#taking all versions of him and putting them in my pocket

[mikkomacko]

Mob reader day dreaming about Nico when she’s meant to be doing some paperwork and she scribbles his name on some part and she has to get it out the office and the house because for some reason she can’t get a new version of the paperwork in the house. she’s just trying to hide it from him cause for some reason thats what she’s embarrassed about not the fact that they have sex in a car not the fact that they are literally rabbits in heat-💕

Stop maybe it’s when she’s pregnant and she’s at that point where she’s just like so hormonal and turned on all the time. Luke and Alex give her a proposal or something to approve or she has a contract with a business to sign and it’s supposed to be a surprise for Nico.

But now that she’s thinking about him, now that his name has been brought up she’s aching and desperate for him, can’t stop thinking about how good he looked this morning when he came up behind her, fresh out of the shower in just a pair of unbuttoned jeans and cupped her barely there belly she has been admiring in the mirror, pressing a warm kiss to the side of her neck all “ya look so good today baby. Practically glowing.”

And she can’t stop seeing his hand, palm and fingers so large on her stomach, warm from being in the shower and the fuzzy hairs on the back of it and his bicep still dark and soft. Hands that make her feel so good and loved, hands that helped put that baby in her belly, hands that’ll hold and protect it once it’s born.

She’s so distracted that she accidentally signs his name on the contract, groaning when she realizes it because technically this is illegal and now Nico’s name is all over a contract that’s already been signed by the business when the deal had been made with her. So she’ll have to get rid of it and go back with a fresh one for them to sign and it’s embarassing because this all came from her drooling over a ten second interaction this morning.

She’s crumbling it up and shoving it in her purse, making Mercer print out another one and ignoring him when he’s all “what happened to the one they already signed?”

And then Timo asks her the same thing when she has him drive her to the business to get it signed again. She’s all blushing and shy when she’s like “I accidentally put Nico’s name on it.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Oh come on. M’not gonna laugh.”

“Yes you are.”

“Promise I won’t.”

“I was thinking about how his hands looked on my belly this morning and him shirtless and then it just happened.”

To Timo’s credit, he doesn’t laugh but he does smile all amused as he ruffles her hair with a sympathetic coo. She’s told him how crazy the baby hormones have made her lately so he does kind of get it. “Poor little babes,” he pouts, “gonna have to tell Nico to take some days off and stay with you huh?”

“Shut up,” she whines because that tempting thought is almost too good to be true.

That’s it though. At least she thinks it is. They get the new contract signed, Timo making sure she signs her name on it this time and then they go home for the day.

Nico’s at the house when they get there, switching out the porch light that went out a couple night ago so he’s eagerly helping her out of the passenger seat when they roll up.

“Hi baby,” he grins, kissing at her cheek and she smiles all sweet before ducking around him.

“Really have to pee sorry!”

She’s left her purse in the footwell so of course he grabs it for her, intrigued by what’s in it when Timo makes a hasty swipe at it.

“Don’t look in there!” He begs but Nico is already digging through it, coming up with the crumpled contract.

“Why is my name on here?”

Timo has to tell him then already knowing that it’ll save you the embarrassment. But Nico is all flattered and happy about it, folding the contract back up and putting it in his back pocket because he thinks it’s so sweet.

You’re embarrassed that you daydreamed about him so hard you wrote his name out meanwhile you’re literally carrying his baby. There’s nothing you could ever do that should be embarrassing. You’re his wife and the mother of his baby, he hopes you love him like that, that the sound of his name makes everything seem so much brighter and better because truth is just the thought of you makes his day 100 times better.

When you come back outside he just tucks you into his chest, kissing at the top of your head all “you’re so cute darling.” And she doesn’t really get where this came from but she’s blushing anyway, trying not get too hot at his compliment.

[calmbigdipper]

So many Kavehs — which one is your favorite?

[nereidprinc3ss]

diva

in which flirty!reader shows up to work in a bad mood and it’s spencer’s job to deal with her attitude. not that he minds. (bandages universe)

fluff warnings/tags: fem!reader, mentions of reader coming to work from a casual hookup, flirting, lots of teasing, the BAU being silly geese bc this is before all the trauma, insecurities about reader's job performance, spencer wants to be a cyborg, borderline cuddling hehehe a/n: nanana diva is a female version of a hustler (bandages!reader theme song) no but really i just missed them so much lowkey always accepting requests for these two!! I hope you guys likeeee bc i loveee them and also this was based on a request so i hope u see this LOL

As soon as Hotch calls wheels up in thirty you’re slumping forward, resting your head on folded arms. The to-go cup on the round table in front of you has long been emptied but you look at it longingly anyway. 

Morgan chuckles, slapping his folder down on the table next to you. “Aw, look at that. Bright eyed and bushy tailed.”

“It’s Sunday,” you groan. “It’s seven in the morning. Excuse me for not being ready to carpe the diem.”

“It’s just carpe diem,” Spencer interjects, standing and slipping his file into his bag. You sit up and give him the most indignant look you can manage, though it’s hard when you’re this tired and he’s that cute. Slacks. Sweater vest. Button down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. An enviable waist. 

“Whose side are you on?”

He frowns, brushing a tuft of shining-clean brown hair out of his eyes. 

“If I was on anyone’s side other than my own it would cease to be their side. We’re all always on our own sides.”

“No, you’re on my side. Defend me.”

His brows only dart up and he looks back down to his bag. It’s a look you know well. Don’t get me involved. 

Morgan spins in his chair to face you, one elbow resting on the table. 

“I’m just saying, if this is your Sunday morning, I’d love to see your Saturday night, little miss forty five minutes late.”

“You heard Hotch say he called me half an hour earlier than everyone else. It was technically fifteen,” you frown. “And I… was at church.”

Rossi gestures at you with his coffee cup. “You step foot in a church, your shoes are going to start smoking.”

Your jaw drops. 

“Wow. I thought old people were supposed to be sweet. Come on, Spencer.”

Spencer knows better than to put up a fight as you get up and grab him by the hand not holding onto your cup and folder, dragging him to the bullpen to sit at your desk until the team is ready to go. 

He stands in front of you, hands in pockets, as you plop into your own chair. “I… can’t tell if you’re actually mad.”

“I am. At you. For not being on my side.”

Spencer sets his bag down and leans against the adjacent desk, arms folded. You stopped caring a long time ago if he’d notice you ogling the long, lithe lines of him. Maybe you never really cared, if you’re being honest with yourself. He’s a little harder to scandalize these days, anyway. But you’ll never stop trying. 

He bites his lip thoughtfully. 

“If you’re mad at me, why am I the one you dragged down here?”

“I’m not taking questions, Reid.”

He hisses. “Ouch. Reid.”

“Mhm. That’s how mad I am.”

“Okay, grouchy. Do you want a refill?”

You borderline pout, continuously perplexed by his kindness in the face of your insolence, but holding out your hollow cup for him anyway as you slouch lower in your seat. 

“Don’t call me grouchy.”

“Then don’t call me Reid,” he says, taking your cup as he passes, and you think you sense the faintest wash of amusement coloring his tone. 

The jet doesn’t do much to put pep in your step. 

“Aberdeen,” Morgan muses, letting his file closed on his lap. “Isn’t that where, uh, Kurt Cobain grew up?”

Spencer sits down in the chair next to you, setting the day’s third cup of coffee in front of you on the small table. “It is. It’s also where Washington’s first suspected serial killer William Gohl resided.”

“First of many,” Rossi amends. Reid nods. 

“In the US, Washington State comes in fifth place in terms of serial killers per capita. Some blame a widespread vitamin D deficiency. Just under eight hours of sunlight in the winter, the least in the contiguous United States.”

Emily gives an abhorrent rendition of a famous Nirvana riff, imitating a twangy electric guitar, before gesturing to your boss. “Hotch, you’re from Seattle. Did you ever get into Nirvana? The whole grunge scene?”

Hotch lowers his folder, giving her an unimpressed look. “Did you?”

While the exchange is amusing, the coffee is not perking you up and you’d like to be slightly less upright, if possible. You bump Spencer’s knee with your own, and he looks over at you obediently. 

“What’s up?”

“I wanna move to the couch.”

He nods and gets right back up. When you pass, and he doesn’t immediately follow, you turn around. Maybe the lack of sleep has rendered you unable to hide your look of contempt as he tries to sit back down. 

“What are you doing?”

Morgan snorts. “Uh oh. Lapdog almost forgot his training.”

“I am not a lapdog,” Spencer defends, giving Morgan a harsh look of his own, before following you, much to the amusement of the rest of the BAU. 

“Don’t listen to them,” you mutter as you step aside to let him pass. 

He settles into the corner of the couch. “I almost never do.” When you cozy up next to him, he seems surprised. “Um, hi?”

“I’m cold. You’re warm.”

“This is… unprofessional.”

You roll your eyes even though he can’t see. “Oh my god. They don’t care.”

That’s enough to shut him up. Eventually he relaxes, and though he doesn’t put his arm around you (they remain crossed in front of him) he doesn’t seem too distraught over the way you’re leaning against him, head on his shoulder. The sky is a soft grey where you can see it through the little rectangles lining the far wall, like a pale tea with plenty of milk. 

“What’s up with you, anyway?” He asks eventually, gingerly, and though he’s bold to ask it you know the last thing he means to do is offend. Luckily for him, he’s your soft spot. You let your eyes flutter shut against the boxes of diffuse light. 

“Tired.”

“I know that. You’ve had three cups of coffee and you’re still about to fall asleep.”

“Well… that’s all it was.”

“Mhm.”

“God, you’re—” you lift your head, about to give him a good old fashioned verbal lashing, but he’s so sweet looking, and he’s so kind to you even when he’s not, that you deflate—all your air coming out on a sigh as you settle back against him. “I… was… not home, when Hotch called me.”

“Yeah, you said you were at church?” He sounds utterly bewildered. Your heart melts, and you can’t hide the fondness seeping from every pore as you look up at him through your lashes. He really is so beautiful. 

“That was a joke, Spence. I was with a friend.”

His brows knit and a faint blush tinges his cheeks. 

“Oh. I knew that.”

And he really is getting better at detecting your brand of sarcasm. One day you doubt you’ll be able to pull any over on him, and he’ll stop being so adorable and bashful and embarrassed and sweet all the time. You don't relish the thought.

“What were you doing this morning?” You ask, in a bid to quell the very embarrassment you covet, because you’re not actually a demon, despite what Rossi had implied earlier. 

“Sleeping.”

You hum. Imagine taking his hand. Don’t really take it. 

“Me ’nd you should hang out outside of work more often.”

“Like… in the mornings?”

“Uh, probably not,” you laugh, your own face heating at the implication he’s only sort of and undoubtedly accidentally making. “I mean—we could. We could have breakfast sometimes.”

“I like breakfast,” he muses. “I know a couple of good spots. I can show you when we get back. There are these ube pancakes that are like bright purple on the inside. Have you had ube? I think you’d like them. The pancakes and the tuber. They’re the same color as your laptop case.”

You giggle, too tired for anything more dignified and too charmed for anything less authentic. Spencer has a moment of apparent self-awareness and after a second chuckles along with you, and like 99% of your moments with him, it’s a nice one. 

It slowly fades, and you sigh. 

“We’d probably get called in right in the middle of breakfast.”

“It’s always a possibility,” Spencer agrees, and you feel him nod. He smells really nice—clean and sort of cedar-y. Warm. 

“You ever think about how we’re just… robot arms to do the bidding of the federal government? We’re not even people. We’re cyborgs.”

“I’d love to be a cyborg.”

“But then you wouldn’t be so warm and comfy.”

“If I were a cyborg I could install a heating element. I’d still be warm. I don’t know about comfy. Maybe if I kept the biomechatronics to one side of my torso.”

“You’d install a heating element just for me? So we could keep cuddling?”

He clears his throat. You smile to yourself. 

“Why are we cyborgs, exactly?”

“Because we don’t get personal lives. The job comes first. I could be doing anything. I could be in the middle of eating bright purple pancakes with my good friend and colleague Spencer Reid and it doesn’t matter. If we get called in we have to leave.”

“If we were in the middle of breakfast, we could just… take our food to go and finish it at our desks.”

“Well—I guess it would be different if it was us, but with my other friends… it’s kind of a bummer, sometimes.”

You’re thinking about the friend you left this morning. Nobody you’re particularly invested in, but you wonder if that friend is still asleep in bed—and you realize you don’t much care. You’re glad to be here, and not there. 

“I think if the job didn’t feel worth it to you, you would’ve left by now. But you haven’t. You can complain all you want, but you show up every day.”

You scoff. 

“Fifteen to 45 minutes late, depending on how you look at it.”

“That is… atypical. You’re usually on time.”

“Usually…” you repeat darkly. A moment passes. An uncomfortable insecurity begins to bloom and ache like a rotting tooth. “Can I ask you a serious question?”

Spencer doesn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“Do you think…” you falter, unused to this kind of vulnerability. A cloud swallows the jet and the cabin darkens into a place for secrets. “Do you think I’m worth the trouble?”

You know Spencer senses the unease like a sheepdog can sense a storm from the way he perks up next to you. He’s always been like that—incredibly attuned to the moods of others. You hope he doesn’t think profiling is just another of many learned skills. It’s a genuine talent, a sort of savantism in its own right. You can’t imagine him doing anything else as passionately as he does his job. Sometimes it almost makes you insecure. 

“What trouble?”

“Like… Hotch having to call me half an hour earlier than he calls the rest of the team. Or you, accepting my constant teasing. I know I’m—I can be kind of a diva. I don’t always really feel as professional as you guys. Or… qualified, maybe.”

You can imagine the way he’d narrow his eyes as he thinks this over, though you’d still like to see it for yourself—but you keep your head on his shoulder. In a way, he’s already getting a closer look at you than you usually grant to anyone. 

“I think… you’re good at your job. And you care more than you’d like to admit. That thing you do—where you sometimes show up a few minutes late, or you piss Rossi off on purpose, or you flirt with Hotch—I think… we all have things like that. We all self-sabotage, because it’s a really hard job, and I think we all wonder if we’re really qualified for it, or deserve to be in these positions, or if we even want the responsibility of trying to save people’s lives. But you’re a genuinely good person and a gifted profiler. And everyone else knows it, too.”

The deep thrum of the jet’s engine blurs the rest of the team’s incomprehensible chatting and the pounding of your heart into one big muddied streak of paint. Hopefully Spencer can’t feel the heat of your cheek through his shirtsleeve. 

“Oh,” you murmur. 

A moment passes. 

It’s a relief when Spencer’s anxiety comes bubbling up before your own can. “Sorry, was that too much?”

“No,” you hurry, “no, it was—no. That was really really nice of you to say. Thank you, Spencer.”

He relaxes. “Well… it’s all true.”

How could anyone ever deserve him? How does anyone get lucky enough to know a man like Spencer Reid?

When you burst through the other side of the cloud, the sun has come out. It burns away the milky early morning fog and makes your eyes ache just enough to finally wake you up. You blink and stretch against him like a cat. 

“Spence?”

“Hm?”

“I just want to clarify… I don’t flirt with Hotch. I flirt with you.”

[szatears]

inked all over, stack.

summary: stack comes back to you with a new surprise, one that you must say suits him a little too well.

pairing: modernau!stack x blackfem!reader

warnings: smut, oral (fem receiving), p in v, use of the n word, descriptions of reader.

notes: modernau!stack has finally arrived! ever since i made that post about smoke and stack w tattoos i couldn't get it out of my head so here we are! also switched up the pov to third person for this one. ignore any errors, did not proofread at all. smoke version coming soon :)

"Goddamn, you said how long?!" Stack's eyes widened as he leaned back in the tattoo chair, sat opposite his tattoo artist, Deuce.

"We're looking at 'bout six hours?" Deuce laughed seeing the expression on his client's face.

Stack was always at Deuce's parlour when he wanted a piece done on his body, he didn't trust anyone else to do it for him. Same with his brother. Today, he walked in wanting to get something he had on his mind for months.

"Six hours? Nigga, I'ma need you to cut it down to like, two and a half. My lady already pissed I ain't wake her up with a kiss this morning," he blew out a breath, thinking about the messages his wife had left him a few hours ago.

He'd been up since the early hours, and it was almost 4 o'clock now. He was only meant to be out running a few errands with Smoke and some by himself, but he just couldn't get the tattoo out of his mind.

Deuce laughed, nodding his head as he placed the drawing of what Stack wanted on his forearm. "This good for you?"

Stack looked down at the placement, a faint smile on his lips. He couldn't wait to see her reaction to this. "Yeah, it's good."

He knew how the process would go, he just hoped he'd be back home at a reasonable time to not get his ass chewed out. Mrs. Moore didn't play like that.

He made himself comfortable, his arm out on the extendable part of the bed to allow Deuce to do his work. Many Men by 50 Cent played through the speakers, and Stack pulled his phone out of his pockets before Deuce started tattooing.

He already had a few tattoos, but he still wasn't too used to the pain. Smoke on the other hand? Stack would say "you could tattoo that nigga's eyeball and he won't even flinch."

Stack had put a lot of thought into this piece. It would be the beginning of a sleeve he hoped to complete later on, but to him, this was the most important part of it. It had the typical designs of a sleeve ─── shaded clouds with the sun peeking through, cursive writing with some red for that pop. But it was what was written that held the most meaning to him.

With time, Stack came to realise that one of his wife's favourite ways of expressing her love to him was through words. It could be something simple, like telling him she was proud of him or that he was doing well with everything. Or it would be more, like a note in the morning before she left to go somewhere, or one of the many texts she sent him throughout the day.

One of these letters stuck with him the most. In it, she wrote about how he'd become such an important part of her life, the tie that held them together growing stronger each day. The exact words he was getting tattooed on his arm were "you're my favourite person and my forever person, i got you always," something she never failed to mention to him.

It was obvious how in love the two were. You rarely saw them without the other, and even if they were, it wouldn't take long for either to mention the other.

Along with the words, Stack added her lipstick print that she always signed her letters off with. He knew he'd be making a joke soon enough about how her lips were always gonna be on him now.

The rest of the piece had some other smaller yet intricate designs, he told Deuce he could freehand whatever, he trusted him like that.

-

Surprisingly, Deuce actually managed to cut his estimated time in half, finishing the tattoo almost three hours later. As Deuce finished taking pictures and wrapping Stack's arm, his phone rang, looking down at the caller id to see his wife's name with a heart next to it. He accepted the facetime, smiling at the mug on her face.

"Why are you smiling? You must like playing with your life..." she mumbled, fixing her hair in the camera frame.

"I can't be happy to see you no more?" He chuckled, watching her fight back a small smile. "You look good."

"I know," she leaned her face closer to her camera. "Where are you? Come home already."

"I'ma be home in a minute, mama, I'm at the shop with Deuce," Stack turned his camera to face the man who was tidying up his supplies as he held up a peace sign.

"Hey, Deuce. So you're the reason my man's out til these hours when he said he'd only be gone for two tops?" Her head tilted as Deuce laughed.

"It ain't my fault he picks the tricky designs."

"Design─── Baby, you got a new piece?" All of a sudden the frown on her face was wiped off, replaced with a smile.

"Yeah, I did. Look at you, smilin' over there," Stack laughed as he got up from the bed, reaching into his pocket to pull out a stack of 50s, handing it to Deuce.

Before he could even complain about being given too much money, Stack gave him a look. "You really gon' make me argue with my lady on the phone?"

"No, sir," Deuce smiled, putting the money away.

"Aight, til next time Deuce."

He grabbed his coat and left the shop, opening the door to his car that was parked right at the front. "You need me to bring anything, baby?" he looked down at his phone as he put on his seatbelt, seeing his wife already staring at him. The smile that graced his face was just his natural reaction to seeing her; he couldn't get enough of her,

"Could you get some more fruit from Mama Glo's corner? If she's still open."

"Yeah. You gon' stay on the phone?"

