#so if tim was gonna clock either of them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yandere--stuck · 3 months

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if you have any more thoughts on the Joker Junior extending the family take I'd love to hear them!! Would J be interested in having Nightwing with them? Or Alfred? I'm not sure how well either of them would take to the venom, but if they have Batman anything's possible

Less ideas and more of an actual fic, oopsie!

---

Three weeks. Three long, agonizing weeks without Tim. Three weeks of hoping beyond all hope that he was somehow fine. That they'd all look back on this and laugh.

But, no. Eventually, Bruce was able to get word that The Joker and Harley had holed themselves up in the abandoned Arkham Asylum, and something in his gut that made him sick knew there was some correlation.

Part of him hadn't wanted Barbara to come along, but he also knew he wouldn't be able to stop her even if he tried. So, the two of them traversed through the crumbling asylum together and followed the echoing sound of Harley's voice singing a lullaby.

“Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird,

And if that mockingbird don't sing,

Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring….”

Closer, closer. It took both of them every bit of will they had not to sprint through the halls as fast as their legs could carry them. As Harley’s voice grew even louder, Barbara split up to find another way in while Bruce took the lead. His heart nearly leapt from his chest with anticipation as he closed in on her location.

“And if that diamond ring is brass,

Mama's gonna buy you a looking glass,

And if that looking glass gets broke-”

The moment Harley saw him burst through the double doors, she perked up, greeting Bruce with a smile. She was cradling a flower vase in her arms, which she set down onto a covered table. Craning her neck, she shouted over her shoulder. “Puddin’, Hubby's home!”

Bruce’s eyes followed Harley’s gaze, spotting Joker on the second floor where he rested on a recliner. With a flourish, The Clown rose to his feet, turning away from his rabbit-eared television set and popping a pipe from his mouth, tossing it aside.

“Well, hello, dear!” Joker strolled down the stairs, stopping just shy of Batman. He wrapped an arm around Harley, the two of them smiling sweetly at their bat. “Welcome home.”

Bruce all but snarled in their faces, leaning close and baring his teeth. “Where's Robin?”

Both clowns shared a quizzical look.

“Robin?” Joker repeated with a quirk of his head. “There's no Robin here!”

“Maybe he means our little J,” Harley offered.

The Clown Prince of Crime snapped his fingers. “Of course! That's it.”

Meeting the Bat's eyes, smiling back at his scowl, Joker gestured to the other side of the room. To whatever was being concealed behind the large blue curtain. And Bruce couldn't help his rage, shoving the couple aside roughly as he moved to cross the room.

The Joker stumbled back, recovering with the shake of his head and click of his tongue. “He must be so stressed out from work.”

“I hate it when he gets like this. He never knows when ta relax,” Harley shook her head and reached underneath the table, pulling out a bazooka from beneath the tablecloth. She fired, and a band of ribbons erupted from the muzzle, knocking Batman to the floor with a hard thud and wrapping him up like a gift - bow and all.

“Good thing he has us. Hmm, now what say we bring this little gift of ours back to the bedroom to unwrap?”

Joker's grin stretched just a little wider as he noticed the movement of Batman's hand - holding it up just so as if to signal someone, just out of eyesight, to stand down. Joker's eyes crinkled. Perfect. He wondered, was it the eldest birdboy? Or maybe they'd be getting two bats with one stone?

“Y'know, Bat's, we've been doing this little run around for years,” Joker spoke again, approaching his prone enemy. “It's been loads of laughs! But the sad fact is - none of us are getting any younger.”

Harley joined his side, patting her stomach. “That ol’ clock's a tickin’!”

“Quite right, Pooh! So, Harley and I were thinking it's about time the three of us finally settled down together.”

“But rather than experiencing the joys of pregnancy, we decided the best way would be to just marry into the family.”

Hand-in-hand, the clowns walked over their Bat's prone form to each rest a hand on the curtain in front of them.

“But no matter how happy we are to join you, we were a bit disappointed that we didn't really have the chance to nurture them, too,” Joker lamented. “And after all, what better way to officially join the family than to impart a little bit of our personalities to the kiddos? He needed a bit of molding, of course, but-”

The couple yanked on each side of the curtain, the blue cloth sliding and billowing out as it parted - revealing a child strapped to a medical examination table.

“... What kid doesn't?” Joker finished with a grin, drinking in the Dark Knight's reaction.

Bruce couldn't help the exhale of ‘no’ that left him. Couldn't even blink, too horrified to look away from what had been done to Tim. The horror set in all at once, like freezing water flooding through every nerve in his system.

Joker brought Tim forward with the click of a button, the table rolling forward and bringing the boy into the light.

Tim...

His face an acid-washed white. His hair an unearthly green. His Robin costume now replaced with an exact recreation of Joker's own suit. And his face… Contorted in a pained smile and his eyes wide and afraid, unblinking.

“Say hello to Dada, JJ,” Joker cooed.

Tim's eyes, seeming to glow red in the light, shifted from Joker to Batman. He leaned further into the light, locking eyes with Bruce, and laughed. He laughed in a way Bruce had never, ever heard before. He unbound himself from the table, leaping to the floor on scrawny legs - God, how much weight had he lost in such a short amount of time. What had they done to his boy?

All at once, the cold shock and dawning horror inside Bruce shifted - and his whole body was alight with rage, like a fire inside threatening to escape through every orifice as he ripped through his bonds. The shout he made was near inhuman, launching a batarang he had cut the ribbons with directly at Joker's head, only for the Clown to dodge it with ease.

Harsh giggles flooded from Joker's throat, wiggling a finger in a ‘come hither’ motion before jumping onto the now vacant medical table, rocketing off with the click of a button, causing Bruce to almost stumble and reorient himself to take off after him - and leaving Barbara to deal with Harley.

—

Giggles bubbled from Tim JJ's throat as he stared unblinkingly down at his father, body crumpled on the floor, cape draped almost protectively over his prone body. And with giddy glee, The Joker Papa J hopped down from the giant building blocks he was perched upon, where he had sliced at Batman and sent him tumbling down only seconds ago.

It was all a blur for Bruce. The chase. The horrific videos of Tim… Tim's torture. Three weeks. Three weeks of that Hell. Electrocution. Beatings. Torment. Starvation. And it was all his fault. He'd failed him. The rage that had filled him nearly completely, made him seen red, had all been snuffed out.

First Jason. Now Tim. And Bruce still couldn't bring him to end this. His vision swam, and he could barely even focus. Not on Tim. Not on the man who tortured him. But… Wait. Where was-?

With a final hop, Joker landed in front of Batman in a crouch, hovering over him with a sly grin.

“You've lost, Bruce,” He rasped, and just hearing the name on the clown's lips made JJ seize up, his forever-smile momentarily twitching and a flood of nervous giggles escaping him. The clown continued, voice low. “Robin is mine… And now, so are you.”

And with a hearty heft, Joker lifted Bruce up by the scruff of his cowl and cape, as if presenting him. The grin of his face, the look in his eyes, as he looked down on his enemy. So proud of himself, so smug.

And Bruce. He looked in a daze, lost and beaten. Blood dripped from his lips.

This isn't what Papa promised. He said everything would be okay now. That he'd see Dad and Dick and Babs and Alfred again and he wouldn't be mean or hurt him again, because Papa knew he would be good now…

But when Joker met his eyes, something in them changed - his smile warping to somehow become comforting, happier. The darkness in his eyes dissipated, replaced with an excited shine. And with a free hand, The Clown grabbed for a large gun that looked more like a toy than anything.

“Here ya go, sonny-boy!” He said, tossing the weapon.

JJ scrambled forward to catch it. He couldn't help but notice how light the gun felt as he cradled it in his shaking, gloved hands. For a moment, he couldn't look away.

“Make him one of us,” The Joker urged, voice like a hiss.

It wasn't a conscious decision to aim the gun. It just happened. Like one minute, JJ was there and gone and back again. His hands shook so hard that he could hardly keep the weapon straight. Could barely even look at him. At the mask. At the man behind it.

“Tim…” Batman breathed. JJ had never heard his voice sound so small.

JJ would swear he couldn't breathe if it weren't for the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the wheezing, giggling exhales that escaped him as he struggled to calm down. Tears threatened to pool from his eyes.

This wasn't right. But, Papa knows best. He said everything would be okay afterward. He said he wouldn't be punished again. But, he couldn't. But, he couldn't run, either - too scared. Too weak. He wanted to be home. He wanted his family. He wanted to stop crying, to be able to breathe, to run into his fathers’ arms-

“It's alright now, JJ,” The Joker soothed, recapturing the boy's attention. “Just pull the trigger, and everything will be okay.”

JJ wanted his Papa to be telling the truth. He just wanted everything to be okay. He just wanted it all to stop. Bruce, please forgive him.

His finger squeezed around the trigger-

Joker's laugh filled the room, just as a green mist began flooding from the gun’s opening. It spread through the air and quickly covered both men. Joker laughed long and loud as he clung to Batman. He pulled his Bat into an embrace, a smile so bright and wide it made the corners of his mouth rip, as Bruce began to choke and hack.

The man seized up and shook in Joker's arms. Slow at first, but soon trembling and writhing in agony, barely restrained and pained chuckles escaping him. So much hurt flooding through every nerve and system that almost faculties left him. His lungs burned, his face ached, he couldn't feel his extremities and wouldn't have been able to hold himself up without Joker's hold on him. Bruce wasn't sure if he could speak or even breathe anymore, but somehow his body found it in itself to betray him, forcing laughter from gritted teeth.

Joker took a knee, gently laying Batman to the ground. The bat spasmed and jerked. Tears began to fall from behind his mask, shining on his cheeks in the light. Gloved hands caressed the sides of Bruce's face. Green eyes glinted in the light as they watched each movement of the other man - every sputter, every gasp, every choked out laugh, every pained, slowly blooming smile that wobbled onto his face.

“You must be so scared, aren't you, sweetheart?” Joker cooed. “You've been scared this whole time, haven't you? Ever since that night in the alleyway...”

Batman didn't reply - couldn't. His eyes crinkled as his smile grew involuntarily. All he could do was return the man's gaze with a manic smile that wasn't his own.

Joker stroked the top of his cowl lovingly. “But it's okay now, Bruce. You don't have to be scared anymore. You don't have to be strong. Don't have to hold yourself back. Me and Harl will build you back up to what you were meant to be. We'll be brave for you now. And do you know why?”

Bruce couldn't respond. For one, the agony of whatever this was, whatever Joker had planned for him, blotted out almost all thoughts in his mind completely. Could only tremble and writhe and cry and laugh. Laugh. Laugh. The laughing made it hurt just a little less. But he could still barely even register what the other man was saying. What he could register, though, was the image of Joker slowly leaning down to press his lips to Bruce's cloaked forehead.

“Because we love you.” Joker finished.

—

“Ohhhh, Harley!” Joker's voice rang through the cavernous halls of the abandoned asylum. “Barbie's turn!”

Barbara's stomach sunk to her feet and her heart skipped a beat. Barbie? No. No, there was no way, he could have known her name. Oh God, what happened to Bruce-?

In the middle of her ruminations, Harley caught her by surprise. A jab to the face, the pull of her leg to trip her up leaving her scrambling to correct her fall- only for her to feel hand grasp tightly at the nape of her neck, coiling painfully at the root of her hair. She was shoved onto her stomach, face-to-face with the dirty, cracked tiles of the former asylum’s floor.

“You know what that means! C'mon, Barbie,” Harley grunted, fingers twisting in the roots of her hair. She lunged forward, slamming her face to the floor with a sick crunch. “Let's go party!”

And everything went dark.

… Barbara awoke with a groan. The smell of pennies flooded her nostrils. Her vision was bleary and swam as she struggled to open her eyes.

A dark figure entered her vision from her periphery, and it loomed over a figure clad in purple. And for a moment, just one moment, she allowed herself to hope.

But, that hope crumbled just as quickly as Joker's voice entered her ears.

“You're okay, Bruce, you're okay, sweetie. You're gonna play nice now, right?”

Barbara couldn't help but shudder at the sound of Bruce's laugh in reply.

Hands found their way to Barbara's hair again, this time much softer. Not grabbing, just brushing and stroking almost soothingly.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs ‘n bakey,” Harley sang as she carded her hands through the younger woman's hair. “Y'know, I've always wanted a daughter. A little girl of my own. You think you'd ever want Mama to braid your hair for you? It's so pretty!”

“Ah, welcome back to the land of the living, Barbie,” Joker greeted. “Your Dad and I were just talking about you. A real chip off the ol’ block. Now all we need is to make it official.”

Barbara watched as Tim approached Bruce, pushing a gun of some kind into his hands. The Batman held it in his hands, smiling down at the weapon - but seemed almost hesitant. Unsure. Like he knew this was wrong. Like the weapon would somehow come alive and bite him.

“Batman, listen to me,” Batgirl pleaded. “Don't do this. Whatever they've done to you, this isn't you.”

“Oh, but it is! And soon it'll be you, too,” Harley corrected, walking back to give herself some distance.

“I know you're torn, Batsy, but I promise this is for the best,” Joker rubbed circles into the other man's back. “We'll all finally be together. Once we get Barbie here, then we'll get Dick and Al. And we'll be a family! They'll never be hurt again. You'll never be hurt again, sweetheart. I won't let anything bad happen anymore. You'll get your happily ever after. You won't be afraid ever again, I promise.”

Tears stung at Barbara's cheeks as she begged. “Batman, please!”

And for a moment, she thought she somehow got through to him. They locked eyes and Bruce smiled at her with a smile that isn't his own. But, she thought she could see understanding or recognition or something in his eyes, and was sure he'd toss the gun away and start kicking Joker's ass.

But, she was wrong.

With a hiss, green toxin flooded all around her. Even over her screams, the sounds of Joker, Tim, Harley, and Bruce's laughter smothered her completely. And soon after, so did her own.

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mamawasatesttube · 10 months

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With timkon who do you think fell first? And who fell harder?

