#never beating the car fucker allegations

[allcap16]

he loves his 2022 beast

#never beating the car fucker allegations #charles leclerc #f1-75 #he is too handsome goodbye

[lukamodric]

CHARLES LECLERC in yas marina circuit, abu dhabi 2019.

📸 darren heath

#charles leclerc #* #abu dhabi gp 2019 #yet again never beating the car fucker allegations #im cleaning my pc this is why im making sm tbts btw 🤠

[remapped-soul]

My eyeballs have been graced by Nico Rosberg's winning car from 2016. The only sexy merc car that has rights.

amd next to me were a kid and his mom wondering who Nico Rosberg is while i was giggling like a lunatic looking at it 😭

#nico rosberg #nico rosberg's car #the only merc with rights #Little meow meow disrespected like that #f1 cars #i m never beating the allegations of being a car fucker #she was so pretty #Kudos to the presentation saying nico is the only other german apart from schumi and seb winning in f1

[robininthelabyrinth]

Countless Roads - Chapter 4

Fic: Countless Roads - Chapter 4 - Ao3

Fandom: Flash, Legends Pairing: Gen, Mick Rory/Leonard Snart, others

Summary: Due to a family curse (which some call a gift), Leonard Snart has more life than he knows what to do with – and that gives him the ability to see, speak to, and even share with the various ghosts that are always surrounding him.

Sure, said curse also means he’s going to die sooner rather than later, just like his mother, but in the meantime Len has no intention of letting superheroes, time travelers, a surprisingly charming pyromaniac, and a lot of ghosts get in the way of him having a nice, successful career as a professional thief.

A/N: This is a new chapter (chapter 5 on Ao3) 

———————————————————————————-

The first time it happens, it's – kind of funny, actually. In retrospect, anyway.

"Don't you dare touch him," Mick growls from where he's standing by the door, glaring at where they’ve got Len all tied up. They being some Santini Family assholes who hired Len and Mick for a small job - nothing big, the main guy said, just need it done quick, don't want to get the Family name involved - and then decided they didn't feel like paying some freelancers for work they apparently should've been doing themselves. Sadly for them, Len's just smart enough not to have brought the goods with him and had no intention of giving said goods up until they coughed up the cash for them.

Damnit, Len hates Family jobs. They shouldn't have taken it, he knows that, but it'd been such an easy job...

"And what exactly are you planning to do about it?" the main Santini asshole drawls, smug and confident now that he's got his people with him.

"You'll touch him over my dead body," Mick says.

"Fine," the mobster sneers, and shoots Mick dead in the chest, the force of it making Mick stagger backwards and fall down to the floor.

"You fucking little – " Len shouts from the chair he's been tied to, eyes wide with terror, worried half to hell because he has no idea what happens when you make a ghost as solid and real as he's made Mick and then that stupid ghost goes and gets himself shot.

"Enough!" Santini snaps. "Or you're going to get a bullet yourself, Mr. Snart – "

"I told you," Mick rasps, and the entire room turns to look to see him standing back up. Mick makes a big production out of it, too, dragging his limbs up like he's in pain, like his joints are creaking, clutching at his chest, but he gets up, eyes fixed on Santini. "You'll touch him over my – dead – body –"

Santini shoots, but Mick takes a step forward. Another shot, another step.

The third bullet clicks to an empty chamber, and Santini just breaks, turning tail and running, each and every one of his men with him.

"You okay?" Len asks the second the last one is gone. He knows ghosts don’t feel things the way the living do, but he’s given Mick a lot of life over the years…

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, I’m good. Stings like a Lisa special, nothing worse than that."

Lisa had once expressed her frustration with Mick by squeezing a lemon at him when he'd just cut his hand open in the kitchen and had been bleeding a little - more out of habit than anything else. Mick is never going to let her live it down.

"But you're okay?"

"All good, boss."

Len shakes his head, starting to grin. "Well," he says, biting his lips to keep from laughing. "Guess now they know you meant it about it being over your dead body."

Mick snorts.

The next time, they try shooting Mick in the head.

Of course, that doesn't work either - Mick confirms that lots of life or not, dead men don't feel pain the same way the living do, so it's all the same to him - but it does bring up some logistical issues.

