thenegativelee

[thenegativelee]

“You let him escape on purpose!”

Ryo stood leaning against the wall, watching as the other gang leader stood over Jericho, his foot buried in the blond’s stomach. His assassin was curled up on the floor, doing his best to block the blows with his arms. He was taking it well at least, he certainly deserved it after that screw up.  The gang leader snapped his fingers and the two other men standing over Jericho pulled him to his feet again, locking their arms under his to hold him up, since he certainly couldn’t do it on his own. Ryo’s eyes darted away as more punches landed, though he wasn’t sure there was a spot left on the younger man that wasn’t broken or bruised. Then a gun cocked and Ryo pushed off from the wall.

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[thenegativelee]

EVERYONE PLEASE LOOK AT THIS WORK OF ART!!

Bad Things Happen Bingo 2: Kick Them While They’re Down

(Thanks a bunch to @spinosaurusregina ​for the request! 

Kuwee’s introduction)

Kuwee doesn’t like stealing from the same place twice- under normal circumstances. But this place, an opulent furriers’ shop in the city’s wealthiest district, is not normal. He’d laden himself so heavily the first time around that he could barely fly, and he’d still had to leave behind dozens of beautiful furs. There was just so much! He’ll get all the rest this time. He’s not completely certain where he’s going to keep them- his nest in the rafters of the abandoned cathedral is already nearly full- but that’s a problem for later. 

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[thenegativelee]

Bad Things Happen Bingo 2: Kick Them While They’re Down

(Thanks a bunch to @spinosaurusregina ​for the request! 

Kuwee’s introduction)

Kuwee doesn’t like stealing from the same place twice- under normal circumstances. But this place, an opulent furriers’ shop in the city’s wealthiest district, is not normal. He’d laden himself so heavily the first time around that he could barely fly, and he’d still had to leave behind dozens of beautiful furs. There was just so much! He’ll get all the rest this time. He’s not completely certain where he’s going to keep them- his nest in the rafters of the abandoned cathedral is already nearly full- but that’s a problem for later. 

The problem for now is getting in, and it’s not much of a problem. He’s waited almost a week- a titanic effort of willpower- so he feels fairly safe going in the same way he did last time. And last time it was so easy! Three locks that barely came together to count as one full challenge, and not even a deadbolt for him to puzzle over. And tonight, he finds that none of it has changed- except for the addition of a fourth lock, no more interesting than the first three.

The door creaked, the first time, when he pushed it one-eight of the way open. Today he stops it there and slips in through the gap, more out of a desire to add a bit more challenge to the task than any fear of being overheard. The shop is silent and empty, the furs sitting on shelves along the walls and hanging on racks in eerily humanoid silhouettes that might have spooked him once, a long time ago.

He gives them only a cursory look before heading to the shelves. That’s where all the good ones are. This one- he can’t make out the colour in the dark, but the fur is so soft and thick- it could only have come from a direwolf. And this one- the thin, almost silken leather, the downy fur- surely worth a fortune.

He picks up a silver fox shawl, drawn by the sliver of moonlight falling on it through the window, and starts to drape it around his neck. He’s halfway there when the front door of the shop slams shut with enough force to shake the floor.

There was no wind today.

The shawl drops to the floor as he starts to turn, already spreading his wings, making the split-second decision to take to the air rather than try and draw his knife with his weaker arm. It’s a cramped space, but he doesn’t need to get a lot of height- just enough to knock down the heavy something-or-other that’s running at him from across the room, footsteps thudding on the floor he’d just crossed so silently.

He doesn’t even register the thwack of a crossbow being fired at first- his first thought is that he’s overextended his shoulder, and he’s still trying to compensate for it when his left wing folds up against his will and he crashes backwards into the shelves.

“Did you think I’m an idiot?” a voice spits from above him as he struggles to disentangle himself from the pile of furs that have fallen on his head. His left foot reaches for his knife, and something heavy comes down on top of it, pinning it to the floor.

Two of his talons break like twigs, and he shrieks.

“Shut up!” the voice snarls. Kuwee takes this as his cue to scream even louder- the sound is inhumanly high-pitched. There’s a muffled flurry of curses from above, and the clumsy steps of a heavy body stumbling backwards.

He gets his right wing under him and hops up, shaking the pile of furs from his back, and that’s as far as it goes. The heavy, clumsy shadow is faster than he expected. This time the foot shoves him back against the shelves, hard, and his cry at the sudden sharp pain that runs up his left wing is cut off by a kick to his stomach. The scream turns into a croak, and the air in his lungs turns to fire.

