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gift giving

Richard John Grayson, age ten

“We’re going to the zoo?” Dick asked excitedly, peering at the tickets in his hand.  Alfred had just barely managed to stop Bruce from buying the zoo.  “Asterous!”

“And I made you a cake,” Bruce said, nervousness plainly visible.  Dick’s excitement muted to skepticism, clearly aware of his foster father’s failings in the kitchen, but Bruce had been determined to get this right, and the resulting cake was quite gorgeous.

Dick’s eyes widened as Alfred set it on the table, until the boy looked like he would fall over in a breeze.  “Bienenstich,” he whispered, his face beginning to scrunch up, “I—you remembered—”

“I know this birthday can’t compare to your last one,” Bruce said quietly, “But I wanted you to have a piece of your old home.”  Bruce had done more than that—he’d tracked down the exact recipe of the Bienenstich cake that Dick had admitted was a special treat for him in the circus, and mixed together pasty cream and dough and honey-almond glaze with the same concentration he brought to fear toxin antidotes.

Dick was definitely crying now, and Alfred had to nudge Bruce to go and hug him, the man looked panicked that he’d done something wrong.

The cake was every bit as delicious as it looked.

~#~

Richard John Grayson, age eighteen

“I—have a gift for you,” Bruce said awkwardly.  The tension in the room was stifling, but Dick made a good show of ignoring it, tapping away on his phone and distractedly eating the rest of the cake Alfred had made on very short notice.

Dick had informed them yesterday that he would be spending his birthday at Titans Tower, with his friends, and wouldn’t be returning for several weeks, and the resultant argument was still simmering in the air.  Only Alfred’s intervention that Dick would be either leaving on the weekend or in a week, but in the latter case he might not come back, had stopped Bruce from grounding Dick.

“Great,” Dick said flatly, not looking up from his phone, “What is it.”

“It’s—downstairs,” Bruce said, and Alfred knew that the dispassion in his tone was a way to avoid sounding anxious.  “Come join me when you’re done.”

Again, haste turning the request into an order, and Alfred inwardly sighed as Dick bristled, expression turning to a scowl that only grew deeper once he realized that Bruce had already fled.

Dick ate the rest of the cake in ill temper, and stayed in his seat when he was done, still doing something on his phone.  Alfred cleared his throat when he finished cleaning the table, and that hostile expression snapped his way.

“I believe Master Bruce wanted to show you something downstairs,” Alfred said, light but firm.  Dick’s expression twisted tighter as he pushed out of the chair, but at least there were no further histrionics.

“What could he possibly have waiting for me here?” Dick said coldly as they descended the stairs, “He made it clear that Robin’s done, and I’m not interested in getting another lecture.”

Because all of them were aware that Dick was going straight back into vigilantism with the Titans, regardless of what Bruce wanted.

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There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"

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A pleasant surprise.

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A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

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Fanfic tiktok is wild... I see so many people saying shit like "I could never read anything below 60k!!", or "What story can you even tell in under 5k words?" or "A oneshot below 10k isn't even a story!" or "I always filter completed fics by 100k< only!"

And I'm like...

A) which fandoms are you reading fics for where you have this kind of offerings on the regular?

B) have you heard of short stories? If you truly think every story NEEDS to be longform to connect with people, I sincerely feel sorry for you.

C) Average novel length is between 50k to 100k. I'm sorry, but CONSISTENTLY demanding fic writers to push out fics of that length is insane. Just think about it: YOU DEMAND AUTHORS TO PUT OUT FICS THAT COMPARE TO COMMERCIAL NOVELS IN LENGTH (AND QUALITY) AS A BASELINE.

Yall are wilding.

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#dirty minds worldwide

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So far, Jason’s return to Gotham was going horribly.

Sure, it had started on a high—the drug trade had been easier to take over than he’d expected, even if he had to hold back the nausea every time he saw a collection of syringes or packets of pills.  Black Mask had done exactly what Jason predicted he would do, and the Joker had escaped from Arkham exactly as planned.