Mick wisely plays dead until Len gets them to go away, because there's reputation and then there's revelation, and the whole gang that tried it unanimously flip their lids in a most satisfying way the next time Len walks in, Mick trailing behind him, same as always, and both of them playing dumb as rocks about the whole alleged – it's their new favorite word after a stint in prison and the justice system - the whole alleged murder thing.

Len's gotten Mick some damn fine fake papers, too, so the Fed threw them into the same prison, too. It was a learning experience.

Not one Len's all too eager to repeat. Mick got into fight after fight on Len's behalf, even with Len felling a few overly touchy guys personally. Next time, he's going to send Mick floating out the wall and get a quicker exit that way.

Mick's quasi-solid virtually all the time now, which Len likes. People think he's a living person, which in fairness is probably why they try to kill him.

Len's pretty sure he's doing the ghost thing wrong, that he's not supposed to give a ghost another life like this, a life made out of his own life, but he figures if he really wasn't supposed to do this, he wouldn't be able to use his feelings about Mick for the extra boost he needs to keep him solid so often.

Love really is the most powerful force. Who woulda thought it?

Other than literally the entire literary world, anyway.

Len still doesn't like it when Mick 'dies', though, whether the cause is an angry mobster or a hail of police bullets, so he starts doubling down on his plans, working on them all day and night so that they don't go wrong and Mick isn't called upon to protect him.

"You know it doesn't hurt me, right? Not really?" Mick asks from the poker game he's set up with a handful of friendlies: the nun who's waiting to see her last student graduate, the thirteen year old who died in a car accident on the way to hear his favorite band, the prostitute that got killed by a serial killer (Len's working on IDing the bastard in his spare time), and a grandmother with wicked children who wouldn't let her see her grandkids.

Grandmother or not, Sun-hui is kicking everyone's asses as usual. Tyrice is staring at her with an expression of awe – Len's got the feeling that the kid's going to be moving on pretty soon if he can convince Sun-hui to attend that concert with him.

(Len underestimates exactly zero of his friendlies - sure, they protect him from the unquiet dead, but Tyrice has a tendency to cause accidents on the street corner where he'd died and Sister Bea has a way of guarding her church schoolkids from trouble that includes nearly giving them heart attacks when they start to do something she considers stupid.)

"I know it don't hurt you," Len replies, not for the first time. "Makes me all queasy, though."

"Awwwww," Daniela says. “You’re such adorable snugglekins.”

"Shut up."

"Find the guy that beat my face in, and I will."

"I'm working on it!"

"Len – " Mick starts.

"Mick, if it makes you feel better, you can think about it as me not wanting to go back to jail, okay? If no one catches us, there's no problem."

"Fine, fine."

"Your plans are getting much better," Sun-hui says approvingly. "You leave very little trail behind you, like a ghost."

"Aw, thanks," Len says, grinning at her. He would never have understood Sun-hui in life, due to the language barrier that vexed her, but the dead all speak the same language.

He's not entire sure what language that is – he's pretty sure it ain't actually English – but that's what he knows, so he hears it in that, or else he just understands it regardless. Len vaguely recalls his mom saying something about how the curse of Babel didn’t apply to the dead, but the specific mechanics aren’t really that interesting to him – they can talk, he can listen, that’s all that matters.

“Plus your plans got much better since your old man got sent away,” Tyrice says, kicking his heels. He’s pretty short. Maybe he regrets not getting tall? Len should offer him some help with that. “Good-for-nothing dickwad.”

“Well, yeah,” Len says, because it’s not untrue. He’d resisted getting rid of his father at first, either by making a heist go wrong or via Mick’s preferred method of just up and torching the fucker, but that'd been because of Lisa, who needed to stay in a good school for her skating and grades. Once his dad fucked up her ankle right before a big skating competition because he needed spare cash, Len saw red.

He’d been able to sweet-talk the old lady down the street into signing up for fostering and then agreeing to take in Lisa for the remainder of her schooling once Lewis was on his way to prison for a good long time.