GOD ive been turning this over in my head all day and it's so hard to answer in those terms i feel like!!! theyre SUCH a friends to lovers in my mind that they just melt into each other so hard. augh lets see though okay okay lemme try

i DO think they both had crushes on each other in their yj98 days. (i mean... "i know i'm gonna die i just wish i could talk to kon one last time" ???? "hey robin anyone tell you your voice drops like an octave when you get all commander-like" I KNOW WHAT YALL ARE.) but i DON'T think either of them realized it. they were both just kids still way too deep in the closet for that.

tim DEFINITELY started going off the deep end wrt kon's death. i think he was still figuring out the whole "bisexuality" thing while getting whammied left and right by shock/trauma/grief all steamrolling him flat in the world's worst conga line, so i don't think he fully registered that the feelings he was having were explicitly romantic, but he was definitely feeling ways. i mean, like. he absolutely kissed cassie as a substitute for kissing kon. when he actually put it together that thats what he was doing, though... i don't think it all really came together for him until after he was done brucequesting and actually got to breathe and let himself process. he was already head over heels at this point. he just didn't know.

for kon, i think it's this really slow, gradual thing, where feelings of friendship melted into a very deep and intimate bond without words somewhere between "best friends" and "romantic partners", again without him really having the self-awareness to put that sort of label on it. post-resurrection kon is just so introspective, i think it just sorta comes to him one day that, like, oh. he'd like to be close to tim forever. he knows he's into guys at this point but bc of his sexual trauma + dating history i do think it takes him a HOT second to clock that this feeling of intimacy and comfort is, in fact, romantic attraction.

so "who fell first" and "who fell harder" is just so confounded by both of them not even fucking realizing they fell for each other for so long kjsdfjksd like arguably they both fell pretty early, and tim fell REALLY hard while kon was dead, but i also don't think they REGISTERED that at all!!! theyre a lil stupid!!!

that said. when they have both figured out they're into each other, kon is def the one who's pretty calm about it like oh :) i love tim and i just want to be near him all the time. whereas tim is out there like oh my god he's holding my shoulder. he does that all the time i will not overthink this but oh my god what if he would hold me more WAIT IM NOT GOING TO OVERTHINK THIS and im NOT going to daydream about OHHHHH MY GOD he put his jacket on me oh fuck oh fuck im going to be normal im NORMAL is that his favorite cologne i can still smell on the collar. oh GOD did he just notice me sniffing the collar of his jacket like a creep ah fuck okay im a creep im a weirdo what the hell am i doing here WHY is this not actually distracting me from the way i can definitely still smell his cologne shit shit fuck-----

(and then they kiss. eventually. <3)

#tim #kon #timkon #answers

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underthe-redhood · 1 year

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our last chance

- a/n: it's mentioned that the reader is the daughter of bruce and selina, but it's never mentioned that she's biologically related, so you could definitely interpret it as her being adopted by them!

7. step one: arm’s length

- synopsis\\ you watch as dick runs off after batman betrays him for the last time, causing the family to fall apart. after an explosion, and a time machine, with a speedster to help you, you have one last chance to stop history from repeating itself.

• word count: 2,252

• masterlist

you sat in your room staring at the grey clock hanging on your wall. it was ticking away towards noon, and you had yet to go downstairs. you'd been up for a few hours, but you couldn't bring yourself to go down there until you were sure you were ready to start step one. you and bart agreed that to start things off, you needed to distance dick from barbara because the less attached he is the less everything will hurt should you fail to stop the affair.

but how? you were gonna start by getting in the way of them spending time together, which you didn't think babs would mind too much. and you were planning on pushing him close to his other friends like kori and wally. but, would that be enough? you got up from your desk and walked over to your bed to lay back down. you couldn't stay in your room forever, you were on a time limit.

maybe you could try what bart does and plan as you go? it sounded new, and it sounded uncomfortable. but it worked for bart, so maybe it'd work for you? either way, nothing would get done if you stayed in your room so you got up went to find dick. it wasn't quite noon yet, so you started by checking the kitchen. as you assumed, he was sitting there eating cereal with tim.

"hey y/n," tim said as you walked over to them and sat next to him.

"hey timmy, are either of you doing anything today?"

"i have plans with wally, why what's up?" dick said.

"nothing really, i just have a boring day ahead of me," you told him. "is bart coming with you?"

"bart?" tim asked, confused as to why you were bringing him up. you had to remember that at this point in time you'd seen him maybe once or twice in passing.

"yeah, flash's grandson right?" you said smoothly, then looked back at dick.

"i'm not sure, why?" dick asked. he was eyeing you suspiciously. you'd already let it slip to him that you'd hung out with bart once. you didn't wanna mess anything up for yourself.

"if he's gonna be there, can i come along too?" if not to watch how dick is doing, you at least wanted to hang out with bart. even with all the time you'd already been spending with him, you kinda just wanted to see him more.

"since when have you liked hanging out with bart? i didn't even know you knew him," tim said, also suspicious now. you kinda forgot to think about how were you gonna explain it to him.

"neither did i," dick said, leading you further into a corner where you'd have to explain yourself.

"well i don't, not yet anyway," you said, it was a lame response but what else were you gonna say.

"and you want to because?" tim continued, if you were gonna take an interest in one of his best friends then he was gonna find out exactly why.

"he's cute," you blurred out. cute? well, you'd officially screwed yourself over. dick's eyes widened and tim's mouth was slightly open in shock.

"you can't date him"/"bart's off limits", they both shouted.

"keep your voices down before someone hears you, jesus! that's not how i meant that," but was it? "so can i come or not?"

"absolutely not," dick said. you saw this coming the second those words left your mouth.

time to say something else that was gutsy, "if bart is there i'm coming. i'm not gonna date him, so you don't have to freak out," you said.