"No, I'm gonna take a shower real quick. But I'll see you soon, handsome. I love you," she kissed the camera.

"I love you too."

-

Stack came back with a brown paper bag containing the fruit his wife had asked for, closing the front door with his foot. He slipped his trainers off, walking to the kitchen and placing the fruit on the counter. When he didn't hear the sound of footsteps coming down to greet him, he tilted his head, making his way up the stairs.

He found her lying on their bed, dressed only in a bra and a small pair of shorts. She turned her head to the door when she heard the floorboards creak, a smile on her face as she set her phone down on the bedside table.

Stack smiled at her smile, his hands resting on her waist as she stood in front of him. His frame slightly towered over hers, his head dipping down a little to kiss her lips.

"Nice of you to come home, Elias," she hummed into the kiss.

"You know I could never be away from you for too long." His words were like music to her eyes as she used the hands that were around his neck to softly run her fingers over his skin.

"I got your fruit," he told her, tapping her hip twice so she'd let him go briefly, letting him take off his shirt. It was only when he took off the black muscle t-shirt that he wore, that she let her eyes run over the tattoos that adorned his chest and back before she remembered the reason he went out.

She let her eyes wander over him whilst he put his phone on charge, finally spotting the wrapped part of his right arm. Stack glanced at her, noticing how quiet she'd gotten. "You wanna see it?" he laughed at how eagerly she nodded in response to his question.

He stepped closer to her, taking a seat on the edge of the bed as she stood between his legs. He slowly took off the wrapping of the tattoo, much to his wife's impatience. When he finally revealed the finished work of art, the look on her face made his impulse decision ten times worth it.

He let her gently run her hands over the ink, waiting for to notice what made it even more special. He watched her face closely as her eyes flickered over his forearm, holding it with so much care. It wasn't until she turned his hand over so his palm was facing her, that she saw the writing.

"Elias..." she whispered, a pout on her face as she ran over the words and the copy of her lips.

"You like it?" he smiled at her, flashing his gold caps.

"Like it? Baby, I'm in love with it, oh my God," she couldn't tear her eyes off it. Throughout their relationship, Stack would always say something along the lines of "I'ma get your name tatted on my face," but this was far more meaningful.

"Good, 'cause it hurt like a bitch," he mumbled, pulling her into his lap. He kissed the side of her face as she held onto his arm. "I love you more than life itself."

"I love you endlessly," she took his face in both her hands, kissing him.

"Yeah?"

"Mhm."

He turned his head into the kiss, letting his lips leave hers to kiss down her neck to her collar. He flipped them over, bringing her to lay back down in the middle of the bed.

Her hands ran down his toned arms, massaging his broad shoulders. She let her fingers trace over the inked parts of his skin that she could reach, having memorised where every part was.

Stack used his knee to nudge her legs apart, letting him slot in between them as he kissed her. His tongue danced with hers whilst she held him closer to her face by the back of his neck. Her soft moans only encouraged him more, as did the growing friction her hips created against his.

"Yeah, you gon' have to come up outta these," he mumbled against her lips as his hands fumbled down to her shorts, pulling them down her legs.

"Elias..." she whispered, tugging at his belt. She was almost naked whilst he was still half clothed.

He smiled at her, pulling away from her lips to kiss a trail down to her pelvis. "Hold on, baby. I wanna make you feel good first." He kissed her clit over the lacy underwear she wore, and she shuddered, leaning back further into the pillows.

Stack used his thumb to rub her clothed clit, watching how her legs started to close around his hand. "Baby, please," she whined, and it didn't take long for him to give in to her pleas, taking off her underwear.

Just as quick as he had done that, his head lowered closer to her core, his mouth latching onto her creaming opening. His tongue licked up and down, his hand holding either side of her hips as he ate her out. She let out a loud moan, her hands gripping the back of his head.

"Fuck, baby, just like that," she breathed out, her eyes fluttering with pleasure.

"Yeah?" he mumbled against her, the vibrations just adding to the feeling.

Stack lapped at her for all she was worth, the unholy sounds emitting from her lips and his work. He used his thumb to rub her clit as he continued to work her away with his tongue. She writhed underneath him, feeling that familiar coil inside of her begin to surface.

"Why you moving away, huh? You can take it mama, I know you can," he assured her, replacing his tongue with his fingers as he briefly looked up at her. The sight alone almost made her cum right there; his mustache and goatee coated in her fluids.

She couldn't keep it in, especially when he went back to her with his tongue, his two fingers pumping in and out just as fast. "Shit, I'm gonna─── Oh, my God," her moans aligned with her release, all over his mouth.

Stack continued to eat her out through her high, her hips grinding into his face as he sought more. "Baby let up," she groaned, trying to push his face away.

"One more, baby. For me?" How could she say no when he was making feel that good?

It wasn't long before she came again, her body letting up as Stack cleaned her up. Only he could make her tap out like that.

He finally moved his head from between her legs, hovering over her as she grabbed his face, pulling him down for a messy kiss. She licked over his lips, moaning at the taste of her on him. His hand travelled to her throat, the same arm that was newly inked now right in front of her.

Stack's tattoos were such a turn on, it was almost impossible to describe. If he wanted to make her orgasm fast, all he had to do was talk her through it, or have her analyse his tattoos. Easy.

"You not tapping out on me, are you?" he smirked, as she gave him a lazy smile. She could feel his dick through his pants at her entrance. Shaking her head, she let go of him to take his belt off, eyes on him as she pulled him out of his boxers.

He briefly got up to take them off all the way, before he settled back between her legs, hiking them up his hips. She let her arms rest over his shoulders as he pushed in, both of them groaning.

He fit so perfectly with her, and he made her feel that way every time, through sex or not. The sound of skin slapping soon took over the room, as did their moans.

Stack ground his hips into hers, his head resting in the crook of her neck, leaving small love bites where he could.

"You're doing me so good, E," she whispered lowly in his ear which only spurred him on. He picked up his pace, finding that spot of hers that had her arching into him.

"Like that, baby? Hm?" he asked as she could only not in reply, too far into it to speak actual words. Stack fucked her so good, without fail every time.

He looked down at where they connected briefly, fascinated by her precious pussy taking him in so well. "You're doing so good for me, pretty." he told her, his eyes back on hers.

She managed to keep the contact for a few moments before he had her eyes rolling at the back of her head, her muscled walls clenching around his dick.

He grunted at that, feeling himself close to unravelling. But like he always did, he wanted her to come first.

"I'm almost there, E, keep going─── Yeahhhh, just like that," she moaned, whining even as she felt herself about to come for the third time. She held his head to her face as he kissed her, groaning as she reached closer and closer to her climax.

"Fuck!" she screamed as he cum coated his dick, spilling out as he fucked her through it.

"You got it baby, shit, I'm gonna cum too, hold on," his words trailed off to a whisper as he came in her, her eyes fluttering shut as she adjusted to the overbearing amount of pleasure only her man could give her.

Stack's thrusts slowed down as he pushed his seed back in her, a lazy smirk on her face as she watched him do so. He pulled out slowly, gently laying on top of her. She brought her legs around his waist, kissing his temple as they caught their breath.

"Damn," Stack sighed happily. "Might have to get my whole body tatted up now."

taglist. @childishgambinaax @abriefnirvana @blackisy2k @chrisevansmentee @siasoup @amethyst09 @heauxtales @skywalker0809 @thelightknight21 @klssngss @atomicearthquakemusic7 @oc3anbxbyxoxo @honestlyurslol @simpingfor-wakasa @omg-mymelaninisbeautiful @favoritten

[darkbluekies]

Intruder 2024 ver

Yandere!mafia OC x reader

Summary: finding a mystical USB in your bag leads to more danger you ever could have anticipated. It leads you straight into the arms of a well respected mob boss.

Warnings: gore, kidnapping, breaking in, chains, crime, yandere

Word count: 2.4k

A/N: I thought it could be fun to remake my first one-shot almost 2 years later to see how I have improved! I hope you like the new version♡

Your hands tear through the bag, impatiently looking for the lip balm that is somewhere in the mess of papers, water bottles, wallets and receipts. Your head is pounding, your back is sore and your fucking lips are dry and you can’t think of anything else. You grab the backpack and turn it upside down, shaking it violently until every little thing has fallen out. Receipts dingle down like snowflakes. The lip balm falls out on the wooden floor and when you bend down to take it, you notice that it’s lying beside something that you can swear that you have never seen before. A white USB. Confused, you turn it around, looking for some kind of indication to remind you of what it contains. No tape, no pen, nothing. You sigh and stand up. Before walking over to your computer to figure out what contains on the USB, you smother your lips in lip balm. It gets in your mouth, tasting buttery and putting a greasy layer on your front teeth.

You sit down in front of your computer, boot it up and press the USB into the right port. If you see what is on it, maybe you’ll remember what you have used it for. It takes a few moments before a file pops up at the bottom of your screen. You press on it and are met by multiple folders, all having cryptic titles.

When have I ever done this?

Is this a Friday night drunk act? It would be an answer to why you don’t remember anything about it. You decide to press on one of the folders. Pictures and videos. Hundreds of them. You click on the first picture. What meets your eyes puzzle you. For a few seconds you can’t even process what you are looking at. A mushy red sponge-looking … something. When it hits you that what you are looking at is a dead, mangled body you gasp and shoot your chair away from your desk. A wave of mixed fear, disgust and disbelief washes over you as millions of questions bash into your head. Panicked worries about where the USB came from, who was in the picture, how many more there are like this, why you have the USB and if you would get in trouble and. If you give the USB to the police, would they find you suspicious? Would they think that you had anything to do with this? And will the ones who owns this USB kill you for it?

You find yourself pacing back and forth in your room as your heart beats in your ears. What are you going to do? You have to get rid of it. Quickly.

You turn back to the computer and pull the USB out as quickly as if it was on fire. The grotesque picture disappears. You drop the white stick into your pocket, as if it was really in flames. Just holding it made you feel dirty. You wipe your hands on your shirt, expecting it to smear blood. Nauseous, you run to the bathroom. Despite washing your hands in water and soap until your heads become gnarly and sore, you feel as if you have murdered that poor girl yourself and nothing will clear you of what you have witnessed.

You’re not sure how long you’ve been in the bathroom, how long you’ve tried to wash yourself of sin and guilt. Suddenly, the front door’s lock seems to click. You freeze, listen closely. Perhaps it isn’t your door? You quickly find that it is, indeed, your front door creaking open. Quickly, you get into the bathtub and hide behind the curtain. Your entire body trembled.

“Little thing”, a deep voice sing-songs in what can only be interpreted as amusement. “I see that you have something that belongs to me.”

The voice is unfamiliar, which is only for the best. You’re able to locate him in your bedroom.

The click of a gun snapping in place makes you flinch against the ceramic tub. If he finds you, you will die.

“Don’t try to hide from me.” You can hear the evident smile in his voice. “I know that you are here somewhere. I saw you on that low resonate web cam of yours just ten minutes ago! I don’t have time to play hide and seek with you. The longer I have to look for you, the less fun it’ll be for you when I find you.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, praying that all of this is a horrible nightmare. Your chest is burning with fear. All you want is to scream and cry, plead and beg for your pitiful little life.

“Little thing, I know that you saw some gruesome stuff on that USB”, he says, his voice now drenched in false pity. “Don’t you want to get rid of that horrible filth, hm? I can take it off your hands. Just come out and give it to me and I will spare your life. What do you say?”

A silence follows. An excruciating silence that makes you want to claw out of your own skin. You prepare yourself to see him ripping the curtain away and putting a bullet through your skull.

“Oh, would you look at that?” His voice appears again, back to the amusement. “A call from your mother? Let’s answer, shall we?”

Panic goes through your entire body as you realize that he has your phone — and, indirectly, your mother, in his hands. You can’t let your family be involved in this! The more people who know, the more people will be in danger and the harder it will be to get out of this mess.

You hurry out of the bathtub, out of the bathroom. You make your way down the corridor and storm into your bedroom. The man is tall with hair as dark as night and when he looks over his shoulder you can tell that his eyes, as well, are as dark as his ruthless soul. He’s standing in front of the same computer you watched the picture on — the same computer he claims he saw you through. He smiles at you, a triumphed ‘i told you so’ smile.

“Please don’t”, you beg. “Don’t answer the call. Please.”

He clicks away the phone call before throwing the phone on the bed. He turns to you. He’s wearing a black suit.

“There you are”, he smirks and tilts his head. “You look much better in person.”

With trembling fingers you fish the USB out of your pocket and throw it at his feet. He looks at it for a few seconds, appearing clueless.

“Take it!” you shriek. “Take it and leave me alone!”

The man scoffs out a surprised laugh and lifts his eyebrows before slowly bending down and picking it up. He looks at it for a few seconds and then at you, meeting your eyes. They’re surprisingly calm.

“Please, just take it and go.” Your voice is barely audible.

The man stays silent for a few seconds before opening his mouth again. “I don’t think I can.”

“W-What? I haven’t done anything, I don’t know how it ended up in my bag, I didn’t steal it. I don’t even know when or how I got it.”

The man seems amused by your rambling. As if he’s hearing a little kid try to reassure their innocence in a sandbox fight.

“I know that you haven’t done anything”, the man calmly answers. “My man’s incompetence of carrying an USB is not your fault. But you have seen what’s on it. You know what it is, don’t you?”

“No”, you lie and shake your head.

He scoffs. “I saw you on your webcam. I know that you understood what was on it. Do you think I can just let you off the hook and walk straight to the police? Now that you’ve seen me too?”

You are going to die. Holy shit.

“I-I won’t tell anyone!” you stutter and start to back away from him. “I will pretend that I have never seen anything. No one will know. Please.”

Before you have time to run, he grabs your arm and pulls you back to him. You scream and try to fight back, but he’s bigger, stronger. He slams his hand over your mouth, forces your back against his chest. You sob and shake your head, your pleas getting muffled by his hand.

“Don’t cry, pretty thing”, he says. “It doesn't suit you.”

With that said, he pulls you out of the apartment. You can feel the gun in his pocket poking your back. You have never been this scared before, and have no idea what your body will do when it is this panicked. To your surprise, it decides to black out.

For a few seconds you're sure that you have dreamt the worst nightmare in your life, until you open your eyes and find that you aren't in your bed. You aren't even in your apartment. Quick eyes search around. A bunker or a basement. Those are your best guesses. Blood, both dried and fresh, covers the cement walls. You hurry to look around your body to make sure that none of the blood belongs to you. For the moment you seem to be unharmed. But for how long? You have chains around your wrists, ankles and throat to keep you in place. Like a dog. You repeat your name, your background and family in your head, just to not go completely insane. Will you ever see them again?

You damn that little piece of plastic and metal, wish that it would self-destruct and ruin that man's life. Such a little thing got you in such big trouble.

A door creaks open above you and your man starts to walk down the stairs to the basement. He's wearing a black buttoned shirt. He has something in his hands.

“Awake now?” he says.

You don't answer. He strolls over to where you're sitting and crouches down. He reaches out for you, removing some hair from your forehead. You will bite his fingers off if he doesn't keep them to himself.

You glare at him. You wish that your eyes could penetrate his skin and pierce his ice cold heart.

“What's your name?” he asks.

“Why do you want to know?” you ask carefully.

“It might be so that you'll have to stay here with me for a while. Telling me your name will make it easier for me to talk to you.”

“What's your name, then?” you ask.

He smiles, and the smile is almost soft. He seems amused by your counter question.

“Silas”, he says. “Achilleos.”

The name rings a bell in your brain. You've heard his name before. On the news. He's a mob boss. Your eyes widen. You really have screwed yourself beyond belief.

“My name won't hurt you”, he smiles.

“It's not the name I'm scared of”, you mutter.

“And your name?”

You hesitate. You know better than to give your name to a literal mob boss, but you also know better than to lie to one.

“Y/N”, you whisper, hoping that he won't hear and that you won't have to repeat yourself.

Silas makes himself more comfortable on the cold, hard floor. He leans on his arm.

“I have to say that I am genuinely sorry for this”, he says. “I don't like pulling innocent people into something they don't have anything to do with. Especially this kind of shit. I have more important things to do. My man stupidly dropped the USB into your bag and now that you have seen what's on it and know who I am, I can't let you go.”

Maybe you shouldn't have asked for his name.

“Normally, I would have killed you”, he says. “But I think that I'm going to keep you for a little while. You interest me.”

You lift your heavy, chained hands and cover your face. Sobbing. Silas removes your hands and lifts your chin up with his index finger.

“Let's make a deal, shall we?” he asks. “I will not hurt you … if you do as I say.”

“So I can't go home again?”

“No, because the second you put that USB in your computer, and I got the notification that someone had opened it, you’ve belonged to me.”

Beyond screwed isn't even enough to describe what you are.

“So?” Silas says. “Do we have a deal?”

What choice do you even have? You nod shortly.

“Good”, Silas says.

He reveals what he had in his hands when walking down the stairs. A small yogurt packet and a spoon. The text on the packet isn't in English.

“I used to eat this when I was a kid”, he says and opens the lid, giving it to you. “I guess that you're hungry.”

You shovel it into your mouth. It tastes like strawberry and is smooth in texture. It's first after eating it all that you remember who gave it to you and perhaps that you shouldn't have eaten it.

“No, I haven't poisoned it”, Silas scoffs. “Didn't I just tell you that I have planned to keep you alive?”

“You could have lied”, you whisper.

He scoffs again as he starts to remove the chains. The weight drops off of you like angel light. Silas pulls you up on your feet, buy your knees buckle the second you try to put pressure on them. Silas catches you and lifts you up in his arms. He carries you up the stairs, to a hall, and then up another flight of stairs. Your body aches.

Silas walks into a bedroom, dressed in modern interior design. You're placed down on a king sized bed, tucked in under heavy blankets. The crinkle of chains makes you flinch. Silas lifts an identical cuff to the ones you wore five minutes ago.

“This is just to keep you here”, he explains and places it around your wrist. “Sleep now.”

With that said, he walks out and leaves you alone. The door closes. You tug at the chain, but it's obvious that you'll stay there. Too tired to cry, you sink down on the mattress. Too alert to fall asleep you stare up at the ceiling. A thought crosses your mind, quick and easy, buy loud enough for your heart to ache. You have to get out of here before it's too late.

[angrythingstarlight]

Prompt: I saw on the news that an 8 year old decided not to go to school but stole her parents keys and drove herself to target for a day of Starbucks and shopping. I am laughing but kinda horrified but my first thought was Bumblebee sneaking away from her bodyguards and going out for a day of shenanigans.

Pairing: Mafia!Bucky x Reader, daughter nicknamed Bumblebee

CW: Fluff

WC: Drabble

AN: Part of the Bumblebee series.

While you're running around, finishing some last-minute things, Bee manages to get her little hands on the keys to her personalized Barbie Lamborghini.

Her bodyguards catch her making a break for the garage when you go upstairs to grab your purse. She's in her tiny car and backing down the driveway by the time Nino and Ronan reach the stairs.

She has everything she needs for her impromptu getaway. Mr. Tato strapped in the passenger seat. Her partially unzipped purse full of monies and snacks is bouncing in the back. A rolled up coloring book and a handful of crayons in the cup holders. Your sunglasses sitting crooked on her face, the frames slipping down her nose.

Bee tips her head back in time to see her bodyguards casually strolling after her. Nino holds up his phone, her eyes widen at the sound of your voice crackling through the speaker—Bumblebee get your butt back in here—and she hits the gas with a wild giggle.

She flies down the driveway at an impressive 5 miles an hour. This girl has places to be and no one is going to stop her.

Bee knows her Papa is somewhere past the towering iron wrought gates leading to the road.

She'll find him before you catch her.

Or so she thinks anyway.

"Bumblebee," you call out, hand on your hip. "You are in so much trouble. Are those my glasses?"

A quick glance over her shoulder and she lets out a yelp. When did you get here and why are you so close? Why is her car slowing down?