Having said old lady’s husband around – and said old lady being a devout spiritualist, or whatever the hell you call people that pay fake mediums too much money, much to her deceased husband’s concern – had really helped.

Besides, if her boo-boo told her the money was better used on taking care of Lisa than on all those mediums, who was she to object?

(Boo-boo. Really. Len is so glad he and Mick aren’t over-the-top smoochy like that.)

All things considered, it worked pretty well.

His remaining concerns about leaving Lisa with the old lady were misplaced: Mrs. Crabtree was officially Lisa’s favorite person ever, being a proper old grandma type, and Lisa chased the fake mediums who sought Mrs. Crabtree out for an easy mark away with a baseball bat, which in turn meant Mr. Crabtree felt comfortable moving on, which made everybody happy.

But since that skating scholarship didn’t look like it was going anywhere anymore, not since Lewis, that still left the question of somehow paying for Lisa’s continued schooling. It turned out high school was fine and all, being public, but college? College is an expensive pain in Len's ass, but he was determined that Lisa would go. Mrs. Crabtree certainly couldn’t help pay for it, living off her pension as she did, and neither Len nor Lisa would ever ask for her to. Now that Len knew that Lisa was somewhere safe, though, he could devote himself to dealing with that little problem.

With his dad gone, Len could recruit his own crew and hunt up some game of his own, and what glorious game it was: high end jewelry transports, art museums with shitty security, history museums with even shittier guards, fashion designer outlets where they carted away bags of dresses, much to the complaints of his crew until they found out they could sell that shit to a copy-cat place for very near the price of gold…

Okay, sure, it didn't work perfectly all the time – he spent a good few of Lisa's teenage years in prison – but after he got out again, he went right back at it, saving up the money for Lisa’s college and grad school and whatever else she wants in life. Two solid years of it, travelling the world, and it was fun and all, but Len’s not going to lie, he’s damn happy it’s over. Now that he’s had time to try all the different variations, he definitely prefers taking his time and planning out the perfect heist instead of doing them all rapid-fire like he has been.

Not to mention, now that the heat’s passed in Central and they’re mostly looking for him in Europe and the coast cities instead, it means that he gets to come home and settle down, and best of all that he’ll get to see Lisa again regularly instead of just talking to her on the phone like it’s been the last two years.

Lisa is twenty now – starting a bit later than the rest, yes, but money takes time and she's not so far behind that people would really notice. College freshman, thanks to the fudging of her high school record that he paid for to make sure she got to go anywhere she wanted, though she still picked Central City Uni so that she could live in her own apartment but still come back to Mrs. Crabtree’s for her laundry and to hang out, apparently.

College.

Lisa.

Man.

Len doesn’t even know what to do with that.

Like, he's been dreaming of it and planning it and counting on it, but now that she's actually enrolled, it's all weird.

He hasn’t been much of a brother these last few years, he feels – he’d been in and out of prison until she was seventeen, and he’d spent her last three birthdays out raising money for her. Len took care of Lisa as long as he could, and when he realized he couldn’t, he got her where she needed to be, but it’s not the same as really being there, even though Lisa assures him that between the near-daily phone calls and the week-long visits he tried to arrange at least once every three months, she never felt like he was too far away.

Still not the same, and he’s gotta admit, he’s feeling a bit insecure about it. Which, he suspects, leads to his current overreaction now that she’s coming to crash with him for her very first spring break.

Len spends a whole week cleaning up the place he’d acquired in anticipation of Lisa's arrival, and he never cleans.

"Why are you so worried?" Sun-hui asks, even as she supervises his (deplorable) cleaning attempts. "Your sister loves you, and will be happy anywhere."

"She's a college student now," Len says, focusing on his scrubbing. "I don't know, there's a difference."

"Nah, man," Tryice says. He’d finally gotten his concert, but he’d decided to wait on Sun-hui reaching her own goals before agreeing to pass on. "Still your sister. My big bro went to college, but he was still the same coming back." He pauses. "Smoked more pot, though."

Len gives Tyrice a dirty look, then sighs. "Well, s'long as it's just pot, we'll be fine."

"Yeah, crack's the bad stuff," Tyrice says all too wisely.

