#straight from nana's pen

[pinoyhawks]

i'll see your heart and i'll raise you mine

takami keigo/hawks x gn!reader

Description: You can read him just as well as he can read you and he's not yet sure whether that's a blessing or a curse.

He's starting to edge toward blessing when you reach for him.

content warnings: hospital setting, whump, graphic description of injuries, brief descriptions of medical procedures, bodily trauma

[crossposted from my ao3: link]

~~~

“So you’ll never guess what I saw today.” Hawks tugs at the curtains, blocking out the golden rays of the setting sun. He knows you hate it when the sun’s in your eyes. “Do you remember that one photoshoot where I had to stick paintbrushes and scrub brushes through my hair and behind my ears and in my mouth?” 

Hawks glances back at you. The slight dip of your head urges him to continue. He gives the curtains a final tug before making a beeline for the electric kettle on the counter of your hospital room’s mini-kitchen. The water within begins to boil at the push of a button.

“When I was on patrol, I saw a billboard advertising some sort of brush for feathers and—wouldn’t you know it?—I was on it! Apparently, that was what the photoshoot was for! Brushes for feathers!” 

He shakes his head in disbelief as he tears open two packets of peppermint tea, the electric kettle beeping loudly as steam pours out of its spout. “They didn’t even tell me what the photoshoot was for while we were taking it. Wanna know what the kicker is?” 

He pauses for one or two seconds, for both dramatic effect and for the space where your answer would be, before pressing on. “They didn’t even give me one of those feather brushes!” 

Hawks dips two bags of peppermint tea in and out of two paper cups, one for you and one for him. “I mean, I’ll admit, my feathers don’t really need brushing nor did I really want one, but still. Would’ve been nice to receive some sort of care package or branded gift basket from them, right?” 

The smell from such a small portion invades his nostrils and feels like toothpicks sticking into his brain. How you drink this every night without getting overstimulated, he’ll never know, but there’s no way he’ll make a fuss about it. Not when recovery from your incident demanded that much of your independence and daily rituals be taken away from you. 

Hawks figures it must have been painful to be denied the simple joy of having a cup of peppermint tea before bed during the worst parts of your recovery. So he makes two. One for you to drink, one for him to hold. You’ll finish yours and he’ll give you his. 

He picks up the two cups and makes his way to you, treading carefully so as not to spill. From your seat on the hospital bed, you carefully pull the overbed table towards you, a safe place for two cups of tea to land. “I know it’s stupid,” Hawks says, gently placing one cup in front of you, “but hey. You asked me to talk about my day and that was the only thing I could think of.” 

You beam up at him before shaking your head as if to say, No, I don’t think it’s stupid. I’d ask for a gift basket too if they made me stick a toothbrush up my nose and took a picture of it without telling me what it was for.  

Something in his chest aches at the thought of your possible response. His grip on his paper cup tightens as he watches you breathe in the minty steam before taking your very first sip.

It’s been two weeks since the incident, hard to tell from how quickly you’re recovering physically. Dark circles still bruise the bags of your eyes, your face looks gaunter, and your skin looks a little duller than usual, but the scratches on your face are shrinking and with every change of bandages he stumbles upon, the gauze wrapped around your abdomen comes away with less and less blood. 

Yes, you’re healing, no doubt about it, but the silence that hangs over your room and fills the air like a wicked miasma tells him a completely different story. 

A quick tap on his arm startles Hawks out of his spiral. You fix him with a concerned look, brows knitted together. Hey. You’re flying off again. Come back to me . Hawks tacks on those last two words, just for himself. You’d never say those last two words, but he lets himself be selfish in that way. It’s hard for him not to be selfish when it comes to knowing ( knowing , not guessing ) what you, his very first, genuine friend, would say. 

Hawks plasters a placating grin on his face. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologizes, patting the back of your hand. “I’m fine. I promise.”

Your lips press together briefly before splitting into an affirmative smile, but Hawks catches the microexpression quick enough. You don’t really believe he’s fine, but for his sake, you’ll help him keep up that silly little illusion. You can read him just as well as he can read you and he’s not yet sure whether that’s a blessing or a curse. 

He’s starting to edge towards ‘blessing’ when you reach for him, palm up and fingers opening and closing. Hawks switches his cup to his other hand to take yours. As soon as his hand is in yours, your thumb brushes over the back of his, back and forth, back and forth. It’s okay. It’s okay, you seem to say. You smile up at him as you squeeze his hand tightly. It’s gonna be okay.

Hawks swallows down the lump in his throat at how the situation has turned itself around. He’s here to comfort you in your trying times, not you comfort him for not being fine. 

You’re the one who got caught in the crossfires of a villain attack, not him. You’re the one who suffered multiple blunt-force injuries in the chest, the stomach, and the head from being tossed around so violently, not him. You’re the one who could barely breathe the moment you entered the hospital’s treatment room, your breath rattling as your lungs fought to push air in and out of you from within your battered ribcage, not him. You’re the one who’s nonverbal thanks to a mix of trauma from the incident and vocal cord paralysis from your injuries, not him. You’re the one relying on body language and the notes app of your phone to ask for the simplest things, not him. 

Between you and him, Hawks is the most selfish person in the room. How dare he call himself a hero? 

Hawks drops your hand. 

For a moment, your expression falls before he takes your hand in his once more. His thumb strokes over the cracked and scarred skin of your knuckles in the same way you did his. Your smile makes his heart hammer against his ribcage. He sets down his paper cup on the overbed table to cup your hand in both of his. 

I’m here. I’m here for you. I’ll take care of you, he hopes he says as he raises your hand to his mouth. 

Briefly, he presses his lips to your knuckles. Short, but reverent in every way. I love you, I love you, I love you. 

Hawks looks up at you with bated breath, taking in your softened gaze, your teary eyes, and the pleased curve of your smile.

You set your cup down on the overbed table, right next to his, and cradle Hawks’s cheek in your palm. Something blooms in your chest, something much more powerful than fear and injury.

“Love you, too.”

[iinsertblognamee]

bluey and phonecalls

summary ― your son misses sam

pairing ― sam kerr x foord!reader

warning/s ― fluff, mentions of pregnancy

“Mama?” 

Theodore looked up at you, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes as he let out a small yawn. You let out a small ‘coo’ as you ran your fingers through his hair and placing his bowl down in front on him. His younger sister, Hazel, was giggling to herself as she smashed her cut up fruit all over her highchair. 

“Yes baby?” 

“Where’s mummy? I wanna watch Bluey with her?” 

It was no secret that the last few months have been pretty hectic for your growing family. Sam helping Chelsea win the FA Women’s cup and then moving straight onto getting for the World Cup. During all that madness Theo had celebrated his fourth birthday and you had found out your were expecting yours and Sam’s third child. 

With all that, Theo had started to notice that Sam wasn’t around as much but still didn’t quite grasp why. Sam was currently at training getting ready for their game against Denmark. After being put on the bench due to her calf playing up, Sam had made it her mission to enure she would be back on that field as fast a possible and as much as you knew how important this World Cup was for her and the team, you couldn’t help but feel sad. Your children were missing out on spending time with their mummy and you were missing out on spending time with your wife. 

“She’s at training baby, but we’re gonna go watch her play tonight with Nana!” You let excitement fill your voice, knowing that the uplifting tone would get him more excited for tonight. 

“With Aunty Cat-Cat?” A smile fills your lips, as you run your fingers through his hair once again before placing a kiss on the top of his forehead. “Yeah baby, Aunty Cailtin will be there too!” 

It was no secret that Sam was his favourite person in the whole wide world, from the second he could kick in your womb, it was very clear that Sam was his person. Her adore everything she did, whether it was kick game-winning goals or flip pancakes in the morning - Theo didn’t care, she could do no wrong. The pair were two peas in a pod, Theo demanding that Sam teach him anything and everything about football (which, of course she loved). 

Although Sam was his everything, there was one other person on this planet that Theo loved almost as much, your sister, Miss Caitlin Foord. Whether it was the football or the fact that she spoils him rotten anytime she’s around he loved her. 

“Can they come over now mama? I just wanna watch one show” His small voice breaks your heart a little, his plead with those big brown eyes starring up at you. A small frown appears on your face, as you shake your head “I’m sorry baby, they’re busy at the moment but we can still watch it together?” 

He lets out a small okay, as he takes a few bites of cereal. Hazel let out a squeal as she continued to bang on the highchair, your attention turning away from Theo and onto her. 

“Oh my goodness! Look at my messy baby” Hazel giggles even louder as you make your way over to her - wiping off the fruit and picking her out of her highchair. A small grunt leaving your lips - your pregnant belly making it difficult for you to hold onto her. 

“Mama be careful!” Theo jumping down from his chair and running towards you - his arms up, ready to take Hazel out of your arms. “It’s okay baby, I got this”. You made your way, slowly, to the living room - Theo watching your every move (just like his mother). 

You placed Hazel in her play pen, before settling yourself down on the couch next to your son. 

“How bout we watch some bluey together? Would that be okay?” You watched Theo think about it for a few seconds, his eyebrows frowning for a second before he nods his head. “Okay mama, we do that�� 

You let out a small laugh as you pull him closer to you and place another kiss on his forehead. Bringing the blanket from next to you over both your bodies, Theo got himself comfortable around your bump - his little hand placed right where Sam would normally have it. The sound of the Bluey intro was enough to pull his attention away as you pulled out your phone - clicking on Sam’s contact. 

yn; hey baby, you busy? 

You bring your attention over to Hazel for a few seconds, would was happily playing in her pen with all the toys your mum and sisters had spoilt her with when you had arrived back in Australia. 

The buzz of your phone takes your attention away. 

sam; having a break for some food

sam; i got about 15 minutes

yn; hows your calf? 

sam; much better

sam; the physio did wonders on it 

sam; reckon i could be playing tonight 

yn: that’s so good baby!

yn: we’ll be in the crowd cheering you on

sam; my favourite thing in the world 

sam; did you see what i left out for you to wear tonight? 

yn: the jersey with foord on it? 

sam; funny. 

sam; last i remember the ring on your finger means youre a kerr now 

yn: i love you mrs kerr

sam; that what i thought 

yn: you nervous ? 

sam; a little 

sam; i wanna do right by the team

sam; and i feel like i’ve let everyone down the past couple of games 

yn: you haven’t baby

yn: I promise 

sam; how’s the kids going? Not giving you trouble are they?

yn: nah

yn: they’re being good

yn: Theo is missing you lots though 

yn: he wanted to watch bluey with you 

sam; my poor little man

sam; give me a second and i’ll call 

yn: okay, i love you 

sam; i love you too 

You turned your attention back to the screen, the intro of a new episode was playing, Theo’s attention glued onto his favourite show. The intro hadn’t even finished before your phone started ringing, Sam’s name flashing across the screen. 

“Baby look! It’s mummy!” Theo’s face lit up, the phone leaving your grip in an instant. 

“Hi Mummy!” Theo squealed, his body jumping up and down with excitement. The loud squeals were enough to set Hazel off, wanting to be apart of whatever she felt she was missing out on. You triple check that Theo was okay on the couch before getting yourself off the couch. 

“Hi Baby! Whatcha doing?” You hear Sam’s voice follow through the speakers as Hazel claps her hands and looks up at you. Picking her up once again, a small grunt leaving your lips brings the attention of both your wife and first child. 

“Mama!” 

“Love?” 

“I’m okay!” you assure them both as you bring you and Hazel back to the couch, your daughter squealing once again once she sees Sam on the phone. 

“What are you guys doing?” Sam asks once again, both kids attention completely on the phone screen. 

“Watching Bluey with mama” Sam lets out a small chuckle, as you shake your head in the background. You and Sam had seen every single bluey episode there was. It being a fan favourite in your household (and the main attraction for the 24 hour plane trip from London to Sydney). 

“That sounds fun! Have you been looking after our girls for me bubs?” Theo nodded his head, with a very serious look on his face. Your heart beating just that little bit faster. Sam was very protective over her family, which your son had noticed and of course copied. 

“Of course mummy! I even helped mummy get Hazel ready” 

You nodded your head in agreement, as you placed a kiss on the back of his head before adding “He did. Such a good big boy aren’t you baby”. 

You catch the sound of Sam’s teammates in the background, already knowing that Sam would need to say her goodbyes soon enough. Looking down into your arms, Hazel was fast asleep. 

“Are you coming home soon?” His little voice breaks both yours and Sam’s hearts, knowing this wasn’t going to end well. 

“I’m sorry baby, i’m at training getting ready for tonight’s game” You could see Theo’s shoulders drop in disappointment, Sam noticing as well. “But! But baby, you and mama and Hazel are coming to watch us tonight so i’ll get to see you really really soon at the stadium. How does that sound huh?” 

You could see that Theo was torn between his emotions, the noise of the matidlas getting louder and you could see Sam watching Theo - waiting for his response. “We watch bluey together tomorrow?” He shyly asks, looking between you and the phone. 

“Of course baby! We can watch Bluey all day long tomorrow, but only if your promise to look after mama for me tonight and cheer for us!” 

Yet again, Theo nodded his head with purpose, these new ‘comands’ practically written in stone for your son. “I will mummy, I’ll cheer the loudest” 

“I know you will baby, but look. I need to go back to training but I can’t wait to see you tonight okay. I love you so much” 

“I love you mummy” 

“Love you Sam” you add on, as she blows you both a kiss before the call disconnects. 

Theo waits a few seocnds after the call to end before turning his body towards yours “Mama”

“Yes baby” 

“Can we wait Bluey until we go watch mummy play” 

This was going to be a long day.

[babymetaldoll]

Are you mine - Chapter five: “Our flaws are who we really are”

Summary: Spencer and (Y/N) have to return to work, and for once, the idea isn't appealing to any of them. There is a new member in the team...  Word count: 6.010 Warnings: Nothing but some Criminal Minds case info and some curses. A/N:  Is it weird to consider a 6K words chapter "short"?

Series' Masterlist - Author's masterlist

Previous chapter | Next chapter (post date: September 25th)

(Y/N)’s point of view

Because being a mother, a wife, an FBI S.S.A. and part of the BAU wasn’t stressful enough, I decided to finish my Ph.D. after Raven was born. I still had one more year left, but my husband supported me to fish it.

After getting shot in the neck that year, Spencer took a month off and we returned to the BAU together. I will never forget the first day we left Raven with my mom at our place. Spencer wouldn’t let our baby go that morning. We were standing in the middle of our living room, mom stared at us, nearly chuckling, as my husband kept talking to Raven, explaining what would happen.

- “So, remember what I told you, Raven. You are going to stay here with your Nana until we come back from work. If things go well, we won’t go out of town on a case today.”

- “Things are going to go well.”- Mom pointed out, but I guess neither of us was paying attention to her. I kissed Raven’s forehead one more time and sighed.

- “I love you, birdie. Be good with Nana, ok?”

- “She is three months old. She can’t be naughty.”- Mom added, chortling.

- “She can. Trust me.”- I turned to her and shook my head.

- “Ok kids, you are running late. Give me my granddaughter.”- Mom stood next to us and reached out her arms to grab Raven. But Spencer didn’t move. He held our baby closer to his chest and sighed, staring at her big, brown eyes.

- “I love you so much.”- he whispered against her forehead as he kissed her carefully.- “Dad will be thinking of you all day long.”

It melted my heart to watch him being so loving and sweet with our baby girl. I always knew he was going to be a good dad, but watching him in action was a completely different thing. It was heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I knew he didn’t want to leave her alone, because of course, neither did I. But we had to.

Mom walked to him and literally took Raven from his hands. Spencer looked at her and frowned, ready to argue. But stopped himself in his tracks. He knew he had to let her go that morning, even when it hurt.

- “We are going to be fine.”- mom assured us with a big smile. - “I’ll call you at noon, and you can text me whenever you want. Now go there and be heroes. Make your baby proud.”

And I guess, that’s something Spencer loves doing, ‘cos after he kissed Raven one last time, he held my hand and headed to the door.

- “Did you realize this is the longest we’ve been alone in over three months?”- I said as I sipped my coffee, and watched Spencer smiling as he drove us to work.

- “I know. It’s weird.”- he replied and chuckled. - “We should get more mommy and daddy alone time.”- I raised an eyebrow as I heard those words and opened my mouth to tease him about his kinks, but the phone interrupted me and made me skip a bit.

- “Is it your mom?”- Spencer asked right away.

- “No, it’s Garcia. Hey Pen, what is it?”

- “Are you guys coming?”- she asked right away.

- “Yeah, we just got late waiting for my mom, ‘cos she is staying with Raven. Why? Do we have a case?”

- “No, I’m just making sure you two are coming today. We miss you.”- I giggled and shook my head, though I knew Penelope couldn’t see me.

- “We’ll be there in ten.”

- “Everything ok?”- my husband asked. - “Do we have to go straight to the jet?”

- “No, she was just anxious to know if we were coming.”

- “I hope she baked us cupcakes.”

- “I’m sure she did.”- I replied and rubbed his leg with my left hand as he drove. We hummed to the song on the radio, the first non-kid song we had heard in weeks, and we drank our mugs of coffee as we got to work.

- “I miss her already.”- I whispered after a few minutes of silence.

- “I didn’t want to tell you, but I miss her too.”- Spencer replied and we both sighed.

- “But she is going to be ok.”- I assured her- “Mom is a pro.”

- “Yeah, I know. I’m glad Sofia can help us, otherwise, I would have lost my mind. I could never leave her at daycare. I would have rather taken her to the BAU with us than leave her with strangers.”

- “You know we will have to send her to school eventually.”- I teased Spencer and tried not to laugh as he parked in our old parking spot at work and neither of us moved for a few seconds.

- “I know she will eventually have to go to school, but I am not ready to think of that today.”- my husband whispered. I looked at him and nodded, holding his hand.

- “One day at a time.”- I replied and cut him a smile.

- “One day at a time.”- he repeated and leaned in to crush his mouth on mine. His kiss was sweet and slow, he took his time, rubbing his lips against mine and tasting me.

- “Come on kid!!”- and of course, Morgan had to ruin it all. - “Let the lady go and get to work!”- he teased as he knocked on our window, nearly killing us with a heart attack.

- “We hadn’t had a minute alone since Raven was born, and you had to interrupt us!”- I argued as soon as I stepped out of the car. Derek chuckled and opened his arms, giving me a triple hug before I could continue talking.

- “I missed you, pretty girl. How is my baby girl?”

- “She is so big! She started grabbing everything and putting it in her mouth. She is so cute!”- I quickly replied and nearly took my phone to show him the million pictures we had. But I stopped on time. I had promised myself I wasn’t going to be that kind of mom, pushing their baby pictures on everybody’s face. I always hated that, and I didn’t want people to hate me as well. At that minute, all I really wanted was to come back to work and find everything just as we had left it.

Of course, it wasn’t. The only constant at the BAU, I guess, was change.

Garcia was, in fact, waiting for us with homemade cupcakes and cookies. That was the sweet part of our morning. Then came the meeting with Hotch, to catch up with everything that had happened when we had been away. He told us about Alex Blake’s departure, how she had quit the FBI and decided to move to Boston, with her husband, and teach full-time. We both knew it, she had called us to deliver the news before leaving, and though we invited her over, I knew it was too much for her to see Spencer again. She had developed a motherly bond with him, and watching him get hurt had pulled a string in her. One she didn’t want to relive. I guess some wounds are not meant to heal. The BAU can cause you that.

