#i had this saved in my files for almost half a year i need to exorcise it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

devilfic · 4 months

Text

❝right place, right time❞

VIII. whatever keeps you around.

parts: previously / next plot: bruce has a proposal for you. pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x gn!reader. cw: surgeon!reader, secret identities, slow burn, brief discussion of slight suicidal ideation/martyrdom, drug (and the injection of drugs) mentions, you will not guess what trope I managed to include in here. words: 6.9k. a/n: plotting this series makes me feel like charlie day pointing at a wall of red string

“…You won’t like it.”

It's clear what you have to do. You'd realized it when Gordon came to you, so of course Bruce did too. If you were going to make this right, you would have to face this head on. "I know what I have to do," you start, "I need to lure him out."

Bruce's expression shifts. Whatever you've said seems to be the wrong answer, "That... won't be necessary."

"What? What else can I do?"

"What did Gordon tell you about Dimitri?"

Your head throbs as you recall the memory, "Uh... he said he believes I'm next on Dimitri's hit list. He also said Dimitri hadn't anticipated me being at the house."

"Right, because Russo didn't want anyone knowing where he was." Bruce turns to his computer and brings up Russo's file, "After his divorce and the death of his son, he holed up and started erasing himself from the internet. As far as his neighbors know, he was constantly alone. You already know how hard it was to find him on your own, and unless Dimitri knew someone keeping tabs, it doesn't stand to reason that he found him any easier. But you, on the other hand," Bruce opens a search engine and types in your name. You're unsettled when the screen fills with results, most of them news articles from the night you'd been held hostage, "your name and face was everywhere after the gang war."

When the reporters had shoved cameras in your face and begged for you to tell them about Batman's heroic rescue, you hadn't thought twice about it, still fresh from the throes of gore and violence in the ER. Friends, family, coworkers: almost everyone you knew had seen it.

It clicks for you then, "If Dimitri planned on killing us both and I was easiest to find, why didn't he come for me first? I mean... it was me and Alex who ruined his life. If he wanted anyone dead more, wouldn't it be me?"

"I wondered the same thing. With the know-how and the right connections, anyone could find where you live just by name alone. Russo, on the other hand, is almost anonymous. It doesn't make sense why Dimitri would target Russo first."

"Do you think maybe it was a warning? Maybe he wanted to scare me."

"If he wanted to warn you, he wouldn't kill the guy in his house where no one checks up on him. Days would've passed before anyone noticed the flies in the windows."

"I don't get it."

"Do you remember how long it's been since you were taken hostage?"

Your mind lands on a weak estimate, "I don't know, a week and a half?"

"It's been over two weeks. According to the wardens, Dimitri stopped being a problem for them after the first few years. Friends with a rough crowd but he rarely got caught up in anything. Didn't have the heart to. So why, after 17 years, does he break out?"

Your stomach drops, "He saw me."

"And realized that while he was rotting away with nothing to live for, you were a hero," the word sickens you to hear, "on the front lines, saving lives, being saved. Your life went back to normal."

You grip the side of Bruce's desk with the sudden urge to vomit up everything you'd eaten today, which, frankly, wouldn't add up to much more than water and crackers.

You'd said it yourself: you'd gotten to live a life that Natalie, Dimitri, and Alex never would. Of course he wanted you dead. "So then I have to lure him out."

"And put yourself in danger? No."

"I’m already in danger, Bruce. What if he goes after the others? My parents? My coworkers? The other cops at the shootout? We have to end it now."

"This isn't the only way."

"It's the best way."

"Last time he had a knife, you could defend yourself. Barely. What if next time, he has a gun?"

"So what, you just want to do nothing?"

Bruce turns away from you. He gnaws on his lower lip, "No, I want to bide our time. Look into him more. I need to know if he's working with the Vipers again."

You watch him as he begins typing away at his computer, but you can't process what he's looking for through the haze of anger that washes over you. You lean on the desk, craning your neck up at his face to make him look at you, to understand how ridiculous he sounds, "We don't have time for that. His grudge is with me. I should meet him now and end this... either he gets what he wants or- or..."

Or what? Your stubbornness peters out. You don't know what. You see yourself standing face-to-face with Dimitri, his knife raised, ready to bury itself into the cushion of your chest. And nothing.

The you in this vision has no weapon.

"You don't think you're going to survive this." Coming out of your mind, Bruce is now looking at you, brows furrowed. He looks... mortified.

You scramble to cover your tracks, "That's not true. I'd have you there."

"But you don't want me there. You want to go alone. You think you deserve it."

"God, what are you? My therapist?" Your words flit out of your mouth in a rush, tongue nearly slipping up to defend yourself. You push away from the desk when you start feeling overexposed.

Bruce follows you, "You're not 16 anymore, this isn't some gang fight where you throw all your chips in because you can't see a year ahead of you. You've made a life. You've got people to lose, you said so yourself. I know what it's like... the survivor's guilt. You relive that day over and over-"

His words are making you feel sick to your stomach again and you lurch forward, finger in his face, "Don't you fucking preach to me-"

Almost as immediately as you'd raised your finger, Bruce snatches your wrist in his hand, yanking you close enough to be imposing, staring down at you with the same power that the Batman had used. It was so sudden that you quickly fall slack, wrist going limp in his grip.

It had completely sobered you of your tantrum, and for better or for worse, you were forced to listen to him, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself and think. You see this ending with you dead because you want to make up for the shit you did. You think that's what Alex wants? For you to bleed out in an alley like she did?" And just like that, the fire roars in you once more, but your other hand can't slap him across the face before he's caught that one too, "No future? What about all the people you've saved? Could still save? Face it now because you may not get another chance: you're alive. Do you want to be or not?"

You want to hurt him, turn his skin red and give it a place among the other bruises that glitter and glare down his torso, and as your hand shakes in his hold, you are forced to understand that you are angry because he is right.

You'd felt this same anger before. When your parents told you Alex was a bad influence on you. When Russo looked you in the eye and told you that you didn't have it in you to pull the trigger. It was maddening. He had clocked your suicide mission before even you had, had seen you in his mind's eye the way you saw yourself: disarmed, a lamb to the slaughter, a sacrifice for the greater good, a speedbump.

You could see Batman tackling him to the ground over your dying body. You couldn't see yourself getting up the next day.

After the frustration leaves Bruce's eyes, he's looking at you with something softer. You feel known, uncomfortably so, as he waits for you to meet him there.

And when you do, you hate how you collapse into him. Even more, you hate that he takes you up into his arms, holding you steadfast, as understanding as you needed him to be with all your fear of admitting it. The solidness of his body reminds you of the night he'd first held you, and that just makes you cry harder.

It feels different from last time. Where there was armor is now warm skin, the likes of which you hadn't felt in a while. If you had told your past self you'd one day be standing in Batman's cave, hugging Bruce Wayne and crying over the permanence of your mistakes, you might have diagnosed yourself with head trauma.

You screw your eyes shut in a vain attempt to put the tears to rest, your freed hands practically clawing at Bruce's warm back for some purchase, some stability. He doesn't seem to mind. He just holds you closer.

After a few minutes, you force yourself to speak, sniffling away the last remaining tears you'd allow yourself to shed, "You said I wouldn't like it. Your plan. What is it?"

"To disappear."

You wrench yourself back. Bruce is dead serious. "What?"

"I've considered it from all angles-"

"What do you mean, 'disappear'?"

"All but one of the prisoners Dimitri broke out with are still missing. How do we know they're not all working together? How do we know that you luring him out won't draw them out too? You were the easiest target before, not anymore."

"Say what you mean, Bruce. What do you want me to do?"

"I want to hide you here," he winces as he says this, as if aware of his words only now that they're out in the open, "with me."

"You're shitting me."

After a while, Bruce's face hardens, "I told you you wouldn't like it."

Liking it or not liking it was nothing. You'd advanced past "like". You were firmly out of your depth here.

You slip out of Bruce's hold and he lets you, standing rather awkwardly as you rub a hand across your mouth. Despite earlier, it now feels uncomfortably dry. You glance at Bruce and then at his screen, the tab with your name and face plastered all over it hovering in the background. "You want me to disappear off the face of the earth while you track him down. Leave my home, leave the people I care about, abandon my job. You want me to hide."

"I don't know how else to protect you. Not until we figure out what we're up against." Bruce watches you spin away, scoffing into the air, "You noticed it when you fought him off, didn't you? Something was really wrong with him."

You see flashes of Dimitri's feral stare, the way he staggered and swung. He was like a rabid animal in a cage. "Of course there was, he was trying to kill me."

"Beyond that," Bruce insists, "he wasn't right. I've seen it before. He was on something."

"Most people are these days. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd... I don't know, gotten his hands on drops or something-"

"It wasn't drops. Gordon told me."

"The detective?"

"He said they found a syringe with traces of venom in it. Dimitri's shooting up. That's why he was so strong."

Your mouth drops open in disbelief, "Venom? Great. Somehow worse than Drops."

"If he's on that drug, he's definitely addicted. It also means you won't stand a chance against him. This is why I'm telling you to stay here," Bruce steps forward, eyes imploring yours. You're dumbstruck by the heavy earnestness there, "stay in the tower. Hide here for a few days. Let me handle this."

"If he's on venom, it means he doesn't think he can handle you on his own," you wring your hands, flitting through images of the Dimitri you remember, "he was always really small. Even at fourteen, he hadn't really sprung up. He was scrawny and small and couldn't defend himself. Suddenly Gordon's saying he's almost twice the size of what I remember. Have you ever fought someone on venom?"

"Once or twice, somewhere between fixes. Why?"

"General has this kind of... sedative that we use when we get patients dealing with the effects. It's not perfect, but it does help calm them down enough to help them. Maybe we can use it to help him."

"The strain is constantly changing," Bruce watches you deflate and clears his throat, "but if I can get that sedative, I can use it as a base to make a new one."

"You need clearance to get your hands on that stuff. I'm going with you."

"What part of disappear do you not understand?"

"One, I never agreed to do that, and two, if Batman gets caught stealing from a hospital, that'll make you public enemy number one. You need my help, so let me help you."

Bruce is looking away, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth even as you zero in on him. You're getting flashbacks of that same Bruce from when you'd first met him here in this tower. All tender-eyed, even as he tries to put on a face for you, "And I need a drink," you rub your temple next, catching a glimpse of Bruce watching you from his peripheral, "You've got those, don't you?"

It turns out Bruce has plenty. There's a whole cellar full of them, the kinds you see in MTV Cribs with the low recessed lighting and mahogany shelves gleaming with polish. It makes sense for him to have it, but less so when he tells you he doesn't actually drink any of it.

"You weren't drinking at the party, either. Even though everyone else thought you were." You brush your hand along the shelves, careful not to knock any bottles loose. "Is that a trick to keep people spilling secrets? Or to keep from spilling your own?"

Bruce hovers near the entrance with his arms folded and back pressed to the wall, carefully watching you peruse his selection, "Maybe I don't like the taste."

"That's good. Men in Gotham die from alcoholism at a higher rate than any other city in the state."

"Really?"

"Really. You don't smoke either." Bruce blinks at you, "Just get shot at. And stabbed."

He says nothing.

Your hand lands on a red aged older than your mother and you stand to the side, looking expectantly at him. You're afraid that if you try to pick it up, you might knock down the whole row.

Slowly, Bruce pushes himself off the wall and glides over to you, grabbing the neck of the bottle in one hand and looking to you for approval. You try not to shrink yourself when you nod.

You follow him out of the cellar, flinching when the lights dim behind you and the door rolls shut all on its own. He guides you to the kitchen where night still hangs over Gotham outside the window, but the time on the stove clock warns of early morning soon.

Bruce pulls out two glasses and fills yours with wine and his with cranberry juice from the fridge. You could almost laugh at the pairing.

Once he slides your glass to you, you take a seat at the island and take a sip, "I need to ask you something. I get now why you refused me at the station, but then you came back. Why did you change your mind? I mean, neither of us knew Russo would be dead when we got there. Were you just going to let me hate you?"

"Yes." His simple response draws a quick, stifled laugh out of you.

"Are you always this... chaotic?"

Bruce leans his elbows on the countertop, hunching in on himself, "I always meant to tell you who I was. I just didn't know when. And I didn't mind if you hated Bruce Wayne, but... you trusted Batman. I didn't want to break that trust. Even if it meant telling you earlier than I planned, I wanted to give you some closure."

You think about the fear that had paralyzed you back then, thinking that Bruce Wayne was some big, bad criminal hiding behind polite society. Then you think about the real man, hiding behind a mask. You fidget uncomfortably, struggling with feeling somewhere between grateful and nauseous. Your eyes catch the stitches on his shoulder and you itch to wipe away the dried blood that had dribbled from the cut, "You said you were looking for Dimitri when you got that. Did you..."

Bruce catches your eye when you fail to finish your question. "No," he answers solemnly, "which is only part of our problem." He stands to his full height, flexing bruised knuckles against the counter, "I ran into one of the guys that broke out with Dimitri tonight. That's who gave me this. Dimitri isn't working alone."

You frown, "Is he trying to shake you? Why leave clues at all?"

"Because these people want me dead. The guy from tonight? I booked him a year ago for trafficking women. Earlier led me to a fringe group of Falcone's."

"You've been looking for Dimitri all day?"

"I haven't stopped since we found Russo. I couldn't."

You rub your arms, feeling the room grow chiller by the second, "So... so he's leaving clues to people who hate you. To keep you occupied." Bruce nods. "So he can get to me?"

"After last night, he knows the Batman is on your side."

"Dimitri wasn't out when you got on the scene. Do you think maybe he's taking venom because these guys warned him about you?"

Bruce smirks, rolling his eyes as he takes a sip from his glass, "As a precaution, sure. And now he has reason to believe I know you. If he's going to go after you, he's going to shoot up each time."

"That stuff is nasty. You're big and scary when you're on it but as soon as the effects wear off-"

"You deflate like a balloon. It's also stupid expensive, so he's either got real generous prison pals or he's being used. It's why I need to know if he's working with the Vipers. They might be supplying him."

How you'd gone from an ordinary surgeon to a detective in the span of mere weeks was beyond you. You're beyond just treading water. You're diving into the abyss.

Your brain struggles to make real what is before you. Bruce, still shirtless, drinking delicately from a glass as he watches the night sky shimmer from the kitchen window. And you, sitting across from him, cracking open one of his family's expensive bottles that, frankly, puts your pantry vinos to shame. Playing vigilantes like schoolchildren. Except the blood on you both is very real.

Your arm throbs at being remembered for once tonight. Bruce notices you touch it, "You need to get some rest."

You know he's right, and you're not arguing for the sake of arguing when you say, "I can't sleep yet." But he can tell there's more on your mind as he waits silently, almost egging you on to lay yourself bare. You swear you're not arguing just for the sake of arguing, "And I don't want to disappear. I want to be alive."

Bruce says nothing. The silence isn't humiliating like you'd think it be, even if the first few seconds leave you feeling just as laid bare as you thought you would. No. It feels acknowledging. Understanding, even.

For the first time, you look at Bruce and feel like you understand him. If he was really Batman, then he would know better than anyone why you would want to put yourself in danger. But beneath that, with the meager knowledge of who Bruce Wayne is, you also think you understand him too.

He'd mentioned the survivor's guilt. While he'd played a much more innocent role in the whole ordeal, you couldn't imagine the weight on one's chest knowing that two people you love didn't get to go on but you did. It's a lot to ask of a child barely coming to understand the mortality of one's own keepers.

The choice to be alive for someone like that is a deliberate choice. Constantly made every morning.

"There is another way," Bruce muses, "but you'll like it even less."

"Don't leave me hanging."

"We could go public."

"What?"

"You said disappearing would mean abandoning your life. And it would. No one could know where you went, who you were with, but there's always the chance someone might slip up. It's the safest option but it's not what you want. So don't hide." Bruce's eye contact is deep and unwavering. Compared to earlier, he seems to trust you're willing to listen this time, "Be mine."

For the nth time tonight, you are rendered nearly speechless. Nearly. "Are you fucking with me?"

Bruce's eyes narrow, "No."

"Did you just... proposition me?"

"I made a proposal."

"You're asking me to date you."

"Publicly. Batman has more enemies than allies, but Bruce Wayne has the people. If you and I are publicly linked, it tells everyone looking for you that the world is watching. It makes you more visible, as well as anyone who comes after you."

"You haven't slept," you reason, "clearly. And you're delirious."

"I haven't slept, no." But he looks fairly sober for someone who hasn't slept in a day. He is a different breed, this Bruce Wayne.

You peer out the kitchen window and see the black sky dipping into a blue horizon, "Then sleep on it and come up with something better."

Bruce rounds the island until he's standing beside you, looking down at your barely touched wine, "There's some spare rooms upstairs. You can take your pick." It dawns on you that you may not be going back home any time soon. "You know your way around."

