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headcans-oneshots-and-stuff · 3 years

Text

Overworked

Fandom: DC Pairing: Batsis!reader x Batfamily Word count: 3k Summay: Your on your way to be the next C.E.O. of Wayne Enterprises, but the road is filled with challenges and a lack of self-care that your family can’t help but worry about (based on this) Warning: Slight angst and unconciousness, near death experience Requested by a pretty great Anon: Can you do a one shot of future ceo batsis overworking herself with long days and vigilante nights and she’s basically not sleeping or taking care of herself and batfams gotta step in and make her listen to reason.

The cup of coffee had already grown cold, the liquid inside it stale and surely undrinkable, when you reached for it. Hardly the first few drops of the liquid had ran down your throat when you realized the horrible transition it had gone through from the nectar of productivity to the lovechild of tar and sulfur, your face distorting into an expression of utmost disgust as you quickly put it back down and besides the other six paper-cups that were all half-filled at most. You sighed when you realized that it must have already been an hour since you had made - and after completely forgot about - the coffee. It really was a cursed circle that you had been going through for the last eight hours. You made a cup, brought it to your office, drank a bit, forgot about it and realized how horrible it now tasted half an hour or so later and then you took at least another twenty minutes before deciding to head for your next cup. Was it already time for the next one? No, it could wait a bit longer. You turned your attention back to the screen in front of you - or rather the three screens - and let your eyes fly over all the data and graphs and numbers that you had to have in a presentable form by next morning for the monthly debriefing. This time would be your first time without Bruce on the sidelines and overlooking your work, a fact that made you feel proud at your accomplishment while simultaneously scaring you to the core. You knew that logically it wouldn’t be different than the last two - which you had also done basically solo with Bruce only sitting beside you silently observing - but there was still that internal voice that told you that without your father by your side the board would rip you apart until nothing was left over. You didn’t know what exactly caused it but suddenly you felt dizzy and the letters and numbers in front of you started swimming around, turning into absolute gibberish, the neon-lights of the screen hurting your eyes. No, not the screens themselves, it was the contrast between the brightly lit screens and the darkness that spread out behind them. It was only then that you let your gaze move behind the confines of your office and through the glass doors to the rest of the office space that was completely engulfed in darkness. Now you realized that it wasn’t only that, it was more, there was no soul wandering the floor and no sound beside the ever-so-steady growling of the computer fan and the clicking of your keyboard. “Fuck,” you couldn’t help but mutter when you looked at the clock beside you which already read half past nine. Which meant that you only had half an hour at most before your patrol started. Ignoring the pounding that built up in your head you tried to remember how it was possible for the time to surprise you like that. You had come to work at eight that morning and had spent two hours calling around, checking on contracts and meeting with potential clients, then you had your daily briefing with the department heads - which had extended into almost an hour because Brad from PR really couldn’t get his shit together - then you had to talk to HR about finding a possible replacement for Brad from PR and after you had started working on the numbers. And now you were standing in the elevator on your way to the car park. Did you have Lunch today? No, you had to skip Lunch break for Brad. What about Breakfast? No, wait, you forgot about that too. You rubbed your eyes and felt the need to curse rise again when you realized that you’d have to get right back to the numbers as soon as you had finished patrol which meant that you wouldn’t be able to sleep yet again. What was that? The fourth night in a row? Your only solace was the possibility that you’d maybe finish quickly and get a good one to two hours before you had to be back in the office, but deep inside you knew that it was unlikely. It hadn’t worked the last four nights either. But you’d pull through. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. After tomorrow’s meeting you’d go home at a normal time and indulge yourself in that full meal your stomach had been begging you for, sleep for a full eight hours and maybe even watch a movie if you felt especially crazy. Just for one night you’d really let yourself go. But for that to be possible you had to bite your teeth together and stay on your path.

The elevator arrived at the car park and you quickly rushed to your car and made your way to your apartment which - for maximum efficiency - was only a five minute drive away from the Wayne Ent. Tower, where you quickly rushed into the hidden side room to change into your gear. As you checked the time you realized that you still had a good five minutes before you had to check in with your father and you had to very quickly decide between your two options: quickly eat something or make and drink another coffee. You decided for the second one, but as you made your way to the kitchen counter where your coffee machine stood you caught a glimpse of the unopened stack of mail on the kitchen island and with a sigh decided to just get that over with, effectively ignoring both your previous options. The letters were rather quickly sorted through and before you knew you were standing on a nearby ceiling and activated your comm. “Y/H/N reporting from area 7.4 in central Gotham.” “Good evening Y/H/N, it’s Oracle, I’ll be your voice in the background tonight,” Barbara’s voice echoed through your ears and after exchanging the usual greetings she quickly gave you the location of a robbery in progress. With quick, experienced movements you jumped over the roofs until you stood on the ceiling of a jewelry which was - luckily for you - made out of glass. There was only a single man in the darkness of the store below you, using a flashlight to clean out the display cases, and he wasn’t especially silent so you used the noise to your advantage as you opened one of the few ceiling windows that were openable and let yourself glide down with a hook. “I think you have to pay for that,” you interrupted the robber who quickly turned around, his face hidden by a black, knitted hat with badly cut out holes for the eyes. He was definitely no professional. The man - obviously panicked - got out a gun with shaky hands and pointed it at you, but before he could even think of shooting you had thrown a batarang and the piece of weaponry landed on the floor too far from him that he could reach it before you. Seemingly not seeing another option the man started charging at you and you just sighed and said: “I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” but by the end of the sentence his fist tried to make contact with your masked face, but you caught his hand expertly and used the momentum to twist it behind his back, grabbing the other one too and with quick movements you had used a pair of handcuffs that you had in your bat-belt™ to chain him to one of the displays before letting him go. “If you’ll excuse me for a second,” you mumbled before walking a few feet away where you told Barbara to contact the police and tell him they didn’t need to hurry. You had just finished the conversation and muted your mic again when the same dizziness as earlier in the office hit you but this time tenfold. It was like the ground was swaying below you and you had to take ahole of a countertop so that you didn’t fall. “Hey, are you okay, you look kinda sick,” the robber asked in an actual concerned voice, but you didn’t answer, instead you quickly used the hook you had attached earlier to let yourself swing out of the window again. “Y/H/N?” Barbara contacted you and you tried your best to swallow down the weakness in your muscles that suddenly seemed to grow over you. “Yeah?” “Bats asks you to meet him on the roof of the Jefferson building down in third.” “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

You gave yourself another few seconds to collect yourself before you did as you were told and made your way over to the roof of the builduing Babs’ had told you to go to, the dark silhouette of your father’s persona already expecting you there. Like you had done so often before, you started to run towards the edge of the building next to it - the one you were currently on - and made yourself ready to jump, only for your muscles to suddenly give up on you and the only thing you felt next was the rushing of air as you were falling and then the sudden stop and pain in your wrist as something caught you. Bruce quickly pulled you up and even with the cowl you could see the concern. “You okay?” he asked, his voice worried which definitely sounded uncanny in connection with what he was wearing. “Uhm yeah, my legs just kind of gave up on me there,” you tried to wave it off with a chuckle, not wanting him to see that you were frightened to your core. “Y/H/N?” he asked again in that voice he had always used when you tried to sneak out at night and lied when he had caught you. He hadn’t used that voice in so long. “I’m serious Batman, everything is okay, it’s no big deal,” you huffed - now defensive - and stood up with your arms crossed in front of your chest. “It is when you suddenly fall from a roof. What would have been if I hadn’t been there to catch you?” he asked, now slight anger edging through the worry, but you couldn’t blame him. “I’m sorry, okay, it won’t happen again,” you sighed and hoped he would just let it go, especially considering that the dizziness started to return. Along with it came the heaviness of your eyelids that you had gotten used to that somehow now seemed to actively pull you down. You raised your hand to rub your eyes - hoping it would put some more live back into you - but even that slight movement seemed to be too much as the world started swaying again and you felt gravity getting the best of you. Something black started moving in front of you and you weren’t quite sure if you were falling unconscious or if it was Bruce who came towards you to catch your falling form, but it turned out to be latter when you found yourself being lowered to the ground and propped against the end of one of the vantilator shafts of the building with Bruce kneeling beside you. “You’re definitely not okay,” he muttered as he held your face in his hands to get you to look at him. “I’m just a little bit tired is all,” you tried to argue, but your voice was weak and almost started lulling. “When was the last time you slept? Or ate?” You shut your eyes in concentration as you tried to remember. “Wait I know the answer to that one,” you muttered but almost fell asleep, only being kept away when your head started falling downwards, “What did you ask again?” “When was the last time you slept an entire night?” he tried again, this time more specific. “What day is it today?” “Friday.” “Then I think it was Monday,” you whispered since suddenly the loud noise of your voice seemed to pierce your skull apart. “You were on Patrol from nine to two a.m. on Monday,” Bruce disagreed and you almost chuckled. “Yes, and after I went to bed and got a full five hours. That’s pretty good isn’t it,” you couldn’t help but smile almost proudly, your mind starting to fog up with bubblegum coloured smoke that made it impossible to think straight. “And when did you last eat?” Bruce sighed, worry and recognition crossed his face. He himself must have known too well what you were going through. You averted your eyes and looked down at your lap where you played with your hands like an embarrassed child. “Also Monday,” you mumbled and Bruce immediately shook his head. “That’s not okay, you have to take care of yourself Y/H/N, you’re no good for anyone when you don’t.” You weren’t sure if it was only tired paranoia that made you see only disappointment on your fathers face - that ignored all the worry - but suddenly the prospect of having disappointed him, the one thing that you were trying to avoid ever since you could remember, made tears well up in your eyes and your lip quiver, “‘M sorry,” you could just press out before the tears started rolling. Bruce immediately regretted his tone of voice, but he knew nothing he would say now would be remembered by you so he just pulled you up from the roof and started carrying your already passing out form towards the batmobil. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow…”

The feeling of waking up rested was foreign to you, especially since it wasn’t one of your four separate alarms that woke you, and caused you to immediately sit up, only to be pulled back into the mattress. Your eyes flew open and explored your surroundings. The chandelier above you, with rainbow-coloured glass-pendants and the dark blue dealing with the painted stars immediately calmed you again. This room was your childhood bedroom which meant that you were in the manor, which in turn meant that you were safe. For a moment the calm was pretty nice, but then you remembered your case of immovability and looked down at where your wrists came out from under the cover. They were bound by silky bands and a move of your feet told you that the same was the case for them. While you were contemplating ways to get out of the unbelievably good, but still comfortable restraints, the door started to open and you turned as well as you could towards where you smallest (figuratively and literally) brother entered. “Your awake?” he asked in his usual stern voice, but you had known him for long enough to recognize the hidden worry. “Yeah, mind telling me why I’m strapped to my bed?” “Forced self-care,” he stated matter-of-factly and you couldn't help but narrow your eyes. “What?” “You fainted on Patrol, father says you haven’t eaten or slept since last Monday so we took measures to make sure you wouldn’t kill yourself with how careless you are.” You wanted to reply with something snarky, but you were well aware that what he said was probably right. “I’m sorry okay, I just had a lot on my plate, but you’re right and I feel a lot better now that I had some sleep, so you can let me go again,” you tried to smooth your way out of there, but you had the slight suspicion that it was hopeless. “I respect your try but you will not be let go until father is certain that you’re better.”

“But I am better!” you whined and tried yet again to wiggle yourself out of the restraints. Damian just raised his eyebrows unimpressed. He walked over to a chair that was standing beside your bed and as you followed him with your eyes you noticed the shutted curtains and the small gap of light between them. “What time is it anyways?” you sighed and felt surprise when you had to hold back a yawn. “It’s about 8 a.m.” Your eyes widened. That meant you had enough time to get to the office! “Please Dami, you gotta let me go, I have to get to the board meeting,” you begged, starting to wiggle more and more, but to no avail. “But Ukthi, you-” “No you don’t understand! This is my first time alone, I can’t let dad down, I have to be able to pull through with this if I ever want to make it as the next C.E.O. Dad wasn’t allowed a break either.” “Ukthi-” “Damian please, please, I promise I’ll come back right after and take care of myself, but I have to do this if I-” “Ukthi! The board meeting was yesterday. You slept for over 24 hours!” Damian shouted to get you to stop interrupting him and when you realized the weight of his words you sunk back down into the pillow. “What? But I was supposed to…” “Father just postponed it, he didn’t leave room to argue, he also gave you the week off from patrol and work.” If your hands weren’t bound you’d probably sunken your face into them in shame. You tried to hold tears back as you looked away from Damian. “Y/N?” he asked and came closer. “I’m sorry, It’s just- how am I supposed to handle being the C.E.O. of Wayne Enterprise if I can’t even handle little things like board meetings? How am I supposed to take after dad?” “Y/N, you keep on saying how father managed to lead the business on his own, and how you should be able too, but you’re not alone. You’re not supposed to be either. You have all of us by your side for a reason and we won’t leave you alone with this. We’re here for you and you shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for help. We’re family, we love you and we want to support you with all we can. “For now, how about you rest a little bit more and then I’ll let you out of bed to get a proper meal, Alfred made your favorite. After that I’m afraid Father will want to have a word with you.” “Oh shucks….”

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invisibleanonymousmonsters · 3 years

Text

Civilian

Character: Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

Summary: Jason Todd is used to saving the innocent. But he’s not used to them saving him.

Word Count: 3,100 – One Shot

“Fuck me,” Jason groaned as he stumbled across the rooftops.

How he was able to even walk right now was beyond him.

He had Slade on the ropes. Just one more punch to put him off balance and Jason would’ve shoved a knife into his jugular and be done with him. But Slade had a few more tricks up his sleeve and decided to flee instead of finish a losing battle, so he ran like a coward.

It left Jason utterly irritated and with a huge gash in his side, amongst other various injuries.

He could’ve called one his “friends” or someone in his “family.” But he was stubborn. He wanted to be stronger than that. He wanted to prove that he didn’t need any of them. He was better than that. He was the best. And he’d risk bleeding out to prove it to them – or really…himself.

But his body wasn’t on the same page.

And it finally had enough.

Jason stumbled to his knees on a rooftop. He groaned as his vision became hazy.

His helmet had a protective system in place so no one could take it off if he was unconscious. They’d get a nice little shock if they tried. His identity would be safe even if someone stumbled upon his injured body… or corpse.

Jason managed to roll onto his back and was met with the smoggy Gotham sky.

“Get the fuck up,” he told himself aloud.

He blinked, trying to straighten and clear his vision.

But it was useless.

The last thing Jason remember seeing was the Bat signal reflecting off of the cloudy sky. Somewhere in the city, there was more crime to fight and he’d just be another asshole who thought he could put a stop to it.

Dying didn’t scare Jason anymore. He’d done it once before, and he could do it again. What did it matter now anyway?

But Jason didn’t die.

He woke up on a couch. Well, if one could even call it that. His 6’4 frame could barely fit on the thing. His legs were hanging off the end, not able to comfortably fit on the thing.

His head felt like it was having the worse hangover of his life. When he opened his eyes, he blinked at the incoming sunlight. Then he realized he wasn’t looking through the programming of his Red Hood helmet.

Then he touched his face to realize that his backup domino mask had also been removed, leaving his identity exposed.

His eyes widened in slight panic as he looked around.

He appeared to be a in a small apartment – normal, no threats detected.

Then Jason looked down to realize he wasn’t in his uniform. In fact, his chest was bare and he was only in his black briefs. His autopsy scars on full display.

But just half a foot away from him, his clothes were neatly folded into a pile on the edge of the coffee table. His two guns were sitting right next to them.

Whoever had brought him here clearly didn’t see him as a threat. Stupid on their part. There were about two dozen other weapons hiding in the crevices of his clothes too.

But the more concerning thing was that Jason didn’t have a single wound on his body. The giant gash to his side that had made him faint and nearly die from blood loss was nowhere to be found. After all these years, Jason was still figuring out the side effects from being dumped into the Lazarus pit. But this couldn’t be related, could it?

Suddenly there was the sound of the apartment door opening.

On instinct alone, Jason shot up, grabbed one of his guns, and found his target.

What he wasn’t expecting to find was a beautiful woman, probably only just a little bit younger than him, standing with a coffees in a carrier tray and a bag in the other hand. She had earbuds in, further disorienting her from such a welcome. Her eyes went wide and the rest of her body was completely frozen.

After a few seconds, she slowly tugged her headphones out.

“Is the gun really necessary?” She asked.

But Jason could tell from her body language that she was scared.

“Who the hell are you?”

She had enough courage to glare at his tone. “I’m the person who saved your life, asshole.”

“Yeah? And how exactly did you do that?”

She seemed to be getting less scared and more angry with every sentence Jason said.

“If you put the fucking gun down, I’ll tell you.”

Jason hesitated before finally putting it down. Then his behavior caught up to him. Here was this stranger, who was clearly innocent and had helped him…and his first thought was to point a gun at the poor thing.

“Sorry,” he finally gasped. “It’s…a habit.”

