DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.
The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.
He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.
It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.
So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!
Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.
He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.
The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).
It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.
"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.
Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.
"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.
"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"
"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.
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hmmm do you guys ever think about… how much steve would love it if you ever scratched up his back during sex <3 he. loves. it. so. bad.
honestly he treats it like he does hickies, he lurvssss getting to show off— gets all hot under the collar at the mere thought that if anyone else can see them they’ll know he’s taken, that he’s got a lover and he treat them right. it’s this perfect sweet spot between stroking his pride and catering to his possessiveness :)
the first time you notice you’ve done it (because let’s be real, you don’t notice in the moment, you’re far more focused on the perfect grind of his hips into you, fast and filthy, so good it has you clawing at his back) but the day after, when he tugs his shirt off, you spot the scratches and you’re instantly spouting apologies.
your hands flit over his back, worried that you’ve hurt him and he’s like, “no no no! it’s— i’m fine and- uh, how do i say this? please, um, always do that.” he can’t even pretend to hide how much he loves it and that makes you feel better, makes you glow hot inside.
eddie notices one time when you’re all over at the harrington house, using the pool to cool off. right as steve tugs his shirt off over his head, eddie catches sight of the red scratches where your nails have raked down the tan expanse of his back and whistles loudly, “damn, harrington, you share a bed with a wild animal lately?” like he doesn’t know damn well where those marks came from.
his quick glance at you confirms it and you can’t help but feel a little bashful but steve’s already scoffing, a little smug and a lil pink in the cheeks from how proud he is and he jerks a thumb over his shoulder and is like, “actually, it means i got a good grade in sex :)”
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Concept:
Post-tadpole, Tav offers to help Astarion find a way to walk in the sun again, and she starts by going to different libraries and repositories and archives around the city to look for books that might be relevant. Astarion, obviously, has to stay in the rental room with the shutters closed during the daytime, so he can't come with her.
At some point, this takes her up to the posh part of the city, where the fancy ✨ scholarly ✨ archive is. She remembers most of the walk - it's not too far from the graveyard Astarion took her to, in the neighbourhood where he once used to live.
And like, it's never actually occurred to her that he could still have Actual Blood Relatives still living? It's not a topic she's ever thought to raise with him. But she has to sign in and out of the archive, and she just happens to notice the name three or four lines above hers: an initial and a surname she recognises.
Ancunín.
The same name from Astarion's gravestone.
A parent? A sibling?
A niece or nephew Astarion has never even met?
Thus begins a secondary quest of trying to reunite a broken family. Astarion is willing enough to talk about the few memories he still has of the thirty-nine years he had with his family before turning - a drop in the ocean compared to the 200 years spent suffering under Cazador - but he shuts down when she nudges him towards the likelihood that Mr & Mrs Ancunín are still alive. He retreats back behind the selfish, catty survivalist he was when she first met him and claims he has no interest in ever reconnecting. The pain in every clipped syllable says drop it, so she does.
But then he asks her, very quietly, several days later, what the initial was. He doesn't really react when she tells him - there's no obvious recognition, and he doesn't ask any follow-up questions or try to discuss it further. He just goes back to his book. She watches him out of the corner of her eye though, as she skim-reads her own giant tome of magical artifacts. A very long time goes by before she sees him turn a page.
For a good long while, the family issue gets put firmly on the back burner. They have other shit going on. Sometimes, it's following promising leads on a possible workaround for Astarion's sunlight allergy. Other times, it's the kind of ugly, ragged-edged breakdown that so often follows a period of relative safety and stability after a major trauma. He's been running in survival mode for two centuries, and now he's finally starting to feel secure enough for the rest of his mind to come back online, and all the trauma he couldn't handle at the time, all the pain and fear and tangled emotions survival mode was protecting him from, is catching up to him. During those sporadic episodes, trying to keep him from falling apart is her top priority and, well, time gets away from them and by the time he brings up his parents again, months or more have gone by, and they have a fairly good idea of what artifact of daywalking they need to find.
By the time it comes to actually meeting with them, still more months have passed, and they have already found it.
It's horrible, and heartwarming, and heartbreaking, and healing, and hurting, and so many other conflicting things that for a while - a long while - Tav doesn't know whether she actually did the right thing encouraging him to reach out to long-lost loved ones. It's a mess of moments that makes her heart ache for a dozen reasons. She finds out that Astarion looks most like his mother, but has his father's nose. She holds him for hours while he shakes and sobs into her shoulder because they never even left the city, they were here the whole time, and they never found him - and he's so angry and full of grief he doesn't know what to do with himself. She accompanies him to the home he was raised in, and the once-familiar surroundings jog memories he thought lost for good - he's glassy-eyed, recounting them to her, but she's fairly sure it's the good kind of glassy-eyed, so she doesn't mention it. She tries to make conversation at family dinner while he stares at his hands in his lap, dissociated, looking even more uncomfortable than she feels, utterly lost in a world that once fit him like a glove. There are a lot of feelings to try and mediate. They are all hurt, all damaged, all afraid, all looking for the ghost of a loved one in the face of a stranger.
But, eventually, there is a day where she overhears Astarion having a conversation with his father, and he sounds like himself - not the persona he puts on in public - and his father laughs at something he says in a way that's entertained rather than awkward. There is a day where his mother reaches out and he doesn't shake his head or step away - he lets her hug him goodbye. They have not slipped back into the graves they crawled out of in each other's lives - they are all very different people now - but they are learning new ways to fit together, and he seems to be pleased about it.
So she thinks, yeah, it was worth it.
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