#parents don’t expect their kid to save the world??

[triysn]

Y’all ever think about how Rex is like. An orphan. Of all his cartoon contemporaries, he’s the only one whose parents are just straight up, explicitly dead.

And like, yeah, you could argue that for some, their relationships with their LIVING parents are like equally traumatising as having dead ones (cough cough phantom cough). Plus Rex has holiday and six.

But like holiday and six are very much paid to take care of him. Like, no matter how good their intentions are, they are still very much people with jobs and their own agendas.

You think Holiday ever had to ignore how wrong it felt to experiment on Rex and take samples and reduce him to a bunch of numbers and test results but she HAS to because that’s her job and she needs to find a cure for Beverly, needs to figure out how he works.

Or Six having to train Rex to be a weapon, probably in the exact way he was trained. The dual motivation of “this is for his own good, to keep him alive” and “I’m literally being paid to manipulate this kid who trusts me with the goal of ensuring the outcome providence wants in battle” and wondering if one can ever cancel out the other.

Like they care. They care about him so much. But Holiday still does her tests and Six still trains him and doesn’t tell him about Noah. Neither of these things is for Rex’s own good. They’re trying, but they work for Providence. They are literally, undeniably complicit in Rex’s abuse. All they can do is control the extent of the abuse. They love him and they’re getting their paychecks from controlling him.

That’s so fucked up. That is so cool.

[missnxthingg]

I CAN'T LIE TO YOU ✮ LN4

pairing: Lando Norris x bestie!Reader (childhood best friends to lovers) summary: Lando Norris decides to surprise his best friend after being a long time away from home. What she didn't expect was that he had a big secret that he couldn't share with her words: 4.5K - warnings: swearing, suggestive content & not proof read author's notes: I'm back once again! Now you just know I'm a sucker for childhood besties to lovers. Also, I may have already started writing a part two for this one... let me know if you want it!

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The days in England have become more boring with time. Y/N was losing her mind over the repetitive routine that follows the life of a college student. Work, study, beer with close friends and bed. So when her mother invited her for a family dinner, she worried about how excited she got with the event. It wasn’t supposed to be anything special, just her parents and a few of their close friends gathered to catch up over nice food. 

Coming home felt way too good. It’s a feeling most college students get when they go back to their hometown, leaving their crappy flat in university to be served with their parents pampering during their quick visit. Y/N was supposed to be back to her place in just a couple of days, but she felt satisfied to be in a different place than the four walls of her house. Not to mention that she was having a good laugh with everyone at the table.

Her mother always takes dinner parties to another level, serving the best food in her special crockery, saved for moments like this. So Y/N packed a nice new outfit; a cute long-sleeved dress that looked perfect with tights and heels. Not that the guests cared about how she was dressed, but it felt nice to look beautiful and all put together for once after months of hoodies and leggings.

As usual, her parents invited the Norris family, as they’ve been the best of friends for the longest time. Not only they lived next to each other for years back when she was younger, all of their kids were really close friends with Y/N. But the spotlight always goes to Lando, who is the same age as her, making them grow up attached to the hip.

They all grew up going to the same school, not to mention that she would always tag along in Lando and his brother’s karting sessions, having the best time watching them drive flawlessly on tracks. He always enjoyed the times when she’d steal her parents cameras so they could make some homemade videos of their time together. Or when they would sit back, watch their dads play golf every Saturday and share candies in the cart. 

  Y/N and Lando have been inseparable since the age of four, growing up side by side, going through everything together. She was so important to him that, when he joined Formula 1 and had to choose a number to race, he chose the age the two of them had become friends. 

“The number four is for my best friend, Y/N. She was the one to suggest it, and the meaning behind it is very cute. Actually, I don’t want to tell you to not spoil anything, but I can only say that it’s very dear to my heart”, Lando said once in an interview during his second season in F1, making every single one of his fans curious about the meaning.

But it’s been a while since the infamous duo had been together. They supported each other from afar; Y/N sometimes joining him for race weekends and Lando coming back to see her on birthdays and weekends in London, while he visited the McLaren factory. But the last time they had been together was four months ago, during summer break, when he dragged her to join him for his crazy trips around the world. When racing and university was back on, they lost a little bit of touch; almost no calls and only a few texting breaks so they wouldn’t fall apart.

A lot happened in those four months. Lando had a new gorgeous girlfriend; a model who everyone had become obsessed with her TikTok videos for beauty tips. They had been seen together a few times around the world, her joining him for the races and a lot of make-outs behind DJ booths at parties. Y/N, on the other hand, was lacking in the dating department. But the friends she made over the past year made everything worthy. After years of pretty much having Lando as her only very close friend, she finally found new people to go out and have fun as a normal 20-year-old.

With that, Y/N and Lando’s friendship got weird. He had been avoiding her for a while, with the excuse of being too busy with racing, but actually not wanting to talk about his personal life with someone who knew him like the palm of her hand. Meanwhile, she was having a good time with her friends to be bothered by anything. But lately, life had become more boring and Y/N felt like having Lando back would bring some more fun into her life again, with all the epic parties and the good times they always managed to happen.

“Only one month left”, she thought, as winter break was approaching, meaning that Lando would finally be free to come home for the holidays.

She was pushed out of her thoughts by Adam Norris, who now seemed interest in Y/N’s life after a long catching up with her dad. “Tell us more about college! Are you having fun? Learning anything special?”, he asked with a kind smile.

“Oh, I’m graduating this spring, so it’s been… rough”, she chuckled. “But everything has been amazing, you know? The internship is so cool and the people are nice as well”.

“I just can’t believe it will all be over soon”, his wife, Cisca, responded. “It feels like it was just yesterday when you joined uni and Lando started his first season in F1. Time really flies, uhm?”

Every mention of his name made Y/N smile like a fool. But lately, it has been accompanied by a ting of pain on her chest. God, she missed him so much.

“What is it that you miss?”, Cisca asked, pulling Y/N out of her thoughts. Shit, did she say that out loud?

“I said I missed your pie so much, Cis. You know I have always loved it growing up”, Y/N tried to cover it up by stuffing her mouth with the cheesy pie, trying to keep her thoughts of being spoken out loud. But something caught her by surprise.

“Yeah, mum’s pie is the best in the world, isn’t it?”, a male voice said from behind her, one that she hadn’t heard in person for a while. Her eyes widened when she realized who it was, only to turn around and see Lando standing right behind her tugged into his signature comfortable hoodie, with a giant smile plastered on his face, and a bouquet in his hands. “Surprise!”

Y/N brought her hands up to her mouth, trying not to cry at the sight. She couldn’t believe what was standing in front of her. So she jumped out of her seat and jumped into his arms, not caring about anyone else in the room or the flowers being crumpled up in his hands. Lando buried his nose in her hair, taking in her scent, making him feel at ease for once

“What are you doing here?”, she leaned back, holding his face between her hands. His soft eyes looked down at her, his smile never faltering.

“I thought I could surprise my best girl”, he admitted, digging one of his hands into her hips, making her securely close to him. “I had a break before the end of the season, and it had been so long…”

“Shut up, you idiot. I just want to hug you”, she cut him mid-sentence, burying her face in his neck, making his smile even wider, if that was possible. Everyone on the table laughed at her reaction, but let them have their moment after months without seeing each other. It felt too good to be true. 

“I missed you so much”, he whispered in her ear, pressing a small kiss to the top of her head.

“I missed you too. Welcome home, Lan”, she leaned back and kissed his cheek, making it tinted red. Lando was so cute when he blushed. “You brought me flowers! How cute is this?”

She took the giant bouquet filled with red and pink roses out of his hands, bringing it close to her body. “It’s an apology for not being here as much as I should”, he said, making her heart so warm with the thoughtful gift.

“You being here is enough”, she pressed another kiss to his cheek and quickly pulled him for another hug. They just couldn’t get enough of each other.

“Alright, we all know you both really miss each other, but you can catch up after dinner. Food is getting cold and poor Lando must be starving”, her mother cut them off, making Y/N look back at the table, her face burning in embarrassment. He laughed at her behavior and pulled the chair next to her so they could sit together.

Through the whole dinner, Lando told all of his amazing stories traveling the world, leaving all the ‘best friends only’ parts for later, when he would be alone with Y/N. She felt so happy to finally have him by her side, making fun of her table manners, resting his hand on her knee and cracking any bad jokes just to see her roll her eyes. And even though he lived those many adventures, Lando knew life couldn’t get better than having his favourite person in the world back on his side.

“So, Lando, what finally brings you back home?”, Y/N’s father asked, making him shrug.

“You know, the championship could’ve been better and I feel really tired, you know?”, Lando searched for his best friend’s hand under the table, entwining their fingers once they met. Then he looked at her with an adoring smile on his face. “I just need some recharging. Thought I could use some home time before the last few races of the year”.

“You’re always welcomed to recharge in our house if you want to, Lando”, her mother said before the conversation was taken somewhere else once again.

While everyone else chatted, Y/N and Lando updated their phone gallery with new pictures of them. A lot of cute selfies and pictures of their homemade dinner which soon found their place on their Instagrams.

y/username

liked by landonorris and 3,419 others

y/username: always feels good to have my best friend back in the house

tagged: landonorris

landonorris Besties reunited LFG!

↪ y/username you’re such a bore

fanacc1 FINALLY SOME Y/N AND LANDO CONTENT

fanacc2 Wasn’t him dating a model?

↪fanacc3 He is, but Y/N is his childhood best friend

fanacc4 ugh, if i was his gf, i would be so jealous of them together

↪fanacc5 I bet his girlfriend actually hates them

fanacc6 Does this mean more Y/N around the paddock?

The dinner was coming to an end with the delicious sweet treats they prepared for dessert. At that point, Lando and Y/N were just existing at the conversation. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and she found a comfortable spot to lean into him and keep sipping on her wine while they shared a slice of cake. But even though they were quiet, they surely weren’t tired. So as the rest of the adults continued with their chat, they took their glasses of wine to the backyard, just so they could have some alone time.

Lando chuckled when he saw what was still standing strong in her backyard. “You still have our old treehouse?”, he asked and she nodded excitedly. “Wow, it looks so much nicer than before”.

“It’s because I renovated it, you fool. Haven’t I told you?”, she asked, but Lando shook his head. “Oh my… you have to see this! Now it’s a grown up treehouse! Take a look”.

Y/N dragged him to the small construction and made him climb all the way up to the house. It changed a lot with the renovations. Their wall doodles from when they were little kids were preserved by a varnish coat on the wood. She also substituted the old toys for books and her collection of vinyls, making the place look extra cozy. There was even a table for afternoon tea and card games, a TV and a huge futon, with lots of cushions, so they could just lie down and spend the rest of the day hidden from the world.

“What a glow up!”, he joked. “I loved it. This is amazing”, Lando took a place next to the window, where the moonlight invaded the room. Y/N sat next to him and almost immediately pulled out her camera just to capture the moment. And just like old times, they had fun doing a tiny photoshoot together, only to be cut off by his mom, calling them from the ground.

“Are you coming, Lando?”, Cisca asked, making him look over to Y/N, who replied for him.

“I’m not letting him go anywhere, Cisca”, she joked, throwing her arms around Lando, making his mother laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your son”.

“Have fun you two”, they waved at her and sighed after finally being left alone for a proper catching up between best friends. Lando had a satisfied smile on his face and he felt so calm at that moment. He threw both of his arms around his best friend and hugged her tightly.

“Home, at last”, his cheek was pressed on the side of her face, making her giggle with the contact. “I want to know everything going on with you. Just blurt it all out. I owe you this”.

“Oh, nothing great happened”, she shrugged. “Nothing that you didn’t know already. The internship is nice, but it’s coming to an end soon and I’m not sure they’ll keep me with them. And college is almost finished, so that’s kind of bittersweet”.

“I thought you were excited to have a degree”, he said, making her sigh. “Are you not happy about graduating?”

“Of course I am. You more than anyone knows how important this is to me”, she answered. “And I made so many good friends and I’ve been having the best time with them. I know graduating will make us grow apart”.

“Endings aren’t always nice, uhm? But you have to look at the bright side of things”, he started. “You’re finally achieving something great and you managed to have a really good time along the way. Made friends and worked really hard to become the best professional out there. I’m so proud of you!”

Lando has always been her biggest supporter on pursuing her academic path. He remembers all the talks they had about her wanting to master in communications. While he didn’t get to finish school to up his game in racing, he was there for every step his best friend took until enrolling in university. So when they talk about it, he always has that beautiful proud smile on his face, to which Y/N loved seeing.

“Thank you”, she smiled shyly. “And what about you, Mr Worldwide? You’ve been everywhere these past months. How was it?”

“Oh, always amazing”, he beamed. “I got to see so many amazing places around the world. You would’ve loved all the clubs I went to. The DJ booths are amazing. Oh, and the golf courts… breathtaking”.

“Yeah, I saw all the pictures”, Y/N arched her brows and rolled her eyes. “You didn’t even bother on calling, telling me about your adventures”.

“Sorry, I lacked in that department”, he apologized. “Even though everything has been amazing, I’m so tired of this year. I could’ve done better on the track and the last few races have been exhausting. I knew that I needed to recharge before the last two races, so I came back to you”.

“It’s always a pleasure to have you home”, she ran her hand through his curls and smiled. Lando always saw Y/N as his home. She always brings him that sense of familiarity, and her absence in his travels around the world were taking a toll on him.

Not to mention that hiding a big secret from his best friend also wasn’t doing him any good.

“But I’m not here to talk about me. I want to know everything about you”, he poked her side with his index finger and smirked. “Anyone special appeared in your life in the past few months?”

“Please”, she rolled her eyes. “The last time I had a proper hook up was during our summer trip to Bali with that guy on the club”.

“Come on, it can’t be that bad”, he giggled, but Y/N’s face was burning in embarrassment.

“I had a few dates in the past months, but fuck me, they were annoying”, Lando laughed at her statement. “One of them found out you’re my best friend and spent the entire time asking questions about you. And the only guy who was actually decent came in his pants when we were making out in his car. Didn’t even get to touch me”. 

“Oh, poor you”, he giggled. “So no boy to be my new best friend? I mean, come on, we need more male energy in this friendship”.

“Sorry, Lan. No boyfriend this time”, she said. “You, on the other hand, started dating this gorgeous model and forgot to tell me about everything.”

And there she said it: the topic Lando had been avoiding the most throughout the whole night. He really didn’t want to talk about it with Y/N, because his big secret had been hiding right there. He knew he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, lie about anything to her. And he also knew that he really needed to vent about this secret with her as well.

Lando turned really quiet, and looked away, avoiding her eyes. “Don’t start now, Y/N. I mean, there’s not much to say, to be fair”, he mumbled.

“Come on, I want to know everything about the woman who stole my bestie’s heart”, she poked him, but Lando didn’t dare to look Y/N in the eyes. “I mean, everybody loves her and she seems sweet. Why don’t you want to tell me about her?”

“Because we’re not together”.

“What do you mean? I’ve seen the Instagram pictures and the gossip pages posting videos of you two kissing in the club. I thought you were becoming a thing”.

“Y/N, don’t push it”, he asked, his voice bargaining on his throat.

“Why don’t you want to tell me about her?”

“Because we’re not together, I told you”, he sighed. “She’s a PR stunt. She’s not my girlfriend, and it’s been consuming me from the inside ever since we started this little thing”.

Lando finally looked her in the eyes and Y/N saw them brimming with tears. As an immediate response, she rested a hand on his arm and waited until he was ready to talk more. He leaned into her touch and the tears started to stream down his face. He’s never one to cry for anything, so the tears meant that it was so much more than he was letting show. Her heart broke at the sight of her best friend.

“Is this why you look more tired than usual?”, Y/N asked and he nodded, making the tears fall harder. “Oh, Lan… Come here”.

She pulled his head to rest on her chest and Lando wrapped his arms around her, needing some sort of comfort. He didn’t say much for a couple of minutes after, feeling his heart aching on his chest. He wanted to talk about everything with Y/N, because he knew she would understand him. He always feels vulnerable and safe enough to talk about anything with his best friend. 

“Everything is so fucked up, Y/N”, Lando cried out. “God, I can’t take this fake relationship anymore. Do you know how disgusting it feels to pretend to be in love with someone you’re not? And to lie to everyone, hiding it from my parents. From you. I can’t stand it”

“I’m sure you have a good reason to be doing so”, she said, fingers running through his curls and making him sure that she was right there with him. Y/N felt his fingers clinging tighter onto her. “You’re just doing your job and that’s okay. This won’t last forever”.

“I feel so lonely, you know? I was doing so bad on the last few races and I missed home so much. I missed talking to my dad and hugging my mom. I missed making fun of my sisters and going for a drive with my brother. And I missed you so much. I wish I could just stay here for a long while”.

“Soon you’ll get to be here for as long as you want, baby”, Y/N pressed a kiss on top of his head and Lando sighed in comfort. It ached a little less with her there. “And we’ll get to spend so much time together. You can come over and we’ll have sleepovers. We can take the car, drive around and go clubbing until sunrise. Whatever you want”.

“God, it would be so easy if it was you”, he whispered, still holding onto her as if his life depended on it. What did he mean with that? Just those single words made Y/N’s heart skip a beat. Truth is, while her heart ached for her best friend, she was relieved he’s not in love with someone else. Did he have feelings for her? 

“You know, I looked over my so-called girlfriend one night while we were hanging out at the club and I wanted to shout to everyone that it was all an act. She’s like a solid reminder of how lonely I am all the damn time. It’s ridiculous”, he grunted. 

“Come on, look at me”, Y/N pulled his face to look up and held his head between her hands. “Lan, you are never alone, okay? Even if you feel like you are, and even if I’m not there physically, you know that I’m always with you. I’m right here”, she rested a hand over his heart, making him smile through his tears. “I've been in your heart since the moment we met”.

“I…”, he started, but couldn’t get to say the rest. After all this time, Lando was afraid that the next move would ruin their friendship forever. But looking her in the eyes, comforting him through this rough time, he knew she felt the same. “I love you, Y/N”.

She was expecting anything. ‘I know’, maybe. That was so much bigger than what she imagined. Lando had said he loved her countless times over the years they’ve known each other; after all, they grew up together, almost like brother and sister. But this time, it was different. Y/N knew it, and Lando knew it too.

Y/N was too stunned to speak, so he continued with his confession. “I always have, you know? And I only hid everything from you because I can’t lie to you. And because I thought you’d never look at me the same way if you found out”.

“Lando, I…” she stopped mid-sentence, trying to catch some air. “Fuck, this is a lot. Just wait a second”.

They giggled together and he leaned his forehead against hers. “It’s okay to not say anything right now. I just dropped a giant bomb on your lap. This wasn’t the way I wanted to confess to you, but I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore”.

“Are you saying this because you’re emotional? Because I swear to God, if you are, I’m gonna kill you for misleading me”, her eyes were brimming with tears and Lando whipped them away.

“I’m telling you the truth”, he assured. “I think I’ve loved you my entire life. With all the crazy things I’ve experienced in my life, you were the only constant. You’re home, Y/N”.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”, she asked and he took a deep breath.

“Because I was afraid of losing you. Scared this might ruin our friendship somehow”, he admitted. “You’re the most precious thing in my life. Do you know how scary it is to fall in love with your best friend when you’re just a kid? And then grow up, and those feelings never go away, just getting stronger every day. I just didn’t want to lose you”.

“You weren’t going to lose me, Lan”, her eyes softened at his confession and now he was the one wiping her tears. Y/N brought him back for a hug and even though he didn’t have an answer, deep down he knew she felt the same.

“I’ve loved you since we were four. There’s a reason why I always carry this number with me”, Lando confessed. “God, look what you do to me. I never cry”.

“You only cry for the important things”, she reminded. “That’s why I love you, Lando. I’ve been in love with you for my entire life too, idiot”.

His eyes widened as he looked up to her, who had a smirk plastered on her face. “Can I kiss you?”, Lando asked, but before she could properly shake her head in agreement, he crashed his lips into hers. He needed to be home, and Y/N has always been home for him. It was the most intense kiss they ever had, like years of lingering had finally paid off for both of them.

Lando pulled her closer with a hand on the back of her head. She wrapped her fingers around his neck, smiling into his lips. Then, as if it wasn't enough, he pulled her to sit on lap, making them closer somehow. She slowed down the pace, making the kiss needier and more delicious. Lando even let out a satisfied throaty moan, his heart speeding on his chest. Her touches made him feral, knowing that after years of pinning, he finally had his dream girl.

“Thank you for this”, he whispered against her lips, a wide and satisfied smile on his face. “Thank you for all the years, all the times you've been here for me, to tell me everything is going to be alright.”

“Always, Lan”, she played with the hairs on his nape. “I love you so much”.

“I love you too. So much”, he left one more peck on her lips before hugging her again. “I don't know what I'd do without you”.

“Yeah, me too”.

The story of how they fell in love with each other was long, but beautiful. Lando and Y/N sat in that tree house all night and shared all of those stories with each other. And for a second, he really believed everything was going to work out. After all, if he had Y/N, Lando would be just fine.

❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁❁

⤿ add yourself to the taglist!

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*Bold means I can't tag you! Send me a DM so we can solve it out

[heartpascal]

is it freedom?

▹— spiderverse (future) found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: after losing everything, you struggle to accept the one thing you needed all along.

▹— a/n: ok i have been enabled by exactly two (2!) people. (thank you both) SO dare i start a spiderverse series??? IF YALL WANT MORE OF THIS… I WILL DO IT. this is really just a set up thing idk but i feel like arachnid has potential for further parts and ACTUAL found family!! also haven’t tagged people on my general taglist bc idk if you guys want to be tagged in ALL works or just all pedro works :(

▹— warnings: slight across the spiderverse spoilers, not really found family yet, injuries, blood, treating own injuries, stitches, fighting (canon-typical violence yall), dead parents (mentioned a LOT), a whole lot of angst (it’s a spider-person so what do we expect), reader has a whole lot of bad thoughts, loneliness, isolation

masterlist PART TWO

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

Had you known what this, this thing, would lead to, you would have never started it. Not that you had done so purposely, at least to begin with, more so happening as an event of pure chance. You were in the right place at the right time, and since then, you had been addicted.

But if you could go back, look at yourself just a year younger than you are now, tell that kid what would come if you went through with saving a life for the first time, you wondered. It was a question that scratched deep in your brain, sending you off balance the more you thought about it; would you have still done it? Would you have saved that person’s life, knowing it would lead to your own falling apart?

You would like to think yes. In fact, you know that back then, when your eyes were bright at the prospect of helping people, when you still marvelled at the world like it was good, you would have been certain that it would be worth it. Why should that person die, just to save you? It’s a harrowing realisation. A conclusion that makes your fingers tremble, your voice shake. Now, you’re not sure you would do it. You don’t think you could bear to face that decision knowing what you know of the world around you now.

It’s something cruel, really, that the spider that bit you gave you these powers, and nothing to go back and fix your mistakes. Your perceived victories. Your losses.

But the worst has already happened, and the only one left to die is you, so you carry on. You don the suit every day, you sew up your own injuries on the top floor of the abandoned offices that you’ve claimed as your own. Each day, you wake when you choose, you sleep when you want to, and you work yourself down to your very bones with nobody to object.

The hollow feeling in your gut is a pain you have no choice to ignore, to smother with assurances that this is freedom. What else could it be? You do whatever you so please, you spend your time swinging through the streets of New York rather than doing schoolwork at home, you eat all the junk you could ever have wanted.

It’s freedom. It has to be.

You tell yourself that you don’t miss the home part of having to do schoolwork, promise your heart that you don’t miss home-cooked meals as opposed to greasy food that leaves you unsatisfied. You swear that you like having nobody to tell you what to do. There’s no other choice, after all.

And each day, when you spend a little bit longer out on the streets, getting yourself into needless fights that the police could certainly handle, you tell yourself it’s because you’re protecting the city. You convince yourself that it’s not because of having an unending rage to satiate, or a permanent feeling of breathlessness when you leave police to handle anything, as if you could relive the moment your father, the captain, was left to handle something he couldn’t.