“Not so loud now, are you, you filthy little thief?” The voice sounds slightly out of breath and deeply smug. Kuwee thrashes, flopping over onto his back, his wings beating uselessly against the ground. 

A second kick ends that very efficiently.

He curls slowly and painfully into the fetal position, wheezing. His mouth is filled with the taste of blood, and his nose with the smell of it, and his ears with unpleasant laughter.

“I could call the city guard, and watch them cut your hands off,” says the shadow thoughtfully, grinding its heel into Kuwee’s breastbone, “but I’m not sure if a freak like you even has any! And what fun would that be? You didn’t steal from them; you stole from me. So I’ll deal with you.”

The third kick is higher and more purposeful. Pain explodes through his ribs, wraps around his chest and paralyzes his muscles.

Tears run down his face to mix with the blood dripping from his bottom lip. His body convulses, trying to tear a scream free from his burning lungs, but all he can manage is a thin, grinding whine.

The shadow chuckles. “Not so loud anymore, are you?”

[thenegativelee]

Just wanted to introduce Kuwee before posting the BTHB fill about him, because he deserves a proper introduction! He's a 10-year-old harpy who should be about 25 in human maturity terms but is closer to about 14. He's a thief, a secret genius but also heavily impulse-driven; he gets obsessions in cycles, things like lamps or furs or stained glass windows, and will steal the thing he's currently obsessed with to the detriment of anything actually useful. He's a sweetheart when he's not being accidentally annoying with his hyperactivity, and he'd probably like to be your best friend.

[thenegativelee]

when I was your age I didn’t call it hurt/comfort, I called it “why am I so emotionally and mentally entangled in any scene where a tough/stoic male character is injured or in pain and has to be cared for and soothed is this normal”

[thenegativelee]

Bad Things Happen Bingo 1: Hiding an Injury

(Thanks a million to @nicolethewhumpatee for the request! Yellow squares are claimed, red squares are filled.)

It wasn’t the cold that worried Theo. He’d had colds before; the tiredness, the fuzziness in his head, the tightness in his chest, all that was normal. It would pass. What was worrying him was the scrape on his elbow. He’d got it yesterday, and it was still there. Smaller, definitely, but it should have been gone a dozen times over.

An illness that could wear out his body enough to slow down his normal healing rate that much, that was unusual. If Jan or Dirk found out- it was just his luck that this would happen while they were all in the same house- they’d be worried. They’d be worried, and they’d probably want him to stay in bed, and ask him if he was okay, and try to do things for him. It would, in short, be terrible.

So he splashed some water on his face, rolled his sleeves down, and trotted down the stairs like nothing was wrong.

“G’morning,” Jan greeted him from the kitchen table. “You look tired.”

“Do I?” he replied, all breezy and nonchalant. “I don’t feel tired.”

“Well, that’s good.” Jan looked back down at his coffee, losing interest in the conversation. Theo walked over to the coffee pot, considered it, then changed his mind and poured himself a glass of orange juice. It didn’t look much more appealing, but he had to have something.

“Theo? You’re still going to help with the garden shed, right?” Dirk called from the living room, and Theo grimaced minutely before summoning up a smile.

“Of course!”

“Me too,” Jan added, standing up and pushing his chair in. He walked over to set his mug in the sink, then turned and gave Theo a funny look.

“You’re sure you’re not tired?”

Theo frowned, suddenly seeing himself through Jan’s eyes- a bit pale, probably, with dark circles under his eyes, hair a little less tidy than usual; small things, but impossible to ignore when they were all added together. “Mmm, maybe a little bit,” he said, as though that had just occurred to him. “I didn’t sleep that well last night. I’m good, though.”

“Oh, good. As long as you’re not gonna leave me to put the roof on the shed by myself.”

“Of course not!”

The garden shed was a skeleton, three metres a side with a tarp for a roof and its actual roof sitting on the grass in three pieces. No more than afternoon’s worth of work there for the three of them, Theo was sure, even with his limbs feeling heavy and his balance a couple degrees off.

The first piece went up without a hitch. The second was a few inches too far forward, and when they lifted the third up, it didn’t quite fit.

“Okay, okay, put it down for a moment,” said Dirk, and Theo did so gladly, rubbing his sore forearms when he was sure neither of them were looking. Dirk walked all the way around the shed, assessing the situation, and then looked back at his sons. “Theo, can you get up onto the wall and guide us from up there?”

Up on the wall? “Of course,” Theo agreed immediately. He wouldn’t hesitate under normal circumstances, so to hesitate now would look odd. He took a deep breath, stepped up onto the edge of the empty side window, and pulled himself up onto the top of the wall.