"Pssh, heroin. Now that's a college kid killer – and I should know," Julie says. She's new - died of an OD before flying home for Christmas, now waiting for next Christmas to go back and say goodbye to everyone, and she’s become best buds with Daniela, which is good since Sister Bea has finally moved on by now.

Kiki, another new one, a soft-spoken too-late-regretted suicide, nods in agreement.

“Very bad,” she says solemnly. Nora – a sad-looking woman in her late thirties who’d gotten stabbed in the chest and never saw her beloved eleven-year-old grow up – covers her mouth to hide a smile at Len’s expression.

"Well, I think meth – " Daniela starts.

"Will you all stop talking about drugs!" Len finally yells. "Lisa's not on any! So shut up!"

They all smirk at him, but fall silent. They usually listen to him, Len's found, especially when he means it. He's not sure if it's because they all want something from him or because he actually has some power over them, but he's been trying not to think about it too hard.

He's not a necromancer, damnit. His job is to help fix the world by doing his own special part of the spiritual cycle of life, just like the bacteria that eat the body of the dead, except he helps clean up the ghostly realms instead of the forest.

Julie thinks the metaphor is awful, and Nora agrees. Mick kind of likes it, though.

Speaking of Mick, he's been too quiet.

"Mick?" Len calls, but no, nothing. "Go check if something's on fire," he tells the ghosts, shaking his head.

"Nothing's on fire," Mick grumbles, walking through the door to the kitchen. The open door, for once; he’s getting better at pretending to be living on instinct. "I went grocery shopping and didn't want to holler back from the porch."

"Groceries?"

"If we're gonna impress your sister like you so obviously want to, we're gonna need some food,” Mick says like it’s obvious. “College students eat like pigs when the food’s free.”

Len sighs and looks down at the half-scrubbed floor. "I'm not gonna impress her either way," he says. "I'm a high school dropout with a criminal record – "

"Who raised her from childhood," Mick says skeptically. "Who got that criminal record paying for her schooling. Who got your dad put away on charges of theft and murder that'll keep him there for a few years at least, so that he won't find you guys when he gets out. Nah, nothing impressive there at all."

"But – "

"Lenny. It'll be fine. Relax."

#dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #lisa snart #my fic #deadfic

[dontshootmespence]

Fade to Black

A/N: An Elle x Reader fic of my own design shortly after Elle leaves the Bureau. Y/N is also a former law enforcement agent (though from the CIA and not the FBI). Tired of working for a system that lets certain people escape the system free of consequences, they decide to take matters into their own hands. What happened to Elle with The Fisher King remains, and the reader has a past checkered with sexual abuse. @coveofmemories @sexualemobitch @jamiemelyn @cherrybombs-and-rabbitholes

Warnings: Mention of rape

                                                             -----

“Hey, babe.” 

Plopping down on the couch, the two of you started going over the files upon files in front of you. Scouring for your next target was difficult - not because of a lack of them, but because there were too many to sift through. “How the hell are we supposed to pick who’s next?” Elle asked you. “There are so many of these fuckers out there and we can’t get them all.”

“Well,” you said, leaning your head against her shoulder, “Between us working outside the law and those working in the law, we just have to focus on the fact that less people are going to be harmed. We can’t stop them all, but someone will remain safe because of what we’ve done.” You kissed her on the cheek as she placed two files in front of you.

“You pick this time.”

Normally, you went back and forth each time, switching off on who would pick. You tended to go for the boys with money that got off scot free because of daddy’s connection - because that’s exactly what had happened to you. Though Elle hadn’t been raped, she had been violated in her own home, so when the two of you met at a bar and began talking about your pasts in veiled terms, you realized how similar you were, and your relationship, both romantic and “professional” had grown steadily from there. 