You suppose you deserve that dig.

Then he's leaving you, glasses abandoned, home for you to explore. You don't realize how thick the air had gotten with him right next to you until he's gone.

You half-expect Alfred to pop up somewhere nearby, but there's nothing. This far up, there is no city to listen for, no neighbors slamming doors. You are in a cold house all alone. You suddenly wish he'd stayed to keep you company, even if the weight of it was beginning to take its toll on you. Left alone, you only had the sunrise.

You watch until the sky has all but chased the night away, and then you head upstairs.

You didn't think you'd get much sleep in a stranger's bed, but you're being roused by a sharp, successive rapping at your door several hours later. It jolts you awake, kick-starting your heart, and you clumsily tumble out of the million thread count sheets to open the door.

Alfred stands there fully dressed for the day, one hand tucked in his pocket and the other still raised to knock. Upon seeing you, he lowers his fist, "Morning," he starts, looking away as soon as he meets your eyes, "breakfast is ready. Come get it before it's cold."

He does not give you a choice in the matter. He's already limping toward the staircase without another word.

After you get your heart to settle down, you follow after him, preening yourself as you pass hallway mirrors and portraits of the Wayne family through the generations. You hadn't come down this hallway when you'd found the terminus elevator, so you stumble to a stop in front of a portrait of a young Bruce grinning ear to ear.

It startles you. His eyes are soft, a gentle humming blue untouched by wrinkle or darkness. He must've been especially young here. Glancing at a nearby portrait of his parents, you find him the spitting image of his father. You look around and realize there are no portraits of Bruce at this age.

Bruce. He might be at breakfast, and the mere thought of having to discuss what occurred last night almost turns you right back around to the guest room, but your stomach rumbling begs you not to. You still walk quietly, peering around corners in case your stomach changed its mind.

You find you're cautious for naught when the only person standing in the kitchen is Alfred, chopping up fresh fruit.

"I hope you don't mind that I moved your things," he gestures with his paring knife to your surgical tools neatly congregated on the counter, "I cleaned them too."

"Oh. You didn't need to do that."

"There was blood, so I'm afraid I did." Alfred places a bit of pressure on "blood", and you quickly take note of his short tone.

Still, all the same, he then gestures to the island and implores you take a seat in front of an empty plate. Without asking, he begins pushing steaming hot food onto your plate, "Tea or coffee?" He asks, barely looking up at you.

"Uh, coffee is fine. Thanks." You watch Alfred pour you a mug and wonder if the awkwardness with him is any more preferable to the awkwardness with Bruce. Alfred is passive-aggressive, Bruce is... aggressive. You remember how the latter had left off your night together and find yourself feeling warmer toward Alfred. "How long have you been up?"

"Since 6, although I woke a few times through the night."

You wince, "Sorry."

"No need to apologize. I did think Bruce had invited you over under different circumstances, so... not as alarming, all things considered." Your grip on your fork slips and it clatters to the marble. Alfred barely reacts.

"He needed stitches." Is all you can get out.

"Yes, I'm well aware."

You glance up at him, "You saw?"

"When he first arrived home, yes. I was the one who helped stop the bleeding."

You stare at the coffee sweating in your cup, recalling something Bruce had mentioned last night, "Bruce said you were the one who used to stitch him up."

"Yes."

"If you were there, why-"

"It's what he pays you for, isn't it?" Alfred almost snaps back at you, slicing a strawberry into quarters with more edge than needed.

You recall something else next. The softness in Alfred's face the day you first came here, arguing with Bruce in the very room next door. You'd wondered what it had all been about.

"I've done alright, haven't I?"

"He said something else too," you start, careful as you choose your next words, "about how much you worry about him." You fiddle with your mug, pretending not to feel the heat of Alfred's eyes on you, "I think the reason he hired me is because he was worried about you."

You just catch the tail-end of Alfred's frown, "Worried about me? Why?"

You probably aren't close enough to either of these two to laugh about this, but you do anyway, "Isn't it kind of obvious?"

"Nonsense. We always discussed... if it would come to it, that if he were to pursue this life further, that he would recruit professionals who might aid him in his work. It was the natural thing to do."

"Maybe, yeah. But would he have really needed me if you weren't already doing everything else for him? You've taken good care of him this long. I mean, the aftercare you gave his bullet wound was exceptional. I accused him of talking to other doctors."

Alfred busies himself with scraping his strawberry halves into a bowl, "It's basic knowledge. You learn that kind of thing in the service."

"Or when you invited me to watch you two spar. You know his body probably better than he does. You're fantastic, Alfred." You couldn't say you weren't also trying to butter him up to better his feelings toward you, but you were speaking truth all the same.

In a very British way, he rebuts your compliments and spoons some fruit into a glass, beginning to layer some yogurt over top them, "Regardless of reason, you are here now, and I'll have you know that every part of your contract covers this. Wayne Enterprises will exhaust every possible legal tool at our leisure if you speak of any—any—of this to anyone. Master Bruce's identity is safely guarded, and regardless of his trust in you, I will not hesitate-"

"Whoa, whoa, hey. I would never tell anyone. Not after all Batman has done for me." You press a hand over your heart for emphasis, "He is just as much my patient as Bruce Wayne is, and he didn't have to pay me to take care of him."

Alfred still stares you down like a guard dog, paring knife still clutched in his fingers. After a moment, he looks away from you and points at your plate, "Eat. It's getting cold."

So you do. It's good so you say as much, counting any point toward his affection as a good thing. If you could get Alfred to trust you, you'd call that a win.

The tension in the air dissipates over time, and after you've licked your plate clean, you and Alfred are sharing coffee together. "Bruce isn't joining us?"

"I've stopped expecting him to be awake this early." You glance at the clock that reads 10:12. "He has adopted a near-fully nocturnal lifestyle."

"The night that he crawled through my window, he was there at the hospital the next morning like nothing happened. He doesn't do that often?"

"Before last year, it was a rare occurrence. While he's dedicated himself to his role more recently, if he can avoid it, he will."

You think back to what knowledge you do have on Bruce's charity work and his friendship with the Mayor. You'd worked shifts just as long, but you couldn't imagine showing up to work mere hours after getting shot in the stomach and having to put on a brave face about it. You almost feel bad for calling him out on it in front of everyone.

But then again, if you hadn't, would you even be sitting here?

You swirl the last vestiges of coffee in your cup, trying to picture a world in which you'd gone and found that empty office to nap in instead of toddling behind Rudy and Em and Alfred and Batman. The Batman.

The novelty of it brings a fresh wave of dizziness over you. You had been exposed to so much information over the course of the last 12 hours that it hadn't fully settled in on you what Bruce was. You didn't think that your brain would process it even if he was standing in cowl and cape right in front of you.

"I suppose you'll be staying with us for the near future, if Bruce has anything to say about it," Alfred stands from his chair beside you and puts your dishes in the sink, "shall I inform your security detail or would you like to?"

You don't know what to say to that. "I'm... I think I should talk this over with Bruce first. It may not need to come to that."

The butler shrugs. "I'll be attending to some house duties for the rest of the morning. Should you stay for lunch, let Dory know, hm?" You give him a weak nod and watch as he makes his way from the sink and heads down another hallway out of sight.

Not too long after Alfred leaves you, you hear the doorbell ring. Bruce hadn't mentioned to you that any guests would be here today, but then again, the two of you had had more important things to discuss last night. You check your reflection in the glass of the kitchen window, wondering if there were any hidden doors in the bookcases that could hide you from whatever Wayne Enterprises exec that was coming to talk business, but you wouldn't trust yourself not to break something in the process.

You hear two pairs of footsteps approaching from the elevator and turn to see who it might be. You first recognize Dory, fluttering between frantic small talk and making sure not to trip in her kitten heels as she guides her guest into the living room. You stiffen as soon as you see him.

Detective Gordon catches your eyes instantly, his own widening. Dory says something about going to fetch Bruce before she quickly ascends the stairs, leaving you and James staring at each other across the distance. In one hand is a notepad and pencil, and the other fixes his tie, almost as if at a loss for words. He greets you, hesitantly leaving where Dory had left him to approach you, "I saw the boys out front but... I didn't expect to see you here."

"Me neither." You reply. "Is everything okay?"

James glances up at the stairs as he passes underneath, "That depends. I followed up on your request."

Shit. Of course a cop would do their job when you least expect it. You slip out of your chair and rush to meet him halfway into the kitchen, "Did... did you find something?"

"I can't say much right now. I'd like to talk to Mr. Wayne, but-" The sound of Dory's heels clacking against the wooden stairs makes James lower his voice, "-you being here complicates things."

Bruce is wearing a shirt this time, thankfully, though you're not expecting him to look as put together this early after what Alfred had said. He towers behind Dory's much smaller frame in a pair of loose black pants and a matching turtleneck, looking in a fashionable state of undress as he pads barefoot into the room. With hair slicked back and stubble freshly shaved, he doesn't look like someone caught unaware. He's fixing the sleeve of his sweater when he extends a hand to Detective Gordon, bright smile and all, "Detective James Gordon, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Mr. Wayne, I'm sorry for dropping in unannounced. If this is a bad time, I can come back." James gestures to you.

Bruce's look at you is empty, devoid of any detectable emotion or thought. It strikes you as unsettling, the same way a cashier at the end of their shift isn't really looking at you, "Oh, no. I was just on my way to work when I felt unwell. I called my doctor over but it was nothing to worry about. A little stomach bug, is all."

You do look like you'd just come over in a rush. You're still in your lounge clothes from the night before, and your medical supplies are still in the kitchen where Alfred had left them. James seems to notice, but he doesn't look any more relaxed. "That's good to hear. I don't want to keep you too long, but truth is, I have some questions I'd like to ask you if you have the time."

"Is something wrong?" James glances between you and Bruce, something the latter doesn't miss, "is it sensitive?"

"It's about the party you threw here the other night, Mr. Wayne. For Mayor Reál. I hear you invited quite a few Gotham politicians to celebrate the passing of the mayor's new bill, correct?"

"That's correct."

"And I understand you're quite invested in Gotham politics in general, much like your father."

"I am. My mother and father were very interested in the city, and Mayor Reál breathed new life into that for me after the election. I do what I can to support the cause."

"And that cause is...?"

Bruce takes the skeptical tone on the chin, smiling wider, "A safer, fairer Gotham. For everyone."

This Bruce was nothing like the Bruce you had all to yourself. He taps into that persona from the party with ease. Watching him is like watching a performance. "That's good, good. I notice you try to make an effort with charities in the city, donations and the like. You recently donated a new wing to Gotham General."

"I did. Increasing access to medical care for the citizens is important to me. My doctor, a talented surgeon at General, knows this well." You flash a timid smile when both Bruce and James look to you.

"And you also financially support politicians in Gotham."

"Occasionally. Anyone I feel has Gotham's best interests in mind."

"And have you found members of Gotham's political parties to be unusually forward in requesting your support, Mr. Wayne? Perhaps a little too pushy, maybe."

Bruce wears confusion well, "Not necessarily. I'm not easily pressured into doing things I have no interest in."

"Of course. How about any attempts to win over your support? Publicly or otherwise."

"I'm not sure what you're asking, detective. I'd love to help, but I don't think I have the information you're looking for."

James nods, holding his chin high, "My apologies. I should've been clear from the beginning. My question is: have any politicians or members of law enforcement offered you anything in exchange for your financial or public support? I have reason to believe there may be someone with high clearance exchanging confidential information with civilians. Especially ones who can pay. I'm just looking for a lead."

James frames his question well, even though any fat cat familiar with the cops could see the hidden question. Bruce frowns, tilts his head, shaking it slowly, "That's awful. I don't currently know of anyone doing such a thing, to me or anyone else. But I can keep an eye out. I can only imagine how dangerous that might be."

"Exactly. We'd like to nip it in the bud as soon as possible."

"Of course. Do you have a card? Perhaps I can contact you if I hear anything."

James fishes out his card and hands it over, "I don't want to put you in a bad position, only pass along what you know if you feel safe enough to do so."

You notice Bruce is flicking the business card between his fingers as a fidget, though he keeps his attention respectfully on the detective. "Absolutely. Thank you, detective. Dory can show you to the door."

The detective nods and follows Dory out of the room. As soon as the two are out of earshot, Bruce's expression softens as he presses his back into the counter. You wish you could sink into the floor. "To be fair," you begin, "I didn't think he'd find anything."

Bruce side-eyes you, "That was you?"

"I thought my criminal boss was going to blackmail me to keep his secrets."

"Criminal boss." You think he's trying to mock you, but his eyes are surprisingly guilty when he looks at you, "Alfred wasn't kidding. I really didn't handle this well."

"No, not really." You don't mean to kick him while he's down, but you can't lie either. Even now, you were still making meaning out of this whole thing.

By all means, you've gone from knowing nothing about him, to understanding even less, to fearing him, to this. With Batman on the other hand, you'd felt nothing but loyalty and trust in him up until the very last second. Now they were both the same person, and the meager hours of sleep you'd gotten hadn't cleared all that up just yet.

You wonder who you're supposed to see now. Batman or Bruce Wayne? Why was the line separating them blurring the more you thought of them?

"So, did you ever come up with a better idea?"

Bruce does not offer one. You'd dreaded that.

"You already know what I think. No matter how we go about this, there's going to be something. So what do you want to do?" Bruce's eyes follow your ever minute expression, laser-focused on you. "Whatever you choose, I will keep you safe. I promise you."

He feels so staunchly Batman in this moment, even with the soft voice of Bruce, watching over you. Through all your uncertainty, this you believe him on.

And you're exhausted, you find. Your arm is beginning to throb again. You crave the reprieve of a bed but not your own, to your surprise.

"I'm going to trust you, Bruce," your voice wobbles as you say it out loud, "I'm going to trust you like I trust Batman."

Bruce holds eye contact with you for a few moments, "Okay."

"Can I ask... why are you dressed so nice?"

"We're going to get the sedative."

"You're going as Bruce?"

"It's the middle of the day. Yes, I'm going as Bruce. I'm not letting you out of my sight."

You fluster, suddenly reconsidering this entire plan. You'd pictured Batman skulking on the rooftop while you Mission Impossible'd your way into the medicine cabinets for what you needed. Walking in with him—the real him—would draw attention you didn't need, "You're only going to make me look suspicious."

"I'm your patient, and more importantly, I'm a donor."

"You will stick out like a sore thumb."

"That means when people are looking at me, they're not looking at you." You open your mouth to argue but he's already cutting you off, "Do you want me to drop you off at your place or do you want me to send someone to get your things?"

You're aware of what he's really asking.

You heave a sigh, "Drop me off. I can't promise Judith won't hurt someone if she finds a stranger in my house."

a/n: mj stop having the reader move in with bruce when their life is put in imminent danger challenge impossible

#bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne scenarios #bruce wayne fic #bruce wayne #batman x reader #batman scenarios #batman fic #batman angst #batman fluff #the batman #battinson x reader #battinson #dc #mjwrites #bw; rprt

182 notes · View notes

ashsimpsalot · 4 months

Text

Coconut oil & honey (Monkey Man Kid X reader)

A/n: I haven't written anything in so so long. Like a year long. This is a fluff fic erm... OKAY ENJOY

Gentle love?

Gentle love.

He's 27 now, almost 28.

He's the age that his mother will forever be, and after 18 years, he's found that feeling he's been desperately craved, he's mistaken for trying to fill that hole in his chest by the only thing he's understands; pain.

The angry 13 years old boy with tiger stripes on his wrists would be baffled if he'd find out that the emptiness he feels is that yearning for love.

The stoic 20 years old boy with knitted eyebrows will scoffs if he's told him that he needs to open his heart bigger to fill it up.

"what is grief if not love with nowhere to go?" his woman had said while tracing his scarred palm with her perfect fingers.

Perfect.

She's perfect.

Who would've known that he'd find the missing half of his cursed soul in a cursed hotel? Not him.

"where'd you go, handsome?" you asked, sweeter than sugar cane, quieter than the night outside of her shitty apartment.

Just the sound of your voice had crafted a small, soft smile on his otherwise tight lips. "I'm right here, jaanu", " Kid would answer just as quiet as you, reaching behind, taking one of your hands out of his curls, planting a kiss on your palm ignoring the distinct smell of coconut oil and honey. By pure muscle memories you flatten your palm out and placed it on his cheek.

"you're getting all the oil on your lips and cheek, silly." you chuckled.

and right there and there he'd understand that half of his heart had spilled out of his chest and now free to roam the world in the form of his lover.

Kid's nights used to be filed with snoring men and loud voices of his mother's screams.

Now it's this, you sitting on the couch, him sitting on the floor between your legs, eyes pinned on whatever movie you decided to turn on, your fingers that are red with henna along with small ring he'd bought with whatever money left in his pockets wrapped around your ring finger that are willingly buried in his curls, working their magic.