- “And are we getting a new teammate?”- I asked Hotch, and he nodded immediately.

- “Yes, but so far I’ve interviewed nine people, and I still haven’t found the right one.”

- “Nine? Have you tried with someone we know? Maybe bringing back Emily.”- Spencer suggested, reading my mind.

- “I already tried, she is not interested at the moment. But if things go well tomorrow, we might get a new member. Despite all that, today you just have to worry about catching up with work. You’ve been out for a long while, and we needed you back.”

- “We are ready.”- I replied and stood up from my chair right away. - “Anything else, sir?”

- “I just wanted to make it clear I can’t keep any of you in Quantico anymore. You’ll have to start traveling to the cases with us. Are you both ready for that?”

I knew neither of us wanted to do it, but we had to. It was our job, and we had to do it. So we agreed, stood up, and walked back to our desks.

- “We missed you here.”- JJ said from her desk and smiled at us. - “It was too quiet without your facts, Spence.”

- “It’s nice coming back.”- my husband replied with a warm smile. I looked at him and sighed at the sight of the pictures on his desk. He had three family pictures framed, one from our wedding, one from our first Comic Con together a million years ago, and one with Raven. Our first picture as a family. My phone hummed and a picture of mom and Raven playing made my day. So I walked to my husband and interrupted whatever he was talking about with JJ to show him the picture. He smiled and chuckled, pleased to see our baby girl was having a good time with her grandma.

Spencer’s point of view

Going back to work after Raven was born was a mistake. Now that I see it in retrospect, that was the moment we should have stopped. I could have started teaching full-time, like (Y/N) wanted me to do. And she would have finished her Ph.D. and might even have taught with me. We could have had a different life. More calm, at home. We wouldn’t have missed all the important moments in Raven’s life like we did. We would have been there when she needed us.

We wouldn't have ended as wounded as we did. With more emotional scars than we could ever deal with. On the bright side, at least we are still together. Despite the hell we went through.

The newest team member was Kate Callahan. We had seen her around in some FBI get-togethers like the time we all did karaoke at Rossi’s favorite bar. (Y/N) remembered that when we bumped into her the following morning, at the elevator.

- “You were singing karaoke at the Benjamin the night it closed.”- (Y/N) pointed out as the three of us shared the elevator on our way to the 6th floor. That’s how I guessed Hotch was about to interview her for the position.

- “I was! Good memory.”- Kate smiled at us and added - “Billy Joel might have died a little that night.”

- “Sadly he was not the only one.”- I replied and chuckled. - “He got the team started, but we went on to do a six-song set.”

- “The 80s took a fatal hit if I remember correctly.”- Kate said, chuckling along with my wife, and somehow I realized Kate would make an amazing match with ma cherie. They shared a very similar sarcastic sense of humor.

- “Have you seen the place that took over?”- she asked us and both of us shook our heads at the same time. Since we had turned into parents, our social life was basically nonexistent. - “It's like techno and twerking.”

- “It's not really my crowd.”- I replied and Kate turned to me immediately, shocked by my answer.

- “What? You don't twerk?”- I frowned and shook my head, somehow embarrassed by my own answer. Meanwhile, my wife had to cover her mouth so as not to laugh in my face.

- “I was... I was kidding.”- Kate explained, surprised I hadn’t got it. - “I don't twerk.”

- “Neither do we, don't worry”- my wife added and chuckled. The three of us walked out of the elevator and I hurried to open the door for Kate and my wife.

- “Ah. A gentleman and a scholar.”- Callahan pointed out and I just smiled.

- “Agent Hotchner's office is the first one at the top of the stairs.”- I said and though she looked at me confused I knew why she was there, she just thanked me and walked away.

- “Good luck!”- (Y/N) said and smiled at her. Kate nodded and disappeared.

- “We have to schedule Raven’s next pediatrician appointment.”- I said, leaving my things on my desk and turning to look at my wife, who just nodded. - “I’ll call the doctor's office at lunchtime, ok?”-I wrote it down though I knew I wasn’t going to forget it. (Y/N) simply stared at me and sighed.

- “Let’s pray we are in town to take Raven to that appointment. I don’t wanna miss it.”- I was about to tell my wife we couldn’t foresee how things would go in the BAU when Rossi, JJ, Penelope, and Derek walked into the bullpen, all of them talking at the same time.

- “Hotch talked to Emily.”- JJ announced and I turned to my wife knowing Em wasn’t planning on returning to the team.

- “And?”- Garcia was clearly excited by what she had just heard.

- “She just doesn't want to come back.”- Rossi killed all her hopes with just one sentence. I took a few steps closer to the team as I heard Pen arguing with David’s words.

- “Why? She loves us!”

- “For what it's worth, Hotch is interviewing someone we've met before.”- I announced and (Y/N) nodded.

- “He is?”- JJ asked right away and everybody turned to Hotch’s office to try to catch a glimpse of the candidate.

- “Yes. And it’s someone we actually like”- (Y/N) added from her desk. I turned to her and she smiled back.

- “How many candidates is that now?”- Derek asked

- “This one makes lucky number 10.”- Rossi announced and my Garcia turned to him shocked.

- “Ten candidates? Are you for real? And no one ever mentioned that? See, this is what happens when I don't sleep. I miss things.”- Pen whispered and I wondered why she wasn't sleeping well. But I didn’t get to ask, she just continued talking. - “Now can someone tell me who this person is? Are they nice? Why is that the first question I always ask?”

Pen started rambling as my wife explained we had bumped into agent Callahan on the way over. All of our friends nodded as she told us what had happened until JJ mentioned the one fact I wished we all could have forgotten.

- “Didn’t she use to work with Seaver? At Andy Swan’s Unit?”

- “What?”- (Y/N) asked as her face fell- “She is Seaver’s friend?”

- “You know, pretty girl, that simple fact doesn’t mean she has to be your enemy.”- Derek explained with a silly grin on his face. (Y/N) just turned to him and raised an eyebrow.

- “Of course, it doesn’t”.- she whispered and made a short pause before she added - “But did you just meet me or what?”- I looked at my wife and raised an eyebrow. She just smiled and shook her head.

- “You already liked her, face it.”- I whispered and (Y/N) sighed.

- “Yeah… but what if Seaver talked shit about me ‘cos I was mean to her when she was part of the team.”

- “Then she wouldn’t be lying.”- JJ replied and my wife glared at her immediately- “What? you know you weren’t nice.”

- “I know that, but you weren’t here to witness the whole deal, so you don’t know the whole story.”- the way (Y/N) nearly spat those words on JJ’s face left me speechless. And JJ didn’t know how to react either. So she just turned around and looked at me, shocked.

- “Come on, don’t argue.”- Pen said and stood between JJ and my wife. - “We have to stay together, we are a team, and we might be getting a new member.”- her cell phone finished her speech and her face went pale in a second.

- “What is it?”- Rossi asked, noticing her change.

- “The Bakersfield’s unsub killed again.”- she mumbled and started walking, she had to tell Hotch.

I looked at (Y/N) and she sighed. She knew she had been rude to JJ, though her comment hadn’t been the best either.

- “I’m sorry I snapped”- (Y/N) said and cut JJ a short smile. She was being honest, and I knew it was hard for her to deal with apologies.

- “I’m sorry too, I know it was a hard moment for you… I shouldn’t have said that.”- JJ rubbed her arms as she stared at my wife, and the two of them nodded.

- “Come on, we have a case.”- Rossi said and started walking to the briefing room, I waited for (Y/N) to grab her things and followed her.

- “Everyone, this is SSA Kate Callahan from Andy Swan's unit. She'll be joining the team.”- Hotch announced as soon as he walked into the room with Callahan, who waved at us with a grin.

- “Congratulations.”- I smiled at her as she sat at the other side of the table.

- “How are Andy and Seaver doing?”- Morgan asked her.

- “Oh, they're great and they say hello. They told me a lot about all of you.”- Kate said with a cheerful voice, and the entire team stared at my wife, who just nodded at Callahan with a warm smile, ignoring them. They weren't being subtle at all, and (Y/N) knew it.

- “We can get started.”- Hotch said and Pen started presenting the case.

(Y/N)’s point of view

It was sad knowing Prentiss didn’t want to come back to the team. I knew she loved her job at Interpol, but I always hoped one day she’d return to us. I was also feeling weird about JJ. I didn’t have any logical reason to snap at her the way I did, but something inside of me felt uneasy about her. However, she was my friend, so I did my best to put that feeling aside and be nicer to her. I know when I’m upset I can be incredibly hurtful, and that’s no way to treat a friend.

I called my mom as we gathered our things to get to the plane and announced to her we were heading to California.

- “We have been consulting on this case, and this guy just dumped the third body, so we are heading over right now.”- I explained as I grabbed my casefile, purse and looked at Spencer.

- “Take care, peanut. I will keep you posted on this beautiful baby girl.”- mom said and I heard her kissing my daughter’s cheeks.

- “Thank you, mom. I love you.”- I sighed after I hung up and shook my head. - “I hate leaving her behind.”

- “I know. Me too.”- Spencer whispered and held my hand- “Let’s hope we catch this guy fast.”

That day, Hotch paired me with Rossi and Kate. And guess what? I enjoyed it more than I imagined I would, considering we were trying to catch a serial killer. But Callahan was a great addition to the team. She was fun witty and incredibly smart. She had amazing comebacks to any random comment I would make. Three hours in the field and we were besties already. That made me feel more confident about anything that Seaver might have said to her about me.

We were back at the police station. Spencer was working on the geographic profile and Garcia was on the phone from Virginia, updating us on the number of websites that she found on the deep web where our suspect got to buy limbs from the victims. He wasn’t the unsub we were looking for, just… a weirdo with a problem. At least we already had a profile, and it felt like we were a little closer to catching our guy.

- “You'd think after 10 years I'd seen it all.”- Garcia sighed through the line. I knew she was definitely shocked by what she had found on those sites. It was sick, to be honest.

- “How many sites are there, mama?”- Derek asked her as I stared at the board my husband was working on. I was sitting at the other side of the table, next to Kate, going through the case file again.

- “Hundreds. And that gem of a fellow you've got in custody has looked at all of them at one time or another.”- Garcia explained.

- “I’m guessing there is no lead to get our unsub, right?”- I asked her and Pen automatically explained there wasn’t.

- “Anonymity is huge for these sites. They use a Tor network, which is an onion router. The point is, you're not gonna be able to find anyone this way. Do you know there are actual variations on a disarticulation fetish?”- my friend sighed at the other side of the line and whispered. - “I need baby kitten pics asap.”

- “Oh! Have you seen the hippo who lives with the family?”- Kate asked out of the blue, and I turned to her confused.

- “What?”- Garcia asked right away.

- “Sleeps with a blanket, gets massages, eats better than I do.”- Kate explained and looked at me nodding.

- “Where is that?”- Pen questioned and I could almost picture her face as she googled it.

- “South Africa. It's amazing.”- Kate explained. Morgan and Spencer turned to us and raised an eyebrow as Garcia got hyperventilated at the other side of the line and continued talking.

- “Trust me, I have an arsenal of cuteness. Have you seen the one with the baby elephant…”

- “Oh, with the baby chicks?”- Kate interrupted her, excited as well

- “Yes, I love that one!”

- “I love the one with the kitten cuddling with a baby, it’s so cute!”- I added and both Kate and Pen agreed with me, very enthusiastically. - "I keep telling Spencer we should get a kitten for Raven to grow up with, but he is..."

- “Uh, hey, you guys?”- Spencer looked at us from the board and I nodded.

- “Sorry. Sorry.”- the three of us said at the same time as my husband took us all back to work.

- “The most recent victim was taken from Riverside.”- he pointed out. - “That's more than 2 1/2 hours away from here.”

- “So his comfort zone isn't limited to here.”- Morgan added.

- “That's not good. He's got a lot more confidence than we thought.”- Kate said as I nodded.

- “Yeah, but this area has to mean something to him.”- I pointed out and Morgan supported my words.

- “Yes, he's leaving vics here, so he must have some connection to Bakersfield.”

- “The M.E. says he's gotten better at ligating each victim, which means he may have had practice.”- Spencer pointed out as he walked closer to the table and stood next to me.

- “On what?”- Morgan asked

- “We didn't originally profile him as an acrotomophile, but that sort of attraction typically has deep roots in childhood.”- my husband added.

- “That makes sense, maybe growing up he was constantly around dead bodies. Maybe his family had a funeral home.”- I said and my husband nodded at my words.

- “Exactly, it wasn't that big of a leap for him.”- Kate added, supporting my thoughts.

- “It could be. We know he wasn't social enough to continue the family tradition, so maybe he found work in a morgue or a hospital.”- Morgan pointed out.

- “When you say work…”- Garcia asked right away.

- “Security guard, janitor, anything entry level.”- I explained to her and heard her typing as I spoke.

- “Uh, the UC system has a medical facility in Bakersfield.”- she announced in a few seconds.

- “Anyone fired recently?”- Spencer asked him.

- “No, but there's an anatomy Professor on sabbatical.”

- “What's his name?” I asked and grabbed a pen right away.

- “Dylan Myers.”

The team went to the suspect’s house and left me and Spencer at the police station. I wasn’t complaining that time, I didn’t want to go. A part of my brain was relieved neither of us was in danger during that case. I wanted to go back home and hold my baby, hopefully, that very same night.

That last part was probably not going to happen when we got a call from Hotch, telling us the unsub wasn’t there. So the search for a secondary location started. However, Garcia had nothing on the guy, and the search was turning incredibly frustrating.

I was at the kitchenette in the police station, pouring a fresh cup of coffee for Spencer. He was a few feet away from me, reading the M.E. reports one more time. That was when I saw him reach the bullet scar on his neck and rub it. He would do it from time to time, I was sure it hurt, though he always denied it. Surely, he didn’t want to worry me. But nevertheless, I was worried. The fear of getting hurt or even worse had always been at the back of my brain, since I joined the BAU. But now that I was a mother, facing my own mortality was harder than ever.

- “Kid? Are you ok?”- I heard Morgan ask my husband as he walked into the room. I grabbed the cup I had poured for Spencer and headed in their direction.

- “Yeah. You?”- he replied, pretending nothing was bothering him. And Derek acted like he didn’t notice. A dangerous game to play at the BAU, if you ask me.

- “Just tired.”

- “Here hon.”- I gave my husband his cup of coffee and he sat straight on his chair right away, acting as if he wasn’t in pain at all. That was still upsetting to me, knowing Spencer wouldn’t be honest about those tiny things because he still wanted to protect me.

- “Dr. Lee sent this over. The most recent victim had more than just leather particulates in her stomach.”- Spencer explained to Morgan as I sat next to him and went through the file again. - “She chewed through it, leaving entire chunks behind. She also found traces of horse hair. He's using a bridle.”

- “This guy could have used anything. Why that?”- Morgan questioned and Spencer tried to get an answer.

- “It's either specific to his fantasy or something he had easy access to.”

- “How many horse ranches are around here?”- Derek asked my husband, but before he could reply, I said:

- “One hundred and thirty-four.”- Morgan frowned and turned to me as Spencer smiled and looked at the M.E report in his hands.

- “You are spending too much time with your husband, I’m gonna ask Hotch to pair us together instead.”- the phone interrupted our conversation, and speak of the devil, it was Hotch, with shocking news. Our suspect David Myers wasn’t actually the unsub, but his first victim and the killer had framed him.

- “That’s what I call a plot twist”- I whispered as I heard Hotch’s explanation.

- “He took out a lot of rage on this man for a reason.”- our Unit Chief added.

- “Maybe this Dylan Myers stood in the way of the unsub's true object of affection.”- Spencer suggested.

- “Well, it makes sense since we thought the first and second victims were connected.”- I added, but Spencer quickly shook his head.

- “Only Dylan Myers was single.”

- “Garcia, was Dylan Myers dating anyone?”- Hotch asked at the other side of the line.

- “He was a bit of a hermit, and like I said, zero social media skills. Did go old school with a landline. Tracking his frequently called numbers. He called a young woman named Christine Locke several times. She's a former student, lives in Bakersfield.”- Garcia made a pause and somehow, we all knew exactly what she was going to say next. - “And she's missing. Sending you her picture now.”

We stared at our cell phone’s screen and watched the image of a young blond girl appear in front of us.

- “She looks like the second victim.”- I whispered and looked at my husband for a moment, he was frowning, trying to connect the dots in this crime. If you ask me, he was desperate to crack it and go back home.

- “Did she have a restraining order out on anyone?”- Hotch asked.

- “Checking now.”- Garcia replied and typed as fast as she could. - “Uh, yes. She filed for and was granted a restraining order on August 6 from Steven Parkett.”

- “And where is he?”- I asked quickly, and Pen answered in a second.

- “Probably on his way to hell in a handbasket, munchkin. He was raised and lives at a cattle ranch and slaughterhouse in Bishopville just outside of Bakersfield. Sending you the coordinates now.”

The team got the killer, and before we knew it, we were on the plane, on our way back home. JJ and Morgan welcomed Kate with a long speech about their battle scars, that made me chuckle from the other side of the plane, at least the few minutes it lasted, ‘cos soon everybody around me was snoring. Everyone but me. Somehow I couldn’t close my eyes. I was too excited about going back home and holding my daughter in my arms. So I stood up carefully, trying not to wake Spencer, who was softly snoring next to me, and walked to the kitchenette to make myself a cup of tea.

The water hadn’t boiled yet when Kate appeared next to me, and cut me a short smile, clearly still half asleep.

- “Is there enough water in that pot for another tea?”- she whispered and I chuckled.

- “The correct question would be: is there enough tea in this plane to keep you awake?”- I answered and Kate Callahan laughed under her breath, trying not to wake any of our teammates.

- “Pick your favorite.”- I whispered and handed her a box with different kinds of teas- “If you need help, I can tell you my favorite pick to keep me awake during trips is Earl Gray.”

- “Earl Gray it is.”- she grabbed one bag and put it in an empty mug. We both stayed quiet for a few minutes. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just a little weird. We hadn’t actually been alone since we met, technically 48 hours earlier.

- “So why don’t you wanna sleep?”- I finally asked her, pouring the hot boiling water in her cup.

- “I can’t stop thinking about the case.”- she simply replied and smiled at me.- “How do you deal with catching a different serial killer every week and not… taking it with you?”

- “That’s a good question. I don’t know how we do it, actually.”- I answered and grabbed my cup with both hands, feeling the warmth against my cold skin right away.

- “Seaver told me a lot about the team when she transferred.”

And there it was, the pink elephant in the room. I bit my lips and looked at Kate, waiting for a snarky comment, a complaint, maybe a threat not to be mean to her. But no. That’s not what happened. Instead, Kate smiled at me and whispered.

- “She said everybody on the team taught her a lot and made her a better agent. Especially you and Prentiss.”

- “Me?”- I didn’t even try to mask how shocked I was by that confession. It made no sense. Yes, at the end Seaver and I were on better terms, but she wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t even invited to our wedding. And, like JJ had pointed out a few days earlier in the worst way possible, I hadn’t been nice at Seaver.

- “Yeah, she said you two had a rocky start, but that you were an incredible agent, and that she put to use everything you taught her.”- I raised an eyebrow and waited for the “but” to come any second.

But it never came.

- “I don’t know if Ashley actually meant it.”- I finally confessed and sipped my tea - “I was very mean to her when she joined the team. We had… considerable issues.”

- “Whatever it was, you two managed to work together no matter what, and you really taught her a lot. She was very proud to have worked alongside you and agent Prentiss.”- I tried to read Kate, try to find any trace of deceit, irony, or any lead that showed me she was lying. But there was nothing. Was I losing my profiler’s touch? Or was she actually being honest?