So, you’re almost relieved by the appearance of something… strange. Something dangerous. This is what you live for — this is your job.

You crouch against the wall, fingers splayed and suit itching where you had crudely sewn it back together across your ribs at an almost too-close call. You hold your breath, you watch. The lenses over your eyes shield your sensitive sight from the harshest colours of this new opponent, who looks almost… unreal. Too different to be a part of reality. He yells out, seemingly glitching? A distorted scream of what is apparently pain, accompanied by flashes of colour that are unfamiliar to you.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.” You comment, eyebrows raised beneath your mask, and the strange looking guy snaps his head towards you, long hair slapping across the goggles over his eyes. He bares his teeth at you, something almost resembling a grin marring his face.

“Spider-man!” He yells triumphantly, cackling as he wipes the hair away from his face, tendrils unfurling from behind his back and lifting him into the air.

“Not quite!” You call back, dodging below the metallic arm that shoots towards where your head was, crumbling through the wall. You try to think back to the jokes you used to tell to rile up whoever you were facing, but find your mind is blank. Instead, all you can think of is questions. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

The man follows you as you spring from wall to wall, heading towards the center of the building where it tunnels up for about forty floors, balconies overlooking the fountain below. “A new spider, eh? Well I’ll take you down just as easily as I have the other!” He tells you, though you’re immediately suspicious of his statement. You’re the only Spider-related hero around, and even if you weren’t, you doubt this guy could squash a worm, let alone you.

“Sure thing, man.” You say, sighing, already exhausted by the repetitiveness that comes with every fight. Your opponents always say they’ll beat you, kill you, squish you, take you down, and yet you always get back up at the end of the fight, and they always remain defeated. When you started doing this, you never would have thought you’d get so tired from winning all the time.

And yet here you are, slipping further and further up the building with the octopus-looking guy chasing after you, metal arms crumbling walls and bannisters on his way up. He falters once more, another one of those glitch-like movements sending him down a few floors, but he’s quick to recover. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

You crouch down on one balcony, somewhere around the thirty mark floor-wise, peering down at the guy as he shakes lingering pain from his body. He charges upwards, aiming to reach you quickly with an almost predatory smirk on his face. Before he can even get close to you, however, you’re back on the move, setting a trap for him that he doesn’t even seem to notice.

It’s only when a group of late workers emerge on what you’re pretty sure is the twenty-first floor that you become more anxious about this fight. You don’t like when civilians are involved.

There’s about a dozen of them crowding the balcony, looking up to where you’re facing off with octopus-man above, some having begun to descend the stairs to the next floor before catching on to your presence. You try not to draw attention to them, but their pointing and whispering sets the Spidey-sense off, ringing loudly between your ears, almost deafening in its intensity. Maybe you underestimated this guy. The flash of a camera sends the last hope of him not noticing down the drain, and he grins at you as he switches targets, climbing down towards them with some semblance of caution.

You’re much faster than he is, dropping down and using a web to catch yourself rather than having to climb. It’s hard to stop yourself from yelling at them, cursing them out for being so damn foolish — who in their right mind would stick around a very dangerous fight to take pictures?

Instead, you choose to yell, “Get out! Go, go, go.” And usher them down the stairs, but it’s not difficult to realise that this guy is going to get to them before they manage to descend to the bottom. You shouldn’t be surprised, really. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be, not for you.

The split second decision to drop down and form a net-like web low enough to catch the workers worked out for you in the end, as you swung back up and pushed the workers off of the balcony and stairway just as the octopus man was reaching them. He cursed at you, refocusing his efforts on you as you vaguely noted the workers clambering down after their screaming had stopped. Honestly — did people really have so little faith in you? Had you ever sent anybody to their death before?

“You are just as pesky of an insect as Spider-man!” He growled out, teeth gritted, and came after you with renewed force. He kind of reminded you of that doctor you faced not long after getting your powers, but this guy looked completely different. The doctor you faced — aptly named Doc Ock — had turned himself into some form of a mutant, he had reinforced tentacles which sprouted from his back. Was this guy some kind of copy cat? Maybe he was just delusional.

“I don’t know who Spider-man is, man!” You shout to him as you ascend the building again, trying to figure out the best way to take this guy down. His tentacles seem electronic, so surely you could disable whatever machinery resides on his back?

“That’d be me.” A voice came from above you, two floors ahead of your position. Your head snapped towards it, seeing a man in a blue and red suit, framed by a burst of orange behind him. He didn’t linger up there long, instead moving to leap down to the guy who had turned his attention to the new guy. The closer you looked at this new guy, the more similarities you saw to yourself — his webs looked remarkably similar to your own, the pattern that went across his suit matched your own, even the wide white lenses that shielded your eyes on your mask. Who the hell was this guy?

The octopus man grinned widely, shaking greasy hair from his face. “Ah, finally! The real Spider-man. Got yourself a new protégé, I see.” He drawled, dodging this new guy’s hit straight off of the bat. You tried not to get annoyed at being referred to as a protégé, considering as far as you were aware, you were the only Spider-person around. Where was this guy when you were holding a bridge full of civilians together? Where was he when you took down villain after villain, never once failing to get the guy? No — you were the real Spider-man, if anyone.

“I don’t know who you are, man, but I’m handling this just fine.” You call to the guy, swinging down to rejoin the fight, webbing the villain’s metal tentacles to the wall behind him, before dropping down to kick him towards the wall.

“Oh, so you know how to send this guy back to his own dimension?” Spider-man asks you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask, and as if on cue, the guy glitches once more, ripping his arms away from the wall and just about catching himself on a balcony below before he could fall into your net.

You gape at the new guy, glancing back up to where the burst of orange remains opened, and is that a portal? Is this Spider-man from another dimension? Is that why you’ve never heard of him before? God, if your mother was alive, she’d kill to find out about this. Inter-dimensional travel was something she had spent her life researching. If you didn’t remain so bitter toward her even after her death, you might’ve been sad she wasn’t alive to see this.

But you were bitter, and it made the experience all the worse.

Because you’re pretty sure that that bitterness takes the place of grief within you. It’s hard to understand why you crave to feel that pain, that grief, as opposed to the aching resentment that floods you with the thought of her. It’s such a sharp contrast to thinking of your father, your kind father, the man who threw himself into a battle he couldn’t have hoped to survive, just on the off chance he could save somebody. You hope you take after him.

“Wait— you’re from another dimension?” You question anyway, eyes flickering between the battle and the looming portal above. In fact, you’re so distracted by finding out about that tidbit of information that you miss octopus man aim a tentacle for you, and it snatches you around the ankle. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—!”

The man waves you around like some kind of rag doll, and you try not to be too bitter about being caught off guard. You should probably learn that getting caught up in your little pity party always ends up badly, always distracts you from that renowned Spidey-sense. You formulate a plan in your mind when the drip of blood around your ankle draws your attention back to the battle at hand.

You web the wall opposite and hold on tight, pausing the movements and letting the dizziness that had come over you fade away. The man growls out in annoyance, and gets closer to cut the webs with another tentacle, which is exactly what you planned for. The tension from the webs launches you towards him when you let go, and in his surprise, the metal tentacle releases you. You wrap around him, and start webbing up the machinery embedded in his back as Spider-man distracts most of the tentacles, keeping them from pulling you off.

His tentacles start faltering, clearly not obeying his movements, and you wrap them up where they emerge from his back, continuing along until the movement is so limited that he has to use them all to clutch onto the nearest balcony.

You crawl up the tentacles in the very same spidery manner that you’re known for, and crouch, watching the octopus man struggle as Spider-man observes from the balcony opposite. “You wanna finish this one off, Spider-man?” You ask, unable to hide any bitterness from your tone at his mostly unhelpful actions throughout the battle.

“Hey, not bad!” He praises, and it annoys you. You’re good at what you do — for the most part. You manage without help constantly, and that’s the way you prefer it. “You’d make a good addition to the Spider Society!”

Now, you don’t know what the Spider Society is. But honestly? You don’t care. You don’t need help, and you prefer working alone, and you certainly don’t like feeling patronised.

“Whatever, man. Just send him back to whatever dimension he came from.” You tell the guy, and drop down as you hear sirens outside, landing on your injured ankle and just about stopping yourself from cursing. Through all the adrenaline and fighting, you’d forgotten about the way the metal had ripped into your skin, drawn blood. It’s just be another place you’d have to sew up your suit with itchy, uneven stitching. “Officers,” You greet as they open the doors, guns drawn, radios murmuring. “All taken care of. Civilians okay?”

“Shaken up, but fine.” The leading police officer says, immediately relaxing and holstering his weapon. You wish it reassured you that the police trusted you now, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, the other officers follow suit. “Thank you, Arachnid.”

The name your world has bestowed upon you has yet to grow on you, but you nod your head regardless, and salute them as you make your way out, swinging across the city, trying to put the existence of the multiverse and inter-dimensional travel out of your mind. Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy when you have a busted ankle to fix up.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

You’re halfway through stitching up your suit, having already sewn your skin back together with as much skill as you possessed in the matter — which was, not much. But the bleeding has stopped, and your stupidly slow healing will take care of it within a few days. You know that the itchy stitches on your suit will just irritate the injury, and though you wouldn’t lose anything if your identity was revealed, it doesn’t feel right to go out into the city with any part of you on show.

No, you wear the suit for a reason. You keep every part of yourself covered because nobody can know it’s you underneath the suit. Not because you had anything to lose, no, you had already lost everything. It was because then you could never make a mistake, you would have to be absolutely perfect, flawless, to make up for the fact that it was you underneath the layer.

So, you settle with a sewn suit that will itch and make the stitches on your ankle sting.

However, when there’s a burst of orange across the room, you have no choice but to forgo the suit, to simply drop the needle and thread and hover your fingers over your web shooters. You wait, nervously, for some other villain to appear. You’re not sure if Spider-man appearing would be better or worse.

But when a foot steps through the portal, it’s nobody familiar. In fact, it’s a suit you have never seen before, made up of dark blues and bright reds, sharp edges and long claws. It’s… unnerving, and considering the silence coming from the person wearing it, you’re not entirely certain of what they’re here for.

A moment later and another person steps through, a woman, with bright yellow lenses across her eyes that filter her irises into an amber. She steps forward, standing beside the person who had stepped through first, and if she hadn’t showed up, you would’ve been tempted to attack. With that being said, you remain on edge, but there’s something… comforting about her presence. Like her presence softens the man’s jagged edges.

She says your name, and then adds, “Arachnid.”

You furrow your brows and curse as you glance back at the suit so crudely laid out on the floor. Still, it doesn’t explain how she knows your name. Was it an inter-dimensional thing?

“Spider-man told us about your work in capturing Doc Ock earlier.” She tells you, as if that explains their presence. You did what you were supposed to do, which was take out the bad guys. “We’re here to offer you a place in the Spider Society.”

You can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. She presents an offer which doesn’t sound too bad, and then her sharp-edged companion presents all the drawbacks and the catches. They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, either way. You still don’t even know what this Spider Society was! Was it some kind of multi-dimensional cult?

“I already told Spider-man that I wasn’t interested in joining whatever cult you’ve got going on.” You practically hiss, though you didn’t exactly tell him in such blatant words. You were more dismissive earlier, so you’d have to be clear now.

“It’s not a cult,” The man speaks, voice harsh and sharp much like the blades that branch from his forearms. “We work to protect the multiverse from anomalies that threaten to destroy it.”

The woman glances at him in a way that you translate as being vaguely annoyed, like he wasn’t approaching you in the way she had wanted him to. “He means to say that it’s a big job, and we need all the help we can get.” She says, softer, but only in comparison to the man’s harshness. “Listen, kid, you’re good at what you do. We need that kind of talent.”

“You’ll have to find it somewhere else.” You say firmly, because why would you want to leave your universe? This was a lot to think about when you had only learned of the multiverse existing mere hours ago. Regardless, you weren’t about to abandon your city just to go across the multiverse to help other heroes who couldn’t keep a leash on their own villains.

The two of them shared a look, a mere glance, before the woman heaved a sigh. “Look,” She sighed, heavily, like whatever she was about to say was something she didn’t want to be voicing. “Before you make your choice, you should know, your Green Goblin is currently terrorising another universe.”

You couldn’t work out if this was some kind of recruitment tactic, or something. That just wasn’t possible. You had put Gwen Stacy in the highest security prison after all antidotes to her goblin-tech failed. She was stuck in there — permanently. There was no way she had gotten out, let alone gotten out to another universe.

…Right?

It’s hard not to think of the memories at the mention of her—Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. Never Gwen Stacy. You wonder if this is where your fear comes from, the terrifying fact that you are remembered only for your mistakes. Because before she was the Green Goblin, she was Gwen. She was everything to you. She was the sun you orbited, the stars that charted your path. And it hurts, it hurts that you can only remember the blood and the dust and the destruction when you think of her.

People aren’t born as monsters, are they?

Like the spider that bit you, that invertebrate that so many fear, it was born the way it was. It was born with those fang-lined maws, with those eight legs and dozens of eyes. It was made into the monster it became, artificially crafted to deliver a venom that changed you forever. But it wasn’t born that way.

Surely, Gwen wasn’t either. She was kind. You remember that about her. You can remember her soft hands that used to hold your own, the loud laughter that always ended in a snort when she laughed at her own jokes, the gentle eyes that stared into your very soul. But those eyes are the very same ones that let her see through your mask, let her see exactly where to hit you to make it hurt. Was that what she was born as? Or is that what she was made into? A killer. A monster.

“Show me.” You say, because what else could you possibly respond? If what they’re saying is true, if the Green Goblin is loose once more, then people will die.

You can’t let her get fresh blood on her hands. Not when somewhere, deep inside your chest, so far down it’s almost unreachable, you have hope for her. You have an innate desire to look for the best in her, even when the Gwen you knew was the first life that the Green Goblin took.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

If there’s one thing you’ve taken from being Arachnid, it’s to expect the unexpected. And you go through the orange portal after Jessica Drew and Miguel O’Hara with that exact mindset about you, staring at where an orange watch-like device is wrapped around your wrist.

It’s in your nature to be suspicious, and these people weren’t an exception to that.

In fact, their presence only heightened that behaviour. After all, what were you to expect from two Spider people, who supposedly came to you for your help?

You weren’t blind, you saw the aged lines of their faces the moment you got close enough to see them clearly, away from the dim lighting of the building. They were adults, adults who had clearly been doing this type of thing a lot longer than you had. You, who was barely bordering on adult, who had fought enough battles already to last a lifetime — so why would they need you?

It didn’t feel right.

And when this Miguel person summoned Lyla the moment you walked through the portal, it felt all the more wrong. She was a hologram of some kind, much higher tech than the kind of thing you saw on your earth. But then again, you had never really been in high tech labs back in your earth. Still, it unsettled you. “Lyla, get me the location of Green Goblin, Earth 5011.” He commanded, and they argued in hushed voices for a moment, before a wider hologram appeared, stamped at Earth 3899.

“How did she get to another universe?” You ask, then, because it doesn’t make sense, and you’re shaking underneath the thin material of your suit. You’re hyper aware of each drag of stitching against the wound on your leg, each patch of fabric you had sewn on in hopes of the suit lasting you just a little longer, because you didn’t have the resource to produce a new one.

“It’s an anomaly.” Jessica Drew tells you, her tone softer than you’d heard it, as if she was attempting to reassure you in some way.

It didn’t help. But how could it? The last time you had faced Gwen Stacy—Green Goblin— you had lost so much. It had been the beginning of the end of everything good in your life. The explosion she had caused at your mother’s laboratory was the very same one that killed her, the very same explosion that sent you and your dad miles apart all while living in the same home. And still, you found a way to hope that there was something to salvage within Gwen.

But not only had you lost your mother, and not long after — your father, you had also lost your closest friend. The one person you had confided in, who knew you from your surface to the deepest level, and she had used that against you the moment the Goblin had taken over.

It had taken everything in you to beat her, back then.

And that was on home turf! How did these people expect you to do that a second time, in a completely unfamiliar place?

“Specifics aren’t important right now. Jessica, you take Arachnid. Lyla, send another one of the teams.” Miguel instructed, dismissing your questions right off the bat. It was frustrating. They were leaving you completely in the dark, and sending you to fight the worst enemy you had ever faced, and they were sending you alongside others like you from different universes. It was like asking you to bare your soul in front of them, to reveal your secrets, your deepest regrets, everything that you wanted to stay buried.

You knew Green Goblin. You knew that’s exactly what she would do. She would undermine you, she would lay your life out in front of you like tiles on a scrabble board. In the end, none of it amounted to much.

Jessica Drew made her way out, glancing at you and nodding for you to follow along. Your moment of hesitation had drawn Miguel’s attention, and he called out to you after a moment of hesitation. “We’ve all faced one like it, kid. It’s easier with others.” He told you, though he held a pained expression on his face all the while. Instead of admitting to the way he had hit the nail right on the head, you simply nodded and followed after Spider-woman.

It was a whirlwind from there.

Meeting up with others. Travelling the length of the so-called Lobby to wherever it was that Jessica was taking you. When you finally arrived, she offered an empty glass box with a mannequin inside, bare. She gestured towards it like it should’ve been self explanatory, but soon realised she’d have to spell it out for you.

You shouldn’t have been so upset by the offer of a new suit.

But you were.

This suit was your life. You had nothing outside of it, not anymore. You couldn’t just throw it away, as if it meant nothing, as if every rip and patch and wonky stitch didn’t mean anything. These were proof that what you were doing was real, that it was worth something. Each stitch proved you had value. You weren’t about to throw all of that away, especially for whatever overly technical suit these people would provide.

You had everything you needed.

And so Jessica led you to the next destination: Earth 3899.

The moment you stepped through the portal, it was like you were hit with a wave of familiarity. And not in a positive, slightly nostalgic way, no— this was chaos. This was the state your world had been in when Green Goblin ran riot, unchecked. She had torn apart buildings, blown up parks, she had set New York City aflame. And she was doing exactly the same here.

It was more contained here than it had been on your earth, and you had to assume that was thanks to the Spider-man already on site, coordinating police, ambulance and fire responses to douse the fires as quickly as she set them. If only the police in your city had trusted you so much, back then.

“Where is she?” You ask, the moment you get close enough to speak to the resident Spider-man of the universe. He looks at you as if you’re familiar, but doesn’t comment, instead just pointing a finger toward a skyscraper just a short way ahead. You’re gone the moment he tells you where to go.

She had the uncanny ability to stay quiet. It had freaked you own back on your own earth, but it was even more terrifying here, where things were ever so slightly different.

“Arachnid.” Gwen’s voice called, and for a moment, you could forget. You could forget every horrible thing the Goblin had done, and you could remember your friend, your Gwen, who had called out to Arachnid more than once without knowing it was you behind the mask. Whether it was for a story or to provide information on your most recent opponent, the voice calling your alias was familiar. But then there was that crackle of laughter, an unnatural gurgle in the way it left her throat, and you turned to see the green-tinged pallor of her skin. “I was so hoping you’d show up.”

You didn’t know how much her appearance would effect you, until you were stuck to the side of the building, staring at what had once been your best friend. You’re so choked up that you can’t even formulate a response, because you want that to be Gwen so badly, but you know it isn’t. The more you look at her, the more Goblin you see, the more you know that the Gwen you love is never coming back.

“Nothing to say?” She asks, and then says your real name, the name she used to say down the crackle of a phone line, or across the school hallway, and she smiles. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You should’ve stayed in prison, Gwen.” You say, your voice unsteady as you say her name aloud for the first time in what must be forever. She seems to relish in the tremble of your voice, and you have to curse yourself for being so stupid, for already showing the vulnerability she was so easily able to pick out.

The Green Goblin tutted at you, stood atop her glider, but the smile you saw didn’t belong to Gwen. “You’re pathetically predictable, you know. You’re like a moth to the flame.” She tells you, and you fear that she’s right, that you’re the same person you were back when you fought her, back when she almost won. She sighs, like something heavy is weighing upon her, but it turns wistful in the blink of an eye. “I’m just glad your dad isn’t here to see this. He’d be so disappointed.”

“Arachnid, focus.” Jessica’s voice interrupts, before you can spiral down that rabbit hole. How did Gwen even know about your father? She was in prison long before he died. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe,” You say, that familiar tremble around your words. “He did always hope for the best for you.”

She bares her teeth at your words, the only visible reaction before her mask is slipping over the bottom of her face, stretching out up to pointed ears, all metallic and tinted a murky green. Then, she’s attacking.

It’s muscle memory, mostly, you think.

If you don’t think too hard about it, it could be like playing a game with a longtime friend from your childhood. You know the moves to make, you know how she’ll respond. It’s a constant push and pull, a balance which leaves only destruction behind, the path of the Green Goblin’s wrath tangible in each battle scene the two of you leave behind. You can’t beat her like this.

It’s her glitching that gives you a slight upper hand — and you send her careening off of her glider to the ground below.

Your heart squeezes suddenly in your chest as you watch her fall, her eyes wide in what could almost be perceived as fear. If you didn’t intervene, would she die? Would you have put an end to her story, once and for all, when you secretly hope there’s a cure out there for her? You can’t bear the thought of finding out, of watching her die, and so you foolishly dive after her.

A web to her midsection allows you to grip her before she hits the ground, and you set her down with a far more gentle hand than you would ever admit.

She says your name, then, a whispered version of it that sounds like Gwen. You think you can see her in those wide blue eyes, in that stare, and you approach with some caution. “Gwen,” You say, more of a question, “You with me?”

“I’m with you,” She answers, as you reach her side, as you resist the urge to pull off your mask. You’re so preoccupied staring at her expression that you don’t see the blade until it’s too late, your Spidey-sense failing you as you wallowed in your search for someone who was gone. “You sweet, predictable bug.” She spits then, twisting the blade she had sunk deep into your side, and you writhe, trying to move away from her.

“Arachnid!” Jessica Drew calls out, drawing the Green Goblin’s attention, allowing you to pull away from her slackened grasp. You leave the blade where it is, knowing your only slightly enhanced healing wouldn’t make up for the onslaught of blood that would pour from the wound. “I think that’s enough, Green Goblin.” Jessica says, riding a motorbike that you swore she didn’t have earlier. Nonetheless, she uses it to put even more space between you and your villain.

“You need a hand, kid?” A new voice asks, and a gloved hand reaches out for you where you had knelt against the tarmac. You look up, seeing a new Spider-man, but this one has his mask up, showing off his aged face and the bags underneath his eyes. You wave him off, staggering up to your feet, and clench your jaw as you stare at Green Goblin, watch as she pulls bombs from her waistband, barely the size of a chocolate bar, but capable of causing irreparable damage. “Get back to HQ, Arachnid, we can handle this.” Spider-man tells you, in what you suspect to be a fatherly voice, but you ignore him.

Time flies, slips out of your grasp, and you don’t know how long you and the others spend fighting Green Goblin, but she proves to be just as difficult of a foe for them to face as she was for you. Each time the three of you manage to get the drop on her, she slips away before she could be caught. It’s frustrating, and you can even see the way irritation thickens in the air, tangible.

Spider-man, or Peter, as Jessica had called him, is with you, focusing on trying to take Green Goblin down, whilst Jessica Drew is focused on damage control, blowing up Gwen’s bombs before they could hit their intended targets. You’re pretty sure the resident Spider-man is around here, too, pulling any lingering citizens out of harms way before Green Goblin could end them. You’d admit, it works better than you had done alone back on your own earth.

But it doesn’t work well enough, and more than one building is damaged almost beyond repair, and in the dust and rubble, Peter was distracted by the few citizens poking their heads out of the gaping hole in the side of their apartments. He didn’t see Green Goblin coming until it was too late, until she had thrown two of her bombs, one towards him, and one towards the already wrecked building.

Your throat dries up as you try to figure out what to do, who to go for, but in the end, you don’t have to choose.

Beams of glowing orange webs shoot into the bombs where they arc towards their victims, blowing them up and leaving both Peter and the civilians in the apartments without a scratch on any of them. Well, nothing that wasn’t already there before. You see him then, running alongside Jessica Drew, none other than Miguel O’Hara — who clearly didn’t think that the three of you were capable of handling Green Goblin.