She just eyed him, neither rejecting or accepting his apology.

She sat on the love seat opposite of the couch that he’d taken over.

With an innocent look, she slowly put a coffee cup on the table and the bag.

“I’m not much of a cook… so I picked up breakfast. It’s just a black coffee. I figured you didn’t like anything fancy.”

“T-Thank you,” he stuttered out, trying his best not to sound harsh.

Those words were strange coming out of his mouth. And Jason couldn’t figure out if it was because he’d completely lost his manners or there wasn’t anything someone had done for him lately that warranted any sort of thanks.

“I’m sorry about taking off your clothes,” she suddenly said. “I would’ve given you something. But…well…I don’t have anything even close to your size. Even my oversized clothing wouldn’t have fit.”

Jason was about to tell her it was OK, but she continued.

“Not that I would’ve even been able to put it on you. I hardly got your clothes off.”

Jason smirked at that. “Speaking of which, how the hell did you get my helmet off.”

“Yeah…I managed to get you to come to for a minute or so.” Then she shifted in her seat, clutching her coffee tighter as if it was a security blanket. “I honestly just asked you very nicely. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone what you looked like. You were kind of just…a zombie or something and…took it off.”

Then he took her stature in. Jason knew he was a big guy. He was bigger than the majority of men. He’d only met a few women in his life that were taller than him, and they were all either Amazons or aliens.

This young woman was neither of those things.

“How did you get me off that roof?”

She laughed, seeing that he was trying to add it up in his head. “I’m definitely no Superman. My neighbor doesn’t have any other hobbies besides going to the gym. He owed me a favor.” Then her eyes widened. “Don’t worry, he didn’t see you without your helmet. He’s also sworn to secrecy.”

Jason shrugged. “It’s fine if he did. I can just kill him later.”

He saw her whole body tense up at that.

“Relax. I’m kidding.”

Her tension was released, but she didn’t find his joke very funny.

Then her eyes locked to the floor.

Jason took this chance to study her.

Her hair was a bit of a mess. But there was still a halo around it as the sun shined from behind her. Her jeans were a bit baggy, but purposely so. She was wearing a band t-shirt that was so worn that there were a few holes in it.

Jason had to acknowledge that she was beautiful. But he had made note of that as soon as he’d pointed a gun at her.

“I ended last night with a life-threatening injury…amongst other things,” Jason said as he looked down at his body. “I woke up with not even a scratch on me. So why don’t you tell me how the hell that’s possible?”

She finally raised her gaze from the floor to him. Then she swallowed and clenched her jaw. It was clear she had been hoping for a scenario where Jason didn’t ask any questions, where he would just give his thanks and move on.

But she wasn’t that lucky.

“Hey,” he said gently. “You’ve seen my face. You know who I am now. Whatever it is you’re scared to tell me, we’ll be even.”

She stared at him a bit longer before taking in a shaky breath. “I…umm…can do this thing.”

“Uh huh,” he encouraged.

“I can heal people by…umm…touching them?”

Jason sat back, letting the information settle. “Huh,” he said with small nod.

“I saved your life,” she told him. “All I ask in return is that you keep my secret.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he told her.

She nodded nervously, but didn’t seem fully convinced.

“What’s your name?” He asked her softly.

She looked unsure if she should tell him.

“I’m Jason. Jason Todd.” He offered to even the playing field.

She tilted her head, probably because she heard that name before. Everyone in Gotham had at some point. The tragic death of Bruce Wayne’s second adopted son. And then the dead son who had somehow come back, his death misidentified. There were hundreds of rumors about what really happened. But they all sounded ridiculous to her.

“Y/N,” she finally told him.

“Thank you for saving my life, Y/N.” He scratched the back of his neck. “But I have to ask why you did.”

After all, the neighborhood she lived in was weary of Gotham’s vigilantes. Some believed they were keeping them safe, while others thought they were just making things worse. It led to a general distrust of the masked heroes.

“They say the Red Hood used to be Robin,” she told him quietly.

“I don’t pay attention to what people say…”

Y/N leaned forward. “But is it true? Were you Robin back then?”

Jason ground his teeth together. “That was a lifetime ago.”

She watched him for a minute, working out whether she wanted to share something or not.

“When I was a little girl, I was at the bank with my mom when a robbery went down. Things went bad and quick. They panicked, decided a little girl was the best hostage to grab. We barely got a few blocks away before Batman intervened. I was terrified, even of him. But Robin was with him…and he could tell I was scared. He wasn’t that much older than me, but he was so much braver. He held my hand until the police came. But even then I wouldn’t let go of him. So, he stayed with me until my mom got there.” She took in a deep and shaky breath. “It meant a lot to me.”

Jason controlled his expression, but he knew what she was talking about. He remembered that night. How he did was beyond him. But it didn’t feel long ago. He remembered thinking the little girl was pretty.

Jason didn’t have a lot of friends back then. He came from the streets but lived in a mansion. He couldn’t figure out who he was back then. And it was hard to relate to other children.

Back then, it was the most intimate interaction he had with someone his age.

“Would you still have saved me last night even if I hadn’t been Robin?”

This was all Y/N would get in terms of Jason admitting that he had been Robin that night.

Y/N shrugged and nodded. Then she cleared her throat. “The only thing saving this shit hole of a city is people doing the right thing.”

Jason stood.

The motion startled Y/N and she followed his action without even meaning to.

Now that he was standing on his own two feet, she truly understood just how absolutely massive he was. She was by no means short and she still felt like she was looking at a giant.

However, Jason misread her gawking for something else. “You don’t have to be scared of me, kid. I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her quietly.

“I’m not scared of you,” she said as her face suddenly felt hot.

Y/N didn’t know what she had expected to see under that red helmet last night. But she definitely wasn’t expecting a man handsome enough to be a model.

But then her brow scrunched, “And I’m not a kid.” Jason smiled – like, genuinely smiled. The muscles on his face forgot what that felt like.

He eyed the band t-shirt she was wearing: Fleetwood Mac – the Rumors album, to be precise.

“You’ve got good taste in music,” Jason complimented.

“Thank you,” Y/N mumbled.

A new tension filled the air.

Something neither of them have felt in awhile – if at all.

Y/N cleared her throat again, starting to feel too close to this large and beautiful man who was only standing in his briefs.

“You can use the shower if you want.”

Jason smirked. “Thanks, but I should get out of your hair. You’ve already done enough for me.”

He took a step toward her, realizing that he seemed to like seeing her reaction to his presence.

She stayed in place, but shifted her weight.

Jason lowered his head a bit. “Your secret is safe with me, Y/N. Thank you again…you saved my life.”

——————

Y/N and Jason couldn’t stop thinking about one another since that morning.

Jason had trust issues. And because of those trust issues, he learned not to rely on others. He refused to be anything besides independent. But those flaws were also the reason it was so hard for him to get close to anyone. He kept people at a distance so he could never be rejected or get his heart broken. It was problematic, but that was how he survived.

But Y/N had shown him kindness and then expected absolutely nothing in return. She just hoped he wouldn’t shoot her brains out when he finally came to.

Meanwhile, Y/N couldn’t remember the last time a man looked at her the way Jason had. Just thinking about the looks he gave her caused goosebumps to shiver across her skin. She’d seen the scars across his skin and knew he’d lived a rough life. And that wasn’t even including the scars his mind and heart held. She wondered who was the last person to help him or to just show him that they cared whether he lived or died.

It had been a few weeks and Y/N still couldn’t get Jason Todd out of her mind. Even now, as she sat on the rooftop of her building once again, eating a pizza she’d just picked up and washing it down with cheap red wine.

She almost spilled said wine all over herself when she jumped from the sound of someone dropping onto the roof from behind her.

Y/N whipped around to see Red Hood walking steadily toward her.

“Sorry. I tried to be loud so I wouldn’t scare you.” His voice sounded different from the helmet distorting it.

“Well, most people use doors and stairs…so I think the effort is pretty useless.”

Jason ignored her joke and pulled out a thick envelope that had been tucked on the inside of his leather jacket.

He handed it to her.

Y/N was confused, but took it from his grasp anyway.

She opened it to find two tickets to see Fleetwood Mac on their reunion tour at Gotham City Stadium.

Her gaze shot up to Jason’s and then she did a double take at the tickets, making sure she wasn’t seeing things.

“How - What - Why?” She finally sputtered out the right question.

Jason just shrugged. “I owed you.”

“T-This is too much. I can’t accept this. These tickets must’ve cost a fortune,” she told him as she tried to hand the envelop back to him.

But he wasn’t having it and simply shook his head.

Y/N knew they cost a fortune because she had looked up tickets. Her heart had broken when she saw how far out of her budget the lowest prices were.

“Take them, Y/N. Please.”

She knew there was no point in arguing.

But she slowly looked up at him. “Would…ummm… Would you like to go with me?”

Jason blinked at the offer. “Seriously?”

Y/N laughed at his surprise. “Yeah, I mean, clearly you’re a fan, too.” Then she shrugged, now self conscious that she’d been too forward. “I don’t know. When was the last time you did something fun?”

Jason was shocked at how right she was.

“Oh, my God!” Y/N suddenly yelped.

Jason immediately jumped into action, grabbing both of his guns and stepping to Y/N in a protective stance.

“Jason, you’re bleeding!” She cried out, not realizing that he had just used his body as a human shield for her to defend an attack that wasn’t even happening.

He relaxed and followed her gaze to his forearm – the small patch of skin between his gloves and the rolled up sleeve of his leather jacket. He had been sliced by a knife. He probably needed to clean it before it got infected and stitch it up.

“Y/N, it’s just a scratch.”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “Come here.”

Then he let her dragged him to the two fold-out chairs she kept on the roof.

Jason realized suddenly that he didn’t mind being bossed around by this woman. In fact, he kind of enjoyed it.

Without asking for permission, Y/N put her palm over his cut.

Jason watched as he felt a comforting warmth wash over the area of skin that she was touching. Within seconds, his cut was completely gone.

Y/N gave it a satisfied smile. No matter how many injuries she healed, the pride and relief never went away.

“You’re fucking amazing, you know that?” Jason was relieved his helmet hid the dumbstruck look that was surely on his face.

Y/N didn’t seem to take the compliment very well and slightly folded into herself.

“So, will you?” She changed the subject quickly.

“Will I what?” But as Jason asked for clarification, he knew that he’d probably do anything Y/N would ask of him.

“Will you go to the concert with me?”

He nodded.

The nonverbal answer was enough for Y/N because she gave him a beaming smile.

In that moment, Jason wondered how he could ever push Y/N away like he had done with everyone else in his life.

And for once, he allowed himself to feel happy.

Maybe he could keep letting himself be happy, as long as it included Y/N.

---------------------------

Really, really loving writing for Jason Todd. I was a little exhausted with Marvel fandom. Let me know what you think!

#jason todd #jason todd fic #jason todd one shot #red hood #red hood fic #red hood one shot #jason todd reader insert #red hood reader insert #jason todd x reader #red hood x reader #batman universe #batman characters #jason todd fluff #red hood fluff

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starfirette · 2 years

Text

Corynorhinus

✨very short. My first battinson fic. I wrote it literally laying in bed on my phone, when I should be sleeping. This fic is such shit and I might delete it LOL

✨ angsty, I went for sad vibes here, I stole some Batman Begins dialogue.

✨ masterlist ~ more battinson to come ❤️

Raindrops pattered the canvas of your black umbrella.

The cloudy sky and the wind chill made you shiver, your teeth rattling in your skull as you watched Bruce hide behind the door.

"You haven't been answering my calls," you said, loudly to be heard over the thunder storm.

Bruce's soft eyes flickered down. "I've been working," he said.

For a brief moment only thunder and rain played between you two.

Bruce carefully opened the door wider, finally revealing his full figure. Bloody gauze and prickly sutures poked from the collar of Bruce's dark tee shirt.

He posed awkwardly at the threshold, staring at a spot on the ground with hard eyes.

"You could look at me, at least," you said firmly. You refused to lose your composure.

Bruce's eyes dragged up, the movement looking painful on his pale eyelids. Purple shadows kissed the bags of his eyes, the darkness like the night he was so fond of. He loved it so much that it had become part of him; the night was a physical feature on Bruce Wayne's face, in those purple shades much like bruises.

"You're sad," Bruce muttered. His words were strained. The thick weight of his voice betrayed his heart.

"I never hear from you," you said. You shrugged, your body shifting back and forth with uneasy distress. You were moments away from falling apart.

It was perhaps a pathetic display. The most pathetic that Bruce Wayne had ever likely seen. You knew Bruce well enough to know that's what he was thinking behind those somber eyes.

You stood on the doorstep of the derelict house, trying to shield yourself from the stinging rain. Beyond Bruce was darkness; more darkness, more shadows.

"I would have never come back if it weren't for you," you told him. You gripped the umbrella for dear life. It was the only physical relic keeping you grounded, and without it you worried you would collapse.

Your words trembled into the rain.

As thick drops pounded the canvas of your umbrella, Bruce stared at you with furrowed brows. He looked so expectant: so ready to listen to your woes.

"After all the death and loss I've felt, I didn't think there was anything left here for me. Gotham felt like a graveyard. But then you...you were selfish."

"You made me fall in love with you. You lured me in with unspoken promises. Security, loyalty, long lasting companionship. I was so willing to leave everything behind to be with both of you. With Bruce and the Bat. I thought that maybe they were one in the same. That Bruce Wayne was the Bat in some weird way.And then it all went to shit. I know that Bruce Wayne loves me. But I don't think that He does."

Bruce's eyes didn't waver as he watched you fidget in place.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you could feel tears slide down your face.

This was to be expected.

You're sure that Bruce knew what you'd been leading up to all this time. There's no way he could be so ignorant. He knew that you'd eventually leave.

And he'd let it happen. He didn't try to stop it. He didn't try to fix the problems that plagued your mind and heart.

You shrugged, rain slipping down the back of the umbrella and splashing the back of your legs. "Maybe one day, when Gotham doesn't need Batman anymore, I'll see him again. The man that loves me. But I can't wait. I can't put my life on hold for him. For either of them."

"Where will you go?" Bruce asked, his voice just a slight decibel higher.

You kicked the ground to show off the black, velvet heels you begrudgingly wore. "Spain. Back to my aunt's estate. I'll stay there for a while. Until it feels better."

Until I'm over you.

The unspoken words littered the air between you.

Bruce used a bandaged hand to brush the fringe of hair from his eyes. He looked handsome with his hair out of his face. He looked like the man you'd fallen in love with.

"I hope that you take care of yourself. And of Alfred. Okay?"

"I love you," Bruce mumbled.

A painful smile spread over your mouth. "Don't say that to me."

You expected him to follow you down the steps of the worn grounds, of the Wayne estate he had recently reaquired. But each clack of your heels against the pavement marked the growing distance between you two. Your heart begged you to turn and look back, to take just one more glance-but you knew better than to torture yourself that way.

Thunder cracked throughout the Gotham countryside as you lowered your umbrella, no longer able to manage the strength and keep it up.

Cold rain sliced your skin. The drops washed your tears away.

You slid into the backseat of your car, pulling the seatbelt in place. "I'm ready," you said softly to the driver.

The car rolled out of the driveway, merging onto the main road. You watched the old Wayne country house grow smaller and smaller in the distance. You hoped that Bruce was still in the doorway, doing just the same with your car. But you knew better than to hold onto such childish hopes and dreams.

You rejected the heat that the car's vents had to offer. You closed them up, despite being cold, and you curled in your seat, leaning your head against the window.

With your arms wrapped around yourself, you tried not to shiver; warmth would only make you sad. It would only remind you of Bruce's arms around you, of the crackling fire place in his bedroom, or of the hot chocolate you drank with Alfred during the insomniatic hours of the night.

You were exhausted.

Your eyelids were heavy, as if threaded with ship anchors. You curled into the warmth of the cashmere coat, taking a deep breath. You'd reject the heat for now. You'd reject the heat until your heart could bear the weight of the emotions.

You'd reject it until your coat no longer smelled like Bruce Wayne.

#bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne x reader #the batman x reader #the Batman imagine #batman x reader #battinson #battinson x reader #Starfirette writes #dc x reader #dc imagine

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writingsbychlo · 4 years

Text

more ways than one (01)

word count; 4951

summary; your first meeting with the stranger you rescued doesn’t go as smoothy as you’d hoped.

notes; I remind y’all that Stiles was possessed, but it veers off and it goes away, it’s not really mentions how, but the nogitsune never splits from Stiles. Allison is still alive, and Malia and Stiles are not a couple. Oh, and Derek is away travelling with Cora. That’s about it.

warnings; violence, choking, aggression.

You chewed on the straw in your mouth absentmindedly, your gaze trailing off into the distance as the girls talked constantly around you. You were vaguely following the conversation as they spoke, the girls chatting loudly about everything you had all been through lately, as though the supernatural was public information and they didn’t care about the opinions of those tables around you all who could easily eavesdrop if they bothered to listen closely.

