightly faster into the living room, his hand nearly reaches into his pocket to call your phone if you didn’t end up in any of the rooms—pulse beginning to be infected with a steady injection of adrenaline.

Brown eyes find your hand behind the couch when they’re about to shift to the open door of your bedroom. A sharp gasp is inhaled instantaneously.

Kyle races over, grappling to it and pressing his fingers to your neck for a pulse. You softly breathe, none the wiser as you lightly shift and sigh in your sleep; a delicate hum moving out as familiar fingers dig into you.

It’s through his panic that a thought quickly cuts through the man’s mind. You’d mentioned this before.

Kyle pauses, just about to loudly wake you.

‘It gets hot when the power goes out, Kyle, I swear one of these days I’m going to just fall asleep on the floor. At least it’s cool down there.’

Well, the power was out, and, it seemed, you really had fallen asleep on the floor. Now that he thought about it, the flat was running hot—and he also knew that you knew he had gotten nervous of late when you left the windows open at night.

“Bloody hell,” the man releases a long breath, free hand moving to grip the back of his head. A few seconds later, Kyle chuckles to himself, shaking his head with a small smile. “You are losing it, Mate. Losing it.”

Without another word, he grips you, and with a grunt, picks you up and takes you to bed, setting you down on the pillows and making sure to leave the sheets off of you so you don’t grow uncomfortable.

A kiss is pressed to your forehead, and you hum in slumber, smiling unconsciously.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, Love.”

He leaves to go make a quick supper of cereal and milk.

3K notes · View notes

fantasyyluvr · 1 month

Note

Hey, i read the “Bat-boys finding out your pregnant” and may i ask for more? It was sooo cute that i need more of it 😭💕

The Batboys fathers HCs

A/N: this request is long overdue that I’m sure the requester doesn’t even remember it, but I’ve arrived at last. I hope this is what they wanted. The Absolute Power run has restored my love for Nightwing and comics. ❣️

Dick Grayson is a fun dad. At first, Dick suffocated beneath the weight of fatherly duties. He wanted to be better than Bruce. Dick loved him, but he could admit that his boyhood wasn’t a salubrious environment for the young mind. No child should have to carry the weight of Bruce’s mission. Thus, Dick’s mission became ensuring yours and the baby’s lives were secure, safe, and joyous.

Pale beams of sunlight kissed your cheeks good morning. The aroma of maple syrup wafted throughout the house, tickling your nostrils as you carried yourself down the stair steps, footfall by footfall. There Dick stood at the stove, scooting the black spatula beneath a golden pancake and flipping it into the air, causing your baby to burst out into a fit of giggles before the pancake hit the skillet with a sizzle. He was proud of himself for making his baby laugh.

“Well, well, look at mama.” A grin crept across his lips as he spotted you creeping closer, supernovas bursting in his electric blue irises.” You were snoring in a pool of drool when I awoke, so I grabbed the baby and started breakfast.” Vibrant seas of pacifiers, rattles, and toy pianos adorned the house.

Dick attempted to rush the developmental process. Not out of callousness, but sheer excitement to have a child. He had already stocked the baby in dolls, trucks, pacifiers, fruit snacks, apple juice (watered down, of course). He even installed a nightlight that short circuited the house at first, but Bruce helped him fix it. Reading is good for the baby right? Dick is on it. He’s already ordered the best and most classic tales; Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Seuss, Little Red Riding Hood.

Dick Grayson has read multiple novels on fatherhood, motherhood, child development, postpartum depression. He hates surprises, and babies are the breeding ground of surprises. He will pack the go-bag full of onesies, pacifiers, diapers, wipes, toys because he doesn’t want you to be in public and not have the materials.

“Give me a few days to install the new changing table. You’ll love it.” Crimson blush adorned his tanned cheeks, a proud grin dawning on his lips, showcasing his pearlescent teeth.” It broke when I weight checked it, thank god. Damian, albeit reluctantly, is coming out here tomorrow to translate the instructions.”

Jason Todd is the protective, paranoid father because he’d placed a bullet in the worst humanity had to offer, witnessed otherworldly horrors done to the little guys, the folks who lack billions of dollars to hole up on secluded islands and cabins. He can’t eradicate all the scum, can’t caulk the fractures villains seem to keep slipping through—and that terrifies him.

Jason never imagined a life worth living to be possible. He’d thought himself a sentient zombie, an unlucky boy yanked from the eternal peace of a cold, soundless grave and forced to enact vengeance on behalf of the common folk who lack the means to undertake the mission themselves. He never considered Red Hood to be a hero; merely a restless phantom with nothing else to bide his time until the sweet release of the afterlife deigned to shatter his manacles to the mortal world. That was until he’d fallen over the sun, offering endless devotion to his goddess, and you’d rewarded his offering with a daughter, a lovely girl. He’d abduct the moon and wrap it in a silken bow if only you’d give him permission.

“Catch, papa,” your daughter had called out, retrieving the little football and sprinting toward him, tiny feet carrying her over the damp and verdant grass of y’all’s backyard. Jason never brought the both of you to parks—an excess of people to watch, different personalities and behaviors; a myriad of possibilities for tragedy. Too much room for error in a vast, leafy expanse.

“You’ve gotta bring it to me first,” Jason called back, outstretching his muscular arms, awaiting her arrival. He was paranoid and distrustful of the world, not a killjoy. Y’all’s daughter’s bedroom was littered with vivid nail polishes, fluffy scarves, glittering tiaras, and Monster High dolls. Your daughter had always adored Frankie Stein and Frankenstein because they reminded her of Jason and herself, the dolls and humans both sharing pale white streaks of hair. He hadn’t known whether to laugh or weep upon hearing those words from her lips, innocent and completely unaware of the accuracies spanning far past hair color.

“Jason, I love you, but we are not cooping ourselves up in the house this summer.” The words were firm and unyielding—but lacking any true bite.

“ I’ve given you grace. I let a lot slide because I understand your background. But we’re just not doing it this summer. Its too hot to not go to waterparks and enjoy ourselves because of possibilities.” A damn good point rested upon your tongue, and he knew it.

“Fine.” He relented with a jocosely petulant huff.” But we take a gun with us.”

Tim Drake is an ambitious father. It’s been said before, but I don’t believe he’s as active as the fandom would believe. Though, his absence isn’t born of malice or indifference, but ambition, a thirst for a legacy. He wants to be a man his significant other and child can be proud of, a father worth bragging about. There’s also a large chamber seated within his mind that knows not how to be a father, for his parents were cold, choosing to throw dollars at his gripes and needs rather than be present.

One of his greatest fears is disappointing the both of you, like he was disappointed by his own parents, so disappointed he couldn’t even despise them. Tragically, the mission to avoid history’s repetition had placed him before a mirror, his parents gazing back at him, a smug smirk curled on their lips because they know that he’ll be on their end of the glass within a few decades.

Can he be blamed? Tim wants the absolute best for his family. The best grades, the best schools, the best scores, the best scholarships. He’s not naïve enough like Dick to believe hard work and persevere can lift a nobody anywhere. There are no bootstraps to be pulled taut. It’s an illusion, a sauce wealthy people spoon over their meals to disguise the taste of nepotism and privilege. Manipulations the rich regurgitate to excuse themselves from having to acknowledge the unfair, biased system they’ve upheld.

The door to his limousine slammed closed, his child seated beside but, but farther than ever. What could be said? Jerking forward, the limousine rolled into drive, coasting beneath autumn streaked clouds, as though her father had gifted her the sky from a florist. Bruce hadn’t prepared Tim for the teenaged terror years. He couldn’t help but wonder if he himself had been this capricious and fickle as a teen, or if he were merely that bad of a father.

“Do. . . do you want a Milkshake? From that one place by the house, like we used to when you were young.” Tim couldn’t help but raise a hopeful raven shaded brow. He could smell the stench of sweat, an anxious perspiration, cleaving to your school uniform. It must’ve been a test day.” I’ll clear the rest of my schedule for us. . . if you want, of course.” He extended an olive branch, granting her the choice to engage and accept, or set the course for the rest her teenage years.

Damian Wayne does not want children. He doesn’t know how far his taint would bleed, and all he can envision are the ways he could disgrace the mind of a child. His village was rotten and evil. Bad fruits bear worse seeds.

Damian’s devotion was love, the purest kind he knew, a primal desire to protect and cherish that of which he adored. You forged suns in his heart, set the butterflies in his belly aflutter. Beneath a weeping of sheet of violet sky, the both of you had sworn to love the other until Earth imploded—and when it did, he would find you in another universe.

He doesn’t hate children. In fact, he would be a decent babysitter for Dick and Jason, and whenever Tim deigned to grace the BatCave with his presence. But, Damian is staunch in his childfree attitude, and you respect it. Truthfully, you weren’t even sure you wanted kids. No, you and Damian battled crime, traveled the world and experienced culture, learned histories outside of the filth pumped into his mind by the Al Ghuls. Bruce was saddened by Damian’s decision against children, but he ultimately respected it—and him.

Damian knew he was poisoned and rotten and always would be, no matter what emblem was sewn over his breast. He was content with the life the both of you had, and knowing Dick, many more children are to come, so he’d never get lonely.” Beloved, what do you make of Italy? Not the tourist parts where the history is washed, but the ripe lands.”