"in that case i'm coming too," tim chimed in. "i wanna make sure there's nothing already going on between the two of you." maybe winging it wasn't gonna work out too well for you.

~~~~~

"i thought you were planning on going somewhere," you said to dick, unenthusiastically.

"the batcave is somewhere," he said, tossing a batarang up into the air and catching it.

"somewhere out," you clarified. you turned your attention over to tim who was sitting on the ground, lost in thought and mumbling to himself. "are you okay?" you asked him.

"i just don't get what you see in him," he started. you'd been waiting for wally to show up, hopefully with bart, and you were all bored out of your minds. "i mean, he's bart!"

"glad to see you think so highly of your best friend," you said sarcastically.

"you know what i mean," he said. "do you even really remember what he looks like? how can you be sure he's actually cute?" he whined.

"timmy, i meant that in a friendly way i swear!" you were hoping the speedsters would show up soon and end this conversation.

"what does that even mean! besides, what makes you think he's even gonna show up," tim said. he had a point, but only because he didn't know what you knew. you were sure bart would show up to see you and dick, but you couldn't explain that.

so instead, you just went with another lame excuse, "he'll probably show up because he knows you're here." as you finished saying that, another realization crossed your mind. bart didn't know that you'd accidentally called him cute. he was gonna get grilled by tim, and maybe even dick, without really knowing why. you'd tell him, but how do you just casually tell someone you called them cute to your brothers?

you decided bart was just gonna have to manage, you'd make it up to him somehow later. thankfully, the zeta tubes finally glowed and two lit up figures stepped out. "hey dick," wally greeted. "i hope you don't mind that i brought bart along, he kept pestering me about seeing tim because apparently seeing him all the time at titans tower isn't enough," wally sighed.

you smiled, bart pulled through just like you knew he would. you could always count on him, and that meant more to you than you could express. bart smiled at you and sped over to where you and tim were and dick and wally started a conversation of their own. "hey bart," tim eyed him.

"hey tim?" bart raised an eyebrow at him, then turned to look at you hoping you'd say something to at least clue him in on what might be about to happen.

instead, you gave an apologetic look as tim continued, "what a coincidence seeing you here."

bart looked like got what was happening, "well i knew you were gonna be here," he said. and that seemed to be enough for tim. you may have slipped up, but at least he thought it was one sided.

then dick called out, "hey we're going on a donut run with barbara and artemis, do you want anything while we're out?" from the stairs.

you replied with, "no we're good!" and tim looked over at you disappointed.

"i wanted chocolate donuts," he said, but dick and wally were already in the elevator shaft.

"i'll go tell him," you offered, and took that chance to leave as well. you went back to the manor, but the two of them were already gone of course. you paced around up stairs trying to think of a plan. maybe if you caused a fake scene or whatever then you'd be able to call batgirl to it and get her away from dick?

as bad as you felt about keeping him away from his girlfriend, you needed to keep them at arms length for his own good. you went back down to the batcave where tim and bart were now nerding out together. "i wasn't able to catch them, but maybe you and bart could just meet them there?"

"aren't they going on a double date? it'd be awkward if we just showed up for donuts," tim said.

"so then call stephanie and make it a triple date," you suggested.

"what about bart?" tim asked, and you replied maybe just a bit too quickly.

"bart will be fine!" you said, which made tim look at you weirdly. he then looked over at bart who only agreed with you. "plus it's not like dick is gonna mind, he always says the more the merrier," you added.

"yeah i guess," tim said as he pulled out his phone to call stephanie. he started walking back to the manor and called out, "i'll see you later." he probably assumed bart was going to home and you were thankful he actually left instead of staying to watch and make sure.

but then it hit you, "can you zeta back to central city and then run here? wait do you know how to get in without using the zeta tubes?" you said to him.

"yeah, i've done it a couple times with tim. but why do i need to leave and run back?" he asked, confused.

"because knowing dick he's gonna come back and check the zeta tube records and he's gonna get suspicious if he sees you never left even after tim joined them," you explained.

"why not just lie about dating or something, wouldn't that make it easier to sneak around for this plan?" he asked, and it took you a hot second to realize he was being fully serious.

"bart, that's sweet but have you met anyone in my family? you wouldn't live to help me with the second step," you said.

"you're exaggerating, right?" he asked oh so innocently.

"after living with damian i'm not so sure that i am," you told him. "if we ever date we'd have to keep it a secret."

"if we ever date?" he asked with a teasing tone and you immediately became hyper-aware of what you'd just said. at least it was salvageable.

"well i just, uh you know, like hypothetically," you stumbled all over your words.

and with that he shook his head with a quiet laugh and zeta'd back to central city. he then showed back up a couple minutes later and the two of you got to work. you walked over to the bat-computer and pulled up barbara's location.

who knew bruce's stalker habits would one day help you too. "maybe i can anonymously send her phone a random location in gotham and get her to show up?"

"won't she be able to eventually trace it back to the bat-computer though? how would you do that?" he asked. that made you think, and after a few moments you finally had a solid idea.

"okay so i think i have a plan, you should go to the café that they're at. if you can beat them there, which you probably can because tim is with them now, then you can tell me when you see babs look down at her phone and i can send a fake bat signal that looks real enough for her to take it seriously and show up, but also enough like a glitch for her to think that's what happened when she shows up to an empty alley.

"what about dick?" bart asked, which was reasonable but you didn't think you'd have to worry about it.

"if we're fast enough then babs will tell him she had to dip and i bet she's gonna tell him she can handle it on his own and that he should stay with the others. i really don't think she's gonna go out of her way to spend time with him right now, which kinda makes this easier for us," you told him.

"okay yeah, that makes sense," he said. "so should i run over now?"

"yes, and hurry," you urged him. he sped off and about a minute and a half later you got a text from him.

bart: okay, she's sitting down at one of the booths

i'm standing awkwardly at the bus stop across the street

oh wait she's looking down at her phone!

as soon as that text popped up you hit the button on the bat-computer that sent the signal. and then immediately canceled it. although you couldn't see it, barbara had a look of confusion on her face that was soon followed by a look of relief. as sad as it was, you were right. she was glad she didn't have to spend the day with dick, and so she took off.

bart: she's grabbing her jacket and getting up

i think your plan worked!

you: yes!

you should head back here before the others show up and see you

he left you on read but about a minute and half later you were met with a gust of wind and bart. "so now that we have some free time," he smirked, "let's go back to what you said earlier."

"what i said earlier?" you asked him. you were hoping he wasn't referencing what you assumed he was.

"if we were to date," and somehow his smile grew just a little bit more.

"it was just a hypothetical, i swear!" you said. he'd gotten his flirty personality from wally, no doubt. it was oddly likeable. but you just saw him as a friend, you were pretty sure. you just happened to sometimes say some silly things. that's all.

"uh huh, whatever you say," he teased. but at this point, you were smiling too. well, you were smiling until you felt your phone buzzing. you pulled it out to see,

INCOMING CALL: dick :3

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#dick grayson x reader #batsis reader #batfam x batsis #batfam x reader #batboys x reader #batboys x you #batsis #dick grayson x batsis #bart allen x reader

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quanticowrites · 4 months

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The Wrong One Pt. 3 (Timothy McGee x Reader)

•• GAH I got something done. Part 3 and final part of this fic. Enjoy! ••

The headlights are practically blinding, but you're able to see them reach for the car door and push it open. They step out to show that they have a hood over their face.

"Who are you?"

"You mean you haven't figured it out yet?" They ask, sounding annoyed. "I thought leaving my necklace at the crime scene would make it pretty clear."

"HEY-!" They reach for their hood.

"I'm just showing you who I am." The calmness in their voice made your stomach churn. You watched as they pulled the hood back. You feel your gun slip out of your hands.

It was like looking in the mirror.

"Surprised?" She laughed. "Looks like Mom and Dad didn't tell you everything." Your mind was spinning as you watched her sprint toward you. You managed to twist yourself mid-fall so that she was beneath you, giving you a slight advantage. "Aww, don't feel bad. I didn't know I had a twin either." She laughed, clocking you in the jaw with her elbow. "Not that it matters, you know, I'm going to kill you and take your place." You spit in her eye and rolled towards your gun. If you could just reach it. "You're not better than me, just because they didn't give you up!" You flinched as her fingers came a bit too close to your eyes for comfort.

"You think you can be me? Huh?" You laughed. "You'd be found out in a heartbeat. My husband would know you were a fake the second you walk through our front door."

"Don't be too sure." You pinned her arms as she reached for your gun. Shit, you thought. Now we're both pinned like this. "I've been watching you for months, learning your routine."

"Oh just fuck off." You hiss. "You're pinned." She smirked.

"So are you."

"My team will be here any minute."

"No, they won't. They don't have any clue where you are. I disabled your car's GPS while you were at the Lieutenant's apartment and I've got a cell jammer in my car."

"Why are you doing this?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you, Miss Perfect." She wiggled and got out of your hold, despite your best effort, sending a kick to your lower abdomen. "FUCK YOU!" You didn't know what came out of your mouth, but you were sure it didn't qualify as words. She got the gun in her hands and you jumped up just in time to miss a bullet to the leg. Is it a good or a bad thing she didn't know how to shoot? At this range, it didn't matter much. "Alright, get in my car."

"Why should I? You're just gonna kill me." She cocked the gun back.

"You can decide if you want it slow and painful." You sigh, standing up. At the moment you didn't have much choice. You both stopped and listened to the sound of squealing tires.

"My team won't be here, huh?"

"GET IN THE CAR OR I'LL SHOOT YOU NOW!" You knew she was serious, so you headed toward her car. She came up behind you and you stopped and threw your head back. You felt her nose crack against the back of your skull. "AUGH!" She put the gun right up against your neck and pushed you into the door of her car. "BITCH! YOU'RE GONNA BLEED OUT-!" Brakes squealed and a gunshot rang out, You flinched, but you weren't hit. Her body dropped behind you and you turned. Gibbs, Tim, Nick, and Ellie all stood outside the Charger, weapons drawn. Tim was the first to holster his weapon and start towards you. You met him halfway and he wrapped you up tightly in his arms.

"How'd you find me?" He laughed.

"I put an Airtag in your trunk." You blinked. He couldn't have done that after you went to the Lieutenants. You leaned back and looked up at him and his sheepish grin.

"How long has that been there?" His face turned redder than it already was. You patted him on the chest.

"I think I can forgive you this time."

"So," Ellie came up beside Tim as Nick started putting up crime scene tape. "I take it you didn't know about the whole twin thing?" Gibbs was off to the side on the phone, presumably with Leon. You stiffened. Shit. You proved your innocence but you still defied an order from the director. Hopefully, he would be understanding and just give you a week of unpaid leave.

"No," You finally answered. "Not until she showed her face just now." You look down at her body before quickly looking away. "Can we cover her up until Ducky and Jimmy get here? I don't like looking at myself dead on the ground." Ellie nodded before quickly going to scour the trunk of the car for anything that could shield her from view.

"Hey." You jump at Gibbs's voice being so close. You didn't notice him walk over. "You alright?" You nodded.

"Yeah. How pissed is the Director?" He laughed, smiling.

"The usual amount." He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking toward where your car was in the ditch. "Tow truck's on the way. Since your car is evidence It'll be towed back to NCIS."

"Evidence?"

"She hit it with her car, right?" He pointed. "Plus, I think your dash cam caught her entire confession on video."

"I think it's still recording. I can see the red dot in the corner." Ellie added and you smiled.

"I knew getting one of them was going to be a good investment." You elbowed Tim and he sighed.

"Okay, I was wrong about the dashcam being useless, happy?" You smirked.

"Very." With that video, you were pretty much cleared of the murder charges, but you knew you still had to face the Director and some form of punishment. Better than being dead, you supposed. Tim wrapped an arm around you and pulled you closer. Yep. Definitely better.

Tag list:

@stanathanxoox , @nikkiwierden , @malindacath , @havlindzk , @countrygal17a , @memyselfandmaddox , @octobersmog , @mizzezm , @diaryofafan17 , @emmitheacefangirl , @a-sad-excuse-of-everything , @marennnx

#timothy mcgee x reader #mcgee x reader #ncis x reader

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aurorarosesposts · 1 year

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DP/DC WEEK 2022

Day 1: Worse Case Scenario Only

Hello everybody! I'm very excited to do the DP/DC Week made by @avaritia-apotheosis ! Sadly, I'll be doing one, which is this one, fanfic for DP/DC this week due to my busy schedule. I'm upset about it since I made a continuous story with the prompts in my head but maybe I'll do some quick sketches instead for the other days. Who knows ^_^

Also, the story idea for this prompt was made by @stealingyourbones so go check them out!!!

Sorry if there's any grammar errors in this, English isn't my native language ≥﹏≤

Anyways, hope you all enjoy and have a great day!!!! Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ

====================================

This is not how things should go.

Dick Grayson was responding to a hostage situation in Blüdhaven; Just a few weeks after being gassed with the new Joker Gas. Now that doesn't sound good and he was hospitalized for it but he got better! And that should be the end of it...

If only it didn't have side effects.

In the weeks that follow were laughing episodes akin to panic attacks. With research of the gas, some questioning and a bit of detective work, it turns out that the Joker purposely did that so the victims who do survive his gas will suffer either way.

Now luckily there was a antidote.

Unluckily Joker destroy it before anyone got their hands on it.

Now the people that survive would have to bare the fits until the Justice League figure out a antidote. The victims were to be held in government approved hospitals and monitor by the government and the Justice League as they worked together on the cure. Good news to the victims that were gassed, the gas isn't as potent or deathly and there's a 50/50 chance of the effects surfacing after roughly a week after being cured the first time. The good news only ended there though. Dick was hit, but he didn't have the side effects.

At least that's what everyone thought.

Now don't get him wrong, he was bedridden for a few days, but he did get better!... But then fates decided to be cruel and the side effects began just a week after being cured and the fits started; but the family didn't know that. To them, Dick Grayson wasn't amongst the unfortunate people who did. He was fine! And he would like to keep it that way.

Dick didn't want to make them worried about him. Tim and Bruce already have to spend countless nights just to make a cure (and still are for the side effects), his siblings worked around the clock so they can cover him in Bloodhaven, and even Alfred was on edge after the whole insident. Really, he didn't want them to know.

So he kept his mouth shut.

Sure, hiding from a family of detectives wasn't gonna last long, and the laughing fits weren't making it any better to hide,but he's a detective too! Dick was raised by one of the greatest detective no less! He managed to keep it from them, but now Dick suspect that some of them (mostly Cass) are catching on what's going on.

Because of that, he decided to stay in Blüdhaven to lay low. Dick wasn't allowed to be Nightwing yet, but Dick had a job at BCPD; he's not going to sit around and do nothing after all. Alfred may have grounded him from going out as a vigilant but his city still needs him in more ways in one.

And here he was, on the ground, laughing and wheezing and coughing his sorrows away, during a very delicate hostage situation. The hostages were held in a warehouse...