- “Wow.”- that was all I managed to say. - “I’m glad we were a good school for her.”

- “You definitely were. She said it was the first time she actually managed to skip her father’s stigma and be herself.”- I sipped my cup and nodded. On that very same plane, I had yelled at Ashley about how her father had killed my aunt. It felt like ages ago. In another life.

- “So, how long have you and Spencer been together?”- Kate asked after a few seconds. I smiled and whispered.

- “It’s gonna be three years already since we got married, and four since we started dating.”

- “You didn’t wait long to tie the knot!”- she replied, shocked, and raised an eyebrow.

- “It might sound weird, but most people thought it took us too long.”- it was funny looking back now, but god! It had been a long journey.

- “Really? Why?”

- “‘Cos we were in love for four years and a half and none of us said a word about our feelings.”- I confessed and giggled. Kate wide opened her eyes, shocked.

- “You what?!”

- “Yeah! We wasted four years in love with each other ‘cos we were both terrified to deal with our feelings.”

- “Oh my god! That’s… like a rom-com!”- Callahan chuckled and I smiled, thinking it was funny now, but back when Ashley was in the team, it was the closest I had ever been to hell on earth.

- “Yeah, that’s why after we started dating, we decided to get married very soon, and no one was actually shocked by that.”

- “And do you have kids?”- Kate asked, and I had to do my best effort not to jump with excitement when I started talking about our daughter.

- “One daughter, Raven Marie. She is three months and a half.”- I made my best effort not to be the kind of mom I always made fun of, showing pictures of their babies to anyone they could. Until I heard Kate ask the questions:

- “Do you have pictures?”- and I know I grinned like a maniac, grabbing my phone.

- “I have so many!”

For the rest of the trip, Callahan and I stayed in the kitchenette of the plane, drinking tea and chatting. She told me she didn’t have kids of her own yet, but that she and her husband were guardians of her little niece “Meg” after her sister died. I didn’t ask much about it 'cause it was clearly a sensitive subject, but she did tell me a lot about Meg. She was thirteen already, which gave me a glimpse of what raising a teenager meant. And it sounded creepy.

That morning we reached home and found my mom walking in the living room with baby Raven. I nearly ran to her and held her in my arms. Me and Spencer kissed her chubby cheeks and somehow, I felt at peace. That’s a feeling I only get when we are all together, at home. A feeling that’s very elusive when you are an SSA. 

Previous chapter | Next chapter (post date: September 25th)

[dearcat1]

Dangerous Trash

Part 8 of Sass and Squirrels

Xanxus is doing his homework in all of his eight years old glory when Iemitsu makes an appearance. The worst thing is that Xanxus doesn't even see him coming. One moment he's seated down, writing the answers down in his worksheet and the next he's in the air, pen stabbing ineffectively at somebody's arm. Somewhere on the floor Tsuna screams. Xanxus is about ready to commit murder when the loud laugh gives him pause. Behind them, Nana giggles.

"Look at my boys!" Iemitsu exclaims, finally putting Xanxus down. "So strong." He smiles bemusedly at Tsuna, who is still trying to stab him with his toy knife.

Good. It stuck.

"I'm fine." Xanxus sits down, pulling Tsunayoshi into his lap and petting his hair. "Good job." He looks up at Iemitsu but the man has moved on to his wife. Behind him, though, smiling benevolently at them, is Timoteo. Fuck that, they're barricading themselves in Xanxus's room.

"San," his little brother whines, small hands tight around Xanxus's shoulders.

"Yeah." Xanxus agrees because as far as he's concerned, that's the right reaction to have when faced with these two. "Let's go."

"Hello there," Timoteo interrupts, kneeling down to their level. "Nice to meet you."

Xanxus tightens his hold on his little brother, doing his best not to scoot away. "Hi."

Tsunayoshi seems to sense his mood because he doesn't bother dislodging his face from Xanxus's neck. Not that Xanxus isn't a little thankful for that. He stares at Timoteo for a moment, waiting to see if he'll say something else but when he doesn't, he stands up.

"Come on." He pulls Tsuna into a piggyback ride, ignoring the stickiness of his brother's snack smearing on his shirt. "Ma, Tsuna and I are going upstairs."

Predictively, she's too busy with her husband to pay any attention to them.

"Good instincts," he praises his brother, saying nothing of the way Tsuna is clutching at him. "They're trash but they're dangerous trash."

"Trash?"

"Yeah," Xanxus confirms, putting Tsuna down on the bed. It's a little early but going to sleep is a better excuse than most to keep away from their unwanted guests. "Let's put on our pajamas."

"Not tired," Tsuna pouts.

Xanxus just nods. "Me either but it's that or those two," he gestures downstairs.

"Ugh," Tsuna scrunches up his face but he accepts the clothing so Xanxus takes that as the agreement it is.

He's not sure when it started or who started doing it but at some point it became normal for them to share a bed. Xanxus doesn't necessarily appreciate waking up to tiny feet on his face but the arrangement soothes his paranoia. All in all, it's a net win.

"Tomorrow, we're going to the park after school." And staying there until it's late enough to justify going straight to bed. Xanxus refuses to share space with these men for longer than strictly necessary.

"Yes!" Tsuna wiggles in excitement, doing the silly little dance he does when he's happy. "Play?"

"Sure, yeah, we'll play." He helps Tsuna take off his clothes so he can wear his pajamas. "Bring your knife with you, ok? You keep forgetting yours."

Tsuna nods seriously and Xanxus makes a mental note to take an extra wooden knife anyway. He knows his brother enough, Tsuna will either forget to bring it with him or give it to some random kid he thinks needs saving. Damn bleeding heart that he is.

[aerodaltonimperial]

(Junglecorpse, 1.4k ish. In my defense, and I know I say this a lot but it's actually true this time, I am very legitimately going through a lot right now, and I don't know if my therapist would approve of this method of self-soothing or no, BUT whatever, Junglecorpse is one of the few pairings that activates my "MUST HAVE FLUFF NOW" toggles when normally I avoid fluff like the plague. I wrote this snippet a few months back or so for Vamp via chat and expanded it today for Myself™️ so I'm posting it here so I can save it on the masterlist. You do not have to read this.)

“Do you think Tony’s gonna lose his mind and create a new pay-per-view every week?” Jack asks, while thumbing up through his Twitter feed somewhat absently. He’s only got his right hand, as Darby has stolen his left. Darby’s got one of his ink pens, the felt-tipped kind he uses to doodle sometimes, and the brush of the tip against the skin on the back of Jack’s hand is calming. Sometimes Jack ends up with skulls littering his knuckles, other times with swoops and flourishes; mostly, he just lets Darby do his thing. It’s familiar.

“Seems like a bad business model,” Darby replies. His head is bowed, chin turned down as he works. Last week, Jack went out to lunch with his sister with a stylized skateboard heading up against the bump in his wrist bone, and she’d laughed for about three minutes straight.

Jack snorts a little, still scrolling. Doom-scrolling, really, though he’ll never admit that to his therapist. “Yeah, people are gonna stop paying if all they ever see is Hanger and Swerve stapling each other’s chests every single month, over and over again.”

“You may be greatly underestimating the public interest in that.” Darby laughs.

“Oh.” Jack frowns at the back glow, squinting a little. “Shit, yeah, you’re right. Man. Should I start up a homoerotic feud with somebody with the sole goal of getting some really violent death matches?”

“Please don’t let anyone else staple your chest,” Darby says, a bit muffled. The brush pen curls along Jack’s skin.

“Anyone else? Whoa, buddy, stapling me was not on the to-do list for this week.”

Darby snorts. “I like you in one piece, thanks. And I’m not a big fan of watching you bleed all over the mats.”

“Oh, sure, but I have to watch you toss yourself spine first off the posts every Wednesday,” Jack says. He taps the screen again with his thumb, pulling down. Something something official AEW twitter, five clips from the last show, and Stokely buying another celebrity Cameo to woo Kris Statlander. Actually, that one’s pretty funny. He got Barack Obama to do it. Jack didn’t even know Obama had a Cameo.

The brush tip swirls, then taps a few times. “Aw. You gettin’ anxious over me?”

“Well, if you die, who’s going to keep my feet warm at night?”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you: wear socks. Your feet are fucking freezing.”

Jack huffs out another laugh. The Obama cameo was hilarious. Stokely deserves managing her at this point. “I don’t need socks, I have your legs.”

“Dick,” Darby grumbles.

“But back to this pay-per-view thing. This is a lot of matches. Having even more on Sunday, every month, feels kind of overwhelming. Like, I need to have the roofing guy come look at my place? And I can’t schedule it because Tony keeps creating new shows.”

“Mm.” Another swoop of the brush, then some lines. Jack glides through an update from Prince Nana that reads truly bizarre, a reblog from Bowens that reads genuinely excited, and a post from Danhausen that’s mostly nonsense ending with ‘you’re cursed.’ “Maybe next week. Your shingles? Or the gutters? I don’t think I remember you talking about any other issues.”

“Just the shingles. After that last wind storm, I think a few came off, and now I’m worried the whole damn thing will come down around me one night.”

Darby huffs out a laugh, but the doodling ministrations on the back of Jack’s hand don’t pause. “I think you’d get a bit of a heads up before that happens.”

“Only if someone is physically there to yell ‘heads up’ at all times,” Jack jokes. Another tweet from the official AEW account, and then a reblog. Sammy posted. Ricky posted. Sammy tweeted at Ricky with a bunch of capslock, Ricky quote-retweeted with a gif of a dancing middle finger, and Jack skips all of that. Let them argue on main if they want to. Sammy’s just gonna try to fall on Ricky from the scaffolding again.

“I’ll do it.”

The drawing on the back of his hand stops. “Oh, yeah?” Jack smiles. “Are you volunteering to always…” He looks down at the doodles on his skin, and freezes.

Adorning his knuckles are a series of curves, vine-like, that curl up towards his ring finger where they create a solid horizontal line, and in the middle of his hand, somewhat shaky, given they were written upside down to be read from Jack’s direction, blocky letters spell WILL YOU MARRY ME.

Jack’s chest constricts. He can’t breathe. With his heart roaring against his ears, he whips his gaze up to stare at Darby, whose expression is maddeningly neutral. “Darby. What the fuck?”

“Okay, that’s… a response,” Darby says, with the tiniest of shrugs and a pinch to his lips. “Think it’s pretty clear.”

“Are you… are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Darby replies, mouth quirking up at the corners. “Yeah, I am.”

“You…” Jack’s tongue is ungainly, swollen. “Oh my god.”

“I’m not hearing an answer.”

“But… why would you…”

Darby drops his eyes, dragging his thumb over the topmost part of his impromptu design in a caress, and his smile never really diminishes. “Jack, what did you think this was? What did you think this was going to be? I don’t do things in halves, I told you that from the get-go. You know me. It’s you and me, and that’s what I want. Forever.”

“Are… are you sure?” Jack’s gonna choke on everything bubbling up from his chest.

Darby’s eyes slide back up. They reflect the lamplight, bright shiny starbursts. “Yeah, Jack, I’m really fucking sure. And if you don’t—”

“Yes.”

Darby pauses, tongue slipping out to press into the corner of his mouth. “Yes?”

“Yes.” Jack laughs, the sound bubbling up through his throat. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Holy shit.” Darby’s smile widens, impossibly stretched. “Holy shit. Really?”

Jack grabs for Darby’s face, clutching the sides of his head. He mashes their mouths together with way too much force, but he can’t stop it, because the rattling in his veins has started to sing. Then he pulls away. “You asked, you absolute loon, how did you not expect an answer? Yes, really. Really.”

And then he’s not really sure of much other than the fact that they’re both laughing, euphoric, and Jack doesn’t care about the roof anymore, or the idea of someone stapling his chest, because all that really pales in comparison to everything else, and he thinks ah, that’s exactly how it should be.

His brain starts to catch up with reality, sluggish. “Where are we gonna live? My place, or your place? This is opposite sides of the country, you know. Oh, wow. We’re gonna have to file taxes together.”

Darby laughs, features pulled incredulous. “What?”

“Should we hyphenate our last names?” Jack’s eyes track over Darby’s face: blue, blue, blue, his eyes are so blue. Should they have blue in their wedding? Should they have a wedding? “Should we hyphenate them in the ring? Wait, I have to go to the grocery store today, and I don’t want to wash this off my hand. Should I take a photo? Or wear a glove? Am I gonna look like Michael Jackson?”

“Jack,” Darby laughs again, high and bright. “Darling. Light of my life. You’re such a fucking idiot.”

“I’m seventeen steps ahead again, aren’t I.”

Darby grabs his face between his palms. “Yes. Yes, you are. Honestly, I don’t know where we’re gonna live. We’ll probably just keep both places. Yes, we’re gonna have to file taxes together. No, I don’t know if we’ll hyphenate our names; I really don’t give a shit. Yes, you can take a photo. No, you will never look like Michael Jackson.”

“You don’t have an opinion about our names?” Jack asks.

Darby hauls him closer, until their noses touch. He’s smiling, smiling, and Jack’s smiling, the expression too wide and aching on his face. “Jack, I don’t fucking care. I just want to be with you and your stupidly cold feet.”

“Does this proposal come with the condition that I have to buy some socks?”

“Don’t you even dare,” Darby replies, his thumb gliding along Jack’s cheek a little. “You’re gonna shove your feet between my legs in the middle of the night and jolt me awake like you always do, and I’m gonna fuckin’ love it, every damn time.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a sap,” Jack says.

“Get to used to that, ‘cause you’re gonna be legally stuck with me after this.”

“Awesome,” Jack breathes, and kisses him again.

[kittymaine]

Free Tire Removal Service

Note: I wrote this for the 40th Anniversary Jason Todd Exchange. This was my gift for G_of_Thorn.

-----

The first time Jason Todd stole the wheels off the Batmobile he was fifteen and it nearly cost him his life. You would think that he would know better than to do it again.

But, Jason wasn’t a fifteen year old kid helpless in the mean streets of Gotham’s seediest districts anymore. He was the big bad Red Hood and he wasn't afraid of the Bat or Two Face or even the Joker (especially the Joker). So, the first time he saw the Batmobile parked in HIS DISTRICT (the nerve, seriously) Jason didn’t hesitate to jack those big beautiful truck tires. Seriously, he didn’t even know they made them that big. He didn’t stick around to see what the Bat would do once he found his ride up on cinder blocks. He rolled those big ass tires all the way to the nearest chop shop, sold them for a mint (because really who was going to try and rip off the Red Hood) and took the money straight to Abuela Gutierrez. She could put the money to good use.

The second time he ran into the Batmobile it was in Tricorner. Not his usual stomping grounds, but he had a hot tip that Carmine Falcone was storing his heroine in a storage unit there and had made a short trip to the island to wire up a little c4 and blow the whole unit to kingdom come. On the way back, he happened to see something glossy black in a narrow alleyway behind a Thai restaurant that had him doing a u-turn on his bike. There she was, the Batmobile, so glossy black it looked like candy paint.

It wasn’t the Bowery, not even close to it. But, Jason ws burning with curiosity about whether the Bat had taken any precautions after his last tidy haul. Besides, he had a collapsible tire iron in his saddlebag.

(The bat had taken precautions and added alarms on all the tires. But, Jason was no amateur and he disabled them before removing all the tires and rolling them the two city blocks to the water's edge and pushing them in.)

The third time wasn’t even him. He was out of town handling a shipment of epi-pens, mifepristone and other needed medications being shipped in from Canada hush hush like through a friend of a friend. He had two clinics set up in the Bowery by then, but keeping them stocked with the real essentials was a pain in the ass that a little bit of smuggling could easily solve for him. Fuck tariffs anyway they could eat his entire ass.

When he came back to Gotham, everyone was talking about how four kids no older than thirteen were seen rolling tires almost as big as them away from crime alley, all of them wearing red hoodies. Jason was so proud he could have cried. There was real hope in the next generation.

He sent a cake and a metric ton of burritos to the houses of each kid and made an announcement to all his guys. Any bat vehicle parked in the bowery was fair game. If any bat tried to give any of his people trouble for fucking with their cars, bikes or fucking unicycles, they could rest assured that the Red Hood would have their back.

Jason had expected that to be the beginning of open season. He was spoiling for a fight, if he was honest. It was either the Bats or Carmine Falcone and honestly he wasn’t all that interested in trying to go up against Falcone yet. He had been funneling the money he made from drugs (only non-addictives), drag races, and gambling dens back into the community. He had set up homeless shelters, free childcare centers, clinics, and children’s homes all throughout the Bowery, all with good people who he knew could be trusted. Anything that was leftover went straight to families that needed it. The Bowery was big, but it was also close and everyone basically lived in everyone else’s pockets. They kept things insular and they took care of their own and it was never hard to ask a few abuelas or nanas about who in the community could use his help the most. Still, that didn’t leave a lot of money left over to invest in weapons or hiring outside goons to go throw themselves into the line of fire.

The bats were the next best thing. The only problem was that they weren’t biting.

Jason had gotten a visit from Batman early on in his campaign to take over the Bowery. It was a joke, honestly. Jason had just started to wage a bloody one man war against Black Mask to push him out of the Bowery. He didn’t have a gang yet, just a duffle bag full of impressive weaponry and a death wish. And one night there Batman was perching on his window all dark and foreboding. Instead of fucking off when Jason took a few pot shots at him, he just started droning on about how Jason was a criminal and if he didn’t stop with all the violence and bloodshed, he would be getting another visit from him and next time he wouldn’t be so nice.

Oh, so scared. /s

What a douchebag.

Jason didn’t pay him any mind. Partially because he already thought that Batman was a grandstanding jackass who only ever showed up if he could get a big front page piece written about him in the Gotham Gazette. Where was Batman when his dad was beating him? Or when his mom was passing out on street corners? It didn’t even have to be particularly his mom and dad. When had Batman ever helped anyone who lived in the Bowery, in the poorest part of the city, like him? Never, as far as he knew. Batman barely ever set foot in the Bowery. The rest of his reason was because he wanted Batman to pick a fight with him. It had been a while since Jason met someone he couldn't beat in a fair fight and he was looking forward to punching the Bat in the face.

Jason succeeded in not just pushing Black Mask out of Gotham, but actually spun his ass out so bad that he was lucky to own one shitty strip club and a bar out in the West End. Batman never showed up again. Jason mostly forgot about him and focused on his own shit.

Until now. Who knew that Jason could still be disappointed in Batman even after all these years?

Despite the open invitation to come fuck with him, no Batman ever showed his face in the Bowery. Batman and all of his associates weren’t seen in the Bowery for months after the kids stole his tires. It was a bummer. Most of his people seemed happy about it though. They were all patting themselves on the back for scaring off the big bad bat. So, Jason shrugged it off. At least it was good for morale.

Until finally one of them showed up.

A late night in May, under cold drizzling spring rain, Jason spotted a bright red spot of color shooting down the streets toward Otisburg, cutting right through the center of the Bowery. He followed it on the rooftops for a while before it pulled into what he thought was a locked underground garage and disappeared. Intrigued, Jason followed.

The garage was locked when he got to it, but he was able to enter the building it was built under and access the garage from there. Inside was a lot of garbage, a few abandoned cars and oh hello. A glossy red coupe with a definitely illegal tint on the windows. Not to mention a garishly obvious stylized R painted on the hood. Jesus. Way to keep a low profile.

Still, Jason was so pumped to finally get a chance to take another pot shot at the Bats that he didn’t just take the tires off. No, he also removed the suicide doors, the bucket seats, and was under the hood working on detaching and lifting out the engine with a chain tossed over a metal support beam in the ceiling when the boy wonder himself finally came back.