And then Batman had looked him in the eyes—as Jason begged, as he pleaded his father to kill the greatest monster of Jason’s nightmares—and walked away.

Even the explosion he’d wired hadn’t managed to do its job—not on him, not on the clown, not on the Bat.

Jason had managed to recoup some of his losses by going after the Replacement—the kid that Bruce actually cared about, the black-haired blue-eyed heir he wanted—and proving that he was still the superior fighter, but it was a hollow victory.  There was no real satisfaction in trashing the Tower—it had never been his the way it had been Dick’s—and his enjoyment had soured by the time he met Drake’s wide, scared, hurt eyes and choked him out.

He’d managed to demonstrate that their security was laughable and their baby heroes pathetic, but he’d left a fifteen-year-old unconscious and beaten on the floor in the process.  It had left a bad taste in his mouth, one even the soothing, green-laced rage couldn’t wipe, and he could still hear the kid’s lost, confused, desperate voice.

“Jason—stop—why are you doing this?  Bruce loves you!  Just come home!”

In the moment, it had only stoked his fury.  Now it matched the roiling disgust in his stomach.  The disgust at Batman.  At the oh-so-sanctimonious heroes.  At this filthy, stinking garbage pile of a city.

At himself.

He—he needed a break.  From the violence.  From the killing.  From the rage.  He needed to get out of this fucking city before he lost his mind, and there was only a couple of things he wanted to take with him.

Unfortunately, some of them were in the Manor.

A photo of him and his mother.  The old, faded red hoodie Jason had refused to let Alfred throw out.  His books.

Before, Jason might’ve asked Bruce’s permission—before he broke into the Tower and beat up the kid—but now Jason was forced to wait until he got news that Bruce Wayne was in London for a business trip—coinciding neatly with the intel that the Justice League had a big, week-long space mission—before he dared to sneak into his old home.

He didn’t try his security codes.  They would’ve definitely fixed that after he pointed out that glaring mistake in Titans Tower.  But Jason had spent more than three years at the Manor, and he’d long since mastered getting into or out of the house without setting off any alarms.

The first bedroom after the stairs was the one with the window that didn’t latch all the way, and the security system couldn’t register whether it was open or closed.  It was a little difficult to reach, involving free-climbing up two floors, but Jason had been Robin and now had League training under his belt and it was easy to haul himself up on the ledge and jimmy the window open.

The bedroom remained barren, bed stripped, desk and closets empty, the room cold with the chill of desertion, and Jason shivered as he toed his shoes off on habit and headed for the door.  Alfred usually went with Bruce on his ‘business trips’, so the Manor should be empty, leaving enough time for Jason to get whatever he wanted.

He had the petty thought that he could leave behind some random destruction—if he was leaving Gotham anyway, he might as well leave a message that even their precious Manor wasn’t as safe as they purported.

But Alfred was the one he’d really hurt, and Jason didn’t want to do that.

Jason tiptoed across the hall on automatic, his steps silent and muffled as he crossed to his old bedroom door.  He paused for a moment to scan it, making sure no one had added any traps, and hoped that his stuff was still inside this room.  He didn’t want to have to hunt through the massive house, and if they gave his room to the Replacement, he was going to fucking set something on fire.

Slow, shuffling steps sounded from the stairs, accompanied by the tinkle of glass and china, and Jason paused.  That didn’t sound like Alfred.  The Manor was supposed to be empty.  Who—

Messy black hair came into view, blue eyes firmly fixed on the wobbling tray held in one shaky hand, the other attempting to hold up a crutch as the Replacement limped up the stairs.

Fucking fantastic.  Jason wondered if he had enough time to slip inside the room before the kid looked up—his attention was pretty firmly fixed on the tray with a bowl of stew and a slice of cake—but he was frozen by the dark, fading bruises across the kid’s face.