A warehouse similar to the warehouse that held...Jason...

Little wing...

His brother- that he failed-

He couldn't breathe- couldn't think-! He-

He hears shots in the distance but is helpless to do anything.

---

This is not how things should go.

Dash Baxter is just a simple man; a man trying to live his normal life as a policeman in the BCPD. And life likes to make things difficult then it should be, though that should be expected in his line of work. Thank the ancients that he hasn't gone gray yet!

The day starts with a call about a hostage situation. Before that, he was investigating a string of robberies in Bloodhaven for the past few months that might be -no, is- connected to each other and the hostage situation at hand.

How does he know?

Well, all the robberies were done by the same people and although they're cover their faces, the robbers were wearing the same clothes and masks every time. Sure, there were effective in keeping the robber's identities, but at this point, it might as well be their identities.

Even knowing that, the criminals were slippery little shitters as they constantly evaded them at every turn. Entil now; Dash got in contact with Detective Wes Weston (that fees so weird to say), an old friend and now pravite detective to lend a helping hand and figure out the robbers next move.

All the years spend doing conpriresy theories and stalking his classmates finally paid off for him, Dash thought. Though he wouldn't want to admitted that in front of him.

With the help of Detective Wes (Ancients it still feels weird to say that), they managed to figure out the criminal's next plan; that is to rob a bank and stop them before they get their hands on the cash. But just like slimy slippery little bastards they are, they got away.

And this time, with hostages.

Dash, who's on the wheel, his partner Dick Grayson besided him and Wes at the back managed to catch up with the criminals with his car to a empty abondon warehouse just outside the docks. Dash makes sure that they weren't spotted and let the robbers think that they managed to escape.

The plan was to wait until help arrived and go from there. However, he noticed Dick wasn't looking so good when they got to the warehouse, but he was focused on the task at hand.

That was his worse mistake.

"Hey Dash...? Your partner's not looking good there..." Wes whispered, opening the car door slowly, before shit went sideways.

Dick started to giggled, and the next thing they know, he started to laugh, which gave away the three's position.

Shots rang out.

"TAKE COVER!!" Dash yelled as he opened the door, grabs Dick, who's now laughing like a mad man, and took cover at the side of the car. Wes pulls out his Fenton Gun and starts shooting back, green goo hitting and melting away at the metal walls.

Dash takes out his walkie talkie and calls for backups as Wes keep shooting back, careful where he shoots as he didn't know where the hostages are.

The situation is getting worse.

"Damn the Ancients! You're so going to own me a favor!" Wes ducks down with them.

"Crap! This isn't good," Dash retorted back. He starts to reload his gun (the normal kind) and stars shooting at the criminals that he can see. He then ducks down to check on Dick. "Dick! Wha-" he cuts himself.

By the looks of it, Dick having a panic attack, although he knows damn well that laughing isn't one of the symptoms. He looks like in a lot of pain; tears freely ran down his cheeks, as he tries desperately to silent himself, his body was shaking and trembling. Then Dash remembers about the new Joker Gas on the news a while back. How it now has side effects, how Dick was visiting his family in Gotham that time, how-

Dick was gassed with the Joker Gas.

And only then Dash noticed that he can only hear Dick's maniac of a laugh and not the gunshots.

"Hey, D! Look!" Wes called out, shaking Dash fully out of his thoughts.

Shit, the hostage situation.

He feared the worse... but Wes was giving him a shit eating grin and he hears no more gun shots, so he looks back at the warehouse. People were coming out, all the hostages were free, and he zero in a certain woman with dark skin and wearing a hot pink top with a black leather jacket on top and white jeans waving at them.

He wasn't expecting to see another old friend amidst the crowd.

It was Paulina waving at them, with a big smile on her face, at the front of the hostages. Acting as a leader of sorts, she orders them to dragged out the robbers who are now tided up with chains. From his position, he could see that one of them has a pretty nasty black eye. If he wasn't still on edge, he'll find the situation hallarious and wanted to know why she's here in Blüdhaven. But now he know that the people are safe and Paulina mostly took care of it, Dash focused on Dick's laughing problem.

"Wes, can you take care of them for me?" Dash asked. He still needs to help his partner who's still laying on the ground.

Wes just sigh, "You so own me for this," he then walks to the group, no doubt relief as Dash is that the people were safe (though not admitted anything when asked), leaving Dash and Dick behind.

Thankfully, Dick seems to calm down and the laughing stopped. He's eyes were bloodshot red and tears were already staining his cheeks. Unfortunately, he's still giggling.

"I... I'm... I'm sorr-god I-so sorry-" Dick tried to say, but he's out of breath and still giggles between words. Dash feels helpless to do anything.

"Hey, it's okay. Just breathe, alright?" Dash knees down and ask,"can I touch you? At the shoulder?"

Dick silently nods. Dash sat next to him and place he's hand on Dick's shoulder. Dash hears sirens at the distance, signaling that backups have arrived. Hopefully the ambulance as well.

It's going be a long day.

---

Dash decided to stay behind to help rally up the culprits and to give a report on what happened. He feels a little embarrassed that Paulina and Wes did all the work, but they insist that Dash help as well as he could.

He also talked to the medics about his theory on what happened to Dick Grayson. He believes that Dick was gas by the new Joker Gas and kept the side effects from everyone after he was supposedly cured (which is true). Now that he thinks about it, every time that Dick looks unwell, he always excuses himself. Dash really was an idiot and thought his partner was just under the weather.

Ancients, he wanted to banged his head up against a wall.

After the paramedics took Dick away, and knowing he'll be in good hand, Dash walks over to where Paulina and Wes were to catch up on their lives.

---

"Soooo, about the favor you own me...."

"What favor?"

"I'm not bribing Fenton into giving you another cursed book, Wes."

#dp/dc week 2022 #y'all don't know how proud I am #with this one #I don't know much about DC or DP for that matter #so forgive me if their a bit too ooc #IDK I always think that Dick would hide his pain from other #and Wes to be a detective #lol #all the stalking finally paid off #dp x dc #dc x dp #Op writes

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dc-said-bi-robin-rights · 7 months

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BEEP… BEEP… BEEP

Jaime Reyes, the superhero known the world as Blue Beetle, lazily throws an arm over his face as the alarm continues to go off next to his ear. He doesn’t wanna get up. It’s still so early…

“Jaime Reyes,” his Scarab chides, its flat machine-like voice perfectly audible even with the loud, insistent beeping in the background—which makes sense, given that’s its not actually speaking, but rather communicating directly with his mind. “It is almost—”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Jaime groans out loud, sitting up and rubbing the bleariness out of his eyes. He looks at his alarm clock, and his eyes widen. 3:15 in the afternoon. Damn.

“Tres y quince,” he mutters out loud, kicking the blankets away and leaning over to turn off his alarm clock. He missed breakfast, he knows, and is about to miss lunch too if he doesn’t hurry. “Conchale, Khaji, y porque no me despiertas?”

If it was possible for sentient alien WMDs to be irritable, he’s certain Scarab would be shorter-tempered than even Cassie is these days. “Jaime Reyes—”

“Ya, ya, ya,” he interrupts impatiently, waving Scarab off with a sweep of his hand and getting up to walk towards the closet. “Olvidalo, da igual, me visto y ya. Hormiga de miercoles…”

The Scarab mercifully doesn’t bother correcting him, and before long Jaime is sitting down in the living room across from Cassie and Tim, neither of whom spare him a glance, with Tim too busy with his tablet to even bother looking up and Cassie just melancholically glaring down at her food like it is the reason for the mess they’re all in. Jaime isn’t really surprised—no one on the team really spoke to each other all that much anymore after the incident down at the docks two months ago, but it still rankles him for reasons he can’t fully verbalize. Cassie killed someone. They should be trying to figure out what that meant, together, as a team, not closing themselves off in their own little worlds to process what happened by themselves.

He tries to just keep his head down and get with the program, he really does, but after ten long minutes in complete silence the awkwardness becomes too unbearable.

“Soo,” he tries, absentmindedly picking at his food with his fork. “Nice weather we’re having, huh?”

Great start, Jaime.

Cassie completely ignores him, which isn’t a surprise, but he does succeed in making Tim at least raise his head. “Do you need something, Jaime?” he asks neutrally, his eyes cool in a way they really shouldn’t be.

“I… no, I guess not,” he says uncertainly, off-put by the sudden coldness that came over Tim’s demeanor over such a bland, inoffensive statement as the one he just uttered. “Just…”

“Just what?” he asks.

It’s not aggressive.

It’s not Tim, either.

“Nothing,” he replies, swallowing thickly before getting up from the table. “I think I lost my appetite.”

“Did you?” He sounds so… bored. With Jaime. With everything. “That’s too bad.”

Jaime gathers up his plate and half-turns to the kitchen, getting more and more creeped out by the moment. “Right. I, um, I’m just gonna go, if that’s alright with the two of you.”

“Fine by me,” Tim says simply, lowering his gaze back to the tablet. “Just clean your plate before you put it in the dishwasher. We don’t want a repeat of the Bart incident.”

“Sure thing,” Jaime mutters absently as he turns and walking away, feeling Tim’s gaze burn into his back despite the fact he’s not even looking at him. “I’ll get right on it.”

He shakes his head as soon as he’s out of the room. What the hell was up with everyone lately?

“And don’t do it again!” Eddie roars in a strangely deep voice, slamming the door in their faces. They hear it lock a moment later, and an awkward silence engulfs the hallway for a good ten seconds as he and Bart try to process the fact that Eddie Bloomberg just screamed at them over them knocking on his door to invite him to play video games.

“He’s…” Bart tries, before falling silent. Jaime doesn’t know what he was gonna say. Stressed? In a bad mood?

“Yeah, I bet he is,” Jaime mutters, not even completely sure of what he means by that, before tapping his fist against Bart’s shoulder and walking away. “Sorry, hermano. Another day.”

“Yeah,” Bart says quietly, still standing there staring at Eddie’s locked door like it held the keys to some great puzzle. “Another day.”

Jaime holds a fist to his mouth in an attempt to stifle his chuckling as he walks towards M’gann room. In his hand he holds a long, rambling letter from his conspiracy nut uncle warning him about some supposed behind-the-curtain happenings in the military—generals being quietly sacked and replaced with no justification overnight or going missing outright, whole weapon caches disappearing from the official logs, tanks and airplanes being found irreparably damaged from one day to the next, that sort of thing. It’s nonsense, and it reads like the sort of thing a QAnonist might come up with. Jaime wants to do a dramatic reading of it in front of M’gann—he has a feeling they both need more reasons to smile these days, and the last time he read out one of his uncle’s fiery letters the sound of her helpless giggling made him unable to stop smiling for a whole week. Goofing off like that again will do them both good, he decides.

“Hey, chica, come look at this!” he calls out, knocking on her door twice in quick succession.

There’s no answer.

Jaime’s brows knit together in concern. “M’gann?”

Nothing.

“M’gann, come on!” he calls out, knocking frantically on her door, despite the fact that he knows he has to be in there—no one has seen her leave her room in days. “This isn’t funny!”

No answer. He tries the door. Locked.

She’d been burnt after the crisis, Jaime remembers. She’d said she’d be fine. She’d promised.

Please, not another one. We can’t take another one.

“Jaime Reyes,” the Scarab says, and he extends his arm as the left side of his suit materializes over his body. Thanks, Khaji, he thinks, flexing his fingers before curling them into a fist and smashing through the door with a single punch. He gropes blindly for the handle on the other side before his fingers settle around it. He twists, opening the door and walking inside.

The room beyond is empty and devoid of color, completely unlike what it had been the last time Jaime was here. All of M’gann’s belongings are gone, taken. There’s no body, no evidence whatsoever of a fight or of a wound gone bad. It’s as if she simply… vanished.

“M’gann?” Jaime whispers.

The curtains flap in the wind through the open window, the only movement in the lifeless room. It is his only answer.

“Hey,” he greets Rose as he passes her in the hallway, handing her the coffee in his left hand but keeping the one in his right for himself. “Sleep well?”

“Not really,” she admits, taking it from his hands with a grateful nod. “You?”

Jaime sighs. “Not really.”

Nothing more needs to be said—what happened last night was horrible enough without needing to discuss it.

And still… he feels the urge to cover for his kind-of friend, even if what he did was seriously shitty, accident or not. “Listen, I’m sure Eddie thought he was being sweet when he… you know. Are you sure you want to drop him over it? You two were like best friends, right? Maybe if you ju—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are anything like what I think they’re about to be, it’s gonna be you that gets a broken nose next,” Rose warns, closing herself off so fast Jaime has to swallow hard to vanish the sudden dryness in her throat. “Drop it.”

“Fine, okay, sorry,” he says quickly, holding up his hands in surrender. “I won’t bring it up again.”

“Good.”

There’s a long silence, and then, “What are you going to do, then?” Jaime asks, biting his lip. “About Eddie, I mean.”

Rose snorts. “Whatever the hell that thing is, it sure as hell isn’t Eddie anymore.”

Jaime’s eyebrows rise his hairline. “The heck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, nevermind,” she says, moving on before Jaime can press the topic. “I… probably punch someone who cares about me really hard, knowing me.” She pushes her hair back with one hand and sighs, a little bitterly. “It’s what I do best, it seems like.”

Jaime doesn’t dare touch that last part with a five foot pole. “You mean Cassie?”

“Might be best,” Rose agrees, taking a long sip from her coffee cup and licking her lips afterwards… before suddenly grinning widely at him. “Mmh, this is good. Thanks for making the trip, by the way. I know it wasn’t a short one.”

“I was going there anyway,” Jaime lies, wondering why Rose was acting so nice to him all of a sudden. Maybe it was the coffee? He might need to fetch her a cup more often if it meant she’d be nicer to him in the future.

“Uh huh,” she snorts, turning to walk away. “See you around, Jaime.”

“You too, Rose,” he replies, before something suddenly occurs to him. “Hey, wait a moment, actually.”

Rose stops, turning her head to look back at him. “Yeah?”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to spar with Cassie right now?” The image of her glaring furiously down at her plate for no reason at all flashes through his mind. “I don’t think she’s in a good mood today.”

“Worried about little old me now?” Her tone turns bitter again all of a sudden, so fast Jaime’s head spins trying to keep up with her sudden mood shifts. “And here I thought I ‘scared the poop out of you’.”

Jaime has the decency to look sheepish. “You… heard that, huh?”

“I did. So why don’t you keep your advice to yourself and let me worry about my own girlfriend, huh?” she sneers, walking away before Jaime can come up with a reply.

“Oh, come on, I didn’t even…” Jaime trails off. Wait. Girlfriend?

Huh.

That’s new.

Guess they finally got it over with.

And yet… hadn’t Rose told Cassie to never lay a hand on her again after they’d pulled her out of that vision? What was that about? Did they…

Oh, whatever, he thinks, mentally cutting himself off. It’s none of my business anyway.

He doesn’t think much of it until later, when he walks into the unisex bathroom on the fifth floor and sees Rose standing in front of the mirror dabbin at her face with a makeup stick in the dark.

“Uh,” he coughs, taking a step back towards the door. I didn’t even know Rose wore makeup. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were in here. I’ll, just, um—”

“Go in the stall,” she cuts him off, not turning to look at him. “I’m just using the mirror.”

“Uh, okay,” he says, too taken aback to argue. He turns towards the stall, but as he does so, he catches sight of Rose’s reflection in the mirror—and pauses misstep, his eyes widening.

Rose’s one good eye was encircled by the blackest, nastiest bruise he’d ever seen, so large and ugly the eye itself was nearly swelled shut. Jaime starts—he didn’t even know Rose could get bruised, had always assumed her healing factor would take care of any minor injuries like that before they became notable. He’s certainly never seen her with a bruise. Cuts, yeah. But bruises? Nope. Not once.