“We’ve gotta end this.” Peter tells the three of you, glaring over at Green Goblin after coming so close to one of her bombs.

“You distract, I’ll go in.” You say, the only plan that makes sense. The only plan that’ll work. You wouldn’t be much use as a distraction, not with the blood still pooling around the blade hanging from your side, but you could beat her. You knew you could.

Peter nodded, and he, Jessica and Miguel went in one after another, landing hits on Green Goblin before she could even think to withdraw another bomb, or land a hit of her own, whilst you made your way behind her, swinging as high as you dared to go in your state. She was getting angry, you could tell, a distinct flush rushing up the back of her neck, a tell that Green Goblin shared with Gwen.

It was only when she was starting to turn the tide that you jumped down from your spot against the side of a building, looking for your opening.

She sent Jessica Drew tumbling off of her motorbike, which was your chance.

Green Goblin heard you only a moment before you were on her, not giving her a chance to make a countermove. Instead, you were curling your arms around her, as tight as you could, holding her hands away from her waistband. You gripped the blade in your side and yanked it out, holding it to her chest, breathing heavily through the pain as you bared your teeth at her, her face beside your own.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You say, and try not to hear the pleading in your own voice, the distinctive tone of a beg. You may have the upper hand on her, but as always, she had the power. “Don’t.” You repeat, because you can feel it in your bones that you would do it. If it was the choice between her or the hundreds that she would kill on this world, it would be those hundreds. There was no doubt about it, no questions to be asked.

You may have resented your mother, but she wasn’t the only one who died because of the Green Goblin. You wouldn’t let that happen again.

Perhaps she heard the plea in your voice, the giveaway that you weren’t bluffing, because she went still in your arms, still enough for the other Spiders to approach with some caution, eyes on her hands where you held them away from any weapons, using your forearm connected to the hand holding the blade to her chest to keep her left hand from grasping anything.

“I won’t be asking again.” You tell her, which is as much of a threat as you can muster. Or, more so, a promise.

As Miguel pushed you back with a firm hand, throwing a machine at Gwen’s feet, you think she understands. If the two of you are ever in that position again, there will be no hesitation about it. You will kill her.

“Good work, kid.” Peter says as Miguel and Jessica get to work with getting your Green Goblin through a portal to the HQ. He glanced down at where your hand is now pressing into your side, blood pouring steadily. In your other hand, you still hold the blade that had pierced your own skin, that would have killed Gwen Stacy had she not surrendered. He winces as if it’s him who got hurt, and guides you through the portal after the others. “C’mon, we’ll get you checked out. You not got enhanced healing?” He asks, though you suspect he doesn’t expect you to answer, and you’re glad.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

“I can do this myself, you know.” You sigh, wincing as a Spider-man — who apparently is also a doctor and works in the Spider Society’s infirmary — stitches up the wound on your midsection. It’s uncomfortable, though less painful that when you do it yourself. Still, it’s uncomfortable to accept help from these strangers.

“Ooh, shouldn’t say that to him.” Peter B. Parker laughs, one of the many Peter Parkers of the Society, but the same one who had fought Green Goblin with you. “He’ll lecture you on proper healthcare for days if you give him the opportunity!”

The Spider-doctor glares at Peter, or you assume he does, from the slight squint of the lenses of his mask. He kisses his teeth under the mask, tutting, muttering about “Spiders and their complete disregard for their health. Lucky you haven’t died ten times over from infections.” But he doesn’t say anything that requires a response from you, and he soon finished up the stitches. He goes to offer to fix up the injury on your ankle, but you’re up on your feet before he can even get the words out.

“Now, I gotta get back home to the wife, but Miguel wants to see you. He’ll take you home,” Peter tells you as he walks out of the infirmary by your side, but he stops you in the hallway with a hand on your shoulder, surprisingly gentle. “If that’s what you want.”

Your eyebrows furrowed before you could stop them, and the confusion over his words must’ve been written all over your face.

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” You ask, defensively.

Peter opens his mouth, but nothing escapes. Instead, it’s his expression that tells you everything he’s thinking. The crease between his brows screams pitying, or sympathetic. He’s talking about the way you live back on your earth, about the life you lead, Arachnid by day, and by night. With no room for you, no room for your secret identity. He’s thinking of the way you’ll be returning to a world with nobody awaiting you, with not a soul to look out for you, to stitch you up after a battle. Nobody but yourself, anyway.

You pull away from him, brows furrowing further, into an almost angered expression, and you don’t watch the way his hand falls away from your shoulder back to his side. He sighs when you turn away, scoffing as you make your way through the hallways of the Lobby towards where you think Miguel will be.

It’s overwhelming, all of these people. They all believe that they know you, that they know your circumstances, your story, but the truth is that they don’t. Nobody does, and that’s the way you prefer it. You don’t need a Society of Spiders surrounding you, breathing down your neck, telling you they’re sorry, or not trusting you to handle yourself in your own fights, because you can handle yourself. You’ve spent the last year of your life trying to prove that, trying to prove that you can do good things, that you’re worthy of the title Arachnid. You certainly shouldn’t need to prove that to a whole Society of people like you, most of which had been doing the job a lot longer.

You’re capable and you’re content.

You don’t need a life as your secret identity to be content, in fact, it’s better without one. You don’t have to tell so many lies, don’t have to worry about hurting the people you love, because there are none of them left. There’s nobody to hurt, and there’s nobody to lie to. Why would you want to change that?

The hallway ahead looks familiar, and you follow it until you enter a room where Miguel stands, looking at orange tinted screens on a platform halfway up the room. You enter with the absolute certainty that you want to return to your own earth, and you’re not going to let anybody stop you.

“I’m ready.” You tell him, expectantly.

He scoffs, saying nothing, still staring at the screens in front of him. For whatever reason, the reaction makes you angry — inexplicably so. You’re slinging up to the platform before you can have a second thought about it, and you’re pushing his shoulder so he’ll face you, so he’ll acknowledge you.

He stares at you, unimpressed.

“Send me back to my earth.” You press, brows furrowed beneath your mask, but you’re sure he can see the anger in the way your shoulders tense up.

“Sure,” Miguel said blankly, staring at you as if you’d suddenly change your mind or something. “But you know, there’s a lot more like her.” He added on when you said nothing, waiting for him to send you back to your world so you could give him back the stupid watch still wrapped around your wrist.

You stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “There are no more like her.” You respond, feeling that hot press on your chest. You don’t want to talk about Gwen Stacy anymore than you’re sure he’d like to talk about whatever he had gone through in his life. Hell, you don’t even want to think about her, but you know that nobody else you would ever have to face would hurt you in the way that she did. In the way that having to see her as an enemy, rather than your friend, had hurt. So, yeah, there was nobody like her, not for you.

Miguel seems ready to let you go for a moment, but then he’s shaking his head at you. “You have a place here. You can be with people like you. You don’t have to do this alone, anymore.” He says, and you think that is ironic, because you don’t see anybody else in here. To you, it seems like he is doing exactly that; doing the job alone. You can practically see the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I prefer being alone.” You tell him, and it has to be true. It has to be.

His jaw sets, acceptance, you think, and he nods. He glances past you, to where a portal was open on the floor below. Considering that you hadn’t seen him set up the portal, you’d wager that his AI Lyla must’ve listened in and done it for him. You pull the watch off of your wrist, relishing in the way your very atoms seem to sag with the weight of being in another dimension.

“Thanks.” You say, and drop down, landing on your sore ankle but not murmuring a word about the pain. You walk back to your world with your head held high, despite your tattered suit and multitude of wounds that would take days to stop hurting.

Miguel stares after you as the portal closes, eyebrows furrowed. He barely acknowledges Jessica Drew’s arrival in the room, already having known she had been lingering in the hallway, listening in. “Well, that went well.” She comments, glancing between where the portal had been and where Miguel stands, brooding. She knows how much pressure he puts on himself, and she knows that he cares about each and every Spider-person in the multiverse. It doesn’t take a Spider-sense to see the way in which you struggle. It’s a familiar struggle, sure, but there were so many Spiders across the multiverse who had a shoulder to lean on in their hardest times. Who did you have? There was no Aunt May for Arachnid, or Gwen Stacy, or Harry Osborne, or, well, anybody.

Jessica thinks that if anybody were to know exactly how that felt, it would be Miguel.

[morphodae]

Gregory Violet |Headcanons

Including general, relationship (x reader), and some modern au as a bonus!

These headcanons kind of trickle down into a story/narrative so please bear with it lol (plus: these are to warm up! I have ideas for future oneshots)

cw: none

Read more P4 headcanons here: 🦉x ,🌹 x ,🌱 x

General:

I see Gregory coming from a well-off family. They might not have the highest rank out there (they’re probably a viscount or baron nobility rank), but they have enough to send Gregory to Weston.

Either Gregory is an only child, eldest, or youngest. I have a feeling that he may not be super close with his family; perhaps he comes from a blended family or doesn’t have many siblings.

Naturally, his talents sent him to Weston College— which is unnatural for a lot of noble, rich London boys. Most get in for status and money, Gregory got sent there for his talents. Gregory was born with talents and had great expectations placed on him while he was content to create art and do things on his own.

When he was younger, he was obviously different compared to noble boys and girls around him— or general kids of the era. Being so “different, odd, and weird” was something that bothered him in his younger years, but once he turned 18 he stopped caring about others’ opinions. He’s his own person and he couldn’t care less what others have to say about it.

As such, he’s very obviously not thrilled to go to a crowded, renown, high-end school, but thankfully he was sorted into a House that accentuates his eccentricities with others like him. Still, he tends to keep to himself (as most introverts) save for a few close friends— Redmond, Greenhill, and Bluewer.

He’s “eccentric” by many peers but if he were in modern times, he’s definitely neurodivergent at the least. Definitely not me projecting my own autism /s lol.

One misconception is that people believe him to be antisocial or too “moody” when this is not the case. Gregory has a vibrant inner world and is an excellent observer; which allows me to transition into how a relationship with him might be.

Relationship:

Gregory isn’t one to actively seek anyone out, let alone a significant other. For any sort of relationship to have with this artsy fellow, you’d have to either 1) be someone who stands out with the time period’s standards (like him) or 2) have to be brought into his life suddenly and stay for a while before anything remotely romantic happens.

It’s fun to see him with someone who is either a lot like him or someone who is a bit of an opposite— although mostly in external appearance and I’ll explain why.

I don’t think someone who is a polar opposite to be someone who suits Gregory.

If say, someone preferred cutesy girly things or pastel colors and sunlight, that’d be fine. However, I see a calmer personality with a lot of empathy and respect being something he’d need. Otherwise I don’t think a boisterous loud person to be someone that he’d see himself with romantically.

With that said, courting you is… a feat lol. It takes Cheslock (poor Gregory), and the rest of the P4 to really push him in the direction of you.

When it finally happens and Gregory and you are able to formally meet and court, all five of them practically cheer lol. No one thought he’d be the type to find a s/o and Gregory’s parents were concerned he’d die alone :(

Because of expectations of his nobility, I do expect he’d marry you in some way irregardless of gender. But with you, someone he’s not arranged to and someone he truly loves, he tends to view it as a romantic and passionate expression of his commitment towards you.

A relationship with Gregory is majorly spent in comfortable silence. I’d say quality time is a major thing with him. However, he, like a lot of introverts, still needs ample time to himself— so don’t expect him to be glued at your hip. Plus, for that time period, PDA and general overt displays of affection whether in public or private was generally seen as odd. Gregory, for one, doesn’t care too much for the status quo but he is still figuring out his first relationship with you and how to navigate it while respecting you.

In a modern au, he’d be a bit more clingy in private. I see him as the type to play with your hair, study its shape and color for his sketches but mostly because it feels nice to him. If you are reading or gaming then I see him the type to sit behind you with his chin on your shoulder just enjoying quiet contact. It’s very wholesome. Alternatively, whether you lay with him on his chest or he on yours, he just enjoys quiet moments where he can be close to you.

He’s very reciprocal. By this I mean; you respect him and his hobbies, he respects yours. You show him kindness and care, so does he. He’s actually quite a classically romantic guy and is one to surprise you with flowers, food, and of course, sketches and art! He definitely cares and worries about your well-being and happiness (as seen in manga with his friends too!), so he will have his moments where it seems like he’s mother-henning you if he feels that you aren’t taking care of yourself.

Don’t be surprised that one of his first drawings of you was during his pining phase before the two of you formally spoke or courted lol.

Overall a relationship with Gregory is mostly spent in quiet understanding in silence with a partner who is able to empathically express and respect him mutually. Despite being a bit of an oddball for the time period he lives in, he still is a traditional romantic who loves to look after your well-being and give you gifts 💜

[ofc-vi-writes-too]

so all ive been able to think about is gotham for the past several days, and more specifically how gothamite culture has to be SO drastically different and jarring to literally anywhere else in the world. Like even other super cities like metropolis, or central city, or wherever else are at least KINDA normal. Like yea u have superman or wonderwoman or the flash but they dont really have to deal with the same level of bs as Gotham.

That being said here are a list of things that I think are extremely normal to Gotham, and other things that happen in thay horrible little city:

• the episode of Hot Ones with Brucie Wayne where no one thinks he’ll even be able to stand the 2nd or 3rd wing but he eats all of them with no reaction, and Sean Evans (or the in universe equivalent) just sits there like “wow no one has ever had literally no reaction before this is really crazy, and Bruce Wayne of all people?” Afterwards Bruce has second thoughts and realizes that maybe he should have played up his reaction to the spice a bit more. People Inside of Gotham are a little shocked because everytime he eats in public it is the most boring, bland, flavorless food imaginable. (he handled the spice so well because Batman is ready for all potential threats and forms of torture. Ridiculous levels of spice included)

• Gotham schools offer courses in self defense. In some school districts its actually mandatory, thats usually in old gotham or downtown gotham. In more affluent areas, self defense is still taught in schools, but most kids are sent to some ritzy trainer to make sure they can defend themselves.

• No one even blinks when theres a new vigilante by the time Damian comes around. Theres still a little buzz but by the time Duke shows up, people are like “Oh cool another one. HEY BRO WHATS YOUR NAME.” I saw someone post here about how when the Wayne kids get mad at Bruce, they go to Selina and make public appearances as Stray, Catwomans sidekick. I personally believe that Tim was the first one to do it but Dick does it the most, and gothamites didnt even need to get used to Stray showing up sometimes, nor did people really care that Stray was always wildly different heights, shapes, colors, etc. the additude is kinda like “I have taxes and job security to worry about. If a new vigilante is what were doing then so be it.”

• People tend to think that Gothamites aren’t smart, but that city is home to the Richest, smartest, most creative people alive. They mostly just lack morals. Like Dr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, hell even The Riddler are all insanely intelligent. Half of Gothams Villains have at minimum 2 Doctorates in something or other. Gotham generates a lot of cash as a whole, and small businesses thrive there. They have high employment rates, and most citizens have their associates despite everything happening around them. People who have never been to Gotham before expect to have to talk down to the citizens but Gothamites just kinda roll their eyes at them and carry on about their merriment.

• Gothamites CONSTANTLY says “because I’m Batman” when they don’t want to explain themselves. Kids hear it a lot from parents and they also get “If you don’t go to sleep, Condiment Man i gonna come and cover you in stinky relish.” Because truly what else is condiment man good for.

• Gothamites who work at BatBurger and typically work the night shift are used to visits from Batman, Robin, Red Hood, Cat Woman, Harley Quinn, etc. Sometimes they remember the workers and ask about their family, and how life is, and other things like that. Theres some barely 18 y/o who just graduated high school who worls at Bat Burger, and asked Red Hood to help him impress his gf by saying theyre friends. He like fuck it why not and tells the gf that the kid helped him save an old lady’s cat in a tree and now theyre bffs. She totally believes it. Score.

• I see the Gotham thinks Batman is Bruce Wayne’s boyfriend theories and raise you: Its pretty common knowledge that Bruce Wayne is Batman, just no one has the heart to tell him. Also theyre scared he will quit if anyone brings it up. So from this Gothamites created the joke that BW and batman are dating and when asked about it in an interview, dick grayson is like “……yes! My adoptive father is dating the guy who dressed up like a bat every night…!”

• this cuased and arguement between Bruce and Dick because no! Bruce isnt dating Batman! (stray was seen again that week) HE IS BATMAN! But fuck now the public thinks theyre a couple so now bruce gets asked about it and hes like “haha yes my spooky bat bf is who i love very dearly!” As punishment He makes Dick bring him flowers in the batsuit because “as far as he is concerned, this is his shithead son’s fault.” Thats a direct quote btw. Little does he know this somehow ties back to Tim Drake before they met.

[cobrakaisb]

call me, beep me, if you want to reach me

summary: percy, annabeth, and grover have some great news about their quest, but something is off about their hypothesis  

word count: 2.8k

featuring: reader and annabeth’s relationship, slightly steamy reader and luke scene, more percabeth crumbs, fluff and angst  

author's note: IM BACKKKKK...this one took me forever, and i am so sorry about that! between finals, coming home from college, and just dealing with life in general it has been a real struggle BUT we are finally back on the luke train 🤩 and trust, these next few parts are about to get real...anyways, enjoy 💗

series masterlist ||| previous ||| next

you run to the top of the hill, calling out to the three kids before they can cross the protective barrier surrounding camp half-blood.

“i just wanted to wish you guys good luck before you leave, although i’m sure you won’t need it,” you explain, walking up to the trio. 

annabeth smiles at you. there’s an excited gleam in her eyes, and you remember how she’s been waiting for this for years -- her chance at glory.

“thanks,” percy mumbles, not really knowing what to say. 

“i just…be safe okay?” you whisper, hands gripping tightly at annabeth’s shoulders while you look directly at her. 

she nods, “i will. i promise.” 

you nod in agreement, lips pursed in a tight line as you struggle to keep your emotions at bay. over the course of your years at camp, the bond between you and annabeth has grown exponentially. you love her like a little sister, one you’d do anything to protect. it scares you to think about her, a twelve year old kid, in the real world with no one looking out for her this time. 

she senses your anguish, and pulls you into a tight hug. you freeze at first, not used to the affection from her, but ultimately wrap your arms around her small frame. the two of you stand there for a minute, embracing each other, but break apart when luke calls out to you from the bottom of the hill. 

“it’s time to go,” he yells, and you imagine his pointed look and crossed arms. luke was just as worried as you, but he found it necessary to hide those feelings, claiming it was best for annabeth’s sake. you disagreed. 

you nod, stepping away from the kids, back towards the chaos of camp, “i’ll see you at the solstice.”

you watch, with your stomach in knots from nerves and a mouth full of anxiety, as the kids step past thalia’s tree and into the world of monsters.      

that was almost four days ago, and still no word from the trio. percy, annabeth, and grover were on their quest to find and return zeus’s master bolt, but the radio silence worries you. while you didn’t expect them to call every day to say good night — they needed to save their dracmas — you at least expected some type of update by now. the lack thereof leaves a nervous feeling in your stomach; something isn’t right, you know it, but you can’t quite determine what. 

“those are called feelings sweetie,” katrina replies when you explain your current predicament to her.

you suck your teeth at her words, shoving her shoulder as you mumble, “shut up.”

“i’m being serious! since when do you care about three twelve year olds? no scratch that, since when do you care about anybody?” she shouts, throwing her hands up. 

you look down at your converse, arms crossing over your bent knees as you sit and look at the rippling water. i care about luke, you think, and all those kids who will never experience a true family thanks to our parents. i care about you, and our friendship. i care about grover, who’s too kind for his own good. the list goes on and on, but you don’t say any of those names out loud. 

instead you respond with, “i care about annabeth.”

katrina openly scoffs at your words, leaning back on her palms. “oh please, i’m talking about that little blonde.” 

you sigh, looking at her over your shoulder. her short hair rustles in the breeze, and the unruly curls from spending the day in the water makes her possess a childlike innocence. if you didn’t know katrina, you’d think she was a sweet girl who’d chew you out for swearing, but you do know her; she’s anything but, and the constant taunting and teasing proves that. 

“there’s something different about percy,” you explain with a shrug. 

“yeah, it’s called your need to play mommy,” she mumbles. 

“oh shut up,” you gripe, getting up from your spot on the dock. you make sure to kick her calf, not too hard, on your way back to hera’s cabin. 

“harder,” luke commands, despite the sweat dripping down both of their faces. 

percy groans, throwing his head back in frustration. they’ve been going at it for hours, practicing various techniques and maneuvers with wooden swords. while percy’s claiming was still new, and his slaying of the minotaur with no experience was still the talk of the camp, it was obvious to everyone that he needed to train. there’s an impending war coming, and the blonde boy has found himself right in the middle of it. 

but he doesn’t even know what it is, you think, stepping into the dirt of the practice arena. 

“give him a break, luke. he needs some hydration,” you exclaim, holding up two refillable water bottles. 

they’re dripping in condensation, the ice from the pavilion already melting in the sweltering heat courtesy of long island summers. luke grumbles something under his breath, probably about how he doesn’t need a break, but takes the bottle from you with a squeeze of your hip. he stays close to your side as he drinks the water, and instead of giving him your attention, you’re busy looking over percy. 

“there’s a cut on your forehead,” you say, pushing back some of his curls to get a better look. 

“yeah, your boyfriend nicked me,” he replies, gesturing to luke with his chin. 

“it was an accident! how many times do i have to tell you?” luke defends.

“a lot more. i’m great at holding grudges,” percy announces, and you roll your eyes. 

“and that’s why you’re becoming friendly with annabeth?” you tease.

luke raises his eyebrows at your statement, looking over at the smaller boy, whose cheeks are suddenly a very dark shade of red. 

“that’s different,” he grumbles, pouring the remaining water on his head. 

“uh huh, right. whatever floats your boat i guess,” you reply, patting his cheek in a motherly fashion. percy swerves with an eye roll fit for a teenager. 

“anyways, i’ll let you guys get back to it,” you announce, turning to face luke. 

you kiss his cheek, and his palm splays across your waist. he gives it a gentle squeeze, a small sign of affection in a hasty moment. you smile at him, leaning into his chest to whisper, “go easy on him.” 

“he’s training with the best swordsman in camp, he knows what to expect,” luke replies, cocky as ever, as you pat his sweaty chest three times before walking away. 

the training arena is packed when you arrive, brimming with younger kids and blaring noisy chatter. they’re all clad in some sort of battle armor: shields, bronze chest plates, and celestial bronze swords. it takes a minute for them to notice your presence, but when they do they part like the red sea. most of them have the sense to keep quiet, watching you with nervous eyes and wary glances, fueled by the words of their older siblings no doubt. others, the more gutsy of the bunch, have the courage to whisper the exact words they heard from their siblings, warning their friends about you and your anger. you, however, are focused on finding the tallest head amongst the group; the one housing messy, onyx curls. 

“he’s up front, helping jimmy with his armor,” a young girl whispers shyly, drawing designs in the dirt with the tip of her sword.

you stop walking, turning to face her. she’s young, no older than eight, and you feel the edges of your hard exterior soften from the sight of her pigtails and pink twinkle toes. you smile softly at her, hoping that it doesn’t scare her off. 

“thank you,” you say, “i love your shoes.” she smiles at your words, giggling quietly to herself as a small blush coats her cheeks. 

just as she goes to answer, luke appears at your side with, who you can only assume, is jimmy. you smile softly at him, ready to explain why you’re here in the first place, but luke beats you to it:

“let me just give them some instructions, then we can talk, okay?” he whispers, his free hand taking its place on the small of your back.

you hum in agreement, watching fondly as he takes charge of the large group of young demigods. he instructs them to practice the methods he just demonstrated in pairs, explaining that he’ll be walking around to give feedback once he’s done talking to you. as the kids partner up, he leads you to the side of the arena, where he finally meets your gaze with a raised brow. 

“what?” you ask, crossing your arms at his confused stare. 

“you never come here while i’m teaching lessons,” he answers.

“well, maybe i’m starting to,” you reply. 

luke scoffs at your words, “no shot. what’s really going on?” 