Seven feet down below his feet, dangling over the shed’s concrete pad floor; eight feet down behind him. Somehow it felt a lot higher than that; he felt distinctly uncomfortable. He looked over his shoulder and gave the thumbs-up.

“Okay. Jan, you’ve got it?”

“Yes, got it.”

With one of them on each side, they lifted up the heavy wooden truss, and Theo leaned forward as far as his balance allowed, watching, making sure it was centred.

“A little to the left,” he directed, letting go of the wall to gesture and nearly overbalancing. His breath caught between his teeth, and his heart leapt painfully.

“How about now? Theo?” There was the slightest note of hurry up in Jan’s voice.

“Right, ah, no, no, it’s still not on all the way. It’s no good, it’s not going to fit- Oh! Put it back down, quick.”

They did, and Jan looked up at Theo with his head tilted to the side, squinting in the sunlight. “What is it?”

“It’s not going to fit, because this one is too far forward, see? You didn’t push it all the way in.”

“I can’t see,” said Jan with a short laugh, “but I believe you. Can you fix it?”

Could he fix it? “Yeah, definitely,” he said confidently, leaning over a bit to get a better look. It wasn’t far off at all. Two inches to the left maybe, and another inch further back, and it would be perfect. Just a little push. That was obviously well within his limits.

“Wait,” Dirk began, “it’s okay, Theo, I can-“

“I got it,” Theo said, leaning just a little further forward- just enough to grab the misaligned edge of the truss- just enough to tip his centre of gravity past the point of no return.

He fell with a sharp cry of shock- falling? I never fall!- and his hand, grasping instinctively to catch him, brought the roof truss down with him. They crashed down onto the concrete floor together, and the rough surface tore through Theo’s palms and knees like paper before heavy beams fell onto his back.

Jan was yelling, Dirk was yelling. Theo couldn’t make any of it out through the ringing in his ears. “I’m okay,” he tried to say, but he had no breath to say it with, and the attempt sent a stabbing pain into his chest. 

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

“Theo! Damn! I got you, I got you-“ Dirk’s voice. Suddenly the weight was gone. He managed a short breath before being cut off by an agonizing coughing fit that tried to twist his body in half and brought tears to his eyes.

“Huh… Fuh… fine… ‘m fine.“

“Are you sure? That looked really bad.” Jan’s voice, full of concern. Theo gritted his teeth and pushed himself up on his elbows.

“Yeah, ‘m sure,” he hissed. He winced as he got his weight off his knees and stood up, steadying himself against a wall. “Looked… worse than it was.” He couldn’t get his breath back. Fuck, he hoped he hadn’t broken a rib. Blinking the dust out of his eyes, he looked down at his skinned hands and torn jeans and swallowed down a cough, his shoulders shaking momentarily.

Dirk stepped over the fallen truss to stand next to him. “What happened?”

Of course he would wonder. Theo never fell down, never lost his balance, never did anything so clumsy and stupid. “The… wall moved. Wasn’ expecting it.”

A poor excuse, and to judge by the looks on the faces of his brother and father, neither of them were buying it. Damage control time. He stepped away from the wall and made a show of brushing the dust off his jeans, biting his tongue to keep from grimacing in pain when that dust stuck to the raw flesh of his palms. “Guess we’d better… get that back up there,” he said as casually as he could manage.

“Yeah,” Jan agreed uncertainly as Theo turned away to catch his breath. He couldn’t quite manage it. His chest was starting to burn.

It took some awkward maneuvering to get the truss out of the shed and back into lifting position, and Theo thought he made a good show of it. He held one end of the beam, despite his hands burning as though he was holding hot coals, and in breathing shallowly through his teeth, kept the pain in his chest to a non-distracting level.

As soon as he let his end fall to the grass, though, the pain flared up savagely. He flinched and stumbled back, and his feet no longer seemed to be in contact with the ground. In fact, no part of him seemed to be in contact with anything. He was floating.

The world tilted wildly. Someone yelled his name from far away: two sharp syllables of alarm.

For the second time in five minutes, he fell.

[thenegativelee]

hi hi!

my name’s coco, and i’m pretty new to the whump community! i don’t really know how interaction on tumblr works much, but i’ve always enjoyed reading through prompts (and by extension, creating them) so here i am!

if you’re a whump blog, can you reblog this? i’m trying to find as many people as i can who are in the community haha.

[thenegativelee]

@nicolethewhumpatee

*supports everyone who makes OCs just to ship them with canon characters*

[thenegativelee]

I finally got a new bthb card! Please send me some requests!