A determine look on your face as you massages your homemade hair oil into his scalp.

He'd never know that the smell of the coconut oil and honey that hits his nose when he first met you would stay in his life for this long, and he's wish upon all that he knows for it to stay forever.

"lost you there again, bandhar." you said softer this time, he knows what that means, concerned. He almost whined when your fingers left his hair, he knew that you're done.

He shakes his head, held your hand and continue to do so as he settles to sit next to you.

"thank you." he whispered, kissing your palm and pushes his cheek against it next. You smiled. "you know I love playing with your hair. This is purely for my pleasure." you joked.

He didn't laugh, he shook his head. "not that, you saved me, you found the heart that I lost all those years ago, you.." he stopped, he realised he doesn't have the words to let you understand just how much you meant to him.

"I love you" you replied, you understood, you always do.

He smiled and leans in to kiss you. "I love you much more than you can ever imagine," he whispered, with his forehead pressed onto yours, colloused thumb softly rubbing on your chin.

He felt it again, the love you have for him spill onto him just by your hands, your hands in his curls, your hands on his cheeks, your fingers in his palm, your hand on his chest.

"I love you," he repeated, he'd laid down on the couch, pulling you with him, the desire to be close to you is too strong, you can't be closer, the only way to do that is to open him up and crawl into him, you've laid your head on his chest, eyes back on the screen. You're watching the TV and he's watching her.

"I love you," he repeats again.

"I love you" he repeats, not giving you a chance to reply.

"I love you," if you've forgotten.

"I love you," if you've doubted him.

He sighs and kisses your forehead. "I love you,"

You softly chuckle and move up.

"i love you," he said again, you had leaned in to kiss him to shut him up, hand caressing his cheek as you do so. He thought he'd die, he thought the love in his chest is too much it'll burst open and kill him.

"I love you too," your voice silenced him.

He smiled as you went back to lay on his chest, finger tracing circles on his chest.

He closes his eyes.

He knows now.

He's knows he's loved.

He matters.

#monkey man #monkey man x reader #kid monkey man #kid x reader #fluff #monkey man fluff #dev patel #monkey man fanfiction

166 notes · View notes

atlafan · 1 year

Text

You fucked up again. Just when Harry thinks you've learned from your mistakes, you go and do something ten times as devious. Which is why he's giving you that same glazed over look, the one where he's concocting severe punishments. It's not anger, it's almost exhaustion. It's giving, "how many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man" from Spongebob. But unlike last time when you accidentally pushed him too far, this was purposeful.

Harry has a grueling job. He works a lot of long hours, he has to deal with idiots all day long, and he cannot stand the other partners at his firm. You were his saving grace. You, who was working as a para-legal just to support yourself while you ran your online jewelry store, started assisting Harry. You'd pull the files he needed. You could type more than 100 words a minute. And you had been so innocent. Not naiive, not a prude, but you were blissfully ignorant, and Harry found that to be very cute. So, when you inevitably started hooking up after one too many long nights together, he opened your eyes to a whole new world of kinky sex. He was so serious about it, explaining that he needed someone to be rough and mean with, but also craving to take care of someone and spoil them with affection. And because he had made you come so hard you cried, you were hooked on him, so you went with it.

You've been together a year now, you live together, and you're thinking of maybe getting a dog soon. You don't report directly to Harry anymore, though. You assist another person in another department. It was the only way you two could date without it being a big deal for the firm.

Tonight is a big night. They're announcing the new junior partners, and since Harry is a senior partner, he gets to pin the two people he's been mentoring. He's actually pretty excited about it, or he was until he saw you step out of the bathroom and back into your shared walk-in closet. He's standing there, half dressed, frozen with fury as he watches you pick out which rings and bracelets you're planning to wear. You double take after seeing the look on his face.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" You asked innocently.

"I told you not to wear that dress." He responded lowly.

"You asked me not to wear it, and I never agreed or disagreed. You can't tell me what I can and can't put on my body, Harry."

"You're making me sound controlling, that's not what this is about. You know you look stunning and sexy in that goddamn red dress, and you know it drives me insane because I know for a fact that you're not wearing anything underneath it. That's why I asked you not to wear it. I saw you eyeing it the other day, I should have known."

"I can't wear underwear with this, the fabric is too clingy and I hate having panty lines. It's just a dress. Show some self control."

And that's when the look changed. You swallowed hard and tried not to falter under his gaze. He slowly stalks toward you, still half naked, his abs and other chiseled features fully on display.

"I have plenty of self control." He said as he hooked his arm around your waist, pulling you into him. "And you know better than anyone else that I love showing you off and letting everyone around us know that you're mine and mine alone and that they'll never know you or have you the way that I do." He brings his fingers up to squish the sides of your cheeks. "You have plenty of other dresses. I'd like you to go put a different one, and save this one for my eyes only."

"No." You say through your puckered lips.

"No?"

"No."

"That's final answer?"

"It took me forty-five minutes to get ready, I'm not starting over. The hair and the makeup go with the dress. I'm not changing."

He looked you up and down, smirked, then let you go. You watched him carefully as he pulled his shirt and suit jacket on. You weren't sure what he was going to do, but you're standing your ground on this.

"Babe?" He calls to you from the bedroom, so you leave the closet with your ruby clutch in hand and meet him by his dresser.

"Do you need help with your tie, sweetheart?" You ask ignorantly.

"No, I'm not wearing a tie tonight. I'm doing the open button thing, but thank you for offering. Pull up the skirt of your dress for me."

You furrow your brows but does as he says. He gets down on one knee and starts kissing up your leg. He pulls something out of his jacket pocket and your stomach drops. He hears you gasp, and he looks up at you wickedly.

"I'm going to put this inside you."

"Harry, please, this is a work event, I can't have my come dripping down my legs."

"It won't be come because you won't be coming. I'm going to do as I please with this tonight." He turns the little egg-shaped vibrator on and holds his phone up next to it to pair to the Bluetooth. "Perfect. Alright, spread 'em." He looks up at you, his features turning softer. "Do you need your safe word? It's okay if you'd rather wait until we get home to be punished. I don't want you to be uncomfortable."

"No." You smile softly down at him, gently caressing his cheek. "I'm okay, daddy, go ahead."

He kisses the inside of your knee as he works the toy inside of you. He stands back up and taps one of the settings in the app to give you a test vibration to make sure it's working properly.

You're in for a long night.

What puzzled you most was that Harry hadn't done anything to you yet. He didn't turn the toy on in the car. And you've been at the party for an hour already, and he still hasn't done anything. The anticipation has been killing you. Maybe that was his plan all along. You see your boss and roll your eyes as he stuffs his face with shrimp from the raw bar. You hate him. Part of you wanted to wear your red dress tonight because you wanted to show that sweaty hog that he could look all he wanted, but he'd never be able to touch you.

It's when you're taking a sip of your martini while talking to some of the other paras that you feel the toy kick on. It's starts off with little pulsations, then moves along to steady vibrations. You pinch your thighs together as discretely as you can. You're starting to sweat, and you're starting to let little noises out. You're covering them with coughs and whatnot, but after ten minutes of this, you're starting to get uncomfortably wet. It's all so torturous because as good as it feels, you're not getting any external stimulation, which you need in order to come, so this is all just edging. And you love being edged, so even though it's torture, it's also the absolute best.

Harry knows this. He can see it on your face. You two lock eyes, and you pout at him, pleading. He can't resist you for long, not while you're wearing that dress. Before he can get to you, your boss approaches you, which makes Harry stop short. You had mentioned how he had been such a douchebag lately. He wants to watch the exchange.

"You look incredible." Your boss grinned.

"I know." You snap.

"What are you doing wearing a tight thing like that for? It leaves little to the imagination."

In your head, you don't see how that's true. It's a mermaid style halter with an open back, and the front is separated so you can just see the outline of of the inner parts of your breasts. But because it's a gown, there's an air of class to it. Your hair is up, plenty of pieces out in the front to frame your face. You look stunning. There are plenty of women at this party dressed similarly.

"Don't look at me too much, then." You respond after taking a careful sip of champagne. You're sweating while having that stupid toy inside you. You have to grit your teeth and pinch your nails into your palms to stay composed.

"I'm afraid that's impossible. I think you wore this to get my attention, not that you need help in that department."

"You're being inappropriate. I wore this for myself. I like the way I look in it. It's also one of Harry's favorites, so-"

"I can't believe you're still with that guy. He's like a lump on a log. He's only charismatic with his clients, you know?"

"We live together, so I'd like to think I know him pretty well."

"You deserve to be with someone that can make it so you never have to work another day in your life."

"I like working."

"No one likes working."

"I just said I like working."

"You like making jewelry. Wouldn't you rather do that full time?"

"I-" Your breath hitches when you feel the pulsations start to work in tandem with the vibrations. You're going to kill him.

"Are you feeling alright?" Your boss takes one of your hands, but before he can do anything else, Harry comes up and puts his arm around your waist.

"Bill, she really doesn't like it when you touch her. Look at her, she looks like she's going to be sick, so instead of continuing to make her more uncomfortable, why don't you just walk away. You get away with too many things here, but not for much longer."

"Is that a threat?"

"If you want to take it as one, be my guest." His grip on your hip tightens and you can't help but whimper. "Excuse us." Harry's hand moves to the small of your back to lead you out to the coat check room. He gets you in and locks the door behind you. "Are you alright?" He cups her jaw and looks you over."

"Yeah, th-thank you for getting me - shit - away from h-him." You grit your teeth and pinch your eyes closed, bracing your hands flat against Harry's chest. "Please, I can't...I can't take much more of this, it's been almost two hours."

"I know, and you've done so well for me. I'll turn it off and take it out if you tell me why you wore this even after I asked you not to. I know you can put whatever you want on your body. I just like it when you save certain things for me, for us."

"I hate my boss." You say, still bracing yourself against him. "He makes passes at me all the time. I just wanted to torture him a little, to let him know he'll never know what's underneath all this fabric."

"Sweet girl." He tilts your chin up so you'll look at him. "If Joe was being that big of a prick, why didn't you say something to me?"

"I don't want to run to you to fight all my battles for me. I need to be able to lean on myself."

"If he's sexually harassing you, then you should come to me so I can go with you to HR. You know they don't listen unless someone of higher rank complains. It's fucked up, but that's just how it is. I want the culture to change, but it's slow going."

"I know." You cry, almost feeling ready to drool from how worked up you are. "You're not one of the cogs in the machine, and that's one of the many things I love about you, Harry. I'm sorry I upset you by wearing this because I know you're only upset because you just want to rip it off with your teeth"

"That's right." He backs you up against the closest wall, not caring about any of the coats hanging up being knocked to the floor. He kisses you hard and hot, bending at the knee a bit to get a hand under your dress. He moans into your mouth as he slides his fingers through your folds. "You're soaked, beyond soaked."

"Please, daddy, please." You say breathlessly as he plays with you.

"You sound so good when you're begging. Keep going." He nips at your earlobe before licking and sucking at your neck.

"Please, take it out, daddy. Then you can fuck me in here and I'll do whatever you say."

"You'll need to be quiet. I'll have to stuff the toy into your mouth." He brushes your bottom lip with his thumb and you nod. "Need your safe word?"

"No, god no."

He smirks and pulls the toy out of you, pressing down on the button to turn it off. He whimpers when he feels so much of your slick drip out. He puts the toy inside his own mouth first, moaning at the taste of you, then he puts it into your mouth. He hikes your dress up and immediately gets his middle and ring fingers inside of you. You whine around the toy and clutch at the lapels of his jacket as he pumps his fingers in and out of you, beating into your g-spot. The heel of his palm works to ground down against your clit, making your head roll back. He sponges kisses to your throat as you tug at the hair on the back of his head. Your eyes burst open when you feel yourself start to get close. You're going to explode, and you're all of a sudden worried about ruining the jackets in this closet.

"Don't you dare hold back on me. Fuck the jackets, baby, make a mess." He growls, pounding into your harder.

You're moaning uncontrollably around the toy. You start gushing with his fingers still inside of you, and he doesn't let up. You're coming hard and it feels like it's going to be never ending. This is why you like being edged. You'll take a solid sixty-second orgasm over a ton of little quick ones. Harry slows down his pace, weaning you off of him, before taking his fingers all the way out. He sucks them into his mouth as he fixes your dress. He takes the toy out of your mouth and stuffs it into his jacket pocket while you take his fingers to lick and suck on.

"My good girl." He coos, caressing her cheek. "My good, fucking girl." He catches a glimpse of his watch and sucks his teeth. "Shit, we need to go back to the main room. The pinning is going to start soon."

"Okay, just, let me catch my breath." She says. "Daddy, is my makeup all fucked?"

"Only a little." He wipes under your eyes for you. "Still gorgeous as ever."

"Thank you." You wrap your arms around his neck and hug him tight. He holds you close, giving you gentle kisses and whispering sweet words into your ear. "Thank you." You whisper. "Can we go home after the pinning?" You ask as he opens the door and you walk out of the coat check room.

"Eager for daddy's cock?" He grins.

"Always."

#harry styles #harry styles au #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles smut #harry styles fluff #harry styles x reader #mine #harry styles y/n #harry styles x y/n #harry styles angst #blurb #harry styles blurb

612 notes · View notes

k-howlett · 20 days

Text

H(ear)tline Prologue | Bruce Wayne [Batman] xF!Angel:reader

TW: Possible religious insensitivity, Fallen Angel, Canon-breaking OOC, eventual smut(not in this specific installment)

Rating: Gender Specific (Female Reader), Eventual Smut (Teen+/mature), SFW (Prologue), eventual fluff

A/N:

Thank you so much for your continued patience! I am unfortunately knee deep in moving. Breaking and Entering is on Hiatus at the moment because of my inability to appeal a report (I've been too busy to check my email and missed the 24 hour deadline. Thank you so much(/s) to whoever FALSELY reported my artistry and now cost me hours of setbacks. I don't know if I can repost and change the tag but I did file a complaint with tumblr admin and am awaiting a resolution), in the mean time, please enjoy this concept I came up with half-awake whilst packing boxes!

With love and healing,

-Lark

𓂋

𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢˚₊‧꒰ა ♡ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢

Bruce Wayne was not one for religion. If there was a God, the creator must’ve had a particular disdain for Gotham City and everything in it. The place was a living hell, overrun with the likes of Scarecrow, Bane, Joker, Penguin—an endless parade of villains. It felt as though God had abandoned him, leaving the city to rot.

When a group of young people stopped him on the street, offering free Bibles, Bruce briefly considered lashing out, tearing into their beliefs with the cynicism that years in Gotham had sharpened. But he held back. Despite his doubts, he couldn’t deny the comfort religion provided to those who believed. He recalled attending Sunday school as a child, his mother’s gentle voice praising the beauty of the world around them, her unshakeable faith even in the face of Gotham’s darkness. In her final moments, she had reached out to God. Who was he to strip these kids of that same hope?

Wordlessly, he accepted the leather-bound Bible. It was crafted with care, though the materials were clearly cheap—the gold lettering was already flaking. He considered tossing it when he got home, or maybe donating it to a shelter. He might not believe in God, but he knew that his own moral compass had been shaped by something greater than himself. Not everyone had that foundation; maybe some people really did need saving.

He sighed as he carried the Bible to his office. The last thing he needed was for anyone to think he’d found religion. He had a carefully curated, morally ambiguous playboy persona to maintain. What if the media thought he was turning over a new leaf? What if they took it as a sign he was ready to settle down? The thought of more women throwing themselves at him—especially devout ones—made him shudder.

He tucked the Bible under his arm, the gold lettering pressed tightly against his side. Maybe someone would mistake it for a journal. A glance at his watch made him scowl—somehow, the walk from the coffee shop to the office had eaten up more time than expected. Lucius would undoubtedly have something to say about it later; they had a meeting, and now he was going to be late—again.

Dragging a hand down his face, Bruce felt the exhaustion deep in his bones. The late nights and early mornings were catching up with him, eroding his focus, fraying the edges of his mind. For a moment, bitterness welled up—a rare flicker of resignation. Did it even make a difference? Gotham’s streets were never truly free of crime. Petty theft, gang violence, the constant churn of the underworld—it never stopped. And the ones he managed to lock up? They always found a way out. Arkham was a revolving door, a sick joke of a prison.

For a fleeting second, he entertained the idea of quitting. The notion of a full night’s sleep was almost unimaginable, but his body ached for it. Was there really no reprieve? After all these years, the despair felt like it was swallowing him whole. Gotham was a sinkhole, and he was drowning in it.