“i could be!” 

“but you’re not. you hate their judgy, beady, little eyes. so, what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours to make you seek me out while i’m in the middle of lessons?” he continues, his fingers playing with the waistband of your shorts. 

you take a deep breath, meeting his chocolate brown eyes on the exhale, and state your concerns: “i’m worried. why haven’t we heard from them yet? it’s been days, and it’s not like annabeth to keep us completely in the dark.” 

luke sighs at your words, “i’m sure they’re fine.” 

you raise your eyebrows at his unexpected answer. this is luke, the same guy who refused to let you and annabeth out of his sight during capture the flag, talking? not a chance. 

“so you’re not worried, at all?” you ask, searching for the true reason behind his lack of worry. 

luke clenches his jaw at your words, looking away from you as he stares off into the distance. his eyebrows furrow, and you can see something flicker across his face. you don’t know what it is, but you know he’s battling something within himself. 

“luke?” you ask softly, resting your hand on his bicep. 

he shakes his head, a carefree smile taking over his face as he says, “it’s annabeth. she’s the smartest, most careful person i know. nothing’s wrong.” 

you eye him warily, and nod your head slowly, “right. i guess i’m just overthinking.” 

luke smiles, a teasing look in his eyes as he nudges your foot with his own. you look up at him, a breathy laugh escaping your lips as you meet his playful gaze. 

“you always are,” he mumbles, followed by a loud laugh as you shove his shoulder. 

he plants a quick kiss on your temple, hands rubbing up and down your sides before whispering, “i’ll stop by your cabin tonight. once they’re all tucked in.” 

you hum in agreement, watching as he departs from your side and heads to the closest duo to provide feedback.  

****

the door creaks open, and luke slips inside before the harpies register the noise. you’re already awake, patiently waiting for him on the singular cot in the cabin. the eternal flames of the fire pit burn brightly, leaving dangerous shadows on your face, illuminating the storm brewing inside. 

“you’re late,” you quip, not even bothering to look up from your book. 

you’re laying on your stomach, propped up on your forearms with a paperback book in your hands. you’re in your usual sleep attire, shorts and a tank top, and luke has to physically hold back a groan. he’s never wanted you so badly in his life, but instead of expressing that desire, he apologizes for his actions.

“some of the younger campers were arguing, you know i had to settle that,” he whispers, burying his face between your neck and left shoulder. 

luke kisses your bare skin, slightly warmed from all the sun you’ve been getting recently. your head tilts, giving him access to more skin, and he doesn’t deny that. his lips move to your neck, leaving more than a few marks. 

“careful. hera’s watching,” you tease, closing the cover of your book. 

“let her,” he mumbles, practically moaning when you thread your fingers through his hair. 

“oh you’d love that,” you taunt, tugging on his curls. 

luke’s right arm wraps around your waist, flipping you onto your back, while his left pushes your book to the floor. your mouth falls open in shock, and you gasp quietly. he smirks at your expression, feeling satisfied to have you speechless. before you can ruin the moment, he captures your mouth with his. 

the kiss is rough, all tongue and teeth. his left hand settles next to your head, while his right tugs your hips closer to his. your fingers are still lodged into his curls, and you use them to keep his face pressed against yours. he pulls back, gasping for air, but keeps his forehead planted against your skin. before he can reconnect your lips, you’re kissing all over his face.

“missed you,” you murmur in between kisses. 

luke sighs, relaxing into your arms as the tension from camp counselor duties and other activities leaves his body. he knows eventually he’s going to have to tell you. he thinks it will be something like ripping off a band aid. but, for now, when he has you so eagerly in his arms, and he’s content with baring the brunt of the burden. besides, the kids aren’t even close to figuring out the truth, he’s sure of it. 

****

“we know who stole the bolt,” percy announces, nothing but confidence in his voice. 

luke falters, but only for a second, before asking, “how do you know?”

immediately, annabeth starts rambling. she mentions an encounter with ares, how he knows who the thief is, but was clearly covering for them. as she talks, luke realize that their suspicions are anything but correct, in fact, they’re so far into leftfield it’d be considered a homerun. yet, he runs with it, not willing to give himself up.

“so who would ares cover for?” annabeth finishes, waiting for luke to answer. 

“his favorite daughter. clarisse is the lightning thief,” he answers, making sure to sound shocked by their groundbreaking discovery. 

“chrion’s got to arrest her, find out what she knows. there’s more to this than just the bolt, something bigger,” percy explains.

luke and annabeth share a look of uncertainty, one that percy picks up on because he quickly adds, “don't ask me how i know, you’ve just got to trust me.” 

as luke is about to assure the kids that he’ll get to it straight away, you walk into the office. 

“talking to yourself again, castellan? i knew you were crazy but not this off the rocker,” you tease, stepping closer to his side. 

as you approach, you see the faces of annabeth and percy in the mist. you smile at the sight of them. while they look tired, they seem pretty intact and much better off than you expected.

“how’s your quest going?” you ask, hoping to hear some positive news. 

“not too bad. between ares, the chimera and medusa, i’d say we’re doing pretty good,” percy exclaims.

your eyes widen at his words, and you look to luke to see what his reaction is, but he’s not even looking at you. instead he’s watching the two demigods arguing about which monster occurred each day. he smirks at the sight of them, gently bumping his hip with yours before saying, “what is this?”

“what?” annabeth answers, confusion written all over her face. 

“since when did you guys turn into an old married couple?” luke continues to tease, and you smile at the kids’ shocked faces. percy blushes at luke’s comment, and annabeth makes a point to avoid your gaze.

“not to change the subject, but we need your advice luke. we’re going to vegas and…” before percy can say another word, the iris message cuts out, the connective screen dissipating along with the rainbow that brought it here.

“well that was entertaining,” you joke, turning to face your boyfriend. 

you expect him to laugh at your words, but his face is set into a hard line. his arms are crossed and jaw clenched as he stares at the spot where annabeth and percy’s faces were previously occupying. his thoughts are clearly running a mile a minute, and you step into his line of sight, calling out to him. 

“they think they know who the lightning thief is,” he grumbles, gaze still distant and cold. 

“what? who?” you ask, stepping closer to him. while it’s only the two of you in the room, you don’t want to risk anyone else hearing; this isn’t the sort of thing that should be spread around camp, even if you hate the majority of the people here. 

“clarisse,” he starts, “but they’re wrong.” 

“how do you know?” you ask, nothing but confusion plastered all over your face. 

“because it’s actually me,” luke replies, finally meeting your gaze.

taglist: @percabethlvr @iwantahockeyhimbo @hottiewifeyyyy @loveryoushouldcomeoverr @maraschinocherry3 @used2beee @harrysnovia @cami-is-reading @mxtokko @cxcilla @obxstiles @dracoslovergirl @vanessa-rafesgirl @l1a-pjosversion

[ellana-ravenwood]

You idiot ! - Batfam x fem!reader

Synopsis : It is rare, for you to be genuinely mad at your family. Extremely rare. But when they put their life in danger to save yours, you cannot help but give them a good ol’ scolding. 

Bonus story. I’m planning on writing and posting another one before I go on my honeymoon next Saturday, this is just something short I suddenly wanted to write. A few snippets of “that time your husband/kids put themselves in great danger to save you”, and I hope you’ll like it : 

Please, do not repost my stories anywhere else, under any other form. Do not translate and then repost them either. Thank you.

My masterlists : @ella-ravenwood-archives​

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Bruce

“YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT !!” is not what Bruce expected to hear from you, after he just saved your life. 

And yet here you were, punching at his chest, tears in your eyes, mad as hell. 

“How dare ?! How dare you throw your life away like that ? Did you stop a minute to think about how I’d feel ? Do you think I want to watch you die for me ?? You idiot, you damn freaking IDIOT !!” 

Each words were punctuated by a punch to his chest, expressing your frustration to its fullest. 

You couldn’t help it. Your emotions entirely took control. There was no “trying to calm down”, because-because-if you had lost him...

How dare. How dare he ?! 

“You don’t just jump in front of me like that, you idiot ! What if the bullet had touched you more badly ?? What if you had died ? There ? Right in front of me ?”

Bruce didn’t know what to say. He reacted before he could think. He saw you in danger, about to be shot by that thug, and jumped in front of you, shielding you with his body. 

Fortunately, the thug missed, and only grazed Bruce’s shoulder. It didn’t take him long to take care of the criminal, and coming to check on you. 

You were silent, at first. Clearly shocked. And he understood, you almost died. You were in grave danger. It would’ve shaken anyone. 

Except...Except that wasn’t the reason you were mad at him. Oh no. The reason you were mad, was exactly because he saved you. Or rather, the way he saved you. 

How selfish, to sacrifice his life to save yours. Because if he was gone...if he was gone...

You didn’t want to live in a World without him in it. Not anymore. And yes, you understood why he jumped in to save you, regardless of his safety. But it didn’t make you any less mad at him. 

“What were you thinking, shielding me like that ?? What if I had felt you die in my arm ? What if I- What if I-that would’ve been horrible...”

To be honest, Bruce didn’t think of the aftermath of it all. He gladly jumped in front of you so you could survive, and didn’t think further than that. 

But now that he had time to think, he realized : yes. How horrible it would be, to be the reason the love of your life died. 

Bruce couldn’t even imagine it. He already felt so guilty about his parents’ death, even if he now knew he wasn’t to blame. So if he was the reason you would die ? 

His arms closed themselves around your frame, holding you close to his chest, where his heart was beating (so you would know he was still here, with you). You resisted a bit, at first, still telling him how much of an “idiot” he was, but then you yielded and fell into his embrace. 

Bruce hadn’t realized, in the moment, that his action of saving you could’ve devastated you. 

“How could I ever heal, knowing I’m the cause of your death ?” You whispered, exhausted now. Crying was tiring. 

He held you, close, and didn’t let go up until you finally calmed down. 

To him, your anger was justified. Because if the situation was reversed, he would’ve never forgiven you for leaving him all alone.

He knew for a fact, that he couldn’t stand back up after losing you. He would continue on living, yes, but as a shell of a human being. Carrying out his “justice” mission, soulless, mechanical, shut away from all feelings. 

Without you, he would never be whole again. He knew that. And yet, he almost did that to you. Because he couldn’t bear to live without you, he almost died himself to save you ? 

He understood your anger. He did. Because he knew the depth of his own love for you, he knew how precious your life was for him. He knew you were the love of his life. That’s why he was holding onto you so dearly now, why he apologized, as you weeped in his arms. Crying from relief, and from the very idea that he could be ripped away from you, just like that. Right in front of you. 

Yes. Bruce knew why you reacted that way. Knew how you felt, and knew his own feelings were even grander. And that’s why-

That’s why he couldn’t promise that he would never do it again. 

Dick 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING !!??” 

Dick was stunned. This was the first time you ever yelled at him. Not even when he had his fit of anger, when he was almost mean to you because of his pain, or when he did some bad things, did you ever get mad at him. 

He wasn’t used to it. He always took the fact that you were nice, gentle, and that you’d bear any of his bad mood, that he was truly and utterly stunned. 

“How could you be so reckless ? Richard, how could you do this ?!” 

You called him “Richard”. You never called him “Richard” before. It was yet another proof, that you were truly mad at him. 

Dick Grayson, recently adopted into the Wayne family. Officialy yours and Bruce’s son. 9 years old. Not supposed to be on patrol yet. Still jumped head first into danger when he saw your life was at risk. 

It was one of those boring galas he hated. Everything went by so quickly. Armed men entered, and you immediately were a prime target. 

Things got out of hand too fast, and you were about to be shot when-

Dick swung from a low hanging chandelier, and kicked the man with the gun, almost getting shot himself in the process. After that, Bruce came to the rescue, later saying something like : “I took jujitsu in high school” to explain how fast he got rid of the bandits (interesting, how gothamites would just drink his every words without ever suspecting him to be Batman...What, elegant, delicate, warm, extroverted and handsome Bruce Wayne ? Being the Batman ? Inconceivable !). 

Everyone praised your little one for his braveness. Everyone...but you. 

Thankfully, people quickly shifted away, attracted to your husband like bees to a fresh flower. He did it on purpose, of course. Got their attention on him, like he was so skilled to do, so you could have your moment with your son. 

He knew it was coming. 

When he saw little Dickie jump in there, his heart stopped. He was near you fast, but not fast enough to stop his son. Bruce saw his life flash before his eyes, fearing he would see his little kid get badly hurt, or worst. 

But the boy was not to be underestimated, and he did indeed take his training seriously. Still. He was really afraid. Now, he managed to release his fear by beating those guys who dared threaten his family. But you ? Oh boy, you- 

“What were you thinking Dick ? Mmm ? You could’ve been seriously hurt ! Don’t ever do that again !” 

You were holding him by the shoulders, to make sure he was looking at you in the eye. And you were mad, oh so mad. He wasn’t used to it. 

“But I- I don’t want to- I can’t-I...I can’t lose another family.”

He managed to say, before...

Before bursting into tears. 

And that stopped your rant right away.  

You froze, his tears making you feel distressed. What were you doing ? Yelling at your son like that ? 

It was wrong. Of course, your feelings poured out all at once after you got so scared for your baby’s life, but it was still wrong. 

Dick was only 9 years old. He saw you were in danger, and he jumped in. 

He already witnessed once his family dying in front of his eyes, without him being able to do anything...Of course, he wouldn’t let it happen twice. 

He was crying heavy tears now, trying to tell you, to explain to you he couldn’t bear to lose another family. He couldn’t. 

He uttered a few words, there and there, talking about how he didn’t want to, couldn’t, lose you, and it broke your heart. 

How dare you, scream at such a small boy ?

You quickly took him into your arms, and he held onto you for dear life, burying his face into your shoulder. You picked him up, as Bruce shifted the crowd away from you two. You saw the worry in his eyes as he saw you walking away with Dick in your arms. Was the boy hurt ? 

Only you, could’ve discern his worry. With your own eyes, you reassured him. Your son was fine. But he needed his parents. 

He needed to know neither you, nor Bruce, were going anywhere. 

You rushed outside, before anyone could notice your crying son, protecting him in your arms (oh, the memories of how tiny Dicky used to be, he had a sudden growth spurt only around 16 !). Bruce quickly followed, and Alfred, as usual, was ready to leave before Bruce even shut his door. 

You went home, and didn’t leave Dick’s side up until he finally fell asleep. And even then, you stayed near him, holding his hand, so he could feel you were still here. Not letting go. Never letting him go. 

So he would know. So he would know that he didn’t have to put his life in danger so he wouldn’t lose you. So he would know, that no matter what, you would always be there. 

Jason

“Don’t make me live through that ever again, Jason. Don’t you dare ! What do you think I’ll feel, knowing I am the cause of your death ? Knowing that if I hadn’t been there, you would’ve survived ?? How can I ever heal from not only losing you, but knowing it’s because of me ??”

Jason didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to react. 

“Mom, it wasn't because of-”

“Don’t do that ever again !” 

He couldn’t find the right words. He just couldn’t. 

When he died, after the Joker killed him, he came back to life feeling so angry. Angry that nobody seemed to care enough to kill that fucking clown ! Angry that his parents didn’t do it for him !! 

Angry. So angry. 

And now, after he started to forgive you and Bruce, he realized...

He realized that, of course, you cared. 

You cared so much in fact, that both you and his father felt guilty. Felt like you had killed your son. 

And that’s why right now, as he jumped in front of you to save you from imminent danger, you were such a mess. 

Tears ran down your face, and you were angry. So angry. 

Angry because, how dare he throw his life away ? After all he went through ? 

“You deserve peace, and happiness. You deserve to have a long life, full of joy. So don’t- Don’t do that ever again !”

Jason felt his throat clench. The love in your words, how much you cared for him, your wish for him to simply be happy...It was gut wrenching. 

He wasn’t angry anymore. He came to understand his father’s vision, and to know why you didn’t kill the Joker either. He came to see things your way. He came to realize that-

That both you and Bruce loved him so much, that it almost shattered your lives, when he died. 

That you almost crumbled, unable to ever stand back on your feet again. 

That the pain was so grand, you barely made it. 

You both loved him. 

You loved him so much, it hurt sometimes. And through your words, Jason felt that. That love he thought you didn’t have for him. 

It was there. It had always been there. 

He wasn’t angry anymore. Because know, he knew. He knew. 

“What is the point of living, if my baby dies before me ?” You asked, your voice cracking on the last words. 

Jason felt his heart breaking for you, and made a promise to himself. Never. Never again will he be the reason you felt that way. Never again will he make you cry. Never. 

He sat next to you, and gave you a hug. You returned it, of course. And he allowed you to cry (out of relief, mainly), staying with you until you calmed down. 

He would feel broken, if you ever died. He knew he would. 

And the thought that you would feel the same way, was both sad, yet comforting. 

He was loved. He was so loved. 

Tim

Tim had the “savior’s complex”, for sure. 

The first time he was unable to solve a case fast enough, and an innocent person ended up dying, he blamed himself for weeks. Months. Hell, you were pretty sure he remember that first case, and often used it as a driving force to do better. 

Tim always pushed himself to his limits, just so he could save people. Ever since he was a child, he had been like that. That’s why he sought Bruce in the first place, he so dearly wanted to help ! 

Yes. Tim had always been the one who needed to save others. 

And so, when he saw you, his mom, in danger, he didn’t think twice. 

He jumped into action, and save you, to the detriment of his own safety. That’s what he was supposed to do, right ? Especially when it was his mom ! 

His bruises and cuts didn’t bother him, all he cared about was that you were ok. Safe and sound. And when you said : “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING ?!”, as you started to get mad at him, he only said : 

“I saved you. That’s what I do. That’s what-”

You cut him off, saying : 

"YOU ARE A CHILD, TIM !! There is no reason in this world that justifies your sacrifice to save me !!” 

Silence. 

A short one. 

He’s never seen you so angry. 

Tim looks at you, and slowly, he face falls. His lips turns down. Tears are gathering in his eyes. 

For once, he cannot control his emotions. He cannot do that thing he always does during tough moments, when he detaches himself from his feelings (like father, like son ?). 

He cannot. 

“I’m sorry mom. I just-I didn’t-”

He doesn’t have to finish his sentence. You know. 

You know. 

Because you felt the same. One person is missing, and the whole world is empty. 

He didn’t want to lose you, is what he wanted to say. But he couldn’t, overwhelmed by his feelings. Those feelings he so carefully tried to keep in control at all times. All pouring out at once. 

He had been so scared, so scared ! What if he couldn’t make it in time ? What if you died right in front of his eyes ? 

For once, he acted without thinking. He jumped in there, with only one plan : saving you. And that’s what he did, and not even getting too hurt in the process. Phew. 

But you were mad. You were mad at him, because you were scared to. 

What if you had seen him die right in front of you ? Your own son ? Your baby ?

And Tim let it all go. All his emotions. 

You were next to him in an instant, taking him into your arms, drawing soothing circles on his back. 

Tim felt so vulnerable, and for once, he didn’t mind. On the contrary. Because he felt so relieved. 

You were ok. You were ok. 

That’s all that mattered, or so he thought...It only mattered because him too, was ok. One day, he would come to understand that. 

But for now, all he needed, was to let his emotions run free, and for his mom to be there, and reassure him that, yes. You were still here. 

And you always would be, even when he was acting like a reckless idiot. 

Cassandra

She didn’t back down. She didn’t apologize. In fact, she stood there, facing you, proud as a hawk. And then she frowned. 

She was the only one that never backed down in such a situation. On the contrary, she said, looking at you right in the eye : 

“If I had to do it again, I would !” 

Such strength, in those words. 

She was telling you that you had no right to be angry, because given the chance, you would’ve done the same (which was true). Could you really blame her for not thinking of herself, when you were in danger ?? 

You were her mom. 

She only had one mom. 

She couldn’t bear to lose her. 

No. Absolutely not. 

“If I had to do it again, I would !”

She would do it for her dad, for her brothers, for her friends...

Too long, was Cass used for evil. By those who called themselves “parents”, whose only goal were to fabricate the perfect human weapon. 

She was used to hurt so many, and never really had a choice in the matter...

So if now, she chose to sacrifice herself so that only one of her loved one could survive...She would. 

It was her choice. HERS. And nothing you could tell her would change her mind. You knew that. You knew and, it was as if your anger instantly disappeared. 

Usually, it would disappear after a few admonitions, after you yelled at them enough. But this time, she didn’t even let you start. Didn’t even let you question her actions. 

She would not let you die, period. If it meant for her life to end, then so be it. 

“If I had to do it again, I would !” 

It was her choice. Hers. 

Her mom’s life was worth any sacrifice. Including the ultimate one, her own life. 

“Mom.” 

Mom...You skipped right above the “anger” part of the aftermath of them putting themselves in danger for you, and went to the “my babies” part, during which you would hold onto them, glad they were still alive. 

Cass gave your hug back, fiercely, decisively. 

“If I had to do it again, I would !” 

Never again, would she hurt someone else. Never again, would she stand by doing nothing.

She had found a family, she would never let any of you go. 

And she’d rather die, before putting herself in safety first in a situation during which she could save you. 

Damian

Damian woke up, and he was at Wayne Manor, in one of the rooms specifically made for medical attentions that they set up. Leslie Thompkins would come take care of you guys, in those rooms with all the materials you could find in a proper hospital. 

Having your own at home hospital made it easier to hide certain wounds your family would get because of their “vigilante’s activities”. It came in handy, for sure. 

Like today, as Damian needed urgent care after he rushed to save you, and took the brunt of the blow for you. 

Damian woke up. First, one eye, finding it difficult to adjust to the bright white lights. And then, the second eye, finally focusing on his surroundings. 

And here you were, sat in an armchair next to his bed, your arms in a cast. 

At first, your youngest son panicked. No ! You were hurt ! 

But quickly, he realized you had no other wound but your broken arm, and he relaxed a bit, slowly realizing that...his entire body hurt. 

Ah. Yes. He’s the one who jumped in front of you, and got most of the impact. Without thinking, just seeing his mom in danger, he took the matter in hands and...The rest was foggy. 

He couldn’t really remember much, except you gathering his body against you, and screaming that you needed help. 

Everything went to black, and he woke up in that “hospital” bed. And you were safe. That was all he needed to know.

“Boy, you’re in trouble. Also, I’m glad you’re safe.” 

Damian turned his head to the side and, ah, his father was here too. He was smiling at him, and added : 

“You’re lucky you’re mom was exhausted, and is fast asleep. Or that would’ve been a wake up call you’d remember.” 

His mind still a little hazy, Damian didn’t understand right away. 

“Are you okay ?” Bruce asked, and his son nodded, before saying : 

“What do you mean, wake up call ?” 

Your husband was so relieved that your son was ok, he sighed, fell back in his chair, and smiled, before saying :

“Well, I’m 100% sure she’s going to wake up and get very mad at you for putting your life in danger.” 

“But I-I saved her life ?”

“And you almost lost yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Try to think of the same situation, but reversed. How would you feel ?” 

Damian’s mind was clearing itself a bit, after a good night’s sleep and care. What if the situation was reverse ? 

“I would be mad.” he answered, and ah. Ah yes. Of course. So his mom had every right to get mad at him for being so reckless, right ? 

“But, dad...”

It was rare, for Damian to call him “dad”. He would do it only during certain times, usually when he was particularly tired, needed reassurance, or something like that. 

“I couldn’t- I don’t think I’d want to- I wouldn’t want to live in a World in which she’s not in anymore.” 

Simple words. Born from that deep feeling that Damian truly understood only recently...

Love. 

He loved his mom. He didn’t want her to die. And so he didn’t think, and saved her, even if it meant putting his own life in danger. 

“Is it wrong ?” 

He asked, and the innocence of his words touched Bruce’s heart, moved him, even. Was it wrong, to love someone so much you would be willing to die for them, even if it meant they’d have to continue on living alone ?

Bruce smiled. Of a most tender smile, only his family ever saw on his face. He smiled, and said : 

“No son. No, it’s not wrong at all.” 