“Are you…” Jaime starts, his voice trailing away when Rose makes an annoyed noise in the back of her throat.

“Sparring injury. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sparing’s not supposed to leave injuries.”

“Well, it did this time,” Rose says impatiently, turning her head to glare at him. “Do you mind? I’m trying to do something here.”

Her words from earlier run through his mind. “Did Cassie…?”

Every muscle in Rose’s body tenses so suddenly he visibly flinches. “Did Cassie what?” she grinds out, her tone the angriest he’s ever heard from her.

Holy poop, I’m gonna die, he thinks first, quickly followed by, no, wait, Khaji, I’m fine, don’t deploy the suit.

“Well, did she, uh…” he starts, trailing off. It’s such a ridiculous thought he can’t even bring himself to voice it. Cassie can be pretty intense at times, sure, passionate, yeah, stubborn, absolutely, angry, definitely… but she wouldn’t let herself seriously hurt fellow Titans no matter how on edge she was. He quickly change tracks. “Y’know, go overboard a bit by accident?”

Rose relaxes so quickly it gives him whiplash. Her shoulders loosen, her features soften, her fists unclench… it’s like some higher entity flicked her anger switch off and reset her to an earlier mood. Before he can comment on this, she turns her face back to the mirror and goes back to dabbing at it with the stick. “It’s nothing I couldn’t take.”

That’s… not reassuring, either.

“You know you don’t have to ‘take’ anything from a teammate, right?” Jaime asks slowly, not only kind of alarmed now but quite frankly disturbed. A nagging voice in the back of his head keeps telling him something about this just… isn’t right. Rose has been so… off lately. It’s like someone crawled under her skin and found it a too-snug fit, like someone was sat down and told to study a list of all of Rose’s mannerisms and speech-isms without bothering to provide them with the context to them. “Much less from someone who’s supposed to be your partner in… well, everything.”

“Uh huh,” Rose says disinterestedly, turning her face this way and that to observe herself. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

There’s something strangely familiar in the way she’s…

A memory flashes in his mind’s eye. He had once walked in on Traci standing in front of the mirror, dabbing at a spot on her cheek with a stick just like the one Rose is using now.

“What’s that?” he had asked, pointing at it.

“Oh, this?” She had held it up. “It’s…”

Concealer.

It’s not makeup, he realizes with a start. It’s concealer!

Rose isn’t giving herself a foundation, she’s trying to cover up the bruise!

He… he shouldn’t point this out. He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t, after how Rose just reacted to him even vaguely implying Cassie might have hurt her on purpose.

And yet…

“If it’s really just a sparring injury,” he says, very carefully, “why are you trying to cover it up?”

Rose stiffens. Very slowly, she drops the stick into the sink—Jaime can hear it clank against the marble—and grabs the edges of it. Then she just… stays like that, staring down at the sink like it was a divination pool in one of those shitty mmos people swore were supposed to be fun. Jaime waits, and waits, and waits, and just when he has given up on her ever answering and turned towards the door she speaks again, her voice quiet. “It made daddy feel guilty.”

His hand freezes on the doorknob. “What?”

“Looking at it,” she elaborates, like that explained anything. Jaime hears the creak of her gloves as her fingers tighten on the sink. “She… she didn’t mean to. She told me so.”

There’s a very long pause as Jaime turns around and just… stares at Rose.

“What did you just say?” he finally asks, just to make sure it wasn’t his imagination.

For a moment, nothing happens, and then Rose slightly turns her face, her one eye piercing Jaime with its intensity. He can’t move. He’s pinned in place, speared through the heart by the cold blue ice swimming in its depths. “What do you mean?”

“I… what you just said, it was…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rose says cooly. “I never said anything to you.”

“I…”

“Did you hear something, Jaime?” she asks slowly, and something about her voice makes Jaime feel like the bug his persona is named after.

“I…uh, I…”

“Did you?” she insists, her gloves creaking again, and suddenly Khaji Da is screeching alerts into his mind, demanding he summon the suit, threatening him with assuming direct control if he doesn’t comply. He forces his alien ride-along back as harshly as he can and takes a step back, then two.

“No,” he says, his voice almost a whisper, but he can’t for the life of him make it louder. His throat is so dry…

She looks amused. “No?”

“No, I didn’t,” he breathes. “I never heard you say anything.”

“I thought not.” Her lips slowly curl into a half-smirk, and like a switch, it’s Rose again. “See you later, Jaime.”

“I… see you later, Rose,” he breathes, blindly groping for the door knob, unwilling to turn his back to her after whatever the heck that was about. His fingers close around it and he hails it open, harder than he meant to, and he has to consciously slow down to cover up the terrified action before Rose is tipped off to his rapidly rising terror. He holds the door open with his foot and slowly starts exiting the room, keeping his eyes on Rose the entire time, like she’d change again if he looked away.

He waits until he hears the door shut behind him to breathe again, only now feeling the way his heart is pumping a mile a minute.

What the actual duck?

He’s fully convinced himself the entire thing in the bathroom was some kind of cuckoo hallucination by the next day, despite Khaji doggedly insisting it wasn’t and requesting permission to label Rose as an enemy in his systems.

“For the last time, Khaji,” he says out loud as he pushes open the door to the gym—Cassie had gotten rid of the automatic doors some days ago, for reasons Jaime couldn’t really understand—something about buying newer, more reinforced models. “Rose isn’t…” he trails off, catching sight of the titular ex-mercenary running on her personal treadmill near the back wall, her hair pulled back, a towel slung around her bare shoulders. He smiles, reassured by such a normal sight; he’s scared poopless of Rose by his own admission, but just because he knows she could totally crack his skull like a watermelon if he put his head under her foot while she was running doesn’t mean he’s not still glad to see someone acting normally around here for once.

“Jaime Reyes, nothing about this situation is normal,” the Scarab warns, it’s robotic voice sounding actually frustrated. “Do not go near her. I repeat, do not—”

“Hey, Rose,” he calls out as he walks past her, receiving only a grunt in response. “What’s up?”

Khaji Da screeches it’s displeasure into his mind, but he pointedly ignores it.

“Nothing much,” Rose replies in between bouts of heavy breathing. Jaime looks at her machine’s display and sees she’s running at an average speed nearly twice that of Usain Bolt at his prime. “You?”

“Nothing much,” he says, reassured by how normal she’s acting that the whole thing in the bathroom was just his imagination. “I just felt like doing some weights today.

“Good for you,” Rose pants, a grin in her voice. “You could use some bulki—augh!”

Jaime turns to see something impossible—Rose Wilson collapsed on the ground, clutching her leg, having fallen off the treadmill like an amateur.

“Uh, you okay?” he asks hesitantly, more confused than concerned—he’d been pretty sure Rose was biologically incapable of being clumsy up until now.

“Fuck… off,” Rose spits, gritting her teeth and trying to stand… only to fall on her ass a second time with a pained grunt. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually.

“Hey, I’m just wondering if you’re okay,” Jaime protests, instead of voicing that particular out loud, because he’s not in fact suicidal.

“Well, stop wondering—I’m fine,” she snarls, trying to stand up again and failing for the third time. “Just… tripped. I…”

“Jaime Reyes,” Khaji Da says in his mind, making Rose’s voice fade into the background. “I have detected information you might want to hear.”

“Spill,” he says out loud, cutting Rose off mid-sentence and earning himself “The Look”—his name for the weird looks people always gave him when he started seemingly talking to himself.

“Subject Rose “Ravager” Wilson has a severely torn muscle in her lower left calf,” it reports, “likely due to to significant overtaxing over a very short period of time.”

“That’s…”

“Not all,” the Scarab interrupts. “She also has several slightly older injuries that would typically require medical attention, including two cracked ribs, a bruised pelvis, and a fractured leg.”

Jaime rounds on Rose, incredulous. “You were running forty two miles an hour on a broken leg?!”

Rose scowls up at him. “How did you…?”

“Nevermind that,” Jaime interrupts, kneeling down in front to Rose and offering her his hand. “Are you insane or what?”

Rose slaps aside his hand and slowly, painfully, gets up on her own. “You don’t understand,” she grinds out, teeth gritted against the pain.

“Then help me understand,” he demands, reaching out to steady her as she stumbles. “You’re gonna kill yourself at this rate.”

“She needs me,” Rose snarls, pushing him away. “That’s worth a little pain.”

“Who, Rose?” he retorts, exasperated, feeling like he’s going insane. What the hell was up with everyone? “Who needs you so badly you’d kill yourself to help them?”

“Hey,” a familiar voice says, and he turns to see Cassie standing in the doorway. “Everything okay in here?

He doesn’t miss the way her eyes jealously linger on the closeness between him and Rose for a moment longer than excusable.

Jaime opens his mouth to say something like, “Did you do this to her?”, but Rose beats him to the punch.

“Everything’s fine, da—dear,” Rose assures her, and it’s so obviously such a not-Rose thing to say that Jaime seriously contemplates whether he’s actually still asleep and this isn’t some really weird dream.

“Good,” Cassie says, her eyes flickering again to Jaime before they round on Rose, “cause I was wondering if you wanted to spar again today.”

A flash of dread crosses Rose’s face, so obvious and unveiled even Cassie must have plainly caught it. “I’d love to.”

“Great!” Cassie beams, and the world’s not only gone off its axis, it’s detached completely and is currently heading towards a black hole. “Training room 3A?”

Rose gives a pained grin. “It’s a date.”

Cassie’s smile widens, and she turns and walks out of the room. Jaime turns to Rose, aiming to silently implore her not to go… only to find her already following after Cassie, trotting a bit—fractured leg notwithstanding—to keep up.

I’m in a freaking madhouse, Jaime realizes.

Jaime taps his fingers against his leg, carefully not looking at either Conner or Bart, who are seated on the floor in front of him playing a fighting game. It’s his turn next, but try as he might, he finds he just can’t concentrate on that with everything that’s happened.

He tries to dismiss the urge to ask the others about it, but it eventually it grows too strong for him, and he concedes to it. “So… Rose has been acting pretty weird lately.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause.

“Has she?” says Conner, too curiously for it to be genuine. “I haven’t noticed.”

His heart skips a beat for reasons he can’t entirely articulate. Conner probably notices. He tries not to think about that.

“Hmm,” he says noncomitally, his eyes flickering over to the other boy. “What about you, Bart? Have you noticed anything?”

There’s an even longer pause.

“Nope,” Bart says slowly “Can’t say I have.”

“She’s just stressed,” Rose tells him later, as they both sit on the roof looking at the stars. It had been her and Eddie’s favorite spot once, he knows, but Eddie never comes out of his room anymore. “Fighting me helps her, lets her gauge how hard she can go on normal opponents now that she’s not holding back as much anymore. She’s been doing a pretty good job of pulling her punches back so far.”

He’d be more inclined to believe her if it wasn’t for the brand-new cast over her wrist, the sheer white of it at a stark contrast to the thin strings of Rose’s blue bikini. “If you say so .”

“I do,” she says plainly, taking a long puff from her cigarette with her free hand. When she exhales, she blows out the smoke in a perfect ring. She watches it rise high up in the air for a moment, before wrestling a small stone free from the railing and handing it to him. “Throw it.”

“Huh?” Jaime says intelligently.

“Throw it. Through the ring. It should be pretty easy for you…” She grins. “…unless it’s actually the suit that does all the aiming for you.”

Jaime’s feels his lip curl into a smile. “What do I get if I do get it through?” he asks, cocking his arm back.

“You’ll see. Throw it.”

He does. It gets through. His smile widens.

“What’s my prize?” he asks, turning to Rose… before his smile fades at the look of dread on her face. “Rose?”

“I thought… I thought it was just a dream,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Jaime. “That…”

“Thought what was just a dream?” Jaime asks, frowning.

Rose turns her head to look at him. There’s something in her eyes he can’t quite place. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, but just when Jaime opens his mouth to speak again, she says, “Don’t do it tomorrow.”

“Do what?”

“You know what. Don’t do it tomorrow,” she says, before standing up and walking away without another word.

Jaime blinks. “Rose?”

She does not look back, but Jaime swears he can hear her mutter, “Trust me.”

“Ok, let’s see what you’ve been hiding,” Jaime says, cracking his fingers and getting to work on cracking Tim’s encryption.

I took a hacking class in high school. How hard could it be?

Very hard, as it turns out. Jaime’s on the verge of giving up when he finds a note taped to the bottom of the desk that reads, “New password is SpoilerAlert. Don’t forget this time. You owe at least that to her, you utter failure.”

It’s written in Tim’s hand. Jaime decides not to think too hard about it.

“Ok, let’s see what the hell is going on here…”

As he logs into Tim’s private files, the grandfather clock set against the far wall of Tim’s office chimes with the coming of the hour.

Tick

“—this is mercy!”

He shuts his eyes when Eddie starts screaming. Goddamn it. They should’ve realized…

Tock

“You made me do it. You made me.”

Tick

There’s a horrible squelching noise as the thief’s head yields beneath the force of Cassie’s fist, spraying pink matter and bits of flesh everywhere. The video wobbles as the person holding the phone steps back in shock, an action mirrored by everyone in the small crowd of criminals… until the screams begin.

“No, wait!” Cassie yells as everyone in the crowd save for the mysterious recorder starts to run, holding her hands out in a gesture of peace—which might be more effective if the dead thief’s brains weren’t still dripping from them. “I didn’t mean to! I…” she trails off, looking down at her hands like she’s never seen them before, like they belong to someone else. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to.”

Tock

The clock chimes again by the time Jaime stops vomiting.

Tick

“If you’re seeing this, it means I’m leaving,” M’gann says into the security camera. “Please, Tim, show this tape to the others. I don’t want… I can’t say goodbye in person after what I just saw in your mind, but…”

Tock

“Ravager, huh?” The thing that wasn’t Eddie asked, grinning at the picture on his phone, which is pincered carefully between two massive red fingers. “Mmmh, I’d like to ravage her. I think she’d make a wonderfully feisty bride, wouldn’t you agree?”

“What, uh, makes you think that?” asks Tim, who is clearly uncomfortable with the situation… though not uncomfortable enough to leave it, clearly.

“Call it a feeling,” Not-Eddie says, his grin widening. “I have several, you know. I know these things.”

“Several…?”

“Brides,” the demon clarifies, his eyes literally blazing with mirth. “All of them beautiful and very happy with their place in life, I’ll have it said. I’m nothing if not a sensitive and attentive husband.”

“Right…”

“How much for the Ravager?” he asks, leaning forward and placing his palms on the desk, unaware or uncaring how his fiery hands singe the wood black underneath them. “You mortals do still like gold, don’t you?”

“Uh…”

“Or perhaps… it is power you seek?” Not-Eddie presses, his grin widening. “I can see your desires… you think yourself intelligent, little boy, but I can give you a mind that would dwarf all others. Would you like that?”

Jaime wishes he couldn’t tell Tim was tempted.

“I… no,” he says finally, swallowing thickly, as if mourning the opportunity he’s just rejected.

“No?” The demon raises an eyebrow, then shrugs. “Hmm… perhaps I misjudged you. It happens sometimes, it must be said. Very well, I could also offer you…”

“No, I meant…” he trails off, and for a moment Jaime thinks it’s because he’s struggling to think of a way to explain the concept of women having rights to a demon before Tim’s next words smash that optimistic hope to bits. “I meant, she’s really not mine to sell in the first place. She’s Cassie’s thing, not mine.”

Jaime’s breath stutters in disbelief. What the actual…?

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and even if she knew about your, uh, transformation, she’d never give Rose up after all the trouble she went to keep her around, even though it’s obviously the pragmatic thing to do. Sorry.”

“I see.”

But, um,” Tim starts, licking his lips. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t get you… other things, if you made it worth my while… and didn’t tell Cassie.”

The demon looks intrigued. “Go on.”

Tim leans forward, a greedy glint coming over his eyes. “Well, you demons like making deals with desperate people, right?”

“You could say that.”

Tim’s lips slowly curl into a smile, and something about it makes Jaime’s mouth go dry. “How would you like to get your hands on a few supervillains?”

Tick