But he shook off the thought, setting his jaw with grim resolve. He would not break, and he would not allow himself the luxury of weakness. He’d let his body rot from the inside out if that’s what it took to see his mission through. It wasn’t just an obligation; it was a promise. And though no one would blame him if he walked away, though they might even understand, he wouldn’t bow down and admit defeat. He’d fought for fifteen years—he could fight for fifteen more.

𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢

Bruce tossed the Bible onto his desk and sank into his leather chair, his eyes heavy as they flicked to the desktop screen. Logging in, he was greeted by a flood of emails—requests for meetings from the legal branch, shareholders bickering over stock distributions, and the usual complaints from board members about his lack of attention to this year’s Gala preparations.

His assistant had already informed him of the missed meeting, explaining that Lucius had been pulled into another matter. The issues were piling up, and for a brief moment, his hand trembled as he reached for the mouse. Wayne Enterprises was his father’s legacy, and Batman was his—but right now, the mission would have to wait. He needed to get this under control, and fast.

Four hours of back-to-back phone calls and troubleshooting. Bruce was now lying under his desk, trying to replace a faulty cable. The entire office was down, and with IT swamped, he had no choice but to handle it himself. He needed to review the quarterly reports before the bonuses were announced, and he knew the company had been slacking—summer interns flooding in and Tim away at college had left him without the structure he relied on.

When he finally sat up from the floor, his head collided with the corner of the desk, sending a sharp pain through his skull. The Bible tumbled from the desk, hitting him squarely on the head before flopping open on the ground, a business card slipping out.

Bruce picked it up, squinting at the bold print: "1-800-ANGEL." He frowned. What kind of absurd, erotic phone service was this? The card was nearly blank, save for a single line:

"May you find your faith."

Real funny, he thought, for a number probably meant to fleece desperate souls. They probably charged by the minute. Bruce rolled his eyes, dismissing it as yet another scam targeting the gullible.

Bruce thumbed the card, skepticism tightening his grip. Surely, no one was desperate enough to actually call. He wondered about the legitimacy of the number, and after settling back into his chair, he opened a new tab. Thankfully, the replacement cable had done its job, and his screen blinked to life. He typed in the number, but nothing came up—not even a link to some sketchy website. He tried the motto next, but all he found were articles on religion and local church recommendations. He raised an eyebrow. For a scam, they were doing a remarkably poor job of marketing it.

Picking up the Bible again, he considered the possibility that the kids handing them out might have been given faulty copies. But as he inspected it, the Bible seemed legitimate enough. He cross-referenced it with an online version to be sure, but everything checked out. The only oddity was the card. Flipping through the pages, he eventually found a strange marking on the back cover, stamped with the words "ales et lux."

"Wings and light?" he muttered, dropping the Bible back onto the desk.

Curiosity gnawed at him. Without hesitation, he dialed the number. Whatever this was, he intended to get to the bottom of it. Maybe he’d caught it early enough—he could pull a few strings with the FBI and shut it down before it preyed on anyone vulnerable. But as the line connected, the voice on the other end made him stop cold.

“So you’ve received the calling card of heaven. We’re so glad you have found your faith. Please note this card is for one-time use. For inquiries about time of death, press 1. For prayers and answers, press 2. For information on Christian denominations and healing, press 3. For nondenominational options, press 4. For Native, Inuit, Norse, and Pagan beliefs, press 5. Unsure what category your beliefs fall under? Press star for a list. For all other healing-related questions, press 6.”

Bruce’s scowl deepened as he listened to the automated menu. The damn phone hadn’t even rung—this had to be some kind of twisted scam. He was about to hang up when the final option made his breath catch.

“And finally, to speak to your angel, press 0.”

His angel? A guardian angel? He doubted he had one. If he did, they’d done a piss-poor job watching over him. The loss of his parents, Jason Todd, and Alfred—the man who had been the closest thing to a father he had left—proved that. Anger flickered in his chest. He wanted to speak to this so-called angel, to confront them, to demand answers for the pain he’d endured. What kind of angel lets their charge suffer like this?

He pressed zero, the cold, rational part of him momentarily overridden by the seething anger and hurt simmering beneath the surface—the hurt little boy he’d buried deep inside threatening to unleash all that unprocessed trauma.

He wasn’t expecting such a soft voice to greet him, nor the surprising calm that washed over his mind as it did.

“Bruce? You really called.” The voice on the other end was feminine, light, almost breathless, as if she had been waiting for this moment.

“...Who the hell are you?” His voice was sharp, defensive.

“Well, my official title doesn’t really have an accurate translation in mortal language, but I’m more or less your protector.”

“Protector?!” He growled, the word scraping out like a curse. “You couldn’t even protect me from a goddamn paper cut, let alone a laundry list of loss. You didn’t protect anything—I protect this city, I protect people. You’re not even real! You’re probably just some credit card scammer, phishing for my personal data. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Data mining. Your entire operation is fraudulent at best, and—”

He cut himself off, his voice shaking with anger. It wasn’t just fury at this supposed "protector"—it was fury at the years of pain, at the endless nights spent fighting a war that never seemed to end, at the world for daring to keep spinning while he bled in the dark. How dare anyone call themselves his protector when every person he’d ever loved had been torn away from him? How dare they try to soothe him with some ethereal nonsense when he was the one in the trenches, the one facing down Gotham’s nightmares every single night?

The silence on the other end of the line was almost unbearable, but he wouldn’t back down. He’d heard enough lies in his lifetime to know when someone was trying to sell him false hope.

“…It doesn’t work like that,” the voice finally replied, a hint of sadness woven into its softness. “I can’t interfere with your life in the way you think. Those losses… they were unfortunate, and I know they fuel the anguish that haunts your mind, but my role isn’t to shield you from pain. My job is to keep you alive. Every close call, every moment when death was just a breath away—that was my divine interference. I won’t let you die, Bruce. Not until the time is right and your body is ready to rest.”

Bruce clenched his jaw, anger and disbelief warring within him. He wanted to tear into her, to lash out at the absurdity of it all. This so-called protector, claiming to watch over him, to keep him alive—where was she when his parents were murdered in front of him? Where was she when Jason died, or when he stood over Alfred’s grave, feeling the weight of yet another life lost because of him?

“Don’t patronize me,” he spat, his voice low and dangerous. “You think I need your protection? You think those near-deaths were some divine favor? I’ve survived because I’ve fought, because I’ve clawed my way out of every hellhole Gotham’s thrown me into. You had nothing to do with it.”

He could almost hear her smile through the phone, a soft, resigned sound that seemed to fill the silence between them.

“You’ve fought harder than anyone should ever have to, Bruce. You’re the purest soul I’ve ever had the privilege of encountering. No matter how much you try to front or deflect, it’s clear you care. You care more than anyone else. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have taken in those kids, or dressed up like a bat to fight crime night after night. You’re like Sisyphus, eternally pushing a boulder uphill. And while you may not want praise or acknowledgment, you need to know—despite everything, you are a good person. You’re a good man. And in many ways, you’re the closest thing to God’s image I’ve ever seen.”

Bruce’s breath caught, anger and disbelief momentarily overshadowed by the weight of her words. How could she claim to know him so well, to understand his pain and sacrifice? Yet, the very notion of being compared to something divine—despite how hollow it felt—struck a chord deep within him.

“Spare me the sermon,” he growled, trying to regain his composure. “You think you can soothe me with this celestial rhetoric? I don’t need your validation. I need results. I need to keep this city safe, and I need to know that those I care about are protected. Save your platitudes for someone who believes in them.”

There was a pause on the other end, as if she was choosing her words carefully. “I’m not here to validate you, Bruce. I’m here to remind you that even in the darkest moments, you have a purpose. And while you may see yourself as a flawed instrument of justice, remember that even in your struggle, there’s a reflection of something greater—a beacon of hope for others, whether you realize it or not.”

Bruce didn’t respond, his mind a storm of conflicting emotions. The rational part of him dismissed her words as manipulative flattery, but a flicker of vulnerability, long suppressed, threatened to break through. He forced himself to focus, pushing those thoughts aside.

“Enough of this,” he said, his voice cold and final. “If you’re really here to help, then stay out of my way. I’ll handle things my way.”

He hung up the phone, the echo of her voice lingering in his mind. As he turned his attention back to the stack of paperwork and problems awaiting him, he couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that perhaps, in some twisted way, she had touched a part of him he had long buried.

𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢

Bruce landed another punch on the goon, watching as they crumpled to the ground. Fighting at the docks was his least favorite—slippery surfaces and treacherous footing made it harder to maintain his balance. He glanced at the wall, the dim streetlight casting an eerie glow on the dilapidated brick.

In the periphery of his vision, he thought he saw the shadow of wings, a fleeting, phantom-like presence. When he snapped around, though, all he saw were the goons he had already beaten. They lay scattered and unconscious, bloodied and bruised. A quick scan of the area revealed the familiar wreckage of a confrontation: discarded weapons and broken crates.

On the ground, a few feet away from a goon he didn’t remember hitting, lay a gun glinting in the faint light. Next to it was a single white feather. The goon in question had no visible injuries, no sign of the kind of violence Bruce had just inflicted on the others. There were no swollen bruises, no blood—nothing to suggest that they had been involved in the scuffle.

Bruce frowned, his mind racing. He hadn't hit this one, nor had he seen anything out of the ordinary during the fight. The feather seemed out of place, its presence unsettling. It wasn’t like anything he had come across before—an odd detail in an otherwise straightforward altercation.

His instincts, honed by years of vigilant observation, told him this was no mere coincidence. There was something strange here, something beyond the usual street brawls and petty crime. The feather could mean something, or someone, had intervened. And if that was the case, Bruce needed to understand why.

He crouched down to examine the feather and the gun more closely. His eyes narrowed, scanning for any other anomalies or signs that could explain the goon’s sudden unconsciousness. Whatever the cause, Bruce knew he couldn’t ignore it. Not with the pattern of oddities and divine encounters that had begun to surface recently.

He straightened up, the feather clenched in his hand, his mind already shifting gears. There was more at play here than just a fight—something, or someone, was influencing events from the shadows. And as always, it was up to him to uncover the truth.

˚₊‧𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢 𓏲𝄢‧₊˚

Approx. Word Count: ~2,746

pt I: Coming Soon(?)

This is a soft-launch of this series, if you guys would like more parts, please let me know in the comments <3 It helps motivate me to write!

//Series Tag List: Available Upon Request!

Status Page 2024: Here

#bruce wayne #angst #batman #batfam #batdad #batman x reader #bruce wayne fanfiction #x reader #reader insert #female reader #alfred pennyworth #tim drake #dc batman #bruce wayne x reader #angst with a happy ending #eventual smut #angel reader

33 notes · View notes

myfaveficrecs · 2 years

Text

Remember This?

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x Reader

Word Count: 2,011

Warnings: Smut, unprotected sex, dirty talk, mentions of injuries/medical procedures

AN: I am dipping my toes back into the writing world for @roosterforme’s #love is in the air tgm challenge. My song is, “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men. Hopefully this isn’t a flop! Happy Valentine’s Day! XOXO

You enjoyed your job immensely. Helping people had always been something that was extremely important to you, and you were lucky enough to be able to do what you were passionate about. You finished medical school 3 years ago and now you were employed at your local VA Hospital part time, your other half being on base with your husband, Bradley. You had been high school sweethearts and you were still going on like it was your honeymoon.

You were overjoyed when you learned you were going to be able to help soldiers from all branches from all over the country. You helped veteran soldiers with rehabilitation mostly. Post war injuries that needed extra help and attention when they were able to come back home.

Bradley and his squadron were all in the Navy. Fanboy and Halo had done 3 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan while Bradley had done 2 recently. Hangman was almost killed in combat 4 days before he was due to come home from his last deployment. The others had thankfully come home in one piece, only minor scrapes and injuries from their time overseas. Bradley hadn’t been as lucky.

Bradley had been shot once in the chest inches away from his heart, and shrapnel had sliced through his face, neck, and arm. He was lucky to be alive but thankfully the doctors he had were good at what they do. They were able to save his life but not without complications. He had severe nerve damage through his left shoulder and bicep and his collarbone had been shattered and completely reconstructed. When he was sent home, he started showing up to the hospital you worked at for his physical therapy, often riding home with you at the end of the day.

You had just finished with a patient when you were heading to your office, passing by the nurses’ station on your way. You dropped the patient’s chart off at the desk but before you could start heading in the direction you desired, your charge nurse, Rebecca, stopped you with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“You have a visitor.”

“A visitor?”

“If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

She just shrugged her shoulders noncommittally with a smirk, walking away from you to continue your filing. Looking at your basket you noticed you had no patients waiting and walked to your office wondering who could be waiting for you.

As soon as you walked into your office your face broke out in a large smile. You knew it was your husband without a doubt. His 6’1” frame standing in front of your large window overlooking the city, broad shoulders, long legs, tight little ass, and hair with perfect curls for pulling.

“Well, this is a pleasant surprise.” You smiled while shutting your door, taking off your lab jacket and throwing it over the back of one of the chairs in your office. He turned around quickly and smiled at you, holding his arms open wide for you to walk into, bringing you into a warm and tight embrace.

“Yeah, I had my last appointment today and thought I’d come up and see you.”

“How’d it go?”

“Good. Almost as good as before.”

“That’s awesome, honey.”

“You don’t have any patients do you?”

“No, I think my next appointment is in another 45 minutes, why?”

With a mischievous look and a flick of the lock on your door, Bradley looks towards your desk and says, “Hey Alexa! Play my baby maker playlist.” You couldn’t help but laugh, burying your face in his chest as “I’ll Make Love to You,” starts to echo in your office.

“Haven’t heard this song since the night before my last deployment...you remember that night?” He smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at you.

“Of course, I do! But Roo, we can’t do that here!”

“We can. I locked the door. C’mon baby, I thought we could celebrate a little early.” He could see the slight crack in your resolve and pounced on the seconds of vulnerability, the pride. “Besides, Rebecca is probably listening right outside the door right now anyway.:

Close your eyes, make a wish And blow out the candlelight For tonight is just your night We're gonna celebrate, all through the night Pour the wine, light the fire Girl your wish is my command I submit to your demands

Bradley wrapped one hand into your hair, gently pulling your head back, tracing his nose up your cheek. Pulling back slightly he hovers his lips over your own, a little quirk to his lips when he pulls millimeters away when you try and connect. Once, twice more before he lets out a breathy chuckle at your frustration, finally crashing his plush lips to yours in a passionate kiss. His other hand pushing into your lower back and pulling you flush against him, swaying to the harmony of the song. When he pulled away you were both breathless and dizzy. Desire had pooled in your core, and you could feel an impressive bulge digging into your stomach. “You gonna let me love you like it’s that night all over again? Right here, right now?”

He didn’t give you any time to respond before he crashed his lips back onto yours once again. This time the kiss was all tongue and teeth. He loved to bite on your lower lip when you kissed, and it always managed to send shivers down your spine. As soon as you let out a moan, he knew he had you right where he wanted you and he smiled against your mouth. He quickly picked you up, digging his hands underneath your ass cheeks and plopped you unceremoniously on top of your desk, pushing everything out of his way to give you enough room to lie down. Your movements were frantic, knowing time was limited, ironically the same as the night before he left.

I will do anything, girl you need only ask I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby, all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

Bradley was usually a rough lover, but he always managed to make you feel loved and protected, no matter what you were doing, and the sex was no different. His touch held a tenderness; a reaffirming touch that he would always be there to care for you.

You quickly pulled his shirt off of his broad shoulders and pulled it up over his head to reveal his chiseled chest and abs. Reaching up you pulled Bradley down toward you, kissing over his scars from the old wounds, shrapnel, and surgeries. This was something you always did, letting him know you were thankful he was alive and in your arms. The reminder that he was still beautiful in your eyes.

Girl relax, let's go slow I ain't got nowhere to go I'm just gon' concentrate on you Girl, are you ready? It's gon' be a long night Throw your clothes (throw your clothes) on the floor (on the floor) I'm gonna take my clothes off too I've made plans to be with you Girl whatever you ask me, you know I can do

Bradley pulled your hair and moved your head back far enough to stretch your neck long, licking a broad stripe and ending with a quick nip underneath your ear. You let out an obscene moan making him pull back from you and stand up as straight as he could while leaning over your desk for support. “You gotta be quiet, baby.” He practically ripped your scrub pants and panties off of you in one quick pull, your shoes flying off along with them from the force of his tug. He placed your feet wide along the edge of your desk, opening yourself up to him. “Fuck Y/N…you’re already soaking wet.”

“I’m always wet for you, Bradley…now are you just going to stare or are you going to make love to your wife?”

I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby, all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

Bradley’s demeanor instantly changed. His eyes quickly shot up to yours, narrowing into slits. He clenched his jaw making it tick, and he snapped his belt open, never once taking his eyes from yours. The intensity bringing a new wave of slick rushing out of you. There was no reply from him, his face telling you everything you needed to know. He was most definitely going to love you, and he was going to make sure you remembered it.