For some reason, Damian felt lighter. Felt good. Nice and warm. Felt like-

You stirred in your armchair, and one of your eyes opened. In an instant, you sat up and-

“Oh dear...”

Bruce said (in a very Alfred way, might I add...force of habits), and he stood up, ruffled affectionately his son’s hair, before living whispering : “You’re on your own for that one. Rite of passage, some would call it.” 

Damian watched as his father left, and didn’t have time to react as the storm of your wrath suddenly fell on him. 

But he knew. Your son knew, that you weren’t actually angry. That you had been so afraid for him. That you couldn’t bear to be the cause of his demise. That-

That you loved him, as simple as that. And so he took the onslaught of your sermon, “like a champ”. 

Because the only reason you reacted that way, was because indeed...

You loved him. You loved him so much. 

Duke

"You absolute idiot !!” You yell, as you rush towards the newest addition to your little family. Towards the boy you now viewed as your son. 

“I knew I would survive. I have powers, you know, that allow me to see a little in the future.” This was partly true, partly a lie. Yes, he had such powers, but it only showed him possibilities of events. No certainty. A slight change of a millimeter to the left, or a breath taken a millisecond too late, and it could alter his visions. 

The truth was, Duke didn’t think. He saw you in danger, he pushed you out of the way and took your place. As simple as that. 

Duke couldn’t bear to see another member of his family get hurt while he couldn’t do anything, like it happened with his parents and the Joker. 

He swore to himself he would never be powerless anymore. Maybe that’s how his meta human powers started to appear ? Him finally making that decision to never let anyone get hurt in front of him again ? Maybe. Who knows.

What was known though, is that he wasn’t going to stay put as he saw danger fly right to you. He knew that, if that piece of concrete fell on you, you would’ve died. He knew. 

And with his costume, there was a chance he could take it. Sure, most his bones would be shattered. But he would survive. After all, Bruce and Lucious Fox spend a lot of time working on those suits, to make them almost indestructible (regardless of the state of the person in it). 

“THAT IS NO REASON ! I forbid you, you hear ? I forbid you from doing something like that ever again !” 

They told him that this day would come. That you’d get mad at him for putting his life “needlessly” in danger. He knew, because they told him, that he shouldn’t take it too personally. 

That you would get mad, because you were so afraid for him that your brain couldn’t see reason anymore. You were so afraid, and at the same time relieved he was still alive, that processing your emotion was too hard and you just exploded. 

Yes. Duke, thanks to the experience of the rest of his family, knew what was coming. And so he let it happen. He took your anger. Your worries. Everything. 

He only winced once you calmed down, and hugged him a little too tight, as Bruce and a medical team were coming to take care of his broken bones...

That (those) time(s) you did it. 

"MOM !!”

You weren’t sure who yelled it, your mind hazy with pain. You knew it was one of your baby, though.

Aah. “Baby”. You only thought of them as “your babies” when you felt extra sentimental. When you suddenly just wanted to squish them in your arms, words being unable to express how much you loved them. 

And the gods only knew how much you did love them. 

Enough to throw your life away for them. Enough to jump in the middle of danger, if only to save their lives. 

How ironic, really. How many times did you yell at them because they did that exact same thing ? Too many times to count, now. 

You would get so mad, when they put themselves in arms’ way just to save you. And what did you do now ? The exact same thing. 

You knew that it was quite a selfish act. That it was a way to not be the one who remained. Because everyone knew...everyone knew those “left behind”, left alive, were the ones to feel sorry for the most. 

Once you were gone, you were gone. Either you went to an afterlife, either it was just the end, or maybe you could reincarnate...But there would be no pain, anymore. 

The same couldn’t be said about those you would leave behind. 

The pain of losing a member of your family, one of your loved one...it was unbearable. It almost drove you mad a few times. When Jason and Damian died. When you thought Tim, Dick or even Bruce died. When-

Yes. You knew the pain. And yet, you would inflict it one someone you loved, just to save them. Knowing they were safe was enough. It was...Enough ?

No. The truth was, you didn’t want to feel the pain. Or your body just moved on its own when you saw the person you loved in danger. 

You knew, it wasn’t something you could fully control. You knew. 

Yet, you always got mad at them when they did it. And you still did it yourself. 

“My love !” 

Ah. Bruce now. Joining your kids. 

You were just a little shook up, but you were fine. Maybe you had a few broken ribs, and a concussion as you got knocked down, but you would definitely survive. 

Years of being a “vigilante”, and they knew that you were going to be ok. 

And oh boy, that meant...

That meant that you were in trouble. 

One by one, they threw your own words back at you. “How dare you ??” “How do you think I could live with the fact I’m the reason you died ??”, “Selfish !”, “Don’t you dare do that again !”, “YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT !!” 

It was ironic, really. And a little funny...

“Ah, now you know. You know how it feels.” 

Yes. Yes, now they knew. Would that stop them to, if given the chance, jump in and save you, completely disregarding their own safety ? Probably not. 

None of you wanted to live in a world where a part of your heart would be missing. So yes, given the chance, you would all take that “selfish” decision to die for those you loved. 

Because sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated. You were a bunch of humans, but not that strong. 

Bonus : Clark

To Clark, the Waynes were special. 

Family. 

You and Bruce were his best friends. The kids were like his little nephews and niece. Alfred, was like a surrogate uncle to him, almost another father figure, at times. Even Ace, the family dog, was important, as he was one of Krypto’s (aka “his baby”) very first friend (besides himself). 

So when he saw you right in the middle of danger, he acted. And that’s how it happened. 

Kryptonite. Tearing his side. Badly. 

He would survive. After all, they didn’t call him “Superman” for nothing. But it had been close nonetheless. 

He settled you down, glad he was able to save you. Glad he brought you back to Bruce, safe and sound. He doesn’t think he could ever face his friend again, if he had arrived too late, and had to bring your dead body to him. He doesn’t think he could bear the weight of being the one who would finally crush the Batman. 

And then he fell on his knees, because that wound hurt like hell ! And to be honest, he wasn't much used to pain. 

He looked up, expecting to see relief and thankfulness on your face, only to be met with...Your glare. You were fuming. 

“YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT !!” You screamed, and Clark was very confused. Up until he met Bruce eyes, and the Batman himself looked like he was sorry for his friend. His eyes were telling him : “Good luck.” 

Yes. Clark was confused, as Bruce and his children slowly moved away (once they made sure you were ok), and you started to sermon him on the incredible value of his life. 

Somehow, it felt both heartwarming and terrifying at the same time. 

__________________________________________________

Boom, just a little something I suddenly wanted to write :D Didn’t re-read myself as usual (or I would never post anything). I was just thinking of the cliche of someone sacrificing themselves for their loved ones, and how angry I would actually be if anyone did that because like...what do you do, knowing the person you love died for you ? How can you heal from not only losing them, but knowing you’re the cause, ya know ? And here we are haha. 

As usual, comments and reblogs are very welcomed, and I hope you liked this story :). 

[iridescentdove]

If it is not too much trouble, may I please request a Yandere? Platonic! BSD x Arlecchino! Reader, let's say that the reader has played an important role in almost everybody's life.

For example, she took Kouyou under her wing when she failed to escape the Mafia, advised and convinced Fukuzawa to save Yosano, treated and viewed (15) Dazai as only a child and not the demon prodigy, never once used or placed Chuuya as the second choice, etc. Things like that, but the reader is still in the Fatui and does run the House of the Hearth and looks after orphans while also training them to be enlisted in the Fatui. So, they probably view reader as a parent figure and someone dear to their hearts and don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

A LIFE OF OUR OWN.

Yandere!Platonic!BSD x Arlecchino!Reader

A/N: I immediately worked on this request on seeing it omg anon you guys do not know how much I love Arlecchino ... also for here I use "Father", but that's only because in the game Lyney & Lynette call Arlecchino that. Feel free to pretend it's mother or something else!

You're the second whole of their hearts.

They'll do anything for you ...

Father.

It's not a coincidence. To take one for an example. KOUYOU, that poor little girl who did nothing wrong. She was such a sweet kid, someone nice ... and yet she was there in the Port Mafia. Taken away and unable to live her life like a child should.

In an attempt to leave the mafia with a man she liked, it was rather unfornature enough – both were caught red handed.

And that man? He was killed.

KOUYOU was desperately holding on, wanting him to open his eyes, to survive and still find a way. And yet deep down, she knew that it would be impossible.

Good things never last.

She began to see the light as something meaningless. That the moment a flower born in darkness is exposed to light, it will wilt and burn away to nothingness. She can't escape. Not anymore. But that also wishful thinking.

That was until you came along and helped her up.

It was like a moment's heartbeat, the moment she looked up. You were right there – holding your hand out.

Even if you weren't expressive as to be expected out of sympathy for what happened, she can tell that you were no ill-intentioned person. So what did she do? She took it. Your hand. And gave you a smile ... one that faintly shined of hope.

Of course, she never left the mafia. But she had you to take care of her ... and treat her like a true daughter.

She was ecstatic to have family of her own.

You even gifted her a little plushie. Of course, of the the most fine and exquisite type of material. Your rich ass is flexing without even saying it out loud. slay

And you never treated her as a second choice.

Just like CHUUYA. As the time passed, he too joined the Port Mafia by boss orders. Honestly – you probably didn't give much of a shit, but that obviously changed.

Even now, your fatherish figure still remains after years. And that may as well never change.

He takes some great pride on his abilities, and he's rather smug about it himself. Although – sometimes he does question himself, and his humanity. Due to basically being merged and being Arahabaki's vessel.

But no, fuck that. You treated him as your own child, and although had more better things to do in the Fatui – this kid was insecure as hell and needed a parental figure.

CHUUYA adores you from the bottom of his heart. You showed him what it was to be human. To be alive. You gave him good reason and even let him visit the orphanage you looked after. Since he was merged with basically a God, you found it curious as well.

Well Arahabaki doesn't have a Gnosis so he's luckily safe

And then also, boom. Your attention extended towards his partner! DAZAI himself, of his young age. And from that time on, you already knew something was up with him.

Honestly – it can't be doubted. He was destined to live in the darkness forever. Nothing in the world can compel that deep etched loneliness in his heart; and even his late friend ODASAKU had acknowledged that.

Even after their unfortunate deaths, you were right there.

He was almost weirded the fuck out at first. You're not treating him like a monster. Or a demon. Not even his position and affiliation. You straight out threw those ourt the trash and instead? You treated him like your son.

It comforted him a little. To know he finally had someone to call his own. At first – just like anyone, he thought he'd lose you.

But you proved him wrong in various ways.

No matter how hard he tried, you kept him his side. Trained with him and succeeded in his defeat (much to his surprise), and gave him a few fatherly hugs and gifts that he would need and like. And DAZAI couldn't help it either.

He wanted you to be his real father quite badly. You were always there, and his eternal loneliness?

What's that again?

No. Even with that in mind, you never stopped to pursue and keep going with the mafioso. You'd go as much as to take him and meet with the rest of the harbingers, maybe taking CHUUYA and other executives from time to time.

Of course, avoiding The Doctor because it might as well just give back DAZAI his trauma.

And when he keft the mafia? You came along with him. Words cannot express how happy and relieved he was. He didn't want to loose his only comfort, his family. And if any9ne ever tries to threaten your familial bond?

He's gonna pull out the fucking demon prodigy card and show them how demonic he can be

In any case, same is due to everyone else. Like the fact you just always seemed to be there in the right place, at the right time. Like when YOSANO was being forced into healing soldier after soldier in the war.

The poor girl. Safe to assume the Fatui didn't really care about such and didn't participate in the war.

Much unless the Tsaritsa commands them to stop it, they may as well do that. But as of now they didn't really care. But that was only an 11 year old child ...

A child. You just had to take her in, didn't you?

And if not – in any case, you went ahead and got FUKUZAWA to save her. You reasoned with him, quite the good convincer yourself. You were a woman of a hundred, if not a thousand faces that could easily fool others.

So he took her in to the agency.

Although YOSANO was never told about what had happened in the sidelines, the moment she saw you walking away from the both of them – she just had that feeling.

She wants to thank you, if it's the last thing she did.

From the time that came on, you continued to do what you did and appeared, woving yourself into the hearts of everyone. At first, it was obviously never easy. But that wasn't a reason to give up. And you're you, would you seriously give up from that?

Many of them expresses gratitude in multiple ways, sometimes a bit unhinged – which you were yourself. There's not a sane bone in your body.

At least, that's what people like to think.

You've come this far into giving others a new life, being a father figure that everyone cherishes dearly and adores. Oh, and if anyone try to tear away that dream or hurt you – even a single scratch on that body of yours ...

There will be hell to pay.

You'd think they got very protective of their father. They can all quite collectively agree that they need no other familial figure in their lives other than you. Dearest you, who saved them from their shameful lives and gave them a future.

Even one who isn't supposedly a kid like SIGMA – he came from a book. He doesn't have a family. But correction, he does.

And it's you.

Or anyone else from multiple affiliations across. The Decay of the Angels, the Hunting Dogs, supposedly those that caught your eye in these several factions.

Suppose the easily jealous ones of seeing you paying attention to kids more in the orphanage, or giving a certain triplets more of time can get them boiling with anger quite enough. Even if it was wrong, it just seemed so right.

And so? They try to steal more of your attention away. This is one of the time they truly act like children once more.

CHUUYA would most likely not want anyone even gazing at your direction. Must they make things worse? You're around kids almost 24/7 and taking care of them yes, but you should only be taking care of him!

DAZAI acts like a child throwing a tantrum. No! No! No one can be with his father other than himself! How dare those kids call you their father?! He's livid, and tries to hide his anger and jealousy, yet he was visibly so eerie and tense.

KOUYOU can bet it was saddening to see you paying attention to work at the Fatui. Come on now, can you blame her? If you took her under your wing, you better be responsible. So she tries to invite you to her own missions and do fun together, just like when she was little. She wants your care.

YOSANO can tolerate it mostly, although at some point she comes with a breaking point as well. She's normally kind and likes hang around you and feel protected and loved, but oh, when you're not looking? Let's see ... pulls out chainsaw

So if a child or two goes missing in the orphanage?

Let's just say it wasn't anyone's fault, dear father :)

[bobluvbot]

birthday blues

pairing: sirius black x f!reader  summary: first time godfather sirius goes shopping to find the perfect first birthday gift (jily + baby harry ♥️) wc: 5k a/n: me tryna heal canon trauma ❤️ because in my world everyone lives happily ever after !!! my lil celebration piece for hitting 200 followers! thank u all <3 not proofread, english is not my first language so plz be nice heheh

“What’s the store called again, sweets?”

even as a young kid, one of your biggest pet peeves is repeating yourself for more than four times. three is pushing it. your parents told you its a bad habit to take to adulthood because you’re bound to meet people who just don’t get what you’re saying the first or second time around. But one Wednesday morning, when you asked from upstairs where your favorite periwinkle socks were and your parents downstairs said something that the loud dishwasher and vacuum covered up, you asked them to repeat it again (still can’t hear), and again when you moved closer to the staircase down (barely heard any), then you heard your father’s heavy footsteps up, personally shoving in your waiting hand the said pair of socks.. only damp. “Honey, I said three times already, that they were still in the dryer,” your dad had huffed before heading back downstairs. That’s when you knew it was genetic. 

But, you love Sirius Black. It’s gotten to the point where in the honest, sensitive hours past midnight, while there was nothing much to do as you let sleep creep up from your tired limbs to your fluttering eyelids, but to watch peace settle on the raven-haired boy’s sharp features, ethereal and glowing like an angel even in the dark of the night; that you realize he may be the love of your life. It’s a scary thought, with fears of being too eager, too soon, too much—- so you tuck it in a little pocket and give it a nudge when you need a reminder of how big and true its growing with each second spent together. 

You love him, so you breathe out the snarky irritation away in slow heavy puffs and inhale peace, choosing to exercise patience because you know Sirius is nervous. 

“It’s Spintwitches Sporting Needs, love. ‘s right across Ollivanders if I’m not mistaken,” you say, taking his free hand in yours and rubbing small circles on his knuckles to calm some of his nerves down, while he drives through busy muggle London streets to park by the Leaky Cauldron. He throws you a soft smile and gives your hand a quick squeeze as thanks, grateful to the heavens that you’re here to keep him from going insane.

You know him enough that, while the day in question is not about him, or you, or your relationship, it meant a great deal to Sirius. 

He had one chance (even if you’d argue otherwise) to make things right, do things the right way the first time around with Harry. James knew this fact by heart, which is why he and Lily agreed in a heartbeat that Sirius should be little Harry’s godfather, as it was meant to be. He would do anything, go beyond means, hell, even against Merlin himself just to ensure the safety and happiness of his godson. 

No one, however, was expecting it to backfire and it caught you and Sirius off guard. Once the tears dried and elation diffused, the anxiety kicked in for Sirius, and in turn you. He knew what the opposite was, parents who robbed their own sons of happy childhoods and disowned him when he got brave enough to find happiness and protect it, he had lived it. And now that he has a chance to save an innocent soul from a similar fate, he was determined, but this fact scared him shitless.

He wanted everything to be perfect (who wouldn’t?) and gave everything he physically could to make James and Lily’s Harry’s life easy and happy. Seeing Sirius buy ‘How to Dad?’ books and pour over them at night or on his free time at work was undoubtedly an attractive and loving sight. In a span of a week, he knew which is the best formula to supplement with breastfeeding, toys to pick that stimulate early brain development, even clothes made with hypoallergenic materials that won’t irritate the sensitive newborn skin. It came to a point where James would ask him for advice when Lily’s at work, and Sirius would put on his trusty reading glasses and point at a specific passage of ‘How to Dad?’ that answers James’ question perfectly. 

Eventually, you did have to put your foot down when you found Sirius writing a howler to a baby food company when rumors started going around that their baby snack puffs (which Harry was obsessed with) had harmful chemicals in it. In typical Sirius fashion, he wasn’t convinced that easily. You’d bet that what pushed him off the howler letter route (and in turn protect the statute of wizarding secrecy) was seeing you spend lots of time in the kitchen to perfect making banana and strawberry baby snack puffs from scratch until the recall was over and the food was deemed safe to be consumed again by experts and Sirius himself. 

Hearing many iterations of how the newborn days and months go by so fast was difficult to believe at times, especially when you and Sirius were babysitting to let the exhausted parents get some sort of reprieve multiple times a month. It was almost always the same. Harry would sleep for four hours straight during the night, and almost hourly right after; and while you and sirius had gotten pretty good at dividing up the tasks like bottle feeding and nappy changes equally, the shrill cry of a hungry baby is difficult to ignore and sleep through. 

So despite of Sirius’s best efforts to crawl out of bed and tip-toe to the bassinet quietly not to wake your sleeping form, he gets sad but unsurprised to see you pad towards him and the baby, yawning soundlessly as you squeeze yourself between the soft armrest and Sirius’s side, head resting on his shoulder. It was his idea to get a spacious, soft recliner in the bedroom and it came in handy for situations like these, where getting back to bed once Harry sleeps is too risky as the boy would just wake up with the slightest movement, so the next best option was to try getting rest wherever you ended up in. The cries that once overpowered Sirius’s hushed whispers and cooing finally quiets down. A sigh of relief leaves both your lips, basking in the comfortable silence and bodies finding solace in each other’s warmth. 

You want to say so many things to your lovely boyfriend, things he just has to hear: that he’s doing such a great job, that you see him and all the extra steps he has to take to become and do better than what he was raised for, that you love him for every single bit of it— but the right words don’t come easy when sleep-deprived and exhausted at 4:25am in the morning. So you lift your lips up to meet his temple, the side of his mouth, then his lips; hoping it’d convey what words couldn’t at the moment. 

But time is an experienced thief. It was a Saturday afternoon in the middle of May and it was warm enough for you to whip out the frilly spring dresses that had been pushed to the back of your closet by the thick woolen coats from colder months. The boys had gone on a day trip to help Peter move into his first solo apartment, assembling furniture and stocking up on necessities to ensure he could survive on his own. Without the booming voices and bumbling energy of his father and godfather, little Harry had no choice but to match the calm and peaceful ambiance that you and Lily curated inside the Potter house. While it’s certainly different from what his everyday looks like (living with the likes of James), he seems to enjoy it. Gentle breeze from the windows Lily left open while she baked carry the smell of lemons and vanilla throughout the entire house, making it smell heavenly. You’d been sat on the floor by the dining table, surrounded by toy trains and colorful blocks, watching the ten-month-old munch on a toy graphorn adoringly. Recently, he’s been on a phase where he has to run anything he could get his hands on with his mouth. Some secret test or screening must be up there or something because that’s how Harry decides which toys are deserving of his attention for the day.

You’d picked up a toy set of magical creatures after work yesterday, and it won the almost toddler’s attention for the whole day. James had to snatch the toy niffler away from Harry’s grasp so he could say goodbye to his son and ask for a kiss. Safe to say there were no kisses exchanged because the little boy was too busy wailing and screaming at his father’s face. Lily had to create physical distance between her two boys so the younger one can calm down while the older got mopey. Sirius had to whisk his best friend away from the scene of the crime so that they can get on with the day, but not without leaving you a kiss. 

The said niffler had soon been replaced with the hippogriff, then now the graphorn, and it’s been sitting on your lap since. Harry suddenly pulls the toy graphorn out of his mouth with a resounding pop. You both share a second or two of shocked eye contact and silence, his bright green eyes wide with surprise, before triggering a belly flipping laughing fit. This child could shock himself with a sudden burp or an unexpected sound of hitting random things with a fork, and you’d laugh every single time like its the funniest cutest thing you’ve seen in your life. It’s likewise for the rest of the marauders. Being the first baby of the group had all the adults wrapped in his pudgy fingers and he has no idea. 

Harry’s eyes drop from your smiling face to the Niffler on your lap, and makes grabby hands. You almost, almost give in, but you decide to encourage him to go get it himself. Maybe today’s the day he starts to walk. You move to him a bit closer, probably a good seven baby steps in between. 

“You want the Niffler, bud? You have to go get it from me!” You make a show out of grabbing the toy from your lap multiple times, hoping it’d make sense to the little boy. 

He whines something sounding like your name and does more impatient grabby hands. But you weren’t giving up without a fight. “C’mon, Haz! You can do it,” you say enthusiastically. 

Harry did know how to stand and good thing you were both sat near the dining table chairs, so to alleviate some of your aunt guilt you tuck the niffler away and out of Harry’s reach, before helping him up to his feet and urging him to grab one of the chair legs for support. 

He stays upright, eyes still on the toy that you place again on your lap as you return to your original spot, and you clap with glee. “Great job, buddy! Okay, only a few steps to me and you’ll get the toy!”

Lily, curious to see the commotion happening on her kitchen floor, leans against the counter for a better view. Harry sees this and does the same thing, he looks at her pleadingly while making grabby hands and pointing to the niffler on your lap. You can tell the redhead’s fighting the mom urge to make her child’s life easier, but thank the heavens when she gives your same answer. She even moves to kneel beside you, waving to get her son’s attention and pointing at the niffler on your lap.

“C’mon, my sweet boy,” Lily says. “Mama knows you can do it!”

Motivated by frustration as his aunt and own mother won’t just hand him his goddamn toy, Harry whines angrily but makes a sideways step closer, death grip still on one of the chair legs. You and Lily squeal and clap in delight, urging the boy to do it again.

He makes a move for another step, but realizes that there’s no more legs to grab onto. Reluctantly, his right hand lets go and in turn faces you and Lily. This results in another round of applause, which serves like a drug to these little babies. 

An anxious expression fleetingly appears on his face as he looks to you both, but the encouragement and cooing seemed to scare those big feelings away. Determined, Harry makes an unsure step forward without support, which then makes both yours and Lily’s heartbeat jump. It all happened so quick, the fear of losing balance triggered Harry’s other leg catch him on impulse, then the same on the other leg, then the other. Harry’d made four successful steps on his own before his mom catches him in her embrace before he topples over to the floor.

You and Lily were a sobbing, exultant mess. Harry, clearly confused about the commotion, whines for the niffler while Lily kisses him all over his face. You hand it to his waiting palms like a trophy before ruffling his unruly hair.  An attempt for words has been made, but all that came from your mouth are garbled phrases about the miracle that just happened. Lily nods in agreement and you hug them both back. 