“Hey! HEY!” Robin shouted, sprinting at Jason from somewhere in the dark garage, his voice sounding a lot more frantic the closer he got. “OH MY GOD! What have you done to MY CAR?!” he screeched by the time he came to a sliding stop a few feet away from the car itself. Jason had carefully placed each piece he removed from the car beside it so it looked like a halo of car parts surrounding the chassis up on cinder blocks.

“Oh, well look who it is!” Jason sang as he popped up from under the hood holding an adjustable wrench in his hand. “If it isn’t the bird brained idiot who parked his car in my territory. How’s it going, bird brained idiot? Catch any ne’er do wells today?”

“How did you do all this? The seats? THE STEREO?!” Robin bemoaned, going from one item on the ground to the next like he didn’t know where to look.

“Oh my god,” Jason sighed, rolling his eyes so hard he thought he might have seen his brain for a second. He dropped the radiator to the ground with a loud clang and walked over to where the chain hooked around the engine was hanging from a beam in the ceiling and gave it a testing pull. It was still attached in a few spots, since he wasn’t actually ready to take it out yet. But, he could probably pull off his big coup de grace well enough. He had the core strength for it.

“HEY ASSHOLE” Jason shouted and Robin’s head popped up, his face a comic masterpiece of crestfallen and confused.

Once Jason had his attention, he gave a powerful pull on the chain and the whole front of the car lifted off the ground for one brief glorious moment before with a horrendous sound of wrenching metal and torn vinyl piping the last few bits and bobs connecting the engine to the rest of the car gave out and the whole thing ripped free of the chassis, dropping the car back onto the front cinder blocks with a loud clang.

Robin wailed a distraught “NO STOP WHAT ARE YOU-” but froze as his car came crashing down to Earth with an ear shattering bang.

Jason guided the engine block down off the chain and onto the dirty garage floor and then dusted his hands off on his jeans. Robin was still frozen in shock, his hand still half raised toward his car. Jason tapped his adjustable wrench on Robin’s shoulder as he went by him.

“Stay out of the Bowery, twerp,” he said brightly and then strolled out of the garage humming a merry tune.

-----

Jason was exceedingly pleased with how well pranking Robin had gone, but he assumed that would be the end of it for the bats for a while. Batman had obviously gotten the message loud and clear and Jason would eat his own shoe if Robin so much as saw the word Bowery in a book and didn’t shudder in terror. Surely, they had the message now that no bat was safe in the Bowery and he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing any more after that.

Except that Jason developed a shadow just a few days after his run in with Robin.

Once the sun went down and Jason put his helmet on, he could feel that he was being followed. He couldn’t see whoever was following him, but he could feel them. Like a breath on the back of your neck or a sense of foreboding, he knew he was being followed everywhere by unblinking eyes as soon as he donned the Red Hood.

It took a week before Jason finally admitted that he wouldn’t be able to catch whoever it was who was watching them. No amount of turning around or taking strange turns or changing up his routine could shake the feeling of being watched. But, he could at least let them know that he knew he was being watched.

He was on top of his own apartment building, sitting between planters full of cherry tomato and pepper plants still small in their big five gallon pots when he called out, “I know you’re there! You could at least come out and say hello!”

He wasn’t wearing his helmet. It was the end of his night, so he had taken it off and was dragging on a cigarette before heading inside. But, he was still armed and in his body armor and it had been an easy night, except for the constant eyes always putting him on edge. If this was likely to work, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t try it then. Not that he was actually expecting ‘asking nicely’ to work.

So, imagine his surprise when a thin dark figure separated itself from the shadows at the far end of the roof and stepped toward him.

Jason startled so hard he almost dropped his cigarette over the side of the roof. Almost.

“Whoa! Ah, okay, hi hello. I really didn’t think that would work,” Jason stumbled over his words.

The shadow tilted its head at him and oh look it had little bat ears. Guess that answered that.

“You broke Robin’s car,” the shadow said in halting uncertain speech. They also had the voice of a young girl.

“I didn’t break his car, I just disassembled it. He can put it back together,” Jason said with a wry grin. He was tempted to take another drag of his cigarette but wanted to be ready if she lunged at him.

“You stole Batman’s tires,” the little shadow added, stalking closer but staying at the edges of the roof.

“Okay, I did do that. Multiple times, even,” Jason said, his grin turning smug as he remembered the satisfied feeling he had each time he rolled those tires away from that shining black monster of a vehicle.

“Can’t steal my tires,” the little shadow said, it’s voice lilting up in a teasing tone.

“Oho,” Jason laughed, some of the tension bleeding out of his body. He wasn’t sure he could take such a sneaky shadow in a fair fight, but if she just wanted to play, then that was fine with him. “Pretty confident, huh? What makes you say that?”

“Don’t drive,” she said with such a perfectly innocent shrug that it made Jason bray out a loud uncontrolled laugh.

“You got me there!” he said, once he caught his breath. “But, bats and birds still aren’t allowed in the Bowery. I’ll figure something out,” Jason said with a dangerous grin. “I’m the Red Hood, by the way. Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” he added with a genteel little sketch of a bow.

“You’re Jason Todd,” the little shadow said confidently and Jason was so shocked he almost fell over. But, luckily he was leaning against the low wall around the roof, so he didn’t. That would have been embarrassing. 

“I’m Black Bat,” she said, holding out one slim hand encased completely in ink black kevlar.

Jason took her hand and shook it firmly. She squeezed his hand just as strongly back. “You’re scary as hell, but don’t think I won’t find a way to get the best of you,” he said.

“Good luck,” she tittered and then was gone almost before he could blink.

-----

Jason pondered for a good long while how to catch the Black Bat. If she didn’t drive, then his current method of fucking with the bats was out. He considered just fighting her, as that was normally his go to for dealing with people who didn't listen to him. But, he also liked her and even if she was scary as hell she was also tiny and sounded feminine. He was not ignorant of the optics of a huge tank of a guy like him fighting a girl as tiny as her. That tossed out most of the physical stuff and put him back in prank territory. Something he didn’t have much experience with, if he was honest with himself. So, off to YouTube he went.

There were a staggering array of options when it came to pranking someone, Jason found out. Jason would never admit it, but he lost hour upon hour looking up all the different kinds of pranks people played on each other. A lot of them weren’t options because they were either too mean or required you to live with the person, but finally he settled on one he thought a young girl would probably appreciate. Buying the crafts was a fun experience in ribbing, but Mrs. Cotilla who ran the dollar store was nice enough not to give him too hard of a time for all the weird shit he was buying.

Then, all he had to do was wait for her to show up. Or, for him to feel her eyes on the back of his head and call her down, more than likely.

So again imagine his surprise when he felt eyes on his back but also heard footsteps. Was she getting sloppy? Or was she trying to give him a chance? If that was the case he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Reaching into the pouch on his hip where he had been keeping his secret ammo just for her, Jason whirled as fast as he could and chucked the pouch at where he had heard her coming up on him as hard as he could.

The first thing he saw was an explosion of red and black glitter as his glitter bomb collided with something. The second thing he realized was that the thing his bomb had collided with was not a young girl all in black but a young girl all in eggplant purple who was gaping at him while she was covered head to toe in red glitter.

“DID YOU JUST GLITTER BOMB ME!” she shrieked holding her arms out at her side.

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLACK BAT!” he shouted back, holding his hands out palms up.

“Glitter! For me?” Black Bat called, her voice all excitement and teasing as she separated herself from the shadow of a water tank and jumped as light as a cat to stand beside the girl in purple. She picked up the glitter bomb from the ground and gasped in delight as she squeezed it and it rained more sparkling plastic pieces.

Jason pressed a hand to his chest and tried to slow his beating heart. “Shit. Yes,” he gasped, taking a deep breath. “I told you I was gonna get you somehow!” he shouted once he realized that she was there and the glitter trap had finally been sprung.

“You didn’t get her though! You got me!” purple girl shouted, trying to brush the glitter off of her front and only succeeding in grinding it into the fabric more. “God dammit! And it had to be red?”

“Never would have got me,” Black Bat said, tossing the glitter bomb to the ground once it was no longer making little puffs of red sparkles when she squeezed it.

“I’ve still got plenty more of these things. I’ll get you. You’ll see,” Jason blustered, putting his hands on his hips.

“I want the glitter,” Black Bat said, holding her hand out and putting her other hand on her hip mirroring Jason. “Give.”

“What? Fuck. No,” he said, confused and on the backfoot. “Why would I give you the glitter? Hell no.” But she just kept standing there with her hand out looking tiny and threatening. And, Jason had made them for her. And, there was no way in hell he was going to hit her with one of these things. She could at least enjoy his hard work, he guessed. “Goddammit,” he spit and handed her the pouch full of glitter bombs.

She hummed happily as she pawed through the pouch, sending up more little poofs of red glitter dust before selecting a glitter bomb. She weighed it in her hand, tossing it up and down and then whipped it at Jason as hard as a baseball pitcher nailing him square in the forehead. Luckily the glitter bombs were just made of cotton balls, red and black glitter and burlap so he didn’t feel anything but a rain of glitter sprinkle down his face and chest.

“Jesus fuck,” he groaned, not even bothering to try and get the dust off. He knew from experience that it would take days for it to leave his skin and hair.

“Avenged,” Black Bat said to the purple girl.

“That’s why you’re my actual best friend,” purple girl sang.

“This is my friend,” Black Bat said to Jason, gesturing at purple girl with the pouch of glitter bombs she still held in her hand.

“Spoiler,” Purple girl added.

“Spoiler for what?” Jason asked, his nose wrinkling as he frowned and tried to shake glitter out of his bangs.

“No, like, my name is Spoiler. Like, I spoil all your evil plans! Get it?”

“Seriously?” he turned to Black Bat. “You guys let her go out with a name like that?”

“Hey! Like you have any room to talk! You’re not even wearing a hood right now that’s a fucking domino!”

“Hey, this isn’t feedback hour, okay? My name is ironic,” Jason spat back.

“YOU STARTED IT!” purple girl shouted back.

“Hey,” Black Bat interrupted them, poking Jason in the side which gave him a little start because okay when did she get so close. “Spoiler has a bike.”

“Huh? Uh, yeah. Why does that matter?” purple girl asked looking confused.

Jason was also confused for a second before the clouds parted and God smiled down on his poor bedazzled ass and he realized what Black Bat was getting at.

“Did you park it in the Bowery?” he asked with what he knew had to be a truly unhinged looking grin.

“Uh. Yeah? Why?” purple girl answered, but she wouldn’t get an answer. Jason was already sprinting off the roof toward the road scanning for any hint of purple he could see. This girl had a theme and he doubted that her bike had escaped it’s eggplant grasp.

What followed was probably the most fun and chaos Jason had had since ever probably. He was methodically grappling across the Bowery looking for Spoiler’s bike while being chased by a frantic Spoiler who had at some point gotten Jason’s bag of glitter bombs so he was being spiked with them every time she got too close. Black Bat was also zipping along beside them, sometimes helping Jason, sometimes helping Spoiler and just generally being a force of uncertainty.

Jason eventually found the bike parked down near the water but before he could do more than plant his butt on it, Black Bat was flinging him off it. But, for his trouble, she had given him the bag of glitter bombs. So, Jason got to chase Spoiler back across the Bowery pelting her with as many glitter bombs as she had hit him with.

Once both Spoiler and Jason were laying flat on their backs exhausted on a rooftop near Otisburg, Black Bat sat down on Jason’s chest and showed him his pouch filled with all the glitter bombs they must have lost as they chased each other up and down the Bowery. He had no idea how Black Bat had had time to gather them all back up and put them back in the pouch while still chasing the two of them, but she had.

“Now me,” she said with finality and plunked the bag down between the two of them.

So, Red Hood and Spoiler took turns tossing red glitter bombs at Black Bat while she performed what Jason guessed was probably a dance from Swan Lake with all the fluttering of hands. By the time the sun was starting to peak over the edge of the water, turning it into a diaspora of glitter itself, they were all completely covered with a metric ton of glitter.

“Fun,” Black Bat sighed happily, turning her arms in the warm morning daylight and watching them sparkle.

“Yeah. You two are cool,” Jason agreed. He was exhausted. Chasing those two girls all across the city was a tougher workout than any fight he’d ever had. “You can hang with me. But, no boys!” he added loudly.

Spoiler barked a laugh. “No boys allowed!” she agreed. “Only hot girls and homicidal crime bosses.”

“Amen,” Jason said.

-----

Jason was added to a group chat titled ‘two girls and a criminal’ by the next morning. He was more than a little tickled by the name and was glad that one of them had thought to open up a line of communication. That way they could let him know when they were flying through his district and he could warn them about any skeevy shit he heard about through his own channels. He also put the word out with his gang that purple girl and the little shadow were cool and not included in his Fuck Batman five point plan.

Even if that was the intention they mostly just sent memes to him and he mostly just sent pics of his tomatoes and the kids in his after school group, which they fawned over appreciatively anyway.

Spoiler came by irregularly, usually while chasing a case. Despite acting wild and fun in person, she was surprisingly no nonsense about her cases. Most of which were about hustling the other gangs still messing with the lower income areas of Gotham that weren’t under his protection, so Jason was more than happy to feed her whatever information she wanted. Even if he could tell that half the info she was fishing for wasn’t for herself. He didn’t know if it was for Batman or someone else that she was gathering intel and he didn’t particularly care. He trusted Spoiler enough to deal with her regardless.

Black Bat showed up all the time. He wasn’t really sure what her deal was, but she was fun and scary smart and the kids in the Bowery immediately fell in love with her. If the kids liked her, then that was good enough for him. Their asshole radar was honed as sharp as scalpels, so their positive assessment was worth its weight in gold to him.

Plus, she always came along with him to get greasy chili dogs at the hot dog stand outside Papi’s Strip Club which made her a hit with not just him but all the girls and customers there. Within a few months she was as good as any Bowery native, born and raised, as far as the people on the street were concerned.

And then one night at the end of summer Black Bat and Spoiler showed up together, which always spelled trouble, with one more kid in tow.

The three of them landed on Jason’s roof, their feet making hardly any sound on the sunbaked bitumen. Somehow Robin looked smaller and slighter than both the girls, though that might have been because of how they stood in front of him with their backs straight and their shoulders thrown back while he seemed ready to fold in on himself any moment.

“Hey, I thought we said only hot girls and crime bosses,” Jason said mildly, stubbing his cigarette out on the sole of his boot before slowly hauling himself out of the folding chair he had been lounging in.

He didn’t really mind them bringing Robin along. They both mentioned him pretty often, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the three of them were pretty tight. He had figured that it wouldn’t be long before they brought him into their little cadre of crime fighters and criminal.

“Robin basically counts as a girl,” Spoiler quipped, though not a muscle in her body relaxed and her feet remained planted firmly like she was waiting to take a hit.

“Hey,” Robin said weakly from behind her. “In my defense, I don’t even want to be here,” the last bit mostly directed at Jason.

“Robin is good,” Black Bat said, her body language loose and easy. Though for her she could be doing the splits and still be ready for anything. “And, we need him.”

“Oh yeah?” Jason drawled. “What for?”

“For the prank to end all pranks,” Spoiler added with a shark toothed grin that Jason could see even under her full face mask.

“We’ll need his brains,” Black Bat added with a solemn nod.

Jason snorted. “Well then, you kids have come to the right place!” Jason said with a grand sweep of his arm. “As my feathered friend there can tell you, I am the king of pranks! Did you ever put your car back together, by the way?”

“Yes,” Robin snapped out, looking alive for the first time since they dropped down. “No thanks to you.”

“I knew you could do it, kid,” Jason said with a wink that made Robin look so wrong footed and flustered that he almost laughed again. “So, what do you have in mind,” he asked Spoiler.

“We’re going to prank the most untouchable of us all,” she said with a solemn expression. Jason frowned, expecting her to say Batman. He wasn’t above pranking Batman, but he kept so far out of the Bowery lately that he expected he would have to go pretty far afield to get him. Though, if the kids helped him maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “Nightwing!” Spoiler finished.

“Nightwing?” Jason repeated, totally lost. That definitely wasn’t what he was suspecting. “That guy from Bludhaven? Why him? I thought for sure you were gonna say Batman.”

Spoiler snorted. “Bats has to be the easiest guy in the world to prank. One time I put mouthwash in his mug instead of coffee and I swear he drank from it three times before he poured it out.”

“Last week I put glow in the dark hello kitty stickers all over the back of his cape and he did a whole patrol like that,” Tim chipped in.

“Whipped cream. Up nose,” Black Bat added with a snort and a mime of shooting a can of something up her own nose.

“Jesus,” Jason said, not sure if he should be impressed by their savagery or sympathetic for Batman.

“Nightwing is the real get. He’s the oldest of us and the only one who’s graduated to having his own city to protect and everything. And he’s not beaten down and exhausted like Bats yet. We’ve all tried to get him, but it’s like he has eyes on the back of his head! It’s ridiculous!” Spoiler complained, waving her arms around in frustration.

“He’s a nice guy, though! He’s like my big brother,” Robin added hesitantly. “So, like, we don’t want to go too hard on him.”

“Yes go hard,” Black Bat added.

Jason snorted.

“You’re our ace in the hole,” Spoiler hissed. “You got all of us-”

“Not me,” Black Bat interrupted.

“All of us MORTALS,” Spoiler corrected herself with a haughty glance at a pleased looking Black Bat. “With you we can finally get his ass!”

Jason made a show of thinking about it for a second. There were plenty of reasons not to do it. For one, Jason had negative interest in anything happening outside of Gotham. For another, he knew next to nothing about this Nightwing guy. For third, it might not be wise to make enemies of some unknown mask, even if the other Bat kids were down for it.

But, who was he kidding. He knew he was in from the second they asked.

“I’m in,” he said finally, eliciting a whoop of delight from Spoiler, a little hopping dance from Black Bat and a begrudging look of satisfaction from Robin. “Let’s get to planning. I’ll make pancakes.”

-----

They eventually decided on a multi-prong approach. The girls wanted to go hard on this guy, so they decided to each play to their strengths. Each of them would go after this guy with a prank they felt was the best match for their skills with Jason as the unexpected coup de grace.

They all jumped in the back of one of Jason’s shit cars and rode together for the quick one hour drive on the interstate into Bludhaven. Once they were there, they all jumped on a comm together and then took off in different directions. The game was on.

Jason went straight to his objective. His job was going to take the longest, but he was more than confident he could get it done in time. After the kids piled out, Jason took the car deeper into the city. Bludhaven really was a shithole, even by Bowery standards. At least the Bowery had character and history. Bludhaven was all strip malls and square cheaply built office buildings piled up beside shitty hipster bars stacked beside gaudy department stores. Nothing was much older than thirty years old, yet everything looked run down and dirty. The sidewalks were miniscule, with no room for kids to ride bikes or even walk or cross the streets. Jason drove for over thirty minutes before he saw a single grocery store. Seriously. These people should eat their elected representatives for breakfast.