“Oh, G-God, Tim, I-I actually d-did it,” Cassie sobs into Tim’s shoulder, nearly incoherent with regret. “I-I did it, and… she… she didn’t even wake up! She… she trusted me, subconsciously, and I… I…”

“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” Tim says softly, rubbing soothing circles into Cassie’s back. “You had to. She left you no other choice.”

“That’s b-bullshit, and you know it!” Cassie yells, pushing away from Tim and wiping furiously at her eyes. “Great Hera, what have I done? I… I… I’m worse than Slade.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Oh come on, even you don’t believe that.”

“And why not?” Cassie snaps, furiously rounding on Tim, tears running down her cheeks. “At least Slade had the decency to look her in the eyes when he did it! I snuck up on her while she was sleeping! Like some… some coward!”

Tim sighs. “Look, we both know we couldn’t just let someone with as much intel on us as Rose just walk out of here weeks before the operation… and if it makes you feel better, I condensed the formula so that you would only have to do it once instead of every weeks, like Slade.”

Cassie sniffs, wiping away a tear in the corner of her eye with her finger. “I… I need to tell her.”

Tim’s face visibly twitches in a way that makes Jaime’s heart fearfully skip a beat. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not,” she says fiercely, blinking to clear the moisture in her eyes. “This is wrong, Tim. What I did was… horrible. I knew how scared she was of being controlled like that again… and I still did it!” She wipes at her eyes and turns towards the door, and for a moment it seems everything is gonna work out okay. “I can’t stand it a moment longer. I have to tell her.”

His eyes flicker to the date of the recording. It’s nearly a month old.

Rose had still been acting weird less than a day ago.

Dammit, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut. Goddamn all you people, you’ve all gone insane.

He suddenly wants nothing more than to be at home with his sister, and his parents, in that place he grew up in, where everyone speaks Spanish and there are barbecues every Sunday and things are simply and easy and people he used to care about don’t turn out to secretly be massive douchebags, and—

“Do what you want,” he hears Tim say, seemingly uncaring. “I’m just wondering if you’ve thought the consequences through.”

Don’t stop, he feels himself thinking, even though he knows full well she is going to stop. Don’t listen to him. Keep going. Tell Rose. Make it make sense again.

“What do you mean?” Cassie’s voice asks hesitantly, and he doesn’t need to open his eyes again to know that she’s stopped. He still does it anyway.

“I mean, what do you think is gonna happen when you tell her you drugged her?” Tim asks sardonically, chuckling a little when Cassie’s expression tightens. “See, even you know I’m right. Remind me, how many times has she tried to kill Slade by now…?”

“I…”

“Four? Five?” He grins. “And like you said, at least Slade had the decency to look her in the eye when he did it. You… not so much.”

“I… what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you tell Rose what you did, you lose her forever,” Tim says, a bit more gently. “I mean, she was gearing up to leave even before you drugged her. She’s not ever going to forgive you if you tell her. You know that, right?”

“That… that doesn’t matter,” Cassie says, too firmly, like she’s trying to convince not only Tim but herself too. “What I did to her was wrong. I have to make up for it.”

Tim looks at her, then sighs, standing up and walking towards the medical cabinet in the back of the lab. “Okay.”

“I… really?”

��Yeah,” Tim says, pulling open one of the drawers and pulling out a long, thin syringe filled with an unfamiliar green liquid. “This is the antidote. You give this to Rose, she’ll be back to normal within the hour.”

He turns around and holds it out for Cassie to grab. “Take it.”

Do it. Come on. Please. It’s right there. You can fix everything if you just take it. It’s right there.

Cassie hesitates. “The serum… it’s not really mind control, is it?”

Jaime can Tim’s lips quirk up slightly. He’s just won, he realizes. “Nope. It just enhances feelings that are already there.”

By which he means it sends all of her emotions into overdrive and makes her extremely unstable. Goddamn it. How are you falling for this? You’re Wonder Girl. Use your freaking brain.

“Maybe… maybe it would be best to wait a bit before giving her the antidote,” Cassie says slowly, looking like she herself doesn’t believe what is saying. “Just to make sure the whole… thing is not as raw as it would be right now. Besides… since it’s a new version, it could have side effects we don’t know about, right? Maybe it would be best to stand back and study her case for a bit to make sure we don’t accidentally put her in distress by ‘curing’ her.”

Tim’s lips curl into an open smile. “I knew you’d come around.”

Tock

Operation Titanomachy.

It’s a strange name for a file.

Jaime clicks on it, more by curiosity than anything else, and his eyes widen at what he sees inside. There are plans for a full takeover of the government, graphs showcasing “military infiltration levels”, monthly political pie charts that are steady turning more and more extremist with every month, blueprints for state-run super-weapons, everything and anything an up-and-coming supervillain would need to—

An alarm suddenly blares in his head, and he turns, his suit materializing around him as the smoke pellets roll along the floor and hiss open, expelling what Khaji labels a deadly neurotoxin into the air. It’s about as dangerous to his suit’s air filtration system as a pebble and about as useful, though, so Jaime simply switches his vision settings to thermal and blasts Tim straight in the chest with his hand cannon. He flies back, out of the cloud of smoke and into the far wall, which he collapses against with a pained moan. Jaime marches right over to him and grabs him by the cape before he can recover, dragging him along the floor as he marches straight to the conference room.

One way or another, this insanity ends now.

“Jaime Reyes, this course is I’ll-advised,” the Scarab warns him, but he doesn’t care anymore. Six months. Six months of sitting there like a lamp, watching his friends turn into murders, and for what? For them to plot to take over the government? For Tim to sell incarcerated supervillains to a demon—and not just any demon, but the one that had killed Eddie? For Cassie to drug Rose the exact same way her father drugged her? No. He’s not stopping to consider a better option. He’d already let this go too far.

“J-Jaime,” Tim gasps, but it isn’t Jaime he’s speaking to anymore, it’s Blue Beetle. He has just enough time to squawk out a “w-wait!” before he founds himself picked up and lobbed through the door, which breaks under his weight and deposits him on the floor amidst a pile of broken wood.

“Nobody moves!” Blue Beetle snarls, his arm cannon raised and pointed at the room’s inhabitants, who look up in shock at his entrance. “I’ve had just about enough of this!”

The conference room is a little different from how it was the last time he was in here. The table is new, a holographic map of the world with several places outlined in red. At the back, Wonder Girl’s chair, recognizable by the ‘W’ symbol on the back of it, has been placed on a slight dais, all the better to look out over the contents of the map… and, perhaps unintentionally, down on the people around it.

Looks like they’ve already gotten started on all the fascist imagery. Figures.

Not that there were all that many people around the table—for whatever reason, only Wonder Girl, Superboy, and now Red Robin were in the room with him, with Rose obviously absent and Impulse nowhere to be found. As for Superboy and Wonder Girl, they were both seated some distance apart, but jumped to their feet at his entrance.

“Jaime, wh—” Wonder Girl cries, before she is cut off by an energy blast hitting the wall an inch from her ear. “Hey!”

“I know. I know what you’re plotting,” he reveals, taking a step forward, his helmet retracting rom his head so he can look her in the eyes. “And I know what you did.”

Wonder Girl visibly swallows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Liar,” he accuses, lips twisting into a scowl. “How does it feel knowing you betrayed everything you stood for? That you betrayed the one person who’s never going to forgive you for it?”

Wonder Girl looks stricken for a moment, before her eyes flicker to his cannon hand.

“Jaime, think about this,” she warns, in a tone usually reserved for stupid, misbehaving children. “We’re your friends. We don’t wanna…”

“Lady, I don’t know who the hell you people are anymore,” Blue Beetle interrupts, priming his cannon, “but you’re sure as hell not my friends.”

Wonder Girl’s eyes flicker again, this time to something behind him, and by the time Blue Beetle thinks to turn two fiery-hot hands have clamped tightly onto his face from behind. A sizzling noise fills his ears, and it takes him a moment to register its his own flesh that’s burning. He screams, feeling his face boil beneath his assailant’s fingertips, and turns, shoving away the thing that wasn’t Eddie and then sending him crashing back with an energy blast. The massive demon—for, it seems, Red Devil had been metamorphosing somehow in his room and has now emerged as a muscular, eight feet tall version of himself—lets out a grunt and lies still as its back hits the wall, but Blue Beetle doesn’t let his guard down; he turns and transforms his left hand into a blade just in time to block Wonder Girl’s descending fist. Sparks fly as the alien metal clashes against her steel bracelet, but Blue Beetle doesn’t lean into the lock, knowing Wonder Girl is much stronger than he is, instead choosing to send a kick quick to her stomach to get some distance in between them and turn to face his other opponent—not fast enough, though. Superboy tackles him around the waist and flies them both into the wall, prompting a pained gasp from Blue Beetle as all the air is forced out of his ribs, and he doesn’t stop there: hits start raining down on his head, one after the other, so hard his helmet starts cracking, unable to protect his head from the powerful blows until… now, Khaji! His chest opens up, expelling a highly concentrated beam of energy that sends Superboy crashing into and through the ceiling, going up and up and up at an angle until he is blasted well out of the Tower. There’s no time to catch his breath, however, as Wonder Girl’s lasso suddenly snaps taut around his wrist and pulls him, first into the wall, then, as he crashes down, into a punch that completely shatters his helmet and leaves him seeing stars on the ground.

Ouch. He needs to—

He rolls back, jumping to his feet and into the air as bomb pellets explode on the ground beneath him, summoning his wings and manifesting an energy shield to protect himself from the blast. The force of it crashes against his shield, and he can feel the searing heat ford around him like a stone in a river, but he is unharmed, and a moment later he makes Red Robin pay for getting up by strafing him with his energy cannon. He dodges the first, the second, but not the third blast, and Blue Beetle lands on the ground to finish him off… only to find his cannon hand pulled away by Wonder’s Girl lasso at the last moment, directing his blast into the floor instead. He turns and yanks on the lariat with his free hand, aiming to pull her off her feet in a move he once saw Rose use in one of her and Wonder Girl’s sparring matches, but he isn’t Rose, and this isn’t sparring; Wonder Girl not only keeps her feet, but pulls back, and the short tug of war ends the only way it could—with Blue Beetle speeding through the air straight into Wonder Girl’s grip. She wastes no time raising him high into the air before turning and smashing him down into the fancy new holographic conference table, which breaks under his weight, leaving him dazed in a pile of broken glass.

Okay, might have beaten bitten off a bit more than I could chew here, he thinks, shaking off his discombobulation and dodging just in time for Wonder Girl’s fist to leave a crater where his head had been a moment prior.

Looks like Rose was right, she really is pulling her punches. Not.

Cassie doesn’t let up, her fists surging towards him with the speed and accuracy of homing missiles, and he—he—

He feels his neck be seized from behind, and knows in that moment it’s about to be snapped.

No, that can’t be, he thinks inanely in his last moments of life, reaching up to grab futilely at the arm around his neck. Rose said don’t do it tomorrow, and I didn’t, unless… he focuses his gaze on the window. There is light coming from underneath the curtains.

It’s morning.

“Oh, he breathes, and he hears the crunch long before he feels it.

There is a very long silence as Eddie stands over Jaime, panting.

“Eddie,” Cassie breathes, feeling a pit open in her stomach. “Eddie, what did you do?”

Eddie looks up… and slowly smiles.

“Doomed boy,” the wind whispers in their ears as it fled them, like the crowd had fled Cassie after what she did. “Doomed, doomed, doomed.”

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sisterofficerlucychen · 1 year

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in this essay i will explore why mastermind fits chenford perfectly. and yes, i have officially lost my damn mind thanks to them ♡

so this general thought is what threw me down the rabbit hole -- in 5x10 during the montage scene, lucy references the green dress to which tim smiles at. it’s an item that holds a memory for the two of them, perhaps the same type of memory, as tim looked lucy up and down when she walked toward him and asked her to save her a dance. a dance they were both clearly excited for considering ‘the debt’ gets paid at nyla’s wedding and they have their first dance. lucy knew exactly what she was doing when she referred back to it.

Once upon a time, the planets and the fate And all the stars aligned You and I ended up in the same room At the same time

1x01: the planets and fate literally aligned to have both of them at mid-wilshire station. they come from such different backgrounds and just everything they’ve lived through before the start of the series??? like tim serving two tours and the whole rise and fall of his marriage with isabel; lucy not knowing where she’s going in life but knowing she doesn’t want to follow her parents footsteps or wishes so she signs up for the police academy on a whim. also, the fact that percy asked grey to pair jackson with tim and instead of doing that, he paired up lucy and tim together. had lucy and tim not been paired together, their entire relationship would have likely not happened and it would have been a very different outcome for both of them.

And the touch of a hand lit the fuse Of a chain reaction of countermoves To assess the equation of you Checkmate, I couldn't lose

lucy met tim in possibly the worst moment of his life. he had lost himself, losing isabel put him in a really dark path and it was not pretty. he was hurting and it made him mean because tim may be no nonsense but we’ve seen how he is now to what he was then like he still means business but there’s a more playful and patient side to him. which was not the case back at the beginning of the series where he was hurting and was projecting those emotions. like tim’s intro to the series and how he told jackson he was going to make his life a living hell? well, that could have been a tim test tbh, but also felt so out of left field because we know he considers being a training officer something sacred and takes it seriously.

What if I told you none of it was accidental And the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me? I laid the groundwork and then, just like clockwork The dominoes cascaded in a line

the way the two prank each other has always teetered between being something else. it’s playful and fun but it’s also very much them and even to an extent, intimate? like when lucy filled tim’s lockers with booties when he made sergeant. during angela’s wedding, her attention completely shifted off nyla and grey the moment she saw tim. she clocked him and beelined toward him. why? why? she knows why, he knows why, we all know why. tim wasn’t subtle about taking her in either and they were so flirty with each other in that moment, and then before they walked away from one another, he asked her for a dance and she was pleased by that.

then the prep for going undercover aka chenford’s first kiss. it will never not be funny how these two dumb idiots thought that for going undercover, they needed to practice kissing and i am holding out for the day when nyla finds out and gives them shit for it because it’ll be so funny. but the fact that as they’re working on their cover story, lucy says something she knows will get a reaction from it. it’s completely on purpose. she broke his brain for a second there and as he brought up the suggestion of them having to kiss, she kept playing dumb to make him spell it out.

No one wanted to play with me as a little kid So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since To make them love me and make it seem effortless This this the first time I've felt the need to confess And I swear I'm only cryptic and Machiavellian 'cause I care

lucy is an only chlid and being one myself, i can say that it is extremely lonely not growing up with any siblings and while that may not be the literal definition of that first lyrics, not having any siblings definitely does play into that because you don’t really have anyone to play with as a kid. we also know that lucy craves validation and praise. we saw it so many times while she was a rookie and even nyla says it when tim storms off when lucy goes undercover for the first time as nova.

additionally, lucy caring is key. when ashley broke up with tim and lucy gauged that something was wrong but didn’t know what, she used the opportunity of him leaving his radio behind to send him on a scavenger hunt to places she knew would bring him joy. like it was so devious and cute and she played dumb when he called her on it.