This ten-month old just walked. This is the same baby that kept you and Sirius up at night for his feedings. The same baby responsible for the drool and spit up marks on your shirts. The same baby that  laughs and babbles with you like he understands when you tell him random stories. The same baby that squeals in delight when you blow raspberries on his belly. 

It felt like he had just been born a few days ago, memories of changing hundreds of nappies and preparing bottles of milk still vivid in your mind. But it’s earth shattering to consider that he’s closer to being a one year old than to the little bundle handed to you by James in the hospital room. 

Time is unrelenting, stealing mundane moments behind your back and when you realize the loss, poof! The newborn you held in your arms is now a walking toddler. Soon, he’ll be the one talking your ears off, going to Hogwarts, driving a car.. You shiver at the thought. He was growing up so fast that blinking felt like cheating, afraid that you’ll miss a precious moment that you’ll never get back. 

His first birthday came in the same manner— too fast for both yours and Sirius’s liking, but the wistful feelings came with excitement as Harry being a toddler opened up lots more opportunities to play and discover the world around him. James and Lily had spent the whole month planning a big birthday bash to celebrate the kiddo’s life, inviting all their loved ones to share the special day with them. And with that, the pressure was on for Sirius, as the self-proclaimed best godfather to get the perfect first birthday gift.

It’s like the heavens knew it was a special day for you both that it made sure to put out the best shopping weather one could ever ask for—- not too warm or too cold. It was a Tuesday afternoon, which meant the adults were kept in workplaces and children sent to Hogwarts or in homeschooling, leaving Diagon Alley nearly deserted, minus the occasional stray shoppers entering and leaving shops here and there. Clad in color coordinated couples outfits (that was your thing recently, Sirius more than happy to oblige) and hand in hand, you begin the mission to locate Spintwitches Sporting Needs. 

Nostalgia always finds a way to seep into your bones whenever you find yourself in Diagon Alley. One blink and suddenly you’re ten again, both hands tucked in each parent’s as your mom pours over the list of school supplies you’ll need again for your first year at Hogwarts. You and Sirius see Ollivanders at a short distance and hear the entrance bell chime, the very same sound you heard when entering the shop for the first time, the shopkeeper taking one good look at you before immediately rummaging around the store, grabbing a specific box located on a random shelf four stories up. The look of confidence when he says it’s made just for you, a magical glow enveloping your tiny frame while opening the magenta box. That same magic guided you to a world where you truly belonged in, a castle that felt so much like home, and friends that soon became found family and lifelong partners. The thought of Harry soon experiencing these moments leaves a giddy feeling in your chest. 

The smoky sweet scent of freshly roasted chestnuts catches your attention and you discreetly look for the source of your favorite warm snack. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Sirius (hardly nothing ever does, even the things you wish he’d miss or forget), and he gives your hand a small tug. You try to be aloof as you return his waiting gaze, complete with a quirk of your eyebrow, to which he responds with an impish smirk towards your bad acting.

“You’re not fooling anyone with that look, sweets.” The amusement in his voice is palpable as he steers you away from the main walkway and towards the small chestnut stall tucked in an alleyway, almost hidden by the bigger shops surrounding it.

“But, the store’s right there, Siri,” you try to protest. He had been anxious and stressed out about this day in particular, you knew if you were in his shoes, you’d be beelining to the store as soon as you get off the car. But he just shakes his head like its the obvious choice and nods towards the cart. “Can’t have my girl hungry now.” 

After a failed attempt of trying to pay for the warm brown bag (you were no match for Sirius’s lithe, agile fingers in basically everything), you accept it with a sigh, giving yourself a few seconds to sulk before starting on the chestnuts. You weren’t the best at accepting things from other people just because, it always felt like you had to do something in return for them just to deserve it. Maybe that’s why the universe conspired to have you meet and fall for Sirius, who is a very enthusiastic giver, teaching you hard lessons on the daily.

As you begin the journey back to the shop, you carefully crack open one and hold it up to Sirius’s mouth, to which he happily obliged. “Mm, somehow chestnuts taste better when you handfeed me, dove. Do it again.”

You roll your eyes in response, but you find your fingers starting to peel another. “You’re lucky you’re good looking, Black,” you mutter to save some face, that you weren’t head over heels for this man and he to you. That’s a conversation to be had in another, less stressful day. 

The shop, painted electric blue and orange, wasn’t hard to miss. One step in and the welcoming aroma of broom polish, rubber, and smoky wood brings you right back to the Quidditch locker rooms; memories of frantically lacing up your boots a minute or two after James called you as backup for an injured beater, helping Marlene comb out the tail end to fix the broom alignment after practice, and getting pinned to the cool lockers during post-win celebratory makeout sessions with Sirius, replaying vividly in your head. 

It looked deceivingly small on the outside; aside from the expansive selection of different broomstick models, they had books and magazines about Quidditch strategies and featured famous matches, repair and maintenance kits for maintaining broomstick qualities, complete Quidditch gear for all shapes and sizes, and tiny practice snitches flying around the room. Squint and it’ll just be like how each Hogwarts common room would be decorated when there’s a big Quidditch match between houses or international ones in the world cup: streamers and accessories like horns and banners representing each team, posters of Chudley Cannons and Holyhead Harpies (in opposing corners to prevent unsolicited fights) accompanied by autographs of famous players and collectibles littering almost every surface of the walls. It was Quidditch dreamland. 

Still in awe admiring the displays as you both walk through aisles hand in hand, Sirius breaks the silence first. “What do you think Harry will play as in Quidditch?”

You hum in response and he continues, running his hands through the bat display they had for little kids.  “I bet he’d be a beater like me. You remember how that punk hit me straight on the face last week?” 

You nod in amusement. Sirius had played it cool as he gently laid Harry back in his playpen, still laughing and cooing, then as soon as little Harry turned his back on his uncle, Sirius ran to you for first aid and whined the whole time you were healing the already forming bruise. But not a few hours later, he’s bouncing the baby in his arms again as he gave him a tour of the backyard. 

“Yeah, those little fists definitely pack a punch.”

“How about you, love?”

Sifting through a year’s worth of memories, it was surprisingly easy to find your answer. “I think he’ll follow James’s footsteps and be a seeker.” 

Sirius’s pout becomes evident, making you giggle and tug on his arm in efforts to cheer him up. “Think about it. Ever since prongslet got those glasses, it’s harder to hide anything from him now because his eyes are so quick. Poor Crookshanks too, that cat can’t catch a break now when Haz wants to play because he tracks its movements.” 

Sirius lets out a soft chuckle and slings his arm around your shoulders to hold you closer. “Good point, good point,” he repeats, seemingly deep in thought as his fingers run up and down the small of your arm. “We shall see, whatever he decides to play as, or if he even plays at all, I’ll be proud of him.”

You look up to him as he absentmindedly stares at the Quidditch gear sets for little kids, a light, wistful smile on his handsome features. He might not say it out loud, but the love he has for his godson reverberates through his being, and its a warming sight to see. 

Before you confess your love for your boyfriend in the middle of a Quidditch store, you whisk him away and towards the toy broom display, the only thing you were both here for. Only the big bright signs directed you to the right place, which didn’t prepare you at all for the heart exploding sight.

You’re about to burst into tears seeing how cute and tiny the little toy brooms were, and how they came in complete with tiny versions of the headlights, seats, and bag compartments the usual adult broom comes with. Both you and Sirius stood with mouths agape for a solid minute as you took in the expansive display, before your lovely boyfriend proceeds to pick out the most expensive one with the most features on it from the batch.

Surprisingly, it was you who reminded him to grab a helmet before running off to purchase the toy broom, the giddiness and excitement spreading between the two of you. The cashier gives both of you a knowing look as you and Sirius both mellowed down from full giggles to bashful smiles, examines the broom to be purchased, and asks, “For your little one?”

Now, you were no stranger to conversations like these with former lovers in the past, and you could almost hear the typical response of denial that comes swiftly with the question. It used to hurt, even if you knew by heart that that person didn’t have the fifth date potential or that it just wouldn’t last. It’s that unexplainable feeling of shame and rejection when they’d realize that it won’t work with you before you would, or if they answer with a laugh, as if having a future with you is an appalling thought. You’ve gotten better with it throughout the years, but for some reason your skin crawls with the thought of Sirius saying the same things. Years of desensitization down the drain, you find yourself bearing your entire soul to the man beside you the entire relationship, and he can easily break you into two with his response. You cross your fingers that he won’t.

He was already looking when your gaze met his, a look of softness and tenderness from him so profound you wondered if you were deserving of it. The surge of butterflies in your belly was all consuming. 

Sirius shifts uneasily and shakes his head, you prepare for the worst. “For our nephew, not for our own child..,” he pauses, glancing back at you for a quick second. “Yet. But if all goes according to my sneaky plan, we might be back sooner than she thinks.”

The cashier chuckles at your stunned reaction as you shift your focus between him and your boyfriend who was both furiously blushing and actively avoiding your stare. Did you just get a marriage proposal? 

Taking advantage of your confusion, Sirius pays for everything including the gift wrapping, which you had previously argued about who was responsible paying (you won, not that that matters now). You let him tug your arm and guide you out of the store, saying a quick thank you to the amused cashier. The influx of butterflies were back, tickling your insides and spreading warmth in each crevice. Just seeing Sirius handle the rambunctious mini James with care and glee, makes it so easy for you to imagine a life with him, and eventually have a little bean that’s equal parts of you and him. You hope they’d get the best parts of both.

No one brings it up as you began your journey back to the car and you’re grateful. Gift bag swinging on your arm, you drag Sirius to go get ice cream to which he happily obliges. 

A gentle quiet settles on accomplished shoulders like a warm blanket as you settle in the car. Strawberry and vanilla fudge ice cream sticky sweet on each other’s lips as you exchange cones every once in a while. It would be enough to lull you to sleep, if not for Sirius’s deep breaths and sighs, the thundering of his heart that he tries to quell by discreetly scratching a small part of the steering wheel where his thumb usually lay. 

He breaks the silence first, an uneasy tone making his voice seem small. “Do you think he’ll like it, dove?”

“Yes, Siri. I know he’ll love it.” You try your best to enunciate the right words, but a conflicted expression marrs his handsome features, sending a twinge to your heart. 

It comes to you before he speaks. This was something that had been plaguing Sirius’s mind for a while, occupying his dreams and thoughts, embedding itself to his mind and causing unwarranted amounts of stress. You resist the urge to fill in the blanks for him because it has to come from him and him only. 

But after everything he’s been through, what seems easy for most sometimes is the hardest to muster. “Siri,” you pause, waiting until he looks up at you and you keep his gaze. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

His gray orbs still before the dam breaks. “I’m sorry, love.” He chokes. “If I’m being so difficult, irky, irritated, anxious, everything.”

Hot tears run down his cheeks and it’s a painful watch. wanting nothing but to wipe it off and tuck him in your embrace and promise him he won’t be hurt as long as you’re there, but you can’t. The best thing you could do for him is to let it all out and finally feel.

He stares ahead on the city road with fingers trembling on the wheel. “I’m just so scared. So scared. James and Lily have been amazing parents, I can’t say same thing for myself but I try my best. Sometimes I still feel like he deserves someone better to be his godfather,” he sobs. “I just love him so much. I want only the best for him. I just want him to be happy and healthy all the time.”

After a while, you say with a bittersweet tone. “You know we can’t promise that, Siri,” you sigh. “Storms will come and will do damage and hurt and things that we can’t undo,” you pause, sniffling as you take your right hand to guide him to face you again, vulnerable gray eyes meeting yours. “But you know what?”

You give him an assuring smile, speaking the truth. “He’s gonna be alright because little as he is right now, he is so loved and adored by so many people, so loved by his parents. And so loved by his godfather.”

It wasn’t said aloud, it doesn’t need to. Loud as it could be, Sirius knows what you’re about to say; that his ability to love despite of everything he’s been through, despite of his own family ruthlessly trying to rob him of the ability to do so. That’s the type of love that Sirius gives, a love that withstands rain and abandonment; a love that stays after a rough storm, offering a home always open to go to when times are rough and feelings are still hurt; a love that tells the truth even when its hardest to hear. 

You know all this as an easy fact because you’re at the receiving end. Even if you hadn’t heard it from his lips yet.

“Have I told you I love you?”

A watery smile spreads on your face as you shake your head. “No, but i feel it everyday.”

“I love you, Y/N.” It leaves his lips like breaths, naturally and easily. 

It’s the same thing for you, too. “I love you too, Siri.” 

And it ends with sticky kisses that taste of vanilla fudge and berries.

[sharkneto]

So. Season 4.

Let’s start with the good. In no particular order -

The road trip. Loved the energy of them all together again and suffering mildly and looking terrible. I appreciate we didn’t waste a bunch of time with them without their powers.

Gene and Jean were great. Loved their energy, the right level of weird. Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally were perfectly cast for the roles.

Liked the idea of the Keepers, the consequence of all the timeline meddling leaking through.

Loved the concept of the subway-between-timelines. That aesthetic slaps for the map alone.

 The Truman Show Christmas Town. They nailed the creepy energy, I liked how ridiculously well-armed it was, I liked that they all died badly, I liked that the Umbrellas got to flex their powers. Diego’s flipping and bullet-mancy was fun, as was him cheating at the axe game to win his kids toys. Luther finally being properly bulletproof was also nice.

Ben Doc-Ock-ing around on the Horror. And the Horror dragging behind him while powers were booting back up. Silly fun.

Loved that Viktor dated and was unable to hold on to every eligible woman in Halifax. Daddy Issues strike again and again, poor guy.

It makes no sense for the level of tech in the show, but I did laugh at Ben being a Crypto Bro. That is the exact way in which his personality sucks.

Jerome and Nancy. If they had left Diego being suspicious of Lila seeing that “little Greek guy” as a “haha it’s just Five!” joke, it is very funny. But they didn’t. Alas.

I didn’t hate the ending! I will always think redemption through living is a better and more powerful conclusion, but them all dying to save the world because they’re the force causing repeat apocalypses was always on the table as an option. I thought they did a good job hitting emotions, them all snarking together until the end felt in character and heartfelt; if other writing choices didn’t happen before it, I think they could have really stuck that landing. I thought the easter eggs of characters from earlier seasons was fun, I hope the Handler still sucks as a regular person.

Overall, I was vibing for the first four episodes. Was it perfect? No. It was never going to be, but I could overlook the usual UA cringe and plotholes because my favorite guys were back on the screen and having good character moments together and fumbling along to save the world. I don’t usually care about spoilers, but I worked hard to avoid S4 spoilers specifically because I didn’t want expectations. The show was going to do what it was going to do, and I didn’t want to judge it for things it was never going to be. And that strat worked well for the first half of the season! It was on par with S3, which I’m an apologist for – had stuff I liked and stuff I was going to be happy to ignore, but overall we’re having a good time! My favorite dysfunctional family is here, I had missed them!

Then Ep5 hit. And we’re onto the problems and things I would change (under the cut --)

The biggest problem of the season is that the pacing was wack, in both an internal time-frame and technical-writing frame.

Internally, media for some reason has no idea how long a year is. Some of the Hargreeves’ problems at the beginning of the season would have worked much better if we were jumping in at year two or three of being in the new timeline, six years is a long time. Diego and Lila’s growing pains at being parents and living a domestic life, how to balance having kids makes more sense to be at this point. And the first couple years of adapting to no-powers-new-universe is way more interesting that hopping in once they’re all settled into mostly-sad patterns (which is in character for them all, they’re disasters). Why not an opening montage of them in their active struggle? Why are we picking up six years later? Unfortunately, because of Ep5, it does feel like the whole point of such a long time jump was to get Five’s body to a legal age and not just so Aidan wouldn’t have to pretend he’s physically a teen anymore (even though we have 30-year-olds playing teens all over other TV shows).

From a technical writing standpoint, for a show that only has six episodes to bring about a satisfying conclusion to a plot as convoluted and bonkers as UA has, they squandered Episode 5. The first four episodes we were moving along, finding plot points, getting Umbrellas in position to move things forward, and then Ep5 hits and is anyone except Viktor and Ben doing something for the plot??? The show is at its strongest with the Umbrellas are together, and it went out of its way to split them up. I also usually love character time, but we had no time to spare! We spend most of the episode either with Five and Lila in the subway, or with Klaus in the world’s most fucked-up situation. And neither do anything to build meaningfully towards the final episode! A weird choice to have your show screech to a halt in its penultimate episode.

Usually, Klaus’ side adventures loop in some important detail that pushes things forward in an unexpected way – he destroys Hazel and ChaCha’s briefcase because of Vietnam, he finds the Kugelblitz, he puts Reggie in position to use Oblivion. This time? He’s getting used and abused by a gang and buried alive to be reunited with Allison so that we… gain nothing? Except Klaus and Allison have made up from their fight? Why did I have to watch Klaus get possessed and fucked for that to happen? Why did they do that to him and me. I don’t mind angst and the incredible fucked-up situations, but it has to be earned and the story didn’t gain anything from it. Klaus just had a horrific time because that’s what he gets, I guess.

And now we get to Five and Lila. Five and Lila, Five and Lila, Five and Lila. The thing is – I don’t hate the idea of them. Obviously, it’s not anything I was ever going to ship on my own, but if they’re going to do it, I can see how and why. They even set it up in a way that I go “yeah I get it.” The thing is, after setting it up, they completely forgot what makes either character themselves or compelling so that they could be shoehorned into Cottagecore Bliss in the greenhouse and the most boring romance possible. If we're committed to doing this, I wish they’d had a weird trauma-bonded relationship in the rat pits of the subway, I would have understood that. Supported it even, tbh. Let them be weird and feral together, yelling and emoting at each other over eastbound vs westbound trains. Instead, Five, who for the past three seasons has been driven by his need to save his family, is happy to delay returning and give up on them to keep very quietly playing house with Lila. What the fuck. Lila, who cannot handle domestic life with Diego and her three children, can handle being a housewife with Five and wear soft sweaters and dresses. They didn’t try to kill each other once! I said way back after S3 aired that I didn’t like Lila’s pregnancy plot because it was going to tie her down in weird ways, and lo and behold! UA writers cannot write women, and it sucks that Lila was yet another casualty of that.

And then the whole thing shafts Diego. I know Diego and Lila don’t have a particularly healthy relationship, but he’s an Umbrella and Lila’s mom is the Handler. I think they do pretty well for what they’re working with, they have a fun chemistry, and it seemed (before this season) they really loved each other. Why did Steve write them off instead of letting their arc be them falling back in love (well, I guess that was Diego’s arc. Wasn’t Lila’s)? Now the three of them get to spend the final episode of the entire show in an unhappy, unnecessary love triangle instead of us getting to watch the Umbrella Academy fully join together to save the world one last time.

After all of that, the rest of my complaints feel like small potatoes. Why don’t we do another numbered list to round out this essay. In no particular order –

It sucks Ben was the plot driver of the season and then doesn’t even get to die with his family, just melted and turned into mindless Cleanse Goo. I was excited for him to get to do more, was excited for a payoff for Viktor trying to return the favor of Umbrella Ben sacrificing himself for him. I wish the Cleanse was more squiddy because it was made out of the two squiddiest characters.

UA has gotten more and more flexible with powers as the seasons have gone, but I straight up do not know what Allison’s power was at the end. Was she telekinetic? Was she Rumoring reality? Why did we have to use that to graphically crush a man’s balls in front of Claire? I liked that the powers got an upgrade and a twist, for the most part, but that only works if we know what they are. Lila has laser eyes and I thought that was it until they needed her to mimic powers again in the last episode. Five can’t blink anymore because he now just goes to the subway (still an aesthetic that is cool, and a cool way to have it tied in a different way to time), unless he’s doing it with Lila? Viktor just has energy now, I guess, sound doesn’t seem to be part of it.

Abigail. I did not fully follow what her motivation was. I wanted her to be comically evil, worse than Reggie, but – again- UA writers can’t write women so I guess she was just a good guy benevolently taking skin suits so she could get the world to end to save the world. Boring. Reggie also should have recognized his wife even if she was wearing Gene and kissed Nick Offerman.

Why didn’t Five have a reaction to his Apocalypse? He had PTSD flashbacks in S1! He was trapped there for four decades! It’s been six years but it’s not like he was working on his mental health during that time. No reaction???? Don’t even get me started on Delores and his “Good thing I’ve never been married” comment.

I’m not usually for fan service, but it felt like the season was actively trying to avoid fan service. Was Gene and Jean’s dance really the only dance party of the season? Five doesn’t have a single fight scene to fun music? Five doesn’t kill anyone all season??? What the fuck.

I wish the Fives in the Five Diner were Sean Sullivan. Bring back Old Five, why would Five fuck up his jump back in every timeline.

The gratuitous fat shaming. It’s always been bad with Luther, but absolutely ridiculous the comments made about Diego.

I don’t particularly like Sloane but where the fuck was Sloane. And I hope Ray not being in the show was a scheduling conflict, because that was tragic that he off-screen left Allison with no further explanation or context. Didn’t feel very Ray.  

A lot of character arcs from over the whole show stagnate or go backwards. Luther is back at the Academy after working to build his own identity. Klaus I guess has to be on drugs if he has his powers. I don’t know what’s going on with Allison and Claire’s relationship – it seems bad at the beginning but just sort of fixes itself when they go rescue Klaus? Diego tries to have an arc to understand how much good he has with his family, but the writers won’t let Lila be part of that. Don't get me started on Five.

I wish the writing team cared enough to actually know the characters. Luther’s powers aren’t tied to him being gorilla’d – that was a separate event, why would the marigolds re-gorilla him. Lila likes bracelets, one of the very first things she did in the show was take and keep the one Diego made. It’s little things, but they go a long way in making us know the creative team cares, rather than just jerking around these characters because they have an idea the think is funny or shocking and requires characters to go against their established personalities and motivations to pull off.

Overall – it was fine, which is not the energy you want when finishing one of the most popular shows on one of the biggest streaming platforms. I get why people are upset, I get a lot of mourning is happening, but I hope we can find a spot where we can enjoy what we have and play in the space again.

It was always going to be a rough goodbye. This show, as cliché as it is, changed my life. I started writing because of it. I’ve made some incredible friends because of it. It helped me figure out I was trans, because of Elliot Page. I’m going to miss it. I’m going to keep hanging around here having fun with the characters, but I’ll miss the fandom, too, as people move on to whatever the next new thing is.

It's been a ride, everyone!

[piratefishmama]

Fake it Till you Make It | Part 9

Eddie felt like he’d been dipped directly into some kind of crazy world where nothing made sense. Or rather where everything he thought was true, was actually the opposite.

He was in an opposite world where despite being the obvious odd one out, he was being made to feel comfortable instead of ostracized.

These rich people? Not assholes.

Steve Harrington? Not a douche.

Okay so… that was only two things, but they were two pretty huge things on the Munson Doctrine that he’d now need to mentally re-write

Especially when the response to “we’ve known each other since high school but—but I guess I never really thought much about him until I saw him with Robin at The Hideout, apparently he was making sure my band was child safe for Dustin and the other kids and I—"

Was, “your band?” Interrupting him may have been rude but Lynda looked damn near sparkly eyed at the idea of him being in a band, as if middle-class people like the parents he’d freaked out thus far only thought they knew how to behave to appear richer, and rich people were actually this whole weird little species of their own. “Steven here has always sort of gravitated toward talented people, first Nancy, I’ve never known a girl quite as driven to be heard by the people around her as that one and I’m a lawyer, I really admired her for that.”

“You did?” Steve asked in surprise, why had they never said anything?

“Of course I did! Karen told me she wanted to be a journalist, gosh let me tell you she’ll make an incredible journalist someday, we’re already proud of her.” They knew she wanted to be a journalist? They were proud of her? “Then there was Robin—"

“Robin is my friend.”