Your eyes were squinted a little, the sun shining down and giving a warm feeling over the day, despite the storm that was due to set in later on in the day, and Lydia had texted you all this morning and told you to be ready to go for a late lunch while it was warm. She claimed that after everything that had happened with Stiles’ brief run-in with possession, and the year of supernatural crap that had gone down during your sophomore year, that you were all well overdue a lunch date to chat. That, and she was taking the opportunity to introduce Malia to the world of once again being bi-pedal and human.

Said strawberry-blonde snapped her fingers in front of your face, calling your attention to her and your thoughts snapped away from the nightmare you had somehow landed yourself in, your eyes focusing in on her as you pulled your milkshake away from your mouth, smiling as casually as you could as you looked at her. Her eyes were narrowed, lips pursed as she studied you carefully, before her lips were twisting up in a smirk.

“What’cha thinking about so hard there, girly?”

You cleared your throat, shaking your head and smiling casually as you lifted one of your fries to your mouth, chewing on the soft potato as you shrugged at her, trying your best to play it cool, but the four sets of eyes on you were throwing you through a loop. “Nothing.” You watched them carefully, swallowing the milkshake before taking a long sip of your milkshake, the chocolate flavour filling your mouth and she merely hummed, Allison was snickering as she turned to whisper to Kira, and Malia simply watched the interactions, taking the last bite of her double-cheeseburger and licking the sauce from the edge of her mouth, humming happily around the food.

“So, you’re not thinking about a pale and male-covered boy with brown hair and bright eyes?” You practically choked on your drink as Allison questioned you, your eyes wide as you wondered whether they’d found out about the lookalike you’d stashed at Derek’s loft, and you sputtered for an explanation, your cheeks heating up with a red flush, Kira cracking up and slapping the huntress on the arm as the two curled into each other in a fit of giggles.

“She’s totally thinking about Stiles, look at her blushing!”

You felt relief seep into your body as the tension slipped away, your body slumping in the seat as you rolled your eyes, your racing heart calming as your secret remained safe, for now. “Wait, am I missing something? Why would I be thinking about Stiles?”

Lydia picked at her acrylic nails, not even bothering to look up at you as she spoke. “Maybe because you’re totally into each other?”

“What?”

“Oh, come on. You know the two of you have gotten super close, lately!” Allison insisted, and your brows rose as you glanced around the other girls, and Lydia mumbled her agreement as she sipped at her water, a half-eaten salad sitting in front of her.

“When I first met you guys, I thought you were together,” Kira added, and you rolled your eyes, nibbling on your lower lip as embarrassment flooded through your system, the copy-cat male you’d hidden away yesterday slipping from your mind as thoughts of the original filled your thoughts. You loved your best friend, you truly did, and you couldn't deny how much closer you’d gotten to him lately, but it was only because he’d come to you when he started to feel the effects of his possession, confiding in you long before anyone else had. “I think you’d be cute together.”

“Are they not together?” Malia muttered, looking intently at the uneaten food on your plate, and you giggled as you offered it up to her, a bright smile taking over his face as she accepted the plate ad placed it down on top of her own empty one, quickly tucking into your leftover food.

“C’mon girls, he’s totally in love with Lyds, since like third grade. You know this, he’s not exactly subtle.” You teased, knowing it was true. The boy spoke about her all the time, and while he hadn't quite been as vocal about it, you knew he was still pining for the red-head girl.

“Everyone’s a little bit in love with me, but not everyone holds hands with their best friend.” You snorted unattractively, giving her a side-eye and leaning back, your legs crossing proudly as you thought about it.

“When have I ever held hands with Stiles?”

“Uh, like six times over the past three months?” Kira objected, the others all making various sounds of agreement as you watched Malia finish your meal too, a proud smile on her face as she leaned back in her chair, legs parted and hands sitting on her stomach as she groaned happily at the feeling of having a full stomach.

“Three of those times he was unconscious, one of those times he was going into a bathtub full of ice and one of those times he was checking into a nuthouse.” You pointed out, and the banshee counted them off on her fingers, wiggling a finger at you as she smiled.

“That makes five, what about the sixth time?”

You shrugged, deciding to bait them a little, a sigh falling from your lips. “You’re right, me and Stiles are totally and madly in love. You caught us out.” Their jaws dropped as they leaned forwards, a collection of squeals sounding as you tried to keep a straight face, eventually cracking up, and one by one they caught on as they scowled at you, Allison flicking you in the arm and Lydia pinching the other one, and you jumped away from both of them, rubbing your arms as you all but cackled at having fooled them.

The conversation moved on as they began to focus on other things, and you pulled your phone from your pocket, two messages flashing up on the screen and you clicked on the first, rolling your eyes as you opened the message from Stiles.

[batman 🦇💛] bring me ur leftover pizza back from lunch?

can’t, malia ate it, whoops x

[batman 🦇💛] >:( I can’t believe this, does 12yrs of friendship mean nothing to u?!

You grinned, rolling your eyes and tuning out the taunts and whistles you got from the group around you as they realised you were texting your best friend, your fingers flying over the screen as you typed out your reply, checking the time before you did.

according to the girls, it means we r in love x

[batman 🦇💛] ha. funny. ive seen u eat sand. couldnt kiss u now.

shut up, dumbass. I was 6 and u dared me x

[batman 🦇💛] kinda sad to kno the girl i'm in love w/ thinks i love u but that's my luck.

You cooed, rolling your eyes and promising that you’d text him later as you swiped out to the other text, your stomach churning as you realised it was from Derek. Admittedly, he was only asking about his loft, and whether you’d been over to check everything was okay, but it still made guilt twist at your guts before you sent a half-true reply, choosing instead to cover up the real facts.

Instead, you chose to tell him that you had definitely been over to check and that everything was tip-top okay, neglecting to tell him that you were stashing a supernatural double of your best friend only two weeks after he was mysteriously possessed and released, and that he was cut up and injured and arrived from a weird storm. Minor details.

Clearing your throat, you pulled out a handful of notes from your purse, placing them down in the amount that you owed as you excused yourself from the table, balancing the strap of your bag on your shoulder and smiling at the complaints of your friends as they encouraged you to stay, but it was already nearing the late afternoon and early evening, and you needed to grow the courage to return to the scene of your crime.

The pharmacy was only a quick walk around the corner, and you’d made sure to park your car outside of it so that none of them would see you leaving and entering the building with a suspicious amount of medical supplies, and you pulled the crumpled paper with your list pulled on out of your pocket. Smoothing the crumpled item out in the palm of your hand, the bell above the door jingled, the air conditioning washing over you immediately and you shivered at the sudden temperature drop upon entering the shop.

Peering at your own writing, you smiled uneasily at the cashier who was watching you, a kid who’d graduated just a year or two earlier, and her eyes narrowed on you as you moved through the shelves. Plucking one of the plastic shopping baskets from the side, you held it carefully in your arms, avoiding their scrutinising gaze.

Paper Stitches.

Your eyes scanned over the shelf, a surprising number of options displayed before you, and even the first option was already showing you the impact that this little shop was going to have on your bank account, and you simply prayed it would be worth it. Taking the largest size and strongest strength in your hand, you shrugged to yourself, dropping it into the basket and scanning the other ones. You could always pick up another size of you needed them, but you were definitely going to need at least two boxes of these ones for now.

You couldn't help the scowl on your face as the sum total began to add up in your mind, moving along the aisle to the wrapping sand covers,

Bandages. Gauze.

There were far too many options of bandages and covers, a jumble between compression wraps, light and thick material covers and thick and padded gauze. You could barely tell the difference between any of the options, and you began to think that maybe you should have paid a little more attention to the quick google search you’d done earlier as to what you actually needed.

First up, a collection of thick, cotton wool paddings to place over the large gashes the man had obtained, followed by gauze and bandages, a hand rubbing over your forehead as the collection began to gather up in the bottom of the basket. Your fingers brushed over the rolls of medical tape, and you dropped a roll of that in too, knowing you’d need something to fasten the material to his torso with.

You skirted around the corner to the next set of shelves, your cheeks flaring in a blush as you caught the suspicious gaze she was giving you, and you cleared your throat, holding your head high as you ignored the judgement hanging on her sights.

Antiseptic Wash. Hand Sanitizer. Cotton Balls.

100 cotton balls in a bag for three dollars felt like a good enough offer for you, and you dropped it into the basket, humming to the tune playing over the radio above your head as you swiped a large bottle of antiseptic wash from its place, and finally, a few of the small bottles of hand sanitizer, because you’d been needing some more of that anyway.

You hadn't quite been ready for the odd glare the ex-peer had given you when you placed the basket on the counter, and her eyes moved slowly between the items and your eyes, a sarcastic smile on her lips as she slowly began to ring them up, placing them all in a paper bag for you and ensuring they would all fit.

In a bid to avoid the wight of her stare fixed on you, you let your eyes scan over the ‘last-minute-purchase’ options on the counter, adding a packet of strawberry bubblegum to the collection and she scanned it through, reading your total to you and you jammed the card into the reader, wincing at the price that was displayed on the small screen. Your fingers punched into the buttons as you bit your tongue, taking the card and the bag as soon as you could and you darted from the shop, barely pausing to take your receipt from her as you fled.

Placing the stuffed paper bag on the shotgun seat, you rounded the car, letting out a deep sigh as you strapped into the seat and stuck your keys into the ignition. Digging into the bag beside you, you fished out the bubblegum, taking a stick from the packet and unwrapping it, popping it into your mouth and letting the chewing motion and sweet flavour soothe you as you started up the car and began the well-ingrained journey to the loft, anxiety riddling your body.

The radio played quietly in the background as you made your way along, the only sounds filling the car being that of the quiet hum of the latest chart-toppers, and the occasional pop of the bubblegum in your mouth. You weren’t really too sure why you were still keeping this secret from everyone, you had the perfect chance at lunch to tell the girls about what had happened, to get help and confide in someone.

Stiles.

Deep down, it was about protecting Stiles. The ripples on the surface of the water had only just smoothed back down, and you weren’t willing to throw the next stone in a situation that you were absolutely certain you could handle yourself. How dangerous could someone who was 147 pounds and unconscious be?

That was the only thought that was strong enough to force you up and out of the car, your feet carrying you forwards as you unlocked the main door, clicking it shut behind you as you made your way toward the stairs, choosing to walk all the way up to the top instead of taking the rickety elevator. You could use the time to calm yourself down, work out what you were going to do if the stranger you were harbouring was now awake.

Your hands were shaking so much that the keys were jingling as you walked, and you clenched them in a fist, taking a deep breath as you reached the final level and pausing before the silver metal door. With a deep sigh, you unlocked it carefully, sliding it out of the way and looking inside carefully. Natural light was flooding in through the huge bay windows at the other end, the concrete room lit up with warm light that almost made the monochrome grey space look welcoming, and your eyes zeroed in on the space that had once occupied that man you had rescued.

Nothing seemed out of place, the room wasn’t trashed and rummaged through, and everything was still and calm as you took a first cautious step inside. By the second step, you were sliding the door shut behind you, your brows furrowing. By the third step, a cold hand was sealed tightly around your throat, pinning you up to the wall as the tips of your toes brushed the ground.

The bag in your arms fell away, the items within it scattering across the floor as you squeaked, coming up to grab at the wrist holding you so tightly to the wall as you struggled to drag in any breath at all, your gaze meeting the furious one of the face you knew so well on the person you didn’t know at all. Those familiar honey-brown eyes were scanning over you interrogatively, and the long fingers wrapped around your throat flexed, tightening for a second before you were released, and you fell to your knees, eyes watering as you took in burning breaths, rubbing soothingly at the skin on your throat as the man merely stood and watched you for a second, before spinning on his heel and walking away.

You watched him go, shaking your head as he stormed away, and once your breathing had finally calmed and your heart had stopped racing so had on your chest that you thought it may burst out, you began to slowly gather up the items you had dropped, stuffing them all haphazardly back into the now torn paper bag and standing it up. Sitting on your knees, you took a moment to gather yourself, your eyes locking with the narrowed brown ones watching you, goosebumps rising over your body and you tried to seem strong, not to let him know quite how terrified you really were, as you took the back, standing on unsteady legs and holding your head high as you stared him down.

Making your way over to him, you placed the bag down in front of him, raising your brows as you moved slowly, the warning growl in his throat being acknowledged as you held up your hands, palms out to him to show you meant no hard, despite the fact that he'd attacked you only moments prior. Instead, you slowly tipped the bag upside down, allowing all the contents to spill out across Derek’s plain black coffee table, the man’s eyes scanning over it all, his face twisted in confusion as he looked at each item.

You stood with him in silence for a moment, letting him look at all the items, before he was stepping away from you, a snarl on his lips as he moved as far back as he could while still being able to watch your movements, track what you were doing. With a heavy sigh, you backed away yourself, never taking your eyes off of him out of fear of what he might do once you did, and for each step backwards you took, he moved forward one, and you slowly guided him toward the kitchen.

He lingered in the doorway as you moved around, never taking your eyes off of him for more than a split second as you searched through his drawers and cupboards, a small sound of victory leaving you once you found something you could work with, and you slipped two packets of the instant-noodles from the collection, dropping them on the counter as you continued your hunt on your meal-making task.

He flinched each time a pot or pan clashed, his eyes once again narrowing menacingly, and you had to suppress a chuckle because it was no longer focused on you, but instead on the source of the loud sounds, as he glared at a frying pan that had shifted and fallen loudly on another one. Selecting a pan big enough for the job, you quickly filled it with water from the tap, deciding that using the hob was definitely the safest bet, as you worked with this. Tearing open each packet, you held it up to show him as you watched on curiously, and you dropped the solid blocks of noodles into the water, waiting for it to begin to bubble over the flame.

There was nothing in the fridge that you could use, he’d gotten rid of everything perishable before going away, and you made a mental note to buy food, your heart once again sinking at the savings-draining task you had taken on. Maybe if you told Lydia, she’d give you her card and allow you to pay using her platinum, but you highly doubted you’d get away with telling her now without having to endure a long sit down talk and a lot of disappointed looks, which you weren’t ready to deal with. Lydia Martin could be scary when she wanted to be.

The silence hung heavily in the room between the two of you, and you tried to school your face into a stoic expression, despite the stormy scowl that was being directed at you, his body shuffling as you looked at him, his shoulders rolling from the discomfort of his injuries and he looked like he was going to try and dash at any moment. Taking two dishes from the lower cupboard beside your legs, you placed them out on the table gently, a fork beside each one and you stirred the noodles, the pasta soft and flimsy as it circled around, the savoury smell filling the air and you quickly dished up the food after switching off the hob, placing a fork in one bowl and pushing it across the countertop toward him.

He stepped forward as you took a seat on one of the stools, and you watched as he lifted up the instrument, pushing the pasta around the dish, a growl leaving him as he dropped the fork back into the bowl with a clatter, and you raised your eyebrows as you ate your own food, fixing him with a judgemental look and shaking your head. He used a single, skinny finger to push the bowl toward you roughly, some of the soup sloshing over the side and you let out a sigh, continuing to eat your food as he glared at you.

You had never felt quite so intimidated while in the presence of a bowl of noodles, and had you been anywhere else, in any other situation, you might have found this situation funny, perhaps even laughed at it, but right now, you worried you may actually choke on the noodles from stress. When you finally finished, and he was still twitching from foot to foot in front of you, his nervous shuffling giving you anxiety, too.

“What? You don’t eat, then?” He merely snarled at you, despite the rumbling in his stomach as the delicious smell drifted through the air and you raised a brow at him, shrugging and taking the bowl, his eyes watching as you snatched the food from in front of him. You made sure to make a show of tipping it into the garbage disposal, his eyes watching as the food slipped away into the drain and his jaw tightened, twitching as he ground his teeth together, his body jerking in shock as you slammed your hand down on the button on the wall and the loud grating filled the room, before you finished it, a smug look on your face as you cleared the dishes into the sink to clean later.

He stalked from the room as you did, his nostrils flaring at your actions and you wanted to stomp your foot on the ground and groan, but instead, you merely clenched your fists by your sides, following after him as he whipped his head around to see you following him, choosing to make his way over to the couch and poke through the items spilt out on the coffee table.

He picked up the bag of cotton wool balls, looking at them curiously before dropping them and you cleared your throat, his hard gaze directed back to you as you crossed your arms over your chest self-consciously. “Those wounds on your back are bad, you should let me take a look at you.”

He blinked at you, twice, eyes wide and his face didn’t move, giving you no indication that he was actually understanding a thing you were saying and you took cautious and slow steps toward him, his body tensing up as you did and you plucked the item from his hands, meeting little resistance as you held it up.

“These are for cleaning the wounds. On your shoulders?”

You placed the item down, motioning to your own shoulders as you tried to make him understand, and he twitched at the motion, his features falling from their hard glare a little his eyes softening and he swallowed thickly, his gaze dropping from yours for just a moment as he adjusted his arms. A wince was clear on his face as he moved his arms back, his lips parting and a quiet groan left him.