Bruce Wayne is a weary father. He knew the birth of his youngest child was redemption, his last chance at preserving the Wayne name since Damian had sworn off children. But Bruce was aged, hardened, jaded, weary. He had scars to last a lifetime, some worn on his heart, though majority were worn on his skin.

The Wayne brownstone was eerily silent since Alfred’s death. Bruce’s son sat around the oaken table, coloring a picture of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Alfred. Bruce’s heavy lids fell over exhausted, dim blue irises, his brain flitting back to the memories of Alfred, gathered at the stove and learning a recipe. I am. . . old, Master Bruce. My time on this earth is not infinite. You must learn more than the ways of fists, the words echoed in his mind. Reminding him that old age wasn’t even the murderer of Alfred Pennyworth.

He fetched an inhale before pulling himself off of the couch, and padding over toward his son at the dinner table.” What’s that? Oh, a pretty picture. A real artistic talent, like Damian.” Bruce was unsure of his fathering more often than not. He knew how it appeared to his son’s school counselors and the principal—old, washed up playboy Bruce Wayne saddled with another young son. That was far from the case, but the masses will believe anything when they’re given nothing.

Bruce fetched a pot and skillet from the creaking cabinets of the brownstone, far from the elegance and cleanliness of the manor. Alfred would’ve been mortified to see the mess, he almost chuckled, but withheld it. Lest his son raise a question, for the explanation would be too complicated and long-winded for his young mind.” So, what do you see for dinner tonight? What makes that belly growl like a lion? Mac and Cheese? Lasagna? Hamburger Helper?”

Bruce knew exactly what his son would choose. Asking was merely a courtesy. Bruce knew him, raised the boy from the minute he was weaned. He knew what his son would do before his son knew what he himself would do. The Batman wasn’t a slacker, wasn’t lazy.

595 notes · View notes

redflagshipwriter · 2 months

Text

Mamabat Chapter 11: the trap snaps shut

masterpost

Five vans peeled into view, rocketing around the curved road fast enough that they visibly tilted through the turn. They all bristled with weaponry.

Cass felt her lips press into a faint line. She glanced at Dannybaby: scared. I knew it. Here they are.

They didn’t have to talk about it. The three adults stepped out and put their backs to ring Danny, facing outwards to the threat.

“Shoot the racks,” she commanded. The mounted weapons. She didn’t like that. She pulled out a batarang herself and squinted to find her aim. The construction? Sloppy. Exposed wires. Weakness.

A gun cocked. “Aye aye, captain.” Jason hefted a gun in each hand and started shooting as the vans screeched to a stop in a circle around them. Bang! Sparks flew where he hit. Cass and Dickiebird did the same with quieter precision, slicing wires and leaving projectiles sticking into the metal monstrosities. Electricity sparked. Just in time: machines whined as they were powered on. One gave out with a huge bang! The van attached to it jolted as the machine punched a huge dent into the roof. White smoke floated away, clouding the nighttime scene with a chemical stink.

“Whoa,” Danny breathed.

She felt a twinge of satisfaction.

Jason hit the last set-up with a bang! Bang! Then his foot scuffed across the pavement to knock against Danny’s. Check, you’re here, you’re safe, you’re little.

“They’ll come out!” Danny warned.

He was right. Doors clicked unlocked all around them and men in white suits piled out, futuristic looking guns aimed at the little group.

She felt a twinge of disbelief. “Can’t shoot,” Cass said. No way. So dumb. They were in a circle. Friendly fire, new concept to losers??

They shot. She hit the ground in a roll and trusted that everyone else would. They did. She turned her head to see that one agent was down from friendly fire. There was no blood as he was lifted off his feet and blasted backwards against the van he came out of.

“Ghost scum!” howled one of the suits.

“We knew it!”

The victory in their voices set her blood boiling. Cass launched herself to the closest opponent and took him down with a nasty hit. She whirled on the next one, two mean hits. Go, go, clear the area! She heard feet scuffling and weapons whining as they fired, fired, fired on the boys.

She took number 4 down as the smoke was starting to clear. She heard a pained oof from the center, where Jason and Dickiebird were blocking Danny.

“Jason!” Danny said. He sounded very young. “Oh, shit.” Cass cast a frantic glance over at his posture and sucked in a breath even as she bulleted towards the next opponent. Determined. I have to do this. Here we go!

No, no!

Jason was down. Dickiebird was darting between Jason and the man actively firing. Danny was pale. He opened his mouth. He put his palms out. He flashbanged.

She blinked away stars and slammed a man’s head into a van before he could aim at her. Slam, slam, drop. She stole another glance. Danny was- Danny had white hair now and he was flashing green light at their enemies. Hm. She couldn’t afford to watch. Cass bared her teeth, angry.

Air sizzled: GIW firing wildly. Guns fired: Jason was still conscious. Danny yelped: what?

Cass didn’t dare look more. She moved faster than Batman could ever, brutally taking down these criminals with disdainful ease. They had nothing but numbers and lasers.

Green shot past her vision. She traced it back: Danny! Her eyes went wide. Wow. He had some kind of organic blast, like Starfire. Very useful!

It wasn’t enough. Danny screamed. She heard him hit the ground. Sizzling.

She howled, wordless with fury. She tackled the next agent and cracked his head against the pavement. Only two more. She flung a batarang down the barrel aimed at her and then yanked the weapon away to brutally jab the air out of the agent’s diaphragm. Cass tossed it at him as he fell. Solid thunk. It hit his head.

The last man tried to say something, white teeth flashing in the gloom. Her ears were closed to it. The only language she spoke right now was violence. She used it to get him down and wrench him into zip ties. She could hear Dickiebird talking his soothing sounds at Danny baby. Cass wanted to go there. Cass wanted to soothe him. She wanted to see his hurts.

But she had to secure the area. She rushed around to the groaning and crying men she had put down. She immobilized them. The foolish ones tried to get up as she approached. The smart one (and there was only one) held his hands out, eyes wide in the night. He talked at her. Beseeching, reasoning, she just doesn’t understand. You’re like me. Not like them.

Cass snarled. She understood just fine. She pressed his face into the ground harshly, fingers digging into his jaw. “Shut up,” she gritted out. She left him with effort, ignoring the mean impulse to smack him.

All the boys were on the ground. There was no blood. Eyes open. Not dead.

Something in her gun unclenched.

Dickiebird looked up at her from where he was supporting Jason, sitting halfway with a grimace as he holstered his guns. Hands shaking. “He’ll be fine!” Danny pressed his body against Jason like he was trying to absorb his body heat. His hair was black again and his eyes looked tired. “He, uh, it’s shock,” Dannybaby babbled. She knelt to rub at his back, silently encouraging the explanation. “They basically zapped his ecto, stopped circulation. It should start up again in a few minutes and he’ll feel fine.”

“Get off,” Jason grunted. He shoved at Dickiebird. Weak. “I feel fine.”

Lie.

“I feel drained,” he admitted. “But fine. Just weak. I can stand.” He struggled to stand, biting his lip. He swayed only slightly. “Man,” he cursed under his breath. Jason cast an unhappy look at the 14 agents groaning on the ground, on their bellies like the worms they were with hands ziptied at their backs. “Not my best showing.”

“Next time, you could dodge,” Dickiebird suggested lightly.

“You’re lucky it got him and not you,” Danny snapped. “Didn’t you see that guy go flying?”

Tense. Dickiebird paused. Smile. Soothe. “I’m only teasing,” he said. “It’s fine, Danny.”

“None of this is fine!” Cass swiveled her head to make sweltering eye contact with the scumbag who was cutting in. He was bold, for someone with his cheek digging into the rocks and cement. “By the authority of the US Government, you are required to submit these ecto-entities for testing and capture into our custody. Release us, or face dire consequences!”

Cass looked at him. She felt hate. Disdain. You’re nothing, you’re a worm to me.

“They’re telling the truth,” Danny whispered. “It’s, uh, it’s legal.” He looked haunted. He rubbed at his chest: some memory of sharp pain.

Dickiebird snorted and slung an arm over Danny’s narrow shoulders. “Maybe by US laws, but Oa has jurisdiction that supersedes. This was a clear case of assault.” He gave an unpleasant smile. Big brother. Big angry. Guard dog at the door. “I’ll make a call.”

The next minutes felt very long. Cass pressed Danny’s face into her shoulder so that he didn’t have to make eye contact with the fallen agents. She stroked his hair with her free hand, boiling inside with fury.

Dickiebird called. A Green Lantern answered: coming.

They waited. Jason said he felt better. His body said: mostly better. But strange. They ignored the threats and complaints from the GIW men on the ground.

Hal Jordan came, with one more Green Lantern that Cass didn’t know. He gathered up prisoners in a green veil. He talked with Dickiebird. He nodded, and left.

“I wanna go home,” Danny said quietly. “But I think that we need to get Jason to my doctor. He’s really not right. It’s… It might be time sensitive.”

#dp x dc #dc x dp #red mama bat

427 notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 months

Text

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 1: Welcome To A New Kind Of Tension]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “American Idiot” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.1k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

“What do you think, should we kill ourselves now or later?” Rio is spinning his Beretta M9 around on his index finger. This is not advisable. He doesn’t care.