“Oh, I know” he didn’t like how she said that word, that know, she couldn’t know-know, right? How would she—how could she? No… no she couldn’t. Robin had never said anything, never hinted at anything, she was terrified of being known, scared of the consequences. It’d taken being stuck in a broken elevator at work and him freaking out about enclosed spaces to come out to him, and he’d had to, in a moment of panic so sure he was going to die in there, come clean about his crush on her for her to do it! “That doesn’t change the fact that you had a crush on her first, don’t think we don’t know about that, we do. Your children are loud.” Dustin. It had to be Dustin. Not the queer thing, the crush thing. He’d never even told the little snot about that, he’d just noticed it, latched onto it, and like a dog with a high prey drive, just refused to let go, shaking it around until it was nothing but tatters. “She’s so talented in linguistics. and languages aren’t easy let me tell you, I don’t know what she intends to do but she’ll go far in it when she gets there.”

Steve was just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, still semi-convinced that the whole thing was performative and that the second Eddie left, the moment Steve was on his own with them, they’d pull the rug out and it’d have all been for ‘show’ and they weren’t supportive at all.

He was ‘dating’ a musician. Not a rich one. An unknown musician from an unknown band, living in a trailer park, with zero prospects, zero connections, and frankly a terrible reputation around the parents of Hawkins for his little fake date scheme.

Surely that had to be breaking some kind of unwritten rule for rich kids. Right? Surely his parents would have expected more from him, right?

Surely this wasn’t actually okay… was it? Was it really okay? Could it be okay? If… if he actually wanted that? Would it continue to be okay, or were they just saving face until it was safe to return to being the disappointed set of parents he’d come to know as an adolescent?

“I didn’t know you paid that much attention…” Eddie squeezed his hand, he didn’t have to look at him to know he’d fixed those bring brown eyes on him all warm and supportive. There for him, if he needed him to step in.

If he needed him to make it all about him again, to shine the spotlight on himself in either a positive or negative light, Eddie would.

He squeezed back, he’d be okay.

“Oh sweetheart… we may not be the best at showing it, but we’re not blind. You were just a little harder to speak to when you were younger, all those parties, and the drinking, the drugs—”

“It was just—”

“Marijuana is a drug, son.” John finally spoke up and that was the end of that argument, although Eddie was visibly trying to hide a grin as the towns resident ex-drug dealer who’d maybe supplied that marijuana once or twice. “Not one a boy that age should have been consuming.” True, he’d kill the kids if he ever caught them smoking weed unsupervised.

Maybe if he was there, he’d let them do it once just to show them what it was like. But once would be the maximum, and they’d be supervised!

He’d been unsupervised surrounded by strangers with alcohol and bad decisions to make. He was lucky he hadn’t wound up knocking some poor girl up or something equally life destroying.

“Yes, like your father says it was difficult, your father and I… we had to be the bad guys more often than we’d have liked and then things at the office got busy and well… maybe all that put a strain on things, but we were never not paying attention, I’m sorry we made you think that.” Another gentle squeeze. Eddie was there.

He'd continue to be there.

“So Stevie here has a type is what I’m hearing” Eddie finally spoke up, breaking the tension, a small but warm smile on his face that Steve appreciated more than he could possibly say.

“So I like people to be passionate about what they like! I like intelligent people—”

“Oof, puts me out of luck then” Eddie cut in with a dramatic little pout on his face, hand over his heart.

“Are you kidding me? You’re smart, you’re really smart!”

“Dude I failed high school like, three times. Pretty sure they finally let me graduate out of pity.”

“Yeah but that was bullshit, not everyone is good at school. I barely passed an I’m still half certain I only did cause of the sports shit.” Maybe the money thing too “but you can come up with all kinds of stuff on the fly, I know you ‘DM’ for that dungeons and demons shit an you deal with Dustin, Mike, AND Erica like a pro and honestly that takes some work the kids are nightmare children normally, so it’d probably be actual hell when you have to believably improv their characters taking a liking to some random NPC you’ve conjured up to be a weird little one time interaction and—and I know you can recite Shakespeare! And come up with your own Shakespeare-like poems, that SOUND like Shakespeare, and you write your songs which is cool, and you play guitar which is tricky I know I tried once it’s not easy, and in debate, people couldn’t keep up with you ever and—” and he was rambling.

“—Dragons…” Eddie gently cut him off, eyes wide but his smile… it looked like a cross between awe and affection. It was beautiful, and the dimple was there which made it extra pretty. Fuck why was Eddie Munson so goddamn pretty all of a sudden?

Was it even sudden? “Huh?”

“Dragons… you know NPC, but you don’t know it’s Dungeons and Dragons…” he sounded so fond, so soft spoken it was strange… but a good kind of strange that made Steve’s cheeks warm “you—you know all that about me?”

“W-well… yeah I mean—we’re dating, of course I know about the Dungeons and Dragons stuff I—” he could explain it away for his parents but Eddie, who was in on their fake dating thing, emphasis on the fake couldn’t be so easily fooled.

“No, not the D&D stuff… the Shakespeare thing, poetry, debate class, you saw that?”

It was his turn to be bashful, to be shy, to squeeze that hand, to be honest about something he’d never thought too hard about but god he had to now, didn’t he? “…You were hard to miss, Eddie.” He’d grown up, he could appreciate what he’d scoffed and rolled his eyes at back when he was a dumb teenager, he could admit that he’d seen Eddie, that deep down, despite the scoffing, the eye rolling, that deep down he liked that.

Deep down he’d always liked Eddie. He just wished he’d have been less of a douchebag, maybe they’d have known each other sooner.

“Ehem” Lynda gently cleared her throat, not cruelly, her smile definitely a little mischievous, a little ‘i'm going to be INSUFFERABLE about this’ but not trying to break up the moment, she just had to ask “Eddie… I’m not sure if you still live at home, but… if you do, are your parents… okay with you being away for a week with total strangers? Do… do they know about—”

“Ah! Uhm, yeah! Well, yes and no. My parents aren’t really… around, I live with my Uncle Wayne, he took me in when I was a kid.” He wasn’t going into that story, and nobody could make him for the sake of a fake date scheme “He knows about me… uh… about us… he’s okay with it, but he did ask that he meet you both before we go, if I’m allowed to come with you?”

“We’d be thrilled to have you, Eddie, he can meet us any time he likes.”

Main Goal. Achieved.

Part 11

[aritany]

it feels like yesterday i was posting my first ever WIP intro—this is that story.

today DEAD GIRLS DON’T SAY SORRY is out in the world, and i am officially a published author!

i love this story and everything it means, and i can’t wait for nora and julia and dillan to meet the readers that need them.

at its heart, DEAD GIRLS is and always has been about navigating grief without closure. how do you heal when the person who hurt you is out of reach? how do you heal when that person will never say sorry?

today is wildly significant to me not only because my debut novel launches, but also because on this day two years ago, feb 6 2022, my whole life imploded. i lost a spouse and two sets of parents in one fell swoop when i refused to go back in the closet regarding my gender identity, and while i’d expected the road would be long and bumpy, it was a shock that so many were unwilling to walk it with me.

i never imagined starting over at 22, let alone while struggling with chronic illness and no savings. but i did it, and DEAD GIRLS was with me the whole way, for better or for worse. slowly, i got to rebuild a family who who have supported me through it all. i’m so grateful to all of you here on writeblr who have showed endless kindness and support—more than you’ll ever know.

i’ll get off this soapbox in a second, but a last word: the grief does get easier to walk with. to those who have been hurt by friendships that were supposed to protect you: there are people worth trusting around every corner. to my fellow queer kids orphaned by bigotry: i stand with you & beside you & that hurt might never go away, but it does fade with time.

be you. be free. live joyously🩷💛

oh, P.S. you can support my journey (and future books) and buy it here ;)

[solar-wing]

⚣ Safer With Me ❌

⚣❌ A/N → Yandere! Arkham!Jason Todd. Inspired by @yanderes-galore and their prompt writing for Jason. Prompts below were selected with a randomizer wheel. WARNINGS: Abduction/Kidnapping, Minor themes of Non-Con, Stalking/Obsessive Behavior, Depictions of Violence and Gun-Use

Prompt List Here! #40: "I know what's best for you, just trust me on this one." #18: "There's no use in sucking up to me now."

⚣❌ Summary → Homeless on the streets after your parents kicked you out when you came out to them, fate seemed to take mercy on you as you were taken in by Gotham's Billionaire Playboy, Bruce Wayne. But, your stay with him is not long as someone has been keeping an eye on you. An old acquaintance of your new guardian who had a plan of getting you away from the famed CEO. Why? Because you were safer with him, why else?

⚣❌ Words → 1.8k

REBLOGS and replies very appreciated, please! ❤️

⚣ ENJOY ❌

You couldn’t figure out how you ended up in this situation.

A few months before this entire mess of a night, your parents had kicked you out on the streets after coming out to them as gay. Kind of ironic knowing the other stuff they ‘tolerated’, but whatever. 

So after that, you were sleeping on the streets, doing what you had to do to survive. It’s Gotham City, so you were bound to eventually run into trouble. Some guys who were clearly drunk off their asses decided to start harassing you then Batman showed up to save the day. But he barely got a punch in before you had all three of them laying on their asses in pain.

There was a reason you asked your parents for self-defense classes the moment you came to terms with your sexuality. The world was changing, but not quickly enough.

So, the Dark Knight dropped you off at the police station where coincidentally, Bruce Wayne happened to show up and offered to take you in. You’d heard about the billionaire’s ‘hobby’ of taking in kids off the street and giving them a better life, and what more pleasing way to shove the middle finger at your parents than to end up in the care of someone who seemed to actually give a fuck about you more than they ever pretended to?

Then, the tests started. You figured Bruce was testing your skills to see how well you’d be able to take care of yourself just in case another incident happened as the one Batman found you in. They continued for a while, and before Bruce got to tell you what they were actually for, it was too late.

A few months after your move-in into Wayne Manor, you started getting the feeling you were being watched. And growing up in Gotham, you always knew it was better to listen to your instincts and be wrong than not listen and still be wrong.

A week before the attack on the city from Scarecrow, you had been on your way home walking since Bruce wasn’t able to pick you up due to some ‘unforeseen circumstances’. You’d soon come to find out all of that was a diversion so Arkham Knight and his militiamen had a clear shot at nabbing you. 

When you turned down a corner to an empty street, they pulled you into an alleyway and jumped you. You did your best to fight them off, but they began to overwhelm you. Somehow, you gained an upper hand though, the goons not expecting you to be as trained as you were. 

Just before you could take out the last of them though, he showed up and surprised you from behind, covering your nose and mouth with a rag seeped in nitrous oxide, putting you right to sleep.

Right before you lost consciousness, you heard a modulated voice chuckle in your ear, “Don’t worry, I got you. You’re safe with me now.”

You woke up in a dark room with hands and feet tied together and a splitting headache to match the aches around your body. You looked around to see the room you were in was empty, but you could hear voices on the outside talking.

“Why do you think Knight wanted him in the first place?”

“If I had to guess, it probably got something to do with the Bat himself.”

“Hmm, maybe. Personally, I think he’s got a thing for him. Not my place to judge, but I’ve heard and seen how protective he gets of him. Did you see the way he brought him in? Not one of us was allowed to even touch him.”

You didn’t know what to make of it or how to make sense of it. Didn’t have the time to do it either since you heard footsteps approaching the door. You listened to that same modulated voice you’d heard before you passed out giving an order to open the door. 

Laying back down in the position you were in before, you pretended to be still asleep.

You could hear the heavy footsteps as if whoever this was wearing the heaviest of heaviest boots in the world. The nervous feeling in your chest grew more and more the closer they sounded. Doing your best to stay still, you tried slowing your breathing down to a relaxed pace as you felt the thuds on the ground from him coming to stand next to you, feeling his entire presence standing over your body. You prepared your body figuring he may kick, slap, or even yell for you to wake up.

You did not expect to feel a gloved hand caressing your face.

“I know you’re awake.” He spoke before removing his hands and standing back up.

Opening your eyes, you saw a glowing screen mask staring down at you. 

You heard their modulated voice chuckle as he watched you slowly sit back up. “You didn’t think we’d have cameras inside watching to see when you’d got up?” He stated before gesturing to the cameras around the room. 

The mysterious soldier turned around to grab the only chair in the room, moving it to the middle of the room before coming back to lift you off the ground, settling you into the chair gently.

“Why am I here?”

“I know what’s best for you, just trust me on this one. You’re safer with me than with him.”

“Him? Who are you talking about?” You asked with a puzzled look coming across your face.

He didn’t immediately respond, but you could tell he was debating on something, you just didn’t know what.

“In time, you’ll find out.” He replied simply.

“What do you want?” You asked.

“Direct and to the point, huh? Knew there was something I liked about you.” He laughed, walking to stand in front of you with his arms crossed.

“Must be a lot of things from what I’ve heard. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be sitting here.”

“Really? Well, if I were you, I’d think better than believing everything I hear.” He said, grabbing your chin a little rough, forcing you to look up at him.

You scowled at the armor-clad man before spitting at him. You watched the glob of saliva run down his mask before the hand on your chin grabbed at your neck. You clawed at his wrists to no avail as he lifted you out of the seat.

“That wasn’t very nice. Say you’re sorry, and I won’t hurt you… much.” He said, getting very close to your face to the point you could feel the electricity buzzing off the screen.

“Fuck you, asshole.” You spat at him.

He chuckled darkly, before kicking the chair you were sitting on.

“If you insist.”

He slammed you down on the ground, your breath escaping you and your vision going blurred. He kept his hand tight on your neck while the other one went down to your pants, undoing the belt and button before attempting to pull them down.

“No!” You whimpered, trying to fight back against him. He placed his body over your kicking legs, his heavyweight managing to hold them still while he now went to put his hands up your shirt. He felt all over your upper body, even stopping to pinch at your nipples a few times, before his hand went back down to your pants, sticking them down your underwear. You cried out at the feeling, trying your best to get him off you, but the dude was like a tank, and you were getting weaker with the more time he spent choking the air out of you. He started trying to push down your pants again before you both heard pounding against the door.

“Knight! Scarecrow says we gotta move!”

He held still for a moment before you felt him release you. You gasped for breath while he re-did your pants before pulling you up from the ground. Your body lay against his weak while feeling a little lightheaded from being jerked up so suddenly.

“You got lucky, this time. But, I wouldn’t try a move like that again. You won’t be leaving anytime soon

“Batman will. He’ll kick your ass.” You groaned from the soreness around your throat while panting into his chest armor.

You felt the chuckle vibrate from his chest before he bent down to lift you in a bridal hold.

“I was held captive once too, tortured even. Thought the same thing. It’s nice for a while but you’ll get over it soon enough.”

You struggled in the hold as he moved toward the door letting out a whimper from the pain your body was still in. “Please… just let me go.” You begged.

“Aww, already giving in? Cute. And smart. But, too little, too late. There’s no use in sucking up to me now.” He said, before heading out of the room to wherever.

You watched from around the corner, a gag tied over your mouth now with your hands bound in front of you as one of the militiamen held you in place. You saw Batman come around the corner and tried to scream out to warn him but was too late as Knight had jumped from the ledge he was hiding on shooting at him. 

Batman managed to dodge but was quickly knocked to the ground. Before he could get up, Knight walked over and placed his foot on his chest, pinning him down to the ground.

“Oh no, no, you’re not going anywhere, old man.”

You looked in horror as Knight switched hands with the gun he was holding, pointing it down directly at the masked vigilante.

“Tri-weave, titanium coated, armor plating. Nice. Unless you know exactly…where to shoot.” He said, before placing the gun down on his lower abdomen and pulling the trigger. You flinched at the sound, watching him groan in pain before Knight moved his foot off his chest.

“You’re good, Dark Knight. Even better than I remember. It’s going to make it even more satisfying when I kill you. Oh, and, don’t worry about Barbara. I’ll take better care of her than you ever did. Y/N too, he’s mine now.” You heard him say, walking toward where you and the others were standing around the corner.

“Batman’s in the control room. Show him what happens when he messes with my city and tries to take what doesn’t belong to him.”

Knight walked toward you as the militiaman immediately released you into his embrace. He cradled you gently even as you tried to push out of his hold. When he got tired of you fighting him, he just picked you up and tossed you over his shoulder, carrying you away from the room.

“You’re better off without him anyway.”

☀️ | Jason Todd/Red Hood | ☀️

☀️ | Masterlists | ☀️

[yoru-no-seiiki]

https://www.tumblr.com/yoru-no-seiiki/751614308271718400/hii-so-like-ive-been-starving-for-yandere-eren

def something w/ canon eren! but other than that you can could go as wild as u want! :p

god where do i start?? i’ll mostly write for early seasons eren since i refuse to watch the whole thing until i’m done with season one on my quotev book as a motivator but i’ll add some tidbits that i got from other fanfics. go check it (my book) out btw!! it’s called Walk With Me!! (currently on the next chapter which is around 10k words atm huhu)

as always he’s aged up to 18 during enlistment and massive spoilers for those that don’t know the lore/story yet.

MDNI. DDDNE!!

yandere! eren is a force of absolute willpower. he is obsessive, he is protective, and very much goddamn possessive. he needs you, he needs you to need him too if not moreso. he grew up in a very traditional household and expected to be the provider in the family. the least you could do is have him in your thoughts at all times.

if you want max yandere! potential with him, it’s best to have known him even before armin. be close family friends. maybe your parents worked with his dad since marley and were similarly banished (but not turned into mindless titans).

as children he’d always been protective of you. he’d always stick to you like glue. and because of future him’s influence over grisha and essentially your parents, you were arranged to even sleep in the same bed.

but this sort of backfired in the long run cause you saw him as this annoying brother figure that just wouldn’t stop bothering you.

and one day you just blurt out, tired of the suffocation you felt with your friend, with your parents that vehemently kept pushing you two together, of everything in your life that you couldn’t control.

“i wonder what it’s like beyond the walls.”

i feel like armin would still be the true trigger of eren’s obsession with the outside and freedom (after all, he doesn’t give a shit about yours so why and how would you influence him in that area?), but you probably pushed him in terms of the survey corps.

you were dumb at the time. i mean as a kid, who isn’t? so you announced to literally everyone you knew that you planned to join the military and eventually explore the outside world.

you didn’t really understand the concept of death and all but whatever that was, you still thought it would be better than eren’s basically isolating you from anything that moves.

you dont truly understand death until eren kills those intruders in mikasa’s house right in front of you.

you were supposed to help him, but only stood there frozen in fear.

thankfully mikasa awakened just in time, with eren shouting at her to save you.

speaking of mikasa, her true allegiance/ackerman blood thingy is still with eren in this fic but i headcannon that since his first command was to for her to fight for you she also has the same knee jerk reaction for whenever she perceives you’re being harmed.

in anycase, that day ™️ happens and you all start training.

it had already been obvious since you were teens but eren started looking at you from a different angle. the sexual kind.

your lack of contact with other people due to his influence had made you a bit of a pushover, as such he’d often coerce you into sex or other related acts.

i mean, you had to pity him! he never had the opportunity to explore and act on his urges. mans stayed a virgin til he enlisted and he’s pent up. you try to argue that it’s cause he was so hung up on revenge that he’s bitchless but that only leads to him questioning you if you’ve been seeing other people behind his back.

i mean you two were basically together, why would he see other people? don’t tell him that you’ve been … cheating on him? how could you!

so yeah he does the same thing to mikasa (the manipulation not the sex lol) and forces her to guard the two of you during your ‘trysts’ (which is just him, the inexperienced boy rutting into you and getting off while you stood/laid there uncomfortable silence)in addition to basically shutting down whatever feelings she might have brewing for him (poor mikasa dude)

but surprisingly eren is the most lax to you during this time period. despite the literal r*pe, he basically allowed you to roam around and do whatever for a change. frankly, it was mostly cause he had to catch up in terms of training, but also cause his FREEDOM ideal is the strongest during this phase.

anddd depending on your behavior you might get pimped out. only to those that he can trust though. god even jean got a taste of you because he lost a bet. he promptly beats up the man afterwards though.

if you’re more focused on training and acquiesce to his demands (hormones) however you’ll be enjoying the only three years of your life where eren’s presence wasn’t looming like dread of your death by a titan’s hands.

now i can’t vouch for how accurate i can portray later seasons eren but basically he’s the worst in yan levels at that point.

once he can fully utilize his powers there is literally no escape for you, not even his death, unless you have some sort of power that hides your ass. he’d already prepared for everything from your captivity to how your life will be like after his inevitable demise.

like i said before, he’d be the type to give you an illusion of freedom. he hates the idea of being caged and vice versa. so specifically speaking after his death and the end of the series, you’ll go from being stuck in a remote area to being free but with hundreds of armed guards watching your every move. hell maybe even the whole “town/village/city” you live in will all just be paid actors he had staged. he will never let you move on from him. whether you like it or not, you’re his in life, in death, as he is dying, and beyond that.

[yuuuume]

househusband au headcanons

Shinji ver.

| 1 | 2 | ?

rating: safe for work

reader prons: they/them

Listen, if Shinji could have it his way, he’d still be playing the sax every night at the lounge he used to work at. Sure the pay was crap, and he wasn’t all that great of a musician, but he genuinely enjoyed his night job (because the man clearly needed a day job to get by), but things change, people fall in love, people have kids for Christ’s sake whether it’s planned or not. That’s just life for you, so welcome to Shinji Hirako’s, or should we say the new neighborhood stay-at-home dad. This happened because 1, he got married! Yeah, someone went up to that mysteriously cheap and swanky lounge one night, took a seat, had a drink or two, and said, ‘Damn, I want to marry that’. Who in their right mind would wanna do that? Aside from me and the Shinji fuckers. Not many, but hey, love is blind! So… yeah. This is his life now. Stinky diapers, a fussy firstborn, and a life full of mayhem to accommodate. Shinji absolutely doesn’t wish he was at work! Someone save him.

What he doesn’t realize is that he will come to love this more than any job in the world and that being there with his kid every step of the way is a privilege he was glad to experience for both himself and his spouse since they work very hard to keep the family fed, clothed, and housed despite working dreadful hours. Because of this, Shinji really tries to give it his all with this househusband gig, to not stress them out on their two measly days off of work on the weekends. The Hirako family is what I call the living example of surviving on each paycheck but despite that stress, they never take it out on their child nor deny them anything they may want or need. Shinji and his spouse try hard to be great parents and are successful, they just don’t know it yet. Just like any dad, though, they start at the very beginning, which is the entrance of their child into the world! Shinji was given a sweet baby girl and managed to take care of her fairly well when his spouse was on paid family leave as provided by their work. They could have taken extra time but the pay was too dangerous to live on for long without overtime hours and the family needed more to accommodate their newer, safer housing so off to work it was, and there began Shinji’s adventures with his newborn daughter.

To be honest, the new dad didn’t expect to do much since he hadn’t done so before but that reality came to a screeching halt when Shinji realized that 1. He was behind on laundry, and 2. His newborn had explosive- and I mean explosive- diarrhea. The kind that gets from the bum to the nape of her neck kind of explosive and she’s screaming her head off from the discomfort of her excrements. All is not well in the Hirako household the first week without parent 2 around to help and he’s quick to break down which is sad, not going to lie. Shinji is so overwhelmed by the lonely cries of his daughter, housework, managing expenses, and paying bills, that he kind of just breaks down that week. He feels like a terrible father, and an even worse husband once he realizes that he can’t even do what his mother and her mother had done and it was as if his daughter could understand his pain, that she finally let up on the crying upon behind held in his arms after cleaning her up. Shinji quite literally let out tears of relief at her silence and realized that all she wanted was to be held and loved by him. Pure Dad moments!

He took a lot of tips from various forums and mommy blogs, investing in regular skin-to-skin contact (despite the awkward clawing at his nips) as well as simply keeping his baby in a carrier wrap and her fussiness improves greatly! So much that Shinji can spend more time doing things he needs to, but will lie her down in the very expensive but effective baby swing as it mimics his movements well enough to keep her asleep for at least an hour while he completes more physically demanding tasks such as scrubbing the stove, mopping, etc. Now what you’re probably thinking is, Mia where’s the daily route? Or maybe, What about Dad friend!Kensei!? Well don’t worry, I’ll get to it, starting with Kensei. He and his spouse visited the Hirako’s with food in hand and young twins clad in matching outfits once the family of 3 had moved into the neighborhood as a welcome gesture. Least to say, the Hirako’s weren’t used to that as the most they’ve gotten before is a half-drunk man with pissed pants sleeping at their door. Ya gotta love the seedier parts of cities, amirite?