Your own shoulders slumped as you watched him, and you picked up another couple of items, deciding to offer him a small smile as you held it up, jiggling the packages before him, and the crinkling caught his attention. “These are for wrapping and padding the cuts, because those are really bad, and they’ll get infected.”

He pursed his lips, but for once they weren’t fixed in a heavy scowl and you felt as though perhaps you were making some kind of progress with him. Placing them down, you moved through the rest of the items, lifting each one slowly and telling him what it would be used for, only receiving the same blank looks and lonely silence as he stood before you, his gaze flicking over both you and the room multiple times. Despite the lack of verbal confirmation, you were choosing to believe that he understood you, because his posture had loosened, his body slumping forward a little and he seemed a little less like he was preparing to fight for his life at every turn of events.

It wasn’t until you’d finished talking to him and moved toward him that his defensive stance returned to him. He jerked aggressively away from you as you took a step toward him, and you lifted your hands, reaching out to him carefully as you motioned towards his back. “Let me take a look at your injuries!”

He stepped back again, his legs hitting the edge of the couch and he went rigid as you closed in on him, a low growl sounding from his throat, the noise rumbling from his chest in a warning and his eyes were practically burning with rage, his anger having built in seconds and your jaw dropped.

“We just talked about your injuries! I told you what I need to do!”

You tried one final time, reaching for him carefully and he took your wrist in his hand squeezing so tightly that your knees buckled as you released a cry, and he growled once again, this time predatory, as if to tell you to back off or it would get worse. Then, he was using his grip on you to push you back as you stumbled over your own feet, just about stopping yourself from tripping up and falling on your ass.

“Fine!” You snapped, your arms flying out to your sides as you shouted at him, and his eyebrows raised at your increase in volume, his eyes wide as he watched you, your own jaw clenching and you pointed at him angrily. “Go ahead, die of fuckin’ osteomyelitis for all I care!”

Your cheeks were flushed, and you fixed him with the harshest glare you could, before letting out a deep sound of anger, a groan that rippled through your body as you threw your head back, eyes squeezed shut as you tried to calm yourself down. Taking a series of deep breaths, you calmed your racing heart and the heat that was curling up your cheeks died down.

You mumbled curses under your breath, turning back to him to find him staring at you intently still, and you ran a hand through your head, grimacing as the tension in the air hung thickly. “Look, I’m going to go and get some warm water, we really need to sort out those gashes or you’re going to get really sick.”

You nodded at him, hoping that he understood before you were rubbing your hands together and turning on your heel, making your way into the kitchen. Fishing out a fresh bowl, you turned on the tap, running the water over the inside of your wrist to test the temperature, and when it became too hot for the skin there, you knew it was the perfect temperature. Gathering enough in the bowl, you placed it on the side, searching through the drawers for some clean rags.

When you first heard the metal of the door sliding, your brows furrowed, and it took a second before the realisation of what that particular grinding of metal meant, your eyes widening and you squeaked, dropping the material on your hands as you dashed from the kitchen, your eyes scanning over the empty loft area and your heart raced, bile rising in your throat as you guts twisted. “Shit!”

Your eyes focused on the open loft door, and you ran towards it, your feet moving quickly down the stairs as your tried not to fall, your blood pounding in your ears and you let out a panicked and frustrated yell as you noticed the main door now hanging open too, his taller stature and head-start ensuring you wouldn’t catch up to him even with his injuries, the area surrounding the loft still and empty, as though he had just disappeared.

Your legs buckled under you as the consequences began to run through your mind. Worry, fear and anger flooded your system as you kicked at a rock on the ground, tears lacing your eyes from the overwhelming floods of emotion bubbling over inside of you as you tried to work out what the fuck you were going to do now.

The sun was almost setting, dark clouds moving in over the sky and threatening to break at any time as the sun sank lower and lower on the horizon.

“I’m so fucking screwed.”

261 notes · View notes

watchtower-feed · 4 years

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All in Your Head (Part 3)

SSA Main ✧ Batman ✧ 1 ✧ 2 ✧ 3 ✧ 4 ✧ 5

No one knows about your link with Bruce. Neither of you even knew you had it until a few months ago. The subconscious link is one of the, if not the most, private links there is. Only the two of you know you have it.

You reach out and hold Bruce’s face in your hands. He holds onto them and looks back at you. He looks so tired and you wish he didn’t have to go. “I’m not going anywhere so you go and save her.”

Just like you promised, you stayed asleep. He left you in that space of darkness and you stood in it for another minute before shifting the space into the Wayne Manor. You always walked in through the front door because the Manor always felt like such a sacred space for Bruce.

When you were with him, you would often see his family, the boys running around through the corridors and hallways, sometimes in their suits or in civilian clothing. Bruce would replay the moments he spent with them, watching TV, eating dinner, training, or even just sitting around and telling each other about their days.

Those were the best moments. They deserve more of those, not what Bruce mostly shows you, which are the fights, the yelling, the arguments, and the silent crying. He relives these moments with you instantly because he almost can’t do them by himself anymore.

“Sometimes when I’m standing in front of them and it gets too much, I forget myself and I just grab at your hand like you’re there beside me,” he said.

You stare at your hand and wish Bruce was there holding it tightly like he always does. On some occasions, Bruce thinks of someone he hasn’t seen for days and desperately misses. You’ve only seen him do it twice. Once with Jason and the other with Damian when they fought and he stayed with his mother for months.

You want to think about Bruce, standing here with you but you don’t. Neither of you does that because it feels like cheating. Your imagination could never live up to the real.

You walk along the hall and lean against the doorframe that leads into the study. There was one moment when Bruce missed his parents so badly that he relived the memory of when he annoyed his father until he would throw a ball with him in the garden. You watched, amused, as Bruce shifted himself into his younger self. A child with bright blue eyes and always smiling from ear to ear, so full of mirth.

But now the manor is completely empty.

You walk beside its walls like a ghost that can’t touch anything.

You walk up the stairs and down the long corridors until you reach Bruce’s room. You find it the same way the two of you left it from the other night, with pillows on the floor, sheets disheveled, and a broken lamp tucked away in the corner.

You smile as you walk forward and fall face down onto Bruce’s bed. The sheets don’t smell like anything and it’s exactly how Bruce smells. After honing his sense of smell beyond human ability, he’s become sensitive to everything. When he’s dreaming he shuts off all of his senses and relaxes.

You lie there for an hour, maybe less or more, you don’t know. Time is the most unstable factor in the dreamscape. You and Bruce have had to set up the most aggressive alarms just so the two of you won’t sleep away a whole day together. Again.

You bring your knees closer to your chest, emulating the sudden constricting hold wrapping around your torso. You grip the sheets in your hands until your knuckles are white and you let horrific sobs wrack through your body. You cry loudly inside the empty bedroom.

You cry until your subconscious couldn’t produce any more tears and it feels like your throat has closed up.

Finally, you get up and go down to the cave, walking in through the old grandfather in the study. You climb down the stairs as slow as you can and focus so that the dream won’t add more steps. You count the number Bruce has given you. When you reach the landing, you stare out at the illuminated cave and the parts that are still shrouded in darkness.

You walk past the glass displays that store their old costumes, Dick’s, Jason’s, Tim’s, Cass’, and Damian’s, until you reach the computer. You place yourself in front of the monitors, tucking your legs underneath you as you sit in a chair almost twice your size, and wrap yourself in a blanket you and Bruce shared on other nights when you would just sit and talk. You turn on the computer and let it boot up as if you’re actually there and not sleeping in your bedroom.

But you don’t touch the mouse or the keyboard. Instead, your mind forces the monitor to show you videos and clips of what Bruce could be doing right now. He might be infiltrating a prison cell hidden in the subbasement of a secret government building, a hidden island in the Pacific Ocean, or an illegal lab that experiments on soulmates and metas.

You watch one of the screens that’s showing Batman crawling inside a long air vent. He stops in front of a set of grills and looks in. You can see beds with two that are occupied, some desks and cabinets, a tall man in the middle of the room, and the biggest figure in the room stands between him and the door.

You lean in close to the monitor as you watch Bruce unscrew the grills. You watch as golden smoke rises up to the ceiling, making Bruce pause for a brief second. You still have the image of it in your head when suddenly the woman on one of the beds leaps at the tall figure.

Bruce is already through the vent and scaling along the walls when you realize that was Wonder Woman. She’s shaking, one hand clinging onto the table to stand upright. You gasp when the huge figure smashes her into the ground.

You watch the rest of the scene play out, inching closer and closer. You shout out Bruce’s name when you see Scarecrow come up behind him and injects him. You finally breathe better when nothing happens and you relax more as you watch them escape.

Suddenly, the monitors shut down and the lights around the outer walls of the cave turn off one by one, and then the whole cave is drowned in darkness. It takes a long second before the soft glow of the emergency lights light up the platform.

You definitely didn’t do that.

You hear groaning behind you and jump off the chair as you turn around. There on the medical table, Bruce is sitting up and looking around the cave frantically, as if he doesn’t recognize the place. He looks frightened and weak, standing up too quickly and staggering toward you. “Where’s Alfred?”

You quickly go to his aid. He wraps an arm around your shoulder as you help him stand. “He was just here,” he mumbles, turning his head to look around the platform. “He was just… testing me for poisons.”

“Poisons?” you gasp. Scarecrow’s mask immediately springs back into your mind. “I thought that was nothing. I thought you were fine. You were…” you suddenly realize that what you saw on the monitor wasn’t just your imagination. It was Bruce’s memories.

“Bruce, you’re asleep now.”

“I’m not,” he protests. “I’m in the Batcave. I was with Alfred but you were…”

“No, Bruce,” you whisper, almost pleading. “You’re asleep.” Something’s definitely wrong. Bruce has always had the better handle on your link, always better at controlling the dreamscape and filtering his subconscious. Lucid dreaming is still a skill you have a hard time nurturing but Bruce handles it with talent.

“B-Bruce…” you both turn at the sound of somebody else’s voice softly echoing in the cave. He sounds out of breath and gurgling. It’s Robin. Jason. He’s holding his side with both of his hands while blood is seeping between his fingers.

“Oh my god,” you whisper.

His face is badly bruised. His mask is torn in half and his eye is swollen. He coughs out blood and you feel Bruce’s fingers digging into your shoulder. “H-help…”

As Jason falls, Bruce drags himself away from you and kneels right beside Jason. His hands are badly shaking over Jason’s still body, so afraid to touch him. “No. Not again. Late again,” you hear him say. His thoughts are starting to filter out of his own head and into both of yours.

You can hear the chaos as different voices fill the dream. Bruce is devastated by the death of Jason but Batman is telling him it’s not real. You can hear an eerie whispering sound coming from him as he rocks his body in shock over Jason’s body.

“It’s the toxin. It’s the toxin. It’s the toxin.”

You muster the courage to take the steps toward Bruce and Jason. You flinch at the pale boy’s face and then pry your eyes away. You kneel down beside Bruce and touch his shoulder. You wait until he turns to you, “Bruce, please.” You hold his face in your hands, forcing him to look into your eyes. “That’s not Jason.”

Bruce whimpers and closes his eyes. He holds your hands and presses them harder against his cheeks as the tears start to come. “Not real,” he whispers like a mantra.

Metal skidding on the platform breaks both of your concentration. Barbara is rushing onto the platform, frantically turning the wheels of her wheelchair until she skids to a stop in front of you.

“Bruce!” she yells out and then there’s the sound of a door slamming and Barbara turns around in fear.

You follow her gaze that’s directed somewhere off the platform. It’s all black. Then there’s a gunshot and Barbara goes limp in her wheelchair, her head hanging on one side with a bullet hole in her forehead.

You’re screaming. Barbara’s eyes are wide open. You know this scene. You’ve seen it. You know who’s in the darkness. “Bruce, you need to calm down,” you whimper desperately. “You’re going to--”

Maniacal laughter fills every crevice and every crack of the cave. You look around the ceiling, desperately clinging onto Bruce’s cape. A voice boom out from the darkness, “Ello Batsy!”

Your whole body goes rigid as he steps out from the shadows, one leg first like an entertainer coming through the curtain. His pale white face stands out against the darkness. He’s grinning wildly. “Been a while.”

You choke down a whimper and his face quickly turns to you. “Oooooh. What do we have here?” He steps closer to the two of you. “Looks like you got yourself a soulmate, Batsy. And here I was thinking I’m the one.” Joker leans close to your face and glares at you with his eyebrows touching.

You prepare yourself to start inching back but then he grabs you by the throat and lifts you off the floor. The force is so strong that Bruce falls on his back with his hands bracing him. Scarecrow’s fear toxin has been completely absorbed by his system and he’s run out of control in the dreamscape. For the first time that you’ve been with him, Bruce is completely incapacitated with fear.

You choke as the bony fingers of the madman dig into your skin. It hurts and you can’t breathe. Everything suddenly feels so real.

The Joker laughs as you choke.

“No…” Bruce whispers, finally finding some semblance of his own voice. But it’s so low and broken. He sounds like a boy. “No. Please.”

You want this dream to be over. You try to claw at the Joker’s hands. He laughs in your face and the next thing you hear is a bone crack.

The Joker lets you go and you lie there unable to move. This is wrong. You’re supposed to wake up. You’re supposed to leave.

You’re on the floor with your bent neck and your head lying on the side, facing Bruce. He’s staring at you with wide eyes and his mouth is open. He drags his knees close to you and you can see his whole body shaking as he leans down. “No… no…”

Gently he picks you up to hold you in his arms. He’s staring down at your face, watching the stillness and pale skin. His subconscious is too strong and you feel like you’re dead because he truly believes it.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

You can feel it too. You can actually feel the rigor mortis kicking in and it’s scaring you. Is this how it feels to die?

Bruce’s head hangs low and you see the tears fall before feeling their warmth on your skin.

“Not you too… Please, not you...”

You want to whimper. You want to cry. You just want this to be over. You have got to be stronger than Bruce. You have to block out his thoughts and overpower him.

You will yourself to concentrate until you can move a single finger. Then another. Until you can move one hand. That’s all you need. Slowly, you lift it to touch his face and his eyes widen. He grabs your hand and clasps it while he stares at you with furrowed brows.

“Y-you’re right, Bruce,” you struggle to say, slowly feeling his hold on the dreamscape crumble. “I’m not real. None of this is.” Bruce shakes his head. “Please… just wake up.”

You shut your eyes and force the dreamscape to completely obliterate.

Bruce is sweating and raking in large breaths at a time when he wakes up on the medical table. Only some time has passed. Alfred is there with a sad expression on his face as the monitor’s angry blue lights frame his silhouette.

Bruce focuses his eyes on the monitor and finds a graph with greatly varying spikes connected to different types of chemicals. “W-what just…” he breathes out.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred says gently, “It appears to be an alteration of Scarecrow’s fear toxin.”

Bruce groans as he drops down from the table, “What kind of alteration?”

Alfred doesn’t answer him right away. Instead, he stares at Bruce and from the way he looks, he might already know, “It’s a lot milder. Mild enough to not affect your consciousness…” he let his words hang as he watches the slow recognition dawn on Bruce’s face. “And only affect you while you’re unconscious.”

Bruce clenches his fists and suddenly finds it hard to swallow.

“They know.”

✧ 1 ✧ 2 ✧ 3 ✧ 4 ✧ 5

✧ Watchtower Masterlist ✧

#ssa #superhero soulmate au #DC fanfiction #DC imagines #DC reader insert #batman fanfiction #batman imagine #batman x reader #bruce wayne imagine #bruce wayne fanfiction #bruce wayne x reader #watchtower-feed #acropen #lexyartem

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chibinightowl · 5 years

Note

10. “Poppycock! No fool could ever be that daft to actually go through with it!”, Bruce/Clark but its Bruce who says poppycock.

I swear, I have started and failed this prompt about half a dozen times. I even built an entire Holmesian AU in my head around it. And yet, what do I end up with? This. I hope you enjoy! (also, love your icon! Asmo is amazing!)

(also, for the anon who asked for #10 with Alfred and Bruce, this is also your response too!)

~*~*~

There was nothing quite like the glitz and glamor of a charity auction hosted by the Wayne Foundation, Clark decided. These sort of puff pieces were beneath a reporter of his caliber, but he appreciated covering events hosted by Bruce because he knew that not only were the funds being raised going to the right places, but that the majority of the costs associated with hosting this were covered by Bruce himself.

Whether they were tax deductible, he’d yet to discover.

Lingering near the canapé table, Clark dutifully took notes for the article that was already mostly written in his head. All he needed were a few quotes from the people who really mattered rather than the attention seekers attracted by his visible press pass. His hearing told him that Tim wasn’t too far and that Bruce was perhaps a few meters beyond his son.

Tim was always good for an honest statement at an event like this, touching on the meaningful points of what his adopted father’s foundation was currently doing. With the right questions, Clark was sure he could learn more about Tim’s own Neon Knights program and how that was progressing.

But, meaningful as that was, it didn’t sell papers or keep people renewing their online subscriptions.

No, what sold papers were the antics of Brucie Wayne, billionaire playboy and philanthropist.