Her ballet flat taps the gas pedal with short frustrated jabs but her tires roll to a slow, defeating stop. She turns the steering wheel but goes nowhere. "Dab it."

Shaking your head, you suppress your laugh. "Sorry Bee."

"Mommy." Bee slumps in her seat as defeat sinks in, pushing the sunglasses back to reveal her cinched brows and adorable pout. "My car broked."

You slide the remote control in your back pocket and feign sympathy while hiding your amusement at the fact that she didn't get far. "Aw it is? Your papa will fix it when he gets home. Where were you going?"

'Papa's office." She states with a shrug. It should be obvious. Where else would she be going on a Wednesday morning? Letting you unbuckle her and Mr. Tato, she explains. "Papa needs my help with business. I knows it, Mommy."

Her earnest explanation brings a smile to your face. She's so cute.

You can't even be mad at her toddler version of prison break. He left the house in a hurry this morning, Bee overheard him arguing on the phone with someone on his way out. That must be why she felt the need to help him. You pluck the glasses off her face and put them on yours before collecting her and all her things in your arms.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" You head to the garage, the warm sun on your back. Kissing the top of her hair, you inhale the soft scents of her lavender lotion mixed with your perfume, she had asked you to spray a little on her wrists this morning.

"I got inpants and has to go fast." She shrugs, plopping her chin on your shoulder. "No times to waits," she sings out, waving at Nino who's carrying her car back inside.

"Impatient?" You clarify, stopping in front of your car.

"Yeah my inpants gots bad. I sorry."

She had time to snag some art supplies, a cupcake and a bunch of veggie straws though. You'd be miffed at her priorities but you're used to her toddler logic by now and it makes sense. Kinda.

You get the wiggling toddler in her car seat along with her dino and purse. Rummaging through it, you find a few veggie straws which she takes with a happy tank you.

"Next time you wait for me okay? It's not nice to leave without me." Your soft smile gentles the reprimand and she mirrors your expression. "No matter how impatient you get, don't leave me behind. I'll get real sad if you do."

Bee nods, grabbing your hand with crumb-coated fingers. "Okays. I pwomise to waits for mommy. I don't want you to be sads."

She'll probably forget this whole thing in a few weeks and you'll end up having this conversation again. Yet looking down at her, seeing the perfect combination of you and Bucky in her sweet face, you honestly don't mind.

You kiss her chubby cheeks and buckle her in. "How about we go to the bookstore?"

She loves the one downtown, it's an independent place run by a librarian. Bee perks up, it's almost as fun at the toy store next door.

"Mr. Tato wants a dino book." She beams, squeezing him in her hands. "And I needs a Bluey book for my office."

"He said we should get coffee while we're out," You reply, starting the engine. There's a place nearby that makes the perfect latte for you and a not to sweet chocolate milk for her. "When we're done, we'll take Papa out for lunch and then we'll see if he wants any help with work."

"He does mommy. He needs us."

Bucky will agree with that.

You take off, looking in your rear view mirror to find Bee still hugging Mr. Tato as she talks about dino books, ballerinas and Bluey.

You never would have imagined that this imaginative, rambunctious, sweet girl would be the best part of your day. And you're on way to meet the second best part.

At the office.

"Mr. Barnes, your one o'clock is here. I told him he's early but he's—," Kate hesitates, eyes lifting to the ceiling with a slight cant of her head.

She doesn't want to offend in case this man is important to her boss, but she doesnt want to lie to the pakhan either.

She finally settles on "—insistent that you meet with him now. Do you want me to let him up?"

Bucky picks up on the frazzled edge to her voice despite her best attempts to hide it.

Insistent.

Bucky's knows all about the heir and his insistent nature.

Bucky sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Put him in the conference room on the fifth floor. Tell Adrian and Victor to wait in the hallway and to inform me if he does anything."

"Yes sir."

Bucky leans back in his chair and goes back to the hotel blueprints he was reviewing. After this, he's going to select your anniversary gift.

The heir can wait until his scheduled appointment or he can leave. Bucky doesn't give a fuck, he's not the one drowning in debt.

There's only a handful of people on this earth that can demand his time and attention.

And Ransom Drysdale is not one of them.

[fanged-fanfics]

Hello I was thinking what if shadowmilk lover can make themself tiny and like hang out in shadowmilk hair ALOT, when he about to get in a fight knowing it will take a while he just pull his lover out of his hair and give them to black sapphire where he know they be safe and he put shadowmilk's lover in his packet and keep a close eye on candy apple making sure she won't try anything to them.

☆ Mayhem In All Sizes — Shadow Milk Cookie x GN Reader HCs ☆

Genre: Fluff || they/them pronouns for reader || No warnings needed

──────.𖥔 ݁ ˖˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ──────

ᯓᡣ𐭩 When you first transformed into a smaller version of yourself, Shadow Milk had scooped you up and immediately began gushing about how cute it was. You were the size of his palm, and could perfectly cradle into his pocket

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Anytime you felt like it, he'd carry you on his shoulder, in a little bag, or even have you hide under his hat! That was when you had the idea to burrow into his hair and peek out when something interesting was happening

ᯓᡣ𐭩 There's been plenty of times where Shadow Milk would have to deal with some idiot, so he'd gently let Black Sapphire take hold of watching you for the time being while he went to make crumbs out of them

"Here, hold them if you please~!" Shadow Milk had sang, placing your miniature form into Black Sapphire's palms. "Of course, Shadow Milk Cookie! Consider it done" Black Sapphire said, saluting while balancing you on his shoulder. "Good, good! I'll be just a moment, my snooky-bear!" Shadow Milk called out to you, before turning to the stranger Cookie who had dared to insult him. "Nooww! Where were we?" Shadow Milk asked, voice dropping to menacing as Black Sapphire handed you a mini jelly snack

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Candy Apple loves to try to makeshift little outfits for you so you'll have something to do when in tiny form. Why not try modeling? Might as well, yeah? This one's even got a matching gloves set!

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Black Sapphire always bickered with Candy Apple over your head about it. This is a teammate, not some doll! Shadow Milk wanted you safe, not dolled up in something made out of tissues!

ᯓᡣ𐭩 While the two minions bickered, Shadow Milk was finally starting to come back. He dusted his hands off, cleaning crumbs off of his outfit. Once he saw you, his grin came back in full force, and you were scooped into his arms

ᯓᡣ𐭩 "There we go! No more of those idiots, dear! Just us again" The snickering jester said, nuzzling into the top of your head. You laughed a little, letting him carry you to his shoulder and scooting back into place. Black Sapphire and Candy Apple immediately straightened up at his arrival

ᯓᡣ𐭩 You got your way back into his hair, climbing up until you reached the top of his head. When you resurfaced, you poked out of the edge of his hat to look around. The deceitful cookie giggled at the sight, while Black Sapphire and Candy Apple were fighting over what to eat for dinner

[witchywithwhiskey]

For the Sweethearts game: Steve Rogers + All Mine 💘😌

more than chocolate

pairing: husband!steve rogers x wife!female reader

summary: after your valentine's day date with your husband, he takes you to a hotel room and you make good use of the bed—but end up heading home to sleep in your own home.

warnings: 18+ content (minors dni!!!), smut, piv sex, unprotected sex, possessive sex, creampie, breeding kink, daddy kink, choking, biting, rough sex, established bdsm dynamic, light bratting/brat taming, pussy spanking, dirty talk, praise kink, light degradation, husband/wife kink, orgasm control/delay, cockwarming, aftercare, marathon sex, happy ending

word count: 4.5k

a/n: thank you for sending in a prompt, Eva!!! i'm not even the least bit surprised that you chose Steve 🤭 i hope you love this feral, possessive husband version of him, because i had fun writing him. thank you for playing my sweethearts game, i hope you enjoy ♡♡

sweethearts game masterlist

Giddy laughter bubbled up in your chest, tasting like the champagne still lingering on your tongue, which was busy savoring the rich chocolate mousse from the depths of Steve Rogers’ mouth. You dragged his broad body closer, licking the groan from his lips while his arm banded around your waist tightened almost painfully. 

The back of his other arm brushed against the soft mounds of your tits while he fumbled for the key card to your hotel room that was stashed in the pocket inside his jacket, and you couldn’t help but moan into his mouth. Your body was suffused in heat and need that grew with every moment, and you finally broke from the kiss to urge Steve on.

“C’mon, captain, your wife’s pussy is feeling so empty and needy,” you purred in his ear, pressing hot kisses along his jaw. The big super soldier shuddered, and you grinned like a cat that got the cream against his cheek. “Don’t you wanna fill me up? Don’t you wanna put a baby in my belly?”

A rough sound wrenched free from Steve’s mouth, his arm tightening around your waist as he caught your lips in a fierce kiss that sent your mind scattering along the ugly rug of the hotel hallway. 

Distantly, you heard the rending of metal, but you didn’t pay it much mind since Steve was lifting you up into his arms and carrying you into the room. He kicked the door shut behind the two of you with another screech of metal that sounded wrong, though you couldn’t say why.

Before you could think to pull away and see what damage Steve had done or ask him about it, his hand was cupping the back of your head, holding you close as he kissed the breath from your lungs and strode deeper into the room. 

Your chest was burning for air and your body was throbbing with arousal by the time your husband tossed you down on the soft hotel bed. You took only a brief second to glance at the rose petals strewn across the blanket, arranged in the shape of a heart, before you turned back to the glory that was Steve Rogers.

The former Captain America stood at the foot of the bed, his blue eyes blazing with desire as he tore off his dinner jacket and tossed it somewhere in the room. One hand worked open the top buttons of his light blue dress shirt while the other wrapped around your ankle.

“Is this how it’s going to be tonight, wife?” Steve rumbled, a feral smirk on his face as he yanked you down the mattress, manhandling your body even as he took care not to use too much of his super-soldier strength so he didn’t hurt you.

You shrieked with dizzying laughter, your nice dress riding up to your hips as you spread your legs for your husband, giving him a perfect view of the lacy panties you wore beneath. Steve’s gaze dropped immediately to the juncture of your thighs, his big hands skimming up your legs and pushing them wide open so you were on full display for him.

“You think you can tease me into breeding this pretty little pussy?” he asked darkly, palming your hot cunt through the thin fabric of your panties, which were already damp with your desire. “You think you can bat those pretty eyes and kiss me with those pretty lips and I’ll rut you until you’re so full of my cum, there’s no way you’re not knocked up?”

His fingers pushed shallowly into your dripping hole, fucking you in a poor mimicry of what you actually needed. But your panties were still in the way, preventing him from slipping all the way inside your needy pussy, teasing you with the penetration you so desperately needed. 

Your head thrashed on the bedspread, rose petals feeling like silk against your skin, and you made the most pathetic sound, partway between a whimper and a whine. Your hips worked hard against Steve’s hand, grinding your greedy pussy against his palm as you tried to take his fingers deeper, to where you needed them.

“Yes, I do, captain,” you huffed, batting your eyes up at your husband, your hands wrapping around Steve’s strong forearm and trying to shove his hand deeper between your thighs. 

But Steve was having none of it. He pulled away from your pussy, gathering your wrists in his big hand and pinned them to the bed above your head. The move had his big body covering yours, but he held himself aloft, making sure you had nothing to grind against while his hips held your thighs open. 

“Are you sure about that, baby?” Steve asked in a dangerously calm tone. 

Despite the need pounding insistently in your bloodstream, you couldn’t help but rile up your husband even more. So you pursed your lips together and blew him a kiss. 

Steve’s blue eyes darkened until they were nearly the mean, murky color of the Atlantic Ocean, and he shifted to one side. 

That was all the warning you got before Steve’s big hand came down between your thighs, giving your pussy a sharp spank. 

The sting wrenched a shrill sound from your throat, but the pain quickly melted into a burning heat that had your hips squirming and your legs flailing. Your calves curled around Steve’s legs in an attempt to draw him back between your thighs. 

“Daddy, please,” you cried, a sob of pleasure falling from your lips while Steve rubbed your pussy, making a mess of your slit as you leaked through your panties and into his hand.

“What was that, baby?” Steve asked mockingly, watching you squirm beneath him with a glint in his eye that made it clear you’d pushed him to the point of no return. “Something about you thinking you could brat your way into getting a baby in your belly?” 

Steve pulled his hand away from your pussy and pressed down on your stomach, pinning you to the bed and leaving you to only writhe. He held you like that for a long moment, your legs twisting and hips humping the empty air, until you’d nearly worked yourself up to tears. 

“Daddy, daddy, please!” Your voice was a pathetic whine, and your eyes were misty as you stared up at your husband. “I’ll be good, I promise,” you begged, your lips pursed in a perfect pout. “Just fill me up—please, please, please, I need it!”

“Ah, there she is,” Steve rumbled, his voice switching to a deep, pleased tone instantly. “My sweet wife, begging so pretty like such a good girl for daddy.” He ducked down and brushed a kiss to your cheek, catching the single tear that had fallen from your eye. “That’s how pretty girls get what they want—by asking nicely.”

You grumbled a little, but couldn’t help but preen under his sweet kisses and sweeter praise, making Steve chuckle against your skin. He pressed one last kiss to your lips and then he was standing up, grabbing your hips and flipping you onto your stomach with ease. 

Carefully, he pulled down the zipper of your dress, his fingers skimming along your spine and making you shiver as you pressed your face into the rose petals on the bedspread, inhaling their sweet scent as your husband undressed you. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you watched Steve lay the dress carefully over the chair in the corner, then he was back, ripping your panties down over your ass and thighs, shoving them in the pocket of his slacks while his other hand curled around your hip. 

“On your hands and knees, wife,” Steve ordered in a gruff voice, helping to lift you up into position. His hands made quick work of his belt and fly while you arranged yourself on your hands and knees on the edge of the bed.

Turning your head, you caught Steve’s eye over your shoulder, shooting him a smile while you arched your back and wiggled your hips for him. His blue eyes sparkled with love as he smiled back, but then his gaze dropped to your ass and he bit back a groan. 

Your husband ran his hands appreciatively up your thighs, then down your sides, reaching around to your front to grope your tits while he pressed kisses along your spine. You arched into his touch, letting out a needy whine when he plucked and pinched your nipples in just the way you liked.

“You’re so fucking pretty, baby,” Steve murmured into your skin, making you shiver at the depth of emotion in his tone. “Looked so gorgeous dolled up for our Valentine’s date tonight,” he said, sinking his teeth carefully into the curve of your shoulder, making you moan and melt further beneath his talented mouth. “But I’ll always love seeing you naked and begging for my cock.”

“Thank you, daddy,” you said sweetly, pushing your hips back into Steve’s lap and feeling his cock slip between your thighs. Your legs were already a mess with your arousal and you could feel your dripping heat coating the hard length of him as he thrust lazily between your thighs. “May I have your cock now—pretty please?”

The sweetness in your tone made Steve chuckle against your shoulder blade. But he grabbed his cock and rubbed the tip up and down your wet slit, teasing your tight little hole with everything you wanted. 

“Look at you,” he cooed teasingly, and you could hear the self-satisfied smirk in his tone. “Such a good, sweet girl when you ask nicely.” He pushed the crown of his cock into your hole before pulling out, making your whole body shiver with need as a whine worked its way up your throat. “Tell daddy how bad you want my cock, baby.”

“Sooo bad, daddy,” you wailed, trying to push back on Steve’s hard length. But he held your hip in a tight grip, making sure you only got the tip of his cock. “I want it so bad—more than chocolate, more than champagne, more than anything, daddy, please!”

“Good girl, such a good girl for your husband,” Steve purred, sliding inside your dripping cunt and filling you up with one firm stroke.

The feeling of him filling you up after teasing you for so long, his thick cock stretching you out so perfectly, wrung a delighted sob from your lips. You buried your face in the rose petals and blankets as you cried at the pleasure rolling through your body in waves. 

Steve gave you a long moment to adjust to his cock, and then his hand was wrapping around the front of your neck and he was lifting your body until your back was to his chest. The position forced his cock even deeper inside your pussy and you moaned loudly, your hands grabbing Steve’s thick thighs for something to hold onto.

“Open your eyes, pretty baby,” Steve cooed in your ear.

As soon as you did, your eyes were met with the sight of your body framed by your husband’s larger form and you realized there was a mirror hanging over the head of the bed. It gave you a perfect view of your pussy impaled on your husband’s cock, your tits bouncing as you breathed heavily.

Your entire, naked body was on display, and behind you stood Steve. He still wore the light blue shirt he’d donned for dinner, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his dark slacks were pushed down his thighs only far enough to free his cock. His strong, golden arms were holding you pinned to his chest, one hand curving possessively around your throat while the other banded around your middle beneath your tits.

Your husband’s blue eyes were sparkling with a possessive hunger as he caught your gaze in the mirror. 

“All mine.”

Steve’s voice was little more than a growl in your ear, the possessiveness trickling down your spine and settling in your belly only adding to the heat in your core. In the mirror, you could see the place where his cock split you open, where his hand was holding your throat in a dominating grip, and your pussy gushed with even more arousal. 

“You’re all mine, wife,” Steve said again, catching your eye in the mirror and letting you see the depth of the devotion burning in his gaze. “Now and forever.”

His words made you sink deeper into his grip, a pleased smile curling your lips as your hands reached for him. One gripped his strong thigh, nails digging into his golden skin hard enough to make his hips stutter with an instinctive thrust. The fingers of your other hand slid into the blond hair at the back of Steve’s head, curling in the strands and yanking on them just enough to make your husband’s eyes flash in the mirror.

“And you’re all mine, husband, now and forever,” you purred in return, echoing his words and enjoying the way Steve’s cock twitched deep in your cunt at the depth of the possessiveness in your tone. It was enough to make you smirk, the brattiness you’d felt earlier in the evening coming back to the surface. “Now, be a good husband and put a baby in your wife’s belly, captain.”

You barely had the chance to shoot your husband a playful wink before his eyes darkened, his pupils blowing wide and blotting out the blue of his irises. Steve let out a furious growl, his face contorting with determination as he started bouncing you on his cock, using his firm grip on your throat and body to lift you up and slam you down on his hard length.

“You’re going to regret that, wife,” he snarled in your ear, his fingers digging into the sides of your throat while he fucked you. “I’m going to use your body like my own personal fucktoy, and then maybe you’ll get my cum—if you can show me you can be a good girl and take my cock.”

Your husband looked so fierce in the mirror over the bed, fucking you hard and fast and giving you every inch of his cock over and over and over again. Still, you couldn’t help but be a little menace, torturing both of you so you could get everything you wanted.

“Harder, daddy,” you whined, your nails digging deeper into Steve’s thigh, feeling his muscles working beneath your fingertips as he thrust into you hard enough that the sound of his skin slapping against yours met your ears. “Choke me harder.”

“Bratty, perfect girl,” Steve muttered, choking you harder as he fucked you, his fingers digging into the sides of your neck and making pleasure swim across your vision.

It wasn’t long before you were close to the edge of your release, moans and pleading whimpers spilling freely from your lips. You clung to Steve desperately, your hips pushing back to meet his thrusts, but the closer you got, the more he slowed.

Just when you were about to tip over the edge, Steve stopped entirely. He yanked you down on his cock until you were impaled so thoroughly, you swore you could feel him in your guts. Then he dropped the hand not wrapped around your throat to your pussy.

“If you want my seed, baby, you’re gonna cum from getting your clit spanked, d’you hear me?” Steve growled in your ear, his blue eyes glittering and dark in the mirror as you caught his eye.

A whining sound of protest fell from your lips, and Steve waited a beat, but you didn’t voice your safe word. You knew your husband would stop immediately if you said the word you’d established years ago, but you didn’t really want him to stop.

Steve chuckled against your cheek, swatting your clit with the flat of his fingers, making you cry out and squirm in his hold. He adjusted his grip, his hand around your throat pinning you to his chest while he tapped teasingly against your clit. 