Those who came to visit after Shinji’s spouse returned to work were visibly surprised by his presence. He knew it wasn’t that common for men to practice this way of life but damn, he didn’t think it was that surprising when he informed a mother that his spouse was at work upon their rather concerned inquiry. The gifts of food for the new family eventually stopped as his daughter reached 1 month old, leaving him alone as not many wanted to schedule playdates or even a general hangout simply because he was a father. Kensei was the only person to extend an invite to his place as he swore the neighborhood mothers were like vultures and that he didn’t want Shinji’s daughter to be exposed to too many pathogens from the outside world all at once. Simply the teachings of a professional househusband that Shinji gladly accepted and modified to fit his parenting style much better.

Alright, so Shinji’s got one Dad™ Friend, the oh-so-trusty Kensei Muguruma at his side, but it isn’t often since the latter works at home. So what is a usual day at the Hirako Household? It starts a bit like this: A groggy Shinji rolling off the bed like he hadn’t slept all night… which is partially true. The baby has her days and nights crossed for a long while so Papa Hirako is up keeping her company for his spouse to get enough sleep for work. His first duty of the day is to get breakfast started and make sure his spouse's work clothes are set for the day. They’re very insistent that they can iron the clothes by themselves but Shinji does it anyway then moves on to perfecting a breakfast they’ve been eating almost every morning since the birth of the baby. Shinji tends to worry his spouse will get sick of it but they always comment on how much better he’s been getting, and how it tastes different every day (in a good way, of course). Kensei’s cooking tips not only benefitted Shinji, but his spouse too as the married couple would often cook meals together on the weekends to bond with each other.

Although the morning is the most tense time of the day, Shinji usually gets through unscathed with the baby slung to his chest, one hand feeding her a warmed bottle and the other feeding himself. He’d be lying if he said food never landed on the kid's head. Both he and his spouse find it funny, as it was the little things in life that made a difference in their day. With their little one back to sleep in the sling secured across Shinji’s chest, he kisses his partner farewell, waving them off before going back into the house to catch some extra sleep. He’s usually more energized after the nap and gets started on whatever needs to be done which is breakfast dishes, laundry, and any other daily cleaning. His little girl is just bordering 2 months at this time, so Shinji makes a good effort to stimulate her, jingling noisy toys, and talking about any and everything while being sure to listen for any cues that she’s had enough. She’s quite the talker just like her father, entertaining him as she attempts to form words that sound like pure gibberish. Shinji records countless videos daily just to capture her development, sending a few to his spouse to watch at work during their break since he isn’t much for showcasing his kid over social media.

At this age, Shinji’s special gal is developing well and for the most part, still on track with meeting her milestones. Everything is seemingly happy-go-lucky until he receives a call from the pediatrics office that she will need to be vaccinated. The appointment for said vaccination was for today, and since then Shinji believed he would face this with his spouse but sadly that wouldn’t be the case. The first-time father was more nervous than his baby but Kensei reassured him that everything would be fine, and to be a little more gentle as the injection site would be a little on the sensitive side. Shinji at least tried his best to stay calm but both he and his baby were left crying. Shinji only cried a bit when the doctor left the room, of course, the immense feeling of guilt was just too much for him. Regardless of their conjoined Hirako Meltdown, Shinji made everything better by getting her all swaddled up and offering a bottle of milk during the ride back home.

Should he need to go shopping, Shinji will typically do so with Kensei because they’re designated Dad Friends, and therefore must move together. Shinji gets into couponing to save a few bucks and makes an effort to clip any and everything he might find useful. He even gives Kensei coupons for the really expensive organic stuff he always buys and makes sure to give it to him on a near-weekly basis. When shopping, the father usually has the luxury of browsing through most aisles, shuffling among his many organized coupons to grab the right box of crackers. If Kensei tags along, he finds it a little more difficult as the mothers in the neighborhood tend to hover over his children when in reality they’re trying to score him. Some like to fawn over his little girl due to her chubby cheeks but nothing more ever comes after. He doesn’t mind shopping with Kensei, it simply feels as though someone is always breathing down his back and that's a very weird situation to be in, much less with his baby. The little one is almost always intrigued by the older babies she can see, giving a gummy smile. Kensei 100% thinks it's cute but won’t admit it. He cannot give those moms another thing to obsess over.

Once he gets home, Shinji tries to at least get the refrigerator items put away before settling on one of Kensei’s so-called “not complex” dinner recipes. He wouldn’t dare try grilled fish again as he once neglected to check on the food, leaving the dinner harder than concrete. They had to resort to food delivery although it hurt the couple's pocket but they made do. Shinji attempts the basic hamburger steak and surprisingly does well as this time he does not leave the kitchen for a single second, watching the meat sear in the pan and checking each steak with a meat thermometer for extra security. His spouse is usually not home until all of the last-minute cleaning for the day has been done so Shinji does well to keep the dinner he cooked nice and warm until their expected arrival. His spouse is reasonably tired by then but at least they get to eat with their husband, the baby either entertained or asleep not far. They are so grateful for Shinji and all that he does as they realize taking care of an infant solo is notoriously difficult. They thank him for the dinner, offering to co-wash the dishes before getting ready to wind down for the night. That is if their little one lets Shinji do so for long.

As Shinji’s little one gets older with time he tries to get into various hobbies that clearly don’t lean into his favor. Those include but are not limited to finger painting, as his little she-devil had a phase of painting on the floors and walls (thank goodness he got the washable kind), photography (she kept throwing the disposable camera at things she 100% should not have been throwing it at), singing (she grew a knack for screaming at the top of her lungs), and gardening. Shinji could never forget his toddler dousing the newborn plants with soap to get them clean. They ended up kicking the bucket that very week and never recovered. Needless to say, this papa has been through some shit the older his daughter has gotten. All those memories ended up in a scrapbook though, videos grew into compilations separated by year, and soon he’d be marking a 5th compilation.

She’d grown well into her striking blonde hair although it had the shape of her other parents, and her teeth were as showy as his but Shinji convinced her they were cool so she wouldn’t have to deal with self-esteem issues, and oh boy, did she have a lot to say. Shinji didn’t even have to teach her to talk either, she just up and started, then never stopped. Even though she may have her quirks, the mini Hirako acts similar to her father. She’s been aiming to nail every single one of his expressions and does so very well to the point no one questions whether or not he is her father. Despite that, she gets on well with Kensei’s twins, referring to them as her cousins and to Kensei as her uncle. Shinji’s daughter is happy that her cousins stayed back from kindergarten so she wouldn’t be lonely, and in turn, they helped their Uncle Shinji get his girl into a few hobbies before she entered school.

It was certain that Shinji did not want to let his little girl go to school, but his spouse enforced it, saying it could give him a break and that she’d have to go the following year anyway. It was tough on him as it felt like it was yesterday when she was just a swaddled newborn on the date of her arrival, so beautiful and sweet, craving nothing but the love and attention of her parents. She was still an angel that day, kissing her father on his cheek as she ran off to the school with the other kids. He promised himself he wouldn’t cry and did so to the best of his abilities as he got home. Shinji couldn’t help but slump onto the couch, staring at the framed picture of their very first family portrait. The one on his phone from this morning would soon make its way there too, having been taken outside their home, a simple photo of the family of 3 to commemorate her first day of school. Shinji was bored with nothing to do afterward, not even thinking about the possibility of having another child. It was too expensive, not to mention they wouldn’t have the space should it be a boy this time around. He’s left to sulk until noisy moving vehicles drive on by for a few days and he ends up outside checking out the new dad who gives both him and Kensei a bad vibe.

Mr. Sousuke Aizen and his little one.

do not steal or repost my works anywhere

© yuuuume

[m1ckeyb3rry]

HOW I WOULD’VE WRITTEN YUKIMIYA AND KUNIGAMI

i made a silly post last night about something i would’ve done differently in the neo egoist league and it inspired me to finally make a proper post explaining how i, personally, would’ve written yukimiya and kunigami specifically, given that the both of them are currently suffering from benched-character-syndrome (that’s not a real thing, i just made it up, but i’m sure you all can figure out what it means)

disclaimer before i start: this is MY OPINION and just one way that things could be done differently — i’m not saying that this way is better or worse (on the whole i actually have been enjoying kaneshiro’s decisions so this is definitely not hate), it’s just a different perspective!! i will be cutting many characters in the course of this explanation, including some fan-favorites ones, but don’t take that personally, because for the most part, it doesn’t mean i hate them 😩 in fact i typically like most of them, this is just from a writing perspective ☝🏻

disclaimer two: i am not a professional writer or mangaka or anything — i’m literally typing this while eating a rice bowl at my kitchen counter!! so don’t expect peak fiction and DO expect plenty of typos…i also don’t know how the manga is going to go and this could be rendered completely obsolete (writing this as of chapter 276) in like an arc or so 😓 please don’t come in my notes and call me stupid or say i have zero reading comprehension or whatever other insult you feel inspired to come up with (i know some of y’all like to tussle 😰), put that energy into making your own post or ignoring me or whatever brings you peace and joy 🥰

OKAY now that that’s over with we can finally get started!! LMAO sorry for the lengthy disclaimers i’m scared of some people in fandom tbh because some of the notes i’ve seen on my mutuals’ posts/some of the fandoms i’ve been in in the past…anyways…

@sharkissm here’s the post i promised you!!

YUKIMIYA KENYU

poor yuki…he went from number 5 in blue lock to a literal random in bastard münchen?? okay maybe not quite RANDOM but he’s approaching that status 😓 it feels as though the character he was set up to become in the third selection and u20 arcs is not the same as the character he became in the NEL arc both in terms of worldview and play-style!! so to begin with, i’d make some heavy adjustments to his backstory in order to explain away some of those discrepancies in a more consistent manner

as we know, yuki had a pretty good childhood, all things considered — much more in line with the isagis of the world than, say, bachira, and not to mention kaiser. well, the first thing i’m going to do is take that away from him completely!! instead of having an idyllic childhood where he’s incredibly perfect, i want him to be from a “bad” area of japan. of course, both in real life and in blue lock, japan does not have any crazily horrible terrible areas, but all countries have their sketchier parts, and i want yukimiya to be born in one of those. he lives his childhood as an absolute MENACE and is the kid that adults hate to see coming. his parents work a lot, so as much as they love him and try to raise him as best as they can, they’re not there to correct him 100% of the time, so he kinda just runs roughshod and does whatever the hell he wants. in his light novel, it’s mentioned that he learns to play soccer with this old man and his dog, and i’m actually not going to take that aspect away from him completely because it’s cute, but i will change the context a bit; instead of it being a chance encounter, the old man actually seeks yukimiya out and asks to teach him soccer. maybe his son went down a similar path that yukimiya has begun down and while he can no longer save his son, he at least wants to help yuki out and channel his energy into something more productive, hence soccer!!

after learning soccer from the old man and his dog, yukimiya begins to play it on the streets with some of the other local kids (who are just glad he’s not being a bully anymore and are happy to play along) which is the beginning of the development of his street-style dribbling (in reference to that majestic ass panel of him in the u20 game that was like hardly ever referenced again) as well as his dominance as the one-on-one king. he’s basically undefeatable, and this leads to something of a superiority complex in that he is firmly convinced that he is the protagonist, he is the one that the universe favors, and he absolutely cannot and will not lose and nothing bad can ever happen to him. he continues to be an asshole in general and is still the kind of guy that your parents would tell you to stay the hell away from, however!!

things change when his eyesight starts deteriorating. he goes to the doctor, and that’s when it’s revealed that he has this eye disease (is it even named in canon?? idk i’m just going to call it eye disease) and he might eventually go blind. that night when he leaves the doctor, it’s pretty much in despair, because soccer is the only thing that makes him happy given how miserable his surroundings are (again, there’s obviously many countries and places that have it way worse, but for young yukimiya who is comparing it to the rest of japan, it’s not that great) and he feels like he’ll now be stuck in the same cycle that his parents are caught in. on the way home, he sees one of those religious billboards that’s all like “god will always forgive you” and since he’s at one of the lowest points of his life thus far, he decides that he’s going to become religious because this blindness/disease must be a punishment from god for the things he’s done.

soon after, he’s walking home from school or something random (this is meant to be an extreme coincidence given the situation) and is scouted to be a model. this reaffirms his conviction that his conduct thus far is wrong and that if he ever wants to escape and live the good life that he dreams of, he has to abide by god’s rules and follow his ways. he gets into modeling and makes enough money that he and his family can move to a better part of the country, where he begins to play soccer for his new high school and is quickly recognized for his skill/talent. through this process, he learns how to be incredibly polite, kind, and altruistic, because he’s already been “punished” once and doesn’t want to face it again…he also wants to prove that he is better now and deserves this new life of his as much as if he had born to it + he doesn’t ever want to go back to where he used to be!!

what this backstory change accomplishes: it explains the street soccer panel in a more satisfying way, and it also gives a reason for why yuki is so kind in the 3rd selection/u-20 match and then suddenly becomes incredibly selfish in the NEL — instead of it just being explained away as ego, it shows how blue lock manages to draw out the worst aspects of one’s personality via competition, because yukimiya, who has worked so hard to be good and kind, reverts to his childhood personality almost instantly under isagi’s pressure!! it also explains why yuki’s so quick to just go back to being chill, as he probably feels guilty that he let himself slip like that and doubles down on being a “good person”

now as for the actual games this is where i think i will make the most people mad BUT i would’ve gotten rid of kurona and had yukimiya replace him!! to be honest as much as i do like kurona, he was very very randomly dropped in (i literally thought i had missed the manga panel introducing him because his actual first speaking appearance was so out of the blue) and there were already established characters that could’ve taken that role (ex. yukimiya). i would’ve sent kurona (and honestly probably kiyora) over to barcha because they likely would’ve gotten along well with bachira and otoya plus their passing skills could’ve made barcha a stronger team!! this also serves to isolate isagi more and gives him literally no one but hiori on his side — in this scenario, i want yukimiya to be SO altruistic (as per the backstory change) that he will pass to anyone, just as long as that’s what’s best for the team (the “greater good”). if yukimiya stays the 1v1 emperor, this also adds another dynamic to the kaisagi rivalry as well as possibly adding a ness vs hiori dynamic because that would mean that more often than not, yukimiya would have the ball, and he’s the one who they will rely on to break through the defense before passing to one of the other midfielders (ness, hiori) or going straight to one of the strikers (kaiser, isagi) (yes i know there’s only one striker on a team but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN). this version of yukimiya could also have a very interesting dynamic with kaiser as both of them come from somewhat similar backgrounds (obviously kaiser is worse but there are similarities) however kaiser forsakes everyone in order to view himself as a god, or god’s chosen one, whereas yukimiya once believed himself to be that but has now forsaken that aspect of his ego in order to place his beliefs in others and in a higher being. this means kaiser could also be a method of awakening yukimiya (giving him interactions with more of the team than just isagi) where his selfishness makes yukimiya realize that if he wants to survive and continue dominating on the field as the 1v1 emperor, he also has to be a little more selfish (a leader instead of just a follower), allowing him to settle into a blend of his new personality and his childhood one, where he’s still kind and agreeable but also a little bossy and much more assertive/willing to score his own goals even if it’s not necessarily for the greater good 100% of the time

what this new role accomplishes: it allows yukimiya to have much MUCH more play time as he deserves given the hype built up for him during the third selection (he was ranked higher than NAGI, which yes it was in the second selection but second selection nagi was a beast so that says something about yuki for sure [as well as karasu and otoya but we’re not talking about them atm]), it gives us a smaller cast to work with on bm (because at the moment there are just too many blue lockers getting random backstories and doing one thing in a game before ghosting and honestly if all of their individual contributions were consolidated into one character, in this case yukimiya, it would make that one character much stronger as well as taking away the plotsagi accusations as now isagi isn’t the only one consistently doing things in games) and allows us to get much more attached/involved with the stakes of the games, and it gives kaiser dynamics with the rest of bastard münchen instead of just isagi, which fleshes him out a bit more as well

KUNIGAMI RENSUKE

i’m sure this is what most of you are reading for (although i hope you went through the yukimiya part and enjoyed it as well!!) and trust i have come to deliver because i have many thoughts about kunigami…my biggest gripe is that his return from the wildcard was so built up and then the narrative treated it as so utterly unimportant (why do literally none of the characters gaf??? like there were a couple of panels touching on it but nowhere near the significance it shoudl’ve been given) that the readers themselves have zero stakes in it!! like if isagi, who considered kunigami a fairly good friend as far as blue lock goes, barely questions why his friend is so different now, then why should we as readers care either?? now, if/when the wildcard reveals are done, they will MOST LIKELY not have the same impact that they could’ve if kunigami as a character was treated differently in the narrative (again, maybe this will change and there will be something that makes the punch of it still hit just as hard, but as of the moment i’m writing this post, i don’t feel that that will happen)

there’s two routes that i could see kunigami taking, and both of them involve kicking out some fan favorite characters (again) but in the first case it’s only temporary!! i’ll go through the first one and then the second one and cover my ears as the bm fans yell at me for axing kaiser and ness

that’s right, route one involves getting rid of kaiser and (most likely) ness entirely!! i am actually of the firm belief that the ng11s (specifically kaiser and lorenzo) were introduced too early. people legitimately think lorenzo is a bad player just because ubers lost vs bm even though kaiser himself had difficulties when lorenzo was covering him…in my opinion the ng11s should’ve been kept as a mysterious entity whose only representative we see is sae itoshi (for narrative reasons) until the u-20 world cup, where ng11s randomly show up in some of the matches to raise the stakes and allow individual blue lockers to confront their demons/weakness and develop further (for example, in a game against, say, the italian u-20 team, maybe shidou learns how to break through a defensive set up with lorenzo at the center?? and that particular match is the ‘shidou match’ random example because idek if shidou’s built like that but you get the gist). i honestly don’t even mind kaiser being there as much because at least he’s doing stuff and still feels like he’s on another level but lorenzo shouldn’t have been shown until later — anything he does, aiku could’ve accomplished and that also would’ve built the rivalry between him and barou that was hinted at in barou’s ln…but anyways my thoughts on aiku can be a separate post because i have digressed!! back to kunigami

in this version, i want him to be isagi’s main rival instead of kaiser, who’s not here at all. make his new ego so obsessed with scoring goals that he cannot fathom anyone else doing it. whatever wildcard did fucked him up so badly that he is absolutely TERRIFIED of returning, so even if it makes the team lose, even if it makes him an asshole, he will do anything to score and prove himself as “useful” to the team so that, even in the worst-case scenario, he’s the one being chosen instead of anyone else (the way reo was chosen over him). this also creates a much deeper rivalry than just “who gets to be the star of the team” as it’s rooted in kunigami’s insecurity and fear of wtvr the fuck was going on in wildcard. this also builds wildcard up as something much more terrifying than it has been so far in canon, because when you think about it it MUST have been horrible and that’s gone somewhat unacknowledged except for brief hints and glimpses, and it also adds a legal/moral/ethical dilemma — because obviously wildcard WORKS, kunigami is the proof of it (as isagi’s main rival, he’s scoring all of the goals that kaiser did, so he’s obviously eating it up), but is it sustainable?? is it something that they can do en masse?? because there’s no question that it’s destroyed kunigami completely, so is it even worth it?? or is it one of those things that you think is worth it when you start (the way kunigami must’ve) but afterwards you regret entirely??

however, given the importance that kaiser has to the NEL (he’s kind of the face of it to be honest), as well as how many fans he has, i can totally understand leaving him in, so i have another option, which i also really like. in this route, i want to use kunigami to replace ness — which doesn’t make sense at first i know but hear me out!! ness hasn’t contributed enough to the plot (besides his dynamic w kaiser ig) for me to feel bad about kicking him out honestly and that’s one less character on the main cast that we have to care about, allowing for more depth to the characters that DO exist. in this scenario, kaiser’s in a loki-esque situation, where all he needs to get that coveted re al offer is someone with the crazy strength to push through players like lorenzo (we’ve seen kaiser struggling with defense before, and as barou says in second selection, kunigami has the build to hold the ball up at the top of the field)…enter kunigami, who’s very obviously a prime candidate for this, and kaiser POUNCES!! he thinks he’s going to have to convince kuni to take his side instead of isagi’s, but surprisingly, kunigami very readily agrees to it. this is because in this route, kunigami resents the blue lockers, including isagi, because while he was effectively being tortured, they were being lauded with praise and shown on live tv as celebrities and whatnot. they never suffered in the way he did, and although he does believe that wildcard was necessary for him to evolve (not a healthy mindset but the one drilled into him), he still wishes the rest had endured what he did, because it scarred him so much that he almost cannot handle knowing that he went through it alone while the others were enjoying themselves (comparatively)?? so he teams up with kaiser and is actively working against his old friends (for maximum effect add in reminders/callbacks to the team z days to give extra angst to the “betrayal”)…it would also be very fun to juxtapose kunigami’s and kaiser’s backstories here, as kunigami had a good life that was ruined by soccer, whereas kaiser had a shitty life that was saved by soccer, and this could definitely come through in their particular brands of desperation while playing!!

now, there’s plenty of theories floating around that ness will assist isagi in scoring the final point against pxg (now that IGAGURI is in for some reason idk if that’s still a likely outcome but i can def see it happening) however my counter-point is don’t have kunigami assist isagi with the two-gun volley…give that to yukimiya (given he’s a character like i outlined previously) or even hiori, and instead have kunigami pay isagi back for the half of the steak (therefore acknowledging their past and old friendship for the first time since his return) by passing him the ball instead of kaiser, the way everyone expected/was covering for. this allows isagi to still score the final goal against pxg while giving it more of an emotional meaning than just “oh isagi has to win because he’s the main character”

alternatively, if pxg is meant to win, then i would leave the two-gun volley as it is, but i would just make it so that the setup is still kunigami choosing isagi over kaiser and acknowledging their old friendship, and i would make a bigger deal out of the pass since the build up is different!! i also wouldn’t have noa tell kunigami to manmark shidou the entire time…instead i would make kunigami obsessed with shidou in the BEGINNING of the game, but i would have kaiser/isagi/noel noa yell at him for this obsession and remind him that the objective is winning, not revenge, so he’s still active in the game instead of just being stuck on babysitting shidou duty (this role could be given to yukimiya actually, again given that he’s written as i stated previously, as he’s the 1v1 emperor so he has enough of the physicality to accomplish that and keep the ball away from shidou if it gets near him, and he’s already done enough in the previous games that it’s alright for him to take a bit more of a backseat especially after two-gun volley)

as a footnote, EITHER route you like, there’s one thing that was absolutely a missed opportunity which i’d like to focus on, and that’s kunigami’s dynamic with noel noa. it’s not a secret that kunigami’s supposed to be a copy of noel noa, but what does noa think of this?? i need their dynamic to be weird and fucked up…like he’s noa’s protege, as he’s meant to be a copy of the man, but noa is simultaneously absolutely disgusted by ego, becuase what do you mean his old rival who faded into obscurity has suddenly returned with this child whose body and life and future he completely ruined, whose mental state is absolutely destroyed, just so that he could finally “beat” noa?? just so that he could make a copy of the man that he could never actually be himself?? and this disgust with ego transfers to noa also almost shunning kuni and avoiding him when possibly/treating him way more strictly than he does the others…which only makes kunigami try to work ten times as hard to prove himself…but this only freaks noa out more and it’s just a vicious cycle LSKDFJHSLK

ANYWAYS so this was a crazy long post but it’s really not meant to be taken all too seriously!! like i said these are just musings about how two characters that i personally like could’ve been used differently 🤩 if you read all of this then you’re a goat fr and feel free to talk to me about blue lock/anything else at any time!!

what was that youtube ass outro