Pulling his jeans and boxers down just below his ass, his erection sprang free. It was long and thick, steadily leaking drops of precum. He wrapped his hand around the base, slowly stroking upwards, giving you a show. With a smirk he wrapped his hand around your thighs, pulling you down until your ass was flush with the edge of your desk.

Baby, tonight is your night And I will do you right Just make a wish on your night Anything that you ask I will give you the love of your life, your life, your life

No warning was given before he thrust into you in one slow and measured thrust, filling you to the brink, and trusting your body to accept him as it has hundreds of times before. Your eyes rolled back in your head and your mouth opened wide to let out a sound you had never heard yourself make before, not that you could bring yourself to care.

“I said,” he pistoned into you quickly, “be quiet. You don’t want those coworkers of yours getting too curious, do you?” You shook your head, biting your lip hard enough to draw blood in an attempt to muffle your noises. Bradley set a punishing pace knowing time was not on his side. His hips quickly meeting yours, the sound of slapping skin loud enough to echo throughout your office over the music. He pushed your scrub top up and over your breasts, pulling the cups of your bra down, and started to roughly caress your breasts with his left hand, his right holding tightly onto your hip to keep you from scooting across your desk from the power of his thrusts. The cold metal of his wedding ring made your nipples harden to tight peaks, the sensation running like a lightning bolt to your clit. “Fuck…Roo…please.”

He didn’t need to ask what you needed, knowing your body better than you did after all of these years. He quickly put his body flush with yours, chest to chest, intertwining your hands together beside of your head, and slammed his lips onto yours once again, tongues battling for dominance and attempting to muffle the noises trying to escape. The new angle caused him to move even deeper inside of you, completely bottoming out. The feeling of being so full and the delicious friction his pelvis was giving you by rubbing against your clit sent you over the edge.

I'll make love to you Like you want me to And I'll hold you tight Baby all through the night I'll make love to you When you want me to And I will not let go 'Til you tell me to

You arched your back and wrapped your legs tightly around his waist. The tight fluttering of your walls sending Bradley into his own orgasm, giving a growl you felt deep within his chest as he released himself inside of you. The sound of your intercom on your office phone went off, Rebecca’s voice floating through the room. “Your last appointment of the day just cancelled. See you tomorrow, Dr. Bradshaw!”

Both of you were still breathing heavily, interlocked together to the point you couldn’t tell where you began, and he ended. “Thank God because I don’t think I can walk after that.”

You both broke out into laughter, ready to go home. Bradley knew he had that record on the bookshelf in his office...round 2 is exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you do not wish to be tagged, please let me know and I will remove you! If you do want to be tagged, please let me know.

@roosterscock

@roosterforme

@endofdays56

@bradshawsbitch

@jupitercomet

@seresinhangmanjake

@wildbornsiren

@babyrooster

@ohtobeleah

@oncasette

@topguncortez

@topgun-imagines

@roleycoleyreccenter

@cherrycola27

@thedroneranger

@notroosterbradshaw

@almostgenerallyalways

@roosterbruiser

@teacupsandtopgun

@mak-32

#love is in the air tgm #bradley bradshaw x female reader #rooster x reader #bradley bradshaw x reader #top gun fanfiction #tgm #rooster x y/n #rooster imagine #rooster smut #female reader

448 notes · View notes

monikafilefan · 8 months

Text

Jingle Bells and Jealousy 1

I realized I never shared my newest fic I wrote on Christmas Eve here. There’s 2 chapters: 1 in Mulder’s pov and 2 in Scully’s.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight

Mulder scoffs as he draws the final insidious lines onto the smiling image of Santa Claus in front of him.

“Better,” he chuckles wryly.

The black ballpoint’s ink bleeds through the red and white dessert plate where the now new and improved Santa stares up at him. He blows cookie crumbs and remnants of pecan pie off his paper plate to get a good look at his masterpiece. The cookies were bland, but the pie hit the spot.

He feels overdressed and uncomfortable next to coworkers in ugly Christmas sweaters surrounded by tinsel by the pound. Good pie just might be the highlight of the night, Mulder muses sourly.

In a surprising turn of events while wrapping up a post X-File department budget meeting with Skinner this morning, Scully had confirmed that, yes, she was planning to attend the Bureau’s annual Christmas party for the first time in a long time. Mulder almost laughed at her joke — seeing as how they’d both agreed years ago that holiday parties could only serve to further ridicule their spooky department of two — before Skinner boldly stated that he’d hoped to see her there with her plus one. And to Mulder’s utter shock, Scully had blushed, avoided his probing gaze, and nodded. Scully had a date? His jaw had clenched so hard his teeth hurt. From there, Mulder’s plans to spend a quiet Christmas break on his couch with his pretty partner and a carton of Beijing beef had crumbled quicker than the pie crust now littering his lap.

Through the years, we all will be together

If the fates allow

Sinatra croons about fated happiness throughout the Hoover’s reception hall as Mulder slumps further in his seat. He’s only been here a half an hour and already regrets coming. The only plus side is that Diana and Spender are out of town on a case — an X-File, and aren’t here to silently mock his bullpen misery. If Scully hadn’t dropped a last minute bomb about attending this bureaucratic shindig, he sure as hell wouldn’t have either. Should have saved himself the embarrassment, he knows. He should’ve gone for a run instead of stewing in his apartment for three hours before changing his mind and frantically dusting off his tux he didn’t need for front row seats to a waking nightmare cheerfully playing out in front of him.

He isn’t sure his heart can handle what his eyes cannot get enough of: Dana Scully is absolutely gorgeous. Though, she’s always been pretty to him. Even when she emerges from her one star motel room at five a.m., sleepy-eyed and grumpy, rolling her eyes at his new case glee, Fox Mulder is wholly enamored.

But now… Christ. It must be his sorrow kicking him while he’s down again, because Scully has never been more beautiful. The green, form fitting cashmere cardigan looks so good on her with its top two buttons undone and something red and lacy peeking out underneath. It’s festive, flirty. The fine lines of her collarbones rise and fall in time with her shoulders as she sips her wine amongst the crowd. But her luminous appearance is hardly the attribute that attracts him to his partner the most. Her mind, her stubbornness, her heart… all of her has made him fall foolishly and dangerously in love.

And she looks happy without him.

Mulder sighs, sick to his stomach. He doesn’t deserve her attention anyway. His attitude pretty much proved that in the bullpen earlier tonight…

They leave the meeting with Skinner in a blur as Mulder silently reels at the implication of Scully dating, feeling the invisible noose of self-deprecation squeezing tighter.

“I thought you were going to conveniently miss that budget meeting,” Scully comments when they enter the nearly empty bullpen. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Where you, go I go,” he casually admits, trying not to sound as possessive as he feels right now. Because it’s the truth and the promise he’d silently made on his knees as he’d sobbed by her bedside in the Oncology ward.

She huffs a laugh. “Is that an early New Year’s resolution?”

“Not really new.” Mulder flops down in his chair and contemplates further, watching her fiddling with the mess on his tiny desk. He wants to just ask if she’s seeing someone. If she’s finally gotten sick of his shit and moved on, but for the first time in his life, he isn’t sure he wants the truth. “So you’ve decided to attend the Christmas party this year?”

Scully stops stacking files of neglected background checks and gives him a meaningful look. “I have.”

“You don’t think this is just another way to punish us, or you, if you go?” He whispers while pointing a pencil toward Kersh’s office across the hall. “You know how they operate up here.”

“Does enjoying a little Christmas music and conversation really seem like discipline to you?”

“Yes,” he says immediately.

“There’s pie,” she teases, pulling his discarded invitation he never read from the recycling bin and sliding it enticingly across the desk.

As much as he is itching to know more about her party plans, playing cool, calm, and collected feels less desperate. So he feigns disinterest and shrugs, “You know I’m picky about pie.”

Scully cocks her head and crosses her arms. “There’s me.”

“And you’re standing right here like always,” he offhandedly adds, hating his forced indifference more with every dismissive word that rolls off his tongue.

“Like always,” she mumbles. And out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shoulders slump, her arms falling limply to her sides. “Where I go, you go, but not if it includes socializing above subterranean territory?”

Something about the snide way she says that irritates him. Scully’s been just as pissed off about their reassignment to shit duty as he is and has never complained about being in the bowels of the basement with him. Not once.

Whatever reign he’d had on his internal turmoil snaps.

He spins around in his chair and points the pencil at her accusingly. “Am I too much of a loner for you now, is that why you’re bringing a plus one?” he hisses. “A date?”

“Excuse me?” A wave of anger rises within her sea blue eyes. Brow arched, she opens her mouth to rip him a new one he definitely deserves, but then seemingly reconsiders within earshot of others, tilting her head instead. “So what if I am?” she prods, sharp as a scalpel.

It’s unfair, he knows. His agitation and accusation. She’s never mentioned dating anyone before. Has never given him a reason to ask if she was, but the sudden white-hot flare of jealousy in his chest hurts more than her “oh brother” response to his recent love confession than he could have imagined.

Scully is staring at him like she wants to shove him against a wall and choke him with his tie. Mulder’s gut twists.

He tosses the pencil and stands. “Scully, I’m sorr-”

She holds up a halting hand.

“I’m going to the party tonight, Mulder.” Her voice is soft, a little shaky. “With or without you.”

Before Mulder can say another word, Scully turns on her heel and walks out of the bullpen, leaving him alone with a lump in his throat.

Now, Mulder’s heart hammers in time with the beat of the “Little Drummer Boy” echoing off the Bureau’s walls.

He had thought he could handle this soul-crushing feeling of heartbreak when he’d decided to come. He’d told himself he could push his own feelings aside for Scully’s happiness and show up to prove to her he’s really not a hermit intentionally holding her back in life. To remind her that he will do any thing for her. But now, confronted with the reality of her hand caressing another man’s forearm in a room riddled with mistletoe, he finds the sight of it is like a tabloid headline at a gas station checkout people are too ashamed to buy but can’t help indulging in a quick flip-through. Goddammit! His fists clench along the snowflake tablecloth. Like a train wreck, he cannot look away.

“Devil horns on Santa Claus, Mulder?” A.D. Skinner scolds wearily from over his shoulder.

Mulder startles and tears his eyes away from the woman he loves. He should have known he couldn’t wallow at a party in peace. “It’s Krampus, sir.”

“Looks about as cheerful as you do,” Skinner retorts.

Mulder pushes his defiled plate aside. “If I hear one more song about old Saint Nick, I might stuff my ears with marshmallows.”

“As much as you may deserve it after blowing the quarterly budget; again, a party isn’t a punishment, Mulder. Even when you’re off the files.”

The increasing ache in Mulder’s chest disagrees.

“You sound like Scully.”

“Then maybe you should listen.” Skinner nods toward Scully at the opposite side of the room. She’s smiling brightly as the same good-looking agent with dark skin and a gleaming grin hands her a glass of wine. “Agent Scully seems to be enjoying herself.”

“She deserves it,” Mulder mumbles moodily, doing a piss-poor job of ignoring the green-eyed Grinch gnawing a hole in his gut. And it doesn’t make it any less true, his closest, most cherished friend deserves the best.

“She’s said the same thing about you, you know,” Skinner huffs and shakes his head. The twinkling lights decorating the reception hall reflect off his boss’s scalp like a skin-colored disco ball. “Go on, show your tux a good time. Drink some eggnog, make some bullpen buddies. You know, live a little.”

“Dunno, Skinman. Sounds like a bad idea to me.”

“Jesus, Mulder.” Skinner reaches over and snags one of the bundles of mistletoe taped to the hall’s wall and shoves it into Mulder's palm. “Here, consider it my gift to you.”

“Uh,” Mulder blinks. “You shouldn’t have, sir.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Skinner rolls his eyes and pokes at the plastic flower. “For your partner. You know, the woman who — by some miracle, insists on defending you at every turn over the last six years. The same woman I overheard decline multiple dance offers already because of you.”

“How much punch have you had, sir? Because I saw Tom Colton pour a bottle of Jim Beam in there earlier.” Still, his hopeful eyes scan the crowd in search of Scully’s beckoning ones. But her back is turned, her date brazenly tucking a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. Mulder’s heart sinks to his shoes. “She couldn’t have said that about me.”

“Does she really have to?” Skinner asks incredulously.

Mulder tsks and flicks a stray chocolate chip across the table. “Considering she’s here with someone else and has ignored me since I walked in, I’d say so.”

“Well, even I know when your partner’s annoyed with you. More than usual, anyway.” Mulder can only shrug at the big man’s statement. He’s not wrong. “You didn’t tell her you were coming, did you?”

“No, I wasn’t planning to show up at all. Not until-” Mulder stops and groans, his last vestige of hope fading faster than his will to be here.

“Until you were you and jumped to conclusions without supporting evidence? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“The supporting evidence is currently palming my partner’s back,” Mulder grumbles under his breath as dark thoughts invade his brain. “You heard her in your office,” he says loud enough for Skinner to hear this time. “She’d planned to bring a date before I even knew she was coming.”

Skinner side eyes him. “How do you know she wasn’t talking about you?”

Mulder ponders that prospect as the festive music makes his head pound. He and Scully are in an emotional stalemate as of late. Both treading lightly, trying not to hurt each other, and he fears he's doing a shit job of it. It’s been a domino of disasters between Antarctica and his heated hallway confession, being booted from the files, the Diana debacle, and with Kersh breathing down their necks more and more has undoubtedly tugged hard on their tethered partnership. Mulder would be lying if he said he isn’t worried about losing her more than ever.

“Look, Scully and I are friends,” he responds solemnly. “Best friends. And yeah, I… well, you seem to already know,” he admits in defeat. Somehow, Mulder isn’t embarrassed to confess the unplatonic pull toward his partner to Skinner. His endless love for Scully is practically screaming at this point. “But I’m me. And she…”

“You’re too smart to be this stupid,” Skinner mutters, exasperated.

“Hey,” Mulder scoffs. “She has a date who looks to be the exact kind of man her family would love to see sweep her off her feet. Anyway, I don’t ever want to be the reason she can’t have what makes her happy.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mulder,” Skinner leans down close. “Last month Agent Scully put her ass — and mine — on the line without a second thought to rescue yours from the Bermuda Triangle for a reason. And that’s just one of the recent stunts she's pulled that could’ve cost her her job, and her life. The crazy thing is, I don’t think she cares as long as you’re by her side in the end.”

Mulder clears his rapidly thickening throat to speak, but Skinner shoots him his Shut The Hell Up And Listen look.

“And you’re sulking?” Skinner continues, chuckling to himself. “I know you’re angry about your reassignment. Rightfully so, but now is not the time to show it. You’ve gone head to head with Cancer Man, jumped off a bridge and onto a moving train — and whatever other insane things you’ve done behind my back, let alone Kersh’s, so I know you’re brave enough to haul your ass across this room and enjoy yourself.”

Mulder can’t help but smirk. “Now that’s a pep talk.”

Skinner loosens his candy cane striped tie as his eyes search the crowded room.

“I’ve never known two people so irritatingly stubborn in my life. Consider this my gift to you. Go ask Agent Scully to dance, and apologize for… well, everything, and use that mistletoe for God’s sake.” He slaps a heavy hand on Mulder’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “She’s waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass. Don’t blow it.”

Mulder’s mouth hangs open as the A.D. saunters off through the crowd with an unusual pep in his step. If Mulder didn’t know better, he’d think his boss just offered him fatherly advice. He scrubs his hands over his eyes and catches a familiar flash of red hair across the room, feeling a rush of renewed bravery take hold. The big man is right. What the hell is he doing torturing himself instead of seeking out the reason he’s come here?

He wipes the crumbs from his lap and weaves his way through the throng of buzzed and festive Feds. It looks like Kris Kringle threw up Christmas itself here. There are decorations everywhere. As Mulder rounds a corner to follow Scully out into the hallway, an upbeat song blares through the speaker near his ear.

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock

Jingle bells chime in jingle bell time

A group of women in red velvet and green lace bump into him and ask him to dance, tell him how good he looks in a tux, but Mulder doesn’t care. Not when Scully is fifteen feet in front of him, talking awfully close with the man Mulder now recognizes as another new agent in the lab. Her handsome, science nerd date with his hands gently cupping Scully’s arms, smiling sweetly at her as she nods up at him. Mulder freezes. With breath caught in his chest, he watches by the wayside in horror as the man seemingly leans down and presses a lingering kiss to Scully’s upturned lips.

What a bright time, it's the right time

To rock the night away

Mulder’s heart nearly stops.

An explosion of emotion flares in his gut. Frustration, sadness, disappointment… Anger. Anger at himself, at the lucky bastard kissing his one in five billion. He grits his teeth, swallows hard against the molten burn of it all, and turns around before Scully sees the misery on his face.