Your hands are gripping the skeletal latticework of the transmission tower, steel hot enough to burn you; no electricity hums in the power lines suspended above your heads. Your eyes are on the horizon, golden June sunlight over fields no one has planted. Weeds are growing up through the earth, feral and defiantly useless, reclaiming their land just like the deer are, and the rabbits and the opossums and the turtles and the squirrels and the doves. The reign of humanity is over. Now you’re prey animals too. “Let’s wait.”

“For what?”

“Maybe someone will save us.”

“Ain’t nobody coming, Chips!” Rio says. “We’re a hundred feet off the ground in the middle of nowhere, motherfucking Catawissa, Pennsylvania, and we haven’t run into anyone since that Amish family back in Lightstreet, and I wouldn’t count on them driving by in their horse and buggy to pick us up.”

“We’re about sixty feet off the ground.”

“Okay, Bob the Builder, why don’t you whip up a helicopter or something to get us out of here?” Rio’s M9 has one bullet left in it, yours has three, nowhere near enough. At the bottom of the tower is a swarm of fifty-four zombies; you’ve counted them twice. There are no cute euphemisms: walkers, biters, the infected. They were once people and now they’re not. They wear the vestiges of their former lives, like how those who believe in reincarnation see meaning in birthmarks: here you were stabbed, there you were kissed by your true love. They lurch and snarl and hiss in their professional attire, college t-shirts, Vans and Jordans, septum piercings, wedding rings. They decompose in a miasma of metallic blood and spoiled meat. Parker had been the last one to the transmission tower, and they grabbed him by the legs. Now they’re chewing the gristle off his bones: disconnected ligaments that swing like strands of cobwebs, scarlet threads of muscle. “Oh shit,” Rio says, looking down. “We’ve got a smart one.”

Most zombies don’t have the fine motor skills to climb, swim, or open doors, but every once in a while—just like out of every 5,000 or 10,000 or however many ordinary humans you’ll pull the lever on the genetic slot machine and get a Picasso or a kid who can score a 1600 on the SATs—you run into an overachiever. This zombie, a teenage boy with red hair and a blue plaid shirt, is slowly scaling the tower. He’s already ten feet off the ground.

Rio aims his M9, semiautomatic, packs a punch but won’t break your arm with the recoil. “Fuck off, Ed Sheeran!” He fires and misses; the bullet grazes the boy’s shoulder. He groans dramatically and asks you in defeat: “Will you take care of that, please?”

You pull your pistol out of your holster and lean away from the tower to get a better angle, holding onto the scaffolding with one hand. You feel Rio’s large fingers close around your wrist, ready to yank you back if you slip. You click off the safety with your thumb, peer through the front sight, aim and wait until you’re sure. It’s a headshot: shards of skull ricochet off steel beams, half-rotten brains spray out in a mist. The carcass plummets to the earth.

“All this horror, all this catastrophe.” Rio’s eyes, dark like a mineshaft, drift mischievously back to you. “We could…distract each other.”

He’s not serious; this is a game you play. “No thanks.”

“You don’t want to die a virgin.”

“I do if you’re the only other person up here.”

“You deny a condemned man his final wish?”

“We’re not dying,” you insist. “What about Sophie?”

“Sophie would understand given the circumstances. She would want me to be happy.”

“What if we have sex and then immediately thereafter get rescued? You’d be a cheater. You’d be consumed by guilt. You’d never be able to take me back to your parents’ doomsday prepper cult commune in bumblefuck Oregon to wait out the apocalypse in peace.”

“You’re going to appreciate those doomsday preppers when you’re eating Chef Boyardee out of a can instead of shuffling around as a reanimated corpse.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I will,” you muse. “So you agree we’re going to get off this tower somehow.”

Rio sighs and whistles a morose tune: what a shame. “You should have gone out with that Marine at Corpus Christi.”

You frown, repentant, wistful. There’s nothing on the horizon except fields and trees and black storm clouds of crows taking flight. “I was afraid of making a mistake.”

“And now look at you. About to die as pure as Pope Francis.”

“How did this happen?! We’re not idiots, we’re goddamn professionals!” You re-holster your M9. You’re still wearing your uniforms from when you went AWOL, stealing away from Saratoga Springs like rats from a sinking ship.

“I’ll tell you exactly how this happened. You let that loser Parker come with us even though I knew it was a bad idea—”

“I couldn’t just leave him there! He started crying!”

“And he had one job, which was to check the oil in the Humvee, and clearly he failed because…” Rio glances at his watch. “Approximately four hours ago, the engine started smoking and the whole thing died on us, so we had to get out and walk, like we’re pioneers or some shit, and then that hoard down there came out of nowhere, and the only place left to go was up. Freaking Parker. I could murder that guy.” An awkward pause. “I mean, the zombies beat me to it. But still.”

“He had two jobs. He was also carrying the extra ammo.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rio isn’t messing around with his M9 anymore. He’s contemplating it as the sun hovers just past noon, hot and shadowless. “How many bullets do you have left?”

“Two.”

“Good. Don’t use them.”

You look at him, this man you’ve known for over four years, this man you’ve traveled the world with. You’ve already gone so much farther than Oregon together. How is it possible that what was once a six hour flight is now a month-long journey that might kill you? “It’s not over yet, Rio.”

“Remember what you promised me.”

His hushed voice in the moonlit indigo of the Humvee the night you left Saratoga Springs: Don’t let me die alone. “We’re going to be okay. We’re going to make it to Oregon.” Then you grin, sweltering summer air breathing over you, humid, heavy, the screeching of insects in the trees. “But if it comes to that, I’d be happy to shoot you first.”

Rio smiles as the zombies below growl and claw at the steel framework of the transmission tower. Flesh peels off their fingers until you can see the gore-stained white of their bones. “Don’t miss.”

“I rarely do.”

“Do you have any more packs of Cheddar Whales in your pockets or—?” He cuts off as he spots something in the distance. His eyes go wide, his jaw drops open. “What…what is that?!”

It’s an SUV, massive, dark blue, rumbling across the field in a dust storm of displaced earth. It’s headed straight towards you. There is someone standing up through the sunroof, short dark hair that whips wildly in the wind, binoculars. You can hear the engine revving and, faintly, Kanye West’s Gold Digger. As the SUV nears the tower, Sunroof Kid ducks inside and closes the hatch.

Rio explodes into hysterical, rapturous laughter. “Oh my God, we’re saved! We’re not going to die up here! Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you. I’m never going to jack off on Sundays again.”

The SUV, still accelerating, plows through the mob of zombies. Severed limbs go flying; bones crunch and snap. There’s a woman driving, you can see now through the slightly tinted windows. She puts the monstrous vehicle and reverse and does another pass. Zombies paw futilely at the sides of the SUV, a Chevy Tahoe, as it turns out. They smack their open, soggy palms on the windows; they gnaw and lick at the bumpers and the wheel wells. The Tahoe circles to regain speed, the engine growling, a bear, a dragon, and barrels into the remaining ambulatory zombies. The hoard is now largely incapacitated. Rio is cheering and clapping his hands.

The Tahoe’s doors open, and your rescuers appear. There are two men wielding baseball bats: one with long dark curly hair, the other tall and blonde, and there’s something wrong with his face, the left side, though you are too far away to see clearly. They move rapidly through the battlefield of felled, moaning bodies, swinging their bats and crushing skulls. There’s another blonde guy, shorter, softer, pink with sunburn, wearing plastic sunglasses and a teal polo with a popped collar. He’s spinning a golf club in his right hand. He is followed out of the Tahoe by one last blonde, spindly and swift, stalking the perimeter with a compound bow, a quiver of arrows secured to his belt. Rio is singing along to Gold Digger, drumming his fists on the steel beams.

“Now, I ain’t sayin’ you a gold digger, you got needs

You don’t want a dude to smoke, but he can’t buy weed

You go out to eat, he can’t pay, y’all can’t leave

There’s dishes in the back, he gotta roll up his sleeves…”

The driver wriggles out of the Tahoe with some difficulty; she is seven or eight months pregnant. “Stay in the car,” Madame Driver tells someone inside as she slams the door shut. She’s holding a hammer and sets about euthanizing the zombies still squirming on the ground and gnashing their cracked teeth at her.

Golf Club says: “Jace, bro, that’s so embarrassing. You’re gonna let her do that?”

Curly—or, rather, Jace—shrugs. “Exercise is good for the baby.”

All three blondes respond at once in a chorus of appalled disapproval. Interestingly, your rescuers have British accents. From within the Tahoe, someone turns off the CD player. This is wise; noise tends to attract more zombies. Madame Driver, unaffected, puts her hammer through the eye socket of a former Arby’s employee.

Jace flings back: “She likes helping! It would be sexist to tell her she’s not allowed to!”

The Scarred Man looks up at you and Rio and salutes, two fingers glanced off his forehead. You begin climbing down the scalding rungs of the transmission tower to meet them.

“Oh fuck, Aemond, you gotta deal with this,” Golf Club says. He is holding a yowling zombie at arm’s length by the straps of its overalls. It’s tiny, maybe a kindergartener. “You know I can’t kill the little kid ones.”

The Scarred Man, Aemond, turns to him. He’s wearing a maroon Harvard University t-shirt. “You have to learn how to do things yourself. I might not always be around.”

Golf Club scoffs. “As if I’d outlive you.”