Around his throat, finger marks obvious.  The awkward way he was holding the crutch—Jason remembered dislocating that shoulder.  The cast wrapped around the left ankle—Jason could still hear the sickening snap of bone, the scream, the sound of his chuckles over suppressed sobs—

The kid looked up, three steps past the edge of the stairs.  And Jason watched the blood drain from his face.

The tray hit the floor with a resounding clatter, china splintering and skidding in all directions.

The Replacement stumbled back—and abruptly remembered that there was nothing behind him but empty space, jerking sideways before Jason could even start the instinctive ‘look out’.  He flinched, and Jason realized that he’d just stumbled onto the china shards.

Another panicked step—but the shards were clearly digging into the kid’s bare feet and when his good leg spasmed, his bad leg buckled completely, sending the kid crumpling to the ground.

Jason stepped forward automatically, one hand raising—and froze when the kid jerked back, pressing against the railing and all but scrambling into the corner.

Blue eyes were wide and shining, face drawn pale, breaths too fast and too shallow as his chest fluttered, knees drawn up and hands slightly extended, as though to ward him off.  Jason swallowed, and stepped back.

Okay.  He got the message loud and clear.  He was clearly the monster here.  Jason kept his mouth shut, and stalked back to his old bedroom.

~#~

His bedroom was just the way he left it, which was both exactly what Jason wanted, and also extremely creepy.  No one had even tidied up the homework sheets on his table.  It would make sense if the room had been locked and dusty, but it looked as though Jason had just stepped out yesterday.

It was enough to make anyone a little bit dizzy.

Jason retrieved the items he was looking for—the picture with his mom, his old hoodie, a couple of worn copies of books that had ‘property of Jason Todd’ marked in loopy handwriting.  He wanted to take more stuff, but that meant sitting down and figuring out which stuff was his, and which stuff Bruce had bought him, and the Replacement would’ve already set off the alarm so Jason didn’t have much time.

He hadn’t considered the kid in any of his plans—he’d figured that the kid had gone with Alfred and Bruce, or with Nightwing, or somewhere—and barely managed to tamp down on the seething annoyance.  The Replacement was always getting in the way.

Well, at least Jason was going far, far from here.  He’d never have to set eyes on that scrawny little shit again.

Jason collected his stuff and headed for the door—he’d planned to stay another night in Gotham, but he wasn’t up to dealing with the return of a furious Batman and Nightwing.  He’d have to pack the rest of his stuff quickly, and get out, and—

The lunch tray was still on the floor, stew in a growing puddle, cake a soggy lump, shards of the broken plate and bowl scattered all over the hallway.  Jason hadn’t exactly expected the kid to have cleaned the mess, but he had expected the kid to be gone.  Hiding.  Or confronting him with that stick, if the kid was particularly determined and had no common sense.

He hadn’t expected the shivering, curled-up form in the corner, knees up, head tucked down, arms wrapped firmly around shins.  Or the quiet, shuddering breaths, or the choked gasps.

Jason stared at the Repla—at Robin, pressed firmly into the corner like he was trying to make himself a smaller target, and felt the pit of his stomach drop.

He hadn’t moved.  Jason had spent—had spent at least five minutes in the room, and the kid hadn’t moved.

Jason took a step towards the room he’d entered through.  He needed to leave.  Clearly the kid thought—and Jason couldn’t exactly fault him—but Jason needed to go.  Once he left, the kid would come out of it.  Eventually.  Jason couldn’t exactly call anyone, the only numbers he remembered were the ones to the Manor, and they would’ve locked him out of everything in the Cave.

Red.  There was red pooling under the kid’s feet.  The pieces of broken china littered the floor like a minefield, and that was way too much bleeding to be a minor wound.  That was the kind of bleeding that needed immediate attention and probably stitches.

Jason swallowed.

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Peruvian whistling vessels simulating animal calls (some of the oldest found date to c. 500–300 BCE)

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MONIQUE LHUILLIER Fall/Winter RTW 2024 if you want to support this blog consider donating to:ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

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The zoomster

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Today’s card is: A 3x5 index card