Given both of your pasts in law enforcement, it had taken you a bit of time to get used to working outside the law, but too many people fell through the cracks in the system and then went on to do the same or worse things, and you had the ability to stop it. “Michael Baker,” you said, his name rolling off the tip of your tongue. “White male. Age 25. Accused of raping and beating his ex-girlfriend. Got off because she couldn’t put herself through a rape kit and she was his ex so the local police chalked it up to rough consensual sex.” Your eyes nearly rolled all the way back. “And Kace Nelson of the famous Nelson law family,” you said, your tone dripping with disgust. “University student named Riya Solomon got picked up at a bar by Kace and woke up the next morning in a field near the school with bruises on her legs and no pants. She went through all of the rape kits and questioning and evidence retrieval only to have the allegations seemingly washed over...I think you know which one I want to go for.”

“You know this one’s going to be more difficult, right? They are a prestigious family.”

It would be more difficult. And as always, you’d do your homework, looking into the criminal to ensure that he (or on occasion she) was still offending and that it hadn’t just been a one-off. Only once had that background check proved a singular incident. Every other time, they were multiple offenders, either using the system to their advantage, or serving their time and going back to the lives they knew. “I know it will. But we’ve been meaning to switch up the MO for a while so law enforcement doesn’t catch on. Let’s start with this one.”

“Okay,” she said, gathering you to her shoulder. “Now I know you picked, but you know the deal.”

You sighed. “Yea, I know.”

Whenever you picked, it tended to be because they tugged at your heart in same way, their victims similar to you and their rapes similar to your own, and vice versa for Elle, so whoever picked, the opposite would be the “lure” bringing in the men to certain doom. Elle was the lure this time; it was easy for both of you to lure people in; they were always, unequivocally stupid, at least below the waist.

Neither of you ever disclosed the amount of people you’d targeted and eliminated, preferring to keep the number as an ambiguous thing in the back of your mind. That number wasn’t important. The number of people you saved from savagery was what mattered to you both. 

“Time to gather intel on Kace Nelson,” you said.

                                                            -----

Over the next few weeks, both you and Elle took turns gathering information on Kace, following him to bars and watching as he’d put date rape drugs in the drinks of the women he attempted to pick up. While it always made you livid beyond belief, you’d let the drugging happen if you couldn’t get to the drink without being seen, and wait until your target, in this case, Kace, walked out. Whoever was there, you or Elle, would knock them out and take the girls back home.

Kace was without a doubt a repeat offender - and he felt no shame for what he’d done to Riya, bragging about it to friends at a party. After you both felt you’d gathered enough information to focus in on him permanently, you devised a plan. ”I have an idea,” Elle said. “I am the primary target. But you’ll be there too. I’ll lure him in. Make him think he’s gonna get some and then I’ll invite you over.”

“And he’ll think he has us both,” you said with a smile. The lure of the threesome; sometimes it was too easy. Kace was going to be at a very large networking event, so although he was a “notable” person, he would amongst a sea of them and would quickly fade into the background. To be safe, you both had a fair number of disguises you switched between. “Then what?”

“We get him drunk. There’s a very thick forest right next to the gala he’s attending. We tell him to meet us out there in five minutes time for a bit of exhibition and then I’ve got this.”

When you looked down, you saw a bottle of succinylcholine, a paralytic used during surgeries that if given in large doses would kill and leave the body quickly, leaving very little trace. You’d only used “succs” once before, and it had gone well. “You gonna be able to do this one?”

“Yea, I’ve got this.”

Another scumbag off the streets. Another victim safe from harm.

                                                              -----

Later that night, you put on understated dresses, wanting to stand out to him, but not to anyone else. For the majority of the night, you flitted among the space separately, giving Elle a glance when she lured in Kace. 

Four hours passed before you got a text from Elle.

Leaving now. See you in a few.

Everything was always very quick, details discussed beforehand just in case things did lead back to you. They never did. You switched up the MO and the murder weapon too often. Though you were never under the delusion that you could never be caught.

As you approached the patch of trees, you heard Elle giggling, a strained one that told you that you were right on time. “So this is your friend?” he slurred. “Two blonde beauties.” Elle had dyed her hair instead of donning a wig this time and he was so drunk he hadn’t noticed you were a redhead and it was a wig. He turned back to Elle, kissing her neck as she motioned for you to reach around front and play with the buttons of his shirt.