“Go on. You can do it,” Aemond says. Behind him, more people are emerging from the Chevy Tahoe: Binoculars Buddy, a slight girl with shifting, watchful eyes, a blonde woman in a billowing sundress and with a burlap messenger bag slung over one shoulder.

Golf Club is still struggling. “Aw, Aemond, man, he’s got light-up sneakers!”

Jace strides over irritably. “Aegon, you’re so fucking useless…” He kicks the miniature zombie to the dirt, raises his bloodied baseball bat, and brings it down on a skull that disintegrates like an overripe Halloween pumpkin. “You’re welcome.”

“Get bit, you poodle.”

Rio hits the ground first, his boots thumping against untamed earth. Aemond sets his baseball bat aside and reaches out to offer assistance as you dangle from a white-hot steel beam. “No,” Rio tells him roughly. “Back up.”

Aemond shows his palms and complies, retreating several paces. Rio helps you down. Now you can see Aemond’s face perfectly. There’s a relatively fresh wound running down the left half of his face, the violent red of burgeoning scar tissue, clear stitches; his eye has been sutured shut. But that’s not why you’re staring at him. His other eye is a focused, hypnotic blue, his short blonde hair disheveled. He keeps touching his chin, a nervous tick. Immediately, there’s something you like about him. He gives you the impression of someone who has gotten very good at hiding how afraid he is. Aemond looks away from your gaze, thinking you’re horrified by his injury. Then, reluctantly, he comes back. There’s forbidden temptation the lines of his ravaged face, a curiosity, a hesitation.

“Thank you for saving us,” you say to your rescuers, tearing your attention from Aemond. It’s not easy. “That was really, really cool of you, and we know you didn’t have to do it. So thanks.”

“Yeah,” Rio adds. “Sorry your Tahoe is covered in guts now.”

Aemond turns to confer silently with his companions, then asks you: “Where are you headed?”

“Odessa, Oregon.”

He nods. “We’re going to California.”

“NorCal,” Jace says, holding his baseball bat across his shoulders. “Bay Area.”

“Are you two together?” Aegon asks.

“Yeah,” Rio says, misunderstanding the question.

“Not like that,” you clarify. “He has a wife and baby, that’s what’s in Oregon.”

“So you’re single,” Aegon says, grinning toothily. His fellow travelers—family? friends? classmates? a combination thereof?—grumble and roll their eyes.

“Um, I mean, yeah, technically…?”

“Aemond’s also single,” Madame Driver informs you, relishing the chaos.

“He’s single but deformed and traumatized,” Aegon says. “I am mentally uninjured.”

You chuckle awkwardly. Your eyes, by their own volition, flick back to Aemond. He peers down at the ground then up at you again, smiling, a little sheepish, a little wicked.

Aegon groans, swinging his golf club around. “Man, come on.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Aemond replies.

“No, it’s just right there, all over your fucked up face.”

Madame Driver feigns a sympathetic frown at Aegon. “How sad. Guess you won’t have anyone to give your syphilis to.”

“I don’t have syphilis,” Aegon tells you. Then, to the others: “I can’t be the only single guy! It’s pathetic!”

“I’m single,” Archery Team says brightly.

“You’re like twelve. You don’t count.”

“I’m seventeen!”

“Are you Army?” Aemond asks you and Rio.

“Navy,” Rio replies. “We were stationed at Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.”

Aemond is fascinated. “You’re deserters?”

“What are you gonna do about it, Brit Boy?” Rio says. Aemond blinks at him. Aegon cackles, drawing huge circles in the air with his golf club.

“Everyone’s deserting,” you explain diplomatically.

“They were going to evacuate the base and send everyone left into New York City,” Rio says. “Fuck that, we’d heard things, we weren’t about to go on some suicide mission. We weren’t even in a combat unit for Christ’s sake, we’re Seabees.”

“You’re what?” Aemond asks, puzzled.

“We do construction. That’s why we were still at the base. If they’re putting us on the front lines, the situation is truly desperate. I’m not going in the meatgrinder. I’m not gonna be like those Hitler Youth kids sent to Russia.”

Aegon is squinting behind his sunglasses, truly lost. “Huh?”

“We should go west together,” Aemond suggests. He’s attempting to sound casual.

“I thought we didn’t want to travel with strangers, Aemond,” Jace says pointedly, mocking him. “I thought they couldn’t be trusted, Aemond. I thought they might slit our throats and steal our Tahoe in the dead of night, Aemond.”

“We’re useful!” Rio bargains. “We can shoot things!”

Aegon is very confused. “I thought you did construction.”

“Everyone has to go through basic training,” Aemond tells him impatiently, watching you.

“She got the Marksmanship Medal,” Rio says, grinning, proud.

“A lot of people get that,” you demur immediately.

“We can give you guys weapons training,” Rio continues. “You seem…like you probably don’t know about guns. Like you read a lot of books.” He gestures to Aegon. “Except that one.”

Aegon snickers, unoffended, still swinging his golf club around. “I don’t read books. I read maps.”

“Okay, lets do it,” Aemond says. “We’ll stick together across the Midwest and split up before we get to the Pacific. That puts us at ten people, and there’s safety in numbers.”

“Why do you get to make all the decisions?!” Jace demands. “Who signed that fucking contract? I didn’t consent to those terms.”

“Because that’s what Criston told us the last time the phones worked,” Aegon replies smugly. “He said Aemond’s in charge. So he is. If you want to find your way to California on your own, you’re welcome to try.”

“Who’s Criston?” you ask.

“Our fake dad,” Aegon says.

“Oh, your stepdad?”

“No, our mom is still married to our dad, he just sucks.”

“He does suck,” Archery Team confirms.

Rio tells you: “Hey, Chips, you’re standing in a torso.”

“Am I?” You look down. Your boots are buried to the ankles in the rotting gore of a bare midsection with only one limp arm still attached. You step out of it and shake off the bits of decomposing organs. “Gnarly. Thanks.” You spot Parker’s backpack containing the extra ammunition, pick it up out of the dirt, and throw it over your shoulders.

“Chips?” Aemond says. “Like…chocolate chips?”

“No, like woodchips. I’m a carpenter. I mean, I was a carpenter, I guess. That’s what I did in the Navy. Some people call the carpenters Chips.”

“I was an electrician,” Rio says. “So clearly, now that all the power is down, that turned out to be a fantastic career path.” Then he formally introduces himself. “Hi everyone, I’m Rio.”

Aegon perks up. “Oh, like the Rio Grande.”

Rio pretends to be scandalized. “Wow, racist.”

“So racist,” you agree.

Aegon’s chubby pink face fills with horror. “No, wait, I didn’t…um…”

Rio laughs and taps the nametag on his chest, black letters stitched over green camouflage: Osorio.

“His first name’s Bryan,” you say. “But no one calls him that.”

“My mom calls me Bryan. Sophie calls me Bryan.”

Aemond points at his companions, one after the other. “That’s my brother Aegon and my sister Helaena. Jace and Luke are our cousins. Then Baela and Rhaena are their girlfriends. Well, Baela…she’s kind of a fiancée. But there’s no official ring yet.”

Jace says: “Unfortunately, all the jewelry stores were looted on account of the apocalypse.”

“And I’m Daeron,” Archery Team says buoyantly, waving. Then he shields his eyes as he notices something at the edge of the field. “Oh, guys…?”

There are zombies approaching with clumsy, staggering strides, only a few now, but more will follow. That’s the thing; they are in seemingly endless supply. It’s easy to get too comfortable with them, to think of them as slow and mindless, even comical, even pitiful. But they can surprise you. And it only takes one bite to become just like them.

“Time to return to the Tahoe,” Baela announces, waddling towards the driver’s seat. Rhaena climbs in the passenger’s side. The rest of you pile into the back. The SUV has nine seats; Aegon crouches on the floor without being asked to. He’s unfolding a map he pulled from the pocket of his salmon-colored shorts and laying it flat across Rio’s knees so everyone can see. Baela turns the key in the ignition and the Tahoe rumbles to life. You spot a few red gas cans under the seats. If you can’t find more when that runs out—siphoning it out of other vehicles, stumbling across a gas station that is miraculously not drained dry—you’ll be walking, biking, or skateboarding to the West Coast. Or embracing the Amish lifestyle with a horse and buggy.

“We were planning to swing by Fort Indiantown Gap,” you tell Aemond. He twists around in his seat to look at you, that absorbed crystalline blue gaze. “That’s where we were headed before our Humvee broke down. It’s a National Guard Training Center. It’s probably cleaned out like everywhere else, but if it’s not…we might be able to find some guns and ammo there.”

“Where is it?”

“An hour south of here, just outside of Harrisburg.”

Baela is watching Aemond in the rearview mirror. He gives her a nod. “How do I get there?” Baela asks you.

“South on Route 42. Did you see the signs on your way in…?”

“Yup. Got it.” Baela steers the Tahoe across the field, kicking up a vortex of parched soil. She intentionally runs down four zombies before swerving left onto a two-lane road. Then she turns up the volume on the CD player: War Pigs by Black Sabbath. “It’s a mixtape,” she informs you.