Eventually he reached the small security door that Robin had marked on the map for him. He pulled his shitty truck up to the alley and hopped out. Just like Robin had advised him, there was a keypad beside the door and entering in the code caused the door to lift up and in like a garage door rather than a normal door. Jason raised his eyebrows behind his domino mask. Swanky. He grabbed his toolbox and welding kit from the back of the truck before heading down the narrow ramp hidden behind the door.

At the bottom of the ramp he pushed through swinging plastic sheeting and found himself in a hidden garage with a bunch of tools and junk strewn around but the crown was definitely the gleaming glossy dark blue bike siting square in the center.

“Hello, baby. I am going to do some truly terrible things to you,” Jason sang.

As Jason got down to work, the earpiece he was wearing crackled to life and the plan finally began.

Tim was the first leg of the plan because, as the girls had assured Jason, he was by far the best liar of all of them. He would get Nightwing to where they needed him to be.

“A great night for patrol, don’t you think?” Nightwing was saying, grunting like he was stretching or climbing over the comms.

“A perfect night,” Robin agreed. “Spoiler’s hot tip is over on Baltic Avenue. Let’s head over and pick out a good spot to stake out.”

Robin and Nightwing kept up a friendly chatter as they ran the rooftops to get to the fake lookout spot that Spoiler had ‘tipped Robin off about’. Jason worked away as he listened, happily disconnecting transmission lines and removing brake pads.

Once they got to Baltic Avenue, Steph’s leg of the plan took over. Robin led Nightwing easy as could be to the roof of an old multiplex. They both laid down on their bellies and pulled out binoculars to keep an eye on a boarded up office building across the street. Robin really was an excellent liar. Jason couldn’t find a hint of deceit in his voice and he already knew he was lying. Maybe Nightwing knew him better, but if he thought anything was off he wasn't giving any hints either.

After letting them lay there and get comfortable for a few minutes, Jason heard a bit of metallic banging and then Spoiler called out “YOU’VE YEE’ED YOUR LAST HAW, PARTNER!” which made Jason laugh so hard that he almost choked on his own spit.

From the other comms he heard a similar guffaw of startled laughter before the sound of something going Shoom! A deep hollow sound came faintly over the comm. There was a wet splat sound and then Nightwing shouting “OH MY GOD” and a much lower, “Dammit Steph,” from Robin. Which Jason took to mean that she had succeeded in nailing them both with her t-shirt canon loaded with hand towels soaked in purple fabric paint.

Nightwing burst out into laughter and the sound of slapping came over the call, so Jason figured he was trying to brush the paint off his suit. But, since it was fabric paint, he was only going to make it worse. That shit was never going to come out.

“Haha, Spoiler! How- Were you there the whole time?” Nightwing laughed, sounding way too pleased for this prank to be working correctly.

“YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED!” Spoiler continued to shout. There was a clatter as she tossed her t-shirt canon aside. “BUT THE BETRAYAL DOESN’T STOP HERE!”

“Haha, what the fuck,” Jason heard Nightwing say quietly to himself.

“HARK!” Spoiler shouted. “THE HARBINGER OF YOUR DEMISE!”

At that the sound of absolute chaos took over the comms, the volume getting so loud that the audio started clipping. Jason heard a shout of “CASS!” and “No! It’s in my mouth!” and “AH! NOT ME!” in beats and snatches. He guessed they didn’t care much about secret identities anymore. Not that he cared. They probably already knew his social security number and the last time he had his flu shot.

Jason would have taken his time to really soak in the truly glorious amount of chaos Black Bat was causing, but the fact that she was out lobbing yellow glitter bombs designed by the great Red Hood himself meant that the last part of the plan was in motion. Black Bat's job was to drive Nightwing (and possibly Robin if Nightwing hadn’t yet realized he was untrustworthy yet) to the garage Jason was hiding in, in the hopes of outrunning her on his bike.

Which meant that Jason only had a few minutes tops to put the final touches on his part of the plan. Luckily, in case it wasn’t already evident, Jason was fast as fuck with a wrench and a welding torch and he was very nearly done.

He was just stepping back and wiping sweat from his brow to admire his work when he heard Nightwing and Robin crash down into the alley outside the fake security door. Black Bat and Spoiler were right on their asses, their cackling laughter echoing strangely as they were picked up by multiple mics on the call. Jason took up a spot behind the bike, his arms crossed over his chest in a way he knew made the muscles in his biceps bulge impressively.

Nightwing and Robin scrambled down the ramp into the garage and Nightwing skidded to a halt three or four feet into the garage when he saw Jason and what was left of his bike. Robin almost ran into the back of him, but was able to stop himself and lean around Nightwing with a demonically pleased grin stretching his little gremlin face.

“May I present to you,” Jason said with aplomb. “The Night Cycle!” and here he swept a hand out to indicate the motorcycle that he had masterfully converted into a motorized unicycle. Still a motorcycle, technically! But now more suited to clowns with an adrenaline addiction than to a vigilante.

“Oh my god,” Robin laughed lowly, walking slowly around Nightwing so that he could circle the bike and admire it from all sides.

“Oh My God!” Nightwing exclaimed, sounding a lot more distressed than Robin had.

And now Jason finally took a second to look at Nightwing. He looked ridiculous, splattered all over with pastel purple paint which was covered again with shimmering primary yellow glitter. But, under all of that, he was also probably the fittest guy Jason had ever seen wearing a skin tight kevlar suit of all black accented in bright sky blue with thick dark wavy hair and the kind of jaw and mouth that Jason thought only movie stars from black and white films had.

Excuse me, why did these children not inform him that their ‘brother’ was a walking sexual awakening on legs? They were truly menaces.

Black Bat and Spoiler were by then sprinting into the garage and not bothering to skid to a stop before slamming into Nightwing’s back, who by the power of a core so shredded you could probably grate cheese on those abs, held himself still under their combined weight. They popped up around him to take in Jason’s masterpiece and their reactions were the butter to his toast.

Spoiler screamed in laughter and fell to the ground on her back, laughing so hard it sounded painful. Black Bat was bouncing on the balls of her feet, her grin spread so wide Jason could see it even under her full face mask.

“I want to ride,” Black Bat said, bouncing over to Jason.

“No!” Nightwing exclaimed, speaking for the first time since he saw his new bike. “Wait, no, please! That has to be so dangerous.”

“Aw, let the little lady take it for a spin,” Jason said, holding a hand out to Black Bat to help her up onto the unicycle. Which she took but didn’t use at all as she hopped up.

“Yeehaw. Motherfuckers,” she said before gunning the engine so hard even Jason lunged to stop her from smacking her face full force into the concrete floor. But, she just leaned forward and shot out of the garage full speed up the ramp, screaming all the way.

“Shit, wait!” Spoiler shouted, sprinting after her. Robin was tight on her heels, leaving Jason and Nightwing alone in the garage staring at each other.

“Are you … the Red Hood?” Nightwing asked slowly, moving to put his hands on how hips and then to cross them and then giving up and letting them hang free.

“Yep. That’s me,” Jason said awkwardly.

“How’d they rope you into this?” Nightwing asked, frowning around at the remnants of his bike. He was taking the destruction of his property surprisingly well.

“We’re buds,” Jason answered easily.

“Buds?” Nightwing asked, sounding really stumped, his head popping up to pin Jason with an unreadable look.

“Yep,” Jason said, popping the p on the word. “I failed to prank Black Bat and it was the beginning of the end. I’m one of them now, I guess.” What he just said sunk in a second after he said it and Jason rushed on to add, “A chaos goblin, I mean! Not a bat. Fucking perish the thought.”

Nightwing laughed, a real laugh not a fake or nervous one and Jason’s already battered sexual orientation took another hard hit. Good to know that all the bats were a menace in their own right.

“Well, I guess I should say welcome to the team. Of goblins, I mean,” Nightwing said, sticking out a hand.

Jason took it and Nightwing squeezed his hand tightly on the shake. Jason’s sexuality trembled. “I didn’t know you were a part of the team,” Jason said, resolutely keeping his eyes on Nightwing’s pleasantly smiling face.

“I’m the founding member,” he replied with a toothy grin.

“Oh,” Jason said intelligently, finally letting go of Nightwing’s hand.

“Anyway, why don’t you help me wrangle the rest of the goblins? They’re bound to have wracked up enough property damage for one night anyway,” Nightwing suggested, jerking a thumb over his shoulder back toward the ramp.

“Oh. Yeah. We can take my truck,” Jason grunted, following Nightwing out of the garage.

“Cool,” Nightwing smiled.

Jason’s sexual orientation crumbled with a sigh.

[imnotsorryforanyofthis]

Quirkless Advantage

Chapter two: Complicated Explanation

Warning: lots and lots of cussing.....

———

These chapters are going to be stupid and short. Enjoy reading!

———

"Oh shit, what the fuck am I going to do now?" I mumble to myself. "Hey, can you hear me young lady?! I asked if you are ok from that fall," the very large muscled man asks me. "Have you met Midoriya yet? If you have, then did he get into UA yet?" I ask and he looks at me confused. "You know Young Midoriya? How do you know he got into UA? They haven't sent those recordings to the students. I think." "Ummm, how do I explain this...." I say and he looks even more confused.

Well, double shit. What do I do now? I could just straight up explain everything to him and see how it goes, or I could just run for my life. I guess it's explaining everything to him because there's no way in hell I could outrun him if he went after me.

"You probably will think I'm crazy but this is the only option I could think of right now. I'm from a world where you are in an anime called My hero Academia. You probably don't believe me. Let's see, what can I say for you to believe me. Oh! I know! Your quirk is called One for All and it is passed on from user to user. Your mentor was Nana Shimura, who was the seventh user. " I say really fast.

He is not moving a muscle, great, good job self. You totally didn't make him somewhat nervous about you knowing about his quirk Oh wait, I know more information. "Also, you are hurt from a big battle with All for One, who also was the one that killed Nana Shimura, and you can only go into this form for a couple of hours."

Yup, definitely shocked him.

Poof, now he is in drug addict form. "Ok, let's talk to a friend of mine that could possibly help." He finally says.

That was easier than I thought it would be. Now, who is the person that I am going to talk to?

We began to walk towards the city and ended up at a house that I didn't recognize from the anime. "Oh.. the detective that is oddly attractive even though kind of plain." I say as I stand next to All Might in front of Detective Da-----Tsukauchi when the door opens immediately after All Might knocks.

"I told you it's a complicated situation." All Might sighs and we were invited inside. "Yeah, I just wasn't expecting... her... uh bluntness." Tsukauchi says. "So I already know about the situation. What is your name? How old are you? How did you get here?" He asks pulling a notebook and pen out of nowhere. I sit on the couch while All Might sits in a chair that is right by the chair Tsukauchi sat down in "My name is Tsuna Sasaki and I am 17. I walked downstairs to see my TV playing this anime and I fell asleep watching it. When I woke up, I was falling onto the beach."

"So, you are still a minor and in school I presume. What year?" "I'm about to start my last." I say and he nods, writing down everything. "I need to inform a lot of people about this and figure out where you are going to stay and set up everything for you. There are going to be a lot of questions from a lot of people. You are a danger to a lot of us since you know a lot about us." He says and I start fidgeting with my skirt. I have to be careful of what I say and try to not say something that makes them turn on me.

This is going to be exhausting.

---

Here is the link to all of the chapters

Link to next: Chapter three: Aizawa

[nuagederose]

kinktober 2022 // day eighteen: night of the witch prompt: lingerie (courtesy of @the-purity-pen) pairing: alex/lily (eerie inhabitants) also on ao3 💋

I knew that, from the very second that I saw him up in there, I would never forget the time I caught Alex sniffing through my underwear drawer. On one hand, I wondered what on Earth he could have been searching for in there because it wasn’t like there was much to look at in there, just my own panties and my brassieres. On the other hand, in hindsight, it seemed hilarious to witness this vampire boy wrist deep in my private drawer and with his long black curls sprawled all around his shoulders and the side of his neck as if that was enough to hide him from anyone who dared poke their head into my bedroom right then.

Nevertheless, I walked in on him on that particular evening as he delved through it and I stood there in the doorway and gasped at the sight there right before me.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded from him. Embarrassed, he lifted his head and staggered away from my dresser. He swallowed and clutched at himself. I stood still there in the doorway and raised my eyebrows at him.

“What are you doing in my underwear drawer, you naughty little undead matzo ball,” I repeated in a lower voice.

“I was just, uh—seeing if—you had any gum,” he said. I squinted my eyes at him.

“You’re a vampire, you don’t chew gum,” I pointed out.

“Not in front of you, though,” he insisted with a straight face.

“No, no, no,” I scolded him with a wag of my finger. “You were sniffing my undies for any residual blood, weren’t you?”

He swallowed at that.

“You just—smell so good, Lily,” he confessed to me in a small voice.

“Well, I assure you, Alex—you're not going to find it in here,” I told him; I ambled across the floor to the drawer there and I nudged it closed. “Although I’m flattered that you think my lips and the nether region down below all smells good to you.”

“It’s blood,” he explained. “I can’t help it, either—the mere smell of blood, no matter how vestigial, just—tickles me.”

“It makes you hungry,” I followed along with him, and I stepped closer to him for a kiss on those little lips of his: indeed, they tasted like the coldest skin in the world, the skin that I was growing more and more acquainted with through the passing of time with him. Not a single piece of blood or the flesh of another victim to be found on there.

“It makes me so hungry!” he declared as he ran a hand down his chest and onto his stomach. “In fact, uh—right before you came in here and caught me in the act, I was going to—get something to eat for myself. A fresh new victim for myself right outside of the house here.”

“Is that really why you were looking for gum?” I asked him, and he burst out laughing.

“As a matter of fact, yes!” he chuckled at that, and I laughed some more at that. Nevertheless, he soon left the room through my window and I watched him slide down the tree outside of my room there and down onto the grass. I watched him run towards the sidewalk only to vanish into the shadows out there.

It was a memory with him that I would always think about no matter what happened between the two of us.

The reason why that memory stayed with me for so long was the fact that he and the rest of the vampires were all carnivores. His devouring blood and a great deal of flesh at the same time had given me an idea. But it would have to wait for a time, however, at least until I could scrounge up enough money for myself once again with each and every time that I broke a dollar and scrounged the loose pocket change.

I knew that what I wanted to get for us cost quite a bit but I bode my time and I found what money I could along the way before I had my grant for school come through for the next term. I had the last shred of bravery in me to do such a thing given I lived in a household that almost forbade anything like that: I would have to hide it away from where my dad, Uncle Phil, and Nana Iverson couldn’t see it for themselves, and I especially didn’t want Abby to see it for herself, either.

I needed some sort of excuse, however: it wasn’t like I could go out on a whim, on a last moment’s notice, especially without telling Abby about it because she and I were in the whole thing with the vampires together. I thought of everything, from studying after school to going out with friends, and none of it checked out the more thought I put into each one, either.

But it was the strangest thing, though: when I realized that I had the right amount of money on hand for it, and I knew that I could make my trip there on a whim, and I could do it without anyone so much as noticing me in the meantime as well. Abby had gone out to baseball practice, Dad and Uncle Phil both worked late, and my nana had left the house at one point. I was alone in the house come ten o’clock in the morning, and I had no idea as to how long I would be alone, either.

Nevertheless, I saw this as my chance. I took my key with me and I slung my purse over my shoulder, and I put on my jacket over my body. I locked the door and I put on my sunglasses, and I headed out for the next bus ride down to Hayward and a little clothing shop that I had seen advertised in a tiny corner of a newspaper one morning.

It would be quite the ride down there, all the way around the Bay itself on the main bus, followed by a feeder bus, and then another mainline to the heart of Hayward, to that particular neighborhood about three hundred feet from the water’s edge and not too far from where Alex and Greg both lived. I hoped to keep my head down and my sunglasses over my face lest one of those two guys spotted me on the street: it was a clear morning that day in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a big bright blue sky overhead and without a trace of clouds anywhere to be found. The fog had been rather sparse the night before, in fact.

I shivered and zipped up my jacket a bit more as I reached the front door of the shop.

As far as I could tell, I was alone in there. All alone except for the round convex mirror suspended on the far corner of the room.

I lowered my gaze to the sheer extent of all of lush lingerie on display before me. All of it on display like the petals of an orchid flower. The lace. The silk. The sheer outfits. The bikinis and matching underwear. The fact that some of them had their nipples cut out.

I could feel my face beginning to flush at the sheer sight of it all before me. I knew that the Bay Area had its share of little nooks like this, and one had to know as to where to look about for them if they were curious at all about it. I just so happened to see a little ad for this place in the newspaper one morning and it tickled my fancy. But as I walked along the far right-hand side of the room, and I surrounded myself with lace, silk, and fine satin teddies and bodysuits, the more I really wondered what it exactly what it was that I wanted for myself. Things with garters for my thighs, and yet I couldn’t hardly picture myself wearing any of these things, either.

I finally had to stop right where I stood, right next to a little nook before the changing rooms.

Everyone else was confident about wearing lingerie except for me. When I looked down at my own body, the less I could picture myself with it. I had my vampire boyfriend and yet I still struggled with the feeling, with the thought. With the fantasy. I closed my eyes and I pictured Alex right there next to me, with his body leaned up against my own as if he was helping me. He was helping me, with that body of his. He was to stay inside of that body for all of eternity. To be there forever.

If only I had the same fate myself. To live in this body forever.

I couldn’t exactly put my head around when I thought about it, and even more so when I put even more thought into it, either. I couldn’t imagine being inside of this body forever. I knew that it wouldn’t last forever, either. It wouldn’t last forever like with him, and if anything, I wondered what would happen to mine once I left my skin. I wondered what would happen to my own body once my time came, and I knew that there would be no going back to it after that.

I opened my eyes when I realized that I had to have been overthinking the whole thing. I was overthinking the whole entire thing.

I ran my fingers through my hair and I turned my attention to the clothing racks to the right of me there. There was one outfit that caught my eye, one of a nurse’s ensemble, complete with the napkin for the top of the head: but I could tell that the top itself was one of those tops where I would have to tie a little knot at the front and it would push my breasts up my chest a bit.

It felt like everyone was watching me. All eyes on me as I took that low rise lace top off of the rung before me. I held the top close to my chest, and when I had my back to the rest of the shop, I took a look down at it: it was like a sexy Halloween costume, and there would be nothing else to cover up my belly or my legs should I wear this thing and surprise Alex the next time he broke into the Iverson estate to sniff my underwear drawer. To treat him for the thing that ailed him so much.