And just like Bruce’s children, Clark really disliked dealing with the Brucie persona that was always in full effect when the public was watching. Nearly two decades hadn’t lessened it in the slightest.

Deciding it was best to get it over with, he made his way through the crowd with his own act of mild mannered reporter who was a tad bit clumsy on display.

As he moved into the periphery of Bruce’s circle of sycophants, Clark noticed that Brucie seemed to be in rare form tonight. To the outside world, there was absolutely nothing going on behind those pale blue eyes. Wide and vapid, they matched his laugh, his smile, his everything.

Brucie was in the middle of a story and gesturing with great enthusiasm. “…And then Alfred said Poppycock! No fool could ever be that daft to actually go through with it! Well, I’m no fool and Dickie had already done it, so I figured I could too.”

Clark zoned out as he tried to maneuver closer, already familiar with the real story about how Dick took it upon himself to try walking a tightrope strung up between two large Las Vegas hotels. Bruce’s public version though explains how he ended up with that broken leg a couple months ago.

The crowd was too tight around Bruce, so he decided hitting up Tim would be the better option. If he was lucky, Brucie would pull some ridiculous stunt before he left that could be added into his article.

No sooner had he turned his sights on Tim, a large hand thumped solidly on the back of his shoulder. “Well, well, well, would you look who’s here?”

It was Bruce.

“Hello there, Nebraska.”

Clark tossed a prayer into the ether for patience. “It’s Kansas.”

“Right, right. I’ll remember next time, Iowa.” Brucie grinned vapidly but Clark didn’t miss the gleam of amusement in his eyes.

Someone wanted to play. Damn, and here he’d been hoping that if he did speak with Bruce, he’d take pity on him and make it easy. No such luck tonight.

“Mr. Wayne, congratulations on the turnout tonight. How much are you and the Wayne Foundation anticipating this auction will raise for the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Greater Gotham City area?”

“Ugh, numbers.” Bruce pulled a disgusted face as he looped an arm over Clark’s shoulders and started leading him away. “I hate numbers. They’re so…numbery. Who even invented them anyway?”

“The current number system we use originally evolved from the Hindus by way of the Arabs —“ Clark was cut off with a broad wave of Bruce’s hand that almost hit him in the face.

“If I wanted a history lesson, Smallville, I’d have asked for one.”

Well, at least he was using the right town now. It was better than farm boy, which was probably coming up as Bruce cycled through all his nicknames. The list was long and Clark swore that Lois and Bruce must have a master list that they shared because some of them were just too crazy for them to have come up with on their own.

Clark sighed and pushed his glasses firmly onto his nose. “Mr. Wayne, if you could just give me a brief statement about the auction, I can get out of your hair.”

“Hmm, and go bother Timothy instead?” A brief flash of Bruce’s usual wry humor appeared in his eyes. “No, I think that —”

This time, Bruce was cut off as a well-dressed socialite appeared out of nowhere and tossed champagne right in his face.

“How could you, Brucie?” the brunette wailed, eyes welling with tears so big her makeup was already starting to run. “I thought you said I was special.”

Only with his super hearing could Clark hear the low Fuck that escaped from his friend.

“Anita!” Bruce said smoothly, completely ignoring the liquid streaming down his face. Already, there was a circle forming around them as people stopped to stare.

The woman wailed even more loudly. “That’s not my name!”

“Annie? Annabelle? Something that starts with an A?“

Clark stepped to the side to watch the drama unfold. And what a show it was, right out of a daytime soap opera. A jilted lover seeking public vindication that she’d been wronged in some hope of winning back the love of the one who wronged them. The backdrop of the hotel ballroom was the perfect touch too if by some chance this woman did manage to convince Bruce to speak with her in private. Perhaps in a hotel room upstairs. Like that was going to happen though. At this point in time, the playboy reputation was just that, a reputation, and had been for some time. Whoever this person was, they were trying to take advantage of that for their own gain.

Bruce and the woman were going around in circles, the woman getting more and more hysterical by the minute. The whole thing ended when she threw her empty glass and then herself at Bruce. A security guard caught hold of her before she could though. It took two of them to drag her away, still wailing and screaming.

“Well, that was entertaining.” Bruce smiled disarmingly at Clark. “I think you got your story now, Iowa.”

“I got something, that’s for sure. Have a good night, Mr. Wayne.”

It was past time to seek out Tim, get his quote, and get out of here.

~*~

Less than an hour later, Clark sat in his hotel room and typed up the story. A shower had gone a long way toward improving his mood, as had the comfortable pillows supporting his back as he wrote. The bed was surprisingly comfortable, which, considering the price tag for the room, it had better be. This kind of place was out of his budget, but wasn’t even a drop in the bucket for the man who was taking a shower of his own in the bathroom.

Bruce.

This was one of those rare nights where their schedules happened to coincide, that there wasn’t some disaster calling him away. The kids were all on patrol tonight, so unless there was an Arkham emergency, here they would stay until morning and life tore them apart once again.

Clark shook off his maudlin thoughts and kept writing. Work first. This was how his bills got paid. Fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop and he’d proofread the article twice by the time Bruce exited the bathroom, dressed in a bathrobe and his hair still damp.

“Almost done?” he asked as he took a seat on the other side of the large bed, swinging his legs up so that he could lay down.

“Just about.” Clark clicked on send and the article was off to Perry. “Tim was a huge help.”

“He always is.”

Setting the laptop aside, he took off his glasses and turned his attention on Bruce. The man looked exhausted, even more so than usual. “Rough week?”

Bruce rolled onto his side to face Clark. “Rough month. Don’t tell Alfred, but I probably shouldn’t have taken the cast off when I did.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” He laid down and pointedly did not switch over to his x-ray vision to scan Bruce’s leg. It wouldn’t do any good for either of them. “Ready for bed?” he asked instead.

“We haven’t seen each other in person for three months. Do you really think I want to sleep?”

Clark sighed and traced one dark smudge under Bruce’s eye, then the other. They’d been hidden by concealer earlier. “These say otherwise.”

Bruce grabbed his hand and drew it to his mouth, lips ghosting over the large knuckles. “Those are never going away, Clark. Deal with it.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I’m always right. Now get over here and keep me awake.”

“And what if I want you to fall asleep on me?” Clark shifted around until he was pressed flush against the other man.

It constantly amazed him that he and the oh so proud Batman were at a point in their lives where this was even possible. Twenty years ago, he’d have asked if the person suggesting it was feeling all right and done a quick scan of their brain to check for damage. Ten years ago, he would have wordlessly shrugged it off. Five years… well, time made for all the difference in the world. This was about as close to domestic as the two of them got. It hurt that it couldn’t be more, but with the lives they led, these quiet moments were more precious than gold.

“Shut up and kiss me, Clark.”

Laughing, he did just that.

#chibinightowl writes #Clark Kent #Bruce Wayne #SuperBat

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perksofbeingawaifu · 6 years

Text

the great cat caper

hey yall it’s been 50 million years. so i was looking through my old drafts (of which i have several) and found this nearly finished ficlet. it was based on this amazing and hilarious art by the very lovely and talented @magickitt . i can’t for the life of me remember why i quit writing it (maybe someone else wrote the same fic so i just dropped it?) but here it is very very late. enjoy!~

Eren didn’t know when it started. One day he went to grab a pair of undies from the crumpled clean laundry basket and pulled them on only to find them too small. He shrugged and assumed they’d shrunk in the laundry. Then it happened again a few days later. And again the day after that!

“Armin, do I look like I’m gaining weight?” he asked, checking his gut in front of a mirror.

“You? No,” Armin laughed, turning his eyes back to his term paper.

“No you’re perfect,” Mikasa said flipping through a magazine.

“What about you Titan?” he asked the cat making figure eights between his legs. “Does Daddy look different to you? Hm? I gotta start working out more.”

And he did. He got up to run every morning just as his cranky neighbor from 2B left for work (no but seriously who works that early?). And every morning just as he saw the perfectly shined shoes step outside his door, Eren darted down the stairwell, content on avoiding him. He’d never met his neighbor and had no desire to. The man was quiet except for the times when he wasn’t. He would burst into short, clipped, rage-filled sentences that ranged from threats to his roommate, “I swear to fucking god if you don’t flush the toilet I will personally grind you up and flush you down to float with my shit!” to, “SHIT ON A STICK!” to the worrisome phone conversation of, “I will fucking butcher you!”

He could also hear his neighbors discussing chemical “particles” and “reactions.” He had no doubt his neighbor was involved in pharmaceuticals of the “Breaking Bad” variety. Eren vowed to keep his head down and mind his own business.

Or rather he tried, he really did try.

“Oh no,” he said holding up a pair of skivvies that were most certainly not his.

“Hanji I swear to fucking shit, where the fuck are they?” his neighbor echoed on the other side of the thin wall. “I’m down to my last pair, I’m washing it every single day, where are you hiding them?”

“Bad Titan!” Eren hissed at his cat.

Sure, he’d noticed Titan playing with something last night. And sure, yes, he’d noticed socks and undies stuffed into his slippers or in his backpack. And the nest under the bed. But today he found a pair placed lovingly on his bath mat. Once again they didn’t fit, despite all of his recent activity. He flipped the band to see a Men’s small on the waistband. He wore a medium. At first he thought maybe Mikasa had bought him another package of briefs and simply grabbed the wrong size. But now given the ruckus on the other end of the wall, a horrible chill raced its way down his spine.

“Please, please,” he begged as he rummaged through his drawer grabbing every pair he could find. He dug into his dirty laundry, then his clean laundry, the place between his bed and the wall, under the couch and between the cushions and even behind his television.

Finally he set lay them all out in his living room, like they were all artifacts from some archeology dig.

“Oh Titan, why do you hate me? Is it the discount catfood?” Eren asked as Titan waltzed through the display purring.

As Eren dragged his hands down his face, Titan flopped over and began rolling around on his stolen goods.

What to do? What was he supposed to do in a situation like this? Give them back, right? He didn’t know which ones belonged to the man next door. Who knew who else Titan stole from? Eren didn’t know if he could be held legally responsible for something his cat did. He knew what he had to do. He was just too terrified to do it.

Summoning all of his courage, he stepped over to 2B and rapped on the door.

“You’re not the pizza guy,” his neighbor guessed astutely, pulling his gaming headphones down from his neck.

“Hah, no I’m—“

“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped into the mic.

“Uh,” Eren froze.

“Sorry, them, not you,” he indicated his headphones. Then there was a warble of noise on the other end and his face twitched. “No Oluo is not fucking tanking. Erwin is our main Tank and Mike is—no you don’t get to heal either not if you’re gonna piss and moan like you did last time when you didn’t get the roll. Now shut up I’m afk.”

He hit the mute button on the side and shook his head in annoyance.

“Sorry, my guild is a bunch of chodenuggets, what’s up? You locked out?”

“No I—you see—“

“Man our pizza is really late, Hanji, you called them right?” he called back to the other gamer hunched over their desk. “We’re kindof in the middle of something, so what do you need?”

Hi, I’m Eren and I live next door. You wouldn’t happen to be missing a pair of boxers or briefs would you? Because I think my cat may have stolen them.

At least that’s what he had planned on saying, but he was so frazzled that all he managed to get out was, “Boxers or briefs?”

The man finally gave Eren his full attention, snapping his neck to assess him with those cool grey eyes of his.

“What did you say to me?”

“I—I—“ Eren stammered.

“You some kind of pervert?” he asked, taking a step out of the hallway.

“No?” Eren winced putting his hands up in surrender.

“Levi hurry up! Erwin says if you’re not back, we’re going without you.”

“Look, I don’t know what frathouse bullshit this is but—“ Levi said taking another step forward.

“Cat!” Eren blurted out, crossing his hands over his face. “M-my cat!”

“What?”

“Okay, Oluo rushed in and we wiped, so that’s done for now, what’s going on?” Hanji came over.

“This little punk is harassing me,” Levi said, rolling his very thick shoulders.

“I think my cat has been stealing your underwear!” Eren shouted.

“…What?” Levi stopped short, confusion spreading over his face.

“I mean, you’re missing underwear right? I think my cat has been stealing them. Just…come see?”

A minute later Levi and Hanji examined the carnage that was Eren’s living room.

“Oh my god,” Levi said surveying the scene.

“Sorry I don’t know which ones are yours,” Eren said stepping over Titan and picking a few up off the floor. “I also have no idea who these lacey panties belong—”

“I—here, give me those,” Levi said, snatching the lacey boyshorts out of his hands. “They’re uh, probably my cousin Isabel’s from when she visited.”

Hanji snorted and Levi stilled them with a look.

“So yeah, I’m guessing yours are just the Men’s small and Boy’s XL here,” Eren pointed.

“Okay, well,” Levi said, flushing up to his roots, panties sticking out of his jean pockets. “Just the small are mine.”

“Oh, so not these dinosaur ones because—“

“Pfft no.”

“Because you wrote Levi on the waistband in sharpie.”

Levi winced and also took the Batman Y-fronts.

“Yeah sorry it took me so long to notice he was taking them,” Eren said stepping over the mess. “I kept pulling on pairs I found around the apartment and when they didn’t fit—“

“You wore them?” Levi cried, his lip curled in disgust.

“Y-yes, but I washed them!”

“Oh!” Levi groaned and spun on the spot. “That’s great, that’s fucking great! You wore them getting your skidmarks all over them!”

“Excuse me? I didn’t get any skidmarks on them! Any streaks you see are yours and yours alone!”

Levi gasped, offended. “You know what you are?” he said dangerously. “You’re a dirty pervert panty sniffer. I don’t think your cat stole these, I think you stole these!”

“You think—“ Eren sputtered in protest.

“Yeah, I think you’re the kind of guy who gets off to stolen underwear from the laundry room—“ Levi jabbed his finger into Eren’s chest.

“At least I don’t have three different pairs of Strawberry Shortcake panties!” Eren shot back.

“Boys—boys—“ Hanji said stepping between them. “I know how we can settle this.”

“Yeah me too,” Levi flexed his biceps. “Oh wait—no not that again, Hanji!”

Hanji’s idea proved to be a GoPro that they fitted to Titan’s collar. Levi agreed to hold off on pummeling Eren’s face until they had heard his case and verified his claims.

“Now…we wait,” Hanji said, scratching behind Titan’s ears.

A full 48 hours later they sat in front of Hanji’s computer, Eren a little nervous and Titan rolling about in Levi’s lap no many how many times he shoved him off.

They watched the video in tense silence. There was Hanji putting on the GoPro…there was Eren escorting a naughty Titan back to his apartment…then…nothing. Titan did nothing but sleep all night.

“I thought cats were nocturnal?” Levi asked, as Titan attempted to scale his shoulder.

“Oh no, Titan sleeps like the dead until…yup, there.”

5:35AM, a good twenty-five minutes before Eren’s alarm was due to go off, Titan woke up and began pawing at his face.

Eren watched as he tossed and turned in the bed, Titan smacking him repetitively until Eren stumbled to his feet, scratching at his ass, Titan weaving in between his legs. The camera shook suddenly as a sleepy Eren tripped over the cat and fell hard.

“Okay we can fast forward through this, please?” Eren asked, putting a hand over his eyes.

Levi snorted at Eren’s expense.

Then Titan ate his food happily for a good ten minutes. He spent another twenty minutes licking his ass. Hanji tapped the fast forward button again to zip through.

“Wait what was that?” Levi pointed.

“NO!” Eren said, diving for the controls but Hanji held their keyboard above both of them, slowing it down.

Titan always sat on Eren’s bathmat and waited for him to finish with his shower. Eren stepped out of the shower and then realized that GoPro was aimed right between his legs and collapsed again, grabbing a towel and lunging at Titan.

Both Hanji and Levi tilted their heads to watch the Eren on-screen struggle to cover himself.

“Get out of here!” past-Eren hissed at the cat as present-Eren put both hands over his eyes. “You’re peeping on me you pervert cat! Aw, I’m sorry. No, don’t lick me. Stop it that tickles. Look how fierce you are. I didn’t mean to scare you. Okay now no more spying on me while I’m naked. We don’t want Mr. Grumpy Pants with the Cute Ass next door to see me naked, do we? No we don’t. No we don’t!”

Levi turned and looked at Eren.

“I did not realize it had sound,” Eren choked out in a pained voice.

“Clearly,” Levi said, now looking amused at the situation.

They watched Titan run around the apartment, playing with his toys, grooming, napping. Hanji yawned, tapping on the fast forward button as Titan slept most of the afternoon. Levi shifted in boredom, Eren opened his water bottle and took several long sips. He looked around the room and realized that all the times he had thought his neighbors were drug dealers, they were instead grad students with piles and piles of Hanji’s notes on biochem scattered throughout their desk and Levi’s neatly shelved text books.

Then…

“He’s up, he’s moving! Take it back!” Eren said, slapping Hanji’s chair.

He couldn’t help but be a little excited, here it was, proof that Titan was stealing the undergarments and not Eren!