Aegon points to southcentral Pennsylvania on a map of the United States of America, highway arteries and local route veins. “We’re here,” he says, sliding around on the floor of the Tahoe as Baela drives. His index finger traces the path; it’s a precarious balance between avoiding the most heavily populated areas and still having access to the necessary trappings of civilization: supplies to scavenge, roads to follow, buildings to take shelter in. “We’ll stop by Fort Indiantown Gap and then head northwest, thread the needle between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, stay south of Detroit and Chicago, cut across Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, that top part of Utah, then go our separate ways in Nevada. Oh my God, it’s just like the Oregon Trail! Do you guys remember that game?! Fording rivers, getting dysentery, hunting bison to extinction?” He starts humming the theme song.

Jace smirks, chomping on a Twizzler. “Hope you don’t die of a snakebite or something. That’d be awful.”

Aegon ignores him and refolds the map. “Rio! Fuck, marry, kill. The last three first ladies before Biden.”

Rhaena says, exasperated: “Aegon, you have to stop asking people that. It’s inappropriate.”

“Oh, easy,” Rio replies. “I’m fucking Laura Bush.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Aegon gives him a high five.

“And then I have to marry Michelle.”

“You gotta.”

“Which means Melania gets the grape Flavor Aid.”

“It’s the only logical answer.”

“I’d fuck Melania,” Jace says.

“Of course you would, you sick, sick man,” Aegon mutters, rolling down a window and sticking his head out like a golden retriever, his sunglasses still on, his blonde hair flapping in the wind. There’s a tattoo in black ink on his forearm, you notice for the first time: It’s not over ‘til you’re underground.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fort Indiantown Gap is a ghost town like a gold seam emptied, an oil well run dry, a collapsed coal mine. There’s no central armory but instead a series of arms rooms, one for each unit. Every single scrap of lethal metal is gone: no pistols, no rifles, no grenade launchers or machine guns, no ammo, not even pocketknives, although you do find clean PT uniforms for you and Rio to change into, t-shirts and running shorts and sneakers. Clothes are surprisingly difficult to acquire now. Most stores have either been looted or overrun by zombies, and Amazon is tragically no longer delivering. You can break into houses that seem abandoned, but then you have to hope the people who lived there just so happened to be your size and also aren’t waiting inside to eat you. It’s not usually a wise gamble.

You study Aemond and his companions as you move through the base clearing buildings, you and Rio with loaded M9s in your holsters and clutching borrowed baseball bats; gunshots are best avoided if possible so as not to attract unwanted attention. Aemond and Jace take point, almost always; Aegon hovers on Aemond’s blind left side, wagging his golf club around, occasionally slapping Aemond’s shoulder to remind him he’s there. Daeron prowls at the back and on the periphery. Baela pretends she isn’t struggling to keep up. Luke and Rhaena are the lookouts. Helaena fills her burlap messenger bag with small treasures you don’t even notice her accumulating: bottles of Advil, batteries, lighters, pens, tweezers, Band-Aids, Uno cards. You encounter only three zombies, easily decommissioned. Fort Indiantown Gap must have been evacuated weeks ago. You wonder what pointless battles her soldiers died in. Everyone knows the dead have won.

What the abandoned base lacks in weaponry it makes up for in food. You find a chow hall with an untouched kitchen, a wealth of shelf-stable delicacies: chili, saltine crackers, applesauce, fruit cocktail with bright red gems of cherries, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, green beans, carrots, peas, beets, tuna fish, chicken noodle soup. You feast—a Thanksgiving, a Last Supper—then settle into the barracks next door as the sun begins to set. There are plenty of bunkbeds and a closet full of pillows and sheets. Someone always has to be up to keep watch; Daeron and Jace immediately go to sleep so they can get some rest before they are shaken awake sometime around 2 or 3 a.m. Baela says she’s going to lie down for a minute and almost immediately begins snoring. Helaena makes silent amendments in her notebook; she keeps an inventory of everything the group has, needs, or wants.

Outside, Rio and Aegon are engaged in a spirited game of Uno. Luke is sitting cross-legged on the roof of the Tahoe with his binoculars. Rhaena is beside him softly reading a book out loud: The Hunger Games. Aemond is on a wooden bench on the front porch of the barracks, watching the sun sink into the west. When he notices you, he seems pleased. “Hi.”

“Hi. I’m sorry we wasted your gas to come here.”

“No, it was a good idea. It was worth a shot. And now we have a safe place to sleep tonight.” His eye drops lower, his scarred brow crinkles in concern. “What happened to your hands?”

“My hands?” In the haze of the adrenaline, you didn’t even notice. Your palms are blistered, swollen and stinging. “Oh. It was the transmission tower. The steel beams got really hot while we were up there. I’ll be okay.”

“Let me bandage them. You don’t want to get an infection.”

“Really, I’m fine, I shouldn’t inconvenience—”

“Sit down,” Aemond insists. You take a seat on the bench while he goes to the Tahoe to fetch a black nylon bag about the size of a briefcase. Rio casts you a furtive, crafty grin. It’s nothing, you mouth back, more to convince yourself than him. Your pulse is thudding in your ears; your cheeks are warm. You haven’t felt like this since you almost agreed to go on a date with that Marine you met at Corpus Christi, where your battalion had been dispatched to build a series of new airplane hangars. Aemond returns to the bench and begins wiping down your palms with antiseptic. “Sorry if this stings.”

It does, but you’re grateful for the distraction. “It isn’t too bad.”

“You’re not from Oregon.” He’s noticed your accent.

“Kentucky,” you confess.

“You aren’t making a stop at home before traveling west?”

“Why would I want to go back there?”

Aemond looks at you uncertainly; he can’t tell if you’re joking. You like the way his voice goes quiet when it’s just the two of you. You like the way he barely shows his teeth when he talks, like he’s keeping secrets.

After a moment, as the sky begins to turn to orange and pink and lilac, you continue. “People join the Army for a paycheck and a place to sleep, free college, health insurance. People join the Marines to prove they’re the best. People join the Air Force because they want to be in the military but think they’re too smart for grunt work. And people join the Navy to get away from home. I wanted to get far, far, far away.”

Aemond smiles. “Are you far enough yet?” He doesn’t mean by miles. He means the fact that the world will never be the same. Now he’s coating your hands in a thick white ointment, cool and blissful.

“I was afraid of so many things, and now none of them matter.”

“We all have brand new things to be afraid of.” He gets a roll of gauze and begins to wrap your palms, careful to keep your fingers and thumbs unencumbered.

“Aemond?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to your face?”

He shrugs. He’s trying not to be resentful about it; he can’t change it anyway. “We were scavenging supplies from a Home Depot. We had to board up the house and wait until things…got quieter and it was safe to travel out of Boston.” And by got quieter, he means that the initial wave passed, the zombies began to wander out of the cities and disperse, the survivors were hunkered down and not participating in gunfights or Vikings-style pillaging in the streets. “A piece of sheet metal fell on me from the top shelf. Aegon and Jace dragged me home, they thought I was dying.”

“I’m glad you weren’t. Who treated it?”

“I did.”

You can’t disguise your shock. “You…you stitched up your own face?”

He smirks, finishing the bandages on your hands. “I was in medical school before all this.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I was an intern. So definitely not a doctor, but the closest thing to one I had access to. And I had taken some things from the hospital when everything went to hell. So I got a little mirror, and I lidocained myself very generously, and I started suturing.”

You don’t know what to say. His eye?? He stitched his eye shut?? “I mean…you did a great job.”

“I’m aware I look like Frankenstein, but I guess it’s better than not being here at all.”

“No, seriously. You look amazing, Aemond.”

He stares at you, bewildered. You realize how bizarre it must sound. You both start laughing as Aemond packs his supplies back into his medical kit. He touches his fingertips to his chin a few times—restless, meditative—then stands to return inside the barracks. “I’m…going to go check on Helaena.”

“Yeah. Cool. See ya.” You don’t watch him leave. This takes intentional effort.

Seconds pass anonymously: no time you need to be anywhere, nothing late, nothing early, no television premiers, no football games, no State Of The Unions, no time zones to do mental math over. You aren’t even sure what day it is. The earth has erased your invisible prisons. Now all that remain are the real ones: weather, terrain, disease, predators.

There is the creaking of weight on the porch steps. You warn him: “I’m not interested in your commentary.”

Rio winks as he says: “Maybe you won’t die a virgin after all.”

#aemond x y/n #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen

404 notes · View notes

fcb4 · 2 months

Text

“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.” -Teddy Roosevelt

“The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

Only two days before, the editor-in-chief of The Outlook characterized Roosevelt as “an electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” and for the next 90 minutes, the 53-year-old former president proved it. “I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap,” he claimed.

Roosevelt told the Milwaukee audience that the campaign’s inflamed political rhetoric contributed to the shooting. “It is a very natural thing,” he said, “that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”

-https://www.history.com/news/shot-in-the-chest-100-years-ago-teddy-roosevelt-kept-on-talking

304 notes · View notes

dusterbishop · 17 days

Text

we can go forever until you wanna sit it out

summary. || you are an amplifier gifted with the ability to strengthen the power of other mutants, a skill that earns you a place on team x. learning to work with them is a sharp curve, especially with the lonesome newest member, logan.

pairing. || logan x f!reader (slow burn)

count. || 2.1k

notes. || warning for character death and violence. this is my first time writing for logan, but i have been bewitched by the tiktok edits.

part one. || part two. || part three. || part four.