lastly ...

I laid the groundwork and then saw a wide smirk On your face, you knew the entire time You knew that I'm a mastermind And now you're mine

so this is one that i think is coming like when they have the conversation of how and when they fell. tim’s just as perceptive of lucy as lucy is of tim except he’s definitely more subtle about it. like referring back to when she sent him on a scavenger hunt or when jan kept talking about being a minx and how it had “lucy written all over it”. also, the hotel room in vegas when he flat out tells her it didn’t feel like pretend. i could see them coming back to this as well as the fake confession and how tim to a certain extent was aware of her feelings but the fake confession did throw him off because of how he reacted to it when she started laughing.

the end :-))

if you made it this far, ilu???? thanks for coming to my ted talk and entertaining my delusion as i stumbled down the rabbit hole.

#the rookie #chenford #tim bradford #lucy chen #chenford: an essay #i have lost my damn mind #someone send help pls

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purplecatghostposts · 1 year

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Do you have any headcanons on what Brian, Alex and Jay’a backstory’s are like?

I personally give them dark back stories and that’s why they we’re so easily manipulated

I mean honestly I think they were easily manipulated because they were just regular guys before! I do have some details of their backstories (including pre-MH stuff) that I stick with though:

Brian

- Single mother and only kid. Dad skipped out, Brian resents him more than his mother does because she doesn’t like to waste time thinking about him

- Brian and his mother were close, he called her pretty frequently. His missing poster was the first to go up when he stopped responding

- In at least two scenes showing Pre-MH, nobody knows where Brian is despite him being needed for a scene in one and them hanging out at his house for another. Because of this, I often HC that Brian was frequently losing time and waking up in weird places due to the Operator around this time. Not wanting to worry anyone however, he kept this to himself and always tried to play it off as something else

- While Brian and Tim were never officially roommates, they talked about it a lot and planned to do it next semester, though unfortunately never got that far

- Brian has been openly bisexual since he was young, even if he didn’t have a label for it back then. He got some shit for it, most of it being pretty backhanded stuff considering he was popular

- He met Alex during Freshman Orientation at college and immediately clocked him as bisexual before Alex officially came out to him

- While Brian is a popular guy and gets along with a lot of people, he only has a few close friends because he chooses them wisely. He had a handful of not so great ‘friends’ in High School that he’s no longer in contact with and is subtly wary with most relationships going forward

Alex

- Didn’t fully realize he was bisexual until High School but stayed deep in the closet until he could move out

- His family (of which Alex is the third kid of four) is largely shitty on top of being homophobic, especially his father, and he cuts off all contact when he moves out for college. He didn’t tell them what college he was going to either, leaving in the middle of the night

- The only family he IS in contact with and has a good relationship with is his cousin and his husband, as they’re the only other gay people in the family (though technically disowned, not that Alex cares) and have always been more of a family to Alex than his actual one. They got really worried when Alex sends Rocky up to live with them but they take good care of Rocky. When he drops off the map, they are the people who eventually call in a missing person report for him

- Alex got Rocky in High School and took him with him when he left. When shit goes on with the Operator, Alex sends Rocky to live with his cousin out of fear that something will happen to him if he doesn’t. Rocky outlives Alex because of this.

- Alex met Amy in a shared class in his Freshman Year. They end up dating about three months after but eventually in her second year, Amy ends up transferring to a different college in order to pursue her degree as the other college had better options. They remain long distance and visit each other as much as they can

Jay

- Him and his Moms have always been the odd ones out in their town so Jay was pretty used to the idea that people were always gonna find something to dislike about him no matter what he did and he might as well be himself if that’s the case

- Openly gay for as long as he can remember

- Didn’t really have a whole lot of friends growing up but fortunately while enduring some bullying, also knew how to snap back in a way to make them back off. Eventually everyone knew to just leave him alone

- His family, while living comfortably, has always been careful with money, causing Jay to pick up the same habits. He saved a ton of money before college and always has at least a dozen of coupons in his wallet

- When Jay stops answering calls, his moms went looking for him themselves. They’re used to only relying on each other so they don’t bother with the police. They find answers, just not the ones they want, but Tim is always welcomed to the Merrick Household. No matter how much he blames himself, they know otherwise. Call it mother’s intuition.

- Jay had a TON of cats growing up so he’s very friendly with them and can spout Cat Facts at any given moment

#marble hornets #homophobia m #death m #I think Tim should find his family in his friends’ family #I dunno. I think he should be loved and have a support system #because while in grief of losing their loved ones they look at Tim and see someone their sons age in need of help #and I realize Tim is still sick but SHUSH I WANT HIM TO HAVE SUPPORT #fuck the Operator and it’s ability to inflict isolation I want FOUND FAMILY #tell me if I need to tag anything else

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adoreuoon · 10 months

Note

Everything was too loud, Tim wondered how Kon could even begin to function with his super hearings.

(for the fanfic thing)

thank you for the ask!!

send me an ask with the first sentence of a fic and i’ll write the next five!

The screams inside the building under Tim’s feet were growing too loud to ignore. There weren’t many stars out that night either, just the moon.

Tim’s hearing and sight were already struggling, then he started to lose his footing. Harley Quinn’s giant wooden hammer had struck his bo staff’s defense (literally) right in half, and sent it clambering to the rooftop.

“This is so gonna piss off your dad.”

Harley took a step back to get a good swing lined up. She had Tim backed up to the edge of the roof with nothing behind him but a fifty meter drop onto cold, black pavement.

He reached for his grappling hook and shot it up at the next building to his right, but before the line could reach the other rooftop, Harley’s hammer collided with his wrist and send his grapple flying.

Tim waited for Harley to start gloating again before he made his next move. He noticed that her hammer was still in his vicinity, and he knew his masked covered wherever his eyes were pointing. He grabbed his wrist and winced.

“Wah wah,” she mocked, right on cue. Tim grabbed the hammer by its head, shoved it into the ground, and handsprung off of it. The weight of the hammer yanked Harley forward.

Now, he was behind her, and dealt a strong kick to sweep her legs out from under her. She fell to the ground with an ‘oof’ and turned onto her side. She scolded for a moment, then she smiled devilishly up at Tim, which he assumed was part of her clown gimmick.

Then he felt a strong blow to the back of his head that sent him stumbling sideways. He peered over his shoulder and realized two things; one: the Joker had just clocked him in the head with a pistol, and two: that was why Harley smiled.

He scrambled. It was too loud for him to think clearly. The gunfire and the screams and sirens below were cluttering the air. He supposed Kon could probably counter these situations by flying away from them and shooting lasers out of his eyes.

“I wouldn’t be offended by a little help!” he muttered as he held his finger over the communicator in his ear.

“What was that, sport?” the Joker asked. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over all the people dying.”

Tim threw a punch at the man’s jaw and kicked him in the groin. It gave him enough leeway to grab the gun from Joker’s hand and chuck it off of the roof.

“I have to say, you might be the least entertaining boy blunder yet.” He pulled another pistol from under his purple blazer. “But you are definitely the slowest,” he said. In the same breath, he pointed it down, and sent a bullet into Tim’s foot.

Tim shouted and tripped backwards, but before he could hit the ground, he was in Harley’s arms. “Baby bird, you gotta rest that poor foot! Let me help ‘ya.”

Tim couldn’t tell if there was more fire in his foot or in his chest. He elbowed Harley in her side and managed to get his balance back. He grabbed her hammer from its spot on the ground and swung it at the Joker, knocking the wind out of him.

He used the next couple seconds of air to reach out on comms again. “Batman! Spoiler! Do you-“

He was cut off by another hit to his head, this time it was Harley’s fist slamming against his jaw from the side. For the first time that night, he saw stars.

He felt a coldness in his right ear. It sent a shiver down his spine. The next thing he saw was Harley in front of him with his communicator in her hand. Just when he thought this couldn’t possibly get any worse.

“Seriously? This is your backup plan?” Harley laughed. She pressed down on the button and held the communicator uncomfortably close to her mouth. “Wah wah, I’m Robin! I’m useless on my own and my parents are probably dead!” She mocked. “Puh-lease.” With a roll of her eyes, she dropped the comm onto the ground and stomped on it. She even dragged her foot from side to side, as if she were putting out a cigarette.

Tim hadn’t been clobbered in the head for a suspicious amount of time. In anticipation, he turned around and ducked. As he’d suspected, Joker was right behind him, ready to swing again. Tim dodged the Joker’s arm and shot back with a powerful uppercut to his slim jaw.

As resilient as Tim had become, he wouldn’t be able to handle attacks coming from both sides for much longer. He was losing blood, likely had a concussion, and there was so. much. noise.

The Joker stomped on Tim’s oozing foot, which made the boy scream and fall backwards, again into Harley’s arms.

“We gotta stop meetin’ like this, kiddo.” She chuckled at her own joke and began walking backwards, ever so slowly. She stopped once her heels touched the egde of the roof.

Joker stepped closer and loomed over Tim as he squirmed. “You’re no fun at all. I hate to have to cut this short but.. I actually don’t hate to at all. At least the other failed abortions were funny.” He grabbed Tim by the fabric that attached his suit to his cape and raised him up, out of Harley’s arms.

Before Tim could reach out and do anything, he was hoisted over the edge. If he did anything to incapacitate the Joker now, it would mean certain death. With a limp right foot, he was in no position to try anything slick. He didn’t dare to look down, but he knew there was nothing underneath his feet for meters. He knew there was nothing between his body and the ground. He knew Batman wasn’t coming to save him.

“Any last words, Wonder Brat?” The Joker grinned.

With the last bit of energy he had, Tim let out the loudest, most ear piercing, gut wrenching scream possible, and pleaded for the only person he knew would never fail him: “CONNER!”

“Conner?” Harley laughed. “Is Conner Batman’s real name or is some white guy comin’ to save you?”

Tim tried to think of something smart to say to keep himself alive longer and raise his chances of Kon coming to bail him out. But there wasn’t time. Joker let go, and Tim fell.

Tim had fallen from high places before countless times, but he was never without his grapple, without batman, without help. He’d never felt his heart plummet the way it did as he flew downward through the air.

Then it stopped. It was sudden. The falling stopped. Tim felt himself breathe again. His eyes were still clenched shut, but he could feel the warm, strong arms that had caught him mid-air. For a brief moment, Tim thought he was dead.

“Hey,” a sweet voice said. Thank God.

Tim let his eyes open back up. Tan skin, blue eyes, and curly hair. Blue. Leather. Tacky hot topic spikes. Sunglasses, even though it was nighttime. Thank God.

“You okay?” Kon asked.

“Yeah.” Tim cleared his throat, trying to get his teary eyes back to normal before they could leak out from under his mask and give him away. “Thanks.”

“You don’t look okay.”

“Yeah, well… can you take me home please? If it’s not too much trouble. I got shot in the foot and I don’t think I’d make it very far on my own.”

Kon’s eyebrows shot up as he peered over to inspect Tim’s foot. “No problemo, dude. Is Batman gonna kill me for being in Gotham though?”

“He’ll get over it,” Tim snickered. He finally let himself look down, now that he knew he was safe. Then, he realized that civilians were starting to notice Superboy holding Robin in the sky. If that were to make the papers, Batman might never get over it. “We should go.”

“Agreed,” Kon said, making the same observation. With Tim tight in his grasp, he took off for the Batcave.

Kon’s superhearing was unbearable near that building, but he wouldn’t trade it for anything as long as Tim was safe.

#big whump #sorry tim :(#timkon #timkon fic #my writing #dc fic #this is way more than five please forgive me #i got carried away #lost in the sauce if you will #not proofread #be kind to me please

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prisonprocess · 2 years

Photo

Tim Goes to Prison

46.

A word from the former Tim:

So this is Toad, y’all. Been a long time! You’ve heard about me and you’ve heard about my brother Robert, who a lotta the cons call Robby the Robot, for obvious reasons, and his cellie Bodhi. You also heard about me and my cellie Pete, who is totally great. And you know that we all figured somethin out, that we belonged in prison, even if we didn’t expect we did, but it worked out fine.

Robby and me aren’t really on the same vibe, you know, and we’re not in the same block either. So I don’t see him that much, or hear from him. Which is cool. He did let me know that if I ever needed anything—cuz he’s like, big man on the yard and so on—that I should get the word out. But that’s not gonna happen. Pete and me just lie low and do what we’re told, and we don’t have to even think any more. While ago they put us in the canning factory. The green shit comes in off the farm and we put it in cans—sorta like what happened to us, lol! You work there all day, it’s pretty easy to turn into a machine part yourself. Cmon dog, you tellin me you wouldn’t wanta be a mean piece a steel? Then we go to chow and we get locked in our cage and we’re in there all night. With each other. You wouldn’t like that? So time stopped, you know what I mean? So why should we need any help?

Pete and me got tattoos now. They’re exactly the same, and they’re classic. Totally retro. Some dudes look at our arms and they tell us, hey, when you gonna finish that ink? Ain’t no hands on them clocks, dude! But that’s the point. No hands on the clock—you’re here for life! Don’t worry bout your time, don’t worry bout nothin. You think you’d like that? I think you would.

#uniform #labor

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djcanipe99 · 1 year

Text

Dick : I can't do it.

Jade : What?

Dick : I can't beat him.

Jade : Kladur ?

Dick : Yeah. I been out there walkin' around, thinkin'. I mean, who am I kiddin'? I ain't even in the guy's league.

Jade : What are we gonna do?

Dick : I don't know.

Jade : You worked so hard.

Jade : Yeah, that don't matter. 'Cause I was nobody before.

Jade : Don't say that.

Dick : Ah come on, Jade , it's true. I was nobody. But that don't matter either, you know? 'Cause I was thinkin', it really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Ahm , and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood.

//////

Jade :Dick ! Put on your coat. Just put on your coat. Come on it's not worth it.

Dick : Naw, Jade it is worth it. He's just confused.

Jade : Dick, do you see what's happ...

Dick : [Interrupting] Yeah I do see he's twisted around by Pierce.

Jade : No, come on it's you, it's you, it's not him. You can't live backwards. Come on, you can't turn back the clock, 'cause we live now, we live here.

Dick : Hey Jade I know where we live, what do you think, I'm stupid? I'm not as dumb as you think I am. You don't think I can smell it? I see where we are. Jade, I don't want this no more! I want something good for the family, I don't want this! I don't want this! Jade did I come back here and get my brains beat out for these guys to say 'Hey there goes Grayson just another bum from the neighborhood!' I didn't want this!

Dick : No, come on, nobody says that!

Dick : I'm sayin' it Jade ! I'm sayin' this! I'm sayin' this! When that kid was in the ring, you know, what was I doin'? I was winnin'. When he was winnin', I was winnin'.

Jade : You were winning?

Dick : Yeah it was, it was like my last chance at getting some respect for us you know that?

Jade : I respect you, I respect you!

Dick : [Interrupting] You can't respect me!

Jade: I do respect you!

Dick : No you can't!

Jade : I do! All those beatings you took in the ring, I took them with you! I know how you feel! I know when somebody like Tim comes along you feel alive! But he's not you - he doesn't have your heart! All those fighters you beat, you beat 'em with heart not muscle! That's what Bruce knew, that's why you and Bruce were special, but Bruce’s dead! If there's something you wanna pass on, pass it on to your step daughter!For God's sake your step daughter is lost! She needs you! I know Tim makes you feel great, he makes you feel like you're winning again but you're losing us! Dick ,you're losing your family!