Hanji took it back right before Titan moved. He suddenly perked up his head as if he heard something. Then ran to the bathroom, stood on his hind legs and managed to flip the switch to the bathroom window.

“…HOW?” Eren asked in awe.

“You are such a little pest,” Levi said, scruffing Titan who only purred in his lap.

Then he carefully padded around the corner, dropped down into the courtyard, hot on Levi’s heels as he parked his motorcycle.

“No…” Levi said as he watched Titan stalked behind him. “I don’t believe this.”

Titan followed Levi up the stairs, ducking behind the staircase as he watched Levi open the door to his apartment.

“There he’s gonna—oh…” Eren said in disappointment. “I thought he’d get in your apartment just then.”

Titan waited and then a few short minutes later, Levi stepped out with his laundry basket in hand.

“Watch watch watch,” Hanji said, smacking them both with their arms.

“Okay! Knock it off!” Levi said, warding off their flailing limbs.

Titan snuck downstairs and watched Levi as he put quarters in the machine.

“Man, he knows your routine,” Hanji said, spewing popcorn all over their desk.

“This is like a scene from one of those serial killer movies,” Levi said.

And yet, Titan waited as Levi washed his laundry, then dried it, then folded it. And never made a move. Instead he left through the open basement window and went over to see the fancy Persian nextdoor. They purred and groomed each other. No undie stealing. No nothing.

“You tried to pin it on your cat!” Levi said, turning on Eren. “Look, he had every chance there and he didn’t!”

“I didn’t do it! Just wait! We’re still on the first day, right Hanji?”

“Yeah but I didn’t do my laundry yesterday,” Levi said, standing up and despite his size towered over Eren.

“Ooh there he goes again,” Hanji said pointing.

Titan left his Persian friend, hopping up onto the brick ledge before leaping up to the second floor windows. He lurked, watching Levi dusting his action figures. He took special care to polish the backside of his Kaworu figure.

“Perfect,” Levi said on camera, giving his own backside a smack.

“Oh god,” Levi in his chair said, putting his fingers to his pinched brow as Eren turned to look around at his shelf of figurines.

“You have a lot of anime characters,” Eren pointed out.

And he dutifully dusted every single one daily as Titan’s sneaky camera documented.

“How…how much more is there?” Eren asked. “I’m wondering when you’re going to start singing to your broom here.”

“Oh he always busts out Nicki Minaj for that,” Hanji informed him. “There it is!”

Now that it was Levi’s turn to be humiliated, he slunk down in his chair. Hanji’s laughter was infectious and Eren laughed along with them—that was until Titan’s hidden camera caught Hanji eating popcorn that had been in the trash.

“…Is that the same bag?” Levi asked, looking from the screen to the bag in Hanji’s hands.

When Hanji took a little long to answer, they both groaned.

“It’s still good!”

“Why are you two even roommates?” Eren asked, a grin still on his face.

“Not for long, I’m moving in with Moblit who isn’t such a clean freak,” Hanji huffed.

“Or he’s just another slob who doesn’t mind you leaving unopened yogurt on your desk for two weeks.”

“Ah yeah, my best friend is moving in with his boyfriend so I’m out a roommate soon as well,” Eren sighed.

Levi’s eyes swept over Eren appraisingly. “When is your lease up?”

“Two months but—“

Levi on screen placed his clothes neatly in their drawers and then left for his computer. Titan ducked in Hanji’s open bedroom window and then raced around the corner into Levi’s room, leaping onto his dresser, wedging a paw in the draw and pulling it open.

“HOW? This cat is better than the entire cast of Ocean’s 11!” Levi said, mouth open.

Grabbing several pairs in his mouth, he raced back to Eren’s room, dumped his loot under the bed and then crawled on top of it purring madly.

“WHY?” Eren asked. “I adopted him from a shelter when he was a kitten, where did he learn this?”

“Maybe he likes the detergent?” Hanji asked.

“Tide with Febreeze?” Levi wrinkled his nose.

“Ooh Mr. Fancy with his fancy laundry detergent,” Hanji grumbled. “We’ve been over this by the way. You can just make your own soap! It’s just Borax and baking soda.”

“Except you never actually make your own soap—“

“Did he tell you he weighs the soap every day—“

“Because you use mine and pour water back in and think I won’t notice!”

Eren coughed into his hand politely. “This still isn’t helping me with my cat.”

“Maybe you just smell good to the cat,” Hanji suggested, leaning over and sniffing Levi.

Titan who had fallen asleep in Levi’s lap clearly liked being there.

Eren leaned over to do the same and inhaled deeply. “Yeah but how different can you smell compared to—“

He stopped and sat up, flushing a little. “Okay well sorry to bother you. And sorry for this little turd nugget. I will keep an eye out and do more to secure the apartment so he doesn’t get out again.”

Eren held out his hands to accept Titan from Levi. Levi looked reluctantly at the sleeping cat in his lap before carefully scooping him into Eren’s arms.

“Bye you little shit,” Levi said, rubbing Titan’s temples. Then in a whisper, “And quit being an asshole to your owner.”

Titan only purred in response.

“And, uh,” Levi cleared his throat. “Let me know how the roommate search goes. I’m just trying to find someone who isn’t a complete slob.”

“I mean…I’m like a normal level of slob,” Eren said, scratching the back of his neck.

“Nah, I saw your apartment on the—video thing. It looks like you actually know that food belongs in the fridge and not in your bed.” Levi leaned on the doorway in his sleeveless muscle tank and Eren felt his heart flutter.

“You looked at my bed,” Eren repeated.

“What?”

“BYE!” Eren said, realizing what he’d said and running down the hallway with a startled Titan. He slammed the door behind him and slapped his forehead. “Stupid!”

“Fucking weirdo,” Levi said, shutting the door behind him.

<*>

“Hanji, I love you, I do,” Moblit said on the phone, “but I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Moblit, first of all, do you want Levi to move in with us?”

“God no.”

“Secondly, it is nearly Valentine’s Day. I am merely playing Cupid,” Hanji said, crowing to themself as they tossed all of Levi’s underwear drawer into the garbage.

“Hanji—it’s not going to work like you think it will. Don’t meddle okay? Please?”

“I would never meddle. Ever. I am simply performing an experiment,” Hanji reassured him in a voice that was anything but reassuring, sliding the drawer back into place on Levi’s dresser.

Levi stepped out of the shower just as Hanji finished.

“What the…goddamnit! Eren!” Levi pounded on the thing wall. “Your stupid cat stole all my underwear again!”

Levi walked all the way down the hallway in a towel and banged on Eren’s door, except he forgot what he was going to say when Eren opened it.

“I’m naked,” Levi told him stupidly.

“I can see that,” Eren said.

“It’s your fault,” Levi said, finding it hard to get the words out now that he was looking up at Eren’s green eyes.

“We should do something about that,” Eren said, just as idiotically back.

“Yes,” Levi agreed, allowing himself to be led into Eren’s apartment.

When he came back it was a full three hours later and wearing a pair of Eren’s sweats and shirt.

“It totally worked,” Hanji said into their mic as Levi wandered over to his desk.

“What? Really? Did you remember to take the garbage out?” Moblit asked.

“Pfft no, why would I? Levi always does it.”

“Hanji…” Moblit sighed.

“WHY IS ALL OF MY UNDERWEAR IN THE GARBAGE? HANJI!!”

#ereri #snk #drabble #this is ancient #i think it might be over a year old #hahaha oops!#i know it's been a million years since i posted anything and thanks for your guyses patience #life is busy here

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fairylights101writes · 7 years

Note

can i request oikuroo and 47?? or 19?? anything oikuroo TBH

19. “I can’t... I can’t believe you actually remembered…”47. “no stop i’M HURTING FROM LAUGHING SO MUCH”Thank you for requesting!Read on AO3 or under the cut

Kuroo wrung his hands together as he stared around his room. It looked clean enough - he’d actually changed his sheets and washed everything up, cracked a window, sprayed Febreze around so that it smelled fucking awesome, and had stuffed all his clothes into drawers. No manga or textbooks littered his desk and bed, and all his papers had been neatly shoved into his backpack. And, just to be safe, there was a bottle of lube and a pack of condoms stashed away in his nightstand.

Satisfied, Kuroo spun around and marched out into his apartment, frantically analyzing what he could. He and Tendou always kept it clean - something that had surprised him when he’d first met the redhead - but it was even more pristine than usual. Hell, he’d even broken out the vacuum and Swiffer. And Tendou had teased him all the while - “Wow Kuroo, you must really like this guy! Hoping to get lucky, are we?” - until he’d left to bone his own man off in Kyoto. But it was worth it because the apartment looked good, enough that Kuroo let out a nervous little laugh and sank down onto the couch. “God, this is ridiculous.” He was acting like he was seventeen and going on his first date and not twenty-four and on his fifth one with this guy, never mind the fact that it was the first time they hadn’t gone out into public.

Kuroo shook his head. Closed his eyes. Jackknifed upright in horror a second before a knock resounded through the quiet apartment. He stared down at his pants and shirt and- “Oh my God, no,” he whispered. He was still in his pajamas, just a pair of black briefs and a white shirt with a cat on it, “Thug Life x9” beneath it and his date was at the door.

Kuroo flew off the couch and spun around twice before he found his voice. “Just a minute!” he shouted before he darted back into his bedroom. He chucked his shirt off and tossed it into his desk chair, then jerked his closet open. Shirt, shirt, gimme a shirt… He found a button down, plaid and red and soft, and he tugged that on, then whirled around and flew over to his dresser. He jerked one open and grinned. Thank God I washed my clothes. A pair of black jeans lay on top and he wrestled himself into those as he swiped his tongue across his teeth and thought back to when he’d brushed his teeth, just an hour ago. Ah, they’re fine.

He buttoned the jeans up and swiped a hand through his hair, still insufferably wild, and then took a breath as he glared at the bookshelf on top of his dresser. You can do this. Be calm. Be cool. That didn’t exactly make his heart stop pounding as he unlocked the door, but it was enough that his smile was brilliant when he pulled it open. “Oikawa! Hey, sorry about that!”

The brunet in the doorway didn’t move, blinking at Kuroo, his phone in front of his chest. His eyes flicked down and moved slowly, his ears turning a faint pink as he smiled. “Well… you’re looking handsome today.”

Kuroo’s eyes widened and his head snapped down, right as a distinctive, quiet click went off. His shirt was completely unbuttoned to reveal a bare torso, and his pants were maybe a little too far down, hipbones almost on full display. His head rose to the sound of giggles and a phone camera going off again as Oikawa beamed, cheeks flushed, clearly barely holding back laughter. Kuroo’s hand shot out and grabbed his unoccupied hand and he pulled his boyfriend in, slammed the door shut, and managed to lock it before boisterous laughs exploded from Oikawa as he doubled over, shaking, wheezing, and clutching at his sides. “Oh my- oh my God, Kuroo, that’s-! Well, that’s o-one way to greet me! I-!”

He shook his head and rose, head thrown back, the laughs rocking him as he grinned, one hand halfway hiding his mouth and reddening face. Kuroo growled, a little embarrassed, but mostly playful as he stepped in and grabbed Oikawa by the waist. The brunet squeaked and jerked back, but Kuroo caged him in, pressed him to the door as his fingers danced across Oikawa’s torso. The booming laughs turned to giggles as Oikawa twisted and wiggled in his grasp, gasping. “K-K-Kuroo!!! N-no! Stop! I can’t-”

Kuroo just grinned and dug his fingers in a little harder, worming between arms pressed tight to his sides to find his weak points on his back and the outer edges of his sides. Oikawa wheezed, flapping his hands, rocking as he continued to gasp out giggles. “No, stop! I-I’m hurting from laughing so much!” Kuroo relented after one last poke and he wrapped his arms around Oikawa instead, pulling him close as he caught his breath, heavy and limp against Kuroo. Slowly, his own arms fell away from his sides. His breathing evened out. He pushed back after a moment, the pout on his lips ruined by the scarlet flush still lingering in his cheeks. Somehow it made Kuroo’s chest ache, so beautiful in the mirth still lingering in Oikawa’s eyes and the way he’d gone red from neck to ears, in the way his lips pursed, almost like he was asking to be kissed. And Kuroo loved it.

“So rude!” Oikawa huffed.

Kuroo just blew a kiss at him, then leaned forward and pressed one to Oikawa’s cheeks. “Only if you piss yourself. Come on in, I’ll make tea to make up for it.”

“You gonna leave your shirt unbuttoned?”

He considered it for a moment, that and the way Oikawa stared at his chest a little too intensely - and then he started to button his shirt with a coy smile as Oikawa puffed his cheeks out. “Nah, not this time.”

Oikawa snorted and shook his head as he toed his shoes off, shed his jacket, and caught Kuroo before he could head to the kitchen. He didn’t have time to question, just enough to smile as their lips brushed, then pressed in for a firmer kiss with a quiet hum. Oikawa smiled and leaned back enough so they could look each other in the eye, his sparkling with warmth. “There’s the proper kiss I wanted. Let’s go make tea.” Kuroo winked at him and slipped their hands together, tugged him along into the little kitchen area.

Making tea was a good idea, because it ended up with the kettle on the stove while Kuroo nudged Oikawa against a counter, one hand in that infuriatingly soft, perfectly styled hair, the other on his slender hip, as they kissed, lips smacking quietly, only a hint of tongue. Giggles still shook Oikawa, and occasionally he leaned back, grinning, only to lean back in before Kuroo could question it and kiss him gently before coaxing him into a deeper kiss - not that he wanted to. He had a fairly good idea of why Oikawa was still laughing, and rather than waste his words he focused on sucking on Oikawa’s lip and thumbing the space just behind his ear. A quiet hum met that, and he smirked and released his lip in favor of pressing another soft kiss to Oikawa’s mouth.

The kettle whistled before they could do much more, and they parted with soft smiles and chasing kisses for a moment more before Kuroo pulled away with a groan. He poured them two cups and dunked the tea in, bags of black tea. “So, I’ve got some movies we can watch, unless you want to watch something on Netflix?”

“Oh, Netflix and chill already?” Oikawa teased. Kuroo stuck his tongue out at Oikawa, who grinned and shook his head. “Just kidding. But what all did you get?”

Brown eyes followed a jab of his finger to the counter, where a stack of DVDs sat, recently bought. Oikawa plucked them up and Kuroo watched, pleased, as Oikawa’s eyes widened as he looked over the first title, then shuffled the cases aside, mouth opening a little with every one he looked at. It took him a moment after he reached the last one to finally look up, eyes a little more watery than they should have been maybe as he stared at Kuroo. “I can’t… I can’t believe you actually remembered.”

Kuroo shrugged, grinning as Oikawa clutched the movies to his chest. “Of course. You said you liked them, so I wanted to make sure you watched ‘em again. Oh, and since you don’t have them, you can keep them.” Oikawa took a breath. Set the movies down. Crossed the kitchen in two long strides and cupped Kuroo’s face, pulled him in close. Their foreheads and noses bumped together, but their lips stayed millimeters apart as Oikawa closed his eyes, fingers trembling slightly. “What are you even?” he whispered into the space between them.

Kuroo grinned. “Superman? Ironman? Batman? Sexy? Take your pick.”

A giggle bubbled out as Oikawa’s hands slid back, his arms around Kuroo’s neck, hands somewhere in the air behind him as Oikawa angled their faces and pressed another sweet kiss to his lips. “You’re amazing,” he breathed against Kuroo’s mouth, “That’s what you are.” Kuroo snorted, but he didn’t argue at that, not with the kisses Oikawa peppered over his face until they both remembered the tea still steeping. Thankfully it wasn’t overdone, and they grabbed their mugs of tea and the movies and headed out into the living room where they curled up, Oikawa pressed into Kuroo’s side, a blanket draped over their legs, and a movie in.

Kuroo had expected minimal kissing, and true to his expectations that was how it played out - Oikawa was simply too engrossed to peel his eyes away long enough for anything other than the pizza delivered halfway through the second movie, or the popcorn they made sometime during the fourth. But it was cute - so much so that he couldn’t even find the heart to tease Oikawa - watching his eyes light up, smiles blooming and loud laughs bursting out, or quiet gasps in suspenseful moments or at shocking revelations. He twitched more than a few times, the jump scares getting him, but it was all the more endearing.

And it was well worth it when, at nearly two in the morning, they finished the stack of movies and found themselves sprawled out on the couch, Oikawa on top of him, kissing lazily as the movie credits played. Oikawa pulled back after a moment, smiling with tired eyes as his thumb slipped along Kuroo’s cheekbone. “Y’know…” he murmured, “I think I like you. Probably a little more than I should.”

Kuroo grinned and waggled his eyebrows, hands tightening on the small of Oikawa’s back. “That’s perfect then.”

Oikawa hummed, his smile widening as he leaned back in for more. “You’re right about that.”

#oikuroo #kurooi #flights writes #ask meme #quotes challenge #Oikawa #Kuroo #haikyuu!!#request #thank you for requesting!!!!#i liked writing this one ;3 #it was super cute aaaah #i hope you enjoy it!!!#and thank you for the patience oh man like wowza #akaashvi #answered

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dylan-hague · 7 years

Text

Chapter 26

??? February 26th, 2018. 2:31 PM.