You meet Logan when you are young, but he is far older than you initially assume.

Stryker takes point in the introductions, as usual. You linger patiently at his back, just a pace behind, idly scuffing the dirt with the toe of your boot. The air is sour with the stench of stale blood and decay. War isn’t new to you. Neither is recruitment for new soldiers.

“Who’s your little friend?” One of the men jeers, a sharp smile edging the curve of his mouth. This one is Victor Creed, you think, and it’s confirmed when you glance to the other side of the cell and see the other brother sitting back, unimpressed. That one is surely Logan.

From the files that Stryker let you and Zero parse through, you expected more… reaction. He has been tracing their movements for the past two months, and you have seen the bullet list of their service history and grim achievements. They are deadly predators, mutated to efficiently slaughter their prey. Animals, Zero had remarked, and you had silently conceded to that point. Not that you haven’t killed, but you also have human hands that do not morph to tear apart flesh.

“Less who she is, and more what she can do for you both,” Stryker says. On cue, you wander a step closer and set your amplifier alight with a flick of your wrist. You’ve mastered the range just enough to brush the soles of their feet, a fleeting-faint taste of your ability. The hand movement is still an instinct you can’t quash despite the disapproving look Stryker gives you when he sees it.

Victor sucks in a deep, rumbling breath, twitching with a suppressed lunge. Logan doesn’t make a noise, but merely closes his eyes as if a weight has been lifted. Your own body tingles with rippling electricity, every nerve set alight with adrenaline. Like a caffeine rush, you’ll feel the impact of the fall later, but for now you neatly dim your amplifier to a low buzz and shuffle back a half-step to escape their range. The pair slumps against the wall the moment it escapes them. Victor bares his teeth in a grin, and Logan gazes at Stryker with half-lidded eyes. It’s a dark, calculating gaze. Weighing the competition, you think.

“Now that I have your attention,” Stryker says, but you can’t help but notice that both the brothers are looking at you, instead. Their mistake.

Three months later, the brothers once again leave you pinned behind metal-gilded crates with enough gunfire to rattle your teeth in your skull.

“Good God,” you spit out, hauling yourself back behind cover. “Can you stop the self-sacrificial antics for a moment?”

“Sacrifice?” Victor laughs. His skin ripples with regeneration, leaving merely a smear of blood behind as proof of the healed bullet hole. His clawed hand flexes at his side, the elongated tips of his fingers scratching lightly against the floor. “I’m not the one dying, Star.”

You pull a face at the name, but you don’t have the time to argue it. Bullets spray in patterned bursts against your cover, and you have to hunch in on yourself to protect your extremities. The perk of your power is that you can keep your team from burning out and improve their reflexes. The downside is that your power does absolutely nothing in terms of protecting you; your protection is your team.

So you draw in a slow breath, flick your wrist, and summon a surging wave of amplification. Victor surges to his feet with a giddy-mad laugh and delves into the fray. Logan follows in close pursuit behind him, though he takes more care to skirt the edges of the bloodbath, cleaning up the loose ends.

The brothers are an odd addition to this mismatched army of mutant soldiers, though Stryker is pleased with their formidable prowess in battle. In the three months you’ve worked with them, you can see why, and there is a foreboding sense of dread that wells inside you as you listen to the choked-off screams of the enemy ahead. You clench your fists and hold the amplifier steady, silently grateful that for the moment, the only mutants in the room are the ones less likely to tear you apart. No doubt Victor would revel in slicing the flesh from your bones to expose what lies beneath your skin. Logan would be less inclined, perhaps, but you know he follows his brother above all else.

Yes, of course Stryker values their addition to Team X. They are nothing but monsters.

Nothing but monsters, and you have a leash on every one of them.

Stryker has a keen interest in your power, or rather what your power does for the team. You aren’t invulnerable, and you don’t have hyper senses. You don’t teleport or shoot with terrifying accuracy. On the surface, you appear nothing more than a young woman with military training and a nervous tic in your hand.

Underneath the surface, you burn bright.

Your father had been an amateur astronomer. When you were growing up, he would sneak you out to the backyard past your bedtime and the two of you would watch the sky and plot the path of constellations. He was the one that taught you about the sun, the moon, and the stars. My girl, he would say, you are made of the cosmos.

He must be partially right. There’s a staggering core of cosmic energy stored in the cradle of your ribcage. You have spent long moments staring at your own bare reflection in the mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of it. How do you look so ordinary when there is a blazing sun in your chest?

Yet you do. Stryker had been skeptical of your ability when you first met him, but by that point he had recruited Zero and Bradley, so it only took a little wave of your hand to boost their abilities and prove your silent mutation. Proving it had sealed your fate: under the codename Cosmic, you were an infinite battery pack to the newly forged Team X.

Yet it’s moments like this, when you’re stranded in a rare week of downtime, that you feel like an outsider looking in.

It’s been four days since the job that got you shot at, the same job that let Victor unleash utter havoc, and you’re all going a little stir-crazy while you wait for things to cool down. John Wraith has somehow secured a deck of cards, and he’s managed to wrangle Bradley, Victor, and Wade in a game you don’t follow. The rules seem to change the more they drink and bicker over the play, so you toy with your own can of half-drunk beer and stare out the living room window of your temporary housing. There are stray stars speckled in the night sky, and you feel such a deep-ridden surge of grief at the sight of them.

The arguing gets louder around the kitchen table, and none of them notice when you slip out the front door. The night is hushed when you close the door behind you, and some unknown tension eases from your shoulders with the sky exposed high above. It takes some wandering to properly immerse yourself in the pitch dark, but you find a patch of grass cleared of undergrowth and sprawl out on your back, tucking your hands beneath your head. The safe house that Stryker has your team staying in is hours from the nearest large city, and the sky is clear of light pollution. You can see a scattered sea of stars, all of them twinkling in familiar greeting.

My girl, you are made of the cosmos.

You have to swallow back the sudden swell of emotion in your throat. It’s quiet this far from the house. Without any heightened senses, you can’t hear anything other than the soft rustle of the wildlife shuffling through the trees. It’s lonely, but not in the way that you felt lonely sitting in that room with the rest of the team. Their abilities serve them; your ability just makes them more.

You’re reminded of that fact in a fierce strike of terror when a figure appears at the edge of the clearing, moving too quiet for your human hearing to pick up. You bolt upright, curling your hands into fists, all too aware of your pitiful human strength and basic military training. It would do nothing against a mutant intent on rending you apart.

“Thought you were asleep,” Logan grunts, rubbing a hand over his chest in discomfort. The adrenaline from his sudden appearance spiked your amplifier, and you have to focus on leveling your breathing as you slowly retract your power back to your core. “Took you too long to notice me.”

“You were in your room,” you accuse. It’s mostly the fear driving the annoyance in your tone, but you don’t have the patience for an apology. “I wasn’t expecting to see you lurking in the woods.”

The clearing is half-lit by the light of the moon, though Logan lingers near the edges. He’s wearing a short-sleeve white shirt that clings to the curve of his torso, the muscled tone of his arms flexing as he crosses them over his chest. You can barely make out the way he raises a brow at your choice of words, his profile half-shadowed.

“Lurking,” he repeats, almost amused. “Says the stargazer.”

“Cosmic,” you remind him. “Comes with the territory.”

“What, you charge them, too?” You don’t expect him to step closer, but he does. In the moonlight, the tousled curl of his hair softens the incredulous look he’s giving you. There isn’t the same degree of mocking like the kind you would expect from Victor, but then again, you haven’t spoken to Logan much. He’s content to focus on the work rather than the idle play. Unlike Zero, however, there isn’t the same air of arrogant distaste.

He almost seems… ordinary.

“Funny,” you say dryly. You shuffle your weight and lay back down in the grass, pointedly ignoring the low chuckle he gives at your exasperation. There’s a kernel of truth stuck in your throat, so you blurt out, “I think they charge me.”

“Right,” Logan says, his tone decidedly skeptical. “And I get my claws charged up by sunshine and rainbows.”

You shoot him a glare. “I’m serious.”

“So I am, bub.”

He takes another step from the edge of the clearing. He’s closer now, enough that he looms over you. The stars speckle the sky above his head in a crown of twinkling light, and you flex your fingers, silently summoning the rush of energy that the sight of the sky gives you. Logan shivers, cursing under his breath, though he doesn’t back away.

He takes a step closer, nudging your hip with the toe of his boot. His posture doesn’t change, but he’s flexing his fingers into a fist, almost subconsciously. You wonder how it feels for him, to have his bones shift and extend into claw-like weapons. The first time you watched him kill, you grimaced at the sight of his hands. The sharpened claws of Victor’s nails were tame in comparison to the mutation that rearranged Logan’s skeleton.

You’ve never seen any indication that his ability hurts him, yet the way he flexes his hands now makes you wonder. He doesn’t speak for a long moment, only staring down at you with that unapproachable expression. You wonder, too, if he’s out here for the same reason that you are. Surely not; you’ve seen the way he follows Victor, and the way Victor turns to him, expectant in battle. They are tied together in a way that reminds you of a hangman’s noose.

“Sunshine, huh?” You say. “Suits your happy personality.”

“Like you know a fucking thing about me,” he says, and the laugh trailing the end of that sentence is far from amused. When he steps back, you almost miss the warmth of his presence filling the sky above. “Pay attention before you get yourself killed.”