Mix and a-mingle in the jingling feet

That's the jingle bell

Maybe this is what was supposed to happen tonight: fate telling him he deserves whatever shitty cards he’s dealt. But fuck, he loves her. He loves her fiercely and wants her to be happy. Whether it’s with him, or someone else, it shouldn’t matter as long as she’s living a life she chooses. A life she deserves.

It shouldn’t matter, but goddammit, it does.

So Mulder tamps down tears, and walks away.

That’s the jingle bell

He stalks out of the hall and bursts his way through the double doors, relieved to escape into the snow covered streets. He frantically searches his pockets for his car keys when his fingers get caught on the mistletoe’s hard plastic petals. Instantly, his nose stings and eyes water. He’s not sure if it’s from the pain of his heart shattering or the icy December air. He doubts it matters.

He doubts anything does, anymore.

That’s the jingle bell rooock

#msr fanfic #romance #angst #christmas #multi chap fic

40 notes · View notes

prototypelq · 6 months

Text

Haven't posted MHW screens in a while, so here are some

My little kitty squire, he saves me on a regular basis, thank you little guy for your service

Explorer Grandma is my #2 favourite character in the game where character have No Names Besides Their Profession. Handler's my bff, but I almost love the grandma even more, she is awesome

(I really need to start using the stealth mantle to take screens of monsters in the wild BEFORE I mercilessly cut them down...)

Adore the collectibles in the Elder's Recess! They look gorgeous, sadly the textures get weird when I try to take a picture of them.

Speaking of textures, I was happy to delete 47 gbs of highest textures, cause apparently I do not use them anyway and they just east my memory space))) Why isn't this An Option In Every Game And I have To Manually Dig Through Files With Fear Of Breaking The Game Tailing Behind Me. I have only been a pc-gamer for less than half a year, and I already hate the memory space problems. Make the highest-res texture packs optional downloads.

Some Nergigante being a total bastard shots. The first one - he flew to the arena above the one we previously fought on, and the moment I climbed onto it, he did a diving attack, which landed him right back at the lower arena. I had to jump down after him, only for the bastard to Fly Up Again. And then we got right into the beginning of this situation, because he did the dive attack and fell down AGAIN. I swear. This absolute bastard. Also, I'm pretty sure that death pose is a meme?

Finished him off with utter disrespect through firing at him with the slinger. Took me three tries. At least, the high rank armor/weapon grind is finally accesibble now.

Listen. Listen. I know this is high rank, I do, But This Is A Few Ranks Too High???

I went for a 'quick odogaron grind' hunt. While I was chasing the doggo, who ran to the highest level of the valley, where I followed him, where apparently bazel followed Me, and we all crashed into a poor radobaan who didn't deserve any of this. Bazel was a freakin menace, he kept tailing me, while I was tailing odogaron, simply thinking he'd go away. Apparently not, cause after I managed to cut down the poor doggo, bazel finished me off, And Odogaron Respawned. So i got no materials out of my 'quick doggo grind'. I was angry enough to try to take on the pinecone plane himself, but I only managed to cut his tail off and drive him away, after which I went to hunt the respawned odogaron, Again. I wanted to chase the pinecone afterwards, but he fleed like a coward. Anyway, this was an interesting hunt for sure, and I now have an unfurfilled grudge against bazel, which I will try to remedy for sure. He is really cool tho, I cannot lie, and I think his battle theme is metal? Anyway, pinecone boy is annoying but cool, I like him.

#gotta get that odogaron armor and then legiana grind is next #can't say i like legiana too much but the mobility and defence skills on her armor pieces are very very useful for me #no idea if nergi spawns outside story missions but i want revenge against him too plus his armor is cool #this game is a trap for bloodthirsty barbie fans and apparently i am one #like you hunt animals for sport and materials for your fashion #nothing can rival the wiggler head tho #really need to start taking more organic monster pics in the wild the photomode in here is quite decent #mhw #mh world #monster hunter world

7 notes · View notes

francesthetraveller · 3 months

Text

Watch me go ham about the art book!!! (in a positive manner)

Lately from January to this month I've gotten REALLY into B.O.O. due to a false rumour going around that resulted in me drawing my first OC for it and I spent the eventual first half of my year trying my best to research EVERYTHING I could about the movie, even if some of them were scarce at best or non-existent at worst. But in April of this year, an early copy of the art book itself got leaked online, and I was so ECSTATIC about it that I spent almost an entire school day trying to look through the art and read through the script of it inorder to peice together what the movie was completely about. I was originally going to save it earlier, however they took it off of The Wayback Machine, and I was only able to screenshot a few images before doing so. HOWEVER!! They did infact also save it onto a Mega file, and so I spent an entire friday afternoon downloading both the art book and the guide-book/pitch bible onto my computer incase I would need it for either my art, writing or for research (I am,,, normal,,, about this movie,,,) It's not actually that hard to find it's both on The Lost Media page for it and also for The Cancelled Movie wiki page. Although you do have to download them first because they're both zip-files. Regardless of the fact, I'm going to dwelve into parts of the art book that particularly caught my interest (I plan to do the guide-book for another post). This might take me more than one post to do but I'll try my best.

The Art Book Itself

Since it is pretty much an unfinished version of what would've been the final product (the date underneath each pages say that this was worked on around September 30th of 2014), text from every page had the HTTYD2 art book text added in as a temporary placeholder. The actual text itself is within another file that you have to open separately.

It's also important to note that some of the images haven't been completely added in yet as of the time this early draft was created, so it is mainly left to interpretation on what was originally going to be added there.

The Worldbuilding

Ever since clips of the movie surfaced around, some people were speculating on where the movie itself was going to take place (aside from the cosmic realm). And We've actually got an answer for that right here! The town where most of the hauntings happen is called Gateway, which is somewhere around Illinois.

I very much love the whole vibe of the town, as it looks almost like an early, dreamworkish version of the New York City shown in Soul (oh no,, the afterlife hyperfixations clash !!).

The mixture between the different architecture from both the past and the current era really shows how much this town changed overtime and emphasizes a reason to feel close towards it. It also gives more meaning towards its name (while also tying into the whole ghost plot)

The Character Designs (For the humans, that is)

Although not that visible within the rendered animated models, it was actually intended that humans and ghosts would have followed the teardrop theory way of character design, with humans being wider from below while ghosts were more wider from above to showcase how ghosts are more lighter since their forms aren't actually corporeal.

(I actually followed this when doing the second designs for my OCs!)

#b.o.o.: bureau of otherworldly operations #bureau of otherworldly operations #b.o.o.#b.o.o #art book #artbook #illustration #art book analysis #deep dive #hyperfixation #niche fandom #cancelled movies

4 notes · View notes

aita-blorbos · 5 months

Note

(OC, 👽 so I can find it later)

AITA for leaving my best friend behind?

>TWs: child death and endangerment, abuse, kidnapping<

Sorry this is very long but there's a lot that I need to explain.

So 6 years ago a war started between humanity and this really fascist alien dictator who wanted to exterminate us. They started capturing children to experiment on them to find weaknesses to put them at an advantage in battle.

I (11F at the time) was captured at the beginning of the war when I was about 7. The years spent there were absolute hell and left me with permanent damage (both physical and mental).

After about half a year of being imprisoned I befriended one of the other kids there who I'll call H (11, almost 12,F at the time). She and I slowly became close over the 4 years we were trapped to be point we've become practically inseparable.

So about 2 years ago we were sitting and talking in the "free time" area when we started to hear gun shots and the sound of a door being knocked down.

We ran through random corridors and managed to find the security office where, on the cameras, we could see a large group of alien rebels had broken in in an attempt to neutralise our captors and save all the children. The captors, however, seeing how difficult it would be to overcome this, started trying to kill the kids instead.

As H was watching the cameras, she noticed that a few of the captors had started searching around the ship. They were looking for us.

When we were first running to the room had noticed a large vent on the floor that looked to be loose, so I suggested we go hide in it.

Right before we left the room, H had turned to me and made me promise that if anything bad happened, that I must leave her behind and save myself. I really didn't want to do that, but she was insistent.

The cover of the vent made an incredibly loud noise as we moved it, and the alien captors began running towards us. Right as we managed to get into the vent one of the captors ran by us and straight into the security room.

The vent was cramped and we had to go single file when crawling through it. H was a much faster runner than me, and had to drag me along with her when running to the room, however I was much better at crawling than her. Not wanting to leave her behind, I let her hold onto my ankle so that we wouldn't lose each other in the darkness.

Once we had managed to turn a corner, the alien who had ran into the security room had had enough time to check the footage of the camera above the security room's door, which showed us climbing into the vent. By the time it had gotten to the vent and called to the others saying we were in there, we hadn't gotten far at all.

The alien that had started climbing through the vent was one that we knew to be incredibly violent, so, as there was no way we'd be able to escape at our current pace, H had let go of me and insisted I go on on my own. H tried to reason that, if she stayed behind, the alien would be so busy attacking her that I would have enough time to escape.

I tried desperately to refuse, but H reminded me of the promise we made earlier and told me that I couldn't break it. I could only give her one last look before she shuffled backwards to the corner and told me to book it.

As I had managed to turn a few more corners, I could hear the alien find her. I never saw what happened to H, but I think it's safe to say she's probably not alive anymore.

After a while longer of crawling, I managed to find an exit where a few members of the rebel group were. They managed to get me and some other children out of the ship (after having to shoot a few of the aggressors that just wouldn't give up, man) and I've been staying on their own ship ever since.

That day has haunted me ever since, and I think it's my fault that she's not with me anymore, even though she insisted that that be the case.

So, AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality #child abuse #human experimentation #child death #kidnapping

4 notes · View notes

tracybirds · 1 year

Text

ack, I was determined to get this finished up tonight before sleeping even though I already missed the genderqueer and genderfluid day for @thunder-pride but no matter! I'm not doing a readthrough bc oof i need to be asleep so any typos I missed I will fix up tomorrow morning <;33

Brains is making some upgrades to the iR suits, both for trans Gordon but also a little bit for himself....I hope you enjoy <333

---

“Hey, Brains?”

“Y-yes, Gordon?”

The reply was automatic, Brains only half listening as he frowned and bent down over his workbench. Pieces of fabric and electronic parts were scattered in all directions, but his careful hands never hesitated as he worked on the newest upgrades to their suits.

“Do you think you could upgrade the hydrophonics system on Four?”

Brains looked up and blinked. If there was one constant across his career as an engineer, it was that interruptions always came at the moments that required the most delicacy.

They never seemed to occur during the more tedious moments of maintenance, or when he was merely adding final details that added nothing to the function. Always, always it was in a moment of inspiration, of innovation, of climatic concentration.

And if there was one constant across his time with the Tracy family, it was that the unexpected requests almost always were worth listening to.

He carefully lay the soldering iron aside and switched off the power.

“Why? Is it for someone’s research project, because I’ve told you before I’m not comfortable releasing data that could make the true scope of Thunderbird Four public.”

“No, no not that,” said Gordon, but his expression grew sheepish within seconds. “Okay, so maybe I haven’t thought about it fully yet, I just had the idea and I dunno, there’s just something inside me saying we’re gonna need it soon.”

Brains sighed. “Your squid sense?”

“Squid sense,” confirmed Gordon, hoisting himself up onto the bench in the little kitchenette opposite Brains. “Sound travels in water and greater sensitivity to the hydrophones, along with improved analysis systems, could help us pinpoint compromised structures much faster.”

“We’d need to develop a wider network to ensure we could triangulate the position,” murmured Brains, pulling up a holoscreen and beginning to type furiously. “Higher sensitivity means nothing if we can’t pinpoint the origin of anything we hear and the satellite array can’t penetrate deep enough. John, can you send me data for the current GDF ocean monitoring stations?”

“On it,” said John’s voice immediately. The family were well used to Brains’ sudden leaps in intuition and habit of requesting seemingly unrelated information without any preamble. “How high in classification do you need?”

“High enough to cover the oceans with a max radius around each station of 3000km.” Gordon’s face fell and Brains shook his head in response. “I’m not risking higher, International Rescue is already on shaky territory. Janus isn’t the only GDF operative who wants control over us and we mustn’t give them a reason to seize control.”

“You sound like Scott,” said Gordon, still pouting.

Brains hid a smile, torn between embarrassment and satisfaction.

“Done,” interrupted John, saving Brains from having to reply. “Anything else?”

“No, thank you John,” said Brains, nodding at him and running through the list. “Future project, I’ll let you know when it develops further. I suspect we’ll need a program.”

“Well, you have my number,” said John with a faint smile. “Gordon, you should rest while you can; there’s a storm system starting to intensify in the Northwest Pacific and we’ll need to be standing by if it makes landfall.”

“Sure thing, John,” said Gordon. “I’ve been practicing sleeping with my eyes open, getting real good at it now.”

Brains filed the proposal away, linking the compiled data and saving it into the folder containing all the suggested improvements that had been mentioned over the years. The folder for Thunderbird Four was at least twelve times bigger than the others, containing everything from more manoeuvrable propellers – “Brains, I’m sick of three-point-turning my way out of tight spots” – to the more impractical vacuum floor – “like the opposite of an air hockey table, it’ll be fantastic for cleaning up!” – and lots more besides. Gordon never seemed to mind that the vast majority of his ideas never came to fruition.

“What’re you working on now?” asked Gordon, peering down at the gear. “Increased frost tolerance? Electric self defence? Automatic Hood Destructor-nator?”

“Nothing so violent, I can assure you,” said Brains. “Sit down and do your ‘eyes open’ sleep while I finish this, then I’ll show you.”

“Right-o,” said Gordon with a smart salute and ridiculous grin. “Wake me up when you’re ready.”

Gordon didn’t sleep, but he didn’t talk either and left Brains to his work, fiddling with his holo-device and playing some sort of farming simulator. The hours ticked by and the circuitry inched closer to completion was every passing minute.

Finally, Brains lifted the suit, passing his hand carefully over the new display he’d added to the right breast.

Gordon seemed to know instinctively that he was done, or he’d been paying more attention than Brains had realised, because he jumped up at once.

“Oh cool!” he enthused, clapping Brains on the back. “What’s it for? You gave John lasers, do we all get that upgrade now?”

“No, this is something quite different,” said Brains quietly.

Gordon sobered immediately, taking in Brains’ serious look.

“Tell me more,” he said in the same gentle tone he used with the children he rescued.

Brains reached down to the wrist controls, and swiped to the new display containing personal information.

“I thought you might like to be able to make your pronouns more accessible. They’ll auto-translate according to region and languages heard by the radio receiver.”

He looked up, to see Gordon’s mouth moving without speaking, and flushed. “I’m sorry Gordon, I realise I may have overstepped. I’m sure you have more important things to worry about in the field, I just… know…”

Here Brains trailed off, his words somehow stuck in his throat.

“You just know what?” asked Gordon, his voice huskier than normal and to Brains’ horror he found his friend was fighting back tears.

“Oh my, I didn’t mean… that is I just thought that…” Flustered, Brains froze, halfway between stammering an apology and wishing very hard that the floor would open up and allow the earth to swallow him. He’d never wanted to put Gordon in such a position, and still he seemed lost for words.

Before he could make his excuses however, Gordon wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in tight for a hug. Brains squeaked, trying to escape and collect himself, but he soon realised that Gordon needed the contact and that the strange hiccupping noises were actually sobs.

“I’m sorry,” he said regretfully, wishing he’d never decided to make the addition a surprise, wishing he’d conducted his usual thorough process of consultation.

“Gordon laughed – a wet, warm chuckle against Brains’ neck – and pulled away. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “Happy tears, I promise. You’re right, getting misgendered mid mission’s not exactly forefront of my worries, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. I hadn’t realised how much until you gave me a way to communicate it, that’s all.”

Brains smiled, still feeling awkward. He’d gotten used to Gordon’s wildly swinging emotions over the years, but he still found their intensity unsettling and he breathed deep and slow as he straightened his shirt.

“Yes, well, I’m glad to do it.”

“Really, Brains,” said Gordon earnestly. “Thank you. You always seem to know which problems need solving before we even realise there’s an issue. This means a lot.”

Now was his moment, Brains knew. He had a perfect opening, with the one person who would understand better than anyone, so why was his knees knocking together in sudden fear?

“I-I…” he began, then swallowed past the sudden ache in his throat. “I s-suppose, that is…”

Gordon grabbed his elbow and steered him towards the sofa.

“No rush,” he said. “But sit down, you look like you might throw up.”

Brains breathed in deep, running through steady counts again as he inhaled and exhaled.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about pronouns,” he finally said, his voice more a squeak than the steady calm he’d practiced in the mirror. “And how maybe… I mean…”

He wanted to say it so badly but the words wouldn’t form.