Indeed, I brought my attention back to the coat hanger rungs right over my head and I noticed the little pair of white lace panties with the slight skirt around it. I could feel a bead of sweat collecting on my forehead as I took it off of the rung. It still felt like everyone had their eyes on me as I picked it out for myself.

But it would be a little something special for my vampire prince the next time that he came to visit me again when no one was looking. It was going to be tricky given he showed up and snuck into my room whenever he felt like it. But, nevertheless, I was determined.

I fanned myself with my free hand as I made my way up to the register. The young guy with the short dyed pink hair behind the counter there showed me a little smile.

“Find everything okay?” he kindly asked me.

“Oh, yeah.”

“You alright? You look hot.”

“Yeah, I just—got a little warm over there,” was all I could say to him.

“Just relax, babe,” he assured me as he checked me out right there. “Relax and everything’ll be okay.” I paid up and he handed me the little black paper bag of that little nurse’s outfit. I showed him a shy smile.

“Thank you,” I told him in a small voice, and he flashed me a wink.

I walked on out of there and back to the bus stop, which I had caught with only mere minutes to spare right then. I headed on back to the Iverson estate, and all the while, his words lingered with me. Relax and everything will be okay.

I didn’t even have to tell him about my relationship. It was as if he had seen that a few times before I showed up. But nevertheless, I had to hide my outfit and that black paper bag from any wandering eyes there in the house. When I unlocked the front door, I realized that I was still alone in there. I made my way back upstairs to try on that outfit.

I shut the door and I set the bag down on my bed. I stripped off my clothes, including my underwear when I realized that there was no way that little skirt would fit over my hips with my old panties on.

I slipped that white lace over my thighs followed by my hips. The stretch waistband hugged my hipbones and the space underneath my belly button. The slight skirt lifted away from the sides of my thighs: any twirl or pirouette that came out of me would expose the whole of my ass to him.

The little top came next, with that low neckline that showed off my chest as well as most of my breasts: I looked down at the little red cross with the apple in the middle as well as the accompanying golden-yellow poppy right over my heart. The bottom hem of the top pressed firm against my rib cage to show off my whole entire middle to him.

I stood there in the middle of the floor with this little outfit on.

I felt so exposed, like there was no way that I could go through with it and especially when I realized that there was no crotch on the panties, either. But then I thought back to what the boy behind the counter had told him. I stood still in the middle of the floor with my hands pressed onto my hipbones: I let my fingers slide down onto the tops of my thighs and then I brought them back up again towards my waist and then my breasts.

The feeling was in there somewhere: I needed to relax and better feel myself before he came along—

“NURSE!” he exclaimed from right behind me. I jerked around to find him there in the window with his blue eyes wide and those dark eyebrows of his raised high up on his brow.

Though he caught me off guard, I pressed my hands to my hips and cocked my left hip to the side to accentuate my body for him.

Alex nearly fell from the window sill and then he picked himself up off the hard floor underneath us. Out of breath, he clasped his hands to the sides of his head.

“Paging Doctor Skolnick,” I started with what I could. “Nurse Lilian will see you now.”

“Oh, man,” he groaned. “Oh, my god.”

“You wanna fuck me silly right here?” I suggested as I moved in closer to him.

“Please! Oh, god, I'm crazy. I'm nuts.”

“You’re nuts?” I giggled at him.

“More nuts than my own nuts,” he retorted back to me. He fell onto his knees right before me and he clasped onto my hips and he planted those cold cherry lips onto my waist. But I kept my legs together as he brought them down towards my crotch and the top of my thighs, as if he wanted a way in between them. But he gazed up at me with those deep-set crystalline blue eyes and the gray plume high over the right side of his forehead like a prince.

“The doctor needs his medicine, nurse,” he begged up at me.

“I’m afraid the nurse can’t give the medicine just yet,” I told him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“We’re reanimating the corpse, remember?”

He cracked me a sly little smirk. “Ah, yes. I remember now. Injecting new life into the deceased—one little thrust of the hips at a time.” He clambered over to the bottom bunk of the bunk bed on the other side of the room, the one that happened to be Abby’s bunk no less.

At that point, I didn’t care how I looked right then: I only cared about getting down with Alex right there on the bunk bed. He opened his legs for me, complete with his jeans already undone, and I lunged for his body.

I lingered over his body with my hands pressed onto either side of his head. I let my breasts hang down over him: he lowered his gaze to my chest and my nipples as they poked through the thin fabric. Nothing more than thin fabric that separated me from him. Indeed, he reached up to my chest for a little fondle of my left nipple: I raised a hand and slapped on the back of his, and I wagged my finger at him.

“But—” he begged. I wagged my finger at him again: I could feel myself growing moist between the legs at the mere sight of him there before me.

“Reanimate the corpse under the spell of lightning, Doctor,” I told him in a near whisper. I propped myself upright to show the lack of a crotch on my panties and he gaped at me.

He was getting the Amazon nurse: I knew that much.

I held onto the top of the mattress. I locked eyes with him. If Abby ever asked what happened to her comforter once I put it in the wash downstairs, I would tell her that I accidentally spilled a little bit of juice on one part of it. Indeed, I spilled a little bit of juice on one part of it. A little bit of juice that was as cold as ice.

Every gyration on my part was a gyration of my breasts right before his face.

I could feel him growing harder and harder in between my legs. I knew that I was going to make him come so fast. The corpse was about to reanimate itself and cheat death a third time. I was going to make him come so hard as well. And he did. He missed me by about an inch and he instead left a little bit of his load on the inside of my knee.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered with a raise of his eyebrows. “I really hope I don’t make you into a vampire with that.”

“No, no, you missed me,” I assured him, out of breath. I climbed off of him and I undid the knot underneath my breasts right before his face. He swallowed at the sight of my exposed nipples.

“I want to touch,” he whimpered to me, like that of a young boy. I swatted his hand again and I wagged my finger in his face yet again.

“Good doctors get their medicine when they reanimate the corpse,” I teased him, to which he tilted his head back and let out a soft moan. A part of me regretted blocking him like that, but I had to work with what I had, though, especially since he had snuck up on me so hard back there.

The next day, I was able to visit him at the house of Skolnick some mile or two away from the Iverson estate: I didn’t want to bring the lingerie with me lest his parents were home or should Nana demand as to why my pants seemed a little tighter than normal.   Indeed, the night before, when Abby was still out of the room, I had put my jacket on over that little top and slipped my jeans over those panties to see if I could sneak them with me over there: a tight fit but not one I was willing to go through with, especially when, for all I knew, his parents were home.

I took a shower and then I caught the next bus ride over there unannounced: I figured it would be nice, sweet revenge on him for sneaking up on me in my own bedroom.

The bus pulled up to the right side of the street and I stepped off into the cool morning: once I stepped outside of there with my wet hair, I was glad that I never went through with the idea of wearing the outfit underneath my clothes, because the gust of cold wet breeze from the bay waters billowed up my jacket and sent a chill down my spine.

Though Alex’s body was naturally cold, I still thought about snuggling up close to him in that nice big library of theirs in the front part of the house. I walked on up that hill with my hands stuffed into my pockets to keep my jacket down.

When I reached the top of the hill, I noticed the front door hung slightly ajar. When I reached the front step, I set a hand on the panel closest to my face and I pushed open the door.

“Hello?” I called out. “Alex?”

“In here,” he called back out to me from the library. I stepped into the house and hung up my jacket, and I ambled into the library right there before me.

He stood before the bookshelf on the wall opposite from the doorway, with those long black curls sprawled down his back and with snug, fitted black jeans on his lanky legs.

“Alex?” I asked him again, that time in a lower tone of voice, and he closed the book in his hand and he turned his attention back to me.

He wore big black horn-rimmed glasses which he probably swiped from his dad’s nightstand, as well as something of a white button-up shirt which he had unbuttoned at the very bottom hem: he tied up that bottom hem over his stomach, and he let his jeans sprawl open underneath his belly button. Even undone, those black pants still fit his legs with such perfection. He must have washed his hair before I showed because when he had tousled his hair over his shoulder, those black curls glistened under the soft golden lamp light as if he had dunked his head underwater. He tucked the book under his arm and then he nudged the glasses down the bridge of his aquiline nose and raised an eyebrow at me.

“Whoa, what’s all this?” I asked him, and he ran his tongue along those cherry lips at me.

“You tell me,” he told me in a low husky voice.

“Bad guitar tech,” I teased him, to which he shrugged his shoulders at me.

“Close. I mean, it’s not nearly as hot as your little thing from yesterday, but it’s got a little something to it, though.”

“Hot nuclear scientist,” I tried again as I sauntered closer to him.

“Not a bad guess—a pretty cool guess, actually,” he told me as he showed me some more of his tongue and then he ran his fingers down his stomach, down to his belly button and the soft skin underneath there: only about an inch away from his dick. “I could ask you to hand me the special tongs to pick up those old plutonium rods behind the protective glass.”

“Sexy nerd,” I said with a chuckle, and he cracked me a sly little grin.

“I guess you could say that I am,” he declared with a little shrug of his shoulders and a tilt of his head to the side. “Nerds become—doctors, you know.”   Those black curls sprawled down his chest and over his shoulder: he showed me some more of his tongue as well as those crooked teeth on the left side of his mouth. Those crooked teeth which disguised his fangs from the world.

Where I was tense, he was effortlessly sexy. Effortlessly sexy in homemade lingerie all of his own.

“Would you like a lap dance?” I offered him.

“Please.”

“Especially after that little cock-block I did yesterday?” I teased him.

“Especially after that little cock-block, yeah,” he repeated with a smirk on his face and with a little chuckle. He gave his black curls a toss back from his shoulder and then he took his seat there in that nice big armchair by the bookshelf: before he sat down, however, he nudged his jeans down his legs to expose his dick to me. He was already partially erect: all I had to do was help him.

I took my jeans off and lay them over the top of the chair, right behind his head.

I sat down upon his lap and I leaned back to look right into his handsome face: the undone collar exposed his pale collar bones as well as the smooth skin on his fine neck for me. I thought about kissing him there, but I instead showed him the tip of my tongue the way that he did with me.

“You look really hot, baby,” I told him, and he pressed his lips onto mine.

“So do you—you looked really, really sexy in that nurse outfit,” he whispered into my mouth; he reached up to the horn-rimmed glasses and I wagged my finger at him.

“Good doctors keep their glasses on,” I advised him, to which he moved that hand to the crown of his head instead. I gripped onto the arms of the chair as I rubbed my bare ass over his thighs as well as his dick, all to tickle him and to coax a better erection out of him.

“Let’s do it doggy style,” I suggested.

“You mean, ‘corpse style’?” he corrected me, which in turn brought out a mad cackle out of me.

“Corpse style, yes!”

I didn’t hesitate to drop down onto my hands and knees for him. He held onto my hips and thrust so hard into me. That cold hard bit of flesh deep into my ass, with each and every swipe, I rose higher. I rose higher and yet the cold grounded me. He grounded me with that thick firm dick. He treated me with the best medicine. Even though it was obvious they didn’t belong to him, he kept those glasses on every step of the way.   Every step of the reanimation.

[336863]

I didn't had too much expectations in any way but the GZ trip with C and her family turned out to be pretty decent trip. I got to go to a new country and all-in-all was pleasantly surprised - the local chinese there were warm, service standards were pretty high and I actually liked most of the food that we had. I also got to know some of C's family a bit better - K, Uncle L, DG and even C's mum. Taking the time to have one-on-one chats with them was nice and less tiring than I had imagined it to be. Maybe a lot of time the inertia is in my head and its a mental block more than anything else. Penning this down reminds me of the conversation I had with Jef where he said he tries his very best to "say yes" whenever he has the opportunity and maybe I should start embracing this "yes theory of everything" hah. I digress a little but I guess as with any travel groups of size, there's also a fair bit of friction but I think it all went pretty smoothly (at least for the parts that C and I were there for) C also had the foresight to leave a couple days at the end just for the both of us and I thought it was a really cute way to end off the trip. As per usual we had our short/heated bust-ups... but according to C, seeing as we're both "fire signs", I should pay more attention to walking around her trigger points and she does mine. I have to say she does manage me plenty better than I do her. Plenty for me to work on here. And writing it out over here does indeed help as a reminder

Ora's passing during my time away from home was a low point for me this past week. I can't say that it's a complete surprise given that she's increasingly looked frail for a couple months but it still hit pretty deeply. During the trip I was trying very hard to avoid processing the news and was not allowing myself to grief. It could be that I didn't want to be a distraction to others or perhaps I just didn't want to appear too vulnerable in front of C. But she showed that she was there for me and made me feel comfortable enough to cry

Ora -- you were such an important part in our lives and you were my very first bun and have been with me through the entirety of my adult life. I keep replaying back to to our first/last shower I took you to on the Sunday before I left for GZ - you were so good and well-behaved. I'd thought that you'd be gassed at being washed but maybe you just had too little energy to resist by then. Regardless, I'm glad that we will always have that. 11 years is a long time even in human years so at least I'm glad you lived a very healthy life till a ripe old bunny age. Although you're not the most affectionate little bun, you were the least fussy with your food. And! You mothered 6 beautiful babies and I hope you'll be binkying with 5 of them now as well as enjoying all the nanas there is wherever you are. I'm glad you came into our family and I'll forever be grateful for it. Hop free now darling Ora, you've been as beautiful a bunny as you are a blessing. I'll miss you dearly

This extra week off for reservist is doing real good to my mental health and work-life balance. I feel like it's helping me recalibrate my headspace and realign what's important in my personal life outside of work, where the alternative scenario would be a breathless dive straight back into work... That'd leave me with little time/chance to introspect -- so this is good timing in the grand scheme of things. Seeing the army buds again was pleasant and every time we meet, it reminds me of how we've grown a little older and experiencing a little bit more of adulthood in our own ways

In trying to keep to my newly made 2024 resolutions, I hope I've made a decent start with this entry, cheers and let's hope 2024 kicks on in a good way buddy. You got this

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Another Top Ten Favorite Reads of 2023

I’m ranking this group of books as well. 

#11

The Sin of Abbé Mouret Émile Zola (1875)

The Belly of Paris Émile Zola (1873)

The Bright Side of Life Émile Zola (1884)

Nana Émile Zola (1880)

Zola! Zola! Zola!  All lower tier Zola novels, but interesting just the same.  In The Sin of Abbé Mouret a priest falls in love with a woman and then Zola recounts their love as if he were retelling the Garden of Eden story.  Beautiful, maddening and one of the most experimental of all his novels.  The Belly of Paris deals with what we call Farmer’s Markets.  It isn’t disgusting like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, but the butcher shop that is the focal point for the characters involved isn’t always a paragon of good health.  The Bright Side of Life uses the title ironically as a family takes in a ten year old who has inherited the wealth of her parents who ran the butcher shop in The Belly of Paris.  The family taking her in manage to rob her of that wealth and then blame her for allowing them to do so.  Nana is about a high class prostitute who enjoys ruining every man she meets until she meets a man who delights in abusing her.  What happens to Nana in the final pages of the novel is almost abusive on Zola’s part. 

#12

Crook Manifesto Colson Whitehead (2023)

Last year Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle made my Top Ten list.  It is a about a Harlem furniture salesman named Ray Carney, a character who introduced me to medieval sleeping and his hilarious hijinks as he struggles to be both a good citizen and a criminal.  In the second book of this trilogy, Carney is back, but this time he plans on going the straight and narrow. No more criming for Carney.  At least until a detective threatens him with serious time if he doesn’t pull off a heist for the detective to benefit from.  Another very funny novel that ultimately has some rather serious consequences for Carney.  Of course, I look forward to the final book about Ray Carney.

#13

My Last Innocent Year Daisy Alpert Florin (2023)

When Isabel Rosen has an affair with her writing professor at a prestigious college, we know the professor should know better.  What makes this interesting is that it is told from the point of view of the student having the affair and we catch glimpses that tell us she is recounting this affair in the future, which means she has processed it and weighed it out.  For better or worse, Isabel Rosen is a wise young woman. This is a remarkable debut.

#14

Day Michael Cunningham (2023)

Taking place on the same day over three consecutive years beginning in April 2019, we discover how love/ marriage is entered into for the worst reasons (loneliness, a union of two like minded people, because prospects weren’t going to improve, etc) and how that slowly ebbs away at people.  It also documents how COVID changed the world, yet never at any point in time does that word enter into the novel.  I assumed this would be a downer of a book but it is blisteringly funny…and sad.  Social media just ruins everything. 

#15

My Death Lisa Tuttle (2004)

This freaky novel takes a (fictious) legendary mistress of a (fictitious) famous painter and a (fictitious) author who wants to pen a biography of said mistress and then turns the entire situation inside out.  The mistress turns out to have been a painter herself not to mention an expert at behind the scenes manipulation.  The book’s title is the name of the outrageous painting the author discovers. Was the author really encountering serendipity when she discovered that painting by the mistress or was this all a grand scheme to trick the author?   Who is being played here: the mistress, the author or the reader?

#16

Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo And The Rise of Indie Rock Jesse Jarnow (2012)

Once upon a time I used to read virtually every bio about bands I loved and then one day I stopped.  A massive Yo La Tengo kick lead me back to this book that I ignored back in the day.  How is it there is a trio of people who have no controversy swirling around them other than maybe occasionally one of them isn’t always the nicest of people.  Ooh.  That might describe all of us.

#17

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly Sun-Mi Hwang (2000)

A hen who yearns to lay eggs yet can’t and is eventually culled but doesn’t die and then is saved by a mallard who everyone makes fun of.  Together this pair of misfit animals manage to raise a family and the cycle of life marches on.  This is a fantastic tale of dreams and familial bonds crossing species because like with humans, the one who puts in the work gets the right to be called Mom. 

#18

Address Unknown Katherine Kressmann Taylor (1938)

Written in 1938 and told in epistolary form it contains 18 letters and one telegram passed back and forth between two German men.  One of the men is Jewish and runs an art gallery in San Francisco.  His partner, not Jewish, has returned to Germany.  What happens is expected of course (through our own awareness today of what took place), but again this was written in 1938.  Anyone claiming America knew nothing about the Nazi threat during that time is a liar. 