“I’ve seen enough,” you shoot back, stung by the sudden seethe of his tone. You sit up to properly glare at him, but he’s already turned and heading back into the darkness of the woods. You call to his retreating back, “You and that brother of yours are gonna get the wrong people hurt.”

“Save the altruism for someone else,” he calls over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.

You glare up at the sky instead. The yawning black abyss above you feels lonelier than ever.

#logan howlett #wolverine x reader #logan howlett x reader #logan howlett x you #wolverine x you #wolverine imagine #logan imagine #x men imagine

233 notes · View notes

peachsukii · 2 months

Text

𝓲𝓷𝓴 & 𝓻𝓱𝔂𝓽𝓱𝓶 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽 『 band au | strangers to lovers | slow burn 』

pairing // artist!reader x drummer!bakugo status // in progress rating // explicit (18+ themes) #✩.ink&rhythm + crossposted to AO3

✩ summary // Distortion is the hottest band in town, making waves in the underground scene with their unique sound. Led by your college best friend and music prodigy, Kyoka Jiro, alongside her misfit group of friends, they've been playing shows every weekend for the last few months and have gathered a decent following. You're whisked into the whirlwind of their rockstar lives when Jiro commissions you to design a band logo for their merch, reconnecting with her and meeting the members of the band. Your eyes immediately gravitate to their powerful drummer, Katsuki Bakugo. Fresh out of a nasty three year on/off relationship, he's not looking for anything or anyone while shutting out the world around him. He's focused on the one thing that keeps him sane; music. You're six months free of a breakup as well, looking to repaint your world with new colors and experiences, but turns out it's more tumultuous than anticipated. Explosive fights, newfound fame, clashing egos, dive bars, stolen kisses, black out dreams, messy exes and hard lessons; but somehow, love finds a way to bloom like a flower in the desert - deep in the hottest, driest wasteland of two broken hearts.

✩ tags & warnings // rock/punk/alt band au, slow burn, meet cute, strangers to lovers, various smut, smoking/drugs/alcohol consumption, talks of emotional & physical abuse from past partners, angst with a happy ending, emotional hurt/comfort, mild violence, mentions of cheating from past partners, miscommunications, jealousy, long distance, stalking, attempted sexual assault (not from bakugo or the bakusquad!), bakugo & reader suffer from relationship traumas (Camie & dabi are nasty exes), bakusquad are in a band, friend breakups & makeups

꒰ track list ꒱ ✩ Prelude: Holding onto Hope is a Different Kind of Pain ✩ Track One: Shine a Light into the Wreckage ✩ Track Two: Flowers Filled with Vitriol ✩ Track Three: Boulevard of (Broken?) Dreams ✩ Track Four: You Can Throw Me in the Deep End ✩ Track Five: Every Canvas that I Paint is a Masterpiece (of My Mistakes) ✩ Track Six: Band-Aids Don't Fix Bullet Holes ✩ Track Seven: Good Girls Stay Alive ✩ Track Eight: The End of Me, The End of Me ✩ Track Nine: If It Means A Lot To You ✩ Track Ten: Hand on the Throttle ✩ Bonus Track: We Are Distortion, 1-2-3-go!!

꒰ info ꒱ ✩ all characters are 24/25 years old ✩ reader co-owns an art gallery and has a BFA ✩ reader's artist alias is "glxtch" (glitch) ✩ bakugo drives a custom built orange & black Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R ✩ relationships: momojiro, kirimina, ex-bakucamie, ex-dabi/reader

✩ band name: Distortion ✧ Kyoka Jiro | lead singer, electric guitar (Barista - Degree in Music Production) ✧ Denki Kaminari | electric guitar, backup vocals (Waiter) ✧ Eijiro Kirishima | bass, backup vocals (Bartender) ✧ Katsuki Bakugo | drummer, backup vocals (Bike Mechanic) ✧ Mina Ashido | keyboard, backup vocals (Makeup artist) ✧ Momo Yaoyorozu | band manager (Marketing assistant)

✩ vocal inspirations ✧ Kyoka Jiro ⇢ addie amick (halocene) ✧ Denki Kaminari ⇢ rory rodriguez (dayseeker) ✧ Eijiro Kirishima ⇢ tim mcilrath (rise against) ✧ Katsuki Bakugo ⇢ eric vanlerberghe & acoustic (i prevail - harsh vocals) ✧ Mina Ashido ⇢ maggie lindemann

꒰ mood board ꒱

✩ pinterest board ✩

꒰ playlist ꒱

⇢ tag list ; @/bells-28 @/simp-plague @/nemisimp @/hotttamalee @/mymysenpai @/ttulipwritezz @/bakunianadecorazon @/yoyolovesdaiki @/eeeeeevesstuff @/alloueate @/dollukisposts @/Rikakhai @/blazedbakugou @/lillizxzz ♡ last updated // 08.09.24 dividers, banners & moodboard by taurus-magicka

#✩.ink&rhythm #band au #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou angst #bakugou smut #bakucamie #dabi x reader #touya x reader #touya todoroki x reader #my hero academia x reader #Spotify

319 notes · View notes

flamingpudding · 11 months

Text

I am keeping him B

A/N: Stress late night writing, while I am supposed to sleep cause I still got work tomorrow but screw my life...

It all started with the disappearance of Box Ghost, followed by Spectra. Back then, Danny didn't realize what was happening, and he still blamed himself for that. What a fine bridge of balance he was....

The next to disappear had been Elli and Danny had mobilize whatever he could to organize a search party when he lost contact. After Elli, Ember was next. Maybe by then Danny should be realized.

Dan was the next in line of disappearances. Vlad was the one making Danny aware of it. Everything Danny had mobilized in his search for Elli was extended to find Dan now, too.

Shortly after Dan, Vlad also disappeared from the face of earth. If he hadn't already be worried Danny would have been now. His events tripled, sleepless nights followed, days in which Jazz practically had to force him to sleep.

One by one all the Ghosts Danny knew disappeared. Maybe he would have realized it sooner if he had paid more attention to certain things, to the news to politics, to anything really. Maybe then Danny would be noticed the appearance of Dalv.Co and his parents invention on the black market. The sudden spike in Meta traficing following or the sudden interest in Ecto-entities.

But he hadn't...

...and that probably what was what costed him too.

Because, one day, he woke up in a dark cell, still in his Phantom transformation but with a collar around his neck. It zapped him any time he touched it or tried to let go of his ghost form. It was like a reverse of the stupid taser Vlad had. There were no mirrors or anything he could use to see himself with, but he had a feeling that collar used Fenton tech. He also realized that he was in a more eldrich kind of transformation. His hands that usually were in white gloves when in phantom form were clawed and inky black with sparks that reminded Danny of the night sky's above Amity Park. He couldn't tell if he looked anything like himself or not, but judging by his hands, probably not.

That day, when Danny woke up in that cell, he realized the reason behind the disappearances of his family and ghost rogues. Just like there was a spike in Meta trafficking, the growing interest had also developed into Ecto-Entity trafficking and worse was, they weren't even protected by law. The Anti-Ecto Acts are making it not even a real or all too big of a crime.

Months passed, and Danny learned to shut his mouth and emotions out. He thought he was even in a state disassociation, Jazz would have been proud of him for his self diagnosis, maybe. With the passing days, Danny stopped remembering who owned him and who he was forced to fight. Sometimes, his eyes came to live when he met one of his old friends in the battle rings. Tho their fights were no longer a form or bonding, it still felt nice to sometimes feel the heat of Ember's flames, the sting of Skulkers blasters or even see a box get thrown at him.

Of course, he had tried to escape or save at least one of the others before, but whoever modified his parents' inventions knew what they were doing. All his attempts were met with failure.

But then the day everything changed came. Danny didn't know how long it had been, all he knew was that a stupid clown was his current holder. The guy spouted some nonsense or wanting to see how a bat, of all animals held himself against one of the strongest ecto-entiies. Danny really wanted to refuse, yell at that fruitloop of a clown and be done with the World.

But what he didn't expect to happen that day was the shock of electricity, the ricochet of a bullet, the crack of metal... and the collar falling of his neck.

Suddenly, Danny no longer felt like he was trapped in his own body, like he was just an onlooker, but at the same time, he had never felt this tired before. He stumbled forward his body losing whatever momentum he had before. It was a single arm that saved him from faceplanting.

"Fuck! That thing was actually a kid!"

"What?!"

"I am going to fucking murder the clown."

Danny blinked slowly as he felt his awareness sliding from him, yet he still couldn't help muttering at least something before the world would go dark. "Get in line, I really hate clowns, and he is the nightmare realm fodder."

Danny felt the arm holding him shaking, and he really wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but right before he did, in fact, black out from pure exhaustion, he heard one last thing. "I don't give a fuck, B. I like this kid so I am keeping him."

#danny fenton #dp x dc #danny phantom #dpxdc #dcxdp #crossover #jason todd #fanfic #i am sleep deprived #late night stress writing #hope any of this makes sense #Jason going to keep Danny #batfam to the rescue #once danny is awake again a lot of bad guys will wish he wasn't #random late night thoughts

921 notes · View notes

castillon02 · 2 months

Text

“Make them clean their own guns,” Nguyen said, leaning her considerable bulk over Q’s desk. She was just starting her shift. “Or at least wear gloves.”