“You’ll be a good girl for daddy, won’t you, baby?” he cooed mockingly, smacking your clit a little harder and chuckling when your whole body jerked in his hold. But you were no match for his super-soldier strength, so all you could do was sit on his cock and take it, whimpers and moans falling mindlessly from your lips. “Of course you will,” he murmured darkly in your ear. “Because you want daddy to knock you up, don’t you, baby?”

A feral little kitten snarl tore from your mouth at the condescension in his tone, but still you didn’t stop him. Steve was stubborn and you knew you were going to cum from him spanking your pussy simply because he had the sheer determination to make it happen—and because he knew exactly how to work your body, how to walk the line of pleasure and pain until you were seeing stars.

Steve rocked into you with his hips, grinding his cock deep into your cunt, and spanked your clit sharply, making you cry out and convulse in his arms. But that damn super-soldier strength meant you weren’t going anywhere.

After five spanks, you lost count, but thankfully, you came not long after. 

Your release rushed over you suddenly, dragging you over the edge kicking and screaming, the stinging pain of Steve’s spanking hand washed away in a deluge of burning, all-consuming pleasure. It was the most intense orgasm of your life, and you screamed your release into the hotel room, your body tightening and your nails digging so hard into Steve’s forearm, you thought you might draw blood.

While you were in the throes of pleasure, you heard Steve grunt and groan behind you. His arms tightened around your body and his hips pressed flush to your ass as he buried himself as deep in you as possible. Then you felt the telltale twitching of his cock, and knew he was spilling his seed deep in your cunt, flooding your womb with his cum.

The two of you rode out your releases together, gasping and clinging to each other as you eked out every ounce of pleasure from your bodies. Before you collapse into a puddle among the rose petals, Steve gathered you up in his arms and climbed into the bed, laying you down in the center with his body behind you, holding you close. 

He managed to make sure his cock didn’t pull out of your still fluttering channel and you sighed in relief—you didn’t want him slipping out of you for the rest of the night. You wanted him plugging you full and making sure his seed would take in your womb.

“That was fun,” you murmured, reaching back and tugging on Steve’s hair until your mouth found his for a kiss. It was a little clumsy, but you could feel Steve’s smile against your lips, so it was perfect. “I love it when you get all mean with me,” you whispered against his mouth, unable to stop yourself from grinning.

Steve’s cheeks pinked and he kissed you more tenderly. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked softly, his fingers smoothing gently down either side of your neck, watching your face carefully for any flinches of pain. 

“No, I’m ok,” you assured him, waiting patiently while he insisted on kissing every spot where his fingers had dug into your neck when he’d choked you. 

“Good,” he said on a relieved sigh, burying his face in your neck. His hand slid down your front, laying possessively over your belly. “Because you’re going to need to take more of my cum if we’re going to make sure you’re knocked up tonight, wife.”

A giggle slipped from your lips and you wiggled your ass back into Steve’s lap, feeling him growing hard again inside you. “Gimme all ya got, captain,” you shot back over your shoulder, catching Steve’s eye and giving him a playful smirk.

For the rest of the evening, you and Steve stayed in that hotel room bed, mussing the blankets and sending rose petals flying as you made love over and over again like you couldn’t get enough of each other—which you couldn’t. You’d never get enough of the feeling of Steve’s cock pumping you full of cum, and he’d never get enough of your sweet sounds while your pussy clenched down greedily on his hard length.

By the time you were too exhausted to move, you’d lost count of how many loads of cum Steve had filled you with, but you were hopeful that his seed would take and your belly would grow with his child. You were cooing deliriously to your cum-filled stomach while Steve carried you to the bathroom and cleaned you up. 

When the two of you made it back to the bed, slipping beneath the sheets and not caring when you found some rose petals had made it into the bed, you were half asleep. You curled up into Steve’s side and tried to drift off…

But, even though you’d had enough orgasms that it should’ve been easy to fall asleep, you couldn’t seem to get comfortable in the hotel room bed. The pillows were too lumpy and the sheets were too scratchy, and even with your nose pressed into Steve’s bare skin, the room smelled too different from home. 

After a few minutes of your restless body squirming against his, Steve chuckled and brushed a kiss to your forehead. 

“Do you wanna go home, baby?” he asked softly, humor and affection thick in his tone. “Sleep in our own bed?”

“Yeah,” you said on a sigh, giving up the fight to fall asleep and lifting your head to look at your husband. Even in the dark of the hotel room, you could see his eyes glittering with love and you felt suddenly guilty, hiding your face in his chest. “I’m sorry—you got us this nice hotel room for the whole night, but I can’t sleep here.”

“That’s alright, baby,” Steve assured you, running his hand soothingly up and down your spine. “We got plenty of use out of it,” he said, laughing softly to himself. Then he wrapped his arms around you and lifted you from the bed, placing you carefully on your feet. “Don’t you think?” he asked playfully. 

Steve turned on the light and you looked around at the completely destroyed room. There were rose petals everywhere and the blankets on the bed were mussed beyond recognition, the pillows strewn haphazardly up and down the mattress. It gave you a small flicker of pride to see how thoroughly you’d used the bed with your husband and you grinned at him.

“Yeah, I think we did.”

As quickly as you could manage, you and Steve dressed and made your way to the door. There, Steve had to wrench it open, confirming your suspicions that he’d broken the lock earlier when he couldn’t get the key card out of his jacket pocket. 

At the front desk, Steve reported the damage and told the clerk to charge his card for the repairs while you tried to muffle your giggles in the back of his suit jacket. 

When he was done checking out, Steve laced his fingers with yours and pulled you toward the parking garage, both of you trying—and failing—to stifle your laughter. 

It was late when you leaned against Steve’s side as he unlocked the front door of the brownstone the two of you called home. You toed out of your shoes as soon as you were inside, leaving them by the door as you followed the low, warm light filtering out of the living room.

You padded around to the front of the couch, grabbing the remote for the TV and flicking it off before stopping and taking in the sight in front of you. Steve walked up behind you and slid his arms around your waist, his chin coming to rest on your shoulder as the two of you stared down at the couch.

“Your friends are terrible babysitters,” you whispered, cutting a look at Steve out of the corner of your eye, which only made him snort softly. The sound tickled your skin and sent a small shiver racing down your spine.

“What can I say, our little sweet pea has them wrapped around her fingers,” he responded easily, brushing a kiss to your cheek before unraveling himself from around your body and moving toward the couch.

Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson were both asleep on the couch, their heads lolling against the back and loud snores spilling from their mouths. Between them, your daughter was snuggled in her favorite blanket, which would’ve been adorable if it wasn’t so many hours past her bedtime.

“Papa?” your daughter murmured sleepily as Steve gathered her up in his arms, blanket and all, tucking her in close to his chest while her little arms wound around his neck. “Wan sleep wif you and mama,” she whispered before burying her little face in your husband’s collarbone.

“She refused to go to bed until you got home,” Sam said gruffly from the couch, where he was waking. He covered his mouth with a fist while he yawned, his other hand pushing at Bucky’s shoulder, but the super-soldier ducked out of the way with a grumpy grunt. 

“We all know where she gets that stubbornness from, don’t we?” he grumbled, shooting you a wink and cutting his head toward Steve, who was heading in the direction of the stairs leading up to the second floor of the brownstone. 

You muffled a snort into your palm and Steve cut you a look over his shoulder that only made you laugh louder. 

“Oh, she definitely gets it from me,” you said innocently, shooting your husband a wink as you turned back to his friends, who were standing and gathering their things. “Thanks for watching her.”

“Anytime,” Sam said, giving you a hug. Bucky echoed his sentiment and hugged you as well before the two of them saw themselves out.

You turned off the lights on the lower level, then followed Steve upstairs to your bedroom. He’d already tucked your daughter into the middle of your bed and was in the closet changing into his pajamas. The two of you shared a few sleepy kisses as you changed, then you slipped into bed, snuggling your daughter together. 

Before the three of you fell asleep, Steve whispered sleepily, “How do you feel about having a little brother or sister, sweet pea?”

“Want it, papa,” she huffed softly, and you couldn’t help but kiss her little head as affection and love surged in your heart. 

Steve caught your eye over your daughter’s head and he shot you a wink. “More than chocolate?” he asked, but his only answer was your daughter’s light snoring. 

You and your husband giggled silently and you reached for his hand, your fingers tangling together as your eyelids drooped. You fell asleep within seconds, a smile on your face as you were surrounded by love, delighted by the idea of adding another person to your little family. 

You wanted it more the chocolate, more than champagne, more than anything, to grow your family with your husband, Steve Rogers—and you’d get exactly that. Nine months after Valentine’s Day. 

sweethearts game masterlist

[mephisto-reporting]

Silk, Satin and Sensual - Caleb Edition

Premise: Headcanons on his preferences for lingerie and his reaction when he sees you in them. Based on this request. Pairing: Reader x Caleb. You can find all the other men's version here (along with Caleb's because I added that to it) Note: Reader and the men are in a relationship. This is suggestive. Please do not interact if you are a minor. . If you wanted to be added to my taglist, please DM, ask or comment :D Content warning: Suggestive. MNDI.

Caleb prefers lingerie that’s just for him—sexy yet teasing, revealing enough to drive him mad but covering just enough to make him desperate.

Caleb gravitates toward sleek, understated sensuality. He favors deep, alluring colors like navy, black, and dark burgundy, shades that hint at elegance but still feel undeniably intimate. However, he has a soft spot for delicate lilacs and soft purples, especially when they complement your skin.

Minimal but devastatingly effective designs have him on edge. Thin straps barely holding everything together, high-cut panties that accentuate your legs, delicate bralettes that are more about aesthetics than practicality. He loves when the details like lace appliques or ribbon ties demand his attention. Anything he can tug, unravel, or ruin.

Let’s be real. Caleb is not a man who delicately undresses you. He’s been patient his entire life, watching, waiting, restraining himself. The moment you’re finally his? He’s not taking his time. “You knew what would happen when you put this on, didn’t you?” His voice is low, rough—before the sound of tearing lace fills the room.

If you ever wonder why pieces of your lingerie mysteriously disappear, don’t. Caleb takes them when you’re not looking, slipping them into his uniform pockets or luggage when he’s preparing for deployment. He’s possessive, obsessive, and when he’s away on fleet missions, he wants something of yours to keep with him. A delicate lace garter? A silk chemise you once wore to bed? He’ll tuck them away like trophies, running his fingers over them late at night, mind filled with thoughts of you.

He’s a man who gives gifts with purpose. He knows exactly what you want, and he knows what he wants. If he’s getting you that plushie you mentioned offhandedly, or the book you’ve been dying to read, you will find a carefully wrapped lingerie set alongside it. Every gift is a two-for-one deal—his way of spoiling you while satisfying his own desires. Tucked inside, there’s always a note with cheeky messages: "Making dinner tonight. But if you wear this, you'll be the dessert."

Caleb is the picture of patience in public. He knows what you’re wearing underneath your dress—he saw you put it on, watched every slow movement in the mirror. But he doesn’t let it show. Not a single twitch of his lips, not a single shift in his stance. He leans down, lips brushing your ear, his voice impossibly calm: “You’re going to regret this later.”

There is one thing that drives him past the point of no return— his clothes on you. Seeing you in his oversized shirt is one thing, but if he catches you lounging in his boxers? He’s done. His fingers dig into the waistband, his voice a rough whisper against your ear. “You must really like testing me, huh?” His breath is hot against your neck, his hands already tugging the waistband lower. Any plans you had for the day? Gone.

His Reaction:

When you step into the room, wearing something meant just for him, his expression darkens immediately. There’s a brief flicker of something feral in his purple eyes—desire, possessiveness, raw hunger. He doesn’t say a word at first, just stands there, his breath held. “You expect me to behave after this?” His patience is frayed, and it's clear he’s barely holding onto his composure.

Try to tease him, make him work for it and he’ll let you, for a moment. He enjoys the chase, the way you think you’re in control. But the moment he decides he’s had enough? You’re done for. One second, he’s watching you with quiet intensity, and the next, you’re beneath him, your wrists pinned, your breath stolen by the sheer force of his presence.

When he touches you, it’s as if he can’t get enough—his fingers move with purpose, reverence, but there’s an undeniable urgency. “You’re mine. Always.” And with that, his lips crash against yours, taking what’s his. There’s no gentle teasing here—this is pure, unfiltered desire. It’s clear there’s no going back now. You’ve pushed him past the point of no return. The soft, teasing lace may have been your choice—but now everything that happens from there is his.

AN: reblogs, feedback and opinions are appreciated!

Taglist: @cordidy, @natimiles @leighsartworks216 @notisekais @raining4food @fallthelong @pomegranatepip @juliuscaesarsstabbedback @krystallevine @lemurianmaster @nenggie @loverindeepspace @sinsodom

[starry-bi-sky]

#second: op you answered so many questions!!? thank you!! but that is a dangerous game bc now i have /more/ >:)

I will answer as many as I can!!! this is making me literally so happy lmao. And as I said before: if i don't have an answer to one, I'll mention it. (a lot of these are great because I can meditate on the answer and it lets me expand on the au more)

#aaah there is SO much heartache all around in this au!!#how you described the grief danny was feeling before he died - how dying with those emotions means he'll never be free of them? my heart </#just hit again with w how SAD dannys ghost form is in this au - and how will jason respond once he sees it?

I SAW THIS BEFORE I WENT INTO WORK AND MMMM. It made me think so much about my thoughts on how I wanted to expand a little more on his ghost form, and I just thought about adding how his Lichtenberg scars like, converge where his heart is. His left arm has the scarring. And then when you look at where his heart is, there's scarring over it, as if there's a hole there and his heart is missing. His grief has carried onto the afterlife, why not incorporate that into his ghost self more? Raaaa I want it to look like he's perpetually crying under his evil scientist goggles. (post-post addition: i drew it :))

Have you ever listened to 'The Moon Will Sing' from The Crane Wives? That's Danny with his grief over Jason. "The moon will sing a song for me/I loved you like the sun/bore the shadows that you made/with no light of my own/I shine only with the light you gave me"

I don't even know if I need to expand on his grief because we already know how it gets in canon. It's this heavy, destructive thing that hits hard and lasts long. Losing your entire family is different from losing a single person, but if that single person was part of a separate, two person family, then what difference does that make?

#and does he ever see danny fight - not as a scrappy street kid anymore but now trained and experienced! does he learn HE trained danny?

eventually! I can't think of an occasion (yet) where Jason would see Danny fight, but that can totally come later. Maybe if I get possessed again I'll write something. I've had a few ideas about how Danny reveals his ghost form but all of them verge more into the 'cracky, can really only be expanded on in dms cuz they don't follow the theme of the au' territory, and didn't feel satisfactory to the au.

#how would he feel after that declaration of dannys to kill joker? i'd be like wth did i tell him??? and why cant i remember!#poor jason already sweating bullets at the idea of admitting he's still alive after all this time - he has no idea where they even stand no#danny talked to his ghost? his actual ghost? how much does danny know? does he know he was robin? does he know he's HOOD? or about his mom?#there's so much he's wanted to tell danny - how much would he have said as a ghost with apparently nothing else to lose?

YEAH THAT'S EXACTLY IT. Jason watches Danny leave and he's trying to just. Process everything. From seeing his best friend in front of him, to remembering that Danny doesn't know he's Red Hood, to realizing that Danny has been grieving him for the last five years and that he was still grieving. And then Danny tells him that he talked to his ghost? And that he's gonna murder the Joker? Jason is just. He's processing. Your tags capture exactly that: his questions about what does Danny know?

#also: if danny is 19 - jason is 19/20 right? so tbh this is probably not long after his frankly suicidal murder rampage through gotham#so what - admit to danny thats... a lot to admit to

yeah I'll be totally frank I don't know enough about Jason during his Red Hood era to give much of a response to this. I only had a little idea that he even went on a rampage tbh 😅 but now knowing that he went on a murder rampage? Yeah he'd be even less inclined to tell Danny about him. Ignorance is bliss and all that -- even if Danny's ignorance to him being alive is causing him more harm than good. (Jason still doesn't even know that Danny's been searching for him yet).

#and i can kind of get why he might have kept fenton stuff from bruce. either the dr fentons are fine & good or theyre not#either admittance to bruce might feel like betrayel - esp if danny has never said in clear words : i want out of this family#and he must have known them at least a little. shared a small meal at their place? listened to a crazy speech? he might be defensive of the(m)

Oh yeah totally! If Danny hasn't invited Jason over at least once, then his parents have whenever they see him hanging out with Jason. And that brings up one of Jackdaw's tags -- that Danny knows not to touch his parents inventions. And I think even Jason knows that. He remembers whenever Danny's parents talked about repairing the toaster or the fridge, or making an invention with parts laying around the house, that Danny would always immediately drag Jason off to the other room. "I hate it when they do this." He'd complain, "their things are a safety hazard."

And then later he complains to Jason about how whatever invention his parents made or whatever thing they fixed blew up and set off their shit fire alarm and they had to evacuate the building. "I told you it was a safety hazard." He says, and then steals the cigarette from Jason's hands.

Jason knows that Danny wouldn't touch his parents things with a three hundred foot pole. Just imagine how he'd react to finding out that Danny willingly walked into his parents' broken, unstable portal with nothing but a hazmat suit only a week after his funeral :)

Post-posting addition: raaaa even better if Danny even tells Jason about their new lab basement after they move to the new house and Danny routinely mentions that he avoids going in there as much as possible because he doesn’t want to be around whatever half-baked safety hazard his parents have cooked up in case it explodes on him. Him not taking Sam and Tucker in there until after the funeral when the portal finishes.

#back to jason hearing the ghost talk: it was one thing to feel guilty about keeping away from danny who loved him -#but now after avoiding danny and amity he's faced with the proof that he's missed out on x amount of time w danny too#how much has changed in their time apart

I have nothing I can say about this other than I love it and the line "it was one thing to feel guilty about keeping away from Danny who loved him" because RA its so good, because Danny DOES love him. And not even romantically yet because platonic love ftw. Jason was part of Danny's family and all but his other half. His partner in crime. And YEAH Jason's missed out on so much, when he starts looking into Amity Park he's really going to see how much.

#one last thing: that danny avoided gotham bc he wants to kill joker but if he starts could he stop? makes me wonder... what changed?#was it really just a coincidence with vlad? or is he hoping to find jason's ghost in gotham?#or is he giving up again but this time he'll be sure to take out the clown with him?#bc telling THE RED HOOD his threat on the joker? yeah that feels like a challenge. a promise. like he's being too loose with his life again#and if he was afraid of turning into rath for all these years - a different name sure- but how did all that happen in this au?#same as canon? or was it jason related? both?? bc im p sure that happened roughly 6 months after portal incident too..... ;)

exhibit a of why i love these questions because it pushes me to expand my thinking of the au and in turn expand the au itself because when I was writing this initially I really didn't expect to think too hard on it. i mentioned in my first response that vlad's 'blackmailing' was just me coming up with an excuse to get Danny into Gotham unwillingly. I was possessed by the brainrot gods and spent four hours writing the initial post like a Man Possessed. And now we're here and I love it.

I need to sit on this answer, because I wasn't thinking about changing much about how TUE could differ from canon. But this is making me think SO much. I will totally try and get back to you on this after I mull it over. As well as Danny telling the Red Hood about going to kill the Joker and the Vlad thing. But in the meantime feel free to rant more because I love it and it gives me brainrot <3

Childhood Friends Danny and Jason

(cw underage smoking / smoking as a form of bonding) (cw Jason thinking Danny killed himself but its only for a moment) (cw depictions of murderous intent? Danny wants to murder the Joker and he's a little descriptive about it

This is… aha. Massive. Word count check: 9k+

this has probably been done before but hey, everyone loves a good trope and I wanted to share my take on this idea. 👏👏 So, Danny Fenton and Jason Todd being childhood friends. The Fentons lived in Crime Alley for a good long while during Danny's childhood. Nobody wanted to fund their research and Jack and Maddie struggled to keep any form of work for a multitude of reasons. Jack worked in construction due to his big build and Maddie had another job elsewhere.