The old pickup rumbled over the worn asphalt as it drifted along down the highway. Raven sat in the bed, loose straws of hay in her hair, and gazed out at the fields of wheat that seemed to stretch on forever before her. She looked down at her Damian, sleeping soundly as he laid out next to her, mostly buried underneath the pile of hay. His head rested soundly in her lap, and Raven smiled softly as she watched the corners of his lips twitch as he dreamed. Despite the wind blowing all around them, Raven could still pick out his scent in the air. She didn’t understand how or why, but Damian always smelled like trees… like trees that stood tall in autumn. Raven couldn’t understand how or why, but she loved it. It didn’t take long for it to smell like home. As Raven let her eyes drift to Damian’s lips, her mind wandered to his taste… she couldn’t quite explain it. It was almost like smoke that hung on her lips, like she were kissing a fire in the winter. It seemed unreal, an unnatural taste that no human should ever produce… but then again, there was no human quite like Damian Wayne.

Slowly, Damian began to stir awake, his eyes fluttering softly as he came out of his dreaming. She ran her thumb gently across his cheek, and he smiled up at her before pulling himself into an upright position, hay flying out of the truck bed as he turned around to face her. He slipped his hand into hers, and smiled back into her eyes as he pulled himself as much as he could out of his drowsiness.

“Any idea where we’re at now?” Damian asked. Raven glanced around at the fields surrounding them and shrugged.

“I couldn’t tell you,” the half-demon replied. “Coms and phone have been out of service for a while. We’re gonna have to just make our way to the nearest town and reroute ourselves from there… and if we keep passing through nowhere like we’ve been doing all day, it’s starting to look like we’ll have to stop for the night.”

Damian threw his head back and groaned. “That sucks…” he murmured. “Remind me to call Kori whenever we get a signal. I wanna make sure the others are getting back to it.”

Raven looked down at the little mounds of hay around them before resting their joined hands on her leg. “Damian…” she said under her breath. “… Damian, have you ever thought about kids?”

Damian cocked an eyebrow, still trying to blink the tiredness from his eyes. “Wow, that’s… kind of a lot to drop on a guy after he just woke up.”

The mage girl looked away, her face going red again. “I’m sorry… I didn’t–”

“No, no, no!” Damian put his other hand on Raven’s knee. “Raven, you know you can ask me anything. You just caught me off-guard, that’s all.”

Raven looked back to the boy, her irises shimmering with the faintest hints of light. “I mean… not necessarily having kids of your own, but just…”

Damian’s lips slid into a knowing half-smile. “Raven. Come on. I’m no empath, but you know I can feel your heart almost as much as you can feel mine. And I know that’s what you wanted to ask.”

Raven’s cheeks burned as she fought back against the bashful grin trying to spread across her face. “Damian…”

“Well, if I’m being honest, the thought had never occurred to me until recently…” Damian looked down and began absently tracing little hearts into Raven’s knee with his free hand. “I mean… I never thought I would have time to raise a child myself. But…” His fingers slowly trailed up her leg and began fiddling with the hem of her skirt. “… well, you changed how I think about things. I… I think I could picture myself settling down, starting a family.”

Raven looked back up at Damian, her blushing now dimmed down just barely. “… So could I.”

Damian lifted his eyes to hers, his fingers going still as a teasing smirk weaseled its way onto his lips. “And to be clear… you mean with me, right?”

Raven grinned, slapping at his shoulder playfully as he snickered. “Dork.”

Damian chuckled as he put his arm around her, pulling her into his lap as they leaned back against the pile of hay behind him. “I think… I think I’d want a girl,” he whispered into her ear, slipping his arms around her waist. “One that looks like you.”

Raven turned to look back into Damian’s eyes, her lips parting just barely. Damian’s eyes dropped back to her mouth for a moment, and Raven gently bit her lower lip. The Son of Batman felt his spine shiver, and a breath he didn’t noticed he’d held onto hissed out of his throats as he leaned in, gently taking her lips with his. Raven’s hand found its way to Damian’s chest, and it gripped softly at his shirt as she pulled her mouth away; he hadn’t noticed it, but she felt the truck slowing down. The two of them were swallowed up in darkness for a moment, and the next moment Damian found himself lying in a wheat field, with Raven hanging over him, her knees on either side of his stomach. He grabbed his head in a daze, squeezing his eyes shut as he groaned.

“Please warn me next time you do that…” he moaned. Raven slowly lowered herself onto him, holding herself up on her elbows as she ran her fingers into his hair.

“Sorry, baby…” she cooed down at him. “I know, you aren’t used to it yet.”

After a moment, Damian let his eyes open up to see his Raven’s eyes looking down into his, her hair hanging down around his face. “So, what about you?” He smiled up at her. “Would you want a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t really know…” Raven brought her head down and pressed her lips against his forehead. “But if we were to have one… I’d want them to look like you.”

Damian grinned, his arms sliding into place around Raven. “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens down the line. Won’t we?”

Raven smirked, not saying another word as she brought her lips down onto his.

Titans Tower, Jump City. February 26th, 2018. 3:34 PM.

“Come on, Jonathan! Get back up!”

Jon found himself on his hands and knees in the training room, drenched in sweat. It was a good thing he didn’t train in his costume, or he’d probably have to go out and buy a new jacket… which, frankly, he couldn’t afford. He slowly pushed himself shakily back to his feet, and looked up to see Starfire standing tall and ready not to far in front of him. When it came to training with his powers, Ms. Kori was really the only one who could handle him. But as it turns out, that was quite the steep curve for Jon to overcome; he may have the genetic potential to be the most powerful member of the team, but Ms. Kori had been doing this sort of thing for years. She knew how to tap into the full potential of her powers, whereas Jon was still getting the hang of having powers at all.

“Alright, let’s try it again,” the Tamaranean said, crouching down to prepare for Jon’s first move. He complied once more, rocketing forward faster than a speeding bullet. But Kori’s reflexes were astounding, and she quickly shifted out of the way of his fist, grabbing him by the leg and tossing him into the air. Jon recovered, trying to shoot back down with his heel fast enough to surprise his teacher and land a hit. Kori, however, proved once again to be smarter than he, as she nimbly hopped out of the way, launching herself back with a kick directly into Jon’s chest. He careened back into the wall, leaving a sizable crack where he collided with the concrete, before dropping back to the mat. This was pointless; Jon simply couldn’t act fast enough to anticipate Starfire’s moves.

“Back on your feet, Jonathan!” Kori ordered. “You’ve almost got it!” Jon’s limbs shook under his weight, and he dropped back to the mat.

“I can’t… I just can’t do it, Ms. Kori…” Jon grunted as he pulled himself to his knees. Kori began walking towards him.

“I won’t accept that, Jonathan,” Kori stood over him, her expression stern as her stare bore down on him. “We’re Titans. Titans don’t say ‘I can’t.’ Titans push through until they can.”

“I’m sorry, I just…” Jon clenched his fists in frustration, his teeth grit. “I’m giving it everything I have, I just can’t do it… I’m not fast enough.”

“This isn’t how a Titan talks!” Starfire was adamant, refusing to let him rest. This wasn’t working. “What would your father say right now?”

Jon stopped for a second when the words left Kori’s mouth. His brow slowly began to furrow. “… Stop talking about my dad, Ms. Kori.”

Kori crossed her arms. “Superman never said 'I can’t,’ and he never gave up on anything,” she carried on. “How can you let yourself cut corners where he won’t?”

“I’m telling you, you need to stop it…” Jon growled, his fists beginning to quake. A flash of red sparked from his eyes. “Leave my dad out of it…!”

Kori would not let up. “Jonathan, you can do this! I’ve seen you fight before!” She glared down at the hybrid at her feet. “You’re every bit as capable of accomplishing amazing things as your father!”

Jon snapped. His eyes shot up to meet Starfire’s, glowing bright red.

“I SAID STOP IT!!”

Before either of them could blink, Jon’s right fist bolted upwards faster than lightning, driving right into Kori’s gut. And audible boom could be heard a split second later in reaction to Jon’s punch breaking the sound barrier. A brief second later, Kori stumbled back and grabbed at her stomach, doubling over in pain. When he realized what he’d done, Jon threw his hands over his mouth in shock.

“Ms. Kori!!” Jon cried, rushing to her side. “Ms. Kori, I’m so sorry! Here, let me help you up–”

Kori’s eyes shot up to meet Jon’s. “That’s it…” She took the young hybrid by his shoulders, a look of sheer excitement displayed across her face. “Jonathan, that’s it!!”

Jon stood staring back at the Tamaranean, an eyebrow cocked out of confusion. “Ummm… what’s what?”

“That’s the secret!” Kori exclaimed, rising to her feet. “That’s how you get to your strongest point! My powers grow stronger when I’m confident; your powers grow stronger when you’re angry!”

Jon blinked several times, processing this information. “… do you really think so, Ms. Kori?”

“Absolutely!” Starfire leapt back to the other side of the mat. “So if we want to push your limits and make you stronger… we’re going to have to get you riled up!”

Jon hesitated for a moment before shifting into stance. “… I don’t think I like where this is going…”

Just outside of Jump City. March 3rd, 2018. 3:45 PM.

Damian and Raven looked out from beside their pond at the familiar cityscape that lay before them. It had taken some time doing it the way they did it, but they were finally home. At the beginning of their trip, Damian had honestly wished they could buy a plane ticket home, and even made an attempt to convince Raven that they should. But Raven had her heart set on taking the long way home, hitchhiking their way across the entire country to get back to California from Gotham. And by the end of their journey, Damian was actually disheartened that it was already over. Part of him didn’t want to go back to regular life; part of him wanted to stay on the road with her forever. And he suspected that part of her wanted to do the same.

But of course, life isn’t all kisses and road trips. The time had come to go back to the Tower, and settle back into their routine of keeping Jump City safe. Still, it was an interesting ride… Damian found his mind wandering to a certain possible future, in which he and Raven decided to hang up their capes, raise a few children, and live a normal life together (at least, as normal a life as one can lead as the CEO of one of the world’s most powerful companies). Had it been a year or so ago, Damian would have dropped the notion like a hot potato; his life was devoted to justice, he could never stop fighting for what he believed in.

Of course, a year or so ago, he didn’t count on being happy.

Damian looked over at his beloved Raven. She had her hood pulled up, probably to avoid anyone in the city seeing her face. They were close enough to the city now that such a concern was valid, since… well, they lived here. People knew them here. Raven was on a first-name basis with the staff at the city library (well, they still called her Rachel, but she knew all of their names). She looked exhausted, which was understandable; they’d been walking for most of the day. But she smiled up at the city they called home, and she looked ready to sleep in her own bed again.

“Good to be back, isn’t it?” the Son of Batman sighed, putting his arm around her.

“Mm…” Raven nodded before turning to her Damian. “Damian, these past few days have been…”

“Painful for your feet?” Damian winked, Raven laughed.

“They’ve been uplifting,” she went on. “They’ve been some of the best days I’ve ever had… thank you for being there with me.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Damian replied, gently placing a hand on her cheek. “We have to do it again someday. Just you and me, wandering like that…”

“We really do.” Raven smiled lovingly back at the boy, her violet eyes glowing under the shadow of her hood.

Damian paused for a moment. His heart skipped a beat as a thought popped into his head. Should he… should he do it now? After the incredible experience they just had, he considered… his hand reached slowly for the pocket in his belt with the little black box inside…

“Raven…” he stammered, reaching up and pulling her hood off of her head so he could see her face a little bit better. “Raven, I–”

He stopped. Something was wrong. He felt as if someone had pushed on his chest… Raven hadn’t moved, so what was it? He meant to ask her, but all she could do was hang her mouth open and stare down at his chest. Confused, he looked down at himself. There was a hole in his uniform. How did that get there…?

This was when the colors began to fade; slowly, everything began to fade to grey. But the fade was gradual enough that he only really noticed when he put his fingers to the hole in his uniform. When he pulled them away, his gloved hand was covered in some grey liquid… it was only upon looking back at Raven that he realized the liquid on his hand wasn’t grey at all.

His whole body went limp.

Raven caught him, holding him tightly in her arms.

Everything went black.

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Intelligent and Horny Costumes For Halloween

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Intelligent and Horny Costumes For Halloween

This concept requires a accomplice, however basic Betty and Veronica make for a cute, nostalgic Halloween duo. All you want are two lengthy wigs: one with darkish with bangs, and one platinum blonde. Tie in a 50’s / 60’s look, sexier for Veronica in fact, and extra girl-next-door for Betty, and you’ve got an excellent throwback costume. Bonus factors if there’s a man keen to throw on a cardigan and bow-tie to play Archie.

Halloween 2016 shall be filled with Harley Quinn’s. Totally seize Daddy’s Little Monster with a blonde wig, then dye the ponytails pink and blue. Add a decent baseball tee (tremendous low-cost at your native sporting items retailer) glittery short-shorts, boots, and a baseball bat. Smear some eye make-up on, choose up some momentary tattoos, in addition to a short lived angle for the night.

For these making an attempt to flee the hoards of Harley Quinns this All Hallows’ Eve, tackle one other Suicide Squad character for the evening. Katana is simply as intense as Harley, with much less display time, but additionally, with much less of an opportunity of a replica costume at a celebration. All you want is a brief black wig, white masks, black jacket, and a critically intimidating, (however faux) sword.

American Horror Story is changing into a cult basic, so any of the highly effective, but terrifying ladies are up for grabs. Don a white costume and turban to channel Woman Gaga’s Countess, or a loopy blonde wig to check out Hyperdermic Sally. Angela Bassett’s triple breasted Desiree Dupree, or Jessica Lange’s Elsa Mars are different viable choices for a spooky and horny look.

It’s a good time to be a Riveter! The basic, but iconic tomboy look of Rosie the Riveter is ideal for this Halloween. Merely get a collared denim quick sleeved shirt and denims (bonus in the event that they’re connected as a jumpsuit), in addition to a crimson polka dotted bandana or headband. Final step? Strike a robust pose.

Amélie is a unusual and cute costume that’s good for any francophile. Amélie is a simple final minute costume; simply seize a cropped brunette wig with too quick bangs (or seize an extended one and provides it a haircut.) Put on a decent crimson prime or costume, with or and not using a waitress apron. Pale face make-up and brilliant crimson lipstick full this refined, but candy Halloween look.

Showcase your Burton experience with a gender-swapped Edward Scissorhands. Begin with an deliberately mussed jet black wig, pale face make-up, and darkish black or purple eyeshadow and lip stain. A good black jumpsuit, with or with out buckles and straps, together with faux scissors, completes this inventive costume. If scissors aren’t accessible or preferable, swap Edward out for his romantic curiosity, Kim.

Jane Goodall is an sudden, but intelligent costume for animal lovers. Khaki shorts, a tee or denim prime, together with mountain climbing boots are cute and cozy. Add a stuffed monkey and an outsized digicam to finish this jungle look. Different sensible and intelligent options are Amelia Earhart or The Statue of Liberty.

There’s by no means been a greater time to be Belle. With ABC’s As soon as Upon A Time in full swing, together with the discharge of the live-action Magnificence and the Beast, Belle is a topical costume alternative. Belle has two potential seems, each the basic lengthy, yellow robe, in addition to the blue costume, white apron, with brown braid and armful of books.

The queen of sarcasm, Daria and her finest good friend, Jane, are nonetheless iconic go-to costumes for cynics. Daria is straightforward – black fight boots, a black skirt, with a inexperienced jacket and glasses. A brunette wig with slightly wave completes the look. Jane is analogous, nevertheless with black tights, a crimson jacket, and a black bob. Faux or actual silver earrings are good for Jane.

Roy Lichtenstein’s artwork has impressed a ton of superior Halloween costume concepts. Many followers take his iconic model and apply it to make-up, overlaying their faces in white dots, and accentuating their options with black eyeliner. Seize some brilliant, vibrant face paint, a 60’s impressed outfit, and a bright-colored wig completes this enjoyable, artsy look.

For followers of Futurama, Leela is a well-liked and fairly simple costume to place collectively. Black pants and boots, a white tank prime, and a purple wig are all that’s wanted. Leela’s cyclops eye is simple to make with a bit of white paper and black pen. Different inventive choices are paper medical face masks, or white mesh.

Selina Kyle, introduced again into reputation with Fox’s Gotham, is a contemporary replace to drained Catwoman costumes. Selina’s look is steampunk, but informal. Seize a black leather-based jacket, black turtleneck and ripped, fitted denims, in addition to googles. For extra conventional Batman followers, a Catwoman costume is simple with a black jumpsuit and cat ears.

Netflix’s Jessica Jones is prone to encourage some competitors within the costume, however for these in search of a troublesome as nails appear and feel, Jessica is it. Seize a pair of black denims, black fight boots and a leather-based jacket, in addition to a voluminous black wig with some bounce to it. Final thing, work on the sarcastic comebacks.