For a few moments, you did, removing the shirt from his trousers as his hand rose around Elle’s neck. “Oh no way, baby,” she said, wagging her finger in his face. “I don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Oh come on,” he whined, practically collapsing into her he was so drunk. That’s when you made your move, pulling out a very thin needle and using the medication. Within minutes, he’d collapsed on the floor and with gloved hands, you checked his pulse. 

“Gone.”

It was perfect timing really. Rain had just started to fall. “Ready to go?” she asked. 

You nodded and grabbed her hand, quickly returning to the car. It would be about an hour’s drive home, and halfway there, you pulled to a campground and found a fire pit, placing your dresses and wigs into the flames, while you threw the medicine bottle and needle into the pond nearby. Once everything had been sufficiently burned, you cleaned up the ashes and tossed them out the window on the way home. 

“I think we’ve covered all bases,” you said.

Elle nodded as you pulled up to home, nearly three hours later. “Now it’s time for bed.”

                                                             -----

The next morning, you awoke to the paper. It wasn’t front-page news, but that was a good thing. The headline read, “Famed Party Animal Kace Nelson Dies After a Night of Heavy Drinking.”

A period of rest.

And then onto the next one.

#elle greenaway #elle greenaway x reader #elle greenaway fanfiction #elle greenaway fic #dontshootmespence #fade to black

[ernmark]

Would you expand a little on the Nureyev-is-a-dragon AU? That one was super cool

Oh, thank god.

I wrote that fic mostly for my own entertainment, and I didn’t hold out much hope that anyone else would get much out of it. I’m absolutely thrilled you actually enjoyed it. :)

Juno stands firm beside Peter while the would-be-client’s footsteps have gone silent in the hall. Then he rounds on his partner.

“What do you mean, you’re a dragon?”He doesn’t want the client to hear, so he keeps his shriek down to merely ear-splitting levels. “Were you ever actually planning on telling me? Ever?”

And damn him, Peter seems clueless. “I thought you knew.”

“What, the way you knew that woman was a dragon? I have no idea how the hell you two did that, but I fucking can’t!”

“And of course you can’t; your nose isn’t nearly as developed as mine, love, but you shouldn’t need to.”

No. Absolutely not. Peter is not going to let this just slide off him like it doesn’t matter. “Don’t you ‘love’ at me–”

“Juno, you’ve been inside my head. You’ve gone through my memories. Do you really mean to tell me that you missed a detail like that?” 

And just like that, Juno’s fury is extinguished. Because he did. He absolutely did. 

“I still wish you would’ve told me,” he mutters petulantly, though right now he’s mostly just mad at himself. Really, how did he miss it?

Oddly enough, that’s what Peter reacts to– not the initial outburst of fury, but the grumpy discomfort afterward.

“Juno,” he says softly. “This won’t be a problem for you, will it?”

“I don’t know,” Juno admits. “Will it?” He doesn’t know the first thing about dragons. He’s heard of them, sure, but most of the time he assumed they were just metaphors or weirdos who got in too deep with gene splicing. What he just witnessed with Peter, though, was something else entirely. “How does any of this even work?”

“It works the same way it has since the beginning.” Peter steps forward and wraps his arms around Juno. “I told you, I thought you knew. Nothing else has changed.”

Okay, so maybe ‘nothing’ was a bit optimistic.

Because things have changed.

For one, Juno suddenly understands the little things that always seemed so weird before. The way some people might be perfectly civil on the phone and then turn hostile and cold the moment he’s in the same room as them, even before he has the chance to piss them off on his own. And every time, they’re the kinds of people whose shoes cost more than Juno’s entire apartment building. And every time he comes home from meeting with people like that, Peter’s all over him, dominating and possessive in a way that Juno won’t deny he loves.

It always seemed to come out of the blue before. But suddenly it makes sense.

“That… uh… the woman.” Juno can’t remember her name. As thoroughly as Peter just fucked him, it’s a miracle that Juno still remembers how to talk, but he knows Peter will understand who he’s talking about. “She wasn’t human, was she?” 

Peter’s applying ointment to the places where his love bites broke skin. He doesn’t pause in his ministrations. “Of course she wasn’t.” 

“You two know each other?” 

That draws a chuckle out of him. “No, I’m afraid all dragons don’t know each other.”