Danny and Jason were friends during that time, really great friends. I'm not super solid on how they met yet but I do know it involves Danny committing petty crime and Jason deciding to jump in and help when he sees Danny struggling. Danny was distrustful (as all crime alley kids ought to be) but they eventually became thick as thieves, committing petty crime together.

While it's all too easy to make Danny the weaker one of the two with Jason protecting him, I actually really like the idea that they protected each other. Growing up (essentially) on the streets means Danny forcibly had to grow a backbone unless he wanted to get trampled all over. He is just as willing to scuffle with the bigger kids as Jason is, and he and Jason regularly fought each other whenever they needed to let off steam, or just because. They were a duo, having each other's backs in tough situations.

(Sometimes the pair of them would sneak out at night and try and get a glimpse of Batman and Robin while they soared through the air. It was like a game between the two of them to see who could spot the dynamic duo first. When they were a little older, Jason would steal his dad's cigarettes and share them with Danny while they searched for Batman and Robin)

So when Danny has to move away when they're eleven years old, it's pretty safe to say that Jason didn't speak to him for a week afterwards. Nothing Danny did could persuade him to otherwise, even when Danny insisted that it wasn't his fault and that he didn't want to move away either, but he didn't have a choice in the matter.

When the week was over, Jason climbed through Danny's window and sat in his room, dead silent and looking upset. he didn't speak until Danny fished out a stolen pack of cigarettes from his bed and handed one to Jason.

(It was a ritual they had where if one of them was upset about something but wasn't saying anything, the other one could then hand them a cigarette -- whether it be the one they were using or a new one -- and that would be an open invitation for the person to vent. The other one who handed him the cigarette wouldn't speak until the venter handed back the cigarette. Then back and forth it would go until the cigarette was gone.)

Jason ranted about how pissed he was about Danny moving, and they promised to try and stay in touch after he leaves. Neither of them had phones, but Danny was determined to send him a letters.

Danny moves to Amity Park and it's... an adjustment, that's for sure. He's angry, grumpy, upset, and every other negative feeling under the sun. He was going to a new middle school with new people he didn't know, away from all of the people he did know and away from his best friend.

(He does however keep his word about sending letters, and mails one out to Jason at the first opportunity.)

He refuses to get along with anyone, butts heads with the teachers, is combative, rude, and openly smokes in class -- which gets him plenty of detentions and a bad reputation. He speaks in a thick Gotham street accent and wears hand-me-down clothes that are too big and baggy on him. (His parents have yet to replace any of their wardrobes as they settle into their new life, and Danny is hesitant to spend the money to get new clothes.)

He only manages to befriend Sam and Tucker because one of the football kids was bullying Tucker and Danny stepped in. It was some blond jerk named Dash and when Dash threw the first punch, Danny broke his nose. Tucker found him later that day and reluctantly thanked him for his help.

Sam and Danny do not get along for the longest time. Sam questions Danny about his upbringing, his accent, his smoking. She judges him for talking back to the teachers despite doing it herself and for ruining his lungs with cigarettes. Danny tells her to fuck off, and when she tries to judge him and Tucker for not being vegetarian, he calls her a privileged brat.

Sam doesn't even look at him for two weeks after, and Danny refuses to apologize. Tucker is caught between a rock and a hard place as his old friend and new friend are feuding with each other.

They... sort it out eventually.

Danny and Jason send each other letters near religiously. Danny complains about Amity Park, and Jason complains about how Crime Alley isn't the same without him. Danny talks about the school and what he's learned, about Sam and Tucker, and how he's been getting into the astronomy books in the library. He steals Jason a book and sends it to him.

When Jason tells Danny that he was adopted by Bruce Wayne, Danny calls bullshit. There's no fucking way Bruce Wayne would even look at Crime Alley, regardless of his charity efforts towards it. But when he checks Gotham news later that week, he's hit in the face with every single news article announcing Bruce Wayne's newest ward; Jason Todd.

Cue freaking out. Jason talks all about living in Wayne Manor and what it's like there. He says that there's a monster library in a part of the house that Bruce says he has free reign over, and that Jason can have anything to eat as long as he asks Alfred to make it and it isn't a desert, and that he has his own monster-sized room that he got to pick out himself and decorate.

(When they both get phones, the first thing either of them do is add each other's numbers.)

When Sam complains about having to go to a Wayne Gala that her parents are dragging her to one weekend, the first thing Danny asks is if he can go with. It surprises Sam and Tucker; Danny was the last person they would have thought wanted to go with. HE hates the rich even more than Sam does. Danny stands firm in his decision, and refuses to elaborate.

"Besides." He says to Sam, with whom he's begun to get along with via 'the enemy of my enemy is a friend'. "Would you rather go alone or with someone you can tolerate?"

She brings him with and convinces her parents to allow Danny to come along, citing that she'll be on her best behavior if they do. They agree, and buy Danny a suit when he says that he doesn't have one of his own.

(He discovers that he hates wearing suit jackets and ties, but vests he doesn't mind. He doesn't like that he has to comb his hair back, but he does to make Sam's parents happy. They give him a crash course in etiquette that Danny's going to forget the next day, and soon enough off they go in a private jet to Gotham)

(he does not tell Jason he's coming.)

he feels mischievous and nervous as they touch down, his stomach swirling as Sam's parents usher them to a high-profile hotel that Danny's only ever dreamed about going into. He feels largely out of place as they walk through the lobby, and falls back on old habits: square shoulders, set jaw, make yourself look like the biggest person in the room.

They get ready in the hotel room, Sam's parents primp and preen for the night incoming, and Sam is dragged into it by her mother. Danny does only what's required of him, and fiddles with the sleeves of his fresh-ironed button-down that's been tailored to his body. He's itching for a cigarette, and didn't bring any with.

Sam's dad helps him with his tie, a bout of kindness that Danny doesn't think is one. Just obligation to prevent Danny from looking like a mess. Sam pesters him again about wanting to come, and his reasons for it, and Danny keeps mum.

He's stone-faced with anxiety as they get closer to the gala, and before they leave the limousine the Mansons rented Sam links arms with him. A form of solidarity that Danny needs as he squeezes their arms together and smiles weakly at her.

The paparazzi are loud, bright, and demanding, shouting questions over questions at them like overlapping tidal waves. Danny ignores them all and focuses on the front doors instead. Sam's parents whisper at the stairs that they are to greet the Waynes first, and Danny's heart leaps to his throat.

His heart is in his ears as they drift closer, Mister Wayne is preoccupied with another rich couple, smiling that charming billionaire smile that Danny saw on every billboard in Gotham, and then some in Amity Park. Getting so close to him feels unreal.

And there by his side is the one and only Jason Todd, who isn't even trying to hide the bored look on his face as he watches Bruce interact with the other adults. He's gotten taller in the year they've been away, and healthier. His hair looks like its been cut professionally and he doesn't look as street kid skinny.

Danny's arm, hooked with Sam's, tightens up, and he resists the urge to rush forward and hug Jason. He watches Jason's eyes sweep left, away from him, and then right, towards him. The air stills for a moment as their eyes lock.

Danny grins toothily at him, lopsided and playful in nature, and sees the moment Jason processes the sight before him. His arm starts slipping out of Sam's at the same time as an ecstatic smile stretches across Jason's face.

His lopsided grin fills out on the other end. "DANNY!" Jason yells, cutting off whatever Bruce Wayne and startling everyone within earshot. There's barely a moment for Bruce to look down when Jason shoves past him and runs at Danny.

Danny yanks his arm out of Sam's, "JASON!" He yells with just as much enthusiasm, and Jason nearly topples them right over when he collides with Danny. His arms wrap around Danny's shoulders, holding onto him tightly, and they're both laughing, spinning around like tops out of joy.

"You didn't tell me you were coming!" Jason cries, sounding accusing. Danny hugs him just as tightly, and laughs when Jason pulls away momentarily to punch his shoulder.

"I wanted it to be a surprise!" He defends, laughing between words as their spinning comes to a stop. They're both reluctant to pull apart, but they do and clutch the sleeves of their elbows tightly. "How could my best friend be adopted by the Bruce Wayne and have me not come confirm it with my own two eyes?"

"I sent you newspaper clippings!" Jason says, narrowing his eyes while his smile betrays his face. Danny quietly notices that his Gotham street accent is faded slightly.

"Oh that's what it was?" Danny's grin turns again, edging into a smirk. He feigns innocence, "I thought that was fire kindling." He has the newspaper clippings hung on the corkboard in his room, proud beyond words about his best friend.

Jason punches him in the shoulder again, hard enough to leave a bruise. "You jackass." He says, ignoring Danny's laughter even when he's holding back his own.

There's a soft, sharp clearing of someone's throat, breaking their attentions away from each other to the one that made the noise.

Bruce Wayne was a tall man, taller than Danny expected, and he looks exactly like his billboards. If less promiscuous than his perfume ads. Danny expects him to be upset with them both for disrupting his pretty rich gala, but instead he just looks gently amused, with an arched eyebrow. Overall though, he just looks fond.

Danny would be the first to admit that Bruce had taken in Jason as a charity case, something to fill the void after his other kid Dick Grayson finally moved out. But Danny’s a good judge of character — or he likes to assume he is — and those are not the eyes of a man who would take Jason in as a charity case. Those are the eyes of a man who actually, genuinely, cares about one Jason Todd.

The wriggly protective thing settles in his chest.

He doesn’t let go of Jason, but he does twist his smile into something a little more polite. Mister Wayne’s eyebrow arches higher, and he turns his blue-blue eyes onto Jason. “Who’s this, Jason?” He has that fancy Gotham Elite accent -- something that sounds like a mix between old transatlantic and faintly British -- that Danny's only heard in passing when he and Jason snuck up to the nicer parts of Gotham.

Jason stares at Mister Wayne, his grip on Danny tightens as his eyes flick to the other onlookers in the room. “This is Danny, B.” He says once his eyes turn back to Mister Wayne. “We grew up in Crime Alley together, he moved to Illinois last year."

Danny can see the uncomfortable expressions cross every rich person's face, murmurs sweeping across the room as soon their uncomfortable gazes turned judgmental and flinty. He's kept track of the tabloids after Jason's adoption, the ones calling him a charity case and looking down on him for being a street kid.

He inches a little closer to Jason, straightening up instinctively, as if they were back in Crime Alley and facing a pack of kids that didn't like them. He can see Sam's surprised expression from the corner of his eye -- he never told Tucker or Sam about where he grew up, although he's sure they had their suspicions.

He looks back to Mister Wayne and meets his blue-blue eyes, his smile has slowly begun to fade. Mister Wayne doesn't miss a beat however, and his smile stays plastered to his face. If anything, it gets a little softer, a little wider. "It's nice to meet you Danny -- Daniel? I'm so glad that Jason has a friend here." He holds out a hand.

Danny eyes him unsurely, and then takes his hand. "It's jus' Danny, Mister Wayne." He says, some of his old accent slipping through as he shook his hand firmly. He would have done it harder, but this was Jason's new guardian, and from Jason's letters he didn't sound too bad. "It's, uh, nice to meet you too. Jason's told me lots about you."

Mister Wayne's brows jump momentarily, he looks intrigued. He looks between Danny and Jason, and claps his hands together softly. "Well, Jay, how would you like to stay with Danny for a while, hm? I'm sure you too have a lot to catch up on."

Hope simmers in Danny's heart, and he glances to Jason to see that same hope on his face. "Really?" He asks, and Mister Wayne nods with a laugh.

"Of course! How could I keep two friends apart? Go on ahead, chum. I'll come get you when the gala ends."

And just like that, Bruce Wayne leaves Jason with Danny, diving back into a conversation with one of the rich gothamites and taking the attention with it as if he were the sun and everyone else a planet orbiting him.

Danny and Jason share grins, and throw their arms around each other with laughter. Danny is on cloud nine, pressing his nose into Jason's shoulder and breathing him in, fingers digging into the back of his suit hard enough to leave wrinkles in his jacket.

Sam demands answers when they finally, for real this time, pull apart. Why didn't he tell her that he was friends with Jason Todd!? Danny slings his arm around Jason's shoulders and keeps him close, and tells her that it was because he wanted it to be a surprise.

Sam's parents have unreadable expressions on their faces, part greed -- Danny is their in to the elusive Bruce Wayne -- and part disdain -- a Gotham street rat. Danny ignores them, they're unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

He introduces Sam to Jason, and Jason to Sam. And off they go to a corner of the room near the buffet table where they can eat and shit talk everyone else in the room in peace.

At some point in the night Sam is called back to her parents to meet some other fancy rich kids her parents want her to get along with, and Danny and Jason go off to the west end balcony to avoid anyone who may try and approach the new Gotham ward.

Danny hops up onto the balcony railing, kicking his feet as Jason pulls a cigarette pack out of his inner jacket pocket, and grins. "Don't tell Bruce," he says, handing the box to Danny first. "He's been trying to get me to quit."

"Hah!" Danny takes one just as Jason slips out a lighter. "That sounds like Jazz. She's been trying to get me to stop since we moved to Amity." Granted, she's been trying ever since she found out before they moved, but now she was even more insistent. "She hasn't found my stash yet."

At the end of the night when the Mansons are leaving and Danny has to leave with them, he walks back to Mister Wayne with Jason to tell him that he's leaving. Mister Wayne mourns his going, and tells him that he's always able to come visit.

"Any friend of Jason's is always welcome to the manor." He says with a blinding grin, pulling Jason close to his side and squeezing him tight. Jason's nose scrunches up, but he doesn't push away.

It becomes a new routine for them. The Mansons are all too happy to bring him with to the Wayne Galas (of which they start receiving more invites to due to their connection with Danny) and Danny is all too happy to spend the evening with Jason again. No matter what, they always end up on the balcony at some point in the night.

And, eventually, Danny is invited to stay at Wayne Manor either for a weekend or for a break. He jumps at the chance when winter break rolls around and his parents start their debate over Santa Claus again.

Danny and Jason stay up late into the night talking or playing video games during their sleepovers, and in the warmer nights they climb out and onto the roof to stargaze. Danny points out constellations - - things he can find in neither Gotham or Amity -- and rambles on and on about space.

There are plenty of times during the Wayne Galas that the event gets attacked by a rogue. More often than he'd like he loses Jason in the crowd, and has later stopped Robin or Batman in his panic to find him.

The first time it happened, he was in tears with terror. He grabbed onto Batman's cape, stopping the man from going back in as he babbled that his Jason Todd was still inside, that he disappeared during the chaos and he couldn't find him. Batman took his hands and calmly told him that he'd find Jason for him, and that he was sure he was okay, but he needed to calm down.

He found Jason later once everything had calmed down, and he screamed at him for disappearing during a rogue attack, if he ever did it again he'll kill him. Then he cried.

The second time it happened, Danny didn't even realize that Jason was gone until everything was already over. They'd been separated before the attack happened. He stopped Robin and Batman before they could leave, trying to keep his breathing under control as he asked again, if they had seen Jason Todd.

"That- that asshole keeps fucking ditching me when these things happen." His voice has an embarrassing wobble in it. "Please-- please tell me you've seen him, that he's alright."

Robin this time steps up to reassure him, that Jason Todd was out of the building. He got him out. "He's probably looking for you too, uhhh..."

"Danny" Danny says, and eyes him up and down. "You're the new Robin right?"

Robin stilled up, and Danny could understand it a little. He'd seen the thoughts on the new Robin online. He wasn't very popular at first. Robin nods curtly, and Batman was shuffled a little closer to him, almost protectively.

Danny grins at him. "Cool." He says, "Me and Jay used to sneak out onto the rooftops sometimes to try and spot Batman and the first Robin, we made it a game." He holds out a fistbump, "Thanks for doing what you do, man. I might not live in Gotham anymore, but I mean it. You're a living legend."

Robin looks like there's something stuck in his throat, and after a beat he returns the fistbump tentatively. "Th- uh, thanks." He stumbles out awkwardly, and then turns away, "Me and B- uh, better go."

Before Danny could even respond, Robin already had his grapple in hand and was grappling away. "You too, Batman." Danny says before Batman can follow.

When Danny sees Jason after that, and weight lifts off his chest and he hits him in the arm again. And then complains that he should have gotten Batman and Robin's autograph, it would have been epic.

By the fifth time it happens, Danny is cussing up a storm when Robin saves him, cursing out Jason and claiming that he needs to put that boy on a fucking leash. "We're a duo!" He scowls when Robin gets him outside, "I got his back, he has mine! I can't have his back when he's got no back to fucking have."

The eighth time it happens, Danny gets held hostage by one of the henchmen. He's become a recognizable friend of the Waynes, and when the Waynes are nowhere to be found, then the next best thing was up to offer. Danny isn't even mad this time around -- just relieved that Jason was fucking off somewhere where he couldn't get hurt.

Robin, however, seemed furious when he arrived, and broke the hostager's jaw with a single flying kick to the face. Jason found him rapidly quick soon after the situation had settled, and apologized over and over again.

Danny slings an arm around his shoulder and laughs that it was fine, Robin saved the day! His legs were shaking with the worn off adrenaline, something he tried to hide from Jason. "I'm just glad it was me instead of you, Jay." He grins. Jason looks like he swallowed a toad.

Jason stops disappearing as often after that, sticking close to Danny's side until the attack was over.

When Danny is fourteen, Jason dies, and his world unravels.

He calls the manor on a late night in April after Jason had stopped responding to his texts. Danny knew that Jason was just recently in a fight with Bruce, but he knows that Bruce loves Jason. He would know where he is, right?

When he calls, Bruce answers with a hoarse "hello?" as if he'd been crying all day, and Danny's blood turns to ice. The anxiety he'd been feeling beforehand doubles in size, and he feels himself stammering.

"Mister- uh- Mister Wayne? Um, I'm calling because Jason--" he hears Bruce inhale sharply on the other line, and his anxiety skyrockets into fear. "--hasn't been answering any of my texts and- and I'm gettin' real worried."

There's silence on the other end, and Danny feels a rock forming in his throat, gross and heavy like he was on the verge of throwing up. "Mister- Bruce? Mister B?"

There's a shaky breath, and then Bruce's voice crackles through the phone. "Um-- Jason, he, he's--" there's a sound like rustling, "he's been killed."

Danny's vision whites out with skyrocketing terror, his mind skidding to a stop. His body rapidly grows hot, and then chills, like a blacksmith striking a heated weapon. "What?"

When the phone call ends, Danny screams himself hoarse. Jazz and his parents come running into his room, his parents equipped with ghost weapons. Instead, they find Danny curled up in his bed, sobbing hoarsely.

Danny almost -- almost -- refuses to attend the funeral, nearly paralyzed with grief. Jazz coaxes him to go, to find closure if anything else, and he drags himself out of bed to go.

He feels numb the entire time. It's closed casket, so he can't even see him for one last time before Jason is buried in the ground. He's silent, and if he think he looks bad, then Bruce looks even worse, like he hadn't slept since Jason died and worse.

Danny grabs his sleeve before he leaves, and when Bruce turns to him with a dull look in his once vibrant eyes, he clings to him tightly. And cries. Bruce clings back just as tight, Danny feels tears drip into his hair.

"Who did it." Danny whispers, voice too hurt to speak any louder, when he pulls back. His fingers curl around Bruce's jacket tightly, desperately. His eyes hurt with tears. "You said he was murdered, B. Please, who did it."

Bruce looks down at him, and for the first time it really does feel like he's looking down at him. His face is blank, and his eyes close in grief. There is no answer, a silent no.

Danny's face twists up all ugly like, and he shakes Bruce's jacket. "Bruce, please. Tell me who did it."

Bruce refuses, his face full of grief.

Danny never returns to Gotham.

Prior to Jason's death and post their reunion, Danny had slowly begun to improve in school. He started caring more, he was putting in more effort, he was doing his homework and was actually enjoying class. There was the bullying from Dash and the A-Listers, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle, he was ignoring them for the most part.