#source : rocky 1976 #source :rocky five 1990 #dick is lian’s step dad in this scenario #incorrect young justice qoutes #nightwing #cheshire #Cheswing #birdcat #catwings #dick grayson x jade nguyen #jade nguyen x dick grayson #dick x jade #Jade x dick

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ladyreapermc · 3 years

Text

Fic: Closing Time (Johnny Utah x fem!reader)

Summary: You work at a clothing store, you get a last minute customer at closing time and sexy tims happen.

Pairing: Johnny Utah x fem!reader

Author’s Notes: So I’m slowly getting back to writing. I’m not gonna say I’m fully back just yet, but for this week at least, there will be content! Huge thanks to @toomanystoriessolittletime and @meetmeinthematinee for being cheerleaders and giving me early feedback on this!

Wordcount: 3125

Warnings: smut. oral sex (F! receiving); dirty talk; unprotected sex with strangers (don’t do this kids!); sex in inappropriate places.

Most days you quite enjoyed it when there was barely any movement at the store. It gave you the opportunity of just being by yourself, reading a book, or enjoying some music or studying for college, things that you didn’t always have the privacy of doing at your dorm because your roommate seemed to always be around. Even during the summer and what was up with that? Didn’t she have better things to do?

She wasn’t like you, who actually had to work to put yourself through college and took some extra jobs during the summer so you could have some savings for the following term when all you managed to get were part-time jobs that you had fit in between classes and paid shit.

Fortunately, at the shop, you had some peace and time for yourself. It was a tiny, hole-in-the-wall sort of place around Venice Beach where tourists could get some shirts and other knickknacks to take back home and locals surfers could find cheap clothing and supplies for a day out on the beach. Most days, you worked from 9-5 and after your shift, you could head to the beach, spread your towel on the sand and enjoy the gorgeous Californian sunset. However, as the summer winded out and the fall winds blew the scalding hot weather into simmering heat, your boss let you close a little early, especially on Tuesdays, when most tourists had already headed home and the new arrivals hadn’t landed yet so there were barely any customers around.

Your plan today had been to finish your reading for class and start the new crime thriller you picked up at the used books store on your way to work. Except, today you were just too restless to focus. You must have reread the same paragraph of your textbook twenty times before you gave up and set it aside, giving the other book a go, but it was just as unsuccessful at holding your attention.

So instead, you moved around the cramped space, adjusting the decoration items, dusting off shelves, and refolding every single shirt in the display until it was perfectly symmetrical while you willed time to move faster so you could end this day. Maybe it was the heatwave that had made an appearance turning the air in the shop stifling and all you had to help you was an old and slow fan that made more noise than blow air. The A/C was busted and your boss still hadn’t called someone to fix it.

Another possibility was the fact that you had to keep the glass doors opened to help circulate a little air and every time any kind of wind blew or someone walked in, it brought with them the crisp smell of salt and sand that always made you ache for the ocean and fight against the temptation of just abandoning everything and heading for the beach so you could cool off taking a dip in the deliciously cold water. Either way, you kept checking the slow ticking of the clock hands, counting the seconds before you could turn the closed sign.

When the minute hand finally hit twelve, you let out a cheer, jumping off your stool and taking a step towards the door. You always locked the doors first to discourage most last-minute walk-ins while you closed the register, put away the money in the back office safe, and slipped out of the store through the back door, taking any garbage with you to throw in the dumpster outside.

Before you could move from behind the counter, a man stepped into the store and you groaned low in your throat. Of-fucking-course! It was like they stood in wait to come in at the precise moment you were about to head out.

“Hey, you’re still open, right?” He asked, pushing the overgrown dark hair back from his forehead and offering you an unsure smile. You felt the urge to lie and say that no, you were closed and he should come back tomorrow.

“Yeah, sure.” You said instead placing your best and most fake seller’s smile. “Feel free to look around and let me know if you need help.”

“Thanks!” He replied, flashing a wider smile that showed a small dimple, before moving towards the shirts in the display while you made your way to the main entrance, flipped the sign, and locked the door to bar any other walk-ins.

You hung back while the guy browsed the options, taking a moment to assess him. He didn’t look like a tourist, but also not fully like a local. Most Californian guys that you knew had the most horrifying hair cuts or bleach jobs you had ever seen and that was not the case for the man in front of you.

His hair was dark brown, a little shaggy from too much exposure to sun and salt and it flopped a little over his forehead, just above his eyes. He wore a grey cropped t-shirt that had definitely seen better days and struggled to contain his broad shoulders, showing a peek of toned abs. His jeans were ridiculously tight and hung low on his slender hips, the light-wash of the denim accentuating the perfect bubble butt and for the love of God, you needed to get laid. Badly.

“Excuse me,” he called, startling you and you prayed he hadn’t noticed the way you were checking his ass just now. “Do you have this one in black?”

“Yeah, sure.” You moved towards the drawers. “What’s your usual size? Medium or large?”

“I think large should be good,” he replied and when you turned around with the requested shirt, he was just standing there, barechested, his top hanging from his shoulder and you hoped your gasp wasn’t as loud as it sounded in your head.

“Here you go,” you croaked, offering him the shirt. “We do have a fitting room…” you gestured towards the small cubicle to the rear of the store.

“Oh right!” He glanced over as he pulled the shirt on. “Do you mind if I try them out here, though?”

“Not at all,” you forced your voice to sound somewhat normal.

“Awesome!”

Damn! He wasn’t just fucking hot. He was also cute, the wide grin he just flashed giving him a boyish look that was only enhanced by the almond-shaped chocolate-colored eyes. Biting your lip, you watched as he turned side to side in front of the mirror, checking himself out.

“It think is a little too big,” he said, meeting your gaze. “What do you think?”

“Well…” you cleared your throat and moved closer so you could look at him through the mirror. “If you want it more fitted, then yeah, probably a smaller size would be best. Want me to get it?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Once again, by the time you turned back to him, he was shirtless, the garment he had just tried neatly folded and resting on the shelf as he took a look at some other shirts, his attention snapping at you when he noticed you coming closer to hand him the new shirt, giving you a glimpse of a pale, sunken scar running down his abs that stopped just above his belly button and that drew attention to the small trail of fine dark hairs that disappeared under the waist of his jeans and holy shit! He was bare beneath those jeans.

“Bike accident,” he commented as he took the shirt that you offered and you met his eyes in confusion.

“What?” You asked, mouth suddenly dry.

“The scar,” he clarified, putting on the shirt and his lips were tilted into a slight smirk. “That was what you were staring at, right?”

“Right,” you agreed, feeling your face burning. “I’ll just head to the register and give you some privacy.”

I don’t mind,” he shrugged, turning to the mirror. “This is better. What do you think?” He turned towards you, giving you a full view of the cotton fabric covering his muscles, looking almost as if painted on him.

“Sure...” you swallowed hard, trying not to stare. “If you prefer it more fitted...”

“I do,” pulling the shirt off and once again giving you the glorious view of his torso. “I’ll take it.”

You took the shirt to the register and he followed, pausing only to pick up his own, which he had discarded on a nearby hanger. You were expecting him to put it back on, but he just threw it over his shoulder, reaching for his wallet as you registered the sale and tried not to stare.

“Is that the only camera you have around here?” He asked, gesturing to a point above your left and you glanced at the object before nodding, exchanging the money he gave you for the paper bag with his purchase.

“Yeah, why?”

“So basically...” he started, taking a step to the side, closer to the fitting room. “I’m completely out of sight over here?”

“Basically, yeah,” you frowned a little, stepping away from the counter. “Why? Are you planning to rob the place? Because let me tell you, there’s not much worth...” You trailed off with a surprised squeak as he tugged on your hand, pulling you over to the blindspot and nearly pressed against his strong chest.

“Because honestly, I never really gave a fuck about the shirt. I just thought you were beautiful and wanted to ask your number when I walked in, but you looked kind pissed so I got cold feet,” he confessed with a rueful smile.

“So you decided to just get mostly naked in front of me?” You snorted, shaking your head and he shrugged.

“Needed to make sure you might be interested and considering the way you were eyeing me earlier, it looked like you saw something you liked.”

“You’re really sure of yourself, aren’t you?” You arched an eyebrow at him, not ready to concede just yet. Even if the heat of his body and the smell of sea breeze whiffing off his skin were driving you crazy.

“Only when I’m right,” he flashed you a lopsided smirk and just waited, gazing into your eyes, making it clear that the next step was yours.

Part of you screamed that it was crazy to even consider hooking up with a guy that just walked into your store, no matter how hot he was, but it had been a ridiculously long time since you last had sex and he was so fucking hot, the scent of his golden skin intoxicating and his heat was making you dizzy with want as you looked him up and down, noticing the volume pressing against the denim of his pants.

“We might not have cameras, but the windows are see-through, so get your ass to the fitting room while I finish closing up.”

He flashed a victorious smirk and nodded, heading towards the back while you rushed through the steps of securing the store before joining him.

Your heart was pounding with anticipation as you made your way towards the back, pushing away the curtain that blocked the small space of the fitting room and finding him perched on the low stool that you kept there so customers could put down their things, facing the full-length mirror, legs spread, jeans undone, revealing the bush of dark hairs surrounding his long and thick cock.

You nearly whimpered at the sight, your center pulsing in want as you leaned against the doorframe, watching him as he run his left hand up and down his shaft, head tilted back, breathing hard, eyes hooded. He was such a beautiful and debauched sight that you felt the urge to photograph him, capture that sensuality.

“Are you just gonna stand there and watch?” He asked, eyes meeting yours through the reflective surface.

“You seemed to be doing fine on your own,” you teased stepping into the tight space, fingers itching to touch all that glorious skin.

“I did not just spend most of my afternoon at the corner diner, drinking burned coffee just to jerk off in front of you,” he declared, standing up and turning your way.

“Ohhh, so this was premeditated?” You asked, kicking off your sneakers as he reached for you and you stumbled against his chest.

“A little bit, yeah,” he admitted, large hand hot against your hips and you wanted to feel it against your flesh. “You probably don’t remember, but I was here last week and you had to bend over to get something from one of the lower drawers...” he let out a soft groan, hands moving to your ass and squeezing lightly. “Fuck! I don’t think I ever popped a boner so fast in my life. I had to get out.”

You vaguely remembered that. There was so much coming and going in this place, it was hard to keep track of faces, but customers just taking off after asking to see something usually caused an impression. If you weren’t about to get fucked after six months, you would be more pissed.

“So you decided to come back when I was alone and seduce me?” you asked, running your hands over his chest and abs, scratching it slightly and goosebumps rose in his skin as he hissed.

“Yeah,” he spoke in a low voice as his hands move to the button of your jeans. “I’ve been thinking about you all week,” he slid your fly down and your breath caught in your throat. “I thought about bending you over that counter and fucking you until you’re screaming.” His fingers skimmed over your cunt, just a soft touch, but you gasped and arched your hips forward, holding onto his arms to steady yourself. “I thought about it eating your pussy and your ass until you’re begging me to fuck you.”

Those words were whispered right against your ear, before he changed your positions, crowding you against the mirror and pushing your jeans down to your thighs before he once against skimmed his fingers over covered sex, making you ache for him.

“What do you think about that?” He asked, lips brushing your cheek in an almost chaste kiss, completely opposed to the lewdness of his hand exploring your cunt. “Do you want it?”

“If you’re as good with your tongue at eating pussy like you are at talking dirty, then I maybe I do,” you declared, tired of his teasing and you felt his smirk as he gracefully slid to his knees in front of you.

You didn’t manage to get another word out before he shoved your panties down to join your jeans and his lips firmly connected to your clit. He gave it a sharp suck and you groaned, burying your fingers into his hair to keep yourself on your feet as your brain short-circuited and your knees turned to jelly.

He was very good at eating you out, especially because he was very attentive to every sound you made, every tightening of your grip on his hair, and roll of your hips to nudge him into going faster or slower, harder or softer... It wasn’t long before he reached that perfect alternation of fast flickering against your clit and slower and broad strokes of his tongue over your entrance and lips, a combination that drove you crazy.

You were whimpering and moaning, legs quaking with the alternating urge to close them around his face to keep him trapped there pleasuring you forever or spreading them wider so he could have more space to work, but the edges of your jeans were digging into the lower part of your knees, signaling you that that was as far as they could go.

As if reading your thoughts or maybe he just realized he would need more room, he shoved your pants down and helped you to kick them off so you could be completely free of the garment. And didn’t you two looked like a mismatched pair, with you standing there wearing only your top while he knelt in front of you, his jeans still on.

Once your pants were off, he hooked your right thigh over his shoulder, pressing his mouth even harder against your cunt, flickering his tongue over your clit before dipping it in between your lips, gathering the juices soaking your sex like a starved man.

“Fuck! I’m so close...” you hissed, rolling your hips, seeking more because that tight knot deep inside you was about to snap and from the way you ached and shuddered, your muscles tensing, you knew it would be a hard one.

“Yeah?” He mumbled against your core, his breath against your overheated skin making you shiver as he pushed two fingers inside you. “Gonna cum all over my mouth?”

He pistoled his fingers in and out at a fast pace, crooking inwards with every down motion, his tongue matching his rhythm against your clit and it was that made you snap as you bit down on your fist to stop yourself from shouting as your body was flooded with pleasure and all you knew was the unbelievable bliss that surrounded you. Stars bust behind your closed lids, the air came out of your lungs in short gushes as you fought hard not to slide down to the ground because your legs felt like jelly.

“Ok?” he asked, making you finally snap your eyes open to look at him.

He was sitting on his heels, face still glistening with your orgasm, his lips swollen and red from the abuse. His cock was rock hard, red, and leaking and you really wanted to return the favor.

“Way better than ok,” you replied with a gasp. “My turn?” To your surprise, he shook his head and got to his feet.

“Tonight, the only place I’m cumming is in that pussy,” he announced against your ear and shivered with anticipation. “So let’s get out of this fucking store and go to my place?”

“Fuck yes!” you grinned breathlessly at him as you reached for your jeans and he buttoned his over his hard cock and that couldn’t be comfortable.

“I’m Johnny, by the way,” he said. “Johnny Utah. Just in case you want to know what to shout when I fuck your brains out later.”

You rolled your eyes at his cheeky smirk and moved closer to him, once fully clothed, the only evidence of your recent climax was the sweat cooling on your skin and the stupid grin that refused to leave your face.

“I think I like you more when your mouth is busy with something other than talking,” you declared and before Johnny could manage a reply, you silenced him with a kiss, tasting yourself in his tongue.

xxx

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