#19

Lucy Gayheart Willa Cather (1935)

Yes, this is minor Cather.  But I was so enraptured with the titular character I fell deep into this book.  Keep in mind, I never read the backs of books, so I rarely actually know what I’m getting into. I assumed this was a minor retelling by Cather of her brilliant Song of The Lark which is about an opera singer. Lucy goes to work for an opera singer.  From that point on, nothing, and I mean nothing I believed was going to happen, happened.  How is it that I have read all of Cather and I still did not realize that in Cather’s novels anyone who falls in love is doomed. Cather hated marriage and she demonstrated that endlessly by punishing anyone in her novels who was foolish enough to fall prey to marriage.  While Lucy didn’t marry, she did fall in love and was equally punished for that fault.

#20

Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue The Marquis de Sade (1791)

Is it possible for a book I absolutely detested to land on this of Favorite Reads?  Well, here it is, so the answer is obviously yes.  This wasn’t a favorite read but it was so memorable that I still think about it six months after the fact.  Justine and her sister lose their parents at an early age.  Justine gives herself to God and the sister marries a wealthy man and then ensures he dies young so she can inherit his wealth.  All Justine gets is raped by every single man (and occasionally a woman) that she encounters.  De Sade was an atheist and he believed that atheists lacked a moral code which allowed them to behave as terrible as they desired.  He takes this belief and punishes poor Justine for believing in God by ensuring she is raped, beaten, tortured over and over in the most excruciating detail.  This book is punishment.  It angers me because I am an atheist and I have a moral code.  De Sade even believes that women are such a blight on humanity that they should be done away with altogether.  Okay, genius, let’s see how long humanity would last without women.  De Sade was a fool but this book stays in my head like a song that won’t go away.  The only good thing about this novel was the ending which actually made me laugh out loud.  Poor Justine, in the end, even God didn’t love her.   This was the first and the last book I’ll ever read by Citizen de Sade.

[fool-of-a-triceratops]

The Doorjamb Where We Mark Our Heights

My house, like all houses, has a doorjamb where the heights of all the people in the house are marked. Ours is between the computer that my dad spent most of his time using (he said it was for his "job") and the fireplace where every night from December to February I would be tasked with lighting a fire (I wasn't very good at it).

My mother and father each have one mark for their height, but me and my brother have dozens, accumulated over the years. Many of the marks made for my height are sloppy, made by a little girl trying to reach behind her head with a pen while balancing a book on her head and standing up straight. Most of them don't have years attached to them. The first time I marked my height I was berated by my father for ruining the paint, but I just wanted to make the house feel as lived-in as Nana's.

The lines drawn for my brother are all perfectly straight and marked with the date. My mother started keeping track of his height when he was four because the doctors said he was too small. I was always perfectly normal, if not a little smarter than usual. I wasn't allowed to need extra help or be delayed, not when my brother was already taking up all of my parents attention. I'm not sure when my mother started keeping track of my height, nor am I sure when she marked her and my father's heights.

My father's affair with Emily (my uncle's wife) might have started three and a half years ago. I was two and a half inches shorter then. Two years ago, it blew up in everyone's faces. I was an inch shorter then. A year and a bit ago, my father finally left and moved to Illinois. I was the same height then as I am now. Tonight, I colored over his name over with black sharpie. I made sure the place where his name used to be was noticable. I think I meant it as a warning.

[markdanielsson]

A new feeling, continued.

Three weeks had past and I looked in my bedroom mirror. The blackened eye had begun to fade. The ribs had begun to hurt less. The cuts had started to heal. I stared in the mirror for a long time looking at myself. What had happened?

My mum was behind me putting away clean laundry into my wardrobe. The fresh smell of clothes filled the room as they had been hung on the line in the garden. I turned around and I went to sit on the bed. It was not as easy as a couple of weeks before. The pain was easing, bit still twinged. My mother sat down beside me. "Baby, who was it?" I just stared at her in silence. I felt silenced. I felt I couldn't.

My school had been sending work home as I was in my first year of GCSE's. Almost the most important years of schooling. A line of 'Get well soon' cards were displayed on my chest of drawers along with one signed from everybody in my form group. In front of the cards was a teddy bear with 'you're amazing' across its t-shirt.

Often in the mid afternoon conveniently after school time, the doorbell would ring and some of my friends would be standing on the porch to check up on me. I was elated to see their faces. They would make jokes about how I fell down stairs or decided to play a musical instrument and it won. Little did they know. They were never invited in as I needed to rest.

During this time there was an extended period of radio silence from my nana and grandpa. Not a phone call. Not a card. Not even a visit. My mother had begun to suspect something but I could never. I just couldn't. I had tried to avoid the subject matter altogether. My mother gave the best hugs. It was the only cure at that moment.

One windy afternoon I was sat at the dining room table with my exercise books sprawled across it, with my pencil case rammed full of multicoloured pencils and maths equipment. I was trying to figure out quadrilateral equations whilst dealing with a headache. I had drawn a blank.

Mum came rushing into the dining room and sat opposite me. The mountain of books was up to her chin and she got straight to the point. "Jack, baby, you can not hide forever. Who was it. I promise I won't get mad." I put down the pen in my hand and sat back in the chair. Almost instantly my eyes began to glaze over and my heart rate increased. Getting faster. Getting louder.

I was so emotional I could not remember if I had control of my voice let alone my emotions. Before I knew it, we were in the car driving quite fast and my mother felt like a statue.

[cloudy-leonhart]

AOT veterans with a Filipino S/O!!

[author note: did I write this as soon as I posted the first part?? yes. I like writing for this, it’s so fun lolol up next, Marleyan Warriors!!]

Summary: not much, just the AOT vets with their filipino S/O.

Gender Neutral Reader.

Recommended Song: Buwan - Juan Karlos.

Theme: Fluff, Modern AU.

TW: Swearing.

Characters: Hange, Levi, Miche, Erwin, Moblit, Nanaba.

Hange Zöe

Honestly they fully immersed themselves in your culture, as you know Hange LOVES learning about new things, discovering about your culture, they probably forced you to go the Philippines with them.

They started asking people for directions in english?? You had to step in translate for them, in which they responded to ask to teach them the language.

Yes they keep a small notebook of words they think are interesting. Yes even swear words are in there, not to mention they absolutely just butcher the way you say it.

One time when you both came back, Hange told Erwin that Bakla was a word for a good man, and they laughed their asses off watching Erwin tell people he was Bakla LMFAO.

They actually visited your province, they met your family and was surprised at the fact that they owned a whole farm, they tried to learn with your siblings on how to harvest rice, they nailed it btw.

they named your carabao, Sawney, and your chicken, Bean.

And respectfully so, your family started to call their animals by the name Hange gave them.

They started to cry about the fact that you guys had to go back, and like every time, your mom and dad encouraged y’all to bring filipino snacks back home, in which you did, because you knew that you’d probably miss it when you flew back home.

You guys have a tradition of going to the Philippines for your guys’ anniversary.

THEY SUPRISINGLY LISTENS TO FILIPINO MUSIC

They were the one to suggest Aegis to Levi but they prefer someone like Jireh Lim.

Favourite song is probably, Buko. They love the guitar in it.

Levi Ackerman

He first found out you were Filipino when he caught you packing a balikbayan box for your family back home, (for those who don’t know, balikbayan box is a box full of your country’s snacks to send back to the PH for your family to try.)

He had asked you what it was, and you answered that it was for your family back in the Philippines, in which he responded with helping you, and mainly scolding you about the way you packed it.

“Idiot, pack it like this, so you have more space to place stuff.”

When he first went to the Philippines, he first noticed the cleanliness of the hotels, he looked at you with a ‘is this why you’re so good at cleaning?’ look. 

God when I say your parents loved him, YOUR PARENTS ABSOLUTELY ADORED HIM. He would clean for your mom, and not only that, your mom approved of his cleaning technique, yes she told you to marry him that second.

And that you did, you had your first wedding with you family in the Philippines, and another in where you guys currently lived.

Bye, he absolutely looks AMAZING in a Barong. Your dad helped him slick his hair back.

Your mom and him, bonded of cleaning, sometimes when your mom needs help removing rust on her pans, she calls Levi.

like Hange he and you go to the Philippines for y’alls anniversary. 

Please save this man from the streets, I’m not saying it to be mean but this man almost gave his wallet to a bunch of kids who were hungry.

You gave money instead because you didn’t want your man to be broke lmfao.

He loves seeing you so happy while you’re in the Philippines, he just thinks it’s adorable when you speak your language.

Aegis listener, absolutely no discussion, mans listens to them while cleaning, he listens to “Sayang Na Sayang” religiously.

when Aegis plays in the house, you know it’s a cleaning day lmao.

Erwin Smith

Please, remember when I said Hange told him bakla was a word for a good man, yes, that’s how he found out you were Filipino, you literally was so dumbfounded, you waited for him in the living room, your friend’s laughing over the phone, man thought he did something wrong until..

“Erwin, can you tell me why you’ve been telling your friends you’re fucking gay??”

Yeah he’s got trust issues now. But he wasn’t that shocked to find out you were filipino, he just thinks it’s neat, he butchers pronouncing shit, he tries to learn filipino jokes??? It’s really bad, like you need to stop him from telling your family to save HIM from embarrassment.

He knows how to cook barbecue lmfao, he sits at your family’s barbecue spot and cooks for them, your dad appreciates the help so much lmao, also he loves drinking the gulaman whenever he’s there, your dad gives it to him for free because, he basically considers Erwin his son now. His awkward, barbecue-cooking, son.

You guys go on hiking in Mt. Butalao, yes you sneak peeks when he’s climbing because his muscles flex, and he sweats. You guys go on a double hiking date with Miche and his S/O all the time.

He was kind of fearful when you went to a province to get in touch with your grandparents, he watched you help their carabao back into their pens, he’s scared of carabaos, don’t blame him-

Surprisingly he’s as good as your dad in basketball, bye I just know the women of your community comes to watch him, he’s ripped, you’re jealous but you don’t say it lmao.

He’s got those jeep keychains lmfao, the fact that he kinda looked like a lost puppy when you’re traveling, like so many people, so little space-

please educate him, he’s confused on everything-

he probably listens to Eraserheads, Huwag Mo Nang Itanong. Yes his ultimate song. 

Miche Zacharias

probably the only veteran that knows what to do?? Beside Moblit?? He knows how to bless, he knows to call your parents nanay and tatay. He also loves going to where there’s a lot of Filipino street food because he loves the smell, he prefers the smell of bananaque over anything, hotcakes are a close second.

mf was scared when your mom suddenly said, “Oh yeah, I kept your childhood spider.”

YOU OWNED A MF SPIDER?? You were all like ‘omg i miss him’ he was a little scared bitch omg.

You had to explain that you would buy them from the local toy store and you and your friends would make them fight each other to the death.

HE THOUGHT IT WAS GONNA BE SMALL- IT’S A WHOLE MF TARANTULA BYE

you know those dyed chicks you get from winning a game, yeah, he was attached to one you guys won, but as always, they weren’t going to live long, I think he sulked for a whole 2 days. He named the chick Richard AHAHA.

ah yes, absolute unit in basketball, yes you and Erwin’s S/O would watch them play basketball together with your guys’ dads. Yes y’all gossiped about how hot they were in tagalog.

Just saying, Miche got some that night. 

He doesn’t fit in tricycles- neither does he fit in jeepneys lmfao- he kinda has to sit on the ground if you force him to fit, in which he has to awkwardly crawl to get out lmfao.

He literally looks godly while hiking, you guys don’t go to your parents’ house when you first arrive, you guys hike.

You guys go whenever y’all feel like it honestly.

“hey hey, reader, Mahal Kita.”

He listens to anything in filipino honestly, he likes chill filipino songs like Tell Me Where It Hurts by MYMP.

Moblit Berner

He’s a researcher, he makes sure he doesn’t disrespect the culture.

he knows to bless and all that jazz like Miche.

Wait but your family loved him as soon as you told them he was a doctor lmfao?? He’s in nursing.

He’s basically already apart of the family, all your little siblings call him kuya Moblit, he absolutely thinks it’s adorable.

when you guys are sending a balikbayan box, he places toys he bought for your little siblings in the box, with a note written and translated by you for them.

Moblit also knows about poverty in the Philippines, he’s apart of an organization where they give to those who can’t afford real food, even when he’s back home with you, he donates from abroad, everyone knows him as the generous kuya.

honestly I can see him as someone who’s also known by your community, people call him kuya Moblit or tito Moblit, it’s very wholesome when a kid asks him to carry them.

This man looks so nice and kind on the outside but when you guys are at your tita’s bday party and there’s a whole mf buffet, he’s a whole beast.

You know when your uncles have like, food stacked on their plate, and like a cup of buko pandan at the side?? yes, him. definitely.

He’s kinda like sasha in this au, he loves the food so much, he probably finished a filipino dish by himself (it’s the palabok)

he’s also a god at making ice candy?? like he’s so good at filling up the plastic with the liquid lmao.

you guys adopted a stray dog in the community and his name was Moblit, your family takes care of him while you guys are back home.

genuinely, it’s mostly wholesome with him, he doesn’t really do anything wrong besides butchering pronounciation.

Moblit probably watches boxing with your dad though, it’s just too accurate not to be true.

More of a movie watcher than a song listener, his favourite movie so far is Four Sisters and A Wedding.

he cries every filipino movie, them do it to you.

Seven Sundays, he cried for days straight.

Nanaba

Nanaba found a filipino flag from your collage years in a box, asked you about it, then encouraged you to visit the Philippines because she wanted to meet your family. 

Okay but your family thought she was a guy because of her hair?? 

your siblings can’t say Nanaba, so they call her Ate Nana.

She was kind of jealous of your bond with your family, she knows she shouldn’t be, but she couldn’t help it since her and her father’s relationship absolutely sucked.

And you know this, you had talked with her about it too, it was kinda like a, “are you okay?” and “it’s nothing.”

You had to drag her out to family events, eventually, she started to feel like she was apart of the family, she went swimming with the fam, did karaoke nights, she was basically in the family now.

She felt really happy that you decided to help her educate herself in your culture, and that your family openly accepted her into your family.

when you and her married, she wore a baro’t saya for the wedding reception and she looked absolutely gorgeous in them. She took your last name.

Your mom taught her to do the tinikling dance, and she mastered it easily, you of course danced with her.

she kinda had a guilty pleasure of going to McDonalds in the Philippines, SOLELY FOR THE ROOT BEER FLOAT, that stuff be bussin.

she forces you to go to McD’s whenever’s there’s a new flavour released.

Nanaba loves going on the jeepney, she likes the fact that you ring a bell when you have to get off and she does it every time you guys use a jeep for transportation.

Nanaba knows one word in filipino and that’s Mahal, she uses it so weirdly though, but she’s adorable so you let it pass.

“Reader..erm, I mahal?? you?..” 

she’s both a listener and a movie watcher, she listens to more modern filipino singers, like Patch Quiwa.

Favourite movie is when Vice Ganda’s in it, she just thinks all his movies are funny.

[dearcat1]

(Storms)

Part 24 of An Exercise in Patience

Gokudera is a menace. 

It's not that Xanxus isn't used to the occasionally blown wall, broken furniture or random screaming. Most of it, except for the screaming, he does all on his own when he's mad. It's that the alpha isn't used to entire wings needing to be rebuilt every time some Storm has a hissy fit. It drives him up the wall because he's talked to the little shit, informed Gokudera multiple times that he's overstepping a line. But this is Tsunayoshi's Storm, Xanxus can't reprimand him properly without also crossing a line. Besides, the omega knows the Commander doesn't like this and has tried talking to his Storm. This is Reborn's doing, Xanxus is almost sure of it. 

That doesn't change the fact that Xanxus is at the end of his rope. The entire fucking living room and part of the garden, gone. Over some imagined slight or the other. Tsunayoshi is fidgeting with anxiety, which just makes Xanxus's ire worse because is the fucking Storm blind? Does he not see or care how much this is affecting his Sky? Xanxus growls, deep and harsh. It gets him Hayato snapping at him but Xanxus's attention is on Tsunayoshi. The omega's bottom lip is trembling, his eyes on the floor and his throat bared. He looks miserable and sad, eyes a little wet already. Xanxus is going to hate this. 

Normally, Xanxus would have the omega fix his mess and pay for it but that's going to be Gokudera's job. As the one who actually did the damage. Xanxus's first instinct is to spank the omega, he's not one to drag on punishments and a spanking usually gets his point across. But Tsunayoshi is still getting comfortable with Xanxus's touch, there are days when he pulls away despite all the progress they've done and Xanxus isn't willing to risk it for speed. So that's a no go. Reaching a decision, Xanxus clicks his tongue. "Tsunayoshi, come here." 

Gokudera shuts up when his Sky moves. Tsunayoshi hesitates for a moment in front of Xanxus but burrows into his hold when the alpha spreads his arms.

"We're ok." Xanxus rubs his back. "I'm not going to leave just because I'm mad." 

The little mewl is killing him.

"Your room?"

"Yes." Xanxus resists the urge to soothe him some more, letting him go instead. "Squalo, you deal with this shit."

Squalo nods, drawing his sword to stop Gokudera from moving when he tries to follow behind Xanxus. "Voi, you've done it now."

Xanxus rolls his eyes, confident that Squalo will set the Storm straight. He has an omega to ease into a punishment the assassin doesn't even want to give and a hitman to talk to because this is ridiculous. Reborn's idea of fun is crooked, the Commander doesn't usually mind but limits will have to be set. He closes the door behind him and steps into his bedroom to find himself with an armful of distressed Tsunayoshi.

"I'm sorry." 

Carding fingers through the omega's hair, Xanxus sighs. "I know. But we've been here a few times before." The problem isn't that Tsunayoshi doesn't know how to get his Storm to stop. The problem is that he's not leaning on any of them for assistance. "You should have asked for help."

Tsunayoshi pulls away, eyeing Xanxus carefully. "Is that why you're angry?"

Telling him the assassin isn't angry, at least not with him, just frustrated, isn't going to go anywhere. So Xanxus nods, watching the younger Sky process the situation. "This is not a warning."

"Not this time." At least Tsunayoshi seems to understand where Xanxus is coming from. 

"Corner?" The omega doesn't look happy about it but he doesn't look afraid, either. It's something. 

Xanxus would consider the method for that alone if it wasn't so obvious that this was Nana's method of dealing with her son. Xanxus is trying to distance himself from her way of doing this, as much as he can manage. So the alpha shakes his head, guiding the younger Sky to his desk. "How is your Italian?" 

"Bad," Tsunayoshi admits, taking in the blank paper and pen. "English is better." 

"Alright." Xanxus sits him down, tapping the wood. "You're writing down everything you did right and everything you did wrong, in detail." He forces himself to ignore the trembling bottom lip. "When you're done, we'll go over it together and figure out the consequences for each point. Good or bad."

"In English?"

He tries to resist the doe eyes but Xanxus ends up giving in a little. "It's fine if you make some mistakes," he soothes. "It's about honesty, not grammar."

[topsytervy]

Brownies ~ Rafe Cameron

Blurb: You have a craving for brownies at 2 AM and your boyfriend Rafe helps you make them.

Word Count: 1,598

Warnings: uh swearing. I'm pretty sure that's it