Come Monday after the funeral, and Danny breaks Dash's nose when he starts up with his shit. He withdrew into himself, and it was like he was back to square one again, except this time it was much worse.

Everyone knew Danny was close friends with Jason Todd. So when news of his death finally reached the ears of Amity Park, the students of Casper High School kept their distance.

That following Friday, Danny dies in the portal and comes back. A month later he becomes Phantom, the ghost-fighting ghost. the ghost Phantom wears his hazmat suit partially undone, showing a tanktop he didn't wear in death under the initial suit while the sleeves are tied around his waist. Vicious, glowing lichtenburg scars travel up his arm and neck and torso, covering half of his face while a pair of scientist-like goggles covers his eyes. He's bitter and angry, showing off his death.

Look at me, Phantom's form says, I am a dead child. Look at me look at me look at me. Mourn me. I am a dead child. LOOK AT ME. MOURN ME.

A few weeks later he enters the ghost zone and realizes that he could find Jason. And he spends a weekend scouring the ghost zone for him. He finds Gotham in the zone, and rather than finding Jason, he finds Robin.

Danny didn't know he'd died. And he flies towards him, asks him if he's seen Jason, reveals that it's him, Danny Fenton. Robin stares at him, mouth agape, and peels off his mask to reveal Jason Todd.

They both cry, and when Danny tells him how he died, Jason looks pale in the face. "You didn't- you didn't kill yourself because of me, did you?"

Danny fervently denies it. No, no. He didn't, he didn't. It was an accident. Totally unrelated. But enough about that, what the hell happened? Bruce wouldn't tell him anything at the funeral.

Jason clams up, his ghostly face losing its color, and Danny curses himself. He tells Jason that he doesn't have to tell him, he doesn't have to say anything. They sit in silence.

"It was the Joker." Jason says.

That's all Danny needs to know. He nods quietly. 'I'll kill him.' He thinks to himself, a stubborn set in his jaw. "Okay."

It had always been a plan; a thought wriggling in the back of Danny's mind ever since Bruce told him that Jason had been killed.

Not died. Killed.

Danny wanted the fucker dead the moment he realized it. He just needed to know who did it. He thinks Bruce knew it too, could probably see it in his eyes the moment Danny asked him who did it. He isn't sure if he should hate Bruce more for keeping it from him now.

They spend hours together, just soaking in each other's presence. Danny tries to take him through the ghost portal, to bring him back to the land of the living. But much like Kitty, Jason's form is tied to the zone. Danny promises to visit every day.

And he does. Or he tries to. The grief doesn't go away, but with the comfort of knowing that Jason was on the other side, Danny feels a little better. He tells Jason about being Phantom, and Jason helps train him. It feels like they're kids again and are fighting just because they want to. Its a bout of familiarity in a place that feels unfamiliar. All they need are cigarettes.

And then six months later he loses him again. Danny scours the ghost zone for him for the second time, and this time he doesn't find him.

His haunt is still in the zone though. He didn't move on. He's still here, somewhere.

Danny is convinced that Jason was in the Elsewhereness, and looks for him in between ghost fights and his social life. He visits Jason's haunt every day, knowing that Jason should be able to feel when another ghost enters his home. He does not show up.

(He never thinks that Jason came back to life, and Jason doesn't remember his time in the ghost zone)

When Danny is nineteen, Vlad Masters blackmails him into going to another Wayne Gala. Begrudgingly, Danny goes. He's taller than he used to be, having inherited his dad's monstrous height and his mom's leanness. He has piercings, some of them he got after a lost bet from Sam and Tucker, and he's given himself an undercut.

He still prefers vests over suit jackets, and he still smokes. A little less than before, he sneaks a pack into his pocket before he leaves, along with a lighter. Vlad gives him a dirty look the whole time - he knows.

"Don't give me that look." "That stuff kills, you know" "I'm already dead."

It's like deja vu when he arrives; an awful bout of deja vu, that is. The paparazzi is still as bright and loud and annoying as it always was, and they don't recognize him at all. Something he thinks of as a soft mercy up until one of the reporters asks Vlad who he is.

Vlad smiles and tugs Danny into the camera frame, "Why, this is my godson!" He crows, and shoots Danny a look that is downright smug I'm sure many of you may know him as Daniel Fenton?"

If looks could kill, Vlad would be ash. Danny isn't quite sure why he still agreed to this -- blackmail or no. He felt itchy being in Gotham; jumpy. He's never forgotten his vow to kill the Joker, in fact it was something he still desperately wants.

But the threat of Rath, the name he chose for his evil future self, haunts him just as much as his murderous intent. If he kills the Joker, would he stop?

Danny's almost afraid of what he'll do if he ever lays eyes on the Joker in person. He doesn't think he'll be able to stop himself from wrapping his hands around that stupid clown's neck and watching the light leave his eyes.

He pushes the thoughts to the side, and smiles lopsidedly as cameras and microphones flood his face, reporters yelling over themselves as they clamor to get a shot of the old Wayne family friend.

Danny turns and walks inside without answering a single question, flexing his fingers in and out of fists. Vlad gracefully hurries after him, and Danny can hear his glare burning into his back.

"You told me to come," Danny hisses to him once he's beside him, meeting Vlad's gaze piercingly, "not that I should play nice."

"Don't embarrass me, Daniel." Vlad hisses back, trying to look the upmost calm as eyes turn onto them. "I'll make you regret it."

"You embarrass yourself, fruitloop." Danny shoots back, walking away before Vlad could get a retort in. He sees Bruce Wayne on the other side of the room.

His heart seizes with nostalgia. He hasn't seen Bruce since Jason's funeral, hasn't spoken to him either. He doesn't know how to feel about him, but he'd been keeping tabs on Bruce both as himself and as Batman.

Danny's feet carry him forwards before he can think about it, silently weaving between the throng of rich people vying for his attention. It's only when he gets closer does he see the little shadow clinging to his side: Damian Wayne.

The newest little bird, Danny realizes, and stifles a smile at the surly expression on Damian's face as two older women coo over him. He reminded him of Sam, who had long since stopped coming to these things the moment she was able to.

The feeling of eyes on him turns Danny's attention away from Damian, and instead finds them back on Bruce's, who stares at him with a little furrow between his brows. As if he recognized him, but he wasn't sure from there.

Danny grins crookedly the moment he's within earshot. "Mister B!" He exclaims, slipping into what remained of his Gotham street accent. Recognition flashed in Bruce's eyes, and the man smiled widely. "Long time no see, old man."

"Danny," Bruce says, his name breathing out like relief. He slips between the crowd surrounding him -- who are now watching Danny -- and pulls Danny into a close hug. "It's good to see you again."

Danny hesitates for a moment -- he wasn't expecting Bruce to hug him -- and returns the gesture. "It's good to see you too, Bruce." He admits. Bruce was still using the same cologne that he did when Danny was a kid. He blinks heavily.

He pulls away quickly, clapping Bruce lightly on the shoulder as Damian quickly latches onto his father's side again. Damian glares daggers at him, fingers digging into Bruce's pantlegs like a possessive little kid.

He made Danny's ghost sense tingle in the back of his throat, creeping up slowly like a spider before stopping suddenly before it reached his mouth. It hummed, and then disappeared.

Danny smothered a frown. Since when did Batman work with ectoplasm? “This must be Damian." He says to Bruce, and holds out a hand to Damian -- he doesn't crouch, he had a feeling that Damian would be less than appreciative if he did that. "You've really expanded the nest since the last time I saw you."

Damian's eyes narrow at him. Bruce laughs lightly, "Ah yes, Tim is around here somewhere. I'm sure you'll see him soon."

"Father," Damian says, his voice layered with an accent. He glares up at Danny with piercing green eyes. "How do you know this man?" He sounds distrustful, Danny respects that and drops his hand.

"This is Danny Fenton." Bruce says, and Danny lets him introduce him. "He was Jason's friend."

An expression similar to bewilderment flashes briefly over Damian's face, and he eyes Danny in disbelief. "Todd had friends?"

Oh. So that's how he wanted to be. Bruce had a little elitist on his hands. Danny's smile drops like a deadweight, and any lingering endearment he had hardens like ice in his chest, fury slowly taking its place like a flickering candlelight. "It's not polite to speak ill of the dead, Mister Wayne." He says coldly, his voice made of chips of ice.

Damian blinks, the disbelief disappearing from his face. The closest thing to a recoil Danny thinks he's going to get. He doesn't care. No one speaks about his best friend that way.

"I grew up with Jason, actually." He continues, breathing in slow and deep, trying to keep the ghostly possessive-protective-rage under control. "I was his best friend."

He turns, almost robotically, towards Bruce, and tries not to look so angry. "I'm going to go find Tim, Mister B." He says, and tries to offer up a weak smile for the man. It comes out as a grimace instead.

"And..." he pauses, flicks his eyes towards Damian, and then looks at Bruce. "I'll... try and keep in contact, B. Tell Dick I said hi, alright? I'll see you in a little bit."

Bruce nods, looking vaguely disappointed and sighing slow through his nose. Danny walks away as Bruce turns to address his youngest, and doesn't bother listening in on what he has to say.

He does, eventually, find Tim Drake. He spots him in a crowd instantly - it's hard not to, and he makes his way over to him. He's not sure Tim Drake would recognize him, Bruce didn't at first and Danny had been around him constantly.

Except Tim Drake does recognize him, much to Danny's surprise. They lock eyes and Tim immediately makes his way over to him. "Danny Fenton!" He says and stops in front of him, "What a surprise, we weren't expecting you tonight."

"Tim Drake," Danny replies, smiling a little as his earlier hurt begins to fade away. "I'm surprised you know me."

"There are pictures of you in the manor with Jason." Tim explains, stuffing his hands into his pockets with an easy-going smile. "It's hard not to know you."

"It’s hard not to know you too,” Danny retorts, a sly smile slowly spreading across his face. “Although you’re a lot taller than you used to be, when you were lurking around Bruce and Jason and I.”

Ohhh Danny recognizes him alright. One part due to all the news articles and tabloids on him after he was adopted by Bruce, and the other part because he remembers the little shadow lurking near plants pots and table legs that used to follow him and Jason around at galas just like these.

Knowing that Jason was Robin, he wonders if Jason knew he was there too.

The effect is immediate: Tim’s eyes grow comically large, and a red tint glows at the tip of his ears as he shrinks back like a turtle trying to hide into its shell. “You— you noticed that!?” He hisses.

“I did!” Danny grins, large and wide, stifling a laugh as the red tint spreads over Tim’s cheeks and nose. He looks mortified. Danny coos. “Aww, I thought it was adorable that Jason had a little shadow. I’m sure he would have loved you if you had just come over and said hi. He had a big soft spot for kids.”

Tim snorts and it— it almost sounds derisive? “Sure he would.” He looks sad, and the mirth in Danny’s chest shrivels up like a flower without light. The smile fades from his face, and all that’s left is a strange, staunch reminder that Danny and Bruce weren’t the only ones that probably mourned.

He touches Tim’s shoulder lightly, “Hey, I’m sorry.” He says, trying to look as apologetic as he feels. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m sorry, I miss him too.” Like a fucking limb he missed him.

There’s something that flickers in Tim’s eyes, passing through too fast for Danny to realize what it is. He assumes its gratefulness, because Tim relaxes a little and offers him a weak little smile. “I wish I had talked to him.”

Danny sees an out and takes it, he forces out a short laugh, grinning widely. “I can tell you all about him if you’d like,” he offers, “I told Mister B I’d keep in touch anyways. I’ve missed him and Alfred quite a lot in the last few years.”

“Not Dick?”

“That dipstick wasn’t around often enough for me to form any sort of emotional attachment to him.” Danny says in a half-complaining tone, placing his hands on his hips. “Although I did like his puns.”

Tim snickers, “I’ll tell him you said that then. Nobody likes his puns.”

“Go on ahead,” Danny grins, laughter swirling in his chest and making his core thrum with warmth. Damn, he’s missed this family. “I stand by my decision. Puns are funny.”

“Let’s get a photo then.” Tim says with a hand already fishing in his pocket for his phone. “He’ll be devastated to know that you were here and he didn’t get to see you.”

“Sure.” And Danny sidles on next to Tim, throwing an arm around his shoulders — and making a noise of surprise when his arm was able to fit comfortably — as if he was just resting it on a counter.

He totally forgot how tall he was compared to Tim. Forgot that he’d been looking down the entire time they’d been talking. “Why’d I get my dad’s height.” He complains, and bends his knees as Tim raises the phone with the front-facing camera on.

Tim snickers under his breath, and takes the picture while they’re both smiling wide. Danny immediately stands up, and peers over Tim’s shoulders to look at the picture.

It’s a good one, with the fringe of Danny’s curls falling slightly over his left eye and making the dimple on his right cheek more prominent. He could see the barely-there smattering of freckles he had across his nose, the ones that became more prominent when the sun was out. His smile was lopsided, Danny’s favorite kind of smile.

He whistles lowly, “That’s a good one,” he says aloud, and smiles impishly at Tim when he looks at him. “You should send that one, I look hot in it.”

Tim snorts, his ears reddening as he looks down at his phone. “Yeah sure, no problem.” He says quickly, and Danny looks away when he pulls up the messenger app. He’s never felt comfortable looking over people’s shoulders when they were on their phone.

“I’m gonna go take a smoke break.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and curls his fingers around the box and lighter inside. “I’ll—“

“Be on the west-end balcony.” Tim finishes, the red in his ears darkening as he glances up from his phone to smile embarrassedly. “I know.”

Danny snorts, “Okay.” His voice is thick with amusement. “Let me know how Dipstick reacts, alright?” He backs up slowly, awaiting Tim’s response. Tim merely waves a hand at him, a weak gesture of “yeah yeah” that makes Danny grin before he flips around and marches towards his favorite smoking balcony.

———————

(Tim pulls up the family group chat and loads the selfie into the text bar. His face feels warm with embarrassment even as his thumbs fly across the screen.

Tim: look who i found at the latest charity gala :) [image]

Hee awaits eagerly a response, and finds he doesn’t have to wait long. Dick’s thought bubble appears on screen, then Cass’s — of which it only exists for a moment before disappearing.

Dick: holy shit, is that who i think it is?

Tim responds quickly, and his message sends.

Tim: yep. He wanted me to tell you that he thinks your jokes are funny.

Dick: they are funny

Tim rolls his eyes and thinks for a moment, really thinks. He weighs his pros and cons. And then his fingers fly across the screen again.

Tim: hey Jason are you not gonna say anything?

There’s no response for all of thirty seconds — of which it stretches on to an uncomfortably long minute — and then Jason’s thought bubble appears.

Jason: what do i have to say to a bunch of idiots blowing up my phone in the middle of patrol?

Tim: harsh. do you recognize the guy in the photo?

Jason’s response is instant. Too fast for him to have actually looked at the photo itself. He’s just trying to spite Tim then. Tim doesn’t care, he has the upper hand here

Jason: no and I don’t care, i have patrol

Tim knows he didn’t look at the photo, and yet he can’t help stifle a shit-eating smile and feign innocence

Tim: really? You and Danny used to be so close, color me surprised

His teeth dig into his lower lip, he doesn’t need to in order to hide a smile. But it gives him something to do. Jason is worryingly silent for a long, long time, and Tim can almost imagine him staring long and hard at the selfie. Tim knows he will be later.

Finally, Jason’s text bubble shows up. It exists for a long time, before finally Tim’s phone buzzes with his message alert.

Jason: that’s danny?

Tim feels all too gleeful. Smugness swirling in his chest like kicked up sand as he types his response: yep! Apparently he showed up today, although I’m not sure with who since I don’t see Miss Manson around here.

Damian: Father says to get off your phone, Drake. We are at a Gala and your behavior is most unbecoming

Tim: can it demon spawn, I was just telling Jason that his friend Danny is here

Damian: He can’t be too important if he doesn’t even know Todd is alive

Tim: how would you know that?

Damian: When Father introduced him as Todd’s friend, I expressed my surprise that Todd even had friends, considering how unpleasant he can be. Fenton became quite cross with me after that and quickly excused himself thereafter

Dick: you said what!? Damian that’s not okay

Damian: Father made that quite clear after Fenton left in a huff. My mistake for thinking that Todd had told his ‘supposed best friend’ that he was alive.

Dick: he didn’t even tell us we were alive at first

Damian: He did eventually, didn’t he? Clearly Todd doesn’t seem to care too much about Fenton if he hasn’t even informed him of his being alive at this point.

Jason’s thought bubble quickly pops up, and then dissipates, then pops up again. Tim quickly pockets his phone before he can see Jason’s response. He doesn’t feel smug anymore, just uncomfortable.)

———————

Stepping out onto the west-end balcony feels like a blast from the past. A painful one at that. Danny’s fingers dig into his cigarette pack, and he pulls it out with a sense of bittersweet familiarity.

It feels like a lifetime ago that he once stood here with Jason. The package clunks dully as his fingers scrape against the side, and he fishes a cigarette out of the box before stuffing it back into his pocket.

“Quite the night isn’t it.” He says to nothing, to ghosts of the past, to himself. He turns and sits on the railing, sticking his legs out like a tripping hazard while Gotham’s hot city wind blows through the air.

He looks up and only sees the ugly pollution yellow sky looking down at him. It’s an unfamiliar feeling to him. He loves the stars and yet when faced with a smog that covers it, he feels more at home.

Danny’s fingers find the lighter, and with a few clicks a small open flame appears in existence. There’s a poem here, he can feel it. But he feels too tired to find it.

The cigarette lights, and the lighter dies in response. Returning back to his coffin-like pocket until he needs to use it again. He pulls a leg up, resting his chin on his knee with a heavy, tired sigh.

He soaks in the sounds around him. The ugly city warmth nips at his jaw. The music inside is muffled by the force of two glass doors and walls on all four sides, and Danny can hear late night traffic coming by on the road nearby. It’s a special kind of ambience you can only find on the west end balcony.

Half a decade ago, Danny had played a part with that ambience with Jason. Now it was just him, and Jason was nowhere to be found. It left a hopeless kind of feeling in his chest. An all-suffocating kind of fear that filled him head to toe with an intensity only ghosts could have.

His body winds up like a spring, and Danny holds his breath. When he exhales two minutes later, the spring stutters and jolts, and his body relaxes with a tremble.

He misses Jason. He misses Jason.

Ghosts are emotional creatures. They feel it from their crown to their soles. And emotional wounds never really heal. They scab over and fester, waiting to be picked at again and again so it can bleed as fresh as it did when it first opened.

Danny’s grief is never going to go away, he thinks. It’s clung to him like a parasite; shaped him and molded him. The wound was too close to him when he died, and now it will stay with him forever.

He opens his eyes when his ghost sense tingles, a heavy feeling in his throat that is neither nicotine nor grief. It’s just like Damian’s, but stronger. Potent. Older. It reaches the top of Danny’s throat and sits at the base of his tongue, like a hand about to suffocate him.

He looks up, cigarette hanging off his lips, and the Red Hood drops down beside him. He stands in the same spot Jason once did, and that alone makes the ghostly core in Danny seize possessively.

Don’t you dare stand where he stood, it hisses, coiling around his lungs like smog. Danny grits his teeth and feels his ghost sense evaporate. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, and nicotine smoke pours out like a cheap version of his ghost sense.

“Red Hood.” He says plainly, his free hand coiling and uncoiling like cat’s claws against the railing. “A surprise to see you here.”

Danny knows through process of elimination who most of the Gotham vigilantes are: Dick is Nightwing, Bruce is Batman, Tim is Red Robin, Damian is Robin, and Cass is Orphan. There are a few who he doesn’t know, however. Like Batgirl and Red Hood.

It’s fine, he doesn’t need to know. Danny of all people understands the importance of a secret identity.