[thenegativelee]

I love a good betrayal!

Can you give me some superhero whump? I'm really upset...

Anon, I have been working on this since I first got your message yesterday and I have to admit it: I suck at writing superhero whump. In fact, I suck at writing superheroes, full stop. I tried; believe me, I tried–I even got all collaborative and collected advice from other whump writers and it still didn’t work. The best I could do was some minor-minor underling of a villain getting knocked around by a gritty Batman expy. So with that said:

HEY WHUMPBLR: HELP A NON OUT WITH SOME SUPERHERO WHUMP!!

[thenegativelee]

“So how long do you think you can keep this up for, Shrike?”

The villain’s tone is mocking. He flits around her, appearing in her peripheral vision for a millisecond before vanishing again. She tracks him by his voice and the buzz of his wings, keeping her eyes on her task, and doesn’t answer. 

“Not long enough, I don’t think,” he continues casually. “Not if you can’t spare any energy for one of your famous snarky comebacks. You’re feeling it, aren’t you? And how many people are still in there? Too many. It’s hopeless.”

His tactics are childish, blunt, and highly effective. She can’t let them get to her, and she can’t look down for even a moment at the waves of people streaming out of the building to see if he’s right. She’s looking at a blank concrete wall, thirty storeys up, but her awareness extends far beyond it. Her hands aren’t just supporting the skyscraper’s weight, but also maintaining the energy tendrils that snake through its pillars and beams, keeping it from falling apart. A moment of distraction and it’ll all be over.

The sirens below are trying her patience.

Ten minutes have passed since the bomb went off. She could swear that Mosquito-Man hasn’t stopped talking for even a second in that time.

“You’re losing it,” he gloats. “And as soon as your concentration breaks, down it goes! Think of the noise it’ll make! I wonder how many others it’ll take down with it. Four? Five? A whole block? Or maybe two whole blocks! And just look at the idiots down there, looking up at you. They sure do trust you. You’d better tell them to get clear before it’s too late. Go on, you’ve got a strong voice; they’ll be able to hear you from all the way down there.”

He’s lying. The sirens mean they’re getting people clear. She’s just got to keep it up for a little longer. 

And then… and then… she’ll be able to release her hold in just the right way to make it collapse inward. She’s sure she can do that. It’ll be easy, and nobody will get hurt.

Something shifts inside the building. Dust rains down on Shrike’s head from above, and a deep groan of slowly twisting steel makes her grit her teeth. Mosquito-Man laughs. “Whoops! Be careful! That sounded bad. Are you sure you’re up to this, rookie? Maybe you should have called in Shockwave.”

“I could- crush you with my bare hands,” she snarls.

“Oho! So, you can talk! Well, why don’t you, then? Come and get me!” He hovers above her, tapping his foot against the top of her head, and she bites her tongue.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Something else shifts, and this time the whole structure shakes. The voices from far below suddenly seem much louder and clearer than the laughing voice behind her- they’re too close, they’re all going to die, there must be thousands of people still in this building and watching from what they think is a safe distance.

Is the building getting heavier? Her muscles are on fire. Flying is supposed to be easy. 

Has she lost height?

Are her hands sliding?

Her confidence slips, and her instincts take over. “GET AWAY!” she screams; her voice echoes through the streets. “You’ll all be killed! Get away now!”

The buzz of wings behind her recedes. She hears a quiet laugh of triumph before he’s gone, and then the only noise she can hear is the sound of a thousand panes of glass shattering at once. Her concentration has broken, and so has the energy field holding the collapsing building together. Everyone’s out. They must be. 

“Move! Run!” she howls, her voice breaking. She can’t even hear herself. There’s no way anyone else can hear her. 

And she’s got no energy left to try again, not now that she’s pouring every ounce of what she’s got left into her flight. Just a few more seconds- there are still people down there, they’re too close, but if she can just slow the fall, control it-

She can’t. The last of her strength is gone so suddenly that it takes her a moment to realize she’s falling. The vast concrete wall falls after her in slow motion, blocking out the sun. Then she and it are gone in a cloud of dust and a roar like the end of the world.

Can you give me some superhero whump? I'm really upset...

Anon, I have been working on this since I first got your message yesterday and I have to admit it: I suck at writing superhero whump. In fact, I suck at writing superheroes, full stop. I tried; believe me, I tried–I even got all collaborative and collected advice from other whump writers and it still didn’t work. The best I could do was some minor-minor underling of a villain getting knocked around by a gritty Batman expy. So with that said:

HEY WHUMPBLR: HELP A NON OUT WITH SOME SUPERHERO WHUMP!!