“Did you want us to use different pronouns for you?” asked Gordon, eyes wide. “We can do that, I mean no sweat, everyone did for me and I must have changed them a thousand times before I felt I knew myself well enough and even then sometimes ‘he’ doesn’t fit right, and you’ve all been really good about it, so I get it and you don’t have to worry and–”

“Gordon,” interrupted Brains. “P-please, let me speak.”

Gordon feel silent at once, his ears flushing red with embarrassment.

“I don’t know how to describe how I feel right now,” said Brains, looking at his hands. “Gender feels so far away here. Every day that passes, I feel more and more like myself and less and less like the son my family expected.”

“You don’t have to know,” said Gordon. “You can take your time, try things out. Maybe you’ll find you like being a guy best and that’ll be okay too. Nothing wrong with exploring a little.”

Brains nodded quickly.

“Yes, exactly,” he said. “I want to find out for myself, that’s what I mean.”

“Cool,” said Gordon with a lopsided grin. “I mean that’s so cool, Brains. Anything spring to mind?”

Here, he hesitated again, thinking carefully. He’d never been one to leap forward blindfolded, had always taken the path most carefully considered, but here all roads seemed to diverge into equal uncertainty.

He had Gordon though, who’d walked this road before, Gordon and the rest of his family, all cheering for Brains as he took the first step and the next and the next.

“I think I want to try agender,” he said. “Not worry about it, go with the flow. Try using they/them perhaps?”

“Go with the flow,” repeated Gordon , drawing out the vowel as he danced in his seat. “I like it.”

“Yeah,” said Brains, trying on their new perspective for the first time. “It is very new for me, isn’t it?”

Their facial expression changed at once.

“Oh help, I’m not a go with the flow person, what am I doing?”

“Relax,” said Gordon, cuffing their shoulder. “You don’t have to change yourself to use new pronouns. Nothing wrong with reflecting or being steady. It’s about finding who you are in the midst of the eddies, right?”

Brains exhaled and nodded.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve got this.”

#gordon tracy #brains #hiram hackenbacker #thunderbirds are go #thunderpride #sometimes i fic #featuring my fave headcanon of the fam just casually hang out with brains in his workshop just bc #and he loves them all so much #brains is part of the family and i cry T.T #like the tracys themselves aren't found family but they also def are for brains T.T #they found him and he found them and i just love <3333 #okay i'll stop being sappy and go to bed lol #goodnight <3 #edit: actually you know what i've forgotten to do: put in brains' stutter bc it's ussually my last step #so i can maintain some consistency with his voice #darn brains' stammer is important to meeee for reasonsss #i will have to edit tomorrow #to ot of it now #pretend for me please and thank you <3

15 notes · View notes

beesandwasps · 5 months

Text

A Confession of Digital Mess

I’m looking for citations to back up a post I made, and I am having just a bit of a problem. This is kind of boring, but since @deepfriedinfant deserves some kind of update, here it is (hidden because it’s long).

Google is rather notoriously starting to get bad at finding things. And the thing I’m looking for is something which… well, unless I already had the specific details which I’m looking for, there are way too many things out there which basically share all the possible search terms.

That’s not the problem; that’s a thing that everyone online encounters these days. If that were all, we’d be done; it would just be a matter of me either admitting defeat or doing a search and examining every single one of hundreds of results.

The problem is searching my own stuff.

I keep files. When I see an image I may want later, I drag it to the desktop. (For those using other OSes/browsers which don’t behave the same way as the Mac: this saves the file to your account’s Desktop folder.) When I see text I like, if it’s just part of a page I select it and drag the selection to the desktop. (A feature Apple created years ago and kind of seems not to like any more — this creates a .textClipping file containing the text in rich text format, unfortunately using an archaic storage mechanism that is otherwise almost completely abandoned for the last 2 decades.) If it’s an entire document, I save the document to the desktop.

Every so often, I go through the huge mass of files on my desktop (right at this moment: 516 items — I’m overdue), get rid of anything which has outlived its usefulness, and throw all the remains into a folder named “To Be Filed”.

Which is all well and good, but:

I very seldom go into the “To Be Filed” folder and actually file things. It contains many, many thousands of items, some of them dating back to the GWB administration. (And many of them now completely lacking context — I’m now, IIRC, two computers on from what I was using back then, and when you copy files from one computer to another, the modification date is changed and some of the filesystem metadata is lost.) And I actually have an even older “To Be Filed” folder which I thought I had lost, causing me to create the current one, which also contains vast numbers of files.

Many years ago, I did do a bunch of filing, at least in the sense of separating text and images out a bit. I have a folder named “Random Text” which really ought to have subfolders already and will absolutely need them if I ever get around to adding more stuff to it, and an “Images” folder containing subfolders with the names of topics and/or sources. So not everything that I might want to search is even in the “To Be Filed” folder(s), some of it is elsewhere.

Much to my delight, a while back Apple added OCR software to the Mac OS. This is very useful, and the last time I used OCR software, which was at least a decade and a half ago, it was ludicrously bad, so the accuracy they have in their freebie version surprises me. But this does mean that any image sitting around which has identifiable text in it is indexed for searching, so now I get huge numbers of results for practically everything by default. (And while you can restrict search results by type, you can’t do a negative restriction — you can’t search for “not images”, and there are multiple types of files which contain text so you can’t do a single search for all text types.)

I have periodically downloaded big collections of things. I have complete runs of comics. I have that archive of game walkthroughs that somebody compiled from GameFAQs a while back. All kinds of stuff. Now that Apple indexes images, all of it can pop up in search results — and none of it is typically what I want. (Okay, yes, every once in a while I end up looking for a walkthrough of an old game or a specific comic strip. But that’s genuinely a rare thing.)

Just to make things even better, it turns out that Apple’s text indexing system does not index .textClipping files. This is something which has been true all along — Google shows that people were complaining about this all the way back in 2008 — but recently it has begun to dawn on me that, given the number of clipping files I have around, many of which are exactly the kind of thing I might want to use as a citation, this is very specifically my problem. These have to be searched manually every time I want to find something, unless I can remember the location of the file and the name (which is automatically created from the first few words of the text). Ouch.

So right now I am taking some steps to ameliorate the problem while I keep looking. First, I’m looking for things which are giving me large numbers of results I don’t want, like the aforementioned GameFAQs archive, and changing them from folders into compressed read-only disk image files, the contents of which are not part of the general search index. (If space was an issue, it would be better to use compressed archives files like 7Zip, which get somewhat better compression levels, but that obviously isn’t a problem if I’m already holding on to the uncompressed files — and a disk image file can be mounted, searched, and used directly without any hassle if I do want to find something in that specific collection, whereas archives can be problematic no matter how much effort is put into making them act like they’re just a special type of folder.) I’m also looking into some kind of scheme to convert all my .textClipping files into an indexable format, but this turns out to be a more convoluted operation than you would assume.

This may take a while. It will speed me up in future searches, but it may take a while.

2 notes · View notes

chellyfishing · 9 months

Text

i’m trying to finish one last book before my year-end book post goes up so i’m gonna talk about games and tv first. not too many of either to talk about this year tbh but i apparently still have so many words.

no movies post bc i don’t log my films anywhere and i simply cannot remember what i watched. maybe i should make 2024 the year of using letterboxed. not enough to talk about with new music either. 2024 can also be the year of getting back into music.

games: i actually haven’t played much ffxiv this year. well in the first half i sorta did but i have barely touched it since like. august. except to keep my houses from getting demolished. i did finally finish myths of the realm last week, since they wrote that entire storyline for me specifically. i need the minion so bad yoship help.

in march capcom gave me a birthday prezzie with the release of the resident evil 4 remake which i’d had preordered since last year (the only games i’ll preorder and pay full price for are resis and ffxiv expansions). i don’t need to explain this to you. it’s incredibly good, the best of the extremely good remakes so far i think. i haven’t played the dlc yet but i’m excited to think there is more of this game i still have to play. btw ashley defense squad. i’ll brook no ashley slander in my house.

i can’t remember exactly when but i think it was some time in the summer that i finally, finally finished breath of the wild! i’m so behind the curve on this one, but i did at least get to start tears of the kingdom in the same year as everyone else. umm, i have to admit i remain ambivalent to this approach to zelda. i have to challenge myself to figure out how much of that is because iT’s DiFfErEnT but genuinely i think the things i dislike about it, i would still dislike even if i had nothing to compare it against. i really wish i thought it was the best zelda ever like so many do but i guess i just struggle to find a flow state with either of them which is why it’s taking me so fucking long to finish them lmao. still obviously extremely good and beautiful! like still head and shoulders above most games, easily, a good time overall!! (wish nintendo wasn’t the way that it is.)

i should mention that one day in july i fucked around in catlateral damage while streaming for bella. this is a very basic game, literally you are just a cat’s paw knocking things over, but man when you just need a brain-free giggle? it did its job.

also in july i played the sequel to oxenfree, which is a game that i love. this game didn’t click with me quite as much, i haven’t revisited it since i finished it, but there are probably also other reasons i shan’t get into that aren’t the game’s fault. idk i feel a bit unqualified to give a final verdict without playing it to completion but i guess the fact that i’ve had it for months and not bothered to do that yet is a kind of verdict in itself since with oxenfree i went straight back in till i got that final ending and platinum trophy.

for basically all of autumn i of course played baldur’s gate 3. i’m very sad that my extreme anhedonia has hit before i could play the new epilogue. i tried to load up one of my finished games but i ran into a problem because the only way to back up your saves is in the cloud so you can’t shuffle files around or make copies, only overwrite, and don’t get me STARTED again or i’ll start spitting i’m so SICK of PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT AAAAAHH. anyway it’s a pretty good game. i won’t be surprised or mad if neil wins the bafta but it really really should be samantha please if there’s justice in this world.

tv: season 3 of only murders in the building. umm, idk. it’s not a revolutionary show but it’s comforting, it doesn’t feel stale yet, and there’s just a lot of talent at work here. just fun to watch.

i watched almost all of neon genesis evangelion but couldn’t finish it because i decided to have an (unrelated) emotional breakdown instead. i’ll finish it eventually if for no other reason than i owe it to phil. shinji is baby.

finally got to the first season of our flag means death. just a delight. i love fun pirate adventures and i love the queers. unfortunately watched it right before the second season released and haven’t gotten to that yet.

did watch the second season of good omens though. i think they made the right choice to scale it back because honestly once you’ve averted the apocalypse trying to outdo yourself becomes a fool’s errand. also, jon hamm’s butt what who said that.

that’s it i think. as i said no season 2 of ofmd, not even the new flanagan yet which i had really been looking forward to for a long time. i dunno ya girl is struggling to find any pleasure in life atm.

#thought this post was gonna be short #but then remembered like two more games #and i watched way more tv than i thought #wish i could tell you about the movies but i really cannot. remember.

3 notes · View notes

lightphieric · 2 years

Text

Over the past two and a half years, I have amassed a huge backlog of games and extensively catalogued the ones I’ve played. It started out as a way to keep myself sane during the pandemic, but since then it’s basically just become the way I play video games. I’ve recently reached the huge milestone of 200 games played using this system, and to commemorate, I thought a list of “Each Zero Escape character as one of those 200 games” would be fun! Let’s go!

(FYI, I kept a tier list and for this post, I’ve only drawn from games I’ve ranked B, A, or S. So yes, these are all recommendations! I played some of them via itch.io, but all of them are available on Steam)

Ace: Contradiction

An FMV detective game with elegantly simple mechanics: you do exactly what the title says and it’s very satisfying. Special mention goes to the pair of shady businessmen you encounter who totally don’t brainwash, kill, or kidnap people wink wink.

Snake: Dicey Dungeons

This is almost entirely based on Light’s codename meaning “snake eyes,” but it was between this and that game you play by blinking so this seemed like the more appropriate choice. A cute and cheeky roguelike deckbuilder played by rolling and assigning dice. The fact that its gameplay is built around basic arithmetic gives me 999 vibes in general!

Santa: Tell Me Why

A choice-consequence adventure game from the makers of the first two Life Is Strange games (LIS2 my beloved, don’t @ me). Two siblings who can communicate telepathically revisit their childhood home and the events leading up to their mother’s death. One of the siblings is a trans man so if you are as Correct about Aoi as I am you know where I’m coming from.

Clover: Chicory: A Colorful Tale

The game where the world is a blank coloring book and you get to fill in the lines. Tells a lovely and relatable story about art, burnout, impostor syndrome and mentorship, although the main reason I’m assigning this to Clover is because it’s just plain adorable. The relationship between Pizza and Chicory also reminds me of her and Alice.

Junpei: Lamplight City

Perhaps aligned more with ZTD Junpei than any other iteration, this is a steampunk point-and-click about a disgraced detective who is haunted by his late partner and can’t rest until he’s avenged his death. The best part of this game is the protagonist’s awesome wife, who, unlike Akane, will actually help you with puzzles sometimes.

Akane: Elsinore

You play as Ophelia. You are stuck in a time loop and must find a way to save yourself and manufacture a happier ending to the tragedy of Hamlet. This is basically tied with Celeste for the title of my favorite video game of all time, and I was delighted to find parallels between it and Akane’s story.

Seven: The Darkside Detective

I love detective games so I had a wealth to choose from when it came to the cop character. I ended up going with this game, a standard point-and-click that is a detective game in name and theming only but is still a lot of fun. A pastiche of Twin Peaks and X-Files with some of the funniest writing I’ve ever seen in a video game, it captures Seven’s zaniness and willingness to believe in the supernatural.

Lotus: Beglitched

A glitzy and girly game full of computer lingo and in-jokes that go over my head. Thankfully you don’t actually need to know a lick of code to enjoy it because the hacking minigames all take the form of really unique and strategic battles.

Kubota: Underhero

An RPG with one of the most wonderfully convoluted premises ever. Put simply, you’re a villain’s henchman who must play double agent when you’re magically chosen to be the next great hero. Kubota certainly doesn’t fit the “secret hero” angle, but a whole game about an underling seemed appropriate.

Sigma: Milkmaid of the Milky Way

A point-and-click (can you tell I love those?) in which a dairy farmer’s favorite cow is abducted by aliens and she must sneak onto the spacecraft to rescue it. Now, that absolutely delightful premise could work with just about any VLR character; I don’t want to spoil the game, but something else does happen that rings very close to Sigma’s story specifically.

Phi: Downwell

I really expected Phi to get a platformer, with all her soaring and kicking! Downwell is kind of a platformer, I guess, although really it’s more of a free-fall simulator and most of the things you land on die. You can either shoot enemies with your “gunboots” or step on them to kill them - killing things with your feet, very Phi.

Alice: Paradise Killer

A quirky open-world detective game where everyone is impractically hot. I’ve truly never felt more like a detective than I did while playing this game, but you can’t talk about it without talking about the style. The world is bizarre, the music is all vaporwave, and again. You, the investigator, are improbably sexy, and so is every suspect you interview.

Dio: Cult of the Lamb

The cute and cozy roguelike where you start your own cult and smite nonbelievers. I feel like I don’t really need to describe this one further, y’all know it already.

Luna: Cloud Gardens

An art/puzzle game about helping plants reclaim an abandoned, decaying urban environment. Has both a story mode which I completed, and a sandbox mode I didn’t try in which you can just grow gardens to your heart’s content.

Quark: Carto

A really cute puzzle game where you manipulate the very ground you stand on using a map. The story is about a little girl trying to find her grandmother, so it’s very Quark in both aesthetic and story.

Kyle: Hades

The mythological roguelike about hating your dad a whole lot. I don’t feel like I need to explain this one further, either, as everyone has talked about it at length including me on this very blog, but I’ll have you know that I’ve played it for hundreds of hours and it’s solidly my third favorite video game of all time.

Carlos: The Rewinder

This is the most recent game I’ve played; I haven’t finished it yet and I can’t even say for sure that it will be top-tier in the rankings, but I’m really liking it so far and since I wanted a puzzle game about time manipulation for Carlos it was between this and Braid. And as far as I know, The Rewinder doesn’t have a creator with the absolutely rancid vibes of Jonathan Blow.

Sean: 2064: Read Only Memories

A visual novel where you solve a mystery in a cyberpunk world with the help of the world’s first fully sentient AI. The AI is a precious baby baby baby; if you love Sean, you will love Turing.

Delta: Evergate

A gorgeous puzzle platformer about the afterlife and a fraught sibling relationship that transcends time. I loved this game so much that I 100-percented all the collectibles and time trials, which is something I never do. Made me want to call my brother.

Eric: Boyfriend Dungeon

Of course, my much maligned fave gets paired with a game that also gets a lot of undue hate but nonetheless has my entire heart. It’s a dating sim for all of the thirsty simps out there that’s also a roguelike about literally attacking your inner demons and fears with crazy impractical weapons. This choice has nothing to do with a certain Boyfriend Dungeon character who gives all Erics a bad name.