Red Hood doesn’t say anything, just stares at him as if he’s a deer in headlights. His body all tensed up like he isn’t sure what to do now that he’s here in front of Danny. Like he wasn’t expecting Danny to be here at all.

Danny’s brows furrow. “Sorry, am I in your spot?” He asks, and begins to push off the railing. “I didn’t think vigilantes used the Wayne Hall west-end balcony, I can leave if you want.”

He’s already begun to move towards the door.

The Red Hood lurches in his spot, “No!” He yells, and Danny stops in place with raising eyebrows. Red Hood’s fingers cringe, and he straightens up.

He’s shorter than Danny, he notes. Which isn’t much of revelation. Everyone is shorter than Danny.

“No,” Red Hood repeats, sounding sturdier than before, “No. You’re fine. I’m just stopping here for a quick rest before resuming patrol.”

…Danny doesn’t question it. It’s none of his business about other vigilantes and their practices. He shrugs and breathes out more smoke, “Alright.” He says, and walks back over to the railing to sit on it. “I’m Danny, by the way.”

The Red Hood nods, and a silence falls over them. Danny doesn’t care enough to make it feel uncomfortable, but the Red Hood seems unsettled by something. Lost in thought. He leans his back against the railing similar to Danny, and then switches a few seconds later to a new pose.

He does it again, and again, and again. Until finally he flips over and leans his stomach against the railing, arms resting against it. It is starkly like what Jason used to do, and Danny stares at him long and hard.

He frowns. And says nothing.

When Danny’s cigarette is nothing more than a butt of nicotine, he crushes it in his hand and watches the ash flutter down to the ground. The heat stings his hand, but its nothing his ghostly healing can’t fix.

The Red Hood is already holding out another one when Danny’s hand drifts to his pocket for the box.

Danny stares at him, sudden wariness opening up like floodgates that sit at the bottom of his stomach.

His frown deepens, his eyes flicker up and down at Red Hood. His hands hover over his pocket. “I have my own.” He says, and watches subtly as the Red Hood hides a wilt. As if he’d been expecting Danny to take it.

“Alright.” The Red Hood says, trying to sound unbothered. He retracts the cigarette away from Danny, quiet all the way. He’s looking away.

Danny plucks the cigarette out of his hand, startling the Hood enough that Red snaps back to look at him. Danny yanks his lighter from his pocket. “I won’t say no to a free cigarette.” He says, slightly muffled with the stick between his teeth. It lights.

Silence falls over them again, and when one minute stretches into five, whatever hope that had been digging into the shoulders of Red Hood finally pulls away and leaves him slumping subtly.

‘A ciggie for your thoughts?’ Nine year old Jason Todd whispers one night with an impish grin, holding up a cigarette pinched between his two fingers. ‘I stole it from my old man. He won’t even notice its gone.’

Danny is halfway through it when he speaks. “The Joker killed my best friend.” He says, and watches from the corner of his eye as the Red Hood flinches. Is he startled by Danny speaking, or startled by the bluntness of him starting?

“He beat him to death.” Danny continues, staring stone-faced away from Red Hood. His grief claws up his lungs and burrows into his heart again. His fingers dig into the railing. “He beat my best friend to death.”

The Red Hood is silent, his body as still as the grave. Silence stretches out between them both, and like he’d been thinking, the Hood finally speaks: “How do you know?”

He’s not holding the cigarette, he broke his and Jason’s rule. Danny bounces the stick between his fingers. “His ghost told me.” He says, taking a trembling breath. “His ghost told me so, before he disappeared.”

The Red Hood says nothing, and Danny gathers his thoughts. The ones that had been buried deep next to his core, shoved down ever since Danny learned of Rath and a terrible future where a world is destroyed by one ghost’s hands.

Danny has never said it out loud before. His face scrunches up briefly, and then smooths out when his eyes squeeze shut. “I’m going to kill him, Red Hood.” He murmurs when he opens his eyes, turning his face toward the vigilante. The sound is sucked out of the air.

The Red Hood stares at him, but he doesn’t say a word. Danny pushes on, teeth grinding into teeth as he flips his silvery scarred hand back and forth. Palm up, palm down. “It’s why I haven’t been back to Gotham in a while.” He admits, voice still quiet. “If I see the Joker I will kill him, and I won’t feel bad for it.”

“Not today though,” he says, and closes his hand, “today I’m here on a favor to Vlad Masters. Then after this I’ll go visit my friend. I need to apologize for not seeing his grave in a while. I’ll have to stop by a florist to see if they have any zinnias. Jay likes those.”

He takes out the cigarette in his mouth and breathes out one last cloud of smoke. And then he crushes the cigarette stick under his foot and walks back inside.

[violent138]

Tim, looking around the darkened corridor: "You think it's a good idea to be breaking into random places right now?"

Jason said nothing, fumbling in his pockets.

Dick: "You live here, don't you?" Which gets everyone's attention laser-focused.

Jason just cast him a look, getting the door open.

Steph entered first, smacking into something that falls over. "Jeez." She complained, stumbling backward until Cass steadied her by the shoulders. "Sorry, that's my bad."

Duke turned on the lights in one motion, making everyone blink and wince.

"Get off me." Damian snapped, and Dick carefully let him go, letting him limp angrily into a chair. He frowned, scrutinizing the place. "You live here? Why would anyone--"

"Guys." Dick rubbed his eyes over the mask, cutting off Damian and Jason’s sharp answer. "First aid kit?" Dick asked Jason tiredly.

Jason nodded, moving to get it and heard Damian ask "What?" in response to a patented glare he must be getting.

Tim had made a beeline for the kitchen. "Dude, why do you have a singular set of dishes? And why are there just guns in this cabinet?"

Jason scoffed, handing Dick the kit. "Didn't realize I was running a fucking bed and breakfast."

"There's guns in this cabinet too!" Tim shook his head, opening and closing two more. "Oh good, just large knives in this one."

At Tim's raised eyebrows, Jason went into the kitchen and shooed Cass down the counter she was perched on, grabbing the paper plates he kept in a drawer and shoving them into Tim's chest.

Glancing at the way Steph was rubbing her neck, slouched at the table, Jason grabbed two ice packs, sliding one her way and throwing the other to Damian.

Duke, taking a book off Jason's meticulously organized shelf: "Why do you have seven copies of Pride and Prejudice? Did you keep forgetting you bought it, or--?"

Jason, storming over to put the book back. "Stop."

Dick looked up from the wound he was stitching. "Are they different at at all?"

"Are they in different languages?" Steph asked.

"Did you barter them for food? Because your fridge is fucking empty." Tim reported.

Jason groaned, realizing that they weren't going to drop it. "One has a different introduction and one is the zombies version. And yes, the rest are the same, now could you all stop touching stuff?"

"Why do you have five copies of the same book?"

[heavensoutofsight]

tension and release | b.e.

synopsis: you and billie share an intimate bath as a way of de-stressing after a long day.

tags/warnings: established relationship, sharing a bath, romance, fluff, implied sexual content

word count: 1,653

author's note: just an idea that's been festering around in my mind please enjoyyyy. notes and reblogs are always appreciated <3

The second you arrived home, you wasted no time in ridding yourself of your work clothes, opting to lounge comfortably in a cozy robe as you watched the bathtub fill with warm water.

You didn't often take baths; showers were quick and efficient and normally you preferred them. But with the holiday season came insurmountable levels of stress that began piling up, weighing on you like heavy sandbags. You weren't just affected by your hectic work life mentally but also physically, as your stress often manifested in stomach aches and a sore body from how tense you were all the time. Simply put, you were feeling extremely overworked, and a hot bath was just screaming your name.

At some point, while you were sitting at the edge of the tub, watching the water rise and adding generous amounts of soap, Billie's dog, Shark, decided to trot into the bathroom with you, his cold nose poking your hand.

You smiled at him, giving him gentle head pats. It was almost as if Shark could sense that you weren't feeling great and came to comfort you.

Eventually, the bath was ready, and it had plenty of bubbles and was the perfect temperature. You grabbed your phone from the pocket of your robe and immediately began browsing through Spotify, searching through your long list of different playlists and trying to decide which one would fit the mood best. While you were doing this, that's when your lovely girlfriend made an appearance. Shark quickly ran out of the bathroom to greet her, and with an airy laugh, you followed the pit bull with the same level of enthusiasm.

When you exited the bathroom you were met with the sight of Billie kneeling on the ground, hugging Shark tightly and showering him in kisses. You watched the scene before you unfold with fondness in your eyes, chuckling to yourself at the way Shark mercilessly locked Billie's face.

You briefly made eye contact with Billie while she was in the middle of her show of affection, and the grin on your face only widened.

“Okay, Shark– I missed you too, but somebody else deserves some love, too.” Billie said as if Shark could understand anything. She gently had to push him off, not before giving him one last kiss, and then she was quickly making her way to you.

She crossed the distance in just a few seconds, wrapping her arms around you and giving you the same treatment, her lips covering every inch of your face. You were laughing the whole time, holding her close. When she pulled away, she was gazing into your eyes lovingly, her hands still lightly squeezing your waist.

“Hey, mama.” She said with a wide smile.

“Hi,” you replied, sporting the same lovesick expression. “How was your day, baby?” You asked her, curiously.

“Productive. Finneas and I actually worked on a few songs.”

Your eyebrows raised in surprise at that. “Working on new songs already?” You inquired excitedly. You loved hearing about any new music Billie was working on because it meant you'd eventually get to hear early versions of it, and it always made you feel extremely special to listen to her creations long before anyone else had the chance to.

“Yeah, well, surprisingly, I was just suddenly feeling really inspired and I just had to take advantage of that feeling while it lasted. We were kinda on a roll with ideas. It was nice.” She replied, grinning as she thought back to her time spent with her brother just moments prior.

“That's really nice, Bils. I can't wait to hear what you've got so far.”

“And I can't wait to show you. I've already got some snippets for you to hear.” She said, leaning in close, whispering those last few words against your lips before giving you a cute peck. It was an innocent, chaste kiss, until she leaned in again and gave you one that was a bit deeper, her lips slotting against yours perfectly like a puzzle piece. She has pulled you impossibly closer against her body at this point, her hands roaming a bit lower, shamelessly feeling you up (and of course, you shamelessly enjoyed it).

Billie again was the first to pull away after a couple minutes had passed. She quickly gave your body a look up and down.

“You look fucking adorable in this robe– wait, is that mine?” She asked, inspecting the fabric closely. You chuckled.

“Maybe,” you said mischievously, sporting a sly grin. “But I know you love it.”

“I absolutely do,” Billie replied with a smirk, leaning in to kiss you again. You reciprocated the kiss, but didn't let it go on for too long– although you wanted to, you quickly remembered that the water in your bathtub was cooling down and you wanted to get in there while it was still hot.

Reluctantly, you pulled away this time, your hands moving from the nape of Billie's neck to holding her hands. You absentmindedly played with the rings that adorned her fingers.

“As much as I love it when you kiss me senseless, there's a hot bubble bath calling my name.” You said. Billie simply bit her bottom lip in response, giving you a knowing look.

“You wouldn't mind if I joined you, hm?” She asked, but she didn't even have to pose the question, as you had already made up your mind.

You were already pulling her to the bathroom when you replied, “Please join me.”

The both of you entered the bathroom, Billie closing the door once she was inside. You didn't waste a second in taking off your robe, lazily letting it fall off your shoulders. You didn't immediately get in though, turning around to face Billie, whose eyes were very obviously glancing elsewhere.

“Your turn.” You said playfully, and Billie happily obliged, removing her baggy jeans and oversized shirt. She folded them neatly, placing them on the counter, her rings placed on top. You were shamelessly ogling as well, admiring her beautiful body and appreciating every dip and curve.

When she was fully undressed, you stepped aside to let her get in first. When she slowly lowered herself into the water, you could visibly see her expression relax, her eyes fluttering shut as the heat from the water encompassed her.

“Fuck.” She cursed, letting out a few other small sounds of pleasure that made your cheeks hot.

“The temperature is good?”

“It's perfect, baby,” Billie replied, glancing up at you. “Get your pretty ass in here.”

At that, you giggled, following her instruction and joining her in the water.

You had a similar reaction, the warm water immediately soothing your tense muscles. You fit perfectly between Billie's legs, your back laying against her chest. In this position, you could rest your head on her shoulder, giving Billie access to the most sensitive spots on your neck, which she was quick to begin peppering in kisses.

You sighed in contentment, focusing on the feeling of the hot water and Billie's lips on your neck. You hadn't felt this relaxed in a while, and you were savoring every second.

“Baby, I'm so sorry,” Billie mumbled, still lazily kissing your skin. Your eyebrows furrowed, perplexed at her sudden apology.

“For what?” You replied, your words just slightly slurring together as you already began feeling tiredness overcome you.

“I didn't ask you how your day was,” she said. “Tell me all about it, my love.”

You scoffed. “My day was boring and uneventful, like always. Definitely not as interesting as anything you've got going on.” You replied earnestly.

“If it's coming from you, it's always interesting.” She responded warmly, lazily tracing patterns into your skin underneath the water. You smiled at her words, your eyes closing as you reveled in the sensation of the softness of her body beneath you, feeling her chest rise and fall with her breaths.

For the remaining couple of hours, you and Billie had brief moments where you'd talk about whatever entered each other's minds, and other moments where you two would simply sit in comfortable silence. Sometimes, Billie would begin humming or quietly singing, her voice sweet as honey, her lips just barely brushing against your ear. You had also switched positions at some point, with Billie on one end and you on the other, legs tangling together in the middle.

Sadly, the water did start to get a little cold, and you were the first to notice.

“Billie.” You softly called her name, noticing that her eyes were closed and she had seemed to doze off. You held back your chuckles, nudging her a bit.

“Billie. Baby. My angel.” You tried again. Billie's eyes opened for a split second.

“Hm?” She said sleepily, and your heart warmed at the endearing sight before you.

“Water's cold. Let's dry off, yeah?” You said. Billie grinned, slowly nodding, still shaking off sleep.

“Okay, mama.”

The two of you got out and dried yourselves with towels, the both of you making your own towel dresses and heading to your shared bedroom, where you just laid in bed, feeling slight chills from the cool air. Of course, the both of you were cuddled up together, basking in the relaxing silence. The towels didn't really stay on, and at some point, you both ditched them altogether, the skin-to-skin contact feeling much better anyway.

You both were pretty much keeping your hands still until your lips found each other again, the two of you sleepily making out with a newfound passion. It wasn't long until Billie had you on your back, kissing down your body

“Billie,” you half spoke, half whined. “Don't you wanna nap?” You asked, a smirk tugging at your lips.

Billie just looked at you with a hungry stare, her head already situated in the place you wanted her most.

“You're gonna nap real good when I'm done with you, mama.”

[hotvintagepoll]

last poll of the quarterfinals!

Gene Wilder (Bonnie and Clyde, The Producers)—Gene Wilder's first starring role was a pathetic little guy who was lured into committing crimes and panicked about it, then continued committing the same crimes in prison!

Peter Lorre (The Maltese Falcon, Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca)—to me he DEFINES scrungle hes the first person i think of every time the term comes up! i want to fold him up like a paper accordion and put him in my pocket. guy that spawned a million voice artists and impersonators. they made a ghost version of him for halloween cereal staple boo berry. bewitched by his nervous mania and tooth gap <3 (for the purposes of propaganda im linking a photo from his extremely short appearance in muscle beach party bc ive been obsessed w it for years and i couldnt find any video for it :/ anyway imagine youre frankie avalon spending the whole movie battling a bodybuilder faction thats taking over your beach and your girl and then you find out this fucking guy is their mastermind mystery leader and hes stronger than all the bodybuilders combined. like Huh. What.)

These are the the quarterfinals for the scrungly little guy contest. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. If you’re confused on what a scrungle is, or any of the rules of the contest, click here.

[additional submitted propaganda + scrungly videos under the cut]

Gene:

"Excellently scrungly, even in his debut film. And the Producers requires no explanation. Big this energy":

Peter:

he's pretty much the archetype of the scrungly little guy. the blueprint. the example by which all other scrungly little guys are judged

The entire point of his iconic role in Casablanca (apart from introducing the central plot mcguffin) was to be LITTLE and SCRUNGLY to make Bogie look even cooler. And Maggot in Corpse Bride - the littlest scrungliest guy in that film - was a parody of him.

Between his big eyes, wheezy laugh, short stature, and expressive faces, Peter Lorre achieved icon status as the scrungliest, littlest guy in Hollywood. His scrungly little guy energy was often contrasted with the more typical masculinity of the leading man, but whether this contrast was meant to make him seem especially sinister, comedic, or pathetic, it always left an unforgettable impression!

The perfect sniveling character actor, “scrungly” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of him.

I'm sure somebody else has already submitted him (if not then ???) but he's a cute kind of scrungly little guy. He's got a distinctive nasal voice with an accent that is instantly recognizable and often imitated. His later horror movies are so much fun, especially when he's playing off of Vincent Price. He's so good at being unhinged, creepy, or manic, but also pathetic and sympathetic.

Classic scrungly hollywood golden age little guy who was friends with Humphrey Bogart and still played some of the wettest most sniveling characters ever committed to celluloid (complimentary) there is a deep despair and darkness in many of his characters that enhances his scrungly

To be clear, I am one of those people who will argue that Lorre is one of the most underrated film actors, but the POINT is that he's also just a scrungly delight. A delightfully pocket-sized man. Somehow endearing even when he is being actively amoral (see esp. Casablanca. "I found myself much more reasonable!") The faces he makes while doing the Russian cossack dance with a butter knife between his teeth in Silk Stockings make me laugh just thinking about them.

Wikipedia described his typical characters as "timidly devious", lots of weird little villains and evil sidekicks that are pretty horrifying but still manage to be sort of pathetic and the very definition of "poor little meow meow". His look and voice and mannerisms are so iconic they're still imitated

Cartoons for the next century have and will continue to include Peter Lorre-esque characters when needed to up the scrunge factor (see Bugs Bunny and so many more).

Youtube link for characters inspired by Lorre [editor's note: I'm not actually sure how many of these characters are directly, verifiably influenced by Peter Lorre, so take with a grain of salt. tw for suicide depiction.]

I think Arsenic and Old Lace is his quintessential "scrungly" performance. He's so put-upon and tired...all he wants is sleep and some schnapps! I love the way his shoulders fall slowly when he thinks he's caught (he looks like a sad puppy!), only to gleefully sprint out the door when he realizes how dumb those police officers are.