“But she seemed to know you,” Juno says. “Or that I know you, anyway.” 

“Smelled me on you, more likely.” There’s no hiding the satisfaction in his voice when he says that. “The same way I smelled her on you when you came back.”

“What?” Juno sits up. “How? I didn’t even shake her hand–”

“I don’t doubt you, love.” Peter chuckles again and kisses one of the bites in Juno’s thigh. “It doesn’t take much to pick up a scent. But no need to worry– there’s not a trace of her left on you. I’ve made sure of that.” 

Juno makes a mental note: dragons are territorial fuckers. In every sense of the word.

Not all other dragons are immediately hostile, though– worse, some of them get flirty.

More than a few of them point out his patched coat, his worn-out shoes, his glass eye. 

“Not much money in being a private eye, I imagine,” muses a tall woman in a cocktail dress while he’s trying to grill her about recent allegations of embezzlement. “A pity you don’t have anyone to assist you with that.” 

“You’re free to help out sometime,” Juno says, “but you might want to change your footwear first. Never heard of a gumshoe in stilettos.” 

She laughs. “Oh, yours helps you solve cases? That’s adorable.”  

Yours.

That’s how they always seem to refer to Peter.

“That awful Kay woman seems to have spread the word,” Peter sighs when Juno tells him about it. “I suppose it’ll help prevent another awkward incident.”

“And that’s not going to be a problem?” Juno asks. “Are they going to be able to identify you?”

“The humans won’t, most likely,” Peter says carelessly. “The dragons won’t care. Whose you are isn’t nearly as important as the fact that you’re already spoken for.”

Juno’s not entirely sure how he feels about that. If he wanted half the city to know his relationship status, he would wear a ring. It gets weird, though, when a member of the Triad comes up to his office with a formal invitation.

“If you ever find yourself in need of better care,” he says pointedly, “Know that Shenlong is always generous to those in his employ.” 

Juno’s about to give him a piece of his mind when Peter storms from the back of the office, looking like he’s ready to hurl the mobster through the window. The mobster flees, which is probably the only reason he’s still alive. 

“You okay?” Juno asks.

“Fine,” Peter hisses through sharp teeth. “Just fine.”

“You sure about that?” He doesn’t look fine. Peter’s eyes are slitted and sharp; there are claws where his fingernails used to be. “You mind explaining what that was back there, then?” 

“I knew the man who ran the Triad was a bastard, but that was low,” Peter grumbles. “He was trying to steal you for himself. He seems to think you can do better than me.” 

For all his agitation, Juno can hear a note of genuine hurt in his voice.

“That’s not gonna happen,” he tells Peter, sidling up close. He twines their hands, and immediately the claws start to recede. “I’ve got a strict policy about dating people who’ve tried to have me killed.”

Juno’s not exactly unfamiliar with snide comments about his bruises, his patched clothes, his shitty car. They never bothered him all that much before. Being a functional dumpster fire of a human being was practically a point of pride for him, almost as much as being a Private Eye. 

But when other dragons are looking at him, that’s not what they’re seeing. To them, he’s not just a human disaster, he’s Peter’s human disaster. And as far as they care, the only reason he’s so messed up is because Peter’s neglecting him or something.

That pisses him off. 

So he starts cleaning himself up, just to spite those judgmental assholes. He doesn’t exactly go out for a whole three-piece suit-- maybe Peter can feel comfortable in that kind of getup, but Juno sure can’t-- but he starts throwing out clothes when they stop being presentable. His beat-up old trench coat is replaced by a newer model that’s sleek, expensive, and cut for timeless fashion. He lets Peter buy him jewelry. He even starts applying makeup again, and he can’t even remember the last time he’s been willing to do that.

More and more often, he finds himself preening in front of the mirror. Sure, maybe it’s all done out of spite, but damn if he doesn’t look sharp.

#ingridlake #the penumbra podcast #writing prompt #fanfiction #rk

[allcap16]

charles is never beating the car fucker and the wh*re allegations

#charles leclerc #every single video or picture or story that comes out confirms this for me #i love you little demon who loves his cars and loves thirst trapping but is an angel at the same time