~~~~~~~

You sat on your boyfriends bed, scrolling through your phone as you tried to find a brownie recipe that caught your eye.

You were spending the night at Tanneyhill since the rest of the family had decided to take a weekend trip to the mainland. Rafe declined, deciding that there was no way in hell he could survive a weekend with his family.

So here you were.

It was midnight, Rafe had fallen asleep hours ago, but you just couldn't. Not with the craving of brownies as intense as it was.

You smiled as you found a recipe for caramel brownies that looked delicious and bookmarked the page so you could make them when it was a reasonable time. 

You sighed, beginning to lay down but Rafe's voice scared you.

"You good, Y/N/N?" He mumbled, his back to you. You were about to answer when your stomach growled, causing Rafe to turn his head towards you, an amused expression on his face. "Or is someone a bit hungry?" He chuckled.

You smacked his shoulder. "Shut up. I've been thinking about brownies for the past two and a half hours at least." You replied sheepishly. 

"And whats stopping you from making brownies?"

"I know damn well the only brownies Rose has in this place are from the box and I want to make them from scratch."

Rafe sat up and looked at you. "Then why don't we go get what we need to make them from scratch?" He grinned.

You shook your head. "No. We don't have to. It's late and you were sleeping and it's ridiculous to make them right now-" 

Rafe placed his hand over your mouth. "It's never too late for brownies, baby." He smirked before getting up, tossing you one of his hoodies before pulling on a different one. 

You grinned as you pulled on the hoodie before getting out of Rafe's bed, extremely grateful you wore slip-on shoes today as you quickly pulled them on.

You and Rafe ran downstairs before throwing open the front door, Rafe grabbing his keys as you did, and you raced to his truck, climbing in. You buckled yourself in as you waited for Rafe to finish locking the door.

Rafe opened the driver’s side door and slid in easily, buckling himself in before shoving the keys into the ignition and starting the truck.  

"Buckled in, sweetheart?" He glanced over and you nodded as his hand found it's home on your thigh, the smile on your face growing. "Then let's get this show on the road."

During the ride to the nearest Wal-Mart, you grabbed the little notebook and pen Rafe kept in the glovebox and wrote down what you needed to get as the radio played softly in the background. 

You looked over at Rafe with a small smile and he glanced at you. 

“What?”

You shrugged. “Nothing. Just admiring you.” 

You saw Rafe blush. “Well, stop. You’re distracting me and I don’t want to crash with precious cargo in the car.”

You felt your heart speed up. “Awe, Rafe, baby.” You cooed, resting your head on his arm. 

Rafe shook his head with a chuckle. “Don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s not like this is a new development.” 

“I know but still. You shock me sometimes.”

“I hope it’s a good shock.” Rafe laughed as he pulled into the nearly empty parking lot and easily pulled into a spot near the door.

“Of course it’s a good shock you silly billy.” You answered, leaning over to kiss his cheek before unbuckling your seat belt and hopping out.

Rafe followed your actions and easily fell into step next to you, grabbing your hand. Rafe grabbed a cart, leaning against it as he pushed it into the store and towards the grocery section.

"Alright, baby. What do we need?"

“Butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, unsweetened cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking powder. Plus, caramel cause I want to add caramel.” You listed off as you looked at the little notebook in your hand.

“Of course you do.” He chuckled and you swatted him with the notebook. 

“Shut up. If there’s anything better than brownies, it’s caramel brownies.”

Rafe shook his head before you lead the way down the aisles, picking up each ingredient and placing it into the cart. 

As you crossed the last item off the list Rafe began heading to the home section. You raised your eyebrows as you followed him, stopping in front of the wafflemakers before grabbing one and placing it next to the groceries.

“Why are you buying a wafflemaker?” You asked.

“Cause every time you spend the night, Y/N, you want waffles for breakfast so we go out and get waffles. Now, we can make them at home.” He grinned, looking at you.

“Correction, We can make waffles at your home since it’ll be at your house.” You pointed out.

“Good observation.” He nodded before grabbing another waffle maker and adding it to the cart. “Now, we can make waffles at both of our homes and we have matching waffle makers.” 

“Rafe Cameron, I am not letting you buy me a waffle maker.” You scolded, grabbing one of the boxes to put it back. 

“Then I guess we will just have to move in together in order for both of us to have waffles.” He smirked before kissing your cheek and turning around to head to self-checkout.

You blushed slightly before following, looping your arm through his and resting your head on his upper arm as you walked with him. “You’d really want to move in with me?” 

He nodded. “Yeah. Who else is gonna make sure you don’t accidentally cut your finger off while cooking. Someone’s gotta make sure you stay in one piece baby.”  Rafe pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

You rolled your eyes at his reasoning before walking in front of the cart as you approached the self-checkout lanes. You scanned the items and Rafe pulled out his card, paying for it as soon as the last item was in the bag. He grabbed the receipt before tossing it into a bag and grabbing one of the plastic bags.

“Thank you for taking me to Wal-Mart at a ridiculous time just to get things for brownies and thank you for paying. And thanks for buying a waffle maker cause you know how much I love waffles. You’re the best baby” You grinned as you walked ahead of him, turning around so you could face him. 

“Anytime bubs. Just know that this means I get the first brownie out of the pan.” He winked.

You walked up to him and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “I knew there would be a catch.” 

An hour later, you sat on the counter at Tanneyhill, scraping the bowl clean of batter as you waited impatiently for the brownies to bake. Rafe leaned against the island, smiling as he watched you.

***

Rafe swiped some batter earlier multiple times, hence why you got the bowl. That was apparently a rule in your house but he was positive that you were making that shit up. Who has a rule about whoever swipes batter during the baking process, doesn’t get to lick the bowl, spoons, beaters, etc?

Supposedly, your nana.

Rafe would just have to ask nana Y/L/N at the next family function.

“What?” You asked, looking at your boyfriend as you licked the spatula clean before going back to scrape some more batter out.

“You got something right here,” He leaned over and took his finger, wiping your chin before popping his finger into his mouth.

You scrunched up your nose. “Gross, Rafe. That was on my face.”

“So? I’ve kissed you when you’ve had a crying session and snot was running out of your nose.” He shrugged.

You rolled your eyes before glancing at the timer next to you. 

Three more minutes.

“You know, I could get used to this.”

“Hmm?”

“This. Me and you, in our own place, making food at an unreasonable time, a cat or a dog running around. Maybe a couple of kids in the future if you want them.” You stared at Rafe which caused him to get nervous. “Only if you want them because I’m, obviously, not going to be the one carrying them for all those months and delivering them and-”

“Rafe,” You cut him off from his rambling, “Your genes are way too good to let go to waste. Of course, I would love to have kids with you in the future.” You reassured him. 

He smiled. “No, sweetheart. Your genes are way better than mine.” He argued.

You got down from the counter and wrapped your arms around his neck and he slid his own around your waist. “Either way then, our kids are gonna be fucking gorgeous.”

“Damn straight.” He smirked, kissing your lips as the timer went off.

Rafe’s grip tightened on you as you attempted to pull away and you groaned. “Rafe, I am not in the mood to wait another hour and a half for brownies. Please let me go so they don’t burn.”

“Since you asked politely,” Rafe gave you one last kiss before letting you go and you immediately grabbed the oven mitts. "Actually," He took the oven mitts from your hands and slid them onto his hands, turning off the oven before opening it to pull out the pan.

"I think I can take a pan out of an oven." 

"Not without burning yourself you can't."

~~~~~

[midasinc]

modern era courfeyrac hcs:

-he's got a severe peanut allergy but he can tolerate tree nuts. this mf LOVES almonds, though. his favourite food is literally just almond butter- he eats it with his spoon. half of his grocery budget goes to almond butter. combeferre is really worried that his allergy will mutate to include tree nuts and courfeyrac will die by almond butter

-when he was in high school, he pierced his ears. at the time, courfeyrac thought it was super cool, but a lot of people made fun of him and called him gay for it. he struggled a lot with sexuality and gender presentation at the time and he took the insults to heart and let his piercings grow over

-in university, though, he felt more comfortable with being queer because he doesn't need a label for his sexuality and lets himself like who he likes without feeling insecure about people perceiving him as being straight or gay. courfeyrac decides he likes being a man and having feminine style choices at the same time and he re-pierces his ears and he gets a septum piercing. he likes to paint his nails and wears skirts some days, and other days he's totally cool with jeans and more masculine clothing

-courfeyrac speaks german (his nana is completely german and won't let him speak french or english in her house), french, italian, spanish, arabic, and english. he ALSO can speak klingon (combeferre as well) and is in the process of learning LSF. he really prides himself on how many languages he can speak and it's his goal to learn as many as possible. sometimes when he's overwhelmed he can't even think in one language, though, and his brain fizzes out.

-he's also a genius at chess. in grade school, courfeyrac was always president of chess club and he keeps his fact very secret, so when he needs to make a bet he can go "let's battle it over a game of chess" and always win. when things get difficult for him in life and he needs to relieve stress or think things over, he'll play a game against himself until he's calmed down

-every member of the friend group comes to him both for advice and to get things off their chest. everyone just trusts him very much and courfeyrac sticks to keeping their secrets secret. in a darker timeline, he would 100% spread chaos by telling everyone about so-and-so's drama. he has dirt on EVERYONE.

-he and combeferre are both star trek nerds (god dont bring the debate over whether star trek is better than star wars or not in front of bahorel, it's a nightmare) and once a week, they'll get together to watch a few episodes of the classic show. during the intro, courfeyrac always says "Space-" perfectly in time with the narrator; it's like magic. even when combeferre thinks he'll be too early or miss it, courfeyrac says it right on time (he has the seconds memorized until the narrator says it).

-pen clicker. oh my god, he is the WORST about pen clicking. he and enj both, if you hand them a pen they will click that mf at the speed of light until combeferre takes away pen-privileges

-his handwriting is very very very neat, as opposed to enj's chicken scratch. whenever the group uses a whiteboard to plan things, courferyac is given "scribe duty" so everybody can read and take notes

-(from pet hcs) all of his fish have been named after philosophers. all of them. well- okay, when he was a kid, he'd name his fish after ninja turtles and star trek characters. in high school, he started up the philosopher streak with his fish

-he's also incredibly smart. he has so much information memorized and analyzed in his brain that it surprises people when he speaks. his personality is very bubbly and comedic and charming that people assume he's dumb, but oh my god never debate him because you will lose and it will be humiliating at how bad he destroys you (grantaire has lived to tell the tale, he made the same mistake)

-courfeyrac also spits the best game out of everyone in the group. any stranger he talks up will buy into his flirting and he always finds someone to go home with when he, grantaire, and bossuet go clubbing. he has also contracted chlamydia twice in his adult life. no, he doesn't want the sex ed talk from joly again, thanks for asking, so he always has condoms in his pockets