[mcflymemes]

AS SAID BY ALISTAIR THEIRIN - PARTY BANTER *  updated version - assorted banter from dragon age: origins

they say you can get anything here. i once got pick-pocketed.

i don't know if i should take you seriously... but you scare me sometimes.

i locked myself in a cage once when i was a child. for an entire day. ahh... good times.

why do they call it a brothel? there's no broth. or is there?

couldn't you crawl into a bush somewhere and die? that would be great, thanks.

leave me alone.

i know where babies come from!

what would you do if someone told you that they loved you?

food shouldn't be frilly and pretentious like that.

we take our ingredients, throw them into the largest pot we can find, and cook them for as long as possible until everything is a uniform grey color. as soon as it looks completely bland and unappetizing, that's when i know it's done.

we're not going to be mobbed, right? that's not something they do here? mob people?

do you get the feeling things are just getting worse as we go up?

now that's just unnecessary.

i don't think we're alone. i really don't think we're alone.

is it just me, or did i do really badly back there?

excuse me while i begin projectile vomiting.

maybe she was ugly. maybe she had buck teeth. how would we know?

what is that smell? fish? and something else. oh... more fish.

uh-oh. i'm terrible at puzzles.

let's try not to get lost here. places like this can get you turned around.

i think there's something ahead. something big.

i don't even want to imagine where that leads.

you could be an utter moron, for all we know.

it used to get so quiet that i would start screaming until someone came running. i would tell them that i was just checking. you never know, right?

there's a certain allure to danger, isn't there?

i will never get over how quietly you are able to move.

i heard you often seduce your targets.

don't you wish you could have stayed there? to help more people, i mean?

i've never been very good at that. the steeling myself part. i find it better sometimes to just be a little weak. i'm all right with that, really.

i just wanted some advice.

what should i do if... if i think a woman is special...

i am not lost.

do i have a choice?

you find that curious, do you?

that's directed at me, i take it?

have you really been thinking about that all this time?

so let's talk about your mother for a moment.

why do you always go on about how stupid i am? i'm not stupid, am i?

it hurts my manly feelings, you know. all one of them.

you're not even listening to me.

you're joking, right? a five year old could answer that question.

so what's the deal with you and him, anyway? dare i ask?

that... is a ridiculous question.

i figure you'd be the sort who knows all about deception.

it's moments like this when i truly appreciate the difference between you and me.

you're... you're drunk, aren't you?

how do you manage to be constantly drunk? are we even carrying that much alcohol with us?

i guess a romance between you and i is completely out of the question.

you know a lot of big words.

you wouldn't understand.

don't you ever talk? you know, make polite conversation just to put people at ease?

i spy with my little eye... something that begins with... "G"

are you talking to me?

are we under attack?

i don't have to prove anything to you.

we're not exactly traveling in the lap of luxury here.

can you mend it? when we get back to camp?

i might catch a cold.

that's... one way of looking at it.

i have a hard time believing that.

it's not an outlandish question.

you know, of all the mages i've met you have to be the first one i can honestly say i've really liked.

why are you smiling like that?

i wasn't looking at... you know her... hind-quarters... i gazed. glanced... in that direction, maybe, but i wasn't staring... or really seeing anything even.

i hate you. you're a bad person.

i'm not an idiot. well, not most of the time.

you didn't answer my question.

if you aren't telling me, there must be a reason.

do you mind if i ask you a personal question?

have you... had many women in your time?

how do you... woo them? is there a technique?

i like my hair the way it is, thank you.

we aren't talking about this, are we? did i hit my head?

is that a smirk? are you smirking at me?

well aren't you just chock full of useless trivia today.

i suppose you don't care.

so when this is over, what do you intend to do with yourself?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#governing-is-harder

Winning an election is easier than it looks: all you have to do is convince a bunch of different groups that you will use power to achieve their desires. Bonus points if you can convince groups with mutually exclusive goals that you'll deliver for them – the coalition of "people who disagree about everything" is hard to assemble, but it sure is large!

Politically, a "conservative" is someone who believes that there is a small group of people who were born to rule, and a much larger group of people who were born to be ruled over. As Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind, this is the one trait that unifies all the disparate strains of conservative thought: imperialists, monarchists, capitalists, white supremacists, misogynists, Christian nationalists, Hindu nationalists and supporters of Israeli genocide in Palestine:

https://coreyrobin.com/books/the-reactionary-mind/

These groups all agree that power should be hierarchical, that your position in a hierarchy is something you're born with, and that letting people who were "meant" to be at the bottom of the hierarchy rise to the top puts society so out of balance that it's actually a threat to human survival. That's why conservatives of all stripes get so furious about "DEI" – any kind of affirmative action program serves as a defective sorting hat, putting the incompetent and unsuitable into positions of power over other peoples' lives. It's why "DEI" is the go-to scapegoat for any kind of disaster, including giant ships crashing into bridges:

https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-dei-utah-lawmaker-phil-lyman-misinformation

But while conservatives all agree that some of us are born to be in charge and others are born to be bossed around by our innate superiors, they have irreconcilable differences about who is meant to be in charge. British imperialists who pine for the Raj have views that are fundamentally at odds with the views of Hindu nationalists. They're both "conservative" movements, but they're actually bitter enemies.

For a conservative movement to win power, it has to convince the people whom it would relegate to the bottom of the hierarchy to support that goal (AKA "getting turkeys to vote for Christmas"); and it must convince other conservatives that they will be able to establish a hierarchy that accommodates multiple, co-equal ruling elites.

The first tactic is well-established. LBJ summed it up neatly:

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

The second one requires far more tactical thinking. Some elite groups are able to form coalitions by carving out exclusive zones: think of the friendly feeling among Modi, Orban, Erdogan, bin Salman, Trump, Milei, et al. These people all aspire to dictatorship, all espouse their superior blood – a source of personal and racial superiority – and hypothetically all believe that the world would be better if everyone (including their foreign counterparts) would take their orders.

One way to resolve this tension is to carve up the world geographically, which is why so many despots who seized power by promising to build ethno-states can co-exist with one another and even cheer one another on. Let Orban have Hungary, give Turkey to Erdogan, and let Bibi Netanyahu annex all of Gaza. Sure, in their hearts of hearts, each of these men secretly believe themselves to be racially and personally superior to the others, but so long as they all stay out of one another's turf, there's no reason to make a big deal out of that.

Another way to resolve this tension is to carve up the world temporally: think of the alliance between Christian nationalists and Israeli genocidiers. In the USA, "Christian Zionists" outnumber Jews who identify as Zionists:

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/qanda-for-every-1-jewish-zionist-there-are-30-christian-zionists-and-netanyahu-exploits-this-15656249

But Christian Zionists aren't philosemites. They hate Jews and believe that we are all going to hell for murdering Christ. Their support for Israel isn't grounded in a belief in the necessity of a Jewish ethno-state – it arises out of the apocalyptic belief that Christ will return once Jews "return to the Holy Land" – albeit only briefly, before being cast into a lake of fire for all eternity.

Like British imperialists and the Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists are not on the same side. However, unlike British imperialists and Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists want the same thing…for a while. Both groups support the establishment of a Jewish entho-state in Israel, they just differ sharply as to what happens after that comes to pass. So long as they don't dwell on that moment in the future, they can stand shoulder to shoulder, fighting together for an Israeli state that operates with absolute US support and total international impunity.

Coalitions who defer the question of how they'll use power to after they've gained power are using time (rather than space) as a buffer that keeps their differences from smashing together until they shatter. But time and space aren't the only buffers for the differences between coalition partners – there's also class.

"Class" has been the most important, most useful buffer for conservativism since the Reagan revolution. Reagan came to power by forging an alliance with evangelicals, whose cult leaders had historically demanded that members focus their energies (and cash donations) on the church, while avoiding politics as "worldly."

Reagan promised the Christian right a bunch of culture war stuff – bans on abortion, punishment for uppity women and racial minorities, prayer in school, segregation academies, etc – that his financial backers frankly didn't give a shit about. By all means, let working class evangelicals homeschool their kids and teach them that the Earth is 5,000 years old, it doesn't matter to Wall Street, who will reap a giant tax-cut and also send their kids to private schools with rigorous curriculum. Bankers' wives and daughters will always be able to afford to fly out of state (or across the border) for abortion care, they will never die of AIDS in the charity wing of a community hospital, their daughters won't be trapped by bans on no-fault divorces.

For the past 40 years, American oligarchs and would-be oligarchs have entered into enthusiastic coalitions with virulently racist, sexist and homophobic groups, and maintained peace within their coalition by passing punitive, cruel laws that the rich can buy their way around. For many self-styled libertarians, the most important liberty is "not paying taxes" and this subordinates all other liberties, such that a "libertarian" will vote for a coalition whose platform promises to ban abortion, birth control, "interracial" marriage, and queer sex, so long as it also promises tax cuts. It's a weird kind of pro-freedom ideology that happily trades away (others') freedom for (your own) tax cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

Remember, Trump's first CPAC speech was sponsored by Goproud, a group of "fiscally responsible" gay Republicans who believed in gay rights, sure, but not as much as they believed in getting so rich that even if poor gay people were ground into dust, they could float above it all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOProud

Class is the third buffer between the oligarchs of the right and the mass movement that provides the bulk for winning elections. After all, laws are for the little people, so by all means, we can promise – and even deliver – laws that we would never submit to, because we don't have to submit to them. This is Wilhoit's Law in action:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#Wilhoit's_law

In a hierarchical society, class separates groups of people just as rigidly as time and space, and is every bit as useful a buffer as the other two forces.

Until it isn't.

Eventually – once you've banned abortion, once you've taken all the "controversial" books out of the library, once you've made affirmative action illegal – you reach the layer of non-negotiable culture war demands that the rich can't buy their way out of.

Like immigration.

Let's start with this: immigration doesn't have to result in wage suppression. Couple immigration with strong unions and a muscular labor rights regime and workers do just great. The more the merrier! America needs workers of every kind. What's more, the unions and labor laws in America owe their existence to immigrant workers, so there's nothing about immigration that is necessarily incompatible with winning rights for workers.

But the possibility of importing some overseas union organizers isn't what motivates the finance wing of the conservative coalition to demand "guest-worker" programs like the H1B visa:

https://twitter.com/RobertMSterling/status/1873175206073626660

H1B visas are "non-immigrant" visas, meaning that they are designed not to offer any path to permanent residence or citizenship. You can live in the US for a long time on an H1B, but you are bound over to your employer like a serf bound to a feudal estate: if you lose your job, you lose your right to abide in the country. That can mean losing your house, your car, your kids' school and friends. It can cost your spouse their job, because if you're kicked out of the country, they might well leave along with you, rather than remain alone here.

H1B tech workers are the workers that tech-barons have dreamt of for decades. An H1B worker can't job-hop, and so needn't be lured to work with gourmet cafeterias, luxury gymnasiums, or other perks of the whimsical tech "campus." H1B workers can't quit if they don't like their stock-options packages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech bosses hate tech workers, and they always have. It's not affection that causes Jeff Bezos to allow his coders to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand, while his delivery drivers piss in bottles and his warehouse workers are injured at three times the national average. Jeff Bezos neither cherishes his coders' kidneys, nor is he especially hostile to delivery drivers' need to pee – he just squeezes any and every worker in any and every way he can.

Same for Tim Cook: the accomplishment that prompted Apple's board to elevate Cook to Steve Jobs' CEO office was the successful transfer of iPhone manufacturing to China. Specifically, Cook figured out how to work with his primary supplier, Foxconn, to create a working environment that produced reliable, precision-manufactured mobile devices, and all it took was creating a working environment so brutal that the company had to install suicide nets to catch the factory workers who couldn't stand it any longer:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract

Apple's tech workers aren't worked to suicidal desperation, sure – but not because Tim Cook likes coders and hates factory workers. It's because he's afraid coders will quit, and he's not worried about replacing factory workers after they jump to their death.

The point of the H1B program is to create a tech workforce that bosses no longer have to fear. Recall that when Elon Musk took over Twitter and circulated a mandatory "extremely hardcore" pledge that demanded that workers promise to subordinate their health and wellbeing to his profits, it prompted a mass departure, with the notable exception of workers whose immigration status (and/or insurance for serious health issues) depended on their ongoing employment at Twitter:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23462026/elon-musk-twitter-email-hardcore-or-severance

When Musk's cronies gloated about shedding 20% of Twitter's workforce on "day zero," the workers they had in mind were the ones who didn't fear their bosses and wouldn't frog when the investor class shouted jump. "Sharpen your blades, boys" means we're slicing off workers who are laboring under the misapprehension that they are entitled to a say in their working conditions:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

After all, America does not have a tech worker shortage. The US tech sector fired 260,000 skilled workers in 2023, and more than 150,000 were shown the door in 2024. When Musk and his fellow tech bosses complain that they need more "talent," what they mean is they need workers who are so terrified of being deported that they'll accept low wages, sleep under their desks, refuse to talk to union organizers, and, above all, do as they're told:

https://youtube.com/shorts/N0FkyXFhmpo?si=GCh6bFqd31prazhz

Trump won office by promising mutually exclusive outcomes to different parts of his coalition. To the nativists and bigots (and workers who'd bamboozled into thinking that their low salaries were the fault of other workers, not their bosses), he promised a halt to immigration. To the plutocrats, he promised a large and pliable workforce – of low-waged agricultural workers and of precarious H1B tech workers who'd discipline America's "entitled" tech workers:

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-01-02-president-musk-american-workers-h1b-visas/

Now, he has to figure out how to keep everyone happy. Literally: the Speakership of Congress is only nine votes away from collapsing at any time (and until last week, it was just one vote away), and without Congress, Trump's ability to govern will be severely curtailed (see, for example, 2018-2020).

Immigration isn't an issue like abortion: oligarchs can support abortion bans and still procure abortions when they need them. It's much harder to support an immigration ban and still procure precarious, low-waged workers for your business. It will take many years for American-born workers to be so brutalized and broken that they capitulate to the working conditions that American guest workers and undocumented workers accept, and bosses are impatient.

It's hard to put on a convincing performance of banning immigration, as the UK's New Labour discovered. In the years leading up to the 2010 election, Labour – under Blair and then Brown – made a big show of "cracking down on immigration." At one point, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that she was axing dozens of UK visa categories, while carefully not mentioning these were so niche that hardly anyone qualified for them. This created chaos for the people affected and their families – I lost my own "Highly Skilled Migrant" visa at this time and we had to move our wedding plans up by eight months so I could stay in the country with my British partner and our daughter – but it didn't do anything to quench the xenophobic rage that UKIP and the Tories had been stoking, and Labour lost its next election.

American conservatives are rightly proud of their ability to form coalitions. They trumpet their ethic of "no enemies to the right" and contrast this with the "cancel culture" of progressives:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-year-democrats-lost-the-internet/

It's true that purging your ranks of coalition partners who disagree with you at the margins is a severely self-limiting move. It's also true that the broader your coalition is, the easier it is to win power.

The right has built a coalition of people who want opposite things. Infamously, Project 2025 isn't just a collection of terrifying ideas for running (and ruining) America – it's a collection of mutually exclusive terrifying ideas for running and ruining America:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

Trump's top health picks – RFK jr, Weldon, Oz, Makary, Bhattacharya, Nesheiwat – want mutually exclusive, irreconcilable things that are as impossible to compromise on as "banning immigration" while simultaneously "expanding the H1B program":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/20/clinical-trial-by-ordeal/#spoiled-his-brand-new-rattle

Big, diverse coalitions of people who normally oppose each other are great for winning power, but they're very bad for wielding power. Trump's majorities in Congress and the Senate are razor-thin, and while the Democrats had to suffer under the Manchin-Synematic Universe, the GOP's Klown Kar of Krazies has dozens of swivel-eyed loons who will happily blow up "must-pass" bills just for shits and giggles.

What's more, the GOP has spent decades installing easily blown circuit breakers into the American legislative and administrative systems, from the filibuster to the debt ceiling. By design, these allow small groups of lawmakers to kill bills and hamstring presidential power. Trump's first attempt at removing one of these breakers – the senseless kabuki of the annual debt ceiling showdown – was a total failure:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-12-19-debt-limit-should-absolutely-be-eliminated/

Musk thinks he can ram through policies that sizable portions of the GOP coalition would rather die than support. So far, Trump has proven a pliable puppet for Musk's ambitions. But the Musk-Trump coalition is every bit as fragile as any other in the GOP, and Trump is notoriously sensitive to accusations of weakness. Musk can threaten to primary any GOP lawmaker who gets in his way, but as the Kochs discovered after they unleashed the Tea Party, grievance-fueled, paranoid, heavily armed cults are hard to keep on a leash.

The coming months are sure to be an all-out war of GOP infighting as the coalition must wield power without the useful buffers of space, time and class. They'll be an object lesson in the dangers of a coalition that's so broad that everyone is welcome, even people who'd happily line you and yours in front of a firing squad.

But just because the right's attitude to coalitions is to have a mind so open its brains fall out, that doesn't mean the left should pursue a program of overwhelming ideological purity. Trump is a stupid guy with incoherent ideas, but look at how far he got by erecting such a big tent that anyone fit underneath it (even actual Nazis).

The progressive coalition doesn't need to be that big. We can have enemies to the right. The hugs Kamala Harris bestowed on ghouls like Liz Cheney didn't win the election, and the medal Biden just gave her won't help either:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/politics/presidential-citizens-medal-liz-cheney.html

Manchin and Synema can "fuck off until they come up to a gate with a sign saying 'You Can’t Fuck Off Past Here,' Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever":

https://michaelmarshallsmith.substack.com/about

But the fact that some people don't belong in a progressive coalition, it doesn't follow that there's no room to make the coalition looser and broader. Sure, a big coalition makes it hard to wield power, but without that coalition, we'll never win power.

[sanipoyo]

WAS IT CASUAL WHEN… PART TWO

note - this was heavily requested! it’s a continued version of this piece if you haven’t read it, i would before reading this! enjoy my loves :3.

you and sero had been really hitting it off and TODOROKI did not like this at all. although he was supposedly in a relationship now, you still have a very valuable place in his heart. he doesn’t know why he got into a relationship unprovoked without talking to you, knowing he’d been stringing you along for awhile. you and sero had started talking a bit right after todoroki practically ditched you for someone he’d only known for a week, but you were still hurt about it so you were distant towards sero. it’s been about 2 months since then and you’re over it now. you told sero about how things with todoroki ended and he reassured you in every way possible, you were lucky to have him because he was so understanding about everything. “i wouldn’t do that to you, i promise”, he said holding his pinky out waiting for you to intertwine your pinky with his. you hooked your pinky finger to his and smiled. shoto definitely regrets what he did, as he watches you be loved the way you deserved to be from afar.

it had been about a month since you stopped talking to KAMINARI. today, you were in class and got assigned a group project. you and ojiro got partnered together for it and kaminari didn’t think anything of it. but as y’all began to work, he heard how much you laughed and talked to ojiro. he felt his chest tighten, making it hard for him to focus on his project. “you alright?” his partner, tsuyu asked him and he profusely nodded. “yeah, yeah, i’m good! just brainstorming.” he rambled on, still overhearing you hit it off with ojiro. denki chewed on his bottom lip as he thought to himself; he knows he said he didn’t want to be anything more than friends with you but seeing you act the way you acted with him towards someone else made him feel sick to his stomach. even if you were just being friendly and having conversations, he used to be the only who made you laugh like that, the only person whose head you’d talk off. he wishes he could go back in time and change what he said to you but he wasn’t going to try and come back into your life after hurting you.

SHINSO sat in class, thinking about how he treated you at the mall, full of regret. he wanted to apologize to you, so he made it his mission to talk to you after class. when the bell rang, he hurriedly made his way out to the hallway, seeing you talking with kirishima. he furrowed his eyebrows when he saw you laugh and put your hand on his bicep. once kirishima made his way to class, leaving you alone, shinso approached you. “you into muscular guys now?” shinso hummed and you looked over, shocked to seem him next to you “what do you mean?” you asked him, his eyes trained on the ground. “i saw you grazing his muscles”, shinso said mocking your actions. “so? it’s not like we’re dating”, you quoted him. you were being petty, which he expected because it’s one of the things he loves about you. “i’m sorry”, hitoshi said lowly, now looking at you. “i don’t want to lose you, i was being stupid.” he added and you sighed. “i agree, you were being stupid. but i forgive you.. for now.” you said, rolling your eyes and he lit up. he pulled your favorite candy bar out of his pocket and placed in your hand, “thank you for putting up with me.”

jealous wasn’t even the word, BAKUGO was infuriated seeing midoriya seated next to you, sparking up conversations and seeing you giggle at him. of course, you and deku were just friends but something about him putting a smile on your face struck a nerve with bakugo. a couple minutes later, izuku excused himself to the bathroom and bakugo decided to take that opportunity to warn him not to talk you, he waited outside the bathroom for deku to finish, startling him when he came out. “kacchan! what’re you-“, midoriya began before getting cut off by bakugo. “don’t talk to them anymore, got it? you’ll distract them from getting better and improving.” bakugo stated and simply walked away, leaving midoriya in the hallway confused as to what bakugo was talking about. katsuki wanted to be with you, but he also wanted you to be the best you could be and he was worried he was stopping you from achieving that. so from here on out, he’d make sure no one got in your way.

Ⓒ all published work belongs to sanipoyo! do not copy/plagiarize.