With the 1988 cult basic Heathers being a musical, and in addition in growth as a TV Land present, there’s by no means been a greater time to be a Heather. Or, as a minimum, a Veronica. For a 80’s-inspired Heathers look, get a croquet mallet, plaid skirt, blazer and AquaNet for some critically poofy hair. Don’t neglect the shoulder pads.

The unique Frida Kahlo, recognized for her distinctive work, is a Halloween costume not many will dare. A protracted, colourful maxi costume, scarves, and gold necklaces, in addition to darkish, outlined eyebrows make for an excellent begin for a Frida Kahlo look. Prime it with a flower crown, lengthy earrings, and plenty of bangles. Unibrow, whereas basic Kahlo, is optionally available.

Although there’s sure to be many Reys operating round on Halloween, Star Wars lovers don’t have any different alternative however to play the doubtless misplaced daughter of Luke Skywalker. Much like a toga, Rey’s desert warrior look is principally only a khaki coloured gown, with a brown belt across the waist, in addition to brown boots. Don’t neglect BB8!

For these wanting to realize a extra gothic look, the Penny Dreadful star Vanessa Ives is a superb concept. Ives embodies the basic Victorian look, with a gothy twist. Go to Goodwill or a neighborhood thrift retailer to seek out lengthy, darkish coloured attire with lacy touches. Pair with a trendy up-do, a choker, and stylish earrings.

Any of Orphan Black‘s grungy, but stylish clones could be a simple, but enjoyable Halloween costume. Pleather leggings or black stockings, paired with a decent black prime and leather-based jacket embody the Sarah Manning look. Bonus factors for lengthy, black hair and a trendy aspect braid. If avenue stylish isn’t the precise look, strive one other clone on for measurement.

For Quentin Tarantino fanatics, it’s by no means too late to tug off a basic Kill Invoice costume. The Bride, Gogo Yubari, or Elle Driver are all superior choices for a critically kick-ass costume. These seems take slightly extra planning to tug off, particularly the yellow jumpsuit, however are properly price it for a horny, assured costume.

Who ya gonna name? The Ghostbuster girls shall be out in swarms, however don’t let that damper spirits. Seize a gaggle of girlfriends and discover some khaki jumpsuits to channel the 2016 Ghostbusters crew. Factors for inventive equipment comparable to a stuffed Slimer, Kate McKinnon’s tinted yellow glasses, or genuine Ghostbuster patches.

Whereas the excitement lower Eleven shall be widespread for adolescent women, why not strive a grown up model of the Stranger Issues star? A classic or thrift retailer pink sundress, a cobalt blue jacket, and a bald cap (that’s going to take some creativity), is all that’s wanted to tug off a convincing El.

For the 90’s children, go for a classic Buffy. Whereas this costume might have been all the fad throughout its decade, there gained’t be a lot competitors today for a basic Buffy. Any mixture of thrift retailer 90’s seems, in addition to Buffy’s basic blonde ‘do is ideal. Simply add a stake and possibly some cloves of garlic as a of completion.

Seize an A-line office-friendly costume, and there’s a dressing up as everybody’s favourite fictitious first woman, Claire Underwood. A black blazer, white button-down shirt, or a grey fitted costume are an excellent begin to pull off Robin Wright’s refined look. For these with lengthy hair, simply pull again right into a ponytail.

Although the mom of dragons continues to be prone to be a preferred costume, it gained’t be as widespread as when Recreation of Thrones was first launched. Attempt pulling off the basic Daenerys Targaryen look, full with blonde wig and lengthy robes, or experiment with a Sansa or Cersei costume.

Orange Is The New Black isn’t only a enjoyable group costume, it’s additionally a very comfy one. Khaki or orange coloured scrubs and pretend tattoos might help pull off any inmate at Litchfield Penitentiary. Attempt an extended, black wig and glasses to channel Alex, or only a messy blonde up-do for Piper.

Seize a good friend and hit Ceaselessly21 to decorate up as Broad Metropolis’s Abby and Illana. Abby is ideal with an extended, brunette wig with bands and Illana’s curly, messy hair is achievable with a 80’s-inspired perm wig. Get inventive with clothes, Abby and Illana are all the time altering their look.

The Strolling Lifeless has just a few ladies to select from, together with fan favourite Michonne, in addition to Maggie. Excellent for a gaggle costume or solo, each ladies are achievable with tank tops, vest, boots and denims, together with character particular equipment comparable to Michonne’s sword. Be sure to rub grime across the clothes to get The Strolling Lifeless grunge look.

Josephine Baker is a daring, courageous costume for anybody seeking to exhibit slightly. Baker, recognized for her dancing and work throughout World Battle II, is a sublime, thrilling look that’s simply pulled off with an extended satin costume and pretend jewels, or a hula skirt, bikini prime and lengthy earrings.

For these in search of a daring, progressive look to bypass the Harley Quinns this Halloween, Dakota Fanning’s Jesse is a chilling, but trendy different. The 2016 psychological horror movie didn’t have as a lot publicity as Suicide Squad, however nonetheless has an array of costume concepts to attract from.

Seize a novelty rifle, tattered costume, and a few cowgirl boots and there’s Annie Oakley. Annie Oakley is an underutilized costume concept, however very easy to tug off with just some equipment. There’s additionally the choice of a glammed up Annie Oakley, with fancier western garb, comparable to rhinestone boots and a hat.

For individuals who really feel too grown as much as don Wednesday’s apparel, there’s nonetheless Morticia Addams, who’s simply as fashionable and scary as her daughter. A protracted, black costume, with a black wig, dramatic eye make-up, and light-weight basis is all that’s wanted to be a convincing Morticia. Go one step additional and seize a crimson rose to finish the look.

The sassy, kick-ass Gamora is a superb Halloween choice for somebody in search of a superhero impressed costume. Gamora, whereas not as excessive profile as Surprise Girl or Catwoman, is a down-to-earth tremendous lady with superior outfits to duplicate. Black pleather or leather-based leggings, together with a leather-based or pleather vest or prime, together with a red-tipped black wig is all that’s wanted. Oh, and a ton of inexperienced physique make-up.

With just a few fishnet stockings, black excessive heels, and a very large lamp shade, there’s the well-known Leg Lamp from A Christmas Story. For these in search of a inventive costume with out loads of time to prep, merely head to a thrift retailer to seek out the shade, which will be worn across the waist.

If there’s effort and time, a very nice Marie Antoinette costume will be pulled collectively. An Antoinette costume will be discovered at Halloween rental shops, in addition to with slightly creativeness from a thrift retailer. To embody a very inspiring Marie, strive going for the Sophia Coppola look. Giant costume, tiny corset, pale make-up and a pair of Converse sneakers.

Get a girlfriend to tug off a Prime Gun gender swap. Aviators, a inexperienced army jumpsuit that may be fitted, and boots are all that’s wanted for an excellent Maverick and Goose. To go the additional mile, discover a frost-tipped good friend to play Ice-Man, carry round little plastic planes, and high-five actually each 5 seconds.

There’s no crying in baseball… or on Halloween. Nice for a gaggle of ladies, or solo, a Peaches costume is pretty simple if there’s time to place it collectively. A protracted, buttoned down pink shirt will be changed into a smaller outfit, with a crimson belt or handkerchief across the waist. Seize a crimson cap, in addition to a glove, and the look is full.

For the last word gender swap, think about channeling one in all cinema’s most interesting Jokers. Heath Ledger’s Joker, whereas a bit extra chilling, solely requires some messy make-up, a inexperienced wig or dyed hair, in addition to some taking part in playing cards and a purple blazer. Jared Leto’s Joker is a bit more refined, and could possibly be glammed up with gold equipment, momentary tattoos and vibrant make-up.

Go head-to-head with the superheros of 2016 with Tank Lady, a helmet-clad badass with a kangaroo sidekick. There’s room for creativity with this costume, both go conventional comedian e book with a inexperienced helmet, edgy make-up, and tight black t-shirt, or persist with the cinematic tank lady, with sweat socks for sleeves, crimson lipstick and a white tank prime.

Another choice for a Tim Burton-inspired Halloween costume could be Beetlejuice, that provides the potential for a gender-swapped Beetlejuice, or his romantic curiosity Lydia Deets. For Beetlejuice, white face make-up and inexperienced hairspray will be paired with fitted striped pajamas, or for Lydia, a black spiky banged wig and a black costume with suffice.

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mindthump · 7 years

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9 innovative, entertaining, and downright strange gaming trends from E3 2017 http://ift.tt/2sGavPp

Creative work isn’t made in a vacuum. While video game studios across the world don’t necessarily know what their contemporaries are working on at any given time, every developer makes sure to keep aprised of the current state of the industry. And E3 remains the place the most important show where studios converge en masse to showcase their upcoming games. With the show floor closed, countless game-makers will look back at the event, looking at patterns and trends to see what’s coming next. Let’s take a look at nine trends that unfolded over the course of E3 2017.

Lots of developers are trying new things

When a game developers makes a hit, chances are it’s going to keep making that game series, or at least the same kind of game, until players can’t it anymore. Game franchises rarely change their core identity mid-development or in between entries. At E3 2017, however, a lot of studios showed that plans to change things up.

At Ubisoft, two established franchise showed off major course corrections.

BioWare, best known for creating the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series’, revealed Anthem, a brand new action RPG in the vein of Destiny. While new franchises are born each year, BioWare has spent the last decade Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: The Old Republic — three stable, successful RPG franchises that have made the studio one of the biggest names in the genre. Anthem seems like a huge change of pace from the narrative driven RPGs that BioWare is known for. And given the implied scope of the game, it could very well put all three of Bioware’s franchises will be on the back burner for the foreseeable future.

Crytek, the studio behind the Crysis series, showed off Hunt: Showdown, a game that we learned in May had been resurrected from the ashes of Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age. Since we last saw it three years ago, the game has been completely retooled. Previously, it was a fairly rote zombie horde fest (basically a Left 4 Dead knock off). Now, Hunt: Showdown is a complex and eerie PvP title that pits two teams against one another. Maps are riddled with zombies, and each team must evade or kill them while searching for each other, as well as demonic targets. Showdown is much more tactical than its previous identity, as once you die, your character is gone from the game forever.

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Lastly, at Ubisoft, two established franchise showed off major course corrections. Assassin’s Creed Origins shakes up the decade-old series’ combat, exploration, and inventory management. Ubisoft’s open-world racing game, The Crew 2, will abandon the crime story from the original, essentially rebooting the franchise. And instead of just street races, The Crew 2 emphasizes all forms of motorized travel, including boats and planes.

Developers are finally shipping their long-awaited games

Video games, no matter the size, take time to make, more than the average player probably realizes. Still, it’s no fun when it seems as if a game you’ve been looking forward to has dropped into development limbo, with no word as to whether it will ever come out. Thankfully, a positive trend from this year’s E3 was that a trio of highly anticipated games that experienced long development cycles will arrive before the calendar year changes.

Cuphead, the sidescrolling indie title with an incredible 1930s cartoon-style animation, launches September 29. Developed by Studio MDHR, Cuphead was originally announced at E3 2014, and we’ve had our eyes on it ever since.

Crackdown 3 was also announced at E3 2014. The third game in Microsoft’s over-the-top GTA style franchise has suffered delays ever since, which may have been caused likely by its ambitious “everything you see is destructible” game mode. Delays are a thing of the past now for the game, though, as Crackdown 3 lands on Xbox One and PC November 7.

Fortnite, a co-op survival game that tasks players with building sustainable structures to ward off monsters, hits Early Access July 25. While not technically an official release date, Fortnite has been announced and re-announced multiple times since Epic Games unveiled the project at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards.

Some small-scale hits are getting a shot at building a franchise

Indie games are typically one offs, whereas AAA studios like to build brands through franchises. At E3 2017, however, we learned of followups to two recent, heralded indie games.

Moon Studios announced Ori and the Will of the Wisps, a sequel to its dazzling 2015 game Ori and the Blind Forest. And while technically a prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm will chronicle the events leading up to Dontnod’s Life is Strange. The three episode arc was developed by Deck Nine, not Dontnod, but it’s nice to see that an intellectual property as different as Life is Strange has legs. Oh, and Dontnod is currently working on a proper Life is Strange sequel as well.

This new game franchise seems awfully familiar…

Like we mentioned before, video games aren’t made in a vacuum. New IPs often hark back to existing franchises in terms of mechanics, style, and even setting. At E3 2017, we saw an assortment of new franchises with noticeable ties to games we’ve played and loved, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

When Ubisoft revealed Skull and Bones, we had flashbacks to the surprisingly fun naval combat in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

Anthem feels like BioWare and EA’s take on this online shooter that you may have heard of called Destiny. Like Destiny, Anthem focuses on the grind for new loot. We could also say that the setting reminds us of Horizon Zero Dawn, but it’s clear that Anthem looks to appeal to the Destiny crowd. And it looks great, so all is well.

When Code Vein was first teased by Bandai Namco, we instantly likened it to the Dark Souls series, which the studio publishes. Code Vein doesn’t look like Dark Souls — it has an anime art style and loads of vampires — but after seeing a little gameplay at E3, it’s apparent that Code Vein‘s methodical combat was indeed derived by the popular FromSoftware franchise.

Batman is DC, and Spider-Man is Marvel, so the two don’t coexist, but that doesn’t mean that their video games won’t be likened to one another. Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man was once again shown off at E3, and this time around, we got a better look at the gameplay. Whether or not Insomniac played the Batman: Arkham series, we don’t know, but some of Spidey’s moves, particularly his “perch” and stealth abilities, feel like nod directly to Rocksteady’s take on the Caped Crusader.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a weird pairing, we know, but what’s even more strange is how closely its combat mechanics hew to the modern XCOM franchise. The combat arena, which sets up Mario and pals (including Rabbids dressed as Mario and pals), looks and feels like a lighter take on the very intense XCOM games. Needless to say, we’re excited that Mario + Rabbids is a thing.

When Ubisoft revealed Skull and Bones, we had flashbacks to the surprisingly fun naval combat in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Ubisoft obviously took notice that Assassin’s Creed fans enjoyed that aspect of Black Flag, and decided to ratchet up the pace while turning the experience into a full game.

Slow-motion aiming in mid-air is officially a thing

Earlier this year, Horizon Zero Dawn impressed us on nearly every level. One minor gameplay mechanic, the ability to slow down time when aiming in mid-air, was just one of the many neat mechanics featured. While Horizon certainly wasn’t the first to include such mechanics, it appears that numerous other studios also fancied slow-mo aiming.

At E3 2017, we saw at least four games with a similar slow-mo mechanic — Assassin’s Creed Origins, The Darwin Project, Spider-Man, and Extinction. Slow motion is cool and all, but it’s also apparently a new trend.

What’s with all the bears?

There were bears everywhere at E3. Yes, bears. There were bears on stage and bears in games. From Just Dance panda, to the titular bear in indie game Disco Bear, E3 was bear-y furry this year. We know you need to read more about this, so we did the responsible thing and ranked the bears of E3.

People go bananas when Nintendo simply says a few words

Nintendo showed some great games at E3 this year. Super Mario Odyssey impressed us enough to earn our award for “best of show.” Despite this, the publisher’s biggest news never made it to the show floor. In fact, the games fans seemed most excited for this weren’t even showed. Nintendo may be the only studio that can “reveal” a project without any footage or even a trailer, and create pandemonium.

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During its Spotlight event on the first day of the show, Nintendo said the three little words that every fan has been dying to hear — Metroid Prime 4 — and everyone went nuts. Accompanied by a brief teaser trailer that simply showed some stars in space and the logo, that was enough. Metroid fans had been waiting for that moment for nearly a decade, so we understand. The mere announcement that developer Game Freak would eventually release a Pokémon RPG on the Switch basically stole the show.

Maybe Nintendo shouldn’t even show game trailers anymore. Maybe it should just provide a list of games on the horizon and let its fans do all the talking.

Press conferences? More like trailer roundups!

As an overall trend, the major press conferences are moving more and more away from formal, investor-facing presentations, and shifting toward a series of trailers, with barely anything in between. Microsoft’s showcase, in which it displayed 42 games, had little commentary in between. Sony’s press conference was practically a movie, and Bethesda and Nintendo also had trailer heavy showings. While Ubisoft‘s and EA‘s pressers had more lengthy periods of presenters on stage, there’s no denying that E3 2017 focused more on showing than telling.

VR games are still in the background

While it’s still up for debate whether VR is the natural evolution for the industry at large, at E3 2017, VR certainly didn’t receive as much attention as we expected. At Microsoft’s conference, in which some thought there would be a mention of VR support for Xbox One X, the letters “VR” were not uttered a single time. Sure, Bethesda showed Doom VFR and Fallout 4 VR, and Sony debuted The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, there was a general lack of “big” VR games. Those three, the biggest ones at E3, are all existing games for traditional platforms. We aren’t saying VR is a fad, but it may be a little while before the technology draws enough players to take center stage at E3.

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