Q kept plunging a bore brush soaked with cleaning fluid into the barrel of 007’s Walther PPK. His eyes burned with fatigue. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

When he finished, he left with gun oil on his fingers, fingers that had traced over the gun’s every crevice, every curve and angle, every metal and electric anatomical fold.

—

“Why not tell us to clean our own guns?” 006 asked.

“I'm a control freak,” Q said. “Which is also why I know that yours is in the middle of the Atlantic and not in need of cleaning at all.”

This was a lie. 006 had reported the gun lost at sea but had actually smuggled it back into his own flat, where it was currently residing in what Q suspected was his bedroom and knew for certain was the room that also had a backup earwig that Q had personally assembled, a Ka-Bar that Q had archaically sharpened on a whetstone, and one of the decoy keychains and keys (Alaska) that Q kept on his desk so that agents had something harmless to swipe. Probably there were other things that 006 also had in his nest, but they would be things that Q hadn’t touched and could only theorize about.

Q was bad at lying.

006 visibly recognized this, realized that Q was lying in his favor, and couldn’t stop his eyes from widening. “Right,” he said.

Q smiled. Fixed him with a specific knowing look. You don’t ask, I don’t ask. “If it hadn’t sunk into the fathoms below, I would recommend a new hammer spring. Sometimes these things get a bit fussy when you use a gun as a bludgeon. That’s part of why I do in-person maintenance.”

Part of the reason; not the whole reason.

006 muttered a Russian curse. “Thank you, Q.”

“Happy to help.”

---

001 brought his guns back clean, but with a new part in them each time; a replacement firing pin, hammer, ejector rod, bullets.

Q always asked about the replacement. He did it before disassembling the gun, like a magic trick.

001 always grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. “I’ll get you next time,” he would say, wagging a finger at him. Perhaps you’re more fallible than you believe.

“It’s good that you’re optimistic,” Q would reply loftily. No mistakes. I see your gun. I see your tricks. I see you.

—

004 never cleaned her gun and always brought it back. Hers was a semi-automatic of Theseus, parts replaced naturally when there was wear and tear.

“Same as always?” she asked when she picked up her kit.

“Same as always,” Q confirmed.

—

When Q was a child, he asked, “Mum, why do you always shout about your car keys in the morning? And why does Peter never know where his pencils are?”

She frowned into the mirror and finished applying her lipstick. “Sometimes people lose things, dear.”

“How?” Q asked, boggled.

She looked at him with squinched eyes; that meant she was thinking hard. “Well,” she said slowly, “we forget where we put them, or someone puts them somewhere we don’t expect.”

Q squinched his own eyes too. What could she be thinking so hard about?

Mum smiled. “Tell you what, we’ll see if I can give you a demonstration after school, all right?”

Mum didn’t turn on the telly right away after dinner like she usually did. Instead, she sat down next to him on the sofa. “Sweetheart, you know how you asked about when I lose my keys? Does that ever happen to you?” She was trying to be casual about it, but if it were really unimportant then she would have asked during a commercial.

“One time I pretended it did,” he told her, “because I was curious to see what it was like. So one day while you were doing the shopping I put one of my books on top of the telly and stomped around in the other room going ‘Where the hell is my story book?’ in a loud voice like you do with your keys. It was a little fun, but not much.”

“It’s not fun to lose things. Do you know,” she asked, “where your story book is now?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. His story book was immense and well-thumbed, so heavy that it made him grunt whenever he had to lift it, but he had already read through all of it at least four times. It had hard edges and corners that were beginning to bend; chocolate fingerprints littered the pages at the beginning because his hands had still been sticky from birthday cake when he first opened it—he can put his fingers on them now and see how much he’s grown. There’s a stain of pomegranate juice at the beginning of the Persephone story from the pomegranate that his mother had bought before they read it together; a special treat, expensive, but “you have to know what a pomegranate is before you read it,” she’d said, “otherwise you’ll wonder why they’re eating the seeds.”

“And where is it?” his mum asked. She had to know that Q knew, because why wouldn’t he know?

He answered anyway. She ‘humored’ Q a lot, she sometimes told him, so he could humor her this time. “In the vegetable drawer,” he said. “You came home for lunch and moved it there. But that’s a silly place for things that aren’t vegetables, isn’t it?”

His mum closed her eyes and sighed, long and deep the way she did every so often when Q asked too many questions that she couldn’t answer. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “I’m lucky to have a son who knows that. But most people can’t keep track of their things as well as you can, so let’s not talk about it too much and make them envious, all right?”

That was something he knew how to do. He had already had a few talks about not stirring the other kids up with how smart he was. Plus he could tell from the tightness in her voice, like when she talked to her boss’s boss or Q’s headmaster, that she was nervous. “Sure, Mum,” he said. “I won’t.”

So he never mentioned it again.

He also never lost his keys, or his rucksack, or his socks, or anything else he touched and touched often. He might as well try to lose his own foot.

—

“You know, we can clean our own guns,” 002 said, dropping her pistol onto Q’s desk. “In fact, you’ll find I did.”

Q smiled. “That will make it much quicker when I do it, then.”

002 pursed her lips and blew a pink bubble with her gum, which Q Branch had also issued her. “And where do you want this?” She took the sticky wad out of her mouth and held it out to him. “Gonna chew it for me?”

Q held out a petri dish. “We have better chemical analyzers than my tongue, I’m happy to say. We do want to see about the wear and tear on the product.” He met her eyes. “Reliability is important in our field.”

002’s performatively petulant glare softened. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and next time you’ll make it into plastique instead of a tracker.” One corner of her mouth quirked up.

The sticks of gum were actually one of Q’s least favorite gadgets; like most gum, it was sensitive to heat, so he couldn’t hold it for long without destroying its structural integrity. Couldn’t sense what he usually sensed. But if it put a smile on 002’s face as well as being useful to her, he’d keep issuing it.

—

“A gun and a radio,” Q said. He waved his hand at the corner of his desk where he’d perched the usual equipment case. “Earwig will be distributed at your landing site. Unless things go terribly wrong, the local team should be able to support you for this one.”

Bond took the case. “Anything else?”

Q looked up; he’d been double-checking Bond’s mission brief and wondering how much structural damage the Managua team could make excuses for. “Cufflinks.” He pulled a small box out of his desk drawer and opened it. Inside lay a pair of cufflinks, copies of ones that Bond already owned and wore frequently. “They have little folding knives in them.” He demonstrated how the outside half could be pulled apart to reach the blade in the middle.

The corners of Bond’s eyes were all happy wrinkles. “Am I expected to need tiny knives?”

“No,” Q admitted. “But you brought the Walther back last time and I thought you could use some positive reinforcement. May I?” He removed the old cufflinks and put the new ones on, his fingertips brushing against the warm skin of 007’s wrists as he did. “Good luck in the field, 007,” he said after he closed the last French cuff. “As always, try to bring the equipment back in one piece.”

“As always,” Bond echoed, his eyes meeting Q’s before he left.

The cufflinks weren’t just positive reinforcement, of course. They were a connection; this meant that it was even odds that Bond would destroy them. (Paradoxically, Bond had the best equipment survival rate when that equipment self-destructed; he wore the latest exploding watch for three months and four missions before he had to use it.)

Q didn’t touch the other 00s, who stayed near their equipment, more or less, and who deserved their privacy, deserved not to have their footsteps tracked through the crevices of Q’s brain. In fact, he didn't touch anyone. Not if he could help it.

With Bond, Q made excuses for the tiniest bit of extra assurance, the mental tip-toe of 00 feet sneaking across the globe.

—

“Make Hutchinson do it,” Nguyen said, back again. “He loves guns; he’d be thrilled to do maintenance on company time.”

Q met her eyes. “I take personal responsibility for the equipment of our most senior agents. They deserve that level of consistency.” He changed out the cleaning swatch he was using.

“How consistent will you be if you burn out because you never leave this place? Guns, radios, earpieces--you can delegate. Our work is important, but...”

“I’m almost done,” Q said, implacable.

Nguyen sighed. “Sleep well, Quartermaster.” She showed herself out.

Q dried, oiled, and reassembled the gun. He would make sure to catch up with Doctor Who and a few blockbusters so he could convince Nguyen that he sometimes made an effort to think about things that weren’t work or work-related. They could collaborate on blueprints for a sonic screwdriver. It would be fine.

He would even give the same advice if he were in her position. She couldn’t know that Hutchinson doing as simple a thing as cleaning a Double-Oh’s gun until it shone would be detrimental to the delicate safety net that Q had been building since he had arrived at Six.

Q touched everything his agents went out with, enough that he could still sense 007's old Walther in Macau, 001's discarded ejector rod in Tunis, 004's stack of worn-out gun parts secreted in a tea tin hidden behind a book on his shelf because he liked the thrum of them all together like that, and there was always the risk, at work, that they'd be disposed of.

He never lost things that were truly his. Guns, radios, earwigs, cufflinks.

He hadn’t lost an agent yet either.

#for the whump prompts 'conditioned' and 'interrogated'#this is more the quiet before the whump storm but #Q keeping secrets and isolating himself counts I think #007 fest 2024 #station pacific #castillon writes #yet is the key word here

176 notes · View notes