Mira: Carrion

Going through all these games I was surprised that this was the only real “play as the villain” power fantasy on the list. You might have heard of this one described as a reverse horror movie; you play as a biological weapon, or an alien, or something, that has escaped containment and it’s just about eating scientists and soldiers in an explosion of pixelly gore.

Diana: There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

I won’t be all coy like every other reviewer: this is a video game, a point-and-click about a sentient computer program who really does not want you to use it. It’s really funny and full of meta-references, but the reason I chose it for Diana is because this game is actually a tragic love story not unlike SigDi. I’m not joking about that.

And there you have it, twenty-two great games, one for each Zero Escape character. This is just a silly post but, sincerely, check some of them out if they sound interesting to you!

#zero escape #zero escape 999 #virtue's last reward #zero time dilemma #999 spoilers #vlr spoilers #ztd spoilers #video game recommendations #not gonna tag every game and every character that would be insane

38 notes · View notes

revilleaj · 8 months

Text

Art update & 3D Robodi model images

It has been quite a while since I've last really done anything online. I've been heavily burned out and tired constantly since at least December or so (I have done drawings in months prior, but I have never posted them publically). I still do not have a new computer, even though I have enough money (about £1k) to buy the parts or even an entire computer, but there are other factors in life that need more attention being put towards right now.

I'm still in the midst of trying to get a job (damn required experience and driving license listings!), and drawing right now is bottom priority. It feels like a chore and it's not fun when I have rusted from not drawing in so long (making so many mistakes really sets off my anger problems). I really do not like being pressured into trying to do things, and I have been experimenting with 3D, but only to an extent.

So, with that said, I am going to put making newer drawings on hold for an indefinite amount of time until I feel motivated enough to draw. I'm not done with art entirely and I never will be, but I think I really shouldn't pressure myself as if art is some kind of requirement in life. I've been also having drawing tablet issues, and I noticed there's a small crack in my Huion that I haven't been able to use almost ever since I had it (thankfully the thing still works, and the crack is near the top, only half getting on the drawing area).

I may also finally add some images to my empty DeviantArt account. As much as I do not like that website nor its community, I think it would work if I just put my favorite drawings I've worked on there, specifically ones up until the end of 2023. All of the really old and weaker art (mostly from 2018 and 2020, and anything from 2017) I won't be reposting, as they no longer reflect me, and have not done so for a very long time.

-----

Now, for the second topic of this post, and in a much better light; the 3D Robodi model. I'm sure I've talked about this years ago on Twitter. Back in 2020, when I was still in my first year of university, I worked on a 3D model of one of my characters named Robodi, using Cinema 4D. It was never finished, but I did learn quite a bit when working on it. Here's some newer screenshots of him, now that I've managed to pick back up an older version of C4D (I do not like the 2022 UI layout change):

This is the last version of the model to not be animated, from May 2020. The image is rendered using the Sketch & Toon shader with the Standard renderer. A few options were altered to remove unnecessary outlines.

The model in the renderer itself; right is the objects list, bottom are the materials (vertex colors and textures, some with C4D specific features).

The last ever version of this specific model from September 2021, with the FOV heavily reduced to improve the depth. A single black thin cube was added between the eyes to create a fake extra outline. A bit of a hacky effect; I did not know how to do inverted normals, in fact I don't think I knew that was how most computer games handled outlines.

The very first saved version of the model, in Cinema 4D's editor, made earlier in May 2020. The pieces have default names and are not parented, some materials are not added yet, and the shapes are noticeably bigger, especially the base of the head and the torso.

I once experimented with "realistic" materials and shading (including the dreadfully slow Global Illumination), which doesn't make the most sense for a cartoon character. Here you can see the unit plate on the back of his head, which I don't think I have ever shown before. The camera may look close here, but it's actually extremely far away with a very low FOV (dubbed Super-Telescope). Some textures are no longer in the project files, so this looks slightly off from how it did back in 2020.

In October 2021, I went back to the older May 2020 model and decided to try and remake it. I realized that using one mesh and extruding it works a lot better with the Sketch & Toon shader, as it does not create unnecessary outlines when the default shader options are left the way they are. The lines in the middle of the eyes and nose are from the shader, rather than a black material cube. Of course, it would be more wise to just duplicate each mesh, enlarge them and invert the normals while applying a pitch black texture to them. I abandoned the model shortly after the progress I made here, and I am not sure why. Maybe I was burned out and lost interest.

I should probably try to attempt making a 3D model of him again and some others, now that I know a lot more than I did nearly 4 years ago (yeah, can you believe it has also been nearly 6 years since my Reville character was created? Robodi was first created in mid-2019; almost 5 years ago! Good things take time and care). It will be a difficult task, but I'll make sure to export whatever I make to a .FBX model, so that it doesn't get lost to C4D licensing Hell. Hopefully, that would make the models work in Blender and such (the materials will have to be baked into textures however, instead of being separate C4D ones. At least .FBX doesn't use an external material file unlike .OBJ, which I and others have had issues with). Maybe I could use them for rotoscoping or somethin'.

Here's hoping to me eventually finding motivation, losing my tiredness, and getting a job with stable income alongside continuing to work on my passion projects, no matter how much time has past since the day I first thought of them. I want to keep doing things, not resting in bed most of my days. Too bad winter is freezing cold where I live, and I suffer from mild hypothermia...

#3d model #software #update #indie artist

2 notes · View notes

baddieladdie · 2 years

Text

Date with Nick Valentine ❤️

Interested? Read below, mi amore~

Valentine’s Detective Agency, Diamond City

“A date?” Nora’s lashes fluttered in surprise, color building in her cheeks.

Suppose it has been awhile for her. Valentine thought to himself, hanging the worn-thin trench coat on its hook. She loses her deadbeat husband, discovers what little remains of society…Not exactly a romantic setting, but they somehow made it work.

Dates are a dying tradition from another time. But not dead yet - not as long as he held the memories from the original Nick Valentine. He knew the world before the bombs and they could talk forever about modern conveniences they missed. Fresh drinking water from the tap, an abundance of food, and the luxury of comfort.

Like Nora, Nick had lost his better half. But they never made it to the chapel for their Wedding day. Jenny had spent months planning it all with his Mom. She loved brilliant pink and white roses. Wanted the red velvet wedding cake to be covered in them.

Nick smiled at his shoes, temporarily lost in the memory.

“Nick?” A warm tickle on the exposed metal flesh of his forearm brought him back, glancing down on the worried look on Nora’s face.

“Sorry, lost in another one of Nick's memories.” He admired the love in her eyes, her fingers delicately loosening his tie.

He smiled tenderly back at her, stroking her warm, rosy cheeks and continued. “We've been out traveling together and…well,” Nick cleared his throat awkwardly. His hand fell from her face, and wrapped around the nape of his neck. “I've already had my way with you…multiple times.” Nora bashfully smiled, looking away to hide her blushing face. “Figured a romantic evening was in the cards, it's the least a beautiful dame such as yourself deserves. Whatdja say? Let this old synth take you out for a night on the town?”

“Like you even have to ask, of course nick.” Nora teased.

“Heh, a charmer as always. I'll come by Home plate at 6.”

Later on

Nick tightened his thin black tie, pushing the knot against his atom’s apple (couple hundred years of decimation has had its way with pre-war words).

“It’s good to see you loosen up, Nick.” Ellie commented, watching the worn and weathered synth attempting to make himself presentable. “You work far too hard for far too little.”

She began gathering her items scattered across the desk into her cross-body messenger bag.

“Thanks, Ellie.” He pivoted to face his secretary, watching her close up shop for the day. Piles of files decorated the desk. It was almost like everyone in the Commonwealth has heard of the detective synth in Diamond City who found a way to help the woman out of time access the institute to save her son. Suppose I have Piper to thank for that…

“Alright Nick, out with it.” Ellie rested her fists on her hips. “What’s on your mind? You’re making that face again.”

“Always another case to close, as always I suppose. But even this is too much for a lone detective to solve on their own.”

“I think you’re right, Mr. Valentine.” Ellie sighed, slipping her bag over her head. “You trust me, right Nick?”

“Sure, sure.” He nodded. “Saved my hide plenty of times. I couldn’t run the agency without you.”

“You need a partner, Nick. This get up,” She gestured to his rare clean gray suit. “This is for Nora, right? The two of you have been turning the Commonwealth into a safer place, one case at a time. Criminals know they can’t get away with what they used too.” Ellie made her way towards the door, where Nick nodded thoughtfully. “You’re going to see her tonight, aren’t you Nick?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Do you trust her, care for her?”

“As much as a man can, Ellie.”

“Has she been good to you?”

“Honestly,” He paused. “I don't think I could ask for a better partner or a better friend.”

“Then formally ask her to be your partner.” Ellie smiled kindly on her way out the door. “In every sense of the word. Don’t let her go, Nick.” She gripped the doorknob leading to the evening crowd of residents making their way home.

“Ellie, wait.”

“Yes?”

“Thanks,” He smiled. “For everything.”

She nodded and exited the agency, leaving Nick to adjust his gray suit before following her out the door on his way to Home Plate.

Home Plate

“I wasn’t quite sure what to wear. You didn’t mention what you had in mind for this evening” Nora’s blue-green hair flowed down her exposed shoulders. Her silver-blue sequin dress shimmering in the evening light. The low neckline flaunted the ethereal curves of her collarbone, down to the sheer scarf that slightly obscured the top of her breasts, round and full as the moon herself.

“You look stunning.” Ignoring how great that dress would look opened before him on his desk. Maybe later…He thought to himself behind a friendly smile. You don’t know how she might react to the next big step in our partnership. Best not to get our hopes up, you old rust bucket.

“I was thinking we could visit Power Noodles, catch a dinner show, and finish with a drink.”

“Oh, third rail or the dugout?”

“I, well, would you want to visit Goodneighbor? At this hour?”

“Sure, why not. Magnolia is set to perform some new songs. Might as well drive up Hancock’s tab.”

Nick chuckled, his eyes sparkling humorously. “Think He’ll ever pay that?”

“Not a chance” Nora laughed, her chest bouncing with the motion.

“Shall we, partner?” He extended his elbow to her, which she graciously took, wrapping her own around his.

“Lead on, detective”

Power Noodles

“How’s the noodles game, Tak?” Nick asked the protectron as he slid himself onto one of the available stools. Nora did the same, mindful of the short length of her dress.

“Nan-ni shimasho-ka?” The protectron responded in a friendly tone.

“That so? Well, so long as you’re staying out of trouble.”

“Nan-ni shimasho-ka?” Takashi responded with the same voice line.

“Good. I wouldn’t tolerate anyone mistreating the only other robot in town I can stand.”

“Two orders of Noodles, please.” Nick placed a small handful of caps on the counter.

“Nan-ni shimasho-ka.” The robot affirmed, pivoting 180 at the hip to fill two noodle bowls.

You got a weird look about ya, fella.”

Nick released an exasperated sigh. “Uh, well, yeah. I suppose I am. But there’s nothing to worry about, friend. Me and the institute haven’t been on speaking terms for a long time.”

“But why are you here, synth. Get lost, leave the food for the rest of us.”

Nick sucked the air in between his teeth, narrowing his gaze at the stranger. Must have been hiding under some rock to not recognize us…Regardless, he wasn’t looking for trouble, not while wearing his only clean suit. He reached for his bowl of noodles to slide it over, but only met empty air. In bewilderment, he turned to see Nora, who had stood up, Noodle bowl in hand - launching the bowling soup at the stanger’s face.

“Don’t you fuckin’ talk to my partner that way. I don’t know you and I don’t know how you don’t recognize us, Diamond City ain’t that big, unless you’re just that dumb.” She shouted, drawing the attention of other patrons.

“Nan-ni shimasho-ka?” The protectron coaxed.

“Nora, get a hold of -” Nick paused, noticing the unusual twitching coming from the strangers’ eye.

“You’re not from around here, are you - Stranger?” Nora coo’d, sending a chill down his spine. Hate to be on her bad side…

“No, but I know trash when I SEE IT!”

“And I know a synth when I see it.” Nora lifted the hem of her dress up, exposing a holster against her ample upper thigh. The handle of the pistol pressed against the roundness of her bottom. Smooth, pale, and alluring - a welcome distraction from the growing crowd.

“Woah, woah, woah!” A Diamond City officer dressed as a pre-war catcher jogged towards Nora having noticed her weapon. “The hell’s goin’ here? What’s da matta with you? No weapons allowed in the Marketplace''

“After everything Nick has done for Diamond City, you’re just going to let that slide?” She hissed.

“I dunno know, maybe I will.” The officer leaned down, the catcher’s cage nearly touching her forward. His breath wrecked like a man who hadn’t brushed in 2-00 years.

"I hear you’ve been asking questions around town.” He sneered under his breath. “What, Diamond City's got two private dicks now? Way I see it, we lose a synth and gain you.”

“Ungrateful son’s of -”

“Easy now,” Valentine interrupted, breaking up Nora and the officer. “Nora, it’s alright. This happens from time to time. New fella wanders into Diamond City and panics at the synth, roaming free around people’s business. Just ignore 'em. Not worth anyone with manners possibly getting hurt.” He turned to face the stranger, dripping in noodle broth, his eye twitching in a rather disturbing and inhuman way. “Finish what you came here for and leave.”

“And officer -”

“Yes?” He groaned, swinging his shotgun in hand.

“Get used to it. Cases have been piling up and unless you don’t want us to find Gwen, I’d suggest you keep walking.”

The Officer grumbled as he turned away. Still within earshot he hears a young woman crying out, “Mr. Valentine! Mr. Valentine!” He pauses for a moment, turning back around to watch.

“Uh, hi there. Have we met?” The synth detective asked, his expression of polite curiosity.

”No, no,” She shook her head, long blond hair dancing in the low light. “But you pulled a friend of mine out of some hot water. Tall guy. Gangly. Goes by Hank. I just wanted to say thanks.” She pulled out a handful of caps, offering them up in the palm of her hand. “Here.”

“Oh, now that's not necessary.” Nick closed her open hand around the caps. “I'm just glad everything turned out alright for Hank. Give him my best, will ya?”

“Oh, yeah!” She nodded. “Yeah, I'll do that. You take care.”

Then, she scurried off to neighborhoods that lined up behind the Diamond City Market.

Perhaps this synth fella ain’t so bad afterall. The officer noted, returning to his usual patrol route.

Nora noticed a familiar flat cap and long, red tailcoat approaching them. Her short brown locks bounced as she walked. “Hey Nick, Piper’s coming over.” Nora caught Nick’s attention and pointed out the friendly figure coming closer to the counter.

Piper swung up next to them on a spare stool.

“So, good to have you guys back in town. Was getting a little dull here without you.”

“Nan-ni shimasho-ka?”

“Thanks, Takahasi. Can always count on you to remember my usual.” Piper grinned. “So, what’s with the fancy get up?”

“Well,” Nick signed, returning to his perch. “We were on a date until we were rudely interrupted by some newcomer.”

Piper glanced from Nick, to Nora, back to Nick. “Glad you finally found your partner, Nick. And for what it’s worth, I think you made a great choice with this one.”

“Thanks, Piper. That means a lot coming from you.”

“‘’Course, Nick!” She punched his arm playfully. “Just give me the rundown sometime so I can publish the latest addition to the Valentine Detective Agency in the next edition of Public Occurrences.”

“Wouldn’t know who else to tell.” Nick smiled back.

After Nora finishes her Noodles and gabbin’ with Piper, Nick escorts her around city

“The stars are beautiful tonight, aren’t they?”

Nora craned her neck towards the clear night sky, the sparkles of distant stars reflected in her eyes. Her skin puckered against the chill in the moonlight, the hairs illuminated by the distant city lights. Nick smoothly slid out of his suit jacket, wrapping the warmed garment around her bare shoulders. She turned at the feeling of his touch, resting her hand on his, his arm remaining on her shoulder.

“Nora, I-” The words were lodged in his chest, emotion bobbing in his throat. Her hand slid down the curves of her tight, shimmering dress as she turned slightly to face him.

“I feel like kissing you” He whispered in her ear with an unusually soft voice.

“Here? Nicky, all the people-”

Valentine removes his crumpled fedora, obscuring their faces behind the hat. He drew Nora in by her waist, pulling her into an intimate embrace, and planted a sensual kiss upon her full lips.

He slowly pulled away, returning the fedora to its rightful spot. “Wanna take this back to the agency, partner?” He asked. He raised her chin to bring her eyes to meet his.

"Wouldn't have it any other way" Nora smiled.

-------------------------------------

Originally posted on my ao3:

#nick valentine x sole survivor #nick valentine fanfic #nick valentine #fallout 4 #fallout fanfic #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer

20 notes · View notes